A fortnight after this the Major came over and besought her to return with him for a week at Chericoke. Mrs. Lightfoot had taken to her bed, he said sadly, and the whole place was rapidly falling to rack and ruin. "We need your hands to put it straight again," he added, "and Molly told me on no account to come back without you. I am at your mercy, my dear."

"Why, I should love to go," replied Betty, with the thought of Dan at her heart. "I'll be ready in a minute," and she ran upstairs to find her mother, and to pack her things.

The Major waited for her standing; and when she came down, followed by Petunia with her clothes, he helped her, with elaborate courtesy, into the old coach before the portico.

"It takes me back to my wedding day, Betty," he said, as he stepped in after her and slammed the door. "It isn't often that I carry off a pretty girl so easily."

"Now I know that you didn't carry off Mrs. Lightfoot easily," returned Betty, laughing from sheer lightness of spirits. "She has told me the whole story, sir, from the evening that she wore the peach-blow brocade, that made you fall in love with her on the spot, to the day that she almost broke down at the altar. You had a narrow escape from bachelorship, sir, so you needn't boast."

The Major chuckled in his corner. "I don't doubt that Molly told you so," he replied, "but, between you and me, I don't believe it ever occurred to her until forty years afterwards. She got it out of one of those silly romances she reads in bed—and, take my word for it, you'll find it somewhere in the pages of her Mrs. Radcliffe, or her Miss Burney. Molly's a sensible woman, my child,—I'm the last man to deny it—but she always did read trash. You won't believe me, I dare say, but she actually tried to faint when I kissed her in the carriage after her wedding—and, bless my soul, I came to find that she had 'Evelina' tucked away under her cape."

"Why, she is the most sensible woman in the world," said Betty, "and I'm quite sure that she was only fitting herself to your ideas, sir. No, you can't make me believe it of Mrs. Lightfoot."

"My ideas never took the shape of an Evelina," dissented the Major, warmly, "but it's a dangerous taste, my dear, the taste for trash. I've always said that it ruined poor Jane, with all her pride. She got into her head all kind of notions about that scamp Montjoy, with his pale face and his long black hair. Poor girl, poor girl! I tried to bring her up on Homer and Milton, but she took to her mother's bookshelf as a duck to water." He wiped his eyes, and Betty patted his hand, and wondered if "the scamp Montjoy" looked the least bit like his son.

When they reached Chericoke she shook hands with the servants and ran upstairs to Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber. The old lady, in her ruffled nightcap, which she always put on when she took to bed, was sitting upright under her dimity curtains, weeping over "Thaddeus of Warsaw." There was a little bookstand at her bedside filled with her favourite romances, and at the beginning of the year she would start systematically to read from the first volume upon the top shelf to the last one in the corner near the door. "None of your newfangled writers for me, my dear," she would protest, snapping her fingers at literature. "Why, they haven't enough sentiment to give their hero a title—and an untitled hero! I declare, I'd as lief have a plain heroine, and, before you know it, they'll be writing about their Sukey Sues, with pug noses, who eloped with their Bill Bates, from the nearest butcher shop. Ugh! don't talk to me about them! I opened one of Mr. Dickens's stories the other day and it was actually about a chimney sweep—a common chimney sweep from a workhouse! Why, I really felt as if I had been keeping low society."

Now, as she caught sight of Betty, she laid aside her book, wiped her eyes on a stiffly folded handkerchief, and became cheerful at once. "I warned Mr. Lightfoot not to dare to show his face without you," she began; "so I suppose he brought you off by force."

"I was only too glad to come," replied Betty, kissing her; "but what must I do for you first? Shall I rub your head with bay rum?"

"There's nothing on earth the matter with my head, child," retorted Mrs. Lightfoot, promptly, "but you may go downstairs, as soon as you take off your things, and make me some decent tea and toast. Cupid brought me up two waiters at dinner, and I wouldn't touch either of them with a ten-foot pole."

Betty took off her bonnet and shawl and hung them on a chair. "I'll go down at once and see about it," she answered, "and I'll make Car'line put away my things. It's my old room I'm to have, I suppose."

"It's the whole house, if you want it, only don't let any of the darkies have a hand at my tea. It's their nature to slop."

"But it isn't mine," Betty answered her, and ran, laughing, down into the dining room.

"Dar ain' been no sich chunes sense young Miss rid away in de dead er de night time," muttered Cupid, in the pantry. "Lawd, Lawd, I des wish you'd teck up wid Marse Champe, en move 'long over hyer fer good en all. I reckon dar 'ud be times, den, I reckon, dar 'ould."

"There are going to be times now, Uncle Cupid," responded Betty, cheerfully, as she arranged the tray for Mrs. Lightfoot. "I'm going to make some tea and toast right on this fire for your old Miss. You bring the kettle, and I'll slice the bread."

Cupid brought the kettle, grumbling. "I ain' never hyern tell er sich a mouf es ole Miss es got," he muttered. "I ain' sayin' nuttin' agin er stomick, case she ain' never let de stuff git down dat fur—en de stomick hit ain' never tase it yit."

"Oh, stop grumbling, Uncle Cupid," returned Betty, moving briskly about the room. She brought the daintiest tea cup from the old sideboard, and leaned out of the window to pluck a late microphylla rosebud from the creeper upon the porch. Then, with the bread on the end of a long fork, she sat before the fire and asked Cupid about the health and fortunes of the house servants and the field hands.

"I ain' mix wid no fiel' han's," grunted Cupid, with a social pride befitting the Major. "Dar ain' no use er my mixin' en I ain' mix. Dey stay in dere place en I stay in my place—en dere place hit's de quarters, en my place hit's de dinin' 'oom."

"But Aunt Rhody—how's she?" inquired Betty, pleasantly, "and Big Abel? He didn't go back to college, did he?"

"Zeke, he went," replied Cupid, "en Big Abel he wuz bleeged ter stay behint 'case his wife Saphiry she des put 'er foot right down. Ef'n he 'uz gwine off again, sez she, she 'uz des gwine tu'n right in en git mah'ed agin. She ain' so sho', nohow, dat two husban's ain' better'n one, is Saphiry, en she got 'mos' a min' ter try hit. So Big Abel he des stayed behint."

"That was wise of Big Abel," remarked Betty. "Now open the door, Uncle Cupid, and I'll carry this upstairs," and as Cupid threw open the door, she went out, holding the tray before her.

The old lady received her graciously, ate the toast and drank the tea, and even admitted that it couldn't have been better if she had made it with her own hands. "I think that you will have to come and live with me, Betty," she said good-humouredly. "What a pity you can't fancy one of those useless boys of mine. Not that I'd have you marry Dan, child, the Major has spoiled him to death, and now he's beginning to repent it; but Champe, Champe is a good and clever lad and would make a mild and amiable husband, I am sure. Don't marry a man with too much spirit, my dear; if a man has any extra spirit, he usually expends it in breaking his wife's."

"Oh, I shan't marry yet awhile," replied Betty, looking out upon the falling autumn leaves.

"So I said the day before I married Mr. Lightfoot," rejoined the old lady, settling her pillows, "and now, if you have nothing better to do, you might read me a chapter of 'Thaddeus of Warsaw'; you will find it to be a book of very pretty sentiment."



IX

THE MONTJOY BLOOD

In the morning Betty was awakened by the tapping of the elm boughs on the roof above her. An autumn wind was blowing straight from the west, and when she looked out through the small greenish panes of glass, she saw eddies of yellowed leaves beating gently against the old brick walls. Overhead light gray clouds were flying across the sky, and beyond the waving tree-tops a white mist hung above the dim blue chain of mountains.

When she went downstairs she found the Major, in his best black broadcloth, pacing up and down before the house. It was Sunday, and he intended to drive into town where the rector held his services.

"You won't go in with me, I reckon?" he ventured hopefully, when Betty smiled out upon him from the library window. "Ah, my dear, you're as fresh as the morning, and only an old man to look at you. Well, well, age has its consolations; you'll spare me a kiss, I suppose?"

"Then you must come in to get it," answered Betty, her eyes narrowing. "Breakfast is getting cold, and Cupid is calling down Aunt Rhody's wrath upon your head."

"Oh, I'll come, I'll come," returned the Major, hurrying up the steps, and adding as he entered the dining room, "My child, if you'd only take a fancy to Champe, I'd be the happiest man on earth."

"Now I shan't allow any matchmaking on Sunday," said Betty, warningly, as she prepared Mrs. Lightfoot's breakfast. "Sit down and carve the chicken while I run upstairs with this."

She went out and came back in a moment, laughing merrily. "Do you know, she threatens to become bedridden now that I am here to fix her trays," she explained, sitting down between the tall silver urns and pouring out the Major's coffee. "What an uncertain day you have for church," she added as she gave his cup to Cupid.

With his eyes on her vivid face the old man listened rapturously to her fresh young voice—the voice, he said, that always made him think of clear water falling over stones. It was one of the things that came to her from Peyton Ambler, he knew, with her warm hazel eyes and the sweet, strong curve of her mouth. "Ah, but you're like your father," he said as he watched her. "If you had brown hair you'd be his very image."

"I used to wish that I had," responded Betty, "but I don't now—I'd just as soon have red." She was thinking that Dan did not like brown hair so much, and the thought shone in her face—only the Major, in his ignorance, mistook its meaning.

After breakfast he got into the coach and started off, and Betty, with the key basket on her arm, followed Cupid and Aunt Rhody into the storeroom. Then she gathered fresh flowers for the table, and went upstairs to read a chapter from the Bible to Mrs. Lightfoot.

The Major stayed to dinner in town, returning late in a moody humour and exhausted by his drive. As Betty brushed her hair before her bureau, she heard him talking in a loud voice to Mrs. Lightfoot, and when she went in at supper time the old, lady called her to her bedside and took her hand.

"He has had a touch of the gout, Betty," she whispered in her ear, "and he heard some news in town which upset him a little. You must try to cheer him up at supper, child."

"Was it bad news?" asked Betty, in alarm.

"It may not be true, my dear. I hope it isn't, but, as I told Mr. Lightfoot, it is always better to believe the worst, so if any surprise comes it may be a pleasant one. Somebody told him in church—and they had much better have been attending to the service, I'm sure,—that Dan had gotten into trouble again, and Mr. Lightfoot is very angry about it. He had a talk with the boy before he went away, and made him promise to turn over a new leaf this year—but it seems this is the most serious thing that has happened yet. I must say I always told Mr. Lightfoot it was what he had to expect."

"In trouble again?" repeated Betty, kneeling by the bed. Her hands went cold, and she pressed them nervously together.

"Of course we know very little about it, my dear," pursued Mrs. Lightfoot. "All we have heard is that he fought a duel and was sent away from the University. He was even put into gaol for a night, I believe—a Lightfoot in a common dirty gaol! Well, well, as I said before, all we can do now is to expect the worst."

"Oh, is that all?" cried Betty, and the leaping of her heart told her the horror of her dim foreboding. She rose to her feet and smiled brightly down upon the astonished old lady.

"I don't know what more you want," replied Mrs. Lightfoot, tartly. "If he ever gets clean again after a whole night in a common gaol, I must say I don't see how he'll manage it. But if you aren't satisfied I can only tell you that the affair was all about some bar-room wench, and that the papers will be full of it. Not that the boy was anything but foolish," she added hastily. "I'll do him the justice to admit that he's more of a fool than a villain—and I hardly know whether it's a compliment that I'm paying him or not. He got some quixotic notion into his head that Harry Maupin insulted the girl in his presence, and he called him to account for it. As if the honour of a barkeeper's daughter was the concern of any gentleman!"

"Oh!" cried Betty, and caught her breath. The word went out of her in a sudden burst of joy, but the joy was so sharp that a moment afterwards she hid her wet face in the bedclothes and sobbed softly to herself.

"I don't think Mr. Lightfoot would have taken it so hard but for Virginia," said the old lady, with her keen eyes on the girl. "You know he has always wanted to bring Dan and Virginia together, and he seems to think that the boy has been dishonourable about it."

"But Virginia doesn't care—she doesn't care," protested Betty.

"Well, I'm glad to hear it," returned Mrs. Lightfoot, relieved, "and I hope the foolish boy will stay away long enough for his grandfather to cool off. Mr. Lightfoot is a high-tempered man, my child. I've spent fifty years in keeping him at peace with the world. There now, run down and cheer him up."

She lay back among her pillows, and Betty leaned over and kissed her with cold lips before she dried her eyes and went downstairs to find the Major.

With the first glance at his face she saw that Dan's cause was hopeless for the hour, and she set herself, with a cheerful countenance, to a discussion of the trivial happenings of the day. She talked pleasantly of the rector's sermon, of the morning reading with Mrs. Lightfoot, and of a great hawk that had appeared suddenly in the air and raised an outcry among the turkeys on the lawn. When these topics were worn threadbare she bethought herself of the beauty of the autumn woods, and lamented the ruined garden with its last sad flowers.

The Major listened gloomily, putting in a word now and then, and keeping his weak red eyes upon his plate. There was a heavy cloud on his brow, and the flush that Betty had learned to dread was in his face. Once when she spoke carelessly of Dan, he threw out an angry gesture and inquired if she "found Mrs. Lightfoot easier to-night?"

"Oh, I think so," replied the girl, and then, as they rose from the table, she slipped her hand through his arm and went with him into the library.

"Shall I sit with you this evening?" she asked timidly. "I'd be so glad to read to you, if you would let me."

He shook his head, patted her affectionately upon the shoulder, and smiled down into her upraised face. "No, no, my dear, I've a little work to do," he replied kindly. "There are a few papers I want to look over, so run up to Molly and tell her I sent my sunshine to her."

He stooped and kissed her cheek; and Betty, with a troubled heart, went slowly up to Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber.

The Major sat down at his writing table, and spread his papers out before him. Then he raised the wick of his lamp, and with his pen in his hand, resolutely set himself to his task. When Cupid came in with the decanter of Burgundy, he filled a glass and held it absently against the light, but he did not drink it, and in a moment he put it down with so tremulous a hand that the wine spilled upon the floor.

"I've a touch of the gout, Cupid," he said testily. "A touch of the gout that's been hanging over me for a month or more."

"Huccome you ain' fit hit, Ole Marster?"

"Oh, I've been fighting it tooth and nail," answered the old gentleman, "but there are some things that always get the better of you in the end, Cupid, and the gout's one of them."

"En rheumaticks hit's anurr," added Cupid, rubbing his knee.

He rolled a fresh log upon the andirons and went out, while the Major returned, frowning, to his work.

He was still at his writing table, when he heard the sound of a horse trotting in the drive, and an instant afterwards the quick fall of the old brass knocker. The flush deepened in his face, and with a look at once angry and appealing, he half rose from his chair. As he waited the outside bars were withdrawn, there followed a few short steps across the hall, and Dan came into the library.

"I suppose you know what's brought me back, grandpa?" he said quietly as he entered.

The Major started up and then sat down again.

"I do know, sir, and I wish to God I didn't," he replied, choking in his anger.

Dan stood where he had halted upon his entrance, and looked at him with eyes in which there was still a defiant humour. His face was pale and his hair hung in black streaks across his forehead. The white dust of the turnpike had settled upon his clothes, and as he moved it floated in a little cloud about him.

"I reckon you think it's a pretty bad thing, eh?" he questioned coolly, though his hands trembled.

The Major's eyes flashed ominously from beneath his heavy brows.

"Pretty bad?" he repeated, taking a long breath. "If you want to know what I think about it, sir, I think that it's a damnable disgrace. Pretty bad!—By God, sir, do you call having a gaol-bird for a grandson pretty bad?"

"Stop, sir!" called Dan, sharply. He had steadied himself to withstand the shock of the Major's temper, but, in the dash of his youthful folly, he had forgotten to reckon with his own. "For heaven's sake, let's talk about it calmly," he added irritably.

"I am perfectly calm, sir!" thundered the Major, rising to his feet. The terrible flush went in a wave to his forehead, and he put up one quivering hand to loosen his high stock. "I tell you calmly that you've done a damnable thing; that you've brought disgrace upon the name of Lightfoot."

"It is not my name," replied Dan, lifting his head. "My name is Montjoy, sir."

"And it's a name to hang a dog for," retorted the Major.

As they faced each other with the same flash of temper kindling in both faces, the likeness between them grew suddenly more striking. It was as if the spirit of the fiery old man had risen, in a finer and younger shape, from the air before him.

"At all events it is not yours," said Dan, hotly. Then he came nearer, and the anger died out of his eyes. "Don't let's quarrel, grandpa," he pleaded. "I've gotten into a mess, and I'm sorry for it—on my word I am."

"So you've come whining to me to get you out," returned the Major, shaking as if he had gone suddenly palsied.

Dan drew back and his hand fell to his side.

"So help me God, I'll never whine to you again," he answered.

"Do you want to know what you have done, sir?" demanded the Major. "You have broken your grandmother's heart and mine—and made us wish that we had left you by the roadside when you came crawling to our door. And, on my oath, if I had known that the day would ever come when you would try to murder a Virginia gentleman for the sake of a bar-room hussy, I would have left you there, sir."

"Stop!" said Dan again, looking at the old man with his mother's eyes.

"You have broken your grandmother's heart and mine," repeated the Major, in a trembling voice, "and I pray to God that you may not break Virginia Ambler's—poor girl, poor girl!"

"Virginia Ambler!" said Dan, slowly. "Why, there was nothing between us, nothing, nothing."

"And you dare to tell me this to my face, sir?" cried the Major.

"Dare! of course I dare," returned Dan, defiantly. "If there was ever anything at all it was upon my side only—and a mere trifling fancy."

The old gentleman brought his hand down upon his table with a blow that sent the papers fluttering to the floor. "Trifling!" he roared. "Would you trifle with a lady from your own state, sir?"

"I was never in love with her," exclaimed Dan, angrily.

"Not in love with her? What business have you not to be in love with her?" retorted the Major, tossing back his long white hair. "I have given her to understand that you are in love with her, sir."

The blood rushed to Dan's head, and he stumbled over an ottoman as he turned away.

"Then I call it unwarrantable interference," he said brutally, and went toward the door. There the Major's flashing eyes held him back an instant.

"It was when I believed you to be worthy of her," went on the old man, relentlessly, "when—fool that I was—I dared to hope that dirty blood could be made clean again; that Jack Montjoy's son could be a gentleman."

For a moment only Dan stood motionless and looked at him from the threshold. Then, without speaking, he crossed the hall, took down his hat, and unbarred the outer door. It slammed after him, and he went out into the night.

A keen wind was still blowing, and as he descended the steps he felt it lifting the dampened hair from his forehead. With a breath of relief he stood bareheaded in the drive and raised his face to the cool elm leaves that drifted slowly down. After the heated atmosphere of the library there was something pleasant in the mere absence of light, and in the soft rustling of the branches overhead. The humour of his blood went suddenly quiet as if he had plunged headlong into cold water.

While he stood there motionless his thoughts were suspended, and his senses, gaining a brief mastery, became almost feverishly alert; he felt the night wind in his face, he heard the ceaseless stirring of the leaves, and he saw the sparkle of the gravel in the yellow shine that streamed from the library windows. But with his first step, his first movement, there came a swift recoil of his anger, and he told himself with a touch of youthful rhetoric, "that come what would, he was going to the devil—and going speedily."

He had reached the gate and his hand was upon the latch, when he heard the house door open and shut behind him and his name called softly from the steps.

He turned impulsively and stood waiting, while Betty came quickly through the lamplight that fell in squares upon the drive.

"Oh, come back, Dan, come back," she said breathlessly.

With his hand still on the gate he faced her, frowning.

"I'd die first, Betty," he answered.

She came swiftly up to him and stood, very pale, in the faint starlight that shone between the broken clouds. A knitted shawl was over her shoulders, but her head was bare and her hair made a glow around her face. Her eyes entreated him before she spoke.

"Oh, Dan, come back," she pleaded.

He laughed angrily and shook his head.

"I'll die first, Betty," he repeated. "Die! I'd die a hundred times first!"

"He is so old," she said appealingly. "It is not as if he were young and quite himself, Dan—Oh, it is not like that—but he loves you, and he is so old."

"Don't, Betty," he broke in quickly, and added bitterly, "Are you, too, against me?"

"I am for the best in you," she answered quietly, and turned away from him.

"The best!" he snapped his fingers impatiently. "Are you for the shot at Maupin? the night I spent in gaol? or the beggar I am now? There's an equal choice, I reckon."

She looked gravely up at him.

"I am for the boy I've always known," she replied, "and for the man who was here two weeks ago—and—yes, I am for the man who stands here now. What does it matter, Dan? What does it matter?"

"O, Betty!" he cried breathlessly, and hid his face in his hands.

"And most of all, I am for the man you are going to be," she went on slowly, "for the great man who is growing up. Dan, come back!"

His hands fell from his eyes. "I'll not do that even for you, Betty," he answered, "and, God knows, there's little else I wouldn't do for you—there's nothing else."

"What will you do for yourself, Dan?"

"For myself?" his anger leaped out again, and he steadied himself against the gate. "For myself I'll go as far as I can from this damned place. I wish to God I'd fallen in the road before I came here. I wish I'd gone after my father and followed in his steps. I'll live on no man's charity, so help me God. Am I a dog to be kicked out and to go whining back when the door opens? Go—I'll go to the devil, and be glad of it!" For a moment Betty did not answer. Her hands were clasped on her bosom, and her eyes were dark and bright in the pallor of her face. As he looked at her the rage died out of his voice, and it quivered with a deeper feeling.

"My dear, my dearest, are you, too, against me?" he asked.

She met his gaze without flinching, but the bright colour swept suddenly to her cheeks and dyed them crimson.

"Then if you will go, take me with you," she said.

He fell back as if a star had dropped at his feet. For a breathless instant she saw only his eyes, and they drew her step by step. Then he opened his arms and she went straight into them.

"Betty, Betty," he said in a whisper, and kissed her lips.

She put her hands upon his shoulders, and stood with his arms about her, looking up into his face.

"Take me with you—oh, take me with you," she entreated. "I can't be left. Take me with you."

"And you love me—Betty, do you love me?"

"I have loved you all my life—all my life," she answered; "how can I begin to unlove you now—now when it is too late? Do you think I am any the less yours if you throw me away? If you break my heart can I help its still loving you?"

"Betty, Betty," he said again, and his voice quivered.

"Take me with you," she repeated passionately, saying it over and over again with her lips upon his arm.

He stooped and kissed her almost roughly, and then put her gently away from him.

"It is the way my mother went," he said, "and God help me, I am my father's son. I am afraid,—afraid—do you know what that means?"

"But I am not afraid," answered the girl steadily.

He shivered and turned away; then he came back and knelt down to kiss her skirt. "No, I can't take you with me," he went on rapidly, "but if I live to be a man I shall come back—I will come back—and you—"

"And I am waiting," she replied.

He opened the gate and passed out into the road.

"I will come back, beloved," he said again, and went on into the darkness.

Leaning over the gate she strained her eyes into the shadows, crying his name out into the night. Her voice broke and she hid her face in her arm; then, fearing to lose the last glimpse of him, she looked up quickly and sobbed to him to come back for a moment—but for a moment. It seemed to her, clinging there upon the gate, that when he went out into the darkness he had gone forever—that the thud of his footsteps in the dust was the last sound that would ever come from him to her ears.

Had he looked back she would have gone straight out to him, had he raised a finger she would have followed with a cheerful face; but he did not look back, and at last his footsteps died away upon the road.

When she could see or hear nothing more of him, she turned slowly and crept toward the house. Her feet dragged under her, and as she walked she cast back startled glances at the gate. The rustling of the leaves made her stand breathless a moment, her hand at her bosom; but it was only the wind, and she went step by step into the house, turning upon the threshold to throw a look behind her.

In the hall she paused and laid her hand upon the library door, but the Major had bolted her out, and she heard him pacing with restless strides up and down the room. She listened timidly awhile, then, going softly by, went up to Mrs. Lightfoot.

The old lady was asleep, but as the girl entered she awoke and sat up, very straight, in bed. "My pain is much worse, Betty," she complained. "I don't expect to get a wink of sleep this entire night."

"I thought you were asleep when I came in," answered Betty, keeping away from the candlelight; "but I am so sorry you are in pain. Shall I make you a mustard plaster?"

Though she smiled, her voice was spiritless and she moved with an effort. She felt suddenly very tired, and she wanted to lie down somewhere alone in the darkness.

"I'd just dropped off when Mr. Lightfoot woke me slamming the doors," pursued the old lady, querulously. "Men have so little consideration that nothing surprises me, but I do think he might be more careful when he knows I am suffering. No, I won't take the mustard plaster, but you may bring me a cup of hot milk, if you will. It sometimes sends me off into a doze."

Betty went slowly downstairs again and heated the milk on the dining-room fire. When it was ready she daintily arranged it upon a tray and carried it upstairs. "I hope it will do you good," she said gently as she gave it to the old lady. "You must try to lie quiet—the doctor told you so."

Mrs. Lightfoot drank the milk and remarked amiably that it was "very nice though a little smoked—and now, go to bed, my dear," she added kindly. "I mustn't keep you from your beauty sleep. I'm afraid I've worn you out as it is."

Betty smiled and shook her head; then she placed the tray upon a chair, and went out, softly closing the door after her.

In her own room she threw herself upon her bed, and cried for Dan until the morning.



X

THE ROAD AT MIDNIGHT

When Dan went down into the shadows of the road, he stopped short before he reached the end of the stone wall, and turned for his last look at Chericoke. He saw the long old house, with its peaked roof over which the elm boughs arched, the white stretch of drive before the door, and the leaves drifting ceaselessly against the yellow squares of the library windows. As he looked Betty came slowly from the shadow by the gate, where she had lingered, and crossed the lighted spaces amid the falling leaves. On the threshold, as she turned to throw a glance into the night, it seemed to him, for a single instant, that her eyes plunged through the darkness into his own. Then, while his heart still bounded with the hope, the door opened, and shut after her, and she was gone.

For a moment he saw only blackness—so sharp was the quick shutting off of the indoor light. The vague shapes upon the lawn showed like mere drawings in outline, the road became a pallid blur in the formless distance, and the shine of the lamplight on the drive shifted and grew dim as if a curtain had dropped across the windows. Like a white thread on the blackness he saw the glimmer beneath his grandmother's shutters, and it was as if he had looked in from the high top of an elm and seen her lying with her candle on her breast.

As he stood there the silence of the old house knocked upon his heart like sound—and quick fears sprang up within him of a sudden death, or of Betty weeping for him somewhere alone in the stillness. The long roof under the waving elm boughs lost, for a heartbeat, the likeness of his home, and became, as the clouds thickened in the sky, but a great mound of earth over which the wind blew and the dead leaves fell.

But at last when he turned away and followed the branch road, his racial temperament had triumphed over the forebodings of the moment; and with the flicker of a smile upon his lips, he started briskly toward the turnpike. As the mind in the first ecstasy of a high passion is purified from the stain of mere emotion, so the Major, and the Major's anger, were forgotten, and his own bitter resentment swept as suddenly from his thoughts. He was overpowered and uplifted by the one supreme feeling from which he still trembled. All else seemed childish and of small significance beside the memory of Betty's lips upon his own. What room had he for anger when he was filled to overflowing with the presence of love?

The branch road ran out abruptly into the turnpike, and once off the familiar way by his grandfather's stone wall, he felt the blackness of the night close round him like a vault. Without a lantern there was small hope of striking the tavern or the tavern road till morning. To go on meant a night upon the roadside or in the fields.

As he stretched out his arm, groping in the blackness, he struck suddenly upon the body of the blasted tree, and coming round it, his eyes caught the red light of free Levi's fire, and he heard the sound of a hammer falling upon heated iron. The little path was somewhere in the darkness, and as he vainly sought for it, he stumbled over a row of stripped and headless cornstalks which ran up to the cabin door. Once upon the smooth stone before the threshold, he gave a boyish whistle and lifted his hand to knock. "It is I, Uncle Levi—there are no 'hants' about," he cried.

The hammer was thrown aside, and fell upon the stones, and a moment afterward, the door flew back quickly, showing the blanched face of free Levi and the bright glow of the hearth. "Dis yer ain' no time fur pranks," said the old man, angrily. "Ain't yer ever gwine ter grow up, yit?" and he added, slowly, "Praise de Lawd hit's you instid er de devil."

"Oh, it's I, sure enough," returned Dan, lightly, as he came into the cabin. "I'm on my way to Merry Oaks Tavern, Uncle Levi,—it's ten miles off, you know, and this blessed night is no better than an ink-pot. I'd positively be ashamed to send such a night down on a respectable planet. It's that old lantern of yours I want, by the way, and in case it doesn't turn up again, take this to buy a new one. No, I can't rest to-night. This is my working time, and I must be up and doing." He reached for the rusty old lantern behind the door, and lighted it, laughing as he did so. His face was pale, and there was a nervous tremor in his hands, but his voice had lost none of its old heartiness. "Ah, that's it, old man," he said, when the light was ready. "We'll shake hands in case it's a long parting. This is a jolly world. Uncle Levi,—good-by, and God bless you," and, leaving the old man speechless on the hearth, he closed the door and went out into the night.

On the turnpike again, with the lantern swinging in his hand, he walked rapidly in the direction of the tavern road, throwing quick flashes of light before his footsteps. Behind him he heard the falling of free Levi's hammer, and knew that the old negro was toiling at his rude forge for the bread which he would to-morrow eat in freedom.

With the word he tossed back his hair and quickened his steps, as if he were leaving servitude behind him in the house at Chericoke; and, as the anger blazed up within his heart he found pleasure in the knowledge that at last he was starting out to level his own road. Under the clouds on the long turnpike it all seemed so easy—as easy as the falling of free Levi's hammer, which had faded in the distance.

What was it, after all? A year or two of struggle and of attainment, and he would come back flushed with success, to clasp Betty in his arms. In a dozen different ways he pictured to himself the possible manner of that home-coming, obliterating the year or two that lay between. He saw himself a great lawyer from a little reading and a single speech, or a judge upon his bench, famed for his classic learning and his grave decisions. He had only to choose, he felt, and he might be anything—had they not told him so at college? did not even his grandfather admit it? He had only to choose—and, oh, he would choose well—he would choose to be a man, and to come riding back with his honours thick upon him.

Looking ahead, he saw himself a few years hence, as he rode leisurely homeward up the turnpike, while the stray countrymen he met took off their harvest hats, and stared wonderingly long after he was gone. He saw the Governor hastening to the road to shake his hand, he saw his grandfather bowed with the sense of his injustice, tremulous with the flutter of his pride; and, best of all, he saw Betty—Betty, with the rays of light beneath her lashes, coming straight across the drive into his arms.

And then all else faded slowly from him to give place to Betty, and he saw her growing, changing, brightening, as he had seen her from her childhood up. The small white figure in the moonlight, the merry little playmate, hanging on his footsteps, eager to run his errands, the slender girl, with the red braids and the proud shy eyes, and the woman who knelt upon the hearth in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, smiling up at him as she dried her hair—all gathered round him now illuminated against the darkness of the night. Betty, Betty,—he whispered her name softly beneath his breath, he spoke it aloud in the silence of the turnpike, he even cried it out against the mountains, and waited for the echo—Betty, Betty. There was not only sweetness in the thought of her, there was strength also. The hand that had held him back when he would have gone out blindly in his passion was the hand of a woman, not of a girl—of a woman who could face life smiling because she felt deep in herself the power to conquer it. Two days ago she had been but the girl he loved, to-night, with her kisses on his lips, she had become for him at once a shield and a religion. He looked outward and saw her influence a light upon his pathway; he turned his gaze within and found her a part of the sacred forces of his life—of his wistful childhood, his boyish purity, and the memory of his mother.

He had passed Uplands, and now, as he followed the tavern way, he held the flash of his lantern near the ground, and went slowly by the crumbling hollows in the strip of "corduroy" road. There was a thick carpet of moist leaves underfoot, and above the wind played lightly among the overhanging branches. His lantern made a shining circle in the midst of a surrounding blackness, and where the light fell the scattered autumn leaves sent out gold and scarlet flashes that came and went as quickly as a flame. Once an owl flew across his path, and startled by the lantern, blindly fluttered off again. Somewhere in the distance he heard the short bark of a fox; then it died away, and there was no sound except the ceaseless rustle of the trees.

By the time he came out of the wood upon the open road, his high spirits had gone suddenly down, and the visions of an hour ago showed stale and lifeless to his clouded eyes. After a day's ride and a poor dinner, the ten-mile walk had left him with aching limbs, and a growing conviction that despite his former aspirations, he was fast going to the devil along the tavern road. When at last he swung open the whitewashed gate before the inn, and threw the light of his lantern on the great oaks in the yard, the relief he felt was hardly brighter than despair, and it made very little difference, he grimly told himself, whether he put up for the night or kept the road forever. With a clatter he went into the little wooden porch and knocked upon the door.

He was still knocking when a window was raised suddenly above him, and a man's voice called out, "if he wanted a place for night-hawks to go on to hell." Then, being evidently a garrulous body, the speaker leaned comfortably upon the sill, and sent down a string of remarks, which Dan promptly shortened with an oath.

"Hold your tongue, Jack Hicks," he cried, angrily, "and come down and open this door before I break it in. I've walked ten miles to-night and I can't stand here till morning. How long has it been since you had a guest?"

"There was six of 'em changin' stages this mornin'," drawled Jack, in reply, still hanging from the sill. "I gave 'em a dinner of fried chicken and battercakes, and two of 'em being Yankees hadn't never tasted it befo'—and a month ago one dropped in to spend the night—"

He broke off hastily, for his wife had joined him at the window, and as Dan looked up with the flash of the lantern in his face, she gave a cry and called his name.

"Put on your clothes and go down, you fool," she said, "it's Mr. Dan—don't you see it's Mr. Dan, and he's as white as yo' nightshirt. Go down, I tell you,—go down and let him in." There was a skurrying in the room and on the staircase, and a moment later the door was flung open and a lamp flashed in the darkness.

"Walk in, suh, walk right in," said Jack Hicks, hospitably, "day or night you're welcome—as welcome as the Major himself." He drew back and stood with the lamplight full upon him—a loose, ill-proportioned figure, with a flabby face and pale blue eyes set under swollen lids.

"I want something to eat, Jack," returned Dan, as he entered and put down his lantern, "and a place to sleep—in fact I want anything you have to offer."

Then, as Mrs. Hicks appeared upon the stair, he greeted her, despite his weariness, with something of his old jesting manner. "I am begging a supper," he remarked affably, as he shook her hand, "and I may as well confess, by the way, that I am positively starving."

The woman beamed upon him, as women always did, and while she led the way into the little dining room, and set out the cold meat and bread upon the oil-cloth covering of the table, she asked him eager questions about the Major and Mrs. Lightfoot, which he aroused himself to parry with a tired laugh. She was tall and thin, with a wrinkled brown face, and a row of curl papers about her forehead. Her faded calico wrapper hung loosely over her nightgown, and he saw her bare feet through the cracks in her worn-out leather slippers.

"The poor young gentleman is all but dead," she said at last. "You give him his supper, Jack, and I'll go right up to fix his room. To think of his walkin' ten miles in the pitch blackness—the poor young gentleman."

She went out, her run down slippers flapping on the stair, and Dan, as he ate his ham and bread, listened impatiently to the drawling voice of Jack Hicks, who discussed the condition of the country while he drew apple cider from a keg into a white china pitcher. As he talked, his fat face shone with a drowsy good-humour, and his puffed lids winked sleepily over his expressionless blue eyes. He moved heavily as if his limbs were forever coming in the way of his intentions.

"Yes, suh, I never was one of them folks as ain't satisfied unless they're always a-fussin'," he remarked, as he placed the pitcher upon the table. "Thar's a sight of them kind in these here parts, but I ain't one of 'em. Lord, Lord, I tell 'em, befo' you git ready to jump out of the fryin' pan, you'd better make mighty sure you ain't fixin' to land yo'self in the fire. That's what I always had agin these here abolitionists as used to come pokin' round here—they ain't never learned to set down an' cross thar hands, an' leave the Lord to mind his own business. Bless my soul, I reckon they'd have wanted to have a hand in that little fuss of Lucifer's if they'd been alive—that's what I tell 'em, suh. An' now thar's all this talk about the freein' of the niggers—free? What are they goin' to do with 'em after they're done set 'em free? Ain't they the sons of Ham? I ask 'em; an' warn't they made to be servants of servants like the Bible says? It's a bold man that goes plum agin the Bible, and flies smack into the face of God Almighty—it's a bold man, an' he ain't me, suh. What I say is, if the Lord can stand it, I reckon the rest of the country—"

He paused to draw breath, and Dan laid down his knife and fork and pushed back his chair. "Before you begin again, Jack," he said coolly, "will you spare enough wind to carry me upstairs?"

"That's what I tell 'em," pursued Jack amiably, as he lighted a candle and led the way into the hall. "They used to come down here every once in a while an' try to draw me out; and one of 'em 'most got a coat of tar an' feathers for meddlin' with my man Lacy; but if the Lord—here we are, here we are."

He stopped upon the landing and opened the door of a long room, in which Mrs. Hicks was putting the last touches to the bed. She stopped as Dan came in, and by the pale flicker of a tallow candle stood looking at him from the threshold. "If you'll jest knock on the floor when you wake up, I'll know when to send yo' hot water," she said, "and if thar's anything else you want, you can jest knock agin."

With a smile he thanked her and promised to remember; and then as she went out into the hall, he bolted the door, and threw himself into a chair beside the window. Sleep had quite deserted him, and the dawn was on the mountains when at last he lay down and closed his eyes.



XI

AT MERRY OAKS TAVERN

Upon awaking his first thought was that he had got "into a deucedly uncomfortable fix," and when he stretched out his hand from the bedside the need of fresh clothes appeared less easy to be borne than the more abstract wreck of his career. For the first time he clearly grasped some outline of his future—a future in which a change of linen would become a luxury; and it was with smarting eyes and a nervous tightening of the throat that he glanced about the long room, with its whitewashed walls, and told himself that he had come early to the end of his ambition. In the ill-regulated tenor of his thoughts but a hair's breadth divided assurance from despair. Last night the vaguest hope had seemed to be a certainty; to-day his fat acres and the sturdy slaves upon them had vanished like a dream, and the building of his fortunes had become suddenly a very different matter from the rearing of airy castles along the road.

As he lay there, with his strong white hands folded upon the quilt, his eyes went beyond the little lattice at the window, and rested upon the dark gray chain of mountains over which the white clouds sailed like birds. Somewhere nearer those mountains he knew that Chericoke was standing under the clouded sky, with the half-bared elms knocking night and day upon the windows. He could see the open doors, through which the wind blew steadily, and the crooked stair down which his mother had come in her careless girlhood.

It seemed to him, lying there, that in this one hour he had drawn closer into sympathy with his mother, and when he looked up from his pillow, he half expected to see her merry eyes bending over him, and to feel her thin and trembling hand upon his brow. His old worship of her awoke to life, and he suffered over again the moment in his childhood when he had called her and she had not answered, and they had pushed him from the room and told him she was dead. He remembered the clear white of her face, with the violet shadows in the hollows; and he remembered the baby lying as if asleep upon her bosom. For a moment he felt that he had never grown older since that day—that he was still a child grieving for her loss—while all the time she was not dead, but stood beside him and smiled down upon his pillow. Poor mother, with the merry eyes and the bitter mouth.

Then as he looked the face grew younger, though the smile did not change, and he saw that it was Betty, after all—Betty with the tenderness in her eyes and the motherly yearning in her outstretched arms. The two women he loved were forever blended in his thoughts, and he dimly realized that whatever the, future made of him, he should be moulded less by events than by the hands of these two women. Events might subdue, but love alone could create the spirit that gave him life.

There was a tap at his door, and when he arose and opened it, Mrs. Hicks handed in a pitcher of hot water and inquired "if he had recollected to knock upon the floor?"

He set the water upon the table, and after he had dressed brushed hopelessly, with a trembling hand, at the dust upon his clothes. Then he went to the window and stood gloomily looking down among the great oak trees to the strip of yard where a pig was rooting in the acorns.

A small porch ran across the entrance to the inn, and Jack Hicks was already seated on it, with a pipe in his mouth, and his feet upon the railing. His drowsy gaze was turned upon the woodpile hard by, where an old negro slave was chopping aimlessly into a new pine log, and a black urchin gathering chips into a big split basket. At a little distance the Hopeville stage was drawn out under the trees, the empty shafts lying upon the ground, and on the box a red and black rooster stood crowing. Overhead there was a dull gray sky, and the scene, in all its ugliness, showed stripped of the redeeming grace of lights and shadows.

Jack Hicks, smoking on his porch, presented a picture of bodily comfort and philosophic ease of mind. He was owner of some rich acres, and his possessions, it was said, might have been readily doubled had he chosen to barter for them the peace of perfect inactivity. To do him justice the idea had never occurred to him in the light of a temptation, and when a neighbour had once remarked in his hearing that he "reckoned Jack would rather lose a dollar than walk a mile to fetch it," he had answered blandly, and without embarrassment, that "a mile was a goodish stretch on a sandy road." So he sat and dozed beneath his sturdy oaks, while his wife went ragged at the heels and his swarm of tow-headed children rolled contentedly with the pigs among the acorns.

Dan was still looking moodily down into the yard, when he heard a gentle pressure upon the handle of his door, and as he turned, it opened quickly and Big Abel, bearing a large white bundle upon his shoulders, staggered into the room.

"Ef'n you'd des let me knowed hit, I could er brung a bigger load," he remarked sternly.

While he drew breath Dan stared at him with the blankness of surprise. "Where did you come from, Big Abel?" he questioned at last, speaking in a whisper.

Big Abel was busily untying the sheet he had brought, and spreading out the contents upon the bed, and he did not pause as he sullenly answered:—

"Ole Marster's."

"Who sent you?"

Big Abel snorted. "Who gwine sen' me?" he demanded in his turn.

"Well, I declare," said Dan, and after a moment, "how did you get away, man?"

"Lawd, Lawd," returned Big Abel, "I wa'n' bo'n yestiddy nur de day befo'. Terreckly I seed you a-cuttin' up de drive, I knowed dar wuz mo' den wuz in de tail er de eye, en w'en you des lit right out agin en bang de do' behint you fitten ter bus' hit, den I begin ter steddy 'bout de close in de big wa'drobe. I got out one er ole Miss's sheets w'en she wa'n' lookin, en I tie up all de summer close de bes' I kin—caze dat ar do' bang hit ain' soun' like you gwine be back fo' de summer right plum hyer. I'se done heah a do' bang befo' now, en dars mo' in it den des de shettin' ter stay shet."

"So you ran away?" said Dan, with a long whistle.

"Ain't you done run away?"

"I—oh, I was turned out," answered the young man, with his eyes on the negro. "But—bless my soul, Big Abel, why did you do it?"

Big Abel muttered something beneath his breath, and went on laying out the things.

"How you gwine git dese yer close ef I ain' tote 'em 'long de road?" he asked presently. "How you gwine git dis yer close bresh ef I ain' brung hit ter you? Whar de close you got? Whar de close bresh?"

"You're a fool, Big Abel," retorted Dan. "Go back where you belong and don't hang about me any more. I'm a beggar, I tell you, and I'm likely to be a beggar at the judgment day."

"Whar de close bresh?" repeated Big Abel, scornfully.

"What would Saphiry say, I'd like to know?" went on Dan. "It isn't fair to Saphiry to run off this way."

"Don' you bodder 'bout Saphiry," responded Big Abel. "I'se done loss my tase fur Saphiry, young Marster."

"I tell you you're a fool," snapped out Dan, sharply.

"De Lawd he knows," piously rejoined Big Abel, and he added: "Dar ain' no use a-rumpasin' case hyer I is en hyer I'se gwine ter stay. Whar you run, dar I'se gwine ter run right atter, so 'tain' no use a-rumpasin'. Hit's a pity dese yer ain' nuttin' but summer close."

Dan looked at him a moment in silence, then he put out his hand and slapped him upon the shoulder.

"You're a fool—God bless you," he said.

"Go 'way f'om yer, young Marster," responded the negro, in a high good-humour. "Dar's a speck er dut right on yo' shut."

"Then give me another," cried Dan, gayly, and threw off his coat.

When he went down stairs, carefully brushed, a half-hour afterward, the world had grown suddenly to wear a more cheerful aspect. He greeted Mrs. Hicks with his careless good-humour, and spoke pleasantly to the dirty white-haired children that streamed through the dining room.

"Yes, I'll take my breakfast now, if you please," he said as he sat down at one end of the long, oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Hicks brought him his coffee and cakes, and then stood, with her hands upon a chair back, and watched him with a frank delight in his well-dressed comely figure.

"You do favour the Major, Mr. Dan," she suddenly remarked.

He started impatiently. "Oh, the Lightfoots are all alike, you know," he responded. "We are fond of saying that a strain of Lightfoot blood is good for two centuries of intermixing." Then, as he looked up at her faded wrapper and twisted curl papers, he flinched and turned away as if her ugliness afflicted his eyes. "Do not let me keep you," he added hastily.

But the woman stooped to shake a child that was tugging at her dress, and talked on in her drawling voice, while a greedy interest gave life to her worn and sallow face. "How long do you think of stayin'?" she asked curiously, "and do you often take a notion to walk so fur in the dead of night? Why, I declar, when I looked out an' saw you I couldn't believe my eyes. That's not Mr. Dan, I said, you won't catch Mr. Dan out in the pitch darkness with a lantern and ten miles from home."

"I really do not want to keep you," he broke in shortly, all the good-humour gone from his voice.

"Thar ain't nothin' to do right now," she answered with a searching look into his face. "I was jest waitin' to bring you some mo' cakes." She went out and came in presently with a fresh plateful. "I remember jest as well the first time you ever took breakfast here," she said. "You wa'n't more'n twelve, I don't reckon, an' the Major brought you by in the coach, with Big Abel driving. The Major didn't like the molasses we gave him, and he pushed the pitcher away and said it wasn't fit for pigs; and then you looked about real peart and spoke up, 'It's good molasses, grandpa, I like it.' Sakes alive, it seems jest like yestiddy. I don't reckon the Major is comin' by to-day, is he?"

He pushed his plate away and rose hurriedly, then, without replying, he brushed past her, and went out upon the porch.

There he found Jack Hicks, and forced himself squarely into a discussion of his altered fortunes. "I may as well tell you, Jack," he said, with a touch of arrogance, "that I'm turned out upon the world, at last, and I've got to make a living. I've left Chericoke for good, and as I've got to stay here until I find a place to go, there's no use making a secret of it."

The pipe dropped from Jack's mouth, and he stared back in astonishment.

"Bless my soul and body!" he exclaimed. "Is the old gentleman crazy or is you?"

"You forget yourself," sharply retorted Dan.

"Well, well," pursued Jack, good-naturedly, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe and slowly refilled it. "If you hadn't have told me, I wouldn't have believed you—well, well." He put his pipe into his mouth and hung on it for a moment; then he took it out and spoke thoughtfully. "I reckon I've known you from a child, haven't I, Mr. Dan?" he asked.

"That's so, Jack," responded the young man, "and if you can recommend me, I want you to help me to a job for a week or two—then I'm off to town."

"I've known you from a child year in an' year out," went on Jack, blandly disregarding the interruption. "From the time you was sech a pleasant-spoken little boy that it did me good to bow to you when you rode by with the Major. 'Thar's not another like him in the country,' I said to Bill Bates, an' he said to me, 'Thar's not a man between here an' Leicesterburg as ain't ready to say the same.' Then time went on an' you got bigger, an' the year came when the crops failed an' Sairy got sick, an' I took a mortgage on this here house—an' what should happen but that you stepped right up an' paid it out of yo' own pocket. And you kept it from the Major. Lord, Lord, to think the Major never knew which way the money went."

"We won't speak of that," said Dan, throwing back his head. The thought that the innkeeper might be going to offer him the money stung him into anger.

But Jack knew his man, and he would as soon have thought of throwing a handful of dust into his face. "Jest as you like, suh, jest as you like," he returned easily, and went on smoking.

Dan sat down in a chair upon the porch, and taking out his knife began idly whittling at the end of a stick. A small boy, in blue jean breeches, watched him eagerly from the steps, and he spoke to him pleasantly while he cut into the wood.

"Did you ever see a horse's head on a cane, sonny?"

The child sucked his dirty thumb and edged nearer.

"Naw, suh, but I've seen a dawg's," he answered, drawing out his thumb like a stopper and sticking it in again.

"Well, you watch this and you'll see a horse's. There, now don't take your eyes away."

He whittled silently for a time, then as he looked up his glance fell on the stagecoach in the yard, and he turned from it to Jack Hicks.

"There's one thing on earth I know about, Jack," he said, "and that's a horse."

"Not a better jedge in the county, suh," was Jack's response.

As Dan whittled a flush rose to his face. "Does Tom Hyden still drive the Hopeville stage?" he asked.

"Well, you see it's this way," answered Jack, weighing his words. "Tom he's a first-rate hand at horses, but he drinks like a fish, and last week he married a wife who owns a house an' farm up the road. So long as he had to earn his own livin' he kept sober long enough to run the stage, but since he's gone and married, he says thar's no call fur him to keep a level head—so he don't keep it. Yes, that's about how 'tis, suh."

Dan finished the stick and handed it to the child. "I tell you what, Jack," he said suddenly, "I want Tom Hyden's place, and I'm going to drive that stage over to Hopeville this afternoon. Phil Banks runs it, doesn't he?—well, I know him." He rose and stood humorously looking out upon the coach. "There's no time like the present," he added, "so I begin work to-day."

Jack Hicks silently stared up at him for a moment; then he coughed and exclaimed hoarsely:—

"The jedgment ain't fur off," but Dan laughed the prophecy aside and went upstairs to write to Betty.

"I've got a job, Big Abel," he began, going into his room, where the negro was pressing a pair of trousers with a flatiron, "and what's more it will keep me till I get another."

Big Abel gloomily shook his head. "We all 'ud des better go 'long home ter Ole Miss," he returned, for he was in no mood for compromises. "Caze I ain' use ter de po' w'ite trash en dey ain' use ter me."

"Go if you want to," retorted Dan, sternly, "but you go alone," and the negro, protesting under his breath, laid the clothes away and went down to his breakfast.

Dan sat down by the window and wrote a letter to Betty which he never sent. When he thought of her now it was as if half the world instead of ten miles lay between them; and quickly as he would have resented the hint of it from Jack Hicks, to himself he admitted that he was fast sinking where Betty could not follow him. What would the end be? he asked, and disheartened by the question, tore the paper into bits and walked moodily up and down the room. He had lived so blithely until to-day! His lines had fallen so smoothly in the pleasant places! Not without a grim humour he remembered now that last year his grievance had been that his tailor failed to fit him. Last year he had walked the floor in a rage because of a wrinkled coat, and to-day— His road had gone rough so suddenly that he stumbled like a blind man when he tried to go over it in his old buoyant manner.

An hour later he was still pacing restlessly to and fro, when the door softly opened and Mrs. Hicks looked in upon him with a deprecating smile. As she lingered on the threshold, he stopped in the middle of the room and threw her a sharp glance over his shoulder.

"Is there anything you wish?" he questioned irritably.

Shaking her head, she came slowly toward him and stood in her soiled wrapper and curl papers, where the gray light from the latticed window fell full upon her.

"It ain't nothin'," she answered hurriedly. "Nothin' except Jack's been tellin' me you're in trouble, Mr. Dan."

"Then he has been telling you something that concerns nobody but myself," he replied coolly, and continued his walking.

There was a nervous flutter of her wrapper, and she passed her knotted hand over her face.

"You are like yo' mother, Mr. Dan," she said with an unexpectedness that brought him to a halt. "An' I was the last one to see her the night she went away. She came in here, po' thing, all shiverin' with the cold, an' she wouldn't set down but kep' walkin' up an' down, up an' down, jest like you've been doin' fur this last hour. Po' thing! Po' thing! I tried to make her take a sip of brandy, but she laughed an' said she was quite warm, with her teeth chatterin' fit to break—"

"You are very good, Mrs. Hicks," interrupted Dan, in an affected drawl which steadied his voice, "but do you know, I'd really rather that you wouldn't."

Her sallow face twitched and she looked wistfully up at him.

"It isn't that, Mr. Dan," she went on slowly, "but I've had trouble myself, God knows, and when I think of that po' proud young lady, an' the way she went, I can't help sayin' what I feel—it won't stay back. So if you'll jest keep on here, an' give up the stage drivin' an' wait twil the old gentleman comes round—Jack an' I'll do our best fur you—we'll do our best, even if it ain't much."

Her lips quivered, and as he watched her it seemed to him that a new meaning passed into her face—something that made her look like Betty and his mother—that made all good women who had loved him look alike. For the moment he forgot her ugliness, and with the beginning of that keener insight into life which would come to him as he touched with humanity, he saw only the dignity with which suffering had endowed this plain and simple woman. The furrows upon her cheeks were no longer mere disfigurements; they raised her from the ordinary level of the ignorant and the ugly into some bond of sympathy with his dead mother.

"My dear Mrs. Hicks," he stammered, abashed and reddening. "Why, I shall take a positive pleasure in driving the stage, I assure you."

He crossed to the mirror and carefully brushed a stray lock of hair into place; then he took up his hat and gloves and turned toward the door. "I think it is waiting for me now," he added lightly; "a pleasant evening to you."

But she stood straight before him and as he met her eyes his affected jauntiness dropped from him. With a boyish awkwardness he took her hand and held it for an instant as he looked at her. "My dear madam, you are a good woman," he said, and went whistling down to take the stage.

Upon the porch he found Jack Hicks seated between a stout gentleman and a thin lady, who were to be the passengers to Hopeville; and as Dan appeared the innkeeper started to his feet and swung open the door of the coach for the thin lady to pass inside. "You'll find it a pleasant ride, mum," he heartily assured her. "I've often taken it myself an', rain or shine, thar's not a prettier road in all Virginny," then he moved humbly back as Dan, carelessly drawing on his gloves, came down the steps. "I hope we haven't hurried you, suh," he stammered.

"Not a bit—not a bit," returned Dan, affably, slipping on his overcoat, which Big Abel had run up to hold for him.

"You gwine git right soakin' wet, Marse Dan," said Big Abel, anxiously.

"Oh, I'll not melt," responded Dan, and bowing to the thin lady he stepped upon the wheel and mounted lightly to the box.

"There's no end to this eternal drizzle," he called down, as he tucked the waterproof robe about him and took up the reins.

Then, with a merry crack of the whip, the stage rolled through the gate and on its way.

As it turned into the road, a man on horseback came galloping from the direction of the town, and when he neared the tavern he stood up in his stirrups and shouted his piece of news.

"Thar was a raid on Harper's Ferry in the night," he yelled hoarsely. "The arsenal has fallen, an' they're armin' the damned niggers."



XII

THE NIGHT OF FEAR

Late in the afternoon, as the Governor neared the tavern, he was met by a messenger with the news; and at once turning his horse's head, he started back to Uplands. A dim fear, which had been with him since boyhood, seemed to take shape and meaning with the words; and in a lightning flash of understanding he knew that he had lived before through the horror of this moment. If his fathers had sinned, surely the shadow of their wrong had passed them by to fall the heavier upon their sons; for even as his blood rang in his ears, he saw a savage justice in the thing he feared—a recompense to natural laws in which the innocent should weigh as naught against the guilty.

A fine rain was falling; and as he went on, the end of a drizzling afternoon dwindled rapidly into night. Across the meadows he saw the lamps in scattered cottages twinkle brightly through the dusk which rolled like fog down from the mountains. The road he followed sagged between two gray hills into a narrow valley, and regaining its balance upon the farther side, stretched over a cattle pasture into the thick cover of the woods.

As he reached the summit of the first hill, he saw the Major's coach creeping slowly up the incline, and heard the old gentleman scolding through the window at Congo on the box.

"My dear Major, home's the place for you," he said as he drew rein. "Is it possible that the news hasn't reached you yet?"

Remembering Congo, he spoke cautiously, but the Major, in his anger, tossed discretion to the winds.

"Reached me?—bless my soul!—do you take me for a ground hog?" he cried, thrusting his red face through the window. "I met Tom Bickels four miles back, and the horses haven't drawn breath since. But it's what I expected all along—I was just telling Congo so—it all comes from the mistaken tolerance of black Republicans. Let me open my doors to them to-day, and they'll be tempting Congo to murder me in my bed to-morrow."

"Go 'way f'om yer, Ole Marster," protested Congo from the box, flicking at the harness with his long whip.

The Governor looked a little anxiously at the negro, and then shook his head impatiently. Though a less exacting master than the Major, he had not the same childlike trust in the slaves he owned.

"Shall you not turn back?" he asked, surprised.

"Champe's there," responded the Major, "so I came on for the particulars. A night in town isn't to my liking, but I can't sleep a wink until I hear a thing or two. You're going out, eh?"

"I'm riding home," said the Governor, "it makes me uneasy to be away from Uplands." He paused, hesitated an instant, and then broke out suddenly. "Good God, Major, what does it mean?"

The Major shook his head until his long white hair fell across his eyes.

"Mean, sir?" he thundered in a rage. "It means, I reckon, that those damned friends of yours have a mind to murder you. It means that after all your speech-making and your brotherly love, they're putting pitchforks into the hands of savages and loosening them upon you. Oh, you needn't mind Congo, Governor. Congo's heart's as white as mine."

"Dat's so, Ole Marster," put in Congo, approvingly.

The Governor was trembling as he leaned down from his saddle.

"We know nothing as yet, sir," he began, "there must be some—"

"Oh, go on, go on," cried the Major, striking the carriage window. "Keep up your speech-making and your handshaking until your wife gets murdered in her bed—but, by God, sir, if Virginia doesn't secede after this, I'll secede without her!"

The coach moved on and the Governor, touching his horse with the whip, rode rapidly down the hill.

As he descended into the valley, a thick mist rolled over him and the road lost itself in the blur of the surrounding fields. Without slackening his pace, he lighted the lantern at his saddle-bow and turned up the collar of his coat about his ears. The fine rain was soaking through his clothes, but in the tension of his nerves he was oblivious of the weather. The sun might have risen overhead and he would not have known it.

With the coming down of the darkness a slow fear crept, like a physical chill, from head to foot. A visible danger he felt that he might meet face to face and conquer; but how could he stand against an enemy that crept upon him unawares?—against the large uncertainty, the utter ignorance of the depth or meaning of the outbreak, the knowledge of a hidden evil which might be even now brooding at his fireside?

A thousand hideous possibilities came toward him from out the stretch of the wood. The light of a distant window, seen through the thinned edge of the forest; the rustle of a small animal in the underbrush; the drop of a walnut on the wet leaves in the road; the very odours which rose from the moist earth and dripped from the leafless branches—all sent him faster on his way, with a sound within his ears that was like the drumming of his heart.

To quiet his nerves, he sought to bring before him a picture of the house at Uplands, of the calm white pillars and the lamplight shining from the door; but even as he looked the vision of a slave-war rushed between, and the old buried horrors of the Southampton uprising sprang suddenly to life and thronged about the image of his home. Yesterday those tales had been for him as colourless as history, as dry as dates; to-night, with this new fear at his heart, the past became as vivid as the present, and it seemed to him that beyond each lantern flash he saw a murdered woman, or an infant with its brains dashed out at its mother's breast. This was what he feared, for this was what the message meant to him: "The slaves are armed and rising."

And yet with it all, he felt that there was some wild justice in the thing he dreaded, in the revolt of an enslaved and ignorant people, in the pitiable and ineffectual struggle for a freedom which would mean, in the beginning, but the power to go forth and kill. It was the recognition of this deeper pathos that made him hesitate to reproach even while his thoughts dwelt on the evils—that would, if the need came, send him fearless and gentle to the fight. For what he saw was that behind the new wrongs were the old ones, and that the sinners of to-day were, perhaps, the sinned against of yesterday.

When at last he came out into the turnpike, he had not the courage to look among the trees for the lights of Uplands; and for a while he rode with his eyes following the lantern flash as it ran onward over the wet ground. The small yellow circle held his gaze, and as if fascinated he watched it moving along the road, now shining on the silver grains in a ring of sand, now glancing back from the standing water in a wheelrut, and now illuminating a mossy stone or a weed upon the roadside. It was the one bright thing in a universe of blackness, until, as he came suddenly upon an elevation, the trees parted and he saw the windows of his home glowing upon the night. As he looked a great peace fell over him, and he rode on, thanking God.

When he turned into the drive, his past anxiety appeared to him to be ridiculous, and as he glanced from the clear lights in the great house to the chain of lesser ones that stretched along the quarters, he laughed aloud in the first exhilaration of his relief. This at least was safe, God keep the others.

At his first call as he alighted before the portico, Hosea came running for his horse, and when he entered the house, the cheerful face of Uncle Shadrach looked out from the dining room.

"Hi! Marse Peyton, I 'lowed you wuz gwine ter spen' de night."

"Oh, I had to get back, Shadrach," replied the Governor. "No, I won't take any supper—you needn't bring it—but give me a glass of Burgundy, and then go to bed. Where is your mistress, by the way? Has she gone to her room?"

Uncle Shadrach brought the bottle of Burgundy from the cellaret and placed it upon the table.

"Naw, suh, Miss July she set out ter de quarters ter see atter Mahaley," he returned. "Mahaley she's moughty bad off, but 'tain' no night fur Miss July—dat's w'at I tell 'er—one er dese yer spittin' nights ain' no night ter be out in."

"You're right, Shadrach, you're right," responded the Governor; and rising he drank the wine standing. "It isn't a fit night for her to be out, and I'll go after her at once."

He took up his lantern, and as the old negro opened the doors before him, went out upon the back porch and down the steps.

From the steps a narrow path ran by the kitchen, and skirting the garden-wall, straggled through the orchard and past the house of the overseer to the big barn and the cabins in the quarters. There was a light from the barn door, and as he passed he heard the sound of fiddles and the shuffling steps of the field hands in a noisy "game." The words they sang floated out into the night, and with the squeaking of the fiddles followed him along his path.

When he reached the quarters, he went from door to door, asking for his wife. "Is this Mahaley's cabin?" he anxiously inquired, "and has your mistress gone by?"

In the first room an old negro woman sat on the hearth wrapping the hair of her grandchild, and she rose with a courtesy and a smile of welcome. At the question her face fell and she shook her head.

"Dis yer ain' Mahaley, Marster," she replied. "En dis yer ain' Mahaley's cabin—caze Mahaley she ain' never set foot inside my do', en I ain' gwine set foot at her buryin'." She spoke shrilly, moved by a hidden spite, but the Governor, without stopping, went on along the line of open doors. In one a field negro was roasting chestnuts in the embers of a log fire, and while waiting he had fallen asleep, with his head on his breast and his gnarled hands hanging between his knees. The firelight ran over him, and as he slept he stirred and muttered something in his dreams.

After the first glance, his master passed him by and moved on to the adjoining cabin. "Does Mahaley live here?" he asked again and yet again, until, suddenly, he had no need to put the question for from the last room he heard a low voice praying, and upon looking in saw his wife kneeling with her open Bible near the bedside.

With his hat in his hand, he stood within the shadow of the doorway and waited for the earnest voice to fall silent. Mahaley was dying, this he saw when his glance wandered to the shrunken figure beneath the patchwork quilt; and at the same instant he realized how small a part was his in Mahaley's life or death. He should hardly have known her had he met her last week in the corn field; and it was by chance only that he knew her now when she came to die.

As he stood there the burden of his responsibility weighed upon him like old age. Here in this scant cabin things so serious as birth and death showed in a pathetic bareness, stripped of all ceremonial trappings, as mere events in the orderly working out of natural laws—events as seasonable as the springing up and the cutting down of the corn. In these simple lives, so closely lived to the ground, grave things were sweetened by an unconscious humour which was of the soil itself; and even death lost something of its strangeness when it came like the grateful shadow which falls over a tired worker in the field.

Mrs. Ambler finished her prayer and rose from her knees; and as she did so two slave women, crouching in a corner by the fire, broke into loud moaning, which filled the little room with an animal and inarticulate sound of grief.

"Come away, Julia," implored the Governor in a whisper, resisting an impulse to close his ears against the cry.

But his wife shook her head and spoke for a moment with the sick woman before she wrapped her shawl about her and came out into the open air. Then she gave a sigh of relief, and, with her hand through her husband's arm, followed the path across the orchard.

"So you came home, after all," she said. For a moment he made no response; then, glancing about him in the darkness, he spoke in a low voice, as if fearing the sound of his own words.

"Bad news brought me home, Julia," he replied, "At the tavern they told me a message had come to Leicesterburg from Harper's Ferry. An attack was made on the arsenal at midnight, and, it may be but a rumour, my dear, it was feared that the slaves for miles around were armed for an uprising."

His voice faltered, and he put out his hand to steady her, but she looked up at him and he saw her clear eyes shining in the gloom.

"Oh, poor creatures," she murmured beneath her breath.

"Julia, Julia," he said softly, and lifted the lantern that he might look into her face. As the light fell on her he knew that she was as much a mystery to him now as she had been twenty years ago on her wedding-day.

When they went into the house, he followed Uncle Shadrach about and carefully barred the windows, shooting bolts which were rusted from disuse. After the old negro had gone out he examined the locks again; and then going into the hall took down a bird gun and an army pistol from their places on the rack. These he loaded and laid near at hand beside the books upon his table.

There was no sleep for him that night, and until dawn he sat, watchful, in his chair, or moved softly from window to window, looking for a torch upon the road and listening for the sound of approaching steps.



XIII

CRABBED AGE AND CALLOW YOUTH

With the morning came trustier tidings. The slaves had taken no part in the attack, the weapons had dropped from the few dark hands into which they had been given, and while the shots that might bring them freedom yet rang at Harper's Ferry, the negroes themselves went with cheerful faces to their work, or looked up, singing, from their labours in the field. In the green valley, set amid blue mountains, they moved quietly back and forth, raking the wind-drifts of fallen leaves, or ploughing the rich earth for the autumn sowing of the grain.

As the Governor was sitting down to breakfast, the Lightfoot coach rolled up to the portico, and the Major stepped down to deliver himself of his garnered news. He was in no pleasant humour, for he had met Dan face to face that morning as he passed the tavern, and as if this were not sufficient to try the patience of an irascible old gentleman, a spasm of gout had seized him as he made ready to descend.

But at the sight of Mrs. Ambler, he trod valiantly upon his gouty toe, and screwed his features into his blandest smile—an effort which drew so heavily upon the source of his good-nature, that he arrived at Chericoke an hour later in what was known to Betty as "a purple rage."

"You know I have always warned you, Molly," was his first offensive thrust as he entered Mrs. Lightfoot's chamber, "that your taste for trash would be the ruin of the family. It has ruined your daughter, and now it is ruining your grandson. Well, well, you can't say that it is for lack of warning."

From the centre of her tester bed, the old lady calmly regarded him. "I told you to bring back the boy, Mr. Lightfoot," she returned. "You surely saw him in town, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes, I saw him," replied the Major, loosening his high black stock. "But where do you suppose I saw him, ma'am? and how? Why, the young scapegrace has actually gone and hired himself out as a stagedriver—a common stagedriver. And, bless my soul, he had the audacity to tip his hat to me from the box—from the box with the reins in his hand, ma'am!"

"What stage, Mr. Lightfoot?" inquired his wife, with an eye for particulars.

"Oh, I wash my hands of him," pursued the Major, waving her question aside. "I wash my hands of him, and that's the end of it. In my day, the young were supposed to show some respect for their elders, and every calf wasn't of the opinion that he could bellow like a bull—but things are changed now, and I wash my hands of it all. A more ungrateful family, I am willing to maintain, no man was ever blessed with—which comes, I reckon, from sparing the rod and spoiling the child—but I'm sure I don't see how it is that it is always your temper that gets inherited."

The personal note fell unheeded upon his wife's ears.

"You don't mean to tell me that you came away and left the boy sitting on the box of a stagecoach?" she demanded sharply.

"Would you have me claim a stagedriver as a grandson?" retorted the Major, "because I may as well say now, ma'am, that there are some things I'll not stoop to. Why, I'd as lief have an uncle who was a chimney sweep."

Mrs. Lightfoot turned uneasily in bed. "It means, I suppose, that I shall have to get up and go after him," she remarked, "and you yourself heard the doctor tell me not to move out of bed for a week. It does seem to me, Mr. Lightfoot, that you might show some consideration for my state of health. Do ride in this afternoon, and tell Dan that I say he must behave himself properly."

But the Major turned upon her the terrific countenance she had last seen on Jane's wedding day, and she fell silent from sheer inability to utter a protest befitting the occasion.

"If that stagedriver enters my house, I leave it, ma'am," thundered the old gentleman, with a stamp of his gouty foot. "You may choose between us, if you like,—I have never interfered with your fancies—but, by God, if you bring him inside my doors I—I will horsewhip him, madam," and he went limping out into the hall.

On the stair he met Betty, who looked at him with pleading eyes, but fled, affrighted, before the colour of his wrath; and in his library he found Champe reading his favourite volume of Mr. Addison.

"I hope you aren't scratching up my books, sir," he observed, eying the pencil in his great-nephew's hand.

Champe looked at him with his cool glance, and rose leisurely to his feet. "Why, I'd as soon think of scrawling over Aunt Emmeline's window pane," he returned pleasantly, and added, "I hope you had a successful trip, sir."

"I got a lukewarm supper and a cold breakfast," replied the Major irritably, "and I heard that the Marines had those Kansas raiders entrapped like rats in the arsenal, if that is what you mean."

"No, I wasn't thinking of that," replied Champe, as quietly as before. "I came home to find out about Dan, you know, and I hoped you went into town to look him up."

"Well, I didn't, sir," declared the Major, "and as for that scamp—I have as much knowledge of his whereabouts as I care for.—Do you know, sir," he broke out fiercely, "that he has taken to driving a common stage?"

Champe was sharpening his pencil, and he did not look up as he answered. "Then the sooner he leaves off the better, eh, sir?" he inquired.

"Oh, there's your everlasting wrangling!" exclaimed the Major with a hopeless gesture. "You catch it from Molly, I reckon, and between you, you'll drive me into dotage yet. Always arguing! Never any peace. Why, I believe if I were to take it into my head to remark that white is white, you would both be setting out to convince me that it is black. I tell you now, sir, that the sooner you curb that tendency of yours, the better it will be."

"Aren't we rather straying from the point?" interposed Champe half angrily.

"There it is again," gasped the Major.

The knife slipped in Champe's hand and scratched his finger. "Surely you don't intend to leave Dan to knock about for himself much longer?" he said coolly. "If you do, sir, I don't mind saying that I think it is a damn shame."

"How dare you use such language in my presence?" roared the old gentleman, growing purple to the neck. "Have you, also, been fighting for barmaids and taking up with gaol-birds? It is what I have to expect, I suppose, and I may as well accustom my ears to profanity; but damn you, sir, you must learn some decency;" and going into the hall he shouted to Congo to bring him a julep.

Champe said nothing more; and when the julep appeared on a silver tray, he left the room and went upstairs to where Betty was waiting. "He's awful, there's no use mincing words, he's simply awful," he remarked in an exhausted voice.

"But what does he say? tell me," questioned Betty, as she moved to a little peaked window which overlooked the lawn.

"What doesn't he say?" groaned Champe with his eyes upon her as she stood relieved against the greenish panes of glass.