Then spoke up small Peter Champneys, standing barefooted and bareheaded, clothed in a coarse blue blouse and a pair of patched and faded denim trousers, but for all that heir to a long line of dead-and-gone Champneyses who had been, whatever their faults, fearless and gallant gentlemen.

"Get back there, you, Mosely!" Peter Champneys spoke in the voice his grandfather had on a time used to a recalcitrant field-hand.

"Chuck that little nigger-lover in the swamp!"

"Knock him down an' git the nigger, Mosely!"

"Burn down the house!"

But the shot-gun in that steady young hand held them in check for a breathing-space. They knew Peter Champneys.

"Mosely!" snapped Peter. "You, too, Nicolson! Stand back, you white-livered hounds! First one of you lays a hand on me or Daddy Nep gets his head blown off! Damn you, Mosely! don't make me tell you again to get back!"

And Mosely saw that in the boy's eyes that drove him back, swearing.

The huge farm-hand, who had shifted and squirmed his way to the back of the crowd, now lifted his arm. A rope with a noose at the end snaked over the tossing heads, and all but settled over black Neptune's. It slipped, writhing from the old man's shoulder and down his shirt. The mob set up a disappointed and yet hopeful howl.

"Try it again! Try it again!" they shrieked. Then a sort of waiting hush fell upon them. The farm-hand, to whom the rope had been tossed, was again making ready for a throw, measuring the distance with his eyes. Peter, his lips tightening, waited too. The farm-hand was a tall man, and the posse had shifted to allow him space. His arm shot up, the noosed rope whizzed forward. But even as it did so Peter Champneys's trigger-finger moved. The report sounded like a clap of thunder, and was followed by a roar of rage and pain. The rope-thrower, with the rope tripping his feet and impeding his movements, danced about wildly, shaking the hand from which three fingers had been cleanly clipped. At that instant another posse rode up, with a baying of hounds to herald it. One saw the sheriff on a large bay horse, a Winchester in the crook of his arm. With a merest glance at what had been Jake, he pushed his way through the throng, and was confronted by Peter Champneys standing in front of old Neptune Fennick, with a smoking shot-gun in his hands.

"You better do something, quick! If you let anything happen to Daddy Nep, you've got to kill me first," panted Peter.

"He'd ought to be shot for a nigger-lover, Sheriff!" shouted the farm-hand.

"All right. Do it. But you'll get your neck stretched for it! My name's Champneys," shouted Peter.

The sheriff moved restlessly on his bay. A Champneys had fed his parents. Chadwick Champneys had given him his first pair of shoes. The sheriff was stirred to the depths by the crime that had been committed, and he had no love for a nigger, but—

He turned to the menacing crowd. "Here, boys, enough o' this! The right nigger's dead, and that's all there is to it. No, you don't do no hangin'! I'm sheriff o' this county, an' I aim to keep the law. Let that old nigger alone, Mosely! If that young hell-cat puts a bullet in your chitlin's, it'll be your own funeral."

He straightened in the saddle, touched the rein, and in a second the big bay had been swung around to stand between Neptune and the white men. The muzzle of Peter's gun touched the sheriff's leg.

"Put that pop-gun up, Son," said he, turning his head to look down into the boy's face. Their eyes met, in a long look.

"I knew that girl since she was bawn," he said, and his hard face quivered. "Hell!" swore the sheriff, and the hand on his bridle shook. He knew old Neptune, too, and in his way liked him. But it was hard for the sheriff, who had seen the dead little girl, to look into any black face that night and retain any feeling of humanity.

"Yes, sir. I knew her, too," said Peter Champneys, gulping. "But—I know Neptune, too. And—what happened—wasn't his fault. It's got nothing to do with Neptune—and—and things that Mosely—" His voice broke.

"Hell!" swore the sheriff again. And he whispered, more gently, "All right, Peter. An' I reckon you better stay by the old nigger for a day or two until this thing dies down." After all, the sheriff thought relievedly, Neptune's swift action, actuated by whatsoever motive, had saved the county and himself from a rather frightful episode. Turning to the crowd, he yelled:

"Get them dogs started for home! They're goin' plum crazy! Get on your hawse, Mosely! You, over there, with your fist shot up, ride next to me. Mount, all o' you! Mount, I say! No, I'll come last.

"What's that you're sayin', Briggs? No, suh, not by a damn-sight you won't! Not while I'm sheriff o' this county an' upholdin' law an' order in it, you won't drag no dead nigger behind my hawse—nor yet in front of him, neither! Let the nigger lay where he is and rot—what's left of him."

"Do you want us to bury—it?" quavered Peter.

"Bury it or burn it. What the hell do I care what you do with it?" growled the sheriff. "He's dead, that's all I got to think about." He ran his shrewd eyes over the posse, saw that not one straggler remained to do further mischief, and drove them before him, willy-nilly. In five minutes the trampled yard was clear, and the sound of the horses' hoofs was already dying in the distance. In the sky all other stars had paled to make room for the morning star.

Peter and Neptune, left alone, looked at each other dumbly. A thing remained to be done. The sun mustn't rise upon the horror that lay in the cabin yard. Neptune went to his small barn and trundled out a wheelbarrow, in which were several gunny-sacks, a piece of rope, and a spade.

Peter turned his head away while the old man covered the thing on the ground with sacking, rolled it over, floppily, and tied it as best he could. The sweat came out on them both as they saw the stains that spread on the clean sacking. Neptune heaped the bundle into his wheelbarrow. At a word from him Peter went into the house and returned with a lighted lantern, for the River Swamp was still very dark. The sun wouldn't be up for an hour or two yet. Peter held the lantern in one hand, and carried spade and shot-gun over the other shoulder. In the ghostly light they entered the swamp, every turn and twist of whose wide, watery acreage was known to Neptune, and was fairly familiar to Peter. They had to proceed warily, for the ground was treacherous, and at any moment a jutting tree-root might upset the clumsy barrow. Despite Neptune's utmost care it bumped and swayed, and the shapeless bundle in it shook hideously, as if it were trying to escape. And the stains on the coarse shroud grew, and spread.

In a small and fairly dry space among particularly large cypresses, Neptune stopped. At one side was a deep pool in whose depths the lantern was reflected. About it ferns, some of a great height, grew thickly. Neptune began to dig in the black earth. Sometimes he struck a cypress root, against which the spade rang with a hollow sound. It was slow enough work, but the hole in the swamp earth grew with every spade-thrust, like a blind mouth opening wider and wider. Peter held the lantern. The trees stood there like witnesses.

Presently Neptune straightened his shoulders, moved back to the barrow, and edged it to the hole. Swiftly and deftly he tipped it, and the shapeless bundle slid into the open mouth awaiting it. It was curiously still just then in the River Swamp.

When they emerged into the open, the sun was rising over a clean, fresh world. The dark tops of the trees were gilded by the first rays. Every bush was hung with diamonds, the young grass rippled like a child's hair, and birds were everywhere, voicing the glory of the morning.

The old negro dropped his wheelbarrow, and lifted a supplicating face and a pair of gnarled hands to the morning sky. His lips moved. One saw that he prayed, trustingly, with a childlike simplicity.

Peter Champneys watched him speculatively. He tried to reason the thing out, and the heart in his boyish breast ached with a new pain. Thoughts big, new, insistent, knocked at the door of his intellect and refused to be denied admittance.

He thought it better to take the sheriff's advice and stay with Neptune for a few days, but nobody troubled the good old man. The verdict of the whole county was in his favor. He went his harmless, fearless, laborious way unmolested. That autumn he died, and the cabin by the River Swamp was taken over by nature, who gave it to her winds and rains to play with. Her leaves drifted upon its floor, her birds built under its shallow eaves.

Nobody would live there any more. The negroes said the place was haunted: on wild nights one might hear there the sound of a shot, the baying of a hound; and see Jake running for the swamp.



CHAPTER V

THE PURPLE HEIGHTS

Emma Campbell had one of her contrary fits, and when Emma was contrary, the best thing to do was to keep out of her way. Her "palate was down," her temper was up; she'd had trouble with the Young Sons and Daughters of Zion, in her church, and hot words with a deacon who said that when he passed the cup Emma Campbell lapped up nearly all the communion wine, which was something no lady ought to do. And Cassius had taken unto himself a fourth spouse, and, without taking Emma into his confidence, had gotten her to wash and iron his wedding-shirt for him. So Emma's "palate was down," and not even three toothpicks and two spoons in her hair had been able to get it up. Peter, therefore, took a holiday. He filled his pockets with bread, and set out with no particular destination in mind.

At a turn in the Riverton Road he met the Red Admiral.

He stopped, reflectively. He hadn't seen the Admiral in some time, and it pleased him to be led by that gay adventurer now. The Admiral flitted down the Riverton Road, and Peter ran gaily after him. He led the boy a fine chase across fields, and out on the road again, and then down a lane, and along the river, and through the pines, and finally to the River Swamp woods. Peter came fleet-footed to Neptune's old cabin, raced round it, and then stopped, in utter confusion and astonishment. On the back steps, with an umbrella beside her, and an easel in front of her, sat a young woman so busy getting a bit of the swamp upon her canvas that she didn't hear or see Peter until he was upon her. Then she looked up, with her paint-brush in her hand.

"Hello!" said she, in the friendliest fashion, "where did you come from?"

She was a big girl, blue as to eyes, brown as to hair, and with a fresh-colored, good-humored face. Her glance was singularly clear and direct, and her smile so comradely that Peter took an instantaneous liking to her. He wondered what on earth she meant by coming here, to this lonely place, all by herself. But she was making a picture, and his interest was more in that than in the painter.

"May I look at it, please?" he asked politely. He smiled at her, and Peter had a mighty taking smile of his own.

"Of course you may!" said the lady, genially. Hands behind his back, Peter stared at the canvas. Then he stepped back yet farther, lifted one hand, and squinted through the fingers. The young lady regarded him with growing interest.

"Well, what do you think of it?" she asked.

The young woman wasn't a quick worker, but she was a careful one, and very exact. Unfinished though it was, the picture showed that; and it showed, too, a lack of something vital; there was no spontaneity in it.

"I've never seen anybody paint before, though I've always wanted to," said Peter, and fetched an unconscious sigh of envy.

"You haven't said whether or not you like it," the girl reminded him.

"It isn't finished," said Peter. His eyes went to the familiar woods, the beloved woods, and came back to her canvas. "I think when it's finished it will be like a photograph," he added.

Claribel Spring—for that was the big girl's name—knew her own limitations; but to meet a criticism so exact and so just, from a barefooted child in the South Carolina wilds wasn't to be expected. She took a longer look at the boy and thought she had never before seen a pair of eyes so absolutely, clearly golden. Those eyes would create a distinct impression upon people: either you'd like them, or you'd find them so strange you'd think them ugly. She herself thought them beautiful.

"You seem to know something about pictures, even unfinished ones," she told him comradely. "And may I ask who you are, and why and how you come flying out of the nowhere into the here of these forsaken woods?"

"Oh, I'm only Peter Champneys," said the boy with the golden eyes, shyly. "I hope I didn't startle you? It's my butterfly's fault. You see, I never know where I've got to follow him, or what I'm going to find when I get there."

"Your butterfly? You mean that Red Admiral that just whizzed by? He skimmed over my easel," said the young lady.

"Is that his real name?" Peter was enchanted. "A black fellow with red on his coat-tails, and a sash like a general's? Then that's my butterfly!" said Peter, happily. He smiled at the girl again, and finished, naively: "I owe that butterfly a whole heap of good luck!"

She told him she was spending some time with the Northern people who had lately bought Lynwood Plantation, a few miles down the river. She liked to prowl around and paint things.

"And now," she asked, "would you mind telling me something more about that butterfly of yours? And where some more of the good luck comes in?" She was growing more and more interested in Peter.

Peter dropped down beside the easel, his hands clasped loosely between his knobby knees. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should find himself talking freely to this Yankee girl; it was the most natural thing in the world that she should understand. So Peter, who, as a rule, would have preferred to be beaten with rods rather than divulge his feelings, told her exactly what she wished to know. This must be blamed upon the Red Admiral!

She caught a sharp outline of the child's life, poor in material circumstances, but crowded to the brim with thought and feeling and emotion, and colorful as the coast country was colorful. He had kept himself, she thought, as sweet and limpid as a mountain spring. He was wistful, eager, and mad to know things. His eyes went back again and again, with a sort of desperate hunger in them, to the canvas on her easel, as if the secret of him lay there. The girl sat with her firm white chin in her firm white hands, and looked down at Peter with her bright blue Yankee eyes, and understood him as none of his own people had ever understood him. She even understood what his innate reticence and decency held back. Who shall say that the Admiral wasn't a fairy?

"I'd like to see that first little sketch," she said, when he had finished. Her eyes were very sweet.

For a second he hesitated. Then he rose, went into the deserted cabin, and took from the cupboard a dusty bundle of papers—pieces of white cardboard, sheets of letter-paper, any sort of paper he had been able to lay his hands on. Riverton and the surrounding country, as Peter Champneys saw it, unrolled before her astonished eyes. It was roughly done, and there were glaring faults; but there was something in the crude work that wasn't in the canvas on her easel, and she recognized it. She singled out several sketches of an old negro with a bald head and a white beard, and a stern, fine face innate with dignity. She said quietly:

"You are quite right, Peter: the Red Admiral is undoubtedly a fairy." And after a moment, studying the old man's face: "He's rather a remarkable old man, isn't he?"

Peter looked around him. On that terrible night Daddy Neptune had stood just where the easel was standing now; over there by the tumble-down chicken house, Jake had fallen; and the space that was now green with grass had been full of vengeful men, and howling dogs, and trampling horses. Peter took the sketch from her, looked at it for a long moment, and, as briefly as he could, and keeping himself very much in the background, he told her.

Claribel Spring looked around her, almost disbelieving that such a thing could happen in such a place. She looked at the quiet-faced boy, at the sketches, and shook her head.

When she was ready to go, Peter helped pack her traps, picked up her paint-box, and slung her folding-easel and camp-stool across his shoulder. Lynwood was some three miles from the River Swamp, and shall a gentleman allow a lady to lug her belongings that distance?

"Miss Spring," said Peter, anxiously, as they reached the porch of Lynwood, "Miss Spring, do you expect to go about these woods much—by yourself?"

"Why, yes! Nobody here has time to prowl with me, you see. And I can't stay indoors. I've got to make the most of these woods while I have the opportunity."

Peter looked troubled. His brows puckered. "I wonder if you'd mind if I just sort of stayed around so I could look after—I mean, so I could watch you painting? May I? Please!"

Claribel sensed something tense under that request. She longed to get at Peter's thought processes. She was immensely interested in this shabby little chap who made astonishing sketches and whose personality was so intriguing.

"Why, of course you may, Peter. But would you mind telling me just why you want to come with me—aside from the painting?"

Peter shifted from one bare foot to the other.

"Because somebody's got to go with you," he blurted flatly. "Don't the people here know you mustn't go off like that, by yourself? There—well, Miss Spring, there are bad folks everywhere, I reckon. Our niggers"—Peter's head went up—"are the best niggers, in the world. But—sometimes—And—and—" He looked at her, trying to make her understand.

Claribel Spring considered him. He might be about fourteen. His head just reached her shoulder. And he was offering to take care of her, to be her protector! That's what his anxiety meant. "Oh, you darling little gentleman!" she thought.

"I see. And I'll be perfectly delighted if you can manage to come with me, Peter," said she, sincerely. "And listen: I've been thinking about those sketches of yours, while we were walking home, and I've got the nicest little plan all worked out in my mind. You shall take me around these woods, which you know and I don't. You'll be my guide, philosopher, and friend. In return I'll teach you what I can. You needn't bother about materials: I have loads of stuff for the two of us. What do you say?"

It was so unexpected, so marvelous, that an electrified and transformed Peter looked at her with a face gone white from excess of astonished rapture, and a pair of eyes like pools in paradise when the stars of heaven tremble in their depths.

Claribel Spring was a better teacher than artist, as she discovered for herself. She had the divine faculty of imparting knowledge and at the same time arousing enthusiasm; and she had such a pupil now as real teachers dream of. It wasn't so much like learning, with Peter; it was as if he were being reminded of something he already knew. He had never had a lesson in his whole life, he didn't go about things in the right manner, and there were grave faults to be overcome; but he had the thing itself.

She taught him more than the rudiments of technique, more than the mere processes of mixing colors, more than shading and form, and perspective, and flat surfaces, and high lights, and foreshortening. She was the first person from the outside world with whom Peter had ever come into real contact, the first person not a Southerner with whom he had ever been intimately friendly. And oddly enough, Peter taught her a few things.

Riverton learned that Peter Champneys had been engaged as a sort of fetch-and-carry boy by that big Vermont girl who was stopping at Lynwood. They thought Miss Spring charming, when they occasionally met her, but when it came to trapesing about the woods like a gipsy, quite as irresponsible as Peter Champneys himself—"Birds of a feather flock together," you know.

Claribel Spring was just at that time passing through a Gethsemane of her own, and she needed Peter quite as badly as he needed her. Peter was really a godsend to the girl. Her quiet self-control kept any one from discovering that she was cruelly unhappy, but Peter did at times perceive the shadow upon her face, and he knew that the silence that sometimes fell upon her was not always a happy one. At such times he managed to convey to her delicately, without words, his sympathy. He piloted her to lovely places, he made her pause to look at birds' nests, at corners of old fences, at Carolina wild-flowers. And when he had made her smile again, he was happy. To Peter that was the swiftest, happiest, most enchanted summer he had ever known.

It ended all too soon. He went up to Lynwood one morning to find Claribel packing for a hasty departure. It was a new Claribel that morning, a Claribel with a rosy face and shining eyes and smiling lips. She had gotten news, she told Peter joyously, that called her away at once—beautiful news. The most wonderful news in the world!

She turned over to Peter all the material she had on hand, and gave him painstaking directions as to how he was to proceed, what he was to strive for, what to avoid. And she said that when he had become a great man in the big world, one of these days, he wasn't to forget that she'd prophesied it, and had been allowed to play her little part in his career. Then she kissed Peter as nobody had ever kissed him except his mother. And so she left him.

He was turning fifteen then, and getting too big for the penny jobs Riverton had in pickle for him. Nothing better offering, he hired out that autumn to a farmer who fed his stock better than he did his men. Peter's mouth still twists wryly when he remembers that first month of heavy farm work. The mule was big and Peter wasn't, the plow and the soil were heavy, and Peter was light. Trammell, the farmer, held him to his task, insisting that "a boy who couldn't learn to plow straight couldn't learn to do nothin' else straight, and he'd better learn now while he had the chanst." Peter would have cheerfully forfeited his chance to learn to plow straight; but the thing was there to do, and he tried to do it.

Sunday, his one free day, was the only thing that made life at all endurable to Peter. It was a day to be looked forward to all through the heavy week. Early in the morning, with such lunch as he could come by, his worn Bible in his coat pocket and a package of paper under his arm, Peter disappeared, not to return until nightfall. The farmer's over-burdened wife was glad enough to see him go; that meant one less for whom to cook and to wash dishes.

All the week, after his own fashion, Peter had been observing things. On Sundays he tried to put them down on paper. He had the great, rare, sober gift of seeing things as they are, a gift given to the very few. A negro plowing in a flat brown field behind a horse as patient as himself; an old woman in a red jacket and a plaid bandana, feeding a flock of turkeys; a young girl milking; a boy driving an unruly cow—all the homely, common, ordinary things of everyday life among the plain people, Peter, who had been set down among the plain people, tried to crowd on his scanty supply of drawing-paper on Sunday in the woods.

Peter had learned to draw animals playing, and birds flying, and butterflies fluttering, and folks working. But he couldn't draw a decent living-wage for his daily labor. He was only a boy, and it seemed to be a part of the scheme of things that a boy should be asked to do a man's work for a dwarf's wages. And the food they gave him at the Trammell farm-house was beginning to tell on him. Peter asked for more money and was refused with contumely. He asked for a change of diet, and was informed violently that this country is undoubtedly going to the dogs when folks like himself "think theirselfs too dinged uppidy for good victuals. Eat 'em or leave 'em!"

Peter couldn't eat them any more, so he left them. He discharged himself out of hand, and went back to Riverton and Emma Campbell with forty dollars and a bundle of sketches.

The doctor in Riverton got most of the forty dollars. However, as he needed a boy in his drug store just then, he gave the place to Peter, who took it willingly enough, as he was still feeling the effects of bad food and heavy farm work. He learned to roll pills and weigh out lime-drops and mix soft drinks, and to keep his patience with women who wanted only a one-cent stamp, and expected him to lick it for them into the bargain.

Grown into a gawky chap of sixteen, Peter didn't impress people too favorably. They felt for him the instinctive distrust of the conservative and commercial mind for the free and artistic one. The Peter Champneyses of the world challenge the ideal of commercial success by their utter inability to see in it the real reason for being alive, and the chief end of man. They are inimical to smugness and to complacent satisfaction. Naturally, safe and sane citizens resent this.

There was one person in Riverton who didn't share the general opinion that Peter Champneys was trifling, and that was Mrs. Humphreys. Mrs. Humphrey still tasted that ice-cream and cake Peter had given to old Daddy Christmas on a hot afternoon. It was she who presently persuaded her husband to take Peter into his hardware store, at a better salary than the doctor paid him.

Everybody agreed that it was noble of Sam Humphreys to take Peter on. Of course, Peter was as honest as the sun, but he wasn't businesslike. Not to be businesslike is the American sin against the Holy Ghost. It is far less culpable to begin with the first of the deadly sins on Sunday morning and finish up the last of the seven on Saturday night, than to have your neighbors say you aren't businesslike. Had Peter taken to tatting, instead of to sketching niggers in ox-carts, and men plowing, and women washing clothes, Riverton couldn't have been more impatient with him. Artists, so far as the average American small town is concerned, are ineffectual persons, godless creatures long on hair and short on morals, men whom nobody respects until they are decently dead. It disgusted Riverton that Peter Champneys, who had had such a nice mother and come from a good family, should follow such examples.

But Peter meant to hold fast to his one power, though every hand in the world were against it, though every tongue shouted "Fool," though for it he should go hungry and naked and friendless to the end of his days. He wished to get away from Riverton, to study in some large city under good teachers. Claribel Spring had stressed the necessity of good teachers. Grimly he set himself to work to obtain at least a start toward the coveted end.

By incredible efforts he had managed to save one hundred and ten dollars, when Emma Campbell fell ill with a misery in her legs. Although she had a conjure bag around her neck, a rabbit foot in her pocket, and a horseshoe nailed above the door, she was helpless for a while, and Peter had to hire another colored woman to care for her.

Emma was just on her feet when Cassius took it into his head to die. There was a confusion of husbands and wives between Emma and Cassius, but she mourned for him shrilly. What deepened her distress was the fact that in repudiating him his last wife had carried off all his small possessions, and there was no money left to bury him. Now, not to be buried with due and fitting ceremonies and the displayed insignia of some churchly Buryin' Society, is a calamity and a disgrace. Emma felt that she could never hope to hold up her head again if Cassius had to be buried by town charity.

Peter Champneys hadn't lived among and liked the colored people all these years for nothing. He looked at big Emma Campbell sitting beside the kitchen table with her head buried in her arms, a prey to woe. Then he went to the bank and drew what remained of his savings. Cassius was gathered to his father's with all the accustomed trappings, and Emma's grief was turned to proud joy. But it was another proof of the unbusinesslike mind of Peter Champneys. His small savings were gone; he had to begin all over again.

Decidedly, the purple heights were a long, long way off!



CHAPTER VI

GOOD MORNING, GOOD LUCK!

On a particular Sunday Peter Champneys was making for his favorite haunt, the grass-grown clearing and the solitary and deserted cabin by the River Swamp. It was to him a place not of desolation but of solitude, and usually he fled to it as to a welcome refuge. But to-day his step lagged. The divine discontent of youth, the rebellion aginst the brute force of circumstance, seethed in him headily. Here he was, in the lusty April of his days, and yet life was bitter to his palate, and there was canker at the heart of the rose of Spring. Nothing was right.

The coast country, always beautiful, was at its best, the air sweet with the warm breath of summer. The elder was white with flowers, and in moist places, where the ditches dipped, huge cat-tails swayed to the light wind. Roses rioted in every garden; when one passed the little houses of the negroes every yard was gay with pink crape-myrtle and white and lilac Rose of Sharon trees. All along the worm-fences the vetches and the butterfly-pea trailed their purple; everywhere the horse-nettle showed its lovely milk-white stars, and the orange-red milkweed invited all the butterflies of South Carolina to come and dine at her table. There were swarms of butterflies, cohorts of butterflies, but among all the People of the Sky he missed the Red Admiral.

Peter particularly needed the gallant little sailor's heartening. It was a bad sign not to meet him this morning; it confirmed his own opinion that he was an unlucky fellow, a chap doomed to remain a nonentity, one fitted for nothing better than scooping out a nickel's worth of nails, or wrapping up fifty-cent frying-pans!

He walked more and more wearily, as if it tired him to carry so heavy a heart. Life was unkind, nature cruel, fate a trickster. One was caught, as a rat in a trap, "in the fell clutch of circumstance." What was the use of anything? Why any of us, anyhow?

And still not a glimmer of the Admiral! At this season of the year, when he should have been in evidence, it was ominously significant that he should be missing. Peter trudged another half-mile, and stopped to rest.

"Let's put this thing to the test," he said to himself, seriously. "That little chap has always been my Sign. Well, now, if I meet one, something good is going to happen. If I meet two, I'll get my little chance to climb out of this hole. If I meet three, it's me for the open and the big chance to make good. And if I don't meet any at all—why, I'll be nobody but Riverton Peter Champneys."

He didn't give himself the chance that on a time Jean Jacques gave himself when he threw a stone at a tree, and decided that if it struck the tree he'd get to heaven, and if it missed he'd go to hell—but so placed himself that there was nothing for that stone to do but hit the tree in front of it. Peter would run his risks.

And still no Admiral! It was silly; it was superstitious; it was childish; Peter was as well aware of that as anybody could be. But his heart went down like a plummet.

He had turned into the grassy road that led to the River Swamp. The pathway was bordered with sumac and sassafras and flowering elder, and clumps of fennel, and thickets of blackberry bramble. In clear spaces the tall candle of the mullein stood up straight, a flame of yellow flowers flickering over it. Near by was the thistle, shaking its purple paint-brush.

Peter stopped dead in his tracks and stared as if he weren't willing to believe his own eyesight. He went red and white, and his heavy heart turned a cart-wheel, and danced a jig, and began to sing as a young heart should. On the farthest thistle, as if waiting for him to come, as if they knew he must come, with their sails hoisted over their backs, were three Red Admirals!

Peter dropped in the grass, doubled his long legs under him, and watched them, his mouth turned right side up, his eyes golden in his dark face. Two of them presently flew away. The third walked over the thistle, tentatively, flattened his wings to show his sash and shoulder-straps.

"Good morning, good luck! You're still my Sign!" said Peter.

The Red Admiral fluttered his wings again, as if he quite understood. He allowed Peter to admire his under wings, the fore-wings so exquisitely jeweled and enameled, the lower like a miniature design for an oriental prayer-rug. He sent Peter a message with his delicate, sensitive antenna, a wireless message of hope. Then, with his quick, darting motion, he launched himself into his native element and was gone.

The day took on new loveliness, a happy, intimate, all-pervading beauty that flowed into one like light. Never had the trees been so comradely, the grass so friendly, the swamp water so clear, so cool.

For a happy forenoon he worked in Neptune's empty cabin, whose open windows framed blue sky and green woods, and wide, sunny spaces. He ate the lunch Emma Campbell had fixed for him. Then he went over to the edge of the River Swamp and lay under a great oak, and slipping his Bible from his pocket, read the Thirty-seventh Psalm that his mother had so loved. The large, brave, grave words splashed over him like cool water, and the little, hateful things, that had been like festering splinters in his flesh, vanished. There were flowering bay-trees somewhere near by, diffusing their unforgetable fragrance; the flowering bay is the breath of summer in South Carolina. He sniffed the familiar odor, and listened to a redbird's whistle, and to a mocking-bird echoing it; and to the fiddling of grasshoppers, the whispers of trees, the quiet, soft movement of the swamp water. The long thoughts that came to him in the open crossed his mind as clouds cross the sky, idly, moving slowly, breaking up and drifting with the wind. A bee buzzed about a spike of blue lobelia; ants moved up and down the trunk of the oak-tree; birds and butterflies came and went. With his hands under his head, Peter lay so motionless that a great brown water-snake glided upon a branch not ten feet distant, overhanging a brown pool whose depths a spear of sunlight pierced. The young man had a curious sense of personal detachment, such as comes upon one in isolated places. He felt himself a part of the one life of the universe, one with the whistling redbird, the toiling ants, the fluttering butterflies, the chirping grasshoppers, the great brown snake, the trees, the water. The earth breathed audibly against his ear. He sensed the awefulness and beauty of this oneness of all things, and the immortality of that oneness; and in comparison the littleness of his own personal existence. With piercing clarity he saw how brief a time he had to work and to experience the beauty and wonder of his universe. Then, healingly, dreamlessly, wholesomely, he fell asleep, to wake at sunset with a five-mile tramp ahead of him.

Long before he reached Riverton the dark had fallen. It was an evening of many stars. The wind carried with it the salty taste of the sea, and the smell of the warm country.

A light burned in his own dining-room, which was sitting-room as well, and a much pleasanter room than his mother had known, for books had accumulated in it, lending it that note books alone can give. He had added a reading-lamp and a comfortable arm-chair. Emma Campbell's flowers, planted in anything from a tomato-can to an old pot, filled the windows with gay blossoms.

Peter found his supper on a covered tray on the kitchen table. Emma herself had gone off to church. The Seventh Commandment had no meaning for Emma, she was hazy as to mine and thine, but she clung to church membership. She was a pious woman, given to strenuous spells of "wrastlin' wid de Speret."

Peter fetched his tray into the dining-room, and had just touched a match to the spirit kettle, when a motor-car honked outside his gate.

Peter's house was at some distance from the nearest neighbour's, and fancying this must be a complete stranger to have gotten so far off the beaten track as to come down this short street which was nothing but a road ending at the cove, he went to his door prepared to give such directions as might be required.

Somebody grunted, and climbed out of the car. In the glare of the lamps Peter made out a man as tall as himself, in a linen duster that came to his heels, and with an automobile cap and goggles concealing most of his face. The stranger jerked the gate open, and a moment later Peter was confronting the goggled eyes.

"Are you," said a pleasant voice, "by good fortune, Peter Champneys?"

"Well," said Peter, truthfully, "I can't say anything about the good fortune of it, but I'm Peter Champneys."

The stranger paused for a moment. He said in a changed tone: "I have come three thousand miles to have a look at and a talk with you."

"Come in," said Peter, profoundly astonished, "and do it." And he stepped aside.

His guest shook himself out of dust-coat and goggles and stood revealed an old man in a linen suit—a tall, thin, brown, very distinguished-looking old man, with a narrow face, a drooping white mustache, bushy eyebrows, a big nose, and a pair of fine, melancholy brown eyes. He stared at Peter devouringly, and Peter stared back at him quite as interestedly.

"Peter Champneys: Peter Devereaux Champneys, I have come across the continent to see you. Well! Here you are—and here I am. Have you the remotest idea who I am? what my name is?" Peter shook his head apologetically. He hadn't the remotest idea. Yet there was something vaguely familiar in the tanned old face, some haunting likeness to somebody, that puzzled him.

"My name," said the old gentleman, "is Champneys—Chadwick Champneys. Your father used to call me Chad, when we were boys together. I'm his brother—and your uncle, Nephew—and glad to make your acquaintance. I'll take it for granted you're as pleased to make mine. Now that I see you clearly, let me add that if I met your skin on a bush in the middle of the Sahara desert, I'd know it for a Champneys hide. Particularly the beak. You look like me." Peter stared. It was quite true: he did resemble Chadwick Champneys. The two shook hands.

"But, Uncle Chad—Why, we thought—Well, sir, you see, we heard you were dead."

"Yes. I heard so myself," said Uncle Chad, serenely. "In the meantime, may I ask you for a bite? I'm somewhat hungry."

Peter set another plate for his guest, and brewed tea, and the two drew up to the table. Emma Campbell had provided an excellent meal, and Mr. Chadwick Champneys plied an excellent knife and fork, remarking that when all was said and done one South Carolina nigger was worth six French chefs, and that he hadn't eaten anything so altogether satisfactory for ages.

The more the young man studied the elder man's face, the better he liked it. Figure to yourself a Don Quixote not born in Spain but in South Carolina, not clothed in absurd armor but in a linen suit, and who rode, not on Rosinante but in a motor-car, and you ll have a fair enough idea of the old gentleman who popped into Peter's house that Sunday night.

Peter asked no questions. He sat back, and waited for such information as his guest chose to convey. He felt bewildered, and at the same time happy. He who was so alone of a sudden found that he possessed this relative, and it seemed to him almost too good to be true. That the relative had never before noticed his existence, that he was supposed to be a trifler and a ne'er-do-weel, didn't cloud Peter's joy.

His relative put his feet on a chair, lighted and smoked a cutty, and presently unbosomed himself, jerkily, and with some reluctance. His wife Milly—and whenever he mentioned her name the melancholy in his brown eyes deepened—had been dead some twelve years now. They had had no children. He had wandered from south to west, from Mexico and California and Yucatan to Alaska, always going to strike it lucky and always missing it. To the day of her death Milly had stood by, loyally, lovingly, unselfishly, his one prop and solace, his perfect friend and comrade. There was never, he said, anybody like her. And Milly died. Died poor, in a shack in a mining-town.

He had done something of everything, from selling patent medicines to taking up oil and mining-claims. He couldn't stay put. He really didn't care what happened to him, and so of course nothing happened to him. That's the way things are.

Three years after Milly's death he had fallen in with Feilding, the Englishman. Feilding was almost on his last legs when the two met, and Champneys nursed him back to life. The silent, rather surly Englishman refused to be separated from the man who, he said, had saved his life, and the two struck up a partnership of mutual misfortune. They tramped and starved and worked together, until Feilding died, leaving to his partner his sole possessions—a mining-claim and a patent-medicine recipe. He had felt about down and out, the night Feilding died, for the Englishman was the one real friend he had made, the one person who loved him and whom he loved, after Milly.

But instead of his being down and out, the tide had even then turned for Chadwick Champneys. His friendless wanderings were about done. The mining-claim was worth a very great deal; and the patent medicine did at least some of the things claimed for it. He took it to a certain firm, offering them two thirds of the first and half of the second year's profits for handling the thing for him. They closed with the offer, and from the very first the medicine was a money-maker. It would always be a best-seller.

And then the irony of fate stepped in and took a hand in Chadwick Champneys's affairs. The man who had hitherto been a failure, the man whose touch had seemed able to wither the most promising business sprouts, found himself suddenly possessed of the Midas touch. He couldn't go into anything that didn't double in value. He wasn't able to fail. Let him buy a barren bit of land in Texas, say, and oil would presently be discovered in it; or a God-forsaken tract in the West Virginia mountains, and coal would crop out; or a huddle of mean houses in some unfashionable city district, and immediately commerce and improvement strode in that direction, and what he had bought by the block he sold by the foot.

Because he was alone, and growing old, Champneys's heart turned to his own people. He learned that his brother's orphaned son was still in the South Carolina town. And there was a girl, Milly's niece. These two were the only human beings with whom the rich and lonely man could claim any family ties.

Peter was so breathless with interest and sympathy, so moved by the wanderings of this old Ulysses, and so altogether swept off his feet by the irruption of an uncle into his uncleless existence, that he hadn't time for a thought as to the possible bearing it might have upon his own fortunes. When, therefore, his uncle wound up with, "I'll tell you, Nephew, it's a mighty comforting thing for a man to have some one of his own blood and name close to his hand to carry on his work and fulfil his plans," Peter came to his senses with a shock as of ice-water poured down his backbone. He knew it wasn't in him to carry out any business schemes his uncle might have in mind.

"Uncle Chad," said he, honestly. "Don't be mistaken about me, and don't set your heart on trying to train me into any young Napoleon of Finance. It's not in me." And he added, gently, "I'm sorry I'm a dub. I'd like to please you, and I hate to disappoint you; but you might as well know the truth at once."

Uncle Chad looked him up and down with shrewd eyes.

"So?" said he, and fell to pulling his long mustache. "What's the whole truth, Nephew? If you don't feel equal to learning how to run a million-dollar patent-medicine plant, what do you feel you'd be good at, hey?"

"I'm good in my own line: I want to be an artist. I am going to be an artist, if I have to starve to death for it!" said Peter. He spread out his hands. "I have one life to live, and one thing to do!" he cried.

"Oh, an artist! I've never heard of any Champneys before you who had such a hankering, though I'm quite sure it's all right, if you like it, Nephew. There's no earthly reason why an artist shouldn't be a gentleman, though I could wish you'd have taken over the patent-medicine business, instead. Have you got anything I can see?"

Shyly and reluctantly, Peter began to show him. There were two or three oils by now; powerful sketches of country life, with its humor and pathos; heads of children and of negroes; bits of the River Swamp; all astonishingly well done.

"Paintings are curious things; some have got life and some haven't got anything I can see, except paint. There was one I saw in New York, now. I thought at first it was a mess of spinach. I stood off and looked, and I walked up close and looked, and still I couldn't see anything but the same green mess. But—will you believe it, Nephew?—that thing was The Woods in Spring! Thinks I, They evidently boil their Woods in Spring up here, before painting 'em! The things one paints nowadays don't look like the things they're painted from, I notice. I'm afraid these things of yours look too much like real things to satisfy folks it's real art.—You sure the Lord meant you to be an artist?"

Peter laughed. "I'm sure I mean myself to be an artist, Uncle Chad."

"Want to get away from Riverton, don't you? But that costs money? And you haven't got the money?"

"I want to get away from Riverton. But that costs money, and I haven't got the money," admitted Peter.

"I see. Now, Nephew, when it gets right down to the thing he really wants to do, every man has some horse sense, even if he happens to be a fool in everything else. I'll talk to your horse sense and save time."

Peter, in the midst of scattered drawings, and of the few oils backed up against the dining-room wall, paused.

"I could wish," said his uncle, slowly, "that you were—different. But you are what you are, and it would be a waste of time to try to make you different. You say you have one thing to do. All right, Peter Champneys, you shall have your chance to do it,—with a price-tag attached. Do you want to be what you say you want to be hard enough to be willing to pay the price for it?"

"You mean—to go away from here—to study? To see real pictures—and be a student under a real teacher?" Peter's voice all but failed him. His face went white, and his eyes glittered. He began to tremble. His uncle, watching him narrowly, nodded.

"Yes. Just that. Everything that can help you, you shall have—time, teachers, money, travel. But first you must pay me my price."

Peter could only lean forward and stare. He was afraid he was going to wake up in a minute.

"Let me see if I can make it quite clear to you, Peter. You never knew Milly—my wife Milly. You're not in love, Son, are you? No? Well, you won't be able to understand—yet."

"There was my mother, sir," said Peter, gently.

"I'm sorry," said the other, just as gently. "I wish it had come sooner, the luck. But it didn't, and I can't do anything for Milly,—or for your mother. They're gone." For a moment he hung his head.

"But, Peter, I can do considerable for you, and I mean to do it. Only I can't bear to think Milly shouldn't have her share in it. We never had a child of our own, but there's Milly's niece."

"Oh, but of course, Uncle Chad! Aunt Milly's niece ought to come in for all you can do for her, even before me," said Peter, heartily, and with entire good faith.

"You are your father's son," said Uncle Chad, ambiguously. "But what I wish to impress upon you is, that neither of you comes before the other: you come together." He paused again, and from this time on never removed his eyes from his nephew's face, but watched him hawk-like. "You will understand there is a great deal of money—enough money to found a great American family. Why shouldn't that family be the Champneyses? Why shouldn't the Champneyses be restored to their old place, put where they rightfully belong? And who and what should bring this about, except you, and Milly's niece, and my money!"

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," said Peter, and looked as bewildered as he felt. He wasn't a quick thinker. "What is it you wish me to do?"

Still holding his eyes, "I want you to marry Milly's niece," said Chadwick Champneys. "That's my price."

"Marry? I? Oh, but, Uncle Chad! Why, I don't even know the girl, nor she me! I've never so much as heard of her until this minute!" cried Peter.

"What difference does that make? Men and women never know each other until after they're married anyhow," said his uncle, sententiously. "Peter, do you really wish to go abroad and study? Very well, then: marry Milly's niece. I'll attend to everything else."

"But why? My good God! why?" Peter's eyes popped.

"Nephew," said his uncle, patiently, "you are the last Champneys; she is Milly's niece—my Milly's niece. And Milly is dead, and I am practically under sentence of death myself. I have got to put my affairs in order. I'd hardly learned I was a very rich man before I also learned my time was limited. On high authority. Heart, Nephew. I may last for several years. Or go out like a puff of wind, before morning."

Peter was so genuinely shocked and distressed at this that his uncle smiled to himself. The boy was a true Champneys.

"There is no error in the diagnosis, so I accept what I can't help, and in the meantime arrange my affairs. Now, Nephew Peter, business man or artist the Champneys name is in your keeping. You are the head of the house, so to speak. I supply the funds to refurnish the house, we'll say, and I give you your opportunity to do what you want to do, to make your mark in your own way. In exchange you accept the wife I provide for you. When I meet Milly again, I want to tell her there's somebody of her own blood bearing our name, taking the place of the child we never had, enjoying all the good things we missed, and enjoying them with a Champneys, as a Champneys. If there are to be Champneys children, I want Milly's niece to bear them. I won't divide my money between two separate houses; it must all go to Peter Champneys and his wife, that wife being Milly's niece." His eyes began to glitter, his mouth hardened. "It is little enough to ask!" he cried, raising his voice. "I give you everything else. I do not ask you to change your profession. I make that profession possible by supplying the means to pursue it. In payment you marry Milly's niece."

His manner was so passionately earnest that the astonished boy took his head in his hands to consider this amazing proposition.

"But how in heaven's name can I study if I'm plagued with a wife?" he demanded. "I want to be foot-loose!"

"All right. You shall be foot-loose, for seven years, let's say," said his uncle, quietly. "I reason that if you are ever going to be anything, you'll at least have made a beginning within seven years! You're twenty now, are you not? When you marry my girl, you shall go abroad immediately. She'll stay with me until her education is completed. Your wife shall be trained to take her proper place in the world. On your twenty-seventh birthday you will return and claim her. I do not need anything more than the bare word of a Champneys that he'll be what a man should be. Milly's niece will be safe in your keeping.—Well?"

"Let me think a bit, Uncle."

"Take until morning. In the meanwhile, please help me get my car under shelter, and show me where I turn in for the night." Being in some things a very considerate old man, he did not add that he had found the day strenuous, and that his strength was ebbing.

Peter, lying on the lounge in the dining-room, was unable to sleep. Was this the chance his mother had said would come? Wasn't matrimony rather a small price to pay for it? Or was it? And—hadn't he promised his mother to take it when it came, for the sake of all the Champneyses dead and gone, and for her own sake who had loved him so tenderly and believed in him against all odds?

At dawn he stole out of the house, and walked the three miles to the country cemetery where his mother slept beside his father. He sat beside her last bed, and remembered the cold hand that had crept into his, the faltering whisper that prayed him to take his chance when it came, and to prove himself.

If he refused this miraculous opportunity, there would be Riverton, and the hardware store, or other country stores similar to it, to the end of his days. No freedom, no glorious opportunities, no work of brain and hand together, no beauty wrought of thought and experience; the purple peaks fading into farther and farther distances until they faded out of his sky altogether; and himself a sorry plodder in a path whose dust choked him. Peter shuddered. Anything but that!

Mr. Chadwick Champneys was sitting by the dining-room table talking to astonished Emma Campbell, and stroking the cat, when Peter came swinging into the room.

"Well?" with a keen glance at his nephew's face.

"Yes," said Peter, deliberately.

The old man went on stroking the cat for a moment or so, while Emma Campbell, the hominy-spoon in her hand, watched them both. She understood that something momentous portended. Not for nothing had this shrewd, imperious old man whom she had known in his youth as wild Chad Champneys, led Emma on to tell him all she knew about the family history since his departure, years ago. When Emma had finished, Chadwick Champneys felt that he knew his nephew to the bone; and it was Champneys bone!

"Thank you, Nephew," said he, in a deep voice. "You're a good lad. You won't regret your bargain. I promise you that."

He turned to Emma Campbell:

"If my breakfast is ready, I'm ready too, Emma." And to Peter: "We were renewing our old acquaintance, Emma and I, while you were out, Nephew. She hasn't changed much: she's still the biggest nigger and the best cook and the faithfulest friend in all Carolina."

"Oh, go 'long, Mist' Chad! Who you 'speck ought to look after Miss Maria's chile, 'ceptin' ole Emma Campbell? Lawd 'a' mussy, ain't I wiped 'is nose en dusted 'is britches sense he bawn? Dat Peter, he belonged to Miss Maria en me. He's we chile," said Emma Campbell.

Over his coffee Mr. Champneys outlined his plans carefully and succinctly. Peter was to hold himself in readiness to proceed whither his uncle would direct him by wire. In the meantime he was to settle his affairs in Riverton.

"Uncle Chad," said Peter, to whom the thought had just occurred, "Uncle Chad, now that I have agreed to do what you wish me to do, what is the young lady's name? You didn't tell me."

"Her name? Why, God bless my soul, I forgot, I forgot! Well! Her name's Anne Simms. Called Nancy. Soon be Nancy Champneys, thank Heaven!" And he repeated: "Nancy Champneys! Anne Champneys!"

"Uncle," said Peter, deprecatingly, "you'll understand—I'm a little interested—excuse me for asking you—but what does the young lady look like?"

Mr. Chadwick Champneys blinked at his nephew.

"Look like? You want to know what Milly's niece looks like?"

"Yes, sir," said Peter, modestly. "I—er—that is, the thought occurred to me to ask you what she looks like."

Mr. Champneys scratched the end of his nose, pulled his mustache, and looked unhappy.

"Nephew Peter," said he, "do what I do: take it for granted Milly's niece looks like any other girl—nose and mouth and hair and eyes, you know. But I can't describe her to you in detail."

"No? Why?" Peter wondered.

"Because I have never laid eyes on her," said his uncle.

"Oh!" Peter looked thunderstruck.

"I came to you first," explained his uncle. "I gave you first whack. Now I'm going to see her."

"Oh!" said Peter, still more thunderstruck.

"I'll wire you when you're to come," said his uncle, briskly, and got into dust-coat, cap, and goggles. A few minutes later, before the little town was well awake, he vanished in a cloud of dust down the Riverton Road.



CHAPTER VII

WHERE THE ROAD DIVIDED

Emma Campbell stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, lips pursed, eyes fixed on vacancy, a dish-cloth dangling from one hand, a carving-knife clutched in the other, and projecked. And the more she projecked about what was happening in Peter's house, the less she liked it. It had never occurred to Emma Campbell that Peter might go away from Riverton. Yet now he was going, and it had been taken for granted that she, Emma, who, as she said, had "raised 'im from a puppy up'ards," wouldn't mind staying on here after his departure. Fetching a cold sigh from the depths of an afflicted bosom, Emma moved snail-like toward the work in hand; and as she worked she howled dismally that nobody knew the trouble she saw, "nobody knew but you, Lawd."

When Peter came in to dinner, she addressed him with distant politeness as Mistuh Champneys, instead of the usual Mist' Peter. When he spoke to her she accordion-plaited her lips, and stuck her eyes out at him. Her head, adorned with more than the usual quota of toothpicks, brought the quills upon the fretful porcupine forcibly to one's mind.

Nobody but Peter Champneys could or would have borne with Emma Campbell's contrary fits, but as neither of them realized this they managed to get along beautifully. Peter was well aware that when the car that had suddenly appeared in the night had just as suddenly disappeared in the morning in a cloud of dust on the Riverton Road, Emma's peace of mind had vanished also. He understood, and was patient.

She clapped a platter of crisp fried chicken before him, and stood by, eyeing him and it grimly. And when hungry Peter thrust his fork into a tempting piece, "You know who you eatin'?" she demanded pleasantly.

Peter didn't know whom he was eating; fork suspended, he looked at Emma questioningly.

"You eatin' Lula, dat who you eatin'," Emma told him with grisly unction. "Dem 's de same laigs use to scratch roun' we kitchen do'. Dat 's de same lovin'-hearted hen I raise fum a baby. But, Lawd! Whut you care? You 's de sort kin go trapesin' off by yo'se'f over de worl'. You dat uppidy dese days, whut you care 'bout eatin' up po' lil Lula? She ain't nobody but us-all's chicken, nohow!"

Peter looked doubtfully at "po' lil Lula's" remains, and laid down his fork. Somehow, one can't be keen about eating a loving-hearted hen.

"But, Emma, we eat our chickens all the time! You've fried me many a chicken without raising a row about it!" he protested.

"Who tol' you dey wuz ours?"

As Peter hadn't a fitting reply in return for this ambiguous query, Emma bounced out of the dining-room, to return in a moment with the tea-pot; when Peter held out his cup, she poured into it plain boiling water. At that she set the tea-pot hastily upon the table, threw her gingham apron over her head, and plumped upon the floor with a thud that made the house shake. It frightened the cat into going through the window at a leap, taking with him all the flowers planted in tomato-cans.

"Emma," said Peter, severely, "I'm ashamed of you! Take that silly apron off your head and listen to me. You know very well you aren't being left to shift for yourself. You'll be provided for better than you've ever been. Why, all you'll have to do—"

"All I 'll hab to do is jes' crawl into my grave en stay dere. I done raised 'im fum de egg up, en now he 's got comb en kin crow it 's tail-feathers over de fence en fly off wid 'im! Ah, Lawd! You done made 'em en You knows whut roosters is like!"

"Emma! Look here, confound it!—"

"Who gwine look after 'im? I axes you fum my heart, who gwine do it?—Never did hab no mo' sense dan a rabbit widout I 's by, en now dey aims to tun 'im loose! Ah, Lawd!"

"Emma, listen! Emma, what the—"

"Dem furrin women 'll do 'im lak dem women done po' old Cassius. Dey 'll conjure 'im! En widout I by, who gwine make 'im put one live frawg on 'is nekked stummick, so 's to sweat de speret o' dat frawg een, en de speret o' dat conjure out? No-buddy. Den he 'll up en die. Widout one Gawd's soul o' 'is own folkses to put de coppers on 'is eyes en' tie up de corpse's jaws.—Ah Lawd, ah Lawd!"

"Oh, shut up, you old idiot! I'm not coming home to my meals any more, if this is how you're going to behave!" This from Peter, disgustedly.

"Ain't you, suh? All right, suh, Mistuh Champneys, you 's be boss. But I glad to my Gawd Miss Maria ain't 'yuh to see dis day!" And Emma began to sniffle.

Peter pushed his untouched dinner aside, and reached for his hat. He looked at Emma Campbell irefully.

"Damn!" exploded Peter.

Emma Campbell got to her feet with astounding quickness, ran into the kitchen, and returned in a moment with another platter of chicken, rice, and gravy.

"'Yuh, chile. Set down en eat yo' bittles. You ain't called on to hab no hard feelin's 'bout dis chicken. 'T ain't none o' ours, nohow." Peter resumed his chair and waived cross-examination.

Mr. Champneys having come, so to speak, between dark and daylight, Riverton knew nothing about his visit, for Peter hadn't thought to inform them. This affair seemed so unreal, so improbable, so up in the air, that he dared not mention it. Suppose it mightn't be true, after all. Suppose fate played a cruel joke. Suppose Mr. Champneys changed his mind. So Peter, who had a horror of talk, and writhed when asked personal questions by people who felt that they had a perfect right to know all about his business, kept strict silence, and enjoined the same silence upon Emma Campbell, who could be trusted to hold her tongue when bidden.

Now, one simply cannot remember the price of pots and pans and sheet-iron and plows and ax-handles, when one is living in the beginning of an astounding fairy story, when the most momentous change is impending, when one's whole way of life is about to be diverted into different channels. The things one hates, like being a hardware clerk, for instance, automatically slide into the background when the desire of the heart approaches.

But Mr. Humphreys, whose mind and fortune naturally enough centered in his hardware store, couldn't be expected to know that the impossible had happened for Peter Champneys. He would hardly be able to take Peter's bare word for it, even if Peter should tell him: he didn't know that his absent-minded clerk really liked him, and longed to tell him that he was leaving Riverton shortly—he hoped for years and years—and was only awaiting the message that should speed his departure. Mr. Humphreys, then, cannot be blamed for complaining with feeling and profanity that of all the damidjits he had ever seen in his life, Peter Champneys was about the worst. Loony was no name for him, and what was to become of such a chump he didn't know. "If this thing keeps up, he'll be drooling before he's forty, and we'll have to hire a nigger to feed him out of a papspoon," said Mr. Humphreys, forebodingly.

And in the meanwhile the days dragged and dragged—two whole weeks of suspense and expectancy. On the Monday of the third week the end of Peter's waiting and of Mr. Humphreys's patience came together. One, in fact, brought about the other. The postman who drove in with the daily mail brought for Peter Champneys the yellow envelope toward which he had been looking with such feverish impatience.

He was really to go! The young man experienced that reeling, ecstatic shock which shakes one when a long-delayed desire suddenly assumes reality. He stood with the telegram in his fingers, and stared about the dusty, dingy, uninteresting store, and saw as with new eyes how hopelessly hideous it really was; and wondered and wondered if he were really himself, Peter Champneys, who was going to get away from it.

At that moment stout old Mrs. Beach entered the store and waddled up to him. Mrs. Beach was a woman who never knew what she really wanted, or if, indeed, she really wanted anything in particular; but then again, as she said, she might. She didn't like to leave her house often; and when she did finally make up her mind to dress and go out, she popped into every store she happened to pass, on the chance that she might want something from it, and would thus save herself an extra trip to get it. She would say to a perspiring clerk:

"Now, let me see: there's something I wanted to get from this store. I know it, because on Tuesday last something happened to put me in mind of it—or was it Wednesday, maybe? I know it's something I need about the house—or maybe the yard. You'll have to help me out. I've got a poor memory, but you just sort of run over a list of things folks would be most likely to need and maybe you'll hit on the right thing, and if it's that I want, I'll get it right now. Don't stand there like a hitching-post, boy! Why can't you suggest something, and help out a woman old enough to be your mother?"

If by some fortuitous chance you happened to hit upon an article she thought she might happen to need, and it suited her, she would buy it. But it never occurred to her to thank you for your help, or to apologize for the nerve-racking strain to which she subjected you.

"Young man," said her testy voice in Peter's ear, "I've got to get something and I can't remember what it is. You've got to help me. I can't be wasting my time at my age o' life running around to hardware stores."

Peter thrust the miraculous telegram in his pocket, where he could feel it burn and tingle. Oh, it was true, it was true! He was going to get away from all this!

"For heaven's sake, boy, don't stand there gawping at me like a thunderstruck owl! You surely know about everything you've got in this store, don't you? Well, then, Peter Champneys, look about you and see if you can't light on what I'm most likely to need!"

Peter, mind on the telegram in his pocket, did indeed look at the old lady owlishly. Hazily he remembered certain grueling, sweating half-hours spent in trying to discover what Mrs. Beach thought she might want to buy. Hazily he looked from her to the littered shelves, and reached for the first object upon which his eyes happened to fall.

"Yes 'm, Mrs. Beach. I reckon this is what you'd most likely need," said Peter, gently, and placed in her hand a fine new muzzle. (Paris, maybe Rome; and Florence! Oh, names to conjure with! And he should see them all, walk their historic streets, view immortal work, stand before immortal canvases, and say with Correggio: "And I, too, am a painter!")

"Oh, my dear Lord, save me from bursting wide open! Why, you impudent young reprobate!" Mrs. Beach's outraged voice banished his dream. "For two pins, Peter Champneys, I'd take you across my knees and spank the seat off your breeches! I need a muzzle, do I? I'm to be insulted by a little squirt that's just learning to keep his ears clean! Well! Girl and woman I've been dealing with Sam Humphreys and his father before him, but from this day forth I put no foot of mine across this store door!" All the while she spoke she brandished the muzzle at Peter and kept backing him off into a corner.

Mr. Humphreys came hurriedly out of his office upon hearing the uproar, and sought with soothing speech to placate his irate old friend and customer. But Mrs. Beach wasn't to be placated. She went out of the door and down the street like a hat on a windy day.

Mr. Humphreys watched her go. Then he turned and looked at Peter Champneys, ominously:

"Peter,"—Mr. Humphreys, carefully restraining himself, spoke in low and dulcet tones—"Peter, I have tried to do my duty as a Christian man; now I have to do it as a hardware man, and right here is where you and I say good-by. I have passed over," said Mr. Humphreys, swallowing hard, "your sending gravel to the grocer and a bellows to the minister by mistake; but this is the limit. If there is anybody advertising for a gilt-edged failure as a salesman, you go apply for the job and say I recommend you enthusiastically. I hate like the devil to fire you, Peter, but it's a plain case of self-defense with me: I have to do it. You're fired. Now. Come on in the office," said Mr. Humphreys, eagerly, "and I'll pay you off."

Peter slid his hand into his pocket and pinched that precious slip of paper. Then he smiled into Mr. Humphreys's empurpled visage.

"Why, thank you, Mr. Humphreys," said he, gratefully. "I know just how you feel, and I don't blame you in the least. I've been wanting to tell you I had to quit, and you've saved me the trouble."

Sam Humphreys knew that Peter Champneys had no right to stand there and smile like that at such a solemn moment. He should have appeared ashamed, downcast, humanly perturbed; and he didn't in the least.

"I've been wondering ever since the first day I hired you how I was going to keep from firing you before nightfall. Now the end's come. Say—suppose you go on home, right now. Because," said Mr. Humphreys, softly, "I mightn't be able to refrain from committing justifiable homicide. I'll send you your salary to-night. Go on home. Please!"

To his horror, Peter Champneys of a sudden laughed aloud. It was genuine laughter, that rang true and gay and glad. His eyes sparkled, and a dash of good red jumped into his sallow cheeks.

"Good-by, then, Mr. Humphreys. And thank you for many kindnesses, and for real patience," said Peter. He waved his hand at the dusty store in a wide-flung gesture of glad farewell.

"Oh, my God! He's run plumb crazy!" cried Mr. Humphreys, mopping his brow. "I always said that boy wasn't natural!"

But Peter, walking home in the bright afternoon sunlight, for the first time in his life felt young and free and happy. He wanted to laugh, to sing, to shout, to skip. Emma Campbell was just bringing the washed-and-dried dinner dishes back into the dining-room when he bounced in.

"Emma," said he, sticking his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, and beaming at her, "Emma, I'm out of a job. Kicked out neck and crop. Fired, thank God!"

Emma stacked her dishes on the old deal dresser.

"Is you?"

"I sure am. And, Emma, listen. I—I'm sort of waked up. Even if things shouldn't turn out as I hope they will, I'll manage to go ahead, somehow. I'd get out, now, under any circumstances. Pike's Peak or bust!" said Peter.

"When you 'speck to go?"

"Just as soon as I can get out. I'm expected in New York within ten days at the latest. And then, Emma, the wide world! No more little-town tittle-tattle! All I've got to do, in the big world, is to deliver the goods. And I'm going to deliver the goods!" said Peter.

But Emma Campbell put her grizzled head on the dining-room table and began to cry.

"I nussed you w'en you had de croup en de colic. I used to tromp up en down dis same no' wid you 'crost my shoulder. It was me dressed Miss Maria de day she married wid yo' pa, en it was me dressed 'er for de coffin. You en me been stannin' togedder ever sence. How I gwine stan' by my alonese 'f now? I ole now, Mist' Peter."

"Emma," said Peter, after a pause, "tell me exactly what you want me to do for you and if I can I'll do it."

"I wants to go wid you. I jes' natchelly ain't gwine stay 'yuh by my alonese 'f," wept Emma.

Peter looked at her with the sort of tenderness one must be born in the South to understand. Born in the last years of slavery, brought up in wild Reconstruction days, Emma couldn't read or write. She wasn't amenable to discipline. She was, as Cassius had complained, "so contrary she mus' be 'flicted wid de moonness." She wore a rabbit foot and a conjure bag and believed in ha'nts and hoodoos. But, as far back as he could remember, Emma Campbell had formed a large part of the background of his life. He wondered just what he would have done if it hadn't been for Emma, after his mother's death. There slid into his mind the picture of a shabby youngster weeping over a cheap green-and-gold Collection of Poetic Gems; and he reached over and laid a brown hand upon a black one.

"Well, and why not?" mused Peter. "You stood by me when I hadn't any money; why should you leave me the minute I get it? But are you sure you really want to go along, Emma? I'm going into a foreign country, remember. You won't be able to understand a word anybody says. You'll be a mighty lonesome old nigger over there."

"I can talk wid my cat, can't I?"

"Holy Moses! What, the cat, too?" Peter ran his hands through his hair, distractedly.

"Whah you goes, I goes. En whah I goes, dat cat goes. Dat cat 's we-all's folks."

"Oh, all right," said Peter, resignedly. After all, Emma Campbell and the cat were all the folks he had.

He went to Charleston the next morning, in accordance with the instructions his uncle had given him in their last talk, and the bank at which he presented himself treated him with distinguished consideration. Peter heard for the first time the dulcet accents of Money.

Like Mr. Wilfer in "Our Mutual Friend," Peter had never had everything all together all at once. When he had a suit his shoes were shabby, and when it got around to shoes his coat was shiny in the seams and his hat of last year's vintage. He was boyishly delighted to buy at one time all that he wanted, but as made-to-order clothes were altogether outside of his reckoning as yet, he bought ready-made. His taste was too simple to be essentially bad, but you knew he was a country boy in store clothes and a made tie.

He had never been in Charleston before, and he reveled in the ineluctable charm of the lovely old town. No South Carolinian is ever disappointed in Charleston. Peter thought the city resembled one of her own old ladies, a dear dignified gentlewoman in reduced circumstances, in a worn silk gown and a mended lace cap and a cameo brooch. It might be against the old gentlewoman's religious convictions to bestow undue care upon her personal appearance, but hers was a venerable, unforgetable, and most beautiful old face for all that, and perhaps because of it. She knew that the kingdom of God is within; and being sure of that, she was sure of herself, serene, unpainted, unpretentious.

Peter wandered by old walled gardens in which were set wrought-iron gates that allowed the passer-by a glimpse of greenery and flowers, but prevented encroachments upon family privacy. Every now and then a curving balustrade, a gable, a window, or an old doorway of surpassing charm made his fingers itch for pencil and paper. He reflected, without bitterness, that the doors of every one of these fine old houses had on a time opened almost automatically to a Champneys. Some of these folk were kith and kin, as his mother had remembered and they, perhaps, had forgotten. This didn't worry him in the least: the real interest the houses had for Peter was that this one had a picturesque garden gate, that one a door with a fan-light he'd like to sketch.

He climbed St. Michael's belfry stairway and looked over the city, and toward the sea; and later wandered through its historic churchyard. One very simple memorial held him longest, because it is the only one of its kind among all those records of state honor and family pride, and seems rather to belong to the antique Greek and Roman world which accepted death as the final fact, than to a Carolina churchyard.

SARAH JOHNSTON born in this province 29th May 1690 Died 26th April 1774 In the 84th year of her age.

How lovd how valu'd once avails Thee not To whom related or by whom begot A heap of dust alone remains of Thee.

That covered the Champneyses, too. To whom related or by whom begot, a heap of dust alone remained of them. So much for all human pride! Peter left St. Michael's dead to slumber in peace, and walked for an hour on the Battery, and in Legare Street, where life is brightest in the old city. All good Charlestonians think that after the final resurrection there may be a new heaven and a new earth for others, but for themselves a house in Legare Street or on the Battery.

Peter presently reappeared in Riverton, discreetly clad in his customary clothes, the habits of thrift being yet so firmly ingrained in him that he couldn't easily wear his best clothes on a week-day.

"Peter! You Peter Champneys! Look here a minute, will you?" Mrs. Beach called, as he was passing her house.

Peter stopped. His smiling countenance somewhat astonished Mrs. Beach.

"Peter, I've heard about Sam Humphreys firing you on account of me getting mad at you about that muzzle. Now, while I know in my heart you'd have been fired about something or other, sooner or later, I do wish to my Lord it hadn't been on account of me. Not that I don't think you're an impudent young rapscallion, that never sets his nose inside a church door, and insults old women with muzzles. But I knew your mother well, and I wish it wasn't on account of me Sam Humphreys discharged you." There was real feeling in the testy old lady's face and voice.

"Don't you bother your head about it one minute more, Mrs. Beach. All I'm sorry for is that I appeared to be impertinent to you, when I hadn't any such notion. I was thinking about something else at the time. So you'll just have to forgive me."

"I do," said the old lady, mollified. After all, Maria Champneys's boy couldn't be altogether trifling! "Is what I hear true, that you're going away from Riverton? Folks say you've got a job in the city."

"Yes 'm, I'm going away."

"I reckon it's just as well. You'll do better away from Riverton. You'll have to."

"Yes 'm, I'll have to," agreed Peter. He held out his hand, and the old lady found herself wringing it, and wishing him good luck.

At home he found Emma Campbell carefully packing up all the worthless plunder it had taken her many years to collect. When he had heartlessly rejected all she didn't need, she had one small trunk and a venerable carpet-bag. Everything else was nailed up. The house itself was to be looked after by the town marshal, who was also the town real-estate agent. Peter was very vague as to his return.

No railroad runs through Riverton, but the river steamers come and go daily, the town usually quitting work to foregather at the pier to welcome coming and speed departing travelers. All Riverton made it a point to be on hand the morning Peter Champneys left home to seek his fortune.

Peter never did anything like anybody else. There was always some diverting bit of individual lunacy to make his proceedings interesting. This morning Riverton discovered that Emma Campbell was going away, too. Emma appeared in a black cashmere dress, a blue-and-white checked gingham apron on which a basket of flowers was embroidered in red cross-stitch, and a white bandana handkerchief wound around her head under a respectable black sailor hat. She carried a large, square cage that had once housed a mocking-bird, and now held the Champneys big black cat. Laughter and delighted comments greeted the bird-cage, and her carpet-bag received almost as much attention and applause. Riverton hadn't seen a bag like that since Reconstruction, and it made the most of its opportunity.

"Emma! Aren't you afraid you'll let the cat out of the bag?"

Emma remained haughtily silent.

"Emma, where you-all goin'?"

"We-all gwine whah we gwine, dat 's whah we gwine." This from Emma, succinctly.

"What you goin' to do when you get there?" persisted the wag.

"Who, us? We gwine do whut you-all ain't know how to do: we gwine min' our own business," said Emma, politely.

"Good-by, Peter! Don't set the world on fire, old scout!"

When the boat turned the bend in the river that hid the small town of his birth from his view, Peter felt shaken as he had never thought to be. Good-by, little home town, where the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune had rained upon him!

The boat swung into a side channel to escape a sand-bar. She was in deep water, but very close to the shore, so close that he could see the leaves on the trees quivering and shimmering in the river breeze and the late summer sunlight. Over there, as the crow flies, lay the River Swamp, and Neptune's gray, deserted cabin. They had been his refuge. No other place, no other woods in all the world could quite take their place, or be like them. And he knew there would be many a day when he must ache with homesick longing for the coast country, for the tide-water, and the jessamines, and the moon above the pines, and the scent of the bay in flower on summer nights. The world was opening her wide spaces. But the Carolina coast was home.

"I wish," said Peter, and his chin quivered, "I wish there were some one thing that typified you, something of you I could take with me wherever I go. I wish you had a spirit I could see, and know."

Out from the shore-line, where the earliest golden-rod was just beginning to show that it intended to blossom by and by, and the ironweed was purple, and the wild carrot was white and lacy, and the orange-red milkweed was about ready to close her house for the season, came fluttering with a quick, bold sureness the gallantest craft of all the fairy sail-boats of the sky, hovered for a bright second over the steamer's rail, and scudded for the other shore.

Peter Champneys straightened his shoulders. Youth and courage and hope flashed into his wistful face, and brightened his eyes that followed the Red Admiral.



CHAPTER VIII

CINDERELLA

It wasn't a pleasant house, being of a dingy, bilious-yellow complexion, with narrow window eyes, and a mean slit of a doorway for a mouth; not sinister, but common, stupid, and uninteresting. If one should happen to be a house-psychologist, one would know that behind the Nottingham lace curtains looped back with soiled red ribbons, was all the tawdry, horrible junk that clutters such houses, even as mental junk clutters the minds of the people who have to live in them. One knew that the people who dwelt in that house didn't know how to live, how to think, or how to cook; and that if by any chance a larger life, a real thought, or a bit of good cooking confronted them, they would probably reject it with suspicion.

The elderly gentleman in white linen who made acquaintance with this particular house on a very sultry noon in early August, hesitated before he rang the bell. He glanced over his shoulder at the hot, dusty street where a swarm of hot, dusty children were shrilling and shrieking, or staring at him round-eyed, dived into his pockets, fished up a handful of small change, whistled to insure their greater attention, and flung the coin among them. While they were snatching at the money like a flock of pigeons over a handful of grain, the elderly gentleman rang the bell. He could hear it jangling through the house, but it brought no immediate response. After a decent interval he rang again. This time the door was jerked open, and a girl in a bungalow apron, upon which she was wiping her hands, confronted him. She was a very young girl, a very hot, tired, perspiring, and sullen girl, fresh from a broiling kitchen and a red-hot stove.

She looked at the caller suspiciously, her glance racing over his linen suit, his white shoes, the Panama hat in his hand. She was puzzled, for plainly this wasn't the usual applicant for board and lodging. Perhaps, then, he was a successful house-to-house agent for some indispensable necessity—say an ice-pick that would pull nails, open a can, and peel potatoes. Or maybe a religious book agent. She rather suspected him of wanting to sell her Biblical Prophecies Elucidated by a Chicago Seer, or something like that. Or, stay: perhaps he was a church scout sent out to round up stray souls. Whatever he might be, she was bitterly resentful of having been taken from the thick of her work to answer his ring. She wasn't interested in her soul, her hot and tired body being a much more immediate concern. Heaven is far off, and hell has no terrors and less interest for a girl immured in a red-hot kitchen in a Middle Western town in the dog-days.

"If it's a Bible, we got one. If it's sewin'-machines, we ain't, but don't. If it's savin' our souls, we belong to church reg'lar an' ain't interested. If it's explainin' God, nothin' doin'! An' if it's tack-pullers with nail-files an' corkscrews on 'em, you can save your breath," said the girl rapidly, in a heated voice, and with a half-dry hand on the door-knob.

Mr. Chadwick Champneys's long, drooping mustache came up under his nose, and his bushy eyebrows twitched.

"I am not trying to sell anything," he said hurriedly, in order to prevent her from shutting the door in his face, which was her evident intention.

She said impatiently: "If you're collectin', this ain't our day for payin', an' you got to call again. Come next week, on Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Sattiday." The door began to close.

He inserted a desperate foot.

"I wish to see Miss Simms—Miss Anne, or Nancy Simms. My information is that she lives in this house. I should have stated my errand at once, had I been allowed to do so." He looked at the girl reprovingly.

Before she could reply, a female voice from a back region rose stridently:

"Nancy! You Nancy! What in creation you mean, gassin' this hour o' day when them biscuits is burnin' up in the oven? Send that feller about his business, whatever it is, and you come tend to yours!"

The girl hesitated, and frowned.

"If you come to see Anne Simms, same as Nancy Simms, I'm her—I mean, she's me," said she, hurriedly. "I got no time to talk with you now, Mister, but you can wait in the parlor until I dish up dinner, and whilst they're eatin' I'll have time to run up and see what you want. Is it partic'ler?"

"Very."

"Come on in an' wait, then."

"Nancy! You want I should come up there after you? Oh, my stars, an' that girl knows how partic'ler Poppa is about his biscuits; they gotta be jest so or he won't look at 'em, an' her gassin' and him likely to raise the roof!" screamed the voice.

"Oh, shut up! I'm comin'," bawled the girl in reply. "You better sit over there by the winder, Mister," she told her visitor, hastily. "There's a breeze there, maybe. You'll find to-day's paper an' a fan on the table." She vanished, and he could hear her running kitchenward, and the shrieking voice subsiding into a whine.

Mr. Chadwick Champneys slumped limply into a chair. Everything he looked at added to his sense of astonishment and unease.

The outside of the house hadn't lied: the inside matched it. Mr. Champneys found himself staring and being stared at by the usual crayon portraits of defunct members of the family,—at least he hoped they were defunct,—the man with a long mule face and neck whiskers; and opposite him his spouse, with her hair worn like mustard-plasters on the skull. "Male and female created He them." Placed so that you had to see it the moment you entered the door, on a white-and-gold easel draped with a silkoline scarf trimmed with pink crocheted wheels, was a virulently colored landscape with a house of unknown architecture in the foreground, and mother-of-pearl puddles outside the gate. Mr. Champneys studied those mother-of-pearl puddles gravely. They hurt his feelings. So did the ornate golden-oak parlor set upholstered in red plush; and the rug on the floor, in which colors fought like Kilkenny cats; and a pink vase with large purple plums bunched on it; and the figured wall-paper, and the unclean lace curtains, and the mantel loaded with sorry plunder, and the clothespin butterflies, the tissue-paper parasols, and the cheap fans tacked to the walls. It was a hot and dusty room. The smell of bad cooking, of countless miserable meals eaten by men whose digestion they would ruin, clung to it and would not be gainsaid. Mr. Champneys thought the best thing that could happen to such houses would be a fire beginning in the cellar and ending at the roof.

His mind went back to another house—an old white house in South Carolina, set in spacious grounds, with high-ceilinged, cool, large rooms filled with fine old furniture, a few pictures, glimpses of brass and silver, large windows opening upon lawns and trees and shrubs and flowers, a flash of blue river, a vista of green marshes melting into the cobalt sky. A stately, lovely, leisurely old house, typifying the stately, leisurely life that had called it into being; both gone irrevocably into the past. He sighed.