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Title: The Bishop of Cottontown
       A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills

Author: John Trotwood Moore

Release Date: November 26, 2007 [EBook #23637]

Language: English

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[Illustration: THE KINNEYS "Take care of Lily"]




THE

Bishop of Cottontown

A STORY OF THE SOUTHERN
COTTON MILLS

BY
JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE

AUTHOR OF
"A Summer Hymnal," "Ole Mistis," "Songs and Stories
from Tennessee," etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY THE KINNEYS




       "And each in his separate star,
    Shall paint the thing as he sees it
          For the God of Things As They Are."

                                            Kipling




PHILADELPHIA

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

1906

COPYRIGHT, 1906,

BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, 1906


_All Rights Reserved_




IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER,

EMILY BILLINGSLEA MOORE,

WHO DIED

DECEMBER 14TH, 1903,

THE FAITH OF THIS BOOK BEING HERS.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                     PAGE


PART FIRST--THE BLOOM.

PROLOGUE--THE COTTON BLOSSOM                   7


PART SECOND--THE BOLL.

    I. COTTON                                 13
   II. RICHARD TRAVIS                         18
  III. JUD CARPENTER                          27
   IV. FOOD FOR THE FACTORY                   39
    V. THE FLY CATCHER CAUGHT                 50
   VI. THE FLINT AND THE COAL                 64
  VII. HILLARD WATTS                          84
 VIII. WESTMORELAND                           92
   IX. A MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING                103
    X. A STAR AND A SATELLITE                108
   XI. A MIDNIGHT BURIAL                     117
  XII. JACK BRACKEN                          127


PART THIRD--THE GIN.

    I. ALICE WESTMORE                        143
   II. THE REAL HEROES                       151
  III. FRANKLIN                              154


PART FOURTH--THE LINT.

    I. COTTONTOWN                            179
   II. BEN BUTLER                            187
  III. AN ANSWER TO PRAYER                   199
   IV. HOW THE BISHOP FROZE                  205
    V. THE FLOCK                             209
   VI. A BISHOP MILITANT                     213
  VII. MARGARET ADAMS                        219
 VIII. HARD-SHELL SUNDAY                     226
   IX. THE RETURN                            232
    X. THE SWAN SONG OF THE CREPE MYRTLE     239
   XI. THE CASKET AND THE GHOST              248
  XII. A MIDNIGHT GUARD                      254
 XIII. THE THEFT OF A CHILDHOOD              258
  XIV. UNCLE DAVE'S WILL                     275
   XV. EDWARD CONWAY                         287
  XVI. HELEN'S DESPAIR                       296
 XVII. THE WHIPPER-IN                        305
XVIII. SAMANTHA CAREWE                       312
  XIX. A QUICK CONVERSION                    317
   XX. A LIVE FUNERAL                        326
  XXI. JACK AND THE LITTLE ONES              336
 XXII. THE BROKEN THREAD                     344
XXIII. GOD WILL PROVIDE                      350
 XXIV. BONAPARTE'S WATERLOO                  355
  XXV. A BORN NATURALIST                     366
 XXVI. BEN BUTLER'S LAST RACE                380
XXVII. YOU'LL COME BACK A MAN                414


PART FIFTH--THE LOOM.

    I. A NEW MILL GIRL                       419
   II. IN THE DEPTHS                         431
  III. WORK IN A NEW LIGHT                   438
   IV. MAGGIE                                443
    V. PAY-DAY                               447
   VI. THE PLOT                              456
  VII. MRS. WESTMORE TAKES A HAND            464
 VIII. A QUESTION BROUGHT HOME               473
   IX. THE PEDIGREE OF ACHIEVEMENT           487
    X. MARRIED IN GOD'S SIGHT                493
   XI. THE QUEEN IS DEAD                     499
  XII. IN THYSELF THERE IS WEAKNESS          508
 XIII. HIMSELF AGAIN                         512
  XIV. THE JOY OF THE MORNING                519
   XV. THE TOUCH OF GOD                      526
  XVI. MAMMY MARIA                           533
 XVII. THE DOUBLE THAT DIED                  545
XVIII. THE DYING LION                        552
  XIX. FACE TO FACE WITH DEATH               564
   XX. THE ANGEL WITH THE FLAMING SWORD      572
  XXI. THE GREAT FIRE                        581
 XXII. A CONWAY AGAIN                        588
XXIII. DIED FOR THE LAW                      596
 XXIV. THE ATONEMENT                         611
  XXV. THE SHADOWS AND THE CLOUDS            624
 XXVI. THE MODEL MILL                        633


[Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors, have been silently
corrected. For clarity, have added new paragraphs with respect to
dialogue within paragraphs. The name Hillard and Hilliard have
been uniformly changed to Hillard. Corrected incorrect usages of
'its' and 'it's.' All other inconsistencies (i.e. The inconsistent
spellings--sombre/somber, gray/grey, hyphen/no hyphen) have been
left as they were in the original.]




PART FIRST--THE BLOOM




THE COTTON BLOSSOM


The cotton blossom is the only flower that is born in the shuttle of
a sunbeam and dies in a loom.

It is the most beautiful flower that grows, and needs only to become
rare to be priceless--only to die to be idealized.

For the world worships that which it hopes to attain, and our ideals
are those things just out of our reach.

Satiety has ten points and possession is nine of them.

If, in early August, the delicately green leaves of this most
aristocratic of all plants, instead of covering acres of Southland
shimmering under a throbbing sun, peeped daintily out, from among the
well-kept beds of some noble garden, men would flock to see that
plant, which, of all plants, looks most like a miniature tree.

A stout-hearted plant,--a tree, dwarfed, but losing not its dignity.

Then, one morning, with the earliest sunrise, and born of it, there
emerges from the scalloped sea-shell of the bough an exquisite,
pendulous, cream-white blossom, clasping in its center a golden
yellow star, pinked with dawn points of light, and, setting high up
under its sky of milk-white petals flanked with yellow stars, it
seems to the little nestling field-wrens born beneath it to be the
miniature arch of daybreak, ere the great eye of the morning star
closes.

Later, when the sun rises and the sky above grows pink and purple,
it, too, changes its color from pink to purple, copying the sky from
zone to zone, from blue to deeper blue, until, at late evening the
young nestlings may look up and say, in their bird language: "It is
twilight."

What other flower among them can thus copy Nature, the great master?

Under every sky is a sphere, and under this sky picture, when night
falls and closes it, a sphere is born. And in that sphere is all of
earth.

Its oils and its minerals are there, and one day, becoming too full
of richness, it bursts, and throws open a five-roomed granary, stored
with richer fabric than ever came from the shuttles of Fez and
holding globes of oil such as the olives of Hebron dreamed not of.

And in that fabric is the world clothed.

Oh, little loom of the cotton-plant, poet that can show us the sky,
painter that paints it, artisan that reaches out, and, from the skein
of a sunbeam, the loom of the air and the white of its own soul,
weaves the cloth that clothes the world!

From dawn and darkness building a loom. From sunlight and shadow
weaving threads of such fineness that the spider's were ropes of sand
and the hoar frost's but clumsy icicles.

Weaving--weaving--weaving them. And the delicately patterned tapestry
of ever-changing clouds forming patterns of a fabric, white as the
snow of the centuries, determined that since it has to make the
garments of men, it will make them unsullied.

Oh, little plant, poet, painter, master-artisan!

It is true to Nature to the last. The summer wanes and the winter
comes, and when the cotton sphere bursts, 'tis a ball of snow, but a
dazzling white, spidery snow, which warms and does not chill, brings
comfort and not care, wealth and the rich warm blood, and not the
pinches of poverty.

There are those who cannot hear God's voice unless He speaks to them
in the thunders of Sinai, nor see Him unless He flares before them in
the bonfires of a burning bush. They grumble because His Messenger
came to a tribe in the hill countries of Long Ago. They wish to see
the miracle of the dead arising. They see not the miracle of life
around them. Death from Life is more strange to them than life from
death.

'Tis the silent voice that speaks the loudest. Did Sinai speak louder
than this? Hear it:

"I am a bloom, and yet I reflect the sky from the morning's star to
the midnight's. I am a flower, yet I show you the heaven from the
dawn of its birth to the twilight of its death. I am a boll, and yet
a miniature earth stored with silks and satins, oils of the olives,
minerals of all lands. And when I am ripe I throw open my five-roomed
granary, each fitted to the finger and thumb of the human hand, with
a depth between, equalled only by the palm."

O voice of the cotton-plant, do we need to go to oracles or listen
for a diviner voice than yours when thus you tell us: Pluck?




PART SECOND--THE BOLL




CHAPTER I

COTTON


The frost had touched the gums and maples in the Tennessee Valley,
and the wood, which lined every hill and mountain side, looked like
huge flaming bouquets--large ones, where the thicker wood clustered
high on the side of Sand Mountain and stood out in crimson, gold and
yellow against the sky,--small ones, where they clustered around the
foot hills.

Nature is nothing if not sentimental. She will make bouquets if none
be made for her; or, mayhap, she wishes her children to be, and so
makes them bouquets herself.

There was that crispness in the air which puts one to wondering if,
after all, autumn is not the finest time of the year.

It had been a prosperous year in the Tennessee Valley--that year of
1874. And it had brought a double prosperity, in that, under the
leadership of George S. Houston, the white men of the state, after a
desperate struggle, had thrown off the political yoke of the negro
and the carpetbagger, and once more the Saxon ruled in the land of
his birth.

Then was taken a full, long, wholesome, air-filling Anglo-Saxon
breath, from the Tennessee Valley to the Gulf. There was a quickening
of pulses that had faltered, and heart-beats that had fluttered,
dumb and discouraged, now rattled like kettle-drums, to the fight of
life.

It meant change--redemption--prosperity. And more: that the white
blood which had made Alabama, need not now leave her for a home
elsewhere.

It was a year glorious, and to be remembered. One which marks an
epoch. One wherein there is an end of the old and a beginning of the
new.

The cotton--the second picking--still whitened thousands of acres.
There were not hands enough to pick it. The negroes, demoralized for
a half score of years by the brief splendor of elevation, and backed,
at first, by Federal bayonets and afterwards by sheer force of their
own number in elections, had been correspondingly demoralized and
shiftless. True to their instinct then, as now, they worked only so
long as they needed money. If one day's cotton picking fed a negro
for five, he rested the five.

The negro race does not live to lay up for a rainy day.

And so the cotton being neglected, its lengthened and frowseled locks
hung from wide open bolls like the locks of a tawdry woman in early
morning.

No one wanted it--that is, wanted it bad enough to pick it. For
cotton was cheap that fall--very cheap--and picking cotton is a
back-bending business. Therefore it hung its frowsy locks from the
boll.

And nothing makes so much for frowsiness in the cotton plant, and in
woman, as to know they are not wanted.

The gin-houses were yet full, tho' the gin had been running day and
night. That which poured, like pulverized snow, from the mouth of the
flues into the pick-room--where the cotton fell before being pressed
into bales--scarcely had time to be tramped down and packed off in
baskets to the tall, mast-like screws which pressed the bales and
bound them with ties, ere the seed cotton came pouring in again from
wagon bed and basket.

The gin hummed and sawed and sang and creaked, but it could not
devour the seed cotton fast enough from the piles of the incoming
fleece.

Those grew lighter and larger all the time.

The eight Tennessee sugar-mules, big and sinewy, hitched to the lever
underneath the gin-house at The Gaffs, sweated until they sprinkled
in one continual shower the path which they trod around the
pivot-beam from morning until night.

Around--around--forever around.

For the levers turned the pivot-beam, and the pivot-beam turned the
big shaft-wheel which turned the gin-wheel, and the gin had to go or
it seemed as if the valley would be smothered in cotton.

Picked once, the fields still looked like a snowfall in November, if
such a thing were possible in a land which scarcely felt a dozen
snowfalls in as many years.

Dust! There is no dust like that which comes from a gin-house. It may
be tasted in the air. All other dust is gravel compared to the
penetrating fineness of that diabolical, burning blight which flies
out of the lint, from the thousand teeth of the gin-saws, as diamond
dust flies from the file.

It is all penetrating, consumptive-breeding, sickening, stifling,
suffocating. It is hot and has a metallic flavor; and it flies from
the hot steel teeth of the saws, as pestilence from the hot breath of
the swamps.

It is linty, furry, tickling, smothering, searing.

It makes one wonder why, in picturing hell, no priest ever thought of
filling it with cotton-gin dust instead of fire.

And it clings there from the Lint to the Loom.

Small wonder that the poor little white slaves, taking up their
serfdom at the loom where the negro left off at the lint, die like
pigs in a cotton-seed pen.

There was cotton everywhere--in the fields, unpicked; in the
gin-houses, unginned. That in the fields would be plowed under next
spring, presenting the strange anomaly of plowing under one crop to
raise another of the same kind. But it has been done many times in
the fertile Valley of the Tennessee.

There is that in the Saxon race that makes it discontented, even with
success.

There was cotton everywhere; it lay piled up around the gin-houses
and screws and negro-cabins and under the sheds and even under the
trees. All of it, which was exposed to the weather, was in bales,
weighing each a fourth of a ton and with bulging white spots in their
bellies where the coarse cotton baling failed to cover their
nakedness.

It was cotton--cotton--cotton. Seed,--ginned,--lint,--baled,--cotton.

The Gaffs was a fine estate of five thousand acres which had been
handed down for several generations. The old home sat in a grove of
hickory, oak and elm trees, on a gentle slope. Ancient sentinels, and
they were there when the first Travis came from North Carolina to the
Tennessee Valley and built his first double-log cabin under the
shelter of their arms.

From the porch of The Gaffs,--as the old home was called--the
Tennessee River could be seen two miles away, its brave swift channel
glittering like the flash of a silver arrow in the dark green wood
which bordered it.

Back of the house the mountain ridge rolled; not high enough to be
awful and unapproachable, nor so low as to breed contempt from a too
great familiarity. Not grand, but the kind one loves to wander over.




CHAPTER II

RICHARD TRAVIS


Strength was written in the face of Richard Travis--the owner of The
Gaffs--intellectual, physical, passion-strength, strength of purpose
and of doing. Strength, but not moral strength; and hence lacking all
of being all-conquering.

He had that kind of strength which made others think as he thought,
and do as he would have them do. He saw things clearly, strongly,
quickly. His assurance made all things sure. He knew things and was
proud of it. He knew himself and other men. And best of all, as he
thought, he knew women.

Richard Travis was secretary and treasurer of the Acme Cotton Mills.

To-night he was alone in the old-fashioned but elegant dining-room of
the Gaffs. The big log fire of ash and hickory was pleasant, and the
blaze, falling in sombre color on the old mahogany side-board which
sat opposite the fireplace, on the double ash floor, polished and
shining, added a deeper and richer hue to it. From the toes of the
dragon on which it rested, to the beak of the hand-carved eagle,
spreading his wings over the shield beneath him, carved in the solid
mahogany and surrounded by thirteen stars, all was elegance and
aristocracy. Even the bold staring eyes of the eagle seemed proud of
the age of the side-board, for had it not been built when the stars
numbered but thirteen? And was not the eagle rampant then?

The big brass andirons were mounted with the bronzed heads of
wood-nymphs, and these looked saucily up at the eagle. The
three-cornered cupboard, in one corner of the room, was of cherry,
with small diamond-shaped windows in front, showing within rare old
sets of china and cut glass. The handsome square dining table matched
the side-board, only its dragon feet were larger and stronger, as if
intended to stand up under more weight, at times.

Everything was ancient and had a pedigree. Even the Llewellyn setter
was old, for he was grizzled around the muzzle and had deep-set,
lusterless eyes, from which the firelight, as if afraid of their very
uncanniness, darted out as soon as it entered. And he carried his
head to one side when he walked, as old and deaf dogs do.

He lay on a rug before the fire. He had won this license, for
opposite his name on the kennel books were more field-trials won than
by any other dog in Alabama. And now he dozed and dreamed of them
again, with many twitchings of feet, and cocked, quivering ears, and
rigid tail, as if once more frozen to the covey in the tall
sedge-grass of the old field, with the smell of frost-bitten
Lespedeza, wet with dew, beneath his feet.

Travis stooped and petted the old dog. It was the one thing of his
household he loved most.

"Man or dog--'tis all the same," he mused as he watched the dreaming
dog--"it is old age's privilege to dream of what has been done--it is
youth's to do."

He stretched himself in his big mahogany chair and glanced down his
muscular limbs, and drew his arms together with a snap of quick
strength.

Everything at The Gaffs was an open diary of the master's life. It is
so in all homes--that which we gather around us, from our books to
our bed-clothes, is what we are.

And so the setter on the rug meant that Richard Travis was the best
wing-shot in the Tennessee Valley, and that his kennel of Gladstone
setters had won more field trials than any other kennel in the South.
No man has really hunted who has never shot quail in Alabama over a
well-broken setter. All other hunting is butchery compared to the
scientific sweetness of this sport.

There was a good-night, martial, daring crow, ringing from the
Hoss-apple tree at the dining-room window. Travis smiled and called
out:

"Lights waked you up, eh, Dick? You're a gay Lothario--go back to
sleep."

Richard Travis had the original stock--the Irish Greys--which his
doughty old grandsire, General Jeremiah Travis, developed to
championship honors, and in a memorable main with his friend, General
Andrew Jackson, ten years after the New Orleans campaign, he had
cleared up the Tennesseans, cock and pocket. It was a big main in
which Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama were pitted against each other,
and in which the Travis cocks of the Emerald Isle strain, as Old
Hickory expressed it, "stood the steel like a stuck she-b'ar,
fightin' for her cubs."

General Travis had been an expert at heeling a cock; and it is said
that his skill on that occasion was worth more than the blood of his
Greys; for by a peculiar turn of the gaffs,--so slight as to escape
the notice of any but an expert--his champion cock had struck the
blow which ended the battle. With the money won, he had added four
thousand acres to his estate, and afterwards called it The Gaffs.

And a strong, brave man had been General Jeremiah Travis,--pioneer,
Indian fighter, Colonel in the Creek war and at New Orleans, and a
General in the war with Mexico.

His love for the Union had been that of a brave man who had gone
through battles and shed his blood for his country.

The Civil War broke his heart.

In his early days his heart had been in his thoroughbred horses and
his fighting cocks, and when he heard that his nephew had died with
Crockett and Bowie at the Alamo, he drew himself proudly up and said:
"A right brave boy, by the Eternal, and he died as becomes one
crossed on an Irish Grey cock."

That had been years before. Now, a new civilization had come on the
stage, and where the grandsire had taken to thoroughbreds, Richard
Travis, the grandson, took to trotters. In the stalls where once
stood the sons of Sir Archie, Boston, and imported Glencoe himself,
now were sons of Mambrino Patchin, and George Wilkes and Harold. And
a splendid lot they were--sires,--brood mares and colts, in the
paddocks of The Gaffs.

Travis took no man's dust in the Tennessee Valley. At county fairs he
had a walk-over.

He had inherited The Gaffs from his grandfather, for both his parents
died in his infancy, and his two remaining uncles gave their lives in
Virginia, early in the war, following the flag of the Confederacy.

One of them had left a son, whom Richard Travis had educated and who
had, but the June before, graduated from the State University.

Travis saw but little of him, since each did as he pleased, and it
did not please either of them to get into each other's way.

There had been no sympathy between them. There could not be, for they
were too much alike in many ways.

There can be no sympathy in selfishness.

All through the summer Harry Travis had spent his time at picnics and
dances, and, but for the fact that his cousin now and then missed one
of his best horses from the stable, or found his favorite gun put
away foul, or his fishing tackle broken, he would not have known that
Harry was on the place.

Cook-mother Charity kept the house. Bond and free, she had spent all
her life at The Gaffs. Of this she was prouder than to have been
housekeeper at Windsor. Her word was law; she was the only mortal who
bossed, as she called it, Richard Travis.

Usually, friends from town kept the owner company, and The Gaffs'
reputation for hospitality, while generous, was not unnoted for its
hilarity.

To-night Richard Travis was lonely. His supper tray had not been
removed. He lit a cigar and picked up a book--it was Herbert Spencer,
and he was soon interested.

Ten minutes later an octoroon house-girl, with dark Creole eyes, and
bright ribbons in her hair, came in to remove the supper dishes. She
wore a bright-colored green gown, cut low. As she reached over the
table near him he winced at the strong smell of musk, which beauties
of her race imagine adds so greatly to their aesthetic _status-quo_.
She came nearer to him than was necessary, and there was an attempted
familiarity in the movement that caused him to curve slightly the
corner of his thin, nervous lip, showing beneath his mustache. She
kept a half glance on him always. He smoked and read on, until the
rank smell of her perfume smote him again through the odor of his
cigar, and as he looked up she had busied around so close to him that
her exposed neck was within two feet of him bent in seeming innocence
over the tray. With a mischievous laugh he reached over and flipped
the hot ashes from his cigar upon her neck. She screamed affectedly
and danced about shaking off the ashes. Then with feigned maidenly
piquancy and many reproachful glances, she went out laughing good
humoredly.

He was good natured, and when she was gone he laughed boyishly.

Good nature is one of the virtues of impurity.

Still giggling she set the tray down in the kitchen and told
Cook-mother Charity about it. That worthy woman gave her a warning
look and said:

"The frisk'ness of this new gen'ration of niggers makes me tired.
Better let Marse Dick alone--he's a dan'g'us man with women."

In the dining-room Travis sat quiet and thoughtful. He was a
handsome man, turning forty. His face was strong, clean shaved,
except a light mustache, with full sensual lips and an unusually fine
brow. It was the brow of intellect--all in front. Behind and above
there was no loftiness of ideality or of veneration. His smile was
constant, and though slightly cold, was always approachable. His
manner was decisive, but clever always, and kind-hearted at times.

Contrary to his habit, he grew reminiscent. He despised this kind of
a mood, because, as he said, "It is the weakness of a fool to think
about himself." He walked to the window and looked out on the broad
fields of The Gaffs in the valley before him. He looked at the
handsomely furnished room and thought of the splendid old home. Then
he deliberately surveyed himself in the mirror. He smiled:

"'Survival of the fittest'--yes, Spencer is right--a great--great
mind. He is living now, and the world, of course, will not admit his
greatness until he is dead. Life, like the bull that would rule the
herd, is never ready to admit that other life is great. A poet is
always a dead rhymester,--a philosopher, a dead dreamer.

"Let Spencer but die!

"Tush! Why indulge in weak modesty and fool self-depreciation? Even
instinct tells me--that very lowest of animal intellectual
forces--that I survive because I am stronger than the dead.
Providence--God--whatever it is, has nothing to do with it except to
start you and let you survive by overcoming. Winds you up and
then--devil take the hindmost!

"It is brains--brains--brains that count--brains first and always.
This moral stuff is fit only for those who are too weak to
conquer. I have accomplished everything in life I have ever
undertaken--everything--and--by brains! Not once have I failed--I have
done it by intellect, courage--intuition--the thing in one that speaks.

"Now as to things of the heart,"--he stopped suddenly--he even
scowled half humorously. It came over him--his failure there, as one
who, sweeping with his knights the pawns of an opponent, suddenly
finds himself confronting a queen--and checkmated.

He walked to the window again and looked toward the northern end of
the valley. There the gables of an old and somewhat weather-beaten
home sat in a group of beech on a rise among the foothills.

"Westmoreland"--he said--"how dilapidated it is getting to be!
Something must be done there, and Alice--Alice,"--he repeated the
name softly--reverently--"I feel--I know it--she--even she shall be
mine--after all these years--she shall come to me yet."

He smiled again: "Then I shall have won all around. Fate? Destiny?
Tush! It's living and surviving weaker things, such for instance as
my cousin Tom."

He smiled satisfactorily. He flecked some cotton lint from his coat
sleeve.

"I have had a hard time in the mill to-day. It's a beastly business
robbing the poor little half-made-up devils."

He rang for Aunt Charity. She knew what he wished, and soon came in
bringing him his cocktail--his night-cap as she always called
it,--only of late he had required several in an evening,--a thing
that set the old woman to quarreling with him, for she knew the limit
of a gentleman. And, in truth, she was proud of her cocktails. They
were made from a recipe given by Andrew Jackson. For fifty years
Cook-mother Charity had made one every night and brought it to "old
marster" before he retired. Now she proudly brought it to his
grandson.

"Oh, say Mammy," he said as the old woman started out--"Carpenter
will be here directly with his report. Bring another pair of these
in--we will want them."

The old woman bristled up. "To be sure, I'll fix 'em, honey. He'll
not know the difference. But the licker he gits in his'n will come
outen the bottle we keep for the hosses when they have the colic. The
bran' we keep for gem'men would stick in his th'oat."

Travis laughed: "Well--be sure you don't get that horse brand in
mine."




CHAPTER III

JUD CARPENTER


An hour afterwards, Travis heard a well-known walk in the hall and
opened the door.

He stepped back astonished. He released the knob and gazed half
angry, half smiling.

A large dog, brindled and lean, walked complacently and
condescendingly in, followed by his master. At a glance, the least
imaginative could see that Jud Carpenter, the Whipper-in of the Acme
Cotton Mills, and Bonaparte, his dog, were well mated.

The man was large, raw-boned and brindled, and he, also, walked in,
complacently and condescendingly.

The dog's ears had been cropped to match his tail, which in his
infancy had been reduced to a very few inches. His under jaw
protruded slightly--showing the trace of bull in his make-up.

That was the man all over. Besides he had a small, mean, roguish ear.

The dog was cross-eyed--"the only cross-eyed purp in the worl'"--as
his master had often proudly proclaimed, and the expression of his
face was uncanny.

Jud Carpenter's eastern-eye looked west, and his western-eye looked
east, and the rest of the paragraph above fitted him also.

The dog's pedigree, as his master had drawlingly proclaimed, was
"p'yart houn', p'yart bull, p'yart cur, p'yart terrier, an' the rest
of him--wal, jes' dog."

Reverse this and it will be Carpenter's: Just dog, with a sprinkling
of bull, cur, terrier, and hound.

Before Richard Travis could protest, the dog walked deliberately to
the fireplace and sprang savagely on the helpless old setter dreaming
on the rug. The older dog expostulated with terrific howls, while
Travis turned quickly and kicked off the intruder.

He stood the kicking as quietly as if it were part of the programme
in the last act of a melodrama in which he was the villain. He was
kicked entirely across the room and his head was driven violently
into the half-open door of the side-board. Here it came in contact
with one of Cook-mother's freshly baked hams, set aside for the
morrow's lunch. Without even a change of countenance--for, in truth,
it could not change--without the lifting even of a hair in surprise,
the brute seized the ham and settled right where he was, to lunch.
And he did it as complacently as he had walked in, and with a
satisfied growl which seemed to say that, so far as the villain was
concerned, the last act of the melodrama was ending to his entire
satisfaction.

Opening a side door, Travis seized him by the stump of a tail and one
hind leg--knowing his mouth was too full of ham to bite anything--and
threw him, still clutching the ham, bodily into the back yard.
Without changing the attitude he found himself in when he hit the
ground, the brindled dog went on with his luncheon.

The very cheek of it set Travis to laughing. He closed the door and
said to the man who had followed the dog in: "Carpenter, if I had
the nerve of that raw-boned fiend that follows you around, I'd soon
own the world."

The man had already taken his seat by the fire as unaffectedly as had
the dog. He had entered as boldly and as indifferently and his two
deep-set, cat-gray cross-eyes looked around as savagely.

He was a tall, lank fellow, past middle age, with a crop of stiff,
red-brown hair, beginning midway of his forehead, so near to an
equally shaggy and heavy splotch of eyebrows as to leave scarce a
finger's breadth between them.

He was wiry and shrewd-looking, and his two deep-set eyes seemed
always like a leopard's,--walking the cage of his face, hunting for
some crack to slip through. Furtive, sly, darting, rolling hither and
thither, never still, comprehensive, all-seeing, malicious and deadly
shrewd. These were the eyes of Jud Carpenter, and they told it all.
To this, add again that they looked in contrary directions.

As a man's eye, so is the tenor of his life.

Yet in them, now and then, the twinkle of humor shone. He had a
conciliatory way with those beneath him, and he considered all the
mill hands in that class. To his superiors he was a frowning, yet
daring and even presumptuous underling.

Somewhat better dressed than the Hillites from whom he sprang was
this Whipper-in of the Acme Cotton Mills--somewhat better dressed,
and with the air of one who had arisen above his surroundings. Yet,
withal, the common, low-born, malicious instinct was there--the
instinct which makes one of them hate the man who is better educated,
better dressed than he. All told, it might be summed up and said of
Jud Carpenter that he had all the instincts of a Hillite and all the
arrogance of a manager.

"Nobody understands that dog, Bonaparte, but me," said Carpenter
after a while--"he's to dogs what his namesake was to man. He's the
champ'un fighter of the Tennessee Valley, an' the only cross-eyed
purp in the worl', as I have often said. Like all gen'uses of course,
he's a leetle peculiar--but him and me--we understan's each other."

He pulled out some mill papers and was about to proceed to discuss
his business when Travis interrupted:

"Hold on," he said, good humoredly, "after my experience with that
cross-eyed genius of a dog, I'll need something to brace me up."

He handed Carpenter a glass and each drank off his cocktail at a
quaff.

Travis settled quickly to business. He took out his mill books, and
for an hour the two talked in a low tone and mechanically. The
commissary department of the mill was taken up and the entire
accounts gone over. Memoranda were made of goods to be ordered. The
accounts of families were run over and inspected. It was tedious
work, but Travis never flagged and his executive ability was quick
and incisive. At last he closed the book with an impatient gesture:

"That's all I'll do to-night," he muttered decisively. "I've other
things to talk to you about. But we'll need something first."

He went to the side-board and brought out a decanter of whiskey, two
goblets and a bowl of loaf sugar.

He laughed: "Mammy knows nothing about this. Two cocktails are the
limit she sets for me, and so I keep this private bottle."

He made a long-toddy for himself, but Carpenter took his straight. In
all of it, his furtive eyes, shining out of the splotch of eyebrows
above, glanced inquiringly around and obsequiously followed every
movement of his superior.

"Now, Carpenter," said the Secretary after he had settled back in his
chair and lit a cigar, handing the box afterwards to the other--"You
know me--you and I--must understand each other in all things."

"'Bleeged to be that way," drawled the Whipper-in--"we must wu'ck
together. You know me, an' that Jud Carpenter's motto is, 'mum, an'
keep movin'.' That's me--that's Jud Carpenter."

Travis laughed: "O, it's nothing that requires so much heavy villain
work as the tone of your voice would suggest. We're not in a
melodrama. This is the nineteenth century and we're talking business
and going to win a thing or two by common sense and business ways,
eh?"

Carpenter nodded.

"Well, now, the first is quite matter of fact--just horses. I believe
we are going to have the biggest fair this fall we have ever had."

"It's lots talked about," said Carpenter--"'specially the big race
an' purse you've got put up."

Travis grew interested quickly and leaned over excitedly.

"My reputation is at stake--and that of The Gaffs' stable. You see,
Carpenter, it's a three-cornered race for three-thousand
dollars--each of us, Col. Troup, Flecker and me, have put up a
thousand--three heats out of five--the winner takes the stake. Col.
Troup, of Lenox, has entered a fast mare of his, and Flecker, of
Tennessee, will be there with his gelding. I know Flecker's horse. I
could beat him with Lizette and one of her legs tied up. I looked him
over last week. Contracted heels and his owner hasn't got horse-sense
to know it. It's horse-sense, Carpenter, that counts for success in
life as in a race."

Carpenter nodded again.

"But it's different with Col. Troup's entry. Ever been to Lenox?" he
asked suddenly.

Carpenter shook his head.

"Don't know anybody there?" asked Travis. "I thought so--just what I
want."

He went on indifferently, but Carpenter saw that he was measuring his
words and noting their effect upon himself. "They work out over there
Tuesdays and Fridays--the fair is only a few weeks off--they will be
stepping their best by Friday. Now, go there and say nothing--but
just sit around and see how fast Col. Troup's mare can trot."

"That'll be easy," said Carpenter.

"I have no notion of losing my thousand and reputation, too." He bent
over to Carpenter and laughed. "All's fair in love and--a horse race.
You know it's the 2:25 class, and I've entered Lizette, but Sadie B.
is so much like her that no living man who doesn't curry them every
day could tell them apart. Sadie B.'s mark is 2:15. Now see if Troup
can beat 2:25. Maybe he can't beat 2:15."

Then he laughed ironically.

Carpenter looked at him wonderingly.

It was all he said, but it was enough for Carpenter. Fraud's wink to
the fraudulent is an open book. Her nod is the nod of the Painted
Thing passing down the highway.

Base-born that he was--low by instinct and inheritance, he had never
heard of so brilliant and so gentlemanly a piece of fraud. The
consummate boldness of it made Carpenter's eyes twinkle--a gentleman
and in a race with gentlemen--who would dare to suspect? It was the
boldness of a fine woman, daring to wear a necklace of paste-diamonds.

He sat looking at Travis in silent admiration. Never before had his
employer risen to such heights in the eyes of the Whipper-in. He sat
back in his chair and chuckled. His furtive eyes danced.

"Nobody but a born gen'us 'ud ever have tho'rt of that," he
said--"never seed yo' e'kal--why, the money is your'n, any way you
fix it. You can ring in Lizette one heat and Sadie B."----

"There are things to be thought and not talked of," replied Travis
quickly. "For a man of your age ar'n't you learning to talk too much
out loud? You go and find out what I've asked--I'll do the rest. I'm
thinking I'll not need Sadie B. Never run a risk, even a dead sure
one, till you're obliged to."

"I'll fetch it next week--trust me for that. But I hope you will do
it--ring in Sadie B. just for the fun of it. Think of old bay-window
Troup trottin' his mare to death ag'in two fast horses an' never
havin' sense enough to see it."

He looked his employer over--from his neatly turned foot to the
cravat, tied in an up-to-date knot. At that, even, Travis flushed.
"Here," he said--"another toddy. I'll trust you to bring in your
report all right."

Carpenter again took his straight--his eyes had begun to glitter, his
face to flush, and he felt more like talking.

Travis lit another cigar. He puffed and smoked in silence for a
while. The rings of smoke went up incessantly. His face had begun to
redden, his fingers to thrill to the tip with pulsing blood. With it
went his final contingency of reserve, and under it he dropped to the
level of the base-born at his side.

Whiskey is the great leveler of life. Drinking it, all men are,
indeed, equal.

"When are you going out to get in more hands for the mill?" asked
Travis after a pause.

"To-morrow----"

"So soon?" asked Travis.

"Yes, you see," said Carpenter, "there's been ha'f a dozen of the
brats died this summer an' fall--scarlet fever in the mill."

Travis looked at him and smiled.

"An' I've got to git in some mo' right away," he went on. "Oh,
there's plenty of 'em in these hills."

Travis smoked for a few minutes without speaking.

"Carpenter, had you ever thought of Helen Conway--I mean--of getting
Conway's two daughters into the mill?" He made the correction with a
feigned indifference, but the other quickly noticed it. In an instant
Carpenter knew.

As a matter of fact the Whipper-in had not thought of it, but it was
easy for him to say what he thought the other wished him to say.

"Wal, yes," he replied; "that's jes' what I had been thinkin' of.
They've got to come in--'ristocrats or no 'ristocrats! When it comes
to a question of bread and meat, pedigree must go to the cellar."

"To the attic, you mean," said Travis--"where their old clothes are."

Carpenter laughed: "That's it--you all'ers say the k'rect thing. 'N'
as I was sayin'"--he went on--"it is a ground-hog case with 'em. The
Major's drunk all the time. His farm an' home'll be sold soon. He's
'bleeged to put 'em in the mill--or the po'-house."

He paused, thinking. Then, "But ain't that Helen about the pretties'
thing you ever seed?" He chuckled. "You're sly--but I seen you givin'
her that airin' behin' Lizette and Sadie B.--"

"You've nothing to do with that," said Travis gruffly. "You want a
new girl for our drawing-in machine--the best paying and most
profitable place in the mill--off from the others--in a room by
herself--no contact with mill-people--easy job--two dollars a day--"

"One dollar--you forgit, suh--one dollar's the reg'lar price, sah,"
interrupted the Whipper-in.

The other turned on him almost fiercely: "Your memory is as weak as
your wits--two dollars, I tell you, and don't interrupt me again--"

"To be sho'," said the Whipper-in, meekly--"I did forgit--please
excuse me, sah."

"Then, in talking to Conway, you, of course, would draw his attention
to the fact that he is to have a nice cottage free of rent--that will
come in right handy when he finds himself out in the road--sold out
and nowhere to go," he said.

"'N' the commissary," put in Carpenter quietly. "Excuse me, sah, but
there's a mighty good bran' of whiskey there, you know!"

Travis smiled good humoredly: "Your wits are returning," he said; "I
think you understand."

"I'll see him to-morrow," said Carpenter, rising to go.

"Oh, don't be in a hurry," said Travis.

"Excuse me, sah, but I'm afraid I've bored you stayin' too long."

"Sit down," said the other, peremptorily--"you will need something to
help you along the road. Shall we take another?"

So they took yet another drink, and Carpenter went out, calling his
dog.

Travis stood in the doorway and watched them go down the driveway.
They both staggered lazily along. Travis smiled: "Both drunk--the dog
on ham."

As he turned to go in, he reeled slightly himself, but he did not
notice it.

When he came back he was restless. He looked at the clock. "Too early
for bed," he said. "I'd give a ten if Charley Biggers were here with
his little cocktail laugh to try me a game of poker."

Suddenly he went to the window, and taking a small silver whistle
from his pocket he blew it toward the stables. Soon afterwards a well
dressed mulatto boy entered.

"How are the horses to-night, Jim?" he asked.

"Fine, sir--all eatin' well an' feelin' good."

"And Coquette--the saddle mare?"

"Like split silk, sir."

"Exercise her to-morrow under the saddle, and Sunday afternoon we
will give Miss Alice her first ride on her--she's to be a present for
her on her birth-day, you know--eh?"

Jim bowed and started out.

"You may fix my bath now--think I'll retire. O Jim!" he called, "see
that Antar, the stallion, is securely stalled. You know how dangerous
he is."

He was just dozing off when the front door closed with a bang.

Then a metal whip handle thumped heavily on the floor and the
jingling of a spur rattled over the hall floor, as Harry Travis
boisterously went down the hall, singing tipsily,

    "Oh, Johnny, my dear,
        Just think of your head,
     Just think of your head
        In the morning."

Another door banged so loudly it awakened even the setter. The old
dog came to the side of the bed and laid his head affectionately in
Travis' palm. The master of The Gaffs stroked his head, saying: "It
is strange that I love this old dog so."




CHAPTER IV

FOOD FOR THE FACTORY


The next morning being Saturday, Carpenter, the Whipper-in, mounted
his Texas pony and started out toward the foothills of the mountains.

Upon the pommel of his saddle lay a long single-barreled squirrel
gun, for the hills were full of squirrels, and Jud was fond of a
tender one, now and then. Behind him, as usual, trotted Bonaparte,
his sullen eyes looking for an opportunity to jump on any timid
country dog which happened along.

There are two things for which all mills must be prepared--the wear
and tear of Time on the machinery--the wear and tear of Death on the
frail things who yearly work out their lives before it.

In the fight for life between the machine and the human labor, in the
race of life for that which men call success, who cares for the life
of one little mill hand? And what is one tot of them from another?
And if one die one month and another the next, and another the next
and the next, year in and year out, who remembers it save some
poverty-hardened, stooped and benumbed creature, surrounded by a
scrawny brood calling ever for bread?

The world knows not--cares not--for its tiny life is but a thread in
the warp of the great Drawing-in Machine.

So fearful is the strain upon the nerve and brain and body of the
little things, that every year many of them pass away--slowly,
surely, quietly--so imperceptibly that the mill people themselves
scarcely miss them. And what does it matter? Are there not hundreds
of others, born of ignorance and poverty and pain, to take their
places?

And the dead ones--unknown, they simply pass into a Greater Unknown.
Their places are filled with fresh victims--innocents, whom Passion
begets with a caress and Cupidity buys with a curse. Children they
are--tots--and why should they know that they are trading--life for
death?

It was a bright fall morning, and Jud Carpenter rode toward the
mountain a few miles away. They are scarcely mountains--these
beautifully wooded hills in the Tennessee Valley, hooded by blue in
the day and shrouded in somber at night; but it pleases the people
who live within the sweet influence of their shadows to call them
mountains.

Jud knew where he was going, and he rode leisurely along, revolving
in his mind the plan of his campaign. He needed the recruits for the
Acme Mills, and in all his past experience as an employment agent he
had never undertaken to bring in a family where as much tact and
diplomacy was required as in this case.

It was a dilapidated gate at which he drew rein. There had once been
handsome pillars of stone and brick, but these had fallen and the
gate had been swung on a convenient locust tree that had sprung up
and grown with its usual rapidity from its sheltered nook near the
crumbling rock wall. Only one end of the gate was hung; and it lay
diagonally across the entrance of what had once been a thousand acres
of the finest farm in the Tennessee Valley.

Dismounting, Jud hitched his horse and set his gun beside the tree;
and as it was easier to climb over the broken-down fence than to lift
the gate around, he stepped over and then shuffled along in his lazy
way toward the house.

It was an old farmhouse, now devoid of paint; and the path to it had
once been a well-kept gravel walk, lined with cedars; but the
box-plants, having felt no pruning shears for years, almost filled,
with their fantastically jagged boughs, the narrow path, while the
cedars tossed about their broken and dead limbs.

The tall, square pillars in the house, from dado above to where they
rested in the brick base below, showed the naked wood, untouched so
long by paint that it had grown furzy from rain and snow, and
splintery from sun and heat. Its green shutters hung, some of them,
on one hinge; and those which could be closed, were shut up close and
sombre under the casements.

A half dozen hounds came baying and barking around him. As Jud
proceeded, others poured out from under the house. All were ribby,
and half starved.

Without a moment's hesitation they promptly covered Bonaparte, much
to the delight of that genius. Indeed, from the half-satisfied, half
malignant snarl which lit up his face as they piled rashly and
brainlessly on him, Jud took it that Bonaparte had trotted all these
miles just to breakfast on this remnant of hound on the half-shell.

In a few minutes Bonaparte's terrible, flashing teeth had them flying
in every direction.

Jud promptly cuffed him back to the gate and bade him wait there.

On the front portico, his chair half-tilted back, his trousers in his
boot legs, and his feet on the balustrade rim, the uprights of which
were knocked out here and there, like broken teeth in a comb,--sat a
man in a slouch hat, smoking a cob pipe. He was in his shirt sleeves.
His face was flushed and red; his eyes were watery, bleared. His head
was fine and long--his nose and chin seemed to meet in a sharp point.
His face showed that form of despair so common in those whom whiskey
has helped to degenerate. He did not smile--he scowled continuously,
and his voice had been imprecatory so long that it whined in the same
falsetto twang as one of his hounds.

Jud stepped forward and bowed obsequiously.

"How are you to-day, Majah, sah?" he asked while his puckered and
wrinkled face tried to smile.

Jud was chameleon. Long experience had taught him to drop
instinctively into the mannerism--even the dialect--of those he hoped
to cajole. With the well-bred he could speak glibly, and had airs
himself. With the illiterate and the low-bred, he could out-Caliban
the herd of them.

The man did not take the pipe out of his mouth. He did not even turn
his head. Only his two bleared eyes shot sidewise down to the
ground, where ten feet below him stood the employment agent of the
mills, smiling, smirking, and doing his best to spell out on the
signboard of his unscrupulous face the fact that he came in peace and
good will.

Major Edward Conway scarcely grunted--it might have been anything
from an oath to an eructation. Then, taking his pipe-stem from
between his teeth, and shifting his tobacco in his mouth,--for he was
both chewing and smoking--he expectorated squarely into the eyes of a
hound which had followed Jud up the steps, barking and snarling at
his heels.

He was a good marksman even with spittle, and the dog fled, whining.

Then he answered, with an oath, that he was about as well as the
rheumatism and the beastly weather would permit.

Jud came up uninvited and sat down. The Major did not even turn his
head. The last of a long line of gentlemen did not waste his manners
on one beneath him socially.

Jud was discreetly silent, and soon the Major began to tell all of
his troubles, but in the tone of one who was talking to his servant
and with many oaths and much bitterness:

"You see it's this damned rheumatism, Carpenter. Las' night, suh, I
had to drink a quart of whiskey befo' I cu'd go to sleep at all. It
came on me soon aftah I come out of the wah, an' it growed on me like
jim'son weeds in a hog-pen. My appetite's quit on me--two pints of
whiskey an' wild-cherry bark a day, suh, don't seem to help it at
all, suh. I cyant tell whut the devil's the matter with my stomach.
Nothin' I eat or drink seems to agree with me but whiskey. If I drink
this malarial water, suh, m'legs an' m'feet begin to swell. I have to
go back to whiskey. Damn me, but I was born for Kentucky. Why, I've
got a forty dollar thirst on me this very minute. I'm so dry I cu'd
kick up a dust in a hog wallow. Maybe, though, it's this rotten stuff
that cross-roads Jew is sellin' me an' callin' it whiskey. He's got a
mortgage on everything here but the houn's and the house cat, an'
he's tryin' to see if he cyant kill me with his bug-juice an' save a
suit in Chancery. I'm goin' to sen' off an' see if I cyant git
another bran' of it, suh."

Edward Conway was the type of the Southerner wrecked financially and
morally by the war. His father and grandfather had owned Millwood,
and the present owner had gone into the war a carefully educated,
well reared youth of twenty. He came out of it alive, it is true,
but, like many another fine youth of both North and South, addicted
to drink.

The brutality of war lies not alone in death--it is often more fatal,
more degenerating, in the life it leaves behind.

Coming out of the war, Conway found, as did all others in the
Tennessee Valley who sided with the South, that his home was a wreck.
Not a fence, even, remained--nothing but the old home--shutterless,
plasterless, its roof rotten, its cellar the abode of hogs.

Thousands of others found themselves likewise--brave hearts--men they
proved themselves to be--in that they built up their homes out of
wreck and their country out of chaos.

The man who retrieves his fortune under the protecting arm of law and
order is worthy of great praise; but he who does it in the surly,
snarling teeth of Disorder itself is worthy of still greater praise.

And the real soldier is not he with his battles and his bravery. All
animals will fight--it is instinct. But he who conquers in the great
moral battle of peace and good government, overcoming prejudice,
ignorance, poverty and even injustice, till he rises to the height of
the brave whose deeds do vindicate them--this is the real soldier.

Thousands of Southern soldiers did this, but Edward Conway had not
been one of them. For where whiskey sits he holds a scepter whose
staff is the body of the Upas tree, and there is no room for the oak
of thrift or the wild-flower of sweetness underneath.

From poverty to worse poverty Edward Conway had gone, until now,
hopelessly mortgaged, hopelessly besotted, hopelessly soured, he
lived the diseased product of weakness, developed through stimulated
inactivity.

Nature is inexorable, morally, physically, mentally, and as two
generations of atheists will beget a thief, so will two generations
of idle rich beget nonentities.

On this particular morning that Jud Carpenter came, things had
reached a crisis with Edward Conway. By a decree of the court, the
last hope he had of retaining a portion of his family estate had been
swept away, and the entire estate was to be advertised for sale, to
satisfy a mortgage and judgment. It is true, he had the two years of
redemption under the Alabama law, but can a drunkard redeem his land
when he can not redeem himself?

And so, partly from despair, and partly from that instinct which
makes even the most sensitive of mortals wish to pour their secret
troubles into another's ear, partly even from drunken recklessness,
Edward Conway sat on his verandah this morning and poured his
troubles into the designing ear of Jud Carpenter. The refrain of his
woe was that luck--luck--remorseless luck was against him.

Luck, since the beginning of the world, has been the cry of him who
gambles with destiny. Work is the watchword of the man who believes
in himself.

This thing went because that man had been against him, and this went
because of the faithlessness of another. His health--well, that was
God's doing.

Jud was too shrewd to let him know that he thought whiskey had
anything to do with it--and so, very cautiously did the employment
agent proceed.

A child with sunny hair and bright eyes ran across the yard. She was
followed by an old black mammy, whose anxiety for fear her charge
might get her clothes soiled was plainly evident; from the parlor
came the notes of an old piano, sadly out of tune, and Jud could hear
the fine voice of another daughter singing a love ballad.

"You've got two mighty pyeart gyrls here," at last he ventured.

"Of course, they are, suh," snapped their father--"they are
Conways."

"Ever think of it, sah," went on Jud, "that they could make you a
livin' in the mill?"

Conway was silent. In truth, he had thought of that very thing.
To-day, however, he was nerved and desperate, being more besotted
than usual.

"Now, look aheah--it's this way," went on Jud--"you're gettin' along
in age and you need res'. You've been wuckin' too hard. I tell you,
Majah, sah, you're dead game--no other man I know of would have stood
up under the burdens you've had on yo' shoulders."

The Major drew himself up: "That's a family trait of the Conways,
suh."

"Wal, it's time for you to res' awhile. No use to drive a willin'
hoss to death. I can get a place for both of the gyrls in the mill,
an' aftah the fust month--aftah they learn the job, they can earn
enough to support you comf't'bly. Now, we'll give you a nice little
cottage--no bother of keepin' up a big run-down place like this--jes'
a neat little cottage. Aunt Mariah can keep it in nice fix. The gyrls
will be employed and busy an' you can jes' live comf't'bly, an' res'.
An' say," he added, slyly--"you can get all the credit at the
Company's sto' you want an' I'm thinkin' you'll find a better brand
of licker than that you've been samplin'."

Besotted as he was--hardened and discouraged--the proposition came
over Conway with a wave of shame. Even through his weakened mind the
old instinct of the gentleman asserted itself, and for a moment the
sweet refined face of a beautiful dead wife, the delicate beauty of a
little daughter, the queenliness of an elder one, all the product of
good breeding and rearing, came over him. He sprang to his feet.
"What do you mean, suh? My daughters--grandchildren of Gen. Leonidas
Conway--my daughters work in the mill by the side of that poor trash
from the mountains? I'll see you damned first."

He sat down--he bowed his head in his hands. A glinty look came into
his eyes.

Jud drew his chair up closer: "But jes' think a minute--you're sold
out--you've got no whur to go, you've wuck'd yo'self down tryin' to
save the farm. We've all got to wuck these days. The war has changed
all the old order of things. We havn't got any mo' slaves."

"We,"--repeated Conway, and he looked at the man and laughed.

Jud flushed even through his sallow skin:

"Wal, that's all right," he added. "Listen to me, now, I'm tryin' to
save you from trouble. The war changed everything. Your folks got to
whur they did by wuckin'. They built up this big estate by economy
an' wuck. Now, you mus' do it. You've got the old dead-game Conway
breedin' in yo' bones an' you've got the brains, too." He lowered his
voice: "It's only for a little while--jes' a year or so--it'll give
you a nice little home to live in while you brace up an' pull out of
debt an' redeem yo' farm. Here--it is only for a year or so--sign
this--givin' you a home, an' start all over in life--sign it right
there, only for a little while--a chance to git on yo' feet--."

Conway scarcely knew how it happened that he signed--for Jud quickly
changed the subject.

After a while Jud arose to go. As he did so, Lily, the little
daughter, came out, and putting her arms around her father's neck,
kissed him and said:

"Papa--luncheon is served, and oh, do come on! Mammy and Helen and I
are so hungry."

Mammy Maria had followed her and stood deferentially behind the
chair. And as Jud went away he thought he saw in the old woman's
eyes, as she watched him, a trace of that fine scorn bred of
generations of gentleness, but which whiskey had destroyed in the
master.




CHAPTER V

THE FLY CATCHER CAUGHT


As Jud went out of the dilapidated gate at Millwood, he chuckled to
himself. He had, indeed, accomplished something. He had gained a
decided advance in the labor circles of the mill. He had broken into
the heretofore overpowering prejudice the better class had against
the mill, for he held in his possession the paper wherein an
aristocrat had signed his two daughters into it. Wouldn't Richard
Travis chuckle with him?

In the South social standing is everything.

To have the mill represented by a first family--even if brought to
poverty through drunkenness--was an entering wedge.

His next job was easier. A mile farther on, the poor lands of the
mountain side began. Up on the slope was a cabin, in the poorest and
rockiest portion of it, around the door of which half a dozen cracker
children stared at Jud with unfeigned interest as he rode up.

"Light an' look at yer saddle"--came from a typical Hillite within,
as Jud stopped.

Jud promptly complied--alighted and looked at his saddle.

A cur--which, despite his breeding, is always a keen detective of
character--followed him, barking at his heels.

This one knew Jud as instinctively and as accurately as he knew a
fresh bone from a rank one--by smell. He was also a judge of other
dogs and, catching sight of Bonaparte, his anger suddenly fled and he
with it.

"Won't you set down an' res' yo' hat?" came invitingly from the
doorway.

Jud sat down and rested his hat.

A tall, lank woman, smoking a cob pipe which had grown black with age
and Samsonian in strength, came from the next room. She merely ducked
her long, sharp nose at Jud and, pretending to be busily engaged
around the room, listened closely to all that was said.

Jud told the latest news, spoke of the weather and made many familiar
comments as he talked. Then he began to draw out the man and woman.
They were poor, child-burdened and dissatisfied. Gradually,
carefully, he talked mill and the blessings of it. He drew glorious
pictures of the house he would take them to, its conveniences--the
opportunities of the town for them all. He took up the case of each
of the six children, running from the tot of six to the girl of
twenty, and showed what they could earn.

In all it amounted to sixteen dollars a week.

"You sho'ly don't mean it comes to sixteen dollars ev'y week," said
the woman, taking the cob pipe out for the first time, long enough to
spit and wipe her mouth on the back of her hand, "an' all in silver
an' all our'n?" she asked. "Why that thar is mo' money'n we've seed
this year. What do you say to tryin' it, Josiah?"

Josiah was willing. "You see," he added, "we needn't stay thar
longer'n a year or so. We'll git the money an' then come back an' buy
a good piece of land."

Suddenly he stopped and fired this point blank at Jud: "But see heah,
Mister-man, is thar any niggers thar? Do we hafter wuck with
niggers?"

Jud looked indignant. It was enough.

At the end of an hour the family head had signed for a five years'
contract. They would move the next week.

"Cash--think of it--cash ever' week. An' in silver, too," said the
woman. "Why, I dunno hardly how it'll feel. I'm afeared it mou't gin
me the eetch."

Jud, when he left, had induced their parents to sell five children
into slavery for five years.

It meant for life.

And both parents declared when he left that never before had they
"seed sech a nice man."

Jud had nearly reached the town when he passed, high up on the level
plateau by which the mountain road now ran, the comfortable home of
Elder Butts. Peach and apple trees adorned the yard, while bee-hives
sat in a corner under the shade of them behind the cottage. The
tinkle of a sheep bell told of a flock of sheep nearby. A neatly
painted new wagon stood under the shed by the house, and all around
was an air of thrift and work.

"Now if I cu'd git that Butts family," he mused, "I'd have something
to crow about when I got back to Kingsley to-night. He's got a little
farm an' is well to do an' is thrifty, an' if I cu'd only git that
class started in the mill an' contented to wuck there, it 'ud open up
a new class of people. There's that Archie B.--confound him, he cu'd
run ten machines at onct and never know it. I'd like to sweat that
bottled mischief out of him a year or two.

"Hello!"

Jud drew his horse up with a jerk. Above him, with legs locked, high
up around the body of a dead willow, his seat the stump of a broken
bough and fully twenty feet above the employment agent's head, sat
Archie B., a freckled-faced lad, with fiery red hair and a world of
fun in his blue eyes. He was one of the Butts twins and the very
object of the Whipper-in's thoughts. From his head to his feet he had
on but three garments--a small, battered, all-wool hat, a coarse
cotton shirt, wide open at the neck, and a pair of jeans pants which
came to his knees. But in the pockets of his pants were small samples
of everything of wood and field, from shells of rare bird eggs to a
small supply of Gypsy Juice.

His pockets were miniature museums of nature.

No one but a small boy, bent on fun, knows what Gypsy Juice is. No
adult has ever been able to procure its formula and no small boy in
the South cares, so long as he can get it.

"The thing that hit does," Archie B. explained to his timid and pious
twin brother, Ozzie B., "is ter make anything it touches that wears
hair git up and git."

Coons, possums, dogs, cats--with now and then a country horse or
mule, hitched to the town rack--with these, and a small vial of Gypsy
Juice, Archie B., as he expressed it, "had mo' fun to the square
inch than ole Barnum's show ever hilt in all its tents."

Jud stood a moment watching the boy. It was easy to see what Archie
B. was after. In the body of the dead tree a wood-pecker had chiseled
out a round hole.

"Hello, yo'se'f"--finally drawled Jud--"whatcher doin' up thar?"

"Why, I am goin' to see if this is a wood-pecker's nes' or a
fly-ketcher's."

Bonaparte caught his cue at once and ran to the foot of the tree
barking viciously, daring the tree-climber to come down. His vicious
eyes danced gleefully. He looked at his master between his snarls as
much as to say: "Well, this is great, to tree the real live son of
the all-conquering man!"

It maddened him, too, to see the supreme indifference with which the
all-conqueror's son treated his presence.

Jud grunted. He prided himself on his bird-lore. Finally he said:
"Wal, any fool could tell you--it's a wood-pecker's nest."

"Yes, that's so and jus' exacly what a fool 'ud say," came back from
the tree. "But it 'ud be because he is a fool, tho', an' don't see
things as they be. It's a fly-ketcher's nest, for all that--" he
added.

"Teach yo' gran'-mammy how to milk the house cat," sneered Jud, while
Bonaparte grew furious again with this added insult. "Don't you know
a wood-pecker's nest when you see it?"

"Yes," said Archie B., "an' I also know a fly-ketcher will whip a
wood-pecker and take his nes' from him, an' I've come up here to see
if it's so with this one."

"Oh," said Jud, surprised, "an' what is it?"

"Jus' as I said--he's whipped the wood-pecker an' tuck his nes'."

"What's a fly-ketcher, Mister Know-It-All?" said Jud. Then he grinned
derisively.

Bonaparte, watching his master, ran around the tree again and
squatting on his stump of a tail grinned likewise.

"A fly-ketcher," said Archie B. calmly, "is a sneaking sort of a
bird, that ketches flies an' little helpless insects for a--mill,
maybe. Do you know any two-legged fly-ketchers a-doin' that?"

Jud glared at him, and Bonaparte grew so angry that he snapped
viciously at the bark of the tree as if he would tear it down.

"What do you mean, you little imp?--what mill?"

"Why his stomach," drawled Archie B., "it's a little differunt from a
cotton-mill, but it grinds 'em to death all the same."

Jud looked up again. He glared at Archie B.

"How do you know that's a fly-ketcher's nest and not a wood-pecker's,
then?" he asked, to change the subject.

"That's what I'd like to know, too," said Bonaparte as plainly as his
growls and two mean eyes could say it.

"If it's a fly-ketcher's, the nest will be lined with a
snake's-skin," said Archie B. "That's nachrul, ain't it," he
added--"the nest of all sech is lined with snake-skins."

Bonaparte, one of whose chief amusements in life was killing snakes,
seemed to think this a personal thrust at himself, for he flew around
the tree with renewed rage while Archie B., safe on his high perch,
made faces at him and laughed.

"I'll bet it ain't that way," said Jud, rattled and discomfited and
shifting his long squirrel gun across his saddle. Archie B. replied
by carefully thrusting a brown sunburnt arm into the hole and
bringing out a nest. "Now, a wood-pecker's egg," he said, carefully
lifting an egg out and then replacing it, "'ud be pearly white."

"How did you learn all that?" sneered Jud.

"Oh, by keepin' out of a cotton mill an' usin' my eye," said Archie
B., winking at Bonaparte.

Bonaparte glared back.

"I'd like to git you into the mill," said Jud. "I'd put you to wuck
doin' somethin' that 'ud be worth while."

"Oh, yes, you would for a few years," sneered back Archie B. "Then
you'd put me under the groun', where I'd have plenty o' time to
res'."

"I'm goin' up there now to see yo' folks an' see if I can't git you
into the mill."

"Oh, you are?--Well, don't be in sech a hurry an' look heah at yo'
snake-skin fust--didn't I tell you it 'ud be lined with a
snake-skin?" And he threw down a last year's snake-skin which
Bonaparte proceeded to rend with great fury.

"Now, come under here," went on Archie B. persuasively, "and I'll
sho' you they're not pearly white, like a wood-pecker's, but
cream-colored with little purple splotches scratched over 'em--like a
fly-ketcher's."

Jud rode under and looked up. As he did so Archie B. suddenly turned
the nest upside down, that Jud might see the eggs, and as he looked
up four eggs shot out before he could duck his head, and caught him
squarely between his shaggy eyes. Blinded, smeared with yelk and
smarting with his eyes full of fine broken shell, he scrambled from
his horse, with many oaths, and began feeling for the little branch
of water which ran nearby.

"I'll cut that tree down, but I'll git you and wring yo' neck," he
shouted, while Bonaparte endeavored to tear it down with his teeth.

But Archie B. did not wait. Slowly he slid down the tree, while
Bonaparte, thunder-struck with joy, waited at the foot, his eyes
glaring, his mouth wide open, anticipating the feast on fresh boy
meat. Can he be--dare he be--coming down? Right into my jaws, too?
The very thought of it stopped his snarls.

Jud's curses filled the air.

Down--down, slid Archie B., both legs locked around the tree, until
some ten feet above the dog, and, then tantalizingly, just out of
reach, he suddenly tightened his brown brakes of legs, and thrusting
his hand in his pocket, pulled out a small rubber ball. Reaching
over, he squirted half of its contents over the dog, which still sat
snarling, half in fury and half in wonder.

Then something happened. Jud could not see, being down on his knees
in the little stream, washing his eyes, but he first heard
demoniacal barks proceed from Bonaparte, ending in wailful snorts,
howls and whines, beginning at the foot of the tree and echoing in a
fast vanishing wail toward home.

Jud got one eye in working order soon enough to see a cloud of sand
and dust rolling down the road, from the rear of which only the stub
of a tail could be seen, curled spasmodically downward toward the
earth.

Jud could scarcely believe his eyes--Bonaparte--the champion
dog--running--running like that?

"Whut--whut--whut,"--he stammered, "Whut _did he do_ to Bonaparte?"

Then he saw Archie B. up the road toward home, rolling in the sand
with shouts of laughter.

"If I git my hands on you," yelled Jud, shaking his fist at the boy,
"I'll swaller you alive."

"That's what the fly-ketcher said to the butterfly," shouted back
Archie B.

It was a half hour before Jud got all the fine eggshell out of his
eyes. After that he decided to let the Butts family alone for the
present. But as he rode away he was heard to say again:

"Whut--whut--whut _did he do_ to Bonaparte?"

Archie B. was still rolling on the ground, and chuckling now and then
in fits of laughter, when a determined, motherly looking, fat girl
appeared at the doorway of the family cottage. It was his sister,
Patsy Butts:

"Maw," she exclaimed, "I wish you'd look at Archie B. I bet he's done
sump'in."

There was a parental manner in her way. Her one object in life,
evidently, was to watch Archie B.

"You Archie B.," yelled his mother, a sallow little woman of quick
nervous movements, "air you havin' a revulsion down there? What air
you been doin' anyway? Now, you git up from there and go see why
Ozzie B. don't fetch the cows home."

Archie B. arose and went down the road whistling.

A ground squirrel ran into a pile of rocks. Archie B. turned the
rocks about until he found the nest, which he examined critically and
with care. He fingered it carefully and patted it back into shape.
"Nice little nes'," he said--"that settles it--I thought they lined
it with fur." Then he replaced the rocks and arose to go.

A quarter of a mile down the road he stopped and listened.

He heard his brother, Ozzie B., sobbing and weeping.

Ozzie B. was his twin brother--his "after clap"--as Archie B. called
him. He was timid, uncertain, pious and given to tears--"bo'hn on a
wet Friday"--as Archie B. had often said. He was always the effect of
Archie B.'s cause, the illustration of his theorem, the solution of
his problem of mischief, the penalty of his misdemeanors.

Presently Ozzie B. came in sight, hatless and driving his cows along,
but sobbing in that hiccoughy way which is the final stage of an
acute thrashing.

No one saw more quickly than Archie B., and he knew instantly that
his brother had met Jud Carpenter, on his way back to the mill.

"He's caught my lickin' ag'in," said Archie B., indignantly--"it's a
pity he looks so much like me."

It was true, and Ozzie B. stood and dug one toe into the ground, and
sobbed and wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeve, and told how, in spite
of his explanations and beseechings, the Whipper-in had met him down
the road and thrashed him unmercifully.

"Ozzie B.," said his brother, "you make me tired all over and in
spots. I hate for as big a fool as you to look like me. Whyncher
run--whyncher dodge him?"

"I--I--wanted ter do my duty," sobbed Ozzie B. "Maw tole me ter
drive--drive the cows right up the road--"

Archie B. surveyed him with fine scorn:

"When the Devil's got the road," said Archie B., "decent fo'ks had
better take to the wood. I'd fixed him an' his ole dorg, an' now you
come along an' spile it all."

He made a cross mark in the road and spat on it. Then he turned with
his back to the cross, threw his hat over his head and said slowly:
"_Venture pee wee under the bridge! bam--bam--bam!_"

"What's that fur?" asked Ozzie B., as he ceased sobbing. His brother
always had something new, and it was always absorbingly interesting
to Ozzie B.

"That," said Archie B., solemnly, "I allers say after meetin' a Jonah
in the road. The spell is now broke. Jus' watch me fix Jud Carpenter
agin. Wanter see me git even with him? Well, come along."

"What'll you do?" asked Ozzie B.

"I'll make that mustang break his neck for the way he treated you, or
my name ain't Archie B. Butts--that's all. _Venture pee wee under
the bridge, bam--bam--bam!_"

"No--oo--no," began Ozzie B., beginning to cry again--"Don't kill
'im--it'll be cruel."

"Don't wanter see me go an' git even with the man that's jus' licked
you for nuthin'?"

"No--oo--no--" sobbed Ozzie B. "Paw says--leave--leave--that for--the
Lord."

"Tarnashun!"--said Archie B., spitting on the ground, disgustedly--,
"too much relig'un is a dang'us thing. You've got all of paw's
relig'un an' maw's brains, an' that's 'nuff said."

With this he kicked Ozzie B. soundly and sent him, still sobbing, up
the road.

Then he ran across the wood to head off Jud Carpenter, who he knew
had to go around a bend in the road.

There was no bird that Archie B. could not mimic. He knew every
creature of the wood. Every wild thing of the field and forest was
his friend. Slipping into the underbrush, a hundred yards from the
road down which he knew Jud Carpenter had to ride, he prepared
himself for action.

Drawing a turkey-call from his pocket, he gave the call of the wild
turkey going to roost, as softly as a violinist tries his instrument
to see if it is in tune.

Prut--prut--prut--it rang out clear and distinctly.

"All right,"--he said--"she'll do."

He had not long to wait. Up the road he soon saw the Whipper-in,
riding leisurely along.

Archie B. swelled with anger at sight of the complacent and
satisfactory way he rode along. He even thought he saw a smile--a
kind of even-up smile--light his face.

When opposite his hiding place, Archie B. put his call to his mouth:
_Prut--Prut--P-R-U-T_--it rang out. Then _Prut--prut!_

Jud Carpenter stopped his horse instantly.

"Turkeys goin' to roost."--he muttered. He listened for the
direction.

_Prut--Prut_--it came out of the bushes on the right--a hundred yards
away under a beech tree.

Jud listened: "Eatin' beech-mast,"--he said, and he slipped off his
pony, tied him quietly to the limb of a sweet-gum tree, and cocking
his long gun, slipped into the wood.

Five minutes later he heard the sound still farther off. "They're
walkin'," muttered Jud--"I mus' head 'em off." Then he pushed on
rapidly into the forest.

Archie B. let him go--then, making a short circuit, slipped like an
Indian through the wood, and came up to the pony hitched on the road
side.

Quietly removing the saddle and blanket, he took two tough prickly
burrs of the sweet-gum and placed one on each side of the pony's
spine, where the saddle would rest. Then he put the blanket and
saddle back, taking care to place them on very gently and tighten the
girth but lightly.

He shook all over with suppressed mirth as he went farther into the
wood, and lay down on the mossy bank behind a clay-root to watch the
performance.

It was a quarter of an hour before Jud, thoroughly tired and
disgusted, gave up the useless search and came back.

Untying the pony, he threw the bridle rein over its head and vaulted
lightly into the saddle.

Archie B. grabbed the clay-root and stuffed his wool hat into his
mouth just in time.

"It was worth a dollar," he told Ozzie B. that night, after they had
retired to their trundle bed. "The pony squatted fust mighty nigh to
the groun'--then he riz a-buckin'. I seed Jud's coat-tail a-turnin'
summersets through the air, the saddle and blanket a-followin'. I
heard him when he hit the swamp hole on the side of the road
_kersplash!_--an' the pony skeered speechless went off tearin'
to-ards home. Then I hollered out: '_Go it ole, fly-ketcher--you're
as good for tad-poles as you is for bird-eggs_'--an' I lit out
through the wood."

Ozzie B. burst out crying: "Oh, Archie B., do you reckin the po' man
got hurt?"

Archie B. replied by kicking him in the ribs until he ceased crying.

"Say yo' prayers now and go to sleep. I'll kick you m'se'f, but I'll
lick anybody else that does it."

As Ozzie B. dozed off he heard:

"_Venture pee-wee under the bridge--bam--bam--bam._ Oh, Lord, you who
made the tar'nal fools of this world, have mussy on 'em!"




CHAPTER VI

THE FLINT AND THE COAL


Love is love and there is nothing in all the world like it. Its
romance comes but once, and it is the perfume that precedes the
ripened fruit of all after life. It is not amenable to any of the
laws of reason; nor subject to any law of logic; nor can it be
explained by the analogy of anything in heaven or earth. Do not,
therefore, try to reason about it. Only love once--and in youth--and
be forever silent.

One of the mysteries of love to older ones is that two young people
may become engaged and never a word be spoken. Put the girl in a
convent, even, and let the boy but walk past, and the thing is done.
They look and love, and the understanding is complete. They see and
sigh, and read each other's secret thoughts, past and present--each
other's hopes, fears.

They sigh and are engaged, and there is perfect understanding.

Time and Romance travel not together. Time must hurry on. Romance
would loiter by the way. And so Romance, in her completeness, loves
to dwell most where Time, traveling over the mile-tracks of the
tropics, which belong by heredity to Alabama--stalks slower than on
those strenuous half-mile tracks that spin around the earth in
latitudes which grow smaller as they approach the frozen pole.

The sun had reached, in his day's journey, the bald knob of Sunset
Peak, and there, behind it, seemed to stop. At least to Helen Conway,
born and reared under the brow of Sand Mountain, he seemed every
afternoon, when he reached the mountain peak, to linger, in a
friendly way, behind it.

And a bold warrior-looking crest it was, helmeted with a stratum of
sand-stone, jutting out in visor-shaped fullness about his head, and
feathery above with scrub-oak and cedar.

Perhaps it had been a fancy which lingered from childhood; but from
the time when Mammy Maria had first told her that the sun went to bed
in the valley beyond the mountain until now,--her eighteenth
year,--Helen still loved to think it was true, and that behind the
face of Sunset Rock he still lingered to undress; and, lingering, it
made for her the sweetest and most romantic period of the day.

True to her antebellum ideas, Mammy Maria dressed her two girls every
afternoon before dinner. It is also true that she cooked the dinner
herself and made their dresses with her own fingers, and that of late
years, in the poverty of her drunken master, she had little to dress
them with and less to cook.

But the resources of the old woman seemed wonderful--to the people
round about,--for never were two girls more gorgeously gowned than
Helen and Lily. It was humorous, it was pathetic--the way it was
done.

From old bureau drawers and cedar chests, stored away in the attic
and unused rooms of Millwood, where she herself had carefully put
them in days long gone--days of plenty and thrift--she brought forth
rich gowns of another age, and made them over for Helen and Lily.

"Now, this gown was Miss Clara's," she would say as she took out a
bundle of satin and old lace. She looked at it fondly--often with
tears in her honest black eyes. "Lor', how well I disremember the
night she fust wore it--the night of the ball we give to Jineral
Jackson when he first come to see old Marster. This flowered silk
with pol'naize she wore at the Gov'nor's ball and the black velvet
with cut steel I've seed her wearin' at many an' many a dinner here
in this very house."

And so the old woman would go over all her treasures. Then, in a few
days the gossipy and astounded neighbors would behold Helen and Lily,
dressed, each, in a gown of white brocaded satin, with a dinner gown
of black velvet, and for Sunday, old point lace, with petticoats of
finest hand-made Irish linen and silk stockings--all modernized with
matchless deft and skill.

"I guess my gals will shine as long as the old chist lasts," she
would say, "an' I ain't started on 'em yet. I'm a-savin' some for
their weddin', bless Gord, if I ever sees a man fitten for 'em."

It was an hour yet before dinner, and Aunt Maria had dressed Helen,
this Saturday afternoon, with great care--for after a little frost,
each day and night in Alabama becomes warmer and warmer until the
next frost.

Mammy Maria knew things by intuition, and hence her care to see that
Helen looked especially pretty to-day.

There was no sun save where he streamed his ribbon rays from behind
Sunset Rock, and threw them in pearl and ivory fan handles--white and
gold and emerald, across the mackerel sky beyond.

Helen's silk skirt fitted her well, and one of those beautiful old
ribbons, flowered in broad leaf and blossoms, wound twice around her
slender waist and fell in broad streamers nearly to the ground. The
bodice was cut V-shaped at the throat--the corsage being taken from
one of her grandmother's made in 1822, and around her neck was a long
chain of pure gold beads.

She was a type of Southern beauty obtained only after years of gentle
dames and good breeding.

Her face was pure and fine, rather expressionless at her age, with a
straight nose and rich fine lips. Her heavy hair was coiled
gracefully about her head and fell in a longer coil, almost to her
shoulders. She was tall with a sloping, angular form, the flat
outlines of which were not yet filled with that fullness that time
would soon add.

Her waist was well turned, her shoulders broad and slightly rounded,
with that fullness of chest and breast which Nature, in her hour of
generosity, gives only to the queenly woman. The curves of her
sloping neck were perfect and carried not a wave-line of grossness.
It was as unsensual as a swan's.

Her gown, low cut, showed slight bony shoulders of classic turn and
whiteness, waiting only for time to ripen them to perfection; and the
long curved lines which ran up to where the deep braid of her rich
brown hair fell over them, together with the big joints of her arms
and the long, fine profile of her face were forerunners of a beauty
that is strong--like that of the thoroughbred brood mare after a
year's run on blue-grass.

Her eyes were her only weakness. They were deep and hazel, and given
to drooping too readily with that feigned modesty wherein vanity
clothes boldness. Down in their depths, also, shone that bright,
penetrating spark of a taper by which Folly lights, in woman, the
lamp of ambition.

Her forehead was high--her whole bearing the unconscious one of a
born lady.

Romance--girlish, idealized romance--was her's to-day. A good
intentioned, but thoughtless romance--and therefore a weak one. And
worse still, one which, coupled with ambition, might be led to ruin.

Down through the tangled box-planted walks she strolled, swinging her
dainty hat of straw and old lace in her hand; on through the small
gate that bound the first yard, then through the shaded lawn, unkept
now and rank with weeds, but still holding the old trees which, in
other days, looked down over the well kept lawn of grass beneath. Now
gaunt hogs had rooted it up and the weeds had taken it, and the limbs
of the old trees, falling, had been permitted to lie as they fell.

The first fence was down. She walked across the road and took a path
leading through a cottonfield, which, protected on all sides by the
wood, and being on the elevated plateau on which the residence stood,
had escaped the severer frosts.

And so she stopped and stood amid it, waist high.

The very act of her stopping showed the romance of her nature.

She had seen the fields of cotton all her life, but she could never
pass through one in bloom and in fruit--the white and purple
blossoms, mingled with the green of the leaves and all banked over
billows of snowy lint,--that she did not stop, thrilled with the same
childhood feeling that came with the first reading of the Arabian
Nights.

She had seen the field when it was first plowed, in the spring, and
the small furrows were thrown up by the little turning shovels. Then,
down the entire length of the ridge the cotton-planter had followed,
its two little wheels straddling the row, while the small bull-tongue
in front opened the shallow furrow for the linty, furry, white seeds
to fall in and be covered immediately by the mold-board behind. She
had seen it spring up from one end of the ridge to the other, like
peas, then chopped out by the hoe, the plants left standing, each the
width of the hoe apart. Then she had watched it all summer, growing
under the Southern sun, throwing out limb above limb of beautiful
delicate leaves, drawing their life and sustenance more from the air
and sunshine above than from the dark soil beneath. Drawing it from
the air and sunshine above, and therefore cotton, silken, snowy
cotton--with the warmth of the sun in the skein of its sheen and the
purity of heaven in the fleece of its fold.

Child of the air and the sky and sun; therefore, cotton--and not
corn, which draws its life from the clay and mud and decay which
comes from below.

She had seen the first cream-white bloom come.

She had found it one sweet day in July, early in the morning, on the
tip end of the eldest branch of the cotton stalk nearest the ground.
It hung like the flower of the cream-white, pendulous abutilon, with
pollen of yellow stars beaded in dew and throwing off a rich,
delicate, aromatic odor, smelt nowhere on earth save in a
cottonfield, damp with early dew and warmed by the rays of the rising
sun. Cream-white it was in the morning, but when she had visited it
again at nightfall, it hung purple in the twilight.

Then had she plucked it.

Through the hot month of July she had watched the boll grow and
expand, until in August the lowest and oldest one next to the ground
burst, and shone through the pale green leaves like the image of a
star reflected in waters of green. And every morning new cream-white
blooms formed to the very top, only to turn purple by twilight, while
beneath, climbing higher and higher as the days went by and the cool
nights came, star above star of cotton arose and stood twinkling in
its sky of green and purple, above the dank manger where, in early
spring, the little child-seed had lain.

To-day, touched by the great frost, the last purple bloom in the very
tip-top seemed to look up yearningly and plead with the sun for one
more day of life; that it, too, might add in time its snowy tribute
to the bank of white which rolled entirely across the field, one big
billow of cotton.

And in the midst of it the girl stood dreaming and wondering.

She plucked a purple blossom and pinned it to her breast. Then, with
a deep sigh of saddened longing--that this should be the last--she
walked on, daintily lifting her gown to avoid the damp stars of
cotton, now fast gathering the night dew.

Across the field, a vine of wild grape ran over the top of two small
hackberry trees, forming a natural umbrella-shaped arbor above two
big moss-covered boulders which cropped out of the ground beneath,
making two natural rustic seats. On one of these she sat down. Above
her head glowed the impenetrable leaves of the grape-vine and the
hackberry, and through them all hung the small purple bunches of wild
grapes, waiting for the frost of affliction to convert into sugar the
acid of their souls.

She was in plain view of Millwood, not a quarter of a mile away, and
in the glow of the blazing red sunset, shining through its broken
shutters and windows, she could see Mammy Maria busy about their
dinner.

She looked up the road anxiously--then, with an impatient gesture she
took the cotton bloom from her bosom and began to pluck the petals
apart, one by one, saying aloud:

    "One, I love--two, I love--
     Three, I love, I say.
     Four, I love with all my heart,
     And five, I cast away--"

She stopped short and sighed--"O, pshaw! that was Harry; why did I
name it for him?"

Again she looked impatiently up the road and then went on:

    "Six, he loves, seven, she loves,
     Eight, both love--"

She turned quickly. She heard the gallop of a saddle horse coming.
The rider sprang off, tied his horse and sat on the rock by her side.

She appeared not to notice him, and her piqued face was turned away
petulantly.

It was a handsome boyish face that looked at her for a moment
mischievously. Then he seized and kissed her despite her struggles.

For this she boxed his ears soundly and sat off on another rock.

"Harry Travis, you can't kiss me every time you want to, no matter if
we are engaged."

It was a strong and rather a masculine voice, and it grated on one
slightly, being scarcely expected from so beautiful a face. In it was
power, self-will, ambition--but no tenderness nor that voice, soft
and low, which "is an excellent thing in woman."

He laughed banteringly.

"Did you ever hear that love is not love if it is a minute late? Just
see how long I have waited here for you?"

She sat down by his side and looked fondly up into his face, flushed
with exercise and smiling half cynically. It was the same smile seen
so often on the face of Richard Travis.

"Oh, say," he said, dolefully, "but don't start the
hubby-come-to-taw-business on me until we are married. I was late
because I had to steal the Gov'nor's new mare--isn't she a beauty?"

"Oh, say," he went on, "but that is a good one--he has bought her for
somebody he is stuck on--can't say who--and I heard him tell Jim not
to let anybody get on her back.

"Well,"--he laughed--"she certainly has a fine back. I stole her out
and galloped right straight here.

"You ought to own her,"--he went on flippantly--pinching playfully at
the lobe of her ear--"her name is Coquette."

Then he tried to kiss her again.

"Harry!" she said, pulling away--"don't now--Mammy Maria said I was
never to--let you kiss me."

"Oh," he said with some iciness--"Listen to her an' you will die an
old maid. Besides, I am not engaged to Mammy Maria."

"Do you think I am a coquette?" she asked, sitting down by him again.

"Worst I ever saw--I said to Nellie just now--I mean--" he stopped
and laughed.

She looked at him, pained.

"Then you've stopped to see Nellie, and that is why you are late? I
do not care what she says--I am true to you, Harry--because--because
I love you."

He was feigning anger, and tapping his boot with his riding whip:

"Well--kiss me yourself then--show me that Mammy Maria does not boss
my wife."

She laughed and kissed him. He received it with indifference and some
haughtiness.

Then his good nature returned and they sat and talked, watching the
sunset.

"Don't you think my dress is pretty?" she asked after a while, with a
becoming toss of her head.

"Why, I hadn't noticed it--stunning--stunning. If there is a queen on
earth it is you,"--he added.

She flushed under the praise and was silent.

"Harry,"--she said after a while, "I hate to trouble you now, but I
am so worried about things at home."

He looked up half frowning.

"You know I have always told you I could not marry you now. I would
not burden you with Papa."

"Why, yes," he answered mechanically, "we're both young and can wait.
You see, really, Pet--you know I am dependent at present on the
Gov'nor an'--"

"I understand all that," she said quickly--"but"--

"A long engagement will only test our love," he broke in with a show
of dignity.

"You do not understand," she went on. "Things have got so bad at home
that I must earn something."

He frowned and tapped his foot impatiently. She sat up closer to him
and put her hand on his. He did not move nor even return the
pressure.

"And so, Harry--if--if to help papa--and Millwood is sold--and I can
get a good place in the mill--one off by myself--what they call
drawer-in--at good wages,--and, if only for a little while I'd work
there--to help out, you know--what would you think?"

He sprang up from his seat and dropped her hand.

"Good God, Helen Conway, are you crazy?" he said brutally--"why, I'd
never speak to you again. Me? A Travis?--and marry a mill girl?"

The color went out of her face. She looked in her shame and sorrow
toward the sunset, where a cloud, but ten minutes before, had stood
all rosy and purple with the flush of the sunbeams behind it.

Now the beams were gone, and it hung white and bloodless.

In the crisis of our lives such trifles as these flash over us. In
the greatness of other things--often turning points in our
life--Nature sometimes points it all with a metaphor.

For Nature is the one great metaphor.

Helen knew that she and the cloud were now one.

But she was not a coward, and with her heart nerved and looking him
calmly in the face, she talked on and told him of the wretched
condition of affairs at Millwood. And as she talked, the setting sun
played over her own cheeks, touching them with a halo of such
exquisite colors that even the unpoetic soul of Harry Travis was
touched by the beauty of it all.

And to any one but Harry Travis the proper solution would have been
plain. Not that he said it or even meant it--for she was too proud a
spirit even to have thought of it--there is much that a man should
know instinctively that a woman should never know at all.

Harry surprised himself by the patience with which he listened to
her. In him, as in his cousin--his pattern--ran a vein of tact when
the crisis demanded, through and between the stratum of bold
sensuousness and selfishness which made up the basis of his
character.

And so as he listened, in the meanness and meagerness of his soul, he
kept thinking, "I will let her down easy--no need for a scene."

It was narrow and little, but it was all that could come into the
soul of his narrowness.

For we cannot think beyond our fountain head, nor can we even dream
beyond the souls of the two things who gave us birth. There are men
born in this age of ripeness, born with an alphabet in their mouths
and reared in the regal ways of learning, who can neither read nor
write. And yet had Shakespeare been born without a language, he would
have carved his thoughts as pictures on the trees.

Harry Travis was born as so many others are--not only without a
language, but without a soul within him upon which a picture might be
drawn.

And so it kept running in his mind, quietly, cold-bloodedly,
tactfully down the narrow, crooked, slum-alleys of his mind: "I
will--I will drop her--now!" She ceased--there were tears in her eyes
and her face was blanched whiter even than the cloud.

He arose quickly and glanced at the setting sun: "Oh, say, but I must
get the Gov'nor's mare back. Jim will miss her at feeding time."

There was a laugh on his lips and his foot was already in the
stirrup. "Sorry to be in such a hurry just now, too--because there
is so much I want to say to you on that subject--awful sorry--but
the Gov'nor will raise Cain if he knows what I've done. I'll just
write you a long letter to-night--and I'll be over, maybe,
soon--ta--ta--but this mare, confound her--see how she cuts up--so
sorry I can't stay longer--but I'll write--to-night."

He threw her a kiss as he rode off.

She sat dazed, numbed, with the shallowness of it all--the shale of
sham which did not even conceal the base sub-stratum of deceit below.

Nothing like it had ever come into her life before.

She dropped down behind the rock, but instead of tears there came
steel. In it all she could only say with her lips white, a defiant
poise of her splendid head, and with a flash of the eyes which came
with the Conway aroused: "Oh, and I kissed him--and--and--I loved
him!"

She sat on the rock again and looked at the sunset. She was too hurt
now to go home--she wished to be alone.

She was a strong girl--mentally--and with a deep nature; but she was
proud, and so she sat and crushed it in her pride and strength,
though to do it shook her as the leaves were now being shaken by the
breeze which had sprung up at sunset.

She thought she could conquer--that she had conquered--then, as the
breeze died away, and the leaves hung still and limp again, her pride
went with the breeze and she fell again on her knees by the big rock,
fell and buried her face there in the cool moss and cried: "Oh, and
I loved that thing!"

Ten minutes later she sat pale and smiling. The Conway pride had
conquered, but it was a dangerous conquest, for steel and tears had
mingled to make it.

In her despair she even plucked another cotton bloom from her bosom
as if trying to force herself to be happy again in saying:

    "One, I love--two, I love,
     Three, I love, I say--"

But this only hurt her, because she remembered that when she had said
it before she had had an idol which now lay shattered, as the petals
of the cotton-blossom which she had plucked and thrown away.

Then the breeze sprang up again and with it, borne on it, came the
click--click--click of a hammer tapping a rock. It was a small gladey
valley through which a gulley ran. Boulders cropped out here and
there, and haws, red and white elms, and sassafras grew and shaded
it.

Down in the gulch, not a hundred yards from her, she saw a pair of
broad shoulders overtopped by a rusty summer hat--the worse for a
full season's wear. Around the shoulders was strung a leathern
satchel, and she could see that the person beneath the hat was
closely inspecting the rocks he chipped off and put into the satchel.
Then his hammer rang out again.

She sat and watched him and listened to the tap of his hammer half
sadly--half amused. Harry Travis had crushed her as she had never
been crushed before in her life, and the pride in a woman which
endureth a fall is not to be trifled with afterwards.

She grew calmer--even quiet. The old spirit returned. She knew that
she had never been as beautiful in her life, as now--just now--in the
halo of the sunset shining on her hair and reflected in the rare old
gown she wore.

The person with the leathern satchel was oblivious of everything but
his work. The old straw hat bobbed energetically--the big shoulders
nodded steadily beneath it. She watched him silently a few minutes
and then she called out pleasantly:

"You do seem to be very busy, Clay!"

He stopped and looked up. Then he took off his hat and, awkwardly
bowing, wiped his brow, broad, calm and self-reliant, and a
deliberate smile spread over his face. Everything he did was
deliberate. The smile began in the large friendly mouth and spread in
kindred waves upward until it flashed out from his kindly blue eyes,
through the heavy double-lens glasses that covered them.

Without a word he picked up the last rock he had broken off and put
it into his satchel. Very deliberate, too, was his walk up the hill
toward the grape arbor, mopping his brow as he came along--a brow big
and full of cause and effect and of quiet deductions and deliberate
conclusions. His coat was seedy, his trousers bagged at the knees,
his shoes were old, and there were patches on them, but his collar
and linen were white and very much starched, and his awkward,
shambling gait was honest to the last footfall. A world of depth and
soul was in his strong, fine face, lit up now with an honest, humble
smile, but, at rest, full of quiet dignity.

He shuffled along and sat down in a big brotherly way by the girl's
side.

She sat still, looking at him with a half amused smile on her lips.

He smiled back at her abstractedly. She could see that he had not yet
really seen her. He was looking thoughtfully across at the hill
beyond:

"It puzzles me," he said in a fine, mellow voice, "why I should find
this rotten limestone cropping out here. Now, in the blue limestone
of the Niagara period I was as sure of finding it as I am--"

"Of not finding me at all,"--it came queenly, haughtily from her.

He turned, and the thick lenses of his glasses were focused on her--a
radiant, superb being. Then there were swept away all his
abstractions and deductions, and in their place a real smile--a
lover's smile of satisfaction looking on the paradise of his dreams.

"You know I have always worshiped you," he said simply and
reverently.

She moved up in a sisterly way to him and looked into his face.

"Clay--Clay--but you must not--I have told you--I am engaged."

He did not appear to hear her. Already his mind was away off in the
hills where his eyes were. He went on: "Now, over there I struck a
stratum of rotten limestone--it's a curious thing. I traced that vein
of coal from Walker County--clear through the carboniferous period,
and it is bound to crop out somewhere in this altitude--bound to do
it."

"Now it's just this way," he said, taking her hand without being
conscious of it and counting off the periods with her fingers. "Here
is the carboniferous, the sub-carboniferous--" She jerked her hand
away with what would have been an amused laugh except that in a half
conscious way she remembered that Harry had held her hand but half an
hour ago; and it ended in a frigid shaft feathered with a smile--the
arrow which came from the bow of her pretty mouth.

He came to himself with a boyish laugh and a blush that made Helen
look at him again and watch it roll down his cheek and neck, under
the fine white skin there.

Then he looked at her closely again--the romantic face, the coil of
brown hair, the old gown of rich silk, the old-fashioned corsage and
the rich old gold necklace around her throat.

"If there's a queen on earth--it's you," he said simply.

He reddened again, and to divert it felt in his satchel and took out
a rock. Then he looked across at the hills again:

"If I do trace up that vein of coal and the iron which is needed with
it--when I do--for I know it is here as well as Leverrier knew that
Neptune was in our planetary system by the attraction exerted--when I
do--"

He looked at her again. He could not say the words. Real love has
ideas, but never words. It feels, but cannot speak. That which comes
out of the mouth, being words, is ever a poor substitute for that
which comes from the heart and is spirit.

"Clay," she said, "you keep forgetting. I say I--I am--was--" She
stopped confused.

He looked hurt for a moment and smiled in his frank way: "I know it
is here," he said holding up a bit of coal--"here, by the million
tons, and it is mine by right of birth and education and breeding. It
is my heritage to find it. One day Alabama steel will outrank
Pittsburgh's. Oh, to put my name there as the discoverer!"

"Then you"--he turned and said it fondly--reverently--"you should be
mine by right of--of love."

She sighed.

"Clay--I am sorry for you. I can never love you that way. You have
told me that, since--oh, since I can remember, and I have always told
you--you know we are cousins, anyway--second cousins." She shook her
head.

"Under the heart of the flinty hill lies the coal," he said simply.

But she did not understand him. She had looked down and seen Harry's
foot-track on the moss.

And so they sat until the first star arose and shimmered through the
blue mist which lay around the far off purpling hill tops. Then there
was the clang of a dinner bell.

"It is Mammy Maria," she said--"I must go. No--you must not walk
home with me. I'd rather be alone."

She did not intend it, but it was brutal to have said it that way--to
the sensitive heart it went to. He looked hurt for a moment and then
tried to smile in a weak way. Then he raised his hat gallantly,
turned and went off down the gulch.

Helen stood looking for the last time on the pretty arbor. Here she
had lost her heart--her life. She fell on the moss again and kissed
the stone. Then she walked home--in tears.




CHAPTER VII

HILLARD WATTS


It is good for the world now and then to go back to first principles
in religion. It would be better for it never to get away from them;
but, since it has that way of doing--of breeding away and breaking
away from the innate good--it is well that a man should be born in
any age with the faith of Abraham.

It matters not from what source such a man may spring. And he need
have no known pedigree at all, except an honest ancestry behind him.

Such a man was Hillard Watts, the Cottontown preacher.

Sprung from the common people of the South, he was a most uncommon
man, in that he had an absolute faith in God and His justice, and an
absolute belief that some redeeming goodness lay in every human
being, however depraved he may seem to the world. And so firm was his
faith, so simple his religion--so contrary to the worldliness of the
religion of his day,--that the very practice of it made him an
uncommon man.

As the overseer of General Jeremiah Travis's large estate before the
war, he proved by his success that even slaves work better for
kindness. Of infinite good sense, but little education, he had a mind
that went to the heart of things, and years ago the fame of his
homely but pithy sayings stuck in the community. In connection with
kindness to his negroes one of his sayings was, "Oh, kindness can't
be classified--it takes in the whole world or nothin'."

When General Travis got into dire financial straits once, he sent for
his overseer, and advised with him as to the expediency of giving up.
The overseer, who knew the world and its ways with all the good
judgment of his nature, dryly remarked: "That'll never do. Never let
the world know you've quit; an' let the undertaker that buries you be
the fust man to find out you're busted."

General Travis laughed, and that season one of his horses won the
Tennessee Valley Futurity, worth thirty-thousand dollars--and the
splendid estate was again free from debt.

There was not a negro on the place who did not love the overseer, not
one who did not carry that love to the extent of doing his best to
please him. He had never been known to punish one, and yet the work
done by the Travis hands was proverbial.

Among his duties as overseer, the entire charge of the Westmore
stable of thoroughbreds fell to his care. This was as much from love
as choice, for never was a man born with more innate love of all dumb
creatures than the preacher-overseer.

"I've allers contended that a man could love God an' raise horses, too,"
he would say; and it was ludicrous to see him when he went off to the
races, filling the tent trunk with religious tracts, which, after the
races, he would distribute to all who would read them. And when night
came he would regularly hold prayers in his tent--prayer-meetings in
which his auditors were touts, stable-boys and gamblers. And woe to the
stable-boy who uttered an oath in his presence or dared to strike or
maltreat any of his horses!

He preached constantly against gambling on the races. "That's the
Devil's end of it," he would say--"The Almighty lets us raise good
horses as a benefit to mankind, an' the best one wins the purse. It
was the Devil's idea that turned 'em into gambling machines."

No one ever doubted the honesty of his races. When the Travis horses
ran, the racing world knew they ran for blood.

Physically, he had been an athlete--a giant, and unconscious of his
strength. Incidentally, he had taken to wrestling when a boy, and as
a man his fame as a wrestler was coincident with the Tennessee
Valley. It was a manly sport which gave him great pleasure, just as
would the physical development of one of his race horses. Had he
lived in the early days of Greece, he would have won in the Olympian
wrestling match.

There was in Hillard Watts a trait which is one of the most
pronounced of his type of folks,--a sturdy, honest humor. Humor, but
of the Cromwell type--and withal, a kind that went with praying and
fighting. Possessed, naturally, of a strong mind of great good sense,
he had learned to read and write by studying the Bible--the only book
he had ever read through and through and which he seemed to know by
heart. He was earnest and honest in all things, but in his
earnestness and strong fight for right living there was the twinkle
of humor. Life, with him, was a serious fight, but ever through the
smoke of its battle there gleamed the bright sun of a kindly humor.

The overseer's home was a double log hut on the side of the mountain.
His plantation, he called it,--for having been General Travis's
overseer, he could not imagine any farm being less than a plantation.

It consisted of forty acres of flinty land on the mountain side--"too
po' to sprout cow-peas," as his old wife would always add--"but hits
pow'ful for blackberries, an' if we can just live till blackberry
time comes we can take keer ourselves."

Mrs. Watts had not a lazy bone in her body. Her religion was work:
"Hit's nature's remedy," she would add--"wuck and five draps o'
turpentine if you're feelin' po'ly."

She despised her husband's ways and thought little of his religion.
Her tongue was frightful--her temper worse. Her mission on
earth--aside from work--work--work--was to see that too much peace
and good will did not abide long in the same place.

Elder Butts, the Hard-Shell preacher, used to say: "She can go to the
full of the moon mighty nigh every month 'thout raisin' a row, if
hard pressed for time an' she thinks everybody else around her is
miser'ble. But if things look too peaceful and happy, she'll raise
sand in the last quarter or bust. The Bishop's a good man, but if he
ever gits to heaven, the bigges' diamon' in his crown'll be because
he's lived with that old 'oman an' ain't committed murder. I don't
believe in law suits, but if he ain't got a damage case agin the
preacher that married him, then I'm wrong."

But no one ever heard the old man use harsher language in speaking of
her than to remark that she was "a female Jineral--that's what
Tabitha is."

Perhaps she was, and but for her the Bishop and his household had
starved long ago.

"Furagin' is her strong point"--he would always add--"she'd made
Albert Sydney Johnston a great chief of commissary."

And there was not an herb of any value that Mrs. Watts did not know
all about. Any fair day she might be seen on the mountain side
plucking edibles. Ginseng was her money crop, and every spring she
would daily go into the mountain forests and come back with enough of
its roots to help them out in the winter's pinch.

"Now, if anybody'll study Nature," she would say, "they'll see she
never cal'c'lated to fetch us here 'ithout makin' 'lowance fur to
feed us. The fus' thing that comes up is dandelions--an' I don't want
to stick my tooth in anything that's better than dandelion greens
biled with hog-jowl. I like a biled dinner any way. Sas'fras tea
comes mighty handy with dandelions in the spring, an' them two'll
carry us through April. Then comes wild lettice an' tansy-tea--that's
fur May. Blackberries is good fur June an' the jam'll take us through
winter if Bull Run and Appomattox ain' too healthy. In the summer we
can live on garden truck, an' in the fall there is wild reddishes an'
water-cresses an' spatterdock, an' nuts an' pertatoes come in mighty
handy fur winter wuck. Why, I was born wuckin'--when I was a gal I
cooked, washed and done house-work for a family of ten, an' then had
time to spin ten hanks o' yarn a day."

"Now there's the old man--he's too lazy to wuck--he's like all
parsons, he'd rather preach aroun' all his life on a promise of
heaven than to wuck on earth for cash!"

"How did I ever come to marry Hillard Watts? Wal, he wa'n't that
triflin' when I married him. He didn't have so much religiun then.
But I've allers noticed a man's heredity for no-countness craps out
after he's married. Lookin' back now I reckin' I married him jes' to
res' myself. When I'm wuckin' an' git tired, I watches Hillard doin'
nothin' awhile an' it hopes me pow'ful."

"He gits so busy at it an' seems so contented an' happy."

Besides his wife there were five grandchildren in his
family--children of the old man's son by his second wife. "Their
father tuck after his stepmother," he would explain regretfully, "an'
wucked hisself to death in the cotton factory. The dust an' lint give
him consumption. He was the only man I ever seed that tuck after his
stepmother"--he added sadly.

An old soldier never gets over the war. It has left a nervous shock
in his make-up--a memory in all his after life which takes precedence
over all other things. The old man had the naming of the
grandchildren, and he named them after the battles of the Civil war.
Bull Run and Seven Days were the boys. Atlanta, Appomattox and Shiloh
were the girls. His apology for Shiloh was: "You see I thout I'd name
the last one Appomattox. Then came a little one befo' her mammy died,
so weak an' pitiful I named her Shiloh."

It was the boast of their grandmother--that these children--even
little Shiloh--aged seven--worked from ten to twelve hours every day
in the cotton factory, rising before day and working often into the
night, with forty minutes at noon for lunch.

They had not had a holiday since Christmas, and on the last
anniversary of that day they had worked until ten o'clock, making up
for lost time. Their pay was twenty-five cents a day--except Shiloh,
who received fifteen.

"But I'll soon be worth mo', pap," she would say as she crawled up
into the old man's lap--her usual place when she had eaten her supper
and wanted to rest. "An you know what I'm gwine do with my other
nickel every day? I'm gwine give it to the po' people of Indy an'
China you preaches about."

And thus she would prattle--too young to know that, through the
cupidity of white men, in this--the land of freedom and
progress--she--this blue-eyed, white-skinned child of the Saxon race,
was making the same wages as the Indian sepoy and the Chinese coolie.

It was Saturday night and after the old man had put Shiloh to bed, he
mounted his horse and rode across the mountain to Westmoreland.

"Oh," said the old lady--"he's gwine over to Miss Alice's to git his
Sunday School less'n. An' I'd like to know what good Sunday school
less'ns 'll do any body. If folks'd git in the habit of wuckin' mo'
an' prayin' less, the worl'ud be better off, an' they'd really have
somethin' to be thankful fur when Sunday comes, 'stid of livin' frum
han' to mouth an' trustin' in some unknown God to cram feed in you'
crops."

Hardened by poverty, work, and misfortune, she was the soul of
pessimism.




CHAPTER VIII

WESTMORELAND


From The Gaffs to Westmoreland, the home of Alice Westmore, was
barely two miles up the level white pike.

Jim sat in the buggy at The Gaffs holding the horses while Richard
Travis, having eaten his supper, was lighting a cigar and drawing on
his overcoat, preparatory to riding over to Westmoreland.

The trotters stood at the door tossing their heads and eager to be
off. They were cherry bays and so much alike that even Jim sometimes
got them mixed. They were clean-limbed and racy looking, with flanks
well drawn up, but with a broad bunch of powerful muscles which
rolled from hip to back, making a sturdy back for the splendid full
tails which almost touched the ground. In front they stood up
straight, deep-chested, with clean bony heads, large luminous eyes
and long slender ears, tapering into a point as velvety and soft as
the tendril-bud on the tip of a Virginia creeper.

They stood shifting the bits nervously. The night air was cool and
they wanted to go.

Travis came out and sprang from the porch to the buggy seat with the
quick, sure footing of an athlete. Jim sat on the offside and passed
him the lines just as he sang cheerily out:

"Heigh-ho--my honies--go!"

The two mares bounded away so quickly and keenly that the near mare
struck her quarters and jumped up into the air, running. Her off mate
settled to work, trotting as steadily as a bolting Caribou, but
pulling viciously.

Travis twisted the near bit with a deft turn of his left wrist, and
as the two mares settled to their strides there was but one stroke
from their shoes, so evenly and in unison did they trot. Down the
level road they flew, Travis sitting gracefully upright and holding
the lines in that sure, yet careless way which comes to the expert
driver with power in his arms.

"How many times must I tell you, Jim," he said at last rather
gruffly--"never to bring them out, even for the road, without their
boots? Didn't you see Lizette grab her quarters and fly up just now?"

Jim was duly penitent.

Travis let them out a link. They flew down a soft, cool graveled
stretch. He drew them in at the sound of an ominous click. It came
from Sadie B.

"Sadie B.'s forging again. Didn't I tell you to have the blacksmith
move her hind shoes back a little?"

"I did, sir," said Jim.

"You've got no weight on her front feet, then," said Travis
critically.

"Not to-night, sir--I took off the two ounces thinking you'd not
speed them to-night, sir."

"You never know when I'm going to speed them. The night is as good as
the day when I want a tonic."

They had reached the big stone posts which marked the boundary of
Westmoreland. A little farther on the mares wheeled into the gate,
for it was open and lay, half on the ground, hanging by one hinge. It
had not been painted for years. The driveway, too, had been
neglected. The old home, beautiful even in its decay, sat in a fine
beech grove on the slope of a hill. A wide veranda, with marble
flag-stones as a base, ran across the front. Eight Corinthian pillars
sentineled it, resting on a marble base which seemed to spring up out
of the flag-stones themselves, and towering to the projecting
entablature above.

On one side an ell could be seen, covered with ivy. On the other the
roof of a hot-house, with the glass broken out.

It touched even Richard Travis--this decay. He had known the place in
the days of its glory before its proprietor, Colonel Theodore
Westmore, broken by the war, in spirit and in pocket, had sent a
bullet into his brain and ended the bitter fight with debt. Since
then, no one but the widow and her daughter knew what the fight had
been, for Clay Westmore, the brother, was but a boy and in college at
the time. He had graduated only a few months before, and was now at
home, wrapped up, as Richard Travis had heard, in what to him was a
visionary scheme of some sort for discovering a large area of coal
and iron thereabouts. He had heard, too, that the young man had taken
hold of what had been left, and that often he had been seen following
the plough himself.

Travis drove through the driveway--then he pulled up the mares very
gently, got out and felt of their flanks.

"Take them to the barn and rub them off," he said, "while you wait.
And for a half hour bandage their hind legs--I don't want any wind
puffs from road work."

He started into the house. Then he turned and said: "Be here at the
door, Jim, by ten o'clock, sharp. I shall make another call after
this. Mind you now, ten o'clock, sharp."

At the library he knocked and walked in.

Mrs. Westmore sat by the fire. She was a small, daintily-made woman,
and beautiful even at fifty-five. She had keen, black eyes and
nervous, flighty ways. A smile, half cynical, half inviting, lit up
continuously her face.

"Richard?" she said, rising and taking his hand.

"Cousin Alethea--I thought you were Alice and I was going to surprise
her."

Mrs. Westmore laughed her metallic little laugh. It was habit. She
intended it to be reassuring, but too much of it made one nervous. It
was the laugh without the soul in it--the eye open and lighted, but
dead. It was a Damascus blade falling from the stricken arm to the
stone pavement and not against the ringing steel of an opponent.

"You will guess, of course, where she is," she said after they were
seated.

"No?" from Travis.

"Getting their Sunday School lesson--she, Uncle Bisco, and the
Bishop."

Travis frowned and gave a nervous twitch of his shoulders as he
turned around to find himself a chair.

"No one knows just how we feel towards Uncle Bisco and his wife,"
went on Mrs. Westmore in half apology--"she has been with us so long
and is now so old and helpless since they were freed; their children
have all left them--gone--no one knows where. And so Uncle Bisco and
Aunt Charity are as helpless as babes, and but for Alice they would
suffer greatly."

A sudden impulse seized Travis: "Let us go and peep in on them. We
shall have a good joke on Her Majesty."

Mrs. Westmore laughed, and they slipped quietly out to Uncle Bisco's
cabin. Down a shrubbery-lined walk they went--then through the woods
across a field. It was a long walk, but the path was firm and good,
and the moon lit it up. They came to the little cabin at last, in the
edge of another wood. Then they slipped around and peeped in the
window.

A small kerosene lamp sat on a table lighting up a room scrupulously
clean.

Uncle Bisco was very old. His head was, in truth, a cotton plant full
open. His face was intelligent, grave--such a face as Howard Weeden
only could draw from memory. He had finished his supper, and from the
remnants left on the plate it was plain that Alice Westmore had
prepared for the old man dainties which she, herself, could not
afford to indulge in.

By him sat his old wife, and on the other side of the fireplace was
the old overseer, his head also white, his face strong and
thoughtful. He was clean shaven, save a patch of short white
chin-whiskers, and his big straight nose had a slight hook of
shrewdness in it.

Alice Westmore was reading the chapter--her voice added to it an
hundred fold: "Let not your heart be troubled.... Ye believe in God,
believe also in me.... In my Father's house are many mansions...!"

The lamplight fell on her hair. It was brown where the light flashed
over it, and lay in rippling waves around her temples in a splendid
coil down the arch of her neck, and shining in strong contrast
through the gauzy dark sheen of her black gown. But where the light
fell, there was that suspicion of red which the last faint tendril a
dying sunbeam throws out in a parting clutch at the bosom of a cloud.

It gave one a feeling of the benediction of twilight.

And when she looked up, her eyes were the blessings poured
out--luminous, helpful, uplifting, restful,--certain of life and
immortality, full of all that which one sees not, when awake, but
only when in the borderland of sleep, and memory, unleashed, tracks
back on the trail of sweet days which once were.

They spake indeed always thus: "Let not your heart be troubled....
Peace, be still."

Her face did not seem to be a separate thing--apart--as with most
women. For there are women whose hair is one thing and whose face is
another. The hair is beautiful, pure, refined. The face beautiful,
merely. The hair decorous, quiet, unadorned and debauched not by
powder and paint, stands aloof as Desdemona, Ophelia or Rosalind. The
face, brazen, with a sharp-tongued, vulgar queen of a thing in its
center, on a throne, surrounded by perfumed nymphs, under the sensual
glare of two rose-colored lamps, sits and holds a Du Barry court.

They are neighbors, but not friends, and they live in the same
sphere, held together only by the law of gravity which holds to one
spot of earth the rose and the ragwort. And the hair, like the rose,
in all the purity of its own rich sweetness, all the naturalness of
its soul, sits and looks down upon the face as a queen would over the
painted yellow thing thrust by the law of life into her presence.

But the face of Alice Westmore was companion to her hair. The
firelight fell on it; and while the glow from the lamp fell on her
hair in sweet twilight shadows of good night, the rosy, purple beams
of the cheerful firelight lit up her face with the sweet glory of a
perpetual good morning.

Travis stood looking at her forgetful of all else. His lips were
firmly set, as of a strong mind looking on its life-dream, the quarry
of his hunter-soul all but in his grasp. Flashes of hope and little
twists of fear were there; then, as he looked again, she raised, half
timidly, her face as a Madonna asking for a blessing; and around his,
crept in the smile which told of hope long deferred.

Selfish, impure, ambitious, forceful and masterful as he was, he
stood hopeless and hungry-hearted before this pure woman. She had
been the dream of his life--all times--always--since he could
remember.

To own her--to win her!

As he looked up, the hardness of his face attracted even Mrs.
Westmore, smiling by his side at the scene before her. She looked up
at Travis, but when she saw his face the smile went out of hers. It
changed to fear.

All the other passions in his face had settled into one cruel cynical
smile around his mouth--a smile of winning or of death.

For the first time in her life she feared Richard Travis.

"I must go now," said Alice Westmore to the old men--"but I'll sing
you a verse or two."

The overseer leaned back in his chair. Uncle Bisco stooped forward,
his chin resting on his hickory staff.

And then like the clear notes of a spring, dripping drop by drop with
a lengthening cadence into the covered pool of a rock-lined basin,
came a simple Sunday School song the two old men loved so well.

There were tears in the old negro's eyes when she had finished. Then
he sobbed like a child.

Alice Westmore arose to go.

"Now, Bishop--" she smiled at the overseer--"don't keep Uncle Bisco up
all night talking about the war, and if you don't come by the house and
chat with mamma and me awhile, we'll be jealous."

The overseer looked up: "Miss Alice--I'm an ole man an' we ole men all
dream dreams when night comes. Moods come over us and, look where we
will, it all leads back to the sweet paths of the past. To-day--all
day--my mind has been on"--he stopped, afraid to pronounce the word and
hunting around in the scanty lexicon of his mind for some phrase of
speech, some word even that might not awaken in Alice Westmore memories
of the past.

Richard Travis had an intuition of things as naturally as an eagle has
the homing instinct, however high in air and beyond all earth's
boundaries he flies. In this instance Mrs. Westmore also had it, for she
looked up quickly at the man beside her. All the other emotions had
vanished from his face save the one appealing look which said: "Come,
let us go--we have heard enough."

Then they slipped back into the house.

Alice Westmore had stopped, smiling back from the doorway.

"On what, Bishop?" she finally asked.

He shook his head. "Jus' the dream of an ole man," he said. "Don't
bother about us two ole men. I'll be 'long presently."

"Bisco," said the old preacher after a while, "come mighty nigh
makin' a break then--but I've been thinkin' of Cap'n Tom all day. I
can't throw it off."

Bisco shook his head solemnly. "So have I--so have I. The older I
gits, the mo' I miss Marse Tom."

"I don't like the way things are goin'--in yonder"--and the preacher
nodded his head toward the house.

Uncle Bisco looked cautiously around to see that no one was near:
"He's doin' his bes'--the only thing is whether she can forgit Marse
Tom."

"Bisco, it ain't human nature for her to stan' up agin all that's
brought to bear on her. Cap'n Tom is dead. Love is only human at
las', an' like all else that's human it mus' fade away if it ain't
fed. It's been ten years an' mo'--sence--Cap'n Tom's light went out."

"The last day of November--'64--" said Uncle Bisco, "I was thar an'
seed it. It was at the Franklin fight."

"An' Dick Travis has loved her from his youth," went on the overseer,
"an' he loves her now, an' he's a masterful man."

"So is the Devil," whispered Uncle Bisco, "an' didn't he battle with
the angels of the Lord an' mighty nigh hurled 'em from the crystal
battlements."

"Bisco, I know him--I've knowed him from youth. He's a conjurin'
man--a man who does things--he'll win her--he'll marry her yet.
She'll not love him as she did Cap'n Tom. No--she'll never love
again. But life is one thing an' love is another, an' it ain't often
they meet in the same person. Youth mus' live even if it don't love,
an' the law of nature is the law of life."

"I'm afeered so," said the old negro, shaking his head, "I'm afeered
it'll be that way--but--I'd ruther see her die to-night."

"If God lets it be," said the preacher, "Bisco, if God lets it be--"
he said excitedly, "if he'll let Cap'n Tom die an' suffer the
martyrdom he suffered for conscience sake an' be robbed, as he was
robbed, of his home, an' of his love--if God'll do that, then all I
can say is, that after a long life walkin' with God, it'll be the
fus' time I've ever knowed Him to let the wrong win out in the end.
An' that ain't the kind of God I'm lookin' fur."

"Do you say that, Marse Hillyard?" asked the old negro quickly--his
eyes taking on the light of hope as one who, weak, comes under the
influence of a stronger mind. "Marse Hillyard, do you believe it?
Praise God."

"Bisco--I'm--I'm ashamed--why should I doubt Him--He's told me a
thousand truths an' never a lie."

"Praise God," replied the old man softly.

And so the two old men talked on, and their talk was of Captain Tom.
No wonder when the old preacher mounted his horse to go back to his
little cabin, all of his thoughts were of Captain Tom. No wonder
Uncle Bisco, who had raised him, went to bed and dreamed of Captain
Tom--dreamed and saw again the bloody Franklin fight.




CHAPTER IX

A MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING


In the library, Travis and Mrs. Westmore sat for some time in
silence. Travis, as usual, smoked, in his thoughtful way watching the
firelight which flickered now and then, half lighting up the room. It
was plain that both were thinking of a subject that neither wished to
be the first to bring up.

"I have been wanting all day to ask you about the mortgage," she said
to him, finally.

"Oh," said Travis, indifferently enough--"that's all right. I
arranged it at the bank to-day."

"I am so much obliged to you; it has been so on my mind," said his
companion. "We women are such poor financiers, I wonder how you men
ever have patience to bother with us. Did you get Mr. Shipton to
carry it at the bank for another year?"

"Why--I--you see, Cousin Alethea--Shipton's a close dog--and the most
unaccommodating fellow that ever lived when it comes to money. And
so--er--well--the truth is--is--I had to act quickly and for what I
thought was your interest."

Mrs. Westmore looked up quickly, and Travis saw the pained look in
her face. "So I bought it in myself," he went on, carelessly flecking
his cigar ashes into the fire. "I just had the judgment and sale
transferred to me--to accommodate you--Cousin Alethea--you
understand that--entirely for you. I hate to see you bothered this
way--I'll carry it as long as you wish."

She thanked him again, more with her eyes than her voice. Then there
crept over her face that look of trouble and sorrow, unlike any
Travis had ever seen there. Once seen on any human face it is always
remembered, for it is the same, the world over, upon its millions and
millions--that deadened look of trouble which carries with it the
knowledge that the spot called home is lost forever.

There are many shifting photographs from the camera called sorrow,
pictured on the delicate plate of the human soul or focused in the
face. There is the crushed look when Death takes the loved one, the
hardened look when an ideal is shattered, the look of dismay from
wrecked hopes and the cynical look from wrecked happiness--but none
of these is the numbed and dumb look of despair which confronts
humanity when the home is gone.

It runs not alone through the man family, but every other animal as
well, from the broken-hearted bird which sits on the nearby limb, and
sees the wreck of her home by the ravages of a night-prowling
marauder, to the squalidest of human beings, turning their backs
forever on the mud-hut that had once sheltered them.

To Mrs. Westmore it was a keen grief. Here had she come as a
bride--here had she lived since--here had been born her two
children--here occurred the great sorrow of her life.

And the sacredest memory, at last, of life, lies not in the
handclasp of a coming joy, but in the footfall of a vanishing sorrow.

Westmoreland meant everything to Mrs. Westmore--the pride of birth,
of social standing, the ties of motherhood, the very altar of her
life. And it was her husband's name and her own family. It meant she
was not of common clay, nor unknown, nor without influence. It was
bound around and woven into her life, and part of her very existence.

Home in the South means more than it does anywhere else on earth; for
local self-government--wherever the principle came from--finds its
very altar there. States-right is nothing but the home idea,
stretched over the state and bounded by certain lines. The peculiar
institutions of the South made every home a castle, a town, a
government, a kingdom in itself, in which the real ruler is a queen.

Ask the first negro or child met in the road, whose home is this, or
that, and one would think the entire Southland was widowed.

From the day she had entered it as a bride, Westmoreland, throughout
the County, had been known as the home of Mrs. Westmore.

She was proud of it. She loved it with that love which had come down
through a long line of cavaliers loving their castles.

And now she knew it must go, as well as that, sooner or later, Death
itself must come.

She knew Richard Travis, and she knew that, if from his life were
snatched the chance of making Alice Westmore his wife he would sell
the place as cold-bloodedly as Shipton would.

Travis sat smoking, but reading her. He spelled her thoughts as
easily as if they had been written on her forehead, for he was a man
who spelled. He smoked calmly and indifferently, but the one question
of his heart--the winning of Alice,--surged in his breast and it
said: "Now is the time--now--buy her--the mother. This is the one
thing which is her price."

He looked at Mrs. Westmore again. He scanned her closely, from her
foot to the dainty head of beautiful, half-grey hair. He could read
her as an open book--her veneration of all Westmoreland things--her
vanity--her pride of home and name and position; the overpowering
independence of that vanity which made her hold up her head in
company, just as in the former days, tho' to do it she must work,
scrub, pinch, ay, even go hungry.

He knew it all and he knew it better than she guessed--that it had
actually come to a question of food with them; that her son was a
geological dreamer, just out of college, and that Alice's meagre
salary at the run-down female college where she taught music was all
that stood between them and poverty of the bitterest kind.

For there is no poverty like the tyranny of that which sits on the
erstwhile throne of plenty.

He glanced around the room--the hall--the home--in his mind's
eye--and wondered how she did it--how she managed that poverty should
leave no trace of itself in the home, the well furnished and elegant
old home, from its shining, polished furniture and old silver to the
oiled floor of oak and ash.

Could he buy her--bribe her, win her to work for him? He started to
speak and say: "Cousin Alethea, may not all this be stopped, this
debt and poverty and make-believe--this suffering of pride,
transfixed by the spears of poverty? Let you and me arrange it, and
all so satisfactorily. I have loved Alice all my life."

There is the fool in every one of us. And that is what the fool in
Richard Travis wished him to say. What he did say was:

"Oh, it was nothing but purely business on my part--purely business.
I had the money and was looking for a good investment. I was glad to
find it. There are a hundred acres and the house left. And by the
way, Cousin Alethea, I just added five-hundred dollars more to the
principal,--thought, perhaps, you'd need it, you know? You'll find it
to your credit at Shipton's bank."

He smoked on as if he thought it was nothing. As a business fact he
knew the place was already mortgaged for all it was worth.

"Oh, how can we ever thank you enough?"

Travis glanced at her when she spoke. He flushed when he heard her
place a slight accent on the we. She glanced at him and then looked
into the fire. But in their glances which met, they both saw that the
other knew and understood.

"And by the way, Cousin Alethea," said Travis after a while, "of
course it is not necessary to let Alice know anything of this
business. It will only worry her unnecessarily."

"Of course not," said Mrs. Westmore.




CHAPTER X

A STAR AND A SATELLITE


An hour later Mrs. Westmore had gone to her room and Alice had been
singing his favorite songs. Her singing always had a peculiar
influence over Richard Travis--a moral influence, which, perhaps, was
the secret of its power; and all influence which is permanent is
moral. There was in it for him an uplifting force that he never
experienced save in her presence and under the influence of her
songs.

He was a brilliant man and he knew that if he won Alice Westmore it
must be done on a high plane. Women were his playthings--he had won
them by the score and flung them away when won. But all his
life--even when a boy--he had dreamed of finally winning Alice
Westmore and settling down.

Like all men who were impure, he made the mistake of thinking that
one day, when he wished, he could be pure.

Such a man may marry, but it is a thing of convenience, a matter in
which he selects some woman, who he knows will not be his mistress,
to become his housekeeper.

And thus she plods along in life, differing eventually only from his
mistress in that she is the mother of his children.

In all Richard's longings, too, for Alice Westmore, there was an
unconscious cause. He did not know it because he could not know.

Sooner or later love, which is loose, surfeits and sours. It is then
that it turns instinctively to the pure, as the Jews, straying from
their true God and meeting the chastisement of the sword of Babylon,
turned in their anguish to the city of their King.

Nature is inexorable, and love has its laws as fixed as those which
hold the stars in their course. And woe to the man or woman who
transgresses! He who, ere it is ripe, deflowers the bud of blossoming
love in wantonness and waste, in after years will watch and wait and
water it with tears, in vain, for that bloom will never come.

She came over by the fire. Her face was flushed; her beautiful sad
eyes lighted with excitement.

"Do you remember the first time I ever heard you sing, Alice?"

His voice was earnest and full of pathos, for him.

"Was it not when father dressed me as a gypsy girl and I rode my pony
over to The Gaffs and sang from horse-back for your grandfather?"

He nodded: "I thought you were the prettiest thing I ever saw, and I
have thought so ever since. That's when I fell in love with you."

"I remember quite distinctly what you did," she said. "You were a big
boy and you came up behind my pony and jumped on, frightening us
dreadfully."

"Tried to kiss you, didn't I?"

She laughed: "That was ever a chronic endeavor of your youth."

How pretty she looked. Had it been any other woman he would have
reached over and taken her hand.

"Overpower her, master her, make her love you by force of arms"--his
inner voice said.

He turned to the musing woman beside him and mechanically reached out
his hand. Hers lay on the arm of her chair. The next instant he would
have dropped his upon it and held it there. But as he made the motion
her eyes looked up into his, so passion-free and holy that his own
arm fell by his side.

But the little wave of passion in him only stirred him to his depths.
Ere she knew it or could stop him he was telling her the story of his
love for her. Poetry,--romance,--and with it the strength of
saying,--fell from his lips as naturally as snow from the clouds. He
went into the history of old loves--how, of all loves they are the
greatest--of Jacob who served his fourteen years for Rachel, of the
love of Petrarch, of Dante.

"Do you know Browning's most beautiful poem?" he asked at last. His
voice was tenderly mellow:

    "All that I know of a certain star
     Is, it can throw (like the angled spar)
     Now a dart of red, now a dart of blue;
     Till my friends have said they would fain see, too,
     My star that dartles the red and the blue!
     Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
     They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
     What matter to me if their star is a world?
     Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it."

"Alice," he said, drawing his chair closer to her, "I know I have no
such life to offer as you would bring to me. The best we men can do
is to do the best we can. We are saved only because there is one
woman we can look to always as our star. There is much of our past
that we all might wish to change, but change, like work, is the law
of life, and we must not always dream."

Quietly he had dropped his hand upon hers. Her own eyes were far
off--they were dreaming. So deep was her dream that she had not
noticed it. Passion practised, as he was, the torch of her hand
thrilled him as with wine; and as with wine was he daring.

"I know where your thoughts have been," he went on.

She looked up with a start and her hand slipped from under his into
her lap. It was a simple movement and involuntary--like that of the
little brown quail when she slips from the sedge-grass into the
tangled depths of the blossoming wild blackberry bushes at the far
off flash of a sharp-shinned hawk-wing, up in the blue. Nor could she
say whether she saw it, or whether it was merely a shadow, an
instinctive signal from the innocent courts of the sky to the
brood-children of her innocence below.

But he saw it and said quickly, changing with it the subject: "At
least were--but all that has passed. I need you, Alice," he went on
passionately--"in my life, in my work. My home is there, waiting! It
has been waiting all these years for you--its mistress--the only
mistress it shall ever have. Your mother"--Alice looked at him
surprised.

"Your mother--you,--perhaps, had not thought of that--your mother
needs the rest and the care we could give her. Our lives are not
always our own," he went on gravely--"oftentimes it belongs partly to
others--for their happiness."

He felt that he was striking a winning chord.

"You can love me if you would say so," he said, bending low over her.

This time, when his hand fell on hers, she did not move. Surprised,
he looked into her eyes. There were tears there.

Travis knew when he had gone far enough. Reverently he kissed her
hand as he said:

"Never mind--in your own time, Alice. I can wait--I have waited long.
Twenty years," he added, patiently, even sweetly, "and if need be,
I'll wait twenty more."

"I'll go now," he said, after a moment.

She looked at him gratefully, and arose. "One moment, Richard," she
said--"but you were speaking of mother, and knowing your zeal for her
I was afraid you might--might--the mortgage has been troubling her."

"Oh, no--no"--he broke in quickly--"I did nothing--absolutely
nothing--though I wanted to for your sake."

"I'm so glad," she said--"we will manage somehow. I am so sensitive
about such things."

"I'll come to-morrow afternoon and bring your mare."

She smiled, surprised.

"Yes, your mare--I happened on her quite unexpectedly in Tennessee. I
have bought her for you--she is elegant, and I wish you to ride her
often. I have given Jim orders that no one but you shall ride her. If
it is a pretty day to-morrow I shall be around in the afternoon, and
we will ride down to the bluffs five miles away to see the sunset."

The trotters were at the door. He took her hand as he said good-bye,
and held it while he added:

"Maybe you'd better forget all I said to-night--be patient with
me--remember how long I have waited."

He was off and sprang into the buggy, elated. Never before had she
let him hold her hand even for a moment. He felt, he knew, that he
would win her.

He turned the horses and drove off.

From Westmoreland Travis drove straight toward the town. The
trotters, keen and full of play, flew along, tossing their queenly
heads in the very exuberance of life.

At The Gaffs, he drew rein: "Now, Jim, I'll be back at midnight. You
sleep light until I come in, and have their bedding dry and blankets
ready."

He tossed the boy a dollar as he drove off.

Up the road toward the town he drove, finally slackening his
trotters' speed as he came into the more thickly settled part of the
outskirts. Sand Mountain loomed high in the faint moonlight, and at
its base, in the outposts of the town, arose the smoke-stack of the
cotton mills.

Around it lay Cottontown.

Slowly he brought the nettled trotters down to a walk. Quietly he
turned them into a shaded lane, overhung with forest trees, near
which a cottage, one of the many belonging to the mill, stood in the
shadow of the forest.

Stopping his horses in the shadow, he drew out his watch and pressed
the stem. It struck eleven.

He drew up the buggy-top and taking the little silver whistle from
his pocket, gave a low whistle.

It was ten minutes later before the side door of the cottage opened
softly and a girl came noiselessly out. She slipped out, following
the shadow line of the trees until she came up to the buggy. Then she
threw the shawl from off her face and head and stood smiling up at
Travis. It had been a pretty face, but now it was pinched by overwork
and there was the mingling both of sadness and gladness in her eyes.
But at sight of Travis she blushed joyfully, and deeper still when he
held out his hand and drew her into the buggy and up to the seat
beside him.

"Maggie"--was all he whispered. Then he kissed her passionately on
her lips. "I am glad I came," he went on, as he put one arm around
her and drew her to him--"you're flushed and the ride will do you
good."

She was satisfied to let her head lie on his shoulder.

"They are beauties"--she said after a while, as the trotters'
thrilling, quick step brought the blood tingling to her veins.

"Beauties for the beauty," said Travis, kissing her again. Her brown
hair was in his face and the perfume of it went through him like the
whistling flash of the first wild doe he had killed in his first
boyish hunt and which he never forgot.

"You do love me," she said at last, looking up into his face, where
her head rested. She could not move because his arm held her girlish
form to him with an overpowering clasp.

"Why?" he asked, kissing her again and in sheer passionate excess
holding his lips on hers until she could not speak, but only look
love with her eyes. When she could, she sighed and said:

"Because, you could not make me so happy if you didn't."

He relaxed his arm to control the trotters, which were going too fast
down the road. She sat up by his side and went on.

"Do you know I have thought lots about what you said last Saturday
night?"

"Why, what?" he asked.

She looked pained that he had forgotten.

"About--about--our bein' married to each
other--even--even--if--if--there's no preacher. You know--that true
love makes marriages, and not a ceremony--and--and--that the heart is
the priest to all of us, you know!"

Travis said nothing. He had forgotten all about it.

"One thing I wrote down in my little book when I got back home an'
memorized it--Oh, you can say such beautiful things."

He seized her and kissed her again.

"I am so happy with you--always--" she laughed.

He drove toward the shaded trees down by the river.

"I want you to see how the setting moonlight looks on the river," he
said. "There is nothing in all nature like it. It floats like a
crescent above, falling into the arms of its companion below. All
nature is love and never fails to paint a love scene in preference
to all others, if permitted. How else can you account for it making
two lover moons fall into each other's arms," he laughed.

She looked at him enraptured. It was the tribute which mediocrity
pays to genius.

Presently they passed by Westmoreland, and from Alice's window a
light shone far out into the golden tinged leaves of the beeches
near.

Travis glanced up at it. Then at the pretty mill-girl by his side:

"A star and--a satellite!"--he smiled to himself.




CHAPTER XI

A MIDNIGHT BURIAL


It was growing late when the old preacher left Westmoreland and rode
leisurely back toward the cabin on Sand Mountain. The horse he was
riding--a dilapidated roan--was old and blind, but fox-trotted along
with the easy assurance of having often travelled the same road.

The bridle rested on the pommel of the saddle. The old man's head was
bent in deep thought, and the roan, his head also down and half
dreaming, jogged into the dark shadows which formed a wooded gulch,
leading into the valley and from thence into the river.

There is in us an unnameable spiritual quality which, from lack of a
more specific name, we call mental telepathy. Some day we shall know
more about it, just as some day we shall know what unknown force it
is which draws the needle to the pole.

It is the border land of the spiritual--a touch of it, given, to let
us know there is more and in great abundance in the country to which
we ultimately shall go,--a glimpse of the kingdom which is to be.

To-night, this influence was on the old man. The theme of his
thoughts was, Captain Tom. Somehow he felt that even then Captain Tom
was near him. How--where--why--he could not tell. He merely felt it.

And so the very shadows of the trees grew uncanny to him as he rode
by them and the slight wind among them mourned _Captain
Tom--Captain Tom_.

It was a desolate place in the narrow mountain road and scarcely
could the old man see the white sand which wound in and through it,
and then out again on the opposite side into the clearing beyond the
scraggy side of Sand Mountain. But the horse knew every foot of the
way, and though it was always night with him, instinct had taught him
a sure footing.

Suddenly the rider was awakened from his reverie by the old horse
stopping so suddenly as almost to unseat him. With a snort the roan
had stopped and had thrown up his head, quivering with fear, while
with his nose he was trying to smell out the queer thing which stood
in his path.

The moon broke out from behind a cloud at the same moment, and there,
in the middle of the road, not ten yards from him, stood a heavily
built, rugged, black-bearded man in a ragged slouched hat and
pointing a heavy revolver at the rider's head.

"Hands up, Hillard Watts!"

The old man looked quietly into the muzzle of the revolver and said,
with a laugh:

"This ain't 'zactly my benediction time, Jack Bracken, an' I've no
notion of h'istin' my arms an' axin' a blessin' over you an' that old
pistol. Put it up an' tell me what you want," he said more softly.

"Well, you do know me," said the man, coming forward and thrusting
his pistol into its case. "I wa'nt sho' it was you," he said, "and I
wa'nt sho' you'd kno' me if it was. In my business I have to be
mighty keerful," he added with a slight laugh.

He came up to the saddle-skirt and held out his hand, half
hesitatingly, as he spoke.

The Bishop--as every one knew him--glanced into the face before him
and saw something which touched him quickly. It was grief-stricken,
and sorrow sat in the fierce eyes, and in the shadows of the dark
face. And through it all, a pleading, beseeching appeal for sympathy
ran as he half doubtingly held out his hand.

"Why,--yes--, I'll take it, Jack, robber that you are," said the old
man cheerily. "You may not be as bad as they say, an' no man is worse
than his heart. But what in the worl' do you want to hold up as po' a
man as me--an' if I do say it, yo' frien' when you was a boy?"

"I know," said the other--"I know. I don't want yo' money, even if
you had it. I want you. You've come as a God-send. I--I couldn't bury
him till you'd said somethin'."

His voice choked--he shook with a suppressed sob.

The bishop slid off his horse: "What is it, Jack? You hain't kilt
anybody, have you?"

"No--no"--said the other--"it's little--little Jack--he's dead."

The Bishop looked at him inquiringly. He had never before heard of
little Jack.

"I--I dunno', Jack," he said. "You'll have to tell me all. I hain't
seed you sence you started in your robber career after the war--sence
I buried yo' father," he added. "An' a fine, brave man he was,
Jack--a fine, brave man--an' I've wondered how sech a man's son
could ever do as you've done."

"Come," said the other--"I'll tell you. Come, an' say a prayer over
little Jack fust. You must do it"--he said almost fiercely--"I won't
bury him without a prayer--him that was an angel an' all I had on
earth. Hitch yo' hoss just outer the road, in the thicket, an' follow
me."

The Bishop did as he was told, and Jack Bracken led the way down a
rocky gulch under the shaggy sides of Sand Mountain, furzed with
scraggy trees and thick with underbrush and weeds.

It was a tortuous path and one in which the old man himself, knowing,
as he thought he did, every foot of the country around, could easily
have been lost. Above, through the trees, the moon shone dimly, and
no path could be seen under foot. But Jack Bracken slouched heavily
along, in a wabbling, awkward gait, never once looking back to see if
his companion followed.

For a half mile they went through what the Bishop had always thought
was an almost impenetrable cattle trail. At last they wound around a
curve on the densely wooded side of the mountain, beyond which lay
the broad river breathing out frosty mist and vapor from its sleeping
bosom.

Following a dry gulch until it ended abruptly at the river's bluff,
around the mouth of which great loose rocks lay as they had been
washed by the waters of many centuries, and bushes grew about, the
path terminated abruptly. It overlooked the river romantically, with
a natural rock gallery in front.

Jack Bracken stopped and sat down on one of the rocks. From
underneath he drew forth a lantern and prepared to light it. "This is
my home," he said laconically.

The Bishop looked around: "Well, Jack, but this is part of my own
leetle forty-acre farm. Why, thar's my cabin up yander. We've wound
in an' aroun' the back of my place down by the river! I never seed
this hole befo'."

"I knew it was yo's," said the outlaw quietly. "That's why I come
here. Many a Sunday night I've slipped up to the little church winder
an' heard you preach--me an' po' little Jack. Oh, he loved to hear
the Bible read an' he never forgot nothin' you ever said. He knowed
all about Joseph an' Moses an' Jesus, an' last night when he died o'
that croup befo' I c'ud get him help or anything, he wanted you, an'
he said he was goin' to the lan' where you said Jesus was--"

He broke down--he could not say it.

Stepping into the mouth of the cave, he struck a match, when out of
sight of the entrance way, and stepping from stone to stone he guided
the Bishop down some twenty feet, following the channel the water had
cut on its way underground to the river. Here another opening entered
into the dry channel, and into it he stepped.

It was a nicely turned cave--a natural room,--arched above with
beautiful white lime-rock, the stalactites hanging in pointed
clusters, their starry points twinkling above like stars in a winter
sky. Underneath, the soft sand made a clean, warm floor, and the
entire cave was so beautiful that the old man could do nothing but
look and admire, as the light fell on stalagmite and ghostly columns
and white sanded floors.

"Beautiful," he said--"Jack, you cudn't he'p gettin' relig'un here."

"Little Jack loved 'em," said the outlaw. "He'd lay here ev'y night
befo' he'd go to sleep an' look up an' call it his heaven; an' he
said that big column thar was the great white throne, an' them big
things up yander with wings was angels. He had all them other columns
named for the fellers you preached about--Moses an' Aaron an' Joseph
an' all of 'em, an' that kind o' double one lookin' like a woman
holding her child, he called Mary an' little Jesus."

"He's gone to a prettier heaven than this," said the Bishop looking
down on the little figure, with face as pale and white as any of the
columns around him, neatly dressed and wrapped, save his face, in an
old oil cloth and lying on the little bed that sat in a corner.

The old man sat down very tenderly by the little dead boy and,
pulling out a testament from his pocket, read to the outlaw, whose
whole soul was centered in all he said, the comforting chapter which
Miss Alice had that night read to the old negro: "_Let not your
hearts be troubled...._"

He explained as he read, and told the father how little Jack was now
in one of the many mansions and far better off than living in a cave,
the child of an outlaw, for the Bishop did not mince his words. He
dwelt on it, that God had taken the little boy for love of him, and
to give him a better home and perhaps as a means of changing the
father, and when he said the last prayer over the dead child asking
for forgiveness for the father's sins, that he might meet the little
one in heaven, the heart of the outlaw burst with grief and
repentance within him.

He fell at the old man's feet, on his knees--he laid his big shaggy
head in the Bishop's lap and wept as he had never wept before.

"There can't be--you don't mean," he said--"that there is forgiveness
for me--that I can so live that I'll see little Jack again!"

"That's just what I mean, Jack," said the old man--"here it all
is--here--in a book that never lies, an' all vouched for by Him who
could walk in here to-night and lay His sweet hands on little Jack
an' tell him to rise an' laugh agin, an' he'd do it. You turn about
now an' see if it ain't so--an' that you'll be better an' happier."

"But--my God, man--you don't know--you don't understan'. I've robbed,
I've killed. Men have gone down befo' my bullets like sheep. They was
shootin' at me, too--but I shot best. I'm a murderer."

The old Bishop looked at him calmly.

"So was Moses and David," he replied--"men after God's own heart. An'
so was many another that's now called a saint, from old Hickory
Jackson up."

"But I'm a robber--a thief"--began Jack Bracken.

"We all steal," said the old man sadly shaking his head--"it's human
nature. There's a thief in every trade, an' every idle hand is a
robber, an' every idle tongue is a thief an' a liar. We all steal.
But there's somethin' of God an' divinity in all of us, an' in spite
of our shortcomin' it'll bring us back at last to our Father's home
if we'll give it a chance. God's Book can't lie, an' it says: '_Tho'
your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow!_' ... an' then
agin, _shall have life everlasting!_"

"Life everlastin'," repeated the outlaw. "Do you believe that? Oh, if
it was only so! To live always up there an' with little Jack. How do
you know it ain't lyin'?--It's too gran' to be so. How do you know it
ain't lyin', I say? Hillard Watts, are you handin' it out to me
straight about this here Jesus Christ?" he cried bitterly.

"Well, it's this way, Jack," said the old man, "jes' this away an'
plain as the nose on yo' face: Now here's me, ain' it? Well, you know
I won't lie to you. You believe me, don't you?"

The outlaw nodded.

"Why?" asked the Bishop.

"Because you ain't never lied to me," said the other. "You've allers
told me the truth about the things I know to be so."

"But now, suppose," said the old man, "I'd tell you about somethin'
you had never seed--that, for instance, sence you've been an outcast
from society an' a livin' in this cave, I've seed men talk to each
other a hundred miles apart, with nothin' but a wire betwix' 'em."

"That's mighty hard to believe," said the outlaw grimly.

"But I've seed it done," said the Bishop.

"Do you mean it?" asked the other.

"As I live, I have," said the Bishop.

"Then it's so," said Jack.

"Now that's faith, Jack--an' common sense, too. We know what'll be
the earthly end of the liar, an' the thief, an' the murderer, an' him
that's impure--because we see 'em come to thar end all the time. It
don't lie when it tells you the good are happy, an' the hones' are
elevated an' the mem'ry of the just shall not perish, because them
things we see come so. Now, if after tellin' you all that, that's
true, it axes you to believe when it says there is another life--a
spiritual life, which we can't conceive of, an' there we shall live
forever, can't you believe that, too, sence it ain't never lied about
what you can see, by your own senses? Why ever' star that shines, an'
ever' beam of sunlight fallin' on the earth, an' ever' beat of yo'
own heart by some force that we know not of, all of them is mo'
wonderful than the telegraph, an' the livin' agin of the spirit ain't
any mo' wonderful than the law that holds the stars in their places.
You'll see little Jack agin as sho' as God lives an' holds the worl'
in His hand."

The outlaw sat mute and motionless, and a great light of joy swept
over his face.

"By God's help I'll do it"--and he bowed his head in prayer--the
first he had uttered since he was a boy.

It was wonderful to see the happy and reconciled change when he arose
and tenderly lifted the dead child in his arms. His face was
transformed with a peace the old man had never seen before in any
human being.

Strong men are always strong--in crime--in sin. When they reform it
is the reformation of strength. Such a change came over Jack Bracken,
the outlaw.

He carried his dead child to the next room: "I've got his grave
already chiseled out of the rocks. I'll bury him here--right under
the columns he called Mary and little Jesus, that he loved to talk of
so much."

"It's fitten"--said the old man tenderly--"it's fitten an' beautiful.
The fust burial we know of in the Bible is where Abraham bought the
cave of Machpelah for to bury Sarah, his wife. And as Abraham bought
it of Ephron, the Hittite, and offered it to Abraham for to bury his
dead out of his sight, so I give this cave to you, Jack Bracken,
forever to be the restin' place of little Jack."

And so, tenderly and with many kisses did they bury little Jack,
sinless and innocent, deep in the pure white rock, covered as he was
with purity and looking ever upwards toward the statue above, wherein
Nature's chisel had carved out a Madonna and her child.




CHAPTER XII

JACK BRACKEN


Jack Bracken was comfortably fixed in his underground home. There was
every comfort for living. It was warm in winter and cool in summer,
and in another apartment adjoining his living room was what he called
a kitchen in which a spring of pure water, trickling down from rock
to rock, formed in a natural basin of whitest rock below.

"Jack," said the old man, "won't you tell me about yo'self an' how
you ever got down to this? I knowed you as a boy, up to the time you
went into the army, an' if I do say it to yo' face, you were a brave
hon'rble boy that never forgot a frien' nor--"

"A foe," put in Jack quickly. "Bishop, if I cu'd only forgive my
foes--that's been the ruin of me."

The old man was thoughtful a while: "Jack, that's a terrible thing in
the human heart--unforgiveness. It's to life what a drought is to
Nature--an' it spiles mo' people than any other weakness. But that
don't make yo' no wuss than the rest of us, nor does robbery nor even
murder. So there's a chance for you yet, Jack--a mighty fine chance,
too, sence yo' heart is changed."

"Many a time, Jack, many a time when the paper 'ud be full of yo'
holdin' up a train or shootin' a shar'ff, or robbin' or killin', I'd
tell 'em what a good boy you had been, brave an' game but revengeful
when aroused. I'd tell 'em how you dared the bullets of our own men,
after the battle of Shiloh, to cut down an' carry off a measley
little Yankee they'd hung up as a spy 'cause he had onct saved yo'
father's life. You shot two of our boys then, Jack."

"They was a shootin' me, too," he said quietly. "I caught two bullets
savin' that Yankee. But he was no spy; he was caught in a Yankee
uniform an'--an' he saved my father, as you said--that settled it
with me."

"It turned our boys agin you, Jack."

"Yes, an' the Yankees were agin me already--that made all the worl'
agin me, an' it's been agin me ever since--they made me an outlaw."

The old man softened: "How was it, Jack? I knowed you was driven to
it."

"They shot my father--waylaid and killed him--some home-made Yankee
bush-whackers that infested these hills--as you know."

The Bishop nodded. "I know--I know--it was awful. 'But vengeance is
mine--I will repay'--saith the Lord."

"Well, I was young, an' my father--you know how I loved him. Befo' I
c'ud get home they had burned our house, killed my sick mother from
exposure and insulted my sisters."

"Jack," said the old man hotly--"a home-made Yankee is a 'bomination
to the Lord. He's a twin brother to the Copperhead up north."

"My little brother--they might have spared him," went on the
outlaw--"they might have spared him. He tried to defen' his mother
an' sisters an' they shot him down in col' blood."

"'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord," replied the old man sadly.

"Well, I acted as His agent that time,"--his eyes were hot with a
bright glitter. "I put on their uniform an' went after 'em. I j'ined
'em--the devils! An' they had a nigger sarjent an' ten of their
twenty-seven was niggers, wearin' a Yankee uniform. I j'ined
'em--yes,--for wasn't I the agent of the Lord?" He laughed bitterly.
"An' didn't He say: 'He that killeth with the sword must be killed
with the sword.' One by one they come up missin', till I had killed
all but seven. These got panicky--followed by an unknown doom an'
they c'udn't see it, for it come like a thief at midnight an' agin
like a pesterlence it wasted 'em at noonday. They separated--they
tried to fly--they hid--but I followed 'em 'an I got all but one. He
fled to California."

"It was awful, Jack--awful--God he'p you."

"Then a price was put on my head. I was Jack Bracken, the spy and the
outlaw. I was not to be captured, but shot and hung. Then I cut down
that Yankee an' you all turned agin me. I was hunted and hounded. I
shot--they shot. I killed an' they tried to. I was shot down three
times. I've got bullets in me now.

"After the war I tried to surrender. I wanted to quit and live a
decent life. But no, they put a bigger price on my head. I came home
like other soldiers an' went to tillin' my farm. They ran me
away--they hunted an' hounded me. Civilization turned ag'in me.
Society was my foe. I was up ag'in the fust law of Nature. It is the
law of the survival--the wild beast that, cowered, fights for his
life. Society turned on me--I turned on Society."

"But there was one thing that happen'd that put the steel in me wuss
than all. All through them times was one star I loved and hoped for.
I was to marry her when the war closed. She an' her sister--the
pretty one--they lived up yander on the mountain side. The pretty one
died. But when I lost faith in Margaret Adams, I lost it in mankind.
I'd ruther a seen her dead. It staggered me--killed the soul in
me--to think that an angel like her could fall an' be false."

"I don't blame you," said the old man. "I've never understood it
yet."

"I was to marry Margaret. I love her yet," he added simply. "When I
found she was false I went out--and--well, you know the rest."

He took a turn around the room, picked up one of little Jack's shoes,
and cried over it.

"So I married his mother--little Jack's mother, a mountain lass that
hid me and befriended me. She died when the boy was born. His granny
kep' him while I was on my raids--nobody knowed it was my son. His
granny died two years ago. This has been our home ever sence, an' not
once, sence little Jack has been with me, have I done a wrong deed.
Often an' often we've slipt up to hear you preach--what you've said
went home to me."

"Jack," said the old man suddenly aroused--"was that you--was it you
been puttin' them twenty dollar gol' pieces in the church
Bible--between the leds, _ever'_ month for the las' two years? By it
I've kep' up the po' of Cottontown. I've puzzled an' wonder'd--I've
thought of a dozen fo'ks--but I sed nothin'--was it you?"

The outlaw smiled: "It come from the rich an' it went to the po'.
Come," he said--"that's somethin' we must settle."

He took up the lantern and led the way into the other room. Under a
ledge of rocks, securely hid, sat, in rows, half a dozen common water
buckets, made of red cedar, with tops fitting securely on them.

The outlaw spread a blanket on the sand, then knelt and, taking up a
bucket, removed the top and poured out its contents on the blanket.
They chuckled and rolled and tumbled over each other, the yellow
eagles and half eagles, like thoroughbred colts turned out in the
paddocks for a romp.

The old man's knees shook under him. He trembled so that he had to
sit down on the blanket. Then he ran his hand through them--his
fingers open, letting the coins fall through playfully.

Never before had he seen so much gold. Poor as he was and had ever
been--much and often as he had suffered--he and his, for the
necessities of life, even, knowing its value and the use he might
make of it, it thrilled him with a strange, nervous longing--a
childish curiosity to handle it and play with it.

Modest and brave men have looked on low-bosomed women in the glitter
of dissipative lights with the same feeling.

The old man gazed, silent--doubtless with the same awe which Keats
gave to Cortez, when he first looked on the Pacific and stood

    "Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

The outlaw lifted another bucket and took off the lid. It also was
full. "There are five mo'," he said--"that last one is silver an'
this one--" He lifted the lid of a small cedar box. In it was a large
package, wrapped in water-proof. Unravelling it, he shoved out
packages of bank bills of such number and denomination as fairly made
the old preacher wonder.

"How much in all, Jack?"

"A little the rise of one hundred thousand dollars."

He pushed them back and put the buckets under their ledge of rocks.
"I'd give it all just to have little Jack here agin--an'--an'--start
out--a new man. This has cost me ten years of outlawry an' fo'teen
bullets. Now I've got all this an'--well--a hole in the groun' an'
little Jack in the hole. If you wanter preach a sermon on the folly
of pilin' up money," he went on half ironically, "here is yo' tex'.
All me an' little Jack needed or cu'd use, was a few clothes, some
bac'n an' coffee an' flour. Often I'd fill my pockets an' say: 'Well,
I'll buy somethin' I want, an' that little Jack will want.' I'd go to
town an' see it all, an' think an' puzzle an' wonder--then I'd come
home with a few toys, maybe, an' bac'n an' flour an' coffee."

"With all our money we can't buy higher than our source, an' when we
go we leave even that behind," he added.

"The world," said the old man quaintly, "is full of folks who have
got a big pocket-book an' a bac'n pedigree."

"Do you know who this money belongs to?" he asked the outlaw.

"Every dollar of it," said Jack Bracken. "It come from railroads,
banks and express companies. I didn't feel squirmish about takin' it,
for all o' them are robbers. The only diff'r'nce betwix' them an' me
is that they rob a little every day, till they get their pile, an' I
take mine from 'em, all at onct."

He thought awhile, then he said: "But it must all go back to 'em,
Jack. Let them answer for their own sins. Leave it here until next
week--an' then we will come an' haul it fifty miles to the next town,
where you can express it to them without bein' known, or havin'
anybody kno' what's in the buckets till you're safe back here in this
town. I'll fix it an' the note you are to write. They'll not pester
you after they get their money. The crowd you've named never got hot
under a gold collar. A clean shave will change you so nobody will
suspect you, an' there's a good openin' in town for a blacksmith, an'
you can live with me in my cabin."

"But there's one thing I've kept back for the las'," said Jack, after
they had gone into the front part of the room and sat down on the
deer skins there.

"That sword there"--and he pointed to the wall where it hung.

The Bishop glanced up, and as he did so he felt a strange thrill of
recognition run through him--"It belongs to Cap'n Tom," said Jack
quietly.

The old man sprang up and took it reverently, fondly down.

"Jack--" he began.

"I was at Franklin," went on Jack proudly. "I charged with old Gen.
Travis over the breastworks near the Carter House. I saw Cap'n Tom
when he went under."

"Cap'n Tom," repeated the old man slowly.

"Cap'n Tom, yes--he saved my life once, you know. He cut me down when
they were about to hang me for a spy--you heard about it?"

The Bishop nodded.

"It was his Company that caught me an' they was glad of any excuse to
hang me. An' they mighty nigh done it, but Cap'n Tom came up in time
to cut me down an' he said he'd make it hot for any man that teched
me, that I was a square prisoner of war, an' he sent me to Johnson
Island. Of course it didn't take me long to get out of that hole--I
escaped."

The Bishop was silent, looking at the sword.

"Well, at Franklin, when I seed Cap'n Tom dyin' as I tho'rt, shunned
by the Yankees as a traitor----"

"As a traitor?" asked the old man hotly--"what, after Shiloh--after
he give up Miss Alice for the flag he loved an' his old grand sire
an' The Gaffs an' all of us that loved him--you call that a traitor?"

"You never heard," said Jack, "how old Gen'l Travis charged the
breastworks at Franklin and hit the line where Cap'n Tom's battery
stood. Nine times they had charged Cap'n Tom's battery that
night--nine times he stood his ground an' they melted away around it.
But when he saw the line led by his own grandsire the blood in him
was thicker than water and----"

"An' whut?" gasped the Bishop.

"Well, why they say it was a drunken soldier in his own battery who
struck him with the heavy hilt of a sword. Any way I found the old
Gen'l cryin' over him: 'My Irish Gray--my Irish Gray,' he kept
sayin'. 'I might have known it was you,' and the old Gen'l charged on
leaving him for dead. An' so I found him an' tuck him in my arms an'
carried him to my own cabin up yonder on the mountain--carried him
an'----"

"An' whut?"--asked the old man, grasping the outlaw's
shoulder--"Didn't he die? We've never been able to hear from him."

Jack shook his head. "It 'ud been better for him if he had"--and he
touched his forehead significantly.

"Tell me, Jack--quick--tell it all," exclaimed the old man, still
gripping Jack's shoulder.

"There's nothin' to tell except that I kept him ever
sence--here--right here for two years, with little Jack an' Ephrum,
the young nigger that was his body servant--he's been our cook an'
servant. He never would leave Cap'n Tom, followed me offen the field
of Franklin. An' mighty fond of each other was all three of 'em."

The old man turned pale and his voice trembled so with excitement he
could hardly say:

"Where is he, Jack? My God--Cap'n Tom--he's been here all this time
too--an' me awonderin'--"

"Right here, Bishop--kind an' quiet and teched in his head, where the
sword-hilt crushed his skull. All these years I've cared for him--me
an' Ephrum, my two boys as I called 'em--him an' little Jack. An'
right here he staid contented like till little Jack died last
night--then--"

"In God's name--quick!--tell me--Jack--"

"That's the worst of it--Bishop--when he found little Jack was dead
he wandered off--"

"When?" almost shouted the old man.

"To-day--this even'. I have sent Eph after him--an' I hope he has
found him by now an' tuck him somewhere. Eph'll never stop till he
does."

"We must find him, Jack. Cap'n Tom alive--thank God--alive, even if
he is teched in his head. Oh, God, I might a knowed it--an' only
to-day I was doubtin' You."

He fell on his knees and Jack stood awed in the presence of the great
emotion which shook the old man.

Finally he arose. "Come--Jack--let us go an' hunt for Cap'n Tom."

But though they hunted until the moon went down they found no trace
of him. For miles they walked, or took turn about in riding the old
blind roan.

"It's no use, Bishop," said Jack. "We will sleep a while and begin
to-morrow. Besides, Eph is with him. I feel it--he'll take keer o'
him."

That is how it came that at midnight, that Saturday night, the old
Bishop brought home a strange man to live in the little cabin in his
yard.

That is how, a week later, all the South was stirred over the
strange return of a fortune to the different corporations from which
it had been taken, accompanied by a drawling note from Jack Bracken
saying he returned ill-gotten gain to live a better life.

It ended laconically:

"_An' maybe you'd better go an' do likewise._"

The dim starlight was shining faintly through the cracks of the
outlaw's future home when the old man showed him in.

"Now, Jack," he said, "it's nearly mornin' an' the old woman may be
wild an' raise sand. But learn to lay low an' shoe hosses. She was
bohn disapp'inted--maybe because she wa'n't a boy," he whispered.

There was a whinny outside, in a small paddock, where a nearby stable
stood: "That's Cap'n Tom's horse," said the old man--"I mus' go see
if he's hungry."

"I've kept his horse these ten years, hopin' maybe he'd come back
agin. It's John Paul Jones--the thoroughbred, that the old General
give him."

"I remember him," said Jack.

The great bloodlike horse came up and rubbed his nose on the old
man's shoulder.

"Hungry, John Paul?"

"It's been a job to get feed fur him, po' as I've
been--but--but--he's Cap'n Tom's. You kno'--"

"An' Cap'n Tom will ride him yet," said Jack.

"Do you believe it, Jack?" asked the old man huskily "God be
praised!"

That Saturday night was one never to be forgotten by others beside
Jack Bracken and the old preacher of Cottontown.

When Helen Conway, after supper, sought her drunken father and
learned that he really intended to have Lily and herself go into the
cotton mills, she was crushed for the first time in her life.

An hour later she sent a boy with a note to The Gaffs to Harry
Travis.

He brought back an answer that made her pale with wounded love and
grief. Not even Mammy Maria knew why she had crept off to bed. But in
the night the old woman heard sobs from the young girl's room where
she and her sister slept.

"What is it, chile?" she asked as she slipped from her own cot in the
adjoining little room and went in to Helen's.

The girl had been weeping all night--she had no mother--no one to
whom she could unbosom her heart--no one but the old woman who had
nursed her from her infancy. This kind old creature sat on the bed
and held the girl's sobbing head on her lap and stroked her cheek.
She knew and understood--she asked no questions:

"It isn't that I must work in the mill," she sobbed to the old
woman--"I can do that--anything to help out--but--but--to think that
Harry loves me so little as to give me up for--for--that."

"Don't cry, chile," said Mammy soothingly--"It ain't registered that
you gwine wuck in that mill yit--I ain't made my afferdavit yit."

"But Harry doesn't love me--Oh, he doesn't love me," she wept. "He
would not give me up for anything if he did."

"I'm gwine give that Marse Harry a piece of my mind when I see
him--see if I don't. Don't you cry, chile--hold up yo' haid an' be a
Conway. Don't you ever let him know that yo' heart is bustin' for him
an' fo' the year is out we'll have that same Marse Harry acrawlin' on
his very marrow bones to aix our forgiveness. See if we won't."

It was poor consolation to the romantic spirit of Helen Conway.
Daylight found her still heart-broken and sobbing in the old woman's
lap.




PART THIRD--THE GIN




CHAPTER I

ALICE WESTMORE


It is remarkable how small a part of our real life the world
knows--how little our most intimate friends know of the secret
influences which have proven to be climaxes, at the turning points of
our existence.

There was no more beautiful woman in Alabama than Alice Westmore; and
throughout that state, where the song birds seem to develop,
naturally, along with the softness of the air, and the gleam of the
sunshine, and the lullaby of the Gulf's soft breeze among the pine
trees, there was no one, they say, who could sing as she sang.

And she seemed to have caught it from her native mocking-birds, so
natural was it. Not when they sing in the daylight, when everything
is bright and joyous and singing is so easy; but when they waken at
midnight amid the _arbor vitæ_ trees, and under the sweet, sad
influence of a winter moon, pour out their half awakened notes to the
star-sprays which fall in mist to blend and sparkle around the soft
neck of the night.

For like the star-sprays her notes were as clear; and through them
ran a sadness as of a mist of moonlight. And just as moonbeams, when
they mingle with the mist, make the melancholy of night, so the
memory of a dead love ran through everything Alice Westmore sang.

And this made her singing divine.

Why should it be told? What right has a blacksmith to pry into a
grand piano to find out wherein the exquisite harmony of the
instrument lies? Who has the right to ask the artist how he blended
the colors that crowned his picture with immortality, or the poet to
explain his pain in the birth of a mood which moved the world?

Born in the mountains of North Alabama, she grew up there and
developed this rare voice; and when her father sent her to Italy to
complete her musical education, the depth and clearness of it
captured even that song nation of the world.

The great of all countries were her friends and princes sought her
favors. She sang at courts and in great cathedrals, and her genius
and beauty were toasts with society.

"Still, Mademoiselle will never be a great singer, perfect as her
voice is,"--said her singing master to her one day--a famous Italian
teacher, "until Mademoiselle has suffered. She is now rich and
beautiful and happy. Go home and suffer if you would be a great
singer," he said, "for great songs come only with great suffering."

If this were true, Alice Westmore was now, indeed, a great singer;
for now had she suffered. And it was the death of a life with her
when love died. For there be some with whom love is a separate life,
and when love dies all that is worth living dies with it.

From childhood she and Cousin Tom--Captain Thomas Travis he lived to
be--had been sweethearts. He was the grandson of Colonel Jeremiah
Travis of "The Gaffs," and Tom and Alice had grown up together. Their
love was one of those earthly loves which comes now and then that we
may not altogether lose our faith in heaven.

Both were of a romantic temperament with high ideals, and with keen
and sensitive natures.

Their love was the poem of their lives.

And though a toast in society, and courted by the nobility of the old
world, Alice Westmore remembered only a moon-lighted night when she
told Cousin Tom good-bye. For though they had loved each other all
their lives, they had never spoken of it before that night. To them
it had been a thing too sacred to profane with ordinary words.

Thomas Travis had just graduated from West Point, and he was at home
on vacation before being assigned to duty. To-night he had ridden
John Paul Jones--the pick of his grandfather's stable of
thoroughbreds--a present from the sturdy old horse-racing,
fox-hunting gentleman to his favorite grandson for graduating first
in a class of fifty-six.

How handsome he looked in his dark blue uniform! And there was the
music of the crepe-myrtle in the air--the music of it, wet with the
night dew--for there are flowers so delicate in their sweetness that
they pass out of the realm of sight and smell, into the unheard world
of rhythm. Their very existence is the poetry of perfume. And this
music of the crepe-myrtle, pulsing through the shower-cooled leaves
of that summer night, was accompanied by a mocking-bird from his nest
in the tree.

Never did the memory of that night leave Alice Westmore. In after
years it hurt her, as the dream of childhood's home with green fields
about, and the old spring in the meadow, hurts the fever-stricken one
dying far away from it all.

How long they sat on the rustic bench under the crepe-myrtle they did
not know. At parting there was the light clasp of hands, and Cousin
Tom drew her to him and put his lips reverently to hers. When he had
ridden off there was a slender ring on her finger.

There was nothing in Italy that could make her forget that night,
though often from her window she had looked out on Venice,
moon-becalmed, while the nightingale sang from pomegranate trees in
the hedgerows.

Where a woman's love is first given, that, thereafter, is her heart's
sanctuary.

Alice Westmore landed at home again amid drum beats. War sweeps even
sentiment from the world--sentiment that is stronger than common
sense, and which moves the world.

On the retreat of the Southern army from Fort Donelson, Thomas
Travis, now Captain of Artillery, followed, with Grant's army, to
Pittsburgh Landing. And finding himself within a day's journey of his
old home, he lost no time in slipping through the lines to see Alice,
whom he had not seen since her return.

He went first to her, and the sight of his blue uniform threw Colonel
Westmore into a rage.

"To march into our land in that thing and claim my daughter--" he
shouted. "To join that John Brown gang of abolitionists who are
trying to overrun our country! Your father was a Southern gentleman
and the bosom friend of my youth, but I'll see you damned before you
shall ever again come under my roof, unless you can use your pistols
quicker than I can use mine."

"Oh, Tom," said Alice when they were alone--"how--how could you do
it?"

"But it is my side," he said quietly. "I was born, reared, educated
in the love of the Union. My grandfather himself taught it to me. He
fought with Jackson at New Orleans. My father died for it in Mexico.
I swore fidelity to it at West Point, and the Union gave me my
military education on the faith of my oath. Farragut is a
Tennessean--Thomas a Virginian--and there are hundreds of others, men
who love the Union more than they do their State. Alice--Alice--I do
not love you less because I am true to my oath--my flag."

"Your flag," said Alice hotly--"your flag that would overrun our
country and kill our people? It can never be my flag!"

She had never been angry before in all her life, but now the hot
blood of her Southern clime and ancestry surged in her cheeks. She
arose with a dignity she had never before imagined, even, with Cousin
Tom. "You will choose between us now," she said.

"Alice--surely you will not put me to that test. I will go--" he
said, rising. "Some day, if I live, you can tell me to come back to
you without sacrificing my conscience and my word of honor--my sacred
oath--write me and--and--I will come."

And that is the way it ended--in tears for both.

Thomas Travis had always been his grandsire's favorite. His other
grandson, Richard Travis, was away in Europe, where he had gone as
soon as rumors of the war began to be heard.

That night the old man did not even speak to him. He could not. Alone
in his room, he walked the floor all night in deep sorrow and
thought.

He loved Thomas Travis as he did no other living being, and when
morning came his great nature shook with contending emotions. It
ended in the grandson receiving this note, a few minutes before he
rode away:

"All my life I taught you to love the Union which I helped to make,
with my blood in war and my brains in peace. I gave it my beloved
boy--your father's life--in Mexico. We buried him in its flag. I sent
you to West Point and made you swear to defend that flag with your
life. How now can I ask you to repudiate your oath and turn your back
on your rearing?

"Believing as I do in the right of the State first and the Union
afterwards, I had hoped you might see it differently. But who, but
God, controls the course of an honest mind?

"Go, my son--I shall never see you again. But I know you, my son, and
I shall die knowing you did what you thought was right."

The young man wept when he read this--he was neither too old nor too
hardened for tears--and when he rode away, from the ridge of the
Mountain he looked down again--the last time, on all that had been
his life's happiness.

It was an hour afterwards when the old General called in his
overseer.

"Watts," he said, "in the accursed war which is about to wreck the
South and which will eventually end in our going back into the Union
as a subdued province and under the heel of our former slaves, there
will be many changes. I, myself, will not live to see it. I have two
grandsons, as you know, Tom and Richard. Richard is in Europe; he
went there following Alice Westmore, and is going to stay, till this
fight is over. Now, I have added a codicil to my will and I wish you
to hear it."

He took up a lengthy document and read the last codicil:

"_Since the above will was written and acknowledged, leaving The
Gaffs to be equally divided between my two grandsons, Thomas and
Richard Travis, my country has been precipitated into the horrors of
Civil War. In view of this I hereby change my will as above and give
and bequeath The Gaffs to that one of my grandsons who shall
fight--it matters not to me on which side--so that he fights. For The
Gaffs shall never go to a Dominecker. If both fight and survive the
war, it shall be divided equally between them as above expressed. If
one be killed it shall go to the survivor. If both be killed it shall
be sold and the money appropriated among those of my slaves who have
been faithful to me to the end, one-fifth being set aside for my
faithful overseer, Hillard Watts._"

In the panel of the wall he opened a small secret drawer, zinc-lined,
and put the will in it.

"It shall remain there unchanged," he said, "and only you and I shall
know where it is. If I die suddenly, let it remain until after the
war, and then do as you think best."




CHAPTER II

THE REAL HEROES


The real heroes of the war have not been decorated yet. They have not
even been pensioned, for many of them lie in forgotten graves, and
those who do not are not the kind to clamor for honors or emoluments.

On the last Great Day, what a strange awakening for decorations there
will be, if such be in store for the just and the brave: Private
soldiers, blue and gray, arising from neglected graves with tattered
clothes and unmarked brows. Scouts who rode, with stolid faces set,
into Death's grim door and died knowing they went out unremembered.
Spies, hung like common thieves at the end of a rope--hung, though
the bravest of the brave.

Privates, freezing, starving, wounded, dying,--unloved, unsoothed,
unpitied--giving their life with a last smile in the joy of
martyrdom. Women, North, whose silent tears for husbands who never
came back and sons who died of shell and fever, make a tiara around
the head of our reunited country. Women, South, glorious Rachels,
weeping for children who are not and with brave hearts working amid
desolate homes, the star and inspiration of a rebuilded land. Slaves,
faithfully guarding and working while their masters went to the
front, filling the granaries that the war might go on--faithful to
their trust though its success meant their slavery--faithful and
true.

O Southland of mine, be gentle, be just to these simple people, for
they also were faithful.

Among the heroic things the four years of the American Civil War
brought out, the story of Captain Thomas Travis deserves to rank with
the greatest of them.

The love of Thomas Travis for the preacher-overseer was the result of
a life of devotion on the part of the old man for the boy he had
reared. Orphaned as he was early in life, Thomas Travis looked up to
the overseer of his grandfather's plantation as a model of all that
was great and good.

Tom and Alice,--on the neighboring plantations--ran wild over the
place and rode their ponies always on the track of the overseer. He
taught them to ride, to trap the rabbit, to boat on the beautiful
river. He knew the birds and the trees and all the wild things of
Nature, and Tom and Alice were his children.

As they grew up before him, it became the dream of the
preacher-overseer to see his two pets married. Imagine his sorrow
when the war fell like a thunderbolt out of a harvest sky and, among
the thousand of other wrecked dreams, went the dream of the overseer.

The rest is soon told: After the battle of Shiloh, Hillard Watts,
Chief of Johnston's scouts, was captured and sent to Camp Chase.
Scarcely had he arrived before orders came that twelve prisoners
should be shot, by lot, in retaliation for the same number of Federal
prisoners which had been executed, it was said, unjustly, by
Confederates. The overseer drew one of the black balls. Then happened
one of those acts of heroism which now and then occur, perhaps, to
redeem war of the base and bloody.

On the morning before the execution, at daylight, Thomas Travis
arrived and made arrangements to save his friend at the risk of his
own life and reputation. It was a desperate chance and he acted
quickly. For Hillard Watts went out a free man dressed in the blue
uniform of the Captain of Artillery.

The interposition of the great-hearted Lincoln alone saved the young
officer from being shot.

The yellow military order bearing the words of the martyred President
is preserved to-day in the library of The Gaffs:

"_I present this young man as a Christmas gift to my old friend, his
grandsire, Colonel Jeremiah Travis. The man who could fight his guns
as he did at Shiloh, and could offer to die for a friend, is good
enough to receive pardon, for anything he may have done or may do,
from_

"A. LINCOLN."

Afterwards came Franklin and the news that Captain Tom had been
killed.




CHAPTER III

FRANKLIN


But General Jeremiah Travis could not keep out of the war; for toward
the last, when Hood's army marched into Tennessee the Confederacy
called for everything--even old age.

And so there rode out of the gates of The Gaffs a white-haired old
man, who sat his superb horse well. He was followed by a negro on a
mule.

They were General Jeremiah Travis and his body-servant, Bisco.

"I have come to fight for my state," said General Travis to the
Confederate General.

"An' I am gwine to take keer of old marster suh," said Bisco as he
stuck to his saddle girth.

It was the middle of the afternoon of the last day of November--and
also the last day of many a gallant life--when Hood's tired army
marched over the brow of the high ridge of hills that looked down on
the town of Franklin, in front of which, from railroad to river,
behind a long semicircular breastwork lay Schofield's determined
army. It was a beautiful view, and as plain as looking down from the
gallery into the pit of an amphitheatre.

Just below them lay the little town in a valley, admirably situated
for defense, surrounded as it was on three sides by the bend of a
small river, the further banks of which were of solid rocks rising
above the town. On the highest of these bluffs--Roper's Knob--across
and behind the town, directly overlooking it and grimly facing Hood's
army two miles away, was a federal fort capped with mighty guns,
ready to hurl their shells over the town at the gray lines beyond.
From the high ridge where Hood's army stood the ground gradually
rolled to the river. A railroad ran through a valley in the ridge to
the right of the Confederates, spun along on the banks of the river
past the town and crossed it in the heart of the bend to the left of
the federal fort. From that railroad on the Confederate right, in
front and clear around the town, past an old gin house which stood
out clear and distinct in the November sunlight--on past the Carter
House, to the extreme left bend of the river on the left--in short,
from river to river again and entirely inclosing the town and facing
the enemy--ran the newly made and hastily thrown-up breastworks of
the federal army, the men rested and ready for battle.

There stands to-day, as it stood then, in front of the town of
Franklin, on the highest point of the ridge, a large linden tree, now
showing the effects of age. It was half-past three o'clock in the
afternoon, when General Hood rode unattended to that tree, threw the
stump of the leg that was shot off at Chickamauga over the pommel of
his saddle, drew out his field glasses and sat looking for a long
time across the valley at the enemy's position.

Strange to say, on the high river bluff beyond the town, amid the
guns of the fort, also with field glass in hand anxiously watching
the confederates, stood the federal general. A sharp-shooter in
either line could have killed the commanding general in the other.
And now that prophesying silence which always seems to precede a
battle was afloat in the air. In the hollow of its stillness it
seemed as if one could hear the ticking of the death-watch of
eternity. But presently it was broken by the soft strains of music
which floated up from the town below. It was the federal band playing
"Just Before The Battle, Mother."

The men in gray on the hill and the men in blue in the valley
listened, and then each one mentally followed the tune with silent
words, and not without a bit of moisture in their eyes.

    "Just before the battle, Mother,
     I am thinking most of thee."

Suddenly Hood closed his glasses with that nervous jerk which was a
habit with him, straightened himself in the saddle and, riding back
to General Stewart, said simply: "We will make the fight, General
Stewart."

Stewart pressed his General's hand, wheeled and formed his corps on
the right. Cheatham formed his on the left. A gun--and but few were
used by Hood in the fight for fear of killing the women and children
in the town--echoed from the ridge. It was the signal for the battle
to begin. The heavy columns moved down the side of the ridge, the
brigades marching in echelon.

At the sound of the gun, the federal army, some of whom were on duty,
but the larger number loitering around at rest, or engaged in
preparing their evening meal, sprang noiselessly to their places
behind the breastworks, while hurried whispers of command ran down
the line.

General Travis had been given a place of honor on General Hood's
staff. He insisted on going into the ranks, but his commander had
said: "Stay with me, I shall need you elsewhere." And so the old man
sat his horse silently watching the army forming and marching down.
But directly, as a Mississippi regiment passed by, he noticed at the
head of one of the companies an old man, almost as old as himself,
his clothes torn, and ragged from long marching; shoeless, his feet
tied up in sack-cloth and his old slouch hat aflop over his ears. But
he did not complain, he stood erect, and gamely led his men into
battle. As the company halted for a moment, General Travis rode up to
the old man whose thin clothes could not keep him from shivering in
the now chill air of late afternoon, for it was then past four
o'clock, saluted him and said:

"Captain, will you do me the favor to pull off this boot?"
Withdrawing his boot from the stirrup and thrusting it towards the
old man, the latter looked at him a moment in surprise but sheathed
his sword and complied with the request. "And now the other one?"
said Travis as he turned his horse around. This, too, was pulled off.

"Just put them on, Captain, if you please," said the rider. "I am
mounted and do not need them as much as you do?" and before the
gallant old Captain could refuse, he rode away for duty--in his
stocking feet!

And now the battle began in earnest.

The confederates came on in splendid form. On the extreme right,
Forrest's cavalry rested on the river; then Stewart's corps of
Loring, Walthall, French, from right to left in the order named. On
the left Cheatham's corps, of Cleburne, Brown, Bate, and Walker.
Behind Cheatham marched Johnston's and Clayton's brigade for support,
thirty thousand and more of men, in solid lines, bands playing and
flags fluttering in the afternoon wind.

Nor had the federals been idle. Behind the breastworks lay the second
and third divisions of the 23rd Corps, commanded in person by the
gallant General J. D. Cox. From the railroad on the left to the
Carter's Creek pike on the right, the brigades of these divisions
stood as follows: Henderson's, Casement's, Reilly's, Strickland's,
Moore's. And from the right of the Carter's Creek pike to the river
lay Kimball's first division of the Fourth Corps. In front of the
breastworks, across the Columbia pike, General Wagner, commanding the
second division of the Fourth Corps, had thrown forward the two
brigades of Bradley and Lane to check the first assault of the
confederates, while Opdyck's brigade of the same division was held in
the town as a reserve. Seven splendid batteries growled along the
line of breastworks, and showed their teeth to the advancing foe,
while three more were caged in the fort above and beyond the town.

Never did men march with cooler courage on more formidable lines of
defense. Never did men wait an attack with cooler courage.
Breastworks with abatis in front through which the mouth of cannon
gaped; artillery and infantry on the right to enfilade; siege guns in
the fort high above all, to sweep and annihilate.

Schofield, born general that he was, simply lay in a rock-circled,
earth-circled, water-circled, iron-and-steel-circled cage, bayonet
and flame tipped, proof against the armies of the world!

But Hood's brave army never hesitated, never doubted.

Even in the matter of where to throw up his breastworks, Schofield
never erred. On a beautiful and seemingly level plain like this, a
less able general might have thrown them up anywhere, just so that
they encircled the town and ran from river to river.

But Schofield took no chances. His quick eye detected that even in
apparent level plains there are slight undulations. And so, following
a gentle rise all the way round, just on its top he threw up his
breastworks. So that, besides the ditch and the abatis, there was a
slight depression in his immediate front, open and clear, but so
situated that on the gentle slope in front, down which the
confederates must charge, the background of the slope brought them in
bold relief--gray targets for the guns. On that background the hare
would loom up as big as the hound.

There were really two federal lines, an outer and an inner one. The
outer one consisted of Bradley's and Lane's brigades which had
retired from Spring Hill before the Confederate army, and had been
ordered to halt in front of the breastworks to check the advance of
the army. They were instructed to fire and then fall back to the
breastworks, if stubbornly charged by greatly their superiors in
numbers. They fired, but, true to American ideas, they disliked to
retreat. When forced to do so, they were swept away with the enemy on
their very heels and as they rushed in over the last line at the
breastworks on the Columbia pike the eager boys in gray rushed over
with them, swept away portions of Reilly's and Strickland's troops,
and bayoneted those that remained.

It was then that Schofield's heart sank as he looked down from the
guns of the fort. But Cox had the forethought to place Opdyck's two
thousand men in reserve at this very point. These sprang gallantly
forward and restored the line.

They saved the Union army!

The battle was now raging all around the line. There was a succession
of yells, a rattle, a shock and a roar, as brigade after brigade
struck the breastworks, only to be hurled back again or melt and die
away in the trenches amid the abatis. Clear around the line of
breastworks it rolled, at intervals, like a magazine of powder
flashing before it explodes, then the roar and upheaval, followed
anon and anon by another. The ground was soon shingled with dead men
in gray, while down in the ditches or hugging the bloody sides of the
breastworks right under the guns, thousands, more fortunate or daring
than their comrades, lay, thrusting and being thrust, shooting and
being shot. And there they staid throughout the fight--not strong
enough to climb over, and yet all the guns of the federal army could
not drive them away. Many a gray regiment planted its battle-flag on
the breastworks and then hugged those sides of death in its efforts
to keep it there, as bees cling around the body of their queen.

"I have the honor to forward to the War Department nine stands of
colors," writes General Cox to General Geo. L. Thomas; "these flags
with eleven others were captured by the Twenty-third Army Corps along
the parapets."

Could Bonaparte's army have planted more on the ramparts of Mount St.
Jean?

The sun had not set; yet the black smoke of battle had set it before
its time. God had ordained otherwise; but man, in his fury had shut
out the light of heaven against the decree of God, just as, equally
against His decree, he has now busily engaged in blotting out many a
brother's bright life, before the decree of its sunset. Again and
again and again, from four till midnight--eight butchering hours--the
heart of the South was hurled against those bastions of steel and
flame, only to be pierced with ball and bayonet.

And for every heart that was pierced there broke a dozen more in the
shade of the southern palmetto, or in the shadow of the northern
pine. After nineteen hundred years of light and learning, what a
scientific nation of heart-stabbers and brother-murderers we
Christians are!

It was now that the genius of the confederate cavalry leader,
Forrest, asserted itself. With nearly ten thousand of his intrepid
cavalry-men, born in the saddle, who carried rifles and shot as they
charged, and whom with wonderful genius their leader had trained to
dismount at a moment's notice and fight as infantry--he lay on the
extreme right between the river and the railroad. In a moment he saw
his opportunity, and rode furiously to Hood's headquarters. He found
the General sitting on a flat rock, a smouldering fire by his side,
half way down the valley, at the Winstead House, intently watching
the progress of the battle.

"Let me go at 'em, General," shouted Forrest in his bluff way, "and
I'll flank the federal army out of its position in fifteen minutes."

"No! Sir," shouted back Hood. "Charge them out! charge them out!"

Forrest turned and rode back with an oath of disgust. Years
afterwards, Colonel John McGavock, whose fine plantation lay within
the federal lines and who had ample opportunity for observation, says
that when in the early evening a brigade of Forrest's cavalry
deployed across the river as if opening the way for the confederate
infantry to attack the federal army in flank and rear, hasty
preparations were made by the federal army for retreat. And thus was
Forrest's military wisdom corroborated. "Let me flank them out," was
military genius. "No, charge them out," was dare-devil blundering!

The shock, the shout and the roar continued. The flash from the guns
could now plainly be seen as night descended. So continuous was the
play of flame around the entire breastwork that it looked to the
general at headquarters like a circle of prairie fire, leaping up at
intervals along the breastworks, higher and higher where the
batteries were ablaze.

In a black-locust thicket, just to the right of the Columbia turnpike
and near the Carter House, with abatis in front, the strongest of the
batteries had been placed. It mowed down everything in front. Seeing
it, General Hood turned to General Travis and said: "General, my
compliments to General Cleburne, and say to him I desire that battery
at his hands."

The old man wheeled and was gone. In a moment, it seemed, the black
smoke of battle engulfed him. Cleburne's command was just in front of
the old gin house, forming for another charge. The dead lay in heaps
in front. They almost filled the ditch around the breastworks. But
the command, terribly cut to pieces, was forming as coolly as if on
dress parade. Above them floated a peculiar flag, a field of deep
blue on which was a crescent moon and stars. It was Cleburne's battle
flag and well the enemy knew it. They had seen and felt it at Shiloh,
Murfreesboro, Ringgold Gap, Atlanta. "I tip my hat to that flag,"
said General Sherman years after the war. "Whenever my men saw it
they knew it meant fight."

As the old man rode up, the division charged. Carried away in the
excitement he charged with them, guiding his horse by the flashes of
the guns. As they rushed on the breastworks a gray figure on a
chestnut horse rode diagonally across the front of the moving column
at the enemy's gun. The horse went down within fifty yards of the
breastwork. The rider arose, waved his sword and led his men on foot
to the very ramparts. Then he staggered and fell, pierced with a
dozen minie balls. It was Cleburne, the peerless field-marshal of
confederate brigade commanders; the genius to infantry as Forrest was
to cavalry. His corps was swept back by the terrible fire, nearly
half of them dead or wounded.

Ten minutes afterwards General Travis stood before General Hood.

"General Cleburne is dead, General"--was all he said. Hood did not
turn his head.

"My compliments to General Adams," he said, "and tell him I ask that
battery at his hands."

Again the old man wheeled and was gone. Again he rode into the black
night and the blacker smoke of battle.

General Adams's brigade was in Walthall's division. As the aged
courier rode up, Adams was just charging. Again the old man was swept
away with the charge. They struck the breastworks where Stile's and
Casement's brigades lay on the extreme left of the federal army.
"Their officers showed heroic examples and self-sacrifice," wrote
General Cox in his official report, "riding up to our lines in
advance of their men, cheering them on. One officer, Adams, was shot
down upon the parapet itself, his horse falling across the
breastworks." Casement himself, touched by the splendor of his ride,
had cotton brought from the old gin house and placed under the dying
soldier's head. "You are too brave a man to die," said Casement
tenderly; "I wish that I could save you."

"'Tis the fate of a soldier to die for his country," smiled the dying
soldier. Then he passed away.

It was a half hour before the old man reached Hood's headquarters
again, his black horse wet with sweat.

"General Adams lies in front of the breastworks--dead! His horse half
over it--dead"--was all he said.

Hood turned pale. His eyes flashed with indignant grief.

"Then tell General Gist," he exclaimed. The old man vanished again
and rode once more into the smoke and the night. Gist's brigade led
the front line of Brown's division, Cheatham's corps. It was on the
left, fronting Strickland's and Moore's, on the breastworks. The
Twenty-fourth South Carolina Infantry was in front of the charging
lines. "In passing from the left to the right of the regiment,"
writes Colonel Ellison Capers commanding the South Carolina regiment
above named, "the General (Gist) waved his hat to us, expressed his
pride and confidence in the Twenty-fourth and rode away in the smoke
of battle never more to be seen by the men he had commanded on so
many fields. His horse was shot, and, dismounting, he was leading the
right of the brigade when he fell, pierced through the heart. On
pressed the charging lines of the brigade, driving the advance force
of the enemy pell-mell into a locust abatis where many were captured
and sent to the rear; others were wounded by the fire of their own
men. This abatis was a formidable and fearful obstruction. The entire
brigade was arrested by it. But Gist's and Gordon's brigade charged
on and reached the ditch, mounted the works and met the enemy in
close combat. The colors of the Twenty-fourth were planted and
defended on the parapet, and the enemy retired in our front some
distance, but soon rallied and came back in turn to charge us. He
never succeeded in retaking the line we held. Torn and exhausted,
deprived of every general officer and nearly every field officer, the
division had only strength enough left to hold its position."

The charging became intermittent. Then out of the night, as Hood sat
listening, again came the old man, his face as white as his long
hair, his horse once black, now white with foam.

"General Gist too, is dead," he said sadly.

"Tell Granbury, Carter, Strahl--General! Throw them in there and
capture that battery and break that line."

The old man vanished once more and rode into the shock and shout of
battle.

General Strahl was leading his brigade again against the breastworks.
"Strahl's and Carter's brigade came gallantly to the assistance of
Gist's and Gordon's" runs the confederate report sent to Richmond,
"but the enemy's fire from the houses in the rear of the line and
from guns posted on the far side of the river so as to enfilade the
field, tore their line to pieces before it reached the locust
abatis."

General Carter fell mortally wounded before reaching the breastworks,
but General Strahl reached the ditch, filled with dead and dying men,
though his entire staff had been killed. Here he stood with only two
men around him, Cunningham and Brown. "Keep firing" said Strahl as he
stood on the bodies of the dead and passed up guns to the two
privates. The next instant Brown fell heavily; he, too, was dead.

"What shall I do, General?" asked Cunningham.

"Keep firing," said Strahl.

Again Cunningham fired. "Pass me another gun, General," said
Cunningham. There was no answer--the general was dead.

Not a hundred yards away lay General Granbury, dead. He died leading
the brave Texans to the works.

To the commanding General it seemed an age before the old man
returned. Then he saw him in the darkness afar off, before he reached
the headquarters. The General thought of death on his pale horse and
shivered.

"Granbury, Carter, Strahl--all dead, General," he said. "Colonels
command divisions, Captains are commanding brigades."

"How does Cheatham estimate his loss?" asked the General.

"At half his command killed and wounded," said the old soldier sadly.

"My God!--my God!--this awful, awful day!" cried Hood.

There was a moment's silence and then: "General?" It came from
General Travis.

The General looked up.

"May I lead the Tennessee troops in--I have led them often before."

Hood thought a moment, then nodded and the horse and the rider were
gone. It was late--nearly midnight. The firing on both sides had
nearly ceased,--only a desultory rattling--the boom of a gun now and
then. But O, the agony, the death, the wild confusion! This was
something like the babel that greeted the old soldier's ears as he
rode forward:

"The Fourth Mississippi--where is the Fourth Mississippi?" "Here is
the Fortieth Alabama's standard--rally men to your standard!" "Where
is General Cleburne, men? Who has seen General Cleburne?" "Up, boys,
and let us at 'em agin! Damn 'em, they've wounded me an' I want to
kill some more!"

"Water!--water--for God's sake give us water!" This came from a pile
of wounded men just under the guns on the Columbia pike. It came from
a sixteen year old boy in blue. Four dead comrades lay across him.

"And this is the curse of it," said General Travis, as he rode among
the men.

But suddenly amid the smoke and confusion, the soldiers saw what many
thought was an apparition--an old, old warrior, on a horse with black
mane and tail and fiery eyes, but elsewhere covered with white sweat
and pale as the horse of death. The rider's face too, was deadly
white, but his keen eyes blazed with the fire of many generations of
battle-loving ancestors.

The soldiers flocked round him, half doubting, half believing. The
terrible ordeal of that bloody night's work; the poignant grief from
beholding the death and wounds of friends and brothers; the weird,
uncanny groans of the dying upon the sulphurous-smelling night air;
the doubt, uncertainty, and yet, through it all, the bitter
realization that all was in vain, had shocked, benumbed, unsettled
the nerves of the stoutest; and many of them scarcely knew whether
they were really alive, confronting in the weird hours of the night
ditches of blood and breastworks of death, or were really dead--dead
from concussion, from shot or shell, and were now wandering on a
spirit battle-field till some soul-leader should lead them away.

And so, half dazed and half dreaming, and yet half alive to its
realization, they flocked around the old warrior, and they would not
have been at all surprised had he told them he came from another
world.

Some thought of Mars. Some thought of death and his white horse. Some
felt of the animal's mane and touched his streaming flanks and cordy
legs to see if it were really a horse and not an apparition, while
"What is it?" and "Who is he?" was whispered down the lines.

Then the old rider spoke for the first time, and said simply:

"Men, I have come to lead you in."

A mighty shout came up. "It's General Lee!--he has come to lead us
in," they shouted.

"No, no, men,"--said the old warrior quickly. "I am not General Lee.
But I have led Southern troops before. I was at New Orleans. I was--"

"It's Ole Hick'ry--by the eternal!--Ole Hick'ry--and he's come back
to life to lead us!" shouted a big fellow as he threw his hat in the
air.

"Ole Hickory! Ole Hickory!" echoed and re-echoed down the lines, till
it reached the ears of the dying soldiers in the ditch itself, and
many a poor, brave fellow, as his heart strings snapped and the
broken chord gurgled out into the dying moan, saw amid the blaze and
light of the new life, the apparition turn into a reality and a smile
of exquisite satisfaction was forever frozen on his face in the mould
of death, as he whispered with his last breath:

"It's Old Hickory--my General--I have fought a good fight--I come!"

Then the old warrior smiled--a smile of simple beauty and grandeur,
of keen satisfaction that such an honor should have been paid him,
and he tried to speak to correct them. But they shouted the more, and
drowned out his voice and would not have it otherwise. Despairing, he
rode to the front and drew his long, heavy, old, revolutionary sword.
It flashed in the air. It came to "attention"--and then a dead
silence followed.

"Men," he said, "this is the sword of John Sevier, the rebel that led
us up the sides of King's Mountain when every tyrant gun that belched
in our face called us--rebels!"

"Old Hick'ry! Old Hick'ry, forever!" came back from the lines.

Again the old sword came to attention, and again a deep hush
followed.

"Men," he said, drawing a huge rifled barreled pistol--"this is the
pistol of Andrew Jackson, the rebel that whipped the British at New
Orleans when every gun that thundered in his face, meant death to
liberty!"

"Old Hickory! Old Hickory!!" came back in a frenzy of excitement.

Again the old sword came to attention--again, the silence. Then the
old man fairly stood erect in his stirrups--he grew six inches
taller and straighter and the black horse reared and rose as if to
give emphasis to his rider's assertion:

"Men," he shouted, "rebel is the name that tyranny gives to
patriotism! And now, let us fight, as our fore-fathers fought, for
our state, our homes and our firesides!" And then clear and distinct
there rang out on the night air, a queer old continental command:

"Fix, pieces!"

They did not know what this meant at first. But some old men in the
line happened to remember and fixed their bayonets. Then there was
clatter and clank down the entire line as others imitated their
examples.

"Poise, fo'k!" rang out again more queerly still. The old men who
remembered brought their guns to the proper position. "Right
shoulder, fo'k!"--followed. Then, "Forward, March!" came back and
they moved straight at the batteries--now silent--and straight at the
breastworks, more silent still. Proudly, superbly, they came on, with
not a shout or shot--a chained line with links of steel--a moving
mass with one heart--and that heart,--victory.

On they came at the breastworks, walking over the dead who lay so
thick they could step from body to body as they marched. On they
came, following the old cocked hat that had once held bloodier
breastworks against as stubborn foe.

On--on--they came, expecting every moment to see a flame of fire run
round the breastworks, a furnace of flame leap up from the batteries,
and then--victory or death--behind old Hickory! Either was honor
enough!

And now they were within fifty feet of the breastworks, moving as if
on dress parade. The guns must thunder now or never! One step
more--then, an electrical bolt shot through every nerve as the old
man wheeled his horse and again rang out that queer old continental
command, right in the mouth of the enemy's ditch, right in the teeth
of his guns:

"Charge, pieces!"

It was Tom Travis who commanded the guns where the Columbia Pike met
the breastworks at the terrible deadly locust thicket. All night he
had stood at his post and stopped nine desperate charges. All night
in the flash and roar and the strange uncanny smell of blood and
black powder smoke, he had stood among the dead and dying calling
stubbornly, monotonously:

"Ready!"

"Aim!"

"Fire!"

And now it was nearly midnight and Schofield, finding the enemy
checked, was withdrawing on Nashville.

Tom Travis thought the battle was over, but in the glare and flash he
looked and saw another column, ghostly gray in the starlight, moving
stubbornly at his guns.

"Ready!" he shouted as his gunners sprang again to their pieces.

On came the column--beautifully on. How it thrilled him to see them!
How it hurt to think they were his people!

"_Aim!_" he thundered again, and then as he looked through the gray
torch made, starlighted night, he quailed in a cold sickening fear,
for the old man who led them on was his grandsire, the man whom of
all on earth he loved and revered the most.

Eight guns, with grim muzzles trained on the old rider and his
charging column, waited but for the captain's word to hurl their
double-shotted canisters of death.

And Tom Travis, in the agony of it, stood, sword in hand, stricken in
dumbness and doubt. On came the column, the old warrior leading
them--on and:--

"The command--the command! Give it to us, Captain," shouted the
gunners.

"_Cease firing!_"

The gunners dropped their lanyards with an oath, trained machines
that they were.

It was a drunken German who brought a heavy sword-hilt down on the
young officer's head with:

"You damned traitor!"

A gleam of gun and bayonet leaped in the misty light in front, from
shoulder to breast--a rock wall, tipped with steel swept crushingly
forward over the trenches over the breastworks.

Under the guns, senseless, his skull crushed, an upturned face
stopped the old warrior. Down from his horse he came with a weak,
hysterical sob.

"O Tom--Tom, I might have known it was you--my gallant, noble boy--my
Irish Gray!"

He kissed, as he thought, the dead face, and went on with his men.

It was just midnight.

"At midnight, all being quiet in front, in accordance with orders
from the commanding Generals," writes General J. D. Cox in his
official report, "I withdrew my command to the north bank of the
river."

"The battle closed about twelve o'clock at night," wrote General
Hood, "when the enemy retreated rapidly on Nashville, leaving the
dead and wounded in our hands. We captured about a thousand prisoners
and several stands of colors."

Was this a coincidence--or as some think--did the boys in blue
retreat before they would fire on an old Continental and the spirit
of '76?

An hour afterwards a negro was sadly leading a tired old man on a
superb horse back to headquarters, and as the rider's head sank on
his breast he said:

"Lead me, Bisco, I'm too weak to guide my horse. Nothing is left now
but the curse of it."

And O, the curse of it!

Fifty-seven Union dead beside the wounded, in the little front yard
of the Carter House, alone. And they lay around the breastworks from
river to river, a chain of dead and dying. In front of the
breastworks was another chain--a wider and thicker one. It also ran
from river to river, but was gray instead of blue. Chains are made of
links, and the full measure of "the curse of it" may have been seen
if one could have looked over the land that night and have seen where
the dead links lying there were joined to live under the roof trees
of far away homes.

But here is the tale of a severed link: About two o'clock lights
began to flash about over the battle-field--they were hunting for the
dead and wounded. Among these, three had come out from the Carter
House. A father, son and daughter; each carried a lantern and as they
passed they flashed their lights in the faces of the dead.

"May we look for brother?" asked the young girl, of an officer. "We
hope he is not here but fear he is. He has not been home for two
years, being stationed in another state. But we heard he could not
resist the temptation to come home again and joined General Bate's
brigade. And O, we fear he has been killed for he would surely have
been home before this."

They separated, each looking for "brother." Directly the father heard
the daughter cry out. It was in the old orchard near the house. On
reaching the spot she was seated on the ground, holding the head of
her dying brother in her lap and sobbing:

"Brother's come home! Brother's come home!" Alas, she meant--gone
home!

"Captain Carter, on staff duty with Tyler's brigade," writes General
Wm. B. Bate in his official report, "fell mortally wounded near the
works of the enemy and almost at the door of his father's home. His
gallantry I witnessed with much pride, as I had done on other fields,
and here take pleasure in mentioning it especially."

The next morning in the first light of the first day of that month
celebrated as the birth-month of Him who declared long ago that war
should cease, amid the dead and dying of both armies, stood two
objects which should one day be carved in marble--One, to represent
the intrepid bravery of the South, the other, the cool courage of the
North, and both--"the curse of it."

The first was a splendid war-horse, dead, but lying face forward,
half over the federal breastworks. It was the horse of General Adams.

The other was a Union soldier--the last silent sentinel of
Schofield's army. He stood behind a small locust tree, just in front
of the Carter House gate. He had drawn his iron ram-rod which rested
under his right arm pit, supporting that side. His gun, with butt on
the ground at his left, rested with muzzle against his left side,
supporting it. A cartridge, half bitten off was in his mouth. He
leaned heavily against the small tree in front. He was quite dead, a
minie ball through his head; but thus propped he stood, the wonder of
many eyes, the last sentinel of the terrible night battle.

       *       *       *       *       *

But another severed link cut deepest of all. In the realization of
her love for Thomas Travis, Alice Westmore's heart died within her.
In the years which followed, if suffering could make her a great
singer, now indeed was she great.




PART FOURTH--THE LINT




CHAPTER I

COTTONTOWN


Slavery clings to cotton.

When the directors of a cotton mill, in a Massachusetts village,
decided, in the middle '70's, to move their cotton factory from New
England to Alabama, they had two objects in view--cheaper labor and
cheaper staple.

And they did no unwise thing, as the books of the company from that
time on showed.

In the suburbs of a growing North Alabama town, lying in the
Tennessee Valley and flanked on both sides by low, regularly rolling
mountains, the factory had been built.

It was a healthful, peaceful spot, and not unpicturesque. North and
south the mountains fell away in an undulating rhythmical sameness,
with no abrupt gorges to break in and destroy the poetry of their
scroll against the sky. The valley supplemented the effect of the
mountains; for, from the peak of Sunset Rock, high up on the
mountain, it looked not unlike the chopped up waves of a great river
stiffened into land--especially in winter when the furrowed rows of
the vast cotton fields lay out brown and symmetrically turned under
the hazy sky.

The factory was a low, one-story structure of half burnt bricks.
Like a vulgar man, cheapness was written all over its face. One of
its companions was a wooden store house near by, belonging to the
company. The other companion was a squatty low-browed engine room,
decorated with a smoke-stack which did business every day in the week
except Sunday. A black, soggy exhaust-pipe stuck out of a hole in its
side, like a nicotine-soaked pipe in an Irishman's mouth, and so
natural and matter-of-fact was the entire structure that at evening,
in the uncertain light, when the smoke was puffing out of its stack,
and the dirty water running from its pipes, and the reflected fire
from the engine's furnace blazed through the sunken eyes of the
windows, begrizzled and begrimed, nothing was wanted but a little
imagination to hear it cough and spit and give one final puff at its
pipe and say: "Lu'd but o'ive wur-rek hard an' o'im toired to-day!"

Around it in the next few years had sprung up Cottontown.

The factory had been built on the edge of an old cottonfield which
ran right up to the town's limit; and the field, unplowed for several
years, had become sodded with the long stolens of rank Bermuda grass,
holding in its perpetual billows of green the furrows which had been
thrown up for cotton rows and tilled years before.

This made a beautiful pea-green carpet in summer and a comfortable
straw-colored matting in winter; and it was the only bit of sentiment
that clung to Cottontown.

All the rest of it was practical enough: Rows of scurvy three-roomed
cottages, all exactly alike, even to the gardens in the rear, laid
off in equal breadth and running with the same unkept raggedness up
the flinty side of the mountain.

There was not enough originality among the worked-to-death
inhabitants of Cottontown to plant their gardens differently; for all
of them had the same weedy turnip-patch on one side, straggling
tomatoes on another, and half-dried mullein-stalks sentineling the
corners. For years these cottages had not been painted, and now each
wore the same tinge of sickly yellow paint. It was not difficult to
imagine that they had had a long siege of malarial fever in which the
village doctor had used abundant plasters of mustard, and the disease
had finally run into "yaller ja'ndice," as they called it in
Cottontown.

And thus Cottontown had stood for several years, a new problem in
Southern life and industry, and a paying one for the Massachusetts
directors.

In the meanwhile another building had been put up--a little cheaply
built chapel, of long-leaf yellow pine. It was known as the Bishop's
church, and sat on the side of the mountain, half way up among the
black-jacks, exposed to the blistering suns of summer and the winds
of winter.

It had never been painted: "An' it don't need it," as the Bishop had
said when the question of painting it had been raised by some of the
members.

"No, it don't need it, for the hot sun has drawed all the rosin out
on its surface, an' pine rosin's as good a paint as any church needs.
Jes' let God be, an' He'll fix His things like He wants 'em any way.
He put the paint in the pine-tree when He made it. Now man is mighty
smart,--he can make paint, but he can't make a pine tree."

It was Sunday morning, and as the Bishop drove along to church he was
still thinking of Jack Bracken and Captain Tom, and the burial of
little Jack. When he arose that morning Jack was up, clean-shaved and
neatly dressed. As Mrs. Watts, the Bishop's wife, had become used, as
she expressed it, to his "fetchin' any old thing, frum an old hoss to
an old man home, wharever he finds 'em,"--she did not express any
surprise at having a new addition to the family.

The outlaw looked nervous and sorrow-stricken. Several times, when
some one came on him unexpectedly, the Bishop saw him feeling
nervously for a Colt's revolver which had been put away. Now and
then, too, he saw great tears trickling down the rough cheeks, when
he thought no one was noticing him.

"Now, Jack," said the Bishop after breakfast, "you jes' get on John
Paul Jones an' hunt for Cap'n Tom. I know you'll not leave no stone
unturned to find him. Go by the cave and see if him an' Eph ain't
gone back. I'm not af'eard--I know Eph will take care of him, but we
want to fin' him. After meetin' if you haven't found him I'll join in
the hunt myself--for we must find Cap'n Tom, Jack, befo' the sun goes
down. I'd ruther see him than any livin' man. Cap'n Tom--Cap'n
Tom--him that's been as dead all these years! Fetch him home when you
find him--fetch him home to me. He shall never want while I live.
An', Jack, remember--don't forget yo'se'f and hold up anybody. I'll
expec' you to jine the church nex' Sunday."

"I ain't been in a church for fifteen years," said the other.

"High time you are going, then. You've put yo' hands to the
plough--turn not back an' God'll straighten out everything."

Jack was silent. "I'll go by the cave fus' an' jus' look where little
Jack is sleepin'. Po' little feller, he must ha' been mighty lonesome
last night."

It was ten o'clock and the Bishop was on his way to church. He was
driving the old roan of the night before. A parody on a horse, to one
who did not look closely, but to one who knows and who looks beyond
the mere external form for that hidden something in both man and
horse which bespeaks strength and reserve force, there was seen
through the blindness and the ugliness and the sleepy, ambling,
shuffling gait a clean-cut form, with deep chest and closely ribbed;
with well drawn flanks, a fine, flat steel-turned bone, and a
powerful muscle, above hock and forearms, that clung to the leg as
the Bishop said, "like bees a'swarmin'."

At his little cottage gate stood Bud Billings, the best slubber in
the cotton mill. Bud never talked to any one except the Bishop; and
his wife, who was the worst Xanthippe in Cottontown, declared she had
lived with him six months straight and never heard him come nearer
speaking than a grunt. It was also a saying of Richard Travis, that
Bud had been known to break all records for silence by drawing a
year's wages at the mill, never missing a minute and never speaking
a word.

Nor had he ever looked any one full in the eye in his life.

As the Bishop drove shamblingly along down the road, deeply
preoccupied in his forthcoming sermon, there came from out of a hole,
situated somewhere between the grizzled fringe of hair that marked
Bud's whiskers and the grizzled fringe above that marked his
eyebrows, a piping, apologetic voice that sounded like the first few
rasps of an old rusty saw; but to the occupant of the buggy it meant,
with a drawl:

"Howdy do, Bishop?"

A blind horse is quick to observe and take fright at anything
uncanny. He is the natural ghost-finder of the highways, and that
voice was too much for the old roan. To him it sounded like something
that had been resurrected. It was a ghost-voice, arising after many
years. He shied, sprang forward, half wheeled and nearly upset the
buggy, until brought up with a jerk by the powerful arms of his
driver. The shaft-band had broken and the buggy had run upon the
horse's rump, and the shafts stuck up almost at right angles over his
back. The roan stood trembling with the half turned, inquisitive
muzzle of the sightless horse--a paralysis of fear all over his face.
But when Bud came forward and touched his face and stroked it, the
fear vanished, and the old roan bobbed his tail up and down and
wiggled his head reassuringly and apologetically.

"Wal, I declar, Bishop," grinned Bud, "kin yo' critter fetch a
caper?"

The Bishop got leisurely out of his buggy, pulled down the shafts and
tied up the girth before he spoke. Then he gave a puckering hitch to
his underlip and deposited in the sand, with a puddling _plunk_, the
half cup of tobacco juice that had closed up his mouth.

He stepped back and said very sternly:

"Whoa, Ben Butler!"

"Why, he'un's sleep a'ready," grinned Bud.

The Bishop glanced at the bowed head, cocked hind foot and listless
tail: "Sof'nin' of the brain, Bud," smiled the Bishop; "they say when
old folks begin to take it they jus' go to sleep while settin' up
talkin'. Now, a horse, Bud," he said, striking an attitude for a
discussion on his favorite topic, "a horse is like a man--he must have
some meanness or he c'udn't live, an' some goodness or nobody else c'ud
live. But git in, Bud, and let's go along to meetin'--'pears like it's
gettin' late."

This was what Bud had been listening for. This was the treat of
the week for him--to ride to meetin' with the Bishop. Bud, a
slubber-slave--henpecked at home, brow-beaten and cowed at the mill,
timid, scared, "an' powerful slow-mouthed," as his spouse termed it,
worshipped the old Bishop and had no greater pleasure in life, after his
hard week's work, than "to ride to meetin' with the old man an' jes'
hear him narrate."

The Bishop's great, sympathetic soul went out to the poor fellow, and
though he had rather spend the next two miles of Ben Butler's slow
journey to church in thinking over his sermon, he never failed, as he
termed it, "to pick up charity even on the roadside," and it was
pretty to see how the old man would turn loose his crude histrionic
talent to amuse the slubber. He knew, too, that Bud was foolish about
horses, and that Ben Butler was his model!

They got into the old buggy, and Ben Butler began to draw it slowly
along the sandy road to the little church, two miles away up the
mountain side.




CHAPTER II

BEN BUTLER


Bud was now in a seventh heaven. He was riding behind Ben Butler, the
greatest horse in the world, and talking to the Bishop, the only
person who ever heard the sound of his voice, save in deprecatory and
scary grunts.

It was touching to see how the old man humored the simple and
imposed-upon creature at his side. It was beautiful to see how,
forgetting himself and his sermon, he prepared to entertain, in his
quaint way, this slave to the slubbing machine.

Bud looked fondly at the Bishop--then admiringly at Ben Butler. He
drew a long breath of pure air, and sitting on the edge of the seat,
prepared to jump if necessary; for Bud was mortally afraid of being
in a runaway, and his scared eyes seemed to be looking for the soft
places in the road.

"Bishop," he drawled after a while, "huc-cum you name sech a
hoss"--pointing to the old roan--"sech a grand hoss, for sech a
man--sech a man as he was," he added humbly.

"Did you ever notice Ben Butler's eyes, Bud?" asked the old man,
knowingly.

"Blind," said Bud sadly, shaking his head--"too bad--too
bad--great--great hoss!"

"Yes, but the leds, Bud--that hoss, Ben Butler there, holds a world's
record--he's the only cock-eyed hoss in the world."

"You don't say so--that critter!--cock-eyed?" Bud laughed and slapped
his leg gleefully. "Didn't I always tell you so? World's
record--great--great!"

Then it broke gradually through on Bud's dull mind.

He slapped his leg again. "An' him--his namesake--he was cock-eyed,
too--I seed him onct at New 'Leens."

"Don't you never trust a cock-eyed man, Bud. He'll flicker on you in
the home-stretch. I've tried it an' it never fails. Love him, but
don't trust him. The world is full of folks we oughter love, but not
trust."

"No--I never will," said Bud as thoughtfully as he knew how to
be--"nor a cock-eyed 'oman neither. My wife's cock-eyed," he added.

He was silent a moment. Then he showed the old man a scar on his
forehead: "She done that last month--busted a plate on my head."

"That's bad," said the Bishop consolingly--"but you ortenter
aggravate her, Bud."

"That's so--I ortenter--least-wise, not whilst there's any crockery
in the house," said Bud sadly.

"There's another thing about this hoss," went on the Bishop--"he's
always spoony on mules. He ain't happy if he can't hang over the
front gate spoonin' with every stray mule that comes along. There's
old long-eared Lize that he's dead stuck on--if he c'u'd write he'd
be composin' a sonnet to her ears, like poets do to their lady
love's--callin' them Star Pointers of a Greater Hope, I reck'n, an'
all that. Why, he'd ruther hold hands by moonlight with some old
Maria mule than to set up by lamplight with a thoroughbred filly."

"Great--great!" said Bud slapping his leg--"didn't I tell you so?"

"So I named him Ben Butler when he was born. That was right after the
war, an' I hated old Ben so an' loved hosses so, I thought ef I'd
name my colt for old Ben maybe I'd learn to love him, in time."

Bud shook his head. "That's agin nature, Bishop."

"But I have, Bud--sho' as you are born I love old Ben Butler." He
lowered his voice to an earnest whisper: "I ain't never told you what
he done for po' Cap'n Tom."

"Never heurd o' Cap'n Tom."

The Bishop looked hurt. "Never mind, Bud, you wouldn't understand.
But maybe you will ketch this, listen now."

Bud listened intently with his head on one side.

"I ain't never hated a man in my life but what God has let me live
long enough to find out I was in the wrong--dead wrong. There are
Jews and Yankees. I useter hate 'em worse'n sin--but now what do you
reckon?"

"One on 'em busted a plate on yo' head?" asked Bud.

"Jesus Christ was a Jew, an' Cap'n Tom jined the Yankees."

"Bud," he said cheerily after a pause, "did I ever tell you the story
of this here Ben Butler here?"

Bud's eyes grew bright and he slapped his leg again.

"Well," said the old man, brightening up into one of his funny moods,
"you know my first wife was named Kathleen--Kathleen Galloway when
she was a gal, an' she was the pretties' gal in the settlement an'
could go all the gaits both saddle an' harness. She was han'som' as a
three-year-old an' cu'd out-dance, out-ride, out-sing an' out-flirt
any other gal that ever come down the pike. When she got her Sunday
harness on an' began to move, she made all the other gals look like
they were nailed to the roadside. It's true, she needed a little
weight in front to balance her, an' she had a lot of ginger in her
make-up, but she was straight and sound, didn't wear anything but the
harness an' never teched herself anywhere nor cross-fired nor hit her
knees."

"Good--great!" said Bud, slapping his leg.

"O, she was beautiful, Bud, with that silky hair that 'ud make a
thoroughbred filly's look coarse as sheep's wool, an' two
mischief-lovin' eyes an' a heart that was all gold. Bud--Bud"--there
was a huskiness in the old man's voice--"I know I can tell you
because it will never come back to me ag'in, but I love that Kathleen
now as I did then. A man may marry many times, but he can never love
but once. Sometimes it's his fust wife, sometimes his secon', an'
often it's the sweetheart he never got--but he loved only
one of 'em the right way, an' up yander, in some other star, where
spirits that are alike meet in one eternal wedlock, they'll be one
there forever."

"Her daddy, old man Galloway, had a thoroughbred filly that he named
Kathleena for his daughter, an' she c'ud do anything that the gal
left out. An' one day when she took the bit in her teeth an' run a
quarter in twenty-five seconds, she sot 'em all wild an' lots of
fellers tried to buy the filly an' get the old man to throw in the
gal for her keep an' board."

"I was one of 'em. I was clerkin' for the old man an' boardin' in the
house, an' whenever a young feller begins to board in a house where
there is a thoroughbred gal, the nex' thing he knows he'll be--"

"Buckled in the traces," cried Bud slapping his leg gleefully, at
this, his first product of brilliancy.

The old man smiled: "'Pon my word, Bud, you're gittin' so smart. I
don't know what I'll be doin' with you--so 'riginal an' smart. Why,
you'll quit keepin' an old man's company--like me. I won't be able to
entertain you at all. But, as I was sayin', the next thing he knows,
he'll be one of the family."

"So me an' Kathleen, we soon got spoony an' wanted to marry. Lots of
'em wanted to marry her, but I drawed the pole an' was the only one
she'd take as a runnin' mate. So I went after the old man this a way:
I told him I'd buy the filly if he'd give me Kathleen. I never will
forgit what he said: 'They ain't narry one of 'em for sale, swap or
hire, an' I wish you young fellers 'ud tend to yo' own business an'
let my fillies alone. I'm gwinter bus' the wurl's record wid 'em
both--Kathleena the runnin' record an' Kathleen the gal record, so be
damn to you an' don't pester me no mo'.'"

"Did he say _damn_?" asked Bud aghast--that such a word should ever
come from the Bishop.

"He sho' did, Bud. I wouldn't lie about the old man, now that he's
dead. It ain't right to lie about dead people--even to make 'em say
nice an' proper things they never thought of whilst alive. If we'd
stop lyin' about the ungodly dead an' tell the truth about 'em, maybe
the livin' 'ud stop tryin' to foller after 'em in that respect. As it
is, every one of 'em knows that no matter how wicked he lives
there'll be a lot o' nice lies told over him after he's gone, an' a
monument erected, maybe, to tell how good he was. An' there's another
lot of half pious folks in the wurl it 'ud help--kind o' sissy pious
folks--that jus' do manage to miss all the fun in the world an' jus'
are mean enough to ketch hell in the nex'. Get religion, but don't
get the sissy kind. So I am for tellin' it about old man Galloway
jus' as he was.

"You orter heard him swear, Bud--it was part of his religion. An'
wherever he is to-day in that other world, he is at it yet, for in
that other life, Bud, we're just ourselves on a bigger scale than we
are in this. He used to cuss the clerks around the store jus' from
habit, an' when I went to work for him he said:

"'Young man, maybe I'll cuss you out some mornin', but don't pay no
'tention to it--it's just a habit I've got into, an' the boys all
understand it.'

"'Glad you told me,' I said, lookin' him square in the eye--'one
confidence deserves another. I've got a nasty habit of my own, but I
hope you won't pay no 'tention to it, for it's a habit, an' I can't
help it. I don't mean nothin' by it, an' the boys all understand it,
but when a man cusses me I allers knock him down--do it befo' I
think'--I said--'jes' a habit I've got.'

"Well, he never cussed me all the time I was there. My stock went up
with the old man an' my chances was good to get the gal, if I hadn't
made a fool hoss-trade; for with old man Galloway a good hoss-trade
covered all the multitude of sins in a man that charity now does in
religion. In them days a man might have all the learnin' and virtues
an' graces, but if he cudn't trade hosses he was tinklin' brass an'
soundin' cymbal in that community.

"The man that throwed the silk into me was Jud Carpenter--the same
feller that's now the Whipper-in for these mills. Now, don't be
scared," said the old man soothingly as Bud's scary eyes looked about
him and he clutched the buggy as if he would jump out--"he'll not
pester you now--he's kept away from me ever since. He swapped me a
black hoss with a star an' snip, that looked like the genuine thing,
but was about the neatest turned gold-brick that was ever put on an
unsuspectin' millionaire.

"Well, in the trade he simply robbed me of a fine mare I had, that
cost me one-an'-a-quarter. Kathleen an' me was already engaged, but
when old man Galloway heard of it, he told me the jig was up an' no
such double-barrel idiot as I was shu'd ever leave any of my colts in
the Galloway paddock--that when he looked over his gran'-chillun's
pedigree he didn't wanter see all of 'em crossin' back to the same
damned fool! Oh, he was nasty. He said that my colts was dead sho' to
be luffers with wheels in their heads, an' when pinched they'd quit,
an' when collared they'd lay down. That there was a yaller streak in
me that was already pilin' up coupons on the future for tears and
heartaches an', maybe a gallows or two, an' a lot of uncomplimentary
talk of that kind.

"Well, Kathleen cried, an' I wept, an' I'll never forgit the night
she gave me a little good-bye kiss out under the big oak tree an'
told me we'd hafter part.

"The old man maybe sized me up all right as bein' a fool, but he
missed it on my bein' a quitter. I had no notion of being fired an'
blistered an' turned out to grass that early in the game. I wrote her
a poem every other day, an' lied between heats, till the po' gal was
nearly crazy, an' when I finally got it into her head that if it was
a busted blood vessel with the old man, it was a busted heart with
me, she cried a little mo' an' consented to run off with me an' take
the chances of the village doctor cuppin' the old man at the right
time.

"The old lady was on my side and helped things along. I had
everything fixed even to the moon which was shinin' jes' bright
enough to carry us to the Justice's without a lantern, some three
miles away, an' into the nex' county.

"I'll never forgit how the night looked as I rode over after her, how
the wild-flowers smelt, an' the fresh dew on the leaves. I remember
that I even heard a mockin'-bird wake up about midnight as I tied my
hoss to a lim' in the orchard nearby, an' slipped aroun' to meet
Kathleen at the bars behin' the house. It was a half mile to the
house an' I was slippin' through the sugar-maple trees along the path
we'd both walked so often befo' when I saw what I thought was
Kathleen comin' towards me. I ran to meet her. It wa'n't Kathleen,
but her mother--an' she told me to git in a hurry, that the old man
knew all, had locked Kathleen up in the kitchen, turned the brindle
dog loose in the yard, an' was hidin' in the woods nigh the barn,
with his gun loaded with bird-shot, an' that if I went any further
the chances were I'd not sit down agin for a year. She had slipped
around through the woods just to warn me.

"Of course I wanted to fight an' take her anyway--kill the dog an'
the old man, storm the kitchen an' run off with Kathleen in my arms
as they do in novels. But the old lady said she didn't want the dog
hurt--it being a valuable coon-dog,--and that I was to go away out of
the county an' wait for a better time.

"It mighty nigh broke me up, but I decided the old lady was right an'
I'd go away. But 'long towards the shank of the night, after I had
put up my hoss, the moon was still shinin', an' I cudn't sleep for
thinkin' of Kathleen. I stole afoot over to her house just to look at
her window. The house was all quiet an' even the brindle dog was
asleep. I threw kisses at her bed-room window, but even then I cudn't
go away, so I slipped around to the barn and laid down in the hay to
think over my hard luck. My heart ached an' burned an' I was nigh
dead with love.

"I wondered if I'd ever get her, if they'd wean her from me, an' give
her to the rich little feller whose fine farm j'ined the old man's
an' who the old man was wuckin' fur--whether the two wouldn't
over-persuade her whilst I was gone. For I'd made up my mind I'd go
befo' daylight--that there wasn't anything else for me to do.

"I was layin' in the hay, an' boylike, the tears was rollin' down. If
I c'ud only kiss her han' befo' I left--if I c'ud only see her face
at the winder!

"I must have sobbed out loud, for jus' then I heard a gentle,
sympathetic whinny an' a cold, inquisitive little muzzle was thrust
into my face, as I lay on my back with my heart nearly busted. It was
Kathleena, an' I rubbed my hot face against her cool cheek--for it
seemed so human of her to come an' try to console me, an' I put my
arms around her neck an' kissed her silky mane an' imagined it was
Kathleen's hair.

"Oh, I was heart-broke an' silly.

"Then all at onct a thought came to me, an' I slipped the bridle an'
saddle on her an' led her out at the back door, an' I scratched this
on a slip of paper an' stuck it on the barn do':

"'_To old man Galloway:_

"'_You wouldn't let me 'lope with yo' dorter, so I've 'loped with yo'
filly, an' you'll never see hair nor hide of her till you send me
word to come back to this house an' fetch a preacher._'

"'(Signed)                         _Hillard Watts._'"

The old man smiled, and Bud slapped his leg gleefully.

"Great--great! Oh my, but who'd a thought of it?" he grunted.

"They say it 'ud done you good to have been there the nex' mornin'
an' heurd the cussin' recurd busted--but me an' the filly was forty
miles away. He got out a warrant for me for hoss-stealin', but the
sheriff was for me, an' though he hunted high an' low he never could
find me."

"Well, it went on for a month, an' I got the old man's note, sent by
the sheriff:

"_'To Hillard Watts, Wher-Ever Found._

"_'Come on home an' fetch yo' preacher. Can't afford to loose the
filly, an' the gal has been off her feed ever since you left._

"'_Jobe Galloway._'

"Oh, Bud, I'll never forgit that home-comin' when she met me at the
gate an' kissed me an' laughed a little an' cried a heap, an' we
walked in the little parlor an' the preacher made us one.

"Nor of that happy, happy year, when all life seemed a sweet dream
now as I look back, an' even the memory of it keeps me happy. Memory
is a land that never changes in a world of changes, an' that should
show us our soul is immortal, for memory is only the reflection of
our soul."

His voice grew more tender, and low: "Toward the last of the year I
seed her makin' little things slyly an' hidin' 'em away in the bureau
drawer, an' one night she put away a tiny half-finished little dress
with the needle stickin' in the hem--just as she left it--just as her
beautiful hands made the last stitch they ever made on earth....

"O Bud, Bud, out of this blow come the sweetest thought I ever had,
an' I know from that day that this life ain't all, that we'll live
agin as sho' as God lives an' is just--an' no man can doubt that.
No--no--Bud, this life ain't all, because it's God's unvarying law to
finish things. That tree there is finished, an' them birds, they are
finished, an' that flower by the roadside an' the mountain yonder an'
the world an' the stars an' the sun. An' we're mo' than they be,
Bud--even the tinies' soul, like Kathleen's little one that jes'
opened its eyes an' smiled an' died, when its mammy died. It had
something that the trees an' birds an' mountains didn't have--a
soul--an' don't you kno' He'll finish all such lives up yonder? He'll
pay it back a thousandfold for what he cuts off here."

Bud wept because the tears were running down the old man's cheeks. He
wanted to say something, but he could not speak. That queer feeling
that came over him at times and made him silent had come again.




CHAPTER III

AN ANSWER TO PRAYER


Then the old man remembered that he was making Bud suffer with his
own sorrow, and when Bud looked at him again the Bishop had wiped his
eyes on the back of his hand and was smiling.

Ben Butler, unknown to either, had come to a standstill.

The Bishop broke out in a cheery tone:

"My, how far off the subject I got! I started out to tell you all
about Ben Butler, and--and--how he come in answer to prayer," said
the Bishop solemnly.

Bud grinned: "It muster been, '_Now I lay me down to sleep_.'"

The Bishop laughed: "Well I'll swun if he ain't sound asleep sho'
'nuff." He laughed again: "Bud, you're gittin' too bright for
anything. I jes' don't see how the old man's gwinter talk to you much
longer 'thout he goes to school agin."

"No--Ben Butler is a answer to prayer," he went on.

"The trouble with the world is it don't pray enough. Prayer puts God
into us, Bud--we're all a little part of God, even the worst of us,
an' we can make it big or let it die out accordin' as we pray. If we
stop prayin' God jes' dies out in us. Of course God don't answer any
fool prayer, for while we're here we are nothin' but a bundle of
laws, an' the same unknown law that moves the world around makes yo'
heart beat. But God is behind the law, an' if you get in harmony with
God's laws an' pray, He'll answer them. Christ knowed this, an' there
was some things that even He wouldn't ask for. When the Devil tempted
Him to jump off the top of the mountain. He drawed the line right
there, for He knowed if God saved Him by stoppin' the law of
gravitation it meant the wreck of the world."

"Bud," he went on earnestly, "I've lived a long time an' seed a heap
o' things, an' the plaines' thing I ever seed in my life is that two
generations of scoffers will breed a coward, an' three of 'em a
thief, an' that the world moves on only in proportion as it's got
faith in God.

"I was ruined after the war--broken--busted--ruined! An' I owed five
hundred dollars on the little home up yander on the mountain. When I
come back home from the army I didn't have nothin' but one old
mare,--a daughter of that Kathleena I told you about. I knowed I was
gone if I lost that little home, an' so one night I prayed to the
Lord about it an' then it come to me as clear as it come to Moses in
the burnin' bush. God spoke to me as clear as he did to Moses."

"How did he say it?" asked Bud, thoroughly frightened and looking
around for a soft spot to jump and run.

"Oh, never mind that," went on the Bishop--"God don't say things out
loud--He jes' brings two an' two together an' expects you to add 'em
an' make fo'. He gives you the soil an' the grain an' expects you to
plant, assurin' you of rain an' sunshine to make the crop, if you'll
only wuck. He comes into yo' life with the laws of life an' death an'
takes yo' beloved, an' it's His way of sayin' to you that this life
ain't all. He shows you the thief an' the liar an' the adulterer all
aroun' you, an' if you feel the shock of it an' the hate of it, it's
His voice tellin' you not to steal an' not to lie an' not to be
impure. You think only of money until you make a bad break an' loose
it all. That's His voice tellin' you that money ain't everything in
life. He puts opportunities befo' you, an' if you grasp 'em it's His
voice tellin' you to prosper an' grow fat in the land. No, He don't
speak out, but how clearly an' unerringly He does speak to them that
has learned to listen for His voice!

"I rode her across the river a hundred miles up in Marshall County,
Tennessee, and mated her to a young horse named Tom Hal. Every body
knows about him now, but God told me about him fust.

"Then I knowed jes' as well as I am settin' in this buggy that that
colt was gwinter give me back my little home an' a chance in life. Of
course, I told everybody 'bout it an' they all laughed at me--jes'
like they all laughed at Noah an' Abraham an' Lot an' Moses, an' if I
do say it--Jesus Christ. But thank God it didn't pester me no more'n
it did them."

"Well, the colt come ten years ago--an' I named him Ben Butler--cause
I hated old Ben Butler so. He had my oldest son shot in New Orleans
like he did many other rebel prisoners. But this was God's colt an'
God had told me to love my enemies an' do good to them that did
wrong to me, an' so I prayed over it an' named him Ben Butler, hopin'
that God 'ud let me love my enemy for the love I bore the colt. An'
He has."

Bud shook his head dubiously.

"He showed me I was wrong, Bud, to hate folks, an' when I tell you of
po' Cap'n Tom an' how good Gen. Butler was to him, you'll say so,
too.

"From the very start Ben Butler was a wonder. He came with fire in
his blood an' speed in his heels.

"An' I trained him. Yes--from the time I was Gen. Travis' overseer I
had always trained his hosses. I'm one of them preachers that
believes God intended the world sh'ud have the best hosses, as He
intended it sh'ud have the best men an' women. Take all His works, in
their fitness an' goodness, an' you'll see He never 'lowed for a
scrub an' a quitter anywhere. An' so when He gave me this tip on Ben
Butler's speed I done the rest.

"God gives us the tips of life, but He expects us to make them into
the dead cinches.

"Oh, they all laughed at us, of course, an' nicknamed the colt Mister
Isaacs, because, like Sarah's son, he came in answer to prayer. An'
when in his two-year-old form, I led him out of the stable one cold,
icy day, an' he was full of play an' r'ared an' fell an' knocked down
his hip, they said that 'ud fix Mister Isaacs.

"But it didn't pester me at all. I knowed God had done bigger things
in this world than fixin' a colt's hip, an' it didn't shake my faith.
I kept on prayin' an' kept on trainin'.

"Well, it soon told. His hip was down, but it didn't stop him from
flyin'. As a three-year-old he paced the Nashville half mile track in
one-one flat, an' though they offered me then an' there a thousand
dollars for Ben Butler, I told 'em no,--he was God's colt an' I
didn't need but half of that to raise the mortgage, an' he'd do that
the first time he turned round in a race.

"I drove him that race myself, pulled down the five hundred dollar
purse, refused all their fine offers for Ben Butler, an' me an' him's
been missionaryin' round here ever since."

"Great hoss--great!" said Bud, his eyes sparkling,--"allers told you
so! Think I'll get out and hug him."

This he did while the Bishop sat smiling. But in the embrace Ben
Butler planted a fore foot on Bud's great toe. Bud came back limping
and whimpering with pain.

"Now there, Bud," said the Bishop, consolingly. "God has spoken to
you right there."

"What 'ud He say?" asked Bud, looking scary again.

"Why, he said through Nature's law an' voice that you mustn't hug a
hoss if you don't want yo' toes tramped on."

"Who must you hug then?" asked Bud.

"Yo' wife, if you can't do no better," said the Bishop quietly.

"My wife's wussern a hoss," said Bud sadly--"she bites. I'm sorry you
didn't take that thar thousan' dollars for him," he said, looking at
his bleeding toe.

"Bud," said the old man sternly, "don't say that no mo'. It mou't
make me think you are one of them selfish dogs that thinks money'll
do anything. Then I'd hafter watch you, for I'd know you'd do
anything for money."

Bud crawled in rather crest-fallen, and they drove on.




CHAPTER IV

HOW THE BISHOP FROZE


The Bishop laughed outright as his mind went back again.

"Well," he went on reminiscently, "I'll have to finish my tale an'
tell you how I throwed the cold steel into Jud Carpenter when I got
back. I saw I had it to do, to work back into my daddy-in-law's
graces an' save my reputation.

"Now, Jud had lied to me an' swindled me terribly, when he put off
that old no-count hoss on me. Of course, I might have sued him, for a
lie is a microbe which naturally develops into a lawyer's fee. But
while it's a terrible braggart, it's really cowardly an' delicate,
an' will die of lock-jaw if you only pick its thumb.

"So I breshed up that old black to split-silk fineness, an' turned
him over to Dr. Sykes, a friend of mine living in the next village.
An' I said to the Doctor, 'Now remember he is yo' hoss until Jud
Carpenter comes an' offers you two hundred dollars for him.'

"'Will he be fool enough to do it?' he asked, as he looked the old
counterfeit over.

"'Wait an' see,' I said.

"I said nothin', laid low an' froze an' it wa'n't long befo' Jud come
'round as I 'lowed he'd do. He expected me to kick an' howl; but as I
took it all so nice he didn't understand it. Nine times out of ten
the best thing to do when the other feller has robbed you is to
freeze. The hunter on the plain knows the value of that, an' that he
can freeze an' make a deer walk right up to him, to find out what he
is. Why, a rabbit will do it, if you jump him quick, an' he gets
confused an' don't know jes' what's up; an' so Jud come as I thort
he'd do. He couldn't stan' it no longer, an' he wanted to rub it in.
He brought his crowd to enjoy the fun.

"'Oh, Mr. Watts,' he said grinnin', 'how do you like a coal black
stump-sucker?'

"'Well,' I said indifferent enough--'I've knowed good judges of
hosses to make a hones' mistake now an' then, an' sell a hoss to a
customer with the heaves thinkin' he's a stump-sucker. But it 'ud
turn out to be only the heaves an' easily cured.'

"'Is that so?' said Jud, changing his tone.

"'Yes,' I said, 'an' I've knowed better judges of hosses to sell a
nervous hoss for a balker that had been balked onct by a rattle head.
But in keerful hands I've seed him git over it,' I said, indifferent
like.

"'Indeed?' said Jud.

"'Yes, Jud,' said I, 'I've knowed real hones' hoss traders to make
bad breaks of that kind, now and then--honest intentions an' all
that, but bad judgment,'--sez I--'an' I'll cut it short by sayin'
that I'll just give you two an' a half if you'll match that no-count,
wind broken black as you tho'rt, that you swapped me.'

"'Do you mean it?' said Jud, solemn-like.

"'I'll make a bond to that effect,' I said solemnly.

"Jud went off thoughtful. In a week or so he come back. He hung
aroun' a while an' said:

"'I was up in the country the other day, an' do you kno' I saw a dead
match for yo' black? Only a little slicker an' better lookin'--same
star an' white hind foot. As nigh like him as one black-eyed pea
looks like another.'

"'Jud,' I said, 'I never did see two hosses look exactly alike.
You're honestly mistaken.'

"'They ain't a hair's difference,' he said. 'He's a little slicker
than yours--that's all--better groomed than the one in yo' barn.'

"'I reckon he is,' said I, for I knew very well there wa'n't none in
my barn. 'That's strange,' I went on, 'but you kno' what I said.'

"'Do you still hold to that offer?' he axed.

"'I'll make bond with my daddy-in-law on it,' I said.

"'Nuff said,' an' Jud was gone. The next day he came back leading the
black, slicker an' hence no-counter than ever, if possible.

"'Look at him,' he said proudly--'a dead match for yourn. Jes' han'
me that two an' a half an' take him. You now have a team worth a
thousan'.'

"I looked the hoss over plum' surprised like.

"'Why, Jud,' I said as softly as I cu'd, for I was nigh to bustin',
an' I had a lot of friends come to see the sho', an' they standin'
'round stickin' their old hats in their mouths to keep from
explodin'--'Why, Jud, my dear friend,' I said, 'ain't you kind o'
mistaken about this? I said a _match_ for the black, an' it peers to
me like you've gone an' bought the black hisse'f an' is tryin' to
put him off on me. No--no--my kind frien', you'll not fin' anything
no-count enuff to be his match on this terrestrial ball.'

"By this time you cu'd have raked Jud's eyes off his face with a
soap-gourd.

"'What? w-h-a-t? He--why--I bought him of Dr. Sykes.'

"'Why, that's funny,' I said, 'but it comes in handy all round. If
you'd told me that the other day I might have told you,' I
said--'yes, I might have, but I doubt it--that I'd loaned him to Dr.
Sykes an' told him whenever you offered him two hundred cash for him
to let him go. Jes' keep him,' sez I, 'till you find his mate, an'
I'll take an oath to buy 'em.'"

Bud slapped his leg an' yelled with delight.

"Whew," said the Bishop--"not so loud. We're at the church.

"But remember, Bud, it's good policy allers to freeze. When you're in
doubt--freeze!"




CHAPTER V

THE FLOCK


The Bishop's flock consisted of two distinct classes: Cottontowners
and Hillites.

"There's only a fair sprinklin' of Hillites that lives nigh about
here," said the Bishop, "an' they come because it suits them better
than the high f'lutin' services in town. When a Christian gits into a
church that's over his head, he is soon food for devil-fish."

The line of demarcation, even in the Bishop's small flock, was easily
seen. The Hillites, though lean and lanky, were swarthy, healthy and
full of life. "But Cottontown," said the Bishop, as he looked down on
his congregation--"Cottontown jes' naturally feels tired."

It was true. Years in the factory had made them dead, listless,
soulless and ambitionless creatures. To look into their faces was
like looking into the cracked and muddy bottom of a stream which once
ran.

Their children were there also--little tots, many of them, who worked
in the factory because no man nor woman in all the State cared enough
for them to make a fight for their childhood.

They were children only in age. Their little forms were not the forms
of children, but of diminutive men and women, on whose backs the
burden of earning their living had been laid, ere the frames had
acquired the strength to bear it.

Stunted in mind and body, they were little solemn, pygmy peoples,
whom poverty and overwork had canned up and compressed into
concentrated extracts of humanity. The flavor--the juices of
childhood--had been pressed out.

"'N no wonder," thought the Bishop, as he looked down upon them from
his crude platform, "for them little things works six days every week
in the factory from sun-up till dark, an' often into the night, with
jes' forty minutes at noon to bolt their food. O God," he said softly
to himself, "You who caused a stream of water to spring up in the
wilderness that the life of an Ishmaelite might be saved, make a
stream of sentiment to flow from the heart of the world to save these
little folks."

Miss Patsy Butts, whose father, Elder Butts of the Hard-shell faith,
owned a fertile little valley farm beyond the mountain, was organist.
She was fat and so red-faced that at times she seemed to be oiled.

She was painfully frank and suffered from acute earnestness.

And now, being marriageable, she looked always about her with shy,
quick, expectant glances.

The other object in life, to Patsy, was to watch her younger brother,
Archie B., and see that he kept out of mischief. And perhaps the
commonest remark of her life was:

"Maw, jus' look at Archie B.!"

This was a great cross for Archie B., who had been known to say
concerning it: "If I ever has any kids, I'll never let the old'uns
nuss the young'uns. They gits into a bossin' kind of a habit that
sticks to 'em all they lives."

To-day Miss Patsy was radiantly shy and happy, caused by the fact
that her fat, honest feet were encased in a pair of beautiful new
shoes, the uppers of which were clasped so tightly over her ankles as
to cause the fat members to bulge in creases over the tops, as
uncomfortable as two Sancho Panzas in armor.

"Side-but'ners," said Mrs. Butts triumphantly to Mrs. O'Hooligan of
Cottontown,--"side-but'ners--I got 'em for her yistiddy--the fust
that this town's ever seed. La, but it was a job gittin' 'em on
Patsy. I had to soak her legs in cold water nearly all night, an'
then I broke every knittin' needle in the house abut'nin' them side
but'ners.

"But fashion is fashion, an' when I send my gal out into society,
I'll send her in style. Patsy Butts," she whispered so loud that
everybody on her side of the house heard her--"when you starts up
that ole wheez-in' one gallus organ, go slow or you'll bust them
side-but'ners wide open."

When the Bishop came forward to preach his sermon, or talk to his
flock, as he called it, his surplice would have astonished anyone,
except those who had seen him thus attired so often. A stranger might
have laughed, but he would not have laughed long--the old man's
earnestness, sincerity, reverence and devotion were over-shadowing.
Its pathos was too deep for fun.

Instead of a clergyman's frock he wore a faded coat of blue buttoned
up to his neck. It had been the coat of an officer in the artillery,
and had evidently passed through the Civil War. There was a bullet
hole in the shoulder and a sabre cut in the sleeve.




CHAPTER VI

A BISHOP MILITANT


No one had ever heard the Bishop explain his curious surplice but
once, and that had been several years before, when the little chapel,
by the aid of a concert Miss Alice gave, contributions from the
Excelsior Mill headed by Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley, and other sources had
been furnished, and the Bishop came forward to make his first talk:

"This is the only church of its kind in the worl', I reckin'," he
said. "I've figured it out an' find we're made up of Baptis',
Metherdis', Presbyterian, 'Piscopalian, Cam'elites an' Hard-shells.
You've 'lected me Bishop, I reckon, 'cause I've jined all of 'em, an'
so far as I know I am the only man in the worl' who ever done that
an' lived to tell the tale. An' I'm not ashamed to say it, for I've
allers foun' somethin' in each one of 'em that's a little better than
somethin' in the other. An' if there's any other church that'll teach
me somethin' new about Jesus Christ, that puffect Man, I'll jine it.
I've never seed a church that had Him in it that wa'n't good enough
for me."

The old man smiled in humorous retrospection as he went on:

"The first company of Christians I jined was the Hard-shells. I was
young an' a raw recruit an' nachully fell into the awkward squad. I
liked their solar plexus way of goin' at the Devil, an' I liked the
way they'd allers deal out a good ration of whiskey, after the fight,
to ev'ry true soldier of the Cross--especially if we got our feet too
wet, which we mos' always of'ntimes gen'ally did."

This brought out visible smiles all down the line, from the others at
the Hard-shells and their custom of foot-washing.

"But somehow," went on the old man, "I didn't grow in grace--spent
too much time in singin' an' takin' toddies to keep off the effect of
cold from wet feet. Good company, but I wanted to go higher, so I
drapt into the Baptis' rigiment, brave an' hones', but they spen' too
much time a-campin' in the valley of the still water, an' when on the
march, instid of buildin' bridges to cross dry-shod over rivers an'
cricks, they plunge in with their guns stropped to their backs, their
powder tied up in their socks in their hats, their shoes tied 'round
their necks an' their butcher-knife in their teeth. After they lan'
they seem to think it's the greates' thing in the worl' that they've
been permitted to wade through water instead of crossin' on a log,
an' they spen' the balance of their time marchin' 'roun' an' singin':

    "'Billows of mercy, over me roll,
     Oceans of Faith an' Hope, come to my soul.'

"Don't want to fly to heaven--want to swim there. An' if they find
too much lan' after they get there, they'll spen' the res' of
eternity prayin' for a deluge.

"Bes' ole relig'un in the worl', tho,--good fighters, too, in the
Lord's cause. Ole timey, an' a trifle keerless about their
accoutrements, an' too much water nachully keeps their guns rusty an'
their powder damp, but if it comes to a square-up fight agin the
cohorts of sin, an' the powder in their pans is too damp for
flashin', they'd jes' as soon wade in with the butcher-knife an' the
meat axe. I nachully out-grow'd 'em, for I seed if the Great Captain
'ud command us all to jine armies an' fight the worl', the Baptis'
'ud never go in, unless it was a sea-fight.

"From them to the Cam'elites was easy, for I seed they was
web-footed, too. The only diff'rence betwix' them an' the Baptis' is
that they are willin' to jine in with any other rigiment, provided
allers that you let them 'pint the sappers an' miners an' blaze out
the way. Good fellers, tho', an' learned me lots. They beats the
worl' for standin' up for each other an' votin' allers for fust
place. If there's a promotion in camp they want it; 'n' when they
ain't out a-drillin' their companies they're sho' to be in camp
'sputin' with other rigiments as to how to do it. Good, hones'
fighters, tho', and tort me how to use my side arms in a tight place.
Scatterin' in some localities, but like the Baptises, whenever you
find a mill-dam there'll be their camp an' plenty o' corn.

"Lord, how I did enjoy it when I struck the Methodis' rigiment! The
others had tort me faith an' zeal, but these tort me discipline. They
are the best drilled lot in the army of the Lord, an' their drill
masters run all the way from wet-nurses to old maids. For furagin'
an' free love for ev'rything they beats the worl', an' they pay mo'
'tenshun to their com'sary department than they do to their
ord'nance. They'll march anywhere you want 'em, swim rivers or build
bridges, fight on ship or sho', strong in camp-meetin's or battle
songs, an' when they go, they go like clockwuck an' carry their dead
with 'em!

"The only thing they need is an incubator, to keep up their hennery
department an' supply their captains with the yellow legs of the
land. Oh, but I love them big hearted Methodists!

"I foun' the Presbyterian phalanx a pow'ful army, steady, true an'
ole-fashioned, their powder strong of brimstone an' sulphur an' their
ordnance antique. Why, they're usin' the same old mortars John Knox
fired at the Popes, an' the same ole blunderbusses that scatter wide
enough to cover all creation an' is as liable to kick an' kill
anything in the rear as in front. They won't sleep in tents an'
nothin' suits 'em better'n being caught in a shower on the march. In
battle they know no fear, for they know no ball is goin' to kill you
if you're predistined to be hung. In the fight they know no
stragglers an' fallers from grace.

"Ay, but they're brave. I jined 'em Sunday night after the battle of
Shiloh, when I saw one of their captains stan' up amid the dead an'
dyin' of that bloody field, with the shells from the Yankee gun-boats
fallin' aroun' him. Standin' there tellin' of God an' His
forgiveness, until many a po' dyin' soldier, both frien' an' foe,
like the thief on the cross, found peace at the last hour.

"Befo' I jined the 'Piscopal corps I didn't think I cu'd stan'
'em--too high furlutin' for my raisin'. They seemed to pay mo'
attenshun to their uniforms than their ordnance, an' their
drum-majors outshine any other churches' major generals. An'
drillin'? They can go through mo' monkey manoeuvers in five minutes
than any other church can in a year. It's drillin'--drillin' with 'em
all the time, an' red-tape an' knee breeches, an' when they ain't
drillin' they're dancin'. They have signs an' countersigns, worl'
without end, ah-men. An' I've knowed many of them to put all his
three months' pay into a Sunday uniform for dress parade.

"Weepons? They've got the fines' in the worl' an' they don't think
they can bring down the Devil les' they shoot at him with a silver
bullet. Everything goes by red-tape with 'em, an' the ban'-wagon goes
in front.

"But I jined 'em," went on the old man, "an' I'll tell you why."

He paused--his voice trembled, and the good natured, bubbling humor,
which had floated down the smooth channel of his talk, vanished as
bubbles do when they float out into the deep pool beyond.

"Here," he said, lifting his arm, and showing the coat of the Captain
of Artillery--"this is what made me jine 'em. This is the coat of
Cap'n Tom, that saved my life at the risk of his own an' that was
struck down at Franklin; an' no common man of clay, as I be, ever
befo' had so God-like a man of marble to pattern after. I saw him in
the thick of the fight with his guns parked an' double-shotted, stop
our victorious rush almos' up to the river bank an' saved Grant's
army from defeat an' capture. I was on the other side, an' chief of
scouts for Albert Sidney Johnston, but I see him now in his blue
Yankee coat, fightin' his guns like the hero that he was. I was
foolish an' rushed in. I was captured an' in a prison pen, I drawed
the black ball with 'leven others that was sentenced to be shot. It
was Cap'n Tom who came to me in the early dawn of the day of the
execution an' said: 'They shall not shoot you, Bishop--put on my blue
coat an' go through the lines. I owe much to my country--I am giving
it all.

"'I owe something to you. They shall not shoot you like a dog. I will
tell my colonel what I have done to-morrow. If they think it is
treason they may shoot me instead. I have nothing to live for--you,
all. Go.'

"I have never seed him sence.

"We are mortals and must think as mortals. If we conceive of God, we
can conceive of Him only as in human form. An' I love to think that
the blessed an' brave an' sweet Christ looked like Cap'n Tom looked
in the early dawn of that morning when he come an' offered
himself,--captain that he was--to be shot, if need be, in my
place--so gran', so gentle, so brave, so forgivin', so like a
captain--so like God."

His voice had dropped lower and lower still. It died away in a
sobbing murmur, as a deep stream purls and its echo dies in a deeper
eddy.

"It was his church an' I jined it. This was his coat, an' so, let us
pray."




CHAPTER VII

MARGARET ADAMS


There passed out of the church, after the service, a woman leading a
boy of twelve.

He was a handsome lad with a proud and independent way about him. He
carried his head up and there was that calmness that showed good
blood. There was even a haughtiness which was pathetic, knowing as
the village did the story of his life.

The woman herself was of middle age, with neat, well-fitting clothes,
which, in the smallest arrangement of pattern and make-up, bespoke a
natural refinement.

Her's was a sweet face, with dark eyes, and in their depths lay the
shadow of resignation.

Throughout the sermon she had not taken her eyes off the old man in
the pulpit, and so interested was she, and so earnestly did she drink
in all he said, that any one noticing could tell that, to her, the
plain old man in the pulpit was more than a pastor.

She sat off by herself. Not one of them in all Cottontown would come
near her.

"Our virtue is all we po' fo'ks has got--if we lose that we ain't got
nothin' lef'," Mrs. Banks of grass-widow fame had once said, and
saying it had expressed Cottontown's opinion.

Mrs. Banks was very severe when the question of woman's purity was
up. She was the fastest woman at the loom in all Cottontown. She was
quick, with a bright, deep-seeing eye. She had been pretty--but now
at forty-five she was angular and coarse-looking, with a sharp
tongue.

The Bishop had smiled when he heard her say it, and then he looked at
Margaret Adams sitting in the corner with her boy. In saying it, Mrs.
Banks had elevated her nose as she looked in the direction where sat
the Magdalene.

The old man smiled, because he of all others knew the past history of
Mrs. Banks, the mistress of the loom.

He replied quietly: "Well, I dun'no--the best thing that can be said
of any of us in general is, that up to date, it ain't recorded that
the Almighty has appinted any one of us, on account of our supreme
purity, to act as chief stoner of the Universe. Mighty few of us,
even, has any license to throw pebbles."

Of all his congregation there was no more devoted member than
Margaret Adams--"an' as far as I kno'," the old man had often said,
"if there is an angel on earth, it is that same little woman."

When she came into church that day, the old man noticed that even the
little Hillites drew away from her. Often they would point at the
little boy by her side and make faces at him. To-day they had carried
it too far when one of them, just out in the church yard, pushed him
rudely as he walked proudly by the side of his mother, looking
straight before him, in his military way, and not so much as giving
them a glance.

"Wood's-colt," sneered the boy in his ear, as he pushed him.

"No--thoroughbred"--came back, and with it a blow which sent the
intruder backward on the grass.

Several old men nodded at him approvingly as he walked calmly on by
the side of his mother.

"Jimmie--Jimmie!" was all she said as she slipped into the church.

"I guess you must be a new-comer," remarked Archie B. indifferently
to the boy who was wiping the blood from his face as he arose from
the ground and looked sillily around. "That boy Jim Adams is my
pardner an' I could er tole you what you'd git by meddlin' with him.
He's gone in with his mother now, but him an' me--we're in
alliance--we fights for each other. Feel like you got enough?"--and
Archie B. got up closer and made motions as if to shed his coat.

The other boy grinned good naturedly and walked off.

To-day, just outside of the church Ben Butler had been hitched up and
the Bishop sat in the old buggy.

Bud Billings stood by holding the bit, stroking the old horse's neck
and every now and then striking a fierce attitude, saying
"Whoa--whoa--suh!"

As usual, Ben Butler was asleep.

"Turn him loose, Bud," said the old man humoring the slubber--"I've
got the reins an' he can't run away now. I can't take you home
to-day--I'm gwinter take Margaret, an' you an' Jimmie can come along
together."

No other man could have taken Margaret Adams home and had any
standing left, in Cottontown.

And soon they were jogging along down the mountain side, toward the
cabin where the woman lived and supported herself and boy by her
needle.

To-day Margaret was agitated and excited--more than the Bishop had
ever known her to be. He knew the reason, for clean-shaved and neatly
dressed, Jack Bracken passed her on the road to church that morning,
and as they rode along the Bishop told her it was indeed Jack whom
she had seen, "an' he loves you yet, Margaret," he said.

She turned pink under her bonnet. How pretty and fresh she
looked--thought the Bishop--and what purity in a face to have such a
name.

"It _was_ Jack, then," she said simply--"tell me about him, please."

"By the grace of God he has reformed," said the old
man--"and--Margaret--he loves you yet, as I sed. He is going under
the name of Jack Smith, the blacksmith here, an' he'll lead another
life--but he loves you yet," he whispered again.

Then he told her what had happened, knowing that Jack's secret would
be safe with her.

When he told her how they had buried little Jack, and of the father's
admission that his determination to lead the life of an outlaw had
come when he found that she had been untrue to him, she was shaken
with grief. She could only sit and weep. Not even at the gate, when
the old man left her, did she say anything.

Within, she stopped before a picture which hung over the mantle-piece
and looked at it, through eyes that filled again and again with
tears. It was the picture of a pretty mountain girl with dark eyes
and sensual lip.

Margaret knelt before it and wept.

The boy had come and stood moodily at the front gate. The hot and
resentful blood still tinged in his cheek. He looked at his
knuckles--they were cut and swollen where he had struck the boy who
had jeered him. It hurt him, but he only smiled grimly.

Never before had any one called him a wood's-colt. He had never heard
the word before, but he knew what it meant. For the first time in his
life, he hated his mother. He heard her weeping in the little room
they called home. He merely shut his lips tightly and, in spite of
the stoicism that was his by nature, the tears swelled up in his
eyes.

They were hot tears and he could not shake them off. For the first
time the wonder and the mystery of it all came over him. For the
first time he felt that he was not as other boys,--that there was a
meaning in this lonely cabin and the shunned woman he called mother,
and the glances, some of pity, some of contempt, which he had met all
of his life.

As he stood thinking this, Richard Travis rode slowly down the main
road leading from the town to The Gaffs. And this went through the
boy successively--not in words, scarcely--but in feelings:

"What a beautiful horse he is riding--it thrills me to see it--I love
it naturally--oh, but to own one!

"What a handsome man he is--and how like a gentleman he looks! I like
the way he sits his horse. I like that way he has of not noticing
people. He has got the same way about him I have got--that I've
always had--that I love--a way that shows me I'm not afraid, and that
I have got nerve and bravery.

"He sits that horse just as I would sit him--his head--his face--the
way that foot slopes to the stirrup--why that's me--"

He stopped--he turned pale--he trembled with pride and rage. Then he
turned and walked into the room where Margaret Adams sat. She held
out her arms to him pleadingly.

But he did not notice her, and never before had she seen such a look
on his face as he said calmly:

"Mother, if you will come to the door I will show you my father."

Margaret Adams had already seen. She turned white with a hidden shame
as she said:

"Jimmie--Jimmie--who--who--?"

"No one," he shouted fiercely--"by God"--she had never before heard
him swear--"I tell you no one--on my honor as a Travis--no one! It
has come to me of itself--I know it--I feel it."

He was too excited to talk. He walked up and down the little room,
his proud head lifted and his eyes ablaze.

"I know now why I love honesty, why I despise those common things
beneath me--why I am not afraid--why I struck that boy as I did this
morning--why--" he walked into the little shed room that was his own
and came back with a long single barrel pistol in his hand and
fondled it lovingly--"why all my life I have been able to shoot this
as I have--"

He held in his hand a long, single barrel, rifle-bored duelling
pistol--of the type used by gentlemen at the beginning of the
century. Where he had got it she did not know, but always it had been
his plaything.

"O Jimmie--you would not--" exclaimed the woman rising and reaching
for it.

"Tush--" he said bitterly--"tush--that's the way Richard Travis
talks, ain't it? Does not my very voice sound like his? No--but I
expect you now, mother"--he said it softly--"tell me--tell me all
about it."

For a moment Margaret Adams was staggered. She only shook her head.

He looked at her cynically--then bitterly. A dangerous flash leaped
into his eyes.

"Then, by God," he cried fiercely, "this moment will I walk over to
his house with this pistol in my hand and I will ask him. If he fails
to tell me--damn him--I dare him--"

She jumped up and seized him in her arms.

"Promise me that if I tell you all--all, Jimmy, when you are
fifteen--promise me--will you be patient now--with poor mother, who
loves you so?" And she kissed him fondly again and again.

He looked into her eyes and saw all her suffering there.

The bitterness went out of his.

"I'll promise, mother," he said simply, and walked back into his
little room.




CHAPTER VIII

HARD-SHELL SUNDAY


"This bein' Hard-shell Sunday," said the Bishop that afternoon when
his congregation met, "cattle of that faith will come up to the front
rack for fodder. Elder Butts will he'p me conduct these exercises."

"It's been so long sence I've been in a Hard-shell lodge, I may be a
little rusty on the grip an' pass word, but I'm a member in good
standin' if I am rusty."

There was some laughing at this, from the other members, and after
the Hard-shells had come to the front the Bishop caught the infection
and went on with a sly wink at the others.

"The fact is, I've sometimes been mighty sorry I jined any other
lodge; for makin' honorable exception, the other churches don't know
the diff'r'nce betwixt twenty-year-old Lincoln County an' Michigan
pine-top.

"The Hard-shells was the fust church I jined, as I sed. I hadn't
sampled none of the others"--he whispered aside--"an' I didn't know
there was any better licker in the jug. But the Baptists is a little
riper, the Presbyterians is much mellower, an' compared to all of
them the 'Piscopalians rises to the excellence of syllabub an'
champagne.

"A hones' dram tuck now an' then, prayerfully, is a good thing for
any religion. I've knowed many a man to take a dram jes' in time to
keep him out of a divorce court. An' I've never knowed it to do
anybody no harm but old elder Shotts of Clay County. An' ef he'd a
stuck to it straight he'd abeen all right now. But one of these
old-time Virginia gentlemen stopped with him all night onct, an'
tor't the old man how to make a mint julip; an' when I went down the
next year to hold services his wife told me the good old man had been
gathered to his fathers. 'He was all right' she 'lowed, 'till a
little feller from Virginia came along an' tort 'im ter mix greens in
his licker, an' then he jes drunk hisself to death.'

"There's another thing I like about two of the churches I'm in--the
Hard-shells an' the Presbyterians--an' that is special Providence. If
I didn't believe in special Providence I'd lose my faith in God.

"My father tuck care of me when I was a babe, an' we're all babes in
God's sight.

"The night befo' the battle of Shiloh, I preached to some of our po'
boys the last sermon that many of 'em ever heard. An' I told 'em not
to dodge the nex' day, but to stan' up an' 'quit themselves like men,
for ever' shell an' ball would hit where God intended it should hit.

"In the battle nex' day I was chaplain no longer, but chief of
scouts, an' on the firin' line where it was hot enough. In the
hottest part of it General Johnston rid up, an' when he saw our
exposed position he told us to hold the line, but to lay down for
shelter. A big tree was nigh me an' I got behin' it. The Gineral
seed me an' he smiled an' sed:

"'Oh, Bishop,'"--his voice fell to a proud and tender tone--"did you
know it was Gineral Johnston that fust named me the Bishop?"

"'Oh, Bishop,' he said, 'I can see you puttin' a tree betwixt yo'se'f
an' special Providence.' 'Yes, Gineral,' I sed, 'an' I looks on it as
a very special Providence jus' at this time.'

"He laughed, an' the boys hoorawed an' he rid off.

"Our lives an' the destiny of our course is fixed as firmly as the
laws that wheel the planets. Why, I have knowed men to try to hew out
their own destiny an' they'd make it look like a gum-log hewed out
with a broad axe, until God would run the rip-saw of His purpose into
them, an' square them out an' smooth them over an' polish them into
pillars for His Temple.

"What is, was goin' to be; an' the things that's got to come to us
has already happened in God's mind.

"I've knowed poor an' unpretentious, God-fearin' men an' women to put
out their hands to build shanties for their humble lives, an' God
would turn them into castles of character an' temples of truth for
all time.

"Elder Butts will lead in prayer."

It was a long prayer and was proceeding smoothly, until, in its
midst, from the front row, Archie B.'s head bobbed cautiously up.
Keeping one eye on his father, the praying Elder, he went through a
pantomime for the benefit of the young Hillites around him, who, like
himself, had had enough of prayer. Before coming to the meeting he
had cut from a black sheep's skin a gorgeous set of whiskers and a
huge mustache. These now adorned his face.

There was a convulsive snicker among the young Hillites behind him.
The Elder opened one eye to see what it meant. They were natural
children, whose childhood had not been dwarfed in a cotton mill, and
it was exceedingly funny to them.

But the young Cottontowners laughed not. They looked on in stoical
wonder at the presumption of the young Hillites who dared to do such
a deed.

Humor had never been known to them. There is no humor in the all-day
buzz of the cotton factory; and fun and the fight of life for daily
bread do not sleep in the same crib.

The Hillites tittered and giggled.

"Maw," whispered Miss Butts, "look at Archie B."

Mrs. Butts hastily reached over the bench and yanked Archie B. down.
His whiskers were confiscated and in a moment he was on his knees and
deeply devotional, while the young Hillites nudged each other, and
giggled and the young Cottontowners stared and wondered, and looked
to see when Archie B. would be hung up by the thumbs.

The Bishop was reading the afternoon chapter when the animal in
Archie B. broke out in another spot. The chapter was where Zacharias
climbed into a sycamore tree to see his passing Lord. There was a
rattling of the stove pipe in one corner.

"Maw," whispered Miss Butts, "Jes' look at Archie B.--he's climbin'
the stove pipe like Zacharias did the sycamo'."

Horror again swept over Cottontown, while the Hillites cackled aloud.
The Elder settled it by calmly laying aside his spectacles and
starting down the pulpit steps. But Archie B. guessed his purpose and
before he had reached the last step he was sitting demurely by the
side of his pious brother, intently engaged in reading the New
Testament.

Without his glasses, the Elder never knew one twin from the other,
but presuming that the studious one was Ozzie B., he seized the other
by the ear, pulled him to the open window and pitched him out on the
grass.

It was Ozzie B. of course, and Archie B. turned cautiously around to
the Hillites behind, after the Elder had gone back to his chapter,
and whispered:

"_Venture pee-wee under the bridge--bam--bam--bam._"

Throughout the sermon Archie B. kept the young Hillites in a paroxysm
of smirks.

Elder Butts' legs were brackets, or more properly parentheses, and as
he preached and thundered and gesticulated and whined and sang his
sermon, he forgot all earthly things.

Knowing this, Archie B. would crawl up behind his father and
thrusting his head in between his legs, where the brackets were most
pronounced, would emphasize all that was said with wry grimaces and
gestures.

No language can fittingly describe the way Elder Butts delivered his
discourse. The sentences were whined, howled or sung, ending always
in the vocal expletive--"_ah--ah_."

When the elder had finished and sat down, Archie B. was sitting
demurely on the platform steps.

Then the latest Scruggs baby was brought forward to be baptised.
There were already ten in the family.

The Bishop took the infant tenderly and said: "Sister Scruggs, which
church shall I put him into?"

"'Piscopal," whispered the good Mrs. Scruggs.

The Bishop looked the red-headed young candidate over solemnly. There
was a howl of protest from the lusty Scruggs.

"He's a Cam'elite," said the Bishop dryly--"ready to dispute
a'ready"--here the young Scruggs sent out a kick which caught the
Bishop in the mouth.

"With Baptis' propensities," added the Bishop. "Fetch the baptismal
fount."

"Please, pap," said little Appomattox Watts from the front bench,
"but Archie B. has drunk up all the baptismal water endurin' the
first prayer."

"I had to," spoke up Archie B., from the platform steps--"I et dried
mackerel for breakfas'."

"We'll postpone the baptism' till nex' Sunday," said the Bishop.




CHAPTER IX

THE RETURN


It was Sunday and Jack Bracken had been out all the afternoon,
hunting for Cap'n Tom--as he had been in the morning, when not at
church. Hitching up the old horse, the Bishop started out to hunt
also.

He did not go far on the road toward Westmoreland, for as Ben Butler
plodded sleepily along, he almost ran over a crowd of boys in the
public road, teasing what they took to be a tramp, because of his
unkempt beard, his tattered clothes, and his old army cap.

They had angered the man and with many gestures he was endeavoring to
expostulate with his tormentors, at the same time attempting
imprecations which could not be uttered and ended in a low pitiful
sound. He shook his fist at them--he made violent gestures, but from
his mouth came only a guttural sound which had no meaning.

At a word from the Bishop his tormentors vanished, and when he pulled
up before the uncouth figure he found him to be a man not yet in his
prime, with an open face, now blank and expressionless, overgrown
with a black, tangled, and untrimmed beard.

He was evidently a demented tramp.

But at a second look the Bishop started. It was the man's eyes which
startled him. There was in them something so familiar and yet so
unknown that the Bishop had to study a while before he could
remember.

Then there crept into his face a wave of pitying sorrow as he said to
himself:

"Cap'n Tom--Cap'n Tom's eyes."

And from that moment the homeless and demented tramp had a warm place
in the old man's heart.

The Bishop watched him closely. His tattered cap had fallen off,
showing a shock of heavy, uncut hair, streaked prematurely with gray.

"What yo' name?" asked the Bishop kindly.

The man, flushed and angered, still gesticulated and muttered to
himself. But at the sound of the Bishop's voice, for a moment there
flashed into his eyes almost the saneness of returned reason. His
anger vanished. A kindly smile spread over his face. He came toward
the Bishop pleadingly--holding out both hands and striving to speak.
Climbing into the buggy, he sat down by the old man's side, quite
happy and satisfied--and as a little child.

"Where are you from?" asked the Bishop again.

The man shook his head. He pointed to his head and looked meaningly
at the Bishop.

"Can't you tell me where you're gwine, then?"

He looked at the Bishop inquisitively, and for a moment, only, the
same look--almost of intelligence--shone in his eyes. Slowly and with
much difficulty--ay, even as if he were spelling it out, he said:

"A-l-i-c-e"--

The old man turned quickly. Then he paled tremblingly to his very
forehead. The word itself--the sound of that voice sent the blood
rushing to his heart.

"Alice?--and what does he mean? An' his voice an' his eyes--Alice--my
God--it's Cap'n Tom!"

Tenderly, calmly he pulled the cap from off the strange being's head
and felt amid the unkempt locks. But his hands trembled so he could
scarcely control them, and the sight of the poor, broken, half
demented thing before him--so satisfied and happy that he had found a
voice he knew--this creature, the brave, the chivalrous, the heroic
Captain Tom! He could scarcely see for the tears which ran down his
cheeks.

But as he felt, in the depth of his shock of hair, his finger slipped
into an ugly scar, sinking into a cup-shaped hollow fracture which
gleamed in his hair.

"Cap'n Tom, Cap'n Tom," he whispered--"don't you know me--the
Bishop?"

The man smiled reassuringly and slipped his hand, as a child might,
into that of the old man.

"A-l-i-c-e"--he slowly and stutteringly pronounced again, as he
pointed down the road toward Westmoreland.

"My God," said the Bishop as he wiped away the tears on the back of
his hand--"my God, but that blow has spiled God's noblest gentleman."
Then there rushed over him a wave of self-reproach as he raised his
head heavenward and said:

"_Almighty Father, forgive me! Only this morning I doubted You; and
now, now, You have sent me po' Cap'n Tom!_"

"You'll go home with me, Cap'n Tom!" he added cheerily.

The man smiled and nodded.

"A-l-i-c-e," again he repeated.

There was the sound of some one riding, and as the Bishop turned Ben
Butler around Alice Westmore rode up, sitting her saddle mare with
that natural grace which comes only when the horse and rider have
been friends long enough to become as one. Richard Travis rode with
her.

The Bishop paled again: "My God," he muttered--"but she mustn't know
this is Cap'n Tom! I'd ruther she'd think he's dead--to remember him
only as she knowed him last."

The man's eyes were riveted on her--they seemed to devour her as she
rode up, a picture of grace and beauty, sitting her cantering mare
with the ease of long years of riding. She smiled and nodded brightly
at the Bishop, as she cantered past, but scarcely glanced at the man
beside him.

Travis followed at a brisk gait:

"Hello, Bishop," he said banteringly--"got a new boarder to-day?"

He glanced at the man as he spoke, and then galloped on without
turning his head.

"Alice!--Alice!"--whispered the man, holding out his hands
pleadingly, in the way he had held them when he first saw the Bishop.
"Alice!"--but she disappeared behind a turn in the road. She had not
noticed him.

The Bishop was relieved.

"We'll go home, Cap'n Tom--you'll want for nothin' whilst I live. An'
who knows--ay, Cap'n Tom, who knows but maybe God has sent you here
to-day to begin the unraveling of the only injustice I've ever knowed
Him to let go so long. It 'ud be so easy for Him--He's done bigger
things than jes' to straighten out little tangles like that. Cap'n
Tom! Cap'n Tom!" he said excitedly--"God'll do it--God'll do it--for
He is just!"

As he turned to go a negro came up hurriedly: "I was fetchin' him to
you, Marse Hillard--been lookin' for yo' home all day. I had gone to
the spring for water an' 'lowed I'd be back in a minute."

"Why, it's Eph," said the Bishop. "Come on to my home, Eph, we'll
take keer of Cap'n Tom."

It was Sunday night. They had eaten their supper, and the old man was
taking his smoke before going to bed. Shiloh, as usual, had climbed
up into his lap and lay looking at the distant line of trees that
girdled the mountain side. There was a flush on her cheeks and a
brightness in her eyes which the old man had noticed for several
weeks.

Shiloh was his pet--his baby. All the affection of his strong nature
found its outlet in this little soul--this motherless little waif,
who likewise found in the old man that rare comradeship of
extremes--the inexplicable law of the physical world which brings the
snow-flower in winter. The one real serious quarrel the old man had
had with his stubborn and ignorant old wife had been when Shiloh was
sent to the factory. But it was always starvation times with them;
and when aroused, the temper and tongue of Mrs. Watts was more than
the peaceful old man could stand up against. And as there were a
dozen other tots of her age in the factory, he had been forced to
acquiesce.

Long after all others had retired--long after the evening star had
arisen, and now, high overhead, looked down through the chinks in the
roof of the cabin on the mountain side, saying it was midnight and
past, the patient old man sat with Shiloh on his lap, watching her
quick, restless breathing, and fearing to put her to bed, lest he
might awaken her.

He put her in bed at last and then slipped into Captain Tom's cabin
before he himself lay down.

To his surprise he was up and reading an old dictionary--studying and
puzzling over the words. It was the only book except the Bible the
Bishop had in his cabin, and this book proved to be Captain Tom's
solace.

After that, day after day, he would sit out under the oak tree by his
cabin intently reading the dictionary.

Eph, his body servant, slept on the floor by his side, and Jack
Bracken sat near him like a sturdy mastiff guarding a child.
Sympathy, pity--were written in the outlaw's face, as he looked at
the once splendid manhood shorn of its strength, and from that day
Jack Bracken showered on Captain Tom all the affection of his
generous soul--all that would have gone to little Jack.

"For he's but a child--the same as little Jack was," he would say.

"Put up yo' novel, Cap'n Tom," said the old man cheerily, when he
went in, "an' let's have prayers."

The sound of the old man's voice was soothing to Captain Tom.
Quickly the book was closed and down on their knees went the three
men.

It was a queer trio--the three kneeling in prayer.

"Almighty God," prayed the old man--"me an' Cap'n Tom an' Jack
Bracken here, we thank You for bein' so much kinder to us than we
deserves. One of us, lost to his friends, is brought back home; one
of us, lost in wickedness but yestiddy, is redeemed to-day; an' me
that doubted You only yestiddy, to me You have fotcht Cap'n Tom back,
a reproach for my doubts an' my disbelief, lame in his head, it is
true, but You've fotcht him back where I can keer for him an' nuss
him. An' I hope You'll see fit, Almighty God, You who made the worl'
an' holds it in the hollow of Yo' han', You, who raised up the dead
Christ, to give po' Cap'n Tom back his reason, that he may fulfill
the things in life ordained by You that he should fulfill since the
beginning of things.

"An' hold Jack Bracken to the mark, Almighty God,--let him toe the
line an' shoot, hereafter, only for good. An' guide me, for I need
it--me that in spite of all You've done for me, doubted You but
yestiddy. Amen."

It was a simple, homely prayer, but it comforted even Captain Tom,
and when Jack Bracken put him to bed that night, even the outlaw felt
that the morning of a new era would awaken them.




CHAPTER X

THE SWAN-SONG OF THE CREPE-MYRTLE


It was twilight when Mrs. Westmore heard the clatter of horses' hoofs
up the gravelled roadway, and two riders cantered up.

Richard Travis sat his saddle horse in the slightly stooping way of
the old fox-hunter--not the most graceful seat, but the most natural
and comfortable for hard riding. Alice galloped ahead--her fine
square shoulders and delicate but graceful bust silhouetted against
the western sky in the fading light.

Mrs. Westmore sat on the veranda and watched them canter up. She
thought how handsome they were, and how well they would look always
together.

Alice sprang lightly from her mare at the front steps.

"Did you think we were never coming back? Richard's new mare rides so
delightfully that we rode farther than we intended. Oh, but she
canters beautifully!"

She sat on the arm of her mother's chair, and bent over and kissed
her cheek. The mother looked up to see her finely turned profile
outlined in a pale pink flush of western sky which glowed behind her.
Her cheeks were of the same tinge as the sky. They glowed with the
flush of the gallop, and her eyes were bright with the happiness of
it. She sat telling of the new mare's wonderfully correct saddle
gaits, flipping her ungloved hand with the gauntlet she had just
pulled off.

Travis turned the horses over to Jim and came up.

"Glad to see you, Cousin Alethea," he said, as she arose and advanced
gracefully to meet him--"no, no--don't rise," he added in his half
jolly, half commanding way. "You've met me before and I'm not such a
big man as I seem." He laughed: "Do you remember Giant Jim, the big
negro Grandfather used to have to oversee his hands on the lower
place? Jim, you know, in consideration of his elevation, was granted
several privileges not allowed the others. Among them was the
privilege of getting drunk every Saturday night. Then it was he would
stalk and brag among those he ruled while they looked at him in awe
and reverence. But he had the touch of the philosopher in him and
would finally say: 'Come, touch me, boys; come, look at me; come,
feel me--I'm nothin' but a common man, although I appear so big.'"

Mrs. Westmore laughed in her mechanical way, but all the while she
was looking at Alice, who was watching the mare as she was led off.

Travis caught her eye and winked mischievously as he added: "Now,
Cousin Alethea, you must promise me to make Alice ride her whenever
she needs a tonic--every day, if necessary. I have bought her for
Alice, and she must get the benefit of her before it grows too cold."

He turned to Alice Westmore: "You have only to tell me which days--if
I am too busy to go with you--Jim will bring her over."

She smiled: "You are too kind, Richard, always thinking of my
pleasure. A ride like this once a week is tonic enough."

She went into the house to change her habit. Her brother Clay, who
had been sitting on the far end of the porch unobserved, arose and,
without noticing Travis as he passed, walked into the house.

"I cannot imagine," said Mrs. Westmore apologetically, "what is the
matter with Clay to-day."

"Why?" asked Travis indifferently enough.

"He has neglected his geological specimens all day, nor has he ever
been near his laboratory--he has one room he calls his laboratory,
you know. To-night he is moody and troubled."

Travis said nothing. At tea Clay was not there.

When Travis left it was still early and Alice walked with him to the
big gate. The moon shone dimly and the cool, pure light lay over
everything like the first mist of frost in November. Beyond, in the
field, where it struck into the open cotton bolls, it turned them
into December snow-banks.

Travis led his saddle horse, and as they walked to the gate, the
sweet and scarcely perceptible odor of the crepe-myrtle floated out
on the open air.

The crepe-myrtle has a way of surprising us now and then, and often
after a wet fall, it gives us the swan-song of a bloom, ere its
delicate blossoms, touched to death by frost, close forever their
scalloped pink eyes, on the rare summer of a life as spiritual as the
sweet soft gulf winds which brought it to life.

Was it symbolic to-night,--the swan-song of the romance of Alice
Westmore's life, begun under those very trees so many summers ago?

They stopped at the gate. Richard Travis lit a cigar before mounting
his horse. He seemed at times to-night restless, yet always
determined.

She had never seen him so nearly preoccupied as he had been once or
twice to-night.

"Do you not think?" he asked, after a while as they stood by the
gate, "that I should have a sweet answer soon?"

Her eyes fell. The death song of the crepe-myrtle, aroused by a south
wind suddenly awakened, smote her painfully.

"You know--you know how it is, Richard"--

"How it was--Alice. But think--life is a practical--a serious thing.
We all have had our romances. They are the heritage of dreaming
youth. We outlive them--it is best that we should. Our spiritual life
follows the law of all other life, and spiritually we are not the
same this year that we were last. Nor will we be the next. It is
always change--change--even as the body changes. Environment has
more to do with what we are, what we think and feel--than anything
else. If you will marry me you will soon love me--it is the law of
love to beget love. You will forget all the lesser loves in the great
love of your life. Do you not know it, feel it, Sweet?"

She looked at him surprised. Never before had he used any term of
endearment to her. There was a hard, still and subtle yet determined
light in his eyes.

"Richard--Richard--you--I"--

"See," he said, taking from his vest pocket a magnificent ring set in
an exquisite old setting--inherited from his grandmother, and it had
been her engagement ring. "See, Alice, let me put this on to-night."

He took her hand--it thrilled him as he had never been thrilled
before. This impure man, who had made the winning of women a
plaything, trembled with the fear of it as he took in his own the
hand so pure that not even his touch could awaken sensuality in it.
The odor of her beautiful hair floated up to him as he bent over. A
wave of hot passion swept over him--for with him love was
passion--and his reason, for a moment, was swept from its seat. Then
almost beside himself for love of this woman, so different from any
he had ever known, he opened his arms to fold her in one
overpowering, conquering embrace.

It was but a second and more a habit than thought--he who had never
before hesitated to do it.

She stepped back and the hot blood mounted to her cheek. Her eyes
shone like outraged stars, dreaming earthward on a sleeping past,
unwarningly obscured by a passing cloud, and then flashing out into
the night, more brightly from the contrast.

She did not speak and he crunched under his feet, purposely, the turf
he was standing on, and so carrying out, naturally, the gesture of
clasping the air, in establishing his balance--as if it was an
accident.

She let him believe she thought it was, and secured relief from the
incident.

"Alice--Alice!" he exclaimed. "I love you--love you--I must have you
in my life! Can you not wear this now? See!"

He tried to place it on her finger. He held the small beautiful hand
in his own. Then it suddenly withdrew itself and left him holding his
ring and looking wonderingly at her.

She had thrown back her head, and, half turned, was looking toward
the crepe-myrtle tree from which the faint odor came.

"You had better go, Richard," was all she said.

"I'll come for my answer--soon?" he asked.

She was silent.

"Soon?" he repeated as he rose in the stirrup--"soon--and to claim
you always, Alice."

He rode off and left her standing with her head still thrown back,
her thoughtful face drinking in the odor of the crepe-myrtle.

Travis did not understand, for no crepe-myrtle had ever come into his
life. It could not come. With him all life had been a passion flower,
with the rank, strong odor of the sensuous, wild honeysuckle, which
must climb ever upon something else, in order to open and throw off
the rank, brazen perfume from its yellow and streaked and variegated
blossoms.

And how common and vulgar and all-surfeiting it is, loading the air
around it with its sickening imitation of sweetness, so that even the
bees stagger as they pass through it and disdain to stop and shovel,
for the mere asking, its musky and illicit honey.

But, O mystic odor of the crepe-myrtle--O love which never dies--how
differently it grows and lives and blooms!

In color, constant--a deep pink. Not enough of red to suggest the
sensual, nor yet lacking in it when the full moment of ripeness
comes. How delicately pink it is, and yet how unfadingly it stands
the summer's sun, the hot air, the drought! How quickly it responds
to the Autumn showers, and long after the honeysuckle has died, and
the bees have forgotten its rank memory, this beautiful creature of
love blooms in the very lap of Winter.

O love that defies even the breath of death!

The yellow lips of the honeysuckle are thick and sensual; but the
beautiful petals of this cluster of love-cells, all so daintily
transparent, hanging in pink clusters of loveliness with scalloped
lips of purity, that even the sunbeam sends a photograph of his heart
through them and every moonbeam writes in it the romance of its life.
And the skies all day long, reflecting in its heart, tells to the
cool green leaves that shadow it the story of its life, and it
catches and holds the sympathy of the tiniest zephyr, from the way it
flutters to the patter of their little feet.

All things of Nature love it--the clouds, the winds, the very stars,
and sun, because love--undying love--is the soul of God, its Maker.

The rose is red in the rich passion of love, the lily is pale in the
poverty of it; but the crepe-myrtle is pink in the constancy of it.

O bloom of the crepe-myrtle! And none but a lover ever smelled
it--none but a lover ever knew!

She ran up the gentle slope to the old-fashioned garden and threw
herself under the tree from whence the dying odor came. She fell on
her knees--the moonlight over her in fleckings of purification. She
clung to the scaly weather-beaten stem of the tree as she would have
pressed a sister to her breast. Her arms were around it--she knew
it--its very bark.

She seized a bloom that had fallen and crushed it to her bosom and
her cheek.

"O Tom--Tom--why--why did you make me love you here and then leave me
forever with only the memory of it?"

"Twice does it bloom, dear Heart,--can not my love bloom like
it--twice?"

"A-l-i-c-e!"

The voice came from out the distant woods nearby.

The blood leaped and then pricked her like sharp-pointed icicles, and
they all seemed to freeze around and prick around her heart. She
could not breathe.... Her head reeled.... The crepe-myrtle fell on
her and smothered her....

When she awoke Mrs. Westmore sat by her side and was holding her head
while her brother was rubbing her arms.

"You must be ill, darling," said her mother gently. "I heard you
scream. What--"

They helped her to rise. Her heart still fluttered violently--her
head swam.

"Did you call me before--before"--she was excited and eager.

"Why, yes"--smiled her mother. "I said, 'Alice--Alice!'"

"It was not that--no, that was not the way it sounded," she said as
they led her into the house.




CHAPTER XI

THE CASKET AND THE GHOST


Richard Travis could not sleep that night--why, he could not tell.

After he returned from Westmoreland, Mammy Charity brought him his
cocktail, and tidied up his room, and beat up the feathers in his
pillows and bed--for she believed in the old-fashioned feather-bed
and would have no other kind in the house.

The old clock in the hall--that had sat there since long before he,
himself, could remember--struck ten, and then eleven, and then, to
his disgust, even twelve.

At ten he had taken another toddy to put himself to sleep.

There is only one excuse for drunkenness, and that is sleeplessness.
If there is a hell for the intellectual it is not of fire, as for
commoner mortals, but of sleeplessness--the wild staring eyes of an
eternity of sleeplessness following an eon of that midnight mental
anguish which comes with the birth of thoughts.

But still he slept not, and so at ten he had taken another toddy--and
still another, and as he felt its life and vigor to the ends of his
fingers, he quaffed his fourth one; then he smiled and said: "And now
I don't care if I never go to sleep!"

He arose and dressed. He tried to recite one of his favorite poems,
and it angered him that his tongue seemed thick.

His head slightly reeled, but in it there galloped a thousand
beautiful dreams and there were visions of Alice, and love, and the
satisfaction of conquering and the glory of winning.

He could feel his heart-throbs at the ends of his fingers. He could
see thoughts--beautiful, grand thoughts--long before they reached
him,--stalking like armed men, helmeted and vizored, stalking forward
into his mind.

He walked out and down the long hall.

The ticking of the clock sounded to him so loud that he stopped and
cursed it.

Because, somehow, it ticked every time his heart beat; and he could
count his heart-beats in his fingers' ends, and he didn't want to
know every time his heart beat. It made him nervous.

It might stop; but it would not stop. And then, somehow, he imagined
that his heart was really out in the yard, down under the hill, and
was pumping the water--as the ram had done for years--through the
house. It was a queer fancy, and it made him angry because he could
not throw it off.

He walked down the hall, rudely snatched the clock door open, and
stopped the big pendulum. Then he laughed sillily.

The moonbeams came in at the stained glass windows, and cast red and
yellow and pale green fleckings of light on the smooth polished
floor.

He began to feel uncanny. He was no coward and he cursed himself for
it.

Things began to come to him in a moral way and mixed in with the
uncanniness of it all. He imagined he saw, off in the big square
library across the way, in the very spot he had seen them lay out his
grandfather--Maggie, and she arose suddenly from out of his
grandfather's casket and beckoned to him with--

"I love you so--I love _you_ so!"

It was so real, he walked to the spot and put his hands on the black
mohair Davenport. And the form on it, sitting bolt upright, was but
the pillow he had napped on that afternoon.

He laughed and it sounded hollow to him and echoed down the hall:

"How like her it looked!"

He walked into Harry's room and lit the lamp there. He smiled when he
glanced around the walls. There were hunting scenes and actresses in
scant clothing. Tobacco pipes of all kinds on the tables, and stumps
of ill-smelling cigarettes, and over the mantel was a crayon picture
of Death shaking the dice of life. Two old cutlasses crossed
underneath it.

On his writing desk Travis picked up and read the copy of the note
written to Helen the day before.

He smiled with elevated eyebrows. Then he laughed ironically:

"The little yellow cur--to lie down and quit--to throw her over like
that! Damn him--he has a yellow streak in him and I'll take pleasure
in pulling down the purse for him. Why, she was born for me anyway!
That kid, and in love with Helen! Not for The Gaffs would I have him
mix up with that drunken set--nor--nor, well, not for The Gaffs to
have him quit like that."

And yet it was news to him. Wrapped in his own selfish plans, he had
never bothered himself about Harry's affairs.

But he kept on saying, as if it hurt him: "The little yellow cur--and
he a Travis!" He laughed: "He's got another one, I'll bet--got her
to-night and by now is securely engaged. So much the better--for my
plans."

Again he went into the hall and walked to and fro in the dim light.
But the Davenport and the pillow instantly formed themselves again
into Maggie and the casket, and he turned in disgust to walk into his
own room.

Above his head over the doorway in the hall, on a pair of splendid
antlers--his first trophy of the chase,--rested his deer gun, a clean
piece of Damascus steel and old English walnut, imported years
before. The barrels were forty inches and choked. The small bright
hammers rested on the yellow brass caps deep sunk on steel nippers.
They shone through the hammer slit fresh and ready for use.

He felt a cold draught of air blow on him and turned in surprise to
find the hall window, which reached to the veranda floor, open; and
he could see the stars shining above the dark green foliage of the
trees on the lawn without.

At the same instant there swept over him a nervous fear, and he
reached for his deer gun instinctively. Then there arose from the
Davenport coffin a slouching unkempt form, the fine bright eyes of
which, as the last rays of the moonlight fell on them, were the eyes
of his dead cousin, Captain Tom, and it held out its hands pleadingly
to him and tenderly and with much effort said:

"_Grandfather, forgive. I've come back again._"

Travis's heart seemed to freeze tightly. He tried to breathe--he only
gasped--and the corners of his mouth tightened and refused to open.
He felt the blood rush up from around his loins, and leave him
paralyzed and weak. In sheer desperation he threw the gun to his
shoulder, and the next instant he would have fired the load into the
face of the thing with its voice of the dead, had not something burst
on his head with a staggering, overpowering blow, and despite his
efforts to stand, his knees gave way beneath him and it seemed
pleasant for him to lie prone upon the floor....

When he awakened an hour afterwards, he sat up, bewildered. His gun
lay beside him, but the window was closed securely and bolted. No
night air came in. The Davenport and pillow were there as before. His
head ached and there was a bruised place over his ear. He walked into
his own room and lit the lamp.

"I may have fallen and struck my head," he said, bewildered with the
strangeness of it all. "I may have," he repeated--"but if I didn't
see Tom Travis's ghost to-night there is no need to believe one's
senses."

He opened the door and let in two setters which fawned upon him and
licked his hand. All his nervousness vanished.

"No one knows the comfort of a dog's company," he said, "who does not
love a dog?"

Then he bathed his face and head and went to sleep.

It was after midnight when Jack Bracken led Captain Tom in and put
him to bed.

"A close shave for you, Cap'n Tom," he said--"I struck just in time.
I'll not leave you another night with the door unlocked." Then: "But
poor fellow--how can we blame him for wandering off, after all those
years, and trying to get back again to his boyhood home."




CHAPTER XII

A MIDNIGHT GUARD


Jack Bracken rolled himself in his blanket on the cot, placed in the
room next to Captain Tom, and prepared to sleep again.

But the excitement of the night had been great; his sudden awakening
from sleep, his missing Captain Tom, and finding him in time to
prevent a tragedy, had aroused him thoroughly, and now sleep was far
from his eyes.

And so he lay and thought of his past life, and as it passed before
him it shook him with nervous sleeplessness.

It hurt him. He lay and panted with the strong sorrow of it.

Perhaps it was that, but with it were thoughts also of little Jack,
and the tears came into the eyes of the big-hearted outlaw.

He had his plans all arranged--he and the Bishop--and now as the
village blacksmith he would begin the life of an honest man.

Respected--his heart beat proudly to think of it.

Respected--how little it means to the man who is, how much to the man
who is not.

"Why," he said to himself--"perhaps after a while people will stop
and talk to me an' say as they pass my shop: 'Good mornin',
neighbor, how are you to-day?' Little children--sweet an' innocent
little children--comin' from school may stop an' watch the sparks fly
from my anvil, like they did in the poem I onct read, an' linger
aroun' an' talk to me, shy like; maybe, after awhile I'll get their
confidence, so they will learn to love me, an' call me Uncle
Jack--Uncle Jack," he repeated softly.

"An' I won't be suspectin' people any mo' an' none of 'em will be my
enemy. I'll not be carryin' pistols an' havin' buckets of gold an'
not a friend in the worl'."

His heart beat fast--he could scarcely wait for the morning to come,
so anxious was he to begin the life of an honest man again. He who
had been an outlaw so long, who had not known what it was to know
human sympathy and human friendship--it thrilled him with a rich,
sweet flood of joy.

Then suddenly a great wave swept over him--a wave of such exquisite
joy that he fell on his knees and cried out: "O God, I am a changed
man--how happy I am! jus' to be human agin an' not hounded! How can I
thank You--You who have given me this blessed Man the Bishop tells us
about--this Christ who reaches out an' takes us by the han' an' lifts
us up. O God, if there is divinity given to man, it is given to that
man who can lift up another, as the po' outlaw knows."

He lay silent and thoughtful. All day and night--since he had first
seen Margaret, her eyes had haunted him. He had not seen her before
for many years; but in all that time there had not been a day when he
had not thought of--loved--her.

Margaret--her loneliness--the sadness of her life, all haunted him.
She lived, he knew, alone, in her cottage--an outcast from society.
He had looked but once in her eyes and caught the lingering look of
appeal which unconsciously lay there. He knew she loved him yet--it
was there as plain as in his own face was written the fact that he
loved her. He thought of himself--of her. Then he said:

"For fifteen years I have robbed--killed--oh, God--killed--how it
hurts me now! All the category of crime in bitter wickedness I have
run. And she--once--and now an angel--Bishop himself says so."

"I am a new man--I am a respectable and honest man,"--here he arose
on his cot and drew himself up--"I am Jack Smith--Mr. Jack Smith, the
blacksmith, and my word is my bond."

He slipped out quietly. Once again in the cool night, under the stars
which he had learned to love as brothers and whose silent paths
across the heavens were to him old familiar footpaths, he felt at
ease, and his nervousness left him.

He had not intended to speak to Margaret then--for he thought she was
asleep. He wished only to guard her cabin, up among the stunted old
field pines--while she slept--to see the room he knew she slept
in--the little window she looked out of every day.

The little cabin was a hallowed spot to him. Somehow he knew--he felt
that whatever might be said--in it he knew an angel dwelt. He could
not understand--he only knew.

There is a moral sense within us that is a greater teacher than
either knowledge or wisdom.

For an hour he stood with his head uncovered watching the little
cabin where she lived. Everything about it was sacred, because
Margaret lived there. It was pretty, too, in its neatness and
cleanliness, and there were old-fashioned flowers in the yard and
old-fashioned roses clambered on the rock wall.

He sat down in the path--the little white sanded path down which he
knew she went every day, and so made sacred by her footsteps.

"Perhaps, I am near one of them now," he said--and he kissed the
spot.

And that night and many others did the outlaw watch over the lonely
cabin on the mountain side. And she, the outcast woman, slept within,
unconscious that she was being protected by the man who had loved her
all his life.




CHAPTER XIII

THE THEFT OF A CHILDHOOD


The Watts children were up the next morning by four o'clock.

Mrs. Watts ate, always, by candle-light. The sun, she thought, would
be dishonored, were he to find her home in disorder, her breakfast
uncooked, her day's work not ready for her, with his first beams.

For Mrs. Watts did not consider that arising at four, and cooking and
sweeping and tidying up the cabin, and quarreling with the Bishop as
"a petty old bundle of botheration"--and storming around at the
children--all by sun-up--this was not work at all.

It was merely an appetizer.

The children were aroused by her this morning with more severity than
usual. Half frightened they rolled stupidly out of their
beds--Appomattox, Atlanta, and Shiloh from one, and the boys from
another. Then they began to put on their clothes in the same
listless, dogged, mechanical way they had learned to do
everything--learned it while working all day between the whirl of the
spindle and the buzz of the bobbin.

The sun had not yet risen, and a cold gray mist crept up from the
valley, closing high up and around the wood-girdled brow of the
mountain as billows around a rock in the sea. The faint, far-off
crowing of cocks added to the weirdness; for their shrill voices
alone broke through the silence which came down with the mist. Around
the brow of Sand Mountain the vapor made a faint halo--touched as it
was by the splendid flush of the East.

It was all grand and beautiful enough without, but within was the
poverty of work, and the two--poverty and work--had already had their
effect on the children, except, perhaps, Shiloh. She had not yet been
in the mill long enough to be automatonized.

Looking out of the window she saw the star setting behind the
mountain, and she thought it slept, by day, in a cavern she knew of
there.

"Wouldn't it be fine, Mattox," she cried, "if we didn't have to work
at the mill to-day an' cu'd run up on the mountain an' pick up that
star? I seed one fall onct an' I picked it up."

For a moment the little face was thoughtful--wistful--then she added:

"I wonder how it would feel to spen' the day in the woods onct.
Archie B. says it's just fine and flowers grow everywhere. Oh, jes'
to be 'quainted with one Jeree--like Archie B. is--an' have him come
to yo' winder every mornin' an' say, '_Wake up, Pet! Wake up, Pet!
Wake up, Pet!_' An' then hear a little 'un over in another tree say,
'_So-s-l-ee-py--So-s-l-ee-py!_'"

Her chatter ceased again. Then: "Mattox, did you ever see a rabbit? I
seen one onct, a settin' up in a fence corner an' a spittin' on his
han's to wash his face."

She laughed at the thought of it. But the other children, who had
dressed, sat listlessly in their seats, looking at her with
irresponsive eyes, set deep back into tired, lifeless, weazened
faces.

"I'd ruther a rabbit 'ud wash his face than mine," drawled Bull Run.

Mrs. Watts came in and jerked the chair from under him and he sat
down sprawling. Then he lazily arose and deliberately spat, between
his teeth, into the fireplace.

There was not enough of him alive to feel that he had been imposed
upon.

For breakfast they had big soda biscuits and fried bacon floating in
its own grease. There was enough of it left for the midday lunch.
This was put into a tin pail with a tight fitting top. The pail, when
opened, smelt of the death and remains of every other soda biscuit
that had ever been laid away within this tightly closed mausoleum of
tin.

They had scarcely eaten before the shrill scream of the mill-whistle
called them to their work.

Shiloh, at the sound, stuck her small fingers into her ears and
shuddered.

Then the others struck out across the yard, and Shiloh followed.

To this child of seven, who had already worked six months in the
factory, the scream of the whistle was the call of a frightful
monster, whose black smoke-stack of a snout, with its blacker breath
coming out, and the flaming eyes of the engine glaring through the
smoke, completed the picture of a wild beast watching her. Within,
the whirr and tremble of shuttle and machinery were the purr and
pulsation of its heart.

She was a nervous, sensitive child, who imagined far more than she
saw; and the very uncanniness of the dark misty morning, the silence,
broken only by the tremble and roar of the mill, the gaunt shadows of
the overtopping mountain, filled her with childish fears.

Nature can do no more than she is permitted; and the terrible strain
of twelve hours' work, every day except Sunday, for the past six
months, where every faculty, from hand and foot to body, eye and
brain, must be alert and alive to watch and piece the never-ceasing
breaking of the threads, had already begun to undermine the
half-formed framework of that little life.

As she approached the mill she clung to the hand of Appomattox, and
shrinking, kept her sister between herself and the Big Thing which
put the sweet morning air a-flutter around its lair. As she drew near
the door she almost cried out in affright--her little heart grew
tight, her lips were drawn.

"Oh, it can't hurt you, Shiloh," said her sister pulling her along.
"You'll be all right when you get inside."

There was a snarling clatter and crescendo tremble, ending in an
all-drowning roar, as the big door was pushed open for a moment, and
Shiloh, quaking, but brave, was pulled in, giving the tiny spark of
her little life to add to the Big Thing's fire.

Within, she was reassured; for there was her familiar spinning frame,
with its bobbins ready to be set to spinning and whirling; and the
room was full of people, many as small as she.

The companionship, even of fear, is helpful.

Besides, the roar and clatter drowned everything else.

Shiloh was too small to see, to know; but had she looked to the right
as she entered, she had seen a sight which would have caused a stone
man to flush with pity. It was Byrd Boyle, one of the mill hands who
ran a slubbing machine, and he held in his arms (because they were
too young to walk so far) twins, a boy and a girl. And they looked
like half made up dolls left out on the grass, weather-beaten by
summer rains. They were too small to know where their places were in
the room, and as their father sat them down, in their proper places,
it took the two together to run one side of a spinner, and the tiny
little workers could scarcely reach to their whirling bobbins.

To the credit of Richard Travis, this working of children under
twelve years of age in the mills was done over his protest. Not so
with Kingsley and his wife, who were experienced mill people from New
England and knew the harm of it--morally, physically. Travis had even
made strict regulations on the subject, only to be overruled by the
combined disapproval of Kingsley and the directors and, strange to
say, of the parents of the children themselves. His determination
that only children of twelve years and over should work in the mill
came to naught, more from the opposition of the parents themselves
than that of Kingsley. These, to earn a little more for the family,
did not hesitate to bring a child of eight to the mill and swear it
was twelve. This and the ruling of the directors,--and worse than
all, the lack of any state law on the subject,--had brought about the
pitiful condition which prevailed then as now in Southern cotton
mills.

There was no talking inside the mill. Only the Big Thing was
permitted to talk. No singing--for songs come from the happy heart of
labor, unshackled. No noise of childhood, though the children were
there. They were flung into an arena for a long day's fight against a
thing of steel and steam, and there was no time for anything save
work, work, work--walk, walk, walk--watch, forever watch,--the
interminable flying whirl of spindle and spool.

Early as it was, the children were late, and were soundly rebuffed by
the foreman.

The scolding hurt only Shiloh--it made her tremble and cry. The
others were hardened--insensible--and took it with about the same
degree of indifference with which caged and starved mice look at the
man who pours over their wire traps the hot water which scalds them
to death.

The fight between steel, steam and child-flesh was on.

Shiloh, Appomattox and Atlanta were spinners.

Spinners are small girls who walk up and down an aisle before a
spinning-frame and piece up the threads which are forever breaking.
There were over a hundred spindles on each side of the frame, each
revolving with the rapidity of an incipient cyclone and snapping
every now and then the delicate white thread that was spun out like
spiders' web from the rollers and the cylinders, making a
balloon-like gown of cotton thread, which settled continuously around
the bobbin.

All day long and into the night, they must walk up and down, between
these two rows of spinning-frames, amid the whirling spindles,
piecing the broken threads which were forever breaking.

It did not require strength, but a certain skill, which,
unfortunately, childhood possessed more than the adult. Not power,
but dexterity, watchfulness, quickness and the ability to walk--as
children walk--and watch--as age should watch.

No wonder that in a few months the child becomes, not the flesh and
blood of its heredity, but the steel and wood of its environment.

Bull Run and Seven Days were doffers, and confined to the same set of
frames. They followed their sisters, taking off the full bobbins and
throwing them into a cart and thrusting an empty bobbin into its
place. This requires an eye of lightning and a hand with the
quickness of its stroke.

For it must be done between the pulsings of the Big Thing's heart--a
flash, a snap, a snarl of broken thread--up in the left hand flies
the bobbin from its disentanglement of thread and skein, and down
over the buzzing point of steel spindles settles the empty bobbin,
thrust over the spindle by the right.

It is all done with two quick movements--a flash and a jerk of one
hand up, and the other down, the eye riveted to the nicety of a
hair's breadth, the stroke downward gauged to the cup of a thimble,
to settle over the point of the spindle's end; for the missing of a
thread's breadth would send a spindle blade through the hand, or
tangle and snap a thread which was turning with a thousand
revolutions in a minute.

_Snap--bang! Snap--bang!_ One hundred and twenty
times--_Snap--bang!_ and back again, went the deft little workers
pushing their cart before them.

Full at last, their cart is whirled away with flying heels to another
machine.

It was a steady, lightning, endless track. Their little trained
fingers betook of their surroundings and worked like fingers of
steel. Their legs seemed made of India rubber. Their eyes shot out
right and left, left and right, looking for the broken threads on the
whirling bobbins as hawks sweep over the marsh grass looking for
mice, and the steel claws, which swooped down on the bobbins when
they found it, made the simile not unsuitable.

Young as she was, Shiloh managed one of these harnessed, fiery lines
of dancing witches, pirouetting on boards of hardened oak or hickory.
Up and down she walked--up and down, watching these endless whirling
figures, her bare fingers pitted against theirs of brass, her bare
feet against theirs shod with iron, her little head against theirs
insensate and unpitying, her little heart against theirs of flame
which throbbed in the boiler's bosom and drove its thousand steeds
with a whip of fire.

In the bloodiest and cruelest days of the Roman Empire, man was
matched against wild beasts. But in the man's hand was the blade of
his ancestors and over his breast the steel ribs which had helped his
people to conquer the world.

And in the Beast's body was a heart!

Ay, and the man was a man--a trained gladiator--and he was nerved by
the cheers of thousands of sympathizing spectators.

And now, centuries after, and in the age of so-called kindness, comes
this battle to be fought over. And the fight, now as then, is for
bread and life.

But how cruelly unfair is the fight of to-day, when the weak and
helpless child is made the gladiator, and the fight is for bread, and
the Beast is of steel and steam, and is soulless and heartless.
Steel--that by which the old gladiator conquered--that is the heart
of the Thing the little one must fight. And the cheers--the glamour
of it is lacking, for the little one cannot hear even the sound of
its own voice--in the roar of the thousand-throated Thing which
drives the Steel Beast on.

Seven o'clock--eight o'clock--Shiloh's head swam--her shoulders
ached, her ears quivered with sensitiveness, and seemed not to catch
sounds any more, but sharp and shooting pains. She was dazed already
and weak; but still the Steam Thing cheered its steel legions on.

Up and down, up and down she walked, her baby thoughts coming to her
as through the roar of a Niagara, through pain and sensitiveness,
through aches and a dull, never-ending sameness.

Nine o'clock! Oh, she was so tired of it all!

Hark, she thought she heard a bird sing in a far off, dreamy way, and
for a moment she made mud pies in the back yard of the hut on the
mountain, under the black-oak in the yard, with the glint of soft
sunshine over everything and the murmur of green leaves in the trees
above, as the wind from off the mountain went through them, and the
anemone, and bellworts, and daisies grew beneath and around. Was it a
bluebird? She had never seen but one and it had built its nest in a
hole in a hollow tree, the summer before she went into the mill to
work.

She listened again--yes, it did sound something like a bluebird,
peeping in a distant far off way, such as she had heard in the cabin
on the mountain before she had ever heard the voice of the Big Thing
at the mill. She listened, and a wave of disappointment swept over
her baby face; for, listening closely, she found it was an unoiled
separator, that peeped in a bluebird way now and then, above the
staccato of some rusty spindle.

But in the song of that bluebird and the glory of an imaginary mud
pie, all the disappointment of what she had missed swept over her.

Ten o'clock--the little fingers throbbed and burned, the tiny legs
were stiff and tired, the little head seemed as a block of wood, but
still the Steam Thing took no thought of rest.

Eleven o'clock--oh, but to rest awhile! To rest under the trees in
the yard, for the sunshine looked so warm and bright out under the
mill-windows, and the memory of that bluebird's song, though but an
imitation, still echoed in her ear. And those mud pies!--she saw them
all around her and in such lovely bits of old broken crockery
and--....

She felt a rude punch in the side. It was Jud Carpenter standing over
her and pointing to where a frowzled broken thread was tangling
itself around a separator. She had dreamed but a minute--half a dozen
threads had broken.

It was a rude punch and it hurt her side and frightened her. With a
snarl and a glare he passed on while Shiloh flew to her bobbin.

This fright made her work the next hour with less fatigue. But she
could not forget the song of the bluebird, and once, when Appomattox
looked at her, she was working her mouth in a song,--a Sunday School
song she had picked up at the Bishop's church. Appomattox could not
hear it--no one had a license to hear a song in the Beast Thing's
Den--nothing was ever privileged to sing but it,--but she knew from
the way her mouth was working that Shiloh was singing.

Oh, the instinct of happiness in the human heart! To sing through
noises and aches and tired feet and stunned, blocky heads. To sing
with no hope before her and the theft of her very childhood--ay, her
life--going on by the Beast Thing and his men.

God intended us to be happy, else He had never put so strong an
instinct there.

Twelve o'clock. The Steam Beast gave a triumphant scream heard above
the roar of shuttle and steel. It was a loud, defiant, victorious
roar which drowned all others.

Then it purred and paused for breath--purred softer and softer
and--slept at last.

It was noon.

The silence now was almost as painful to Shiloh as the noise had
been. The sudden stopping of shuttle and wheel and belt and beam did
not stop the noise in her head. It throbbed and buzzed there in an
echoing ache, as if all the previous sounds had been fire-waves and
these the scorched furrows of its touch. Wherever she turned, the
echo of the morning's misery sounded in her ears.

And now they had forty minutes for noon recess.

They sat in a circle, these five children--and ate their lunch of cold
soda biscuits and fat bacon.

Not a word did they say--not a laugh nor a sound to show they were
children,--not even a sigh to show they were human.

Silently, like wooden things they choked it down and then--O men and
women who love your own little ones--look!

Huddled together on the great, greasy, dirty floor of this mill, in all
the attitudes of tired-out, exhausted childhood, they slept. Shiloh
slept bolt upright, her little head against the spinning-frame, where
all the morning she had chased the bobbins up and down the long aisle.
Appomattox and Atlanta were grouped against her. Bull Run slept at her
feet and Seven Days lay, half way over on his bobbin cart, so tired that
he went to sleep as he tried to climb into it.

In other parts of the mill, other little ones slept and even large girls
and boys, after eating, dozed or chatted. Spoolers, weavers, slubbers,
warpers, nearly grown but all hard-faced, listless--and many of them
slept on shawls and battings of cotton.

They were awakened by the big whistle at twenty minutes to one o'clock.
At the same time, Jud Carpenter, the foreman, passed down the aisles and
dashed cold water in the sleeping faces. Half laughingly he did it, but
the little ones arose instantly, and with stooped forms, and tired,
cowed eyes, in which the Anglo-Saxon spirit of resentment had been
killed by the Yankee spirit of greed, they looked at the foreman, and
then began their long six hours' battle with the bobbins.

Three o'clock! The warm afternoon's sun poured on the low flat tin roof
of the mill and warmed the interior to a temperature which was
uncomfortable.

Shiloh grew sleepy--she dragged her stumbling little feet along, and had
she stopped but a moment, she had paid the debt that childhood owes to
fairy-land. The air was close--stifling. Her shoulders ached--her head
seemed a stuffy thing of wood and wooly lint.

As it was she nodded as she walked, and again the song of the bluebird
peeped dreamily from out the unoiled spindle. She tried to sing to keep
awake, and then there came a strange phantasy to mix with it all, and
out of the half-awake world in which she now staggered along she caught
sight of something which made her open her eyes and laugh outright.

_Was it--could it be? In very truth it was--_

_Dolls!_

_And oh, so many! And all in a row dressed in matchless gowns of snowy
white. She would count them up to ten--as far as she had learned to
count.... But there were ten,--yes, and many more than ten-- ... and
just to think of whole rows of them-- ... all there-- ... and waiting
for her to reach out and fondle and caress._

_And she--never in her life before had she been so fortunate as to own
one...._

A smile lit up her dreaming eyes. _Rows upon rows of dolls.... And not
even Appomattox and Atlanta had ever seen so many before; and now how
funny they acted, dancing around and around and bobbing their quaint
bodies and winking and nodding at her.... It was Mayday with them and
down the long line of spindles these cotton dolls were dancing around
their May Queen, and beckoning Shiloh to join them...._

_It was too cute--too cunning--! they were dancing and drawing her
in--they were actually singing-- ... humming and chanting a May
song...._

_O lovely--lovely dolls!..._

Jud Carpenter found her asleep in the greasy aisle, her head resting
on her arm, a smile on her little face--a hand clasping a rounded
well-threaded doll-like bobbin to her breast.

It is useless to try to speak in a room in which the Steam Beast's
voice drowns all other voices. It is useless to try to awaken one by
calling. One might as well stand under Niagara Falls and whistle to
the little fishes. No other voice can be heard while the Steam Beast
speaks.

Shiloh was awakened by a dash of cold water and a rough kick from the
big boot of that other beast who called himself the overseer. He did
not intend to jostle her hard, but Shiloh was such a little thing
that the kick she got in the side accompanied by the dash of water
shocked and frightened her instantly to her feet, and with scared
eyes and blanched face she darted down to the long line of bobbins,
mending the threads.

If, in the great Mystic Unknown,--the Eden of Balance,--there lies no
retributive Cause to right the injustice of that cruel Effect, let us
hope there is no Here-after; that we all die and rot like dogs, who
know no justice; that what little kindness and sweetness and right,
man, through his happier dreams, his hopeful, cheerful idealism, has
tried to establish in the world, may no longer stand as mockery to
the Sweet Philosopher who long ago said: "_Suffer the little children
to come unto me._..."

They were more dead than alive when, at seven o'clock, the Steam
Beast uttered the last volcanic howl which said they might go home.

Outside the stars were shining and the cool night air struck into
them with a suddenness which made them shiver. They were children,
and so they were thoughtless and did not know the risk they ran by
coming out of a warm mill, hot and exhausted, into the cool air of an
Autumn night. Shiloh was so tired and sleepy that Bull Run and Seven
Days had to carry her between them.

Everybody passed out of the mill--a speechless, haggard, over-worked
procession. Byrd Boyle, with a face and form which seemed to belong
to a slave age, carried his twins in his arms.

Their heads lay on his shoulders. They were asleep.

Scarcely had the children eaten their supper of biscuit and bacon,
augmented with dandelion salad, ere they, too, were asleep--all but
Shiloh.

She could not sleep--now that she wanted to--and she lay in her
grandfather's lap with flushed face and hot, over-worked heart. The
strain was beginning to tell, and the old man grew uneasy, as he
watched the flush on her cheeks and the unusual brightness in her
eyes.

"Better give her five draps of tub'bentine an' put her to bed," said
Mrs. Watts as she came by. "She'll be fittin' an' good by mornin'."

The old man did not reply--he only sang a low melody and smoothed her
forehead.

It was ten o'clock, and now she lay on the old man's lap asleep from
exhaustion. A cricket began chirping in the fireplace, under a
hearth-brick.

"What's that, Pap?" asked Shiloh half asleep.

"That's a cricket, Pet," smiled the old man.

She listened a while with a half-amused smile on her lips:

"Well, don't you think his spindles need oilin', Pap?"

There was little but machinery in her life.

Another hour found the old man tired, but still holding the sleeping
child in his arms:

"If I move her she'll wake," he said to himself. "Po' little Shiloh."

He was silent a while and thoughtful. Then he looked up at the shadow
of Sand Mountain, falling half way down the valley in the moonlight.

"The shadow of that mountain across that valley," he said, "is like
the shadow of the greed of gain across the world. An' why should it
be? What is it worth? Who is happier for any money more than he needs
in life?"

He bowed his head over the sleeping Shiloh.

"Oh, God," he prayed--"You, who made the world an' said it might
have a childhood--remember what it means to have it filched away.
It's like stealin' the bud from the rose-bush, the dew from the
grass, hope from the heart of man. Take our manhood--O God--it is
strong enough to stand it--an' it has been took from many a strong
man who has died with a smile on his lips. Take our old age--O
God--for it's jus' a memory of Has Beens. But let them not steal that
from any life that makes all the res' of it beautiful with dreams of
it. If, by some inscrutable law which we po' things can't see
through, stealin' in traffic an' trade must go on in the world, O
God, let them steal our purses, but not our childhood. Amen."




CHAPTER XIV

UNCLE DAVE'S WILL


The whistle of the mill had scarcely awakened Cottontown the next
morning before Archie B., hatless and full of excitement, came over
to the Bishop with a message from his mother. No one was astir but
Mrs. Watts, and she was sweeping vigorously.

"What's the matter, Archie B.?" asked the old man when he came out.

"Uncle Dave Dickey is dyin' an' maw told me to run over an' tell you
to hurry quick if you wanted to see the old man die."

"Oh, Uncle Dave is dyin', is he? Well, we'll go, Archie B., just as
soon as Ben Butler can be hooked up. I've got some more calls to make
anyway."

Ben Butler was ready by the time the children started for the mill.
Little Shiloh brought up the rear, her tiny legs bravely following
the others. Archie B. looked at them curiously as the small
wage-earners filed past him for work.

"Say, you little mill-birds," he said, "why don't you chaps come over
to see me sometimes an' lem'me show you things outdoors that's made
for boys an' girls?"

"Is they very pretty?" asked Shiloh, stopping and all ears at once.
"Oh, tell me 'bout 'em! I am jus' hungry to see 'em. I've learned
the names of three birds myself an' I saw a gray squirrel onct."

"Three birds--shucks!" said Archie B., "I could sho' you forty, but
I'll tell you what's crackin' good fun an' it'll test you mor'n
knowin' the birds--that's easy. But the hard thing is to find their
nests an' then to tell by the eggs what bird it is. That's the
cracker-jack trick."

Shiloh's eyes opened wide: "Why, do they lay eggs, Archie B.? Real
eggs like a hen or a duck?"

Archie B. laughed: "Well, I should say so--an' away up in a tree, an'
in the funniest little baskets you ever saw. An' some of the eggs is
white, an' some blue, and some green, an' some speckled an' oh, so
many kind. But I'll tell you a thing right now that'll help you to
remember--mighty nigh every bird lays a egg that's mighty nigh like
the bird herself. The cat bird's eggs is sorter blue--an' the
wood-pecker's is white, like his wing, an' the thrasher's is mottled
like his breast."

Ben Butler was hitched to the old buggy and the Bishop drove up. He
had a bunch of wild flowers for Shiloh and he gave it with a kiss.
"Run along now, Baby, an' I'll fetch you another when I come back."

They saw her run to catch up with the others and breathlessly tell
them of the wonderful things Archie B. had related. And all through
the day, in the dust and the lint, the thunder and rumble of the
Steam Thing's war, Shiloh saw white and blue and mottled eggs, in
tiny baskets, with homes up in the trees where the winds rocked the
cradles when the little birds came; and young as she was, into her
head there crept a thought that something was wrong in man's
management of things when little birds were free and little children
must work.

As she ran off she waved her hand to her grandfather.

"I'll fetch you another bunch when I come back, Pet," he called.

"You'd better fetch her somethin' to eat, instead of prayin' aroun'
with old fools that's always dyin'," called Mrs. Watts to him from
the kitchen door where she was scrubbing the cans.

"The Lord will always provide, Tabitha--he has never failed me yet."

She watched him drive slowly over the hill: "That means I had better
get a move on me an' go to furagin'," she said to herself.

"Hillard Watts has mistuck me for the Almighty mighty nigh all his
life. It's about time the blackberries was a gittin' ripe anyway."

The Bishop found the greatest distress at Uncle Dave Dickey's. Aunt
Sally Dickey, his wife, was weeping on the front porch, while Tilly,
Uncle Dave's pretty grown daughter, her calico dress tucked up for
the morning's work, showing feet and ankles that would grace a
duchess, was lamenting loudly on the back porch. A coon dog of
uncertain lineage and intellectual development, tuned to the howling
pitch, doubtless, by the music of Tilly's sobs, joined in the chorus.

"Po' Davy is gwine--he's most gone--boo--boo-oo!" sobbed Aunt Sally.

"Pap--Pap--don't leave us," echoed Tilly from the back porch.

"Ow--wow--oo--oo," howled the dog.

The Bishop went in sad and subdued, expecting to find Uncle Davy
breathing his last. Instead, he found him sitting bolt upright in
bed, and sobbing even more lustily than his wife and daughter. He
stretched out his hands pitiably as his old friend went in.

"Most gone"--he sobbed--"Hillard--the old man is most gone. You've
come jus' in time to see your old friend breathe his las' an' to
witness his will," and he broke out sobbing afresh, in which Aunt
Sally and Tilly and the dog, all of whom had followed the Bishop in,
joined.

The Bishop took in the situation at a glance. Then he broke into a
smile that gradually settled all over his kindly face.

"Look aheah, Davy, you ain't no mo' dyin' than I am."

"What--what?" said Uncle Davy between his sobs--"I ain't a dyin',
Hillard? Oh, yes, I be. Sally and Tilly both say so."

"Now, look aheah, Davy, it ain't so. I've seed hundreds die--yes,
hundreds--strong men, babes--women and little tots, strong ones, and
weak and frail ones, given to tears, but I've never seed one die yet
sheddin' a single tear, let alone blubberin' like a calf. It's agin
nature. Davy, dyin' men don't weep. It's always all right with 'em.
It's the one moment of all their lives, often, that everything is all
right, seein' as they do, that all life has been a dream--all back of
death jes' a beginnin' to live, an' so they die contented. No--no,
Davy, if they've lived right they want to smile, not weep."

There was an immediate snuffing and drying of tears all around. Uncle
Davy looked sheepishly at Aunt Sally, she passed the same look on to
Tilly, and Tilly passed it to the coon dog. Here it rested in its
birthplace.

"Come to think of it, Hillard," said Uncle Dave after a while, "but I
believe you are right."

Tilly came back, and she and Aunt Sally nodded their heads: "Yes,
Hillard, you're right," went on Uncle Davy, "Tilly and Sally both say
so."

"How come you to think you was dyin' anyway?" asked the Bishop.

"Hillard,--you kno', Hillard--the old man's been thinkin' he'd go
sudden-like a long time." He raised his eyes to heaven: "Yes, Lord,
thy servant is even ready."

"Last night I felt a kind o' flutterin' of my heart an' I cudn't
breathe good. I thought it was death--death,--Hillard, on the back of
his pale horse. Tilly and Sally both thought so."

The Bishop laughed. "That warn't death on the back of a horse,
Davy--that was jus' wind on the stomach of an ass."

This was too much for Uncle Davy--especially when Tilly and Sally
made it unanimous by giggling outright.

"You et cabbages for supper," said the Bishop.

Uncle Davy nodded, sheepishly.

"Then I sed my will an' Tilly writ it down an', oh, Hillard,
I am so anxious to hear you read it. I wanter see how it'ull
feel fer a man to have his will read after he is dead--an'--an'
how his widder takes it," he added, glancing at Aunt Sally--"an'
his friends. I wanter heah you read it, Hillard, in that deep
organ way of yours,--like you read the Old Testament. In that
_In-the-Beginning-God-Created-the-Heaven-an'-the-Earth-Kinder_ voice!
Drap your voice low like a organ, an' let the old man hear it befo' he
goes. I fixed it when I thought I was a-dyin'."

"Makin' yo' will ain't no sign you're dyin'," said the Bishop.

"But Tilly an' Aunt Sally both said so," said Uncle Davy, earnestly.

"All yo' needs," said the Bishop going to his saddle bags, "is a good
straight whiskey. I keep a little--a very, very little bit in my
saddle bags, for jes' sech occasions as these. It's twenty years
old," he said, "an' genuwine old Lincoln County. I keep it only for
folks that's dyin'," he winked, "an' sometimes, Davy, I feel mighty
like I'm about to pass away myself."

He poured out a very small medicine glass of it, shining and
shimmering in the morning light like a big ruby,--and handed it to
Uncle Davy.

"You say that's twenty years old, Hillard?" asked Uncle Davy as he
wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and again held the little
glass out entreatingly:

"Hillard, ain't it mighty small for its age--'pears to me it orter be
twins to make it the regulation size. Don't you think so?"

The Bishop gave him another and took one himself, remarking as he did
so, "I was pow'ful flustrated when I heard you was dyin' again, Davy,
an' I need it to stiddy my nerves. Now, fetch out yo' will, Davy," he
added.

As he took it the Bishop adjusted his big spectacles, buttoned up his
coat, and drew himself up as he did in the pulpit. He blew his nose
to get a clear sonorous note:

"I've got a verse of poetry that I allers tunes my voice up to the
occasion with," he said. "I do it sorter like a fiddler tunes up his
fiddle. It's a great poem an' I'll put it agin anything in the Queen's
English for real thunder music an' a sentiment that Shakespeare an'
Milton nor none of 'em cud a writ. It stirs me like our park of
artillery at Shiloh, an' it puts me in tune with the great dead of
all eternity. It makes me think of Cap'n Tom an' Albert Sidney
Johnston."

Then in a deep voice he repeated:

    "'The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
          The soldier's last tattoo--
     No more on earth's parade shall meet
          That brave and fallen few.
     On Fame's eternal camping ground
          Their silent tents are spread
     And glory guards with solemn sound
          The Bivouac of the Dead.'"

"Now give me yo' will."

Uncle Davy sat up solemnly, keenly, expectantly. Tilly and Aunt Sally
sat subdued and sad, with that air of solemn importance and respect
which might be expected of a dutiful daughter and bereaved widow on
such an occasion. It was too solemn for Uncle Davy. He began to
whimper again: "I didn't think I would ever live to see the day when
I'd hear my own will read after I was dead, an' Hillard a-readin' it
around my own corpse. It's Tilly's handwrite," he explained, as he saw
the Bishop scrutinizing the testament closely. "I can't write, as you
kno', but I've made my mark at the end, an' I want you to witness
it."

Pitching his voice to organ depths, the Bishop read:

"_'In the name of God, amen: I, Davy Dickey, of the County of ----,
and State of Alabama, being of sound mind and retentive memory, but
knowing the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death, do hereby
make and ordain this--my last will and testamen--_'"

Uncle Davy had lain back, his eyes closed, his hands clasped,
drinking it all in.

"O, Hillard--Hillard, read it agin--it makes me so happy! It does me
so much good. It sounds like the first chapter of Genesis, an' Daniel
Webster's reply to Hayne an' the 19th Psalm all put together."

The Bishop read it again.

"So happy--so happy--" sobbed Uncle Davy, in which Aunt Sally and
Tilly and the coon dog joined.

"_'First,'_" read on the Bishop, following closely Tilly's pretty
penmanship; "_'Concerning that part of me called the soul or spirit
which is immortal, I will it back again to its Maker, leaving it to
Him to do as He pleases with, without asking any impertinent
questions or making any fool requests.'_"

The Bishop paused. "That's a good idea, Davy--Givin' it back to its
Maker without asking any impert'n'ent questions."

"_'Second,'_" read the Bishop, "_'I wills to be buried alongside of
Dan'l Tubbs, on the Chestnut Knob, the same enclosed with a rock
wall, forever set aside for me an' Dan'l and running west twenty
yards to a black jack, then east to a cedar stump three rods, then
south to a stake twenty yards and thence west back to me an' Dan'l. I
wills the fence to be built horse high, bull strong and pig tight, so
as to keep out the Widow Simmon's old brindle cow; the said cow
having pestered us nigh to death in life, I don't want her to worry
us back to life after death._

"_'Third. All the rest of the place except that occupied as aforesaid
by me an' Dan'l, and consisting of twenty acres, more or less, I will
to go to my dutiful wife, Sally Ann Dickey, providing, of course,
that she do not marry again.'_"

"David?" put in Aunt Sallie, promptly, wiping her eyes, "I think that
last thing mout be left out."

"Well, I don't kno'," said Uncle Davy--"you sho'ly ain't got no
notion of marryin' agin, have you, Sally?"

"No--no--" said Aunt Sallie, thoughtfully, "but there aint no tellin'
what a po' widder mout have to do if pushed to the wall."

"Well," sagely remarked Uncle Davy, "we'll jes' let it stan' as it
is. It's like a dose of calomel for disorder of the stomach--if you
need it it'll cure you, an' if you don't it won't hurt you. This
thing of old folks fallin' in love ain't nothin' but a disorder of
the stomach anyhow."

Aunt Sally again protested a poor widow was often pushed to the wall
and had to take advantage of circumstances, but Uncle Davy told the
Bishop to read on.

At this point Tilly got up and left the room.

"_'Fourth. I give and bequeath to my devoted daughter, Tilly, and her
husband, Charles C. Biggers, all my personal property, including the
crib up in the loft, the razor my grandfather left me, the old mare
and her colt, the best bed in the parlor, and--'_"

The Bishop stopped and looked serious.

"Davy, ain't you a trifle previous in this?" he asked.

"Not for a will," he said. "You see this is supposed to happen and be
read after you're dead. You see Charles has been to see her twice and
writ a poem on her eyes."

The Bishop frowned: "You'll have to watch that Biggers boy--he is a
wild reckless rake an' not in Tilly's class in anything."

"He's pow'ful sweet on Tilly," said Aunt Sallie.

"Has he asked her to marry him?" asked the Bishop astonished.

"S-h-h--not yet," said Uncle Davy, "but he's comin' to it as fast as
a lean hound to a meat block. He's got the firs' tech now--silly an'
poetic. After a while he'll get silly an' desperate, an' jes' 'fo' he
kills hisse'l Tilly'll fix him all right an' tie him up for life. The
good Lord makes every man crazy when he is ripe for matrimony, so he
can mate him off befo' he comes to."

The Bishop shook his head: "I am glad I came out here to-day--if for
nothin' else to warn you to let that Biggers boy alone. He don't
study nothin' but fast horses an' devilment."

"I never seed a man have a wuss'r case," said Aunt Sally. "Won't
Tilly be proud of herse'f as the daughter of Old Judge Biggers? An'
me--jes' think of me as the grandmother of Biggerses--the riches' an'
fines' family in the land."

"An' me?--I'll be the gran'pap of 'em--won't I, Sally?"

"You forgit, Davy," said Aunt Sally--"this is yo' will--you'll be
dead."

"I did forgit," said Uncle Davy sadly--"but I'd sho' love to live an'
take one of them little Biggerses on my knees an' think his gran'pap
had bred up to this. Me an' old Judge Biggers--gran'paws of the same
kids! Now, you see, Hillard, he met Tilly at a party an' he tuck her
in to supper. The next day he writ her a poem, an' I think it's a
pretty good start on the gran'pap business."

The Bishop smiled: "It does look like he loves her," he added, dryly.
"If I was the devil an' wanted to ketch a woman I'd write a poem to
her every day an' lie between heats. Love lives on lies."

"Now, I've ca'culated them things out," said Uncle Davy, "an' it'll
be this away: Tilly is as pretty as a peach an' Charlie is gittin'
stuck wus'n wus'n every day. By the time I am dead they will be
married good an' hard. I am almost gone as it is, the ole man he's
liable to drap off any time--yea, Lord, thy servant is ready to
go--but I do hope that the good master will let me live long enough
to hold one of my Biggers grandboys on my knees."

"All I've got to say," said the Bishop, "is jus' to watch yo'
son-in-law. Every son-in-law will stan' watchin' after the ceremony,
but yours will stan' it all the time."

"_'Lastly,'_" read the Bishop, "_'I wills it that things be left just
as they be on the place--no moving around of nothing, especially the
well, it being eighty foot deep, and with good cool water; and
finally I leave anything else I've got, mostly my good will, to the
tender mercies of the lawyers and courts.'_"

The Bishop witnessed it, gave Uncle Davy another toddy, and, after
again cautioning him to watch young Biggers closely, rode away.




CHAPTER XV

EDWARD CONWAY


Across the hill the old man rode to Millwood, and as he rode his head
was bent forward in troubled thought.

He had heard that Edward Conway had come to the sorest need--even to
where he would place his daughters in the mill. None knew better than
Hillard Watts what this would mean socially for the granddaughters of
Governor Conway.

Besides, the old preacher had begun to hate the mill and its infamous
system of child labor with a hatred born of righteousness. Every
month he saw its degradation, its slavery, its death.

He preached, he talked against it. He began to be pointed out as the
man who was against the mill. Ominous rumors had come to his ears,
and threats. It was whispered to him that he had better be silent,
and some of the people he preached to--some of those who had children
in the mill and were supported in their laziness by the life blood of
their little ones--these were his bitterest enemies.

To-day, the drunken proprietor of Millwood sat in his accustomed
place on the front balcony, his cob-pipe in his mouth and ruin all
around him.

Like others, he had a great respect for the Bishop--a man who had
been both his own and his father's friend. Often as a lad he had
hunted, fished, and trapped with the preacher-overseer, who lived
near his father's plantation. He had broken all of the stubborn colts
in the overseer's care; he had ridden them even in some of their
fiercest, hardest races, and he had felt the thrill of victory at the
wire and known the great pride which comes to one who knows he has
the confidence of a brave and honest man.

The old trainer's influence over Edward Conway had always been great.

To-day, as he saw the Bishop ride up, he thought of his boyhood days,
and of Tom Travis. How often had they gone with the old man hunting
and fishing! How he reverenced the memory of his gentleness and
kindness!

The greatest desire of Hillard Watts had been to reform Edward
Conway. He had prayed for him, worked for him. In spite of his
drunkenness the old man believed in him.

"God'll save him yet," he would say. "I've prayed for it an' I kno'
it--tho' it may be by the crushing of him. Some men repent to God's
smile, some to His frown, and some to His fist. I'm afraid it will
take a blow to save Ned, po' boy."

For Ned was always a boy to him.

Conway was drunker than usual to-day. Things grew worse daily, and he
drank deeper.

It is one of the strangest curses of whiskey that as it daily drags a
man down, deeper and deeper, it makes him believe he must cling to
his Red God the closer.

He met the old overseer cordially, in a half drunken endeavor to be
natural. The old man glanced sadly up at the bloated, boastful face,
and thought of the beautiful one it once had been. He thought of the
fine, brilliant mind and marveled that with ten years of drunkenness
it still retained its strength. And the Bishop remembered that in
spite of his drinking no one had ever accused Edward Conway of doing
a dishonorable thing. "How strong is that man's character rooted for
good," he thought, "when even whiskey cannot undermine it."

"Where are the babies, Ned?" he asked, after he was seated.

The father called and the two girls came running out.

The old man was struck with the developing beauty of Helen--he had
not seen her for a year. Lily hunted in his pockets for candy, as she
had always done--and found it--and Helen--though eighteen and grown,
sat thoughtful and sad, on a stool by his side.

The old man did not wonder at her sadness.

"Ned," he said, as he stroked Helen's hand, "this girl looks mo' like
her mother every day, an' you know she was the handsomest woman that
ever was raised in the Valley."

Conway took his pipe out of his mouth. He dropped his head and looked
toward the distant blue hills. What Memory and Remorse were
whispering to him the old man could only guess. Silently--nodding--he
sat and looked and spoke not.

"She ain't gwineter be a bit prettier than my little Lil, when she
gits grown," said a voice behind them.

It was Mammy Maria who, as usual, having dressed the little girl as
daintily as she could, stood nearby to see that no harm befell her.

"Wal, Aunt Maria," drawled the Bishop. "Whar did you come from? I
declar' it looks like ole times to see you agin'."

There is something peculiar in this, that those unlettered, having
once associated closely with negroes, drop into their dialect when
speaking to them. Perhaps it may be explained by some law of
language--some rule of euphony, now unknown. The Bishop unconsciously
did this; and, from dialect alone, one could not tell which was white
and which was black.

Aunt Maria had always been very religious, and the Bishop arose and
shook her hand gravely.

"Pow'ful glad to see you," said the old woman.

"How's religion--Aunt Maria," he asked.

"Mighty po'ly--mighty po'ly"--she sighed. "It looks lak the Cedars of
Lebanon is dwarfed to the scrub pine. The old time religin' is
passin' away, an' I'm all that's lef' of Zion."

The Bishop smiled.

"Yes, you see befo' you all that's lef' of Zion. I'se been longin' to
see you an' have a talk with you--thinkin' maybe you cud he'p me out.
You kno' me and you is Hard-shells."

The Bishop nodded.

"We 'blieves in repentince an' fallin' from grace, an' backslidin'
an' all that," she went on. "Well, they've lopped them good ole
things off one by one an' they don't 'bleeve in nothin' now but jes'
jin'in'. They think jes' jin'in' fixes 'em--that it gives 'em a free
pass into the pearly gates. So of all ole Zion Church up at the
hill, sah, they've jes' jined an' jined around, fust one church an'
then another, till of all the ole Zion Church that me an' you loved
so much, they ain't none lef' but Parson Shadrack, the preacher,
sister Tilly, an' me--We wus Zion."

"Pow'ful bad, pow'ful bad," said the Bishop--"and you three made
Zion."

"We _wus_," said Aunt Maria, sadly--"but now there ain't but one
lef'. _I'm Zion._ It's t'arrable, but it's true. As it wus in the
days of Lot, so it is to-day in Sodom."

"Why, how did that happen?" asked the Bishop.

Aunt Maria's eyes kindled: "It's t'arrable, but it's true--last week
Parson Shadrack deserts his own wife an' runs off with Sis Tilly. It
looked lak he mouter tuck me, too, an' kept the fold together as
Abraham did when he went into the Land of the Philistines. But thank
God, if I am all that's lef', one thing is mighty consolin'--I can
have a meetin' of Zion wherever I is. If I sets down in a cheer to
meditate I sez to myself--'Be keerful, Maria, for the church is in
session.' When I drink, it is communion--when I bathes, it is
baptism, when I walks, I sez to myself: 'Keep a straight gait, Maria,
you are carryin' the tabbernackle of all goodness.' Aunt Tilly got
the preacher, but thank God, I got Zion."

"But I mus' go. Come on, Lily," she said to the little girl,--"let
ole Zion fix up yo' curls."

She took her charge and curtsied out, and the Bishop knew she would
die either for Zion or the little girl.

The old man sat thinking--Helen had gone in and was practising a love
song.

"Ned," said the Bishop, "I tell you a man ain't altogether friendless
when he's got in his home a creature as faithful as she is. She'd die
for that child. That one ole faithful 'oman makes me feel like
liftin' my hat to the whole nigger race. I tell you when I get to
heaven an' fail to see ole Mammy settin' around the River of Life,
I'll think somethin' is wrong."

The Bishop was silent a while, and then he asked: "Ned, it can't be
true that you are goin' to put them girls in the factory?"

"It's all I can do," said Conway, surlily--"I'll be turned out of
home soon--out in the public road. Everything I've got has been sold.
I've no'where to go, an' but for Carpenter's offer from the Company
of the cottage, I'd not have even a home for them. The only condition
I could go on was that--"

"That you sell your daughters into slavery," said the Bishop quietly.

"You don't seem to think it hurts your's," said Conway bluntly.

"If I had my way they'd not work there a day,"--the old man replied
hastily. "But it's different with me, an' you know it. My people take
to it naturally. I am a po' white, an underling by breedin' an'
birth, an' if my people build, they must build up. But you--you are
tearing down when you do that. Po' as I am, I'd rather starve than to
see little children worked to death in that trap, but Tabitha sees it
different, and she is the one bein' in the world I don't cross--the
General"--he smiled--"she don't understand, she's built different."

He was silent a while. Then he said: "I am old an' have nothin'."

He stopped again. He did not say that what little he did have went to
the poor and the sorrow-stricken of the neighborhood. He did not add
that in his home, besides its poverty and hardness, he faced daily
the problem of far greater things.

"If I only had my health," said Conway, "but this cursed rheumatism!"

"Some of us has been so used to benefits," said the old man, "that
it's only when they've withdrawn that we miss 'em. We're always ready
to blame God for what we lose, but fail to remember what He gives us.
We kno' what diseases an' misfortunes we have had, we never know, by
God's mercy, what we have escaped. Death is around us daily--in the
very air we breathe--and yet we live.

"I'll talk square with you, Ned--though you may hate me for it. Every
misfortune you have, from rheumatism to loss of property, is due to
whiskey. Let it alone. Be a man. There's greatness in you yet. You'd
have no chance if you was a scrub. But no man can estimate the value
of good blood in man or hoss--it's the unknown quantity that makes him
ready to come again. For do the best we can, at last we're in the
hands of God an' our pedigree."

"Do you think I've got a show yet?" asked Conway, looking up.

"Do I? Every man has a chance who trusts God an' prays. You can't
down that man. Your people were men--brave an' honest men. They
conquered themselves first, an' all this fair valley afterwards. They
overcame greater obstacles than you ever had, an' in bringin' you
into the world they gave you, by the very laws of heredity, the power
to overcome, too. Why do you grasp at the shadow an' shy at the form?
You keep these hound dogs here, because your father rode to hounds.
But he rode for pleasure, in the lap of plenty, that he had made by
hard licks. You ride, from habit, in poverty. He rode his hobbies--it
was all right. Your hobbies ride you. He fought chickens for an
hour's pastime, in the fullness of the red blood of life. You fight
them for the blood of the thing--as the bred-out Spaniards fight
bulls. He took his cocktails as a gentleman--you as a drunkard."

The old man was excited, indignant, fearless.

Conway looked at him in wonder akin to fear. Even as the idolaters of
old looked at Jeremiah and Isaiah.

"Why--why is it"--went on the old man earnestly, rising and shaking
his finger ominously--"that two generations of cocktails will breed
cock-fighters, and two generations of whiskey will breed a scrub? Do
you know where you'll end? In bein' a scrub? No, no--you will be dead
an' the worms will have et you--but"--he pointed to the house--"you
are fixin' to make scrubs of them--they will breed back.

"Go back to the plough--quit this whiskey and be the man your people
was. If you do not," he said rising to go--"God will crush you--not
kill you, but mangle you in the killin'."

"He has done that already," said Conway bitterly. "He has turned the
back of His hand on me."

"Not yet"--said the Bishop--"but it will fall and fall there." He
pointed to Helen, whose queenly head could be seen in the old parlor
as she trummed out a sad love song.

Conway blanched and his hand shook. He felt a nameless fear--never
felt before. He looked around, but the old man was gone. Afterwards,
as he remembered that afternoon, he wondered if, grown as the old man
had in faith, God had not also endowed him with the gift of
prophecy.




CHAPTER XVI

HELEN'S DESPAIR


An hour afterward, the old nurse found Helen at the piano, her head
bowed low over the old yellow keys. "It's gittin' t'wards dinner
time, chile," she said tenderly, "an' time I was dressin' my queen
gal for dinner an sendin' her out to get roses in her cheeks."

"Oh, Mammy, don't--don't dress me that way any more. I am--I am to
be--after this--just a mill girl, you know?"

There was a sob and her head sank lower over the piano.

"You may be for a while, but you'll always be a Conway"--and the old
woman struck an attitude with her arms akimbo and stood looking at
the portraits which hung on the parlor wall.

"That--that--makes it worse, Mammy." She wiped away her tears and
stood up, and her eyes took on a look Aunt Maria had not seen since
the old Governor had died. She thought of ghosts and grew nervous
before it.

"If my father sends me to work in that place--if he does--" she cried
with flaming eyes--"I shall feel that I am disgraced. I cannot hold
my head up again. Then you need not be surprised at anything I do."

"It ain't registered that you're gwine there yet," and Mammy Maria
stroked her head. "But if you does--it won't make no difference whar
you are nor what you have to do, you'll always be a Conway an' a
lady."

An hour afterwards, dressed as only Mammy Maria could dress her,
Helen had walked out again to the rock under the wild grape vine.

How sweet and peaceful it was, and yet how changed since but a short
time ago she had sat there watching for Harry!

"Harry"--she pulled out the crumpled, tear-stained note from her
bosom and read it again. And the reading surprised her. She expected
to weep, but instead when she had finished she sat straight up on the
mossy rock and from her eyes gleamed again the light before which the
political enemies of the old dead Governor had so often quailed.

Nor did it change in intensity, when, at the sound of wheels and the
clatter of hoofs, she instinctively dropped down on the moss behind
the rock and saw through the grape leaves one of Richard Travis's
horses, steaming hot, and stepping,--right up to its limit--a
clipping gait down the road.

She had dropped instinctively because she guessed it was Harry. And
instinctively, too, she knew the girl with the loud boisterous laugh
beside him was Nellie.

The buggy was wheeled so rapidly past that she heard only broken
notes of laughter and talk. Then she sat again upon her rock, with
the deep flush in her eyes, and said:

"I hate--him--I hate him--and oh--to think--"

She tore his note into fragments, twisted and rolled them into a ball
and shot it, as a marble, into the gulch below.

Then, suddenly she remembered, and reaching over she looked into a
scarred crevice in the rock. Twice that summer had Clay Westmore left
her a quaint love note in this little rock-lined post-office. Quaint
indeed, and they made her smile, for they had been queer mixtures of
geology and love. But they were honest--and they had made her flush
despite the fact that she did not love him.

Still she would read them two or three times and sigh and say: "Poor
Clay--" after every reading.

"Surely there will be one this afternoon," she thought as she peeped
over.

But there was not, and it surprised her to know how much she was
disappointed.

"Even Clay has forgotten me," she said as she arose hastily to go.

A big sob sprang up into her throat and the Conway light of defiance,
that had blazed but a few moments before in her eyes, died in the
depths of the cloud of tears which poured between it and the open.

A cruel, dangerous mood came over her. It enveloped her soul in its
sombre hues and the steel of it struck deep.

She scarcely remembered her dead mother--only her eyes. But when
these moods came upon Helen Conway--and her life had been one wherein
they had fallen often--the memory of her mother's eyes came to her
and stood out in the air before her, and they were sombre and sad,
and full, too, of the bitterness of hopes unfulfilled.

All her life she had fought these moods when they came. But now--now
she yielded to the subtle charm of them--the wild pleasure of their
very sinfulness.

"And why not," she cried to herself when the consciousness of it came
over her, and like a morphine fiend carrying the drug to his lips,
she knew that she also was pressing there the solace of her misery.

"Why should I not dissipate in the misery of it, since so much of it
has fallen upon me at once?

"Mother?--I never knew one--only the eyes of one, and they were the
eyes of Sorrow. Father?"--she waved her hand toward the old
home--"drunk-wrecked--he would sell me for a quart of whiskey.

"Then I loved--loved an image which is--mud--mud"--she fairly spat it
out. "One poor friend I had--I scorned him, and he has forgotten me,
too. But I did know that I had social standing--that my name was an
honored one until--now."

"Now!"--she gulped it down. "Now I am a common mill girl."

She had been walking rapidly down the road toward the house. So
rapidly that she did not know how flushed and beautiful she had
become. She was swinging her hat impatiently in her hand, her fine
hair half falling and loose behind, shadowing her face as rosy sunset
clouds the temple on Mt. Ida. A face of more classic beauty, a skin
of more exquisite fairness, flushed with the bloom of youth, Richard
Travis had never before seen.

And so, long before she reached him, he reined in his trotters and
sat silently watching her come. What a graceful step she had--what a
neck and head and hair--half bent over with eyes on the ground,
unconscious of the beauty and grace of their own loveliness.

She almost ran into his buggy--she stopped with a little start of
surprise, only to look into his clean-cut face, smiling half
patronizingly, half humorously, and with a look of command too, and
of patronage withal, of half-gallant heart-undoing.

It was the look of the sharp-shinned hawk hovering for an instant, in
sheer intellectual abandon and physical exuberance, above the
unconscious oriole bent upon its morning bath.

He was smiling down into her eyes and repeating half humorously, half
gallantly, and altogether beautifully, she thought, Keats' lines:

    "A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
     Its loveliness increases; it will never
     Pass into nothingness; but will keep
     A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
     Full of sweet dreams and health and
     Quiet breathing...."

Even Helen could not tell how it was done nor why she had
consented....

"No--no--you are hot and tired and you shall not walk.... I will give
you just a little spin before Mammy Maria calls you to dinner....
Yes, Lizzette and Sadie B. always do their best when a pretty girl is
behind them."

How refreshing the air--hot and tired as she was. And such
horses--she had never before ridden behind anything so fine. How
quickly he put her at her ease--how intellectual he was--how much of
a gentleman. And was it not a triumph--a social triumph for her? A
mill girl, in name, to have him notice her? It made her heart beat
quickly to think that Richard Travis should care enough for her to
give her this pleasure and at a time when--when she always saw her
mother's eyes.

Timidly she sat by him scarce lifting her eyes to speak, but
conscious all the time that his eyes were devouring her, from her
neck and hair to her slippered foot, sticking half way out from
skirts of old lace-trimmed linen.

She reminded him at last that they should go back home.

No--he would have her at home directly. Yes, he'd have her there
before the old nurse missed her.

She knew the trotters were going fast, but she did not know just how
fast, until presently, in a cloud of whirling dust they flew around a
buggy whose horse, trot as fast as it could, seemed stationary to the
speed the pair showed as they passed.

It was Harry and Nellie. She glanced coldly at him, and when he
raised his hat she cut him with a smile of scorn. She saw his jaw
drop dejectedly as Richard Travis sang out banteringly:

"Sweets to the sweet, and good-bye to the three-minute class."

It was a good half hour, but it seemed but a few minutes before he
had her back at the home gate, her cheeks burning with the glory of
that burst of speed, and rush of air.

He had helped her out and stood holding her hand as one old enough to
be her father. He smiled and, looking down at her glowing face, and
hair, and neck, repeated:

    "What thou art we know not.
        What is most like thee?
     From rainbow clouds there flow not
        Drops so bright to see
     As from thy presence showers a rain of melody."

Then he changed as she thanked him, and said: "When you go into the
mill I shall have many pleasant surprises for you like this."

He bent over her and whispered: "I have arranged for your pay to be
double--we are neighbors, you know--your father and I,--and a pretty
girl, like you, need not work always."

She started and looked at him quickly.

The color went from her cheeks. Then it came again in a crimson tide,
so full and rich, that Richard Travis, like Titian with his brush,
stood spellbound before the work he had done.

Fearing he had said too much, he dropped his voice and with a twinkle
in his eye said:

"For there is Harry--you know."

All her timidity vanished--her hanging of the head, her silence, her
blushes. Instead, there leaped into her eyes that light which Richard
Travis had never seen before--the light of a Conway on mettle.

"I hate him."

"I do not blame you," he said. "I shall be a--father to you if you
will let me."

He pressed her hand, and raising his hat, was gone.

As he drove away he turned and looked at her slipping across the lawn
in the twilight. In his eyes was a look of triumphant excitement.

"To own her--such a creature--God--it were worth risking my neck."

The mention of Harry brought back all her bitter recklessness to
Helen. She was but a child and her road, indeed, was hard. And as she
turned at the old gate and looked back at the vanishing buggy she
said:

"Had he asked me this evening I'd--yes--I'd go to the end of the
world with him. I'd go--go--go--and I care not how."

Richard Travis was in a jolly mood at the supper table that night,
and Harry became jolly also, impertinently so. He had not said a word
about his cousin being with Helen, but it burned in his breast, and
he awaited his chance to mention it.

"I have thought up a fable since I have been at supper, Cousin
Richard. Shall I tell you?"

"Oh"--with a cynical smile--"do!"

"Well," began Harry unabashed, and with many sly winks and much
histrionic effort, "it is called the 'Fox and the Lion.' Now a fox in
the pursuit ran down a beautiful young doe and was about to devour
her when the lion came up and with a roar and a sweep of his paw,
took her saying...."

"'Get out of the way, you whelp,'" said his cousin, carrying the
fable on, "for I perceive you are not even a fox, but a coyote, since
no fox was ever known to run down a doe."

The smile was gradually changed on his face to a cruel sneer, and
Harry ceased talking with a suddenness that was marked.




CHAPTER XVII

THE WHIPPER-IN


When the mill opened the next day, there was work for Jud Carpenter.
He came in and approached the superintendent's desk briskly.

"Well, suh, hu' many to-day?" he asked.

Kingsley looked over his list of absentees.

"Four, and two of them spinners. Carpenter, you must go at once and
see about it. They are playing off, I am sure."

"Lem'me see the list, suh,"--and he ran his eye over the names.

"Bud Billings--plague his old crotchety head--. He kno's that
machine's got to run, whether no. Narthin's the matter with him--bet
a dollar his wife licked him last night an' he's mad about it."

"That will do us no good," said Kingsley--"what he is mad about. That
machine must be started at once. The others you can see afterwards."

Carpenter jerked his slouch hat down over his eyes and went quickly
out.

In half an hour he was back again. His hat was off, his face was red,
his shaggy eyebrows quivered with angry determination, as, with one
hand in the collar of the frightened Bud, he pulled the slubber into
the superintendent's presence.

Following her husband came Mrs. Billings--a small, bony, wiry,
black-eyed woman, with a firmly set mouth and a perpetual
thunder-cloud on her brow--perhaps the shadow of her coarse,
crow-black hair.

While Jud dragged him, she carried a stick and prodded Bud in the
rear. Nor was she chary in abuse.

Jerked into the superintendent's presence, Bud's scared eyes darted
here and there as if looking for a door to break through, and all the
time they were silently protesting. His hands, too, joined in the
protest; one of them wagged beseechingly behind appealing to his
spouse to desist--the other went through the same motion in front
begging Jud Carpenter for mercy.

But not a word did he utter--not even a grunt did he make.

They halted as quickly as they entered. Bud's eyes sought the
ceiling, the window, the floor,--anywhere but straight ahead of him.

His wife walked up to the superintendent's desk--she was hot and
flushed. Her small black eyes, one of which was cocked cynically,
flashed fire, her coarse hair fell across her forehead, or was
plastered to her head with perspiration.

It was pathetic to look at Bud, with his deep-set, scared eyes.
Kingsley had never heard him speak a word, nor had he even been able
to catch his eye. But he was the best slubber in the mill--tireless,
pain-staking. His place could not be filled.

Bud was really a good-natured favorite of Kingsley and when the
superintendent saw him, scared and panting, his tongue half out,
with Jud Carpenter's hand still in his collar, he motioned to Jud to
turn him loose.

"Uh--uh--" grunted Jud "--he will bolt sho!"

Kingsley noticed that Bud's head was bound with a cloth.

"What's the matter, Bud?" he asked kindly.

The slubber never spoke, but glanced at his wife, who stood glaring
at him. Then she broke out in a thin, drawling, daring, poor-white
voice--a ring of impertinence and even a challenge in it:

"I'll tell you'uns what's the matter with Bud. Bud Billings is got
what most men needs when they begin to raise sand about their vittels
for nothin'. I've busted a plate over his head."

She struck an attitude before Kingsley which plainly indicated that
she might break another one. It was also an attitude which asked:
"What are you going to do about it?"

Bud nodded emphatically--a nod that spoke more than words. It was a
positive, unanimous assertion on his part that the plate had been
broken there.

"Ne'ow, Mister Kingsley, you know yo'se'f that Bud is mighty slow
mouthed--he don't talk much an' I have to do his talkin' fur him.
Ne'ow Bud don't intend for to be so mean"--she added a little
softer--"but every month about the full of the moon, Bud seems to
think somehow that it is about time fur him to make a fool of hisse'f
again. He wouldn't say nothin' fur a month--he is quiet as a lam' an'
works steady as a clock--then all to once the fool spell 'ud hit him
an' then some crockery 'ud have to be wasted.

"They ain't no reason for it, Mister Kingsley--Bud cyant sho' the
rappin' of yo' finger fur havin' sech spells along towards the full
of the moon. Bud cyant tell you why, Mister Kingsley, to save his
soul--'cept that he jes' thinks he's got to do it an' put me to the
expense of bustin' crockery.

"I stood it mighty nigh two years arter Bud and me was spliced,
thinkin' maybe it war ther bed-bugs a-bitin' Bud, long towards the
full of the moon. So I watched that pint an' killed 'em all long
towards the first quarter with quicksilver an' the white of an egg.
Wal, Bud never sed a word all that month. He never opened his mouth
an' he acted jes' lak a puf'fec' gentleman an' a dutiful dotin'
husband--(Bud wiped away a tear)--until the time come for the fool
spell to hit 'im, an 'all to once you never seed sech a fool spell
hit a man befo'.

"What you reckin' Bud done, Mister Kingsley? Bud Billins thar, what
did he do? Got mad about his biscuits--it's the funny way the fool
spell allers hits him, he never gits mad about anything but his
biscuits. Why I cud feed Bud on dynamite an' he'd take it all right
if he cu'd eat it along with his biscuits. Onct I put concentrated
lye in his coffee by mistake. I'd never knowed it if the pup hadn't
got some of it by mistake an' rolled over an' died in agony. I rushed
to the mill thinkin' Bud ud' be dead, sho'--but he wa'nt. He never
noticed it. I noticed his whiskers an' eyebrows was singed off an'
questioned 'im 'bout it and he 'lowed he felt sorter quare arter he
drunk his coffee, an' full like, an' he belched an' it sot his
whiskers an' eyebrows a-fiah, which ther same kinder puzzled him fur
a while; but it must be biscuits to make him raise cain. It happened
at the breakfas' table. Mind you, Mister Kingsley, Bud didn't say it
to my face--no, he never says anything to my face--but he gits up an'
picks up the cat an' tells ther cat what he thinks of me--his own
spliced an' wedded wife--sland'in' me to the cat."

She shook her finger in his face--"You know you did, Bud Billins--an'
what you reckin he told ther cat, Mister Kingsley--told her I was
a--a--"

She gasped--she clinched her fist. Bud dodged an' tried to break
away.

"Told him I was a--a--heifer!"

Bud looked sheepishly around--he tried even to run, but Jud Carpenter
held him fast. She shook her finger in his face. "I heard you say it,
Bud Billins, you know I did an' I busted a plate over yo' head."

"But, my dear Madam," said Kingsley, "that was no reason to treat him
so badly."

"Oh, it wa'nt?" she shrieked--"to tattle-tale to the house-cat about
yo' own spliced an' wedded wife? In her own home an' yard--her that
you've sworn to love an' cherish agin bed an' board--ter call her a
heifer?"

She slipped her hand under her apron and produced a deadly looking
blue plate of thick cheap ware. Her eyes blazed, her voice became
husky with anger.

"An' you don't think that was nothin'?" she shrieked.

"You don't understand me, my dear Madam," said Kingsley quickly. "I
meant that it was no reason why you should continue to treat him so
after he has suffered and is sorry. Of course you have got to control
Bud."

She softened and went on.

"Wal it was mighty nigh a year befo' Bud paid any mo' 'tention to the
cat. The full moon quit 'fectin' him--he even quit eatin' biscuits.
Then the spell commenced to come onct a year an' he cu'dn't pass over
blackberry winter to save his life. Mind you he never sed anything to
me about it, but one day he ups an' gits choked on a chicken gizzerd
an' coughs an' wheezes an' goes on so like a fool that I ups with the
cheer an' comes down on his head a-thinkin' I'd make him cough it up.
I mout a bin a little riled an' hit harder'n I orter, but I didn't
mean anything by it, an' he did cough it up on my clean floor, an'
I'm willin' to say agin' I was a little hasty, that's true, in
callin' him a lop-sided son of a pigeon-toed monkey, for Bud riled me
mighty. But what you reckin he done?"

She shook her finger in his face again. Bud tried to run again.

"You kno' you done it, Bud Billins--I followed you an' listened when
you tuck up the cat an' you whispered in the cat's year that your
spliced an' wedded wife was a--a--_she devil_!"

"It tuck two plates that time, Mister Kingsley--that's the time Bud
didn't draw no pay fur two weeks.

"Wal, that was over a year ago, an' Bud he's been a behavin' mighty
well, untwell this mornin'. It's true he didn't say much, but he sed
'nuff fur me to see ther spell was acomin' on an' I'd better bust it
up befo' it got into his blood an' sot 'im to cultivate the company
of the cat. I seed I had to check the disease afore it got too
strong, fur I seed Bud was tryin' honestly to taper off with them
spells an' shake with the cat if he cu'd, so when he kinder snorted a
little this mornin' because he didn't have but one aig an' then
kinder began to look aroun' as if he was thinkin' of mice, I busted a
saucer over his head an' fotched 'im too, grateful la'k an' happy, to
be hisse'f agin. I think he's nearly c'wored an' I'm mighty glad you
is, Bud Billins, fur it's costin' a lot of mighty good crockery to
c'wore you.

"Now you all jes' lem'me 'lone, Mister Kingsley--lem'me manage Bud.
He's slo' mouthed as I'm tellin' you, but he's gittin' over them
spells an' I'm gwinter c'wore him if I hafter go into the queensware
bus'ness on my own hook. Now, Bud Billins, you jes' go in there now
an' go to tendin' to that slubbin' machine, an' don't you so much as
look at a cat twixt now an' next Christmas."

Bud needed no further admonition. He bolted for the door and was soon
silently at work.




CHAPTER XVIII

SAMANTHA CAREWE


But Jud Carpenter did not finish his work by starting the slubbing
machine. Samantha Carewe, one of the main loom women, was absent.
Going over to her cottage, he was told by her mother, a glinty-eyed,
shrewd looking, hard featured woman--that Samantha was "mighty nigh
dead."

"Oh, she's mighty nigh dead, is she," said Jud with a tinge of
sarcasm--"I've heurn of her bein' mighty nigh dead befo'. Well, I
wanter see her."

The mother looked at him sourly, but barred the doorway with her
form. Jud fixed his hard cunning eyes on her.

"Cyant see her; I tell you--she's mighty po'ly."

"Well, cyant you go an' tell her that Mister Jud Cyarpenter is here
an' 'ud like to kno' if he can be of any sarvice to her in orderin'
her burial robe an' coffin, or takin' her last will an' testerment."

With that he pushed himself in the doorway, rudely brushing the woman
aside. "Now lem'me see that gyrl--" he added sternly--"that loom is
got to run or you will starve, an' if she's sick I want to kno' it.
I've seed her have the toe-ache befo'."

The door of the room in which Samantha lay was open, and in plain
view of the hall she lay with a look of pain, feigned or real, on
her face. She was a woman past forty--a spinster truly--who had been
in the mill since it was first started, and, as she came from a South
Carolina mill to the Acme, had, in fact, been in a cotton mill, as
she said--"all her life." For she could not remember when, as a child
even, she had not worked in one.

Her chest was sunken, her shoulders stooped, her whole form corded
and knotted with the fight against machinery. Her skin, bronzed and
sallow, looked not unlike the hard, fine wood-work of the loom, oiled
with constant use.

Jud walked in unceremoniously.

"What ails you, Samanthy?" he asked, with feigned kindness.

"Oh, I dunno, Jud, but I've got a powerful hurtin' in my innards."

"The hurtin' was so bad," said her mother, "that I had to put a hot
rock on her stomach, last night."

She motioned to a stone lying on the hearth. Jud glanced at it--its
size staggered him.

"Good Lord! an' you say you had that thing on her stomach? Why didn't
you send her up to the mill an' let us lay a hot steam engine on
her?"

"What you been eatin', Samanthy?" he asked suddenly.

"Nuthin', Jud--I aint got no appetite at all!"

"No, she aint eat a blessed thing, hardly, to-day," said her
mother--"jes' seemed to have lost her appetite from a to izzard."

"I wish the store'd keep wild cherry bark and whiskey--somethin' to
make us eat. We cyant work unless we can eat," said Samantha,
woefully.

"Great Scott," said Jud, "what we want to do is to keep you folks
from eatin' so much. Lem'me see," he added after a pause, as if still
thinking he'd get to the source of her trouble--"Yistidday was
Sunday--you didn't have to work--now what did you eat for breakfast?"

"Nothin'--oh, I aint got no appetite at all"--whined Miss Samantha.

"Well, what did you eat--I wanter find out what ails you?"

"Well, lem'me see," said Miss Samantha, counting on her fingers--"a
biled mackrel, some fried bacon, two pones of corn bread--kinder
forced it down."

"Ur-huh--" said Jud, thoughtfully--"of course you had to drink, too."

"Yes"--whined Miss Samantha woefully--"two glasses of buttermilk."

Jud elevated his eyebrows "An' for dinner?"

"O, Lor'. Jes' cu'dn't eat nothin' fur dinner," she wailed. "If the
Company'd only get some cherry bark an' whiskey"--

"At dinner," said Mrs Carewe, stroking her chin--"we had some
sour-kraut--she eat right pe'rtly of that--kinder seemed lak a
appetizer to her. She mixed it with biled cabbage an' et right
pe'rtly of it."

"An' some mo' buttermilk--it kinder cools my stomach," whined Miss
Samantha. "An' hog-jowl, an' corn-bread--anything else Maw?"

"A raw onion in vinegar," said her mother--"It's the only thing that
seems to make you want to eat a little. An' reddishes--we had some
new reddishes fur dinner--didn't we, Samanthy?"

"Good Lord," snapped Jud--"reddishes an' buttermilk--no wonder you
needed that weight on your stomach--it's all that kept you from
floatin' in the air. Cyant eat--O good Lord!"

They were silent--Miss Samantha making wry faces with her pain.

"Of course you didn't eat no supper?" he asked.

"No--we don' eat no supper Sunday night," said Mrs. Carewe.

"Didn't eat none at all," asked Jud--"not even a little?"

"Well, 'bout nine o'clock I thought I'd eat a little, to keep me from
gittin' hungry befo' day, so I et a raw onion, an' some black
walnuts, and dried prunes, an'--an'--"

"A few apples we had in the cellar," added her mother, "an' a
huckleberry pie, an' buttermilk--"

Jud jumped up--"Good Lord, I thought you was a fool when you said you
put that stone on her stomach, but now I know you done the right
thing--you might have anchored her by a chain to the bed post, too,
in case the rock didn't hold her down. Now look here," he went on to
Mrs. Carewe, "I'll go to the sto' an' send you a half pound of salts,
a bottle of oil an' turbb'ntine. Give her plenty of it an' have her
at the mill by to-morrow, or I'll cut off all your rations. As it is
I don't see that you need them, anyway, to eat"--he sneered--"for you
'aint got no appetite at all.'"

From the Carewe cottage Jud went to a small yellow cottage on the
farthest side of the valley. It was the home of John Corbin, and
Willis, his ten-year-old son, was one of the main doffers. The father
was lounging lazily on the little front verandah, smoking his pipe.

"What's the matter with Willis?" asked Jud after he had come up.

"Why, nothin'--" drawled the father. "Aint he at the mill?"

"No--the other four children of your'n is there, but Willis aint."

The man arose with more than usual alacrity. "I'll see that he is
there--" he declared--"it's as much as we can do to live on what they
makes, an' I don't want no dockin' for any sickness if I can he'p
it."

Willis, a pale over-worked lad, was down with tonsillitis. Jud heard
the father and mother in an angry dispute. She was trying to persuade
him to let the boy stay at home. In the end hot words were used, and
finally the father came out followed by the pale and hungry-eyed boy.

"He'd better die at the mill at work than here at home," the father
added brutally, as Jud led him off, "fur then the rest of us will
have that much ahead to live on."

He settled lazily back in his chair, and resumed his smoking.




CHAPTER XIX

A QUICK CONVERSION


It happened that morning that the old Bishop was on his daily round,
visiting the sick of Cottontown. He went every day, from house to
house, helping the sick, cheering the well, and better than all
things else, putting into the hearts of the disheartened that
priceless gift of coming again.

For of all the gifts the gods do give to men, that is the
greatest--the ability to induce their fallen fellow man to look up
and hope again. The gift to spur others onward--the gift to make men
reach up. His flock were all mill people, their devotion to him
wonderful. In the rush and struggle of the strenuous world around
them, this humble old man was the only being to whom they could go
for spiritual help.

To-day in his rounds, one thing impressed him more sadly than
anything else--for he saw it so plainly when he visited their
homes--and that was that with all their hard work, from the oldest to
the youngest, with all their traffic in human life, stealing the bud
along with the broken and severed stem--as a matter of fact, the Acme
mills paid out to the people but very little money. Work as they
might, they seldom saw anything but an order on a store, for clothes
and provisions sold to them at prices that would make a Jew peddler
blush for shame.

The Bishop found entire families who never saw a piece of money the
year round.

There are families and families, and some are more shiftless than
others.

In one of the cottages the old man found a broken down little thing
of seven, sick. For just such trips he kept his pockets full of
things, and such wonderful pockets they would have been to a
healthful natural child! Ginger cakes--a regular Noah's Ark, and
apples, red and yellow. Sweet gum, too, which he had himself gathered
from the trees in the woods. And there were even candy dolls and
peppermints.

"Oh, well, maybe I can help her, po' little thing," the Bishop said
when the mother conducted him in. But one look at her was
enough--that dead, unmeaning look, not unconscious, but
unmeaning--deadened--a disease which to a robust child would mean
fever and a few days' sickness--to this one the Bishop knew it meant
atrophy and death. And as the old man looked at her, he thought it
were better that she should go. For to her life had long since lost
its individuality, and dwarfed her into a nerveless machine--the
little frame was nothing more than one of a thousand monuments to the
cotton mill--a mechanical thing, which might cease to run at any
time.

"How old is she?" asked the Bishop, sitting down by the child on the
side of the bed.

"We put her in the mill two years ago when she was seven," said the
mother. "We was starvin' an' had to do somethin'." She added this
with as much of an apologetic tone as her nature would permit. "We
told the mill men she was ten," she added. "We had to do it. The fust
week she got two fingers mashed off."

The Bishop was silent, then he said: "It's bes' always to tell the
truth. Liar is a fast horse, but he never runs but one race."

Although there were no laws in Alabama against child labor, the mill
drew the lines then as now, if possible, on very young children. Not
that it cared for the child--but because it could be brought to the
mill too young for any practical use, unless it was wise beyond its
age.

He handed the little thing a ginger man. She looked at it--the first
she had ever seen,--and then at the giver in the way a wild thing
would, as if expecting some trick in the proffered kindness; but when
he tried to caress her and spoke kindly, she shrank under the cover
and hid her head with fear.

It was not a child, but a little animal--a wild being of an unknown
species in a child's skin--the missing link, perhaps; the link
missing between the natural, kindly instinct of the wild thing, the
brute, the monkey, the anthropoid ape, which protects its young even
at the expense of its life, and civilized man of to-day, the speaking
creature, the so-called Christian creature, who sells his young to
the director-Devils of mills and machinery and prolongs his own life
by the death of his offspring.

Biology teaches that many of the very lowest forms of life eat their
young. Is civilized man merely a case, at last, of reversion to a
primitive type?

She hid her head and then peeped timidly from under the cover at the
kindly old man. He had seen a fox driven into its hole by dogs do the
same thing.

She did not know what a smile meant, nor a caress, nor a proffered
gift. Tremblingly she lay, under the dirty quilt, expecting a kick, a
cuff.

The Bishop sat down by the bedside and took out a paper. "It'll be an
hour or so I can spend," he said to the mother--"maybe you'd like to
be doin' about a little."

"Come to think of it, I'm pow'ful obleeged to you," she said. "I've
all my mornin' washin' to do yit, only I was afraid to leave her
alone."

"You do yo' washin'--I'll watch her. I'm a pretty good sort of a hoss
doctor myse'f."

The child had nodded off to sleep, the Bishop was reading his paper,
when a loud voice was heard in the hallway and some rough steps that
shook the little flimsily made floor of the cottage, and made it rock
with the tramp of them. The door opened suddenly and Jud Carpenter,
angry, boisterous, and presumptuous, entered. The child had awakened
at the sound of Carpenter's foot fall, and now, frightened beyond
control, she trembled and wept under the cover.

There are natural antipathies and they are God-given. They are the
rough cogs in the wheel of things. But uneven as they are, rough and
grating, strike them off and the wheel would be there still, but it
would not turn. It is the friction of life that moves it. And
movement is the law of life.

Antipathies--thank God who gave them to us! But for them the shepherd
dog would lie down with the wolf.

The only man in Cottontown who did not like the Bishop was Jud
Carpenter, and the only man in the world whom the Bishop did not love
was Jud Carpenter. And many a time in his life the old man had
prayed: "O God, teach me to love Jud Carpenter and despise his ways."

Carpenter glared insolently at the old man quietly reading his paper,
and asked satirically. "Wal, what ails her, doctor?"

"Mill-icious fever," remarked the Bishop promptly with becoming
accent on the first syllable, and scarcely raising his eyes from the
paper.

Carpenter flushed. He had met the Bishop too often in contests which
required courage and brains not to have discovered by now that he was
no match for the man who could both pray and fight.

"They aint half as sick as they make out an' I've come to see about
it," he added. He felt the child's pulse. "She ain't sick to hurt.
That spinner is idle over yonder an' I guess I'll jes' be carryin'
her back. Wuck--it's the greatest tonic in the worl'--it's the
Hostetter's Bitters of life," he added, trying to be funny.

The Bishop looked up. "Yes, but I've knowed men to get so drunk on
bitters they didn't kno' a mill-dam from a dam'-mill!"

Carpenter smiled: "Wal, she ain't hurt--guess I'll jes' git her
cloze on an' take her over"--still feeling the child's wrist while
she shuddered and hid under the cover. Nothing but her arm was out,
and from the nervous grip of her little claw-like fingers the old man
could only guess her terrible fear.

"You sho'ly don't mean that, Jud Carpenter?" said the Bishop, with
surprise in his heretofore calm tone.

"Wal, that's jus' what I do mean, Doctor," remarked Carpenter dryly,
and in an irritated voice.

"Jud Carpenter," said the old man rising--"I am a man of God--it is
my faith an' hope. I'm gettin' old, but I have been a man in my day,
an' I've still got strength enough left with God's he'p to stop you.
You shan't tech that child."

In an instant Carpenter was ablaze--profane, abusive, insolent--and
as the old man stepped between him and the bed, the Whipper-in's
anger overcame all else.

The child under the cover heard a resounding whack and stuck her head
out in time to see the hot blood leap to the old man's cheeks where
Carpenter's blow had fallen. For a moment he paused, and then the
child saw the old overseer's huge fist gripping spasmodically, and
the big muscles of his arms and shoulders rolling beneath the folds
of his coat, as a crouching lion's skin rolls around beneath his mane
before he springs.

Again and again it gripped, and relaxed--gripped and relaxed again.
Mastering himself with a great effort, the old man turned to the man
who had slapped him.

"Strike the other cheek, you coward, as my Master sed you would."

Even the child was surprised when Carpenter, half wickedly, in rage,
half tauntingly slapped the other cheek with a blow that almost sent
the preacher reeling against the bed. Again the great fist gripped
convulsively, and the big muscles that had once pitched the Mountain
Giant over a rail fence worked--rolled beneath their covering.

"What else kin I do for you at the request of yo' Master?" sneered
Carpenter.

"As He never said anything further on the subject," said the old man,
in a dry pitched voice that told how hard he was trying to control
himself, "I take it He intended me to use the same means that He
employed when He run the thieves an' bullies of His day out of the
temple of God."

The child thought they were embracing. It was the old hold and the
double hip-thrust, by which the overseer had conquered so often
before in his manhood's prime. Nor was his old-time strength gone. It
came in a wave of righteous indignation, and like the gust of a
whirlwind striking the spars of a rotting ship. Never in his life had
Carpenter been snapped so nearly in two. It seemed to him that every
bone in his body broke when he hit the floor.... It was ten minutes
before his head began to know things again. Dazed, he opened his eyes
to see the Bishop sitting calmly by his side bathing his face with
cold water. The blood had been running from his nose, for the rag and
water were colored. His head ached.

Jud Carpenter had one redeeming trait--it was an appreciation of the
humorous. No man has ever been entirely lost or entirely miserable,
who has had a touch of humor in him. As the Bishop put a pillow under
his head and then locked the door to keep any one else out, the
ridiculousness of it all came over him, and he said sillily:

"Wal, I reckin you've 'bout converted me this time."

"Jud Carpenter," said the Bishop, his face white with shame, "for
God's sake don't tell anybody I done that--"

Jud smiled as he arose and put on his hat. "I can stan' bein'
licked," he added good naturedly--"because I remember now that I've
run up agin the old champion of the Tennessee Valley--ain't that what
they useter call you?--but it does hurt me sorter, to think you'd
suppose I'd be such a damned fool as to tell it."

He felt the child's wrist again. "'Pears lak she's got a little fever
since all this excitement--guess I'll jes' let her be to-day."

"I do think it 'ud be better, Jud," said the Bishop gently.

And Jud pulled down his hat and slipped quietly out.

The mother never did understand from the child just what happened.
When she came in the Bishop had her so much better that the little
thing actually was playing with his ginger cake dolls, and had eaten
one of them.

It was bed time that night before the child finally whispered it
out: "Maw, did you ever see two men hug each other?"

"No--why?"

"Why, the Bishop he hugged Jud Carpenter so hard he fetched the bleed
out of his nose!"

It was her first and last sight of a ginger-man. Two days later she
was buried, and few save the old Bishop knew she had died; for
Cottontown did not care.




CHAPTER XX

A LIVE FUNERAL


The next Sunday was an interesting occasion--voted so by all
Cottontown when it was over. There was a large congregation out,
caused by the announcement of the Bishop the week before.

"Nex' Sunday I intend to preach Uncle Dave Dickey's funeral sermon.
I've talked to Dave about it an' he tells me he has got all kinds of
heart disease with a fair sprinklin' of liver an' kidney trouble an'
that he is liable to drap off any day.

"I am one of them that believes that whatever bouquets we have for
the dead will do 'em mo' good if given while they can smell; an'
whatever pretty things we've got to say over a coffin had better be
said whilst the deceased is up an' kickin' around an' can hear--an'
so Dave is pow'ful sot to it that I preach his fun'ral whilst he's
alive. An' I do hope that next Sunday you'll all come an' hear it.
An' all the bouquets you expect to give him when he passes away,
please fetch with you."

To-day Uncle Dave was out, dressed in his long-tail jeans frock suit
with high standing collar and big black stock. His face had been
cleanly shaved, and his hair, coming down to his shoulders, was cut
square away around his neck in the good old-fashioned way. He sat on
the front bench and looked very solemn and deeply impressed. On one
side of him sat Aunt Sally, and on the other, Tilly; and the coon
dog, which followed them everywhere, sat on its tail, well to the
front, looking the very essence of concentrated solemnity.

But the coon dog had several peculiar idiosyncrasies; one of them was
that he was always very deeply affected by music--especially any
music which sounded anything like a dinner horn. As this was exactly
the way Miss Patsy Butts' organ music sounded, no sooner did she
strike up the first notes than the coon dog joined in, with his long
dismal howl--much to the disgust of Uncle Dave and his family.

This brought things to a standstill, and all the Hillites to
giggling, while Archie B. moved up and took his seat with the
mourners immediately behind the dog.

Tilly looked reproachfully at Aunt Sally; Aunt Sally looked
reproachfully at Uncle Dave, who passed the reproach on to the dog.

"There now," said Uncle Dave--"Sally an' Tilly both said so! They
both said I mustn't let him come."

He gave the dog a punch in the ribs with his huge foot. This hushed
him at once.

"Be quiet Dave," said the Bishop, sitting near--"it strikes me you're
pow'ful lively for a corpse. It's natural for a dog to howl at his
master's fun'ral."

The coon dog had come out intending to enter fully into the solemnity
of the occasion, and when the organ started again he promptly joined
in.

"I'm sorry," said the Bishop, "but I'll have to rise an' put the
chief mourner out."

It was unnecessary, for the chief mourner himself arose just then,
and began running frantically around the pulpit with snaps, howls and
sundry most painful barks.

Those who noticed closely observed that a clothes-pin had been
snapped bitingly on the very tip end of his tail, and as he finally
caught his bearing, and went down the aisle and out of the door with
a farewell howl, they could hear him tearing toward home, quite
satisfied that live funerals weren't the place for him.

What he wanted was a dead one.

"Maw!" said Miss Patsy Butts--"I wish you'd look after Archie B."

Everybody looked at Archie B., who looked up from a New Testament in
which he was deeply interested, surprised and grieved.

The organ started up again.

But it grew irksome to Miss Samantha Carewe seated on the third
bench.

"Ma," she whispered, "I've heard o' fun'rals in Irelan' where they
passed around refreshments--d'ye reckin this is goin' to be that
kind? I'm gittin' pow'ful hungry."

"Let us trust that the Lord will have it so," said her mother
devoutly.

Amid great solemnity the Bishop had gone into the pulpit and was
preaching:

"It may be a little onusual," he said, "to preach a man's fun'ral
whilst he's alive, but it will certn'ly do him mo' good than to
preach it after he's dead. If we're goin' to do any good to our
feller man, let's do it while he's alive.

"Kind words to the livin' are more than monuments to the dead.

"Come to think about it, but ain't we foolish an' hypocritical the
way we go on over the dead that we have forgot an' neglected whilst
they lived?

"If we'd reverse the thing how many a po' creature that had given up
the fight, an' shuffled off this mortal coil fur lack of a helpin'
han' would be alive to-day!

"How many another that had laid down an' quit in the back stretch of
life would be up an' fightin'! Why, the money spent for flowers an'
fun'rals an' monuments for the pulseless dead of the world would
mighty nigh feed the living dead that are always with us.

"What fools we mortals be! Why, we're not a bit better than the
heathen Chinee that we love to send missionaries to and call all
kinds of hard names. The Chinee put sweet cakes an' wine an' sech on
the graves of their departed, an' once one of our missionaries asked
his servant, Ching Lu, who had just lost his brother an' had put all
them things on his grave, when he thought the corpse 'ud rise up an'
eat them; an' Ching Lu told him he thought the Chinee corpse 'ud rise
up an' eat his sweetmeats about the same time that the Melican man's
corpse 'ud rise up an' smell all the bouquets of sweet flowers spread
over him.

"An' there we are, right on the same footin' as the heathen an' don't
know it.

"David Dickey, the subject of this here fun'ral discourse, was born
on the fourth day of July, 1810, of pious, godly parents. Dave as a
child was always a good boy, who loved his parents, worked diligently
and never needed a lickin' in his life"--

"Hold on, Bishop," said Uncle Davy, rising and protesting
earnestly--"this is my fun'ral an' I ain't a-goin' to have nothin'
told but the exact facts: Jes' alter that by sayin' I was a
_tollerbul_ good boy, _tollerbul_ diligent, with a big sprinklin' o'
meanness an' laziness in me, an' that my old daddy,--God bless his
memory for it--in them days cleared up mighty nigh a ten acre lot of
guv'ment land cuttin' off the underbrush for my triflin' hide."

Uncle Dave sat down. The Bishop was confused a moment, but quickly
said: "Now bretherin, there's another good p'int about preachin' a
man's fun'ral whilst he's alive. It gives the corpse a chance to
correct any errors. Why, who'd ever have thought that good old Uncle
Dave Dickey was that triflin' when he was young? Much obliged, Dave,
much obliged, I'll try to tell the exact facts hereafter."

Then he began again:

"In manner Uncle Dave was approachable an' with a kind heart for all
mankind, an' a kind word an' a helpin' han' for the needy. He was
_tollerbul_ truthful"--went on the Bishop--with a look at Uncle Davy
as if he had profited by previous interruptions.

"Tell it as it was, Hillard,"--nodded Uncle Dave, from the front
bench--"jes' as it was--no lies at my fun'ral."

"_Tollerbul_ truthful," went on the Bishop, "on all subjects he
wanted to tell the truth about. An' I'm proud to say, bretherin,
that after fifty odd years of intermate acquantance with our
soon-to-be-deceased brother, you cu'd rely on him tellin' the truth
in all things except"--

"Tell it as it was, Hillard--no--filigree work at my fun'ral--" said
Uncle Dave.

--"Except," went on the Bishop, "returnin' any little change he
happen'd to borry from you, or swoppin' horses, or tellin' the size
of the fish he happened to ketch. On them p'ints, my bretherin, the
lamented corpse was pow'ful weak; an' I'm sorry to have to tell it,
but I've been warned, as you all kno', to speak the exact facts."

"Hillard Watts," said Uncle Dave rising hotly--"that's a lie an' you
know it!"

"Sit down, Dave," said the Bishop calmly, "I've been preachin'
fun'rals fur fifty years an' that is the fus' time I ever was sassed
by a corpse. You know it's so an' besides I left out one thing.
You're always tellin' what kinder weather it's gwinter be to-morrow
an' missin' it. You burnt my socks off forty years ago on the only
hoss-trade I ever had with you. You owe me five dollars you borrowed
ten years ago, an' you never caught a half pound perch in yo' life
that you didn't tell us the nex' day it was a fo' pound trout. So set
down. Oh, I'm tellin' the truth without any filigree, Dave."

Aunt Sally and Tilly pulled Uncle Dave down while they conversed with
him earnestly. Then he arose and said:

"Hillard, I beg yo' pardon. You've spoken the truth--Sally and Tilly
both say so. I tell yo', bretherin," he said turning to the
congregation--"it'd be a good thing if we c'ud all have our fun'ral
sermon now and then correctly told. There would be so many points
brought out as seen by our neighbors that we never saw ourselves."

"The subject of this sermon"--went on the Bishop--"the lamented
corpse-to-be, was never married but once--to his present loving
widow-to-be, and he never had any love affair with any other
woman--she bein' his fust an' only love--"

"Hillard," said Uncle Dave rising, "I hate to--"

"Set down, David Dickey," whispered Aunt Sally, hotly, as she hastily
jerked him back in his seat with a snap that rattled the teeth in his
head:

"If you get up at this time of life to make any post-mortem an' dyin'
declaration on that subject in my presence, ye'll be takin' out a
corpse sho' 'nuff!"

Uncle Dave very promptly subsided.

"An' the only child he's had is the present beautiful daughter that
sits beside him."

Tilly blushed.

"David, I am very sorry to say, had some very serious personal
faults. He always slept with his mouth open. I've knowed him to snore
so loud after dinner that the folks on the adjoining farm thought it
was the dinner horn."

"Now Hillard," said Uncle Dave, rising--"do you think it necessary to
bring in all that?"

"A man's fun'ral," said the Bishop, "ain't intended to do him any
good--it's fur the coming generation. Boys and girls, beware of
sleepin' with yo' mouth open an' eatin' with yo' fingers an' drinkin'
yo' coffee out of the saucer, an' sayin' _them molasses_ an' _I
wouldn't choose any_ when you're axed to have somethin' at the table.

"Dave Dickey done all that.

"Brother Dave Dickey had his faults as we all have. He was a
sprinklin' of good an' evil, a mixture of diligence an' laziness, a
brave man mostly with a few yaller crosses in him, truthful nearly
always, an' lyin' mostly fur fun an' from habit; good at times an'
bad at others, spiritual at times when it looked like he cu'd see
right into heaven's gate, an' then again racked with great passions
of the flesh that swept over him in waves of hot desires, until it
seemed that God had forgotten to make him anything but an animal.

"Come to think of it, an' that's about the way with the rest of us?

"But he aimed to do right, an' he strove constantly to do right, an'
he prayed constantly fur help to do right, an' that's the main thing.
If he fell he riz agin, fur he had a Hand outstretched in his faith
that cu'd lift him up, an' knew that he could go to a Father that
always forgave--an' that's the main thing. Let us remember, when we
see the faults and vices of others--that we see only what they've
done--as Bobby Burns says, we don't kno' what they have resisted.
Give 'em credit for that--maybe it over-balances. Balancin'--ah, my
bretherin, that's a gran' thing. It's the thing on which the whole
Universe hangs--the law of balance. The pendulum every whar swings as
fur back as it did furra'd, an' the very earth hangs in space by
this same law. An' it holds in the moral worl' as well as the t'other
one--only man is sech a liar an' so bigoted he can't see it. But here
comes into the worl' a man or woman filled so full of passion of
every sort,--passions they didn't make themselves either--regular
thunder clouds in the sky of life. Big with the rain, the snow, the
hail--the lightning of passion. A spark, a touch, a strong wind an'
they explode, they fall from grace, so to speak. But what have they
done that we ain't never heard of? All we've noticed is the
explosion, the fall, the blight. They have stirred the sky, whilst
the little white pale-livered untempted clouds floated on the
zephyrs--they've brought rain that made the earth glad, they've
cleared the air in the very fall of their lightnin'. The lightnin'
came--the fall--but give 'em credit fur the other. The little
namby-pamby, white livered, zephyr clouds that is so divine an'
useless, might float forever an' not even make a shadow to hide men
from the sun.

"So credit the fallen man or woman, big with life an' passion, with
the good they've done when you debit 'em with the evil. Many a 'oman
so ugly that she wasn't any temptation even for Sin to mate with her,
has done more harm with her slanderin' tongue an' hypocrisy than a
fallen 'oman has with her whole body.

"We're mortals an' we can't he'p it--animals, an' God made us so. But
we'll never fall to rise no mo' 'less we fail to reach up fur he'p.

"What then is our little sins of the flesh to the big goodness of the
faith that is in us?

"For forty years Uncle Dave has been a consistent member of the
church--some church--it don't matter which. For forty years he has
trod the narrer path, stumpin' his toe now an' then, but allers
gettin' up agin, for forty years he has he'ped others all he cu'd,
been charitable an' forgivin', as hones' as the temptation would
permit, an' only a natural lie now an' then as to the weather or the
size of a fish, trustin' in God to make it all right.

"An' now, in the twilight of life, when his sun is 'most set an' the
dews of kindness come with old age, right gladly will he wake up some
mornin' in a better lan', the scrub in him all bred out, the yaller
streak gone, the sins of the flesh left behind. An' that's about the
way with the most of us,--no better an' maybe wuss--Amen!"

Uncle Dave was weeping:

"Oh, Hillard--Hillard," he said, "say all that over agin about the
clouds an' the thunder of passion--say all the last part over
agin--it sounds so good!"

The congregation thronged around him and shook his hand. They gave
him the flowers they had brought; they told him how much they thought
of him, how sorry they would be to see him dead, how they had always
intended to come to see him, but had been so busy, and to cheer up
that he wasn't dead yet.

"No"--said Uncle Dave, weeping--"no, an' now since I see how much you
all keer fur me I don't b'lieve--I--I wanter die at all."




CHAPTER XXI

JACK AND THE LITTLE ONES


No one would ever have supposed that the big blacksmith at the
village was Jack Bracken. All the week he worked at his trade--so
full of his new life that it shone continually in his face--his face
strong and stern, but kindly. With his leathern apron on, his sleeves
rolled up, his hairy breast bare and shining in the open collar,
physically he looked more like an ancient Roman than a man of to-day.

His greatest pleasure was to entice little children to his shop,
talking to them as he worked. To get them to come, he began by
keeping a sack of ginger snaps in his pockets. And the villagers used
to smile at the sight of the little ones around him, especially after
sunset when his work was finished. Often a half dozen children would
be in his lap or on his knees at once, and the picture was so
beautiful that people would stop and look, and wonder what the big
strong man saw in all those noisy children to love.

They did not know that this man had spent his life a hunted thing;
that the strong instinct of home and children had been smothered in
him, that his own little boy had been taken, and that to him every
child was a saint.

But they soon learned that the great kind-hearted, simple man was a
tiger when aroused. A small child from the mill, sickly and timid,
was among those who stopped one morning to get one of his cakes.

Not knowing it was a mill child on its way to work, Jack detained it
in all the kindness of his heart, and the little thing was not in a
hurry to go. Indeed, it forgot all about the mill until its father
happened along an hour after it should have been at work. His name
was Joe Hopper, a ne'er-do-well whose children, by working at the
mill, supported him in idleness.

Catching the child, he berated it and boxed its ears soundly. Jack
was at work, but turning, and seeing the child chastised, he came at
the man with quiet fury. With one huge hand in Joe Hopper's collar,
he boxed his ears until he begged for mercy. "Now go," said Jack, as
he released him, "an' know hereafter how it feels for the strong to
beat the weak."

Of all things, Jack wanted to talk with Margaret Adams; but he could
never make up his mind to seek her out, though his love for this
woman was the love of his life. Often at night he would slip away
from the old preacher's cabin and his cot by Captain Tom's bed, to go
out and walk around her little cottage and see that all was safe.

James, her boy, peculiarly interested Jack, but it was some time
before he came to know him. He knew the boy was Richard Travis's son,
and that he alone had stood between him and his happiness. That but
for him--the son of his mother--he would never have been the outlaw
that he was, and even now but for this son he would marry her. But
outlaw that he was, Jack Bracken had no free-booting ideas of love.
Never did man revere purity in woman more than he--that one thing
barred Margaret Adams forever from his life, though not from his
heart.

He felt that he would hate James Adams; but instead he took to the
lad at once--his fine strange ways, his dignity, courage, his very
aloofness and the sorrow he saw there, drew him to the strange,
silent lad.

One day while at work in his shop he looked up and saw the boy
standing in the door watching him closely and with evident
admiration.

"Come in, my lad," said Jack, laying down his big hammer. "What is
yo' name?"

"Well, I don't know that that makes any difference," he replied
smiling, "I might ask you what is yours."

Jack flushed, but he pitied the lad.

He smiled: "I guess you an' I could easily understan' each other,
lad--what can I do for you?"

"I wanted you to fix my pistol for me, sir--and--and I haven't
anything to pay you."

Jack looked it over--the old duelling pistol. He knew at once it was
Colonel Jeremiah Travis's. The boy had gotten it somehow. The
hair-spring trigger was out of fix. Jack soon repaired it and said:

"Now, son, she's all right, and not a cent do I charge you."

"I didn't mean that," said the boy, flushing. "I have no money, but I
want to pay you, for I need this pistol--need it very badly."

"To shoot rabbits?" smiled Jack.

The boy did not smile. He ran his hand in his pocket and handed Jack
a thin gold ring, worn almost to a wire; but Jack paled, and his hand
shook when he took it, for he recognized the little ring he himself
had given Margaret Adams years ago.

"It's my mother's," said the boy, "and some man gave it to her
once--long ago--for she is foolish about it. Now, of late, I think I
have found out who that man was, and I hate him as I do hell itself.
I am determined she shall never see it again. So take it, or I'll
give it to somebody else."

"If you feel that way about it, little 'un," said Jack kindly, "I'll
keep it for you," and he put the precious relic in his pocket.

"Now, look here, lad," he said, changing the subject, "but do you
know you've got an' oncommon ac'rate gun in this old weepon?"

The boy smiled--interested.

"It's the salt of the earth," said Jack, "an' I'll bet it's stood
'twixt many a gentleman and death. Can you shoot true, little 'un?"

"Only fairly--can you?"

"Some has been kind enough to give me that character"--he said
promptly. "Want me to give you a few lessons?"

The boy warmed to him at once. Jack took him behind the shop, tied a
twine string between two trees and having loaded the old pistol with
cap and powder and ball, he stepped off thirty paces and shot the
string in twain.

"Good," said the boy smiling, and Jack handed him the pistol with a
boyish flush of pride in his own face.

"Now, little 'un, it's this away in shootin' a weepon like this--it's
the aim that counts most. But with my Colts now--the self-actin'
ones--you've got to cal'c'late chiefly on another thing--a kinder
thing that ain't in the books--the instinct that makes the han' an'
the eye act together an' 'lowin', at the same time, for the leverage
on the trigger." The lad's face glowed with excitement. Jack saw it
and said: "Now I'll give you a lesson to-day. Would you like to shoot
at that tree?" he asked kindly.

"Do you suppose I could hit the string?" asked the boy innocently.

Jack had to smile. "In time--little 'un--in time you might. You're a
queer lad," he said again laughing. "You aim pretty high."

"Oh, then I'll never hit below my mark. Let me try the string,
please."

To humor him, Jack tied the string again, and the boy stepped up to
the mark and without taking aim, but with that instinct which Jack
had just mentioned, that bringing of the hand and eye together
unconsciously, he fired and the string flew apart.

"You damned little cuss," shouted Jack enthusiastically, as he
grabbed the boy and hugged him--"to make a sucker of me that way! To
take me in like that!"

"Oh," said the boy, "I do nothing but shoot this thing from morning
till night. It was my great grandfather's."

And from that time the two were one.

But another thing happened which cemented the tie more strongly. One
Saturday afternoon Jack took a crowd of his boy friends down to the
river for a plunge. The afternoon was bright and warm; the frost of
the morning making the water delightful for a short plunge. It was
great sport. They all obeyed him and swam in certain places he marked
off--all except James Adams. He boldly swam out into the deep current
of the river and came near losing his life. Jack plunged in in time
to reach him, but had to dive to get him, he having sunk the third
time. It required hard work to revive him on the bank, but the man
was strong and swung the lad about by the heels till he got the water
out of his lungs, and his circulation started again. James opened his
eyes at last, and Jack said, smiling: "That's all right, little 'un,
but I feared onct, you was gone."

He took the boy home, and then it was that for the first time for
fifteen years he saw and talked to the woman he loved.

"Mother," said the boy, "this is the new blacksmith that I've been
telling you about, and he is great guns--just pulled me out of the
bottom of the Tennessee river."

Jack laughed and said: "The little 'un ca'n't swim as well as he can
shoot, ma'am."

There was no sign of recognition between them, nothing to show they
had ever seen each other before, but Jack saw her eyes grow tender at
the first word he uttered, and he knew that Margaret Adams loved him
then, even as she had loved him years ago.

He stayed but a short while, and James Adams never saw the silent
battle that was waged in the eyes of each. How Jack Bracken devoured
her with his eyes,--the comely figure, the cleanliness and sweetness
of the little cottage--his painful hungry look for this kind of peace
and contentment--the contentment of love.

And James noticed that his mother was greatly embarrassed, even to
agitation, but he supposed it was because of his narrow escape from
drowning, and it touched him even to caressing her, a thing he had
never done before.

It hurt Jack--that caress. Richard Travis's boy--she would have been
his but for him. He felt a terrible bitterness arising. He turned
abruptly to go.

Margaret had not spoken. Then she thanked him and bade James change
his clothes. As the boy went in the next room to do this, she
followed Jack to the little gate and stood pale and suffering, but
not able to speak.

"Good-bye," he said, giving her his hand--"you know, Margaret, my
life--why I am here, to be near you,--how I love you, have loved
you."

"And how I love you, Jack," she said simply.

The words went through him with a fierce sweetness that shook him.

"My God--don't say that--it hurts me so, after--what you've done."

"Jack," she whispered sadly--"some day you'll know--some day you'll
understand that there are things in life greater even than the
selfishness of your own heart's happiness."

"They can't be," said Jack bitterly--"that's what all life's
for--heart happiness--love. Why, hunger and love, them's the fust
things; them's the man an' the woman; them's the law unto theyselves,
the animal, the instinct, the beast that's in us; the things that
makes God excuse all else we do to get them--we have to have 'em. He
made us so; we have to have 'em--it's His own doin'."

"But," she said sweetly--"suppose it meant another to be despised,
reviled, made infamous."

"They'd have to be," he said sternly, for he was thinking of Richard
Travis--"they'd have to be, for he made his own life."

"Oh, you do not understand," she cried. "And you cannot now--but
wait--wait, and it will be plain. Then you'll know all and--that I
love you, Jack."

He turned bitterly and walked away.




CHAPTER XXII

THE BROKEN THREAD


For the first time in years, the next Sunday the little church on the
mountain side was closed, and all Cottontown wondered. Never before
had the old man missed a Sabbath afternoon since the church had been
built. This was to have been Baptist day, and that part of his
congregation was sorely disappointed.

For an hour Bud Billings had stood by the little gate looking down
the big stretch of sandy road, expecting to see the familiar
shuffling, blind old roan coming:

"Sum'pins happened to Ben Butler," said Bud at last--and at thought
of such a calamity, he sat down and shed tears.

His simple heart yearned for pity, and feeling something purring
against him he picked up the cat and coddled it.

"You seem to be cultivatin' that cat again, Bud Billings," came a
sharp voice from the cabin window.

Bud dropped the animal quickly and struck out across the mountain for
the Bishop's cabin.

But he was not prepared for the shock that came to his simple heart:
Shiloh was dying--the Bishop himself told him so--the Bishop with a
strange, set, hard look in his eyes--a look which Bud had never seen
there before, for it was sorrow mingled with defiance--in that a
great wrong had been done and done over his protest. It was culpable
sorrow too, somewhat, in that he had not prevented it, and a
heart-hardening sorrow in that it took the best that he loved.

"She jes' collapsed, Bud--sudden't like--wilted like a vi'let that's
stepped on, an' the Doctor says she's got no sho' at all, ther' bein'
nothin' to build on. She don't kno' nothin'--ain't knowed nothin'
since last night, an' she thinks she's in the mill--my God, it's
awful! The little thing keeps reaching out in her delirium an' tryin'
to piece the broken threads, an' then she falls back pantin' on her
pillow an' says, pitful like--'_the thread--the thread is broken!_'
an' that's jes' it, Bud--the thread _is_ broken!"

Tears were running down the old man's cheeks, and that strange thing
which now and then came up in Bud's throat and stopped him from
talking came again. He walked out and sat under a tree in the yard.
He looked at the other children sitting around stupid--numbed--with
the vague look in their faces which told that a sorrow had fallen,
but without the sensitiveness to know or care where. He saw a big
man, bronzed and hard-featured, but silent and sorrowful, walking to
and fro. Now and then he would stop and look earnestly through the
window at the little still figure on the bed, and then Bud would hear
him say--"_like little Jack--like little Jack_."

The sun went down--the stars came up--but Bud sat there. He could do
nothing, but he wanted to be there.

When the lamp was lighted in the cabin he could see all within the
home and that an old man held on a large pillow in his lap a little
child, and that he carried her around from window to window for air,
and that the child's eyes were fixed, and she was whiter than the
pillow. He also saw an old woman, lantern-jawed and ghostly, tidying
around and she mumbling and grumbling because no one would give the
child any turpentine.

And still Bud sat outside, with that lump in his throat, that thing
that would not let him speak.

Late at night another man came up with saddle bags, and hitching his
horse within a few feet of Bud, walked into the cabin.

He was a kindly man, and he stopped in the doorway and looked at the
old man, sitting with the sick child in his lap. Then he pulled a
chair up beside the old man and took the child's thin wrist in his
hand. He shook his head and said:

"No use, Bishop--better lay her on the bed--she can't live two
hours."

Then he busied himself giving her some drops from a vial.

"When you get through with your remedy and give her up," said the old
man slowly--"I'm gwinter try mine."

The Doctor looked at the old man sorrowfully, and after a while he
went out and rode home.

Then the old man sent them all to bed. He alone would watch the
little spark go out.

And Bud alone in the yard saw it all. He knew he should go
home--that it was now past midnight, but somehow he felt that the
Bishop might need him.

He saw the moon go down, and the big constellations shine out
clearer. Now and then he could see the old nurse reach over and put
his ear to the child's mouth to see if it yet breathed. But Bud
thought maybe he was listening for it to speak, for he could see the
old man's lips moving as he did when he prayed at church. And Bud
could not understand it, but never before in his life did he feel so
uplifted, as he sat and watched the old man holding the little child
and praying. And all the hours that he sat there, Bud saw that the
old man was praying as he had never prayed before. The intensity of
it increased and began to be heard, and then Bud crept up to the
window and listened, for he dearly loved to hear the Bishop, and amid
the tears that ran down his own cheek, and the quick breathing which
came quicker and quicker from the little child in the lap, Bud heard:

"_Save her, oh, God, an' if I've done any little thing in all my po'
an' blunderin' life that's entitled to credit at Yo' han's, give it
now to little Shiloh, for You can if You will. If there's any credit
to my account in the Book of Heaven, hand it out now to the little
one robbed of her all right up to the door of death. She that is
named Shiloh, which means rest. Do it, oh, God,--take it from my
account if she ain't got none yet herse'f, an' I swear to You with
the faith of Abraham that henceforth I will live to light a
fire-brand in this valley that will burn out this child slavery,
upheld now by ignorance and the greed of the gold lovers. Save
little Shiloh, for You can._"

Bud watched through the crisis, the shorter and shorter breaths, the
struggle--the silence when, only by holding the lighted candle to her
mouth, could the old man tell whether she lived or not. And Bud stood
outside and watched his face, lit up like a saint in the light of the
candle falling on his silvery hair, whiter than the white sand of
Sand Mountain, a stern, strong face with lips which never ceased
moving in prayer, the eyes riveted on the little fluttering lips. And
watching the stern, solemn lips set, as Bud had often seen the white
stern face of Sunset Rock, when the clouds lowered around it,
suddenly he saw them relax and break silently, gently, almost
imperceptibly into a smile which made the slubber think the parting
sunset had fallen there; and Bud gripped the window-sill outside, and
swallowed and swallowed at the thing in his throat, and stood tersely
wiggling on his strained tendons, and then almost shouted when he saw
the smile break all over the old man's face and light up his eyes
till the candle's flickering light looked pale, and saw him bow his
head and heard him say:

"_Lord God Almighty ... My God ... My own God ... an' You ain't never
gone back on me yet.... 'Bless the Lord all my soul, an' all that is
within me; bless His Holy Name!'_"

Bud could not help it. He laughed out hysterically. And then the old
face, still smiling, looked surprised at the window and said: "Go
home, Bud. God is the Great Doctor, an' He has told me she shall
live."

Then, as he turned to go, his heart stood still, for he heard Shiloh
say in her little piping child voice, but, oh, so distinctly, and so
sweetly, like a bird in the forest:

"Pap, sech a sweet dream--an' I went right up to the gate of heaven
an' the angel smiled an' kissed me an' sed:

"'Go back, little Shiloh--not yet--not yet!'"

Then Bud slipped off in the dawn of the coming light.




CHAPTER XXIII

GOD WILL PROVIDE


In a few days Shiloh was up, but the mere shadow of a little waif,
following the old man around the place. She needed rest and good food
and clothes; and Bull Run and Seven Days and Appomattox and Atlanta
needed them, and where to get them was the problem which confronted
the grandfather.

Shiloh's narrow escape from death had forever settled the child-labor
question with him--he would starve, "by the Grace of God," as he
expressed it, before one of them should ever go into the mill again.

He had a bitter quarrel about it with Mrs. Watts; but the good old
man's fighting blood was up at last--that hatred of child-slavery,
which had been so long choked by the smoke of want, now burst into a
blaze when the shock of it came in Shiloh's collapse--a blaze which
was indeed destined "to light the valley with a torch of fire."

On the third day Jud Carpenter came out to see about it; but at sight
of him the old man took down from the rack over the hall door the
rifle he had carried through the war, and with a determined gesture
he stopped the employment agent at the gate: "I am a man of God, Jud
Carpenter," he said in a strange voice, rounded with a deadly
determination, "but in the name of God an' humanity, if you come
into that gate after my little 'uns, I'll kill you in yo' tracks,
jes' as a bis'n bull 'ud stamp the life out of a prowlin' coyote."

And Jud Carpenter went back to town and spread the report that the
old man was a maniac, that he had lost his mind since Shiloh came so
near dying.

The problem which confronted the old man was serious.

"O Jack, Jack," he said one night, "if I jes' had some of that gold
you had!"

Jack replied by laying ten silver dollars in the old man's hand.

"I earned it,"--he said simply--"this week--shoeing horses--it's the
sweetest money I ever got."

"Why, Jack," said the Bishop--"this will feed us for a week. Come
here, Tabitha," he called cheerily--"come an' see what happens to
them that cast their bread upon the waters. We tuck in this outcast
an' now behold our bread come back ag'in."

The old woman came up and took it gingerly. She bit each dollar to
test it, remarking finally: "Why, hit's genuwine!"--

Jack laughed.

"Why, hit's mo' money'n I've seed fur years," she said--"I won't
hafter hunt fur 'sang roots to-morrow."

"Jack," said the Bishop, after the others had retired, and the two
men sat in Captain Tom's cabin--"Jack, I've been thinkin' an'
thinkin'--I must make some money."

"How much?" asked Jack.

"A thousand or two."

"That's a lot of money," said the outlaw quickly. "A heap fur you to
need."

"It's not fur me," he said--"I don't need it--I wouldn't have it for
myself. It's for him--see!" he pointed to the sleeping man on the low
cot. "Jack, I've been talkin' to the Doctor--he examined Cap'n Tom's
head, and he says it'd be an easy job--that it's a shame it ain't
been done befo'--that in a city to the North,--he gave me the name of
a surgeon there who could take that pressure from his head and make
him the man he was befo'--the _man_, mind you, the _man_ he was
befo'."

Jack sat up excited. His eyes glittered.

"Then there's Shiloh," went on the old man--"it'll mean life to her
too--life to git away from the mill.

"Cap'n Tom and Shiloh--I must have it, Jack--I must have it. God will
provide a way. I'd give my home--I'd give everything--just to save
them two--Cap'n Tom and little Shiloh."

He felt a touch on his shoulder and looked up.

Jack Bracken stood before him, clutching the handle of his big Colt's
revolver, and his hat was pulled low over his eyes. He was flushed
and panting. A glitter was in his eyes, the glitter of the old
desperado spirit returned.

"Bishop," he said, "ever' now and then it comes over me ag'in, comes
over me--the old dare-devil feelin'." He held up his pistol: "All
week I've missed somethin'. Last night I fingered it in my sleep."

He pressed it tenderly. "Jes' you say the word," he whispered, "an'
in a few hours I'll be back here with the coin. Shipton's bank is
dead easy an' he is a money devil with a cold heart." The old man
laughed and took the revolver from him.

"It's hard, I know, Jack, to give up old ways. I must have made po'
Cap'n Tom's and Shiloh's case out terrible to tempt you like that.
But not even for them--no--no--not even for them. Set down."

Jack sat down, subdued. Then the Bishop pulled out a paper from his
pocket and chuckled.

"Now, Jack, you're gwinter have the laugh on me, for the old mood is
on me an' I'm yearnin' to do this jes' like you yearn to hold up the
bank ag'in. It's the old instinct gettin' to wurk. But, Jack, you
see--this--mine--ain't so bad. God sometimes provides in an
onexpected way."

"What is it?" asked Jack.

The old man chuckled again. Then Jack saw his face turn red--as if
half ashamed: "Why should I blame you, Jack, fur I'm doin' the same
thing mighty nigh--I'm longin' for the flesh pots of Egypt. As I rode
along to-day thinkin'--thinkin'--thinkin'--how can I save the
children an' Cap'n Tom, _how can I get a little money to send Cap'n
Tom off to the Doctor_--an' also repeatin' to myself--'_The Lord will
provide--He will provide--_' I ran up to this, posted on a tree, an'
kinder starin' me an' darin' me in the face."

He laughed again: "Jes' scolded you, Jack, but see here. See how the
old feelin' has come over me at sight of this bragging, blow-hard
challenge. It makes my blood bile.

"Race horse?--Why, Richard Travis wouldn't know a real race horse if
he had one by the tail. It's disgustin'--these silk-hat fellers
gettin' up a three-cornered race, an' then openin' it up to the
valley--knowin' they've put the entrance fee of fifty dollars so high
that no po' devil in the County can get in, even if he had a horse
equal to theirs.

"Three thousan' dollars!--think of it! An' then Richard Travis rubs
it in. He's havin' fun over it--he always would do that. Read the
last line ag'in--in them big letters:

"'_Open to anything raised in the Tennessee Valley._'

"Fine fun an' kinder sarcastic, but, Jack, Ben Butler cu'd make them
blooded trotters look like steers led to slaughter."

Jack sat looking silently in the fire.

"If I had the entrance fee I'd do it once--jes' once mo' befo' I die?
Once mo' to feel the old thrill of victory! An' for Cap'n Tom an'
Shiloh. God'll provide, Jack--God'll provide!"




CHAPTER XXIV

BONAPARTE'S WATERLOO


Bonaparte lay on the little front porch--the loafing place which
opened into Billy Buch's bar-room. Apparently, he was asleep and
basking in the warm Autumn sunshine. In reality he was doing his star
trick and one which could have originated only in the brains of a
born genius. Feigning sleep, he thus enticed within striking distance
all the timid country dogs visiting Cottontown for the first time,
and viewing its wonders with a palpitating heart. Then, like a bolt
from the sky, he would fall on them, appalled and paralyzed--a demon
with flashing teeth and abbreviated tail.

When finally released, with lacerated hides and wounded feelings,
they went rapidly homeward, and they told it in dog language, from
Dan to Beersheba, that Cottontown was full of the terrible and the
unexpected.

And a great morning he had had of it--for already three humble and
unsuspecting curs, following three humble and unsuspecting countrymen
who had walked in to get their morning's dram, had fallen victims to
his guile.

Each successful raid of Bonaparte brought forth shouts of laughter
from within, in which Billy Buch, the Dutch proprietor, joined. It
always ended in Bonaparte being invited in and treated to a cuspidor
of beer--the drinking, with the cuspidor as his drinking horn, being
part of his repertoire. After each one Billy Buch would proudly
exclaim:

"Mine Gott, but dat Ponyparte ees one greet dog!"

Then Bonaparte would reel around in a half drunken swagger and go
back to watch for other dogs.

"I tell you, Billy," said Jud Carpenter--"Jes' watch that dog. They
ain't no dog on earth his e'kal when it comes to brains. Them country
dogs aflyin' up the road reminds me of old Uncle Billy Alexander who
paid for his shoes in bacon, and paid every spring in advance for the
shoes he was to get in the fall. But one fall when he rid over after
his shoes, the neighbors said the shoemaker had gone--gone for
good--to Texas to live--gone an' left his creditors behin'. Uncle
Billy looked long an' earnestly t'wards the settin' sun, raised his
han's to heaven an' said: 'Good-bye, my bacon!'"

Billy Buch laughed loudly.

"Dat ees goot--goot--goot-bye, mine bac'n! I dus remember dat."

Bonaparte had partaken of his fourth cuspidor of beer and was in a
delightful state of swagger and fight when he saw an unusual
commotion up the street. What was it, thought Bonaparte--a crowd of
boys and men surrounding another man with an organ and leading a
little devil of a hairy thing, dressed up like a man.

His hair bristled with indignation. That little thing dividing honors
with him in Cottontown? It was not to be endured for a moment!

Bonaparte stood gazing in indignant wonder. He slowly arose and
shambled along half drunkenly to see what it all meant. A crowd had
gathered around the thing--the insignificant thing which was
attracting more attention in Cottontown than himself, the champion
dog. Among them were some school boys, and one of them, a red-headed
lad, was telling his brother all about it.

"Now, Ozzie B., this is a monkey--the furst you've ever seed. He
looks jes' like I told you--sorter like a man an' sorter like a
nigger an' sorter like a groun' hog."

"The pretties' thing I ever seed," said Ozzie B., walking around and
staring delightedly.

The crowd grew larger. It was a show Cottontown had never seen
before.

Then two men came out of the bar-room--one, the bar-keeper, fat and
jolly, and the other lank and with malicious eyes.

This gave Bonaparte his cue and he bristled and growled.

"Look out, mister," said the tender-hearted Ozzie B. to the Italian,
"watch this here dog, Bonaparte; he's terrible 'bout fightin'. He'll
eat yo' monkey if he gets a chance."

"Monk he noo 'fear'd ze dog," grinned the Italian. "Monk he whup ze
dog."

"Vot's dat?" exclaimed Billy Buch--"Vot's dat, man, you say? Mine
Gott, I bet ten to one dat Ponyparte eats him oop!"

To prove it Bonaparte ran at the monkey savagely. But the monkey ran
up on the Italian's shoulder, where he grinned at the dog.

The Italian smiled. Then he ran his hand into a dirty leathern belt
which he carried around his waist--and slowly counted out some gold
coins. With a smile fresh as the skies of Italy, full of all
sweetness, gentleness and suavity:

"Cover zees, den, py Gar!"

Billy gasped and grasped Jud around the neck where he clung, with his
Dutch smile frozen on his lips. Jud, with collapsed under jaw, looked
sheepishly around. Bonaparte tried to stand, but he, too, sat down in
a heap.

The crowd cheered the Italian.

"We will do it, suh," said Jud, who was the first to recover, and who
knew he would get his part of it from Billy.

"Ve vill cover eet," said Billy, with ashen face.

"We will!" barked Bonaparte, recovering his equilibrium and snarling
at the monkey.

There was a sob and a wail on the outskirts of the crowd.

"Oh, don't let him kill the monkey--oh, don't!"

It was Ozzie B.

Archie B. ran hastily around to him, made a cross mark in the road
with his toe and spat in it.

"You're a fool as usual, Ozzie B.," he said, shaking his brother.
"Can't you see that Italian knows what he's about? If he'd risk that
twenty, much as he loves money, he'd risk his soul. _Venture pee-wee
under the bridge--bam--bam--bam!_"

Ozzie B. grew quieter. Somehow, what Archie B. said always made
things look differently. Then Archie B. came up and whispered in his
ear: "I'm fur the monkey--the Lord is on his side."

Ozzie B. thought this was grand.

Then Archie B. hunted for his Barlow pocket knife. Around his neck,
tied with a string, was a small greasy, dirty bag, containing a piece
of gum asafoetida and a ten-dollar gold piece. The asafoetida was worn
to keep off contagious diseases, and the gold piece, which
represented all his earthly possessions, had been given him by his
grandmother the year she died.

Archie B. was always ready to "swap sight under seen." He played
marbles for keeps, checkers for apples, ran foot-races for stakes,
and even learned his Sunday School lessons for prizes.

The Italian still stood, smiling, when a small red-headed boy came up
and touched him on the arm. He put a ten-dollar gold piece into the
Italian's hand.

"Put this in for me, mister--an' make 'em put up a hundred mo'. I
want some of that lucre."

The Italian was touched. He patted Archie B.'s head:

"Breens," he said, "breens uppa da."

Again he shook the gold in the face of Jud and Bill.

"Now bring on ze ten to one, py Gar!"

The cheers of the crowd nettled Billy and Jud.

"Jes' wait till we come back," said Jud. "'He laughs bes' who laughs
las'.'"

They retired for consultation.

Bonaparte followed.

Within the bar-room they wiped the cold perspiration from their faces
and looked speechlessly into each other's eyes. Billy spoke first.

"Mine Gott, but we peek it oop in de road, Jud?"

"It seems that way to me--a dead cinch."

Bonaparte was positive--only let him get to the monkey, he said with
his wicked eyes.

Billy looked at Bonaparte, big, swarthy, sinewy and savage. He
thought of the little monkey.

"Dees is greet!--dees is too goot!--Jud, we peek it oop in de road,
heh?"

"I'm kinder afraid we'll wake an' find it a dream, Billy--hurry up.
Get the cash."

Billy was thoughtful: "Tree hun'd'd dollars--Jud--eef--eef--" he
shook his head.

"Now, Billy," said Jud patronizingly--"that's nonsense. Bonaparte
will eat him alive in two minutes. Now, he bein' my dorg, jes' you
put up the coin an' let me in on the ground floor. I'll pay it
back--if we lose--" he laughed. "_If_ we lose--it's sorter like
sayin' if the sun don't rise."

"Dat ees so, Jud, we peek eet oop in de road. But eef we don't peek
eet oop, Billy ees pusted!"

"Oh," said Jud, "it's all like takin' candy from your own child."

The news had spread and a crowd had gathered to see the champion dog
of the Tennessee Valley eat up a monkey. All the loafers and
ne'er-do-wells of Cottontown were there. The village had known no
such excitement since the big mill had been built.

They came up and looked sorrowfully at the monkey, as they would
look in the face of the dead. But, considering that he had so short a
time to live, he returned the grin with a reverence which was
sacrilegious.

"So han'sum--so han'sum," said Uncle Billy Caldwell, the squire. "So
bright an' han'sum an' to die so young!"

"It's nothin' but murder," said another.

This proved too much for Ozzie B.--

"Don't--d-o-n-'t--let him kill the monkey," he cried.

There was an electric flash of red as Archie B. ran around the tree
and kicked the sobs back into his brother.

"Just wait, Ozzie B., you fool."

"For--what?" sobbed Ozzie.

"For what the monkey does to Bonaparte," he shouted triumphantly.

The crowd yelled derisively: "_What the monkey does to
Bonaparte--that's too good?_"

"Boy," said Uncle Billy kindly--"don't you know it's ag'in
nachur--why, the dorg'll eat him up!"

"That's rot," said Archie B. disdainfully. Then hotly: "Yes, it wus
ag'in nachur when David killed Goliath--when Sampson slew the lion,
and when we licked the British. Oh, it wus ag'in nachur then, but it
looks mighty nach'ul now, don't it? Jes' you wait an' see what the
monkey does to Bonaparte. I tell you, Uncle Billy, the Lord's on the
monkey's side--can't you see it?"

Uncle Billy smiled and shook his head. He was interrupted by low
laughter and cheers. A villager had drawn a crude picture on a white
paste-board and was showing it around. A huge dog was shaking a
lifeless monkey and under it was written:

"What Bonaparte Done To The Monkey!"

Archie B. seized it and spat on it derisively: "Oh, well, that's the
way of the worl'," he said. "God makes one wise man to see befo', an'
a million fools to see afterwards."

The depths of life's mysteries have never yet been sounded, and one
of the wonders of it all is that one small voice praying for flowers
in a wilderness of thorns may live to see them blossom at his feet.

"I've seed stranger things than that," remarked Uncle Billy
thoughtfully. "The boy mout be right."

And now Jud and Billy were seen coming out of the store, with their
hands full of gold.

"Eet's robbery--eet's stealin'"--winked Billy at the crowd--"eet's
like takin' it from a babe--"

With one accord the crowd surged toward the back lot, where
Bonaparte, disgusted with the long delay, had lain down on a pile of
newly-blown leaves and slept. Around the lot was a solid plank fence,
with one gate open, and here in the lot, sound asleep in the
sunshine, lay the champion.

The Italian brought along the monkey in his arms. Archie B. calmly
and confidently acting as his bodyguard. Jud walked behind to see
that the monkey did not get away, and behind him came Ozzie B.
sobbing in his hiccoughy way:

"Don't let him kill the po' little thing!"

He could go no farther than the gate. There he stood weeping and
looking at the merciless crowd.

Bonaparte was still asleep on his pile of leaves. Jud would have
called and wakened him, but Archie B. said: "Oh, the monkey will
waken him quick enough--let him alone."

In the laugh which followed, Jud yielded and Archie B. won the first
blood in the battle of brains.

The crowd now stood silent and breathless in one corner of the lot.
Only Ozzie B.'s sobs were heard. In the far corner lay Bonaparte.

The Italian stooped, and unlinking the chain of the monkey's collar,
sat him on the ground and, pointing to the sleeping dog, whispered
something in Italian into his pet's ear.

The crowd scarcely drew its breath as it saw the little animal
slipping across the yard to its death.

Within three feet of the dog he stopped, then springing quickly on
Bonaparte, with a screeching, bloodcurdling yell, grabbed his stump
of a tail in both hands, and as the crowd rushed up, they heard its
sharp teeth close on Bonaparte's most sensitive member with the
deadly click of a steel trap.

The effect was instantaneous. A battery could not have brought the
champion to his feet quicker. With him came the monkey--glued
there--a continuation of the dog's tail.

Around and around went Bonaparte, snarling and howling and making
maddening efforts to reach the monkey. But owing to the shortness of
Bonaparte's tail, the monkey kept just out of reach, its hind legs
braced against the dog, its teeth and nails glued to the two inches
of tail.

Around and around whirled Bonaparte, trying to throw off the things
which had dropped on him, seemingly, from the skies. His growls of
defiance turned to barks, then to bowls of pain and finally, as he
ran near to Archie B., he was heard to break into yelps of fright as
he broke away dashing around the lot in a whirlwind of leaves and
dust.

The champion dog was running!

"Sick him, Bonaparte, grab him--turn round an' grab him!" shouted Jud
pale to his eyes, and shaking with shame.

"Seek heem, Ponyparte--O mine Gott, seek him," shouted Billy.

Jud rushed and tried to head the dog, but the champion seemed to have
only one idea in his head--to get away from the misery which brought
up his rear.

Around he went once more, then seeing the gate open, he rushed out,
knocking Ozzie B. over into the dust, and when the crowd rushed out,
nothing could be seen except a cloud of dust going down the village
street, in the hind most cloud of it a pair of little red coat tails
flapping in the breeze.

Then the little red coat tails suddenly dropped out of the cloud of
dust and came running back up the road to meet its master.

Jud watched the vanishing cloud of dust going toward the distant
mountains.

"My God--not Bonaparte--not the champion," he said.

Billy stood also looking with big Dutch tears in his eyes. He
watched the cloud of dust go over the distant hills. Then he waved
his hand sadly--

"Goot-pye, mine bac'n!"

The monkey came up grinning triumphantly.

Thinking he had done something worthy of a penny, he added to Billy
Buch's woe by taking off his comical cap and passing it around for a
collection.

He was honest in it, but the crowd took it as irony, and amid their
laughter Jud and Billy slipped away.

Uncle Billy, the stake-holder, in handing the money over to the
Italian, remarked:

"Wal, it don't look so much ag'in nachur now, after all."

"Breens uppa dar"--smiled the Italian as he put ten eagles into
Archie B.'s hand. All of which made Archie B. vain, for the crowd now
cheered him as they had jeered before.

"Come, let's go, Ozzie B.," he said. "They ain't no man livin' can
stand too much heroism."




CHAPTER XXV

A BORN NATURALIST


Archie B. trotted off, striking a path leading through the wood. It
was a near cut to the log school house which stood in an old field,
partly grown up in scrub-oaks and bushes.

Down in the wood, on a clean bar where a mountain stream had made a
bed of white sand, he stopped, pulled off his coat, counted his gold
again with eyes which scarcely believed it yet, and then turned
handsprings over and over in the white sand.

This relieved him of much of the suppressed steam which had been
under pressure for two hours. Then he sat down on a log and counted
once more his gold.

Ozzie B., pious, and now doubly so at sight of his brother's wealth,
stood looking over his shoulder:

"It was the good Lord done it," he whispered reverently, as he stood
and looked longingly at the gold.

"Of course, but I helped at the right time, that's the way the Lord
does everything here."

Then Archie B. went down into his coat pocket and brought out a
hollow rubber ball, with a small hole in one end. Ozzie B. recognized
his brother's battery of Gypsy Juice.

"How--when, oh, Archie B.!"

"-S-h-h--Ozzie B. It don't pay to show yo' hand even after you've
won--the other feller might remember it nex' time. 'Taint good
business sense. But I pumped it into Bonaparte at the right time when
he was goin' round an' round an' undecided whether he'd take holt or
git. This settled him--he got. The Lord was on the monkey's side, of
course, but He needed Gypsy Juice at the right time."

Then he showed Ozzie B. how it was done. "So, with yo' hand in yo'
pocket--so! Then here comes Bonaparte round an' round an' skeered
mighty nigh to the runnin' point. So--then sczit! It wus enough."

Ozzie B. shuddered: "You run a terrible risk doin' that. They'd have
killed you if they'd seen it, Jud an' Billy. An' all yo' money up
too."

"Of course," said his brother, "but Ozzie B., when you bluff, bluff
bold; when you bet, bet big; when you steal, steal straight."

Ozzie B. shook his head. Then he looked up at the sun high above the
trees.

He sprang up from the log, pale and scared.

"Archie B.--Archie B., jes' look at the sun! It must be 'leven
o'clock an--an think what we'll ketch for bein' late at school. Oh,
but I clean forgot--oh--"

He started off trembling.

"Hold on, hold on!" said his brother running and catching Ozzie B. in
the coat collar. "Now you sho'ly ain't goin' to be sech a fool as
that? It's too late to go now; we'll only ketch a whuppin'. We are
goin' to play hookey to-day."

But Ozzie B. only shook his head. "That's wrong--so wrong. The
Lord--He will not bless us--maw says so. Oh, I can't, Archie B."

"Now look here, Ozzie B. The Lord don't expec' nobody but a fool to
walk into a tan-hidin'. If you go to school now, old Triggers will
tan yo' hide, see? Then he'll send word to paw an' when you get home
to-night you'll git another one."

"Maw said I was to allers do my duty. Oh, I can't tell him a lie!"

"You've got to lie, Ozzie B. They's times when everybody has got to
lie. Afterwards when it's all over an' understood they can square it
up in other ways. When a man or 'oman is caught and downed it's all
over--they can't tell the truth then an' get straight--an' there's no
come ag'in! But if they lie an' brazen it out they'll have another
chance yet. Then's the time to stop lyin'--after yo' ain't caught."

"Oh, I can't," said Ozzie B., trying to pull away. "I must--must go
to school."

"Rats"--shouted Archie B., seizing him with both hands and shaking
him savagely--"here I am argu'in' with you about a thing that any
fool orter see when I cu'd a bin yonder a huntin' for that squirrel
nest I wus tellin' you about. Now what'll happen if you go to school?
Ole Triggers'll find out where you've been an' what a-doin'--he'll
lick you. Paw'll know all about it when you git home--he'll lick
you."

Ozzie B. only shook his head: "It's my duty--hate to do it, Archie
B.--but it's my duty. If the Lord wills me a lickin' for tellin' the
truth, I'll, I'll hafter take it--" and he looked very resigned.

"Oh, you're playin' for martyrdom again!"

"There was Casabianca, Archie B.--him that stood on the burnin'
deck"--he ventured timidly.

"Tarnashun!" shouted his brother--"an' I hope he is still standin' on
a burnin' deck in the other worl'--don't mention that fool to me!--to
stay there an' git blowed up after the ship was afire an' his dad
didn't sho' up." He spat on a mark: "_Venture pee-wee under the
bridge--bam--bam--bam._"

"There was William Tell's son," ventured his brother again.

"Another gol-darn id'jut, Ozzie B., like his dad that put him up to
it. Why, if the ole man had missed, the two would'er gone down in
history as the champion ass an' his colt. The risk was too big for
the odds. Why, he didn't have one chance in a hundred. Besides, them
fellers actin' the fool don't hurt nobody but theyselves. Now you--"

"How's that, Archie B.?"

Archie B. lowered his voice to a gentle persuasive whisper: "Don't do
it, ole man--come now--be reasonable. If we stay here in the woods,
Triggers'll think we're at home. Dad will think we're in school.
They'll never know no better. It's wrong, but we'll have plenty o'
time to make it right--we've got six months mo' of school this year.
Now, if you do go--you'll be licked twice an'--an', Ozzie B., I'll
git licked when paw hears of it to-night."

"Oh," said Ozzie B., "that's it, is it?"

"Yes, of course; if a man don't look out for his own hide, whose
goin' to do it for him? Come now, ole man."

Ozzie B. was silent. His brother saw the narrow forehead wrinkling in
indecision. He knew the different habits--not principles--of his
nature were at work for mastery. Finally the hypocrite habit
prevailed, when he said piously: "We have sowed the wind, Archie
B.--we'll hafter reap the whirlwind, like paw says."

"Go!" shouted his brother. "Go!" and he helped him along with a
kick--"Go, since I can't save you. You'll reap the whirlwind, but I
won't if my brains can save me."

He sat down on a log and watched his brother go down the path,
sobbing as usual, when he felt that he was a martyr. He sat long and
thought.

"It's bad," he sighed--"a man cu'd do so much mo' in life if he
didn't hafter waste so much time arguin' with fools. Well, I'm here
fur the day an' I'll learn somethin'. Now, I wanter know if one
squirrel er two squirrels stays in the same hole in winter. Then
there's the wild-duck. I wanter kno' when the mallards go south."

In a few minutes he had hid himself behind a tree in a clump of
brush. He was silent for ten minutes, so silent that only the falling
leaves could be heard. Then very cautiously he imitated the call of
the gray squirrel--once, twice, and still again. He had not long to
wait. In a hole high up in a hickory a little gray head popped
out--then a squirrel came out cautiously--first its head, then half
of its body, and each time it moved looking and listening, with its
cunning, bright eyes, taking in everything. Then it frisked out with
a flirt of its tail, and sat on a limb nearby. It was followed by
another and another. Archie B. watched them for a half hour, a
satisfied smile playing around his lips. He was studying squirrel. He
saw them run into the hole again and bring out each a nut and sit on
a nearby limb and eat it.

"That settles that," he said to himself. "I thought they kept their
nuts in the same hole."

There was the sound of voices behind him and the squirrels vanished.
Archie B. stood up and saw an old man and some children gathering
nuts.

"It's the Bishop an' the little mill-mites. I'll bet they've brought
their dinner."

This was the one thing Archie B. needed to make his day in the woods
complete.

"Hello," he shouted, coming up to them.

"Why, it's Archie B.," said Shiloh, delighted.

"Why, it is," said her grandfather. "What you doin', Archie B.?"

"Studyin' squirrels right now. What you all doin'?"

"I've tuck the kids out of the mill an' I'm givin' 'em their fus' day
in the woods. Shiloh, there, has been mighty sick and is weak yet, so
we're goin' slow. Mighty glad to run upon you, Archie B. Can't you
sho' Shiloh the squirrels? She's never seed one yet, have you, pet?"

"No," said Shiloh thoughtfully. "Is they like them little jorees that
say _Wake-up, pet! Wake-up, pet?_ Oh, do sho' me the squirrel!
Mattox, ain't this jes' fine, bein' out of the mill?"

Archie B.'s keen glance took in the well-filled lunch basket. At once
he became brilliantly entertaining. In a few minutes he had Shiloh
enraptured at the wood-lore he told her,--even Bull Run and Seven
Days, Atlanta and Appomattox were listening in amazement, so
interesting becomes nature's story when it finds a reader.

And so all the morning Archie B. went with them, and never had they
seen so much and enjoyed a day as they had this one.

And the lunch--how good it tasted! It was a new life to them.
Shiloh's color came in the healthful exercise, and even Bull Run
began to look out keenly from his dull eyes.

After lunch Shiloh went to sleep on a soft carpet of Bermuda grass
with the old man's coat for a blanket, while the other children waded
in the branch, and gathered nuts till time to go back home.

It was nearly sun-down when they reached the gate of the little hut
on the mountain.

"We must do this often, Archie B.," said the Bishop, as the children
went in, tired and hungry, leaving him and Archie B. at the gate.
"I've never seed the little 'uns have sech a time, an' it mighty nigh
made me young ag'in."

All afternoon Archie B. had been thinking. All day he had felt the
lumpy, solid thing in the innermost depths of his jeans pocket, which
told him one hundred dollars in gold lay there, and that it would
need an explanation when he reached home or he was in for the worst
whipping he ever had. Knowing this, he had not been thinking all the
afternoon for nothing. The old man bade him good-night, but still
Archie B. lingered, hesitated, hung around the gate.

"Won't you come in, Archie B.?"

"No-o--thank you, Bishop, but I'd--I'd like to, really tho', jes' to
git a little spirt'ul g'idance"--a phrase he had heard his father use
so often.

"Why, what's the matter, Archie B.?"

Archie B. rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I'm--I'm--thinkin' of
j'inin' the church, Bishop."

"Bless yo' h'art--that's right. I know'd you'd quit yo' mischeev'us
ways an' come in--an' I honor you fur it, Archie B.--praise the
Lord!"

Archie B. still stood pensive and sobered:

"But a thing happened to-day, Bishop, an' it's worryin' me very much.
It makes me think, perhaps--I--ain't--ain't worthy of--the bestowal
of--the grace--you know, the kind I heard you speak of?"

"Tell me, Archie B., lad--an' I'll try to enlighten you in my po'
way."

"Well, now; it's this--jes' suppose you wus goin' along now--say to
school, an' seed a dorg, say his name was Bonaparte, wantin' to eat
up a little monkey; an' a lot of fellers, say like Jud Carpenter an'
Billy Buch, a-bettin' he cu'd do it in ten minutes an' a-sickin' him
on the po' little monkey--this big savage dorg. An' suppose now you
feel sorry for the monkey an' somethin'--you can't tell what--but
somethin' mighty plain tells you the Lord wus on the monkey's
side--so plain you cu'd read it--like it told David--an' the dorg
wus as mean an' bostful as Goliath wus--"

"Archie B., my son, I'd a been fur the monkey, I sho' would," said
the Bishop impressively.

Archie B. smiled: "Bishop, you've called my hand--I _wus_ for that
monkey."

The old man smiled approvingly: "Good--good--Archie B."

"Now, what happened? I'm mighty inter'sted--oh, that is good. I'm
bettin' the monkey downed him, the Lord bein' on his side."

"But, s'pose furst," went on Archie B. argumentatively, "that you
wanted to give some money fur a little church that you wanted to
j'ine--up on the mountain side, a little po'-fo'k church, that
depended on charity--"

"I understan's, I understan's, Archie B., that wus the Lord's
doin's,--ten to one on the monkey, Archie--ten to one!"

"An' that you had ten dollars in gold around yo' neck in a little
bag, given you by your ole Granny when she died--an' knowin' how the
Lord wus for the monkey, an' it bein' a dead cinch, an' all that--an'
these fellers blowin' an' offerin' to bet ten to one--an' seein' you
c'ud pick it up in the road--all for the little church, mind you,
Bishop--"

"Archie B.," exclaimed the old man excitedly, "them bein' the facts
an' the thing at stake, with that ole dorg an' Jud Carpenter at the
bottom of it, I'd a put it up on the monkey, son--fur charity, you
know, an' fur the principle of it,--I'd a put it up, Archie B., if
I'd lost ever' cent!"

"Exactly, Bishop, an' I did--at ten to one--think of the odds! Ten to
one, mighty nigh as great as wus ag'in David."

"An' you won, of course, Archie B., you won in a walk?" said the old
man breathlessly. "God was fur you an' the monkey."

Archie B. smiled triumphantly and pulled out his handful of gold. The
old man sat down on a log, dazed.

"Archie B., sho'ly, sho'ly, not all that? An' licked the dorg, an'
that gang, an' cleaned 'em up?"

Archie B. told him the story with all the quaint histrionic talent of
his exuberant nature.

The Bishop sat and laughed till the tears came.

"An' Bonaparte went down the road with the monkey holt his tail--the
champion dorg--an' you won all that?"

"All fur charity, Bishop, except, you know, part fur keeps as a
kinder nes' egg."

"Of co-u-r-se--Archie B., of--course, no harm in the
worl'--if--if--my son--_if you carry out your original ideas_, or
promise, ruther; it won't work if you go back on yo' promise to God.
'God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform,'" added the
Bishop solemnly.

Archie B. slipped fifty of his dollars into the old man's hands.

"Do you know, Archie B., I prayed for this las' night? Now you tell
me God don't answer prayers?"

He was silent, touched. Seldom before had a prayer of his been
answered so directly.

"Fur charity, Archie B., fur charity. I'll take it, an' little you
know what this may mean."

Archie B. was silent. So far so good, but it was plain from his still
thoughtful looks that he had only half won out yet. He had heard the
old man speak, and there had been a huskiness about his voice.

"Now there is paw, Bishop--you know he ain't jes like you--he don't
see so far. He might not understan' it. Would you mind jes' droppin'
him a line, you know? I'll take it to him--in case he looks at the
thing differently, you know, fur whut you write will go a long way
with him."

The old man smiled: "Of course, Archie B.--he must understan' it. Of
course, it 'ud never do to have him spile as good a thing as
that--an' fur charity, all fur the Lord--"

"An' why I didn't go to school, helpin' you all in the woods," put in
Archie B.

"Of course, Archie B., why of course, my son; I'll fix it right."

And he scribbled a few lines on the fly leaf of his note book for
Archie B. to take home:

"God bless you, my son, good-night."

Archie B. struck out across the fields jingling his remaining gold
and whistling. At home it was as he expected. Patsy met him at the
gate. One look into her expectant face showed him that she was
delighted at the prospect of his punishment. It was her hope
deferred, now long unfulfilled. He had always gotten out before, but
now--

"Walk in, Mister Gambler, Mr. Hookey--walk in--paw is waitin' fur
you," she said, smirking.

The Deacon stood in the door, silent, grim, determined. In his hand
were well-seasoned hickories. By him stood his wife more silent, more
grim, more determined.

"Pull off yo' coat, Archie B.," said the Deacon, "I'm gwinter lick
you fur gamblin'."

"Pull off yo' coat, Archie B.," said his mother, "I'm goin' to lick
you fur playin' hookey."

"Pull it off, Archie B.," said his sister bossily, "I'm goin' to
stan' by an' see."

Archie B. pulled off his coat deliberately.

"That's all right," he said, "Many a man has been licked befo' fur
bein' on the Lord's side."

"You mean to tell me, Archie B. Butts, you bet on a dorg fight sho'
nuff," said his father, nervously handling his hickories.

"An' played hookey?" chimed in his mother.

"Tell it, Archie B., tell the truth an' shame the devil," mocked
Patsy.

"Yes, I done all that--fur charity," he said boldly, and with a
victorious ring in his voice.

"Did you put up that ten dollars yo' Granny lef' you?" screamed his
mother.

"Did you dare, Archie B.," said Patsy.

His father paled at the thought of it: "An' lost it, Archie B., lost
it, my son. Oh, I mus' teach you how sinful it is to gamble."

Archie B. replied by running his hand deep down into his pocket and
bringing up a handful of gold--five eagles!

His father dropped the switches and stared. His mother sat down
suddenly in a chair and Patsy reached out, took it and counted it
deliberately:--

"One--two--three--fo'--five--an' all gold--my gracious, Maw!"

"That's jes' ha'f of it," said Archie B. indifferently. "I gave the
old Bishop five of 'em--fur--charity. Here's his note."

The Deacon read it and rubbed his chin thoughtfully: "That's a
different thing," he said after a while. "Entirely different
proposition, my son."

"Yes, it 'pears to be," said his mother counting the gold again.
"We'll jes' keep three of 'em, Archie B. They'll come in handy this
winter."

"Put on yo' coat, my son," said the Deacon gently.

"Patsy, fetch him in the hot waffles an' syrup--the lad 'pears to be
a leetle tired," said his mother.

"How many whippings did you git, Archie B.?" whispered his brother as
Archie B., after entertaining the family for an hour, all about the
great fight, crawled into bed: "I got three," went on Ozzie B.
"Triggers fust, then paw, then maw."

"None," said Archie B., as he put his two pieces of gold under his
pillow.

"I can't see why that was," wailed Ozzie B. "I done nothin'
an'--an'--got all--all--the--lickin'!"

"You jes' reaped my whirlwind," sneered his brother--"All fools do!"

But later he felt so sorry for poor Ozzie B. because he could not lie
on his back at all, that he gave him one of his beautiful coins to go
to sleep.




CHAPTER XXVI

BEN BUTLER'S LAST RACE


It was the last afternoon of the fair, and the great race was to come
off at three o'clock.

There is nothing so typical as a fair in the Tennessee Valley. It is
the one time in the year when everybody meets everybody else. Besides
being the harvest time of crops, of friendships, of happy interchange
of thought and feeling, it is also the harvest time of perfected
horseflesh.

The forenoon had been given to social intercourse, the display of
livestock, the exhibits of deft women fingers, of housewife skill, of
the tradesman, of the merchant, of cotton--cotton, in every form and
shape.

At noon, under the trees, lunch had been spread--a bountiful lunch,
spreading as it did from the soft grass of one tree to that of
another--as family after family spread their linen--an almost
unbroken line of fried chicken, flanked with pickles and salad, and
all the rich profusion of the country wife's pantry.

And now, after lunch, the grand stand had been quickly filled, for
the fame of the great race had spread up and down the valley, and the
valley dearly loved a horse-race.

Five hundred dollars was considered a large purse, but this race was
three thousand!

Three thousand! It would buy a farm. It would buy thirty mules, and
twice that many steers. It would make a family independent for life.

And to-day it was given to see which one, of three rich men, owned
the best horse.

No wonder that everybody for miles around was there.

Sturdy farmers with fat daughters, jaded wives, and lusty sons who
stepped awkwardly on everything on the promenade, and in trying to
get off stepped on themselves. They went about, with broad, strong,
stooping shoulders, and short coats that sagged in the middle,
dropping under-jaws, and eyes that were kindly and shrewd.

The town people were better dressed and fed than the country people,
and but only half way in fashion between the city and country, yet
knowing it not.

The infield around the judges' stand, and in front of the
grand-stand, was thronged with surreys and buggies, and filled with
ladies and their beaux. A ripple of excitement had gone up when
Richard Travis drove up in a tally-ho. It was filled with gay gowns
and alive with merriment and laughter, and though Alice Westmore was
supposed to be on the driver's box with the owner, she was not there.

Tennesseans were there in force to back Flecker's gelding--Trumps,
and they played freely and made much noise. Col. Troup's
mare--Trombine--had her partisans who were also vociferous. But
Travis's entry, Lizzette, was a favorite, and, when he appeared on
the track to warm up, the valley shouted itself hoarse.

Then Flecker shot out of the draw-gate and spun merrily around the
track, and Col. Troup joined him with Trombine, and the audience
watched the three trotters warm up and shouted or applauded each as
it spun past the grand-stand.

Then the starting-judge held up a silk bag in the center of the wire.
It held three thousand dollars in gold, and it swung around and then
settled, to a shining, shimmering silken sack, swaying the wire as it
flashed in the sun.

The starting-judge clanged his bell, but the drivers, being
gentlemen, were heedless of rules and drove on around still warming
up.

The starting-judge was about to clang again--this time more
positively--when there appeared at the draw-gate a new comer, the
sight of whose horse and appointments set the grand-stand into a wild
roar of mingled laughter and applause.

As he drove demurely on the track, he lifted quaintly and stiffly his
old hat and smiled.

He was followed by the village blacksmith, whose very looks told that
they meant business and were out for blood. The audience did not like
the looks of this blacksmith--he was too stern for the fun they were
having. But they recognized the shambling creature who followed him
as Bud Billings, and they shouted with laughter when they saw he had
a sponge and bucket!

"Bud Billings a swipe!"

Cottontown wanted to laugh, but it was too tired. It merely grinned
and nudged one another. For Travis had given a half holiday and all
Cottontown was there.

The old man's outfit brought out the greatest laughter. The cart was
a big cheap thing, new and brightly repainted, and it rattled
frightfully. The harness was a combination--the saddle was made of
soft sheep skin, the wool next to the horse, as were also the
head-stall of the bridle, the breast-strap and the breeching. The
rest of it was undressed leather, and the old man had evidently made
it himself.

But Ben Butler--never had he looked so fine. Blind, cat-hammed and
pacing along,--but his sides were slick and hard, his quarters
rubber.

The old man had not been training him on the sandy stretches of Sand
Mountain for nothing.

A man with half an eye could have seen it, but the funny people in
the grand-stand saw only the harness, and the blind sunken eyes of
the old horse. So they shouted and cat-called and jeered. The outfit
ambled up to the starting judge, and the old driver handed him fifty
dollars.

The starter laughed as he recovered himself, and winking at the
others, asked:

"What's this for, old man?"

"Oh, jes' thought I'd j'ine in--" smiling.

"Why, you can't do it. What's your authority?"

The Bishop ran his hand in his pocket, while Bud held Ben Butler's
head and kept saying with comical seriousness: "Whoa--whoa, sah!"

Pending it all, and seeing that more talk was coming, Ben Butler
promptly went to sleep. Finally the old man brought out a faded
poster. It was Travis's challenge and conditions.

"Jes' read it," said the old driver, "an' see if I ain't under the
conditions."

The starting judge read: "_Open to the Tennessee Valley--trot or
pace. Parties entering, other than the match makers, to pay fifty
dollars at the wire._"

"Phew!" said the starting judge, as he scratched his head. Then he
stroked his chin and re-read the conditions, looking humorously down
over his glasses at the queer combination before him.

The audience took it in and began to shout: "Let him in! Let him in!
It's fair!"

But others felt outraged and shouted back: "No--put him out! Put him
out!"

The starting judge clanged his bell again, and the other three
starters came up.

Flecker, good-natured and fat, his horse in a warming-up foam,
laughed till he swayed in the sulky. Col. Troup, dignified and
reserved, said nothing. But Travis swore.

"It's preposterous!--it will make the race a farce. We're out for
blood and that purse. This is no comedy," he said.

The old man only smiled and said: "I'm sorry to spile the sport of
gentlemen, but bein' gentlemen, I know they will stan' by their own
rules."

"It's here in black and white, Travis," said the starter, "You made
it yourself."

"Oh, hell," said Travis hotly, "that was mere form and to satisfy the
Valley. I thought the entrance fee would bar any outsider."

"But it didn't," said the Judge, "and you know the rules."

"Let him start, let the Hill-Billy start!" shouted the crowd, and
then there was a tumult of hisses, groans and cat-calls.

Then it was passed from mouth to mouth that it was the old Cottontown
preacher, and the excitement grew intense.

It was the most comical, most splendid joke ever played in the
Valley. Travis was not popular, neither was the dignified Col. Troup.
Up to this time the crowd had not cared who won the purse; nor had
they cared which of the pretty trotters received the crown. It meant
only a little more swagger and show and money to throw away.

But here was something human, pathetic. Here was a touch of the stuff
that made the grand-stand kin to the old man. The disreputable cart,
the lifeless, blind old pacer, the home-made harness, the seediness
of it all--the pathos.

Here was the quaint old man, who, all his life, had given for others,
here was the ex-overseer and the ex-trainer of the Travis stables,
trying to win the purse from gentlemen.

"Ten to one," said a prosperous looking man, as he looked quietly
on--"the Bishop wants it for charity or another church. Like as not
he knows of some poverty-stricken family he's going to feed."

"If that's so," shouted two young fellows who were listening, and who
were partisans of Flecker of Tennessee, "if that's the way of it,
we'll go over and take a hand in seeing that he has fair play."

They arose hastily, each shifting a pistol in his pocket, and butted
through the crowd which was thronged around the Judge's stand, where
the old man sat quietly smiling from his cart, and Travis and Troup
were talking earnestly.

"Damned if I let Trombine start against such a combination as that,
sah. I'll drive off the track now, sah--damned if I don't, sah!"

But the two young men had spoken to big fat Flecker of Tennessee, and
he arose in his sulky-seat and said: "Now, gentlemen, clear the track
and let us race. We will let the old man start. Say, old man," he
laughed, "you won't feel bad if we shut you out the fust heat, eh?"

"No," smiled the Bishop--"an' I 'spec you will. Why, the old hoss
ain't raced in ten years."

"Oh, say, I thought you were going to say twenty," laughed Flecker.

Some rowdy had crowded around the old cart and attempted to unscrew
the axle tap. But some one reached over the head of the crowd and
gripped him where his shoulder and arm met, and pulled him forward
and twirled him around like a top.

It was enough. It was ten minutes before he could lift up his arm at
all; it felt dead.

"Don't hurt nobody, Jack," whispered the old man, "be keerful."

The crowd were for the old man. They still shouted--"Fair play, fair
play--let him start," and they came thronging and crowding on the
track.

"Clear the track," cried the starting-judge to a deputy sheriff in
charge--"I'll let him start."

This set the crowd in a roar.

"Square man," they yelled--"Square man!"

Travis bit his lips and swore.

"Why, damn him," he said, "we'll lose him the first heat. I'll shut
him out myself."

"We will, sah, we will!" said Col. Troup. "But if that rattling
contraption skeers my mare, I'll appeal to the National Association,
sah. I'll appeal--sah," and he drove off up the stretch, hotter than
his mare.

And now the track was cleared--the grand stand hummed and buzzed with
excitement.

It was indeed the greatest joke ever played in the Tennessee Valley.
Not that there was going to be any change in the race, not that the
old preacher had any chance, driving as he did this bundle of ribs
and ugliness, and hitched to such a cart--but that he dared try it at
all, and against the swells of horsedom. There would be one heat of
desperate fun and then--

A good-natured, spasmodic gulp of laughter ran clear through the
grand-stand, and along with it, from excited groups, from the
promenade, from the track and infield and stables, even, came such
expressions as these:

"Worth ten dollars to see it!"

"Wouldn't take a hoss for the sight!"

"If he _did_ happen to beat that trio of sports!"

"Boss, it's gwinter to be a hoss race from wire to wire!"

"Oh, pshaw! one heat of fun--they'll shut him out!"

In heart, the sympathy of the crowd was all with the old preacher.

The old man had a habit when keyed to high pitch, emotionally, of
talking to himself. He seemed to regard himself as a third person,
and this is the way he told it, heat by heat:

"Fus' heat, Ben Butler--Now if we can manage to save our distance
an' leave the flag a few yards, we'll be doin' mighty well. Long
time since you stretched them ole muscles of yo's in a race--long
time--an' they're tied up and sore. Ever' heat'll be a wuck out
to you till you git hot. If I kin only stay in till you git
hot--(_Clang--clang--clang_). That's the starter's bell. Yes--we'll
score now--the fus' heat'll be our wuss. They've got it in fur us--they'll
set the pace an' try to shet us out an', likely es not, do it. God
he'p us--Shiloh--Cap'n Tom--it's only for them, Ben Butler--fur them.
(_Clang!--Clang!_) Slow there--heh--heh--Steady--ah-h!"

_Clang--clang-clang!_ vigorously. The starter was calling them back.

They had scored down for the first time, but the hot-heads had been
too fast for the old ambler. In their desire to shut him out, they
rushed away like a whirlwind. The old pacer followed, rocking and
rolling in his lazy way. He wiggled, shuffled, skipped, and when the
strain told on the sore old muscles, he winced, and was left at the
wire!

The crowd jeered and roared with laughter.

"He'll never get off!"

"He's screwed there--fetch a screw driver!"

"Pad his head, he'll fall on it nex'!"

"Go back, gentlemen, go back," shouted the starter, "and try again.
The old pacer was on a break"--_Clang--clang--clang!_ and he jerked
his bell vigorously.

Travis was furious as he drove slowly back. "I had to pull my mare
double to stop her," he called to the starter. "We were all aligned
but the old pacer--why didn't you let us go?"

"Because I am starting these horses by the rules, Mr. Travis. I know
my business," said the starter hotly.

Col. Troup was blue in the face with rage.

Flecker laughed.

They all turned again and came down, the numbers on the drivers' arms
showing 1, 2, 3, 4--Travis, Troup, Flecker, and the old Bishop,
respectively.

"Ben Butler, ole hoss, this ain't no joke--you mus' go this time. We
ain't goin' to meetin'--Stretch them ole legs as you did!--oh, that's
better--ef we could only score a few more times--look!--ah!"

_Clang--clang--clang!_

This time it was Col. Troup's mare. She broke just at the wire.

"She saved us that time, Ben Butler. We wus two rods behind--"

They came down the third time. "Now, thank God, he's jes' beginnin'
to unlimber," chuckled the old man as the old pacer, catching on to
the game and warming to his work, was only a length behind at the
wire, as they scored the fourth time, when Flecker's mare flew up in
the air and again the bell clanged.

The crowd grew impatient. The starter warned them that time was up
and that he'd start them the next time they came down if he had the
ghost of a chance.

Again they aligned and came thundering down. The old man was pale and
silent, and Ben Butler felt the lines telegraphing nervous messages
to his bitted mouth; but all he heard was: "_Shiloh--Cap'n
Tom--Steady, old hoss!_"

"Go!"

It sounded like a gun-shot in the old man's ears. There was a whirr
of wheels, a patter of feet grappling with dirt and throwing it all
over him--another whirr and flutter and buzz as of a covey flushed,
and the field was off, leaving him trailing.

"Whew, Ben Butler, we're in fur it now--the Lord 'a-mussy on our
souls! Take the pole--s'artenly,--it's all yowin, since you're
behin'! Steady ole hoss, there's one consolation,--they're breakin'
the wind for you, an' thank God!--yes Ben Butler, look!