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THE HOOSIER
SCHOOLMASTER

A Story of Backwoods Life
in Indiana

REVISED

with an introduction and Notes on the District
by the Author,

EDWARD EGGLESTON

With Character Sketches by

F. OPPER

and other Illustrations by

W.E.B. STARKWEATHER


GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

1871




AS A PEBBLE CAST UPON A GREAT
CAIRN, THIS EDITION IS INSCRIBED TO THE
MEMORY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL,
WHOSE CORDIAL ENCOURAGEMENT TO MY
EARLY STUDIES OF AMERICAN DIALECT IS
GRATEFULLY REMEMBERED.

THE AUTHOR.




PREFACE TO THE LIBRARY EDITION.

BEING THE HISTORY OF A STORY.


"THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-MASTER" was written and printed in the autumn of
1871. It is therefore now about twenty-one years old, and the publishers
propose to mark its coming of age by issuing a library edition. I avail
myself of the occasion to make some needed revisions, and to preface the
new edition with an account of the origin and adventures of the book. If
I should seem to betray unbecoming pride in speaking of a story that has
passed into several languages and maintained an undiminished popularity
for more than a score of years, I count on receiving the indulgence
commonly granted to paternal vanity when celebrating the majority of a
first-born. With all its faults on its head, this little tale has become
a classic, in the bookseller's sense at least; and a public that has
shown so constant a partiality for it has a right to feel some curiosity
regarding its history.

I persuade myself that additional extenuation for this biography of a
book is to be found in the relation which "The Hoosier School-Master"
happens to bear to the most significant movement in American literature
in our generation. It is the file-leader of the procession of American
dialect novels. Before the appearance of this story, the New England
folk-speech had long been employed for various literary purposes, it is
true; and after its use by Lowell, it had acquired a standing that made
it the classic _lingua rustica_ of the United States. Even Hoosiers and
Southerners when put into print, as they sometimes were in rude
burlesque stories, usually talked about "huskin' bees" and "apple-parin'
bees" and used many other expressions foreign to their vernacular.
American literature hardly touched the speech and life of the people
outside of New England; in other words, it was provincial in the narrow
sense.

I can hardly suppose that "The Hoosier School-Master" bore any causative
relation to that broader provincial movement in our literature which now
includes such remarkable productions as the writings of Mr. Cable, Mr.
Harris, Mr. Page, Miss Murfree, Mr. Richard Malcom Johnson, Mr. Howe,
Mr. Garland, some of Mrs. Burnett's stories and others quite worthy of
inclusion in this list. The taking up of life in this regional way has
made our literature really national by the only process possible. The
Federal nation has at length manifested a consciousness of the
continental diversity of its forms of life. The "great American novel,"
for which prophetic critics yearned so fondly twenty years ago, is
appearing in sections. I may claim for this book the distinction, such
as it is, of being the first of the dialect stories that depict a life
quite beyond New England influence. Some of Mr. Bret Harte's brief and
powerful tales had already foreshadowed this movement toward a larger
rendering of our life. But the romantic character of Mr. Harte's
delightful stories and the absence of anything that can justly be called
dialect in them mark them as rather forerunners than beginners of the
prevailing school. For some years after the appearance of the present
novel, my own stories had to themselves the field of provincial realism
(if, indeed, there be any such thing as realism) before there came the
succession of fine productions which have made the last fourteen years
notable.

Though it had often occurred to me to write something in the dialect now
known as Hoosier--the folk-speech of the southern part of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois of forty years ago--I had postponed the attempt
indefinitely, probably because the only literary use that had been made
of the allied speech of the Southwest had been in the books of the
primitive humorists of that region. I found it hard to dissociate in my
own mind the dialect from the somewhat coarse boisterousness which
seemed inseparable from it in the works of these rollicking writers. It
chanced that in 1871 Taine's lectures on "Art in the Netherlands," or
rather Mr. John Durand's translation of them, fell into my hands as a
book for editorial review. These discourses are little else than an
elucidation of the thesis that the artist of originality will work
courageously with the materials he finds in his own environment. In
Taine's view, all life has matter for the artist, if only he have eyes
to see.

Many years previous to the time of which I am now speaking, while I was
yet a young man, I had projected a lecture on the Hoosier folk-speech,
and had even printed during the war a little political skit in that
dialect in a St. Paul paper. So far as I know, nothing else had ever
been printed in the Hoosier. Under the spur of Taine's argument, I now
proceeded to write a short story wholly in the dialect spoken in my
childhood by rustics on the north side of the Ohio River. This tale I
called "The Hoosier School-Master." It consisted almost entirely of an
autobiographical narration in dialect by Mirandy Means of the incidents
that form the groundwork of the present story. I was the newly
installed editor of a weekly journal, _Hearth and Home_, and I sent this
little story in a new dialect to my printer. It chanced that one of the
proprietors of the paper saw a part of it in proof. He urged me to take
it back and make a longer story out of the materials, and he expressed
great confidence in the success of such a story. Yielding to his
suggestion, I began to write this novel from week to week as it appeared
in the paper, and thus found myself involved in the career of a
novelist, which had up to that time formed no part of my plan of life.
In my inexperience I worked at a white-heat, completing the book in ten
weeks. Long before these weeks of eager toil were over, it was a
question among my friends whether the novel might not write _finis_ to
me before I should see the end of it.

The sole purpose I had in view at first was the resuscitation of the
dead-and-alive newspaper of which I had ventured to take charge. One of
the firm of publishers thought much less favorably of my story than his
partner did. I was called into the private office and informed with some
severity that my characters were too rough to be presentable in a paper
so refined as ours. I confess they did seem somewhat too robust for a
sheet so anæmic as _Hearth and Home_ had been in the months just
preceding. But when, the very next week after this protest was made, the
circulation of the paper increased some thousands at a bound, my
employer's critical estimate of the work underwent a rapid change--a
change based on what seemed to him better than merely literary
considerations. By the time the story closed, at the end of fourteen
instalments, the subscription list had multiplied itself four or five
fold. It is only fair to admit, however, that the original multiplicand
had been rather small.

Papers in Canada and in some of the other English colonies transferred
the novel bodily to their columns, and many of the American country
papers helped themselves to it quite freely. It had run some weeks of
its course before it occurred to any one that it might profitably be
reprinted in book form. The publishers were loath to risk much in the
venture. The newspaper type was rejustified to make a book page, and
barely two thousand copies were printed for a first edition. I remember
expressing the opinion that the number was too large.

"The Hoosier School-Master" was pirated with the utmost promptitude by
the Messrs. Routledge, in England, for that was in the barbarous days
before international copyright, when English publishers complained of
the unscrupulousness of American reprinters, while they themselves
pounced upon every line of American production that promised some
shillings of profit. "The Hoosier School-Master" was brought out in
England in a cheap, sensational form. The edition of ten thousand has
long been out of print. For this large edition and for the editions
issued in the British colonies and in continental Europe I have never
received a penny. A great many men have made money out of the book, but
my own returns have been comparatively small. For its use in serial form
I received nothing beyond my salary as editor. On the copyright edition
I have received the moderate royalty allowed to young authors at the
outset of their work. The sale of the American edition in the first
twenty years amounted to seventy thousand copies. The peculiarity of
this sale is its steadiness. After twenty years, "The Hoosier
School-Master" is selling at the average rate of more than three
thousand copies per annum. During the last half-dozen years the
popularity of the book has apparently increased, and its twentieth year
closed with a sale of twenty-one hundred in six months. Only those who
are familiar with the book trade and who know how brief is the life of
the average novel will understand how exceptional is this
long-continued popularity.

Some of the newspaper reviewers of twenty years ago were a little
puzzled to know what to make of a book in so questionable a shape, for
the American dialect novel was then a new-comer. But nothing could have
given a beginner more genuine pleasure than the cordial commendation of
the leading professional critic of the time, the late Mr. George Ripley,
who wrote an extended review of this book for the _Tribune_. The monthly
magazines all spoke of "The Hoosier School-Master" in terms as favorable
as it deserved. I cannot pretend that I was content with these notices
at the time, for I had the sensitiveness of a beginner. But on looking
at the reviews in the magazines of that day, I am amused to find that
the faults pointed out in the work of my prentice hand are just those
that I should be disposed to complain of now, if it were any part of my
business to tell the reader wherein I might have done better.

_The Nation_, then in its youth, honored "The Hoosier School-Master" by
giving it two pages, mostly in discussion of its dialect, but dispensing
paradoxical praise and censure in that condescending way with which we
are all familiar enough. According to its critic, the author had
understood and described the old Western life, but he had done it
"quite sketchily, to be sure." Yet it was done "with essential truth and
some effectiveness." The critic, however instantly stands on the other
foot again and adds that the book "is not a captivating one." But he
makes amends in the very next sentence by an allusion to "the
faithfulness of its transcript of the life it depicts," and then
instantly balances the account on the adverse side of the ledger by
assuring the reader that "it has no interest of passion or mental
power." But even this fatal conclusion is diluted by a dependent clause.
"Possibly," says the reviewer, "the good feeling of the intertwined love
story may conciliate the good-will of some of the malcontent." One could
hardly carry further the fine art of oscillating between moderate
commendation and parenthetical damnation--an art that lends a factitious
air of judicial impartiality and mental equipoise. Beyond question, _The
Nation_ is one of the ablest weekly papers in the world; the admirable
scholarship of its articles and reviews in departments of special
knowledge might well be a subject of pride to any American. But its
inadequate reviews of current fiction add nothing to its value, and its
habitual tone of condescending depreciation in treating imaginative
literature of indigenous origin is one of the strongest discouragements
to literary production.

The main value of good criticism lies in its readiness and penetration
in discovering and applauding merit not before recognized, or
imperfectly recognized. This is a conspicuous trait of Sainte-Beuve, the
greatest of all newspaper critics. He knew how to be severe upon
occasion, but he saw talent in advance of the public and dispensed
encouragement heartily, so that he made himself almost a foster-father
to the literature of his generation in France. But there is a class of
anonymous reviewers in England and America who seem to hold a
traditional theory that the function of a critic toward new-born talent
is analogous to that of Pharaoh toward the infant Jewish population[1].

During the first year after its publication "The Hoosier School-Master"
was translated into French and published in a condensed form in the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_. The translator was the writer who signs the
name M. Th. Bentzon, and who is well known to be Madame Blanc. This
French version afterward appeared in book form in the same volume with
one of Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich's stories and some other stories of
mine. In this latter shape I have never seen it. The title given to the
story by Madame Blanc was "Le Maître d'École de Flat Creek." It may be
imagined that the translator found it no easy task to get equivalents in
French for expressions in a dialect new and strange. "I'll be dog-on'd"
appears in French as "devil take me" ("_diable m'emporte_"), which is
not bad; the devil being rather a jolly sort of fellow, in French. "The
Church of the Best Licks" seems rather unrenderable, and I do not see
how the translator could have found a better phrase for it than
"_L'Eglise des Raclées_" though "_raclées_" does not convey the double
sense of "licks." "_Jim epelait vite comme l'eclair_" is not a good
rendering of "Jim spelled like lightning," since it is not the celerity
of the spelling that is the main consideration. "_Concours
d'epellation_" is probably the best equivalent for "spelling-school,"
but it seems something more stately in its French dress. When Bud says,
with reference to Hannah, "I never took no shine that air way," the
phrase is rather too idiomatic for the French tongue, and it becomes "I
haven't run after that hare" ("_Je n'ai pas chassé ce lièvre-la_").
Perhaps the most sadly amusing thing in the translation is the way the
meaning of the nickname Shocky is missed in an explanatory foot-note. It
is, according to the translator, an abbreviation or corruption of the
English word "shocking," which expresses the shocking ugliness of the
child--"_qui exprime la laideur choquante de l'enfant_."

A German version of "The Hoosier School-Master" was made about the time
of the appearance of the French translation, but of this I have never
seen a copy. I know of it only from the statement made to me by a German
professor, that he had read it in German before he knew any English.
What are the equivalents in High German for "right smart" and "dog-on" I
cannot imagine.

Several years after the publication of "The Hoosier School-Master" it
occurred to Mr. H. Hansen, of Kjöge, in Denmark, to render it into
Danish. Among the Danes the book enjoyed a popularity as great, perhaps,
as it has had at home. The circulation warranted Mr. Hansen and his
publisher in bringing out several other novels of mine. The Danish
translator was the only person concerned in the various foreign
editions of this book who had the courtesy to ask the author's leave.
Under the old conditions in regard to international copyright, an author
came to be regarded as one not entitled even to common civilities in the
matter of reprinting his works--he was to be plundered without
politeness. As I look at the row of my books in the unfamiliar Danish, I
am reminded of that New England mother who, on recovering her children
carried away by the Canadian Indians, found it impossible to communicate
with a daughter who spoke only French and a son who knew nothing but the
speech of his savage captors. Mr. Hansen was thoughtful enough to send
me the reviews of my books in the Danish newspapers; and he had the
double kindness to translate these into English and to leave out all but
those that were likely to be agreeable to my vanity. Of these I remember
but a single sentence, and that because it was expressed with felicity.
The reviewer said of the fun in "The Hoosier School-Master:" "This is
humor laughing to keep from bursting into tears."

A year or two before the appearance of "The Hoosier School-Master," a
newspaper article of mine touching upon American dialect interested Mr.
Lowell, and he urged me to "look for the foreign influence" that has
affected the speech of the Ohio River country. My reverence for him as
the master in such studies did not prevent me from feeling that the
suggestion was a little absurd. But at a later period I became aware
that North Irishmen used many of the pronunciations and idioms that
distinctly characterized the language of old-fashioned people on the
Ohio. Many Ulster men say "wair" for were and "air" for are, for
example. Connecting this with the existence of a considerable element of
Scotch-Irish names in the Ohio River region, I could not doubt that here
was one of the keys the master had bidden me look for. While pursuing at
a later period a series of investigations into the culture-history of
the American people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I
became much interested in the emigration to America from the north of
Ireland, a movement that waxed and waned as the great Irish-linen
industry of the last century declined or prospered. The first American
home of these Irish was Pennsylvania. A portion of them were
steady-going, psalm-singing, money-getting people, who in course of time
made themselves felt in the commerce, politics, and intellectual life of
the nation. There was also a dare-devil element, descended perhaps from
those rude borderers who were deported to Ireland more for the sake of
the peace of North Britain than for the benefit of Ireland. In this
rougher class there was perhaps a larger dash of the Celtic fire that
came from the wild Irish women whom the first Scotch settlers in Ulster
made the mothers of their progeny. Arrived in the wilds of Pennsylvania,
these Irishmen built rude cabins, planted little patches of corn and
potatoes, and distilled a whiskey that was never suffered to grow
mellow. The forest was congenial to men who spent much the larger part
of their time in boisterous sport of one sort or another. The
manufacture of the rifle was early brought to Lancaster, in
Pennsylvania, direct from the land of its invention by Swiss emigrants,
and in the adventurous Scotch-Irishman of the Pennsylvania frontier the
rifle found its fellow. Irish settlers became hunters of wild beasts,
explorers, pioneers, and warriors against the Indians, upon whom they
avenged their wrongs with relentless ferocity. Both the Irish race and
the intermingled Pennsylvania Dutch were prolific, and the up-country of
Pennsylvania soon overflowed. Emigration was held in check to the
westward for a while by the cruel massacres of the French and Indian
wars, and one river of population poured itself southward into the
fertile valleys of the Virginia mountain country; another and larger
flood swept still farther to the south along the eastern borders of the
Appalachian range until it reached the uplands of Carolina. When the
militia of one county in South Carolina was mustered during the
Revolution, it was found that every one of the thirty-five hundred men
enrolled were natives of Pennsylvania. These were mainly sons of North
Irishmen, and from the Carolina Irish sprang Calhoun, the most
aggressive statesman that has appeared in America, and Jackson, the most
brilliant military genius in the whole course of our history. Before the
close of the Revolution this adventurous race had begun to break over
the passes of the Alleghanies into the dark and bloody ground of
Kentucky and Tennessee. Soon afterward a multitude of Pennsylvanians of
all stocks--the Scotch-Irish and those Germans, Swiss, and Hollanders
who are commonly classed together as the Pennsylvania Dutch, as well as
a large number of people of English descent--began to migrate down the
Ohio Valley. Along with them came professional men and people of more or
less culture, chiefly from eastern Virginia and Maryland. There came
also into Indiana and Illinois, from the border States and from as far
south as North Carolina and Tennessee, a body of "poor whites." These
semi-nomadic people, descendants of the colonial bond-servants, formed,
in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the lowest rank of
Hoosiers. But as early as 1845 there was a considerable exodus of these
to Missouri. From Pike County, in that State, they wended their way to
California, to appear in Mr. Bret Harte's stories as "Pikes." The
movement of this class out of Indiana went on with augmented volume in
the fifties. The emigrants of this period mostly sought the States lying
just west of the Mississippi, and the poorer sort made the trip in
little one-horse wagons of the sorriest description, laden mainly with
white-headed children and followed by the yellow curs that are the one
luxury indispensable to a family of this class. To this migration and to
a liberal provision for popular education Indiana owes a great
improvement in the average intelligence of her people. As early as 1880,
I believe, the State had come to rank with some of the New England
States in the matter of literacy.

The folk-speech of the Ohio River country has many features in common
with that of the eastern Middle States, while it received but little
from the dignified eighteenth-century English of eastern Virginia. There
are distinct traces of the North-Irish in the idioms and in the peculiar
pronunciations. One finds also here and there a word from the
"Pennsylvania Dutch," such as "waumus" for a loose jacket, from the
German _wamms_, a doublet, and "smearcase" for cottage cheese, from the
German _schmierkäse_. The only French word left by the old _voyageurs_,
so far as I now remember, is "cordelle," to tow a boat by a rope carried
along the shore.

Substantially the same folk-speech exists wherever the Pennsylvania
migration formed the main element of the primitive settlement. I have
heard the same dialect in the South Carolina uplands that one gets from
a Posey County Hoosier, or rather that one used to get in the old days
before the vandal school-master had reduced the vulgar tongue to the
monotonous propriety of what we call good English.

In drawing some of the subordinate characters in this tale a little too
baldly from the model, I fell into an error common to inexperienced
writers. It is amusing to observe that these portrait characters seem
the least substantial of all the figures in the book. Dr. Small is a
rather unrealistic villain, but I knew him well and respected him in my
boyish heart for a most exemplary Christian of good family at the very
time that, according to testimony afterward given, he was diversifying
his pursuits as a practising physician by leading a gang of burglars.
More than one person has been pointed out as the original of Bud Means,
and I believe there are one or two men each of whom flatters himself
that he posed for the figure of the first disciple of the Church of the
Best Licks. Bud is made up of elements found in some of his race, but
not in any one man. Not dreaming that the story would reach beyond the
small circulation of _Hearth and Home_, I used the names of people in
Switzerland and Decatur counties, in Indiana, almost without being aware
of it. I have heard that a young man bearing the surname given to one of
the rudest families in this book had to suffer many gibes while a
student at an Indiana college. I here do public penance for my culpable
indiscretion.

"Jeems Phillips," name and all, is a real person whom at the time of
writing this story I had not seen since I was a lad of nine and he a man
of nearly forty. He was a mere memory to me, and was put into the book
with some slighting remarks which the real Jeems did not deserve. I did
not know that he was living, and it did not seem likely that the story
would have vitality enough to travel all the way to Indiana. But the
portion referring to Phillips was transferred to the county paper
circulating among Jeems' neighbors. For once the good-natured man was,
as they say in Hoosier, "mad," and he threatened to thrash the editor.
"Do you think he means you?" demanded the editor. "To be sure he does,"
said the champion speller. "Can you spell?" "I can spell down any master
that ever came to our district," he replied. As time passed on,
Phillips found himself a lion. Strangers desired an introduction to him
as a notability, and invited the champion to dissipate with them at the
soda fountain in the village drug store. It became a matter of pride
with him that he was the most famous speller in the world. Two years
ago, while visiting the town of my nativity, I met upon the street the
aged Jeems Phillips, whom I had not seen for more than forty years. I
would go far to hear him "spell down" a complacent school-master once
more.

The publication of this book gave rise to an amusing revival of the
spelling-school as a means of public entertainment, not in rustic
regions alone, but in towns also. The furor extended to the great cities
of New York and London, and reached at last to farthest Australia,
spreading to every region in which English is spelled or spoken. But the
effect of the chapter on the spelling-school was temporary and
superficial; the only organization that came from the spelling-school
mania, so far as I know, was an association of proof-readers in London
to discuss mooted points. The sketch of the Church of the Best Licks,
however, seems to have made a deep and enduring impression upon
individuals and to have left some organized results. I myself
endeavored to realize it, and for five years I was the pastor of a
church in Brooklyn, organized on a basis almost as simple as that in the
Flat Creek school-house. The name I rendered into respectable English,
and the Church of the Best Licks became the Church of Christian
Endeavor. It was highly successful in doing that which a church ought to
do, and its methods of work have been widely copied. After my work as a
minister had been definitely closed, the name and the underlying thought
of this church were borrowed for a young people's society; and thus the
little story of good endeavor in Indiana seems to have left a permanent
mark on the ecclesiastical organization of the time.

If any one, judging by the length of this preface, should conclude that
I hold my little book in undue esteem, let him know that I owe it more
than one grudge. It is said that Thomas Campbell, twenty years after the
appearance of his best-known poem, was one day introduced as "the author
of 'The Pleasures of Hope.'" "Confound 'The Pleasures of Hope,'" he
protested; "can't I write anything else?" So, however much I may prefer
my later work, more carefully wrought in respect of thought, structure,
and style, this initial novel, the favorite of the larger public, has
become inseparably associated with my name. Often I have mentally
applied Campbell's imprecation on "The Pleasures of Hope" to this
story. I could not write in this vein now if I would, and twenty-one
years have made so many changes in me that I dare not make any but minor
changes in this novel. The author of "The Hoosier School-Master" is
distinctly not I; I am but his heir and executor; and since he is a more
popular writer than I, why should I meddle with his work? I have,
however, ventured to make some necessary revision of the diction, and
have added notes, mostly with reference to the dialect.

A second grudge against this story is that somehow its readers persist
in believing it to be a bit of my own life. Americans are credulous
believers in that miracle of the imagination whom no one has ever seen
in the flesh--the self-made man. Some readers of "The Hoosier
School-Master" have settled it for a certainty that the author sprang
from the rustic class he has described. One lady even wrote to inquire
whether my childhood were not represented in Shocky, the little lad out
of the poor-house. A biographical sketch of me in Italian goes so far as
to state that among the hard resorts by which I made a living in my
early life was the teaching of a Sunday-school in Chicago.

No one knows so well as I the faults of immaturity and inexperience that
characterize this book. But perhaps after all the public is right in so
often preferring an author's first book. There is what Emerson would
have called a "central spontaneity" about the work of a young man that
may give more delight to the reader than all the precision of thought
and perfection of style for which we strive as life advances.

JOSHUA'S ROCK ON LAKE GEORGE, 1892.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Since writing the passage in the text, I have met with the
following in _The Speaker_, of London: "Everybody knows that when an
important work is published in history, philosophy, or any branch of
science, the editor of a respectable paper employs an expert to review
it; . . . indeed, the more abstruse the subject of the book, the more
careful and intelligent you will find the review. . . . It is equally
well known that works of fiction and books of verse are not treated with
anything like the same care. . . . A good poem, play, or novel is at
least as fine an achievement as a good history; yet the history gets the
benefit of an expert's judgment and two columns of thoughtful pimse or
censure, while the poem, play, or novel is treated to ten skittish lines
by the hack who happens to be within nearest call when the book comes
in."]




PART OF THE PREFACE TO THE

FIRST EDITION.


I may as well confess, what it would be affectation to conceal, that I
am more than pleased with the generous reception accorded to this story
as a serial in the columns of _Hearth and Home_. It has been in my mind
since I was a Hoosier boy to do something toward describing life in the
back-country districts of the Western States. It used to be a matter of
no little jealousy with us, I remember, that the manners, customs,
thoughts, and feelings of New England country people filled so large a
place in books, while our life, not less interesting, not less romantic,
and certainly not less filled with humorous and grotesque material, had
no place in literature. It was as though we were shut out of good
society. And, with the single exception of Alice Gary, perhaps, our
Western writers did not dare speak of the West otherwise than as the
unreal world to which Cooper's lively imagination had given birth.

I had some anxiety lest Western readers should take offence at my
selecting what must always seem an exceptional phase of life to those
who have grown up in the more refined regions of the West. But nowhere
has the School-master been received more kindly than in his own country
and among his own people.

Some of those who have spoken generous words of the School-master and
his friends have suggested that the story is an autobiography. But it is
not, save in the sense in which every work of art is an autobiography:
in that it is the result of the experience and observation of the
writer. Readers will therefore bear in mind that not Ralph nor Bud nor
Brother Sodom nor Dr. Small represents the writer, nor do I appear, as
Talleyrand said of Madame de Staël, "disguised as a woman," in the
person of Hannah or Mirandy. Some of the incidents have been drawn from
life; none of them, I believe, from my own. I should like to be
considered a member of the Church of the Best Licks, however.

It has been in my mind to append some remarks, philological and
otherwise, upon the dialect, but Professor Lowell's admirable and
erudite preface to the Biglow Papers must be the despair of every one
who aspires to write on Americanisms. To Mr. Lowell belongs the
distinction of being the only one of our most eminent authors and the
only one of our most eminent scholars who has given careful attention to
American dialects. But while I have not ventured to discuss the
provincialisms of the Indiana backwoods, I have been careful to preserve
the true _usus loquendi_ of each locution.

BROOKLYN, December, 1871.




CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I
                                     PAGE
A Private Lesson from a Bulldog . . .  37

CHAPTER II.
A Spell Coming. . . . . . . . . . . .  52

CHAPTER III.
Mirandy, Hank, and Shocky . . . . . .  57

CHAPTER IV.
Spelling Down the Master. . . . . . .  70

CHAPTER V.
The Walk Home . . . . . . . . . . . .  90

CHAPTER VI.
A Night at Pete Jones's . . . . . . .  97

CHAPTER VII
Ominous Remarks of Mr. Jones. . . . . 105

CHAPTER VIII.
The Struggle in the Dark. . . . . . . 109

CHAPTER IX.
Has God Forgotten Shocky? . . . . . . 114

CHAPTER X.
The Devil of Silence. . . . . . . . . 118

CHAPTER XI.
Miss Martha Hawkins . . . . . . . . . 125

CHAPTER XII.
The Hardshell Preacher. . . . . . . . 133

CHAPTER XIII.
A Struggle for the Mastery. . . . . . 143

CHAPTER XIV.
A Crisis with Bud . . . . . . . . . . 150

CHAPTER XV.
The Church of the Best Licks. . . . . 157

CHAPTER XVI.
The Church Militant . . . . . . . . . 163

CHAPTER XVII.
A Council of War. . . . . . . . . . . 169

CHAPTER XVIII.
Odds and Ends . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

CHAPTER XIX.
Face to Face. . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

CHAPTER XX.
God Remembers Shocky. . . . . . . . . 185

CHAPTER XXI.
Miss Nancy Sawyer . . . . . . . . . . 192

CHAPTER XXII.
Pancakes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

CHAPTER XXIII.
A Charitable Institution. . . . . . . 203

CHAPTER XXIV
The Good Samaritan. . . . . . . . . . 212

CHAPTER XXV.
Bud Wooing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215

CHAPTER XXVI.
A Letter and its Consequences . . . . 220

CHAPTER XXVII.
A Loss and a Gain . . . . . . . . . . 224

CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Flight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

CHAPTER XXIX.
The Trial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234

CHAPTER XXX.
"Brother Sodom" . . . . . . . . . . . 249

CHAPTER XXXI.
The Trial Concluded . . . . . . . . . 254

CHAPTER XXXII.
After the Battle. . . . . . . . . . . 269

CHAPTER XXXIII.
Into the Light. . . . . . . . . . . . 274

CHAPTER XXXIV.
"How it Came Out" . . . . . . . . . . 278




The Hoosier School-Master.




CHAPTER I

A PRIVATE LESSON FROM A BULLDOG.


"Want to be a school-master, do you? You? Well, what would _you_ do in
Flat Crick deestrick, _I'd_ like to know? Why, the boys have driv off
the last two, and licked the one afore them like blazes. You might teach
a summer school, when nothin' but children come. But I 'low it takes a
right smart _man_ to be school-master in Flat Crick in the winter.
They'd pitch you out of doors, sonny, neck and heels, afore Christmas."

The young man, who had walked ten miles to get the school in this
district, and who had been mentally reviewing his learning at every step
he took, trembling lest the committee should find that he did not know
enough, was not a little taken aback at this greeting from "old Jack
Means," who was the first trustee that he lighted on. The impression
made by these ominous remarks was emphasized by the glances which he
received from Jack Means's two sons. The older one eyed him from the top
of his brawny shoulders with that amiable look which a big dog turns on
a little one before shaking him. Ralph Hartsook had never thought of
being measured by the standard of muscle. This notion of beating
education into young savages in spite of themselves dashed his ardor.

He had walked right to where Jack Means was at work shaving shingles in
his own front yard. While Mr. Means was making the speech which we have
set down above, and punctuating it with expectorations, a large brindle
bulldog had been sniffing at Ralph's heels, and a girl in a new
linsey-woolsey dress, standing by the door, had nearly giggled her head
off at the delightful prospect of seeing a new school-teacher eaten up
by the ferocious brute.

The disheartening words of the old man, the immense muscles of the young
man who was to be his rebellious pupil, the jaws of the ugly bulldog,
and the heartless giggle of the girl, gave Ralph a delightful sense of
having precipitated himself into a den of wild beasts. Faint with
weariness and discouragement, and shivering with fear, he sat down on a
wheelbarrow.

"You, Bull!" said the old man to the dog, which was showing more and
more a disposition to make a meal of the incipient pedagogue, "you,
Bull! git aout[2], you pup!" The dog walked sullenly off, but not until
he had given Ralph a look full of promise of what he meant to do when he
got a good chance. Ralph wished himself back in the village of
Lewisburg, whence he had come.

"You see," continued Mr. Means, spitting in a meditative sort of a way,
"you see, we a'n't none of your saft sort in these diggings. It takes a
_man_ to boss this deestrick. Howsumdever, ef you think you kin trust
your hide in Flat Crick school-house I ha'n't got no 'bjection. But ef
you git licked, don't come on us. Flat Crick don't pay no 'nsurance, you
bet! Any other trustees? Wal, yes. But as I pay the most taxes, t'others
jist let me run the thing. You can begin right off a Monday. They a'n't
been no other applications. You see, it takes grit to apply for this
school. The last master had a black eye for a month. But, as I wuz
sayin', you can jist roll up and wade in. I 'low you've got spunk,
maybe, and that goes for a heap sight more'n sinnoo with boys. Walk in,
and stay over Sunday with me. You'll hev' to board roun', and I guess
you better begin here."

Ralph did not go in, but sat out on the wheelbarrow, watching the old
man shave shingles, while the boys split the blocks and chopped wood.
Bull smelled of the new-comer again in an ugly way, and got a good kick
from the older son for his pains. But out of one of his red eyes the dog
warned the young school-master that _he_ should yet suffer for all kicks
received on his account.

"Ef Bull once takes a holt, heaven and yarth can't make him let go,"
said the older son to Ralph, by way of comfort.

It was well for Ralph that he began to "board roun'" by stopping at Mr.
Means's. Ralph felt that Flat Creek was what he needed. He had lived a
bookish life; but here was his lesson in the art of managing people, for
he who can manage the untamed and strapping youths of a winter school in
Hoopole County has gone far toward learning one of the hardest of
lessons. And in Ralph's time, things were worse than they are now. The
older son of Mr. Means was called Bud Means. What his real name was,
Ralph could not find out, for in many of these families the nickname of
"Bud" given to the oldest boy, and that of "Sis," which is the
birth-right of the oldest girl, completely bury the proper Christian
name. Ralph saw his first strategic point, which was to capture Bud
Means.

After supper, the boys began to get ready for something. Bull stuck up
his ears in a dignified way, and the three or four yellow curs who were
Bull's satellites yelped delightedly and discordantly.

"Bill," said Bud Means to his brother, "ax the master ef he'd like to
hunt coons. I'd like to take the starch out uv the stuck-up feller."

"'Nough said[3]," was Bill's reply.

"You durn't[4] do it," said Bud.

"I don't take no sech a dare[5]," returned Bill, and walked down to the
gate, by which Ralph stood watching the stars come out, and half wishing
he had never seen Flat Creek.

"I say, mister," began Bill, "mister, they's a coon what's been a eatin'
our chickens lately, and we're goin' to try to ketch[6] the varmint.
You wouldn't like to take a coon hunt nor nothin', would you?"

"Why, yes," said Ralph, "there's nothing I should like better, if I
could only be sure Bull wouldn't mistake me for the coon."

And so, as a matter of policy, Ralph dragged his tired legs eight or ten
miles, on hill and in hollow, after Bud, and Bill, and Bull, and the
coon. But the raccoon[7] climbed a tree. The boys got into a quarrel
about whose business it was to have brought the axe, and who was to
blame that the tree could not be felled. Now, if there was anything
Ralph's muscles were good for, it was climbing. So, asking Bud to give
him a start, he soon reached the limb above the one on which the raccoon
was. Ralph did not know how ugly a customer a raccoon can be, and so
got credit for more courage than he had. With much peril to his legs
from the raccoon's teeth, he succeeded in shaking the poor creature off
among the yelping brutes and yelling boys. Ralph could not help
sympathizing with the hunted animal, which sold its life as dearly as
possible, giving the dogs many a scratch and bite. It seemed to him that
he was like the raccoon, precipitated into the midst of a party of dogs
who would rejoice in worrying _his_ life out, as Bull and his crowd were
destroying the poor raccoon. When Bull at last seized the raccoon and
put an end to it, Ralph could not but admire the decided way in which he
did it, calling to mind Bud's comment, "Ef Bull once takes a holt,
heaven and yarth[8] can't make him let go."

But as they walked home, Bud carrying the raccoon by the tail, Ralph
felt that his hunt had not been in vain. He fancied that even red-eyed
Bull, walking uncomfortably close to his heels, respected him more
since he had climbed that tree.

"Purty peart kind of a master," remarked the old man to Bud, after Ralph
had gone to bed. "Guess you better be a little easy on him. Hey?"

But Bud deigned no reply. Perhaps because he knew that Ralph heard the
conversation through the thin partition.

Ralph woke delighted to find it raining. He did not want to hunt or fish
on Sunday, and this steady rain would enable him to make friends with
Bud. I do not know how he got started, but after breakfast he began to
tell stories. Out of all the books he had ever read he told story after
story. And "old man Means," and "old _Miss_ Means," and Bud Means, and
Bill Means, and Sis Means listened with great eyes while he told of
Sinbad's adventures, of the Old Man of the Sea, of Robinson Crusoe, of
Captain Gulliver's experiences in Liliput, and of Baron Munchausen's
exploits.

Ralph had caught his fish. The hungry minds of these backwoods people
were refreshed with the new life that came to their imaginations in
these stories. For there was but one book in the Means library, and
that, a well-thumbed copy of "Captain Riley's Narrative," had long since
lost all freshness.

"I'll be dog-on'd[9]," said Bill, emphatically, "ef I hadn't 'ruther
hear the master tell them whoppin' yarns than to go to a circus the best
day I ever seed!" Bill could pay no higher compliment.

What Ralph wanted was to make a friend of Bud. It's a nice thing to
have the seventy-four-gun ship on your own side, and the more Hartsook
admired the knotted muscles of Bud Means the more he desired to attach
him to himself. So, whenever he struck out a peculiarly brilliant
passage, he anxiously watched Bud's eye. But the young Philistine kept
his own counsel. He listened, but said nothing, and the eyes under his
shaggy brows gave no sign. Ralph could not tell whether those eyes were
deep and inscrutable or only stolid. Perhaps a little of both. When
Monday morning came, Ralph was nervous. He walked to school with Bud.

"I guess you're a little skeered by what the old man said, a'n't you?"

Ralph was about to deny it, but on reflection concluded that it was best
to speak the truth. He said that Mr. Means's description of the school
had made him feel a little down-hearted.

"What will you do with the tough boys? You a'n't no match for 'em." And
Ralph felt Bud's eyes not only measuring his muscles, but scrutinizing
his countenance. He only answered:

"I don't know."

"What would you do with me, for instance?" and Bud stretched himself up
as if to shake out the reserve power coiled up in his great muscles.

"I sha'n't have any trouble with you."

"Why, I'm the wust chap of all. I thrashed the last master, myself."

And again the eyes of Bud Means looked out sharply from his shadowing
brows to see the effect of this speech on the slender young man.

"You won't thrash me, though," said Ralph.

"Pshaw! I 'low I could whip you in an inch of your life with my left
hand, and never half try," said young Means, with a threatening sneer.

"I know that as well as you do."

"Well, a'n't you afraid of me, then?" and again he looked sidewise at
Ralph.

"Not a bit," said Ralph, wondering at his own courage.

They walked on in silence a minute. Bud was turning the matter over.

"Why a'n't you afraid of me?" he said presently.

"Because you and I are going to be friends."

"And what about t'others?"

"I am not afraid of all the other boys put together."

"You a'n't! The mischief! How's that?"

"Well, I'm not afraid of them because you and I are going to be friends,
and you can whip all of them together. You'll do the fighting and I'll
do the teaching."

The diplomatic Bud only chuckled a little at this; whether he assented
to the alliance or not Ralph could not tell.

When Ralph looked round on the faces of the scholars--the little faces
full of mischief and curiosity, the big faces full of an expression
which was not further removed than second-cousin from contempt--when
when young Hartsook looked into these faces, his heart palpitated with
stage-fright. There is no audience so hard to face as one of
school-children, as many a man has found to his cost. Perhaps it is that
no conventional restraint can keep down their laughter when you do or
say anything ridiculous.

Hartsook's first day was hurried and unsatisfactory. He was not of
himself, and consequently not master of anybody else. When evening came,
there were symptoms of insubordination through the whole school. Poor
Ralph was sick at heart. He felt that if there had ever been the shadow
of an alliance between himself and Bud, it was all "off" now. It seemed
to Hartsook that even Bull had lost his respect for the teacher. Half
that night the young man lay awake. At last comfort came to him. A
reminiscence of the death of the raccoon flashed on him like a vision.
He remembered that quiet and annihilating bite which Bull gave. He
remembered Bud's certificate, that "Ef Bull once takes a holt, heaven
and yarth can't make him let go." He thought that what Flat Creek needed
was a bulldog. He would be a bulldog, quiet, but invincible. He would
take hold in such a way that nothing should make him let go. And then he
went to sleep.

In the morning Ralph got out of bed slowly. He put his clothes on
slowly. He pulled on his boots in a bulldog mood. He tried to move as he
thought Bull would move if he were a man. He ate with deliberation, and
looked everybody in the eyes with a manner that made Bud watch him
curiously. He found himself continually comparing himself with Bull. He
found Bull possessing a strange fascination for him. He walked to school
alone, the rest having gone on before. He entered the school-room
preserving a cool and dogged manner. He saw in the eyes of the boys that
there was mischief brewing. He did not dare sit down in his chair for
fear of a pin. Everybody looked solemn. Ralph lifted the lid of his
desk. "Bow-wow! wow-wow!" It was the voice of an imprisoned puppy, and
the school giggled and then roared. Then everything was quiet.

The scholars expected an outburst of wrath from the teacher. For they
had come to regard the whole world as divided into two classes, the
teacher on the one side representing lawful authority, and the pupils on
the other in a state of chronic rebellion. To play a trick on the master
was an evidence of spirit; to "lick" the master was to be the crowned
hero of Flat Creek district. Such a hero was Bud Means; and Bill, who
had less muscle, saw a chance to distinguish himself on a teacher of
slender frame. Hence the puppy in the desk.

Ralph Hartsook grew red in the face when he saw the puppy. But the cool,
repressed, bulldog mood in which he had kept himself saved him. He
lifted the dog into his arms and stroked him until the laughter
subsided. Then, in a solemn and set way, he began:

"I am sorry," and he looked round the room with a steady, hard
eye--everybody felt that there was a conflict coming--"I am sorry that
any scholar in this school could be so mean"--the word was uttered with
a sharp emphasis, and all the big boys felt sure that there would be a
fight with Bill Means, and perhaps with Bud--"could be so _mean_--as
to--shut up his _brother_ in such a place as that!"

There was a long, derisive laugh. The wit was indifferent, but by one
stroke Ralph had carried the whole school to his side. By the
significant glances of the boys, Hartsook detected the perpetrator of
the joke, and with the hard and dogged look in his eyes, with just such
a look as Bull would give a puppy, but with the utmost suavity in his
voice, he said:

"William Means, will you be so good as to put this dog out of doors?"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: _Aout_ is not the common form of _out_, as it is in certain
rustic New England regions. The vowel is here drawn in this way for
imperative emphasis, and it occurs as a consequence of drawling speech.]

[Footnote 3: "_'Nough said_" is more than enough said for the French
translator, who takes it apparently for a sort of barbarous negative and
renders it, "I don't like to speak to him." I need hardly explain to any
American reader that _enough said_ implies the ending of all discussion
by the acceptance of the proposition or challenge.]

[Footnote 4: _Durn't, daren't, dasent, dursent_, and _don't dast_ are
forms of this variable negative heard in the folk-speech of various
parts of the country. The tenses of this verb seem to have got
hopelessly mixed long ago, even in literary use, and the speech of the
people reflects the historic confusion.]

[Footnote 5: _To take a dare_ is an expression used in senses
diametrically opposed. Its common sense is that of the text. The man who
refuses to accept a challenge is said to take a dare, and there is some
implication of cowardice in the imputation. On the other hand, one who
accepts a challenge is said also to take the dare.]

[Footnote 6: Most bad English was once good English. _Ketch_ was used by
writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for _catch_. A New
Hampshire magistrate in the seventeenth century spells it _caitch_, and
probably pronounced it in that way. _Ketch_, a boat, was sometimes
spelled _catch_ by the first American colonists, and the far-fetched
derivation of the word from the Turkish may be one of the fancies of
etymologists.]

[Footnote 7: The derivation of _raccoon_ from the French _raton_, to
which Mr. Skeat gives currency, still holds its place in some of our
standard dictionaries. If American lexicographers would only read the
literature of American settlement they would know that Mr. Skeat's
citation of a translation of Buffon is nearly two centuries too late. As
early as 1612 Captain John Smith gives _aroughcune_ as the aboriginal
Virginia word, and more than one New England writer used _rackoon_ a few
years later.]

[Footnote 8: This prefixed _y_ is a mark of a very illiterate or antique
form of the dialect. I have known _piece yarthen_ used for "a piece of
earthen" [ware], the preposition getting lost in the sound of the _y_. I
leave it to etymologists to determine its relation to that ancient
prefix that differentiates _earn_ in one sense from _yearn_. But the
article before a vowel may account for it if we consider it a
corruption. "The earth" pronounced in a drawling way will produce _the
yearth_. In the New York Documents is a letter from one Barnard Hodges,
a settler in Delaware in the days of Governor Andros, whose spelling
indicates a free use of the parasitic _y_. He writes "yunless,"
"yeunder" (under), "yunderstanding," "yeundertake," and "yeouffeis"
(office).]

[Footnote 9: Like many of the ear-marks of this dialect, the verb
"dog-on" came from Scotland, presumably by the way of the north of
Ireland. A correspondent of _The Nation_ calls attention to the use of
"dagon" as Scotch dialect in Barrie's "Little Minister," a recent book.
On examining that story, I find that the word has precisely the sense of
our Hoosier "dog-on," which is to be pronounced broadly as a Hoosier
pronounces dog--"daug-on." If Mr. Barrie gives his _a_ the broad sound,
his "dagon" is nearly identical with "dog-on." Here are some detached
sentences from "The Little Minister:"

"Beattie spoke for more than himself when he said: 'Dagon that Manse! I
never gie a swear but there it is glowering at me.'"

"'Dagon religion,' Rob retorted fiercely; 't spoils a' thing.'"

"There was some angry muttering from the crowd, and young Charles Yuill
exclaimed, 'Dagon you, would you lord it ower us on week-days as well as
on Sabbaths?'"

"'Have you on your Sabbath shoon or have you no on your Sabbath shoon?'
'Guid care you took I should ha'e the dagont things on!' retorted the
farmer."

It will be seen that "dagont," as used above, is the Scotch form of
"dog-oned." But Mr. Barrie uses the same form apparently for "dog-on it"
in the following passage:

"Ay, there was Ruth when she was na wanted, but Ezra, dagont, it looked
as if Ezra had jumped clean out o' the Bible!"

Strangely enough, this word as a verb is not to be found in Jamieson's
dictionary of the Scottish dialect, but Jamieson gives "dugon" as a
noun. It is given in the supplement to Jamieson, however, as "dogon,"
but still as a noun, with an ancient plural _dogonis_. It is explained
as "a term of contempt." The example cited by Jamieson is Hogg's "Winter
Tales," I. 292, and is as follows:

"What wad my father say if I were to marry a man that loot himsel' be
thrashed by Tommy Potts, a great supple wi' a back nae stiffer than a
willy brand? . . . When one comes to close quarters wi' him he's but a
dugon."

Halliwell and Wright give _dogon_ as a noun, and mark it Anglo-Norman,
but they apparently know it only from Jamieson and the supplement to
Jamieson, where _dogguin_ is cited from Cotgrave as meaning "a filthie
old curre," and _doguin_ from Roquefort, defined by "brutal, currish"
[hargneux]. A word with the same orthography, _doguin_, is still used in
French for puppy. It is of course a question whether the noun _dogon_
and its French antecedents are connected with the American verb
_dog-on_. It is easy to conceive that such an epithet as _dogon_ might
get itself mixed up with the word dog, and so become an imprecation. For
instance, a servant in the family of a friend of mine in Indiana,
wishing to resign her place before the return of some daughters of the
house whom she had never seen, announced that she was going to leave
"before them dog-on girls got home." Here the word might have been the
old epithet, or an abbreviated participle. _Dogged_ is apparently a
corruption of dog-on in the phrase "I'll be dogged." I prefer _dog-on_
to _dogone_, because in the dialect the sense of setting a dog on is
frequently present to the speaker, though far enough away from the
primitive sense of the word; perhaps.]




CHAPTER II.

A SPELL COMING.


There was a moment of utter stillness; but the magnetism of Ralph's eye
was too much for Bill Means. The request was so polite, the master's
look was so innocent and yet so determined. Bill often wondered
afterward that he had not "fit" rather than obeyed the request. But
somehow he put the dog out. He was partly surprised, partly inveighed,
partly awed into doing just what he had not intended to do. In the week
that followed, Bill had to fight half a dozen boys for calling him
"Puppy Means." Bill said he wished he'd licked the master on the spot.
'Twould 'a' saved five fights out of the six.

And all that day and the next, the bulldog in the master's eye was a
terror to evil-doers. At the close of school on the second day Bud was
heard to give it as his opinion that "the master wouldn't be much in a
tussle, but he had a heap of thunder and lightning in him."

Did he inflict corporal punishment? inquires some philanthropic friend.
Would you inflict corporal punishment if you were tiger-trainer in Van
Amburgh's happy family? But poor Ralph could never satisfy his
constituency in this regard.

"Don't believe he'll do," was Mr. Pete Jones's comment to Mr. Means.
"Don't thrash enough. Boys won't l'arn 'less you thrash 'em, says I.
Leastways, mine won't. Lay it on good is what I says to a master. Lay it
on good. Don't do no harm. Lickin' and l'arnin' goes together. No
lickin', no l'arnin', says I. Lickin' and l'arnin,' lickin' and larnin',
is the good ole way."

And Mr. Jones, like some wiser people, was the more pleased with his
formula that it had an alliterative sound. Nevertheless, Ralph was
master from this time until the spelling-school came. If only it had not
been for that spelling-school! Many and many a time after the night of
the fatal spelling-school Ralph used to say, "If only it had not been
for that spelling-school!"

There had to be a spelling-school. Not only for the sake of my story,
which would not have been worth the telling if the spelling-school had
not taken place, but because Flat Creek district had to have a
spelling-school. It is the only public literary exercise known in
Hoopole County. It takes the place of lyceum lecture and debating club.
Sis Means, or, as she wished now to be called, Mirandy Means, expressed
herself most positively in favor of it. She said that she 'lowed the
folks in that district couldn't in no wise do without it. But it was
rather to its social than to its intellectual benefits that she
referred. For all the spelling-schools ever seen could not enable her to
stand anywhere but at the foot of the class. There is one branch
diligently taught in a backwoods school. The public mind seems impressed
with the difficulties of English orthography, and there is a solemn
conviction that the chief end of man is to learn to spell. "'Know
Webster's Elementary' came down from Heaven," would be the backwoods
version of the 'Greek saying but that, unfortunately for the Greeks,
their fame has not reached so far. It often happens that the pupil does
not know the meaning of a single word in the lesson. This is of no
consequence. What do you want to know the meaning of a word for? Words
were made to be spelled, and men were probably created that they might
spell them. Hence the necessity for sending a pupil through the
spelling-book five times before you allow him to begin to read, or
indeed to do anything else. Hence the necessity for those long
spelling-classes at the close of each forenoon and afternoon session of
the school, to stand at the head of which is the cherished ambition of
every scholar. Hence, too, the necessity for devoting the whole of the
afternoon session of each Friday to a "spelling-match." In fact,
spelling is the "national game" in Hoopole County. Baseball and croquet
matches are as unknown as Olympian chariot-races. Spelling and
shucking[10] are the only public competitions.

So the fatal spelling-school had to be appointed for the Wednesday of
the second week of the session, just when Ralph felt himself master of
the situation. Not that he was without his annoyances. One of Ralph's
troubles in the week before the spelling-school was that he was loved.
The other that he was hated. And while the time between the appointing
of the spelling tournament and the actual occurrence of that remarkable
event is engaged in elapsing, let me narrate two incidents that made it
for Ralph a trying time.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: In naming the several parts of the Indian corn and the
dishes made from it, the English language was put to many shifts. Such
words as _tassel_ and _silk_ were poetically applied to the blossoms;
_stalk_, _blade_, and _ear_ were borrowed from other sorts of corn, and
the Indian tongues were forced to pay tribute to name the dishes
borrowed from the savages. From them we have _hominy_, _pone_, _supawn_,
and _succotash_. For other nouns words were borrowed from English
provincial dialects. _Shuck_ is one of these. On the northern belt,
shucks are the outer covering of nuts; in the middle and southern
regions the word is applied to what in New England is called the husks
of the corn. _Shuck_, however, is much more widely used than _husk_ in
colloquial speech--the farmers in more than half of the United States
are hardly acquainted with the word _husk_ as applied to the envelope of
the ear. _Husk_, in the Middle States, and in some parts of the South
and West, means the bran of the cornmeal, as notably in Davy Crockett's
verse:

     "She sifted the meal, she gimme the hus';
     She baked the bread, she gimme the crus';
     She b'iled the meat, she gimme the bone;
     She gimme a kick and sent me home."

In parts of Virginia, before the war, the word _husk_ or _hus'_ meant
the cob or spike of the corn. "I smack you over wid a cawn-hus'" is a
threat I have often heard one negro boy make to another. _Cob_ is
provincial English for ear, and I have known "a cob of corn" used in
Canada for an ear of Indian corn. While writing this note "a cob of
Indian corn "--meaning an ear--appears in the report of an address by a
distinguished man at a recent meeting of the Royal Geographical Society.
A lady tells me that she met, in the book of an English traveller, the
remarkable statement that "the Americans are very fond of the young
grain called cob." These Indian-corn words have reached an accepted
meaning after a competition. To _shell_ corn, among the earliest
settlers of Virginia, meant to take it out of the envelope, which was
presumably called the shell. The analogy is with the shelling of pulse.]




CHAPTER III.

MIRANDY, HANK, AND SHOCKY.


Mirandy had nothing but contempt for the new master until he developed
the bulldog in his character. Mirandy fell in love with the bulldog.
Like many other girls of her class, she was greatly enamored with the
"subjection of women," and she stood ready to fall in love with any man
strong enough to be her master. Much has been said of the strong-minded
woman. I offer this psychological remark as a contribution to the
natural history of the weak-minded woman.

It was at the close of that very second day on which Ralph had achieved
his first victory over the school, and in which Mirandy had been seized
with her desperate passion for him, that she told him about it. Not in
words. We do not allow _that_ in the most civilized countries, and still
less would it be tolerated in Hoopole County. But Mirandy told the
master the fact that she was in love with him, though no word passed her
lips. She walked by him from school. She cast at him what are commonly
called sheep's-eyes. Ralph thought them more like calf's eyes. She
changed the whole tone of her voice. She whined ordinarily. Now she
whimpered. And so by ogling him, by blushing at him, by tittering at
him, by giggling at him, by snickering at him, by simpering at him, by
making herself tenfold more a fool even than nature had made her, she
managed to convey to the dismayed soul of the young teacher the
frightful intelligence that he was loved by the richest, the ugliest,
the silliest, the coarsest, and the most entirely contemptible girl in
Flat Creek district.

Ralph sat by the fire the next morning trying to read a few minutes
before school-time, while the boys were doing the chores and the bound
girl was milking the cows, with no one in the room but the old woman.
She was generally as silent as Bud, but now she seemed for some
unaccountable reason disposed to talk. She had sat down on the broad
hearth to have her usual morning smoke; the poplar table, adorned by no
cloth, stood in the middle of the floor; the unwashed blue teacups sat
in the unwashed blue saucers; the unwashed blue plates kept company with
the begrimed blue pitcher. The dirty skillets by the fire were kept in
countenance by the dirtier pots, and the ashes were drifted and strewn
over the hearth-stones in a most picturesque way.

"You see," said the old woman, knocking the residuum from her cob pipe,
and chafing some dry leaf between her withered hands preparatory to
filling it again, "you see, Mr. Hartsook, my ole man's purty well along
in the world. He's got a right smart lot of this world's plunder[11],
one way and another." And while she stuffed the tobacco into her pipe
Ralph wondered why she should mention it to him. "You see, we moved in
here nigh upon twenty-five years ago. 'Twas when my Jack, him as died
afore Bud was born, was a baby. Bud'll be twenty-one the fif' of next
June."

Here Mrs. Means stopped to rake a live coal out of the fire with her
skinny finger, and then to carry it in her skinny palm to the bowl--or
to the _hole_--of her cob pipe. When she got the smoke a-going, she
proceeded:

"You see, this yere bottom land was all Congress land[12] in them there
days, and it sold for a dollar and a quarter, and I says to my ole man,
'Jack,' says I, 'Jack, do you git a plenty while you're a-gittin'. Git a
plenty while you're a-gittin',' says I, 'fer 'twon't never be no
cheaper'n 'tis now,' and it ha'n't been; I knowed 'twouldn't," and Mrs.
Means took the pipe from her mouth to indulge in a good chuckle at the
thought of her financial shrewdness. "'Git a plenty while you're
a-gittin' says I. I could see, you know, they was a powerful sight of
money in Congress land. That's what made me say, 'Git a plenty while
you're a-gittin'.' And Jack, he's wuth lots and gobs of money, all made
out of Congress land. Jack didn't git rich by hard work. Bless you, no!
Not him. That a'n't his way. Hard work a'n't, you know. 'Twas that air
six hundred dollars he got along of me, all salted down into Flat Crick
bottoms at a dollar and a quarter a' acre, and 'twas my sayin' 'Git a
plenty while you're a gittin'' as done it." And here the old ogre
laughed, or grinned horribly, at Ralph, showing her few straggling,
discolored teeth.

Then she got up and knocked the ashes out of her pipe, and laid the pipe
away and walked round In front of Ralph. After adjusting the chunks[13]
so that the fire would burn, she turned her yellow face toward Ralph,
and scanning him closely came out with the climax of her speech in the
remark: "You see as how, Mr. Hartsook, the man what gits my Mirandy'll
do well. Flat Crick land's wuth nigt upon a hundred a' acre."

This gentle hint came near knocking Ralph down. Had Flat Creek land been
worth a hundred times a hundred dollars an acre, and had he owned five
hundred times Means's five hundred acres, he would have given it all
just at that moment to have annihilated the whole tribe of Meanses.
Except Bud. Bud was a giant, but a good-natured one. He thought he would
except Bud from the general destruction. As for the rest, he mentally
pictured to himself the pleasure of attending their funerals. There was
one thought, however, between him and despair. He felt confident that
the cordiality, the intensity, and the persistency of his dislike of Sis
Means were such that he should never inherit a foot of the Flat Creek
bottoms.

But what about Bud? What if he joined the conspiracy to marry him to
this weak-eyed, weak-headed wood-nymph, or backwoods nymph?

If Ralph felt it a misfortune to be loved by Mirandy Means, he found
himself almost equally unfortunate in having incurred the hatred of the
meanest boy in school. "Hank" Banta, low-browed, smirky, and crafty, was
the first sufferer by Ralph's determination to use corporal punishment,
and so Henry Banta, who was a compound of deceit and resentment, never
lost an opportunity to annoy the young school-master, who was obliged to
live perpetually on his guard against his tricks.

One morning, as Ralph walked toward the school-house, he met little
Shocky. What the boy's first name or last name was the teacher did not
know. He had given his name as Shocky, and all the teacher knew was that
he was commonly called Shocky, that he was an orphan, that he lived with
a family named Pearson over in Rocky Hollow, and that he was the most
faithful and affectionate child in the school. On this morning that I
speak of, Ralph had walked toward the school early to avoid the company
of Mirandy. But not caring to sustain his dignity longer than was
necessary, he loitered along the road, admiring the trunks of the
maples, and picking up a beech-nut now and then. Just as he was about
to go on toward the school, he caught sight of little Shocky running
swiftly toward him, but looking from side to side, as if afraid of being
seen.

[Illustration: BETSY SHORT]

"Well, Shocky, what is it?" and Ralph put his hand kindly on the great
bushy head of white hair from which came Shocky's nickname. Shocky had
to pant a minute.

"Why, Mr. Hartsook," he gasped, scratching his head, "they's a pond down
under the school-house," and here Shocky's breath gave out entirely for
a minute.

"Yes, Shocky, I know that. What about it? The trustees haven't come to
fill it up, have they?"

"Oh! no, sir; but Hank Banta, you know--" and Shocky took another
breathing spell, standing as dose to Ralph as he could, for poor Shocky
got all his sunshine from the master's presence.

"Has Henry fallen in and got a ducking, Shocky?"

"Oh! no, sir; he wants to git you in, you see."

"Well, I won't go in, though, Shocky."

"But, you see, he's been and gone and pulled back the board that you
have to step on to git ahind your desk; he's been and gone and pulled
back the board so as you can't help a-tippin' it up, and a-sowsin' right
in ef you step there."

"And so you came to tell me." There was a huskiness in Ralph's voice.
He had, then, one friend in Flat Creek district--poor little Shocky. He
put his arm around Shocky just a moment, and then told him to hasten
across to the other road, so as to come back to the school-house in a
direction at right angles to the master's approach. But the caution was
not needed. Shocky had taken care to leave in that way, and was
altogether too cunning to be seen coming down the road with Mr.
Hartsook. But after he got over the fence to go through the "sugar camp"
(or sugar _orchard_, as they say at the East), he stopped and turned
back once or twice, just to catch one more smile from Ralph. And then he
hied away through the tall trees, a very happy boy, kicking and
ploughing the brown leaves before him in his perfect delight, saying
over and over again: "How he looked at me! how he did look!" And when
Ralph came up to the school-house door, there was Shocky sauntering
along from the other direction, throwing bits of limestone at fence
rails, and smiling still clear down to his shoes at thought of the
master's kind words.

"What a quare boy Shocky is!" remarked Betsey Short, with a giggle. "He
just likes to wander round alone. I see him a-comin' out of the sugar
camp just now. He's been in there half an hour." And Betsey giggled
again; for Betsey Short could giggle on slighter provocation than any
other girl on Flat Creek.

When Ralph Hartsook, with the quiet, dogged tread that he was
cultivating, walked into the school-room, he took great care not to seem
to see the trap set for him; but he carelessly stepped over the board
that had been so nicely adjusted. The boys who were Hank's confidants in
the plot were very busy over their slates, and took pains not to show
their disappointment.

The morning session wore on without incident. Ralph several times caught
two people looking at him. One was Mirandy. Her weak and watery eyes
stole loving glances over the top of her spelling-book, which she would
not study. Her looks made Ralph's spirits sink to forty below zero, and
congeal.

But on one of the backless little benches that sat in the middle of the
school-room was little Shocky, who also cast many love glances at the
young master; glances as grateful to his heart as Mirandy's ogling--he
was tempted to call it ogring--was hateful.

"Look at Shocky," giggled Betsey Short, behind her slate. "He looks as
if he was a-goin' to eat the master up, body and soul."

And so the forenoon wore on as usual, and those who laid the trap had
forgotten it, themselves. The morning session was drawing to a close.
The fire in the great old fire-place had burnt low. The flames, which
seemed to Shocky to be angels, had disappeared, and now the bright
coals, which had played the part of men and women and houses in Shocky's
fancy, had taken on a white and downy covering of ashes, and the great
half-burnt back-log lay there smouldering like a giant asleep in a
snow-drift. Shocky longed to wake him up.

As for Henry Banta, he was too much bothered to get the answer to a
"sum" he was doing, to remember anything about his trap. In fact, he had
quite forgotten that half an hour ago in the all-absorbing employment of
drawing ugly pictures on his slate and coaxing Betsey Short to giggle by
showing them slyly across the school-room. Once or twice Ralph had been
attracted to Betsey's extraordinary fits of giggling, and had come so
near to catching Hank that the boy thought it best not to run any
further risk of the beech switches, four or five feet long, laid up
behind the master in sight of the school as a prophylactic. Hence his
application just now to his "sum" in long division, and hence his
puzzled look, for, idler that he was, his "sums" did not solve
themselves easily. As usual in such cases, he came up in front of the
master's desk to have the difficulty explained. He had to wait a minute
until Ralph got through with showing Betsey Short, who had been seized
with a studying fit, and who could hardly give any attention to the
teacher's explanations, she did want to giggle so much! Not at anything
in particular, but just at things in general.

While Ralph was "doing" Betsey's "sum" for her, he was solving a much
more difficult question. A plan had flashed upon him, but the punishment
seemed a severe one. He gave it up once or twice, but he remembered how
turbulent the Flat Creek elements were; and had he not inly resolved to
be as unrelenting as a bulldog? He fortified himself by recalling again
the oft-remembered remark of Bud, "Ef Bull wunst takes a holt, heaven
and yarth can't make him let go." And so he resolved to give Hank and
the whole school one good lesson.

"Just step round behind me, Henry, and you can see how I do this," said
Ralph.

Hank was entirely off his guard, and, with his eyes fixed upon the slate
on the teacher's desk, he sidled round upon the broad loose board
misplaced by his own hand, and in an instant the other end of the board
rose up in the middle of the school-room, almost striking Shocky in the
face, while Henry Banta went down into the ice-cold water beneath the
school-house.

"Why, Henry!" cried Ralph, jumping to his feet with well-feigned
surprise. "How _did_ this happen?" him by the fire.

Betsey Short giggled.

Shocky was so tickled that he could hardly keep his seat.

The boys who were in the plot looked very serious indeed.

Ralph made some remarks by way of improving the occasion. He spoke
strongly of the utter meanness of the one who could play so heartless a
trick on a schoolmate. He said that it was as much thieving to get your
fun at the expense of another as to steal his money. And while he
talked, all eyes were turned on Hank--all except the eyes of Mirandy
Means. They looked simperingly at Ralph. All the rest looked at Hank.
The fire had made his face very red. Shocky noticed that. Betsey Short
noticed it, and giggled. The master wound up with an appropriate
quotation from Scripture. He said that the person who displaced that
board had better not be encouraged by the success--he said _success_
with a curious emphasis--of the present experiment to attempt another
trick of the kind. For it was set down in the Bible that if a man dug a
pit for the feet of another he would be very likely to fall in it
himself. Which made all the pupils look solemn, except Betsey Short, who
giggled. And Shocky wanted to. And Mirandy cast an expiring look at
Ralph. And if the teacher was not love-sick, he certainly was sick of
Mirandy's love.

[Illustration: HANK BANTA'S IMPROVED PLUNGE BATH]

When school was "let out," Ralph gave Hank every caution that he could
about taking cold, and even lent him his overcoat, very much against
Hank's will. For Hank had obstinately refused to go home before the
school was dismissed.

Then the master walked out in a quiet and subdued way to spend the noon
recess in the woods, while Shocky watched his retreating footsteps with
loving admiration. And the pupils not in the secret canvassed the
question of who moved the board. Bill Means said he'd bet Hank did it,
which set Betsey Short off in an uncontrollable giggle. And Shocky
listened innocently.

But that night Bud said slyly: "Thunder and lightning! what a manager
you _air_, Mr. Hartsook!" To which Ralph returned no reply except a
friendly smile. Muscle paid tribute to brains that time.

But Ralph had no time for exultation; for just here came the
spelling-school.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: This word _plunder_ is probably from Pennsylvania, as it
is exactly equivalent to the German word _plunder_, in the sense of
household effects, the original meaning of the word in German. Any kind
of baggage may be called _plunder_, but the most accepted sense is
household goods. It is quite seriously used. I have seen bills of lading
on the Western waters certifying that A.B. had shipped "1 lot of
plunder;" that is, household goods. It is here used figuratively for
goods in general.]

[Footnote 12: _Congress land_ was the old designation for land owned by
the government. Under the Confederation, the Congress was the
government, and the forms of speech seem to have long retained the
notion that what belonged to the United States was the property of
Congress.]

[Footnote 13: The commonest use of the word _chunk_ in the old days was
for the ends of the sticks of cord-wood burned in the great fireplaces.
As the sticks burned in two, the chunks fell down or rolled back on the
wall side of the andirons. By putting the chunks together, a new fire
was set a-going without fresh wood. This use of the word is illustrated
in a folk-rhyme or nursery jingle of the country which has neither sense
nor elegance to recommend it:

     "Old Mother Hunk
     She got drunk
     And fell in the fire
     And kicked up a chunk."
]




CHAPTER IV.

SPELLING DOWN THE MASTER.


"I 'low," said Mrs. Means, as she stuffed the tobacco into her cob pipe
after supper on that eventful Wednesday evening: "I 'low they'll app'int
the Squire to gin out the words to-night. They mos' always do, you see,
kase he's the peartest[14] _ole_ man in this deestrick; and I 'low some
of the young fellers would have to git up and dust ef they would keep up
to him. And he uses sech remarkable smart words. He speaks so polite,
too. But laws! don't I remember when he was poarer nor Job's turkey?
Twenty year ago, when he come to these 'ere diggings, that air Squire
Hawkins was a poar Yankee school-master, that said 'pail' instid of
bucket, and that called a cow a 'caow,' and that couldn't tell to save
his gizzard what we meant by '_low_[15] and by _right smart_[16]. But
he's larnt our ways now, an' he's jest as civilized as the rest of us.
You would-n know he'd ever been a Yankee. He didn't stay poar long. Not
he. He jest married a right rich girl! He! he!" And the old woman
grinned at Ralph, and then at Mirandy, and then at the rest, until Ralph
shuddered. Nothing was so frightful to him as to be fawned on by this
grinning ogre, whose few lonesome, blackish teeth seemed ready to devour
him. "He didn't stay poar, you bet a hoss!" and with this the coal was
deposited on the pipe, and the lips began to crack like parchment as
each puff of smoke escaped. "He married rich, you see," and here another
significant look at the young master, and another fond look at Mirandy,
as she puffed away reflectively. "His wife hadn't no book-larnin'. She'd
been through the spellin'-book wunst, and had got as fur as 'asperity'
on it a second time. But she couldn't read a word when she was married,
and never could. She warn't overly smart. She hadn't hardly got the
sense the law allows. But schools was skase in them air days, and,
besides, book-larnin' don't do no good to a woman. Makes her stuck up. I
never knowed but one gal in my life as had ciphered into fractions, and
she was so dog-on stuck up that she turned up her nose one night at a
apple-peelin' bekase I tuck a sheet off the bed to splice out the
table-cloth, which was rather short. And the sheet was mos' clean too.
Had-n been slep on more'n wunst or twicet. But I was goin' fer to say
that when Squire Hawkins married Virginny Gray he got a heap o' money,
or, what's the same thing mostly, a heap o' good land. And that's
better'n book-larnin', says I. Ef a gal had gone clean through all
eddication, and got to the rule of three itself, that would-n buy a
feather-bed. Squire Hawkins jest put eddication agin the gal's farm, and
traded even, an' ef ary one of 'em got swindled, I never heerd no
complaints."

And here she looked at Ralph in triumph, her hard face splintering into
the hideous semblance of a smile. And Mirandy cast a blushing, gushing,
all-imploring, and all-confiding look on the young master.

"I say, ole woman," broke in old Jack, "I say, wot is all this 'ere
spoutin' about the Square fer?" and old Jack, having bit off an ounce of
"pigtail," returned the plug to his pocket.

As for Ralph, he fell into a sort of terror. He had a guilty feeling
that this speech of the old lady's had somehow committed him beyond
recall to Mirandy. He did not see visions of breach-of-promise suits.
But he trembled at the thought of an avenging big brother.

"Hanner, you kin come along, too, ef you're a mind, when you git the
dishes washed," said Mrs. Means to the bound girl, as she shut and
latched the back door. The Means family had built a new house in front
of the old one, as a sort of advertisement of bettered circumstances, an
eruption of shoddy feeling; but when the new building was completed,
they found themselves unable to occupy it for anything else than a
lumber room, and so, except a parlor which Mirandy had made an effort to
furnish a little (in hope of the blissful time when somebody should "set
up" with her of evenings), the new building was almost unoccupied, and
the family went in and out through the back door, which, indeed, was the
front door also, for, according to a curious custom, the "front" of the
house was placed toward the south, though the "big road" (Hoosier for
_highway_) ran along the north-west side, or, rather, past the
north-west corner of it.

When the old woman had spoken thus to Hannah and had latched the door,
she muttered, "That gal don't never show no gratitude fer favors;" to
which Bud rejoined that he didn't think she had no great sight to be
pertickler thankful fer. To which Mrs. Means made no reply, thinking it
best, perhaps, not to wake up her dutiful son on so interesting a theme
as her treatment of Hannah. Ralph felt glad that he was this evening to
go to another boarding place. He should not hear the rest of the
controversy.

Ralph walked to the school-house with Bill. They were friends again. For
when Hank Banta's ducking and his dogged obstinacy in sitting in his wet
clothes had brought on a serious fever, Ralph had called together the
big boys, and had said: "We must take care of one another, boys. Who
will volunteer to take turns sitting up with Henry?" He put his own name
down, and all the rest followed.

"William Means and myself will sit up to-night," said Ralph. And poor
Bill had been from that moment the teacher's friend. He was chosen to be
Ralph's companion. He was Puppy Means no longer! Hank could not be
conquered by kindness, and the teacher was made to feel the bitterness
of his resentment long after. But Bill Means was for the time entirely
placated, and he and Ralph went to spelling-school together.

Every family furnished a candle. There were yellow dips and white dips,
burning, smoking, and flaring. There was laughing, and talking, and
giggling, and simpering, and ogling, and flirting, and courting. What a
full-dress party is to Fifth Avenue, a spelling-school is to Hoopole
County. It is an occasion which is metaphorically inscribed with this
legend: "Choose your partners." Spelling is only a blind in Hoopole
County, as is dancing on Fifth Avenue. But as there are some in society
who love dancing for its own sake, so in Flat Creek district there were
those who loved spelling for its own sake, and who, smelling the battle
from afar, had come to try their skill in this tournament, hoping to
freshen the laurels they had won in their school-days.

"I 'low," said Mr. Means, speaking as the principal school trustee, "I
'low our friend the Square is jest the man to boss this 'ere consarn
to-night. Ef nobody objects, I'll app'int him. Come, Square, don't be
bashful. Walk up to the trough, fodder or no fodder, as the man said to
his donkey."

There was a general giggle at this, and many of the young swains took
occasion to nudge the girls alongside them, ostensibly for the purpose
of making them see the joke, but really for the pure pleasure of
nudging. The Greeks figured Cupid as naked, probably because he wears so
many disguises that they could not select a costume for him.

The Squire came to the front. Ralph made an inventory of the
agglomeration which bore the name of Squire Hawkins, as follows:

1. A swallow-tail coat of indefinite age, worn only on state occasions^
when its owner was called to figure in his public capacity. Either the
Squire had grown too large or the coat too small.

2. A pair of black gloves, the most phenomenal, abnormal, and unexpected
apparition conceivable in Flat Creek district, where the preachers wore
no coats in the summer, and where a black glove was never seen except on
the hands of the Squire.

3. A wig of that dirty, waxen color so common to wigs. This one showed a
continual inclination to slip off the owner's smooth, bald pate, and the
Squire had frequently to adjust it. As his hair had been red, the wig
did not accord with his face, and the hair ungrayed was doubly
discordant with a countenance shrivelled by age.

4. A semicircular row of whiskers hedging the edge of the jaw and chin.
These were dyed a frightful dead-black, such a color as belonged to no
natural hair or beard that ever existed. At the roots there was a
quarter of an inch of white, giving the whiskers the appearance of
having been stuck on.

5. A pair of spectacles "with tortoise-shell rim." Wont to slip off.

6. A glass eye, purchased of a peddler, and differing in color from its
natural mate, perpetually getting out of focus by turning in or out.

7. A set of false teeth, badly fitted, and given to bobbing up and
down.

8. The Squire proper, to whom these patches were loosely attached.

It is an old story that a boy wrote home to his father begging him to
come West, because "mighty mean men get into office out here." But Ralph
concluded that some Yankees had taught school in Hoopole County who
would not have held a high place in the educational institutions of
Massachusetts. Hawkins had some New England idioms, but they were well
overlaid by a Western pronunciation.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, shoving up his spectacles, and sucking
his lips over his white teeth to keep them in place, "ladies and
gentlemen, young men and maidens, raley I'm obleeged to Mr. Means fer
this honor," and the Squire took both hands and turned the top of his
head round half an inch. Then he adjusted his spectacles. Whether he was
obliged to Mr. Means for the honor of being compared to a donkey was not
clear. "I feel in the inmost compartments of my animal spirits a most
happifying sense of the success and futility of all my endeavors to
sarve the people of Flat Creek deestrick, and the people of Tomkins
township, in my weak way and manner." This burst of eloquence was
delivered with a constrained air and an apparent sense of a danger that
he, Squire Hawkins, might fall to pieces in his weak way and manner,
and of the success and futility of all attempts at reconstruction. For
by this time the ghastly pupil of the left eye, which was black, was
looking away round to the left, while the little blue one on the right
twinkled cheerfully toward the front. The front teeth would drop down so
that the Squire's mouth was kept nearly closed, and his words whistled
through.

"I feel as if I could be grandiloquent on this interesting occasion,"
twisting his scalp round, "but raley I must forego any such exertions.
It is spelling you want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand,
underlying subterfuge, of a good eddication. I put the spellin'-book
prepared by the great Daniel Webster alongside the Bible. I do, raley. I
think I may put it ahead of the Bible. For if it wurn't fer
spellin'-books and sich occasions as these, where would the Bible be? I
should like to know. The man who got up, who compounded this work of
inextricable valoo was a benufactor to the whole human race or any
other." Here the spectacles fell off. The Squire replaced them in some
confusion, gave the top of his head another twist, and felt of his glass
eye, while poor Shocky stared in wonder, and Betsey Short rolled from
side to side in the effort to suppress her giggle. Mrs. Means and the
other old ladies looked the applause they could not speak.

"I app'int Larkin Lanham and Jeems Buchanan fer captings," said the
Squire. And the two young men thus named took a stick and tossed it from
hand to hand to decide which should have the "first choice." One tossed
the stick to the other, who held it fast just where he happened to catch
it. Then the first placed his hand above the second, and so the hands
were alternately changed to the top. The one who held the stick last
without room for the other to take hold had gained the lot. This was
tried three times. As Larkin held the stick twice out of three times, he
had the choice. He hesitated a moment. Everybody looked toward tall Jim
Phillips. But Larkin was fond of a venture on unknown seas, and so he
said, "I take the master," while a buzz of surprise ran round the room,
and the captain of the other side, as if afraid his opponent would
withdraw the choice, retorted quickly, and with a little smack of
exultation and defiance in his voice, "And _I_ take Jeems Phillips."

And soon all present, except a few of the old folks, found themselves
ranged in opposing hosts, the poor spellers lagging in, with what grace
they could, at the foot of the two divisions. The Squire opened his
spelling-book and began to give out the words to the two captains, who
stood up and spelled against each other. It was not long until Larkin
spelled "really" with one _l_, and had to sit down in confusion, while a
murmur of satisfaction ran through the ranks of the opposing forces. His
own side bit their lips. The slender figure of the young teacher took
the place of the fallen leader, and the excitement made the house very
quiet. Ralph dreaded the loss of prestige he would suffer if he should
be easily spelled down. And at the moment of rising he saw in the
darkest corner the figure of a well-dressed young man sitting in the
shadow. Why should his evil genius haunt him? But by a strong effort he
turned his attention away from Dr. Small, and listened carefully to the
words which the Squire did not pronounce very distinctly, spelling them
with extreme deliberation. This gave him an air of hesitation which
disappointed those on his own side. They wanted him to spell with a
dashing assurance. But he did not begin a word until he had mentally
felt his way through it. After ten minutes of spelling hard words Jeems
Buchanan, the captain on the other side, spelled "atrocious" with an _s_
instead of a _c_, and subsided, his first choice, Jeems Phillips, coming
up against the teacher. This brought the excitement to fever-heat. For
though Ralph was chosen first, it was entirely on trust, and most of
the company were disappointed. The champion who now stood up against the
school-master was a famous speller.

Jim Phillips was a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered fellow who had never
distinguished himself in any other pursuit than spelling. Except in this
one art of spelling he was of no account. He could not catch well or bat
well in ball. He could not throw well enough to make his mark in that
famous West ern game of bull-pen. He did not succeed well in any study
but that of Webster's Elementary. But in that he was--to use the usual
Flat Creek locution--in that he was "a boss." This genius for spelling
is in some people a sixth sense, a matter of intuition. Some spellers
are born, and not made, and their facility reminds one of the
mathematical prodigies that crop out every now and then to bewilder the
world. Bud Means, foreseeing that Ralph would be pitted against Jim
Phillips, had warned his friend that Jim could "spell like thunder and
lightning," and that it "took a powerful smart speller" to beat him, for
he knew "a heap of spelling-book." To have "spelled down the master" is
next thing to having whipped the biggest bully in Hoopole County, and
Jim had "spelled down" the last three masters. He divided the
hero-worship of the district with Bud Means.

For half an hour the Squire gave out hard words. What a blessed thing
our crooked orthography is! Without it there could be no
spelling-schools. As Ralph discovered his opponent's mettle he became
more and more cautious. He was now satisfied that Jim would eventually
beat him. The fellow evidently knew more about the spelling-book than
old Noah Webster himself. As he stood there, with his dull face and long
sharp nose, his hands behind his back, and his voice spelling
infallibly, it seemed to Hartsook that his superiority must lie in his
nose. Ralph's cautiousness answered a double purpose; it enabled him to
tread surely, and it was mistaken by Jim for weakness. Phillips was now
confident that he should carry off the scalp of the fourth school-master
before the evening was over. He spelled eagerly, confidently,
brilliantly. Stoop-shouldered as he was, he began to straighten up. In
the minds of all the company the odds were in his favor. He saw this,
and became ambitious to distinguish himself by spelling without giving
the matter any thought.

Ralph always believed that he would have been speedily defeated by
Phillips had it not been for two thoughts which braced him. The sinister
shadow of young Dr. Small sitting in the dark corner by the water-bucket
nerved him. A victory over Phillips was a defeat to one who wished only
ill to the young school-master. The other thought that kept his pluck
alive was the recollection of Bull. He approached a word as Bull
approached the raccoon. He did not take hold until he was sure of his
game. When he took hold, it was with a quiet assurance of success. As
Ralph spelled in this dogged way for half an hour the hardest words the
Squire could find, the excitement steadily rose in all parts of the
house, and Ralph's friends even ventured to whisper that "maybe Jim had
cotched his match, after all!"

But Phillips never doubted of his success.

"Theodolite," said the Squire.

"T-h-e, the o-d, od, theod, o, theodo, l-y-t-e, theodolite," spelled the
champion.

"Next," said the Squire, nearly losing his teeth In his excitement.
Ralph spelled the word slowly and correctly, and the conquered champion
sat down In confusion. The excitement was so great for some minutes that
the spelling was suspended. Everybody In the house had shown sympathy
with one or the other of the combatants, except the silent shadow in the
corner. It had not moved during the contest, and did not show any
interest now in the result.

"Gewhilliky crickets! Thunder and lightning! Licked him all to smash!"
said Bud, rubbing his hands on his knees, "That beats my time all
holler!"

And Betsey Short giggled until her tuck-comb fell out, though she was on
the defeated side.

Shocky got up and danced with pleasure.

But one suffocating look from the aqueous eyes of Mirandy destroyed the
last spark of Ralph's pleasure in his triumph, and sent that awful
below-zero feeling all through him.

"He's powerful smart, is the master," said old Jack to Mr. Pete Jones.
"He'll beat the whole kit and tuck of 'em afore he's through. I know'd
he was smart. That's the reason I tuck him," proceeded Mr. Means.

"Yaas, but he don't lick enough. Not nigh," answered Pete Jones. "No
lickin', no larnin', says I."

It was now not so hard. The other spellers on the opposite side went
down quickly under the hard words which the Squire gave out. The master
had mowed down all but a few, his opponents had given up the battle, and
all had lost their keen interest in a contest to which there could be
but one conclusion, for there were only the poor spellers left. But
Ralph Hartsook ran against a stump where he was least expecting it. It
was the Squire's custom, when one of the smaller scholars or poorer
spellers rose to spell against the master, to give out eight or ten
easy words, that they might have some breathing-spell before being
slaughtered, and then to give a poser or two which soon settled them. He
let them run a little, as a cat does a doomed mouse. There was now but
one person left on the opposite side, and, as she rose in her blue
calico dress, Ralph recognized Hannah, the bound girl at old Jack
Means's. She had not attended school in the district, and had never
spelled in spelling-school before, and was chosen last as an uncertain
quantity. The Squire began with easy words of two syllables, from that
page of Webster, so well known to all who ever thumbed it, as "baker,"
from the word that stands at the top of the page. She spelled these
words in an absent and uninterested manner. As everybody knew that she
would have to go down as soon as this preliminary skirmishing was over,
everybody began to get ready to go home, and already there was the buzz
of preparation. Young men were timidly asking girls if "they could see
them safe home," which was the approved formula, and were trembling in
mortal fear of "the mitten." Presently the Squire, thinking it time to
close the contest, pulled his scalp forward, adjusted his glass eye,
which had been examining his nose long enough, and turned over the
leaves of the book to the great words at the place known to spellers as
"incomprehensibility," and began to give out those "words of eight
syllables with the accent on the sixth." Listless scholars now turned
round, and ceased to whisper, in order to be in at the master's final
triumph. But to their surprise "ole Miss Meanses' white nigger," as some
of them called her in allusion to her slavish life, spelled these great
words with as perfect ease as the master. Still not doubting the result,
the Squire turned from place to place and selected all the hard words he
could find. The school became utterly quiet, the excitement was too
great for the ordinary buzz. Would "Meanses' Hanner" beat the master?
beat the master that had laid out Jim Phillips? Everybody's sympathy was
now turned to Hannah. Ralph noticed that even Shocky had deserted him,
and that his face grew brilliant every time Hannah spelled a word. In
fact, Ralph deserted himself. As he saw the fine, timid face of the girl
so long oppressed flush and shine with interest; as he looked at the
rather low but broad and intelligent brow and the fresh, white
complexion and saw the rich, womanly nature coming to the surface under
the influence of applause and sympathy--he did not want to beat. If he
had not felt that a victory given would insult her, he would have missed
intentionally. The bulldog, the stern, relentless setting of the will,
had gone, he knew not whither. And there had come in its place, as he
looked in that face, a something which he did not understand. You did
not, gentle reader, the first time it came to you.

The Squire was puzzled. He had given out all the hard words in the book.
He again pulled the top of his head forward. Then he wiped his
spectacles and put them on. Then out of the depths of his pocket he
fished up a list of words just coming into use in those days--words not
in the spelling-book. He regarded the paper attentively with his blue
right eye. His black left eye meanwhile fixed itself in such a stare on
Mirandy Means that she shuddered and hid her eyes in her red silk
handkerchief.

"Daguerreotype," sniffed the Squire. It was Ralph's turn.

"D-a-u, dau--"

"Next."

And Hannah spelled it right.

Such a buzz followed that Betsey Short's giggle could not be heard, but
Shocky shouted: "Hanner beat! my Hanner spelled down the master!" And
Ralph went over and congratulated her.

And Dr. Small sat perfectly still in the corner.

And then the Squire called them to order, and said: "As our friend
Hanner Thomson is the only one left on her side, she will have to spell
against nearly all on t'other side. I shall therefore take the liberty
of procrastinating the completion of this interesting and exacting
contest until to-morrow evening. I hope our friend Hanner may again
carry off the cypress crown of glory. There is nothing better for us
than healthful and kindly simulation."

Dr. Small, who knew the road to practice, escorted Mirandy, and Bud went
home with somebody else. The others of the Means family hurried on,
while Hannah, the champion, stayed behind a minute to speak to Shocky.
Perhaps it was because Ralph saw that Hannah must go alone that he
suddenly remembered having left something which was of no consequence,
and resolved to go round by Mr. Means's and get it.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 14: _Peart_ or peert is only another form of the old word
_pert_--probably an older form. Bartlett cites an example of _peart_ as
far back as Sir Philip Sidney; and Halliwell finds it in various English
dialects. Davies, afterward president of Princeton College, describes
Dr. Lardner, in 1754, as "a little pert old gent." I do not know that
Dr. Daries pronounced his _pert_ as though it were _peart_, but he uses
it in the sense it has in the text, viz., bright-witted, intelligent.
The general sense of _peart_ is lively, either in body or mind.]

[Footnote 15: Mr. Lowell suggested to me in 1869 that this word _'low_
has no kinship with _allow_, but is an independent word for which he
gave a Low Latin original of similar sound. I have not been able to
trace any such word, but Mr. Lowell had so much linguistic knowledge of
the out-of-the-way sort that it may be worth while to record his
impression. Bartlett is wrong in defining this word, as he is usually in
his attempts to explain dialect outside of New England. It does not mean
"to declare, assert, maintain," etc. It is nearly the equivalent of
_guess_ in the Northern and Middle States, and of _reckon_ in the South.
It agrees precisely with the New England _calk'late_. Like all the rest
of these words it may have a strong sense by irony. When a man says, "I
'low that is a purty peart sort of a hoss," he understates for the sake
of emphasis. It is rarely or never _allow_, but simply _'low_. In common
with _calk'late_, it has sometimes a sense of purpose or expectation, as
when a man says, "I 'low to go to town to-morry."]

[Footnote 16: No phrase of the Hoosier and South-western dialect is such
a stumbling-block to the outsider as _right smart_. The writer from the
North or East will generally use it wrongly. Mrs. Stowe says, "I sold
right smart of eggs," but the Hoosier woman as I knew her would have
said "a right smart lot of eggs" or "a right smart of eggs," using the
article and understanding the noun. A farmer omitting the preposition
boasts of having "raised right smart corn" this year. No expression
could have a more vague sense than this. In the early settlement of
Minnesota it was a custom of the land officers to require a residence of
about ten days on "a claim" in order to the establishment of a
pre-emption right. One of the receivers at a land office under
Buchanan's administration was a German of much intelligence who was very
sensitive regarding his knowledge of English. "How long has the claimant
lived on his claim?" he demanded of a Hoosier witness. "Oh, a right
smart while," was the reply. The receiver had not the faintest notion of
the meaning of the answer, but fearing to betray his ignorance of
English he allowed the land to be entered, though the claimant had spent
but about two hours in residing on his quarter-section.]




CHAPTER V.

THE WALK HOME.


You expect me to describe that walk. You have had enough of the Jack
Meanses and the Squire Hawkinses, and the Pete Joneses, and the rest.
You wish me to tell you now of this true-hearted girl and her lover; of
how the silvery moonbeams came down in a shower--to use Whittier's
favorite metaphor--through the maple boughs, flecking the frozen ground
with light and shadow. You would have me tell of the evening star, not
yet gone down, which shed its benediction on them. But I shall do no
such thing. For the moon was not shining, neither did the stars give
their light. The tall, black trunks of the maples swayed and shook in
the wind, which moaned through their leafless boughs. Novelists always
make lovers walk in the moonlight. But if love is not, as the cynics
believe, all moonshine, it can at least make its own light. Moonlight is
never so little needed or heeded, never so much of an impertinence, as
in a love-scene. It was at the bottom of the first hollow beyond the
school-house that Ralph overtook the timid girl walking swiftly through
the dark. He did not ask permission to walk with her. Love does not go
by words, and there are times when conventionality is impossible. There
are people who understand one another at once. When one soul meets
another, it is not by pass-word, nor by hailing sign, nor by mysterious
grip that they recognize. The subtlest freemasonry in the world is this
freemasonry of the spirit.

Ralph and Hannah knew and trusted. Ralph had admired and wondered at the
quiet drudge. But it was when, in the unaccustomed sunshine of praise,
she spread her wings a little, that he loved her. He had seen her awake.

You, Miss Amelia, wish me to repeat all their love-talk. I am afraid
you'd find it dull. Love can pipe through any kind of a reed. Ralph
talked love to Hannah when he spoke of the weather, of the crops, of the
spelling-school. Weather, crops, and spelling-school--these were what
his words would say if reported. But below all these commonplaces there
vibrated something else. One can make love a great deal better when one
doesn't speak of love. Words are so poor! Tones and modulations are
better. It is an old story that Whitefield could make an audience weep
by his way of pronouncing the word Mesopotamia. A lover can sound the
whole gamut of his affection in saying Good-morning. The solemnest
engagements ever made have been without the intervention of speech.

And you, my Gradgrind friend, you think me sentimental. Two young fools
they were, walking so slowly though the night was sharp, dallying under
the trees, and dreaming of a heaven they could not have realized if all
their wishes had been granted. Of course they were fools! Either they
were fools to be so happy, or else some other people are fools not to
be. After all, dear Gradgrind, let them be. There's no harm in it.
They'll get trouble enough before morning. Let them enjoy the evening. I
am not sure but these lovers whom we write down fools are the only wise
people after all. Is it not wise to be happy? Let them alone.

For the first time in three years, for the first time since she had
crossed the threshold of "Old Jack Means" and come under the domination
of Mrs. Old Jack Means, Hannah talked cheerfully, almost gayly. It was
something to have a companion to talk to. It was something to be the
victor even in a spelling-match, and to be applauded even by Flat Creek.
And so, chatting earnestly about the most uninteresting themes, Ralph
courteously helped Hannah over the fence, and they took the usual
short-cut through the "blue-grass pasture." There came up a little
shower, hardly more than a sprinkle, but then It was so nice to have a
shower just as they reached the box-elder tree by the spring! It was so
thoughtful in Ralph to suggest that the shade of a box-elder is dense,
and that Hannah might take cold! And it was so easy for Hannah to yield
to the suggestion! Just as though she had not milked the cows in the
open lot in the worst storms of the last three years! And just as though
the house were not within a stone's-throw! Doubtless it was not prudent
to stop here. But let us deal gently with them. Who would not stay in an
earthy paradise ten minutes longer, even though it did make purgatory
the hotter afterward? And so Hannah stayed.

"Tell me your circumstances," said Ralph, at last. "I am sure I can help
you in something."

"No, no! you cannot," and Hannah's face was clouded. "No one can help
me. Only time and God. I must go, Mr. Hartsook." And they walked on to
the front gate in silence and in some constraint. But still in
happiness.

As they came to the gate, Dr. Small pushed past them in his cool,
deliberate way, and mounted his horse. Ralph bade Hannah good-night,
having entirely forgotten the errand which had been his excuse to
himself for coming out of his way. He hastened to his new home, the
house of Mr. Pete Jones, the same who believed in the inseparableness of
"lickin' and larnin'."

"You're a purty gal, a'n't you? You're a purty gal, a'n't you? _You_
air! Yes, you _air_" and Mrs. Means seemed so impressed with Hannah's
prettiness that she choked on it, and could get no further. "A purty
gal! you! Yes! you air a mighty purty gal!" and the old woman's voice
rose till it could have been heard half a mile. "To be a-santerin' along
the big road after ten o'clock with the master! Who knows whether he's a
fit man fer anybody to go with? Arter all I've been and gone and done
fer you! That's the way you pay me! Disgrace me! Yes, I say disgrace me!
You're a mean, deceitful thing. Stuck up bekase you spelt the master
down. Ketch _me_ lettin' you got to spellin'-school to-morry night!
Ketch ME! Yes, ketch ME, I say!"

"Looky here, marm," said Bud, "it seems to me you're a-makin' a blamed
furss about nothin'. Don't yell so's they'll hear you three or four
mile. You'll have everybody 'tween here and Clifty waked up." For Mrs.
Means had become so excited over the idea of being caught allowing
Hannah to go to spelling-school that she had raised her last "Ketch
me!" to a perfect whoop.

"That's the way I'm treated," whimpered the old woman, who knew how to
take the "injured innocence" dodge as well as anybody. "That's the way
I'm treated. You allers take sides with that air hussy agin your own
flesh and blood. You don't keer how much trouble I have. Not you. Not a
dog-on'd bit. I may be disgraced by that air ongrateful critter, and you
set right here in my own house and sass me about it. A purty fellow you
air! An' me a-delvin' and a-drudgin' fer you all my born days. A purty
son, a'n't you?"

Bud did not say another word. He sat in the chimney-corner and whistled
"Dandy Jim from Caroline." His diversion had produced the effect he
sought: for while his tender-hearted mother poured her broadside into
his iron-clad feelings, Hannah had slipped up the stairs to her garret
bedroom, and when Mrs. Means turned from the callous Bud to finish her
assault upon the sensitive girl, she could only gnash her teeth in
disappointment.

Stung by the insults to which she could not grow insensible, Hannah lay
awake until the memory of that walk through the darkness came into her
soul like a benediction. The harsh voice of the scold died out, and the
gentle and courteous voice of Hartsook filled her soul. She recalled
piece by piece the whole conversation--all the commonplace remarks about
the weather; all the insignificant remarks about the crops; all the
unimportant words about the spelling-school. Not for the sake of the
remarks. Not for the sake of the weather. Not for the sake of the crops.
Not for the sake of the spelling-school. But for the sake of the
undertone. And then she traveled back over the three years of her
bondage and forward over the three years to come, and fed her heart on
the dim hope of rebuilding in some form the home that had been so happy.
And she prayed, with more faith than ever before, for deliverance. For
love brings faith. Somewhere on in the sleepless night she stood at the
window. The moon was shining now, and there was the path through the
pasture, and there was the fence, and there was the box-elder.

She sat there a long time. Then she saw someone come over the fence and
walk to the tree, and then on toward Pete Jones's. Who could it be? She
thought she recognized the figure. But she was chilled and shivering,
and she crept back again into bed, and dreamed not of the uncertain days
to come, but of the blessed days that were past--of a father and a
mother and a brother in a happy home. But somehow the school-master was
there too.




CHAPTER VI.

A NIGHT AT PETE JONES'S.


When Ralph got to Pete Jones's he found that sinister-looking individual
in the act of kicking one of his many dogs out of the house.

"Come in, stranger, come in. You'll find this 'ere house full of brats,
but I guess you kin kick your way around among 'em. Take a cheer. Here,
git out! go to thunder with you!" And with these mild imperatives he
boxed one of his boys over in one direction and one of his girls over in
the other. "I believe in trainin' up children to mind when they're spoke
to," he said to Ralph apologetically. But it seemed to the teacher that
he wanted them to mind just a little before they were spoken to.

"P'raps you'd like a bed. Well, jest climb up the ladder on the outside
of the house. Takes up a thunderin' sight of room to have a stairs
inside, and we ha'n't got no room to spare. You'll find a bed in the
furdest corner. My Pete's already got half of it, and you can take
t'other half. Ef Pete goes to takin' his half in the middle, and tryin'
to make you take yourn on both sides, jest kick him."

In this comfortless bed "in the furdest corner," Ralph found sleep out
of the question. Pete took three-fourths of the bed, and Hannah took all
of his thoughts. So he lay, and looked out through the cracks in the
"clapboards" (as they call rough shingles in the old West) at the stars.
For the clouds had now broken away. And he lay thus recounting to
himself, as a miser counts the pieces that compose his hoard, every step
of that road from the time he had overtaken Hannah in the hollow to the
fence. Then he imagined again the pleasure of helping her over, and then
he retraced the ground to the box-elder tree at the spring, and repeated
to himself the conversation until he came to the part in which she said
that only time and God could help her. What did she mean? What was the
hidden part of her life? What was the connection between her and Shocky?

Hours wore on, and still the mind of Ralph Hartsook went back and
traveled the same road, over the fence, past the box-elder, up to the
inexplicable part of the conversation, and stood bewildered with the
same puzzling questions about the bound girl's life.

At last he got up, drew on his clothes, and sat down on the top of the
ladder, looking down over the blue-grass pasture which lay on the border
between the land of Jones and the land of Means. The earth was white
with moonlight. He could not sleep. Why not walk? It might enable him to
sleep. And once determined on walking, he did not hesitate a moment as
to the direction in which he should walk. The blue-grass pasture (was it
not like unto the garden of Eden?) lay right before him. That box-elder
stood just in sight. To spring over the fence and take the path down the
hill and over the brook was as quickly done as decided upon. To stand
again under the box-elder, to climb again over the farther fence, and to
walk down the road toward the school-house was so easy and so delightful
that it was done without thought. For Ralph was an eager man--when he
saw no wrong in anything that proposed itself, he was wont to follow his
impulse without deliberation. And this keeping company with the stars,
and the memory of a delightful walk, were so much better than the
commonplace Flat Creek life that he threw himself into his night
excursion with enthusiasm.

At last he stood in the little hollow where he had joined Hannah. It was
the very spot at which Shocky, too, had met him a few mornings before.
He leaned against the fence and tried again to solve the puzzle of
Hannah's troubles. For that she had troubles he did not doubt. Neither
did he doubt that he could help her if he could discover what they
were. But he had no clue. In the midst of This meditations he heard the
thud of horses' hoofs coming down the road. Until that moment he had not
felt his own loneliness. He shrank back into the fence-corner. The
horsemen were galloping. There were three of them, and there was one
figure that seemed familiar to Ralph. But he could not tell who it was.
Neither could he remember having seen the horse, which was a sorrel with
a white left forefoot and a white nose. The men noticed him and reined
up a little. Why he should have been startled by the presence of these
men he could not tell, but an indefinable dread seized him. They
galloped on, and he stood still shivering with a nervous fear. The cold
seemed to have got into his bones. He remembered that the region lying
on Flat Creek and Clifty Creek had the reputation of being infested with
thieves, who practiced horse-stealing and house-breaking. For ever since
the day when Murrell's confederate bands were paralyzed by the death of
their leader, there have still existed gangs of desperadoes in parts of
Southern Indiana and Illinois, and in Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, and the
Southwest. It is out of these materials that border ruffianism has
grown, and the nine members of the Reno band who were hanged two or
three years ago by lynch law[17], were remains of the bad blood that
came into the West in the days of Daniel Boone. Shall I not say that
these bands of desperadoes still found among the "poor whitey,
dirt-eater" class are the outcroppings of the bad blood sent from
England in convict-ships? Ought an old country to sow the fertile soil
of a colony with such noxious seed?

Before Ralph was able to move, he heard the hoofs of another horse
striking upon the hard ground in an easy pace. The rider was Dr. Small.
He checked his horse in a cool way, and stood still a few seconds while
he scrutinized Ralph. Then he rode on, keeping the same easy gait as
before, Ralph had a superstitious horror of Henry Small. And, shuddering
with cold, he crept like a thief over the fence, past the tree, through
the pasture, back to Pete Jones's, never once thinking of the eyes that
looked out of the window at Means's. Climbing the ladder, he got into
bed, and shook as with the ague. He tried to reason himself out of the
foolish terror that possessed him, but he could not.

Half an hour later he heard a latch raised. Were the robbers breaking
into the house below? He heard a soft tread upon the floor. Should he
rise and give the alarm? Something restrained him. He reflected that a
robber would be sure to stumble over some of the "brats." So he lay
still and finally slumbered, only awakening when the place in which he
slept was full of the smoke of frying grease from the room below.

At breakfast Pete Jones scowled. He was evidently angry about something.
He treated Ralph with a rudeness not to be overlooked, as if he intended
to bring on a quarrel. Hartsook kept cool, and wished he could drive
from his mind all memory of the past night. Why should men on horseback
have any significance to him? He was trying to regard things in this
way, and from a general desire to keep on good terms with his host he
went to the stable to offer his services in helping to feed the stock.

"Don't want no saft-handed help!" was all he got in return for his
well-meant offer. But just as he turned to leave the stable he saw what
made him tremble again. There was the same sorrel horse with a white
left forefoot and a white nose.

To shake off his nervousness, Ralph started to school before the time.
But, plague upon plagues! Mirandy Means, who had seen him leave Pete
Jones's, started just in time to join him where he came into the big
road. Ralph was not in a good humor after his wakeful night, and to be
thus dogged by Mirandy did not help the matter. So he found himself
speaking crabbedly to the daughter of the leading trustee, in spite of
himself.

"Hanner's got a bad cold this mornin' from bein' out last night, and she
can't come to spellin'-school to-night," began Mirandy, in her most
simpering voice.

Ralph had forgotten that there was to be another spelling-school. It
seemed to him an age since the orthographical conflict of the past
night. This remark of Mirandy's fell upon his ear like an echo from the
distant past. He had lived a lifetime since, and was not sure that he
was the same man who was spelling for dear life against Jim Phillips
twelve hours before. But he was sorry to hear that Hannah had a cold. It
seemed to him, in his depressed state, that he was to blame for it. In
fact, it seemed to him that he was to blame for a good many things. He
seemed to have been committing sins in spite of himself. Broken nerves
and sleepless nights often result in a morbid conscience. And what
business had he to wander over this very road at two o'clock in the
morning, and to see three galloping horsemen, one of them on a horse
with a white left forefoot and a white nose? What business had he
watching Dr. Small as he went home from the bedside of a dying patient
near daylight in the morning? And because he felt guilty he felt cross
with Mirandy, and to her remark about Hannah he only replied that
"Hannah was a smart girl."

"Yes," said Mirandy, "Bud thinks so."

"Does he?" said Ralph.

"I should say so. What's him and her been a-courtin' fer for a year ef
he didn't think she was smart? Marm don't like it; but ef Bud and her
does, and they seem to, I don't see as it's marm's lookout."

When one is wretched, there is a pleasure in being entirely wretched.
Ralph felt that he must have committed some unknown crime, and that some
Nemesis was following him. Was Hannah deceitful? At least, if she were
not, he felt sure that he could supplant Bud. But what right had he to
supplant Bud?

"Did you hear the news?" cried Shocky, running out to meet him. "The
Dutchman's house was robbed last night."

Ralph thought of the three men on horseback, and to save his life he
could not help associating Dr. Small with them. And then he remembered
the sorrel horse with the left forefoot and muzzle white, and he
recalled the sound he had heard as of the lifting of a latch. And it
really seemed to him that in knowing what he did he was in some sense
guilty of the robbery.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 17: Written in 1871.]




CHAPTER VII.

OMINOUS REMARKS OF MR. JONES.


The school-master's mind was like ancient Gaul--divided into three
parts. With one part he mechanically performed his school duties. With
another he asked himself, What shall I do about the robbery? And with
the third he debated about Bud and Hannah. For Bud was not present, and
it was clear that he was angry, and there was a storm brewing. In fact,
it seemed to Ralph that there was a storm brewing all round the sky. For
Pete Jones was evidently angry at the thought of having been watched,
and it was fair to suppose that Dr. Small was not in any better humor
than usual. And so, between Bud's jealousy and revenge and the suspicion
and resentment of the men engaged in the robbery at "the Dutchman's" (as
the only German in the whole region was called), Ralph's excited nerves
had cause for tremor. At one moment he would resolve to have Hannah at
all costs. In the next his conscience would question the rightfulness of
the conclusion. Then he would make up his mind to tell all he knew
about the robbery. But if he told his suspicions about Small, nobody
would believe him. And if he told about Pete Jones, he really could tell
only enough to bring vengeance upon himself. And how could he explain
his own walk through the pasture and down the road? What business had he
being out of bed at two o'clock in the morning? The circumstantial
evidence was quite as strong against him as against the man on the horse
with the white left forefoot and the white nose. Suspicion might fasten
on himself. And then what would be the effect on his prospects? On the
people at Lewisburg? On Hannah? It is astonishing how much instruction
and comfort there is in a bulldog. This slender school-master, who had
been all his life repressing the animal and developing the finer nature,
now found a need of just what the bulldog had. And so, with the thought
of how his friend the dog would fight in a desperate strait, he
determined to take hold of his difficulties as Bull took hold of the
raccoon. Moral questions he postponed for careful decision. But for the
present he set his teeth together in a desperate, bulldog fashion, and
he set his feet down slowly, positively, bulldoggedly. After a wretched
supper at Pete Jones's he found himself at the spelling-school, which,
owing to the absence of Hannah, and the excitement about the burglary,
was a dull affair. Half the evening was spent in talking in little
knots. Pete Jones had taken the afflicted "Dutchman" under his own
particular supervision.

"I s'pose," said Pete, "that them air fellers what robbed your house
must a come down from Jinkins Run. They're the blamedest set up there I
ever see."

"Ya-as," said Schroeder, "put how did Yinkins vellers know dat I sell te
medder to te Shquire, hey? How tid Yinkins know anyting 'bout the
Shquire's bayin' me dree huntert in te hard gash--hey?"

"Some scoundrels down in these 'ere parts is a-layin' in with Jinkins
Run, I'll bet a hoss," said Pete. Ralph wondered whether he'd bet the
one with the white left forefoot and the white nose. "Now," said Pete,
"ef I could find the feller that's a-helpin' them scoundrels rob us
folks, I'd help stretch him to the neardest tree."

"So vood I," said Schroeder. "I'd shtretch him dill he baid me my dree
huntert tollars pack, so I vood."

And Betsey Short, who had found the whole affair very funny, was
transported with a fit of tittering at poor Schroeder's English. Ralph,
fearing that his silence would excite suspicion, tried to talk. But he
could not tell what he knew, and all that he said sounded so hollow and
hypocritical that it made him feel guilty. And so he shut his mouth, and
meditated profitably on the subject of bull dogs. And when later he
overheard the garrulous Jones declare that he'd bet a hoss he could
p'int out somebody as know'd a blamed sight more'n they keerd to tell,
he made up his mind that if it came to p'inting out he should try to be
even with Jones.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE STRUGGLE IN THE DARK


It was a long, lonesome, fearful night that the school-master passed,
lying with nerves on edge and eyes wide open in that comfortless bed in
the "furdest corner" of the loft of Pete Jones's house, shivering with
cold, while the light snow that was falling sifted in upon the ragged
patch-work quilt that covered him. Nerves broken by sleeplessness
imagine many things, and for the first hour Ralph felt sure that Pete
would cut his throat before morning.

And you, friend Callow, who have blunted your palate by swallowing the
Cayenne pepper of the penny-dreadfuls, you wish me to make this night
exciting by a hand-to-hand contest between Ralph and a robber. You would
like it better if there were a trap-door. There's nothing so convenient
as a trap-door, unless it be a subterranean passage. And you'd like
something of that sort just here. It's so pleasant to have one's hair
stand on end, you know, when one is safe from danger to one's self. But
if you want each individual hair to bristle with such a "Struggle in
the Dark," you can buy trap-doors and subterranean passages dirt cheap
at the next news-stand. But it was, indeed, a real and terrible
"Struggle in the Dark" that Ralph fought out at Pete Jones's.

When he had vanquished his fears of personal violence by reminding
himself that it would be folly for Jones to commit murder in his own
house, the question of Bud and Hannah took the uppermost place in his
thoughts. And as the image of Hannah spelling against the master came up
to him, as the memory of the walk, the talk, the box-elder tree, and all
the rest took possession of him, it seemed to Ralph that his very life
depended upon his securing her love. He would shut his teeth like the
jaws of a bulldog, and all Bud's muscles should not prevail over his
resolution and his stratagems.

It was easy to persuade himself that this was right. Hannah ought not to
throw herself away on Bud Means. Men of some culture always play their
conceit off against their consciences. To a man of literary habits it
usually seems to be a great boon that he confers on a woman when he
gives her his love. Reasoning thus, Ralph had fixed his resolution, and
if the night had been shorter, or sleep possible, the color of his life
might have been changed.

But some time along in the tedious hours came the memory of his
childhood, the words of his mother, the old Bible stories, the
aspiration after nobility of spirit, the solemn resolutions to be true
to his conscience. These angels of the memory came flocking back before
the animal, the bull-doggedness, had "set," as workers in plaster say.
He remembered the story of David and Nathan, and it seemed to him that
he, with all his abilities and ambitions and prospects, was about to rob
Bud of the one ewe-lamb, the only thing he had to rejoice in in his
life. In getting Hannah, he would make himself unworthy of Hannah. And
then there came to him a vision of the supreme value of a true
character; how it was better than success, better than to be loved,
better than heaven. And how near he had been to missing it! And how
certain he was, when these thoughts should fade, to miss it! He was as
one fighting for a great prize who feels his strength failing and is
sure of defeat.

This was the real, awful "Struggle in the Dark." A human soul fighting
with heaven in sight, but certain of slipping inevitably into hell! It
was the same old battle. The Image of God fought with the Image of the
Devil. It was the same fight that Paul described so dramatically when he
represented the Spirit as contending with the Flesh. Paul also called
this dreadful something the Old Adam, and I suppose Darwin would call it
the remains of the Wild Beast. But call it what you will, it is the
battle that every well-endowed soul must fight at some point. And to
Ralph it seemed that the final victory of the Evil, the Old Adam, the
Flesh, the Wild Beast, the Devil, was certain. For, was not the pure,
unconscious face of Hannah on the Devil's side? And so the battle had
just as well be given up at once, for it must be lost in the end.

But to Ralph, lying there in the still darkness, with his conscience as
wide awake as if it were the Day of Doom, there seemed something so
terrible in this overflow of the better nature which he knew to be
inevitable as soon as the voice of conscience became blunted, that he
looked about for help. He did not at first think of God; but there came
into his thoughts the memory of a travel-worn Galilean peasant, hungry,
sleepy, weary, tempted, tried, like other men, but having a strange,
divine Victory in him by which everything evil was vanquished at his
coming. He remembered how He had reached out a Hand to every helpless
one, how He was the Helper of every weak one. And out of the depths of
his soul he cried to the Helper, and found comfort. Not victory, but,
what is better, strength. And so, without a thought of the niceties of
theological distinctions, without dreaming that it was the beginning of
a religious experience, he found what he needed, help. And the Helper
gave His beloved sleep.




CHAPTER IX.

HAS GOD FORGOTTEN SHOCKY?


"Pap wants to know ef you would spend to-morry and Sunday at our house?"
said one of Squire Hawkins's girls, on the very next evening, which was
Friday. The old Squire was thoughtful enough to remember that Ralph
would not find it very pleasant "boarding out" all the time he was
entitled to spend at Pete Jones's. For in view of the fact that Mr. Pete
Jones sent seven children to the school, the "master" in Flat Creek
district was bound to spend two weeks in that comfortable place,
sleeping in a preoccupied bed, in the "furdest corner," with
insufficient cover, under an insufficient roof, and eating floating
islands of salt pork fished out of oceans of hot lard. Ralph was not
slow to accept the relief offered by the hospitable justice of the
peace, whose principal business seemed to be the adjustment of the
pieces of which he was composed. And as Shocky traveled the same road,
Ralph took advantage of the opportunity to talk with him. The master
could not dismiss Hannah wholly from his mind. He would at least read
the mystery of her life, if Shocky could be prevailed on to furnish the
clue.

"Poor old tree!" said Shocky, pointing to a crooked and gnarled elm
standing by itself in the middle of a field. For when the elm, naturally
the most graceful of trees, once gets a "bad set," it can grow to be the
most deformed. This solitary tree had not a single straight limb.

"Why do you say 'poor old tree'?" asked Ralph.

"'Cause it's lonesome. All its old friends is dead and chopped down, and
there's their stumps a-standin' jes like grave-stones. It _must_ be
lonesome. Some folks says it don't feel, but I think it does. Everything
seems to think and feel. See it nodding its head to them other trees in
the woods? and a-wantin' to shake hands! But it can't move. I think that
tree must a growed in the night."

"Why, Shocky?"

"'Cause it's so crooked," and Shocky laughed at his own conceit; "must a
growed when they was no light so as it could see how to grow."

And then they walked on in silence a minute. Presently Shocky began
looking up into Ralph's eyes to get a smile. "I guess that tree feels
just like me. Don't you?"

"Why, how do you feel?"

"Kind o' bad and lonesome, and like as if I wanted to die, you know.
Felt that way ever sence they put my father into the graveyard, and sent
my mother to the poor-house and Hanner to ole Miss Means's. What kind of
a place is a poor-house? Is it a poorer place than Means's? I wish I was
dead and one of them clouds was a-carryin' me and Hanner and mother up
to where father's gone, you know! I wonder if God forgets all about poor
folks when their father dies and their mother gits into the poor-house?
Do you think He does? Seems so to me. Maybe God lost track of my father
when he come away from England and crossed over the sea. Don't nobody on
Flat Creek keer fer God, and I guess God don't keer fer Flat Creek. But
I would, though, ef he'd git my mother out of the poor-house and git
Hanner away from Means's, and let me kiss my mother every night, you
know, and sleep on my Hanner's arm, jes like I used to afore father
died, you see."

Ralph wanted to speak, but he couldn't. And so Shocky, with his eyes
looking straight ahead, and as if forgetting Ralph's presence, told over
the thoughts that he had often talked over to the fence-rails and the
trees. "It was real good in Mr. Pearson to take me, wasn't it? Else I'd
a been bound out tell I was twenty-one, maybe, to some mean man like
Ole Means. And I a'n't but seven. And it would take me fourteen years to
git twenty-one, and I never could live with my mother again after Hanner
gets done her time. 'Cause, you see, Hanner'll be through in three more
year, and I'll be ten and able to work, and we'll git a little place
about as big as Granny Sanders's, and--"

Ralph did not hear another word of what Shocky said that afternoon. For
there, right before them, was Granny Sanders's log-cabin, with its row
of lofty sunflower stalks, now dead and dry, in front, with its
rain-water barrel by the side of the low door, and its ash-barrel by the
fence. In this cabin lived alone the old and shriveled hag whose
hideousness gave her a reputation for almost supernatural knowledge. She
was at once doctress and newspaper. She collected and disseminated
medicinal herbs and personal gossip. She was in every regard
indispensable to the intellectual life of the neighborhood. In the
matter of her medical skill we cannot express an opinion, for her
"yarbs" are not to be found in the pharmacopoeia of science.

What took Ralph's breath was to find Dr. Small's fine, faultless horse
standing at the door. What did Henry Small want to visit this old quack
for?




CHAPTER X.

THE DEVIL OF SILENCE.


Ralph had reason to fear Small, who was a native of the same village of
Lewisburg, and some five years the elder. Some facts in the doctor's
life had come into Ralph's possession in such a way as to confirm
life-long suspicion without giving him power to expose Small, who was
firmly intrenched in the good graces of the people of the county-seat
village of Lewisburg, where he had grown up, and of the little
cross-roads village of Clifty, where his "shingle" now hung.

Small was no ordinary villain. He was a genius. Your ordinary hypocrite
talks cant. Small talked nothing. He was the coolest, the steadiest, the
most silent, the most promising boy ever born in Lewisburg. He made no
pretensions. He set up no claims. He uttered no professions. He went
right on and lived a life above reproach. Your vulgar hypocrite makes
long prayers in prayer-meeting. Small did nothing of the sort. He sat
still in prayer-meeting, and listened to the elders as a modest young
man should. Your commonplace hypocrite boasts. Small never alluded to
himself, and thus a consummate egotist got credit for modesty. It is but
an indifferent trick for a hypocrite to make temperance speeches. Dr.
Small did not even belong to a temperance society. But he could never be
persuaded to drink even so much as a cup of tea. There was something
sublime in the quiet voice with which he would say, "Cold water, if you
please," to a lady tempting him with smoking coffee on a cold morning.
There was no exultation, no sense of merit in the act. Everything was
done in a modest and matter-of-course way beautiful to behold. And his
face was a neutral tint. Neither face nor voice expressed anything. Only
a keen reader of character might have asked whether all there was in
that eye could live contented with this cool, austere, self-contained
life; whether there would not be somewhere a volcanic eruption. But if
there was any sea of molten lava beneath, the world did not discover it.
Wild boys were sick of having Small held up to them as the most
immaculate of men[18].

Ralph had failed to get two schools for which he had applied, and had
attributed both failures to certain shrugs of Dr. Small. And now, when
he found Small at the house of Granny Sanders, the center of
intelligence as well as of ignorance for the neighborhood, he trembled.
Not that Small would say anything. He never said anything. He damned
people by a silence worse than words.

Granny Sanders was not a little flattered by the visit.

"Why, doctor, howdy, howdy! Come in, take a cheer. I am glad to see you.
I 'lowed you'd come. Old Dr. Flounder used to say he larnt lots o'
things of me. But most of the doctors sence hez been kinder stuck up,
you know. But I know'd you fer a man of intelligence."

Meantime, Small, by his grave silence and attention, had almost
smothered the old hag with flattery. "Many's the case I've cured with
yarbs and things. Nigh upon twenty year ago they was a man lived over on
Wild Cat Run as had a breakin'-out on his side. 'Twas the left side, jes
below the waist. Doctor couldn't do nothin'. 'Twas Doctor Peacham. He
never would have nothin' to do with 'ole woman's cures.' Well, the man
was goin' to die. Everybody seed that. And they come a-drivin' away over
here all the way from the Wild Cat. Think of that air! I never was so
flustered. But as soon as I laid eyes on that air man, I says, says
I, that air man, says I, has got the shingles, says I. I know'd the
minute I seed it. And if they'd gone clean around, nothing could a saved
him. I says, says I, git me a black cat. So I jist killed a black cat,
and let the blood run all over the swellin'. I tell you, doctor, they's
nothin' like it. That man was well in a month."

[Illustration: MRS. MEANS]

"Did you use the blood warm?" asked Small, with a solemnity most
edifying.

These were almost the only words he had uttered since he entered the
cabin.

"Laws, yes; I jest let it run right out of the cat's tail onto the
breakin'-out. And fer airesipelus, I don't know nothin' so good as the
blood of a black hen."

"How old?" asked the doctor.

"There you showed yer science, doctor! They's no power in a pullet. The
older the black hen the better. And you know the cure fer rheumatiz?"
And here the old woman got down a bottle of grease. "That's ile from a
black dog. Ef it's rendered right, it'll knock the hind sights off of
any rheumatiz you ever see. But it must be rendered in the dark of the
moon. Else a black dog's ile a'n't worth no more nor a white one's."

And all this time Small was smelling of the uncorked bottle, taking a
little on his finger and feeling of it, and thus feeling his way to the
heart--drier than her herbs--of the old witch. And then he went round
the cabin gravely, lifting each separate bunch of dried yarbs from its
nail, smelling of it, and then, by making an interrogation-point of his
silent face, he managed to get a lecture from her on each article in her
_materia medica_> with the most marvelous stories illustrative of their
virtues. When the Granny had got her fill of his silent flattery, he was
ready to carry forward his main purpose.

There was something weird about this silent man's ability to turn the
conversation as he chose to have it go. Sitting by the Granny's
tea-table, nibbling corn-bread while he drank his glass of water, having
declined even her sassafras, he ceased to stimulate her medical talk and
opened the vein of gossip. Once started, Granny Sanders was sure to
allude to the robbery. And once on the robbery the doctor's course was
clear.

"I 'low somebody not fur away is in this 'ere business!"

Not by a word, nor even by a nod, but by some motion of the eyelids,
perhaps, Small indicated that he agreed with her.

"Who d'ye s'pose 'tis?"

But Dr. Small was not in the habit of supposing. He moved his head in a
quiet way, just the least perceptible bit, but so that the old creature
understood that he could give light if he wanted to.

"I dunno anybody that's been 'bout here long as could be suspected."

Another motion of the eyelids indicated Small's agreement with this
remark.

"They a'n't nobody come in here lately 'ceppin' the master."

Small looked vacantly at the wall.

"But I low he's allers bore a tip-top character."

The doctor was too busy looking at his corn-bread to answer this remark
even by a look.

"But I think these oversmart young men'll bear looking arter, _I_ do."

Dr. Small raised his eyes and let them _shine_ an assent. That was all.

"Shouldn't wonder ef our master was overly fond of gals."

Doctor looks down at his plate.

"Had plenty of sweethearts afore he walked home with Hanner Thomson
t'other night, I'll bet."

Did Dr. Small shrug his shoulder? Granny thought she detected a faint
motion of the sort, but she could not be sure.

"And I think as how that a feller what trifles with gals' hearts and
then runs off ten miles, maybe a'n't no better'n he had orter be. That's
what I says, says I."

To this general remark Dr. Small assented in his invisible--shall I say
_intangible_?--way.

"I allers think, maybe, that some folks has found it best to leave home
and go away. You can't never tell. But when people is a-bein' robbed
it's well to lookout. Hey?"

"I think so," said Small quietly, and, having taken his hat and bowed a
solemn and respectful adieu, he departed.

He had not spoken twenty words, but he had satisfied the news-monger of
Flat Creek that Ralph was a bad character at home and worthy of
suspicion of burglary.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: The original from which this character was drawn is here
described accurately. The author now knows that such people are not to
be put into books. They are not realistic enough.]




CHAPTER XI

MISS MARTHA HAWKINS.


"It's very good for the health to dig in the elements. I was quite
emaciated last year at the East, and the doctor told me to dig in the
elements. I got me a florial hoe and dug, and it's been most excellent
for me[19]." Time, the Saturday following the Friday on which Ralph kept
Shocky company as far as the "forks" near Granny Sanders's house. Scene,
the Squire's garden. Ralph helping that worthy magistrate perform sundry
little jobs such as a warm winter day suggests to the farmer. Miss
Martha Hawkins, the Squire's niece, and his housekeeper in his present
bereaved condition, leaning over the palings--pickets she called
them--of the garden fence, talking to the master. Miss Hawkins was
recently from Massachusetts. How many people there are in the most
cultivated communities whose education is partial!

"It's very common for school-master to dig in the elements at the
East," proceeded Miss Martha. Like many other people born in the
celestial empires (of which there are three--China, Virginia,
Massachusetts), Miss Martha was not averse to reminding outside
barbarians of her good fortune in this regard. It did her good to speak
of the East.

Now Ralph was amused with Miss Martha. She really had a good deal of
intelligence despite her affectation, and conversation with her was both
interesting and diverting. It helped him to forget Hannah, and Bud, and
the robbery, and all the rest, and she was so delighted to find somebody
to make an impression on that she had come out to talk while Ralph was
at work. But just at this moment the school-master was not so much
interested in her interesting remarks, nor so much amused by her amusing
remarks, as he should have been. He saw a man coming down the road
riding one horse and leading another, and he recognized the horses at a
distance. It must be Bud who was riding Means's bay mare and leading
Bud's roan colt. Bud had been to mill, and as the man who owned the
horse-mill kept but one old blind horse himself, it was necessary that
Bud should take two. It required three horses to run the mill; the old
blind one could have ground the grist, but the two others had to
overcome the friction of the clumsy machine. But it was not about the
horse-mill that Ralph was thinking nor about the two horses. Since that
Wednesday evening on which he escorted Hannah home from the
spelling-school he had not seen Bud Means. If he had any lingering
doubts of the truth of what Mirandy had said, they had been dissipated
by the absence of Bud from school.

"When I was to Bosting--" Miss Martha was _to_ Boston only once in her
life, but as her visit to that sacred city was the most important
occurrence of her life, she did not hesitate to air her reminiscences of
it frequently. "When I was to Bosting," she was just saying, when,
following the indication of Ralph's eyes, she saw Bud coming up the hill
near Squire Hawkins's house. Bud looked red and sulky, and to Ralph's
and Miss Martha Hawkins's polite recognitions he returned only a surly
nod. They both saw that he was angry. Ralph was able to guess the
meaning of his wrath.

Toward evening Ralph strolled through the Squire's cornfield toward the
woods. The memory of the walk with Hannah was heavy upon the heart of
the young master, and there was comfort in the very miserableness of the
cornstalks with their disheveled blades hanging like tattered banners
and rattling discordantly in the rising wind. Wandering without purpose,
Ralph followed the rows of stalks first one way and then the other in a
zigzag line, turning a right angle every minute or two. At last he came
out in a woods mostly of beech, and he pleased his melancholy fancy by
kicking the dry and silky leaves before him in billows, while the
soughing of the wind through the long, vibrant boughs and slender twigs
of the beech forest seemed to put the world into the wailing minor key
of his own despair.

What a fascination there is in a path come upon suddenly without a
knowledge of its termination! Here was one running in easy, irregular
curves through the wood, now turning gently to the right in order to
avoid a stump, now swaying suddenly to the left to gain an easier
descent at a steep place, and now turning wantonly to the one side or
the other, as if from very caprice in the man who by idle steps
unconsciously marked the line of the foot-path at first. Ralph could not
resist the impulse--who could?--to follow the path and find out its
destination, and following it he came presently into a lonesome hollow,
where a brook gurgled among the heaps of bare limestone rocks that
filled its bed. Following the path still, he came upon a queer little
cabin built of round logs, in the midst of a small garden-patch inclosed
by a brush fence. The stick chimney, daubed with clay and topped with
a barrel open at both ends, made this a typical cabin.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN PEARSON]

It flashed upon Ralph that this place must be Rocky Hollow, and that
this was the house of old John Pearson, the one-legged basket-maker, and
his rheumatic wife--the house that hospitably sheltered Shocky.
Following his impulse, he knocked and was admitted, and was not a little
surprised to find Miss Martha Hawkins there before him.

"You here, Miss Hawkins?" he said when he had returned Shocky's greeting
and shaken hands with the old couple.

"Bless you, yes," said the old lady. "That blessed gyirl"--the old lady
called her a girl by a sort of figure of speech perhaps--"that blessed
gyirl's the kindest creetur you ever saw--comes here every day, most, to
cheer a body up with somethin' or nuther."

Miss Martha blushed, and said "she came because Rocky Hollow looked so
much like a place she used to know at the East. Mr. and Mrs. Pearson
were the kindest people. They reminded her of people she knew at the
East. When she was to Bosting--"

Here the old basket-maker lifted his head from his work, and said:
"Pshaw! that talk about kyindness" (he was a Kentuckian and said
_kyindness_) "is all humbug. I wonder so smart a woman as you don't
know better. You come nearder to bein kyind than anybody I know; but,
laws a me! we're all selfish akordin' to my tell."

"You wasn't selfish when you set up with my father most every night for
two weeks," said Shocky as he handed the old man a splint.

"Yes, I was, too!" This in a tone that made Ralph tremble. "Your father
was a miserable Britisher. I'd fit red-coats, in the war of
eighteen-twelve, and lost my leg by one of 'em stickin' his dog-on'd
bagonet right through it, that night at Lundy's Lane; but my messmate
killed him though which is a satisfaction to think on. And I didn't like
your father 'cause he was a Britisher. But ef he'd a died right here in
this free country, 'though nobody to give him a drink of water, blamed
ef I wouldn't a been ashamed to set on the platform at a Fourth of July
barbecue, and to hold up my wooden leg fer to make the boys cheer! That
was the selfishest thing I ever done. We're all selfish akordin' to my
tell."

"You wasn't selfish when you took me that night, you know," and Shocky's
face beamed with gratitude.

"Yes, I war, too, you little sass-box! What did I take you fer? Hey?
Bekase I didn't like Pete Jones nor Bill Jones. They're thieves, dog-on
'em!"

Ralph shivered a little. The horse with the white forefoot and white
nose galloped before his eyes again.

"They're a set of thieves. That's what they air."

"Please, Mr. Pearson, be careful. You'll get into trouble, you know, by
talking that way," said Miss Hawkins. "You're just like a man that I
knew at the East."

"Why, do you think an old soldier like me, hobbling on a wooden leg, is
afraid of them thieves? Didn't I face the Britishers? Didn't I come home
late last Wednesday night? I rather guess I must a took a little too
much at Welch's grocery, and laid down in the middle of the street to
rest. The boys thought 'twas funny to crate[20] me. I woke up kind o'
cold, 'bout one in the mornin.' 'Bout two o'clock I come up Means's
hill, and didn't I see Pete Jones, and them others that robbed the
Dutchman, and somebody, I dunno who, a-crossin' the blue-grass paster
_towards_ Jones's?" (Ralph shivered.) "Don't shake your finger at me,
old woman. Tongue is all I've got to fight with now; but I'll fight them
thieves tell the sea goes dry, I will. Shocky, gim me a splint."

"But you wasn't selfish when you tuck me. Shocky stuck to his point most
positively.

"Yes, I was, you little tow-headed fool! I didn't take you kase I was
good, not a bit of it. I hated Bill Jones what keeps the poor-house, and
I knowed him and Pete would get you bound to some of their click, and I
didn't want no more thieves raised; so when your mother hobbled, with
you a-leadin' her, poor blind thing! all the way over here on that
winter night, and said, 'Mr. Pearson, you're all the friend I've got,
and I want you to save my boy,' why, you see I was selfish as ever I
could be in takin' of you. Your mother's cryin' sot me a-cryin' too.
We're all selfish in everything, akordin' to my tell. Blamed ef we
ha'n't, Miss Hawkins, only sometimes I'd think you was real benev'lent
ef I didn't know we war all selfish."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Absurd as this speech seems, it is a literal transcript of
words spoken in the author's presence by a woman who, like Miss Hawkins,
was born in Massachusetts.]

[Footnote 20: When the first edition of this book appeared, the critic
who analyzed the dialect in _The Nation_ confessed that he did not know
what to "crate" meant. It was a custom in the days of early Indiana
barbarism for the youngsters of a village, on spying a sleeping
drunkard, to hunt up a "queensware crate"--one of the cages of round
withes in which crockery was shipped. This was turned upside down over
the inebriate, and loaded with logs or any other heavy articles that
would make escape difficult when the poor wretch should come to himself.
It was a sort of rude punishment for inebriety, and it afforded a
frog-killing delight to those who executed justice.]




CHAPTER XII.

THE HARDSHELL PREACHER.


"They's preachin' down to Bethel Meetin'-house to-day," said the Squire
at breakfast. Twenty years In the West could not cure Squire Hawkins of
saying "to" for "at." "I rather guess as how the old man Bosaw will give
pertickeler fits to our folks to-day." For Squire Hawkins, having been
expelled from the "Hardshell" church of which Mr. Bosaw was pastor, for
the grave offense of joining a temperance society, had become a member
of the "Reformers," the very respectable people who now call themselves
"Disciples," but whom the profane will persist in calling
"Campbellites." They had a church in the village of Clifty, three miles
away.

I know that explanations are always abominable to story readers, as they
are to story writers, but as so many of my readers have never had the
inestimable privilege of sitting under the gospel as it is ministered in
enlightened neighborhoods like Flat Creek, I find myself under the
necessity--need-cessity the Rev. Mr. Bosaw would call it--of rising to
explain. Some people think the "Hardshells" a myth, and some sensitive
Baptist people at the East resent all allusion to them. But the
"Hardshell Baptists," or, as they are otherwise called, the "Whisky
Baptists," and the "Forty-gallon Baptists," exist in all the old Western
and South-western States. They call themselves "Anti-means Baptists"
from their Antinomian tenets. Their confession of faith is a caricature
of Calvinism, and is expressed by their preachers about as follows: "Ef
you're elected, you'll be saved; ef you a'n't, you'll be damned. God'll
take keer of his elect. It's a sin to run Sunday-schools, or temp'rince
s'cieties, or to send missionaries. You let God's business alone. What
is to be will be, and you can't hender it." This writer has attended a
Sunday-school, the superintendent of which was solemnly arraigned and
expelled from the Hardshell Church for "meddling with God's business" by
holding a Sunday-school. Of course the Hardshells are prodigiously
illiterate, and often vicious. Some of their preachers are notorious
drunkards. They sing their sermons out sometimes for three hours at a
stretch[21].

Ralph found that he was to ride the "clay-bank mare," the only one of
the horses that would "carry double," and that consequently he would
have to take Miss Hawkins behind him. If it had been Hannah instead,
Ralph might not have objected to this "young Lochinvar" mode of riding
with a lady on "the croup," but Martha Hawkins was another affair. He
had only this consolation; his keeping the company of Miss Hawkins might
serve to disarm the resentment of Bud. At all events, he had no choice.
What designs the Squire had in this arrangement he could not tell; but
the clay-bank mare carried him to meeting on that December morning,
with Martha Hawkins behind. And as Miss Hawkins was not used to this
mode of locomotion, she was in a state of delightful fright every time
the horse sank to the knees in the soft, yellow Flat Creek clay.

"We don't go to church so at the East," she said. "The mud isn't so deep
at the East. When I was to Bosting--" but Ralph never heard what
happened when she was to Bosting, for just as she said Bosting the mare
put her foot into a deep hole molded by the foot of the Squire's horse,
and already full of muddy water.

As the mare's foot went twelve inches down into this track, the muddy
water spurted higher than Miss Hawkins's head, and mottled her dress
with golden spots of clay. She gave a little shriek, and declared that
she had never "seen it so at the East."

The journey seemed a little long to Ralph, who found that the subjects
upon which he and Miss Hawkins could converse were few; but Miss Martha
was determined to keep things going, and once, when the conversation had
died out entirely, she made a desperate effort to renew it by remarking,
as they met a man on horseback, "That horse switches his tail just as
they do at the East. When I was to Bosting I saw horses switch their
tails just that way."

What surprised Ralph was to see that Flat Creek went to meeting.
Everybody was there--the Meanses, the Joneses, the Bantas, and all the
rest. Everybody on Flat Creek seemed to be there, except the old
wooden-legged basket-maker. His family was represented by Shocky, who
had come, doubtless, to get a glimpse of Hannah, not to hear Mr. Bosaw
preach. In fact, few were thinking of the religious service. They went
to church as a common resort to hear the news, and to find out what was
the current sensation.

On this particular morning there seemed to be some unusual excitement.
Ralph perceived it as he rode up. An excited crowd, even though it be at
a church-door on Sunday morning, can not conceal its agitation. Ralph
deposited Miss Hawkins on the stile, and then got down himself, and paid
her the closest attention to the door. This attention was for Bud's
benefit. But Bud only stood with his hands in his pockets, scowling
worse than ever. Ralph did not go in at the door. It was not the Flat
Creek custom. The men gossiped outside, while the women chatted within.
Whatever may have been the cause of the excitement, Ralph could not get
at it. When he entered a little knot of people they became embarrassed,
the group dissolved, and its component parts joined other companies.
What had the current of conversation to do with him? He overheard Pete
Jones saying that the blamed old wooden leg was in it anyhow. He'd been
seen goin' home at two in the mornin'. And he could name somebody else
ef he choosed. But it was best to clean out one at a time. And just then
there was a murmur: "Meetin's took up." And the masculine element filled
the empty half of the "hewed-log" church.

When Ralph saw Hannah looking utterly dejected, his heart smote him, and
the great struggle set in again. Had it not been for the thought of the
other battle, and the comforting presence of the Helper, I fear Bud's
interests would have fared badly. But Ralph, with the spirit of a
martyr, resolved to wait until he knew what the result of Bud's suit
should be, and whether, indeed, the young Goliath had prior claims, as
he evidently thought he had. He turned hopefully to the sermon,
determined to pick up any crumbs of comfort that might fall from Mr.
Bosaw's meager table.

In reporting a single specimen passage of Mr. Bosaw's sermon, I shall
not take the liberty which Thucydides and other ancient historians did,
of making the sermon and putting it into the hero's mouth, but shall
give that which can be vouched for.

"You see, my respective hearers," he began--but alas! I can never
picture to you the rich red nose, the see sawing gestures, the nasal
resonance, the sniffle, the melancholy minor key, and all that. "My
respective hearers-ah, you see-ah as how-ah as my tex'-ah says that the
ox-ah knoweth his owner-ah, and-ah the ass-ah his master's crib-ah.
A-h-h! Now, my respective hearers-ah, they're a mighty sight of
resemblance-ah atwext men-ah and oxen-ah" [Ralph could not help
reflecting that there was a mighty sight of resemblance between some men
and asses. But the preacher did not see this analogy. It lay too close
to him], "bekase-ah, you see, men-ah is mighty like oxen-ah. Fer they's
a tremengious defference-ah atwixt defferent oxen-ah, jest as thar is
atwext defferent men-ah; fer the ox knoweth-ah his owner-ah, and the
ass-ah, his master's crib-ah. Now, my respective hearers-ah" [the
preacher's voice here grew mellow, and the succeeding sentences were in
the most pathetic and lugubrious tones], "you all know-ah that your
humble speaker-ah has got-ah jest the best yoke of steers-ah in this
township-ah." [Here Betsey Short shook the floor with a suppressed
titter.] "They a'n't no sech steers as them air two of mine-ah in this
whole kedentry-ah. Them crack oxen over at Clifty-ah ha'n't a patchin'
to mine-ah. Fer the ox knoweth his owner-ah and the ass-ah his master's
crib-ah.

"Now, my respective hearers-ah, they's a right smart sight of
defference-ah atwext them air two oxen-ah, jest like they is atwext
defferent men-ah. Fer-ah" [here the speaker grew earnest, and sawed the
air, from this to the close, in a most frightful way], "fer-ah, you
see-ah, when I go out-ah in the mornin'-ah to yoke-ah up-ah them air
steers-ah, and I says-ah, 'Wo, Berry-ah! _Wo, Berry-ah!_ WO, BERRY-AH',
why Berry-ah jest stands stock still-ah and don't hardly breathe-ah
while I put on the yoke-ah, and put in the bow-ah, and put in the
key-ah, fer, my brethering-ah and sistering-ah, the ox knoweth his
owner-ah, and the ass-ah his master's crib-ah. Hal-le-lu-ger-ah!

"But-ah, my hearers-ah, but-ah when I stand at t'other eend of the
yoke-ah, and say, 'Come, Buck-ah! _Come, Buck-ah!_ COME, BUCK-AH! COME,
BUCK-AH!' why what do you think-ah? Buck-ah, that ornery ole Buck-ah,
'stid of comin' right along-ah and puttin' his neck under-ah, acts jest
like some men-ah what is fools-ah. Buck-ah jest kinder sorter stands
off-ah, and kinder sorter puts his head down-ah this 'ere way-ah, and
kinder looks mad-ah, and says, Boo-_oo_-OO-OO-ah!"

Alas! Hartsook found no spiritual edification there, and he was in no
mood to be amused. And so, while the sermon drew on through two dreary
hours, he forgot the preacher in noticing a bright green lizard which,
having taken up its winter quarters behind the tin candlestick that hung
just back of the preacher's head, had been deceived by the genial warmth
coming from the great box-stove, and now ran out two or three feet from
his shelter, looking down upon the red-nosed preacher in a most
confidential and amusing manner. Sometimes he would retreat behind the
candlestick, which was not twelve inches from the preacher's head, and
then rush out again. At each reappearance Betsey Short would stuff her
handkerchief into her mouth and shake in a most distressing way. Shocky
wondered what the lizard was winking at the preacher about. And Miss
Martha thought that it reminded her of a lizard that she see at the
East, the time she was to Bosting, in a jar of alcohol in the Natural
History Rooms. The Squire was not disappointed in his anticipation that
Mr. Bosaw would attack his denomination with some fury. In fact, the old
preacher outdid himself in his violent indignation at "these people that
follow Campbell-ah, that thinks-ah that obejience-ah will save 'em-ah
and that belongs-ah to temp'rince societies-ah and Sunday-schools-ah,
and them air things-ah, that's not ortherized in the Bible-ah, but comes
of the devil-ah, and takes folks as belongs to 'em to hell-ah."

As they came out the door Ralph rallied enough to remark: "He did attack
your people, Squire."

"Oh, yes," said the Squire. "Didn't you see the Sarpent inspirin' him?"

But the long, long hours were ended and Ralph got on the clay-bank mare
and rode up alongside the stile whence Miss Martha mounted. And as he
went away with a heavy heart, he overheard Pete Jones call out to
somebody:

"We'll tend to his case & Christmas." Christmas was two days off.

And Miss Martha remarked with much trepidation that poor Pearson would
have to leave. She'd always been afraid that would be the end of it. It
reminded her of something she heard at the East, the time she was down
to Bosting.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: Even the Anti-means Baptists have suffered from the dire
spirit of the age. They are to-day a very respectable body of people
calling themselves "Primitive Baptists." Perhaps the description in the
text never applied to the whole denomination, but only to the Hardshells
of certain localities. Some of these intensely conservative churches, I
have reason to believe, were always composed of reputable people. But
what is said above is not in the least exaggerated as a description of
many of the churches in Indiana and Illinois. Their opposition to the
temperance reformation was both theoretical and practical. A rather able
minister of the denomination whom I knew as a boy used to lie in
besotted drunkenness by the roadside. I am sorry to confess that he once
represented the county in the State legislature. The piece of a sermon
given in this chapter was heard near Cairo, Illinois, in the days before
the war. Most of the preachers were illiterate farmers. I have heard one
of them hold forth two hours at a stretch. But even in that day there
were men among the Hardshells whose ability and character commanded
respect. This was true, especially in Kentucky, where able men like the
two Dudleys held to the Antinomian wing of their denomination. But the
Hardshells are perceptibly less hard than they were. You may march at
the rear of the column among Hunkers and Hardshells if you will, but you
are obliged to march. Those who will not go voluntarily, the
time-spirit, walking behind, prods onward with a goad.]




CHAPTER XIII.

A STRUGGLE FOR THE MASTERY


The school had closed on Monday evening as usual. The boys had been
talking in knots all day. Nothing but the bulldog in the slender,
resolute young master had kept down the rising storm. A teacher who has
lost moral support at home, can not long govern a school. Ralph had
effectually lost his popularity in the district, and the worst of it was
that he could not divine from just what quarter the ill wind came,
except that he felt sure of Small's agency in it somewhere. Even Hannah
had slighted him, when he called at Means's on Monday morning to draw
the pittance of pay that was due him.

He had expected a petition for a holiday on Christmas day. Such holidays
are deducted from the teacher's time, and it is customary for the boys
to "turn out" the teacher who refuses to grant them, by barring him out
of the school-house on Christmas and New Year's morning. Ralph had
intended to grant a holiday if it should be asked, but it was not
asked. Hank Banta was the ringleader in the disaffection, and he had
managed to draw the surly Bud, who was present this morning, into it. It
is but fair to say that Bud was in favor of making a request before
resorting to extreme measures, but he was overruled. He gave it as his
solemn opinion that the master was mighty peart, and they would be beat
anyhow some way, but he would lick the master fer two cents ef he warn't
so slim that he'd feel like he was fighting a baby.

And all that day things looked black. Ralph's countenance was cold and
hard as stone, and Shocky trembled where he sat. Betsey Short tittered
rather more than usual. A riot or a murder would have seemed amusing to
her.

School was dismissed, and Ralph, instead of returning to the Squire's,
set out for the village of Clifty, a few miles away. No one knew what he
went for, and some suggested that he had "sloped."

But Bud said "he warn't that air kind. He was one of them air sort as
died in their tracks, was Mr. Hartsook. They'd find him on the ground
nex' morning, and he lowed the master war made of that air sort of stuff
as would burn the dog-on'd ole school-house to ashes, or blow it into
splinters, but what he'd beat. Howsumdever he'd said he was a-goin' to
help, and help he would; but all the sinno in Golier wouldn't be no
account again the cute they was in the head of the master."

But Bud, discouraged as he was with the fear of Ralph's "cute," went
like a martyr to the stake and took his place with the rest in the
school-house at nine o'clock at night. It may have been Ralph's
intention to preoccupy the school-house, for at ten o'clock Hank Banta
was set shaking from head to foot at seeing a face that looked like the
master's at the window. He waked up Bud and told him about it.

"Well, what are you a-tremblin' about, you coward?" growled Bud. "He
won't shoot you; but he'll beat you at this game, I'll bet a hoss, and
me, too, and make us both as 'shamed of ourselves as dogs with
tin-kittles to their tails. You don't know the master, though he did
duck you. But he'll larn you a good lesson this time, and me too, like
as not." And Bud soon snored again, but Hank shook with fear every time
he looked at the blackness outside the windows. He was sure he heard
foot-falls. He would have given anything to have been at home.

When morning came, the pupils began to gather early. A few boys who were
likely to prove of service in the coming siege were admitted through the
window, and then everything was made fast, and a "snack" was eaten.

"How do you 'low he'll get in?" said Hank, trying to hide his fear.

"How do I 'low?" said Bud. "I don't 'low nothin' about it. You might as
well ax me where I 'low the nex' shootin' star is a-goin' to drap. Mr.
Hartsook's mighty onsartin. But he'll git in, though, and tan your hide
fer you, you see ef he don't. _Ef_ he don't blow up the school-house
with gunpowder!" This last was thrown in by way of alleviating the fears
of the cowardly Hank, for whom Bud had a great contempt.

The time for school had almost come. The boys inside were demoralized by
waiting. They began to hope that the master had "sloped." They dreaded
to see him coming.

"I don't believe he'll come," said Hank, with a cold shiver. "It's past
school-time."

"Yes, he will come, too," said Bud. "And he 'lows to come in here mighty
quick. I don't know how. But he'll be a-standin' at that air desk when
it's nine o'clock. I'll bet a thousand dollars on that. _Ef_ he don't
take it into his head to blow us up!" Hank was now white.

Some of the parents came along, accidentally of course, and stopped to
see the fun, sure that Bud would thrash the master if he tried to break
in. Small, on the way to see a patient perhaps, reined up in front of
the door. Still no Ralph. It was just five minutes before nine. A rumor
now gained currency that he had been seen going to Clifty the evening
before, and that he had not come back, though in fact Ralph had come
back, and had slept at Squire Hawkins's.

"There's the master," cried Betsey Short, who stood out in the road
shivering and giggling alternately. For Ralph at that moment emerged
from the sugar-camp by the school-house, carrying a board.

"Ho! ho!" laughed Hank, "he thinks he'll smoke us out. I guess he'll
find us ready." The boys had let the fire burn down, and there was now
nothing but hot hickory coals on the hearth.

"I tell you he'll come in. He didn't go to Clifty fer nothing" said Bud,
who sat still on one of the benches which leaned against the door. "I
don't know how, but they's lots of ways of killing a cat besides chokin'
her with butter. He'll come in--_ef_ he don't blow us all sky-high!"

Ralph's voice was now heard, demanding that the door be opened.

"Let's open her," said Hank, turning livid with fear at the firm,
confident tone of the master.

Bud straightened himself up. "Hank, you're a coward. I've got a mind to
kick you. You got me into this blamed mess, and now you want to
craw-fish. You jest tech one of these 'ere fastenings, and I'll lay you
out flat of your back afore you can say Jack Robinson."

The teacher was climbing to the roof with the board in hand.

"That air won't win," laughed Pete Jones outside. He saw that there was
no smoke. Even Bud began to hope that Ralph would fail for once. The
master was now on the ridge-pole of the school-house. He took a paper
from his pocket, and deliberately poured the contents down the chimney.

Mr. Pete Jones shouted "Gunpowder!" and set off down the road to be out
of the way of the explosion. Dr. Small remembered, probably, that his
patient might die while he sat here, and started on.

But Ralph emptied the paper, and laid the board over the chimney. What a
row there was inside! The benches that were braced against the door were
thrown down, and Hank Banta rushed out, rubbing his eyes, coughing
frantically, and sure that he had been blown up. All the rest followed,
Bud bringing up the rear sulkily, but coughing and sneezing for dear
life. Such a smell of sulphur as came from that school-house!

Betsey had to lean against the fence to giggle.

[Illustration: FIRE AND BRIMSTONE]

As soon as all were out, Ralph threw the board off the chimney, leaped
to the ground, entered the school-house, and opened the windows. The
school soon followed him, and all was still.

"Would he thrash?" This was the important question in Hank Banta's mind.
And the rest looked for a battle with Bud.

"It is just nine o'clock," said Ralph, consulting his watch, "and I'm
glad to see you all here promptly. I should have given you a holiday if
you had asked me like gentlemen yesterday. On the whole, I think I shall
give you a holiday, anyhow. The school is dismissed."

And Hank felt foolish.

And Bud secretly resolved to thrash Hank or the master, he didn't care
which.

And Mirandy looked the love she could not utter.

And Betsey giggled.




CHAPTER XIV.

A CRISIS WITH BUD.


Ralph sat still at his desk. The school had gone. All at once he became
conscious that Shocky sat yet in his accustomed place upon the hard,
backless bench.

"Why, Shocky, haven't you gone yet?"

"No--sir--I was waitin' to see if you warn't a-goin', too--I--"

"Well?"

"I thought it would make me feel as if God warn't quite so fur away to
talk to you. It did the other day."

The master rose and put his hand on Shocky's head. Was it the
brotherhood in affliction that made Shocky's words choke him so? Or, was
it the weird thoughts that he expressed? Or, was it the recollection
that Shocky was Hannah's brother? Hannah so far, far away from him now!
At any rate, Shocky, looking up for the smile on which he fed, saw the
relaxing of the master's face, that had been as hard as stone, and felt
just one hot tear on his hand.

"P'r'aps God's forgot you, too," said Shocky in a sort of half
soliloquy. "Better get away from Flat Creek. You see God forgets
everybody down here. 'Cause 'most everybody forgets God, 'cept Mr.
Bosaw, and I 'low God don't no ways keer to be remembered by sich as
him. Leastways I wouldn't if I was God, you know. I wonder what becomes
of folks when God forgets 'em?" And Shocky, seeing that the master had
resumed his seat and was looking absently into the fire, moved slowly
out the door.

"Shocky!" called the master.

The little poet came back and stood before him.

"Shocky, you mustn't think God has forgotten you. God brings things out
right at last." But Ralph's own faith was weak, and his words sounded
hollow and hypocritical to himself. Would God indeed bring things out
right?

He sat musing a good while, trying to convince himself of the truth of
what he had just been saying to Shocky--that God would indeed bring
things out right at last. Would it all come out right if Bud married
Hannah? Would it all come out right if he were driven from Flat Creek
with a dark suspicion upon his character? Did God concern himself with
these things? Was there any God? It was the same old struggle between
Doubt and Faith. And when Ralph looked up, Shocky had departed.

In the next hour Ralph fought the old battle of Armageddon. I shall not
describe it. You will fight it in your own way. No two alike. The
important thing is the End. If you come out as he did, with the doubt
gone and the trust in God victorious, it matters little just what shape
the battle may take. Since Jacob became Israel there have never been two
such struggles alike, save in that they all end either in victory or in
defeat.

It was after twelve o'clock on that Christmas day when Ralph put his
head out the door of the school-house and called out: "Bud, I'd like to
see you."

Bud did not care to see the master, for he had inly resolved to "thrash
him" and have done with him. But he couldn't back out, certainly not in
sight of the others who were passing along the road with him.

"I don't want the rest of you," said Ralph in a decided way, as he saw
that Hank and one or two others were resolved to come also.

"Thought maybe you'd want somebody to see far play," said Hank as he
went off sheepishly.

"If I did, you would be the last one I should ask," said Ralph. "There's
no unfair play in Bud, and there is in you." And he shut the door.

"Now, looky here, Mr. Ralph Hartsook," said Bud. "You don't come no gum
games over me with your saft sodder and all that. I've made up my mind.
You've got to promise to leave these 'ere digging, or I've got to thrash
you."

"You'll have to thrash me, then," said Ralph, turning a little pale, but
remembering the bulldog. "But you'll tell me what It's all about, won't
you?"

"You know well enough. Folks says you know more 'bout the robbery at the
Dutchman's than you orter. But I don't believe them. Fer them as says it
is liars and thieves theirselves. 'Ta'n't fer none of that. And I shan't
tell you what it _is_ fer. So now, if you won't travel, why, take off
your coat and git ready fer a thrashing."

The master took off his coat and showed his slender arms. Bud laid his
off, and showed the physique of a prize-fighter.

"You a'n't a-goin to fight _me_?" said Bud.

"Not unless you make me."

"Why I could chaw you all up."

"I know that."

"Well, you're the grittiest feller I ever did see, and ef you'd jest kep
off of my ground I wouldn't a touched you. But I a'n't a-goin' to be cut
out by no feller a livin' 'thout thrashin' him in an inch of his life.
You see I wanted to git out of this Flat Crick way. We're a low-lived
set here in Flat Crick. And I says to myself, I'll try to be somethin'
more nor Pete Jones, and dad, and these other triflin', good-fer-nothin'
ones 'bout here. And when you come I says, There's one as'll help me.
And what do you do with yor book-larnin' and town manners but start
right out to git away the gal that I'd picked out, when I'd picked her
out kase I thought, not bein' Flat Crick born herself, she might help a
feller to do better! Now I won't let nobody cut me out without givin'
'em the best thrashin' it's in these 'ere arms to give."

"But I haven't tried to cut you out."

"You can't fool _me_."

"Bud, listen to me, and then thrash me if you will. I went with that
girl once. When I found you had some claims, I gave her up. Not because
I was afraid of you, for I would rather have taken the worst thrashing
you can give me than give her up. But I haven't spoken to her since the
night of the first spelling-school."

"You lie!" said Bud, doubling his fists.

Ralph grew red.

"You was a-waitin' on her last Sunday right afore my eyes, and a-tryin'
to ketch my attention too. So when you're ready say so."

"Bud, there is some misunderstanding." Hartsook spoke slowly and felt
bewildered. "I tell you that I did not speak to Hannah last Sunday, and
you know I didn't."

"Hanner!" Bud's eyes grew large. "Hanner!" Here he gasped for breath,
and looked around, "Hanner!" He couldn't get any further than the name
at first. "Why, plague take it, who said Hanner?"

"Mirandy said you were courting Hannah," said Ralph, feeling round in a
vague way to get his ideas together.

"Mirandy! Thunder! You believed Mirandy! Well! Now, looky here, Mr.
Hartsook, ef you was to say that my sister lied, I'd lick you till yer
hide wouldn't hold shucks. But _I_ say, a-twix you and me and the
gate-post, don't you never believe nothing that Mirandy Means says. Her
and marm has set theirselves like fools to git you. Hanner! Well, she's
a mighty nice gal, but you're welcome to _her_. I never tuck no shine
that air way. But I was out of school last Thursday and Friday
a-shucking corn to take to mill a-Saturday. And when I come past the
Squire's and seed you talking to a gal as is a gal, you know"--here Bud
hesitated and looked foolish--"I felt hoppin' mad."

Bud put on his coat.

Ralph put on his coat.

Then they shook hands and Bud went out. Ralph sat looking into the fire.
There was no conscientious difficulty now in the way of his claiming
Hannah. The dry forestick lying on the rude stone andirons burst into a
blaze. The smoldering hope In the heart of Ralph Hartsook did the same.
He could have Hannah If he could win her. But there came slowly back the
recollection of his lost standing in Flat Creek. There was
circumstantial evidence against him. It was evident that Hannah believed
something of this. What other stones Small might have put in circulation
he did not know. Would Small try to win Hannah's love to throw it away
again, as he had done with others? At least he would not spare any pains
to turn the heart of the bound girl against Ralph.

The bright flame on the forestick, which Ralph had been watching,
flickered and burned low.




CHAPTER XV.

THE CHURCH OF THE BEST LICKS.


Just as the flame on the forestick, which Ralph had watched so
intensely, flickered and burned low, and just as Ralph with a heavy but
not quite hopeless heart rose to leave, the latch lifted and Bud
re-entered.

"I wanted to say something," he stammered, "but you know it's hard to
say it. I ha'n't no book-larnin to speak of, and some things is hard to
say when a man ha'n't got book-words to say 'em with. And they's some
things a man can't hardly ever say anyhow to anybody."

Here Bud stopped. But Ralph spoke in such a matter-of-course way in
reply that he felt encouraged to go on.

"You gin up Hanner kase you thought she belonged to me. That's more'n
I'd a done by a long shot. Now, arter I left here jest now, I says to
myself, a man what can gin up his gal on account of sech a feeling fer
the rights of a Flat Cricker like me, why, dog-on it, says I, sech a man
is the man as can help me do better. I don't know whether you're a
Hardshell or a Saftshell, or a Methodist, or a Campbellite, or a New
Light, or a United Brother, or a Millerite, or what-not. But I says, the
man what can do the clean thing by a ugly feller like me, and stick to
it, when I was jest ready to eat him up, is a kind of a man to tie to."

Here Bud stopped in fright at his own volubility, for he had run his
words off like a piece learned by heart, as though afraid that if he
stopped he would not have courage to go on.

Ralph said that he did not belong to any church, and he was afraid he
couldn't do Bud much good. But his tone was full of sympathy, and, what
is better than sympathy, a yearning for sympathy.

"You see," said Bud, "I wanted to git out of this low-lived, Flat Crick
way of livin'. We're a hard set down here, Mr. Hartsook. And I'm gittin'
to be one of the hardest of 'em. But I never could git no good out of
Bosaw with his whisky and meanness. And I went to the Mount Tabor church
concert. I heard a man discussin' baptism, and regeneration, and so on.
That didn't seem no cure for me, I went to a revival over at Clifty.
Well, 'twarn't no use. First night they was a man that spoke about Jesus
Christ in sech a way that I wanted to foller him everywhere. But I
didn't feel fit. Next night I come back with my mind made up that I'd
try Jesus Christ, and see ef he'd have me. But laws! they was a big man
that night that preached hell. Not that I don't believe they's a hell.
They's plenty not a thousand miles away as deserves it, and I don't know
as I'm too good for it myself. But he pitched it at us, and stuck it in
our faces in sech a way that I got mad. And I says, Well, ef God sends
me to hell he can't make me holler 'nough nohow. You see my dander was
up. And when my dander's up, I wouldn't gin up fer the devil his-self.
The preacher was so insultin' with his way of doin' it. He seemed to be
kind of glad that we was to be damned, and he preached somethin' like
some folks swears. It didn't sound a bit like the Christ the little man
preached about the night afore. So what does me and a lot of fellers do
but slip out and cut off the big preacher's stirrups, and hang 'em on to
the rider of the fence, and then set his hoss loose! And from that day,
sometimes I did, and sometimes I didn't, want to be better. And to-day
it seemed to me that you must know somethin' as would help me."

Nothing is worse than a religious experience kept ready to be exposed to
the gaze of everybody, whether the time is appropriate or not. But never
was a religious experience more appropriate than the account which
Ralph gave to Bud of his Struggle in the Dark. The confession of his
weakness and wicked selfishness was a great comfort to Bud.

"Do you think that Jesus Christ would--would--well, do you think he'd
help a poor, unlarnt Flat Cricker like me?"

"I think he was a sort of a Flat Creeker himself," said Ralph, slowly
and very earnestly.

"You don't say?" said Bud, almost getting off his seat.

"Why, you see the town he lived in was a rough place. It was called
Nazareth, which meant 'Bush-town.'"

"You don't say?"

"And he was called a Nazarene, which was about the same as
'backwoodsman.'"

And Ralph read the different passages which he had studied at
Sunday-school, illustrating the condescension of Jesus, the stories of
the publicans, the harlots, the poor, who came to him. And he read about
Nathanael, who lived only six miles away, saying, 'Can any good thing
come out of Nazareth?'"

"Jus' what Clifty folks says about Flat Crick," broke in Bud.

"Do you think I could begin without being baptized?" he added
presently.

"Why not? Let's begin now to do the best we can, by his help."

"You mean, then, that I'm to begin now to put in my best licks for Jesus
Christ, and that he'll help me?"

This shocked Ralph's veneration a little. But it was the sincere
utterance of an earnest soul. It may not have been an orthodox start,
but it was the one start for Bud. And there be those who have repeated
with the finest æsthetic appreciation the old English liturgies who have
never known religious aspiration so sincere as that of this ignorant
young Hercules, whose best confession was that he meant hereafter "to
put in his best licks for Jesus Christ." And there be those who can
define repentance and faith to the turning of a hair who never made so
genuine a start for the kingdom of Heaven as Bud Means did.

Ralph said yes, that he thought that was just it. At least, he guessed
if there was something more, the man that was putting in his best licks
would be sure to find it out.

"Do you think he'd help a feller? Seems to me it would be number one to
have God help you. Not to help you fight other folks, but to help you
when it comes to fighting the devil inside. But you see I don't belong
to no church"

"Well, let's you and me have one right off. Two people that help one
another to serve God make a church."

I am afraid this ecclesiastical theory will not be considered orthodox.
It was Ralph's, and I write it down at the risk of bringing him into
condemnation.

But other people before the days of Bud and Ralph have discussed church
organization when they should have been doing Christian work. For both
of them had forgotten the danger that hung over the old basket-maker,
until Shocky burst into the school-house, weeping. Indeed, the poor,
nervous little frame was ready to go into convulsions.

"Miss Hawkins--"

Bud started at mention of the name.

"Miss Hawkins has just been over to say that a crowd is going to tar and
feather Mr. Pearson to-night. And--" here Shocky wept again. "And he
won't run, but he's took up the old flintlock, and he'll die in his
tracks."




CHAPTER XVI.

THE CHURCH MILITANT.


Bud was doubly enlisted on the side of John Pearson, the basket-maker.
In the first place, he knew that this persecution of the unpopular old
man was only a blind to save somebody else; that they were thieves who
cried, "Stop thief!" And he felt consequently that this was a chance to
put his newly-formed resolutions into practice. The Old Testament
religious life, which consists in fighting the Lord's enemies, suited
Bud's temper and education. It might lead to something better. It was
the best possible to him, now. But I am afraid I shall have to
acknowledge that there was a second motive that moved Bud to this
championship. The good heart of Martha Hawkins having espoused the cause
of the basket-maker, the heart of Bud Means could not help feeling
warmly on the same side. Blessed is that man in whose life the driving
of duty and the drawing of love impel the same way! But why speak of the
driving of duty? For already Bud was learning the better lesson of
serving God for the love of God.

The old basket-maker was the most unpopular man in Flat Creek district.
He had two great vices. He would go to Clifty and have a "spree" once in
three months. And he would tell the truth in a most unscrupulous manner.
A man given to plain speaking was quite as objectionable in Flat Creek
as he would have been in France under the Empire, the Commune, or the
Republic, and almost as objectionable as he would be in any refined
community in America. People who live in glass houses have a horror of
people who throw stones. And the old basket-maker, having no friends,
was a good scape-goat. In driving him off, Pete Jones would get rid of a
dangerous neighbor and divert attention from himself. The immediate
crime of the basket-maker was that he had happened to see too much.

"Mr. Hartsook," said Bud, when they got out into the road, "you'd better
go straight home to the Squire's. Bekase ef this lightnin' strikes a
second time it'll strike awful closte to you. You hadn't better be seen
with us. Which way did you come, Shocky?"

"Why, I tried to come down the holler, but I met Jones right by the big
road, and he sweared at me and said he'd kill me ef I didn't go back and
stay. And so I went back to the house and then slipped out through the
graveyard. You see I was bound to come ef I got skinned. For Mr.
Pearson's, stuck to me and I mean to stick to him, you see."

Bud led Shocky through the graveyard. But when they reached the forest
path from the graveyard he thought that perhaps it was not best to "show
his hand," as he expressed it, too soon.

"Now, Shocky," he said, "do you run ahead and tell the ole man that I
want to see him right off down by the Spring-in-rock. I'll keep closte
behind you, and ef anybody offers to trouble you, do you let off a yell
and I'll be thar in no time."

When Ralph left the school-house he felt mean. There were Bud and Shocky
gone on an errand of mercy, and he, the truant member of the Church of
the Best Licks, was not with them. The more he thought of it the more he
seemed to be a coward, and the more he despised himself; so, yielding as
usual to the first brave impulse, he leaped nimbly over the fence and
started briskly through the forest in a direction intersecting the path
on which were Bud and Shocky. He came in sight just in time to see the
first conflict of the Church in the Wilderness with her foes.

For Shocky's little feet went more swiftly on their eager errand than
Bud had anticipated. He got farther out of Bud's reach than the latter
intended he should, and he did not discover Pete Jones until Pete, with
his hog-drover's whip, was right upon him.

Shocky tried to halloo for Bud, but he was like one in a nightmare. The
yell died into a whisper which could not have been heard ten feet.

I shall not repeat Mr. Jones's words. They were frightfully profane. But
he did not stop at words. He swept his whip round and gave little Shocky
one terrible cut. Then the voice was released, and the piercing cry of
pain brought Bud down the path flying.

"You good-for-nothing scoundrel," growled Bud, "you're a coward and a
thief to be a-beatin' a little creetur like him!" and with that Bud
walked up on Jones, who prudently changed position in such a way as to
get the upper side of the hill.

"Well, I'll gin you the upper side, but come on," cried Bud, "ef you
a'n't afeared to fight somebody besides a poor little sickly baby or a
crippled soldier. Come on!"

[Illustration: Bud Means comes to the rescue of Shocky.]

Pete was no insignificant antagonist. He had been a great fighter, and
his well-seasoned arms were like iron. He had not the splendid set of
Bud, but he had more skill and experience in the rude tournament of
fists to which the backwoods is so much given. Now, being out of sight
of witnesses and sure that he could lie about the fight afterward, he
did not scruple to take advantages which would have disgraced him
forever if he had taken them in a public fight on election day or at a
muster. He took the uphill side, and he clubbed his whip-stalk, striking
Bud with all his force with the heavy end, which, coward-like, he had
loaded with lead. Bud threw up his strong left arm and parried the blow,
which, however, was so fierce that it fractured one of the bones of the
arm. Throwing away his whip Pete rushed upon Bud furiously, intending to
overpower him, but Bud slipped quickly to one side and let Jones pass
down the hill, and as Jones came up again Means dealt him one crushing
blow that sent him full length upon the ground. Nothing but the leaves
saved him from a most terrible fall. Jones sprang to his feet more angry
than ever at being whipped by one whom he regarded as a boy, and drew a
long dirk-knife. But he was blind with rage, and Bud dodged the knife,
and this time gave Pete a blow on the nose which marred the homeliness
of that feature and doubled the fellow up against a tree ten feet away.

Ralph came in sight in time to see the beginning of the fight, and he
arrived on the ground just as Pete Jones went down under the well-dealt
blow from the only remaining fist of Bud Means.

While Ralph examined Bud's disabled left arm Pete picked himself up
slowly, and, muttering that he felt "consid'able shuck up like," crawled
away like a whipped puppy. To every one whom he met, Pete, whose
intellect seemed to have weakened in sympathy with his frame, remarked
feebly that he was consid'able shuck up like, and vouchsafed no other
explanation. Even to his wife he only said that he felt purty
consid'able shuck up like, and that the boys would have to get on
to-night without him. There are some scoundrels whose very malignity is
shaken out of them for the time being by a thorough drubbing.

"I'm afraid you're going to have trouble with your arm, Bud," said Ralph
tenderly.

"Never mind; I put in my best licks fer _Him_ that air time, Mr.
Hartsook." Ralph shivered a little at thought of this, but if it was
right to knock Jones down at all, why might not Bud do it "heartily as
unto the Lord?"

Gideon did not feel any more honest pleasure in chastising the
Midianites than did Bud in sending Pete Jones away purty consid'able
shuck up like.




CHAPTER XVII.

A COUNCIL OF WAR.


Shocky, whose feet had flown as soon as he saw the final fall of Pete
Jones, told the whole story to the wondering and admiring ears of Miss
Hawkins, who unhappily could not remember anything at the East just like
it; to the frightened ears of the rheumatic old lady who felt sure her
ole man's talk and stubbornness would be the ruin of him, and to the
indignant ears of the old soldier who was hobbling up and down,
sentinel-wise, in front of his cabin, standing guard over himself.

"No, I won't leave," he said to Ralph and Bud. "You see I jest won't.
What would Gin'ral Winfield Scott say ef he knew that one of them as fit
at Lundy's Lane backed out, retreated, run fer fear of a passel of
thieves? No, sir; me and the old flintlock will live and die together.
I'll put a thunderin' charge of buckshot into the first one of them
scoundrels as comes up the holler. It'll be another Lundy's Lane. And
you, Mr. Hartsook, may send Scott word that ole Pearson, as fit at
Lundy's Lane under him, died a-fightin' thieves on Rocky Branch, in
Hoopole Kyounty, State of Injeanny."

And the old man hobbled faster and faster, taxing his wooden leg to the
very utmost, as if his victory depended on the vehemence with which he
walked his beat.

Mrs. Pearson sat wringing her hands and looking appealingly at Martha
Hawkins, who stood in the door, in despair, looking appealingly at Bud.
Bud was stupefied by the old man's stubbornness and his own pain, and in
his turn appealed mutely to the master, in whose resources he had
boundless confidence. Ralph, seeing that all depended on him, was taxing
his wits to think of some way to get round Pearson's stubbornness.
Shocky hung to the old man's coat and pulled away at him with many
entreating words, but the venerable, bare-headed sentinel strode up and
down furiously, with his flintlock on his shoulder and his basket-knife
in his belt.

Just at this point somebody could be seen indistinctly through the
bushes coming up the hollow.

"Halt!" cried the old hero. "Who goes there?"

"It's me, Mr. Pearson. Don't shoot me, please."

It was the voice of Hannah Thomson. Hearing that the whole neighborhood
was rising against the benefactor of Shocky and of her family, she had
slipped away from the eyes of her mistress, and run with breathless
haste to give warning in the cabin on Rocky Branch. Seeing Ralph, she
blushed, and went into the cabin.

"Well," said Ralph, "the enemy is not coming yet. Let us hold a council
of war."

This thought came to Ralph like an inspiration. It pleased the old man's
whim, and he sat down on the door-step.

"Now, I suppose," said Ralph, "that General Winfield Scott always looked
into things a little before he went into a fight. Didn't he?"

"_To_ be sure," assented the old man.

"Well," said Ralph. "What is the condition of the enemy? I suppose the
whole neighborhood's against us."

"_To_ be sure," said the old man. The rest were silent, but all felt the
statement to be about true.

"Next," said Ralph, "I suppose General Winfield Scott would always
inquire into the condition of his own troops. Now let us see. Captain
Pearson has Bud, who is the right wing, badly crippled by having his arm
broken in the first battle." (Miss Hawkins looked pale.)

"_To_ be sure," said the old man.

"And I am the left wing, pretty good at giving advice, but very slender
in a fight."

"_To_ be sure," said the old man.

"And Shocky and Miss Martha and Hannah good aids, but nothing in a
battle."

"_To_ be sure," said the basket-maker, a little doubtfully.

"Now let's look at the arms and accouterments, I think you call them.
Well, this old musket has been loaded--"

"This ten year," said the old lady.

"And the lock is so rusty that you could not cock it when you wanted to
take aim at Hannah."

The old man looked foolish, and muttered "_To_ be sure."

"And there isn't another round of ammunition in the house."

The old man was silent.

"Now let us look at the incumbrances. Here's the old lady and Shocky. If
you fight, the enemy will be pleased. It will give them a chance to kill
you. And then the old lady will die and they will do with Shocky as they
please."

"_To_ be sure," said the old man reflectively.

"Now," said Ralph, "General Winfield Scott, under such circumstances,
would retreat in good order. Then, when he could muster his forces
rightly, he would drive the enemy from his ground."

"To be sure," said the old man. "What ort I to do?"

"Have you any friends?"

"Well, yes; ther's my brother over in Jackson Kyounty. I mout go there."

"Well," said Bud, "do you just go down to Spring-in-rock and stay there.
Them folks won't be here tell midnight. I'll come fer you at nine with
my roan colt, and I'll set you down over on the big road on Buckeye Run.
Then you can git on the mail-wagon that passes there about five o'clock
in the mornin', and go over to Jackson County and keep shady till we
want you to face the enemy and to swear agin some folks. And then well
send fer you."

"To be sure," said the old man in a broken voice. "I reckon General
Winfield Scott wouldn't disapprove of such a maneuver as that thar."

Miss Martha beamed on Bud to his evident delight, for he carried his
painful arm part of the way home with her. Ralph noticed that Hannah
looked at _him_ with a look full of contending emotions. He read
admiration, gratitude, and doubt in the expression of her face, as she
turned toward home.

"Well, good-by, ole woman," said Pearson, as he took up his little
handkerchief full of things and started for his hiding-place; "good-by.
I didn't never think I'd desart you, and ef the old flintlock hadn't a
been rusty, I'd a staid and died right here by the ole cabin. But I
reckon 'ta'n't best to be brash[22]." And Shocky looked after him, as he
hobbled away over the stones, more than ever convinced that God had
forgotten all about things on Flat Creek. He gravely expressed his
opinion to the master the next day.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 22: The elaborate etymological treatment of this word in its
various forms in our best dictionary is a fine illustration of the fact
that something more than scholarship is needed for penetrating the
mysteries of current folk-speech. _Brash_--often _bresh_--in the sense
of refuse boughs of trees, is only another form of _brush_; the two are
used as one word by the people. _Brash_ in the sense of brittle has no
conscious connection with the noun in popular usage, but it is accounted
by the people the same word as _brash_ in the sense of rash or
impetuous. The suggestion in the Century Dictionary that the words
spelled _brash_ are of modern formation violates the soundest canon of
antiquarian research, which is that a word phrase or custom widely
diffused among plain or rustic people is of necessity of ancient origin.
Now _brash_, the adjective, exists in both senses in two or three of the
most widely separated dialects of the United States, and hence must have
come from England. Indeed, it appears in Wright's Dictionary of
Provincial English in precisely the sense it has in the text.]




CHAPTER XVIII.

ODDS AND ENDS.


The Spring-in-rock, or, as it was sometimes, by a curious perversion,
called, the "rock-in-spring," was a spring running out of a cave-like
fissure in a high limestone cliff. Here the old man sheltered himself on
that dreary Christmas evening, until Bud brought his roan colt to the
top of the cliff above, and he and Ralph helped the old man up the cliff
and into the saddle. Ralph went back to bed, but Bud, who was only too
eager to put in his best licks, walked by the side of old John Pearson
the six miles over to Buckeye Run, and at last, after eleven o'clock, he
deposited him in a hollow sycamore by the road, there to wait the coming
of the mail-wagon that would carry him into Jackson County.

"Good-by," said the basket-maker, as Bud mounted the colt to return. "Ef
I'm wanted jest send me word, and I'll make a forrard movement any time.
I don't like this 'ere thing of running off in the night-time. But I
reckon General Winfield Scott would a ordered a retreat ef he'd a been
in my shoes. I'm lots obleeged to you. Akordin' to my tell, we're all
of us selfish in everything; but I'll be dog-on'd ef I don't believe you
and one or two more is exceptions."

Whether it was that the fact that Pete Jones had got consid'able shuck
up demoralized his followers, or whether it was that the old man's
flight was suspected, the mob did not turn out in very great force, and
the tarring was postponed indefinitely, for by the time they came
together it became known somehow that the man with a wooden leg had
outrun them all. But the escape of one devoted victim did not mollify
the feelings of the people toward the next one.

By the time Bud returned his arm was very painful, and the next day he
went under Dr. Small's treatment to reduce the fracture. Whatever
suspicions Bud might have of Pete Jones, he was not afflicted with
Ralph's dread of the silent young doctor. And if there was anything
Small admired it was physical strength and courage. Small wanted Bud on
his side, and least of all did he want him to be Ralph's champion. So
that the silent, cool, and skillful doctor went to work to make an
impression on Bud Means.

Other influences were at work upon him also. Mrs. Means volleyed and
thundered in her usual style about his "takin' up with a one-legged
thief, and runnin' arter that master that was a mighty suspicious kind
of a customer, akordin' to her tell. She'd allers said so. Ef she'd a
been consulted he wouldn't a been hired. He warn't fit company fer
nobody."

And old Jack Means 'lowed Bud must want to have _their_ barns burnt like
some other folkses had been. Fer his part, he had sense enough to know
they was some people as it wouldn't do to set a body's self agin. And as
fer him, he didn't butt his brains out agin a buckeye-tree. Not when he
was sober. And so they managed, during Bud's confinement to the house,
to keep him well supplied with all the ordinary discomforts of life.

But one visit from Martha Hawkins, ten words of kindly inquiry from her,
and the remark that his broken arm reminded her of something she had
seen at the East and something somebody said the time she was to
Bosting, were enough to repay the champion a thousand fold for all that
he suffered. Indeed, that visit, and the recollection of Ralph's saying
that Jesus Christ was a sort of a Flat Creeker himself, were manna in
the wilderness to Bud.

Poor Shocky was sick. The excitement had been too much for him, and
though his fever was very slight it was enough to produce just a little
delirium. Either Ralph or Miss Martha was generally at the cabin.

"They're coming," said Shocky to Ralph, "they're coming. Pete Jones is
a-going to bind me out for a hundred years. I wish Hanner would hold me
so's he couldn't. God's forgot all about us here in Flat Creek, and
there's nobody to help it."

And he shivered at every sudden sound. He was never free from this
delirious fright except when the master held him tight in his arms. He
staggered around the floor, the very shadow of Shocky, and was so
terrified by the approach of darkness that Ralph staid in the cabin on
Wednesday night and Miss Hawkins staid on Thursday night. On Friday, Bud
sent a note to Ralph, askin him to come and see him.

"You see, Mr. Hartsook, I ha'n't forgot what was said about puttin' in
our best licks for Jesus Christ. I've been a-trying to read some about
him while I set here. And I read where he said somethin about doing fer
the least of his brethren being as the same like as if it was done fer
Jesus Christ his-self. Now there's Shocky. I reckon, p'r'aps, as anybody
is a little brother of Jesus Christ, it is that Shocky. Pete Jones and
his brother Bill is determined to have him back there to-morry. Bekase
you see, Pete's one of the County Commissioners and to-morry's the day
that they bind out. He wants to bind out that boy jes' to spite ole
Pearson and you and me. You see, the ole woman's been helped by the
neighbors, and he'll claim Shocky to be a pauper, and they a'n't no
human soul here as dares to do a thing con_tra_ry to Pete. Couldn't you
git him over to Lewisburg? I'll lend you my roan colt."

Ralph thought a minute. He dared not take Shocky to the uncle's where he
found his only home. But there was Miss Nancy Sawyer, the old maid who
was everybody's blessing. He could ask her to keep him. And, at any
rate, he would save Shocky somehow.

As he went out in the dusk, he met Hannah in the lane.




CHAPTER XIX.

FACE TO FACE.


In the lane, in the dark, under the shadow of the barn, Ralph met Hannah
carrying her bucket of milk (they have no pails in Indiana)[23]. He
could see only the white foam on the milk, and Hannah's white face.
Perhaps it was well that he could not see how white Hannah's face was at
that moment when a sudden trembling made her set down the heavy bucket.
At first neither spoke. The recollection of all the joy of that walk
together in the night came upon them both. And a great sense of loss
made the night seem supernaturally dark to Ralph. Nor was it any lighter
in the hopeless heart of the bound girl. The presence of Ralph did not
now, as before, make the darkness of her life light.

"Hannah--" said Ralph presently, and stopped. For he could not finish
the sentence. With a rush there came upon him a consciousness of the
suspicions that filled Hannah's mind. And with it there came a feeling
of guilt. He saw himself from her stand-point, and felt a remorse almost
as keen as it could have been had he been a criminal. And this sudden
and morbid sense of his guilt as it appeared to Hannah paralyzed him.
But when Hannah lifted her bucket with her hand, and the world with her
heavy heart, and essayed to pass him, Ralph rallied and said:

"_You_ don't believe all these lies that are told about me."

"I don't believe anything, Mr. Hartsook; that is, I don't want to
believe anything against you. And I wouldn't mind anything they say if
it wasn't for two things"--here she stammered and looked down.

"If it wasn't for what?" said Ralph with a spice of indignant denial in
his voice.

Hannah hesitated, but Ralph pressed the question with eagerness.

"I saw you cross that blue-grass pasture the night--the night that you
walked home with me." She would have said the night of the robbery, but
her heart smote her, and she adopted the more kindly form of the
sentence.

Ralph would have explained, but how?

"I did cross the pasture," he began, "but--"

Just here it occurred to Ralph that there was no reason for his night
excursion across the pasture. Hannah again took up her bucket, but he
said:

"Tell me what else you have against me."

"I haven't anything against you. Only I am poor and friendless, and you
oughtn't to make my life any heavier. They say that you have paid
attention to a great many girls. I don't know why you should want to
trifle with me."

Ralph answered her this time. He spoke low. He spoke as though he were
speaking to God. "If any man says that I ever trifled with any woman, he
lies. I have never loved but one, and you know who that is. And God
knows."

"I don't know what to say, Mr. Hartsook." Hannah's voice was broken.
These solemn words of love were like a river in the desert, and she was
like a wanderer dying of thirst. "I don't know, Mr. Hartsook. If I was
alone, it wouldn't matter. But I've got my blind mother and my poor
Shocky to look after. And I don't want to make mistakes. And the world
is so full of lies I don't know what to believe. Somehow I can't help
believing what you say. You seem to speak so true. But--"

"But what?" said Ralph.

"But you know how I saw you just as kind to Martha Hawkins on Sunday
as--as--"

"Han--ner!" It was the melodious voice of the angry Mrs. Means, and
Hannah lifted her pail and disappeared.

Standing in the shadow of his own despair, Ralph felt how dark a night
could be when it had no promise of morning.

And Dr. Small, who had been stabling his horse just inside the barn,
came out and moved quietly into the house just as though he had not
listened intently to every word of the conversation.

As Ralph walked away he tried to comfort himself by calling to his aid
the bulldog in his character. But somehow it did not do him any good.
For what is a bulldog but a stoic philosopher? Stoicism has its value,
but Ralph had come to a place where stoicism was of no account. The
memory of the Helper, of his sorrow, his brave and victorious endurance,
came when stoicism failed. Happiness might go out of life, but in the
light of Christ's life happiness seemed but a small element anyhow. The
love of woman might be denied him, but there still remained what was
infinitely more precious and holy, the love of God. There still remained
the possibility of heroic living. Working, suffering, and enduring still
remained. And he who can work for God and endure for God, surely has
yet the best of life left. And, like the knights who could find the Holy
Grail only in losing themselves, Hartsook, in throwing his happiness out
of the count, found the purest happiness, a sense of the victory of the
soul over the tribulations of life. The man who knows this victory
scarcely needs the encouragement of the hope of future happiness. There
is a real heaven in bravely lifting the load of one's own sorrow and
work.

And it was a good thing for Ralph that the danger hanging over Shocky
made immediate action necessary.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 23: The total absence of the word _pail_ not only from the
dialect, but even from cultivated speech in the Southern and Border
States until very recently, is a fact I leave to be explained on further
investigation. The word is an old one and a good one, but I fancy that
its use in England could not have been generally diffused in the
seventeenth century. So a Hoosier or a Kentuckian never _pared_ an
apple, but _peeled_ it. Much light might be thrown on the origin and
history of our dialects by investigating their deficiencies.]




CHAPTER XX.

GOD REMEMBERS SHOCKY.


At four o'clock the next morning, in the midst of a driving snow, Ralph
went timidly up the lane toward the homely castle of the Meanses. He
went timidly, for he was afraid of Bull. But he found Bud waiting for
him, with the roan colt bridled and saddled. The roan colt was really a
large three-year-old, full of the finest sort of animal life, and
having, as Bud declared, "a mighty sight of hoss sense fer his age." He
seemed to understand at once that there was something extraordinary on
hand when he was brought out of his comfortable quarters at four in the
morning in the midst of a snow-storm. Bud was sure that the roan colt
felt his responsibility.

In the days that followed, Ralph often had occasion to remember this
interview with Bud, who had risked much in bringing his fractured arm
out into the cold, damp air. Jonathan never clave to David more
earnestly than did Bud this December morning to Ralph.

"You see, Mr. Hartsook," said Bud, "I wish I was well myself. It's hard
to set still. But it's a-doing me a heap of good. I'm like a boy at
school. And I'm a-findin' out that doing one's best licks fer others
ain't all they is of it, though it's a good part. I feel like as if I
must git Him, you know, to do lots for me. They's always some sums too
hard fer a feller, and he has to ax the master to do 'em, you know. But
see, the roan's a-stomping round. He wants to be off. Do you know I
think that hoss knows something's up? I think he puts in his best licks
fer me a good deal better than I do fer Him."

Ralph pressed Bud's right hand. Bud rubbed his face against the colt's
nose and said: "Put in your best licks, old fellow." And the colt
whinnied. How a horse must want to speak! For Bud was right. Men are
gods to horses, and they serve their deities with a faithfulness that
shames us.

Then Ralph sprang into the saddle, and the roan, as if wishing to show
Bud his willingness, broke into a swinging gallop, and was soon lost to
the sight of his master in the darkness and the snow. When Bud could no
more hear the sound of the roan's footsteps he returned to the house, to
lie awake picturing to himself the journey of Ralph with Shocky and the
roan colt. It was a great comfort to Bud that the roan, which was almost
a part of himself, represented him in this ride. And he knew the roan
well enough to feel sure that he would do credit to his master. "He'll
put in his best licks," Bud whispered to himself many a time before
daybreak.

The ground was but little frozen, and the snow made the roads more
slippery than ever. But the rough-shod roan handled his feet dexterously
and with a playful and somewhat self-righteous air, as though he said:
"Didn't I do it handsomely that time?" Down slippery hills, through deep
mud-holes covered with a slender film of ice he trod with perfect
assurance. And then up over the rough stones of Rocky Hollow, where
there was no road at all, he picked his way through the darkness and
snow. Ralph could not tell where he was at last, but gave the reins to
the roan, who did his duty bravely, and not without a little flourish,
to show that he had yet plenty of spare power.

A feeble candle-ray, making the dense snow-fall visible, marked for
Ralph the site of the basket-maker's cabin. Miss Martha had been
admitted to the secret, and had joined in the conspiracy heartily,
without being able to recall anything of the kind having occurred at the
East, and not remembering having seen or heard of anything of the sort
the time she was to Bosting. She had Shocky all ready, having used some
of her own capes and shawls to make him warm.

Miss Martha came out to meet Ralph when she heard the feet of the roan
before the door.

"O Mr. Hartsook! is that you? What a storm. This is jest the way it
snows at the East. Shocky's all ready. He didn't know a thing about it
tell I waked him this morning. Ever since that he's been saying that God
hasn't forgot, after all. It's made me cry more'n once." And Shocky
kissed Mrs. Pearson, and told her that when he got away from Flat Creek
he'd tell God all about it, and God would bring Mr. Pearson back again.
And then Martha Hawkins lifted the frail little form, bundled in shawls,
in her arms, and brought him out into the storm; and before she handed
him up he embraced her, and said: "O Miss Hawkins! God ha'n't forgot me,
after all. Tell Hanner that He ha'n't forgot. I'm going to ask him to
git her away from Means's and mother out of the poor-house. I'll ask him
just as soon as I get to Lewisburg."

Ralph lifted the trembling form into his arms, and the little fellow
only looked up in the face of the master and said: "You see, Mr.
Hartsook, I thought God had forgot. But he ha'n't."

And the words of the little boy comforted the master also. God had not
forgotten him, either!

From the moment that Ralph took Shocky into his arms, the conduct of the
roan colt underwent an entire revolution. Before that he had gone over a
bad place with a rush, as though he were ambitious of distinguishing
himself by his brilliant execution. Now he trod none the less surely,
but he trod tenderly. The neck was no longer arched. He set himself to
his work as steadily as though he were twenty years old. For miles he
traveled on in a long, swinging walk, putting his feet down carefully
and firmly. And Ralph found the spirit of the colt entering into
himself. He cut the snow-storm with his face, and felt a sense of
triumph over all his difficulties. The bulldog's jaws had been his
teacher, and now the steady, strong, and conscientious legs of the roan
inspired him.

Shocky had not spoken. He lay listening to the pattering music of the
horse's feet, doubtless framing the footsteps of the roan colt into an
anthem of praise to the God who had not forgot. But as the dawn came on,
making the snow whiter, he raised himself and said half-aloud, as he
watched the flakes chasing one another in whirling eddies, that the snow
seemed to be having a good time of it. Then he leaned down again on the
master's bosom, full of a still joy, and only roused himself from his
happy reverie to ask what that big, ugly-looking house was.

"See, Mr. Hartsook, how big it is, and how little and ugly the windows
is! And the boards is peeling off all over it, and the hogs is right in
the front yard. It don't look just like a house. It looks dreadful. What
is it?"

Ralph had dreaded this question. He did not answer it, but asked Shocky
to change his position a little, and then he quickened the pace of the
horse. But Shocky was a poet, and a poet understands silence more
quickly than he does speech. The little fellow shivered as the truth
came to him.

"Is that the poor-house?" he said, catching his breath. "Is my mother in
that place? _Won't_ you take me in there, so as I can just kiss her
once? 'Cause she can't see much, you know. And one kiss from me will
make her feel so good. And I'll tell her that God ha'n't forgot." He had
raised up and caught hold of Ralph's coat.

Ralph had great difficulty in quieting him. He told him that if he went
in there Bill Jones might claim that he was a runaway and belonged
there. And poor Shocky only shivered and said he was cold. A minute
later, Ralph found that he was shaking with a chill, and a horrible
dread came over him. What if Shocky should die? It was only a minute's
work to get down, take the warm horse-blanket from under the saddle, and
wrap it about the boy, then to strip off his own overcoat and add that
to it. It was now daylight, and finding, after he had mounted, that
Shocky continued to shiver, he put the roan to his best speed for the
rest of the way, trotting up and down the slippery hills, and galloping
away on the level ground. How bravely the roan laid himself to his work,
making the fence-corners fly past in a long procession! But poor little
Shocky was too cold to notice them, and Ralph shuddered lest Shocky
should never be warm again, and spoke to the roan, and the roan
stretched out his head, and dropped one ear back to hear the first word
of command, and stretched the other forward to listen for danger, and
then flew with a splendid speed down the road, past the patches of
blackberry briars, past the elderberry bushes, past the familiar red-haw
tree in the fence-corner, over the bridge without regard to the threat
of a five-dollar fine, and at last up the long lane into the village,
where the smoke from the chimneys was caught and whirled round with the
snow.




CHAPTER XXI.

MISS NANCY SAWYER.


In a little old cottage in Lewisburg, on one of the streets which was
never traveled except by a solitary cow seeking pasture or a countryman
bringing wood to some one of the half-dozen families living in it, and
which in summer was decked with a profusion of the yellow and white
blossoms of the dog-fennel--in this unfrequented street, so generously
and unnecessarily broad, lived Miss Nancy Sawyer and her younger sister
Semantha. Miss Nancy was a providence, one of those old maids that are
benedictions to the whole town; one of those in whom the mother-love,
wanting the natural objects on which to spend itself, overflows all
bounds and lavishes itself on every needy thing, and grows richer and
more abundant with the spending, a fountain of inexhaustible blessing.
There is no nobler life possible to any one than to an unmarried woman.
The more shame that some choose a selfish one, and thus turn to gall all
the affection with which they are endowed. Miss Nancy Sawyer had been
Ralph's Sunday-school teacher, and it was precious little, so far as
information went, that he learned from her; for she never could conceive
of Jerusalem as a place in any essential regard very different from
Lewisburg, where she had spent her life. But Ralph learned from her what
most Sunday-school teachers fail to teach, the great lesson of
Christianity, by the side of which all antiquities and geographies and
chronologies and exegetics and other niceties are as nothing.

And now he turned the head of the roan toward the cottage of Miss Nancy
Sawyer as naturally as the roan would have gone to his own stall in the
stable at home. The snow had gradually ceased to fall, and was eddying
round the house, when Ralph dismounted from his foaming horse, and,
carrying the still form of Shocky as reverently as though it had been
something heavenly, knocked at Miss Nancy Sawyer's door.

With natural feminine instinct that lady started back when she saw
Hartsook, for she had just built a fire in the stove, and she now stood
at the door with unwashed face and uncombed hair.

"Why, Ralph Hartsook, where did you drop down from--and what have you
got?"

"I came from Flat Creek this morning, and I brought you a little angel
who has got out of heaven, and needs some of your motherly care."

Shocky was brought in. The chill shook him now by fits only, for a fever
had spotted his cheeks already.

"Who are you?" said Miss Nancy, as she unwrapped him.

"I'm Shocky, a little boy as God forgot, and then thought of again."




CHAPTER XXII.

PANCAKES.


Half an hour later, Ralph, having seen Miss Nancy Sawyer's machinery of
warm baths and simple remedies safely in operation, and having seen the
roan colt comfortably stabled, and rewarded for his faithfulness by a
bountiful supply of the best hay and the promise of oats when he was
cool--half an hour later Ralph was doing the most ample, satisfactory,
and amazing justice to his Aunt Matilda's hot buckwheat-cakes and warm
coffee. And after his life in Flat Creek, Aunt Matilda's house did look
like paradise. How white the table-cloth, how bright the coffee-pot, how
clean the wood-work, how glistening the brass door-knobs, how spotless
everything that came under the sovereign sway of Mrs. Matilda White! For
in every Indiana village as large as Lewisburg, there are generally a
half-dozen women who are admitted to be the best housekeepers. All
others are only imitators. And the strife is between these for the
pre-eminence. It is at least safe to say that no other in Lewisburg
stood so high as an enemy to dirt, and as a "rat, roach, and mouse
exterminator," as did Mrs. Matilda White, the wife of Ralph's maternal
uncle, Robert White, Esq., a lawyer in successful practice. Of course no
member of Mrs. White's family ever stayed at home longer than was
necessary. Her husband found his office--which he kept in as bad a state
as possible in order to maintain an equilibrium in his life--much more
comfortable than the stiffly clean house at home. From the time that
Ralph had come to live as a chore-boy at his uncle's, he had ever
crossed the threshold of Aunt Matilda's temple of cleanliness with a
horrible sense of awe. And Walter Johnson, her son by a former marriage,
had--poor, weak-willed fellow!--been driven into bad company and bad
habits by the wretchedness of extreme civilization. And yet he showed
the hereditary trait, for all the genius which Mrs. White consecrated to
the glorious work of making her house too neat to be habitable, her son
Walter gave to tying exquisite knots in his colored cravats and combing
his oiled locks so as to look like a dandy barber. And she had no other
children. The kind Providence that watches over the destiny of children
takes care that very few of them are lodged in these terribly clean
houses.

But Walter was not at the table, and Ralph had so much anxiety lest his
absence should be significant of evil, that he did not venture to
inquire after him as he sat there between Mr. and Mrs. White disposing
of Aunt Matilda's cakes with an appetite only justified by his long
morning's ride and the excellence of the brown cakes, the golden honey,
and the coffee, enriched, as Aunt Matilda's always was, with the most
generous cream. Aunt Matilda was so absorbed in telling of the doings of
the Dorcas Society that she entirely forgot to be surprised at the early
hour of Ralph's arrival. When she had described the number of the
garments finished to be sent to the Five Points Mission, or the Home for
the Friendless, or the South Sea Islands, I forget which, Ralph thought
he saw his chance, while Aunt Matilda was in a benevolent mood, to
broach a plan he had been revolving for some time. But when he looked at
Aunt Matilda's immaculate--horribly immaculate--housekeeping, his heart
failed him, and he would have said nothing had she not inadvertently
opened the door herself.

"How did you get here so early, Ralph?" and Aunt Matilda's face was
shadowed with a coming rebuke.

"By early rising," said Ralph. But, seeing the gathering frown on his
aunt's brow, he hastened to tell the story of Shocky as well as he
could. Mrs. White did not give way to any impulse toward sympathy until
she learned that Shocky was safely housed with Miss Nancy Sawyer.

"Yes, Sister Sawyer has no family cares," she said by way of smoothing
her slightly ruffled complacency, "she has no family cares, and she can
do those things. Sometimes I think she lets people impose on her and
keep her away from the means of grace, and I spoke to our new preacher
about it the last time he was here, and asked him to speak to Sister
Sawyer about staying away from the ordinances to wait on everybody, but
he is a queer man, and he only said that he supposed Sister Sawyer
neglected the inferior ordinances that she might attend to higher ones.
But I don't see any sense in a minister of the gospel calling
prayer-meeting a lower ordinance than feeding catnip-tea to Mrs. Brown's
last baby. But hasn't this little boy--Shocking, or what do you call
him?--got any mother?"

"Yes," said Ralph, "and that was just what I was going to say." And he
proceeded to tell how anxious Shocky was to see his half-blind mother,
and actually ventured to wind up his remarks by suggesting that Shocky's
mother be invited to stay over Sunday in Aunt Matilda's house.

"Bless my stars!" said that astounded saint, "fetch a pauper here? What
crazy notions you have got! Fetch her here out of the poor-house? Why,
she wouldn't be fit to sleep in my--" here Aunt Matilda choked. The bare
thought of having a pauper in her billowy beds, whose snowy whiteness
was frightful to any ordinary mortal, the bare thought of the contagion
of the poor-house taking possession of one of her beds, smothered her.
"And then you know sore eyes are very catching."

Ralph boiled a little. "Aunt Matilda, do you think Dorcas was afraid of
sore eyes?"

It was a center shot, and the lawyer-uncle, lawyerlike, enjoyed a good
hit. And he enjoyed a good hit at his wife best of all, for he never
ventured on one himself. But Aunt Matilda felt that a direct reply was
impossible. She was not a lawyer but a woman, and so dodged the question
by making a counter-charge.

"It seems to me, Ralph, that you have picked up some very low
associates. And you go around at night, I am told. You get over here by
daylight, and I hear that you have made common cause with a lame soldier
who acts as a spy for thieves, and that your running about of night is
likely to get you into trouble."

Ralph was hit this time. "I suppose," he said, "that you've been
listening to some of Henry Small's lies."

"Why, Ralph, how you talk! The worst sign of all is that you abuse such
a young man as Dr. Small, the most exemplary Christian young man in the
county. And he is a great friend of yours, for when he was here last
week he did not say a word against you, but looked so sorry when your
being in trouble was mentioned. Didn't he, Mr. White?"

Mr. White, as in duty bound, said yes, but he said yes in a cool,
lawyerlike way, which showed that he did not take quite so much stock in
Dr. Small as his wife did. This was a comfort to Ralph, who sat
picturing to himself the silent flattery which Dr. Small's eyes paid to
his Aunt Matilda, and the quiet expression of pain that would flit
across his face when Ralph's name was mentioned. And never until that
moment had Hartsook understood how masterful Small's artifices were. He
had managed to elevate himself in Mrs. White's estimation and to destroy
Ralph at the same time, and had managed to do both by a contraction of
the eyebrows!

But the silence was growing painful and Ralph thought to break it and
turn the current of talk from himself by asking after Mrs. White's son.

"Where is Walter?"

"Oh! Walter's doing well. He went down to Clifty three weeks ago to
study medicine with Henry Small. He seems so fond of the doctor, and the
doctor is such an excellent man, you know, and I have strong hopes that
Wallie will be led to see the error of his ways by his association with
Henry. I suppose he would have gone to see you but for the unfavorable
reports that he heard. I hope, Ralph, you too will make the friendship
of Dr. Small. And for the sake of your poor, dead mother"--here Aunt
Matilda endeavored to show some emotion--"for the sake of your poor dead
mother--"

But Ralph heard no more. The buckwheat-cakes had lost their flavor. He
remembered that the colt had not yet had his oats, and so, in the very
midst of Aunt Matilda's affecting allusion to his mother, like a
stiff-necked reprobate that he was, Ralph Hartsook rose abruptly from
the table, put on his hat, and went out toward the stable.

"I declare," said Mrs. White, descending suddenly from her high moral
stand-point, "I declare that boy has stepped right on the threshold of
the back-door," and she stuffed her white handkerchief into her pocket,
and took down the floor-cloth to wipe off the imperceptible blemish left
by Ralph's boot-heels. And Mr. White followed his nephew to the stable
to request that he would be a little careful what he did about anybody
in the poor-house, as any trouble with the Joneses might defeat Mr.
White's nomination to the judgeship of the Court of Common Pleas.




CHAPTER XXIII.

A CHARITABLE INSTITUTION.


When Ralph got back to Miss Nancy Sawyer's, Shocky was sitting up in bed
talking to Miss Nancy and Miss Semantha. His cheeks were a little
flushed with fever and the excitement of telling his story; theirs were
wet with tears. "Ralph," whispered Miss Nancy, as she drew him into the
kitchen, "I want you to get a buggy or a sleigh, and go right over to
the poor-house and fetch that boy's mother over here. It'll do me more
good than any sermon I ever heard to see that boy in his mother's arms
to-morrow. We can keep the old lady over Sunday."

Ralph was delighted, so delighted that he came near kissing good Miss
Nancy Sawyer, whose plain face was glorified by her generosity.

But he did not go to the poor-house immediately. He waited until he saw
Bill Jones, the Superintendent of the Poor-House, and Pete Jones, the
County Commissioner, who was still somewhat shuck up, ride up to the
court-house. Then he drove out of the village, and presently hitched his
horse to the poor-house fence, and took a survey of the outside. Forty
hogs, nearly ready for slaughter, wallowed in a pen in front of the
forlorn and dilapidated house; for though the commissioners allowed a
claim for repairs at every meeting, the repairs were never made, and it
would not do to scrutinize Mr. Jones's bills too closely, unless you
gave up all hope of renomination to office. One curious effect of
political aspirations in Hoopole County, was to shut the eyes that they
could not see, to close the ears that they could not hear, and to
destroy the sense of smell. But Ralph, not being a politician, smelled
the hog-pen without and the stench within, and saw everywhere the
transparent fraud, and heard the echo of Jones's cruelty.

A weak-eyed girl admitted him, and as he did not wish to make his
business known at once, he affected a sort of idle interest in the
place, and asked to be allowed to look round. The weak-eyed girl watched
him. He found that all the women with children, twenty persons in all,
were obliged to sleep in one room, which, owing to the hill-slope, was
partly under ground, and which had but half a window for light, and no
ventilation, except the chance draft from the door. Jones had declared
that the women with children must stay there--"he warn't goin' to have
brats a-runnin' over the whole house." Here were vicious women and good
women, with their children, crowded like chickens in a coop for market.
And there were, as usual in such places, helpless, idiotic women with
illegitimate children. Of course this room was the scene of perpetual
quarreling and occasional fighting.

In the quarters devoted to the insane, people slightly demented and
raving maniacs were in the same rooms, while there were also those utter
wrecks which sat in heaps on the floor, mumbling and muttering
unintelligible words, the whole current of their thoughts hopelessly
muddled, turning around upon itself in eddies never ending.

"That air woman," said the weak-eyed girl, "used to holler a heap when
she was brought in here. But Pap knows how to subjue 'em. He slapped her
in the mouth every time she hollered. She don't make no furss now, but
jist sets down that way all day, and keeps a-whisperin'."

Ralph understood it. When she came in she was the victim of mania; but
she had been beaten into hopeless idiocy. Indeed this state of incurable
imbecility seemed the end toward which all traveled. Shut in these bare
rooms, with no treatment, no exercise, no variety, and meager food,
cases of slight derangement soon grew into chronic lunacy.

One young woman, called Phil, a sweet-faced person, apparently a
farmer's wife, came up to Ralph and looked at him kindly, playing with
the buttons on his coat in a childlike simplicity. Her blue-drilling
dress was sewed all over with patches of white, representing ornamental
buttons. The womanly instinct toward adornment had in her taken this
childish turn.

"Don't you think they ought to let me go home?" she said with a
sweetness and a wistful, longing, home-sick look, that touched Ralph to
the heart. He looked at her, and then at the muttering crones, and he
could see no hope of any better fate for her. She followed him round the
barn-like rooms, returning every now and then to her question. "Don't
you think I might go home now?"

The weak-eyed girl had been called away for a moment, and Ralph stood
looking into a cell, where there was a man with a gay red plume in his
hat and a strip of red flannel about his waist. He strutted up and down
like a drill-sergeant.

"I am General Andrew Jackson," he began. "People don't believe it, but I
am. I had my head shot off at Bueny Visty, and the new one that growed
on isn't nigh so good as the old one; it's tater on one side[24]. That's
why they take advantage of me to shut me up. But I know some things. My
head is tater on one side, but it's all right on t'other. And when I
know a thing in the left side of my head, I know it. Lean down here. Let
me tell you something out of the left side. Not out of the tater side,
mind ye. I wouldn't a told you if he hadn't locked me up fer nothing.
_Bill Jones is a thief_! He sells the bodies of the dead paupers, and
then sells the empty coffins back to the county agin. But that a'n't
all--"

Just then the weak-eyed girl came back, and, as Ralph moved away,
General Jackson called out: "That a'n't all. I'll tell the rest another
time. And that a'n't out of the tater side, you can depend on that.
That's out of the left side. Sound as a nut on that side!"

But Ralph began to wonder where he should find Hannah's mother.

"Don't go in there," cried the weak-eyed girl, as Ralph was opening a
door. "Ole Mowley's in there, and she'll cuss you."

"Oh! well, if that's all, her curses won't hurt," said Hartsook,
pushing open the door. But the volley of blasphemy and vile language
that he received made him stagger. The old hag paced the floor, abusing
everybody that came in her way. And by the window, in the same room,
feeling the light that struggled through the dusty glass upon her face,
sat a sorrowful, intelligent Englishwoman. Ralph noticed at once that
she was English, and in a few moments he discovered that her sight was
defective. Could it be that Hannah's mother was the room-mate of this
loathsome creature, whose profanity and obscenity did not intermit for a
moment?

Happily the weak-eyed girl had not dared to brave the curses of Mowley.
Ralph stepped forward to the woman by the window, and greeted her.

"Is this Mrs. Thomson?"

"That is my name, sir," she said, turning her face toward Ralph, who
could not but remark the contrast between the thorough refinement of her
manner and her coarse, scant, unshaped pauper-frock of blue drilling.

"I saw your daughter yesterday."

"Did you see my boy?"

There was a tremulousness in her voice and an agitation in her manner
which disclosed the emotion she strove in vain to conceal. For only the
day before Bill Jones had informed her that Shocky would be bound out on
Saturday, and that she would find that goin' agin him warn't a payin'
business, so much as some others he mout mention.

Ralph told her about Shocky's safety. _I_ shall not write down the
conversation here. Critics would say that it was an overwrought scene.
As if all the world were as cold as they! All I can tell is that this
refined woman had all she could do to control herself in her eagerness
to get out of her prison-house, away from the blasphemies of Mowley,
away from the insults of Jones, away from the sights and sounds and
smells of the place, and, above all, her eagerness to fly to the little
shocky-head from whom she had been banished for two years. It seemed to
her that she could gladly die now, if she could die with that flaxen
head upon her bosom.

And so, in spite of the opposition of Bill Jones's son, who threatened
her with every sort of evil if she left, Ralph wrapped Mrs. Thomson's
blue drilling in Nancy Sawyer's shawl, and bore the feeble woman off to
Lewisburg. And as they drove away, a sad, childlike voice cried from the
gratings of the upper window, "Good-by! good-by!" Ralph turned and saw
that it was Phil, poor Phil, for whom there was no deliverance[25]. And
all the way back Ralph pronounced mental maledictions on the Dorcas
Society, not for sending garments to the Five Points or the South Sea
Islands, whichever it was, but for being so blind to the sorrow and
poverty within its reach. He did not know, for he had not read the
reports of the Boards of State Charities, that nearly all alms-houses
are very much like this, and that the State of New York is not better in
this regard than Indiana. And he did not know that it is true in almost
all other counties, as it was in his own, that "Christian" people do not
think enough of Christ to look for him in these lazar-houses.

And while Ralph denounced the Dorcas Society, the eager, hungry heart of
the mother ran, flew toward the little white-headed boy.

No, I can not do it; I can not tell you about that meeting. I am sure
that Miss Nancy Sawyer's tea tasted exceedingly good to the pauper, who
had known nothing but cold water for years, and that the bread and
butter were delicious to a palate that had eaten poor-house soup for
dinner, and coarse poor-house bread and vile molasses for supper, and
that without change for three years. But I can not tell you how it
seemed that evening to Miss Nancy Sawyer, as the poor English lady sat
in speechless ecstacy, rocking in the old splint-bottomed rocking-chair
in the fire-light, while she pressed to her bosom with all the might of
her enfeebled arms, the form of the little Shocky, who half-sobbed and
half-sang, over and over again, "God ha'n't forgot us, mother; God
ha'n't forgot us."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: Some time after this book appeared Dr. Brown-Séquard
announced his theory of the dual brain. A writer in an English magazine
called attention to the fact that the discovery had been anticipated by
an imaginative writer, and cited the passage in the text as proving that
the author of "The Hoosier School-Master" had outrun Dr. Brown-Séquard
in perceiving the duality of the brain. It is a matter for surprise that
an author, even an "imaginative" one, should have made so great a
discovery without suspecting its meaning until it was explained by some
one else.]

[Footnote 25: The reader may be interested to know that "Phil" was drawn
from the life, as was old Mowley and in part "General Jackson" also.
Between 1867 and 1870, I visited many jails and poor-houses with
philanthropic purpose, publishing the results of my examination in some
cases in _The Chicago Tribune_. Some of the abuses pointed out were
reformed, others linger till this day, I believe.]




CHAPTER XXIV.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN.


The Methodist church to which Mrs. Matilda White and Miss Nancy Sawyer
belonged was the leading one in Lewisburg, as it was in most county-seat
villages in Indiana. If I may be permitted to express my candid and
charitable opinion of the difference between the two women, I shall have
to use the old Quaker locution, and say that Miss Sawyer was a Methodist
and likewise a Christian; Mrs. White was a Methodist, but I fear she was
not likewise.

As to the first part of this assertion, there was no room to doubt Miss
Nancy's piety. She could get happy in class-meeting (for who had a
better right?), and could witness a good experience in the quarterly
love-feast. But it is not upon these grounds that I base my opinion of
Miss Nancy. Do not even the Pharisees the same? She never dreamed that
she had any right to speak of "Christian Perfection" (which, as Mrs.
Partington said of total depravity, is an excellent doctrine if it is
lived up to); but when a woman's heart is full of devout affections and
good purposes, when her head devises liberal and Christlike things, when
her hands are always open to the poor and always busy with acts of love
and self-denial, and when her feet are ever eager to run upon errands of
mercy, why, if there be anything worthy of being called Christian
Perfection in this world of imperfection, I do not know why such an one
does not possess it. What need of analyzing her experiences _in vacuo_
to find out the state of her soul?

How Miss Nancy managed to live on her slender income and be so generous
was a perpetual source of perplexity to the gossips of Lewisburg. And
now that she declared that Mrs. Thomson and Shocky should not return to
the poor-house there was a general outcry from the whole Committee of
Intermeddlers that she would bring herself to the poor-house before she
died. But Nancy Sawyer was the richest woman in Lewisburg, though nobody
knew it, and though she herself did not once suspect it.

How Miss Nancy and the preacher conspired together, and how they managed
to bring Mrs. Thomson's case up at the time of the "Sacramental Service"
in the afternoon of that Sunday in Lewisburg, and how the preacher made
a touching statement of it just before the regular "Collection for the
Poor" was taken, and how the warm-hearted Methodists put in dollars
instead of dimes while the Presiding Elder read those passages about
Zaccheus and other liberal people, and how the congregation sang

     "He dies, the Friend of sinners dies"

more lustily than ever, after having performed this Christian act--how
all this happened I can not take up the reader's time to tell. But I can
assure him that the nearly blind English woman did not room with
blasphemous old Mowley any more, and that the blue-drilling pauper frock
gave way to something better, and that grave little Shocky even danced
with delight, and declared that God hadn't forgot, though he'd thought
that He had. And Mrs. Matilda White remarked that it was a shame that
the collection for the poor at a Methodist sacramental service should be
given to a woman who was a member of the Church of England, and like as
not never soundly converted!

And Shocky slept in his mother's arms and prayed God not to forget
Hannah, while Shocky's mother knit stockings for the store day and
night, and day and night she prayed and hoped.




CHAPTER XXV.

BUD WOOING.


The Sunday that Ralph spent in Lewisburg, the Sunday that Shocky spent
in an earthly paradise, the Sunday that Mrs. Thomson spent with Shocky
instead of old Mowley, the Sunday that Miss Nancy thought was "just like
heaven," was also an eventful Sunday with Bud Means. He had long adored
Miss Martha in his secret heart, but, like many other giants, while
brave enough to face and fight dragons, he was a coward in the presence
of the woman that he loved. Let us honor him for it. The man who loves a
woman truly, reverences her profoundly and feels abashed in her
presence. The man who is never abashed in the presence of womanhood, the
man who tells his love without a tremor, is a shallow egotist. Bud's
nature was not fine. But it was deep, true, and manly. To him Martha
Hawkins was the chief of women. What was he that he should aspire to
possess her? And yet on that Sunday, with his crippled arm carefully
bound up, with his cleanest shirt, and with his heavy boots freshly
oiled with the fat of the raccoon, he started hopefully through fields
white with snow to the house of Squire Hawkins. When he started his
spirits were high, but they descended exactly in proportion to his
proximity to the object of his love. He thought himself not dressed well
enough He wished his shoulders were not so square, and his arms not so
stout. He wished that he had book-larnin' enough to court in nice, big
words. And so, by recounting his own deficiencies, he succeeded in
making himself feel weak, and awkward, and generally good-for-nothing,
by the time he walked up between the rows of dead hollyhocks to the
Squire's front door, to tap at which took all his remaining strength.

Miss Martha received her perspiring lover most graciously, but this only
convinced Bud more than ever that she was a superior being. If she had
slighted him a bit, so as to awaken his combativeness, his bashfulness
might have disappeared.

It was in vain that Martha inquired about his arm and complimented his
courage. Bud could only think of his big feet, his clumsy hands, and his
slow tongue. He answered in monosyllables, using his red silk
handkerchief diligently.

"Is your arm improving?" asked Miss Hawkins.

"Yes, I think it is," said Bud, hastily crossing his right leg over his
left, and trying to get his fists out of sight.

"Have you heard from Mr. Pearson?"

"No, I ha'n't," answered Bud, removing his right foot to the floor
again, because it looked so big, and trying to push his left hand into
his pocket.

"Beautiful sunshine, isn't it?" said Martha.

"Yes, 'tis," answered Bud, sticking his right foot up on the rung of the
chair and putting his right hand behind him.

"This snow looks like the snow we have at the East," said Martha. "It
snowed that way the time I was to Bosting."

"Did it?" said Bud, not thinking of the snow at all nor of Boston, but
thinking how much better he would have appeared had he left his arms and
legs at home.

"I suppose Mr. Hartsook rode your horse to Lewisburg?"

"Yes, he did;" and Bud hung both hands at his side.

"You were very kind."

This set Bud's heart a-going so that he could not say anything, but he
looked eloquently at Miss Hawkins, drew both feet under the chair, and
rammed his hands into his pockets. Then, suddenly remembering how
awkward he must look, he immediately pulled his hands out again, and
crossed his legs. There was a silence of a few minutes, during which Bud
made up his mind to do the most desperate thing he could think of--to
declare his love and take the consequences.

"You see, Miss Hawkins," he began, forgetting boots and fists in his
agony, "I thought as how I'd come over here to-day, and"--but here his
heart failed him utterly--"and--see--you."

"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Means."

"And I thought I'd tell you"--Martha was sure it was coming now, for Bud
was in dead earnest--"and I thought I'd just like to tell you, ef I only
know'd jest how to tell it right"--here Bud got frightened, and did not
dare close the sentence as he had intended--"I thought as how you might
like to know--or ruther I wanted to tell you--that--the--that I--that
we--all of us--think--that--I--that we are going to have a
spellin'-school a Chewsday night."

"I'm real glad to hear it," said the bland but disappointed Martha. "We
used to have spelling-schools at the East." But Miss Martha could not
remember that they had them "to Bosting."

Hard as it is for a bashful man to talk, it is still more difficult for
him to close the conversation. Most men like to leave a favorable
impression, and a bashful man is always waiting with the forlorn hope
that some favorable turn in the talk may let him out without absolute
discomfiture. And so Bud stayed a long time, and how he ever did get
away he never could tell.




CHAPTER XXVI.

A LETTER AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.


"SQUAR HAUKINS

"this is too Lett u no that u beter be Keerful hoo yoo an yore familly
tacks cides with fer peepl wont Stan it too hev the Men wat's sportin
the wuns wat's robin us, sported bi yor Fokes kepin kumpne with 'em, u
been a ossifer ov the Lau, yor Ha wil bern as qick as to an yor Barn tu,
so Tak kere. No mor ad pressnt."

This letter accomplished its purpose. The Squire's spectacles slipped
off several times while he read it. His wig had to be adjusted. If he
had been threatened personally he would not have minded it so much. But
the hay stacks were dearer to him than the apple of his glass eye. The
barn was more precious than his wig. And those who hoped to touch Bud in
a tender place through this letter knew the Squire's weakness far better
than they knew the spelling-book. To see his new red barn with its large
"Mormon" hay-press inside, and the mounted Indian on the vane,
consumed, was too much for the Hawkins heart to stand. Evidently the
danger was on the side of his niece. But how should he influence Martha
to give up Bud? Martha did not value the hay-stacks half so highly as
she did her lover. Martha did not think the new red barn, with the great
Mormon press inside and the galloping Indian on the vane, worth half so
much as a moral principle or a kind-hearted action. Martha, bless her!
would have sacrificed anything rather than forsake the poor. But Squire
Hawkins's lips shut tight over his false teeth in a way that suggested
astringent purse-strings, and Squire Hawkins could not sleep at night if
the new red barn, with the galloping Indian on the vane, were in danger.
Martha must be reached somehow.

So, with many adjustings of that most adjustable wig? with many turnings
of that reversible glass eye? the Squire managed to frighten Martha by
the intimation that he had been threatened, and to make her understand,
what it cost her much to understand, that she must turn the cold
shoulder to chivalrous, awkward Bud, whom she loved most tenderly,
partly, perhaps, because he did not remind her of anybody she had ever
known at the East.

Tuesday evening was the fatal time. Spelling-school was the fatal
occasion. Bud was the victim. Pete Jones had his revenge. For Bud had
been all the evening trying to muster courage enough to offer himself as
Martha's escort. He was not encouraged by the fact that he had spelled
even worse than usual, while Martha had distinguished herself by holding
her ground against Jeems Phillips for half an hour. But he screwed his
courage to the sticking place, not by quoting to himself the adage,
"Faint heart never won fair lady," which, indeed, he had never heard,
but by reminding himself that "ef you don't resk notin' you'll never git
nothin'." So, when the spelling-school had adjourned, he sidled up to
her, and, looking dreadfully solemn and a little foolish, he said:

"Kin I see you safe home?"

And she, with a feeling that her uncle's life was in danger, and that
his salvation depended upon her resolution--she, with a feeling that she
was pronouncing sentence of death on her own great hope, answered
huskily:

"No, I thank you."

If she had only known that it was the red barn with the Indian on top
that was in danger, she would probably have let the galloping brave take
care of himself.

It seemed to Bud, as he walked home mortified, disgraced, disappointed,
hopeless, that all the world had gone down in a whirlpool of despair.

"Might a knowed it," he said to himself. "Of course, a smart gal like
Martha a'n't agoin' to take a big, blunderin' fool that can't spell in
two syllables. What's the use of tryin'? A Flat Cricker Is a Flat
Cricker. You can't make nothin' else of him, no more nor you can make a
Chiny hog into a Berkshire."




CHAPTER XXVII.

A LOSS AND A GAIN.


Dr. Small, silent, attentive, assiduous Dr. Small, set himself to work
to bind up the wounded heart of Bud Means, even as he had bound up his
broken arm. The flattery of his fine eyes, which looked at Bud's muscles
so admiringly, which gave attention to his lightest remark, was not lost
on the young Flat Creek Hercules. Outwardly at least Pete Jones showed
no inclination to revenge himself on Bud. Was it respect for muscle, or
was it the influence of Small? At any rate, the concentrated extract of
the resentment of Pete Jones and his clique was now ready to empty
itself upon the head of Hartsook. And Ralph found himself in his dire
extremity without even the support of Bud, whose good resolutions seemed
to give way all at once. There have been many men of culture and more
favorable surroundings who have thrown themselves away with less
provocation. As it was, Bud quit school, avoided Ralph, and seemed more
than ever under the influence of Dr. Small, besides becoming the
intimate of Walter Johnson, Small's student and Mrs. Matilda White's
son. They made a strange pair--Bud with his firm jaw and silent,
cautious manner, and Walter Johnson with his weak chin, his nice
neck-ties, and general dandy appearance.

To be thus deserted in his darkest hour by his only friend was the
bitterest ingredient in Ralph's cup. In vain he sought an interview. Bud
always eluded him. While by all the faces about him Ralph learned that
the storm was getting nearer and nearer to himself. It might delay. If
it had been Pete Jones alone, it might blow over. But Ralph felt sure
that the relentless hand of Dr. Small was present in all his troubles.
And he had only to look into Small's eye to know how inextinguishable
was a malignity that burned so steadily and so quietly.

But there is no cup of unmixed bitterness. With an innocent man there is
no night so dark that some star does not shine. Ralph had one strong
sheet-anchor. On his return from Lewisburg on Monday Bud had handed him
a note, written on common blue foolscap, in round, old-fashioned hand.
It ran:

     "Dear Sir: Anybody who can do so good a thing as you did for our
     Shocky, can not be bad. I hope you will forgive me. All the
     appearances in the world, and all that anybody says, can not make
     me think you anything else but a good man. I hope God will reward
     you. You must not answer this, and you hadn't better see me again,
     or think any more of what you spoke about the other night. I shall
     be a slave for three years more, and then I must work for my mother
     and Shocky; but I felt so bad to think that I had spoken so hard to
     you, that I could not help writing this. Respectfully,

     "HANNAH THOMSON.

     "To MR. R. HARTSOOK, ESQ."

Ralph read it over and over. What else he did with it I shall not tell.
You want to know whether he kissed it, and put it into his bosom. Many a
man as intelligent and manly as Hartsook has done quite as foolish a
thing as that. You have been a little silly perhaps--if it is silly--and
you have acted in a sentimental sort of a way over such things. But it
would never do for me to tell you what Ralph did. Whether he put the
letter into his bosom or not, he put the words into his heart, and,
metaphorically speaking, he shook that little blue billet, written on
coarse foolscap paper--he shook that little letter full of confidence,
in the face and eyes of all the calamities that haunted him. If Hannah
believed in him, the whole world might distrust him. When Hannah was in
one scale and the whole world in the other, of what account was the
world? Justice may be blind, but all the pictures of blind cupids in the
world can not make Love blind. And it was well that Ralph weighed things
in this way. For the time was come in which he needed all the courage
the blue billet could give him.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE FLIGHT.


About ten days after Ralph's return to Flat Creek things came to a
crisis.

The master was rather relieved at first to have the crisis come. He had
been holding juvenile Flat Creek under his feet by sheer force of will.
And such an exercise of "psychic power" is very exhausting. In racing on
the Ohio the engineer sometimes sends the largest of the firemen to hold
the safety valve down, and this he does by hanging himself to the lever
by his hands. Ralph felt that he had been holding the safety-valve down,
and that he was so weary of the operation that an explosion would be a
real relief. He was a little tired of having everybody look on him as a
thief. It was a little irksome to know that new bolts were put on the
doors of the houses in which he had staid. And now that Shocky was gone,
and Bud had turned against him, and Aunt Matilda suspected him, and even
poor, weak, exquisite Walter Johnson would not associate with him, he
felt himself an outlaw indeed. He would have gone away to Texas or the
new gold fields in California had It not been for one thing. That
letter on blue foolscap paper kept a little warmth in his heart.

His course from school on the evening that something happened lay
through the sugar-camp. Among the dark trunks of the maples, solemn and
lofty pillars, he debated the case. To stay, or to flee? The worn nerves
could not keep their present tension much longer.

It was just by the brook, or, as they say in Indiana, the "branch[26],"
that something happened which brought him to a sudden decision. Ralph
never afterward could forget that brook. It was a swift-running little
stream, that did not babble blatantly over the stones. It ran through a
thicket of willows, through the sugar-camp, and out into Means's
pasture. Ralph had just passed through the thicket, had just crossed the
brook on the half-decayed log that spanned it, when, as he emerged from
the water-willows on the other side, he started with a sudden shock. For
there was Hannah, with a white, white face, holding out a little note
folded like an old-fashioned thumb-paper.

"Go quick!" she stammered as she slipped it Into Ralph's hand,
inadvertently touching his fingers with her own--a touch that went
tingling through the school-master's nerves. But she had hardly said the
words until she was gone down the brookside path and over into the
pasture. A few minutes afterward she drove the cows up into the lot and
meekly took her scolding from Mrs. Means for being gone sech an awful
long time, like a lazy, good-fer-nothin piece of goods that she was.

Ralph opened the thumb-paper note, written on a page torn from an old
copy-book, in Bud's "hand-write" and running:

     "Mr. Heartsook

     "deer Sur:

"I Put in my best licks, taint no use. Run fer yore life. A plans on
foot to tar an fether or wuss to-night. Go rite off. Things is awful
juberous[27].

     "BUD."

The first question with Ralph was whether he could depend on Bud. But he
soon made up his mind that treachery of any sort was not one of his
traits. He had mourned over the destruction of Bud's good resolutions by
Martha Hawkins's refusal, and being a disinterested party he could have
comforted Bud by explaining Martha's "mitten." But he felt sure that Bud
was not treacherous. It was a relief, then, as he stood there to know
that the false truce was over, and worst had come to worst.

His first impulse was to stay and fight. But his nerves were not strong
enough to execute so foolhardy a resolution. He seemed to see a man
behind every maple-trunk. Darkness was fast coming on, and he knew that
his absence from supper at his boarding-place could not fail to excite
suspicion. There was no time to be lost. So he started.

Once run from a danger, and panic is apt to ensue. The forest; the
stalk-fields, the dark hollows through which he passed, seemed to be
peopled with terrors. He knew Small and Jones well enough to know that
every avenue of escape would be carefully picketed. So there was nothing
to do but to take the shortest path to the old trysting place, the
Spring-in-rock.

Here he sat and shook with terror. Angry with himself, he inly denounced
himself for a coward. But the effect was really a physical one. The
chill and panic now were the reaction from the previous strain.

For when the sound of his pursuers' voices broke upon his ears early in
the evening, Ralph shook no more; the warm blood set back again toward
the extremities, and his self-control returned when he needed it. He
gathered some stones about him, as the only weapons of defense at hand.
The mob was on the cliff above. But he thought that he heard footsteps
in the bed of the creek below. If this were so, there could be no doubt
that his hiding-place was suspected.

"O Hank!" shouted Bud from the top of the cliff to some one in the creek
below, "be sure to look at the Spring-in-rock--I think he's there."

This hint was not lost on Ralph, who speedily changed his quarters by
climbing up to a secluded, shelf-like ledge above the spring. He was
none too soon, for Pete Jones and Hank Banta were soon looking all
around the spring for him, while he held a twenty-pound stone over
their heads ready to drop upon them in case they should think of looking
on the ledge above.

When the crowd were gone Ralph knew that one road was open to him. He
could follow down the creek to Clifty, and thence he might escape. But,
traveling down to Clifty, he debated whether it was best to escape. To
flee was to confess his guilt, to make himself an outlaw, to put an
insurmountable barrier between himself and Hannah, whose terror-stricken
and anxious face as she stood by the brook-willows haunted him now, and
was an involuntary witness to her love.

Long before he reached Clifty his mind was made up not to flee another
mile. He knocked at the door of Squire Underwood. But Squire Underwood
was also a doctor, and had been called away. He knocked at the door of
Squire Doolittle. But Squire Doolittle had gone to Lewisburg. He was
about to give up all hope of being able to surrender himself to the law
when he met Squire Hawkins, who had come over to Clifty to avoid
responsibility for the ill-deeds of his neighbors which he was powerless
to prevent.

"Is that you, Mr. Hartsook?"

"Yes, and I want you to arrest me and try me here in Clifty."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 26: I have already mentioned the absence of _pail_ and _pare_
from the ancient Hoosier folk-speech. _Brook_ is likewise absent. The
illiterate Indiana countryman before the Civil War, let us say, had no
pails, pared no apples, husked no corn, crossed no brooks. The same is
true, I believe, of the South generally. As the first settlers on the
Southern coast entered the land by the rivers, each smaller stream was
regarded as a branch of the larger one. A small stream was therefore
called a _branch_. The word brook was probably lost in the first
generation. But a small stream is often called a _run_ in the Middle and
Southern belt. Halliwell gives _rundel_ as used with the same
signification in England, and he gives _ryn_ in the same sense from an
old manuscript.]

[Footnote 27: _Juberous_ is in none of the vocabularies that I have
seen. I once treated this word in print as an undoubted corruption of
_dubious_, and when used subjectively it apparently feels the influence
of dubious, as where one says: "I feel mighty juberous about it." But it
is much oftener applied as in the text to the object of fear, as "The
bridge looks kind o' juberous." Halliwell gives the verb _juberd_ and
defines it as "to jeopard or endanger." It is clearly a dialect form of
_jeopard_, and I make no doubt that _juberous_ is a dialect variation of
_jeopardous_, occasionally used as a form of _dubious_.]




CHAPTER XXIX.

THE TRIAL.


The "prosecuting attorney" (for so the State's attorney is called in
Indiana) had been sent for the night before. Ralph refused all legal
help. It was not wise to reject counsel, but all his blood was up, and
he declared that he would not be cleared by legal quibbles. If his
innocence were not made evident to everybody, he would rather not be
acquitted on a preliminary examination. He would go over to the circuit
court and have the matter sifted to the bottom. But he would have been
pleased had his uncle offered his counsel, though he would have declined
it. He would have felt better to have had a letter from home somewhat
different from the one he received from his Aunt Matilda by the hand of
the prosecuting attorney. It was not very encouraging or very
sympathetic, though it was very characteristic.


"Dear Ralph:

"This is what I have always been afraid of. I warned you faithfully the
last time I saw you. My skirts are clear of your blood, I can not
consent for your uncle to appear as your counsel or to go your bail. You
know how much it would injure him in the county, and he has no right to
suffer for your evil acts. O my dear nephew! for the sake of your poor,
dead mother--"

We never shall know what the rest of that letter was. Whenever Aunt
Matilda got to Ralph's poor, dead mother in her conversation Ralph ran
out of the house. And now that his poor, dead mother was again made to
do service in his aunt's pious rhetoric, he landed the letter on the hot
coals before him, and watched it vanish into smoke with a grim
satisfaction.

Ralph was a little afraid of a mob. But Clifty was better than Flat
Creek, and Squire Hawkins, with all his faults, loved justice, and had a
profound respect for the majesty of the law, and a profound respect for
his own majesty when sitting as a court representing the law. Whatever
maneuvers he might resort to in business affairs in order to avoid a
conflict with his lawless neighbors, he was courageous and inflexible on
the bench. The Squire was the better part of him. With the co-operation
of the constable, he had organized a _posse_ of men who could be
depended on to enforce the law against a mob.

By the time the trial opened in the large school-house in Clifty at
eleven o'clock, all the surrounding country had emptied its population
into Clifty, and all Flat Creek was on hand ready to testify to
something. Those who knew the least appeared to know the most, and were
prodigal of their significant winks and nods. Mrs. Means had always
suspected him. She seed some mighty suspicious things about him from the
word go. She'd allers had her doubts whether he was jist the thing, and
ef her ole man had axed her, liker-n not he never'd a been hired. She'd
seed things with her own livin' eyes that beat all she ever seed in all
her born days. And Pete Jones said he'd allers knowed ther warn't no
good in sech a feller. Couldn't stay abed when he got there. And Granny
Sanders said, Law's sakes! nobody'd ever a found him out ef it hadn't
been fer her. Didn't she go all over the neighborhood a-warnin' people?
Fer her part, she seed straight through that piece of goods. He was fond
of the gals, too! Nothing was so great a crime in her eyes as to be fond
of the gals.

The constable paid unwitting tribute to William the Conquerer by crying
Squire Hawkins's court open with an Oyez! or, as he said, "O yes!" and
the Squire asked Squire Underwood, who came in at that minute, to sit
with him. From the start, it was evident to Ralph that the prosecuting
attorney had been thoroughly posted by Small, though, looking at that
worthy's face, one would have thought him the most disinterested and
philosophical spectator in the court-room.

Bronson, the prosecutor, was a young man, and this was his first case
since his election. He was very ambitious to distinguish himself, very
anxious to have Flat Creek influence on his side in politics; and,
consequently, he was very determined to send Ralph Hartsook to State
prison, justly or unjustly, by fair means or foul. To his professional
eyes this was not a question of right and wrong, not a question of life
or death to such a man as Ralph. It was George H. Bronson's opportunity
to distinguish himself. And so, with many knowing and confident nods and
hints, and with much deference to the two squires, he opened the case,
affecting great indignation at Ralph's wickedness, and uttering Delphic
hints about striped pants and shaven head, and the grating of
prison-doors at Jeffersonville.

"And, now, if the court please, I am about to call a witness whose
testimony is very important indeed. Mrs. Sarah Jane Means will please
step forward and be sworn."

This Mrs. Means did with alacrity. She had met the prosecutor, and
impressed him with her dark hints. She was sworn.

"Now, Mrs. Means, have the goodness to tell us what you know of the
robbery at the house of Peter Schroeder, and the part defendant had in
it."

"Well, you see, I allers suspected that air young man--"

Here Squire Underwood stopped her, and told her that she must not tell
her suspicions, but facts.

"Well, it's facts I am a-going to tell," she sniffed indignantly. "It's
facts that I mean to tell." Here her voice rose to a keen pitch, and she
began to abuse the defendant. Again and again the court insisted that
she must tell what there was suspicious about the school-master. At last
she got it out.

"Well, fer one thing, what kind of gals did he go with? Hey? Why, with
my bound gal, Hanner, a-loafin' along through the blue-grass paster at
ten o'clock, and keepin' that gal that's got no protector but me out
that a-way, and destroyin' her character by his company, that a'n't fit
fer nobody."

Here Bronson saw that he had caught a tartar. He said he had no more
questions to ask of Mrs. Means, and that, unless the defendant wished to
cross-question her, she could stand aside. Ralph said he would like to
ask her one question.

"Did I ever go with your daughter Miranda?"

"No, you didn't," answered the witness, with a tone and a toss of the
head that let the cat out, and set the court-room in a giggle. Bronson
saw that he was gaining nothing, and now resolved to follow the line
which Small had indicated.

Pete Jones was called, and swore point-blank that he heard Ralph go out
of the house soon after he went to bed, and that he heard him return at
two in the morning. This testimony was given without hesitation, and
made a great impression against Ralph in the minds of the justices. Mrs.
Jones, a poor, brow-beaten woman, came on the stand in a frightened way,
and swore to the same lies as her husband. Ralph cross-questioned her,
but her part had been well learned.

There, seemed now little hope for Ralph. But just at this moment who
should stride into the school-house but Pearson, the one-legged old
soldier basket-maker? He had crept home the night before, "to see ef the
ole woman didn't want somethin'," and hearing of Ralph's arrest, he
concluded that the time for him to make "a forrard movement" had come,
and so he determined to face the foe.

"Looky here, Squar," he said, wiping the perspiration from his brow,
"looky here. I jes want to say that I kin tell as much about this case
as anybody."

"Let us hear it, then," said Bronson, who thought he would nail Ralph
now for certain.

So, with many allusions to the time he fit at Lundy's Lane, and some
indignant remarks about the pack of thieves that driv him off, and a
passing tribute to Miss Martha Hawkins, and sundry other digressions, in
which he had to be checked, the old man told how he'd drunk whisky at
Welch's store that night, and how Welch's whisky was all-fired mean, and
how it allers went straight to his head, and how he had got a leetle too
much, and how he had felt kyinder gin aout by the time he got to the
blacksmith's shop, and how he had laid down to rest, and how as he
s'posed the boys had crated him, and how he thought it war all-fired
mean to crate a old soldier what fit the Britishers, and lost his leg by
one of the blamed critters a-punchin' his bagonet[28] through it; and
how when he woke up it was all-fired cold, and how he rolled off the
crate and went on to_wurds_ home, and how when he got up to the top of
Means's hill he met Pete Jones and Bill Jones, and a slim sort of a
young man, a-ridin'; and how he know'd the Joneses by ther hosses, and
some more things of that kyind about 'em; but he didn't know the slim
young man, tho' he tho't he might tell him ef he seed him agin kase he
was dressed up so slick and town-like. But blamed ef he didn't think it
hard that a passel o thieves sech as the Joneses should try to put ther
mean things on to a man like the master, that was so kyind to him and to
Shocky, tho', fer that matter, blamed ef he didn't think we was all
selfish, akordin' to his tell. Had seed somebody that night a-crossin'
over the blue-grass paster. Didn't know who in thunder 'twas, but it was
somebody a-makin' straight fer Pete Jones's. Hadn't seed nobody else,
'ceptin' Dr. Small, a short ways behind the Joneses.

Hannah was now brought on the stand. She was greatly agitated, and
answered with much reluctance. Lived at Mr. Means's. Was eighteen years
of age in October. Had been bound to Mrs. Means three years ago. Had
walked home with Mr. Hartsook that evening, and, happening to look out
of the window toward morning, she saw some one cross the pasture. Did
not know who it was. Thought it was Mr. Hartsook. Here Mr. Bronson
(evidently prompted by a suggestion that came from what Small had
overheard when he listened in the barn) asked her if Mr. Hartsook had
ever said anything to her about the matter afterward. After some
hesitation, Hannah said that he had said that he crossed the pasture. Of
his own accord? No, she spoke of it first. Had Mr. Hartsook offered any
explanations? No, he hadn't. Had he ever paid her any attention
afterward? No. Ralph declined to cross-question Hannah. To him she never
seemed so fair as when telling the truth so sublimely.

Bronson now informed the court that this little trick of having the old
soldier happen in, in the flick of time, wouldn't save the prisoner at
the bar from the just punishment which an outraged law visited upon such
crimes as his. He regretted that his duty as a public prosecutor caused
it to fall to his lot to marshal the evidence that was to blight the
prospects and blast the character, and annihilate for ever, so able and
promising a young man, but that the law knew no difference between the
educated and the uneducated, and that for his part he thought Hartsook a
most dangerous foe to the peace of society. The evidence already given
fastened suspicion upon him. The prisoner had not yet been able to break
its force at all. The prisoner had not even dared to try to explain to
a young lady the reason for his being out at night. He would now
conclude by giving the last touch to the dark evidence that would sink
the once fair name of Ralph Hartsook in a hundred fathoms of infamy. He
would ask that Henry Banta be called.

Hank came forward sheepishly, and was sworn. Lived about a hundred yards
from the house that was robbed. He seen ole man Pearson and the master
and one other feller that he didn't know come away from there together
about one o'clock. He heerd the horses kickin', and went out to the
stable to see about them. He seed two men come out of Schroeder's back
door and meet one man standing at the gate. When they got closter he
knowed Pearson by his wooden leg and the master by his hat. On
cross-examination he was a little confused when asked why he hadn't told
of it before, but said that he was afraid to say much, bekase the folks
was a-talkin' about hanging the master, and he didn't want no lynchin'.

The prosecution here rested, Bronson maintaining that there was enough
evidence to justify Ralph's committal to await trial. But the court
thought that as the defendant had no counsel and offered no rebutting
testimony, it would be only fair to hear what the prisoner had to say
in his own defense.

All this while poor Ralph was looking about the room for Bud. Bud's
actions had of late been strangely contradictory. But had he turned
coward and deserted his friend? Why else did he avoid the session of the
court? After asking himself such questions as these, Ralph would wonder
at his own folly. What could Bud do if he were there? There was no human
power that could prevent the victim of so vile a conspiracy as this,
lodging in that worst of State prisons at Jeffersonville, a place too
bad for criminals. But when there is no human power to help, how
naturally does the human mind look for some divine intervention on the
side of Right! And Ralph's faith in Providence looked in the direction
of Bud. But since no Bud came, he shut down the valves and rose to his
feet, proudly, defiantly, fiercely calm.

"It's of no use for me to say anything. Peter Jones has sworn to a
deliberate falsehood, and he knows it. He has made his wife perjure her
poor soul that she dare not call her own." Here Pete's fists clenched,
but Ralph in his present humor did not care for mobs. The spirit of the
bulldog had complete possession of him. "It is of no use for me to tell
you that Henry Banta has sworn to a lie, partly to revenge himself on
me for punishments I have given him, and partly, perhaps, for money. The
real thieves are in this court-room. I could put my finger on them."

"_To_ be sure," responded the old basket-maker. Ralph looked at Pete
Jones, then at Small. The fiercely calm look attracted the attention of
the people. He knew that this look would probably cost him his life
before the next morning. But he did not care for life. "The testimony of
Miss Hannah Thomson is every word true, I believe that of Mr. Pearson to
be true. The rest is false. But I can not prove it. I know the men I
have to deal with. I shall not escape with State prison. They will not
spare my life. But the people of Clifty will one day find out who are
the thieves." Ralph then proceeded to tell how he had left Pete Jones's,
Mr. Jones's bed being uncomfortable; how he had walked through the
pasture; how he had seen three men on horseback: how he had noticed the
sorrel with the white left forefoot and white nose; how he had seen Dr.
Small; how, after his return, he had heard some one enter the house, and
how he had recognized the horse the next morning. "There," said Ralph
desperately, leveling his finger at Pete, "there is a man who will yet
see the inside of a penitentiary, I shall not live to see it, but the
rest of you will." Pete quailed. Ralph's speech could not of course
break the force of the testimony against him. But it had its effect, and
it had effect enough to alarm Bronson, who rose and said:

"I should like to ask the prisoner at the bar one question."

"Ask me a dozen," said Hartsook, looking more like a king than a
criminal.

"Well, then, Mr. Hartsook. You need not answer unless you choose; but
what prompted you to take the direction you did in your walk on that
evening?"

This shot brought Ralph down. To answer this question truly would attach
to friendless Hannah Thomson some of the disgrace that now belonged to
him.

"I decline to answer," said Ralph.

"Of course, I do not want the prisoner to criminate himself," said
Bronson significantly.

During this last passage Bud had come in, but, to Ralph's disappointment
he remained near the door, talking to Walter Johnson, who had come with
him. The magistrates put their heads together to fix the amount of bail,
and, as they differed, talked for some minutes. Small now for the first
time thought best to make a move in his own proper person. He could
hardly have been afraid of Ralph's acquittal. He may have been a little
anxious at the manner in which he had been mentioned, and at the
significant look of Ralph, and he probably meant to excite indignation
enough against the school-master to break the force of his speech, and
secure the lynching of the prisoner, chiefly by people outside his gang.
He rose and asked the court in gentlest tones to hear him. He had no
personal interest in this trial, except his interest in the welfare of
his old schoolmate, Mr. Hartsook. He was grieved and disappointed to
find the evidence against him so damaging and he would not for the world
add a feather to it, if it were not that his own name had been twice
alluded to by the defendant, and by his friend, and perhaps his
confederate, John Pearson. He was prepared to swear that he was not over
in Flat Creek the night of the robbery later than ten o'clock, and while
the statements of the two persons alluded to, whether maliciously
intended or not, could not implicate him at all, he thought perhaps this
lack of veracity in their statements might be of weight in determining
some other points. He therefore suggested--he could only suggest, as he
was not a party to the case in any way--that his student, Mr. Walter
Johnson, be called to testify as to his--Dr. Small's--exact whereabouts
on the night in question. They were together in his office until two,
when he went to the tavern and went to bed.

Squire Hawkins, having adjusted his teeth, his wig, and his glass eye,
thanked Dr. Small for a suggestion so valuable, and thought best to put
John Pearson under arrest before proceeding further. Mr. Pearson was
therefore arrested, and was heard to mutter something about a "passel of
thieves," when the court warned him to be quiet.

Walter Johnson was then called. But before giving his testimony, I must
crave the reader's patience while I go back to some things which
happened nearly a week before and which will serve to make it
intelligible.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 28: This form, _bagonet_, is not in the vocabularies, but it
was spoken as I have written it. The Century Dictionary gives _bagnet_,
and Halliwell and Wright both give _baginet_ with the _g_ soft
apparently, though neither the one nor the other is very explicit in
distinguishing transcriptions from old authors from phonetic spellings
of dialect forms. I fancy that this _bagonet_ is impossible as a
corruption of _bayonet_, and that it points to some other derivation of
that word than the doubtful one from _Bayonne_.]




CHAPTER XXX.

"BROTHER SODOM."


In order to explain Walter Johnson's testimony and his state of mind, I
must carry the reader back nearly a week. The scene was Dr. Small's
office. Bud and Walter Johnson had been having some confidential
conversation that evening, and Bud had got more out of his companion
than that exquisite but weak young man had intended. He looked round in
a frightened way.

"You see," said Walter, "if Small knew I had told you that, I'd get a
bullet some night from somebody. But when you're initiated it'll be all
right. Sometimes I wish I was out of it. But, you know, Small's this
kind of a man. He sees through you. He can look through a door"--and
there he shivered, and his voice broke down into a whisper. But Bud was
perfectly cool, and doubtless it was the strong coolness of Bud that
made Walter, who shuddered at a shadow, come to him for sympathy and
unbosom himself of one of his guilty secrets.

"Let's go and hear Brother Sodom preach to-night," said Bud.

"No, I don't like to."

"He don't scare you?" There was just a touch of ridicule in Bud's voice.
He knew Walter, and he had not counted amiss when he used this little
goad to prick a skin so sensitive. "Brother Sodom" was the nickname
given by scoffers to the preacher--Mr. Soden--whose manner of preaching
had so aroused Bud's combativeness, and whose saddle-stirrups Bud had
helped to amputate. For reasons of his own, Bud thought best to subject
young Johnson to the heat of Mr. Soden's furnace.

Peter Cartwright boasts that, on a certain occasion, he "shook his
brimstone wallet" over the people. Mr. Soden could never preach without
his brimstone wallet. There are those of refinement so attenuated that
they will not admit that fear can have any place in religion. But a
religion without fear could never have evangelized or civilized the
West, which at one time bade fair to become a perdition as bad as any
that Brother Sodom ever depicted. And against these on the one side, and
the Brother Sodoms on the other, I shall interrupt my story to put this
chapter under shelter of that wise remark of the great Dr. Adam Clark,
who says "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the terror of God
confounds the soul;" and that other saying of his: "With the _fear_ of
God the love of God is ever consistent; but where the _terror_ of the
Lord reigns, there can neither be _fear, faith_, nor _love_; nay, nor
_hope_ either." And yet I am not sure that even the Brother Sodoms were
made in vain.

On this evening Mr. Soden was as terrible as usual. Bud heard him
without flinching. Small, who sat farther forward, listened with pious
approval. Mr. Soden, out of distorted figures pieced together from
different passages of Scripture, built a hell, not quite, Miltonic, nor
yet Dantean, but as Miltonic and Dantean as his unrefined imagination
could make it. As he rose toward his climax of hideous description,
Walter Johnson trembled from head to foot and sat close to Bud. Then, as
burly Mr. Soden, with great gusto, depicted materialistic tortures that
startled the nerves of everybody except Bud, Walter wanted to leave, but
Bud would not let him. For some reason he wished to keep his companion
in the crucible as long as possible.

"Young man!" cried Mr. Soden, and the explosive voice seemed to come
from the hell that he had created--"young man! you who have followed the
counsel of evil companions"--here he paused and looked about, as if
trying to find the man he wanted, while Walter crept up close to Bud
and shaded his face--"I mean you who have chosen evil pursuits and who
can not get free from bad habits and associations that are dragging you
down to hell! You are standing on the very crumbling brink of hell
to-night. The smell of the brimstone is on your garments; the hot breath
of hell is in your face! The devils are waiting for you! Delay and you
are damned! You may die before daylight! You may never get out that
door! The awful angel of death is just ready to strike you down!" Here
some shrieked with terror, others sobbed, and Brother Sodom looked with
approval on the storm he had awakened. The very harshness of his tone,
his lofty egotism of manner, that which had roused all Bud's
combativeness, shook poor Walter as a wind would shake a reed. In the
midst of the general excitement he seized his hat and hastened out the
door. Bud followed, while Soden shot his lightnings after them,
declaring that "young men who ran away from the truth would dwell in
torments forever."

Bud had not counted amiss when he thought that Mr. Soden's preaching
would be likely to arouse so mean-spirited a fellow as Walter. So vivid
was the impression that Johnson begged Bud to return to the office with
him. He felt sick, and was afraid that he should die before morning. He
insisted that Bud should stay with him all night. To this Means readily
consented, and by morning he had heard all that the frightened Walter
had to tell.

And now let us return to the trial, where Ralph sits waiting the
testimony of Walter Johnson, which is to prove his statement false.




CHAPTER XXXI.

THE TRIAL CONCLUDED.


I do not know how much interest the "gentle reader" may feel in Bud. But
I venture to hope that there are some Buddhists among my readers who
will wish the contradictoriness of his actions explained. The first dash
of disappointment had well-nigh upset him. And when a man concludes to
throw overboard his good resolutions, he always seeks to avoid the
witness of those resolutions. Hence Bud, after that distressful Tuesday
evening on which Miss Martha had given him "the sack," wished to see
Ralph less than any one else. And yet when he came to suspect Small's
villainy, his whole nature revolted at it. But having broken with Ralph,
he thought it best to maintain an attitude of apparent hostility, that
he might act as a detective, and, perhaps, save his friend from the
mischief that threatened him. As soon as he heard of Ralph's arrest he
determined to make Walter Johnson tell his own secret in court, because
he knew that it would be best for Ralph that Walter should tell it.
Bud's telling at second-hand would not be conclusive. And he sincerely
desired to save Walter from prison. For Walter Johnson was the victim of
Dr. Small, or of Dr. Small and such novels as "The Pirate's Bride,"
"Claude Duval," "The Wild Rover of the West Indies," and the cheap
biographies of such men as Murrell. Small found him with his imagination
inflamed by the history of such heroes, and opened to him the path to
glory for which he longed.

The whole morning after Ralph's arrest Bud was working on Walter's
conscience and his fears. The poor fellow, unable to act for himself,
was torn asunder between the old ascendency of Small and the new
ascendency of Bud Means. Bud finally frightened him, by the fear of the
penitentiary, into going to the place of trial. But once inside the
door, and once in sight of Small, who was more to him than God, or,
rather, more to him than the devil--for the devil was Walter's God, or,
perhaps, I should say, Walter's God was a devil--once in sight of Small,
he refused to move an inch farther. And Bud, after all his perseverance,
was about to give up in sheer despair.

Fortunately, just at that moment Small's desire to relieve himself from
the taint of suspicion and to crush Ralph as completely as possible,
made him overshoot the mark by asking that Walter be called to the
stand, as we have before recounted. He knew that he had no tool so
supple as the cowardly Walter. In the very language of the request, he
had given Walter an intimation of what he wanted him to swear to. Walter
listened to Small's words as to his doom. He felt that he should die of
indecision. The perdition of a man of his stamp is to have to make up
his mind. Such men generally fall back on some one more positive, and
take all their resolutions ready-made. But here Walter must decide for
himself. For the constable was already calling his name; the court, the
spectators, and, most of all, Dr. Small, were waiting for him. He moved
forward mechanically through the dense crowd, Bud following part of the
way to whisper, "Tell the truth or go to penitentiary." Walter shook and
shivered at this. The witness with difficulty held up his hand long
enough to be sworn.

"Please tell the court," said Bronson, "whether you know anything of the
whereabouts of Dr. Small on the night of the robbery at Peter
Schroeder's."

Small had detected Walter's agitation, and, taking alarm, had edged his
way around so as to stand full in Walter's sight, and there, with keen,
magnetic eye on the weak orbs of the young man, he was able to assume
his old position, and sway the fellow absolutely.

"On the night of the robbery"--Walter's voice was weak, but he seemed to
be reading his answer out of Small's eyes--"on the night of the robbery
Dr. Small came home before--" here the witness stopped and shook and
shivered again. For Bud, detecting the effect of Small's gaze, had
pushed his great hulk in front of Small, and had fastened his eyes on
Walter with a look that said, "Tell the truth or go to penitentiary."

"I can't, I can't. O God! What shall I do?" the witness exclaimed,
answering the look of Bud. For it seemed to him that Bud had spoken. To
the people and the court this agitation was inexplicable. Squire
Hawkins's wig got awry, his glass eye turned in toward his nose, and he
had great difficulty in keeping his teeth from falling out. The
excitement became painfully intense. Ralph was on his feet, looking at
the witness, and feeling that somehow Bud and Dr. Small--his good angel
and his demon--were playing an awful game, or which he was the stake.
The crowd swayed to and fro, but remained utterly silent, waiting to
hear the least whisper from the witness, who stood trembling a moment
with his hands over his face, and then fainted.

The fainting of a person in a crowd is a signal for everybody else to
make fools of themselves. There was a rush toward the fainting man,
there was a cry for water. Everybody asked everybody else to open the
window, and everybody wished everybody else to stand back and give him
air. But nobody opened the window, and nobody stood back. The only
perfectly cool man in the room was Small. With a quiet air of
professional authority he pushed forward and felt the patient's pulse,
remarking to the court that he thought it was a sudden attack of fever
with delirium. When Walter revived, Dr. Small would have removed him,
but Ralph insisted that his testimony should be heard. Under pretense of
watching his patient, Small kept close to him. And Walter began the same
old story about Dr. Small's having arrived at the office before eleven
o'clock, when Bud came up behind the doctor and fastened his eyes on the
witness with the same significant look, and Walter, with visions of the
penitentiary before him halted, stammered, and seemed about to faint
again.

"If the court please," said Bronson, "this witness is evidently
intimidated by that stout young man," pointing to Bud. "I have seen him
twice interrupt witness's testimony by casting threatening looks at
him, I trust the court will have him removed from the court-room."

After a few moments' consultation, during which Squire Hawkins held his
wig in place with one hand and alternately adjusted his eye and his
spectacles with the other, the magistrates, who were utterly bewildered
by the turn things were taking, decided that It could do no harm, and
that it was best to try the experiment of removing Bud. Perhaps Johnson
would then be able to get through with his testimony. The constable
therefore asked Bud if he would please leave the room. Bud cast one last
look at the witness and walked out like a captive bear.

Ralph stood watching the receding form of Bud. The emergency had made
him as cool as Small ever was. Bud stopped at the door, where he was
completely out of sight of the witness, concealed by the excited
spectators, who stood on the benches to see what was going on in front.

"The witness will please proceed," said Bronson.

"If the court please"--it was Ralph who spoke--"I believe I have as much
at stake in this trial as any one. That witness is evidently
intimidated. But not by Mr. Means. I ask that Dr. Small be removed out
of sight of the witness."

"A most extraordinary request, truly." This was what Small's bland
countenance said; he did not open his lips.

"It's no more than fair," said Squire Hawkins, adjusting his wig, "that
the witness be relieved of everything that anybody might think affects
his veracity in this matter."

Dr. Small, giving Walter one friendly, appealing look, moved back by the
door, and stood alongside Bud, as meek, quiet, and disinterested as any
man in the house.

"The witness will now proceed with his testimony." This time it was
Squire Hawkins who spoke. Bronson had been attacked with a suspicion
that this witness was not just what he wanted, and had relapsed into
silence.

Walter's struggle was by no means ended by the disappearance of Small
and Bud. There came the recollection of his mother's stern face--a face
which had never been a motive toward the right, but only a goad to
deception. What would she say if he should confess? Just as he had
recovered himself, and was about to repeat the old lie which had twice
died upon his lips at the sight of Bud's look, he caught sight of
another face, which made him tremble again. It was the lofty and
terrible countenance of Mr. Soden. One might have thought, from the
expression it wore, that the seven last vials were in his hands, the
seven apocalyptic trumpets waiting for his lips, and the seven thunders
sitting upon his eyebrows. The moment that Walter saw him he smelled the
brimstone on his own garments, he felt himself upon the crumbling brink
of the precipice, with perdition below him. Now I am sure that "Brother
Sodoms" were not made wholly in vain. There are plenty of mean-spirited
men like Walter Johnson, whose feeble consciences need all the support
they can get from the fear of perdition, and who are incapable of any
other conception of it than a coarse and materialistic ones Let us set
it down to the credit of Brother Sodom, with his stiff stock, his
thunderous face, and his awful walk, that his influence over Walter was
on the side of truth.

"Please proceed," said Squire Hawkins to Walter. The Squire's wig lay on
one side, he had forgotten to adjust his eye, and he leaned forward,
tremulous with interest.

"Well, then," said Walter, looking not at the court nor at Bronson nor
at the prisoner, but furtively at Mr. Soden--"well, then, if I
must"--and Mr. Soden's awful face seemed to answer that he surely
must--"well, then, I hope you won't send me to prison"--this to Squire
Hawkins, whose face reassured him--"but, oh! I don't see how I can!"
But one look at Mr. Soden assured him that he could and that he must,
and so, with an agony painful to the spectators, he told the story in
driblets. How, while yet in Lewisburg, he had been made a member of a
gang of which Small was chief; how they concealed from him the names of
all the band except six, of whom the Joneses and Small were three.

Here there was a scuffle at the door. The court demanded silence.

"Dr. Small's trying to git out, plague take him," said Bud, who stood
with his back planted against the door. "I'd like the court to send and
git his trunk afore he has a chance to burn up all the papers that's in
it."

"Constable, you will arrest Dr. Small, Peter Jones, and William Jones.
Send two deputies to bring Small's trunk into court," said Squire
Underwood.

The prosecuting attorney was silent.

Walter then told of the robbery at Schroeder's, told where he and Small
had whittled the fence while the Joneses entered the house, and
confirmed Ralph's story by telling how they had seen Ralph in a
fence-corner, and how they had met the basket-maker on the hill.

"_To_ be sure," said the old man, who had not ventured to hold up his
head, after he was arrested, until Walter began his testimony.

Walter felt inclined to stop, but he could not do it, for there stood
Mr. Soden, looking to him like a messenger from the skies, or the
bottomless pit, sent to extort the last word from his guilty soul He
felt that he was making a clean breast of it--at the risk of perdition,
with the penitentiary thrown in, if he faltered. And so he told the
whole thing as though it had been the day of doom, and by the time he
was through, Small's trunk was in court.

Here a new hubbub took place at the door. It was none other than the
crazy pauper, Tom Bifield, who personated General Andrew Jackson in the
poor-house. He had caught some inkling of the trial, and had escaped in
Bill Jones's absence. His red plume was flying, and in his tattered and
filthy garb he was indeed a picturesque figure.

"Squar," said he, elbowing his way through the crowd, "I kin tell you
sornethin'. I'm Gineral Andrew Jackson. Lost my head at Bueny Visty.
This head growed on. It a'n't good fer much. One side's tater. But
t'other's sound as a nut. Now, I kind give you information."

Bronson, with the quick perceptions of a politician, had begun to see
which way future winds would probably blow. "If the court please," he
said, "this man is not wholly sane, but we might get valuable
information out of him. I suggest that his testimony be taken for what
it is worth."

"No, you don't swar me," broke in the lunatic. "Not if I knows myself.
You see, when a feller's got one side of his head tater, he's mighty
onsartain like. You don't swar me, fer I can't tell what minute the
tater side'll begin to talk. I'm talkin' out of the lef' side now, and
I'm all right. But you don't swar me. But ef you'll send some of your
constables out to the barn at the pore-house and look under the hay-mow
in the north-east corner, you'll find some things maybe as has been
a-missin' fer some time. And that a'n't out of the tater side, nuther."

Meantime Bud did not rest. Hearing the nature of the testimony given by
Hank Banta before he entered, he attacked Hank and vowed he'd send him
to prison if he didn't make a clean breast. Hank was a thorough coward,
and, now that his friends were prisoners, was ready enough to tell the
truth if he could be protected from prosecution. Seeing the disposition
of the prosecuting attorney, Bud got from him a promise that he would do
what he could to protect Hank. That worthy then took the stand,
confessed his lie, and even told the inducement which Mr. Pete Jones
had offered him to perjure himself.

"_To_ be sure," said Pearson.

Squire Hawkins, turning his right eye upon him, while the left looked at
the ceiling, said: "Be careful, Mr. Pearson, or I shall have to punish
you for contempt."

"Why, Squar, I didn't know 'twas any sin to hev a healthy contemp' fer
sech a thief as Jones!"

The Squire looked at Mr. Pearson severely, and the latter, feeling that
he had committed some offense without knowing it, subsided into silence.

Bronson now had a keen sense of the direction of the gale.

"If the court please," said he, "I have tried to do my duty in this
case. It was my duty to prosecute Mr. Hartsook, however much I might
feel assured that he was innocent, and that he would be able to prove
his innocence. I now enter a _nolle_ in his case and that of John
Pearson, and I ask that this court adjourn until to-morrow, in order to
give me time to examine the evidence in the case of the other parties
under arrest. I am proud to think that my efforts have been the means of
sifting the matter to the bottom, of freeing Mr. Hartsook from
suspicion, and of detecting the real criminals."

"Ugh!" said Mr. Pearson, who conceived a great dislike to Bronson.

"The court," said Squire Hawkins, "congratulates Mr. Hartsook on his
triumphant acquittal. He is discharged from the bar of this court, and
from the bar of public sentiment, without a suspicion of guilt.
Constable, discharge Ralph Hartsook and John Pearson."

Old Jack Means, who had always had a warm side for the master, now
proposed three cheers for Mr. Hartsook, and they were given with a will
by the people who would have hanged him an hour before.

Mrs. Means gave it as her opinion that "Jack Means allers wuz a fool!"

"This court," said Dr. Underwood, "has one other duty to perform before
adjourning for the day. Recall Hannah Thomson."

"I jist started her on ahead to git supper and milk the cows," said Mrs.
Means. "A'n't a-goin' to have her loafin' here all day."

"Constable, recall her. This court can not adjourn until she returns!"

Hannah had gone but a little way, and was soon in the presence of the
court, trembling for fear of some new calamity.

"Hannah Thomson"--it was Squire Underwood who spoke--"Hannah Thomson,
this court wishes to ask you one or two questions."

"Yes, sir," but her voice died to a whisper.

"How old did you say you were?

"Eighteen, sir, last October."

"Can you prove your age?"

"Yes, sir--by my mother."

"For how long are you bound to Mr. Means?"

"Till I'm twenty-one."

"This court feels in duty bound to inform you that, according to the
laws of Indiana, a woman is of age at eighteen, and as no indenture
could be made binding after you had reached your majority, you are the
victim of a deception. You are free, and if it can be proven that you
have been defrauded by a willful deception, a suit for damages will
lie."

"Ugh!" said Mrs. Means. "You're a purty court, a'n't you, Dr.
Underwood?"

"Be careful, Mrs. Means, or I shall have to fine you for contempt of
court."

But the people, who were in the cheering humor, cheered Hannah and the
justices, and then cheered Ralph again. Granny Sanders shook hands with
him, and allers knowed he'd come out right. It allers 'peared like as if
Dr. Small warn't jist the sort to tie to, you know. And old John Pearson
went home, after drinking two or three glasses of Welch's whisky,
keeping time to an imaginary triumphal march, and feeling prouder than
he had ever felt since he fit the Britishers under Scott at Lundy's
Lane. He told his wife that the master had jist knocked the hind-sights
offen that air young lawyer from Lewisburg.

Walter was held to bail that he might appear as a witness, and Ralph
might have sent his aunt a Roland for an Oliver. But he only sent a note
to his uncle, asking him to go Walter's bail. If he had been resentful,
he could not have wished for a more complete revenge than the day had
brought.




CHAPTER XXXII.

AFTER THE BATTLE.


Nothing can be more demoralizing in the long run than lynch law. And yet
lynch law often originates in a burst of generous indignation which is
not willing to suffer a bold oppressor to escape by means of corrupt and
cowardly courts. It is oftener born of fear. Both motives powerfully
agitated the people of the region round about Clifty as night drew on
after Ralph's acquittal. They were justly indignant that Ralph had been
made the victim of such a conspiracy, and they were frightened at the
unseen danger to the community from such a band as that of Small's. It
was certain that they did not know the full extent of the danger as yet.
And what Small might do with a jury, or what Pete Jones might do with a
sheriff, was a question. I must not detain the reader to tell how the
mob rose. Nobody knows how such things come about. Their origin is as
inexplicable as that of an earthquake. But, at any rate, a rope was
twice put round Small's neck during that night, and both times Small
was saved only by the nerve and address of Ralph, who had learned how
unjust mob law may be. As for Small, he neither trembled when they were
ready to hang him, nor looked relieved when he was saved, nor showed the
slightest flush of penitence or gratitude. He bore himself in a quiet,
gentlemanly way throughout, like the admirable villain that he was.

He waived a preliminary examination the next day; his father went his
bail, and he forfeited bail and disappeared from the county and from the
horizon of my story. Two reports concerning Small have been in
circulation--one that he was running a faro-bank in San Francisco, the
other that he was curing consumption in New York by some quack process.
If this latter were true, it would leave it an open question whether
Ralph did well to save him from the gallows. Pete Jones and Bill, as
usually happens to the rougher villains, went to prison, and when their
terms had expired moved to Pike County, Missouri.

But it is about Hannah that you wish to hear, and that I wish to tell.
She went straight from the court room to Flat Creek, climbed to her
chamber, packed in a handkerchief all her earthly goods, consisting
chiefly of a few family relics, and turned her back on the house of
Means forever. At the gate she met the old woman, who shook her fist in
the girl's face and gave her a parting benediction in the words: "You
mis'able, ongrateful critter you, go 'long. I'm glad to be shed of you!"
At the barn she met Bud, and he told her good-by with a little huskiness
in his voice, while a tear glistened in her eyes. Bud had been a friend
in need, and such a friend one does not leave without a pang.

"Where are you going? Can I--"

"No, no!" And with that she hastened on, afraid that Bud would offer to
hitch up the roan colt. And she did not want to add to his domestic
unhappiness by compromising him in that way.

It was dusk and was raining when she left. The hours were long, the road
was lonely, and after the revelations of that day it did not seem wholly
safe. But from the moment that she found herself free, her heart had
been ready to break with an impatient homesickness. What though there
might be robbers in the woods? What though there were ten rough miles to
travel? What though the rain was in her face? What though she had not
tasted food since the morning of that exciting day? Flat Creek and
bondage were behind; freedom, mother, Shocky, and home were before her,
and her feet grew lighter with the thought. And if she needed any other
joy, it was to know that the master was clear. And he would come? And
so she traversed the weary distance, and so she inquired and found the
house, the beautiful, homely old house of beautiful, homely old Nancy
Sawyer, and knocked, and was admitted, and fell down, faint and weary,
at her blind mother's feet, and laid her tired head in her mother's lap
and wept and wept like a child, and said, "O mother! I'm free! I'm
free!" while the mother's tears baptized her face, and the mother's
trembling fingers combed out her tresses. And Shocky stood by her and
cried: "I knowed God wouldn't forget you, Hanner!"

Hannah was ready now to do anything by which she could support her
mother and Shocky. She was strong, and inured to toil. She was willing
and cheerful, and she would gladly have gone to service if by that means
she could have supported the family. And, for that matter her mother was
already able nearly to support herself by her knitting. But Hannah had
been carefully educated when young, and at that moment the old public
schools were being organized into a graded school, and the good
minister, who shall be nameless, because he is, perhaps, still
living in Indiana, and who in Methodist parlance was called "the
preacher-in-charge of Lewisburg Station"--this good minister and Miss
Nancy Sawyer got Hannah a place as teacher in the primary department.
And then a little house with four rooms was rented, and a little, a very
little furniture was put into it, and the old sweet home was established
again. The father was gone, never to come back again. But the rest were
here. And somehow Hannah kept waiting for somebody else to come.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

INTO THE LIGHT.


For two weeks longer Ralph taught at the Flat Creek school-house. He was
everybody's hero. And he was Bud's idol. He did what he could to get Bud
and Martha together, and though Bud always "saw her safe home" after
this, and called on her every Sunday evening, yet, to save his life, he
could not forget his big fists and his big feet long enough to say what
he most wanted to say, and what Martha most wanted him to say.

At the end of two weeks Ralph found himself exceedingly weary of Flat
Creek, and exceedingly glad to hear from Mr. Means that the school-money
had "gin out." It gave him a good excuse to return to Lewisburg, where
his heart and his treasure were. A certain sense of delicacy had kept
him from writing to Hannah just yet.

When he got to Lewisburg he had good news. His uncle, ashamed of his
previous neglect, and perhaps with an eye to his nephew's growing
popularity, had got him the charge of the grammar department in the new
graded school in the village. So he quietly arranged to board at a
boarding-house. His aunt could not have him about, of which fact he was
very glad. She could not but feel, she said, that he might have taken
better care of Walter than he did, when they were only four miles apart.

He did not hasten to call on Hannah. Why should he? He sent her a
message, of no consequence in itself, by Nancy Sawyer. Then he took
possession of his school; and then, on the evening of the first day of
school, he went, as he had appointed to himself, to see Hannah Thomson.

And she, with some sweet presentiment, had got things ready by fixing up
the scantily-furnished room as well as she could. And Miss Nancy Sawyer,
who had seen Ralph that afternoon, had guessed that he was going to see
Hannah. It's wonderful how much enjoyment a generous heart can get out
of the happiness of others. Is not that what He meant when he said of
such as Miss Sawyer that they should have a hundred-fold in this life
for all their sacrifices? Did not Miss Nancy enjoy a hundred weddings
and have the love of five hundred children? And so Miss Nancy just
happened over at Mrs. Thomson's humble home, and, just in the most
matter-of-course way, asked that lady and Shocky to come over to her
house. Shocky wanted Hannah to come too. But Hannah blushed a little,
and said that she would rather not.

And when she was left alone, Hannah fixed her hair two or three times,
and swept the hearth, and moved the chairs first one way and then
another, and did a good many other needless things. Needless: for a
lover, if he be a lover, does not see furniture or dress.

And then she sat down by the fire, and tried to sew, and tried to look
unconcerned, and tried to feel unconcerned, and tried not to expect
anybody, and tried to make her heart keep still. And tried in vain. For
a gentle rap at the door sent her pulse up twenty beats a minute and
made her face burn. And Hartsook was for the first time, abashed in the
presence of Hannah. For the oppressed girl had, in two weeks, blossomed
out into the full-blown woman.

And Ralph sat down by the fire, and talked of his school and her school,
and everything else but what he wanted to talk about. And then the
conversation drifted back to Flat Creek, and to the walk through the
pasture, and to the box-elder tree, and to the painful talk in the lane.
And Hannah begged to be forgiven, and Ralph laughed at the idea that she
had done anything wrong. And she praised his goodness to Shocky, and he
drew her little note out of--But I agreed not tell you where he kept it.
And then she blushed, and he told how the note had sustained him, and
how her white face kept up his courage in his flight down the bed of
Clifty Creek. And he sat a little nearer, to show her the note that he
had carried in his bosom--I have told it! And--but I must not proceed. A
love-scene, ever so beautiful in itself, will not bear telling. And so I
shall leave a little gap just here, which you may fill up as you please.
. . . Somehow, they never knew how, they got to talking about the future
instead of the past, after that, and to planning their two lives as one
life. And . . . And when Miss Nancy and Mrs. Thomson returned later in
the evening, Ralph was standing by the mantel-piece, but Shocky noticed
that his chair was close to Hannah's. And good Miss Nancy Sawyer looked
in Hannah's face and was happy.




CHAPTER XXXIV.

"HOW IT CAME OUT"


We are all children in reading stories. We want more than all else to
know how it all came out at the end, and, if our taste is not perverted,
we like it to come out well. For my part, ever since I began to write
this story, I have been anxious to know how it was going to come out.

Well, there were very few invited. It took place at ten in the morning.
The "preacher-in-charge" came, of course. Miss Nancy Sawyer was there.
But Ralph's uncle was away, and Aunt Matilda had a sore throat and
couldn't come. Perhaps the memory of the fact that she had refused Mrs.
Thomson, the pauper, a bed for two nights, affected her throat. But Miss
Nancy and her sister were there, and the preacher. And that was all,
besides the family, and Bud and Martha. Of course Bud and Martha came.
And driving Martha to a wedding in a "jumper" was the one opportunity
Bud needed. His hands were busy, his big boots were out of sight, and it
was so easy to slip from Ralph's love affair to his own, that Bud
somehow, in pulling Martha Hawkins's shawl about her, stammered out half
a proposal, which Martha, generous soul, took for the whole ceremony,
and accepted. And Bud was so happy that Ralph guessed from his face and
voice that the agony was over, and Bud was betrothed at last to the
"gal as was a gal."

And after Ralph and Hannah were married--there was no trip, Ralph only
changed his boarding-place and became head of the house at Mrs.
Thomson's thereafter--after it was all over, Bud came to Mr. Hartsook,
and, snickering just a little, said as how as him and Martha had fixed
it all up, and now they wanted to ax his advice; and Martha proud but
blushing, came up and nodded assent. Bud said as how as he hadn't got no
book-larnin' nor nothin', and as how as he wanted to be somethin', and
put in his best licks fer Him, you know'. And that Marthy, she was of
the same way of thinkin', and that was a blessin'. And the Squire was
a-goin' to marry agin', and Marthy would ruther vacate. And his mother
and Mirandy was sech as he wouldn't take no wife to. And he thought as
how Mr. Hartsook might think of some way or some place where he and
Marthy mout make a livin' fer the present, and put in their best licks
fer Him, you know.

Ralph thought a moment. He was about to make an allusion to Hercules and
the Augean stables, but he remembered that Bud would not understand it,
though it might remind Martha of something she had seen at the East, the
time she was to Bosting.

"Bud, my dear friend," said Ralph, "it looks a little hard to ask you to
take a new wife"--here Bud looked admiringly at Martha--"to the
poor-house. But I don't know anywhere where you can do so much good for
Christ as by taking charge of that place, and I can get the appointment
for you. The new commissioners want just such a man."

"What d'ye say, Marthy?" said Bud.

"Why, somebody ought to do for the poor, and I should like to do it."

And so Hercules cleaned the Augean stables.

And so my humble, homely Hoosier story of twenty years ago[29] draws to
a close, and not without regret I take leave of Ralph and Hannah; and
Shocky, and Bud, and Martha, and Miss Nancy, and of my readers.

       *       *       *       *       *

P.S.--A copy of the Lewisburg _Jeffersonian_ came into my hands to-day,
and I see by its columns that Ralph Hartsook is principal of the
Lewisburg Academy. It took me some time, however, to make out that the
sheriff of the county, Mr. Israel W. Means, was none other than my old
friend Bud, of the Church of the Best Licks. I was almost as much
puzzled over his name as I was when I saw an article in a city paper, by
Prof. W.J. Thomson, on Poor-Houses. I should not have recognized the
writer as Shocky, had I not known that Shocky has given his spare time
to making outcasts feel that God has not forgot.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 29: Written in 1871.]


THE END





End of Project Gutenberg's The Hoosier Schoolmaster, by Edward Eggleston