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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10068 ***
+
+THE POWER AND THE GLORY
+
+By GRACE MACGOWAN COOKE
+
+
+Author of "Mistress Joy," "Huldah," "Their First Formal Call," etc.
+
+
+WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR I. KELLER
+
+
+1910
+
+
+TO HELEN
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I. THE BIRTH OF A WOMAN-CHILD
+II. THE BIRTH OF AN AMBITION
+III. A PEAK IN DARIEN
+IV. OF THE USE OF FEET
+V. THE MOCCASIN FLOWER
+VI. WEAVERS AND WEFT
+VII. ABOVE THE VALLEY
+VIII. OF THE USE OF WINGS
+IX. A BIT OF METAL
+X. THE SANDALS OF JOY
+XI. THE NEW BOARDER
+XII. THE CONTENTS OF A BANDANNA
+XIII. A PATIENT FOR THE HOSPITAL
+XIV. WEDDING BELLS
+XV. THE FEET OF THE CHILDREN
+XVI. BITTER WATERS
+XVII. A VICTIM
+XVIII. LIGHT
+XIX. A PACT
+XX. MISSING
+XXI. THE SEARCH
+XXII. THE ATLAS VERTEBRA
+XXIII. A CLUE
+XXIV. THE RESCUE
+XXV. THE FUTURE
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"Yes, I'm a-going to get a chance to work right away," she smiled up at
+him. _Frontispiece_
+
+He loomed above them, white and shaking. "You thieves!" he roared. "Give
+me my bandanner! Give me Johnnie's silver mine!"
+
+"Lost--gone! My God, Mother--it's three days and three nights!"
+
+The car was already leaping down the hill at a tremendous pace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE BIRTH OF A WOMAN-CHILD
+
+"Whose cradle's that?" the sick woman's thin querulous tones arrested
+the man at the threshold.
+
+"Onie Dillard's," he replied hollowly from the depths of the crib which
+he carried upside down upon his head, like some curious kind of
+overgrown helmet.
+
+"Now, why in the name o' common sense would ye go and borry a broken
+cradle?" came the wail from the bed. "I 'lowed you'd git Billy
+Spinner's, an' hit's as good as new."
+
+Uncle Pros set the small article of furniture down gently.
+
+"Don't you worry yo'se'f, Laurelly," he said enthusiastically. Pros
+Passmore, uncle of the sick woman and mainstay of the forlorn little
+Consadine household, was always full of enthusiasm. "Just a few nails
+and a little wrappin' of twine'll make it all right," he informed his
+niece. "I stopped a-past and borried the nails and the hammer from Jeff
+Dawes; I mighty nigh pounded my thumb off knockin' in nails with a rock
+an' a sad-iron last week."
+
+"Looks like nobody ain't got no sense," returned Laurella Consadine
+ungratefully. "Even you, Unc' Pros--while you borryin' why cain't ye
+borry whole things that don't need mendin'?"
+
+Out of the shadows that hoarded the further end of the room came a woman
+with a little bundle in her arm which had evidently created the
+necessity for the borrowed cradle.
+
+"Laurelly," the nurse hesitated, "I wouldn't name it to ye whilst ye was
+a-sufferin,' but I jest cain't find the baby's clothes nowhars. I've
+done washed the little trick and wrapped her in my flannen petticoat. I
+do despise to put anything on 'em that anybody else has wore ... hit
+don't seem right. But I've been plumb through everything, an' cain't
+find none of her coats. Whar did you put 'em?"
+
+"I didn't have no luck borryin' for this one," complained the sick woman
+fretfully. "Looks like everybody's got that mean that they wouldn't lend
+me a rag ... an' the Lord knows I only ast a _wearin'_ of the clothes
+for my chillen. Folks can make shore that I return what I borry--ef the
+Lord lets me."
+
+"Ain't they nothin' to put on the baby?" asked Mavity Bence, aghast.
+
+"No. Hit's jest like I been tellin' ye, I went to Tarver's wife--she's
+got a plenty. I knowed in reason she'd have baby clothes that she
+couldn't expect to wear out on her own chillen. I said as much to her,
+when she told me she was liable to need 'em befo' I did. I says, 'Ye
+cain't need more'n half of 'em, I reckon, an' half'll do me, an' I'll
+return 'em to ye when I'm done with 'em.' She acted jest as
+selfish--said she'd like to know how I was goin' to inshore her that it
+wouldn't be twins agin same as 'twas before. Some folks is powerful mean
+an' suspicious."
+
+All this time the nurse had been standing with the quiet small packet
+which was the storm centre of preparation lying like a cocoon or a giant
+seed-pod against her bosom.
+
+"She's a mighty likely little gal," said she finally. "Have ye any hopes
+o' gittin' anything to put on her?"
+
+The woman in the bed--she was scarcely more than a girl, with shining
+dark eyes and a profusion of jetty ringlets about her elfish, pretty
+little face--seemed to feel that this speech was in the nature of a
+reproach. She hastened to detail her further activities on behalf of
+the newcomer.
+
+"Consadine's a poor provider," she said plaintively, alluding to her
+absent husband. "Maw said to me when I would have him that he was a poor
+provider; and then he's got into this here way of goin' off like. Time
+things gets too bad here at home he's got a big scheme up for makin' his
+fortune somewhars else, and out he puts. He 'lowed he'd be home with a
+plenty before the baby come. But thar--he's the best man that ever was,
+when he's here, and I have no wish to miscall him. I reckon he thought I
+could borry what I'd need. Biney Meal lent me enough for the little un
+that died; but of course some o' the coats was buried with the child;
+and what was left, Sis' Elvira borried for her baby. I was layin' off to
+go over to the Deep Spring neighbourhood when I could git a lift in that
+direction--the folks over yon is mighty accommodative," she concluded,
+"but I was took sooner than I expected, and hyer we air without a
+stitch, I've done sont Bud an' Honey to Mandy Ann Foncher's mebby
+they'll bring in somethin'."
+
+The little cabin shrank back against the steep side of the mountain as
+though half terrified at the hollow immensity of the welkin above, or
+the almost sheer drop to the valley five hundred feet beneath. A sidling
+mountain trail passed the front of its rail fence, and stones
+continually rolled from the upper to the lower side of this highway.
+
+The day was darkening rapidly. A low line of red still burned behind the
+massive bulk of Big Unaka, and the solemn purple mountains raised their
+peaks against it in a jagged line. Within die single-roomed cabin the
+rich, broken light from the cavernous fireplace filled the smoke-browned
+interior full of shadow and shine in which things leaped oddly into
+life, or dropped out of knowledge with a startling effect. The four
+corners of the log room were utilized, three of them for beds, made by
+thrusting two poles through auger holes bored in the logs of the walls,
+setting a leg at the corner where these met and lacing the bottom with
+hickory withes. The fourth had some rude planks nailed in it for a
+table, and a knot-hole in one of the logs served the primitive purpose
+of a salt-cellar. A pack of gaunt hounds quarrelled under the floor, and
+the sick woman stirred uneasily on her bed and expressed a wish that her
+emissaries would return.
+
+Uncle Pros had taken the cradle to a back door to get the last of the
+evening sun upon his task. One would not have thought that he could hear
+what the women were saying at this distance, but the old hunter's ears
+were sharp.
+
+"Never you mind, Laurelly," he called cheerfully. "Wrop the baby up some
+fashion, and I'll hike out and get clothes for her, time I mend
+this cradle."
+
+"Ef that ain't just like Unc' Pros!" And the girlish mother laughed out
+suddenly. You saw the gypsy beauty of her face. "He ain't content with
+borryin' men's truck, but thinks he can turn in an' borry coats 'mongst
+the women. Well, I reckon he might have better luck than what I did."
+
+As she spoke a small boy and girl, her dead brother's children, came
+clattering in from the purple mysteries of dusk outside, hand clasped in
+hand, and stopped close to the bed, staring.
+
+"Mandy Ann, she wouldn't lend us a thing," Bud began in an aggrieved
+tone. "I traded for this--chopped wood for it--and hit was all she would
+give me." He laid a coarse little garment upon the ragged coverlet.
+
+"That!" cried Laurella Passmore, taking it up with angrily tremulous
+fingers. "My child shain't wear no sech. Hit ain't fittin' for my baby
+to put on. Oh, I wisht I could git up from here and do about; I'd git
+somethin' for her to wear!"
+
+"Son," said Mrs. Bence, approaching the bedside, "air ye afeared to go
+over as far as my house right now?"
+
+"I ain't skeered ef Honey'll go with me," returned the boy doubtfully,
+as he interrogated the twilit spaces beyond the open cabin door.
+
+"Well, you go ask Pap to look in the green chist and send me the spotted
+caliker poke that he'll find under the big bun'le. Don't you let him
+give you that thar big bun'le; 'caze that's not a thing but seed corn,
+and he'll be mad ef it's tetched. Fell Pap that what's in the spotted
+poke ain't nothin' that he wants. Tell him it's--well, tell him to look
+at it before he gives it to you."
+
+The two little souls scuttled away into the gathering dark, and the
+neighbour woman sat down by the fire to nurse the baby and croon and
+await the clothing for which she had sent.
+
+She was not an old woman, but already stiff and misshapen by toil and
+the lack of that saving salt of pride, the stimulation of joy, which
+keeps us erect and supple. Her broad back was bent; her hands as they
+shifted the infant tenderly were knotted and work-worn. Mavity Bence was
+a widow, living at home with her father, Gideon Himes; she had one child
+left, a daughter; but the clothing for which she had sent was an outfit
+made for a son, the posthumous offspring of his father; and the babe had
+not lived long enough to wear it.
+
+Outside, Uncle Pros began to sing at his work. He had a fluty old tenor
+voice, and he put in turns and quavers that no ear not of the mountains
+could possibly follow and fix. First it was a hymn, all abrupt, odd,
+minor cadences and monotonous refrain. Then he shifted to a ballad--and
+the mountains are full of old ballads of Scotland and England, come down
+from the time of the first settlers, and with local names quaintly
+substituted for the originals here and there.
+
+  "She's gwine to walk in a silken gownd,
+  An' ha'e plenty o' siller for to spare,"
+
+chanted the old man above the little bed he was repairing.
+
+"Who's that you're a-namin' that's a-goin' to have silk dresses?"
+inquired Laurella, as he entered and set the mended cradle down by
+the bedside.
+
+"The baby." he returned. "Ef I find my silver mine--or ruther _when_ I
+find my silver mine, for you know in reason with the directions Pap's
+Grandpap left, and that word from Great Uncle Billy that helped the
+Injuns work it, I'm bound to run the thing down one o' these days--when
+I find my silver mine this here little gal's a-goin' to have everything
+she wants--ain't ye, Pretty?"
+
+And, having made a bed in the cradle from some folded covers, he lifted
+the baby with strange deftness and placed it in.
+
+"See thar," he called their attention proudly. "As good as new. And ef I
+git time I'm a-goin' to give it a few licks o' paint."
+
+Hands on knees, he bent to study the face of the new-born, that
+countenance so ambiguous to our eyes, scarce stamped yet with the common
+seal of humanity.
+
+"She's a mighty pretty little gal," he repeated Mavity Bence's words.
+"She's got the Passmore favour, as well as the Consadine. Reckon I
+better be steppin' over to Vander's and see can I borry their cow. If
+it's with you this time like it was with the last one, we'll have to
+have a cow. I always thought if we'd had a fresh cow for that other one,
+hit would 'a' lived. I know in reason Vander'll lend the cow for a
+spell"--Uncle Pros always had unbounded confidence in the good will of
+his neighbours toward himself, since his own generosity to them would
+have been fathomless--"I know in reason he'll lend hit, 'caze they ain't
+got no baby to their house."
+
+He bestowed one more proud, fond look upon the little face in the
+borrowed cradle, and walked out with as elated a step as though a queen
+had been born to the tribe.
+
+In the doorway he met Bud and Honey, returning with the spotted calico
+poke clutched fast between them.
+
+"I won't ask nothin' but a wearin' of em for my child," Laurella
+Consadine, born Laurella Passmore, reiterated when the small garments
+were laid out on the bed, and the baby was being dressed. "They're
+mighty fine, Mavity, an' I'll take good keer of 'em and always bear in
+mind that they're only borried."
+
+"No," returned Mavity Bence, with unwonted firmness, as she put the
+newcomer into the slip intended for her own son. "No, Laurelly, these
+clothes ain't loaned to you. I give 'em to this child. I'm a widder, and
+I never look to wed again, becaze Pap he has to have somebody to do for
+him, an' he'd just about tear up the ground if I was to name sech a
+thing. I'm mighty glad to give 'em to yo' little gal. I only wisht," she
+said wistfully, "that hit was a boy. Ef hit was a boy, mebbe you'd give
+hit the name that should 'a' went with the clothes. I was a-goin' to
+call the baby John after hit's pappy."
+
+Laurella Consadine lay quiescent for a moment, big black eyes studying
+the smoky logs that raftered the roof. Then all at once she laughed,
+with a flash of white teeth.
+
+"I don't see why Johnnie ain't a mighty fine name for a gal," she said.
+"I vow I'm a-goin' to name her Johnnie!"
+
+And so this one of the tribe of borrowing Passmores wore her own
+clothing from the first. No borrowed garment touched her. She rejected
+the milk from the borrowed cow, fiercely; lustily she demanded--and
+eventually received--her own legitimate, unborrowed sustenance.
+
+Perhaps such a beginning had its own influence upon her future.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BIRTH OF AN AMBITION
+
+All day the girl had walked steadily, her bare feet comforted by the
+warm dust, shunning the pebbles, never finding sham stones in the way,
+making friends with the path--that would always be Johnnie. From the
+little high-hung valley in the remote fastnesses of the Unakas where she
+was born, Johnnie Consadine was walking down to Cottonville, the factory
+town on the outskirts of Watauga, to find work. Sometimes the road wound
+a little upward for a quarter of a mile or so; but the general tendency
+was persistently down.
+
+In the gray dawn of Sunday morning she had stepped from the door of that
+room where the three beds occupied three corners, and a rude table was
+rigged in the fourth. It might almost seem that the same hounds were
+quarrelling under the floor that had scrambled there eighteen years
+before when she was born. At first the way was entirely familiar to her.
+It passed few habitations, and of those the dwellers were not yet
+abroad, since it was scarce day. As time went on she got to the little
+settlement at the foot of the first mountain, and had to explain to
+everybody her destination and ambition. Beyond this, she stopped
+occasionally for direction, she met more people; yet she was still in
+the heart of the mountains when noon found her, and she crept up a
+wayside bank and sat down alone to eat her bite of corn pone.
+
+Guided by the instinct--or the wood-craft--of the mountain born and
+bred, she had sought out one of the hermit springs of beautiful
+freestone water that hide in these solitudes. When she had slaked her
+thirst at its little ice-cold chalice, she raised her head with a low
+exclamation of rapture. There, growing and blowing beside the cool
+thread of water which trickled from the spring, was a stately pink
+moccasin flower. She knelt and gazed at it with folded hands, as one
+before a shrine.
+
+What is it in the sweeping dignity of these pointed, oval,
+parallel-veined leaves, sheathed one within another, the clean column of
+the bloom stalk rising a foot and a half perhaps above, and at its tip
+the wonderful pink, dreaming Buddha of the forest, that so commands the
+heart? It was not entirely the beauty of the softly glowing orchid that
+charmed Johnnie Consadine's eyes; it was the significance of the flower.
+Somehow the finding this rare, shy thing decking her path toward labour
+and enterprise spoke to her soul of success. For a long time she knelt,
+her bright uncovered head dappled by a ray of sunlight which filtered
+through the deep, cool green above her, her face bent, her eyes
+brooding, as though she prayed. When she had finished her dinner of corn
+pone and fried pork, she rose and parted with almost reverent fingers
+the pink wonder from its stalk, sought out a coarse, clean handkerchief
+from her bundle and, steeping it in the icy water of the spring, lapped
+it around her treasure. Not often in her eighteen summers had she found
+so fine a specimen. Then she took up her journey, comforted and
+strangely elated.
+
+"Looks like it was waiting right there to tell me howdy," she murmured
+to herself.
+
+The keynote of Johnnie Consadine's character was aspiration. In her
+cabin home the wings of desire were clipped, because she must needs put
+her passionate young soul into the longing for food, to quiet the
+cravings of a healthy stomach, which generally clamoured from one
+blackberry season to the other; the longing for shoes, when her feet
+were frostbitten; the yet more urgent wish to feed the little ones she
+loved; the pressing demand, when the water-bucket gave out and they had
+to pack water in a tin tomato can with a string bail; the dull ache of
+mortification when she became old enough to understand their position as
+the borrowing Passmores. Yet all human desire is sacred, and of God; to
+desire--to want--to aspire--thus shall the individual be saved; and
+surely in this is the salvation of the race. And Johnnie felt vaguely
+that at last she was going out into a world where she should learn what
+to desire and how to desire it.
+
+Now as she tramped she was conning over her present plans. Again she saw
+the cabin at home in that pitchy black which precedes the first
+leavening of dawn, and herself getting up to start early on the long
+walk. Her mother would get up too, and that was foolish. She saw the
+slight figure stooping to rake together the embers in the broad
+chimney's throat that the coffee-pot might be set on. She remonstrated
+with the little mother, saying that she aimed not to disturb
+anybody--not even Uncle Pros.
+
+"Uncle Pros!" Laurella echoed from the hearthstone, where she sat on her
+heels, like a little girl playing at mud-pies. Johnnie smiled at the
+memory of how her mother laughed over the suggestion, with a drawing of
+slant brows above big, tragic dark eyes, a look of suffering from the
+mirth which adds the crown to joyousness. "Your Uncle Pros he got a
+revelation 'long 'bout midnight as to just whar that thar silver mine is
+that's been dodgin' him for more'n forty year. He come a-shakin' me by
+the shoulder--like I reckon he's done fifty times ef he's done it
+once--and telling me that he's off to make all our fortunes inside of a
+week. He said if you still would go down to that thar old fool cotton
+mill and hire out, to name it to you that Shade Buckheath would stand
+some watchin'. Your Uncle Pros has got sense--in streaks. Why in the
+world you'll pike out and go to work in a cotton mill is more than I
+can cipher."
+
+"To take care of you and the children," the girl had said, standing tall
+and straight, deep-bosomed and red-lipped, laughing back at her little
+mother. "Somebody's got to take care of you-all, and I just love to
+be the one."
+
+Laurella Consadine, commonly called in mountain fashion by her maiden
+name of Laurella Passmore, scrambled to her feet and tossed the dark
+curls out of her eyes.
+
+"Aw--law--huh!" she returned carelessly. "We'll get along; we always
+have. How do you reckon I made out before you was born, you great big
+somebody? What's the matter with you? Did you fail to borry a frock for
+the dance over at Rainy Gap? Try again, honey--I'll bet S'lomy Buckheath
+would lend you one o' her'n."
+
+That was it; borrowing--borrowing--borrowing till they were known as the
+borrowing Passmores and became the jest of the neighbourhood.
+
+"No, I couldn't stand it," the girl justified herself. "I had obliged to
+get out and go where money could be earned--me, that's big and stout
+and able."
+
+And sighingly--yet light-heartedly, for with Laurella Consadine and
+Johnnie there was always the quaint suggestion of a little girl with a
+doll quite too big for her--the mother let her go. It had been just so
+when Johnnie would have her time for every term of the "old field
+hollerin' school," where she learned to read and write; even when she
+persisted in going to Rainy Gap where some charitably inclined northern
+church maintained a little school, and pushed her education to dizzy
+heights that to mountain vision appeared "plumb foolish."
+
+That morning she had cautioned her mother to be careful lest they waken
+the children, for if the little ones roused and began, as the mountain
+phrase has it, "takin' on," she scarcely knew how she should find heart
+to leave them. The children--there was the thing that drove. Four small
+brothers and sisters there were; with little Deanie, the youngest, to
+make the painfully strong plea of recent babyhood. Consadine, who never
+could earn money, and used to be from home following one wild scheme or
+another most of the time, was gone these two years upon his last
+dubious, adventurous journey; there was not even his intermittent
+assistance to depend upon. Johnnie was the man of the family, and she
+shouldered her burden bravely, declaring to herself that she would yet
+have a chance, which the little ones could share.
+
+She had kissed her mother, picked up her bundle and got as far as the
+door, when there came a spat of bare feet meeting the floor, a pattering
+rush, and Deanie's short arms went around her knees, almost tripping
+her up.
+
+"I wasn't 'sleep--I was 'wake the whole time," whispered the baby,
+lifting a warm, pursed mouth for a kiss. "Deanie'll be good an' let you
+go, Sis' Johnnie. An' then when you get down thar whar it's all so
+sightly, you'll send for Deanie, 'cause deed and double you couldn't
+live without her, now could ye?" And she looked craftily up into the
+face bent above her, bravely choking back the tears that wanted to drown
+her long speech.
+
+Johnnie dropped her bundle and caught up the child, crushing the warm,
+soft, yielding little form against her breast in a very passion of
+tenderness.
+
+"Deed and double I couldn't," she whispered back. "Sister's goin' to
+earn money, and Deanie shall have plenty of good things to eat next
+winter, and some shoes. She shan't be housed up every time it snows.
+Sis's goin' to--"
+
+She broke off abruptly and kissed the small face with vehemence.
+
+"Good-bye," she managed to whisper, as she set the baby down and turned
+to her mother. The kindling touch of that farewell warmed her resolution
+yet. She was not going down to Cottonville to work in the mill merely;
+she was going into the Storehouse of Possibilities, to find and buy a
+chance in the world for these poor little souls who could never have it
+otherwise.
+
+Before she kissed her mother, took up her bundle and trudged away in the
+chill, gray dawn, she declared an intention to come home and pay back
+every one to whom they were under obligations. Now her face dimpled as
+she remembered the shriek of dismay Laurella sent after her.
+
+"Good land, Johnnie Consadine! If you start in to pay off all the
+borryin's of the Passmore family since you was born, you'll ruin
+us--that's what you'll do--you'll ruin us."
+
+These things acted themselves over and over in Johnnie's mind as,
+throughout the fresh April afternoon, her long, free, rhythmic step, its
+morning vigour undiminished, swung the miles behind her; still present
+in thought when, away down in Render's Gap, she settled herself on a
+rock by the wayside where a little stream crossed the road, to wash her
+feet and put on the shoes which she had up to this time carried with
+her bundle.
+
+"I reckon I must be near enough town to need 'em," she said regretfully,
+as she drew the big, shapeless, cowhide affairs on her slim, brown,
+carefully washed and dried feet, and with a leathern thong laced down a
+wide, stiff tongue. She had earned the money for these shoes picking
+blackberries at ten cents the gallon, and Uncle Pros had bought them at
+the store at Bledsoe according to his own ideas. "Get 'em big enough and
+there won't be any fussin' about the fit," the old man explained his
+theory: and indeed the fit of those shoes on Johnnie's feet was not a
+thing to fuss over--it was past considering.
+
+The sun was westering; the Gap began to be in shadow, although the point
+at which she sat was well above the valley. The girl was all at once
+aware that she was tired and a little timid of what lay before her. She
+had written to Shade Buckheath, a neighbour's boy with whom she had gone
+to school, now employed as a mechanic or loom-fixer in one of the cotton
+mills, and from whom she had received a reply saying that she could get
+work in Cottonville if she would come down.
+
+Mavity Bence, who had given Johnnie her first clothes, was a weaver in
+the Hardwick mill at Cottonville, Watauga's milling suburb; her father,
+Gideon Himes, with whom Shade Buckheath learned his trade, was a skilled
+mechanic, and had worked as a loom-fixer for a while. At present he was
+keeping a boarding-house for the hands, and it was here Johnnie was to
+find lodging. Shade himself was reported to be doing extremely well. He
+had promised in his letter that if Johnnie came on a Sunday evening he
+would walk up the road a piece and meet her. She now began to hope that
+he would come. Then, waiting for him, she forgot him, and set herself to
+imagine what work in the cotton mill and life in town would be like.
+
+To Shade Buckheath, strolling up the road, in the expansiveness of his
+holiday mood and the dignity of his Sunday suit, the first sight of
+Johnnie came with a little unwelcome shock. He had left her in the
+mountains a tall, thin, sandy-haired girl in the growing age. He got his
+first sight of her profile relieved against the green of the wayside
+bank, with a bunch of blooming azaleas starring its verdure behind her
+bright head. He was not artist enough to appreciate the picture at its
+value; he simply had the sudden resentful feeling of one who has asked
+for a hen and been offered a bird of paradise. She was tall and lithe
+and strong; her thick, fair hair, without being actually curly, seemed
+to be so vehemently alive that it rippled a bit in its length, as a
+swift-flowing brook does over a stone. It rose up around her brow in a
+roll that was almost the fashionable coiffure. Those among whom she had
+been bred, laconically called the colour red; but in fact it was only
+too deep a gold to be quite yellow. Johnnie's face, even in repose, was
+always potentially joyous. The clear, wide, gray eyes, under their
+arching brows, the mobile lips, held as it were the smile in solution;
+when one addressed her it broke swiftly into being, the pink lips
+lifting adorably above the white teeth, the long fringed eyes crinkling
+deliciously about the corners. Johnnie loved to laugh, and the heart of
+any reasonable being was instantly moved to give her cause.
+
+For himself, the young man was a prevalent type among his people. Brown,
+well built, light on his feet, with heavy black hair growing low on his
+forehead, and long blackish-gray eyes, there was something Latin in the
+grace of his movements and in his glance. Life ran strong in Shade
+Buckheath. He stepped with an independent stride that was almost a
+swagger, and already felt himself a successful man; but that one of the
+tribe of borrowing Passmores should presume to such opulence of charm
+struck him as well-nigh impudent. The pure outlines of Johnnie's
+features, their aristocratic mould, the ruddy gold of her rich,
+clustering hair, those were things it seemed to him a good mill-hand
+might well have dispensed with. Then the girl turned, saw him, and
+flashed him a swift smile of greeting.
+
+"It's mighty kind of you to come up and meet me," she said, getting to
+her feet a little awkwardly on account of the shoes, and picking up
+her bundle.
+
+"I 'lowed you might get lost," bantered the young fellow, not offering
+to carry the packet as they trudged away side by side. "How's everybody
+back on Unaka? Has your Uncle Pros found his silver mine yet?"
+
+"No," returned Johnnie seriously, "but he's lookin' for it."
+
+Shade threw back his head and laughed so long and loud that it would
+have been embarrassing to any one less sound and sweet-natured than
+this girl.
+
+"I reckon he is," said Buckheath. "I reckon Pros Passmore will be
+lookin' for that silver mine when Gabriel blows. It runs in the family,
+don't it?"
+
+Johnnie looked at him and shook her head.
+
+"You've been learnin' town ways, haven't you?" she asked simply.
+
+"You mean my makin' game of the Passmores?" he inquired coolly. "No, I
+never learned that in the settlement; I learned it in the mountains. I
+just forgot your name was Passmore, that's all," he added sarcastically.
+"Are you goin' to get mad about it?"
+
+Johnnie had put on her slat sunbonnet and pulled it down so he could not
+see her face.
+
+"No," she returned evenly, "I'm not goin' to get mad at anything. And my
+name's not Passmore, either. My name is Consadine, and I aim to be
+called that. Uncle Pros Passmore is my mother's uncle, and one of the
+best men that ever lived, I reckon. If all the folks he's nursed in
+sickness or laid out in death was numbered over it would be a-many a
+one; and I never heard him take any credit to himself for anything he
+did. Why, Shade, the last three years of your father's life Uncle Pros
+didn't dare hunt his silver mine much, because your father was paralysed
+and had to have close waitin' on, and--and there wasn't nobody but Uncle
+Pros, since all his boys was gone and--"
+
+"Oh, say it. Speak out," urged Shade hardily. "You mean that all us
+chaps had cut out and left the old man, and there wasn't a cent of money
+to pay anybody, and no one but Pros Passmore would 'a' been fool enough
+to do such hard work without pay. Well, I reckon you're about right. You
+and me come of a mighty poor nation of folks; but I'm goin' to make my
+pile and have my share, if lookin' out for number one'll do it."
+
+Johnnie turned and regarded him curiously. It was characteristic of the
+mountain girl, and of her people, that she had not on first meeting
+stared, village fashion, at his brave attire; and she seemed now
+concerned only with the man himself.
+
+"I reckon you'll get it," she said meditatively. "I reckon you will.
+Sometimes I think we always get just what we deserve in this here world,
+and that the only safe way is to try to deserve something good. I hope I
+didn't say too much for Uncle Pros; but he's so easy and say-nothin'
+himself, that I just couldn't bear to hear you laughin' at him and not
+answer you."
+
+"I declare, you're plenty funny!" Buckheath burst put boisterously. "No,
+I ain't mad at you. I kind o' like you for stickin' up for the old man.
+You and me'll get along, I reckon."
+
+As they moved forward, the man and the girl fell into more general chat,
+the feeling of irritation at Johnnie's beauty, her superior air, growing
+rather than diminishing in the young fellow's mind. How dare Pros
+Passmore's grandniece carry a bright head so high, and flash such
+glances of liquid fire at her questioner? Shade looked sidewise
+sometimes at his companion as he asked the news of their mutual friends,
+and she answered. Yet when he got, along with her mild responses, one of
+those glances, he was himself strangely subdued by it, and fain to prop
+his leaning prejudices by contrasting her scant print gown, her slat
+sunbonnet, and cowhide shoes with the apparel of the humblest in the
+village which they were approaching.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A PEAK IN DARIEN
+
+So walking, and so desultorily talking, they came out on a noble white
+highway that wound for miles along the bluffy edge of the upland
+overlooking the valley upon the one side, fronted by handsome residences
+on the other.
+
+It was Johnnie's first view of a big valley, a river, or a city. She had
+seen the shoestring creek bottoms between the endless mountains among
+which she was born and bred, the high-hung, cup-like depressions of
+their inner fastnesses; she was used to the cool, clear, boulder-checked
+mountain creeks that fight their way down those steeps like an armed man
+beating off assailants at every turn; she had been taken a number of
+times to Bledsoe, the tiny settlement at the foot of Unaka Old Bald,
+where there were two stores, a blacksmith shop, the post-office and
+the church.
+
+Below her, now beginning to glow in the evening light, opened out one of
+the finest valleys of the southern Appalachees. Lapped in it, far off,
+shrouded with rosy mist which she did not identify as transmuted coal
+smoke, a city lay, fretted with spires, already sparkling with electric
+lights, set like a glittering boss of jewels in the broad curve of a
+shining river.
+
+Directly down the steep at their feet was the cotton-mill town, a suburb
+clustered about a half-dozen great factories, whose long rows of lighted
+windows defined their black bulk. There was a stream here, too; a small,
+sluggish thing that flowed from tank to tank among the factories,
+spanned by numerous handrails, bridged in one place for the wagon-road
+to cross. Mills, valley, town, distant rimming mountains, river and
+creek, glowed and pulsed, dissolved and relimned themselves in the
+uprolling glory of sunset.
+
+"Oh, wait for me a minute, Shade," pleaded the girl, pulling off her
+sunbonnet.... "I want to look.... Never in my life did I see anything
+so sightly!"
+
+"Good land!" laughed the man, with a note of impatience in his voice.
+"You and me was raised on mountain scenery, as a body may say. I should
+think we'd both had enough of it to last us."
+
+"But this--this is different," groped Johnnie, trying to explain the
+emotions that possessed her. "Look at that big settlement over yon. I
+reckon it's a city. It must be Watauga. It looks like the--the mansions
+of the blest, in the big Bible that preacher Drane has, down
+at Bledsoe."
+
+"I reckon they're blest--they got plenty of money," returned Shade, with
+the cheap cynicism of his kind.
+
+"So many houses!" the girl communed with herself. "There's bound to be
+a-many a person in all them houses," she went on. One could read the
+loving outreach to all humanity in her tones.
+
+"There is," put in Shade caustically. "There's many a rogue. You want to
+look out for them tricky town folks--a girl like you."
+
+Had he been more kind, he would have said, "a pretty girl like you." But
+Johnnie did not miss it; she was used to such as he gave, or less.
+
+"Come on," he urged impatiently. "We won't get no supper if you don't
+hurry."
+
+Supper! Johnnie drew in her breath and shook her head. With that scene
+unrolled there, as though all the kingdoms of earth were spread before
+them to look upon, she was asked to remember supper! Sighing, but
+submissively, she moved to follow her guide, a reluctant glance across
+her shoulder, when there came a cry something like that which the wild
+geese make when they come over in the spring; and a thing with two
+shining, fiery eyes, a thing that purred like a giant cat, rounded a
+curve in the road and came to a sudden jolting halt beside them.
+
+Shade stopped immediately for that. Johnnie did not fail to recognize
+the vehicle. Illustrated magazines go everywhere in these days. In the
+automobile rode a man, bare-headed, dressed in a suit of white flannels,
+strange to Johnnie's eyes. Beside him sat a woman in a long, shimmering,
+silken cloak, a great, misty, silver-gray veil twined round head and hat
+and tied in a big bow under the chin. Johnnie had as yet seen nothing
+more pretentious than the starched and ruffled flummeries of a small
+mountain watering-place. This beautiful, peculiar looking garb had
+something of the picturesque, the poetic, about it, that appealed to her
+as the frocks worn at Chalybeate Springs or Bledsoe had never done. She
+had not wanted them. She wanted this. The automobile was stopped, the
+young fellow in it calling to Shade:
+
+"I wonder if you could help me with this thing, Buckheath? It's on a
+strike again. Show me what you did to it last time."
+
+Along the edge of the road at this point, for safety's sake, a low stone
+wall had been laid. Setting down her bundle, Johnnie leaned upon this,
+and shared her admiration between the valley below and these beautiful,
+interesting newcomers. Her bonnet was pushed far back; the wind ruffled
+the bright hair about her forehead; the wonder and glory and delight of
+it all made her deep eyes shine with a child's curiosity and avid
+wishfulness. Her lips were parted in unconscious smiles. White and red,
+tremulous, on tiptoe, the eager soul looking out of her face, she was
+very beautiful. The man in the automobile observed her kindly; the
+woman's features she could not quite see, though the veil was parted.
+
+Neither Johnnie nor the driver of the car saw the quick, resentful
+glance her companion shot at the city man as Shade noted the latter's
+admiring look at the girl. Buckheath displayed an awesome familiarity
+with the machine and its workings, crawling under the body, and tapping
+it here and there with a wrench its driver supplied. They backed it and
+moved it a little, and seemed to be debating the short turn which would
+take them into the driveway leading up to a house on the slope above
+the road.
+
+Johnnie continued to watch with fascinated eyes; Shade was on his feet
+now, reaching into the bowels of the machine to do mysterious things.
+
+"It's a broken connection," he announced briefly.
+
+"Is the wire too short to twist together?" inquired the man in the car.
+"Will you have to put in a new piece?"
+
+"Uh-huh," assented Buckheath.
+
+"There's a wire in that box there," directed the other.
+
+Shade worked in silence for a moment.
+
+"Now she'll go, I reckon," he announced, and once more the driver
+started up his car. It curved perilously near the bundle she had set
+down, with the handkerchief containing her cherished blossom lying atop;
+the mud-guard swept this latter off, and Buckheath set a foot upon it as
+he followed the machine in its progress.
+
+"Take care--that was a flower," the man in the auto warned, too late.
+
+Shade answered with a quick, backward-flung glance and a little derisive
+laugh, but no words. The young fellow stopped the machine, jumped down,
+and picked up the coarse little handkerchief which showed a bit of
+drooping green stem at one end and a glimpse of pink at the other.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, presenting it to Johnnie with exactly the air and
+tone he had used in speaking to the lady who was with him in the car.
+"If I had seen it in time, I might have saved it. I hope it's not
+much hurt."
+
+Buckheath addressed himself savagely to his work at the machine. The
+woman in the auto glanced uneasily up at the house on the slope above
+them. Johnnie looked into the eyes bent so kindly upon her, and could
+have worshipped the ground on which their owner trod. Kindness always
+melted her heart utterly, but kindness with such beautiful courtesy
+added--this was the quality in flower.
+
+"It doesn't make any differ," she said softly, turning to him a rapt,
+transfigured face. "It's just a bloom I brought from the mountains--they
+don't grow in the valley, and I found this one on my way down."
+
+The man wondered a little if it were only the glow of the sunset that
+lit her face with such shining beauty; he noted how the fires of it
+flowed over her bright, blown hair and kindled its colour, how it
+lingered in the clear eyes, and flamed upon the white neck and throat
+till they had almost the translucence of pearl.
+
+"I think this thing'll work now--for a spell, anyhow," Shade Buckheath's
+voice sounded sharply from the road behind them.
+
+"Are you afraid to attempt it, Miss Sessions?" the young man called to
+his companion. "If you are, we'll walk up, I'll telephone at the house
+for a trap and we'll drive back:--Buckheath will take the machine in
+for us."
+
+The voice was even and low-toned, yet every word came to Johnnie
+distinctly. She watched with a sort of rapture the movements of this
+party. The man's hair was dark and crisp, and worn a little long about
+the temples and ears; he had pleasant dark eyes and an air of being
+slightly amused, even when he did not smile. The lady apparently said
+that she was not afraid, for her companion got in, the machine
+negotiated the turn safely and began to move slowly up the steep ascent.
+As it did so, the driver gave another glance toward where the mountain
+girl stood, a swift, kind glance, and a smile that stayed with her after
+the shining car had disappeared in the direction of the wide-porched
+building where people were laughing and calling to each other and moving
+about--people dressed in beautiful garments which Johnnie would fain
+have inspected more closely.
+
+Buckheath stood gazing at her sarcastically.
+
+"Come on," he ordered, as she held back, lingering. "They ain't no good
+in you hangin' 'round here. That was Mr. Gray Stoddard, and the lady
+he's beauin' is Miss Lydia Sessions, Mr. Hardwick's sister-in-law. He's
+for such as her--not for you. He's the boss of the bosses down at
+Cottonville. No use of you lookin' at him."
+
+Johnnie scarcely heard the words. Her eyes were on the wide porch of the
+house above them.
+
+"What is that place?" she inquired in an awestruck whisper, as she fell
+into step submissively, plodding with bent head at his shoulder.
+
+"The Country Club," Shade flung back at her. "Did you 'low it was
+heaven?"
+
+Heaven! Johnnie brooded on that for a long time. She turned her head
+stealthily for a last glimpse of the portico where a laughing girl
+tossed a ball to a young fellow on the terrace below. After all, heaven
+was not so far amiss. She had rather associated it with the abode of the
+blest. The people in it were happy; they moved in beautiful raiment all
+day long; they spoke to each other kindly. It was love's home, she was
+sure of that. Then her mind went back to the dress of the girl in
+the auto.
+
+"I'm a-going to have me a frock like that before I die," she said, half
+unconsciously, yet with a sudden passion of resolution. "Yes, if I live
+I'm a-goin' to have me just such a frock."
+
+Shade wheeled in his tracks with a swift narrowing of the slate-gray
+eyes. He had been more stirred than he was willing to acknowledge by the
+girl's beauty, and by a nameless power that went out from the seemingly
+helpless creature and laid hold of those with whom she came in contact.
+It was the open admiration of young Stoddard which had roused the sullen
+resentment he was now spending on her.
+
+"Ye air, air ye?" he demanded sharply. "You're a-goin' to have a frock
+like that? And what man's a-goin' to pay for it, I'd like to know?"
+
+Such talk belonged to the valley and the settlement. In the mountains a
+woman works, of course, and earns her board and keep. She is a valuable
+industrial possession or chattel to the man, who may profit by her
+labour; never a luxury--a bill of expense. As she walked, Johnnie nodded
+toward the factory in the valley, beginning to blaze with light--her
+bridge of toil, that was to carry her from the island of Nowhere to the
+great mainland of Life, where everything might be had for the working,
+the striving.
+
+"I didn't name no man," she said mildly. "I don't reckon anybody's goin'
+to give me things. Ain't there the factory where a body may work and
+earn money for all they need?"
+
+"Well, I reckon they might, if they was good and careful to need
+powerful little," allowed Shade.
+
+At the moment they came to the opening of a small path which plunged
+abruptly down the steep side of the ridge, curving in and out with--and
+sometimes across--a carriage road. As they took the first steps on this
+the sun forsook the valley at last, and lingered only on the mountain
+top where was that Palace of Pleasure into which He and She had
+vanished, before which the strange chariot waited. And all at once the
+little brook that wound, a golden thread, between the bulk of the mills,
+flowed, a stream of ink, from pool to pool of black water. The way down
+turned and turned; and each time that Shade and Johnnie got another
+sight of the buildings of the little village below, they had changed in
+character with the changing point of view. They loomed taller, they
+looked darker in spite of the pulsing light from their many windows.
+
+And now there burst out a roar of whistles, like the bellowing of great
+monsters. Somehow it struck cold upon the girl's heart. They were coming
+down from that wonderful highland where she had seemed to see all the
+kingdoms of earth spread before her, hers for the conquering; they were
+descending into the shadow.
+
+As they came quite to the foot they saw groups of women and children,
+with here and there a decrepit man, leaving the cottages and making
+their way toward the lighted mills. From the doors of little shanties
+tired-faced women with boys and girls walking near them, and, in one or
+two cases, very small ones clinging to their skirts and hands,
+reinforced the crowd which set in a steady stream toward the bridges and
+the open gates in the high board fences.
+
+"What are they a-goin' to the factory for on Sunday evening?" Johnnie
+inquired.
+
+"Night turn," replied Buckheath briefly. "Sunday's over at sundown."
+
+"Oh, yes," agreed Johnnie dutifully, but rather disheartened. "Trade
+must be mighty good if they have to work all night."
+
+"Them that works don't get any more for it," retorted Shade harshly.
+
+"What's the little ones goin' to the mill for?" Johnnie questioned,
+staring up at him with apprehensive eyes.
+
+"Why, to play, I reckon," returned the young fellow ironically. "Folks
+mostly does go to the mill to play, don't they?"
+
+The girl ran forward and clasped his arm with eager fingers that shook.
+"Shade!" she cried; "they can't work those little babies. That one over
+there ain't to exceed four year old, and I know it."
+
+The man looked indifferently to where a tiny boy trotted at his mother's
+heels, solemn, old-faced, unchildish. He laughed a little.
+
+"That thar chap is the oldest feller in the mills," he said. "That's
+Benny Tarbox. He's too short to tend a frame, but his maw lets him help
+her at the loom--every weaver has obliged to have helpers wait on 'em.
+You'll get used to it."
+
+Get used to it! She pulled the sunbonnet about her face. The gold was
+all gone from the earth, and from her mood as well. She raised her eyes
+to where the last brightness lingered on the mountain-top. Up there they
+were happy. And even as her feet carried her forward to Pap Himes's
+boarding-house, her soul went clamouring, questing back toward the
+heights, and the sunlight, the love and laughter, she had left behind.
+
+"The power and the glory--the power and the glory," she whispered over
+and over to herself. "Is it all back there?" Again she looked wistfully
+toward the heights. "But maybe a body with two feet can climb."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+OF THE USE OF FEET
+
+The suburb of Cottonville bordered a creek, a starveling, wet-weather
+stream which offered the sole suggestion of sewerage. The village was
+cut in two by this natural division. It clung to the shelving sides of
+the shallow ravine; it was scattered like bits of refuse on the numerous
+railroad embankments, where building was unhandy and streets almost
+impossible, to be convenient to the mills. Six big factories in all,
+some on one side of the state line and some on the other, daily breathed
+in their live current of operatives and exhaled them again to fill the
+litter of flimsy shanties.
+
+The road which wound down from the heights ran through the middle of the
+village and formed its main street. Across the ravine from it, reached
+by a wooden bridge, stood a pretentious frame edifice, a boarding-house
+built by the Gloriana mill for the use of its office force and
+mechanics. Men were lounging on the wide porches of this structure in
+Sabbath-afternoon leisure, smoking and singing. The young Southern male
+of any class is usually melodious. Across the hollow came the sounds of
+a guitar and a harmonica.
+
+"Listen a minute, Shade. Ain't that pretty? I know that tune," said
+Johnnie, and she began to hum softly under her breath, her girlish heart
+responding to the call.
+
+"Hush," admonished Buckheath harshly. "You don't want to be runnin'
+after them fellers. It's some of the loom-fixers."
+
+In silence he led the way past the great mill buildings of red brick,
+square and unlovely but many-windowed and glowing, alight, throbbing
+with the hum of pent industry. Johnnie gazed steadily up at those
+windows; the glow within was other than that which gilded turret and
+pinnacle and fairy isle in the Western sky, yet perchance this light
+might be a lamp to the feet of one who wished to climb that way. Her
+adventurous spirit rose to the challenge, and she said softly, more to
+herself than to the man:
+
+"I'm a-goin' to be a boss hand in there. I'm goin' to get the highest
+wages of any girl in the mill, time I learn my trade, because I'm goin'
+to try harder 'n anybody."
+
+Shade looked around at her, curiously. Her beauty, her air of
+superiority, still repelled him--such fancy articles were not apt to be
+of much use--but this sounded like a woman who might be valuable to
+her master.
+
+Johnnie returned his gaze with the frank good will of a child, and
+suddenly he forgot everything but the adorable lift of her pink lip over
+the shining white teeth.
+
+The young fellow now halted at the step of a big frame house. The
+outside was of an extent to seem fairly pretentious; yet so mean was the
+construction, so sparing of window and finish, that the building showed
+itself instantly for what it was--the cheap boarding-house of a mill
+town. A group of tired-looking girls sitting on the step in blessed
+Sunday idleness and cheap Sunday finery stared as he and Johnnie
+ascended and crossed the porch. One of these, a tall lank woman of
+perhaps thirty years, got up and followed a few hesitating paces,
+apparently more as a matter of curiosity than with any hospitable
+intent.
+
+A man with a round red face and a bald pate whose curly fringe of
+grizzled, reddish hair made him look like a clown in a pantomime,
+motioned them with a surly thumb toward the back of the house, where
+clattering preparations for supper were audible and odoriferous. The old
+fellow sat in a splint-bottomed chair of extra size and with arms. This
+he had kicked back against the wall of the house, so that his short legs
+did not reach the floor, the big carpet-slippered feet finding rest on
+the rung of the chair. His attitude was one of relaxation. The face,
+broad, flat, small of eye and wide of mouth, did indeed suggest the
+clown countenance; yet there was in it, and in the whole personality,
+something of the Eastern idol, the journeyman attempt of crude humanity
+to represent power. And the potential cruelty of the type slept in his
+placid countenance as surely as ever in the dreaming face of Shiva, the
+destroyer.
+
+"Mrs. Bence--Aunt Mavity," called Shade, advancing into the narrow hall.
+In answer a tired-faced woman came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on
+her checked apron.
+
+"Good Lord, if it ain't Johnnie! I was 'feared she Wouldn't git here
+to-night," she ejaculated when she saw the girl. "Take her out on the
+porch, Shade; I ain't got a minute now. Pap's poorly again, and I'm
+obliged to put the late supper on the table for them thar gals--the
+night shift's done eat and gone. I'll show her whar she's to sleep at,
+after while. I don't just rightly know whar Pap aimed to have her stay,"
+she concluded hastily, as something boiled over on the stove. Johnnie
+set her bundle down in the corner of the kitchen.
+
+"I'll help," she said simply, as she drew the excited coffee-pot to a
+corner of the range and dosed it judiciously with cold water.
+
+"Well, now, that's mighty good of you," panted worried Mavity Bence.
+"How queer things comes 'round," she ruminated as they dished up the
+biscuits and fried pork. "I helped you into the very world, Johnnie. I
+lived neighbour to your maw, and they wasn't nobody else to be with her
+when you was born, and I went over. I never suspicioned that you would
+be helpin' me git supper down here in the settlement inside o'
+twenty year."
+
+Johnnie ran and fetched and carried, as though she had never done
+anything else in her life, intent on the one task. She was alive in
+every fibre of her young body; she saw, she heard, as these words cannot
+always be truthfully applied to people.
+
+"Did Shade tell you anything about Louvania?" inquired the woman at
+length.
+
+"No," replied Johnnie softly, "but I seen it in the paper."
+
+Louvania Bence, the only remaining child of the widow, had, two weeks
+before, left her work at the mill, taken the trolley in to Watauga,
+walked out upon the county bridge across the Tennessee and jumped off.
+Johnnie had read the published account, passed from hand to hand in the
+mountains where Pap Himes and Mavity Bence had troops of kin and where
+Louvania was born. The statement ran that there was no love affair, and
+that the girl's distaste for her work at the cotton mill must have been
+the reason for the suicide.
+
+"That there talk in the newspaper wasn't right," Louvania's mother
+choked. "They wasn't a word of truth in it. You know in reason that if
+Louvany hated to work in the mill as bad as all that she'd have named it
+to me--her own mother--and she never did. She never spoke a word like
+it, only to say now and ag'in, as we all do, that it was hard, and that
+she'd--well, she did 'low she'd ruther be dead, as gals will; but she
+couldn't have meant it. Do you think she could have meant it, Johnnie?"
+
+The faded eyes, clouded now by tears, stared up into Johnnie's clear
+young orbs.
+
+"Of course she couldn't have meant it," Johnnie comforted her. "Why, I'm
+sure it's fine to work in the mill. If she didn't feel so, she'd have
+told you the thing. She must have been out of her mind. People always
+are when they--do that."
+
+"That's what I keep a-thinkin'," the poor mother said, clinging
+pathetically to that which gave her consolation and cheer. "I say to
+myself that it must have been some brain disease took her all of a
+sudden and made her crazy that-a-way; because God knows she had nothing
+to fret her nor drive her to such."
+
+By this time the meal was on the table, and the girls trooped in from
+the porch. The old man with the bald pate was seating himself at the
+head of the board, and Johnnie asked the privilege of helping wait
+on table.
+
+"No, you ain't a-goin' to," Mrs. Bence said hospitably, pushing her into
+a seat. "If you start in to work in the morning, like I reckon you will,
+you ain't got no other time to get acquainted with the gals but right
+now. You set down. We don't take much waitin' on. We all pass things,
+and reach for what we want."
+
+In the smoky illumination of the two ill-cleaned lamps which stood one
+at each end of the table, Johnnie's fair face shone out like a star. The
+tall woman who had shown a faint interest in them on the porch was
+seated just opposite. Her bulging light-blue eyes scarcely left the
+newcomer's countenance as she absent-mindedly filled her mouth. She was
+a scant, stringy-looking creature, despite her height; the narrow back
+was hooped like that of an old woman and the shoulders indrawn, so that
+the chest was cramped, and sent forth a wheezy, flatted voice that
+sorted ill with her inches; her round eyes had no speculation in them;
+her short chin was obstinate without power; the thin, half-gray hair
+that wanted to curl feebly about her lined forehead was stripped away
+and twisted in a knot no bigger than a walnut, at the back of a
+bent head.
+
+For some time the old man at the end of the table stowed himself
+methodically with victuals; his air was that of a man packing a box;
+then he brought his implements to half-rest, as it were, and gave a
+divided attention to the new boarder.
+
+"What did I hear them call yo' name?" he inquired gruffly.
+
+Johnnie repeated her title and gave him one of those smiles that went
+with most of her speeches. It seemed to suggest things to the
+old sinner.
+
+"Huh," he grunted; "I riccollect ye now. Yo' pap was a Consadine, but
+you're old Virgil Passmore's grandchild. One of the borryin' Passmores,"
+he added, staring coolly at Johnnie. "Virge was a fine, upstandin' old
+man. You've got the favour of him--if you wasn't a gal."
+
+He evidently shared Schopenhauer's distaste for "the low-statured,
+wide-hipped, narrow-shouldered sex."
+
+The girls about the table were all listening eagerly. Johnnie had the
+sensation of a freshman who has walked out on the campus too
+well dressed.
+
+"Virge was a great beau in his day," continued Pap, reminiscently. "He
+liked to wear good clothes, too. I mind how he borried Abner Wimberly's
+weddin' coat and wore it something like ten year--showed it off fine--it
+fitted him enough sight better than it ever fitted little old Ab. Then
+he comes back to Wimberly at the end of so long a time with the buttons.
+He says, says he, 'Looks like that thar cloth yo' coat was made of
+wasn't much 'count, Ab,' says he. 'I think Jeeters cheated ye on it. But
+the buttons was good. The buttons wore well. And them I'm bringin' back,
+'caze you may have use for 'em, and I have none, now the coat's gone.
+Also, what I borry I return, as everybody knows.' That was your
+granddaddy."
+
+There was a tremendous giggling about the board as the old man made an
+end. Johnnie herself smiled, though her face was scarlet. She had no
+words to tell her tormentor that the borrowing trait in her tribe which
+had earned them the name of the borrowing Passmores proceeded not from
+avarice, which ate into Pap Himes's very marrow, but from its reverse
+trait of generosity. She knew vaguely that they would have shared with a
+neighbour their last bite or dollar, and had thus never any doubt of
+being shared with nor any shame in the asking.
+
+"Yes," pursued Himes, surveying Johnnie chucklingly, "I mind when you
+was born. Has your Uncle Pros found his silver mine yet?"
+
+"My mother has often told me how good you and Mrs. Bence was to us when
+I was little," answered Johnnie mildly. "No, sir, Uncle Pros hasn't
+found his silver mine yet--but he's still a-hunting for it."
+
+The reply appeared to delight Himes. He laughed immoderately, even as
+Buckheath had done.
+
+"I'll bet he is," he agreed. "Pros Passmore's goin' to hunt that there
+silver mine till he finds another hole in the ground about six feet long
+and six feet deep--that's what he's a-goin' to do."
+
+The hasty supper was well under way now. Mrs. Bence brought the last of
+the hot bread, and shuffled into a seat. The old man at the head of the
+board returned to his feeding, but with somewhat moderated voracity. At
+length, pretty fully gorged, he raised his head from over his plate and
+looked about him for diversion. Again his attention was directed to
+the new girl.
+
+"Air ye wedded?" he challenged suddenly.
+
+She shook her head and laughed.
+
+"Got your paigs sot for to git any one?" he followed up his
+investigations.
+
+Johnnie laughed more than ever, and blushed again.
+
+"How old air ye?" demanded her inquisitor. "Eighteen? 'Most nineteen?
+Good Lord! You're a old maid right now. Well, don't you let twenty go by
+without gittin' your hooks on a man. My experience is that when a gal
+gits to be twenty an' ain't wedded--or got her paigs sot for to
+wed--she's left. Left," he concluded impressively.
+
+That quick smile of Johnnie's responded.
+
+"I reckon I'll do my best," she agreed reasonably; "but some folks can
+do that and miss it."
+
+Himes nodded till he set the little red curls all bobbing around the
+bare spot.
+
+"Uh-huh," he approved, "I reckon that's so. Women is plenty, and men
+hard to git. Here's Mandy Meacham, been puttin' in her best licks for
+thirty year or more, an' won't never make it."
+
+Johnnie did not need to be told which one was Mandy. The sallow cheek of
+the tall woman across from her reddened; the short chin wabbled a bit
+more than the mastication of the biscuit in hand demanded; a moisture
+appeared in the inexpressive blue eyes; but she managed a shaky laugh to
+assist the chorus which always followed Pap Himes's little jokes.
+
+The old man held a sort of state among these poor girls, and took
+tribute of admiration, as he had taken tribute of life and happiness
+from daughter and granddaughter. Gideon Himes was not actively a bad
+man; he was as without personal malice as malaria. When it makes
+miserable those about it, or robs a girl of her pink cheeks, her bright
+eyes, her joy of life, wearing the elasticity out of her step and making
+an old woman of her before her time, we do not fly into a rage at it--we
+avoid it. The Pap Himeses of this world are to be avoided if possible.
+
+Mandy stared at her plate in mortified silence. Johnnie wished she could
+think of something pleasant to say to the poor thing, when her attention
+was diverted by the old man once more addressing herself.
+
+"You look stout and hearty; if you learn to weave as fast as you ort,
+and git so you can tend five or six looms, I'll bet you git a husband,"
+he remarked in a burst of generosity. "I'll bet you do; and what's more,
+I'll speak a good word for ye. A gal that's a peart weaver's mighty apt
+to find a man. You learn your looms if you want to git wedded--and I
+know in reason you do--it's about all gals of your age thinks of."
+
+When supper was over Johnnie was a little surprised to see the tall
+woman approach Pap Himes like a small child begging a favour of a harsh
+taskmaster.
+
+"Can't that there new girl bunk with me?" she inquired earnestly.
+
+"I had the intention to give her Louvany's bed," Pap returned promptly.
+"As long as nobody's with you, I reckon I don't care; but if one comes
+in, you take 'em, and she goes with Mavity, mind. I cain't waste room,
+poor as I am."
+
+Piloted by the tall girl, Johnnie climbed the narrow stair to a long
+bare room where a row of double beds accommodated eight girls. The couch
+she was to occupy had been slept in during the day by a mill hand who
+was on night turn, and it had not been remade. Deftly Johnnie
+straightened and spread it, while her partner grumbled.
+
+"What's the use o' doin' that?" Mandy inquired, stretching herself and
+yawning portentously. "We'll jist muss it all up in about two minutes.
+When you've worked in a mill as long as I have you'll git over the
+notion of makin' your bed, for hit's _but_ a notion."
+
+Johnnie laughed across her shoulder.
+
+"I'd just as soon do it," she reassured her companion. "I do love smooth
+bedclothes; looks like I dream better on 'em and under 'em."
+
+Mandy sat down on the edge of the bed, interfering considerably with the
+final touches Johnnie was putting to it.
+
+"You're a right good gal," she opined patronizingly, "but foolish. The
+new ones always is foolish. I can put you up to a-many a thing that'll
+help you along, though, and I'm willin' to do it."
+
+Again Johnnie smiled at her, that smile of enveloping sweetness and
+tenderness. It made something down in the left side of poor Mandy's
+slovenly dress-bodice vibrate and tingle.
+
+"I'll thank you mightily," said Johnnie Consadine, "mightily." And knew
+not how true a word she spoke.
+
+"You see," counselled Mandy from the bed into which she had rolled with
+most of her clothes on, "you want to get in with Miss Lydia Sessions and
+the Uplift ladies, and them thar swell folks."
+
+Johnnie nodded, busily at work making a more elaborated night toilet
+than the others, who were going to bed all about them, paying little
+attention to their conversation.
+
+"Miss Lyddy she ain't as young as she once was, and the boys has quit
+hangin' 'round her as much as they used to; so now she has took up with
+good works," the girl on the bed explained with a directness which Miss
+Sessions would not perhaps have appreciated. "Her and some other of the
+nobby folks has started what they call a Uplift club amongst the mill
+girls. Thar's a big room whar you dance--if you can--and whar they give
+little suppers for us with not much to eat; and thar's a place where
+they sorter preach to ye--lecture she calls it. I don't know what-all
+Miss Lyddy hain't got for her club. But you jist go, and listen, and say
+how much obliged you are, an she'll do a lot for you, besides payin'
+your wages to get you out of the mill any day she wants you for the
+Upliftin' business."
+
+Mandy had a gasp, which occurred between sentences and at the end of
+certain words, with grotesque effect. Johnnie was to find that this gasp
+was always very much to the fore when Mandy was being uplifted. It then
+served variously as the gasp of humility, gratitude, admiration; the
+gasp of chaste emotion, the gasp of reprobation toward others who did
+not come forward to be uplifted.
+
+"Did you say there was books at that club?" inquired Johnnie out of the
+darkness--she had now extinguished the light. "Can a body learn things
+from the lectures?"
+
+"Uh-huh," agreed Mandy sleepily; "but you don't have to read 'em--the
+books. They lend 'em to you, and you take 'em home, and after so long a
+time you take 'em back sayin' how much good they done you. That's the
+way. If Mr. Stoddard's 'round, he'll ask you questions about 'em; but
+Miss Lyddy won't--she hates to find out that any of her plans
+ain't workin'."
+
+For a long time there was silence. Mandy was just dropping off into her
+first heavy sleep, when a whispering voice asked,
+
+"Is Mr. Stoddard--has he got right brown eyes and right brown hair, and
+does he ride in one of these--one of these--"
+
+"Good land!" grumbled the addressed, "I thought it was mornin' and I had
+to git up! You ort to been asleep long ago. Yes, Mr. Stoddard's got
+sorter brown eyes and hair, and he rides in a otty-mobile. How did
+you know?"
+
+But Mandy was too tired to stay awake to marvel over that. Her rhythmic
+snores soon proved that she slept, while Johnnie lay thinking of the
+various proffers she had that evening received of a lamp to her feet, a
+light on her path. And she would climb--yes, she would climb. Not by the
+road Pap Himes pointed out; not by the devious path Mandy Meacham
+suggested; but by the rugged road of good, honest toil, to heights where
+was the power and the glory, she would certainly strive.
+
+She conned over the new things which this day had brought. Again she saw
+the auto swing around the curve and halt; she got the outline of the
+man's bent head against the evening sky. They were singing again over at
+the mechanics' boarding-house; the sound came across to her window; the
+vibrant wires, the chorus of deep male voices, even the words she knew
+they were using but could not distinguish, linked themselves in some
+fashion with memory of a man's eyes, his smile, his air of tender
+deference as he cherished her broken flower. Something caught in her
+throat and choked. Her mind veered to the figures on the porch of that
+Palace of Pleasure; the girl with the ball tossing it to the young
+fellow below on the lawn. In memory she descended the hill, coming down
+into the shadows with each step, looking back to the heights and the
+light. Well, she had said that if one had feet one might climb, and
+to-night the old man had tried to train her to his pace for attaining
+heart's desire. In the midst of a jumble of autos and shining mill
+windows, she watched the room grow ghostly with the light of a
+late-risen moon. Suddenly afar off she heard the "honk! honk! honk!"
+which had preceded the advent of the car on the ridge road.
+
+Getting up, she stole, to the one window which the long room afforded.
+It gave upon the main street of the village. "Honk! honk! honk!" She
+gazed toward the steep from which the sounds seemed to come. There,
+flashing in and out of the greenery, appeared half a dozen pairs of
+fiery eyes. A party of motorists were going in to Watauga, starting from
+the Country Club on the Ridge crest. Johnnie watched them, fascinated.
+As the foremost car swept down the road and directly beneath her window,
+its driver, whom she recognized with a little shiver, by the
+characteristic carriage of his head, swerved the machine out and stopped
+it at the curb below. The others passed, calling gay inquiries to him.
+
+"We're all right," she heard a well-remembered voice reply. "You go
+ahead--we'll be there before you."
+
+The slim, gray-clad figure in the seat beside him laughed softly and
+fluttered a white handkerchief as the last car went on.
+
+"Now!" exulted the voice. "I'll put on my goggles and cap and we'll show
+them what running is.
+
+  'It's they'll take the high road and we'll take the low,
+  And we'll be in Watauga befo-o-ore them!'"
+
+Even as he spoke he adjusted his costume, and Johnnie saw the car shoot
+forward like a living creature eager on the trail. She sighed as she
+looked after them.
+
+Feet--of what use were feet to follow such a flight as that?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MOCCASIN FLOWER
+
+Johnnie was used to hardship and early rising, but in an intermittent
+fashion; for the Passmores and Consadines were a haggard lot that came
+to no lure but their own pleasure. They might--and often did--go hungry,
+ill-clad, ill-housed; they might sometimes--in order to keep soul and
+body together--have to labour desperately at rude tasks unsuited to
+them; but these times were exceptions, and between such seasons, down to
+the least of the tribe, they had always followed the Vision, pursuing
+the flying skirts of whatever ideal was in their shapely heads. The
+little cabin in the gash of the hills owned for domain a rocky ravine
+that was the standing jest of the mountain-side.
+
+"Sure, hit's good land--fine land," the mountaineers would comment with
+their inveterate, dry, lazy humour. "Nothing on earth to hender a man
+from raisin' a crap off 'n it--ef he could once git the leathers on a
+good stout, willin' pa'r o' hawks or buzzards, an' a plough hitched to
+'em." And Johnnie could remember the other children teasing her and
+saying that her folks had to load a gun with seed corn and shoot it into
+the sky to reach their fields. Yet, the unmended roof covered much joy
+and good feeling. They were light feet that trod the unsecured
+puncheons. The Passmores were tender of each other's eccentricities,
+admiring of each other's virtues. A wolf race nourished on the knees of
+purple kings, how should they ever come down to wearing any man's
+collar, to slink at heel and retrieve for him?
+
+One would have said that to the daughter of such the close cotton-mill
+room with its inhuman clamour, its fetid air, its long hours of
+enforced, monotonous, mechanical toil, would be prison with the torture
+added. But Johnnie looked forward to her present enterprise as a soldier
+going into a new country to conquer it. She was buoyantly certain, and
+determinedly delighted with everything. When, the next morning after her
+arrival, Mandy Meacham shook her by the shoulder and bade her get up,
+the room was humming with the roar of mill whistles, and the gray dawn
+leaking in at its one window in a churlish, chary fashion, reminded her
+that they were under the shadow of a mountain instead of living upon
+its top.
+
+"I don't see what in the world could 'a' made me sleep so!" Johnnie
+deprecated, as she made haste to dress herself. "Looks like I never had
+nothing to do yesterday, except walking down. I've been on foot that
+much many a time and never noticed it."
+
+The other girls in the room, poor souls, were all cross and sleepy.
+Nobody had time to converse with Johnnie. As they went down the stairs
+another contingent began to straggle up, having eaten a hasty meal after
+their night's work, and making now for certain of the just-vacated beds.
+
+Johnnie ran into the kitchen to help Mrs. Bence get breakfast on the
+table, for Pap Himes was bad off this morning with a misery somewhere,
+and his daughter was sending word to the cotton mill to put a substitute
+on her looms till dinner time. Almost as much to her own surprise as to
+that of everybody else, Mandy Meacham proposed to stay and take Johnnie
+in to register for a job.
+
+When the others were all seated at table, the new girl from the
+mountains took her cup of coffee and a biscuit and dropped upon the
+doorstep to eat her breakfast. The back yard was unenclosed, a litter of
+tin cans and ashes running with its desert disorder into a similar one
+on either side. But there were no houses back of the Himes place, the
+ground falling away sharply to the rocky creek bed. Across the ravine
+half a dozen strapping young fellows were lounging, waiting for
+breakfast; loom-fixers and mechanics these, whose hours were more
+favourable than those of the women and children workers.
+
+"It's lots prettier out here than it is in the house," she returned
+smilingly, when Mavity Bence offered to get her a chair. "I do love to
+be out-of-doors."
+
+"Huh," grunted Mandy with her mouth full of biscuit, "I reckon a cotton
+mill'll jest about kill you. What makes you work in one, anyhow? I
+wouldn't if I could help it."
+
+Johnnie eyed the tall girl gravely. "I've got to earn some money," she
+said at length. "Ma and the children have to be taken care of. I don't
+know of any better way than the mill."
+
+"An' I don't know of any worse," retorted Mandy sourly, as they went out
+together.
+
+Johnnie began to feel timid. There had been a secret hope that she would
+meet Shade on the way to the mill, or that Mrs. Bence would finally get
+through in time to accompany her. She was suddenly aware that there was
+not a soul within sound of her voice who had belonged to her former
+world. With a little gasp she looked about her as they entered
+the office.
+
+The Hardwick mill to which they now came consisted of a number of large,
+red brick buildings, joined by covered passage-ways, abutting on one of
+those sullen pools Johnnie had noted the night before, the yard enclosed
+by a tight board fence, so high that the operatives in the first-and
+second-floor rooms could not see the street. This for the factory
+portion; the office did not front on the shut-in yard, but opened out
+freely on to the street, through a little grassy square of its own,
+tree-shadowed, with paved walks and flower beds. As with all the mills
+in its district, the suggestion was dangerously apt of a penitentiary,
+with its high wooden barrier, around all the building, the only free
+approach from the world to its corridors through the seemly, humanized
+office, where abided the heads, the bosses, the free men, who came and
+went at will. The walls were already beginning to wear that garment of
+green which the American ivy flings over so many factory buildings.
+
+As the two girls came up, Johnnie looked at the wide, clear, plate
+windows, the brass railing that guarded the heavy granite approach, the
+shining name "Hardwick" deep-set in brazen lettering on the step over
+which they entered. Inside, the polished oak and metal of office
+fittings carried on the idea of splendour, if not of luxury. Back of the
+crystal windows were the tempering shades, all was spacious, ordered
+with quiet dignity, and there was no sense of hurry in the well-clad,
+well-groomed figures of men that sat at the massive desks or moved about
+the softly carpeted floors. The corridor was long, but cleanly swept,
+and, at its upper portion, covered with a material unfamiliar to
+Johnnie, but which she recognized as suited to its purpose. Down at the
+further end of that corridor, something throbbed and moaned and roared
+and growled--the factory was awake there and working. The contrast
+struck cold to the girl's heart. Here, yet more sharply defined, was the
+same difference she had noted between the Palace of Pleasure on the
+heights and the mills at the foot of the mountain.
+
+Would the people think she was good enough? Would they understand how
+hard she meant to try? For a minute she had a desperate impulse to turn
+and run. Then she heard Mandy's thin, flatted tones announcing:
+
+"This hyer girl wants to git a job in the mill. Miz Bence, she cain't
+come down this morning--you'll have to git somebody to tend her looms
+till noon; Pap, he's sick, and she has obliged to wait on him--so I
+brung the new gal."
+
+"All right," said the man she addressed. "She can wait there; you go on
+to your looms."
+
+Johnnie sat on the bench against the wall where newcomers applying for
+positions were placed. The man she was to see had not yet come to his
+desk, and she remained unnoticed and apparently forgotten for more than
+an hour. The offices were entered from the other side, yet a doorway
+close by Johnnie commanded a view of a room and desk. To it presently
+came one who seated himself and began opening and reading letters.
+Johnnie caught her breath and leaned a little forward, watching him, her
+heart in her eyes, hands locked hard together in her lap. It was the
+young man of the car. He was not in white flannels now, but he looked
+almost as wonderful to the girl in his gray business suit, with the air
+of easy command, and the quiet half-smile only latent on his face. Shade
+Buckheath had spoken of Gray Stoddard as the boss of the bosses down at
+Cottonville. Indeed, his position was unique. Inheritor of large
+holdings in Eastern cotton-mill stock, he had returned from abroad on
+the death of his father, to look into this source of his very ample
+income. The mills in which he was concerned were not earning as they
+should, so he was told; and there was discussion as to whether they be
+moved south, or a Southern mill be established which might be considered
+in the nature of a branch, and where the coarser grades of sheeting
+would be manufactured, as well as all the spinning done.
+
+But Stoddard was not of the blood that takes opinions second-hand. Upon
+his mother's side he was the grandson of one of the great anti-slavery
+agitators. The sister of this man, Gray's great-aunt, had stood beside
+him on the platform when there was danger in it; and after the Negro was
+freed and enfranchised, she had devoted a long life to the cause of
+woman suffrage. The mother who bore him died young. She left him to the
+care of a conservative father, but the blood that came through her did
+not make for conservatism.
+
+Perhaps it was some admixture of his father's traits which set the young
+man to investigating the cotton-mill situation in his own fashion. To do
+this as he conceived it should be done, he had hired himself to the
+Hardwick Spinning Company in an office position which gave him a fair
+outlook on the business, and put him in complete touch with the
+practical side of it; yet the facts of the case made the situation
+evident to those under him as well as his peers. Whatever convictions
+and opinions he was maturing in this year with the Hardwicks, he kept to
+himself; but he was supposed to hold some socialistic ideas, and Lydia
+Sessions, James Hardwick's sister-in-law, made her devoir to these by
+engaging zealously in semi-charitable enterprises among the mill-girls.
+He was a passionate individualist. The word seems unduly fiery when one
+remembers the smiling, insouciant manner of his divergences from the
+conventional type; yet he was inveterately himself, and not some
+schoolmaster's or tailor's or barber's version of Gray Stoddard; and in
+this, though Johnnie did not know it, lay the strength of his charm
+for her.
+
+The moments passed unheeded after he came into her field of vision, and
+she watched him for some time, busy at his morning's work. It took her
+breath when he raised his eyes suddenly and their glances encountered.
+He plainly recognized her at once, and nodded a cheerful greeting. After
+a while he got up and came out into the hall, his hands full of papers,
+evidently on his way to one of the other offices. He paused beside the
+bench and spoke to her.
+
+"Waiting for the room boss? Are they going to put you on this morning?"
+he asked pleasantly.
+
+"Yes, I'm a-going to get a chance to work right away," she smiled up at
+him. "Ain't it fine?"
+
+The smile that answered hers held something pitying, yet it was a pity
+that did not hurt or offend.
+
+"Yes--I'm sure it's fine, if you think so," said Stoddard, half
+reluctantly. Then his eye caught the broken pink blossom which Johnnie
+had pinned to the front of her bodice. "What's that?" he asked. "It
+looks like an orchid."
+
+He was instantly apologetic for the word; but Johnnie detached the
+flower from her dress and held it toward him.
+
+"It is," she assented. "It's an orchid; and the little yellow flower
+that we-all call the whippoorwill shoe is an orchid, too."
+
+Stoddard thrust his papers into his coat pocket and took the blossom in
+his hand.
+
+"That's the pink moccasin flower," Johnnie told him. "They don't bloom
+in the valley at all, and they're not very plenty in the mountains. I
+picked this one six miles up on White Oak Ridge yesterday. I reckon I
+haven't seen more than a dozen of these in my life, and I've hunted
+flowers all over Unaka."
+
+"I never had the chance to analyze one," observed Stoddard. "I'd like to
+get hold of a good specimen.
+
+"I'm sorry this one's broken," Johnnie deprecated. Then her clouded face
+cleared suddenly with its luminous smile. "If it hadn't been for you I
+reckon it would have been knocked over the edge of the road," she added.
+"That's the flower I had in my handkerchief yesterday evening."
+
+Stoddard continued to examine the pink blossom with interest.
+
+"You said it grew up in the mountains--and didn't grow in the valley,"
+he reminded her.
+
+She nodded. "Of course I'm not certain about that," and while she spoke
+he transferred his attention from the flower to the girl. "I really know
+mighty little about such things, and I've not been in the valley to
+exceed ten times in my life. Miss Baird, that taught the school I went
+to over at Rainy Gap, had a herbarium, and put all kinds of pressed
+flowers in it. I gathered a great many for her, and she taught me to
+analyze them--like you were speaking of--but I never did love to do
+that. It seemed like naming over and calling out the ways of your
+friends, to pull the flower all to pieces and press it and paste it in a
+book and write down all its--its--ways and faults."
+
+Again she smiled up at him radiantly, and the young man's astonished
+glance went from her dusty, cowhide shoes to the thick roll of fair hair
+on her graceful head. What manner of mill-girls did the mountains send
+down to the valley?
+
+"But I--" began Stoddard deprecatingly, when Johnnie reddened and broke
+in hastily.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that for you. Miss Baird taught me for three years,
+and I loved her as dearly as I ever could any one. You may keep this
+flower if you want to; and, come Sunday, I'll get you another one that
+won't be broken."
+
+"Why Sunday?" asked Stoddard.
+
+"Well, I wouldn't have time to go after them till then, and the ones I
+know of wouldn't be open before Sunday. I saw just three there by the
+spring. That's the way they grow, you know--two or three in a place,
+and not another for miles."
+
+"You saw them growing?" repeated Stoddard. "I should like to see one on
+its roots, and maybe make a little sketch of it. Couldn't you just as
+well show me the place Sunday?"
+
+For no reason that she could assign, and very much against her will,
+Johnnie's face flushed deeply.
+
+"I reckon I couldn't," she answered evasively. "Hit's a long ways
+up--and--hit's a long ways up."
+
+"And yet you're going to walk it--after a week's work here in the mill?"
+persisted Stoddard. "You'd better tell me where they grow, and let me go
+up in my car."
+
+"I wish't I could," said Johnnie, embarrassed. "But you'd never find it
+in the world. They isn't one thing that I could tell you to know the
+place by: and you have to leave the road and walk a little piece--oh,
+it's no use--and I don't mind, I'd just love to go up there and get the
+flowers for you."
+
+"Are you the new girl?" inquired a voice at Johnnie's shoulder.
+
+They turned to find a squat, middle-aged man regarding them dubiously.
+
+"Yes," answered Johnnie, rising. "I've been waiting quite a while."
+
+"Well, come this way," directed the man and, turning, led her away. Down
+the hall they went, then up a flight of wooden stairs which carried them
+to a covered bridge, and so to the upper story of the factory.
+
+"That's an unusual-looking girl." Old Andrew MacPherson made the comment
+as he received the papers from Stoddard's hands.
+
+"The one I was speaking to in the hall?" inquired Stoddard rather
+unnecessarily. "Yes; she seems to have an unusual mind as well. These
+mountain people are peculiar. They appear to have no idea of class, and
+therefore are in a measure all aristocrats."
+
+"Well, that ought to square with your socialistic notions," chaffed
+MacPherson, sorting the work on his desk and pushing a certain portion
+of it toward Stoddard. "Sit down here, if you please, and we'll go over
+these now. The girl looked a good deal like a fairy princess. I don't
+think she's a safe topic for susceptible young chaps like you and me,"
+the grizzled old Scotchman concluded with a chuckle. "Your socialistic
+hullabaloo makes you liable to foregather with all sorts of
+impossible people."
+
+Gray shook his head, laughing, as he seated himself at the desk beside
+the other.
+
+"Oh, I'm only a theoretical socialist," he deprecated.
+
+"Hum," grunted the older man. "A theoretical socialist always seemed to
+me about like a theoretical pickpocket--neither of them stands to do
+much harm. For example, here you are, one of the richest young fellows
+of my acquaintance, living along very contentedly where every tenet you
+profess to hold is daily outraged. You're not giving away your money.
+You take a healthy interest in a good car, a good dinner, the gals; I'm
+even told you have a fad for old porcelains--and yet you call yourself a
+socialist."
+
+"These economic conditions are not a pin," answered Gray, smiling. "I
+don't have to jump and say 'ouch!' the minute I find they prick me.
+Worse conditions have always been, and no doubt bad ones will survive
+for a time, and pass away as mankind outgrows them. I haven't the
+colossal conceit to suppose that I can reform the world--not even push
+it much faster toward the destination of good to which it is rolling.
+But I want to know--I want to understand, myself; then if there is
+anything for me to do I shall do it. It may be that the present
+conditions are the best possible for the present moment. It may be that
+if a lot of us got together and agreed, we could better them
+exceedingly. It is not certain in my mind yet that any growth is of
+value to humanity which does not proceed from within. This is true of
+the individual--must it not be true of the class?"
+
+"No doubt, no doubt," agreed MacPherson, indifferently. "Most of the men
+who are loud in the leadership of socialism have made a failure of their
+own lives. We'll see what happens when a man who is a personal and
+economic success sets up to teach."
+
+"If you mean that very complimentary description for me," said Gray with
+sudden seriousness, "I will say to you here and now that there is no
+preacher in me. But when I am a little clearer in my own mind as to what
+I believe, I shall practise. The only real creed is a manner of life. If
+you don't live it, you don't really believe it."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+WEAVERS AND WEFT
+
+The Hardwick mill was a large one; to the mountain-bred girl it seemed
+endless, while its clamour and roar was a thing to daunt. They passed
+through the spinning department, in which the long lines of frames were
+tended by children, and reached the weaving-rooms whose looms required
+the attention of women, with here and there a man who had failed to make
+a success of male occupations and sunk to the ill-paid feminine
+activities. In a corner of one of these, Johnnie's guide stopped before
+two silent, motionless looms, and threw on the power. He began to
+instruct her in their operation, all communication being in dumb show;
+for the clapping thunder of the weaving-room instantly snatches the
+sound from one's lips and batters it into shapelessness. Johnnie had
+been an expert weaver on the ancient foot-power looms of the mountains;
+but the strangeness of the new machine, the noise and her surroundings,
+bewildered her. When the man saw that she was not likely to injure
+herself or the looms, he turned away with a careless nod and left her
+to her fate.
+
+It was a blowy April day outside, with a gay blue sky in which the white
+clouds raced, drawing barges of shadow over the earth below. But the
+necessity of keeping dust out of the machinery, the inconvenience of
+having flying ends carried toward it, closed every window in the big
+factory, and the operatives gasped in the early heat, the odour of oil,
+the exhausted air. There was a ventilating system in the Hardwick mill,
+and it was supposed to be exceptionally free from lint; but the fagged
+children crowded to the casements with instinctive longing for the
+outdoor air which could not of course enter through the glass; or
+plodded their monotonous rounds to tend the frames and see that the
+thread was running properly to each spool, and that the spools were
+removed, when filled.
+
+By noon every nerve in Johnnie's body quivered with excitement and
+overstrain; yet when Mandy came for her at the dinner hour she showed
+her a face still resolute, and asked that a snack be brought her to
+the mill.
+
+"I don't see why you won't come along home and eat your dinner," the
+Meacham woman commented. "The Lord knows you get time enough to stay in
+the mill working over them old looms. Say, I seen you in the hall--did
+you know who you was talking to?"
+
+The red flooded Johnnie's face as she knelt before her loom
+interrogating its workings with a dexterous hand; even the white nape of
+her neck showed pink to Mandy's examining eye; but she managed to reply
+in a fairly even tone:
+
+"Yes, that was Mr. Stoddard. I saw him yesterday evening when I was
+coming down the Ridge with Shade."
+
+"But did you know 'bout him? Say--Johnnie Consadine--turn yourself round
+from that old loom and answer me, I was goin' a-past the door, and when
+I ketched sight o' you and him settin' there talkin' as if you'd knowed
+each other all your lives, why you could have--could have knocked me
+down with a feather."
+
+Johnnie sat up on her heels and turned a laughing face across her
+shoulder.
+
+"I don't see any reason to want to knock you down with anything," she
+evaded the direct issue. "Go 'long, Mandy, or you won't have time to eat
+your dinner. Tell Aunt Mavity to send me just a biscuit and a piece
+of meat."
+
+"Good land, Johnnie Consadine, but you're quare!" exclaimed Mandy,
+staring with bulging light eyes. "If it was me I'd be all in a tremble
+yet--and there you sit and talk about meat and bread!"
+
+Johnnie did not think it necessary to explain that the tremor of that
+conversation with Stoddard had indeed lasted through her entire morning.
+
+"There was nothing to tremble about," she remarked with surface calm.
+"He'd never seen a pink moccasin flower, and I gave him the one I had
+and told him where it grew."
+
+"Well, he wasn't looking at no moccasin flower when I seed him," Mandy
+persisted. "He was lookin' at you. He jest eyed you as if you was Miss
+Lydia Sessions herself--more so, if anything."
+
+Johnnie inwardly rebuked the throb of joy which greeted this statement.
+
+"I reckon his looks are his own, Mandy," she said soberly. "You and me
+have no call to notice them."
+
+"Ain't got no call to notice 'em? Well, I jest wish't I could get you
+and him up in front of Miss Sessions, and have her see them looks of
+his'n," grumbled Mandy as she turned away. "I bet you there'd be some
+noticin' done then!"
+
+When in the evening Mandy came for Johnnie, she found the new mill hand
+white about the mouth with exhaustion, heavy-eyed, choking, and ready
+to weep.
+
+"Uh-huh," said the Meacham woman, "I know just how you feel. They all
+look that-a-way the first day or two--then after that they look worse."
+
+Nervelessly Johnnie found her way downstairs in the stream of tired
+girls and women. There was more than one kindly greeting for the new
+hand, and occasionally somebody clapped her on the shoulder and assured
+her that a few days more would get her used to the work. The mill yard
+was large, filled with grass-plots and gravel walks; but it was shut in
+by a boarding so tall that the street could not be seen from the windows
+of the lower floor. To Johnnie, weary to the point where aching muscles
+and blood charged with uneliminated waste spelled pessimism, that high
+board fence seemed to make of the pretty place a prison yard.
+
+A man was propping open the big wooden gates, and through them she saw
+the street, the sidewalk, and a carriage drawn up at the curb. In this
+vehicle sat a lady; and a gentleman, hat in hand, talked to her from
+the sidewalk.
+
+"Come on," hissed Mandy, seizing her companion's arm and dragging her
+forward. "Thar's Miss Lydia Sessions right now, and that's Mr. Stoddard
+a-talkin' to her. I'll go straight up and give you a knockdown--I want
+to, anyway. She's the one that runs the Uplift Club. If she takes a
+shine to you it'll be money in your pocket."
+
+She turned over her shoulder to glance at Johnnie, who was pulling
+vigorously back. There was no hint of tiredness or depression in the
+girl's face now. Her deep eyes glowed; red was again in the fresh lips
+that parted over the white teeth in an adorable, tremulous smile.
+Mandy stared.
+
+"Hurry up--he'll be gittin' away," she admonished.
+
+"Oh, no," objected the new girl. "Wait till some other time, I--I don't
+want to--"
+
+But her remonstrance came too late; Mandy had yanked her forward and was
+performing the introduction she so euphoniously described.
+
+Gray Stoddard turned and bowed to both girls. He carried the broken
+orchid in his hand, and apparently had been speaking of it to Miss
+Sessions. Mandy eyed him narrowly to see if any of the looks she had
+apprehended as offensive to Miss Sessions went in Johnnie's direction.
+And she was not disappointed.
+
+Stoddard's gaze lingered long on the radiant countenance of the girl
+from Unaka. Not so the young women looked after a few months of factory
+life. He was getting to know well the odd jail-bleach the cotton mill
+puts on country cheeks, the curious, dulled, yet resentful expression of
+the eyes, begotten by continuous repetition of excessive hours of
+trivial, monotonous toil. Would this girl come at last to that favour?
+He was a little surprised at the strength of protest in his own heart.
+Then MacPherson, coming down the office steps, called to him; and, with
+courteous adieux, the two men departed in company.
+
+Johnnie was a bit grieved to find that the removal from Miss Sessions of
+the shrouding, misty veil revealed a countenance somewhat angular in
+outline, with cheekbones a trifle hard and high, and a lack of colour.
+She fancied, too, that Miss Sessions was slightly annoyed about
+something. She wondered if it was because they had interrupted her
+conversation with Mr. Stoddard and driven him away. Yet while she so
+questioned, she was taking in with swift appreciation the trim set of
+the driving coat Miss Lydia wore, the appropriate texture of the heavy
+gloves on the small hands that held the lines, and a certain indefinable
+air of elegance hard to put into words, but which all women recognize.
+
+"Ain't she swell?" inquired Mandy, as they passed on. "She's after Mr.
+Stoddard now--it used to be the preacher that had the big church in
+Watauga, but he moved away. I wish I had her clothes."
+
+"Yes," returned Johnnie absently. She had already forgotten her
+impression of Miss Sessions's displeasure. Gone was the leaden weariness
+of her day's toil Something intimate and kind in the glance Stoddard had
+given her remained warm at her heart, and set that heart singing.
+
+Meantime, Stoddard and MacPherson were walking up the ridge toward the
+Country Club together, intending to spend the night on the highlands.
+The Scotchman returned once more to the subject he had broached
+that morning.
+
+"This is a great country," he opened obliquely, "a very great country.
+But you Americans will have to learn that generations of blood and
+breeding are not to be skipped with impunity. See the sons and daughters
+of your rich men. If the hope of the land lay in them it would be a bad
+outlook indeed."
+
+"Is that peculiar to America?" asked Stoddard mildly. They were coming
+under the trees now. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his
+hair to enjoy the coolness. "My impression was that the youthful
+aristocracy of every country often made of itself a spectacle unseemly."
+
+The Scotchman laughed. Then he looked sidewise at his companion. "I'm
+not denying," he pursued, again with that odd trick of entering his
+argument from the side, "that a young chap like yourself has my good
+word. A man with money who will go to work to find out how that money
+was made, and to live as his father did, carries an old head on young
+shoulders. I put aside your socialistic vapourings of course--every
+fellow to his fad--I see in you the makings of a canny business man."
+
+It was Stoddard's turn to laugh, and he did so unrestrainedly, throwing
+back his head and uttering his mirth so boyishly that the other smiled
+in sympathy.
+
+"You talk about what's in the blood," Gray said finally, "and then you
+make light of my socialistic vapourings, as you call them. My mother's
+clan--and it is from the spindle side that a man gets his traits--are
+all come-outers as far back as I know anything about them. They fought
+with Cromwell--some of them; they came over and robbed the Indians in
+true sanctimonious fashion, and persecuted the Quakers; and down the
+line a bit I get some Quaker blood that stood for its beliefs in the
+stocks, and sacrificed its ears for what it thought right. I'm afraid
+the socialistic vapourings are the true expression of the animal."
+
+MacPherson grunted incredulously.
+
+"I give you ten years to be done with it," he said. "It is a disease of
+youth. But don't let it mark your affairs. It is all right to foregather
+with these workingmen, and find out about their trades-unions and that
+sort of thing--such knowledge will be useful to you in your business.
+But when it comes to women"--MacPherson paused and shook his gray
+head--"to young, pretty women--a man must stick to his own class."
+
+"You mean the girl in the corridor," said Stoddard with that directness
+which his friends were apt to find disconcerting. "I haven't classified
+her yet. She's rather an extraordinary specimen."
+
+"Well, she's not in your class, and best leave her alone," returned
+MacPherson doggedly. "It wouldn't matter if the young thing were not so
+beautiful, and with such a winning look in her eyes. This America beats
+me. That poor lass would make a model princess--according to common
+ideals of royalty--and here you find her coming out of some hut in the
+mountains and going to work in a factory. Miss Lydia Sessions is a
+well-bred young woman, now; she's been all over Europe, and profited by
+her advantages of travel. I call her an exceedingly well-bred person."
+
+"She is," agreed Stoddard without enthusiasm.
+
+"And I'm sure you must admire her altruistic ideas--they'd just fall in
+with yours, I suppose, now."
+
+Stoddard shook his head.
+
+"Not at all," he said briefly. "If you were enough interested in
+socialism to know what we folks are driving at, I could explain to you
+why we object to charitable enterprises--but it's not worth while."
+
+"Indeed it is not," assented MacPherson hastily. "Though no doubt we
+might have a fine argument over it some evening when we have nothing
+better to talk about. I thought you and Miss Sessions were fixing up a
+match of it, and it struck me as a very good thing, too. The holdings of
+both of you are in cotton-mill property, I judge. That always makes for
+harmony and stability in a matrimonial alliance."
+
+Stoddard smiled. He was aware that Miss Lydia's holdings consisted of a
+complaisant brother-in-law in whose house she was welcome till she could
+marry. But he said nothing on this head.
+
+"MacPherson," he began very seriously, "I wonder a little at you, I know
+you old-world people regard these things differently; but could you look
+at Mrs. Hardwick's children, and seriously recommend Mrs. Hardwick's
+sister as a wife for a friend?"
+
+Old MacPherson stopped in the way, thrust his hands deep in his pockets
+and stared at the younger man.
+
+"Well!" he ejaculated at last; "that's a great speech for a hot-headed
+young fellow! Your foresight is worthy of a Scotchman."
+
+Gray Stoddard smiled. "I am not a hot-headed person," he observed.
+"Nobody but you ever accused me of such a thing. Marriage concerns the
+race and a man's whole future. If the children of the marriage are
+likely to be unsatisfactory, the marriage will certainly be so. We
+moderns bedeck and bedrape us in all sorts of meretricious togas, till a
+pair of fine eyes and a dashing manner pass for beauty; but when life
+tries the metal--when nature applies her inevitable test--the degenerate
+or neurotic type goes to the wall."
+
+Again MacPherson grunted. "No doubt you're sound enough; but it is
+rather uncanny to hear a young fellow talk like his grandfather," the
+Scotchman said finally. "Are there many of your sort in this
+astonishing land?"
+
+"A good many," Stoddard told him. "The modern young man of education and
+wealth is doing one of two things--burning up his money and going to the
+dogs as fast as he can; or putting in a power of thinking, and trying,
+while he saves his own soul, to do his part in the regeneration of
+the world."
+
+"Yes. Well, it's a big job. It's been on hand a long time. The young men
+of America have their work cut out for them," said MacPherson drily.
+
+"No doubt," returned Stoddard with undisturbed cheerfulness. "But when
+every man saves his own soul, the salvation of the world will come
+to pass."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ABOVE THE VALLEY
+
+All week in Johnnie the white flame of purpose burned out every
+consciousness of weariness, of bodily or mental distaste. The
+preposterously long hours, the ill-ventilated rooms, the savage monotony
+of her toil, none of these reached the girl through the glow of hope and
+ambition. Physically, the finger of the factory was already laid upon
+her vigorous young frame; but when Sunday morning came, though there was
+no bellowing whistle to break in on her slumbers, she waked early, and
+while nerve and muscle begged achingly for more sleep, she rose with a
+sense of exhilaration which nothing could dampen. She had seen a small
+mountain church over the Ridge by the spring where her moccasin flowers
+grew; and if there were preaching in it to-day, the boys and girls
+scouring the surrounding woods during the intermissions would surely
+find and carry away the orchids. There was no safety but to take the
+road early.
+
+The room was dark. Mandy slept noisily beside her. All the beds were
+full, because the night-turn workers were in. She meant to be very
+careful to waken nobody. Poor souls, they needed this one day of rest
+when they could all lie late. Searching for something, she cautiously
+struck a match, and in the flaring up of its small flame got a glimpse
+of Mandy's face, open-mouthed, pallid, unbeautiful, against the tumbled
+pillow. A great rush of pity filled her eyes with tears, but then she
+was in a mood to compassionate any creature who had not the prospect of
+a twelve-mile walk to get a flower for Gray Stoddard.
+
+It was in that black hour before dawn that Johnnie let herself out the
+front door, finding the direction by instinct rather than any assistance
+from sight, since fences, trees, houses, were but vague blots of deeper
+shadow in the black. She was well on her way before a light here and
+there in a cabin window showed that, Sunday morning as it was, the
+earliest risers were beginning to stir. Her face was set to the east,
+and after a time a pallid line showed itself above the great bulk of
+mountains which in this quarter backed up the ramparts of the circling
+ridges about Watauga. The furthest line was big Unaka, but this
+passionate lover of her native highlands gave it neither thought nor
+glance, as she tramped steadily with lifted face, following
+unconsciously the beckoning finger of Fate.
+
+It was a dripping-sweet spring morning, dew-drenched, and with the air
+so full of moisture that it gathered and pattered from the scant
+leafage. She was two miles up, swinging along at that steady pace her
+mountain-bred youth had given her, when the sky began to flush faintly,
+and the first hint of dawn rested on her upraised countenance.
+
+Rain-laden mists swept down upon her from the heights, and she walked
+through them unnoting; the pale light from the eastern sky shone on an
+aspect introverted, rapt away from knowledge of its surroundings. She
+was going to get something for him. She had promised him the flowers,
+and he would be pleased with them. He would smile when he thanked her
+for them, and look at her as he had when she gave him the broken
+blossom. A look like that was to the girl in her present mood as the
+sword's touch on the shoulder of the lad who is being knighted by his
+king--it made her want to rise up and be all that such a man could ever
+demand of her. Twelve miles of walking after a week's toil in the mill
+was a very small offering to put before so worshipful a divinity. She
+sought vaguely to conjecture just what his words would be when next they
+spoke together. Her lips formed themselves into tender, reminiscent
+half-smiles as she went over the few and brief moments of her three
+interviews with Stoddard.
+
+Johnnie was not inexperienced in matters of the heart. Mating time comes
+early in the mountains. Had her dreams been of Shade Buckheath, or any
+of the boys of her own kind and class, she would have been instantly
+full of self-consciousness; but Gray Stoddard appeared to her a creature
+so apart from her sphere that this overwhelming attraction he held for
+her seemed no more than the admiration she might have given to Miss
+Lydia Sessions. And so the dream lay undisturbed under her eyelashes,
+and she breasted the slope of the big mountain with a buoyant step,
+oblivious of fatigue.
+
+She reached the little wayside spring before even the early-rising
+mountain folk were abroad, found three pink blossoms in full perfection,
+plucked them and wrapped them carefully in damp cloths disposed in a
+little hickory basket that Uncle Pros had made for her years ago. It was
+a tiny thing, designed to hold a child's play-pretties or a young girl's
+sewing, but shaped and fashioned after the manner of mountain baskets,
+and woven of stout white hickory withes shaved down to daintier size and
+pliancy by the old man's jack-knife. Life was very sweet to Johnnie
+Consadine as she straightened up, basket in hand, and turned toward the
+home journey.
+
+It was nearly nine o'clock when she reached the gap above Cottonville.
+She was singing a little, softly, to herself, as she footed it down the
+road, and wishing that she might see Gray's face when he got her
+flowers. She planned to put them in a glass on his desk Monday morning,
+and of course she would be at her loom long before he should reach the
+office. She was glad they were such fine specimens--all perfect.
+Lovingly she pulled aside the wet cloth and looked in at them. She began
+to meet people on the road, and the cabins she passed were open and
+thronged with morning life. The next turn in the road would bring her to
+the spring where she had rested that evening just a week ago, and where
+Shade had met her.
+
+Suddenly, she caught the sheen of something down the road between the
+scant greenery. It was a carriage or an automobile. Now, it was more
+likely to be the former than the latter; also, there were a half-dozen
+cars in Cottonville; yet from the first she knew, and was prepared for
+it when the shining vehicle came nearer and showed her Gray Stoddard
+driving it. They looked at each other in silence. Stoddard brought the
+machine to a halt beside her. She came mutely forward, a hesitating hand
+at her basket covering, her eyes raised to his. With the mountaineer's
+deathless instinct for greeting, she was first to speak.
+
+"Howdy," she breathed softly. "I--I was looking for--I got you--"
+
+She fell silent again, still regarding him, and fumbling blindly at the
+cover of the basket.
+
+"Well--aren't you lost?" inquired Stoddard with a rather futile
+assumption of surprise. He was strangely moved by the direct gaze of
+those clear, wide-set gray eyes, under the white brow and the ruffled
+coronet of bright hair.
+
+"No," returned Johnnie gently, literally. "You know I said I'd come up
+here and get those moccasin flowers for you this morning. This is my
+road home, anyhow. I'm not as near lost on it as I am at a loom, down in
+the factory."
+
+Stoddard continued to stare at the hand she had laid on the car.
+
+"It'll be an awfully long walk for you," he said at last, choosing his
+words with some difficulty. "Won't you get in and let me take you up to
+the spring?"
+
+Johnnie laughed softly, exultantly.
+
+"Oh, I picked your flowers before day broke. I'll bet there have been a
+dozen boys over from Sunday-school to drink out of that spring before
+this time. You wouldn't have had any blooms if I hadn't got up early."
+
+Again she laughed, and, uncovering the orchids, held them up to him.
+
+"These are beauties," he exclaimed with due enthusiasm, yet with a
+certain uneasy preoccupation in his manner. "Were you up before day, did
+you tell me, to get these? That seems too bad. You needed your sleep."
+
+Johnnie flushed and smiled.
+
+"I love to do it," she said simply. "It was mighty sweet out on the road
+this morning, and you don't know how pretty the blooms did look,
+standing there waiting for me. I 'most hated to pick them."
+
+Stoddard's troubled eyes raised themselves to her face. Here was a royal
+nature that would always be in the attitude of the giver. He wanted to
+offer her something, and, as the nearest thing in reach, sprang down
+from the automobile and, laying a hand on her arm, said, almost
+brusquely:
+
+"Get in. Come, let me help you. I want to go up and see the spring where
+these grow. I'll get you back to Cottonville in time for church, if
+that's what you're debating about."
+
+Both of them knew that Johnnie's reluctance had nothing to do with the
+question of church-time. Stoddard himself was well aware that a factory
+girl could not with propriety accept a seat in his car; yet when once
+they were settled side by side, and the car resumed that swift, tireless
+climb which is the wonder and delight of the mechanical vehicle, it was
+characteristic that both put aside definitely and completely all
+hesitations and doubts. The girl was freely, innocently, exultantly
+blissful. Stoddard noticed her intent examination of the machine, and
+began explaining its workings to her.
+
+"Was that what you were doing," she asked, alluding to some small item
+of the operating, "when you stopped by the side of the road, Sunday
+night, when Miss Lydia was with you?"
+
+He looked his astonishment.
+
+"You were right under my window when you stopped," Johnnie explained to
+him. "I watched you-all when you started away. I was sure you
+would beat."
+
+"We did," Stoddard assured her. "But we came near missing it. That
+connection Buckheath put in for me the evening you were with him on the
+Ridge worked loose. But I discovered the trouble in time to fix it."
+
+Remembrance of that evening, and of the swift flight of the motors
+through the dusk moonlight, made Johnnie wonder at herself and her
+present position. She was roused by Stoddard's voice asking:
+
+"Are you interested in machinery?"
+
+"I love it," returned Johnnie sincerely. "I never did get enough of
+tinkerin' around machines. If I was ever so fortunate as to own a
+sewing machine I could take it all apart and clean it and put it
+together again. I did that to the minister's wife's sewing machine
+down at Bledsoe when it got out of order. She said I knew more about
+it than the man that sold it to her."
+
+"Would you like to run the car?" came the next query.
+
+Would she like to! The countenance of simple rapture that she turned to
+him was reply sufficient.
+
+"Well, look at my hands here on the steering-wheel. Get the position,
+and when I raise one put yours in its place. There. No, a little more
+this way. Now you can hold it better. The other one's right."
+
+Smilingly he watched her, like a grown person amusing a child.
+
+"You see what the wheel does, of course--guides. Now," when they had run
+ahead for some minutes, "do you want to go faster?"
+
+Johnnie laughed up at him, through thick, fair lashes.
+
+"Looks like anybody would be hard to suit that wanted to go faster than
+this," she apologized. "But if the machine can make a higher speed,
+there wouldn't be any harm in just running that way for a spell,
+would there?"
+
+It was Stoddard's turn to laugh.
+
+"No manner of harm," he agreed readily. "Well, you advance your spark
+and open the throttle--that speeds her up. This is the spark and this
+the gas, here. Then you shove your shifting lever--see, here it is--over
+to the next speed. Remember that, any time you shift the gears, you'll
+have to pull the clutch. The machine has to gain headway on one speed
+before it can take the next."
+
+Johnnie nodded soberly. Her intent gaze studied the mechanism before her
+intelligently.
+
+"We're going a heap faster now," she suggested in a moment. "Can I move
+that--whatever it is--over to the third speed?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Stoddard. "Here's a good, long, straight stretch of road
+for us to take it on. I'll attend to the horn when we come to the turn
+up there. We mustn't make anybody's horse run away."
+
+So the lesson proceeded. He showed her brake and clutch. He gave her
+some theoretical knowledge of cranking up, because she seemed to enjoy
+it as a child enjoys exploiting the possibilities of a new toy.
+
+Up and up they went, the sky widening and brightening above them. Hens
+began to lead forth their broods. Overhead, a hawk wheeled high in the
+blue, uttering his querulous cry.
+
+"I'm mighty glad I came," the girl said, more to herself than to the man
+at her side. "This is the most like flying of anything that ever
+chanced to me."
+
+From time to time Stoddard had sent swift, sidelong glances at his
+companion, noting the bright, bent head, the purity of line in the
+profile above the steering-wheel, the intelligent beauty of the intent,
+down-dropped eyes, with long lashes almost on the flushed cheeks. He
+wondered at her; born amid these wide, cool spaces, how had she endured
+for a week the fetid atmosphere of the factory rooms? How, having tested
+it, could she look forward to a life like that? Something in her
+innocent trust choked him. He began some carefully worded inquiries as
+to her experience in the mill and her opinion of the work. The answers
+partook of that charm which always clung about Johnnie. She told him of
+Mandy and, missing no shade of the humour there was in the Meacham girl,
+managed to make the description pathetic. She described Pap Himes and
+his boarding-house, aptly, deftly, and left it funny, though a
+sympathetic listener could feel the tragedy beneath.
+
+Presently they met the first farm-wagon with its load of worshippers for
+the little mountain church beyond. As these came out of a small side
+road, and caught sight of the car, the bony old horses jibbed and shied,
+and took all the driver's skill and a large portion of his vocabulary to
+carry them safely past, the children staring, the women pulling their
+sunbonnets about their faces and looking down. Something in the sight
+brought home to Johnnie the incongruity of her present position. On the
+instant, a drop of rain splashed upon the back of her hand.
+
+"There!" she cried in a contrite voice. "I knew mighty well and good
+that it was going to rain, and I ought to have named it to you, because
+you town folks don't understand the weather as well as we do. I ought
+not to have let you come on up here."
+
+"We'll have to turn and run for it," said Stoddard, laughing a little.
+"I wish I'd had the hood put on this morning," as he surveyed the narrow
+way in which he had to turn. "Is it wider beyond here, do you remember?"
+
+"There's a bluff up about a quarter of a mile that you could run under
+and be as dry as if you were in the shed at home," said Johnnie. "This
+won't last long. Do you want to try it?"
+
+"You are the pilot," Stoddard declared promptly, resigning the wheel
+once more to her hands. "If it's a bad place, you might let me take
+the car in."
+
+Rain in the mountains has a trick of coming with the suddenness of an
+overturned bucket. Johnnie sent the car ahead at what she considered a
+rapid pace, till Stoddard unceremoniously took the wheel from her and
+shoved the speed clutch over to the third speed.
+
+"I'm mighty sorry I was so careless and didn't warn you about the rain,"
+she declared with shining eyes, as her hair blew back and her colour
+rose at the rapid motion. "But this is fine. I believe that if I should
+ever be so fortunate as to own an automobile I'd want to fly like this
+every minute of the time I was in it."
+
+As she spoke, they swept beneath the overhanging rocks, and a great
+curtain of Virginia creeper and trumpet-vine fell behind them, half
+screening them from the road, and from the deluge which now broke more
+fiercely. For five minutes the world was blotted out in rain, with these
+two watching its gray swirls and listening to its insistent drumming,
+safe and dry in their cave.
+
+Nothing ripens intimacy so rapidly as a common mishap. Also, two people
+seem much to each other as they await alone the ceasing of the rain or
+the coming of the delayed boat.
+
+"This won't last long," Johnnie repeated. "We won't dare to start out
+when it first stops; but there'll come a little clearing-up shower after
+that, and then I think we'll have a fair day. Don't you know the saying,
+'Rain before seven, quit before eleven?' Well, it showered twice just as
+day was breaking, and I had to wait under a tree till it was over."
+
+The big drops lengthened themselves, as they came down, into tiny
+javelins and struck upon the rocks with a splash. The roar and drumming
+in the forest made a soft, blurring undertone of sound. The first rain
+lasted longer than Johnnie had counted on, and the clearing-up shower
+was slow in making its appearance. The two talked with ever-growing
+interest. Strangely enough Johnnie Consadine, who had no knowledge of
+any other life except through a few well-conned books, appreciated the
+values of this mountain existence with almost the detached view of an
+outsider. Her knowledge of it was therefore more assorted and available,
+and Stoddard listened to her eagerly.
+
+"But what made you think you'd like to work in a cotton mill?" he asked
+suddenly. "After all, weren't you maybe better off up in these
+mountains?"
+
+And then and there Johnnie strove to put into exact and intelligent
+words what she had possessed and what she had lacked in the home of her
+childhood. Unconsciously she told him more than was in the mere words.
+He got the situation as to the visionary, kindly father with a turn for
+book learning and a liking for enterprises that appealed to his
+imagination. Uncle Pros and the silver mine were always touched upon
+with the tender kindness Johnnie felt for the old man and his life-long
+quest. But the little mother and the children--ah, it was here that the
+listener found Johnnie's incentive.
+
+"Mr. Stoddard," she concluded, "there wasn't a bit of hope of schooling
+for the children unless I could get out and work in the factory. I think
+it's a splendid chance for a girl. I think any girl that wouldn't take
+such a chance would be mighty mean and poor-spirited."
+
+Gray Stoddard revolved this conception of a chance in the world in his
+mind for some time.
+
+"I did get some schooling," she told him. "You wouldn't think it to hear
+me talk, because I'm careless, but I've been taught, and I can do
+better. Yet if I don't see to it, how am I to know that the children
+will have as much even as I've had? Mountain air is mighty pure and
+healthy, and the water up here is the finest you ever drank; but that's
+only for the body. Of course there's beauty all about you--there was
+never anything more sightly than big Unaka and the ridges that run from
+it, and the sky, and the big woods--and all. And yet human beings have
+got to have more than that. I aim to make a chance for the children."
+
+"Are you going to bring them down and let them work in the mills with
+you?" Stoddard asked in a perfectly colourless tone.
+
+Johnnie looked embarrassed. Her week in the cotton mill had fixed
+indelibly on her mind the picture of the mill child, straggling to work
+in the gray dawn, sleepy, shivering, unkempt; of the young things
+creeping up and down the aisles between the endlessly turning spools,
+dully regarding the frames to see that the threads were not fouled or
+broken; of the tired little groups as they pressed close to the shut
+windows, neglecting their work to stare out into a world of blue sky and
+blowing airs--a world they could see but not enter, and no breath of
+which could come in to them. And so she looked embarrassed. She was
+afraid that memory of those tired little faces would show in her own
+countenance. Her hands on the steering-wheel trembled. She remembered
+that Mr. Stoddard was, as Shade had said, one of the bosses in the
+Hardwick mill. It seemed too terrible to offend him. He certainly
+thought no ill of having children employed; she must not seem to
+criticize him; she answered evasively:
+
+"Well, of course they might do that. I did think of it--before I went
+down there."
+
+"Before you went to work in the mills yourself," supplied Stoddard,
+again in that colourless tone.
+
+"Ye--yes," hesitated Johnnie; "but you mustn't get the idea that I don't
+love my work--because I do. You see the children haven't had any
+schooling yet, and--well, I'm a great, big, stout somebody, and it looks
+like I'm the one to work in the mill."
+
+She turned to him fleetingly a countenance of appeal and perplexity. It
+seemed indeed anything but certain that she was one to work in the mill.
+There was something almost grotesque in the idea which made Stoddard
+smile a little at her earnestness.
+
+"I'd like to talk it over with you when you've been at work there
+longer," he found himself saying. "You see, I'm studying mill conditions
+from one side, and you're studying them from the opposite--perhaps we
+could help each other."
+
+"I sure will tell you what I find out," agreed Johnnie heartily. "I
+reckon you'll want to know how the work seems to me at the side of such
+as I was used to in the mountains; but I hope you won't inquire how long
+it took me to learn, for I'm afraid I'm going to make a poor record. If
+you was to ask me how much I was able to earn there, and how much back
+on Unaka, I could make a good report for the mill on that, because
+that's all that's the matter with the mountains--they're a beautiful
+place to live, but a body can't hardly earn a cent, work as they may."
+
+Johnnie forgot herself--she was always doing that--and she talked freely
+and well. It was as inevitable that she should be drawn to Gray Stoddard
+as that she should desire the clothing and culture Miss Lydia possessed.
+For the present, one aspiration struck her as quite as innocent as the
+other. Stoddard had not yet emerged from the starry constellations among
+which she set him, to take form as a young man, a person who might
+indeed return her regard. Her emotions were in that nebulous, formative
+stage when but a touch would be needed to show her whither the regard
+tended, yet till that touch should come, she as unashamedly adored Gray
+as any child of five could have done. It was not till they were well
+down the road to Cottonville that she realized the bald fact that she, a
+mill girl, was riding in an automobile with one of the mill owners.
+
+She was casting about for some reasonable phrase in which to clothe the
+statement that it would be better he should stop the car and let her
+out; she had parted her lips to ask him to take the wheel, when they
+rounded a turn and came upon a company of loom-fixers from the village
+below. Behind them, in a giggling group, strolled a dozen mill girls in
+their Sunday best. Johnnie had sight of Mandy Meacham, fixing eyes of
+terrified admiration upon her; then she nodded in reply to Shade
+Buckheath's angry stare, and a rattle of wheels apprized her that a
+carriage was passing on the other side. This vehicle contained the
+entire Hardwick family, with Lydia Sessions turning long to look her
+incredulous amazement back at them from her seat beside her
+brother-in-law.
+
+It was all over in a moment. The loom-fixers had debouched upon the
+long, wooden bridge which crossed the ravine to their quarters; the
+girls were going on, Mandy Meacham hanging back and staring; a tree
+finally shut out Miss Sessions's accusing countenance.
+
+"Please stop and let me out here," said Johnnie, in a scarcely audible
+voice.
+
+When Stoddard would have remonstrated, or asked why, his lips were
+closed by sight of her daunted, miserable face. He knew as well as she
+the mad imprudence of the thing which they had done, and blamed himself
+roundly with it all.
+
+"I'll not forget to bring the books we were talking of," he made haste
+to say. He picked up the little basket from the floor of the car.
+
+"You'd better keep the flowers in that," Johnnie told him lifelessly.
+Her innocent dream was broken into by a cruel reality. She was
+struggling blindly under the weight of all her little world's
+disapprobation.
+
+"You'll let me return the basket when I bring you the books," Gray
+suggested, helplessly.
+
+"I don't know," Johnnie hesitated. Then, as a sudden inspiration came to
+her, "Mandy Meacham said she'd try to get me into a club for girls that
+Miss Sessions has. She said Miss Sessions would lend me books. Maybe you
+might just leave them with her. I'm sure I should be mighty proud to
+have them. I know I'll love to read them; but--well, you might just
+leave them with her."
+
+A little satiric sparkle leaped to life in Stoddard's eyes. He looked at
+the innocent, upraised face in wonder. The most experienced manoeuverer
+of Society's legion could not have handled a difficult situation
+more deftly.
+
+"The very thing," he said cheerily. "I'll talk to Miss Sessions about it
+to-morrow."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+OF THE USE OF WINGS
+
+"I told you I'd speak a good word for you," shouted Mandy Meacham,
+putting her lips down close to Johnnie's ear where she struggled and
+fought with her looms amid the deafening clamour of the weaving room.
+
+The girl looked up, flushed, tired, but eagerly receptive.
+
+"Yes," her red lips shaped the word to the other's eyes, though no sound
+could make itself heard above that din except such eldritch shrieks
+as Mandy's.
+
+"I done it. I got you a invite to some doin's at the Uplift Club
+a-Wednesday."
+
+Again Johnnie nodded and shaped "Yes" with her lips. She added something
+which might have been "thank you"; the adorable smile that accompanied
+it said as much.
+
+Mandy watched her, fascinated as the lithe, strong young figure bent and
+strained to correct a crease in the web where it turned the roll.
+
+"They never saw anything like you in their born days, I'll bet," she
+yelled. "I never did. You're awful quare--but somehow I sorter like ye."
+And she scuttled back to her looms as the room boss came in. A weaver
+works by the piece, but Mandy had been reproved too often for slovenly
+methods not to know that she might be fined for neglect. Her looms stood
+where she could continually get the newcomer's figure against the light,
+with its swift motion, its supple curves, and the brave carriage of the
+well-formed head. The sight gave Mandy a curious satisfaction, as though
+it uttered what she would fain have said to the classes above her. Hers
+was something the feeling which the private in the ranks has for the
+standard-bearer who carries the colours aloft, or the dashing officer
+who leads the charge. Johnnie was the challenge she would have flung in
+the face of the enemy.
+
+"I'll bet if you'd put one of Miss Lyddy's dresses on her she'd look
+nobby," Mandy ruminated, addressing her looms. "That's what she would.
+She'd have 'em all f--fa--faded away, as the feller says."
+
+And so it came about that the next day Johnnie Consadine did not go to
+the mill at all, but spent the morning washing and ironing her one light
+print dress. It was as coarse almost as flour-sacking, and the blue dots
+on it had paled till they made a suspicious speckle not unlike mildew;
+yet when she had combed her thick, fair hair, rolled it back from the
+white brow and braided it to a coronet round her head as she had seen
+that of the lady on the porch at the Palace of Pleasure; when, cleansed
+and smooth, she put the frock on, one forgot the dress in the youth of
+her, the hope, the glorious expectation there was in that eager face.
+
+The ladies assisting in Miss Lydia Sessions's Uplift
+
+Club for work among the mill girls, were almost all young and youngish
+women. The mothers in Israel attacked the more serious problems of
+orphanages, winter's supplies of coal, and clothing for the destitute.
+
+"But their souls must be fed, too," Miss Lydia asserted as she recruited
+her helpers for the Uplift work. "Their souls must be fed; and who can
+reach the souls of these young girls so well as we who are near their
+own age, and who have had time for culture and spiritual growth?"
+
+It was a good theory. Perhaps one may say that it remains a good theory.
+The manner of uplifting was to select a certain number of mill girls
+whom it was deemed well to help, approach them on the subject, and, if
+they appeared amenable, pay a substitute to take charge of their looms
+while those in process of being uplifted attended a meeting of the Club.
+The gathering to which Johnnie was bidden was held in honour of a lady
+from London who had written a book on some subject which it was thought
+ought to appeal to workingwomen. This lady intended to address the
+company and to mingle with them and get their views. Most of those
+present being quite unfurnished with any views whatever on the problem
+she discussed, her position was something that of a pick-pocket in a
+moneyless crowd; but of this she was fortunately and happily unaware.
+
+Mandy Meacham regarded Johnnie's preparation for the function with some
+disfavour.
+
+"Ef you fix up like that," she remonstrated, "you're bound to look too
+nice to suit Miss Lyddy. They won't be no men thar. I'm goin' to wear my
+workin' dress, and tell her I hadn't nary minute nor nary cent to
+do other."
+
+Johnnie laughed a little at this, as though it were intended for a joke.
+
+"But I did have time," she objected. "Miss Sessions would pay a
+substitute for the whole day though I told her I'd only need the
+afternoon for the party. I think it was mighty good of her, and it's as
+little as I can do to make myself look as nice as I can."
+
+"You ain't got the sense you was born with!" fretted Mandy. "Them thar
+kind ladies ain't a-carin' for you to look so fine. They'll attend to
+all the fine lookin' theirselves. What they want is to know how bad off
+you air, an' to have you say how much what they have did or give has
+helped you."
+
+Such interchange of views brought the two girls to the door of the
+little frame chapel, given over for the day to Uplift work. Within it
+rose a bustle and clatter, a hum of voices that spoke, a frilling of
+nervous, shrill laughter to edge the sound, and back of that the clink
+of dishes from a rear room where refreshments were being prepared.
+
+Miss Sessions, near the door, had a receiving line, quite in the manner
+of any reception. She herself, in a blouse of marvellous daintiness and
+sweeping skirts, stood beside the visitor from London to present her. To
+this day Johnnie is uncertain as to where the wonderful blue silk frock
+of that lady from abroad was fastened, though she gave the undivided
+efforts of sharp young eyes and an inquiring mind to the problem a good
+portion of the time while it was within her view. The Englishwoman was
+called Mrs. Archbold, and on her other hand stood a tall, slim lady with
+long gray-green eyes, prematurely gray hair which had plainly been red,
+and an odd little twist to her smile. This was Mrs. Hexter, wife of the
+owner of the big woollen mills across the creek, and only bidden in to
+assist the Uplift work because the position of her husband gave her much
+power. These, with the Misses Burchard, daughters of the rector, formed
+the reception committee.
+
+"I am so charmed to see you here to-day," Miss Lydia smiled as they
+entered. It was part of her theory to treat the mill girls exactly as
+she would members of her own circle. Mandy, being old at the business,
+possessed herself of the high-held hand presented; but Johnnie only
+looked at it in astonishment, uncertain whether Miss Lydia meant to
+shake hands or pat her on the head. Yet when she did finally divine what
+was intended, the quality of her apologetic smile ought to have atoned
+for her lapse.
+
+"I'm sure proud to be here with you-all," she said. "Looks like to me
+you are mighty kind to strangers."
+
+The ineradicable dignity of the true mountaineer, who has always been as
+good as the best in his environment, preserved Johnnie from any
+embarrassment, any tendency to shrink or cringe. Her beauty, in the
+fresh-washed print gown, was like a thing released and, as Miss Sessions
+might have put it, rampant.
+
+Gray Stoddard had gone directly to Lydia Sessions, with his proffers of
+books, and his suggestions for Johnnie. The explanation of how the girl
+came to be riding in his car that Sunday morning was neither as full nor
+as penitent as Miss Lydia could have wished; yet it did recognize the
+impropriety of the act, and was, in so far, satisfactory. Miss Sessions
+made haste to form an alliance with the young man for the special
+upliftment of Johnnie Consadine. She would have greatly preferred to
+interest him in Mandy Meacham, but beggars can not be choosers, and she
+took what she could get.
+
+"Whom have we here?" demanded the lady from London, leaning across and
+peering at Johnnie with friendly, near-sighted eyes. "Why, what a
+blooming girl, to be sure! You haven't been long from the country, I'll
+venture to guess, my dear."
+
+Johnnie blushed and dimpled at being so kindly welcomed. The mountain
+people are undemonstrative in speech and action; and that "my dear"
+seemed wonderful.
+
+"I come from away up in the mountains," she said softly.
+
+"From away up in the mountains," repeated the Englishwoman, her smiling
+gaze dwelling on Johnnie's radiant face. "Why yes--so one would
+conceive. Well, you mustn't lose all those pretty roses in the mill down
+here." She was a visitor, remember; residents of Cottonville never
+admitted that roses, or anything else desirable, could be lost in
+the mills.
+
+"I'll not," said Johnnie sturdily. "I'm goin' to earn my way and send
+for Mother and the children, if hard work'll do it; but I'm a mighty
+big, stout, healthy somebody, and I aim to keep so."
+
+Mrs. Archbold patted the tall young shoulder as she turned to Mandy
+Meacham whom Miss Lydia was eager to put through her paces for the
+benefit of the lady from London.
+
+"Isn't that the girl Mr. Stoddard was speaking to me about?" she
+inquired in a whisper as Johnnie moved away. "I think it must be. He
+said she was such a beauty, and I scarcely believe there could be two
+like her in one town."
+
+"Such a type,' were Mr. Stoddard's exact words I believe," returned Miss
+Sessions a little frostily. "Yes, John Consadine is quite a marked type
+of the mountaineer. She is, as she said to you, a stout, healthy
+creature, and, I understand, very industrious. I approve of John."
+
+She approved of John, but she addressed herself to exploiting Mandy; and
+the lady in the blue silk frock learned how poor and helpless the
+Meacham woman had been before she got in to the mill work, how greatly
+the Uplift Club had benefited her, with many interesting details. Yet as
+the English lady went from group to group in company with Miss Lydia and
+T.H. Hexter's wife, her quick eyes wandered across the room to where a
+bright head rose a little taller than its fellows, and occasional bursts
+of laughter told that Johnnie was in a merry mood.
+
+The threadbare attempt at a reception was gotten through laboriously.
+The girls were finally settled in orderly rows, and Mrs. Archbold led to
+the platform. The talk she had prepared for them was upon aspiration. It
+was an essay, in fact, and she had delivered it successfully before many
+women's clubs. She is not to be blamed that the language was as
+absolutely above the comprehension of her hearers as though it had been
+Greek. She was a busy woman, with other aims and activities than those
+of working among the masses; Miss Lydia had heard her present talk,
+fancied it, and thought it would be the very thing for the Uplift Club.
+
+For thirty minutes Johnnie sat concentrating desperately on every
+sentence that fell from the lips of the lady from London, trying harder
+to understand than she had ever tried to do anything in her life. She
+put all her quick, young mind and avid soul into the struggle to
+receive, though piercingly aware every instant of the difference between
+her attire and that of the women who had bidden her there, noting
+acutely variations between their language and hers, their voices, their
+gestures and hers. These were the women of Gray Stoddard's world. Such
+were his feminine associates; here, then, must be her models.
+
+Mandy and her likes got from the talk perhaps nothing at all, except
+that rich people might have what they liked if they wanted it--that at
+least was Miss Meacham's summing up of the matter when she went home
+that night. But to Johnnie some of the sentences remained.
+
+"You struggle and climb and strive," said Mrs. Archbold earnestly,
+"when, if you only knew it, you have wings. And what are the wings of
+the soul? The wings of the soul are aspiration. Oh, that we would spread
+them and fly to the heights our longing eyes behold, the heights we
+dream of when we cannot see them, the heights we foolishly and
+mistakenly expect to climb some day."
+
+Again Johnnie saw herself coming down the ridge at Shade's side;
+descending into the shadow, stepping closer to the droning mills; while
+above her the Palace of Pleasure swam in its golden glory, and these who
+were privileged to do so went out and in and laughed and were happy.
+Were such heights as that what this woman meant? Johnnie had let it
+typify to her the heights to which she intended to climb. Was it indeed
+possible to fly to them instead? The talk ended. She sat so long with
+bent head that Miss Sessions finally came round and took the unoccupied
+chair beside her.
+
+"Are you thinking it over, John?" she inquired with that odd little note
+of hostility which she could never quite keep out of her voice when she
+addressed this girl.
+
+"Yes'm," replied Johnnie meekly.
+
+Several who were talking together in the vicinity relinquished their
+conversation to listen to the two. Mrs. Hexter shot one of her quaint,
+crooked smiles at the lady from London and, with a silent gesture, bade
+her hearken.
+
+"I think these things are most important for you girls who have to earn
+your daily bread," Miss Sessions condescended.
+
+"Daily bread," echoed Johnnie softly. She loved fine phrases as she
+loved fine clothes. "I know where that comes from. It's in the prayer
+about 'daily bread,' and 'the kingdom and the power and the glory.'
+Don't you think those are beautiful words, Miss Lydia--the 'power and
+the glory'?"
+
+Miss Sessions's lips sucked in with that singular, half-reluctant
+expression of condemnation which was becoming fairly familiar
+to Johnnie.
+
+"Oh, John!" she said reprovingly, 'Daily bread' is all we have anything
+to do with. Don't you remember that it says 'Thine be the kingdom and
+the power and the glory'? Thine, John--Thine."
+
+"Yes'm," returned Johnnie submissively. But it was in her heart that
+certain upon this earth had their share of kingdoms and powers and the
+glories. And, although she uttered that submissive "Yes'm," her
+high-couraged young heart registered a vow to achieve its own slice of
+these things as well as of daily bread.
+
+"Didn't you enjoy Mrs. Archbold's talk? I thought it very fine," Miss
+Sessions pursued.
+
+"It sure was that," sighed Johnnie. "I don't know as I understand it
+all--every word. I tried to, but maybe I got some of it wrong."
+
+"What is it you don't understand, John?" inquired
+
+Miss Lydia patronizingly. "Ask me. I'll explain anything you care to
+know about."
+
+Johnnie turned to her, too desperately in earnest to note the other
+listeners to the conversation.
+
+"Why, that about stretching out the wings of your spirit and flying. Do
+you believe that?"
+
+"I certainly do," Miss Sessions said brightly, as delighted at Johnnie's
+remembering part of the visitor's words as a small boy when he has
+taught his terrier to walk on its hind legs.
+
+"Then if a body wants a thing bad enough, and keeps on a-wanting it--Oh,
+just awful--is that aspiration? Will the thing you want that-a-way
+come to pass?"
+
+"We-e-ell," Miss Sessions deemed it necessary to qualify her statement
+to this fiery and exact young questioner. "You have to want the right
+thing, of course, John. You have to want the right thing."
+
+"Yes'm," agreed Johnnie heartily. "And I'd 'low it was certainly the
+right thing, if it was what good folks--like you--want."
+
+Miss Sessions flushed, yet she looked pleased, aware, if Johnnie was
+not, of the number of listeners. Here was her work of Uplift among the
+mill girls being justified.
+
+"I--Oh, really, I couldn't set myself up as a pattern," she said
+modestly.
+
+"But you are," Johnnie assured her warmly. "There ain't anybody in this
+room I'd rather go by as by you." The fine gray eyes had been travelling
+from neck to belt, from shoulder to wrist of the lady who was
+enlightening her, "I think I never in all my life seen anything more
+sightly than that dress-body you're a-wearin'," she murmured softly.
+"Where--how might a person come by such a one? If you thought that my
+wishing and--aspiring--would ever bring me such as that, I'd sure try."
+
+There rose a titter about the two. It spread and swelled till the whole
+assembly was in a gale of laughter. Miss Sessions's becoming blush
+deepened to the tint of angry mortification. She looked about and
+assumed the air of a schoolmistress with a room full of noisy pupils;
+but Johnnie, her cheeks pink too, first swept them all with an
+astonished gaze which flung the long lashes up in such a wide curve of
+innocence as made her eyes bewitching, then joined it, and laughed as
+loud as any of them at she knew not what. It was the one touch to put
+her with the majority, and leave her mentor stranded in a bleak
+minority. Miss Sessions objected to the position.
+
+"Oh, John!" she said severely, so soon as she could be heard above the
+giggles. "How you have misunderstood me, and Mrs. Archbold, and all we
+intended to bring to you! What is a mere blouse like this to the uplift,
+the outlook, the development we were striving to offer? I confess I am
+deeply disappointed in you."
+
+This sobered Johnnie, instantly.
+
+"I'm sorry," she said, bending forward to lay a wistful, penitent hand
+on that of Miss Sessions. "I'll try to understand better. I reckon I'm
+right dumb, and you'll have to have a lot of patience with me. I don't
+rightly know what to aspire after."
+
+The amende was so sweetly made that even Lydia Sessions, still
+exceedingly employed at being pictorially chagrined over the depravity
+of her neophyte, could but be appeased.
+
+"I'll try to furnish you more suitable objects for your ambition," she
+murmured virtuously.
+
+But the lady with the gray hair and the odd little twist to her smile
+now leaned forward and took a hand in the conversation.
+
+"See here, Lydia," Mrs. Hexter remonstrated in crisp tones, "what's the
+matter with the girl's aspiring after a blouse like yours? You took a
+lot of trouble and spent a lot of money to get that one. I noticed you
+were careful to tell me it was imported, because I couldn't see the
+neck-band and find out that detail for myself. That blouse is a
+dream--it's a dream. If it's good enough aspiration for you or me, why
+not for this girl?"
+
+"Oh, but Mrs. Hexter," murmured the mortified Miss Sessions, glancing
+uneasily toward the mill-girl contingent which was listening eagerly,
+and then at the speaker of the day, "I am sure Mrs. Archbold will agree
+with me that it would be a gross, material idea to aspire after blouses
+and such-like, when the poor child needs--er--other things so
+much more."
+
+"Yes'm, I do that," conceded Johnnie dutifully, those changeful eyes of
+hers full of pensive, denied desire, as they swept the dainty gowns of
+the women before her. "I do--you're right. I wouldn't think of spending
+my money for a dress-body like that when I'm mighty near as barefoot as
+a rabbit this minute, and the little 'uns back home has to have every
+cent I can save. I just thought that if beautiful wishes was ever really
+coming true--if it was right and proper for a person to have beautiful
+wishes--I'd like--"
+
+Her voice faltered into discouraged silence. Tears gathered and hung
+thick on her lashes. Miss Sessions sent a beseeching look toward the
+lady from London. Mrs. Archbold stepped accommodatingly into the breach.
+
+"All aspiration is good," she said gently. "I shouldn't be discouraged
+because it took a rather concrete form."
+
+Johnnie's eyes were upon her face, trying to understand. A "concrete
+form" she imagined might allude to the fact that Miss Sessions had a
+better figure than she.
+
+Mrs. Hexter, glad of an ally, tossed that incorrigible gray head of hers
+and dashed into the conversation once more.
+
+"If I were you, Johnnie, I'd just aspire as hard as I could in that
+direction," she said recklessly, her mischievous glance upon the flowing
+lines of Johnnie's young shoulders and throat. "A blouse like that would
+be awfully fetching on you. You'd look lovely in it. Why shouldn't you
+aspire to it? Maybe you'll have one just as pretty before the style
+changes. I am sure you're nice enough, and good-looking enough, for the
+best in the way of purple and fine linen to come to you by the law of
+attraction--don't you believe in the law of attraction, Mrs. Archbold?"
+
+Lydia Sessions got up and moved away in shocked silence. Mrs. Hexter was
+a good deal of a thorn in her flesh, and she only tolerated her because
+of Mr. Hexter and his position. After the retreating and disaffected
+hostess came Mrs. Archbold's voice, with a thread of laughter in it.
+
+"I believe in the law of such attraction as this girl has," she said
+kindly. "What is it your Walt Whitman says about the fluid and attaching
+character? That all hearts yearn toward it, that old and young must give
+it love. That is, my dear," turning explainingly to Johnnie, "the
+character which gives much love, takes much interest in those about it,
+makes itself one with other people and their affairs--do you get
+my meaning?"
+
+"I think I understand," half whispered Johnnie, glowing eyes on the face
+of the speaker. "Do you mean that I am anything like that? I do love
+everybody--most. But how could I help it, when everybody is so good and
+kind to me?"
+
+The glances of the older women met across the bright head.
+
+"She won't have much use for feet to climb with," Mrs. Hexter summed it
+up, taking her figure from the talk earlier in the afternoon. "She's
+got wings."
+
+And puzzled Johnnie could only smile from one to the other.
+
+"Wings!" whispered Mandy Meacham to herself. Mandy was not only
+restricted to the use of spiritual feet; she was lame in the soul as
+well, poor creature, "Wings--air they callin' her a angel?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A BIT OF METAL
+
+In the valleys of Tennessee, spring has a trick of dropping down on the
+world like a steaming wet blanket. The season that Johnnie Consadine
+went to work in the mills at Cottonville, May came in with warm rains.
+Stifling nights followed sultry, drenching days, till vegetation
+everywhere sprouted unwholesomely and the mountain slopes had almost the
+reek of tropic jungles.
+
+Yet the girl performed the labours of a factory weaver with almost
+passionate enthusiasm and devotion. Always and always she was looking
+beyond the mere present moment. If tending loom was the road which led
+to the power and the glory, what need to complain that it--the mere
+road--was but dull earth?
+
+She tried conscientiously, to do and be exactly what Lydia Sessions
+seemed to want. Gray Stoddard's occasional spoken word, or the more
+lengthy written messages he had taken to putting in the books he sent
+her, seemed to demand of her nothing, but always inspired to much. For
+all his disposition to keep hands off the personal development of his
+friends, perhaps on account of it, Gray made an excellent teacher, and
+these writings--the garnered grain, the gist, of his own wide
+culture--were the very sinews for the race Johnnie was setting out on.
+She began to intelligently guard her speech, her manner, her very
+thoughts, conforming them to what she knew of his ideals. Miss Session's
+striving to build up an imitation lady on the sincere foundation Johnnie
+offered appealed less to the girl, and had therefore less effect; but
+she immediately responded to Stoddard's methods, tucking in to the books
+she returned written queries or records of perplexity, which gradually
+expanded into notes, expressions of her own awakened thought, and even
+fancies, which held from the first a quaint charm and individuality.
+
+The long, hot days at the foot of the hills did seem to the
+mountain-bred creature interminable and stifling. Perspiration dripped
+from white faces as the operatives stood listlessly at their looms, or
+the children straggled back and forth in the narrow lanes between the
+frames, tending the endlessly turning spools.
+
+The Hardwick Mill had both spinning and weaving departments.
+Administrative ability is as much a native gift as the poet's voice or
+the actor's grace, and the managers of any large business are always on
+the lookout for it. Before Johnnie Consadine had been two months in the
+factory she was given charge of a spinning room. But the dignity of the
+new position--even the increase of pay--had a cloud upon it. She was
+beginning to understand the enmity there is between the soulless factory
+and the human tide that feeds its life. She knew now that the tasks of
+the little spinners, which seemed less than child's play, were deadly in
+their monotony, their long indoor hours, and the vibrant clamour amid
+which they were performed. Her own vigorous young frame resisted
+valiantly; yet the Saturday half-holiday, the Sunday of rest, could
+scarcely renew her for the exorbitant hours of mechanical toil.
+
+As she left the mill those sultry evenings, with the heat mists still
+tremulous over the valley and heat lightnings bickering in the west, she
+went with a lagging step up the village street, not looking, as had been
+her wont, first toward the far blue mountains, and then at the glorious
+state of the big valley. The houses of the operatives were set up
+haphazard and the village was denied all beauty. Most of the yards were
+unfenced, and here and there a row of shanties would be crowded so close
+together that speech in one could be heard in the other.
+
+"And then if any ketchin' disease does break out, like the dipthery did
+last year," Mavity Bence said one evening as she walked home with
+Johnnie, "hit's sartin shore to go through 'em like it would go through
+a family."
+
+Johnnie looked curiously at the dirty yards with their debris of lard
+buckets and tin cans. Space--air, earth and sky--was cheap and plentiful
+in the mountains. It seemed strange to be sparing of it, down here where
+people were so rich.
+
+"What makes 'em build so close, Aunt Mavity?" she asked.
+
+"Hit's the Company," returned Mrs. Bence lifelessly. "They don't want to
+spend any more than they have to for land. Besides they want everything
+to be nigh to the mill. Lord--hit don't make no differ. Only when a fire
+starts in a row of 'em hit cleans up the Company's property same as it
+does the plunder of the folks that lives in 'em. You just got to be
+thankful if there don't chance to be one or more baby children locked up
+in the houses and burned along with the other stuff. I've knowed that to
+happen more than oncet."
+
+Johnnie's face whitened.
+
+"Miss Lydia says she's going to persuade her brother-in-law to furnish a
+kindergarten and a day nursery for the Hardwick Mill," she offered
+hastily. "They have one at some other mill down in Georgia, and she says
+it's fine the way they take care of the children while the mothers are
+at work in the factory."
+
+"Uh-uh," put in Mandy Meacham slowly, speaking over the shoulders of the
+two, "but I'd a heap ruther take care of my own child--ef I had one. An'
+ef the mills can afford to pay for it the one way, they can afford to
+pay for it t'other way. Miss Liddy's schemes is all for the showin' off
+of the swells and the rich folks. I reckon that, with her, hit'll end in
+talk, anyhow--hit always does."
+
+"Aunt Mavity," pursued Johnnie timidly, "do you reckon the water's
+unhealthy down here in Cottonville? Looks like all the children in the
+mill have the same white, puny look. I thought maybe the water didn't
+agree with them."
+
+Mavity Bence laughed out mirthlessly. "The water!" she echoed in a tone
+of amused contempt. "Johnnie, you're mighty smart about some things;
+cain't you see that a cotton mill is bound to either kill or cripple a
+child? Them that don't die, sort o' drags along and grows up to be
+mis'able, undersized, sickly somebodies. Hit's true the Hardwick Mill
+won't run night turn; hit's true they show mo' good will about hirin'
+older children; but if you can make a cotton mill healthy for young-uns,
+you can do more than God A'mighty." She wiped her eyes furtively.
+
+"Lou was well growed before ever she went in the mill. I know in reason
+hit never hurt her. I mean these here mammies that I see puttin' little
+tricks to work that ort to be runnin' out o' doors gettin' their
+strength and growth--well, po' souls, I reckon they don't know no
+better, God forgive 'em!"
+
+"But if they got sick or anything, there's always the hospital," Johnnie
+spoke up hopefully, as they passed the clean white building standing
+high on its green slope.
+
+"The hospital!" echoed Mandy, with a half-terrified glance over her
+shoulder. "Yes, ef you want to be shipped out of town in a box for the
+student doctors to cut up, I reckon the hospital is a good place. It's
+just like everything else the rich swells does--it's for their profit,
+not for our'n. They was a lot of big talk when they built that thar
+hospital, and every one of us was axed to give something for beds and
+such. We was told that if we got hurt in the mill we could go thar free,
+and if we fell sick they'd doctor us for little or nothin'. They can
+afford it--considerin' the prices they git for dead bodies, I reckon."
+
+"Now, Mandy, you don't believe any such as that," remonstrated Johnnie,
+with a half-smile.
+
+"Believe it--I know it to be true!" Mandy stuck to her point stubbornly.
+"Thar was Lura Dawson; her folks was comin' down to git the body and
+bury hit, and when they got here the hospital folks couldn't tell 'em
+whar to look--no, they couldn't. Atlas Dawson 'lows he'll git even with
+'em if it takes him the rest of his natural life. His wife was a
+Bushares and her whole tribe is out agin the hospital folks and the mill
+folks down here. I reckon you live too far up in the mountains to hear
+the talk, but some of these swells had better look out."
+
+As the long, hot days followed each other, Johnnie noticed how Mandy
+failed. Her hand was forever at her side, where she had a stitch-like
+pain, that she called "a jumpin' misery." Even broad, seasoned Mavity
+Bence grew pallid and gaunt. Only Pap Himes thrived. His trouble was
+rheumatism, and the hot days were his best. Of evenings he would sit on
+the porch in his broad, rush-bottomed chair, the big yellow cat on his
+knees, and smoke his pipe and, if he cared to do so, banter unkindly
+with the girls on the steps. Early in the season as it was, the upstairs
+rooms were terribly hot; and sometimes the poor creatures sat or lay on
+the porch till well past midnight. Across the gulch were songs and the
+strumming of banjos or guitars, where the young fellows at the inn
+waked late.
+
+The rich people on top of the hill were beginning to make their
+preparations to flit to the seashore or mountains. Lydia Sessions left
+for two weeks, promising to return in June, and the Uplift work drooped,
+neglected. There seems to be an understanding that people do not need
+uplifting so much during hot weather. Gray Stoddard was faithful in the
+matter of books. He carried them to Lydia Sessions and discussed with
+that young lady a complete course of reading for Johnnie. Lydia was in
+the position of one taking bad medicine for good results. She could not
+but delight in any enterprise which brought Stoddard intimately to her,
+yet the discussion of Johnnie Consadine, the admiration he expressed for
+the girl's character and work, were as so much quinine.
+
+Johnnie herself was dumb and abashed, now, in his presence. She sought
+vainly for the poise and composure which were her natural birthright in
+most of the situations of life. Yet her perturbation was not that of
+distress. The sight of him, the sound of his voice, even if he were not
+saying good morning to her, would cheer her heart for one whole, long,
+hot day: and if he spoke to her, if he looked at her, nothing could
+touch her with sadness for hours afterward. She asked no questions why
+this was so; she met it with a sort of desperate bravery, accepting the
+joy, refusing to see the sorrow there might be in it. And she robbed
+herself of necessary sleep to read Stoddard's books, to study them, to
+wring from them the last precious crumb of help or information that they
+might have for her. The mountain dweller is a mental creature. An
+environment which builds lean, vigorous bodies, is apt to nourish keen,
+alert minds. Johnnie crowded into her few months of night reading a
+world, of ripening culture.
+
+Ever since the Sunday morning of the automobile ride, Shade Buckheath
+had been making elaborate pretense of having forgotten that such a
+person as Johnnie Consadine existed. If he saw her approaching, he
+turned his back; and when forced to recognize her, barely growled some
+unintelligible greeting. Then one evening she came suddenly into the
+machine room. She walked slowly down the long aisle between pieces of
+whirring machinery, carrying all eyes with her. It was an offence to
+Buckheath to note how the other young fellows turned from their tasks to
+look after her. She had no business down here where the men were. That
+was just like a fool girl, always running after--. She paused at
+his bench.
+
+"Shade," she said, bending close so that he might hear the words, "I got
+leave to come in and ask you to make me a thing like this--see?" showing
+a pattern for a peculiarly slotted strip of metal.
+
+Buckheath returned to the surly indifference of demeanour which was
+natural to him. Yet he smiled covertly as he examined the drawing she
+had made of the thing she wanted. He divined in this movement of
+Johnnie's but an attempt to approach himself, and, as she explained with
+some particularity, he paid more attention to the girl than to
+her words.
+
+"I want a big enough hole here to put a bolt through," she repeated.
+"Shade--do you understand? You're not listening to one word I say."
+
+Buckheath turned and grinned broadly at her.
+
+"What's the use of this foolishness, Johnnie?" he inquired, clinking the
+strips of metal between his fingers. "Looks like you and me could find a
+chance to visit without going to so much trouble."
+
+Johnnie opened her gray eyes wide and stared at him.
+
+"Foolishness!" she echoed. "Mr. Stoddard didn't call it foolishness when
+I named it to him. He said I was to have anything I wanted made, and
+that one of the loom-fixers could attend to it."
+
+"Mr. Stoddard--what's he got to do with it?" demanded Shade.
+
+"He hasn't anything; but that I spoke to him about it, and he told me to
+try any plan I wanted to."
+
+"Well, the less you talk to the bosses--a girl like you, working here in
+the mill--the better name you'll bear," Shade told her, twisting the
+drawing in his hands and regarding her from under lowered brows.
+
+"Don't tear that," cautioned Johnnie impatiently. "I have to speak to
+some of the people in authority sometimes--the same as you do. What's
+the matter with you, Shade Buckheath?"
+
+"There's nothing the matter with me," Buckheath declared wagging his
+head portentously, and avoiding her eye. Then the wrath, the sense of
+personal injury, which had been simmering in him ever since he saw her
+sitting beside Stoddard in the young mill owner's car, broke forth.
+"When I see a girl riding in an automobile with one of these young
+bosses," he growled, close to her ear, "I know what to think--and so
+does everybody else."
+
+It was out. He had said it at last. He stared at her fiercely. The red
+dyed her face and neck at his words and look. For a desperate moment she
+took counsel with herself. Then she lifted her head and looked squarely
+in Buckheath's face.
+
+"Oh, _that's_ what has been the matter with you all this time, is it?"
+she inquired. "Well, I'm glad you spoke and relieved your mind." Then
+she went on evenly, "Mr. Stoddard had been up in the mountains that
+Sunday to get a flower that he wanted, like the one you stepped on and
+broke the day I came down. I was up there and showed him where the
+things grow. Then it rained, and he brought me down in his car. That's
+all there was to it."
+
+"Mighty poor excuse," grunted Shade, turning his shoulder to her.
+
+"It's not an excuse at all," said Johnnie. "You have no right to ask
+excuses for what I do--or explanations, either, for that matter. I've
+told you the truth about it because we were old friends and you named it
+to me; but I'm sorry now that I spoke at all. Give me that drawing and
+those patterns back. Some of the other loom-fixers can make what
+I want."
+
+"You get mad quick, don't you?" Buckheath asked, turning to her with a
+half-taunting, half-relenting smile on his face. "Red-headed people
+always do."
+
+"No, I'm not mad," Johnnie told him, as she had told him long ago. "But
+I'll thank you not to name Mr. Stoddard to me again. If I haven't the
+right to speak to anybody I need to, why it certainly isn't your place
+to tell me of it."
+
+"Go 'long," said Buckheath, surlily; "I'll fix 'em for you." And without
+another word the girl left him.
+
+After Johnnie was gone, Buckheath chewed for some time the bitter cud of
+chagrin. He was wholly mistaken, then, in the object of her visit to the
+mechanical department? Yet he was a cool-headed fellow, always alert for
+that which might bring him gain. Pushing, aspiring, he subscribed for
+and faithfully studied a mechanics' journal which continually urged upon
+its readers the profit of patenting small improvements on machinery
+already in use. Indeed everybody, these days, in the factories, is on
+the lookout for patentable improvements. Why might not Johnnie have
+stumbled on to something worth while? That Passmore and Consadine tribe
+were all smart fools. He made the slotted strips she wanted, and
+delivered them to her the next day with civil words. When, after she had
+them in use on the spinning jennies upstairs for a week, she came down
+bringing them for certain minute alterations, his attitude was one of
+friendly helpfulness.
+
+"You say you use 'em on the frames? What for? How do they work?" he
+asked her, examining the little contrivance lingeringly.
+
+"They're working pretty well," she told him, "even the way they are--a
+good deal too long, and with that slot not cut deep enough, I'm right
+proud of myself when I look at them. Any boy or girl tending a frame can
+go to the end of it and see if anything's the matter without walking
+plumb down. When you get them fixed the way I want them, I tell you
+they'll be fine."
+
+The next afternoon saw Shade Buckheath in the spooling room, watching
+the operation of Johnnie Consadine's simple device for notifying the
+frame-tender if a thread fouled or broke.
+
+"Let me take 'em all down to the basement," he said finally when he had
+studied them from every point of view for fifteen minutes. "They ain't
+as well polished as I'd like to have 'em and I think they might be a
+little longer in the shank. There ought to be a ring of babbit metal
+around that slot, too--I reckon I could get it in Watauga. If you'll let
+me take 'em now, I'll fix 'em up for you soon as I can, so that
+they'll do fine."
+
+Johnnie remonstrated, half-heartedly, as he gathered the crude little
+invention from the frames; but his proposition wore a plausible face,
+and she suffered him to take them.
+
+"They ain't but five here," he said to her sharply.
+
+"I know I made you six. Where's the other one?" He looked so startled,
+he spoke so anxiously, that she laughed.
+
+"I think that must be the one I carried home," she said carelessly. "I
+had a file, and was trying to fix it myself one evening, and I reckon I
+never brought it back."
+
+"Johnnie," said Shade, coming close, and speaking in a low confidential
+tone that was almost affectionate, "if I was you I wouldn't name this
+business to anybody. Wait till we get it all fixed right," he pursued,
+as he saw the rising wonder in her face. "No need to tell every feller
+all you know--so he'll be jest as smart as you are. Ain't that so? And
+you git me that other strip. I don't want it layin' round for somebody
+to get hold of and--you find me that other strip. Hunt it up,
+won't you?"
+
+"Well, you sure talk curious to-day!" Johnnie told him. "I don't see
+anything to be ashamed of in my loving to fool with machinery, if I _am_
+a girl. But I'll get you the strip, if I can find it. I'm mighty proud
+of being a room boss, and I aim to make my room the best one in the
+mill. Shade, did you know that I get eight dollars a week? I've been
+sending money home to mother, and I've got a room to myself down at Pap
+Himes's. And Mr. Sessions says they'll raise me again soon. I wanted 'em
+to see this thing working well."
+
+"Look here!" broke in Shade swiftly; "don't you say anything to the
+bosses about this"--he shook the strips in his hand--"not till I've had
+a chance to talk to you again. You know I'm your friend, don't
+you Johnnie?"
+
+"I reckon so," returned truthful Johnnie, with unflattering moderation.
+"You get me those things done as quick as you can, please, Shade."
+
+After this the matter dropped. Two or three times Johnnie reminded Shade
+of his promise to bring the little strips back, and always he had an
+excuse ready for her: he had been very busy--the metal he wanted was out
+of stock--he would fix them for her just as soon as he could. With every
+interview his manner toward herself grew kinder--more distinctly that
+of a lover.
+
+The loom-fixers and mechanics, belonging, be it remembered, to a
+trades-union, were out of all the mills by five o'clock. It was a
+significant point for any student of economic conditions to note these
+strapping young males sitting at ease upon the porches of their homes or
+boarding houses, when the sweating, fagged women weavers and childish
+spinners trooped across the bridges an hour after. Johnnie was
+surprised, therefore, one evening, nearly two weeks later, to find Shade
+waiting for her at the door of the mill.
+
+"I wish't you'd walk a piece up the Gap road with me, I want to have
+speech with you," the young fellow told her.
+
+"I can't go far; I 'most always try to be home in time to help Aunt
+Mavity put supper on the table, or anyway to wash up the dishes for
+her," the girl replied to him.
+
+"All right," agreed Buckheath briefly. "Wait here a minute and let me
+get some things I want to take along."
+
+He stopped at a little shed back of the offices, sometimes called the
+garage because Stoddard's car stood in it. Johnnie dropped down on a box
+at the door and the young fellow went inside and began searching the
+pockets of a coat hanging on a peg. He spoke over his shoulder to her.
+
+"What's the matter with you here lately since you got your raise? 'Pears
+like you won't look at a body."
+
+"Haven't I seemed friendly?" Johnnie returned, with a deprecating smile.
+"I reckon I'm just tired. Seems like I'm tired every minute of the
+day--and I couldn't tell you why. I sure don't have anything hard to do.
+I think sometimes I need the good hard work I used to have back in the
+mountains to get rested on."
+
+She laughed up at him, and Buckheath's emotional nature answered with a
+dull anger, which was his only reply to her attraction.
+
+"I was going to invite you to go to a dance in at Watauga, Saturday
+night," he said sullenly; "but I reckon if you're tired all the time,
+you don't want to go."
+
+He had hoped and expected that she would say she was not too tired to go
+anywhere that he wished her to. His disappointment was disproportionate
+when she sighingly agreed:
+
+"Yes, I reckon I hadn't better go to any dances. I wouldn't for the
+world break down at my work, when I've just begun to earn so much, and
+am sending money home to mother."
+
+Inside the offices Lydia Sessions stood near her brother's desk. She had
+gone down, as she sometimes did, to take him home in the carriage.
+
+"Oh, here you are, Miss Sessions," said Gray Stoddard coming in. "I've
+brought those books for Johnnie. There are a lot of them here for her to
+make selection from. As you are driving, perhaps you wouldn't mind
+letting me set them in the carriage, then I won't go up past
+your house."
+
+Miss Sessions glanced uneasily at the volumes he carried.
+
+"Do you think it's wise to give an ignorant, untrained girl like that
+the choice of her own reading?" she said at length.
+
+Stoddard laughed.
+
+"It's as far as my wisdom goes," he replied promptly. "I would as soon
+think of getting up a form of prayer for a fellow creature as laying out
+a course of reading for him."
+
+"Well, then," suggested Miss Sessions, "why not let her take up a
+Chatauqua course? I'm sure many of them are excellent. She would be
+properly guided, and--and encroach less on your time."
+
+"My time!" echoed Stoddard. "Never mind that feature. I'm immensely
+interested. It's fascinating to watch the development of so fine a mind
+which has lain almost entirely fallow to the culture of schools. I quite
+enjoy looking out a bunch of books for her, and watching to see which
+one will most appeal to her. Her instinct has proved wholly trustworthy
+so far. Indeed, if it didn't seem exaggerated, I should say her taste
+was faultless."
+
+Miss Sessions flushed and set her lips together.
+
+"Faultless," she repeated, with an attempt at a smile. "I fancy Johnnie
+finds out what you admire most, and makes favourites of your
+favourites."
+
+Stoddard looked a bit blank for an instant. Then,
+
+"Well--perhaps--she does," he allowed, hesitatingly. His usual tolerant
+smile held a hint of indulgent tenderness, and there was a vibration in
+his voice which struck to Lydia Sessions's heart like a knife.
+
+"No, you are mistaken," he added after a moment's reflection. "You don't
+realize how little I've talked to the child about books--or anything
+else, for that matter. It does chance that her taste is mine in very
+many cases; but you underrate our protégé when you speak of her as
+ignorant and uncultured. She knows a good deal more about some things
+than either of us. It is her fund of nature lore that makes Thoreau and
+White of Selborne appeal to her. Now I love them because I know so
+little about what they write of."
+
+Lydia Sessions instantly fastened upon the one point. She protested
+almost anxiously.
+
+"But surely you would not call her cultured--a factory girl who has
+lived in a hut in the mountains all her life? She is trying hard, I
+admit; but her speech is--well, it certainly is rather uncivilized."
+
+Stoddard looked as though he might debate that matter a bit. Then he
+questioned, instead:
+
+"Did you ever get a letter from her? She doesn't carry her quaint little
+archaisms of pronunciation and wording into her writing. Her letters are
+delicious."
+
+Miss Sessions turned hastily to the window and looked out, apparently to
+observe whether her brother was ready to leave or not. Johnnie
+Consadine's letters--her letters. What--when--? Of course she could not
+baldly question him in such a matter; and the simple explanation of a
+little note of thanks with a returned book, or the leaf which reported
+impressions from its reading tucked in between the pages occurred to her
+perturbed mind.
+
+"You quite astonish me," she said finally. "Well--that _is_ good
+hearing. Mr. Stoddard," with sudden decision, "don't you believe that it
+would be well worth while, in view of all this, to raise the money and
+send John Consadine away to a good school? There are several fine ones
+in New England where she might partially work her way; and really, from
+what you say, it seems to me she's worthy of such a chance."
+
+Stoddard glanced at her in surprise.
+
+"Why, Miss Sessions, doesn't this look like going squarely back on your
+most cherished theories? If it's only to bestow a little money, and send
+her away to some half-charity school, what becomes of your argument that
+people who have had advantages should give of themselves and their
+comradeship to those they wish to help?" There was a boyish eagerness in
+his manner; his changeful gray-brown eyes were alight; he came close and
+laid a hand on her arm--quite an unusual demonstration with Gray
+Stoddard. "You mustn't discourage me," he said winningly. "I'm such a
+hopeful disciple. I've never enjoyed anything more in my life than this
+enterprise you and I have undertaken together, providing the right food
+for so bright and so responsive a mind."
+
+Miss Lydia looked at him in a sort of despair.
+
+"Yes--oh, yes. I quite understand that," she agreed almost mechanically.
+"I don't mean to go back on my principles. But what John needs is a
+good, sound education from the beginning. Don't you think so?"
+
+"No," said Stoddard promptly. "Indeed I do not. Development must come
+from within. To give it a chance--to lend it stimulus--that's all a
+friend can do. A ready-made education plastered on the outside
+cultivates nobody. Moreover, Johnnie is in no crying need of mere
+schooling. You don't seem to know how well provided she has been in that
+respect. But the thing that settles the matter is that she would not
+accept any such charitable arrangement. Unless you're tired of our
+present method, I vote to continue it."
+
+Lydia Sessions had been for some moments watching Johnnie Consadine who
+sat on her box at the door of the little garage. She had refrained from
+mentioning this fact to her companion; but now Shade Buckheath stepped
+out to join Johnnie, and instantly Lydia turned and motioned Stoddard
+to her.
+
+"Look there," she whispered. "Don't they make a perfect couple? You and
+I may do what we choose about cultivating the girl's mind--she'll marry
+a man of her own class, and there it will end."
+
+"Why should you say that?" asked Stoddard abruptly. "Those two do not
+belong to the same class. They--"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Stoddard! They grew up side by side; they went to school
+together, and I imagine were sweethearts long before they came to
+Cottonville."
+
+"Do you think that makes them of the same class?" asked Stoddard
+impatiently. "I should say the presumption was still greater the other
+way. I was not alluding to social classes."
+
+"You're so odd," murmured Lydia Sessions. "These mountaineers are all
+alike."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The village road was a smother of white dust; the weeds beside it
+drooped powdered heads; evil odours reeked through the little place; but
+when Shade and Johnnie had passed its confines, the air from the
+mountains greeted them sweetly; the dusty white road gave place to
+springy leaf-mould, mixed with tiny, sharp stones. A young moon rode low
+in the west. The tank-a-tank of cowbells sounded from homing animals. Up
+in the dusky Gap, whip-poor-wills were beginning to call.
+
+"I'm glad I came," said Johnnie, pushing the hair off her hot forehead.
+She was speaking to herself, aware that Buckheath paid little attention,
+but walked in silence a step ahead, twisting a little branch of
+sassafras in his fingers. The spicy odour of the bark was afterward
+associated in Johnnie's mind with what he had then to say.
+
+"Johnnie," he began, facing around and barring her way, when they were
+finally alone together between the trees, "do you remember the last time
+you and me was on this piece of road here--do you?"
+
+He had intended to remind her of the evening she came to Cottonville:
+but instead, recollection built for her once more the picture of that
+slope bathed in Sabbath sunshine. There was the fork where the Hardwick
+carriage had turned off; to this side went Shade and his fellows, with
+Mandy and the girls following; and down the middle of the road she
+herself came, seated in the car beside Stoddard.
+
+For a moment memory choked and blinded Johnnie. She could neither see
+the path before them, nor find the voice to answer her questioner. The
+bleak pathos of her situation came home to her, and tears of rare
+self-pity filled her eyes. Why was it a disgrace that Stoddard should
+treat her kindly? Why must she be ashamed of her feeling for him?
+Shade's voice broke in harshly.
+
+"Do you remember? You ain't forgot, have you? Ever since that time I've
+intended to speak to you--to tell you--"
+
+"Well, you needn't do it," she interrupted him passionately.
+
+"I won't hear a word against Mr. Stoddard, if that's what you're aiming
+at."
+
+Buckheath fell back a pace and stared with angry eyes.
+
+"Stoddard--Gray Stoddard?" he repeated. "What's a swell like that got to
+do with you and me, Johnnie Consadine? You want to let Gray Stoddard and
+his kind alone--yes, and make them let you alone, if you and me are
+going to marry."
+
+It was Johnnie's turn to stare.
+
+"If we're going to marry!" she echoed blankly--"going to marry!" The
+girl had had her lovers. Despite hard work and the stigma of belonging
+to the borrowing Passmore family, Johnnie had commanded the homage of
+more than one heart. She was not without a healthy young woman's relish
+for this sort of admiration; but Shade Buckheath's proposal came with so
+little grace, in such almost sinister form, that she scarcely
+recognized it.
+
+"Yes, if we're going to wed," reiterated Buckheath sullenly. "I'm
+willin' to have you."
+
+Johnnie's tense, almost tragic manner relaxed. She laughed suddenly.
+
+"I didn't know you was joking, Shade," she said good-humouredly. "I took
+you to be in earnest. You'll have to excuse me."
+
+"I am in earnest," Buckheath told her, almost fiercely. "I reckon I'm a
+fool; but I want you. Any day"--he spoke with a curious, half-savage
+reluctance--"any day you'll say the word, I'll take you."
+
+His eyes, like his voice, were resentful, yet eager. He took off his hat
+and wiped the perspiration from his brow, looking away from her now,
+toward the road by which they had climbed.
+
+Johnnie regarded him through her thick eyelashes, the smile still
+lingering bright in her eyes. After all, it was only a rather unusual
+kind of sweethearting, and not a case of it to touch her feelings.
+
+"I'm mighty sorry," she said soberly, "but I ain't aimin' to wed any
+man, fixed like I am. Mother and the children have to be looked after,
+and I can't ask a man to do for 'em, so I have it to do myself."
+
+"Of course I can't take your mother and the children," Buckheath
+objected querulously, as though she had asked him to do so. "But you
+I'll take; and you'd do well to think it over. You won't get such a
+chance soon again, and I'm apt to change my mind if you put on airs with
+me this way."
+
+Johnnie shook her head.
+
+"I know it's a fine chance, Shade," she said in the kindest tone, "but
+I'm hoping you will change your mind, and that soon; for it's just like
+I tell you."
+
+She turned with evident intention of going back and terminating their
+interview. Buckheath stepped beside her in helpless fury. He knew she
+would have other, opportunities, and better. He was aware how futile was
+this threat of withdrawing his proposition. Hot, tired, angry, the dust
+of the way prickling on his face and neck, he was persistently conscious
+of a letter in the pocket of his striped shirt, over his heavily beating
+heart, warm and moist like the shirt itself, with the sweat of his body.
+Good Lord! That letter which had come from Washington this morning
+informing him that the device this girl had invented was patentable,
+filled her hands with gold. It was necessary that he should have control
+of her, and at once. He put from him the knowledge of how her charm
+wrought upon him--bound him the faster every time he spoke to her. Cold,
+calculating, sluggishly selfish, he had not reckoned with her radiant
+personality, nor had the instinct to know that, approached closely, it
+must inevitably light in him unwelcome and inextinguishable fires.
+
+"Johnnie," he said finally, "you ain't saying no to me, are you? You
+take time to think it over--but not so very long--I'll name it to
+you again."
+
+"Please don't, Shade," remonstrated the girl, walking on fast, despite
+the oppressive heat of the evening. "I wish you wouldn't speak of it to
+me any more; and I can't go walking with you this way. I have obliged to
+help Aunt Mavity; and every minute of time I get from that, and my work,
+I'm putting in on my books and reading."
+
+She stepped ahead of him now, and Buckheath regarded her back with
+sullen, sombre eyes. What was he to do? How come nearer her when she
+thus held herself aloof?
+
+"Johnnie Consadine!" The girl checked her steps a bit at a new sound in
+his voice. "I'll tell you just one thing, and you'd better never forget
+it, neither. I ain't no fool. I know mighty well an' good your reason
+for treating me this-a-way. Your reason's got a name. Hit's called Mr.
+Gray Stoddard. You behave yo'self an' listen to reason, or I'll get even
+with him for it. Damn him--I'll fix him!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SANDALS OF JOY
+
+"Come in here, Johnnie," Mavity Bence called one day, as Johnnie was
+passing a strange little cluttered cubbyhole under the garret stairs and
+out over the roof of the lean-to kitchen. It was a hybrid apartment,
+between a large closet and a small room; one four-paned window gave
+scant light and ventilation; all the broken or disused plunder about the
+house was pitched into it, and in the middle sat a tumbled bed. It was
+the woman's sleeping place and her dead daughter had shared it with her
+during her lifetime. Johnnie stopped at the door with a hand on each
+side of its frame.
+
+"Reddin' up things, Aunt Mavity?" she asked, adding, "If I had time I'd
+come in and help you."
+
+"I was just puttin' away what I've got left that belonged to Lou," said
+the woman, sitting suddenly down on the bed and gazing up into the
+bright face above her with a sort of appeal. Johnnie noticed then that
+Mrs. Bence had a pair of cheap slippers in her lap. It came back vividly
+to the girl how the newspapers had said that Louvania Bence had taken
+off her slippers and left them on the bridge, that she might climb the
+netting more easily to throw herself into the water. The mother stared
+down at these, dry-eyed.
+
+"She never had 'em on but the once," Mavity Bence breathed. "And I--and
+I r'ared out on her for buyin' of 'em. I said that with Pap so old and
+all, we hadn't money to spend for slippers. Lord God!"--she
+shivered--"We had to find money for the undertaker, when he come to
+lay her out."
+
+She turned to Johnnie feverishly, like a thing that writhes on the rack
+and seeks an easier position.
+
+"I had the best for her then--I jest would do it--there was white shoes
+and stockin's, and a reg'lar shroud like they make at Watauga; we never
+put a stitch on her that she'd wore--hit was all new-bought. For once I
+said my say to Pap, and made him take money out of the bank to do it.
+He's got some in thar for to bury all of us--he says--but he never
+wanted to use any of it for Lou."
+
+Johnnie came in and sat down on the bed beside her hostess. She laid a
+loving hand over Mavity's that held the slippers.
+
+"What pretty little feet she must have had," she said softly.
+
+"Didn't she?" echoed the mother, with a tremulous half-smile. "I
+couldn't more'n get these here on my hand, but they was a loose fit for
+her. They're as good as new. Johnnie, ef you ever get a invite to a
+dance I'll lend 'em to you. Hit'd pleasure me to think some gal's feet
+was dancin' in them thar slippers. Lou, she never learned to
+dance--looked like she could never find time." Louvania, be it
+remembered had found time in which to die.
+
+So Johnnie thanked poor Mavity, and hurried away, because the warning
+whistle was blowing.
+
+The very next Wednesday Miss Sessions gave a dance to the members of her
+Uplift Club. These gaieties were rather singular and ingenious affairs,
+sterilized dances, Mrs. Hexter irreverently dubbed them. Miss Lydia did
+not invite the young men employed about the mill, not having as yet
+undertaken their uplifting; and feeling quite inadequate to cope with
+the relations between them and the mill girls, which would be something
+vital and genuine, and as such, quite foreign--if not inimical--to her
+enterprise. She contented herself with bringing in a few well-trained
+young males of her own class, who were expected to be attentive to the
+girls, treating them as equals, just as Miss Lydia did. For the rest,
+the members were encouraged to dance with each other, and find such joy
+as they might in the supper, and the fact that Miss Sessions paid for a
+half-day's work for them on the morrow, that they might lie late in bed
+after a night's pleasuring.
+
+Johnnie Consadine had begun to earn money in such quantities as seemed
+to her economic experience extremely large. She paid her board, sent a
+little home to her mother, and had still wherewith to buy a frock for
+the dance. She treated herself to a trolley ride in to Watauga to select
+this dress, going on the Saturday half-holiday which the mills gave
+their workers, lest the labour laws regulating the hours per week which
+women and children may be employed be infringed upon. There was grave
+debate in Johnnie's mind as to what she should buy. Colours would
+fade--in cheap goods, anyhow--white soiled easily. "But then I could
+wash and iron it myself any evening I wanted to wear it," she argued to
+Mandy Meacham, who accompanied her.
+
+"I'd be proud to do it for you," returned Mandy, loyally. Ordinarily the
+Meacham woman was selfish; but having found an object upon which she
+could centre her thin, watery affections, she proceeded to be selfish
+for Johnnie instead of toward her, a spiritual juggle which some mothers
+perform in regard to their children.
+
+The store reached, Johnnie showed good judgment in her choice. There was
+a great sale on at the biggest shopping place in Watauga, and the
+ready-made summer wear was to be had at bargain rates. Not for her were
+the flaring, coarse, scant garments whose lack of seemliness was
+supposed to be atoned for by a profusion of cheap, sleazy trimming.
+After long and somewhat painful inspection, since most of the things she
+wanted were hopelessly beyond her, Johnnie carried home a fairly fine
+white lawn, simply tucked, and fitting to perfection.
+
+"But you've got a shape that sets off anything," said the saleswoman,
+carelessly dealing out the compliments she kept in stock with her goods
+for purchasers.
+
+"You're mighty right she has," rejoined Mandy, sharply, as who should
+say, "My back is not a true expression of my desires concerning backs.
+Look at this other--she has the spine of my dreams."
+
+The saleswoman chewed gum while they waited for change and parcel, and
+in the interval she had time to inspect Johnnie more closely.
+
+"Working in the cotton mill, are you?" she asked as she sorted up her
+stock, jingling the bracelets on her wrists, and patting into shape her
+big, frizzy pompadour. "That's awful hard work, ain't it? I should think
+a girl like you would try for a place in a store. I'll bet you could get
+one," she added encouragingly, as she handed the parcel across the
+counter. But already Johnnie knew that the spurious elegance of this
+young person's appearance was not what she wished to emulate.
+
+The night of the dance Johnnie adjusted her costume with the nice skill
+and care which seem native to so many of the daughters of America.
+Mandy, dressing at the same bureau, scraggled the parting of her own
+hair, furtively watching the deft arranging of Johnnie's.
+
+"Let me do it for you, and part it straight," Johnnie remonstrated.
+
+"Aw, hit'll never be seen on a gallopin' hoss," returned Mandy
+carelessly. "Everybody'll be so tuck up a-watchin' you that they won't
+have time to notice is my hair parted straight, nohow."
+
+"But you're not a galloping horse," objected Johnnie, laughing and
+clutching the comb away from her. "You've got mighty pretty hair, Mandy,
+if you'd give it a chance. Why, it's curly! Let me do it up right for
+you once."
+
+So the thin, graying ringlets were loosened around the meagre forehead,
+and indeed Mandy's appearance was considerably ameliorated.
+
+"There--isn't that nice?" inquired Johnnie, turning her companion around
+to the glass and forcing her to gaze in it--a thing Mandy always
+instinctively avoided.
+
+"I reckon I've looked worse," agreed the tall woman unenthusiastically;
+"but Miss Lyddy ain't carin' to have ye fix up much. I get sort of
+feisty and want to dav-il her by makin' you look pretty. Wish't you
+would wear that breas'-pin o' mine, an' them rings an' beads I borried
+from Lizzie for ye. You might just as well, and then nobody'd know you
+from one o' the swells."
+
+Johnnie shook her fair head decidedly. Talk of borrowing things brought
+a reminiscent flush to her cheek.
+
+"I'm just as much obliged," she said sweetly. "I'll wear nothing but
+what's my own. After a while I'll be able to afford jewellery, and
+that'll be the time for me to put it on."
+
+Presently came Mavity Bence bringing the treasured footwear.
+
+"I expect they'll be a little tight for me," Johnnie remarked somewhat
+doubtfully; the slippers, though cheap, ill-cut things, looked so much
+smaller than her heavy, country-made shoes. But they went readily upon
+the arched feet of the mountain girl, Mandy and the poor mother looking
+on with deep interest.
+
+"I wish't Lou was here to see you in 'em," whispered Mavity Bence. "She
+wouldn't grudge 'em to you one minute. Lord, how pretty you do look,
+Johnnie Consadine! You're as sightly as that thar big wax doll down at
+the Company store. I wish't Lou _could_ see you."
+
+The dance was being given in the big hall above a store, which Miss
+Lydia hired for these functions of her Uplift Club. The room was
+half-heartedly decorated in a hybrid fashion. Miss Lydia had sent down a
+rose-bowl of flowers; and the girls, being encouraged to use their own
+taste, put up some flags left over from last Fourth of July. When
+Johnnie and Mandy Meacham--strangely assorted pair--entered the long
+room, festivities were already in progress; Negro fiddlers were reeling
+off dance music, and Miss Lydia was trying to teach some of her club
+members the two-step. Her younger brother, Hartley Sessions, was gravely
+piloting a girl down the room in what was supposed to be that popular
+dance, and two young men from Watauga, for whom he had vouched, stood
+ready for Miss Sessions to furnish them with partners, when she should
+have encouraged her learners sufficiently to make the attempt. Round the
+walls sat the other girls, and to Johnnie's memory came those words of
+Mandy's, "You dance--if you can."
+
+Johnnie Consadine certainly could dance. Many a time back in the
+mountains she had walked five miles after a hard day's work to get to a
+dance that some one of her mates was giving, tramping home in the dawn
+and doing without sleep for that twenty-four hours. The music seemed
+somehow to get into her muscles, so that she swayed and moved exactly in
+time to it.
+
+"That's the two-step," she murmured to her partner. "I never tried it,
+but I've seen 'em dance it at the hotel down at Chalybeate Springs. I
+can waltz a little; but I love an old-fashioned quadrille the best--it
+seems more friendly."
+
+Gray Stoddard was talking to an older woman who had come with her
+daughter--a thin-bodied, deep-eyed woman of forty, perhaps, with a
+half-sad, tolerant smile, and slow, racy speech. A sudden touch on his
+shoulder roused him, as one of the young men from town leaned over and
+asked him excitedly:
+
+"Who's that girl down at the other end of the room, Gray?--the stunning
+blonde that just came in? She's got one of the mill girls with her."
+
+Gray looked, and laughed a little. Somehow the adjectives applied to
+Johnnie did not please him.
+
+"Both of them work in the mill," he said briefly. "The one you mean is
+Johnnie Consadine. She's a remarkable girl in more ways than merely in
+appearance."
+
+"Well, take me down there and give me an introduction," urged the youth
+from Watauga, in a tone of animation which was barred from
+Uplift affairs.
+
+"All right," agreed Gray, getting to his feet with a twinkle in his eye.
+"I suppose you want to meet the tall one. I've got an engagement for the
+first dance with Miss Consadine myself."
+
+"Say," ejaculated the other, drawing back, "that isn't fair. Miss
+Sessions," he appealed to their hostess as umpire. "Here's Gray got the
+belle of the ball mortgaged for all her dances, and won't even give me
+an introduction. You do the square thing by me, won't you?"
+
+Lydia Sessions had got her neophites safely launched, and they were
+making a more or less tempestuous progress across the floor. She turned
+to the two young men a flushed, smiling countenance. In the tempered
+light and the extremely favouring costume of the hour, she looked
+almost pretty.
+
+"What is it?" she asked graciously. "The belle of the ball? I don't know
+quite who that is. Oh!" with a slight drop in her tone and the
+temperature of her expression; "do you mean John Consadine? Really, how
+well she is looking to-night!"
+
+"Isn't she!" blundered the Watauga man with ill-timed enthusiasm. "I
+call her a regular beauty, and such an interesting-looking creature.
+What is she trying to do? Good Lord, she's going to attempt the two-step
+with that Eiffel tower she brought along!"
+
+These frivolous remarks, suited well enough to the ordinary ballroom,
+did not please Miss Lydia for an Uplift dance.
+
+"The girl with John is one in whom I take a very deep interest," she
+said with a touch of primness.
+
+"John Consadine is young, and exceptionally strong and healthy. But
+Amanda Meacham has--er--disabilities and afflictions that make it
+difficult for her to get along. She is a very worthy case."
+
+The young man from Watauga, who had not regarded Johnnie as a case at
+all, but had considered her purely as an exceptionally attractive young
+woman, looked a trifle bewildered. Then Gray took his arm and led him
+across to where the attempt at two-stepping had broken up in laughing
+disorder. With that absolutely natural manner which Miss Sessions could
+never quite achieve, good as her intentions were, he performed the
+introduction, and then said pleasantly:
+
+"Mr. Baker wants to ask you to dance, Miss Johnnie. I'll carry on Miss
+Amanda's teaching, or we'll sit down here and talk if she'd rather."
+
+"No more two-steppin' for me," agreed Miss Meacham, seating herself
+decidedly. "I'll take my steps one at a time from this on. I'd rather
+watch Johnnie dance, anyhow; but she would have me try for myself."
+
+Johnnie and the young fellow from Watauga were off now. They halted once
+or twice, evidently for some further instructions, as Johnnie got the
+step and time, and then moved away smoothly. Gray took the seat
+beside Mandy.
+
+"Ain't she a wonder?" inquired the big woman, staring fondly after the
+fluttering white skirts.
+
+"She is indeed," agreed Gray quietly. And then, Mandy being thus
+launched on the congenial theme--the one theme upon which she was ever
+loquacious--out came the story of the purchase of the dress, the
+compliments of the saleswoman, the refusal of the borrowed jewellery.
+
+"Johnnie's quare--she is that--I'll never deny it; but I cain't no more
+help likin' her than as if she was my own born sister."
+
+"That's because she is fond of you, too," suggested Gray, thinking of
+the girl's laborious attempts to teach poor Mandy to dance.
+
+"Do you reckon she is?" asked the tall woman, flushing. "Looks like
+Johnnie Consadine loves every livin' thing on the top side of this
+earth. I ain't never seen the human yet that she ain't got a good word
+for. But I don't know as she cares 'specially 'bout _me_."
+
+Stoddard could not refuse the assurance for which Mandy so naively
+angled.
+
+"You wouldn't be so fond of her if she wasn't fond of you," he asserted
+confidently.
+
+"Mebbe I wouldn't," Mandy debated; "but I don't know. Let Johnnie put
+them two eyes o' hern on you, and laugh in your face, and you feel just
+like you'd follow her to the ends of the earth--or I know I do. Why, she
+done up my hair this evening and"--the voice sank to a half-shamed
+whisper--"she said it was pretty."
+
+Gray turned and looked into the flushed, tremulous face beside him with
+a sudden tightening in his throat. How cruel humanity is when it beholds
+only the grotesque in the Mandys of this world. Her hair was pretty--and
+Johnnie had the eyes of love to see it.
+
+He stared down the long, lighted room with unseeing gaze. Old Andrew
+MacPherson's counsel that he let Johnnie Consadine alone appealed to him
+at that moment as cruel good sense. He was recalled from his musings by
+Mandy's voice.
+
+"Oh, look thar!" whispered his companion excitedly. "The other town
+feller has asked for a knock-down to Johnnie, too. Look at him passin'
+his bows with her just like she was one of the swells!"
+
+Stoddard looked. Charlie Conroy was relieving Baker of his partner.
+Johnnie had evidently been asked if she was tired, for they saw her
+laughingly shake her head, and the new couple finished what was left of
+the two-step and seated themselves a moment at the other side of the
+room to wait for the next dance to begin.
+
+"These affairs are great fun, aren't they?" inquired Conroy, fanning his
+late partner vigorously.
+
+"I love to dance better than anything else in the world, I believe,"
+returned Johnnie dreamily.
+
+"Oh, a dance--I should suppose so. You move as though you enjoyed it;
+but I mean a performance like this. The girls are great fun, don't you
+think? But then you wouldn't get quite our point of view on that."
+
+He glanced again at her dress; it was plain and simple, but good style
+and becoming. She wore no jewellery, but lots of girls were rather
+affecting that now, especially the athletic type to which this young
+beauty seemed to belong. Surely he was not mistaken in guessing her to
+be one of Miss Sessions's friends. Of course he was not. She had dressed
+herself in this simple fashion for a mill-girl's dance, that she might
+not embarrass the working people who attended. Yes, by George! that was
+it, and it was a long ways-better taste than the frocks Miss Sessions
+and Mrs. Hexter were wearing.
+
+Johnnie considered his last remark, her gaze still following the
+movements of the Negro fiddler at the head of the room. Understanding
+him to mean that, being a mill-hand herself, she could not get a
+detached view of the matter, and thus see the humour of this attempt to
+make society women of working-girls, Johnnie was yet not affronted. Her
+clear eyes came back from watching Uncle Zeke's manoeuvres and looked
+frankly into the eyes of the man beside her.
+
+"I reckon we are right funny," she assented. "But of course, as you say,
+I wouldn't see that as quick as you would. Sometimes I have to laugh a
+little at Mandy--the girl I was dancing with first this evening
+--but--but she's so good-natured it never hurts her feelings. I don't
+mind being laughed at myself, either."
+
+"Laughed at--you?" inquired Conroy, throwing an immense amount of
+expression into his glance. He was rather a lady's man, and fancied he
+had made pretty fair headway with this beautiful girl whom he still
+supposed to be of the circle of factory owners. "Oh, you mean your work
+among the mill girls here.
+
+"Indeed, I should not laugh at that. I think it's noble for those more
+fortunate to stretch a hand to help their brothers and sisters that
+haven't so good a chance. That's what brought me over here to-night.
+Gray Stoddard explained the plan to me. He doesn't seem to think much of
+it--but then, Gray's a socialist at heart, and you know those socialists
+never believe in organized charity. I tell him he's an anarchist."
+
+"Mr. Stoddard is a mighty good man," agreed Johnnie with sudden
+pensiveness. "They've all been mighty good to me ever since I've been
+here; but I believe Mr. Stoddard has done more for me than any one else.
+He not only lends me books, but he takes time to explain things to me."
+
+Conroy smiled covertly at the simplicity of this young beauty. He
+debated in his mind whether indeed it was not an affected simplicity. Of
+course Gray was devoting himself to her and lending her books; of course
+he would be glad to assume the position of mentor to a girl who bade
+fair to be such a pronounced social success, and who was herself
+so charming.
+
+"How long have you been in Cottonville, Miss Consadine?" he asked. "Do
+tell me who you are visiting--or are you visiting here?"
+
+"Oh, no," Johnnie corrected him. "I believe you haven't understood from
+the first that I'm one of the mill girls. I board at--well, everybody
+calls it Pap Himes's boarding-house."
+
+There was a moment's silence; but Conroy managed not to look quite as
+deeply surprised as he felt.
+
+"I--of course I knew it," he began at length, after having sorted and
+discarded half a dozen explanations. "There--why, there's our dance!"
+And he stood up in relief, as the fiddlers began on an old-fashioned
+quadrille.
+
+Johnnie responded with alacrity, not aware of having either risen or
+fallen in her companion's estimation. She danced through the set with
+smiling enjoyment, prompting her partner, who knew only modern dances.
+On his part Conroy studied her covertly, trying to adjust his slow mind
+to this astonishing new state of things, and to decide what a man's
+proper attitude might be toward such a girl. In the end he found himself
+with no conclusion.
+
+"They say they're going to try a plain waltz," he began as he led her
+back to a seat. He hesitated, glanced about him, and finally placed
+himself uneasily in the chair beside her. Good Lord! The situation was
+impossible. What should he say if anybody--Gray Stoddard, for
+instance--chaffed him about being smitten in this quarter?
+
+"A waltz?" echoed Johnnie helpfully when he did not go on. "I believe I
+could dance that--I tried it once."
+
+"Then you'll dance it with me?" Conroy found himself saying, baldly,
+awkwardly, but unable, for the life of him, to keep the eagerness out of
+his voice.
+
+Upon the instant the music struck up. The two rose and made ready for
+the dance; Conroy placing Johnnie in waltzing position, and instructing
+her solicitously.
+
+Gray Stoddard looking on, was amazed at the naïf simple jealousy that
+swept over him at the sight. She had danced with Conroy twice
+already--he ought to be more considerate than to bring the girl into
+notice that way--a chump like Charlie Conroy, what would he understand
+of such a nature as Johnnie Consadine's? Before he fully realized his
+own intentions, he had paused in front of the two and was speaking.
+
+"I think Miss Johnnie promised me a dance this evening. I'll have to go
+back to the office in twenty minutes, and--I hate to interrupt you, but
+I guess I'll have to claim my own."
+
+He became suddenly aware that Conroy was signalling him across Johnnie's
+unconscious head with Masonic twistings of the features. Stoddard met
+these recklessly inconsiderate grimacings with an impassive stare, then
+looked away.
+
+"I want to see you before you go," the man from Watauga remarked, as he
+reluctantly resigned his partner. "Don't you forget that there's a waltz
+coming to me, Miss Johnnie. I'm going to have it, if we make the band
+play special for us alone."
+
+Lydia Sessions, passing on the arm of young Baker, glanced at Johnnie,
+star-eyed, pink-cheeked and smiling, with a pair of tall cavaliers
+contending for her favours, and sucked her lips in to that thin, sharp
+line of reprobation Johnnie knew so well. Dismissing her escort
+graciously, she hurried to the little supper room and found another
+member of the committee.
+
+"Come here, Mrs. Hexter. Just look at that, will you?" She called
+attention in a carefully suppressed, but fairly tragic tone, to Stoddard
+and Johnnie dancing together, the only couple on the floor. "None of the
+girls know how to waltz. I am not sure that it would be suitable if they
+did. When I came past, just now, there were two of the men--two--talking
+to John Consadine, and they were all three laughing. I can't think how
+it is that girls of that sort manage to stir things up so and get all
+the men around them."
+
+"Neither can I," said Mrs. Hexter wickedly. "If I did know how, I
+believe I'd do it sometimes myself. What is it you want of me, Miss
+Sessions? I must run back and see to supper, if you don't need me."
+
+"But I do," fretted Lydia. "I want your help. This waltzing and--and
+such things--ought to be stopped."
+
+"All right," rejoined practical Mrs. Hexter. "The quickest way to do it
+is to stop the music."
+
+She had meant the speech as a jeer, but literal-minded Lydia Sessions
+welcomed its suggestion. Hurrying down the long room, she spoke to the
+leader of their small orchestra. The Negro raised to her a brown face
+full of astonishment. His fiddle-bow faltered--stopped. He turned to his
+two fellows and gave hasty directions. The waltz measure died away, and
+a quadrille was announced.
+
+"That was too bad," said Stoddard as they came to a halt; "you were just
+getting the step beautifully."
+
+The girl flashed a swift, sweet look up at him. "I do love to dance,"
+she breathed.
+
+"John, would you be so kind as to come and help in the supper room,"
+Miss Sessions's hasty tones broke in.
+
+She was leaning on Charlie Conroy's arm, and when she departed to hide
+Johnnie safely away in the depths of their impromptu kitchen, it left
+the two men alone together. Conroy promptly fastened upon the other.
+
+Charlie Conroy was a young man who had made up his mind to get on
+socially. Such figures are rarer in America than in the old world. Yet
+Charlie Conroy with his petty ambitions does not stand entirely alone.
+He seriously regarded marriage as a stepping-stone to a circle which
+should include "the best people." That this term did not indicate the
+noblest or most selfless, need hardly be explained. It meant only that
+bit of froth which in each community rides high on the top of the cup,
+and which, in Watauga, was augmented by the mill owners of its suburb of
+Cottonville. Conroy had been grateful for the opportunity to make an
+entry into this circle by means of assisting Miss Sessions in her
+charitable work. That lady herself, as sister-in-law of Jerome Hardwick
+and a descendant of an excellent New England family, he regarded with
+absolute veneration, quite too serious and profound for anything so
+assured as mere admiration.
+
+"I tried to warn you," he began: "but you were bound to get stung."
+
+"I beg your pardon?" returned Stoddard in that civil, colourless
+interrogation which should always check over-familiar speech, even from
+the dullest. But Conroy was not sensitive.
+
+"That big red-headed girl, you know," he said, leaning close and
+speaking in a confidential tone. "I mistook her for a lady. I was going
+my full length--telling her what fun the mill girls were, and trying to
+do the agreeable--when I found out."
+
+"Found out what?" inquired Stoddard. "That she was not a lady?"
+
+"Aw, come off," laughed Conroy. "You make a joke of everything."
+
+"I knew that she was a weaver in the mill," said Stoddard quietly.
+
+Conroy glanced half wistfully over his shoulder in the direction where
+Johnnie had vanished.
+
+"She's a good-looker all right," he said thoughtfully. "And smile--when
+that girl smiles and turns those eyes on you--by George! if she was
+taken to New York and put through one of those finishing schools she'd
+make a sensation in the swagger set."
+
+Stoddard nodded gravely. He had not Conroy's faith in the fashionable
+finishing school; but what he lacked there, he made up in conviction as
+to Johnnie's deserts and abilities.
+
+"There she comes now," said Conroy, as the door swung open to admit a
+couple of girls with trays of coffee cups. "She walks mighty well. I
+wonder where a girl like that learned to carry herself so finely. By
+George, she _is_ a good-looker! She's got 'em all beaten; if she was
+only--. Queer about the accidents of birth, isn't it? Now, what would
+you say, in her heredity, makes a common girl like that step and look
+like a queen?"
+
+Gray Stoddard's face relaxed. A hint of his quizzical, inscrutable smile
+was upon it as he answered.
+
+"Nature doesn't make mistakes. I don't call Johnnie Consadine a common
+girl--it strikes me that she is rather uncommon."
+
+And outside, a young fellow in the Sunday suit of a workingman was
+walking up and down, staring at the lighted windows, catching a glimpse
+now and again of one girl or another, and cursing under his breath when
+he saw Johnnie Consadine.
+
+"Wouldn't go with me to the dance at Watauga--oh no! But she ain't too
+tired to dance with the swells!" he muttered to the darkness. "And I
+can't get a word nor a look out of her. Lord, I don't know what some
+women think!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE NEW BOARDER
+
+Pap Himes was sitting on the front gallery, dozing in the westering
+sunshine. On his lap the big, yellow cat purred and blinked with a
+grotesque resemblance in colouring and expression to his master. It was
+Sunday afternoon, when the toilers were all out of the mills, and most
+of them lying on their beds or gone in to Watauga. The village seemed
+curiously silent and deserted. Through the lazy smoke from his cob pipe
+Pap noticed Shade Buckheath emerge from the store and start up the
+street. He paid no more attention till the young man's voice at the
+porch edge roused him from his half-somnolence.
+
+"Evenin', Pap," said the newcomer.
+
+"Good evenin' yourself," returned Himes with unusual cordiality. He
+liked men, particularly young, vigorous, masterful men. "Come in, Buck,
+an' set a spell. Rest your hat--rest your hat."
+
+It was always Pap's custom to call Shade by the first syllable of his
+second name. Buck is a common by-name for boys in the mountains, and it
+could not be guessed whether the old man used it as a diminutive of the
+surname, or whether he meant merely to nickname this favourite of his.
+
+Shade threw himself on the upper step of the porch and searched in his
+pockets for tobacco.
+
+"Room for another boarder?" he asked laconically.
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"I reckon there's always room, ef it's asked for," he returned. "Hit's
+the one way I got to make me a livin', with Louvany dyin' off and Mavity
+puny like she is. I have obliged to keep the house full, or we'd see the
+bottom of the meal sack."
+
+"All right," agreed Buckheath, rising, and treating the matter as
+terminated. "I'll move my things in a-Monday."
+
+"Hold on thar--hold on, young feller," objected Pap, as Shade turned
+away. It was against all reasonable mountain precedent to trade so
+quickly; but indeed Shade had merely done so with a view to forcing
+through what he well knew to be a doubtful proposition.
+
+"I'm a-holding on," he observed gruffly at last, as the other continued
+to blink at him with red eyes and say nothing. "What's the matter with
+what I said? You told me you had room for another boarder and I named it
+that I was comin' to board at your house. Have you got any objections?"
+
+"Well, yes, I have," Himes opened up ponderously. "You set yourself down
+on that thar step and we'll have this here thing out. My boardin'-house
+is for gals. I fixed it so when I come here. There ain't scarcely a
+rowdy feller in Cottonville that hain't at one time or another had the
+notion he'd board with Pap Himes; but I've always kep' a respectable
+house, and I always aim to, I am a old man, and I bear a good name, and
+I'm the only man in this house, and I aim to stay so. Now, sir, there's
+my flatform; and you may take it or leave it."
+
+Buckheath glanced angrily and contemptuously into the stupid, fatuous
+countenance above him; he appeared to curb with some difficulty the
+disposition to retort in kind. Instead, he returned, sarcastically:
+
+"The fellers around town say you won't keep anything but gals because
+nothin' but gals would put up with your hectorin' 'em, and crowdin' ten
+in a room that was intended for four. That's what folks say; but I've
+got a reason to want to board with you, Pap, and I'll pay regular prices
+and take what you give me."
+
+Himes looked a little astonished; then an expression of distrust stole
+over his broad, flat face.
+
+"What's bringin' you here?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"Johnnie Consadine," returned Shade, without evasion or preamble.
+"Before I left the mountains, Johnnie an' me was aimin' to wed. Now
+she's got down here, and doin' better than ever she hoped to, and I
+cain't get within hand-reach of her."
+
+"Ye cain't?" inquired Pap scornfully. "Why anybody could marry that gal
+that wanted to. But Lord! anybody can marry _any_ gal, if he's got the
+sense he was born with."
+
+"All right," repeated Shade grimly. "I come to you to know could I get
+board, not to ask advice. I aim to marry Johnnie Consadine, and I know
+my own business--air you goin' to board me?"
+
+The old man turned this speech in his mind for some time.
+
+"Curious," he muttered to himself, "how these here young fellers will
+get petted on some special gal and break their necks to have her."
+
+"Shut up--will you?" ejaculated Buckheath, so suddenly and fiercely that
+the old man fairly jumped, rousing the yellow cat to remonstrative
+squirmings. "I tell you I know my business, and I ask no advice of
+you--will you board me?"
+
+"I cain't do it, Buck," returned Himes definitely. "I ain't got such a
+room to give you by yourself as you'd be willin' to take up with; and
+nobody comes into my room. But I'll tell you what I'll do for you--I'll
+meal you, ef that will help your case any. I'll meal you for two dollars
+a week, and throw in a good word with Johnnie."
+
+Buckheath received the conclusion of this speech with a grin.
+
+"I reckon your good word 'd have a lot to do with Johnnie Consadine," he
+said ironically, as he picked up his hat from the floor.
+
+"Uh-huh," nodded Pap. "She sets a heap of store by what I say. All of
+'em does; but Johnnie in particular. I don't know but what you're about
+right. Ain't no sense in bein' all tore up concernin' any gal or woman;
+but I believe if I was pickin' out a good worker that would earn her
+way, I'd as soon pick out Johnnie Consadine as any of 'em."
+
+And having thus paid his ultimate compliment to Johnnie, Himes relapsed
+into intermittent slumber as Shade moved away down the squalid, dusty
+street under the fierce July sun.
+
+Johnnie greeted the new boarder with a reserve which was in marked
+contrast to the reception he got from the other girls. Shade Buckheath
+was a handsome, compelling fellow, and a good match; this Adamless Eden
+regarded him as a rival in glory even to Pap himself. When supper was
+over on the first night of his arrival, Shade walked out on the porch
+and seated himself on the steps. The girls disposed themselves at a
+little distance--your mountain-bred young female is ever obviously shy,
+almost to prudery.
+
+"Whar's Johnnie Consadine?" asked the newcomer lazily, disposing himself
+with his back against a post and his long legs stretched across the
+upper step.
+
+"Settin' in thar, readin' a book," replied Beulah Catlett curtly. Beulah
+was but fourteen, and she belonged to the newer dispensation which
+speaks up more boldly to the masculine half of creation. "Johnnie!
+Johnnie Consadine!" she called through the casement. "Here's Mr.
+Buckheath, wishful of your company. Better come out."
+
+"I will, after a while," returned Johnnie absently. "I've got to help
+Aunt Mavity some, and then I'll be there."
+
+"Hit's a sight, the books that gal does read," complained Beulah. "Looks
+like a body might get enough stayin' in the house by workin' in a cotton
+mill, without humpin' theirselves up over a book all evenin'."
+
+"Mr. Stoddard lends 'em to her," announced Mandy importantly. "He used
+to give 'em to Miss Lyddy Sessions, and she'd give 'em to Johnnie; but
+now when Miss Lyddy's away, he'll bring one down to the mill about every
+so often, and him an' Johnnie'll stand and gas and talk over what's in
+'em--I cain't understand one word they say. I tell you Johnnie
+Consadine's got sense."
+
+Her pride in Johnnie made her miss the look of rage that settled on
+Buckheath's face at her announcement. The young fellow was glad when Pap
+Himes began to speak growlingly.
+
+"Yes, an' if she was my gal I'd talk to her with a hickory about that
+there business. A gal that ain't too old to carry on that-a-way ain't
+too old to take a whippin' for it. Huh!"
+
+For her own self Mandy would have been thoroughly scared by this attack;
+in Johnnie's defence she rustled her feathers like an old hen whose one
+chick has been menaced.
+
+"Johnnie Consadine is the prettiest-behaved gal I ever seen," she
+announced shrilly. "She ain't never said nor done the least thing that
+she hadn't ort. Mr. Stoddard he just sees how awful smart she is, and he
+loves to lend her books and talk with her about 'em afterward. For my
+part I ain't never seen look nor motion about Mr. Gray Stoddard that
+wasn't such as a gentleman ort to be. I know he never said nothin' he
+ort not to _me_."
+
+The suggestion of Stoddard's making advances of unseemly warmth to Mandy
+Meacham produced a subdued snicker. Even Pap smiled, and Mandy herself,
+who had been looking a bit terrified after her bold speaking, was
+reassured.
+
+Buckheath had been a week at the Himes boarding-house, finding it not
+unpleasant to show Johnnie Consadine how many of the girls regarded him
+with favour, whether she did or not, when he came to supper one evening
+with a gleam in his eye that spoke evil for some one. After the meal was
+over, he followed Pap out on the porch and sat down beside the old man,
+the girls being bunched expectantly on the step, for he was apt to delay
+for a bit of chat with one or another of them before leaving.
+
+"You infernal old rascal, I've caught up with you," he whispered,
+leaning close to his host.
+
+Himes clutched the pipe in his teeth till it clicked, and stared in
+helpless resentment at his mealer.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he demanded.
+
+"Speak lower, so the gals won't hear you, or you'll wish you had,"
+counselled Shade. "I sent that there thing on to Washington to get a
+patent on it, and now I find that they was a model of the same there in
+the name of Gideon Himes. What do you make of that?"
+
+Pap stared at the thin strips of metal lying in Shade's hard, brown
+palm.
+
+"The little liar!" he breathed. "She told me she got it up herself." He
+glared at the bits of steel with protruding eyes, and breathed hard.
+
+"Well, she didn't," Shade countered swiftly, taking advantage of the
+turn things were showing. "I made six of 'em; and when I told her to
+bring 'em back and I'd give her some that would wear better, she only
+brought me five. She said she'd lost one here at home, she believed. I
+might have knowed then that you'd get your claws on it ef I wasn't
+mighty peart."
+
+Old Gideon was not listening; he had fallen into a brown study, turning
+the piece of metal in his skilful, wonted, knotty fingers, with their
+spade tips.
+
+"Put it out of sight--quick--here she comes!" whispered Shade; and the
+old man looked up to see Johnnie Consadine in the doorway. A grin of
+triumph grew slowly upon his face, as he gazed from one to the other.
+
+"She did get it up!" he returned in Buckheath's face. "You liar! You're
+a-aimin' to steal it from her. You filed out the pieces like she told
+you to, and when you found it would work, you tried to get a patent on
+it for yo'se'f. Yes, sir, I'm onto _you!_"
+
+Shade looked over his shoulder. The girls had forsaken the steps.
+Despairing of his coming, they were strolling two-and-two after Johnnie
+on the sidewalk.
+
+"It's you and me for it, Pap," he said hardily. "What was _you_ tryin'
+to do? Was you gettin' the patent for Johnnie? Shall I call her up here
+and ask her?"
+
+"No, no," exclaimed the old man hastily. "They ain't no use of puttin'
+sich things in a fool gal's hands. She never heard of a patent--wouldn't
+know one from a hole in the ground. Hit's like you say, Buck--you and
+me for it."
+
+The two men rose and stood a moment, Shade smiling a bit to think what
+he would do with Pap Himes and his claim if he could only once get
+Johnnie to say yes to his suit. The thick wits of the elder man
+apparently realized this feature of the matter not at all.
+
+"Why that thar girl is crazy to get married," he argued, half angrily.
+"You know in reason she is--they all are. The fust night when you brung
+her here I named it to her that she was pretty well along in years, and
+she'd better be spry about gettin' her hooks on a man, or she was left.
+She said she'd do the best she could--I never heered a gal speak up
+pearter--most of 'em would be 'shamed to name it out so free. Why, if it
+was me, I'd walk her down to a justice's office an' wed her so quick her
+head'd swim.
+
+"Who's that talking about getting married?" called Johnnie's voice from
+the street, and Johnnie herself ran up the steps.
+
+"Hit was me," harangued Pap Himes doggedly. "I was tellin' Shade how bad
+you wanted to git off, and that I 'lowed you'd be a good bargain
+for him."
+
+He looked hopefully from one to the other, as though he expected to see
+his advice accepted and put into immediate practice. Johnnie laughed
+whole-heartedly.
+
+"Pap," she said with shining eyes, "if you get me a husband, I'll have
+to give you a commission on it. Looks like I can't noways get one for
+myself, don't it?"
+
+She passed into the house, and Shade regarded his ally in helpless
+anger.
+
+"That's the way she talks, here lately," he growled, "Seems like it
+would be easy enough to come to something; and by the Lord, it would,
+with any other gal I ever seed--or with Johnnie like she was when she
+first came down here! But these days and times she's got a way of
+puttin' me off that I can't seem to get around."
+
+Neither man quite understood the power of that mental culture which
+Johnnie was assimilating so avidly. That reading things in a book should
+enable her--a child, a girl, a helpless woman--to negative their wishes
+smilingly, this would have been a thing quite outside the comprehension
+of either.
+
+"Aunt Mavity wants me to go down to the store for her," Johnnie
+announced, returning. "Any of you girls like to come along?"
+
+Mandy had parted her lips to accept the general invitation, when Shade
+Buckheath rose to his feet and announced curtly, "I'll go with you."
+
+His glance added that nobody else was wanted, and Mandy subsided into a
+seat on the steps and watched the two walk away side by side.
+
+"Looks like you ain't just so awful pleased to have me boardin' with
+Pap," Shade began truculently, when it appeared that the girl was not
+going to open any conversation with him. "Maybe you wasn't a-carin' for
+my company down street this evenin'."
+
+"No," said Johnnie, bluntly but very quietly. "I wish you hadn't come to
+the house to board. I have told you to let me alone."
+
+Shade laughed, an exasperated, mirthless laugh. "You know well enough
+what made me do it," he said sullenly. "If you don't want me to board
+with Pap Himes you can stop it any day you say the word. You promise to
+wed me, and I'll go back to the Inn. The Lord knows they feed you better
+thar, and I believe in my soul the gals at Pap Himes's will run me
+crazy. But as long as you hang off the way you do about our marryin',
+and I git word of you carryin' on with other folks, I'm goin' to stay
+where I can watch you."
+
+"Other folks!" echoed Johnnie, colour coming into her cheeks. "Shade,
+there's no use of your quarrelling with me, and I see it's what you're
+settin' out to do."
+
+"Yes, other folks--Mr. Gray Stoddard, for instance. I ain't got no auto
+to take you out ridin' in, but you're a blame sight safer with me than
+you are with him; and if I was to carry word to your mother or your
+uncle Pros about your doin's they'd say--"
+
+"The last word my uncle Pros left with ma to give me was that you'd bear
+watchin', Shade Buckheath," laughed Johnnie, her face breaking up into
+sweet, sudden mirth at the folly of it all. "You're not aimin' for my
+good. I don't see what on earth makes you talk like you wanted to
+marry me."
+
+"Because I do," said Buckheath helplessly. He wondered if the girl did
+not herself know her own attractions, forgetful that he had not seen
+them plainly till a man higher placed in the social scale set the cachet
+of a gentleman's admiration upon them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE CONTENTS OF A BANDANNA
+
+It was a breathless August evening; all day the land had lain humming
+and quivering beneath the glare of the sun. It seemed that such heat
+must culminate in a thunder shower. Even Pap Himes had sought the
+coolest corner of the porch, his pipe put out, as adding too much to the
+general swelter, and the hot, yellow cat perched at a discreet distance.
+
+The old man's dreamy eyes were fixed with a sort of animal content on
+the winding road that disappeared in the rise of the gap. If was his
+boast that God Almighty never made a day too hot for him, and to the
+marrow of them his rheumatic bones felt and savoured the comfort of this
+blistering weather. High up on the road he had noted a small moving
+speck that appeared and disappeared as the foliage hid it, or gaps in
+the trees revealed it. It was not yet time for the mill operatives to be
+out; but as he glanced eagerly in the direction of the buildings, the
+gates opened and the loom-fixers streamed forth. Pap had matters of some
+importance to discuss with Shade Buckheath, and he was glad to see the
+young man's figure come swinging down the street. The two were soon deep
+in a whispered discussion, their heads bent close together.
+
+The little speck far up the road between the trees announced itself to
+the eye now as a moving figure, walking down toward Cottonville.
+
+"Well, I'll read it again, if you don't believe me," Buckheath said
+impatiently. "All that Alabama mill wants is to have me go over there
+and put this trick on their jennies, and if it works they'll give us a
+royalty of--well, I'll make the bargain."
+
+"Or I will," countered Pap swiftly.
+
+"You?" inquired Shade contemptuously. "Time they wrote some of the
+business down and you couldn't read it, whar'd you be, and whar'd our
+money be?"
+
+The moving speck on the road appeared at this time to be the figure of a
+tall man, walking unsteadily, reeling from side to side of the road, yet
+approaching the village.
+
+"Shade," pacified Himes, with a truckling manner that the younger man's
+aggressions were apt to call out in him, "you know I don't mean anything
+against you, but I believe in my soul I'd ruther sell out the patent.
+That man in Lowell said he'd give twenty thousand dollars if it was
+proved to work--now didn't he?"
+
+"Yes, and by the time it's proved to work we'll have made three times
+that much out of it. There ain't a spinning mill in the country that
+won't save money by putting in the indicator, and paying us a good
+royalty on it. If Johnnie and me was wedded, I'd go to work to-morrow
+advertising the thing."
+
+"The gal ain't in the mill this afternoon, is she?" asked old Himes.
+
+"No, she's gone off somewheres with some folks Hardwick's sister-in-law
+has got here. If you want to find her these days, you've got to hunt in
+some of the swell houses round on the hills."
+
+He spoke with bitterness, and Pap nodded comprehendingly; the subject
+was an old one between them. Then Shade drew from his pocket a letter
+and prepared to read it once more to the older man.
+
+"Whar's Johnnie?"
+
+Himes started so violently that he disturbed the equilibrium of his
+chair and brought the front legs to the floor with a slam, so that he
+sat staring straight ahead. Shade Buckheath whirled and saw Pros
+Passmore standing at the foot of the steps--the moving speck come to
+full size. The old man was a wilder-looking figure than usual. He had no
+hat on, and a bloody cloth bound around his head confined the straggling
+gray locks quaintly. The face was ghastly, the clothing in tatters, and
+his hands trembled as they clutched a bandanna evidently full of some
+small articles that rattled together in his shaking grasp.
+
+"Good Lord--Pros! You mighty nigh scared me out of a year's growth,"
+grumbled Pap, hitching vainly to throw his chair back into position.
+"Come in. Come in. You look like you'd been seein' trouble."
+
+"Whar's Johnnie?" repeated old Pros hollowly.
+
+It was the younger man who answered this time, with an ugly lift of the
+lip over his teeth, between a sneer and a snarl.
+
+"She's gone gaddin' around with some of her swell friends. She may be
+home before midnight, an' then again she may not," he said.
+
+The old man collapsed on the lower step.
+
+"I wish't Johnnie was here," he said querulously. "I--" he looked about
+him confusedly--"I've found her silver mine."
+
+At the words the two on the porch became suddenly rigid. Then Buckheath
+sprang down the steps, caught Passmore under the arm-pits and half led,
+half dragged him up to a chair, into which he thrust him with
+little ceremony.
+
+He stood before the limp figure, peering into the newcomer's face with
+eyes of greed and hands that clenched and unclenched themselves
+automatically.
+
+"You've found the silver mine!" he volleyed excitedly. "Whose land is it
+on? Have you got options yet? My grandpappy always said they was a
+silver mine--"
+
+"Hush!" Pap Himes's voice hissed across the loud explosive tones. "No
+need to tell your business to the town. I'll bet Pros ain't thought
+about no options yit. He may need friends to he'p him out on such
+matters; and here's you and me, Buck--God knows he couldn't have
+better ones."
+
+The old man stared about him in a dazed fashion.
+
+"I've got my specimens in this here bandanner," he explained
+quaveringly. "I fell over the ledge, was the way I chanced upon it at
+the last, and I lay dead for a spell. My head's busted right bad. But
+the ore specimens, they're right here in the bandanner, and I aimed to
+give 'em to Johnnie--to put 'em right in her lap--the best gal that ever
+was--and say to her, 'Here's your silver mine, honey, that your
+good-for-nothin' old uncle found for ye; now you can live like a lady!'
+That's what I aimed to say to Johnnie. I didn't aim that nobody else
+should tetch them samples till she'd saw 'em."
+
+Himes and Buckheath were exchanging glances across the old man's bent,
+gray head. Common humanity would have suggested that they offer him rest
+or refreshment, but these two were intent only on what the
+bandanna held.
+
+What is it in the thought of wealth from the ground that so intoxicates,
+so ravishes away from all reasonable judgment, the generality of
+mankind? People never seem to conceive that there might be no more than
+moderate repayal for great toil in a mine of any sort. The very word
+mine suggests to them tapping the vast treasure-house of the world, and
+drawing an unlimited share--wealth lavish, prodigal, intemperate. These
+two were as mad with greed at the thought of the silver mine in the
+mountains as ever were forty-niners in the golden days of California, or
+those more recent ignoble martyrs who strewed their bones along the icy
+trails of the Klondike.
+
+"Ye better let me look at 'em Pros," wheedled Pap Himes. "I know a heap
+about silver ore. I've worked in the Georgia gold mines--and you know
+you never find gold without silver. I was three months in the mountains
+with a feller that was huntin' nickel; he l'arned me a heap."
+
+The old man turned his disappointed gaze from one face to the other.
+
+"I wish't Johnnie was here," he repeated his plaintive formula, as he
+raised the handkerchief and untied the corners.
+
+Pap glanced apprehensively up and down the street; Buckheath ran to the
+door and shut it, that none in the house might see or overhear; and then
+the three stared at the unpromising-looking, earthy bits of mineral in
+silence. Finally Himes put down a stubby forefinger and stirred them
+meaninglessly.
+
+"Le' me try one with my knife," he whispered, as though there were any
+one to hear him.
+
+"All right," returned the old man nervelessly. "But hit ain't soft
+enough for lead--if that's what you're meanin'. I know that much. A lead
+mine is a mighty good thing. Worth as much as silver maybe; but this
+ain't lead."
+
+A curious tremor had come over Pap Himes's face as he furtively compared
+the lump of ore he held in his hand with something which he took from
+his pocket. He seemed to come to some sudden resolution.
+
+"No, 'tain't lead--and 'tain't nothin'," he declared contemptuously,
+flinging the bit he held back into the handkerchief. "Pros Passmore--ye
+old fool--you come down here and work us all up over some truck that
+wasn't worth turnin' with a spade! You might as well throw them things
+away. Whar in the nation did you git 'em, anyhow?"
+
+Passmore stumbled to his feet. He had eaten nothing for three days. The
+fall over the ledge had injured him severely. He was scarcely sane at
+the moment.
+
+"Ain't they no 'count?" he asked pitifully. "Why, I made shore they was
+silver. Well"--he looked aimlessly about--"I better go find Johnnie,"
+and he started down the steps.
+
+"Leave 'em here, Pros, and go in. Mavity'll give you a cup of coffee,"
+suggested Pap, in a kinder tone.
+
+The bandanna slipped rattling from the old man's relaxed fingers. The
+specimens clattered and rolled on the porch floor. With drooping head he
+shambled through the door.
+
+A woman's face disappeared for a moment from the shadowy front-room
+window, only to reappear and watch unseen. Mavity was listening in a
+sort of horror as she heard her father's tones.
+
+"Git down and pick 'em up--every one! Don't you miss a one. Yo' eyes is
+younger'n mine. Hunt 'em up! hunt 'em up," hissed Pap, casting himself
+upon the handkerchief and its contents.
+
+"What is it?" questioned Buckheath keenly. "I thort you had some game on
+hand." And he hastened to comply. "Air they really silver?"
+
+[Illustration: HE LOOMED ABOVE THEM, WHITE AND SHAKING. "YOU THIEVES,"
+HE ROARED. "GIVE ME MY BANDANNER! GIVE ME JOHNNIE'S SILVER MINE!"]
+
+"No--better'n that. They're nickel. The feller that was here from the
+North said by the dips and turns of the stratagems an' such-like we was
+bound to have nickel in these here mountains somewhar. A nickel mine's
+better'n a gold mine--an' these is nickel. I know 'em by the piece o'
+nickel ore from the Canady mines that I carry constantly in my pocket.
+We'll keep the old fool out of the knowin' of it, and find whar the mine
+is at, and we'll--"
+
+The two men squatted on the floor, tallying over the specimens they had
+already collected, and looking about them for more. In the doorway
+behind them appeared a face, gaunt, grimed, a blood-stained bandage
+around the brow, and a pair of glowing, burning eyes looking out
+beneath. Uncle Pros had failed to find Mavity Bence, and was returning.
+Too dazed to comprehend mere words, the old prospector read instantly
+and aright the attitude and expression of the two. As they tied the last
+knot in the handkerchief, he loomed above them, white and shaking.
+
+"You thieves!" he roared. "Give me my bandanner! Give me Johnnie's
+silver mine!"
+
+"Yes--yes--yes! Don't holler it out that-a-way!" whispered Pap Himes
+from the floor, where he crouched, still clutching the precious bits
+of ore.
+
+"We was a-goin' to give 'em to you, Uncle Pros. We was just foolin',"
+Buckheath attempted to reassure him.
+
+The old man bent forward and shot down a long arm to recover his own. He
+missed the bandanna, and the impetus of the movement sent him staggering
+a pace or two forward. At the porch edge he strove to recover himself,
+failed, and with a short, coughing groan, pitched down the steps and
+lay, an inert mass, at their foot.
+
+"Cover that handkecher up," whispered Himes before either man moved to
+his assistance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A PATIENT FOR THE HOSPITAL
+
+When the Hardwick carriage drove up in the heavy, ill-odoured August
+night, and stopped at the gate to let Johnnie Consadine out, Pap Himes's
+boarding-house was blazing with light from window and doorway, clacking
+and humming like a mill with the sound of noisy footsteps and voices.
+Three or four men argued and talked loudly on the porch. Through the
+open windows of the front room, Johnnie had a glimpse of a long, stark
+figure lying on the lounge, and a white face which struck her with a
+strange pang of vague yet alarming resemblance. She made her hasty
+thanks to Miss Sessions and hurried in. Gray Stoddard's horse was
+standing at the hitching post in front, and Gray met her at the head of
+the steps.
+
+Stoddard looked particularly himself in riding dress. Its more
+unconventional lines suited him well; the dust-brown Norfolk, the
+leathern puttees, gave an adventurous turn to the expression of a
+personality which was only so on the mental side. He always rode
+bareheaded, and the brown hair, which he wore a little longer than other
+men's, was tossed from its masculine primness to certain hyacinthine
+lines which were becoming. Just now his clear brown eyes were luminous
+with feeling. He put out a swift, detaining hand and caught hers, laying
+sympathetic fingers over the clasp and retaining it as he spoke.
+
+"I'm so relieved that you've come at last," he said. "We need somebody
+of intelligence here. I just happened to come past a few minutes after
+the accident. Don't be frightened; your uncle came down to see you, and
+got a fall somehow. He's hurt pretty badly, I'm afraid, and these people
+are refusing to have him taken to the hospital."
+
+On the one side Himes and Buckheath drew back and regarded this scene
+with angry derision. In the carriage below Lydia Sessions, who could
+hear nothing that was said, stared incredulously, and moved as though to
+get down and join Johnnie.
+
+"You'll want him sent to the hospital?" Stoddard urged, half
+interrogatively. "Look in there. Listen to the noise. This is no fit
+place for a man with a possible fracture of the skull."
+
+"Yes--oh, yes," agreed Johnnie promptly. "If I could nurse him myself
+I'd like to--or help; but of course he's got to go to the hospital,
+first of everything."
+
+Stoddard motioned the Hardwick driver to wait, and called down to the
+carriage load, "I want you people to drive round by the hospital and
+send the ambulance, if you'll be so kind. There's a man hurt in here."
+
+Lydia Sessions made this an immediate pretext for getting down and
+coming in.
+
+"Did you say they didn't want to send him to the hospital?" she inquired
+sharply and openly, in her tactless fashion, as she crossed the
+sidewalk. "That's the worst thing about such people; you provide them
+with the best, and they don't know enough to appreciate it. Have they
+got a doctor, or done anything for the poor man?"
+
+"I sent for Millsaps, here--he knows more about broken bones than
+anybody in Cottonville," Pap offered sullenly, mopping his brow and
+shaking his bald head. "Millsaps is a decent man. You know what _he's_
+a-goin' to do to the sick."
+
+"Is he a doctor?" asked Stoddard sternly, looking the lank, shuffling
+individual named.
+
+"He can doctor a cow or a nag better'n anybody ever saw," Pap put
+forward rather shamefacedly.
+
+"A veterinarian," commented Stoddard. "Well, they've gone for the
+ambulance, and the surgeon will soon be here now."
+
+"I don't know nothin' about veterinarians and surgeons," growled Pap,
+still alternately mopping his bald head and shaking it contemptuously;
+"but I know that Millsaps ain't a-goin' to box up any dead bodies and
+send 'em to the medical colleges; and I know he made as pretty a job of
+doctoring old Spotty has ever I seen. To be shore the cow died, but he
+got the medicine down her when it didn't look as if human hands could do
+it--that's the kind of doctor he is."
+
+"I aim to give Mr. Passmore a teaspoonful of lamp oil--karosene," said
+the cow doctor, coming forward, evidently feeling that it was time he
+spoke up himself. "Lamp oil is mighty rousin' to them as late like he's
+doin'. I've used copperas for such--but takes longer. Some say a dose of
+turpentine is better lamp oil--but I 'low both of 'em won't hurt."
+
+Johnnie pushed past them all into the front room where the women were
+running about, talking lot and exclaiming. A kerosene lamp without a
+chimney smoked and flared on the table, filling the room with evil
+odours. Pros Passmore's white face thrown up against the lounge cushion
+was the only quiet, dignified object in sight.
+
+"Mandy," said Johnnie, catching the Meacham woman by the elbow as she
+passed her bearing a small kerosene can, "you go up to my room and get
+the good lamp I have there. Then take this thing away. Where's
+Aunt Mavity?"
+
+"I don't know. She's been carryin' on somethin turrible. Yes, Johnnie,
+honey--I'll get the lamp for ye."
+
+When Johnnie turned to her uncle, she found Millsaps bending above him,
+the small can in his hands, its spout approached to the rigid blue lips
+of the patient with the unconcern of a man about to fill a lamp. She
+sprang forward and caught his arm, bringing the can away with a clatter
+and splash.
+
+"You mustn't do that," she said authoritatively. "The doctors will be
+here in a minute. You mustn't give him anything, Mr. Millsaps."
+
+"Oh, all right--all right," agreed Millsaps, with decidedly the air that
+he considered it all wrong.
+
+"There is some people that has objections to having their kin-folks
+cyarved up by student doctors. Then agin, there is others that has no
+better use for kin than to let 'em be so treated. I 'low that a little
+dosin' of lamp oil never hurt nobody--and it's cured a-many, of most any
+kind of disease. But just as you say--just as you say." And he shuffled
+angrily from the room.
+
+Johnnie went and knelt by the lounge. With deft, careful fingers she
+lifted the wet cloths above the bruised forehead. The hurt looked old.
+No blood was flowing, and she wondered a little. Catching Shade
+Buckheath's eye fixed on her from outside the window, she beckoned him
+in and asked him to tell her exactly how the trouble came about.
+Buckheath gave her his own version of the matter, omitting, of course,
+all mention of the bandanna full of ore which lay now carefully hidden
+at the bottom of old Gideon Himes's trunk.
+
+"And you say he fell down the steps?" asked Johnnie. "Who was with him?
+Who saw it?"
+
+"Nobody but me and Pap," Shade answered, trying to give the reply
+unconcernedly.
+
+"I--I seen it," whispered Mavity Bence, plucking at Johnnie's sleeve. "I
+was in the fore room here--and I seen it all."
+
+She spoke defiantly, but her terrified glance barely raised itself to
+the menacing countenances of the two men on the other side of the
+lounge, and fell at once. "I never heard nothin' they was sayin'," she
+made haste to add. "But I seen Pros fall, and I run out and helped Pap
+and Shade fetch him in."
+
+Peculiar as was the attitude of all three, Johnnie felt a certain relief
+in the implied assurance that there had been no quarrel, that her uncle
+had not been struck or knocked down the steps.
+
+"Why, Pap," she said kindly, looking across at the old man's perturbed,
+sweating face, "you surely ain't like these foolish folks round here in
+Cottonville that think the hospital was started up to get dead bodies
+for the student doctors to cut to pieces. You see how bad off Uncle Pros
+is; you must know he's bound to be better taken care of there in that
+fine building, and with all those folks that have learned their business
+to take care of him, than here in this house with only me. Besides, I
+couldn't even stay at home from the mill to nurse him. Somebody's got to
+earn the money."
+
+"I wouldn't charge you no board, Johnnie," fairly whined Himes. "I'm
+willin' to nurse Pros myself, without he'p, night and day. You speak up
+mighty fine for that thar hospital. What about Lura Dawson? Everybody
+knows they shipped her body to Cincinnati and sold it. You ort to be
+ashamed to put your poor old uncle in such a place."
+
+Johnnie turned puzzled eyes from the rigid face on the lounge--Pros had
+neither moved nor spoken since they lifted and laid him there--to the
+old man at the window. That Pap Himes should be concerned, even
+slightly, about the welfare of any living being save himself, struck her
+as wildly improbable. Then, swiftly, she reproached herself for not
+being readier to believe good of him. He and Uncle Pros had been boys
+together, and she knew her uncle one to deserve affection, though he
+seldom commanded it.
+
+There was a sound of wheels outside, and Gray Stoddard's voice with that
+of the doctor's. Shade and Pap Himes still hovered nervously about the
+window, staring in and hearkening to all that was said, Mavity Bence had
+wept till her face was sodden. She herded the other girls back out of
+the way, but watched everything with terrified eyes.
+
+"He'll jest about come to hisself befo' he dies," the older conspirator
+muttered to Shade as the stretcher passed them, and the skilled,
+white-jacketed attendants laid Pros Passmore in the vehicle without so
+much as disturbing his breathing. "He'll jest about come to hisself
+thar, and them pesky doctors 'll have word about the silver mine. Well,
+in this world, them that has, gits, mostly. Ef Johnnie Consadine had
+been any manner o' kin to me, I vow I'd 'a' taken a hickory to her when
+she set up her word agin' mine and let him go out of the house. The
+little fool! she didn't know what she was sendin' away."
+
+And so Pros Passmore was taken to the hospital. His bandanna full of ore
+remained buried at the bottom of Gideon Himes's trunk, to be fished up
+often by the old sinner, fingered and fondled, and laid back in hiding;
+while the man who had carried it down the mountains to fling it in
+Johnnie's lap lay with locked lips, and told neither the doctors nor
+Himes where the silver mine was. August sweated itself away; September
+wore on into October in a procession of sun-robed, dust-sandalled days,
+and still Uncle Pros gave no sign of actual recovery.
+
+Johnnie was working hard in the mill. Hartley Sessions had become, in
+his cold, lifeless fashion, very much her friend. Inert, slow, he had
+one qualification for his position: he could choose an assistant, or
+delegate authority with good judgment; and he found in Johnnie Consadine
+an adjutant so reliable, so apt, and of such ability, that he
+continually pushed more work upon her, if pay and honours did not always
+follow in adequate measure.
+
+For a time, much as she disliked to approach Shade with any request,
+Johnnie continued to urge him whenever they met to finish up the
+indicators and let her have them back again. Then Hartley Sessions
+promoted her to a better position in the weaving department, and other
+cares drove the matter from her mind.
+
+The condition of Uncle Pros added fearfully to the drains upon her time
+and thought. The old man lay in his hospital cot till the great frame
+had wasted fairly to the big bones, following her movements when she
+came into the room with strange, questioning, unrecognizing eyes, yet
+always quieted and soothed by her presence, so that she felt urged to
+give him every moment she could steal from her work. The hurts on his
+head, which were mere scalp wounds, healed over; the surgeon at the
+hospital was unable to find any indentation or injury to the skull
+itself which would account for the old man's condition. They talked for
+a long time of an operation, and did finally trephine, without result.
+They would make an X-ray photograph, they said, when he should be strong
+enough to stand it, as a means of further investigation.
+
+Meantime his expenses, though made fairly nominal to her, cut into the
+money which Johnnie could send to her mother, and she was full of
+anxiety for the helpless little family left without head or protector up
+in that gash of the wind-grieved mountains on the flank of Big Unaka.
+
+In these days Shade Buckheath vacillated from the suppliant attitude to
+the threatening. Johnnie never knew when she met him which would be
+uppermost; and since he had wearied out her gratitude and liking, she
+cared little. One thing surprised and touched her a bit, and that was
+that Shade used to meet her of an evening when she would be coming from
+the hospital, and ask eagerly after the welfare of Uncle Pros. He
+finally begged her to get him a chance to see the old man, and she did
+so, but his presence seemed to have such a disturbing effect on the
+patient that the doctors prohibited further visits.
+
+"Well, I done just like you told me to, and them cussed sawboneses won't
+let me go back no more," Shade reported to Pap Himes that evening. "Old
+Pros just swelled hisself out like a toad and hollered at me time I got
+in the room. He's sure crazy all right. He looks like he couldn't last
+long, but them that heirs what he has will git the writin' that tells
+whar the silver mine's at. Johnnie's liable to find that writin' any
+day; or he may come to hisself and tell her."
+
+"Well, for God's sake," retorted Pap Himes testily, "why don't you wed
+the gal and be done with it? You wed Johnnie Consadine and get that
+writin', and I'll never tell on you 'bout the old man and such; and you
+and me'll share the mine."
+
+Shade gave him a black look.
+
+"You're a good talker," he said sententiously. "If I could _do_ things
+as easy as you can _tell_ 'em, I'd be president."
+
+"Huh!" grunted the old man. "Marryin' a fool gal--or any other
+woman--ain't nothin' to do. If I was your age I'd have her Miz Himes
+before sundown."
+
+"All right," said Buckheath, "if it's so damn' easy done--this here
+marryin'--do some of it yourself. Thar's Laurelly Consadine; she's a
+widow; and more kin to Pros than Johnnie is. You go up in the mountains
+and wed her, and I'll stand by ye in the business."
+
+A slow but ample grin dawned on the old man's round, foolish face. He
+looked admiringly at Shade.
+
+"By Gosh!" he said finally. "That ain't no bad notion, neither. 'Course
+I can do it. They all want to wed. And thar's Laurelly--light-minded
+fool--ain't got the sense she was born with--up thar without Pros nor
+Johnnie--I could persuade her to take off her head and play pitch-ball
+with it--Lord, yes!"
+
+"Well, you've bragged about enough," put in Buckheath grimly. "You git
+down in the collar and pull."
+
+The old man gave him no heed. He was still grinning fatuously.
+
+"It 'minds me of Zack Shalliday, and the way he got wedded," came the
+unctuous chuckle. "Zack was a man 'bout my age, and his daughter was
+a-keepin' house for him. She was a fine hand to work; the best butter
+maker on the Unakas; Zack always traded his butter for a extry price.
+But old as Sis Shalliday was--she must 'a' been all of twenty-seven
+--along comes a man that takes a notion to her. She named it
+to Zack. 'All right,' says he, 'you give me to-morrow to hunt me up one
+that's as good a butter maker as you air, and I've got no objections.'
+Then he took hisself down to Preacher Blaylock, knowin' in reason that
+preachers was always hungry for weddin' fees, and would hustle round to
+make one. He offered the preacher a dollar to give him a list of names
+of single women that was good butter makers. Blaylock done so. He'd say,
+'Now this 'n's right fine-looking, but I ain't never tasted her butter.
+Here's one that ain't much to look at, but her butter is prime--jest
+like your gal's; hit allers brings a leetle extry at the store. This
+'n's fat, yet I can speak well of her workin' qualifications,' He named
+'em all out to Zack, and Zack had his say for each one. 'The fat ones is
+easy keepers,' he says for the last one, 'and looks don't cut much
+figger in this business--it all depends on which one makes the best
+butter anyhow.'
+
+"Well, he took that thar string o' names, and he left. 'Long about
+sundown, here he is back and hollerin' at the fence. 'Come out here,
+preacher--I've got her,' He had a woman in his buggy that Blaylock had
+never put eyes on in all his born days. 'Wouldn't none o' them I sent ye
+to have ye?' the preacher asked Zack in a kind of whisper, when he
+looked at that thar snaggle-toothed, cross-eyed somebody that
+Shalliday'd fetched back. 'I reckon they would,' says Zack. 'I reckon
+any or all of 'em would 'a' had me,' he says. 'I had only named it to
+three o' the four, and I hadn't closed up with none o' them, becaze I
+wasn't quite satisfied in my mind about the butter makin'. And as I was
+goin' along the road toward the last name you give me, I come up with
+this here woman. She was packin' truck down to the store for to trade
+it. I offered her a lift and she rid with me a spell. I chanced to tell
+her of what I was out after, and she let on that she was a widder, and
+showed me the butter she had--hit was all made off of one cow, and the
+calf is three months old. I wasn't a-goin' to take nobody's word in such
+a matter, and hauled her on down to the store and seed the storekeeper
+pay her extry for that thar butter--and here we air. Tie the knot,
+preacher; yer dollar is ready for ye, and we must be gittin' along
+home--it's 'most milkin' time,' The preacher he tied the knot, and
+Shalliday and the new Miz. Shalliday they got along home." The old man
+chuckled as he had at the beginning of this tale.
+
+"Well, that was business," agreed Shade impatiently. "When are you goin'
+to start for Big Unaka?"
+
+The old man rolled his great head between his shoulders.
+
+"Ye-ah," he assented; "business. But it was bad business for Zack
+Shalliday. That thar woman never made a lick of that butter she was a
+packin' to the settlement to trade for her sister that was one o' them
+widders the preacher had give him the name of. Seems Shalliday's woman
+had jest come in a-visitin' from over on Big Smoky, and she turned out
+to be the laziest, no-accountest critter on the Unakas. She didn't know
+which end of a churn-dasher was made for use. Aw--law--huh!
+Business--there's two kinds of business; but that was a bad business for
+Zack Shalliday. I reckon I'll go up on Unaka to-morrow, if Mavity can
+run the house without me."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WEDDING BELLS
+
+A vine on Mavity Bence's porch turned to blood crimson. Its leaves
+parted from the stem in the gay Autumn wind, and sifted lightly down to
+join the painted foliage of the two little maples which struggled for
+existence against an adverse world, crouching beaten and torn at
+the curb.
+
+In these days Johnnie used to leave the mill in the evening and go
+directly to the hospital. Gray Stoddard was her one source of
+comfort--and terror. Uncle Pros's injuries brought these two into closer
+relations than anything had yet done. So far, Johnnie had conducted her
+affairs with a judgment and propriety extraordinary, clinging as it were
+to the skirts of Lydia Sessions, keeping that not unwilling lady between
+her and Stoddard always. But the injured man took a great fancy to Gray.
+Johnnie he had forgotten; Shade and Pap Himes he recognized only by an
+irritation which made the doctors exclude them from his presence; but
+something in Stoddard's equable, disciplined personality, appealed to
+and soothed Uncle Pros when even Johnnie failed.
+
+The old mountaineer had gone back to childhood. He would lie by the hour
+murmuring a boy's woods lore to Gray Stoddard, communicating deep
+secrets of where a bee tree might be found; where, known only to him,
+there was a deeply hidden spring of pure freestone water, "so cold it'll
+make yo' teeth chatter"; and which one of old Lead's pups seemed likely
+to turn out the best coon dog.
+
+When Stoddard's presence and help had been proffered to herself, Johnnie
+had not failed to find a gracious way of declining or avoiding; but you
+cannot reprove a sick man--a dying man. She could not for the life of
+her find a way to insist that Uncle Pros make less demand on the young
+mill owner's time.
+
+And so the two of them met often at the bedside, and that trouble which
+was beginning to make Johnnie's heart like lead grew with the growing
+love Gray Stoddard commanded. She told herself mercilessly that it was
+presumption, folly, wickedness; she was always going to be done with it;
+but, once more in his presence, her very soul cried out that she was
+indeed fit at least to love him, if not to hope for his love in turn.
+
+Stoddard himself was touched by the old man's fancy, and showed a
+devotion and patience that were characteristic.
+
+If she was kept late at the hospital, Mavity put by a bite of cold
+supper for her, and Mandy always waited to see that she had what she
+wanted. On the day after Shade Buckheath and Gideon Himes had come to
+their agreement, she stopped at the hospital for a briefer stay than
+usual. Her uncle was worse, and an opiate had been administered to quiet
+him, so that she only sat a while at the bedside and finally took her
+way homeward in a state of utter depression for which she could
+scarcely account.
+
+It was dusk--almost dark--when she reached the gate, and she noted
+carelessly a vehicle drawn up before it.
+
+"Johnnie," called her mother's voice from the back of the rickety old
+wagon as the girl was turning in toward the steps.
+
+"Sis' Johnnie--Sis' Johnnie!" crowed Deanie; and then she was aware of
+sober, eleven-year-old Milo climbing down over the wheel and trying to
+help Lissy, while Pony got in his way and was gravely reproved. She ran
+to the wheel and put up ready arms.
+
+"Why, honeys!" she exclaimed. "How come you-all never let me know to
+expect you? Oh, I'm so glad, mother. I didn't intend to send you word to
+come; but I was feeling so blue. I sure wanted to. Maybe Uncle Pros
+might know you--or the baby--and it would do him good."
+
+She had got little Deanie out in her arms now, and stood hugging the
+child, bending to kiss Melissa, finding a hand to pat Milo's shoulder
+and rub Pony's tousled poll.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!--I'm so glad to see you-all," she kept repeating. "Who
+brought you?" She looked closely at the man on the driver's seat and
+recognized Gideon Himes.
+
+"Why, Pap!" she exclaimed. "I'll never forget you for this. It was
+mighty good of you."
+
+The door swung open, letting out a path of light.
+
+"Aunt Mavity!" cried the girl. "Mother and the children have come down
+to see me. Isn't it fine?"
+
+Mavity Bence made her appearance in the doorway, her faded eyes so
+reddened with weeping that she looked like a woman in a fever. She
+gulped and stared from her father, where in the shine of her upheld lamp
+he sat blinking and grinning, to Laurella Consadine in a ruffled
+pink-and-white lawn frock, with a big, rose-wreathed hat on her dark
+curls, and Johnnie Consadine with the children clinging about her.
+
+"Have ye told her?" she gasped. And at the tone Johnnie turned quickly,
+a sudden chill falling upon her glowing mood.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked, startled, clutching the baby tighter to
+her, and conning over with quick alarm the tow-heads that bobbed and
+surged about her waist. "The children are all right--aren't they?"
+
+Milo looked up apprehensively. He was an old-faced, anxious-looking,
+little fellow, already beginning to have a stoop to his thin
+shoulders--the bend of the burden bearer.
+
+"I--I done the best I could, Sis' Johnnie," he hesitated apologetically.
+"You wasn't thar, and Unc' Pros was gone, an' I thest worked the farm
+and took care of mother an' the little 'uns best I knowed how. But when
+she--when he--oh, I wish't you and Unc' Pros had been home to-day."
+
+Johnnie, her mind at rest about the children, turned to her mother.
+
+"Was ma sick?" she asked sympathetically. Then, noticing for the first
+time the unwonted gaiety of Laurella's costume, the glowing cheeks and
+bright eyes, she smiled in relief.
+
+"You don't look sick. My, but you're fine! You're as spick and span as a
+bride."
+
+The old man bent and spat over the wheel, preparatory to speaking, but
+his daughter took the words from his mouth.
+
+"She is a bride," explained Mavity Bence in a flatted, toneless voice.
+"Leastways, Pap said he was a-goin' up on Unaka for to wed her and bring
+her down--and I know in reason she'd have him."
+
+Johnnie's terror-stricken eyes searched her mother's irresponsible,
+gypsy face.
+
+"Now, Johnnie," fretted the little woman, "how long air you goin' to
+keep us standin' here in the road? Don't you think my frock's pretty? Do
+they make em that way down here in the big town? I bought this lawn at
+Bledsoe, with the very first money you sent up. Ain't you a bit glad
+to see us?"
+
+The lip trembled, the tragic dark brows lifted in their familiar slant.
+
+"Come on in the house," said Johnnie heavily, and she led the way with
+drooping head.
+
+Called by the unusual disturbance, Mandy left the supper she was putting
+on the table for Johnnie and ran into the front hall. Beulah Catlett and
+one or two of the other girls had crowded behind Mavity Bence's
+shoulders, and were staring. Mandy joined them in time to hear the
+conclusion of Mavity's explanation.
+
+She came through the door and passed the new Mrs. Himes on the porch.
+
+"Why, Johnnie Consadine" she cried. "Is that there your ma?"
+
+Johnnie nodded. She was past speech.
+
+"Well, I vow! I should've took her for your sister, if any kin. Ain't
+she pretty? Beulah--she's Johnnie's ma, and her and Pap has just
+been wedded."
+
+She turned to follow Johnnie, who was mutely starting the children in to
+the house.
+
+"Well," she said with a sigh, "some folks gits two, and some folks don't
+git nary one." And she brought up the rear of the in-going procession.
+
+"Ain't you goin' to pack your plunder in?" inquired the bridegroom
+harshly, almost threateningly, as he pitched out upon the path a number
+of bundles and boxes.
+
+"I reckon they won't pester it till you git back from puttin' up the
+nag," returned Laurella carelessly as she swung her light, frilled
+skirts and tripped across the porch. "You needn't werry about me," she
+called down to the old fellow where he sat speechlessly glaring.
+"Mavity'll show me whar I can sit, and git me a nice cool drink; and
+that's all I'll need for one while."
+
+Pap Himes's mouth was open, but no words came.
+
+He finally shut it with that click of the ill-fitting false teeth which
+was familiar--and terrible--to everybody at the boarding-house, shook
+out the lines over the old horse, and jogged away into the dusk.
+
+"And this here's the baby," admired Mandy, kneeling in front of little
+Deanie, when the newcomers halted in the front room. "Why, Johnnie
+Consadine! She don't look like nothin' on earth but a little copy of
+you. If she's dispositioned like you, I vow I'll just about love her
+to death."
+
+Mavity Bence was struggling up the porch steps loaded with the baggage
+of the newcomers.
+
+"Better leave that for your paw," the bride counselled her. "It's more
+suited to a man person to lift them heavy things."
+
+But Mavity had not lived with Pap Himes for nearly forty years without
+knowing what was suited to him, in distinction, perhaps, from mankind in
+general. She made no reply, but continued to bring in the baggage, and
+Johnnie, after settling her mother in a rocking-chair with the cool
+drink which the little woman had specified, hurried down to help her.
+
+"Everybody always has been mighty good to me all my life," Laurella
+Himes was saying to Mandy, Beulah and the others. "I reckon they always
+will. Uncle Pros he just does for me like he was my daddy, and my
+children always waited on me. Johnnie's the best gal that ever was, ef
+she does have some quare notions."
+
+"Ain't she?" returned Mandy enthusiastically, as Johnnie of the "quare
+notions" helped Mavity Bence upstairs with the one small trunk belonging
+to Laurella.
+
+"Look out for that trunk, Johnnie," came her mother's caution, with a
+girlish ripple of laughter in the tones. "Hit's a borried one. Now don't
+you roach up and git mad. I had obliged to have a trunk, bein' wedded
+and comin' down to the settlement this-a-way. I only borried Mildred
+Faidley's. She won't never have any use for it. Evelyn Toler loaned me
+the trimmin' o' this hat--ain't it sightly?"
+
+Johnnie's distressed eyes met the pale gaze of Aunt Mavity across the
+little oilcloth-covered coffer.
+
+"I would 'a' told you, Johnnie," said the poor woman deprecatingly, "but
+I never knowed it myself till late last night, and I hadn't the heart to
+name it at breakfast. I thort I'd git a chance this evenin', but they
+come sooner'n I was expectin' 'em."
+
+"Never mind, Aunt Mavity," said Johnnie. "When I get a little used to it
+I'll be glad to have them all here. I--I wish Uncle Pros was able to
+know folks."
+
+The children were fed, Milo, touchingly subdued and apologetic, nestling
+close to his sister's side and whispering to her how he had tried to get
+ma to wait and come down to the Settlement, and hungrily begging with
+his pathetic childish eyes for her to say that this thing which had come
+upon them was not, after all, the calamity he feared. Snub-nosed,
+nine-year-old Pony, whose two front teeth had come in quite too large
+for his mouth, Pony, with the quick-expanding pupils, and the
+temperament that would cope ill with disaster, addressed himself gaily
+to his supper and saw no sorrow anywhere. Little Melissa was half
+asleep; and even Deanie, after the first outburst of greeting, nodded in
+her chair.
+
+"I got ready for 'em," Mavity told Johnnie in an undertone, after her
+father returned. "I knowed in reason he'd bring her back with him. Pap
+always has his own way, and gits whatever he wants. I 'lowed you'd take
+the baby in bed with you, and I put a pallet in your room for Lissy."
+
+Johnnie agreed to this arrangement, almost mechanically. Is it to be
+wondered at that her mind was already busy with the barrier this must
+set between herself and Gray Stoddard? She had never been ashamed of her
+origin or her people; but this--this was different.
+
+Next morning she sent word to the mill foreman to put on a substitute,
+and took the morning that she might go with her mother to the hospital.
+Passmore was asleep, and they were not allowed to disturb him; but on
+the steps they met Gray Stoddard, and he stopped so decidedly to speak
+to them that Johnnie could not exactly run away, as she felt like doing.
+
+"Your mother!" echoed Stoddard, when Johnnie had told him who the
+visitor was. He glanced from the tall, fair-haired daughter to the lithe
+little gypsy at her side. "Why, she looks more like your sister,"
+he said.
+
+Laurella's white teeth flashed at this, and her big, dark eyes glowed.
+
+"Johnnie's such a serious-minded person that she favours older than her
+years," the mother told him. "Well, I give her the name of the dead, and
+they say that makes a body solemn like."
+
+It was very evident that Stoddard desired to detain them in
+conversation, but Johnnie smilingly, yet with decision, cut the
+interview short.
+
+"I don't see why you hurried me a-past that-a-way," the little mother
+said resentfully, when they had gone a few steps. "I wanted to stay and
+talk to the gentleman, if you didn't. I think he's one of the nicest
+persons I've met since I've been in Cottonville. Mr. Gray Stoddard--how
+come you never mentioned him to me Johnnie?"
+
+She turned to find a slow, painful blush rising in her daughter's face.
+
+"I don't know, ma," said Johnnie gently. "I reckon it was because I
+didn't seem to have any concern with a rich gentleman such as Mr.
+Stoddard. He's got more money than Mr. Hardwick, they say--more than
+anybody else in Cottonville."
+
+"Has he?" inquired Laurella vivaciously. "Well, money or no money, I
+think he's mighty nice. Looks like he ain't studying as to whether you
+got money or not. And if you was meaning that you didn't think yourself
+fit to be friends with such, why I'm ashamed of you, Johnnie Consadine.
+The Passmores and the Consadines are as good a family as there is on
+Unaka mountains. I don't know as I ever met up with anybody that I found
+was too fine for my company. And whenever your Uncle Pros gets well and
+finds his silver mine, we'll have as much money as the best of 'em."
+
+The tears blinded Johnnie so that she could scarcely find her way, and
+the voice wherewith she would have answered her mother caught in her
+throat. She pressed her lips hard together and shook her head, then
+laughed out, a little sobbing laugh.
+
+"Poor ma--poor little mother!" she whispered at length. "You ain't been
+away from the mountains as I have. Things are--well, they're a heap
+different here in the Settlement."
+
+"They're a heap nicer," returned Laurella blithely. "Well, I'm mighty
+glad I met that gentleman this morning. Mr. Himes was talking to me of
+Shade Buckheath a-yesterday. He said Shade was wishful to wed you,
+Johnnie, and wanted me to give the boy my good word. I told him I
+wouldn't say anything--and then afterward I was going to. But since I've
+seen this gentleman, and know that his likes are friends of your'n,
+well--I--Johnnie, the Buckheaths are a hard nation of people, and that's
+the truth. If you wedded Shade, like as not he'd mistreat you."
+
+"Oh mother--don't!" pleaded Johnnie, scarlet of face, and not daring to
+raise her eyes.
+
+"What have I done now?" demanded Laurella with asperity.
+
+"You mustn't couple my name with Mr. Stoddard's that way," Johnnie told
+her. "He's never thought of me, except as a poor girl who needs help
+mighty bad; and he's so kind-hearted and generous he's ready to do for
+each and every that's worthy of it. But--not that way--mother, you
+mustn't ever suppose for a minute that he'd think of me in that way."
+
+"Well, I wish't I may never!" Laurella exclaimed. "Did I mention any
+particular way that the man was supposed to be thinking about you? Can't
+I speak a word without your biting my head off for it? As for what Mr.
+Gray Stoddard thinks of you, let me tell you, child, a body has only to
+see his eyes when he's looking at you."
+
+"Mother--Oh, mother!" protested Johnnie.
+
+"Well, if he can look that way I reckon I can speak of it," returned
+Laurella, with some reason.
+
+"I want you to promise never to name it again, even to me," said Johnnie
+solemnly, as they came to the steps of the big lead-coloured house. "You
+surely wouldn't say such a thing to any one else. I wish you'd forget it
+yourself."
+
+"We-ell," hesitated Laurella, "if you feel so strong; about it, I reckon
+I'll do as you say. But there ain't anything in that to hinder me from
+being friends with Mr. Stoddard. I feel sure that him and me would get
+on together fine. He favours my people, the Passmores. My daddy was just
+such an upstanding, dark-complected feller as he is. He's got the look
+in the eye, too."
+
+Johnnie gasped as she remembered that the grandfather of whom her mother
+spoke was Virgil Passmore, and called to mind the story of the borrowed
+wedding coat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FEET OF THE CHILDREN
+
+The mountain people, being used only to one class, never find themselves
+consciously in the society of their superiors. Johnnie Consadine had
+been unembarrassed and completely mistress of the situation in the
+presence of Charlie Conroy, who did not fail after the Uplift dance to
+make some further effort to meet the "big red-headed girl," as he called
+her. She was aware that social overtures from such a person were not to
+be received by her, and she put them aside quite as though she had been,
+according to her own opinion, above rather than beneath them. The
+lover-like pretensions of Shade Buckheath, a man dangerous, remorseless,
+as careless of the rights of others as any tiger in the jungle, she
+regarded with negligent composure. But Gray Stoddard--ah, there her
+treacherous heart gave way, and trembled in terror. The air of perfect
+equality he maintained between them, his attitude of intimacy,
+flattering, almost affectionate, this it was which she felt she must not
+recognize.
+
+The beloved books, which had seemed so many steps upon which to climb to
+a world where she dared acknowledge her own liking and admiration for
+Stoddard, were now laid aside. It took all of her heart and mind and
+time to visit Uncle Pros at the hospital, keep the children out of Pap's
+way in the house, and do justice to her work in the factory. She told
+Gray, haltingly, reluctantly, that she thought she must give up the
+reading and studying for a time.
+
+"Not for long, I hope," Stoddard received her decision with a puzzled
+air, turning in his fingers the copy of "Walden" which she was bringing
+back to him. "Perhaps now that you have your mother and the children
+with you, there will be less time for this sort of thing for a while,
+but you haven't a mind that can enjoy being inactive. You may think
+you'll give it up; but study--once you've tasted it--will never let
+you alone."
+
+Johnnie looked up at him with a weak and pitiful version of her usual
+beaming smile.
+
+"I reckon you're right," she hesitated finally, in a very low voice.
+"But sometimes I think the less we know the happier we are."
+
+"How's this? How's this?" cried Stoddard, almost startled. "Why,
+Johnnie--I never expected to hear that sort of thing from you. I thought
+your optimism was as deep as a well, and as wide as a church."
+
+Poor Johnnie surely had need of such optimism as Stoddard had ascribed
+to her. They were weary evenings when she came home now, with the
+November rain blowing in the streets and the early-falling dusk almost
+upon her. It was on a Saturday night, and she had been to the hospital,
+when she got in to find Mandy, seated in the darkest corner of the
+sitting room, with a red flannel cloth around her neck--a sure sign that
+something unfortunate had occurred, since the tall woman always had sore
+throat when trouble loomed large.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Johnnie, coming close and laying a hand on
+the bent shoulder to peer into the drooping countenance.
+
+"Don't come too nigh me--you'll ketch it," warned Mandy gloomily. "A so'
+th'oat is as ketchin' as smallpox, and I know it so to be, though they
+is them that say it ain't. When mine gits like this I jest tie it up and
+keep away from folks best I can. I hain't dared touch the baby sence hit
+began to hurt me this a-way."
+
+"There's something besides the sore throat," persisted Johnnie. "Is it
+anything I can help you about?"
+
+"Now, if that ain't jest like Johnnie Consadine!" apostrophized Mandy.
+"Yes, there is somethin'--not that I keer." She tossed her poor old
+gray head scornfully, and then groaned because the movement hurt her
+throat. "That thar feisty old Sullivan gave me my time this evenin'. He
+said they was layin' off weavers, and they could spare me. I told him,
+well, I could spare them, too. I told him I could hire in any other mill
+in Cottonville befo' workin' time Monday--but I'm afeared I cain't."
+Weak tears began to travel down her countenance. "I know I never will
+make a fine hand like you, Johnnie," she said pathetically. "There ain't
+a thing in the mill that I love to do--nary thing. I can tend a truck
+patch or raise a field o' corn to beat anybody, and nobody cain't outdo
+me with fowls; but the mill--"
+
+She broke off and sat staring dully at the floor. Pap Himes had stumped
+into the room during the latter part of this conversation.
+
+"Lost your job, hey?" he inquired keenly.
+
+Mandy nodded, with fearful eyes on his face.
+
+"Well, you want to watch out and keep yo' board paid up here. The week
+you cain't pay--out you go. I reckon I better trouble you to pay me in
+advance, unless'n you've got some kind friend that'll stand for you."
+
+Mandy's lips parted, but no sound came. The gaze of absolute terror with
+which she followed the old man's waddling bulk as he went and seated
+himself in front of the air-tight stove, was more than Johnnie
+could endure.
+
+"I'll stand for her board, Pap," she said quietly.
+
+"Oh, you will, will ye?" Pap received her remark with disfavour. "Well,
+a fool and his money don't stay together long. And who'll stand for you,
+Johnnie Consadine? Yo' wages ain't a-goin' to pay for yo' livin' and
+Mandy's too. Ye needn't lay back on bein' my stepdaughter. You ain't
+acted square by me, an' I don't aim to do no more for you than if we
+was no kin."
+
+"You won't have to. Mandy'll get a place next week--you know she will,
+Pap--an experienced weaver like she is. I'll stand for her."
+
+Himes snorted. Mandy caught at Johnnie's hand and drew it to her,
+fondling it. Her round eyes were still full of tears.
+
+"I do know you're the sweetest thing God ever made," she whispered, as
+Johnnie looked down at her. "You and Deanie." And the two went out into
+the dining room together.
+
+"Thar," muttered Himes to Buckheath, as the latter passed through on his
+way to supper; "you see whether it would do to give Johnnie the handlin'
+o' all that thar money from the patent. Why, she'd hand it out to the
+first feller that put up a poor mouth and asked her for it. You heard
+anything, Buck?"
+
+Shade nodded.
+
+"Come down to the works with me after supper. I've got something to show
+you," he said briefly, and Himes understood that the desired letter
+had arrived.
+
+At first Laurella Consadine bloomed like a late rose in the town
+atmosphere. She delighted in the village streets. She was as wildly
+exhilarated as a child when she was taken on the trolley to Watauga.
+With strange, inherent deftness she copied the garb, the hair dressing,
+even the manner and speech, of such worthy models as came within her
+range of vision--like her daughter, she had an eye for fitness and
+beauty; that which was merely fashionable though truly inelegant, did
+not appeal to her. She was swift to appreciate the change in Johnnie.
+
+"You look a heap prettier, and act and speak a heap prettier than you
+used to up in the mountains," she told the tall girl. "Looks like it was
+a mighty sensible thing for you to come down here to the Settlement; and
+if it was good for you, I don't see why it wasn't good for me--and won't
+be for the rest of the children. No need for you to be so solemn
+over it."
+
+The entire household was aghast at the bride's attitude toward her old
+husband. They watched her with the fascinated gaze we give to a petted
+child encroaching upon the rights of a cross dog, or the pretty lady
+with her little riding whip in the cage of the lion. She treated him
+with a kindly, tolerant, yet overbearing familiarity that appalled. She
+knew not to be frightened when he clicked his teeth, but drew up her
+pretty brows and fretted at him that she wished he wouldn't make that
+noise--it worried her. She tipped the sacred yellow cat out of the
+rocking-chair where it always slept in state, took the chair herself,
+and sent that astonished feline from the room.
+
+It was in Laurella's evident influence that Johnnie put her trust when,
+one evening, they all sat in Sunday leisure in the front room--most of
+the girls being gone to church or out strolling with "company"--Pap
+Himes broached the question of the children going to work in the mill.
+
+"They're too young, Pap," Johnnie said to him mildly. "They ought to be
+in school this winter."
+
+"They've every one, down to Deanie, had mo' than the six weeks schoolin'
+that the laws calls for," snarled Himes.
+
+"You wasn't thinking of putting Deanie in the mill--not _Deanie_--was
+you?" asked Johnnie breathlessly.
+
+"Why not?" inquired Himes. "She'll get no good runnin' the streets here
+in Cottonville, and she can earn a little somethin' in the mill. I'm a
+old man, an sickly, and I ain't long for this world. If them chaps is
+a-goin' to do anything for me, they'd better be puttin' in their licks."
+
+Johnnie looked from the little girl's pink-and-white infantile
+beauty--she sat with the child in her lap--to the old man's hulking,
+powerful, useless frame. What would Deanie naturally be expected to do
+for her stepfather?
+
+"Nobody's asked my opinion," observed Shade Buckheath, who made one of
+the family group, "but as far as I can see there ain't a thing to hurt
+young 'uns about mill work; and there surely ain't any good reason why
+they shouldn't earn their way, same as we all do. I reckon they had to
+work back on Unaka. Goin' to set 'em up now an make swells of 'em?"
+
+Johnnie looked bitterly at him but made no reply.
+
+"They won't take them at the Hardwick mill," she said finally. "Mr.
+Stoddard has enforced the rule that they have to have an affidavit with
+any child the mill employs that it is of legal age; and there's nobody
+going to swear that Deanie's even as much as twelve years old--nor
+Lissy--nor Pony--nor Milo. The oldest is but eleven."
+
+Laurella had bought a long chain of red glass beads with a heart-shaped
+pendant. This trinket occupied her attention entirely while her daughter
+and husband discussed the matter of the children's future.
+
+"Johnnie," she began now, apparently not having heard one word that had
+been said, "did you ever in your life see anything so cheap as this here
+string of beads for a dime? I vow I could live and die in that
+five-and-ten-cent store at Watauga. There was more pretties in it than I
+could have looked at in a week. I'm going right back thar Monday and git
+me them green garters that the gal showed me. I don't know what I was
+thinkin' about to come away without 'em! They was but a nickel."
+
+Pap Himes looked at her, at the beads, and gave the fierce,
+inarticulate, ludicrously futile growl of a thwarted, perplexed animal.
+
+"Mother," appealed Johnnie desperately, "do you want the children to go
+into the mill?"
+
+"I don't know but they might as well--for a spell," said Laurella Himes,
+vainly endeavouring to look grown-up, and to pretend that she was really
+the head of the family. "They want to go, and you've done mighty well in
+the mill. If it wasn't for my health, I reckon I might go in and try to
+learn to weave, myself. But there--I came a-past with Mandy t'other
+evenin' when she was out, and the noise of that there factory is enough
+for me from the outside--I never could stand to be in it. Looks like
+such a racket would drive me plumb crazy."
+
+Pap stared at his bride and clicked his teeth with the gnashing sound
+that overawed the others. He drew his shaggy brows in an attempt to look
+masterful.
+
+"Well, ef you cain't tend looms, I reckon you can take Mavity's place in
+the house here, and let her keep to the weavin' stiddier. She'll just
+about lose her job if she has to be out and in so much as she has had to
+be with me here of late."
+
+"I will when I can," said Laurella, patronizingly. "Sometimes I get to
+feeling just kind of restless and no-account, and can't do a stroke of
+work. When I'm that-a-way I go to bed and sleep it off, or get out and
+go somewheres that'll take my mind from my troubles. Hit's by far the
+best way."
+
+Once more Pap looked at her, and opened and shut his mouth helplessly.
+Then he turned sullenly to his stepdaughter, grumbling.
+
+"You hear that! She won't work, and you won't give me your money. The
+children have obliged to bring in a little something--that's the way it
+looks to me. If the mills on the Tennessee side is too choicy to take
+'em--and I know well as you, Johnnie, that they air; their man Connors
+told me so--I can hire 'em over at the Victory, on the Georgy side."
+
+The Victory! A mill notorious in the district for its ancient,
+unsanitary buildings, its poor management, its bad treatment of its
+hands. Yes, it was true that at the Victory you could hire out anything
+that could walk and talk. Johnnie caught her breath and hugged the small
+pliant body to her breast, feeling with a mighty throb of fierce,
+mother-tenderness, the poor little ribs, yet cartilagenous; the
+delicate, soft frame for which God and nature demanded time, and chance
+to grow and strengthen. Yet she knew if she gave up her wages to Pap she
+would be no better off--indeed, she would be helpless in his hands; and
+the sum of them would not cover what the children all together
+could earn.
+
+"Oh, Lord! To work in the Victory!" she groaned.
+
+"Now, Johnnie," objected her mother, "don't you get meddlesome just
+because you're a old maid. Your great-aunt Betsy was meddlesome disposed
+that-a-way. I reckon single women as they get on in years is apt so to
+be. Every one of these children has been promised that they should be
+let to work in the mill. They've been jest honin' to do it ever since
+you came down and got your place. Deanie was scared to death for fear
+they wouldn't take her. Don't you be meddlesome."
+
+"Yes, and I'm goin' to buy me a gun and a nag with my money what I
+earn," put in Pony explosively. "'Course I'll take you-all to ride." He
+added the saving clause under Milo's reproving eye. "Sis' Johnnie, don't
+you want me to earn money and buy a hawse and a gun, and a--and most
+ever'thing else?"
+
+Johnnie looked down into the blue eyes of the little lad who had crept
+close to her chair. What he would earn in the factory she knew
+well--blows, curses, evil knowledge.
+
+"If they should go to the Victory, I'd be mighty proud to do all I could
+to look after 'em, Johnnie," spoke Mandy from the shadows, where she sat
+on the floor at Laurella Consadine's feet, working away with a
+shoe-brush and cloth at the cleaning and polishing of the little woman's
+tan footwear. "Ye know I'm a-gittin' looms thar to-morrow mornin'. Yes,
+I am," in answer to Johnnie's deprecating look. "I'd ruther do it as to
+run round a week--or a month--'mongst the better ones, huntin' a job,
+and you here standin' for my board."
+
+Till late that night Johnnie laboured with her mother and stepfather,
+trying to show them that the mill was no fit place for the children.
+Milo was all too apt for such a situation, the very material out of
+which a cotton mill moulds its best hands and its worst citizens. Pony,
+restless, emotional, gifted and ambitious, craving his share of the joy
+of life and its opportunities, would never make a mill hand; but under
+the pressure of factory life his sister apprehended that he would make
+a criminal.
+
+"Uh-huh," agreed Pap, drily, when she tried to put something of this
+into words. "I spotted that feller for a rogue and a shirk the minute I
+laid eyes on him. The mill'll tame him. The mill'll make him git down
+and pull in the collar, I reckon. Women ain't fitten to bring up
+chillen. A widder's boys allers goes to ruin. Why, Johnnie Consadine,
+every one of them chaps is plumb crazy to work in the mill--just like
+you was--and you're workin' in the mill yourself. What makes you talk so
+foolish about it?"
+
+Laurella nodded an agreement, looking more than usually like a little
+girl playing dolls.
+
+"I reckon Mr. Himes knows best, Johnnie, honey," was her reiterated
+comment.
+
+Cautiously Johnnie approached the subject of pay; her stepfather had
+already demanded her wages, and expressed unbounded surprise that she
+was not willing to pass over the Saturday pay-envelope to him and let
+him put the money in the bank along with his other savings. Careful
+calculation showed that the four children could, after a few weeks of
+learning, probably earn a little more than she could; and in any case
+Himes put it as a disciplinary measure, a way of life selected largely
+for the good of the little ones.
+
+"If you just as soon let me," she said to him at last, "I believe I'll
+take them over to the Victory myself to-morrow morning."
+
+She had hopes of telling their ages bluntly to the mill superintendent
+and having them refused.
+
+Pap agreed negligently; he had no liking for early rising. And thus it
+was that Johnnie found herself at eight o'clock making her way, in the
+midst of the little group, toward the Georgia line and the old Victory
+plant, which all good workers in the district shunned if possible.
+
+As she set her foot on the first plank of the bridge she heard a little
+rumble of sound, and down the road came a light, two-seated vehicle,
+with coloured driver, and Miss Lydia Sessions taking her sister's
+children out for an early morning drive. There was a frail, long-visaged
+boy of ten sitting beside his aunt in the back, with a girl of eight
+tucked between them. The nurse on the front seat held the youngest
+child, a little girl about Deanie's age.
+
+As they came nearer, the driver drew up, evidently in obedience to Miss
+Sessions's command, and she leaned forward graciously to speak
+to Johnnie.
+
+"Good morning, John," said Miss Sessions as the carriage stopped. "Whose
+children are those?"
+
+"They are my little sisters and brothers," responded Johnnie, looking
+down with a very pale face, and busying herself with Deanie's hair.
+
+"And you're taking them over to the mill, so that they can learn to be
+useful. How nice that is!" Lydia smiled brightly at the little ones--her
+best charity-worker's smile.
+
+"No," returned Johnnie, goaded past endurance, "I'm going over to see if
+I can get them to refuse to take this one." And she bent and picked
+Deanie up, holding her, the child's head dropped shyly against her
+breast, the small flower-like face turned a bit so that one blue eye
+might investigate the carriage and those in it. "Deanie's too little to
+work in the mill," Johnnie went on. "They have night turn over there at
+the Victory now, and it'll just about make her sick."
+
+Miss Lydia frowned.
+
+"Oh, John, I think you are mistaken," she said coldly. "The work is very
+light--you know that. Young people work a great deal harder racing about
+in their play than at anything they have to do in a spooling room--I'm
+sure my nieces and nephews do. And in your case it is necessary and
+right that the younger members of the family should help. I think you
+will find that it will not hurt them."
+
+Individuals who work in cotton mills, and are not adults, are never
+alluded to as children. It is an offense to mention them so. They are
+always spoken of--even those scarcely more than three feet high--as
+"young people."
+
+Miss Sessions had smiled upon the piteous little group with a judicious
+mixture of patronage and mild reproof, and her driver had shaken the
+lines over the backs of the fat horses preparatory to moving on, when
+Stoddard's car turned into the street from the corner above.
+
+"Wait, Junius, Dick is afraid of autos," cautioned Miss Lydia nervously.
+
+Junius grinned respectfully, while bay Dick dozed and regarded the
+approaching car philosophically. As they stood, they blocked the way, so
+that Gray was obliged to slow down and finally to stop. He raised his
+hat ceremoniously to both groups. His pained eyes went past Lydia
+Sessions as though she had been but the painted representation of a
+woman, to fasten themselves on Johnnie where she stood, her tall,
+deep-bosomed figure relieved against the shining water, the
+flaxen-haired child on her breast, the little ones huddled about her.
+
+That Johnnie Consadine should have fallen away all at once from that
+higher course she had so eagerly chosen and so resolutely maintained,
+had been to Gray a disappointment whose depth and bitterness somewhat
+surprised him. In vain he recalled the fact that all his theories of
+life were against forcing a culture where none was desired; he went back
+to it with grief--he had been so sure that Johnnie did love the real
+things, that hers was a nature which not only wished, but must have,
+spiritual and mental food. Her attitude toward himself upon their few
+meetings of late had confirmed a certain distrust of her, if one may use
+so strong a word. She seemed afraid, almost ashamed to face him. What
+was it she was doing, he wondered, that she knew so perfectly he would
+disapprove? And then, with the return of the books, the dropping of
+Johnnie's education, came the abrupt end of those informal letters. Not
+till they ceased, did he realize how large a figure they had come to cut
+in his life. Only this morning he had taken them out and read them over,
+and decided that the girl who wrote them was worth at least an attempt
+toward an explanation and better footing. He had decided not to give her
+up. Now she confirmed his worst apprehensions. At his glance, her face
+was suffused with a swift, distressed red. She wondered if he yet knew
+of her mother's marriage. She dreaded the time when she must tell him.
+With an inarticulate murmur she spoke to the little ones, turned her
+back and hurried across the bridge.
+
+"Is Johnnie putting those children in the mill?" asked Stoddard half
+doubtfully, as his gaze followed them toward the entrance of
+the Victory.
+
+"I believe so," returned Lydia, smiling. "We were just speaking of how
+good it was that the cotton mills gave an opportunity for even the
+smaller ones to help, at work which is within their capacity."
+
+"Johnnie Consadine said that?" inquired Gray, startled. "Why is she
+taking them over to the Victory?" And then he answered his own question.
+"She knows very well they are below the legal age in Tennessee."
+
+Lydia Sessions trimmed instantly.
+
+"That must be it," she said. "I wondered a little that she seemed not to
+want them in the same factory that she is in. But I remember Brother
+Hartley said that we are very particular at our mill to hire no young
+people below the legal age. That must be it."
+
+Stoddard looked with reprehending yet still incredulous eyes, to where
+Johnnie and her small following disappeared within the mill doors.
+Johnnie--the girl who had written him that pathetic little letter about
+the children in her room, and her growing doubt as to the wholesomeness
+of their work; the girl who had read the books he gave her, and fed her
+understanding on them till she expressed herself logically and lucidly
+on the economic problems of the day--that, for the sake of the few cents
+they could earn, she should put the children, whom he knew she loved,
+into slavery, seemed to him monstrous beyond belief. Why, if this were
+true, what a hypocrite the girl was! As coarse and unfeeling as the rest
+of them. Yet she had some shame left; she had blushed to be caught in
+the act by him. It showed her worse than those who justified this thing,
+the enormity of which she had seemed to understand well.
+
+"You mustn't blame her too much," came Lydia Sessions's smooth voice.
+"John's mother is a widow, and girls of that age like pretty clothes and
+a good time. Some people consider John very handsome, and of course with
+an ignorant young woman of that class, flattery is likely to turn the
+head. I think she does as well as could be expected."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+BITTER WATERS
+
+Johnnie had a set of small volumes of English verse, extensively
+annotated by his own hand, which Stoddard had brought to her early in
+their acquaintance, leaving it with her more as a gift than as a loan.
+She kept these little books after all the others had gone back. She had
+read and reread them--cullings from Chaucer, from Spenser, from the
+Elizabethan lyrists, the border balladry, fierce, tender, oh, so
+human--till she knew pages of them by heart, and their vocabulary
+influenced her own, their imagery tinged all her leisure thoughts. It
+seemed to her, whenever she debated returning them, that she could not
+bear it. She would get them out and sit with one of them open in her
+hands, not reading, but staring at the pages with unseeing eyes, passing
+her fingers over it, as one strokes a beloved hand, or turning through
+each book only to find the pencilled words in the margins. She would be
+giving up part of herself when she took these back.
+
+Yet it had to be done, and one miserable morning she made them all into
+a neat package, intending to carry them to the mill and place them on
+Stoddard's desk thus early, when nobody would be in the office. Then the
+children came in; Deanie was half sick; and in the distress of getting
+the ailing child comfortably into her own bed, Johnnie forgot the books.
+Taking them in at noon, she met Stoddard himself.
+
+"I've brought you back your--those little books of Old English Poetry,"
+she said, with a sudden constriction in her throat, and a quick burning
+flush that suffused brow, cheek and neck.
+
+Stoddard looked at her; she was thinner than she had been, and otherwise
+showed the marks of misery and of factory life. The sight was almost
+intolerable to him. Poor girl, she herself was suffering cruelly enough
+beneath the same yoke she had helped to lay on the children.
+
+"Are you really giving up your studies entirely?" he asked, in what he
+tried to make a very kindly voice. He laid his hand on the package of
+books. "I wonder if you aren't making a mistake, Johnnie. You look as
+though you were working too hard. Some things are worth more than money
+and getting on in the world."
+
+Johnnie shook her head. For the moment words were beyond her. Then she
+managed to say in a fairly composed tone.
+
+"There isn't any other way for me. I think some times, Mr. Stoddard,
+when a body is born to a hard life, all the struggling and trying just
+makes it that much harder. Maybe when the children get a little older
+I'll have more chance."
+
+The statement was wistfully, timidly made; yet to Gray Stoddard it
+seemed a brazen defence of her present course. It pierced him that she
+on whose nobility of nature he could have staked his life, should
+justify such action.
+
+"Yes," he said with quick bitterness, "they might be able to earn more,
+of course, as time goes on." It was a cruel speech between two people
+who had discussed this feature of industrial life as these had; even
+Stoddard had no idea how cruel.
+
+For a dizzy moment the girl stared at him, then, though her flushed
+cheeks had whitened pitifully and her lip trembled, she answered with
+bravely lifted head.
+
+"I thank you very much for all the help you've been to me, Mr. Stoddard.
+What I said just now didn't look as though I appreciated it. I ask your
+pardon for that. I aim to do the best I can for the children. And
+I--thank you."
+
+She turned and was gone, leaving him puzzled and with a sore ache at
+heart.
+
+Winter came on, wet, dark, cheerless, in the shackling, half-built
+little village, and Johnnie saw for the first time what the distress of
+the poor in cities is. A temperature which would have been agreeable in
+a drier climate, bit to the bone in the mist-haunted valleys of that
+mountain region. The houses were mostly mere board shanties, tightened
+by pasting newspapers over the cracks inside, where the women of the
+family had time for such work; and the heating apparatus was generally a
+wood-burning cook-stove, with possibly an additional coal heater in the
+front room which could be fired on Sundays, or when the family was at
+home to tend it.
+
+All through the bright autumn days, Laurella Himes had hurried from one
+new and charming sensation or discovery to another; she was like the
+butterflies that haunt the banks of little streams or wayside pools at
+this season, disporting themselves more gaily even than the insects of
+spring in what must be at best a briefer glory. When the weather began
+to be chilly, she complained of a pain in her side.
+
+"Hit hurts me right there," she would say piteously, taking Johnnie's
+hand and laying it over the left side of her chest. "My feet haven't
+been good and warm since the weather turned. I jest cain't stand these
+here old black boxes of stoves they have in the Settlement. If I could
+oncet lay down on the big hearth at home and get my feet warm, I jest
+know my misery would leave me."
+
+At first Pap merely grunted over these homesick repinings; but after a
+time he began to hang about her and offer counsel which was often enough
+peevishly received.
+
+"No, I ain't et anything that disagreed with me," Laurella pettishly
+replied to his well-meant inquiries. "You're thinkin' about yo'se'f. I
+never eat more than is good for me, nor anything that ain't jest right.
+Hit ain't my stomach. Hit's right there in my side. Looks like hit was
+my heart, an' I believe in my soul it is. Oh, law, if I could oncet lay
+down befo' a nice, good hickory fire and get my feet warm!"
+
+And so it came to pass that, while everybody in the boarding-house
+looked on amazed, almost aghast, Gideon Himes withdrew from the bank
+such money as was necessary, and had a chimney built at the side of the
+fore room and a broad hearth laid. He begged almost tearfully for a
+small grate which should burn the soft bituminous coal of the region,
+and be much cheaper to install and maintain. But Laurella turned away
+from these suggestions with the hopeless, pliable obstinacy of the weak.
+
+"I wouldn't give the rappin' o' my finger for a nasty little smudgy,
+smoky grate fire," she declared rebelliously, thanklessly. "A hickory
+log-heap is what I want, and if I cain't have that, I reckon I can jest
+die without it."
+
+"Now, Laurelly--now Laurelly," Pap quavered in tones none other had ever
+heard from him, "don't you talk about dyin'. You look as young as
+Johnnie this minute. I'll git you what you want. Lord, I'll have Dawson
+build the chimbley big enough for you to keep house in, if them's
+yo' ruthers."
+
+It was almost large enough for that, and the great load of hickory logs
+which Himes hauled into the yard from the neighbouring mountain-side was
+cut to length. Fire was kindled in the new chimney; it drew perfectly;
+and Pap himself carried Laurella in his arms and laid her on some quilts
+beside the hearthstone, demanding eagerly, "Thar now--don't that make
+you feel better?"
+
+"Uh-huh." The ailing woman turned restlessly on her pallet. The big,
+awkward, ill-favoured old man stood with his disproportionately long
+arms hanging by his sides, staring at her, unaware that his presence
+half undid the good the leaping flames were doing her.
+
+"I wish't Uncle Pros was sitting right over there, t'other side the
+fire," murmured Laurella dreamily. "How is Pros, Johnnie?"
+
+For nobody understood, as the crazed man in the hospital might have
+done, that Laurella's bodily illness was but the cosmic despair of the
+little girl who has broken her doll. It had been the philosophy of this
+sun-loving, butterfly nature to turn her back on things when they got
+too bad and take to her bed till, in the course of events, they bettered
+themselves. But now she had emerged into a bleak winter world where
+Uncle Pros was not, where Johnnie was powerless, and where she had been
+allowed by an unkind Providence to work havoc with her own life and the
+lives of her little ones; and her illness was as the tears of the girl
+with a shattered toy.
+
+The children in their broken shoes and thin, ill-selected clothing,
+shivered on the roads between house and mill, and gave colour to the
+statement of many employers that they were better off in the thoroughly
+warmed factories than at home. But the factories were a little too
+thoroughly warmed. The operatives sweated under their tasks and left the
+rooms, with their temperature of eighty-five, to come, drenched with
+perspiration, into the chill outside air. The colds which resulted were
+always supposed to be caught out of doors. Nobody had sufficient
+understanding of such matters to suggest that the rebreathed,
+superheated atmosphere of the mill room was responsible.
+
+Deanie, who had never been sick a day in her life, took a heavy cold and
+coughed so that she could scarcely get any sleep. Johnnie was
+desperately anxious, since the lint of the spinning room immediately
+irritated the little throat, and perpetuated the cold in a steady,
+hacking cough, that cotton-mill workers know well. Pony was from the
+first insubordinate and well-nigh incorrigible--in short, he died hard.
+He came to Johnnie again and again with stories of having been cursed
+and struck. She could only beg him to be good and do what was demanded
+without laying himself liable to punishment. Milo, the serious-faced
+little burden bearer, was growing fast, and lacked stamina. Beneath the
+cotton-mill régime, his chest was getting dreadfully hollow. He was all
+too good a worker, and tried anxiously to make up for his brother's
+shortcomings.
+
+"Pony, he's a little feller," Milo would say pitifully. "He ain't nigh
+as old as I am. It comes easier to me than what it does to him to stay
+in the house and tend my frames, and do like I'm told. If the bosses
+would call me when he don't do to suit 'em, I could always get him
+to mind."
+
+Lissy had something of her mother's shining vitality, but it dimmed
+woefully in the rough-and-ready clatter and slam of the big
+Victory mill.
+
+The children had come from the sunlit heights and free air of the
+Unakas. Their play had been always out of doors, on the mosses under
+tall trees, where fragrant balsams dropped cushions of springy needles
+for the feet; their labour, the gathering of brush and chips for the
+fire in winter, the dropping corn, and, with the older boys, the hoeing
+of it in spring and summer--all under God's open sky. They had been
+forced into the factory when nothing but places on the night shift could
+be got for them. Day work was promised later, but the bitter winter wore
+away, and still the little captives crept over the bridge in the
+twilight and slunk shivering home at dawn. Johnnie made an arrangement
+to get off from her work a little earlier, and used to take the two
+girls over herself; but she could not go for them in the morning. One
+evening about the holidays, miserably wet, and offering its squalid
+contrast to the season, Johnnie, plodding along between the two little
+girls, with Pony and Milo following, met Gray Stoddard face to face. He
+halted uncertainly. There was a world of reproach in his face, and
+Johnnie answered it with eyes of such shame and contrition as convinced
+him that she knew well the degradation of what she was doing.
+
+"You need another umbrella," he said abruptly, putting down his own as
+he paused under the store porch where a boy stood at the curb with his
+car, hood on, prepared for a trip in to Watauga.
+
+"I lost our'n," ventured Pony. "It don't seem fair that Milo has to get
+wet because I'm so bad about losing things, does it?" And he smiled
+engagingly up into the tall man's face--Johnnie's own eyes,
+large-pupilled, black-lashed, full of laughter in their clear depths.
+Gray Stoddard stared down at them silently for a moment. Then he pushed
+the handle of his umbrella into the boy's grimy little hand.
+
+"See how long you can keep that one," he said kindly. "It's marked on
+the handle with my name; and maybe if you lost it somebody might bring
+it back to you."
+
+Johnnie had turned away and faltered on a few paces in a daze of
+humiliation and misery.
+
+"Sis' Johnnie--oh, Sis' Johnnie!" Pony called after her, flourishing the
+umbrella. "Look what Mr. Stoddard give Milo and me." Then, in sudden
+consternation as Milo caught his elbow, he whirled and offered voluble
+thanks. "I'm a goin' to earn a whole lot of money and pay back the
+trouble I am to my folks," he confided to Gray, hastily. "I didn't know
+I was such a bad feller till I came down to the Settlement. Looks like I
+cain't noways behave. But I'm goin' to earn a big heap of money, an' buy
+things for Milo an' maw an' the girls. Only now they take all I can earn
+away from me."
+
+There was a warning call from Johnnie, ahead in the dusk somewhere; and
+the little fellow scuttled away toward the Victory and a night of work.
+
+Spring came late that year, and after it had given a hint of relieving
+the misery of the poor, there followed an Easter storm which covered all
+the new-made gardens with sleet and sent people shivering back to their
+winter wear. Deanie had been growing very thin, and the red on her
+cheeks was a round spot of scarlet. Laurella lay all day and far into
+the night on her pallet of quilts before the big fire in the front room,
+spent, inert, staring at the ceiling, entertaining God knows what guests
+of terror and remorse. Nothing distressing must be brought to her.
+Coming home from work once at dusk, Johnnie found the two little girls
+on the porch, Deanie crying and Lissy trying to comfort her.
+
+"I thest cain't go to that old mill to-night, Sis' Johnnie," the little
+one pleaded. "Looks like I thest cain't."
+
+"I could tell Mr. Reardon, and he'd put a substitute on to tend her
+frames," Lissy spoke up eagerly. "You ask Pap Himes will he let us do
+that, Sis' Johnnie."
+
+Johnnie went past her mother, who appeared to be dozing, and into the
+dining room, where Himes was. He had promised to do some night work,
+setting up new machines at the Victory, and he was in that uncertain
+humour which the prospect of work always produced. Gideon Himes was an
+old man, pestered, as he himself would have put it, by the mysterious
+illness of his young wife, fretted by the presence of the children, no
+doubt in a measure because he felt himself to be doing an ill part by
+them. His grumpy silence of other days, his sardonic humour, gave place
+to hypochondriac complainings and outbursts of fierce temper. Pony had
+hurt his foot in a machine at the factory and it required daily
+dressing. Johnnie understood from the sounds which greeted her that the
+sore foot was being bandaged.
+
+"Hold still, cain't ye?" growled Himes. "I ain't a-hurtin' ye. Now you
+set in to bawl and I'll give ye somethin' to bawl for--hear me?"
+
+The old man was skilful with hurts, but he was using such unnecessary
+roughness in this case as set the plucky little chap to sobbing, and,
+just as Johnnie entered the room, got him heavy-handed punishment for
+it. It was an unfortunate time to bring up the question of Deanie; yet
+it must be settled at once.
+
+"Pap," said the girl, urgently, "the baby ain't fit to go to the mill
+to-night--if ever she ought. You said that you'd get day work for them
+all. If you won't do that, let Deanie stay home for a spell. She sure
+enough isn't fit to work."
+
+Himes faced his stepdaughter angrily.
+
+"When I say a child's fitten to work--it's fitten to work," he rounded
+on her. "I hain't axed your opinion--have I? No. Well, then, keep it to
+yourself till it is axed for. You Pony, your foot's done and ready. You
+get yourself off to the mill, or you'll be docked for lost time."
+
+The little fellow limped sniffling out; Johnnie reached down for Deanie,
+who had crept after her to hear how her cause went. It was evident that
+sight of the child lingering increased Pap's anger, yet the elder sister
+gathered up the ailing little one in her strong arms and tried again.
+
+"Pap, I'll pay you for Deanie's whole week's work if you'll just let her
+stay home to-night. I'll pay you the money now."
+
+"All right," Pap stuck out a ready, stubbed palm, and received in it the
+silver that was the price of the little girl's time for a week. He
+counted it over before he rammed it down in his pocket. Then, "You can
+pay me, and she can go to the mill, 'caze your wages ought to come to me
+anyhow, and it don't do chaps like her no good to be muchin' 'em all the
+time. Would you ruther have her go before I give her a good beatin' or
+after?" and he looked Johnnie fiercely in the eyes.
+
+Johnnie looked back at him unflinching. She did not lack spirit to defy
+him. But her mother was this man's wife; the children were in their
+hands. Devoted, high-couraged as she was, she saw no way here to fight
+for the little ones. To her mother she could not appeal; she must have
+support from outside.
+
+"Never you mind, honey," she choked as she clasped Deanie's thin little
+form closer, and the meagre small arms went round her neck. "Sister'll
+find a way. You go on to the mill to-night, and sister'll find somebody
+to help her, and she'll come there and get you before morning."
+
+When the pitiful little figure had lagged away down the twilight street,
+holding to Lissy's hand, limping on sore feet, Johnnie stood long on the
+porch in the dark with gusts of rain beating intermittently at the
+lattice beside her. Her hands were wrung hard together. Her desperate
+gaze roved over the few scattered lights of the little village, over the
+great flaring, throbbing mills beyond, as though questioning where she
+could seek for assistance. Paying money to Pap Himes did no good. So
+much was plain. She had always been afraid to begin it, and she realized
+now that the present outcome was what she had apprehended. Uncle Pros,
+the source of wisdom for all her childish days, was in the hospital, a
+harmless lunatic. Of late the old man's bodily health had mended
+suddenly, almost marvellously; but he remained vacant, childish in mind,
+and so far the authorities had retained him, hoping to probe in some way
+to the obscure, moving cause of his malady. Twice when she spoke to her
+mother of late, being very desperate, Laurella had said peevishly that
+if she were able she'd get up and leave the house. Plainly to-night she
+was too sick a woman to be troubled. As Johnnie stood there, Shade
+Buckheath passed her, going out of the house and down the street toward
+the store. Once she might have thought of appealing to him; but now a
+sure knowledge of what his reply would be forestalled that.
+
+There remained then what the others called her "swell friends." Gray
+Stoddard--the thought brought with it an agony from which she flinched.
+But after all, there was Lydia Sessions. She was sure Miss Sessions
+meant to be kind; and if she knew that Deanie was really sick--. Yes, it
+would be worth while to go to her with the whole matter.
+
+At the thought she turned hesitatingly toward the door, meaning to get
+her hat, and--though she had formulated no method of appeal--to hurry to
+the Hardwick house and at least talk with Miss Sessions and endeavour to
+enlist her help.
+
+But the door opened before she reached it, and Mavity Bence stood there,
+in her face the deadly weariness of all woman's toil and travail
+since the fall.
+
+Johnnie moved to her quickly, putting a hand on her shoulder,
+remembering with swift compunction that the poor woman's burdens were
+trebled since Laurella lay ill, and Pap gave up so much of his time to
+hanging anxiously about his young wife.
+
+"What is it, Aunt Mavity?" she asked. "Is anything the matter?"
+
+"I hate to werry ye, Johnnie," said the other's deprecating voice; "but
+looks like I've jest got obliged to have a little help this evenin'. I'm
+plumb dead on my feet, and there's all the dishes to do and a stack of
+towels and things to rub out." Her dim gaze questioned the young face
+above her dubiously, almost desperately. The little brass lamp in her
+hand made a pitiful wavering.
+
+"Of course I can help you. I'd have been in before this, only I--I--was
+kind of worried about something else, and I forgot," declared Johnnie,
+strengthening her heart to endure the necessary postponement of
+her purpose.
+
+She went into the kitchen with Mavity Bence, and the two women worked
+there at the dishes, and washing out the towels, till after nine
+o'clock, Johnnie's anxiety and distress mounting with every minute of
+delay. At a little past nine, she left poor Mavity at the door of that
+wretched place the poor woman called her room, looked quietly in to see
+that her mother seemed to sleep, got her hat and hurried out, goaded by
+a seemingly disproportionate fever of impatience and anxiety. She took
+her way up the little hill and across the slope to where the Hardwick
+mansion gleamed, many-windowed, gay with lights, behind its evergreens.
+
+When she reached the house itself she found an evening reception going
+forward--the Hardwicks were entertaining the Lyric Club. She halted
+outside, debating what to do. Could she call Miss Lydia from her company
+to listen to such a story as this? Was it not in itself almost an
+offence to bring these things before people who could live as Miss Lydia
+lived? Somebody was playing the violin, and Johnnie drew nearer the
+window to listen. She stared in at the beautiful lighted room, the
+well-dressed, happy people. Suddenly she caught sight of Gray Stoddard
+standing near the girl who was playing, a watchful eye upon her music to
+turn it for her. She clutched the window-sill and stood choking and
+blinded, fighting with a crowd of daunting recollections and miserable
+apprehensions. The young violinist was playing Schubert's Serenade. From
+the violin came the cry of hungry human love demanding its mate,
+questing, praying, half despairing, and yet wooing, seeking again.
+
+Johnnie's piteous gaze roved over the well-beloved lineaments. She noted
+with a passion of tenderness the turn of head and hand that were so
+familiar to her, and so dear. Oh, she could never hate him for it, but
+it was hard--hard--to be a wave in the ocean of toil that supported the
+galleys of such as these!
+
+It began to rain again softly as she stood there, scattered drops
+falling on her bright hair, and she gathered her dress about her and
+pressed close to the window where the eaves of the building sheltered
+her, forcing herself to look in and take note of the difference between
+those people in there and her own lot of life. This was not usually
+Johnnie's way. Her unfailing optimism prompted her always to measure the
+distance below her, and be glad of having climbed so far, rather than to
+dim her eyes with straining them toward what was above. But now she
+marked mercilessly the light, yet subdued, movements, the deference
+expressed when one of these people addressed another; and Gray Stoddard
+at the upper end of the room was easily the most marked figure in it.
+Who was she to think she might be his friend when all this beautiful
+world of ease and luxury and fair speech was open to him?
+
+Like a sword flashed back to her memory of the children. They were being
+killed in the mills, while she wasted her thoughts and longings on
+people who would laugh if they knew of her presumptuous devotion.
+
+She turned with a low exclamation of astonishment, when somebody touched
+her on the shoulder.
+
+"Is you de gal Miss Lyddy sont for?" inquired the yellow waitress a bit
+sharply.
+
+"No--yes--I don't know whether Miss Sessions sent for me or not,"
+Johnnie halted out; "but," eagerly, "I must see her. I've--Cassy. I've
+got to speak to her right now."
+
+Cassy regarded the newcomer rather scornfully.
+
+Yet everybody liked Johnnie, and the servant eventually put off her
+design of being impressive and said in a fairly friendly manner:
+
+"You couldn't noways see her now. I couldn't disturb her whilst she's
+got company--without you want to put on this here cap and apron and come
+he'p me sarve the refreshments. Dey was a gal comin' to resist me, but
+she ain't put in her disappearance yet. Ain't no time for foolin',
+dis ain't."
+
+Johnnie debated a moment. A servant's livery--but Deanie was sick
+and--. With a sudden, impulsive movement, and somewhat to Cassy's
+surprise, Johnnie followed into the pantry, seized the proffered cap and
+apron and proceeded to put them on.
+
+"I've got to see Miss Sessions," she repeated, more to herself than to
+the negress. "Maybe what I have to say will only take a minute. I reckon
+she won't mind, even if she has got company. It--well, I've got to see
+her some way." And taking the tray of frail, dainty cups and saucers
+Cassy brought her, she started with it to the parlour.
+
+The music was just dying down to its last wail when Gray looked up and
+caught sight of her coming. His mind had been full of her. To him
+certain pieces of music always meant certain people, and the Serenade
+could bring him nothing but Johnnie Consadine's face. His startled eyes
+encountered with distaste the cap pinned to her hair, descended to the
+white apron that covered her black skirt, and rested in astonishment on
+the tray that held the coffee, cream and sugar.
+
+"Begin here," Cassie prompted her assistant, and Johnnie, stopping,
+offered her tray of cups.
+
+Gray's indignant glance went from the girl herself to his hostess. What
+foolery was this? Why should Johnnie Consadine dress herself as a
+servant and wait on Lydia Sessions's guests?
+
+Before the two reached him, he turned abruptly and went into the
+library, where Miss Sessions stood for a moment quite alone. Her face
+brightened; he had sought her society very much less of late. She looked
+hopefully for a renewal of that earlier companionship which seemed by
+contrast almost intimate.
+
+"Have you hired Johnnie Consadine as a waitress?" Stoddard asked her in
+a non-committal voice. "I should have supposed that her place in the
+mill would pay her more, and offer better prospects."
+
+"No--oh, no," said Miss Sessions, startled, and considerably
+disappointed at the subject he had selected to converse upon.
+
+"How does she come to be here with a cap and apron on to-night?" pursued
+Stoddard, with an edge to his tone which he could not wholly subdue.
+
+"I really don't understand that myself," Lydia Sessions told him. "I
+made no arrangement with her. I expected to have a couple of
+negresses--they're much better servants, you know. Of course when a girl
+like John gets a little taste of social contact and recognition, she may
+go to considerable lengths to gratify her desire for it. No doubt she
+feels proud of forcing herself in this evening; and then of course she
+knows she will be well paid. She seems to be doing nicely," glancing
+between the portieres where Johnnie bent before one guest or another,
+offering her tray of cups. "I really haven't the heart to reprove her."
+
+"Then I think I shall," said Stoddard with sudden resolution. "If you
+don't mind, Miss Sessions, would you let her come in and talk to me a
+little while, as soon as she has finished passing the coffee? I--really
+it seems to me that this is outrageous. Johnnie is a girl of brains and
+abilities, and we who have her true welfare at heart should see that she
+doesn't--in her youth and ignorance--fall into such errors as this."
+
+"Oh, if you like, I'll talk to her myself," said Miss Lydia smoothly.
+The conversation was not so different from others that she and Stoddard
+had held concerning this girl's deserts and welfare. She added, after an
+instant's pause, speaking quickly, with heightened colour, and a little
+nervous catch in her voice, "I'll do my best. I--I don't want to speak
+harshly of John, but I must in truth say that she's the one among my
+Uplift Club girls that has been least satisfactory to me."
+
+"In what way?" inquired Stoddard in an even, quiet tone.
+
+"Well, I should be a little puzzled to put it into words," Miss Sessions
+answered him with a deprecating smile; "and yet it's there--the feeling
+that John Consadine is--I hate to say it--ungrateful."
+
+"Ungrateful," repeated her companion, his eyes steadily on Miss
+Sessions's face. "To leave Johnnie Consadine out of the matter entirely,
+what else do you expect from any of your protégées? What else can any
+one expect who goes into what the modern world calls charitable work?"
+
+Miss Sessions studied his face in some bewilderment. Was he arraigning
+her, or sympathizing with her? He said no more. He left upon her the
+onus of further speech. She must try for the right note.
+
+"I know it," she fumbled desperately. "And isn't it disappointing? You
+do everything you possibly can for people and they seem to dislike
+you for it."
+
+"They don't merely seem to," said Stoddard, almost brusquely, "they do
+dislike and despise you, and that most heartily. It is as certain a
+result as that two and two make four. You have pauperized and degraded
+them, and they hate you for it."
+
+Lydia Sessions shrank back on the seat, and stared at him, her hand
+before her open mouth.
+
+"Why, Mr. Stoddard!" she ejaculated finally. "I thought you were fully
+in sympathy with my Uplift work. You--you certainly let me think so. If
+you despised it, as you now say, why did you help me and--and all that?"
+
+Stoddard shook his head.
+
+"No," he demurred a little wearily. "I don't despise you, nor your work.
+As for helping you--I dislike lobster, and yet I conscientiously provide
+you with it whenever we are where the comestible is served, because I
+know you like it."
+
+"Mr. Stoddard," broke in Lydia tragically, "that is frivolous! These are
+grave matters, and I thought--oh, I thought certainly--that I was
+deserving your good opinion in this charitable work if ever I deserved
+such a thing in my life."
+
+"Oh--deserved!" repeated Stoddard, almost impatiently. "No doubt you
+deserve a great deal more than my praise; but you know--do you
+not?--that people who believe as I do, regard that sort of philanthropy
+as a barrier to progress; and, really now, I think you ought to admit
+that under such circumstances I have behaved with great friendliness and
+self-control."
+
+The words were spoken with something of the old teasing intonation that
+had once deluded Lydia Sessions into the faith that she held a relation
+of some intimacy to this man. She glanced at him fleetingly; then,
+though she felt utterly at sea, made one more desperate effort.
+
+"But I always went first to you when I was raising money for my Uplift
+work, and you gave to me more liberally than anybody else. Jerome never
+approved of it. Hartley grumbled, or laughed at me, and came reluctantly
+to my little dances and receptions. I sometimes felt that I was going
+against all my world--except you. I depended upon your approval. I felt
+that you were in full sympathy with me here, if nowhere else."
+
+She looked so disproportionately moved by the matter that Stoddard
+smiled a little.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said at last. "I see now that I have been taking it for
+granted all along that you understood the reservation I held in regard
+to this matter."
+
+"You--you should have told me plainly," said Lydia drearily. "It--it
+gives me a strange feeling to have depended so entirely on you, and then
+to find out that you were thinking of me all the while as Jerome does."
+
+"Have I been?" inquired Stoddard. "As Jerome does? What a passion it
+seems to be with folks to classify their friends. People call me a
+Socialist, because I am trying to find out what I really do think on
+certain economic and social subjects. I doubt that I shall ever bring up
+underneath any precise label, and yet some people would think it
+egotistical that I insisted upon being a class to myself. I very much
+doubt that I hold Mr. Hardwick's opinion exactly in any particular." He
+looked at the girl with a sort of urgency which she scarcely
+comprehended. "Miss Sessions," he said, "I wear my hair longer than most
+men, and the barber is always deeply grieved at my obstinacy. I never
+eat potatoes, and many well-meaning persons are greatly concerned over
+it--they regard the exclusion of potatoes from one's dietary as almost
+criminal. But you--I expect in you more tolerance concerning my
+peculiarities. Why must you care at all what I think, or what my views
+are in this matter?"
+
+"Oh, I don't understand you at all," Lydia said distressfully.
+
+"No?" agreed Stoddard with an interrogative note in his voice. "But
+after all there's no need for people to be so determined to understand
+each other, is there?"
+
+Lydia looked at him with swimming eyes.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me not to do those things?" she managed finally to
+say with some composure.
+
+"Tell you not to do things that you had thought out for yourself and
+decided on?" asked Stoddard. "Oh, no, Miss Sessions. What of your own
+development? I had no business to interfere like that. You might be
+exactly right about it, and I wrong, so far as you yourself were
+concerned. And even if I were right and you wrong, the only chance of
+growth for you was to exploit the matter and find it out for yourself."
+
+"I don't understand a word you say," Lydia Sessions repeated dully.
+"That's the kind of thing you used always to talk when you and I were
+planning for John Consadine. Development isn't what a woman wants. She
+wants--she needs--to understand how to please those she--approves. If
+she fails anywhere, and those she--well, if somebody that she
+has--confidence--in tells her, why then she'll know better next time.
+You should have told me."
+
+Her eyes overflowed as she made an end, but Stoddard adopted a tone of
+determined lightness.
+
+"Dear me," he said gently. "What reactionary views! You're out of temper
+with me this evening--I get on your nerves with my theorizing. Forgive
+me, and forget all about it."
+
+Lydia Sessions smiled kindly on her guest, without speaking. But one
+thing remained to her out of it all. Gray Stoddard thought ill of her
+work--it carried her further from him, instead of nearer! So many months
+of effort worse than wasted! At that instant she had sight of Shade
+Buckheath's dark face in the entry. She got to her feet.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said wanly, "I think there is some one out
+there that I ought to speak to."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A VICTIM
+
+In the spinning room at the Victory Mill, with its tall frames and
+endlessly turning bobbins, where the languid thread ran from hank to
+spool and the tired little feet must walk the narrow aisles between the
+jennies, watching if perchance a filament had broken, a knot caught, or
+other mischance occurred, and right it, Deanie plodded for what seemed
+to her many years. Milo and Pony both had work now in another
+department, and Lissy's frames were quite across the noisy big room.
+Whenever the little dark-haired girl could get away from her own task
+and the eye of the room boss, she ran across to the small, ailing sister
+and hugged her hard, begging her not to feel bad, not to cry, Sis'
+Johnnie was bound to come before long. With the morbidness of a sick
+child, Deanie came to dread these well-meant assurances, finding them
+almost as distressing as her own strange, tormenting sensations.
+
+The room was insufferably close, because it had rained and the windows
+were all tightly shut. The flare of light vitiated the air, heated it,
+but seemed to the child's sick sense to illuminate nothing. Sometimes
+she found herself walking into the machinery and put out a reckless
+little hand to guard her steps. Sister Johnnie had said she would come
+and take her away. Sister Johnnie was the Providence that was never
+known to fail. Deanie kept on doggedly, and tied threads, almost asleep.
+The room opened and shut like an accordion before her fevered vision;
+the floor heaved and trembled under her stumbling feet. To lie down--to
+lie down anywhere and sleep--that was the almost intolerable longing
+that possessed her. Her mouth was hot and dry. The little white, peaked
+face, like a new moon, grew strangely luminous in its pallor. Her eyes
+stung in their sockets--those desolate blue eyes, dark with unshed
+tears, heavy with sleep.
+
+She had turned her row and started back, when there came before her, so
+plain that she almost thought she might wet her feet in the clear water,
+a vision of the spring-branch at home up on Unaka, where she and Lissy
+used to play. There, among the giant roots of the old oak on its bank,
+was the house they had built of big stones and bright bits of broken
+dishes; there lay her home-made doll flung down among gay fallen leaves;
+a little toad squatted beside it; and near by was the tiny gourd that
+was their play-house dipper. Oh, for a drink from that spring!
+
+She caught sight of Mandy Meacham passing the door, and ran to her,
+heedless of consequences.
+
+"Mandy," she pleaded, taking hold of the woman's skirts and throwing
+back her reeling head to stare up into the face above her, "Mandy, Sis'
+Johnnie said she'd come; but it's a awful long time, and I'm scared I'll
+fall into some of these here old machines, I feel that bad. Won't you go
+tell Sis' Johnnie I'm waitin' for her?"
+
+Mandy glanced forward through the weaving-room toward her own silent
+looms, then down at the little, flushed face at her knee. If she dared
+to do things, as Johnnie dared, she would pick up the baby and leave.
+The very thought of it terrified her. No, she must get Johnnie herself.
+Johnnie would make it right. She bent down and kissed the little thing,
+whispering:
+
+"Never you mind, honey. Mandy's going straight and find Sis' Johnnie,
+and bring her here to Deanie. Jest wait a minute."
+
+Then she turned and, swiftly, lest her courage evaporate, hurried down
+the stair and to the time keeper.
+
+"Ef you've got a substitute, you can put 'em on my looms," she said
+brusquely. "I've got to go down in town."
+
+"Sick?" inquired Reardon laconically, as he made some entry on a card
+and dropped it in a drawer beside him.
+
+"No, I ain't sick--but Deanie Consadine is, and I'm goin' over in town
+to find her sister. That child ain't fitten to be in no mill--let alone
+workin' night turn. You men ort to be ashamed--that baby ort to be in
+her bed this very minute."
+
+Her voice had faltered a bit at the conclusion. Yet she made an end of
+it, and hurried away with a choke in her throat. The man stared after
+her angrily.
+
+"Well!" he ejaculated finally. "She's got her nerve with her. Old Himes
+is that gal's stepdaddy. I reckon he knows whether she's fit to work in
+the mills or not--he hired her here. Bob, ain't Himes down in the
+basement right now settin' up new machines? You go down there and name
+this business to him. See what he's got to say."
+
+A party of young fellows was tramping down the village street singing.
+One of them carried a guitar and struck, now and again, a random chord
+upon its strings. The street was dark, but as the singers, stepping
+rythmically, passed the open door of the store, Mandy recognized a
+shape she knew.
+
+"Shade--Shade Buckheath! Wait thar!" she called to him.
+
+The others lingered, too, a moment, till they saw it was a girl
+following; then they turned and sauntered slowly on, still singing:
+
+  "Ef I was a little bird, I'd nest in the tallest tree,
+  That leans over the waters of the beautiful Tennessee."
+
+The words came back to Buckheath and Mandy in velvety bass and boyish
+tenor.
+
+"Shade--whar's Johnnie?" panted Mandy, shaking him by the arm. "I been
+up to the house, and she ain't thar. Pap ain't thar, neither. I was
+skeered to name my business to Laurelly; Aunt Mavity ain't no help and,
+and--Shade--whar's Johnnie?" Buckheath looked down into her working,
+tragic face and his mouth hardened.
+
+"She ain't at home," he said finally. "I've been at Himes's all evening.
+Pap and me has a--er, a little business on hand and--she ain't at home.
+They told me that they was some sort of shindig at Mr. Hardwick's
+to-night. I reckon Johnnie Consadine is chasin' round after her tony
+friends. Pap said she left the house a-goin' in that direction--or
+Mavity told me, I disremember which. I reckon you'll find her thar. What
+do you want of her?"
+
+"It's Deanie." She glanced fearfully past his shoulder to where the big
+clock on the grocery wall showed through its dim window. It was
+half-past ten. The lateness of the hour seemed to strike her with fresh
+terror, "Shade, come along of me," she pleaded. "I'm so skeered. I never
+shall have the heart to go in and ax for Johnnie, this time o' night at
+that thar fine house. How she can talk up to them swell people like she
+does is more than I know. You go with me and ax is she thar."
+
+The group of young men had crossed the bridge and were well on their way
+to the Inn. Buckheath glanced after them doubtfully and turned to walk
+at Mandy's side. When they came to the gate, the woman hung back,
+whimpering at sight of the festal array, and sound of the voices within.
+
+"They've got a party," she deprecated. "My old dress is jest as dirty as
+the floor. You go ax 'em, Shade."
+
+As she spoke, Johnnie, carrying a tray of cups and saucers, passed a
+lighted window, and Buckheath uttered a sudden, unpremeditated oath.
+
+"I don't know what God Almighty means makin' women such fools," he
+growled. "What call had Johnnie Consadine got to come here and act the
+servant for them rich folks?--runnin' around after Gray Stoddard--and
+much good may it do her!"
+
+Mandy crowded herself back into the shadow of the dripping evergreens,
+and Shade went boldly up on the side porch. She saw the door opened and
+her escort admitted; then through the glass was aware of Lydia Sessions
+in an evening frock coming into the small entry and conferring at
+length with him.
+
+Her attention was diverted from them by the appearance of Johnnie
+herself just inside a window. She ran forward and tapped on the pane.
+Johnnie put down her tray and came swiftly out, passing Shade and Miss
+Sessions in the side entry with a word.
+
+"What is it?" she inquired of Mandy, with a premonition of disaster in
+her tones.
+
+"Hit's Deanie," choked the Meacham woman. "She's right sick, and they
+won't let her leave the mill--leastways she's skeered to ask, and so am
+I. I 'lowed I ought to come and tell you, Johnnie. Was that right? You
+wanted me to, didn't you?" anxiously.
+
+"Yes--yes--yes!" cried Johnnie, reaching up swift, nervous fingers to
+unfasten the cap from her hair, thrusting it in the pocket of the apron,
+and untying the apron strings. "Wait a minute. I must give these things
+back. Oh, let's hurry!"
+
+It was but a moment after that she emerged once more on the porch, and
+apparently for the first time noticed Buckheath.
+
+"To-morrow, then," Miss Sessions was saying to him as he moved toward
+the two girls. "To-morrow morning." And with a patronizing nod to them
+all, she withdrew and rejoined her guests.
+
+"I never found you when I went up to the house," explained Mandy
+nervously, "and so I stopped Shade on the street and axed him would he
+come along with me. Maybe it would do some good if he was to go up with
+us to the mill. They pay more attention to a man person. I tell you,
+Johnnie, the baby's plumb broke down and sick."
+
+The three were moving swiftly along the darkened street now.
+
+"I'm going to take the children away from Pap," Johnnie said in a
+curious voice, rapid and monotonous, as though she were reciting
+something to herself. "I have obliged to do it. There must be a law
+somewhere. God won't let me fail."
+
+"Huh-uh," grunted Buckheath, instantly. "You can't do such a thing. Ef
+you was married, and yo' mother would let you adopt 'em, I reckon the
+courts might agree to that."
+
+"Shade," Johnnie turned upon him, "you've got more influence with Pap
+Himes than anybody. I believe if you'd talk to him, he'd let me have the
+children. I could support them now."
+
+"I don't want to fall out with Pap Himes--for nothing" responded Shade.
+"If you'll say that you'll wed me to-morrow morning, I'll go to Pap and
+get him to give up the children." Neither of them paid any attention to
+Mandy, who listened open-eyed and open-eared to this singular courtship.
+"Or I'll get him to take 'em out of the mill. You're right, I ain't got
+a bit of doubt I could do it. And if I don't do it, you needn't
+have me."
+
+An illumination fell upon Johnnie's mind. She saw that Buckheath was in
+league with her stepfather, and that the pressure was put on according
+to the younger man's ideas, and would be instantly withdrawn at his
+bidding. Yet, when the swift revulsion such knowledge brought with it
+made her ready to dismiss him at once, thought of Deanie's wasted little
+countenance, with the red burning high on the sharp, unchildish
+cheekbone, stayed her. For a while she walked with bent head. Heavily
+before her mind's eye went the picture of Gray Stoddard among his own
+people, in his own world--where she could never come.
+
+"Have it your way," she said finally in a suffering voice.
+
+"What's that you say? Are you goin' to take me?" demanded Buckheath,
+pressing close and reaching out a possessive arm to put around her.
+
+"I said yes," Johnnie shivered, pushing his hand away; "but--but it'll
+only be when you can come to me and tell me that the children are all
+right. If you fail me there, I--"
+
+Back at the Victory, downstairs went Reardon's messenger to where Pap
+Himes was sweating over the new machinery. Work always put the old man
+in a sort of incandescent fury, and now as Bob spoke to him, he raised
+an inflamed face, from which the small eyes twinkled redly, with a grunt
+of inquiry.
+
+"That youngest gal o' yours," the man repeated. "She's tryin' to leave
+her job and go home. Reardon said tell you, an' see what you had to say.
+The Lord knows we have trouble enough with those young 'uns. I'm glad
+when any of their folks that's got sand is around to make 'em behave. I
+reckon she can't come it over you, Gid."
+
+Himes straightened up with a groan, under any exertion his rheumatic old
+back always punished him cruelly for the days of indolence that had let
+its suppleness depart.
+
+"Huh?" he grunted. "Whar's she at? Up in the spinnin' room? Well, is
+they enough of you up thar to keep her tendin' to business for a spell,
+till I can get this thing levelled?" He held to the mechanism he was
+adjusting and harangued wheezily from behind it. "I cain't drop my job
+an' canter upstairs every time one o' you fellers whistles. The chap
+ain't more'n two foot long. Looks like you-all might hold on to her for
+one while--I'll be thar soon as I can--'bout a hour"; and he returned
+savagely to his work.
+
+When Mandy left her, Deanie tried for a time to tend her frames; but the
+endlessly turning spools, the edges of the jennies, blurred before her
+fevered eyes. Everything--even her fear of Pap Himes, her dread of the
+room boss--finally became vague in her mind. More and more she dreaded
+little Lissy's well-meant visitations; and after nearly an hour she
+stole toward the door, looking half deliriously for Sister Johnnie.
+Nobody noticed in the noisy, flaring room that spool after spool on her
+frame fouled its thread and ceased turning, as the little figure left
+its post and hesitated like a scared, small animal toward the main exit.
+Pap Himes, having come to where he could leave his work in the basement,
+climbed painfully the many stairs to the spinning room, and met her
+close to where the big belt rose up to the great shaft that gave power
+to every machine in that department.
+
+The loving master of the big yellow cat had always cherished a somewhat
+clumsily concealed dislike and hostility to Deanie. Perhaps there
+lingered in this a touch of half-jealousy of his wife's baby; perhaps he
+knew instinctively that Johnnie's rebellion against his tyranny was
+always strongest where Deanie was concerned.
+
+"Why ain't you on your job?" he inquired threateningly, as the child saw
+him and made some futile attempt to shrink back out of his way.
+
+"I feel so quare, Pap Himes," the little girl answered him, beginning to
+cry. "I thes' want to lay down and go to sleep every minute."
+
+"Huh!" Pap exploded his favourite expletive till it sounded ferocious,
+"That ain't quare feelin's. That's just plain old-fashioned laziness.
+You git yo'self back thar and tend them frames, or I'll--"
+
+"I cain't! I cain't see 'em to tend! I'm right blind in the eyes!"
+wailed Deanie. "I wish Sis' Johnnie would come. I wish't she would!"
+
+"Uh-huh," commented Bob Conley, who had strolled up in the old man's
+wake. "Reckon Sis' Johnnie would run things to suit her an' you, Himes,
+you can cuss me out good an' plenty, but I take notice you seem to have
+trouble makin' your own family mind."
+
+"You shut your head," growled Pap.
+
+Reardon had added himself to the spectators.
+
+"See here," the foreman argued, "if you say there's nothing the matter
+with that gal, an' she carries on till we have to let her go home, she
+goes for good. I'll take her frames away from her."
+
+Pap felt that a formidable show of authority must be made.
+
+"Git back thar!" he roared, advancing upon the child, raising the hand
+that still held the wrench with which he had been working on the
+machinery down stairs. "Git back thar, or I'll make you wish you had.
+When I tell you to do a thing, don't you name Johnnie to me. Git
+back thar!"
+
+With a faint cry the child cowered away from him. It is unlikely he
+would have struck her with the upraised tool he held. Perhaps he did not
+intend a blow at all, but one or two small frame tenders paused at the
+ends of their lanes to watch the scene with avid eyes, to extract the
+last thrill from the sensation that was being kindly brought into the
+midst of their monotonous toilsome hours; and Lissy, who was creeping up
+anxiously, yet keeping out of the range of Himes's eye, crouched as
+though the hammer had been raised over her own head.
+
+"Johnnie said--" began the little girl, desperately; but the old man,
+stung to greater fury, sprang at her; she stumbled back and back; fell
+against the slowly moving belt; her frock caught in the rivets which
+were just passing, and she was instantly jerked from her feet. If any
+one of the three men looking on had taken prompt action, the child might
+have been rescued at once; but stupid terror held them motionless.
+
+At the moment Johnnie, Shade and Mandy, coming up the stairs, got sight
+of the group, Pap with upraised hammer, the child in the clutches of
+imminent death.
+
+With shrill outcries the other juvenile workers swiftly gathered in a
+crowd. One broke away and fled down the long room screaming.
+
+"You Pony Consadine! Milo! Come here. Pap Himes is a-killing yo'
+sister."
+
+The old man, shaking all through his bulk, stared with fallen jaw. Mandy
+shrieked and leaped up the few remaining steps to reach Deanie, who was
+already above the finger-tips of a tall man.
+
+"Pap! Shade! Quick! Don't you see she'll be killed!" Mandy screamed in
+frenzy.
+
+Something in the atmosphere must have made itself felt, for no sound
+could have penetrated the din of the weaving room; yet some of the women
+left their looms and came running in behind the two pale, scared little
+brothers, to add their shrieks to the general clamour. Deanie's fellow
+workers, poor little souls, denied their childish share of the world's
+excitements, gazed with a sort of awful relish. Only Johnnie, speeding
+down the room away from it all, was doing anything rational to avert the
+catastrophe. The child hung on the slowly moving belt, inert, a tiny rag
+of life, with her mop of tangled yellow curls, her white, little face,
+its blue eyes closed. When she reached the top, where the pulley was
+close against the ceiling, her brains would be dashed out and the small
+body dragged to pieces between beam and ceiling.
+
+Those who looked at her realized this. Numbed by the inevitable, they
+made no effort, save Milo, who at imminent risk of his own life, was
+climbing on a frame near at hand; but Pony flew at Himes, beating the
+old man with hard-clenched, inadequate fists, and screaming.
+
+"You git her down from thar--git her down this minute! She'll be killed,
+I tell ye! She'll be killed, I tell ye!"
+
+Poor Mandy made inarticulate moanings and reached up her arms; Shade
+Buckheath cursed softly under his breath; the women and children stared,
+eager to lose no detail.
+
+"I always have said, and I always shall say, that chaps as young as that
+ain't got no business around whar machinery's at!" Bob Conley kept
+shouting over and over in a high, strange, mechanical voice, plainly
+quite unconscious that he spoke at all.
+
+The child was so near the ceiling now that a universal groan proceeded
+from the watchers. Then, all at once the belt ceased to move, and the
+clash and tumult were stilled. Johnnie, who had flown to the little
+controlling wheel to throw off the power, came running back, crying out
+in the sudden quiet.
+
+"Shade--quick--get a ladder! Hold something under there! She might--Oh,
+my God!" for Deanie's frock had pulled free and the little form hurled
+down before Johnnie could reach them. But the devoted Mandy was there,
+her futile, inadequate skirts upheld. Into them the small body dropped,
+and together the two came to the floor with a dull sort of crunch.
+
+When Johnnie reached the prostrate pair, Mandy was struggling to her
+knees, gasping; but Deanie lay twisted just as she had fallen, the
+little face sunken and deathly, a tiny trickle of blood coming from a
+corner of her parted lips.
+
+"Oh, my baby! Oh, my baby! They've killed my baby!
+Deanie--Deanie--Deanie--!" wailed Mandy.
+
+Johnnie was on her knees beside the child, feeling her over with
+tremulous hands. Her face was bleached chalk-white, and her eyes stared
+fearfully at the motionless lips of the little one, from which that
+scarlet stream trickled; but she set her own lips silently.
+
+"Thar--right thar in the side," groaned Mandy. "She's all staved in on
+the side that--my pore little Deanie! Oh, I tried to ketch her, but she
+broke right through and pulled my skirts out of my hand and hit
+the floor."
+
+Pap had drawn nearer on shaking limbs; the children crowded so close
+that Johnnie looked up and motioned them back.
+
+"Shade--you run for a doctor, and have a carriage fetched," she ordered
+briefly.
+
+"Is--Lord God, is she dead?" faltered the old man.
+
+"Ef she ain't dead now, she'll die," Mandy answered him shrilly. "They
+ain't no flesh on her--she's run down to a pore little skeleton. That's
+what the factories does to women and children--they jest eats 'em up,
+and spits out they' bones."
+
+"Well, I never aimed to skeer her that-a-way," said Himes; "but the
+little fool--"
+
+Johnnie's flaming glance silenced him, and his voice died away, a sort
+of a rasp in his throat. Mechanically he glanced up to the point on the
+great belt from which the child had fallen, and measured the distance to
+the floor. He scratched his bald head dubiously, and edged back from the
+tragedy he had made.
+
+"Everybody knows I never hit her," he muttered as he went.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+LIGHT
+
+Gray Stoddard's eyes had followed Lydia Sessions when she went into the
+hall to speak to Shade Buckheath. He had a glimpse of Johnnie, too, in
+the passage; he noted that she later left the house with Buckheath
+(Mandy Meacham was beyond his range of vision); and the pang that went
+through him at the sight was a strangely mingled one.
+
+The talk between him and his hostess had been enlightening to both of
+them. It showed Lydia Sessions not only where she stood with Gray, but
+it brought home to her startlingly, and as nothing had yet done, the
+strength of Johnnie's hold upon him; while it forced Gray himself to
+realize that ever since that morning when he met the girl on the bridge
+going to put her little brothers and sisters in the Victory mill, he had
+behaved more like a sulky, disappointed lover than a staunch friend. He
+confessed frankly to himself, that, had Johnnie been a boy, a young man,
+instead of a beautiful and appealing woman, he would have been prompt to
+go to her and remonstrate--he would have made no bones of having the
+matter out clearly and fully. He blamed himself much for the
+estrangement which he had allowed to grow between them. He knew
+instinctively about what Shade Buckheath was--certainly no fit mate for
+Johnnie Consadine. And for the better to desert her--poor, helpless,
+unschooled girl--could only operate to push her toward the worse. These
+thoughts kept Stoddard wakeful company till almost morning.
+
+Dawn came with a soft wind out of the west, all the odours of spring on
+its breath, and a penitent warmth to apologize for last night's storm.
+Stoddard faced his day, and decided that he would begin it with an
+early-morning horseback ride. He called up his stable boy over the
+telephone, and when Jim brought round Roan Sultan saddled there was a
+pause, as of custom, for conversation.
+
+"Heared about the accident over to the Victory, Mr. Stoddard?" Jim
+inquired.
+
+"No," said Gray, wheeling sharply. "Anybody hurt?"
+
+"One o' Pap Himes's stepchildren mighty near killed, they say," the boy
+told him. "I seen Miss Johnnie Consadine when they was bringing the
+little gal down. It seems they sent for her over to Mr. Hardwickses
+where she was at."
+
+Gray mounted quickly, settled himself in the saddle, and glanced down
+the street which would lead him past Himes's place. For months now, he
+had been instinctively avoiding that part of town. Poor Johnnie! She
+might be a disappointing character, but he knew well that she was full
+of love; he remembered her eyes when, nearly a year ago, up in the mist
+and sweetness of April on the Unakas, she had told him of the baby
+sister and the other little ones. She must be suffering now. Almost
+without reflection he turned his horse's head and rode toward the
+forlorn Himes boarding-house.
+
+As he drew near, he noticed a huddled figure at the head of the steps,
+and coming up made it out to be Himes himself, sitting, elbows on knees,
+staring straight ahead of him. Pap had not undressed at all, but he had
+taken out his false teeth "to rest his jaws a spell," as he was in the
+habit of doing, and the result was startling. His cheeks were fallen in
+to such an extent that the blinking red eyes above looked larger; it was
+as though the old rascal's crimes of callous selfishness and greed had
+suddenly aged him.
+
+Stoddard pulled in his horse at the foot of the steps.
+
+"I hear one of the little girls was hurt in the mill last night. Was she
+badly injured? Which one was it?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Hit's Deanie. She's all right," mumbled Pap. "Got the whole house
+uptore, and Laurelly miscallin' me till I don't know which way to look;
+and now the little dickens is a-goin' to git well all right. Chaps is
+tough, I tell ye. Ye cain't kill 'em."
+
+"You people must have thought so," said Stoddard, "or you wouldn't have
+brought these little ones down and hired them to the cotton mill.
+Johnnie knew what that meant."
+
+The words had come almost involuntarily. The old man stared at the
+speaker breathing hard.
+
+"What's Johnnie Consadine got to do with it?" he inquired finally. "I'm
+the stepdaddy of the children--and Johnnie's stepdaddy too, for the
+matter of that--and what I say goes."
+
+"Did you hire the children at the Victory?" inquired Stoddard, swiftly.
+Back across his memory came the picture of Johnnie with her poor little
+sheep for the shambles clustered about her on the bridge before the
+Victory mill. "Did you hire the children to the factory?" he repeated.
+
+"Now Mr. Stoddard," began the old man, between bluster and whine, "I
+talked about them chaps to the superintendent of yo' mill, an' you-all
+said you didn't want none of that size. And one o' yo' men--he was a
+room boss, I reckon--spoke up right sassy to me--as sassy as Johnnie
+Consadine herself, and God knows she ain't got no respect for them
+that's set over her. I had obliged to let 'em go to the Victory; but I
+don't think you have any call to hold it ag'in me--Johnnie was plumb
+impident about it--plumb impident."
+
+Stoddard glanced up at the windows and made as though to dismount. All
+night at his pillow had stood the accusation that he had been cruel to
+Johnnie. Now, as Himes's revelations went on, and he saw what her futile
+efforts had been, as he guessed a part of her sufferings, it seemed he
+must hurry to her and brush away the tangle of misunderstanding which he
+had allowed to grow up between them.
+
+"They've worked over that thar chap, off an' on, all night," the old man
+said. "Looks like, if they keep hit up, she'll begin to think somethin's
+the matter of her."
+
+Gray realized that his visit at this moment would be ill-timed. He would
+ride on through the Gap now, and call as he came back.
+
+"I had obliged to find me a place whar I could hire out them chaps," the
+miserable old man before him went on, garrulously. "They's nothin' like
+mill work to take the davilment out o' young 'uns. Some of them chaps'll
+call you names and make faces at you, even whilst you' goin' through the
+mill yard--and think what they'd be ef they _wasn't_ worked! I'm a old
+man, and when I married Laurelly and took the keepin' o' her passel o'
+chaps on my back, I aimed to make it pay. Laurelly, she won't work."
+
+He looked helplessly at Stoddard, like a child about to cry.
+
+"She told me up and down that she never had worked in no mill, and she
+was too old to l'arn. She said the noise of the thing from the outside
+was enough to show her that she didn't want to go inside--and go she
+would not."
+
+"But she let her children go--she and Johnnie," muttered Stoddard,
+settling himself in his saddle.
+
+"Well, I'd like to see either of 'em he'p theirselves!" returned Pap
+Himes with a reminiscence of his former manner. "Johnnie ain't had the
+decency to give me her wages, not once since I've been her pappy; the
+onliest money I ever had from her--'ceptin' to pay her board--was when
+she tried to buy them chaps out o' workin' in the mill. But when I put
+my foot down an' told her that the chillen could work in the mill
+without a beatin' or with one, jest as she might see and choose, she had
+a little sense, and took 'em over and hired 'em herself. Baylor told me
+afterward that she tried to make him say he didn't want 'em, but Baylor
+and me stands together, an' Miss Johnnie failed up on that trick."
+
+Pap felt an altogether misplaced confidence in the view that Stoddard,
+as a male, was likely to take of the matter.
+
+"A man is obliged to be boss of his own family--ain't that so, Mr.
+Stoddard?" he demanded. "I said the chillen had to go into the mill, and
+into the mill they went. They all wanted to go, at the start, and
+Laurelly agreed with me that hit was the right thing. Then, just because
+Deanie happened to a accident and Johnnie took up for her, Laurelly has
+to go off into hy-strikes and say she'll quit me soon as she can put
+foot to the ground."
+
+Stoddard made no response to this, but touched Sultan with his heel and
+moved on. He had stopped at the post-office as he came past, taking from
+his personal box one letter. This he opened and read as he rode slowly
+away. Halfway up the first rise, Pap saw him rein in and turn; the old
+man was still staring when Gray stopped once more at the gate.
+
+"See here, Himes," he spoke abruptly, "this concerns you--this letter
+that has just reached me."
+
+Pap looked at the younger man with mere curiosity.
+
+"When Johnnie was first given a spinning room to look after," said Gray,
+"she came to Mr. Sessions and myself and asked permission to have a
+small device of her own contrivance used on the frames as an Indicator."
+
+Pap shuffled his feet uneasily.
+
+"I thought no more about the matter; in fact I've not been in the
+spinning department for--for some time." Stoddard looked down at the
+hand which held his bridle, and remembered that he had absented himself
+from every place that threatened him with the sight of Johnnie.
+
+Pap was breathing audibly through his open mouth.
+
+"She--she never had nothin' made," he whispered out the ready lie
+hurriedly, scrambling to his feet and down the steps, pressing close to
+Roan Sultan's shoulder, laying a wheedling hand on the bridle, looking
+up anxiously into the stern young face above him.
+
+"Oh, yes, she did," Stoddard returned. "I remember, now, hearing some of
+the children from the room say that she had a device which worked well.
+From the description they gave of it, I judge that it is the same which
+this letter tells me you and Buckheath are offering to the Alabama
+mills. Mr. Trumbull, the superintendent, says that you and Buckheath
+hold the patent for this Indicator jointly. As soon as I can consult
+with Johnnie, we will see about the matter."
+
+Himes let go the roan's bridle and staggered back a pace or two,
+open-mouthed, staring. The skies had fallen. His heavy mind turned
+slowly toward resentment against Buckheath. He wished the younger
+conspirator were here to take his share. Then the door opened and Shade
+himself came out wiping his mouth. He was fresh from the breakfast
+table, but not on his way to the mill, since it was still too early. He
+gave Stoddard a surly nod as he passed through the gate and on down the
+street, in the direction of the Inn. Himes, in a turmoil of stupid
+uncertainty, once or twice made as though to detain him. His slow wits
+refused him any available counsel. Dazedly he fumbled for something
+convincing to say. Then on a sudden inspiration, he once more laid hold
+of the bridle and began to speak volubly in a hoarse undertone:
+
+"W'y, name o' God, Mr. Stoddard! Who should have a better right to that
+thar patent than Buck and me? I'm the gal's stepdaddy, an' he's the man
+she's goin' to wed."
+
+Some peculiar quality in the silence of Gray Stoddard seemed finally to
+penetrate the old fellow's understanding. He looked up to find the man
+on horseback regarding him, square-jawed, pale, and with eyes angrily
+bright. He glanced over his shoulder at the windows of the house behind
+him, moistened his lips once again, gulped, and finally resumed in a
+manner both whining and aggressive.
+
+"Now, Mr. Stoddard, I want to talk to you mighty plain. The whole o'
+Cottonville is full o' tales about you and Johnnie. Yes--that's
+the truth."
+
+He stood staring down at his big, shuffling feet, laboriously sorting in
+his own mind such phrases as it might do to use. The difficulty of what
+he had to say blocked speech for so long that Stoddard, in a curiously
+quiet voice, finally prompted him.
+
+"Tales?" he repeated. "What tales, Mr. Himes?"
+
+"Why, they ain't a old woman in town, nor a young one neither--I believe
+in my soul that the young ones is the worst--that ain't been
+talkin'--talkin' bad--ever since you took Johnnie to ride in your
+otty-mobile."
+
+Again there came a long pause. Stoddard stared down on Gideon Himes, and
+Himes stared at his own feet.
+
+"Well?" Stoddard's quiet voice once more urged his accuser forward.
+
+Pap rolled his head between his shoulders with a negative motion which
+intimated that it was not well.
+
+"And lending her books, and all sich," he pursued doggedly. "That kind
+o' carryin' on ain't decent, and you know it ain't. Buck knows it
+ain't--but he's willin' to have her. He told her he was willin' to have
+her, and the fool gal let on like she didn't want him. He came here to
+board at my house because she wouldn't scarcely so much as speak to him
+elsewhere."
+
+By the light of these statements Stoddard read what poor Johnnie's
+persecution had been. The details of it he could not, of course, know;
+yet he saw in that moment largely how she had been harried. At the
+instant of seeing, came that swift and mighty revulsion that follows
+surely when we have misprized and misunderstood those dear to us.
+
+"What is it you want of me?" he inquired of Himes.
+
+"Why, just this here," Pap told him. "You let Johnnie Consadine alone."
+He leaned even closer and spoke in a yet lower tone, because a number of
+girls were emerging from the house and starting down the steps. "A big,
+rich feller like you don't mean any good by a girl fixed the way Johnnie
+is. You wouldn't marry her--then let her alone. Things ain't got so bad
+but what Buck is still willin' to have her. You wouldn't marry her."
+
+Stoddard looked down at the shameful old man with eyes that were
+indecipherable. If the impulse was strong in him to twist the unclean
+old throat against any further ill-speaking, it gave no heat to the tone
+in which he answered:
+
+"It's you and your kind that say I mean harm to Johnnie, and that I
+would not marry her. Why should I intend ill toward her? Why shouldn't I
+marry her? I would--I would marry her."
+
+As he made this, to him the only possible defence of the poor girl, Pap
+faltered slowly back, uttering a gurgling expression of astonishment.
+With a sense of surprise Stoddard saw in his face only dismay
+and chagrin.
+
+"Hit--hit's a lie," Himes mumbled half-heartedly. "Ye'd never do it in
+the world."
+
+Stoddard gathered up his bridle rein, preparatory to moving on.
+
+"You're an old man, Mr. Himes," he said coldly, "and you are excited;
+but you don't want to say any more--that's quite enough of that sort
+of thing."
+
+Then he loosened the rein on Roan Sultan, and moved away down the
+street.
+
+Gideon Himes stood and gazed after him with bulging eyes. Gray Stoddard
+married to Johnnie! He tried to adjust his dull wits to the new position
+of affairs; tried to cipher the problem with this amazing new element
+introduced. Last night's scene of violence when the injured child was
+brought home went dismally before his eyes. Laurella had said she would
+leave him so soon as she could put foot to the floor. He had expected to
+coax her with gifts and money, with concessions in regard to the
+children if it must be; but with a rich man for a son-in-law, of course
+she would go. He would never see her face again. And suddenly he flung
+up an arm like a beaten schoolboy and began to blubbler noisily in the
+crook of his elbow.
+
+An ungentle hand on his shoulder recalled him to time and place.
+
+"For God's sake, what's the matter with you?" inquired Shade Buckheath's
+voice harshly.
+
+The old man gulped down his grief and made his communication in a few
+hurried sentences.
+
+"An' he'll do it," Pap concluded. "He's jest big enough fool for
+anything. Ain't you heard of his scheme for having the hands make the
+money in the mill?" (Thus he described a profit-sharing plan.) "Don't
+you know he's given ten thousand dollars to start up some sort o' school
+for the boys and gals to learn their trade in? A man like that'll do
+anything. And if he marries Johnnie, Laurelly'll leave me sure."
+
+"Leave you!" echoed Buckheath darkly. "She won't have to. If Gray
+Stoddard marries Johnnie Consadine, you and me will just about roost in
+the penitentiary for the rest of our days."
+
+"The patent!" echoed Pap blankly. He turned fiercely on his fellow
+conspirator. "Now see what ye done with yer foolishness," he exclaimed.
+"Nothin' would do ye but to be offerin' the contraption for sale, and
+tellin' each and every that hit'd been used in the Hardwick mill. Look
+what a mess ye've made. I'm sorry I ever hitched up with ye. Boy o' yo'
+age has got no sense."
+
+"How was I to know they'd write to Stoddard?" growled Shade sulkily. "No
+harm did if hit wasn't for him. We've got the patent all right, and
+Johnnie cain't help herself. But him--with all his money--he can help
+her--damn him!"
+
+"Yes, and he'll take a holt and hunt up about Pros's silver mine, too,"
+said Himes. "I've always mistrusted the way he's been hangin' round Pros
+Passmore. Like enough he's hearn of that silver mine, and that's the
+reason he's after Johnnie."
+
+The old man paused to ruminate on this feature of the case. He was
+pleased with his own shrewdness in fathoming Gray Stoddard's
+mysterious motives.
+
+"Buck," he said finally, with a swift drop to friendliness, "hit's got
+to be stopped. Can you stop it?
+
+"Didn't you tell me that Johnnie promised last night to wed you? Didn't
+you say she promised it, when you was goin' up to the Victory with her?"
+
+Shade nodded.
+
+"She promised she would if I'd get you to let the children stay out of
+the mill. Deanie's hurt now, and you're afraid to make the others go
+back in the mill anyhow, 'count of Laurelly's tongue. I can't hold
+Johnnie to that promise. But--but there's one person I want to talk to
+about this business, and then I'll be ready to do something."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+A PACT
+
+While Himes and Buckheath yet stood thus talking, the warning whistles
+of the various mills began to blow. Groups of girls came down the steps
+and stared at the two men conferring with heads close together. Mavity
+Bence put her face out at the front door and called.
+
+"Pap, yo' breakfast is gettin' stone cold."
+
+"Do you have to go to the mill right now?" inquired the older man,
+timorously. He was already under the domination of this swifter, bolder,
+more fiery spirit.
+
+"No, I don't have to go anywhere that I don't want to. I've got business
+with a certain party up this-a-way, and when I git to the mill I'll
+be there."
+
+He turned and hurried swiftly up the minor slope that led to the big
+Hardwick home, Pap's fascinated eyes following him as long as he was in
+sight. As the young fellow strode along he was turning in his mind Lydia
+Sessions's promise to talk to him this morning about Johnnie.
+
+"But she'll be in bed and asleep, I reckon, at this time of day," he
+ruminated. "The good Lord knows I would if I had the chance like
+she has."
+
+As he came in sight of the Hardwick house, he checked momentarily.
+Standing at the gate, an astonishing figure, still in her evening frock,
+looking haggard and old in the gray, disillusioning light of early
+morning, was Lydia Sessions. Upstairs, her white bed was smooth; its
+pillows spread fair and prim, unpressed by any head, since the maid had
+settled them trimly in place the morning before; but the long rug which
+ran from her dressing table to the window might have told a tale of
+pacing feet that passed restlessly from midnight till dawn; the mirror
+could have disclosed the picture of a white, anxious, and often angry
+face that had stared into it as the woman paused now and again to
+commune with the real Lydia Sessions.
+
+She was thirty and penniless. She belonged to a circle where everybody
+had money. Her sister had married well, and Harriet was no
+better-looking than she. All Lydia Sessions's considerable forces were
+by heredity and training turned into one narrow channel--the effort to
+make a creditable, if not a brilliant, match. And she had thought she
+was succeeding. Gray Stoddard had seemed seriously interested. In those
+long night watches while the lights flared on either side of her mirror,
+and the luxurious room of a modern young lady lay disclosed, with all
+its sumptuous fittings of beauty and inutility, Lydia went over her
+plans of campaign. She was a suitable match for him--anybody would say
+so. He had liked her--he had liked her well enough--till he got
+interested in this mill girl. They had never agreed on anything
+concerning Johnnie Consadine. If that element were eliminated to-morrow,
+she knew she could go back and pick up the thread of their intimacy
+which had promised so well, and, she doubted not at all, twist it safely
+into a marriage-knot. If Johnnie were only out of the way. If she would
+leave Cottonville. If she would marry that good-looking mechanic who
+plainly wanted her. How silly of her not to take him!
+
+Toward dawn, she snatched a little cape from the garments hanging in the
+closet, flung it over her shoulders and ran downstairs. She must have a
+breath of fresh air. So, in the manner of helpless creatures who cannot
+go out in the highway to accost fate, she was standing at the gate when
+she caught sight of Shade Buckheath approaching. Here was her
+opportunity. She must be doing something, and the nearest enterprise at
+hand was to foster and encourage this young fellow's pursuit of Johnnie.
+
+"I wanted to talk to you about a very particular matter," she broke out
+nervously, as soon as Buckheath was near enough to be addressed in the
+carefully lowered tone which she used throughout the interview. She
+continually huddled the light cape together at the neck with tremulous,
+unsteady fingers; and it was characteristic of these two that, although
+the woman had heard of the calamity at the Victory mill the night
+before, and knew that Shade came directly from the Himes home, she made
+no inquiry as to the welfare of Deanie, and he offered no information.
+He gave no reply in words to her accost, and she went on, with
+increasing agitation.
+
+"I--this matter ought to be attended to at once. Something's got to be
+done. I've attempted to improve the social and spiritual conditions of
+these girls in the mill, and if I've only worked harm by bringing them
+in contact with--in contact with--"
+
+She hesitated and stood looking into the man's face. Buckheath knew
+exactly what she wished to say. He was impatient of the flummery she
+found it necessary to wind around her simple proposition; but he was
+used to women, he understood them; and to him a woman of Miss Sessions's
+class was no different from a woman of his own.
+
+"I reckon you wanted to name it to me about Johnnie Consadine," he said
+bluntly.
+
+"Yes--yes, that was it," breathed Lydia Sessions, glancing back toward
+the house with a frightened air. "John is--she's a good girl, Mr.
+Buckheath; I beg of you to believe me when I assure you that John is a
+good, honest, upright girl. I would not think anything else for a
+minute; but it seems to me that somebody has to do something, or--or--"
+
+Shade raised his hand to his mouth to conceal the swift, sarcastic smile
+on his lips. He spat toward the pathside before agreeing seriously with
+Miss Lydia.
+
+"Her and me was promised, before she come down here and got all this
+foolishness into her head," he said finally. "Her mother never could do
+anything with Johnnie. Looks like Johnnie's got more authority--her
+mother's more like a little girl to her than the other way round. Her
+uncle Pros has been crazy in the hospital, and Pap Himes, her
+stepfather--well, I reckon she's the only human that ever had to mind
+Pap and didn't do it."
+
+This somewhat ambiguous statement of the case failed to bring any smile
+to his hearer's lips.
+
+"There's no use talking to John herself," Miss Lydia took up the tale
+feverishly. "I've done that, and it had no effect on--. Well, of course
+she would say that she didn't encourage him to the things I saw
+afterward; but I know that a man of his sort does not do things without
+encouragement, and--Mr. Buckheath don't you think you ought to go right
+to Mr. Stoddard and tell him that John is your promised wife, and show
+him the folly and--and the wickedness of his course--or what would be
+wickedness if he persisted in it? Don't you think you ought to do that?"
+
+Shade held down his head and appeared to be giving this matter some
+consideration. The weak point of such an argument lay in the fact that
+Johnnie was not his promised wife, and Gray Stoddard was very likely to
+know it. Indeed, Lydia Sessions herself only believed the statement
+because she so wished.
+
+"I reckon I ort," he said finally. "If I could ever get a chance of
+private speech with him, mebbe I'd--"
+
+There came a sound of light hoofs down the road, and Stoddard on Roan
+Sultan, riding bareheaded, came toward them under the trees.
+
+Miss Sessions clutched the gate and stood staring. Buckheath drew a
+little closer, set his shoulder against the fence and tried to look
+unconcerned. The rising sun behind the mountains threw long slant rays
+across into the bare tree tops, so that the shimmer of it dappled horse
+and man. Gray's face was pale, his brow looked anxious; but he rode head
+up and alert, and glanced with surprise at the two at the Sessions gate.
+He had no hat to raise, but he saluted Lydia Sessions with a sweeping
+gesture of the hand and passed on. A blithe, gallant figure cantering
+along the suburban road, out toward the Gap, and the mountains beyond,
+Gray Stoddard rode into the dip of the ridge and--so far as Cottonville
+was concerned--vanished utterly.
+
+Buckheath drew a long breath and straightened up.
+
+"I'm but a poor man," he began truculently, "yit there ain't nobody can
+marry the gal I set out to wed and me stand by and say nothing."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Buckheath!" cried Miss Lydia. "Mr. Stoddard had no idea of
+_marrying_ John--a mill girl! There is no possibility of any such thing
+as that. I want you to understand that there isn't--to feel assured,
+once for all. I have reason to know, and I urge you to put that out of
+your mind."
+
+Shade looked at her narrowly. Up to the time Pap gave him definite
+information from headquarters, he had never for an instant supposed that
+there was a possibility of Stoddard desiring to marry Johnnie; but the
+flurried eagerness of Miss Sessions convinced him that such a
+possibility was a very present dread with her, and he sent a venomous
+glance after the disappearing horseman.
+
+"You go and talk to him right now, Mr. Buckheath," insisted Lydia
+anxiously. "Tell him, just as you have told me, how long you and John
+have been engaged, and how devoted she was to you before she came down
+to the mill. You appeal to him that way. You can overtake him--I mean
+you can intercept him--if you start right on now--cut across the turn,
+and go through the tunnel."
+
+"If I go after him to talk to him, and we--uh--we have an
+interruption--are you going to tell everybody you see about it?"
+demanded Shade sharply, staring down at the woman.
+
+She crouched a little, still clinging to the pickets of the gate. The
+word "interruption" only conveyed to her mind the suggestion that they
+might be interfered with in their conversation. She did not recollect
+the mountain use of it to describe a quarrel, an outbreak, or an affray.
+
+"No," she whispered. "Oh, certainly not--I'll never tell anything that
+you don't want me to."
+
+"All right," returned Buckheath hardily. "If you won't, I won't. If you
+name to people that I was the last one saw with Mr. Stoddard, I shall
+have obliged to tell 'em of what you and me was talkin' about when he
+passed us. You see that, don't you?"
+
+She nodded silently, her frightened eyes on his face; and without
+another word he set off at that long, swinging pace which belongs to his
+people. Lydia turned and ran swiftly into the house, and up the stairs
+to her own room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+MISSING
+
+When Stoddard did not come to his desk that morning the matter remained
+for a time unnoticed, except by McPherson, who fretted a bit at so
+unusual a happening. Truth to tell, the old Scotchman had dreaded having
+this rich young man for an associate, and had put a rod in pickle for
+his chastisement. When Stoddard turned out to be a regular worker,
+punctual, amenable to discipline, he congratulated himself, and praised
+his assistant, but warily. Now came the first delinquency, and in his
+heart he cared more that Stoddard should absent himself without notice
+than for the pile of letters lying untouched.
+
+"Dave," he finally said to the yellow office boy, "I wish you'd 'phone
+to Mr. Stoddard's place and see when he'll be down."
+
+Dave came back with the information that Mr. Stoddard was not at the
+house; he had left for an early-morning ride, and not returned to his
+breakfast.
+
+"He'll just about have stopped up at the Country Club for a snack,"
+MacPherson muttered to himself. "I wonder who or what he found there
+attractive enough to keep him from his work."
+
+Looking into Gray's office at noon, the closed desk with its pile of
+mail once more offended MacPherson's eye.
+
+"Mr. Stoddard here?" inquired Hartley Sessions, glancing in at the same
+moment.
+
+"No, I think not," returned the Scotchman, unwilling to admit that he
+did not exactly know. "I believe he's up at the club. Perhaps he's got
+tangled in for a longer game of golf than he reckoned on."
+
+This unintentional and wholly innocent falsehood stopped any inquiry
+that there might have been. MacPherson had meant to 'phone the club
+during the day, but he failed to do so, and it was not until evening
+that he walked up himself to put more cautious inquiries.
+
+"No, sah--no, sah, Mr. Gray ain't been here," the Negro steward told him
+promptly. "I sure would have remembered, sah," in answer to a startled
+inquiry from MacPherson. "Dey been havin' a big game on between Mr.
+Charley Conroy and Mr. Hardwick, and de bofe of 'em spoke of Mr. Gray,
+and said dey was expectin' him to play."
+
+MacPherson came down the stone steps of the clubhouse, gravely
+disquieted. Below him the road wound, a dimly conjectured, wavering gray
+ribbon; on the other side of it the steep slope took off to a gulf of
+inky shadow, where the great valley lay, hushed under the solemn stars,
+silent, black, and shimmering with a myriad pulsating electric lights
+which glowed like swarms of fireflies caught in an invisible net. That
+was Watauga. The strings of brilliants that led from it were arc lights
+at switch crossings where the great railway lines rayed out. Near at
+hand was Cottonville with its vast bulks of lighted mills whose hum came
+faintly up to him even at this distance. MacPherson stood uncertainly in
+the middle of the road. Supper and bed were behind him. But he had not
+the heart to turn back to either. Somewhere down in that abyss of night,
+there was a clue--or there were many clues--to this strange absence of
+Gray Stoddard. Perhaps Gray himself was there; and the Scotchman cursed
+his own dilatoriness in waiting till darkness had covered the earth
+before setting afoot inquiries.
+
+He found himself hurrying and getting out of breath as he took his way
+down the ridge and straight to Stoddard's cottage, only to find that the
+master's horse was not in the stable, and the Negro boy who cared for it
+had seen nothing of it or its rider since five o'clock that morning.
+
+"I wonder, now, should I give the alarm to Hardwick," MacPherson said to
+himself. "The lad may have just ridden on to La Fayette, or some little
+nearby town, and be staying the night. Young fellows sometimes have
+affairs they'd rather not share with everybody--and then, there's Miss
+Lydia. If I go up to Hardwick's with the story, she'll be sure to hear
+it from Hardwick's wife."
+
+"Did Mr. Stoddard ever go away like this before without giving you
+notice?" he asked with apparent carelessness.
+
+The boy shook his head in vigorous negative.
+
+"Never since I've been working for him," he asserted. "Mr. Stoddard
+wasn't starting anywhere but for his early ride--at least he wasn't
+intending to. He hadn't any hat on, and he was in his riding clothes. He
+didn't carry anything with him. I know in reason he wasn't intending
+to stay."
+
+This information sent MacPherson hurrying to the Hardwick home. Dinner
+was over. The master of the house conferred with him a moment in the
+vestibule, then opened the door into the little sitting room and
+asked abruptly:
+
+"When was the last time any of you saw Gray Stoddard?"
+
+His sister-in-law screamed faintly, then cowered in her chair and stared
+at him mutely. But Mrs. Hardwick as yet noted nothing unusual.
+
+"Yesterday evening," she returned placidly. "Don't you remember, Jerome,
+he was here at the Lyric reception?"
+
+"Oh, I remember well enough," said Hardwick knitting his brows. "I
+thought some of you might have seen him since then. He's missing."
+
+"Missing!" echoed Lydia Sessions with a note of terror in her tones.
+
+Now Mrs. Hardwick looked startled.
+
+"But, Jerome, I think you're inconsiderate," she began, glancing
+solicitously at her sister. "Under the circumstances, it seems to me you
+might have made your announcement more gently--to Lydia, anyhow. Never
+mind, dearie--there's nothing in it to be frightened at."
+
+"I'm not frightened," whispered Lydia Sessions through white lips that
+belied her assertion. Hardwick looked impatiently from his sister-in-law
+to his wife.
+
+"I'm sorry if I startled you, Lydia," he said in a perfunctory tone,
+"but this is a serious business. MacPherson tells me Stoddard hasn't
+been at the factory nor at his boarding-house to-day. The last person
+who saw him, so far as we know, is his stable boy. Black Jim says
+Stoddard rode out of the gate at five o'clock this morning, bareheaded
+and in his riding clothes. Have any of you seen him since--that's what I
+want to know?"
+
+"Since?" repeated Miss Sessions, who seemed unable to get beyond the
+parrot echoing of her questioner's words. "Why Jerome, what makes you
+think I've seen him since then? Did he say--did anybody tell you--"
+
+She broke off huskily and sat staring at her interlaced fingers dropped
+in her lap.
+
+"No--no. Of course not, Lydia," her sister hastened to reassure her,
+crossing the room and putting a protecting arm about the girl's
+shoulders. "He shouldn't have spoken as he did, knowing that you and
+Gray--knowing how affairs stand."
+
+"Well, I only thought since you and Stoddard are such great friends,"
+Hardwick persisted, "he might have mentioned to you some excursion, or
+made opportunity to talk with you alone, sometime last night--to--to
+say something. Did he tell you where he was going, Lydia? Are you
+keeping something from us that we ought to know? Remember this is no
+child's play. It begins to look as though it might be a question of the
+man's life."
+
+Lydia Sessions started galvanically. She pushed off her sister's
+caressing hand with a fierce gesture.
+
+"There's nothing--no such relation as you're hinting at, Elizabeth,
+between Gray Stoddard and me," she said sharply. Memory of what Gray had
+(as she supposed) followed her into the library to say to her wrung a
+sort of groan from the girl. "I suppose Matilda's told you that we
+had--had some conversation in the library," she managed to say.
+
+Her brother-in-law shook his head.
+
+"We haven't questioned the servants yet," he said briefly. "We haven't
+questioned anybody nor hunted up any evidence. MacPherson came direct to
+me from Stoddard's stable boy. Gray did stop and talk to you last night?
+What did he say?"
+
+"I--why nothing in--I really don't remember," faltered Lydia, with so
+strange a look that both her sister and Hardwick looked at her in
+surprise. "That is--oh, nothing of any importance, you know. I--I
+believe we were talking about socialism, and--and different classes of
+people.... That sort of thing."
+
+MacPherson, who had pushed unceremoniously into the room behind his
+employer, nodded his gray head. "That would always be what he was
+speaking of." He smiled a little as he said it.
+
+"All right," returned Hardwick, struggling into his overcoat at the
+hat-tree, and seeking his hat and stick, "I'll go right back with you,
+Mac. This thing somehow has a sinister look to me."
+
+As the two men were leaving the house, Hardwick felt a light, trembling
+touch on his arm, and turned to face his sister-in-law.
+
+"Why--Jerome, why did you say that last?" Lydia quavered. "What do you
+think has happened to him? Do you think anybody--that is--? Oh, you
+looked at me as though you thought I had something to do with it!"
+
+"Come, come, Lyd. Pull yourself together. You're getting hysterical,"
+urged Hardwick kindly. Then he turned to MacPherson. As the two men went
+companionably down the walk and out into the street, the Scotchman said
+apologetically:
+
+"Of course, I knew Miss Lydia would be alarmed. I understand about her
+and Stoddard. It made me hesitate a while before coming up to you folks
+with the thing."
+
+"Well, by the Lord, you did well not to hesitate too long, Mac!"
+ejaculated Hardwick. "I shouldn't feel the anxiety I do if we hadn't
+been having trouble with those mountain people up toward Flat Rock over
+that girl that died at the hospital." He laughed a little ruefully.
+"Trying to do things for folks is ticklish business. There wasn't a man
+in the crowd that interviewed me whom I could convince that our hospital
+wasn't a factory for the making of stiffs which we sold to the Northern
+Medical College. Oh, it was gruesome!
+
+"I told them the girl had had every attention, and that she died of
+pernicious anaemia. They called it 'a big dic word' and asked me point
+blank if the girl hadn't been killed in the mill. I told them that we
+couldn't keep the body indefinitely, and they said they 'aimed to come
+and haul it away as soon as they could get a horse and wagon.' I called
+their attention to the fact that I couldn't know this unless they wrote
+and told me so in answer to my letter. But between you and me, Mac, I
+don't believe there was a man in the crowd who could read or write."
+
+"For God's sake!" exclaimed the Scotchman. "You don't think _those_
+people were up to doing a mischief to Stoddard, do you?"
+
+"I don't know what to think," protested Hardwick. "Yes; they are
+mediaeval--half savage. The fact is, I have no idea what they would or
+what they wouldn't do."
+
+MacPherson gave a whistle of dismay.
+
+"Gad, it sounds like the manoeuvres of one of our Highland clans three
+hundred years ago!" he said. "Wouldn't it be the irony of fate that
+Stoddard--poor fellow!--a friend of the people, a socialist, ready to
+call every man his brother--should be sacrificed in such a way?"
+
+The words brought them to Stoddard's little home, silent and deserted
+now. Down the street, the lamps flared gustily. It was after
+eleven o'clock.
+
+"Where does that boy live that takes care of the horses--black Jim?"
+Hardwick inquired, after they had rung the bell, thumped on the door,
+and called, to make sure the master had not returned during
+MacPherson's absence.
+
+"I don't know--really, I don't know. He might have a room over the
+stable," MacPherson suggested.
+
+But the stable proved to be a one-story affair, and they were just
+turning to leave when a stamping sound within arrested their notice.
+
+"Good God!--what's that?" ejaculated MacPherson, whose nerves were
+quivering.
+
+"It's the horse," answered Hardwick in a relieved tone. "Stoddard's got
+back--"
+
+"Of course," broke in old MacPherson, quickly, "and gone over to Mrs.
+Gandish's for some supper. That is why he wasn't in the house."
+
+To make assurance doubly sure, they opened the unlocked stable door, and
+MacPherson struck a match. The roan turned and whinnied hungrily at
+sight of them.
+
+"That's funny," said Hardwick, scarcely above his breath. "It looks to
+me as though that animal hadn't been fed."
+
+In the flare of the match MacPherson had descried the stable lantern
+hanging on the wall. They lit this and examined the stall. There was no
+feed in the box, no hay in the manger. The saddle was on Gray Stoddard's
+horse; the bit in his mouth; he was tied by the reins to his stall ring.
+The two men looked at each other with lengthening faces.
+
+"Stoddard's too good a horseman to have done that," spoke Hardwick
+slowly.
+
+"And too kind a man," supplied MacPherson loyally. "He'd have seen to
+the beast's hunger before he satisfied his own."
+
+As the Scotchman spoke he was picking up the horse's hoofs, and digging
+at them with a bit of stick.
+
+"They're as clean as if they'd just been washed," he said, as he
+straightened up. "By Heaven! I have it, Hardwick--that fellow came into
+town with his hoofs muffled."
+
+The younger man looked also, and assented mutely, then suggested:
+
+"He hasn't come far; there's not a hair turned on him."
+
+The Scotchman shook his head. "I'm not sure of that," he debated.
+"Likely he's been led, and that slowly. God--this is horrible!"
+
+Mechanically Hardwick got some hay down for the horse, while MacPherson
+pulled off the saddle and bridle, examining both in the process. Grain
+was poured into the box, and then water offered.
+
+"He won't drink," murmured the Scotchman. "D'ye see, Hardwick? He won't
+drink. You can't come into Cottonville without crossing a stream. This
+fellow's hoofs have been wet within an hour--yes, within the half-hour."
+
+As their eyes encountered, Hardwick caught his breath sharply; both felt
+that chill of the cuticle, that stirring at the roots of the hair, that
+marks the passing close to us of some sinister thing--stark murder, or
+man's naked hatred walking in the dark beside our cheerful, commonplace
+path. By one consent they turned back from the stable and went together
+to Mrs. Gandish's. The house was dark.
+
+"Of course, you know I don't expect to find him here," said Hardwick. "I
+don't suppose they know anything about the matter. But we've got to wake
+them and ask."
+
+They did so, and set trembling the first wave of that widening ring of
+horror which finally informed the remotest boundaries of the little
+village that a man from their midst was mysteriously missing.
+
+The morning found the telegraph in active requisition, flashing up and
+down all lines by which a man might have left Cottonville or Watauga.
+The police of the latter place were notified, furnished with
+information, and set to find out if possible whether anybody in the city
+had seen Stoddard since he rode away on Friday morning.
+
+The inquiries were fruitless. A young lady visiting in the city had
+promised him a dance at the Valentine masque to be held at the Country
+Club-house Friday night. Some clothing put out a few days before to be
+cleaned and pressed was ready for delivery. His laundry came home. His
+mail arrived punctually. The postmaster stated that he had no
+instructions for a change of address; all the little accessories of Gray
+Stoddard's life offered themselves, mute, impressive witnesses that he
+had intended to go on with it in Cottonville. But Stoddard himself had
+dropped as completely out of the knowledge of man as though he had been
+whisked off the planet.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE SEARCH
+
+The fruitless search was vigorously prosecuted. On Saturday the Hardwick
+mill ran short-handed while nearly half its male employees made some
+effort to solve the mystery. Parties combed again and again the nearer
+mountains. Sunday all the mill operatives were free; and then groups of
+women and children added themselves to the men; dinners were taken
+along, lending a grotesque suggestion of picnicking to the work, a
+suggestion contradicted by the anxious faces, the strained timbre of the
+voices that called from group to group. But night brought the amateur
+searchers straggling home with nothing to tell. It should have been
+significant to any one who knew the mountain people, that information
+concerning Gray Stoddard within a week of his disappearance, was
+noticeably lacking. Nobody would admit that his had been a familiar
+figure on those roads. At the utmost they had "seed him a good deal a
+while ago, but he'd sorter quit riding up this-a-way of late." But on no
+road could there be found man, woman, or child who had seen Gray
+Stoddard riding Friday morning on his roan horse. The whole outlying
+district seemed to be in a conspiracy of silence.
+
+In Watauga and in Cottonville itself, clues were found by the police,
+followed up and proved worthless. All Gray's Eastern connections were
+immediately communicated with by telegraph, in the forlorn hope of
+finding some internal clue. The business men in charge of his large
+Eastern interests answered promptly that nothing from recent
+correspondence with him pointed to any intention on his part of making a
+journey or otherwise changing his ordinary way of living. They added
+urgent admonitions to Mr. MacPherson to have locked up in the Company's
+safe various important papers which they had sent, at Stoddard's
+request, for signature, and which they supposed from the date, must be
+lying with his other mail. A boyhood friend telegraphed his intention of
+coming down from Massachusetts and joining the searchers. Stoddard had
+no near relatives. A grand-aunt, living in Boston, telegraphed to Mr.
+Hardwick to see that money be spent freely.
+
+Meantime there was reason for Johnnie Consadine, shut in the little
+sister's sick room day and night, to hear nothing of these matters.
+Lissy had been allowed to help wait upon the injured child only on
+promise that nothing exciting should be mentioned. Both boys had
+instantly begged to join a searching party, Milo insisting that he could
+work all night and search all day, and that nobody should complain that
+he neglected his job. Pony, being refused, had run away; Milo the
+rulable followed to get him to return; and by Sunday night Mavity was
+feeding both boys from the back door and keeping them out of sight of
+Pap's vengeance. Considering that Johnnie had trouble enough, she
+cautioned everybody on the place to say nothing of these matters to the
+girl. Mandy, a feeble, unsound creature at best, was more severely
+injured than had been thought. She was confined to her bed for days. Pap
+went about somewhat like a whipped dog, spoke little on any subject, and
+tolerated no mention of the topic of the day in Cottonville; his face
+kept the boarders quiet at table and in the house, anyhow. Shade
+Buckheath never entered the place after Deanie was carried in from the
+hastily summoned carriage Thursday night.
+
+The doctors told them that if Deanie survived the shock and its violent
+reaction, she had a fair chance of recovery. They found at once that she
+was not internally injured; the blood that had been seen came only from
+a cut lip. But the child's left arm was broken, the small body was
+dreadfully bruised, and the terror had left a profound mental
+disturbance. Nothing but quiet and careful nursing offered any good
+hope; while there was the menace that she would never be strong again,
+and might not live to womanhood.
+
+At first she lay with half-closed, glazed eyes, barely breathing, a
+ghastly sight. Then, when she roused a bit, she wanted, not Lissy, not
+even Johnnie; she called for her mother.
+
+When her child was brought home to her, dying as they all thought,
+Laurella had rallied her forces and got up from the pallet on which she
+lay to tend on the little thing; but she broke down in the course of a
+few hours, and seemed about to add another patient to Johnnie's cares.
+
+Yet when the paroxysms of terror shook the emaciated frame, and the
+others attempted to reassure Deanie by words, it was her mother who
+called for a bit of gay calico, for scissors and needle and thread, and
+began dressing a doll in the little sufferer's sight. Laurella had
+carried unspoiled the faculty for play, up with her through the years.
+
+"Let her be," the doctor counselled Johnnie, in reply to anxious
+inquiries. "Don't you see she's getting the child's attention? The baby
+notices. An ounce of happiness is worth a pound of any medicine I
+could bring."
+
+And so, when Laurella could no longer sit up, they brought another cot
+for her, and she lay all day babbling childish nonsense, and playing
+dolls within hand-reach of the sick-bed; while Johnnie with Lissy's
+help, tended on them both.
+
+"You've got two babies now, you big, old, solemn Johnnie," Laurella
+said, with a ghost of her sparkling smile. "Deanie and me is just of one
+age, and that's a fact."
+
+If Pap wanted to see his young wife--and thirst for a sight of her was a
+continual craving with him; she was the light of the old sinner's
+eyes--he had to go in and look on the child he had injured. This kept
+him away pretty effectually after that first fiery scene, when Laurella
+had flown at him like a fierce little vixen and told him that she never
+wanted to see his face again, that she rued the day she married him, and
+intended to leave him as soon as she could put foot to the ground.
+
+In the gray dawn of Monday morning, when Johnnie was downstairs eating
+her bit of early breakfast, Pap shambled in to make Laurella's fire.
+Having got the hickory wood to blazing, he sat humped and shame-faced by
+the bedside a while, whispering to his wife and holding her hand, a
+sight for the student of man to marvel at. He had brought a paper of
+coarse, cheap candy for Deanie, but the child was asleep. The offering
+was quite as acceptable to Laurella, and she nibbled a stick as she
+listened to him.
+
+The bald head with its little fringe of grizzled curls, bent close to
+the dark, slant-browed, lustrous-eyed, mutinous countenance; Pap
+whispered hoarsely for some time, Laurella replying at first in a sort
+of languid tolerance, but presently with little ejaculations of wonder
+and dismay. A step on the stair which he took to be Johnnie's put Himes
+to instant flight.
+
+"I've got to go honey," he breathed huskily. "Cain't you say you forgive
+me before I leave? I know I ain't fitten fer the likes of you; but when
+I come back from this here raid I'm a-goin' to take some money out of
+the bank and git you whatever you want. Look-a-here; see what I've
+done," and he showed a little book in his hand, and what he had
+written in it.
+
+"Oh--I forgive you, if that's any account to you," returned Laurella
+with kindly contempt. "I never noticed that forgiving things undid the
+harm any; but--yes--oh, of course I forgive you. Go along; I'm tired
+now. Don't bother me any more, Gid; I want to sleep."
+
+The old man thrust the treasured bankbook under Laurella's pillow, and
+hurried away. Downstairs in the dining room Johnnie was eating her
+breakfast.
+
+"Johnnie," said Mavity Bence, keeping behind the girl's chair as she
+served the meal to her at the end of the long table, "I ain't never done
+you a meanness yet, have I? And you know I've got all the good will in
+the world toward you--now don't you?"
+
+"Why, of course, Aunt Mavity," returned Johnnie wonderingly, trying to
+get sight of the older woman's face.
+
+Mrs. Bence took a plate and hurried out for more biscuits. She came back
+with some resolution plainly renewed in her mind.
+
+"Johnnie," she began once more, "there's something I've got to tell you.
+Your Uncle Pros has got away from 'em up at the hospital, and to the
+hills, and--and--I have obliged to tell you."
+
+"Yes, I know," returned Johnnie passively. "They sent me word last
+night. I'm sorry, but I can't do anything about it. Maybe he won't come
+to any harm out that way. I can't imagine Uncle Pros hurting anybody.
+Perhaps it will do him good."
+
+"Hit wasn't about your Uncle Pros that I was meaning. At least not about
+his gettin' away from the hospital," amended Mavity. "It was about the
+day he got hurt here. I--I always aimed to tell you. I know I ort to
+have done it. I was always a-goin' to, and then--Pap--he--"
+
+She broke off and stood silent so long that Johnnie turned and looked at
+her.
+
+"Surely you aren't afraid of me, Aunt Mavity," she said finally.
+
+"No," said Mavity Bence in a low voice, "but I'm scared of--the others."
+
+The girl stared at her curiously.
+
+"Johnnie," burst out the woman for the third time, "yo' Uncle Pros found
+his silver mine! Oh, yes, he did; and Pap's got his pieces of ore
+upstairs in a bandanner; and him and Shade Buckheath aims to git it away
+from you-all and--oh, I don't know what!"
+
+There fell a long silence. At last Johnnie's voice broke it, asking very
+low:
+
+"Did they--how was Uncle Pros hurt?"
+
+"Neither of 'em touched him," Mavity hastened to assure her. "He heard
+'em name it how they'd get the mine from him--or thought he did--and he
+come out and talked loud, and grabbed for the bandanner, and he missed
+it and fell down the steps. He wasn't crazy when he come to the house.
+He was jest plumb wore out, and his head was hurt. He called it yo'
+silver mine. He said he had to put the bandanner in yo' lap and tell you
+hit was for you."
+
+Johnny got suddenly to her feet.
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Mavity," she said kindly. "This is what's been
+troubling you, is it? Don't worry any more, I'll see about this,
+somehow. I must go back to Mother now."
+
+Laurella had said to Pap Himes that she wanted to sleep, and indeed her
+eyes, were closed when Johnnie entered the room; but beneath the shadow
+of the sweeping lashes burned such spots of crimson that her nurse
+was alarmed.
+
+"What was Pap Himes saying to you to get you so excited?" she asked
+anxiously.
+
+"Johnnie, come here. Sit down on the edge of the bed and listen to me,"
+demanded Laurella feverishly. She laid hold of her daughter's arm, and
+half pulled herself up by it, staring into Johnnie's face as she talked;
+and out tumbled the whole story of Gray Stoddard's disappearance.
+
+As full understanding of what her mother said came home to Johnnie, her
+eyes dilated in her pale face. She sank to her knees beside the bed.
+
+"Lost!" she echoed. "Lost--gone! Hasn't been seen since Friday
+morning--Friday morning before sunup! Friday, Saturday, Sunday. My God,
+Mother--it's three days and three nights!"
+
+"Yes, honey, it's three days and three nights," assented Laurella
+fearfully. "Gid says he's going up in the mountains with a lot of others
+to search. He says some thinks the moonshiners have taken him in mistake
+for a revenuer; and some believe it was robbery--for his watch and
+money; and Mr. Hardwick is blaming it on the Groner crowd that raised up
+such a fuss when Lura Dawson died in the hospital here. Gid says they've
+searched every ridge and valley this side of Big Unaka. He--Johnnie, he
+says _he_ believes Mr. Stoddard suicided."
+
+[Illustration: "LOST--GONE! MY GOD, MOTHER--IT'S THREE DAYS AND THREE
+NIGHTS!"]
+
+"Where is Shade Buckheath?" whispered Johnnie.
+
+"Shade's been out with mighty nigh every crowd that went," Laurella told
+her. "Mr. Hardwick pays them wages, just the same as if they were in the
+mill. Shade's going with Gid this morning, in Mr. Stoddard's
+automobile."
+
+"Are they gone--oh, are they gone?" Johnnie sprang to her feet in
+dismay, and stood staring a moment. Then swiftly she bent once more over
+the little woman in the bed. "Mother," she said before Laurella could
+speak or answer her, "Aunt Mavity can wait on you and Deanie for a
+little while--with what help Lissy will give you--can't she, honey? And
+Mandy was coming downstairs to her breakfast this morning--she's able to
+be afoot now--and I know she'll be wanting to help tend on Deanie. You
+could get along for a spell without me--don't you think you could?
+Honey," she spoke desperately. "I've just got to find Shade Buckheath--I
+must see him."
+
+"Sure, we'll get along all right, Johnnie," Laurella put in eagerly. She
+tugged at a corner of the pillow, fumbled thereunder with her little
+brown hand, and dragging out Pap Himes's bankbook, showed it to her
+daughter, opening at that front page where Pap's clumsy characters made
+Laurella Himes free of all his savings. "You go right along, Johnnie,
+and see cain't you help about Mr. Stoddard. Looks like I cain't bear to
+think ... the pore boy ... you go on--me and Deanie'll be all right till
+you get back."
+
+Johnnie stooped and kissed the cheek with its feverish flush.
+
+"Good-bye, Mommie," she whispered hurriedly. "Don't worry about me. I'll
+be back--. Well, don't worry. Good-bye." She snatched a coat and hat,
+and, going out, closed the door quietly behind her.
+
+She stepped out into the dancing sunlight of an early spring morning.
+The leafless vine on Mavity Bence's porch rattled dry stems against the
+lattice work in a gay March wind. Taking counsel with herself for a
+moment, she started swiftly down the street in the direction of the
+mills. In the office they told her that Mr. Hardwick had gone to
+Nashville to see about getting bloodhounds; MacPherson was following his
+own plan of search in Watauga. She was permitted to go down into the
+mechanical department and ask the head of it about Shade Buckheath.
+
+"No, he ain't here," Mr. Ramsey told her promptly. "We're running so
+short-handed that I don't know how to get along; and if I try to get an
+extra man, I find he's out with the searchers. I sent up for Himes
+yesterday, but him and Buckheath was to go together to-day, taking Mr.
+Stoddard's car, so as to get further up into the Unakas."
+
+Johnnie felt as though the blood receded from her face and gathered all
+about a heart which beat to suffocation. For a wild moment she had an
+impulse to denounce Buckheath and her stepfather. But almost instantly
+she realized that she would weaken her cause and lose all chance of
+assistance by doing so. Her standing in the mill was excellent, and as
+she ran up the stairs she was going over in her mind the persons to whom
+she might take her story. She found no one from whom she dared expect
+credence and help. Out in the street again she caught sight of Charlie
+Conroy, and her thoughts were turned by a natural association of ideas
+to Lydia Sessions. That was it! Why had it not occurred to her before?
+She hurried up the long hill to the Hardwick home and, trying first the
+bell at the front, where she got no reply, skirted the house and rapped
+long and loudly at the side door.
+
+Harriet Hardwick, when things began to wear a tragic complexion, had
+promptly packed her wardrobe and her children and flitted to Watauga.
+This hegira was undertaken mainly to get her sister away from the scene
+of Gray Stoddard's disappearance; yet when the move came to be made,
+Miss Sessions refused to accompany her sister.
+
+"I can't go," she repeated fiercely. "I'll stay here and keep house for
+Jerome. Then if there comes any news, I'll be where--oh, don't look at
+me that way. I wish you'd go on and let me alone. Yes--yes--yes--it is
+better for you to go to Watauga and leave me here."
+
+Ever since her brother-in-law opened the door of the sitting room and
+announced to the family Gray Stoddard's disappearance, Lydia Sessions
+had been, as it were, a woman at war with herself. Her first impulse was
+of decorum--to jerk her skirts about her in seemly fashion and be
+certain that no smirch adhered to them. Then she began to wonder if she
+could find Shade Buckheath, and discover from him the truth of the
+matter. Whenever she would have made a movement toward this, she winced
+away from what she knew he would say to her. She flinched even from
+finding out that her fears were well grounded. As matters began to wear
+a more serious face, she debated now and again telling her
+brother-in-law of her suspicions that Buckheath had a grudge against
+Stoddard. But if she said this, how account for the knowledge? How
+explain to Jerome why she had denied seeing Stoddard Friday morning?
+Jerome was so terribly practical--he would ask such searching questions.
+
+Back of it all there was truly much remorse, and terrible anxiety for
+Stoddard himself; but this was continually swallowed up in her concern
+for her own welfare, her own good name. Always, after she had agonized
+so much, there would come with a revulsion--a gust of anger. Stoddard
+had never cared for her, he had been cruel in his attitude of kindness.
+Let him take what followed.
+
+Cottonville was a town distraught, and the Hardwick servants had seized
+the occasion to run out for a bit of delectable gossip in which the
+least of the horrors included Gray Stoddard's murdered and mutilated
+body washed down in some mountain stream to the sight of his friends.
+
+Johnnie was too urgent to long delay. Getting no answer at the side
+door, she pushed it open and ventured through silent room after room
+until she came to the stairway, and so on up to Miss Sessions's bedroom
+door. She had been there before, and fearing to alarm by knocking, she
+finally called out in what she tried to make a normal, reassuring tone.
+
+"It's only me--Johnnie Consadine--Miss Lydia."
+
+The answer was a hasty, muffled outcry. Somebody who had been kneeling
+by the bed on the further side of the room sprang up and came forward,
+showing a face so disfigured by tears and anxiety, by loss of sleep and
+lack of food, as to be scarcely recognizable. That ravaged visage told
+plainly the battle-ground that Lydia Sessions's narrow soul had become
+in these dreadful days. She knew now that she had set Shade Buckheath to
+quarrel with Gray Stoddard--and Gray had never been seen since the hour
+she sent the dangerous, unscrupulous man after him to that quarrel. With
+this knowledge wrestled and fought the instinct we strive to develop in
+our girl children, the fear we brand shamefully into their natures--her
+name must not be connected with such an affair--she must not be
+"talked about."
+
+"Have they found him?" Lydia gasped. "Is he alive?"
+
+Johnnie, generous soul, even in the intense preoccupation of her own
+pain, could pity the woman who looked and spoke thus.
+
+"No," she answered, "they haven't found him--and some that are looking
+for him never will find him.
+
+"Oh, Miss Lydia, I want you to help me make them send somebody that we
+can trust up the Gap road, and on to the Unakas."
+
+Miss Sessions flinched plainly.
+
+"What do you know about it?" she inquired in a voice which shook.
+
+Still staring at Johnnie, she moved back toward her bedroom door. "Why
+should you mention the Gap road? What makes you think he went up in
+the Unakas?"
+
+"I--don't know that he went there," hesitated Johnnie. "But I do know
+who you've got to find before you can find him. Oh, get somebody to go
+with me and help me, before it's too late. I--" she hesitated--"I
+thought maybe we could get your brother Hartley's car. I could run it--I
+could run a car."
+
+The bitterness that had racked Lydia Sessions's heart for more than
+forty-eight hours culminated. She had been instrumental in putting Gray
+Stoddard in mortal danger--and now if he was to be helped, assistance
+would come through Johnnie Consadine! It was more than she could bear.
+
+"I don't believe it!" she gasped. "You know who to find! You're just
+getting up this story to be noticed. You're always doing things to
+attract attention to yourself. You want to go riding around in an
+automobile and--and--Mr. Stoddard has probably gone in to Watauga and
+taken the midnight train for Boston. This looking around in the
+mountains is folly. Who would want to harm him in the mountains?"
+
+For a moment Johnnie stood, thwarted and non-plussed. The insults
+directed toward herself made almost no impression on her, strangely as
+they came from Lydia Sessions's lips. She was too intent on her own
+purpose to care greatly.
+
+"Shade Buckheath--" she began cautiously, intending only to state that
+Shade had taken Stoddard's car; but Lydia Sessions drew back with
+a scream.
+
+"It's a lie!" she cried. "There isn't a word of truth in what you say,
+John Consadine. Oh, you're the plague of my life--you have been from the
+first! You follow me about and torment me. Shade Buckheath had nothing
+to do with Gray Stoddard's disappearance, I tell you. Nothing--nothing
+--nothing!"
+
+She thrust forward her face and sent forth the words with incredible
+vehemence. But her tirade kindled in Johnnie no heat of personal anger.
+She stood looking intently at the frantic woman before her. Slowly a
+light of comprehension dawned in her eyes.
+
+"Shade Buckheath had everything to do with Gray Stoddard's
+disappearance. You know it--that's what ails you now. You--you must have
+been there when they quarrelled!"
+
+"They didn't quarrel--they didn't!" protested Miss Lydia, with a yet
+more hysteric emphasis. "They didn't even speak to each other. Mr.
+Stoddard said 'Good morning' to me, and rode right past."
+
+Johnnie leant forward and, with a sudden sweeping movement, caught the
+other woman by the wrist, looking deep into her eyes.
+
+"Lydia," she said accusingly, and neither of them noticed the freedom of
+the address, "you didn't tell the truth when you said you hadn't seen
+Gray since Friday night. You saw him Friday morning--_you_--_and_--
+_Shade_--_Buckheath_! You have both lied about it--God knows why. Now,
+Shade and my stepfather have taken poor Gray's car and gone up into the
+mountains. _What do you think they went for?_"
+
+The blazing young eyes were on Miss Sessions's tortured countenance.
+
+"Oh, don't let those men get at Gray. They'll murder him!" sobbed the
+older woman, sinking once more to her knees. "Johnnie--I've always been
+good to you, haven't I? You go and tell them that--say that Shade
+Buckheath--that somebody ought to--"
+
+She broke off abruptly, and sprang up like a suddenly goaded creature.
+
+"No, I won't!" she cried out. "You needn't ask it of me. I will not tell
+about seeing Mr. Stoddard Friday morning. I promised not to, and it
+can't do any good, anyhow. If you set them at me, I'll deny it and tell
+them you made up the story. I will--I will--I will!"
+
+And she ran into her room once more, and threw herself down beside the
+bed. Johnnie turned contemptuously and left the woman babbling
+incoherencies on her knees, evidently preparing to pray to a God whose
+laws she was determined to break.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE ATLAS VERTEBRA
+
+Johnnie hurried downstairs, in a mental turmoil out of which there
+swiftly formed itself the resolution to go herself and if possible
+overtake or find Shade and her stepfather. Word must first be sent to
+her mother. She was glad to remember that little bankbook under
+Laurella's pillow. Mavity and Mandy would tend the invalids well, helped
+by little Lissy; and with money available, she was sure they would be
+allowed to lack for nothing. She crossed the hall swiftly, meaning to go
+past the little grocery where they bought their supplies and telephone
+Mavity that she might be away for several days. But near the side door
+she noted the Hardwick telephone, and hesitated a moment. People would
+hear her down at Mayfield's. Already she began to have a terror of being
+watched or followed. Hesitatingly she took down the receiver and asked
+for connection. At the little tinkle of the bell, there was a swift,
+light rush above stairs.
+
+"Mahala!" screamed Miss Sessions's voice over the banisters, thinking
+the maid was below stairs; "answer that telephone." She heard Johnnie
+move, and added, "Tell everybody that I can't be seen. If it's anything
+about Mr. Stoddard, say that I'm sick--utterly prostrated--and can't be
+talked to." She turned from the stairway, ran back into her own room and
+shut and locked the door. And at that moment Johnnie heard Mavity
+Bence's voice replying to her.
+
+"Aunt Mavity," she began, "this is Johnnie. I'm up at Mr. Hardwick's
+now. Uncle Pros is out in the mountains, and I'm going to look for him.
+I'd rather not have anybody know I'm gone; do you understand that? Try
+to keep it from the boarders and the children. You and Mandy are the
+only ones that would have to know."
+
+"Yes, honey, yes, Johnnie," came the eager, humble reply. "I'll do just
+like you say. Shan't nobody find out from me. Johnnie--" there was a
+pause--"Johnnie, Pap and Shade didn't get off as soon as they expected.
+Something was the matter with the machine, I believe. They ain't been
+gone to exceed a quarter of an hour. I--I thought maybe you'd like
+to know."
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Mavity," said Johnnie. "Yes, I'm glad you told me." She
+understood what a struggle the kind soul had had with her weakness and
+timidity ere, for loyalty's sake, she was able to make the disclosure.
+"I may not be back for two or three days. Don't worry about me. I'll be
+all right. Mother's got money. You buy what she and Deanie need, and
+don't work too hard. Good-bye."
+
+She hung up the receiver, went out the side door and, reaching the main
+street, struck straight for the Gap, holding the big road for the
+Unakas. To her left was the white highway that ran along above the
+valley, and that Palace of Pleasure which had seemed a wonder and a
+mystery to her one year gone. To-day she gave no thought to the sight of
+river and valley and town, except to look back once at the roofs and
+reflect that, among all the people housed there in sight of her, there
+were surely those who knew the secret of Gray Stoddard's
+disappearance--who could tell her if they would where to search for him.
+Somehow, the thought made her feel very small and alone and unfriended.
+With its discouragement came that dogged persistence that was
+characteristic of the girl. She set her trembling lip and went over her
+plans resolutely, methodically. Deanie and Laurella were safe to be well
+looked after in her absence. Mavity Bence and Mandy would care for them
+tenderly. And there was the bankbook. If Johnnie knew her mother, the
+household back there would not lack, either for assistance or
+material matters.
+
+And now the present enterprise began to shape itself in her mind. A
+practical creature, she depended from the first on getting a lift from
+time to time. Yet Johnnie knew better than another the vast, silent,
+secret network of hate that draws about the victim in a mountain
+vendetta. If the spirit of feud was aroused against the mill owners, if
+the Groners and Dawsons had been able to enlist their kin and clan, she
+was well aware that the man or woman who gave her smiling information as
+to ways and means, might, the hour before, have looked on Gray Stoddard
+lying dead, or sat in the council which planned to kill him. Thus she
+walked warily, and dared ask from none directions or help. She was not
+yet in her own region, these lower ridges lying between two lines of
+railway, which, from the mountaineer's point of view, contaminated them
+and gave them a tincture of the valley and the Settlement.
+
+Noon came and passed. She was very weary. Factory life had told on her
+physically, and the recent distress of mind added its devitalizing
+influence. There was a desperate flagging of the muscles weakened by
+disuse and an unhealthy indoor life.
+
+"I wonder can I ever make it?" she questioned herself. Then swiftly,
+"I've got to--I've got to."
+
+Her eye roved toward a cabin on the slope above. There lived a man by
+the name of Straley, but he was a cousin to Lura Dawson, the girl who
+had died in the hospital. Johnnie knew him to be one of the bitterest
+enemies of the Cottonville mill owners, and realized that he would be
+the last one to whom she should apply. Mutely, doggedly, she pressed on,
+and rounding a bend in a long, lonely stretch of road, saw before her
+the tall, lithe form of a man, trousers tucked into boots, a tall staff
+in hand, making swift progress up the road. The sound of feet evidently
+arrested the attention of the wayfarer. He turned and waited for her
+to come up.
+
+The figure was so congruous with its surroundings that she saw with
+surprise a face totally strange to her. The turned-down collar of the
+rumpled shirt was unbuttoned at a brown throat; the face above seemed to
+her eyes neither old nor young, though the light, springing gait when he
+walked, the supple, easeful attitude now that he rested, one hand flung
+high on the curious tall staff, were those of a youth; the eyes of a
+warm, laughing hazel had the direct fearlessness of a child, and a
+slouch hat carried in the hand showed a fair crop of slightly grizzled,
+curling hair.
+
+A stranger--at first the thought frightened, and then attracted her.
+This man looked not unlike Johnnie's own people, and there was something
+in his face that led her to entertain the idea of appealing to him for
+help. He settled the question of whether or no she should enter into
+conversation, by accosting her at once brusquely and genially.
+
+"Mornin', sis'. You look tired," he said. "You ought to have a stick,
+like me. Hold on--I'll cut you one."
+
+Before the girl could respond beyond an answering smile and "good
+morning," the new friend had put his own alpenstock into her hands and
+gone to the roadside, where, with unerring judgment, he selected a long,
+straight, tapering shoot of ash, and hewed it deftly with a monster
+jack-knife drawn from his trousers pocket.
+
+"There--try that," he said as he returned, trimming off the last of the
+leaves and branches.
+
+Johnnie took the staff with her sweet smile of thanks.
+
+For a few moments the two walked on silently side by side, she
+desperately absorbed in her anxieties, her companion apparently
+returning to some world apart in his own mind. Suddenly:
+
+"Can I get to the railroad down this side?" the man asked her in that
+odd, incidental voice of his which suggested that what he said was
+merely a small portion of what he thought.
+
+"Why--yes, I reckon so," hesitated Johnnie. "It's a pretty far way, and
+there don't many folks travel on it. It's an old Indian trail; a heap of
+our roads here are that; but it'll take you right to the railroad--the
+W. and A."
+
+Her companion chuckled, seemingly with some inner satisfaction.
+
+"Yes, that's just what I supposed. I soldiered all over this country,
+and I thought it was about as pretty scenery as God ever made. I
+promised myself then that if I ever came back into this part of the
+world, I'd do some tramping through here. They're going to have a great
+big banquet at Atlanta, and they had me caged up taking me down there to
+make a speech. I gave them the slip at Watauga. I knew I'd strike the
+railroad if I footed it through the mountains here."
+
+Johnnie examined her companion with attention. Would it do to ask him if
+he had seen an automobile on the road--a dark green car? Dare she make
+inquiry as to whether he had heard of Gray Stoddard's disappearance, or
+met any of the searchers? She decided on a conservative course.
+
+"I wish I had time to set you in the right road," she hesitated; "but my
+poor old uncle is out here somewhere among these ridges and ravines;
+he's not in his right mind, and I've got to find him if I can."
+
+"Crazy, do you mean?" asked her companion, with a quick yet easy,
+smiling attention. "I'd like to see him, if he's crazy. I take a great
+interest in crazy folks. Some of 'em have a lot of sense left."
+
+Johnnie nodded.
+
+"He doesn't know any of us," she said pitifully. "They've had him in the
+hospital three months, trying to do something for him; but the doctors
+say he'll never be well."
+
+"That's right hopeful," observed the man, with a plainly intentional,
+dry ludicrousness. "I always think there's some chance when the doctors
+give 'em up--and begin to let 'em alone. How was he hurt, sis'?"
+
+Johnnie did not pause to reflect that she had not said Uncle Pros was
+hurt at all. For some reason which she would herself have been at a loss
+to explain, she hastened to detail to this chance-met stranger the exact
+appearance and nature of Pros Passmore's injuries, her listener nodding
+his head at this or that point; making some comment or inquiry
+at another.
+
+"The doctors say that they would suppose it was a fractured skull, or
+concussion of the brain, or something like that; but they've examined
+him and there is nothing to see on the outside; and they trephined and
+it didn't do any good; so they just let him stay about the hospital."
+
+"No," said her new friend softly, almost absently, "it didn't do any
+good to trephine--but it might have done a lot of harm. I'd like to see
+the back of your uncle's neck. I ain't in any hurry to get to that
+banquet at Atlanta--a man can always overeat and make himself sick,
+without going so far to do it."
+
+So, like an idle schoolboy, the unknown forsook his own course, turning
+from the road when Johnnie turned, and went with her up the steep, rocky
+gulch where the door of a deserted cabin flung to and fro on its
+hinges. At sight of the smokeless chimney, the gaping doorway and empty,
+inhospitable interior, Johnnie looked blank.
+
+"Have you got anything to eat?" she asked her companion, hesitatingly.
+"I came off in such a hurry that I forgot all about it. Some people that
+I know used to live in that cabin, and I hoped to get my dinner there
+and ask after my uncle; but I see they have moved."
+
+"Sit right down here," said the stranger, indicating the broad
+door-stone, around which the grass grew tall. "We'll soon make that all
+right." He sought in the pockets of the coat he carried slung across his
+shoulder and brought out a packet of food. "I laid in some fuel when I
+thought I might get the chance to run my own engine across the
+mountains," he told the girl, opening his bundle and dividing evenly. He
+uttered a few musical words in an unknown tongue.
+
+"That's Indian," he commented carelessly, without looking at her. "It
+means you're to eat your dinner. I was with the Shawnees when I was a
+boy. I learned a lot of their language, and I'll never forget it. They
+taught me more things than talk."
+
+Johnnie studied the man beside her as they ate their bit of lunch.
+
+"My name is Johnnie Consadine, sir," she told him. "What shall I call
+you?"
+
+Thus directly questioned, the unknown smiled quizzically, his hazel eyes
+crinkling at the corners and overflowing with good humour.
+
+"Well, you might say 'Pap,'" he observed consideringly, "Lots of boys
+and girls do call me Pap--more than a thousand of 'em, now, I guess. And
+I'm eighty--mighty near old enough to have a girl of nineteen."
+
+She looked at him in astonishment. Eighty years old, as lithe as a lad,
+and with a lad's clear, laughing eye! Yet there was a look of power, of
+that knowledge which is power, in his face that made her say to him:
+
+"Do you think that Uncle Pros can ever be cured--have his right mind
+back again, I mean? Of course, the cut on his head is healed up
+long ago."
+
+"The cut on his head didn't make him crazy," said her companion,
+murmuringly. "Of course it wasn't that, or he would have been raving
+when he came down from the mountain. Something happened to him
+afterward."
+
+"Yes, there did," Johnnie assented wonderingly--falteringly. "I don't
+know how you came to guess it, but the woman who told me that she was
+hiding in the front room when they were quarrelling and saw Uncle Pros
+fall down the steps, says he landed almost square on his head. She
+thought at first his neck was broken--that he was killed."
+
+"Uh-huh," nodded the newcomer. "You see I'm a good guesser. I make my
+living guessing things." He flung her a whimsical, sidelong glance, as,
+having finished their lunch, they rose and moved on. "I wish I had my
+hands on the processes of that atlas vertebra," he said.
+
+"On--on what?" inquired Johnnie in a slightly startled tone.
+
+"Never mind, sis'. If we find him, and I can handle him, I'll know where
+to look."
+
+"Nobody can touch him but me when he gets out this way," Johnnie said.
+"He acts sort of scared and sort of fierce, and just runs and hides from
+people. Maybe if you'll tell me what you want done, I could do it."
+
+"Maybe you could--and then again maybe you couldn't," returned the
+other, with a great show of giving her proposition serious
+consideration. "A good many folks think they can do just what I can--if
+I'd only tell 'em how--and sometimes they find out they can't."
+
+Upon the word, they topped a little rise, and Johnnie laid a swift,
+detaining hand upon her companion's arm. At the roadside, in a little
+open, grassy space where once evidently a cabin had stood, knelt the
+figure of a gaunt old man. At first he seemed to the approaching pair to
+be gesticulating and pointing, but a moment's observation gave them the
+gleam of a knife in his hand--he was playing mumblety-peg. As they
+stood, drawn back near some roadside bushes, watching him, the long,
+lean old arm went up, the knife flashing against the knuckles of the
+clenched fist and, with a whirl of the wrist, reversing swiftly in air,
+to bury its blade in the soil before the player.
+
+"Hi! Hi! Hi! I th'owed it. That counts two for me," the cracked old
+falsetto shrilled out.
+
+There on that grassy plot that might have been a familiar dooryard of
+his early days, he was playing alone, gone back to childhood. Johnnie
+gazed and her eyes swam with unshed tears.
+
+"You better not go up there--and him with the knife and all," she
+murmured finally. The man beside her looked around into her face
+and laughed.
+
+"I'm not very bad scared," he said, advancing softly in line with his
+proposed patient, motioning the girl not to make herself known, or
+startle her uncle.
+
+Johnnie stole after him, filled with anxiety. When the newcomer stood
+directly behind the kneeling man, he bent, and his arms shot out with
+surprising quickness. The fingers of one hand dropped as though
+predestined upon the back of the neck, the other caught skilfully
+beneath the chin. There was a sharp wrench, an odd crack, a grunt from
+Uncle Pros, and then the mountaineer sprang to his full and very
+considerable height with a roar. Whirling upon his adversary, he
+grappled him in his long arms, hugging like a grizzly, and shouting:
+
+"You, Gid Himes, wha'r's my specimens?"
+
+He shook the stranger savagely.
+
+"You an' Shade Buckheath--you p'ar o' scoundrels--give me back my silver
+specimens! Give me back my silver ore that shows about the mine for my
+little gal."
+
+"Uncle Pros! Uncle Pros!" screamed Johnnie, rushing in and laying hold
+of the man's arm, "Don't you know me? It's Johnnie. Don't hurt this
+gentleman."
+
+The convulsion of rage subsided in the old man with almost comical
+suddenness. His tense form relaxed; he stumbled back, dropping his hands
+at his sides and staring about him, then at Johnnie.
+
+"Why, honey," he gasped, "how did you come here? Whar's Gid? Whar's
+Shade Buckheath? Lord A'mighty! Whar am I at?"
+
+He looked around him bewildered, evidently expecting to see the porch of
+Himes's boarding-house at Cottonville, the scattered bits of silver ore,
+and the rifled bandanna. He put his hand to his head, and sliding it
+softly down to the back of the neck demanded.
+
+"What's been did to me?"
+
+"You be right good and quiet now, and mind Johnnie," the girl began,
+with a pathetic tremble in her voice, "and she'll take you back to the
+hospital where they're so kind to you."
+
+"The hospital?" echoed Pros. "That hospital down at Cottonville? I never
+was inside o' one o' them places--what do you want me to go thar for,
+Johnnie? Who is this gentleman? How came we-all up here on the road
+this-a-way?"
+
+"I can quiet him," said Johnnie aside to her new friend. "I always can
+when he gets wild this way."
+
+The unknown shook his head.
+
+"You'll never have to quiet him any more, unless he breaks his neck
+again," came the announcement. "Your uncle is as sane as anybody--he
+just doesn't remember anything that happened from the time he fell down
+the steps and slipped that atlas vertebra a little bit on one side."
+
+Again Pros Passmore's fingers sought the back of his collar.
+
+"Looks like somebody has been tryin' to wring my neck, same as a
+chicken's," he said meditatively. "But hit feels all right now--all
+right--Hoo-ee!" he suddenly broke off to answer to a far, faint hail
+from the road below them.
+
+"Pap! Hey--Pap!" The words came up through the clear blue air,
+infinitely diminished and attenuated, like some insect cry. The tall man
+seemed to guess just what the interruption would be. He turned with a
+pettish exclamation.
+
+"Never could go anywhere, nor have any fun, but what some of the
+children had to tag," he protested.
+
+"Hoo-ee!" He cupped his hands and sent his voice toward where two men in
+a vehicle had halted their horses and were looking anxiously up.
+"Well--what is it?"
+
+"Did you get lost? We hired a buggy and came out to find you," the man
+below called up.
+
+"Well, if I get lost, I can find myself," muttered the newcomer. He
+looked regretfully at the green slopes about him; the lofty, impassive
+cliffs where Peace seemed to perch, a visible presence; the great sweeps
+of free forest; then at Uncle Pros and Johnnie. And they looked back at
+him dubiously.
+
+"I expect I'll have to leave you," he said at last. "I see what it is
+those boys want; they're trying to get me back to the railroad in time
+for the six-forty train. I'd a heap rather stay here with you, but--" he
+glanced from Johnnie and Uncle Pros down to the men in their attitude of
+anxious waiting--"I reckon I'll have to go."
+
+He had made the first descending step when Johnnie's hand on his arm
+arrested him. Uncle Pros knew not the wonder of his own restoration; but
+to the girl this man before her was something more than mortal. Her eyes
+went from the lightly tossed hair on his brow to the mud-spattered
+boots--was he only a human being? What was the strange power he had over
+life and death and the wandering soul of man?
+
+"What--what--aren't you going to tell me your name, and what you are,
+before you go?" she entreated him.
+
+He laughed over his shoulder, an enigmatic laugh.
+
+"What was it you did to Uncle Pros?" Her voice was vibrant with the awe
+and wonder of what she had seen. "Was it the laying on of hands--as they
+tell of it in the Bible?"
+
+"Say, Pap, hurry up, please," wailed up the thin, impatient reminder
+from the road.
+
+"Well, yes--I laid my hands on him pretty strong. Didn't I, old man?"
+And the stranger glanced to where Uncle Pros stood, still occasionally
+interrogating the back of his neck with fumbling fingers. "Don't you
+worry, sis'; a girl like you will get a miracle when she has to have it.
+If I happened to be the miracle you needed, why, that's good. As for my
+profession--my business in life--there was a lot of folks that used to
+name me the Lightning Bone-setter. For my own part, I'd just as soon
+you'd call me a human engineer. I pride myself on knowing how the
+structure of man ought to work, and keeping the bearings right and the
+machinery properly levelled up. Never mind. Next time you have use for a
+miracle, it'll be along on schedule time, without you knowing what name
+you need to call it. You're that sort." With that curious, onlooker's
+smile of his and with a nod of farewell, he plunged down the steep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+A CLUE
+
+They stood together watching, as the tall form retreated around the
+sharp curves of the red clay road, or leaped lightly and hardily down
+the cut-offs. They waved back to their late companion when, climbing
+into the waiting buggy below, he was finally driven away. Johnnie turned
+and looked long at her uncle with swimming eyes, as he stood gazing
+where the vehicle had disappeared. She finally laid a tremulous hand
+on his arm.
+
+"Oh, Uncle Pros," she said falteringly, "I can't believe it yet. But
+you--you do understand me now, don't you? You know me. I'm Johnnie."
+
+The old man wheeled sharply, and laughed.
+
+"See here, honey," he said with a tinge of irritation in his tones. "I
+reckon I've been crazy. From what you say, looks like I haven't known my
+best friends for a long time. But I have got as much sense now as I ever
+had, and I don't remember anything about that other business. Last thing
+I know of was fussin' with Gid Himes and Shade Buckheath about my silver
+ore. By Joe! I bet they got that stuff when I was took--Johnnie, was I
+took sudden?"
+
+He seated himself on the lush, ancient, deep-rooted dooryard grass
+where, a half-hour gone, he had knelt, a harmless lunatic, playing
+mumblety peg. Half reluctantly Johnnie sank down beside him.
+
+"Yes--yes--yes, Uncle Pros," the girl agreed, impatience mounting in her
+once more, with the assurance of her uncle's safety and well-being.
+"They did get your specimens; but we can fix all that; there's a worse
+thing happened now." And swiftly, succinctly, she told him of the
+disappearance of Gray Stoddard.
+
+"An' I been out o' my head six months and better," the old man
+ruminated, staring down at the ground. "Good Lord! it's funny to miss
+out part o' your days like that. Hit was August--but--O-o-h, hot enough
+to fry eggs on a shingle, the day I tramped down to Cottonville with
+them specimens; and here it is"--he threw up his head and took a
+comprehensive survey of the grove about him--"airly spring--March, I
+should say--ain't it, Johnnie? Yes," as she nodded. "And who is this
+here young man that you name that's missin', honey?"
+
+The girl glanced at him apprehensively.
+
+"You know, Uncle Pros," she said in a coaxing tone. "It's Mr. Stoddard,
+that used to come to the hospital to see you so much and play checkers
+with you when you got better. You--why, Uncle Pros, you liked him more
+than any one. He could get you to eat when you wouldn't take a spoonful
+from anybody else. You must remember him--you can't have forgot Mr.
+Stoddard."
+
+Pros thrust out a long, lean arm, and fingered the sleeve upon it.
+
+"Nor my own clothes, I reckon," he assented with a sort of rueful
+testiness; "but to the best of my knowin' and believin', I never in my
+life before saw this shirt I'm wearin'--every garment I've got on is a
+plumb stranger to me, Johnnie. Ye say I played checkers with him--and--"
+
+"Uncle Pros, you used to talk to him by the hour, when you didn't know
+me at all," Johnnie told him chokingly. "I would get afraid that you
+asked too much of him, but he'd leave anything to come and sit with you
+when you were bad. He's got the kindest heart of anybody I ever knew."
+
+The old man's slow, thoughtful gaze was raised a moment to her eloquent,
+flushed face, and then dropped considerately to the path.
+
+"An' ye tell me he's one of the rich mill owners? Mr. Gray Stoddard?
+That's one name you've never named in your letters. What cause have you
+to think that Shade wished the man ill?"
+
+Slowly Johnnie's eyes filled with tears. "Why, what Shade said himself.
+He was--"
+
+"Jealous of him, I reckon," supplied the old man.
+
+Johnnie nodded. It was no time for evasions.
+
+"He had no call to be," she repeated. "Mr. Stoddard had no more thought
+of me in that way than he has of Deanie. He'd be just as kind to one as
+the other. But Shade brought his name into it, and threatened him to me
+in so many words. He said--" she shivered at the recollection--"he said
+he'd fix him--he'd get even with him. So this morning when I found that
+Pap Himes and Shade had taken Mr. Stoddard's car and come on up this
+way, it scared me. Yet I couldn't hardly go to anybody with it. I felt
+as though they would say it was just a vain, foolish girl thinking she'd
+stirred up trouble and had the men quarrelling over her. I did try to
+see Mr. Hardwick and Mr. MacPherson, and both of them were away. And
+after that I went to Mr. Hardwick's house. The Miss Sessions I wrote you
+so much about was the only person there, and she wouldn't do a thing.
+Then I just walked up here on my two feet. Uncle Pros, I was desperate
+enough for anything."
+
+Passmore had listened intently to Johnnie's swift, broken, passionate
+sentences.
+
+"Yes--ye-es," he said, as she made an end. "I sorter begin to see. Hold
+on, honey, lemme think a minute."
+
+He sat for some time silent, with introverted gaze, Johnnie with
+difficulty restraining her impatience, forbearing to break in upon his
+meditation.
+
+"Hit cl'ars up to me--sorter--as I study on it," he finally said. "Hit's
+like this, honey; six months ago (Lord, Lord, six months!) when I was
+walkin' down to take that silver ore to you, Rudd Dawson stopped me, and
+nothing would do but I must go home with him--ye know he's got the old
+Gid Himes place, in the holler back of our house--an' talk to Will
+Venters, Jess Groner, and Rudd's brother Sam. I didn't want to go--my
+head was plumb full of the silver-mine business, an' I jest wanted to
+git down to you quick as I could. The minute I said 'Johnnie,' Rudd
+'lowed he wanted to warn me about you down in the Cottonville mills. He
+went over all that stuff concerning Lura, an' how she'd been killed off
+in the mill folk's hospital and her body shipped to Cincinnati and sold.
+I put in my word that you was a-doin' well in the mills; an' I axed him
+what proof he had that the mill folks sold dead bodies. I 'lowed that
+you found the people at Cottonville mighty kind, and the work good. He
+came right back at me sayin' that Lura had talked the same way, and that
+many another had. Well, I finally went with him to his place--the old
+Gid Himes house--an' him an' me an' Sam an' Groner had considerable
+talk. They told me how they'd all been down an' saw Mr. Hardwick, and
+how quare he spoke to 'em. 'Them mill fellers never offered me a dollar,
+not a dollar,' says Rudd. An' I says to him, 'Good Lord, Dawson! Never
+offered you money? For God's sake! Did you want to be paid for Lura's
+body?' And he says, 'You know damn' well I didn't want to be paid for
+Lura's body, Pros Passmore,' he says. 'But do you reckon I'm a-goin' to
+let them mill men strut around with money they got that-a-way in their
+pockets? No, I'll not. I'll see 'em cold in hell fust,' he says--them
+Dawsons is a hard nation o' folks, Johnnie. I talked to 'em for a spell,
+and tried to make 'em see that the Hardwick folks hadn't never sold no
+dead body to the student doctors; but they was all mad and out o'
+theirselves. I seed that they wanted to get up a feud. 'Well,' says
+Rudd, 'They've got one of the Dawsons, and before we're done we'll get
+one o' them.'
+
+"'Uh-huh,' I says, 'you-all air a-goin' to get one o' them, air ye? Do
+you mean by that that you're ready to run your heads into a noose?'
+
+"'We don't have to run our heads into nary noose,' says Sam Dawson.
+'Shade Buckheath is a-standin' in with us. He knows all them mill
+fellers, an' their ways. He aims to he'p us; an' we'll ketch one o' them
+men out, and carry him off up here som'ers, and hold him till they pay
+us what we ask. I reckon the live body of one o' them chaps is worth a
+thousand dollars.' That's jest what he said," concluded the old man,
+turning toward her; "an' from what you tell me, Johnnie, I'll bet Shade
+Buckheath put the words in his mouth, if not the notion in his head."
+
+"Yes," whispered Johnnie through white lips, "yes; but Shade Buckheath
+isn't looking to make money out of it. He knows better than to think
+that they could keep Mr. Stoddard prisoner a while, and then get money
+for bringing him back, and never have to answer for it. He said he'd get
+even--he'd fix him. Shade wants just one thing--Oh, Uncle Pros! Do you
+think they've killed him?"
+
+The old man looked carefully away from her.
+
+"This here kidnappin' business, an tryin' to get money out of a feller's
+friends, most generally does wind up in a killin'," he said. "The folks
+gits to huntin' pretty hot, then them that's done the trick gets scared,
+and--they wouldn't have no good place to put him, them Dawsons,
+and--and," reluctantly, "a dead body's easier hid than a live man. Truth
+is, hit looks mighty bad for the young feller, honey girl. To my mind
+hit's really a question of time. The sooner his friends gets to him the
+better, that's my belief."
+
+Johnnie's pale, haggard face took on tragic lines as she listened to
+this plain putting of her own worst fears. She sprang up desperately.
+Uncle Pros rose, too.
+
+"Now, which way?" she demanded.
+
+The old hunter stood, staring thoughtfully at the path before his feet,
+rubbing his jaw with long, supple fingers, the daze of his recent
+experience yet upon him.
+
+"Well, I had aimed to go right to our old cabin," he said finally.
+"Hit's little more than a mile to where Dawson lives, in Gid's old place
+in Blue Spring Holler. They all think I'm crazy, an' they won't
+interfere with me--not till they find out different. Your mother; she'll
+give us good help, once we git to her. There's them that thinks Laurelly
+is light-minded and childish, but I could tell 'em she's got a heap of
+sense in that thar pretty little head o' her'n."
+
+"Oh, Uncle Pros! I forgot you don't know--of course you don't," broke in
+Johnnie with a sudden dismay in her voice. "I ought to have told you
+that mother"--she hesitated and looked at the old man--"mother isn't up
+at the cabin any more. I left her in Cottonville this morning."
+
+"Cottonville!" echoed Pros in surprise. Then he added, "O' course, she
+came down to take care o' me when I was hurt. That's like Laurelly. Is
+all the chaps thar? Is the cabin empty? How's the baby?"
+
+Johnnie nodded in answer to these inquiries, forbearing to go into any
+details. One thing she must tell him.
+
+"Mother's--mother's married again," she managed finally to say.
+
+"She's--" The old man broke off and turned Johnnie around that he might
+stare into her face. Then he laughed. "Well--well! Things have been
+happenin'--with the old man crazy an' all!" he said. "An' yit I don't
+know it' so strange. Laurelly is a mighty handsome little woman, and she
+don't look a day older than you do, Johnnie. I reckon it came through me
+bein' away, an' her havin' nobody to do for her. 'Course"--with
+pride--"she could have wedded 'most any time since your Pa died, if
+she'd been so minded. Who is it?"
+
+Johnnie looked away from him. "I--Uncle Pros, I never heard a word about
+it till I came home one evening and there they were, bag and baggage,
+and they'd been married but an hour before by Squire Gaylord. It"--her
+voice sank almost to a whisper--"It's Pap Himes."
+
+The old man thrust her back and stared again.
+
+"Gid--Gideon Himes?" he exclaimed incredulously. "Why, the man's old
+enough to be her grand-daddy, let alone her father. Gid Himes--the old--
+What in the name of--? Johnnie--and you think Himes is mixed up with
+this young man that's been laywaid--him and Buckheath? Lord, what _is_
+all this business?"
+
+"When Shade found I wouldn't have him," Johnnie began resolutely at the
+beginning, "he got Pap Himes to take him to board so that he could
+always be at me, tormenting me about it. I don't know what he and Pap
+Himes had between them; but something--that I'm sure of. And after the
+old man went up and married mother, it was worse. He put the children in
+the mill and worked them almost to death; even--even Deanie," she choked
+back a sob. "And Shade as good as told me he could make Pap Himes stop
+it any time I'd promise to marry him. Something they were pulling
+together over. Maybe it was the silver mine."
+
+"The silver mine!" echoed old Pros. "That's it. Gid thought I was likely
+to die, and the mine would come to your mother. Not but what he'd be
+glad enough to get Laurelly--but that's what put it in his head. An' Gid
+Himes is married to my little Laurelly, an' been abusin' the children!
+Lord, hit don't pay for a man to go crazy. Things gits out of order
+without him."
+
+"Well, what do you think now?" Johnnie inquired impatiently. "We mustn't
+stay here talking when Mr. Stoddard may be in mortal danger. Shall we go
+on to our place, just the same?"
+
+The old man looked compassionately at her.
+
+"Hold on, honey girl," he demurred gently. "We--" he sighted at the sun,
+which was declining over beyond the ridges toward Watauga. "I'm mighty
+sorry to pull back on ye, but we've got to get us a place to stay for
+the night. See," he directed her gaze with his own; "hit's not more'n a
+hour by sun. We cain't do nothin' this evenin'."
+
+The magnitude of the disappointment struck Johnnie silent. Pros Passmore
+was an optimist, one who never used a strong word to express sorrow or
+dismay, but he came out of a brown study in which he had muttered,
+"Blaylock. No, Harp wouldn't do. Culp's. Sally Ann's not to be trusted.
+What about the Venable boys? No good"--to say with a distressed drawing
+of the brows, "My God! In a thing like this, you don't know who to
+look to."
+
+"No. That's so, Uncle Pros," whispered Johnnie; she gazed back down the
+road she had come with the stranger. "I went up Slater's Lane to find
+Mandy Meacham's sister Roxy that married Zack Peavey," she said. "But
+they've moved from the cabin down there. They must have been gone a good
+while, for there's no work done on the truck-patch. I guess they went up
+to the Nooning-Spring place--Mandy said they talked of moving there. We
+might go and see. Mandy"--she hesitated, and looked questioningly at her
+uncle--"Mandy's been awful good to all of us, and she liked Mr.
+Stoddard."
+
+"We'll try it," said Pros Passmore, and they set out together.
+
+They climbed in silence, using a little-travelled woods-road, scarce
+more than two deep, grass-grown ruts, full of rotting stumps. Suddenly a
+couple of children playing under some wayside bushes leaped up and ran
+ahead of them, screaming.
+
+"Maw--he's comin' back, and he's got a woman with him!"
+
+A turn in the road brought the Nooning-Spring cabin in sight, a tiny,
+one-roomed log structure, ancient and ruinous; and in its door a young
+woman standing, with a baby in her arms, staring with all her eyes at
+them and at their approaching couriers.
+
+She faltered a step toward the dilapidated rail fence as they came up.
+
+"Howdy," she said in a low, half-frightened tone. Then to Uncle Pros,
+"We-all was mighty uneasy when you never come back."
+
+Involuntarily the old man's hand went to that vertebra whose eighth-inch
+displacement had been so lately reduced.
+
+"Have I been here?" he asked. "I was out of my head, and I don't
+remember it."
+
+The young woman looked at him with a hopeless drawing of scant, light
+eyebrows above bulging gray eyes. She chugged the fretting baby gently
+up and down in her arms to hush it. Johnnie saw her resemblance to
+Mandy. Apparently giving up the effort in regard to the man, Zack
+Peavey's wife addressed the girl as an easier proposition.
+
+"He was here," she said in a sort of aside. "He stayed all night
+a-Saturday. Zack said he was kinder foolish, but I thought he had as
+much sense as most of 'em." Her gaze rested kindly on the old man. The
+children, wild and shy as young foxes, had stolen to the door of the
+cabin, in which they had taken refuge, and were staring out wonderingly.
+
+"Well, we'll have to ask you could we stay to-night," Johnnie began
+doubtfully. "My uncle's been out of his head, and he got away from the
+folks at the hospital. I came up to hunt for him. I've just found
+him--but we aren't going right back. I met a man out there on the road
+that did something to him that--that--" she despaired of putting into
+words that the woman could comprehend the miracle which she had seen the
+stranger work--"Well, Uncle Pros is all right now, and we'd like to stay
+the night if we can."
+
+"Come in--come in--the both of you," urged the woman, turning toward the
+cabin. "'Course, ye kin stay, an' welcome. Set and rest. Zack ain't home
+now. He's--" A curious, furtive look went over her round face. "Zack has
+got a job on hand, ploughing for--ploughing for a neighbour, but he'll
+be home to-night."
+
+They went in and sat down. A kettle of wild greens was cooking over the
+fire, and everything was spotlessly clean. Mandy had said truly that
+there wasn't a thing on the farm she didn't love to do, and the gift of
+housewifery ran in the family. Johnnie had barely explained who she was,
+and made such effort as she could to enlist Mandy's sister, when Zack
+came tramping home, and showed, she thought, some uneasiness at finding
+them there. The wife ran out and met him before he reached the cabin,
+and they stood talking together a long time, the lines of both figures
+somehow expressing dismay; yet when they came in there was a fair
+welcome in the man's demeanour. At the supper table, whose scanty fare
+was well cooked, Uncle Pros and Johnnie had to tell again, and yet
+again, the story of that miraculous healing which both husband and wife
+could see was genuine.
+
+Through it all, both Pros and Johnnie attempted to lead the talk around
+to some information which might be of use to them. Nothing was more
+natural than that they should speak of Gray Stoddard's disappearance,
+since Watauga, Cottonville, and the mountains above were full of the
+topic; yet husband and wife sheered from it in a sort of terror.
+
+"Them that makes or meddles in such gits theirselves into trouble,
+that's what I say," Zack told the visitors, stroking a chin whose
+contours expressed the resolution and aggressiveness of a rabbit. "I
+ain't never seen this here Mr. Man as far as I know. I don't never want
+to see him. I ain't got no call to mix myself up in such, and I 'low
+I'll sleep easier and live longer if I don't do it."
+
+"That's right," quavered Roxy. "Burkhalter's boy, he had to go to mixin'
+in when the Culps and the Venables was feudin'; and look what chanced.
+Nary one o' them families lost a man; but Burkhalter's boy got hisself
+killed up. Yes, that's what happened to him. Dead. I went to
+the funeral."
+
+"True as Scriptur'," confirmed Zack--"reach an' take off, Pros. Johnnie,
+eat hearty--true as you-all set here. I he'ped make the coffin an' dig
+the grave."
+
+After a time there came a sort of ruth to Johnnie for the poor
+creatures, furtive, stealing glances at each other, and answering her
+inquiries or Uncle Pros's with dry, evasive platitudes. She knew there
+was no malice in either of them; and that only the abject terror of the
+weak kept them from giving whatever bit of information it was they had
+and were consciously withholding. Soon she ceased plying them with
+questions, and signalled Uncle Pros that he should do the same. After
+the children were asleep in their trundle-bed, the four elders sat by
+the dying fire on the hearth and talked a little. Johnnie told Zack and
+Roxy of the mill work at Cottonville, how well she had got on, and how
+good Mr. Stoddard had been to her, choking over the treasured
+remembrances. She related the many kindnesses that had been shown Pros
+and his kinfolk at the Hospital, how the old man had been there for
+three months, treated as a guest during the latter part of his stay
+rather than a patient, and how Mr. Stoddard would leave his work in the
+office to come and cheer the sick man, or quiet him if he got violent.
+
+"He looked perfectly dreadful when I first saw him," she said to them,
+"but the doctors took care of him as if he'd been a little baby. The
+nurses fed him by spoonfuls and coaxed him just like you would little
+Honey; and Mr. Stoddard--he never was too busy to--" the tears brimmed
+her eyes in the dusky cabin interior--"to come when Uncle Pros
+begged for him."
+
+The woman sighed and stirred uneasily, her eye stealthily seeking her
+husband's.
+
+In that little one-room hut there was no place for guests. Presently the
+men drifted out to the chip pile, where they lingered a while in
+desultory talk. Roxy and Johnnie, partly undressed, occupied the one
+bed; and later the host and his guest came in and lay down, clothed just
+as they were, with their feet to the fire, and slept.
+
+In the darkness just before dawn, Johnnie wakened from heavy sleep and
+raised her head to find that a clear fire was burning on the hearth and
+the two men were gone. Noiselessly she arose, and replaced her outer
+wear, thinking to slip away without disturbing Roxy. But when she
+returned softly to the interior, after laving face and hands out at the
+wash-basin, and ordering her abundant hair, she found the little woman
+up and clad, slicing bacon and making coffee of generous strength from
+their scanty store.
+
+"No--why, the idea!" cried Roxy. "Of course, you wasn't a-goin' on from
+no house o' mine 'thout no breakfast. Why, I say!"
+
+Johnnie's throat swelled at the humble kindness. They ate, thanked Roxy
+and her man Zack in the simple uneffusive mountain fashion, and started
+away in the twilight of dawn. The big road was barely reached, when they
+heard steps coming after them in the dusk, and a breathless voice
+calling in a whisper, "Johnnie! Johnnie!"
+
+The two turned and waited till Roxy came up.
+
+"I--ye dropped this on the floor," the woman said, fumbling in her
+pocket and bringing out a bit of paper. "I didn't know as it was of any
+value--and then again I didn't know but what it might be. Johnnie--" she
+broke off and stood peering hesitatingly into the gloom toward the
+girl's shining face.
+
+With a quick touch of the arm Johnnie signed to Pros to move on. As he
+swung out of earshot, the bulging light eyes, so like Mandy's, were
+suddenly dimmed by a rush of tears.
+
+"I reckon he'd beat me ef he knowed I told," Roxy gasped. "He ain't
+never struck me yit, and us married five year--but I reckon he'd beat me
+for that."
+
+Johnnie wisely forbore reply or interference of any sort. The woman
+gulped, drew her breath hard, and looked about her.
+
+"Johnnie," she whispered again, "the--that there thing they ride in--the
+otty-mobile--hit broke down, and Zack was over to Pres Blevin's
+blacksmith shop a-he'pin' 'em work on it all day yesterday. You know
+Pres--he married Lura Dawson's aunt. Neither Himes nor Buckheath could
+git it to move, but by night they had it a-runnin'--or so hit _would_
+run. That's why you never saw tracks of it on the road--hit hadn't been
+along thar yit. But hit's went on this morning. No--no--no! I don't know
+whar it went. I don't know what they was aimin' to do. I don't know
+nothin'! Don't ask me, Johnnie Consadine, I reckon I've said right now
+what's put my man's neck in danger. Oh, my God--I wish the men-folks
+would quit their fussin' an' feudin'!"
+
+And she turned and ran distractedly back into the cabin while Johnnie
+hurried on to join her uncle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE RESCUE
+
+Johnnie caught her uncle's hand and ran with him through the little
+thicket of saplings toward the main road.
+
+"We'll get the track of the wheels, and when we find that car--and Shade
+Buckheath--and Pap Himes....I ..." Johnnie panted, and did not finish
+her sentence. Her heart leaped when they came upon the broad mark of the
+pneumatic tires still fresh in the lonely mountain road.
+
+"Looks like they might have passed here while we was standin' back there
+talkin' to Roxy," Uncle Pros said. "They could have--we'd not have heard
+a thing that distance, through this thick woods. Wonder could we catch
+up with them?"
+
+Johnnie shook her head. She remembered the car flying up the ascents,
+swooping down long slopes and skimming like a bird across the levels,
+that morning when she had driven it.
+
+"They'll go almost as fast as a railroad train, Uncle Pros," she told
+him, "but we must get there as soon as we can."
+
+After that scarcely a word was spoken, while the two, still hand in
+hand, made what speed they could. The morning waxed. The March sunshine
+was warm and pleasant. It was even hot, toiling endlessly up that
+mountain road. Now and again they met people who knew and saluted them,
+and who looked back at them curiously, furtively; at least it seemed so
+to the old man and the girl. Once a lean, hawk-nosed fellow ploughing a
+hillside field shouted across it:
+
+"Hey-oh, Pros Passmore! How yuh come on? I 'lowed the student doctors
+would 'a' had you, long ago."
+
+Pros ventured no reply, save a wagging of the head.
+
+"That's Blaylock's cousin," he muttered to Johnnie. "Mighty glad we
+never went near 'em last night."
+
+Once or twice they were delayed to talk. Johnnie would have hurried on,
+but her uncle warned her with a look to do nothing unusual. Everybody
+spoke to them of Gray Stoddard. Nobody had seen anything of him within a
+month of his disappearance, but several of them had "hearn say."
+
+"They tell me," vouchsafed a lanky boy dawdling with his axe at a chip
+pile, "that the word goes in Cottonville now, that he's took money and
+lit out for Canada. Town folks is always a-doin' such."
+
+"Like as not, bud," Pros assented gravely. "Me and Johnnie is goin' up
+to look after the old house, but we allowed to sleep to-night at
+Bushares's. Time enough to git to our place to-morrow."
+
+Johnnie, who knew that her uncle hoped to reach the Consadine cabin by
+noon, instantly understood that he considered the possibility of this
+boy being a sort of picket posted to interview passers-by; and that the
+intention was to misinform him, so that he should not carry news of
+their approach.
+
+After this, they met no one, but swung on at their best pace, and for
+the most part in silence, husbanding strength and breath. Twelve o'clock
+saw them entering that gash of the hills where the little cabin crouched
+against the great mountain wall. The ground became so rocky, that the
+track of the automobile was lost. At first it would be visible now and
+again on a bit of sandy loam, chain marks showing, where the tire left
+no impression; but, within a mile or so of the Consadine home, it seemed
+to have left the trail. When this point arrived, Johnnie differed from
+her uncle in choosing to hold to the road.
+
+"Honey, this ends the cyar-tracks. Looks like they'd turned out. I think
+they took off into the bushes here, and where that cyar goes we ought to
+go," Pros argued.
+
+But Johnnie hurried on ahead, looking about her eagerly. Suddenly she
+stooped with a cry and picked up from the path a small object.
+
+"They've carried him past this way," she panted. "Oh, Uncle Pros, he was
+right here not so very long ago."
+
+She scrutinized the sparse growth, the leafless bushes about the spot,
+looking for signs of a struggle, and the question in her heart was, "My
+God, was he alive or dead?" The thing she held in her hand was a blossom
+of the pink moccasin flower, carefully pressed, as though for the pages
+of a herbarium; The bit of paper to which it was attached was crumpled
+and discoloured.
+
+"Looks like it had laid out in the dew last night," breathed Johnnie.
+
+"Or for a week," supplied Pros. He scanned the little brown thing, then
+her face.
+
+"All right," he said dubiously; "if that there tells you that he come
+a-past here, we'll foller this road--though it 'pears to me like we
+ought to stick to the cyar."
+
+"It isn't far to our house," urged Johnnie. "Let's go there first,
+anyhow."
+
+For a few minutes they pressed ahead in silence; then some subtle
+excitement made them break into a run. Thus they rounded the turn. The
+cabin came in sight. Its door swung wide on complaining hinges. The last
+of the rickety fence had fallen. The desolation and decay of a deserted
+house was over all.
+
+"There's been folks here--lately," panted Pros. "Look thar!" and he
+pointed to a huddle of baskets and garments on the porch. "Mind out! Go
+careful. They may be thar now."
+
+They "went careful," stealing up the steps and entering with caution;
+but they found nothing more alarming than the four bare walls, the
+ash-strewn, fireless hearth, the musty smell of a long-unoccupied house.
+Near the back door, at a spot where the dust was thick, Uncle Pros bent
+to examine a foot-print, when an exclamation from Johnnie called him
+through to the rear of the cabin.
+
+"See the door!" she cried, running up the steep way toward the cave
+spring-house.
+
+"Hold on, honey. Go easy," cautioned her uncle, following as fast as he
+could. He noted the whittling where the sapling bar that held the stout
+oaken door in place had been recently shaped to its present purpose.
+Then a soft, rhythmic sound like a giant breathing in his sleep caught
+the old hunter's keen ear.
+
+"Watch out, Johnnie," he called, catching her arm, "What's that?
+Listen!"
+
+Her fingers were almost on the bar. They could hear the soft lip-lip of
+the water as it welled out beneath the threshold, mingled with the
+tinkle and fall of the spring branch below.
+
+Johnnie turned in her uncle's grasp and clutched him, staring down.
+Something shining and dark, brave with brass and flashing lamps, stood
+on the rocky way beneath, and purred like a great cat in the broad
+sunlight of noon--Gray Stoddard's motor car! The two, clinging to each
+other on the steep above it, gazed half incredulous, now that they had
+found the thing they sought. It looked so unbelievably adequate and
+modern and alive standing there, drawing its perfectly measured breath;
+it was so eloquent of power and the work of men's hands that there
+seemed to yawn a gap of half a thousand years between it and the raid in
+which it was being made a factor. That this pet toy of the modern
+millionaire should be set to work out the crude vengeance of wild men in
+these primitive surroundings, crowded up on a little rocky path of these
+savage mountains, at the door of a cave spring-house--such a food-cache
+as a nomad Indian might have utilized, in the gray bluff against the
+sky-line--it took the breath with its sinister strangeness.
+
+They turned to the barred door. The cave was a sizable opening running
+far back into the mountain; indeed, the end of it had never been
+explored, but the vestibule containing the spring was fitted with rude
+benches and shelves for holding pans of milk and jars of buttermilk.
+
+As Johnnie's hand went out to the newly cut bar, her uncle once more
+laid a restraining grasp upon it. A dozen men might be on the other side
+of the oaken door, and there might be nobody.
+
+"Hello!" he called, guardedly.
+
+No answer came; but within there was a sound of clinking, and then a
+shuffling movement. The panting motor spoke loud of those who had
+brought it there, who must be expecting to return to it very shortly.
+Johnnie's nerves gave way.
+
+"Hello! Is there anybody inside?" she demanded fearfully.
+
+"Who's there? Who is it?" came a muffled hail from the cave, in a voice
+that sent the blood to Johnnie's heart with a sudden shock.
+
+"Uncle Pros, we've found him!" she screamed, pushing the old man aside,
+and tugging at the bar which held the door in place. As she worked,
+there came a curious clinking sound, and then the dull impact of a heavy
+fall; and when she dragged the bar loose, swung the door wide and peered
+into the gloom, there was nothing but the silvery reach of the great
+spring, and beyond it a prone figure in russet riding-clothes.
+
+"Uncle Pros--he's hurt! Oh, help me!" she cried.
+
+The prostrate man struggled to turn his face to them.
+
+"Is that you, Johnnie?" Gray Stoddard's voice asked. "No, I'm not hurt.
+These things tripped me up."
+
+The two got to him simultaneously. They found him in heavy shackles.
+They noted how ankle and wrist chains had been rivetted in place.
+Together they helped him up.
+
+As they did so tears ran down Johnnie's cheeks unregarded. Passmore
+deeply moved, yet quiet, studied him covertly. This, then, was the man
+of whom Johnnie thought so much, the rich young fellow who had left his
+work or amusements to come and cheer a sick old man in the hospital;
+this was the face that was a stranger's to him, but which had leaned
+over his cot or sat across the checker-board from him for long hours,
+while they talked or played together. That face was pale now, the brown
+hair, "a little longer than other people wore it," tossed helplessly in
+Stoddard's eyes, because he scarcely could raise his shackled hands to
+put it right; his russet-brown clothing was torn and grimed, as though
+with more than one struggle, though it may have been nothing worse than
+such mishap as his recent fall. Yet the man's soul looked out of his
+eyes with the same composure, the same kindness that always were his. He
+was eaten by neither terror nor rage, though he was alert for every
+possibility of help, or of advantage.
+
+"You, Johnnie--you!" whispered Gray, struggling to his knees with their
+assistance, and catching a fold of her dress in those manacled hands. "I
+have dreamed about you here in the dark. It is you--it is
+really Johnnie."
+
+He was pale, dishevelled, with a long mark of black leaf-mould across
+his cheek from his recent fall; and Johnnie bent speechlessly to wipe
+the stain away and put back the troublesome lock. He looked up into the
+brave beauty of her young, tear-wet face.
+
+"Thank God for you, Johnnie," he murmured. "I might have known I
+wouldn't be let to die here in the dark like a rat in a hole while
+Johnnie lived."
+
+"Whar's them that brought you here? The keepers?" questioned the old man
+anxiously, in a hoarse, hurried whisper.
+
+"Dawson's gone to his dinner," returned Gray. "There were others
+here--came in an auto--I heard that. They've been quarrelling for more
+than an hour."
+
+--"About what they'd do with you," broke in Pros. "Yes, part of 'em
+wants to put you out of the way, of course." He stooped, eagerly
+examining the shackles on Gray's ankles. "No way to git them things off
+without time and a file," he muttered, shaking his head.
+
+"No," agreed Stoddard. "And I can't run much with them on. But we must
+get away from here as quick as we can. Dawson came in and told me after
+the other had gone that they had a big row, and he was standing out for
+me. Said he'd never give in to have me taken down and tied on the
+railroad track in Stryver's Gulch."
+
+Johnnie's fair face whitened at the sinister words.
+
+"The car!" she cried. "It's your own, Mr. Stoddard, and it's right down
+here. Uncle Pros, we can get him to it--I can run it--I know how." She
+put her shoulder under Stoddard's, catching the manacled hand in hers.
+Pros laid hold on the other side, and between them they half carried the
+shackled captive around the spring and to the door.
+
+"Leggo, Johnnie!" cried her uncle. "You run on down and see if that
+contraption will go. I can git him thar now."
+
+Johnnie instantly loosed the arm she held, sprang through the doorway,
+and headlong down the bluffy steep, stones rattling about her. She
+leaped into the car. Would her memory serve her? Would she forget some
+detail that she must know? There were two levers under the
+steering-wheel. She advanced her spark and partly opened the throttle.
+From the steady, comfortable purr which had undertoned all sounds in the
+tiny glen, the machine burst at once into a deep-toned roar. The narrow
+depression vibrated with its joyous clamour.
+
+Suddenly, above the sound, Johnnie was aware of a distant hail, which
+finally resolved itself into words.
+
+"Hi! Hoo--ee! You let that car alone, whoever you are."
+
+She glanced over her shoulder; Passmore had got Gray to the top of the
+declivity, and was attempting to help him down. Both men evidently heard
+the challenge, but she screamed to them again and again.
+
+"Hurry, oh hurry! They're coming--they're coming."
+
+Stoddard had been stepping as best he could, hobbling along in the
+hampering leg chains, that were attached to the wrists also, and
+twitched on his hands with every step. His muscles responded to
+Johnnie's cry almost automatically, stiffening to an effort at extra
+speed, and he fell headlong, dragging Pros down with him. Despairingly
+Johnnie started to climb down from the car and go to their aid, but her
+uncle leaped to his feet clawing and grabbing to find a hold around
+Gray's waist, panting out, "Stay thar--Johnnie--I can fetch him."
+
+With a straining heave he hoisted Gray's helpless body into his arms.
+The car trembled like a great, eager monster, growling in leash.
+Johnnie's agonized eyes searched first its mechanism, and then went to
+the descending figures, where her uncle plunged desperately down the
+slope, fell, struggled, rolled, but rose and came gallantly on, half
+dragging, half carrying Gray in his arms.
+
+"Let that car alone!" a new voice took up the hail, a little nearer this
+time; and after it came the sound of a shot. High up on the mountain's
+brow, against the sky, Johnnie caught a glimpse of the heads and
+shoulders of men, with the slanting bar of a gun barrel over one.
+
+"Oh, hurry, Uncle Pros!" she sobbed. "Let me come back and help you."
+
+But Passmore stumbled across the remaining space; mutely, with drawn
+face and loud, labouring breath he lifted Gray and thrust him any
+fashion into the tonneau, climbing blindly after.
+
+The pursuit on the hill above broke into the open. Johnnie moved the
+levers as Gray had shown her how to do, and with a bound of the great
+machine, they were off. Stoddard, dazed, bruised, abraded, was back in
+the tonneau struggling up with Uncle Pros's assistance. He could not
+help her. She must know for herself and do the right thing. The track
+led through the bushes, as they had found it that morning. It was fairly
+good, but terribly steep. She noted that the speed lever was at neutral.
+She slipped it over to the first speed; the car was already leaping down
+the hill at a tremendous pace; yet those yelling voices were behind, and
+her pushing fingers carried the lever through second to the third speed
+without pausing.
+
+Under this tremendous pressure the car jumped like a nervous horse,
+lurched drunkenly down the short way, but reeled successfully around the
+turn at the bottom. Johnnie knew this was going too fast. She debated
+the possibility of slackening the speed a bit as they struck the
+highway, such as it was. Uncle Pros, yet gasping, was trying to help
+Gray into the seat; but with his hampering manacles and the jerking of
+the car, the younger man was still on his knees, when the chase burst
+through the bushes, scarcely more than three hundred feet behind them.
+
+There was a hoarse baying of men's voices; there were four of them
+running hard, and two carried guns. The noise of the machine, of course,
+prevented its occupants from distinguishing any word, but the menace of
+the open pursuit was apparent.
+
+"Johnnie!" cried Gray. "Oh, this won't do! For God's sake, Mr. Passmore,
+help me over there. They wouldn't want to hurt her--but they're going to
+shoot. She--"
+
+The old man thrust Gray down, with a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"You keep out o' range," he shouted close to Gray's ear. "They won't aim
+to hit Johnnie; but you they'll pick off as far as they can see ye. Bend
+low, honey," to the girl in the driver's seat. "But freeze to it.
+Johnnie ain't no niece of mine if she goes back on a friend."
+
+The girl in front heard neither of them. There was a bellowing
+detonation, and a spatter of shot fell about the flying car.
+
+"That ain't goin' to hurt nobody," commented Pros philosophically. "It's
+no more than buck-shot anyhow."
+
+[Illustration: THE CAR WAS ALREADY LEAPING DOWN THE HILL AT A TREMENDOUS
+PACE]
+
+But on the word followed a more ominous crack, and there was the whine
+of a bullet above them.
+
+"My God, I can't let her do this," Gray protested. But Johnnie turned
+over her shoulder a shining face from which all weariness had suddenly
+been erased, a glorified countenance that flung him the fleeting smile
+she had time to spare from the machine.
+
+"You're in worse danger right now from my driving than you are from
+their guns," she panted.
+
+As she spoke there sounded once more the ripping crack of a rifle, the
+singing of a bullet past them, and with it the flatter, louder noise of
+the shot-gun was repeated. Her eye in the act of turning to her task,
+caught the silhouette of old Gideon Himes's uncouth figure relieved
+against the noonday sky, as he sprang high, both arms flung up, the
+hands empty and clutching, and pitched headlong to his face. But her
+mind scarcely registered the impression, for a rifle ball struck the
+shaly edge of a bluff under which the road at this point ran, and tore
+loose a piece of the slate-like rock, which glanced whirling into the
+tonneau and grazed Gray Stoddard's temple. He fell forward, crumpling
+down into the bottom of the vehicle.
+
+"On--go on, honey!" yelled Pros, motioning vehemently to the girl.
+"Don't look back here--I'll tend to him"; and he stooped over the
+motionless form.
+
+Then came the roaring impression of speed, of rushing bushes that
+gathered themselves and ran back past the car while, working under full
+power, it stood stationary, as it seemed to Johnnie, in the middle of a
+long, dusty gray ribbon that was the road. The cries of the men behind
+them, all sounds of pursuit, were soon left so far in the distance that
+they were unheard.
+
+"Ain't this rather fast?" shouted Uncle Pros, who had lifted Stoddard's
+bleeding head to his knee and, crouched on the bottom of the tonneau,
+was shielding the younger man from further injury as the motor lurched
+and pitched.
+
+"Yes, it's too fast," Johnnie screamed back to him. "I'm trying to go
+slower, but the foot-brake won't hold. Uncle Pros, is he hurt? Is he
+hurt bad?"
+
+"I don't think so, honey," roared the old man stoutly, guarding Gray's
+inert body with his arm. Then, stretching up as he kneeled, and leaning
+forward as close to her ear as he could get: "But you git him to
+Cottonville quick as you can. Don't you werry about goin' slow, unlessen
+you're scared yourself. Thar ain't no tellin' who might pop up from
+behind these here bushes and take a chance shot at us as we go by."
+
+Johnnie worked over her machine wildly. Gray had told her of the
+foot-brake only; but her hand encountering the lever of the emergency
+brake, she grasped it at a hazard and shoved it forward, as the god of
+luck had ordered, just short of a zigzag in the steep mountain road
+which, at the speed they had been making, would have piled them, a mass
+of wreckage, beneath the cliff.
+
+The sudden, violent check--shooting along at the speed they were, it
+amounted almost to a stoppage--gave the girl a sense of power. If she
+could do that, they were fairly safe. With the relief, her brain
+cleared; she was able to study the machine with some calmness. Gray
+could not help her--out of the side of her eye she could see where he
+lay inert and senseless in Passmore's hold. The lives of all three
+depended on her cool head at this moment. She remembered now all that
+Stoddard had said the morning he taught her to run the car. With one
+movement she threw off the switch, thus stopping the engine, entirely.
+They must make it to Cottonville running by gravity wherever they could;
+since she had no means of knowing that there was sufficient gasoline in
+the tank, and it would not do to be overtaken or waylaid.
+
+On and on they flew, around quick turns, along narrow ways that skirted
+tall bluffs, over stretches of comparatively level road, where Johnnie
+again switched on the engine and speeded up. They were skimming down
+from the upper Unakas like a great bird whose powerful wings make
+nothing of distance. But Johnnie's heart was as lead when she glanced
+back at the motionless figure in the tonneau, the white, blood-streaked
+face that lay on her uncle's arm. She turned doggedly to her
+steering-wheel and levers, and took greater chances than ever with the
+going, for speed's sake. The boy they had talked with two hours before
+at the chip pile, met them afoot. He leaped into the bushes to let them
+pass, and stared after them with dilated eyes. Johnnie never knew what
+he shouted. They only saw his mouth open and working. Mercifully, so
+far, they had met no vehicles. But now the higher, wilder mountains were
+behind them, there was an occasional horseman. As they neared
+Cottonville, and teams were numerous on the road, Johnnie, jealously
+unwilling to slacken speed, kept the horn going almost continuously.
+People in wagons and buggies, or on foot, drawn out along the roadside,
+cupped hands to lips and yelled startled inquiries. Johnnie bent above
+the steering-wheel and paid no attention. Uncle Pros tried to answer
+with gesticulation or a shouted word, and sometimes those he replied to
+turned and ran, calling to others. But it was black Jim, riding on Roan
+Sultan, out with the searchers, who saw and understood. He looked down
+across the great two-mile turn beyond the Gap, and sighted the climbing
+car. Where he stood it was less than an eighth of a mile below him; he
+could almost have thrown a stone into it. He bent in his saddle, shaded
+his eyes, and gazed intently.
+
+"Fo' God!" he muttered under his breath. "That's Mr. Gray hisself!
+Them's the clothes he was wearin'!"
+
+Whirling his horse and digging in the spurs, he rattled pell-mell down
+the opposite steep toward Cottonville, shouting as he went.
+
+"They've done got him--they've found him! Miss Johnnie Consadine's
+a-bringin' him down in his own cyar!"
+
+At the Hardwick place, where the front lawn sloped down with its
+close-trimmed, green-velvet sward, stood two horses. Charlie Conroy had
+come out as soon as the alarm was raised to help with the search. He and
+Lydia had ridden together each day since. Moving slowly along a quiet
+ravine yesterday, out of sight and hearing of the other searchers,
+Conroy had found an intimate moment in which to urge his suit. She had
+begged a little time to consider, with so encouraging an aspect that,
+this morning, when he came out that they might join the party bound for
+the mountains, he brought the ring in his pocket. The bulge of the big
+diamond showed through her left-hand glove. She had taken him at last.
+She told herself that it was the only thing to do. Harriet Hardwick, who
+had returned from Watauga, since her sister would not come to her, stood
+in the door of the big house regarding them with a countenance of
+distinctly chastened rejoicing. Conroy's own frame of mind was evident;
+deep satisfaction radiated from his commonplace countenance. He was to
+be Jerome Hardwick's brother-in-law, an intimate member of the mill
+crowd. He was as near being in love with Lydia Sessions at that moment
+as he ever would be. As for Lydia herself, the last week had brought
+that thin face of hers to look all of its thirty odd years; and the
+smile which she turned upon her affianced was the product of
+conscientious effort. She was safely in her saddle, and Conroy had just
+swung up to his own, when Jim came pelting down the Gap road toward the
+village. They could see him across the slope of the hill. Conroy
+cantered hastily up the street a bit to hear what the boy was
+vociferating. Lydia's nerves quivered at sight of him returning.
+
+"Hurrah! Hurrah!" shouted Conroy, waving his cap. "Lord, Lord; Did you
+hear that, Lydia? Hoo-ee, Mrs. Hardwick! Did you hear what Jim's saying?
+They've got Gray! Johnnie Consadine's bringing him--in his own car."
+Then turning once more to his companion: "Come on, dear; we'll ride
+right down to the hospital. Jim said he was hurt. That's where she would
+take him. That Johnnie Consadine of yours is the girl--isn't she a
+wonder, though?"
+
+Lydia braced herself. It had come, and it was worse than she could have
+anticipated. She cringed inwardly in remembrance; she wished she had not
+let Conroy make that pitying reference--unreproved, uncorrected--to
+Stoddard's being a rejected man. But perhaps they were bringing Gray in
+dead, after all--she tried not to hope so.
+
+The auto became visible, a tiny dark speck, away up in the Gap. Then it
+was sweeping down the Gap road; and once more Conroy swung his cap and
+shouted, though it is to be questioned that any one marked him.
+
+Below in the village the noisy clatter brought people to door and
+casement. At the Himes boarding-house, a group had gathered by the gate.
+At the window above, in an arm-chair, sat a thin little woman with great
+dark eyes, holding a sick child in her lap. The sash was up, and both
+were carefully wrapped in a big shawl that was drawn over the two
+of them.
+
+"Sis' Johnnie is comin' back; she sure is comin' back soon," Laurella
+was crooning to her baby. "And we ain't goin' to work in no cotton mill,
+an' we ain't goin' to live in this ol' house any more. Next thing we're
+a-goin' away with Sis' Johnnie and have a fi-ine house, where Pap Himes
+can't come about to be cross to Deanie."
+
+High up on Unaka Mountain, where a cluttered mass of rock reared itself
+to front the noonday sun, an old man's figure, prone, the hands clutched
+full of leaf-mould, the gray face down amid the fern, Gideon Himes would
+never offer denial to those plans, nor seek to follow to that
+fine house.
+
+The next moment an automobile flashed into sight coming down the long
+lower slope from the Gap, the horn blowing continuously, horsemen,
+pedestrians, buggies and wagons fleeing to the roadside bushes as it
+roared past in its cloud of dust.
+
+"Look, honey, look--yon's Sis' Johnnie now!" cried Laurella. "She's
+a-runnin' Mr. Stoddard's car. An' thar's Unc' Pros ... Is--my Lord! Is
+that Mr. Stoddard hisself, with blood all over him?"
+
+Lydia and Conroy, hurrying down the street, drew up on the fringes of
+the little crowd that had gathered and was augmenting every moment, and
+Johnnie's face was turned to Stoddard in piteous questioning. His eyes
+were open now. He raised himself a bit on her uncle's arm, and declared
+in a fairly audible voice:
+
+"I'm all right. I'm not hurt."
+
+"Somebody git me a glass of water," called Uncle Pros.
+
+Mavity Bence ran out with one, but when she got close enough to see
+plainly the shackled figure Passmore supported, she thrust the glass
+into Mandy Meacham's hand and flung her apron over her head.
+
+"Good Lord!" she moaned. "I reckon they've killed him. They done one of
+my brothers that-a-way in feud times, and throwed him over a bluff. Oh,
+my Lord; Why will men be so mean?"
+
+Pros had taken the glass from Mandy and held it to Gray's lips. Then he
+dashed part of the remaining water on Stoddard's handkerchief and with
+Mandy's help, got the blood cleared away.
+
+From every shanty, women and children came hastening--men hurried up
+from every direction.
+
+"Look at her--look at Johnnie!" cried Beulah Catlett. "Pony! Milo!"
+turning back into the house, where the boys lay sleeping. "Come out here
+and look at your sister!"
+
+"Did ye run it all by yourself, Sis' Johnnie?" piped Lissy from the
+porch.
+
+The girl in the driver's seat smiled and nodded to the child.
+
+"Are you through there, Uncle Pros?" asked Johnnie. "We must get Mr.
+Stoddard on to his house."
+
+The women and children drew back, the crowd ahead parted, and the car
+got under way once more. The entire press of people followed in its
+wake, surged about it, augmenting at every corner.
+
+"I'm afraid my horse won't stand this sort of thing," Lydia objected,
+desperately, reining in. Conroy glanced at her in surprise. Bay Dick was
+the soberest of mounts. Then he looked wistfully after the crowd.
+
+"Would you mind if I--" he began, and broke off to say contritely, "I'll
+go back with you if you'd rather." It was evident that Lydia would make
+of him a thoroughly disciplined husband.
+
+"Never mind," she said, locking her teeth. "I'll go with you." One might
+as well have it done and over with. And they hurried on to make up for
+lost time.
+
+They saw the car turn in to the street which led to the Hardwick
+factory. Somebody had hurried ahead and told MacPherson and Jerome
+Hardwick; and just as they came in sight, the office doors burst open
+and the two men came running hatless down the steps. Suddenly the
+factory whistles roared out the signal that had been agreed upon, which
+bellowed to the hills the tidings that Gray Stoddard was found. Three
+long calls and a short one--that meant that he was found alive. As the
+din of it died down, Hexter's mills across the creek took up the
+message, and when they were silent, the old Victory came in on their
+heels, bawling it again. Every whistle in Cottonville gave tongue,
+clamouring hoarsely above the valley, and out across the ranges, to the
+hundreds at their futile search, "Gray Stoddard is found. Stoddard is
+found. Alive. He is brought in alive."
+
+MacPherson ran up to one side of the car and Hardwick to the other.
+
+"Are you hurt?" inquired the Scotchman, his hands stretched out.
+
+"Can you get out and come in?" Hardwick demanded eagerly.
+
+On the instant, the big gates swung wide, the factory poured out a tide
+of people as though the building had been afire. At sight of Stoddard,
+the car, and Johnnie, a cheer went up, spontaneous, heart-shaking.
+
+"My God--look at that!" MacPherson's eyes had encountered the shackles
+on Stoddard's wrists.
+
+"Lift him down--lift him out," cried Jerome Hardwick. With tears on his
+tanned cheeks the Scotchman complied; and Hardwick's eyes, too, were wet
+as he saw it.
+
+"We'll have those things off of him in no time," he shouted. "Here,
+let's get him in to the couch in my office. Send some of the mechanics
+here. Where's Shade Buckheath?"
+
+A dozen pairs of hands were stretched up to assist MacPherson and Pros
+Passmore. As many as could get to the rescued man helped. And when the
+crowd saw that shackled figure raised, and heard in the tense silence
+the clinking sound of the chains, a low groan went through it; more than
+one woman sobbed aloud. But at this Gray raised his head a bit, and once
+more declared in a fairly strong voice:
+
+"I'm not hurt, people--only a little crack on the head. I'm all
+right--thanks to her," and he motioned toward the girl in the car, who
+was watching anxiously.
+
+Then the ever thickening throng went wild; and as Gray was carried up
+the steps and disappeared through the office doors, it turned toward the
+automobile, surging about the car, a sea of friendly, admiring faces,
+most of them touched with the tenderness of tears, and cheered its very
+heart out for Johnnie Consadine.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE FUTURE
+
+"Gray!" it was Uncle Pros's voice, and Uncle Pros's face looked in at
+the office door. "Could I bother you a minute about the sidewalk in
+front of the place up yon? Mr. Hexter told me you'd know whether the
+grade was right, and I could let the workmen go ahead."
+
+Stoddard swung around from his desk and looked at the old man.
+
+"Come right in," he said. "I'm not busy--I'm just pretending this
+morning. MacPherson won't give me anything to do. He persists in
+considering me still an invalid."
+
+Uncle Pros came slowly in and laid his hat down gingerly before seating
+himself. He was dressed in the garb which, with money, he would always
+have selected--the village ideal of a rich gentleman's wear--and he
+looked unbelievably tall and imposing in his black broadcloth. When the
+matter of the patent was made known to Jerome Hardwick, a company was
+hastily formed to take hold of it, which advanced the ready money for
+Johnnie and her family to place themselves. Mrs. Hexter, who had been
+all winter in Boston, had decided, suddenly, to go abroad; and when her
+husband wired her to know if he might let the house to the
+Consadine-Passmore household, she made a quick, warm response.
+
+So they were domiciled in a ready-prepared home of elegance and beauty.
+Though the place at Cottonville had been only a winter residence with
+Mrs. Hexter, she was a woman of taste, and had always had large means at
+her command. With all a child's plasticity, Laurella dropped into the
+improved order of things. Her cleverness in selecting the proper wear
+for herself and children was nothing short of marvellous; and her calm
+acceptance of the new state of affairs, the acme of good breeding.
+Johnnie immediately set about seeing that Mavity Bence and Mandy Meacham
+were comfortably provided for in the old boarding-house, where she
+assured Gray they could do more good than many Uplift clubs.
+
+"We'll have a truck-patch there, and a couple of cows and some
+chickens," she said. "That'll be good for the table, and it'll give
+Mandy the work she loves to do. Aunt Mavity can have some help in the
+house--there's always a girl or two breaking down in the mills, who
+would be glad to have a chance at housework for a while."
+
+Now Pros looked all about him, and seemed in no haste to begin, though
+Gray knew well there was something on his mind. Finally Stoddard
+observed, smiling:
+
+"You're the very man I wanted to see, Uncle Pros. I rang up the house
+just now, but Johnnie said you had started down to the mills. What do
+you think I've found out about our mine?"
+
+Certainly the old man looked very tall and dignified in his new
+splendours; but now he was all boy, leaning eagerly forward to
+half whisper:
+
+"I don't know--what?"
+
+Stoddard's face was scarcely less animated as he searched hastily in the
+pigeon-holes of his desk. The patent might have a company to manage its
+affairs, but the mine on Big Unaka was sacred to these two, in whom the
+immortal urchin sufficiently survived to make mine-hunting and
+exploiting delectable employment.
+
+"Why, Uncle Pros, it isn't silver at all. It's--" Gray looked up and
+caught the woeful drop of the face before him, and hastened on to add,
+"It's better than silver--it's nickel. The price of silver fluctuates;
+but the world supply of nickel is limited, and nickel's a sure thing."
+
+Pros Passmore leaned back in his chair, digesting this new bit of
+information luxuriously.
+
+"Nickel," he said reflectively. And again he repeated the word to
+himself. "Nickel. Well, I don't know but what that's finer. Leastways,
+it's likelier. To say a silver mine, always seemed just like taking
+money out of the ground; but then, nickels are money too--and enough of
+'em is all a body needs."
+
+"These people say the ore is exceptionally fine." Stoddard had got out
+the letter now and was glancing over it. "They're sending down an
+expert, and you and I will go up with him as soon as he gets here. There
+are likely to be other valuable minerals as by-products in a nickel
+mine. And we want to build an ideal mining village, as well as model
+cotton mills. Oh, we've got the work cut out for us and laid right to
+hand! If we don't do our little share toward solving some problems, it
+will be strange."
+
+"Cur'us how things turns out in this world," the old man ruminated.
+"Ever sence I was a little chap settin' on my granddaddy's knees by the
+hearth--big hickory fire a-roarin' up the chimbly, wind a-goin' 'whooh!'
+overhead, an' me with my eyes like saucers a-listenin' to his tales of
+the silver mine that the Injuns had--ever sence that time I've hunted
+that thar mine." He laughed chucklingly, deep in his throat. "Thar
+wasn't a wild-catter that could have a hideout safe from me. They just
+had to trust me. I crawled into every hole. I came mighty near seein'
+the end of every cave--but one. And that cave was the one whar my Mammy
+kept her milk and butter--the springhouse whar they put you in prison.
+Somehow, I never did think about goin' to the end of that. Looked like
+it was too near home to have a silver mine in it; and thar the stuff lay
+and waited for the day when I should take a notion to find a pretty rock
+for Deanie, and crawl back in thar and keep a crawlin', till I just fell
+over it, all croppin' out in the biggest kind of vein."
+
+Gray had heard Uncle Pros tell the story many times, but it had a
+perennial charm.
+
+"Then I lost six months--plumb lost 'em, you know. And time I come to
+myself, Johnnie an' me was a-huntin' for you. And there we found you
+shut in that thar same cave; and I was so tuck up with that matter that
+I never once thought, till I got you home, to wonder did Buckheath and
+the rest of 'em know that they'd penned you in the silver mine. I ain't
+never asked you, but you'd have knowed if they had."
+
+"I should have known anything that Rudd Dawson or Groner or Venters
+knew," Gray said, "but I'm not sure about Buckheath or Himes. However,
+Himes is dead, and Buckheath--I don't suppose anybody in Cottonville
+will ever see him again."
+
+Pros's face changed instantly. He leaned abruptly forward and laid a
+hand on the other's knee.
+
+"That's exactly what I came down here to speak with you about, Gray," he
+said. "They've fetched Shade Buckheath in--now, what do you make out
+of that?"
+
+Stoddard shoved the letter from the Eastern mining man back in its
+pigeon-hole.
+
+"Well," he said slowly, "I didn't expect that. I thought of course Shade
+was safely out of the country. I--Passmore, I'm sorry they've got him."
+After a little silence he spoke again. "What do I make of it? Why, that
+there are some folks up on Big Unaka who need pretty badly to appear as
+very law-abiding citizens. I'll wager anything that Groner and Rudd
+Dawson brought Shade in."
+
+Uncle Pros nodded seriously. "Them's the very fellers," he said. "Reckon
+they've talked pretty free to you. I never axed ye, Gray--how did they
+treat ye?"
+
+"Dawson was the best friend I had," Stoddard returned promptly. "When I
+got to the big turn on Sultan--coming home that Friday morning
+--Buckheath met me, and asked me to go down to Burnt Cabin and
+help him with a man that had fallen and hurt himself on the rocks.
+Dawson told me afterward that he and Jesse Groner were posted at the
+roadside to stop me and hem me in before I got to the bluff. I've
+described to you how Buckheath tried to back Sultan over the edge, and I
+got off on the side where the two were, not noticing them till they tied
+me hand and foot. They almost came to a clinch with Buckheath then and
+there. You ought to have heard Groner swear! It was like praying
+gone wrong."
+
+"Uh-huh," agreed Pros, "Jess is a terrible wicked man--in speech
+that-a-way--but he's good-hearted."
+
+"That first scrimmage showed me just what the men were after," Stoddard
+said. "Buckheath plainly wanted me put out of the way; but the others
+had some vague idea of holding me for a ransom and getting money out of
+the Hardwicks. Dawson complained always that he thought the mills owed
+him money. He said they must have sold his girl's body for as much as a
+hundred dollars, and he felt that he'd been cheated. Oh, it was all
+crazy stuff! But he and the others had justified themselves; and they
+had no notion of standing for what Buckheath was after. I was one of the
+cotton-mill men to them; they had no personal malice.
+
+"Through the long evenings when Groner or Dawson or Will Venters was
+guarding me--or maybe all three of them--we used to talk; and it
+surprised me to find how simple and childish those fellows were. They
+were as kind to me as though I had been a brother, and treated me
+courteously always.
+
+"Little by little, I got at the whole thing from them. It seems that
+Buckheath took advantage of the feeling there was in the mountains
+against the mill men on account of the hospital and some other matters.
+He went up there and interviewed anybody that he thought might join him
+in a vendetta. I imagine he found plenty of them that were ready to talk
+and some that were willing to do; but it chanced that Dawson and Jesse
+Groner were coming down to Cottonville that morning I passed Buckheath
+at the Hardwick gate, and he must have cut across the turn and followed
+me, intending to pick a quarrel. Then he met Dawson and Groner and
+framed up this other plan with their assistance.
+
+"Uncle Pros, I want you to help me out. If Buckheath has to stand trial,
+how are we--any of us--going to testify without making it hard on the
+Dawson crowd? I expect to live here the rest of my days. Here's this
+mine of ours. And right here I mean to build a big mill and work out my
+plans. I think you know that I hope to marry a mountain wife, and I
+can't afford to quarrel with those folks."
+
+Uncle Pros's chin dropped to his breast, his eyes half closed as he sat
+thinking intently.
+
+"Well," he said finally, "they won't have nothing worse than
+manslaughter against Shade. It can't be proved that he intended to shoot
+Pap--'cause he didn't. If he was shootin' after us--there's the thing we
+don't want to bring up. You was down in the bottom of the cyar, an' I
+had my back to him, and so did Johnnie, and we don't know anything about
+what was done--ain't that so? As for you, you've already told Mr.
+Hardwick and the others that you was taken prisoner and detained by
+parties unknown. Johnnie an' me was gettin' you out of the springhouse
+and away in the machine. Then Gid and Shade comes up, and thinkin' we're
+the other crowd stealin' the machine--they try to catch us and turn
+loose at us--that makes a pretty good story, don't it?"
+
+"It does if Dawson and Groner and Venters agree to it," Stoddard
+laughed. "But somebody will have to communicate with them before they
+tell another one--or several others."
+
+"I'll see to that, Gray," Pros said, rising and preparing to go. "Boy,"
+he looked down fondly at the younger man, and set a brown right hand on
+his shoulder, "you never done a wiser thing nor a kinder in your life,
+than when you forgave your enemies that time, I'll bet you could ride
+the Unakas from end to end, the balance o' your days, the safest man
+that ever travelled their trails."
+
+"Talking silver mine?" inquired MacPherson, putting his quizzical face
+in at the door.
+
+"No," returned Stoddard. "We were just mentioning my pestilent
+cotton-mill projects. By this time next year, you and Hardwick will be
+wanting to have me abated as a nuisance."
+
+"No, no," remonstrated MacPherson, coming in and leaning with
+affectionate familiarity on the younger man's chair. "There's no
+pestilence in you, Gray. You couldn't be a nuisance if you tried. People
+who will work out their theories stand to do good in the world; it's
+only the fellows who are content with bellowing them out that I
+object to."
+
+"Better be careful!" laughed Stoddard. "We'll make you vice-president of
+the company."
+
+"Is that an offer?" countered MacPherson swiftly. "I've got a bit of
+money to invest in this county; and Hardwick has ever a new
+brother-in-law or such that looks longingly at my shoes."
+
+"You'd furnish the conservative element, surely," debated Stoddard.
+
+"I'd keep you from bankruptcy," grunted the Scotchman, as he laid a
+small book on Gray's desk. "I doubt not Providence demands it of me."
+
+Evening was closing in with a greenish-yellow sunset, and a big full
+moon pushing up to whiten the sky above it. It was late March now, and
+the air was full of vernal promise. Johnnie stepped out on the porch and
+glanced toward the west. She was expecting Gray that evening. Would
+there be time before he came, she wondered, for a little errand she
+wanted to do? Turning back into the hall, she caught a jacket from the
+hook where it hung and hurried down to the gate, settling her arms in
+the sleeves as she ran. There would be time if she went fast. She wished
+to get the little packet into which she had made Gray's letters months
+ago, dreading to look even at the folded outsides of them, tucking them
+away on the high shelf of her dress-closet at the Pap Himes
+boarding-house, and trying to forget them. Nobody would know where to
+look but herself. She got permission from Mavity to go upstairs. Once
+there, the letters made their own plea; and alone in the little room
+that was lately her own, she opened the packet, carrying the contents to
+the fading light and glancing over sheet after sheet. She knew them all
+by heart. How often she had stood at that very window devouring these
+same words, not realizing then, as she did now, what deep meaning was in
+each phrase, how the feeling expressed increased from the first to the
+last. Across the ravine, one of the loom fixers found the evening warm
+enough to sit on the porch playing his guitar. The sound of the twanging
+strings, and the appealing vibration of his young voice in a plaintive
+minor air, came over to her. She gathered the sheets together and
+pressed them to her face as though they were flowers, or the hands of
+little children.
+
+"I've got to tell him--to-night," she whispered to herself, in the
+dusky, small, dismantled room. "I've got to get him to see it as I do. I
+must make myself worthy of him before I let him take me for his own."
+
+She thrust the letters into the breast-pocket of her coat and ran
+downstairs. Mavity Bence stood in the hall, plainly awaiting her.
+
+"Honey," she began fondly, "I've been putting away Pap's things
+to-day--jest like you oncet found me putting away Lou's. I came on this
+here." And then Johnnie noticed a folded bandanna in her hands.
+
+"You-all asked me to let ye go through and find that nickel ore, and ye
+brung it out in a pasteboard box; but this here is what it was in on the
+day your Uncle Pros fetched hit here, and I thought maybe you'd take a
+interest in having the handkercher that your fortune come down the
+mountains in."
+
+"Yes, indeed, Aunt Mavity," said Johnnie, taking the bandanna into her
+own hands.
+
+"Pap, he's gone," the poor woman went on tremulously, "an' the evil what
+he done--or wanted to do--is a thing that I reckon you can afford to
+forget. You're a mighty happy woman, Johnnie Consadine; the Lord knows
+you deserve to be."
+
+She stood looking after the girl as she went out into the twilit street.
+Johnnie was dressed as she chose now, not as she must, and her clothing
+showed itself to be of the best. Anything that might be had in Wautaga
+was within her means; and the tall, graceful figure passing so quietly
+down the street would never have been taken for other than a member of
+what we are learning to call the "leisure class." When the shadows at
+the end of the block swallowed her up, Mavity turned, wiping her eyes,
+and addressed herself to her tasks.
+
+"I reckon Lou would 'a' been just like that if she'd 'a' lived," she
+said to Mandy Meacham, with the tender fatuity of mothers. "Johnnie
+seems like a daughter to me--an' I know in my soul no daughter could be
+kinder. Look at her makin' me keep every cent Pap had in the bank, when
+Laurelly could have claimed it all and kep' it."
+
+"Yes, an' addin' somethin' to it," put in Mandy. "I do love 'em
+both--Johnnie an' Deanie. Ef I ever was so fortunate as to get a man and
+be wedded and have chaps o' my own, I know mighty well and good I
+couldn't love any one of 'em any better than I do Deanie. An' yet
+Johnnie's quare. I always will say that Johnnie Consadine is quare. What
+in the nation does she want to go chasin' off to Yurrup for, when she's
+got everything that heart could desire or mind think of right here in
+Cottonville?"
+
+That same question was being put even more searchingly to Johnnie by
+somebody else at the instant when Mandy enunciated it. She had found
+Gray waiting for her at the gate of her home.
+
+"Let's walk here a little while before we go in," he suggested. "I went
+up to the house and found you were out. The air is delightful, and I've
+got something I want to say to you."
+
+He had put his arm under hers, and they strolled together down the long
+walk that led to the front of the lawn. The evening air was pure and
+keen, tingling with the breath of the wakening season.
+
+"Sweetheart," Gray broke out suddenly, "I've been thinking day and night
+since we last talked together about this year abroad that you're
+planning. I certainly don't want to put my preferences before yours. I
+only want to be very sure that I know what your real preferences are,"
+and he turned and searched her face with a pair of ardent eyes.
+
+"I think I ought to go," the girl said in a very low voice, her head
+drooped, her own eyes bent toward the path at her feet.
+
+"Why?" whispered her lover.
+
+"I--oh, Gray--you know. If we should ever be married--well, then," in
+answer to a swift, impatient exclamation, "when we are married, if you
+should show that you were ashamed of me--I think it would kill me. No,
+don't say there's not any danger. You might have plenty of reason. And
+I--I want to be safe, Gray--safe, if I can."
+
+Gray regarded the beautiful, anxious face long and thoughtfully. Yes, of
+course it was possible for her to feel that way. Assurance was so deep
+and perfect in his own heart, that he had not reflected what it might
+lack in hers.
+
+"Dear girl," he said, pausing and making her look at him, "how little
+you do know of me, after all! Do I care so much for what people say?
+Aren't you always having to reprove me because I so persistently like
+what I like, without reference to the opinions of the world? Besides,
+you're a beauty," with tender brusqueness, "and a charmer that steals
+the hearts of men. If you don't know all this, it isn't from lack of
+telling. Moreover, I can keep on informing you. A year of European
+travel could not make you any more beautiful, Johnnie--or sweeter. You
+may not believe me, but there's little the 'European capitals' could add
+to your native bearing--you must have learned that simple dignity from
+these mountains of yours. Of course, if you wanted to go for pleasure--"
+His head a little on one side, he regarded her with a tender,
+half-quizzical smile, hoping he had sounded the note that would bring
+him swift surrender.
+
+"It isn't altogether for myself--there are the others," Johnnie told
+him, lifting honest eyes to his in the dim moonlight. "They're all I had
+in the world, Gray, till you came into my life, and I must keep my own.
+I belong to a people who never give up anything they love."
+
+Stoddard dropped an arm about his beloved, and turned her that she might
+face the windows of the house behind them, bending to set his cheek
+against hers and direct her gaze.
+
+"Look there," he whispered, laughingly.
+
+She looked and saw her mother, clad in such wear as Laurella's taste
+could select and Laurella's beauty make effective. The slight, dark
+little woman was coming in from the dining room with her children all
+about her, a noble group.
+
+"Your mother is much more the fine lady than you'll ever be, Johnnie
+Stoddard," Gray said, giving her the name that always brought the blood
+to the girl's cheek and made her dumb before him. "You know your Uncle
+Pros and I are warmly attached to each other.
+
+"What is it you'd be waiting for, girl? Why, Johnnie, a man has just so
+long to live on this earth, and the years in which he has loved are the
+only years that count--would you be throwing one of these away? A
+year--twelve months--three hundred and sixty-five days--cast to the
+void. You reckless creature!"
+
+He cupped his hands about her beautiful, fair face and lifted it,
+studying it.
+
+"Johnnie--Johnnie--Johnnie Stoddard; the one woman out of all the world
+for me," he murmured, his deep voice dropping to a wooing cadence. "I
+couldn't love you better--I shall never love you less. Don't let us
+foolishly throw away a year out of the days which will be vouchsafed us
+together. Don't do it, darling--it's folly."
+
+Hard-pressed, Johnnie made only a sort of inarticulate response.
+
+"Come, love, sit a moment with me, here," pleaded Gray, indicating a
+small bench hidden among the evergreens and shrubs at the end of the
+path. "Sit down, and let's reason this thing out."
+
+"Reasoning with you," began Johnnie, helplessly, "isn't--it isn't
+reasonable!"
+
+"It is," he told her, in that deep, masterful tone which, like a true
+woman, she both loved and dreaded. "It's the height of reasonableness.
+Why, dear, the great primal reason of all things speaks through me. And
+I won't let you throw away a year of our love. Johnnie, it isn't as
+though we'd been neighbours, and grown up side by side. I came from the
+ends of the earth to find you, darling--and I knew my own as soon as
+I saw you."
+
+He put out his arms and gathered her into a close embrace.
+
+For a space they rested so, murmuring question and reply, checked or
+answered by swift, sweet kisses.
+
+"The first time I ever saw you, love...."
+
+"Oh, in thoze dusty old shoes and a sunbonnet! Could you love me then,
+Gray?"
+
+"The same as at this moment, sweetheart. Shoes and sunbonnets--I'm
+ashamed of you now, Johnnie, in earnest. What do such things matter?"
+
+"And that morning on the mountain, when we got the moccasin flowers,"
+the girl's voice took up the theme. "I--it was sweet to be with you--and
+bitter, too. I could not dream then that you were for me. And
+afterward--the long, black, dreadful time when you seemed so utterly
+lost to me--"
+
+At the mention of those months, Gray stopped her words with a kiss.
+
+"Mine," he whispered with his lips against hers, "Out of all the
+world--mine."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Power and the Glory, by Grace MacGowan Cooke
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10068 ***