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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Other Main-Travelled Roads, by Hamlin Garland
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Other Main-Travelled Roads
+
+Author: Hamlin Garland
+
+Release Date: March 1, 2007 [EBook #20714]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OTHER MAIN-TRAVELLED ROADS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: DADDY DEERING]
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+OTHER MAIN-TRAVELLED ROADS
+
+HAMLIN GARLAND
+SUNSET EDITION
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1892, 1899, 1910, BY HAMLIN GARLAND
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+PRAIRIE FOLKS
+
+PIONEERS
+
+  They rise to mastery of wind and snow;
+    They go like soldiers grimly into strife,
+  To colonize the plain; they plough and sow,
+    And fertilize the sod with their own life
+  As did the Indian and the buffalo.
+
+SETTLERS
+
+  Above them soars a dazzling sky,
+    In winter blue and clear as steel,
+  In summer like an arctic sea
+    Wherein vast icebergs drift and reel
+  And melt like sudden sorcery.
+
+  Beneath them plains stretch far and fair,
+    Rich with sunlight and with rain;
+  Vast harvests ripen with their care
+    And fill with overplus of grain
+  Their square, great bins.
+
+  Yet still they strive! I see them rise
+    At dawn-light, going forth to toil:
+  The same salt sweat has filled my eyes,
+    My feet have trod the self-same soil
+  Behind the snarling plough.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+PREFACE
+
+Nearly all the stories in this volume were written at the same time and
+under the same impulse as those which compose its companion volume,
+_Main-Travelled Roads_--and the entire series was the result of a
+summer-vacation visit to my old home in Iowa, to my father's farm in
+Dakota, and, last of all, to my birthplace in Wisconsin. This happened
+in 1887. I was living at the time in Boston, and had not seen the West
+for several years, and my return to the scenes of my boyhood started me
+upon a series of stories delineative of farm and village life as I knew
+it and had lived it. I wrote busily during the two years that followed,
+and in this revised definitive edition of _Main-Travelled Roads_ and its
+companion volume, _Other Main-Travelled Roads_ (compiled from other
+volumes which now go out of print), the reader will find all of the
+short stories which came from my pen between 1887 and 1889.
+
+It remains to say that, though conditions have changed somewhat since
+that time, yet for the hired man and the renter farm life in the West is
+still a stern round of drudgery. My pages present it--not as the summer
+boarder or the young lady novelist sees it--but as the working farmer
+endures it.
+
+Not all the scenes of _Other Main-Travelled Roads_ are of farm life,
+though rural subjects predominate; and the village life touched upon
+will be found less forbidding in color. In this I am persuaded my view
+is sound; for, no matter how hard the villager works, he is not lonely.
+He suffers in company with his fellows. So much may be called a gain.
+Then, too, I admit youth and love are able to transform a bleak prairie
+town into a poem, and to make of a barbed-wire lane a highway of
+romance.
+
+                                                        HAMLIN GARLAND.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Contents
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+Introductory Verse                                         v
+Preface                                                  vii
+William Bacon's Man                                        3
+Elder Pill, Preacher                                      29
+A Day of Grace                                            65
+Lucretia Burns                                            81
+Daddy Deering                                            119
+A Stop-Over at Tyre                                      143
+A Division in the Coolly                                 203
+A Fair Exile                                             245
+An Alien in the Pines                                    263
+Before the Low Green Door                                293
+A Preacher's Love Story                                  305
+An Afterword: of Winds, Snows, and The Stars             350
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM BACON'S MAN
+
+I
+
+
+The yellow March sun lay powerfully on the bare Iowa prairie, where the
+ploughed fields were already turning warm and brown, and only here and
+there in a corner or on the north side of the fence did the sullen
+drifts remain, and they were so dark and low that they hardly appeared
+to break the mellow brown of the fields.
+
+There passed also an occasional flock of geese, cheerful harbingers of
+spring, and the prairie-chickens had set up their morning symphony,
+wide-swelling, wonderful with its prophecy of the new birth of grass and
+grain and the springing life of all breathing things. The crow passed
+now and then, uttering his resonant croak, but the crane had not yet
+sent forth his bugle note.
+
+Lyman Gilman rested on his axe-helve at the woodpile of Farmer Bacon to
+listen to the music around him. In a vague way he was powerfully moved
+by it. He heard the hens singing their weird, raucous, monotonous song,
+and saw them burrowing in the dry chip-dust near him. He saw the young
+colts and cattle frisking in the sunny space around the straw-stacks,
+absorbed through his bare arms and uncovered head the heat of the sun,
+and felt the soft wooing of the air so deeply that he broke into an
+unwonted exclamation:--
+
+"Glory! we'll be seeding by Friday, sure."
+
+This short and disappointing soliloquy was, after all, an expression of
+deep emotion. To the Western farmer the very word "seeding" is a poem.
+And these few words, coming from Lyman Gilman, meant more and expressed
+more than many a large and ambitious springtime song.
+
+But the glory of all the slumbrous landscape, the stately beauty of the
+sky with its masses of fleecy vapor, were swept away by the sound of a
+girl's voice humming, "Come to the Saviour," while she bustled about the
+kitchen near by. The windows were open. Ah! what suggestion to these
+dwellers in a rigorous climate was in the first unsealing of the
+windows! How sweet it was to the pale and weary women after their long
+imprisonment!
+
+As Lyman sat down on his maple log to hear better, a plump face appeared
+at the window, and a clear, girl-voice said:--
+
+"Smell anything, Lime?"
+
+He snuffed the air. "Cookies, by the great horn spoons!" he yelled,
+leaping up. "Bring me some, an' see me eat; it'll do ye good."
+
+"Come an' get 'm," laughed the face at the window.
+
+"Oh, it's nicer out here, Merry Etty. What's the rush? Bring me out
+some, an' set down on this log."
+
+With a nod Marietta disappeared, and soon came out with a plate of
+cookies in one hand and a cup of milk in the other.
+
+"Poor little man, he's all tired out, ain't he?"
+
+Lime, taking the cue, collapsed in a heap, and said feebly, "Bread,
+bread!"
+
+"Won't milk an' cookies do as well?"
+
+He brushed off the log and motioned her to sit down beside him, but she
+hesitated a little and colored a little.
+
+"Oh, Lime, s'pose somebody should see us?"
+
+"Let 'em. What in thunder do we care? Sit down an' gimme a holt o' them
+cakes. I'm just about done up. I couldn't 'a' stood it another minute."
+
+She sat down beside him with a laugh and a pretty blush. She was in her
+apron, and the sleeves of her dress were rolled to her elbows,
+displaying the strong, round arms. Wholesome and sweet she looked and
+smelled, the scent of the cooking round her. Lyman munched a couple of
+the cookies and gulped a pint of milk before he spoke.
+
+"Whadda we care who sees us sittin' side b' side? Ain't we goin' t' be
+married soon?"
+
+"Oh, them cookies in the oven!" she shrieked, leaping up and running to
+the house. She looked back as she reached the kitchen door, however, and
+smiled with a flushed face. Lime slapped his knee and roared with
+laughter at his bold stroke.
+
+"Ho! ho!" he laughed. "Didn't I do it slick? Ain't nothin' green in _my_
+eye, I guess." In an intense and pleasurable abstraction he finished the
+cookies and the milk. Then he yelled:--
+
+"Hey! Merry--Merry Etty!"
+
+"Whadda ye want?" sang the girl from the window, her face still rosy
+with confusion.
+
+"Come out here and git these things."
+
+The girl shook her head, with a laugh.
+
+"Come out an' git 'm, 'r, by jingo, I'll throw 'em at ye! Come on, now!"
+
+The girl looked at the huge, handsome fellow, the sun falling on his
+golden hair and beard, and came slowly out to him--came creeping along
+with her hand outstretched for the plate which Lime, with a laugh in his
+sunny blue eyes, extended at the full length of his bare arm. The girl
+made a snatch at it, but his left hand caught her by the wrist, and away
+went cup and plate as he drew her to him and kissed her in spite of her
+struggles.
+
+"My! ain't you strong!" she said, half ruefully and half admiringly, as
+she shrugged her shoulders. "If you'd use a little more o' _that_
+choppin' wood, Dad wouldn't 'a' lost s' much money by yeh."
+
+Lime grew grave.
+
+"There's the hog in the fence, Merry; what's yer dad goin' t' say--"
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About our gitt'n married this spring."
+
+"I guess you'd better find out what _I'm_ a-goin' t' say, Lime Gilman,
+'fore you pitch into Dad."
+
+"I _know_ what you're a-goin' t' say."
+
+"No, y' don't."
+
+"Yes, but I _do_, though."
+
+"Well, ask me, and see, if you think you're so smart. Jest as like 's
+not, you'll slip up."
+
+"All right; here goes. Marietty Bacon, ain't you an' Lime Gilman goin'
+t' be married?"
+
+"No, sir, we ain't," laughed the girl, snatching up the plate and
+darting away to the house, where she struck up "Weevily Wheat," and went
+busily on about her cooking. Lime threw a kiss at her, and fell to work
+on his log with startling energy.
+
+Lyman looked forward to his interview with the old man with as much
+trepidation as he had ever known, though commonly he had little fear of
+anything--but a girl.
+
+Marietta was not only the old man's only child, but his housekeeper, his
+wife having at last succumbed to the ferocious toil of the farm. It was
+reasonable to suppose, therefore, that he would surrender his claim on
+the girl reluctantly. Rough as he was, he loved Marietta strongly, and
+would find it exceedingly hard to get along without her.
+
+Lyman mused on these things as he drove the gleaming axe into the huge
+maple logs. He was something more than the usual hired man, being a
+lumberman from the Wisconsin pineries, where he had sold out his
+interest in a camp not three weeks before the day he began work for
+Bacon. He had a nice "little wad o' money" when he left the camp and
+started for La Crosse, but he had been robbed in his hotel the first
+night in the city, and was left nearly penniless. It was a great blow to
+him, for, as he said, every cent of that money "stood fer hard knocks
+an' poor feed. When I smelt of it I could jest see the cold, frosty
+mornin's and the late nights. I could feel the hot sun on my back like
+it was when I worked in the harvest-field. By jingo! It kind o' made my
+toes curl up."
+
+But he went resolutely out to work again, and here he was chopping wood
+in old man Bacon's yard, thinking busily on the talk which had just
+passed between Marietta and himself.
+
+"By jingo!" he said all at once, stopping short, with the axe on his
+shoulder. "If I hadn't 'a' been robbed I wouldn't 'a' come here--I
+never'd met Merry. Thunder and jimson root! Wasn't that a narrow
+escape?"
+
+And then he laughed so heartily that the girl looked out of the window
+again to see what in the world he was doing. He had his hat in his hand
+and was whacking his thigh with it.
+
+"Lyman Gilman, what in the world ails you to-day? It's perfectly
+ridiculous the way you yell and talk t' y'rself out there on the chips.
+You beat the hens, I declare if you don't."
+
+Lime put on his hat and walked up to the window, and, resting his great
+bare arms on the sill, and his chin on his arms, said:--
+
+"Merry, I'm goin' to tackle 'Dad' this afternoon. He'll be sittin' up
+the new seeder, and I'm goin' t' climb right on the back of his neck.
+He's jest _got_ t' give me a chance."
+
+Marietta looked sober in sympathy.
+
+"Well! P'raps it's best to have it over with, Lime, but someway I feel
+kind o' scary about it."
+
+Lime stood for a long time looking in at the window, watching the
+light-footed girl as she set the table in the middle of the sun-lighted
+kitchen floor. The kettle hissed, the meat sizzled, sending up a
+delicious odor; a hen stood in the open door and sang a sort of cheery
+half-human song, while to and fro moved the sweet-faced, lithe, and
+powerful girl, followed by the smiling eyes at the window.
+
+"Merry, you look purty as a picture. You look just like the wife I be'n
+a-huntin' for all these years, sure's shootin'."
+
+Marietta colored with pleasure.
+
+"Does Dad pay you to stand an' look at me an' say pretty things t' the
+cook?"
+
+"No, he don't. But I'm willin' t' do it without pay. I could just stand
+here till kingdom come an' look at you. Hello! I hear a wagon. I guess I
+better hump into that woodpile."
+
+"I think so too. Dinner's most ready, and Dad 'll be here soon."
+
+Lime was driving away furiously at a tough elm log when Farmer Bacon
+drove into the yard with a new seeder in his wagon. Lime whacked away
+busily while Bacon stabled the team, and in a short time Marietta
+called, in a long-drawn, musical fashion:--
+
+"Dinner-r-r!"
+
+After sozzling their faces at the well the two men went in and sat down
+at the table. Bacon was not much of a talker at any time, and at
+meal-time, in seeding, eating was the main business in hand; therefore
+the meal was a silent one, Marietta and Lime not caring to talk on
+general topics. The hour was an anxious one for her, and an important
+one for him.
+
+"Wal, now, Lime, seedun' 's the nex' thing," said Bacon, as he shoved
+back his chair and glared around from under his bushy eyebrows. "We
+can't do too much this afternoon. That seeder's got t' be set up an' a
+lot o' seed-wheat cleaned up. You unload the machine while I feed the
+pigs."
+
+Lime sat still till the old man was heard outside calling "Oo-ee,
+poo-ee" to the pigs in the yard; then he smiled at Marietta, but she
+said:--
+
+"He's got on one of his fits, Lime; I don't b'lieve you'd better tackle
+him t'-day."
+
+"Don't you worry; I'll fix him. Come, now, give me a kiss."
+
+"Why, you great thing! You--took--"
+
+"I know, but I want you to _give_ 'em to me. Just walk right up to me
+an' give me a smack t' bind the bargain."
+
+"I ain't made any bargain," laughed the girl. Then, feeling the force of
+his tender tone, she added: "Will you behave, and go right off to your
+work?"
+
+"Jest like a little man--hope t' die!"
+
+"_Lime!_" roared the old man from the barn.
+
+"Hello!" replied Lime, grinning joyously and winking at the girl, as
+much as to say, "This would paralyze the old man if he saw it."
+
+He went out to the shed where Bacon was at work, as serene as if he had
+not a fearful task on hand. He was apprehensive that the father might
+"gig back" unless rightly approached, and so he awaited a good
+opportunity.
+
+The right moment seemed to present itself along about the middle of the
+afternoon. Bacon was down on the ground under the machine, tightening
+some burrs. This was a good chance for two reasons. In the first place,
+the keen, almost savage eyes were no longer where they could glare on
+him, and in spite of his cool exterior Lime had just as soon not have
+the old man looking at him.
+
+Besides, the old farmer had been telling about his "river eighty," which
+was without a tenant; the man who had taken it, having lost his wife,
+had grown disheartened and had given it up.
+
+"It's an almighty good chance for a man with a small family. Good house
+an' barn, good land. A likely young feller with a team an' a woman could
+do tiptop on that eighty. If he wanted more, I'd let him have an eighty
+j'inun'--"
+
+"I'd like t' try that m'self," said Lime, as a feeler. The old fellow
+said nothing in reply for a moment.
+
+"Ef you had a team an' tools an' a woman, I'd jest as lief you'd have it
+as anybody."
+
+"Sell me your blacks, and I'll pay half down--the balance in the fall. I
+can pick up some tools, and as for a woman, Merry Etty an' me have
+talked that over to-day. She's ready to--ready to marry me whenever you
+say go."
+
+There was an ominous silence under the seeder, as if the father could
+not believe his ears.
+
+"What's--what's that!" he stuttered. "Who'd you say? What about Merry
+Etty?"
+
+"She's agreed to marry me."
+
+"The hell you say!" roared Bacon, as the truth burst upon him. "So
+that's what you do when I go off to town and leave you to chop wood. So
+you're goun' to git married, hey?"
+
+He was now where Lime could see him, glaring up into his smiling blue
+eyes. Lime stood his ground.
+
+"Yes, sir. That's the calculation."
+
+"Well, I guess I'll have somethin' t' say about that," said Bacon,
+nodding his head violently.
+
+"I rather expected y' would. Blaze away. Your privilege--my bad luck.
+Sail in ol' man. What's y'r objection to me fer a son-in-law?"
+
+"Don't you worry, young feller. I'll come at it soon enough," went on
+Bacon, as he turned up another burr in a very awkward corner. In his
+nervous excitement the wrench slipped, banging his knuckle.
+
+"Ouch! Thunder--m-m-m!" howled and snarled the wounded man.
+
+"What's the matter? Bark y'r knuckle?" queried Lime, feeling a mighty
+impulse to laugh. But when he saw the old savage straighten up and glare
+at him he sobered. Bacon was now in a frightful temper. The veins in his
+great, bare, weather-beaten neck swelled dangerously.
+
+"Jest let me say right here that I've had enough o' you. You can't live
+on the same acre with my girl another day."
+
+"What makes ye think I can't?" It was now the young man's turn to draw
+himself up, and as he faced the old man, his arms folded and each vast
+hand grasping an elbow, he looked like a statue of red granite, and the
+hands resembled the paws of a crouching lion; but his eyes smiled.
+
+"I don't _think_, I know ye won't."
+
+"What's the objection to me?"
+
+"Objection? Hell! What's the inducement? My hired man, an' not three
+shirts to yer back!"
+
+"That's another; I've got four. Say, old man, did you ever work out for
+a living?"
+
+"That's none o' your business," growled Bacon a little taken down. "I've
+worked an' scraped, an' got t'gether a little prop'ty here, an' they
+ain't no sucker like you goun' to come 'long here, an' live off me, an'
+spend my prop'ty after I'm dead. You can jest bet high on that."
+
+"Who's goin' t' live on ye?"
+
+"You're aimun' to."
+
+"I ain't, neither."
+
+"Yes, y'are. You've loafed on me ever since I hired ye."
+
+"That's a--" Lime checked himself for Marietta's sake, and the enraged
+father went on:--
+
+"I hired ye t' cut wood, an' you've gone an' fooled my daughter away
+from me. Now you just figger up what I owe ye, and git out o' here. Ye
+can't go too soon t' suit _me_."
+
+Bacon was renowned as the hardest man to handle in Cedar County, and
+though he was getting old, he was still a terror to his neighbors when
+roused. He was honest, temperate, and a good neighbor until something
+carried him off his balance; then he became as cruel as a panther and as
+savage as a grisly. All this Lime knew, but it did not keep his anger
+down so much as did the thought of Marietta. His silence infuriated
+Bacon, who yelled hoarsely:--
+
+"Git out o' this!"
+
+"Don't be in a rush, ol' man--"
+
+Bacon hurled himself upon Lime, who threw out one hand and stopped him,
+while he said in a low voice:--
+
+"Stay right where you are, ol' man. I'm dangerous. It's for Merry's
+sake--"
+
+The infuriated old man struck at him. Lime warded off the blow, and with
+a sudden wrench and twist threw him to the ground with frightful force.
+Before Bacon could rise, Marietta, who had witnessed the scene, came
+flying from the house.
+
+"Lime! Father! What are you doing?"
+
+"I--couldn't help it, Merry. It was him 'r me," said Lime, almost sadly.
+
+"Dad, ain't you got no sense? What 're you thinking of? You jest stop
+right now. I won't have it."
+
+He rose while she clung to him; he seemed a little dazed. It was the
+first time he had ever been thrown, and he could not but feel a certain
+respect for his opponent, but he could not give way.
+
+"Pack up yer duds," he snarled, "an' git off'n my land. I'll have the
+money fer ye when ye come back. I'll give ye jest five minutes to git
+clear o' here. Merry, you stay here."
+
+The young man saw it was useless to remain, as it would only excite the
+old man; and so, with a look of apology, not without humor, at Marietta,
+he went to the house to get his valise. The girl wept silently while the
+father raged up and down. His mood frightened her.
+
+"I thought ye had more sense than t' take up with such a dirty houn'."
+
+"He ain't a houn'," she blazed forth, "and he's just as good and clean
+as you are."
+
+"Shut up! Don't let me hear another word out o' your head. I'm boss here
+yet, I reckon."
+
+Lime came out with his valise in his hand.
+
+"Good-by, Merry," he said cheerily. She started to go to him, but her
+father's rough grasp held her.
+
+"Set _down_, an' stay there."
+
+Lime was going out of the gate.
+
+"Here! Come and get y'r money," yelled the old man, extending some
+bills. "Here's twenty--"
+
+"Go to thunder with your money," retorted Lime. "I've had my pay for my
+month's work." As he said that, he thought of the sunny kitchen and the
+merry girl, and his throat choked. Good-by to the sweet girl whose smile
+was so much to him, and to the happy noons and nights her eyes had made
+for him. He waved his hat at her as he stood in the open gate, and the
+sun lighted his handsome head into a sort of glory in her eyes. Then he
+turned and walked rapidly off down the road, not looking back.
+
+The girl, when she could no longer see him, dashed away, and, sobbing
+violently, entered the house.
+
+
+II
+
+
+There was just a suspicion of light in the east, a mere hint of a glow,
+when Lyman walked cautiously around the corner of the house and tapped
+at Marietta's window. She was sleeping soundly and did not hear, for she
+had been restless during the first part of the night. He tapped again,
+and the girl woke without knowing what woke her.
+
+Lyman put the blade of his pocket-knife under the window and raised it a
+little, and then placed his lips to the crack, and spoke in a sepulchral
+tone, half groan, half whisper:--
+
+"Merry! Merry Etty!"
+
+The dazed girl sat up in bed and listened, while her heart almost stood
+still.
+
+"Merry, it's me--Lime. Come to the winder." The girl hesitated, and
+Lyman spoke again.
+
+"Come, I hain't got much time. This is your last chance t' see me. It's
+now 'r never."
+
+The girl slipped out of bed, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, crept to
+the window.
+
+"Boost on that winder," commanded Lyman. She raised it enough to admit
+his head, which came just above the sill; then she knelt on the floor by
+the window.
+
+Her eyes stared wide and dark.
+
+"Lime, what in the world do you mean--"
+
+"I mean business," he replied. "I ain't no last year's chicken; I know
+when the old man sleeps the soundest." He chuckled pleasantly.
+
+"How 'd y' fool old Rove?"
+
+"Never mind about that now; they's something more important on hand.
+You've got t' go with me."
+
+She drew back, "Oh, Lime, I can't!"
+
+He thrust a great arm in and caught her by the wrist.
+
+"Yes, y' can. This is y'r last chance. If I go off without ye t'night, I
+never come back. What makes ye gig back? Are ye 'fraid o' me?"
+
+"N-no; but--but--"
+
+"But what, Merry Etty?"
+
+"It ain't right to go an' leave Dad all alone. Where y' goin' t' take
+me, anyhow?"
+
+"Milt Jennings let me have his horse an' buggy; they're down the road a
+piece, an' we'll go right down to Rock River and be married by sun-up."
+
+The girl still hesitated, her firm, boyish will unwontedly befogged.
+Resolute as she was, she could not at once accede to his demand.
+
+"Come, make up your mind soon. The old man 'll fill me with buck-shot if
+he catches sight o' me." He drew her arm out of the window and laid his
+bearded cheek to it. "Come, little one, we're made for each other; God
+knows it. Come! It's him 'r me."
+
+The girl's head dropped, consented.
+
+"That's right! Now a kiss to bind the bargain. There! What, cryin'? No
+more o' that, little one. Now I'll give you jest five minutes to git on
+your Sunday-go-t'-meetin' clo'es. Quick, there goes a rooster. It's
+gittin' white in the east."
+
+The man turned his back to the window and gazed at the western sky with
+a wealth of unuttered and unutterable exultation in his heart. Far off a
+rooster gave a long, clear blast--would it be answered in the barn? Yes;
+some wakeful ear had caught it, and now the answer came faint, muffled,
+and drowsy. The dog at his feet whined uneasily as if suspecting
+something wrong. The wind from the south was full of the wonderful odor
+of springing grass, warm, brown earth, and oozing sap. Overhead, to the
+west, the stars were shining in the cloudless sky, dimmed a little in
+brightness by the faint silvery veil of moisture in the air. The man's
+soul grew very tender as he stood waiting for his bride. He was rough,
+illiterate, yet there was something fine about him after all, a kind of
+simplicity and a gigantic, leonine tenderness.
+
+He heard his sweetheart moving about inside, and mused: "The old man
+won't hold out when he finds we're married. He can't get along without
+her. If he does, why, I'll rent a farm here, and we'll go to work
+housekeepin'. I can git the money. She shan't always be poor," he ended,
+and the thought was a vow.
+
+The window was raised again, and the girl's voice was heard low and
+tremulous:--
+
+"Lime, I'm ready, but I wish we didn't--"
+
+He put his arm around her waist and helped her out, and did not put her
+down till they reached the road. She was completely dressed, even to
+her hat and shoes, but she mourned:--
+
+"My hair is every-which-way; Lime, how can I be married so?"
+
+They were nearing the horse and buggy now, and Lime laughed. "Oh, we'll
+stop at Jennings's and fix up. Milt knows what's up, and has told his
+mother by this time. So just laugh as jolly as you can."
+
+Soon they were in the buggy, the impatient horse swung into the road at
+a rattling pace, and as Marietta leaned back in the seat, thinking of
+what she had done, she cried lamentably, in spite of all the caresses
+and pleadings of her lover.
+
+But the sun burst up from the plain, the prairie-chickens took up their
+mighty chorus on the hills, robins met them on the way, flocks of wild
+geese, honking cheerily, drove far overhead toward the north, and, with
+these sounds of a golden spring day in her ears, the bride grew
+cheerful, and laughed.
+
+
+III
+
+
+At about the time the sun was rising, Farmer Bacon, roused from his
+sleep by the crowing of the chickens on the dry knolls in the fields as
+well as by those in the barn-yard, rolled out of bed wearily, wondering
+why he should feel so drowsy. Then he remembered the row with Lime and
+his subsequent inability to sleep with thinking over it. There was a
+dull pain in his breast, which made him uncomfortable.
+
+As was his usual custom, he went out into the kitchen and built the fire
+for Marietta, filled the tea-kettle with water, and filled the
+water-bucket in the sink. Then he went to her bedroom door and knocked
+with his knuckles as he had done for years in precisely the same
+fashion.
+
+Rap--rap--rap. "Hello, Merry! Time t' git up. Broad daylight, an' birds
+asingun.'"
+
+Without waiting for an answer he went out to the barn and worked away at
+his chores. He took such delight in the glorious morning and the
+turbulent life of the farmyard that his heart grew light and he hummed a
+tune which sounded like the merry growl of a lion. "Poo-ee, poo-ee," he
+called to the pigs as they swarmed across the yard.
+
+"Ahrr! you big, fat rascals, them hams o' yourn is clear money. One of
+ye shall go t' buy Merry a new dress," he said as he glanced at the
+house and saw the smoke pouring out the stovepipe. "Merry's a good girl;
+she's stood by her old pap when other girls 'u'd 'a' gone back on 'im."
+
+While currying horses he went all over the ground of the quarrel
+yesterday, and he began to see it in a different light. He began to see
+that Lyman was a good man and an able man, and that his own course was a
+foolish one.
+
+"When I git mad," he confessed to himself, "I don't know any thin'. But
+I won't give her up. She ain't old 'nough t' marry yet--and, besides, I
+need her."
+
+After finishing his chores, as usual, he went to the well and washed his
+face and hands, then entered the kitchen--to find the tea-kettle boiling
+over, and no signs of breakfast anywhere, and no sign of the girl.
+
+"Well, I guess she felt sleepy this mornin'. Poor gal! Mebbe she cried
+half the night."
+
+"Merry!" he called gently, at the door.
+
+"Merry, m' gal! Pap needs his breakfast."
+
+There was no reply, and the old man's face stiffened into a wild
+surprise. He knocked heavily again and got no reply, and, with a white
+face and shaking hand, he flung the door open and gazed at the empty
+bed. His hand dropped to his side; his head turned slowly from the bed
+to the open window; he rushed forward and looked out on the ground,
+where he saw the tracks of a man.
+
+He fell heavily into the chair by the bed, while a deep groan broke from
+his stiff and twitching lips.
+
+"She's left me! She's left me!"
+
+For a long half-hour the iron-muscled old man sat there motionless,
+hearing not the songs of the hens or the birds far out in the brilliant
+sunshine. He had lost sight of his farm, his day's work, and felt no
+hunger for food. He did not doubt that her going was final. He felt that
+she was gone from him forever. If she ever came back it would not be as
+his daughter, but as the wife of Gilman. She had deserted him, fled in
+the night like a thief; his heart began to harden again, and he rose
+stiffly. His native stubbornness began to assert itself, the first great
+shock over, and he went out to the kitchen, and prepared, as best he
+could, a breakfast, and sat down to it. In some way his appetite failed
+him, and he fell to thinking over his past life, of the death of his
+wife, and the early death of his only boy. He was still trying to think
+what his life would be in the future without his girl, when two
+carriages drove into the yard. It was about the middle of the forenoon,
+and the prairie-chickens had ceased to boom and squawk; in fact, that
+was why he knew, for he had been sitting two hours at the table. Before
+he could rise he heard swift feet and a merry voice and Marietta burst
+through the door.
+
+"Hello, Pap! How you makin' out with break--" She saw a look on his face
+that went to her heart like a knife. She saw a lonely and deserted old
+man sitting at his cold and cheerless breakfast, and with a remorseful
+cry she ran across the floor and took him in her arms, kissing him again
+and again, while Mr. John Jennings and his wife stood in the door.
+
+"Poor ol' Pap! Merry couldn't leave you. She's come back to stay as long
+as he lives."
+
+The old man remained cold and stern. His deep voice had a relentless
+note in it as he pushed her away from him, noticing no one else.
+
+"But how do you come back t' me?"
+
+The girl grew rosy, but she stood proudly up.
+
+"I come back the wife of a _man_, Pap; a wife like my mother, an' this
+t' hang beside hers;" and she laid down a rolled piece of parchment.
+
+"Take it an' go," growled he; "take yer lazy lubber an' git out o' my
+sight. I raised ye, took keer o' ye when ye was little, sent ye t'
+school, bought ye dresses,--done everythin' fer ye I could, 'lowin' t'
+have ye stand by me when I got old,--but no, ye must go back on yer ol'
+pap, an' go off in the night with a good-f'r-nothin' houn' that nobuddy
+knows anything about--a feller that never done a thing fer ye in the
+world--"
+
+"What did you do for mother that she left _her_ father and mother and
+went with you? How much did you have when you took her away from her
+good home an' brought her away out here among the wolves an' Indians?
+I've heard you an' her say a hundred times that you didn't have a chair
+in the house. Now, why do you talk so t' me when I want t' git--when
+Lime comes and asks for me?"
+
+The old man was staggered. He looked at the smiling face of John
+Jennings and the tearful eyes of Mrs. Jennings, who had returned with
+Lyman. But his heart hardened again as he caught sight of Lime looking
+in at him. His absurd pride would not let him relent. Lime saw it, and
+stepped forward.
+
+"Ol' man, I want t' take a little inning now. I'm a fair, square man. I
+asked ye fer Merry as a man should. I told you I'd had hard luck, when I
+first came here. I had five thousand dollars in clean cash stole from
+me. I hain't got a thing now except credit, but that's good fer enough
+t' stock a little farm with. Now, I wan' to be fair and square in this
+thing. You wan' to rent a farm; I need one. Let me have the river
+eighty, or I'll take the whole business on a share of a third, an' Merry
+Etty and I to stay here with you jest as if nothin' 'd happened. Come,
+now, what d' y' say?"
+
+There was something winning in the sturdy bearing of the man as he stood
+before the father, who remained silent and grim.
+
+"Or if you don't do that, why, there's nothin' left fer Merry an' me but
+to go back to La Crosse, where I can have my choice of a dozen farms.
+Now this is the way things is standin'. I don't want to be underhanded
+about this thing--"
+
+"That's a fair offer," said Mr. Jennings in the pause which followed.
+"You'd better do it, neighbor Bacon. Nobuddy need know how things stood;
+they were married in my house--I thought that would be best. You can't
+live without your girl," he went on, "any more 'n I could without my
+boy. You'd better--"
+
+The figure at the table straightened up. Under his tufted eyebrows his
+keen gray eyes flashed from one to the other. His hands knotted.
+
+"Go slow!" went on the smooth voice of Jennings, known all the country
+through as a peacemaker. "Take time t' think it over. Stand out, an'
+you'll live here alone without chick 'r child; give in, and this house
+'ll bubble over with noise and young ones. Now is short, and forever's a
+long time to feel sorry in."
+
+The old man at the table knitted his eyebrows, and a distorted,
+quivering, ghastly smile broke out on his face. His chest heaved; then
+he burst forth:--
+
+"Gal, yank them gloves off, an' git me something to eat--breakfus 'r
+dinner, I don't care which. Lime, you infernal idiot, git out there and
+gear up them horses. What in thunder you foolun' round about hyere in
+seed'n'? Come, hustle, all o' ye!"
+
+And they all shouted in laughter, while the old man strode unsteadily
+but resolutely out toward the barn, followed by the bridegroom, who was
+still laughing--but silently.
+
+
+
+
+ELDER PILL, PREACHER
+
+I
+
+
+Old man Bacon was pinching forked barbs on a wire fence one rainy day in
+July, when his neighbor Jennings came along the road on his way to town.
+Jennings never went to town except when it rained too hard to work
+outdoors, his neighbors said; and of old man Bacon it was said he
+_never_ rested _nights_ nor Sundays.
+
+Jennings pulled up. "Good morning, neighbor Bacon."
+
+"Mornin'," rumbled the old man without looking up.
+
+"Taking it easy, as usual, I see. Think it's going to clear up?"
+
+"May, an' may not. Don't make much differunce t' me," growled Bacon,
+discouragingly.
+
+"Heard about the plan for a church?"
+
+"Naw."
+
+"Well, we're goin' to hire Elder Pill from Douglass to come over and
+preach every Sunday afternoon at the schoolhouse, an' we want help t'
+pay him--the laborer is worthy of his hire."
+
+"Sometimes he is an' then agin he ain't. Y' needn't look t' me f'r a
+dollar. I ain't got no intrust in y'r church."
+
+"Oh, yes, you have--besides, y'r sister--"
+
+"She ain't got no more time 'n I have t' go t' church. We're obleeged to
+do 'bout all we c'n stand t' pay our debts, let alone tryun' to support
+a preacher." And the old man shut the pinchers up on a barb with a
+vicious grip.
+
+Easy-going Mr. Jennings laughed in his silent way. "I guess you'll help
+when the time comes," he said, and, clucking to his team, drove off.
+
+"I guess I won't," muttered the grizzled old giant as he went on with
+his work. Bacon was what is called land poor in the West, that is, he
+had more land than money; still he was able to give if he felt disposed.
+It remains to say that he was _not_ disposed, being a sceptic and a
+scoffer. It angered him to have Jennings predict so confidently that he
+would help.
+
+The sun was striking redly through a rift in the clouds, about three
+o'clock in the afternoon, when he saw a man coming up the lane, walking:
+on the grass at the side of the road, and whistling merrily. The old man
+looked at him from under his huge eyebrows with some curiosity. As he
+drew near, the pedestrian ceased to whistle, and, just as the farmer
+expected him to pass, he stopped and said, in a free and easy style:--
+
+"How de do? Give me a chaw t'baccer. I'm Pill, the new minister. I take
+fine-cut when I can get it," he said, as Bacon put his hand into his
+pocket. "Much obliged. How goes it?"
+
+"Tollable, tollable," said the astounded farmer, looking hard at Pill as
+he flung a handful of tobacco into his mouth.
+
+"Yes, I'm the new minister sent around here to keep you fellows in the
+traces and out of hell-fire. Have y' fled from the wrath?" he asked, in
+a perfunctory way.
+
+"You are, eh?" said Bacon, referring back to his profession.
+
+"I am, just! How do you like that style of barb fence? Ain't the twisted
+wire better?"
+
+"I s'pose they be, but they cost more."
+
+"Yes, costs more to go to heaven than to hell. You'll think so after I
+board with you a week. Narrow the road that leads to light, and broad
+the way that leads--how's your soul anyway, brother?"
+
+"Soul's all right. I find more trouble to keep m' body go'n."
+
+"Give us your hand; so do I. All the same we must prepare for the next
+world. We're gettin' old; lay not up your treasures where moth and rust
+corrupt and thieves break through and steal."
+
+Bacon was thoroughly interested in the preacher, and was studying him
+carefully. He was tall, straight, and superbly proportioned;
+broad-shouldered, wide-lunged, and thewed like a Chippewa. His rather
+small steel-blue eyes twinkled, and his shrewd face and small head, set
+well back, completed a remarkable figure. He wore his reddish beard in
+the usual way of Western clergymen, with mustache chopped close.
+
+Bacon spoke slowly:--
+
+"You look like a good, husky man to pitch in the barn-yard; you've too
+much muscle f'r preachun'."
+
+"Come and hear me next Sunday, and if you say so then, I'll quit,"
+replied Mr. Pill, quietly. "I give ye my word for it. I believe in
+preachers havin' a little of the flesh and the devil; they can
+sympathize better with the rest of ye." The sarcasm was lost on Bacon,
+who continued to look at him. Suddenly he said, as if with an
+involuntary determination:--
+
+"Where ye go'n' to stay t'night?"
+
+"I don't know; do you?" was the quick reply.
+
+"I reckon ye can hang out with me, 'f ye feel like ut. We ain't very
+purty, at our house, but we eat. You go along down the road and tell 'em
+I sent yeh. Ye'll find an' ol' dusty Bible round some'rs--I s'pose ye
+spend y'r spare time read'n' about Joshua an' Dan'l--"
+
+"I spend more time reading men. Well, I'm off! I'm hungrier 'n a gray
+wolf in a bear-trap." And off he went as he came. But he did not
+whistle; he chewed.
+
+Bacon felt as if he had made too much of a concession, and had a strong
+inclination to shout after him, and retract his invitation; but he did
+not, only worked on, with an occasional bear-like grin. There was
+something captivating in this fellow's free and easy way.
+
+When he came up to the house an hour or two later, in singular good
+humor for him, he found the Elder in the creamery, with his niece
+Eldora, who was not more won by him than was his sister Jane Buttles, he
+was so genial and put on so few religious frills.
+
+Mrs. Buttles never put on frills of any kind. She was a most frightful
+toiler, only excelled (if excelled at all) by her brother. Unlovely at
+her best, when about her work in her faded calico gown and flat shoes,
+hair wisped into a slovenly knot, she was depressing. But she was a good
+woman, of sterling integrity, and ambitious for her girl. She was very
+glad of the chance to take charge of her brother's household after
+Marietta married.
+
+Eldora was as attractive as her mother was depressing. She was very
+young at this time and had the physical perfection--at least as regards
+body--that her parents must have had in youth. She was above the average
+height of woman, with strong swell of bosom and glorious, erect carriage
+of head. Her features were coarse, but regular and pleasing, and her
+manner boyish.
+
+Elder Pill was on the best terms with them as he watched the milk being
+skimmed out of the "submerged cans" ready for the "caaves and hawgs," as
+Mrs. Buttles called them.
+
+"Uncle told you t' come here 'nd stay t' supper, did he? What's come
+over him?" said the girl, with a sort of audacious humor.
+
+"Bill has an awful grutch agin preachers," said Mrs. Buttles, as she
+wiped her hands on her apron. "I declare, I don't see how--"
+
+"_Some_ preachers, not _all_ preachers," laughed Pill, in his mellow
+nasal. "There are preachers, and then again preachers. I'm one o' the
+t'other kind."
+
+"I sh'd think y' was," laughed the girl.
+
+"Now, Eldory, you run right t' the pig-pen with that milk, whilst I go
+in an' set the tea on."
+
+Mr. Pill seized the can of milk, saying, with a twang: "Show me the way
+that I may walk therein," and, accompanied by the laughing girl, made
+rapid way to the pig-pen just as the old man set up a ferocious shout to
+call the hired hand out of the corn-field.
+
+"How'd y' come to send _him_ here?" asked Mrs. Buttles, nodding toward
+Pill.
+
+"Damfino! I kind o' liked him--no nonsense about him," answered Bacon,
+going into temporary eclipse behind his hands as he washed his face at
+the cistern.
+
+At the supper table Pill was "easy as an old shoe"; ate with his knife,
+talked about fatting hogs, suggested a few points on raising clover,
+told of pioneer experiences in Michigan, and soon won them--hired man
+and all--to a most favorable opinion of himself. But he did not trench
+on religious matters at all.
+
+The hired man in his shirt-sleeves, and smelling frightfully of tobacco
+and sweat (as did Bacon), sat with open mouth, at times forgetting to
+eat, in his absorbing interest in the minister's yarns.
+
+"Yes, I've got a family, too much of a family, in fact--that is, I think
+so sometimes when I'm pinched. Our Western people are so indigent--in
+plain terms, poor--they _can't_ do any better than they do. But we pull
+through--we pull through! John, you look like a stout fellow, but I'll
+bet a hat I can _down_ you three out of five."
+
+"I bet you can't," grinned the hired man. It was the climax of all, that
+bet.
+
+"I'll take y' in hand an' flop y' both," roared Bacon from his
+lion-like throat, his eyes glistening with rare good-nature from the
+shadow of his gray brows. But he admired the minister's broad shoulders
+at the same time. If this fellow panned out as he promised, he was a
+rare specimen.
+
+After supper the Elder played a masterly game of croquet with Eldora,
+beating her with ease; then he wandered out to the barn and talked
+horses with the hired man, and finished by stripping off his coat and
+putting on one of Mrs. Buttles's aprons to help milk the cows.
+
+But at breakfast the next morning, when the family were about pitching
+into their food as usual without ceremony, the visitor spoke in an
+imperious tone and with lifted hand. "_Wait!_ Let us look to the Lord
+for His blessing."
+
+They waited till the grace was said, but it threw a depressing
+atmosphere over the group; evidently they considered the trouble begun.
+At the end of the meal the minister asked:--
+
+"Have you a Bible in the house?"
+
+"I reckon there's one around somewhere. Elly, go 'n see 'f y' can't
+raise one," said Mrs. Buttles, indifferently.
+
+"Have you any objection to family devotion?" asked Pill, as the book was
+placed in his hands by the girl.
+
+"No; have all you want," said Bacon, as he rose from the table and
+passed out the door.
+
+"I guess I'll see the thing through," said the hand.
+
+"It ain't just square to leave the women folks to bear the brunt of it."
+
+It was shortly after breakfast that the Elder concluded he'd walk up to
+Brother Jennings's and see about church matters.
+
+"I shall expect you, Brother Bacon, to be at the service at 2.30."
+
+"All right, go ahead expectun'," responded Bacon, with an inscrutable
+sidewise glance.
+
+"You promised, you remember?"
+
+"The--devil--I did!" the old man snarled.
+
+The Elder looked back with a smile, and went off whistling in the warm,
+bright morning.
+
+
+II
+
+
+The schoolhouse down on the creek was known as "Hell's Corners" all
+through the county, because of the frequent rows that took place therein
+at "corkuses" and the like, and also because of the number of teachers
+that had been "ousted" by the boys. In fact, it was one of those places
+still to be found occasionally in the West, far from railroads and
+schools, where the primitive ignorance and ferocity of men still prowl,
+like the panthers which are also found sometimes in the deeps of the
+Iowa timber lands.
+
+The most of this ignorance and ferocity, however, was centred in the
+family of Dixons, a dark-skinned, unsavory group of Missourians. It
+consisted of old man Dixon and wife, and six sons, all man-grown,
+great, gaunt, sinewy fellows, with no education, but superstitious as
+savages. If anything went wrong in "Hell's Corners" everybody knew that
+the Dixons were "on the rampage again." The school-teachers were warned
+against the Dixons, and the preachers were besought to convert the
+Dixons.
+
+In fact, John Jennings, as he drove Pill to the schoolhouse next day,
+said:--
+
+"If you can convert the Dixon boys, Elder, I'll give you the best horse
+in my barn."
+
+"I work not for such hire," said Mr. Pill, with a look of deep solemnity
+on his face, belied, indeed, by a twinkle in his small, keen eye--a
+twinkle which made Milton Jennings laugh candidly.
+
+There was considerable curiosity, expressed by a murmur of lips and
+voices, as the minister's tall figure entered the door and stood for a
+moment in a study of the scene before him. It was a characteristically
+Western scene. The women sat on one side of the schoolroom, the men on
+the other; the front seats were occupied by squirming boys and girls in
+their Sunday splendor.
+
+On the back, to the right, were the young men, in their best vests, with
+paper collars and butterfly neckties, with their coats unbuttoned, their
+hair plastered down in a fascinating wave on their brown foreheads. Not
+a few were in their shirt-sleeves. The older men sat immediately between
+the youths and boys, talking in hoarse whispers across the aisles about
+the state of the crops and the county ticket, while the women in much
+the same way conversed about the children and raising onions and
+strawberries. It was their main recreation, this Sunday meeting.
+
+"Brethren!" rang out the imperious voice of the minister, "let us pray."
+
+The audience thoroughly enjoyed the Elder's prayer. He was certainly
+gifted in that direction, and his petition grew genuinely eloquent as
+his desires embraced the "ends of the earth and the utterm'st parts of
+the seas thereof." But in the midst of it a clatter was heard, and five
+or six strapping fellows filed in with loud thumpings of their brogans.
+
+Shortly after they had settled themselves with elaborate impudence on
+the back seat, the singing began. Just as they were singing the last
+verse, every individual voice wavered and all but died out in
+astonishment to see William Bacon come in--an unheard-of thing! And with
+a clean shirt, too! Bacon, to tell the truth, was feeling as much out of
+place as a cat in a bath-tub, and looked uncomfortable, even shamefaced,
+as he sidled in, his shapeless hat gripped nervously in both hands;
+coatless and collarless, his shirt open at his massive throat. The girls
+tittered, of course, and the boys hammered each other's ribs, moved by
+the unusual sight. Milton Jennings, sitting beside Bettie Moss, said:--
+
+"Well! may I jump straight up and never come down!"
+
+And Shep Watson said: "May I never see the back o' my neck!" Which
+pleased Bettie so much that she grew quite purple with efforts to
+conceal her laughter; she always enjoyed a joke on her father.
+
+But all things have an end, and at last the room became quiet as Mr.
+Pill began to read the Scripture, wondering a little at the commotion.
+He suspected that those dark-skinned, grinning fellows on the back seat
+were the Dixon boys, and knew they were bent on fun. The physique of the
+minister being carefully studied, the boys began whispering among
+themselves, and at last, just as the sermon opened, they began to push
+the line of young men on the long seat over toward the girls' side,
+squeezing Milton against Bettie. This pleasantry encouraged one of them
+to whack his neighbor over the head with his soft hat, causing great
+laughter and disturbance. The preacher stopped. His cool, penetrating
+voice sounded strangely unclerical as he said:--
+
+"There are some fellows here to-day to have fun with me. If they don't
+keep quiet, they'll have more fun than they can hold." (At this point a
+green crab-apple bounded up the aisle.) "I'm not to be bulldozed."
+
+He pulled off his coat and laid it on the table before him, and, amid a
+wondering silence, took off his cuffs and collar, saying:--
+
+"I can preach the word of the Lord just as well without my coat, and I
+can throw rowdies out the door a little better in my shirt-sleeves."
+
+Had the Dixon boys been a little shrewder as readers of human character,
+or if they had known why old William Bacon was there, they would have
+kept quiet; but it was not long before they began to push again, and at
+last one of them gave a squeak, and a tussle took place. The preacher
+was in the midst of a sentence:--
+
+"An evil deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of mustard seed. It is
+small, but it grows steadily, absorbing its like from the earth and air,
+sending out roots and branches, till at last--"
+
+There was a scuffle and a snicker. Mr. Pill paused, and gazed intently
+at Tom Dixon, who was the most impudent and strongest of the gang; then
+he moved slowly down on the astonished young savage. As he came his eyes
+seemed to expand like those of an eagle in battle, steady, remorseless,
+unwavering, at the same time that his brows shut down over them--a
+glance that hushed every breath. The awed and astonished ruffians sat as
+if paralyzed by the unuttered yet terribly ferocious determination of
+the preacher's eyes. His right hand was raised, the other was clenched
+at his waist. There was a sort of solemnity in his approach, like a
+tiger creeping upon a foe.
+
+At last, after what seemed minutes to the silent, motionless
+congregation, his raised hand came down on the shoulder of the leader
+with the exact, resistless precision of the tiger's paw, and the ruffian
+was snatched from his seat to the floor sprawling. Before he could rise,
+the steel-like grip of the roused preacher sent him halfway to the door,
+and then out into the dirt of the road.
+
+Turning, Pill strode down the aisle once more. The half-risen
+congregation made way for him, curiously. When he came within reach of
+Dick, the fellow struck savagely out at the preacher, only to have his
+blow avoided by a lithe, lightning-swift movement of the body above the
+hips (a trained boxer's trick), and to find himself lying bruised and
+dazed on the floor.
+
+By this time the other brothers had recovered from their stupor, and,
+with wild curses, leaped over the benches toward the fearless preacher.
+
+But now a new voice was heard in the sudden uproar--a new but familiar
+voice. It was the mighty voice of William Bacon, known far and wide as a
+terrible antagonist, a man who had never been whipped. He was like a
+wild beast excited to primitive savagery by the smell of blood.
+
+"Stand _back_, you hell-hounds!" he said, leaping between them and the
+preacher. "You know me. Lay another hand on that man an', by the livun'
+God, you answer t' me. Back thear!"
+
+Some of the men cheered, most stood irresolute. The women crowded
+together, the children began to scream with terror, while through it all
+Pill dragged his last assailant toward the door.
+
+Bacon made his way down to where the Dixons had halted, undecided what
+to do. If the preacher had the air and action of the tiger, Bacon looked
+the grisly bear--his eyebrows working up and down, his hands clenched
+into frightful bludgeons, his breath rushing through his hairy nostrils.
+
+"Git out o' hyare," he growled. "You've run things here jest about long
+enough. Git out!"
+
+His hands were now on the necks of two of the boys and he was hustling
+them toward the door.
+
+"If you want 'o whip the preacher, meet him in the public road--one at a
+time; he'll take care o' himself. Out with ye," he ended, kicking them
+out. "Show your faces here agin, an' I'll break ye in two."
+
+The non-combative farmers now began to see the humor of the whole
+transaction, and began to laugh; but they were cut short by the calm
+voice of the preacher at his desk:--
+
+"But a _good_ deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of wheat planted in
+good earth, that bringeth forth fruit in due season an hundred fold."
+
+
+III
+
+
+Mr. Pill, with all his seeming levity, was a powerful hand at revivals,
+as was developed at the "protracted" meetings at the Grove during
+December. Indeed, such was the pitiless intensity of his zeal that a
+gloom was cast over the whole township; the ordinary festivities stopped
+or did not begin at all.
+
+The lyceum, which usually began by the first week in December, was put
+entirely out of the question, as were the spelling-schools and
+"exhibitions." The boys, it is true, still drove the girls to meeting in
+the usual manner; but they all wore a furtive, uneasy air, and their
+laughter was not quite genuine at its best, and died away altogether
+when they came near the schoolhouse, and they hardly recovered from the
+effects of the preaching till a mile or two had been spun behind the
+shining runners. It took all the magic of the jingle of the bells and
+the musical creak of the polished steel on the snow to win them back to
+laughter.
+
+As for Elder Pill, he was as a man transformed. He grew more intense
+each night, and strode back and forth behind his desk and pounded the
+Bible like an assassin. No more games with the boys, no more poking the
+girls under the chin! When he asked for a chew of tobacco now it was
+with an air which said: "I ask it as sustenance that will give me
+strength for the Lord's service," as if the demands of the flesh had
+weakened the spirit.
+
+Old man Bacon overtook Milton Jennings early one Monday morning, as
+Milton was marching down toward the Seminary at Rock River. It was
+intensely cold and still, so cold and still that the ring of the cold
+steel of the heavy sleigh, the snort of the horses, and the old man's
+voice came with astonishing distinctness to the ears of the hurrying
+youth, and it seemed a very long time before the old man came up.
+
+"Climb on!" he yelled, out of his frosty beard. He was seated on the
+"hind bob" of a wood-sleigh, on a couple of blankets. Milton clambered
+on, knowing well he'd freeze to death there.
+
+"Reckon I heerd you prowlun' around the front door with my girl last
+night," Bacon said at length. "The way you both 'tend out t' meetun'
+ought 'o sanctify yeh; must 'a' stayed to the after-meetun', didn't
+yeh?"
+
+"Nope. The front part was enough for--"
+
+"Danged if I was any more fooled with a man in m' life. I b'lieve the
+whole thing is a little scheme on the bretheren t' raise a dollar."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Waal, y' see, Pill ain't got much out o' the app'intment thus fur, and
+he ain't likely to, if he don't shake 'em up a leetle. Borrud ten
+dollars o' me t'other day."
+
+Well, thought Milton, whatever his real motive is, Elder Pill is earning
+all he gets. Standing for two or three hours in his place night after
+night, arguing, pleading, even commanding them to be saved.
+
+Milton was describing the scenes of the meeting to Bradley Talcott and
+Douglas Radbourn the next day, and Radbourn, a young law student,
+said:--
+
+"I'd like to see him. He must be a character."
+
+"Let's make up a party and go out," said Milton, eagerly.
+
+"All right; I'll speak to Lily Graham."
+
+Accordingly, that evening a party of students, in a large sleigh, drove
+out toward the schoolhouse, along the drifted lanes and through the
+beautiful aisles of the snowy woods. A merry party of young people, who
+had no sense of sin to weigh them down. Even Radbourn and Lily joined in
+the songs which they sang to the swift clanging of the bells, until the
+lights of the schoolhouse burned redly through the frosty air.
+
+Not a few of the older people present felt scandalized by the singing
+and by the dancing of the "town girls," who could not for the life of
+them take the thing seriously. The room was so little, and hot, and
+smoky, and the men looked so queer in their rough coats and hair
+every-which-way.
+
+But they took their seats demurely on the back seat, and joined in the
+opening songs, and listened to the halting prayers of the brethren and
+the sonorous prayers of the Elder, with commendable gravity. Miss Graham
+was a devout Congregationalist, and hushed the others into gravity when
+their eyes began to dance dangerously.
+
+However, as Mr. Pill warmed to his work, the girls grew sober enough. He
+awed them, and frightened them with the savagery of his voice and
+manner. His small gray eyes were like daggers unsheathed, and his small,
+round head took on a cat-like ferocity, as he strode to and fro, hurling
+out his warnings and commands in a hoarse howl that terrified the
+sinner, and drew "amens" of admiration from the saints.
+
+"Atavism; he has gone back to the era of the medicine man," Radbourn
+murmured.
+
+As the speaker went on, foam came upon his thin lips; his lifted hand
+had prophecy and threatening in it. His eyes reflected flames; his voice
+had now the tone of the implacable, vindictive judge. He gloated on the
+pictures that his words called up. By the power of his imagination the
+walls widened, the floor was no longer felt, the crowded room grew still
+as death, every eye fixed on the speaker's face.
+
+"I tell you, you must repent or die. I can see the great judgment angel
+now!" he said, stopping suddenly and pointing above the stovepipe. "I
+can see him as he stands weighing your souls as a man 'ud weigh wheat
+and chaff. Wheat goes into the Father's garner; chaff is blown to hell's
+devouring flame! I can see him _now_! He seizes a poor, damned,
+struggling soul by the _neck_, he holds him over the flaming forge of
+_hell_ till his bones melt like wax; he shrivels like thread in the
+flame of a candle; he is nothing but a charred husk, and the angel
+flings him back into _outer darkness_; life was not in him."
+
+It was this astonishing figure, powerfully acted, that scared poor Tom
+Dixon into crying out for mercy. The effect upon others was painful. To
+see so great a sinner fall terror-stricken seemed like a providential
+stroke of confirmatory evidence, and nearly a dozen other young people
+fell crying, whereat the old people burst out into amens of spasmodic
+fervor, while the preacher, the wild light still in his eyes, tore up
+and down, crying above the tumult:--
+
+"The Lord is come with _power_! His hand is visible _here_. Shout
+_aloud_ and spare _not_. Fall before him as _dust_ to his feet!
+Hypocrites, vipers, scoffers! the _lash_ o' the _Lord_ is on ye!"
+
+In the intense pause which followed as he waited with expectant,
+uplifted face--a pause so deep even the sobbing sinners held their
+breath--a dry, drawling, utterly matter-of-fact voice broke the intense
+hush.
+
+"S-a-y, Pill, ain't you a-bearun' down on the boys a _leetle too_ hard?"
+
+The preacher's extended arm fell as if life had gone out of it. His face
+flushed and paled; the people laughed hysterically, some of them with
+the tears of terror still on their cheeks; but Radbourn said, "Bravo,
+Bacon!"
+
+Pill recovered himself.
+
+"Not hard enough for _you_, neighbor Bacon."
+
+Bacon rose, retaining the same dry, prosaic tone:--
+
+"I ain't bitin' that kind of a hook, an' I ain't goin' to be _yanked_
+into heaven when I c'n _slide_ into hell. Waal! I must be goin'; I've
+got a new-milk's cow that needs tendin' to."
+
+The effect of all this was very great. From being at the very mouth of
+the furnace, quivering with fear and captive to morbid imaginings,
+Bacon's dry intonation brought them all back to earth again. They
+perceived something of the absurdity of the whole situation.
+
+Pill was beaten for the first time in his life. He had been struck below
+the belt by a good-natured giant. The best he could do, as Bacon
+shuffled calmly out, was to stammer: "Will some one please sing?" And
+while they sang, he stood in deep thought. Just as the last verse was
+quivering into silence, the full, deep tones of Radbourn's voice rose
+above the bustle of feet and clatter of seats:--
+
+"And all _that_ he preaches in the name of Him who came bringing peace
+and good-will to men."
+
+Radbourn's tone had in it reproach and a noble suggestion. The people
+looked at him curiously. The deacons nodded their heads together in
+counsel, and when they turned to the desk Pill was gone!
+
+"Gee whittaker! That was tough," said Milton to Radbourn; "knocked the
+wind out o' him like a cannon-ball. What'll he do now?"
+
+"He can't do anything but acknowledge his foolishness."
+
+"You no business t' come here an' 'sturb the Lord's meetin'," cried old
+Daddy Brown to Radbourn. "You're a sinner and a scoffer."
+
+"I thought Bacon was the disturbing ele--"
+
+"You're just as bad!"
+
+"He's all _right_," said William Councill. "I've got sick, m'self, of
+bein' _scared_ into religion. I never was so fooled in a man in my life.
+If I'd tell you what Pill said to me the other day, when we was in
+Robie's store, you'd fall in a fit. An' to hear him talkin' here
+t'night, is enough to make a horse laugh."
+
+"You're all in league with the devil," said the old man, wildly; and so
+the battle raged on.
+
+Milton and Radbourn escaped from it, and got out into the clear, cold,
+untainted night.
+
+"The heat of the furnace doesn't reach as far as the horses," Radbourn
+moralized, as he aided in unhitching the shivering team. "In the vast,
+calm spaces of the stars, among the animals, such scenes as we have just
+seen are impossible." He lifted his hand in a lofty gesture. The light
+fell on his pale face and dark eyes. The girls were a little indignant
+and disposed to take the preacher's part. They thought Bacon had no
+right to speak out that way, and Miss Graham uttered her protest, as
+they whirled away on the homeward ride with pleasant jangle of bells.
+
+"But the secret of it all was," said Radbourn in answer, "Pill knew he
+was acting a part. I don't mean that he meant to deceive, but he got
+excited, and his audience responded as an audience does to an actor of
+the first class, and he was for the time in earnest; his imagination
+_did_ see those horrors,--he was swept away by his own words. But when
+Bacon spoke, his dry tone and homely words brought everybody, preacher
+and all, back to the earth with a thump! Everybody saw, that after
+weeping and wailing there for an hour, they'd go home, feed the calves,
+hang up the lantern, put out the cat, wind the clock, and go to bed. In
+other words, they all came back out of their barbaric _powwow_ to their
+natural modern selves."
+
+This explanation had palpable truth, but Lily perceived that it had
+wider application than to the meeting they had just left.
+
+"They'll be music around this clearing to-morrow," said Milton, with a
+sigh; "wish I was at home this week."
+
+"But what'll become of Mr. Pill?"
+
+"Oh, he'll come out all right," Radbourn assured her, and Milton's clear
+tenor rang out as he drew Eileen closer to his side:--
+
+  "O silver moon, O silver moon,
+  You set, you set too soon--
+  The morrow day is far away,
+  The night is but begun."
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The news, grotesquely exaggerated, flew about the next day, and at
+night, though it was very cold and windy, the house was jammed to
+suffocation. On these lonely prairies life is so devoid of anything but
+work, dramatic entertainments are so few, and appetite so keen, that a
+temperature of twenty degrees below zero is no bar to a trip of ten
+miles. The protracted meeting was the only recreation for many of them.
+The gossip before and after service was a delight not to be lost, and
+this last sensation was dramatic enough to bring out old men and women
+who had not dared to go to church in winter for ten years.
+
+Long before seven o'clock, the schoolhouse blazed with light and buzzed
+with curious speech. Team after team drove up to the door, and as the
+drivers leaped out to receive the women, they said in low but eager
+tones to the bystanders:--
+
+"Meeting begun yet?"
+
+"Nope!"
+
+"What kind of a time y' havin' over here, any way?"
+
+"A mighty solumn time," somebody would reply with a low laugh.
+
+By seven o'clock every inch of space was occupied; the air was
+frightful. The kerosene lamps gave off gas and smoke, the huge stove
+roared itself into an angry red on its jack-oak grubs, and still people
+crowded in at the door.
+
+Discussion waxed hot as the stove; two or three Universalists boldly
+attacked everybody who came their way. A tall man stood on a bench in
+the corner, and, thumping his Bible wildly with his fist, exclaimed, at
+the top of his voice:--
+
+"There is _no_ hell at _all_! The Bible says the _wicked_ perish
+_utterly_. They are _consumed_ as _ashes_ when they die. They _perish_
+as _dogs_!"
+
+"What kind o' docterin' is that?" asked a short man of Councill.
+
+"I d'know. It's ol' Sam Richards. Calls himself a
+Christian--Christadelphian 'r some new-fangled name."
+
+At last people began to inquire, "Well, ain't he comin'?"
+
+"Most time f'r the Elder to come, ain't it?"
+
+"Oh, I guess he's preparin' a sermon."
+
+John Jennings pushed anxiously to Daddy Brown.
+
+"Ain't the Elder comin'?"
+
+"I d'know. He didn't stay at my house."
+
+"He didn't?"
+
+"No. Thought he went home with you."
+
+"I ain't see 'im 't all. I'll ask Councill. Brother Councill, seen
+anything of the Elder?"
+
+"No. Didn't he go home with Bensen?"
+
+"I d'n know. I'll see."
+
+This was enough to start the news that "Pill had skipped."
+
+This the deacons denied, saying "he'd come or send word."
+
+Outside, on the leeward side of the house, the young men who couldn't
+get in stood restlessly, now dancing a jig, now kicking their huge boots
+against the underpinning to warm their toes. They talked spasmodically
+as they swung their arms about their chests, speaking from behind their
+huge buffalo-coat collars.
+
+The wind roared through the creaking oaks; the horses stirred
+complainingly, the bells on their backs crying out querulously; the
+heads of the fortunates inside were shadowed outside on the snow, and
+the restless young men amused themselves betting on which head was
+Bensen and which Councill.
+
+At last some one pounded on the desk inside. The suffocating but lively
+crowd turned with painful adjustment toward the desk, from whence Deacon
+Bensen's high, smooth voice sounded:--
+
+"Brethren an' sisters, Elder Pill hain't come--and, as it's about eight
+o'clock, he probably won't come to-night. After the disturbances last
+night, it's--a--a--we're all the more determined to--the--a--need of
+reforming grace is more felt than ever. Let us hope nothing has happened
+to the Elder. I'll go see to-morrow, and if he is unable to come--I'll
+see Brother Wheat, of Cresco. After prayer by Brother Jennings, we will
+adjourn till to-morrow night. Brother Jennings, will you lead us in
+prayer?" (Some one snickered.) "I hope the disgraceful--a--scenes of
+last night will not be repeated."
+
+"Where's Pill?" demanded a voice in the back part of the room. "That's
+what I want to know."
+
+"He's a bad pill," said another, repeating a pun already old.
+
+"I guess so! He borrowed twenty dollars o' me last week," said the first
+voice.
+
+"He owes me for a pig," shouted a short man, excitedly. "I believe he's
+skipped to get rid o' his debts."
+
+"So do I. I allus said he was a mighty queer preacher."
+
+"He'd bear watchin' was my idee fust time I ever see him."
+
+"Careful, brethren--_careful_. He may come at any minute."
+
+"I don't care if he does. I'd bone him f'r pay f'r that shote, preacher
+'r no preacher," said Bartlett, a little nervously.
+
+High words followed this, and there was prospect of a fight. The
+pressure of the crowd, however, was so great it was well-nigh impossible
+for two belligerents to get at each other. The meeting broke up at last,
+and the people, chilly, soured, and disappointed at the lack of
+developments, went home saying Pill was _scaly_; no preacher who chawed
+terbacker was to be trusted, and when it was learned that the horse and
+buggy he drove he owed Jennings and Bensen for, everybody said, "He's a
+fraud."
+
+
+V
+
+
+In the meantime, Andrew Pill was undergoing the most singular and awful
+mental revolution.
+
+When he leaped blindly into his cutter and gave his horse the rein, he
+was wild with rage and shame, and a sort of fear. As he sat with bent
+head, he did not hear the tread of the horse, and did not see the trees
+glide past. The rabbit leaped away under the shadow of the thick groves
+of young oaks; the owl, scared from its perch, went fluttering off into
+the cold, crisp air; but he saw only the contemptuous, quizzical face of
+old William Bacon--one shaggy eyebrow lifted, a smile showing through
+his shapeless beard.
+
+He saw the colorless, handsome face of Radbourn, and his look of
+reproach and note of suggestion--Radbourn, one of the best thinkers in
+Rock River, and the most generally admired young man in Rock County.
+
+When he saw and heard Bacon, his hurt pride flamed up in wrath, but the
+calm voice of Radbourn, and the look in his stern, accusing eyes, made
+his head fall in thought. As he rode, things grew clearer. As a matter
+of fact, his whole system of religious thought was like the side of a
+shelving sand-bank--in unstable equilibrium--needing only a touch to
+send it slipping into a shapeless pile at the river's edge. That touch
+had been given, and he was now in the midst of the motion of his falling
+faith. He didn't know how much would stand when the sloughing ended.
+
+Andrew Pill had been a variety of things, a farmer, a dry-goods
+merchant, and a travelling salesman, but in a revival quite like this of
+his own, he had been converted and his life changed. He now desired to
+help his fellow-men to a better life, and willingly went out among the
+farmers, where pay was small. It was not true, therefore, that he had
+gone into it because there was little work and good pay. He was really
+an able man, and would have been a success in almost anything he
+undertook; but his reading and thought, his easy intercourse with men
+like Bacon and Radbourn, had long since undermined any real faith in the
+current doctrine of retribution, and to-night, as he rode into the
+night, he was feeling it all and suffering it all, forced to acknowledge
+at last what had been long moving.
+
+The horse took the wrong road, and plodded along steadily, carrying him
+away from his home, but he did not know it for a long time. When at last
+he looked up and saw the road leading out upon the wide plain between
+the belts of timber, leading away to Rock River, he gave a sigh of
+relief. He could not meet his wife then; he must have a chance to think.
+
+Over him, the glittering, infinite sky of winter midnight soared,
+passionless, yet accusing in its calmness, sweetness, and majesty. What
+was he that he could dogmatize on eternal life and the will of the Being
+who stood behind that veil? And then would come rushing back that scene
+in the schoolhouse, the smell of the steaming garments, the gases from
+the lamps, the roar of the stove, the sound of his own voice, strident,
+dominating, so alien to his present mood, he could only shudder at it.
+
+He was worn out with thinking when he drove into the stable at the
+Merchants' House and roused up the sleeping hostler, who looked at him
+suspiciously and demanded pay in advance. This seemed right in his
+present mood. He was not to be trusted.
+
+When he flung himself face downward on his bed, the turmoil in his brain
+was still going on. He couldn't hold one thought or feeling long; all
+seemed slipping like water from his hands.
+
+He had in him great capacity for change, for growth. Circumstances had
+been against his development thus far, but the time had come when growth
+seemed to be defeat and failure.
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Radbourn was thinking about him, two days after, as he sat in his friend
+Judge Brown's law office, poring over a volume of law. He saw that
+Bacon's treatment had been heroic; he couldn't get the pitiful confusion
+of the preacher's face out of his mind. But, after all, Bacon's seizing
+of just that instant was a stroke of genius.
+
+Some one touched him on the arm and he turned.
+
+"Why--Elder--Mr. Pill, how de do? Sit down. Draw up a chair."
+
+There was trouble in the preacher's face. "Can I see you, Radbourn,
+alone?"
+
+"Certainly; come right into this room. No one will disturb us there."
+
+"Now, what can I do for you?" he said, as they sat down.
+
+"I want to talk to you about--about religion," said Pill, with a little
+timid pause in his voice.
+
+Radbourn looked grave. "I'm afraid you've come to a dangerous man."
+
+"I want you to tell me what you think. I know you're a student. I want
+to talk about my case," pursued the preacher, with a curious hesitancy.
+"I want to ask a few questions on things."
+
+"Very well; sail in. I'll do the best I can," said Radbourn.
+
+"I've been thinking a good deal since that night. I've come to the
+conclusion that I don't believe what I've been preaching. I thought I
+did, but I didn't. I don't know _what_ I believe. Seems as if the land
+had slid from under my feet. What am I to do?"
+
+"Say so," replied Radbourn, his eyes kindling. "Say so, and get out of
+it. There's nothing worse than staying where you are. What have you
+saved from the general land-slide?"
+
+Pill smiled a little. "I don't know."
+
+"Want me to cross-examine you and see, eh? Very well, here goes." He
+settled back with a smile. "You believe in square dealing between man
+and man?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You believe in good deeds, candor, and steadfastness?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You believe in justice, equality of opportunity, and in liberty?"
+
+"Certainly I do."
+
+"You believe, in short, that a man should do unto others as he'd have
+others do unto him; think right and live out his thoughts?"
+
+"All that I steadfastly believe."
+
+"Well, I guess your land-slide was mostly imaginary. The face of the
+eternal rock is laid bare. You didn't recognize it at first, that's all.
+One question more. You believe in getting at truth?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well, truth is only found from the generalizations of facts. Before
+calling a thing true, study carefully all accessible facts. Make your
+religion practical. The matter-of-fact tone of Bacon would have had no
+force if you had been preaching an earnest morality in place of an
+antiquated terrorism."
+
+"I know it, I know it," sighed Pill, looking down.
+
+"Well, now go back and tell 'em so. And then, if you can't keep your
+place preaching what you do believe, get into something else. For the
+sake of all morality and manhood, don't go on cursing yourself with
+hypocrisy."
+
+Mr. Pill took a chew of tobacco rather distractedly, and said:--
+
+"I'd like to ask you a few questions."
+
+"No, not now. You think out your present position yourself. Find out
+just what you have saved from your land-slide."
+
+The elder man rose; he hardly seemed the same man who had dominated his
+people a few days before. He turned with still greater embarrassment.
+
+"I want to ask a favor. I'm going back to my family. I'm going to say
+something of what you've said, to my congregation--but--I'm in debt--and
+the moment they know I'm a backslider, they're going to bear down on me
+pretty heavy. I'd like to be independent."
+
+"I see. How much do you need?" mused Radbourn.
+
+"I guess two hundred would stave off the worst of them."
+
+"I guess Brown and I can fix that. Come in again to-night. Or no, I'll
+bring it round to you."
+
+The two men parted with a silent pressure of the hand that meant more
+than any words.
+
+When Mr. Pill told his wife that he could preach no more, she cried, and
+gasped, and scolded till she was in danger of losing her breath
+entirely. "A guinea-hen sort of a woman" Councill called her. "She can
+talk more an' say less 'n any woman I ever see," was Bacon's verdict,
+after she had been at dinner at his house. She was a perpetual irritant.
+
+Mr. Pill silenced her at last with a note of impatience approaching a
+threat, and drove away to the Corners to make his confession without
+her. It was Saturday night, and Elder Wheat was preaching as he entered
+the crowded room. A buzz and mumble of surprise stopped the orator for a
+few moments, and he shook hands with Mr. Pill dubiously, not knowing
+what to think of it all, but as he was in the midst of a very effective
+oratorical scene, he went on.
+
+The silent man at his side felt as if he were witnessing a burlesque of
+himself as he listened to the pitiless and lurid description of torment
+which Elder Wheat poured forth,--the same figures and threats he had
+used a hundred times. He stirred uneasily in his seat, while the
+audience paid so little attention that the perspiring little orator
+finally called for a hymn, saying:--
+
+"Elder Pill has returned from his unexpected absence, and will exhort in
+his proper place."
+
+When the singing ended, Mr. Pill rose, looking more like himself than
+since the previous Sunday. A quiet resolution was in his eyes and voice
+as he said:--
+
+"Elder Wheat has more right here than I have. I want 'o say that I'm
+going to give up my church in Douglass and--" A murmur broke out, which
+he silenced with his raised hand. "I find I don't believe any longer
+what I've been believing and preaching. Hold on! let me go on. I don't
+quite know where I'll bring up, but I think my religion will simmer down
+finally to about this: A full half-bushel to the half-bushel and sixteen
+ounces to the pound." Here two or three cheered. "Do unto others as
+you'd have others do unto you." Applause from several, quickly
+suppressed as the speaker went on, Elder Wheat listening as if
+petrified, with his mouth open.
+
+"I'm going out of preaching, at least for the present. After things get
+into shape with me again, I may set up to teach people how to live, but
+just now I can't do it. I've got all I can do to instruct myself. Just
+one thing more. I owe two or three of you here. I've got the money for
+William Bacon, James Bartlett, and John Jennings. I turn the mare and
+cutter over to Jacob Bensen, for the note he holds. I hain't got much
+religion left, but I've got some morality. That's all I want to say
+now."
+
+When he sat down there was a profound hush; then Bacon arose.
+
+"That's _man's_ talk, that is! An' I jest want 'o say, Andrew Pill, that
+you kin jest forgit you owe me anything. An' if ye want any help come to
+me. Y're jest gittun' ready to preach, 'n' I'm ready to give ye my
+support."
+
+"That's the talk," said Councill. "I'm with ye on that."
+
+Pill shook his head. The painful silence which followed was broken by
+the effusive voice of Wheat:--
+
+"Let us pray--and remember our lost brother."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The urgings of the people were of no avail. Mr. Pill settled up his
+affairs and moved to Cresco, where he went back into trade with a
+friend, and for three years attended silently to his customers, lived
+down their curiosity, and studied anew the problem of life. Then he
+moved away, and no one knew whither.
+
+One day last year Bacon met Jennings on the road.
+
+"Heerd anything o' Pill lately?"
+
+"No, have you?"
+
+"Waal, yes. Brown told me he ran acrost him down in Eelinoy, doun' well,
+too."
+
+"In dry goods?"
+
+"No, preachun'."
+
+"Preachun'?"
+
+"So Brown said. Kind of a free-f'r-all church, I reckon, from what Jedge
+told me. Built a new church; fills it twice a Sunday. I'd like to hear
+him, but he's got t' be too big a gun f'r us. Ben studyun', they say;
+went t' school."
+
+Jennings drove sadly and thoughtfully on.
+
+"Rather stumps Brother Jennings," laughed Bacon, in a good-humored
+growl.
+
+
+
+
+A DAY OF GRACE
+
+
+Sunday is the day for courtship on the prairie. It has also the piety of
+cleanliness. It allows the young man to get back to a self-respecting
+sweetness of person, and enables the girls to look as nature intended,
+dainty and sweet as posies.
+
+The change from everyday clothing on the part of young workmen like Ben
+Griswold was more than change; it approached transformation. It took
+more than courage to go through the change,--it required love.
+
+Ben arose a little later on Sunday morning than on weekdays, but there
+were the chores to do as usual. The horses must be watered, fed, and
+curried, and the cows were to milk, but after breakfast Ben threw off
+the cares of the hired hand. When he came down from the little garret
+into which the hot August sun streamed redly, he was a changed creature.
+Clean from tip to toe, newly shaven, wearing a crackling white shirt, a
+linen collar and a new suit of store clothes, he felt himself a man
+again, fit to meet maidens.
+
+His partner, being a married man, was slouching around in his tattered
+and greasy brown denim overalls. He looked at Ben and grinned.
+
+"Got a tag on y'rself?"
+
+"No, why?"
+
+"Nobod'y know ye, if anything happened on the road. There's thirty
+dollars gone to the dogs." He sighed. "Oh, well, you'll get over that,
+just as I did."
+
+"I hope I won't get over liking to be clean," Ben said a little sourly.
+"I won't be back to milk."
+
+"Didn't expect ye. That's the very time o' day the girls are
+purtiest,--just about sundown. Better take Rock. I may want the old team
+myself."
+
+Ben hitched up and drove off in the warm bright morning, with wonderful
+elation, clean and self-respecting once more. His freshly shaven face
+felt cool, and his new suit fitted him well. His heart took on a great
+resolution, which was to call upon Grace.
+
+The thought of her made his brown hands shake, and he remembered how
+many times he had sworn to visit her, but had failed of courage, though
+it seemed she had invited him by word and look to do so.
+
+He overtook Milton Jennings on his way along the poplar-lined lane.
+
+"Hello, Milt, where you bound?"
+
+Milton glanced up with a curious look in his laughing eyes. From the
+pockets of his long linen duster he drew a handful of beautiful scarlet
+and yellow Siberian crab-apples.
+
+"See them crabs?"
+
+"Yes, I see 'em."
+
+Milton drew a similar handful out of his left pocket. "See those?"
+
+"What y' going to do with 'em?"
+
+"Take 'em home again."
+
+Something in Milton's voice led him to ask soberly:--
+
+"What did you intend doing with 'em?"
+
+"Present 'em to Miss Cole."
+
+"Well, why didn't y' do it?"
+
+Milton showed his white teeth in a smile that was frankly derisive of
+himself.
+
+"Well, when I got over there I found young Conley's sorrel hitched to
+one post and Walt Brown's gray hitched to the other. I went in, but I
+didn't stay long; in fact, I didn't sit down. I was afraid those
+infernal apples would roll out o' my pockets. I was afraid they'd find
+out I brought 'em over there for Miss Cole, like the darn fool I was."
+
+They both laughed heartily. Milton was always as severe upon himself as
+upon any one else.
+
+"That's tough," said Ben, "but climb in, and let's go to Sunday-school."
+
+Milton got in, and they ate the apples as they rode along.
+
+The Grove schoolhouse was the largest in the township, and was the only
+one with a touch of redeeming grace. It was in a lovely spot; great oaks
+stood all about, and back of it the woods grew thick, and a clear creek
+gurgled over its limestone bed not far away.
+
+To Ben and Milton there was a wondrous charm about the Grove
+schoolhouse. It was the one place where the boys and girls met in
+garments disassociated from toil. Sundays in summer, and on winter
+nights at lyceums or protracted meetings, the boys came to see the
+girls in their bright dresses, with their clear and (so it seemed)
+scornful bright eyes.
+
+All through the service Ben sat where he could see Grace by turning his
+head, but he had not the courage to do so. Once or twice he caught a
+glimpse of the curve of her cheek and the delicate lines of her ear, and
+a suffocating throb came into his throat.
+
+He wanted to ask her to go with him down to Cedarville to the Methodist
+camp-meeting, but he knew it was impossible. He could not even say "good
+day" when she took pains to pass near him after church. He nodded like a
+great idiot, all ease and dignity lost, his throat too dry and hot to
+utter a sound.
+
+He cursed his shyness as he went out after his horse. He saw her picking
+her dainty way up the road with Conrad Sieger walking by her side. What
+made it worse for Ben was a dim feeling that she liked him, and would go
+with him if he had the courage to ask her.
+
+"Well, Ben," said Milton, "it's settled, we go to Rock River to-night to
+the camp-meeting. Did you ask Grace?"
+
+"No, she's going with Con. It's just my blasted luck."
+
+"That's too bad. Well, come with us. Take Maud."
+
+As he rode away Ben passed Grace on the road.
+
+"Going to the camp-meeting, Con?" asked Milton, in merry voice.
+
+"I guess so," said Conrad, a handsome, but slow-witted German.
+
+As they went on Ben could have wept. His keener perception told him
+there was a look of appeal in Grace's upturned eyes.
+
+He made a poor companion at dinner, and poor plain Maud knew his mind
+was elsewhere. She was used to that and accepted it with a pathetic
+attempt to color it differently.
+
+They got away about five o'clock.
+
+Ben drove the team, driving took his mind off his weakness and failure;
+while Milton in the seclusion of the back seat of the carryall was happy
+with Amelia Turner.
+
+It was growing dark as they entered upon the curving road along the
+river which was a relief from the rectangular and sun-smitten roads of
+the prairie. They lingered under the great oaks and elms which shaded
+them. It would have been perfect Ben thought, if Grace had been beside
+him in Maud's place.
+
+He wondered how he should manage to speak to Grace. There was a time
+when it seemed easier. Now the consciousness of his love made the
+simplest question seem like the great question of all.
+
+Other teams were on the road, some returning, some going. A camp-meeting
+had come to be an annual amusement, like a circus, and young people from
+all over the country drove down on Sundays, as if to some celebration
+with fireworks.
+
+"There's the lane," said Milton. "See that team goin' in?"
+
+Ben pulled up and they looked at it doubtfully. It looked dangerously
+miry. It was quite dark now and Ben said:--
+
+"That's a scaly piece of road."
+
+"Oh, that's all right. Hark!"
+
+As they listened they could hear the voice of the exhorter nearly a mile
+away. It pushed across the cool spaces with a wild and savage sound. The
+young people thrilled with excitement.
+
+Insects were singing in the grass. Frogs with deepening chorus seemed to
+announce the coming of night, and above these peaceful sounds came the
+wild shouts of the far-off preacher, echoing through the cool green
+arches of the splendid grove.
+
+The girls became silent, as the voice grew louder.
+
+Lights appeared ahead, and the road led up a slight hill to a gate. Ben
+drove on under a grove of oaks, past dimly lighted tents, whose open
+flaps showed tumbled beds and tables laden with crockery. Heavy women
+were moving about inside, their shadows showing against the tent walls
+like figures in a pantomime.
+
+The young people alighted in curious silence. As they stood a moment,
+tying the team, the preacher lifted his voice in a brazen, clanging,
+monotonous reiteration of worn phrases.
+
+"Come to the _Lord_! Come _now_! Come to the _light_! Jesus will give
+it! _Now_ is the appointed time,--come to the _light_!"
+
+From a tent near by arose the groaning, gasping, gurgling scream of a
+woman in mortal agony.
+
+"O my God!"
+
+It was charged with the most piercing distress. It cut to the heart's
+palpitating centre like a poniard thrust. It had murder and outrage in
+it.
+
+The girls clutched Ben and Milton. "Oh, let's go home!"
+
+"No, let's go and see what it all is."
+
+The girls hung close to the arms of the young men and they went down to
+the tent and looked in.
+
+It was filled with a motley throng of people, most of them seated on
+circling benches. A fringe of careless or scoffing onlookers stood back
+against the tent wall. Many of them were strangers to Ben.
+
+Occasionally a Norwegian farm-hand, or a bevy of young people from some
+near district, lifted the flap and entered with curious or laughing or
+insolent faces.
+
+The tent was lighted dimly by kerosene lamps, hung in brackets against
+the poles, and by stable lanterns set here and there upon the benches.
+
+Ben and Milton ushered the girls in and seated them a little way back.
+The girls smiled, but only faintly. The undertone of women's cries moved
+them in spite of their scorn of it all.
+
+"What cursed foolishness!" said Ben to Milton.
+
+Milton smiled, but did not reply. He only nodded toward the exhorter, a
+man with a puffy jumble of features and the form of a gladiator, who was
+uttering wild and explosive phrases.
+
+"Oh, my friends! I bless the Lord for the SHALL in the word. You SHALL
+get light. You SHALL be saved. Oh, the SHALL in the word! You SHALL be
+redeemed!"
+
+As he grew more excited, his hoarse voice rose in furious screams, as if
+he were defying hell's legions. Foam lay on his lips and flew from his
+mouth. At every repetition of the word "shall" he struck the desk a
+resounding blow with his great palm.
+
+"He's a hard hitter," said Milton.
+
+At length he leaped, apparently in uncontrollable excitement, upon the
+mourners' bench, and ran up and down close to the listening, moaning
+audience. He walked with a furious rhythmic, stamping action, like a
+Sioux in the war dance. Wild cries burst from his audience, antiphonal
+with his own.
+
+"He 'SHALL' send light!"
+
+"_Send Thy arrows, O Lord._"
+
+"O God, come!"
+
+"He 'SHALL' keep His word!"
+
+One old negro woman, fat, powerful, and gloomy, suddenly arose and
+uttered a scream that had the dignity and savagery of a mountain lion's
+cry. It rang far out into the night.
+
+The exhorter continued his mad, furious, thumping, barbaric walk.
+
+Behind him a row of other exhorters sat, a relay ready to leap to his
+aid. They urged on the tumult with wild cries.
+
+"A-men, brother."
+
+"YES, brother, YES!" clapping their hands in rhythm.
+
+The exhorter redoubled his fury. He was like a jaded actor rising at
+applause, carried out of his self-command.
+
+Out of the obscure tumult of faces and tossing hands there came at last
+certain recognizable features. The people were mainly farming folks of
+the more ignorant sort, rude in dress and bearing, hard and bent with
+toil. They were recognizably of a class subject to these low forms of
+religious excitement which were once well-nigh universal.
+
+The outer fringe continued to smile scornfully and to jest, yet they
+were awed, in a way, by this suddenly revealed deep of barbaric emotion.
+
+The girls were appalled by the increasing clangor. Milton was amused,
+but Ben grew bitter. Something strong came out in him, too. His lip
+curled in disgust.
+
+Suddenly, out of the level space of bowed shoulders, tossing hands, and
+frenzied, upturned faces, a young girl leaped erect. She was strong and
+handsome, powerful in the waist and shoulders. Her hair was braided like
+a child's, and fell down her back in a single strand. Her head was
+girlish, but her face looked old and drawn and tortured.
+
+She moaned pitifully; she clapped her hands with wild gestures, ending
+in a quivering motion. The action grew to lightning-like quickness. Her
+head seemed to set in its socket. Her whole body stiffened. Gasping
+moans came from her clenched teeth as she fell to the ground and rolled
+under the seats, wallowing in the muddy straw and beating her feet upon
+the ground like a dying partridge.
+
+The people crowded about her, but the preacher, roared above the
+tumult:--
+
+"Si' down! Never mind that party. She's all right; she's in the hands of
+the Lord!"
+
+The people settled into their seats, and the wild tumult went on again.
+Ben rose to go over where the girl was and the others followed.
+
+A young man seated by the struggling sinner held her hand and fanned her
+with his hat, while some girl friends, scared and sobbing, kept the
+tossing limbs covered. She rolled from side to side restlessly,
+thrusting forth her tongue as if her throat were dry. She looked like a
+dying animal.
+
+Maud clung to Milton.
+
+"Oh, can't something be done?"
+
+"Her soul is burdened for _you_!" cried a wild old woman to the
+impassive youth who clung to the frenzied girl's hand.
+
+A moment later, as the demoniacal chorus of yells, songs, incantations,
+shrieks, groans, and prayers swelled high, a farmer's wife on the left
+uttered a hoarse cry and stiffened and fell backward upon the ground.
+She rolled her head from side to side. Her eyes turned in; her lips wore
+a maniac's laugh, and her troubled brow made her look like the death
+mask of a tortured murderer, the hell horror frozen on it.
+
+She sank at last into a hideous calm, with her strained and stiffened
+hands pointing weirdly up. She was like marble. She did not move a
+hair's breadth during the next two hours.
+
+Over to the left a young man leaped to his feet with a scream:--
+
+"Jesus, _Jesus_, JESUS!"
+
+The great negress caught him in her arms as he fell, and laid him down,
+then leaped up and down, shrieking:--
+
+"O Jesus, come. Come, God's Lamb!"
+
+Around her a dozen women took up her cry. Most of them had no voices.
+Their horrifying screams had become hoarse hisses, yet still they
+strove. Scores of voices were mixed in the pandemonium of prayer.
+
+All order was lost. Three of the preachers now stood shouting before the
+mourners' bench, two were in the aisles.
+
+One came down the aisle toward the girl with the braided hair. As he
+came he prayed. Foam was on his lips, but his eyes were cool and
+calculating; they betrayed him.
+
+As he came he fixed his gaze upon a woman seated near the prostrate
+girl, and with a horrible outcry the victim leaped into the air and
+stiffened as if smitten with epilepsy. She fell against some scared
+boys, who let her fall, striking her head against the seats. She too
+rolled down upon the straw and lay beside her sister. Both had round,
+pretty, but childish faces.
+
+Milton's party retreated. They smiled no more; they were
+horror-stricken.
+
+Squads of "workers" now moved down the aisles; in one they surrounded
+two people, a tall, fair girl and a young man.
+
+"Why, it's Grace!" exclaimed Maud.
+
+Ben turned quickly, "Where?"
+
+They pointed her out.
+
+"She can't get away. See! Oh, boys, don't let them--"
+
+Ben pushed his way toward her, his face set in a fierce frown, bitter,
+desperate.
+
+Grace stood silently beside one of the elders; a woman exhorter stood
+before her. Conrad, overawed, had fallen into a trembling stupor; Grace
+was defenseless.
+
+The elder's hand hovered over her head, on her face a deadly pallor had
+settled, her eyes were cast down, she breathed painfully and trembled
+from head to foot. She was about to fall, when Ben set his eyes upon
+her.
+
+"Get out o' my way," he shouted, shouldering up the aisle. His words had
+oaths, his fists were like mauls.
+
+"Grace!" he cried, and she heard. She looked up and saw him coming; the
+red flamed over her face.
+
+The power of the preacher was gone.
+
+"Let me go," she cried, trying to wring herself loose.
+
+"You are going to hell. You are lost if you do not--"
+
+"God damn ye. Get out o' way. I'll kill ye if you lay a hand on her."
+
+With one thrust Ben cleared her tormentor from her arm. For one moment
+the wordless young man looked into her eyes; then she staggered toward
+him. He faced the preacher.
+
+"I'd smash hell out o' you for a leather cent," he said. In the tumult
+his words were lost, but the look on his face was enough. The exhorter
+fell away.
+
+Their retreat was unnoted in the tumult. At the door they looked back
+for an instant at the scene.
+
+At the mourners' bench were six victims in all stages of induced
+catalepsy, one man with head flung back, one with his hands pointing,
+fixed in furious appeal. Another with bowed head was being worked upon
+by a brother of hypnotic appeal. He struck with downward, positive
+gestures on either side of the victim's head.
+
+Over another the negress towered, screaming with panther-like
+ferocity:--
+
+"Git under de blood! Git under de blood!"
+
+As she screamed she struck down at the mourner with her clenched fist.
+On her face was the grin of a wildcat.
+
+Out under the cool, lofty oaks, the outcry was more inexpressibly
+hellish, because overhead the wind rustled the sweet green leaves,
+crickets were chirping, and the scent of flowering fields of buckwheat
+was in the air.
+
+Grace grew calmer, but she clung with strange weakness to her lover. She
+felt he had saved her from something, she did not know what, but it was
+something terrifying to look back upon.
+
+Conrad was forgotten--set aside. Ben bundled him into the carryall and
+took his place with Grace. He no longer hesitated, argued, or
+apologized. He had claimed his own.
+
+On the long ride home, Grace lay within his right arm, and the young
+man's tongue was unchained. He talked, and his spirit grew tender and
+manly and husbandlike, as he told his plans and his hopes. Hell was very
+far away, and Heaven was very near.
+
+
+
+
+LUCRETIA BURNS
+
+I
+
+
+Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of early
+girlhood, and now she was middle-aged, distorted with work and
+child-bearing, and looking faded and worn as one of the boulders that
+lay beside the pasture fence near where she sat milking a large white
+cow.
+
+She had no shawl or hat and no shoes, for it was still muddy in the
+little yard, where the cattle stood patiently fighting the flies and
+mosquitoes swarming into their skins, already wet with blood. The
+evening was oppressive with its heat, and a ring of just-seen
+thunderheads gave premonitions of an approaching storm.
+
+She rose from the cow's side at last, and, taking her pails of foaming
+milk, staggered toward the gate. The two pails hung from her lean arms,
+her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico
+dress showed her tired and swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed
+mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair.
+
+The children were quarrelling at the well, and the sound of blows could
+be heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and little
+turkeys, lost in a tangle of grass, were piping plaintively.
+
+The sun just setting struck through a long, low rift, like a boy peeping
+beneath the eaves of a huge roof. Its light brought out Lucretia's face
+as she leaned her sallow forehead on the top bar of the gate and looked
+toward the west.
+
+It was a pitifully worn, almost tragic face--long, thin, sallow,
+hollow-eyed. The mouth had long since lost the power to shape itself
+into a kiss, and had a droop at the corners which seemed to announce a
+breaking-down at any moment into a despairing wail. The collarless neck
+and sharp shoulders showed painfully.
+
+She felt vaguely that the night was beautiful. The setting sun, the
+noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe--all in some way
+called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood
+to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes grew round, deep, and wistful
+as she saw the illimitable craggy clouds grow crimson, roll slowly up,
+and fire at the top. A childish scream recalled her.
+
+"Oh, my soul!" she half groaned, half swore, as she lifted her milk and
+hurried to the well. Arriving there, she cuffed the children right and
+left with all her remaining strength, saying in justification:--
+
+"My soul! can't you--you young'uns, give me a minute's peace? Land
+knows, I'm almost gone up; washin', an' milkin' six cows, and tendin'
+you, and cookin' f'r _him_, ought 'o be enough f'r one day! Sadie, you
+let him drink now 'r I'll slap your head off, you hateful thing! Why
+can't you behave, when you know I'm jest about dead?" She was weeping
+now, with nervous weakness. "Where's y'r pa?" she asked after a moment,
+wiping her eyes with her apron.
+
+One of the group, the one cuffed last, sniffed out, in rage and grief:--
+
+"He's in the corn-field; where'd ye s'pose he was?"
+
+"Good land! why don't the man work all night? Sile, you put that dipper
+in that milk agin, an' I'll whack you till your head'll swim! Sadie, le'
+go Pet, an' go 'n get them turkeys out of the grass 'fore it gits dark!
+Bob, you go tell y'r dad if he wants the rest o' them cows milked he's
+got 'o do it himself. I jest can't, and what's more, I _won't_," she
+ended, rebelliously.
+
+Having strained the milk and fed the children, she took some skimmed
+milk from the cans and started to feed the calves bawling strenuously
+behind the barn. The eager and unruly brutes pushed and struggled to get
+into the pails all at once, and in consequence spilt nearly all of the
+milk on the ground. This was the last trial; the woman fell down on the
+damp grass and moaned and sobbed like a crazed thing. The children came
+to seek her and stood around like little partridges, looking at her in
+scared silence, till at last the little one began to wail. Then the
+mother rose wearily to her feet, and walked slowly back toward the
+house.
+
+She heard Burns threshing his team at the well, with the sound of oaths.
+He was tired, hungry, and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate to
+care. His poor, overworked team did not move quickly enough for him,
+and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyes
+gleamed wrathfully from his dust-laid face.
+
+"Supper ready?" he growled.
+
+"Yes, two hours ago."
+
+"Well, I can't help it!" he said, understanding her reproach. "That
+devilish corn is gettin' too tall to plough again, and I've got 'o go
+through it to-morrow or not at all. Cows milked?"
+
+"Part of 'em."
+
+"How many left?"
+
+"Three."
+
+"Hell! Which three?"
+
+"Spot, and Brin, and Cherry."
+
+"_Of_ course, left the three worst ones. I'll be damned if I milk a cow
+to-night. I don't see why you play out jest the nights I need ye most."
+Here he kicked a child out of the way. "Git out o' that! Hain't you got
+no sense? I'll learn ye--"
+
+"Stop that, Sim Burns," cried the woman, snatching up the child. "You're
+a reg'lar ol' hyeny,--that's what you are," she added defiantly, roused
+at last from her lethargy.
+
+"You're a--beauty, that's what _you_ are," he said, pitilessly. "Keep
+your brats out f'um under my feet." And he strode off to the barn after
+his team, leaving her with a fierce hate in her heart. She heard him
+yelling at his team in their stalls: "Git around there, damn yeh."
+
+The children had had their supper; so she took them to bed. She was
+unusually tender to them, for she wanted to make up in some way for her
+previous harshness. The ferocity of her husband had shown up her own
+petulant temper hideously, and she sat and sobbed in the darkness a long
+time beside the cradle where little Pet slept.
+
+She heard Burns come growling in and tramp about, but she did not rise.
+The supper was on the table; he could wait on himself. There was an
+awful feeling at her heart as she sat there and the house grew quiet.
+She thought of suicide in a vague way; of somehow taking her children in
+her arms and sinking into a lake somewhere, where she would never more
+be troubled, where she could sleep forever, without toil or hunger.
+
+Then she thought of the little turkeys wandering in the grass, of the
+children sleeping at last, of the quiet, wonderful stars. Then she
+thought of the cows left unmilked, and listened to them stirring
+uneasily in the yard. She rose, at last, and stole forth. She could not
+rid herself of the thought that they would suffer. She knew what the
+dull ache in the full breasts of a mother was, and she could not let
+them stand at the bars all night moaning for relief.
+
+The mosquitoes had gone, but the frogs and katydids still sang, while
+over in the west Venus shone. She was a long time milking the cows; her
+hands were so tired she had often to stop and rest them, while the tears
+fell unheeded into the pail. She saw and felt little of the external as
+she sat there. She thought in vague retrospect of how sweet it seemed
+the first time Sim came to see her; of the many rides to town with him
+when he was an accepted lover; of the few things he had given her--a
+coral breastpin and a ring.
+
+She felt no shame at her present miserable appearance; she was past
+personal pride. She hardly felt as if the tall, strong girl, attractive
+with health and hope, could be the same soul as the woman who now sat in
+utter despair listening to the heavy breathing of the happy cows,
+grateful for the relief from their burden of milk.
+
+She contrasted her lot with that of two or three women that she knew
+(not a very high standard), who kept hired help, and who had fine houses
+of four or five rooms. Even the neighbors were better off than she, for
+they didn't have such quarrels. But she wasn't to blame--Sim
+didn't--Then her mind changed to a dull resentment against "things."
+Everything seemed against her.
+
+She rose at last and carried her second load of milk to the well,
+strained it, washed out the pails, and, after bathing her tired feet in
+a tub that stood there, she put on a pair of horrible shoes, without
+stockings, and crept stealthily into the house. Sim did not hear her as
+she slipped up the stairs to the little low unfinished chamber beside
+her oldest children. She could not bear to sleep near _him_ that
+night,--she wanted a chance to sob herself to quiet.
+
+As for Sim, he was a little disturbed, but would as soon have cut off
+his head as acknowledged himself in the wrong. As he went to bed, and
+found her still away, he yelled up the stairway:--
+
+"Say, old woman, ain't ye comin' to bed?" Upon receiving no answer he
+rolled his aching body into the creaking bed. "Do as y' damn please
+about it. If y' want to sulk y' can." And in such wise the family grew
+quiet in sleep, while the moist, warm air pulsed with the ceaseless
+chime of the crickets.
+
+
+II
+
+
+When Sim Burns woke the next morning he felt a sharper twinge of
+remorse. It was not a broad or well-defined feeling--just a sense that
+he had been unduly irritable, not that on the whole he was not in the
+right. Little Pet lay with the warm June sunshine filling his baby eyes,
+curiously content in striking at flies that buzzed around his little
+mouth.
+
+The man thrust his dirty, naked feet into his huge boots, and, without
+washing his face or combing his hair, went out to the barn to do his
+chores.
+
+He was a type of the average prairie farmer, and his whole surrounding
+was typical of the time. He had a quarter-section of fine level land,
+bought with incredible toil, but his house was a little box-like
+structure, costing, perhaps, five hundred dollars. It had three rooms
+and the ever-present summer kitchen at the back. It was unpainted and
+had no touch of beauty,--a mere box.
+
+His stable was built of slabs and banked and covered with straw. It
+looked like a den, was low and long, and had but one door in the end.
+The cow-yard held ten or fifteen cattle of various kinds, while a few
+calves were bawling from a pen near by. Behind the barn, on the west
+and north, was a fringe of willows forming a "wind-break." A few broken
+and discouraged fruit trees, standing here and there among the weeds,
+formed the garden. In short, he was spoken of by his neighbors as "a
+hard-working cuss, and tol'ably well fixed."
+
+No grace had come or ever could come into his life. Back of him were
+generations of men like himself, whose main business had been to work
+hard, live miserably, and beget children to take their places when they
+died.
+
+His courtship had been delayed so long on account of poverty that it
+brought little of humanizing emotion into his life. He never mentioned
+his love-life now, or if he did, it was only to sneer obscenely at it.
+He had long since ceased to kiss his wife or even speak kindly to her.
+There was no longer any sanctity to life or love. He chewed tobacco and
+toiled on from year to year without any very clearly defined idea of the
+future. His life was mainly regulated from without.
+
+He was tall, dark, and strong, in a flat-chested, slouching sort of way,
+and had grown neglectful of even decency in his dress. He wore the
+American farmer's customary outfit of rough brown pants, hickory shirt,
+and greasy wool hat. It differed from his neighbors' mainly in being a
+little dirtier and more ragged. His grimy hands were broad and strong as
+the clutch of a bear, and he was a "terrible feller to turn off work,"
+as Councill said. "I'd ruther have Sim Burns work for me one day than
+some men three. He's a linger." He worked with unusual speed this
+morning, and ended by milking all the cows himself as a sort of savage
+penance for his misdeeds the previous evening, muttering in
+self-defence:--
+
+"Seems 's if ever' cussid thing piles on to me at once. That corn, the
+road-tax, and hayin' comin' on, and now _she_ gits her back up--"
+
+When he went back to the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in the
+horse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready, but his
+wife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around the
+uninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap ware and with boiled
+potatoes and fried salt pork as the principal dishes.
+
+"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a threatening note in his voice, as he
+sat down by the table.
+
+"She's in the bedroom."
+
+He rose and pushed open the door. The mother sat with the babe in her
+lap, looking out of the window down across the superb field of timothy,
+moving like a lake of purple water. She did not look around. She only
+grew rigid. Her thin neck throbbed with the pulsing of blood to her
+head.
+
+"What's got into you _now_?" he said, brutally. "Don't be a fool. Come
+out and eat breakfast with me, an' take care o' y'r young ones."
+
+She neither moved nor made a sound. With an oath he turned on his heel and
+went out to the table. Eating his breakfast in his usual wolfish fashion,
+he went out into the hot sun with his team and riding-plough, not a
+little disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness." He
+ploughed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heat
+and dust. The air was full of tempestuous threats, still and sultry, one
+of those days when work is a punishment. When he came in at noon he
+found things the same--dinner on the table, but his wife out in the
+garden with the youngest child.
+
+"I c'n stand it as long as _she_ can," he said to himself, in the
+hearing of the children, as he pushed back from the table and went back
+to work.
+
+When he had finished the field of corn it was after sundown, and he came
+up to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and his
+neck aching with the work of looking down all day at the corn-rows. His
+mood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of the
+wide, green field had been lost upon him.
+
+"I wonder if she's milked them cows," he muttered to himself. He gave a
+sigh of relief to find she had. But she had done so not for his sake,
+but for the sake of the poor, patient dumb brutes.
+
+When he went to the bedroom after supper, he found that the cradle and
+his wife's few little boxes and parcels--poor, pathetic properties!--had
+been removed to the garret, which they called a chamber, and he knew he
+was to sleep alone again.
+
+"She'll git over it, I guess." He was very tired, but he didn't feel
+quite comfortable enough to sleep. The air was oppressive. His shirt,
+wet in places, and stiff with dust in other places, oppressed him more
+than usual; so he rose and removed it, getting a clean one out of a
+drawer. This was an unusual thing for him, for he usually slept in the
+same shirt which he wore in his day's work; but it was Saturday night,
+and he felt justified in the extravagance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the meanwhile poor Lucretia was brooding over her life in a most
+dangerous fashion. All she had done and suffered for Simeon Burns came
+back to her till she wondered how she had endured it all. All day long
+in the midst of the glorious summer landscape she brooded.
+
+"I hate him," she thought, with a fierce blazing up through the murk of
+her musing. "I hate t' live. But they ain't no hope. I'm tied down. I
+can't leave the children, and I ain't got no money. I couldn't make a
+living out in the world. I ain't never seen anything an' don't know
+anything."
+
+She was too simple and too unknowing to speculate on the loss of her
+beauty, which would have brought her competency once--if sold in the
+right market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenly
+thinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horse
+which Sim had bought once, years before, and put to the plough when it
+was too old and weak to work. She could see her again as in a vision,
+that poor old mare, with sad head drooping, toiling, toiling, till at
+last she could no longer move, and lying down under the harness in the
+furrow, groaned under the whip,--and died.
+
+Then she wondered if her own numbness and despair meant death, and she
+held her breath to think harder upon it. She concluded at last, grimly,
+that she didn't care--only for the children.
+
+The air was frightfully close in the little attic, and she heard the low
+mutter of the rising storm in the west. She forgot her troubles a
+little, listening to the far-off gigantic footsteps of the tempest.
+
+_Boom_, _boom_, _boom_, it broke nearer and nearer, as if a vast cordon
+of cannon was being drawn around the horizon. Yet she was conscious only
+of pleasure. She had no fear. At last came the sweep of cool, fragrant
+storm-wind, a short and sudden dash of rain, and then in the cool, sweet
+hush which followed, the worn and weary woman fell into a deep sleep.
+
+
+III
+
+
+When she woke the younger children were playing about on the floor in
+their night-clothes, and little Pet was sitting in a square of sunshine,
+intent on one of his shoes. He was too young to know how poor and
+squalid his surroundings were,--the patch of sunshine flung on the floor
+glorified it all. He--little animal--was happy.
+
+The poor of the Western prairies lie almost as unhealthily close
+together as do the poor of the city tenements. In the small hut of the
+peasant there is as little chance to escape close and tainting contact
+as in the coops and dens of the North End of proud Boston. In the midst
+of oceans of land, floods of sunshine and gulfs of verdure, the farmer
+lives in two or three small rooms. Poverty's eternal cordon is ever
+round the poor.
+
+"Ma, why didn't you sleep with Pap last night?" asked Bob, the
+seven-year-old, when he saw she was awake at last. She flushed a dull
+red.
+
+"You hush, will yeh? Because--I--it was too warm--and there was a storm
+comin'. You never mind askin' such questions. Is he gone out?"
+
+"Yup. I heerd him callin' the pigs. It's Sunday, ain't it, ma?"
+
+The fact seemed to startle her.
+
+"Why, yes, so it is! Wal! Now, Sadie, you jump up an' dress quick 's y'
+can, an' Bob an' Sile, you run down an' bring s'm' water," she
+commanded, in nervous haste, beginning to dress. In the middle of the
+room there was scarce space to stand beneath the rafters.
+
+When Sim came in for his breakfast he found it on the table, but his
+wife was absent.
+
+"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a little less of the growl in his
+voice.
+
+"She's upstairs with Pet."
+
+The man ate his breakfast in dead silence, till at last Bob ventured to
+say:--
+
+"What makes ma ac' so?"
+
+"Shut up!" was the brutal reply. The children began to take sides with
+the mother--all but the oldest girl, who was ten years old. To her the
+father turned now for certain things to be done, treating her in his
+rough fashion as a housekeeper, and the girl felt flattered and docile
+accordingly.
+
+They were pitiably clad; like many farm-children, indeed, they could
+hardly be said to be clad at all. Sadie had on but two garments, a sort
+of undershirt of cotton and a faded calico dress, out of which her bare,
+yellow little legs protruded, lamentably dirty and covered with
+scratches.
+
+The boys also had two garments, a hickory shirt and a pair of pants like
+their father's, made out of brown denim by the mother's never-resting
+hands--hands that in sleep still sewed, and skimmed, and baked, and
+churned. The boys had gone to bed without washing their feet, which now
+looked like toads, calloused, brown, and chapped.
+
+Part of this the mother saw with her dull eyes as she came down, after
+seeing the departure of Sim up the road with the cows. It was a
+beautiful Sunday morning, and the woman might have sung like a bird if
+men had been as kind to her as Nature. But she looked dully out upon the
+seas of ripe grasses, tangled and flashing with dew, out of which the
+bobolinks and larks sprang. The glorious winds brought her no melody, no
+perfume, no respite from toil and care.
+
+She thought of the children she saw in the town,--children of the
+merchant and banker, clean as little dolls, the boys in knickerbocker
+suits, the girls in dainty white dresses,--and a vengeful bitterness
+sprang up in her heart. She soon put the dishes away, but felt too tired
+and listless to do more.
+
+"Taw-bay-wies! Pet want ta-aw-bay-wies!" cried the little one, tugging
+at her dress.
+
+Listlessly, mechanically she took him in her arms, and went out into the
+garden, which was fragrant and sweet with dew and sun. After picking
+some berries for him, she sat down on the grass under the row of
+cottonwoods, and sank into a kind of lethargy. A kingbird chattered and
+shrieked overhead, the grasshoppers buzzed in the grasses, strange
+insects with ventriloquistic voices sang all about her--she could not
+tell where.
+
+"Ma, can't I put on my clean dress?" insisted Sadie.
+
+"I don't care," said the brooding woman, darkly. "Leave me alone."
+
+Oh, if she could only lie here forever, escaping all pain and weariness!
+The wind sang in her ears; the great clouds, beautiful as heavenly
+ships, floated far above in the vast, dazzling deeps of blue sky; the
+birds rustled and chirped around her; leaping insects buzzed and
+clattered in the grass and in the vines and bushes. The goodness and
+glory of God was in the very air, the bitterness and oppression of man
+in every line of her face.
+
+But her quiet was broken by Sadie, who came leaping like a fawn down
+through the grass.
+
+"Oh, ma, Aunt Maria and Uncle William are coming. They've jest turned
+in."
+
+"I don't care if they be!" she answered in the same dully irritated way.
+"What're they comin' here to-day for, I wan' to know." She stayed there
+immovably, till Mrs. Councill came down to see her, piloted by two or
+three of the children. Mrs. Councill, a jolly, large-framed woman,
+smiled brightly, and greeted her in a loud, jovial voice. She made the
+mistake of taking the whole matter lightly; her tone amounted to
+ridicule.
+
+"Sim says you've been having a tantrum, Creeshy. Don't know what for, he
+says."
+
+"He don't," said the wife, with a sullen flash in her eyes. "_He_ don't
+know why! Well, then, you just tell him what I say. I've lived in hell
+long enough. I'm done. I've slaved here day in and day out f'r twelve
+years without pay,--not even a decent word. I've worked like no nigger
+ever worked 'r could work and live. I've given him all I had, 'r ever
+expect to have. I'm wore out. My strength is gone, my patience is gone.
+I'm done with it,--that's a _part_ of what's the matter."
+
+"My sakes, Lucreeshy! You mustn't talk that way."
+
+"But I _will_" said the woman, as she supported herself on one palm and
+raised the other. "I've _got_ to talk that way." She was ripe for an
+explosion like this. She seized upon it with eagerness. "They ain't no
+use o' livin' this way, anyway. I'd take poison if it wa'n't f'r the
+young ones."
+
+"Lucreeshy Burns!"
+
+"Oh, I mean it."
+
+"Land sakes alive, I b'lieve you're goin' crazy!"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if I was. I've had enough t' drive an Indian crazy.
+Now you jest go off an' leave me 'lone. I ain't no mind to visit,--they
+ain't no way out of it' and I'm tired o' trying to _find_ a way. Go off
+an' let me be."
+
+Her tone was so bitterly hopeless that the great, jolly face of Mrs.
+Councill stiffened into a look of horror such as she had not known for
+years. The children, in two separate groups, could be heard rioting.
+Bees were humming around the clover in the grass, and the kingbird
+chattered ceaselessly from the Lombardy poplar tip. Both women felt all
+this peace and beauty of the morning dimly, and it disturbed Mrs.
+Councill because the other was so impassive under it all. At last, after
+a long and thoughtful pause, Mrs. Councill asked a question whose answer
+she knew would decide it all--asked it very kindly and softly:--
+
+"Creeshy, are you comin' in?"
+
+"No," was the short and sullenly decisive answer. Mrs. Councill knew
+that was the end, and so rose with a sigh, and went away.
+
+"Wal, good-by," she said, simply.
+
+Looking back, she saw Lucretia lying at length, with closed eyes and
+hollow cheeks. She seemed to be sleeping, half buried in the grass. She
+did not look up nor reply to her sister-in-law, whose life was one of
+toil and trouble also, but not so hard and helpless as Lucretia's. By
+contrast with most of her neighbors, she seemed comfortable.
+
+"Sim Burns, what you ben doin' to that woman?" she burst out, as she
+waddled up to where the two men were sitting under a cottonwood tree,
+talking and whittling after the manner of farmers.
+
+"Nawthin' 's fur 's I know," answered Burns, not quite honestly, and
+looking uneasy.
+
+"You needn't try t' git out of it like that, Sim Burns," replied his
+sister. "That woman never got into that fit f'r _nawthin_'."
+
+"Wal, if you know more about it than I do, whadgy ask _me_ fur?" he
+replied, angrily.
+
+"Tut, tut!" put in Councill, "hold y'r horses! Don't git on y'r ear,
+children! Keep cool, and don't spile y'r shirts. Most likely you're all
+t' blame. Keep cool an' swear less."
+
+"Wal, I'll bet Sim's more to blame than she is. Why, they ain't a
+harder-workin' woman in the hull State of Ioway than she is--"
+
+"Except Marm Councill."
+
+"Except nobody. Look at her, jest skin and bones."
+
+Councill chuckled in his vast way. "That's so, mother; measured in that
+way, she leads over you. You git fat on it."
+
+She smiled a little, her indignation oozing away. She never "_could_
+stay mad," her children were accustomed to tell her. Burns refused to
+talk any more about the matter, and the visitors gave it up, and got out
+their team and started for home, Mrs. Councill firing this parting
+shot:--
+
+"The best thing you can do to-day is t' let her alone. Mebbe the
+children 'll bring her round ag'in. If she does come round, you see 't
+you treat her a little more 's y' did when you was a-courtin' her."
+
+"This way," roared Councill, putting his arm around his wife's waist.
+She boxed his ears, while he guffawed and clucked at his team.
+
+Burns took a measure of salt and went out into the pasture to salt the
+cows. On the sunlit slope of the field, where the cattle came running
+and bawling to meet him, he threw down the salt in handfuls, and then
+lay down to watch them as they eagerly licked it up, even gnawing a bare
+spot in the sod in their eagerness to get it all.
+
+Burns was not a drinking man; he was hard-working, frugal; in fact, he
+had no extravagances except his tobacco. His clothes he wore until they
+all but dropped from him; and he worked in rain and mud, as well as dust
+and sun. It was this suffering and toiling all to no purpose that made
+him sour and irritable. He didn't see why he should have so little after
+so much hard work.
+
+He was puzzled to account for it all. His mind--the average mind--was
+weary with trying to solve an insoluble problem. His neighbors, who had
+got along a little better than himself, were free with advice and
+suggestion as to the cause of his persistent poverty.
+
+Old man Bacon, the hardest-working man in the county, laid it to Burns's
+lack of management. Jim Butler, who owned a dozen farms (which he had
+taken on mortgages), and who had got rich by buying land at government
+price and holding for a rise, laid all such cases as Burns's to "lack of
+enterprise, foresight."
+
+But the larger number, feeling themselves in the same boat with Burns,
+said:--
+
+"I d' know. Seems as if things get worse an' worse. Corn an' wheat
+gittin' cheaper 'n' cheaper. Machinery eatin' up profits--got to _have_
+machinery to harvest the cheap grain, an' then the machinery eats up
+profits. Taxes goin' up. Devil to pay all round; I d' know what in
+thunder _is_ the matter."
+
+The Democrats said protection was killing the farmers; the Republicans
+said no. The Grangers growled about the middle-men; the Greenbackers
+said there wasn't circulating medium enough, and, in the midst of it
+all, hard-working, discouraged farmers, like Simeon Burns, worked on,
+unable to find out what really was the matter.
+
+And there, on this beautiful Sabbath morning, Sim sat and thought and
+thought, till he rose with an oath and gave it up.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+It was hot and brilliant again the next morning as Douglas Radbourn
+drove up the road with Lily Graham, the teacher of the school in the
+little white schoolhouse. It was blazing hot, even though not yet nine
+o'clock, and the young farmers ploughing beside the fence looked
+longingly and somewhat bitterly at Radbourn seated in a fine top-buggy
+beside a beautiful creature in lace and cambric.
+
+Very beautiful the town-bred "schoolma'am" looked to those grimy, sweaty
+fellows, superb fellows too, physically, with bare red arms and
+leather-colored faces. She was as if builded of the pink and white
+clouds soaring far up there in the morning sky. So cool, and sweet, and
+dainty.
+
+As she came in sight, their dusty and sweaty shirts grew biting as the
+poisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grew
+distressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chapped
+and swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility of
+some time in the far future standing a chance of having an introduction
+to her, caused them to wipe their palms on their trousers' legs
+stealthily.
+
+Lycurgus Banks swore when he saw Radbourn: "That cuss thinks he's ol'
+hell this morning. He don't earn his living. But he's just the kind of
+cuss to get holt of all the purty girls."
+
+Others gazed with simple, sad wistfulness upon the slender figure, pale,
+sweet face, and dark eyes of the young girl, feeling that to have talk
+with such a fairylike creature was a happiness too great to ever be
+their lot. And when she had passed they went back to work with a sigh
+and feeling of loss.
+
+As for Lily, she felt a pang of pity for these people. She looked at
+this peculiar form of poverty and hardship much as the fragile, tender
+girl of the city looks upon the men laying a gas-main in the streets.
+She felt, sympathetically, the heat and grime, and, though but the
+faintest idea of what it meant to wear such clothing came to her, she
+shuddered. Her eyes had been opened to these things by Radbourn, a
+classmate at the Seminary.
+
+The young fellow knew that Lily was in love with him, and made distinct
+effort to keep the talk upon impersonal subjects. He liked her very
+much, probably because she listened so well.
+
+"Poor fellows," sighed Lily, almost unconsciously, "I hate to see them
+working there in the dirt and hot sun. It seems a hopeless sort of life,
+doesn't it?"
+
+"Oh, but this is the most beautiful part of the year," said Radbourn.
+"Think of them in the mud, in the sleet; think of them husking corn in
+the snow, a bitter wind blowing; think of them a month later in the
+harvest; think of them imprisoned here in winter!"
+
+"Yes, it's dreadful! But I never felt it so keenly before. You have
+opened my eyes to it. Of course, I've been on a farm but not to live
+there."
+
+"Writers and orators have lied so long about 'the idyllic' in farm life,
+and said so much about the 'independent American farmer,' that he
+himself has remained blind to the fact that he's one of the
+hardest-working and poorest-paid men in America. See the houses they
+live in,--hovels."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," said Lily; a look of deeper pain swept over her
+face. "And the fate of the poor women; oh, the fate of the women!"
+
+"Yes, it's a matter of statistics," went on Radbourn, pitilessly, "that
+the wives of the American farmers fill our insane asylums. See what a
+life they lead, most of them; no music, no books. Seventeen hours a day
+in a couple of small rooms--dens. Now there is Sim Burns! What a
+travesty of a home! Yet there are a dozen just as bad in sight. He works
+like a fiend--so does his wife--and what is their reward? Simply a hole
+to hibernate in and to sleep and eat in in summer. A dreary present and
+a well-nigh hopeless future. No, they have a future, if they knew it,
+and we must tell them."
+
+"I know Mrs. Burns," Lily said, after a pause; "she sends several
+children to my school. Poor, pathetic little things, half-clad and
+wistful-eyed. They make my heart ache; they are so hungry for love, and
+so quick to learn."
+
+As they passed the Burns farm, they looked for the wife, but she was not
+to be seen. The children had evidently gone up to the little white
+schoolhouse at the head of the lane. Radbourn let the reins fall slack
+as he talked on. He did not look at the girl; his eyebrows were drawn
+into a look of gloomy pain.
+
+"It isn't so much the grime that I abhor, nor the labor that crooks
+their backs and makes their hands bludgeons. It's the horrible waste of
+life involved in it all. I don't believe God intended a man to be bent
+to plough-handles like that, but that isn't the worst of it. The worst
+of it is, these people live lives approaching automata. They become
+machines to serve others more lucky or more unscrupulous than
+themselves. What is the world of art, of music, of literature, to these
+poor devils,--to Sim Burns and his wife there, for example? Or even to
+the best of these farmers?"
+
+The girl looked away over the shimmering lake of yellow-green corn. A
+choking came into her throat. Her gloved hand trembled.
+
+"What is such a life worth? It's all very comfortable for us to say,
+'They don't feel it.' How do we know what they feel? What do we know of
+their capacity for enjoyment of art and music? They never have leisure
+or opportunity. The master is very glad to be taught by preacher, and
+lawyer, and novelist, that his slaves are contented and never feel any
+longings for a higher life. These people live lives but little higher
+than their cattle--are _forced_ to live so. Their hopes and aspirations
+are crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toil
+twists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the city
+laborer. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught to
+be content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there isn't
+any hereafter?"
+
+"Oh, don't say that, please!" Lily cried.
+
+"But I don't _know_ that there is," he went on remorselessly, "and I do
+know that these people are being robbed of something more than money, of
+all that makes life worth living. The promise of milk and honey in
+Canaan is all very well, but I prefer to have mine here; then I'm sure
+of it."
+
+"What can we do?" murmured the girl.
+
+"Do? Rouse these people for one thing; preach _discontent_, a noble
+discontent."
+
+"It will only make them unhappy."
+
+"No, it won't; not if you show them the way out. If it does, it's better
+to be unhappy striving for higher things, like a man, than to be content
+in a wallow like swine."
+
+"But what _is_ the way out?"
+
+This was sufficient to set Radbourn upon his hobbyhorse. He outlined his
+plan of action: the abolition of all indirect taxes, the State control
+of all privileges the private ownership of which interfered with the
+equal rights of all. He would utterly destroy speculative holdings of
+the earth. He would have land everywhere brought to its best use, by
+appropriating all ground rents to the use of the state, etc., etc., to
+which the girl listened with eager interest, but with only partial
+comprehension.
+
+As they neared the little schoolhouse, a swarm of midgets in pink
+dresses, pink sun-bonnets, and brown legs, came rushing to meet their
+teacher, with that peculiar devotion the children in the country develop
+for a refined teacher.
+
+Radbourn helped Lily out into the midst of the eager little scholars,
+who swarmed upon her like bees on a lump of sugar, till even Radbourn's
+gravity gave way, and he smiled into her lifted eyes,--an unusual smile,
+that strangely enough stopped the smile on her own lips, filling her
+face with a wistful shadow, and her breath came hard for a moment, and
+she trembled.
+
+She loved that cold, stern face, oh, so much! and to have him smile was
+a pleasure that made her heart leap till she suffered a smothering pain.
+She turned to him to say:--
+
+"I am very thankful, Mr. Radbourn, for another pleasant ride," adding in
+a lower tone, "it was a very great pleasure; you always give me so much.
+I feel stronger and more hopeful."
+
+"I'm glad you feel so. I was afraid I was prosy with my land doctrine."
+
+"Oh, no! Indeed no! You have given me a new hope; I am exalted with the
+thought; I shall try to think it all out and apply it."
+
+And so they parted, the children looking on and slyly whispering among
+themselves. Radbourn looked back after a while, but the bare white hive
+had absorbed its little group, and was standing bleak as a tombstone and
+hot as a furnace on the naked plain in the blazing sun.
+
+"America's pitiful boast!" said the young radical, looking back at it.
+"Only a miserable hint of what it might be."
+
+All that forenoon, as Lily faced her noisy group of barefooted children,
+she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for these
+poor, supine farmers, hopeless and in some cases content in their narrow
+lives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came to
+them as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,--whose very voice
+and intonation awed them.
+
+They noted, unconsciously of course, every detail. Snowy linen, touches
+of soft color, graceful lines of bust and side, the slender fingers that
+could almost speak, so beautifully flexile were they. Lily herself
+sometimes, when she shook the calloused, knotted, stiffened hands of the
+women, shuddered with sympathetic pain to think that the crowning wonder
+and beauty of God's world should be so maimed and distorted from its
+true purpose.
+
+Even in the children before her she could see the inherited results of
+fruitless labor, and, more pitiful yet, in the bent shoulders of the
+older ones she could see the beginnings of deformity that would soon be
+permanent; and as these thoughts came to her, she clasped the wondering
+children to her side, with a convulsive wish to make life a little
+brighter for them.
+
+"How is your mother to-day?" she asked of Sadie Burns, as she was eating
+her luncheon on the drab-colored table near the open window.
+
+"Purty well," said Sadie, in a hesitating way.
+
+Lily was looking out, and listening to the gophers whistling as they
+raced to and fro. She could see Bob Burns lying at length on the grass
+in the pasture over the fence, his heels waving in the air, his hands
+holding a string which formed a snare. It was like fishing to young
+Izaak Walton.
+
+It was very still and hot, and the cheep and trill of the gophers and
+the chatter of the kingbirds alone broke the silence. A cloud of
+butterflies were fluttering about a pool near; a couple of big flies
+buzzed and mumbled on the pane.
+
+"What ails your mother?" Lily asked, recovering herself and looking at
+Sadie, who was distinctly ill at ease.
+
+"Oh, I dunno," Sadie replied, putting one bare foot across the other.
+
+Lily insisted.
+
+"She 'n' pa's had an awful row--"
+
+"Sadie!" said the teacher, warningly, "what language!"
+
+"I mean they quarrelled, an' she don't speak to him any more."
+
+"Why, how dreadful!"
+
+"An' pa, he's awful cross; and she won't eat when he does, an' I haf to
+wait on table."
+
+"I believe I'll go down and see her this noon," said Lily to herself, as
+she divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.
+
+
+V
+
+
+Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him.
+He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task, and was just about
+ready to go when Lily spoke to him.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. It
+must be time to go to dinner,--aren't you ready to go? I want to talk
+with you."
+
+Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking down
+the road with the schoolma'am, but there was something in her look which
+seemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and, besides, he
+was not in good humor.
+
+"Yes, in a minnit--soon's I fix up this hole. Them shotes, I b'lieve,
+would go through a keyhole, if they could once get their snoots in."
+
+He expanded on this idea as he nailed away, anxious to gain time. He
+foresaw trouble for himself. He couldn't be rude to this sweet and
+fragile girl. If a _man_ had dared to attack him on his domestic
+shortcomings, he could have fought. The girl stood waiting for him, her
+large, steady eyes full of thought, gazing down at him from the shadow
+of her broad-brimmed hat.
+
+"The world is so full of misery anyway, that we ought to do the best we
+can to make it less," she said at last, in a musing tone, as if her
+thoughts had unconsciously taken on speech. She had always appealed to
+him strongly, and never more so than in this softly uttered
+abstraction--that it was an abstraction added to its power with him.
+
+He could find no words for reply, but picked up his hammer and nail-box,
+and slouched along the road by her side, listening without a word to her
+talk.
+
+"Christ was patient, and bore with his enemies. Surely we ought to bear
+with our--friends," she went on, adapting her steps to his. He took off
+his torn straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, being much
+embarrassed and ashamed. Not knowing how to meet such argument, he kept
+silent.
+
+"How _is_ Mrs. Burns!" said Lily at length, determined to make him
+speak. The delicate meaning in the emphasis laid on _is_ did not escape
+him.
+
+"Oh, she's all right--I mean she's done her work jest the same as ever.
+I don't see her much--"
+
+"I didn't know--I was afraid she was sick. Sadie said she was acting
+strangely."
+
+"No, she's well enough--but--"
+
+"But what is the trouble? Won't you let me help you, _won't_ you?" she
+pleaded.
+
+"Can't anybody help us. We've got 'o fight it out, I s'pose," he
+replied, a gloomy note of resentment creeping into his voice. "She's
+ben in a devil of a temper f'r a week."
+
+"Haven't you been in the same kind of a temper too?" demanded Lily,
+firmly but kindly. "I think most troubles of this kind come from bad
+temper on both sides. Don't you? Have you done your share at being kind
+and patient?"
+
+They had reached the gate now, and she laid her hand on his arm to stop
+him. He looked down at the slender gloved hand on his arm, feeling as if
+a giant had grasped him; then he raised his eyes to her face, flushing a
+purplish red as he remembered his grossness. It seemed monstrous in the
+presence of this girl-advocate. Her face was like silver; her eyes
+seemed pools of tears.
+
+"I don't s'pose I have," he said at last, pushing by her. He could not
+have faced her glance another moment. His whole air conveyed the
+impression of destructive admission. Lily did not comprehend the extent
+of her advantage or she would have pursued it further. As it was she
+felt a little hurt as she entered the house. The table was set, but Mrs.
+Burns was nowhere to be seen. Calling her softly, the young girl passed
+through the shabby little living-room to the oven-like bedroom which
+opened off it, but no one was about. She stood for a moment shuddering
+at the wretchedness of the room.
+
+Going back to the kitchen, she found Sim about beginning on his dinner.
+Little Pet was with him; the rest of the children were at the
+schoolhouse.
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"I d' know. Out in the garden, I expect. She don't eat with me now. I
+never see her. She don't come near _me_. I ain't seen her since
+Saturday."
+
+Lily was shocked inexpressibly and began to see more clearly the
+magnitude of the task she had set herself to do. But it must be done;
+she felt that a tragedy was not far off. It must be averted.
+
+"Mr. Burns, what have you done? What _have_ you done?" she asked in
+terror and horror.
+
+"Don't lay it all to _me_! She hain't done nawthin' but complain f'r ten
+years. I couldn't do nothin' to suit her. She was always naggin' me."
+
+"I don't think Lucretia Burns would nag anybody. I don't say you're
+_all_ to blame, but I'm afraid you haven't acknowledged you were _any_
+to blame. I'm afraid you've not been patient with her. I'm going out to
+bring her in. If she comes, will you _say_ you were _part_ to blame? You
+needn't beg her pardon--just say you'll try to be better. Will you do
+it? Think how much she has done for you! Will you?"
+
+He remained silent, and looked discouragingly rude. His sweaty, dirty
+shirt was open at the neck, his arms were bare, his scraggly teeth were
+yellow with tobacco, and his uncombed hair lay tumbled about on his
+high, narrow head. His clumsy, unsteady hands played with the dishes on
+the table. His pride was struggling with his sense of justice; he knew
+he ought to consent, and yet it was so hard to acknowledge himself to
+blame. The girl went on in a voice piercingly sweet, trembling with pity
+and pleading.
+
+"What word can I carry to her from you? I'm going to go and see her. If
+I could take a word from _you_, I know she would come back to the table.
+Shall I tell her you feel to blame?"
+
+The answer was a long time coming; at last the man nodded an assent, the
+sweat pouring from his purple face. She had set him thinking; her
+victory was sure.
+
+Lily almost ran out into the garden and to the strawberry patch, where
+she found Lucretia in her familiar, colorless, shapeless dress, picking
+berries in the hot sun, the mosquitoes biting her neck and hands.
+
+"Poor, pathetic, dumb sufferer!" the girl thought as she ran up to her.
+
+She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into the
+tender, pitying face. Not a word was spoken, but something she saw there
+made her eyes fill with tears, and her throat swell. It was pure
+sympathy. She put her arms around the girl's neck and sobbed for the
+first time since Friday night. Then they sat down on the grass under the
+hedge, and she told her story, interspersed with Lily's horrified
+comments.
+
+When it was all told, the girl still sat listening. She heard Radbourn's
+calm, slow voice again. It helped her not to hate Burns; it helped her
+to pity and understand him.
+
+"You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes him
+callous, selfish, unfeeling, necessarily. A fine nature must either
+adapt itself to its hard surroundings or die. Men who toil terribly in
+filthy garments day after day and year after year cannot easily keep
+gentle; the frost and grime, the heat and cold, will soon or late enter
+into their souls. The case is not all in favor of the suffering wives
+and against the brutal husbands. If the farmer's wife is dulled and
+crazed by her routine, the farmer himself is degraded and brutalized."
+
+As well as she could Lily explained all this to the woman, who lay with
+her face buried in the girl's lap. Lily's arms were about her thin
+shoulders in an agony of pity.
+
+"It's hard, Lucretia, I know,--more than you can bear,--but you mustn't
+forget what Sim endures too. He goes out in the storms and in the heat
+and dust. His boots are hard, and see how his hands are all bruised and
+broken by his work! He was tired and hungry when he said that--he didn't
+really mean it."
+
+The wife remained silent.
+
+"Mr. Radbourn says work, as things go now, _does_ degrade a man in spite
+of himself. He says men get coarse and violent in spite of themselves,
+just as women do when everything goes wrong in the house,--when the
+flies are thick, and the fire won't burn, and the irons stick to the
+clothes. You see, you both suffer. Don't lay up this fit of temper
+against Sim--will you?"
+
+The wife lifted her head and looked away. Her face was full of hopeless
+weariness.
+
+"It ain't this once. It ain't that 't all. It's having no let-up. Just
+goin' the same thing right over 'n' over--no hope of anything better."
+
+"If you had hope of another world--"
+
+"Don't talk that. I don't want that kind o' comfert. I want a decent
+chance here. I want 'o rest an' be happy _now_." Lily's big eyes were
+streaming with tears. What should she say to the desperate woman?
+"What's the use? We might jest as well die--all of us."
+
+The woman's livid face appalled the girl. She was gaunt, heavy-eyed,
+nerveless. Her faded dress settled down over her limbs, showing the
+swollen knees and thin calves; her hands, with distorted joints,
+protruded painfully from her sleeves. All about her was the ever
+recurring wealth and cheer of nature that knows no favor,--the bees and
+flies buzzing in the sun, the jay and the kingbird in the poplars, the
+smell of strawberries, the motion of lush grass, the shimmer of
+corn-blades tossed gayly as banners in a conquering army.
+
+Like a flash of keener light, a sentence shot across the girl's mind:
+"Nature knows no title-deed. The bounty of her mighty hands falls as the
+sunlight falls, copious, impartial; her seas carry all ships; her air is
+for all lips, her lands for all feet."
+
+"Poverty and suffering such as yours will not last." There was something
+in the girl's voice that roused the woman. She turned her dull eyes upon
+the youthful face.
+
+Lily took her hand in both hers as if by a caress she could impart her
+own faith.
+
+"Look up, dear. When nature is so good and generous, man must come to be
+better, surely. Come, go in the house again. Sim is there; he expects
+you; he told me to tell you he was sorry." Lucretia's face twitched a
+little at that, but her head was bent. "Come; you can't live this way.
+There isn't any other place to go to."
+
+No, that was the bitterest truth. Where on this wide earth, with its
+forth-shooting fruits and grains, its fragrant lands and shining seas,
+could this dwarfed, bent, broken, middle-aged woman go? Nobody wanted
+her, nobody cared for her. But the wind kissed her drawn lips as readily
+as those of the girl, and the blooms of clover nodded to her as if to a
+queen.
+
+Lily had said all she could. Her heart ached with unspeakable pity and a
+sort of terror.
+
+"Don't give up, Lucretia. This may be the worst hour of your life. Live
+and bear with it all for Christ's sake,--for your children's sake. Sim
+told me to tell you he was to blame. If you will only see that you are
+both to blame and yet neither to blame, then you can rise above it. Try,
+dear!"
+
+Something that was in the girl imparted itself to the wife,
+electrically. She pulled herself together, rose silently, and started
+toward the house. Her face was rigid, but no longer sullen. Lily
+followed her slowly, wonderingly.
+
+As she neared the kitchen door, she saw Sim still sitting at the table;
+his face was unusually grave and soft. She saw him start and shove back
+his chair, saw Lucretia go to the stove and lift the tea-pot, and heard
+her say, as she took her seat beside the baby:--
+
+"Want some more tea?"
+
+She had become a wife and mother again, but in what spirit the puzzled
+girl could not say.
+
+
+
+
+DADDY DEERING
+
+I
+
+
+They were threshing on Farmer Jennings's place when Daddy made his very
+characteristic appearance. Milton, a boy of thirteen, was gloomily
+holding sacks for the measurer, and the glory of the October day was
+dimmed by the suffocating dust, and poisoned by the smarting beards and
+chaff which had worked their way down his neck. The bitterness of the
+dreaded task was deepened also by contrast with the gambols of his
+cousin Billy, who was hunting rats with Growler amid the last sheaves of
+the stack bottom. The piercing shrieks of Billy, as he clapped his hands
+in murderous glee, mingled now and again with the barking of the dog.
+
+The machine seemed to fill the world with its snarling boom, which
+became a deafening yell when the cylinder ran empty for a moment. It was
+nearly noon, and the men were working silently, with occasional glances
+toward the sun to see how near dinner-time it was. The horses, dripping
+with sweat, and with patches of foam under their harness, moved round
+and round steadily to the cheery whistle of the driver.
+
+The wild, imperious song of the bell-metal cog-wheel had sung into
+Milton's ears till it had become a torture, and every time he lifted his
+eyes to the beautiful far-off sky, where the clouds floated like ships,
+a lump of rebellious anger rose in his throat. Why should he work in
+this choking dust and deafening noise while the hawks could sail and
+sweep from hill to hill with nothing to do but play?
+
+Occasionally his uncle, the feeder, smiled down upon him, his face black
+as a negro, great goggles of glass and wire-cloth covering his merry
+eyes. His great good-nature shone out in the flash of his white teeth,
+behind his dusky beard, and he tried to encourage Milton with his smile.
+He seemed tireless to the other hands. He was so big and strong. He had
+always been Milton's boyish hero. So Milton crowded back the tears that
+came into his eyes, and would not let his uncle see how childish he was.
+
+A spectator riding along the road would have remarked upon the lovely
+setting for this picturesque scene--the low swells of prairie, shrouded
+with faint, misty light from the unclouded sky, the flaming colors of
+the trees, the faint sound of cow-bells, and the cheery sound of the
+machine. But to be a tourist and to be a toiler in a scene like this are
+quite different things.
+
+They were anxious to finish the setting by noon, and so the feeder was
+crowding the cylinder to its limit, rolling the grain in with slow and
+apparently effortless swaying from side to side, half buried in the
+loose yellow straw. But about eleven o'clock the machine came to a
+stand, to wait while a broken tooth was being replaced, and Milton fled
+from the terrible dust beside the measuring spout, and was shaking the
+chaff out of his clothing, when he heard a high, snappy, nasal voice
+call down from the straw-pile. A tall man, with a face completely masked
+in dust, was speaking to Mr. Jennings:--
+
+"Say, young man, I guess you'll haf to send another man up here. It's
+poorty stiff work f'r two; yes, sir, poorty stiff."
+
+"There, there! I thought you'd cry 'cavy,'" laughed Mr. Jennings. "I
+told you it wasn't the place for an old man."
+
+"Old man," snarled the figure in the straw. "I ain't so old but I can
+daown you, sir,--yessir, condemmit, yessir!"
+
+"I'm your man," replied Jennings, smiling up at him.
+
+The man rolled down the side of the stack, disappearing in a cloud of
+dust and chaff. When he came to light, Milton saw a tall, gaunt old man
+of sixty years of age, or older. Nothing could be seen but a dusty
+expanse of face, ragged beard, and twinkling, sharp little eyes. His
+color was lost, his eyes half hid. Without waiting for ceremony, the men
+clenched. The crowd roared with laughter, for though Jennings was the
+younger, the older man was a giant still, and the struggle lasted for
+some time. He made a gallant fight, but his breath gave out, and he lay
+at last flat on his back.
+
+"I wish I was your age, young man," he said ruefully, as he rose. "I'd
+knock the heads o' these young scamps t'gether,--yessir!--I could do it,
+too!"
+
+"Talk's a good dog, uncle," said a young man.
+
+The old man turned on him so ferociously that he fled.
+
+"Run, condemn yeh! I own y' can beat me at that."
+
+His face was not unpleasant, though his teeth were mainly gone, and his
+skin the color of leather and wrinkled as a pan of cream. His eyes had a
+certain sparkle of fun that belied his rasping voice, which seemed to
+have the power to lift a boy clean off his feet. His frame was bent and
+thin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory. At
+some far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, but
+toil had bent and stiffened him.
+
+"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" he said, in his rapid,
+rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner.
+"And, by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man,
+sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the state; no, sir; no,
+sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's
+pay--that's all, sir!"
+
+Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man up
+there this afternoon."
+
+The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty
+places, and his endurance was marvellous. He could stand all day at the
+tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent
+air, as if it were all mere play.
+
+He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier
+and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity
+that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with
+that most hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks. To a twelve-year-old
+boy it seems to be the worst job in the world.
+
+All day, while the hawks wheel and dip in the glorious air, and the
+trees glow like banks of roses; all day, while the younger boys are
+tumbling about the sunlit straw, to be forced to stand holding sacks,
+like a convict, was maddening. Daddy, whose rugged features, bent
+shoulders, and ragged cap loomed through the suffocating, blinding dust,
+necessarily came to seem like the jailer who held the door to freedom.
+
+And when the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to
+bear, the old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl of
+the cylinder.
+
+"Nem mind, sonny! Chaff ain't pizen; dust won't hurt ye a mite." And
+when Milton was unable to laugh, the old man tweaked his ear with his
+leathery thumb and finger.
+
+Then he shouted long, disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make
+neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him,
+just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell
+to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent
+a good deal of time trying to discover which were the original sections
+of the coat, and especially of the vest, which was ragged and yellow
+with age, with the cotton batting working out; and yet Daddy took the
+greatest care of it, folding it carefully and putting it away during the
+heat of the day out of reach of the crickets.
+
+One of his peculiarities, as Mrs. Jennings learned on the second day,
+was his habit of coming to breakfast. But he always earned all he got,
+and more too; and, as it was probable that his living at home was
+frugal, Mrs. Jennings smiled at his thrift, and quietly gave him his
+breakfast if he arrived late, which was not often.
+
+He had bought a little farm not far away, and settled down into a mode
+of life which he never afterward changed. As he was leaving at the end
+of the third day, he said:--
+
+"Now, sir, if you want any bootcherin' done, I'm y'r man. I don't turn
+m' hand over f'r any man in the state; no, sir! I c'n git a hawg on the
+gambrils jest a leetle quicker'n any other man I ever see; yes, sir; by
+gum!"
+
+"All right, uncle; I'll send for you when I'm ready to kill."
+
+
+II
+
+
+Hog-killing was one of the events of a boy's life on a Western farm, and
+Daddy was destined to be associated in the minds of Shep and Milton with
+another disagreeable job, that of building the fire and carrying water.
+
+It was very early on a keen, biting morning in November when Daddy came
+driving into the yard with his rude, long-runnered sled, one horse half
+his length behind the other in spite of the driver's clucking. He was
+delighted to catch the boys behind in the preparation.
+
+"A-a-h-h-r-r-h-h!" he rasped out, "you lazy vagabon's? Why ain't you got
+that fire blazin'? What the devil do y' mean, you rascals! Here it is
+broad daylight, and that fire not built. I vum, sir, you need a
+thrashin', the whole kit an bilun' of ye; yessir! Come, come, come!
+hustle now, stir your boots! hustle y'r boots--ha! ha! ha!"
+
+It was of no use to plead cold weather and damp chips.
+
+"What has that got to do with it, sir? I vum, sir, when I was your age,
+I could make a fire of green red-oak; yessir! Don't talk to me of colds!
+Stir your stumps and get warm, sir!"
+
+The old man put up his horses (and fed them generously with oats), and
+then went to the house to ask for "a leetle something hot--mince pie or
+sassidge." His request was very modest, but, as a matter of fact, he sat
+down and ate a very hearty breakfast, while the boys worked away at the
+fire under the big kettle.
+
+The hired man, under Daddy's direction, drew the bob-sleighs into
+position on the sunny side of the corn-crib, and arranged the barrel at
+the proper slant, while the old man ground his knives, Milton turning
+the grindstone--another hateful task, which Daddy's stories could not
+alleviate.
+
+Daddy never finished a story. If he started in to tell about a horse
+trade, it infallibly reminded him of a cattle trade, and talking of
+cattle switched him off upon logging, and logging reminded him of some
+heavy snow-storm he had known. Each parenthesis outgrew its proper
+limits, till he forgot what should have been the main story. His stories
+had some compensation, for when he stopped to try to recollect where he
+was, the pressure on the grindstone was released.
+
+At last the water was hot, and the time came to seize the hogs. This was
+the old man's great moment. He stood in the pen and shrieked with
+laughter while the hired men went rolling, one after the other, upon the
+ground, or were bruised against the fence by the rush of the burly
+swine.
+
+"You're a fine lot," he laughed. "Now, then, sir, _grab 'im_! Why don't
+ye nail 'im? I vum, sir, if I couldn't do better'n that, sir, I'd sell
+out; I would, sir, by gol! Get out o' the way!"
+
+With a lofty scorn he waved aside all help and stalked like a gladiator
+toward the pigs huddled in one corner of the pen. And when the selected
+victim was rushing by him, his long arm and great bony hand swept out,
+caught him by the ear, and flung him upon his side, squealing with
+deafening shrillness. But in spite of his smiling concealment of effort,
+Daddy had to lean against the fence and catch his breath even while he
+boasted:--
+
+"I'm an old codger, sir, but I'm worth--a dozen o' you--spindle-legged
+chaps; dum me if I ain't, sir!"
+
+His pride in his ability to catch and properly kill a hog was as genuine
+as the old knight-errant's pride in his ability to stick a knife into
+another steel-clothed brigand like himself. When the slain shote was
+swung upon the planking on the sled before the barrel, Daddy rested,
+while the boys filled the barrel with water from the kettle.
+
+There was always a weird charm about this stage of the work to the boys.
+The sun shone warm and bright in the lee of the corn-crib; the steam
+rose up, white and voluminous, from the barrel; the eaves dropped
+steadily; the hens ventured near, nervously, but full of curiosity,
+while the men laughed and joked with Daddy, starting him off on long
+stories, and winking at each other when his back was turned.
+
+At last he mounted his planking, selecting Mr. Jennings to pull upon the
+other handle of the hog-hook. He considered he conferred a distinct
+honor in this selection.
+
+"The time's been, sir, when I wouldn't thank any man for his help. No,
+sir, wouldn't thank 'im."
+
+"What do you do with these things?" asked one of the men, kicking two
+iron candlesticks which the old man laid conveniently near.
+
+"Scrape a hawg with them, sir. What do y' s'pose, you numskull?"
+
+"Well, I never saw anything--"
+
+"You'll have a chance mighty quick, sir. Grab ahold, sir! Swing 'im
+around--there! Now easy, easy! Now then, one, two; one, two--that's
+right."
+
+While he dipped the porker in the water, pulling with his companion
+rhythmically upon the hook, he talked incessantly, mixing up scraps of
+stories and boastings of what he could do, with commands of what he
+wanted the other man to do.
+
+"The best man I ever worked with. _Now turn 'im, turn 'im!_" he yelled,
+reaching over Jennings's wrist. "Grab under my wrist. There! won't ye
+never learn how to turn a hawg? _Now out with 'im!_" was his next wild
+yell, as the steaming hog was jerked out of the water upon the planking.
+"Now try the hair on them ears! Beautiful scald," he said, clutching his
+hand full of bristles and beaming with pride. "Never see anything finer.
+Here, Bub, a pail of hot water, quick! Try one of them candlesticks!
+They ain't no better scraper than the bottom of an old iron candlestick;
+no, sir! Dum your new-fangled scrapers! I made a bet once with old Jake
+Ridgeway that I could scrape the hair off'n two hawgs, by gum, quicker'n
+he could one. Jake was blowin' about a new scraper he had....
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, dump it right into the barrel. Condemmit! Ain't you got
+no gumption?... So Sim Smith, he held the watch. Sim was a mighty good
+hand t' work with; he was about the only man I ever sawed with who
+didn't ride the saw. He could jerk a crosscut saw.... Now let him in
+again, now, _he-ho_, once again! _Rool him over now_; that foreleg needs
+a tech o' water. Now out with him again; that's right, that's right! By
+gol, a beautiful scald as ever I see!"
+
+Milton, standing near, caught his eye again. "Clean that ear, sir! What
+the devil you standin' there for?" He returned to his story after a
+pause. "A--n--d Jake, he scraped away--_hyare_!" he shouted suddenly,
+"don't ruggle the skin like that! Can't you see the way I do it? Leave
+it smooth as a baby, sir--yessir!"
+
+He worked on in this way all day, talking unceasingly, never shirking a
+hard job, and scarcely showing fatigue at any moment.
+
+"I'm short o' breath a leetle, that's all; never git tired, but my wind
+gives out. Dum cold got on me, too."
+
+He ate a huge supper of liver and potatoes, still working away hard at
+an ancient horse trade, and when he drove off at night, he had not yet
+finished a single one of the dozen stories he had begun.
+
+
+III
+
+
+But pitching grain and hog-killing were on the lower levels of his art,
+for above all else Daddy loved to be called upon to play the fiddle for
+dances. He "officiated" for the first time at a dance given by one of
+the younger McTurgs. They were all fiddlers themselves,--had been for
+three generations,--but they seized the opportunity of helping Daddy and
+at the same time of relieving themselves of the trouble of furnishing
+the music while the rest danced.
+
+Milton attended this dance, and saw Daddy for the first time earning his
+money pleasantly. From that time on the associations around his
+personality were less severe, and they came to like him better. He came
+early, with his old fiddle in a time-worn white-pine box. His hair was
+neatly combed to the top of his long, narrow head, and his face was very
+clean. The boys all greeted him with great pleasure, and asked him where
+he would sit.
+
+"Right on that table, sir; put a chair up there."
+
+He took his chair on the kitchen-table as if it were a throne. He wore
+huge moccasins of moose-hide on his feet, and for special occasions like
+this added a paper collar to his red woollen shirt. He took off his coat
+and laid it across his chair for a cushion. It was all very funny to the
+young people, but they obeyed him laughingly, and while they "formed
+on," he sawed his violin and coaxed it up to concert pitch, and twanged
+it and banged it into proper tunefulness.
+
+"A-a-a-ll ready there!" he rasped out, with prodigious force. "Everybody
+git into his place!" Then, lifting one huge foot, he put the fiddle
+under his chin, and, raising his bow till his knuckles touched the
+strings, he yelled, "Already, G'LANG!" and brought his foot down with a
+startling bang on the first note. _Rye doodle duo, doodle doo_.
+
+As he went on and the dancers fell into rhythm, the clatter of heavy
+boots seemed to thrill him with old-time memories, and he kept
+boisterous time with his foot, while his high, rasping nasal rang high
+above the confusion of tongues and heels and swaying forms.
+
+"_Ladies_' gran' change! Four hands round! _Balance_ all! _Elly_-man
+left! Back to play-cis."
+
+His eyes closed in a sort of intoxication of pleasure, but he saw all
+that went on in some miraculous way.
+
+"_First_ lady lead to the right--_toodle rum rum!_ _Gent_ foller after
+(step along thar)! Four hands round--"
+
+The boys were immensely pleased with him. They delighted in his antics
+rather than in his tunes, which were exceedingly few and simple. They
+seemed never to be able to get enough of one tune which he called
+"Honest John," and which he played in his own way, accompanied by a
+chant which he meant, without a doubt, to be musical.
+
+"HON-ers tew your pardners--_tee teedle deedle dee dee dee dee_! Stand
+up straight an' put on your style! _Right_ an' left four--"
+
+The hat was passed by the floor-manager during the evening, and Daddy
+got nearly three dollars, which delighted Milton very much.
+
+At supper he insisted on his prerogative, which was to take the
+prettiest girl out to supper.
+
+"Look-a-here, Daddy, ain't that crowdin' the mourners?" objected the
+others.
+
+"What do you mean by that, sir? No, sir! Always done it, in Michigan and
+Yark State both; yes, sir."
+
+He put on his coat ceremoniously, while the tittering girls stood about
+the room waiting. He did not delay. His keen eyes had made selection
+long before, and, approaching Rose Watson with old-fashioned, elaborate
+gallantry, he said: "_May_ I have the pleasure?" and marched out
+triumphantly, amidst shouts of laughter.
+
+His shrill laugh rang high above the rest at the table, as he said: "I'm
+the youngest man in this crowd, sir! Demmit, I bet a hat I c'n dance
+down any man in this crowd; yes, sir. The old man can do it yet."
+
+They all took sides in order to please him.
+
+"I'll bet he can," said Hugh McTurg; "I'll bet a dollar on Daddy."
+
+"I'll take the bet," said Joe Randall, and with great noise the match
+was arranged to come the first thing after supper.
+
+"All right, sir; any time, sir. I'll let you know the old man is on
+earth yet."
+
+While the girls were putting away the supper dishes, the young man lured
+Daddy out into the yard for a wrestling-match, but some others objected.
+
+"Oh, now, that won't do! If Daddy was a young man--"
+
+"What do you mean, sir? I am young enough for you, sir. Just let me get
+ahold o' you, sir, and I'll show you, you young rascal! you dem
+jackanapes!" he ended, almost shrieking with rage, as he shook his fist
+in the face of his grinning tormentors.
+
+His friends held him back with much apparent alarm, and ordered the
+other fellows away.
+
+"There, there, Daddy, I wouldn't mind him! I wouldn't dirty my hands on
+him; he ain't worth it. Just come inside, and we'll have that
+dancing-match now."
+
+Daddy reluctantly returned to the house, and, having surrendered his
+violin to Hugh McTurg, was ready for the contest. As he stepped into the
+middle of the room he was not altogether ludicrous. His rusty trousers
+were bagged at the knee, and his red woollen stockings showed between
+the tops of his moccasins and his pantaloon legs, and his coat, utterly
+characterless as to color and cut, added to the stoop in his shoulders;
+and yet there was a rude sort of grace and a certain dignity about his
+bearing which kept down laughter. They were to have a square dance of
+the old-fashioned sort.
+
+"_Farrm_ on," he cried, and the fiddler struck up the first note of the
+Virginia Reel. Daddy led out Rose, and the dance began. He straightened
+up till his tall form towered above the rest of the boys like a
+weather-beaten pine tree, as he balanced and swung and led and called
+off the changes with a voice full of imperious command.
+
+The fiddler took a malicious delight toward the last in quickening the
+time of the good old dance, and that put the old man on his mettle.
+
+"Go it, ye young rascal!" he yelled. He danced like a boy and yelled
+like a demon, catching a laggard here and there, and hurling them into
+place like tops, while he kicked and stamped, wound in and out and waved
+his hands in the air with a gesture which must have dated back to the
+days of Washington. At last, flushed, breathless, but triumphant, he
+danced a final breakdown to the tune of "Leather Breeches," to show he
+was unsubdued.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+But these rare days passed away. As the country grew older it lost the
+wholesome simplicity of pioneer days, and Daddy got a chance to play but
+seldom. He no longer pleased the boys and girls--his music was too
+monotonous and too simple. He felt this very deeply. Once in a while he
+broke forth in protest against the changes.
+
+"The boys I used to trot on m' knee are gittin' too high-toned. They
+wouldn't be found dead with old Deering, and then the preachers are
+gittin' thick, and howlin' agin dancin', and the country's filling up
+with Dutchmen, so't I'm left out."
+
+As a matter of fact, there were few homes now where Daddy could sit on
+the table, in his ragged vest and rusty pantaloons, and play "Honest
+John," while the boys thumped about the floor. There were few homes
+where the old man was even a welcome visitor, and he felt this rejection
+keenly. The women got tired of seeing him about, because of his
+uncleanly habits of spitting, and his tiresome stories. Many of the old
+neighbors died or moved away, and the young people went West or to the
+cities. Men began to pity him rather than laugh at him, which hurt him
+more than their ridicule. They began to favor him at threshing or at the
+fall hog-killing.
+
+"Oh, you're getting old, Daddy; you'll have to give up this heavy work.
+Of course, if you feel able to do it, why, all right! Like to have you
+do it, but I guess we'll have to have a man to do the heavy lifting, I
+s'pose."
+
+"I s'pose not, sir! I am jest as able to yank a hawg as ever, sir; yes,
+sir, demmit--demmit! Do you think I've got one foot in the grave?"
+
+Nevertheless, Daddy often failed to come to time on appointed days, and
+it was painful to hear him trying to explain, trying to make light of it
+all.
+
+"M' caugh wouldn't let me sleep last night. A goldum leetle, nasty,
+ticklin' caugh, too; but it kept me awake, fact was, an'--well, m' wife,
+she said I hadn't better come. But don't you worry, sir; it won't happen
+again, sir; no, sir."
+
+His hands got stiffer year by year, and his simple tunes became
+practically a series of squeaks and squalls. There came a time when the
+fiddle was laid away almost altogether, for his left hand got caught in
+the cog-wheels of the horse-power, and all four of the fingers on that
+hand were crushed. Thereafter he could only twang a little on the
+strings. It was not long after this that he struck his foot with the axe
+and lamed himself for life.
+
+As he lay groaning in bed, Mr. Jennings went in to see him and tried to
+relieve the old man's feelings by telling him the number of times he had
+practically cut his feet off, and said he knew it was a terrible hard
+thing to put up with.
+
+"Gol dummit, it ain't the pain," the old sufferer yelled, "it's the dum
+awkwardness. I've chopped all my life; I can let an axe in up to the
+maker's name, and hew to a hair-line; yes, sir! It was jest them dum new
+mittens my wife made; they was s' slippery," he ended with a groan.
+
+As a matter of fact, the one accident hinged upon the other. It was the
+failure of his left hand, with its useless fingers, to do its duty, that
+brought the axe down upon his foot. The pain was not so much physical as
+mental. To think that he, who could hew to a hair-line, right and left
+hand, should cut his own foot like a ten-year-old boy--that scared him.
+It brought age and decay close to him. For the first time in his life
+he felt that he was fighting a losing battle.
+
+A man like this lives so much in the flesh, that when his limbs begin to
+fail him everything else seems slipping away. He had gloried in his
+strength. He had exulted in the thrill of his life-blood and in the
+swell of his vast muscles; he had clung to the idea that he was strong
+as ever, till this last blow came upon him, and then he began to think
+and to tremble.
+
+When he was able to crawl about again, he was a different man. He was
+gloomy and morose, snapping and snarling at all that came near him, like
+a wounded bear. He was alone a great deal of the time during the winter
+following his hurt. Neighbors seldom went in, and for weeks he saw no
+one but his hired hand, and the faithful, dumb little old woman, his
+wife, who moved about without any apparent concern or sympathy for his
+suffering. The hired hand, whenever he called upon the neighbors, or
+whenever questions were asked, said that Daddy hung around over the
+stove most of the time, paying no attention to any one or anything. "He
+ain't dangerous 't all," he said, meaning that Daddy was not dangerously
+ill.
+
+Milton rode out from school one winter day with Bill, the hand, and was
+so much impressed with his story of Daddy's condition that he rode home
+with him. He found the old man sitting bent above the stove, wrapped in
+a quilt, shivering and muttering to himself. He hardly looked up when
+Milton spoke to him, and seemed scarcely to comprehend what he said.
+
+Milton was much alarmed at the terrible change, for the last time he had
+seen him he had towered above him, laughingly threatening to "warm his
+jacket," and now here he sat, a great hulk of flesh, his mind flickering
+and flaring under every wind of suggestion, soon to go out altogether.
+
+In reply to questions he only muttered with a trace of his old spirit:
+"I'm all right. Jest as good a man as I ever was, only I'm cold. I'll be
+all right when spring comes, so 't I c'n git outdoors. Somethin' to warm
+me up, yessir; I'm cold, that's all."
+
+The young fellow sat in awe before him, but the old wife and Bill moved
+about the room, taking very little interest in what the old man said or
+did. Bill at last took down the violin. "I'll wake him up," he said.
+"This always fetches the old feller. Now watch 'im."
+
+"Oh, don't do that!" Milton said in horror. But Bill drew the bow across
+the strings with the same stroke that Daddy always used when tuning up.
+
+He lifted his head as Bill dashed into "Honest John," in spite of
+Milton's protest. He trotted his feet after a little and drummed with
+his hands on the arms of his chair, then smiled a little in a pitiful
+way. Finally he reached out his right hand for the violin and took it
+into his lap. He tried to hold the neck with his poor, old, mutilated
+left hand, and burst into tears.
+
+"Don't you do that again, Bill," Milton said. "It's better for him to
+forget that. Now you take the best care of him you can to-night. I don't
+think he's going to live long; I think you ought to go for the doctor
+right off."
+
+"Oh, he's been like this for the last two weeks; he ain't sick, he's
+jest old, that's all," replied Bill, brutally.
+
+And the old lady, moving about without passion and without speech,
+seemed to confirm this; and yet Milton was unable to get the picture of
+the old man out of his mind. He went home with a great lump in his
+throat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning, while they were at breakfast, Bill burst wildly into
+the room.
+
+"Come over there, all of you; we want you."
+
+They all looked up much scared. "What's the matter, Bill?"
+
+"Daddy's killed himself," said Bill, and turned to rush back, followed
+by Mr. Jennings and Milton.
+
+While on the way across the field Bill told how it all happened.
+
+"He wouldn't go to bed, the old lady couldn't make him, and when I got
+up this morning I didn't think nothin' about it. I s'posed, of course,
+he'd gone to bed all right; but when I was going out to the barn I
+stumbled across something in the snow, and I felt around, and there he
+was. He got hold of my revolver someway. It was on the shelf by the
+washstand, and I s'pose he went out there so 't we wouldn't hear him. I
+dassn't touch him," he said, with a shiver; "and the old woman, she jest
+slumped down in a chair an' set there--wouldn't do a thing--so I come
+over to see you."
+
+Milton's heart swelled with remorse. He felt guilty because he had not
+gone directly for the doctor. To think that the old sufferer had killed
+himself was horrible and seemed impossible.
+
+The wind was blowing the snow, cold and dry, across the yard, but the
+sun shone brilliantly upon the figure in the snow as they came up to it.
+There Daddy lay. The snow was in his scant hair and in the hollow of his
+wide, half-naked chest. A pistol was in his hand, but there was no mark
+upon him, and Milton's heart leaped with quick relief. It was delirium,
+not suicide.
+
+There was a sort of majesty in the figure half buried in the snow. His
+hands were clenched, and there was a frown of resolution on his face, as
+if he had fancied Death coming, and had gone defiantly forth to meet
+him.
+
+
+A STOP-OVER AT TYRE
+
+I
+
+
+Albert Lohr was studying the motion of the ropes and lamps, and
+listening to the rumble of the wheels and the roar of the ferocious wind
+against the pane of glass that his head touched. It was the midnight
+train from Marion rushing toward Warsaw like some savage thing
+unchained, creaking, shrieking, and clattering through the wild storm
+which possessed the whole Mississippi Valley.
+
+Albert lost sight of the lamps at last, and began to wonder what his
+future would be. "First I must go through the university at Madison;
+then I'll study law, go into politics, and perhaps some time I may go to
+Washington."
+
+In imagination he saw that wonderful city. As a Western boy, Boston to
+him was historic, New York was the great metropolis, but Washington was
+the great American city, and political greatness the only fame.
+
+The car was nearly empty: save here and there the wide-awake Western
+drummer, and a woman with four fretful children, the train was as
+deserted as it was frightfully cold. The engine shrieked warningly at
+intervals, the train rumbled hollowly over short bridges and across
+pikes, swung round the hills, and plunged with wild warnings past little
+towns hid in the snow, with only here and there a light shining dimly.
+
+One of the drummers now and then rose up from his cramped bed on the
+seats, and swore cordially at the railway company for not heating the
+cars. The woman with the children inquired for the tenth time, "Is the
+next station Lodi?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, it is," snarled the drummer, as he jerked viciously at the
+strap on his valise; "and darned glad I am, too, I can tell yeh! I'll be
+stiff as a car-pin if I stay in this infernal ice-chest another hour. I
+wonder what the company think--"
+
+At Lodi several people got on, among them a fat man with a pretty
+daughter, who appeared to be abnormally wide awake--considering the time
+of night. She saw Albert for the same reason that he saw her--they were
+both young and good-looking.
+
+The student began his musings again, modified by this girl's face. He
+had left out the feminine element; obviously he must recapitulate. He'd
+study law, yes; but that would not prevent going to sociables and church
+fairs. And at these fairs the chances were good for a meeting with a
+girl. Her father must be influential--county judge or district attorney.
+Marriage would open new avenues--
+
+He was roused by the sound of his own name.
+
+"Is Albert Lohr in this car?" shouted the brakeman, coming in, enveloped
+in a cloud of fine snow.
+
+"Yes, here!" called Albert.
+
+"Here's a telegram for you."
+
+Albert snatched the envelope with a sudden fear of disaster at home; but
+it was dated "Tyre":
+
+           "Get off at Tyre. I'll be there.
+                                              "HARTLEY."
+
+"Well, now, that's fun!" said Albert, looking at the brakeman. "When do
+we reach there?"
+
+"About 2.20."
+
+"Well, by thunder! A pretty time o' night!"
+
+The brakeman grinned sympathetically. "Any answer?" he asked, at length.
+
+"No; that is, none that will do the matter justice."
+
+"Hartley friend o' yours?"
+
+"Yes; know him?"
+
+"Yes; he boarded where I did in Warsaw."
+
+When he came back again, the brakeman said to Albert, in a hesitating
+way:
+
+"Ain't going t' stop off long, I s'pose?"
+
+"May an' may not; depends on Hartley. Why?"
+
+"Well, I've got an aunt there that keeps boarders, and I kind o' like t'
+send her one when I can. If you should happen to stay a few days, go an'
+see her. She sets up first-class grub, an' it wouldn't kill anybody,
+anyhow, if you went up an' called."
+
+"Course not. If I stay long enough to make it pay I'll look her up sure.
+I'm no Vanderbilt. I can't afford to stop at two-dollar-a-day hotels."
+
+The brakeman sat down opposite, encouraged by Albert's smile.
+
+"Y' see, my division ends at Warsaw, and I run back and forth here every
+other day, but I don't get much chance to see them, and I ain't worth a
+cuss f'r letter-writin'. Y' see, she's only aunt by marriage, but I like
+her; an' I guess she's got about all she can stand up under, an' so I
+like t' help her a little when I can. The old man died owning nothing
+but the house, an' that left the old lady t' rustle f'r her livin'.
+Dummed if she ain't sandy as old Sand. They're gitt'n' along purty--"
+
+The whistle blew for brakes, and, seizing his lantern, the brakeman
+slammed out on the platform.
+
+"Tough night for twisting brakes," suggested Albert, when he came in
+again.
+
+"Yes--on the freight."
+
+"Good heavens! I should say so. They don't run freight such nights as
+this?"
+
+"Don't they? Well, I guess they don't stop for a storm like this if
+they's any money to be made by sending her through. Many's the night
+I've broke all night on top of the old wooden cars, when the wind was
+sharp enough to shear the hair off a cast-iron mule--_woo-o-o!_ There's
+where you need grit, old man," he ended, dropping into familiar speech.
+
+"Yes; or need a job awful bad."
+
+The brakeman was struck with this idea. "There's where you're right. A
+fellow don't take that kind of a job for the fun of it. Not much! He
+takes it because he's got to. That's as sure's you're a foot high. I
+tell you, a feller's got t' rustle these days if he gits any kind of a
+job--"
+
+"_Toot, too-o-o-o-t, toot!_"
+
+The station passed, the brakeman did not return, perhaps because he
+found some other listener, perhaps because he was afraid of boring this
+pleasant young fellow.
+
+Albert shuddered with a sympathetic pain as he thought of the heroic
+fellows on the tops of icy cars, with hands straining at frosty brakes,
+the wind cutting their faces like a sand-blast. Oh, those tireless hands
+at the wheel and throttle!--
+
+He looked at his watch; it was two o'clock; the next station was Tyre.
+As he began to get his things together, the brakeman again addressed
+him:
+
+"Oh, I forgot to say that the old lady's name is Welsh--Mrs. Robert
+Welsh. Say I sent yeh, and it'll be all right."
+
+"Sure! I'll try her in the morning--that is, if I find out I'm going to
+stay."
+
+Albert clutched his valise, and pulled his cap firmly down on his head.
+
+"Here goes!" he muttered.
+
+"Hold y'r breath!" shouted the brakeman. Albert swung himself to the
+platform before the station--a platform of planks along which the snow
+was streaming like water.
+
+"Good-night!" shouted the brakeman.
+
+"_Good_-night!"
+
+"All-l abo-o-o-ard!" called the conductor somewhere in the storm. The
+brakeman swung his lantern, the train drew off into the blinding whirl,
+and its lights were soon lost in the clouds of snow.
+
+No more desolate place could well be imagined. A level plain, apparently
+bare of houses, swept by a ferocious wind; a dingy little den called a
+station--no other shelter in sight; no sign of life save the dull glare
+of two windows to the left, alternately lost and found in the storm.
+
+Albert's heart contracted with a sudden fear; the outlook was appalling.
+
+"Where's the town?" he asked of a dimly seen figure with a lantern--a
+man evidently locking the station door, his only refuge.
+
+"Over there," was the surly reply.
+
+"How far?"
+
+"'Bout a mile."
+
+"A mile!"
+
+"That's what I said--a mile."
+
+"Well, I'll be blanked!"
+
+"Well, y' better be doing something besides standing here, 'r y' 'll
+freeze t' death. I'd go over to the Arteeshun House an' go t' bed if I
+was in your fix."
+
+"Well, where _is_ the Artesian House?"
+
+"See them lights?"
+
+"I see them lights."
+
+"Well, they're it."
+
+"Oh, wouldn't your grammar make Old Grammaticuss curl up, though!"
+
+"What say?" queried the man bending his head toward Albert, his form
+being almost lost in the snow that streamed against them both.
+
+"I said I guessed I'd try it," grinned the youth, invisibly.
+
+"Well, I would if I was in your fix. Keep right close after me; they's
+some ditches here, and the foot-bridges are none too wide."
+
+"The Artesian is owned by the railway, eh?"
+
+"Yup."
+
+"And you're the clerk?"
+
+"Yup; nice little scheme, ain't it?"
+
+"Well, it'll do," replied Albert.
+
+The man laughed without looking around.
+
+In the little bar-room, lighted by a vilely smelling kerosene lamp, the
+clerk, hitherto a shadow and a voice, came to light as a middle-aged man
+with a sullen face slightly belied by a sly twinkle in his eyes.
+
+"This beats all the winters I ever _did_ see. It don't do nawthin' but
+blow, _blow_. Want to go to bed, I s'pose. Well, come along."
+
+He took up one of the absurd little lamps and tried to get more light
+out of it.
+
+"Dummed if a white bean wouldn't be better."
+
+"Spit on it!" suggested Albert.
+
+"I'd throw the whole business out o' the window for a cent!" growled the
+man.
+
+"Here's y'r cent," said the boy.
+
+"You're mighty frisky f'r a feller gitt'n' off'n a midnight train,"
+replied the man, as he tramped along a narrow hallway. He spoke in a
+voice loud enough to awaken every sleeper in the house.
+
+"Have t' be, or there'd be a pair of us."
+
+"You'll laugh out o' the other side o' y'r mouth when you saw away on
+one o' the bell-collar steaks this house puts up," ended the clerk, as
+he put the lamp down.
+
+"Sufficient unto the morn is the evil thereof,'" called Albert after
+him.
+
+He was awakened the next morning by the cooks pounding steak down in the
+kitchen and wrangling over some division of duty. It was a vile place at
+any time, but on a morning like this it was appalling. The water was
+frozen, the floor like ice, the seven-by-nine glass frosted so that he
+couldn't see to comb his hair.
+
+"All that got me out of bed," he remarked to the clerk, "was the thought
+of leaving."
+
+The breakfast was incredibly bad--so much worse than he expected that
+Albert was forced to admit he had never seen its like. He fled from the
+place without a glance behind, and took passage in an omnibus for the
+town, a mile away. It was terribly cold, the thermometer registering
+twenty below zero; but the sun was very brilliant, and the air still.
+
+The driver pulled up before a very ambitious wooden hotel entitled "The
+Eldorado," and Albert dashed in at the door and up to the stove, with
+both hands covering his ears.
+
+As he stood there, frantic with pain, kicking his toes and rubbing his
+hands, he heard a chuckle--a slow, sly, insulting chuckle--turned, and
+saw Hartley standing in the doorway, visibly exulting over his misery.
+
+"Hello, Bert! that you?"
+
+"What's left of me. Say, you're a good one, you are? Why didn't you
+telegraph me at Marion? A deuce of a night I've had of it!"
+
+"Do ye good," laughed Hartley, a tall, alert, handsome fellow nearly
+thirty years of age.
+
+After a short and vigorous "blowing up," Albert asked: "Well, now,
+what's the meaning of all this, anyhow? Why this change from Racine?"
+
+"Well, you see, I got wind of another fellow going to work this county
+for a _Life of Logan_, and thinks I, 'By jinks! I'd better drop in ahead
+of him with Blaine's _Twenty Tears_.' I telegraphed f'r territory, got
+it, and telegraphed to stop you."
+
+"You did it. When did you come down?"
+
+"Last night, six o'clock."
+
+Albert was getting warmer and better-natured.
+
+"Well, I'm here; what are you going t' do with me?"
+
+"I'll use you some way. First thing is to find a boarding-place where we
+can work in a couple o' books on the bill."
+
+"Well, I don't know about that, but I'm going to look up a place a
+brakeman gave me a pointer on."
+
+"All right; here goes!"
+
+Scarcely any one was stirring on the streets. The wind was pitilessly
+cold, though not strong. The snow under their feet cried out with a note
+like glass and steel. The windows of the stores were thick with frost,
+and Albert shivered with a sense of homelessness. He had never
+experienced anything like this before. "I don't want much of this," he
+muttered, through his scarf.
+
+Mrs. Welsh lived in a large frame house standing on the edge of a bank,
+and as the young men waited at the door they could look down on the
+meadow-land, where the river lay blue and hard as steel.
+
+A pale little girl, ten or twelve years of age, opened the door.
+
+"Is this where Mrs. Welsh lives?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Will you ask her to come here a moment?"
+
+"Yes, sir," piped the little one. "Won't you come in and sit down by the
+fire?" she added, with a quaint air of hospitality.
+
+The room was the usual village sitting-room. A cylinder heater full of
+wood stood at one side of it. A rag carpet, much faded, covered the
+floor. The paper on the wall was like striped candy, and the chairs were
+nondescript; but everything was clean--worn more with brushing than with
+use.
+
+A slim woman of fifty, with hollow eyes and a patient smile, came in,
+wiping her hands on her apron.
+
+"How d'ye do? Did you want to see me?"
+
+"Yes," said Hartley, smiling. "The fact is, we're book agents, and
+looking for a place to board."
+
+"Well--a--I--yes, I keep boarders."
+
+"I was sent here by a brakeman on the midnight express," put in Bert,
+
+"Oh, Tom," said the woman, her face clearing. "Tom's always sending us
+people. Why, yes; I've got room for you, I guess--this room here." She
+pushed open a folding door leading into what had been her parlor.
+
+"You can have this."
+
+"And the price?"
+
+"Four dollars."
+
+"Eight dollars f'r the two of us. All right; we'll be with you a week or
+two if we have luck."
+
+Mrs. Welsh smiled. "Excuse me, won't you? I've got to be at my baking;
+make y'rselves at home."
+
+Bert remarked how much she looked like his own mother in the back. She
+had the same tired droop in the shoulders, the same colorless dress,
+characterless with much washing.
+
+"Certainly. I feel at home already," replied Bert. "Now, Jim," he said,
+after she left the room, "I'm going t' stay right here while you go and
+order our trunks around--just t' pay you off f'r last night."
+
+"All right," said Hartley cheerily, going out.
+
+After getting warm, Bert returned to the sitting-room, and sat down at
+the parlor organ and played a gospel hymn or two from the Moody and
+Sankey hymnal. He was in the midst of the chorus of _Let Your Lower
+Lights_, etc., when a young woman entered the room. She had a
+whisk-broom in her hand, and stood a picture of gentle surprise. Bert
+wheeled about on his stool.
+
+"I thought it was Stella," she began.
+
+"I'm a book agent," Bert explained. "I might as well out with it. There
+are two of us. Come here to board."
+
+"Oh!" said the girl, with some relief. She was very fair and very
+slight, almost frail. Her eyes were of the sunniest blue, her face pale
+and somewhat thin, but her lips showed scarlet, and her teeth were fine.
+Bert liked her and smiled.
+
+"A book agent is the next thing to a burglar, I know; but still--"
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean that, but I _was_ surprised. When did you come?"
+
+"Just a few moments ago. Am I in your way?" he inquired, with elaborate
+solicitude.
+
+"Oh no! Please go on. You play very well. It is seldom young men play at
+all."
+
+"I had to at college; the other fellows all wanted to sing. You play, of
+course."
+
+"When I have time." She sighed. There was a weary droop in her voice;
+she seemed aware of it, and said more brightly:
+
+"You mean Madison, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes; I'm in my second year."
+
+"I went there two years. Then I had to quit and come home to help
+mother."
+
+"Did you? That's why I'm out here on this infernal book business--to get
+money to go on with."
+
+She looked at him with interest now, noticing his fine eyes and waving
+brown hair.
+
+"It's dreadful, isn't it? But you've got a hope to go back. I haven't."
+She ended with a sigh, a far-off expression in her eyes. "It almost
+killed me to give it up. I don't s'pose I'd know any of the scholars
+you know. Even the teachers are not the same. Oh, yes--Sarah Shaw; I
+think she's back for the normal course."
+
+"Oh yes!" exclaimed Bert, "I know Sarah. We boarded on the same street;
+used t' go home together after class. An awful nice girl, too."
+
+"She's a worker. She teaches school. I can't do that, for mother needs
+me at home." There was another pause, broken by the little girl, who
+called:
+
+"Maud, mamma wants you."
+
+Maud rose and went out, with a tired smile on her face that emphasized
+her resemblance to her mother. Bert couldn't forget that smile, and he
+was still thinking about the girl, and what her life must be, when
+Hartley came in.
+
+"By jinks! It's _snifty_, as dad used to say. You can't draw a long
+breath through your nostrils without freezing y'r nose solid as a
+bottle," he announced, throwing off his coat. "By-the-way, I've just
+found out why you was so anxious to get into this house. Another case o'
+girl, hey?"
+
+Bert blushed; he couldn't help it, notwithstanding his innocence in this
+case. "I didn't know it myself till about ten minutes ago," he
+protested.
+
+Hartley winked prodigiously.
+
+"Don't tell me! Is she pretty?"
+
+The girl returned at this moment with an armful of wood.
+
+"Let _me_ put it in," cried Hartley, springing up. "Excuse me. My name
+is Hartley, book agent: Blaine's _Twenty Years_, plain cloth, sprinkled
+edges, three dollars; half calf, three fifty. This is my friend Mr.
+Lohr, of Marion; German extraction, soph at the university."
+
+The girl bowed and smiled, and pushed by him toward the door of the
+parlor. Hartley followed her in, and Bert could hear them rattling away
+at the stove.
+
+"Won't you sit down and play for us?" asked Hartley, after they returned
+to the sitting-room. The persuasive music of the book agent was in his
+fine voice.
+
+"Oh no! It's nearly dinner-time, and I must help about the table."
+
+"Now make yourselves at home," said Mrs. Welsh, appearing at the door
+leading to the kitchen; "if you want anything, just let me know."
+
+"All right. We will," replied Hartley.
+
+By the time the dinner-bell rang they were feeling at home in their new
+quarters. At the table they met the usual group of village boarders: the
+Brann brothers, newsdealers; old man Troutt, who ran the
+livery-stable--and smelled of it; and a small, dark, and wizened woman
+who kept the millinery store. The others, who came in late, were clerks
+in the stores near by.
+
+Maud served the dinner, while Stella and her mother waited upon the
+table. Albert admired the hands of the girl, which no amount of work
+could quite rob of their essential shapeliness. She was not more than
+twenty, he decided, but she looked older, so wistful was her face.
+
+"They's one thing ag'in' yeh," Troutt, the liveryman, remarked to
+Hartley: "we've jest been worked for one o' the goldingedest schemes you
+_ever_ see! 'Bout six munce ago s'm' fellers come all through here
+claimin' t' be after information about the county and the leadin'
+citizens; wanted t' write a history, an' wanted all the pitchers of the
+leading men, old settlers, an' so on. You paid ten dollars, an' you had
+a book an' your pitcher in it."
+
+"I know the scheme," grinned Hartley.
+
+"Wal, sir, I s'pose them fellers roped in every man in this town. I
+don't s'pose they got out with a cent less'n one thousand dollars. An'
+when the book come--wal!" Here he stopped to roar. "I don't s'pose you
+ever see a madder lot o' men in your life. In the first place, they got
+the names and the pitchers mixed so that I was Judge Ricker, an' Judge
+Ricker was ol' man Daggett. Didn't the judge swear--oh, it was awful!"
+
+"I should say so."
+
+"An the pitchers that wa'n't mixed was so goldinged _black_ you couldn't
+tell 'em from niggers. You know how kind o' lily-livered Lawyer Ransom
+is? Wal, he looked like ol' black Joe; he was the maddest man of the
+hull bi'lin'. He throwed the book in the fire, and tromped around like a
+blind bull."
+
+"It wasn't a success, I take it, then. Why, I should 'a' thought they'd
+'a' nabbed the fellows."
+
+"Not much! They was too keen for that. They didn't deliver the books
+theirselves; they hired Dick Bascom to do it f'r them. 'Course, Dick
+wa'n't t' blame."
+
+"No; I never tried it before," Albert was saying to Maud, at their end
+of the table. "Hartley offered me a job, and as I needed money, I came.
+I don't know what he's going to do with me, now I'm here."
+
+Albert did not go out after dinner with Hartley; it was too cold. He
+had brought his books with him, planning to keep up with his class, if
+possible, and was deep in "Cæsar" when a timid knock came upon the door.
+
+"Come!" he called, student fashion,
+
+Maud entered, her face aglow.
+
+"How natural that sounds!" she said.
+
+Albert sprang up to take the wood from her arms. "I wish you'd let me do
+that," he said, pleadingly, as she refused his aid.
+
+"I wasn't sure you were in. Were you reading?"
+
+"Cæsar," he replied, holding up the book. "I am conditioned on Latin.
+I'm going over the 'Commentaries' again."
+
+"I thought I knew the book," she laughed.
+
+"You read Latin?"
+
+"Yes, a little--Vergil."
+
+"Maybe you can help me out on these _oratia obliqua_. They bother me
+yet. I hate these 'Cæsar saids.' I like Vergil better."
+
+She stood at his shoulder while he pointed out the knotty passage. She
+read it easily, and he thanked her. It was amazing how well acquainted
+they felt after this.
+
+The wind roared outside in the bare maples, and the fire boomed in its
+pent place within, but these young people had forgotten time and place.
+The girl sank into a chair almost unconsciously as they talked of
+Madison--a great city to them--of the Capitol building, of the splendid
+campus, of the lakes, and the gay sailing there in summer and
+ice-boating in winter.
+
+"Oh, it makes me homesick!" cried the girl, with a deep sigh. "It was
+the happiest, sunniest time of all my life. Oh, those walks and talks!
+Those recitations in the dear, chalky old rooms! Oh, _how_ I would like
+to go back over that hollow door-stone again!"
+
+She broke off, with tears in her eyes, and he was obliged to cough two
+or three times before he could break the silence.
+
+"I know just how you feel. The first spring when I went back on the farm
+it seemed as if I couldn't stand it. I thought I'd go crazy. The days
+seemed forty-eight hours long. It was so lonesome, and so dreary on
+rainy days! But of course I expected to go back; that's what kept me up.
+I don't think I could have stood it if I hadn't had hope."
+
+"I've given it up now," she said, plaintively; "it's no use hoping."
+
+"Why don't you teach?" he asked, deeply affected by her voice and
+manner.
+
+"I did teach here for a year, but I couldn't endure the strain; I'm not
+very strong, and the boys were so rude. If I could teach in a
+seminary--teach Latin and English--I should be happy, I think. But I
+can't leave mother now."
+
+She was a wholly different girl in Albert's eyes as she said this. Her
+cheap dress, her check apron, could not hide the pure intellectual flame
+of her spirit. Her large, blue eyes were deep with thought, and the pale
+face, lighted by the glow of the fire, was as lovely as a rose. Almost
+before he knew it, he was telling her of his life.
+
+"I don't see how I endured it as long as I did," he went on. "It was
+nothing but work, work, and dust or mud the whole year round; farm-life,
+especially on a dairy farm, is slavery."
+
+"Yes," she agreed, "that is true. Father was a carpenter, and I've
+always lived here; but we have people who are farmers, and I know how it
+is with them."
+
+"Why, when I think of it now it makes me crawl! To think of getting up
+in the morning before daylight, and going out to the barn to do chores,
+to get ready to go into the field to work! Working, wasting y'r life on
+dirt. Waiting and tending on cows seven hundred times a year. Goin'
+round and round in a circle, and never getting out. You needn't talk to
+me of the poetry of a farmer's life."
+
+"It's just the same for us women," she corroborated. "Think of us going
+around the house day after day, and doing just the same things over an'
+over, year after year! That's the whole of most women's lives.
+Dishwashing almost drives me crazy."
+
+"I know it," said Albert; "but somebody has t' do it. And if a fellow's
+folks are workin' hard, why, of course he can't lay around and study.
+They're not to blame. I don't know that anybody's to blame."
+
+"I don't suppose anybody is, but it makes me sad to see mother going
+around as she does, day after day. She won't let me do as much as I
+would." The girl looked at her slender hands. "You see, I'm not very
+strong. It makes my heart ache to see her going around in that quiet,
+patient way; she's so good."
+
+"I know, I know! I've felt just like that about my mother and father,
+too."
+
+There was a long pause, full of deep feeling, and then the girl
+continued in a low, hesitating voice:
+
+"Mother's had an awful hard time since father died. We had to go to
+keeping boarders, which was hard--very hard for mother." The boy felt a
+sympathetic lump in his throat as the girl went on again: "But she
+doesn't complain, and she didn't want me to come home from school; but
+of course I couldn't do anything else."
+
+It didn't occur to either of them that any other course was open, nor
+that there was any special heroism or self-sacrifice in the act; it was
+simply _right_.
+
+"Well, I'm not going to drudge all my life," said Albert, at last. "I
+know it's kind o' selfish, but I can't live on a farm. I've made up my
+mind to study law and enter the bar. Lawyers manage to get hold of
+enough to live on decently, and that's more than you can say of the
+farmers. And they live in town, where something is going on once in a
+while, anyway."
+
+In the pause which followed, footsteps were heard on the walk outside,
+and the girl sprang up with a beautiful blush.
+
+"My stars! I didn't think--I forgot--I must go."
+
+Hartley burst into the room shortly after she left it, in his usual
+breeze.
+
+"Hul-_lo!_ Still at the Latin, hey?"
+
+"Yes," said Bert, with ease. "How goes it?"
+
+"Oh, I'm whooping 'er up! I'm getting started in great shape. Been up
+to the court-house and roped in three of the county officials. In these
+small towns the big man is the politician or the clergyman. I've nailed
+the politicians through the ear; now you must go for the ministers to
+head the list--that's your lay-out."
+
+"How 'm I t' do it?" asked Bert, in an anxious tone. "I can't sell books
+if they don't want 'em."
+
+"Why, cert! That's the trick. Offer a big discount. Say full calf, two
+fifty; morocco, two ninety. Regular discount to the clergy, ye know. Oh,
+they're on to that little racket--no trouble. If you can get a few of
+these leaders of the flock, the rest will follow like lambs to the
+slaughter. Tra-la-la--who-o-o-_ish_, whish!"
+
+Albert laughed at Hartley as he plunged his face into the ice-cold
+water, puffing and wheezing.
+
+"Jeemimy Crickets! but ain't that water cold! I worked Rock River this
+way last month, and made a boomin' success. If you take hold here in
+the--"
+
+"Oh, I'm all ready to stand anything short of being kicked out."
+
+"No danger of that if you're a real book agent. It's the snide that gets
+kicked. You've got t' have some savvy in this, just like any other
+business." He stopped in his dressing to say, "We've struck a great
+boarding-place, hey?"
+
+"Looks like it."
+
+"I begin t' cotton to the old lady a'ready. Good 'eal like mother used
+t' be 'fore she broke down. Didn't the old lady have a time of it
+raisin' me? Phewee! Patient! Job wasn't a patchin'. But the test is
+goin' t' come on the biscuit; if her biscuit comes up t' mother's I'm
+hern till death."
+
+He broke off to comb his hair, a very nice bit of work in his case.
+
+
+II
+
+
+There was no discernible reason why the little town should have been
+called Tyre, and yet its name was as characteristically American as its
+architecture. It had the usual main street lined with low brick or
+wooden stores--a street which developed into a road running back up a
+wide, sandy valley away from the river. Being a county town, it had a
+court-house in a yard near the centre of the town, and a big summer
+hotel. Curiously shaped and oddly distributed hills rose abruptly out of
+the valley sand, forming a sort of amphitheatre in which the village
+lay. These square-topped hills ended at a common level, showing that
+they were not the result of an upheaval, but were the remains of the
+original stratification formations left standing after the scooping
+action of the post-glacial floods had ceased.
+
+Some of them looked like ruined walls of castles ancient as hills, on
+whose massive tops time had sown sturdy oaks and cedars. They lent a
+distinct air of romance to the landscape at all times; but when in
+summer graceful vines clambered over their rugged sides, and underbrush
+softened their broken lines, it was not at all difficult to imagine them
+the remains of an unrecorded and very war-like people.
+
+Even now, in winter, with yellow-brown and green cedars standing starkly
+upon their summits, these towers possessed a distinct charm, and in the
+early morning when the trees glistened with frost, or at evening when
+the white light of the sun was softened and violet shadows lay along the
+snow, the whole valley was a delight to the eye, full of distinct and
+lasting charm.
+
+In the campaign which Hartley began, Albert did his best, and his best
+was done unconsciously; for the simplicity of his manner--all unknown to
+himself--was the most potent factor in securing consideration.
+
+"I'm not a book agent," he said to one of the clergymen to whom he first
+appealed; "I'm a student trying to sell a good book and make a little
+money to help me to complete my course at the university."
+
+In this way he secured three clergymen to head the list, much to the
+delight and admiration of Hartley.
+
+"Good! Now corral the alumni of the place. Work the fraternal racket to
+the bitter end. Oh, say! there's a sociable to-morrow night; I guess
+we'd better go, hadn't we?"
+
+"Go alone?"
+
+"Alone? No! Take some girls. I'm going to take neighbor Pickett's
+daughter; she's homely as a hedge fence, but I'll take her for business
+reasons."
+
+"Hartley, you're an infernal fraud!"
+
+"Nothing of the kind--I'm a salesman," ended Hartley, with a laugh.
+
+After supper the following day, as Albert was still lingering at the
+table with the girls and Mrs. Welsh, he said to Maud:
+
+"Are you going to the sociable?"
+
+"No; I guess not."
+
+"Would you go if I asked you?"
+
+"Try me and see!" answered the girl, with a laugh, her color rising.
+
+"All right. Miss Welsh, will you attend the festivity of the evening
+under my guidance and protection?"
+
+"Yes, thank you; but I must wash the dishes first."
+
+"I'll wash the dishes; you go get ready," said Mrs. Welsh.
+
+Albert felt that he had one of the loveliest girls in the room as he led
+Maud down the floor of the vestry of the church. Her cheeks were
+glowing, and her eyes shining with maidenly delight as they took seats
+at the table to sip a little coffee and nibble a bit of cake.
+
+Maud introduced him to a number of young people who had been students at
+the university. They received him cordially, and in a very short time he
+was enjoying himself very well indeed. He was reminded rather
+disagreeably of his office, however, by seeing Hartley surrounded by a
+laughing crowd of the more frolicsome young people. He winked at Albert,
+as much as to say, "Good stroke of business."
+
+The evening passed away with songs, games, and recitations, and it was
+nearly eleven o'clock when the young people began to wander off toward
+home in pairs. Albert and Maud were among the first of the young folks
+to bid the rest good-night.
+
+The night was clear and keen but perfectly still, and the young people,
+arm in arm, walked slowly homeward under the bare maples, in delicious
+companionship. Albert held Maud's arm close to his side.
+
+"Are you cold?" he asked, in a low voice.
+
+"No, thank you; the night is lovely," she replied; then added, with a
+sigh, "I don't like sociables so well as I used to--they tire me out."
+
+"We stayed too long."
+
+"It wasn't that; I'm getting so they seem kind o' silly."
+
+"Well, I feel a little that way myself," he confessed.
+
+"But there is so little to see here in Tyre at any time--no music, no
+theatres. I like theatres, don't you?"
+
+"I can't go half enough."
+
+"But nothing worth seeing ever comes into these little towns--and then
+we're all so poor, anyway."
+
+The lamp, turned low, was emitting a terrible odor as they entered the
+sitting-room.
+
+"My goodness! it's almost twelve o'clock! Good-night!" She held out her
+hand.
+
+"Good-night!" he said, taking it, and giving it a cordial pressure which
+she remembered long.
+
+"Good-night!" she repeated, softly, going up the stairs.
+
+Hartley, who came in a few minutes later, found his partner sitting
+thoughtfully by the fire, with his coat and shoes off, evidently in deep
+abstraction.
+
+"Well, I got away at last--much as ever. Great scheme, that sociable,
+eh? I saw your little girl introducing you right and left."
+
+"Say, Hartley, I wish you'd leave her out of this thing; I don't like
+the way you speak of her when--"
+
+"Phew! You don't? Oh, all right! I'm mum as an oyster--only keep it up!
+Get into all the church sociables you can; there's nothing like it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hartley soon had canvassers out along the country roads, and was working
+every house in town. The campaign promised to lengthen into a
+month--perhaps longer. Albert especially became a great favorite. Every
+one declared there had never been such book agents in the town. "They're
+such gentlemanly fellows. They don't press anybody to buy. They don't
+rush about and 'poke their noses where they're not wanted.' They are
+more like merchants with books to sell." The only person who failed to
+see the attraction in them was Ed Brann, who was popularly supposed to
+be engaged to Maud. He grew daily more sullen and repellent, toward
+Albert noticeably so.
+
+One evening about six, after coming in from a long walk about town,
+Albert entered his room without lighting his lamp, lay down on the bed,
+and fell asleep. He had been out late the night before with Maud at a
+party, and slumber came almost instantly.
+
+Maud came in shortly, hearing no response to her knock, and after
+hanging some towels on the rack went out without seeing the sleeper. In
+the sitting-room she met Ed Brann. He was a stalwart young man with
+curling black hair, and a heavy face at its best, but set and sullen
+now. His first words held a menace:
+
+"Say, Maud, I want t' talk to you."
+
+"Very well; what is it, Ed?" replied the girl, quietly.
+
+"I want to know how often you're going to be out till twelve o'clock
+with this book agent?"
+
+Perhaps it was the derisive inflection on "book agent" that woke Albert.
+Brann's tone was brutal--more brutal even than his words, and the girl
+turned pale and her breath quickened.
+
+"Why, Ed, what's the matter?"
+
+"Matter is just this: you ain't got any business goin' around with that
+feller with my ring on your finger, that's all." He ended with an
+unmistakable threat in his voice.
+
+"Very well," said the girl, after a pause, curiously quiet; "then I
+won't; here's your ring."
+
+The man's bluster disappeared instantly. Bert could tell by the change
+in his voice, which was incredibly great, as he pleaded:
+
+"Oh, don't do that, Maud; I didn't mean to say that; I was mad--I'm
+sorry."
+
+"I'm _glad_ you did it _now_, so I can know you. Take your ring, Ed; I
+never 'll wear it again."
+
+Albert had heard all this, but he did not know how the girl looked as
+she faced the man. In the silence which followed she scornfully passed
+him and went out into the kitchen. Brann went out and did not return at
+supper.
+
+Young people of this sort are not self-analysts, and Maud did not
+examine closely into causes. She was astonished to find herself more
+indignant than grieved. She broke into an angry wail as she went to her
+mother's bosom:
+
+"Mother! mother!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Maudie? Tell me. There, there! don't cry, pet!
+Who's been hurtin' my poor little bird?"
+
+"Ed has; he said--he said--"
+
+"There, there! poor child! Have you been quarrelling again? Never mind;
+it'll come out all right."
+
+"No, it won't--not the way you mean," the girl declared. "I've given him
+back his ring, and I'll never wear it again."
+
+The mother could not understand with what wounding brutality the man's
+tone had fallen upon the girl's spirit, and Maud could not explain
+sufficiently to justify herself. Mrs. Welsh consoled herself with the
+idea that it was only a lover's quarrel--one of the little jars sure to
+come when two natures are settling together--and that all would be
+mended in a day or two.
+
+Albert, being no more of a self-analyst than Maud, simply said, "Served
+him right," and dwelt no more upon it for the time.
+
+At supper, however, he was extravagantly gay, and to himself
+unaccountably so. He joked Troutt till Maud begged him to stop, and
+after the rest had gone he remained seated at the table, enjoying the
+indignant color in her face and the flash of her infrequent smile, which
+it was such a pleasure to provoke. He volunteered to help wash the
+dishes.
+
+"Thank you, but I'm afraid you'd be more bother than help," she replied.
+
+"Thank _you_, but you don't know me. I ain't so green as I look by no
+manner o' means. I've been doing my own housekeeping for four terms."
+
+"I know all about that," laughed the girl. "You young men rooming do
+precious little cooking and no dish-washing at all."
+
+"That's a base calumny! I made it a point to wash every dish in the
+house, except the spider, once a week; had a regular cleaning-up day."
+
+"And about the spider?"
+
+"I wiped that out nicely with a newspaper every time I wanted to use
+it."
+
+"Oh, horrors!--Mother, listen to that!"
+
+"Why, what more could you ask? You wouldn't have me wipe it _six_ times
+a day, would you?"
+
+"I wonder it didn't poison you," commented Mrs. Welsh.
+
+"Takes more'n that to poison a student," laughed Albert, as he went out.
+
+The next afternoon he came bursting into the kitchen, where Maud stood
+with her sleeves rolled up, deep in the dishpan.
+
+"Don't you want a sleigh-ride?" he asked, boyishly eager.
+
+She looked up with shining eyes.
+
+"Oh, wouldn't I! Can you get along, mother?"
+
+"Certainly, child. Go on. The air will do you good."
+
+"W'y, Maud!" said the little girl, "you said you didn't want to when
+Ed--"
+
+Mrs. Welsh silenced her, and said:
+
+"Run right along, dear; it's just the nicest time o' day. Are there many
+teams out?"
+
+"They're just beginning to come out," said Albert. "I'll have a cutter
+around here in about two jiffies; be on hand, sure."
+
+Troutt was standing in the sunny doorway of his stable when the young
+fellow dashed up to him.
+
+"Hullo, Uncle Troutt! Harness your fastest nag into your swellest outfit
+instanter."
+
+"Aha! Goin' t' take y'r girl out, hey?"
+
+"Yes; and I want to do it in style."
+
+"I guess ol' Dan's the horse for you. Gentle as a kitten and as knowin'
+as a fox. Drive him with one hand--left hand." The old man laughed till
+his long, faded beard flapped up and down and quivered with the stress
+of his enjoyment of his joke. He ended by hitching a vicious-looking
+sorrel to a gay, duck-bellied cutter, saying, as he gave up the reins:
+
+"Now, be keerful. Dan's foxy; he's all right when he sees you've got the
+reins, but don't drop 'em."
+
+"Don't you worry about me; I grew up with horses," said the
+over-confident youth, leaping into the sleigh and gathering up the
+lines. "Stand aside, my lord, and let the cortége pass. Hoop-la!"
+
+The brute gave a tearing lunge, and was out of the doorway before the
+old man could utter another word. Albert thrilled with pleasure as he
+felt the reins stiffen in his hands, and saw the traces swing slack
+beside the thills.
+
+"If he keeps this up he'll do," he said aloud.
+
+As he turned up at the gate Maud came gayly down the path, muffled to
+the eyes.
+
+"Oh, what a nice cutter! But the horse--is he gentle?" she asked, as she
+climbed in.
+
+"As a cow," Albert replied.--"Git out o' this, Bones!"
+
+The main street was already filled with wood sleighs, bob-sleds filled
+with children, and men in light cutters, out for a race. Laughter was on
+the air, and the jingle-jangle of bells. The sun was dazzling in its
+brightness, and the gay wraps and scarfs lighted up the scene with
+flecks of color. Loafers on the sidewalks fired familiar phrases at the
+teams as they passed:
+
+"Step up, Bones!"
+
+"Let 'er _go_, Gallagher!"
+
+"Get there, Eli," and the like.
+
+But what cared the drivers? If the shouts were insolent they laid them
+to envy, and if they were pleasant they smiled in reply.
+
+Albert and Maud had made two easy turns up and down the street when a
+man driving a span of large Black Hawk horses dashed up a side street
+and whirled in just before them. The man was a superb driver, and sat
+with the reins held carelessly but securely in his left hand, guiding
+the team more by his voice than by the bit.
+
+"_Hel_-lo!" cried Bert; "that looks like Brann."
+
+"It is," said Maud.
+
+"Cracky! that's a fine team--Black Hawks, both of them. I wonder if ol'
+sorrel can pass 'em?"
+
+"Oh, please don't try!" pleaded the girl.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because--because I'm afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"Afraid something 'll happen."
+
+"Something _is_ sure to happen; I'm goin' to pass him if old Bones has
+any _git_ to him."
+
+"It'll make him mad."
+
+"Who mad? Brann?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, s'pose it does, who cares?"
+
+There were a dozen similar rigs moving up or down the street, and
+greetings passed from sleigh to sleigh. Everybody except Brann welcomed
+Albert with sincere pleasure, and exchanged rustic jokes with him. As
+they slowed up at the upper end of the street and began to turn, a man
+on the sidewalk said, confidentially:
+
+"Say, cap', if you handle that old rack o' bones just right, he'll
+distance anything on this road. When you want him to do his best let him
+have the rein; don't pull a pound. I used to own 'im--I know 'im."
+
+The old sorrel came round "gauming," his ugly head thrown up, his great
+red mouth open, his ears laid back. Brann and the young doctor of the
+place were turning together, a little farther up the street. The blacks,
+responding to their driver's word, came down with flying hoofs, their
+great glossy breasts flecked with foam, their jaws champing.
+
+"Come on, crow-bait!" yelled Brann, insultingly, as he came down past
+the doctor, and seemed about to pass Albert and Maud. There was hate in
+the glare of his eyes.
+
+But he did not pass. The old sorrel seemed to lengthen; to the
+spectators his nose appeared to be glued to the glossy side of Brann's
+off black.
+
+"See them blacks trot!" shouted Albert, in ungrammatical enthusiasm.
+
+"See that old sorrel shake himself!" yelled the loafers.
+
+The doctor came tearing down with a spirited bay, a magnificent stepper.
+As he drew along so that Bert could catch a glimpse of the mare's neck,
+he thrilled with delight. There was the thoroughbred's lacing of veins;
+the proud fling of her knees and the swell of her neck showed that she
+was far from doing her best. There was a wild light in her eyes.
+
+These were the fast teams of the town. All interest was centred in them.
+
+"Clear the track!" yelled the loafers.
+
+"The doc's good f'r 'em."
+
+"If she don't break."
+
+Albert was pulling at the sorrel heavily, absorbed in seeing, as well as
+he could for the flung snowballs, the doctor's mare draw slowly, foot by
+foot, past the blacks. Suddenly Brann gave a shrill yell and stood up in
+his sleigh. The gallant little bay broke and fell behind; Brann laughed,
+the blacks trotted on, their splendid pace unchanged.
+
+"Let the sorrel out!" yelled somebody.
+
+"Let him loose!" yelled Troutt on the corner, quivering with excitement.
+"Let him go!"
+
+Albert, remembering what the fellow had said, let the reins loose. The
+old sorrel's teeth came together with a snap; his head lowered and his
+tail rose; he shot abreast of the blacks. Maud, frightened into silence,
+covered her head with the robe to escape the flying snow. The sorrel
+drew steadily ahead and was passing the blacks when Brann turned.
+
+"Durn y'r old horse!" he yelled through his shut teeth, and laid the
+whip across the sorrel's hips. The blacks broke wildly, but, strange to
+say, the old sorrel increased his speed. Again Brann struck, but the
+lash fell on Bert's outstretched wrists. He did not see that the blacks
+were crowding him to the gutter, but he heard a warning cry.
+
+"Look _out_, there!"
+
+Before he could turn to look, the cutter seemed to be blown up by a
+bomb. He rose in the air like a vaulter, and when he fell the light went
+out.
+
+The next that he heard was a curious soft murmur of voices, out of which
+a sweet, agonized girl-voice broke:
+
+"Oh, where's the doctor? He's dead--oh, he's dead! _Can't_ you hurry?"
+
+Next came a quick, authoritative voice, still far away, and a hush
+followed it; then an imperative order:
+
+"Stand out o' the way! What do you think you can do by crowding on top
+of him?"
+
+"Stand back! stand back!" other voices called.
+
+Then he felt something cold on his scalp: they were taking his cap off
+and putting snow on his head; then the doctor--he knew him now--said:
+
+"Let me take him!"
+
+A dull, throbbing ache came into his head, and as this grew the noise of
+voices became more distinct, and he could hear sobbing. Then he opened
+his lids, but the glare of the sunlight struck them shut again; he saw
+only Maud's face, agonized, white, and wet with tears, looking down into
+his.
+
+They raised him a little more, and he again opened his eyes on the
+circle of hushed and excited men thronging about him. He saw Brann, with
+wild, scared face, standing in his cutter and peering over the heads of
+the crowd.
+
+"How do you feel now?" asked the doctor.
+
+"Can you hear us? Albert, do you know me?" called the girl.
+
+His lips moved stiffly, but he smiled a little, and at length whispered
+slowly, "Yes; I guess--I'm all--right."
+
+"Put him into my cutter; Maud, get in here, too," the doctor commanded.
+The crowd opened as the doctor and Troutt helped the wounded man into
+the sleigh. The pain in his head grew worse, but Albert's perception of
+things sharpened in proportion; he closed his eyes to the sun, but in
+the shadow of Maud's breast opened them again and looked up at her. He
+felt a vague, child-like pleasure in knowing that she was holding him in
+her arms; he thought of his mother--"how it would frighten her if she
+knew."
+
+"Hello!" called a breathless, hearty voice, "what the deuce y' been
+doing with my pardner? Bert, old fellow, are you there?" Hartley asked,
+clinging to the edge of the moving cutter, and peering into his friend's
+face. Albert smiled.
+
+"I'm here--what there is left of me," he replied, faintly.
+
+"Glory! How did it happen?" he asked of the girl.
+
+"I don't know--I couldn't see--we ran into a culvert," replied Maud.
+
+"Weren't you hurt?"
+
+"Not a bit. I stayed in the cutter."
+
+Albert groaned, and tried to rise, but the girl gently yet firmly
+restrained him. Hartley was walking beside the doctor, talking loudly.
+"It was a devilish thing to do; the scoundrel ought to be jugged!"
+
+Albert tried again to rise. "I'm bleeding yet; I'm soaking you; let me
+get up!"
+
+The girl shuddered, but remained firm.
+
+"No; we're 'most home."
+
+She felt no shame, but a certain exaltation as she looked into the faces
+about her. She gazed unrecognizingly upon her nearest girl friends, and
+they, gazing upon her white face and unresponsive eyes, spoke in awed
+whispers.
+
+At the gate the crowd gathered and waited with deepest interest. It was
+enthralling romance to them.
+
+"Ed Brann done it," said one.
+
+"How?" asked another.
+
+"With the butt end of his whip."
+
+"That's a lie! His team ran into Lohr's rig."
+
+"Not much; Ed crowded him into the ditch."
+
+"What fer?"
+
+"Cause Bert cut him out with Maud."
+
+"Come, get out of the way! Don't stand there gabbing," yelled Hartley,
+as he took Albert in his arms and, together with the doctor, lifted him
+out of the sleigh.
+
+"Goodness sakes alive! Ain't it terrible! How is he?" asked an old lady,
+peering at him as he passed.
+
+On the porch stood Mrs. Welsh, supported by Ed Brann.
+
+"She's all right, I tell you. He ain't hurt much, either; just stunned a
+little, that's all."
+
+"Maud! child!" cried the mother, as Maud appeared, followed by a bevy of
+girls.
+
+"_I'm_ all right, mother," she said, running into the trembling arms
+outstretched toward her; "but, oh, poor Albert!"
+
+After the wounded man disappeared into the house the crowd dispersed.
+Brann went off by the way of the alley; he was not prepared to meet the
+questions of his accusers.
+
+"Now, what in ---- you been up to?" was the greeting of his brother, as
+he re-entered the shop.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Welting a man on the head with a whip-stock ain't anything, hey?"
+
+"I didn't touch him. We was racing, and he run into the culvert."
+
+"Hank says he saw you strike him."
+
+"He lies! I was strikin' the horse to make him break!"
+
+"Oh, yeh was!" sneered the older man. "Well, I hope you understand that
+this'll ruin you in this town. If you didn't strike him, they'll say you
+run him into the culvert, 'n' every man, woman, 'n' child'll be down on
+you, and _me_ f'r bein' related to you. They all know how you feel
+toward him for cuttin' you out with Maud Welsh."
+
+"Oh, don't bear down on him too hard, Joe. He didn't mean t' do any
+harm," said Troutt, who had followed Ed down to the store. "I guess the
+young feller 'll come out all right. Just go kind o' easy till we see
+how he turns out. If he dies, why, it'll haf t' be looked into."
+
+Ed turned pale and swallowed hastily. "If he should die I'll be a
+murderer," he thought. He acknowledged that hate was in his heart, and
+he shivered as he remembered the man's white face with the bright red
+stream flowing down behind his ear and over his cheek. It almost seemed
+to him that he _had_ struck him, so close had the accident followed upon
+the fall of his whip.
+
+
+III
+
+
+Albert sank into a feverish sleep that night, with a vague perception of
+four figures in the room--Maud, her mother, Hartley, and the young
+doctor. When he awoke fully in the morning his head felt prodigiously
+hot and heavy.
+
+It was early dawn, and the lamp was burning brightly. Outside, a man's
+feet could be heard on the squealing snow--a sound which told how still
+and cold it was. A team passed with a jingle of bells.
+
+Albert raised his head and looked about. Hartley was lying on the sofa,
+rolled up in his overcoat and some extra quilts. He had lain down at
+last, worn with watching. Albert felt a little weak, and fell back on
+his pillow, thinking about the strange night he had passed--a night more
+filled with strange happenings than the afternoon.
+
+As the light grew in the room his mind cleared, and lifting his muscular
+arm he opened and shut his hand, saying aloud, in his old boyish manner:
+
+"I guess I'm all here."
+
+"What's that?" called Hartley, rolling out of bed. "Did you ask for
+anything?"
+
+"Give me some water, Jim; my mouth is dry as a powder-mill."
+
+"How yeh feelin', anyway, pardner?" said Hartley, as he brought the
+water.
+
+"First-rate, Jim; I guess I'll be all right."
+
+"Well, I guess you'd better keep quiet."
+
+He threw on his coat next, and went out into the kitchen, returning soon
+with some hot water, with which he began to bathe his partner's face and
+hands as tenderly as a woman.
+
+"There; now I guess you're in shape f'r grub--feel any like grub?--Come
+in," he called, in answer to a knock on the door.
+
+Mrs. Welsh entered.
+
+"How is he?" she whispered, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," replied Albert.
+
+"I'm glad to find you so much better," she said, going to his bedside.
+"I've hardly slep', I was so much worried about you. Your breakfast is
+ready, Mr. Hartley. I've got something special for Albert."
+
+A few minutes later Maud entered with a platter, followed closely by her
+mother.
+
+The girl came forward timidly, but when Albert turned his eyes on her
+and called, cheerily, "Good morning!" she flamed out in rosy color and
+recoiled. She had expected to see him pale, dull-eyed, and with a weak
+voice, but there was little to indicate invalidism in his firm greeting.
+She gave place to Mrs. Welsh, who prepared his breakfast. She was
+smitten dumb by his tone, and hardly dared look at him as he sat propped
+up in bed.
+
+However, though he was feeling absurdly well, there was a good deal of
+bravado in his tone and manner, for he ate but little, and soon sank
+back on the bed.
+
+"I feel better when my head is low," he explained, in a faint voice.
+
+"Can't I do something?" asked the girl, her courage reviving as she
+perceived how ill and faint he really was.
+
+"I guess you better write to his folks," said Mrs. Welsh.
+
+"No, don't do that," he protested, opening his eyes; "it will only worry
+them, and do me no good. I'll be all right in a few days. You needn't
+waste your time on me; Hartley will wait on me."
+
+"Don't mind him," said Mrs. Welsh. "I'm his mother now, and he's goin'
+to do just as I tell him to--aren't you, Albert?"
+
+He dropped his eyelids in assent, and went off into a doze. It was all
+very pleasant to be thus waited upon. Hartley was devotion itself, and
+the doctor removed his bandages with the care and deliberation of a man
+with a moderate practice; besides, he considered Albert a personal
+friend.
+
+Hartley, after the doctor had gone, said with some hesitation:
+
+"Well, now, pard, I _ought_ to go out and see a couple o' fellows I
+promised t' meet this morning."
+
+"All right, Jim; all right. You go right ahead on business; I'm goin' t'
+sleep, anyway, and I'll be all right in a day or two."
+
+"Well, I will; but I'll run in every hour 'r two and see if you don't
+want something. You're in good hands, anyway, when I'm gone."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Won't you read to me?" pleaded Albert, one afternoon, when Maud came in
+with her mother to brush up the room. "It's getting rather slow business
+layin' here like this."
+
+"Shall I, mother?"
+
+"Why, of course, Maud."
+
+So Maud got a book, and sat down over by the stove, quite distant from
+the bed, and read to him from _The Lady of the Lake_, while the mother,
+like a piece of tireless machinery, moved about the house at the
+never-ending succession of petty drudgeries which wear the heart and
+soul out of so many wives and mothers, making life to them a pilgrimage
+from stove to pantry, from pantry to cellar, and from cellar to
+garret--a life that deadens and destroys, coarsens and narrows, till the
+flesh and bones are warped to the expression of the wronged and cheated
+soul.
+
+Albert's selfishness was in a way excusable. He enjoyed beyond measure
+the sound of the girl's soft voice and the sight of her graceful head
+bent over the page. He lay, looking and listening dreamily, till the
+voice and the sunlit head were lost in a deep, sweet sleep.
+
+The girl sat with closed book, looking at his face as he slept. It was a
+curious study to her, a young man--_this_ young man, asleep. His brown
+lashes lay on his cheek as placid as those of a child. As she looked she
+gained courage to go over softly and peer down on him. How boyish he
+seemed! How little to be feared! A boy outside uttered a shout, and she
+hurried away, pale and breathless. As she paused in the door and looked
+back at the undisturbed sleeper, she smiled, and the pink came back into
+her thin face.
+
+Albert's superb young blood began to assert itself, and on the afternoon
+of the fifth day he was able to sit in his rocking-chair before the fire
+and read a little, though he professed that his eyes were not strong, in
+order that Maud should read for him. This she did as often as she could
+leave her other work, which was "not half often enough," the invalid
+grumbled.
+
+"More than you deserve," she found courage to say.
+
+Hartley let nothing interfere with the book business. "You take it
+easy," he repeated. "Don't you worry--your pay goes on just the same.
+You're doing well right where you are. By jinks! biggest piece o' luck,"
+he went on, half in earnest. "Why, I can't turn around without taking an
+order--fact! Turned in a book on the livery bill, so that's all fixed.
+We'll make a clear hundred dollars out o' that little bump o' yours."
+
+"Little bump! Say, now, that's--"
+
+"Keep it up--put it on! Don't hurry about getting well. I don't need you
+to canvass, and I guess you enjoy being waited on." He ended with a sly
+wink and cough.
+
+Yes, convalescence was delicious, with Maud reading to him, bringing his
+food, and singing for him; all that marred his peace was the stream of
+people who came to inquire how he was getting along. The sympathy was
+largely genuine, as Hartley could attest, but it bored the invalid. He
+had rather be left in quiet with Walter Scott and Maud. In the light of
+common day the accident was hurrying to be a dream.
+
+At the end of a week he was quite himself again, though he still had
+difficulty in wearing his hat. It was not till the second Sunday after
+the accident that he appeared in the dining-room for the first time,
+with a large travelling-cap concealing the suggestive bandages. He
+looked pale and thin, but his eyes danced with joy.
+
+Maud's eyes dilated with instant solicitude. The rest sprang up in
+surprise, with shouts of delight, as hearty as brethren.
+
+"Ginger! I'm glad t' see yeh!" said Troutt, so sincerely that he looked
+almost winning to the boy. The rest crowded around, shaking hands.
+
+"Oh, I'm on deck again."
+
+Ed Brann came in a moment later with his brother, and there was a
+significant little pause--a pause which grew painful till Albert turned
+and saw Brann, and called out:
+
+"Hello, Ed! How are you? Didn't know you were here."
+
+As he held out his hand, Brann, his face purple with shame and
+embarrassment, lumbered heavily across the room and took it, muttering
+some poor apology.
+
+"Hope y' don't blame me."
+
+"Of course not--fortunes o' war. Nobody to blame; just my
+carelessness.--Yes; I'll take turkey," he said to Maud, as he sank into
+the seat of honor.
+
+The rest laughed, but Brann remained standing near Albert's chair. He
+had not finished yet.
+
+"I'm mighty glad you don't lay it up against me, Lohr; an' I want to say
+the doctor's bill is all right; you un'erstand, it's _all right_."
+
+Albert looked at him a moment in surprise. He understood that this,
+coming from a man like Brann, meant more than a thousand prayers from a
+ready apologist. It was a terrible victory, and he was disposed to make
+it as easy for his rival as he could.
+
+"Oh, all right, Ed; only I'd calculated to cheat him out o' part of
+it--I'd planned to turn in a couple o' Blaine's _Twenty Years_ on the
+bill."
+
+Hartley roared, and the rest joined in, but not even Albert perceived
+all that it meant. It meant that the young savage had surrendered his
+claim in favor of the man he had all but killed. The struggle had been
+prodigious, but he had snatched victory out of defeat; his better nature
+had conquered.
+
+No one ever gave him credit for it; and when he went West in the spring,
+people said his passion for Maud had been superficial. In truth, he had
+loved the girl as sincerely as he had hated his rival. That he could
+rise out of the barbaric in his love and his hate was heroic.
+
+When Albert went to ride again, it was on melting snow, with the slowest
+horse Troutt had. Maud was happier than she had been since she left
+school, and fuller of color and singing. She dared not let a golden
+moment pass now without hearing it ring full, and she dared not think
+how short this day of happiness might be.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+At the end of the fifth week of their stay in Tyre a suspicion of spring
+was in the wind as it swept the southern exposure of the valley. March
+was drawing to a close, and there was more than a suggestion of April in
+the rapidly melting snow which still lay on the hills and under the
+cedars and tamaracks in the swamps. Patches of green grass, appearing on
+the sunny side of the road where the snow had melted, led to predictions
+of spring from the loafers beginning to sun themselves on the
+salt-barrels and shoe-boxes outside the stores.
+
+A group sitting about the blacksmith shop were discussing it.
+
+"It's an early seedin'--now mark my words," said Troutt, as he threw his
+knife into the soft ground at his feet. "The sun is crossing the line
+earlier this spring than it did last."
+
+"Yes; an' I heard a crow to-day makin' that kind of a--a spring noise
+that sort o'--I d' know what--kind o' goes all through a feller."
+
+"And there's Uncle Sweeney, an' that settles it; spring's comin' sure!"
+said Troutt, pointing at an old man, much bent, hobbling down the
+street. "When _he_ gits out the frogs ain't fur behind."
+
+"We'll be gittin' on to the ground by next Monday," said Sam Dingley to
+a crowd who were seated on the newly painted harrows and seeders which
+Svend & Johnson had got out ready for the spring trade. "Svend &
+Johnson's Agricultural Implement Depot" was on the north side of the
+street, and on a spring day the yard was one of the pleasantest
+loafing-places that could be imagined, especially if one wished company.
+
+Albert wished to be alone. Something in the touch and tone of this
+spring afternoon made him restless and inclined to strange thoughts. He
+took his way out along the road which followed the river-bank, and in
+the outskirts of the village threw himself down on a bank of grass which
+the snows had protected, and which had already a tinge of green because
+of its wealth of sun.
+
+The willows had thrown out their tiny light-green flags, though their
+roots were under the ice, and some of the hardwood twigs were tinged
+with red. There was a faint but magical odor of uncovered earth in the
+air, and the touch of the wind was like a caress from a moist, magnetic
+hand.
+
+The boy absorbed the light and heat of the sun as some wild thing might.
+With his hat over his face, his hands folded on his breast, he lay as
+still as a statue. He did not listen at first, he only felt; but at
+length he rose on his elbow and listened. The ice cracked and fell along
+the bank with a long, hollow, booming crash; a crow cawed, and a jay
+answered it from the willows below. A flight of sparrows passed,
+twittering innumerably. The boy shuddered with a strange, wistful
+longing, and a realization of the flight of time.
+
+He could have wept, he could have sung, but he only shuddered and lay
+silent under the stress of that strange, sweet passion which quickened
+his heart, deepened his eyes, and made his breath come and go with a
+quivering sound. Across the dazzling blue arch of the sky the crow
+flapped, sending down his prophetic, jubilant note; the breeze, as soft
+and sweet as April, stirred in his hair; the hills, deep in their dusky
+blue, seemed miles away; and the voices of the care-free skaters on the
+melting ice of the river below came to the ear subdued to a unity with
+the scene.
+
+Suddenly a fear seized upon the boy--a horror! Life, life was passing!
+Life that can be lived only once, and lost, is lost forever! Life, that
+fatal gift of the Invisible Powers to man--a path, with youth and joy
+and hope at its eastern gate, and despair, regret, and death at its low
+western portal!
+
+The boy caught a momentary glimpse of his real significance. "I am only
+a gnat, a speck in the sun, a youth facing the millions of great and
+wise and wealthy!" He leaped up in a frenzy. "Oh, I mustn't stay here! I
+must get back to my studies. Life is slipping by me, and I am doing
+nothing, being nothing!"
+
+His face, as pale as death, shone with passionate resolution, and his
+hands were clinched in silent vow.
+
+But on his way back he met the jocund party of skaters going home from
+the river, and with the easy shift and change of youth joined in their
+ringing laughter. The weird power of the wind's voice was gone, and he
+sank to the level of the unthinking boy again. However, the problem was
+only put off, not solved.
+
+That night Hartley said: "Well, pardner, we're getting 'most ready to
+pull out. Someways I always get restless when these warm days begin."
+This was as sentimental as Hartley ever got; or, if he ever felt more
+sentiment, he concealed it carefully.
+
+"I s'pose it must 'a' been in spring that those old chaps, on their
+steeds and in their steel shirts, started out for to rescue some damsel,
+hey?" he ended, with a grin. "Now, that's the way I feel--just like
+striking out for, say, Oshkosh. That little piece of lofty tumbling of
+yours was a big boom, and no mistake. Why, your share o' this campaign
+will be a hundred and twenty dollars sure."
+
+"More'n I've earned," replied Bert.
+
+"No, it ain't. You've done your duty like a man. Done as much in your
+way as I have. Now, if you want to try another county with me, say so.
+I'll make a thousand dollars this year out o' this thing."
+
+"I guess I'll go back to school."
+
+"All right; I don't blame you for wanting to do that."
+
+"I guess, with what I can earn for father, I can pull through the year.
+I _must_ get back. I'm awfully obliged to you, Jim."
+
+"That'll do on that," said Hartley, shortly; "you don't owe me anything.
+We'll finish delivery to-morrow, and be ready to pull out on Friday or
+Sat."
+
+There was an acute pain in Albert's breast somewhere; he had not
+analyzed his case at all, and did not now, but the idea of going
+affected him strongly. It had been so pleasant, that daily return to a
+lovely girlish presence.
+
+"Yes, sir," Hartley was going on, "I'm going to just quietly leave a
+book on her centre-table. I don't know as it'll interest her much, but
+it'll show we appreciate the grub, and so on. By jinks! you don't seem
+to realize what a worker that woman is! Up five o'clock in the
+morning--By-the-way, you've been going around with the girl a good deal,
+and she's introduced you to some first-rate sales; now, if you want to
+leave her a little something, make it a morocco copy, and charge it to
+the firm."
+
+Albeit knew that he meant well, but he couldn't, somehow, help saying,
+ironically:
+
+"Thanks, but I guess _one_ copy of Blaine's _Twenty Years_ will be
+enough in the house, especially--"
+
+"Well, give her anything you please, and charge it up to the firm. I
+don't insist on Blaine; only suggested that because--"
+
+"I guess I can stand the expense of a present."
+
+"I didn't say you couldn't, man! But _I_ want a hand in this thing.
+Don't be so turrible keen t' snap a feller up," complained Hartley,
+turning on him. "What the thunder is the matter of you, anyway? I like
+the girl, and she's been good to us all round; she tended you like an
+angel--"
+
+"There, there! That's enough o' that," put in Albert, hastily. "For
+God's sake, don't whang away on that string forever, as if I didn't know
+it!"
+
+Hartley stared at him as he turned away.
+
+"Well, by jinks! What _is_ the matter o' you?"
+
+He was too busy to dwell upon it much, but concluded his partner was
+homesick.
+
+Albert was beginning to have a vague underconsciousness of his real
+feeling toward the girl, but he fought off the acknowledgment of it as
+long as possible. His mind moved in a circle, coming back to the one
+point ceaselessly--a dreary prospect, in which that slender girl-figure
+had no place--and each time the prospect grew more intolerably blank,
+and the pain in his heart more acute and throbbing.
+
+When he faced her that night, after they had returned from a final walk
+down by the river, he was as far from a solution as ever. He had avoided
+all reference to their separation, and now he stood as a man might at
+the parting of the ways, saying: "I will not choose; I cannot choose. I
+will wait for some sign, some chance thing, to direct me."
+
+They stood opposite each other, each feeling that there was more to be
+said: the girl tender, her eyes cast down, holding her hands to the
+fire; he shivering, but not with cold. He had a vague knowledge of the
+vast importance of the moment, and he hesitated to speak.
+
+"It's almost spring again, isn't it? And you've been here"--she paused
+and looked up with a daring smile--"seems as if you'd been here always."
+
+It was about half-past eight. Mrs. Welsh was setting her bread in the
+kitchen; they could hear her moving about. Hartley was down-town
+finishing up his business. They were almost alone in the house. Albert's
+throat grew dry and his limbs trembled. His pause was ominous. The
+girl's smile died away as he took a seat without looking at her.
+
+"Well, Maud, I suppose you know--we're going away to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, must you? But you'll come back?"
+
+"I don't expect to--I don't see how I can. I may never see you again."
+
+"Oh, don't say that!" cried the girl, her face as white as silver, her
+clasped hands straining.
+
+"I must go--I must!" he muttered, not daring to look upon her face.
+
+"Oh, what can I do--_we_ do--without you! I can't bear it!"
+
+She stopped, and sank back into a chair, her breath coming heavily from
+her twitching lips, the unnoticed tears falling from her staring,
+pitiful, wild, appealing eyes, her hands nervously twisting her gloves.
+
+There was a long silence. Each was undergoing a self-revelation; each
+was trying to face a future without the other.
+
+"I must go!" he repeated, aimlessly, mechanically. "What can I do here?"
+
+The girl's heavy breathing deepened into a wild little moaning sound,
+inexpressibly pitiful, her hungry eyes fixed on his face. She gave way
+first, and flung herself down upon her knees at his side, her hands
+seeking his neck.
+
+"Albert, I can't _live_ without you now! Take me with you! Don't leave
+me!"
+
+He stooped suddenly and took her in his arms, raised her, and kissed her
+hair.
+
+"I didn't mean it, Maud; I'll never leave you--never! Don't cry!"
+
+She drew his head down and kissed his lips, then turned her face to his
+breast--then joy and confidence came back to her.
+
+"I know now what you meant," she cried, gayly, raising herself and
+looking into his face; "you were trying to scare me; trying to make me
+show how much I--cared for you--first!" There was a soft smile on her
+lips and a tender light in her eyes. "But I don't mind it."
+
+"I guess I didn't know myself what I meant," he answered, with a grave
+smile.
+
+When Mrs. Welsh came in, they were sitting on the sofa, talking in low
+voices of their future. He was grave and subdued, while she was radiant
+with love and hope. The future had no terrors for her, but the boy
+unconsciously felt the gravity of life somehow deepened by the
+revelation of her love.
+
+"Why, Maud!" Mrs. Welsh exclaimed, "what are you doing?"
+
+"Oh, mother, I'm so happy--just as happy as a bird!" she cried, rushing
+into her mother's arms.
+
+"Why, why!--what is it? You're crying, dear!"
+
+"No, I'm not; I'm laughing--see!"
+
+Mrs. Welsh turned her dim eyes on the girl, who shook the tears from her
+lashes with the action of a bird shaking water from its wings. She
+seemed to shake off her trouble at the same moment.
+
+Mrs. Welsh understood perfectly. "I'm very glad, too, dearie," she said,
+simply, looking at the young man with motherly love irradiating her worn
+face. Albert went to her, and she kissed him, while the happy girl put
+her arms about them both in an ecstatic hug.
+
+"_Now_ you've got a son, mother."
+
+"But I've lost a daughter--my first-born."
+
+"Oh, wait till you hear our plans! He's going to settle down
+here--aren't you, Albert?"
+
+Then she went away and left the young people alone. They had a sweet,
+intimate talk of an hour, full of plans and hopes and confidences, and
+then he kissed his radiant love good-night, and, going into his own
+room, sat down by the stove and there pondered on the change that had
+come into his life.
+
+Already he sighed with the stress of care, the press of thought, which
+came upon him. The longing uneasiness of the boy had given place to
+another unrest--the unrest of the man who must face the world in earnest
+now, planning for food and shelter. To go back to school was out of the
+question. To expect help from his father, overworked and burdened with
+debt, was impossible. He must go to work, and go to work to aid _her_. A
+living must be wrung from this town. All the home and all the property
+Mrs. Welsh had were here, and wherever Maud went the mother must follow.
+
+He was in the midst of his mental turmoil when Hartley came in, humming
+the _Mulligan Guards_.
+
+"In the dark, hey?"
+
+"Completely in the dark."
+
+"Well, light up, light up!"
+
+"I'm trying to."
+
+"What the deuce do you mean by that tone? What's been going on here
+since my absence?"
+
+Albert did not reply, and Hartley shuffled about after a match, lighted
+the lamp, threw his coat and hat in the corner, and then said:
+
+"Well, I've got everything straightened up. Been freezing out old
+Daggett; the old skeesix has been promisin' f'r a week, and I just said,
+'Old man, I'll camp right down with you here till you fork over,' and he
+did. By-the-way, everybody I talked with to-day about leaving said,
+'What's Lohr going to do with that girl?' I told 'em I didn't know; do
+you? It seems you've been thicker'n I supposed."
+
+"I'm going to marry her," said Albert, calmly, but his voice sounded
+strained and hoarse.
+
+"What's that?" yelled Hartley.
+
+"Sh! don't raise the neighbors. I'm going to marry her."
+
+"Well, by jinks! When? Say, looky here! Well, I swanny!" exclaimed
+Hartley, helplessly. "When?"
+
+"Right away; some time this summer--June, maybe."
+
+Hartley thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, stretched out his
+legs, and stared at his friend in vast amaze.
+
+"You're givin' me guff!"
+
+"I'm in dead earnest."
+
+"I thought you was going through college all so fast?"
+
+"Well, I've made up my mind it isn't any use to try," replied Albert,
+listlessly.
+
+"What y' goin' t' do here, or are y' goin' t' take the girl away with
+yeh?"
+
+"She can't leave her mother. We'll run this boarding-house for the
+present. I'll try for the principalship of the school here. Raff is
+going to resign, they say. If I can't get that, I'll go into a law
+office. Don't worry about me."
+
+"But why go into this so quick? Why not put it off fifteen or twenty
+years?" asked Hartley, trying to get back to cheerful voice.
+
+"What would be the use? At the end of a year I'd be just about as poor
+as I am now."
+
+"Can't y'r father step in and help you?"
+
+"No. There are three boys and two girls, all younger than I, to be
+looked out for, and he has all he can carry. Besides, _she_ needs me
+right here and right now, and if I can do anything to make life easier
+for her I'm going t' do it. Besides," he ended, in a peculiar tone, "we
+don't feel as if we could live apart much longer."
+
+"But, great Scott! man, you can't--"
+
+"Now, hold on, Jim! I've thought this thing all over, and I've made up
+my mind. It ain't any use to go on talking about it. What good would it
+do me to go to school another year? I'd come out without a dollar, and
+no more fitted for earning a living for her than I am now! And, besides
+all that, I couldn't draw a free breath thinking of her workin' away
+here to keep things moving, liable at any minute to break down."
+
+Hartley gazed at him in despair, and with something like awe. It was a
+tremendous transformation in the young, ambitious student.
+
+Like most men in America, and especially Western men, he still clung to
+the idea that a man was entirely responsible for his success or failure
+in life. He had not admitted that conditions of society might be so
+adverse that only men of most exceptional endowments, and willing and
+able to master many of the best and deepest and most sacred of their
+inspirations and impulses, could succeed.
+
+Of the score of specially promising young fellows who had been with him
+at school, seventeen had dropped out and down. Most of them had married
+and gone back to farming, or to earn a precarious living in the small,
+dull towns where farmers trade and traders farm. Conditions were too
+adverse; they simply weakened and slipped slowly back into dulness and
+an ox-like or else a fretful patience. Thinking of these men, and
+thinking their failure due to themselves alone, Hartley could not endure
+the idea of his friend adding one more to the list of failures. He
+sprang up at last.
+
+"Say, Bert, you might just as well hang y'rself, and done with it! Why,
+it's suicide! I can't allow it. I started in at college bravely, and
+failed because I'd let it go too long. I couldn't study--couldn't get
+down to it; but you--why, old man, I'd _bet_ on you!" He had a tremor in
+his voice. "I hate like thunder to see you give up your plans. Say, you
+can't afford to do this; it's too much to pay."
+
+"No, it isn't."
+
+"I say it is--and, besides, you'd get over this in a week--"
+
+"Jim!" called Albert, warningly, sharply.
+
+"All right," said Jim, in the tone of a man who knows it's all
+wrong--"all right; but the time 'll come when you'll wish I'd--You ain't
+doin' the girl enough good to make up for the harm you're doin'
+yourself." He broke off again, and said in a tone of finality: "I'm
+done. I'm all through, and I c'n see you're through with Jim Hartley.
+All right!"
+
+"Darn curious," he muttered to himself, "that boy should get caught just
+at this time, and not with some o' those girls in Marion. Well, it's
+none o' my funeral," he ended, with a sigh; for it had stirred him to
+the bottom of his sunny nature, after all. A dozen times, as he lay
+there beside his equally sleepless companion, he started to say
+something more in deprecation of the step, but each time stifled the
+opening word into a groan.
+
+It would not be true to say that love had come to Albert Lohr as a
+relaxing influence, but it had changed the direction of his energies so
+radically as to make his whole life seem weaker and lower. As long as
+his love-dreams went out toward a vague and ideal woman, supposedly
+higher and grander than himself, he was spurred on to face the terrible
+sheer escarpment of social eminence; but when he met, by accident, the
+actual woman who was to inspire his future efforts, the difficulties he
+faced took on solid reality. His aspirations fell to the earth, their
+wings clipped, and became, perforce, submissive beasts at the plough.
+The force that moved so much of his thought was transformed into other
+energy.
+
+The table was very gay at dinner next day. Maud was standing at the
+highest point of her girlhood dreams. Her flushed cheeks and shining
+eyes made her seem almost a child, and Hartley wondered at her, and
+relented a little in the face of such happiness.
+
+"They're gay as larks now," thought Hartley to himself, as he joined in
+the laughter; "but that won't help 'em any ten years from now."
+
+He could hardly speak next day as he shook hands at the station with his
+friend.
+
+"Good-by, ol' man; I hope it'll come out all right, but I'm afraid--But
+there! I promised not to say anything about it. Good-by till we meet in
+Congress," he ended, in a resolute attempt to conceal his dismay.
+
+"Can't you come to the wedding, Jim? We've decided on June. You see,
+they need a man around the house, so we--You'll come, won't you, old
+fellow? And don't mind my being a little crusty last night."
+
+"Oh yes; I'll come," Jim said, in a tone which concealed a desire to
+utter one more protest, but to himself he said:
+
+"That ends him! He's jumped into a hole and pulled the hole in after
+him. A man can't marry a family like that at his age, and pull out of
+it. He _may_, but I doubt it. Well, as I remarked before, it's none o'
+my funeral so long as _he's_ satisfied."
+
+But he said it with a painful lump in his throat, and he could not bring
+himself to feel that Albert's course was right, and felt himself to be
+somehow culpable in the case.
+
+
+
+
+A DIVISION IN THE COOLLY
+
+
+A funeral is a depressing affair under the best circumstances, but a
+funeral in a lonely farm-house in March, the roads full of slush, the
+ragged gray clouds leaping the sullen hills like eagles, is tragic.
+
+The teams arrived splashed with mud, the women blue with cold under
+their scanty cotton-quilt lap robes, their hats set awry by the wind.
+They scurried into the house, to sit and shiver in the best room, where
+all the chairs that could contrive to stand erect, and all of any sort
+that could be borrowed, were crammed in together to seat the women
+folks.
+
+The men drove out to the barn, and having blanketed their teams with lap
+robes, picked their way through the slush of the yard over to the lee
+side of the haystack, where the pale sun occasionally shone.
+
+They spoke of "diseased" Williams, as if Diseased were his Christian
+name. They whittled shingles or stalks of straw as they talked.
+
+Sooner or later, after each new arrival, they branched off upon
+politics, and the McKinley Bill was handled gingerly. If any one, in his
+zeal, raised his voice above a certain pitch, some one said "Hish!" and
+the newcomer's voice sank again to that abnormal quiet which falls now
+and again on these loud-voiced folk of the wind and open spaces.
+
+The boys hung around the kitchen and smoke-house, playing sly jokes upon
+each other in order to provoke that explosion of laughter so thoroughly
+enjoyed by those who can laugh noiselessly.
+
+A snort of this sort brought Deacon Williams out to reprimand them,
+"Boys, boys, you should have more respect for the dead."
+
+The preacher came. The choir raised a wailing chant for the dead, but
+the group by the haystack did not move.
+
+Occasionally they came back, after talking about seeding and the price
+of hogs, to the discussion of the dead man's affairs.
+
+"I s'pose his property will go to Emmy and Serry, half and half."
+
+"I expec' so. He always said so, an' John wa'n't a man to whiffle about
+every day."
+
+"Well, Emmy won't make no fuss, but if Ike don't git more'n his half,
+I'll eat the greaser."
+
+"Who's ex-e_cu_tor?"
+
+"Deacon Williams, I expect."
+
+"Well, the Deacon's a slick one," some one observed, as if that were an
+excellent quality in an executor.
+
+"They ain't no love lost between Bill Gray and Harkey, I don't expect."
+
+"No, I don't think they is."
+
+"Ike don't seem to please people. It's queer, too. He tries awful hard."
+
+The voice of the preacher within, raised to a wild shout, interrupted
+them.
+
+"The Elder's gettin' warmed up," said one of the story-tellers, pausing
+in his talk. "And so I told Bill if he wanted the cord-wood--"
+
+The sun shone warmer, and the chickens _caw-cawed_ feebly. The colts
+whinnied, and a couple of dogs rolled and tumbled in wild frolic, while
+the voice of the preacher sounded dolefully or in humming monotone.
+
+Meanwhile, in the house, in the best room and in the best seats near the
+coffin, the women, in their black, worn dresses, with wrinkled, sallow
+faces and gnarled hands, sat shivering. Theirs was to be the luxury of
+the ceremony.
+
+The carpet was damp and muddy, the house was chill, and the damp wind
+filled them all with ague; but they had so much to see and talk about,
+that time passed rapidly. Each one entering was studied critically to
+see whether dress and deportment were proper to the occasion or not, and
+if one of the girls smiled a little as she entered, some one was sure to
+whisper:--
+
+"Heartless thing, how _can_ she?"
+
+There were a few young men, only enough to help out on the singing, and
+they remained mainly in the kitchen where they were seen occasionally in
+anxious consultation with Deacon Williams.
+
+The girls looked serious, but a little sly, as if they could smile if
+the boys looked their way or if one of the old women should cough her
+store teeth out.
+
+Upstairs the family were seated in solemn silence, the two nieces, Emma
+and Sarah, and Emma's husband, Harkey, and Sarah's children--deceased
+Williams had no wife. These people sat in stony immobility, except when
+Harkey looked at his watch, and said:--
+
+"Seem slow gitten here."
+
+Occasionally women came up the stairway and flung themselves upon the
+necks of the mourning nieces, who submitted to it without apparent
+disgust or astonishment, and sank back into the same icy calm after
+their visitors had "straightened their things," and retired to the
+reserved seats below.
+
+Deacon Williams, small, quick, with sunny blue-gray eyes belying the
+gloomy curve of his mouth, was everywhere; arranging for bearers,
+selecting hymns, conferring with the family, keeping abstracted old
+women off the seats reserved for the mourners, and maintaining an
+anxious lookout for the minister.
+
+The Deacon was a distant relative of the dead man, and it was generally
+admitted that he "would have a time of it" in administering upon the
+estate.
+
+At last the word was whispered about that the Elder was coming. Word was
+sent to the smoke-house and to the haystack to call the stragglers in.
+They came slowly, and finding the rooms all filled considered themselves
+absolved from a disagreeable duty, and went back to the sunny side of
+the haystack, where they smoked their pipes in ruminative enjoyment.
+
+The Elder, upon entering, took his place beside the coffin, the foot of
+which he used for a pulpit on which to lay his Bible and his hymn-book.
+A noise of whispering, rustling, scraping of feet arose as some old men
+crowded in among the women, and then the room became silent.
+
+The Elder took his seat and glanced round upon them all with solemn
+unrecognizing severity, while the mourners came down the creaking pine
+stairway in proper order of procedure.
+
+Everybody noticed the luxury of new dresses on the nieces and the new
+suits on the children. Everybody knew the feeling which led to these
+extravagances. Death, after all, was a majestic visitor, and money was
+not to stand in the way of a decent showing. Some of the girls smiled
+slyly at Isaac's gloves, which were too small and would go only halfway
+on, a fact he tried to conceal by keeping his hands folded. Each boy was
+provided with a large new stiff cotton handkerchief, which occupied
+immense space in outside pockets, crumpled as they were into a rustling
+ball with cruel salient angles like a Chinese puzzle.
+
+The Elder had attended two funerals that week, and like a jaded actor
+came lamely to his work. His prayer was not entirely satisfactory to the
+older people, they had expected a "little more power."
+
+He was a thin-faced man, with weak brown eyes and a mouth like a gopher,
+that is, with very prominent upper teeth. His black coat was worn and
+shiny, and hung limply, as if at some other period he had been fatter,
+or as if it had belonged to some other man.
+
+The choir with instinctive skill had selected a wailing hymn, only
+slightly higher in development than the chant of the Indians, sweet,
+plaintive at times, barbaric in its moving cadences. They sang it well,
+in meditative march, looking out of the windows during its interminable
+length.
+
+Then the Elder read some passages of the Scripture in his "funeral
+voice," which was entirely different from his "marriage voice" and his
+"Sunday voice." It had deep cadences in it and chanting inflections, not
+unlike the negro preachers or the keeners at Irish wakes.
+
+Then he gave out the hymn, which all joined in singing, rising to their
+feet with much trouble. After they had settled down again he took out a
+large carefully ironed handkerchief and laid it on the coffin as who
+should say, "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now."
+
+The absurdity of all this did not appear to his listeners, though they
+well knew he cared very little about the dead man, who was a very
+retiring person.
+
+The Elder on his part understood that his audience was before him for
+the pleasure of weeping, for the delight of seeing agonized faces and
+hearing wild grief-laden wailing. They were there to feel the delicious
+creeping thrill of horror and fear, roused by the presence of the corpse
+and the near shadow of the hovering angel of death.
+
+The Elder led off by some purely perfunctory remarks about the deceased,
+about his kindness, and his honesty. This caused the nieces to wipe away
+a sparse tear or two, and he was encouraged as if by slight applause. He
+developed as usual the idea that in the midst of life we are in death,
+that no man can tell when his time will come. He told two or three
+grewsome stories of sudden death. His voice now rose in a wild chant now
+sank to a hoarse whisper.
+
+The blowing of noses, low sobbings, and fervent amens from the old men
+thickened encouragingly, and he entered upon more impassioned flights.
+His voice, naturally sonorous, deepened in powerful song till the men
+seated comfortably on their haunches out by the haystack could plainly
+hear his words. "Oh, my brethren, what will you do in that last day?"
+
+Sarah's boys, without in the least understanding what it all meant,
+began to weep also and to use their handkerchiefs, so smooth and shining
+they were useless as so much legal-cap writing paper.
+
+Their misery would have been enhanced had they known that out in the
+wagon-shed under cover of the Elder's voice the other boys were having a
+game of mummelly peg in the warm, dry ground. Their fresh young souls
+laughed at death as the early robins out in the hedge near by defied the
+winds of March.
+
+Having harrowed the poor sensation-loving souls as thoroughly as could
+be desired, the Elder began the process of "letting them down easy." He
+remembered that the Lord was merciful; that the deceased could approach
+him with confidence; that there was a life beyond the tomb, a life of
+eternal rest (the allurement of all hard-working humanity).
+
+Slowly the snuffling and sobbing ceased, the handkerchiefs took longer
+and longer intervals of rest, and when in conclusion the preacher said,
+"Let us pray," the old men looked at each other with fervent
+satisfaction. "It's been a blessed time--a blessed time!"
+
+The pretty girl who sang the soprano looked very interesting with her
+wet eyelashes, the tears stopped halfway in their course down her
+rounded cheek. The closing hymn promised endless peace and rest, but was
+voiced in the same tragic and hopeless music with which the service
+opened.
+
+Deacon Williams came out to say, "All parties desiring to view the
+_remains_, will now have an opportunity." He had the hospitable tone of
+a host inviting his guests in to dinner.
+
+Viewing the remains was considered a religious duty, and the men from
+outside, and even the boys from behind the smoke-house, felt constrained
+to come in and pass in shuddering horror before the still face whose
+breath did not dim the glass above it. Most of them hurried by the box
+with only a swift side glance down at the strange thing within.
+
+Then the bearers lifted the coffin and slipped it into the
+platform-spring wagon, which was backed up to the door. The other teams
+loaded up, and the procession moved off, down the perilously muddy road
+toward the village burying-ground.
+
+In this way was John Williams, a hard-working, honorable Welshman,
+buried. His death furnished forth a sombre, dramatic entertainment such
+as he himself had ceremoniously attended many times. The funeral
+trotters whom he had seen at every funeral in the valley were now in at
+his death, and would be at each other's death, until the black and
+yellow earth claimed them all.
+
+A ceremony almost as interesting to the gossips as the burial was the
+reading of the will, to which only the family were invited. After the
+return of Emma, her husband, and Sarah from the cemetery, Deacon
+Williams read the dead man's bequests, seated in the best room, which
+was still littered with chairs and damp with mud.
+
+The will was simple and not a surprise to any one. It gave equal
+division of all the property to the nieces.
+
+"Well, now, when'll we have the settlement?" asked the Deacon.
+
+"Just's you say, Deacon," said Emma, meekly.
+
+"Suit yourself," said Harkey; "only it 'ad better come soon. Sooner the
+better--seedin's coming on."
+
+"Well, to-morrow is Friday, why not Saturday?"
+
+"All right, Saturday." All agreed.
+
+As Harkey drove off down the road he said to his wife: "The sooner we
+have it, the fewer things 'll git carried off. The Deacon don't favor me
+none, and Bill Gray is sweet on Serry, and he'll bear watchin'."
+
+The Deacon on his part took his chin in his fist and looked after
+Harkey. "Seemed a little bit anxious, 'cordin' to _my_ notion," he said,
+with a smile.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Saturday was deliciously warm and springlike, the hens woke in the early
+dawn with a jocund note in their throats, and the young cattle frisked
+about the barn-yard, moved to action by the electrical influences of the
+south wind.
+
+"Clear as a bell overhead," Deacon Williams said.
+
+But Jack Dunlap, Sarah's hand, said, "Nobody travels that way."
+
+Long before dawn the noise of the melting water could be heard running
+with musical tinkle under the ice. The ponds crashed and boomed in long
+reverberating explosions, as the sinking water heaved it up and let it
+fall with crackling roar; flights of ducks flashed over, cackling
+breathlessly as they scurried straight into the north.
+
+Deacon and Sarah arrived early and took possession, for Sarah was to
+have the eighty which included the house. They were busy getting things
+ready for the partition. The Deacon, assisted by Jack, the hired man,
+was busy hauling the machinery out of the shed into the open air, while
+Sarah and a couple of neighbors' girls, with skirts tucked up and towels
+on their heads, were scouring up pots and pans and dusting furniture in
+the kitchen.
+
+The girls, strong and handsome in their unsapped animal vigor, enjoyed
+the innocent display of their bare arms and petticoats.
+
+People from Sand Lake passing by wondered what was going on. Gideon
+Turner had the courage to pull up and call out, for the satisfaction of
+his wife:--
+
+"What's going on here this fine morning?"
+
+"Oh, we're goin' to settle up the estate!" said Sarah. "Why! how de do,
+Mrs. Turner?"
+
+"W'y, it's you, is it, Serry?"
+
+"Yes; it's me,--what they is left of me. I been here sence six o'clock.
+I'm getting things ready for the division. Deacon Williams is the
+ex-e_cu_tor, you know."
+
+"Aha! Less see, you divide equally, I hear."
+
+"Near's we can get at it. Uncle left me the house eighty, and the valley
+eighty to Emmy. Deacon's goin' to parcel out the belongin's."
+
+Turner looked sly. "How'd Harkey feel?"
+
+Sarah smiled. "I don't know and care less. He'll make trouble if he can,
+but I don't see how he can. He agreed to have the Deacon do the
+dividin', and he'll have to stand by it so far as I can see."
+
+Mrs. Turner looked dubious. "Well, you know Ike Harkey. He looks as
+though sugar wouldn't melt in his mouth, but I tell you I'd hate to have
+dealin's with him."
+
+Turner broke in: "Well, we must be movin'. I s'pose you'll move right
+in?"
+
+"Yes. Just as soon's as this thing's settled."
+
+"Well, good-by. Come up."
+
+"You come down."
+
+Sarah was a heavy, good-natured woman, a widow with "a raft of
+children." Probably for that reason her uncle had left her the house,
+which was large and comfortable. As she stood looking down the road, one
+of the girls came out to the gate. She was a plump, strong creature, a
+neighbor's girl who had volunteered to help.
+
+"Anybody coming?"
+
+"Yes. I guess--no, it's going the other way. Ain't it a nice day?"
+
+That was as far as she could carry the utterance of her feeling, but all
+the morning she had felt the wonderful power of the air. The sun had
+risen incredibly warm. The wind was in the south, and the crackling,
+booming roar of ice in the ponds and along the river was like winter
+letting go its iron grip upon the land. Even the old cows shook their
+horns, and made comical attempts to frisk with the yearlings. Sarah knew
+it was foolish, but she felt like a girl that morning--and Bill was
+coming up the road.
+
+In the midst of the joy of the spring day stood the house, desolate and
+empty, out of which its owner had been carried to a bed in the cold,
+clinging clay of the little burying-ground.
+
+The girls and Sarah worked swiftly, brushing, cleaning, setting aside,
+giving little thought to even the beauty of the morning, which entered
+their blood unconsciously.
+
+"Well, how goes it?" asked a quick, jovial voice.
+
+The girls gave screams of affected fright.
+
+"Why, Deacon! You nearly scared the life out of us."
+
+Deacon Williams was always gallant.
+
+"I didn't know I was given to scaring the ladies," he said. "Well, who's
+here?"
+
+"Nobody but us so far."
+
+"Hain't seen nothing o' Harkey?"
+
+"Not a thing. He sent word he'd be on hand, though."
+
+"M--, well, we've got the machinery invoiced. Guess I'll look around and
+kind o' get the household things in my mind's eye," said the Deacon,
+taking on the air of a public functionary.
+
+"All right. We'll have everything ready here in a few minutes."
+
+They returned to work, dusting and scrubbing. The girls with their
+banter put death into the background as an obscure and infrequent
+incident of old age.
+
+Sarah again studied the road down the Coolly.
+
+"Well there! I see a team coming up the Coolly now; wonder if it's
+Emmy."
+
+"Looks more like Bill Gray's team," said one of the girls, looking slyly
+at Sarah, who grew very red.
+
+"Oh, you're too sharp, ain't you?"
+
+It was perfectly ridiculous (to the young people) to see these
+middle-aged lovers courting like sixteen-year-olds, and they had no
+mercy on either Bill or Sarah.
+
+Bill drove up in leisurely way, his horses steaming, his wagon-wheels
+loaded with mud. Mrs. Gray was with him, her jolly face shining like the
+morning sun.
+
+"Hello, folkses, are you all here?"
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Gray," said the Deacon, approaching to help her out.
+"Hello, Bill, nice morning."
+
+Bill looked at Sarah for a moment. "Bully good," he said, leaving his
+mother to scramble down the wagon-wheel alone--at least so far as he was
+concerned, but the Deacon stood below courageously.
+
+Mrs. Gray cried out in her loud good humor: "Look out, Deacon, don't git
+too near me--if I should fall on you there wouldn't be a grease spot
+left. _There!_ I'm all right now," she said, having reached ground
+without accident. She shook her dress and looked briskly around. "Wal,
+what you done, anyway? Emmy's folks come yet?"
+
+"No, but I guess that's them comin' now. I hope Ike won't come, though."
+
+Mrs. Gray stared at the Deacon. "Why not?"
+
+"Well, he's just sure to make a fuss," said Jack, "he's so afraid he
+won't get his share."
+
+Bill chewed on a straw and looked at Sarah abstractedly.
+
+"Well, what's t' be done?" inquired Mrs. Gray, after a pause.
+
+"Can't do much till Emmy gets here," said Sarah.
+
+"Oh, I guess we can. Bill, you put out y'r team, we won't get away 'fore
+dinner."
+
+The men drove off to the barn, leaving the women to pick their way on
+chips and strips of board laid in the mud, to the safety of the
+chip-pile, and thence to the kitchen, which was desolately littered with
+utensils.
+
+Deacon assumed command with the same alertness, and with the same sunny
+gleam in his eye, with which he directed the funeral a few days before.
+
+"Now, Bill, put out your team and help Jack and me pen them hogs. Women
+folks 'll git things ready here."
+
+Emma came at last, driven by Harkey's brother and his hired man. They
+were both brawny fellows, rude and irritable, and the Deacon lifted his
+eyebrows and whistled when he saw them drive in with a lumber wagon.
+
+The women swarmed out to greet Emma, who was a thin, irritable, feeble
+woman.
+
+"Better late than never. Where's Ike?" inquired Mrs. Gray.
+
+"Well, he--couldn't git away very well--he's got t' clean up some
+seed-oats," she answered nervously. After the men drove off, however,
+she added: "He thought he hadn't ought to come; he didn't want to cause
+no aidgewise feelin's, so he thought he hadn't better come--he'd just
+leave it to you, Deacon."
+
+The Deacon said, "All right, all right! We'll fix it up!" but he didn't
+feel so sure of it after that, though he set to work bravely.
+
+The sun, growing warmer, fell with pleasant gleam around the kitchen
+door and around the chip-pile where the hens were burrowing. The men
+worked in their shirt-sleeves.
+
+"Well, now, we'll share the furniture an' stuff next," said the Deacon,
+looking around upon his little interested semicircle of spectators.
+"Now, put Emmy's things over there and Serry's things over here. I'll
+call 'em off, and, if they's no objection, you girls can pass 'em over."
+
+He cleared his throat and began in the voice of one in authority:--
+
+"Thirteen pans, six to Emmy, seven to Serry;" then hastened to add:
+"I'll balance that by giving the biggest of the two kittles to Emmy.
+Rollin' pin and cake board to Serry, two flat-irons to Emmy, small tub
+to Emmy, large one to Serry, balanced by the tin water pail. Dozen
+clo'se-pins; half an' half, six o' one, half-dozen t'other," he said
+with a smile at his own joke, while the others actively placed the
+articles in separate piles.
+
+"Stove to Serry, because she has the house, bureau to Emmy."
+
+At this point Mrs. Gray said, "I guess that ain't quite even, Deacon;
+the bureau ain't worth much."
+
+"Oh, no, no, that's all right! Let her have it," Emma protested
+nervously.
+
+"Give her an extry tick, anyway," said Sarah, not to be outdone in
+magnanimity.
+
+"Settle that between ye," said the Deacon.
+
+He warmed to his work now, and towels, pans, crockery, brooms, mirrors,
+pillows, and bedticks were rapidly set aside in two groups on the soft
+soil. The poverty of the home could best be seen in the display of its
+pitiful furniture.
+
+The two nieces looked on impassively, standing side by side. The men
+came to move the bureau and other heavy things and looked on, while the
+lighter things were being handed over by Mrs. Gray and the girls.
+
+At noon they sat down in the empty kitchen and ate a cold snack--at
+least, the women took seats, the men stood around and lunched on hunks
+of boiled beef and slices of bread. There was an air of constraint upon
+the male portion of the party not shared by Mrs. Gray and the girls.
+
+"Well, that settles things in the house," beamed the Deacon as he came
+out with the women trailing behind him; "an' now in about two jerks of
+a dead lamb's tail, we'll git at the things out in the barn."
+
+"Wal, we don't know much about machines and things, but I guess we'd
+better go out and keep you men from fightin'," said Mrs. Gray, shaking
+with fun; "Ike didn't come because he didn't want to make any trouble,
+but I guess he might just as well 'a' come as send two such critters as
+Jim 'n' Hank."
+
+The women laughed at her frankness, and in very good humor they all went
+out to the barn-yard.
+
+"Now, these things can't be laid out fast as I call 'em off, but we'll
+do the best we can."
+
+"Let's try the stawk first," said Jim.
+
+The women stood around with shawls pinned over their heads while the
+division of the stock went forward. The young men came often within
+chaffing distance of the girls.
+
+There were nine shotes nearly of a size, and the Deacon said, "I'll give
+Serry the odd shote."
+
+"Why so?" asked Jim Harkey, a sullen-faced man of thirty.
+
+"Because a shote is hard to carry off and I can balance--"
+
+"Well, I guess you can balance f'r Em 'bout as well as f'r Serry."
+
+The Deacon was willing to yield a point. "Any objection, Bill? If not,
+why--"
+
+"Nope, let her go," said Bill.
+
+"What 'ave _you_ got to say 'bout it?" asked Jim, insolently.
+
+Bill turned his slow bulk. "I guess I've a good 'eal to say--haven't I,
+Serry?"
+
+Sarah reddened, but stood beside him bravely. "I guess you have, Bill,
+about as much as _I_ have." There was a moment of dramatic tension and
+the girls tingled with sympathy.
+
+"Let 'er go," said Bill, splitting a straw with his knife. He had not
+proposed to Sarah before and he felt an unusual exaltation to think it
+came so easy after all.
+
+When they reached the cattle, Jim objected to striking a balance with a
+"farrer cow," and threw the Deacon's nice calculation all out of joint.
+
+"Let it go, Jim," pleaded Emma.
+
+"I won't do it," Ike said--"I mean I know he don't want no farrer cow,
+he's got two now."
+
+The Deacon was a little nettled. "I guess that's going to stand," he
+said sharply.
+
+Jim swore a little but gave in, and came back with an access of ill
+humor on a division of the horses.
+
+"But I've give you the four heavy horses to balance the four others and
+the two-year-old," said the Deacon.
+
+"I'll be damned if I stand that," said Jim.
+
+"I guess you'll have to," said the Deacon.
+
+Emma pleaded, "Let it go, Jim, don't make a fuss."
+
+Jim raged on, "I'll be cawn-demmed if I'll stand it. I don't--Ike don't
+want them spavined old crows; they're all ring-boned and got the
+heaves." His long repressed ill-nature broke out.
+
+"Toh, toh!" said the Deacon, "Don't kick over the traces now. We'll fix
+it up some way."
+
+Emma tried to stop Jim, but he shook her off and continued to walk back
+and forth behind the horses munching on quietly, unconscious of any
+dispute about their value.
+
+Bill sat on the oat box in his hulking way, his heels thumping a tune,
+his small gray eyes watching the angry man.
+
+"Don't make a darn fool of yourself," he said placidly.
+
+Jim turned, glad of the chance for a row, "You better keep out of this."
+
+Bill continued to thump, the palms of his big hands resting on the edge
+of the box. "I'm in it," he said conclusively.
+
+"Well, you git out of it! I ain't goin' to be bulldozed--that ain't what
+I come here for."
+
+"No, I see it ain't," said Bill. "If you're after a row you can have it
+right here. You won't find a better place."
+
+"There, there," urged the Deacon. "What's the use? Keep cool and don't
+tear your shirts."
+
+Mrs. Gray went up to Jim and took him by the arm. "You need a good
+spankin' to make you good-natured," she said. "I think the Deacon has
+done first rate, and you ought 'o--"
+
+"Let go o' me," he snarled, raising his hand as if to strike her.
+
+Bill's big boot lunged out, catching Harkey in the ribs, and if the
+Deacon had not sprung to his assistance Jim would have been trampled to
+pieces by the scared horse under whose feet he found himself. He was
+wild with dizzy, breathless rage.
+
+"Who hit me?" he demanded.
+
+Bill's shapeless hulk straightened up and stood beside him as if his
+pink flesh had suddenly turned to oak. Out of his fat cheeks his gray
+eyes glared.
+
+"I did. Want another?"
+
+The Deacon and Jack came between and prevented the encounter which would
+have immediately followed. Bill went on:--
+
+"They cain't no man lay a hand on my mother and live long after it." He
+was thoroughly awake now. There was no slouch to his action at that
+moment, and Jim was secretly pleased to have the encounter go by.
+
+"You come here for a fuss and you can have it, both of you," Bill went
+on in unusual eloquence. "Deacon's tried to do the square thing, Emmy's
+tried to do the square thing, and Serry's kep' quiet, but you've been
+sour and ugly the whole time, and now it's goin' to stop."
+
+"This ain't the last of this thing," said Jim.
+
+"You never'll have a better time," said Bill.
+
+Mrs. Gray and the Deacon turned in now to quiet Bill, and the settlement
+went on. Jim kept close watch on the proceedings, and muttered his
+dissent to his friends, but was careful not to provoke Bill further.
+
+In dividing the harnesses they came upon a cow-bell hanging on a nail.
+The Deacon jingled it as he passed. "Goes with the bell-cow," he said,
+and nothing further was said of it. Jim apparently did not consider it
+worth quarrelling about.
+
+At last the work was done, a terribly hard day's work. The machines and
+utensils were piled in separate places, the cattle separated, and the
+grain measured. As they were about to leave, the Deacon said finally:--
+
+"If there's any complaint to make, let's have it right now. I want this
+settlement to _be_ a settlement. Is everybody satisfied?"
+
+"I am," said Emmy. "Ain't you, Serry?"
+
+"Why, of course," said Sarah, who was a little slower of speech. "I
+think the Deacon has done first rate. I ain't a word of fault to find,
+have you, Bill?"
+
+"Nope, not an ioty," said Bill, readily.
+
+Jim did not agree in so many words, but, as he said nothing, the Deacon
+ended:--
+
+"Well, that settles it. It ain't goin' to rain, so you can leave these
+things right here till Monday. I guess I'll be gettin' out for home.
+Good evening, everybody."
+
+Emma drove away down the road with Jim, but Sarah remained to straighten
+up the house. Harkey's hired hand went home with Dade Walker who
+considered that walk the pleasant finish to a very interesting day's
+work. She sympathized for the time with the Harkey faction.
+
+Sunday forenoon, when Bill and Sarah drove up to the farm to put things
+in order in the house, they found Ike Harkey walking around with that
+queer side glance he had, studying the piles of furniture, and mentally
+weighing the pigs.
+
+He greeted them smoothly: "Yes, yes, I'm _purr_fickly satisfied,
+_purr_fickly! Not a word to say--better'n I expected," he added.
+
+Bill was not quite keen enough to perceive the insult which lay in that
+final clause, and Sarah dared not inform him for fear of trouble.
+
+As Harkey drove away, however, Bill had a dim feeling of dissatisfaction
+with him.
+
+"He's too gol-dang polite, that feller is; I don't like such
+butter-mouth chaps--they'd steal the cents off'n a dead nigger's eyes."
+
+
+III
+
+
+The second Sunday after the partition of goods the entire Coolly turned
+out to church in spite of the muddy road. The men, after driving up to
+the door of the little white church and helping the women to alight,
+drove out to the sheds along the fence and gathered in knots beside
+their wagons in the warm spring sun. It was very pleasant there, and the
+men leaned with relaxed muscles upon the wagon-wheels, or sat on the
+fence with jack-knives in hand. The horses, weary with six days seeding,
+slept with closed eyes and drooping lips. Generally the talk was upon
+spring work, each man bragging of the number of acres he had sown during
+the week, but this morning the talk was all about the division which had
+come between the nieces of "deceased Williams." They discussed it slowly
+as one might eat a choice pudding in order to extract the flavor from
+each spoonful.
+
+"What is it all about, anyhow?" asked Jim Cranby. "I ain't heard nothing
+about it." He had stood in open-mouthed perplexity trying to catch a
+clew. Coming late, he found it baffling.
+
+"That shows where he lives; a man might as well live in a well as up in
+Molasses Gap," said one of the younger men, pointing up to the Coolly.
+"Why, Ike Harkey is kicking about the six shotes the Deacon put off on
+him."
+
+"No, it wasn't the shotes, it was a farrer cow," put in Clint Stone.
+
+"Well, _I_ heard it was a shote."
+
+"So did I," said another.
+
+"Well, Bill Gray told Jinks Ike had stole a cow-bell that belonged to
+the black farrer cow," said another late comer.
+
+"Stole a cow-bell," and they all drew closer together. This was really
+worth while!
+
+"Yes, sir; Jinks told me he heard Bill say so yesterday. That's the way
+I heard it."
+
+"Well, I'll be cussed, if that ain't small business for Ike Harkey!"
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Cranby, with sharpened appetite.
+
+"Well, I didn't hear no p'rtic'lars, but it seems the bell was hangin'
+on a peg in the barn, and when they got home from church it was gone,
+hide an' hair. Bill is dead sure Ike took it."
+
+"Say, there'll be fun over that yet, won't they," said one of the
+fellows, with a grin.
+
+"Well, Ike better keep out of Bill's way, that's all."
+
+"Well--I ain't takin' sides. Some young'un may have took it."
+
+"Well, let's go in, boys; I see the Elder's come. By gum, there's
+Harkey!" They all looked toward Harkey, who had just driven up to the
+door.
+
+Harkey came into church holding his smooth, serious face a little one
+side, in his usual way, quiet and dignified, as if he were living up to
+his Sunday suit of clothes. He seemed to be unconscious of the attitude
+in which he stood toward most of his neighbors.
+
+Bill and Sarah were not present, and that gave additional color to the
+story of trouble between the sisters.
+
+After the sermon Deacon Harkey led the Sunday School, and the critics of
+his action were impressed more than usual with his smooth and quiet
+utterance. Emma seemed more than ordinarily worn and dispirited.
+
+It was perfectly natural that Mrs. Gray should be the last person to
+know of the division which had slowly set in between the two sisters and
+their factions. Charitable and guileless herself, it was difficult for
+her to conceive of slander and envy.
+
+Nevertheless, a division had come about, slowly, but decisively. The
+entire Coolly was involved in the discussion before Mrs. Gray gave it
+any serious attention, but one day, when Sarah came in upon her and
+poured out a mingled flood of sorrow and invective, the good soul was
+aghast.
+
+"Well, well, I swan! There, there! I wouldn't make so much fuss over
+it!" she said, stripping her hands out of the biscuit dough in order to
+go over and pat Sarah on the shoulder. "After all that to-do gettin'
+settled, seems 's if you ought 'o _stay_ settled. Good land! It ain't
+anything to have a fuss over, anyway!"
+
+"But it is _our_ cow-bell. It belonged on the black farrer cow, that Jim
+turned his nose up at, and he sneaked around and got it just to spite
+us."
+
+"Oh, I guess not," she replied incredulously.
+
+"Well, he did; and Emmy put him up to it, and I know she did," said
+Sarah in a lamentable voice.
+
+"Sary Ann," said Mrs. Gray, as sharply as any one ever heard her speak,
+"that's a pretty way to talk about your sister, ain't it?"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Jim Harkey said--"
+
+"You never mind what Mrs. Jim Harkey said; she's a _snoop_ and everybody
+knows it."
+
+"But she wouldn't tell that, if it weren't so."
+
+"Well, I tell you, I wouldn't pay no attention to what she said, and I
+wouldn't make such a fuss over an old cow-bell, anyway."
+
+"But the cow-bell is only the starting point; she ain't been near the
+house since, and she says all kinds of mean, nasty things about us."
+
+"All comes through Mrs. Jim, I suppose," said Mrs. Gray, with some
+sarcasm.
+
+"No, it don't. She told Dade Walker that I got all the biggest
+flat-irons, when she knows I offered her the bureau. I did everything I
+could to make her feel satisfied."
+
+"I know you did, and now you must just keep cool till I see Emmy
+myself."
+
+When Mrs. Gray started out on her mission of pacification, she found it
+to be entirely out of her control. The Coolly was actively partisan. One
+party stood by the Harkeys, and another took Sarah's part, while the
+_tertium quid_ said it was "all darn foolishness."
+
+Mrs. Gray was appalled at the state of affairs, but struggled to
+maintain a neutral position. In May, when Bill and Sarah were married,
+things had reached such a stage that Emma was not invited to the wedding
+supper. Nothing could have cut deeper than this neglect, and thereafter
+adherents of the third remove declined to speak when passing; some even
+refused to nod. The Harkey faction also condemned the early marriage of
+Bill and Sarah as unseemly.
+
+Soon after, Emma came again to see Mrs. Gray, salty with tears, and
+crushed with the slight Sarah had put upon her. She was a plain pale
+woman, anyway, and weeping made her pitiable. She explained the
+situation with her head on Mrs. Gray's lap:--
+
+"She never has been to see me since that day, and--but I hoped she'd
+come and see me, but she never sent me any invitation to her wedding."
+She choked with sobs at the memory of it.
+
+Mrs. Gray realized the enormity of the offence, and she could only put
+her arms around Emma's back and say, "There, there, I wouldn't take on
+so about it." As a matter of fact, she had striven to have Bill send an
+invitation to his brother-in-law, but Bill was inflexible on that point.
+With the sound of the stolen cow-bell ringing in his ears, he could not
+bring himself to ask Ike Harkey into his house.
+
+After Emma grew a little calmer, Mrs. Gray tried again to bridge the
+chasm. "Now, I just believe if you would go to Sarah--"
+
+"I can't do that! She'd slam the door in my face. Jim's wife says Sarah
+said I shouldn't pick a single currant out of the garden this year!"
+
+"I don't go much on what Jim's wife says," put in Mrs. Gray, guardedly.
+She had begun to feel that Jim's wife was the main disturbing element.
+
+The sisters really suffered from their separation. They had been so used
+to running in at all times of the day that each missed the other
+wofully. It had been their habit whenever they needed each other to help
+cook, or cut a dress, to hang a cloth out of the chamber window, a sign
+which was sure to bring help post-haste; but now nothing would induce
+either of them to make the first concession.
+
+Two or three times when Emma, feeling especially lonely, was on the
+point of hanging out the signal, she was prevented by the thought of
+some cruel message Mrs. Jim had brought. Jim lived on Ike's farm in a
+small house that had been Emma's first home, and Mrs. Jim was almost as
+much in her house as in her own. She had no children, and was a
+mischief-maker, not so much from ill will as from a love of dramatic
+situations; it was her life, this dramatic play of loves and hates
+among her friends and neighbors.
+
+Emma feared her husband, too; he was so self-contained, and so
+inexorably moral, at least in appearance. He sweetly said he bore no ill
+will toward the Grays, but he must insist that his wife should not visit
+them until they apologized. He took the matter very serenely, however.
+
+The sound of the cow-bell was a constant daily irritation to Bill; he
+was slow to wrath, but the bell seemed to rasp on his tenderest nerve;
+it had a curiously exultant sound heard in the early morning--it seemed
+to voice Harkey's triumph. Bill's friends were astonished at the change
+in him. He grew dark and thunderous with wrath whenever Harkey's name
+was mentioned.
+
+One day Ike's cattle broke out of the pasture into Bill's young oats,
+and though Ike hurried after them, it seemed to Bill he might have got
+them out a little quicker than he did. He said nothing then, however,
+but when a few days later they broke in again, he went over there in
+very bad humor.
+
+"I want this thing stopped," he said.
+
+Ike was mending the fence. He smiled in his sweet way, and said
+smoothly, "I'm sorry, but when they once git a taste of grain it's
+pretty hard to keep 'em--"
+
+"Well, there ought to be a new fence here," said Bill. "That fence is as
+rotten as a pumpkin."
+
+"I s'pose they had; yes, sir, that's so," Harkey assented quickly. "I'm
+ready to build my half, you know," he said, "any time--any time you
+are."
+
+"Well, I'll build mine to-morrow," said Bill. "I can't have your cattle
+pasturing on my oats."
+
+"All right, all right. I'll have mine done as quick as yourn."
+
+"Well, see't you do; I don't want my grain all tramped into the ground
+and I ain't a-goin' to have it."
+
+Harkey hastily gathered up his tools, saying, "Yes, yes, all right."
+
+"You might send home that cow-bell of mine while you're about it," Bill
+called after him, but Harkey did not reply or turn around.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The line fence ran up the bluff toward the summit of the ridge to the
+east. On each side it was set with smooth green slopes of pasture and
+pleasant squares of wheat, until it reached the woods and ran under the
+oaks and walnuts and birches to the cliffs of lichen-spotted stone which
+topped the summit.
+
+Bill walked the full length of the fence to see how much of the old
+material could be used. He recognized the bell on one of Harkey's
+cattle, and he grew wrathful at the sight of another cow peacefully
+gnawing the fresh, green grass, with the bell, which belonged to the
+black cow, on her neck.
+
+It was mid-spring. Everywhere was the vivid green of the Wisconsin
+landscape; the slopes were like carefully tended lawns, without stumps
+or stones; the groves rose up the hills, pink and gray and green in
+softly rounded billows of cherry bloom and tender oak and elm foliage.
+Here and there under the forest tender plants and flowers had sprung up,
+slender and succulent like all productions of a rich and shadowed soil.
+
+Early the next morning Bill and his two hands began to work in the
+meadow, working toward the ridge; Harkey and his brother and their hands
+began at the ridge and worked down toward the meadow; each party could
+hear the axes of the other ringing in the still, beautiful spring air.
+
+Bill's hired hand, on his way to the spring about the middle of the
+forenoon, met Jim Harkey, who said wickedly in answer to a jocular
+greeting:--
+
+"Don't give me none of your lip now; we'll break your necks for two
+cents."
+
+The hand came to Bill with the story. "Bill, they're on the fight."
+
+"Oh, I guess not."
+
+"Well, they be. We better not run up against them to-day if we don't
+want trouble."
+
+"Well, I ain't goin' to dodge 'em," said Bill; "I ain't in that
+business; if they want fight, we'll accommodate 'em with the best we've
+got in the shop."
+
+At noon, Harkey's gang went to dinner a little earlier, and, as they
+came down the path quite near, Jim said with a sneer:--
+
+"You managed to git the easiest half of the fence, didn't yeh?"
+
+"We took the half that belongs to us," said Bill. "_We_ don't take what
+don't belong to us."
+
+"Cow-bells, for instance," put in Bill's hired hand, with a provoking
+intonation.
+
+Jim stopped and his face twisted with rage; Ike paused a little farther
+on down the path. Jim came closer.
+
+"Say, I know what you're driving at and you're a liar, and for a leather
+cent I'd lick you like hell!"
+
+"You can't do it. You don't weigh enough."
+
+"Oh, shut up, Jack," called Bill. "Go about y'r business," he said to
+Jim, "or I'll take a hand."
+
+Jim's face flamed into a wild wrath. His lips lifted at the corners like
+a wolf's as he leaped the fence with a wild spring and lunged against
+Bill's breast. The larger man went down, but his great arms closed about
+his assailant's neck with a bear-like grip. Jim could neither rise nor
+strike; with a fury no animal could equal he pressed his hands upon
+Bill's throat and thrust his elbow into his mouth in the attempt to
+strangle him. He meant murder.
+
+Jack faced the other men, who came running up. Ike seized a stake, and
+was about to leap over, when Jack raised an axe in the air.
+
+"Stand off!" he yelled, and his voice rang through the woods; he noticed
+how harsh and wild it sounded in the silence. He heard a grunting sound,
+and gave one glance at the two men writhing amid the ferns silent as
+grappling bull-dogs.
+
+Bill had fallen in the brake and seemed wedged in. At last there came
+into his heart a terrible shiver, a blind desperation that uncoiled all
+the strength in his great bulk. Then he seemed to bound from the
+ground, as he twisted the other man under him, and shook himself free.
+
+He dragged one great maul of a fist free and drove it at the face
+beneath him. Jim saw it coming and turned his head. The blow fell on his
+neck and his carnivorous grin smoothed out as if sleep had suddenly
+fallen upon him. He drew a long, shuddering breath, his muscles
+quivered, and his clenched hands fell open.
+
+Bill rose upon his knees and looked at him. A deep awe fell upon him. In
+the pause he heard the robins rioting from the trees in the lower
+valley, and the woodpecker cried resoundingly.
+
+"You've killed him!" cried Ike, as he climbed hastily over the fence.
+
+Bill did not reply. The men faced each other in solemn silence, all wish
+for murder going out of their hearts. The sobbing cry of the mourning
+dove, which they had been hearing all day, suddenly assumed new meaning.
+
+"_Ah, woe, woe is me!_" it cried.
+
+"Bring water!" shouted Ike, kneeling beside his brother.
+
+Bill knelt there with him, while the rest dashed water upon Jim's face.
+
+At last he began to breathe like a fretful, waking child, and looking up
+into the scared faces above him, motioned the water away from him. The
+angry look came back into his face, but it was mixed with perplexity.
+
+He touched his hand to his face and brought it down covered with blood.
+"How much am I hurt?" he said fiercely.
+
+"Oh, nothing much," Ike hastened to say; "it's just a scratch."
+
+Jim struggled to his elbow and looked around him. It all seemed to come
+back to him. "Did he do it fair?" he demanded of his companions.
+
+"Oh, yes; it was fair enough," said Ike.
+
+Jim looked at Jack. "That _thing_ didn't hit me with his axe, did he?"
+
+Jack grinned. "No, but I was just a-goin' to when Bill belted you one,"
+was the frank and convincing reply.
+
+Jim got up slowly and faced Bill. "Well, that settles it; it's all
+right! You're a better man than I am. That's all I've got to say."
+
+He climbed back over the fence and led the way down to dinner without
+looking back.
+
+"What give ye that lick on the side o' the head, Jim?" his wife asked,
+when he sat down at the dinner-table.
+
+"Never you mind," he replied surlily, but he added, "Ike's axe come off,
+and give me a side-winder."
+
+Bill carefully removed all marks of his struggle and walked into dinner
+shamefacedly, all muscle gone out of his bulk of fat. His sudden return
+to primeval savagery grew monstrous in the cheerful kitchen, with its
+noise of hearty children, sizzling meat, and the clatter of dishes.
+
+The stove was not drawing well and Sarah did not notice anything out of
+the way with Bill.
+
+"I never see such a hateful thing in all my life," she said, referring
+to the stove. "That rhubarb duff won't be fit for a hog to eat; the
+undercrust ain't baked the least bit yet, and I have had it in there
+since fifteen minutes after 'leven."
+
+Bill said generously, "Oh, well, never mind, Serry; we'll worry it down
+some way."
+
+
+V
+
+
+All through July and August Mrs. Jim Harkey seemed to renew her
+endeavors to keep the sisters apart; she still carried spiteful tales to
+and fro, amplifying them with an irresistible histronic tendency. It had
+become a matter of self-exoneration with her then. She could not stop
+now without seeming to admit she had been mischief-making in the past.
+If the sisters should come together, her lies would instantly appear.
+
+Emma grew morose, irritable, and melancholy; she was suffering for her
+sister's wholesome presence, and yet, being under the dominion of the
+mischief-maker, dared not send word or even mention the name of her
+sister in the presence of the Harkeys.
+
+Mrs. Jim came up to the house to stay as Emma got too ill to work, and
+took charge of the house. The children hated her fiercely, and there
+were noisy battles in the kitchen constantly wearing upon the nerves of
+the sick woman who lay in the restricted gloom of the sitting room
+bed-chamber, within hearing of every squall.
+
+There were moments of peace only when Ike was in the house. Smooth as he
+was, Jim's wife was afraid of him. There was something compelling in his
+low-toned voice; his presence subdued but did not remove strife.
+
+His silencing of the tumult hardly arose out of any consideration for
+his wife, but rather from his inability to enjoy his paper while the
+clamor of war was going on about him.
+
+He was not a tender man, and yet he prided himself on being a very calm
+and even-tempered man. He kept out of Bill's way, and considered himself
+entirely justified in his position regarding the cow-bell. It is
+doubtful if he would have accepted an apology.
+
+Emma suffered acutely from Mrs. Harkey's visits. Something mean and
+wearying went out from her presence, and her sharp, bold face was a
+constant irritation. Sometimes when she thought herself alone, Emma
+crawled to the window which looked up the Coolly, toward Sarah's home,
+and sat there silently longing to send out a cry for help. But at the
+sound of Jane Harkey's step she fled back into bed like a frightened
+child.
+
+She became more and more childish and more flighty in her thoughts as
+her time of trial drew near, and she became more subject to her jailer.
+She grew morbidly silent, and her large eyes were restless and full of
+pleading.
+
+One day she heard Mrs. Smith talking out in the kitchen.
+
+"How is Emmy to-day, Mrs. Jim?"
+
+"Well, not extry. She ain't likely to come out as well as usual this
+time, I don't think," was the brutally incautious reply; "she's pretty
+well run down, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had some trouble."
+
+"I suppose Sarah will be down to help you," said Mrs. Smith.
+
+"Well, I guess not--not after what she's told."
+
+"What has she told?" asked Mrs. Smith, in her sweet and friendly voice.
+
+"Why, she said she wouldn't set foot in this house if we all _died_."
+
+"I never heard her say that, and I don't believe she ever _did_ say it,"
+said Mrs. Smith, firmly.
+
+Emma's heart glowed with a swift rush of affection toward her sister and
+Mrs. Smith; she wanted to cry out her faith in Sarah, but she dared not.
+
+Mrs. Harkey slammed the oven door viciously. "Well, you can believe it
+or not, just as you like; I heard her say it."
+
+"Well, I didn't, so I can't believe it."
+
+When Mrs. Smith came in, Emma was ready to weep, so sweet and cheery was
+her visitor's face.
+
+She found no chance to talk with her, however, for Mrs. Harkey kept near
+them during her visit. Once, while Mrs. Jim ran out to look at the pies,
+Mrs. Smith whispered: "Don't you believe what they say about Sarah.
+She's just as kind as can be--I know she is. She's looking down this
+way every day, and I know she'd come down instanter if you'd send for
+her. I'm going up that way, and--"
+
+She found no further chance to say anything, but from that moment Emma
+began to think of letting Sarah know how much she needed her. She
+planned to hang out the cloth as she used to. She exaggerated its
+importance in the way of an invalid, until it attained the significance
+of an act of treason. She felt like a criminal even in thinking about
+it.
+
+Several times in the night she dreamed she had put the cloth out and
+that Jim and his wife had seen it and torn it down. She awoke two or
+three times to find herself sitting up in bed staring out of the window,
+through which the moon shone and the multitudinous sounds of the
+mid-summer insects came sonorously.
+
+Once her husband said, "What's the matter? It seems to me you'd rest
+better if you'd lay down and keep quiet." His voice was low enough, but
+it had a peculiar inflection, which made her sink back into bed by his
+side, shivering with fear and weeping silently.
+
+The next day Jim and her husband both went off to town, and Jim's wife,
+after about ten o'clock, said:--
+
+"Now, Emmy, I'm going down to Smith's to get a dress pattern, and I want
+you to keep quiet right here in bed. I'll be right back; I'll set some
+water here, and I guess you won't want anything else until I get back.
+I'll run right down and right back."
+
+After hearing the door close, Emma lay for a few minutes listening,
+waiting until she felt sure Mrs. Harkey was well out of the yard, then
+she crept out of bed and crawled to the window. Mrs. Jim was far down
+the road; she could see her blue dress and her pink sunbonnet.
+
+The sick woman seized the sheet and pulled it from the bed; the clothes
+came with it, but she did not mind that. She pulled herself painfully up
+the stairway and across the rough floor of the chamber to the window
+which looked toward her sister's house, and with a wild exultation flung
+the sheet far out and dropped on her knees beside the open window.
+
+She moaned and cried wildly as she waved the sheet. The note of a scared
+child was in her voice.
+
+"Oh, Serry, come quick! Oh, I _need_ you, Serry! I didn't mean to be
+mean; I want to see you _so_! Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, Serry, come
+quick!"
+
+Then space and the world slipped away, and she knew nothing of time
+again until she heard the anxious voice of Sarah below.
+
+"Emmy, where _are_ you, Emmy?"
+
+"Here I be, Serry."
+
+With swift, heavy tread Sarah hurried up the stairs, and the dear old
+face shone upon her again; those kind gray eyes full of anxiety and of
+love.
+
+Emma looked up like a child entreating to be lifted. Her look so
+pitifully eager went to the younger sister's maternal heart.
+
+"You poor, dear soul! Why didn't you send for me before?"
+
+"Oh, Serry, don't leave me again, will you?"
+
+When Mrs. Harkey returned she found Sarah sitting by Emma's side in the
+bed-chamber. Sarah looked at her with all the grimness her jolly fat
+face could express.
+
+"You ain't needed _here_," she said coldly. "If you want to do anything,
+find a man and send him for the Doctor--quick. If she dies you'll be her
+murderer."
+
+Mrs. Harkey was subdued by the bitterness of accusation in Sarah's face
+as well as by Emma's condition. She hurried down the Coolly and sent a
+boy wildly galloping toward the town. Then she went home and sat down by
+her own hearthstone feeling deeply injured.
+
+When the Doctor came he found a poor little boy baby crying in Sarah's
+arms. It was Emma's seventh child, but the ever sufficing mother-love
+looked from her eyes undimmed, limitless as the air.
+
+"Will it live, Doctor? It's so little," she said, with a sigh.
+
+"Oh, yes, I suppose so!" said the Doctor, as if its living were not
+entirely a blessing to itself or others. "Yes, I've seen lots of lusty
+children begin life like that. But," he said to Sarah at the door, "she
+needs better care than the babe!"
+
+"She'll git it," said Sarah, with deep solemnity, "if I have to move
+over here--and live."
+
+
+
+
+A FAIR EXILE
+
+
+The train was ambling across the hot, russet plain. The wind, strong and
+warm and dry, sweeping up from the south, carried with it the subtle
+odor of September grass and gathered harvests. Out of the unfenced roads
+the dust arose in long lines, like smoke from some hidden burning which
+the riven earth revealed. The fields were tenanted with thrashing crews,
+the men diminished by distance to pygmies, the long belt of the engine
+flapping and shining like a ribbon in the flaming sunlight.
+
+The freight-cars on the accommodation train jostled and rocked about and
+heaved up laterally till they resembled a long line of awkward,
+frightened, galloping buffaloes. The one coach was scantily filled with
+passengers, mainly poorly clothed farmers and their families.
+
+A young man seated well back in the coach was looking dreamily out of
+the window, and the conductor, a keen-eyed young fellow, after passing
+him several times, said, in a friendly way:
+
+"Going up to Boomtown, I imagine."
+
+"Yes--if we ever get there."
+
+"Oh, we'll get there. We won't have much more switching. We've only got
+an empty car or two to throw in at the junction."
+
+"Well, I'm glad of that. I'm a little impatient, because I've got a case
+coming up in court, and I'm not exactly fixed for it."
+
+"Your name is Allen, I believe."
+
+"Yes; J. H. Allen, of Sioux City."
+
+"I thought so. I've heard you speak."
+
+The young lawyer was a tall, slender, dark-eyed man, rather sombre in
+appearance. He did not respond to the invitation in the conductor's
+voice.
+
+"When do you reach the junction?"
+
+"Next stop. We're only a few minutes late. Expect to meet friends
+there?"
+
+"No; thought I'd get a lunch, that's all."
+
+At the junction the car became pretty well filled with people. Two or
+three Norwegian families came clattering in, the mothers clothed in
+heavy shawls and cheap straw hats, the flaxen-haired children in faded
+cottonade and blue denims. They filled nearly half the seats. Several
+drummers came in, laughing loudly, bearing heavy valises. Then Allen
+heard, above the noise, the shrill but sweet voice of a girl, and caught
+the odor of violets as two persons passed him and took a seat just
+before him.
+
+The man he knew by sight and reputation as a very brilliant young
+lawyer--Edward Benson, of Heron Lake. The girl he knew instantly to be
+utterly alien to this land and people. She was like a tropic bird seen
+amid the scant foliage of northern hills. There was evidence of great
+care and taste in every fold of her modish dress. Her hat was simple but
+in the latest city fashion, and her gloves were spotless. She gave off
+an odor of cleanliness and beauty.
+
+She was very young and slender. Her face was piquant but not
+intellectual, and scarcely beautiful. It pleased rather by its life and
+motion and oddity than by its beauty. She looked at her companion in a
+peculiar way--trustfully, almost reverently--and yet with a touch of
+coquetry which seemed perfectly native to every turn of her body or
+glance of her eyes.
+
+Her companion was a fine Western type of self-made man. He was tall and
+broad-shouldered, but walked a little stooping, like a man of fifty. He
+wore a long Prince Albert frock-coat, hanging loosely from his rather
+square shoulders. His white vest was noticeably soiled by his watch
+chain, and his tie was disarranged.
+
+His face was very fine and good. His eyes were gray-blue, deep and
+quiet, but slightly smiling, as were his lips, which his golden-brown
+mustache shaded but did not hide. He was kept smiling in this quizzical
+way by the nervous chatter of the girl beside him. His profile, which
+was the view Allen had of him, was striking. His strong, straight nose
+and abrupt forehead formed a marked contrast to the rather characterless
+nose and retreating forehead of the girl.
+
+The first words that Allen distinguished out of the merry war in which
+they seemed engaged were spoken in the tone of pretty petulance such
+women use--a coquette's defence.
+
+"You did! you did! you _did_! _Now_! You know you did! You told me
+that! You told me you despised girls like me!"
+
+"I said I despised women who had no object in life but dress," he
+replied, rather soberly.
+
+"But you were hopping on me; you meant me, now! You can't deny it! You
+despise me, I know you do!" She challenged his flattery in her pouting
+self-depreciation.
+
+The young man tried to stop her in her course, to change her mood, which
+was descending to real feeling. His low words were lost in the rumble of
+the car.
+
+"Yes, yes, try to smooth it over; but you can't fool me any more. But I
+don't want you to flatter me and lie to me the way Judge Stearns did,"
+she added, with a sudden change of manner. "I like you because you're
+straight."
+
+The phrase with which she ended seemed to take on a new meaning, uttered
+by those red lips in childish pout.
+
+"Now, why are you down on the judge? I don't see," said the man, as if
+she had gone back to an old attack.
+
+"Well, if you'd seen what I have, you'd understand." She turned away and
+looked out of the window. "Oh, this terrible country! I'd die out here
+in six weeks. I know I should."
+
+The young lawyer was not to be turned aside.
+
+"Of course, I'm pleased to have you throw the judge over and employ me,
+but, all the same, I think you do him an injustice. He's a good, square
+man."
+
+"Square man!" she said, turning to him with a sudden fury in her eyes.
+"Do you call it square for a man--married, and gray-haired, too--to take
+up with a woman like Mrs. Shellberg? Say, do you, now?"
+
+"Well, I don't quite believe--"
+
+"Oh, I _lie_, do I?" she cried, with another swift change to reproach.
+"You can't take my word for Mrs. Shellberg's visits to his office."
+
+"But he was her lawyer."
+
+"But you know what kind of a woman she is! She didn't need to go there
+every day or two, did she? What did he always receive her in his private
+office for? Come, now, tell me that!"
+
+"I don't know that he did," persisted the lawyer.
+
+A sort of convulsion passed over her face, her little hands clinched,
+and the tears started into her eyes. Her voice was very quiet.
+
+"You think I lie, then?"
+
+"I think you are mistaken, just as other jealous women have--"
+
+"You think I'm jealous, do you?"
+
+"You act like a jeal--"
+
+"Jealous of that gray-haired old wretch? No, sir! I--I--" She struggled
+to express herself. "I liked him, and I hated to lose all my faith in
+men. I thought he was good and honest when he prayed--Oh, I've seen him
+pray in church, the old hypocrite!" Her fury returned at the
+recollection.
+
+Her companion's face grew grave. The smile went out of his eyes, leaving
+them dark and sorrowful.
+
+"I understand you now," he said, at last. She turned to look at him.
+"My practice in the divorce business out here has almost destroyed my
+faith in women. If it weren't for my wife and sister--"
+
+She broke in eagerly: "Now I _know_ you know what I mean. Sometimes I
+think men are--devils!" She thrust this word forth, and her little face
+grew dark and strained. "But the judge kept me from thinking--I never
+loved my father; he didn't care for me; all he wanted to do was to make
+ten thousand barrels of beer a year and sell it; and the judge seemed
+like a father to me till _she_ came and destroyed my faith in him."
+
+"But--well, let Mrs. S. go. There are lots of good men and pure women in
+the world. It's dangerous to think there aren't--especially for a
+handsome young woman like you. You can't afford to keep in that kind of
+a mood long."
+
+She looked at him curiously. "That's what I like about you," she said,
+soberly. "You talk to me as if I had some sense--as if I were a human
+being. If you were to flatter me, now, and make love to me, I never
+would believe in any man again."
+
+He smiled again in his frank, good way, and drew a picture from his
+pocket. It was a picture of a woman bending down over a laughing, naked
+child, sprawling frogwise in her lap. The woman's face was broad and
+intellectual and handsome. The look of splendid maternity was in her
+eyes. They both looked at the picture in silence. The girl sighed.
+
+"I wish I was as good as that woman looks."
+
+"You can be if you try."
+
+"Not with a big Chicago brewer for a father, and a husband that beats
+you whenever the mood takes him."
+
+"I admit that's hard. I think the atmosphere of that Heron Lake hotel
+isn't any great help to you."
+
+"Oh, they're a gay lot there! We fight like cats and dogs." A look of
+slyness and boldness came over her face. "Mrs. Shellberg hates me as
+hard as I do her. She used to go around telling: 'It's very peculiar,
+you know'"--she imitated her rival's voice--"'but no matter which end of
+the dining-room I sit, all the men look that way!'"
+
+The young lawyer laughed at her in spite of himself.
+
+And she went on: "But they don't, now. That's the reason she hates me,"
+she said, in conclusion. "The men don't notice her when I'm around."
+
+To hear her fresh young lips utter those words with their vile
+inflections was like taking a sudden glimpse into the underworld, where
+harlots dwell and the spirits of unrestrained lusts dance in the shadowy
+recesses of the human heart.
+
+Allen, hearing this fragmentary conversation, fascinated yet uneasy,
+looked at the pair with wonder. They seemed quite unconscious of their
+public situation.
+
+The young lawyer looked straight before him, while the girl, swept on by
+her ignoble rage, displayed still more of the moral ulceration which had
+been injected into her young life.
+
+"I don't see what men find about her to like--unless it is her eyes.
+She's got beautiful eyes. But she's vulgar--ugh! The stories she
+tells--right before men, too! She'd kill any one that got ahead of her,
+that woman would! And yet she'll come into my room and cry and cry, and
+say: 'Don't take him away from me! Leave him to me!' Ugh! It makes me
+sick." She stamped her foot, then added, irrelevantly: "She wears a wig,
+too. I suppose that old fool of a judge thinks it's her own hair."
+
+The lawyer sat in stony silence. His grave face was accusing in its set
+expression, and she felt it, and was spurred on to do still deeper
+injustice to herself--an insane perversity.
+
+"Not that I care a cent--I'm not jealous of her. I ain't so bad off for
+company as she is. She can't take anybody away from me, but she must go
+and break down my faith in the judge."
+
+She bit her lips to keep from crying out. She looked out of the window
+again, seeking control.
+
+The "divorce colony" never appeared more sickening in its inner
+corruptions than when delineated by this dainty young girl. Allen could
+see the swarming men about the hotels; he could see their hot, leering
+eyes and smell their liquor-laden breaths as they named the latest
+addition to the colony or boasted of their associations with those
+already well known.
+
+The girl turned suddenly to her companion.
+
+"How do those people live out here on their farms?"
+
+She pointed at a small shanty where the whole family stood to watch the
+train go by.
+
+"By eating boiled potatoes and salt pork."
+
+"Salt pork!" she echoed, as if salt pork were old boot-heels or bark or
+hay. "Why, it takes four hours for salt pork to digest!"
+
+He laughed again at her childish irrelevancy. "So much the better for
+the poor. Where'd you learn all that, anyway?"
+
+"At school. Oh, you needn't look so incredulous! I went to
+boarding-school. I learned a good deal more than you think."
+
+"Well, so I see. Now, I should have said pork digested in three hours,
+speaking from experience."
+
+"Well, it don't. What do the women do out here?"
+
+"They work like the men, only more so."
+
+"Do they have any new things?"
+
+"Not very often, I'm afraid."
+
+She sighed. After a pause, she said:
+
+"You were raised on a farm?"
+
+"Yes. In Minnesota."
+
+"Did you do work like that?" She pointed at a thrashing-machine in the
+field.
+
+"Yes, I ploughed and sowed and reaped and mowed. I wasn't on the farm
+for my health."
+
+"You're very strong, aren't you?" she asked, admiringly.
+
+"In a slab-sided kind of a way--yes."
+
+Her eyes grew abstracted.
+
+"I like strong men. Ollie was a little man, not any taller than I am,
+but when he was drunk he was what men call a--a holy terror. He struck
+me with the water-pitcher once--that was just before baby was born. I
+wish he'd killed me." She ended in a sudden reaction to hopeless
+bitterness. "It would have saved me all these months of life in this
+terrible country."
+
+"It might have saved you from more than you think," he said, quietly,
+tenderly.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You've been brought up against women and men who have defiled you.
+They've made your future uncertain."
+
+"Do you think it's so bad as that? Tell me!" she insisted, seeing his
+hesitation.
+
+"You're on the road to hell!" he said, in a voice that was very low, but
+it reached her. It was full of pain and grave reprimand and gentleness.
+"You've been poisoned. You're in need of a good man's help. You need the
+companionship of good, earnest women instead of painted harlots."
+
+Her voice shook painfully as she replied:
+
+"You don't think I'm _all_ bad?"
+
+"You're not bad at all--you're simply reckless. _You_ are not to blame.
+It depends upon yourself now, though, whether you keep a true woman or
+go to hell with Mrs. Shellberg."
+
+The conductor eyed them, as he passed, with an unpleasant light in his
+eyes, and the drummers a few seats ahead turned to look at them. The tip
+had passed along from lip to lip. They were like wild beasts roused by
+the presence of prey. Their eyes gleamed with relentless lust. They eyed
+the little creature with ravening eyes. Her helplessness was their
+opportunity.
+
+Allen, sitting there, entered into the terror and the tragedy of the
+girl's life. He imagined her reckless, prodigal girlhood; the coarse,
+rich father; the marriage, when a thoughtless girl, with a drunken,
+dissolute boy; the quarrels, brutal beatings; the haste to secure a
+divorce; the contamination of the crowded hotels in Heron Lake, where
+this slender young girl--naturally pure, alert, quick of impulse--was
+like a lamb among lustful wolves. His heart ached for her.
+
+The deep, slow voice of the lawyer sounded on. His eyes, turned toward
+her, had no equivocal look. He was a brother speaking to a younger
+sister. The tears fell down her cheeks, upon her folded hands. Her
+widely opened eyes seemed to look out into a night of storms.
+
+"Oh, what shall I do?" she moaned. "I wish I was dead--and baby, too!"
+
+"Live for the baby--let him help you out."
+
+"Oh, he can't! I don't care enough for him. I wish I was like other
+mothers, but I'm not. I can't shut myself up with a baby. I'm too
+young."
+
+He saw that. She was seeking the love of a man, not the care of a child.
+She had the wifely passion, but not the mother's love. He was silent;
+the case baffled him.
+
+"Oh, I wish you could help me! I wish I had you to help me all the time!
+I do! I don't care what you think--_I do! I do!_"
+
+"Our home is open to you and baby, too," he said, slowly. "My wife knows
+about you, and--"
+
+"Who told her--did you?" she flashed out again, angrily, jealously.
+
+"Yes. My wife is my other self," he replied, quietly.
+
+She stared at him, breathing heavily, then looked out of the window
+again. At last she turned to him. She seemed to refer to his invitation.
+
+"Oh, this terrible land! Oh, I couldn't stay here! I'd go insane.
+Perhaps I'm going insane, anyway. Don't you think so?"
+
+"No, I think you're a little nervous, that's all."
+
+"Oh! Do you think I'll get my divorce?"
+
+"Certainly, without question."
+
+"Can I wait and go back with you?"
+
+"I shall not return for several days. Perhaps you couldn't bear to wait
+in this little town; it's not much like the city."
+
+"Oh, dear! But I can't go about alone. I hate these men, they stare at
+me so! I wish I was a man. It's awful to be a woman, don't you think so?
+Please don't laugh."
+
+The young lawyer was far from laughing, but this was her only way of
+defending herself. These pert, bird-like ways formed her shield against
+ridicule and misprision.
+
+He said, slowly, "Yes, it's an awful thing to be a woman, but then it's
+an awful responsibility to be a man."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that we are responsible, as the dominant sex, for every tragic,
+incomplete woman's life."
+
+"Don't you blame Mrs. Shellberg?" she said, forcing him to a concrete
+example with savage swiftness.
+
+"No. She had a poor father and a poor husband, and she must earn her own
+living some way."
+
+"She could cook, or nurse, or something like that."
+
+"It isn't easy to find opportunity to cook or nurse. If it were as easy
+to earn a living in a pure way as it is in a vicious way, all men would
+be rich and virtuous. But what had you planned to do after your
+divorce?"
+
+"Oh, I'm going to travel for two years. Then I'll try to settle down."
+
+"What you need is a good husband, and a little cottage where you'd have
+to cook your own food--and tend the baby."
+
+"I wouldn't cook for any man living," she broke in, to express her
+bitterness that he could so coldly dispose of her future. "Oh, this
+terrible train! Can't it go faster? If I'd realized what a trip this
+was, I wouldn't have started."
+
+"This is the route you all go," he replied, with grim humor, and his
+words pictured a ceaseless stream of divorcées.
+
+She resented his classing her with the rest, but she simply said: "You
+despise me, don't you? But what can we do? You can't expect us to live
+with men we hate, can you? That would be worse than Mrs. Shellberg."
+
+"No, I don't expect that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every
+marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust.
+"Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a
+question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a
+question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's
+what throws this demoralizing business into our hands here."
+
+"It pays, don't it? I know I've paid for everything I've had."
+
+"Yes, that's the demoralizing thing. It draws a gang of conscienceless
+attorneys here, and it draws us who belong here off into dirty work, and
+it brings us into contact with men and women--I'm sick of the whole
+business."
+
+She had hardly followed him in his generalizations. She brought him back
+to the personal.
+
+"You're sick of me, I know you are!" She leaned her head on the
+window-pane. Her eyes closed. "Oh, I wish my heart would stop beating!"
+she said, in a tense, profoundly significant tone.
+
+Allen, sitting so close behind them, was forced to overhear, so
+piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might
+hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but God should listen
+to this outcry of a quivering, writhing soul.
+
+She faced her companion again. "You're the only man I know, now, that I
+respect, and you despise me."
+
+"No, I don't; I pity you."
+
+"That's worse. I want you to help me. Oh, if you could go with me, or if
+I could be with you!" Her gloved hands strained together in the agony of
+her desire.
+
+His calm lips did not waver. He did not smile, even about the eyes. He
+knew her cry sprang from her need of a brother, not from the passion of
+a woman.
+
+"Our home is yours just as long as you can bear the monotony of our
+simple lives," he said, in his quiet way, but it was deep-throated and
+unmistakable in its sincerity.
+
+She laid her hand on his arm and clasped it hard, then turned away her
+head, and they rode in silence.
+
+After they left the car Allen sat, with savage eyes and grimly set
+mouth, going over the problem again and again. He saw that young and
+helpless creature walking the gantlet between endless ranks of lustful,
+remorseless men, snatching at her in selfish, bestial desire.
+
+It made him bitter and despairing to think that women should be
+helpless--that they should need some man to protect them against some
+other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women
+subordinate and trivial and deceptive and vacillating. He wished they
+could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or
+she-wolf, they could not only defend themselves, but their young.
+
+He tried to breathe a sigh of relief that she had gone out of his life,
+but he could not. It was not so easy to shake off the shadow of his
+responsibility. He followed her in imagination on her downward path till
+he saw her stretching out her hands in pitiful need to casual
+acquaintances--alone and without hope; still petite, still dainty in
+spite of all, still with flashes of wit, and then--
+
+He shuddered. "O my God! Upon whom does the burden of guilt lie?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the night of his return he sat among his romping babes, debating
+whether he should tell the story to his wife or not. As the little ones
+grew weary the noise of the autumn wind--the lonely, woful, moaning
+prairie wind--came to his ears, and he shuddered. His wife observed it.
+
+"What is it, Joe? Did you get a chill?"
+
+"Oh no. The wind sounds a little lonesome to-night, that's all." But he
+took his little girl into his arms and held her close.
+
+
+
+
+AN ALIEN IN THE PINES
+
+I
+
+
+A man and a woman were pacing up and down the wintry station platform,
+waiting for a train. On every side the snow lay a stained and crumpled
+blanket, with here and there a light or a chimney to show the village
+sleeping beneath.
+
+The sky was a purple-black hemisphere, out of which the stars glittered
+almost white. The wind came out of the west, cold but amiable; the
+cracked bell of a switch-engine gurgled querulously at intervals,
+followed by the bumping of coupling freight-cars; roosters were crowing,
+and sleepy train-men were assembling in sullen silence.
+
+The couple walked with arms locked like lovers, but the tones of their
+voices had the quality which comes after marriage. They were man and
+wife.
+
+The woman's clear voice arose. "Oh, Ed, isn't this delicious? What one
+misses by not getting up early!"
+
+"Sleep, for instance," laughed her husband.
+
+"Don't drag me down. You know what I mean. Let's get up early every
+morning while we're up here in the woods."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if we had to. There'll be a lot to do, and I want to
+get back to Chicago by the 1st of February."
+
+"This is an experience! Isn't it still? When is our train due?"
+
+"Due now; I think that is our headlight up the track."
+
+As he spoke an engine added its voice to the growing noise of the
+station, and drew solemnly down the frosty steel.
+
+An eruption of shapeless forms of men from the depot filled the one
+general coach of the train. They nearly all were dressed in some sort of
+fur coat, and all had the look of men accustomed to out-door
+life--powerful, loud-voiced, unrefined. They were, in fact, travelling
+men, business men, the owners of mills or timber. The stolid or patient
+ox-like faces of some Norwegian workmen, dressed in gay Mackinac
+jackets, were sprinkled about.
+
+The young wife was a fine type of woman anywhere, but these surroundings
+made her seem very dainty and startlingly beautiful. Her husband had the
+fair skin of a city man, but his powerful shoulders and firm step
+denoted health and wholesome living. They were both good to look at.
+
+They soon felt the reaction to sleepiness which comes to those not
+accustomed to early rising, and the wife, soothed by the clank of the
+train, leaned her head on her husband's shoulder and dozed. He looked
+out upon the landscape, glad that his wife was not observing it. He did
+not know such desolation existed in Wisconsin.
+
+On every side were the evidences of a ruined forest land. A landscape of
+flat wastes, of thinned and burned and uprooted trees. A desolate and
+apparently useless land.
+
+Here and there a sawmill stood gray and sagging, surrounded by little
+cabins of unpainted wood, to testify to the time when great pines stood
+all about, and the ring of the swamper's axe was heard in the intervals
+of silence between the howls of a saw.
+
+To the north the swells grew larger. Birch and tamarack swamps
+alternated with dry ridges on which an inferior pine still grew. The
+swamps were dense tangles of broken and uprooted trees. Slender
+pike-like stumps of fire-devastated firs rose here and there, black and
+grim skeletons of trees.
+
+It was a land that had been sheared by the axe, torn by the winds, and
+blasted by fire.
+
+Off to the west low blue ridges rose, marking the boundaries of the
+valley which had been washed out ages ago by water. After the floods
+pine forest had sprung up, and these in their turn had been sheared away
+by man. It lay now awaiting the plough and seeder of the intrepid
+pioneer.
+
+Suddenly the wife awoke and sat up. "Why, we haven't had any breakfast!"
+
+He smiled at her childish look of bewilderment. "I've been painfully
+aware of it for some time back. I've been suffering for food while you
+slept."
+
+"Why didn't you get into the basket?"
+
+"How could I, with you on my manly bosom?"
+
+She colored up a little. They had not been married long, evidently. "How
+considerate you are!"
+
+They were soon eating a breakfast with the spirit of picnickers.
+Occasionally she looked out of the window.
+
+"What a wild country!" she said. He did not emphasize its qualities to
+her; rather, he distracted her attention from its desolation.
+
+The train roared round its curves, conforming with the general course of
+the river. On every hand were thickening signs of active lumber
+industry. They flashed by freight trains loaded with logs or lumber or
+ties. Mills in operation grew thicker.
+
+The car echoed with the talk of lumber. A brisk man with a red mustache
+was exhibiting a model of a machine to cut certain parts of machinery
+out of "two by fours." Another was describing a new shingle-mill he had
+just built.
+
+A couple of elderly men, one a German, were discussing the tariff on
+lumber. The workmen mainly sat silent.
+
+"It's all so strange!" the young wife said, again and again.
+
+"Yes, it isn't exactly the Lake Shore Drive."
+
+"I like it. I wish I could smell the pines."
+
+"You'll have all the pines you can stand before we get back to Chicago."
+
+"No, sir; I'm going to enjoy every moment of it; and you're going to let
+me help, you know--look over papers, and all that. I'm the heiress, you
+must remember," she added, wickedly.
+
+"Well, we won't quarrel about that until we see how the legacy turns
+out. It may not be worth my time up here. I shall charge you roundly as
+your lawyer, depend on that."
+
+The outlook grew more attractive as the train sped on. Old Mosinee rose,
+a fine rounded blue shape, on the left.
+
+"Why, there's a mountain! I didn't know Wisconsin had such a mountain as
+that."
+
+"Neither did I. This valley is fine. Now, if your uncle's estates only
+included that hill!"
+
+The valley made off to the northwest with a bold, large, and dignified
+movement. The coloring, blue and silver, purple-brown and bronze-green,
+was harmonious with the grouping of lines. It was all fresh and vital,
+wholesome and very impressive.
+
+From this point the land grew wilder--that is to say, more primeval.
+There was more of Nature and less of man. The scar of the axe was here
+and there, but the forest predominated. The ridges of pine foliages
+broke against the sky, miles and miles, in splendid sweep.
+
+"This must be lovely in summer," the wife said, again and again, as they
+flashed by some lake set among the hills.
+
+"It's fine now," he replied, feeling the thrill of the sportsman. "I'd
+like to shoulder a rifle and plunge into those snowy vistas. How it
+brings the wild spirit out in a man! Women never feel that delight."
+
+"Oh, yes, we do," she replied, glad that something remained yet
+unexplained between them. "We feel just like men, only we haven't the
+strength of mind to demand a share of it with you."
+
+"Yes, you feel it at this distance. You'd come back mighty quick the
+second night out."
+
+She did not relish his laughter, and so looked away out of the window.
+"Just think of it--Uncle Edwin lived here thirty years!"
+
+He forebore to notice her inconsistency. "Yes, the wilderness is all
+right for a vacation, but I prefer Chicago for the year round."
+
+When they came upon Ridgeley, both cried out with delight.
+
+"Oh, what a dear, picturesque little town!" she said.
+
+"Well, well! I wonder how they came to build a town without a row of
+battlemented stores?"
+
+It lay among and upon the sharp, low, stumpy pine ridges in haphazard
+fashion, like a Swiss village. A small brook ran through it, smothered
+here and there in snow. A sawmill was the largest figure of the town,
+and the railway station was the centre. There was not an inch of painted
+board in the village. Everywhere the clear yellow of the pine flamed
+unstained by time. Lumber piles filled all the lower levels near the
+creek. Evidently the town had been built along logging roads, and there
+was something grateful and admirable in its irregular arrangement. The
+houses, moreover, were all modifications of the logging camps; even the
+drug store stood with its side to the street. All about were stumps and
+fringes of pines, which the lumbermen, for some good reason, had passed
+by. Charred boles stood purple-black out of the snow.
+
+It was all green and gray and blue and yellow-white and stern. The sky
+was not more illimitable than the rugged forest which extended on every
+hand.
+
+"Oh, this is glorious--glorious!" said the wife. "Do I own some of this
+town?" she asked, as they rose to go out.
+
+"I reckon you do."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!"
+
+As they stepped out on the platform, a large man in corduroy and
+wolf-skin faced them like a bandit.
+
+"Hello, Ed!"
+
+"Hello, Jack! Well, we've found you. My wife, Mr. Ridgeley. We've come
+up to find out how much you've embezzled," he said, as Ridgeley pulled
+off an immense glove to shake hands all round.
+
+"Well, come right over to the hotel. It ain't the Auditorium, but then,
+again, it ain't like sleeping outdoors."
+
+As they moved along they heard the train go off, and then the sound of
+the saw resumed its domination of the village noises.
+
+"Was the town named after you, or you after the town?" asked Field.
+
+"Named after me. Old man didn't want it named after him; would kill it,"
+he said.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Field found the hotel quite comfortable and the dinner
+wholesome. They beamed upon each other.
+
+"It's going to be delightful," they said.
+
+Ridgeley was a bachelor, and made his home at the hotel also. That night
+he said: "Now we'll go over the papers and records of your uncle's
+property, and then we'll go out and see if the property is all there. I
+imagine this is to be a searching investigation."
+
+"You may well think it. My wife is inexorable."
+
+As night fell, the wife did not feel so safe and well pleased. The loud
+talking in the office below and the occasional whooping of a crowd of
+mill-hands going by made her draw her chair nearer and lay her fingers
+in her husband's palm.
+
+He smiled indulgently. "Don't be frightened, my dear. These men are not
+half so bad as they sound."
+
+
+II
+
+
+Mrs. Field sat in the inner room of Ridgeley's office, waiting for the
+return of her husband with the team. They were going out for a drive.
+
+Ridgeley was working at his books, and he had forgotten her presence.
+
+She could not but feel a deep admiration for his powerful frame and his
+quick, absorbed action as he moved about from his safe to his desk. He
+was a man of great force and ready decision.
+
+Suddenly the door opened and a stranger entered. He had a sullen and
+bitter look on his thin, dark face. Ridgeley's quick eyes measured him,
+and his hand softly turned the key in his money drawer, and as he faced
+about he swung shut the door of the safe.
+
+The stranger saw all this with eyes as keen as Ridgeley's. A cheerless
+and strange smile came upon his face.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," he said. "I'm low, but I ain't as low as that."
+
+"Well, sir, what can I do for you?" asked Ridgeley. Mrs. Field half
+rose, feeling something tense and menacing in the attitude of the two
+men.
+
+But the intruder quietly answered, "You can give me a job if you want
+to."
+
+Ridgeley remained alert. His eyes ran over the man's tall frame. He
+looked strong and intelligent, although his eyes were fevered and dull.
+
+"What kind of a job?"
+
+"Any kind that will take me out into the woods and keep me there."
+
+There was a self-accusing tone in his voice that Ridgeley felt.
+
+"What's your object? You look like a man who could do something else.
+What brings you here?"
+
+The man turned with a sudden resolution to punish himself. His voice
+expressed a terrible loathing.
+
+"Whiskey, that's what. It's a hell of a thing to say, but I can't let
+liquor alone when I can smell it. I'm no common hand, or I wouldn't be
+if I--But let that go. I can swing an axe, and I'm ready to work. That's
+enough. Now the question is, can you find a place for me?"
+
+Ridgeley mused a little. The young fellow stood there, statuesque,
+rebellious.
+
+Then Ridgeley said, "I guess I can help you out that much." He picked up
+a card and a pencil. "What shall I call you?"
+
+"Oh, call me Williams; that ain't my name, but it'll do."
+
+"What you been doing?"
+
+"Everything part of the time, drinking the rest. Was in a livery-stable
+down at Wausau last week. It came over me, when I woke yesterday, that I
+was gone to hell if I stayed in town. So I struck out; and I don't care
+for myself, but I've got a woman to look out for--" He stopped abruptly.
+His recklessness of mood had its limits, after all.
+
+Ridgeley pencilled on a card. "Give this to the foreman of No. 6. The
+men over at the mill will show you the teams."
+
+The man started toward the door with the card in his hand. He turned
+suddenly.
+
+"One thing more. I want you to send ten dollars of my pay every two
+weeks to this address." He took an envelope out of his pocket. "It don't
+matter what I say or do after this, I want that money sent. The rest
+will keep me in tobacco and clothing. You understand?"
+
+Ridgeley nodded. "Perfectly. I've seen such cases before."
+
+The man went out and down the walk with a hurried, determined air, as if
+afraid to trust his own resolution.
+
+As Ridgeley turned toward his desk he met Mrs. Field, who faced him with
+tears of fervent sympathy in her eyes.
+
+"Isn't it awful?" she said, in a half whisper. "Poor fellow, what will
+become of him?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. He'll get along some way. Such fellows do. I've had
+'em before. They try it awhile here; then they move. I can't worry about
+them."
+
+Mrs. Field was not listening to his shifty words. "And then, think of
+his wife--how she must worry."
+
+Ridgeley smiled. "Perhaps it's his mother or a sister."
+
+"Anyway, it's awful. Can't something be done for him?"
+
+"I guess we've done about all that can be done."
+
+"Oh, I wish I could help him! I'll tell Ed about him."
+
+"Don't worry about him, Mrs. Field; he ain't worth it."
+
+"Oh yes, he is. I feel he's been a fine fellow, and then he's so
+self-accusing."
+
+Her own happiness was so complete, she could not bear to think of
+others' misery. She told her husband about Williams, and ended by
+asking, "Can't we do something to help the poor fellow?"
+
+Field was not deeply concerned. "No; he's probably past help. Such men
+are so set in their habits, nothing but a miracle or hypnotism can save
+them. He'll end up as a 'lumber Jack,' as the townsmen call the hands in
+the camps."
+
+"But he isn't that, Edward. He's finer, some way. You feel he is. Ask
+Mr. Ridgeley."
+
+Ridgeley merely said: "Yes, he seemed to me to be more than a common
+hand. But, all the same, it won't be two weeks before he'll be in here
+as drunk as a wild cat, wanting to shoot me for holding back his money."
+
+In this way Williams came to be to Mrs. Field a very important figure in
+the landscape of that region. She often spoke of him, and on the
+following Saturday night, when Field came home, she anxiously asked, "Is
+Williams in town?"
+
+"No, he hasn't shown up yet."
+
+She clapped her hands in delight. "Good! good! He's going to win his
+fight."
+
+Field laughed. "Don't bet on Williams too soon. We'll hear from him
+before the week is out."
+
+"When are we going to visit the camp?" she asked, changing the subject.
+
+"As soon as it warms up a little. It is too cold for you."
+
+She had a laugh at him. "You were the one who wanted to 'plunge into the
+snowy vistas.'"
+
+He evaded her joke on him by assuming a careless tone. "I'm not plunging
+as much as I was; the snow is too deep."
+
+"When you go I want to go with you--I want to see Williams."
+
+"Ha!" he snorted, melodramatically. "She scorns me faithful heart. She
+turns--"
+
+Mrs. Field smiled faintly. "Don't joke about it, Ed. I can't get that
+wife out of my mind."
+
+
+III
+
+
+A few very cold gray days followed, and then the north wind cleared the
+sky; and, though it was still cold, it was pleasant. The sky had only a
+small white cloud here and there to make its blueness the more profound.
+
+Ridgeley dashed up to the door with a hardy little pair of broncos
+hitched to a light pair of bobs, and Mrs. Field was tucked in like a
+babe in a cradle.
+
+Almost the first thing she asked was, "How is Williams?"
+
+"Oh, he's getting on nicely. He refused to sleep with his bunk-mate, and
+finally had to lick him, I understand, to shut him up. Challenged the
+whole camp, then, to let him alone or take a licking. They let him
+alone, Lawson says. G'lang there, you rats!"
+
+Mrs. Field said no more, for the air was whizzing by her ears, and she
+hardly dared look out, so keen was the wind; but as soon as they entered
+the deeps of the forest it was profoundly still.
+
+The ride that afternoon was a glory she never forgot. Everywhere
+yellow-greens and purple shadows. The sun in a burnished blue sky
+flooded the forests with light, striking down through even the thickest
+pines to lay in fleckings of radiant white and gold upon the snow.
+
+The trail (it was not a road) ran like a graceful furrow over the
+hills, around little lakes covered deep with snow, through tamarack
+swamps where the tracks of wild things thickened, over ridges of tall
+pine clear of brush, and curving everywhere amid stumps, where
+dismantled old shanties marked the site of the older logging camps.
+Sometimes they met teams going to the store. Sometimes they crossed
+logging roads--wide, smooth tracks artificially iced, down which
+mountainous loads of logs were slipping, creaking, and groaning.
+Sometimes they heard the dry click-clock of the woodsmen's axes or the
+crash of falling trees deep in the wood. When they reached the first
+camp Ridgeley pulled up the steaming horses at the door and shouted,
+"Hello, the camp!"
+
+A tall old man with a long red beard came out. He held one bare red arm
+above his eyes. He wore an apron.
+
+"Hello, Sandy!"
+
+"Hello, Mr. Ridgeley!"
+
+"Ready for company?"
+
+"Am always ready for company," he said, with a Scotch accent.
+
+"Well, we're coming in to get warm."
+
+"Vera weel."
+
+As they went in, under the roofed shed between the cook's shanty and the
+other and larger shanty, Mrs. Field sniffed. Sandy led them past a large
+pyramid composed of the scraps of beef bones, egg-shells, cans, and tea
+grounds left over during the winter. In the shed itself hung great slabs
+of beef.
+
+It was all as untidy and suggestive of slaughter as the nest of a brood
+of eagles.
+
+Sandy was beginning dinner on a huge stove spotted with rust and pancake
+batter. All about was the litter of his preparation. Beef--beef on all
+sides, and tin dishes and bare benches and huge iron cooking-pans.
+
+Mrs. Field was glad to get out into the sunlight again. "What a horrible
+place! Are they all like that?"
+
+"No, my camps are not like that--or, I should say, _our_ camps,"
+Ridgeley added, with a smile.
+
+"Not a gay place at all," said Field, in exaggerated reserve.
+
+But Mrs. Field found her own camps not much better. True, the refuse was
+not raised in pyramidal shape before the front door, and the beef was a
+little more orderly, but the low log huts, the dim cold light, the dingy
+walls and floors, the lack of any womanly or home touch, the tin dishes,
+the wholesale cooking, all struck upon her with terrible force.
+
+"Do human beings live here?" she asked Ridgeley, when he opened the door
+of the main shanty of No. 6.
+
+"Forty creatures of the men kind sleep and house here," he replied.
+
+"To which the socks and things give evidence," said Field, promptly,
+pointing toward the huge stove which sat like a rusty-red cheese in the
+centre of the room. Above it hung scores of ragged gray and red socks
+and Mackinac boots and jackets which had been washed by the men
+themselves.
+
+Around were the grimy bunks where the forty men slept like tramps in a
+steamer's hold. The quilts were grimy, and the posts greasy and shining
+with the touch of hands. There were no chairs--only a kind of rude stool
+made of boards. There were benches near the stove, nailed to the rough
+floor. In each bunk, hanging to a peg, was the poor little
+imitation-leather hand-bag which contained the whole wardrobe of each
+man, exclusive of the tattered socks and shirts hanging over the stove.
+
+The room was chill and cold and gray. It had only two small windows. Its
+doors were low. Even Mrs. Field was forced to stoop in entering. This
+helped to make it seem like a den. There were roller-towels in the
+corner and wash-basins, and a grindstone which made it seem like a
+barn. It was, in fact, more cheerless than a barn, and less wholesome.
+
+"Doesn't that hay in the bunks get a--a--sometimes?" asked Field.
+
+"Well, yes, I shouldn't wonder, though the men are pretty strict about
+that. They keep pretty free from bugs, I think. However, I shouldn't
+want to run no river chances on the thing myself." Ridgeley smiled at
+Mrs. Field's shudder of horror.
+
+"Is this the place?" The men laughed. She had asked that question so
+many times before.
+
+"Yes, _this_ is where Mr. Williams hangs out. Say, Field, you'll need to
+make some new move to hold your end up against Williams."
+
+Mrs. Field felt hurt and angry at his rough joke. In the dim corner a
+cough was heard, and as a yellow head raised itself over the bunk-board
+a man presented a ghastly face. His big blue eyes fixed themselves on
+the lovely woman with a look of childish wonder.
+
+"Hello, Gus--didn't see you! What's the matter--sick?"
+
+"Yah, ai baen hwick two days. Ai tank ai lack to hav doketer."
+
+"All right, I'll send him up. What seems the matter?"
+
+As they talked, Mrs. Field again chilled with the cold gray
+comfortlessness of it all: to be sick in such a place! The silent
+appearance of the man out of his grim corner was startling. She was glad
+when they drove out into the woods again, where the clear sunshine fell
+and the pines stood against the blazing winter sky motionless as iron
+trees. Her pleasure in the ride was growing less. To her delicate sense
+this life was sordid, not picturesque. She wondered how Williams endured
+it. They arrived at No. 8 just as the men were trailing down the road to
+work, after eating their dinner. Their gay-colored jackets of Mackinac
+wool stood out like trumpet notes in the prevailing white and blue and
+bronze-green.
+
+The boss and the sealer came out and met them, and after introductions
+they went into the shanty to dinner. The cook was a deft young
+Norwegian--a clean, quick, gentlemanly fellow with a fine brown
+mustache. He cleared a place for them at one end of the long table, and
+they sat down.
+
+It was a large camp, but much like the others. On the table were the
+same cheap iron forks, the tin plates, and the small tin basins (for
+tea) which made up the dinner-set. Basins of brown sugar stood about.
+
+"Good gracious! Do people still eat brown sugar? Why, I haven't seen any
+of that for ages!" cried Mrs. Field.
+
+The stew was good and savory, and the bread fair. The tea was not all
+clover, but it tasted of the tin. Mrs. Field said:
+
+"Beef, beef--everywhere beef. One might suppose a menagerie of desert
+animals ate here. Edward, we must make things more comfortable for our
+men. They must have cups to drink out of; these basins are horrible."
+
+It was humorous to the men, this housewifely suggestion.
+
+"Oh, make it napkins, Allie!"
+
+"You can laugh, but I sha'n't rest after seeing this. If you thought I
+was going to say, 'Oh, how picturesque!' you're mistaken. I think it's
+barbarous."
+
+She was getting impatient of their patronizing laughter, as if she were
+a child. They changed their manner to one of acquiescence, but thought
+of her as a child just the same.
+
+After dinner they all went out to see the crew working. It was the
+biggest crew anywhere in the neighborhood. Ridgeley got out and hitched
+the team to a tree, and took Field up to the skidway. Mrs. Field
+remained in the sleigh.
+
+Near her "the swamping team," a span of big, deep-red oxen, came and
+went among the green tops of the fallen pines. They crawled along their
+trails in the snow like some strange machinery, and the boy in a blue
+jacket moved almost as listlessly. Somewhere in the tangle of refuse
+boughs the swampers' axes click-clocked, saws uttered their grating,
+rhythmic snarl, and great trees at intervals shivered, groaned, and fell
+with soft, rushing, cracking sweeps into the deep snow, and the swampers
+swarmed upon them like Lilliputians attacking a giant enemy.
+
+There was something splendid (though tragic) in the work, but the
+thought of the homelessness of the men, their terrible beds, and their
+long hours of toil oppressed the delicate and refined woman. She began
+to take on culpability. She was partly in authority now, and this system
+must be changed. She was deep in plans for improvement, in shanties and
+in sleeping-places, when the men returned.
+
+Ridgeley was saying: "No, we control about thirty thousand acres of pine
+as good as that. It ain't what it was twenty years ago, but it's worth
+money, after all."
+
+It was getting near to dark as they reached No. 6 again, and Ridgeley
+drew up and helped them out and into the cook's shanty.
+
+Mrs. Field was introduced to the cook, a short, rather sullen, but
+intelligent man. He stood over the red-hot stove, laying great slices of
+beef in a huge dripping-pan. He had a taffler, or assistant, in the
+person of a half-grown boy, at whom he jerked rough orders like hunks of
+stove wood. Some hit the boy and produced noticeable effects, others did
+not.
+
+Meanwhile a triumphant sunset was making the west one splendor of purple
+and orange and crimson, which came over the cool green rim of the pines
+like the _Valhalla March_ in Wagner.
+
+Mrs. Field sat there in the dim room by the window, seeing that splendor
+flush and fade, and thinking how dangerous it was to ask where one's
+wealth comes from in the world. Outside, the voices of the men
+thickened; they were dropping in by twos and fours, with teams and on
+foot.
+
+The assistant arranged the basins in rows, and put one of the iron forks
+and knives on either side of each plate, and filled the sugar-basins,
+and dumped in the cold beans, and split the bread into slabs, and put
+small pots of tea here and there ready for the hands of the men.
+
+At last, when the big pans of toast, the big plates of beef, were placed
+steaming on the table, the cook called Field and Ridgeley, and said:
+
+"Set right here at the end." He raised his arm to a ring which dangled
+on a wire. "Now look out; you'll see 'em come--sidewise." He jerked the
+ring, and disappeared into the kitchen.
+
+A sudden tumult, shouts, trampling, laughter, and the door burst open
+and they streamed in: Norwegians, French, half-breeds--dark-skinned
+fellows, all of them, save the Norwegians. They came like a flood, but
+they fell silent at sight of a woman, so beautiful and strange to them.
+
+All words ceased. They sank into place beside the table with the thump
+of falling sand-bags. They were all in their shirt-sleeves, but with
+faces cleanly washed, and the most of them had combed their hair; but
+they seemed very wild and hairy to Mrs. Field. She looked at her husband
+and Ridgeley with a grateful pleasure; it was so restful to have them
+close beside her.
+
+The men ate like hungry dogs. They gorged in silence. Nothing was heard
+but the clank of knives on tin plates, the drop of heavy platters of
+food, and the occasional muttered words of some one asking for the bread
+or the gravy.
+
+As they ate they furtively looked with great curiosity and admiration up
+at the dainty woman. Their eyes were bright and large, and gleamed out
+of the obscure brown of their dimly lighted faces with savage
+intensity--so it seemed to Mrs. Field, and she dropped her eyes before
+their glare.
+
+Her husband and Ridgeley tried to enter into conversation with those
+sitting near. Ridgeley seemed on good terms with them all, and ventured
+a joke or word, at which they laughed with terrific energy, and fell as
+suddenly silent again.
+
+As Mrs. Field looked up the second time she saw the dark, strange face
+of Williams a few places down, and opposite her. His eyes were fixed on
+her husband's hands with a singular intensity. Her eyes followed his,
+and the beauty of her husband's hands came to her again with new force.
+They were perfectly shaped, supple, warm-colored, and strong. Their
+color and deftness stood out in vivid contrast to the heavy, brown,
+cracked, and calloused, paw-like hands of the workmen.
+
+Why should Williams study her husband's hands? If he had looked at her
+she would not have been surprised. The other men she could read. They
+expressed either frank, simple admiration or furtive desire. But this
+man looked at her husband, and his eyes fell often upon his own hands,
+which trembled with fatigue. He handled his knife clumsily, and yet she
+could see he, too, had a fine hand--a slender, powerful hand, like that
+people call an artist hand--a craftsman-like hand.
+
+He saw her looking at him, and he flashed one enigmatical glance into
+her eyes, and rose to go out.
+
+"How you getting on, Williams?" Ridgeley asked.
+
+Williams resented his question. "Oh, I'm all right," he said, sullenly.
+
+The meal was all over in an incredibly short time. One by one, two by
+two, they rose heavily and lumbered out with one last, wistful look at
+Mrs. Field. She will never know how seraphic she seemed sitting there
+amid those rough surroundings--the dim, red light of the kerosene lamp
+falling across her clear pallor, out of which her dark eyes shone with
+liquid softness, made deeper and darker by her half-sorrowful tenderness
+for these homeless fellows.
+
+An hour later, as they were standing at the door, just ready to take to
+their sleigh, they heard the scraping of a fiddle.
+
+"Oh, some one is going to play!" Mrs. Field cried, with visions of the
+rollicking good times she had heard so much about, and of which she had
+seen nothing so far. "Can't I look in?"
+
+Ridgeley was dubious. "I'll go and see," he said, and entered the door.
+"Boys, Mrs. Field wants to look in a minute. Go on with your fiddling,
+Sam--only I wanted to see that you weren't sitting around in dishabill."
+
+This seemed a good joke, and they all howled and haw-hawed gleefully.
+
+"So go right ahead with your evening prayers. All but--you understand!"
+
+"All right, captain," said Sam, the man with the fiddle.
+
+When Mrs. Field looked in, two men were furiously grinding axes; several
+were sewing on ragged garments; all were smoking; some were dressing
+chapped or bruised fingers. The atmosphere was horrible. The socks and
+shirts were steaming above the huge stove; the smoke and stench for a
+moment were sickening, but Ridgeley pushed them just inside the door.
+
+"It's better out of the draught."
+
+Sam jigged away on the violin. The men kept time with the cranks of the
+grindstone, and all faces turned with bashful smiles and bold grins at
+Mrs. Field. Most of them shrank a little from her look, like shy
+animals.
+
+Ridgeley threw open the window. "In the old days," he explained to Mrs.
+Field, "we used a fireplace, and that kept the air better."
+
+As her sense of smell became deadened the air seemed a little more
+tolerable to Mrs. Field.
+
+"Oh, we must change all this," she said. "It is horrible."
+
+"Play us a tune," said Sam, extending the violin to Field. He did not
+think Field could play. It was merely a shot in the dark on his part.
+
+Field took it and looked at it and sounded it. On every side the men
+turned face in eager expectancy.
+
+"He can play, that feller."
+
+"I'll bet he can. He handles her as if he knew her."
+
+"You bet your life. Tune up, Cap."
+
+Williams came from the obscurity somewhere, and looked over the
+shoulders of the men.
+
+"Down in front!" somebody called, and the men took seats on the benches,
+leaving Field standing with the violin in hand. He smiled around upon
+them in a frank, pleased way, quite ready to show his skill. He played
+_Annie Laurie_, and a storm of applause broke out.
+
+"_Hoo-ray!_ Bully for you!"
+
+"Sam, you're out of it!"
+
+"Sam, your name is Mud!"
+
+"Give us another, Cap!"
+
+"It ain't the same fiddle!"
+
+He played again some simple tune, and he played it with the touch which
+showed the skilled amateur. As he played, Mrs. Field noticed a growing
+restlessness on Williams' part. He moved about uneasily. He gnawed at
+his finger-nails. His eyes glowed with a singular fire. His hands
+drummed and fingered. At last he approached, and said, roughly:
+
+"Let me take that fiddle a minute."
+
+"Oh, cheese it, Williams!" the men cried. "Let the other man play."
+
+"What do _you_ want to do with the fiddle--think it's a music-box?"
+asked Sam, its owner.
+
+"Go to hell!" said Williams. As Field gave the violin over to him, his
+hands seemed to tremble with eagerness.
+
+He raised his bow, and struck into an imposing, brilliant strain, and
+the men fell back in astonishment.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" gasped the owner of the violin.
+
+"Keep quiet, Sam."
+
+Mrs. Field looked at her husband. "Why, Ed, he is playing _Sarasate_!"
+
+"That's what he is," he returned, slangily, too much astonished to do
+more than gaze. Williams played on.
+
+There was a faint defect in the high notes, as if his fingers did not
+touch the strings properly, but his bow action showed cultivation and
+breadth of feeling. As he struck into one of those difficult
+octave-leaping movements his face became savage. On the E string a
+squeal broke forth; he flung the violin into Sam's lap with a ferocious
+curse, and then, extending his hands, hard, crooked to fit the
+axe-helve, calloused and chapped, he said to Field:
+
+"Look at my hands! Lovely things to play with, aren't they?"
+
+His voice trembled with passion. He turned and went outside. As he
+passed Mrs. Field his head was bowed, and he was uttering a groaning cry
+like one suffering physical pain.
+
+"That's what drink does for a man," Ridgeley said, as they watched
+Williams disappear down the swampers' trail.
+
+"That man has been a violinist," said Field. "What's he doing up here?"
+
+"Came to get away from himself, I guess," Ridgeley replied.
+
+"I'm afraid he's failed," said Field, as he put his arm about his wife
+and led her to the sleigh.
+
+The ride home was made mainly in silence. "Oh, the splendid stillness!"
+the woman kept saying in her heart. "Oh, the splendid moonlight, the
+marvellous radiance!" Everywhere a heavenly serenity--not a footstep,
+not a bell, not a cry, not a cracking tree--nothing but vivid light,
+white snow dappled and lined with shadows, and trees etched against a
+starlit sky. Unutterable splendor of light and sheen and shadow. Wide
+wastes of snow so white the stumps stood like columns of charcoal. A
+night of Nature's making, when she is tired of noise and blare of color.
+
+And in the midst of it stood the camp, with its reek of obscenity, foul
+odors, and tobacco smoke, to which a tortured soul must return.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The following Saturday afternoon, as Ridgeley and Field entered the
+office, Williams rose to meet them. He looked different--finer some way,
+Field imagined. At any rate, he was perfectly sober. He was freshly
+shaven, and though his clothes were rough, he appeared the man of
+education he really was. His manner was cold and distant.
+
+"I'd like to be paid off, Mr. Ridgeley," he said. "I guess what's left
+of my pay will take me out of this."
+
+"Where do you propose to go?" Ridgeley asked, with kindly interest.
+
+Williams must have perceived his kindliness, for he answered: "I'm going
+home to my wife, to my violin. I am going to try living once more."
+
+After he had gone out, Field said, "I wonder if he'll do it?"
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't wonder. I've seen men brace up just as mysteriously as
+that and stay right by their resolutions. I thought he didn't look like
+a common lumber Jack when he came in."
+
+"Ed, your playing did it!" Mrs. Field cried, when she heard of Williams'
+resolution. "Oh, how happy his wife will be! She'll save him yet!"
+
+"Well, I don't know; depends on what kind of a woman she is."
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE THE LOW GREEN DOOR
+
+
+Matilda Bent was dying; there was no doubt of that now, if there had
+been before. The gruff old physician--one of the many overworked and
+underpaid country doctors--shook his head and pushed by Joe Bent, her
+husband, as he passed through the room which served as dining-room,
+sitting-room, and parlor. The poor fellow slouched back to his chair by
+the stove as if dazed, and before he could speak again the doctor was
+gone.
+
+Mrs. Ridings was just coming up the walk as the doctor stepped out of
+the door.
+
+"Oh, doctor, how is she?"
+
+"She is a dying woman, madam."
+
+"Oh, don't say that, doctor! What's the matter?"
+
+"Cancer."
+
+"Then the news was true--"
+
+"I don't know anything of the news, Mrs. Ridings, but Mrs. Bent is dying
+from the effects of a cancer primarily, which she has had for
+years--since her last child, which died in infancy, you remember."
+
+"But, doctor, she never told me--"
+
+"Neither did she tell me. But no matter now. I have done all I can for
+her. If you can make death any easier for her, go and do it. You will
+find some opiate powders there with directions. Keep the pain down at
+all hazards. Don't let her suffer; that is useless. She is likely to
+last a day or two; but if any change comes to-night, send for me."
+
+When the good matron entered the dowdy, suffocating little room where
+Matilda Bent lay gasping for breath, she was sick for a moment with
+sympathetic pain. There the dying woman lay, her world narrowed to four
+close walls, propped up on the pillows near the one little window. Her
+eyes seemed very large and bright, and the brow, made prominent by the
+sinking away of the cheeks, gave evidence that it was an uncommon woman
+who lay there quietly waiting the death angel.
+
+She smiled, and lifted her eyebrows in a ghastly way.
+
+"Oh, Marthy!" she breathed.
+
+"Matildy, I didn't know you was so bad or I'd 'a' come before. Why
+didn't you let me know?" said Mrs. Ridings, kneeling by the bed and
+taking the ghostly hands of the sufferer in her own warm and soft palms.
+She shuddered as she kissed the thin lips.
+
+"I think you'll soon be around ag'in," she added, in the customary
+mockery of an attempt at cheer. The other woman started slightly, turned
+her head, and gazed on her old friend long and intently. The hollowness
+of her neighbor's words stung her.
+
+"I hope not, Marthy--I'm ready to go. I want to go. I don't care to
+live."
+
+The two women communed by looking for a long time in each other's eyes,
+as if to get at the very secretest desires and hopes of the heart. Tears
+fell from Martha's eyes upon the cold and nerveless hands of her
+friend--poor, faithful hands, hacked and knotted and worn by thirty
+years of ceaseless daily toil. They lay there motionless upon the
+coverlet, pathetic protest for all the world to see.
+
+"Oh, Matildy, I wish I could do something for you! I want to help you
+so! I feel so bad that I didn't come before! Ain't they somethin'?"
+
+"Yes, Marthy--jest set there--till I die--it won't be long," whispered
+the pale lips. The sufferer, as usual, was calmer than her visitor, and
+her eyes were thoughtful.
+
+"I will! I will! But oh, must you go? Can't somethin' be done? Don't yo'
+want the minister to be sent for?"
+
+"No, I'm all ready. I ain't afraid to die. I ain't worth savin' now. Oh,
+Marthy, I never thought I'd come to this--did you? I never thought I'd
+die--so early in life--and die--unsatisfied."
+
+She lifted her head a little as she gasped out these words with an
+intensity of utterance that thrilled her hearer--a powerful, penetrating
+earnestness that burned like fire.
+
+"Are you satisfied?" pursued the steady lips. "My life's a failure,
+Marthy--I've known it all along--all but my children. Oh, Marthy,
+what'll become o' them? This is a hard world."
+
+The amazed Martha could only chafe the hands, and note sorrowfully the
+frightful changes in the face of her friend. The weirdly calm, slow
+voice began to shake a little.
+
+"I'm dyin', Marthy, without ever gittin' to the sunny place we
+girls--used to think--we'd git to, by-an'-by. I've been a-gittin' deeper
+'n' deeper--in the shade--till it's most dark. They ain't been no
+rest--n'r hope f'r me, Marthy--none. I ain't--"
+
+"There, there, Tillie, don't talk so--don't, dear! Try to think how
+bright it'll be over there--"
+
+"I don't know nawthin' about over there; I'm talkin' about here. I ain't
+had no chance here, Marthy."
+
+"He will heal all your care--"
+
+"He can't wipe out my sufferin's here."
+
+"Yes, He can, and He will. He can wipe away every tear and heal every
+wound."
+
+"No--he--can't. God Himself can't wipe out what has been. Oh, Mattie, if
+I was only there!--in the past--if I was only young and purty ag'in! You
+know how tall I was! How we used to run--oh, Mattie, if I was only
+there! The world was all bright then--wasn't it? We didn't expect--to
+work all our days. Life looked like a meadow, full of daisies and pinks,
+and the nicest ones and the sweetest birds were just a little ways
+on--where the sun was--it didn't look--wasn't we happy?"
+
+"Yes, yes, dear. But you mustn't talk so much." The good woman thought
+Matilda's mind was wandering. "Don't you want some med'cine? Is your
+fever risin'?"
+
+"But the daisies and pinks all turned to weeds," she went on, waiting a
+little, "when we picked 'em. An' the sunny place--has been always behind
+me, and the dark before me. Oh, if I was only there--in the sun--where
+the pinks and daisies are!"
+
+"You mustn't talk so, Mattie! Think about your children! You ain't sorry
+y'had them? They've been a comfort to y'? You ain't sorry you had 'em?"
+
+"I ain't glad," was the unhesitating reply of the failing woman; and
+then she went on, in growing excitement: "They'll haf to grow old jest
+as I have--git bent and gray, an' die. They ain't be'n much comfort to
+me: the boys are like their father, and Julyie's weak. They ain't no
+happiness--for such as me and them."
+
+She paused for breath, and Mrs. Ridings, not knowing what to say, did
+better than speak. She fell to stroking the poor face and the hands,
+getting more restless each moment. It was as if Matilda Fletcher had
+been silent so long, had borne so much without complaint, that now it
+burst from her in a torrent not to be stayed. All her most secret doubts
+and her sweetest hopes seemed trembling on her lips or surging in her
+brain, racking her poor, emaciated frame for utterence. Now that death
+was sure, she was determined to rid her bosom of its perilous stuff.
+Martha was appalled.
+
+"I used to think--that when I got married I'd be perfectly happy; but I
+never have been happy sence. It was the beginning of trouble to me. I
+never found things better than they looked; they was always worse. I've
+gone further an' further from the sunshiny meadow, an' the birds an'
+flowers--and I'll never git back to 'em again, never!" She ended with a
+sob and a low wail.
+
+Her face was horrifying with its intensity of pathetic regret. Her
+straining, wide-open eyes seemed to be seeing those sunny spots in the
+meadow.
+
+"Mattie, sometimes when I'm asleep I think I am back there ag'in--and
+you girls are there--an' we're pullin' off the leaves of the wild
+sunflower--'rich man, poor man, beggar man'--and I hear you all laugh
+when I pull off the last leaf; and then I come to myself--and I'm an
+old, dried-up woman, dyin'--unsatisfied!"
+
+"I've felt that way a little myself, Matildy," confessed the watcher, in
+a scared whisper.
+
+"I knew it, Mattie; I knew you'd know how I felt. Things have been
+better for you. You ain't had to live in an old log house all your life,
+an' work yourself to skin an' bone for a man you don't respect nor
+like."
+
+"Matildy Bent, take that back! Take it back, for mercy sake! Don't you
+dare die thinkin' that--don't you dare!"
+
+Bent, hearing her voice rising, came to the door, and the wife,
+recognizing his step, cried out:
+
+"Don't let him in! Don't! I can't bear him--keep him out; I don't want
+to see him ag'in."
+
+"Who do you mean? Not Joe?"
+
+"Yes! Him!"
+
+Had the dying woman confessed to murder, good Martha could not have been
+more shocked. She could not understand this terrible revulsion in
+feeling, for she herself had been absolutely loyal to her husband
+through all the trials which had come upon them.
+
+But she met Bent at the threshold, and, closing the door, went out with
+him into the summer kitchen, where the rest of the family were sitting.
+A gloomy silence fell on them all after the greetings were over. The men
+were smoking; all were seated in chairs tipped back against the wall.
+Joe Bent, a smallish man, with a weak, good-natured face, asked, in a
+hoarse whisper:
+
+"How is she, Mis' Ridings?"
+
+"She seems quite strong, Mr. Bent. I think you had all better go to bed;
+if I want you, I can call you. Doctor give me directions."
+
+"All right," responded the relieved man. "I'll sleep on the lounge in
+the other room. If you want me, just rap on the door."
+
+When, after making other arrangements, Martha went back to the bedroom,
+she was startled to hear the sick woman muttering to herself, or perhaps
+because she had forgotten Martha's absence.
+
+"But the shadows on the meadow didn't stay; they passed on, and then the
+sun was all the brighter on the flowers. We used to string
+sweet-williams on spears of grass--don't you remember?"
+
+Martha gave her a drink of the opiate in the glass, adjusted her on the
+pillow, and threw open the window, even to the point of removing the
+screen, and the gibbous moon flooded the room with light. She did not
+light a lamp, for its flame would heat the room. Besides, the moonlight
+was sufficient. It fell on the face of the sick woman till she looked
+like a thing of marble--all but her dark eyes.
+
+"Does the moon hurt you, Tilly? Shall I put down the curtain?"
+
+The woman heard with difficulty, and when the question was repeated,
+said slowly:
+
+"No, I like it." After a little: "Don't you remember, Mattie, how
+beautiful the moonlight seemed? It seemed to promise happiness--and
+love--but it never come for us. It makes me dream of the past now--just
+as it did of the future then; an' the whip-poor-wills, too--"
+
+The night was perfectly beautiful, such a night as makes dying an
+infinite sorrow. The summer was at its liberalest. Innumerable insects
+of the nocturnal sort were singing in unison with the frogs in the
+pools. A whip-poor-will called, and its neighbor answered like an echo.
+The leaves of the trees, glossy from the late rain, moved musically to
+the light west wind, and the exquisite perfume of many flowers came in
+on the breeze.
+
+When the failing woman sank into silence, Martha leaned her elbow on the
+window-sill, and, gazing far into the great deeps of space, gave herself
+up to unwonted musings upon the problems of human life. She sighed
+deeply at times. She found herself at moments in the almost terrifying
+position of a human soul in space. Not a wife, not a mother, but just a
+soul facing the questions which harass philosophers. As she realized her
+condition of mind she apprehended something of the thinking of the
+woman on the bed. Matilda had gone beyond--or far back--of the wife and
+mother.
+
+The hours wore on; the dying woman stirred uneasily now and then,
+whispering a word or phrase which related to her girlhood--never to her
+later life. Once she said:
+
+"Mother, hold me. I'm so tired."
+
+Martha took the thin form in her arms, and, laying her head close beside
+the sunken cheek, sang, in half breath, a lullaby till the sufferer grew
+quiet again.
+
+The lustrous moon passed over the house, leaving the room dark, and
+still the patient watcher sat beside the bed, listening to the slow
+breathing of the dying one. The cool air grew almost chill; the east
+began to lighten, and with the coming light the tide of life sank in the
+dying body. The head, hitherto restlessly turning, ceased to move. The
+eyes grew quiet and began to soften like a sleeper's.
+
+"How are you now, dear?" asked the watcher several times, bending over
+the bed, and bathing back the straying hair.
+
+"I'm tired--tired, mother--turn me," she murmured drowsily, with heavy
+lids drooping.
+
+Martha patted the pillows once again, and turned her friend's face to
+the wall. The poor, tortured, restless brain slowly stopped its grinding
+whirl, and the thin limbs, heavy with years of hopeless toil,
+straightened out in an endless sleep.
+
+Matilda Fletcher had found rest.
+
+
+
+
+A PREACHER'S LOVE STORY
+
+I
+
+
+The train drew out of the great Van Buren Street depot at 4.30 of a dark
+day in late October. A tall young man, with a timid look in his eyes,
+was almost the last passenger to get on, and his pale face wore a
+worried look as he dropped into an empty seat and peered out at the
+squalid city reeling past in the mist.
+
+The buildings grew smaller, and vacant lots appeared stretching away in
+flat spaces, broken here and there by ridges of ugly, squat, little
+tenement blocks. Over this landscape vast banners of smoke streamed,
+magnified by the misty rain which was driven in from the lake.
+
+At last there came a swell of land clothed on with trees. It was still
+light enough for him to see that they were burr oaks, and the young
+student's heart thrilled at sight of them. His forehead smoothed out,
+and his eyes grew tender with boyish memories.
+
+He was seated thus, with head leaning against the pane, when another
+young man came down the aisle from the smoking-car and took a seat
+beside him with a pleasant word.
+
+He was a handsome young fellow of twenty three or four. His face was
+large and beardless, and he had a bold and keen look, in spite of the
+bang of yellow hair which hung over his forehead. Some commonplaces
+passed between them, and then silence fell on each. The conductor coming
+through the car, the smooth-faced young fellow put up a card to be
+punched, and the student handed up a ticket, simply saying, "Kesota."
+
+After a decent pause the younger man said, "Going to Kesota, are you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So am I. I live there, in fact."
+
+"Do you? Then perhaps you can tell me the name of your County
+Superintendent. I'm looking for a school." He smiled frankly. "I'm just
+out of Jackson University, and--"
+
+"That so? I'm an Ann Arbor man myself." They took a moment for mutual
+warming up. "Yes, I know the Superintendent. Why not come right up to my
+boarding-place, and to-morrow I'll introduce you? Looking for a school,
+eh? What kind of a school?"
+
+"Oh, a village school, or even a country school. It's too late to get a
+good place; but I've been sick, and--"
+
+"Yes, the good positions are all snapped up; still, you might by
+accident hit on something. I know Mott; he'll do all he can for you.
+By-the-way, my name's Allen."
+
+The young student understood this hint and spoke. "Mine is Stacey."
+
+The younger man mused a few minutes, as if he had forgotten his new
+acquaintance. Suddenly he roused up.
+
+"Say, would you take a country school several miles out?"
+
+"I think I would, if nothing better offered."
+
+"Well, in my old district they're without a teacher. It's six miles out,
+and it isn't a lovely neighborhood! However, they will pay fifty dollars
+a month; that's ten dollars extra for the scrimmages. They wanted me to
+teach this winter--my sister tackles it in summer--but, great Peter! I
+can't waste my time teaching school, when I can run up to Chicago and
+take a shy at the pit and make a whole term's wages in thirty minutes!"
+
+"I don't understand," said Stacey.
+
+"Wheat Exchange. I've got a lot of friends in the pit, and I can come in
+any time on a little deal. I'm no Jim Keene, but I hope to get cash
+enough to handle five thousand. I wanted the old gent to start me up in
+it, but he said, 'Nix come arouse.' Fact is, I dropped the money he gave
+me to go through college with." He smiled at Stacey's disapproving look.
+"Yes, indeedy; there's where the jar came into our tender relations. Oh,
+I call on the Governor--always when I've got a wad. I have fun with
+him." He smiled brightly. "Ask him if he don't need a little cash to pay
+for hog-killin', or something like that." He laughed again. "No, I
+didn't graduate at Ann Arbor. Funny how things go, ain't it? I was on my
+way back the third year, when I stopped in to see the pit--it's one o'
+the sights of Chicago, you know--and Billy Krans saw me looking over the
+rail, I went in, won, and then took a flyer on December. Come a big
+slump, and I failed to materialize at school."
+
+"What did you do then?" asked Stacey, to whom this did not seem
+humorous.
+
+"I wrote a contrite letter to the Governor, stating case, requesting
+forgiveness--and money. No go! Couldn't raise neither. I then wrote,
+casting him off. 'You are no longer father of mine.'" He smiled again
+radiantly. "You should have seen me the next time I went home! Plug hat!
+Imported suit! Gold watch! Diamond shirt-stud! Cost me $200 to paralyze
+the General, but I did it. My glory absolutely turned him white as a
+sheet. I knew what he thought, so I said: 'Perfectly legitimate, Dad.
+The walls of Joliet are not gaping for me.' That about half-fetched
+him--calling him _Dad_, I mean; but he can't get reconciled to my
+business. 'Too many ups and downs,' he says. Fact is, he thinks it's
+gambling, and I don't argue the case with him. I'm on my way home now to
+stay over Sunday."
+
+The train whistled, and Allen looked out into the darkness. "We're
+coming to the crossing. Now, I can't go up to the boarding-place when
+you do, but I'll give you directions, and you tell the landlady I sent
+you, and it'll be all right. Allen, you remember--Herman Allen."
+
+Following directions, Stacey came at length to a two-story frame house
+situated on the edge of the bank, with its back to the river. It stood
+alone, with vacant lots all about. A pleasant-faced woman answered the
+ring.
+
+He explained briefly. "How do you do? I'm a teacher, and I'd like to get
+board here a few days while passing my examinations. Mr. Herman Allen
+sent me."
+
+The woman's quick eye and ear were satisfied. "All right. Walk in, sir.
+I'm pretty full, but I expect I can accommodate you--if you don't mind
+Mr. Allen for a room-mate."
+
+"Oh, not at all," he said, while taking off his coat.
+
+"Come right in this way. Supper will be ready soon."
+
+He went into a comfortable sitting-room, where a huge open fire of soft
+coal was blazing magnificently. The walls were papered in florid
+patterns, and several enlarged portraits were on the walls. The fire was
+the only adornment; all else was cheap, and some of it was tawdry.
+
+Stacey spread his thin hands to the blaze, while the landlady sat down a
+moment, out of politeness, to chat, scanning him keenly. She was a
+handsome woman, strong, well-rounded, about forty years of age, with
+quick, gray eyes, and a clean, firm-lipped mouth.
+
+"Did you just get in?"
+
+"Yes. I've been on the road all day," he said, on an impulse of
+communication. "Indeed, I'm just out of college."
+
+"Is that so!" exclaimed Mrs. Mills, stopping her rocking in an access of
+interest. "What college?"
+
+"Jackson University. I've been sick, and only came West--"
+
+There came a look into her face that transformed and transfigured her.
+"_My_ boy was in Ann Arbor. He was killed on the train on his way home
+one day." She stopped, for fear of breaking into a quaver, and smiled
+brightly. "That's why I always like college boys. They all stop here
+with me." She rose hastily. "Well, you'll excuse me, won't you, and I'll
+go an' 'tend to supper."
+
+There was a great deal that was feminine in Stacey, and he felt at once
+the pathos of the woman's life. He looked a refined, studious, rather
+delicate young man, as he sat low in his chair and observed the light
+and heat of the fire. His large head was heavy with learning, and his
+dark eyes deep with religious fervor.
+
+Several young women entered, and the room was filled with the clatter of
+tongues. Herman came in a few moments later, his face in a girlish glow
+of color. Everybody rushed at him with loud outcry. He was evidently a
+great favorite. He threw his arms about Mrs. Mills, giving her a hearty
+hug. The girls pretended to be shocked when he reached out for them, but
+they were not afraid of him. They hung on his arms and besieged him with
+questions till he cried out, in jolly perplexity:
+
+"Girls, girls! This will never do!"
+
+Mrs. Mills brushed out his damp yellow curls with her hands. "You're all
+wet."
+
+"Girls, if you'll let me sit down, I'll take one on each knee," he said,
+pleadingly, and they released him.
+
+Stacey grew red with sympathetic embarrassment, and shrank away into a
+corner.
+
+"Go get supper ready," commanded Herman. And it was only after they had
+left him that he said to Stacey: "Oh, you found your way all right." He
+took a seat by the fire and surveyed his wet shoes. "I took a run up to
+Mott's house--only a half block out o' the way. He said they'd be
+tickled to have you at Cyene. By-the-way, you're a theolog, aren't you?"
+Wallace nodded, and Herman went on: "So I told Mott. He said you might
+work up a society out there at Cyene."
+
+"Is there a church there?"
+
+"Used to be, but--say, I tell you what you do: you go out with me
+to-morrow, and I'll give you a history of the township."
+
+The ringing of the bell took them all out into the cheerful dining-room
+in a good-natured scramble. Mrs. Mills put Stacey at one end of the
+table, near a young woman who looked like a teacher, and he had full
+sweep of the table, which was surrounded by bright and happy faces. The
+station-hand was there, and a couple of grocery clerks, and a brakeman
+sat at Stacey's right hand. They all seemed very much at home, and
+called one another by their Christian names, and there was very obvious
+courtship on the part of several young couples.
+
+Stacey escaped from the table as soon as possible, and returned to his
+seat beside the fire. He was young enough to enjoy the chatter of the
+girls, but his timidity made him glad they paid so little attention to
+him. The rain had changed to sleet outside and hammered at the window
+viciously, but the blazing fire and the romping young people set it at
+defiance. The landlady came to the door of the dining-room, dish and
+cloth in hand, to share in each outburst of laughter, and not
+infrequently the hired girl peered over her shoulder with a broad smile
+on her face. A little later, having finished their work, they both came
+in and took active part in the light-hearted fun.
+
+Herman and one of the girls were having a great struggle over some
+trifle he had snatched from her hand, and the rest stood about laughing
+to see her desperate attempts to recover it. This was a familiar form of
+courtship in Kesota, and an evening filled with such romping was
+considered a "cracking good time." After the girl, red and dishevelled,
+had given up, Herman sat down at the organ, and they all sang Moody and
+Sankey hymns, negro melodies, and college songs till ten o'clock. Then
+Mrs. Mills called, "Come, now, boys and girls!" and they all said
+good-night, like obedient children.
+
+Herman and Wallace went up to their bedroom together.
+
+"Say, Stacey, have you got a policy?" Wallace shook his head. "And don't
+want any, I suppose. Well, I just asked you as a matter of form. You
+see," he went on, winking at Wallace comically, "nominally I'm an
+insurance agent, but practically I'm a 'lamb'--but I get a mouthful o'
+fur myself occasionally. What I'm working for is to get on that Wheat
+Exchange. That's where you get life! I'd rather be an established broker
+in that howling mob than go to Congress."
+
+He rose on his elbow in bed and looked at Wallace, who was rising from a
+silent prayer.
+
+"Say, why didn't you shout? I forgot all about it--I mean your
+profession."
+
+Wallace crept into bed beside his communicative bedfellow in silence.
+He didn't know how to deal with such spirits.
+
+"Say," called Herman suddenly, as Wallace was about dropping off to
+sleep, "you ain't got no picnic, old man!"
+
+"Why, what do you mean?"
+
+"Wait till you see Cyene Church. Oh, it's a daisy snarl!"
+
+"I wish you'd tell me about it."
+
+"Oh, it's quiet now. The calmness of death," said Herman. "Well, you
+see, it came this way. The church is made up of Baptists and Methodists,
+and the Methodists wanted an organ, because, you understand, father was
+the head centre, and Mattie is the only girl among the Methodists who
+can play. The old man has got a head like a mule. He can't be switched
+off, once he makes up his mind. Deacon Marsden, he don't believe in
+anything above tuning-forks, and he's tighter'n the bark on a bulldog.
+He stood out like a sore thumb, and Dad wouldn't give an inch.
+
+"You see, they held meetings every other Sunday. So Dad worked up the
+organ business and got one, and then locked it up when the Baptists held
+their services. Things went from bad to worse. They didn't speak as they
+passed by--that is, the old folks; we young folks didn't care a
+continental whether school kept or not. Well, upshot is, the church died
+out. The wind blew the horse-sheds down, and there they lie--and the
+church is standing there empty as an--old boot--and--Say, Stacey--by
+Jinks!--are you a Baptist?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, Peter! ain't that lovely!" He chuckled shamelessly, and went off to
+sleep without another word.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Herman was still sleeping when Stacey rose and dressed and went down to
+breakfast. Mrs. Mills defended Herman against the charge of laziness:
+"He's probably been out late all the week."
+
+Stacey found Mott in the county court-house, and a perfunctory
+examination soon put him in possession of a certificate. There was no
+question of his attainments.
+
+Herman met him at dinner-time.
+
+"Well, elder, I'm going down to get a rig to go out home in. It's
+colder'n a blue whetstone, so put on all the clothes you've got. Gimme
+your check, and I'll get your traps. Have you seen Mott?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then, everything's all fixed."
+
+He turned up about three o'clock, seated on the spring seat of a lumber
+wagon beside a woman, who drove the powerful team. Whether she was young
+or old could not be told through her wraps. She wore a cap and a thick,
+faded cloak.
+
+Mrs. Mills hurried to the door. "Why, Mattie Allen! What you doin' out
+such a day as this? Come in here instanter!"
+
+"Can't stop!" called a clear, boyish voice. "Too late!"
+
+"Well, land o' stars, you'll freeze!"
+
+When Wallace reached the wagon side, Herman said, "My sister, Stacey."
+
+The girl slipped her strong, brown hand out of her huge glove and gave
+him a friendly grip. "Get right in," she said. "Herman, you're going to
+stand up behind."
+
+Herman appealed to Mrs. Mills for sympathy. "This is what comes of
+having plebeian connections."
+
+"Oh, dry up," laughed the girl, "or I'll make you drive."
+
+Stacey scrambled in awkwardly beside her. She was not at all
+embarrassed, apparently.
+
+"Tuck yourself in tight. It's mighty cold on the prairie."
+
+"Why didn't you come down with the baroosh?" grumbled Herman.
+
+"Well, the corn was contracted for, and father wasn't able to come--he
+had another attack of neuralgia last night, after he got the corn
+loaded, so I had to come."
+
+"Sha'n't I drive for you?" asked Wallace.
+
+"No, thank you. You'll have all you can do to keep from freezing." She
+studied his thin coat and worn gloves with keen glance. He could see
+only her pink cheeks, strong nose, and dark, smiling eyes.
+
+It was one of those terrible Illinois days when the temperature drops
+suddenly to zero, and the churned mud of the highways hardens into
+scoriac rock, which cripples the horses and sends the heavy wagons
+booming and thundering along like mad things. The wind was keen as a
+saw-bladed sword, and smote incessantly. The desolate sky was one thick,
+impenetrable mass of swiftly flying clouds.
+
+When they swung out upon the long pike leading due north, Wallace drew
+his breath with a gasp, and bent his head to the wind.
+
+"Pretty strong, isn't it?" shouted Mattie.
+
+"Oh, the farmer's life is the life for me, tra-la!" sang Herman, from
+his shelter behind the seat.
+
+Mattie turned. "What do you think of _Penelope_ this month?"
+
+"She's a-gitten there," said Herman, pounding his shoe heels.
+
+"She's too smart for young Corey. She ought to marry a man like
+Bromfield. My, wouldn't they talk!"
+
+"Did y' get the second bundle of magazines last Saturday?"
+
+"Yes; and Dad found something in the _Popular Science_ that made him
+mad, and he burned it."
+
+"Did 'e? Tum-la-la! Oh, the farmer's life for me!"
+
+"Are you cold?" she asked Wallace.
+
+He turned a purple face upon her. "No--not much."
+
+"I guess you better slip right down under the blankets," she advised.
+
+The wind blew gray out of the north--a wild blast which stopped the
+young student's blood in his veins. He hated to give up, but he could no
+longer hold the blankets over his knees, so he slipped down into the
+corner of the box, with his back to the wind, while Mattie drew the
+blankets over his head, slapped the reins down on the backs of the
+snorting horses, and encouraged them with shouts like a man: "Get out o'
+this, Dan! Hup there, Nellie!"
+
+The wagon boomed and rattled. The floor of the box seemed beaten with a
+maul. The glimpses Wallace had of the land appalled him, it was so flat
+and gray and bare.
+
+Herman sang at the top of his voice, and danced, and pounded his feet
+against the wagon box. "This ends it! If I can't come home without
+freezing to death, I don't come. I should have hired a rig, irrespective
+of you--"
+
+The girl laughed. "Oh, you're getting thin-blooded, Herman. Life in the
+city has taken the starch all out of you."
+
+"Better grow limp in a great city than freeze stiff in the country," he
+replied.
+
+An hour's ride brought them into a yard before a large, gray-white frame
+house.
+
+Herman sprang out to meet a tall old man with head muffled up. "Hello,
+Dad! Take the team. We're just naturally froze solid--at least, I am.
+This is Mr. Stacey, the new teacher."
+
+"How de do? Run in; I'll take the horses."
+
+Herman and Wallace stumbled toward the house, stiff and bent.
+
+Herman flung his arms about a tall woman in the kitchen door. "Hello,
+muz!" he said. "This is Mr. Stacey, the new teacher."
+
+Mattie came in soon with a boyish rush, gleeful as a happy babe. She
+unwound the scarf from her head and neck, and hung up her cap and cloak
+like a man, but she gave her hair a little touch of feminine care, and
+came forward with both palms pressed to her burning cheeks.
+
+"Did you suffer, child?" asked Mrs. Allen.
+
+"No; I enjoyed it."
+
+Herman looked at Stacey. "I believe on my life she did."
+
+"Oh, it's fun. I don't get a chance to do anything so exciting very
+often."
+
+Herman clicked his tongue. "Exciting? Well, well!"
+
+"You must remember things are slower here," Mattie explained.
+
+She came to light much younger than Stacey thought her. She was not
+eighteen, but her supple and splendid figure was fully matured. Her hair
+hung down her back in a braid, which gave a distinct touch of
+childishness to her.
+
+"Sis, you're still a-growin'," Herman said, as he put his arm around her
+waist and looked up at her.
+
+She seemed to realize for the first time that Stacey was a young man,
+and her eyes fell.
+
+"Well, now, set up the chairs, child," said Mrs. Allen.
+
+When the young teacher returned from his cold spare room off the parlor
+the family sat waiting for him. They all drew up noisily, and Allen
+said:
+
+"Ask the blessing, sir?"
+
+Wallace said grace.
+
+As Allen passed the potatoes he continued:
+
+"My son tells me you are a minister of the gospel."
+
+"I have studied for it."
+
+"What denomination?"
+
+"Tut, tut!" warned Herman. "Don't start any theological rabbits
+to-night, Dad. With jaw swelled up you won't be able to hold your own."
+
+"I'm a Baptist," Stacey answered.
+
+The old man's face grew grim. It had been ludicrous before with its
+swollen jaw. "Baptist!" He turned a stern look upon his son, whose smile
+angered him. "Didn't you know no more'n to bring a Baptist preacher into
+this house?"
+
+"There, there, father!" began the wife.
+
+"Be quiet. I'm boss of this shanty, and I won't have you bringing--"
+
+Herman struck in: "Don't make a show of yourself, old man. Never mind
+the old gent, Stacey; he's mumpy to-day, anyhow."
+
+Stacey rose. "I guess I--I'd better not stay--I--"
+
+"Oh no, no! Sit down! It's all right. The old man's a little acid at me.
+He doesn't mean it."
+
+Stacey got his coat and hat. His heart was swollen with indignation. He
+felt as if something fine were lost to him, and the land outside was so
+desolate!
+
+Mrs. Allen was in tears; but the old man, having taken his stand, was
+going to keep it.
+
+Herman lost his temper a little. "Well, Dad, you're a little the
+cussedest Christian I ever knew! Stacey, sit down. Don't you be a fool
+just because he is--"
+
+Stacey was buttoning his coat with trembling hands when Martha went up
+to him.
+
+"Don't go," she said. "Father's sick and cross. He'll be sorry for this
+to-morrow."
+
+Wallace looked into her frank, kindly eyes, and hesitated.
+
+Herman said: "Dad, you are a lovely follower of Christ! You'll apologize
+for this, or I'll never set foot on your threshold again."
+
+Stacey still hesitated. He was hurt and angry, but being naturally of a
+sweet and gentle nature, he grew sad, and, yielding to the pressure of
+the girl's hand on his arm, he began to unbutton his overcoat.
+
+She helped him with it, and hung it back on the nail, and her mother and
+Herman tried to restore something of the brightness which had been lost;
+but Allen sat grimly eating, his chin pushed down like a hog's snout.
+
+After supper, as his father was about retiring to his bedroom, Herman
+fixed his bright eyes on him, and something very hard and masterful came
+into his face.
+
+"Old man, you and I haven't had a settlement on this thing yet. I'll see
+you later."
+
+Allen shrank before his son's look, but shuffled sullenly off without
+uttering a word.
+
+Herman turned to Wallace. "Stacey, I want to beg your pardon for getting
+you into this scrape. I didn't suppose the old gentleman would act like
+that. The older he gets, the more his New Hampshire granite shows. I
+hope you won't lay it up against me."
+
+Wallace was too conscientious to say he didn't mind it, but he took
+Herman's hand in a quick clasp.
+
+"Let's have a song," proposed Herman. "Music hath charms to soothe the
+savage breast, to charm a rock, and split a cabbage."
+
+They went into the best room, where a fire was blazing, and Mattie and
+Herman sang hymns and old-fashioned love-songs and college glees
+wonderfully intermingled. They ended with _Lorena_, a wailing, extra
+sentimental love-song current in war times, and when they looked around
+there was a lofty look on the face of the young preacher--a look of
+exaltation, of consecration and resolve.
+
+
+III
+
+
+The next morning, at breakfast, Herman said, as he seized a hot biscuit,
+"We'll dispense with grace this morning, and till after the war is
+over." But Wallace blessed his bread in a silent prayer, and Mattie
+thought it very brave of him to do so.
+
+Herman was full of mockery. "The sun rises just the same, whether it's
+'sprinkling' or 'immersion.' It's lucky Nature don't take a hand in
+these theological contests. She doesn't even referee the scrap; she
+never seems to care whether you are sparring for points or fighting to a
+finish. What you theologic middle-weights are really fighting for I
+can't see--and I don't care, till you fall over the ropes on to my
+corns."
+
+Stacey listened in a daze to Herman's tirade. He knew it was addressed
+to Allen, and that it deprecated war, and that it was mocking. The fresh
+face and smiling lips of the young girl seemed to put other affairs very
+far away. It was such a beautiful thing to sit at table with a lovely
+girl.
+
+After breakfast he put on his cap and coat, and went out into the clear,
+cold November air. All about him the prairie outspread, marked with
+farm-houses and lined with leafless hedges. Artificial groves surrounded
+each homestead, and these relieved, to some degree, the desolateness of
+the fields.
+
+Down the road he saw the spire of a small white church, and as he walked
+briskly toward it, Herman's description of it came to his mind.
+
+As he drew near, the ruined sheds, the rotting porch, and the windows
+boarded up told a sorry story, and his face grew sad. He tried one of
+the doors, and found it open. Some tramp had broken the lock. The inside
+was even more desolate than the outside. It was littered with rotting
+straw and plum stones and melon seeds. Obscene words were scrawled on
+the walls, and even on the pulpit itself.
+
+Taken altogether, it was an appalling picture to the young servant of
+the Man of Galilee--a blunt reminder of the inherent ferocity and
+depravity of man.
+
+As he pondered the fire burned, and there rose again the flame of his
+resolution. He lifted his face and prayed that he might be the one to
+bring these people into the living union of the Church of Christ.
+
+His blood set toward his heart with tremulous action.
+
+His eyes glowed with zeal like that of the prophets of the Middle Ages.
+He saw the people united once more in this desecrated hall. He heard the
+bells ringing, the sound of song, the voices of love and fellowship
+filling the anterooms where hate had scrawled hideous blasphemy against
+woman and against God.
+
+As he sat there Herman came in, his keen eyes seeking out every stain
+and evidence of vandalism.
+
+"Cheerful prospect, isn't it?"
+
+Wallace looked up with the blaze of his resolution still in his eyes.
+His pale face was sweet and solemn.
+
+"Oh, how these people need Christ!"
+
+Herman turned away. "They need killing--about two dozen of 'em. I'd like
+to have the job of indicating which ones. I wouldn't miss the old man,
+you bet!" he added, with cordial resentment.
+
+Wallace was helpless in the face of such reckless thought, and so sat
+silently watching the handsome young fellow as he walked about.
+
+"Well, now, Stacey, I guess you'll need to move. I had another session
+with the old man, but he won't give in, so I'm off for Chicago. Mother's
+brother, George Chapman, who lives about as near the schoolhouse on the
+other side, will take you in. I guess we'd better go right down now and
+see about it. I've said good-by to the old man--for good this time; we
+didn't shake hands, either," he said, as they started down the road
+together. He was very stern and hard. Something of the father was hidden
+under his laughing exterior.
+
+Stacey regretted deeply the necessity which drove him out of Allen's
+house. Mrs. Allen and Mattie had appealed to him very strongly. For
+years he had lived far from young women, and there was a magical power
+in the intimate home actions of this young girl. Her bare head, with
+simple arrangement of hair, someway seemed the most beautiful thing he
+had ever seen.
+
+He thought of her that night, as he sat at the table with Chapman and
+his aged mother. They lived alone, and their lives were curiously
+silent. Once in a while a low-voiced question, and that was all. George
+read the _Popular Science, Harper's Monthly Magazine_, and the _Open
+Court_, and brooded over them with slow intellectual movement. It was
+wonderful the amount of information he secreted from these periodicals.
+He was better informed than many college graduates. He had little
+curiosity about the young stranger. He understood that he was to teach
+the school; beyond that he did not care to go.
+
+He tried Wallace once or twice on the latest discoveries of John Fiske
+and Edison, and then gave him up and retired to his seat beside the
+sitting-room stove.
+
+On the following Monday morning school began, and as Wallace took his
+way down the lane the wrecked church came again to his eyes. He walked
+past it with slow feet. His was a deeply religious nature, one that
+sorrowed easily over sin. Suffering of the poor did not trouble him;
+hunger seemed a little thing beside losing one's everlasting soul.
+Therefore, to come from his studies upon such a monument of human
+depravity as this rotting church was to receive a shock and to hear a
+call to action.
+
+Approaching the schoolhouse, his thought took a turn toward the
+scholars and toward Mattie. He had forgotten to ask her if she intended
+to be one of his pupils.
+
+There were several children already gathered at the weather-beaten door
+as he came up. It was all very American--the box-like house of white,
+the slender teacher approaching, the roughly clad urchins waiting.
+
+He said, "Good morning, scholars!"
+
+They chorused a queer croak in reply--hesitating, inarticulate, shy. He
+unlocked the door and entered the cold, bare room--familiar, unlovely,
+with a certain power of primitive associations. In such a room he had
+studied his primer and his Ray's Arithmetic. In such a room he had made
+gradual recession from the smallest front seat to the back wall seat;
+and from one side of such a room to the other he had furtively
+worshipped a graceful, girlish head.
+
+He allowed himself but a moment of such dreaming before assuming
+command, and with his ready helpers a fire was soon started. Other
+children came in, timorous as rabbits, slipping by, each with an eye
+fixed on him like a scared chicken. They pre-empted their seats by
+putting down books and slates, and there arose sly wars for possession,
+which he watched with amusement--it was so like his own life at that
+age.
+
+He assumed control as nearly in the manner of the old-time teachers as
+he could recall, and the work of his teaching was begun. The day passed
+quickly, and, as he walked homeward again, there stood that rotting
+church, and in his mind there rose a surging emotion larger than he
+could himself comprehend--a desire to rebuild it by uniting the warring
+factions, of whose lack of Christianity this deserted chapel was a fatal
+witness.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Now this mystical thing happened. As this son of a line of preachers
+brooded on this unlovely strife among men, he lost the equipoise of the
+scholar and student of modern history. He grew narrower and more
+intense. The burden of his responsibility as a preacher of Christ grew
+daily more insupportable.
+
+Toward the end of the week he announced preaching in the schoolhouse on
+Sunday afternoon, and at the hour set he found the room crowded with
+people of all ages and sorts.
+
+His heart grew heavy as he looked out over the room--on women nursing
+querulous children, on the grizzled faces of grim-looking men, who
+studied him with keen, unsympathetic eyes. He had hard, unfriendly
+material to work with. There were but few of the opposite camp present,
+while the Baptist leaders were all there, with more curiosity than
+sympathy in their faces.
+
+They exulted to think the next preacher to come among them as an
+evangelist should be a Baptist.
+
+After the singing, which would have dribbled away into failure but for
+Mattie, Wallace rose, looking very white and weak, and began his
+prayer. Some of the boys laughed when his voice stuck in his throat, but
+he went on to the end of an earnest supplication, feeling he had not
+touched them at all.
+
+While they sang again, he sat looking down at them with dry throat and
+staring eyes. How hard, how unchristian-like, they all were. What could
+he say to them? He saw Mattie gazing up at him, and on the front seat
+sat three beautiful little girls huddled together with hands clasped;
+inexpressibly dainty by contrast. As he looked at them the thought came
+to him, What is the goodness of a girl--of a child? It is not
+partisan--it is not of creeds, of articles--it is goodness of thought,
+of deeds. His face lighted up with the inward feeling of this idea, and
+he rose resolutely.
+
+"Friends, with the help of Christ I am come among you to do you good. I
+shall hold meetings each night here in the schoolhouse until we can
+unite and rebuild the church again. Let me say now, friends, that I was
+educated a Baptist. My father was a faithful worker in the Baptist
+Church, and so was his father before him. I was educated in a Baptist
+college, and I came here hoping to build up a Baptist Church." He
+paused.
+
+"But I see my mistake. I am here to build up a Church of Christ, of good
+deeds and charity and peace, and so I here say I am no longer a Baptist
+or Methodist. I am only a preacher, and I will not rest until I rebuild
+the church which stands rotting away there." His voice rang with
+determination as he uttered those words.
+
+The people listened. There was no movement now. Even the babies seemed
+to feel the need of being silent. When he began again it was to describe
+that hideous wreck. He delineated the falling plaster, the litter around
+the pulpit, the profanation of the walls. "It is a symbol of your sinful
+hearts!" he cried.
+
+Much more he said, carried out of himself by his passion. It was as if
+the repentant spirit of his denominational fathers were speaking through
+him; and yet he was not so impassioned that he did not see, or at least
+feel, the eyes of the strong young girl fixed upon him; his resolutions
+were spoken to her, and a swift response seemed to leap from her eyes.
+
+When it was over, some of the Methodists and one of the Baptists came up
+to shake hands with him, awkwardly wordless, and the pressure of their
+hands helped him. Many of the Baptist brethren slipped outside to
+discuss the matter. Some were indignant, others much moved.
+
+Allen went by him with an audible grunt of derision, with a dark scowl
+on his face, but Mattie smiled at him, with tears still in her eyes. She
+had been touched by his vibrant voice; she had no sins to repent of.
+
+The skeptics of the neighborhood were quite generally sympathetic.
+"You've struck the right trail now, parson," said Chapman, as they
+walked homeward together. "The days of the old-time denominationalism
+are about played out."
+
+But the young preacher was not so sure of it, now that his inspiration
+was gone. He remembered his debt to his college, to his father, to the
+denomination, and it was not easy to set aside the grip of such
+memories.
+
+He sat late revolving the whole situation in his mind. When he went to
+bed his problem was still with him, and involved itself with his dreams;
+but always the young girl smiled upon him with sympathetic eyes and told
+him to go on--or so it seemed to him.
+
+He was silent at breakfast. He went to school with a feeling that a
+return to teaching little tow-heads to count and spell was now
+impossible. He sat at his scarred and dingy desk while they took their
+places, and his eyes had a passionate intensity of prayer in them which
+awed his pupils. He had assumed new grandeur and terror in their eyes.
+When they were seated he bowed his head and uttered a short plea for
+grace, and then he looked at them again.
+
+On the low front seat, with dangling legs and red, round faces, sat the
+little ones. Some way he could not call them to his knees and teach them
+to spell; he felt as if he ought to call them to him, as Christ did, to
+teach them love and reverence. It was impossible that they should not be
+touched by this hideous neighborhood strife.
+
+Behind them sat the older children, some of them with rough, hard, sly
+faces. One or two grinned rudely and nudged each other. The older girls
+sat with bated breath; they perceived something strange in the air. Most
+of them had heard his sermon of the night before.
+
+At last he broke silence. "Children, there is something I must say to
+you this morning. I'm going to have meeting here to-night, and it may
+be I shall not be your teacher any more--I mean in school. I wish you'd
+go home to-day and tell your people to come to church here to-night. I
+wish you'd all come yourselves. I want you to be good. I want you to
+love God and be good. I want you to go home and tell your people the
+teacher can't teach children how to read till he has taught the older
+people to be kind and generous. You may put your books away, and school
+will be dismissed."
+
+The wondering children obeyed--some with glad promptness, others with
+sadness, for they had already come to like their teacher very much.
+
+As he sat by the door and watched them file out, it was as if he were a
+king abdicating a throne, and these his faithful subjects.
+
+Mrs. Allen came over with Mattie to see him that day. She was a good
+woman, gentle and prayerful, and she said, with much emotion:
+
+"Oh, Mr. Stacey, I do hope you can patch things up here. If you could
+only touch his heart! He don't mean to do wrong, but he's so set in his
+ways--if he says a thing he sticks to it."
+
+Stacey turned to Mattie for a word of encouragement, but she only looked
+away. It was impossible for her to put into words her feeling in the
+matter, which was more of admiration for his courage than for any part
+of his religious zeal. He was so different from other men.
+
+It did him good to have these women come, and he repeated his vow:
+
+"By the grace of our Lord, I am going to rebuild the Cyene Church!" and
+his face paled and his eyes grew luminous.
+
+The girl shivered with emotion. He seemed to recede from her as he
+spoke, and to grow larger, too. Such nobility of purpose was new and
+splendid to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The revival was wondrously dramatic. The little schoolhouse was crowded
+to the doors night by night. The reek of stable-stained coats and boots,
+the smell of strong tobacco, the effluvia of many breaths, the heat, the
+closeness were forgotten in the fervor of the young evangelist's
+utterances. His voice took on wild emotional cadences which sounded deep
+places in the heart. To these people, long unused to religious oratory,
+it was like the return of John and Isaiah. It was poetry and the drama,
+and processions and apocalyptic visions. This youth had the histrionic
+spell, too, and his slender body lifted and dilated, and his head took
+on majesty and power, and the fling of his white hand was a challenge
+and an appeal.
+
+A series of stirring events took place on the third night.
+
+On Wednesday Jacob Turner rose and asked the prayers of his neighbors,
+and was followed by two Baptist spearmen of the front rank. On Thursday
+the women were weeping on one another's bosoms; only one or two of the
+men held out--old Deacon Allen and his antagonist, Stewart Marsden.
+Grim-visaged old figures they were, placed among repentant men and
+weeping women. They sat like rocks in the rush of the two factions
+moving toward each other for peaceful union. Granitic, narrow, keen of
+thrust, they seemed unmoved, while all around them, one by one, skeptics
+acknowledged the pathos and dignity of the preacher's views of life and
+death.
+
+Meanwhile the young evangelist lived at high pressure. He grew thinner
+and whiter each night. He toiled in the daytime to formulate his
+thoughts for the evening. He could not sleep till far toward morning.
+The food he ate did him little good, while his heart went out constantly
+to his people in strenuous supplication. It was testimony of his human
+quality that he never for one moment lost that shining girl face out of
+his thought. He looked for it there night after night. It was his
+inspiration in speaking, as at the first.
+
+On the nights when Mattie was not there his speech was labored (as the
+elders noticed), but on the blessed nights when she came and sang, her
+voice, amid all the rest, came to him, and uttered poetry and peace like
+a rill of cool, sweet water. And afterward, when he walked home under
+the stars, his mind went with her, she was so strong and lithe and good
+to see. He did not realize the worshipping attitude the girl took before
+his divine duties.
+
+At last the great day came--the great night.
+
+In some way, perhaps by the growing mass of rushing emotion set in
+action by some deep-going phrase, or perhaps by some interior slow
+weakening of stubborn will, Deacon Allen gave way; and when the preacher
+called for penitents, the old man struggled to his feet, his seamed,
+weather-beaten face full of grotesque movement. He broke out:
+
+"Brethren, pray for me; I'm a miserable sinner. I want to confess my
+sins--here--before ye all." He broke into sobbing terrible to hear. "My
+heart is made--flesh again--by the blessed power of Christ...."
+
+He struggled to get his voice. One or two cried, "Praise God!" but most
+of them sat silent, awed into immobility.
+
+The old man walked up the aisle. "I've been rebellious--and now I want
+to shake hands with you all--and I ask your prayers." He bent down and
+thrust his hand to Marsden, his enemy, while the tears streamed down his
+face.
+
+Marsden turned white with a sort of fear, but he rose awkwardly and
+grasped the outstretched hand, and at the touch of palms every soul rose
+as if by electric shock. "Amens!" burst forth. The preacher began a
+fervent prayer, and came down toward the grizzled, weeping old men, and
+they all embraced, while some old lady with sweet, quavering voice
+raised a triumphal hymn, in which all joined, and found grateful relief
+from their emotional tension.
+
+Allen turned to Mattie and his wife. "My boy--send for him--Herman."
+
+It seemed as if the people could not go away. The dingy little
+schoolhouse was like unto the shining temple of God's grace, and the
+regenerated seemed to fear that to go home might permit a return to hate
+and strife. So they clung around the young preacher and would not let
+him go.
+
+At last he came out, with Allen holding to his arm. "You must come home
+with us to-night," he pleaded, and the young minister with glad heart
+consented, for he hoped he might walk beside Mattie; but this was not
+possible. There were several others in the group, and they moved off two
+and two up the deep hollows which formed the road in the snow.
+
+The young minister walked with head uplifted to the stars, hearing
+nothing of the low murmur of talk, conscious only of his great plans,
+his happy heart, and the strong young girl who walked before him.
+
+In the warm kitchen into which they came he lost something of his
+spiritual tension, and became more humanly aware of the significance of
+sitting again with these people. He gave the girl his coat and hat, and
+then watched her slip off her knitted hood and her cloak. Her eyes shone
+with returning laughter, and her cheeks were flushed with blood.
+
+Looking upon her, the young evangelist lost his look of exaltation, his
+eyes grew soft and his limbs relaxed. His silence was no longer rapt--it
+was the silence of delicious, drowsy reverie.
+
+
+V
+
+
+The next morning he did not rise at all. The collapse had come. The bad
+air, the nervous strain, the lack of sleep, had worn down his slender
+store of strength, and when the great victory came he fell like a tree
+whose trunk has been slowly gnawed across by teeth of silent saw. His
+drowse deepened into torpor.
+
+In the bright winter morning, seated in a gay cutter behind a bay colt
+strung with slashing bells, Mattie drove to Kesota for the doctor. She
+felt the discord between the joyous jangle of the bells, the stream of
+sunlight, and the sparkle of snow crystals, but it only added to the
+poignancy of her anxiety.
+
+She had not yet reached self-consciousness in her regard for the young
+preacher--she thought of him as a noble human being, liable to death,
+and she chirped again and again to the flying colt, whose broad hoofs
+flung the snow in stinging showers against her face.
+
+A call at the doctor's house set him jogging out along the lanes, while
+she sent a telegram to Herman. As she whirled bay Tom into the road to
+go home her heart rose in relief that was almost exaltation. She loved
+horses. She always sang under her breath, chiming to the beat of their
+bells, when alone, and now she loosened the rein and hummed an old
+love-song, while the powerful young horse squared away in a trot which
+was twelve miles an hour.
+
+In such air, in such sun, who could die? Her good animal strength rose
+dominant over fear of death.
+
+She came upon the doctor swinging along in his old blue cutter, dozing
+in country-doctor style, making up for lost sleep.
+
+"Out o' the way, doctor!" she gleefully called.
+
+The doctor roused up and looked around with a smile. He was not beyond
+admiring such a girl as that. He snapped his whip-lash lightly on old
+Sofia's back, who looked up surprised, and, seeming to comprehend
+matters, began to reach out broad, flat, thin legs in a pace which the
+proud colt respected. She came of illustrious line, did Sofia,
+scant-haired and ungracious as she now was.
+
+"Don't run over me!" called the doctor, ironically, and, with Sofia
+still leading, they swung into the yard.
+
+Mattie went in with the doctor, while Allen looked after both horses.
+They found Chapman attending Wallace, who lay in a dazed
+quiet--conscious, but not definitely aware of material things.
+
+The doctor looked his patient over carefully. Then he asked, "Who is the
+yoong mon?"
+
+"He's been teaching here, or, rather, preaching."
+
+"When did this coom on?"
+
+"Last night. Wound up a big revival last night, I believe. Kind o' caved
+in, I reckon."
+
+"That's all. Needs rest. He'll be wearin' a wood jacket if he doosna
+leave off preachin'."
+
+"Regular jamboree. I couldn't stop him. One of these periodical
+neighborhood 'awakenings,' they call it."
+
+"They have need of it here, na doot."
+
+"Well, they need something--love for God--or man."
+
+"M--well! It's lettle I can do. The wumman can do more, if the mon'll be
+eatin' what they cuke for 'im," said the candid old Scotchman. "Mak' 'im
+eat! Mak' 'im eat!"
+
+Once more Tom pounded along the shining road to Kesota to meet the
+six-o'clock train from Chicago.
+
+Herman, magnificently clothed in fur-lined ulster and cap, alighted with
+unusually grave face, and hurried toward Mattie.
+
+"Well, what is it, Sis? Mother sick?"
+
+"No; it's the teacher. He is unconscious. I've been for the doctor. Oh,
+we were scared!"
+
+He looked relieved, but a little chagrined. "Oh, well, I don't see why I
+should be yanked out of my boots by a telegram because the teacher is
+sick! He isn't kin--yet."
+
+For the first time a feeling of confusion swept over Mattie, and her
+face flushed.
+
+Herman's keen eyes half closed as he looked into her face.
+
+"Mat--what--what! Now look here--how's this? Where's Ben Holly's claim?"
+
+"He never had any." She shifted ground quickly. "Oh, Herman, we had a
+wonderful time last night! Father and Uncle Marsden shook hands--"
+
+"What!" shouted Herman, as he fell in a limp mass against the cutter.
+"Bring a physician--I'm stricken."
+
+"Don't act so! Everybody's looking."
+
+"They'd better look. I'm drowning while they wait."
+
+She untied the horse and came back.
+
+"Climb in there and stop your fooling, and I'll tell you all about it."
+
+He crawled in with tearing groans of mock agony, and then leaned his
+head against her shoulder. "Well, go on, Sis; I can bear it now."
+
+She nudged him to make him sit up.
+
+"Well, you know we've had a revival."
+
+"So you wrote. Must have been a screamer to fetch Dad and old Marsden. A
+regular Pentecost of Shinar."
+
+"It was--I mean it was beautiful. I saw father was getting stirred up.
+He prayed almost all day yesterday, and at night--Well, I can't tell
+you, but Wallace talked, oh, so beautiful and tender!"
+
+"She calls him Wallace?" mused Herman, like a comedian. "Hush! And then
+came the hand-shaking, and then the minister came home with us because
+father asked him to, and stayed because he liked the chicken."
+
+The girl was hurt, and she showed it. "If you make fun, I won't tell you
+another word," she said.
+
+"Away Chicago! enter Cyene! Well, come, I won't fool any more."
+
+"Then after Wallace--I mean--"
+
+"Let it stand. Come to the murder."
+
+"Then father came and asked me to send for you, and mother cried, and so
+did he. And, oh, Hermie, he's so sweet and kind! Don't make fun of him,
+will you? It's splendid to have him give in, and everybody feels glad
+that the district will be all friendly again."
+
+Herman did not gibe now. His voice was gentle. The pathos in the scene
+appealed to him. "So the old man sent for me himself, did he?"
+
+"Yes; he could hardly wait till morning. But this morning, when we came
+to call the teacher, he didn't answer, and father went in and found him
+unconscious. Then I went for the doctor."
+
+Bay Tom whirled along in the splendid dusk, his nostrils flaring ghostly
+banners of steam on the cold, crisp air. The stars overhead were points
+of green and blue and crimson light, low-hung, changing each moment.
+Their influence entered the soul of the mocking young fellow. He felt
+very solemn, almost melancholy, for a moment.
+
+"Well, Sis, I've got something to tell you all. I'm going to tell it to
+you by degrees. I'm going to be married."
+
+"Oh!" she gasped, with quick, indrawn breath. "Who?"
+
+"Don't be ungrammatical, whatever you do. She's a cashier in a
+restaurant, and she's a fine girl," he added, steadily, as if combating
+a prejudice. He forgot for the moment that such prejudices did not exist
+in Cyene.
+
+Sis was instantly tender, and very, very serious.
+
+"Of course she is, or you wouldn't care for her. Oh, I'd like to see
+her!"
+
+"I'll take you up some day and show her to you."
+
+"Oh, will you? Oh, when can I go?" She was smitten into gravity again.
+"Not till the teacher is well."
+
+Herman pretended to be angry. "Dog take the teacher, the old
+spindle-legs! If I'd known he was going to raise such a ruction in our
+quiet and peaceful neighborhood, I never would have brought him here."
+
+Mattie did not laugh; she pondered. She never quite understood her
+brother when he went off on those queer tirades, which might be a joke
+or an insult. He had grown away from her in his city life.
+
+They rode on in silence the rest of the way, except now and then an
+additional question from Mattie concerning his sweetheart.
+
+As they neared the farm-house she lost interest in all else but the
+condition of the young minister. They could see the light burning dimly
+in his room, and in the parlor and kitchen as well, and this unusual
+lighting stirred the careless young man deeply. It was associated in his
+mind with death and birth, and also with great joy. The house was
+lighted so the night his elder brother died, and it looked so to him
+when he whirled into the yard with the doctor when Mattie was born.
+
+"Oh, I hope he isn't worse!" said the girl, with deep feeling.
+
+Herman put his arm about her, and she knew he knew.
+
+"So do I, Sis."
+
+Allen came to the door as they drove in, and the careless boy realized
+suddenly the emotional tension his father was in. As the old man came to
+the sleigh-side he could not speak. His fingers trembled as he took the
+outstretched hand of his boy.
+
+Herman's voice shook a little:
+
+"Well, Dad, Mattie says the war is over."
+
+The old man tried to speak, but only coughed and then he blew his nose.
+At last he said, brokenly:
+
+"Go right in; your mother's waitin'."
+
+It was singularly dramatic to the youth. To come from the careless,
+superficial life of his city companions into contact with such primeval
+passions as these made him feel like a spectator at some new and
+powerful and tragic play.
+
+His mother fell upon his neck and cried, while Mattie stood by pale and
+anxious. Inside the parlor could be heard the mumble of men's voices.
+
+In such wise do death and the fear of death fall upon country homes. All
+day the house had swarmed with people. All day this mother had looked
+forward to the reconciliation of her husband with her son. All day had
+the pale and silent minister of God kept his corpse-like calm, while all
+about the white snow gleamed, and radiant shadows filled every hollow,
+and the cattle bawled and frisked in the barn-yard, and the fowls
+cackled joyously, what time the mild, soft wind breathed warmly over the
+land.
+
+Mattie cried out to her mother, in quick, low voice, "Oh mother, how is
+he?"
+
+"He ain't no worse. The doctor says there's no immediate danger."
+
+The girl brought her hands together girlishly, and said: "Oh, I'm so
+glad. Is he awake?"
+
+"No; he's asleep."
+
+"Is the doctor still here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I guess I'll step in," said Herman.
+
+The doctor and George Chapman sat beside the hard-coal heater, talking
+in low voices. The old doctor was permitting himself the luxury of a
+story of pioneer life. He arose with automatic courtesy, and shook hands
+with Herman.
+
+"How's the sick man getting on?"
+
+"Vera well--vera well--consederin' the mon is a complete
+worn-out--that's all--naethin' more. Thes floom-a-didale bezniss of
+rantin' away on the fear o' the Laird for sax weeks wull have worn out
+the frame of a bool-dawg."
+
+Herman and Chapman smiled. "I hope you'll tell him that."
+
+"Na fear, yoong mon," said the grim old warrior. "Weel, now, ai'll juist
+be takin' anither look at him."
+
+Herman went in with the doctor, and stood looking on while the old man
+peered and felt about. He came out soon, and, leaving a few directions
+with Herman and Chapman, took his departure. Everything seemed
+favorable, he said.
+
+There was no longer poignancy of anxiety in Mattie's mind, she was too
+much of a child to imagine the horror of loss, but she was grave and gay
+by turns. Her healthy and wholesome nature continually reasserted itself
+over the power of her newly attained woman's interest in the young
+preacher. She went to bed and slept dreamlessly, while Herman yawned and
+inwardly raged at the fix in which circumstances had placed him.
+
+Like many another lover, days away from his sweetheart were lost days.
+He wondered how she would take all this life in Cyene. It would be good
+fun to bring her down, anyway, and hear her talk. He planned such a
+trip, and grew so interested in the thought he forgot his patient.
+
+In the early dawn Wallace rallied and woke. Herman heard the rustle of
+the pillow, and turned to find the sick man's eyes looking at him
+fixedly, calm but puzzled. Herman's lips slowly changed into a beautiful
+boyish smile. "Hello, old man! How do you find yourself?" His hearty,
+humorous greeting seemed to do the sick man good. Herman approached the
+bed. "Know where you are?" Wallace slowly put out a hand, and Herman
+took it. "You're coming on all right. Want some breakfast? Make it
+bucks?" he said, in Chicago restaurant slang. "White wings--sunny--one
+up coff."
+
+All this was good tonic for Wallace, and an hour later he sipped broth,
+while Mrs. Allen and the Deacon and Herman stood watching the process
+with apparently consuming interest. Mattie was still soundly sleeping.
+
+Now began delicious days of convalescence, during which Wallace looked
+peacefully out at the coming and going of the two women, each possessing
+powerful appeal to him: one the motherly presence which had been denied
+him for many years, the other something he had never permitted himself
+to hope for--a sweetheart's daily companionship.
+
+He lay there planning his church, and also his home. Into the thought of
+a new church came shyly but persistently the thought of a fireside of
+his own, with this young girl sitting in the glow of it waiting for him.
+His life possessed little romance. He had earned his own way through
+school and to college. His slender physical energies had been taxed to
+their utmost at every stage of his climb, but now it seemed as though
+some blessed rest and peace were at hand.
+
+Meanwhile, the bitter partisans met each other coming and going out of
+the gate of the Allen estate, and the goodness of God shone in their
+softened faces. Herman was skeptical of its lasting quality, but was
+forced to acknowledge that it was a lovely light. He it was who made the
+electrical suggestion to rebuild the church as an evidence of good
+faith. "You say you're regenerated. Well, prove it--go ahead and
+regenerate the church," he said.
+
+The enthusiasm of the neighborhood took flame. It should be done. A
+meeting was called. Everybody subscribed money or work. It was a
+generous outpouring of love and faith.
+
+It was Herman also who counselled secrecy. "It would be a nice thing to
+surprise him," he said. "We'll agree to keep the scheme from him at
+home, if you don't give it away."
+
+They set to work like bees. The women came down one day and took
+possession with brooms and mops and soap, and while the carpenters
+repaired the windows they fell savagely upon the grime of the seats and
+floors. The walls of the church echoed with woman's gossip and girlish
+laughter. Everything was scoured, from the door-hinges to the altar
+rails. New doors were hung and a new stove secured, and then came the
+painters to put a new coat of paint on the inside. The cold weather
+forbade repainting the outside.
+
+The sheds were rebuilt by men whose hearts glowed with old-time fire. It
+was like pioneer days, when "barn-raisings" and "bees" made life worth
+while in a wild, stern land. The old men were moved to tears, and the
+younger rough men shouted cheery, boisterous cries to hide their own
+deep emotion. Hand met hand in heartiness never shown before. Neighbors
+frequented one another's homes, and the old times of visiting and
+brotherly love came back upon them. Nothing marred the perfect beauty of
+their revival--save the fear of its evanescence. It seemed too good to
+last.
+
+Meanwhile love of another and merrier sort went on. The young men and
+maidens turned prayer-meeting into trysts and scrubbing-bees into
+festivals. They rode from house to house under glittering stars, over
+sparkling snows, singing:
+
+  "Hallelujah! 'tis done:
+  I believe on the Son;
+  I am saved by the blood
+  Of the Crucified One."
+
+And their rejoicing chorus was timed to the clash of bells on swift
+young horses. Who shall say they did not right? Did the Galilean forbid
+love and joy?
+
+No matter. God's stars, the mysterious night, the bells, the watchful
+bay of dogs, the sting of snow, the croon of loving voices, the clasp of
+tender arms, the touch of parting lips--these things, these joys
+outweigh death and hell, and all that makes the criminal tremble. Being
+saved, they must of surety rejoice.
+
+And through it all Wallace crawled slowly back to life and strength. He
+ate of Mother Allen's chicken-broth and of toast from Mattie's
+care-taking hand, and gradually reassumed color and heart. His solemn
+eyes watched the young girl with an intensity which seemed to take her
+strength from her. She would gladly have given her blood for him, if it
+had occurred to her, or if it had been suggested as a good thing;
+instead, she gave him potatoes baked to a nicety, and buttered toast
+that would melt on the tongue, and, on the whole, they served the
+purpose.
+
+One day a smartly dressed man called to see Wallace. Mattie recognized
+him as the Baptist clergyman from Kesota. He came in, and, introducing
+himself said he had heard of the excellent work of Mr. Stacey, and that
+he would like to speak with him.
+
+Wallace was sitting in a rocking-chair in the parlor. Herman was in
+Chicago, and there was no one but Mrs. Allen and Mattie in the house.
+
+The Kesota minister introduced himself to Wallace, and then entered upon
+a long eulogium upon his work in Cyene. He asked after his credentials,
+his plans, his connections, and then he said:
+
+"You've done a _fine_ work in softening the hearts of these people. We
+had almost _despaired_ of doing anything with them. Yes, you have done a
+_won-der-ful work_, and now we must reorganize a regular society here. I
+will be out again when you get stronger, and we'll see about it."
+
+Wallace was too weak to take any stand in the talk, and so allowed him
+to get up and go away without protest or explanation of his own plans.
+
+When Herman came down on Saturday, he told him of the Baptist minister's
+visit and the proposition. Herman stretched his legs out toward the fire
+and put his hands in his pockets. Then he rose and took a strange
+attitude, such as Wallace had seen in comic pictures--it was, in fact,
+the attitude of a Bowery tough.
+
+"Say, look here! If you want 'o set dis community by de ears agin, you
+do dat ting--see? You play dat confidence game and dey'll rat ye--sure!
+You invite us to come into a non-partisan deal--see?--and den you
+springs your own platform on us in de joint corkus--and we won't stand
+it! Dis goes troo de way it began, or we don't play--see?"
+
+Out of all this Wallace deduced his own feeling--that continued peace
+and good-will lay in keeping clear of all doctrinal debates and
+disputes--the love of Christ, the desire to do good and to be clean.
+These emotions had been roused far more deeply than he realized, and he
+lifted his face to God in the hope that no lesser thing should come in
+to mar the beauty of His Church.
+
+There came a day when he walked out in the sunshine, and heard the hens
+caw-cawing about the yard, and saw the young colts playing about the
+barn. And the splendor of the winter day dazzled him as if he were
+looking upon the broad-flung robe of the Lord Most High. Everywhere the
+snow lay ridged with purple and brown hedges. Smoke rose peacefully from
+chimneys, and the sound of boys skating on a near-by pond added the
+human element.
+
+The trouble of concealing the work of the community upon the church
+increased daily, and Mattie feared that some hint of it had come to him.
+She had her plan. She wanted to drive him down herself, and let him see
+the reburnished temple alone. But this was impossible. On the day when
+he seemed able to go, her father drove them all down. Marsden was there
+also, and several of his women-folks, putting down a new carpet on the
+platform. As they drew near the church, Wallace said:
+
+"Why, they've fixed up the sheds!"
+
+Mattie nodded. She was trembling with the delicious excitement of
+it--she wanted him hurried into the church at once. He had hardly time
+to think before he was whirled up to the new porch, and Marsden came
+out, followed by several women. He was bewildered by it all. Marsden
+helped him out with hearty voice, sounding:
+
+"Careful now! Don't hurry!"
+
+Mattie took one arm, and so he entered the church. Everything repainted!
+Everything warm and bright and cozy!
+
+The significance of it came to him like a wave of light, and he took his
+seat in the pulpit chair and stared at them all with a look on his pale
+face which moved them more than words. He was like a man transfigured by
+an inward glow. His eyes for an instant flamed with this marvellous
+fire, then darkened, softened with tears, and his voice came back in a
+sob of joy, and he could only say:
+
+"Friends--brethren!"
+
+Marsden, after much coughing, said:
+
+"We all united on this. We wanted to have you come to the church
+and--Well, we couldn't bear to have you see it again the way it was."
+
+He understood it now. It was the sign of a united community. It set the
+seal of Christ's victory over evil passions, and the young preacher's
+head bowed in prayer, and they all knelt, while his weak voice returned
+thanks to the Lord for his gifts.
+
+Then they all rose and shook off the oppressive solemnity, and he had
+time to look around at all the changes. At last he turned to Mattie and
+reached out his hand--he had the boldness of a man in the shadow of some
+mighty event which makes false modesty and conventions shadowy things of
+little importance. His sharpened interior sense read her clear soul, and
+he knew she was his, therefore he reached her his hand, and she came to
+him with a flush on her face, which died out as she stood proudly by his
+side, while he said:
+
+"And Martha shall help me."
+
+Therefore, this good thing happened--that in the midst of his fervor and
+his consecration to God's work, the love of woman found a place.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+AN AFTERWORD: OF WINDS, SNOWS, AND THE STARS
+
+  O witchery of the winter night
+    (With broad moon shouldering to the west)
+
+  In the city streets the west wind sweeps
+  Before my feet in rustling flight;
+  The midnight snows in untracked heaps
+  Lie cold and desolate and white.
+  I stand and wait with upturned eyes,
+  Awed with the splendor of the skies
+  And star-trained progress of the moon.
+
+  The city walls dissolve like smoke
+  Beneath the magic of the moon,
+  And age falls from me like a cloak;
+  I hear sweet girlish voices ring
+  Clear as some softly stricken string--
+  (The moon is sailing to the west.)
+  The sleigh-bells clash in homeward flight;
+  With frost each horse's breast is white--
+  (The big moon sinking to the west.)
+
+       "Good night, Lettie!"
+       "Good night, Ben!"
+  (The moon is sinking at the west.)
+  "Good night, my sweetheart."  Once again
+  The parting kiss while comrades wait
+  Impatient at the roadside gate,
+  And the red moon sinks beyond the west.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Other Main-Travelled Roads, by Hamlin Garland
+
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Other Main Travelled Roads, by Hamlin Garland.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Other Main-Travelled Roads, by Hamlin Garland
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Other Main-Travelled Roads
+
+Author: Hamlin Garland
+
+Release Date: March 1, 2007 [EBook #20714]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OTHER MAIN-TRAVELLED ROADS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="illus-001" id="illus-001"></a>
+<img src="images/illus-fpc.jpg" alt="DADDY DEERING" title="" width="400" height="610" /><br />
+<span class="caption">DADDY DEERING</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<table width="400" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="" border="1"><tr><td>
+<p class="titleblock" style="margin-top: 40px; font-size: 200%; margin-bottom: 0px; ">OTHER</p>
+<p class="titleblock" style="margin-top: 0px; font-size: 200%; margin-bottom: 0px; ">MAIN-TRAVELLED</p>
+<p class="titleblock" style="margin-top: 0px; font-size: 200%; margin-bottom: 60px; ">ROADS</p>
+<p class="titleblock" style="margin-top: 0px; font-size: 160%; margin-bottom: 0px; ">HAMLIN GARLAND</p>
+<p class="titleblock" style="margin-top: 0px; font-size: 140%; margin-bottom: 80px; ">SUNSET EDITION</p>
+<p class="titleblock"><img src="images/illus-emb.png" width="95" height="114" alt="emblem" /></p>
+<p class="titleblock" style="margin-top: 80px; font-size: 140%; margin-bottom: 0px; letter-spacing: .2em;">HARPER &amp; BROTHERS</p>
+<p class="titleblock" style="margin-top: 0px; font-size: 120%; margin-bottom: 40px; letter-spacing: .2em;">NEW YORK AND LONDON</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<p style="margin-top:20px; margin-bottom: 20px; font-size: 75%; text-align: center">COPYRIGHT, 1892, 1899, 1910, BY HAMLIN GARLAND</p>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<div>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="INTRO" id="INTRO">v</a></span>
+<h3>PRAIRIE FOLKS</h3>
+</div>
+
+<div style="margin:auto; width:20em;">
+<p class="center" style="font-size: smaller">PIONEERS.</p>
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+They rise to mastery of wind and snow;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They go like soldiers grimly into strife,</span><br />
+To colonize the plain; they plow and sow,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And fertilize the sod with their own life</span><br />
+As did the Indian and the buffalo.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-size: smaller">SETTLERS.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left:2em">
+Above them soars a dazzling sky,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In winter blue and clear as steel,</span><br />
+In summer like an Arctic sea<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wherein vast icebergs drift and reel</span><br />
+And melt like sudden sorcery.<br />
+<br />
+Beneath them plains stretch far and fair,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rich with sunlight and with rain;</span><br />
+Vast harvests ripen with their care<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And fill with overplus of grain</span><br />
+Their square, great bins.<br />
+<br />
+Yet still they strive! I see them rise<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At dawn-light, going forth to toil:</span><br />
+The same salt sweat has filled my eyes,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My feet have trod the self-same soil</span><br />
+Behind the snarling plough.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">vii</a></span>
+<h3>PREFACE</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Nearly all the stories in this volume were written at the same time and
+under the same impulse as those which compose its companion volume,
+<i>Main-Travelled Roads</i>&mdash;and the entire series was the result of a
+summer-vacation visit to my old home in Iowa, to my father's farm in
+Dakota, and, last of all, to my birthplace in Wisconsin. This happened
+in 1887. I was living at the time in Boston, and had not seen the West
+for several years, and my return to the scenes of my boyhood started me
+upon a series of stories delineative of farm and village life as I knew
+it and had lived it. I wrote busily during the two years that followed,
+and in this revised definitive edition of <i>Main-Travelled Roads</i> and its
+companion volume, <i>Other Main-Travelled Roads</i> (compiled from other
+volumes which now go out of print), the reader will find all of the
+short stories which came from my pen between 1887 and 1889.</p>
+
+<p>It remains to say that, though conditions have changed somewhat since
+that time, yet for the hired man and the renter farm life in the West is
+still a stern round of drudgery. My pages present it&mdash;not as the summer
+boarder or the young lady novelist sees it&mdash;but as the working farmer
+endures it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">viii</a></span>
+Not all the scenes of <i>Other Main-Travelled Roads</i> are of farm life,
+though rural subjects predominate; and the village life touched upon
+will be found less forbidding in color. In this I am persuaded my view
+is sound; for, no matter how hard the villager works, he is not lonely.
+He suffers in company with his fellows. So much may be called a gain.
+Then, too, I admit youth and love are able to transform a bleak prairie
+town into a poem, and to make of a barbed-wire lane a highway of
+romance.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hamlin Garland.</span>
+</p>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>Contents</h2>
+<div class="smcap">
+<table border="0" width="500" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<col style="width:85%;" />
+<col style="width:15%;" />
+<tr>
+  <td class="pr" align="right">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td align="right"><span style="font-size: 80%">PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Introductory Verse</td><td align="right"><a href="#INTRO">v</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">William Bacon's Man</td><td align="right"><a href="#WILLIAM_BACONS_MAN">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Elder Pill, Preacher</td><td align="right"><a href="#ELDER_PILL_PREACHER">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A Day of Grace</td><td align="right"><a href="#A_DAY_OF_GRACE">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Lucretia Burns</td><td align="right"><a href="#LUCRETIA_BURNS">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Daddy Deering</td><td align="right"><a href="#DADDY_DEERING">119</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A Stop-Over at Tyre</td><td align="right"><a href="#A_STOP-OVER_AT_TYRE">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A Division in the Coolly</td><td align="right"><a href="#A_DIVISION_IN_THE_COOLLY">203</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A Fair Exile</td><td align="right"><a href="#A_FAIR_EXILE">245</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">An Alien in the Pines</td><td align="right"><a href="#AN_ALIEN_IN_THE_PINES">263</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Before the Low Green Door</td><td align="right"><a href="#BEFORE_THE_LOW_GREEN_DOOR">293</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">A Preacher's Love Story</td><td align="right"><a href="#A_PREACHERS_LOVE_STORY">305</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">An Afterword: of Winds, Snows, and the Stars</td><td align="right"><a href="#AFTERWORD">350</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="WILLIAM_BACONS_MAN" id="WILLIAM_BACONS_MAN"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span>
+<h2>WILLIAM BACON'S MAN</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>The yellow March sun lay powerfully on the bare Iowa prairie, where the
+ploughed fields were already turning warm and brown, and only here and
+there in a corner or on the north side of the fence did the sullen
+drifts remain, and they were so dark and low that they hardly appeared
+to break the mellow brown of the fields.</p>
+
+<p>There passed also an occasional flock of geese, cheerful harbingers of
+spring, and the prairie-chickens had set up their morning symphony,
+wide-swelling, wonderful with its prophecy of the new birth of grass and
+grain and the springing life of all breathing things. The crow passed
+now and then, uttering his resonant croak, but the crane had not yet
+sent forth his bugle note.</p>
+
+<p>Lyman Gilman rested on his axe-helve at the woodpile of Farmer Bacon to
+listen to the music around him. In a vague way he was powerfully moved
+by it. He heard the hens singing their weird, raucous, monotonous song,
+and saw them burrowing in the dry chip-dust near him. He saw the young
+colts and cattle frisking in the sunny space around the straw-stacks,
+absorbed through his bare arms and uncovered head the heat of the sun,
+and felt the soft wooing of the air so deeply that he broke into an
+unwonted exclamation:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Glory! we'll be seeding by Friday, sure."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This short and disappointing soliloquy was, after all, an expression of
+deep emotion. To the Western farmer the very word "seeding" is a poem.
+And these few words, coming from Lyman Gilman, meant more and expressed
+more than many a large and ambitious springtime song.</p>
+
+<p>But the glory of all the slumbrous landscape, the stately beauty of the
+sky with its masses of fleecy vapor, were swept away by the sound of a
+girl's voice humming, "Come to the Saviour," while she bustled about the
+kitchen near by. The windows were open. Ah! what suggestion to these
+dwellers in a rigorous climate was in the first unsealing of the
+windows! How sweet it was to the pale and weary women after their long
+imprisonment!</p>
+
+<p>As Lyman sat down on his maple log to hear better, a plump face appeared
+at the window, and a clear, girl-voice said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Smell anything, Lime?"</p>
+
+<p>He snuffed the air. "Cookies, by the great horn spoons!" he yelled,
+leaping up. "Bring me some, an' see me eat; it'll do ye good."</p>
+
+<p>"Come an' get 'm," laughed the face at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's nicer out here, Merry Etty. What's the rush? Bring me out
+some, an' set down on this log."</p>
+
+<p>With a nod Marietta disappeared, and soon came out with a plate of
+cookies in one hand and a cup of milk in the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little man, he's all tired out, ain't he?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lime, taking the cue, collapsed in a heap, and said feebly, "Bread,
+bread!"</p>
+
+<p>"Won't milk an' cookies do as well?"</p>
+
+<p>He brushed off the log and motioned her to sit down beside him, but she
+hesitated a little and colored a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Lime, s'pose somebody should see us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let 'em. What in thunder do we care? Sit down an' gimme a holt o' them
+cakes. I'm just about done up. I couldn't 'a' stood it another minute."</p>
+
+<p>She sat down beside him with a laugh and a pretty blush. She was in her
+apron, and the sleeves of her dress were rolled to her elbows,
+displaying the strong, round arms. Wholesome and sweet she looked and
+smelled, the scent of the cooking round her. Lyman munched a couple of
+the cookies and gulped a pint of milk before he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Whadda we care who sees us sittin' side b' side? Ain't we goin' t' be
+married soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, them cookies in the oven!" she shrieked, leaping up and running to
+the house. She looked back as she reached the kitchen door, however, and
+smiled with a flushed face. Lime slapped his knee and roared with
+laughter at his bold stroke.</p>
+
+<p>"Ho! ho!" he laughed. "Didn't I do it slick? Ain't nothin' green in <i>my</i>
+eye, I guess." In an intense and pleasurable abstraction he finished the
+cookies and the milk. Then he yelled:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Hey! Merry&mdash;Merry Etty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Whadda ye want?" sang the girl from the window, her face still rosy
+with confusion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come out here and git these things."</p>
+
+<p>The girl shook her head, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Come out an' git 'm, 'r, by jingo, I'll throw 'em at ye! Come on, now!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked at the huge, handsome fellow, the sun falling on his
+golden hair and beard, and came slowly out to him&mdash;came creeping along
+with her hand outstretched for the plate which Lime, with a laugh in his
+sunny blue eyes, extended at the full length of his bare arm. The girl
+made a snatch at it, but his left hand caught her by the wrist, and away
+went cup and plate as he drew her to him and kissed her in spite of her
+struggles.</p>
+
+<p>"My! ain't you strong!" she said, half ruefully and half admiringly, as
+she shrugged her shoulders. "If you'd use a little more o' <i>that</i>
+choppin' wood, Dad wouldn't 'a' lost s' much money by yeh."</p>
+
+<p>Lime grew grave.</p>
+
+<p>"There's the hog in the fence, Merry; what's yer dad goin' t' say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"About what?"</p>
+
+<p>"About our gitt'n married this spring."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you'd better find out what <i>I'm</i> a-goin' t' say, Lime Gilman,
+'fore you pitch into Dad."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>know</i> what you're a-goin' t' say."</p>
+
+<p>"No, y' don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I <i>do</i>, though."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ask me, and see, if you think you're so smart. Jest as like 's
+not, you'll slip up."</p>
+
+<p>"All right; here goes. Marietty Bacon, ain't you an' Lime Gilman goin'
+t' be married?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, we ain't," laughed the girl, snatching up the plate and
+darting away to the house, where she struck up "Weevily Wheat," and went
+busily on about her cooking. Lime threw a kiss at her, and fell to work
+on his log with startling energy.</p>
+
+<p>Lyman looked forward to his interview with the old man with as much
+trepidation as he had ever known, though commonly he had little fear of
+anything&mdash;but a girl.</p>
+
+<p>Marietta was not only the old man's only child, but his housekeeper, his
+wife having at last succumbed to the ferocious toil of the farm. It was
+reasonable to suppose, therefore, that he would surrender his claim on
+the girl reluctantly. Rough as he was, he loved Marietta strongly, and
+would find it exceedingly hard to get along without her.</p>
+
+<p>Lyman mused on these things as he drove the gleaming axe into the huge
+maple logs. He was something more than the usual hired man, being a
+lumberman from the Wisconsin pineries, where he had sold out his
+interest in a camp not three weeks before the day he began work for
+Bacon. He had a nice "little wad o' money" when he left the camp and
+started for La Crosse, but he had been robbed in his hotel the first
+night in the city, and was left nearly penniless. It was a great blow to
+him, for, as he said, every cent of that money "stood fer hard knocks
+an' poor feed. When I smelt of it I could jest see the cold, frosty
+mornin's and the late nights. I could feel the hot sun on my back like
+it was when I worked in the harvest-field. By jingo! It kind o' made my
+toes curl up."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But he went resolutely out to work again, and here he was chopping wood
+in old man Bacon's yard, thinking busily on the talk which had just
+passed between Marietta and himself.</p>
+
+<p>"By jingo!" he said all at once, stopping short, with the axe on his
+shoulder. "If I hadn't 'a' been robbed I wouldn't 'a' come here&mdash;I
+never'd met Merry. Thunder and jimson root! Wasn't that a narrow
+escape?"</p>
+
+<p>And then he laughed so heartily that the girl looked out of the window
+again to see what in the world he was doing. He had his hat in his hand
+and was whacking his thigh with it.</p>
+
+<p>"Lyman Gilman, what in the world ails you to-day? It's perfectly
+ridiculous the way you yell and talk t' y'rself out there on the chips.
+You beat the hens, I declare if you don't."</p>
+
+<p>Lime put on his hat and walked up to the window, and, resting his great
+bare arms on the sill, and his chin on his arms, said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Merry, I'm goin' to tackle 'Dad' this afternoon. He'll be sittin' up
+the new seeder, and I'm goin' t' climb right on the back of his neck.
+He's jest <i>got</i> t' give me a chance."</p>
+
+<p>Marietta looked sober in sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"Well! P'raps it's best to have it over with, Lime, but someway I feel
+kind o' scary about it."</p>
+
+<p>Lime stood for a long time looking in at the window, watching the
+light-footed girl as she set the table in the middle of the sun-lighted
+kitchen floor. The kettle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span> hissed, the meat sizzled, sending up a
+delicious odor; a hen stood in the open door and sang a sort of cheery
+half-human song, while to and fro moved the sweet-faced, lithe, and
+powerful girl, followed by the smiling eyes at the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Merry, you look purty as a picture. You look just like the wife I be'n
+a-huntin' for all these years, sure's shootin'."</p>
+
+<p>Marietta colored with pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"Does Dad pay you to stand an' look at me an' say pretty things t' the
+cook?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, he don't. But I'm willin' t' do it without pay. I could just stand
+here till kingdom come an' look at you. Hello! I hear a wagon. I guess I
+better hump into that woodpile."</p>
+
+<p>"I think so too. Dinner's most ready, and Dad 'll be here soon."</p>
+
+<p>Lime was driving away furiously at a tough elm log when Farmer Bacon
+drove into the yard with a new seeder in his wagon. Lime whacked away
+busily while Bacon stabled the team, and in a short time Marietta
+called, in a long-drawn, musical fashion:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Dinner-r-r!"</p>
+
+<p>After sozzling their faces at the well the two men went in and sat down
+at the table. Bacon was not much of a talker at any time, and at
+meal-time, in seeding, eating was the main business in hand; therefore
+the meal was a silent one, Marietta and Lime not caring to talk on
+general topics. The hour was an anxious one for her, and an important
+one for him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wal, now, Lime, seedun' 's the nex' thing," said Bacon, as he shoved
+back his chair and glared around from under his bushy eyebrows. "We
+can't do too much this afternoon. That seeder's got t' be set up an' a
+lot o' seed-wheat cleaned up. You unload the machine while I feed the
+pigs."</p>
+
+<p>Lime sat still till the old man was heard outside calling "Oo-ee,
+poo-ee" to the pigs in the yard; then he smiled at Marietta, but she
+said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He's got on one of his fits, Lime; I don't b'lieve you'd better tackle
+him t'-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry; I'll fix him. Come, now, give me a kiss."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you great thing! You&mdash;took&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know, but I want you to <i>give</i> 'em to me. Just walk right up to me
+an' give me a smack t' bind the bargain."</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't made any bargain," laughed the girl. Then, feeling the force of
+his tender tone, she added: "Will you behave, and go right off to your
+work?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jest like a little man&mdash;hope t' die!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Lime!</i>" roared the old man from the barn.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" replied Lime, grinning joyously and winking at the girl, as
+much as to say, "This would paralyze the old man if he saw it."</p>
+
+<p>He went out to the shed where Bacon was at work, as serene as if he had
+not a fearful task on hand. He was apprehensive that the father might
+"gig back" unless rightly approached, and so he awaited a good
+opportunity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The right moment seemed to present itself along about the middle of the
+afternoon. Bacon was down on the ground under the machine, tightening
+some burrs. This was a good chance for two reasons. In the first place,
+the keen, almost savage eyes were no longer where they could glare on
+him, and in spite of his cool exterior Lime had just as soon not have
+the old man looking at him.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, the old farmer had been telling about his "river eighty," which
+was without a tenant; the man who had taken it, having lost his wife,
+had grown disheartened and had given it up.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an almighty good chance for a man with a small family. Good house
+an' barn, good land. A likely young feller with a team an' a woman could
+do tiptop on that eighty. If he wanted more, I'd let him have an eighty
+j'inun'&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like t' try that m'self," said Lime, as a feeler. The old fellow
+said nothing in reply for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ef you had a team an' tools an' a woman, I'd jest as lief you'd have it
+as anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"Sell me your blacks, and I'll pay half down&mdash;the balance in the fall. I
+can pick up some tools, and as for a woman, Merry Etty an' me have
+talked that over to-day. She's ready to&mdash;ready to marry me whenever you
+say go."</p>
+
+<p>There was an ominous silence under the seeder, as if the father could
+not believe his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"What's&mdash;what's that!" he stuttered. "Who'd you say? What about Merry
+Etty?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She's agreed to marry me."</p>
+
+<p>"The hell you say!" roared Bacon, as the truth burst upon him. "So
+that's what you do when I go off to town and leave you to chop wood. So
+you're goun' to git married, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>He was now where Lime could see him, glaring up into his smiling blue
+eyes. Lime stood his ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. That's the calculation."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess I'll have somethin' t' say about that," said Bacon,
+nodding his head violently.</p>
+
+<p>"I rather expected y' would. Blaze away. Your privilege&mdash;my bad luck.
+Sail in ol' man. What's y'r objection to me fer a son-in-law?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry, young feller. I'll come at it soon enough," went on
+Bacon, as he turned up another burr in a very awkward corner. In his
+nervous excitement the wrench slipped, banging his knuckle.</p>
+
+<p>"Ouch! Thunder&mdash;m-m-m!" howled and snarled the wounded man.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? Bark y'r knuckle?" queried Lime, feeling a mighty
+impulse to laugh. But when he saw the old savage straighten up and glare
+at him he sobered. Bacon was now in a frightful temper. The veins in his
+great, bare, weather-beaten neck swelled dangerously.</p>
+
+<p>"Jest let me say right here that I've had enough o' you. You can't live
+on the same acre with my girl another day."</p>
+
+<p>"What makes ye think I can't?" It was now the young man's turn to draw
+himself up, and as he faced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span> the old man, his arms folded and each vast
+hand grasping an elbow, he looked like a statue of red granite, and the
+hands resembled the paws of a crouching lion; but his eyes smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't <i>think</i>, I know ye won't."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the objection to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Objection? Hell! What's the inducement? My hired man, an' not three
+shirts to yer back!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's another; I've got four. Say, old man, did you ever work out for
+a living?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's none o' your business," growled Bacon a little taken down. "I've
+worked an' scraped, an' got t'gether a little prop'ty here, an' they
+ain't no sucker like you goun' to come 'long here, an' live off me, an'
+spend my prop'ty after I'm dead. You can jest bet high on that."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's goin' t' live on ye?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're aimun' to."</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't, neither."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, y'are. You've loafed on me ever since I hired ye."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a&mdash;" Lime checked himself for Marietta's sake, and the enraged
+father went on:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I hired ye t' cut wood, an' you've gone an' fooled my daughter away
+from me. Now you just figger up what I owe ye, and git out o' here. Ye
+can't go too soon t' suit <i>me</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Bacon was renowned as the hardest man to handle in Cedar County, and
+though he was getting old, he was still a terror to his neighbors when
+roused. He was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span> honest, temperate, and a good neighbor until something
+carried him off his balance; then he became as cruel as a panther and as
+savage as a grisly. All this Lime knew, but it did not keep his anger
+down so much as did the thought of Marietta. His silence infuriated
+Bacon, who yelled hoarsely:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Git out o' this!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be in a rush, ol' man&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Bacon hurled himself upon Lime, who threw out one hand and stopped him,
+while he said in a low voice:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Stay right where you are, ol' man. I'm dangerous. It's for Merry's
+sake&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The infuriated old man struck at him. Lime warded off the blow, and with
+a sudden wrench and twist threw him to the ground with frightful force.
+Before Bacon could rise, Marietta, who had witnessed the scene, came
+flying from the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Lime! Father! What are you doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;couldn't help it, Merry. It was him 'r me," said Lime, almost sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"Dad, ain't you got no sense? What 're you thinking of? You jest stop
+right now. I won't have it."</p>
+
+<p>He rose while she clung to him; he seemed a little dazed. It was the
+first time he had ever been thrown, and he could not but feel a certain
+respect for his opponent, but he could not give way.</p>
+
+<p>"Pack up yer duds," he snarled, "an' git off'n my land. I'll have the
+money fer ye when ye come back. I'll give ye jest five minutes to git
+clear o' here. Merry, you stay here."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The young man saw it was useless to remain, as it would only excite the
+old man; and so, with a look of apology, not without humor, at Marietta,
+he went to the house to get his valise. The girl wept silently while the
+father raged up and down. His mood frightened her.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought ye had more sense than t' take up with such a dirty houn'."</p>
+
+<p>"He ain't a houn'," she blazed forth, "and he's just as good and clean
+as you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up! Don't let me hear another word out o' your head. I'm boss here
+yet, I reckon."</p>
+
+<p>Lime came out with his valise in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, Merry," he said cheerily. She started to go to him, but her
+father's rough grasp held her.</p>
+
+<p>"Set <i>down</i>, an' stay there."</p>
+
+<p>Lime was going out of the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"Here! Come and get y'r money," yelled the old man, extending some
+bills. "Here's twenty&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Go to thunder with your money," retorted Lime. "I've had my pay for my
+month's work." As he said that, he thought of the sunny kitchen and the
+merry girl, and his throat choked. Good-by to the sweet girl whose smile
+was so much to him, and to the happy noons and nights her eyes had made
+for him. He waved his hat at her as he stood in the open gate, and the
+sun lighted his handsome head into a sort of glory in her eyes. Then he
+turned and walked rapidly off down the road, not looking back.</p>
+
+<p>The girl, when she could no longer see him, dashed away, and, sobbing
+violently, entered the house.</p>
+
+<div>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>
+<h4>II</h4>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was just a suspicion of light in the east, a mere hint of a glow,
+when Lyman walked cautiously around the corner of the house and tapped
+at Marietta's window. She was sleeping soundly and did not hear, for she
+had been restless during the first part of the night. He tapped again,
+and the girl woke without knowing what woke her.</p>
+
+<p>Lyman put the blade of his pocket-knife under the window and raised it a
+little, and then placed his lips to the crack, and spoke in a sepulchral
+tone, half groan, half whisper:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Merry! Merry Etty!"</p>
+
+<p>The dazed girl sat up in bed and listened, while her heart almost stood
+still.</p>
+
+<p>"Merry, it's me&mdash;Lime. Come to the winder." The girl hesitated, and
+Lyman spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, I hain't got much time. This is your last chance t' see me. It's
+now 'r never."</p>
+
+<p>The girl slipped out of bed, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, crept to
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Boost on that winder," commanded Lyman. She raised it enough to admit
+his head, which came just above the sill; then she knelt on the floor by
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes stared wide and dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Lime, what in the world do you mean&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean business," he replied. "I ain't no last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span> year's chicken; I know
+when the old man sleeps the soundest." He chuckled pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"How 'd y' fool old Rove?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind about that now; they's something more important on hand.
+You've got t' go with me."</p>
+
+<p>She drew back, "Oh, Lime, I can't!"</p>
+
+<p>He thrust a great arm in and caught her by the wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, y' can. This is y'r last chance. If I go off without ye t'night, I
+never come back. What makes ye gig back? Are ye 'fraid o' me?"</p>
+
+<p>"N-no; but&mdash;but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But what, Merry Etty?"</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't right to go an' leave Dad all alone. Where y' goin' t' take
+me, anyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Milt Jennings let me have his horse an' buggy; they're down the road a
+piece, an' we'll go right down to Rock River and be married by sun-up."</p>
+
+<p>The girl still hesitated, her firm, boyish will unwontedly befogged.
+Resolute as she was, she could not at once accede to his demand.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, make up your mind soon. The old man 'll fill me with buck-shot if
+he catches sight o' me." He drew her arm out of the window and laid his
+bearded cheek to it. "Come, little one, we're made for each other; God
+knows it. Come! It's him 'r me."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's head dropped, consented.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right! Now a kiss to bind the bargain. There! What, cryin'? No
+more o' that, little one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span> Now I'll give you jest five minutes to git on
+your Sunday-go-t'-meetin' clo'es. Quick, there goes a rooster. It's
+gittin' white in the east."</p>
+
+<p>The man turned his back to the window and gazed at the western sky with
+a wealth of unuttered and unutterable exultation in his heart. Far off a
+rooster gave a long, clear blast&mdash;would it be answered in the barn? Yes;
+some wakeful ear had caught it, and now the answer came faint, muffled,
+and drowsy. The dog at his feet whined uneasily as if suspecting
+something wrong. The wind from the south was full of the wonderful odor
+of springing grass, warm, brown earth, and oozing sap. Overhead, to the
+west, the stars were shining in the cloudless sky, dimmed a little in
+brightness by the faint silvery veil of moisture in the air. The man's
+soul grew very tender as he stood waiting for his bride. He was rough,
+illiterate, yet there was something fine about him after all, a kind of
+simplicity and a gigantic, leonine tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>He heard his sweetheart moving about inside, and mused: "The old man
+won't hold out when he finds we're married. He can't get along without
+her. If he does, why, I'll rent a farm here, and we'll go to work
+housekeepin'. I can git the money. She shan't always be poor," he ended,
+and the thought was a vow.</p>
+
+<p>The window was raised again, and the girl's voice was heard low and
+tremulous:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Lime, I'm ready, but I wish we didn't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He put his arm around her waist and helped her out, and did not put her
+down till they reached the road.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span> She was completely dressed, even to
+her hat and shoes, but she mourned:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"My hair is every-which-way; Lime, how can I be married so?"</p>
+
+<p>They were nearing the horse and buggy now, and Lime laughed. "Oh, we'll
+stop at Jennings's and fix up. Milt knows what's up, and has told his
+mother by this time. So just laugh as jolly as you can."</p>
+
+<p>Soon they were in the buggy, the impatient horse swung into the road at
+a rattling pace, and as Marietta leaned back in the seat, thinking of
+what she had done, she cried lamentably, in spite of all the caresses
+and pleadings of her lover.</p>
+
+<p>But the sun burst up from the plain, the prairie-chickens took up their
+mighty chorus on the hills, robins met them on the way, flocks of wild
+geese, honking cheerily, drove far overhead toward the north, and, with
+these sounds of a golden spring day in her ears, the bride grew
+cheerful, and laughed.</p>
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>At about the time the sun was rising, Farmer Bacon, roused from his
+sleep by the crowing of the chickens on the dry knolls in the fields as
+well as by those in the barn-yard, rolled out of bed wearily, wondering
+why he should feel so drowsy. Then he remembered the row with Lime and
+his subsequent inability to sleep with thinking over it. There was a
+dull pain in his breast, which made him uncomfortable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As was his usual custom, he went out into the kitchen and built the fire
+for Marietta, filled the tea-kettle with water, and filled the
+water-bucket in the sink. Then he went to her bedroom door and knocked
+with his knuckles as he had done for years in precisely the same
+fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Rap&mdash;rap&mdash;rap. "Hello, Merry! Time t' git up. Broad daylight, an' birds
+asingun.'"</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting for an answer he went out to the barn and worked away at
+his chores. He took such delight in the glorious morning and the
+turbulent life of the farmyard that his heart grew light and he hummed a
+tune which sounded like the merry growl of a lion. "Poo-ee, poo-ee," he
+called to the pigs as they swarmed across the yard.</p>
+
+<p>"Ahrr! you big, fat rascals, them hams o' yourn is clear money. One of
+ye shall go t' buy Merry a new dress," he said as he glanced at the
+house and saw the smoke pouring out the stovepipe. "Merry's a good girl;
+she's stood by her old pap when other girls 'u'd 'a' gone back on 'im."</p>
+
+<p>While currying horses he went all over the ground of the quarrel
+yesterday, and he began to see it in a different light. He began to see
+that Lyman was a good man and an able man, and that his own course was a
+foolish one.</p>
+
+<p>"When I git mad," he confessed to himself, "I don't know any thin'. But
+I won't give her up. She ain't old 'nough t' marry yet&mdash;and, besides, I
+need her."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After finishing his chores, as usual, he went to the well and washed his
+face and hands, then entered the kitchen&mdash;to find the tea-kettle boiling
+over, and no signs of breakfast anywhere, and no sign of the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess she felt sleepy this mornin'. Poor gal! Mebbe she cried
+half the night."</p>
+
+<p>"Merry!" he called gently, at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Merry, m' gal! Pap needs his breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>There was no reply, and the old man's face stiffened into a wild
+surprise. He knocked heavily again and got no reply, and, with a white
+face and shaking hand, he flung the door open and gazed at the empty
+bed. His hand dropped to his side; his head turned slowly from the bed
+to the open window; he rushed forward and looked out on the ground,
+where he saw the tracks of a man.</p>
+
+<p>He fell heavily into the chair by the bed, while a deep groan broke from
+his stiff and twitching lips.</p>
+
+<p>"She's left me! She's left me!"</p>
+
+<p>For a long half-hour the iron-muscled old man sat there motionless,
+hearing not the songs of the hens or the birds far out in the brilliant
+sunshine. He had lost sight of his farm, his day's work, and felt no
+hunger for food. He did not doubt that her going was final. He felt that
+she was gone from him forever. If she ever came back it would not be as
+his daughter, but as the wife of Gilman. She had deserted him, fled in
+the night like a thief; his heart began to harden again, and he rose
+stiffly. His native stubbornness began to assert itself, the first great
+shock over, and he went out to the kitchen, and prepared, as best he
+could, a breakfast, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span> sat down to it. In some way his appetite failed
+him, and he fell to thinking over his past life, of the death of his
+wife, and the early death of his only boy. He was still trying to think
+what his life would be in the future without his girl, when two
+carriages drove into the yard. It was about the middle of the forenoon,
+and the prairie-chickens had ceased to boom and squawk; in fact, that
+was why he knew, for he had been sitting two hours at the table. Before
+he could rise he heard swift feet and a merry voice and Marietta burst
+through the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Pap! How you makin' out with break&mdash;" She saw a look on his face
+that went to her heart like a knife. She saw a lonely and deserted old
+man sitting at his cold and cheerless breakfast, and with a remorseful
+cry she ran across the floor and took him in her arms, kissing him again
+and again, while Mr. John Jennings and his wife stood in the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor ol' Pap! Merry couldn't leave you. She's come back to stay as long
+as he lives."</p>
+
+<p>The old man remained cold and stern. His deep voice had a relentless
+note in it as he pushed her away from him, noticing no one else.</p>
+
+<p>"But how do you come back t' me?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl grew rosy, but she stood proudly up.</p>
+
+<p>"I come back the wife of a <i>man</i>, Pap; a wife like my mother, an' this
+t' hang beside hers;" and she laid down a rolled piece of parchment.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it an' go," growled he; "take yer lazy lubber an' git out o' my
+sight. I raised ye, took keer o' ye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span> when ye was little, sent ye t'
+school, bought ye dresses,&mdash;done everythin' fer ye I could, 'lowin' t'
+have ye stand by me when I got old,&mdash;but no, ye must go back on yer ol'
+pap, an' go off in the night with a good-f'r-nothin' houn' that nobuddy
+knows anything about&mdash;a feller that never done a thing fer ye in the
+world&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do for mother that she left <i>her</i> father and mother and
+went with you? How much did you have when you took her away from her
+good home an' brought her away out here among the wolves an' Indians?
+I've heard you an' her say a hundred times that you didn't have a chair
+in the house. Now, why do you talk so t' me when I want t' git&mdash;when
+Lime comes and asks for me?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man was staggered. He looked at the smiling face of John
+Jennings and the tearful eyes of Mrs. Jennings, who had returned with
+Lyman. But his heart hardened again as he caught sight of Lime looking
+in at him. His absurd pride would not let him relent. Lime saw it, and
+stepped forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Ol' man, I want t' take a little inning now. I'm a fair, square man. I
+asked ye fer Merry as a man should. I told you I'd had hard luck, when I
+first came here. I had five thousand dollars in clean cash stole from
+me. I hain't got a thing now except credit, but that's good fer enough
+t' stock a little farm with. Now, I wan' to be fair and square in this
+thing. You wan' to rent a farm; I need one. Let me have the river
+eighty, or I'll take the whole business on a share of a third, an' Merry
+Etty and I to stay here with you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span> jest as if nothin' 'd happened. Come,
+now, what d' y' say?"</p>
+
+<p>There was something winning in the sturdy bearing of the man as he stood
+before the father, who remained silent and grim.</p>
+
+<p>"Or if you don't do that, why, there's nothin' left fer Merry an' me but
+to go back to La Crosse, where I can have my choice of a dozen farms.
+Now this is the way things is standin'. I don't want to be underhanded
+about this thing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's a fair offer," said Mr. Jennings in the pause which followed.
+"You'd better do it, neighbor Bacon. Nobuddy need know how things stood;
+they were married in my house&mdash;I thought that would be best. You can't
+live without your girl," he went on, "any more 'n I could without my
+boy. You'd better&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The figure at the table straightened up. Under his tufted eyebrows his
+keen gray eyes flashed from one to the other. His hands knotted.</p>
+
+<p>"Go slow!" went on the smooth voice of Jennings, known all the country
+through as a peacemaker. "Take time t' think it over. Stand out, an'
+you'll live here alone without chick 'r child; give in, and this house
+'ll bubble over with noise and young ones. Now is short, and forever's a
+long time to feel sorry in."</p>
+
+<p>The old man at the table knitted his eyebrows, and a distorted,
+quivering, ghastly smile broke out on his face. His chest heaved; then
+he burst forth:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Gal, yank them gloves off, an' git me something to eat&mdash;breakfus 'r
+dinner, I don't care which. Lime, you infernal idiot, git out there and
+gear up them horses. What in thunder you foolun' round about hyere in
+seed'n'? Come, hustle, all o' ye!"</p>
+
+<p>And they all shouted in laughter, while the old man strode unsteadily
+but resolutely out toward the barn, followed by the bridegroom, who was
+still laughing&mdash;but silently.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="ELDER_PILL_PREACHER" id="ELDER_PILL_PREACHER"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span>
+<h2>ELDER PILL, PREACHER</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span>
+<h4>I</h4>
+</div>
+
+<p>Old man Bacon was pinching forked barbs on a wire fence one rainy day in
+July, when his neighbor Jennings came along the road on his way to town.
+Jennings never went to town except when it rained too hard to work
+outdoors, his neighbors said; and of old man Bacon it was said he
+<i>never</i> rested <i>nights</i> nor Sundays.</p>
+
+<p>Jennings pulled up. "Good morning, neighbor Bacon."</p>
+
+<p>"Mornin'," rumbled the old man without looking up.</p>
+
+<p>"Taking it easy, as usual, I see. Think it's going to clear up?"</p>
+
+<p>"May, an' may not. Don't make much differunce t' me," growled Bacon,
+discouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Heard about the plan for a church?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naw."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we're goin' to hire Elder Pill from Douglass to come over and
+preach every Sunday afternoon at the schoolhouse, an' we want help t'
+pay him&mdash;the laborer is worthy of his hire."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes he is an' then agin he ain't. Y' needn't look t' me f'r a
+dollar. I ain't got no intrust in y'r church."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, you have&mdash;besides, y'r sister&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She ain't got no more time 'n I have t' go t' church. We're obleeged to
+do 'bout all we c'n stand t' pay our debts, let alone tryun' to support
+a preacher." And the old man shut the pinchers up on a barb with a
+vicious grip.</p>
+
+<p>Easy-going Mr. Jennings laughed in his silent way. "I guess you'll help
+when the time comes," he said, and, clucking to his team, drove off.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I won't," muttered the grizzled old giant as he went on with
+his work. Bacon was what is called land poor in the West, that is, he
+had more land than money; still he was able to give if he felt disposed.
+It remains to say that he was <i>not</i> disposed, being a sceptic and a
+scoffer. It angered him to have Jennings predict so confidently that he
+would help.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was striking redly through a rift in the clouds, about three
+o'clock in the afternoon, when he saw a man coming up the lane, walking:
+on the grass at the side of the road, and whistling merrily. The old man
+looked at him from under his huge eyebrows with some curiosity. As he
+drew near, the pedestrian ceased to whistle, and, just as the farmer
+expected him to pass, he stopped and said, in a free and easy style:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"How de do? Give me a chaw t'baccer. I'm Pill, the new minister. I take
+fine-cut when I can get it," he said, as Bacon put his hand into his
+pocket. "Much obliged. How goes it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tollable, tollable," said the astounded farmer, looking hard at Pill as
+he flung a handful of tobacco into his mouth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm the new minister sent around here to keep you fellows in the
+traces and out of hell-fire. Have y' fled from the wrath?" he asked, in
+a perfunctory way.</p>
+
+<p>"You are, eh?" said Bacon, referring back to his profession.</p>
+
+<p>"I am, just! How do you like that style of barb fence? Ain't the twisted
+wire better?"</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose they be, but they cost more."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, costs more to go to heaven than to hell. You'll think so after I
+board with you a week. Narrow the road that leads to light, and broad
+the way that leads&mdash;how's your soul anyway, brother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Soul's all right. I find more trouble to keep m' body go'n."</p>
+
+<p>"Give us your hand; so do I. All the same we must prepare for the next
+world. We're gettin' old; lay not up your treasures where moth and rust
+corrupt and thieves break through and steal."</p>
+
+<p>Bacon was thoroughly interested in the preacher, and was studying him
+carefully. He was tall, straight, and superbly proportioned;
+broad-shouldered, wide-lunged, and thewed like a Chippewa. His rather
+small steel-blue eyes twinkled, and his shrewd face and small head, set
+well back, completed a remarkable figure. He wore his reddish beard in
+the usual way of Western clergymen, with mustache chopped close.</p>
+
+<p>Bacon spoke slowly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You look like a good, husky man to pitch in the barn-yard; you've too
+much muscle f'r preachun'."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come and hear me next Sunday, and if you say so then, I'll quit,"
+replied Mr. Pill, quietly. "I give ye my word for it. I believe in
+preachers havin' a little of the flesh and the devil; they can
+sympathize better with the rest of ye." The sarcasm was lost on Bacon,
+who continued to look at him. Suddenly he said, as if with an
+involuntary determination:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Where ye go'n' to stay t'night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know; do you?" was the quick reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon ye can hang out with me, 'f ye feel like ut. We ain't very
+purty, at our house, but we eat. You go along down the road and tell 'em
+I sent yeh. Ye'll find an' ol' dusty Bible round some'rs&mdash;I s'pose ye
+spend y'r spare time read'n' about Joshua an' Dan'l&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I spend more time reading men. Well, I'm off! I'm hungrier 'n a gray
+wolf in a bear-trap." And off he went as he came. But he did not
+whistle; he chewed.</p>
+
+<p>Bacon felt as if he had made too much of a concession, and had a strong
+inclination to shout after him, and retract his invitation; but he did
+not, only worked on, with an occasional bear-like grin. There was
+something captivating in this fellow's free and easy way.</p>
+
+<p>When he came up to the house an hour or two later, in singular good
+humor for him, he found the Elder in the creamery, with his niece
+Eldora, who was not more won by him than was his sister Jane Buttles, he
+was so genial and put on so few religious frills.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Buttles never put on frills of any kind. She was a most frightful
+toiler, only excelled (if excelled at all)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span> by her brother. Unlovely at
+her best, when about her work in her faded calico gown and flat shoes,
+hair wisped into a slovenly knot, she was depressing. But she was a good
+woman, of sterling integrity, and ambitious for her girl. She was very
+glad of the chance to take charge of her brother's household after
+Marietta married.</p>
+
+<p>Eldora was as attractive as her mother was depressing. She was very
+young at this time and had the physical perfection&mdash;at least as regards
+body&mdash;that her parents must have had in youth. She was above the average
+height of woman, with strong swell of bosom and glorious, erect carriage
+of head. Her features were coarse, but regular and pleasing, and her
+manner boyish.</p>
+
+<p>Elder Pill was on the best terms with them as he watched the milk being
+skimmed out of the "submerged cans" ready for the "caaves and hawgs," as
+Mrs. Buttles called them.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle told you t' come here 'nd stay t' supper, did he? What's come
+over him?" said the girl, with a sort of audacious humor.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill has an awful grutch agin preachers," said Mrs. Buttles, as she
+wiped her hands on her apron. "I declare, I don't see how&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Some</i> preachers, not <i>all</i> preachers," laughed Pill, in his mellow
+nasal. "There are preachers, and then again preachers. I'm one o' the
+t'other kind."</p>
+
+<p>"I sh'd think y' was," laughed the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Eldory, you run right t' the pig-pen with that milk, whilst I go
+in an' set the tea on."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pill seized the can of milk, saying, with a twang: "Show me the way
+that I may walk therein," and, accompanied by the laughing girl, made
+rapid way to the pig-pen just as the old man set up a ferocious shout to
+call the hired hand out of the corn-field.</p>
+
+<p>"How'd y' come to send <i>him</i> here?" asked Mrs. Buttles, nodding toward
+Pill.</p>
+
+<p>"Damfino! I kind o' liked him&mdash;no nonsense about him," answered Bacon,
+going into temporary eclipse behind his hands as he washed his face at
+the cistern.</p>
+
+<p>At the supper table Pill was "easy as an old shoe"; ate with his knife,
+talked about fatting hogs, suggested a few points on raising clover,
+told of pioneer experiences in Michigan, and soon won them&mdash;hired man
+and all&mdash;to a most favorable opinion of himself. But he did not trench
+on religious matters at all.</p>
+
+<p>The hired man in his shirt-sleeves, and smelling frightfully of tobacco
+and sweat (as did Bacon), sat with open mouth, at times forgetting to
+eat, in his absorbing interest in the minister's yarns.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I've got a family, too much of a family, in fact&mdash;that is, I think
+so sometimes when I'm pinched. Our Western people are so indigent&mdash;in
+plain terms, poor&mdash;they <i>can't</i> do any better than they do. But we pull
+through&mdash;we pull through! John, you look like a stout fellow, but I'll
+bet a hat I can <i>down</i> you three out of five."</p>
+
+<p>"I bet you can't," grinned the hired man. It was the climax of all, that
+bet.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take y' in hand an' flop y' both," roared Bacon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span> from his
+lion-like throat, his eyes glistening with rare good-nature from the
+shadow of his gray brows. But he admired the minister's broad shoulders
+at the same time. If this fellow panned out as he promised, he was a
+rare specimen.</p>
+
+<p>After supper the Elder played a masterly game of croquet with Eldora,
+beating her with ease; then he wandered out to the barn and talked
+horses with the hired man, and finished by stripping off his coat and
+putting on one of Mrs. Buttles's aprons to help milk the cows.</p>
+
+<p>But at breakfast the next morning, when the family were about pitching
+into their food as usual without ceremony, the visitor spoke in an
+imperious tone and with lifted hand. "<i>Wait!</i> Let us look to the Lord
+for His blessing."</p>
+
+<p>They waited till the grace was said, but it threw a depressing
+atmosphere over the group; evidently they considered the trouble begun.
+At the end of the meal the minister asked:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Have you a Bible in the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon there's one around somewhere. Elly, go 'n see 'f y' can't
+raise one," said Mrs. Buttles, indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any objection to family devotion?" asked Pill, as the book was
+placed in his hands by the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"No; have all you want," said Bacon, as he rose from the table and
+passed out the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I'll see the thing through," said the hand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It ain't just square to leave the women folks to bear the brunt of it."</p>
+
+<p>It was shortly after breakfast that the Elder concluded he'd walk up to
+Brother Jennings's and see about church matters.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall expect you, Brother Bacon, to be at the service at 2.30."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, go ahead expectun'," responded Bacon, with an inscrutable
+sidewise glance.</p>
+
+<p>"You promised, you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"The&mdash;devil&mdash;I did!" the old man snarled.</p>
+
+<p>The Elder looked back with a smile, and went off whistling in the warm,
+bright morning.</p>
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The schoolhouse down on the creek was known as "Hell's Corners" all
+through the county, because of the frequent rows that took place therein
+at "corkuses" and the like, and also because of the number of teachers
+that had been "ousted" by the boys. In fact, it was one of those places
+still to be found occasionally in the West, far from railroads and
+schools, where the primitive ignorance and ferocity of men still prowl,
+like the panthers which are also found sometimes in the deeps of the
+Iowa timber lands.</p>
+
+<p>The most of this ignorance and ferocity, however, was centred in the
+family of Dixons, a dark-skinned, unsavory group of Missourians. It
+consisted of old man Dixon and wife, and six sons, all man-grown,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>
+great, gaunt, sinewy fellows, with no education, but superstitious as
+savages. If anything went wrong in "Hell's Corners" everybody knew that
+the Dixons were "on the rampage again." The school-teachers were warned
+against the Dixons, and the preachers were besought to convert the
+Dixons.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, John Jennings, as he drove Pill to the schoolhouse next day,
+said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If you can convert the Dixon boys, Elder, I'll give you the best horse
+in my barn."</p>
+
+<p>"I work not for such hire," said Mr. Pill, with a look of deep solemnity
+on his face, belied, indeed, by a twinkle in his small, keen eye&mdash;a
+twinkle which made Milton Jennings laugh candidly.</p>
+
+<p>There was considerable curiosity, expressed by a murmur of lips and
+voices, as the minister's tall figure entered the door and stood for a
+moment in a study of the scene before him. It was a characteristically
+Western scene. The women sat on one side of the schoolroom, the men on
+the other; the front seats were occupied by squirming boys and girls in
+their Sunday splendor.</p>
+
+<p>On the back, to the right, were the young men, in their best vests, with
+paper collars and butterfly neckties, with their coats unbuttoned, their
+hair plastered down in a fascinating wave on their brown foreheads. Not
+a few were in their shirt-sleeves. The older men sat immediately between
+the youths and boys, talking in hoarse whispers across the aisles about
+the state of the crops and the county ticket, while the women in much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span>
+the same way conversed about the children and raising onions and
+strawberries. It was their main recreation, this Sunday meeting.</p>
+
+<p>"Brethren!" rang out the imperious voice of the minister, "let us pray."</p>
+
+<p>The audience thoroughly enjoyed the Elder's prayer. He was certainly
+gifted in that direction, and his petition grew genuinely eloquent as
+his desires embraced the "ends of the earth and the utterm'st parts of
+the seas thereof." But in the midst of it a clatter was heard, and five
+or six strapping fellows filed in with loud thumpings of their brogans.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after they had settled themselves with elaborate impudence on
+the back seat, the singing began. Just as they were singing the last
+verse, every individual voice wavered and all but died out in
+astonishment to see William Bacon come in&mdash;an unheard-of thing! And with
+a clean shirt, too! Bacon, to tell the truth, was feeling as much out of
+place as a cat in a bath-tub, and looked uncomfortable, even shamefaced,
+as he sidled in, his shapeless hat gripped nervously in both hands;
+coatless and collarless, his shirt open at his massive throat. The girls
+tittered, of course, and the boys hammered each other's ribs, moved by
+the unusual sight. Milton Jennings, sitting beside Bettie Moss, said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well! may I jump straight up and never come down!"</p>
+
+<p>And Shep Watson said: "May I never see the back o' my neck!" Which
+pleased Bettie so much that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span> she grew quite purple with efforts to
+conceal her laughter; she always enjoyed a joke on her father.</p>
+
+<p>But all things have an end, and at last the room became quiet as Mr.
+Pill began to read the Scripture, wondering a little at the commotion.
+He suspected that those dark-skinned, grinning fellows on the back seat
+were the Dixon boys, and knew they were bent on fun. The physique of the
+minister being carefully studied, the boys began whispering among
+themselves, and at last, just as the sermon opened, they began to push
+the line of young men on the long seat over toward the girls' side,
+squeezing Milton against Bettie. This pleasantry encouraged one of them
+to whack his neighbor over the head with his soft hat, causing great
+laughter and disturbance. The preacher stopped. His cool, penetrating
+voice sounded strangely unclerical as he said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There are some fellows here to-day to have fun with me. If they don't
+keep quiet, they'll have more fun than they can hold." (At this point a
+green crab-apple bounded up the aisle.) "I'm not to be bulldozed."</p>
+
+<p>He pulled off his coat and laid it on the table before him, and, amid a
+wondering silence, took off his cuffs and collar, saying:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I can preach the word of the Lord just as well without my coat, and I
+can throw rowdies out the door a little better in my shirt-sleeves."</p>
+
+<p>Had the Dixon boys been a little shrewder as readers of human character,
+or if they had known why old William Bacon was there, they would have
+kept quiet; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span> it was not long before they began to push again, and at
+last one of them gave a squeak, and a tussle took place. The preacher
+was in the midst of a sentence:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"An evil deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of mustard seed. It is
+small, but it grows steadily, absorbing its like from the earth and air,
+sending out roots and branches, till at last&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>There was a scuffle and a snicker. Mr. Pill paused, and gazed intently
+at Tom Dixon, who was the most impudent and strongest of the gang; then
+he moved slowly down on the astonished young savage. As he came his eyes
+seemed to expand like those of an eagle in battle, steady, remorseless,
+unwavering, at the same time that his brows shut down over them&mdash;a
+glance that hushed every breath. The awed and astonished ruffians sat as
+if paralyzed by the unuttered yet terribly ferocious determination of
+the preacher's eyes. His right hand was raised, the other was clenched
+at his waist. There was a sort of solemnity in his approach, like a
+tiger creeping upon a foe.</p>
+
+<p>At last, after what seemed minutes to the silent, motionless
+congregation, his raised hand came down on the shoulder of the leader
+with the exact, resistless precision of the tiger's paw, and the ruffian
+was snatched from his seat to the floor sprawling. Before he could rise,
+the steel-like grip of the roused preacher sent him halfway to the door,
+and then out into the dirt of the road.</p>
+
+<p>Turning, Pill strode down the aisle once more. The half-risen
+congregation made way for him, curiously.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span> When he came within reach of
+Dick, the fellow struck savagely out at the preacher, only to have his
+blow avoided by a lithe, lightning-swift movement of the body above the
+hips (a trained boxer's trick), and to find himself lying bruised and
+dazed on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the other brothers had recovered from their stupor, and,
+with wild curses, leaped over the benches toward the fearless preacher.</p>
+
+<p>But now a new voice was heard in the sudden uproar&mdash;a new but familiar
+voice. It was the mighty voice of William Bacon, known far and wide as a
+terrible antagonist, a man who had never been whipped. He was like a
+wild beast excited to primitive savagery by the smell of blood.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand <i>back</i>, you hell-hounds!" he said, leaping between them and the
+preacher. "You know me. Lay another hand on that man an', by the livun'
+God, you answer t' me. Back thear!"</p>
+
+<p>Some of the men cheered, most stood irresolute. The women crowded
+together, the children began to scream with terror, while through it all
+Pill dragged his last assailant toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>Bacon made his way down to where the Dixons had halted, undecided what
+to do. If the preacher had the air and action of the tiger, Bacon looked
+the grisly bear&mdash;his eyebrows working up and down, his hands clenched
+into frightful bludgeons, his breath rushing through his hairy nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>"Git out o' hyare," he growled. "You've run things here jest about long
+enough. Git out!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His hands were now on the necks of two of the boys and he was hustling
+them toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>"If you want 'o whip the preacher, meet him in the public road&mdash;one at a
+time; he'll take care o' himself. Out with ye," he ended, kicking them
+out. "Show your faces here agin, an' I'll break ye in two."</p>
+
+<p>The non-combative farmers now began to see the humor of the whole
+transaction, and began to laugh; but they were cut short by the calm
+voice of the preacher at his desk:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But a <i>good</i> deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of wheat planted in
+good earth, that bringeth forth fruit in due season an hundred fold."</p>
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Mr. Pill, with all his seeming levity, was a powerful hand at revivals,
+as was developed at the "protracted" meetings at the Grove during
+December. Indeed, such was the pitiless intensity of his zeal that a
+gloom was cast over the whole township; the ordinary festivities stopped
+or did not begin at all.</p>
+
+<p>The lyceum, which usually began by the first week in December, was put
+entirely out of the question, as were the spelling-schools and
+"exhibitions." The boys, it is true, still drove the girls to meeting in
+the usual manner; but they all wore a furtive, uneasy air, and their
+laughter was not quite genuine at its best, and died away altogether
+when they came near the schoolhouse, and they hardly recovered from the
+effects of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span> preaching till a mile or two had been spun behind the
+shining runners. It took all the magic of the jingle of the bells and
+the musical creak of the polished steel on the snow to win them back to
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>As for Elder Pill, he was as a man transformed. He grew more intense
+each night, and strode back and forth behind his desk and pounded the
+Bible like an assassin. No more games with the boys, no more poking the
+girls under the chin! When he asked for a chew of tobacco now it was
+with an air which said: "I ask it as sustenance that will give me
+strength for the Lord's service," as if the demands of the flesh had
+weakened the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Old man Bacon overtook Milton Jennings early one Monday morning, as
+Milton was marching down toward the Seminary at Rock River. It was
+intensely cold and still, so cold and still that the ring of the cold
+steel of the heavy sleigh, the snort of the horses, and the old man's
+voice came with astonishing distinctness to the ears of the hurrying
+youth, and it seemed a very long time before the old man came up.</p>
+
+<p>"Climb on!" he yelled, out of his frosty beard. He was seated on the
+"hind bob" of a wood-sleigh, on a couple of blankets. Milton clambered
+on, knowing well he'd freeze to death there.</p>
+
+<p>"Reckon I heerd you prowlun' around the front door with my girl last
+night," Bacon said at length. "The way you both 'tend out t' meetun'
+ought 'o sanctify yeh; must 'a' stayed to the after-meetun', didn't
+yeh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nope. The front part was enough for&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Danged if I was any more fooled with a man in m' life. I b'lieve the
+whole thing is a little scheme on the bretheren t' raise a dollar."</p>
+
+<p>"Why so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, y' see, Pill ain't got much out o' the app'intment thus fur, and
+he ain't likely to, if he don't shake 'em up a leetle. Borrud ten
+dollars o' me t'other day."</p>
+
+<p>Well, thought Milton, whatever his real motive is, Elder Pill is earning
+all he gets. Standing for two or three hours in his place night after
+night, arguing, pleading, even commanding them to be saved.</p>
+
+<p>Milton was describing the scenes of the meeting to Bradley Talcott and
+Douglas Radbourn the next day, and Radbourn, a young law student,
+said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to see him. He must be a character."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's make up a party and go out," said Milton, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"All right; I'll speak to Lily Graham."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, that evening a party of students, in a large sleigh, drove
+out toward the schoolhouse, along the drifted lanes and through the
+beautiful aisles of the snowy woods. A merry party of young people, who
+had no sense of sin to weigh them down. Even Radbourn and Lily joined in
+the songs which they sang to the swift clanging of the bells, until the
+lights of the schoolhouse burned redly through the frosty air.</p>
+
+<p>Not a few of the older people present felt scandalized by the singing
+and by the dancing of the "town girls," who could not for the life of
+them take the thing seriously. The room was so little, and hot, and
+smoky,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span> and the men looked so queer in their rough coats and hair
+every-which-way.</p>
+
+<p>But they took their seats demurely on the back seat, and joined in the
+opening songs, and listened to the halting prayers of the brethren and
+the sonorous prayers of the Elder, with commendable gravity. Miss Graham
+was a devout Congregationalist, and hushed the others into gravity when
+their eyes began to dance dangerously.</p>
+
+<p>However, as Mr. Pill warmed to his work, the girls grew sober enough. He
+awed them, and frightened them with the savagery of his voice and
+manner. His small gray eyes were like daggers unsheathed, and his small,
+round head took on a cat-like ferocity, as he strode to and fro, hurling
+out his warnings and commands in a hoarse howl that terrified the
+sinner, and drew "amens" of admiration from the saints.</p>
+
+<p>"Atavism; he has gone back to the era of the medicine man," Radbourn
+murmured.</p>
+
+<p>As the speaker went on, foam came upon his thin lips; his lifted hand
+had prophecy and threatening in it. His eyes reflected flames; his voice
+had now the tone of the implacable, vindictive judge. He gloated on the
+pictures that his words called up. By the power of his imagination the
+walls widened, the floor was no longer felt, the crowded room grew still
+as death, every eye fixed on the speaker's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, you must repent or die. I can see the great judgment angel
+now!" he said, stopping suddenly and pointing above the stovepipe. "I
+can see him as he stands weighing your souls as a man 'ud weigh wheat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span>
+and chaff. Wheat goes into the Father's garner; chaff is blown to hell's
+devouring flame! I can see him <i>now</i>! He seizes a poor, damned,
+struggling soul by the <i>neck</i>, he holds him over the flaming forge of
+<i>hell</i> till his bones melt like wax; he shrivels like thread in the
+flame of a candle; he is nothing but a charred husk, and the angel
+flings him back into <i>outer darkness</i>; life was not in him."</p>
+
+<p>It was this astonishing figure, powerfully acted, that scared poor Tom
+Dixon into crying out for mercy. The effect upon others was painful. To
+see so great a sinner fall terror-stricken seemed like a providential
+stroke of confirmatory evidence, and nearly a dozen other young people
+fell crying, whereat the old people burst out into amens of spasmodic
+fervor, while the preacher, the wild light still in his eyes, tore up
+and down, crying above the tumult:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The Lord is come with <i>power</i>! His hand is visible <i>here</i>. Shout
+<i>aloud</i> and spare <i>not</i>. Fall before him as <i>dust</i> to his feet!
+Hypocrites, vipers, scoffers! the <i>lash</i> o' the <i>Lord</i> is on ye!"</p>
+
+<p>In the intense pause which followed as he waited with expectant,
+uplifted face&mdash;a pause so deep even the sobbing sinners held their
+breath&mdash;a dry, drawling, utterly matter-of-fact voice broke the intense
+hush.</p>
+
+<p>"S-a-y, Pill, ain't you a-bearun' down on the boys a <i>leetle too</i> hard?"</p>
+
+<p>The preacher's extended arm fell as if life had gone out of it. His face
+flushed and paled; the people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span> laughed hysterically, some of them with
+the tears of terror still on their cheeks; but Radbourn said, "Bravo,
+Bacon!"</p>
+
+<p>Pill recovered himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Not hard enough for <i>you</i>, neighbor Bacon."</p>
+
+<p>Bacon rose, retaining the same dry, prosaic tone:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't bitin' that kind of a hook, an' I ain't goin' to be <i>yanked</i>
+into heaven when I c'n <i>slide</i> into hell. Waal! I must be goin'; I've
+got a new-milk's cow that needs tendin' to."</p>
+
+<p>The effect of all this was very great. From being at the very mouth of
+the furnace, quivering with fear and captive to morbid imaginings,
+Bacon's dry intonation brought them all back to earth again. They
+perceived something of the absurdity of the whole situation.</p>
+
+<p>Pill was beaten for the first time in his life. He had been struck below
+the belt by a good-natured giant. The best he could do, as Bacon
+shuffled calmly out, was to stammer: "Will some one please sing?" And
+while they sang, he stood in deep thought. Just as the last verse was
+quivering into silence, the full, deep tones of Radbourn's voice rose
+above the bustle of feet and clatter of seats:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And all <i>that</i> he preaches in the name of Him who came bringing peace
+and good-will to men."</p>
+
+<p>Radbourn's tone had in it reproach and a noble suggestion. The people
+looked at him curiously. The deacons nodded their heads together in
+counsel, and when they turned to the desk Pill was gone!</p>
+
+<p>"Gee whittaker! That was tough," said Milton to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span> Radbourn; "knocked the
+wind out o' him like a cannon-ball. What'll he do now?"</p>
+
+<p>"He can't do anything but acknowledge his foolishness."</p>
+
+<p>"You no business t' come here an' 'sturb the Lord's meetin'," cried old
+Daddy Brown to Radbourn. "You're a sinner and a scoffer."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought Bacon was the disturbing ele&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're just as bad!"</p>
+
+<p>"He's all <i>right</i>," said William Councill. "I've got sick, m'self, of
+bein' <i>scared</i> into religion. I never was so fooled in a man in my life.
+If I'd tell you what Pill said to me the other day, when we was in
+Robie's store, you'd fall in a fit. An' to hear him talkin' here
+t'night, is enough to make a horse laugh."</p>
+
+<p>"You're all in league with the devil," said the old man, wildly; and so
+the battle raged on.</p>
+
+<p>Milton and Radbourn escaped from it, and got out into the clear, cold,
+untainted night.</p>
+
+<p>"The heat of the furnace doesn't reach as far as the horses," Radbourn
+moralized, as he aided in unhitching the shivering team. "In the vast,
+calm spaces of the stars, among the animals, such scenes as we have just
+seen are impossible." He lifted his hand in a lofty gesture. The light
+fell on his pale face and dark eyes. The girls were a little indignant
+and disposed to take the preacher's part. They thought Bacon had no
+right to speak out that way, and Miss Graham uttered her protest, as
+they whirled away on the homeward ride with pleasant jangle of bells.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But the secret of it all was," said Radbourn in answer, "Pill knew he
+was acting a part. I don't mean that he meant to deceive, but he got
+excited, and his audience responded as an audience does to an actor of
+the first class, and he was for the time in earnest; his imagination
+<i>did</i> see those horrors,&mdash;he was swept away by his own words. But when
+Bacon spoke, his dry tone and homely words brought everybody, preacher
+and all, back to the earth with a thump! Everybody saw, that after
+weeping and wailing there for an hour, they'd go home, feed the calves,
+hang up the lantern, put out the cat, wind the clock, and go to bed. In
+other words, they all came back out of their barbaric <i>powwow</i> to their
+natural modern selves."</p>
+
+<p>This explanation had palpable truth, but Lily perceived that it had
+wider application than to the meeting they had just left.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll be music around this clearing to-morrow," said Milton, with a
+sigh; "wish I was at home this week."</p>
+
+<p>"But what'll become of Mr. Pill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he'll come out all right," Radbourn assured her, and Milton's clear
+tenor rang out as he drew Eileen closer to his side:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 2em">
+"O silver moon, O silver moon,<br />
+You set, you set too soon&mdash;<br />
+The morrow day is far away,<br />
+The night is but begun."
+</p>
+
+<div>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>
+<h4>IV</h4>
+</div>
+
+<p>The news, grotesquely exaggerated, flew about the next day, and at
+night, though it was very cold and windy, the house was jammed to
+suffocation. On these lonely prairies life is so devoid of anything but
+work, dramatic entertainments are so few, and appetite so keen, that a
+temperature of twenty degrees below zero is no bar to a trip of ten
+miles. The protracted meeting was the only recreation for many of them.
+The gossip before and after service was a delight not to be lost, and
+this last sensation was dramatic enough to bring out old men and women
+who had not dared to go to church in winter for ten years.</p>
+
+<p>Long before seven o'clock, the schoolhouse blazed with light and buzzed
+with curious speech. Team after team drove up to the door, and as the
+drivers leaped out to receive the women, they said in low but eager
+tones to the bystanders:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Meeting begun yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nope!"</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of a time y' havin' over here, any way?"</p>
+
+<p>"A mighty solumn time," somebody would reply with a low laugh.</p>
+
+<p>By seven o'clock every inch of space was occupied; the air was
+frightful. The kerosene lamps gave off gas and smoke, the huge stove
+roared itself into an angry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span> red on its jack-oak grubs, and still people
+crowded in at the door.</p>
+
+<p>Discussion waxed hot as the stove; two or three Universalists boldly
+attacked everybody who came their way. A tall man stood on a bench in
+the corner, and, thumping his Bible wildly with his fist, exclaimed, at
+the top of his voice:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There is <i>no</i> hell at <i>all</i>! The Bible says the <i>wicked</i> perish
+<i>utterly</i>. They are <i>consumed</i> as <i>ashes</i> when they die. They <i>perish</i>
+as <i>dogs</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"What kind o' docterin' is that?" asked a short man of Councill.</p>
+
+<p>"I d'know. It's ol' Sam Richards. Calls himself a
+Christian&mdash;Christadelphian 'r some new-fangled name."</p>
+
+<p>At last people began to inquire, "Well, ain't he comin'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most time f'r the Elder to come, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I guess he's preparin' a sermon."</p>
+
+<p>John Jennings pushed anxiously to Daddy Brown.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't the Elder comin'?"</p>
+
+<p>"I d'know. He didn't stay at my house."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Thought he went home with you."</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't see 'im 't all. I'll ask Councill. Brother Councill, seen
+anything of the Elder?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Didn't he go home with Bensen?"</p>
+
+<p>"I d'n know. I'll see."</p>
+
+<p>This was enough to start the news that "Pill had skipped."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This the deacons denied, saying "he'd come or send word."</p>
+
+<p>Outside, on the leeward side of the house, the young men who couldn't
+get in stood restlessly, now dancing a jig, now kicking their huge boots
+against the underpinning to warm their toes. They talked spasmodically
+as they swung their arms about their chests, speaking from behind their
+huge buffalo-coat collars.</p>
+
+<p>The wind roared through the creaking oaks; the horses stirred
+complainingly, the bells on their backs crying out querulously; the
+heads of the fortunates inside were shadowed outside on the snow, and
+the restless young men amused themselves betting on which head was
+Bensen and which Councill.</p>
+
+<p>At last some one pounded on the desk inside. The suffocating but lively
+crowd turned with painful adjustment toward the desk, from whence Deacon
+Bensen's high, smooth voice sounded:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Brethren an' sisters, Elder Pill hain't come&mdash;and, as it's about eight
+o'clock, he probably won't come to-night. After the disturbances last
+night, it's&mdash;a&mdash;a&mdash;we're all the more determined to&mdash;the&mdash;a&mdash;need of
+reforming grace is more felt than ever. Let us hope nothing has happened
+to the Elder. I'll go see to-morrow, and if he is unable to come&mdash;I'll
+see Brother Wheat, of Cresco. After prayer by Brother Jennings, we will
+adjourn till to-morrow night. Brother Jennings, will you lead us in
+prayer?" (Some one snickered.) "I hope the disgraceful&mdash;a&mdash;scenes of
+last night will not be repeated."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Where's Pill?" demanded a voice in the back part of the room. "That's
+what I want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"He's a bad pill," said another, repeating a pun already old.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess so! He borrowed twenty dollars o' me last week," said the first
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"He owes me for a pig," shouted a short man, excitedly. "I believe he's
+skipped to get rid o' his debts."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I. I allus said he was a mighty queer preacher."</p>
+
+<p>"He'd bear watchin' was my idee fust time I ever see him."</p>
+
+<p>"Careful, brethren&mdash;<i>careful</i>. He may come at any minute."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care if he does. I'd bone him f'r pay f'r that shote, preacher
+'r no preacher," said Bartlett, a little nervously.</p>
+
+<p>High words followed this, and there was prospect of a fight. The
+pressure of the crowd, however, was so great it was well-nigh impossible
+for two belligerents to get at each other. The meeting broke up at last,
+and the people, chilly, soured, and disappointed at the lack of
+developments, went home saying Pill was <i>scaly</i>; no preacher who chawed
+terbacker was to be trusted, and when it was learned that the horse and
+buggy he drove he owed Jennings and Bensen for, everybody said, "He's a
+fraud."</p>
+
+<div>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>
+<h4>V</h4>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the meantime, Andrew Pill was undergoing the most singular and awful
+mental revolution.</p>
+
+<p>When he leaped blindly into his cutter and gave his horse the rein, he
+was wild with rage and shame, and a sort of fear. As he sat with bent
+head, he did not hear the tread of the horse, and did not see the trees
+glide past. The rabbit leaped away under the shadow of the thick groves
+of young oaks; the owl, scared from its perch, went fluttering off into
+the cold, crisp air; but he saw only the contemptuous, quizzical face of
+old William Bacon&mdash;one shaggy eyebrow lifted, a smile showing through
+his shapeless beard.</p>
+
+<p>He saw the colorless, handsome face of Radbourn, and his look of
+reproach and note of suggestion&mdash;Radbourn, one of the best thinkers in
+Rock River, and the most generally admired young man in Rock County.</p>
+
+<p>When he saw and heard Bacon, his hurt pride flamed up in wrath, but the
+calm voice of Radbourn, and the look in his stern, accusing eyes, made
+his head fall in thought. As he rode, things grew clearer. As a matter
+of fact, his whole system of religious thought was like the side of a
+shelving sand-bank&mdash;in unstable equilibrium&mdash;needing only a touch to
+send it slipping into a shapeless pile at the river's edge. That touch
+had been given, and he was now in the midst of the motion of his falling
+faith. He didn't know how much would stand when the sloughing ended.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Andrew Pill had been a variety of things, a farmer, a dry-goods
+merchant, and a travelling salesman, but in a revival quite like this of
+his own, he had been converted and his life changed. He now desired to
+help his fellow-men to a better life, and willingly went out among the
+farmers, where pay was small. It was not true, therefore, that he had
+gone into it because there was little work and good pay. He was really
+an able man, and would have been a success in almost anything he
+undertook; but his reading and thought, his easy intercourse with men
+like Bacon and Radbourn, had long since undermined any real faith in the
+current doctrine of retribution, and to-night, as he rode into the
+night, he was feeling it all and suffering it all, forced to acknowledge
+at last what had been long moving.</p>
+
+<p>The horse took the wrong road, and plodded along steadily, carrying him
+away from his home, but he did not know it for a long time. When at last
+he looked up and saw the road leading out upon the wide plain between
+the belts of timber, leading away to Rock River, he gave a sigh of
+relief. He could not meet his wife then; he must have a chance to think.</p>
+
+<p>Over him, the glittering, infinite sky of winter midnight soared,
+passionless, yet accusing in its calmness, sweetness, and majesty. What
+was he that he could dogmatize on eternal life and the will of the Being
+who stood behind that veil? And then would come rushing back that scene
+in the schoolhouse, the smell of the steaming garments, the gases from
+the lamps, the roar of the stove, the sound of his own voice, strident,
+dominating,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span> so alien to his present mood, he could only shudder at it.</p>
+
+<p>He was worn out with thinking when he drove into the stable at the
+Merchants' House and roused up the sleeping hostler, who looked at him
+suspiciously and demanded pay in advance. This seemed right in his
+present mood. He was not to be trusted.</p>
+
+<p>When he flung himself face downward on his bed, the turmoil in his brain
+was still going on. He couldn't hold one thought or feeling long; all
+seemed slipping like water from his hands.</p>
+
+<p>He had in him great capacity for change, for growth. Circumstances had
+been against his development thus far, but the time had come when growth
+seemed to be defeat and failure.</p>
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+<p>Radbourn was thinking about him, two days after, as he sat in his friend
+Judge Brown's law office, poring over a volume of law. He saw that
+Bacon's treatment had been heroic; he couldn't get the pitiful confusion
+of the preacher's face out of his mind. But, after all, Bacon's seizing
+of just that instant was a stroke of genius.</p>
+
+<p>Some one touched him on the arm and he turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;Elder&mdash;Mr. Pill, how de do? Sit down. Draw up a chair."</p>
+
+<p>There was trouble in the preacher's face. "Can I see you, Radbourn,
+alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly; come right into this room. No one will disturb us there."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, what can I do for you?" he said, as they sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to talk to you about&mdash;about religion," said Pill, with a little
+timid pause in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>Radbourn looked grave. "I'm afraid you've come to a dangerous man."</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to tell me what you think. I know you're a student. I want
+to talk about my case," pursued the preacher, with a curious hesitancy.
+"I want to ask a few questions on things."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; sail in. I'll do the best I can," said Radbourn.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been thinking a good deal since that night. I've come to the
+conclusion that I don't believe what I've been preaching. I thought I
+did, but I didn't. I don't know <i>what</i> I believe. Seems as if the land
+had slid from under my feet. What am I to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say so," replied Radbourn, his eyes kindling. "Say so, and get out of
+it. There's nothing worse than staying where you are. What have you
+saved from the general land-slide?"</p>
+
+<p>Pill smiled a little. "I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Want me to cross-examine you and see, eh? Very well, here goes." He
+settled back with a smile. "You believe in square dealing between man
+and man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"You believe in good deeds, candor, and steadfastness?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>"You believe in justice, equality of opportunity, and in liberty?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I do."</p>
+
+<p>"You believe, in short, that a man should do unto others as he'd have
+others do unto him; think right and live out his thoughts?"</p>
+
+<p>"All that I steadfastly believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess your land-slide was mostly imaginary. The face of the
+eternal rock is laid bare. You didn't recognize it at first, that's all.
+One question more. You believe in getting at truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, truth is only found from the generalizations of facts. Before
+calling a thing true, study carefully all accessible facts. Make your
+religion practical. The matter-of-fact tone of Bacon would have had no
+force if you had been preaching an earnest morality in place of an
+antiquated terrorism."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it, I know it," sighed Pill, looking down.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now go back and tell 'em so. And then, if you can't keep your
+place preaching what you do believe, get into something else. For the
+sake of all morality and manhood, don't go on cursing yourself with
+hypocrisy."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pill took a chew of tobacco rather distractedly, and said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to ask you a few questions."</p>
+
+<p>"No, not now. You think out your present position yourself. Find out
+just what you have saved from your land-slide."</p>
+
+<p>The elder man rose; he hardly seemed the same man who had dominated his
+people a few days before. He turned with still greater embarrassment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I want to ask a favor. I'm going back to my family. I'm going to say
+something of what you've said, to my congregation&mdash;but&mdash;I'm in debt&mdash;and
+the moment they know I'm a backslider, they're going to bear down on me
+pretty heavy. I'd like to be independent."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. How much do you need?" mused Radbourn.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess two hundred would stave off the worst of them."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess Brown and I can fix that. Come in again to-night. Or no, I'll
+bring it round to you."</p>
+
+<p>The two men parted with a silent pressure of the hand that meant more
+than any words.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Pill told his wife that he could preach no more, she cried, and
+gasped, and scolded till she was in danger of losing her breath
+entirely. "A guinea-hen sort of a woman" Councill called her. "She can
+talk more an' say less 'n any woman I ever see," was Bacon's verdict,
+after she had been at dinner at his house. She was a perpetual irritant.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pill silenced her at last with a note of impatience approaching a
+threat, and drove away to the Corners to make his confession without
+her. It was Saturday night, and Elder Wheat was preaching as he entered
+the crowded room. A buzz and mumble of surprise stopped the orator for a
+few moments, and he shook hands with Mr. Pill dubiously, not knowing
+what to think of it all, but as he was in the midst of a very effective
+oratorical scene, he went on.</p>
+
+<p>The silent man at his side felt as if he were witnessing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span> a burlesque of
+himself as he listened to the pitiless and lurid description of torment
+which Elder Wheat poured forth,&mdash;the same figures and threats he had
+used a hundred times. He stirred uneasily in his seat, while the
+audience paid so little attention that the perspiring little orator
+finally called for a hymn, saying:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Elder Pill has returned from his unexpected absence, and will exhort in
+his proper place."</p>
+
+<p>When the singing ended, Mr. Pill rose, looking more like himself than
+since the previous Sunday. A quiet resolution was in his eyes and voice
+as he said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Elder Wheat has more right here than I have. I want 'o say that I'm
+going to give up my church in Douglass and&mdash;" A murmur broke out, which
+he silenced with his raised hand. "I find I don't believe any longer
+what I've been believing and preaching. Hold on! let me go on. I don't
+quite know where I'll bring up, but I think my religion will simmer down
+finally to about this: A full half-bushel to the half-bushel and sixteen
+ounces to the pound." Here two or three cheered. "Do unto others as
+you'd have others do unto you." Applause from several, quickly
+suppressed as the speaker went on, Elder Wheat listening as if
+petrified, with his mouth open.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going out of preaching, at least for the present. After things get
+into shape with me again, I may set up to teach people how to live, but
+just now I can't do it. I've got all I can do to instruct myself. Just
+one thing more. I owe two or three of you here. I've got the money for
+William Bacon, James Bartlett, and John<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span> Jennings. I turn the mare and
+cutter over to Jacob Bensen, for the note he holds. I hain't got much
+religion left, but I've got some morality. That's all I want to say
+now."</p>
+
+<p>When he sat down there was a profound hush; then Bacon arose.</p>
+
+<p>"That's <i>man's</i> talk, that is! An' I jest want 'o say, Andrew Pill, that
+you kin jest forgit you owe me anything. An' if ye want any help come to
+me. Y're jest gittun' ready to preach, 'n' I'm ready to give ye my
+support."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the talk," said Councill. "I'm with ye on that."</p>
+
+<p>Pill shook his head. The painful silence which followed was broken by
+the effusive voice of Wheat:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Let us pray&mdash;and remember our lost brother."</p>
+
+<hr class="minor" />
+
+<p>The urgings of the people were of no avail. Mr. Pill settled up his
+affairs and moved to Cresco, where he went back into trade with a
+friend, and for three years attended silently to his customers, lived
+down their curiosity, and studied anew the problem of life. Then he
+moved away, and no one knew whither.</p>
+
+<p>One day last year Bacon met Jennings on the road.</p>
+
+<p>"Heerd anything o' Pill lately?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Waal, yes. Brown told me he ran acrost him down in Eelinoy, doun' well,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>"In dry goods?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, preachun'."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Preachun'?"</p>
+
+<p>"So Brown said. Kind of a free-f'r-all church, I reckon, from what Jedge
+told me. Built a new church; fills it twice a Sunday. I'd like to hear
+him, but he's got t' be too big a gun f'r us. Ben studyun', they say;
+went t' school."</p>
+
+<p>Jennings drove sadly and thoughtfully on.</p>
+
+<p>"Rather stumps Brother Jennings," laughed Bacon, in a good-humored
+growl.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="A_DAY_OF_GRACE" id="A_DAY_OF_GRACE"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>
+<h2>A DAY OF GRACE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Sunday is the day for courtship on the prairie. It has also the piety of
+cleanliness. It allows the young man to get back to a self-respecting
+sweetness of person, and enables the girls to look as nature intended,
+dainty and sweet as posies.</p>
+
+<p>The change from everyday clothing on the part of young workmen like Ben
+Griswold was more than change; it approached transformation. It took
+more than courage to go through the change,&mdash;it required love.</p>
+
+<p>Ben arose a little later on Sunday morning than on weekdays, but there
+were the chores to do as usual. The horses must be watered, fed, and
+curried, and the cows were to milk, but after breakfast Ben threw off
+the cares of the hired hand. When he came down from the little garret
+into which the hot August sun streamed redly, he was a changed creature.
+Clean from tip to toe, newly shaven, wearing a crackling white shirt, a
+linen collar and a new suit of store clothes, he felt himself a man
+again, fit to meet maidens.</p>
+
+<p>His partner, being a married man, was slouching around in his tattered
+and greasy brown denim overalls. He looked at Ben and grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"Got a tag on y'rself?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, why?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nobod'y know ye, if anything happened on the road. There's thirty
+dollars gone to the dogs." He sighed. "Oh, well, you'll get over that,
+just as I did."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I won't get over liking to be clean," Ben said a little sourly.
+"I won't be back to milk."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't expect ye. That's the very time o' day the girls are
+purtiest,&mdash;just about sundown. Better take Rock. I may want the old team
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>Ben hitched up and drove off in the warm bright morning, with wonderful
+elation, clean and self-respecting once more. His freshly shaven face
+felt cool, and his new suit fitted him well. His heart took on a great
+resolution, which was to call upon Grace.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of her made his brown hands shake, and he remembered how
+many times he had sworn to visit her, but had failed of courage, though
+it seemed she had invited him by word and look to do so.</p>
+
+<p>He overtook Milton Jennings on his way along the poplar-lined lane.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Milt, where you bound?"</p>
+
+<p>Milton glanced up with a curious look in his laughing eyes. From the
+pockets of his long linen duster he drew a handful of beautiful scarlet
+and yellow Siberian crab-apples.</p>
+
+<p>"See them crabs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I see 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Milton drew a similar handful out of his left pocket. "See those?"</p>
+
+<p>"What y' going to do with 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"Take 'em home again."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Something in Milton's voice led him to ask soberly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What did you intend doing with 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"Present 'em to Miss Cole."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, why didn't y' do it?"</p>
+
+<p>Milton showed his white teeth in a smile that was frankly derisive of
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, when I got over there I found young Conley's sorrel hitched to
+one post and Walt Brown's gray hitched to the other. I went in, but I
+didn't stay long; in fact, I didn't sit down. I was afraid those
+infernal apples would roll out o' my pockets. I was afraid they'd find
+out I brought 'em over there for Miss Cole, like the darn fool I was."</p>
+
+<p>They both laughed heartily. Milton was always as severe upon himself as
+upon any one else.</p>
+
+<p>"That's tough," said Ben, "but climb in, and let's go to Sunday-school."</p>
+
+<p>Milton got in, and they ate the apples as they rode along.</p>
+
+<p>The Grove schoolhouse was the largest in the township, and was the only
+one with a touch of redeeming grace. It was in a lovely spot; great oaks
+stood all about, and back of it the woods grew thick, and a clear creek
+gurgled over its limestone bed not far away.</p>
+
+<p>To Ben and Milton there was a wondrous charm about the Grove
+schoolhouse. It was the one place where the boys and girls met in
+garments disassociated from toil. Sundays in summer, and on winter
+nights at lyceums or protracted meetings, the boys came to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span> see the
+girls in their bright dresses, with their clear and (so it seemed)
+scornful bright eyes.</p>
+
+<p>All through the service Ben sat where he could see Grace by turning his
+head, but he had not the courage to do so. Once or twice he caught a
+glimpse of the curve of her cheek and the delicate lines of her ear, and
+a suffocating throb came into his throat.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to ask her to go with him down to Cedarville to the Methodist
+camp-meeting, but he knew it was impossible. He could not even say "good
+day" when she took pains to pass near him after church. He nodded like a
+great idiot, all ease and dignity lost, his throat too dry and hot to
+utter a sound.</p>
+
+<p>He cursed his shyness as he went out after his horse. He saw her picking
+her dainty way up the road with Conrad Sieger walking by her side. What
+made it worse for Ben was a dim feeling that she liked him, and would go
+with him if he had the courage to ask her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Ben," said Milton, "it's settled, we go to Rock River to-night to
+the camp-meeting. Did you ask Grace?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, she's going with Con. It's just my blasted luck."</p>
+
+<p>"That's too bad. Well, come with us. Take Maud."</p>
+
+<p>As he rode away Ben passed Grace on the road.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to the camp-meeting, Con?" asked Milton, in merry voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess so," said Conrad, a handsome, but slow-witted German.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As they went on Ben could have wept. His keener perception told him
+there was a look of appeal in Grace's upturned eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He made a poor companion at dinner, and poor plain Maud knew his mind
+was elsewhere. She was used to that and accepted it with a pathetic
+attempt to color it differently.</p>
+
+<p>They got away about five o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>Ben drove the team, driving took his mind off his weakness and failure;
+while Milton in the seclusion of the back seat of the carryall was happy
+with Amelia Turner.</p>
+
+<p>It was growing dark as they entered upon the curving road along the
+river which was a relief from the rectangular and sun-smitten roads of
+the prairie. They lingered under the great oaks and elms which shaded
+them. It would have been perfect Ben thought, if Grace had been beside
+him in Maud's place.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered how he should manage to speak to Grace. There was a time
+when it seemed easier. Now the consciousness of his love made the
+simplest question seem like the great question of all.</p>
+
+<p>Other teams were on the road, some returning, some going. A camp-meeting
+had come to be an annual amusement, like a circus, and young people from
+all over the country drove down on Sundays, as if to some celebration
+with fireworks.</p>
+
+<p>"There's the lane," said Milton. "See that team goin' in?"</p>
+
+<p>Ben pulled up and they looked at it doubtfully. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span> looked dangerously
+miry. It was quite dark now and Ben said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That's a scaly piece of road."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right. Hark!"</p>
+
+<p>As they listened they could hear the voice of the exhorter nearly a mile
+away. It pushed across the cool spaces with a wild and savage sound. The
+young people thrilled with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Insects were singing in the grass. Frogs with deepening chorus seemed to
+announce the coming of night, and above these peaceful sounds came the
+wild shouts of the far-off preacher, echoing through the cool green
+arches of the splendid grove.</p>
+
+<p>The girls became silent, as the voice grew louder.</p>
+
+<p>Lights appeared ahead, and the road led up a slight hill to a gate. Ben
+drove on under a grove of oaks, past dimly lighted tents, whose open
+flaps showed tumbled beds and tables laden with crockery. Heavy women
+were moving about inside, their shadows showing against the tent walls
+like figures in a pantomime.</p>
+
+<p>The young people alighted in curious silence. As they stood a moment,
+tying the team, the preacher lifted his voice in a brazen, clanging,
+monotonous reiteration of worn phrases.</p>
+
+<p>"Come to the <i>Lord</i>! Come <i>now</i>! Come to the <i>light</i>! Jesus will give
+it! <i>Now</i> is the appointed time,&mdash;come to the <i>light</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>From a tent near by arose the groaning, gasping, gurgling scream of a
+woman in mortal agony.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"O my God!"</p>
+
+<p>It was charged with the most piercing distress. It cut to the heart's
+palpitating centre like a poniard thrust. It had murder and outrage in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The girls clutched Ben and Milton. "Oh, let's go home!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, let's go and see what it all is."</p>
+
+<p>The girls hung close to the arms of the young men and they went down to
+the tent and looked in.</p>
+
+<p>It was filled with a motley throng of people, most of them seated on
+circling benches. A fringe of careless or scoffing onlookers stood back
+against the tent wall. Many of them were strangers to Ben.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally a Norwegian farm-hand, or a bevy of young people from some
+near district, lifted the flap and entered with curious or laughing or
+insolent faces.</p>
+
+<p>The tent was lighted dimly by kerosene lamps, hung in brackets against
+the poles, and by stable lanterns set here and there upon the benches.</p>
+
+<p>Ben and Milton ushered the girls in and seated them a little way back.
+The girls smiled, but only faintly. The undertone of women's cries moved
+them in spite of their scorn of it all.</p>
+
+<p>"What cursed foolishness!" said Ben to Milton.</p>
+
+<p>Milton smiled, but did not reply. He only nodded toward the exhorter, a
+man with a puffy jumble of features and the form of a gladiator, who was
+uttering wild and explosive phrases.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my friends! I bless the Lord for the SHALL in the word. You SHALL
+get light. You SHALL<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span> be saved. Oh, the SHALL in the word! You SHALL be
+redeemed!"</p>
+
+<p>As he grew more excited, his hoarse voice rose in furious screams, as if
+he were defying hell's legions. Foam lay on his lips and flew from his
+mouth. At every repetition of the word "shall" he struck the desk a
+resounding blow with his great palm.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a hard hitter," said Milton.</p>
+
+<p>At length he leaped, apparently in uncontrollable excitement, upon the
+mourners' bench, and ran up and down close to the listening, moaning
+audience. He walked with a furious rhythmic, stamping action, like a
+Sioux in the war dance. Wild cries burst from his audience, antiphonal
+with his own.</p>
+
+<p>"He 'SHALL' send light!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Send Thy arrows, O Lord.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"O God, come!"</p>
+
+<p>"He 'SHALL' keep His word!"</p>
+
+<p>One old negro woman, fat, powerful, and gloomy, suddenly arose and
+uttered a scream that had the dignity and savagery of a mountain lion's
+cry. It rang far out into the night.</p>
+
+<p>The exhorter continued his mad, furious, thumping, barbaric walk.</p>
+
+<p>Behind him a row of other exhorters sat, a relay ready to leap to his
+aid. They urged on the tumult with wild cries.</p>
+
+<p>"A-men, brother."</p>
+
+<p>"YES, brother, YES!" clapping their hands in rhythm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The exhorter redoubled his fury. He was like a jaded actor rising at
+applause, carried out of his self-command.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the obscure tumult of faces and tossing hands there came at last
+certain recognizable features. The people were mainly farming folks of
+the more ignorant sort, rude in dress and bearing, hard and bent with
+toil. They were recognizably of a class subject to these low forms of
+religious excitement which were once well-nigh universal.</p>
+
+<p>The outer fringe continued to smile scornfully and to jest, yet they
+were awed, in a way, by this suddenly revealed deep of barbaric emotion.</p>
+
+<p>The girls were appalled by the increasing clangor. Milton was amused,
+but Ben grew bitter. Something strong came out in him, too. His lip
+curled in disgust.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, out of the level space of bowed shoulders, tossing hands, and
+frenzied, upturned faces, a young girl leaped erect. She was strong and
+handsome, powerful in the waist and shoulders. Her hair was braided like
+a child's, and fell down her back in a single strand. Her head was
+girlish, but her face looked old and drawn and tortured.</p>
+
+<p>She moaned pitifully; she clapped her hands with wild gestures, ending
+in a quivering motion. The action grew to lightning-like quickness. Her
+head seemed to set in its socket. Her whole body stiffened. Gasping
+moans came from her clenched teeth as she fell to the ground and rolled
+under the seats, wallowing in the muddy straw and beating her feet upon
+the ground like a dying partridge.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The people crowded about her, but the preacher, roared above the
+tumult:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Si' down! Never mind that party. She's all right; she's in the hands of
+the Lord!"</p>
+
+<p>The people settled into their seats, and the wild tumult went on again.
+Ben rose to go over where the girl was and the others followed.</p>
+
+<p>A young man seated by the struggling sinner held her hand and fanned her
+with his hat, while some girl friends, scared and sobbing, kept the
+tossing limbs covered. She rolled from side to side restlessly,
+thrusting forth her tongue as if her throat were dry. She looked like a
+dying animal.</p>
+
+<p>Maud clung to Milton.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, can't something be done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her soul is burdened for <i>you</i>!" cried a wild old woman to the
+impassive youth who clung to the frenzied girl's hand.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later, as the demoniacal chorus of yells, songs, incantations,
+shrieks, groans, and prayers swelled high, a farmer's wife on the left
+uttered a hoarse cry and stiffened and fell backward upon the ground.
+She rolled her head from side to side. Her eyes turned in; her lips wore
+a maniac's laugh, and her troubled brow made her look like the death
+mask of a tortured murderer, the hell horror frozen on it.</p>
+
+<p>She sank at last into a hideous calm, with her strained and stiffened
+hands pointing weirdly up. She was like marble. She did not move a
+hair's breadth during the next two hours.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Over to the left a young man leaped to his feet with a scream:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Jesus, <i>Jesus</i>, <span class="smcap">Jesus</span>!"</p>
+
+<p>The great negress caught him in her arms as he fell, and laid him down,
+then leaped up and down, shrieking:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"O Jesus, come. Come, God's Lamb!"</p>
+
+<p>Around her a dozen women took up her cry. Most of them had no voices.
+Their horrifying screams had become hoarse hisses, yet still they
+strove. Scores of voices were mixed in the pandemonium of prayer.</p>
+
+<p>All order was lost. Three of the preachers now stood shouting before the
+mourners' bench, two were in the aisles.</p>
+
+<p>One came down the aisle toward the girl with the braided hair. As he
+came he prayed. Foam was on his lips, but his eyes were cool and
+calculating; they betrayed him.</p>
+
+<p>As he came he fixed his gaze upon a woman seated near the prostrate
+girl, and with a horrible outcry the victim leaped into the air and
+stiffened as if smitten with epilepsy. She fell against some scared
+boys, who let her fall, striking her head against the seats. She too
+rolled down upon the straw and lay beside her sister. Both had round,
+pretty, but childish faces.</p>
+
+<p>Milton's party retreated. They smiled no more; they were
+horror-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>Squads of "workers" now moved down the aisles; in one they surrounded
+two people, a tall, fair girl and a young man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's Grace!" exclaimed Maud.</p>
+
+<p>Ben turned quickly, "Where?"</p>
+
+<p>They pointed her out.</p>
+
+<p>"She can't get away. See! Oh, boys, don't let them&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Ben pushed his way toward her, his face set in a fierce frown, bitter,
+desperate.</p>
+
+<p>Grace stood silently beside one of the elders; a woman exhorter stood
+before her. Conrad, overawed, had fallen into a trembling stupor; Grace
+was defenseless.</p>
+
+<p>The elder's hand hovered over her head, on her face a deadly pallor had
+settled, her eyes were cast down, she breathed painfully and trembled
+from head to foot. She was about to fall, when Ben set his eyes upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out o' my way," he shouted, shouldering up the aisle. His words had
+oaths, his fists were like mauls.</p>
+
+<p>"Grace!" he cried, and she heard. She looked up and saw him coming; the
+red flamed over her face.</p>
+
+<p>The power of the preacher was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go," she cried, trying to wring herself loose.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going to hell. You are lost if you do not&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"God damn ye. Get out o' way. I'll kill ye if you lay a hand on her."</p>
+
+<p>With one thrust Ben cleared her tormentor from her arm. For one moment
+the wordless young man looked into her eyes; then she staggered toward
+him. He faced the preacher.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'd smash hell out o' you for a leather cent," he said. In the tumult
+his words were lost, but the look on his face was enough. The exhorter
+fell away.</p>
+
+<p>Their retreat was unnoted in the tumult. At the door they looked back
+for an instant at the scene.</p>
+
+<p>At the mourners' bench were six victims in all stages of induced
+catalepsy, one man with head flung back, one with his hands pointing,
+fixed in furious appeal. Another with bowed head was being worked upon
+by a brother of hypnotic appeal. He struck with downward, positive
+gestures on either side of the victim's head.</p>
+
+<p>Over another the negress towered, screaming with panther-like
+ferocity:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Git under de blood! Git under de blood!"</p>
+
+<p>As she screamed she struck down at the mourner with her clenched fist.
+On her face was the grin of a wildcat.</p>
+
+<p>Out under the cool, lofty oaks, the outcry was more inexpressibly
+hellish, because overhead the wind rustled the sweet green leaves,
+crickets were chirping, and the scent of flowering fields of buckwheat
+was in the air.</p>
+
+<p>Grace grew calmer, but she clung with strange weakness to her lover. She
+felt he had saved her from something, she did not know what, but it was
+something terrifying to look back upon.</p>
+
+<p>Conrad was forgotten&mdash;set aside. Ben bundled him into the carryall and
+took his place with Grace. He no longer hesitated, argued, or
+apologized. He had claimed his own.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the long ride home, Grace lay within his right arm, and the young
+man's tongue was unchained. He talked, and his spirit grew tender and
+manly and husbandlike, as he told his plans and his hopes. Hell was very
+far away, and Heaven was very near.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="LUCRETIA_BURNS" id="LUCRETIA_BURNS"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span>
+<h2>LUCRETIA BURNS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of early
+girlhood, and now she was middle-aged, distorted with work and
+child-bearing, and looking faded and worn as one of the boulders that
+lay beside the pasture fence near where she sat milking a large white
+cow.</p>
+
+<p>She had no shawl or hat and no shoes, for it was still muddy in the
+little yard, where the cattle stood patiently fighting the flies and
+mosquitoes swarming into their skins, already wet with blood. The
+evening was oppressive with its heat, and a ring of just-seen
+thunderheads gave premonitions of an approaching storm.</p>
+
+<p>She rose from the cow's side at last, and, taking her pails of foaming
+milk, staggered toward the gate. The two pails hung from her lean arms,
+her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico
+dress showed her tired and swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed
+mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair.</p>
+
+<p>The children were quarrelling at the well, and the sound of blows could
+be heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and little
+turkeys, lost in a tangle of grass, were piping plaintively.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sun just setting struck through a long, low rift, like a boy peeping
+beneath the eaves of a huge roof. Its light brought out Lucretia's face
+as she leaned her sallow forehead on the top bar of the gate and looked
+toward the west.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pitifully worn, almost tragic face&mdash;long, thin, sallow,
+hollow-eyed. The mouth had long since lost the power to shape itself
+into a kiss, and had a droop at the corners which seemed to announce a
+breaking-down at any moment into a despairing wail. The collarless neck
+and sharp shoulders showed painfully.</p>
+
+<p>She felt vaguely that the night was beautiful. The setting sun, the
+noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe&mdash;all in some way
+called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood
+to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes grew round, deep, and wistful
+as she saw the illimitable craggy clouds grow crimson, roll slowly up,
+and fire at the top. A childish scream recalled her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my soul!" she half groaned, half swore, as she lifted her milk and
+hurried to the well. Arriving there, she cuffed the children right and
+left with all her remaining strength, saying in justification:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"My soul! can't you&mdash;you young'uns, give me a minute's peace? Land
+knows, I'm almost gone up; washin', an' milkin' six cows, and tendin'
+you, and cookin' f'r <i>him</i>, ought 'o be enough f'r one day! Sadie, you
+let him drink now 'r I'll slap your head off, you hateful thing! Why
+can't you behave, when you know I'm jest about dead?" She was weeping
+now, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span> nervous weakness. "Where's y'r pa?" she asked after a moment,
+wiping her eyes with her apron.</p>
+
+<p>One of the group, the one cuffed last, sniffed out, in rage and grief:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He's in the corn-field; where'd ye s'pose he was?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good land! why don't the man work all night? Sile, you put that dipper
+in that milk agin, an' I'll whack you till your head'll swim! Sadie, le'
+go Pet, an' go 'n get them turkeys out of the grass 'fore it gits dark!
+Bob, you go tell y'r dad if he wants the rest o' them cows milked he's
+got 'o do it himself. I jest can't, and what's more, I <i>won't</i>," she
+ended, rebelliously.</p>
+
+<p>Having strained the milk and fed the children, she took some skimmed
+milk from the cans and started to feed the calves bawling strenuously
+behind the barn. The eager and unruly brutes pushed and struggled to get
+into the pails all at once, and in consequence spilt nearly all of the
+milk on the ground. This was the last trial; the woman fell down on the
+damp grass and moaned and sobbed like a crazed thing. The children came
+to seek her and stood around like little partridges, looking at her in
+scared silence, till at last the little one began to wail. Then the
+mother rose wearily to her feet, and walked slowly back toward the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>She heard Burns threshing his team at the well, with the sound of oaths.
+He was tired, hungry, and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate to
+care. His poor, overworked team did not move quickly enough for him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>
+and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyes
+gleamed wrathfully from his dust-laid face.</p>
+
+<p>"Supper ready?" he growled.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, two hours ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't help it!" he said, understanding her reproach. "That
+devilish corn is gettin' too tall to plough again, and I've got 'o go
+through it to-morrow or not at all. Cows milked?"</p>
+
+<p>"Part of 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"How many left?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three."</p>
+
+<p>"Hell! Which three?"</p>
+
+<p>"Spot, and Brin, and Cherry."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Of</i> course, left the three worst ones. I'll be damned if I milk a cow
+to-night. I don't see why you play out jest the nights I need ye most."
+Here he kicked a child out of the way. "Git out o' that! Hain't you got
+no sense? I'll learn ye&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop that, Sim Burns," cried the woman, snatching up the child. "You're
+a reg'lar ol' hyeny,&mdash;that's what you are," she added defiantly, roused
+at last from her lethargy.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a&mdash;beauty, that's what <i>you</i> are," he said, pitilessly. "Keep
+your brats out f'um under my feet." And he strode off to the barn after
+his team, leaving her with a fierce hate in her heart. She heard him
+yelling at his team in their stalls: "Git around there, damn yeh."</p>
+
+<p>The children had had their supper; so she took them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span> to bed. She was
+unusually tender to them, for she wanted to make up in some way for her
+previous harshness. The ferocity of her husband had shown up her own
+petulant temper hideously, and she sat and sobbed in the darkness a long
+time beside the cradle where little Pet slept.</p>
+
+<p>She heard Burns come growling in and tramp about, but she did not rise.
+The supper was on the table; he could wait on himself. There was an
+awful feeling at her heart as she sat there and the house grew quiet.
+She thought of suicide in a vague way; of somehow taking her children in
+her arms and sinking into a lake somewhere, where she would never more
+be troubled, where she could sleep forever, without toil or hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Then she thought of the little turkeys wandering in the grass, of the
+children sleeping at last, of the quiet, wonderful stars. Then she
+thought of the cows left unmilked, and listened to them stirring
+uneasily in the yard. She rose, at last, and stole forth. She could not
+rid herself of the thought that they would suffer. She knew what the
+dull ache in the full breasts of a mother was, and she could not let
+them stand at the bars all night moaning for relief.</p>
+
+<p>The mosquitoes had gone, but the frogs and katydids still sang, while
+over in the west Venus shone. She was a long time milking the cows; her
+hands were so tired she had often to stop and rest them, while the tears
+fell unheeded into the pail. She saw and felt little of the external as
+she sat there. She thought in vague retrospect of how sweet it seemed
+the first time Sim came to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span> see her; of the many rides to town with him
+when he was an accepted lover; of the few things he had given her&mdash;a
+coral breastpin and a ring.</p>
+
+<p>She felt no shame at her present miserable appearance; she was past
+personal pride. She hardly felt as if the tall, strong girl, attractive
+with health and hope, could be the same soul as the woman who now sat in
+utter despair listening to the heavy breathing of the happy cows,
+grateful for the relief from their burden of milk.</p>
+
+<p>She contrasted her lot with that of two or three women that she knew
+(not a very high standard), who kept hired help, and who had fine houses
+of four or five rooms. Even the neighbors were better off than she, for
+they didn't have such quarrels. But she wasn't to blame&mdash;Sim
+didn't&mdash;Then her mind changed to a dull resentment against "things."
+Everything seemed against her.</p>
+
+<p>She rose at last and carried her second load of milk to the well,
+strained it, washed out the pails, and, after bathing her tired feet in
+a tub that stood there, she put on a pair of horrible shoes, without
+stockings, and crept stealthily into the house. Sim did not hear her as
+she slipped up the stairs to the little low unfinished chamber beside
+her oldest children. She could not bear to sleep near <i>him</i> that
+night,&mdash;she wanted a chance to sob herself to quiet.</p>
+
+<p>As for Sim, he was a little disturbed, but would as soon have cut off
+his head as acknowledged himself in the wrong. As he went to bed, and
+found her still away, he yelled up the stairway:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Say, old woman, ain't ye comin' to bed?" Upon receiving no answer he
+rolled his aching body into the creaking bed. "Do as y' damn please
+about it. If y' want to sulk y' can." And in such wise the family grew
+quiet in sleep, while the moist, warm air pulsed with the ceaseless
+chime of the crickets.</p>
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>When Sim Burns woke the next morning he felt a sharper twinge of
+remorse. It was not a broad or well-defined feeling&mdash;just a sense that
+he had been unduly irritable, not that on the whole he was not in the
+right. Little Pet lay with the warm June sunshine filling his baby eyes,
+curiously content in striking at flies that buzzed around his little
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>The man thrust his dirty, naked feet into his huge boots, and, without
+washing his face or combing his hair, went out to the barn to do his
+chores.</p>
+
+<p>He was a type of the average prairie farmer, and his whole surrounding
+was typical of the time. He had a quarter-section of fine level land,
+bought with incredible toil, but his house was a little box-like
+structure, costing, perhaps, five hundred dollars. It had three rooms
+and the ever-present summer kitchen at the back. It was unpainted and
+had no touch of beauty,&mdash;a mere box.</p>
+
+<p>His stable was built of slabs and banked and covered with straw. It
+looked like a den, was low and long, and had but one door in the end.
+The cow-yard held ten or fifteen cattle of various kinds, while a few
+calves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span> were bawling from a pen near by. Behind the barn, on the west
+and north, was a fringe of willows forming a "wind-break." A few broken
+and discouraged fruit trees, standing here and there among the weeds,
+formed the garden. In short, he was spoken of by his neighbors as "a
+hard-working cuss, and tol'ably well fixed."</p>
+
+<p>No grace had come or ever could come into his life. Back of him were
+generations of men like himself, whose main business had been to work
+hard, live miserably, and beget children to take their places when they
+died.</p>
+
+<p>His courtship had been delayed so long on account of poverty that it
+brought little of humanizing emotion into his life. He never mentioned
+his love-life now, or if he did, it was only to sneer obscenely at it.
+He had long since ceased to kiss his wife or even speak kindly to her.
+There was no longer any sanctity to life or love. He chewed tobacco and
+toiled on from year to year without any very clearly defined idea of the
+future. His life was mainly regulated from without.</p>
+
+<p>He was tall, dark, and strong, in a flat-chested, slouching sort of way,
+and had grown neglectful of even decency in his dress. He wore the
+American farmer's customary outfit of rough brown pants, hickory shirt,
+and greasy wool hat. It differed from his neighbors' mainly in being a
+little dirtier and more ragged. His grimy hands were broad and strong as
+the clutch of a bear, and he was a "terrible feller to turn off work,"
+as Councill said. "I'd ruther have Sim Burns work for me one day than
+some men three. He's a linger." He worked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span> with unusual speed this
+morning, and ended by milking all the cows himself as a sort of savage
+penance for his misdeeds the previous evening, muttering in
+self-defence:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Seems 's if ever' cussid thing piles on to me at once. That corn, the
+road-tax, and hayin' comin' on, and now <i>she</i> gits her back up&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>When he went back to the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in the
+horse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready, but his
+wife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around the
+uninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap ware and with boiled
+potatoes and fried salt pork as the principal dishes.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a threatening note in his voice, as he
+sat down by the table.</p>
+
+<p>"She's in the bedroom."</p>
+
+<p>He rose and pushed open the door. The mother sat with the babe in her
+lap, looking out of the window down across the superb field of timothy,
+moving like a lake of purple water. She did not look around. She only
+grew rigid. Her thin neck throbbed with the pulsing of blood to her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"What's got into you <i>now</i>?" he said, brutally. "Don't be a fool. Come
+out and eat breakfast with me, an' take care o' y'r young ones."</p>
+
+<p>She neither moved nor made a sound. With an oath he turned on his heel and
+went out to the table. Eating his breakfast in his usual wolfish fashion,
+he went out into the hot sun with his team and riding-plough, not a
+little disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span> He
+ploughed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heat
+and dust. The air was full of tempestuous threats, still and sultry, one
+of those days when work is a punishment. When he came in at noon he
+found things the same&mdash;dinner on the table, but his wife out in the
+garden with the youngest child.</p>
+
+<p>"I c'n stand it as long as <i>she</i> can," he said to himself, in the
+hearing of the children, as he pushed back from the table and went back
+to work.</p>
+
+<p>When he had finished the field of corn it was after sundown, and he came
+up to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and his
+neck aching with the work of looking down all day at the corn-rows. His
+mood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of the
+wide, green field had been lost upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if she's milked them cows," he muttered to himself. He gave a
+sigh of relief to find she had. But she had done so not for his sake,
+but for the sake of the poor, patient dumb brutes.</p>
+
+<p>When he went to the bedroom after supper, he found that the cradle and
+his wife's few little boxes and parcels&mdash;poor, pathetic properties!&mdash;had
+been removed to the garret, which they called a chamber, and he knew he
+was to sleep alone again.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll git over it, I guess." He was very tired, but he didn't feel
+quite comfortable enough to sleep. The air was oppressive. His shirt,
+wet in places, and stiff with dust in other places, oppressed him more
+than usual; so he rose and removed it, getting a clean one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span> out of a
+drawer. This was an unusual thing for him, for he usually slept in the
+same shirt which he wore in his day's work; but it was Saturday night,
+and he felt justified in the extravagance.</p>
+
+<hr class="minor" />
+
+<p>In the meanwhile poor Lucretia was brooding over her life in a most
+dangerous fashion. All she had done and suffered for Simeon Burns came
+back to her till she wondered how she had endured it all. All day long
+in the midst of the glorious summer landscape she brooded.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate him," she thought, with a fierce blazing up through the murk of
+her musing. "I hate t' live. But they ain't no hope. I'm tied down. I
+can't leave the children, and I ain't got no money. I couldn't make a
+living out in the world. I ain't never seen anything an' don't know
+anything."</p>
+
+<p>She was too simple and too unknowing to speculate on the loss of her
+beauty, which would have brought her competency once&mdash;if sold in the
+right market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenly
+thinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horse
+which Sim had bought once, years before, and put to the plough when it
+was too old and weak to work. She could see her again as in a vision,
+that poor old mare, with sad head drooping, toiling, toiling, till at
+last she could no longer move, and lying down under the harness in the
+furrow, groaned under the whip,&mdash;and died.</p>
+
+<p>Then she wondered if her own numbness and despair meant death, and she
+held her breath to think harder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span> upon it. She concluded at last, grimly,
+that she didn't care&mdash;only for the children.</p>
+
+<p>The air was frightfully close in the little attic, and she heard the low
+mutter of the rising storm in the west. She forgot her troubles a
+little, listening to the far-off gigantic footsteps of the tempest.</p>
+
+<p><i>Boom</i>, <i>boom</i>, <i>boom</i>, it broke nearer and nearer, as if a vast cordon
+of cannon was being drawn around the horizon. Yet she was conscious only
+of pleasure. She had no fear. At last came the sweep of cool, fragrant
+storm-wind, a short and sudden dash of rain, and then in the cool, sweet
+hush which followed, the worn and weary woman fell into a deep sleep.</p>
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>When she woke the younger children were playing about on the floor in
+their night-clothes, and little Pet was sitting in a square of sunshine,
+intent on one of his shoes. He was too young to know how poor and
+squalid his surroundings were,&mdash;the patch of sunshine flung on the floor
+glorified it all. He&mdash;little animal&mdash;was happy.</p>
+
+<p>The poor of the Western prairies lie almost as unhealthily close
+together as do the poor of the city tenements. In the small hut of the
+peasant there is as little chance to escape close and tainting contact
+as in the coops and dens of the North End of proud Boston. In the midst
+of oceans of land, floods of sunshine and gulfs of verdure, the farmer
+lives in two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span> or three small rooms. Poverty's eternal cordon is ever
+round the poor.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma, why didn't you sleep with Pap last night?" asked Bob, the
+seven-year-old, when he saw she was awake at last. She flushed a dull
+red.</p>
+
+<p>"You hush, will yeh? Because&mdash;I&mdash;it was too warm&mdash;and there was a storm
+comin'. You never mind askin' such questions. Is he gone out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yup. I heerd him callin' the pigs. It's Sunday, ain't it, ma?"</p>
+
+<p>The fact seemed to startle her.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, so it is! Wal! Now, Sadie, you jump up an' dress quick 's y'
+can, an' Bob an' Sile, you run down an' bring s'm' water," she
+commanded, in nervous haste, beginning to dress. In the middle of the
+room there was scarce space to stand beneath the rafters.</p>
+
+<p>When Sim came in for his breakfast he found it on the table, but his
+wife was absent.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a little less of the growl in his
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"She's upstairs with Pet."</p>
+
+<p>The man ate his breakfast in dead silence, till at last Bob ventured to
+say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What makes ma ac' so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up!" was the brutal reply. The children began to take sides with
+the mother&mdash;all but the oldest girl, who was ten years old. To her the
+father turned now for certain things to be done, treating her in his
+rough fashion as a housekeeper, and the girl felt flattered and docile
+accordingly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They were pitiably clad; like many farm-children, indeed, they could
+hardly be said to be clad at all. Sadie had on but two garments, a sort
+of undershirt of cotton and a faded calico dress, out of which her bare,
+yellow little legs protruded, lamentably dirty and covered with
+scratches.</p>
+
+<p>The boys also had two garments, a hickory shirt and a pair of pants like
+their father's, made out of brown denim by the mother's never-resting
+hands&mdash;hands that in sleep still sewed, and skimmed, and baked, and
+churned. The boys had gone to bed without washing their feet, which now
+looked like toads, calloused, brown, and chapped.</p>
+
+<p>Part of this the mother saw with her dull eyes as she came down, after
+seeing the departure of Sim up the road with the cows. It was a
+beautiful Sunday morning, and the woman might have sung like a bird if
+men had been as kind to her as Nature. But she looked dully out upon the
+seas of ripe grasses, tangled and flashing with dew, out of which the
+bobolinks and larks sprang. The glorious winds brought her no melody, no
+perfume, no respite from toil and care.</p>
+
+<p>She thought of the children she saw in the town,&mdash;children of the
+merchant and banker, clean as little dolls, the boys in knickerbocker
+suits, the girls in dainty white dresses,&mdash;and a vengeful bitterness
+sprang up in her heart. She soon put the dishes away, but felt too tired
+and listless to do more.</p>
+
+<p>"Taw-bay-wies! Pet want ta-aw-bay-wies!" cried the little one, tugging
+at her dress.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Listlessly, mechanically she took him in her arms, and went out into the
+garden, which was fragrant and sweet with dew and sun. After picking
+some berries for him, she sat down on the grass under the row of
+cottonwoods, and sank into a kind of lethargy. A kingbird chattered and
+shrieked overhead, the grasshoppers buzzed in the grasses, strange
+insects with ventriloquistic voices sang all about her&mdash;she could not
+tell where.</p>
+
+<p>"Ma, can't I put on my clean dress?" insisted Sadie.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care," said the brooding woman, darkly. "Leave me alone."</p>
+
+<p>Oh, if she could only lie here forever, escaping all pain and weariness!
+The wind sang in her ears; the great clouds, beautiful as heavenly
+ships, floated far above in the vast, dazzling deeps of blue sky; the
+birds rustled and chirped around her; leaping insects buzzed and
+clattered in the grass and in the vines and bushes. The goodness and
+glory of God was in the very air, the bitterness and oppression of man
+in every line of her face.</p>
+
+<p>But her quiet was broken by Sadie, who came leaping like a fawn down
+through the grass.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ma, Aunt Maria and Uncle William are coming. They've jest turned
+in."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care if they be!" she answered in the same dully irritated way.
+"What're they comin' here to-day for, I wan' to know." She stayed there
+immovably, till Mrs. Councill came down to see her, piloted by two or
+three of the children. Mrs. Councill, a jolly, large-framed woman,
+smiled brightly, and greeted her in a loud, jovial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span> voice. She made the
+mistake of taking the whole matter lightly; her tone amounted to
+ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>"Sim says you've been having a tantrum, Creeshy. Don't know what for, he
+says."</p>
+
+<p>"He don't," said the wife, with a sullen flash in her eyes. "<i>He</i> don't
+know why! Well, then, you just tell him what I say. I've lived in hell
+long enough. I'm done. I've slaved here day in and day out f'r twelve
+years without pay,&mdash;not even a decent word. I've worked like no nigger
+ever worked 'r could work and live. I've given him all I had, 'r ever
+expect to have. I'm wore out. My strength is gone, my patience is gone.
+I'm done with it,&mdash;that's a <i>part</i> of what's the matter."</p>
+
+<p>"My sakes, Lucreeshy! You mustn't talk that way."</p>
+
+<p>"But I <i>will</i>" said the woman, as she supported herself on one palm and
+raised the other. "I've <i>got</i> to talk that way." She was ripe for an
+explosion like this. She seized upon it with eagerness. "They ain't no
+use o' livin' this way, anyway. I'd take poison if it wa'n't f'r the
+young ones."</p>
+
+<p>"Lucreeshy Burns!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I mean it."</p>
+
+<p>"Land sakes alive, I b'lieve you're goin' crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't wonder if I was. I've had enough t' drive an Indian crazy.
+Now you jest go off an' leave me 'lone. I ain't no mind to visit,&mdash;they
+ain't no way out of it' and I'm tired o' trying to <i>find</i> a way. Go off
+an' let me be."</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was so bitterly hopeless that the great, jolly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span> face of Mrs.
+Councill stiffened into a look of horror such as she had not known for
+years. The children, in two separate groups, could be heard rioting.
+Bees were humming around the clover in the grass, and the kingbird
+chattered ceaselessly from the Lombardy poplar tip. Both women felt all
+this peace and beauty of the morning dimly, and it disturbed Mrs.
+Councill because the other was so impassive under it all. At last, after
+a long and thoughtful pause, Mrs. Councill asked a question whose answer
+she knew would decide it all&mdash;asked it very kindly and softly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Creeshy, are you comin' in?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," was the short and sullenly decisive answer. Mrs. Councill knew
+that was the end, and so rose with a sigh, and went away.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal, good-by," she said, simply.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back, she saw Lucretia lying at length, with closed eyes and
+hollow cheeks. She seemed to be sleeping, half buried in the grass. She
+did not look up nor reply to her sister-in-law, whose life was one of
+toil and trouble also, but not so hard and helpless as Lucretia's. By
+contrast with most of her neighbors, she seemed comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"Sim Burns, what you ben doin' to that woman?" she burst out, as she
+waddled up to where the two men were sitting under a cottonwood tree,
+talking and whittling after the manner of farmers.</p>
+
+<p>"Nawthin' 's fur 's I know," answered Burns, not quite honestly, and
+looking uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't try t' git out of it like that, Sim Burns,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span> replied his
+sister. "That woman never got into that fit f'r <i>nawthin</i>'."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal, if you know more about it than I do, whadgy ask <i>me</i> fur?" he
+replied, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, tut!" put in Councill, "hold y'r horses! Don't git on y'r ear,
+children! Keep cool, and don't spile y'r shirts. Most likely you're all
+t' blame. Keep cool an' swear less."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal, I'll bet Sim's more to blame than she is. Why, they ain't a
+harder-workin' woman in the hull State of Ioway than she is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Except Marm Councill."</p>
+
+<p>"Except nobody. Look at her, jest skin and bones."</p>
+
+<p>Councill chuckled in his vast way. "That's so, mother; measured in that
+way, she leads over you. You git fat on it."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled a little, her indignation oozing away. She never "<i>could</i>
+stay mad," her children were accustomed to tell her. Burns refused to
+talk any more about the matter, and the visitors gave it up, and got out
+their team and started for home, Mrs. Councill firing this parting
+shot:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The best thing you can do to-day is t' let her alone. Mebbe the
+children 'll bring her round ag'in. If she does come round, you see 't
+you treat her a little more 's y' did when you was a-courtin' her."</p>
+
+<p>"This way," roared Councill, putting his arm around his wife's waist.
+She boxed his ears, while he guffawed and clucked at his team.</p>
+
+<p>Burns took a measure of salt and went out into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span> pasture to salt the
+cows. On the sunlit slope of the field, where the cattle came running
+and bawling to meet him, he threw down the salt in handfuls, and then
+lay down to watch them as they eagerly licked it up, even gnawing a bare
+spot in the sod in their eagerness to get it all.</p>
+
+<p>Burns was not a drinking man; he was hard-working, frugal; in fact, he
+had no extravagances except his tobacco. His clothes he wore until they
+all but dropped from him; and he worked in rain and mud, as well as dust
+and sun. It was this suffering and toiling all to no purpose that made
+him sour and irritable. He didn't see why he should have so little after
+so much hard work.</p>
+
+<p>He was puzzled to account for it all. His mind&mdash;the average mind&mdash;was
+weary with trying to solve an insoluble problem. His neighbors, who had
+got along a little better than himself, were free with advice and
+suggestion as to the cause of his persistent poverty.</p>
+
+<p>Old man Bacon, the hardest-working man in the county, laid it to Burns's
+lack of management. Jim Butler, who owned a dozen farms (which he had
+taken on mortgages), and who had got rich by buying land at government
+price and holding for a rise, laid all such cases as Burns's to "lack of
+enterprise, foresight."</p>
+
+<p>But the larger number, feeling themselves in the same boat with Burns,
+said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I d' know. Seems as if things get worse an' worse. Corn an' wheat
+gittin' cheaper 'n' cheaper. Machinery eatin' up profits&mdash;got to <i>have</i>
+machinery to harvest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span> the cheap grain, an' then the machinery eats up
+profits. Taxes goin' up. Devil to pay all round; I d' know what in
+thunder <i>is</i> the matter."</p>
+
+<p>The Democrats said protection was killing the farmers; the Republicans
+said no. The Grangers growled about the middle-men; the Greenbackers
+said there wasn't circulating medium enough, and, in the midst of it
+all, hard-working, discouraged farmers, like Simeon Burns, worked on,
+unable to find out what really was the matter.</p>
+
+<p>And there, on this beautiful Sabbath morning, Sim sat and thought and
+thought, till he rose with an oath and gave it up.</p>
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>It was hot and brilliant again the next morning as Douglas Radbourn
+drove up the road with Lily Graham, the teacher of the school in the
+little white schoolhouse. It was blazing hot, even though not yet nine
+o'clock, and the young farmers ploughing beside the fence looked
+longingly and somewhat bitterly at Radbourn seated in a fine top-buggy
+beside a beautiful creature in lace and cambric.</p>
+
+<p>Very beautiful the town-bred "schoolma'am" looked to those grimy, sweaty
+fellows, superb fellows too, physically, with bare red arms and
+leather-colored faces. She was as if builded of the pink and white
+clouds soaring far up there in the morning sky. So cool, and sweet, and
+dainty.</p>
+
+<p>As she came in sight, their dusty and sweaty shirts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span> grew biting as the
+poisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grew
+distressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chapped
+and swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility of
+some time in the far future standing a chance of having an introduction
+to her, caused them to wipe their palms on their trousers' legs
+stealthily.</p>
+
+<p>Lycurgus Banks swore when he saw Radbourn: "That cuss thinks he's ol'
+hell this morning. He don't earn his living. But he's just the kind of
+cuss to get holt of all the purty girls."</p>
+
+<p>Others gazed with simple, sad wistfulness upon the slender figure, pale,
+sweet face, and dark eyes of the young girl, feeling that to have talk
+with such a fairylike creature was a happiness too great to ever be
+their lot. And when she had passed they went back to work with a sigh
+and feeling of loss.</p>
+
+<p>As for Lily, she felt a pang of pity for these people. She looked at
+this peculiar form of poverty and hardship much as the fragile, tender
+girl of the city looks upon the men laying a gas-main in the streets.
+She felt, sympathetically, the heat and grime, and, though but the
+faintest idea of what it meant to wear such clothing came to her, she
+shuddered. Her eyes had been opened to these things by Radbourn, a
+classmate at the Seminary.</p>
+
+<p>The young fellow knew that Lily was in love with him, and made distinct
+effort to keep the talk upon impersonal subjects. He liked her very
+much, probably because she listened so well.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Poor fellows," sighed Lily, almost unconsciously, "I hate to see them
+working there in the dirt and hot sun. It seems a hopeless sort of life,
+doesn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but this is the most beautiful part of the year," said Radbourn.
+"Think of them in the mud, in the sleet; think of them husking corn in
+the snow, a bitter wind blowing; think of them a month later in the
+harvest; think of them imprisoned here in winter!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's dreadful! But I never felt it so keenly before. You have
+opened my eyes to it. Of course, I've been on a farm but not to live
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Writers and orators have lied so long about 'the idyllic' in farm life,
+and said so much about the 'independent American farmer,' that he
+himself has remained blind to the fact that he's one of the
+hardest-working and poorest-paid men in America. See the houses they
+live in,&mdash;hovels."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, I know," said Lily; a look of deeper pain swept over her
+face. "And the fate of the poor women; oh, the fate of the women!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's a matter of statistics," went on Radbourn, pitilessly, "that
+the wives of the American farmers fill our insane asylums. See what a
+life they lead, most of them; no music, no books. Seventeen hours a day
+in a couple of small rooms&mdash;dens. Now there is Sim Burns! What a
+travesty of a home! Yet there are a dozen just as bad in sight. He works
+like a fiend&mdash;so does his wife&mdash;and what is their reward? Simply a hole
+to hibernate in and to sleep and eat in in summer. A dreary present and
+a well-nigh hopeless future. No,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span> they have a future, if they knew it,
+and we must tell them."</p>
+
+<p>"I know Mrs. Burns," Lily said, after a pause; "she sends several
+children to my school. Poor, pathetic little things, half-clad and
+wistful-eyed. They make my heart ache; they are so hungry for love, and
+so quick to learn."</p>
+
+<p>As they passed the Burns farm, they looked for the wife, but she was not
+to be seen. The children had evidently gone up to the little white
+schoolhouse at the head of the lane. Radbourn let the reins fall slack
+as he talked on. He did not look at the girl; his eyebrows were drawn
+into a look of gloomy pain.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't so much the grime that I abhor, nor the labor that crooks
+their backs and makes their hands bludgeons. It's the horrible waste of
+life involved in it all. I don't believe God intended a man to be bent
+to plough-handles like that, but that isn't the worst of it. The worst
+of it is, these people live lives approaching automata. They become
+machines to serve others more lucky or more unscrupulous than
+themselves. What is the world of art, of music, of literature, to these
+poor devils,&mdash;to Sim Burns and his wife there, for example? Or even to
+the best of these farmers?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked away over the shimmering lake of yellow-green corn. A
+choking came into her throat. Her gloved hand trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"What is such a life worth? It's all very comfortable for us to say,
+'They don't feel it.' How do we know what they feel? What do we know of
+their capacity for enjoyment of art and music? They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span> never have leisure
+or opportunity. The master is very glad to be taught by preacher, and
+lawyer, and novelist, that his slaves are contented and never feel any
+longings for a higher life. These people live lives but little higher
+than their cattle&mdash;are <i>forced</i> to live so. Their hopes and aspirations
+are crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toil
+twists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the city
+laborer. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught to
+be content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there isn't
+any hereafter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't say that, please!" Lily cried.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't <i>know</i> that there is," he went on remorselessly, "and I do
+know that these people are being robbed of something more than money, of
+all that makes life worth living. The promise of milk and honey in
+Canaan is all very well, but I prefer to have mine here; then I'm sure
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>"What can we do?" murmured the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Do? Rouse these people for one thing; preach <i>discontent</i>, a noble
+discontent."</p>
+
+<p>"It will only make them unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it won't; not if you show them the way out. If it does, it's better
+to be unhappy striving for higher things, like a man, than to be content
+in a wallow like swine."</p>
+
+<p>"But what <i>is</i> the way out?"</p>
+
+<p>This was sufficient to set Radbourn upon his hobbyhorse. He outlined his
+plan of action: the abolition of all indirect taxes, the State control
+of all privileges<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span> the private ownership of which interfered with the
+equal rights of all. He would utterly destroy speculative holdings of
+the earth. He would have land everywhere brought to its best use, by
+appropriating all ground rents to the use of the state, etc., etc., to
+which the girl listened with eager interest, but with only partial
+comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>As they neared the little schoolhouse, a swarm of midgets in pink
+dresses, pink sun-bonnets, and brown legs, came rushing to meet their
+teacher, with that peculiar devotion the children in the country develop
+for a refined teacher.</p>
+
+<p>Radbourn helped Lily out into the midst of the eager little scholars,
+who swarmed upon her like bees on a lump of sugar, till even Radbourn's
+gravity gave way, and he smiled into her lifted eyes,&mdash;an unusual smile,
+that strangely enough stopped the smile on her own lips, filling her
+face with a wistful shadow, and her breath came hard for a moment, and
+she trembled.</p>
+
+<p>She loved that cold, stern face, oh, so much! and to have him smile was
+a pleasure that made her heart leap till she suffered a smothering pain.
+She turned to him to say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I am very thankful, Mr. Radbourn, for another pleasant ride," adding in
+a lower tone, "it was a very great pleasure; you always give me so much.
+I feel stronger and more hopeful."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you feel so. I was afraid I was prosy with my land doctrine."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! Indeed no! You have given me a new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span> hope; I am exalted with the
+thought; I shall try to think it all out and apply it."</p>
+
+<p>And so they parted, the children looking on and slyly whispering among
+themselves. Radbourn looked back after a while, but the bare white hive
+had absorbed its little group, and was standing bleak as a tombstone and
+hot as a furnace on the naked plain in the blazing sun.</p>
+
+<p>"America's pitiful boast!" said the young radical, looking back at it.
+"Only a miserable hint of what it might be."</p>
+
+<p>All that forenoon, as Lily faced her noisy group of barefooted children,
+she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for these
+poor, supine farmers, hopeless and in some cases content in their narrow
+lives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came to
+them as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,&mdash;whose very voice
+and intonation awed them.</p>
+
+<p>They noted, unconsciously of course, every detail. Snowy linen, touches
+of soft color, graceful lines of bust and side, the slender fingers that
+could almost speak, so beautifully flexile were they. Lily herself
+sometimes, when she shook the calloused, knotted, stiffened hands of the
+women, shuddered with sympathetic pain to think that the crowning wonder
+and beauty of God's world should be so maimed and distorted from its
+true purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the children before her she could see the inherited results of
+fruitless labor, and, more pitiful yet,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span> in the bent shoulders of the
+older ones she could see the beginnings of deformity that would soon be
+permanent; and as these thoughts came to her, she clasped the wondering
+children to her side, with a convulsive wish to make life a little
+brighter for them.</p>
+
+<p>"How is your mother to-day?" she asked of Sadie Burns, as she was eating
+her luncheon on the drab-colored table near the open window.</p>
+
+<p>"Purty well," said Sadie, in a hesitating way.</p>
+
+<p>Lily was looking out, and listening to the gophers whistling as they
+raced to and fro. She could see Bob Burns lying at length on the grass
+in the pasture over the fence, his heels waving in the air, his hands
+holding a string which formed a snare. It was like fishing to young
+Izaak Walton.</p>
+
+<p>It was very still and hot, and the cheep and trill of the gophers and
+the chatter of the kingbirds alone broke the silence. A cloud of
+butterflies were fluttering about a pool near; a couple of big flies
+buzzed and mumbled on the pane.</p>
+
+<p>"What ails your mother?" Lily asked, recovering herself and looking at
+Sadie, who was distinctly ill at ease.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I dunno," Sadie replied, putting one bare foot across the other.</p>
+
+<p>Lily insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"She 'n' pa's had an awful row&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sadie!" said the teacher, warningly, "what language!"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean they quarrelled, an' she don't speak to him any more."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, how dreadful!"</p>
+
+<p>"An' pa, he's awful cross; and she won't eat when he does, an' I haf to
+wait on table."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I'll go down and see her this noon," said Lily to herself, as
+she divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.</p>
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him.
+He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task, and was just about
+ready to go when Lily spoke to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. It
+must be time to go to dinner,&mdash;aren't you ready to go? I want to talk
+with you."</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking down
+the road with the schoolma'am, but there was something in her look which
+seemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and, besides, he
+was not in good humor.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, in a minnit&mdash;soon's I fix up this hole. Them shotes, I b'lieve,
+would go through a keyhole, if they could once get their snoots in."</p>
+
+<p>He expanded on this idea as he nailed away, anxious to gain time. He
+foresaw trouble for himself. He couldn't be rude to this sweet and
+fragile girl. If a <i>man</i> had dared to attack him on his domestic
+shortcomings, he could have fought. The girl stood waiting for him, her
+large, steady eyes full of thought, gazing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span> down at him from the shadow
+of her broad-brimmed hat.</p>
+
+<p>"The world is so full of misery anyway, that we ought to do the best we
+can to make it less," she said at last, in a musing tone, as if her
+thoughts had unconsciously taken on speech. She had always appealed to
+him strongly, and never more so than in this softly uttered
+abstraction&mdash;that it was an abstraction added to its power with him.</p>
+
+<p>He could find no words for reply, but picked up his hammer and nail-box,
+and slouched along the road by her side, listening without a word to her
+talk.</p>
+
+<p>"Christ was patient, and bore with his enemies. Surely we ought to bear
+with our&mdash;friends," she went on, adapting her steps to his. He took off
+his torn straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, being much
+embarrassed and ashamed. Not knowing how to meet such argument, he kept
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>"How <i>is</i> Mrs. Burns!" said Lily at length, determined to make him
+speak. The delicate meaning in the emphasis laid on <i>is</i> did not escape
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she's all right&mdash;I mean she's done her work jest the same as ever.
+I don't see her much&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know&mdash;I was afraid she was sick. Sadie said she was acting
+strangely."</p>
+
+<p>"No, she's well enough&mdash;but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But what is the trouble? Won't you let me help you, <i>won't</i> you?" she
+pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't anybody help us. We've got 'o fight it out, I s'pose," he
+replied, a gloomy note of resentment creeping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span> into his voice. "She's
+ben in a devil of a temper f'r a week."</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't you been in the same kind of a temper too?" demanded Lily,
+firmly but kindly. "I think most troubles of this kind come from bad
+temper on both sides. Don't you? Have you done your share at being kind
+and patient?"</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the gate now, and she laid her hand on his arm to stop
+him. He looked down at the slender gloved hand on his arm, feeling as if
+a giant had grasped him; then he raised his eyes to her face, flushing a
+purplish red as he remembered his grossness. It seemed monstrous in the
+presence of this girl-advocate. Her face was like silver; her eyes
+seemed pools of tears.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't s'pose I have," he said at last, pushing by her. He could not
+have faced her glance another moment. His whole air conveyed the
+impression of destructive admission. Lily did not comprehend the extent
+of her advantage or she would have pursued it further. As it was she
+felt a little hurt as she entered the house. The table was set, but Mrs.
+Burns was nowhere to be seen. Calling her softly, the young girl passed
+through the shabby little living-room to the oven-like bedroom which
+opened off it, but no one was about. She stood for a moment shuddering
+at the wretchedness of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Going back to the kitchen, she found Sim about beginning on his dinner.
+Little Pet was with him; the rest of the children were at the
+schoolhouse.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I d' know. Out in the garden, I expect. She don't eat with me now. I
+never see her. She don't come near <i>me</i>. I ain't seen her since
+Saturday."</p>
+
+<p>Lily was shocked inexpressibly and began to see more clearly the
+magnitude of the task she had set herself to do. But it must be done;
+she felt that a tragedy was not far off. It must be averted.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Burns, what have you done? What <i>have</i> you done?" she asked in
+terror and horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't lay it all to <i>me</i>! She hain't done nawthin' but complain f'r ten
+years. I couldn't do nothin' to suit her. She was always naggin' me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think Lucretia Burns would nag anybody. I don't say you're
+<i>all</i> to blame, but I'm afraid you haven't acknowledged you were <i>any</i>
+to blame. I'm afraid you've not been patient with her. I'm going out to
+bring her in. If she comes, will you <i>say</i> you were <i>part</i> to blame? You
+needn't beg her pardon&mdash;just say you'll try to be better. Will you do
+it? Think how much she has done for you! Will you?"</p>
+
+<p>He remained silent, and looked discouragingly rude. His sweaty, dirty
+shirt was open at the neck, his arms were bare, his scraggly teeth were
+yellow with tobacco, and his uncombed hair lay tumbled about on his
+high, narrow head. His clumsy, unsteady hands played with the dishes on
+the table. His pride was struggling with his sense of justice; he knew
+he ought to consent, and yet it was so hard to acknowledge himself to
+blame. The girl went on in a voice piercingly sweet, trembling with pity
+and pleading.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What word can I carry to her from you? I'm going to go and see her. If
+I could take a word from <i>you</i>, I know she would come back to the table.
+Shall I tell her you feel to blame?"</p>
+
+<p>The answer was a long time coming; at last the man nodded an assent, the
+sweat pouring from his purple face. She had set him thinking; her
+victory was sure.</p>
+
+<p>Lily almost ran out into the garden and to the strawberry patch, where
+she found Lucretia in her familiar, colorless, shapeless dress, picking
+berries in the hot sun, the mosquitoes biting her neck and hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor, pathetic, dumb sufferer!" the girl thought as she ran up to her.</p>
+
+<p>She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into the
+tender, pitying face. Not a word was spoken, but something she saw there
+made her eyes fill with tears, and her throat swell. It was pure
+sympathy. She put her arms around the girl's neck and sobbed for the
+first time since Friday night. Then they sat down on the grass under the
+hedge, and she told her story, interspersed with Lily's horrified
+comments.</p>
+
+<p>When it was all told, the girl still sat listening. She heard Radbourn's
+calm, slow voice again. It helped her not to hate Burns; it helped her
+to pity and understand him.</p>
+
+<p>"You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes him
+callous, selfish, unfeeling, necessarily. A fine nature must either
+adapt itself to its hard surroundings or die. Men who toil terribly in
+filthy garments day after day and year after year cannot easily keep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span>
+gentle; the frost and grime, the heat and cold, will soon or late enter
+into their souls. The case is not all in favor of the suffering wives
+and against the brutal husbands. If the farmer's wife is dulled and
+crazed by her routine, the farmer himself is degraded and brutalized."</p>
+
+<p>As well as she could Lily explained all this to the woman, who lay with
+her face buried in the girl's lap. Lily's arms were about her thin
+shoulders in an agony of pity.</p>
+
+<p>"It's hard, Lucretia, I know,&mdash;more than you can bear,&mdash;but you mustn't
+forget what Sim endures too. He goes out in the storms and in the heat
+and dust. His boots are hard, and see how his hands are all bruised and
+broken by his work! He was tired and hungry when he said that&mdash;he didn't
+really mean it."</p>
+
+<p>The wife remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Radbourn says work, as things go now, <i>does</i> degrade a man in spite
+of himself. He says men get coarse and violent in spite of themselves,
+just as women do when everything goes wrong in the house,&mdash;when the
+flies are thick, and the fire won't burn, and the irons stick to the
+clothes. You see, you both suffer. Don't lay up this fit of temper
+against Sim&mdash;will you?"</p>
+
+<p>The wife lifted her head and looked away. Her face was full of hopeless
+weariness.</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't this once. It ain't that 't all. It's having no let-up. Just
+goin' the same thing right over 'n' over&mdash;no hope of anything better."</p>
+
+<p>"If you had hope of another world&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk that. I don't want that kind o' comfert.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span> I want a decent
+chance here. I want 'o rest an' be happy <i>now</i>." Lily's big eyes were
+streaming with tears. What should she say to the desperate woman?
+"What's the use? We might jest as well die&mdash;all of us."</p>
+
+<p>The woman's livid face appalled the girl. She was gaunt, heavy-eyed,
+nerveless. Her faded dress settled down over her limbs, showing the
+swollen knees and thin calves; her hands, with distorted joints,
+protruded painfully from her sleeves. All about her was the ever
+recurring wealth and cheer of nature that knows no favor,&mdash;the bees and
+flies buzzing in the sun, the jay and the kingbird in the poplars, the
+smell of strawberries, the motion of lush grass, the shimmer of
+corn-blades tossed gayly as banners in a conquering army.</p>
+
+<p>Like a flash of keener light, a sentence shot across the girl's mind:
+"Nature knows no title-deed. The bounty of her mighty hands falls as the
+sunlight falls, copious, impartial; her seas carry all ships; her air is
+for all lips, her lands for all feet."</p>
+
+<p>"Poverty and suffering such as yours will not last." There was something
+in the girl's voice that roused the woman. She turned her dull eyes upon
+the youthful face.</p>
+
+<p>Lily took her hand in both hers as if by a caress she could impart her
+own faith.</p>
+
+<p>"Look up, dear. When nature is so good and generous, man must come to be
+better, surely. Come, go in the house again. Sim is there; he expects
+you; he told me to tell you he was sorry." Lucretia's face twitched a
+little at that, but her head was bent. "Come; you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span> can't live this way.
+There isn't any other place to go to."</p>
+
+<p>No, that was the bitterest truth. Where on this wide earth, with its
+forth-shooting fruits and grains, its fragrant lands and shining seas,
+could this dwarfed, bent, broken, middle-aged woman go? Nobody wanted
+her, nobody cared for her. But the wind kissed her drawn lips as readily
+as those of the girl, and the blooms of clover nodded to her as if to a
+queen.</p>
+
+<p>Lily had said all she could. Her heart ached with unspeakable pity and a
+sort of terror.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't give up, Lucretia. This may be the worst hour of your life. Live
+and bear with it all for Christ's sake,&mdash;for your children's sake. Sim
+told me to tell you he was to blame. If you will only see that you are
+both to blame and yet neither to blame, then you can rise above it. Try,
+dear!"</p>
+
+<p>Something that was in the girl imparted itself to the wife,
+electrically. She pulled herself together, rose silently, and started
+toward the house. Her face was rigid, but no longer sullen. Lily
+followed her slowly, wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>As she neared the kitchen door, she saw Sim still sitting at the table;
+his face was unusually grave and soft. She saw him start and shove back
+his chair, saw Lucretia go to the stove and lift the tea-pot, and heard
+her say, as she took her seat beside the baby:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Want some more tea?"</p>
+
+<p>She had become a wife and mother again, but in what spirit the puzzled
+girl could not say.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="DADDY_DEERING" id="DADDY_DEERING"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>
+<h2>DADDY DEERING</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>They were threshing on Farmer Jennings's place when Daddy made his very
+characteristic appearance. Milton, a boy of thirteen, was gloomily
+holding sacks for the measurer, and the glory of the October day was
+dimmed by the suffocating dust, and poisoned by the smarting beards and
+chaff which had worked their way down his neck. The bitterness of the
+dreaded task was deepened also by contrast with the gambols of his
+cousin Billy, who was hunting rats with Growler amid the last sheaves of
+the stack bottom. The piercing shrieks of Billy, as he clapped his hands
+in murderous glee, mingled now and again with the barking of the dog.</p>
+
+<p>The machine seemed to fill the world with its snarling boom, which
+became a deafening yell when the cylinder ran empty for a moment. It was
+nearly noon, and the men were working silently, with occasional glances
+toward the sun to see how near dinner-time it was. The horses, dripping
+with sweat, and with patches of foam under their harness, moved round
+and round steadily to the cheery whistle of the driver.</p>
+
+<p>The wild, imperious song of the bell-metal cog-wheel had sung into
+Milton's ears till it had become a torture, and every time he lifted his
+eyes to the beautiful far-off<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span> sky, where the clouds floated like ships,
+a lump of rebellious anger rose in his throat. Why should he work in
+this choking dust and deafening noise while the hawks could sail and
+sweep from hill to hill with nothing to do but play?</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally his uncle, the feeder, smiled down upon him, his face black
+as a negro, great goggles of glass and wire-cloth covering his merry
+eyes. His great good-nature shone out in the flash of his white teeth,
+behind his dusky beard, and he tried to encourage Milton with his smile.
+He seemed tireless to the other hands. He was so big and strong. He had
+always been Milton's boyish hero. So Milton crowded back the tears that
+came into his eyes, and would not let his uncle see how childish he was.</p>
+
+<p>A spectator riding along the road would have remarked upon the lovely
+setting for this picturesque scene&mdash;the low swells of prairie, shrouded
+with faint, misty light from the unclouded sky, the flaming colors of
+the trees, the faint sound of cow-bells, and the cheery sound of the
+machine. But to be a tourist and to be a toiler in a scene like this are
+quite different things.</p>
+
+<p>They were anxious to finish the setting by noon, and so the feeder was
+crowding the cylinder to its limit, rolling the grain in with slow and
+apparently effortless swaying from side to side, half buried in the
+loose yellow straw. But about eleven o'clock the machine came to a
+stand, to wait while a broken tooth was being replaced, and Milton fled
+from the terrible dust beside the measuring spout, and was shaking the
+chaff<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span> out of his clothing, when he heard a high, snappy, nasal voice
+call down from the straw-pile. A tall man, with a face completely masked
+in dust, was speaking to Mr. Jennings:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Say, young man, I guess you'll haf to send another man up here. It's
+poorty stiff work f'r two; yes, sir, poorty stiff."</p>
+
+<p>"There, there! I thought you'd cry 'cavy,'" laughed Mr. Jennings. "I
+told you it wasn't the place for an old man."</p>
+
+<p>"Old man," snarled the figure in the straw. "I ain't so old but I can
+daown you, sir,&mdash;yessir, condemmit, yessir!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm your man," replied Jennings, smiling up at him.</p>
+
+<p>The man rolled down the side of the stack, disappearing in a cloud of
+dust and chaff. When he came to light, Milton saw a tall, gaunt old man
+of sixty years of age, or older. Nothing could be seen but a dusty
+expanse of face, ragged beard, and twinkling, sharp little eyes. His
+color was lost, his eyes half hid. Without waiting for ceremony, the men
+clenched. The crowd roared with laughter, for though Jennings was the
+younger, the older man was a giant still, and the struggle lasted for
+some time. He made a gallant fight, but his breath gave out, and he lay
+at last flat on his back.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I was your age, young man," he said ruefully, as he rose. "I'd
+knock the heads o' these young scamps t'gether,&mdash;yessir!&mdash;I could do it,
+too!"</p>
+
+<p>"Talk's a good dog, uncle," said a young man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The old man turned on him so ferociously that he fled.</p>
+
+<p>"Run, condemn yeh! I own y' can beat me at that."</p>
+
+<p>His face was not unpleasant, though his teeth were mainly gone, and his
+skin the color of leather and wrinkled as a pan of cream. His eyes had a
+certain sparkle of fun that belied his rasping voice, which seemed to
+have the power to lift a boy clean off his feet. His frame was bent and
+thin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory. At
+some far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, but
+toil had bent and stiffened him.</p>
+
+<p>"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" he said, in his rapid,
+rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner.
+"And, by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man,
+sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the state; no, sir; no,
+sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's
+pay&mdash;that's all, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man up
+there this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty
+places, and his endurance was marvellous. He could stand all day at the
+tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent
+air, as if it were all mere play.</p>
+
+<p>He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier
+and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity
+that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span> with
+that most hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks. To a twelve-year-old
+boy it seems to be the worst job in the world.</p>
+
+<p>All day, while the hawks wheel and dip in the glorious air, and the
+trees glow like banks of roses; all day, while the younger boys are
+tumbling about the sunlit straw, to be forced to stand holding sacks,
+like a convict, was maddening. Daddy, whose rugged features, bent
+shoulders, and ragged cap loomed through the suffocating, blinding dust,
+necessarily came to seem like the jailer who held the door to freedom.</p>
+
+<p>And when the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to
+bear, the old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl of
+the cylinder.</p>
+
+<p>"Nem mind, sonny! Chaff ain't pizen; dust won't hurt ye a mite." And
+when Milton was unable to laugh, the old man tweaked his ear with his
+leathery thumb and finger.</p>
+
+<p>Then he shouted long, disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make
+neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him,
+just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell
+to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent
+a good deal of time trying to discover which were the original sections
+of the coat, and especially of the vest, which was ragged and yellow
+with age, with the cotton batting working out; and yet Daddy took the
+greatest care of it, folding it carefully and putting it away during the
+heat of the day out of reach of the crickets.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One of his peculiarities, as Mrs. Jennings learned on the second day,
+was his habit of coming to breakfast. But he always earned all he got,
+and more too; and, as it was probable that his living at home was
+frugal, Mrs. Jennings smiled at his thrift, and quietly gave him his
+breakfast if he arrived late, which was not often.</p>
+
+<p>He had bought a little farm not far away, and settled down into a mode
+of life which he never afterward changed. As he was leaving at the end
+of the third day, he said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now, sir, if you want any bootcherin' done, I'm y'r man. I don't turn
+m' hand over f'r any man in the state; no, sir! I c'n git a hawg on the
+gambrils jest a leetle quicker'n any other man I ever see; yes, sir; by
+gum!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, uncle; I'll send for you when I'm ready to kill."</p>
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Hog-killing was one of the events of a boy's life on a Western farm, and
+Daddy was destined to be associated in the minds of Shep and Milton with
+another disagreeable job, that of building the fire and carrying water.</p>
+
+<p>It was very early on a keen, biting morning in November when Daddy came
+driving into the yard with his rude, long-runnered sled, one horse half
+his length behind the other in spite of the driver's clucking. He was
+delighted to catch the boys behind in the preparation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A-a-h-h-r-r-h-h!" he rasped out, "you lazy vagabon's? Why ain't you got
+that fire blazin'? <span class="smcap">What</span> the devil do y' mean, you rascals! Here it is
+broad daylight, and that fire not built. I vum, sir, you need a
+thrashin', the whole kit an bilun' of ye; yessir! Come, come, come!
+hustle now, stir your boots! hustle y'r boots&mdash;ha! ha! ha!"</p>
+
+<p>It was of no use to plead cold weather and damp chips.</p>
+
+<p>"What has that got to do with it, sir? I vum, sir, when I was your age,
+I could make a fire of green red-oak; yessir! Don't talk to me of colds!
+Stir your stumps and get warm, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>The old man put up his horses (and fed them generously with oats), and
+then went to the house to ask for "a leetle something hot&mdash;mince pie or
+sassidge." His request was very modest, but, as a matter of fact, he sat
+down and ate a very hearty breakfast, while the boys worked away at the
+fire under the big kettle.</p>
+
+<p>The hired man, under Daddy's direction, drew the bob-sleighs into
+position on the sunny side of the corn-crib, and arranged the barrel at
+the proper slant, while the old man ground his knives, Milton turning
+the grindstone&mdash;another hateful task, which Daddy's stories could not
+alleviate.</p>
+
+<p>Daddy never finished a story. If he started in to tell about a horse
+trade, it infallibly reminded him of a cattle trade, and talking of
+cattle switched him off upon logging, and logging reminded him of some
+heavy snow-storm he had known. Each parenthesis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span> outgrew its proper
+limits, till he forgot what should have been the main story. His stories
+had some compensation, for when he stopped to try to recollect where he
+was, the pressure on the grindstone was released.</p>
+
+<p>At last the water was hot, and the time came to seize the hogs. This was
+the old man's great moment. He stood in the pen and shrieked with
+laughter while the hired men went rolling, one after the other, upon the
+ground, or were bruised against the fence by the rush of the burly
+swine.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a fine lot," he laughed. "Now, then, sir, <i>grab 'im</i>! Why don't
+ye nail 'im? I vum, sir, if I couldn't do better'n that, sir, I'd sell
+out; I would, sir, by gol! Get out o' the way!"</p>
+
+<p>With a lofty scorn he waved aside all help and stalked like a gladiator
+toward the pigs huddled in one corner of the pen. And when the selected
+victim was rushing by him, his long arm and great bony hand swept out,
+caught him by the ear, and flung him upon his side, squealing with
+deafening shrillness. But in spite of his smiling concealment of effort,
+Daddy had to lean against the fence and catch his breath even while he
+boasted:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I'm an old codger, sir, but I'm worth&mdash;a dozen o' you&mdash;spindle-legged
+chaps; dum me if I ain't, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>His pride in his ability to catch and properly kill a hog was as genuine
+as the old knight-errant's pride in his ability to stick a knife into
+another steel-clothed brigand like himself. When the slain shote was
+swung upon the planking on the sled before the barrel, Daddy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span> rested,
+while the boys filled the barrel with water from the kettle.</p>
+
+<p>There was always a weird charm about this stage of the work to the boys.
+The sun shone warm and bright in the lee of the corn-crib; the steam
+rose up, white and voluminous, from the barrel; the eaves dropped
+steadily; the hens ventured near, nervously, but full of curiosity,
+while the men laughed and joked with Daddy, starting him off on long
+stories, and winking at each other when his back was turned.</p>
+
+<p>At last he mounted his planking, selecting Mr. Jennings to pull upon the
+other handle of the hog-hook. He considered he conferred a distinct
+honor in this selection.</p>
+
+<p>"The time's been, sir, when I wouldn't thank any man for his help. No,
+sir, wouldn't thank 'im."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you do with these things?" asked one of the men, kicking two
+iron candlesticks which the old man laid conveniently near.</p>
+
+<p>"Scrape a hawg with them, sir. What do y' s'pose, you numskull?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I never saw anything&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have a chance mighty quick, sir. Grab ahold, sir! Swing 'im
+around&mdash;there! Now easy, easy! Now then, one, two; one, two&mdash;that's
+right."</p>
+
+<p>While he dipped the porker in the water, pulling with his companion
+rhythmically upon the hook, he talked incessantly, mixing up scraps of
+stories and boastings of what he could do, with commands of what he
+wanted the other man to do.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The best man I ever worked with. <i>Now turn 'im, turn 'im!</i>" he yelled,
+reaching over Jennings's wrist. "Grab under my wrist. There! won't ye
+never learn how to turn a hawg? <i>Now out with 'im!</i>" was his next wild
+yell, as the steaming hog was jerked out of the water upon the planking.
+"Now try the hair on them ears! Beautiful scald," he said, clutching his
+hand full of bristles and beaming with pride. "Never see anything finer.
+Here, Bub, a pail of hot water, quick! Try one of them candlesticks!
+They ain't no better scraper than the bottom of an old iron candlestick;
+no, sir! Dum your new-fangled scrapers! I made a bet once with old Jake
+Ridgeway that I could scrape the hair off'n two hawgs, by gum, quicker'n
+he could one. Jake was blowin' about a new scraper he had....</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, yes, dump it right into the barrel. Condemmit! Ain't you got
+no gumption?... So Sim Smith, he held the watch. Sim was a mighty good
+hand t' work with; he was about the only man I ever sawed with who
+didn't ride the saw. He could jerk a crosscut saw.... Now let him in
+again, now, <i>he-ho</i>, once again! <i>Rool him over now</i>; that foreleg needs
+a tech o' water. Now out with him again; that's right, that's right! By
+gol, a beautiful scald as ever I see!"</p>
+
+<p>Milton, standing near, caught his eye again. "Clean that ear, sir! What
+the devil you standin' there for?" He returned to his story after a
+pause. "A&mdash;n&mdash;d Jake, he scraped away&mdash;<i>hyare</i>!" he shouted suddenly,
+"don't ruggle the skin like that! Can't you see the way I do it? Leave
+it smooth as a baby, sir&mdash;yessir!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He worked on in this way all day, talking unceasingly, never shirking a
+hard job, and scarcely showing fatigue at any moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm short o' breath a leetle, that's all; never git tired, but my wind
+gives out. Dum cold got on me, too."</p>
+
+<p>He ate a huge supper of liver and potatoes, still working away hard at
+an ancient horse trade, and when he drove off at night, he had not yet
+finished a single one of the dozen stories he had begun.</p>
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>But pitching grain and hog-killing were on the lower levels of his art,
+for above all else Daddy loved to be called upon to play the fiddle for
+dances. He "officiated" for the first time at a dance given by one of
+the younger McTurgs. They were all fiddlers themselves,&mdash;had been for
+three generations,&mdash;but they seized the opportunity of helping Daddy and
+at the same time of relieving themselves of the trouble of furnishing
+the music while the rest danced.</p>
+
+<p>Milton attended this dance, and saw Daddy for the first time earning his
+money pleasantly. From that time on the associations around his
+personality were less severe, and they came to like him better. He came
+early, with his old fiddle in a time-worn white-pine box. His hair was
+neatly combed to the top of his long, narrow head, and his face was very
+clean. The boys all greeted him with great pleasure, and asked him where
+he would sit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Right on that table, sir; put a chair up there."</p>
+
+<p>He took his chair on the kitchen-table as if it were a throne. He wore
+huge moccasins of moose-hide on his feet, and for special occasions like
+this added a paper collar to his red woollen shirt. He took off his coat
+and laid it across his chair for a cushion. It was all very funny to the
+young people, but they obeyed him laughingly, and while they "formed
+on," he sawed his violin and coaxed it up to concert pitch, and twanged
+it and banged it into proper tunefulness.</p>
+
+<p>"A-a-a-ll ready there!" he rasped out, with prodigious force. "Everybody
+git into his place!" Then, lifting one huge foot, he put the fiddle
+under his chin, and, raising his bow till his knuckles touched the
+strings, he yelled, "Already, <span class="smcap">G'LANG</span>!" and brought his foot down with a
+startling bang on the first note. <i>Rye doodle duo, doodle doo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As he went on and the dancers fell into rhythm, the clatter of heavy
+boots seemed to thrill him with old-time memories, and he kept
+boisterous time with his foot, while his high, rasping nasal rang high
+above the confusion of tongues and heels and swaying forms.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ladies</i>' gran' change! <span class="smcap">Four</span> hands round! <i>Balance</i> all! <i>Elly</i>-man
+left! Back to play-cis."</p>
+
+<p>His eyes closed in a sort of intoxication of pleasure, but he saw all
+that went on in some miraculous way.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>First</i> lady lead to the right&mdash;<i>toodle rum rum!</i> <i>Gent</i> foller after
+(step along thar)! Four hands round&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The boys were immensely pleased with him. They delighted in his antics
+rather than in his tunes, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span> were exceedingly few and simple. They
+seemed never to be able to get enough of one tune which he called
+"Honest John," and which he played in his own way, accompanied by a
+chant which he meant, without a doubt, to be musical.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Hon</span>-ers tew your pardners&mdash;<i>tee teedle deedle dee dee dee dee</i>! Stand
+up straight an' put on your style! <i>Right</i> an' left four&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The hat was passed by the floor-manager during the evening, and Daddy
+got nearly three dollars, which delighted Milton very much.</p>
+
+<p>At supper he insisted on his prerogative, which was to take the
+prettiest girl out to supper.</p>
+
+<p>"Look-a-here, Daddy, ain't that crowdin' the mourners?" objected the
+others.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that, sir? No, sir! Always done it, in Michigan and
+Yark State both; yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>He put on his coat ceremoniously, while the tittering girls stood about
+the room waiting. He did not delay. His keen eyes had made selection
+long before, and, approaching Rose Watson with old-fashioned, elaborate
+gallantry, he said: "<i>May</i> I have the pleasure?" and marched out
+triumphantly, amidst shouts of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>His shrill laugh rang high above the rest at the table, as he said: "I'm
+the youngest man in this crowd, sir! Demmit, I bet a hat I c'n dance
+down any man in this crowd; yes, sir. The old man can do it yet."</p>
+
+<p>They all took sides in order to please him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet he can," said Hugh McTurg; "I'll bet a dollar on Daddy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll take the bet," said Joe Randall, and with great noise the match
+was arranged to come the first thing after supper.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, sir; any time, sir. I'll let you know the old man is on
+earth yet."</p>
+
+<p>While the girls were putting away the supper dishes, the young man lured
+Daddy out into the yard for a wrestling-match, but some others objected.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, now, that won't do! If Daddy was a young man&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, sir? I am young enough for you, sir. Just let me get
+ahold o' you, sir, and I'll show you, you young rascal! you dem
+jackanapes!" he ended, almost shrieking with rage, as he shook his fist
+in the face of his grinning tormentors.</p>
+
+<p>His friends held him back with much apparent alarm, and ordered the
+other fellows away.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, Daddy, I wouldn't mind him! I wouldn't dirty my hands on
+him; he ain't worth it. Just come inside, and we'll have that
+dancing-match now."</p>
+
+<p>Daddy reluctantly returned to the house, and, having surrendered his
+violin to Hugh McTurg, was ready for the contest. As he stepped into the
+middle of the room he was not altogether ludicrous. His rusty trousers
+were bagged at the knee, and his red woollen stockings showed between
+the tops of his moccasins and his pantaloon legs, and his coat, utterly
+characterless as to color and cut, added to the stoop in his shoulders;
+and yet there was a rude sort of grace and a certain dignity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span> about his
+bearing which kept down laughter. They were to have a square dance of
+the old-fashioned sort.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Farrm</i> on," he cried, and the fiddler struck up the first note of the
+Virginia Reel. Daddy led out Rose, and the dance began. He straightened
+up till his tall form towered above the rest of the boys like a
+weather-beaten pine tree, as he balanced and swung and led and called
+off the changes with a voice full of imperious command.</p>
+
+<p>The fiddler took a malicious delight toward the last in quickening the
+time of the good old dance, and that put the old man on his mettle.</p>
+
+<p>"Go it, ye young rascal!" he yelled. He danced like a boy and yelled
+like a demon, catching a laggard here and there, and hurling them into
+place like tops, while he kicked and stamped, wound in and out and waved
+his hands in the air with a gesture which must have dated back to the
+days of Washington. At last, flushed, breathless, but triumphant, he
+danced a final breakdown to the tune of "Leather Breeches," to show he
+was unsubdued.</p>
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>But these rare days passed away. As the country grew older it lost the
+wholesome simplicity of pioneer days, and Daddy got a chance to play but
+seldom. He no longer pleased the boys and girls&mdash;his music was too
+monotonous and too simple. He felt this very deeply. Once in a while he
+broke forth in protest against the changes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The boys I used to trot on m' knee are gittin' too high-toned. They
+wouldn't be found dead with old Deering, and then the preachers are
+gittin' thick, and howlin' agin dancin', and the country's filling up
+with Dutchmen, so't I'm left out."</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, there were few homes now where Daddy could sit on
+the table, in his ragged vest and rusty pantaloons, and play "Honest
+John," while the boys thumped about the floor. There were few homes
+where the old man was even a welcome visitor, and he felt this rejection
+keenly. The women got tired of seeing him about, because of his
+uncleanly habits of spitting, and his tiresome stories. Many of the old
+neighbors died or moved away, and the young people went West or to the
+cities. Men began to pity him rather than laugh at him, which hurt him
+more than their ridicule. They began to favor him at threshing or at the
+fall hog-killing.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you're getting old, Daddy; you'll have to give up this heavy work.
+Of course, if you feel able to do it, why, all right! Like to have you
+do it, but I guess we'll have to have a man to do the heavy lifting, I
+s'pose."</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose not, sir! I am jest as able to yank a hawg as ever, sir; yes,
+sir, demmit&mdash;demmit! Do you think I've got one foot in the grave?"</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Daddy often failed to come to time on appointed days, and
+it was painful to hear him trying to explain, trying to make light of it
+all.</p>
+
+<p>"M' caugh wouldn't let me sleep last night. A goldum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span> leetle, nasty,
+ticklin' caugh, too; but it kept me awake, fact was, an'&mdash;well, m' wife,
+she said I hadn't better come. But don't you worry, sir; it won't happen
+again, sir; no, sir."</p>
+
+<p>His hands got stiffer year by year, and his simple tunes became
+practically a series of squeaks and squalls. There came a time when the
+fiddle was laid away almost altogether, for his left hand got caught in
+the cog-wheels of the horse-power, and all four of the fingers on that
+hand were crushed. Thereafter he could only twang a little on the
+strings. It was not long after this that he struck his foot with the axe
+and lamed himself for life.</p>
+
+<p>As he lay groaning in bed, Mr. Jennings went in to see him and tried to
+relieve the old man's feelings by telling him the number of times he had
+practically cut his feet off, and said he knew it was a terrible hard
+thing to put up with.</p>
+
+<p>"Gol dummit, it ain't the pain," the old sufferer yelled, "it's the dum
+awkwardness. I've chopped all my life; I can let an axe in up to the
+maker's name, and hew to a hair-line; yes, sir! It was jest them dum new
+mittens my wife made; they was s' slippery," he ended with a groan.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, the one accident hinged upon the other. It was the
+failure of his left hand, with its useless fingers, to do its duty, that
+brought the axe down upon his foot. The pain was not so much physical as
+mental. To think that he, who could hew to a hair-line, right and left
+hand, should cut his own foot like a ten-year-old boy&mdash;that scared him.
+It brought age<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span> and decay close to him. For the first time in his life
+he felt that he was fighting a losing battle.</p>
+
+<p>A man like this lives so much in the flesh, that when his limbs begin to
+fail him everything else seems slipping away. He had gloried in his
+strength. He had exulted in the thrill of his life-blood and in the
+swell of his vast muscles; he had clung to the idea that he was strong
+as ever, till this last blow came upon him, and then he began to think
+and to tremble.</p>
+
+<p>When he was able to crawl about again, he was a different man. He was
+gloomy and morose, snapping and snarling at all that came near him, like
+a wounded bear. He was alone a great deal of the time during the winter
+following his hurt. Neighbors seldom went in, and for weeks he saw no
+one but his hired hand, and the faithful, dumb little old woman, his
+wife, who moved about without any apparent concern or sympathy for his
+suffering. The hired hand, whenever he called upon the neighbors, or
+whenever questions were asked, said that Daddy hung around over the
+stove most of the time, paying no attention to any one or anything. "He
+ain't dangerous 't all," he said, meaning that Daddy was not dangerously
+ill.</p>
+
+<p>Milton rode out from school one winter day with Bill, the hand, and was
+so much impressed with his story of Daddy's condition that he rode home
+with him. He found the old man sitting bent above the stove, wrapped in
+a quilt, shivering and muttering to himself. He hardly looked up when
+Milton spoke to him, and seemed scarcely to comprehend what he said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Milton was much alarmed at the terrible change, for the last time he had
+seen him he had towered above him, laughingly threatening to "warm his
+jacket," and now here he sat, a great hulk of flesh, his mind flickering
+and flaring under every wind of suggestion, soon to go out altogether.</p>
+
+<p>In reply to questions he only muttered with a trace of his old spirit:
+"I'm all right. Jest as good a man as I ever was, only I'm cold. I'll be
+all right when spring comes, so 't I c'n git outdoors. Somethin' to warm
+me up, yessir; I'm cold, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>The young fellow sat in awe before him, but the old wife and Bill moved
+about the room, taking very little interest in what the old man said or
+did. Bill at last took down the violin. "I'll wake him up," he said.
+"This always fetches the old feller. Now watch 'im."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't do that!" Milton said in horror. But Bill drew the bow across
+the strings with the same stroke that Daddy always used when tuning up.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his head as Bill dashed into "Honest John," in spite of
+Milton's protest. He trotted his feet after a little and drummed with
+his hands on the arms of his chair, then smiled a little in a pitiful
+way. Finally he reached out his right hand for the violin and took it
+into his lap. He tried to hold the neck with his poor, old, mutilated
+left hand, and burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you do that again, Bill," Milton said. "It's better for him to
+forget that. Now you take the best care of him you can to-night. I don't
+think he's going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span> to live long; I think you ought to go for the doctor
+right off."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's been like this for the last two weeks; he ain't sick, he's
+jest old, that's all," replied Bill, brutally.</p>
+
+<p>And the old lady, moving about without passion and without speech,
+seemed to confirm this; and yet Milton was unable to get the picture of
+the old man out of his mind. He went home with a great lump in his
+throat.</p>
+
+<hr class="minor" />
+
+<p>The next morning, while they were at breakfast, Bill burst wildly into
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Come over there, all of you; we want you."</p>
+
+<p>They all looked up much scared. "What's the matter, Bill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Daddy's killed himself," said Bill, and turned to rush back, followed
+by Mr. Jennings and Milton.</p>
+
+<p>While on the way across the field Bill told how it all happened.</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't go to bed, the old lady couldn't make him, and when I got
+up this morning I didn't think nothin' about it. I s'posed, of course,
+he'd gone to bed all right; but when I was going out to the barn I
+stumbled across something in the snow, and I felt around, and there he
+was. He got hold of my revolver someway. It was on the shelf by the
+washstand, and I s'pose he went out there so 't we wouldn't hear him. I
+dassn't touch him," he said, with a shiver; "and the old woman, she jest
+slumped down in a chair an' set there&mdash;wouldn't do a thing&mdash;so I come
+over to see you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Milton's heart swelled with remorse. He felt guilty because he had not
+gone directly for the doctor. To think that the old sufferer had killed
+himself was horrible and seemed impossible.</p>
+
+<p>The wind was blowing the snow, cold and dry, across the yard, but the
+sun shone brilliantly upon the figure in the snow as they came up to it.
+There Daddy lay. The snow was in his scant hair and in the hollow of his
+wide, half-naked chest. A pistol was in his hand, but there was no mark
+upon him, and Milton's heart leaped with quick relief. It was delirium,
+not suicide.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sort of majesty in the figure half buried in the snow. His
+hands were clenched, and there was a frown of resolution on his face, as
+if he had fancied Death coming, and had gone defiantly forth to meet
+him.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="A_STOP-OVER_AT_TYRE" id="A_STOP-OVER_AT_TYRE"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span>
+<h2>A STOP-OVER AT TYRE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>Albert Lohr was studying the motion of the ropes and lamps, and
+listening to the rumble of the wheels and the roar of the ferocious wind
+against the pane of glass that his head touched. It was the midnight
+train from Marion rushing toward Warsaw like some savage thing
+unchained, creaking, shrieking, and clattering through the wild storm
+which possessed the whole Mississippi Valley.</p>
+
+<p>Albert lost sight of the lamps at last, and began to wonder what his
+future would be. "First I must go through the university at Madison;
+then I'll study law, go into politics, and perhaps some time I may go to
+Washington."</p>
+
+<p>In imagination he saw that wonderful city. As a Western boy, Boston to
+him was historic, New York was the great metropolis, but Washington was
+the great American city, and political greatness the only fame.</p>
+
+<p>The car was nearly empty: save here and there the wide-awake Western
+drummer, and a woman with four fretful children, the train was as
+deserted as it was frightfully cold. The engine shrieked warningly at
+intervals, the train rumbled hollowly over short bridges<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span> and across
+pikes, swung round the hills, and plunged with wild warnings past little
+towns hid in the snow, with only here and there a light shining dimly.</p>
+
+<p>One of the drummers now and then rose up from his cramped bed on the
+seats, and swore cordially at the railway company for not heating the
+cars. The woman with the children inquired for the tenth time, "Is the
+next station Lodi?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am, it is," snarled the drummer, as he jerked viciously at the
+strap on his valise; "and darned glad I am, too, I can tell yeh! I'll be
+stiff as a car-pin if I stay in this infernal ice-chest another hour. I
+wonder what the company think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At Lodi several people got on, among them a fat man with a pretty
+daughter, who appeared to be abnormally wide awake&mdash;considering the time
+of night. She saw Albert for the same reason that he saw her&mdash;they were
+both young and good-looking.</p>
+
+<p>The student began his musings again, modified by this girl's face. He
+had left out the feminine element; obviously he must recapitulate. He'd
+study law, yes; but that would not prevent going to sociables and church
+fairs. And at these fairs the chances were good for a meeting with a
+girl. Her father must be influential&mdash;county judge or district attorney.
+Marriage would open new avenues&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He was roused by the sound of his own name.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Albert Lohr in this car?" shouted the brakeman, coming in, enveloped
+in a cloud of fine snow.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, here!" called Albert.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Here's a telegram for you."</p>
+
+<p>Albert snatched the envelope with a sudden fear of disaster at home; but
+it was dated "Tyre":</p>
+
+<div style="margin:auto; width:12em">
+<p style="text-align:left; margin-bottom:0">"Get off at Tyre. I'll be there.</p>
+<p class="smcap" style="text-align:right; margin-top:0">Hartley</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Well, now, that's fun!" said Albert, looking at the brakeman. "When do
+we reach there?"</p>
+
+<p>"About 2.20."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, by thunder! A pretty time o' night!"</p>
+
+<p>The brakeman grinned sympathetically. "Any answer?" he asked, at length.</p>
+
+<p>"No; that is, none that will do the matter justice."</p>
+
+<p>"Hartley friend o' yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; he boarded where I did in Warsaw."</p>
+
+<p>When he came back again, the brakeman said to Albert, in a hesitating
+way:</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't going t' stop off long, I s'pose?"</p>
+
+<p>"May an' may not; depends on Hartley. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've got an aunt there that keeps boarders, and I kind o' like t'
+send her one when I can. If you should happen to stay a few days, go an'
+see her. She sets up first-class grub, an' it wouldn't kill anybody,
+anyhow, if you went up an' called."</p>
+
+<p>"Course not. If I stay long enough to make it pay I'll look her up sure.
+I'm no Vanderbilt. I can't afford to stop at two-dollar-a-day hotels."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The brakeman sat down opposite, encouraged by Albert's smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Y' see, my division ends at Warsaw, and I run back and forth here every
+other day, but I don't get much chance to see them, and I ain't worth a
+cuss f'r letter-writin'. Y' see, she's only aunt by marriage, but I like
+her; an' I guess she's got about all she can stand up under, an' so I
+like t' help her a little when I can. The old man died owning nothing
+but the house, an' that left the old lady t' rustle f'r her livin'.
+Dummed if she ain't sandy as old Sand. They're gitt'n' along purty&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The whistle blew for brakes, and, seizing his lantern, the brakeman
+slammed out on the platform.</p>
+
+<p>"Tough night for twisting brakes," suggested Albert, when he came in
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;on the freight."</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens! I should say so. They don't run freight such nights as
+this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't they? Well, I guess they don't stop for a storm like this if
+they's any money to be made by sending her through. Many's the night
+I've broke all night on top of the old wooden cars, when the wind was
+sharp enough to shear the hair off a cast-iron mule&mdash;<i>woo-o-o!</i> There's
+where you need grit, old man," he ended, dropping into familiar speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; or need a job awful bad."</p>
+
+<p>The brakeman was struck with this idea. "There's where you're right. A
+fellow don't take that kind of a job for the fun of it. Not much! He
+takes it because he's got to. That's as sure's you're a foot high. I
+tell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span> you, a feller's got t' rustle these days if he gits any kind of a
+job&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Toot, too-o-o-o-t, toot!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The station passed, the brakeman did not return, perhaps because he
+found some other listener, perhaps because he was afraid of boring this
+pleasant young fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Albert shuddered with a sympathetic pain as he thought of the heroic
+fellows on the tops of icy cars, with hands straining at frosty brakes,
+the wind cutting their faces like a sand-blast. Oh, those tireless hands
+at the wheel and throttle!&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his watch; it was two o'clock; the next station was Tyre.
+As he began to get his things together, the brakeman again addressed
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I forgot to say that the old lady's name is Welsh&mdash;Mrs. Robert
+Welsh. Say I sent yeh, and it'll be all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure! I'll try her in the morning&mdash;that is, if I find out I'm going to
+stay."</p>
+
+<p>Albert clutched his valise, and pulled his cap firmly down on his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Here goes!" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold y'r breath!" shouted the brakeman. Albert swung himself to the
+platform before the station&mdash;a platform of planks along which the snow
+was streaming like water.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night!" shouted the brakeman.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Good</i>-night!"</p>
+
+<p>"All-l abo-o-o-ard!" called the conductor somewhere in the storm. The
+brakeman swung his lantern, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span> train drew off into the blinding whirl,
+and its lights were soon lost in the clouds of snow.</p>
+
+<p>No more desolate place could well be imagined. A level plain, apparently
+bare of houses, swept by a ferocious wind; a dingy little den called a
+station&mdash;no other shelter in sight; no sign of life save the dull glare
+of two windows to the left, alternately lost and found in the storm.</p>
+
+<p>Albert's heart contracted with a sudden fear; the outlook was appalling.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the town?" he asked of a dimly seen figure with a lantern&mdash;a
+man evidently locking the station door, his only refuge.</p>
+
+<p>"Over there," was the surly reply.</p>
+
+<p>"How far?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Bout a mile."</p>
+
+<p>"A mile!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I said&mdash;a mile."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll be blanked!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, y' better be doing something besides standing here, 'r y' 'll
+freeze t' death. I'd go over to the Arteeshun House an' go t' bed if I
+was in your fix."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, where <i>is</i> the Artesian House?"</p>
+
+<p>"See them lights?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see them lights."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they're it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, wouldn't your grammar make Old Grammaticuss curl up, though!"</p>
+
+<p>"What say?" queried the man bending his head toward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span> Albert, his form
+being almost lost in the snow that streamed against them both.</p>
+
+<p>"I said I guessed I'd try it," grinned the youth, invisibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I would if I was in your fix. Keep right close after me; they's
+some ditches here, and the foot-bridges are none too wide."</p>
+
+<p>"The Artesian is owned by the railway, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yup."</p>
+
+<p>"And you're the clerk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yup; nice little scheme, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it'll do," replied Albert.</p>
+
+<p>The man laughed without looking around.</p>
+
+<p>In the little bar-room, lighted by a vilely smelling kerosene lamp, the
+clerk, hitherto a shadow and a voice, came to light as a middle-aged man
+with a sullen face slightly belied by a sly twinkle in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"This beats all the winters I ever <i>did</i> see. It don't do nawthin' but
+blow, <i>blow</i>. Want to go to bed, I s'pose. Well, come along."</p>
+
+<p>He took up one of the absurd little lamps and tried to get more light
+out of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Dummed if a white bean wouldn't be better."</p>
+
+<p>"Spit on it!" suggested Albert.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd throw the whole business out o' the window for a cent!" growled the
+man.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's y'r cent," said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"You're mighty frisky f'r a feller gitt'n' off'n a midnight train,"
+replied the man, as he tramped along a narrow hallway. He spoke in a
+voice loud enough to awaken every sleeper in the house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Have t' be, or there'd be a pair of us."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll laugh out o' the other side o' y'r mouth when you saw away on
+one o' the bell-collar steaks this house puts up," ended the clerk, as
+he put the lamp down.</p>
+
+<p>"Sufficient unto the morn is the evil thereof,'" called Albert after
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He was awakened the next morning by the cooks pounding steak down in the
+kitchen and wrangling over some division of duty. It was a vile place at
+any time, but on a morning like this it was appalling. The water was
+frozen, the floor like ice, the seven-by-nine glass frosted so that he
+couldn't see to comb his hair.</p>
+
+<p>"All that got me out of bed," he remarked to the clerk, "was the thought
+of leaving."</p>
+
+<p>The breakfast was incredibly bad&mdash;so much worse than he expected that
+Albert was forced to admit he had never seen its like. He fled from the
+place without a glance behind, and took passage in an omnibus for the
+town, a mile away. It was terribly cold, the thermometer registering
+twenty below zero; but the sun was very brilliant, and the air still.</p>
+
+<p>The driver pulled up before a very ambitious wooden hotel entitled "The
+Eldorado," and Albert dashed in at the door and up to the stove, with
+both hands covering his ears.</p>
+
+<p>As he stood there, frantic with pain, kicking his toes and rubbing his
+hands, he heard a chuckle&mdash;a slow, sly, insulting chuckle&mdash;turned, and
+saw Hartley standing in the doorway, visibly exulting over his misery.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Bert! that you?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What's left of me. Say, you're a good one, you are? Why didn't you
+telegraph me at Marion? A deuce of a night I've had of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do ye good," laughed Hartley, a tall, alert, handsome fellow nearly
+thirty years of age.</p>
+
+<p>After a short and vigorous "blowing up," Albert asked: "Well, now,
+what's the meaning of all this, anyhow? Why this change from Racine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, I got wind of another fellow going to work this county
+for a <i>Life of Logan</i>, and thinks I, 'By jinks! I'd better drop in ahead
+of him with Blaine's <i>Twenty Tears</i>.' I telegraphed f'r territory, got
+it, and telegraphed to stop you."</p>
+
+<p>"You did it. When did you come down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Last night, six o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>Albert was getting warmer and better-natured.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm here; what are you going t' do with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll use you some way. First thing is to find a boarding-place where we
+can work in a couple o' books on the bill."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know about that, but I'm going to look up a place a
+brakeman gave me a pointer on."</p>
+
+<p>"All right; here goes!"</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely any one was stirring on the streets. The wind was pitilessly
+cold, though not strong. The snow under their feet cried out with a note
+like glass and steel. The windows of the stores were thick with frost,
+and Albert shivered with a sense of homelessness. He had never
+experienced anything like this before. "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span> don't want much of this," he
+muttered, through his scarf.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Welsh lived in a large frame house standing on the edge of a bank,
+and as the young men waited at the door they could look down on the
+meadow-land, where the river lay blue and hard as steel.</p>
+
+<p>A pale little girl, ten or twelve years of age, opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this where Mrs. Welsh lives?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you ask her to come here a moment?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," piped the little one. "Won't you come in and sit down by the
+fire?" she added, with a quaint air of hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>The room was the usual village sitting-room. A cylinder heater full of
+wood stood at one side of it. A rag carpet, much faded, covered the
+floor. The paper on the wall was like striped candy, and the chairs were
+nondescript; but everything was clean&mdash;worn more with brushing than with
+use.</p>
+
+<p>A slim woman of fifty, with hollow eyes and a patient smile, came in,
+wiping her hands on her apron.</p>
+
+<p>"How d'ye do? Did you want to see me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Hartley, smiling. "The fact is, we're book agents, and
+looking for a place to board."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;a&mdash;I&mdash;yes, I keep boarders."</p>
+
+<p>"I was sent here by a brakeman on the midnight express," put in Bert,</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Tom," said the woman, her face clearing. "Tom's always sending us
+people. Why, yes; I've got<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span> room for you, I guess&mdash;this room here." She
+pushed open a folding door leading into what had been her parlor.</p>
+
+<p>"You can have this."</p>
+
+<p>"And the price?"</p>
+
+<p>"Four dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"Eight dollars f'r the two of us. All right; we'll be with you a week or
+two if we have luck."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Welsh smiled. "Excuse me, won't you? I've got to be at my baking;
+make y'rselves at home."</p>
+
+<p>Bert remarked how much she looked like his own mother in the back. She
+had the same tired droop in the shoulders, the same colorless dress,
+characterless with much washing.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. I feel at home already," replied Bert. "Now, Jim," he said,
+after she left the room, "I'm going t' stay right here while you go and
+order our trunks around&mdash;just t' pay you off f'r last night."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Hartley cheerily, going out.</p>
+
+<p>After getting warm, Bert returned to the sitting-room, and sat down at
+the parlor organ and played a gospel hymn or two from the Moody and
+Sankey hymnal. He was in the midst of the chorus of <i>Let Your Lower
+Lights</i>, etc., when a young woman entered the room. She had a
+whisk-broom in her hand, and stood a picture of gentle surprise. Bert
+wheeled about on his stool.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it was Stella," she began.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a book agent," Bert explained. "I might as well out with it. There
+are two of us. Come here to board."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said the girl, with some relief. She was very fair and very
+slight, almost frail. Her eyes were of the sunniest blue, her face pale
+and somewhat thin, but her lips showed scarlet, and her teeth were fine.
+Bert liked her and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"A book agent is the next thing to a burglar, I know; but still&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I didn't mean that, but I <i>was</i> surprised. When did you come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just a few moments ago. Am I in your way?" he inquired, with elaborate
+solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no! Please go on. You play very well. It is seldom young men play at
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"I had to at college; the other fellows all wanted to sing. You play, of
+course."</p>
+
+<p>"When I have time." She sighed. There was a weary droop in her voice;
+she seemed aware of it, and said more brightly:</p>
+
+<p>"You mean Madison, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I'm in my second year."</p>
+
+<p>"I went there two years. Then I had to quit and come home to help
+mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you? That's why I'm out here on this infernal book business&mdash;to get
+money to go on with."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with interest now, noticing his fine eyes and waving
+brown hair.</p>
+
+<p>"It's dreadful, isn't it? But you've got a hope to go back. I haven't."
+She ended with a sigh, a far-off expression in her eyes. "It almost
+killed me to give it up. I don't s'pose I'd know any of the scholars
+you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span> know. Even the teachers are not the same. Oh, yes&mdash;Sarah Shaw; I
+think she's back for the normal course."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes!" exclaimed Bert, "I know Sarah. We boarded on the same street;
+used t' go home together after class. An awful nice girl, too."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a worker. She teaches school. I can't do that, for mother needs
+me at home." There was another pause, broken by the little girl, who
+called:</p>
+
+<p>"Maud, mamma wants you."</p>
+
+<p>Maud rose and went out, with a tired smile on her face that emphasized
+her resemblance to her mother. Bert couldn't forget that smile, and he
+was still thinking about the girl, and what her life must be, when
+Hartley came in.</p>
+
+<p>"By jinks! It's <i>snifty</i>, as dad used to say. You can't draw a long
+breath through your nostrils without freezing y'r nose solid as a
+bottle," he announced, throwing off his coat. "By-the-way, I've just
+found out why you was so anxious to get into this house. Another case o'
+girl, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>Bert blushed; he couldn't help it, notwithstanding his innocence in this
+case. "I didn't know it myself till about ten minutes ago," he
+protested.</p>
+
+<p>Hartley winked prodigiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell me! Is she pretty?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl returned at this moment with an armful of wood.</p>
+
+<p>"Let <i>me</i> put it in," cried Hartley, springing up. "Excuse me. My name
+is Hartley, book agent: Blaine's <i>Twenty Years</i>, plain cloth, sprinkled
+edges, three dollars;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span> half calf, three fifty. This is my friend Mr.
+Lohr, of Marion; German extraction, soph at the university."</p>
+
+<p>The girl bowed and smiled, and pushed by him toward the door of the
+parlor. Hartley followed her in, and Bert could hear them rattling away
+at the stove.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you sit down and play for us?" asked Hartley, after they returned
+to the sitting-room. The persuasive music of the book agent was in his
+fine voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no! It's nearly dinner-time, and I must help about the table."</p>
+
+<p>"Now make yourselves at home," said Mrs. Welsh, appearing at the door
+leading to the kitchen; "if you want anything, just let me know."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. We will," replied Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>By the time the dinner-bell rang they were feeling at home in their new
+quarters. At the table they met the usual group of village boarders: the
+Brann brothers, newsdealers; old man Troutt, who ran the
+livery-stable&mdash;and smelled of it; and a small, dark, and wizened woman
+who kept the millinery store. The others, who came in late, were clerks
+in the stores near by.</p>
+
+<p>Maud served the dinner, while Stella and her mother waited upon the
+table. Albert admired the hands of the girl, which no amount of work
+could quite rob of their essential shapeliness. She was not more than
+twenty, he decided, but she looked older, so wistful was her face.</p>
+
+<p>"They's one thing ag'in' yeh," Troutt, the liveryman, remarked to
+Hartley: "we've jest been worked for one o' the goldingedest schemes you
+<i>ever</i> see! 'Bout six munce ago s'm' fellers come all through here
+claimin' t' be after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span> information about the county and the leadin'
+citizens; wanted t' write a history, an' wanted all the pitchers of the
+leading men, old settlers, an' so on. You paid ten dollars, an' you had
+a book an' your pitcher in it."</p>
+
+<p>"I know the scheme," grinned Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>"Wal, sir, I s'pose them fellers roped in every man in this town. I
+don't s'pose they got out with a cent less'n one thousand dollars. An'
+when the book come&mdash;wal!" Here he stopped to roar. "I don't s'pose you
+ever see a madder lot o' men in your life. In the first place, they got
+the names and the pitchers mixed so that I was Judge Ricker, an' Judge
+Ricker was ol' man Daggett. Didn't the judge swear&mdash;oh, it was awful!"</p>
+
+<p>"I should say so."</p>
+
+<p>"An the pitchers that wa'n't mixed was so goldinged <i>black</i> you couldn't
+tell 'em from niggers. You know how kind o' lily-livered Lawyer Ransom
+is? Wal, he looked like ol' black Joe; he was the maddest man of the
+hull bi'lin'. He throwed the book in the fire, and tromped around like a
+blind bull."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't a success, I take it, then. Why, I should 'a' thought they'd
+'a' nabbed the fellows."</p>
+
+<p>"Not much! They was too keen for that. They didn't deliver the books
+theirselves; they hired Dick Bascom to do it f'r them. 'Course, Dick
+wa'n't t' blame."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I never tried it before," Albert was saying to Maud, at their end
+of the table. "Hartley offered me a job, and as I needed money, I came.
+I don't know what he's going to do with me, now I'm here."</p>
+
+<p>Albert did not go out after dinner with Hartley; it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span> was too cold. He
+had brought his books with him, planning to keep up with his class, if
+possible, and was deep in "C&aelig;sar" when a timid knock came upon the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come!" he called, student fashion,</p>
+
+<p>Maud entered, her face aglow.</p>
+
+<p>"How natural that sounds!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Albert sprang up to take the wood from her arms. "I wish you'd let me do
+that," he said, pleadingly, as she refused his aid.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't sure you were in. Were you reading?"</p>
+
+<p>"C&aelig;sar," he replied, holding up the book. "I am conditioned on Latin.
+I'm going over the 'Commentaries' again."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I knew the book," she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You read Latin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a little&mdash;Vergil."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you can help me out on these <i>oratia obliqua</i>. They bother me
+yet. I hate these 'C&aelig;sar saids.' I like Vergil better."</p>
+
+<p>She stood at his shoulder while he pointed out the knotty passage. She
+read it easily, and he thanked her. It was amazing how well acquainted
+they felt after this.</p>
+
+<p>The wind roared outside in the bare maples, and the fire boomed in its
+pent place within, but these young people had forgotten time and place.
+The girl sank into a chair almost unconsciously as they talked of
+Madison&mdash;a great city to them&mdash;of the Capitol building, of the splendid
+campus, of the lakes, and the gay sailing there in summer and
+ice-boating in winter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it makes me homesick!" cried the girl, with a deep sigh. "It was
+the happiest, sunniest time of all my life. Oh, those walks and talks!
+Those recitations in the dear, chalky old rooms! Oh, <i>how</i> I would like
+to go back over that hollow door-stone again!"</p>
+
+<p>She broke off, with tears in her eyes, and he was obliged to cough two
+or three times before he could break the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I know just how you feel. The first spring when I went back on the farm
+it seemed as if I couldn't stand it. I thought I'd go crazy. The days
+seemed forty-eight hours long. It was so lonesome, and so dreary on
+rainy days! But of course I expected to go back; that's what kept me up.
+I don't think I could have stood it if I hadn't had hope."</p>
+
+<p>"I've given it up now," she said, plaintively; "it's no use hoping."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you teach?" he asked, deeply affected by her voice and
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"I did teach here for a year, but I couldn't endure the strain; I'm not
+very strong, and the boys were so rude. If I could teach in a
+seminary&mdash;teach Latin and English&mdash;I should be happy, I think. But I
+can't leave mother now."</p>
+
+<p>She was a wholly different girl in Albert's eyes as she said this. Her
+cheap dress, her check apron, could not hide the pure intellectual flame
+of her spirit. Her large, blue eyes were deep with thought, and the pale
+face, lighted by the glow of the fire, was as lovely as a rose. Almost
+before he knew it, he was telling her of his life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how I endured it as long as I did," he went on. "It was
+nothing but work, work, and dust or mud the whole year round; farm-life,
+especially on a dairy farm, is slavery."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she agreed, "that is true. Father was a carpenter, and I've
+always lived here; but we have people who are farmers, and I know how it
+is with them."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, when I think of it now it makes me crawl! To think of getting up
+in the morning before daylight, and going out to the barn to do chores,
+to get ready to go into the field to work! Working, wasting y'r life on
+dirt. Waiting and tending on cows seven hundred times a year. Goin'
+round and round in a circle, and never getting out. You needn't talk to
+me of the poetry of a farmer's life."</p>
+
+<p>"It's just the same for us women," she corroborated. "Think of us going
+around the house day after day, and doing just the same things over an'
+over, year after year! That's the whole of most women's lives.
+Dishwashing almost drives me crazy."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," said Albert; "but somebody has t' do it. And if a fellow's
+folks are workin' hard, why, of course he can't lay around and study.
+They're not to blame. I don't know that anybody's to blame."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose anybody is, but it makes me sad to see mother going
+around as she does, day after day. She won't let me do as much as I
+would." The girl looked at her slender hands. "You see, I'm not very
+strong. It makes my heart ache to see her going around in that quiet,
+patient way; she's so good."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I know, I know! I've felt just like that about my mother and father,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long pause, full of deep feeling, and then the girl
+continued in a low, hesitating voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother's had an awful hard time since father died. We had to go to
+keeping boarders, which was hard&mdash;very hard for mother." The boy felt a
+sympathetic lump in his throat as the girl went on again: "But she
+doesn't complain, and she didn't want me to come home from school; but
+of course I couldn't do anything else."</p>
+
+<p>It didn't occur to either of them that any other course was open, nor
+that there was any special heroism or self-sacrifice in the act; it was
+simply <i>right</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not going to drudge all my life," said Albert, at last. "I
+know it's kind o' selfish, but I can't live on a farm. I've made up my
+mind to study law and enter the bar. Lawyers manage to get hold of
+enough to live on decently, and that's more than you can say of the
+farmers. And they live in town, where something is going on once in a
+while, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>In the pause which followed, footsteps were heard on the walk outside,
+and the girl sprang up with a beautiful blush.</p>
+
+<p>"My stars! I didn't think&mdash;I forgot&mdash;I must go."</p>
+
+<p>Hartley burst into the room shortly after she left it, in his usual
+breeze.</p>
+
+<p>"Hul-<i>lo!</i> Still at the Latin, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Bert, with ease. "How goes it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm whooping 'er up! I'm getting started in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span> great shape. Been up
+to the court-house and roped in three of the county officials. In these
+small towns the big man is the politician or the clergyman. I've nailed
+the politicians through the ear; now you must go for the ministers to
+head the list&mdash;that's your lay-out."</p>
+
+<p>"How 'm I t' do it?" asked Bert, in an anxious tone. "I can't sell books
+if they don't want 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, cert! That's the trick. Offer a big discount. Say full calf, two
+fifty; morocco, two ninety. Regular discount to the clergy, ye know. Oh,
+they're on to that little racket&mdash;no trouble. If you can get a few of
+these leaders of the flock, the rest will follow like lambs to the
+slaughter. Tra-la-la&mdash;who-o-o-<i>ish</i>, whish!"</p>
+
+<p>Albert laughed at Hartley as he plunged his face into the ice-cold
+water, puffing and wheezing.</p>
+
+<p>"Jeemimy Crickets! but ain't that water cold! I worked Rock River this
+way last month, and made a boomin' success. If you take hold here in
+the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm all ready to stand anything short of being kicked out."</p>
+
+<p>"No danger of that if you're a real book agent. It's the snide that gets
+kicked. You've got t' have some savvy in this, just like any other
+business." He stopped in his dressing to say, "We've struck a great
+boarding-place, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Looks like it."</p>
+
+<p>"I begin t' cotton to the old lady a'ready. Good 'eal like mother used
+t' be 'fore she broke down. Didn't the old lady have a time of it
+raisin' me? Phewee! Patient! Job wasn't a patchin'. But the test is
+goin' t' come on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span> the biscuit; if her biscuit comes up t' mother's I'm
+hern till death."</p>
+
+<p>He broke off to comb his hair, a very nice bit of work in his case.</p>
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>There was no discernible reason why the little town should have been
+called Tyre, and yet its name was as characteristically American as its
+architecture. It had the usual main street lined with low brick or
+wooden stores&mdash;a street which developed into a road running back up a
+wide, sandy valley away from the river. Being a county town, it had a
+court-house in a yard near the centre of the town, and a big summer
+hotel. Curiously shaped and oddly distributed hills rose abruptly out of
+the valley sand, forming a sort of amphitheatre in which the village
+lay. These square-topped hills ended at a common level, showing that
+they were not the result of an upheaval, but were the remains of the
+original stratification formations left standing after the scooping
+action of the post-glacial floods had ceased.</p>
+
+<p>Some of them looked like ruined walls of castles ancient as hills, on
+whose massive tops time had sown sturdy oaks and cedars. They lent a
+distinct air of romance to the landscape at all times; but when in
+summer graceful vines clambered over their rugged sides, and underbrush
+softened their broken lines, it was not at all difficult to imagine them
+the remains of an unrecorded and very war-like people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Even now, in winter, with yellow-brown and green cedars standing starkly
+upon their summits, these towers possessed a distinct charm, and in the
+early morning when the trees glistened with frost, or at evening when
+the white light of the sun was softened and violet shadows lay along the
+snow, the whole valley was a delight to the eye, full of distinct and
+lasting charm.</p>
+
+<p>In the campaign which Hartley began, Albert did his best, and his best
+was done unconsciously; for the simplicity of his manner&mdash;all unknown to
+himself&mdash;was the most potent factor in securing consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a book agent," he said to one of the clergymen to whom he first
+appealed; "I'm a student trying to sell a good book and make a little
+money to help me to complete my course at the university."</p>
+
+<p>In this way he secured three clergymen to head the list, much to the
+delight and admiration of Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>"Good! Now corral the alumni of the place. Work the fraternal racket to
+the bitter end. Oh, say! there's a sociable to-morrow night; I guess
+we'd better go, hadn't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alone? No! Take some girls. I'm going to take neighbor Pickett's
+daughter; she's homely as a hedge fence, but I'll take her for business
+reasons."</p>
+
+<p>"Hartley, you're an infernal fraud!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing of the kind&mdash;I'm a salesman," ended Hartley, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>After supper the following day, as Albert was still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span> lingering at the
+table with the girls and Mrs. Welsh, he said to Maud:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to the sociable?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I guess not."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you go if I asked you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Try me and see!" answered the girl, with a laugh, her color rising.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Miss Welsh, will you attend the festivity of the evening
+under my guidance and protection?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, thank you; but I must wash the dishes first."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll wash the dishes; you go get ready," said Mrs. Welsh.</p>
+
+<p>Albert felt that he had one of the loveliest girls in the room as he led
+Maud down the floor of the vestry of the church. Her cheeks were
+glowing, and her eyes shining with maidenly delight as they took seats
+at the table to sip a little coffee and nibble a bit of cake.</p>
+
+<p>Maud introduced him to a number of young people who had been students at
+the university. They received him cordially, and in a very short time he
+was enjoying himself very well indeed. He was reminded rather
+disagreeably of his office, however, by seeing Hartley surrounded by a
+laughing crowd of the more frolicsome young people. He winked at Albert,
+as much as to say, "Good stroke of business."</p>
+
+<p>The evening passed away with songs, games, and recitations, and it was
+nearly eleven o'clock when the young people began to wander off toward
+home in pairs. Albert and Maud were among the first of the young folks
+to bid the rest good-night.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The night was clear and keen but perfectly still, and the young people,
+arm in arm, walked slowly homeward under the bare maples, in delicious
+companionship. Albert held Maud's arm close to his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you cold?" he asked, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you; the night is lovely," she replied; then added, with a
+sigh, "I don't like sociables so well as I used to&mdash;they tire me out."</p>
+
+<p>"We stayed too long."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't that; I'm getting so they seem kind o' silly."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I feel a little that way myself," he confessed.</p>
+
+<p>"But there is so little to see here in Tyre at any time&mdash;no music, no
+theatres. I like theatres, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't go half enough."</p>
+
+<p>"But nothing worth seeing ever comes into these little towns&mdash;and then
+we're all so poor, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>The lamp, turned low, was emitting a terrible odor as they entered the
+sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>"My goodness! it's almost twelve o'clock! Good-night!" She held out her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night!" he said, taking it, and giving it a cordial pressure which
+she remembered long.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night!" she repeated, softly, going up the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Hartley, who came in a few minutes later, found his partner sitting
+thoughtfully by the fire, with his coat and shoes off, evidently in deep
+abstraction.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I got away at last&mdash;much as ever. Great scheme, that sociable,
+eh? I saw your little girl introducing you right and left."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Say, Hartley, I wish you'd leave her out of this thing; I don't like
+the way you speak of her when&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Phew! You don't? Oh, all right! I'm mum as an oyster&mdash;only keep it up!
+Get into all the church sociables you can; there's nothing like it."</p>
+
+<hr class="minor" />
+
+<p>Hartley soon had canvassers out along the country roads, and was working
+every house in town. The campaign promised to lengthen into a
+month&mdash;perhaps longer. Albert especially became a great favorite. Every
+one declared there had never been such book agents in the town. "They're
+such gentlemanly fellows. They don't press anybody to buy. They don't
+rush about and 'poke their noses where they're not wanted.' They are
+more like merchants with books to sell." The only person who failed to
+see the attraction in them was Ed Brann, who was popularly supposed to
+be engaged to Maud. He grew daily more sullen and repellent, toward
+Albert noticeably so.</p>
+
+<p>One evening about six, after coming in from a long walk about town,
+Albert entered his room without lighting his lamp, lay down on the bed,
+and fell asleep. He had been out late the night before with Maud at a
+party, and slumber came almost instantly.</p>
+
+<p>Maud came in shortly, hearing no response to her knock, and after
+hanging some towels on the rack went out without seeing the sleeper. In
+the sitting-room she met Ed Brann. He was a stalwart young man with
+curling black hair, and a heavy face at its best, but set and sullen
+now. His first words held a menace:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Say, Maud, I want t' talk to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; what is it, Ed?" replied the girl, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know how often you're going to be out till twelve o'clock
+with this book agent?"</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was the derisive inflection on "book agent" that woke Albert.
+Brann's tone was brutal&mdash;more brutal even than his words, and the girl
+turned pale and her breath quickened.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Ed, what's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Matter is just this: you ain't got any business goin' around with that
+feller with my ring on your finger, that's all." He ended with an
+unmistakable threat in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said the girl, after a pause, curiously quiet; "then I
+won't; here's your ring."</p>
+
+<p>The man's bluster disappeared instantly. Bert could tell by the change
+in his voice, which was incredibly great, as he pleaded:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't do that, Maud; I didn't mean to say that; I was mad&mdash;I'm
+sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm <i>glad</i> you did it <i>now</i>, so I can know you. Take your ring, Ed; I
+never 'll wear it again."</p>
+
+<p>Albert had heard all this, but he did not know how the girl looked as
+she faced the man. In the silence which followed she scornfully passed
+him and went out into the kitchen. Brann went out and did not return at
+supper.</p>
+
+<p>Young people of this sort are not self-analysts, and Maud did not
+examine closely into causes. She was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span> astonished to find herself more
+indignant than grieved. She broke into an angry wail as she went to her
+mother's bosom:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother! mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter, Maudie? Tell me. There, there! don't cry, pet!
+Who's been hurtin' my poor little bird?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ed has; he said&mdash;he said&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There, there! poor child! Have you been quarrelling again? Never mind;
+it'll come out all right."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it won't&mdash;not the way you mean," the girl declared. "I've given him
+back his ring, and I'll never wear it again."</p>
+
+<p>The mother could not understand with what wounding brutality the man's
+tone had fallen upon the girl's spirit, and Maud could not explain
+sufficiently to justify herself. Mrs. Welsh consoled herself with the
+idea that it was only a lover's quarrel&mdash;one of the little jars sure to
+come when two natures are settling together&mdash;and that all would be
+mended in a day or two.</p>
+
+<p>Albert, being no more of a self-analyst than Maud, simply said, "Served
+him right," and dwelt no more upon it for the time.</p>
+
+<p>At supper, however, he was extravagantly gay, and to himself
+unaccountably so. He joked Troutt till Maud begged him to stop, and
+after the rest had gone he remained seated at the table, enjoying the
+indignant color in her face and the flash of her infrequent smile, which
+it was such a pleasure to provoke. He volunteered to help wash the
+dishes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, but I'm afraid you'd be more bother than help," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank <i>you</i>, but you don't know me. I ain't so green as I look by no
+manner o' means. I've been doing my own housekeeping for four terms."</p>
+
+<p>"I know all about that," laughed the girl. "You young men rooming do
+precious little cooking and no dish-washing at all."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a base calumny! I made it a point to wash every dish in the
+house, except the spider, once a week; had a regular cleaning-up day."</p>
+
+<p>"And about the spider?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wiped that out nicely with a newspaper every time I wanted to use
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, horrors!&mdash;Mother, listen to that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what more could you ask? You wouldn't have me wipe it <i>six</i> times
+a day, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder it didn't poison you," commented Mrs. Welsh.</p>
+
+<p>"Takes more'n that to poison a student," laughed Albert, as he went out.</p>
+
+<p>The next afternoon he came bursting into the kitchen, where Maud stood
+with her sleeves rolled up, deep in the dishpan.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want a sleigh-ride?" he asked, boyishly eager.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up with shining eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, wouldn't I! Can you get along, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, child. Go on. The air will do you good."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"W'y, Maud!" said the little girl, "you said you didn't want to when
+Ed&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Welsh silenced her, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Run right along, dear; it's just the nicest time o' day. Are there many
+teams out?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're just beginning to come out," said Albert. "I'll have a cutter
+around here in about two jiffies; be on hand, sure."</p>
+
+<p>Troutt was standing in the sunny doorway of his stable when the young
+fellow dashed up to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, Uncle Troutt! Harness your fastest nag into your swellest outfit
+instanter."</p>
+
+<p>"Aha! Goin' t' take y'r girl out, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and I want to do it in style."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess ol' Dan's the horse for you. Gentle as a kitten and as knowin'
+as a fox. Drive him with one hand&mdash;left hand." The old man laughed till
+his long, faded beard flapped up and down and quivered with the stress
+of his enjoyment of his joke. He ended by hitching a vicious-looking
+sorrel to a gay, duck-bellied cutter, saying, as he gave up the reins:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, be keerful. Dan's foxy; he's all right when he sees you've got the
+reins, but don't drop 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry about me; I grew up with horses," said the
+over-confident youth, leaping into the sleigh and gathering up the
+lines. "Stand aside, my lord, and let the cort&eacute;ge pass. Hoop-la!"</p>
+
+<p>The brute gave a tearing lunge, and was out of the doorway before the
+old man could utter another word. Albert thrilled with pleasure as he
+felt the reins stiffen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span> in his hands, and saw the traces swing slack
+beside the thills.</p>
+
+<p>"If he keeps this up he'll do," he said aloud.</p>
+
+<p>As he turned up at the gate Maud came gayly down the path, muffled to
+the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what a nice cutter! But the horse&mdash;is he gentle?" she asked, as she
+climbed in.</p>
+
+<p>"As a cow," Albert replied.&mdash;"Git out o' this, Bones!"</p>
+
+<p>The main street was already filled with wood sleighs, bob-sleds filled
+with children, and men in light cutters, out for a race. Laughter was on
+the air, and the jingle-jangle of bells. The sun was dazzling in its
+brightness, and the gay wraps and scarfs lighted up the scene with
+flecks of color. Loafers on the sidewalks fired familiar phrases at the
+teams as they passed:</p>
+
+<p>"Step up, Bones!"</p>
+
+<p>"Let 'er <i>go</i>, Gallagher!"</p>
+
+<p>"Get there, Eli," and the like.</p>
+
+<p>But what cared the drivers? If the shouts were insolent they laid them
+to envy, and if they were pleasant they smiled in reply.</p>
+
+<p>Albert and Maud had made two easy turns up and down the street when a
+man driving a span of large Black Hawk horses dashed up a side street
+and whirled in just before them. The man was a superb driver, and sat
+with the reins held carelessly but securely in his left hand, guiding
+the team more by his voice than by the bit.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Hel</i>-lo!" cried Bert; "that looks like Brann."</p>
+
+<p>"It is," said Maud.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Cracky! that's a fine team&mdash;Black Hawks, both of them. I wonder if ol'
+sorrel can pass 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please don't try!" pleaded the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because&mdash;because I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid of what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid something 'll happen."</p>
+
+<p>"Something <i>is</i> sure to happen; I'm goin' to pass him if old Bones has
+any <i>git</i> to him."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll make him mad."</p>
+
+<p>"Who mad? Brann?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, s'pose it does, who cares?"</p>
+
+<p>There were a dozen similar rigs moving up or down the street, and
+greetings passed from sleigh to sleigh. Everybody except Brann welcomed
+Albert with sincere pleasure, and exchanged rustic jokes with him. As
+they slowed up at the upper end of the street and began to turn, a man
+on the sidewalk said, confidentially:</p>
+
+<p>"Say, cap', if you handle that old rack o' bones just right, he'll
+distance anything on this road. When you want him to do his best let him
+have the rein; don't pull a pound. I used to own 'im&mdash;I know 'im."</p>
+
+<p>The old sorrel came round "gauming," his ugly head thrown up, his great
+red mouth open, his ears laid back. Brann and the young doctor of the
+place were turning together, a little farther up the street. The blacks,
+responding to their driver's word, came down with flying hoofs, their
+great glossy breasts flecked with foam, their jaws champing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Come on, crow-bait!" yelled Brann, insultingly, as he came down past
+the doctor, and seemed about to pass Albert and Maud. There was hate in
+the glare of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>But he did not pass. The old sorrel seemed to lengthen; to the
+spectators his nose appeared to be glued to the glossy side of Brann's
+off black.</p>
+
+<p>"See them blacks trot!" shouted Albert, in ungrammatical enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"See that old sorrel shake himself!" yelled the loafers.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor came tearing down with a spirited bay, a magnificent stepper.
+As he drew along so that Bert could catch a glimpse of the mare's neck,
+he thrilled with delight. There was the thoroughbred's lacing of veins;
+the proud fling of her knees and the swell of her neck showed that she
+was far from doing her best. There was a wild light in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>These were the fast teams of the town. All interest was centred in them.</p>
+
+<p>"Clear the track!" yelled the loafers.</p>
+
+<p>"The doc's good f'r 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"If she don't break."</p>
+
+<p>Albert was pulling at the sorrel heavily, absorbed in seeing, as well as
+he could for the flung snowballs, the doctor's mare draw slowly, foot by
+foot, past the blacks. Suddenly Brann gave a shrill yell and stood up in
+his sleigh. The gallant little bay broke and fell behind; Brann laughed,
+the blacks trotted on, their splendid pace unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>"Let the sorrel out!" yelled somebody.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let him loose!" yelled Troutt on the corner, quivering with excitement.
+"Let him go!"</p>
+
+<p>Albert, remembering what the fellow had said, let the reins loose. The
+old sorrel's teeth came together with a snap; his head lowered and his
+tail rose; he shot abreast of the blacks. Maud, frightened into silence,
+covered her head with the robe to escape the flying snow. The sorrel
+drew steadily ahead and was passing the blacks when Brann turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Durn y'r old horse!" he yelled through his shut teeth, and laid the
+whip across the sorrel's hips. The blacks broke wildly, but, strange to
+say, the old sorrel increased his speed. Again Brann struck, but the
+lash fell on Bert's outstretched wrists. He did not see that the blacks
+were crowding him to the gutter, but he heard a warning cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Look <i>out</i>, there!"</p>
+
+<p>Before he could turn to look, the cutter seemed to be blown up by a
+bomb. He rose in the air like a vaulter, and when he fell the light went
+out.</p>
+
+<p>The next that he heard was a curious soft murmur of voices, out of which
+a sweet, agonized girl-voice broke:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, where's the doctor? He's dead&mdash;oh, he's dead! <i>Can't</i> you hurry?"</p>
+
+<p>Next came a quick, authoritative voice, still far away, and a hush
+followed it; then an imperative order:</p>
+
+<p>"Stand out o' the way! What do you think you can do by crowding on top
+of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stand back! stand back!" other voices called.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then he felt something cold on his scalp: they were taking his cap off
+and putting snow on his head; then the doctor&mdash;he knew him now&mdash;said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me take him!"</p>
+
+<p>A dull, throbbing ache came into his head, and as this grew the noise of
+voices became more distinct, and he could hear sobbing. Then he opened
+his lids, but the glare of the sunlight struck them shut again; he saw
+only Maud's face, agonized, white, and wet with tears, looking down into
+his.</p>
+
+<p>They raised him a little more, and he again opened his eyes on the
+circle of hushed and excited men thronging about him. He saw Brann, with
+wild, scared face, standing in his cutter and peering over the heads of
+the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you feel now?" asked the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you hear us? Albert, do you know me?" called the girl.</p>
+
+<p>His lips moved stiffly, but he smiled a little, and at length whispered
+slowly, "Yes; I guess&mdash;I'm all&mdash;right."</p>
+
+<p>"Put him into my cutter; Maud, get in here, too," the doctor commanded.
+The crowd opened as the doctor and Troutt helped the wounded man into
+the sleigh. The pain in his head grew worse, but Albert's perception of
+things sharpened in proportion; he closed his eyes to the sun, but in
+the shadow of Maud's breast opened them again and looked up at her. He
+felt a vague, child-like pleasure in knowing that she was holding him in
+her arms; he thought of his mother&mdash;"how it would frighten her if she
+knew."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Hello!" called a breathless, hearty voice, "what the deuce y' been
+doing with my pardner? Bert, old fellow, are you there?" Hartley asked,
+clinging to the edge of the moving cutter, and peering into his friend's
+face. Albert smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm here&mdash;what there is left of me," he replied, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Glory! How did it happen?" he asked of the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;I couldn't see&mdash;we ran into a culvert," replied Maud.</p>
+
+<p>"Weren't you hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit. I stayed in the cutter."</p>
+
+<p>Albert groaned, and tried to rise, but the girl gently yet firmly
+restrained him. Hartley was walking beside the doctor, talking loudly.
+"It was a devilish thing to do; the scoundrel ought to be jugged!"</p>
+
+<p>Albert tried again to rise. "I'm bleeding yet; I'm soaking you; let me
+get up!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl shuddered, but remained firm.</p>
+
+<p>"No; we're 'most home."</p>
+
+<p>She felt no shame, but a certain exaltation as she looked into the faces
+about her. She gazed unrecognizingly upon her nearest girl friends, and
+they, gazing upon her white face and unresponsive eyes, spoke in awed
+whispers.</p>
+
+<p>At the gate the crowd gathered and waited with deepest interest. It was
+enthralling romance to them.</p>
+
+<p>"Ed Brann done it," said one.</p>
+
+<p>"How?" asked another.</p>
+
+<p>"With the butt end of his whip."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's a lie! His team ran into Lohr's rig."</p>
+
+<p>"Not much; Ed crowded him into the ditch."</p>
+
+<p>"What fer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cause Bert cut him out with Maud."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, get out of the way! Don't stand there gabbing," yelled Hartley,
+as he took Albert in his arms and, together with the doctor, lifted him
+out of the sleigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodness sakes alive! Ain't it terrible! How is he?" asked an old lady,
+peering at him as he passed.</p>
+
+<p>On the porch stood Mrs. Welsh, supported by Ed Brann.</p>
+
+<p>"She's all right, I tell you. He ain't hurt much, either; just stunned a
+little, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Maud! child!" cried the mother, as Maud appeared, followed by a bevy of
+girls.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I'm</i> all right, mother," she said, running into the trembling arms
+outstretched toward her; "but, oh, poor Albert!"</p>
+
+<p>After the wounded man disappeared into the house the crowd dispersed.
+Brann went off by the way of the alley; he was not prepared to meet the
+questions of his accusers.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what in &mdash;&mdash; you been up to?" was the greeting of his brother, as
+he re-entered the shop.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Welting a man on the head with a whip-stock ain't anything, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't touch him. We was racing, and he run into the culvert."</p>
+
+<p>"Hank says he saw you strike him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He lies! I was strikin' the horse to make him break!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yeh was!" sneered the older man. "Well, I hope you understand that
+this'll ruin you in this town. If you didn't strike him, they'll say you
+run him into the culvert, 'n' every man, woman, 'n' child'll be down on
+you, and <i>me</i> f'r bein' related to you. They all know how you feel
+toward him for cuttin' you out with Maud Welsh."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't bear down on him too hard, Joe. He didn't mean t' do any
+harm," said Troutt, who had followed Ed down to the store. "I guess the
+young feller 'll come out all right. Just go kind o' easy till we see
+how he turns out. If he dies, why, it'll haf t' be looked into."</p>
+
+<p>Ed turned pale and swallowed hastily. "If he should die I'll be a
+murderer," he thought. He acknowledged that hate was in his heart, and
+he shivered as he remembered the man's white face with the bright red
+stream flowing down behind his ear and over his cheek. It almost seemed
+to him that he <i>had</i> struck him, so close had the accident followed upon
+the fall of his whip.</p>
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Albert sank into a feverish sleep that night, with a vague perception of
+four figures in the room&mdash;Maud, her mother, Hartley, and the young
+doctor. When he awoke fully in the morning his head felt prodigiously
+hot and heavy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was early dawn, and the lamp was burning brightly. Outside, a man's
+feet could be heard on the squealing snow&mdash;a sound which told how still
+and cold it was. A team passed with a jingle of bells.</p>
+
+<p>Albert raised his head and looked about. Hartley was lying on the sofa,
+rolled up in his overcoat and some extra quilts. He had lain down at
+last, worn with watching. Albert felt a little weak, and fell back on
+his pillow, thinking about the strange night he had passed&mdash;a night more
+filled with strange happenings than the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>As the light grew in the room his mind cleared, and lifting his muscular
+arm he opened and shut his hand, saying aloud, in his old boyish manner:</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I'm all here."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" called Hartley, rolling out of bed. "Did you ask for
+anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Give me some water, Jim; my mouth is dry as a powder-mill."</p>
+
+<p>"How yeh feelin', anyway, pardner?" said Hartley, as he brought the
+water.</p>
+
+<p>"First-rate, Jim; I guess I'll be all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess you'd better keep quiet."</p>
+
+<p>He threw on his coat next, and went out into the kitchen, returning soon
+with some hot water, with which he began to bathe his partner's face and
+hands as tenderly as a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"There; now I guess you're in shape f'r grub&mdash;feel any like grub?&mdash;Come
+in," he called, in answer to a knock on the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Welsh entered.</p>
+
+<p>"How is he?" she whispered, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm all right," replied Albert.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to find you so much better," she said, going to his bedside.
+"I've hardly slep', I was so much worried about you. Your breakfast is
+ready, Mr. Hartley. I've got something special for Albert."</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later Maud entered with a platter, followed closely by her
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>The girl came forward timidly, but when Albert turned his eyes on her
+and called, cheerily, "Good morning!" she flamed out in rosy color and
+recoiled. She had expected to see him pale, dull-eyed, and with a weak
+voice, but there was little to indicate invalidism in his firm greeting.
+She gave place to Mrs. Welsh, who prepared his breakfast. She was
+smitten dumb by his tone, and hardly dared look at him as he sat propped
+up in bed.</p>
+
+<p>However, though he was feeling absurdly well, there was a good deal of
+bravado in his tone and manner, for he ate but little, and soon sank
+back on the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel better when my head is low," he explained, in a faint voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't I do something?" asked the girl, her courage reviving as she
+perceived how ill and faint he really was.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you better write to his folks," said Mrs. Welsh.</p>
+
+<p>"No, don't do that," he protested, opening his eyes; "it will only worry
+them, and do me no good. I'll be all right in a few days. You needn't
+waste your time on me; Hartley will wait on me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't mind him," said Mrs. Welsh. "I'm his mother now, and he's goin'
+to do just as I tell him to&mdash;aren't you, Albert?"</p>
+
+<p>He dropped his eyelids in assent, and went off into a doze. It was all
+very pleasant to be thus waited upon. Hartley was devotion itself, and
+the doctor removed his bandages with the care and deliberation of a man
+with a moderate practice; besides, he considered Albert a personal
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>Hartley, after the doctor had gone, said with some hesitation:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, pard, I <i>ought</i> to go out and see a couple o' fellows I
+promised t' meet this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Jim; all right. You go right ahead on business; I'm goin' t'
+sleep, anyway, and I'll be all right in a day or two."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I will; but I'll run in every hour 'r two and see if you don't
+want something. You're in good hands, anyway, when I'm gone."</p>
+
+<hr class="minor" />
+
+<p>"Won't you read to me?" pleaded Albert, one afternoon, when Maud came in
+with her mother to brush up the room. "It's getting rather slow business
+layin' here like this."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course, Maud."</p>
+
+<p>So Maud got a book, and sat down over by the stove, quite distant from
+the bed, and read to him from <i>The Lady of the Lake</i>, while the mother,
+like a piece of tireless machinery, moved about the house at the
+never-ending<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span> succession of petty drudgeries which wear the heart and
+soul out of so many wives and mothers, making life to them a pilgrimage
+from stove to pantry, from pantry to cellar, and from cellar to
+garret&mdash;a life that deadens and destroys, coarsens and narrows, till the
+flesh and bones are warped to the expression of the wronged and cheated
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>Albert's selfishness was in a way excusable. He enjoyed beyond measure
+the sound of the girl's soft voice and the sight of her graceful head
+bent over the page. He lay, looking and listening dreamily, till the
+voice and the sunlit head were lost in a deep, sweet sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The girl sat with closed book, looking at his face as he slept. It was a
+curious study to her, a young man&mdash;<i>this</i> young man, asleep. His brown
+lashes lay on his cheek as placid as those of a child. As she looked she
+gained courage to go over softly and peer down on him. How boyish he
+seemed! How little to be feared! A boy outside uttered a shout, and she
+hurried away, pale and breathless. As she paused in the door and looked
+back at the undisturbed sleeper, she smiled, and the pink came back into
+her thin face.</p>
+
+<p>Albert's superb young blood began to assert itself, and on the afternoon
+of the fifth day he was able to sit in his rocking-chair before the fire
+and read a little, though he professed that his eyes were not strong, in
+order that Maud should read for him. This she did as often as she could
+leave her other work, which was "not half often enough," the invalid
+grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>"More than you deserve," she found courage to say.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hartley let nothing interfere with the book business. "You take it
+easy," he repeated. "Don't you worry&mdash;your pay goes on just the same.
+You're doing well right where you are. By jinks! biggest piece o' luck,"
+he went on, half in earnest. "Why, I can't turn around without taking an
+order&mdash;fact! Turned in a book on the livery bill, so that's all fixed.
+We'll make a clear hundred dollars out o' that little bump o' yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Little bump! Say, now, that's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep it up&mdash;put it on! Don't hurry about getting well. I don't need you
+to canvass, and I guess you enjoy being waited on." He ended with a sly
+wink and cough.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, convalescence was delicious, with Maud reading to him, bringing his
+food, and singing for him; all that marred his peace was the stream of
+people who came to inquire how he was getting along. The sympathy was
+largely genuine, as Hartley could attest, but it bored the invalid. He
+had rather be left in quiet with Walter Scott and Maud. In the light of
+common day the accident was hurrying to be a dream.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of a week he was quite himself again, though he still had
+difficulty in wearing his hat. It was not till the second Sunday after
+the accident that he appeared in the dining-room for the first time,
+with a large travelling-cap concealing the suggestive bandages. He
+looked pale and thin, but his eyes danced with joy.</p>
+
+<p>Maud's eyes dilated with instant solicitude. The rest sprang up in
+surprise, with shouts of delight, as hearty as brethren.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ginger! I'm glad t' see yeh!" said Troutt, so sincerely that he looked
+almost winning to the boy. The rest crowded around, shaking hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm on deck again."</p>
+
+<p>Ed Brann came in a moment later with his brother, and there was a
+significant little pause&mdash;a pause which grew painful till Albert turned
+and saw Brann, and called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Ed! How are you? Didn't know you were here."</p>
+
+<p>As he held out his hand, Brann, his face purple with shame and
+embarrassment, lumbered heavily across the room and took it, muttering
+some poor apology.</p>
+
+<p>"Hope y' don't blame me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not&mdash;fortunes o' war. Nobody to blame; just my
+carelessness.&mdash;Yes; I'll take turkey," he said to Maud, as he sank into
+the seat of honor.</p>
+
+<p>The rest laughed, but Brann remained standing near Albert's chair. He
+had not finished yet.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm mighty glad you don't lay it up against me, Lohr; an' I want to say
+the doctor's bill is all right; you un'erstand, it's <i>all right</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Albert looked at him a moment in surprise. He understood that this,
+coming from a man like Brann, meant more than a thousand prayers from a
+ready apologist. It was a terrible victory, and he was disposed to make
+it as easy for his rival as he could.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, all right, Ed; only I'd calculated to cheat him out o' part of
+it&mdash;I'd planned to turn in a couple o' Blaine's <i>Twenty Years</i> on the
+bill."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hartley roared, and the rest joined in, but not even Albert perceived
+all that it meant. It meant that the young savage had surrendered his
+claim in favor of the man he had all but killed. The struggle had been
+prodigious, but he had snatched victory out of defeat; his better nature
+had conquered.</p>
+
+<p>No one ever gave him credit for it; and when he went West in the spring,
+people said his passion for Maud had been superficial. In truth, he had
+loved the girl as sincerely as he had hated his rival. That he could
+rise out of the barbaric in his love and his hate was heroic.</p>
+
+<p>When Albert went to ride again, it was on melting snow, with the slowest
+horse Troutt had. Maud was happier than she had been since she left
+school, and fuller of color and singing. She dared not let a golden
+moment pass now without hearing it ring full, and she dared not think
+how short this day of happiness might be.</p>
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>At the end of the fifth week of their stay in Tyre a suspicion of spring
+was in the wind as it swept the southern exposure of the valley. March
+was drawing to a close, and there was more than a suggestion of April in
+the rapidly melting snow which still lay on the hills and under the
+cedars and tamaracks in the swamps. Patches of green grass, appearing on
+the sunny side of the road where the snow had melted, led to predictions
+of spring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span> from the loafers beginning to sun themselves on the
+salt-barrels and shoe-boxes outside the stores.</p>
+
+<p>A group sitting about the blacksmith shop were discussing it.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an early seedin'&mdash;now mark my words," said Troutt, as he threw his
+knife into the soft ground at his feet. "The sun is crossing the line
+earlier this spring than it did last."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; an' I heard a crow to-day makin' that kind of a&mdash;a spring noise
+that sort o'&mdash;I d' know what&mdash;kind o' goes all through a feller."</p>
+
+<p>"And there's Uncle Sweeney, an' that settles it; spring's comin' sure!"
+said Troutt, pointing at an old man, much bent, hobbling down the
+street. "When <i>he</i> gits out the frogs ain't fur behind."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll be gittin' on to the ground by next Monday," said Sam Dingley to
+a crowd who were seated on the newly painted harrows and seeders which
+Svend &amp; Johnson had got out ready for the spring trade. "Svend &amp;
+Johnson's Agricultural Implement Depot" was on the north side of the
+street, and on a spring day the yard was one of the pleasantest
+loafing-places that could be imagined, especially if one wished company.</p>
+
+<p>Albert wished to be alone. Something in the touch and tone of this
+spring afternoon made him restless and inclined to strange thoughts. He
+took his way out along the road which followed the river-bank, and in
+the outskirts of the village threw himself down on a bank of grass which
+the snows had protected, and which had already a tinge of green because
+of its wealth of sun.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The willows had thrown out their tiny light-green flags, though their
+roots were under the ice, and some of the hardwood twigs were tinged
+with red. There was a faint but magical odor of uncovered earth in the
+air, and the touch of the wind was like a caress from a moist, magnetic
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>The boy absorbed the light and heat of the sun as some wild thing might.
+With his hat over his face, his hands folded on his breast, he lay as
+still as a statue. He did not listen at first, he only felt; but at
+length he rose on his elbow and listened. The ice cracked and fell along
+the bank with a long, hollow, booming crash; a crow cawed, and a jay
+answered it from the willows below. A flight of sparrows passed,
+twittering innumerably. The boy shuddered with a strange, wistful
+longing, and a realization of the flight of time.</p>
+
+<p>He could have wept, he could have sung, but he only shuddered and lay
+silent under the stress of that strange, sweet passion which quickened
+his heart, deepened his eyes, and made his breath come and go with a
+quivering sound. Across the dazzling blue arch of the sky the crow
+flapped, sending down his prophetic, jubilant note; the breeze, as soft
+and sweet as April, stirred in his hair; the hills, deep in their dusky
+blue, seemed miles away; and the voices of the care-free skaters on the
+melting ice of the river below came to the ear subdued to a unity with
+the scene.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a fear seized upon the boy&mdash;a horror! Life, life was passing!
+Life that can be lived only once, and lost, is lost forever! Life, that
+fatal gift of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span> Invisible Powers to man&mdash;a path, with youth and joy
+and hope at its eastern gate, and despair, regret, and death at its low
+western portal!</p>
+
+<p>The boy caught a momentary glimpse of his real significance. "I am only
+a gnat, a speck in the sun, a youth facing the millions of great and
+wise and wealthy!" He leaped up in a frenzy. "Oh, I mustn't stay here! I
+must get back to my studies. Life is slipping by me, and I am doing
+nothing, being nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>His face, as pale as death, shone with passionate resolution, and his
+hands were clinched in silent vow.</p>
+
+<p>But on his way back he met the jocund party of skaters going home from
+the river, and with the easy shift and change of youth joined in their
+ringing laughter. The weird power of the wind's voice was gone, and he
+sank to the level of the unthinking boy again. However, the problem was
+only put off, not solved.</p>
+
+<p>That night Hartley said: "Well, pardner, we're getting 'most ready to
+pull out. Someways I always get restless when these warm days begin."
+This was as sentimental as Hartley ever got; or, if he ever felt more
+sentiment, he concealed it carefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose it must 'a' been in spring that those old chaps, on their
+steeds and in their steel shirts, started out for to rescue some damsel,
+hey?" he ended, with a grin. "Now, that's the way I feel&mdash;just like
+striking out for, say, Oshkosh. That little piece of lofty tumbling of
+yours was a big boom, and no mistake. Why, your share o' this campaign
+will be a hundred and twenty dollars sure."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"More'n I've earned," replied Bert.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it ain't. You've done your duty like a man. Done as much in your
+way as I have. Now, if you want to try another county with me, say so.
+I'll make a thousand dollars this year out o' this thing."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I'll go back to school."</p>
+
+<p>"All right; I don't blame you for wanting to do that."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess, with what I can earn for father, I can pull through the year.
+I <i>must</i> get back. I'm awfully obliged to you, Jim."</p>
+
+<p>"That'll do on that," said Hartley, shortly; "you don't owe me anything.
+We'll finish delivery to-morrow, and be ready to pull out on Friday or
+Sat."</p>
+
+<p>There was an acute pain in Albert's breast somewhere; he had not
+analyzed his case at all, and did not now, but the idea of going
+affected him strongly. It had been so pleasant, that daily return to a
+lovely girlish presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," Hartley was going on, "I'm going to just quietly leave a
+book on her centre-table. I don't know as it'll interest her much, but
+it'll show we appreciate the grub, and so on. By jinks! you don't seem
+to realize what a worker that woman is! Up five o'clock in the
+morning&mdash;By-the-way, you've been going around with the girl a good deal,
+and she's introduced you to some first-rate sales; now, if you want to
+leave her a little something, make it a morocco copy, and charge it to
+the firm."</p>
+
+<p>Albeit knew that he meant well, but he couldn't, somehow, help saying,
+ironically:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, but I guess <i>one</i> copy of Blaine's <i>Twenty Years</i> will be
+enough in the house, especially&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, give her anything you please, and charge it up to the firm. I
+don't insist on Blaine; only suggested that because&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I can stand the expense of a present."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say you couldn't, man! But <i>I</i> want a hand in this thing.
+Don't be so turrible keen t' snap a feller up," complained Hartley,
+turning on him. "What the thunder is the matter of you, anyway? I like
+the girl, and she's been good to us all round; she tended you like an
+angel&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There, there! That's enough o' that," put in Albert, hastily. "For
+God's sake, don't whang away on that string forever, as if I didn't know
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>Hartley stared at him as he turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, by jinks! What <i>is</i> the matter o' you?"</p>
+
+<p>He was too busy to dwell upon it much, but concluded his partner was
+homesick.</p>
+
+<p>Albert was beginning to have a vague underconsciousness of his real
+feeling toward the girl, but he fought off the acknowledgment of it as
+long as possible. His mind moved in a circle, coming back to the one
+point ceaselessly&mdash;a dreary prospect, in which that slender girl-figure
+had no place&mdash;and each time the prospect grew more intolerably blank,
+and the pain in his heart more acute and throbbing.</p>
+
+<p>When he faced her that night, after they had returned from a final walk
+down by the river, he was as far from a solution as ever. He had avoided
+all reference to their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span> separation, and now he stood as a man might at
+the parting of the ways, saying: "I will not choose; I cannot choose. I
+will wait for some sign, some chance thing, to direct me."</p>
+
+<p>They stood opposite each other, each feeling that there was more to be
+said: the girl tender, her eyes cast down, holding her hands to the
+fire; he shivering, but not with cold. He had a vague knowledge of the
+vast importance of the moment, and he hesitated to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"It's almost spring again, isn't it? And you've been here"&mdash;she paused
+and looked up with a daring smile&mdash;"seems as if you'd been here always."</p>
+
+<p>It was about half-past eight. Mrs. Welsh was setting her bread in the
+kitchen; they could hear her moving about. Hartley was down-town
+finishing up his business. They were almost alone in the house. Albert's
+throat grew dry and his limbs trembled. His pause was ominous. The
+girl's smile died away as he took a seat without looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Maud, I suppose you know&mdash;we're going away to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, must you? But you'll come back?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't expect to&mdash;I don't see how I can. I may never see you again."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't say that!" cried the girl, her face as white as silver, her
+clasped hands straining.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go&mdash;I must!" he muttered, not daring to look upon her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what can I do&mdash;<i>we</i> do&mdash;without you! I can't bear it!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She stopped, and sank back into a chair, her breath coming heavily from
+her twitching lips, the unnoticed tears falling from her staring,
+pitiful, wild, appealing eyes, her hands nervously twisting her gloves.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. Each was undergoing a self-revelation; each
+was trying to face a future without the other.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go!" he repeated, aimlessly, mechanically. "What can I do here?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl's heavy breathing deepened into a wild little moaning sound,
+inexpressibly pitiful, her hungry eyes fixed on his face. She gave way
+first, and flung herself down upon her knees at his side, her hands
+seeking his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Albert, I can't <i>live</i> without you now! Take me with you! Don't leave
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>He stooped suddenly and took her in his arms, raised her, and kissed her
+hair.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean it, Maud; I'll never leave you&mdash;never! Don't cry!"</p>
+
+<p>She drew his head down and kissed his lips, then turned her face to his
+breast&mdash;then joy and confidence came back to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I know now what you meant," she cried, gayly, raising herself and
+looking into his face; "you were trying to scare me; trying to make me
+show how much I&mdash;cared for you&mdash;first!" There was a soft smile on her
+lips and a tender light in her eyes. "But I don't mind it."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I didn't know myself what I meant," he answered, with a grave
+smile.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Welsh came in, they were sitting on the sofa, talking in low
+voices of their future. He was grave and subdued, while she was radiant
+with love and hope. The future had no terrors for her, but the boy
+unconsciously felt the gravity of life somehow deepened by the
+revelation of her love.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Maud!" Mrs. Welsh exclaimed, "what are you doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mother, I'm so happy&mdash;just as happy as a bird!" she cried, rushing
+into her mother's arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, why!&mdash;what is it? You're crying, dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not; I'm laughing&mdash;see!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Welsh turned her dim eyes on the girl, who shook the tears from her
+lashes with the action of a bird shaking water from its wings. She
+seemed to shake off her trouble at the same moment.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Welsh understood perfectly. "I'm very glad, too, dearie," she said,
+simply, looking at the young man with motherly love irradiating her worn
+face. Albert went to her, and she kissed him, while the happy girl put
+her arms about them both in an ecstatic hug.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Now</i> you've got a son, mother."</p>
+
+<p>"But I've lost a daughter&mdash;my first-born."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, wait till you hear our plans! He's going to settle down
+here&mdash;aren't you, Albert?"</p>
+
+<p>Then she went away and left the young people alone. They had a sweet,
+intimate talk of an hour, full of plans and hopes and confidences, and
+then he kissed his radiant love good-night, and, going into his own
+room, sat down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span> by the stove and there pondered on the change that had
+come into his life.</p>
+
+<p>Already he sighed with the stress of care, the press of thought, which
+came upon him. The longing uneasiness of the boy had given place to
+another unrest&mdash;the unrest of the man who must face the world in earnest
+now, planning for food and shelter. To go back to school was out of the
+question. To expect help from his father, overworked and burdened with
+debt, was impossible. He must go to work, and go to work to aid <i>her</i>. A
+living must be wrung from this town. All the home and all the property
+Mrs. Welsh had were here, and wherever Maud went the mother must follow.</p>
+
+<p>He was in the midst of his mental turmoil when Hartley came in, humming
+the <i>Mulligan Guards</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"In the dark, hey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Completely in the dark."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, light up, light up!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm trying to."</p>
+
+<p>"What the deuce do you mean by that tone? What's been going on here
+since my absence?"</p>
+
+<p>Albert did not reply, and Hartley shuffled about after a match, lighted
+the lamp, threw his coat and hat in the corner, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've got everything straightened up. Been freezing out old
+Daggett; the old skeesix has been promisin' f'r a week, and I just said,
+'Old man, I'll camp right down with you here till you fork over,' and he
+did. By-the-way, everybody I talked with to-day about leaving said,
+'What's Lohr going to do with that girl?' I told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span> 'em I didn't know; do
+you? It seems you've been thicker'n I supposed."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to marry her," said Albert, calmly, but his voice sounded
+strained and hoarse.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" yelled Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>"Sh! don't raise the neighbors. I'm going to marry her."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, by jinks! When? Say, looky here! Well, I swanny!" exclaimed
+Hartley, helplessly. "When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right away; some time this summer&mdash;June, maybe."</p>
+
+<p>Hartley thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, stretched out his
+legs, and stared at his friend in vast amaze.</p>
+
+<p>"You're givin' me guff!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm in dead earnest."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you was going through college all so fast?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've made up my mind it isn't any use to try," replied Albert,
+listlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"What y' goin' t' do here, or are y' goin' t' take the girl away with
+yeh?"</p>
+
+<p>"She can't leave her mother. We'll run this boarding-house for the
+present. I'll try for the principalship of the school here. Raff is
+going to resign, they say. If I can't get that, I'll go into a law
+office. Don't worry about me."</p>
+
+<p>"But why go into this so quick? Why not put it off fifteen or twenty
+years?" asked Hartley, trying to get back to cheerful voice.</p>
+
+<p>"What would be the use? At the end of a year I'd be just about as poor
+as I am now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Can't y'r father step in and help you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. There are three boys and two girls, all younger than I, to be
+looked out for, and he has all he can carry. Besides, <i>she</i> needs me
+right here and right now, and if I can do anything to make life easier
+for her I'm going t' do it. Besides," he ended, in a peculiar tone, "we
+don't feel as if we could live apart much longer."</p>
+
+<p>"But, great Scott! man, you can't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, hold on, Jim! I've thought this thing all over, and I've made up
+my mind. It ain't any use to go on talking about it. What good would it
+do me to go to school another year? I'd come out without a dollar, and
+no more fitted for earning a living for her than I am now! And, besides
+all that, I couldn't draw a free breath thinking of her workin' away
+here to keep things moving, liable at any minute to break down."</p>
+
+<p>Hartley gazed at him in despair, and with something like awe. It was a
+tremendous transformation in the young, ambitious student.</p>
+
+<p>Like most men in America, and especially Western men, he still clung to
+the idea that a man was entirely responsible for his success or failure
+in life. He had not admitted that conditions of society might be so
+adverse that only men of most exceptional endowments, and willing and
+able to master many of the best and deepest and most sacred of their
+inspirations and impulses, could succeed.</p>
+
+<p>Of the score of specially promising young fellows who had been with him
+at school, seventeen had dropped out and down. Most of them had married
+and gone back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span> to farming, or to earn a precarious living in the small,
+dull towns where farmers trade and traders farm. Conditions were too
+adverse; they simply weakened and slipped slowly back into dulness and
+an ox-like or else a fretful patience. Thinking of these men, and
+thinking their failure due to themselves alone, Hartley could not endure
+the idea of his friend adding one more to the list of failures. He
+sprang up at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Bert, you might just as well hang y'rself, and done with it! Why,
+it's suicide! I can't allow it. I started in at college bravely, and
+failed because I'd let it go too long. I couldn't study&mdash;couldn't get
+down to it; but you&mdash;why, old man, I'd <i>bet</i> on you!" He had a tremor in
+his voice. "I hate like thunder to see you give up your plans. Say, you
+can't afford to do this; it's too much to pay."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it isn't."</p>
+
+<p>"I say it is&mdash;and, besides, you'd get over this in a week&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Jim!" called Albert, warningly, sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Jim, in the tone of a man who knows it's all
+wrong&mdash;"all right; but the time 'll come when you'll wish I'd&mdash;You ain't
+doin' the girl enough good to make up for the harm you're doin'
+yourself." He broke off again, and said in a tone of finality: "I'm
+done. I'm all through, and I c'n see you're through with Jim Hartley.
+All right!"</p>
+
+<p>"Darn curious," he muttered to himself, "that boy should get caught just
+at this time, and not with some o' those girls in Marion. Well, it's
+none o' my funeral,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span> he ended, with a sigh; for it had stirred him to
+the bottom of his sunny nature, after all. A dozen times, as he lay
+there beside his equally sleepless companion, he started to say
+something more in deprecation of the step, but each time stifled the
+opening word into a groan.</p>
+
+<p>It would not be true to say that love had come to Albert Lohr as a
+relaxing influence, but it had changed the direction of his energies so
+radically as to make his whole life seem weaker and lower. As long as
+his love-dreams went out toward a vague and ideal woman, supposedly
+higher and grander than himself, he was spurred on to face the terrible
+sheer escarpment of social eminence; but when he met, by accident, the
+actual woman who was to inspire his future efforts, the difficulties he
+faced took on solid reality. His aspirations fell to the earth, their
+wings clipped, and became, perforce, submissive beasts at the plough.
+The force that moved so much of his thought was transformed into other
+energy.</p>
+
+<p>The table was very gay at dinner next day. Maud was standing at the
+highest point of her girlhood dreams. Her flushed cheeks and shining
+eyes made her seem almost a child, and Hartley wondered at her, and
+relented a little in the face of such happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"They're gay as larks now," thought Hartley to himself, as he joined in
+the laughter; "but that won't help 'em any ten years from now."</p>
+
+<p>He could hardly speak next day as he shook hands at the station with his
+friend.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, ol' man; I hope it'll come out all right, but I'm afraid&mdash;But
+there! I promised not to say anything about it. Good-by till we meet in
+Congress," he ended, in a resolute attempt to conceal his dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you come to the wedding, Jim? We've decided on June. You see,
+they need a man around the house, so we&mdash;You'll come, won't you, old
+fellow? And don't mind my being a little crusty last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes; I'll come," Jim said, in a tone which concealed a desire to
+utter one more protest, but to himself he said:</p>
+
+<p>"That ends him! He's jumped into a hole and pulled the hole in after
+him. A man can't marry a family like that at his age, and pull out of
+it. He <i>may</i>, but I doubt it. Well, as I remarked before, it's none o'
+my funeral so long as <i>he's</i> satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>But he said it with a painful lump in his throat, and he could not bring
+himself to feel that Albert's course was right, and felt himself to be
+somehow culpable in the case.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="A_DIVISION_IN_THE_COOLLY" id="A_DIVISION_IN_THE_COOLLY"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>
+<h2>A DIVISION IN THE COOLLY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>A funeral is a depressing affair under the best circumstances, but a
+funeral in a lonely farm-house in March, the roads full of slush, the
+ragged gray clouds leaping the sullen hills like eagles, is tragic.</p>
+
+<p>The teams arrived splashed with mud, the women blue with cold under
+their scanty cotton-quilt lap robes, their hats set awry by the wind.
+They scurried into the house, to sit and shiver in the best room, where
+all the chairs that could contrive to stand erect, and all of any sort
+that could be borrowed, were crammed in together to seat the women
+folks.</p>
+
+<p>The men drove out to the barn, and having blanketed their teams with lap
+robes, picked their way through the slush of the yard over to the lee
+side of the haystack, where the pale sun occasionally shone.</p>
+
+<p>They spoke of "diseased" Williams, as if Diseased were his Christian
+name. They whittled shingles or stalks of straw as they talked.</p>
+
+<p>Sooner or later, after each new arrival, they branched off upon
+politics, and the McKinley Bill was handled gingerly. If any one, in his
+zeal, raised his voice above a certain pitch, some one said "Hish!" and
+the newcomer's voice sank again to that abnormal quiet which falls now
+and again on these loud-voiced folk of the wind and open spaces.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The boys hung around the kitchen and smoke-house, playing sly jokes upon
+each other in order to provoke that explosion of laughter so thoroughly
+enjoyed by those who can laugh noiselessly.</p>
+
+<p>A snort of this sort brought Deacon Williams out to reprimand them,
+"Boys, boys, you should have more respect for the dead."</p>
+
+<p>The preacher came. The choir raised a wailing chant for the dead, but
+the group by the haystack did not move.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally they came back, after talking about seeding and the price
+of hogs, to the discussion of the dead man's affairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose his property will go to Emmy and Serry, half and half."</p>
+
+<p>"I expec' so. He always said so, an' John wa'n't a man to whiffle about
+every day."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Emmy won't make no fuss, but if Ike don't git more'n his half,
+I'll eat the greaser."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's ex-e<i>cu</i>tor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Deacon Williams, I expect."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the Deacon's a slick one," some one observed, as if that were an
+excellent quality in an executor.</p>
+
+<p>"They ain't no love lost between Bill Gray and Harkey, I don't expect."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think they is."</p>
+
+<p>"Ike don't seem to please people. It's queer, too. He tries awful hard."</p>
+
+<p>The voice of the preacher within, raised to a wild shout, interrupted
+them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The Elder's gettin' warmed up," said one of the story-tellers, pausing
+in his talk. "And so I told Bill if he wanted the cord-wood&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The sun shone warmer, and the chickens <i>caw-cawed</i> feebly. The colts
+whinnied, and a couple of dogs rolled and tumbled in wild frolic, while
+the voice of the preacher sounded dolefully or in humming monotone.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, in the house, in the best room and in the best seats near the
+coffin, the women, in their black, worn dresses, with wrinkled, sallow
+faces and gnarled hands, sat shivering. Theirs was to be the luxury of
+the ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>The carpet was damp and muddy, the house was chill, and the damp wind
+filled them all with ague; but they had so much to see and talk about,
+that time passed rapidly. Each one entering was studied critically to
+see whether dress and deportment were proper to the occasion or not, and
+if one of the girls smiled a little as she entered, some one was sure to
+whisper:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Heartless thing, how <i>can</i> she?"</p>
+
+<p>There were a few young men, only enough to help out on the singing, and
+they remained mainly in the kitchen where they were seen occasionally in
+anxious consultation with Deacon Williams.</p>
+
+<p>The girls looked serious, but a little sly, as if they could smile if
+the boys looked their way or if one of the old women should cough her
+store teeth out.</p>
+
+<p>Upstairs the family were seated in solemn silence, the two nieces, Emma
+and Sarah, and Emma's husband,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span> Harkey, and Sarah's children&mdash;deceased
+Williams had no wife. These people sat in stony immobility, except when
+Harkey looked at his watch, and said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Seem slow gitten here."</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally women came up the stairway and flung themselves upon the
+necks of the mourning nieces, who submitted to it without apparent
+disgust or astonishment, and sank back into the same icy calm after
+their visitors had "straightened their things," and retired to the
+reserved seats below.</p>
+
+<p>Deacon Williams, small, quick, with sunny blue-gray eyes belying the
+gloomy curve of his mouth, was everywhere; arranging for bearers,
+selecting hymns, conferring with the family, keeping abstracted old
+women off the seats reserved for the mourners, and maintaining an
+anxious lookout for the minister.</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon was a distant relative of the dead man, and it was generally
+admitted that he "would have a time of it" in administering upon the
+estate.</p>
+
+<p>At last the word was whispered about that the Elder was coming. Word was
+sent to the smoke-house and to the haystack to call the stragglers in.
+They came slowly, and finding the rooms all filled considered themselves
+absolved from a disagreeable duty, and went back to the sunny side of
+the haystack, where they smoked their pipes in ruminative enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>The Elder, upon entering, took his place beside the coffin, the foot of
+which he used for a pulpit on which to lay his Bible and his hymn-book.
+A noise of whispering, rustling, scraping of feet arose as some old men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>
+crowded in among the women, and then the room became silent.</p>
+
+<p>The Elder took his seat and glanced round upon them all with solemn
+unrecognizing severity, while the mourners came down the creaking pine
+stairway in proper order of procedure.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody noticed the luxury of new dresses on the nieces and the new
+suits on the children. Everybody knew the feeling which led to these
+extravagances. Death, after all, was a majestic visitor, and money was
+not to stand in the way of a decent showing. Some of the girls smiled
+slyly at Isaac's gloves, which were too small and would go only halfway
+on, a fact he tried to conceal by keeping his hands folded. Each boy was
+provided with a large new stiff cotton handkerchief, which occupied
+immense space in outside pockets, crumpled as they were into a rustling
+ball with cruel salient angles like a Chinese puzzle.</p>
+
+<p>The Elder had attended two funerals that week, and like a jaded actor
+came lamely to his work. His prayer was not entirely satisfactory to the
+older people, they had expected a "little more power."</p>
+
+<p>He was a thin-faced man, with weak brown eyes and a mouth like a gopher,
+that is, with very prominent upper teeth. His black coat was worn and
+shiny, and hung limply, as if at some other period he had been fatter,
+or as if it had belonged to some other man.</p>
+
+<p>The choir with instinctive skill had selected a wailing hymn, only
+slightly higher in development than the chant of the Indians, sweet,
+plaintive at times, barbaric in its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span> moving cadences. They sang it well,
+in meditative march, looking out of the windows during its interminable
+length.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Elder read some passages of the Scripture in his "funeral
+voice," which was entirely different from his "marriage voice" and his
+"Sunday voice." It had deep cadences in it and chanting inflections, not
+unlike the negro preachers or the keeners at Irish wakes.</p>
+
+<p>Then he gave out the hymn, which all joined in singing, rising to their
+feet with much trouble. After they had settled down again he took out a
+large carefully ironed handkerchief and laid it on the coffin as who
+should say, "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now."</p>
+
+<p>The absurdity of all this did not appear to his listeners, though they
+well knew he cared very little about the dead man, who was a very
+retiring person.</p>
+
+<p>The Elder on his part understood that his audience was before him for
+the pleasure of weeping, for the delight of seeing agonized faces and
+hearing wild grief-laden wailing. They were there to feel the delicious
+creeping thrill of horror and fear, roused by the presence of the corpse
+and the near shadow of the hovering angel of death.</p>
+
+<p>The Elder led off by some purely perfunctory remarks about the deceased,
+about his kindness, and his honesty. This caused the nieces to wipe away
+a sparse tear or two, and he was encouraged as if by slight applause. He
+developed as usual the idea that in the midst of life we are in death,
+that no man can tell when his time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span> will come. He told two or three
+grewsome stories of sudden death. His voice now rose in a wild chant now
+sank to a hoarse whisper.</p>
+
+<p>The blowing of noses, low sobbings, and fervent amens from the old men
+thickened encouragingly, and he entered upon more impassioned flights.
+His voice, naturally sonorous, deepened in powerful song till the men
+seated comfortably on their haunches out by the haystack could plainly
+hear his words. "Oh, my brethren, what will you do in that last day?"</p>
+
+<p>Sarah's boys, without in the least understanding what it all meant,
+began to weep also and to use their handkerchiefs, so smooth and shining
+they were useless as so much legal-cap writing paper.</p>
+
+<p>Their misery would have been enhanced had they known that out in the
+wagon-shed under cover of the Elder's voice the other boys were having a
+game of mummelly peg in the warm, dry ground. Their fresh young souls
+laughed at death as the early robins out in the hedge near by defied the
+winds of March.</p>
+
+<p>Having harrowed the poor sensation-loving souls as thoroughly as could
+be desired, the Elder began the process of "letting them down easy." He
+remembered that the Lord was merciful; that the deceased could approach
+him with confidence; that there was a life beyond the tomb, a life of
+eternal rest (the allurement of all hard-working humanity).</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the snuffling and sobbing ceased, the handkerchiefs took longer
+and longer intervals of rest, and when in conclusion the preacher said,
+"Let us pray," the old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span> men looked at each other with fervent
+satisfaction. "It's been a blessed time&mdash;a blessed time!"</p>
+
+<p>The pretty girl who sang the soprano looked very interesting with her
+wet eyelashes, the tears stopped halfway in their course down her
+rounded cheek. The closing hymn promised endless peace and rest, but was
+voiced in the same tragic and hopeless music with which the service
+opened.</p>
+
+<p>Deacon Williams came out to say, "All parties desiring to view the
+<i>remains</i>, will now have an opportunity." He had the hospitable tone of
+a host inviting his guests in to dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Viewing the remains was considered a religious duty, and the men from
+outside, and even the boys from behind the smoke-house, felt constrained
+to come in and pass in shuddering horror before the still face whose
+breath did not dim the glass above it. Most of them hurried by the box
+with only a swift side glance down at the strange thing within.</p>
+
+<p>Then the bearers lifted the coffin and slipped it into the
+platform-spring wagon, which was backed up to the door. The other teams
+loaded up, and the procession moved off, down the perilously muddy road
+toward the village burying-ground.</p>
+
+<p>In this way was John Williams, a hard-working, honorable Welshman,
+buried. His death furnished forth a sombre, dramatic entertainment such
+as he himself had ceremoniously attended many times. The funeral
+trotters whom he had seen at every funeral in the valley were now in at
+his death, and would be at each other's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span> death, until the black and
+yellow earth claimed them all.</p>
+
+<p>A ceremony almost as interesting to the gossips as the burial was the
+reading of the will, to which only the family were invited. After the
+return of Emma, her husband, and Sarah from the cemetery, Deacon
+Williams read the dead man's bequests, seated in the best room, which
+was still littered with chairs and damp with mud.</p>
+
+<p>The will was simple and not a surprise to any one. It gave equal
+division of all the property to the nieces.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, when'll we have the settlement?" asked the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"Just's you say, Deacon," said Emma, meekly.</p>
+
+<p>"Suit yourself," said Harkey; "only it 'ad better come soon. Sooner the
+better&mdash;seedin's coming on."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to-morrow is Friday, why not Saturday?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Saturday." All agreed.</p>
+
+<p>As Harkey drove off down the road he said to his wife: "The sooner we
+have it, the fewer things 'll git carried off. The Deacon don't favor me
+none, and Bill Gray is sweet on Serry, and he'll bear watchin'."</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon on his part took his chin in his fist and looked after
+Harkey. "Seemed a little bit anxious, 'cordin' to <i>my</i> notion," he said,
+with a smile.</p>
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Saturday was deliciously warm and springlike, the hens woke in the early
+dawn with a jocund note in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span> their throats, and the young cattle frisked
+about the barn-yard, moved to action by the electrical influences of the
+south wind.</p>
+
+<p>"Clear as a bell overhead," Deacon Williams said.</p>
+
+<p>But Jack Dunlap, Sarah's hand, said, "Nobody travels that way."</p>
+
+<p>Long before dawn the noise of the melting water could be heard running
+with musical tinkle under the ice. The ponds crashed and boomed in long
+reverberating explosions, as the sinking water heaved it up and let it
+fall with crackling roar; flights of ducks flashed over, cackling
+breathlessly as they scurried straight into the north.</p>
+
+<p>Deacon and Sarah arrived early and took possession, for Sarah was to
+have the eighty which included the house. They were busy getting things
+ready for the partition. The Deacon, assisted by Jack, the hired man,
+was busy hauling the machinery out of the shed into the open air, while
+Sarah and a couple of neighbors' girls, with skirts tucked up and towels
+on their heads, were scouring up pots and pans and dusting furniture in
+the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>The girls, strong and handsome in their unsapped animal vigor, enjoyed
+the innocent display of their bare arms and petticoats.</p>
+
+<p>People from Sand Lake passing by wondered what was going on. Gideon
+Turner had the courage to pull up and call out, for the satisfaction of
+his wife:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What's going on here this fine morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we're goin' to settle up the estate!" said Sarah. "Why! how de do,
+Mrs. Turner?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"W'y, it's you, is it, Serry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it's me,&mdash;what they is left of me. I been here sence six o'clock.
+I'm getting things ready for the division. Deacon Williams is the
+ex-e<i>cu</i>tor, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Aha! Less see, you divide equally, I hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Near's we can get at it. Uncle left me the house eighty, and the valley
+eighty to Emmy. Deacon's goin' to parcel out the belongin's."</p>
+
+<p>Turner looked sly. "How'd Harkey feel?"</p>
+
+<p>Sarah smiled. "I don't know and care less. He'll make trouble if he can,
+but I don't see how he can. He agreed to have the Deacon do the
+dividin', and he'll have to stand by it so far as I can see."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turner looked dubious. "Well, you know Ike Harkey. He looks as
+though sugar wouldn't melt in his mouth, but I tell you I'd hate to have
+dealin's with him."</p>
+
+<p>Turner broke in: "Well, we must be movin'. I s'pose you'll move right
+in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Just as soon's as this thing's settled."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good-by. Come up."</p>
+
+<p>"You come down."</p>
+
+<p>Sarah was a heavy, good-natured woman, a widow with "a raft of
+children." Probably for that reason her uncle had left her the house,
+which was large and comfortable. As she stood looking down the road, one
+of the girls came out to the gate. She was a plump, strong creature, a
+neighbor's girl who had volunteered to help.</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody coming?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I guess&mdash;no, it's going the other way. Ain't it a nice day?"</p>
+
+<p>That was as far as she could carry the utterance of her feeling, but all
+the morning she had felt the wonderful power of the air. The sun had
+risen incredibly warm. The wind was in the south, and the crackling,
+booming roar of ice in the ponds and along the river was like winter
+letting go its iron grip upon the land. Even the old cows shook their
+horns, and made comical attempts to frisk with the yearlings. Sarah knew
+it was foolish, but she felt like a girl that morning&mdash;and Bill was
+coming up the road.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of the joy of the spring day stood the house, desolate and
+empty, out of which its owner had been carried to a bed in the cold,
+clinging clay of the little burying-ground.</p>
+
+<p>The girls and Sarah worked swiftly, brushing, cleaning, setting aside,
+giving little thought to even the beauty of the morning, which entered
+their blood unconsciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how goes it?" asked a quick, jovial voice.</p>
+
+<p>The girls gave screams of affected fright.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Deacon! You nearly scared the life out of us."</p>
+
+<p>Deacon Williams was always gallant.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know I was given to scaring the ladies," he said. "Well, who's
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody but us so far."</p>
+
+<p>"Hain't seen nothing o' Harkey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a thing. He sent word he'd be on hand, though."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"M&mdash;, well, we've got the machinery invoiced. Guess I'll look around and
+kind o' get the household things in my mind's eye," said the Deacon,
+taking on the air of a public functionary.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. We'll have everything ready here in a few minutes."</p>
+
+<p>They returned to work, dusting and scrubbing. The girls with their
+banter put death into the background as an obscure and infrequent
+incident of old age.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah again studied the road down the Coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well there! I see a team coming up the Coolly now; wonder if it's
+Emmy."</p>
+
+<p>"Looks more like Bill Gray's team," said one of the girls, looking slyly
+at Sarah, who grew very red.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you're too sharp, ain't you?"</p>
+
+<p>It was perfectly ridiculous (to the young people) to see these
+middle-aged lovers courting like sixteen-year-olds, and they had no
+mercy on either Bill or Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>Bill drove up in leisurely way, his horses steaming, his wagon-wheels
+loaded with mud. Mrs. Gray was with him, her jolly face shining like the
+morning sun.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, folkses, are you all here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Mrs. Gray," said the Deacon, approaching to help her out.
+"Hello, Bill, nice morning."</p>
+
+<p>Bill looked at Sarah for a moment. "Bully good," he said, leaving his
+mother to scramble down the wagon-wheel alone&mdash;at least so far as he was
+concerned, but the Deacon stood below courageously.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gray cried out in her loud good humor: "Look out, Deacon, don't git
+too near me&mdash;if I should fall on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span> you there wouldn't be a grease spot
+left. <i>There!</i> I'm all right now," she said, having reached ground
+without accident. She shook her dress and looked briskly around. "Wal,
+what you done, anyway? Emmy's folks come yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I guess that's them comin' now. I hope Ike won't come, though."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gray stared at the Deacon. "Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's just sure to make a fuss," said Jack, "he's so afraid he
+won't get his share."</p>
+
+<p>Bill chewed on a straw and looked at Sarah abstractedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what's t' be done?" inquired Mrs. Gray, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't do much till Emmy gets here," said Sarah.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I guess we can. Bill, you put out y'r team, we won't get away 'fore
+dinner."</p>
+
+<p>The men drove off to the barn, leaving the women to pick their way on
+chips and strips of board laid in the mud, to the safety of the
+chip-pile, and thence to the kitchen, which was desolately littered with
+utensils.</p>
+
+<p>Deacon assumed command with the same alertness, and with the same sunny
+gleam in his eye, with which he directed the funeral a few days before.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Bill, put out your team and help Jack and me pen them hogs. Women
+folks 'll git things ready here."</p>
+
+<p>Emma came at last, driven by Harkey's brother and his hired man. They
+were both brawny fellows, rude and irritable, and the Deacon lifted his
+eyebrows and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span> whistled when he saw them drive in with a lumber wagon.</p>
+
+<p>The women swarmed out to greet Emma, who was a thin, irritable, feeble
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Better late than never. Where's Ike?" inquired Mrs. Gray.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he&mdash;couldn't git away very well&mdash;he's got t' clean up some
+seed-oats," she answered nervously. After the men drove off, however,
+she added: "He thought he hadn't ought to come; he didn't want to cause
+no aidgewise feelin's, so he thought he hadn't better come&mdash;he'd just
+leave it to you, Deacon."</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon said, "All right, all right! We'll fix it up!" but he didn't
+feel so sure of it after that, though he set to work bravely.</p>
+
+<p>The sun, growing warmer, fell with pleasant gleam around the kitchen
+door and around the chip-pile where the hens were burrowing. The men
+worked in their shirt-sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, we'll share the furniture an' stuff next," said the Deacon,
+looking around upon his little interested semicircle of spectators.
+"Now, put Emmy's things over there and Serry's things over here. I'll
+call 'em off, and, if they's no objection, you girls can pass 'em over."</p>
+
+<p>He cleared his throat and began in the voice of one in authority:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Thirteen pans, six to Emmy, seven to Serry;" then hastened to add:
+"I'll balance that by giving the biggest of the two kittles to Emmy.
+Rollin' pin and cake board to Serry, two flat-irons to Emmy, small tub
+to Emmy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span> large one to Serry, balanced by the tin water pail. Dozen
+clo'se-pins; half an' half, six o' one, half-dozen t'other," he said
+with a smile at his own joke, while the others actively placed the
+articles in separate piles.</p>
+
+<p>"Stove to Serry, because she has the house, bureau to Emmy."</p>
+
+<p>At this point Mrs. Gray said, "I guess that ain't quite even, Deacon;
+the bureau ain't worth much."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, no, that's all right! Let her have it," Emma protested
+nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Give her an extry tick, anyway," said Sarah, not to be outdone in
+magnanimity.</p>
+
+<p>"Settle that between ye," said the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>He warmed to his work now, and towels, pans, crockery, brooms, mirrors,
+pillows, and bedticks were rapidly set aside in two groups on the soft
+soil. The poverty of the home could best be seen in the display of its
+pitiful furniture.</p>
+
+<p>The two nieces looked on impassively, standing side by side. The men
+came to move the bureau and other heavy things and looked on, while the
+lighter things were being handed over by Mrs. Gray and the girls.</p>
+
+<p>At noon they sat down in the empty kitchen and ate a cold snack&mdash;at
+least, the women took seats, the men stood around and lunched on hunks
+of boiled beef and slices of bread. There was an air of constraint upon
+the male portion of the party not shared by Mrs. Gray and the girls.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that settles things in the house," beamed the Deacon as he came
+out with the women trailing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span> behind him; "an' now in about two jerks of
+a dead lamb's tail, we'll git at the things out in the barn."</p>
+
+<p>"Wal, we don't know much about machines and things, but I guess we'd
+better go out and keep you men from fightin'," said Mrs. Gray, shaking
+with fun; "Ike didn't come because he didn't want to make any trouble,
+but I guess he might just as well 'a' come as send two such critters as
+Jim 'n' Hank."</p>
+
+<p>The women laughed at her frankness, and in very good humor they all went
+out to the barn-yard.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, these things can't be laid out fast as I call 'em off, but we'll
+do the best we can."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's try the stawk first," said Jim.</p>
+
+<p>The women stood around with shawls pinned over their heads while the
+division of the stock went forward. The young men came often within
+chaffing distance of the girls.</p>
+
+<p>There were nine shotes nearly of a size, and the Deacon said, "I'll give
+Serry the odd shote."</p>
+
+<p>"Why so?" asked Jim Harkey, a sullen-faced man of thirty.</p>
+
+<p>"Because a shote is hard to carry off and I can balance&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess you can balance f'r Em 'bout as well as f'r Serry."</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon was willing to yield a point. "Any objection, Bill? If not,
+why&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nope, let her go," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"What 'ave <i>you</i> got to say 'bout it?" asked Jim, insolently.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Bill turned his slow bulk. "I guess I've a good 'eal to say&mdash;haven't I,
+Serry?"</p>
+
+<p>Sarah reddened, but stood beside him bravely. "I guess you have, Bill,
+about as much as <i>I</i> have." There was a moment of dramatic tension and
+the girls tingled with sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>"Let 'er go," said Bill, splitting a straw with his knife. He had not
+proposed to Sarah before and he felt an unusual exaltation to think it
+came so easy after all.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the cattle, Jim objected to striking a balance with a
+"farrer cow," and threw the Deacon's nice calculation all out of joint.</p>
+
+<p>"Let it go, Jim," pleaded Emma.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't do it," Ike said&mdash;"I mean I know he don't want no farrer cow,
+he's got two now."</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon was a little nettled. "I guess that's going to stand," he
+said sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Jim swore a little but gave in, and came back with an access of ill
+humor on a division of the horses.</p>
+
+<p>"But I've give you the four heavy horses to balance the four others and
+the two-year-old," said the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be damned if I stand that," said Jim.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you'll have to," said the Deacon.</p>
+
+<p>Emma pleaded, "Let it go, Jim, don't make a fuss."</p>
+
+<p>Jim raged on, "I'll be cawn-demmed if I'll stand it. I don't&mdash;Ike don't
+want them spavined old crows; they're all ring-boned and got the
+heaves." His long repressed ill-nature broke out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Toh, toh!" said the Deacon, "Don't kick over the traces now. We'll fix
+it up some way."</p>
+
+<p>Emma tried to stop Jim, but he shook her off and continued to walk back
+and forth behind the horses munching on quietly, unconscious of any
+dispute about their value.</p>
+
+<p>Bill sat on the oat box in his hulking way, his heels thumping a tune,
+his small gray eyes watching the angry man.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't make a darn fool of yourself," he said placidly.</p>
+
+<p>Jim turned, glad of the chance for a row, "You better keep out of this."</p>
+
+<p>Bill continued to thump, the palms of his big hands resting on the edge
+of the box. "I'm in it," he said conclusively.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you git out of it! I ain't goin' to be bulldozed&mdash;that ain't what
+I come here for."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I see it ain't," said Bill. "If you're after a row you can have it
+right here. You won't find a better place."</p>
+
+<p>"There, there," urged the Deacon. "What's the use? Keep cool and don't
+tear your shirts."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gray went up to Jim and took him by the arm. "You need a good
+spankin' to make you good-natured," she said. "I think the Deacon has
+done first rate, and you ought 'o&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let go o' me," he snarled, raising his hand as if to strike her.</p>
+
+<p>Bill's big boot lunged out, catching Harkey in the ribs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span> and if the
+Deacon had not sprung to his assistance Jim would have been trampled to
+pieces by the scared horse under whose feet he found himself. He was
+wild with dizzy, breathless rage.</p>
+
+<p>"Who hit me?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Bill's shapeless hulk straightened up and stood beside him as if his
+pink flesh had suddenly turned to oak. Out of his fat cheeks his gray
+eyes glared.</p>
+
+<p>"I did. Want another?"</p>
+
+<p>The Deacon and Jack came between and prevented the encounter which would
+have immediately followed. Bill went on:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"They cain't no man lay a hand on my mother and live long after it." He
+was thoroughly awake now. There was no slouch to his action at that
+moment, and Jim was secretly pleased to have the encounter go by.</p>
+
+<p>"You come here for a fuss and you can have it, both of you," Bill went
+on in unusual eloquence. "Deacon's tried to do the square thing, Emmy's
+tried to do the square thing, and Serry's kep' quiet, but you've been
+sour and ugly the whole time, and now it's goin' to stop."</p>
+
+<p>"This ain't the last of this thing," said Jim.</p>
+
+<p>"You never'll have a better time," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gray and the Deacon turned in now to quiet Bill, and the settlement
+went on. Jim kept close watch on the proceedings, and muttered his
+dissent to his friends, but was careful not to provoke Bill further.</p>
+
+<p>In dividing the harnesses they came upon a cow-bell hanging on a nail.
+The Deacon jingled it as he passed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span> "Goes with the bell-cow," he said,
+and nothing further was said of it. Jim apparently did not consider it
+worth quarrelling about.</p>
+
+<p>At last the work was done, a terribly hard day's work. The machines and
+utensils were piled in separate places, the cattle separated, and the
+grain measured. As they were about to leave, the Deacon said finally:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If there's any complaint to make, let's have it right now. I want this
+settlement to <i>be</i> a settlement. Is everybody satisfied?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am," said Emmy. "Ain't you, Serry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course," said Sarah, who was a little slower of speech. "I
+think the Deacon has done first rate. I ain't a word of fault to find,
+have you, Bill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nope, not an ioty," said Bill, readily.</p>
+
+<p>Jim did not agree in so many words, but, as he said nothing, the Deacon
+ended:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that settles it. It ain't goin' to rain, so you can leave these
+things right here till Monday. I guess I'll be gettin' out for home.
+Good evening, everybody."</p>
+
+<p>Emma drove away down the road with Jim, but Sarah remained to straighten
+up the house. Harkey's hired hand went home with Dade Walker who
+considered that walk the pleasant finish to a very interesting day's
+work. She sympathized for the time with the Harkey faction.</p>
+
+<p>Sunday forenoon, when Bill and Sarah drove up to the farm to put things
+in order in the house, they found Ike Harkey walking around with that
+queer side glance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span> he had, studying the piles of furniture, and mentally
+weighing the pigs.</p>
+
+<p>He greeted them smoothly: "Yes, yes, I'm <i>purr</i>fickly satisfied,
+<i>purr</i>fickly! Not a word to say&mdash;better'n I expected," he added.</p>
+
+<p>Bill was not quite keen enough to perceive the insult which lay in that
+final clause, and Sarah dared not inform him for fear of trouble.</p>
+
+<p>As Harkey drove away, however, Bill had a dim feeling of dissatisfaction
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>"He's too gol-dang polite, that feller is; I don't like such
+butter-mouth chaps&mdash;they'd steal the cents off'n a dead nigger's eyes."</p>
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The second Sunday after the partition of goods the entire Coolly turned
+out to church in spite of the muddy road. The men, after driving up to
+the door of the little white church and helping the women to alight,
+drove out to the sheds along the fence and gathered in knots beside
+their wagons in the warm spring sun. It was very pleasant there, and the
+men leaned with relaxed muscles upon the wagon-wheels, or sat on the
+fence with jack-knives in hand. The horses, weary with six days seeding,
+slept with closed eyes and drooping lips. Generally the talk was upon
+spring work, each man bragging of the number of acres he had sown during
+the week, but this morning the talk was all about the division which had
+come between the nieces of "deceased Williams." They discussed it slowly
+as one might eat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span> a choice pudding in order to extract the flavor from
+each spoonful.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it all about, anyhow?" asked Jim Cranby. "I ain't heard nothing
+about it." He had stood in open-mouthed perplexity trying to catch a
+clew. Coming late, he found it baffling.</p>
+
+<p>"That shows where he lives; a man might as well live in a well as up in
+Molasses Gap," said one of the younger men, pointing up to the Coolly.
+"Why, Ike Harkey is kicking about the six shotes the Deacon put off on
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it wasn't the shotes, it was a farrer cow," put in Clint Stone.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>I</i> heard it was a shote."</p>
+
+<p>"So did I," said another.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Bill Gray told Jinks Ike had stole a cow-bell that belonged to
+the black farrer cow," said another late comer.</p>
+
+<p>"Stole a cow-bell," and they all drew closer together. This was really
+worth while!</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; Jinks told me he heard Bill say so yesterday. That's the way
+I heard it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll be cussed, if that ain't small business for Ike Harkey!"</p>
+
+<p>"How did it happen?" asked Cranby, with sharpened appetite.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I didn't hear no p'rtic'lars, but it seems the bell was hangin'
+on a peg in the barn, and when they got home from church it was gone,
+hide an' hair. Bill is dead sure Ike took it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Say, there'll be fun over that yet, won't they," said one of the
+fellows, with a grin.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Ike better keep out of Bill's way, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I ain't takin' sides. Some young'un may have took it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, let's go in, boys; I see the Elder's come. By gum, there's
+Harkey!" They all looked toward Harkey, who had just driven up to the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>Harkey came into church holding his smooth, serious face a little one
+side, in his usual way, quiet and dignified, as if he were living up to
+his Sunday suit of clothes. He seemed to be unconscious of the attitude
+in which he stood toward most of his neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>Bill and Sarah were not present, and that gave additional color to the
+story of trouble between the sisters.</p>
+
+<p>After the sermon Deacon Harkey led the Sunday School, and the critics of
+his action were impressed more than usual with his smooth and quiet
+utterance. Emma seemed more than ordinarily worn and dispirited.</p>
+
+<p>It was perfectly natural that Mrs. Gray should be the last person to
+know of the division which had slowly set in between the two sisters and
+their factions. Charitable and guileless herself, it was difficult for
+her to conceive of slander and envy.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, a division had come about, slowly, but decisively. The
+entire Coolly was involved in the discussion before Mrs. Gray gave it
+any serious attention, but one day, when Sarah came in upon her and
+poured out a mingled flood of sorrow and invective, the good soul was
+aghast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, I swan! There, there! I wouldn't make so much fuss over
+it!" she said, stripping her hands out of the biscuit dough in order to
+go over and pat Sarah on the shoulder. "After all that to-do gettin'
+settled, seems 's if you ought 'o <i>stay</i> settled. Good land! It ain't
+anything to have a fuss over, anyway!"</p>
+
+<p>"But it is <i>our</i> cow-bell. It belonged on the black farrer cow, that Jim
+turned his nose up at, and he sneaked around and got it just to spite
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I guess not," she replied incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he did; and Emmy put him up to it, and I know she did," said
+Sarah in a lamentable voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Sary Ann," said Mrs. Gray, as sharply as any one ever heard her speak,
+"that's a pretty way to talk about your sister, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mrs. Jim Harkey said&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You never mind what Mrs. Jim Harkey said; she's a <i>snoop</i> and everybody
+knows it."</p>
+
+<p>"But she wouldn't tell that, if it weren't so."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I tell you, I wouldn't pay no attention to what she said, and I
+wouldn't make such a fuss over an old cow-bell, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"But the cow-bell is only the starting point; she ain't been near the
+house since, and she says all kinds of mean, nasty things about us."</p>
+
+<p>"All comes through Mrs. Jim, I suppose," said Mrs. Gray, with some
+sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>"No, it don't. She told Dade Walker that I got all the biggest
+flat-irons, when she knows I offered her the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span> bureau. I did everything I
+could to make her feel satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you did, and now you must just keep cool till I see Emmy
+myself."</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Gray started out on her mission of pacification, she found it
+to be entirely out of her control. The Coolly was actively partisan. One
+party stood by the Harkeys, and another took Sarah's part, while the
+<i>tertium quid</i> said it was "all darn foolishness."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gray was appalled at the state of affairs, but struggled to
+maintain a neutral position. In May, when Bill and Sarah were married,
+things had reached such a stage that Emma was not invited to the wedding
+supper. Nothing could have cut deeper than this neglect, and thereafter
+adherents of the third remove declined to speak when passing; some even
+refused to nod. The Harkey faction also condemned the early marriage of
+Bill and Sarah as unseemly.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after, Emma came again to see Mrs. Gray, salty with tears, and
+crushed with the slight Sarah had put upon her. She was a plain pale
+woman, anyway, and weeping made her pitiable. She explained the
+situation with her head on Mrs. Gray's lap:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"She never has been to see me since that day, and&mdash;but I hoped she'd
+come and see me, but she never sent me any invitation to her wedding."
+She choked with sobs at the memory of it.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gray realized the enormity of the offence, and she could only put
+her arms around Emma's back and say, "There, there, I wouldn't take on
+so about it." As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span> a matter of fact, she had striven to have Bill send an
+invitation to his brother-in-law, but Bill was inflexible on that point.
+With the sound of the stolen cow-bell ringing in his ears, he could not
+bring himself to ask Ike Harkey into his house.</p>
+
+<p>After Emma grew a little calmer, Mrs. Gray tried again to bridge the
+chasm. "Now, I just believe if you would go to Sarah&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't do that! She'd slam the door in my face. Jim's wife says Sarah
+said I shouldn't pick a single currant out of the garden this year!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't go much on what Jim's wife says," put in Mrs. Gray, guardedly.
+She had begun to feel that Jim's wife was the main disturbing element.</p>
+
+<p>The sisters really suffered from their separation. They had been so used
+to running in at all times of the day that each missed the other
+wofully. It had been their habit whenever they needed each other to help
+cook, or cut a dress, to hang a cloth out of the chamber window, a sign
+which was sure to bring help post-haste; but now nothing would induce
+either of them to make the first concession.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three times when Emma, feeling especially lonely, was on the
+point of hanging out the signal, she was prevented by the thought of
+some cruel message Mrs. Jim had brought. Jim lived on Ike's farm in a
+small house that had been Emma's first home, and Mrs. Jim was almost as
+much in her house as in her own. She had no children, and was a
+mischief-maker, not so much from ill will as from a love of dramatic
+situations;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span> it was her life, this dramatic play of loves and hates
+among her friends and neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>Emma feared her husband, too; he was so self-contained, and so
+inexorably moral, at least in appearance. He sweetly said he bore no ill
+will toward the Grays, but he must insist that his wife should not visit
+them until they apologized. He took the matter very serenely, however.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of the cow-bell was a constant daily irritation to Bill; he
+was slow to wrath, but the bell seemed to rasp on his tenderest nerve;
+it had a curiously exultant sound heard in the early morning&mdash;it seemed
+to voice Harkey's triumph. Bill's friends were astonished at the change
+in him. He grew dark and thunderous with wrath whenever Harkey's name
+was mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>One day Ike's cattle broke out of the pasture into Bill's young oats,
+and though Ike hurried after them, it seemed to Bill he might have got
+them out a little quicker than he did. He said nothing then, however,
+but when a few days later they broke in again, he went over there in
+very bad humor.</p>
+
+<p>"I want this thing stopped," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Ike was mending the fence. He smiled in his sweet way, and said
+smoothly, "I'm sorry, but when they once git a taste of grain it's
+pretty hard to keep 'em&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there ought to be a new fence here," said Bill. "That fence is as
+rotten as a pumpkin."</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose they had; yes, sir, that's so," Harkey assented quickly. "I'm
+ready to build my half, you know," he said, "any time&mdash;any time you
+are."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll build mine to-morrow," said Bill. "I can't have your cattle
+pasturing on my oats."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, all right. I'll have mine done as quick as yourn."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, see't you do; I don't want my grain all tramped into the ground
+and I ain't a-goin' to have it."</p>
+
+<p>Harkey hastily gathered up his tools, saying, "Yes, yes, all right."</p>
+
+<p>"You might send home that cow-bell of mine while you're about it," Bill
+called after him, but Harkey did not reply or turn around.</p>
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>The line fence ran up the bluff toward the summit of the ridge to the
+east. On each side it was set with smooth green slopes of pasture and
+pleasant squares of wheat, until it reached the woods and ran under the
+oaks and walnuts and birches to the cliffs of lichen-spotted stone which
+topped the summit.</p>
+
+<p>Bill walked the full length of the fence to see how much of the old
+material could be used. He recognized the bell on one of Harkey's
+cattle, and he grew wrathful at the sight of another cow peacefully
+gnawing the fresh, green grass, with the bell, which belonged to the
+black cow, on her neck.</p>
+
+<p>It was mid-spring. Everywhere was the vivid green of the Wisconsin
+landscape; the slopes were like carefully tended lawns, without stumps
+or stones; the groves rose up the hills, pink and gray and green in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span>
+softly rounded billows of cherry bloom and tender oak and elm foliage.
+Here and there under the forest tender plants and flowers had sprung up,
+slender and succulent like all productions of a rich and shadowed soil.</p>
+
+<p>Early the next morning Bill and his two hands began to work in the
+meadow, working toward the ridge; Harkey and his brother and their hands
+began at the ridge and worked down toward the meadow; each party could
+hear the axes of the other ringing in the still, beautiful spring air.</p>
+
+<p>Bill's hired hand, on his way to the spring about the middle of the
+forenoon, met Jim Harkey, who said wickedly in answer to a jocular
+greeting:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Don't give me none of your lip now; we'll break your necks for two
+cents."</p>
+
+<p>The hand came to Bill with the story. "Bill, they're on the fight."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I guess not."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they be. We better not run up against them to-day if we don't
+want trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I ain't goin' to dodge 'em," said Bill; "I ain't in that
+business; if they want fight, we'll accommodate 'em with the best we've
+got in the shop."</p>
+
+<p>At noon, Harkey's gang went to dinner a little earlier, and, as they
+came down the path quite near, Jim said with a sneer:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You managed to git the easiest half of the fence, didn't yeh?"</p>
+
+<p>"We took the half that belongs to us," said Bill. "<i>We</i> don't take what
+don't belong to us."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Cow-bells, for instance," put in Bill's hired hand, with a provoking
+intonation.</p>
+
+<p>Jim stopped and his face twisted with rage; Ike paused a little farther
+on down the path. Jim came closer.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, I know what you're driving at and you're a liar, and for a leather
+cent I'd lick you like hell!"</p>
+
+<p>"You can't do it. You don't weigh enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, shut up, Jack," called Bill. "Go about y'r business," he said to
+Jim, "or I'll take a hand."</p>
+
+<p>Jim's face flamed into a wild wrath. His lips lifted at the corners like
+a wolf's as he leaped the fence with a wild spring and lunged against
+Bill's breast. The larger man went down, but his great arms closed about
+his assailant's neck with a bear-like grip. Jim could neither rise nor
+strike; with a fury no animal could equal he pressed his hands upon
+Bill's throat and thrust his elbow into his mouth in the attempt to
+strangle him. He meant murder.</p>
+
+<p>Jack faced the other men, who came running up. Ike seized a stake, and
+was about to leap over, when Jack raised an axe in the air.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand off!" he yelled, and his voice rang through the woods; he noticed
+how harsh and wild it sounded in the silence. He heard a grunting sound,
+and gave one glance at the two men writhing amid the ferns silent as
+grappling bull-dogs.</p>
+
+<p>Bill had fallen in the brake and seemed wedged in. At last there came
+into his heart a terrible shiver, a blind desperation that uncoiled all
+the strength in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span> great bulk. Then he seemed to bound from the
+ground, as he twisted the other man under him, and shook himself free.</p>
+
+<p>He dragged one great maul of a fist free and drove it at the face
+beneath him. Jim saw it coming and turned his head. The blow fell on his
+neck and his carnivorous grin smoothed out as if sleep had suddenly
+fallen upon him. He drew a long, shuddering breath, his muscles
+quivered, and his clenched hands fell open.</p>
+
+<p>Bill rose upon his knees and looked at him. A deep awe fell upon him. In
+the pause he heard the robins rioting from the trees in the lower
+valley, and the woodpecker cried resoundingly.</p>
+
+<p>"You've killed him!" cried Ike, as he climbed hastily over the fence.</p>
+
+<p>Bill did not reply. The men faced each other in solemn silence, all wish
+for murder going out of their hearts. The sobbing cry of the mourning
+dove, which they had been hearing all day, suddenly assumed new meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ah, woe, woe is me!</i>" it cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring water!" shouted Ike, kneeling beside his brother.</p>
+
+<p>Bill knelt there with him, while the rest dashed water upon Jim's face.</p>
+
+<p>At last he began to breathe like a fretful, waking child, and looking up
+into the scared faces above him, motioned the water away from him. The
+angry look came back into his face, but it was mixed with perplexity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He touched his hand to his face and brought it down covered with blood.
+"How much am I hurt?" he said fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing much," Ike hastened to say; "it's just a scratch."</p>
+
+<p>Jim struggled to his elbow and looked around him. It all seemed to come
+back to him. "Did he do it fair?" he demanded of his companions.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; it was fair enough," said Ike.</p>
+
+<p>Jim looked at Jack. "That <i>thing</i> didn't hit me with his axe, did he?"</p>
+
+<p>Jack grinned. "No, but I was just a-goin' to when Bill belted you one,"
+was the frank and convincing reply.</p>
+
+<p>Jim got up slowly and faced Bill. "Well, that settles it; it's all
+right! You're a better man than I am. That's all I've got to say."</p>
+
+<p>He climbed back over the fence and led the way down to dinner without
+looking back.</p>
+
+<p>"What give ye that lick on the side o' the head, Jim?" his wife asked,
+when he sat down at the dinner-table.</p>
+
+<p>"Never you mind," he replied surlily, but he added, "Ike's axe come off,
+and give me a side-winder."</p>
+
+<p>Bill carefully removed all marks of his struggle and walked into dinner
+shamefacedly, all muscle gone out of his bulk of fat. His sudden return
+to primeval savagery grew monstrous in the cheerful kitchen, with its
+noise of hearty children, sizzling meat, and the clatter of dishes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The stove was not drawing well and Sarah did not notice anything out of
+the way with Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"I never see such a hateful thing in all my life," she said, referring
+to the stove. "That rhubarb duff won't be fit for a hog to eat; the
+undercrust ain't baked the least bit yet, and I have had it in there
+since fifteen minutes after 'leven."</p>
+
+<p>Bill said generously, "Oh, well, never mind, Serry; we'll worry it down
+some way."</p>
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>All through July and August Mrs. Jim Harkey seemed to renew her
+endeavors to keep the sisters apart; she still carried spiteful tales to
+and fro, amplifying them with an irresistible histronic tendency. It had
+become a matter of self-exoneration with her then. She could not stop
+now without seeming to admit she had been mischief-making in the past.
+If the sisters should come together, her lies would instantly appear.</p>
+
+<p>Emma grew morose, irritable, and melancholy; she was suffering for her
+sister's wholesome presence, and yet, being under the dominion of the
+mischief-maker, dared not send word or even mention the name of her
+sister in the presence of the Harkeys.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jim came up to the house to stay as Emma got too ill to work, and
+took charge of the house. The children hated her fiercely, and there
+were noisy battles in the kitchen constantly wearing upon the nerves of
+the sick woman who lay in the restricted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span> gloom of the sitting room
+bed-chamber, within hearing of every squall.</p>
+
+<p>There were moments of peace only when Ike was in the house. Smooth as he
+was, Jim's wife was afraid of him. There was something compelling in his
+low-toned voice; his presence subdued but did not remove strife.</p>
+
+<p>His silencing of the tumult hardly arose out of any consideration for
+his wife, but rather from his inability to enjoy his paper while the
+clamor of war was going on about him.</p>
+
+<p>He was not a tender man, and yet he prided himself on being a very calm
+and even-tempered man. He kept out of Bill's way, and considered himself
+entirely justified in his position regarding the cow-bell. It is
+doubtful if he would have accepted an apology.</p>
+
+<p>Emma suffered acutely from Mrs. Harkey's visits. Something mean and
+wearying went out from her presence, and her sharp, bold face was a
+constant irritation. Sometimes when she thought herself alone, Emma
+crawled to the window which looked up the Coolly, toward Sarah's home,
+and sat there silently longing to send out a cry for help. But at the
+sound of Jane Harkey's step she fled back into bed like a frightened
+child.</p>
+
+<p>She became more and more childish and more flighty in her thoughts as
+her time of trial drew near, and she became more subject to her jailer.
+She grew morbidly silent, and her large eyes were restless and full of
+pleading.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One day she heard Mrs. Smith talking out in the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"How is Emmy to-day, Mrs. Jim?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not extry. She ain't likely to come out as well as usual this
+time, I don't think," was the brutally incautious reply; "she's pretty
+well run down, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had some trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose Sarah will be down to help you," said Mrs. Smith.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess not&mdash;not after what she's told."</p>
+
+<p>"What has she told?" asked Mrs. Smith, in her sweet and friendly voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, she said she wouldn't set foot in this house if we all <i>died</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I never heard her say that, and I don't believe she ever <i>did</i> say it,"
+said Mrs. Smith, firmly.</p>
+
+<p>Emma's heart glowed with a swift rush of affection toward her sister and
+Mrs. Smith; she wanted to cry out her faith in Sarah, but she dared not.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Harkey slammed the oven door viciously. "Well, you can believe it
+or not, just as you like; I heard her say it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I didn't, so I can't believe it."</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Smith came in, Emma was ready to weep, so sweet and cheery was
+her visitor's face.</p>
+
+<p>She found no chance to talk with her, however, for Mrs. Harkey kept near
+them during her visit. Once, while Mrs. Jim ran out to look at the pies,
+Mrs. Smith whispered: "Don't you believe what they say about Sarah.
+She's just as kind as can be&mdash;I know she is.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span> She's looking down this
+way every day, and I know she'd come down instanter if you'd send for
+her. I'm going up that way, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She found no further chance to say anything, but from that moment Emma
+began to think of letting Sarah know how much she needed her. She
+planned to hang out the cloth as she used to. She exaggerated its
+importance in the way of an invalid, until it attained the significance
+of an act of treason. She felt like a criminal even in thinking about
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Several times in the night she dreamed she had put the cloth out and
+that Jim and his wife had seen it and torn it down. She awoke two or
+three times to find herself sitting up in bed staring out of the window,
+through which the moon shone and the multitudinous sounds of the
+mid-summer insects came sonorously.</p>
+
+<p>Once her husband said, "What's the matter? It seems to me you'd rest
+better if you'd lay down and keep quiet." His voice was low enough, but
+it had a peculiar inflection, which made her sink back into bed by his
+side, shivering with fear and weeping silently.</p>
+
+<p>The next day Jim and her husband both went off to town, and Jim's wife,
+after about ten o'clock, said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Emmy, I'm going down to Smith's to get a dress pattern, and I want
+you to keep quiet right here in bed. I'll be right back; I'll set some
+water here, and I guess you won't want anything else until I get back.
+I'll run right down and right back."</p>
+
+<p>After hearing the door close, Emma lay for a few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span> minutes listening,
+waiting until she felt sure Mrs. Harkey was well out of the yard, then
+she crept out of bed and crawled to the window. Mrs. Jim was far down
+the road; she could see her blue dress and her pink sunbonnet.</p>
+
+<p>The sick woman seized the sheet and pulled it from the bed; the clothes
+came with it, but she did not mind that. She pulled herself painfully up
+the stairway and across the rough floor of the chamber to the window
+which looked toward her sister's house, and with a wild exultation flung
+the sheet far out and dropped on her knees beside the open window.</p>
+
+<p>She moaned and cried wildly as she waved the sheet. The note of a scared
+child was in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Serry, come quick! Oh, I <i>need</i> you, Serry! I didn't mean to be
+mean; I want to see you <i>so</i>! Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, Serry, come
+quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Then space and the world slipped away, and she knew nothing of time
+again until she heard the anxious voice of Sarah below.</p>
+
+<p>"Emmy, where <i>are</i> you, Emmy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here I be, Serry."</p>
+
+<p>With swift, heavy tread Sarah hurried up the stairs, and the dear old
+face shone upon her again; those kind gray eyes full of anxiety and of
+love.</p>
+
+<p>Emma looked up like a child entreating to be lifted. Her look so
+pitifully eager went to the younger sister's maternal heart.</p>
+
+<p>"You poor, dear soul! Why didn't you send for me before?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Serry, don't leave me again, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Harkey returned she found Sarah sitting by Emma's side in the
+bed-chamber. Sarah looked at her with all the grimness her jolly fat
+face could express.</p>
+
+<p>"You ain't needed <i>here</i>," she said coldly. "If you want to do anything,
+find a man and send him for the Doctor&mdash;quick. If she dies you'll be her
+murderer."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Harkey was subdued by the bitterness of accusation in Sarah's face
+as well as by Emma's condition. She hurried down the Coolly and sent a
+boy wildly galloping toward the town. Then she went home and sat down by
+her own hearthstone feeling deeply injured.</p>
+
+<p>When the Doctor came he found a poor little boy baby crying in Sarah's
+arms. It was Emma's seventh child, but the ever sufficing mother-love
+looked from her eyes undimmed, limitless as the air.</p>
+
+<p>"Will it live, Doctor? It's so little," she said, with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I suppose so!" said the Doctor, as if its living were not
+entirely a blessing to itself or others. "Yes, I've seen lots of lusty
+children begin life like that. But," he said to Sarah at the door, "she
+needs better care than the babe!"</p>
+
+<p>"She'll git it," said Sarah, with deep solemnity, "if I have to move
+over here&mdash;and live."</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="A_FAIR_EXILE" id="A_FAIR_EXILE"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span>
+<h2>A FAIR EXILE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>The train was ambling across the hot, russet plain. The wind, strong and
+warm and dry, sweeping up from the south, carried with it the subtle
+odor of September grass and gathered harvests. Out of the unfenced roads
+the dust arose in long lines, like smoke from some hidden burning which
+the riven earth revealed. The fields were tenanted with thrashing crews,
+the men diminished by distance to pygmies, the long belt of the engine
+flapping and shining like a ribbon in the flaming sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>The freight-cars on the accommodation train jostled and rocked about and
+heaved up laterally till they resembled a long line of awkward,
+frightened, galloping buffaloes. The one coach was scantily filled with
+passengers, mainly poorly clothed farmers and their families.</p>
+
+<p>A young man seated well back in the coach was looking dreamily out of
+the window, and the conductor, a keen-eyed young fellow, after passing
+him several times, said, in a friendly way:</p>
+
+<p>"Going up to Boomtown, I imagine."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;if we ever get there."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we'll get there. We won't have much more switching. We've only got
+an empty car or two to throw in at the junction."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm glad of that. I'm a little impatient, because I've got a case
+coming up in court, and I'm not exactly fixed for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Your name is Allen, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; J. H. Allen, of Sioux City."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought so. I've heard you speak."</p>
+
+<p>The young lawyer was a tall, slender, dark-eyed man, rather sombre in
+appearance. He did not respond to the invitation in the conductor's
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"When do you reach the junction?"</p>
+
+<p>"Next stop. We're only a few minutes late. Expect to meet friends
+there?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; thought I'd get a lunch, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>At the junction the car became pretty well filled with people. Two or
+three Norwegian families came clattering in, the mothers clothed in
+heavy shawls and cheap straw hats, the flaxen-haired children in faded
+cottonade and blue denims. They filled nearly half the seats. Several
+drummers came in, laughing loudly, bearing heavy valises. Then Allen
+heard, above the noise, the shrill but sweet voice of a girl, and caught
+the odor of violets as two persons passed him and took a seat just
+before him.</p>
+
+<p>The man he knew by sight and reputation as a very brilliant young
+lawyer&mdash;Edward Benson, of Heron Lake. The girl he knew instantly to be
+utterly alien to this land and people. She was like a tropic bird seen
+amid the scant foliage of northern hills. There was evidence of great
+care and taste in every fold of her modish dress. Her hat was simple but
+in the latest city fashion, and her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span> gloves were spotless. She gave off
+an odor of cleanliness and beauty.</p>
+
+<p>She was very young and slender. Her face was piquant but not
+intellectual, and scarcely beautiful. It pleased rather by its life and
+motion and oddity than by its beauty. She looked at her companion in a
+peculiar way&mdash;trustfully, almost reverently&mdash;and yet with a touch of
+coquetry which seemed perfectly native to every turn of her body or
+glance of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Her companion was a fine Western type of self-made man. He was tall and
+broad-shouldered, but walked a little stooping, like a man of fifty. He
+wore a long Prince Albert frock-coat, hanging loosely from his rather
+square shoulders. His white vest was noticeably soiled by his watch
+chain, and his tie was disarranged.</p>
+
+<p>His face was very fine and good. His eyes were gray-blue, deep and
+quiet, but slightly smiling, as were his lips, which his golden-brown
+mustache shaded but did not hide. He was kept smiling in this quizzical
+way by the nervous chatter of the girl beside him. His profile, which
+was the view Allen had of him, was striking. His strong, straight nose
+and abrupt forehead formed a marked contrast to the rather characterless
+nose and retreating forehead of the girl.</p>
+
+<p>The first words that Allen distinguished out of the merry war in which
+they seemed engaged were spoken in the tone of pretty petulance such
+women use&mdash;a coquette's defence.</p>
+
+<p>"You did! you did! you <i>did</i>! <i>Now</i>! You know you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span> did! You told me
+that! You told me you despised girls like me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I said I despised women who had no object in life but dress," he
+replied, rather soberly.</p>
+
+<p>"But you were hopping on me; you meant me, now! You can't deny it! You
+despise me, I know you do!" She challenged his flattery in her pouting
+self-depreciation.</p>
+
+<p>The young man tried to stop her in her course, to change her mood, which
+was descending to real feeling. His low words were lost in the rumble of
+the car.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, try to smooth it over; but you can't fool me any more. But I
+don't want you to flatter me and lie to me the way Judge Stearns did,"
+she added, with a sudden change of manner. "I like you because you're
+straight."</p>
+
+<p>The phrase with which she ended seemed to take on a new meaning, uttered
+by those red lips in childish pout.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, why are you down on the judge? I don't see," said the man, as if
+she had gone back to an old attack.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if you'd seen what I have, you'd understand." She turned away and
+looked out of the window. "Oh, this terrible country! I'd die out here
+in six weeks. I know I should."</p>
+
+<p>The young lawyer was not to be turned aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I'm pleased to have you throw the judge over and employ me,
+but, all the same, I think you do him an injustice. He's a good, square
+man."</p>
+
+<p>"Square man!" she said, turning to him with a sudden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span> fury in her eyes.
+"Do you call it square for a man&mdash;married, and gray-haired, too&mdash;to take
+up with a woman like Mrs. Shellberg? Say, do you, now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't quite believe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I <i>lie</i>, do I?" she cried, with another swift change to reproach.
+"You can't take my word for Mrs. Shellberg's visits to his office."</p>
+
+<p>"But he was her lawyer."</p>
+
+<p>"But you know what kind of a woman she is! She didn't need to go there
+every day or two, did she? What did he always receive her in his private
+office for? Come, now, tell me that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that he did," persisted the lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>A sort of convulsion passed over her face, her little hands clinched,
+and the tears started into her eyes. Her voice was very quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"You think I lie, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are mistaken, just as other jealous women have&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You think I'm jealous, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You act like a jeal&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Jealous of that gray-haired old wretch? No, sir! I&mdash;I&mdash;" She struggled
+to express herself. "I liked him, and I hated to lose all my faith in
+men. I thought he was good and honest when he prayed&mdash;Oh, I've seen him
+pray in church, the old hypocrite!" Her fury returned at the
+recollection.</p>
+
+<p>Her companion's face grew grave. The smile went out of his eyes, leaving
+them dark and sorrowful.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand you now," he said, at last. She turned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span> to look at him.
+"My practice in the divorce business out here has almost destroyed my
+faith in women. If it weren't for my wife and sister&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She broke in eagerly: "Now I <i>know</i> you know what I mean. Sometimes I
+think men are&mdash;devils!" She thrust this word forth, and her little face
+grew dark and strained. "But the judge kept me from thinking&mdash;I never
+loved my father; he didn't care for me; all he wanted to do was to make
+ten thousand barrels of beer a year and sell it; and the judge seemed
+like a father to me till <i>she</i> came and destroyed my faith in him."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;well, let Mrs. S. go. There are lots of good men and pure women in
+the world. It's dangerous to think there aren't&mdash;especially for a
+handsome young woman like you. You can't afford to keep in that kind of
+a mood long."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him curiously. "That's what I like about you," she said,
+soberly. "You talk to me as if I had some sense&mdash;as if I were a human
+being. If you were to flatter me, now, and make love to me, I never
+would believe in any man again."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled again in his frank, good way, and drew a picture from his
+pocket. It was a picture of a woman bending down over a laughing, naked
+child, sprawling frogwise in her lap. The woman's face was broad and
+intellectual and handsome. The look of splendid maternity was in her
+eyes. They both looked at the picture in silence. The girl sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I was as good as that woman looks."</p>
+
+<p>"You can be if you try."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not with a big Chicago brewer for a father, and a husband that beats
+you whenever the mood takes him."</p>
+
+<p>"I admit that's hard. I think the atmosphere of that Heron Lake hotel
+isn't any great help to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they're a gay lot there! We fight like cats and dogs." A look of
+slyness and boldness came over her face. "Mrs. Shellberg hates me as
+hard as I do her. She used to go around telling: 'It's very peculiar,
+you know'"&mdash;she imitated her rival's voice&mdash;"'but no matter which end of
+the dining-room I sit, all the men look that way!'"</p>
+
+<p>The young lawyer laughed at her in spite of himself.</p>
+
+<p>And she went on: "But they don't, now. That's the reason she hates me,"
+she said, in conclusion. "The men don't notice her when I'm around."</p>
+
+<p>To hear her fresh young lips utter those words with their vile
+inflections was like taking a sudden glimpse into the underworld, where
+harlots dwell and the spirits of unrestrained lusts dance in the shadowy
+recesses of the human heart.</p>
+
+<p>Allen, hearing this fragmentary conversation, fascinated yet uneasy,
+looked at the pair with wonder. They seemed quite unconscious of their
+public situation.</p>
+
+<p>The young lawyer looked straight before him, while the girl, swept on by
+her ignoble rage, displayed still more of the moral ulceration which had
+been injected into her young life.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see what men find about her to like&mdash;unless it is her eyes.
+She's got beautiful eyes. But she's vulgar&mdash;ugh! The stories she
+tells&mdash;right before men, too!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span> She'd kill any one that got ahead of her,
+that woman would! And yet she'll come into my room and cry and cry, and
+say: 'Don't take him away from me! Leave him to me!' Ugh! It makes me
+sick." She stamped her foot, then added, irrelevantly: "She wears a wig,
+too. I suppose that old fool of a judge thinks it's her own hair."</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer sat in stony silence. His grave face was accusing in its set
+expression, and she felt it, and was spurred on to do still deeper
+injustice to herself&mdash;an insane perversity.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I care a cent&mdash;I'm not jealous of her. I ain't so bad off for
+company as she is. She can't take anybody away from me, but she must go
+and break down my faith in the judge."</p>
+
+<p>She bit her lips to keep from crying out. She looked out of the window
+again, seeking control.</p>
+
+<p>The "divorce colony" never appeared more sickening in its inner
+corruptions than when delineated by this dainty young girl. Allen could
+see the swarming men about the hotels; he could see their hot, leering
+eyes and smell their liquor-laden breaths as they named the latest
+addition to the colony or boasted of their associations with those
+already well known.</p>
+
+<p>The girl turned suddenly to her companion.</p>
+
+<p>"How do those people live out here on their farms?"</p>
+
+<p>She pointed at a small shanty where the whole family stood to watch the
+train go by.</p>
+
+<p>"By eating boiled potatoes and salt pork."</p>
+
+<p>"Salt pork!" she echoed, as if salt pork were old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span> boot-heels or bark or
+hay. "Why, it takes four hours for salt pork to digest!"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again at her childish irrelevancy. "So much the better for
+the poor. Where'd you learn all that, anyway?"</p>
+
+<p>"At school. Oh, you needn't look so incredulous! I went to
+boarding-school. I learned a good deal more than you think."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so I see. Now, I should have said pork digested in three hours,
+speaking from experience."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it don't. What do the women do out here?"</p>
+
+<p>"They work like the men, only more so."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they have any new things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not very often, I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed. After a pause, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"You were raised on a farm?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. In Minnesota."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you do work like that?" She pointed at a thrashing-machine in the
+field.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I ploughed and sowed and reaped and mowed. I wasn't on the farm
+for my health."</p>
+
+<p>"You're very strong, aren't you?" she asked, admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"In a slab-sided kind of a way&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes grew abstracted.</p>
+
+<p>"I like strong men. Ollie was a little man, not any taller than I am,
+but when he was drunk he was what men call a&mdash;a holy terror. He struck
+me with the water-pitcher once&mdash;that was just before baby was born. I
+wish he'd killed me." She ended in a sudden reaction<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span> to hopeless
+bitterness. "It would have saved me all these months of life in this
+terrible country."</p>
+
+<p>"It might have saved you from more than you think," he said, quietly,
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've been brought up against women and men who have defiled you.
+They've made your future uncertain."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it's so bad as that? Tell me!" she insisted, seeing his
+hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"You're on the road to hell!" he said, in a voice that was very low, but
+it reached her. It was full of pain and grave reprimand and gentleness.
+"You've been poisoned. You're in need of a good man's help. You need the
+companionship of good, earnest women instead of painted harlots."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice shook painfully as she replied:</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think I'm <i>all</i> bad?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not bad at all&mdash;you're simply reckless. <i>You</i> are not to blame.
+It depends upon yourself now, though, whether you keep a true woman or
+go to hell with Mrs. Shellberg."</p>
+
+<p>The conductor eyed them, as he passed, with an unpleasant light in his
+eyes, and the drummers a few seats ahead turned to look at them. The tip
+had passed along from lip to lip. They were like wild beasts roused by
+the presence of prey. Their eyes gleamed with relentless lust. They eyed
+the little creature with ravening eyes. Her helplessness was their
+opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>Allen, sitting there, entered into the terror and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span> tragedy of the
+girl's life. He imagined her reckless, prodigal girlhood; the coarse,
+rich father; the marriage, when a thoughtless girl, with a drunken,
+dissolute boy; the quarrels, brutal beatings; the haste to secure a
+divorce; the contamination of the crowded hotels in Heron Lake, where
+this slender young girl&mdash;naturally pure, alert, quick of impulse&mdash;was
+like a lamb among lustful wolves. His heart ached for her.</p>
+
+<p>The deep, slow voice of the lawyer sounded on. His eyes, turned toward
+her, had no equivocal look. He was a brother speaking to a younger
+sister. The tears fell down her cheeks, upon her folded hands. Her
+widely opened eyes seemed to look out into a night of storms.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what shall I do?" she moaned. "I wish I was dead&mdash;and baby, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"Live for the baby&mdash;let him help you out."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he can't! I don't care enough for him. I wish I was like other
+mothers, but I'm not. I can't shut myself up with a baby. I'm too
+young."</p>
+
+<p>He saw that. She was seeking the love of a man, not the care of a child.
+She had the wifely passion, but not the mother's love. He was silent;
+the case baffled him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wish you could help me! I wish I had you to help me all the time!
+I do! I don't care what you think&mdash;<i>I do! I do!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Our home is open to you and baby, too," he said, slowly. "My wife knows
+about you, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Who told her&mdash;did you?" she flashed out again, angrily, jealously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. My wife is my other self," he replied, quietly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She stared at him, breathing heavily, then looked out of the window
+again. At last she turned to him. She seemed to refer to his invitation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, this terrible land! Oh, I couldn't stay here! I'd go insane.
+Perhaps I'm going insane, anyway. Don't you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I think you're a little nervous, that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Do you think I'll get my divorce?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, without question."</p>
+
+<p>"Can I wait and go back with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not return for several days. Perhaps you couldn't bear to wait
+in this little town; it's not much like the city."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear! But I can't go about alone. I hate these men, they stare at
+me so! I wish I was a man. It's awful to be a woman, don't you think so?
+Please don't laugh."</p>
+
+<p>The young lawyer was far from laughing, but this was her only way of
+defending herself. These pert, bird-like ways formed her shield against
+ridicule and misprision.</p>
+
+<p>He said, slowly, "Yes, it's an awful thing to be a woman, but then it's
+an awful responsibility to be a man."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that we are responsible, as the dominant sex, for every tragic,
+incomplete woman's life."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you blame Mrs. Shellberg?" she said, forcing him to a concrete
+example with savage swiftness.</p>
+
+<p>"No. She had a poor father and a poor husband, and she must earn her own
+living some way."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She could cook, or nurse, or something like that."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't easy to find opportunity to cook or nurse. If it were as easy
+to earn a living in a pure way as it is in a vicious way, all men would
+be rich and virtuous. But what had you planned to do after your
+divorce?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm going to travel for two years. Then I'll try to settle down."</p>
+
+<p>"What you need is a good husband, and a little cottage where you'd have
+to cook your own food&mdash;and tend the baby."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't cook for any man living," she broke in, to express her
+bitterness that he could so coldly dispose of her future. "Oh, this
+terrible train! Can't it go faster? If I'd realized what a trip this
+was, I wouldn't have started."</p>
+
+<p>"This is the route you all go," he replied, with grim humor, and his
+words pictured a ceaseless stream of divorc&eacute;es.</p>
+
+<p>She resented his classing her with the rest, but she simply said: "You
+despise me, don't you? But what can we do? You can't expect us to live
+with men we hate, can you? That would be worse than Mrs. Shellberg."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't expect that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every
+marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust.
+"Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a
+question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a
+question of the senseless severity of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span> laws in other States. That's
+what throws this demoralizing business into our hands here."</p>
+
+<p>"It pays, don't it? I know I've paid for everything I've had."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's the demoralizing thing. It draws a gang of conscienceless
+attorneys here, and it draws us who belong here off into dirty work, and
+it brings us into contact with men and women&mdash;I'm sick of the whole
+business."</p>
+
+<p>She had hardly followed him in his generalizations. She brought him back
+to the personal.</p>
+
+<p>"You're sick of me, I know you are!" She leaned her head on the
+window-pane. Her eyes closed. "Oh, I wish my heart would stop beating!"
+she said, in a tense, profoundly significant tone.</p>
+
+<p>Allen, sitting so close behind them, was forced to overhear, so
+piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might
+hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but God should listen
+to this outcry of a quivering, writhing soul.</p>
+
+<p>She faced her companion again. "You're the only man I know, now, that I
+respect, and you despise me."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't; I pity you."</p>
+
+<p>"That's worse. I want you to help me. Oh, if you could go with me, or if
+I could be with you!" Her gloved hands strained together in the agony of
+her desire.</p>
+
+<p>His calm lips did not waver. He did not smile, even about the eyes. He
+knew her cry sprang from her need of a brother, not from the passion of
+a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Our home is yours just as long as you can bear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span> the monotony of our
+simple lives," he said, in his quiet way, but it was deep-throated and
+unmistakable in its sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>She laid her hand on his arm and clasped it hard, then turned away her
+head, and they rode in silence.</p>
+
+<p>After they left the car Allen sat, with savage eyes and grimly set
+mouth, going over the problem again and again. He saw that young and
+helpless creature walking the gantlet between endless ranks of lustful,
+remorseless men, snatching at her in selfish, bestial desire.</p>
+
+<p>It made him bitter and despairing to think that women should be
+helpless&mdash;that they should need some man to protect them against some
+other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women
+subordinate and trivial and deceptive and vacillating. He wished they
+could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or
+she-wolf, they could not only defend themselves, but their young.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to breathe a sigh of relief that she had gone out of his life,
+but he could not. It was not so easy to shake off the shadow of his
+responsibility. He followed her in imagination on her downward path till
+he saw her stretching out her hands in pitiful need to casual
+acquaintances&mdash;alone and without hope; still petite, still dainty in
+spite of all, still with flashes of wit, and then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He shuddered. "O my God! Upon whom does the burden of guilt lie?"</p>
+
+<hr class="minor" />
+
+<p>On the night of his return he sat among his romping babes, debating
+whether he should tell the story to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span> wife or not. As the little ones
+grew weary the noise of the autumn wind&mdash;the lonely, woful, moaning
+prairie wind&mdash;came to his ears, and he shuddered. His wife observed it.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Joe? Did you get a chill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no. The wind sounds a little lonesome to-night, that's all." But he
+took his little girl into his arms and held her close.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="AN_ALIEN_IN_THE_PINES" id="AN_ALIEN_IN_THE_PINES"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>
+<h2>AN ALIEN IN THE PINES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>A man and a woman were pacing up and down the wintry station platform,
+waiting for a train. On every side the snow lay a stained and crumpled
+blanket, with here and there a light or a chimney to show the village
+sleeping beneath.</p>
+
+<p>The sky was a purple-black hemisphere, out of which the stars glittered
+almost white. The wind came out of the west, cold but amiable; the
+cracked bell of a switch-engine gurgled querulously at intervals,
+followed by the bumping of coupling freight-cars; roosters were crowing,
+and sleepy train-men were assembling in sullen silence.</p>
+
+<p>The couple walked with arms locked like lovers, but the tones of their
+voices had the quality which comes after marriage. They were man and
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>The woman's clear voice arose. "Oh, Ed, isn't this delicious? What one
+misses by not getting up early!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sleep, for instance," laughed her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't drag me down. You know what I mean. Let's get up early every
+morning while we're up here in the woods."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Shouldn't wonder if we had to. There'll be a lot to do, and I want to
+get back to Chicago by the 1st of February."</p>
+
+<p>"This is an experience! Isn't it still? When is our train due?"</p>
+
+<p>"Due now; I think that is our headlight up the track."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke an engine added its voice to the growing noise of the
+station, and drew solemnly down the frosty steel.</p>
+
+<p>An eruption of shapeless forms of men from the depot filled the one
+general coach of the train. They nearly all were dressed in some sort of
+fur coat, and all had the look of men accustomed to out-door
+life&mdash;powerful, loud-voiced, unrefined. They were, in fact, travelling
+men, business men, the owners of mills or timber. The stolid or patient
+ox-like faces of some Norwegian workmen, dressed in gay Mackinac
+jackets, were sprinkled about.</p>
+
+<p>The young wife was a fine type of woman anywhere, but these surroundings
+made her seem very dainty and startlingly beautiful. Her husband had the
+fair skin of a city man, but his powerful shoulders and firm step
+denoted health and wholesome living. They were both good to look at.</p>
+
+<p>They soon felt the reaction to sleepiness which comes to those not
+accustomed to early rising, and the wife, soothed by the clank of the
+train, leaned her head on her husband's shoulder and dozed. He looked
+out upon the landscape, glad that his wife was not observing it. He did
+not know such desolation existed in Wisconsin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On every side were the evidences of a ruined forest land. A landscape of
+flat wastes, of thinned and burned and uprooted trees. A desolate and
+apparently useless land.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there a sawmill stood gray and sagging, surrounded by little
+cabins of unpainted wood, to testify to the time when great pines stood
+all about, and the ring of the swamper's axe was heard in the intervals
+of silence between the howls of a saw.</p>
+
+<p>To the north the swells grew larger. Birch and tamarack swamps
+alternated with dry ridges on which an inferior pine still grew. The
+swamps were dense tangles of broken and uprooted trees. Slender
+pike-like stumps of fire-devastated firs rose here and there, black and
+grim skeletons of trees.</p>
+
+<p>It was a land that had been sheared by the axe, torn by the winds, and
+blasted by fire.</p>
+
+<p>Off to the west low blue ridges rose, marking the boundaries of the
+valley which had been washed out ages ago by water. After the floods
+pine forest had sprung up, and these in their turn had been sheared away
+by man. It lay now awaiting the plough and seeder of the intrepid
+pioneer.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the wife awoke and sat up. "Why, we haven't had any breakfast!"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her childish look of bewilderment. "I've been painfully
+aware of it for some time back. I've been suffering for food while you
+slept."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you get into the basket?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could I, with you on my manly bosom?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She colored up a little. They had not been married long, evidently. "How
+considerate you are!"</p>
+
+<p>They were soon eating a breakfast with the spirit of picnickers.
+Occasionally she looked out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>"What a wild country!" she said. He did not emphasize its qualities to
+her; rather, he distracted her attention from its desolation.</p>
+
+<p>The train roared round its curves, conforming with the general course of
+the river. On every hand were thickening signs of active lumber
+industry. They flashed by freight trains loaded with logs or lumber or
+ties. Mills in operation grew thicker.</p>
+
+<p>The car echoed with the talk of lumber. A brisk man with a red mustache
+was exhibiting a model of a machine to cut certain parts of machinery
+out of "two by fours." Another was describing a new shingle-mill he had
+just built.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of elderly men, one a German, were discussing the tariff on
+lumber. The workmen mainly sat silent.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all so strange!" the young wife said, again and again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it isn't exactly the Lake Shore Drive."</p>
+
+<p>"I like it. I wish I could smell the pines."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have all the pines you can stand before we get back to Chicago."</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; I'm going to enjoy every moment of it; and you're going to let
+me help, you know&mdash;look over papers, and all that. I'm the heiress, you
+must remember," she added, wickedly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, we won't quarrel about that until we see how the legacy turns
+out. It may not be worth my time up here. I shall charge you roundly as
+your lawyer, depend on that."</p>
+
+<p>The outlook grew more attractive as the train sped on. Old Mosinee rose,
+a fine rounded blue shape, on the left.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, there's a mountain! I didn't know Wisconsin had such a mountain as
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither did I. This valley is fine. Now, if your uncle's estates only
+included that hill!"</p>
+
+<p>The valley made off to the northwest with a bold, large, and dignified
+movement. The coloring, blue and silver, purple-brown and bronze-green,
+was harmonious with the grouping of lines. It was all fresh and vital,
+wholesome and very impressive.</p>
+
+<p>From this point the land grew wilder&mdash;that is to say, more primeval.
+There was more of Nature and less of man. The scar of the axe was here
+and there, but the forest predominated. The ridges of pine foliages
+broke against the sky, miles and miles, in splendid sweep.</p>
+
+<p>"This must be lovely in summer," the wife said, again and again, as they
+flashed by some lake set among the hills.</p>
+
+<p>"It's fine now," he replied, feeling the thrill of the sportsman. "I'd
+like to shoulder a rifle and plunge into those snowy vistas. How it
+brings the wild spirit out in a man! Women never feel that delight."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, we do," she replied, glad that something remained yet
+unexplained between them. "We feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span> just like men, only we haven't the
+strength of mind to demand a share of it with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you feel it at this distance. You'd come back mighty quick the
+second night out."</p>
+
+<p>She did not relish his laughter, and so looked away out of the window.
+"Just think of it&mdash;Uncle Edwin lived here thirty years!"</p>
+
+<p>He forebore to notice her inconsistency. "Yes, the wilderness is all
+right for a vacation, but I prefer Chicago for the year round."</p>
+
+<p>When they came upon Ridgeley, both cried out with delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what a dear, picturesque little town!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! I wonder how they came to build a town without a row of
+battlemented stores?"</p>
+
+<p>It lay among and upon the sharp, low, stumpy pine ridges in haphazard
+fashion, like a Swiss village. A small brook ran through it, smothered
+here and there in snow. A sawmill was the largest figure of the town,
+and the railway station was the centre. There was not an inch of painted
+board in the village. Everywhere the clear yellow of the pine flamed
+unstained by time. Lumber piles filled all the lower levels near the
+creek. Evidently the town had been built along logging roads, and there
+was something grateful and admirable in its irregular arrangement. The
+houses, moreover, were all modifications of the logging camps; even the
+drug store stood with its side to the street. All about were stumps and
+fringes of pines, which the lumbermen, for some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span> good reason, had passed
+by. Charred boles stood purple-black out of the snow.</p>
+
+<p>It was all green and gray and blue and yellow-white and stern. The sky
+was not more illimitable than the rugged forest which extended on every
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, this is glorious&mdash;glorious!" said the wife. "Do I own some of this
+town?" she asked, as they rose to go out.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon you do."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so glad!"</p>
+
+<p>As they stepped out on the platform, a large man in corduroy and
+wolf-skin faced them like a bandit.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Ed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Jack! Well, we've found you. My wife, Mr. Ridgeley. We've come
+up to find out how much you've embezzled," he said, as Ridgeley pulled
+off an immense glove to shake hands all round.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, come right over to the hotel. It ain't the Auditorium, but then,
+again, it ain't like sleeping outdoors."</p>
+
+<p>As they moved along they heard the train go off, and then the sound of
+the saw resumed its domination of the village noises.</p>
+
+<p>"Was the town named after you, or you after the town?" asked Field.</p>
+
+<p>"Named after me. Old man didn't want it named after him; would kill it,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. Field found the hotel quite comfortable and the dinner
+wholesome. They beamed upon each other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's going to be delightful," they said.</p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley was a bachelor, and made his home at the hotel also. That night
+he said: "Now we'll go over the papers and records of your uncle's
+property, and then we'll go out and see if the property is all there. I
+imagine this is to be a searching investigation."</p>
+
+<p>"You may well think it. My wife is inexorable."</p>
+
+<p>As night fell, the wife did not feel so safe and well pleased. The loud
+talking in the office below and the occasional whooping of a crowd of
+mill-hands going by made her draw her chair nearer and lay her fingers
+in her husband's palm.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled indulgently. "Don't be frightened, my dear. These men are not
+half so bad as they sound."</p>
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Mrs. Field sat in the inner room of Ridgeley's office, waiting for the
+return of her husband with the team. They were going out for a drive.</p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley was working at his books, and he had forgotten her presence.</p>
+
+<p>She could not but feel a deep admiration for his powerful frame and his
+quick, absorbed action as he moved about from his safe to his desk. He
+was a man of great force and ready decision.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the door opened and a stranger entered. He had a sullen and
+bitter look on his thin, dark face. Ridgeley's quick eyes measured him,
+and his hand softly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span> turned the key in his money drawer, and as he faced
+about he swung shut the door of the safe.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger saw all this with eyes as keen as Ridgeley's. A cheerless
+and strange smile came upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be alarmed," he said. "I'm low, but I ain't as low as that."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, what can I do for you?" asked Ridgeley. Mrs. Field half
+rose, feeling something tense and menacing in the attitude of the two
+men.</p>
+
+<p>But the intruder quietly answered, "You can give me a job if you want
+to."</p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley remained alert. His eyes ran over the man's tall frame. He
+looked strong and intelligent, although his eyes were fevered and dull.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of a job?"</p>
+
+<p>"Any kind that will take me out into the woods and keep me there."</p>
+
+<p>There was a self-accusing tone in his voice that Ridgeley felt.</p>
+
+<p>"What's your object? You look like a man who could do something else.
+What brings you here?"</p>
+
+<p>The man turned with a sudden resolution to punish himself. His voice
+expressed a terrible loathing.</p>
+
+<p>"Whiskey, that's what. It's a hell of a thing to say, but I can't let
+liquor alone when I can smell it. I'm no common hand, or I wouldn't be
+if I&mdash;But let that go. I can swing an axe, and I'm ready to work. That's
+enough. Now the question is, can you find a place for me?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley mused a little. The young fellow stood there, statuesque,
+rebellious.</p>
+
+<p>Then Ridgeley said, "I guess I can help you out that much." He picked up
+a card and a pencil. "What shall I call you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, call me Williams; that ain't my name, but it'll do."</p>
+
+<p>"What you been doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything part of the time, drinking the rest. Was in a livery-stable
+down at Wausau last week. It came over me, when I woke yesterday, that I
+was gone to hell if I stayed in town. So I struck out; and I don't care
+for myself, but I've got a woman to look out for&mdash;" He stopped abruptly.
+His recklessness of mood had its limits, after all.</p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley pencilled on a card. "Give this to the foreman of No. 6. The
+men over at the mill will show you the teams."</p>
+
+<p>The man started toward the door with the card in his hand. He turned
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"One thing more. I want you to send ten dollars of my pay every two
+weeks to this address." He took an envelope out of his pocket. "It don't
+matter what I say or do after this, I want that money sent. The rest
+will keep me in tobacco and clothing. You understand?"</p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley nodded. "Perfectly. I've seen such cases before."</p>
+
+<p>The man went out and down the walk with a hurried, determined air, as if
+afraid to trust his own resolution.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As Ridgeley turned toward his desk he met Mrs. Field, who faced him with
+tears of fervent sympathy in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it awful?" she said, in a half whisper. "Poor fellow, what will
+become of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. He'll get along some way. Such fellows do. I've had
+'em before. They try it awhile here; then they move. I can't worry about
+them."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Field was not listening to his shifty words. "And then, think of
+his wife&mdash;how she must worry."</p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley smiled. "Perhaps it's his mother or a sister."</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, it's awful. Can't something be done for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I guess we've done about all that can be done."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wish I could help him! I'll tell Ed about him."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry about him, Mrs. Field; he ain't worth it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, he is. I feel he's been a fine fellow, and then he's so
+self-accusing."</p>
+
+<p>Her own happiness was so complete, she could not bear to think of
+others' misery. She told her husband about Williams, and ended by
+asking, "Can't we do something to help the poor fellow?"</p>
+
+<p>Field was not deeply concerned. "No; he's probably past help. Such men
+are so set in their habits, nothing but a miracle or hypnotism can save
+them. He'll end up as a 'lumber Jack,' as the townsmen call the hands in
+the camps."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But he isn't that, Edward. He's finer, some way. You feel he is. Ask
+Mr. Ridgeley."</p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley merely said: "Yes, he seemed to me to be more than a common
+hand. But, all the same, it won't be two weeks before he'll be in here
+as drunk as a wild cat, wanting to shoot me for holding back his money."</p>
+
+<p>In this way Williams came to be to Mrs. Field a very important figure in
+the landscape of that region. She often spoke of him, and on the
+following Saturday night, when Field came home, she anxiously asked, "Is
+Williams in town?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, he hasn't shown up yet."</p>
+
+<p>She clapped her hands in delight. "Good! good! He's going to win his
+fight."</p>
+
+<p>Field laughed. "Don't bet on Williams too soon. We'll hear from him
+before the week is out."</p>
+
+<p>"When are we going to visit the camp?" she asked, changing the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as it warms up a little. It is too cold for you."</p>
+
+<p>She had a laugh at him. "You were the one who wanted to 'plunge into the
+snowy vistas.'"</p>
+
+<p>He evaded her joke on him by assuming a careless tone. "I'm not plunging
+as much as I was; the snow is too deep."</p>
+
+<p>"When you go I want to go with you&mdash;I want to see Williams."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!" he snorted, melodramatically. "She scorns me faithful heart. She
+turns&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Field smiled faintly. "Don't joke about it, Ed. I can't get that
+wife out of my mind."</p>
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>A few very cold gray days followed, and then the north wind cleared the
+sky; and, though it was still cold, it was pleasant. The sky had only a
+small white cloud here and there to make its blueness the more profound.</p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley dashed up to the door with a hardy little pair of broncos
+hitched to a light pair of bobs, and Mrs. Field was tucked in like a
+babe in a cradle.</p>
+
+<p>Almost the first thing she asked was, "How is Williams?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's getting on nicely. He refused to sleep with his bunk-mate, and
+finally had to lick him, I understand, to shut him up. Challenged the
+whole camp, then, to let him alone or take a licking. They let him
+alone, Lawson says. G'lang there, you rats!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Field said no more, for the air was whizzing by her ears, and she
+hardly dared look out, so keen was the wind; but as soon as they entered
+the deeps of the forest it was profoundly still.</p>
+
+<p>The ride that afternoon was a glory she never forgot. Everywhere
+yellow-greens and purple shadows. The sun in a burnished blue sky
+flooded the forests with light, striking down through even the thickest
+pines to lay in fleckings of radiant white and gold upon the snow.</p>
+
+<p>The trail (it was not a road) ran like a graceful furrow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span> over the
+hills, around little lakes covered deep with snow, through tamarack
+swamps where the tracks of wild things thickened, over ridges of tall
+pine clear of brush, and curving everywhere amid stumps, where
+dismantled old shanties marked the site of the older logging camps.
+Sometimes they met teams going to the store. Sometimes they crossed
+logging roads&mdash;wide, smooth tracks artificially iced, down which
+mountainous loads of logs were slipping, creaking, and groaning.
+Sometimes they heard the dry click-clock of the woodsmen's axes or the
+crash of falling trees deep in the wood. When they reached the first
+camp Ridgeley pulled up the steaming horses at the door and shouted,
+"Hello, the camp!"</p>
+
+<p>A tall old man with a long red beard came out. He held one bare red arm
+above his eyes. He wore an apron.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Sandy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Mr. Ridgeley!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ready for company?"</p>
+
+<p>"Am always ready for company," he said, with a Scotch accent.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we're coming in to get warm."</p>
+
+<p>"Vera weel."</p>
+
+<p>As they went in, under the roofed shed between the cook's shanty and the
+other and larger shanty, Mrs. Field sniffed. Sandy led them past a large
+pyramid composed of the scraps of beef bones, egg-shells, cans, and tea
+grounds left over during the winter. In the shed itself hung great slabs
+of beef.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was all as untidy and suggestive of slaughter as the nest of a brood
+of eagles.</p>
+
+<p>Sandy was beginning dinner on a huge stove spotted with rust and pancake
+batter. All about was the litter of his preparation. Beef&mdash;beef on all
+sides, and tin dishes and bare benches and huge iron cooking-pans.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Field was glad to get out into the sunlight again. "What a horrible
+place! Are they all like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my camps are not like that&mdash;or, I should say, <i>our</i> camps,"
+Ridgeley added, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a gay place at all," said Field, in exaggerated reserve.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Field found her own camps not much better. True, the refuse was
+not raised in pyramidal shape before the front door, and the beef was a
+little more orderly, but the low log huts, the dim cold light, the dingy
+walls and floors, the lack of any womanly or home touch, the tin dishes,
+the wholesale cooking, all struck upon her with terrible force.</p>
+
+<p>"Do human beings live here?" she asked Ridgeley, when he opened the door
+of the main shanty of No. 6.</p>
+
+<p>"Forty creatures of the men kind sleep and house here," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"To which the socks and things give evidence," said Field, promptly,
+pointing toward the huge stove which sat like a rusty-red cheese in the
+centre of the room. Above it hung scores of ragged gray and red socks
+and Mackinac boots and jackets which had been washed by the men
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Around were the grimy bunks where the forty men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span> slept like tramps in a
+steamer's hold. The quilts were grimy, and the posts greasy and shining
+with the touch of hands. There were no chairs&mdash;only a kind of rude stool
+made of boards. There were benches near the stove, nailed to the rough
+floor. In each bunk, hanging to a peg, was the poor little
+imitation-leather hand-bag which contained the whole wardrobe of each
+man, exclusive of the tattered socks and shirts hanging over the stove.</p>
+
+<p>The room was chill and cold and gray. It had only two small windows. Its
+doors were low. Even Mrs. Field was forced to stoop in entering. This
+helped to make it seem like a den. There were roller-towels in the
+corner and wash-basins, and a grindstone which made it seem like a
+barn. It was, in fact, more cheerless than a barn, and less wholesome.</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't that hay in the bunks get a&mdash;a&mdash;sometimes?" asked Field.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes, I shouldn't wonder, though the men are pretty strict about
+that. They keep pretty free from bugs, I think. However, I shouldn't
+want to run no river chances on the thing myself." Ridgeley smiled at
+Mrs. Field's shudder of horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this the place?" The men laughed. She had asked that question so
+many times before.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, <i>this</i> is where Mr. Williams hangs out. Say, Field, you'll need to
+make some new move to hold your end up against Williams."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Field felt hurt and angry at his rough joke. In the dim corner a
+cough was heard, and as a yellow head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span> raised itself over the bunk-board
+a man presented a ghastly face. His big blue eyes fixed themselves on
+the lovely woman with a look of childish wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Gus&mdash;didn't see you! What's the matter&mdash;sick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yah, ai baen hwick two days. Ai tank ai lack to hav doketer."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, I'll send him up. What seems the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>As they talked, Mrs. Field again chilled with the cold gray
+comfortlessness of it all: to be sick in such a place! The silent
+appearance of the man out of his grim corner was startling. She was glad
+when they drove out into the woods again, where the clear sunshine fell
+and the pines stood against the blazing winter sky motionless as iron
+trees. Her pleasure in the ride was growing less. To her delicate sense
+this life was sordid, not picturesque. She wondered how Williams endured
+it. They arrived at No. 8 just as the men were trailing down the road to
+work, after eating their dinner. Their gay-colored jackets of Mackinac
+wool stood out like trumpet notes in the prevailing white and blue and
+bronze-green.</p>
+
+<p>The boss and the sealer came out and met them, and after introductions
+they went into the shanty to dinner. The cook was a deft young
+Norwegian&mdash;a clean, quick, gentlemanly fellow with a fine brown
+mustache. He cleared a place for them at one end of the long table, and
+they sat down.</p>
+
+<p>It was a large camp, but much like the others. On the table were the
+same cheap iron forks, the tin plates,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span> and the small tin basins (for
+tea) which made up the dinner-set. Basins of brown sugar stood about.</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious! Do people still eat brown sugar? Why, I haven't seen any
+of that for ages!" cried Mrs. Field.</p>
+
+<p>The stew was good and savory, and the bread fair. The tea was not all
+clover, but it tasted of the tin. Mrs. Field said:</p>
+
+<p>"Beef, beef&mdash;everywhere beef. One might suppose a menagerie of desert
+animals ate here. Edward, we must make things more comfortable for our
+men. They must have cups to drink out of; these basins are horrible."</p>
+
+<p>It was humorous to the men, this housewifely suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, make it napkins, Allie!"</p>
+
+<p>"You can laugh, but I sha'n't rest after seeing this. If you thought I
+was going to say, 'Oh, how picturesque!' you're mistaken. I think it's
+barbarous."</p>
+
+<p>She was getting impatient of their patronizing laughter, as if she were
+a child. They changed their manner to one of acquiescence, but thought
+of her as a child just the same.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner they all went out to see the crew working. It was the
+biggest crew anywhere in the neighborhood. Ridgeley got out and hitched
+the team to a tree, and took Field up to the skidway. Mrs. Field
+remained in the sleigh.</p>
+
+<p>Near her "the swamping team," a span of big, deep-red oxen, came and
+went among the green tops of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span> fallen pines. They crawled along their
+trails in the snow like some strange machinery, and the boy in a blue
+jacket moved almost as listlessly. Somewhere in the tangle of refuse
+boughs the swampers' axes click-clocked, saws uttered their grating,
+rhythmic snarl, and great trees at intervals shivered, groaned, and fell
+with soft, rushing, cracking sweeps into the deep snow, and the swampers
+swarmed upon them like Lilliputians attacking a giant enemy.</p>
+
+<p>There was something splendid (though tragic) in the work, but the
+thought of the homelessness of the men, their terrible beds, and their
+long hours of toil oppressed the delicate and refined woman. She began
+to take on culpability. She was partly in authority now, and this system
+must be changed. She was deep in plans for improvement, in shanties and
+in sleeping-places, when the men returned.</p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley was saying: "No, we control about thirty thousand acres of pine
+as good as that. It ain't what it was twenty years ago, but it's worth
+money, after all."</p>
+
+<p>It was getting near to dark as they reached No. 6 again, and Ridgeley
+drew up and helped them out and into the cook's shanty.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Field was introduced to the cook, a short, rather sullen, but
+intelligent man. He stood over the red-hot stove, laying great slices of
+beef in a huge dripping-pan. He had a taffler, or assistant, in the
+person of a half-grown boy, at whom he jerked rough orders like hunks of
+stove wood. Some hit the boy and produced noticeable effects, others did
+not.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile a triumphant sunset was making the west one splendor of purple
+and orange and crimson, which came over the cool green rim of the pines
+like the <i>Valhalla March</i> in Wagner.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Field sat there in the dim room by the window, seeing that splendor
+flush and fade, and thinking how dangerous it was to ask where one's
+wealth comes from in the world. Outside, the voices of the men
+thickened; they were dropping in by twos and fours, with teams and on
+foot.</p>
+
+<p>The assistant arranged the basins in rows, and put one of the iron forks
+and knives on either side of each plate, and filled the sugar-basins,
+and dumped in the cold beans, and split the bread into slabs, and put
+small pots of tea here and there ready for the hands of the men.</p>
+
+<p>At last, when the big pans of toast, the big plates of beef, were placed
+steaming on the table, the cook called Field and Ridgeley, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Set right here at the end." He raised his arm to a ring which dangled
+on a wire. "Now look out; you'll see 'em come&mdash;sidewise." He jerked the
+ring, and disappeared into the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden tumult, shouts, trampling, laughter, and the door burst open
+and they streamed in: Norwegians, French, half-breeds&mdash;dark-skinned
+fellows, all of them, save the Norwegians. They came like a flood, but
+they fell silent at sight of a woman, so beautiful and strange to them.</p>
+
+<p>All words ceased. They sank into place beside the table with the thump
+of falling sand-bags. They were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span> all in their shirt-sleeves, but with
+faces cleanly washed, and the most of them had combed their hair; but
+they seemed very wild and hairy to Mrs. Field. She looked at her husband
+and Ridgeley with a grateful pleasure; it was so restful to have them
+close beside her.</p>
+
+<p>The men ate like hungry dogs. They gorged in silence. Nothing was heard
+but the clank of knives on tin plates, the drop of heavy platters of
+food, and the occasional muttered words of some one asking for the bread
+or the gravy.</p>
+
+<p>As they ate they furtively looked with great curiosity and admiration up
+at the dainty woman. Their eyes were bright and large, and gleamed out
+of the obscure brown of their dimly lighted faces with savage
+intensity&mdash;so it seemed to Mrs. Field, and she dropped her eyes before
+their glare.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband and Ridgeley tried to enter into conversation with those
+sitting near. Ridgeley seemed on good terms with them all, and ventured
+a joke or word, at which they laughed with terrific energy, and fell as
+suddenly silent again.</p>
+
+<p>As Mrs. Field looked up the second time she saw the dark, strange face
+of Williams a few places down, and opposite her. His eyes were fixed on
+her husband's hands with a singular intensity. Her eyes followed his,
+and the beauty of her husband's hands came to her again with new force.
+They were perfectly shaped, supple, warm-colored, and strong. Their
+color and deftness stood out in vivid contrast to the heavy, brown,
+cracked, and calloused, paw-like hands of the workmen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Why should Williams study her husband's hands? If he had looked at her
+she would not have been surprised. The other men she could read. They
+expressed either frank, simple admiration or furtive desire. But this
+man looked at her husband, and his eyes fell often upon his own hands,
+which trembled with fatigue. He handled his knife clumsily, and yet she
+could see he, too, had a fine hand&mdash;a slender, powerful hand, like that
+people call an artist hand&mdash;a craftsman-like hand.</p>
+
+<p>He saw her looking at him, and he flashed one enigmatical glance into
+her eyes, and rose to go out.</p>
+
+<p>"How you getting on, Williams?" Ridgeley asked.</p>
+
+<p>Williams resented his question. "Oh, I'm all right," he said, sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>The meal was all over in an incredibly short time. One by one, two by
+two, they rose heavily and lumbered out with one last, wistful look at
+Mrs. Field. She will never know how seraphic she seemed sitting there
+amid those rough surroundings&mdash;the dim, red light of the kerosene lamp
+falling across her clear pallor, out of which her dark eyes shone with
+liquid softness, made deeper and darker by her half-sorrowful tenderness
+for these homeless fellows.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later, as they were standing at the door, just ready to take to
+their sleigh, they heard the scraping of a fiddle.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, some one is going to play!" Mrs. Field cried, with visions of the
+rollicking good times she had heard so much about, and of which she had
+seen nothing so far. "Can't I look in?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley was dubious. "I'll go and see," he said, and entered the door.
+"Boys, Mrs. Field wants to look in a minute. Go on with your fiddling,
+Sam&mdash;only I wanted to see that you weren't sitting around in dishabill."</p>
+
+<p>This seemed a good joke, and they all howled and haw-hawed gleefully.</p>
+
+<p>"So go right ahead with your evening prayers. All but&mdash;you understand!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, captain," said Sam, the man with the fiddle.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Field looked in, two men were furiously grinding axes; several
+were sewing on ragged garments; all were smoking; some were dressing
+chapped or bruised fingers. The atmosphere was horrible. The socks and
+shirts were steaming above the huge stove; the smoke and stench for a
+moment were sickening, but Ridgeley pushed them just inside the door.</p>
+
+<p>"It's better out of the draught."</p>
+
+<p>Sam jigged away on the violin. The men kept time with the cranks of the
+grindstone, and all faces turned with bashful smiles and bold grins at
+Mrs. Field. Most of them shrank a little from her look, like shy
+animals.</p>
+
+<p>Ridgeley threw open the window. "In the old days," he explained to Mrs.
+Field, "we used a fireplace, and that kept the air better."</p>
+
+<p>As her sense of smell became deadened the air seemed a little more
+tolerable to Mrs. Field.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we must change all this," she said. "It is horrible."</p>
+
+<p>"Play us a tune," said Sam, extending the violin to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span> Field. He did not
+think Field could play. It was merely a shot in the dark on his part.</p>
+
+<p>Field took it and looked at it and sounded it. On every side the men
+turned face in eager expectancy.</p>
+
+<p>"He can play, that feller."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet he can. He handles her as if he knew her."</p>
+
+<p>"You bet your life. Tune up, Cap."</p>
+
+<p>Williams came from the obscurity somewhere, and looked over the
+shoulders of the men.</p>
+
+<p>"Down in front!" somebody called, and the men took seats on the benches,
+leaving Field standing with the violin in hand. He smiled around upon
+them in a frank, pleased way, quite ready to show his skill. He played
+<i>Annie Laurie</i>, and a storm of applause broke out.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Hoo-ray!</i> Bully for you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sam, you're out of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sam, your name is Mud!"</p>
+
+<p>"Give us another, Cap!"</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't the same fiddle!"</p>
+
+<p>He played again some simple tune, and he played it with the touch which
+showed the skilled amateur. As he played, Mrs. Field noticed a growing
+restlessness on Williams' part. He moved about uneasily. He gnawed at
+his finger-nails. His eyes glowed with a singular fire. His hands
+drummed and fingered. At last he approached, and said, roughly:</p>
+
+<p>"Let me take that fiddle a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, cheese it, Williams!" the men cried. "Let the other man play."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What do <i>you</i> want to do with the fiddle&mdash;think it's a music-box?"
+asked Sam, its owner.</p>
+
+<p>"Go to hell!" said Williams. As Field gave the violin over to him, his
+hands seemed to tremble with eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>He raised his bow, and struck into an imposing, brilliant strain, and
+the men fell back in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll be damned!" gasped the owner of the violin.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep quiet, Sam."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Field looked at her husband. "Why, Ed, he is playing <i>Sarasate</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what he is," he returned, slangily, too much astonished to do
+more than gaze. Williams played on.</p>
+
+<p>There was a faint defect in the high notes, as if his fingers did not
+touch the strings properly, but his bow action showed cultivation and
+breadth of feeling. As he struck into one of those difficult
+octave-leaping movements his face became savage. On the E string a
+squeal broke forth; he flung the violin into Sam's lap with a ferocious
+curse, and then, extending his hands, hard, crooked to fit the
+axe-helve, calloused and chapped, he said to Field:</p>
+
+<p>"Look at my hands! Lovely things to play with, aren't they?"</p>
+
+<p>His voice trembled with passion. He turned and went outside. As he
+passed Mrs. Field his head was bowed, and he was uttering a groaning cry
+like one suffering physical pain.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what drink does for a man," Ridgeley said, as they watched
+Williams disappear down the swampers' trail.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That man has been a violinist," said Field. "What's he doing up here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Came to get away from himself, I guess," Ridgeley replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid he's failed," said Field, as he put his arm about his wife
+and led her to the sleigh.</p>
+
+<p>The ride home was made mainly in silence. "Oh, the splendid stillness!"
+the woman kept saying in her heart. "Oh, the splendid moonlight, the
+marvellous radiance!" Everywhere a heavenly serenity&mdash;not a footstep,
+not a bell, not a cry, not a cracking tree&mdash;nothing but vivid light,
+white snow dappled and lined with shadows, and trees etched against a
+starlit sky. Unutterable splendor of light and sheen and shadow. Wide
+wastes of snow so white the stumps stood like columns of charcoal. A
+night of Nature's making, when she is tired of noise and blare of color.</p>
+
+<p>And in the midst of it stood the camp, with its reek of obscenity, foul
+odors, and tobacco smoke, to which a tortured soul must return.</p>
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>The following Saturday afternoon, as Ridgeley and Field entered the
+office, Williams rose to meet them. He looked different&mdash;finer some way,
+Field imagined. At any rate, he was perfectly sober. He was freshly
+shaven, and though his clothes were rough, he appeared the man of
+education he really was. His manner was cold and distant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to be paid off, Mr. Ridgeley," he said. "I guess what's left
+of my pay will take me out of this."</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you propose to go?" Ridgeley asked, with kindly interest.</p>
+
+<p>Williams must have perceived his kindliness, for he answered: "I'm going
+home to my wife, to my violin. I am going to try living once more."</p>
+
+<p>After he had gone out, Field said, "I wonder if he'll do it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I shouldn't wonder. I've seen men brace up just as mysteriously as
+that and stay right by their resolutions. I thought he didn't look like
+a common lumber Jack when he came in."</p>
+
+<p>"Ed, your playing did it!" Mrs. Field cried, when she heard of Williams'
+resolution. "Oh, how happy his wife will be! She'll save him yet!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know; depends on what kind of a woman she is."</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="BEFORE_THE_LOW_GREEN_DOOR" id="BEFORE_THE_LOW_GREEN_DOOR"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span>
+<h2>BEFORE THE LOW GREEN DOOR</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Matilda Bent was dying; there was no doubt of that now, if there had
+been before. The gruff old physician&mdash;one of the many overworked and
+underpaid country doctors&mdash;shook his head and pushed by Joe Bent, her
+husband, as he passed through the room which served as dining-room,
+sitting-room, and parlor. The poor fellow slouched back to his chair by
+the stove as if dazed, and before he could speak again the doctor was
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ridings was just coming up the walk as the doctor stepped out of
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, doctor, how is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is a dying woman, madam."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't say that, doctor! What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cancer."</p>
+
+<p>"Then the news was true&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything of the news, Mrs. Ridings, but Mrs. Bent is dying
+from the effects of a cancer primarily, which she has had for
+years&mdash;since her last child, which died in infancy, you remember."</p>
+
+<p>"But, doctor, she never told me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Neither did she tell me. But no matter now. I have done all I can for
+her. If you can make death<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span> any easier for her, go and do it. You will
+find some opiate powders there with directions. Keep the pain down at
+all hazards. Don't let her suffer; that is useless. She is likely to
+last a day or two; but if any change comes to-night, send for me."</p>
+
+<p>When the good matron entered the dowdy, suffocating little room where
+Matilda Bent lay gasping for breath, she was sick for a moment with
+sympathetic pain. There the dying woman lay, her world narrowed to four
+close walls, propped up on the pillows near the one little window. Her
+eyes seemed very large and bright, and the brow, made prominent by the
+sinking away of the cheeks, gave evidence that it was an uncommon woman
+who lay there quietly waiting the death angel.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, and lifted her eyebrows in a ghastly way.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Marthy!" she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>"Matildy, I didn't know you was so bad or I'd 'a' come before. Why
+didn't you let me know?" said Mrs. Ridings, kneeling by the bed and
+taking the ghostly hands of the sufferer in her own warm and soft palms.
+She shuddered as she kissed the thin lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you'll soon be around ag'in," she added, in the customary
+mockery of an attempt at cheer. The other woman started slightly, turned
+her head, and gazed on her old friend long and intently. The hollowness
+of her neighbor's words stung her.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not, Marthy&mdash;I'm ready to go. I want to go. I don't care to
+live."</p>
+
+<p>The two women communed by looking for a long time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span> in each other's eyes,
+as if to get at the very secretest desires and hopes of the heart. Tears
+fell from Martha's eyes upon the cold and nerveless hands of her
+friend&mdash;poor, faithful hands, hacked and knotted and worn by thirty
+years of ceaseless daily toil. They lay there motionless upon the
+coverlet, pathetic protest for all the world to see.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Matildy, I wish I could do something for you! I want to help you
+so! I feel so bad that I didn't come before! Ain't they somethin'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Marthy&mdash;jest set there&mdash;till I die&mdash;it won't be long," whispered
+the pale lips. The sufferer, as usual, was calmer than her visitor, and
+her eyes were thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>"I will! I will! But oh, must you go? Can't somethin' be done? Don't yo'
+want the minister to be sent for?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm all ready. I ain't afraid to die. I ain't worth savin' now. Oh,
+Marthy, I never thought I'd come to this&mdash;did you? I never thought I'd
+die&mdash;so early in life&mdash;and die&mdash;unsatisfied."</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her head a little as she gasped out these words with an
+intensity of utterance that thrilled her hearer&mdash;a powerful, penetrating
+earnestness that burned like fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you satisfied?" pursued the steady lips. "My life's a failure,
+Marthy&mdash;I've known it all along&mdash;all but my children. Oh, Marthy,
+what'll become o' them? This is a hard world."</p>
+
+<p>The amazed Martha could only chafe the hands, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span> note sorrowfully the
+frightful changes in the face of her friend. The weirdly calm, slow
+voice began to shake a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm dyin', Marthy, without ever gittin' to the sunny place we
+girls&mdash;used to think&mdash;we'd git to, by-an'-by. I've been a-gittin' deeper
+'n' deeper&mdash;in the shade&mdash;till it's most dark. They ain't been no
+rest&mdash;n'r hope f'r me, Marthy&mdash;none. I ain't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, Tillie, don't talk so&mdash;don't, dear! Try to think how
+bright it'll be over there&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know nawthin' about over there; I'm talkin' about here. I ain't
+had no chance here, Marthy."</p>
+
+<p>"He will heal all your care&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He can't wipe out my sufferin's here."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, He can, and He will. He can wipe away every tear and heal every
+wound."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;he&mdash;can't. God Himself can't wipe out what has been. Oh, Mattie, if
+I was only there!&mdash;in the past&mdash;if I was only young and purty ag'in! You
+know how tall I was! How we used to run&mdash;oh, Mattie, if I was only
+there! The world was all bright then&mdash;wasn't it? We didn't expect&mdash;to
+work all our days. Life looked like a meadow, full of daisies and pinks,
+and the nicest ones and the sweetest birds were just a little ways
+on&mdash;where the sun was&mdash;it didn't look&mdash;wasn't we happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, dear. But you mustn't talk so much." The good woman thought
+Matilda's mind was wandering. "Don't you want some med'cine? Is your
+fever risin'?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But the daisies and pinks all turned to weeds," she went on, waiting a
+little, "when we picked 'em. An' the sunny place&mdash;has been always behind
+me, and the dark before me. Oh, if I was only there&mdash;in the sun&mdash;where
+the pinks and daisies are!"</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't talk so, Mattie! Think about your children! You ain't sorry
+y'had them? They've been a comfort to y'? You ain't sorry you had 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't glad," was the unhesitating reply of the failing woman; and
+then she went on, in growing excitement: "They'll haf to grow old jest
+as I have&mdash;git bent and gray, an' die. They ain't be'n much comfort to
+me: the boys are like their father, and Julyie's weak. They ain't no
+happiness&mdash;for such as me and them."</p>
+
+<p>She paused for breath, and Mrs. Ridings, not knowing what to say, did
+better than speak. She fell to stroking the poor face and the hands,
+getting more restless each moment. It was as if Matilda Fletcher had
+been silent so long, had borne so much without complaint, that now it
+burst from her in a torrent not to be stayed. All her most secret doubts
+and her sweetest hopes seemed trembling on her lips or surging in her
+brain, racking her poor, emaciated frame for utterence. Now that death
+was sure, she was determined to rid her bosom of its perilous stuff.
+Martha was appalled.</p>
+
+<p>"I used to think&mdash;that when I got married I'd be perfectly happy; but I
+never have been happy sence. It was the beginning of trouble to me. I
+never found things better than they looked; they was always worse. I've
+gone further an' further from the sunshiny meadow,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span> an' the birds an'
+flowers&mdash;and I'll never git back to 'em again, never!" She ended with a
+sob and a low wail.</p>
+
+<p>Her face was horrifying with its intensity of pathetic regret. Her
+straining, wide-open eyes seemed to be seeing those sunny spots in the
+meadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Mattie, sometimes when I'm asleep I think I am back there ag'in&mdash;and
+you girls are there&mdash;an' we're pullin' off the leaves of the wild
+sunflower&mdash;'rich man, poor man, beggar man'&mdash;and I hear you all laugh
+when I pull off the last leaf; and then I come to myself&mdash;and I'm an
+old, dried-up woman, dyin'&mdash;unsatisfied!"</p>
+
+<p>"I've felt that way a little myself, Matildy," confessed the watcher, in
+a scared whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it, Mattie; I knew you'd know how I felt. Things have been
+better for you. You ain't had to live in an old log house all your life,
+an' work yourself to skin an' bone for a man you don't respect nor
+like."</p>
+
+<p>"Matildy Bent, take that back! Take it back, for mercy sake! Don't you
+dare die thinkin' that&mdash;don't you dare!"</p>
+
+<p>Bent, hearing her voice rising, came to the door, and the wife,
+recognizing his step, cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let him in! Don't! I can't bear him&mdash;keep him out; I don't want
+to see him ag'in."</p>
+
+<p>"Who do you mean? Not Joe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! Him!"</p>
+
+<p>Had the dying woman confessed to murder, good Martha could not have been
+more shocked. She could not understand this terrible revulsion in
+feeling, for she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span> herself had been absolutely loyal to her husband
+through all the trials which had come upon them.</p>
+
+<p>But she met Bent at the threshold, and, closing the door, went out with
+him into the summer kitchen, where the rest of the family were sitting.
+A gloomy silence fell on them all after the greetings were over. The men
+were smoking; all were seated in chairs tipped back against the wall.
+Joe Bent, a smallish man, with a weak, good-natured face, asked, in a
+hoarse whisper:</p>
+
+<p>"How is she, Mis' Ridings?"</p>
+
+<p>"She seems quite strong, Mr. Bent. I think you had all better go to bed;
+if I want you, I can call you. Doctor give me directions."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," responded the relieved man. "I'll sleep on the lounge in
+the other room. If you want me, just rap on the door."</p>
+
+<p>When, after making other arrangements, Martha went back to the bedroom,
+she was startled to hear the sick woman muttering to herself, or perhaps
+because she had forgotten Martha's absence.</p>
+
+<p>"But the shadows on the meadow didn't stay; they passed on, and then the
+sun was all the brighter on the flowers. We used to string
+sweet-williams on spears of grass&mdash;don't you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>Martha gave her a drink of the opiate in the glass, adjusted her on the
+pillow, and threw open the window, even to the point of removing the
+screen, and the gibbous moon flooded the room with light. She did not
+light a lamp, for its flame would heat the room. Besides, the moonlight
+was sufficient. It fell on the face of the sick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span> woman till she looked
+like a thing of marble&mdash;all but her dark eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Does the moon hurt you, Tilly? Shall I put down the curtain?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman heard with difficulty, and when the question was repeated,
+said slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"No, I like it." After a little: "Don't you remember, Mattie, how
+beautiful the moonlight seemed? It seemed to promise happiness&mdash;and
+love&mdash;but it never come for us. It makes me dream of the past now&mdash;just
+as it did of the future then; an' the whip-poor-wills, too&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The night was perfectly beautiful, such a night as makes dying an
+infinite sorrow. The summer was at its liberalest. Innumerable insects
+of the nocturnal sort were singing in unison with the frogs in the
+pools. A whip-poor-will called, and its neighbor answered like an echo.
+The leaves of the trees, glossy from the late rain, moved musically to
+the light west wind, and the exquisite perfume of many flowers came in
+on the breeze.</p>
+
+<p>When the failing woman sank into silence, Martha leaned her elbow on the
+window-sill, and, gazing far into the great deeps of space, gave herself
+up to unwonted musings upon the problems of human life. She sighed
+deeply at times. She found herself at moments in the almost terrifying
+position of a human soul in space. Not a wife, not a mother, but just a
+soul facing the questions which harass philosophers. As she realized her
+condition of mind she apprehended something of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span> the thinking of the
+woman on the bed. Matilda had gone beyond&mdash;or far back&mdash;of the wife and
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>The hours wore on; the dying woman stirred uneasily now and then,
+whispering a word or phrase which related to her girlhood&mdash;never to her
+later life. Once she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, hold me. I'm so tired."</p>
+
+<p>Martha took the thin form in her arms, and, laying her head close beside
+the sunken cheek, sang, in half breath, a lullaby till the sufferer grew
+quiet again.</p>
+
+<p>The lustrous moon passed over the house, leaving the room dark, and
+still the patient watcher sat beside the bed, listening to the slow
+breathing of the dying one. The cool air grew almost chill; the east
+began to lighten, and with the coming light the tide of life sank in the
+dying body. The head, hitherto restlessly turning, ceased to move. The
+eyes grew quiet and began to soften like a sleeper's.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you now, dear?" asked the watcher several times, bending over
+the bed, and bathing back the straying hair.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm tired&mdash;tired, mother&mdash;turn me," she murmured drowsily, with heavy
+lids drooping.</p>
+
+<p>Martha patted the pillows once again, and turned her friend's face to
+the wall. The poor, tortured, restless brain slowly stopped its grinding
+whirl, and the thin limbs, heavy with years of hopeless toil,
+straightened out in an endless sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Matilda Fletcher had found rest.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="A_PREACHERS_LOVE_STORY" id="A_PREACHERS_LOVE_STORY"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>
+<h2>A PREACHER'S LOVE STORY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>The train drew out of the great Van Buren Street depot at 4.30 of a dark
+day in late October. A tall young man, with a timid look in his eyes,
+was almost the last passenger to get on, and his pale face wore a
+worried look as he dropped into an empty seat and peered out at the
+squalid city reeling past in the mist.</p>
+
+<p>The buildings grew smaller, and vacant lots appeared stretching away in
+flat spaces, broken here and there by ridges of ugly, squat, little
+tenement blocks. Over this landscape vast banners of smoke streamed,
+magnified by the misty rain which was driven in from the lake.</p>
+
+<p>At last there came a swell of land clothed on with trees. It was still
+light enough for him to see that they were burr oaks, and the young
+student's heart thrilled at sight of them. His forehead smoothed out,
+and his eyes grew tender with boyish memories.</p>
+
+<p>He was seated thus, with head leaning against the pane, when another
+young man came down the aisle from the smoking-car and took a seat
+beside him with a pleasant word.</p>
+
+<p>He was a handsome young fellow of twenty three or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span> four. His face was
+large and beardless, and he had a bold and keen look, in spite of the
+bang of yellow hair which hung over his forehead. Some commonplaces
+passed between them, and then silence fell on each. The conductor coming
+through the car, the smooth-faced young fellow put up a card to be
+punched, and the student handed up a ticket, simply saying, "Kesota."</p>
+
+<p>After a decent pause the younger man said, "Going to Kesota, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"So am I. I live there, in fact."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you? Then perhaps you can tell me the name of your County
+Superintendent. I'm looking for a school." He smiled frankly. "I'm just
+out of Jackson University, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That so? I'm an Ann Arbor man myself." They took a moment for mutual
+warming up. "Yes, I know the Superintendent. Why not come right up to my
+boarding-place, and to-morrow I'll introduce you? Looking for a school,
+eh? What kind of a school?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a village school, or even a country school. It's too late to get a
+good place; but I've been sick, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the good positions are all snapped up; still, you might by
+accident hit on something. I know Mott; he'll do all he can for you.
+By-the-way, my name's Allen."</p>
+
+<p>The young student understood this hint and spoke. "Mine is Stacey."</p>
+
+<p>The younger man mused a few minutes, as if he had forgotten his new
+acquaintance. Suddenly he roused up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Say, would you take a country school several miles out?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I would, if nothing better offered."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, in my old district they're without a teacher. It's six miles out,
+and it isn't a lovely neighborhood! However, they will pay fifty dollars
+a month; that's ten dollars extra for the scrimmages. They wanted me to
+teach this winter&mdash;my sister tackles it in summer&mdash;but, great Peter! I
+can't waste my time teaching school, when I can run up to Chicago and
+take a shy at the pit and make a whole term's wages in thirty minutes!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," said Stacey.</p>
+
+<p>"Wheat Exchange. I've got a lot of friends in the pit, and I can come in
+any time on a little deal. I'm no Jim Keene, but I hope to get cash
+enough to handle five thousand. I wanted the old gent to start me up in
+it, but he said, 'Nix come arouse.' Fact is, I dropped the money he gave
+me to go through college with." He smiled at Stacey's disapproving look.
+"Yes, indeedy; there's where the jar came into our tender relations. Oh,
+I call on the Governor&mdash;always when I've got a wad. I have fun with
+him." He smiled brightly. "Ask him if he don't need a little cash to pay
+for hog-killin', or something like that." He laughed again. "No, I
+didn't graduate at Ann Arbor. Funny how things go, ain't it? I was on my
+way back the third year, when I stopped in to see the pit&mdash;it's one o'
+the sights of Chicago, you know&mdash;and Billy Krans saw me looking over the
+rail, I went in, won, and then took a flyer on December. Come a big
+slump, and I failed to materialize at school."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What did you do then?" asked Stacey, to whom this did not seem
+humorous.</p>
+
+<p>"I wrote a contrite letter to the Governor, stating case, requesting
+forgiveness&mdash;and money. No go! Couldn't raise neither. I then wrote,
+casting him off. 'You are no longer father of mine.'" He smiled again
+radiantly. "You should have seen me the next time I went home! Plug hat!
+Imported suit! Gold watch! Diamond shirt-stud! Cost me $200 to paralyze
+the General, but I did it. My glory absolutely turned him white as a
+sheet. I knew what he thought, so I said: 'Perfectly legitimate, Dad.
+The walls of Joliet are not gaping for me.' That about half-fetched
+him&mdash;calling him <i>Dad</i>, I mean; but he can't get reconciled to my
+business. 'Too many ups and downs,' he says. Fact is, he thinks it's
+gambling, and I don't argue the case with him. I'm on my way home now to
+stay over Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>The train whistled, and Allen looked out into the darkness. "We're
+coming to the crossing. Now, I can't go up to the boarding-place when
+you do, but I'll give you directions, and you tell the landlady I sent
+you, and it'll be all right. Allen, you remember&mdash;Herman Allen."</p>
+
+<p>Following directions, Stacey came at length to a two-story frame house
+situated on the edge of the bank, with its back to the river. It stood
+alone, with vacant lots all about. A pleasant-faced woman answered the
+ring.</p>
+
+<p>He explained briefly. "How do you do? I'm a teacher, and I'd like to get
+board here a few days while passing my examinations. Mr. Herman Allen
+sent me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The woman's quick eye and ear were satisfied. "All right. Walk in, sir.
+I'm pretty full, but I expect I can accommodate you&mdash;if you don't mind
+Mr. Allen for a room-mate."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not at all," he said, while taking off his coat.</p>
+
+<p>"Come right in this way. Supper will be ready soon."</p>
+
+<p>He went into a comfortable sitting-room, where a huge open fire of soft
+coal was blazing magnificently. The walls were papered in florid
+patterns, and several enlarged portraits were on the walls. The fire was
+the only adornment; all else was cheap, and some of it was tawdry.</p>
+
+<p>Stacey spread his thin hands to the blaze, while the landlady sat down a
+moment, out of politeness, to chat, scanning him keenly. She was a
+handsome woman, strong, well-rounded, about forty years of age, with
+quick, gray eyes, and a clean, firm-lipped mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you just get in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've been on the road all day," he said, on an impulse of
+communication. "Indeed, I'm just out of college."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that so!" exclaimed Mrs. Mills, stopping her rocking in an access of
+interest. "What college?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jackson University. I've been sick, and only came West&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>There came a look into her face that transformed and transfigured her.
+"<i>My</i> boy was in Ann Arbor. He was killed on the train on his way home
+one day." She stopped, for fear of breaking into a quaver, and smiled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span>
+brightly. "That's why I always like college boys. They all stop here
+with me." She rose hastily. "Well, you'll excuse me, won't you, and I'll
+go an' 'tend to supper."</p>
+
+<p>There was a great deal that was feminine in Stacey, and he felt at once
+the pathos of the woman's life. He looked a refined, studious, rather
+delicate young man, as he sat low in his chair and observed the light
+and heat of the fire. His large head was heavy with learning, and his
+dark eyes deep with religious fervor.</p>
+
+<p>Several young women entered, and the room was filled with the clatter of
+tongues. Herman came in a few moments later, his face in a girlish glow
+of color. Everybody rushed at him with loud outcry. He was evidently a
+great favorite. He threw his arms about Mrs. Mills, giving her a hearty
+hug. The girls pretended to be shocked when he reached out for them, but
+they were not afraid of him. They hung on his arms and besieged him with
+questions till he cried out, in jolly perplexity:</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, girls! This will never do!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mills brushed out his damp yellow curls with her hands. "You're all
+wet."</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, if you'll let me sit down, I'll take one on each knee," he said,
+pleadingly, and they released him.</p>
+
+<p>Stacey grew red with sympathetic embarrassment, and shrank away into a
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Go get supper ready," commanded Herman. And it was only after they had
+left him that he said to Stacey: "Oh, you found your way all right." He
+took a seat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span> by the fire and surveyed his wet shoes. "I took a run up to
+Mott's house&mdash;only a half block out o' the way. He said they'd be
+tickled to have you at Cyene. By-the-way, you're a theolog, aren't you?"
+Wallace nodded, and Herman went on: "So I told Mott. He said you might
+work up a society out there at Cyene."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there a church there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Used to be, but&mdash;say, I tell you what you do: you go out with me
+to-morrow, and I'll give you a history of the township."</p>
+
+<p>The ringing of the bell took them all out into the cheerful dining-room
+in a good-natured scramble. Mrs. Mills put Stacey at one end of the
+table, near a young woman who looked like a teacher, and he had full
+sweep of the table, which was surrounded by bright and happy faces. The
+station-hand was there, and a couple of grocery clerks, and a brakeman
+sat at Stacey's right hand. They all seemed very much at home, and
+called one another by their Christian names, and there was very obvious
+courtship on the part of several young couples.</p>
+
+<p>Stacey escaped from the table as soon as possible, and returned to his
+seat beside the fire. He was young enough to enjoy the chatter of the
+girls, but his timidity made him glad they paid so little attention to
+him. The rain had changed to sleet outside and hammered at the window
+viciously, but the blazing fire and the romping young people set it at
+defiance. The landlady came to the door of the dining-room, dish and
+cloth in hand, to share in each outburst of laughter, and not
+infrequently the hired girl peered over her shoulder with a broad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span> smile
+on her face. A little later, having finished their work, they both came
+in and took active part in the light-hearted fun.</p>
+
+<p>Herman and one of the girls were having a great struggle over some
+trifle he had snatched from her hand, and the rest stood about laughing
+to see her desperate attempts to recover it. This was a familiar form of
+courtship in Kesota, and an evening filled with such romping was
+considered a "cracking good time." After the girl, red and dishevelled,
+had given up, Herman sat down at the organ, and they all sang Moody and
+Sankey hymns, negro melodies, and college songs till ten o'clock. Then
+Mrs. Mills called, "Come, now, boys and girls!" and they all said
+good-night, like obedient children.</p>
+
+<p>Herman and Wallace went up to their bedroom together.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Stacey, have you got a policy?" Wallace shook his head. "And don't
+want any, I suppose. Well, I just asked you as a matter of form. You
+see," he went on, winking at Wallace comically, "nominally I'm an
+insurance agent, but practically I'm a 'lamb'&mdash;but I get a mouthful o'
+fur myself occasionally. What I'm working for is to get on that Wheat
+Exchange. That's where you get life! I'd rather be an established broker
+in that howling mob than go to Congress."</p>
+
+<p>He rose on his elbow in bed and looked at Wallace, who was rising from a
+silent prayer.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, why didn't you shout? I forgot all about it&mdash;I mean your
+profession."</p>
+
+<p>Wallace crept into bed beside his communicative bedfellow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span> in silence.
+He didn't know how to deal with such spirits.</p>
+
+<p>"Say," called Herman suddenly, as Wallace was about dropping off to
+sleep, "you ain't got no picnic, old man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait till you see Cyene Church. Oh, it's a daisy snarl!"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd tell me about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's quiet now. The calmness of death," said Herman. "Well, you
+see, it came this way. The church is made up of Baptists and Methodists,
+and the Methodists wanted an organ, because, you understand, father was
+the head centre, and Mattie is the only girl among the Methodists who
+can play. The old man has got a head like a mule. He can't be switched
+off, once he makes up his mind. Deacon Marsden, he don't believe in
+anything above tuning-forks, and he's tighter'n the bark on a bulldog.
+He stood out like a sore thumb, and Dad wouldn't give an inch.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, they held meetings every other Sunday. So Dad worked up the
+organ business and got one, and then locked it up when the Baptists held
+their services. Things went from bad to worse. They didn't speak as they
+passed by&mdash;that is, the old folks; we young folks didn't care a
+continental whether school kept or not. Well, upshot is, the church died
+out. The wind blew the horse-sheds down, and there they lie&mdash;and the
+church is standing there empty as an&mdash;old boot&mdash;and&mdash;Say, Stacey&mdash;by
+Jinks!&mdash;are you a Baptist?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Peter! ain't that lovely!" He chuckled shamelessly, and went off to
+sleep without another word.</p>
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Herman was still sleeping when Stacey rose and dressed and went down to
+breakfast. Mrs. Mills defended Herman against the charge of laziness:
+"He's probably been out late all the week."</p>
+
+<p>Stacey found Mott in the county court-house, and a perfunctory
+examination soon put him in possession of a certificate. There was no
+question of his attainments.</p>
+
+<p>Herman met him at dinner-time.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, elder, I'm going down to get a rig to go out home in. It's
+colder'n a blue whetstone, so put on all the clothes you've got. Gimme
+your check, and I'll get your traps. Have you seen Mott?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, everything's all fixed."</p>
+
+<p>He turned up about three o'clock, seated on the spring seat of a lumber
+wagon beside a woman, who drove the powerful team. Whether she was young
+or old could not be told through her wraps. She wore a cap and a thick,
+faded cloak.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mills hurried to the door. "Why, Mattie Allen! What you doin' out
+such a day as this? Come in here instanter!"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't stop!" called a clear, boyish voice. "Too late!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, land o' stars, you'll freeze!"</p>
+
+<p>When Wallace reached the wagon side, Herman said, "My sister, Stacey."</p>
+
+<p>The girl slipped her strong, brown hand out of her huge glove and gave
+him a friendly grip. "Get right in," she said. "Herman, you're going to
+stand up behind."</p>
+
+<p>Herman appealed to Mrs. Mills for sympathy. "This is what comes of
+having plebeian connections."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dry up," laughed the girl, "or I'll make you drive."</p>
+
+<p>Stacey scrambled in awkwardly beside her. She was not at all
+embarrassed, apparently.</p>
+
+<p>"Tuck yourself in tight. It's mighty cold on the prairie."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you come down with the baroosh?" grumbled Herman.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the corn was contracted for, and father wasn't able to come&mdash;he
+had another attack of neuralgia last night, after he got the corn
+loaded, so I had to come."</p>
+
+<p>"Sha'n't I drive for you?" asked Wallace.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you. You'll have all you can do to keep from freezing." She
+studied his thin coat and worn gloves with keen glance. He could see
+only her pink cheeks, strong nose, and dark, smiling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those terrible Illinois days when the temperature drops
+suddenly to zero, and the churned mud of the highways hardens into
+scoriac rock, which cripples the horses and sends the heavy wagons
+booming and thundering along like mad things. The wind was keen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span> as a
+saw-bladed sword, and smote incessantly. The desolate sky was one thick,
+impenetrable mass of swiftly flying clouds.</p>
+
+<p>When they swung out upon the long pike leading due north, Wallace drew
+his breath with a gasp, and bent his head to the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty strong, isn't it?" shouted Mattie.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the farmer's life is the life for me, tra-la!" sang Herman, from
+his shelter behind the seat.</p>
+
+<p>Mattie turned. "What do you think of <i>Penelope</i> this month?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's a-gitten there," said Herman, pounding his shoe heels.</p>
+
+<p>"She's too smart for young Corey. She ought to marry a man like
+Bromfield. My, wouldn't they talk!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did y' get the second bundle of magazines last Saturday?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and Dad found something in the <i>Popular Science</i> that made him
+mad, and he burned it."</p>
+
+<p>"Did 'e? Tum-la-la! Oh, the farmer's life for me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you cold?" she asked Wallace.</p>
+
+<p>He turned a purple face upon her. "No&mdash;not much."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you better slip right down under the blankets," she advised.</p>
+
+<p>The wind blew gray out of the north&mdash;a wild blast which stopped the
+young student's blood in his veins. He hated to give up, but he could no
+longer hold the blankets over his knees, so he slipped down into the
+corner of the box, with his back to the wind, while Mattie drew the
+blankets over his head, slapped the reins<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span> down on the backs of the
+snorting horses, and encouraged them with shouts like a man: "Get out o'
+this, Dan! Hup there, Nellie!"</p>
+
+<p>The wagon boomed and rattled. The floor of the box seemed beaten with a
+maul. The glimpses Wallace had of the land appalled him, it was so flat
+and gray and bare.</p>
+
+<p>Herman sang at the top of his voice, and danced, and pounded his feet
+against the wagon box. "This ends it! If I can't come home without
+freezing to death, I don't come. I should have hired a rig, irrespective
+of you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The girl laughed. "Oh, you're getting thin-blooded, Herman. Life in the
+city has taken the starch all out of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Better grow limp in a great city than freeze stiff in the country," he
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>An hour's ride brought them into a yard before a large, gray-white frame
+house.</p>
+
+<p>Herman sprang out to meet a tall old man with head muffled up. "Hello,
+Dad! Take the team. We're just naturally froze solid&mdash;at least, I am.
+This is Mr. Stacey, the new teacher."</p>
+
+<p>"How de do? Run in; I'll take the horses."</p>
+
+<p>Herman and Wallace stumbled toward the house, stiff and bent.</p>
+
+<p>Herman flung his arms about a tall woman in the kitchen door. "Hello,
+muz!" he said. "This is Mr. Stacey, the new teacher."</p>
+
+<p>Mattie came in soon with a boyish rush, gleeful as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span> happy babe. She
+unwound the scarf from her head and neck, and hung up her cap and cloak
+like a man, but she gave her hair a little touch of feminine care, and
+came forward with both palms pressed to her burning cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you suffer, child?" asked Mrs. Allen.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I enjoyed it."</p>
+
+<p>Herman looked at Stacey. "I believe on my life she did."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's fun. I don't get a chance to do anything so exciting very
+often."</p>
+
+<p>Herman clicked his tongue. "Exciting? Well, well!"</p>
+
+<p>"You must remember things are slower here," Mattie explained.</p>
+
+<p>She came to light much younger than Stacey thought her. She was not
+eighteen, but her supple and splendid figure was fully matured. Her hair
+hung down her back in a braid, which gave a distinct touch of
+childishness to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Sis, you're still a-growin'," Herman said, as he put his arm around her
+waist and looked up at her.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to realize for the first time that Stacey was a young man,
+and her eyes fell.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, set up the chairs, child," said Mrs. Allen.</p>
+
+<p>When the young teacher returned from his cold spare room off the parlor
+the family sat waiting for him. They all drew up noisily, and Allen
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Ask the blessing, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>Wallace said grace.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As Allen passed the potatoes he continued:</p>
+
+<p>"My son tells me you are a minister of the gospel."</p>
+
+<p>"I have studied for it."</p>
+
+<p>"What denomination?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, tut!" warned Herman. "Don't start any theological rabbits
+to-night, Dad. With jaw swelled up you won't be able to hold your own."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a Baptist," Stacey answered.</p>
+
+<p>The old man's face grew grim. It had been ludicrous before with its
+swollen jaw. "Baptist!" He turned a stern look upon his son, whose smile
+angered him. "Didn't you know no more'n to bring a Baptist preacher into
+this house?"</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, father!" began the wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet. I'm boss of this shanty, and I won't have you bringing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Herman struck in: "Don't make a show of yourself, old man. Never mind
+the old gent, Stacey; he's mumpy to-day, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>Stacey rose. "I guess I&mdash;I'd better not stay&mdash;I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, no! Sit down! It's all right. The old man's a little acid at me.
+He doesn't mean it."</p>
+
+<p>Stacey got his coat and hat. His heart was swollen with indignation. He
+felt as if something fine were lost to him, and the land outside was so
+desolate!</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Allen was in tears; but the old man, having taken his stand, was
+going to keep it.</p>
+
+<p>Herman lost his temper a little. "Well, Dad, you're a little the
+cussedest Christian I ever knew! Stacey, sit down. Don't you be a fool
+just because he is&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Stacey was buttoning his coat with trembling hands when Martha went up
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go," she said. "Father's sick and cross. He'll be sorry for this
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>Wallace looked into her frank, kindly eyes, and hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>Herman said: "Dad, you are a lovely follower of Christ! You'll apologize
+for this, or I'll never set foot on your threshold again."</p>
+
+<p>Stacey still hesitated. He was hurt and angry, but being naturally of a
+sweet and gentle nature, he grew sad, and, yielding to the pressure of
+the girl's hand on his arm, he began to unbutton his overcoat.</p>
+
+<p>She helped him with it, and hung it back on the nail, and her mother and
+Herman tried to restore something of the brightness which had been lost;
+but Allen sat grimly eating, his chin pushed down like a hog's snout.</p>
+
+<p>After supper, as his father was about retiring to his bedroom, Herman
+fixed his bright eyes on him, and something very hard and masterful came
+into his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Old man, you and I haven't had a settlement on this thing yet. I'll see
+you later."</p>
+
+<p>Allen shrank before his son's look, but shuffled sullenly off without
+uttering a word.</p>
+
+<p>Herman turned to Wallace. "Stacey, I want to beg your pardon for getting
+you into this scrape. I didn't suppose the old gentleman would act like
+that. The older he gets, the more his New Hampshire granite shows. I
+hope you won't lay it up against me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Wallace was too conscientious to say he didn't mind it, but he took
+Herman's hand in a quick clasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have a song," proposed Herman. "Music hath charms to soothe the
+savage breast, to charm a rock, and split a cabbage."</p>
+
+<p>They went into the best room, where a fire was blazing, and Mattie and
+Herman sang hymns and old-fashioned love-songs and college glees
+wonderfully intermingled. They ended with <i>Lorena</i>, a wailing, extra
+sentimental love-song current in war times, and when they looked around
+there was a lofty look on the face of the young preacher&mdash;a look of
+exaltation, of consecration and resolve.</p>
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The next morning, at breakfast, Herman said, as he seized a hot biscuit,
+"We'll dispense with grace this morning, and till after the war is
+over." But Wallace blessed his bread in a silent prayer, and Mattie
+thought it very brave of him to do so.</p>
+
+<p>Herman was full of mockery. "The sun rises just the same, whether it's
+'sprinkling' or 'immersion.' It's lucky Nature don't take a hand in
+these theological contests. She doesn't even referee the scrap; she
+never seems to care whether you are sparring for points or fighting to a
+finish. What you theologic middle-weights are really fighting for I
+can't see&mdash;and I don't care, till you fall over the ropes on to my
+corns."</p>
+
+<p>Stacey listened in a daze to Herman's tirade. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span> knew it was addressed
+to Allen, and that it deprecated war, and that it was mocking. The fresh
+face and smiling lips of the young girl seemed to put other affairs very
+far away. It was such a beautiful thing to sit at table with a lovely
+girl.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast he put on his cap and coat, and went out into the clear,
+cold November air. All about him the prairie outspread, marked with
+farm-houses and lined with leafless hedges. Artificial groves surrounded
+each homestead, and these relieved, to some degree, the desolateness of
+the fields.</p>
+
+<p>Down the road he saw the spire of a small white church, and as he walked
+briskly toward it, Herman's description of it came to his mind.</p>
+
+<p>As he drew near, the ruined sheds, the rotting porch, and the windows
+boarded up told a sorry story, and his face grew sad. He tried one of
+the doors, and found it open. Some tramp had broken the lock. The inside
+was even more desolate than the outside. It was littered with rotting
+straw and plum stones and melon seeds. Obscene words were scrawled on
+the walls, and even on the pulpit itself.</p>
+
+<p>Taken altogether, it was an appalling picture to the young servant of
+the Man of Galilee&mdash;a blunt reminder of the inherent ferocity and
+depravity of man.</p>
+
+<p>As he pondered the fire burned, and there rose again the flame of his
+resolution. He lifted his face and prayed that he might be the one to
+bring these people into the living union of the Church of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>His blood set toward his heart with tremulous action.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His eyes glowed with zeal like that of the prophets of the Middle Ages.
+He saw the people united once more in this desecrated hall. He heard the
+bells ringing, the sound of song, the voices of love and fellowship
+filling the anterooms where hate had scrawled hideous blasphemy against
+woman and against God.</p>
+
+<p>As he sat there Herman came in, his keen eyes seeking out every stain
+and evidence of vandalism.</p>
+
+<p>"Cheerful prospect, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Wallace looked up with the blaze of his resolution still in his eyes.
+His pale face was sweet and solemn.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how these people need Christ!"</p>
+
+<p>Herman turned away. "They need killing&mdash;about two dozen of 'em. I'd like
+to have the job of indicating which ones. I wouldn't miss the old man,
+you bet!" he added, with cordial resentment.</p>
+
+<p>Wallace was helpless in the face of such reckless thought, and so sat
+silently watching the handsome young fellow as he walked about.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, Stacey, I guess you'll need to move. I had another session
+with the old man, but he won't give in, so I'm off for Chicago. Mother's
+brother, George Chapman, who lives about as near the schoolhouse on the
+other side, will take you in. I guess we'd better go right down now and
+see about it. I've said good-by to the old man&mdash;for good this time; we
+didn't shake hands, either," he said, as they started down the road
+together. He was very stern and hard. Something of the father was hidden
+under his laughing exterior.</p>
+
+<p>Stacey regretted deeply the necessity which drove him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span> out of Allen's
+house. Mrs. Allen and Mattie had appealed to him very strongly. For
+years he had lived far from young women, and there was a magical power
+in the intimate home actions of this young girl. Her bare head, with
+simple arrangement of hair, someway seemed the most beautiful thing he
+had ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of her that night, as he sat at the table with Chapman and
+his aged mother. They lived alone, and their lives were curiously
+silent. Once in a while a low-voiced question, and that was all. George
+read the <i>Popular Science, Harper's Monthly Magazine</i>, and the <i>Open
+Court</i>, and brooded over them with slow intellectual movement. It was
+wonderful the amount of information he secreted from these periodicals.
+He was better informed than many college graduates. He had little
+curiosity about the young stranger. He understood that he was to teach
+the school; beyond that he did not care to go.</p>
+
+<p>He tried Wallace once or twice on the latest discoveries of John Fiske
+and Edison, and then gave him up and retired to his seat beside the
+sitting-room stove.</p>
+
+<p>On the following Monday morning school began, and as Wallace took his
+way down the lane the wrecked church came again to his eyes. He walked
+past it with slow feet. His was a deeply religious nature, one that
+sorrowed easily over sin. Suffering of the poor did not trouble him;
+hunger seemed a little thing beside losing one's everlasting soul.
+Therefore, to come from his studies upon such a monument of human
+depravity as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span> this rotting church was to receive a shock and to hear a
+call to action.</p>
+
+<p>Approaching the schoolhouse, his thought took a turn toward the
+scholars and toward Mattie. He had forgotten to ask her if she intended
+to be one of his pupils.</p>
+
+<p>There were several children already gathered at the weather-beaten door
+as he came up. It was all very American&mdash;the box-like house of white,
+the slender teacher approaching, the roughly clad urchins waiting.</p>
+
+<p>He said, "Good morning, scholars!"</p>
+
+<p>They chorused a queer croak in reply&mdash;hesitating, inarticulate, shy. He
+unlocked the door and entered the cold, bare room&mdash;familiar, unlovely,
+with a certain power of primitive associations. In such a room he had
+studied his primer and his Ray's Arithmetic. In such a room he had made
+gradual recession from the smallest front seat to the back wall seat;
+and from one side of such a room to the other he had furtively
+worshipped a graceful, girlish head.</p>
+
+<p>He allowed himself but a moment of such dreaming before assuming
+command, and with his ready helpers a fire was soon started. Other
+children came in, timorous as rabbits, slipping by, each with an eye
+fixed on him like a scared chicken. They pre-empted their seats by
+putting down books and slates, and there arose sly wars for possession,
+which he watched with amusement&mdash;it was so like his own life at that
+age.</p>
+
+<p>He assumed control as nearly in the manner of the old-time teachers as
+he could recall, and the work of his teaching was begun. The day passed
+quickly, and, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span> he walked homeward again, there stood that rotting
+church, and in his mind there rose a surging emotion larger than he
+could himself comprehend&mdash;a desire to rebuild it by uniting the warring
+factions, of whose lack of Christianity this deserted chapel was a fatal
+witness.</p>
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Now this mystical thing happened. As this son of a line of preachers
+brooded on this unlovely strife among men, he lost the equipoise of the
+scholar and student of modern history. He grew narrower and more
+intense. The burden of his responsibility as a preacher of Christ grew
+daily more insupportable.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of the week he announced preaching in the schoolhouse on
+Sunday afternoon, and at the hour set he found the room crowded with
+people of all ages and sorts.</p>
+
+<p>His heart grew heavy as he looked out over the room&mdash;on women nursing
+querulous children, on the grizzled faces of grim-looking men, who
+studied him with keen, unsympathetic eyes. He had hard, unfriendly
+material to work with. There were but few of the opposite camp present,
+while the Baptist leaders were all there, with more curiosity than
+sympathy in their faces.</p>
+
+<p>They exulted to think the next preacher to come among them as an
+evangelist should be a Baptist.</p>
+
+<p>After the singing, which would have dribbled away into failure but for
+Mattie, Wallace rose, looking very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span> white and weak, and began his
+prayer. Some of the boys laughed when his voice stuck in his throat, but
+he went on to the end of an earnest supplication, feeling he had not
+touched them at all.</p>
+
+<p>While they sang again, he sat looking down at them with dry throat and
+staring eyes. How hard, how unchristian-like, they all were. What could
+he say to them? He saw Mattie gazing up at him, and on the front seat
+sat three beautiful little girls huddled together with hands clasped;
+inexpressibly dainty by contrast. As he looked at them the thought came
+to him, What is the goodness of a girl&mdash;of a child? It is not
+partisan&mdash;it is not of creeds, of articles&mdash;it is goodness of thought,
+of deeds. His face lighted up with the inward feeling of this idea, and
+he rose resolutely.</p>
+
+<p>"Friends, with the help of Christ I am come among you to do you good. I
+shall hold meetings each night here in the schoolhouse until we can
+unite and rebuild the church again. Let me say now, friends, that I was
+educated a Baptist. My father was a faithful worker in the Baptist
+Church, and so was his father before him. I was educated in a Baptist
+college, and I came here hoping to build up a Baptist Church." He
+paused.</p>
+
+<p>"But I see my mistake. I am here to build up a Church of Christ, of good
+deeds and charity and peace, and so I here say I am no longer a Baptist
+or Methodist. I am only a preacher, and I will not rest until I rebuild
+the church which stands rotting away there." His voice rang with
+determination as he uttered those words.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The people listened. There was no movement now. Even the babies seemed
+to feel the need of being silent. When he began again it was to describe
+that hideous wreck. He delineated the falling plaster, the litter around
+the pulpit, the profanation of the walls. "It is a symbol of your sinful
+hearts!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>Much more he said, carried out of himself by his passion. It was as if
+the repentant spirit of his denominational fathers were speaking through
+him; and yet he was not so impassioned that he did not see, or at least
+feel, the eyes of the strong young girl fixed upon him; his resolutions
+were spoken to her, and a swift response seemed to leap from her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When it was over, some of the Methodists and one of the Baptists came up
+to shake hands with him, awkwardly wordless, and the pressure of their
+hands helped him. Many of the Baptist brethren slipped outside to
+discuss the matter. Some were indignant, others much moved.</p>
+
+<p>Allen went by him with an audible grunt of derision, with a dark scowl
+on his face, but Mattie smiled at him, with tears still in her eyes. She
+had been touched by his vibrant voice; she had no sins to repent of.</p>
+
+<p>The skeptics of the neighborhood were quite generally sympathetic.
+"You've struck the right trail now, parson," said Chapman, as they
+walked homeward together. "The days of the old-time denominationalism
+are about played out."</p>
+
+<p>But the young preacher was not so sure of it, now that his inspiration
+was gone. He remembered his debt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span> his college, to his father, to the
+denomination, and it was not easy to set aside the grip of such
+memories.</p>
+
+<p>He sat late revolving the whole situation in his mind. When he went to
+bed his problem was still with him, and involved itself with his dreams;
+but always the young girl smiled upon him with sympathetic eyes and told
+him to go on&mdash;or so it seemed to him.</p>
+
+<p>He was silent at breakfast. He went to school with a feeling that a
+return to teaching little tow-heads to count and spell was now
+impossible. He sat at his scarred and dingy desk while they took their
+places, and his eyes had a passionate intensity of prayer in them which
+awed his pupils. He had assumed new grandeur and terror in their eyes.
+When they were seated he bowed his head and uttered a short plea for
+grace, and then he looked at them again.</p>
+
+<p>On the low front seat, with dangling legs and red, round faces, sat the
+little ones. Some way he could not call them to his knees and teach them
+to spell; he felt as if he ought to call them to him, as Christ did, to
+teach them love and reverence. It was impossible that they should not be
+touched by this hideous neighborhood strife.</p>
+
+<p>Behind them sat the older children, some of them with rough, hard, sly
+faces. One or two grinned rudely and nudged each other. The older girls
+sat with bated breath; they perceived something strange in the air. Most
+of them had heard his sermon of the night before.</p>
+
+<p>At last he broke silence. "Children, there is something I must say to
+you this morning. I'm going to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span> have meeting here to-night, and it may
+be I shall not be your teacher any more&mdash;I mean in school. I wish you'd
+go home to-day and tell your people to come to church here to-night. I
+wish you'd all come yourselves. I want you to be good. I want you to
+love God and be good. I want you to go home and tell your people the
+teacher can't teach children how to read till he has taught the older
+people to be kind and generous. You may put your books away, and school
+will be dismissed."</p>
+
+<p>The wondering children obeyed&mdash;some with glad promptness, others with
+sadness, for they had already come to like their teacher very much.</p>
+
+<p>As he sat by the door and watched them file out, it was as if he were a
+king abdicating a throne, and these his faithful subjects.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Allen came over with Mattie to see him that day. She was a good
+woman, gentle and prayerful, and she said, with much emotion:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Stacey, I do hope you can patch things up here. If you could
+only touch his heart! He don't mean to do wrong, but he's so set in his
+ways&mdash;if he says a thing he sticks to it."</p>
+
+<p>Stacey turned to Mattie for a word of encouragement, but she only looked
+away. It was impossible for her to put into words her feeling in the
+matter, which was more of admiration for his courage than for any part
+of his religious zeal. He was so different from other men.</p>
+
+<p>It did him good to have these women come, and he repeated his vow:</p>
+
+<p>"By the grace of our Lord, I am going to rebuild the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span> Cyene Church!" and
+his face paled and his eyes grew luminous.</p>
+
+<p>The girl shivered with emotion. He seemed to recede from her as he
+spoke, and to grow larger, too. Such nobility of purpose was new and
+splendid to her.</p>
+
+<hr class="minor" />
+
+<p>The revival was wondrously dramatic. The little schoolhouse was crowded
+to the doors night by night. The reek of stable-stained coats and boots,
+the smell of strong tobacco, the effluvia of many breaths, the heat, the
+closeness were forgotten in the fervor of the young evangelist's
+utterances. His voice took on wild emotional cadences which sounded deep
+places in the heart. To these people, long unused to religious oratory,
+it was like the return of John and Isaiah. It was poetry and the drama,
+and processions and apocalyptic visions. This youth had the histrionic
+spell, too, and his slender body lifted and dilated, and his head took
+on majesty and power, and the fling of his white hand was a challenge
+and an appeal.</p>
+
+<p>A series of stirring events took place on the third night.</p>
+
+<p>On Wednesday Jacob Turner rose and asked the prayers of his neighbors,
+and was followed by two Baptist spearmen of the front rank. On Thursday
+the women were weeping on one another's bosoms; only one or two of the
+men held out&mdash;old Deacon Allen and his antagonist, Stewart Marsden.
+Grim-visaged old figures they were, placed among repentant men and
+weeping women. They sat like rocks in the rush of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span> two factions
+moving toward each other for peaceful union. Granitic, narrow, keen of
+thrust, they seemed unmoved, while all around them, one by one, skeptics
+acknowledged the pathos and dignity of the preacher's views of life and
+death.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the young evangelist lived at high pressure. He grew thinner
+and whiter each night. He toiled in the daytime to formulate his
+thoughts for the evening. He could not sleep till far toward morning.
+The food he ate did him little good, while his heart went out constantly
+to his people in strenuous supplication. It was testimony of his human
+quality that he never for one moment lost that shining girl face out of
+his thought. He looked for it there night after night. It was his
+inspiration in speaking, as at the first.</p>
+
+<p>On the nights when Mattie was not there his speech was labored (as the
+elders noticed), but on the blessed nights when she came and sang, her
+voice, amid all the rest, came to him, and uttered poetry and peace like
+a rill of cool, sweet water. And afterward, when he walked home under
+the stars, his mind went with her, she was so strong and lithe and good
+to see. He did not realize the worshipping attitude the girl took before
+his divine duties.</p>
+
+<p>At last the great day came&mdash;the great night.</p>
+
+<p>In some way, perhaps by the growing mass of rushing emotion set in
+action by some deep-going phrase, or perhaps by some interior slow
+weakening of stubborn will, Deacon Allen gave way; and when the preacher
+called for penitents, the old man struggled to his feet, his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span> seamed,
+weather-beaten face full of grotesque movement. He broke out:</p>
+
+<p>"Brethren, pray for me; I'm a miserable sinner. I want to confess my
+sins&mdash;here&mdash;before ye all." He broke into sobbing terrible to hear. "My
+heart is made&mdash;flesh again&mdash;by the blessed power of Christ...."</p>
+
+<p>He struggled to get his voice. One or two cried, "Praise God!" but most
+of them sat silent, awed into immobility.</p>
+
+<p>The old man walked up the aisle. "I've been rebellious&mdash;and now I want
+to shake hands with you all&mdash;and I ask your prayers." He bent down and
+thrust his hand to Marsden, his enemy, while the tears streamed down his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>Marsden turned white with a sort of fear, but he rose awkwardly and
+grasped the outstretched hand, and at the touch of palms every soul rose
+as if by electric shock. "Amens!" burst forth. The preacher began a
+fervent prayer, and came down toward the grizzled, weeping old men, and
+they all embraced, while some old lady with sweet, quavering voice
+raised a triumphal hymn, in which all joined, and found grateful relief
+from their emotional tension.</p>
+
+<p>Allen turned to Mattie and his wife. "My boy&mdash;send for him&mdash;Herman."</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as if the people could not go away. The dingy little
+schoolhouse was like unto the shining temple of God's grace, and the
+regenerated seemed to fear that to go home might permit a return to hate
+and strife. So they clung around the young preacher and would not let
+him go.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At last he came out, with Allen holding to his arm. "You must come home
+with us to-night," he pleaded, and the young minister with glad heart
+consented, for he hoped he might walk beside Mattie; but this was not
+possible. There were several others in the group, and they moved off two
+and two up the deep hollows which formed the road in the snow.</p>
+
+<p>The young minister walked with head uplifted to the stars, hearing
+nothing of the low murmur of talk, conscious only of his great plans,
+his happy heart, and the strong young girl who walked before him.</p>
+
+<p>In the warm kitchen into which they came he lost something of his
+spiritual tension, and became more humanly aware of the significance of
+sitting again with these people. He gave the girl his coat and hat, and
+then watched her slip off her knitted hood and her cloak. Her eyes shone
+with returning laughter, and her cheeks were flushed with blood.</p>
+
+<p>Looking upon her, the young evangelist lost his look of exaltation, his
+eyes grew soft and his limbs relaxed. His silence was no longer rapt&mdash;it
+was the silence of delicious, drowsy reverie.</p>
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>The next morning he did not rise at all. The collapse had come. The bad
+air, the nervous strain, the lack of sleep, had worn down his slender
+store of strength, and when the great victory came he fell like a tree
+whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span> trunk has been slowly gnawed across by teeth of silent saw. His
+drowse deepened into torpor.</p>
+
+<p>In the bright winter morning, seated in a gay cutter behind a bay colt
+strung with slashing bells, Mattie drove to Kesota for the doctor. She
+felt the discord between the joyous jangle of the bells, the stream of
+sunlight, and the sparkle of snow crystals, but it only added to the
+poignancy of her anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>She had not yet reached self-consciousness in her regard for the young
+preacher&mdash;she thought of him as a noble human being, liable to death,
+and she chirped again and again to the flying colt, whose broad hoofs
+flung the snow in stinging showers against her face.</p>
+
+<p>A call at the doctor's house set him jogging out along the lanes, while
+she sent a telegram to Herman. As she whirled bay Tom into the road to
+go home her heart rose in relief that was almost exaltation. She loved
+horses. She always sang under her breath, chiming to the beat of their
+bells, when alone, and now she loosened the rein and hummed an old
+love-song, while the powerful young horse squared away in a trot which
+was twelve miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>In such air, in such sun, who could die? Her good animal strength rose
+dominant over fear of death.</p>
+
+<p>She came upon the doctor swinging along in his old blue cutter, dozing
+in country-doctor style, making up for lost sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Out o' the way, doctor!" she gleefully called.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor roused up and looked around with a smile. He was not beyond
+admiring such a girl as that.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span> He snapped his whip-lash lightly on old
+Sofia's back, who looked up surprised, and, seeming to comprehend
+matters, began to reach out broad, flat, thin legs in a pace which the
+proud colt respected. She came of illustrious line, did Sofia,
+scant-haired and ungracious as she now was.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't run over me!" called the doctor, ironically, and, with Sofia
+still leading, they swung into the yard.</p>
+
+<p>Mattie went in with the doctor, while Allen looked after both horses.
+They found Chapman attending Wallace, who lay in a dazed
+quiet&mdash;conscious, but not definitely aware of material things.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor looked his patient over carefully. Then he asked, "Who is the
+yoong mon?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's been teaching here, or, rather, preaching."</p>
+
+<p>"When did this coom on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Last night. Wound up a big revival last night, I believe. Kind o' caved
+in, I reckon."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all. Needs rest. He'll be wearin' a wood jacket if he doosna
+leave off preachin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Regular jamboree. I couldn't stop him. One of these periodical
+neighborhood 'awakenings,' they call it."</p>
+
+<p>"They have need of it here, na doot."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they need something&mdash;love for God&mdash;or man."</p>
+
+<p>"M&mdash;well! It's lettle I can do. The wumman can do more, if the mon'll be
+eatin' what they cuke for 'im," said the candid old Scotchman. "Mak' 'im
+eat! Mak' 'im eat!"</p>
+
+<p>Once more Tom pounded along the shining road to Kesota to meet the
+six-o'clock train from Chicago.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Herman, magnificently clothed in fur-lined ulster and cap, alighted with
+unusually grave face, and hurried toward Mattie.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what is it, Sis? Mother sick?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; it's the teacher. He is unconscious. I've been for the doctor. Oh,
+we were scared!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked relieved, but a little chagrined. "Oh, well, I don't see why I
+should be yanked out of my boots by a telegram because the teacher is
+sick! He isn't kin&mdash;yet."</p>
+
+<p>For the first time a feeling of confusion swept over Mattie, and her
+face flushed.</p>
+
+<p>Herman's keen eyes half closed as he looked into her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Mat&mdash;what&mdash;what! Now look here&mdash;how's this? Where's Ben Holly's claim?"</p>
+
+<p>"He never had any." She shifted ground quickly. "Oh, Herman, we had a
+wonderful time last night! Father and Uncle Marsden shook hands&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What!" shouted Herman, as he fell in a limp mass against the cutter.
+"Bring a physician&mdash;I'm stricken."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't act so! Everybody's looking."</p>
+
+<p>"They'd better look. I'm drowning while they wait."</p>
+
+<p>She untied the horse and came back.</p>
+
+<p>"Climb in there and stop your fooling, and I'll tell you all about it."</p>
+
+<p>He crawled in with tearing groans of mock agony, and then leaned his
+head against her shoulder. "Well, go on, Sis; I can bear it now."</p>
+
+<p>She nudged him to make him sit up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know we've had a revival."</p>
+
+<p>"So you wrote. Must have been a screamer to fetch Dad and old Marsden. A
+regular Pentecost of Shinar."</p>
+
+<p>"It was&mdash;I mean it was beautiful. I saw father was getting stirred up.
+He prayed almost all day yesterday, and at night&mdash;Well, I can't tell
+you, but Wallace talked, oh, so beautiful and tender!"</p>
+
+<p>"She calls him Wallace?" mused Herman, like a comedian. "Hush! And then
+came the hand-shaking, and then the minister came home with us because
+father asked him to, and stayed because he liked the chicken."</p>
+
+<p>The girl was hurt, and she showed it. "If you make fun, I won't tell you
+another word," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Away Chicago! enter Cyene! Well, come, I won't fool any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Then after Wallace&mdash;I mean&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let it stand. Come to the murder."</p>
+
+<p>"Then father came and asked me to send for you, and mother cried, and so
+did he. And, oh, Hermie, he's so sweet and kind! Don't make fun of him,
+will you? It's splendid to have him give in, and everybody feels glad
+that the district will be all friendly again."</p>
+
+<p>Herman did not gibe now. His voice was gentle. The pathos in the scene
+appealed to him. "So the old man sent for me himself, did he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; he could hardly wait till morning. But this morning, when we came
+to call the teacher, he didn't answer, and father went in and found him
+unconscious. Then I went for the doctor."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Bay Tom whirled along in the splendid dusk, his nostrils flaring ghostly
+banners of steam on the cold, crisp air. The stars overhead were points
+of green and blue and crimson light, low-hung, changing each moment.
+Their influence entered the soul of the mocking young fellow. He felt
+very solemn, almost melancholy, for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Sis, I've got something to tell you all. I'm going to tell it to
+you by degrees. I'm going to be married."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she gasped, with quick, indrawn breath. "Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be ungrammatical, whatever you do. She's a cashier in a
+restaurant, and she's a fine girl," he added, steadily, as if combating
+a prejudice. He forgot for the moment that such prejudices did not exist
+in Cyene.</p>
+
+<p>Sis was instantly tender, and very, very serious.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she is, or you wouldn't care for her. Oh, I'd like to see
+her!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take you up some day and show her to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, will you? Oh, when can I go?" She was smitten into gravity again.
+"Not till the teacher is well."</p>
+
+<p>Herman pretended to be angry. "Dog take the teacher, the old
+spindle-legs! If I'd known he was going to raise such a ruction in our
+quiet and peaceful neighborhood, I never would have brought him here."</p>
+
+<p>Mattie did not laugh; she pondered. She never quite understood her
+brother when he went off on those queer tirades, which might be a joke
+or an insult. He had grown away from her in his city life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">340</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They rode on in silence the rest of the way, except now and then an
+additional question from Mattie concerning his sweetheart.</p>
+
+<p>As they neared the farm-house she lost interest in all else but the
+condition of the young minister. They could see the light burning dimly
+in his room, and in the parlor and kitchen as well, and this unusual
+lighting stirred the careless young man deeply. It was associated in his
+mind with death and birth, and also with great joy. The house was
+lighted so the night his elder brother died, and it looked so to him
+when he whirled into the yard with the doctor when Mattie was born.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I hope he isn't worse!" said the girl, with deep feeling.</p>
+
+<p>Herman put his arm about her, and she knew he knew.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I, Sis."</p>
+
+<p>Allen came to the door as they drove in, and the careless boy realized
+suddenly the emotional tension his father was in. As the old man came to
+the sleigh-side he could not speak. His fingers trembled as he took the
+outstretched hand of his boy.</p>
+
+<p>Herman's voice shook a little:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Dad, Mattie says the war is over."</p>
+
+<p>The old man tried to speak, but only coughed and then he blew his nose.
+At last he said, brokenly:</p>
+
+<p>"Go right in; your mother's waitin'."</p>
+
+<p>It was singularly dramatic to the youth. To come from the careless,
+superficial life of his city companions into contact with such primeval
+passions as these made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">341</a></span> him feel like a spectator at some new and
+powerful and tragic play.</p>
+
+<p>His mother fell upon his neck and cried, while Mattie stood by pale and
+anxious. Inside the parlor could be heard the mumble of men's voices.</p>
+
+<p>In such wise do death and the fear of death fall upon country homes. All
+day the house had swarmed with people. All day this mother had looked
+forward to the reconciliation of her husband with her son. All day had
+the pale and silent minister of God kept his corpse-like calm, while all
+about the white snow gleamed, and radiant shadows filled every hollow,
+and the cattle bawled and frisked in the barn-yard, and the fowls
+cackled joyously, what time the mild, soft wind breathed warmly over the
+land.</p>
+
+<p>Mattie cried out to her mother, in quick, low voice, "Oh mother, how is
+he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He ain't no worse. The doctor says there's no immediate danger."</p>
+
+<p>The girl brought her hands together girlishly, and said: "Oh, I'm so
+glad. Is he awake?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; he's asleep."</p>
+
+<p>"Is the doctor still here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess I'll step in," said Herman.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor and George Chapman sat beside the hard-coal heater, talking
+in low voices. The old doctor was permitting himself the luxury of a
+story of pioneer life. He arose with automatic courtesy, and shook hands
+with Herman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">342</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How's the sick man getting on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Vera well&mdash;vera well&mdash;consederin' the mon is a complete
+worn-out&mdash;that's all&mdash;naethin' more. Thes floom-a-didale bezniss of
+rantin' away on the fear o' the Laird for sax weeks wull have worn out
+the frame of a bool-dawg."</p>
+
+<p>Herman and Chapman smiled. "I hope you'll tell him that."</p>
+
+<p>"Na fear, yoong mon," said the grim old warrior. "Weel, now, ai'll juist
+be takin' anither look at him."</p>
+
+<p>Herman went in with the doctor, and stood looking on while the old man
+peered and felt about. He came out soon, and, leaving a few directions
+with Herman and Chapman, took his departure. Everything seemed
+favorable, he said.</p>
+
+<p>There was no longer poignancy of anxiety in Mattie's mind, she was too
+much of a child to imagine the horror of loss, but she was grave and gay
+by turns. Her healthy and wholesome nature continually reasserted itself
+over the power of her newly attained woman's interest in the young
+preacher. She went to bed and slept dreamlessly, while Herman yawned and
+inwardly raged at the fix in which circumstances had placed him.</p>
+
+<p>Like many another lover, days away from his sweetheart were lost days.
+He wondered how she would take all this life in Cyene. It would be good
+fun to bring her down, anyway, and hear her talk. He planned such a
+trip, and grew so interested in the thought he forgot his patient.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">343</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the early dawn Wallace rallied and woke. Herman heard the rustle of
+the pillow, and turned to find the sick man's eyes looking at him
+fixedly, calm but puzzled. Herman's lips slowly changed into a beautiful
+boyish smile. "Hello, old man! How do you find yourself?" His hearty,
+humorous greeting seemed to do the sick man good. Herman approached the
+bed. "Know where you are?" Wallace slowly put out a hand, and Herman
+took it. "You're coming on all right. Want some breakfast? Make it
+bucks?" he said, in Chicago restaurant slang. "White wings&mdash;sunny&mdash;one
+up coff."</p>
+
+<p>All this was good tonic for Wallace, and an hour later he sipped broth,
+while Mrs. Allen and the Deacon and Herman stood watching the process
+with apparently consuming interest. Mattie was still soundly sleeping.</p>
+
+<p>Now began delicious days of convalescence, during which Wallace looked
+peacefully out at the coming and going of the two women, each possessing
+powerful appeal to him: one the motherly presence which had been denied
+him for many years, the other something he had never permitted himself
+to hope for&mdash;a sweetheart's daily companionship.</p>
+
+<p>He lay there planning his church, and also his home. Into the thought of
+a new church came shyly but persistently the thought of a fireside of
+his own, with this young girl sitting in the glow of it waiting for him.
+His life possessed little romance. He had earned his own way through
+school and to college. His slender physical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">344</a></span> energies had been taxed to
+their utmost at every stage of his climb, but now it seemed as though
+some blessed rest and peace were at hand.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the bitter partisans met each other coming and going out of
+the gate of the Allen estate, and the goodness of God shone in their
+softened faces. Herman was skeptical of its lasting quality, but was
+forced to acknowledge that it was a lovely light. He it was who made the
+electrical suggestion to rebuild the church as an evidence of good
+faith. "You say you're regenerated. Well, prove it&mdash;go ahead and
+regenerate the church," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The enthusiasm of the neighborhood took flame. It should be done. A
+meeting was called. Everybody subscribed money or work. It was a
+generous outpouring of love and faith.</p>
+
+<p>It was Herman also who counselled secrecy. "It would be a nice thing to
+surprise him," he said. "We'll agree to keep the scheme from him at
+home, if you don't give it away."</p>
+
+<p>They set to work like bees. The women came down one day and took
+possession with brooms and mops and soap, and while the carpenters
+repaired the windows they fell savagely upon the grime of the seats and
+floors. The walls of the church echoed with woman's gossip and girlish
+laughter. Everything was scoured, from the door-hinges to the altar
+rails. New doors were hung and a new stove secured, and then came the
+painters to put a new coat of paint on the inside. The cold weather
+forbade repainting the outside.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">345</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The sheds were rebuilt by men whose hearts glowed with old-time fire. It
+was like pioneer days, when "barn-raisings" and "bees" made life worth
+while in a wild, stern land. The old men were moved to tears, and the
+younger rough men shouted cheery, boisterous cries to hide their own
+deep emotion. Hand met hand in heartiness never shown before. Neighbors
+frequented one another's homes, and the old times of visiting and
+brotherly love came back upon them. Nothing marred the perfect beauty of
+their revival&mdash;save the fear of its evanescence. It seemed too good to
+last.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile love of another and merrier sort went on. The young men and
+maidens turned prayer-meeting into trysts and scrubbing-bees into
+festivals. They rode from house to house under glittering stars, over
+sparkling snows, singing:</p>
+
+<p style="margin-left: 2em">
+"Hallelujah! 'tis done:<br />
+I believe on the Son;<br />
+I am saved by the blood<br />
+Of the Crucified One."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>And their rejoicing chorus was timed to the clash of bells on swift
+young horses. Who shall say they did not right? Did the Galilean forbid
+love and joy?</p>
+
+<p>No matter. God's stars, the mysterious night, the bells, the watchful
+bay of dogs, the sting of snow, the croon of loving voices, the clasp of
+tender arms, the touch of parting lips&mdash;these things, these joys
+outweigh death and hell, and all that makes the criminal tremble. Being
+saved, they must of surety rejoice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">346</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And through it all Wallace crawled slowly back to life and strength. He
+ate of Mother Allen's chicken-broth and of toast from Mattie's
+care-taking hand, and gradually reassumed color and heart. His solemn
+eyes watched the young girl with an intensity which seemed to take her
+strength from her. She would gladly have given her blood for him, if it
+had occurred to her, or if it had been suggested as a good thing;
+instead, she gave him potatoes baked to a nicety, and buttered toast
+that would melt on the tongue, and, on the whole, they served the
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>One day a smartly dressed man called to see Wallace. Mattie recognized
+him as the Baptist clergyman from Kesota. He came in, and, introducing
+himself said he had heard of the excellent work of Mr. Stacey, and that
+he would like to speak with him.</p>
+
+<p>Wallace was sitting in a rocking-chair in the parlor. Herman was in
+Chicago, and there was no one but Mrs. Allen and Mattie in the house.</p>
+
+<p>The Kesota minister introduced himself to Wallace, and then entered upon
+a long eulogium upon his work in Cyene. He asked after his credentials,
+his plans, his connections, and then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"You've done a <i>fine</i> work in softening the hearts of these people. We
+had almost <i>despaired</i> of doing anything with them. Yes, you have done a
+<i>won-der-ful work</i>, and now we must reorganize a regular society here. I
+will be out again when you get stronger, and we'll see about it."</p>
+
+<p>Wallace was too weak to take any stand in the talk,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">347</a></span> and so allowed him
+to get up and go away without protest or explanation of his own plans.</p>
+
+<p>When Herman came down on Saturday, he told him of the Baptist minister's
+visit and the proposition. Herman stretched his legs out toward the fire
+and put his hands in his pockets. Then he rose and took a strange
+attitude, such as Wallace had seen in comic pictures&mdash;it was, in fact,
+the attitude of a Bowery tough.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, look here! If you want 'o set dis community by de ears agin, you
+do dat ting&mdash;see? You play dat confidence game and dey'll rat ye&mdash;sure!
+You invite us to come into a non-partisan deal&mdash;see?&mdash;and den you
+springs your own platform on us in de joint corkus&mdash;and we won't stand
+it! Dis goes troo de way it began, or we don't play&mdash;see?"</p>
+
+<p>Out of all this Wallace deduced his own feeling&mdash;that continued peace
+and good-will lay in keeping clear of all doctrinal debates and
+disputes&mdash;- the love of Christ, the desire to do good and to be clean.
+These emotions had been roused far more deeply than he realized, and he
+lifted his face to God in the hope that no lesser thing should come in
+to mar the beauty of His Church.</p>
+
+<p>There came a day when he walked out in the sunshine, and heard the hens
+caw-cawing about the yard, and saw the young colts playing about the
+barn. And the splendor of the winter day dazzled him as if he were
+looking upon the broad-flung robe of the Lord Most High. Everywhere the
+snow lay ridged with purple and brown hedges. Smoke rose peacefully from
+chimneys,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">348</a></span> and the sound of boys skating on a near-by pond added the
+human element.</p>
+
+<p>The trouble of concealing the work of the community upon the church
+increased daily, and Mattie feared that some hint of it had come to him.
+She had her plan. She wanted to drive him down herself, and let him see
+the reburnished temple alone. But this was impossible. On the day when
+he seemed able to go, her father drove them all down. Marsden was there
+also, and several of his women-folks, putting down a new carpet on the
+platform. As they drew near the church, Wallace said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, they've fixed up the sheds!"</p>
+
+<p>Mattie nodded. She was trembling with the delicious excitement of
+it&mdash;she wanted him hurried into the church at once. He had hardly time
+to think before he was whirled up to the new porch, and Marsden came
+out, followed by several women. He was bewildered by it all. Marsden
+helped him out with hearty voice, sounding:</p>
+
+<p>"Careful now! Don't hurry!"</p>
+
+<p>Mattie took one arm, and so he entered the church. Everything repainted!
+Everything warm and bright and cozy!</p>
+
+<p>The significance of it came to him like a wave of light, and he took his
+seat in the pulpit chair and stared at them all with a look on his pale
+face which moved them more than words. He was like a man transfigured by
+an inward glow. His eyes for an instant flamed with this marvellous
+fire, then darkened, softened with tears, and his voice came back in a
+sob of joy, and he could only say:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">349</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Friends&mdash;brethren!"</p>
+
+<p>Marsden, after much coughing, said:</p>
+
+<p>"We all united on this. We wanted to have you come to the church
+and&mdash;Well, we couldn't bear to have you see it again the way it was."</p>
+
+<p>He understood it now. It was the sign of a united community. It set the
+seal of Christ's victory over evil passions, and the young preacher's
+head bowed in prayer, and they all knelt, while his weak voice returned
+thanks to the Lord for his gifts.</p>
+
+<p>Then they all rose and shook off the oppressive solemnity, and he had
+time to look around at all the changes. At last he turned to Mattie and
+reached out his hand&mdash;he had the boldness of a man in the shadow of some
+mighty event which makes false modesty and conventions shadowy things of
+little importance. His sharpened interior sense read her clear soul, and
+he knew she was his, therefore he reached her his hand, and she came to
+him with a flush on her face, which died out as she stood proudly by his
+side, while he said:</p>
+
+<p>"And Martha shall help me."</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, this good thing happened&mdash;that in the midst of his fervor and
+his consecration to God's work, the love of woman found a place.</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<div style="margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em">
+<a name="AFTERWORD" id="AFTERWORD"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">350</a></span>
+<p class="center" style="font-size:160%">AN AFTERWORD:<br />
+<span style="font-size:90%">OF WINDS, SNOWS AND THE STARS</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p style="margin:auto; width:20em; font-style:italic">
+O witchery of the winter night<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(With broad moon shouldering to the west)!</span><br />
+<br />
+In city streets the west wind sweeps<br />
+Before my feet in rustling flight;<br />
+The midnight snows in untracked heaps<br />
+Lie cold and desolate and white.<br />
+I stand and wait with upturned eyes,<br />
+Awed with the splendor of the skies<br />
+And star-trained progress of the moon.<br />
+<br />
+The city walls dissolve like smoke<br />
+Beneath the magic of the moon,<br />
+And age falls from me like a cloak;<br />
+I hear sweet girlish voices ring,<br />
+Clear as some softly stricken string&mdash;<br />
+(The moon is sailing to the west.)<br />
+The sleigh-bells clash in homeward flight;<br />
+With frost each horse's breast is white&mdash;<br />
+(The big moon sinking to the west.)</p>
+<p class="center" style="font-size: smaller;  letter-spacing: 3em; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em">*****</p>
+<p style="margin:auto; width:20em; font-style:italic">
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Good night, Lettie!"</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Good night, Ben!"</span><br />
+(The moon is sinking at the west.)<br />
+"Good night, my sweetheart," Once again<br />
+The parting kiss while comrades wait<br />
+Impatient at the roadside gate,<br />
+And the red moon sinks beyond the west.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align: center; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 3em;'>THE END</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Other Main-Travelled Roads, by Hamlin Garland
+
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Other Main-Travelled Roads, by Hamlin Garland
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Other Main-Travelled Roads
+
+Author: Hamlin Garland
+
+Release Date: March 1, 2007 [EBook #20714]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OTHER MAIN-TRAVELLED ROADS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: DADDY DEERING]
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+OTHER MAIN-TRAVELLED ROADS
+
+HAMLIN GARLAND
+SUNSET EDITION
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1892, 1899, 1910, BY HAMLIN GARLAND
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+PRAIRIE FOLKS
+
+PIONEERS
+
+  They rise to mastery of wind and snow;
+    They go like soldiers grimly into strife,
+  To colonize the plain; they plough and sow,
+    And fertilize the sod with their own life
+  As did the Indian and the buffalo.
+
+SETTLERS
+
+  Above them soars a dazzling sky,
+    In winter blue and clear as steel,
+  In summer like an arctic sea
+    Wherein vast icebergs drift and reel
+  And melt like sudden sorcery.
+
+  Beneath them plains stretch far and fair,
+    Rich with sunlight and with rain;
+  Vast harvests ripen with their care
+    And fill with overplus of grain
+  Their square, great bins.
+
+  Yet still they strive! I see them rise
+    At dawn-light, going forth to toil:
+  The same salt sweat has filled my eyes,
+    My feet have trod the self-same soil
+  Behind the snarling plough.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+PREFACE
+
+Nearly all the stories in this volume were written at the same time and
+under the same impulse as those which compose its companion volume,
+_Main-Travelled Roads_--and the entire series was the result of a
+summer-vacation visit to my old home in Iowa, to my father's farm in
+Dakota, and, last of all, to my birthplace in Wisconsin. This happened
+in 1887. I was living at the time in Boston, and had not seen the West
+for several years, and my return to the scenes of my boyhood started me
+upon a series of stories delineative of farm and village life as I knew
+it and had lived it. I wrote busily during the two years that followed,
+and in this revised definitive edition of _Main-Travelled Roads_ and its
+companion volume, _Other Main-Travelled Roads_ (compiled from other
+volumes which now go out of print), the reader will find all of the
+short stories which came from my pen between 1887 and 1889.
+
+It remains to say that, though conditions have changed somewhat since
+that time, yet for the hired man and the renter farm life in the West is
+still a stern round of drudgery. My pages present it--not as the summer
+boarder or the young lady novelist sees it--but as the working farmer
+endures it.
+
+Not all the scenes of _Other Main-Travelled Roads_ are of farm life,
+though rural subjects predominate; and the village life touched upon
+will be found less forbidding in color. In this I am persuaded my view
+is sound; for, no matter how hard the villager works, he is not lonely.
+He suffers in company with his fellows. So much may be called a gain.
+Then, too, I admit youth and love are able to transform a bleak prairie
+town into a poem, and to make of a barbed-wire lane a highway of
+romance.
+
+                                                        HAMLIN GARLAND.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Contents
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+Introductory Verse                                         v
+Preface                                                  vii
+William Bacon's Man                                        3
+Elder Pill, Preacher                                      29
+A Day of Grace                                            65
+Lucretia Burns                                            81
+Daddy Deering                                            119
+A Stop-Over at Tyre                                      143
+A Division in the Coolly                                 203
+A Fair Exile                                             245
+An Alien in the Pines                                    263
+Before the Low Green Door                                293
+A Preacher's Love Story                                  305
+An Afterword: of Winds, Snows, and The Stars             350
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM BACON'S MAN
+
+I
+
+
+The yellow March sun lay powerfully on the bare Iowa prairie, where the
+ploughed fields were already turning warm and brown, and only here and
+there in a corner or on the north side of the fence did the sullen
+drifts remain, and they were so dark and low that they hardly appeared
+to break the mellow brown of the fields.
+
+There passed also an occasional flock of geese, cheerful harbingers of
+spring, and the prairie-chickens had set up their morning symphony,
+wide-swelling, wonderful with its prophecy of the new birth of grass and
+grain and the springing life of all breathing things. The crow passed
+now and then, uttering his resonant croak, but the crane had not yet
+sent forth his bugle note.
+
+Lyman Gilman rested on his axe-helve at the woodpile of Farmer Bacon to
+listen to the music around him. In a vague way he was powerfully moved
+by it. He heard the hens singing their weird, raucous, monotonous song,
+and saw them burrowing in the dry chip-dust near him. He saw the young
+colts and cattle frisking in the sunny space around the straw-stacks,
+absorbed through his bare arms and uncovered head the heat of the sun,
+and felt the soft wooing of the air so deeply that he broke into an
+unwonted exclamation:--
+
+"Glory! we'll be seeding by Friday, sure."
+
+This short and disappointing soliloquy was, after all, an expression of
+deep emotion. To the Western farmer the very word "seeding" is a poem.
+And these few words, coming from Lyman Gilman, meant more and expressed
+more than many a large and ambitious springtime song.
+
+But the glory of all the slumbrous landscape, the stately beauty of the
+sky with its masses of fleecy vapor, were swept away by the sound of a
+girl's voice humming, "Come to the Saviour," while she bustled about the
+kitchen near by. The windows were open. Ah! what suggestion to these
+dwellers in a rigorous climate was in the first unsealing of the
+windows! How sweet it was to the pale and weary women after their long
+imprisonment!
+
+As Lyman sat down on his maple log to hear better, a plump face appeared
+at the window, and a clear, girl-voice said:--
+
+"Smell anything, Lime?"
+
+He snuffed the air. "Cookies, by the great horn spoons!" he yelled,
+leaping up. "Bring me some, an' see me eat; it'll do ye good."
+
+"Come an' get 'm," laughed the face at the window.
+
+"Oh, it's nicer out here, Merry Etty. What's the rush? Bring me out
+some, an' set down on this log."
+
+With a nod Marietta disappeared, and soon came out with a plate of
+cookies in one hand and a cup of milk in the other.
+
+"Poor little man, he's all tired out, ain't he?"
+
+Lime, taking the cue, collapsed in a heap, and said feebly, "Bread,
+bread!"
+
+"Won't milk an' cookies do as well?"
+
+He brushed off the log and motioned her to sit down beside him, but she
+hesitated a little and colored a little.
+
+"Oh, Lime, s'pose somebody should see us?"
+
+"Let 'em. What in thunder do we care? Sit down an' gimme a holt o' them
+cakes. I'm just about done up. I couldn't 'a' stood it another minute."
+
+She sat down beside him with a laugh and a pretty blush. She was in her
+apron, and the sleeves of her dress were rolled to her elbows,
+displaying the strong, round arms. Wholesome and sweet she looked and
+smelled, the scent of the cooking round her. Lyman munched a couple of
+the cookies and gulped a pint of milk before he spoke.
+
+"Whadda we care who sees us sittin' side b' side? Ain't we goin' t' be
+married soon?"
+
+"Oh, them cookies in the oven!" she shrieked, leaping up and running to
+the house. She looked back as she reached the kitchen door, however, and
+smiled with a flushed face. Lime slapped his knee and roared with
+laughter at his bold stroke.
+
+"Ho! ho!" he laughed. "Didn't I do it slick? Ain't nothin' green in _my_
+eye, I guess." In an intense and pleasurable abstraction he finished the
+cookies and the milk. Then he yelled:--
+
+"Hey! Merry--Merry Etty!"
+
+"Whadda ye want?" sang the girl from the window, her face still rosy
+with confusion.
+
+"Come out here and git these things."
+
+The girl shook her head, with a laugh.
+
+"Come out an' git 'm, 'r, by jingo, I'll throw 'em at ye! Come on, now!"
+
+The girl looked at the huge, handsome fellow, the sun falling on his
+golden hair and beard, and came slowly out to him--came creeping along
+with her hand outstretched for the plate which Lime, with a laugh in his
+sunny blue eyes, extended at the full length of his bare arm. The girl
+made a snatch at it, but his left hand caught her by the wrist, and away
+went cup and plate as he drew her to him and kissed her in spite of her
+struggles.
+
+"My! ain't you strong!" she said, half ruefully and half admiringly, as
+she shrugged her shoulders. "If you'd use a little more o' _that_
+choppin' wood, Dad wouldn't 'a' lost s' much money by yeh."
+
+Lime grew grave.
+
+"There's the hog in the fence, Merry; what's yer dad goin' t' say--"
+
+"About what?"
+
+"About our gitt'n married this spring."
+
+"I guess you'd better find out what _I'm_ a-goin' t' say, Lime Gilman,
+'fore you pitch into Dad."
+
+"I _know_ what you're a-goin' t' say."
+
+"No, y' don't."
+
+"Yes, but I _do_, though."
+
+"Well, ask me, and see, if you think you're so smart. Jest as like 's
+not, you'll slip up."
+
+"All right; here goes. Marietty Bacon, ain't you an' Lime Gilman goin'
+t' be married?"
+
+"No, sir, we ain't," laughed the girl, snatching up the plate and
+darting away to the house, where she struck up "Weevily Wheat," and went
+busily on about her cooking. Lime threw a kiss at her, and fell to work
+on his log with startling energy.
+
+Lyman looked forward to his interview with the old man with as much
+trepidation as he had ever known, though commonly he had little fear of
+anything--but a girl.
+
+Marietta was not only the old man's only child, but his housekeeper, his
+wife having at last succumbed to the ferocious toil of the farm. It was
+reasonable to suppose, therefore, that he would surrender his claim on
+the girl reluctantly. Rough as he was, he loved Marietta strongly, and
+would find it exceedingly hard to get along without her.
+
+Lyman mused on these things as he drove the gleaming axe into the huge
+maple logs. He was something more than the usual hired man, being a
+lumberman from the Wisconsin pineries, where he had sold out his
+interest in a camp not three weeks before the day he began work for
+Bacon. He had a nice "little wad o' money" when he left the camp and
+started for La Crosse, but he had been robbed in his hotel the first
+night in the city, and was left nearly penniless. It was a great blow to
+him, for, as he said, every cent of that money "stood fer hard knocks
+an' poor feed. When I smelt of it I could jest see the cold, frosty
+mornin's and the late nights. I could feel the hot sun on my back like
+it was when I worked in the harvest-field. By jingo! It kind o' made my
+toes curl up."
+
+But he went resolutely out to work again, and here he was chopping wood
+in old man Bacon's yard, thinking busily on the talk which had just
+passed between Marietta and himself.
+
+"By jingo!" he said all at once, stopping short, with the axe on his
+shoulder. "If I hadn't 'a' been robbed I wouldn't 'a' come here--I
+never'd met Merry. Thunder and jimson root! Wasn't that a narrow
+escape?"
+
+And then he laughed so heartily that the girl looked out of the window
+again to see what in the world he was doing. He had his hat in his hand
+and was whacking his thigh with it.
+
+"Lyman Gilman, what in the world ails you to-day? It's perfectly
+ridiculous the way you yell and talk t' y'rself out there on the chips.
+You beat the hens, I declare if you don't."
+
+Lime put on his hat and walked up to the window, and, resting his great
+bare arms on the sill, and his chin on his arms, said:--
+
+"Merry, I'm goin' to tackle 'Dad' this afternoon. He'll be sittin' up
+the new seeder, and I'm goin' t' climb right on the back of his neck.
+He's jest _got_ t' give me a chance."
+
+Marietta looked sober in sympathy.
+
+"Well! P'raps it's best to have it over with, Lime, but someway I feel
+kind o' scary about it."
+
+Lime stood for a long time looking in at the window, watching the
+light-footed girl as she set the table in the middle of the sun-lighted
+kitchen floor. The kettle hissed, the meat sizzled, sending up a
+delicious odor; a hen stood in the open door and sang a sort of cheery
+half-human song, while to and fro moved the sweet-faced, lithe, and
+powerful girl, followed by the smiling eyes at the window.
+
+"Merry, you look purty as a picture. You look just like the wife I be'n
+a-huntin' for all these years, sure's shootin'."
+
+Marietta colored with pleasure.
+
+"Does Dad pay you to stand an' look at me an' say pretty things t' the
+cook?"
+
+"No, he don't. But I'm willin' t' do it without pay. I could just stand
+here till kingdom come an' look at you. Hello! I hear a wagon. I guess I
+better hump into that woodpile."
+
+"I think so too. Dinner's most ready, and Dad 'll be here soon."
+
+Lime was driving away furiously at a tough elm log when Farmer Bacon
+drove into the yard with a new seeder in his wagon. Lime whacked away
+busily while Bacon stabled the team, and in a short time Marietta
+called, in a long-drawn, musical fashion:--
+
+"Dinner-r-r!"
+
+After sozzling their faces at the well the two men went in and sat down
+at the table. Bacon was not much of a talker at any time, and at
+meal-time, in seeding, eating was the main business in hand; therefore
+the meal was a silent one, Marietta and Lime not caring to talk on
+general topics. The hour was an anxious one for her, and an important
+one for him.
+
+"Wal, now, Lime, seedun' 's the nex' thing," said Bacon, as he shoved
+back his chair and glared around from under his bushy eyebrows. "We
+can't do too much this afternoon. That seeder's got t' be set up an' a
+lot o' seed-wheat cleaned up. You unload the machine while I feed the
+pigs."
+
+Lime sat still till the old man was heard outside calling "Oo-ee,
+poo-ee" to the pigs in the yard; then he smiled at Marietta, but she
+said:--
+
+"He's got on one of his fits, Lime; I don't b'lieve you'd better tackle
+him t'-day."
+
+"Don't you worry; I'll fix him. Come, now, give me a kiss."
+
+"Why, you great thing! You--took--"
+
+"I know, but I want you to _give_ 'em to me. Just walk right up to me
+an' give me a smack t' bind the bargain."
+
+"I ain't made any bargain," laughed the girl. Then, feeling the force of
+his tender tone, she added: "Will you behave, and go right off to your
+work?"
+
+"Jest like a little man--hope t' die!"
+
+"_Lime!_" roared the old man from the barn.
+
+"Hello!" replied Lime, grinning joyously and winking at the girl, as
+much as to say, "This would paralyze the old man if he saw it."
+
+He went out to the shed where Bacon was at work, as serene as if he had
+not a fearful task on hand. He was apprehensive that the father might
+"gig back" unless rightly approached, and so he awaited a good
+opportunity.
+
+The right moment seemed to present itself along about the middle of the
+afternoon. Bacon was down on the ground under the machine, tightening
+some burrs. This was a good chance for two reasons. In the first place,
+the keen, almost savage eyes were no longer where they could glare on
+him, and in spite of his cool exterior Lime had just as soon not have
+the old man looking at him.
+
+Besides, the old farmer had been telling about his "river eighty," which
+was without a tenant; the man who had taken it, having lost his wife,
+had grown disheartened and had given it up.
+
+"It's an almighty good chance for a man with a small family. Good house
+an' barn, good land. A likely young feller with a team an' a woman could
+do tiptop on that eighty. If he wanted more, I'd let him have an eighty
+j'inun'--"
+
+"I'd like t' try that m'self," said Lime, as a feeler. The old fellow
+said nothing in reply for a moment.
+
+"Ef you had a team an' tools an' a woman, I'd jest as lief you'd have it
+as anybody."
+
+"Sell me your blacks, and I'll pay half down--the balance in the fall. I
+can pick up some tools, and as for a woman, Merry Etty an' me have
+talked that over to-day. She's ready to--ready to marry me whenever you
+say go."
+
+There was an ominous silence under the seeder, as if the father could
+not believe his ears.
+
+"What's--what's that!" he stuttered. "Who'd you say? What about Merry
+Etty?"
+
+"She's agreed to marry me."
+
+"The hell you say!" roared Bacon, as the truth burst upon him. "So
+that's what you do when I go off to town and leave you to chop wood. So
+you're goun' to git married, hey?"
+
+He was now where Lime could see him, glaring up into his smiling blue
+eyes. Lime stood his ground.
+
+"Yes, sir. That's the calculation."
+
+"Well, I guess I'll have somethin' t' say about that," said Bacon,
+nodding his head violently.
+
+"I rather expected y' would. Blaze away. Your privilege--my bad luck.
+Sail in ol' man. What's y'r objection to me fer a son-in-law?"
+
+"Don't you worry, young feller. I'll come at it soon enough," went on
+Bacon, as he turned up another burr in a very awkward corner. In his
+nervous excitement the wrench slipped, banging his knuckle.
+
+"Ouch! Thunder--m-m-m!" howled and snarled the wounded man.
+
+"What's the matter? Bark y'r knuckle?" queried Lime, feeling a mighty
+impulse to laugh. But when he saw the old savage straighten up and glare
+at him he sobered. Bacon was now in a frightful temper. The veins in his
+great, bare, weather-beaten neck swelled dangerously.
+
+"Jest let me say right here that I've had enough o' you. You can't live
+on the same acre with my girl another day."
+
+"What makes ye think I can't?" It was now the young man's turn to draw
+himself up, and as he faced the old man, his arms folded and each vast
+hand grasping an elbow, he looked like a statue of red granite, and the
+hands resembled the paws of a crouching lion; but his eyes smiled.
+
+"I don't _think_, I know ye won't."
+
+"What's the objection to me?"
+
+"Objection? Hell! What's the inducement? My hired man, an' not three
+shirts to yer back!"
+
+"That's another; I've got four. Say, old man, did you ever work out for
+a living?"
+
+"That's none o' your business," growled Bacon a little taken down. "I've
+worked an' scraped, an' got t'gether a little prop'ty here, an' they
+ain't no sucker like you goun' to come 'long here, an' live off me, an'
+spend my prop'ty after I'm dead. You can jest bet high on that."
+
+"Who's goin' t' live on ye?"
+
+"You're aimun' to."
+
+"I ain't, neither."
+
+"Yes, y'are. You've loafed on me ever since I hired ye."
+
+"That's a--" Lime checked himself for Marietta's sake, and the enraged
+father went on:--
+
+"I hired ye t' cut wood, an' you've gone an' fooled my daughter away
+from me. Now you just figger up what I owe ye, and git out o' here. Ye
+can't go too soon t' suit _me_."
+
+Bacon was renowned as the hardest man to handle in Cedar County, and
+though he was getting old, he was still a terror to his neighbors when
+roused. He was honest, temperate, and a good neighbor until something
+carried him off his balance; then he became as cruel as a panther and as
+savage as a grisly. All this Lime knew, but it did not keep his anger
+down so much as did the thought of Marietta. His silence infuriated
+Bacon, who yelled hoarsely:--
+
+"Git out o' this!"
+
+"Don't be in a rush, ol' man--"
+
+Bacon hurled himself upon Lime, who threw out one hand and stopped him,
+while he said in a low voice:--
+
+"Stay right where you are, ol' man. I'm dangerous. It's for Merry's
+sake--"
+
+The infuriated old man struck at him. Lime warded off the blow, and with
+a sudden wrench and twist threw him to the ground with frightful force.
+Before Bacon could rise, Marietta, who had witnessed the scene, came
+flying from the house.
+
+"Lime! Father! What are you doing?"
+
+"I--couldn't help it, Merry. It was him 'r me," said Lime, almost sadly.
+
+"Dad, ain't you got no sense? What 're you thinking of? You jest stop
+right now. I won't have it."
+
+He rose while she clung to him; he seemed a little dazed. It was the
+first time he had ever been thrown, and he could not but feel a certain
+respect for his opponent, but he could not give way.
+
+"Pack up yer duds," he snarled, "an' git off'n my land. I'll have the
+money fer ye when ye come back. I'll give ye jest five minutes to git
+clear o' here. Merry, you stay here."
+
+The young man saw it was useless to remain, as it would only excite the
+old man; and so, with a look of apology, not without humor, at Marietta,
+he went to the house to get his valise. The girl wept silently while the
+father raged up and down. His mood frightened her.
+
+"I thought ye had more sense than t' take up with such a dirty houn'."
+
+"He ain't a houn'," she blazed forth, "and he's just as good and clean
+as you are."
+
+"Shut up! Don't let me hear another word out o' your head. I'm boss here
+yet, I reckon."
+
+Lime came out with his valise in his hand.
+
+"Good-by, Merry," he said cheerily. She started to go to him, but her
+father's rough grasp held her.
+
+"Set _down_, an' stay there."
+
+Lime was going out of the gate.
+
+"Here! Come and get y'r money," yelled the old man, extending some
+bills. "Here's twenty--"
+
+"Go to thunder with your money," retorted Lime. "I've had my pay for my
+month's work." As he said that, he thought of the sunny kitchen and the
+merry girl, and his throat choked. Good-by to the sweet girl whose smile
+was so much to him, and to the happy noons and nights her eyes had made
+for him. He waved his hat at her as he stood in the open gate, and the
+sun lighted his handsome head into a sort of glory in her eyes. Then he
+turned and walked rapidly off down the road, not looking back.
+
+The girl, when she could no longer see him, dashed away, and, sobbing
+violently, entered the house.
+
+
+II
+
+
+There was just a suspicion of light in the east, a mere hint of a glow,
+when Lyman walked cautiously around the corner of the house and tapped
+at Marietta's window. She was sleeping soundly and did not hear, for she
+had been restless during the first part of the night. He tapped again,
+and the girl woke without knowing what woke her.
+
+Lyman put the blade of his pocket-knife under the window and raised it a
+little, and then placed his lips to the crack, and spoke in a sepulchral
+tone, half groan, half whisper:--
+
+"Merry! Merry Etty!"
+
+The dazed girl sat up in bed and listened, while her heart almost stood
+still.
+
+"Merry, it's me--Lime. Come to the winder." The girl hesitated, and
+Lyman spoke again.
+
+"Come, I hain't got much time. This is your last chance t' see me. It's
+now 'r never."
+
+The girl slipped out of bed, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, crept to
+the window.
+
+"Boost on that winder," commanded Lyman. She raised it enough to admit
+his head, which came just above the sill; then she knelt on the floor by
+the window.
+
+Her eyes stared wide and dark.
+
+"Lime, what in the world do you mean--"
+
+"I mean business," he replied. "I ain't no last year's chicken; I know
+when the old man sleeps the soundest." He chuckled pleasantly.
+
+"How 'd y' fool old Rove?"
+
+"Never mind about that now; they's something more important on hand.
+You've got t' go with me."
+
+She drew back, "Oh, Lime, I can't!"
+
+He thrust a great arm in and caught her by the wrist.
+
+"Yes, y' can. This is y'r last chance. If I go off without ye t'night, I
+never come back. What makes ye gig back? Are ye 'fraid o' me?"
+
+"N-no; but--but--"
+
+"But what, Merry Etty?"
+
+"It ain't right to go an' leave Dad all alone. Where y' goin' t' take
+me, anyhow?"
+
+"Milt Jennings let me have his horse an' buggy; they're down the road a
+piece, an' we'll go right down to Rock River and be married by sun-up."
+
+The girl still hesitated, her firm, boyish will unwontedly befogged.
+Resolute as she was, she could not at once accede to his demand.
+
+"Come, make up your mind soon. The old man 'll fill me with buck-shot if
+he catches sight o' me." He drew her arm out of the window and laid his
+bearded cheek to it. "Come, little one, we're made for each other; God
+knows it. Come! It's him 'r me."
+
+The girl's head dropped, consented.
+
+"That's right! Now a kiss to bind the bargain. There! What, cryin'? No
+more o' that, little one. Now I'll give you jest five minutes to git on
+your Sunday-go-t'-meetin' clo'es. Quick, there goes a rooster. It's
+gittin' white in the east."
+
+The man turned his back to the window and gazed at the western sky with
+a wealth of unuttered and unutterable exultation in his heart. Far off a
+rooster gave a long, clear blast--would it be answered in the barn? Yes;
+some wakeful ear had caught it, and now the answer came faint, muffled,
+and drowsy. The dog at his feet whined uneasily as if suspecting
+something wrong. The wind from the south was full of the wonderful odor
+of springing grass, warm, brown earth, and oozing sap. Overhead, to the
+west, the stars were shining in the cloudless sky, dimmed a little in
+brightness by the faint silvery veil of moisture in the air. The man's
+soul grew very tender as he stood waiting for his bride. He was rough,
+illiterate, yet there was something fine about him after all, a kind of
+simplicity and a gigantic, leonine tenderness.
+
+He heard his sweetheart moving about inside, and mused: "The old man
+won't hold out when he finds we're married. He can't get along without
+her. If he does, why, I'll rent a farm here, and we'll go to work
+housekeepin'. I can git the money. She shan't always be poor," he ended,
+and the thought was a vow.
+
+The window was raised again, and the girl's voice was heard low and
+tremulous:--
+
+"Lime, I'm ready, but I wish we didn't--"
+
+He put his arm around her waist and helped her out, and did not put her
+down till they reached the road. She was completely dressed, even to
+her hat and shoes, but she mourned:--
+
+"My hair is every-which-way; Lime, how can I be married so?"
+
+They were nearing the horse and buggy now, and Lime laughed. "Oh, we'll
+stop at Jennings's and fix up. Milt knows what's up, and has told his
+mother by this time. So just laugh as jolly as you can."
+
+Soon they were in the buggy, the impatient horse swung into the road at
+a rattling pace, and as Marietta leaned back in the seat, thinking of
+what she had done, she cried lamentably, in spite of all the caresses
+and pleadings of her lover.
+
+But the sun burst up from the plain, the prairie-chickens took up their
+mighty chorus on the hills, robins met them on the way, flocks of wild
+geese, honking cheerily, drove far overhead toward the north, and, with
+these sounds of a golden spring day in her ears, the bride grew
+cheerful, and laughed.
+
+
+III
+
+
+At about the time the sun was rising, Farmer Bacon, roused from his
+sleep by the crowing of the chickens on the dry knolls in the fields as
+well as by those in the barn-yard, rolled out of bed wearily, wondering
+why he should feel so drowsy. Then he remembered the row with Lime and
+his subsequent inability to sleep with thinking over it. There was a
+dull pain in his breast, which made him uncomfortable.
+
+As was his usual custom, he went out into the kitchen and built the fire
+for Marietta, filled the tea-kettle with water, and filled the
+water-bucket in the sink. Then he went to her bedroom door and knocked
+with his knuckles as he had done for years in precisely the same
+fashion.
+
+Rap--rap--rap. "Hello, Merry! Time t' git up. Broad daylight, an' birds
+asingun.'"
+
+Without waiting for an answer he went out to the barn and worked away at
+his chores. He took such delight in the glorious morning and the
+turbulent life of the farmyard that his heart grew light and he hummed a
+tune which sounded like the merry growl of a lion. "Poo-ee, poo-ee," he
+called to the pigs as they swarmed across the yard.
+
+"Ahrr! you big, fat rascals, them hams o' yourn is clear money. One of
+ye shall go t' buy Merry a new dress," he said as he glanced at the
+house and saw the smoke pouring out the stovepipe. "Merry's a good girl;
+she's stood by her old pap when other girls 'u'd 'a' gone back on 'im."
+
+While currying horses he went all over the ground of the quarrel
+yesterday, and he began to see it in a different light. He began to see
+that Lyman was a good man and an able man, and that his own course was a
+foolish one.
+
+"When I git mad," he confessed to himself, "I don't know any thin'. But
+I won't give her up. She ain't old 'nough t' marry yet--and, besides, I
+need her."
+
+After finishing his chores, as usual, he went to the well and washed his
+face and hands, then entered the kitchen--to find the tea-kettle boiling
+over, and no signs of breakfast anywhere, and no sign of the girl.
+
+"Well, I guess she felt sleepy this mornin'. Poor gal! Mebbe she cried
+half the night."
+
+"Merry!" he called gently, at the door.
+
+"Merry, m' gal! Pap needs his breakfast."
+
+There was no reply, and the old man's face stiffened into a wild
+surprise. He knocked heavily again and got no reply, and, with a white
+face and shaking hand, he flung the door open and gazed at the empty
+bed. His hand dropped to his side; his head turned slowly from the bed
+to the open window; he rushed forward and looked out on the ground,
+where he saw the tracks of a man.
+
+He fell heavily into the chair by the bed, while a deep groan broke from
+his stiff and twitching lips.
+
+"She's left me! She's left me!"
+
+For a long half-hour the iron-muscled old man sat there motionless,
+hearing not the songs of the hens or the birds far out in the brilliant
+sunshine. He had lost sight of his farm, his day's work, and felt no
+hunger for food. He did not doubt that her going was final. He felt that
+she was gone from him forever. If she ever came back it would not be as
+his daughter, but as the wife of Gilman. She had deserted him, fled in
+the night like a thief; his heart began to harden again, and he rose
+stiffly. His native stubbornness began to assert itself, the first great
+shock over, and he went out to the kitchen, and prepared, as best he
+could, a breakfast, and sat down to it. In some way his appetite failed
+him, and he fell to thinking over his past life, of the death of his
+wife, and the early death of his only boy. He was still trying to think
+what his life would be in the future without his girl, when two
+carriages drove into the yard. It was about the middle of the forenoon,
+and the prairie-chickens had ceased to boom and squawk; in fact, that
+was why he knew, for he had been sitting two hours at the table. Before
+he could rise he heard swift feet and a merry voice and Marietta burst
+through the door.
+
+"Hello, Pap! How you makin' out with break--" She saw a look on his face
+that went to her heart like a knife. She saw a lonely and deserted old
+man sitting at his cold and cheerless breakfast, and with a remorseful
+cry she ran across the floor and took him in her arms, kissing him again
+and again, while Mr. John Jennings and his wife stood in the door.
+
+"Poor ol' Pap! Merry couldn't leave you. She's come back to stay as long
+as he lives."
+
+The old man remained cold and stern. His deep voice had a relentless
+note in it as he pushed her away from him, noticing no one else.
+
+"But how do you come back t' me?"
+
+The girl grew rosy, but she stood proudly up.
+
+"I come back the wife of a _man_, Pap; a wife like my mother, an' this
+t' hang beside hers;" and she laid down a rolled piece of parchment.
+
+"Take it an' go," growled he; "take yer lazy lubber an' git out o' my
+sight. I raised ye, took keer o' ye when ye was little, sent ye t'
+school, bought ye dresses,--done everythin' fer ye I could, 'lowin' t'
+have ye stand by me when I got old,--but no, ye must go back on yer ol'
+pap, an' go off in the night with a good-f'r-nothin' houn' that nobuddy
+knows anything about--a feller that never done a thing fer ye in the
+world--"
+
+"What did you do for mother that she left _her_ father and mother and
+went with you? How much did you have when you took her away from her
+good home an' brought her away out here among the wolves an' Indians?
+I've heard you an' her say a hundred times that you didn't have a chair
+in the house. Now, why do you talk so t' me when I want t' git--when
+Lime comes and asks for me?"
+
+The old man was staggered. He looked at the smiling face of John
+Jennings and the tearful eyes of Mrs. Jennings, who had returned with
+Lyman. But his heart hardened again as he caught sight of Lime looking
+in at him. His absurd pride would not let him relent. Lime saw it, and
+stepped forward.
+
+"Ol' man, I want t' take a little inning now. I'm a fair, square man. I
+asked ye fer Merry as a man should. I told you I'd had hard luck, when I
+first came here. I had five thousand dollars in clean cash stole from
+me. I hain't got a thing now except credit, but that's good fer enough
+t' stock a little farm with. Now, I wan' to be fair and square in this
+thing. You wan' to rent a farm; I need one. Let me have the river
+eighty, or I'll take the whole business on a share of a third, an' Merry
+Etty and I to stay here with you jest as if nothin' 'd happened. Come,
+now, what d' y' say?"
+
+There was something winning in the sturdy bearing of the man as he stood
+before the father, who remained silent and grim.
+
+"Or if you don't do that, why, there's nothin' left fer Merry an' me but
+to go back to La Crosse, where I can have my choice of a dozen farms.
+Now this is the way things is standin'. I don't want to be underhanded
+about this thing--"
+
+"That's a fair offer," said Mr. Jennings in the pause which followed.
+"You'd better do it, neighbor Bacon. Nobuddy need know how things stood;
+they were married in my house--I thought that would be best. You can't
+live without your girl," he went on, "any more 'n I could without my
+boy. You'd better--"
+
+The figure at the table straightened up. Under his tufted eyebrows his
+keen gray eyes flashed from one to the other. His hands knotted.
+
+"Go slow!" went on the smooth voice of Jennings, known all the country
+through as a peacemaker. "Take time t' think it over. Stand out, an'
+you'll live here alone without chick 'r child; give in, and this house
+'ll bubble over with noise and young ones. Now is short, and forever's a
+long time to feel sorry in."
+
+The old man at the table knitted his eyebrows, and a distorted,
+quivering, ghastly smile broke out on his face. His chest heaved; then
+he burst forth:--
+
+"Gal, yank them gloves off, an' git me something to eat--breakfus 'r
+dinner, I don't care which. Lime, you infernal idiot, git out there and
+gear up them horses. What in thunder you foolun' round about hyere in
+seed'n'? Come, hustle, all o' ye!"
+
+And they all shouted in laughter, while the old man strode unsteadily
+but resolutely out toward the barn, followed by the bridegroom, who was
+still laughing--but silently.
+
+
+
+
+ELDER PILL, PREACHER
+
+I
+
+
+Old man Bacon was pinching forked barbs on a wire fence one rainy day in
+July, when his neighbor Jennings came along the road on his way to town.
+Jennings never went to town except when it rained too hard to work
+outdoors, his neighbors said; and of old man Bacon it was said he
+_never_ rested _nights_ nor Sundays.
+
+Jennings pulled up. "Good morning, neighbor Bacon."
+
+"Mornin'," rumbled the old man without looking up.
+
+"Taking it easy, as usual, I see. Think it's going to clear up?"
+
+"May, an' may not. Don't make much differunce t' me," growled Bacon,
+discouragingly.
+
+"Heard about the plan for a church?"
+
+"Naw."
+
+"Well, we're goin' to hire Elder Pill from Douglass to come over and
+preach every Sunday afternoon at the schoolhouse, an' we want help t'
+pay him--the laborer is worthy of his hire."
+
+"Sometimes he is an' then agin he ain't. Y' needn't look t' me f'r a
+dollar. I ain't got no intrust in y'r church."
+
+"Oh, yes, you have--besides, y'r sister--"
+
+"She ain't got no more time 'n I have t' go t' church. We're obleeged to
+do 'bout all we c'n stand t' pay our debts, let alone tryun' to support
+a preacher." And the old man shut the pinchers up on a barb with a
+vicious grip.
+
+Easy-going Mr. Jennings laughed in his silent way. "I guess you'll help
+when the time comes," he said, and, clucking to his team, drove off.
+
+"I guess I won't," muttered the grizzled old giant as he went on with
+his work. Bacon was what is called land poor in the West, that is, he
+had more land than money; still he was able to give if he felt disposed.
+It remains to say that he was _not_ disposed, being a sceptic and a
+scoffer. It angered him to have Jennings predict so confidently that he
+would help.
+
+The sun was striking redly through a rift in the clouds, about three
+o'clock in the afternoon, when he saw a man coming up the lane, walking:
+on the grass at the side of the road, and whistling merrily. The old man
+looked at him from under his huge eyebrows with some curiosity. As he
+drew near, the pedestrian ceased to whistle, and, just as the farmer
+expected him to pass, he stopped and said, in a free and easy style:--
+
+"How de do? Give me a chaw t'baccer. I'm Pill, the new minister. I take
+fine-cut when I can get it," he said, as Bacon put his hand into his
+pocket. "Much obliged. How goes it?"
+
+"Tollable, tollable," said the astounded farmer, looking hard at Pill as
+he flung a handful of tobacco into his mouth.
+
+"Yes, I'm the new minister sent around here to keep you fellows in the
+traces and out of hell-fire. Have y' fled from the wrath?" he asked, in
+a perfunctory way.
+
+"You are, eh?" said Bacon, referring back to his profession.
+
+"I am, just! How do you like that style of barb fence? Ain't the twisted
+wire better?"
+
+"I s'pose they be, but they cost more."
+
+"Yes, costs more to go to heaven than to hell. You'll think so after I
+board with you a week. Narrow the road that leads to light, and broad
+the way that leads--how's your soul anyway, brother?"
+
+"Soul's all right. I find more trouble to keep m' body go'n."
+
+"Give us your hand; so do I. All the same we must prepare for the next
+world. We're gettin' old; lay not up your treasures where moth and rust
+corrupt and thieves break through and steal."
+
+Bacon was thoroughly interested in the preacher, and was studying him
+carefully. He was tall, straight, and superbly proportioned;
+broad-shouldered, wide-lunged, and thewed like a Chippewa. His rather
+small steel-blue eyes twinkled, and his shrewd face and small head, set
+well back, completed a remarkable figure. He wore his reddish beard in
+the usual way of Western clergymen, with mustache chopped close.
+
+Bacon spoke slowly:--
+
+"You look like a good, husky man to pitch in the barn-yard; you've too
+much muscle f'r preachun'."
+
+"Come and hear me next Sunday, and if you say so then, I'll quit,"
+replied Mr. Pill, quietly. "I give ye my word for it. I believe in
+preachers havin' a little of the flesh and the devil; they can
+sympathize better with the rest of ye." The sarcasm was lost on Bacon,
+who continued to look at him. Suddenly he said, as if with an
+involuntary determination:--
+
+"Where ye go'n' to stay t'night?"
+
+"I don't know; do you?" was the quick reply.
+
+"I reckon ye can hang out with me, 'f ye feel like ut. We ain't very
+purty, at our house, but we eat. You go along down the road and tell 'em
+I sent yeh. Ye'll find an' ol' dusty Bible round some'rs--I s'pose ye
+spend y'r spare time read'n' about Joshua an' Dan'l--"
+
+"I spend more time reading men. Well, I'm off! I'm hungrier 'n a gray
+wolf in a bear-trap." And off he went as he came. But he did not
+whistle; he chewed.
+
+Bacon felt as if he had made too much of a concession, and had a strong
+inclination to shout after him, and retract his invitation; but he did
+not, only worked on, with an occasional bear-like grin. There was
+something captivating in this fellow's free and easy way.
+
+When he came up to the house an hour or two later, in singular good
+humor for him, he found the Elder in the creamery, with his niece
+Eldora, who was not more won by him than was his sister Jane Buttles, he
+was so genial and put on so few religious frills.
+
+Mrs. Buttles never put on frills of any kind. She was a most frightful
+toiler, only excelled (if excelled at all) by her brother. Unlovely at
+her best, when about her work in her faded calico gown and flat shoes,
+hair wisped into a slovenly knot, she was depressing. But she was a good
+woman, of sterling integrity, and ambitious for her girl. She was very
+glad of the chance to take charge of her brother's household after
+Marietta married.
+
+Eldora was as attractive as her mother was depressing. She was very
+young at this time and had the physical perfection--at least as regards
+body--that her parents must have had in youth. She was above the average
+height of woman, with strong swell of bosom and glorious, erect carriage
+of head. Her features were coarse, but regular and pleasing, and her
+manner boyish.
+
+Elder Pill was on the best terms with them as he watched the milk being
+skimmed out of the "submerged cans" ready for the "caaves and hawgs," as
+Mrs. Buttles called them.
+
+"Uncle told you t' come here 'nd stay t' supper, did he? What's come
+over him?" said the girl, with a sort of audacious humor.
+
+"Bill has an awful grutch agin preachers," said Mrs. Buttles, as she
+wiped her hands on her apron. "I declare, I don't see how--"
+
+"_Some_ preachers, not _all_ preachers," laughed Pill, in his mellow
+nasal. "There are preachers, and then again preachers. I'm one o' the
+t'other kind."
+
+"I sh'd think y' was," laughed the girl.
+
+"Now, Eldory, you run right t' the pig-pen with that milk, whilst I go
+in an' set the tea on."
+
+Mr. Pill seized the can of milk, saying, with a twang: "Show me the way
+that I may walk therein," and, accompanied by the laughing girl, made
+rapid way to the pig-pen just as the old man set up a ferocious shout to
+call the hired hand out of the corn-field.
+
+"How'd y' come to send _him_ here?" asked Mrs. Buttles, nodding toward
+Pill.
+
+"Damfino! I kind o' liked him--no nonsense about him," answered Bacon,
+going into temporary eclipse behind his hands as he washed his face at
+the cistern.
+
+At the supper table Pill was "easy as an old shoe"; ate with his knife,
+talked about fatting hogs, suggested a few points on raising clover,
+told of pioneer experiences in Michigan, and soon won them--hired man
+and all--to a most favorable opinion of himself. But he did not trench
+on religious matters at all.
+
+The hired man in his shirt-sleeves, and smelling frightfully of tobacco
+and sweat (as did Bacon), sat with open mouth, at times forgetting to
+eat, in his absorbing interest in the minister's yarns.
+
+"Yes, I've got a family, too much of a family, in fact--that is, I think
+so sometimes when I'm pinched. Our Western people are so indigent--in
+plain terms, poor--they _can't_ do any better than they do. But we pull
+through--we pull through! John, you look like a stout fellow, but I'll
+bet a hat I can _down_ you three out of five."
+
+"I bet you can't," grinned the hired man. It was the climax of all, that
+bet.
+
+"I'll take y' in hand an' flop y' both," roared Bacon from his
+lion-like throat, his eyes glistening with rare good-nature from the
+shadow of his gray brows. But he admired the minister's broad shoulders
+at the same time. If this fellow panned out as he promised, he was a
+rare specimen.
+
+After supper the Elder played a masterly game of croquet with Eldora,
+beating her with ease; then he wandered out to the barn and talked
+horses with the hired man, and finished by stripping off his coat and
+putting on one of Mrs. Buttles's aprons to help milk the cows.
+
+But at breakfast the next morning, when the family were about pitching
+into their food as usual without ceremony, the visitor spoke in an
+imperious tone and with lifted hand. "_Wait!_ Let us look to the Lord
+for His blessing."
+
+They waited till the grace was said, but it threw a depressing
+atmosphere over the group; evidently they considered the trouble begun.
+At the end of the meal the minister asked:--
+
+"Have you a Bible in the house?"
+
+"I reckon there's one around somewhere. Elly, go 'n see 'f y' can't
+raise one," said Mrs. Buttles, indifferently.
+
+"Have you any objection to family devotion?" asked Pill, as the book was
+placed in his hands by the girl.
+
+"No; have all you want," said Bacon, as he rose from the table and
+passed out the door.
+
+"I guess I'll see the thing through," said the hand.
+
+"It ain't just square to leave the women folks to bear the brunt of it."
+
+It was shortly after breakfast that the Elder concluded he'd walk up to
+Brother Jennings's and see about church matters.
+
+"I shall expect you, Brother Bacon, to be at the service at 2.30."
+
+"All right, go ahead expectun'," responded Bacon, with an inscrutable
+sidewise glance.
+
+"You promised, you remember?"
+
+"The--devil--I did!" the old man snarled.
+
+The Elder looked back with a smile, and went off whistling in the warm,
+bright morning.
+
+
+II
+
+
+The schoolhouse down on the creek was known as "Hell's Corners" all
+through the county, because of the frequent rows that took place therein
+at "corkuses" and the like, and also because of the number of teachers
+that had been "ousted" by the boys. In fact, it was one of those places
+still to be found occasionally in the West, far from railroads and
+schools, where the primitive ignorance and ferocity of men still prowl,
+like the panthers which are also found sometimes in the deeps of the
+Iowa timber lands.
+
+The most of this ignorance and ferocity, however, was centred in the
+family of Dixons, a dark-skinned, unsavory group of Missourians. It
+consisted of old man Dixon and wife, and six sons, all man-grown,
+great, gaunt, sinewy fellows, with no education, but superstitious as
+savages. If anything went wrong in "Hell's Corners" everybody knew that
+the Dixons were "on the rampage again." The school-teachers were warned
+against the Dixons, and the preachers were besought to convert the
+Dixons.
+
+In fact, John Jennings, as he drove Pill to the schoolhouse next day,
+said:--
+
+"If you can convert the Dixon boys, Elder, I'll give you the best horse
+in my barn."
+
+"I work not for such hire," said Mr. Pill, with a look of deep solemnity
+on his face, belied, indeed, by a twinkle in his small, keen eye--a
+twinkle which made Milton Jennings laugh candidly.
+
+There was considerable curiosity, expressed by a murmur of lips and
+voices, as the minister's tall figure entered the door and stood for a
+moment in a study of the scene before him. It was a characteristically
+Western scene. The women sat on one side of the schoolroom, the men on
+the other; the front seats were occupied by squirming boys and girls in
+their Sunday splendor.
+
+On the back, to the right, were the young men, in their best vests, with
+paper collars and butterfly neckties, with their coats unbuttoned, their
+hair plastered down in a fascinating wave on their brown foreheads. Not
+a few were in their shirt-sleeves. The older men sat immediately between
+the youths and boys, talking in hoarse whispers across the aisles about
+the state of the crops and the county ticket, while the women in much
+the same way conversed about the children and raising onions and
+strawberries. It was their main recreation, this Sunday meeting.
+
+"Brethren!" rang out the imperious voice of the minister, "let us pray."
+
+The audience thoroughly enjoyed the Elder's prayer. He was certainly
+gifted in that direction, and his petition grew genuinely eloquent as
+his desires embraced the "ends of the earth and the utterm'st parts of
+the seas thereof." But in the midst of it a clatter was heard, and five
+or six strapping fellows filed in with loud thumpings of their brogans.
+
+Shortly after they had settled themselves with elaborate impudence on
+the back seat, the singing began. Just as they were singing the last
+verse, every individual voice wavered and all but died out in
+astonishment to see William Bacon come in--an unheard-of thing! And with
+a clean shirt, too! Bacon, to tell the truth, was feeling as much out of
+place as a cat in a bath-tub, and looked uncomfortable, even shamefaced,
+as he sidled in, his shapeless hat gripped nervously in both hands;
+coatless and collarless, his shirt open at his massive throat. The girls
+tittered, of course, and the boys hammered each other's ribs, moved by
+the unusual sight. Milton Jennings, sitting beside Bettie Moss, said:--
+
+"Well! may I jump straight up and never come down!"
+
+And Shep Watson said: "May I never see the back o' my neck!" Which
+pleased Bettie so much that she grew quite purple with efforts to
+conceal her laughter; she always enjoyed a joke on her father.
+
+But all things have an end, and at last the room became quiet as Mr.
+Pill began to read the Scripture, wondering a little at the commotion.
+He suspected that those dark-skinned, grinning fellows on the back seat
+were the Dixon boys, and knew they were bent on fun. The physique of the
+minister being carefully studied, the boys began whispering among
+themselves, and at last, just as the sermon opened, they began to push
+the line of young men on the long seat over toward the girls' side,
+squeezing Milton against Bettie. This pleasantry encouraged one of them
+to whack his neighbor over the head with his soft hat, causing great
+laughter and disturbance. The preacher stopped. His cool, penetrating
+voice sounded strangely unclerical as he said:--
+
+"There are some fellows here to-day to have fun with me. If they don't
+keep quiet, they'll have more fun than they can hold." (At this point a
+green crab-apple bounded up the aisle.) "I'm not to be bulldozed."
+
+He pulled off his coat and laid it on the table before him, and, amid a
+wondering silence, took off his cuffs and collar, saying:--
+
+"I can preach the word of the Lord just as well without my coat, and I
+can throw rowdies out the door a little better in my shirt-sleeves."
+
+Had the Dixon boys been a little shrewder as readers of human character,
+or if they had known why old William Bacon was there, they would have
+kept quiet; but it was not long before they began to push again, and at
+last one of them gave a squeak, and a tussle took place. The preacher
+was in the midst of a sentence:--
+
+"An evil deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of mustard seed. It is
+small, but it grows steadily, absorbing its like from the earth and air,
+sending out roots and branches, till at last--"
+
+There was a scuffle and a snicker. Mr. Pill paused, and gazed intently
+at Tom Dixon, who was the most impudent and strongest of the gang; then
+he moved slowly down on the astonished young savage. As he came his eyes
+seemed to expand like those of an eagle in battle, steady, remorseless,
+unwavering, at the same time that his brows shut down over them--a
+glance that hushed every breath. The awed and astonished ruffians sat as
+if paralyzed by the unuttered yet terribly ferocious determination of
+the preacher's eyes. His right hand was raised, the other was clenched
+at his waist. There was a sort of solemnity in his approach, like a
+tiger creeping upon a foe.
+
+At last, after what seemed minutes to the silent, motionless
+congregation, his raised hand came down on the shoulder of the leader
+with the exact, resistless precision of the tiger's paw, and the ruffian
+was snatched from his seat to the floor sprawling. Before he could rise,
+the steel-like grip of the roused preacher sent him halfway to the door,
+and then out into the dirt of the road.
+
+Turning, Pill strode down the aisle once more. The half-risen
+congregation made way for him, curiously. When he came within reach of
+Dick, the fellow struck savagely out at the preacher, only to have his
+blow avoided by a lithe, lightning-swift movement of the body above the
+hips (a trained boxer's trick), and to find himself lying bruised and
+dazed on the floor.
+
+By this time the other brothers had recovered from their stupor, and,
+with wild curses, leaped over the benches toward the fearless preacher.
+
+But now a new voice was heard in the sudden uproar--a new but familiar
+voice. It was the mighty voice of William Bacon, known far and wide as a
+terrible antagonist, a man who had never been whipped. He was like a
+wild beast excited to primitive savagery by the smell of blood.
+
+"Stand _back_, you hell-hounds!" he said, leaping between them and the
+preacher. "You know me. Lay another hand on that man an', by the livun'
+God, you answer t' me. Back thear!"
+
+Some of the men cheered, most stood irresolute. The women crowded
+together, the children began to scream with terror, while through it all
+Pill dragged his last assailant toward the door.
+
+Bacon made his way down to where the Dixons had halted, undecided what
+to do. If the preacher had the air and action of the tiger, Bacon looked
+the grisly bear--his eyebrows working up and down, his hands clenched
+into frightful bludgeons, his breath rushing through his hairy nostrils.
+
+"Git out o' hyare," he growled. "You've run things here jest about long
+enough. Git out!"
+
+His hands were now on the necks of two of the boys and he was hustling
+them toward the door.
+
+"If you want 'o whip the preacher, meet him in the public road--one at a
+time; he'll take care o' himself. Out with ye," he ended, kicking them
+out. "Show your faces here agin, an' I'll break ye in two."
+
+The non-combative farmers now began to see the humor of the whole
+transaction, and began to laugh; but they were cut short by the calm
+voice of the preacher at his desk:--
+
+"But a _good_ deed, brethren, is like unto a grain of wheat planted in
+good earth, that bringeth forth fruit in due season an hundred fold."
+
+
+III
+
+
+Mr. Pill, with all his seeming levity, was a powerful hand at revivals,
+as was developed at the "protracted" meetings at the Grove during
+December. Indeed, such was the pitiless intensity of his zeal that a
+gloom was cast over the whole township; the ordinary festivities stopped
+or did not begin at all.
+
+The lyceum, which usually began by the first week in December, was put
+entirely out of the question, as were the spelling-schools and
+"exhibitions." The boys, it is true, still drove the girls to meeting in
+the usual manner; but they all wore a furtive, uneasy air, and their
+laughter was not quite genuine at its best, and died away altogether
+when they came near the schoolhouse, and they hardly recovered from the
+effects of the preaching till a mile or two had been spun behind the
+shining runners. It took all the magic of the jingle of the bells and
+the musical creak of the polished steel on the snow to win them back to
+laughter.
+
+As for Elder Pill, he was as a man transformed. He grew more intense
+each night, and strode back and forth behind his desk and pounded the
+Bible like an assassin. No more games with the boys, no more poking the
+girls under the chin! When he asked for a chew of tobacco now it was
+with an air which said: "I ask it as sustenance that will give me
+strength for the Lord's service," as if the demands of the flesh had
+weakened the spirit.
+
+Old man Bacon overtook Milton Jennings early one Monday morning, as
+Milton was marching down toward the Seminary at Rock River. It was
+intensely cold and still, so cold and still that the ring of the cold
+steel of the heavy sleigh, the snort of the horses, and the old man's
+voice came with astonishing distinctness to the ears of the hurrying
+youth, and it seemed a very long time before the old man came up.
+
+"Climb on!" he yelled, out of his frosty beard. He was seated on the
+"hind bob" of a wood-sleigh, on a couple of blankets. Milton clambered
+on, knowing well he'd freeze to death there.
+
+"Reckon I heerd you prowlun' around the front door with my girl last
+night," Bacon said at length. "The way you both 'tend out t' meetun'
+ought 'o sanctify yeh; must 'a' stayed to the after-meetun', didn't
+yeh?"
+
+"Nope. The front part was enough for--"
+
+"Danged if I was any more fooled with a man in m' life. I b'lieve the
+whole thing is a little scheme on the bretheren t' raise a dollar."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"Waal, y' see, Pill ain't got much out o' the app'intment thus fur, and
+he ain't likely to, if he don't shake 'em up a leetle. Borrud ten
+dollars o' me t'other day."
+
+Well, thought Milton, whatever his real motive is, Elder Pill is earning
+all he gets. Standing for two or three hours in his place night after
+night, arguing, pleading, even commanding them to be saved.
+
+Milton was describing the scenes of the meeting to Bradley Talcott and
+Douglas Radbourn the next day, and Radbourn, a young law student,
+said:--
+
+"I'd like to see him. He must be a character."
+
+"Let's make up a party and go out," said Milton, eagerly.
+
+"All right; I'll speak to Lily Graham."
+
+Accordingly, that evening a party of students, in a large sleigh, drove
+out toward the schoolhouse, along the drifted lanes and through the
+beautiful aisles of the snowy woods. A merry party of young people, who
+had no sense of sin to weigh them down. Even Radbourn and Lily joined in
+the songs which they sang to the swift clanging of the bells, until the
+lights of the schoolhouse burned redly through the frosty air.
+
+Not a few of the older people present felt scandalized by the singing
+and by the dancing of the "town girls," who could not for the life of
+them take the thing seriously. The room was so little, and hot, and
+smoky, and the men looked so queer in their rough coats and hair
+every-which-way.
+
+But they took their seats demurely on the back seat, and joined in the
+opening songs, and listened to the halting prayers of the brethren and
+the sonorous prayers of the Elder, with commendable gravity. Miss Graham
+was a devout Congregationalist, and hushed the others into gravity when
+their eyes began to dance dangerously.
+
+However, as Mr. Pill warmed to his work, the girls grew sober enough. He
+awed them, and frightened them with the savagery of his voice and
+manner. His small gray eyes were like daggers unsheathed, and his small,
+round head took on a cat-like ferocity, as he strode to and fro, hurling
+out his warnings and commands in a hoarse howl that terrified the
+sinner, and drew "amens" of admiration from the saints.
+
+"Atavism; he has gone back to the era of the medicine man," Radbourn
+murmured.
+
+As the speaker went on, foam came upon his thin lips; his lifted hand
+had prophecy and threatening in it. His eyes reflected flames; his voice
+had now the tone of the implacable, vindictive judge. He gloated on the
+pictures that his words called up. By the power of his imagination the
+walls widened, the floor was no longer felt, the crowded room grew still
+as death, every eye fixed on the speaker's face.
+
+"I tell you, you must repent or die. I can see the great judgment angel
+now!" he said, stopping suddenly and pointing above the stovepipe. "I
+can see him as he stands weighing your souls as a man 'ud weigh wheat
+and chaff. Wheat goes into the Father's garner; chaff is blown to hell's
+devouring flame! I can see him _now_! He seizes a poor, damned,
+struggling soul by the _neck_, he holds him over the flaming forge of
+_hell_ till his bones melt like wax; he shrivels like thread in the
+flame of a candle; he is nothing but a charred husk, and the angel
+flings him back into _outer darkness_; life was not in him."
+
+It was this astonishing figure, powerfully acted, that scared poor Tom
+Dixon into crying out for mercy. The effect upon others was painful. To
+see so great a sinner fall terror-stricken seemed like a providential
+stroke of confirmatory evidence, and nearly a dozen other young people
+fell crying, whereat the old people burst out into amens of spasmodic
+fervor, while the preacher, the wild light still in his eyes, tore up
+and down, crying above the tumult:--
+
+"The Lord is come with _power_! His hand is visible _here_. Shout
+_aloud_ and spare _not_. Fall before him as _dust_ to his feet!
+Hypocrites, vipers, scoffers! the _lash_ o' the _Lord_ is on ye!"
+
+In the intense pause which followed as he waited with expectant,
+uplifted face--a pause so deep even the sobbing sinners held their
+breath--a dry, drawling, utterly matter-of-fact voice broke the intense
+hush.
+
+"S-a-y, Pill, ain't you a-bearun' down on the boys a _leetle too_ hard?"
+
+The preacher's extended arm fell as if life had gone out of it. His face
+flushed and paled; the people laughed hysterically, some of them with
+the tears of terror still on their cheeks; but Radbourn said, "Bravo,
+Bacon!"
+
+Pill recovered himself.
+
+"Not hard enough for _you_, neighbor Bacon."
+
+Bacon rose, retaining the same dry, prosaic tone:--
+
+"I ain't bitin' that kind of a hook, an' I ain't goin' to be _yanked_
+into heaven when I c'n _slide_ into hell. Waal! I must be goin'; I've
+got a new-milk's cow that needs tendin' to."
+
+The effect of all this was very great. From being at the very mouth of
+the furnace, quivering with fear and captive to morbid imaginings,
+Bacon's dry intonation brought them all back to earth again. They
+perceived something of the absurdity of the whole situation.
+
+Pill was beaten for the first time in his life. He had been struck below
+the belt by a good-natured giant. The best he could do, as Bacon
+shuffled calmly out, was to stammer: "Will some one please sing?" And
+while they sang, he stood in deep thought. Just as the last verse was
+quivering into silence, the full, deep tones of Radbourn's voice rose
+above the bustle of feet and clatter of seats:--
+
+"And all _that_ he preaches in the name of Him who came bringing peace
+and good-will to men."
+
+Radbourn's tone had in it reproach and a noble suggestion. The people
+looked at him curiously. The deacons nodded their heads together in
+counsel, and when they turned to the desk Pill was gone!
+
+"Gee whittaker! That was tough," said Milton to Radbourn; "knocked the
+wind out o' him like a cannon-ball. What'll he do now?"
+
+"He can't do anything but acknowledge his foolishness."
+
+"You no business t' come here an' 'sturb the Lord's meetin'," cried old
+Daddy Brown to Radbourn. "You're a sinner and a scoffer."
+
+"I thought Bacon was the disturbing ele--"
+
+"You're just as bad!"
+
+"He's all _right_," said William Councill. "I've got sick, m'self, of
+bein' _scared_ into religion. I never was so fooled in a man in my life.
+If I'd tell you what Pill said to me the other day, when we was in
+Robie's store, you'd fall in a fit. An' to hear him talkin' here
+t'night, is enough to make a horse laugh."
+
+"You're all in league with the devil," said the old man, wildly; and so
+the battle raged on.
+
+Milton and Radbourn escaped from it, and got out into the clear, cold,
+untainted night.
+
+"The heat of the furnace doesn't reach as far as the horses," Radbourn
+moralized, as he aided in unhitching the shivering team. "In the vast,
+calm spaces of the stars, among the animals, such scenes as we have just
+seen are impossible." He lifted his hand in a lofty gesture. The light
+fell on his pale face and dark eyes. The girls were a little indignant
+and disposed to take the preacher's part. They thought Bacon had no
+right to speak out that way, and Miss Graham uttered her protest, as
+they whirled away on the homeward ride with pleasant jangle of bells.
+
+"But the secret of it all was," said Radbourn in answer, "Pill knew he
+was acting a part. I don't mean that he meant to deceive, but he got
+excited, and his audience responded as an audience does to an actor of
+the first class, and he was for the time in earnest; his imagination
+_did_ see those horrors,--he was swept away by his own words. But when
+Bacon spoke, his dry tone and homely words brought everybody, preacher
+and all, back to the earth with a thump! Everybody saw, that after
+weeping and wailing there for an hour, they'd go home, feed the calves,
+hang up the lantern, put out the cat, wind the clock, and go to bed. In
+other words, they all came back out of their barbaric _powwow_ to their
+natural modern selves."
+
+This explanation had palpable truth, but Lily perceived that it had
+wider application than to the meeting they had just left.
+
+"They'll be music around this clearing to-morrow," said Milton, with a
+sigh; "wish I was at home this week."
+
+"But what'll become of Mr. Pill?"
+
+"Oh, he'll come out all right," Radbourn assured her, and Milton's clear
+tenor rang out as he drew Eileen closer to his side:--
+
+  "O silver moon, O silver moon,
+  You set, you set too soon--
+  The morrow day is far away,
+  The night is but begun."
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The news, grotesquely exaggerated, flew about the next day, and at
+night, though it was very cold and windy, the house was jammed to
+suffocation. On these lonely prairies life is so devoid of anything but
+work, dramatic entertainments are so few, and appetite so keen, that a
+temperature of twenty degrees below zero is no bar to a trip of ten
+miles. The protracted meeting was the only recreation for many of them.
+The gossip before and after service was a delight not to be lost, and
+this last sensation was dramatic enough to bring out old men and women
+who had not dared to go to church in winter for ten years.
+
+Long before seven o'clock, the schoolhouse blazed with light and buzzed
+with curious speech. Team after team drove up to the door, and as the
+drivers leaped out to receive the women, they said in low but eager
+tones to the bystanders:--
+
+"Meeting begun yet?"
+
+"Nope!"
+
+"What kind of a time y' havin' over here, any way?"
+
+"A mighty solumn time," somebody would reply with a low laugh.
+
+By seven o'clock every inch of space was occupied; the air was
+frightful. The kerosene lamps gave off gas and smoke, the huge stove
+roared itself into an angry red on its jack-oak grubs, and still people
+crowded in at the door.
+
+Discussion waxed hot as the stove; two or three Universalists boldly
+attacked everybody who came their way. A tall man stood on a bench in
+the corner, and, thumping his Bible wildly with his fist, exclaimed, at
+the top of his voice:--
+
+"There is _no_ hell at _all_! The Bible says the _wicked_ perish
+_utterly_. They are _consumed_ as _ashes_ when they die. They _perish_
+as _dogs_!"
+
+"What kind o' docterin' is that?" asked a short man of Councill.
+
+"I d'know. It's ol' Sam Richards. Calls himself a
+Christian--Christadelphian 'r some new-fangled name."
+
+At last people began to inquire, "Well, ain't he comin'?"
+
+"Most time f'r the Elder to come, ain't it?"
+
+"Oh, I guess he's preparin' a sermon."
+
+John Jennings pushed anxiously to Daddy Brown.
+
+"Ain't the Elder comin'?"
+
+"I d'know. He didn't stay at my house."
+
+"He didn't?"
+
+"No. Thought he went home with you."
+
+"I ain't see 'im 't all. I'll ask Councill. Brother Councill, seen
+anything of the Elder?"
+
+"No. Didn't he go home with Bensen?"
+
+"I d'n know. I'll see."
+
+This was enough to start the news that "Pill had skipped."
+
+This the deacons denied, saying "he'd come or send word."
+
+Outside, on the leeward side of the house, the young men who couldn't
+get in stood restlessly, now dancing a jig, now kicking their huge boots
+against the underpinning to warm their toes. They talked spasmodically
+as they swung their arms about their chests, speaking from behind their
+huge buffalo-coat collars.
+
+The wind roared through the creaking oaks; the horses stirred
+complainingly, the bells on their backs crying out querulously; the
+heads of the fortunates inside were shadowed outside on the snow, and
+the restless young men amused themselves betting on which head was
+Bensen and which Councill.
+
+At last some one pounded on the desk inside. The suffocating but lively
+crowd turned with painful adjustment toward the desk, from whence Deacon
+Bensen's high, smooth voice sounded:--
+
+"Brethren an' sisters, Elder Pill hain't come--and, as it's about eight
+o'clock, he probably won't come to-night. After the disturbances last
+night, it's--a--a--we're all the more determined to--the--a--need of
+reforming grace is more felt than ever. Let us hope nothing has happened
+to the Elder. I'll go see to-morrow, and if he is unable to come--I'll
+see Brother Wheat, of Cresco. After prayer by Brother Jennings, we will
+adjourn till to-morrow night. Brother Jennings, will you lead us in
+prayer?" (Some one snickered.) "I hope the disgraceful--a--scenes of
+last night will not be repeated."
+
+"Where's Pill?" demanded a voice in the back part of the room. "That's
+what I want to know."
+
+"He's a bad pill," said another, repeating a pun already old.
+
+"I guess so! He borrowed twenty dollars o' me last week," said the first
+voice.
+
+"He owes me for a pig," shouted a short man, excitedly. "I believe he's
+skipped to get rid o' his debts."
+
+"So do I. I allus said he was a mighty queer preacher."
+
+"He'd bear watchin' was my idee fust time I ever see him."
+
+"Careful, brethren--_careful_. He may come at any minute."
+
+"I don't care if he does. I'd bone him f'r pay f'r that shote, preacher
+'r no preacher," said Bartlett, a little nervously.
+
+High words followed this, and there was prospect of a fight. The
+pressure of the crowd, however, was so great it was well-nigh impossible
+for two belligerents to get at each other. The meeting broke up at last,
+and the people, chilly, soured, and disappointed at the lack of
+developments, went home saying Pill was _scaly_; no preacher who chawed
+terbacker was to be trusted, and when it was learned that the horse and
+buggy he drove he owed Jennings and Bensen for, everybody said, "He's a
+fraud."
+
+
+V
+
+
+In the meantime, Andrew Pill was undergoing the most singular and awful
+mental revolution.
+
+When he leaped blindly into his cutter and gave his horse the rein, he
+was wild with rage and shame, and a sort of fear. As he sat with bent
+head, he did not hear the tread of the horse, and did not see the trees
+glide past. The rabbit leaped away under the shadow of the thick groves
+of young oaks; the owl, scared from its perch, went fluttering off into
+the cold, crisp air; but he saw only the contemptuous, quizzical face of
+old William Bacon--one shaggy eyebrow lifted, a smile showing through
+his shapeless beard.
+
+He saw the colorless, handsome face of Radbourn, and his look of
+reproach and note of suggestion--Radbourn, one of the best thinkers in
+Rock River, and the most generally admired young man in Rock County.
+
+When he saw and heard Bacon, his hurt pride flamed up in wrath, but the
+calm voice of Radbourn, and the look in his stern, accusing eyes, made
+his head fall in thought. As he rode, things grew clearer. As a matter
+of fact, his whole system of religious thought was like the side of a
+shelving sand-bank--in unstable equilibrium--needing only a touch to
+send it slipping into a shapeless pile at the river's edge. That touch
+had been given, and he was now in the midst of the motion of his falling
+faith. He didn't know how much would stand when the sloughing ended.
+
+Andrew Pill had been a variety of things, a farmer, a dry-goods
+merchant, and a travelling salesman, but in a revival quite like this of
+his own, he had been converted and his life changed. He now desired to
+help his fellow-men to a better life, and willingly went out among the
+farmers, where pay was small. It was not true, therefore, that he had
+gone into it because there was little work and good pay. He was really
+an able man, and would have been a success in almost anything he
+undertook; but his reading and thought, his easy intercourse with men
+like Bacon and Radbourn, had long since undermined any real faith in the
+current doctrine of retribution, and to-night, as he rode into the
+night, he was feeling it all and suffering it all, forced to acknowledge
+at last what had been long moving.
+
+The horse took the wrong road, and plodded along steadily, carrying him
+away from his home, but he did not know it for a long time. When at last
+he looked up and saw the road leading out upon the wide plain between
+the belts of timber, leading away to Rock River, he gave a sigh of
+relief. He could not meet his wife then; he must have a chance to think.
+
+Over him, the glittering, infinite sky of winter midnight soared,
+passionless, yet accusing in its calmness, sweetness, and majesty. What
+was he that he could dogmatize on eternal life and the will of the Being
+who stood behind that veil? And then would come rushing back that scene
+in the schoolhouse, the smell of the steaming garments, the gases from
+the lamps, the roar of the stove, the sound of his own voice, strident,
+dominating, so alien to his present mood, he could only shudder at it.
+
+He was worn out with thinking when he drove into the stable at the
+Merchants' House and roused up the sleeping hostler, who looked at him
+suspiciously and demanded pay in advance. This seemed right in his
+present mood. He was not to be trusted.
+
+When he flung himself face downward on his bed, the turmoil in his brain
+was still going on. He couldn't hold one thought or feeling long; all
+seemed slipping like water from his hands.
+
+He had in him great capacity for change, for growth. Circumstances had
+been against his development thus far, but the time had come when growth
+seemed to be defeat and failure.
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Radbourn was thinking about him, two days after, as he sat in his friend
+Judge Brown's law office, poring over a volume of law. He saw that
+Bacon's treatment had been heroic; he couldn't get the pitiful confusion
+of the preacher's face out of his mind. But, after all, Bacon's seizing
+of just that instant was a stroke of genius.
+
+Some one touched him on the arm and he turned.
+
+"Why--Elder--Mr. Pill, how de do? Sit down. Draw up a chair."
+
+There was trouble in the preacher's face. "Can I see you, Radbourn,
+alone?"
+
+"Certainly; come right into this room. No one will disturb us there."
+
+"Now, what can I do for you?" he said, as they sat down.
+
+"I want to talk to you about--about religion," said Pill, with a little
+timid pause in his voice.
+
+Radbourn looked grave. "I'm afraid you've come to a dangerous man."
+
+"I want you to tell me what you think. I know you're a student. I want
+to talk about my case," pursued the preacher, with a curious hesitancy.
+"I want to ask a few questions on things."
+
+"Very well; sail in. I'll do the best I can," said Radbourn.
+
+"I've been thinking a good deal since that night. I've come to the
+conclusion that I don't believe what I've been preaching. I thought I
+did, but I didn't. I don't know _what_ I believe. Seems as if the land
+had slid from under my feet. What am I to do?"
+
+"Say so," replied Radbourn, his eyes kindling. "Say so, and get out of
+it. There's nothing worse than staying where you are. What have you
+saved from the general land-slide?"
+
+Pill smiled a little. "I don't know."
+
+"Want me to cross-examine you and see, eh? Very well, here goes." He
+settled back with a smile. "You believe in square dealing between man
+and man?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"You believe in good deeds, candor, and steadfastness?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"You believe in justice, equality of opportunity, and in liberty?"
+
+"Certainly I do."
+
+"You believe, in short, that a man should do unto others as he'd have
+others do unto him; think right and live out his thoughts?"
+
+"All that I steadfastly believe."
+
+"Well, I guess your land-slide was mostly imaginary. The face of the
+eternal rock is laid bare. You didn't recognize it at first, that's all.
+One question more. You believe in getting at truth?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well, truth is only found from the generalizations of facts. Before
+calling a thing true, study carefully all accessible facts. Make your
+religion practical. The matter-of-fact tone of Bacon would have had no
+force if you had been preaching an earnest morality in place of an
+antiquated terrorism."
+
+"I know it, I know it," sighed Pill, looking down.
+
+"Well, now go back and tell 'em so. And then, if you can't keep your
+place preaching what you do believe, get into something else. For the
+sake of all morality and manhood, don't go on cursing yourself with
+hypocrisy."
+
+Mr. Pill took a chew of tobacco rather distractedly, and said:--
+
+"I'd like to ask you a few questions."
+
+"No, not now. You think out your present position yourself. Find out
+just what you have saved from your land-slide."
+
+The elder man rose; he hardly seemed the same man who had dominated his
+people a few days before. He turned with still greater embarrassment.
+
+"I want to ask a favor. I'm going back to my family. I'm going to say
+something of what you've said, to my congregation--but--I'm in debt--and
+the moment they know I'm a backslider, they're going to bear down on me
+pretty heavy. I'd like to be independent."
+
+"I see. How much do you need?" mused Radbourn.
+
+"I guess two hundred would stave off the worst of them."
+
+"I guess Brown and I can fix that. Come in again to-night. Or no, I'll
+bring it round to you."
+
+The two men parted with a silent pressure of the hand that meant more
+than any words.
+
+When Mr. Pill told his wife that he could preach no more, she cried, and
+gasped, and scolded till she was in danger of losing her breath
+entirely. "A guinea-hen sort of a woman" Councill called her. "She can
+talk more an' say less 'n any woman I ever see," was Bacon's verdict,
+after she had been at dinner at his house. She was a perpetual irritant.
+
+Mr. Pill silenced her at last with a note of impatience approaching a
+threat, and drove away to the Corners to make his confession without
+her. It was Saturday night, and Elder Wheat was preaching as he entered
+the crowded room. A buzz and mumble of surprise stopped the orator for a
+few moments, and he shook hands with Mr. Pill dubiously, not knowing
+what to think of it all, but as he was in the midst of a very effective
+oratorical scene, he went on.
+
+The silent man at his side felt as if he were witnessing a burlesque of
+himself as he listened to the pitiless and lurid description of torment
+which Elder Wheat poured forth,--the same figures and threats he had
+used a hundred times. He stirred uneasily in his seat, while the
+audience paid so little attention that the perspiring little orator
+finally called for a hymn, saying:--
+
+"Elder Pill has returned from his unexpected absence, and will exhort in
+his proper place."
+
+When the singing ended, Mr. Pill rose, looking more like himself than
+since the previous Sunday. A quiet resolution was in his eyes and voice
+as he said:--
+
+"Elder Wheat has more right here than I have. I want 'o say that I'm
+going to give up my church in Douglass and--" A murmur broke out, which
+he silenced with his raised hand. "I find I don't believe any longer
+what I've been believing and preaching. Hold on! let me go on. I don't
+quite know where I'll bring up, but I think my religion will simmer down
+finally to about this: A full half-bushel to the half-bushel and sixteen
+ounces to the pound." Here two or three cheered. "Do unto others as
+you'd have others do unto you." Applause from several, quickly
+suppressed as the speaker went on, Elder Wheat listening as if
+petrified, with his mouth open.
+
+"I'm going out of preaching, at least for the present. After things get
+into shape with me again, I may set up to teach people how to live, but
+just now I can't do it. I've got all I can do to instruct myself. Just
+one thing more. I owe two or three of you here. I've got the money for
+William Bacon, James Bartlett, and John Jennings. I turn the mare and
+cutter over to Jacob Bensen, for the note he holds. I hain't got much
+religion left, but I've got some morality. That's all I want to say
+now."
+
+When he sat down there was a profound hush; then Bacon arose.
+
+"That's _man's_ talk, that is! An' I jest want 'o say, Andrew Pill, that
+you kin jest forgit you owe me anything. An' if ye want any help come to
+me. Y're jest gittun' ready to preach, 'n' I'm ready to give ye my
+support."
+
+"That's the talk," said Councill. "I'm with ye on that."
+
+Pill shook his head. The painful silence which followed was broken by
+the effusive voice of Wheat:--
+
+"Let us pray--and remember our lost brother."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The urgings of the people were of no avail. Mr. Pill settled up his
+affairs and moved to Cresco, where he went back into trade with a
+friend, and for three years attended silently to his customers, lived
+down their curiosity, and studied anew the problem of life. Then he
+moved away, and no one knew whither.
+
+One day last year Bacon met Jennings on the road.
+
+"Heerd anything o' Pill lately?"
+
+"No, have you?"
+
+"Waal, yes. Brown told me he ran acrost him down in Eelinoy, doun' well,
+too."
+
+"In dry goods?"
+
+"No, preachun'."
+
+"Preachun'?"
+
+"So Brown said. Kind of a free-f'r-all church, I reckon, from what Jedge
+told me. Built a new church; fills it twice a Sunday. I'd like to hear
+him, but he's got t' be too big a gun f'r us. Ben studyun', they say;
+went t' school."
+
+Jennings drove sadly and thoughtfully on.
+
+"Rather stumps Brother Jennings," laughed Bacon, in a good-humored
+growl.
+
+
+
+
+A DAY OF GRACE
+
+
+Sunday is the day for courtship on the prairie. It has also the piety of
+cleanliness. It allows the young man to get back to a self-respecting
+sweetness of person, and enables the girls to look as nature intended,
+dainty and sweet as posies.
+
+The change from everyday clothing on the part of young workmen like Ben
+Griswold was more than change; it approached transformation. It took
+more than courage to go through the change,--it required love.
+
+Ben arose a little later on Sunday morning than on weekdays, but there
+were the chores to do as usual. The horses must be watered, fed, and
+curried, and the cows were to milk, but after breakfast Ben threw off
+the cares of the hired hand. When he came down from the little garret
+into which the hot August sun streamed redly, he was a changed creature.
+Clean from tip to toe, newly shaven, wearing a crackling white shirt, a
+linen collar and a new suit of store clothes, he felt himself a man
+again, fit to meet maidens.
+
+His partner, being a married man, was slouching around in his tattered
+and greasy brown denim overalls. He looked at Ben and grinned.
+
+"Got a tag on y'rself?"
+
+"No, why?"
+
+"Nobod'y know ye, if anything happened on the road. There's thirty
+dollars gone to the dogs." He sighed. "Oh, well, you'll get over that,
+just as I did."
+
+"I hope I won't get over liking to be clean," Ben said a little sourly.
+"I won't be back to milk."
+
+"Didn't expect ye. That's the very time o' day the girls are
+purtiest,--just about sundown. Better take Rock. I may want the old team
+myself."
+
+Ben hitched up and drove off in the warm bright morning, with wonderful
+elation, clean and self-respecting once more. His freshly shaven face
+felt cool, and his new suit fitted him well. His heart took on a great
+resolution, which was to call upon Grace.
+
+The thought of her made his brown hands shake, and he remembered how
+many times he had sworn to visit her, but had failed of courage, though
+it seemed she had invited him by word and look to do so.
+
+He overtook Milton Jennings on his way along the poplar-lined lane.
+
+"Hello, Milt, where you bound?"
+
+Milton glanced up with a curious look in his laughing eyes. From the
+pockets of his long linen duster he drew a handful of beautiful scarlet
+and yellow Siberian crab-apples.
+
+"See them crabs?"
+
+"Yes, I see 'em."
+
+Milton drew a similar handful out of his left pocket. "See those?"
+
+"What y' going to do with 'em?"
+
+"Take 'em home again."
+
+Something in Milton's voice led him to ask soberly:--
+
+"What did you intend doing with 'em?"
+
+"Present 'em to Miss Cole."
+
+"Well, why didn't y' do it?"
+
+Milton showed his white teeth in a smile that was frankly derisive of
+himself.
+
+"Well, when I got over there I found young Conley's sorrel hitched to
+one post and Walt Brown's gray hitched to the other. I went in, but I
+didn't stay long; in fact, I didn't sit down. I was afraid those
+infernal apples would roll out o' my pockets. I was afraid they'd find
+out I brought 'em over there for Miss Cole, like the darn fool I was."
+
+They both laughed heartily. Milton was always as severe upon himself as
+upon any one else.
+
+"That's tough," said Ben, "but climb in, and let's go to Sunday-school."
+
+Milton got in, and they ate the apples as they rode along.
+
+The Grove schoolhouse was the largest in the township, and was the only
+one with a touch of redeeming grace. It was in a lovely spot; great oaks
+stood all about, and back of it the woods grew thick, and a clear creek
+gurgled over its limestone bed not far away.
+
+To Ben and Milton there was a wondrous charm about the Grove
+schoolhouse. It was the one place where the boys and girls met in
+garments disassociated from toil. Sundays in summer, and on winter
+nights at lyceums or protracted meetings, the boys came to see the
+girls in their bright dresses, with their clear and (so it seemed)
+scornful bright eyes.
+
+All through the service Ben sat where he could see Grace by turning his
+head, but he had not the courage to do so. Once or twice he caught a
+glimpse of the curve of her cheek and the delicate lines of her ear, and
+a suffocating throb came into his throat.
+
+He wanted to ask her to go with him down to Cedarville to the Methodist
+camp-meeting, but he knew it was impossible. He could not even say "good
+day" when she took pains to pass near him after church. He nodded like a
+great idiot, all ease and dignity lost, his throat too dry and hot to
+utter a sound.
+
+He cursed his shyness as he went out after his horse. He saw her picking
+her dainty way up the road with Conrad Sieger walking by her side. What
+made it worse for Ben was a dim feeling that she liked him, and would go
+with him if he had the courage to ask her.
+
+"Well, Ben," said Milton, "it's settled, we go to Rock River to-night to
+the camp-meeting. Did you ask Grace?"
+
+"No, she's going with Con. It's just my blasted luck."
+
+"That's too bad. Well, come with us. Take Maud."
+
+As he rode away Ben passed Grace on the road.
+
+"Going to the camp-meeting, Con?" asked Milton, in merry voice.
+
+"I guess so," said Conrad, a handsome, but slow-witted German.
+
+As they went on Ben could have wept. His keener perception told him
+there was a look of appeal in Grace's upturned eyes.
+
+He made a poor companion at dinner, and poor plain Maud knew his mind
+was elsewhere. She was used to that and accepted it with a pathetic
+attempt to color it differently.
+
+They got away about five o'clock.
+
+Ben drove the team, driving took his mind off his weakness and failure;
+while Milton in the seclusion of the back seat of the carryall was happy
+with Amelia Turner.
+
+It was growing dark as they entered upon the curving road along the
+river which was a relief from the rectangular and sun-smitten roads of
+the prairie. They lingered under the great oaks and elms which shaded
+them. It would have been perfect Ben thought, if Grace had been beside
+him in Maud's place.
+
+He wondered how he should manage to speak to Grace. There was a time
+when it seemed easier. Now the consciousness of his love made the
+simplest question seem like the great question of all.
+
+Other teams were on the road, some returning, some going. A camp-meeting
+had come to be an annual amusement, like a circus, and young people from
+all over the country drove down on Sundays, as if to some celebration
+with fireworks.
+
+"There's the lane," said Milton. "See that team goin' in?"
+
+Ben pulled up and they looked at it doubtfully. It looked dangerously
+miry. It was quite dark now and Ben said:--
+
+"That's a scaly piece of road."
+
+"Oh, that's all right. Hark!"
+
+As they listened they could hear the voice of the exhorter nearly a mile
+away. It pushed across the cool spaces with a wild and savage sound. The
+young people thrilled with excitement.
+
+Insects were singing in the grass. Frogs with deepening chorus seemed to
+announce the coming of night, and above these peaceful sounds came the
+wild shouts of the far-off preacher, echoing through the cool green
+arches of the splendid grove.
+
+The girls became silent, as the voice grew louder.
+
+Lights appeared ahead, and the road led up a slight hill to a gate. Ben
+drove on under a grove of oaks, past dimly lighted tents, whose open
+flaps showed tumbled beds and tables laden with crockery. Heavy women
+were moving about inside, their shadows showing against the tent walls
+like figures in a pantomime.
+
+The young people alighted in curious silence. As they stood a moment,
+tying the team, the preacher lifted his voice in a brazen, clanging,
+monotonous reiteration of worn phrases.
+
+"Come to the _Lord_! Come _now_! Come to the _light_! Jesus will give
+it! _Now_ is the appointed time,--come to the _light_!"
+
+From a tent near by arose the groaning, gasping, gurgling scream of a
+woman in mortal agony.
+
+"O my God!"
+
+It was charged with the most piercing distress. It cut to the heart's
+palpitating centre like a poniard thrust. It had murder and outrage in
+it.
+
+The girls clutched Ben and Milton. "Oh, let's go home!"
+
+"No, let's go and see what it all is."
+
+The girls hung close to the arms of the young men and they went down to
+the tent and looked in.
+
+It was filled with a motley throng of people, most of them seated on
+circling benches. A fringe of careless or scoffing onlookers stood back
+against the tent wall. Many of them were strangers to Ben.
+
+Occasionally a Norwegian farm-hand, or a bevy of young people from some
+near district, lifted the flap and entered with curious or laughing or
+insolent faces.
+
+The tent was lighted dimly by kerosene lamps, hung in brackets against
+the poles, and by stable lanterns set here and there upon the benches.
+
+Ben and Milton ushered the girls in and seated them a little way back.
+The girls smiled, but only faintly. The undertone of women's cries moved
+them in spite of their scorn of it all.
+
+"What cursed foolishness!" said Ben to Milton.
+
+Milton smiled, but did not reply. He only nodded toward the exhorter, a
+man with a puffy jumble of features and the form of a gladiator, who was
+uttering wild and explosive phrases.
+
+"Oh, my friends! I bless the Lord for the SHALL in the word. You SHALL
+get light. You SHALL be saved. Oh, the SHALL in the word! You SHALL be
+redeemed!"
+
+As he grew more excited, his hoarse voice rose in furious screams, as if
+he were defying hell's legions. Foam lay on his lips and flew from his
+mouth. At every repetition of the word "shall" he struck the desk a
+resounding blow with his great palm.
+
+"He's a hard hitter," said Milton.
+
+At length he leaped, apparently in uncontrollable excitement, upon the
+mourners' bench, and ran up and down close to the listening, moaning
+audience. He walked with a furious rhythmic, stamping action, like a
+Sioux in the war dance. Wild cries burst from his audience, antiphonal
+with his own.
+
+"He 'SHALL' send light!"
+
+"_Send Thy arrows, O Lord._"
+
+"O God, come!"
+
+"He 'SHALL' keep His word!"
+
+One old negro woman, fat, powerful, and gloomy, suddenly arose and
+uttered a scream that had the dignity and savagery of a mountain lion's
+cry. It rang far out into the night.
+
+The exhorter continued his mad, furious, thumping, barbaric walk.
+
+Behind him a row of other exhorters sat, a relay ready to leap to his
+aid. They urged on the tumult with wild cries.
+
+"A-men, brother."
+
+"YES, brother, YES!" clapping their hands in rhythm.
+
+The exhorter redoubled his fury. He was like a jaded actor rising at
+applause, carried out of his self-command.
+
+Out of the obscure tumult of faces and tossing hands there came at last
+certain recognizable features. The people were mainly farming folks of
+the more ignorant sort, rude in dress and bearing, hard and bent with
+toil. They were recognizably of a class subject to these low forms of
+religious excitement which were once well-nigh universal.
+
+The outer fringe continued to smile scornfully and to jest, yet they
+were awed, in a way, by this suddenly revealed deep of barbaric emotion.
+
+The girls were appalled by the increasing clangor. Milton was amused,
+but Ben grew bitter. Something strong came out in him, too. His lip
+curled in disgust.
+
+Suddenly, out of the level space of bowed shoulders, tossing hands, and
+frenzied, upturned faces, a young girl leaped erect. She was strong and
+handsome, powerful in the waist and shoulders. Her hair was braided like
+a child's, and fell down her back in a single strand. Her head was
+girlish, but her face looked old and drawn and tortured.
+
+She moaned pitifully; she clapped her hands with wild gestures, ending
+in a quivering motion. The action grew to lightning-like quickness. Her
+head seemed to set in its socket. Her whole body stiffened. Gasping
+moans came from her clenched teeth as she fell to the ground and rolled
+under the seats, wallowing in the muddy straw and beating her feet upon
+the ground like a dying partridge.
+
+The people crowded about her, but the preacher, roared above the
+tumult:--
+
+"Si' down! Never mind that party. She's all right; she's in the hands of
+the Lord!"
+
+The people settled into their seats, and the wild tumult went on again.
+Ben rose to go over where the girl was and the others followed.
+
+A young man seated by the struggling sinner held her hand and fanned her
+with his hat, while some girl friends, scared and sobbing, kept the
+tossing limbs covered. She rolled from side to side restlessly,
+thrusting forth her tongue as if her throat were dry. She looked like a
+dying animal.
+
+Maud clung to Milton.
+
+"Oh, can't something be done?"
+
+"Her soul is burdened for _you_!" cried a wild old woman to the
+impassive youth who clung to the frenzied girl's hand.
+
+A moment later, as the demoniacal chorus of yells, songs, incantations,
+shrieks, groans, and prayers swelled high, a farmer's wife on the left
+uttered a hoarse cry and stiffened and fell backward upon the ground.
+She rolled her head from side to side. Her eyes turned in; her lips wore
+a maniac's laugh, and her troubled brow made her look like the death
+mask of a tortured murderer, the hell horror frozen on it.
+
+She sank at last into a hideous calm, with her strained and stiffened
+hands pointing weirdly up. She was like marble. She did not move a
+hair's breadth during the next two hours.
+
+Over to the left a young man leaped to his feet with a scream:--
+
+"Jesus, _Jesus_, JESUS!"
+
+The great negress caught him in her arms as he fell, and laid him down,
+then leaped up and down, shrieking:--
+
+"O Jesus, come. Come, God's Lamb!"
+
+Around her a dozen women took up her cry. Most of them had no voices.
+Their horrifying screams had become hoarse hisses, yet still they
+strove. Scores of voices were mixed in the pandemonium of prayer.
+
+All order was lost. Three of the preachers now stood shouting before the
+mourners' bench, two were in the aisles.
+
+One came down the aisle toward the girl with the braided hair. As he
+came he prayed. Foam was on his lips, but his eyes were cool and
+calculating; they betrayed him.
+
+As he came he fixed his gaze upon a woman seated near the prostrate
+girl, and with a horrible outcry the victim leaped into the air and
+stiffened as if smitten with epilepsy. She fell against some scared
+boys, who let her fall, striking her head against the seats. She too
+rolled down upon the straw and lay beside her sister. Both had round,
+pretty, but childish faces.
+
+Milton's party retreated. They smiled no more; they were
+horror-stricken.
+
+Squads of "workers" now moved down the aisles; in one they surrounded
+two people, a tall, fair girl and a young man.
+
+"Why, it's Grace!" exclaimed Maud.
+
+Ben turned quickly, "Where?"
+
+They pointed her out.
+
+"She can't get away. See! Oh, boys, don't let them--"
+
+Ben pushed his way toward her, his face set in a fierce frown, bitter,
+desperate.
+
+Grace stood silently beside one of the elders; a woman exhorter stood
+before her. Conrad, overawed, had fallen into a trembling stupor; Grace
+was defenseless.
+
+The elder's hand hovered over her head, on her face a deadly pallor had
+settled, her eyes were cast down, she breathed painfully and trembled
+from head to foot. She was about to fall, when Ben set his eyes upon
+her.
+
+"Get out o' my way," he shouted, shouldering up the aisle. His words had
+oaths, his fists were like mauls.
+
+"Grace!" he cried, and she heard. She looked up and saw him coming; the
+red flamed over her face.
+
+The power of the preacher was gone.
+
+"Let me go," she cried, trying to wring herself loose.
+
+"You are going to hell. You are lost if you do not--"
+
+"God damn ye. Get out o' way. I'll kill ye if you lay a hand on her."
+
+With one thrust Ben cleared her tormentor from her arm. For one moment
+the wordless young man looked into her eyes; then she staggered toward
+him. He faced the preacher.
+
+"I'd smash hell out o' you for a leather cent," he said. In the tumult
+his words were lost, but the look on his face was enough. The exhorter
+fell away.
+
+Their retreat was unnoted in the tumult. At the door they looked back
+for an instant at the scene.
+
+At the mourners' bench were six victims in all stages of induced
+catalepsy, one man with head flung back, one with his hands pointing,
+fixed in furious appeal. Another with bowed head was being worked upon
+by a brother of hypnotic appeal. He struck with downward, positive
+gestures on either side of the victim's head.
+
+Over another the negress towered, screaming with panther-like
+ferocity:--
+
+"Git under de blood! Git under de blood!"
+
+As she screamed she struck down at the mourner with her clenched fist.
+On her face was the grin of a wildcat.
+
+Out under the cool, lofty oaks, the outcry was more inexpressibly
+hellish, because overhead the wind rustled the sweet green leaves,
+crickets were chirping, and the scent of flowering fields of buckwheat
+was in the air.
+
+Grace grew calmer, but she clung with strange weakness to her lover. She
+felt he had saved her from something, she did not know what, but it was
+something terrifying to look back upon.
+
+Conrad was forgotten--set aside. Ben bundled him into the carryall and
+took his place with Grace. He no longer hesitated, argued, or
+apologized. He had claimed his own.
+
+On the long ride home, Grace lay within his right arm, and the young
+man's tongue was unchained. He talked, and his spirit grew tender and
+manly and husbandlike, as he told his plans and his hopes. Hell was very
+far away, and Heaven was very near.
+
+
+
+
+LUCRETIA BURNS
+
+I
+
+
+Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of early
+girlhood, and now she was middle-aged, distorted with work and
+child-bearing, and looking faded and worn as one of the boulders that
+lay beside the pasture fence near where she sat milking a large white
+cow.
+
+She had no shawl or hat and no shoes, for it was still muddy in the
+little yard, where the cattle stood patiently fighting the flies and
+mosquitoes swarming into their skins, already wet with blood. The
+evening was oppressive with its heat, and a ring of just-seen
+thunderheads gave premonitions of an approaching storm.
+
+She rose from the cow's side at last, and, taking her pails of foaming
+milk, staggered toward the gate. The two pails hung from her lean arms,
+her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico
+dress showed her tired and swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed
+mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair.
+
+The children were quarrelling at the well, and the sound of blows could
+be heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and little
+turkeys, lost in a tangle of grass, were piping plaintively.
+
+The sun just setting struck through a long, low rift, like a boy peeping
+beneath the eaves of a huge roof. Its light brought out Lucretia's face
+as she leaned her sallow forehead on the top bar of the gate and looked
+toward the west.
+
+It was a pitifully worn, almost tragic face--long, thin, sallow,
+hollow-eyed. The mouth had long since lost the power to shape itself
+into a kiss, and had a droop at the corners which seemed to announce a
+breaking-down at any moment into a despairing wail. The collarless neck
+and sharp shoulders showed painfully.
+
+She felt vaguely that the night was beautiful. The setting sun, the
+noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe--all in some way
+called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood
+to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes grew round, deep, and wistful
+as she saw the illimitable craggy clouds grow crimson, roll slowly up,
+and fire at the top. A childish scream recalled her.
+
+"Oh, my soul!" she half groaned, half swore, as she lifted her milk and
+hurried to the well. Arriving there, she cuffed the children right and
+left with all her remaining strength, saying in justification:--
+
+"My soul! can't you--you young'uns, give me a minute's peace? Land
+knows, I'm almost gone up; washin', an' milkin' six cows, and tendin'
+you, and cookin' f'r _him_, ought 'o be enough f'r one day! Sadie, you
+let him drink now 'r I'll slap your head off, you hateful thing! Why
+can't you behave, when you know I'm jest about dead?" She was weeping
+now, with nervous weakness. "Where's y'r pa?" she asked after a moment,
+wiping her eyes with her apron.
+
+One of the group, the one cuffed last, sniffed out, in rage and grief:--
+
+"He's in the corn-field; where'd ye s'pose he was?"
+
+"Good land! why don't the man work all night? Sile, you put that dipper
+in that milk agin, an' I'll whack you till your head'll swim! Sadie, le'
+go Pet, an' go 'n get them turkeys out of the grass 'fore it gits dark!
+Bob, you go tell y'r dad if he wants the rest o' them cows milked he's
+got 'o do it himself. I jest can't, and what's more, I _won't_," she
+ended, rebelliously.
+
+Having strained the milk and fed the children, she took some skimmed
+milk from the cans and started to feed the calves bawling strenuously
+behind the barn. The eager and unruly brutes pushed and struggled to get
+into the pails all at once, and in consequence spilt nearly all of the
+milk on the ground. This was the last trial; the woman fell down on the
+damp grass and moaned and sobbed like a crazed thing. The children came
+to seek her and stood around like little partridges, looking at her in
+scared silence, till at last the little one began to wail. Then the
+mother rose wearily to her feet, and walked slowly back toward the
+house.
+
+She heard Burns threshing his team at the well, with the sound of oaths.
+He was tired, hungry, and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate to
+care. His poor, overworked team did not move quickly enough for him,
+and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyes
+gleamed wrathfully from his dust-laid face.
+
+"Supper ready?" he growled.
+
+"Yes, two hours ago."
+
+"Well, I can't help it!" he said, understanding her reproach. "That
+devilish corn is gettin' too tall to plough again, and I've got 'o go
+through it to-morrow or not at all. Cows milked?"
+
+"Part of 'em."
+
+"How many left?"
+
+"Three."
+
+"Hell! Which three?"
+
+"Spot, and Brin, and Cherry."
+
+"_Of_ course, left the three worst ones. I'll be damned if I milk a cow
+to-night. I don't see why you play out jest the nights I need ye most."
+Here he kicked a child out of the way. "Git out o' that! Hain't you got
+no sense? I'll learn ye--"
+
+"Stop that, Sim Burns," cried the woman, snatching up the child. "You're
+a reg'lar ol' hyeny,--that's what you are," she added defiantly, roused
+at last from her lethargy.
+
+"You're a--beauty, that's what _you_ are," he said, pitilessly. "Keep
+your brats out f'um under my feet." And he strode off to the barn after
+his team, leaving her with a fierce hate in her heart. She heard him
+yelling at his team in their stalls: "Git around there, damn yeh."
+
+The children had had their supper; so she took them to bed. She was
+unusually tender to them, for she wanted to make up in some way for her
+previous harshness. The ferocity of her husband had shown up her own
+petulant temper hideously, and she sat and sobbed in the darkness a long
+time beside the cradle where little Pet slept.
+
+She heard Burns come growling in and tramp about, but she did not rise.
+The supper was on the table; he could wait on himself. There was an
+awful feeling at her heart as she sat there and the house grew quiet.
+She thought of suicide in a vague way; of somehow taking her children in
+her arms and sinking into a lake somewhere, where she would never more
+be troubled, where she could sleep forever, without toil or hunger.
+
+Then she thought of the little turkeys wandering in the grass, of the
+children sleeping at last, of the quiet, wonderful stars. Then she
+thought of the cows left unmilked, and listened to them stirring
+uneasily in the yard. She rose, at last, and stole forth. She could not
+rid herself of the thought that they would suffer. She knew what the
+dull ache in the full breasts of a mother was, and she could not let
+them stand at the bars all night moaning for relief.
+
+The mosquitoes had gone, but the frogs and katydids still sang, while
+over in the west Venus shone. She was a long time milking the cows; her
+hands were so tired she had often to stop and rest them, while the tears
+fell unheeded into the pail. She saw and felt little of the external as
+she sat there. She thought in vague retrospect of how sweet it seemed
+the first time Sim came to see her; of the many rides to town with him
+when he was an accepted lover; of the few things he had given her--a
+coral breastpin and a ring.
+
+She felt no shame at her present miserable appearance; she was past
+personal pride. She hardly felt as if the tall, strong girl, attractive
+with health and hope, could be the same soul as the woman who now sat in
+utter despair listening to the heavy breathing of the happy cows,
+grateful for the relief from their burden of milk.
+
+She contrasted her lot with that of two or three women that she knew
+(not a very high standard), who kept hired help, and who had fine houses
+of four or five rooms. Even the neighbors were better off than she, for
+they didn't have such quarrels. But she wasn't to blame--Sim
+didn't--Then her mind changed to a dull resentment against "things."
+Everything seemed against her.
+
+She rose at last and carried her second load of milk to the well,
+strained it, washed out the pails, and, after bathing her tired feet in
+a tub that stood there, she put on a pair of horrible shoes, without
+stockings, and crept stealthily into the house. Sim did not hear her as
+she slipped up the stairs to the little low unfinished chamber beside
+her oldest children. She could not bear to sleep near _him_ that
+night,--she wanted a chance to sob herself to quiet.
+
+As for Sim, he was a little disturbed, but would as soon have cut off
+his head as acknowledged himself in the wrong. As he went to bed, and
+found her still away, he yelled up the stairway:--
+
+"Say, old woman, ain't ye comin' to bed?" Upon receiving no answer he
+rolled his aching body into the creaking bed. "Do as y' damn please
+about it. If y' want to sulk y' can." And in such wise the family grew
+quiet in sleep, while the moist, warm air pulsed with the ceaseless
+chime of the crickets.
+
+
+II
+
+
+When Sim Burns woke the next morning he felt a sharper twinge of
+remorse. It was not a broad or well-defined feeling--just a sense that
+he had been unduly irritable, not that on the whole he was not in the
+right. Little Pet lay with the warm June sunshine filling his baby eyes,
+curiously content in striking at flies that buzzed around his little
+mouth.
+
+The man thrust his dirty, naked feet into his huge boots, and, without
+washing his face or combing his hair, went out to the barn to do his
+chores.
+
+He was a type of the average prairie farmer, and his whole surrounding
+was typical of the time. He had a quarter-section of fine level land,
+bought with incredible toil, but his house was a little box-like
+structure, costing, perhaps, five hundred dollars. It had three rooms
+and the ever-present summer kitchen at the back. It was unpainted and
+had no touch of beauty,--a mere box.
+
+His stable was built of slabs and banked and covered with straw. It
+looked like a den, was low and long, and had but one door in the end.
+The cow-yard held ten or fifteen cattle of various kinds, while a few
+calves were bawling from a pen near by. Behind the barn, on the west
+and north, was a fringe of willows forming a "wind-break." A few broken
+and discouraged fruit trees, standing here and there among the weeds,
+formed the garden. In short, he was spoken of by his neighbors as "a
+hard-working cuss, and tol'ably well fixed."
+
+No grace had come or ever could come into his life. Back of him were
+generations of men like himself, whose main business had been to work
+hard, live miserably, and beget children to take their places when they
+died.
+
+His courtship had been delayed so long on account of poverty that it
+brought little of humanizing emotion into his life. He never mentioned
+his love-life now, or if he did, it was only to sneer obscenely at it.
+He had long since ceased to kiss his wife or even speak kindly to her.
+There was no longer any sanctity to life or love. He chewed tobacco and
+toiled on from year to year without any very clearly defined idea of the
+future. His life was mainly regulated from without.
+
+He was tall, dark, and strong, in a flat-chested, slouching sort of way,
+and had grown neglectful of even decency in his dress. He wore the
+American farmer's customary outfit of rough brown pants, hickory shirt,
+and greasy wool hat. It differed from his neighbors' mainly in being a
+little dirtier and more ragged. His grimy hands were broad and strong as
+the clutch of a bear, and he was a "terrible feller to turn off work,"
+as Councill said. "I'd ruther have Sim Burns work for me one day than
+some men three. He's a linger." He worked with unusual speed this
+morning, and ended by milking all the cows himself as a sort of savage
+penance for his misdeeds the previous evening, muttering in
+self-defence:--
+
+"Seems 's if ever' cussid thing piles on to me at once. That corn, the
+road-tax, and hayin' comin' on, and now _she_ gits her back up--"
+
+When he went back to the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in the
+horse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready, but his
+wife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around the
+uninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap ware and with boiled
+potatoes and fried salt pork as the principal dishes.
+
+"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a threatening note in his voice, as he
+sat down by the table.
+
+"She's in the bedroom."
+
+He rose and pushed open the door. The mother sat with the babe in her
+lap, looking out of the window down across the superb field of timothy,
+moving like a lake of purple water. She did not look around. She only
+grew rigid. Her thin neck throbbed with the pulsing of blood to her
+head.
+
+"What's got into you _now_?" he said, brutally. "Don't be a fool. Come
+out and eat breakfast with me, an' take care o' y'r young ones."
+
+She neither moved nor made a sound. With an oath he turned on his heel and
+went out to the table. Eating his breakfast in his usual wolfish fashion,
+he went out into the hot sun with his team and riding-plough, not a
+little disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness." He
+ploughed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heat
+and dust. The air was full of tempestuous threats, still and sultry, one
+of those days when work is a punishment. When he came in at noon he
+found things the same--dinner on the table, but his wife out in the
+garden with the youngest child.
+
+"I c'n stand it as long as _she_ can," he said to himself, in the
+hearing of the children, as he pushed back from the table and went back
+to work.
+
+When he had finished the field of corn it was after sundown, and he came
+up to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and his
+neck aching with the work of looking down all day at the corn-rows. His
+mood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of the
+wide, green field had been lost upon him.
+
+"I wonder if she's milked them cows," he muttered to himself. He gave a
+sigh of relief to find she had. But she had done so not for his sake,
+but for the sake of the poor, patient dumb brutes.
+
+When he went to the bedroom after supper, he found that the cradle and
+his wife's few little boxes and parcels--poor, pathetic properties!--had
+been removed to the garret, which they called a chamber, and he knew he
+was to sleep alone again.
+
+"She'll git over it, I guess." He was very tired, but he didn't feel
+quite comfortable enough to sleep. The air was oppressive. His shirt,
+wet in places, and stiff with dust in other places, oppressed him more
+than usual; so he rose and removed it, getting a clean one out of a
+drawer. This was an unusual thing for him, for he usually slept in the
+same shirt which he wore in his day's work; but it was Saturday night,
+and he felt justified in the extravagance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the meanwhile poor Lucretia was brooding over her life in a most
+dangerous fashion. All she had done and suffered for Simeon Burns came
+back to her till she wondered how she had endured it all. All day long
+in the midst of the glorious summer landscape she brooded.
+
+"I hate him," she thought, with a fierce blazing up through the murk of
+her musing. "I hate t' live. But they ain't no hope. I'm tied down. I
+can't leave the children, and I ain't got no money. I couldn't make a
+living out in the world. I ain't never seen anything an' don't know
+anything."
+
+She was too simple and too unknowing to speculate on the loss of her
+beauty, which would have brought her competency once--if sold in the
+right market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenly
+thinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horse
+which Sim had bought once, years before, and put to the plough when it
+was too old and weak to work. She could see her again as in a vision,
+that poor old mare, with sad head drooping, toiling, toiling, till at
+last she could no longer move, and lying down under the harness in the
+furrow, groaned under the whip,--and died.
+
+Then she wondered if her own numbness and despair meant death, and she
+held her breath to think harder upon it. She concluded at last, grimly,
+that she didn't care--only for the children.
+
+The air was frightfully close in the little attic, and she heard the low
+mutter of the rising storm in the west. She forgot her troubles a
+little, listening to the far-off gigantic footsteps of the tempest.
+
+_Boom_, _boom_, _boom_, it broke nearer and nearer, as if a vast cordon
+of cannon was being drawn around the horizon. Yet she was conscious only
+of pleasure. She had no fear. At last came the sweep of cool, fragrant
+storm-wind, a short and sudden dash of rain, and then in the cool, sweet
+hush which followed, the worn and weary woman fell into a deep sleep.
+
+
+III
+
+
+When she woke the younger children were playing about on the floor in
+their night-clothes, and little Pet was sitting in a square of sunshine,
+intent on one of his shoes. He was too young to know how poor and
+squalid his surroundings were,--the patch of sunshine flung on the floor
+glorified it all. He--little animal--was happy.
+
+The poor of the Western prairies lie almost as unhealthily close
+together as do the poor of the city tenements. In the small hut of the
+peasant there is as little chance to escape close and tainting contact
+as in the coops and dens of the North End of proud Boston. In the midst
+of oceans of land, floods of sunshine and gulfs of verdure, the farmer
+lives in two or three small rooms. Poverty's eternal cordon is ever
+round the poor.
+
+"Ma, why didn't you sleep with Pap last night?" asked Bob, the
+seven-year-old, when he saw she was awake at last. She flushed a dull
+red.
+
+"You hush, will yeh? Because--I--it was too warm--and there was a storm
+comin'. You never mind askin' such questions. Is he gone out?"
+
+"Yup. I heerd him callin' the pigs. It's Sunday, ain't it, ma?"
+
+The fact seemed to startle her.
+
+"Why, yes, so it is! Wal! Now, Sadie, you jump up an' dress quick 's y'
+can, an' Bob an' Sile, you run down an' bring s'm' water," she
+commanded, in nervous haste, beginning to dress. In the middle of the
+room there was scarce space to stand beneath the rafters.
+
+When Sim came in for his breakfast he found it on the table, but his
+wife was absent.
+
+"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a little less of the growl in his
+voice.
+
+"She's upstairs with Pet."
+
+The man ate his breakfast in dead silence, till at last Bob ventured to
+say:--
+
+"What makes ma ac' so?"
+
+"Shut up!" was the brutal reply. The children began to take sides with
+the mother--all but the oldest girl, who was ten years old. To her the
+father turned now for certain things to be done, treating her in his
+rough fashion as a housekeeper, and the girl felt flattered and docile
+accordingly.
+
+They were pitiably clad; like many farm-children, indeed, they could
+hardly be said to be clad at all. Sadie had on but two garments, a sort
+of undershirt of cotton and a faded calico dress, out of which her bare,
+yellow little legs protruded, lamentably dirty and covered with
+scratches.
+
+The boys also had two garments, a hickory shirt and a pair of pants like
+their father's, made out of brown denim by the mother's never-resting
+hands--hands that in sleep still sewed, and skimmed, and baked, and
+churned. The boys had gone to bed without washing their feet, which now
+looked like toads, calloused, brown, and chapped.
+
+Part of this the mother saw with her dull eyes as she came down, after
+seeing the departure of Sim up the road with the cows. It was a
+beautiful Sunday morning, and the woman might have sung like a bird if
+men had been as kind to her as Nature. But she looked dully out upon the
+seas of ripe grasses, tangled and flashing with dew, out of which the
+bobolinks and larks sprang. The glorious winds brought her no melody, no
+perfume, no respite from toil and care.
+
+She thought of the children she saw in the town,--children of the
+merchant and banker, clean as little dolls, the boys in knickerbocker
+suits, the girls in dainty white dresses,--and a vengeful bitterness
+sprang up in her heart. She soon put the dishes away, but felt too tired
+and listless to do more.
+
+"Taw-bay-wies! Pet want ta-aw-bay-wies!" cried the little one, tugging
+at her dress.
+
+Listlessly, mechanically she took him in her arms, and went out into the
+garden, which was fragrant and sweet with dew and sun. After picking
+some berries for him, she sat down on the grass under the row of
+cottonwoods, and sank into a kind of lethargy. A kingbird chattered and
+shrieked overhead, the grasshoppers buzzed in the grasses, strange
+insects with ventriloquistic voices sang all about her--she could not
+tell where.
+
+"Ma, can't I put on my clean dress?" insisted Sadie.
+
+"I don't care," said the brooding woman, darkly. "Leave me alone."
+
+Oh, if she could only lie here forever, escaping all pain and weariness!
+The wind sang in her ears; the great clouds, beautiful as heavenly
+ships, floated far above in the vast, dazzling deeps of blue sky; the
+birds rustled and chirped around her; leaping insects buzzed and
+clattered in the grass and in the vines and bushes. The goodness and
+glory of God was in the very air, the bitterness and oppression of man
+in every line of her face.
+
+But her quiet was broken by Sadie, who came leaping like a fawn down
+through the grass.
+
+"Oh, ma, Aunt Maria and Uncle William are coming. They've jest turned
+in."
+
+"I don't care if they be!" she answered in the same dully irritated way.
+"What're they comin' here to-day for, I wan' to know." She stayed there
+immovably, till Mrs. Councill came down to see her, piloted by two or
+three of the children. Mrs. Councill, a jolly, large-framed woman,
+smiled brightly, and greeted her in a loud, jovial voice. She made the
+mistake of taking the whole matter lightly; her tone amounted to
+ridicule.
+
+"Sim says you've been having a tantrum, Creeshy. Don't know what for, he
+says."
+
+"He don't," said the wife, with a sullen flash in her eyes. "_He_ don't
+know why! Well, then, you just tell him what I say. I've lived in hell
+long enough. I'm done. I've slaved here day in and day out f'r twelve
+years without pay,--not even a decent word. I've worked like no nigger
+ever worked 'r could work and live. I've given him all I had, 'r ever
+expect to have. I'm wore out. My strength is gone, my patience is gone.
+I'm done with it,--that's a _part_ of what's the matter."
+
+"My sakes, Lucreeshy! You mustn't talk that way."
+
+"But I _will_" said the woman, as she supported herself on one palm and
+raised the other. "I've _got_ to talk that way." She was ripe for an
+explosion like this. She seized upon it with eagerness. "They ain't no
+use o' livin' this way, anyway. I'd take poison if it wa'n't f'r the
+young ones."
+
+"Lucreeshy Burns!"
+
+"Oh, I mean it."
+
+"Land sakes alive, I b'lieve you're goin' crazy!"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if I was. I've had enough t' drive an Indian crazy.
+Now you jest go off an' leave me 'lone. I ain't no mind to visit,--they
+ain't no way out of it' and I'm tired o' trying to _find_ a way. Go off
+an' let me be."
+
+Her tone was so bitterly hopeless that the great, jolly face of Mrs.
+Councill stiffened into a look of horror such as she had not known for
+years. The children, in two separate groups, could be heard rioting.
+Bees were humming around the clover in the grass, and the kingbird
+chattered ceaselessly from the Lombardy poplar tip. Both women felt all
+this peace and beauty of the morning dimly, and it disturbed Mrs.
+Councill because the other was so impassive under it all. At last, after
+a long and thoughtful pause, Mrs. Councill asked a question whose answer
+she knew would decide it all--asked it very kindly and softly:--
+
+"Creeshy, are you comin' in?"
+
+"No," was the short and sullenly decisive answer. Mrs. Councill knew
+that was the end, and so rose with a sigh, and went away.
+
+"Wal, good-by," she said, simply.
+
+Looking back, she saw Lucretia lying at length, with closed eyes and
+hollow cheeks. She seemed to be sleeping, half buried in the grass. She
+did not look up nor reply to her sister-in-law, whose life was one of
+toil and trouble also, but not so hard and helpless as Lucretia's. By
+contrast with most of her neighbors, she seemed comfortable.
+
+"Sim Burns, what you ben doin' to that woman?" she burst out, as she
+waddled up to where the two men were sitting under a cottonwood tree,
+talking and whittling after the manner of farmers.
+
+"Nawthin' 's fur 's I know," answered Burns, not quite honestly, and
+looking uneasy.
+
+"You needn't try t' git out of it like that, Sim Burns," replied his
+sister. "That woman never got into that fit f'r _nawthin_'."
+
+"Wal, if you know more about it than I do, whadgy ask _me_ fur?" he
+replied, angrily.
+
+"Tut, tut!" put in Councill, "hold y'r horses! Don't git on y'r ear,
+children! Keep cool, and don't spile y'r shirts. Most likely you're all
+t' blame. Keep cool an' swear less."
+
+"Wal, I'll bet Sim's more to blame than she is. Why, they ain't a
+harder-workin' woman in the hull State of Ioway than she is--"
+
+"Except Marm Councill."
+
+"Except nobody. Look at her, jest skin and bones."
+
+Councill chuckled in his vast way. "That's so, mother; measured in that
+way, she leads over you. You git fat on it."
+
+She smiled a little, her indignation oozing away. She never "_could_
+stay mad," her children were accustomed to tell her. Burns refused to
+talk any more about the matter, and the visitors gave it up, and got out
+their team and started for home, Mrs. Councill firing this parting
+shot:--
+
+"The best thing you can do to-day is t' let her alone. Mebbe the
+children 'll bring her round ag'in. If she does come round, you see 't
+you treat her a little more 's y' did when you was a-courtin' her."
+
+"This way," roared Councill, putting his arm around his wife's waist.
+She boxed his ears, while he guffawed and clucked at his team.
+
+Burns took a measure of salt and went out into the pasture to salt the
+cows. On the sunlit slope of the field, where the cattle came running
+and bawling to meet him, he threw down the salt in handfuls, and then
+lay down to watch them as they eagerly licked it up, even gnawing a bare
+spot in the sod in their eagerness to get it all.
+
+Burns was not a drinking man; he was hard-working, frugal; in fact, he
+had no extravagances except his tobacco. His clothes he wore until they
+all but dropped from him; and he worked in rain and mud, as well as dust
+and sun. It was this suffering and toiling all to no purpose that made
+him sour and irritable. He didn't see why he should have so little after
+so much hard work.
+
+He was puzzled to account for it all. His mind--the average mind--was
+weary with trying to solve an insoluble problem. His neighbors, who had
+got along a little better than himself, were free with advice and
+suggestion as to the cause of his persistent poverty.
+
+Old man Bacon, the hardest-working man in the county, laid it to Burns's
+lack of management. Jim Butler, who owned a dozen farms (which he had
+taken on mortgages), and who had got rich by buying land at government
+price and holding for a rise, laid all such cases as Burns's to "lack of
+enterprise, foresight."
+
+But the larger number, feeling themselves in the same boat with Burns,
+said:--
+
+"I d' know. Seems as if things get worse an' worse. Corn an' wheat
+gittin' cheaper 'n' cheaper. Machinery eatin' up profits--got to _have_
+machinery to harvest the cheap grain, an' then the machinery eats up
+profits. Taxes goin' up. Devil to pay all round; I d' know what in
+thunder _is_ the matter."
+
+The Democrats said protection was killing the farmers; the Republicans
+said no. The Grangers growled about the middle-men; the Greenbackers
+said there wasn't circulating medium enough, and, in the midst of it
+all, hard-working, discouraged farmers, like Simeon Burns, worked on,
+unable to find out what really was the matter.
+
+And there, on this beautiful Sabbath morning, Sim sat and thought and
+thought, till he rose with an oath and gave it up.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+It was hot and brilliant again the next morning as Douglas Radbourn
+drove up the road with Lily Graham, the teacher of the school in the
+little white schoolhouse. It was blazing hot, even though not yet nine
+o'clock, and the young farmers ploughing beside the fence looked
+longingly and somewhat bitterly at Radbourn seated in a fine top-buggy
+beside a beautiful creature in lace and cambric.
+
+Very beautiful the town-bred "schoolma'am" looked to those grimy, sweaty
+fellows, superb fellows too, physically, with bare red arms and
+leather-colored faces. She was as if builded of the pink and white
+clouds soaring far up there in the morning sky. So cool, and sweet, and
+dainty.
+
+As she came in sight, their dusty and sweaty shirts grew biting as the
+poisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grew
+distressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chapped
+and swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility of
+some time in the far future standing a chance of having an introduction
+to her, caused them to wipe their palms on their trousers' legs
+stealthily.
+
+Lycurgus Banks swore when he saw Radbourn: "That cuss thinks he's ol'
+hell this morning. He don't earn his living. But he's just the kind of
+cuss to get holt of all the purty girls."
+
+Others gazed with simple, sad wistfulness upon the slender figure, pale,
+sweet face, and dark eyes of the young girl, feeling that to have talk
+with such a fairylike creature was a happiness too great to ever be
+their lot. And when she had passed they went back to work with a sigh
+and feeling of loss.
+
+As for Lily, she felt a pang of pity for these people. She looked at
+this peculiar form of poverty and hardship much as the fragile, tender
+girl of the city looks upon the men laying a gas-main in the streets.
+She felt, sympathetically, the heat and grime, and, though but the
+faintest idea of what it meant to wear such clothing came to her, she
+shuddered. Her eyes had been opened to these things by Radbourn, a
+classmate at the Seminary.
+
+The young fellow knew that Lily was in love with him, and made distinct
+effort to keep the talk upon impersonal subjects. He liked her very
+much, probably because she listened so well.
+
+"Poor fellows," sighed Lily, almost unconsciously, "I hate to see them
+working there in the dirt and hot sun. It seems a hopeless sort of life,
+doesn't it?"
+
+"Oh, but this is the most beautiful part of the year," said Radbourn.
+"Think of them in the mud, in the sleet; think of them husking corn in
+the snow, a bitter wind blowing; think of them a month later in the
+harvest; think of them imprisoned here in winter!"
+
+"Yes, it's dreadful! But I never felt it so keenly before. You have
+opened my eyes to it. Of course, I've been on a farm but not to live
+there."
+
+"Writers and orators have lied so long about 'the idyllic' in farm life,
+and said so much about the 'independent American farmer,' that he
+himself has remained blind to the fact that he's one of the
+hardest-working and poorest-paid men in America. See the houses they
+live in,--hovels."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," said Lily; a look of deeper pain swept over her
+face. "And the fate of the poor women; oh, the fate of the women!"
+
+"Yes, it's a matter of statistics," went on Radbourn, pitilessly, "that
+the wives of the American farmers fill our insane asylums. See what a
+life they lead, most of them; no music, no books. Seventeen hours a day
+in a couple of small rooms--dens. Now there is Sim Burns! What a
+travesty of a home! Yet there are a dozen just as bad in sight. He works
+like a fiend--so does his wife--and what is their reward? Simply a hole
+to hibernate in and to sleep and eat in in summer. A dreary present and
+a well-nigh hopeless future. No, they have a future, if they knew it,
+and we must tell them."
+
+"I know Mrs. Burns," Lily said, after a pause; "she sends several
+children to my school. Poor, pathetic little things, half-clad and
+wistful-eyed. They make my heart ache; they are so hungry for love, and
+so quick to learn."
+
+As they passed the Burns farm, they looked for the wife, but she was not
+to be seen. The children had evidently gone up to the little white
+schoolhouse at the head of the lane. Radbourn let the reins fall slack
+as he talked on. He did not look at the girl; his eyebrows were drawn
+into a look of gloomy pain.
+
+"It isn't so much the grime that I abhor, nor the labor that crooks
+their backs and makes their hands bludgeons. It's the horrible waste of
+life involved in it all. I don't believe God intended a man to be bent
+to plough-handles like that, but that isn't the worst of it. The worst
+of it is, these people live lives approaching automata. They become
+machines to serve others more lucky or more unscrupulous than
+themselves. What is the world of art, of music, of literature, to these
+poor devils,--to Sim Burns and his wife there, for example? Or even to
+the best of these farmers?"
+
+The girl looked away over the shimmering lake of yellow-green corn. A
+choking came into her throat. Her gloved hand trembled.
+
+"What is such a life worth? It's all very comfortable for us to say,
+'They don't feel it.' How do we know what they feel? What do we know of
+their capacity for enjoyment of art and music? They never have leisure
+or opportunity. The master is very glad to be taught by preacher, and
+lawyer, and novelist, that his slaves are contented and never feel any
+longings for a higher life. These people live lives but little higher
+than their cattle--are _forced_ to live so. Their hopes and aspirations
+are crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toil
+twists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the city
+laborer. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught to
+be content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there isn't
+any hereafter?"
+
+"Oh, don't say that, please!" Lily cried.
+
+"But I don't _know_ that there is," he went on remorselessly, "and I do
+know that these people are being robbed of something more than money, of
+all that makes life worth living. The promise of milk and honey in
+Canaan is all very well, but I prefer to have mine here; then I'm sure
+of it."
+
+"What can we do?" murmured the girl.
+
+"Do? Rouse these people for one thing; preach _discontent_, a noble
+discontent."
+
+"It will only make them unhappy."
+
+"No, it won't; not if you show them the way out. If it does, it's better
+to be unhappy striving for higher things, like a man, than to be content
+in a wallow like swine."
+
+"But what _is_ the way out?"
+
+This was sufficient to set Radbourn upon his hobbyhorse. He outlined his
+plan of action: the abolition of all indirect taxes, the State control
+of all privileges the private ownership of which interfered with the
+equal rights of all. He would utterly destroy speculative holdings of
+the earth. He would have land everywhere brought to its best use, by
+appropriating all ground rents to the use of the state, etc., etc., to
+which the girl listened with eager interest, but with only partial
+comprehension.
+
+As they neared the little schoolhouse, a swarm of midgets in pink
+dresses, pink sun-bonnets, and brown legs, came rushing to meet their
+teacher, with that peculiar devotion the children in the country develop
+for a refined teacher.
+
+Radbourn helped Lily out into the midst of the eager little scholars,
+who swarmed upon her like bees on a lump of sugar, till even Radbourn's
+gravity gave way, and he smiled into her lifted eyes,--an unusual smile,
+that strangely enough stopped the smile on her own lips, filling her
+face with a wistful shadow, and her breath came hard for a moment, and
+she trembled.
+
+She loved that cold, stern face, oh, so much! and to have him smile was
+a pleasure that made her heart leap till she suffered a smothering pain.
+She turned to him to say:--
+
+"I am very thankful, Mr. Radbourn, for another pleasant ride," adding in
+a lower tone, "it was a very great pleasure; you always give me so much.
+I feel stronger and more hopeful."
+
+"I'm glad you feel so. I was afraid I was prosy with my land doctrine."
+
+"Oh, no! Indeed no! You have given me a new hope; I am exalted with the
+thought; I shall try to think it all out and apply it."
+
+And so they parted, the children looking on and slyly whispering among
+themselves. Radbourn looked back after a while, but the bare white hive
+had absorbed its little group, and was standing bleak as a tombstone and
+hot as a furnace on the naked plain in the blazing sun.
+
+"America's pitiful boast!" said the young radical, looking back at it.
+"Only a miserable hint of what it might be."
+
+All that forenoon, as Lily faced her noisy group of barefooted children,
+she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for these
+poor, supine farmers, hopeless and in some cases content in their narrow
+lives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came to
+them as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,--whose very voice
+and intonation awed them.
+
+They noted, unconsciously of course, every detail. Snowy linen, touches
+of soft color, graceful lines of bust and side, the slender fingers that
+could almost speak, so beautifully flexile were they. Lily herself
+sometimes, when she shook the calloused, knotted, stiffened hands of the
+women, shuddered with sympathetic pain to think that the crowning wonder
+and beauty of God's world should be so maimed and distorted from its
+true purpose.
+
+Even in the children before her she could see the inherited results of
+fruitless labor, and, more pitiful yet, in the bent shoulders of the
+older ones she could see the beginnings of deformity that would soon be
+permanent; and as these thoughts came to her, she clasped the wondering
+children to her side, with a convulsive wish to make life a little
+brighter for them.
+
+"How is your mother to-day?" she asked of Sadie Burns, as she was eating
+her luncheon on the drab-colored table near the open window.
+
+"Purty well," said Sadie, in a hesitating way.
+
+Lily was looking out, and listening to the gophers whistling as they
+raced to and fro. She could see Bob Burns lying at length on the grass
+in the pasture over the fence, his heels waving in the air, his hands
+holding a string which formed a snare. It was like fishing to young
+Izaak Walton.
+
+It was very still and hot, and the cheep and trill of the gophers and
+the chatter of the kingbirds alone broke the silence. A cloud of
+butterflies were fluttering about a pool near; a couple of big flies
+buzzed and mumbled on the pane.
+
+"What ails your mother?" Lily asked, recovering herself and looking at
+Sadie, who was distinctly ill at ease.
+
+"Oh, I dunno," Sadie replied, putting one bare foot across the other.
+
+Lily insisted.
+
+"She 'n' pa's had an awful row--"
+
+"Sadie!" said the teacher, warningly, "what language!"
+
+"I mean they quarrelled, an' she don't speak to him any more."
+
+"Why, how dreadful!"
+
+"An' pa, he's awful cross; and she won't eat when he does, an' I haf to
+wait on table."
+
+"I believe I'll go down and see her this noon," said Lily to herself, as
+she divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.
+
+
+V
+
+
+Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him.
+He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task, and was just about
+ready to go when Lily spoke to him.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. It
+must be time to go to dinner,--aren't you ready to go? I want to talk
+with you."
+
+Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking down
+the road with the schoolma'am, but there was something in her look which
+seemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and, besides, he
+was not in good humor.
+
+"Yes, in a minnit--soon's I fix up this hole. Them shotes, I b'lieve,
+would go through a keyhole, if they could once get their snoots in."
+
+He expanded on this idea as he nailed away, anxious to gain time. He
+foresaw trouble for himself. He couldn't be rude to this sweet and
+fragile girl. If a _man_ had dared to attack him on his domestic
+shortcomings, he could have fought. The girl stood waiting for him, her
+large, steady eyes full of thought, gazing down at him from the shadow
+of her broad-brimmed hat.
+
+"The world is so full of misery anyway, that we ought to do the best we
+can to make it less," she said at last, in a musing tone, as if her
+thoughts had unconsciously taken on speech. She had always appealed to
+him strongly, and never more so than in this softly uttered
+abstraction--that it was an abstraction added to its power with him.
+
+He could find no words for reply, but picked up his hammer and nail-box,
+and slouched along the road by her side, listening without a word to her
+talk.
+
+"Christ was patient, and bore with his enemies. Surely we ought to bear
+with our--friends," she went on, adapting her steps to his. He took off
+his torn straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, being much
+embarrassed and ashamed. Not knowing how to meet such argument, he kept
+silent.
+
+"How _is_ Mrs. Burns!" said Lily at length, determined to make him
+speak. The delicate meaning in the emphasis laid on _is_ did not escape
+him.
+
+"Oh, she's all right--I mean she's done her work jest the same as ever.
+I don't see her much--"
+
+"I didn't know--I was afraid she was sick. Sadie said she was acting
+strangely."
+
+"No, she's well enough--but--"
+
+"But what is the trouble? Won't you let me help you, _won't_ you?" she
+pleaded.
+
+"Can't anybody help us. We've got 'o fight it out, I s'pose," he
+replied, a gloomy note of resentment creeping into his voice. "She's
+ben in a devil of a temper f'r a week."
+
+"Haven't you been in the same kind of a temper too?" demanded Lily,
+firmly but kindly. "I think most troubles of this kind come from bad
+temper on both sides. Don't you? Have you done your share at being kind
+and patient?"
+
+They had reached the gate now, and she laid her hand on his arm to stop
+him. He looked down at the slender gloved hand on his arm, feeling as if
+a giant had grasped him; then he raised his eyes to her face, flushing a
+purplish red as he remembered his grossness. It seemed monstrous in the
+presence of this girl-advocate. Her face was like silver; her eyes
+seemed pools of tears.
+
+"I don't s'pose I have," he said at last, pushing by her. He could not
+have faced her glance another moment. His whole air conveyed the
+impression of destructive admission. Lily did not comprehend the extent
+of her advantage or she would have pursued it further. As it was she
+felt a little hurt as she entered the house. The table was set, but Mrs.
+Burns was nowhere to be seen. Calling her softly, the young girl passed
+through the shabby little living-room to the oven-like bedroom which
+opened off it, but no one was about. She stood for a moment shuddering
+at the wretchedness of the room.
+
+Going back to the kitchen, she found Sim about beginning on his dinner.
+Little Pet was with him; the rest of the children were at the
+schoolhouse.
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"I d' know. Out in the garden, I expect. She don't eat with me now. I
+never see her. She don't come near _me_. I ain't seen her since
+Saturday."
+
+Lily was shocked inexpressibly and began to see more clearly the
+magnitude of the task she had set herself to do. But it must be done;
+she felt that a tragedy was not far off. It must be averted.
+
+"Mr. Burns, what have you done? What _have_ you done?" she asked in
+terror and horror.
+
+"Don't lay it all to _me_! She hain't done nawthin' but complain f'r ten
+years. I couldn't do nothin' to suit her. She was always naggin' me."
+
+"I don't think Lucretia Burns would nag anybody. I don't say you're
+_all_ to blame, but I'm afraid you haven't acknowledged you were _any_
+to blame. I'm afraid you've not been patient with her. I'm going out to
+bring her in. If she comes, will you _say_ you were _part_ to blame? You
+needn't beg her pardon--just say you'll try to be better. Will you do
+it? Think how much she has done for you! Will you?"
+
+He remained silent, and looked discouragingly rude. His sweaty, dirty
+shirt was open at the neck, his arms were bare, his scraggly teeth were
+yellow with tobacco, and his uncombed hair lay tumbled about on his
+high, narrow head. His clumsy, unsteady hands played with the dishes on
+the table. His pride was struggling with his sense of justice; he knew
+he ought to consent, and yet it was so hard to acknowledge himself to
+blame. The girl went on in a voice piercingly sweet, trembling with pity
+and pleading.
+
+"What word can I carry to her from you? I'm going to go and see her. If
+I could take a word from _you_, I know she would come back to the table.
+Shall I tell her you feel to blame?"
+
+The answer was a long time coming; at last the man nodded an assent, the
+sweat pouring from his purple face. She had set him thinking; her
+victory was sure.
+
+Lily almost ran out into the garden and to the strawberry patch, where
+she found Lucretia in her familiar, colorless, shapeless dress, picking
+berries in the hot sun, the mosquitoes biting her neck and hands.
+
+"Poor, pathetic, dumb sufferer!" the girl thought as she ran up to her.
+
+She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into the
+tender, pitying face. Not a word was spoken, but something she saw there
+made her eyes fill with tears, and her throat swell. It was pure
+sympathy. She put her arms around the girl's neck and sobbed for the
+first time since Friday night. Then they sat down on the grass under the
+hedge, and she told her story, interspersed with Lily's horrified
+comments.
+
+When it was all told, the girl still sat listening. She heard Radbourn's
+calm, slow voice again. It helped her not to hate Burns; it helped her
+to pity and understand him.
+
+"You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes him
+callous, selfish, unfeeling, necessarily. A fine nature must either
+adapt itself to its hard surroundings or die. Men who toil terribly in
+filthy garments day after day and year after year cannot easily keep
+gentle; the frost and grime, the heat and cold, will soon or late enter
+into their souls. The case is not all in favor of the suffering wives
+and against the brutal husbands. If the farmer's wife is dulled and
+crazed by her routine, the farmer himself is degraded and brutalized."
+
+As well as she could Lily explained all this to the woman, who lay with
+her face buried in the girl's lap. Lily's arms were about her thin
+shoulders in an agony of pity.
+
+"It's hard, Lucretia, I know,--more than you can bear,--but you mustn't
+forget what Sim endures too. He goes out in the storms and in the heat
+and dust. His boots are hard, and see how his hands are all bruised and
+broken by his work! He was tired and hungry when he said that--he didn't
+really mean it."
+
+The wife remained silent.
+
+"Mr. Radbourn says work, as things go now, _does_ degrade a man in spite
+of himself. He says men get coarse and violent in spite of themselves,
+just as women do when everything goes wrong in the house,--when the
+flies are thick, and the fire won't burn, and the irons stick to the
+clothes. You see, you both suffer. Don't lay up this fit of temper
+against Sim--will you?"
+
+The wife lifted her head and looked away. Her face was full of hopeless
+weariness.
+
+"It ain't this once. It ain't that 't all. It's having no let-up. Just
+goin' the same thing right over 'n' over--no hope of anything better."
+
+"If you had hope of another world--"
+
+"Don't talk that. I don't want that kind o' comfert. I want a decent
+chance here. I want 'o rest an' be happy _now_." Lily's big eyes were
+streaming with tears. What should she say to the desperate woman?
+"What's the use? We might jest as well die--all of us."
+
+The woman's livid face appalled the girl. She was gaunt, heavy-eyed,
+nerveless. Her faded dress settled down over her limbs, showing the
+swollen knees and thin calves; her hands, with distorted joints,
+protruded painfully from her sleeves. All about her was the ever
+recurring wealth and cheer of nature that knows no favor,--the bees and
+flies buzzing in the sun, the jay and the kingbird in the poplars, the
+smell of strawberries, the motion of lush grass, the shimmer of
+corn-blades tossed gayly as banners in a conquering army.
+
+Like a flash of keener light, a sentence shot across the girl's mind:
+"Nature knows no title-deed. The bounty of her mighty hands falls as the
+sunlight falls, copious, impartial; her seas carry all ships; her air is
+for all lips, her lands for all feet."
+
+"Poverty and suffering such as yours will not last." There was something
+in the girl's voice that roused the woman. She turned her dull eyes upon
+the youthful face.
+
+Lily took her hand in both hers as if by a caress she could impart her
+own faith.
+
+"Look up, dear. When nature is so good and generous, man must come to be
+better, surely. Come, go in the house again. Sim is there; he expects
+you; he told me to tell you he was sorry." Lucretia's face twitched a
+little at that, but her head was bent. "Come; you can't live this way.
+There isn't any other place to go to."
+
+No, that was the bitterest truth. Where on this wide earth, with its
+forth-shooting fruits and grains, its fragrant lands and shining seas,
+could this dwarfed, bent, broken, middle-aged woman go? Nobody wanted
+her, nobody cared for her. But the wind kissed her drawn lips as readily
+as those of the girl, and the blooms of clover nodded to her as if to a
+queen.
+
+Lily had said all she could. Her heart ached with unspeakable pity and a
+sort of terror.
+
+"Don't give up, Lucretia. This may be the worst hour of your life. Live
+and bear with it all for Christ's sake,--for your children's sake. Sim
+told me to tell you he was to blame. If you will only see that you are
+both to blame and yet neither to blame, then you can rise above it. Try,
+dear!"
+
+Something that was in the girl imparted itself to the wife,
+electrically. She pulled herself together, rose silently, and started
+toward the house. Her face was rigid, but no longer sullen. Lily
+followed her slowly, wonderingly.
+
+As she neared the kitchen door, she saw Sim still sitting at the table;
+his face was unusually grave and soft. She saw him start and shove back
+his chair, saw Lucretia go to the stove and lift the tea-pot, and heard
+her say, as she took her seat beside the baby:--
+
+"Want some more tea?"
+
+She had become a wife and mother again, but in what spirit the puzzled
+girl could not say.
+
+
+
+
+DADDY DEERING
+
+I
+
+
+They were threshing on Farmer Jennings's place when Daddy made his very
+characteristic appearance. Milton, a boy of thirteen, was gloomily
+holding sacks for the measurer, and the glory of the October day was
+dimmed by the suffocating dust, and poisoned by the smarting beards and
+chaff which had worked their way down his neck. The bitterness of the
+dreaded task was deepened also by contrast with the gambols of his
+cousin Billy, who was hunting rats with Growler amid the last sheaves of
+the stack bottom. The piercing shrieks of Billy, as he clapped his hands
+in murderous glee, mingled now and again with the barking of the dog.
+
+The machine seemed to fill the world with its snarling boom, which
+became a deafening yell when the cylinder ran empty for a moment. It was
+nearly noon, and the men were working silently, with occasional glances
+toward the sun to see how near dinner-time it was. The horses, dripping
+with sweat, and with patches of foam under their harness, moved round
+and round steadily to the cheery whistle of the driver.
+
+The wild, imperious song of the bell-metal cog-wheel had sung into
+Milton's ears till it had become a torture, and every time he lifted his
+eyes to the beautiful far-off sky, where the clouds floated like ships,
+a lump of rebellious anger rose in his throat. Why should he work in
+this choking dust and deafening noise while the hawks could sail and
+sweep from hill to hill with nothing to do but play?
+
+Occasionally his uncle, the feeder, smiled down upon him, his face black
+as a negro, great goggles of glass and wire-cloth covering his merry
+eyes. His great good-nature shone out in the flash of his white teeth,
+behind his dusky beard, and he tried to encourage Milton with his smile.
+He seemed tireless to the other hands. He was so big and strong. He had
+always been Milton's boyish hero. So Milton crowded back the tears that
+came into his eyes, and would not let his uncle see how childish he was.
+
+A spectator riding along the road would have remarked upon the lovely
+setting for this picturesque scene--the low swells of prairie, shrouded
+with faint, misty light from the unclouded sky, the flaming colors of
+the trees, the faint sound of cow-bells, and the cheery sound of the
+machine. But to be a tourist and to be a toiler in a scene like this are
+quite different things.
+
+They were anxious to finish the setting by noon, and so the feeder was
+crowding the cylinder to its limit, rolling the grain in with slow and
+apparently effortless swaying from side to side, half buried in the
+loose yellow straw. But about eleven o'clock the machine came to a
+stand, to wait while a broken tooth was being replaced, and Milton fled
+from the terrible dust beside the measuring spout, and was shaking the
+chaff out of his clothing, when he heard a high, snappy, nasal voice
+call down from the straw-pile. A tall man, with a face completely masked
+in dust, was speaking to Mr. Jennings:--
+
+"Say, young man, I guess you'll haf to send another man up here. It's
+poorty stiff work f'r two; yes, sir, poorty stiff."
+
+"There, there! I thought you'd cry 'cavy,'" laughed Mr. Jennings. "I
+told you it wasn't the place for an old man."
+
+"Old man," snarled the figure in the straw. "I ain't so old but I can
+daown you, sir,--yessir, condemmit, yessir!"
+
+"I'm your man," replied Jennings, smiling up at him.
+
+The man rolled down the side of the stack, disappearing in a cloud of
+dust and chaff. When he came to light, Milton saw a tall, gaunt old man
+of sixty years of age, or older. Nothing could be seen but a dusty
+expanse of face, ragged beard, and twinkling, sharp little eyes. His
+color was lost, his eyes half hid. Without waiting for ceremony, the men
+clenched. The crowd roared with laughter, for though Jennings was the
+younger, the older man was a giant still, and the struggle lasted for
+some time. He made a gallant fight, but his breath gave out, and he lay
+at last flat on his back.
+
+"I wish I was your age, young man," he said ruefully, as he rose. "I'd
+knock the heads o' these young scamps t'gether,--yessir!--I could do it,
+too!"
+
+"Talk's a good dog, uncle," said a young man.
+
+The old man turned on him so ferociously that he fled.
+
+"Run, condemn yeh! I own y' can beat me at that."
+
+His face was not unpleasant, though his teeth were mainly gone, and his
+skin the color of leather and wrinkled as a pan of cream. His eyes had a
+certain sparkle of fun that belied his rasping voice, which seemed to
+have the power to lift a boy clean off his feet. His frame was bent and
+thin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory. At
+some far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, but
+toil had bent and stiffened him.
+
+"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" he said, in his rapid,
+rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner.
+"And, by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man,
+sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the state; no, sir; no,
+sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's
+pay--that's all, sir!"
+
+Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man up
+there this afternoon."
+
+The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty
+places, and his endurance was marvellous. He could stand all day at the
+tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent
+air, as if it were all mere play.
+
+He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier
+and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity
+that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with
+that most hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks. To a twelve-year-old
+boy it seems to be the worst job in the world.
+
+All day, while the hawks wheel and dip in the glorious air, and the
+trees glow like banks of roses; all day, while the younger boys are
+tumbling about the sunlit straw, to be forced to stand holding sacks,
+like a convict, was maddening. Daddy, whose rugged features, bent
+shoulders, and ragged cap loomed through the suffocating, blinding dust,
+necessarily came to seem like the jailer who held the door to freedom.
+
+And when the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to
+bear, the old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl of
+the cylinder.
+
+"Nem mind, sonny! Chaff ain't pizen; dust won't hurt ye a mite." And
+when Milton was unable to laugh, the old man tweaked his ear with his
+leathery thumb and finger.
+
+Then he shouted long, disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make
+neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him,
+just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell
+to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent
+a good deal of time trying to discover which were the original sections
+of the coat, and especially of the vest, which was ragged and yellow
+with age, with the cotton batting working out; and yet Daddy took the
+greatest care of it, folding it carefully and putting it away during the
+heat of the day out of reach of the crickets.
+
+One of his peculiarities, as Mrs. Jennings learned on the second day,
+was his habit of coming to breakfast. But he always earned all he got,
+and more too; and, as it was probable that his living at home was
+frugal, Mrs. Jennings smiled at his thrift, and quietly gave him his
+breakfast if he arrived late, which was not often.
+
+He had bought a little farm not far away, and settled down into a mode
+of life which he never afterward changed. As he was leaving at the end
+of the third day, he said:--
+
+"Now, sir, if you want any bootcherin' done, I'm y'r man. I don't turn
+m' hand over f'r any man in the state; no, sir! I c'n git a hawg on the
+gambrils jest a leetle quicker'n any other man I ever see; yes, sir; by
+gum!"
+
+"All right, uncle; I'll send for you when I'm ready to kill."
+
+
+II
+
+
+Hog-killing was one of the events of a boy's life on a Western farm, and
+Daddy was destined to be associated in the minds of Shep and Milton with
+another disagreeable job, that of building the fire and carrying water.
+
+It was very early on a keen, biting morning in November when Daddy came
+driving into the yard with his rude, long-runnered sled, one horse half
+his length behind the other in spite of the driver's clucking. He was
+delighted to catch the boys behind in the preparation.
+
+"A-a-h-h-r-r-h-h!" he rasped out, "you lazy vagabon's? Why ain't you got
+that fire blazin'? What the devil do y' mean, you rascals! Here it is
+broad daylight, and that fire not built. I vum, sir, you need a
+thrashin', the whole kit an bilun' of ye; yessir! Come, come, come!
+hustle now, stir your boots! hustle y'r boots--ha! ha! ha!"
+
+It was of no use to plead cold weather and damp chips.
+
+"What has that got to do with it, sir? I vum, sir, when I was your age,
+I could make a fire of green red-oak; yessir! Don't talk to me of colds!
+Stir your stumps and get warm, sir!"
+
+The old man put up his horses (and fed them generously with oats), and
+then went to the house to ask for "a leetle something hot--mince pie or
+sassidge." His request was very modest, but, as a matter of fact, he sat
+down and ate a very hearty breakfast, while the boys worked away at the
+fire under the big kettle.
+
+The hired man, under Daddy's direction, drew the bob-sleighs into
+position on the sunny side of the corn-crib, and arranged the barrel at
+the proper slant, while the old man ground his knives, Milton turning
+the grindstone--another hateful task, which Daddy's stories could not
+alleviate.
+
+Daddy never finished a story. If he started in to tell about a horse
+trade, it infallibly reminded him of a cattle trade, and talking of
+cattle switched him off upon logging, and logging reminded him of some
+heavy snow-storm he had known. Each parenthesis outgrew its proper
+limits, till he forgot what should have been the main story. His stories
+had some compensation, for when he stopped to try to recollect where he
+was, the pressure on the grindstone was released.
+
+At last the water was hot, and the time came to seize the hogs. This was
+the old man's great moment. He stood in the pen and shrieked with
+laughter while the hired men went rolling, one after the other, upon the
+ground, or were bruised against the fence by the rush of the burly
+swine.
+
+"You're a fine lot," he laughed. "Now, then, sir, _grab 'im_! Why don't
+ye nail 'im? I vum, sir, if I couldn't do better'n that, sir, I'd sell
+out; I would, sir, by gol! Get out o' the way!"
+
+With a lofty scorn he waved aside all help and stalked like a gladiator
+toward the pigs huddled in one corner of the pen. And when the selected
+victim was rushing by him, his long arm and great bony hand swept out,
+caught him by the ear, and flung him upon his side, squealing with
+deafening shrillness. But in spite of his smiling concealment of effort,
+Daddy had to lean against the fence and catch his breath even while he
+boasted:--
+
+"I'm an old codger, sir, but I'm worth--a dozen o' you--spindle-legged
+chaps; dum me if I ain't, sir!"
+
+His pride in his ability to catch and properly kill a hog was as genuine
+as the old knight-errant's pride in his ability to stick a knife into
+another steel-clothed brigand like himself. When the slain shote was
+swung upon the planking on the sled before the barrel, Daddy rested,
+while the boys filled the barrel with water from the kettle.
+
+There was always a weird charm about this stage of the work to the boys.
+The sun shone warm and bright in the lee of the corn-crib; the steam
+rose up, white and voluminous, from the barrel; the eaves dropped
+steadily; the hens ventured near, nervously, but full of curiosity,
+while the men laughed and joked with Daddy, starting him off on long
+stories, and winking at each other when his back was turned.
+
+At last he mounted his planking, selecting Mr. Jennings to pull upon the
+other handle of the hog-hook. He considered he conferred a distinct
+honor in this selection.
+
+"The time's been, sir, when I wouldn't thank any man for his help. No,
+sir, wouldn't thank 'im."
+
+"What do you do with these things?" asked one of the men, kicking two
+iron candlesticks which the old man laid conveniently near.
+
+"Scrape a hawg with them, sir. What do y' s'pose, you numskull?"
+
+"Well, I never saw anything--"
+
+"You'll have a chance mighty quick, sir. Grab ahold, sir! Swing 'im
+around--there! Now easy, easy! Now then, one, two; one, two--that's
+right."
+
+While he dipped the porker in the water, pulling with his companion
+rhythmically upon the hook, he talked incessantly, mixing up scraps of
+stories and boastings of what he could do, with commands of what he
+wanted the other man to do.
+
+"The best man I ever worked with. _Now turn 'im, turn 'im!_" he yelled,
+reaching over Jennings's wrist. "Grab under my wrist. There! won't ye
+never learn how to turn a hawg? _Now out with 'im!_" was his next wild
+yell, as the steaming hog was jerked out of the water upon the planking.
+"Now try the hair on them ears! Beautiful scald," he said, clutching his
+hand full of bristles and beaming with pride. "Never see anything finer.
+Here, Bub, a pail of hot water, quick! Try one of them candlesticks!
+They ain't no better scraper than the bottom of an old iron candlestick;
+no, sir! Dum your new-fangled scrapers! I made a bet once with old Jake
+Ridgeway that I could scrape the hair off'n two hawgs, by gum, quicker'n
+he could one. Jake was blowin' about a new scraper he had....
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, dump it right into the barrel. Condemmit! Ain't you got
+no gumption?... So Sim Smith, he held the watch. Sim was a mighty good
+hand t' work with; he was about the only man I ever sawed with who
+didn't ride the saw. He could jerk a crosscut saw.... Now let him in
+again, now, _he-ho_, once again! _Rool him over now_; that foreleg needs
+a tech o' water. Now out with him again; that's right, that's right! By
+gol, a beautiful scald as ever I see!"
+
+Milton, standing near, caught his eye again. "Clean that ear, sir! What
+the devil you standin' there for?" He returned to his story after a
+pause. "A--n--d Jake, he scraped away--_hyare_!" he shouted suddenly,
+"don't ruggle the skin like that! Can't you see the way I do it? Leave
+it smooth as a baby, sir--yessir!"
+
+He worked on in this way all day, talking unceasingly, never shirking a
+hard job, and scarcely showing fatigue at any moment.
+
+"I'm short o' breath a leetle, that's all; never git tired, but my wind
+gives out. Dum cold got on me, too."
+
+He ate a huge supper of liver and potatoes, still working away hard at
+an ancient horse trade, and when he drove off at night, he had not yet
+finished a single one of the dozen stories he had begun.
+
+
+III
+
+
+But pitching grain and hog-killing were on the lower levels of his art,
+for above all else Daddy loved to be called upon to play the fiddle for
+dances. He "officiated" for the first time at a dance given by one of
+the younger McTurgs. They were all fiddlers themselves,--had been for
+three generations,--but they seized the opportunity of helping Daddy and
+at the same time of relieving themselves of the trouble of furnishing
+the music while the rest danced.
+
+Milton attended this dance, and saw Daddy for the first time earning his
+money pleasantly. From that time on the associations around his
+personality were less severe, and they came to like him better. He came
+early, with his old fiddle in a time-worn white-pine box. His hair was
+neatly combed to the top of his long, narrow head, and his face was very
+clean. The boys all greeted him with great pleasure, and asked him where
+he would sit.
+
+"Right on that table, sir; put a chair up there."
+
+He took his chair on the kitchen-table as if it were a throne. He wore
+huge moccasins of moose-hide on his feet, and for special occasions like
+this added a paper collar to his red woollen shirt. He took off his coat
+and laid it across his chair for a cushion. It was all very funny to the
+young people, but they obeyed him laughingly, and while they "formed
+on," he sawed his violin and coaxed it up to concert pitch, and twanged
+it and banged it into proper tunefulness.
+
+"A-a-a-ll ready there!" he rasped out, with prodigious force. "Everybody
+git into his place!" Then, lifting one huge foot, he put the fiddle
+under his chin, and, raising his bow till his knuckles touched the
+strings, he yelled, "Already, G'LANG!" and brought his foot down with a
+startling bang on the first note. _Rye doodle duo, doodle doo_.
+
+As he went on and the dancers fell into rhythm, the clatter of heavy
+boots seemed to thrill him with old-time memories, and he kept
+boisterous time with his foot, while his high, rasping nasal rang high
+above the confusion of tongues and heels and swaying forms.
+
+"_Ladies_' gran' change! Four hands round! _Balance_ all! _Elly_-man
+left! Back to play-cis."
+
+His eyes closed in a sort of intoxication of pleasure, but he saw all
+that went on in some miraculous way.
+
+"_First_ lady lead to the right--_toodle rum rum!_ _Gent_ foller after
+(step along thar)! Four hands round--"
+
+The boys were immensely pleased with him. They delighted in his antics
+rather than in his tunes, which were exceedingly few and simple. They
+seemed never to be able to get enough of one tune which he called
+"Honest John," and which he played in his own way, accompanied by a
+chant which he meant, without a doubt, to be musical.
+
+"HON-ers tew your pardners--_tee teedle deedle dee dee dee dee_! Stand
+up straight an' put on your style! _Right_ an' left four--"
+
+The hat was passed by the floor-manager during the evening, and Daddy
+got nearly three dollars, which delighted Milton very much.
+
+At supper he insisted on his prerogative, which was to take the
+prettiest girl out to supper.
+
+"Look-a-here, Daddy, ain't that crowdin' the mourners?" objected the
+others.
+
+"What do you mean by that, sir? No, sir! Always done it, in Michigan and
+Yark State both; yes, sir."
+
+He put on his coat ceremoniously, while the tittering girls stood about
+the room waiting. He did not delay. His keen eyes had made selection
+long before, and, approaching Rose Watson with old-fashioned, elaborate
+gallantry, he said: "_May_ I have the pleasure?" and marched out
+triumphantly, amidst shouts of laughter.
+
+His shrill laugh rang high above the rest at the table, as he said: "I'm
+the youngest man in this crowd, sir! Demmit, I bet a hat I c'n dance
+down any man in this crowd; yes, sir. The old man can do it yet."
+
+They all took sides in order to please him.
+
+"I'll bet he can," said Hugh McTurg; "I'll bet a dollar on Daddy."
+
+"I'll take the bet," said Joe Randall, and with great noise the match
+was arranged to come the first thing after supper.
+
+"All right, sir; any time, sir. I'll let you know the old man is on
+earth yet."
+
+While the girls were putting away the supper dishes, the young man lured
+Daddy out into the yard for a wrestling-match, but some others objected.
+
+"Oh, now, that won't do! If Daddy was a young man--"
+
+"What do you mean, sir? I am young enough for you, sir. Just let me get
+ahold o' you, sir, and I'll show you, you young rascal! you dem
+jackanapes!" he ended, almost shrieking with rage, as he shook his fist
+in the face of his grinning tormentors.
+
+His friends held him back with much apparent alarm, and ordered the
+other fellows away.
+
+"There, there, Daddy, I wouldn't mind him! I wouldn't dirty my hands on
+him; he ain't worth it. Just come inside, and we'll have that
+dancing-match now."
+
+Daddy reluctantly returned to the house, and, having surrendered his
+violin to Hugh McTurg, was ready for the contest. As he stepped into the
+middle of the room he was not altogether ludicrous. His rusty trousers
+were bagged at the knee, and his red woollen stockings showed between
+the tops of his moccasins and his pantaloon legs, and his coat, utterly
+characterless as to color and cut, added to the stoop in his shoulders;
+and yet there was a rude sort of grace and a certain dignity about his
+bearing which kept down laughter. They were to have a square dance of
+the old-fashioned sort.
+
+"_Farrm_ on," he cried, and the fiddler struck up the first note of the
+Virginia Reel. Daddy led out Rose, and the dance began. He straightened
+up till his tall form towered above the rest of the boys like a
+weather-beaten pine tree, as he balanced and swung and led and called
+off the changes with a voice full of imperious command.
+
+The fiddler took a malicious delight toward the last in quickening the
+time of the good old dance, and that put the old man on his mettle.
+
+"Go it, ye young rascal!" he yelled. He danced like a boy and yelled
+like a demon, catching a laggard here and there, and hurling them into
+place like tops, while he kicked and stamped, wound in and out and waved
+his hands in the air with a gesture which must have dated back to the
+days of Washington. At last, flushed, breathless, but triumphant, he
+danced a final breakdown to the tune of "Leather Breeches," to show he
+was unsubdued.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+But these rare days passed away. As the country grew older it lost the
+wholesome simplicity of pioneer days, and Daddy got a chance to play but
+seldom. He no longer pleased the boys and girls--his music was too
+monotonous and too simple. He felt this very deeply. Once in a while he
+broke forth in protest against the changes.
+
+"The boys I used to trot on m' knee are gittin' too high-toned. They
+wouldn't be found dead with old Deering, and then the preachers are
+gittin' thick, and howlin' agin dancin', and the country's filling up
+with Dutchmen, so't I'm left out."
+
+As a matter of fact, there were few homes now where Daddy could sit on
+the table, in his ragged vest and rusty pantaloons, and play "Honest
+John," while the boys thumped about the floor. There were few homes
+where the old man was even a welcome visitor, and he felt this rejection
+keenly. The women got tired of seeing him about, because of his
+uncleanly habits of spitting, and his tiresome stories. Many of the old
+neighbors died or moved away, and the young people went West or to the
+cities. Men began to pity him rather than laugh at him, which hurt him
+more than their ridicule. They began to favor him at threshing or at the
+fall hog-killing.
+
+"Oh, you're getting old, Daddy; you'll have to give up this heavy work.
+Of course, if you feel able to do it, why, all right! Like to have you
+do it, but I guess we'll have to have a man to do the heavy lifting, I
+s'pose."
+
+"I s'pose not, sir! I am jest as able to yank a hawg as ever, sir; yes,
+sir, demmit--demmit! Do you think I've got one foot in the grave?"
+
+Nevertheless, Daddy often failed to come to time on appointed days, and
+it was painful to hear him trying to explain, trying to make light of it
+all.
+
+"M' caugh wouldn't let me sleep last night. A goldum leetle, nasty,
+ticklin' caugh, too; but it kept me awake, fact was, an'--well, m' wife,
+she said I hadn't better come. But don't you worry, sir; it won't happen
+again, sir; no, sir."
+
+His hands got stiffer year by year, and his simple tunes became
+practically a series of squeaks and squalls. There came a time when the
+fiddle was laid away almost altogether, for his left hand got caught in
+the cog-wheels of the horse-power, and all four of the fingers on that
+hand were crushed. Thereafter he could only twang a little on the
+strings. It was not long after this that he struck his foot with the axe
+and lamed himself for life.
+
+As he lay groaning in bed, Mr. Jennings went in to see him and tried to
+relieve the old man's feelings by telling him the number of times he had
+practically cut his feet off, and said he knew it was a terrible hard
+thing to put up with.
+
+"Gol dummit, it ain't the pain," the old sufferer yelled, "it's the dum
+awkwardness. I've chopped all my life; I can let an axe in up to the
+maker's name, and hew to a hair-line; yes, sir! It was jest them dum new
+mittens my wife made; they was s' slippery," he ended with a groan.
+
+As a matter of fact, the one accident hinged upon the other. It was the
+failure of his left hand, with its useless fingers, to do its duty, that
+brought the axe down upon his foot. The pain was not so much physical as
+mental. To think that he, who could hew to a hair-line, right and left
+hand, should cut his own foot like a ten-year-old boy--that scared him.
+It brought age and decay close to him. For the first time in his life
+he felt that he was fighting a losing battle.
+
+A man like this lives so much in the flesh, that when his limbs begin to
+fail him everything else seems slipping away. He had gloried in his
+strength. He had exulted in the thrill of his life-blood and in the
+swell of his vast muscles; he had clung to the idea that he was strong
+as ever, till this last blow came upon him, and then he began to think
+and to tremble.
+
+When he was able to crawl about again, he was a different man. He was
+gloomy and morose, snapping and snarling at all that came near him, like
+a wounded bear. He was alone a great deal of the time during the winter
+following his hurt. Neighbors seldom went in, and for weeks he saw no
+one but his hired hand, and the faithful, dumb little old woman, his
+wife, who moved about without any apparent concern or sympathy for his
+suffering. The hired hand, whenever he called upon the neighbors, or
+whenever questions were asked, said that Daddy hung around over the
+stove most of the time, paying no attention to any one or anything. "He
+ain't dangerous 't all," he said, meaning that Daddy was not dangerously
+ill.
+
+Milton rode out from school one winter day with Bill, the hand, and was
+so much impressed with his story of Daddy's condition that he rode home
+with him. He found the old man sitting bent above the stove, wrapped in
+a quilt, shivering and muttering to himself. He hardly looked up when
+Milton spoke to him, and seemed scarcely to comprehend what he said.
+
+Milton was much alarmed at the terrible change, for the last time he had
+seen him he had towered above him, laughingly threatening to "warm his
+jacket," and now here he sat, a great hulk of flesh, his mind flickering
+and flaring under every wind of suggestion, soon to go out altogether.
+
+In reply to questions he only muttered with a trace of his old spirit:
+"I'm all right. Jest as good a man as I ever was, only I'm cold. I'll be
+all right when spring comes, so 't I c'n git outdoors. Somethin' to warm
+me up, yessir; I'm cold, that's all."
+
+The young fellow sat in awe before him, but the old wife and Bill moved
+about the room, taking very little interest in what the old man said or
+did. Bill at last took down the violin. "I'll wake him up," he said.
+"This always fetches the old feller. Now watch 'im."
+
+"Oh, don't do that!" Milton said in horror. But Bill drew the bow across
+the strings with the same stroke that Daddy always used when tuning up.
+
+He lifted his head as Bill dashed into "Honest John," in spite of
+Milton's protest. He trotted his feet after a little and drummed with
+his hands on the arms of his chair, then smiled a little in a pitiful
+way. Finally he reached out his right hand for the violin and took it
+into his lap. He tried to hold the neck with his poor, old, mutilated
+left hand, and burst into tears.
+
+"Don't you do that again, Bill," Milton said. "It's better for him to
+forget that. Now you take the best care of him you can to-night. I don't
+think he's going to live long; I think you ought to go for the doctor
+right off."
+
+"Oh, he's been like this for the last two weeks; he ain't sick, he's
+jest old, that's all," replied Bill, brutally.
+
+And the old lady, moving about without passion and without speech,
+seemed to confirm this; and yet Milton was unable to get the picture of
+the old man out of his mind. He went home with a great lump in his
+throat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning, while they were at breakfast, Bill burst wildly into
+the room.
+
+"Come over there, all of you; we want you."
+
+They all looked up much scared. "What's the matter, Bill?"
+
+"Daddy's killed himself," said Bill, and turned to rush back, followed
+by Mr. Jennings and Milton.
+
+While on the way across the field Bill told how it all happened.
+
+"He wouldn't go to bed, the old lady couldn't make him, and when I got
+up this morning I didn't think nothin' about it. I s'posed, of course,
+he'd gone to bed all right; but when I was going out to the barn I
+stumbled across something in the snow, and I felt around, and there he
+was. He got hold of my revolver someway. It was on the shelf by the
+washstand, and I s'pose he went out there so 't we wouldn't hear him. I
+dassn't touch him," he said, with a shiver; "and the old woman, she jest
+slumped down in a chair an' set there--wouldn't do a thing--so I come
+over to see you."
+
+Milton's heart swelled with remorse. He felt guilty because he had not
+gone directly for the doctor. To think that the old sufferer had killed
+himself was horrible and seemed impossible.
+
+The wind was blowing the snow, cold and dry, across the yard, but the
+sun shone brilliantly upon the figure in the snow as they came up to it.
+There Daddy lay. The snow was in his scant hair and in the hollow of his
+wide, half-naked chest. A pistol was in his hand, but there was no mark
+upon him, and Milton's heart leaped with quick relief. It was delirium,
+not suicide.
+
+There was a sort of majesty in the figure half buried in the snow. His
+hands were clenched, and there was a frown of resolution on his face, as
+if he had fancied Death coming, and had gone defiantly forth to meet
+him.
+
+
+A STOP-OVER AT TYRE
+
+I
+
+
+Albert Lohr was studying the motion of the ropes and lamps, and
+listening to the rumble of the wheels and the roar of the ferocious wind
+against the pane of glass that his head touched. It was the midnight
+train from Marion rushing toward Warsaw like some savage thing
+unchained, creaking, shrieking, and clattering through the wild storm
+which possessed the whole Mississippi Valley.
+
+Albert lost sight of the lamps at last, and began to wonder what his
+future would be. "First I must go through the university at Madison;
+then I'll study law, go into politics, and perhaps some time I may go to
+Washington."
+
+In imagination he saw that wonderful city. As a Western boy, Boston to
+him was historic, New York was the great metropolis, but Washington was
+the great American city, and political greatness the only fame.
+
+The car was nearly empty: save here and there the wide-awake Western
+drummer, and a woman with four fretful children, the train was as
+deserted as it was frightfully cold. The engine shrieked warningly at
+intervals, the train rumbled hollowly over short bridges and across
+pikes, swung round the hills, and plunged with wild warnings past little
+towns hid in the snow, with only here and there a light shining dimly.
+
+One of the drummers now and then rose up from his cramped bed on the
+seats, and swore cordially at the railway company for not heating the
+cars. The woman with the children inquired for the tenth time, "Is the
+next station Lodi?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, it is," snarled the drummer, as he jerked viciously at the
+strap on his valise; "and darned glad I am, too, I can tell yeh! I'll be
+stiff as a car-pin if I stay in this infernal ice-chest another hour. I
+wonder what the company think--"
+
+At Lodi several people got on, among them a fat man with a pretty
+daughter, who appeared to be abnormally wide awake--considering the time
+of night. She saw Albert for the same reason that he saw her--they were
+both young and good-looking.
+
+The student began his musings again, modified by this girl's face. He
+had left out the feminine element; obviously he must recapitulate. He'd
+study law, yes; but that would not prevent going to sociables and church
+fairs. And at these fairs the chances were good for a meeting with a
+girl. Her father must be influential--county judge or district attorney.
+Marriage would open new avenues--
+
+He was roused by the sound of his own name.
+
+"Is Albert Lohr in this car?" shouted the brakeman, coming in, enveloped
+in a cloud of fine snow.
+
+"Yes, here!" called Albert.
+
+"Here's a telegram for you."
+
+Albert snatched the envelope with a sudden fear of disaster at home; but
+it was dated "Tyre":
+
+           "Get off at Tyre. I'll be there.
+                                              "HARTLEY."
+
+"Well, now, that's fun!" said Albert, looking at the brakeman. "When do
+we reach there?"
+
+"About 2.20."
+
+"Well, by thunder! A pretty time o' night!"
+
+The brakeman grinned sympathetically. "Any answer?" he asked, at length.
+
+"No; that is, none that will do the matter justice."
+
+"Hartley friend o' yours?"
+
+"Yes; know him?"
+
+"Yes; he boarded where I did in Warsaw."
+
+When he came back again, the brakeman said to Albert, in a hesitating
+way:
+
+"Ain't going t' stop off long, I s'pose?"
+
+"May an' may not; depends on Hartley. Why?"
+
+"Well, I've got an aunt there that keeps boarders, and I kind o' like t'
+send her one when I can. If you should happen to stay a few days, go an'
+see her. She sets up first-class grub, an' it wouldn't kill anybody,
+anyhow, if you went up an' called."
+
+"Course not. If I stay long enough to make it pay I'll look her up sure.
+I'm no Vanderbilt. I can't afford to stop at two-dollar-a-day hotels."
+
+The brakeman sat down opposite, encouraged by Albert's smile.
+
+"Y' see, my division ends at Warsaw, and I run back and forth here every
+other day, but I don't get much chance to see them, and I ain't worth a
+cuss f'r letter-writin'. Y' see, she's only aunt by marriage, but I like
+her; an' I guess she's got about all she can stand up under, an' so I
+like t' help her a little when I can. The old man died owning nothing
+but the house, an' that left the old lady t' rustle f'r her livin'.
+Dummed if she ain't sandy as old Sand. They're gitt'n' along purty--"
+
+The whistle blew for brakes, and, seizing his lantern, the brakeman
+slammed out on the platform.
+
+"Tough night for twisting brakes," suggested Albert, when he came in
+again.
+
+"Yes--on the freight."
+
+"Good heavens! I should say so. They don't run freight such nights as
+this?"
+
+"Don't they? Well, I guess they don't stop for a storm like this if
+they's any money to be made by sending her through. Many's the night
+I've broke all night on top of the old wooden cars, when the wind was
+sharp enough to shear the hair off a cast-iron mule--_woo-o-o!_ There's
+where you need grit, old man," he ended, dropping into familiar speech.
+
+"Yes; or need a job awful bad."
+
+The brakeman was struck with this idea. "There's where you're right. A
+fellow don't take that kind of a job for the fun of it. Not much! He
+takes it because he's got to. That's as sure's you're a foot high. I
+tell you, a feller's got t' rustle these days if he gits any kind of a
+job--"
+
+"_Toot, too-o-o-o-t, toot!_"
+
+The station passed, the brakeman did not return, perhaps because he
+found some other listener, perhaps because he was afraid of boring this
+pleasant young fellow.
+
+Albert shuddered with a sympathetic pain as he thought of the heroic
+fellows on the tops of icy cars, with hands straining at frosty brakes,
+the wind cutting their faces like a sand-blast. Oh, those tireless hands
+at the wheel and throttle!--
+
+He looked at his watch; it was two o'clock; the next station was Tyre.
+As he began to get his things together, the brakeman again addressed
+him:
+
+"Oh, I forgot to say that the old lady's name is Welsh--Mrs. Robert
+Welsh. Say I sent yeh, and it'll be all right."
+
+"Sure! I'll try her in the morning--that is, if I find out I'm going to
+stay."
+
+Albert clutched his valise, and pulled his cap firmly down on his head.
+
+"Here goes!" he muttered.
+
+"Hold y'r breath!" shouted the brakeman. Albert swung himself to the
+platform before the station--a platform of planks along which the snow
+was streaming like water.
+
+"Good-night!" shouted the brakeman.
+
+"_Good_-night!"
+
+"All-l abo-o-o-ard!" called the conductor somewhere in the storm. The
+brakeman swung his lantern, the train drew off into the blinding whirl,
+and its lights were soon lost in the clouds of snow.
+
+No more desolate place could well be imagined. A level plain, apparently
+bare of houses, swept by a ferocious wind; a dingy little den called a
+station--no other shelter in sight; no sign of life save the dull glare
+of two windows to the left, alternately lost and found in the storm.
+
+Albert's heart contracted with a sudden fear; the outlook was appalling.
+
+"Where's the town?" he asked of a dimly seen figure with a lantern--a
+man evidently locking the station door, his only refuge.
+
+"Over there," was the surly reply.
+
+"How far?"
+
+"'Bout a mile."
+
+"A mile!"
+
+"That's what I said--a mile."
+
+"Well, I'll be blanked!"
+
+"Well, y' better be doing something besides standing here, 'r y' 'll
+freeze t' death. I'd go over to the Arteeshun House an' go t' bed if I
+was in your fix."
+
+"Well, where _is_ the Artesian House?"
+
+"See them lights?"
+
+"I see them lights."
+
+"Well, they're it."
+
+"Oh, wouldn't your grammar make Old Grammaticuss curl up, though!"
+
+"What say?" queried the man bending his head toward Albert, his form
+being almost lost in the snow that streamed against them both.
+
+"I said I guessed I'd try it," grinned the youth, invisibly.
+
+"Well, I would if I was in your fix. Keep right close after me; they's
+some ditches here, and the foot-bridges are none too wide."
+
+"The Artesian is owned by the railway, eh?"
+
+"Yup."
+
+"And you're the clerk?"
+
+"Yup; nice little scheme, ain't it?"
+
+"Well, it'll do," replied Albert.
+
+The man laughed without looking around.
+
+In the little bar-room, lighted by a vilely smelling kerosene lamp, the
+clerk, hitherto a shadow and a voice, came to light as a middle-aged man
+with a sullen face slightly belied by a sly twinkle in his eyes.
+
+"This beats all the winters I ever _did_ see. It don't do nawthin' but
+blow, _blow_. Want to go to bed, I s'pose. Well, come along."
+
+He took up one of the absurd little lamps and tried to get more light
+out of it.
+
+"Dummed if a white bean wouldn't be better."
+
+"Spit on it!" suggested Albert.
+
+"I'd throw the whole business out o' the window for a cent!" growled the
+man.
+
+"Here's y'r cent," said the boy.
+
+"You're mighty frisky f'r a feller gitt'n' off'n a midnight train,"
+replied the man, as he tramped along a narrow hallway. He spoke in a
+voice loud enough to awaken every sleeper in the house.
+
+"Have t' be, or there'd be a pair of us."
+
+"You'll laugh out o' the other side o' y'r mouth when you saw away on
+one o' the bell-collar steaks this house puts up," ended the clerk, as
+he put the lamp down.
+
+"Sufficient unto the morn is the evil thereof,'" called Albert after
+him.
+
+He was awakened the next morning by the cooks pounding steak down in the
+kitchen and wrangling over some division of duty. It was a vile place at
+any time, but on a morning like this it was appalling. The water was
+frozen, the floor like ice, the seven-by-nine glass frosted so that he
+couldn't see to comb his hair.
+
+"All that got me out of bed," he remarked to the clerk, "was the thought
+of leaving."
+
+The breakfast was incredibly bad--so much worse than he expected that
+Albert was forced to admit he had never seen its like. He fled from the
+place without a glance behind, and took passage in an omnibus for the
+town, a mile away. It was terribly cold, the thermometer registering
+twenty below zero; but the sun was very brilliant, and the air still.
+
+The driver pulled up before a very ambitious wooden hotel entitled "The
+Eldorado," and Albert dashed in at the door and up to the stove, with
+both hands covering his ears.
+
+As he stood there, frantic with pain, kicking his toes and rubbing his
+hands, he heard a chuckle--a slow, sly, insulting chuckle--turned, and
+saw Hartley standing in the doorway, visibly exulting over his misery.
+
+"Hello, Bert! that you?"
+
+"What's left of me. Say, you're a good one, you are? Why didn't you
+telegraph me at Marion? A deuce of a night I've had of it!"
+
+"Do ye good," laughed Hartley, a tall, alert, handsome fellow nearly
+thirty years of age.
+
+After a short and vigorous "blowing up," Albert asked: "Well, now,
+what's the meaning of all this, anyhow? Why this change from Racine?"
+
+"Well, you see, I got wind of another fellow going to work this county
+for a _Life of Logan_, and thinks I, 'By jinks! I'd better drop in ahead
+of him with Blaine's _Twenty Tears_.' I telegraphed f'r territory, got
+it, and telegraphed to stop you."
+
+"You did it. When did you come down?"
+
+"Last night, six o'clock."
+
+Albert was getting warmer and better-natured.
+
+"Well, I'm here; what are you going t' do with me?"
+
+"I'll use you some way. First thing is to find a boarding-place where we
+can work in a couple o' books on the bill."
+
+"Well, I don't know about that, but I'm going to look up a place a
+brakeman gave me a pointer on."
+
+"All right; here goes!"
+
+Scarcely any one was stirring on the streets. The wind was pitilessly
+cold, though not strong. The snow under their feet cried out with a note
+like glass and steel. The windows of the stores were thick with frost,
+and Albert shivered with a sense of homelessness. He had never
+experienced anything like this before. "I don't want much of this," he
+muttered, through his scarf.
+
+Mrs. Welsh lived in a large frame house standing on the edge of a bank,
+and as the young men waited at the door they could look down on the
+meadow-land, where the river lay blue and hard as steel.
+
+A pale little girl, ten or twelve years of age, opened the door.
+
+"Is this where Mrs. Welsh lives?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Will you ask her to come here a moment?"
+
+"Yes, sir," piped the little one. "Won't you come in and sit down by the
+fire?" she added, with a quaint air of hospitality.
+
+The room was the usual village sitting-room. A cylinder heater full of
+wood stood at one side of it. A rag carpet, much faded, covered the
+floor. The paper on the wall was like striped candy, and the chairs were
+nondescript; but everything was clean--worn more with brushing than with
+use.
+
+A slim woman of fifty, with hollow eyes and a patient smile, came in,
+wiping her hands on her apron.
+
+"How d'ye do? Did you want to see me?"
+
+"Yes," said Hartley, smiling. "The fact is, we're book agents, and
+looking for a place to board."
+
+"Well--a--I--yes, I keep boarders."
+
+"I was sent here by a brakeman on the midnight express," put in Bert,
+
+"Oh, Tom," said the woman, her face clearing. "Tom's always sending us
+people. Why, yes; I've got room for you, I guess--this room here." She
+pushed open a folding door leading into what had been her parlor.
+
+"You can have this."
+
+"And the price?"
+
+"Four dollars."
+
+"Eight dollars f'r the two of us. All right; we'll be with you a week or
+two if we have luck."
+
+Mrs. Welsh smiled. "Excuse me, won't you? I've got to be at my baking;
+make y'rselves at home."
+
+Bert remarked how much she looked like his own mother in the back. She
+had the same tired droop in the shoulders, the same colorless dress,
+characterless with much washing.
+
+"Certainly. I feel at home already," replied Bert. "Now, Jim," he said,
+after she left the room, "I'm going t' stay right here while you go and
+order our trunks around--just t' pay you off f'r last night."
+
+"All right," said Hartley cheerily, going out.
+
+After getting warm, Bert returned to the sitting-room, and sat down at
+the parlor organ and played a gospel hymn or two from the Moody and
+Sankey hymnal. He was in the midst of the chorus of _Let Your Lower
+Lights_, etc., when a young woman entered the room. She had a
+whisk-broom in her hand, and stood a picture of gentle surprise. Bert
+wheeled about on his stool.
+
+"I thought it was Stella," she began.
+
+"I'm a book agent," Bert explained. "I might as well out with it. There
+are two of us. Come here to board."
+
+"Oh!" said the girl, with some relief. She was very fair and very
+slight, almost frail. Her eyes were of the sunniest blue, her face pale
+and somewhat thin, but her lips showed scarlet, and her teeth were fine.
+Bert liked her and smiled.
+
+"A book agent is the next thing to a burglar, I know; but still--"
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean that, but I _was_ surprised. When did you come?"
+
+"Just a few moments ago. Am I in your way?" he inquired, with elaborate
+solicitude.
+
+"Oh no! Please go on. You play very well. It is seldom young men play at
+all."
+
+"I had to at college; the other fellows all wanted to sing. You play, of
+course."
+
+"When I have time." She sighed. There was a weary droop in her voice;
+she seemed aware of it, and said more brightly:
+
+"You mean Madison, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes; I'm in my second year."
+
+"I went there two years. Then I had to quit and come home to help
+mother."
+
+"Did you? That's why I'm out here on this infernal book business--to get
+money to go on with."
+
+She looked at him with interest now, noticing his fine eyes and waving
+brown hair.
+
+"It's dreadful, isn't it? But you've got a hope to go back. I haven't."
+She ended with a sigh, a far-off expression in her eyes. "It almost
+killed me to give it up. I don't s'pose I'd know any of the scholars
+you know. Even the teachers are not the same. Oh, yes--Sarah Shaw; I
+think she's back for the normal course."
+
+"Oh yes!" exclaimed Bert, "I know Sarah. We boarded on the same street;
+used t' go home together after class. An awful nice girl, too."
+
+"She's a worker. She teaches school. I can't do that, for mother needs
+me at home." There was another pause, broken by the little girl, who
+called:
+
+"Maud, mamma wants you."
+
+Maud rose and went out, with a tired smile on her face that emphasized
+her resemblance to her mother. Bert couldn't forget that smile, and he
+was still thinking about the girl, and what her life must be, when
+Hartley came in.
+
+"By jinks! It's _snifty_, as dad used to say. You can't draw a long
+breath through your nostrils without freezing y'r nose solid as a
+bottle," he announced, throwing off his coat. "By-the-way, I've just
+found out why you was so anxious to get into this house. Another case o'
+girl, hey?"
+
+Bert blushed; he couldn't help it, notwithstanding his innocence in this
+case. "I didn't know it myself till about ten minutes ago," he
+protested.
+
+Hartley winked prodigiously.
+
+"Don't tell me! Is she pretty?"
+
+The girl returned at this moment with an armful of wood.
+
+"Let _me_ put it in," cried Hartley, springing up. "Excuse me. My name
+is Hartley, book agent: Blaine's _Twenty Years_, plain cloth, sprinkled
+edges, three dollars; half calf, three fifty. This is my friend Mr.
+Lohr, of Marion; German extraction, soph at the university."
+
+The girl bowed and smiled, and pushed by him toward the door of the
+parlor. Hartley followed her in, and Bert could hear them rattling away
+at the stove.
+
+"Won't you sit down and play for us?" asked Hartley, after they returned
+to the sitting-room. The persuasive music of the book agent was in his
+fine voice.
+
+"Oh no! It's nearly dinner-time, and I must help about the table."
+
+"Now make yourselves at home," said Mrs. Welsh, appearing at the door
+leading to the kitchen; "if you want anything, just let me know."
+
+"All right. We will," replied Hartley.
+
+By the time the dinner-bell rang they were feeling at home in their new
+quarters. At the table they met the usual group of village boarders: the
+Brann brothers, newsdealers; old man Troutt, who ran the
+livery-stable--and smelled of it; and a small, dark, and wizened woman
+who kept the millinery store. The others, who came in late, were clerks
+in the stores near by.
+
+Maud served the dinner, while Stella and her mother waited upon the
+table. Albert admired the hands of the girl, which no amount of work
+could quite rob of their essential shapeliness. She was not more than
+twenty, he decided, but she looked older, so wistful was her face.
+
+"They's one thing ag'in' yeh," Troutt, the liveryman, remarked to
+Hartley: "we've jest been worked for one o' the goldingedest schemes you
+_ever_ see! 'Bout six munce ago s'm' fellers come all through here
+claimin' t' be after information about the county and the leadin'
+citizens; wanted t' write a history, an' wanted all the pitchers of the
+leading men, old settlers, an' so on. You paid ten dollars, an' you had
+a book an' your pitcher in it."
+
+"I know the scheme," grinned Hartley.
+
+"Wal, sir, I s'pose them fellers roped in every man in this town. I
+don't s'pose they got out with a cent less'n one thousand dollars. An'
+when the book come--wal!" Here he stopped to roar. "I don't s'pose you
+ever see a madder lot o' men in your life. In the first place, they got
+the names and the pitchers mixed so that I was Judge Ricker, an' Judge
+Ricker was ol' man Daggett. Didn't the judge swear--oh, it was awful!"
+
+"I should say so."
+
+"An the pitchers that wa'n't mixed was so goldinged _black_ you couldn't
+tell 'em from niggers. You know how kind o' lily-livered Lawyer Ransom
+is? Wal, he looked like ol' black Joe; he was the maddest man of the
+hull bi'lin'. He throwed the book in the fire, and tromped around like a
+blind bull."
+
+"It wasn't a success, I take it, then. Why, I should 'a' thought they'd
+'a' nabbed the fellows."
+
+"Not much! They was too keen for that. They didn't deliver the books
+theirselves; they hired Dick Bascom to do it f'r them. 'Course, Dick
+wa'n't t' blame."
+
+"No; I never tried it before," Albert was saying to Maud, at their end
+of the table. "Hartley offered me a job, and as I needed money, I came.
+I don't know what he's going to do with me, now I'm here."
+
+Albert did not go out after dinner with Hartley; it was too cold. He
+had brought his books with him, planning to keep up with his class, if
+possible, and was deep in "Caesar" when a timid knock came upon the door.
+
+"Come!" he called, student fashion,
+
+Maud entered, her face aglow.
+
+"How natural that sounds!" she said.
+
+Albert sprang up to take the wood from her arms. "I wish you'd let me do
+that," he said, pleadingly, as she refused his aid.
+
+"I wasn't sure you were in. Were you reading?"
+
+"Caesar," he replied, holding up the book. "I am conditioned on Latin.
+I'm going over the 'Commentaries' again."
+
+"I thought I knew the book," she laughed.
+
+"You read Latin?"
+
+"Yes, a little--Vergil."
+
+"Maybe you can help me out on these _oratia obliqua_. They bother me
+yet. I hate these 'Caesar saids.' I like Vergil better."
+
+She stood at his shoulder while he pointed out the knotty passage. She
+read it easily, and he thanked her. It was amazing how well acquainted
+they felt after this.
+
+The wind roared outside in the bare maples, and the fire boomed in its
+pent place within, but these young people had forgotten time and place.
+The girl sank into a chair almost unconsciously as they talked of
+Madison--a great city to them--of the Capitol building, of the splendid
+campus, of the lakes, and the gay sailing there in summer and
+ice-boating in winter.
+
+"Oh, it makes me homesick!" cried the girl, with a deep sigh. "It was
+the happiest, sunniest time of all my life. Oh, those walks and talks!
+Those recitations in the dear, chalky old rooms! Oh, _how_ I would like
+to go back over that hollow door-stone again!"
+
+She broke off, with tears in her eyes, and he was obliged to cough two
+or three times before he could break the silence.
+
+"I know just how you feel. The first spring when I went back on the farm
+it seemed as if I couldn't stand it. I thought I'd go crazy. The days
+seemed forty-eight hours long. It was so lonesome, and so dreary on
+rainy days! But of course I expected to go back; that's what kept me up.
+I don't think I could have stood it if I hadn't had hope."
+
+"I've given it up now," she said, plaintively; "it's no use hoping."
+
+"Why don't you teach?" he asked, deeply affected by her voice and
+manner.
+
+"I did teach here for a year, but I couldn't endure the strain; I'm not
+very strong, and the boys were so rude. If I could teach in a
+seminary--teach Latin and English--I should be happy, I think. But I
+can't leave mother now."
+
+She was a wholly different girl in Albert's eyes as she said this. Her
+cheap dress, her check apron, could not hide the pure intellectual flame
+of her spirit. Her large, blue eyes were deep with thought, and the pale
+face, lighted by the glow of the fire, was as lovely as a rose. Almost
+before he knew it, he was telling her of his life.
+
+"I don't see how I endured it as long as I did," he went on. "It was
+nothing but work, work, and dust or mud the whole year round; farm-life,
+especially on a dairy farm, is slavery."
+
+"Yes," she agreed, "that is true. Father was a carpenter, and I've
+always lived here; but we have people who are farmers, and I know how it
+is with them."
+
+"Why, when I think of it now it makes me crawl! To think of getting up
+in the morning before daylight, and going out to the barn to do chores,
+to get ready to go into the field to work! Working, wasting y'r life on
+dirt. Waiting and tending on cows seven hundred times a year. Goin'
+round and round in a circle, and never getting out. You needn't talk to
+me of the poetry of a farmer's life."
+
+"It's just the same for us women," she corroborated. "Think of us going
+around the house day after day, and doing just the same things over an'
+over, year after year! That's the whole of most women's lives.
+Dishwashing almost drives me crazy."
+
+"I know it," said Albert; "but somebody has t' do it. And if a fellow's
+folks are workin' hard, why, of course he can't lay around and study.
+They're not to blame. I don't know that anybody's to blame."
+
+"I don't suppose anybody is, but it makes me sad to see mother going
+around as she does, day after day. She won't let me do as much as I
+would." The girl looked at her slender hands. "You see, I'm not very
+strong. It makes my heart ache to see her going around in that quiet,
+patient way; she's so good."
+
+"I know, I know! I've felt just like that about my mother and father,
+too."
+
+There was a long pause, full of deep feeling, and then the girl
+continued in a low, hesitating voice:
+
+"Mother's had an awful hard time since father died. We had to go to
+keeping boarders, which was hard--very hard for mother." The boy felt a
+sympathetic lump in his throat as the girl went on again: "But she
+doesn't complain, and she didn't want me to come home from school; but
+of course I couldn't do anything else."
+
+It didn't occur to either of them that any other course was open, nor
+that there was any special heroism or self-sacrifice in the act; it was
+simply _right_.
+
+"Well, I'm not going to drudge all my life," said Albert, at last. "I
+know it's kind o' selfish, but I can't live on a farm. I've made up my
+mind to study law and enter the bar. Lawyers manage to get hold of
+enough to live on decently, and that's more than you can say of the
+farmers. And they live in town, where something is going on once in a
+while, anyway."
+
+In the pause which followed, footsteps were heard on the walk outside,
+and the girl sprang up with a beautiful blush.
+
+"My stars! I didn't think--I forgot--I must go."
+
+Hartley burst into the room shortly after she left it, in his usual
+breeze.
+
+"Hul-_lo!_ Still at the Latin, hey?"
+
+"Yes," said Bert, with ease. "How goes it?"
+
+"Oh, I'm whooping 'er up! I'm getting started in great shape. Been up
+to the court-house and roped in three of the county officials. In these
+small towns the big man is the politician or the clergyman. I've nailed
+the politicians through the ear; now you must go for the ministers to
+head the list--that's your lay-out."
+
+"How 'm I t' do it?" asked Bert, in an anxious tone. "I can't sell books
+if they don't want 'em."
+
+"Why, cert! That's the trick. Offer a big discount. Say full calf, two
+fifty; morocco, two ninety. Regular discount to the clergy, ye know. Oh,
+they're on to that little racket--no trouble. If you can get a few of
+these leaders of the flock, the rest will follow like lambs to the
+slaughter. Tra-la-la--who-o-o-_ish_, whish!"
+
+Albert laughed at Hartley as he plunged his face into the ice-cold
+water, puffing and wheezing.
+
+"Jeemimy Crickets! but ain't that water cold! I worked Rock River this
+way last month, and made a boomin' success. If you take hold here in
+the--"
+
+"Oh, I'm all ready to stand anything short of being kicked out."
+
+"No danger of that if you're a real book agent. It's the snide that gets
+kicked. You've got t' have some savvy in this, just like any other
+business." He stopped in his dressing to say, "We've struck a great
+boarding-place, hey?"
+
+"Looks like it."
+
+"I begin t' cotton to the old lady a'ready. Good 'eal like mother used
+t' be 'fore she broke down. Didn't the old lady have a time of it
+raisin' me? Phewee! Patient! Job wasn't a patchin'. But the test is
+goin' t' come on the biscuit; if her biscuit comes up t' mother's I'm
+hern till death."
+
+He broke off to comb his hair, a very nice bit of work in his case.
+
+
+II
+
+
+There was no discernible reason why the little town should have been
+called Tyre, and yet its name was as characteristically American as its
+architecture. It had the usual main street lined with low brick or
+wooden stores--a street which developed into a road running back up a
+wide, sandy valley away from the river. Being a county town, it had a
+court-house in a yard near the centre of the town, and a big summer
+hotel. Curiously shaped and oddly distributed hills rose abruptly out of
+the valley sand, forming a sort of amphitheatre in which the village
+lay. These square-topped hills ended at a common level, showing that
+they were not the result of an upheaval, but were the remains of the
+original stratification formations left standing after the scooping
+action of the post-glacial floods had ceased.
+
+Some of them looked like ruined walls of castles ancient as hills, on
+whose massive tops time had sown sturdy oaks and cedars. They lent a
+distinct air of romance to the landscape at all times; but when in
+summer graceful vines clambered over their rugged sides, and underbrush
+softened their broken lines, it was not at all difficult to imagine them
+the remains of an unrecorded and very war-like people.
+
+Even now, in winter, with yellow-brown and green cedars standing starkly
+upon their summits, these towers possessed a distinct charm, and in the
+early morning when the trees glistened with frost, or at evening when
+the white light of the sun was softened and violet shadows lay along the
+snow, the whole valley was a delight to the eye, full of distinct and
+lasting charm.
+
+In the campaign which Hartley began, Albert did his best, and his best
+was done unconsciously; for the simplicity of his manner--all unknown to
+himself--was the most potent factor in securing consideration.
+
+"I'm not a book agent," he said to one of the clergymen to whom he first
+appealed; "I'm a student trying to sell a good book and make a little
+money to help me to complete my course at the university."
+
+In this way he secured three clergymen to head the list, much to the
+delight and admiration of Hartley.
+
+"Good! Now corral the alumni of the place. Work the fraternal racket to
+the bitter end. Oh, say! there's a sociable to-morrow night; I guess
+we'd better go, hadn't we?"
+
+"Go alone?"
+
+"Alone? No! Take some girls. I'm going to take neighbor Pickett's
+daughter; she's homely as a hedge fence, but I'll take her for business
+reasons."
+
+"Hartley, you're an infernal fraud!"
+
+"Nothing of the kind--I'm a salesman," ended Hartley, with a laugh.
+
+After supper the following day, as Albert was still lingering at the
+table with the girls and Mrs. Welsh, he said to Maud:
+
+"Are you going to the sociable?"
+
+"No; I guess not."
+
+"Would you go if I asked you?"
+
+"Try me and see!" answered the girl, with a laugh, her color rising.
+
+"All right. Miss Welsh, will you attend the festivity of the evening
+under my guidance and protection?"
+
+"Yes, thank you; but I must wash the dishes first."
+
+"I'll wash the dishes; you go get ready," said Mrs. Welsh.
+
+Albert felt that he had one of the loveliest girls in the room as he led
+Maud down the floor of the vestry of the church. Her cheeks were
+glowing, and her eyes shining with maidenly delight as they took seats
+at the table to sip a little coffee and nibble a bit of cake.
+
+Maud introduced him to a number of young people who had been students at
+the university. They received him cordially, and in a very short time he
+was enjoying himself very well indeed. He was reminded rather
+disagreeably of his office, however, by seeing Hartley surrounded by a
+laughing crowd of the more frolicsome young people. He winked at Albert,
+as much as to say, "Good stroke of business."
+
+The evening passed away with songs, games, and recitations, and it was
+nearly eleven o'clock when the young people began to wander off toward
+home in pairs. Albert and Maud were among the first of the young folks
+to bid the rest good-night.
+
+The night was clear and keen but perfectly still, and the young people,
+arm in arm, walked slowly homeward under the bare maples, in delicious
+companionship. Albert held Maud's arm close to his side.
+
+"Are you cold?" he asked, in a low voice.
+
+"No, thank you; the night is lovely," she replied; then added, with a
+sigh, "I don't like sociables so well as I used to--they tire me out."
+
+"We stayed too long."
+
+"It wasn't that; I'm getting so they seem kind o' silly."
+
+"Well, I feel a little that way myself," he confessed.
+
+"But there is so little to see here in Tyre at any time--no music, no
+theatres. I like theatres, don't you?"
+
+"I can't go half enough."
+
+"But nothing worth seeing ever comes into these little towns--and then
+we're all so poor, anyway."
+
+The lamp, turned low, was emitting a terrible odor as they entered the
+sitting-room.
+
+"My goodness! it's almost twelve o'clock! Good-night!" She held out her
+hand.
+
+"Good-night!" he said, taking it, and giving it a cordial pressure which
+she remembered long.
+
+"Good-night!" she repeated, softly, going up the stairs.
+
+Hartley, who came in a few minutes later, found his partner sitting
+thoughtfully by the fire, with his coat and shoes off, evidently in deep
+abstraction.
+
+"Well, I got away at last--much as ever. Great scheme, that sociable,
+eh? I saw your little girl introducing you right and left."
+
+"Say, Hartley, I wish you'd leave her out of this thing; I don't like
+the way you speak of her when--"
+
+"Phew! You don't? Oh, all right! I'm mum as an oyster--only keep it up!
+Get into all the church sociables you can; there's nothing like it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hartley soon had canvassers out along the country roads, and was working
+every house in town. The campaign promised to lengthen into a
+month--perhaps longer. Albert especially became a great favorite. Every
+one declared there had never been such book agents in the town. "They're
+such gentlemanly fellows. They don't press anybody to buy. They don't
+rush about and 'poke their noses where they're not wanted.' They are
+more like merchants with books to sell." The only person who failed to
+see the attraction in them was Ed Brann, who was popularly supposed to
+be engaged to Maud. He grew daily more sullen and repellent, toward
+Albert noticeably so.
+
+One evening about six, after coming in from a long walk about town,
+Albert entered his room without lighting his lamp, lay down on the bed,
+and fell asleep. He had been out late the night before with Maud at a
+party, and slumber came almost instantly.
+
+Maud came in shortly, hearing no response to her knock, and after
+hanging some towels on the rack went out without seeing the sleeper. In
+the sitting-room she met Ed Brann. He was a stalwart young man with
+curling black hair, and a heavy face at its best, but set and sullen
+now. His first words held a menace:
+
+"Say, Maud, I want t' talk to you."
+
+"Very well; what is it, Ed?" replied the girl, quietly.
+
+"I want to know how often you're going to be out till twelve o'clock
+with this book agent?"
+
+Perhaps it was the derisive inflection on "book agent" that woke Albert.
+Brann's tone was brutal--more brutal even than his words, and the girl
+turned pale and her breath quickened.
+
+"Why, Ed, what's the matter?"
+
+"Matter is just this: you ain't got any business goin' around with that
+feller with my ring on your finger, that's all." He ended with an
+unmistakable threat in his voice.
+
+"Very well," said the girl, after a pause, curiously quiet; "then I
+won't; here's your ring."
+
+The man's bluster disappeared instantly. Bert could tell by the change
+in his voice, which was incredibly great, as he pleaded:
+
+"Oh, don't do that, Maud; I didn't mean to say that; I was mad--I'm
+sorry."
+
+"I'm _glad_ you did it _now_, so I can know you. Take your ring, Ed; I
+never 'll wear it again."
+
+Albert had heard all this, but he did not know how the girl looked as
+she faced the man. In the silence which followed she scornfully passed
+him and went out into the kitchen. Brann went out and did not return at
+supper.
+
+Young people of this sort are not self-analysts, and Maud did not
+examine closely into causes. She was astonished to find herself more
+indignant than grieved. She broke into an angry wail as she went to her
+mother's bosom:
+
+"Mother! mother!"
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Maudie? Tell me. There, there! don't cry, pet!
+Who's been hurtin' my poor little bird?"
+
+"Ed has; he said--he said--"
+
+"There, there! poor child! Have you been quarrelling again? Never mind;
+it'll come out all right."
+
+"No, it won't--not the way you mean," the girl declared. "I've given him
+back his ring, and I'll never wear it again."
+
+The mother could not understand with what wounding brutality the man's
+tone had fallen upon the girl's spirit, and Maud could not explain
+sufficiently to justify herself. Mrs. Welsh consoled herself with the
+idea that it was only a lover's quarrel--one of the little jars sure to
+come when two natures are settling together--and that all would be
+mended in a day or two.
+
+Albert, being no more of a self-analyst than Maud, simply said, "Served
+him right," and dwelt no more upon it for the time.
+
+At supper, however, he was extravagantly gay, and to himself
+unaccountably so. He joked Troutt till Maud begged him to stop, and
+after the rest had gone he remained seated at the table, enjoying the
+indignant color in her face and the flash of her infrequent smile, which
+it was such a pleasure to provoke. He volunteered to help wash the
+dishes.
+
+"Thank you, but I'm afraid you'd be more bother than help," she replied.
+
+"Thank _you_, but you don't know me. I ain't so green as I look by no
+manner o' means. I've been doing my own housekeeping for four terms."
+
+"I know all about that," laughed the girl. "You young men rooming do
+precious little cooking and no dish-washing at all."
+
+"That's a base calumny! I made it a point to wash every dish in the
+house, except the spider, once a week; had a regular cleaning-up day."
+
+"And about the spider?"
+
+"I wiped that out nicely with a newspaper every time I wanted to use
+it."
+
+"Oh, horrors!--Mother, listen to that!"
+
+"Why, what more could you ask? You wouldn't have me wipe it _six_ times
+a day, would you?"
+
+"I wonder it didn't poison you," commented Mrs. Welsh.
+
+"Takes more'n that to poison a student," laughed Albert, as he went out.
+
+The next afternoon he came bursting into the kitchen, where Maud stood
+with her sleeves rolled up, deep in the dishpan.
+
+"Don't you want a sleigh-ride?" he asked, boyishly eager.
+
+She looked up with shining eyes.
+
+"Oh, wouldn't I! Can you get along, mother?"
+
+"Certainly, child. Go on. The air will do you good."
+
+"W'y, Maud!" said the little girl, "you said you didn't want to when
+Ed--"
+
+Mrs. Welsh silenced her, and said:
+
+"Run right along, dear; it's just the nicest time o' day. Are there many
+teams out?"
+
+"They're just beginning to come out," said Albert. "I'll have a cutter
+around here in about two jiffies; be on hand, sure."
+
+Troutt was standing in the sunny doorway of his stable when the young
+fellow dashed up to him.
+
+"Hullo, Uncle Troutt! Harness your fastest nag into your swellest outfit
+instanter."
+
+"Aha! Goin' t' take y'r girl out, hey?"
+
+"Yes; and I want to do it in style."
+
+"I guess ol' Dan's the horse for you. Gentle as a kitten and as knowin'
+as a fox. Drive him with one hand--left hand." The old man laughed till
+his long, faded beard flapped up and down and quivered with the stress
+of his enjoyment of his joke. He ended by hitching a vicious-looking
+sorrel to a gay, duck-bellied cutter, saying, as he gave up the reins:
+
+"Now, be keerful. Dan's foxy; he's all right when he sees you've got the
+reins, but don't drop 'em."
+
+"Don't you worry about me; I grew up with horses," said the
+over-confident youth, leaping into the sleigh and gathering up the
+lines. "Stand aside, my lord, and let the cortege pass. Hoop-la!"
+
+The brute gave a tearing lunge, and was out of the doorway before the
+old man could utter another word. Albert thrilled with pleasure as he
+felt the reins stiffen in his hands, and saw the traces swing slack
+beside the thills.
+
+"If he keeps this up he'll do," he said aloud.
+
+As he turned up at the gate Maud came gayly down the path, muffled to
+the eyes.
+
+"Oh, what a nice cutter! But the horse--is he gentle?" she asked, as she
+climbed in.
+
+"As a cow," Albert replied.--"Git out o' this, Bones!"
+
+The main street was already filled with wood sleighs, bob-sleds filled
+with children, and men in light cutters, out for a race. Laughter was on
+the air, and the jingle-jangle of bells. The sun was dazzling in its
+brightness, and the gay wraps and scarfs lighted up the scene with
+flecks of color. Loafers on the sidewalks fired familiar phrases at the
+teams as they passed:
+
+"Step up, Bones!"
+
+"Let 'er _go_, Gallagher!"
+
+"Get there, Eli," and the like.
+
+But what cared the drivers? If the shouts were insolent they laid them
+to envy, and if they were pleasant they smiled in reply.
+
+Albert and Maud had made two easy turns up and down the street when a
+man driving a span of large Black Hawk horses dashed up a side street
+and whirled in just before them. The man was a superb driver, and sat
+with the reins held carelessly but securely in his left hand, guiding
+the team more by his voice than by the bit.
+
+"_Hel_-lo!" cried Bert; "that looks like Brann."
+
+"It is," said Maud.
+
+"Cracky! that's a fine team--Black Hawks, both of them. I wonder if ol'
+sorrel can pass 'em?"
+
+"Oh, please don't try!" pleaded the girl.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because--because I'm afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"Afraid something 'll happen."
+
+"Something _is_ sure to happen; I'm goin' to pass him if old Bones has
+any _git_ to him."
+
+"It'll make him mad."
+
+"Who mad? Brann?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, s'pose it does, who cares?"
+
+There were a dozen similar rigs moving up or down the street, and
+greetings passed from sleigh to sleigh. Everybody except Brann welcomed
+Albert with sincere pleasure, and exchanged rustic jokes with him. As
+they slowed up at the upper end of the street and began to turn, a man
+on the sidewalk said, confidentially:
+
+"Say, cap', if you handle that old rack o' bones just right, he'll
+distance anything on this road. When you want him to do his best let him
+have the rein; don't pull a pound. I used to own 'im--I know 'im."
+
+The old sorrel came round "gauming," his ugly head thrown up, his great
+red mouth open, his ears laid back. Brann and the young doctor of the
+place were turning together, a little farther up the street. The blacks,
+responding to their driver's word, came down with flying hoofs, their
+great glossy breasts flecked with foam, their jaws champing.
+
+"Come on, crow-bait!" yelled Brann, insultingly, as he came down past
+the doctor, and seemed about to pass Albert and Maud. There was hate in
+the glare of his eyes.
+
+But he did not pass. The old sorrel seemed to lengthen; to the
+spectators his nose appeared to be glued to the glossy side of Brann's
+off black.
+
+"See them blacks trot!" shouted Albert, in ungrammatical enthusiasm.
+
+"See that old sorrel shake himself!" yelled the loafers.
+
+The doctor came tearing down with a spirited bay, a magnificent stepper.
+As he drew along so that Bert could catch a glimpse of the mare's neck,
+he thrilled with delight. There was the thoroughbred's lacing of veins;
+the proud fling of her knees and the swell of her neck showed that she
+was far from doing her best. There was a wild light in her eyes.
+
+These were the fast teams of the town. All interest was centred in them.
+
+"Clear the track!" yelled the loafers.
+
+"The doc's good f'r 'em."
+
+"If she don't break."
+
+Albert was pulling at the sorrel heavily, absorbed in seeing, as well as
+he could for the flung snowballs, the doctor's mare draw slowly, foot by
+foot, past the blacks. Suddenly Brann gave a shrill yell and stood up in
+his sleigh. The gallant little bay broke and fell behind; Brann laughed,
+the blacks trotted on, their splendid pace unchanged.
+
+"Let the sorrel out!" yelled somebody.
+
+"Let him loose!" yelled Troutt on the corner, quivering with excitement.
+"Let him go!"
+
+Albert, remembering what the fellow had said, let the reins loose. The
+old sorrel's teeth came together with a snap; his head lowered and his
+tail rose; he shot abreast of the blacks. Maud, frightened into silence,
+covered her head with the robe to escape the flying snow. The sorrel
+drew steadily ahead and was passing the blacks when Brann turned.
+
+"Durn y'r old horse!" he yelled through his shut teeth, and laid the
+whip across the sorrel's hips. The blacks broke wildly, but, strange to
+say, the old sorrel increased his speed. Again Brann struck, but the
+lash fell on Bert's outstretched wrists. He did not see that the blacks
+were crowding him to the gutter, but he heard a warning cry.
+
+"Look _out_, there!"
+
+Before he could turn to look, the cutter seemed to be blown up by a
+bomb. He rose in the air like a vaulter, and when he fell the light went
+out.
+
+The next that he heard was a curious soft murmur of voices, out of which
+a sweet, agonized girl-voice broke:
+
+"Oh, where's the doctor? He's dead--oh, he's dead! _Can't_ you hurry?"
+
+Next came a quick, authoritative voice, still far away, and a hush
+followed it; then an imperative order:
+
+"Stand out o' the way! What do you think you can do by crowding on top
+of him?"
+
+"Stand back! stand back!" other voices called.
+
+Then he felt something cold on his scalp: they were taking his cap off
+and putting snow on his head; then the doctor--he knew him now--said:
+
+"Let me take him!"
+
+A dull, throbbing ache came into his head, and as this grew the noise of
+voices became more distinct, and he could hear sobbing. Then he opened
+his lids, but the glare of the sunlight struck them shut again; he saw
+only Maud's face, agonized, white, and wet with tears, looking down into
+his.
+
+They raised him a little more, and he again opened his eyes on the
+circle of hushed and excited men thronging about him. He saw Brann, with
+wild, scared face, standing in his cutter and peering over the heads of
+the crowd.
+
+"How do you feel now?" asked the doctor.
+
+"Can you hear us? Albert, do you know me?" called the girl.
+
+His lips moved stiffly, but he smiled a little, and at length whispered
+slowly, "Yes; I guess--I'm all--right."
+
+"Put him into my cutter; Maud, get in here, too," the doctor commanded.
+The crowd opened as the doctor and Troutt helped the wounded man into
+the sleigh. The pain in his head grew worse, but Albert's perception of
+things sharpened in proportion; he closed his eyes to the sun, but in
+the shadow of Maud's breast opened them again and looked up at her. He
+felt a vague, child-like pleasure in knowing that she was holding him in
+her arms; he thought of his mother--"how it would frighten her if she
+knew."
+
+"Hello!" called a breathless, hearty voice, "what the deuce y' been
+doing with my pardner? Bert, old fellow, are you there?" Hartley asked,
+clinging to the edge of the moving cutter, and peering into his friend's
+face. Albert smiled.
+
+"I'm here--what there is left of me," he replied, faintly.
+
+"Glory! How did it happen?" he asked of the girl.
+
+"I don't know--I couldn't see--we ran into a culvert," replied Maud.
+
+"Weren't you hurt?"
+
+"Not a bit. I stayed in the cutter."
+
+Albert groaned, and tried to rise, but the girl gently yet firmly
+restrained him. Hartley was walking beside the doctor, talking loudly.
+"It was a devilish thing to do; the scoundrel ought to be jugged!"
+
+Albert tried again to rise. "I'm bleeding yet; I'm soaking you; let me
+get up!"
+
+The girl shuddered, but remained firm.
+
+"No; we're 'most home."
+
+She felt no shame, but a certain exaltation as she looked into the faces
+about her. She gazed unrecognizingly upon her nearest girl friends, and
+they, gazing upon her white face and unresponsive eyes, spoke in awed
+whispers.
+
+At the gate the crowd gathered and waited with deepest interest. It was
+enthralling romance to them.
+
+"Ed Brann done it," said one.
+
+"How?" asked another.
+
+"With the butt end of his whip."
+
+"That's a lie! His team ran into Lohr's rig."
+
+"Not much; Ed crowded him into the ditch."
+
+"What fer?"
+
+"Cause Bert cut him out with Maud."
+
+"Come, get out of the way! Don't stand there gabbing," yelled Hartley,
+as he took Albert in his arms and, together with the doctor, lifted him
+out of the sleigh.
+
+"Goodness sakes alive! Ain't it terrible! How is he?" asked an old lady,
+peering at him as he passed.
+
+On the porch stood Mrs. Welsh, supported by Ed Brann.
+
+"She's all right, I tell you. He ain't hurt much, either; just stunned a
+little, that's all."
+
+"Maud! child!" cried the mother, as Maud appeared, followed by a bevy of
+girls.
+
+"_I'm_ all right, mother," she said, running into the trembling arms
+outstretched toward her; "but, oh, poor Albert!"
+
+After the wounded man disappeared into the house the crowd dispersed.
+Brann went off by the way of the alley; he was not prepared to meet the
+questions of his accusers.
+
+"Now, what in ---- you been up to?" was the greeting of his brother, as
+he re-entered the shop.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Welting a man on the head with a whip-stock ain't anything, hey?"
+
+"I didn't touch him. We was racing, and he run into the culvert."
+
+"Hank says he saw you strike him."
+
+"He lies! I was strikin' the horse to make him break!"
+
+"Oh, yeh was!" sneered the older man. "Well, I hope you understand that
+this'll ruin you in this town. If you didn't strike him, they'll say you
+run him into the culvert, 'n' every man, woman, 'n' child'll be down on
+you, and _me_ f'r bein' related to you. They all know how you feel
+toward him for cuttin' you out with Maud Welsh."
+
+"Oh, don't bear down on him too hard, Joe. He didn't mean t' do any
+harm," said Troutt, who had followed Ed down to the store. "I guess the
+young feller 'll come out all right. Just go kind o' easy till we see
+how he turns out. If he dies, why, it'll haf t' be looked into."
+
+Ed turned pale and swallowed hastily. "If he should die I'll be a
+murderer," he thought. He acknowledged that hate was in his heart, and
+he shivered as he remembered the man's white face with the bright red
+stream flowing down behind his ear and over his cheek. It almost seemed
+to him that he _had_ struck him, so close had the accident followed upon
+the fall of his whip.
+
+
+III
+
+
+Albert sank into a feverish sleep that night, with a vague perception of
+four figures in the room--Maud, her mother, Hartley, and the young
+doctor. When he awoke fully in the morning his head felt prodigiously
+hot and heavy.
+
+It was early dawn, and the lamp was burning brightly. Outside, a man's
+feet could be heard on the squealing snow--a sound which told how still
+and cold it was. A team passed with a jingle of bells.
+
+Albert raised his head and looked about. Hartley was lying on the sofa,
+rolled up in his overcoat and some extra quilts. He had lain down at
+last, worn with watching. Albert felt a little weak, and fell back on
+his pillow, thinking about the strange night he had passed--a night more
+filled with strange happenings than the afternoon.
+
+As the light grew in the room his mind cleared, and lifting his muscular
+arm he opened and shut his hand, saying aloud, in his old boyish manner:
+
+"I guess I'm all here."
+
+"What's that?" called Hartley, rolling out of bed. "Did you ask for
+anything?"
+
+"Give me some water, Jim; my mouth is dry as a powder-mill."
+
+"How yeh feelin', anyway, pardner?" said Hartley, as he brought the
+water.
+
+"First-rate, Jim; I guess I'll be all right."
+
+"Well, I guess you'd better keep quiet."
+
+He threw on his coat next, and went out into the kitchen, returning soon
+with some hot water, with which he began to bathe his partner's face and
+hands as tenderly as a woman.
+
+"There; now I guess you're in shape f'r grub--feel any like grub?--Come
+in," he called, in answer to a knock on the door.
+
+Mrs. Welsh entered.
+
+"How is he?" she whispered, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," replied Albert.
+
+"I'm glad to find you so much better," she said, going to his bedside.
+"I've hardly slep', I was so much worried about you. Your breakfast is
+ready, Mr. Hartley. I've got something special for Albert."
+
+A few minutes later Maud entered with a platter, followed closely by her
+mother.
+
+The girl came forward timidly, but when Albert turned his eyes on her
+and called, cheerily, "Good morning!" she flamed out in rosy color and
+recoiled. She had expected to see him pale, dull-eyed, and with a weak
+voice, but there was little to indicate invalidism in his firm greeting.
+She gave place to Mrs. Welsh, who prepared his breakfast. She was
+smitten dumb by his tone, and hardly dared look at him as he sat propped
+up in bed.
+
+However, though he was feeling absurdly well, there was a good deal of
+bravado in his tone and manner, for he ate but little, and soon sank
+back on the bed.
+
+"I feel better when my head is low," he explained, in a faint voice.
+
+"Can't I do something?" asked the girl, her courage reviving as she
+perceived how ill and faint he really was.
+
+"I guess you better write to his folks," said Mrs. Welsh.
+
+"No, don't do that," he protested, opening his eyes; "it will only worry
+them, and do me no good. I'll be all right in a few days. You needn't
+waste your time on me; Hartley will wait on me."
+
+"Don't mind him," said Mrs. Welsh. "I'm his mother now, and he's goin'
+to do just as I tell him to--aren't you, Albert?"
+
+He dropped his eyelids in assent, and went off into a doze. It was all
+very pleasant to be thus waited upon. Hartley was devotion itself, and
+the doctor removed his bandages with the care and deliberation of a man
+with a moderate practice; besides, he considered Albert a personal
+friend.
+
+Hartley, after the doctor had gone, said with some hesitation:
+
+"Well, now, pard, I _ought_ to go out and see a couple o' fellows I
+promised t' meet this morning."
+
+"All right, Jim; all right. You go right ahead on business; I'm goin' t'
+sleep, anyway, and I'll be all right in a day or two."
+
+"Well, I will; but I'll run in every hour 'r two and see if you don't
+want something. You're in good hands, anyway, when I'm gone."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Won't you read to me?" pleaded Albert, one afternoon, when Maud came in
+with her mother to brush up the room. "It's getting rather slow business
+layin' here like this."
+
+"Shall I, mother?"
+
+"Why, of course, Maud."
+
+So Maud got a book, and sat down over by the stove, quite distant from
+the bed, and read to him from _The Lady of the Lake_, while the mother,
+like a piece of tireless machinery, moved about the house at the
+never-ending succession of petty drudgeries which wear the heart and
+soul out of so many wives and mothers, making life to them a pilgrimage
+from stove to pantry, from pantry to cellar, and from cellar to
+garret--a life that deadens and destroys, coarsens and narrows, till the
+flesh and bones are warped to the expression of the wronged and cheated
+soul.
+
+Albert's selfishness was in a way excusable. He enjoyed beyond measure
+the sound of the girl's soft voice and the sight of her graceful head
+bent over the page. He lay, looking and listening dreamily, till the
+voice and the sunlit head were lost in a deep, sweet sleep.
+
+The girl sat with closed book, looking at his face as he slept. It was a
+curious study to her, a young man--_this_ young man, asleep. His brown
+lashes lay on his cheek as placid as those of a child. As she looked she
+gained courage to go over softly and peer down on him. How boyish he
+seemed! How little to be feared! A boy outside uttered a shout, and she
+hurried away, pale and breathless. As she paused in the door and looked
+back at the undisturbed sleeper, she smiled, and the pink came back into
+her thin face.
+
+Albert's superb young blood began to assert itself, and on the afternoon
+of the fifth day he was able to sit in his rocking-chair before the fire
+and read a little, though he professed that his eyes were not strong, in
+order that Maud should read for him. This she did as often as she could
+leave her other work, which was "not half often enough," the invalid
+grumbled.
+
+"More than you deserve," she found courage to say.
+
+Hartley let nothing interfere with the book business. "You take it
+easy," he repeated. "Don't you worry--your pay goes on just the same.
+You're doing well right where you are. By jinks! biggest piece o' luck,"
+he went on, half in earnest. "Why, I can't turn around without taking an
+order--fact! Turned in a book on the livery bill, so that's all fixed.
+We'll make a clear hundred dollars out o' that little bump o' yours."
+
+"Little bump! Say, now, that's--"
+
+"Keep it up--put it on! Don't hurry about getting well. I don't need you
+to canvass, and I guess you enjoy being waited on." He ended with a sly
+wink and cough.
+
+Yes, convalescence was delicious, with Maud reading to him, bringing his
+food, and singing for him; all that marred his peace was the stream of
+people who came to inquire how he was getting along. The sympathy was
+largely genuine, as Hartley could attest, but it bored the invalid. He
+had rather be left in quiet with Walter Scott and Maud. In the light of
+common day the accident was hurrying to be a dream.
+
+At the end of a week he was quite himself again, though he still had
+difficulty in wearing his hat. It was not till the second Sunday after
+the accident that he appeared in the dining-room for the first time,
+with a large travelling-cap concealing the suggestive bandages. He
+looked pale and thin, but his eyes danced with joy.
+
+Maud's eyes dilated with instant solicitude. The rest sprang up in
+surprise, with shouts of delight, as hearty as brethren.
+
+"Ginger! I'm glad t' see yeh!" said Troutt, so sincerely that he looked
+almost winning to the boy. The rest crowded around, shaking hands.
+
+"Oh, I'm on deck again."
+
+Ed Brann came in a moment later with his brother, and there was a
+significant little pause--a pause which grew painful till Albert turned
+and saw Brann, and called out:
+
+"Hello, Ed! How are you? Didn't know you were here."
+
+As he held out his hand, Brann, his face purple with shame and
+embarrassment, lumbered heavily across the room and took it, muttering
+some poor apology.
+
+"Hope y' don't blame me."
+
+"Of course not--fortunes o' war. Nobody to blame; just my
+carelessness.--Yes; I'll take turkey," he said to Maud, as he sank into
+the seat of honor.
+
+The rest laughed, but Brann remained standing near Albert's chair. He
+had not finished yet.
+
+"I'm mighty glad you don't lay it up against me, Lohr; an' I want to say
+the doctor's bill is all right; you un'erstand, it's _all right_."
+
+Albert looked at him a moment in surprise. He understood that this,
+coming from a man like Brann, meant more than a thousand prayers from a
+ready apologist. It was a terrible victory, and he was disposed to make
+it as easy for his rival as he could.
+
+"Oh, all right, Ed; only I'd calculated to cheat him out o' part of
+it--I'd planned to turn in a couple o' Blaine's _Twenty Years_ on the
+bill."
+
+Hartley roared, and the rest joined in, but not even Albert perceived
+all that it meant. It meant that the young savage had surrendered his
+claim in favor of the man he had all but killed. The struggle had been
+prodigious, but he had snatched victory out of defeat; his better nature
+had conquered.
+
+No one ever gave him credit for it; and when he went West in the spring,
+people said his passion for Maud had been superficial. In truth, he had
+loved the girl as sincerely as he had hated his rival. That he could
+rise out of the barbaric in his love and his hate was heroic.
+
+When Albert went to ride again, it was on melting snow, with the slowest
+horse Troutt had. Maud was happier than she had been since she left
+school, and fuller of color and singing. She dared not let a golden
+moment pass now without hearing it ring full, and she dared not think
+how short this day of happiness might be.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+At the end of the fifth week of their stay in Tyre a suspicion of spring
+was in the wind as it swept the southern exposure of the valley. March
+was drawing to a close, and there was more than a suggestion of April in
+the rapidly melting snow which still lay on the hills and under the
+cedars and tamaracks in the swamps. Patches of green grass, appearing on
+the sunny side of the road where the snow had melted, led to predictions
+of spring from the loafers beginning to sun themselves on the
+salt-barrels and shoe-boxes outside the stores.
+
+A group sitting about the blacksmith shop were discussing it.
+
+"It's an early seedin'--now mark my words," said Troutt, as he threw his
+knife into the soft ground at his feet. "The sun is crossing the line
+earlier this spring than it did last."
+
+"Yes; an' I heard a crow to-day makin' that kind of a--a spring noise
+that sort o'--I d' know what--kind o' goes all through a feller."
+
+"And there's Uncle Sweeney, an' that settles it; spring's comin' sure!"
+said Troutt, pointing at an old man, much bent, hobbling down the
+street. "When _he_ gits out the frogs ain't fur behind."
+
+"We'll be gittin' on to the ground by next Monday," said Sam Dingley to
+a crowd who were seated on the newly painted harrows and seeders which
+Svend & Johnson had got out ready for the spring trade. "Svend &
+Johnson's Agricultural Implement Depot" was on the north side of the
+street, and on a spring day the yard was one of the pleasantest
+loafing-places that could be imagined, especially if one wished company.
+
+Albert wished to be alone. Something in the touch and tone of this
+spring afternoon made him restless and inclined to strange thoughts. He
+took his way out along the road which followed the river-bank, and in
+the outskirts of the village threw himself down on a bank of grass which
+the snows had protected, and which had already a tinge of green because
+of its wealth of sun.
+
+The willows had thrown out their tiny light-green flags, though their
+roots were under the ice, and some of the hardwood twigs were tinged
+with red. There was a faint but magical odor of uncovered earth in the
+air, and the touch of the wind was like a caress from a moist, magnetic
+hand.
+
+The boy absorbed the light and heat of the sun as some wild thing might.
+With his hat over his face, his hands folded on his breast, he lay as
+still as a statue. He did not listen at first, he only felt; but at
+length he rose on his elbow and listened. The ice cracked and fell along
+the bank with a long, hollow, booming crash; a crow cawed, and a jay
+answered it from the willows below. A flight of sparrows passed,
+twittering innumerably. The boy shuddered with a strange, wistful
+longing, and a realization of the flight of time.
+
+He could have wept, he could have sung, but he only shuddered and lay
+silent under the stress of that strange, sweet passion which quickened
+his heart, deepened his eyes, and made his breath come and go with a
+quivering sound. Across the dazzling blue arch of the sky the crow
+flapped, sending down his prophetic, jubilant note; the breeze, as soft
+and sweet as April, stirred in his hair; the hills, deep in their dusky
+blue, seemed miles away; and the voices of the care-free skaters on the
+melting ice of the river below came to the ear subdued to a unity with
+the scene.
+
+Suddenly a fear seized upon the boy--a horror! Life, life was passing!
+Life that can be lived only once, and lost, is lost forever! Life, that
+fatal gift of the Invisible Powers to man--a path, with youth and joy
+and hope at its eastern gate, and despair, regret, and death at its low
+western portal!
+
+The boy caught a momentary glimpse of his real significance. "I am only
+a gnat, a speck in the sun, a youth facing the millions of great and
+wise and wealthy!" He leaped up in a frenzy. "Oh, I mustn't stay here! I
+must get back to my studies. Life is slipping by me, and I am doing
+nothing, being nothing!"
+
+His face, as pale as death, shone with passionate resolution, and his
+hands were clinched in silent vow.
+
+But on his way back he met the jocund party of skaters going home from
+the river, and with the easy shift and change of youth joined in their
+ringing laughter. The weird power of the wind's voice was gone, and he
+sank to the level of the unthinking boy again. However, the problem was
+only put off, not solved.
+
+That night Hartley said: "Well, pardner, we're getting 'most ready to
+pull out. Someways I always get restless when these warm days begin."
+This was as sentimental as Hartley ever got; or, if he ever felt more
+sentiment, he concealed it carefully.
+
+"I s'pose it must 'a' been in spring that those old chaps, on their
+steeds and in their steel shirts, started out for to rescue some damsel,
+hey?" he ended, with a grin. "Now, that's the way I feel--just like
+striking out for, say, Oshkosh. That little piece of lofty tumbling of
+yours was a big boom, and no mistake. Why, your share o' this campaign
+will be a hundred and twenty dollars sure."
+
+"More'n I've earned," replied Bert.
+
+"No, it ain't. You've done your duty like a man. Done as much in your
+way as I have. Now, if you want to try another county with me, say so.
+I'll make a thousand dollars this year out o' this thing."
+
+"I guess I'll go back to school."
+
+"All right; I don't blame you for wanting to do that."
+
+"I guess, with what I can earn for father, I can pull through the year.
+I _must_ get back. I'm awfully obliged to you, Jim."
+
+"That'll do on that," said Hartley, shortly; "you don't owe me anything.
+We'll finish delivery to-morrow, and be ready to pull out on Friday or
+Sat."
+
+There was an acute pain in Albert's breast somewhere; he had not
+analyzed his case at all, and did not now, but the idea of going
+affected him strongly. It had been so pleasant, that daily return to a
+lovely girlish presence.
+
+"Yes, sir," Hartley was going on, "I'm going to just quietly leave a
+book on her centre-table. I don't know as it'll interest her much, but
+it'll show we appreciate the grub, and so on. By jinks! you don't seem
+to realize what a worker that woman is! Up five o'clock in the
+morning--By-the-way, you've been going around with the girl a good deal,
+and she's introduced you to some first-rate sales; now, if you want to
+leave her a little something, make it a morocco copy, and charge it to
+the firm."
+
+Albeit knew that he meant well, but he couldn't, somehow, help saying,
+ironically:
+
+"Thanks, but I guess _one_ copy of Blaine's _Twenty Years_ will be
+enough in the house, especially--"
+
+"Well, give her anything you please, and charge it up to the firm. I
+don't insist on Blaine; only suggested that because--"
+
+"I guess I can stand the expense of a present."
+
+"I didn't say you couldn't, man! But _I_ want a hand in this thing.
+Don't be so turrible keen t' snap a feller up," complained Hartley,
+turning on him. "What the thunder is the matter of you, anyway? I like
+the girl, and she's been good to us all round; she tended you like an
+angel--"
+
+"There, there! That's enough o' that," put in Albert, hastily. "For
+God's sake, don't whang away on that string forever, as if I didn't know
+it!"
+
+Hartley stared at him as he turned away.
+
+"Well, by jinks! What _is_ the matter o' you?"
+
+He was too busy to dwell upon it much, but concluded his partner was
+homesick.
+
+Albert was beginning to have a vague underconsciousness of his real
+feeling toward the girl, but he fought off the acknowledgment of it as
+long as possible. His mind moved in a circle, coming back to the one
+point ceaselessly--a dreary prospect, in which that slender girl-figure
+had no place--and each time the prospect grew more intolerably blank,
+and the pain in his heart more acute and throbbing.
+
+When he faced her that night, after they had returned from a final walk
+down by the river, he was as far from a solution as ever. He had avoided
+all reference to their separation, and now he stood as a man might at
+the parting of the ways, saying: "I will not choose; I cannot choose. I
+will wait for some sign, some chance thing, to direct me."
+
+They stood opposite each other, each feeling that there was more to be
+said: the girl tender, her eyes cast down, holding her hands to the
+fire; he shivering, but not with cold. He had a vague knowledge of the
+vast importance of the moment, and he hesitated to speak.
+
+"It's almost spring again, isn't it? And you've been here"--she paused
+and looked up with a daring smile--"seems as if you'd been here always."
+
+It was about half-past eight. Mrs. Welsh was setting her bread in the
+kitchen; they could hear her moving about. Hartley was down-town
+finishing up his business. They were almost alone in the house. Albert's
+throat grew dry and his limbs trembled. His pause was ominous. The
+girl's smile died away as he took a seat without looking at her.
+
+"Well, Maud, I suppose you know--we're going away to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, must you? But you'll come back?"
+
+"I don't expect to--I don't see how I can. I may never see you again."
+
+"Oh, don't say that!" cried the girl, her face as white as silver, her
+clasped hands straining.
+
+"I must go--I must!" he muttered, not daring to look upon her face.
+
+"Oh, what can I do--_we_ do--without you! I can't bear it!"
+
+She stopped, and sank back into a chair, her breath coming heavily from
+her twitching lips, the unnoticed tears falling from her staring,
+pitiful, wild, appealing eyes, her hands nervously twisting her gloves.
+
+There was a long silence. Each was undergoing a self-revelation; each
+was trying to face a future without the other.
+
+"I must go!" he repeated, aimlessly, mechanically. "What can I do here?"
+
+The girl's heavy breathing deepened into a wild little moaning sound,
+inexpressibly pitiful, her hungry eyes fixed on his face. She gave way
+first, and flung herself down upon her knees at his side, her hands
+seeking his neck.
+
+"Albert, I can't _live_ without you now! Take me with you! Don't leave
+me!"
+
+He stooped suddenly and took her in his arms, raised her, and kissed her
+hair.
+
+"I didn't mean it, Maud; I'll never leave you--never! Don't cry!"
+
+She drew his head down and kissed his lips, then turned her face to his
+breast--then joy and confidence came back to her.
+
+"I know now what you meant," she cried, gayly, raising herself and
+looking into his face; "you were trying to scare me; trying to make me
+show how much I--cared for you--first!" There was a soft smile on her
+lips and a tender light in her eyes. "But I don't mind it."
+
+"I guess I didn't know myself what I meant," he answered, with a grave
+smile.
+
+When Mrs. Welsh came in, they were sitting on the sofa, talking in low
+voices of their future. He was grave and subdued, while she was radiant
+with love and hope. The future had no terrors for her, but the boy
+unconsciously felt the gravity of life somehow deepened by the
+revelation of her love.
+
+"Why, Maud!" Mrs. Welsh exclaimed, "what are you doing?"
+
+"Oh, mother, I'm so happy--just as happy as a bird!" she cried, rushing
+into her mother's arms.
+
+"Why, why!--what is it? You're crying, dear!"
+
+"No, I'm not; I'm laughing--see!"
+
+Mrs. Welsh turned her dim eyes on the girl, who shook the tears from her
+lashes with the action of a bird shaking water from its wings. She
+seemed to shake off her trouble at the same moment.
+
+Mrs. Welsh understood perfectly. "I'm very glad, too, dearie," she said,
+simply, looking at the young man with motherly love irradiating her worn
+face. Albert went to her, and she kissed him, while the happy girl put
+her arms about them both in an ecstatic hug.
+
+"_Now_ you've got a son, mother."
+
+"But I've lost a daughter--my first-born."
+
+"Oh, wait till you hear our plans! He's going to settle down
+here--aren't you, Albert?"
+
+Then she went away and left the young people alone. They had a sweet,
+intimate talk of an hour, full of plans and hopes and confidences, and
+then he kissed his radiant love good-night, and, going into his own
+room, sat down by the stove and there pondered on the change that had
+come into his life.
+
+Already he sighed with the stress of care, the press of thought, which
+came upon him. The longing uneasiness of the boy had given place to
+another unrest--the unrest of the man who must face the world in earnest
+now, planning for food and shelter. To go back to school was out of the
+question. To expect help from his father, overworked and burdened with
+debt, was impossible. He must go to work, and go to work to aid _her_. A
+living must be wrung from this town. All the home and all the property
+Mrs. Welsh had were here, and wherever Maud went the mother must follow.
+
+He was in the midst of his mental turmoil when Hartley came in, humming
+the _Mulligan Guards_.
+
+"In the dark, hey?"
+
+"Completely in the dark."
+
+"Well, light up, light up!"
+
+"I'm trying to."
+
+"What the deuce do you mean by that tone? What's been going on here
+since my absence?"
+
+Albert did not reply, and Hartley shuffled about after a match, lighted
+the lamp, threw his coat and hat in the corner, and then said:
+
+"Well, I've got everything straightened up. Been freezing out old
+Daggett; the old skeesix has been promisin' f'r a week, and I just said,
+'Old man, I'll camp right down with you here till you fork over,' and he
+did. By-the-way, everybody I talked with to-day about leaving said,
+'What's Lohr going to do with that girl?' I told 'em I didn't know; do
+you? It seems you've been thicker'n I supposed."
+
+"I'm going to marry her," said Albert, calmly, but his voice sounded
+strained and hoarse.
+
+"What's that?" yelled Hartley.
+
+"Sh! don't raise the neighbors. I'm going to marry her."
+
+"Well, by jinks! When? Say, looky here! Well, I swanny!" exclaimed
+Hartley, helplessly. "When?"
+
+"Right away; some time this summer--June, maybe."
+
+Hartley thrust his hands into his trousers pockets, stretched out his
+legs, and stared at his friend in vast amaze.
+
+"You're givin' me guff!"
+
+"I'm in dead earnest."
+
+"I thought you was going through college all so fast?"
+
+"Well, I've made up my mind it isn't any use to try," replied Albert,
+listlessly.
+
+"What y' goin' t' do here, or are y' goin' t' take the girl away with
+yeh?"
+
+"She can't leave her mother. We'll run this boarding-house for the
+present. I'll try for the principalship of the school here. Raff is
+going to resign, they say. If I can't get that, I'll go into a law
+office. Don't worry about me."
+
+"But why go into this so quick? Why not put it off fifteen or twenty
+years?" asked Hartley, trying to get back to cheerful voice.
+
+"What would be the use? At the end of a year I'd be just about as poor
+as I am now."
+
+"Can't y'r father step in and help you?"
+
+"No. There are three boys and two girls, all younger than I, to be
+looked out for, and he has all he can carry. Besides, _she_ needs me
+right here and right now, and if I can do anything to make life easier
+for her I'm going t' do it. Besides," he ended, in a peculiar tone, "we
+don't feel as if we could live apart much longer."
+
+"But, great Scott! man, you can't--"
+
+"Now, hold on, Jim! I've thought this thing all over, and I've made up
+my mind. It ain't any use to go on talking about it. What good would it
+do me to go to school another year? I'd come out without a dollar, and
+no more fitted for earning a living for her than I am now! And, besides
+all that, I couldn't draw a free breath thinking of her workin' away
+here to keep things moving, liable at any minute to break down."
+
+Hartley gazed at him in despair, and with something like awe. It was a
+tremendous transformation in the young, ambitious student.
+
+Like most men in America, and especially Western men, he still clung to
+the idea that a man was entirely responsible for his success or failure
+in life. He had not admitted that conditions of society might be so
+adverse that only men of most exceptional endowments, and willing and
+able to master many of the best and deepest and most sacred of their
+inspirations and impulses, could succeed.
+
+Of the score of specially promising young fellows who had been with him
+at school, seventeen had dropped out and down. Most of them had married
+and gone back to farming, or to earn a precarious living in the small,
+dull towns where farmers trade and traders farm. Conditions were too
+adverse; they simply weakened and slipped slowly back into dulness and
+an ox-like or else a fretful patience. Thinking of these men, and
+thinking their failure due to themselves alone, Hartley could not endure
+the idea of his friend adding one more to the list of failures. He
+sprang up at last.
+
+"Say, Bert, you might just as well hang y'rself, and done with it! Why,
+it's suicide! I can't allow it. I started in at college bravely, and
+failed because I'd let it go too long. I couldn't study--couldn't get
+down to it; but you--why, old man, I'd _bet_ on you!" He had a tremor in
+his voice. "I hate like thunder to see you give up your plans. Say, you
+can't afford to do this; it's too much to pay."
+
+"No, it isn't."
+
+"I say it is--and, besides, you'd get over this in a week--"
+
+"Jim!" called Albert, warningly, sharply.
+
+"All right," said Jim, in the tone of a man who knows it's all
+wrong--"all right; but the time 'll come when you'll wish I'd--You ain't
+doin' the girl enough good to make up for the harm you're doin'
+yourself." He broke off again, and said in a tone of finality: "I'm
+done. I'm all through, and I c'n see you're through with Jim Hartley.
+All right!"
+
+"Darn curious," he muttered to himself, "that boy should get caught just
+at this time, and not with some o' those girls in Marion. Well, it's
+none o' my funeral," he ended, with a sigh; for it had stirred him to
+the bottom of his sunny nature, after all. A dozen times, as he lay
+there beside his equally sleepless companion, he started to say
+something more in deprecation of the step, but each time stifled the
+opening word into a groan.
+
+It would not be true to say that love had come to Albert Lohr as a
+relaxing influence, but it had changed the direction of his energies so
+radically as to make his whole life seem weaker and lower. As long as
+his love-dreams went out toward a vague and ideal woman, supposedly
+higher and grander than himself, he was spurred on to face the terrible
+sheer escarpment of social eminence; but when he met, by accident, the
+actual woman who was to inspire his future efforts, the difficulties he
+faced took on solid reality. His aspirations fell to the earth, their
+wings clipped, and became, perforce, submissive beasts at the plough.
+The force that moved so much of his thought was transformed into other
+energy.
+
+The table was very gay at dinner next day. Maud was standing at the
+highest point of her girlhood dreams. Her flushed cheeks and shining
+eyes made her seem almost a child, and Hartley wondered at her, and
+relented a little in the face of such happiness.
+
+"They're gay as larks now," thought Hartley to himself, as he joined in
+the laughter; "but that won't help 'em any ten years from now."
+
+He could hardly speak next day as he shook hands at the station with his
+friend.
+
+"Good-by, ol' man; I hope it'll come out all right, but I'm afraid--But
+there! I promised not to say anything about it. Good-by till we meet in
+Congress," he ended, in a resolute attempt to conceal his dismay.
+
+"Can't you come to the wedding, Jim? We've decided on June. You see,
+they need a man around the house, so we--You'll come, won't you, old
+fellow? And don't mind my being a little crusty last night."
+
+"Oh yes; I'll come," Jim said, in a tone which concealed a desire to
+utter one more protest, but to himself he said:
+
+"That ends him! He's jumped into a hole and pulled the hole in after
+him. A man can't marry a family like that at his age, and pull out of
+it. He _may_, but I doubt it. Well, as I remarked before, it's none o'
+my funeral so long as _he's_ satisfied."
+
+But he said it with a painful lump in his throat, and he could not bring
+himself to feel that Albert's course was right, and felt himself to be
+somehow culpable in the case.
+
+
+
+
+A DIVISION IN THE COOLLY
+
+
+A funeral is a depressing affair under the best circumstances, but a
+funeral in a lonely farm-house in March, the roads full of slush, the
+ragged gray clouds leaping the sullen hills like eagles, is tragic.
+
+The teams arrived splashed with mud, the women blue with cold under
+their scanty cotton-quilt lap robes, their hats set awry by the wind.
+They scurried into the house, to sit and shiver in the best room, where
+all the chairs that could contrive to stand erect, and all of any sort
+that could be borrowed, were crammed in together to seat the women
+folks.
+
+The men drove out to the barn, and having blanketed their teams with lap
+robes, picked their way through the slush of the yard over to the lee
+side of the haystack, where the pale sun occasionally shone.
+
+They spoke of "diseased" Williams, as if Diseased were his Christian
+name. They whittled shingles or stalks of straw as they talked.
+
+Sooner or later, after each new arrival, they branched off upon
+politics, and the McKinley Bill was handled gingerly. If any one, in his
+zeal, raised his voice above a certain pitch, some one said "Hish!" and
+the newcomer's voice sank again to that abnormal quiet which falls now
+and again on these loud-voiced folk of the wind and open spaces.
+
+The boys hung around the kitchen and smoke-house, playing sly jokes upon
+each other in order to provoke that explosion of laughter so thoroughly
+enjoyed by those who can laugh noiselessly.
+
+A snort of this sort brought Deacon Williams out to reprimand them,
+"Boys, boys, you should have more respect for the dead."
+
+The preacher came. The choir raised a wailing chant for the dead, but
+the group by the haystack did not move.
+
+Occasionally they came back, after talking about seeding and the price
+of hogs, to the discussion of the dead man's affairs.
+
+"I s'pose his property will go to Emmy and Serry, half and half."
+
+"I expec' so. He always said so, an' John wa'n't a man to whiffle about
+every day."
+
+"Well, Emmy won't make no fuss, but if Ike don't git more'n his half,
+I'll eat the greaser."
+
+"Who's ex-e_cu_tor?"
+
+"Deacon Williams, I expect."
+
+"Well, the Deacon's a slick one," some one observed, as if that were an
+excellent quality in an executor.
+
+"They ain't no love lost between Bill Gray and Harkey, I don't expect."
+
+"No, I don't think they is."
+
+"Ike don't seem to please people. It's queer, too. He tries awful hard."
+
+The voice of the preacher within, raised to a wild shout, interrupted
+them.
+
+"The Elder's gettin' warmed up," said one of the story-tellers, pausing
+in his talk. "And so I told Bill if he wanted the cord-wood--"
+
+The sun shone warmer, and the chickens _caw-cawed_ feebly. The colts
+whinnied, and a couple of dogs rolled and tumbled in wild frolic, while
+the voice of the preacher sounded dolefully or in humming monotone.
+
+Meanwhile, in the house, in the best room and in the best seats near the
+coffin, the women, in their black, worn dresses, with wrinkled, sallow
+faces and gnarled hands, sat shivering. Theirs was to be the luxury of
+the ceremony.
+
+The carpet was damp and muddy, the house was chill, and the damp wind
+filled them all with ague; but they had so much to see and talk about,
+that time passed rapidly. Each one entering was studied critically to
+see whether dress and deportment were proper to the occasion or not, and
+if one of the girls smiled a little as she entered, some one was sure to
+whisper:--
+
+"Heartless thing, how _can_ she?"
+
+There were a few young men, only enough to help out on the singing, and
+they remained mainly in the kitchen where they were seen occasionally in
+anxious consultation with Deacon Williams.
+
+The girls looked serious, but a little sly, as if they could smile if
+the boys looked their way or if one of the old women should cough her
+store teeth out.
+
+Upstairs the family were seated in solemn silence, the two nieces, Emma
+and Sarah, and Emma's husband, Harkey, and Sarah's children--deceased
+Williams had no wife. These people sat in stony immobility, except when
+Harkey looked at his watch, and said:--
+
+"Seem slow gitten here."
+
+Occasionally women came up the stairway and flung themselves upon the
+necks of the mourning nieces, who submitted to it without apparent
+disgust or astonishment, and sank back into the same icy calm after
+their visitors had "straightened their things," and retired to the
+reserved seats below.
+
+Deacon Williams, small, quick, with sunny blue-gray eyes belying the
+gloomy curve of his mouth, was everywhere; arranging for bearers,
+selecting hymns, conferring with the family, keeping abstracted old
+women off the seats reserved for the mourners, and maintaining an
+anxious lookout for the minister.
+
+The Deacon was a distant relative of the dead man, and it was generally
+admitted that he "would have a time of it" in administering upon the
+estate.
+
+At last the word was whispered about that the Elder was coming. Word was
+sent to the smoke-house and to the haystack to call the stragglers in.
+They came slowly, and finding the rooms all filled considered themselves
+absolved from a disagreeable duty, and went back to the sunny side of
+the haystack, where they smoked their pipes in ruminative enjoyment.
+
+The Elder, upon entering, took his place beside the coffin, the foot of
+which he used for a pulpit on which to lay his Bible and his hymn-book.
+A noise of whispering, rustling, scraping of feet arose as some old men
+crowded in among the women, and then the room became silent.
+
+The Elder took his seat and glanced round upon them all with solemn
+unrecognizing severity, while the mourners came down the creaking pine
+stairway in proper order of procedure.
+
+Everybody noticed the luxury of new dresses on the nieces and the new
+suits on the children. Everybody knew the feeling which led to these
+extravagances. Death, after all, was a majestic visitor, and money was
+not to stand in the way of a decent showing. Some of the girls smiled
+slyly at Isaac's gloves, which were too small and would go only halfway
+on, a fact he tried to conceal by keeping his hands folded. Each boy was
+provided with a large new stiff cotton handkerchief, which occupied
+immense space in outside pockets, crumpled as they were into a rustling
+ball with cruel salient angles like a Chinese puzzle.
+
+The Elder had attended two funerals that week, and like a jaded actor
+came lamely to his work. His prayer was not entirely satisfactory to the
+older people, they had expected a "little more power."
+
+He was a thin-faced man, with weak brown eyes and a mouth like a gopher,
+that is, with very prominent upper teeth. His black coat was worn and
+shiny, and hung limply, as if at some other period he had been fatter,
+or as if it had belonged to some other man.
+
+The choir with instinctive skill had selected a wailing hymn, only
+slightly higher in development than the chant of the Indians, sweet,
+plaintive at times, barbaric in its moving cadences. They sang it well,
+in meditative march, looking out of the windows during its interminable
+length.
+
+Then the Elder read some passages of the Scripture in his "funeral
+voice," which was entirely different from his "marriage voice" and his
+"Sunday voice." It had deep cadences in it and chanting inflections, not
+unlike the negro preachers or the keeners at Irish wakes.
+
+Then he gave out the hymn, which all joined in singing, rising to their
+feet with much trouble. After they had settled down again he took out a
+large carefully ironed handkerchief and laid it on the coffin as who
+should say, "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now."
+
+The absurdity of all this did not appear to his listeners, though they
+well knew he cared very little about the dead man, who was a very
+retiring person.
+
+The Elder on his part understood that his audience was before him for
+the pleasure of weeping, for the delight of seeing agonized faces and
+hearing wild grief-laden wailing. They were there to feel the delicious
+creeping thrill of horror and fear, roused by the presence of the corpse
+and the near shadow of the hovering angel of death.
+
+The Elder led off by some purely perfunctory remarks about the deceased,
+about his kindness, and his honesty. This caused the nieces to wipe away
+a sparse tear or two, and he was encouraged as if by slight applause. He
+developed as usual the idea that in the midst of life we are in death,
+that no man can tell when his time will come. He told two or three
+grewsome stories of sudden death. His voice now rose in a wild chant now
+sank to a hoarse whisper.
+
+The blowing of noses, low sobbings, and fervent amens from the old men
+thickened encouragingly, and he entered upon more impassioned flights.
+His voice, naturally sonorous, deepened in powerful song till the men
+seated comfortably on their haunches out by the haystack could plainly
+hear his words. "Oh, my brethren, what will you do in that last day?"
+
+Sarah's boys, without in the least understanding what it all meant,
+began to weep also and to use their handkerchiefs, so smooth and shining
+they were useless as so much legal-cap writing paper.
+
+Their misery would have been enhanced had they known that out in the
+wagon-shed under cover of the Elder's voice the other boys were having a
+game of mummelly peg in the warm, dry ground. Their fresh young souls
+laughed at death as the early robins out in the hedge near by defied the
+winds of March.
+
+Having harrowed the poor sensation-loving souls as thoroughly as could
+be desired, the Elder began the process of "letting them down easy." He
+remembered that the Lord was merciful; that the deceased could approach
+him with confidence; that there was a life beyond the tomb, a life of
+eternal rest (the allurement of all hard-working humanity).
+
+Slowly the snuffling and sobbing ceased, the handkerchiefs took longer
+and longer intervals of rest, and when in conclusion the preacher said,
+"Let us pray," the old men looked at each other with fervent
+satisfaction. "It's been a blessed time--a blessed time!"
+
+The pretty girl who sang the soprano looked very interesting with her
+wet eyelashes, the tears stopped halfway in their course down her
+rounded cheek. The closing hymn promised endless peace and rest, but was
+voiced in the same tragic and hopeless music with which the service
+opened.
+
+Deacon Williams came out to say, "All parties desiring to view the
+_remains_, will now have an opportunity." He had the hospitable tone of
+a host inviting his guests in to dinner.
+
+Viewing the remains was considered a religious duty, and the men from
+outside, and even the boys from behind the smoke-house, felt constrained
+to come in and pass in shuddering horror before the still face whose
+breath did not dim the glass above it. Most of them hurried by the box
+with only a swift side glance down at the strange thing within.
+
+Then the bearers lifted the coffin and slipped it into the
+platform-spring wagon, which was backed up to the door. The other teams
+loaded up, and the procession moved off, down the perilously muddy road
+toward the village burying-ground.
+
+In this way was John Williams, a hard-working, honorable Welshman,
+buried. His death furnished forth a sombre, dramatic entertainment such
+as he himself had ceremoniously attended many times. The funeral
+trotters whom he had seen at every funeral in the valley were now in at
+his death, and would be at each other's death, until the black and
+yellow earth claimed them all.
+
+A ceremony almost as interesting to the gossips as the burial was the
+reading of the will, to which only the family were invited. After the
+return of Emma, her husband, and Sarah from the cemetery, Deacon
+Williams read the dead man's bequests, seated in the best room, which
+was still littered with chairs and damp with mud.
+
+The will was simple and not a surprise to any one. It gave equal
+division of all the property to the nieces.
+
+"Well, now, when'll we have the settlement?" asked the Deacon.
+
+"Just's you say, Deacon," said Emma, meekly.
+
+"Suit yourself," said Harkey; "only it 'ad better come soon. Sooner the
+better--seedin's coming on."
+
+"Well, to-morrow is Friday, why not Saturday?"
+
+"All right, Saturday." All agreed.
+
+As Harkey drove off down the road he said to his wife: "The sooner we
+have it, the fewer things 'll git carried off. The Deacon don't favor me
+none, and Bill Gray is sweet on Serry, and he'll bear watchin'."
+
+The Deacon on his part took his chin in his fist and looked after
+Harkey. "Seemed a little bit anxious, 'cordin' to _my_ notion," he said,
+with a smile.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Saturday was deliciously warm and springlike, the hens woke in the early
+dawn with a jocund note in their throats, and the young cattle frisked
+about the barn-yard, moved to action by the electrical influences of the
+south wind.
+
+"Clear as a bell overhead," Deacon Williams said.
+
+But Jack Dunlap, Sarah's hand, said, "Nobody travels that way."
+
+Long before dawn the noise of the melting water could be heard running
+with musical tinkle under the ice. The ponds crashed and boomed in long
+reverberating explosions, as the sinking water heaved it up and let it
+fall with crackling roar; flights of ducks flashed over, cackling
+breathlessly as they scurried straight into the north.
+
+Deacon and Sarah arrived early and took possession, for Sarah was to
+have the eighty which included the house. They were busy getting things
+ready for the partition. The Deacon, assisted by Jack, the hired man,
+was busy hauling the machinery out of the shed into the open air, while
+Sarah and a couple of neighbors' girls, with skirts tucked up and towels
+on their heads, were scouring up pots and pans and dusting furniture in
+the kitchen.
+
+The girls, strong and handsome in their unsapped animal vigor, enjoyed
+the innocent display of their bare arms and petticoats.
+
+People from Sand Lake passing by wondered what was going on. Gideon
+Turner had the courage to pull up and call out, for the satisfaction of
+his wife:--
+
+"What's going on here this fine morning?"
+
+"Oh, we're goin' to settle up the estate!" said Sarah. "Why! how de do,
+Mrs. Turner?"
+
+"W'y, it's you, is it, Serry?"
+
+"Yes; it's me,--what they is left of me. I been here sence six o'clock.
+I'm getting things ready for the division. Deacon Williams is the
+ex-e_cu_tor, you know."
+
+"Aha! Less see, you divide equally, I hear."
+
+"Near's we can get at it. Uncle left me the house eighty, and the valley
+eighty to Emmy. Deacon's goin' to parcel out the belongin's."
+
+Turner looked sly. "How'd Harkey feel?"
+
+Sarah smiled. "I don't know and care less. He'll make trouble if he can,
+but I don't see how he can. He agreed to have the Deacon do the
+dividin', and he'll have to stand by it so far as I can see."
+
+Mrs. Turner looked dubious. "Well, you know Ike Harkey. He looks as
+though sugar wouldn't melt in his mouth, but I tell you I'd hate to have
+dealin's with him."
+
+Turner broke in: "Well, we must be movin'. I s'pose you'll move right
+in?"
+
+"Yes. Just as soon's as this thing's settled."
+
+"Well, good-by. Come up."
+
+"You come down."
+
+Sarah was a heavy, good-natured woman, a widow with "a raft of
+children." Probably for that reason her uncle had left her the house,
+which was large and comfortable. As she stood looking down the road, one
+of the girls came out to the gate. She was a plump, strong creature, a
+neighbor's girl who had volunteered to help.
+
+"Anybody coming?"
+
+"Yes. I guess--no, it's going the other way. Ain't it a nice day?"
+
+That was as far as she could carry the utterance of her feeling, but all
+the morning she had felt the wonderful power of the air. The sun had
+risen incredibly warm. The wind was in the south, and the crackling,
+booming roar of ice in the ponds and along the river was like winter
+letting go its iron grip upon the land. Even the old cows shook their
+horns, and made comical attempts to frisk with the yearlings. Sarah knew
+it was foolish, but she felt like a girl that morning--and Bill was
+coming up the road.
+
+In the midst of the joy of the spring day stood the house, desolate and
+empty, out of which its owner had been carried to a bed in the cold,
+clinging clay of the little burying-ground.
+
+The girls and Sarah worked swiftly, brushing, cleaning, setting aside,
+giving little thought to even the beauty of the morning, which entered
+their blood unconsciously.
+
+"Well, how goes it?" asked a quick, jovial voice.
+
+The girls gave screams of affected fright.
+
+"Why, Deacon! You nearly scared the life out of us."
+
+Deacon Williams was always gallant.
+
+"I didn't know I was given to scaring the ladies," he said. "Well, who's
+here?"
+
+"Nobody but us so far."
+
+"Hain't seen nothing o' Harkey?"
+
+"Not a thing. He sent word he'd be on hand, though."
+
+"M--, well, we've got the machinery invoiced. Guess I'll look around and
+kind o' get the household things in my mind's eye," said the Deacon,
+taking on the air of a public functionary.
+
+"All right. We'll have everything ready here in a few minutes."
+
+They returned to work, dusting and scrubbing. The girls with their
+banter put death into the background as an obscure and infrequent
+incident of old age.
+
+Sarah again studied the road down the Coolly.
+
+"Well there! I see a team coming up the Coolly now; wonder if it's
+Emmy."
+
+"Looks more like Bill Gray's team," said one of the girls, looking slyly
+at Sarah, who grew very red.
+
+"Oh, you're too sharp, ain't you?"
+
+It was perfectly ridiculous (to the young people) to see these
+middle-aged lovers courting like sixteen-year-olds, and they had no
+mercy on either Bill or Sarah.
+
+Bill drove up in leisurely way, his horses steaming, his wagon-wheels
+loaded with mud. Mrs. Gray was with him, her jolly face shining like the
+morning sun.
+
+"Hello, folkses, are you all here?"
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Gray," said the Deacon, approaching to help her out.
+"Hello, Bill, nice morning."
+
+Bill looked at Sarah for a moment. "Bully good," he said, leaving his
+mother to scramble down the wagon-wheel alone--at least so far as he was
+concerned, but the Deacon stood below courageously.
+
+Mrs. Gray cried out in her loud good humor: "Look out, Deacon, don't git
+too near me--if I should fall on you there wouldn't be a grease spot
+left. _There!_ I'm all right now," she said, having reached ground
+without accident. She shook her dress and looked briskly around. "Wal,
+what you done, anyway? Emmy's folks come yet?"
+
+"No, but I guess that's them comin' now. I hope Ike won't come, though."
+
+Mrs. Gray stared at the Deacon. "Why not?"
+
+"Well, he's just sure to make a fuss," said Jack, "he's so afraid he
+won't get his share."
+
+Bill chewed on a straw and looked at Sarah abstractedly.
+
+"Well, what's t' be done?" inquired Mrs. Gray, after a pause.
+
+"Can't do much till Emmy gets here," said Sarah.
+
+"Oh, I guess we can. Bill, you put out y'r team, we won't get away 'fore
+dinner."
+
+The men drove off to the barn, leaving the women to pick their way on
+chips and strips of board laid in the mud, to the safety of the
+chip-pile, and thence to the kitchen, which was desolately littered with
+utensils.
+
+Deacon assumed command with the same alertness, and with the same sunny
+gleam in his eye, with which he directed the funeral a few days before.
+
+"Now, Bill, put out your team and help Jack and me pen them hogs. Women
+folks 'll git things ready here."
+
+Emma came at last, driven by Harkey's brother and his hired man. They
+were both brawny fellows, rude and irritable, and the Deacon lifted his
+eyebrows and whistled when he saw them drive in with a lumber wagon.
+
+The women swarmed out to greet Emma, who was a thin, irritable, feeble
+woman.
+
+"Better late than never. Where's Ike?" inquired Mrs. Gray.
+
+"Well, he--couldn't git away very well--he's got t' clean up some
+seed-oats," she answered nervously. After the men drove off, however,
+she added: "He thought he hadn't ought to come; he didn't want to cause
+no aidgewise feelin's, so he thought he hadn't better come--he'd just
+leave it to you, Deacon."
+
+The Deacon said, "All right, all right! We'll fix it up!" but he didn't
+feel so sure of it after that, though he set to work bravely.
+
+The sun, growing warmer, fell with pleasant gleam around the kitchen
+door and around the chip-pile where the hens were burrowing. The men
+worked in their shirt-sleeves.
+
+"Well, now, we'll share the furniture an' stuff next," said the Deacon,
+looking around upon his little interested semicircle of spectators.
+"Now, put Emmy's things over there and Serry's things over here. I'll
+call 'em off, and, if they's no objection, you girls can pass 'em over."
+
+He cleared his throat and began in the voice of one in authority:--
+
+"Thirteen pans, six to Emmy, seven to Serry;" then hastened to add:
+"I'll balance that by giving the biggest of the two kittles to Emmy.
+Rollin' pin and cake board to Serry, two flat-irons to Emmy, small tub
+to Emmy, large one to Serry, balanced by the tin water pail. Dozen
+clo'se-pins; half an' half, six o' one, half-dozen t'other," he said
+with a smile at his own joke, while the others actively placed the
+articles in separate piles.
+
+"Stove to Serry, because she has the house, bureau to Emmy."
+
+At this point Mrs. Gray said, "I guess that ain't quite even, Deacon;
+the bureau ain't worth much."
+
+"Oh, no, no, that's all right! Let her have it," Emma protested
+nervously.
+
+"Give her an extry tick, anyway," said Sarah, not to be outdone in
+magnanimity.
+
+"Settle that between ye," said the Deacon.
+
+He warmed to his work now, and towels, pans, crockery, brooms, mirrors,
+pillows, and bedticks were rapidly set aside in two groups on the soft
+soil. The poverty of the home could best be seen in the display of its
+pitiful furniture.
+
+The two nieces looked on impassively, standing side by side. The men
+came to move the bureau and other heavy things and looked on, while the
+lighter things were being handed over by Mrs. Gray and the girls.
+
+At noon they sat down in the empty kitchen and ate a cold snack--at
+least, the women took seats, the men stood around and lunched on hunks
+of boiled beef and slices of bread. There was an air of constraint upon
+the male portion of the party not shared by Mrs. Gray and the girls.
+
+"Well, that settles things in the house," beamed the Deacon as he came
+out with the women trailing behind him; "an' now in about two jerks of
+a dead lamb's tail, we'll git at the things out in the barn."
+
+"Wal, we don't know much about machines and things, but I guess we'd
+better go out and keep you men from fightin'," said Mrs. Gray, shaking
+with fun; "Ike didn't come because he didn't want to make any trouble,
+but I guess he might just as well 'a' come as send two such critters as
+Jim 'n' Hank."
+
+The women laughed at her frankness, and in very good humor they all went
+out to the barn-yard.
+
+"Now, these things can't be laid out fast as I call 'em off, but we'll
+do the best we can."
+
+"Let's try the stawk first," said Jim.
+
+The women stood around with shawls pinned over their heads while the
+division of the stock went forward. The young men came often within
+chaffing distance of the girls.
+
+There were nine shotes nearly of a size, and the Deacon said, "I'll give
+Serry the odd shote."
+
+"Why so?" asked Jim Harkey, a sullen-faced man of thirty.
+
+"Because a shote is hard to carry off and I can balance--"
+
+"Well, I guess you can balance f'r Em 'bout as well as f'r Serry."
+
+The Deacon was willing to yield a point. "Any objection, Bill? If not,
+why--"
+
+"Nope, let her go," said Bill.
+
+"What 'ave _you_ got to say 'bout it?" asked Jim, insolently.
+
+Bill turned his slow bulk. "I guess I've a good 'eal to say--haven't I,
+Serry?"
+
+Sarah reddened, but stood beside him bravely. "I guess you have, Bill,
+about as much as _I_ have." There was a moment of dramatic tension and
+the girls tingled with sympathy.
+
+"Let 'er go," said Bill, splitting a straw with his knife. He had not
+proposed to Sarah before and he felt an unusual exaltation to think it
+came so easy after all.
+
+When they reached the cattle, Jim objected to striking a balance with a
+"farrer cow," and threw the Deacon's nice calculation all out of joint.
+
+"Let it go, Jim," pleaded Emma.
+
+"I won't do it," Ike said--"I mean I know he don't want no farrer cow,
+he's got two now."
+
+The Deacon was a little nettled. "I guess that's going to stand," he
+said sharply.
+
+Jim swore a little but gave in, and came back with an access of ill
+humor on a division of the horses.
+
+"But I've give you the four heavy horses to balance the four others and
+the two-year-old," said the Deacon.
+
+"I'll be damned if I stand that," said Jim.
+
+"I guess you'll have to," said the Deacon.
+
+Emma pleaded, "Let it go, Jim, don't make a fuss."
+
+Jim raged on, "I'll be cawn-demmed if I'll stand it. I don't--Ike don't
+want them spavined old crows; they're all ring-boned and got the
+heaves." His long repressed ill-nature broke out.
+
+"Toh, toh!" said the Deacon, "Don't kick over the traces now. We'll fix
+it up some way."
+
+Emma tried to stop Jim, but he shook her off and continued to walk back
+and forth behind the horses munching on quietly, unconscious of any
+dispute about their value.
+
+Bill sat on the oat box in his hulking way, his heels thumping a tune,
+his small gray eyes watching the angry man.
+
+"Don't make a darn fool of yourself," he said placidly.
+
+Jim turned, glad of the chance for a row, "You better keep out of this."
+
+Bill continued to thump, the palms of his big hands resting on the edge
+of the box. "I'm in it," he said conclusively.
+
+"Well, you git out of it! I ain't goin' to be bulldozed--that ain't what
+I come here for."
+
+"No, I see it ain't," said Bill. "If you're after a row you can have it
+right here. You won't find a better place."
+
+"There, there," urged the Deacon. "What's the use? Keep cool and don't
+tear your shirts."
+
+Mrs. Gray went up to Jim and took him by the arm. "You need a good
+spankin' to make you good-natured," she said. "I think the Deacon has
+done first rate, and you ought 'o--"
+
+"Let go o' me," he snarled, raising his hand as if to strike her.
+
+Bill's big boot lunged out, catching Harkey in the ribs, and if the
+Deacon had not sprung to his assistance Jim would have been trampled to
+pieces by the scared horse under whose feet he found himself. He was
+wild with dizzy, breathless rage.
+
+"Who hit me?" he demanded.
+
+Bill's shapeless hulk straightened up and stood beside him as if his
+pink flesh had suddenly turned to oak. Out of his fat cheeks his gray
+eyes glared.
+
+"I did. Want another?"
+
+The Deacon and Jack came between and prevented the encounter which would
+have immediately followed. Bill went on:--
+
+"They cain't no man lay a hand on my mother and live long after it." He
+was thoroughly awake now. There was no slouch to his action at that
+moment, and Jim was secretly pleased to have the encounter go by.
+
+"You come here for a fuss and you can have it, both of you," Bill went
+on in unusual eloquence. "Deacon's tried to do the square thing, Emmy's
+tried to do the square thing, and Serry's kep' quiet, but you've been
+sour and ugly the whole time, and now it's goin' to stop."
+
+"This ain't the last of this thing," said Jim.
+
+"You never'll have a better time," said Bill.
+
+Mrs. Gray and the Deacon turned in now to quiet Bill, and the settlement
+went on. Jim kept close watch on the proceedings, and muttered his
+dissent to his friends, but was careful not to provoke Bill further.
+
+In dividing the harnesses they came upon a cow-bell hanging on a nail.
+The Deacon jingled it as he passed. "Goes with the bell-cow," he said,
+and nothing further was said of it. Jim apparently did not consider it
+worth quarrelling about.
+
+At last the work was done, a terribly hard day's work. The machines and
+utensils were piled in separate places, the cattle separated, and the
+grain measured. As they were about to leave, the Deacon said finally:--
+
+"If there's any complaint to make, let's have it right now. I want this
+settlement to _be_ a settlement. Is everybody satisfied?"
+
+"I am," said Emmy. "Ain't you, Serry?"
+
+"Why, of course," said Sarah, who was a little slower of speech. "I
+think the Deacon has done first rate. I ain't a word of fault to find,
+have you, Bill?"
+
+"Nope, not an ioty," said Bill, readily.
+
+Jim did not agree in so many words, but, as he said nothing, the Deacon
+ended:--
+
+"Well, that settles it. It ain't goin' to rain, so you can leave these
+things right here till Monday. I guess I'll be gettin' out for home.
+Good evening, everybody."
+
+Emma drove away down the road with Jim, but Sarah remained to straighten
+up the house. Harkey's hired hand went home with Dade Walker who
+considered that walk the pleasant finish to a very interesting day's
+work. She sympathized for the time with the Harkey faction.
+
+Sunday forenoon, when Bill and Sarah drove up to the farm to put things
+in order in the house, they found Ike Harkey walking around with that
+queer side glance he had, studying the piles of furniture, and mentally
+weighing the pigs.
+
+He greeted them smoothly: "Yes, yes, I'm _purr_fickly satisfied,
+_purr_fickly! Not a word to say--better'n I expected," he added.
+
+Bill was not quite keen enough to perceive the insult which lay in that
+final clause, and Sarah dared not inform him for fear of trouble.
+
+As Harkey drove away, however, Bill had a dim feeling of dissatisfaction
+with him.
+
+"He's too gol-dang polite, that feller is; I don't like such
+butter-mouth chaps--they'd steal the cents off'n a dead nigger's eyes."
+
+
+III
+
+
+The second Sunday after the partition of goods the entire Coolly turned
+out to church in spite of the muddy road. The men, after driving up to
+the door of the little white church and helping the women to alight,
+drove out to the sheds along the fence and gathered in knots beside
+their wagons in the warm spring sun. It was very pleasant there, and the
+men leaned with relaxed muscles upon the wagon-wheels, or sat on the
+fence with jack-knives in hand. The horses, weary with six days seeding,
+slept with closed eyes and drooping lips. Generally the talk was upon
+spring work, each man bragging of the number of acres he had sown during
+the week, but this morning the talk was all about the division which had
+come between the nieces of "deceased Williams." They discussed it slowly
+as one might eat a choice pudding in order to extract the flavor from
+each spoonful.
+
+"What is it all about, anyhow?" asked Jim Cranby. "I ain't heard nothing
+about it." He had stood in open-mouthed perplexity trying to catch a
+clew. Coming late, he found it baffling.
+
+"That shows where he lives; a man might as well live in a well as up in
+Molasses Gap," said one of the younger men, pointing up to the Coolly.
+"Why, Ike Harkey is kicking about the six shotes the Deacon put off on
+him."
+
+"No, it wasn't the shotes, it was a farrer cow," put in Clint Stone.
+
+"Well, _I_ heard it was a shote."
+
+"So did I," said another.
+
+"Well, Bill Gray told Jinks Ike had stole a cow-bell that belonged to
+the black farrer cow," said another late comer.
+
+"Stole a cow-bell," and they all drew closer together. This was really
+worth while!
+
+"Yes, sir; Jinks told me he heard Bill say so yesterday. That's the way
+I heard it."
+
+"Well, I'll be cussed, if that ain't small business for Ike Harkey!"
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Cranby, with sharpened appetite.
+
+"Well, I didn't hear no p'rtic'lars, but it seems the bell was hangin'
+on a peg in the barn, and when they got home from church it was gone,
+hide an' hair. Bill is dead sure Ike took it."
+
+"Say, there'll be fun over that yet, won't they," said one of the
+fellows, with a grin.
+
+"Well, Ike better keep out of Bill's way, that's all."
+
+"Well--I ain't takin' sides. Some young'un may have took it."
+
+"Well, let's go in, boys; I see the Elder's come. By gum, there's
+Harkey!" They all looked toward Harkey, who had just driven up to the
+door.
+
+Harkey came into church holding his smooth, serious face a little one
+side, in his usual way, quiet and dignified, as if he were living up to
+his Sunday suit of clothes. He seemed to be unconscious of the attitude
+in which he stood toward most of his neighbors.
+
+Bill and Sarah were not present, and that gave additional color to the
+story of trouble between the sisters.
+
+After the sermon Deacon Harkey led the Sunday School, and the critics of
+his action were impressed more than usual with his smooth and quiet
+utterance. Emma seemed more than ordinarily worn and dispirited.
+
+It was perfectly natural that Mrs. Gray should be the last person to
+know of the division which had slowly set in between the two sisters and
+their factions. Charitable and guileless herself, it was difficult for
+her to conceive of slander and envy.
+
+Nevertheless, a division had come about, slowly, but decisively. The
+entire Coolly was involved in the discussion before Mrs. Gray gave it
+any serious attention, but one day, when Sarah came in upon her and
+poured out a mingled flood of sorrow and invective, the good soul was
+aghast.
+
+"Well, well, I swan! There, there! I wouldn't make so much fuss over
+it!" she said, stripping her hands out of the biscuit dough in order to
+go over and pat Sarah on the shoulder. "After all that to-do gettin'
+settled, seems 's if you ought 'o _stay_ settled. Good land! It ain't
+anything to have a fuss over, anyway!"
+
+"But it is _our_ cow-bell. It belonged on the black farrer cow, that Jim
+turned his nose up at, and he sneaked around and got it just to spite
+us."
+
+"Oh, I guess not," she replied incredulously.
+
+"Well, he did; and Emmy put him up to it, and I know she did," said
+Sarah in a lamentable voice.
+
+"Sary Ann," said Mrs. Gray, as sharply as any one ever heard her speak,
+"that's a pretty way to talk about your sister, ain't it?"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Jim Harkey said--"
+
+"You never mind what Mrs. Jim Harkey said; she's a _snoop_ and everybody
+knows it."
+
+"But she wouldn't tell that, if it weren't so."
+
+"Well, I tell you, I wouldn't pay no attention to what she said, and I
+wouldn't make such a fuss over an old cow-bell, anyway."
+
+"But the cow-bell is only the starting point; she ain't been near the
+house since, and she says all kinds of mean, nasty things about us."
+
+"All comes through Mrs. Jim, I suppose," said Mrs. Gray, with some
+sarcasm.
+
+"No, it don't. She told Dade Walker that I got all the biggest
+flat-irons, when she knows I offered her the bureau. I did everything I
+could to make her feel satisfied."
+
+"I know you did, and now you must just keep cool till I see Emmy
+myself."
+
+When Mrs. Gray started out on her mission of pacification, she found it
+to be entirely out of her control. The Coolly was actively partisan. One
+party stood by the Harkeys, and another took Sarah's part, while the
+_tertium quid_ said it was "all darn foolishness."
+
+Mrs. Gray was appalled at the state of affairs, but struggled to
+maintain a neutral position. In May, when Bill and Sarah were married,
+things had reached such a stage that Emma was not invited to the wedding
+supper. Nothing could have cut deeper than this neglect, and thereafter
+adherents of the third remove declined to speak when passing; some even
+refused to nod. The Harkey faction also condemned the early marriage of
+Bill and Sarah as unseemly.
+
+Soon after, Emma came again to see Mrs. Gray, salty with tears, and
+crushed with the slight Sarah had put upon her. She was a plain pale
+woman, anyway, and weeping made her pitiable. She explained the
+situation with her head on Mrs. Gray's lap:--
+
+"She never has been to see me since that day, and--but I hoped she'd
+come and see me, but she never sent me any invitation to her wedding."
+She choked with sobs at the memory of it.
+
+Mrs. Gray realized the enormity of the offence, and she could only put
+her arms around Emma's back and say, "There, there, I wouldn't take on
+so about it." As a matter of fact, she had striven to have Bill send an
+invitation to his brother-in-law, but Bill was inflexible on that point.
+With the sound of the stolen cow-bell ringing in his ears, he could not
+bring himself to ask Ike Harkey into his house.
+
+After Emma grew a little calmer, Mrs. Gray tried again to bridge the
+chasm. "Now, I just believe if you would go to Sarah--"
+
+"I can't do that! She'd slam the door in my face. Jim's wife says Sarah
+said I shouldn't pick a single currant out of the garden this year!"
+
+"I don't go much on what Jim's wife says," put in Mrs. Gray, guardedly.
+She had begun to feel that Jim's wife was the main disturbing element.
+
+The sisters really suffered from their separation. They had been so used
+to running in at all times of the day that each missed the other
+wofully. It had been their habit whenever they needed each other to help
+cook, or cut a dress, to hang a cloth out of the chamber window, a sign
+which was sure to bring help post-haste; but now nothing would induce
+either of them to make the first concession.
+
+Two or three times when Emma, feeling especially lonely, was on the
+point of hanging out the signal, she was prevented by the thought of
+some cruel message Mrs. Jim had brought. Jim lived on Ike's farm in a
+small house that had been Emma's first home, and Mrs. Jim was almost as
+much in her house as in her own. She had no children, and was a
+mischief-maker, not so much from ill will as from a love of dramatic
+situations; it was her life, this dramatic play of loves and hates
+among her friends and neighbors.
+
+Emma feared her husband, too; he was so self-contained, and so
+inexorably moral, at least in appearance. He sweetly said he bore no ill
+will toward the Grays, but he must insist that his wife should not visit
+them until they apologized. He took the matter very serenely, however.
+
+The sound of the cow-bell was a constant daily irritation to Bill; he
+was slow to wrath, but the bell seemed to rasp on his tenderest nerve;
+it had a curiously exultant sound heard in the early morning--it seemed
+to voice Harkey's triumph. Bill's friends were astonished at the change
+in him. He grew dark and thunderous with wrath whenever Harkey's name
+was mentioned.
+
+One day Ike's cattle broke out of the pasture into Bill's young oats,
+and though Ike hurried after them, it seemed to Bill he might have got
+them out a little quicker than he did. He said nothing then, however,
+but when a few days later they broke in again, he went over there in
+very bad humor.
+
+"I want this thing stopped," he said.
+
+Ike was mending the fence. He smiled in his sweet way, and said
+smoothly, "I'm sorry, but when they once git a taste of grain it's
+pretty hard to keep 'em--"
+
+"Well, there ought to be a new fence here," said Bill. "That fence is as
+rotten as a pumpkin."
+
+"I s'pose they had; yes, sir, that's so," Harkey assented quickly. "I'm
+ready to build my half, you know," he said, "any time--any time you
+are."
+
+"Well, I'll build mine to-morrow," said Bill. "I can't have your cattle
+pasturing on my oats."
+
+"All right, all right. I'll have mine done as quick as yourn."
+
+"Well, see't you do; I don't want my grain all tramped into the ground
+and I ain't a-goin' to have it."
+
+Harkey hastily gathered up his tools, saying, "Yes, yes, all right."
+
+"You might send home that cow-bell of mine while you're about it," Bill
+called after him, but Harkey did not reply or turn around.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The line fence ran up the bluff toward the summit of the ridge to the
+east. On each side it was set with smooth green slopes of pasture and
+pleasant squares of wheat, until it reached the woods and ran under the
+oaks and walnuts and birches to the cliffs of lichen-spotted stone which
+topped the summit.
+
+Bill walked the full length of the fence to see how much of the old
+material could be used. He recognized the bell on one of Harkey's
+cattle, and he grew wrathful at the sight of another cow peacefully
+gnawing the fresh, green grass, with the bell, which belonged to the
+black cow, on her neck.
+
+It was mid-spring. Everywhere was the vivid green of the Wisconsin
+landscape; the slopes were like carefully tended lawns, without stumps
+or stones; the groves rose up the hills, pink and gray and green in
+softly rounded billows of cherry bloom and tender oak and elm foliage.
+Here and there under the forest tender plants and flowers had sprung up,
+slender and succulent like all productions of a rich and shadowed soil.
+
+Early the next morning Bill and his two hands began to work in the
+meadow, working toward the ridge; Harkey and his brother and their hands
+began at the ridge and worked down toward the meadow; each party could
+hear the axes of the other ringing in the still, beautiful spring air.
+
+Bill's hired hand, on his way to the spring about the middle of the
+forenoon, met Jim Harkey, who said wickedly in answer to a jocular
+greeting:--
+
+"Don't give me none of your lip now; we'll break your necks for two
+cents."
+
+The hand came to Bill with the story. "Bill, they're on the fight."
+
+"Oh, I guess not."
+
+"Well, they be. We better not run up against them to-day if we don't
+want trouble."
+
+"Well, I ain't goin' to dodge 'em," said Bill; "I ain't in that
+business; if they want fight, we'll accommodate 'em with the best we've
+got in the shop."
+
+At noon, Harkey's gang went to dinner a little earlier, and, as they
+came down the path quite near, Jim said with a sneer:--
+
+"You managed to git the easiest half of the fence, didn't yeh?"
+
+"We took the half that belongs to us," said Bill. "_We_ don't take what
+don't belong to us."
+
+"Cow-bells, for instance," put in Bill's hired hand, with a provoking
+intonation.
+
+Jim stopped and his face twisted with rage; Ike paused a little farther
+on down the path. Jim came closer.
+
+"Say, I know what you're driving at and you're a liar, and for a leather
+cent I'd lick you like hell!"
+
+"You can't do it. You don't weigh enough."
+
+"Oh, shut up, Jack," called Bill. "Go about y'r business," he said to
+Jim, "or I'll take a hand."
+
+Jim's face flamed into a wild wrath. His lips lifted at the corners like
+a wolf's as he leaped the fence with a wild spring and lunged against
+Bill's breast. The larger man went down, but his great arms closed about
+his assailant's neck with a bear-like grip. Jim could neither rise nor
+strike; with a fury no animal could equal he pressed his hands upon
+Bill's throat and thrust his elbow into his mouth in the attempt to
+strangle him. He meant murder.
+
+Jack faced the other men, who came running up. Ike seized a stake, and
+was about to leap over, when Jack raised an axe in the air.
+
+"Stand off!" he yelled, and his voice rang through the woods; he noticed
+how harsh and wild it sounded in the silence. He heard a grunting sound,
+and gave one glance at the two men writhing amid the ferns silent as
+grappling bull-dogs.
+
+Bill had fallen in the brake and seemed wedged in. At last there came
+into his heart a terrible shiver, a blind desperation that uncoiled all
+the strength in his great bulk. Then he seemed to bound from the
+ground, as he twisted the other man under him, and shook himself free.
+
+He dragged one great maul of a fist free and drove it at the face
+beneath him. Jim saw it coming and turned his head. The blow fell on his
+neck and his carnivorous grin smoothed out as if sleep had suddenly
+fallen upon him. He drew a long, shuddering breath, his muscles
+quivered, and his clenched hands fell open.
+
+Bill rose upon his knees and looked at him. A deep awe fell upon him. In
+the pause he heard the robins rioting from the trees in the lower
+valley, and the woodpecker cried resoundingly.
+
+"You've killed him!" cried Ike, as he climbed hastily over the fence.
+
+Bill did not reply. The men faced each other in solemn silence, all wish
+for murder going out of their hearts. The sobbing cry of the mourning
+dove, which they had been hearing all day, suddenly assumed new meaning.
+
+"_Ah, woe, woe is me!_" it cried.
+
+"Bring water!" shouted Ike, kneeling beside his brother.
+
+Bill knelt there with him, while the rest dashed water upon Jim's face.
+
+At last he began to breathe like a fretful, waking child, and looking up
+into the scared faces above him, motioned the water away from him. The
+angry look came back into his face, but it was mixed with perplexity.
+
+He touched his hand to his face and brought it down covered with blood.
+"How much am I hurt?" he said fiercely.
+
+"Oh, nothing much," Ike hastened to say; "it's just a scratch."
+
+Jim struggled to his elbow and looked around him. It all seemed to come
+back to him. "Did he do it fair?" he demanded of his companions.
+
+"Oh, yes; it was fair enough," said Ike.
+
+Jim looked at Jack. "That _thing_ didn't hit me with his axe, did he?"
+
+Jack grinned. "No, but I was just a-goin' to when Bill belted you one,"
+was the frank and convincing reply.
+
+Jim got up slowly and faced Bill. "Well, that settles it; it's all
+right! You're a better man than I am. That's all I've got to say."
+
+He climbed back over the fence and led the way down to dinner without
+looking back.
+
+"What give ye that lick on the side o' the head, Jim?" his wife asked,
+when he sat down at the dinner-table.
+
+"Never you mind," he replied surlily, but he added, "Ike's axe come off,
+and give me a side-winder."
+
+Bill carefully removed all marks of his struggle and walked into dinner
+shamefacedly, all muscle gone out of his bulk of fat. His sudden return
+to primeval savagery grew monstrous in the cheerful kitchen, with its
+noise of hearty children, sizzling meat, and the clatter of dishes.
+
+The stove was not drawing well and Sarah did not notice anything out of
+the way with Bill.
+
+"I never see such a hateful thing in all my life," she said, referring
+to the stove. "That rhubarb duff won't be fit for a hog to eat; the
+undercrust ain't baked the least bit yet, and I have had it in there
+since fifteen minutes after 'leven."
+
+Bill said generously, "Oh, well, never mind, Serry; we'll worry it down
+some way."
+
+
+V
+
+
+All through July and August Mrs. Jim Harkey seemed to renew her
+endeavors to keep the sisters apart; she still carried spiteful tales to
+and fro, amplifying them with an irresistible histronic tendency. It had
+become a matter of self-exoneration with her then. She could not stop
+now without seeming to admit she had been mischief-making in the past.
+If the sisters should come together, her lies would instantly appear.
+
+Emma grew morose, irritable, and melancholy; she was suffering for her
+sister's wholesome presence, and yet, being under the dominion of the
+mischief-maker, dared not send word or even mention the name of her
+sister in the presence of the Harkeys.
+
+Mrs. Jim came up to the house to stay as Emma got too ill to work, and
+took charge of the house. The children hated her fiercely, and there
+were noisy battles in the kitchen constantly wearing upon the nerves of
+the sick woman who lay in the restricted gloom of the sitting room
+bed-chamber, within hearing of every squall.
+
+There were moments of peace only when Ike was in the house. Smooth as he
+was, Jim's wife was afraid of him. There was something compelling in his
+low-toned voice; his presence subdued but did not remove strife.
+
+His silencing of the tumult hardly arose out of any consideration for
+his wife, but rather from his inability to enjoy his paper while the
+clamor of war was going on about him.
+
+He was not a tender man, and yet he prided himself on being a very calm
+and even-tempered man. He kept out of Bill's way, and considered himself
+entirely justified in his position regarding the cow-bell. It is
+doubtful if he would have accepted an apology.
+
+Emma suffered acutely from Mrs. Harkey's visits. Something mean and
+wearying went out from her presence, and her sharp, bold face was a
+constant irritation. Sometimes when she thought herself alone, Emma
+crawled to the window which looked up the Coolly, toward Sarah's home,
+and sat there silently longing to send out a cry for help. But at the
+sound of Jane Harkey's step she fled back into bed like a frightened
+child.
+
+She became more and more childish and more flighty in her thoughts as
+her time of trial drew near, and she became more subject to her jailer.
+She grew morbidly silent, and her large eyes were restless and full of
+pleading.
+
+One day she heard Mrs. Smith talking out in the kitchen.
+
+"How is Emmy to-day, Mrs. Jim?"
+
+"Well, not extry. She ain't likely to come out as well as usual this
+time, I don't think," was the brutally incautious reply; "she's pretty
+well run down, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had some trouble."
+
+"I suppose Sarah will be down to help you," said Mrs. Smith.
+
+"Well, I guess not--not after what she's told."
+
+"What has she told?" asked Mrs. Smith, in her sweet and friendly voice.
+
+"Why, she said she wouldn't set foot in this house if we all _died_."
+
+"I never heard her say that, and I don't believe she ever _did_ say it,"
+said Mrs. Smith, firmly.
+
+Emma's heart glowed with a swift rush of affection toward her sister and
+Mrs. Smith; she wanted to cry out her faith in Sarah, but she dared not.
+
+Mrs. Harkey slammed the oven door viciously. "Well, you can believe it
+or not, just as you like; I heard her say it."
+
+"Well, I didn't, so I can't believe it."
+
+When Mrs. Smith came in, Emma was ready to weep, so sweet and cheery was
+her visitor's face.
+
+She found no chance to talk with her, however, for Mrs. Harkey kept near
+them during her visit. Once, while Mrs. Jim ran out to look at the pies,
+Mrs. Smith whispered: "Don't you believe what they say about Sarah.
+She's just as kind as can be--I know she is. She's looking down this
+way every day, and I know she'd come down instanter if you'd send for
+her. I'm going up that way, and--"
+
+She found no further chance to say anything, but from that moment Emma
+began to think of letting Sarah know how much she needed her. She
+planned to hang out the cloth as she used to. She exaggerated its
+importance in the way of an invalid, until it attained the significance
+of an act of treason. She felt like a criminal even in thinking about
+it.
+
+Several times in the night she dreamed she had put the cloth out and
+that Jim and his wife had seen it and torn it down. She awoke two or
+three times to find herself sitting up in bed staring out of the window,
+through which the moon shone and the multitudinous sounds of the
+mid-summer insects came sonorously.
+
+Once her husband said, "What's the matter? It seems to me you'd rest
+better if you'd lay down and keep quiet." His voice was low enough, but
+it had a peculiar inflection, which made her sink back into bed by his
+side, shivering with fear and weeping silently.
+
+The next day Jim and her husband both went off to town, and Jim's wife,
+after about ten o'clock, said:--
+
+"Now, Emmy, I'm going down to Smith's to get a dress pattern, and I want
+you to keep quiet right here in bed. I'll be right back; I'll set some
+water here, and I guess you won't want anything else until I get back.
+I'll run right down and right back."
+
+After hearing the door close, Emma lay for a few minutes listening,
+waiting until she felt sure Mrs. Harkey was well out of the yard, then
+she crept out of bed and crawled to the window. Mrs. Jim was far down
+the road; she could see her blue dress and her pink sunbonnet.
+
+The sick woman seized the sheet and pulled it from the bed; the clothes
+came with it, but she did not mind that. She pulled herself painfully up
+the stairway and across the rough floor of the chamber to the window
+which looked toward her sister's house, and with a wild exultation flung
+the sheet far out and dropped on her knees beside the open window.
+
+She moaned and cried wildly as she waved the sheet. The note of a scared
+child was in her voice.
+
+"Oh, Serry, come quick! Oh, I _need_ you, Serry! I didn't mean to be
+mean; I want to see you _so_! Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, Serry, come
+quick!"
+
+Then space and the world slipped away, and she knew nothing of time
+again until she heard the anxious voice of Sarah below.
+
+"Emmy, where _are_ you, Emmy?"
+
+"Here I be, Serry."
+
+With swift, heavy tread Sarah hurried up the stairs, and the dear old
+face shone upon her again; those kind gray eyes full of anxiety and of
+love.
+
+Emma looked up like a child entreating to be lifted. Her look so
+pitifully eager went to the younger sister's maternal heart.
+
+"You poor, dear soul! Why didn't you send for me before?"
+
+"Oh, Serry, don't leave me again, will you?"
+
+When Mrs. Harkey returned she found Sarah sitting by Emma's side in the
+bed-chamber. Sarah looked at her with all the grimness her jolly fat
+face could express.
+
+"You ain't needed _here_," she said coldly. "If you want to do anything,
+find a man and send him for the Doctor--quick. If she dies you'll be her
+murderer."
+
+Mrs. Harkey was subdued by the bitterness of accusation in Sarah's face
+as well as by Emma's condition. She hurried down the Coolly and sent a
+boy wildly galloping toward the town. Then she went home and sat down by
+her own hearthstone feeling deeply injured.
+
+When the Doctor came he found a poor little boy baby crying in Sarah's
+arms. It was Emma's seventh child, but the ever sufficing mother-love
+looked from her eyes undimmed, limitless as the air.
+
+"Will it live, Doctor? It's so little," she said, with a sigh.
+
+"Oh, yes, I suppose so!" said the Doctor, as if its living were not
+entirely a blessing to itself or others. "Yes, I've seen lots of lusty
+children begin life like that. But," he said to Sarah at the door, "she
+needs better care than the babe!"
+
+"She'll git it," said Sarah, with deep solemnity, "if I have to move
+over here--and live."
+
+
+
+
+A FAIR EXILE
+
+
+The train was ambling across the hot, russet plain. The wind, strong and
+warm and dry, sweeping up from the south, carried with it the subtle
+odor of September grass and gathered harvests. Out of the unfenced roads
+the dust arose in long lines, like smoke from some hidden burning which
+the riven earth revealed. The fields were tenanted with thrashing crews,
+the men diminished by distance to pygmies, the long belt of the engine
+flapping and shining like a ribbon in the flaming sunlight.
+
+The freight-cars on the accommodation train jostled and rocked about and
+heaved up laterally till they resembled a long line of awkward,
+frightened, galloping buffaloes. The one coach was scantily filled with
+passengers, mainly poorly clothed farmers and their families.
+
+A young man seated well back in the coach was looking dreamily out of
+the window, and the conductor, a keen-eyed young fellow, after passing
+him several times, said, in a friendly way:
+
+"Going up to Boomtown, I imagine."
+
+"Yes--if we ever get there."
+
+"Oh, we'll get there. We won't have much more switching. We've only got
+an empty car or two to throw in at the junction."
+
+"Well, I'm glad of that. I'm a little impatient, because I've got a case
+coming up in court, and I'm not exactly fixed for it."
+
+"Your name is Allen, I believe."
+
+"Yes; J. H. Allen, of Sioux City."
+
+"I thought so. I've heard you speak."
+
+The young lawyer was a tall, slender, dark-eyed man, rather sombre in
+appearance. He did not respond to the invitation in the conductor's
+voice.
+
+"When do you reach the junction?"
+
+"Next stop. We're only a few minutes late. Expect to meet friends
+there?"
+
+"No; thought I'd get a lunch, that's all."
+
+At the junction the car became pretty well filled with people. Two or
+three Norwegian families came clattering in, the mothers clothed in
+heavy shawls and cheap straw hats, the flaxen-haired children in faded
+cottonade and blue denims. They filled nearly half the seats. Several
+drummers came in, laughing loudly, bearing heavy valises. Then Allen
+heard, above the noise, the shrill but sweet voice of a girl, and caught
+the odor of violets as two persons passed him and took a seat just
+before him.
+
+The man he knew by sight and reputation as a very brilliant young
+lawyer--Edward Benson, of Heron Lake. The girl he knew instantly to be
+utterly alien to this land and people. She was like a tropic bird seen
+amid the scant foliage of northern hills. There was evidence of great
+care and taste in every fold of her modish dress. Her hat was simple but
+in the latest city fashion, and her gloves were spotless. She gave off
+an odor of cleanliness and beauty.
+
+She was very young and slender. Her face was piquant but not
+intellectual, and scarcely beautiful. It pleased rather by its life and
+motion and oddity than by its beauty. She looked at her companion in a
+peculiar way--trustfully, almost reverently--and yet with a touch of
+coquetry which seemed perfectly native to every turn of her body or
+glance of her eyes.
+
+Her companion was a fine Western type of self-made man. He was tall and
+broad-shouldered, but walked a little stooping, like a man of fifty. He
+wore a long Prince Albert frock-coat, hanging loosely from his rather
+square shoulders. His white vest was noticeably soiled by his watch
+chain, and his tie was disarranged.
+
+His face was very fine and good. His eyes were gray-blue, deep and
+quiet, but slightly smiling, as were his lips, which his golden-brown
+mustache shaded but did not hide. He was kept smiling in this quizzical
+way by the nervous chatter of the girl beside him. His profile, which
+was the view Allen had of him, was striking. His strong, straight nose
+and abrupt forehead formed a marked contrast to the rather characterless
+nose and retreating forehead of the girl.
+
+The first words that Allen distinguished out of the merry war in which
+they seemed engaged were spoken in the tone of pretty petulance such
+women use--a coquette's defence.
+
+"You did! you did! you _did_! _Now_! You know you did! You told me
+that! You told me you despised girls like me!"
+
+"I said I despised women who had no object in life but dress," he
+replied, rather soberly.
+
+"But you were hopping on me; you meant me, now! You can't deny it! You
+despise me, I know you do!" She challenged his flattery in her pouting
+self-depreciation.
+
+The young man tried to stop her in her course, to change her mood, which
+was descending to real feeling. His low words were lost in the rumble of
+the car.
+
+"Yes, yes, try to smooth it over; but you can't fool me any more. But I
+don't want you to flatter me and lie to me the way Judge Stearns did,"
+she added, with a sudden change of manner. "I like you because you're
+straight."
+
+The phrase with which she ended seemed to take on a new meaning, uttered
+by those red lips in childish pout.
+
+"Now, why are you down on the judge? I don't see," said the man, as if
+she had gone back to an old attack.
+
+"Well, if you'd seen what I have, you'd understand." She turned away and
+looked out of the window. "Oh, this terrible country! I'd die out here
+in six weeks. I know I should."
+
+The young lawyer was not to be turned aside.
+
+"Of course, I'm pleased to have you throw the judge over and employ me,
+but, all the same, I think you do him an injustice. He's a good, square
+man."
+
+"Square man!" she said, turning to him with a sudden fury in her eyes.
+"Do you call it square for a man--married, and gray-haired, too--to take
+up with a woman like Mrs. Shellberg? Say, do you, now?"
+
+"Well, I don't quite believe--"
+
+"Oh, I _lie_, do I?" she cried, with another swift change to reproach.
+"You can't take my word for Mrs. Shellberg's visits to his office."
+
+"But he was her lawyer."
+
+"But you know what kind of a woman she is! She didn't need to go there
+every day or two, did she? What did he always receive her in his private
+office for? Come, now, tell me that!"
+
+"I don't know that he did," persisted the lawyer.
+
+A sort of convulsion passed over her face, her little hands clinched,
+and the tears started into her eyes. Her voice was very quiet.
+
+"You think I lie, then?"
+
+"I think you are mistaken, just as other jealous women have--"
+
+"You think I'm jealous, do you?"
+
+"You act like a jeal--"
+
+"Jealous of that gray-haired old wretch? No, sir! I--I--" She struggled
+to express herself. "I liked him, and I hated to lose all my faith in
+men. I thought he was good and honest when he prayed--Oh, I've seen him
+pray in church, the old hypocrite!" Her fury returned at the
+recollection.
+
+Her companion's face grew grave. The smile went out of his eyes, leaving
+them dark and sorrowful.
+
+"I understand you now," he said, at last. She turned to look at him.
+"My practice in the divorce business out here has almost destroyed my
+faith in women. If it weren't for my wife and sister--"
+
+She broke in eagerly: "Now I _know_ you know what I mean. Sometimes I
+think men are--devils!" She thrust this word forth, and her little face
+grew dark and strained. "But the judge kept me from thinking--I never
+loved my father; he didn't care for me; all he wanted to do was to make
+ten thousand barrels of beer a year and sell it; and the judge seemed
+like a father to me till _she_ came and destroyed my faith in him."
+
+"But--well, let Mrs. S. go. There are lots of good men and pure women in
+the world. It's dangerous to think there aren't--especially for a
+handsome young woman like you. You can't afford to keep in that kind of
+a mood long."
+
+She looked at him curiously. "That's what I like about you," she said,
+soberly. "You talk to me as if I had some sense--as if I were a human
+being. If you were to flatter me, now, and make love to me, I never
+would believe in any man again."
+
+He smiled again in his frank, good way, and drew a picture from his
+pocket. It was a picture of a woman bending down over a laughing, naked
+child, sprawling frogwise in her lap. The woman's face was broad and
+intellectual and handsome. The look of splendid maternity was in her
+eyes. They both looked at the picture in silence. The girl sighed.
+
+"I wish I was as good as that woman looks."
+
+"You can be if you try."
+
+"Not with a big Chicago brewer for a father, and a husband that beats
+you whenever the mood takes him."
+
+"I admit that's hard. I think the atmosphere of that Heron Lake hotel
+isn't any great help to you."
+
+"Oh, they're a gay lot there! We fight like cats and dogs." A look of
+slyness and boldness came over her face. "Mrs. Shellberg hates me as
+hard as I do her. She used to go around telling: 'It's very peculiar,
+you know'"--she imitated her rival's voice--"'but no matter which end of
+the dining-room I sit, all the men look that way!'"
+
+The young lawyer laughed at her in spite of himself.
+
+And she went on: "But they don't, now. That's the reason she hates me,"
+she said, in conclusion. "The men don't notice her when I'm around."
+
+To hear her fresh young lips utter those words with their vile
+inflections was like taking a sudden glimpse into the underworld, where
+harlots dwell and the spirits of unrestrained lusts dance in the shadowy
+recesses of the human heart.
+
+Allen, hearing this fragmentary conversation, fascinated yet uneasy,
+looked at the pair with wonder. They seemed quite unconscious of their
+public situation.
+
+The young lawyer looked straight before him, while the girl, swept on by
+her ignoble rage, displayed still more of the moral ulceration which had
+been injected into her young life.
+
+"I don't see what men find about her to like--unless it is her eyes.
+She's got beautiful eyes. But she's vulgar--ugh! The stories she
+tells--right before men, too! She'd kill any one that got ahead of her,
+that woman would! And yet she'll come into my room and cry and cry, and
+say: 'Don't take him away from me! Leave him to me!' Ugh! It makes me
+sick." She stamped her foot, then added, irrelevantly: "She wears a wig,
+too. I suppose that old fool of a judge thinks it's her own hair."
+
+The lawyer sat in stony silence. His grave face was accusing in its set
+expression, and she felt it, and was spurred on to do still deeper
+injustice to herself--an insane perversity.
+
+"Not that I care a cent--I'm not jealous of her. I ain't so bad off for
+company as she is. She can't take anybody away from me, but she must go
+and break down my faith in the judge."
+
+She bit her lips to keep from crying out. She looked out of the window
+again, seeking control.
+
+The "divorce colony" never appeared more sickening in its inner
+corruptions than when delineated by this dainty young girl. Allen could
+see the swarming men about the hotels; he could see their hot, leering
+eyes and smell their liquor-laden breaths as they named the latest
+addition to the colony or boasted of their associations with those
+already well known.
+
+The girl turned suddenly to her companion.
+
+"How do those people live out here on their farms?"
+
+She pointed at a small shanty where the whole family stood to watch the
+train go by.
+
+"By eating boiled potatoes and salt pork."
+
+"Salt pork!" she echoed, as if salt pork were old boot-heels or bark or
+hay. "Why, it takes four hours for salt pork to digest!"
+
+He laughed again at her childish irrelevancy. "So much the better for
+the poor. Where'd you learn all that, anyway?"
+
+"At school. Oh, you needn't look so incredulous! I went to
+boarding-school. I learned a good deal more than you think."
+
+"Well, so I see. Now, I should have said pork digested in three hours,
+speaking from experience."
+
+"Well, it don't. What do the women do out here?"
+
+"They work like the men, only more so."
+
+"Do they have any new things?"
+
+"Not very often, I'm afraid."
+
+She sighed. After a pause, she said:
+
+"You were raised on a farm?"
+
+"Yes. In Minnesota."
+
+"Did you do work like that?" She pointed at a thrashing-machine in the
+field.
+
+"Yes, I ploughed and sowed and reaped and mowed. I wasn't on the farm
+for my health."
+
+"You're very strong, aren't you?" she asked, admiringly.
+
+"In a slab-sided kind of a way--yes."
+
+Her eyes grew abstracted.
+
+"I like strong men. Ollie was a little man, not any taller than I am,
+but when he was drunk he was what men call a--a holy terror. He struck
+me with the water-pitcher once--that was just before baby was born. I
+wish he'd killed me." She ended in a sudden reaction to hopeless
+bitterness. "It would have saved me all these months of life in this
+terrible country."
+
+"It might have saved you from more than you think," he said, quietly,
+tenderly.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You've been brought up against women and men who have defiled you.
+They've made your future uncertain."
+
+"Do you think it's so bad as that? Tell me!" she insisted, seeing his
+hesitation.
+
+"You're on the road to hell!" he said, in a voice that was very low, but
+it reached her. It was full of pain and grave reprimand and gentleness.
+"You've been poisoned. You're in need of a good man's help. You need the
+companionship of good, earnest women instead of painted harlots."
+
+Her voice shook painfully as she replied:
+
+"You don't think I'm _all_ bad?"
+
+"You're not bad at all--you're simply reckless. _You_ are not to blame.
+It depends upon yourself now, though, whether you keep a true woman or
+go to hell with Mrs. Shellberg."
+
+The conductor eyed them, as he passed, with an unpleasant light in his
+eyes, and the drummers a few seats ahead turned to look at them. The tip
+had passed along from lip to lip. They were like wild beasts roused by
+the presence of prey. Their eyes gleamed with relentless lust. They eyed
+the little creature with ravening eyes. Her helplessness was their
+opportunity.
+
+Allen, sitting there, entered into the terror and the tragedy of the
+girl's life. He imagined her reckless, prodigal girlhood; the coarse,
+rich father; the marriage, when a thoughtless girl, with a drunken,
+dissolute boy; the quarrels, brutal beatings; the haste to secure a
+divorce; the contamination of the crowded hotels in Heron Lake, where
+this slender young girl--naturally pure, alert, quick of impulse--was
+like a lamb among lustful wolves. His heart ached for her.
+
+The deep, slow voice of the lawyer sounded on. His eyes, turned toward
+her, had no equivocal look. He was a brother speaking to a younger
+sister. The tears fell down her cheeks, upon her folded hands. Her
+widely opened eyes seemed to look out into a night of storms.
+
+"Oh, what shall I do?" she moaned. "I wish I was dead--and baby, too!"
+
+"Live for the baby--let him help you out."
+
+"Oh, he can't! I don't care enough for him. I wish I was like other
+mothers, but I'm not. I can't shut myself up with a baby. I'm too
+young."
+
+He saw that. She was seeking the love of a man, not the care of a child.
+She had the wifely passion, but not the mother's love. He was silent;
+the case baffled him.
+
+"Oh, I wish you could help me! I wish I had you to help me all the time!
+I do! I don't care what you think--_I do! I do!_"
+
+"Our home is open to you and baby, too," he said, slowly. "My wife knows
+about you, and--"
+
+"Who told her--did you?" she flashed out again, angrily, jealously.
+
+"Yes. My wife is my other self," he replied, quietly.
+
+She stared at him, breathing heavily, then looked out of the window
+again. At last she turned to him. She seemed to refer to his invitation.
+
+"Oh, this terrible land! Oh, I couldn't stay here! I'd go insane.
+Perhaps I'm going insane, anyway. Don't you think so?"
+
+"No, I think you're a little nervous, that's all."
+
+"Oh! Do you think I'll get my divorce?"
+
+"Certainly, without question."
+
+"Can I wait and go back with you?"
+
+"I shall not return for several days. Perhaps you couldn't bear to wait
+in this little town; it's not much like the city."
+
+"Oh, dear! But I can't go about alone. I hate these men, they stare at
+me so! I wish I was a man. It's awful to be a woman, don't you think so?
+Please don't laugh."
+
+The young lawyer was far from laughing, but this was her only way of
+defending herself. These pert, bird-like ways formed her shield against
+ridicule and misprision.
+
+He said, slowly, "Yes, it's an awful thing to be a woman, but then it's
+an awful responsibility to be a man."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that we are responsible, as the dominant sex, for every tragic,
+incomplete woman's life."
+
+"Don't you blame Mrs. Shellberg?" she said, forcing him to a concrete
+example with savage swiftness.
+
+"No. She had a poor father and a poor husband, and she must earn her own
+living some way."
+
+"She could cook, or nurse, or something like that."
+
+"It isn't easy to find opportunity to cook or nurse. If it were as easy
+to earn a living in a pure way as it is in a vicious way, all men would
+be rich and virtuous. But what had you planned to do after your
+divorce?"
+
+"Oh, I'm going to travel for two years. Then I'll try to settle down."
+
+"What you need is a good husband, and a little cottage where you'd have
+to cook your own food--and tend the baby."
+
+"I wouldn't cook for any man living," she broke in, to express her
+bitterness that he could so coldly dispose of her future. "Oh, this
+terrible train! Can't it go faster? If I'd realized what a trip this
+was, I wouldn't have started."
+
+"This is the route you all go," he replied, with grim humor, and his
+words pictured a ceaseless stream of divorcees.
+
+She resented his classing her with the rest, but she simply said: "You
+despise me, don't you? But what can we do? You can't expect us to live
+with men we hate, can you? That would be worse than Mrs. Shellberg."
+
+"No, I don't expect that of you. I'd issue a divorce coupon with every
+marriage certificate, and done with it," he said, in desperate disgust.
+"Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a
+question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a
+question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's
+what throws this demoralizing business into our hands here."
+
+"It pays, don't it? I know I've paid for everything I've had."
+
+"Yes, that's the demoralizing thing. It draws a gang of conscienceless
+attorneys here, and it draws us who belong here off into dirty work, and
+it brings us into contact with men and women--I'm sick of the whole
+business."
+
+She had hardly followed him in his generalizations. She brought him back
+to the personal.
+
+"You're sick of me, I know you are!" She leaned her head on the
+window-pane. Her eyes closed. "Oh, I wish my heart would stop beating!"
+she said, in a tense, profoundly significant tone.
+
+Allen, sitting so close behind them, was forced to overhear, so
+piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might
+hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but God should listen
+to this outcry of a quivering, writhing soul.
+
+She faced her companion again. "You're the only man I know, now, that I
+respect, and you despise me."
+
+"No, I don't; I pity you."
+
+"That's worse. I want you to help me. Oh, if you could go with me, or if
+I could be with you!" Her gloved hands strained together in the agony of
+her desire.
+
+His calm lips did not waver. He did not smile, even about the eyes. He
+knew her cry sprang from her need of a brother, not from the passion of
+a woman.
+
+"Our home is yours just as long as you can bear the monotony of our
+simple lives," he said, in his quiet way, but it was deep-throated and
+unmistakable in its sincerity.
+
+She laid her hand on his arm and clasped it hard, then turned away her
+head, and they rode in silence.
+
+After they left the car Allen sat, with savage eyes and grimly set
+mouth, going over the problem again and again. He saw that young and
+helpless creature walking the gantlet between endless ranks of lustful,
+remorseless men, snatching at her in selfish, bestial desire.
+
+It made him bitter and despairing to think that women should be
+helpless--that they should need some man to protect them against some
+other man. He cursed the laws and traditions that had kept women
+subordinate and trivial and deceptive and vacillating. He wished they
+could be raised to the level of the brutes till, like the tigress or
+she-wolf, they could not only defend themselves, but their young.
+
+He tried to breathe a sigh of relief that she had gone out of his life,
+but he could not. It was not so easy to shake off the shadow of his
+responsibility. He followed her in imagination on her downward path till
+he saw her stretching out her hands in pitiful need to casual
+acquaintances--alone and without hope; still petite, still dainty in
+spite of all, still with flashes of wit, and then--
+
+He shuddered. "O my God! Upon whom does the burden of guilt lie?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the night of his return he sat among his romping babes, debating
+whether he should tell the story to his wife or not. As the little ones
+grew weary the noise of the autumn wind--the lonely, woful, moaning
+prairie wind--came to his ears, and he shuddered. His wife observed it.
+
+"What is it, Joe? Did you get a chill?"
+
+"Oh no. The wind sounds a little lonesome to-night, that's all." But he
+took his little girl into his arms and held her close.
+
+
+
+
+AN ALIEN IN THE PINES
+
+I
+
+
+A man and a woman were pacing up and down the wintry station platform,
+waiting for a train. On every side the snow lay a stained and crumpled
+blanket, with here and there a light or a chimney to show the village
+sleeping beneath.
+
+The sky was a purple-black hemisphere, out of which the stars glittered
+almost white. The wind came out of the west, cold but amiable; the
+cracked bell of a switch-engine gurgled querulously at intervals,
+followed by the bumping of coupling freight-cars; roosters were crowing,
+and sleepy train-men were assembling in sullen silence.
+
+The couple walked with arms locked like lovers, but the tones of their
+voices had the quality which comes after marriage. They were man and
+wife.
+
+The woman's clear voice arose. "Oh, Ed, isn't this delicious? What one
+misses by not getting up early!"
+
+"Sleep, for instance," laughed her husband.
+
+"Don't drag me down. You know what I mean. Let's get up early every
+morning while we're up here in the woods."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if we had to. There'll be a lot to do, and I want to
+get back to Chicago by the 1st of February."
+
+"This is an experience! Isn't it still? When is our train due?"
+
+"Due now; I think that is our headlight up the track."
+
+As he spoke an engine added its voice to the growing noise of the
+station, and drew solemnly down the frosty steel.
+
+An eruption of shapeless forms of men from the depot filled the one
+general coach of the train. They nearly all were dressed in some sort of
+fur coat, and all had the look of men accustomed to out-door
+life--powerful, loud-voiced, unrefined. They were, in fact, travelling
+men, business men, the owners of mills or timber. The stolid or patient
+ox-like faces of some Norwegian workmen, dressed in gay Mackinac
+jackets, were sprinkled about.
+
+The young wife was a fine type of woman anywhere, but these surroundings
+made her seem very dainty and startlingly beautiful. Her husband had the
+fair skin of a city man, but his powerful shoulders and firm step
+denoted health and wholesome living. They were both good to look at.
+
+They soon felt the reaction to sleepiness which comes to those not
+accustomed to early rising, and the wife, soothed by the clank of the
+train, leaned her head on her husband's shoulder and dozed. He looked
+out upon the landscape, glad that his wife was not observing it. He did
+not know such desolation existed in Wisconsin.
+
+On every side were the evidences of a ruined forest land. A landscape of
+flat wastes, of thinned and burned and uprooted trees. A desolate and
+apparently useless land.
+
+Here and there a sawmill stood gray and sagging, surrounded by little
+cabins of unpainted wood, to testify to the time when great pines stood
+all about, and the ring of the swamper's axe was heard in the intervals
+of silence between the howls of a saw.
+
+To the north the swells grew larger. Birch and tamarack swamps
+alternated with dry ridges on which an inferior pine still grew. The
+swamps were dense tangles of broken and uprooted trees. Slender
+pike-like stumps of fire-devastated firs rose here and there, black and
+grim skeletons of trees.
+
+It was a land that had been sheared by the axe, torn by the winds, and
+blasted by fire.
+
+Off to the west low blue ridges rose, marking the boundaries of the
+valley which had been washed out ages ago by water. After the floods
+pine forest had sprung up, and these in their turn had been sheared away
+by man. It lay now awaiting the plough and seeder of the intrepid
+pioneer.
+
+Suddenly the wife awoke and sat up. "Why, we haven't had any breakfast!"
+
+He smiled at her childish look of bewilderment. "I've been painfully
+aware of it for some time back. I've been suffering for food while you
+slept."
+
+"Why didn't you get into the basket?"
+
+"How could I, with you on my manly bosom?"
+
+She colored up a little. They had not been married long, evidently. "How
+considerate you are!"
+
+They were soon eating a breakfast with the spirit of picnickers.
+Occasionally she looked out of the window.
+
+"What a wild country!" she said. He did not emphasize its qualities to
+her; rather, he distracted her attention from its desolation.
+
+The train roared round its curves, conforming with the general course of
+the river. On every hand were thickening signs of active lumber
+industry. They flashed by freight trains loaded with logs or lumber or
+ties. Mills in operation grew thicker.
+
+The car echoed with the talk of lumber. A brisk man with a red mustache
+was exhibiting a model of a machine to cut certain parts of machinery
+out of "two by fours." Another was describing a new shingle-mill he had
+just built.
+
+A couple of elderly men, one a German, were discussing the tariff on
+lumber. The workmen mainly sat silent.
+
+"It's all so strange!" the young wife said, again and again.
+
+"Yes, it isn't exactly the Lake Shore Drive."
+
+"I like it. I wish I could smell the pines."
+
+"You'll have all the pines you can stand before we get back to Chicago."
+
+"No, sir; I'm going to enjoy every moment of it; and you're going to let
+me help, you know--look over papers, and all that. I'm the heiress, you
+must remember," she added, wickedly.
+
+"Well, we won't quarrel about that until we see how the legacy turns
+out. It may not be worth my time up here. I shall charge you roundly as
+your lawyer, depend on that."
+
+The outlook grew more attractive as the train sped on. Old Mosinee rose,
+a fine rounded blue shape, on the left.
+
+"Why, there's a mountain! I didn't know Wisconsin had such a mountain as
+that."
+
+"Neither did I. This valley is fine. Now, if your uncle's estates only
+included that hill!"
+
+The valley made off to the northwest with a bold, large, and dignified
+movement. The coloring, blue and silver, purple-brown and bronze-green,
+was harmonious with the grouping of lines. It was all fresh and vital,
+wholesome and very impressive.
+
+From this point the land grew wilder--that is to say, more primeval.
+There was more of Nature and less of man. The scar of the axe was here
+and there, but the forest predominated. The ridges of pine foliages
+broke against the sky, miles and miles, in splendid sweep.
+
+"This must be lovely in summer," the wife said, again and again, as they
+flashed by some lake set among the hills.
+
+"It's fine now," he replied, feeling the thrill of the sportsman. "I'd
+like to shoulder a rifle and plunge into those snowy vistas. How it
+brings the wild spirit out in a man! Women never feel that delight."
+
+"Oh, yes, we do," she replied, glad that something remained yet
+unexplained between them. "We feel just like men, only we haven't the
+strength of mind to demand a share of it with you."
+
+"Yes, you feel it at this distance. You'd come back mighty quick the
+second night out."
+
+She did not relish his laughter, and so looked away out of the window.
+"Just think of it--Uncle Edwin lived here thirty years!"
+
+He forebore to notice her inconsistency. "Yes, the wilderness is all
+right for a vacation, but I prefer Chicago for the year round."
+
+When they came upon Ridgeley, both cried out with delight.
+
+"Oh, what a dear, picturesque little town!" she said.
+
+"Well, well! I wonder how they came to build a town without a row of
+battlemented stores?"
+
+It lay among and upon the sharp, low, stumpy pine ridges in haphazard
+fashion, like a Swiss village. A small brook ran through it, smothered
+here and there in snow. A sawmill was the largest figure of the town,
+and the railway station was the centre. There was not an inch of painted
+board in the village. Everywhere the clear yellow of the pine flamed
+unstained by time. Lumber piles filled all the lower levels near the
+creek. Evidently the town had been built along logging roads, and there
+was something grateful and admirable in its irregular arrangement. The
+houses, moreover, were all modifications of the logging camps; even the
+drug store stood with its side to the street. All about were stumps and
+fringes of pines, which the lumbermen, for some good reason, had passed
+by. Charred boles stood purple-black out of the snow.
+
+It was all green and gray and blue and yellow-white and stern. The sky
+was not more illimitable than the rugged forest which extended on every
+hand.
+
+"Oh, this is glorious--glorious!" said the wife. "Do I own some of this
+town?" she asked, as they rose to go out.
+
+"I reckon you do."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!"
+
+As they stepped out on the platform, a large man in corduroy and
+wolf-skin faced them like a bandit.
+
+"Hello, Ed!"
+
+"Hello, Jack! Well, we've found you. My wife, Mr. Ridgeley. We've come
+up to find out how much you've embezzled," he said, as Ridgeley pulled
+off an immense glove to shake hands all round.
+
+"Well, come right over to the hotel. It ain't the Auditorium, but then,
+again, it ain't like sleeping outdoors."
+
+As they moved along they heard the train go off, and then the sound of
+the saw resumed its domination of the village noises.
+
+"Was the town named after you, or you after the town?" asked Field.
+
+"Named after me. Old man didn't want it named after him; would kill it,"
+he said.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Field found the hotel quite comfortable and the dinner
+wholesome. They beamed upon each other.
+
+"It's going to be delightful," they said.
+
+Ridgeley was a bachelor, and made his home at the hotel also. That night
+he said: "Now we'll go over the papers and records of your uncle's
+property, and then we'll go out and see if the property is all there. I
+imagine this is to be a searching investigation."
+
+"You may well think it. My wife is inexorable."
+
+As night fell, the wife did not feel so safe and well pleased. The loud
+talking in the office below and the occasional whooping of a crowd of
+mill-hands going by made her draw her chair nearer and lay her fingers
+in her husband's palm.
+
+He smiled indulgently. "Don't be frightened, my dear. These men are not
+half so bad as they sound."
+
+
+II
+
+
+Mrs. Field sat in the inner room of Ridgeley's office, waiting for the
+return of her husband with the team. They were going out for a drive.
+
+Ridgeley was working at his books, and he had forgotten her presence.
+
+She could not but feel a deep admiration for his powerful frame and his
+quick, absorbed action as he moved about from his safe to his desk. He
+was a man of great force and ready decision.
+
+Suddenly the door opened and a stranger entered. He had a sullen and
+bitter look on his thin, dark face. Ridgeley's quick eyes measured him,
+and his hand softly turned the key in his money drawer, and as he faced
+about he swung shut the door of the safe.
+
+The stranger saw all this with eyes as keen as Ridgeley's. A cheerless
+and strange smile came upon his face.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," he said. "I'm low, but I ain't as low as that."
+
+"Well, sir, what can I do for you?" asked Ridgeley. Mrs. Field half
+rose, feeling something tense and menacing in the attitude of the two
+men.
+
+But the intruder quietly answered, "You can give me a job if you want
+to."
+
+Ridgeley remained alert. His eyes ran over the man's tall frame. He
+looked strong and intelligent, although his eyes were fevered and dull.
+
+"What kind of a job?"
+
+"Any kind that will take me out into the woods and keep me there."
+
+There was a self-accusing tone in his voice that Ridgeley felt.
+
+"What's your object? You look like a man who could do something else.
+What brings you here?"
+
+The man turned with a sudden resolution to punish himself. His voice
+expressed a terrible loathing.
+
+"Whiskey, that's what. It's a hell of a thing to say, but I can't let
+liquor alone when I can smell it. I'm no common hand, or I wouldn't be
+if I--But let that go. I can swing an axe, and I'm ready to work. That's
+enough. Now the question is, can you find a place for me?"
+
+Ridgeley mused a little. The young fellow stood there, statuesque,
+rebellious.
+
+Then Ridgeley said, "I guess I can help you out that much." He picked up
+a card and a pencil. "What shall I call you?"
+
+"Oh, call me Williams; that ain't my name, but it'll do."
+
+"What you been doing?"
+
+"Everything part of the time, drinking the rest. Was in a livery-stable
+down at Wausau last week. It came over me, when I woke yesterday, that I
+was gone to hell if I stayed in town. So I struck out; and I don't care
+for myself, but I've got a woman to look out for--" He stopped abruptly.
+His recklessness of mood had its limits, after all.
+
+Ridgeley pencilled on a card. "Give this to the foreman of No. 6. The
+men over at the mill will show you the teams."
+
+The man started toward the door with the card in his hand. He turned
+suddenly.
+
+"One thing more. I want you to send ten dollars of my pay every two
+weeks to this address." He took an envelope out of his pocket. "It don't
+matter what I say or do after this, I want that money sent. The rest
+will keep me in tobacco and clothing. You understand?"
+
+Ridgeley nodded. "Perfectly. I've seen such cases before."
+
+The man went out and down the walk with a hurried, determined air, as if
+afraid to trust his own resolution.
+
+As Ridgeley turned toward his desk he met Mrs. Field, who faced him with
+tears of fervent sympathy in her eyes.
+
+"Isn't it awful?" she said, in a half whisper. "Poor fellow, what will
+become of him?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. He'll get along some way. Such fellows do. I've had
+'em before. They try it awhile here; then they move. I can't worry about
+them."
+
+Mrs. Field was not listening to his shifty words. "And then, think of
+his wife--how she must worry."
+
+Ridgeley smiled. "Perhaps it's his mother or a sister."
+
+"Anyway, it's awful. Can't something be done for him?"
+
+"I guess we've done about all that can be done."
+
+"Oh, I wish I could help him! I'll tell Ed about him."
+
+"Don't worry about him, Mrs. Field; he ain't worth it."
+
+"Oh yes, he is. I feel he's been a fine fellow, and then he's so
+self-accusing."
+
+Her own happiness was so complete, she could not bear to think of
+others' misery. She told her husband about Williams, and ended by
+asking, "Can't we do something to help the poor fellow?"
+
+Field was not deeply concerned. "No; he's probably past help. Such men
+are so set in their habits, nothing but a miracle or hypnotism can save
+them. He'll end up as a 'lumber Jack,' as the townsmen call the hands in
+the camps."
+
+"But he isn't that, Edward. He's finer, some way. You feel he is. Ask
+Mr. Ridgeley."
+
+Ridgeley merely said: "Yes, he seemed to me to be more than a common
+hand. But, all the same, it won't be two weeks before he'll be in here
+as drunk as a wild cat, wanting to shoot me for holding back his money."
+
+In this way Williams came to be to Mrs. Field a very important figure in
+the landscape of that region. She often spoke of him, and on the
+following Saturday night, when Field came home, she anxiously asked, "Is
+Williams in town?"
+
+"No, he hasn't shown up yet."
+
+She clapped her hands in delight. "Good! good! He's going to win his
+fight."
+
+Field laughed. "Don't bet on Williams too soon. We'll hear from him
+before the week is out."
+
+"When are we going to visit the camp?" she asked, changing the subject.
+
+"As soon as it warms up a little. It is too cold for you."
+
+She had a laugh at him. "You were the one who wanted to 'plunge into the
+snowy vistas.'"
+
+He evaded her joke on him by assuming a careless tone. "I'm not plunging
+as much as I was; the snow is too deep."
+
+"When you go I want to go with you--I want to see Williams."
+
+"Ha!" he snorted, melodramatically. "She scorns me faithful heart. She
+turns--"
+
+Mrs. Field smiled faintly. "Don't joke about it, Ed. I can't get that
+wife out of my mind."
+
+
+III
+
+
+A few very cold gray days followed, and then the north wind cleared the
+sky; and, though it was still cold, it was pleasant. The sky had only a
+small white cloud here and there to make its blueness the more profound.
+
+Ridgeley dashed up to the door with a hardy little pair of broncos
+hitched to a light pair of bobs, and Mrs. Field was tucked in like a
+babe in a cradle.
+
+Almost the first thing she asked was, "How is Williams?"
+
+"Oh, he's getting on nicely. He refused to sleep with his bunk-mate, and
+finally had to lick him, I understand, to shut him up. Challenged the
+whole camp, then, to let him alone or take a licking. They let him
+alone, Lawson says. G'lang there, you rats!"
+
+Mrs. Field said no more, for the air was whizzing by her ears, and she
+hardly dared look out, so keen was the wind; but as soon as they entered
+the deeps of the forest it was profoundly still.
+
+The ride that afternoon was a glory she never forgot. Everywhere
+yellow-greens and purple shadows. The sun in a burnished blue sky
+flooded the forests with light, striking down through even the thickest
+pines to lay in fleckings of radiant white and gold upon the snow.
+
+The trail (it was not a road) ran like a graceful furrow over the
+hills, around little lakes covered deep with snow, through tamarack
+swamps where the tracks of wild things thickened, over ridges of tall
+pine clear of brush, and curving everywhere amid stumps, where
+dismantled old shanties marked the site of the older logging camps.
+Sometimes they met teams going to the store. Sometimes they crossed
+logging roads--wide, smooth tracks artificially iced, down which
+mountainous loads of logs were slipping, creaking, and groaning.
+Sometimes they heard the dry click-clock of the woodsmen's axes or the
+crash of falling trees deep in the wood. When they reached the first
+camp Ridgeley pulled up the steaming horses at the door and shouted,
+"Hello, the camp!"
+
+A tall old man with a long red beard came out. He held one bare red arm
+above his eyes. He wore an apron.
+
+"Hello, Sandy!"
+
+"Hello, Mr. Ridgeley!"
+
+"Ready for company?"
+
+"Am always ready for company," he said, with a Scotch accent.
+
+"Well, we're coming in to get warm."
+
+"Vera weel."
+
+As they went in, under the roofed shed between the cook's shanty and the
+other and larger shanty, Mrs. Field sniffed. Sandy led them past a large
+pyramid composed of the scraps of beef bones, egg-shells, cans, and tea
+grounds left over during the winter. In the shed itself hung great slabs
+of beef.
+
+It was all as untidy and suggestive of slaughter as the nest of a brood
+of eagles.
+
+Sandy was beginning dinner on a huge stove spotted with rust and pancake
+batter. All about was the litter of his preparation. Beef--beef on all
+sides, and tin dishes and bare benches and huge iron cooking-pans.
+
+Mrs. Field was glad to get out into the sunlight again. "What a horrible
+place! Are they all like that?"
+
+"No, my camps are not like that--or, I should say, _our_ camps,"
+Ridgeley added, with a smile.
+
+"Not a gay place at all," said Field, in exaggerated reserve.
+
+But Mrs. Field found her own camps not much better. True, the refuse was
+not raised in pyramidal shape before the front door, and the beef was a
+little more orderly, but the low log huts, the dim cold light, the dingy
+walls and floors, the lack of any womanly or home touch, the tin dishes,
+the wholesale cooking, all struck upon her with terrible force.
+
+"Do human beings live here?" she asked Ridgeley, when he opened the door
+of the main shanty of No. 6.
+
+"Forty creatures of the men kind sleep and house here," he replied.
+
+"To which the socks and things give evidence," said Field, promptly,
+pointing toward the huge stove which sat like a rusty-red cheese in the
+centre of the room. Above it hung scores of ragged gray and red socks
+and Mackinac boots and jackets which had been washed by the men
+themselves.
+
+Around were the grimy bunks where the forty men slept like tramps in a
+steamer's hold. The quilts were grimy, and the posts greasy and shining
+with the touch of hands. There were no chairs--only a kind of rude stool
+made of boards. There were benches near the stove, nailed to the rough
+floor. In each bunk, hanging to a peg, was the poor little
+imitation-leather hand-bag which contained the whole wardrobe of each
+man, exclusive of the tattered socks and shirts hanging over the stove.
+
+The room was chill and cold and gray. It had only two small windows. Its
+doors were low. Even Mrs. Field was forced to stoop in entering. This
+helped to make it seem like a den. There were roller-towels in the
+corner and wash-basins, and a grindstone which made it seem like a
+barn. It was, in fact, more cheerless than a barn, and less wholesome.
+
+"Doesn't that hay in the bunks get a--a--sometimes?" asked Field.
+
+"Well, yes, I shouldn't wonder, though the men are pretty strict about
+that. They keep pretty free from bugs, I think. However, I shouldn't
+want to run no river chances on the thing myself." Ridgeley smiled at
+Mrs. Field's shudder of horror.
+
+"Is this the place?" The men laughed. She had asked that question so
+many times before.
+
+"Yes, _this_ is where Mr. Williams hangs out. Say, Field, you'll need to
+make some new move to hold your end up against Williams."
+
+Mrs. Field felt hurt and angry at his rough joke. In the dim corner a
+cough was heard, and as a yellow head raised itself over the bunk-board
+a man presented a ghastly face. His big blue eyes fixed themselves on
+the lovely woman with a look of childish wonder.
+
+"Hello, Gus--didn't see you! What's the matter--sick?"
+
+"Yah, ai baen hwick two days. Ai tank ai lack to hav doketer."
+
+"All right, I'll send him up. What seems the matter?"
+
+As they talked, Mrs. Field again chilled with the cold gray
+comfortlessness of it all: to be sick in such a place! The silent
+appearance of the man out of his grim corner was startling. She was glad
+when they drove out into the woods again, where the clear sunshine fell
+and the pines stood against the blazing winter sky motionless as iron
+trees. Her pleasure in the ride was growing less. To her delicate sense
+this life was sordid, not picturesque. She wondered how Williams endured
+it. They arrived at No. 8 just as the men were trailing down the road to
+work, after eating their dinner. Their gay-colored jackets of Mackinac
+wool stood out like trumpet notes in the prevailing white and blue and
+bronze-green.
+
+The boss and the sealer came out and met them, and after introductions
+they went into the shanty to dinner. The cook was a deft young
+Norwegian--a clean, quick, gentlemanly fellow with a fine brown
+mustache. He cleared a place for them at one end of the long table, and
+they sat down.
+
+It was a large camp, but much like the others. On the table were the
+same cheap iron forks, the tin plates, and the small tin basins (for
+tea) which made up the dinner-set. Basins of brown sugar stood about.
+
+"Good gracious! Do people still eat brown sugar? Why, I haven't seen any
+of that for ages!" cried Mrs. Field.
+
+The stew was good and savory, and the bread fair. The tea was not all
+clover, but it tasted of the tin. Mrs. Field said:
+
+"Beef, beef--everywhere beef. One might suppose a menagerie of desert
+animals ate here. Edward, we must make things more comfortable for our
+men. They must have cups to drink out of; these basins are horrible."
+
+It was humorous to the men, this housewifely suggestion.
+
+"Oh, make it napkins, Allie!"
+
+"You can laugh, but I sha'n't rest after seeing this. If you thought I
+was going to say, 'Oh, how picturesque!' you're mistaken. I think it's
+barbarous."
+
+She was getting impatient of their patronizing laughter, as if she were
+a child. They changed their manner to one of acquiescence, but thought
+of her as a child just the same.
+
+After dinner they all went out to see the crew working. It was the
+biggest crew anywhere in the neighborhood. Ridgeley got out and hitched
+the team to a tree, and took Field up to the skidway. Mrs. Field
+remained in the sleigh.
+
+Near her "the swamping team," a span of big, deep-red oxen, came and
+went among the green tops of the fallen pines. They crawled along their
+trails in the snow like some strange machinery, and the boy in a blue
+jacket moved almost as listlessly. Somewhere in the tangle of refuse
+boughs the swampers' axes click-clocked, saws uttered their grating,
+rhythmic snarl, and great trees at intervals shivered, groaned, and fell
+with soft, rushing, cracking sweeps into the deep snow, and the swampers
+swarmed upon them like Lilliputians attacking a giant enemy.
+
+There was something splendid (though tragic) in the work, but the
+thought of the homelessness of the men, their terrible beds, and their
+long hours of toil oppressed the delicate and refined woman. She began
+to take on culpability. She was partly in authority now, and this system
+must be changed. She was deep in plans for improvement, in shanties and
+in sleeping-places, when the men returned.
+
+Ridgeley was saying: "No, we control about thirty thousand acres of pine
+as good as that. It ain't what it was twenty years ago, but it's worth
+money, after all."
+
+It was getting near to dark as they reached No. 6 again, and Ridgeley
+drew up and helped them out and into the cook's shanty.
+
+Mrs. Field was introduced to the cook, a short, rather sullen, but
+intelligent man. He stood over the red-hot stove, laying great slices of
+beef in a huge dripping-pan. He had a taffler, or assistant, in the
+person of a half-grown boy, at whom he jerked rough orders like hunks of
+stove wood. Some hit the boy and produced noticeable effects, others did
+not.
+
+Meanwhile a triumphant sunset was making the west one splendor of purple
+and orange and crimson, which came over the cool green rim of the pines
+like the _Valhalla March_ in Wagner.
+
+Mrs. Field sat there in the dim room by the window, seeing that splendor
+flush and fade, and thinking how dangerous it was to ask where one's
+wealth comes from in the world. Outside, the voices of the men
+thickened; they were dropping in by twos and fours, with teams and on
+foot.
+
+The assistant arranged the basins in rows, and put one of the iron forks
+and knives on either side of each plate, and filled the sugar-basins,
+and dumped in the cold beans, and split the bread into slabs, and put
+small pots of tea here and there ready for the hands of the men.
+
+At last, when the big pans of toast, the big plates of beef, were placed
+steaming on the table, the cook called Field and Ridgeley, and said:
+
+"Set right here at the end." He raised his arm to a ring which dangled
+on a wire. "Now look out; you'll see 'em come--sidewise." He jerked the
+ring, and disappeared into the kitchen.
+
+A sudden tumult, shouts, trampling, laughter, and the door burst open
+and they streamed in: Norwegians, French, half-breeds--dark-skinned
+fellows, all of them, save the Norwegians. They came like a flood, but
+they fell silent at sight of a woman, so beautiful and strange to them.
+
+All words ceased. They sank into place beside the table with the thump
+of falling sand-bags. They were all in their shirt-sleeves, but with
+faces cleanly washed, and the most of them had combed their hair; but
+they seemed very wild and hairy to Mrs. Field. She looked at her husband
+and Ridgeley with a grateful pleasure; it was so restful to have them
+close beside her.
+
+The men ate like hungry dogs. They gorged in silence. Nothing was heard
+but the clank of knives on tin plates, the drop of heavy platters of
+food, and the occasional muttered words of some one asking for the bread
+or the gravy.
+
+As they ate they furtively looked with great curiosity and admiration up
+at the dainty woman. Their eyes were bright and large, and gleamed out
+of the obscure brown of their dimly lighted faces with savage
+intensity--so it seemed to Mrs. Field, and she dropped her eyes before
+their glare.
+
+Her husband and Ridgeley tried to enter into conversation with those
+sitting near. Ridgeley seemed on good terms with them all, and ventured
+a joke or word, at which they laughed with terrific energy, and fell as
+suddenly silent again.
+
+As Mrs. Field looked up the second time she saw the dark, strange face
+of Williams a few places down, and opposite her. His eyes were fixed on
+her husband's hands with a singular intensity. Her eyes followed his,
+and the beauty of her husband's hands came to her again with new force.
+They were perfectly shaped, supple, warm-colored, and strong. Their
+color and deftness stood out in vivid contrast to the heavy, brown,
+cracked, and calloused, paw-like hands of the workmen.
+
+Why should Williams study her husband's hands? If he had looked at her
+she would not have been surprised. The other men she could read. They
+expressed either frank, simple admiration or furtive desire. But this
+man looked at her husband, and his eyes fell often upon his own hands,
+which trembled with fatigue. He handled his knife clumsily, and yet she
+could see he, too, had a fine hand--a slender, powerful hand, like that
+people call an artist hand--a craftsman-like hand.
+
+He saw her looking at him, and he flashed one enigmatical glance into
+her eyes, and rose to go out.
+
+"How you getting on, Williams?" Ridgeley asked.
+
+Williams resented his question. "Oh, I'm all right," he said, sullenly.
+
+The meal was all over in an incredibly short time. One by one, two by
+two, they rose heavily and lumbered out with one last, wistful look at
+Mrs. Field. She will never know how seraphic she seemed sitting there
+amid those rough surroundings--the dim, red light of the kerosene lamp
+falling across her clear pallor, out of which her dark eyes shone with
+liquid softness, made deeper and darker by her half-sorrowful tenderness
+for these homeless fellows.
+
+An hour later, as they were standing at the door, just ready to take to
+their sleigh, they heard the scraping of a fiddle.
+
+"Oh, some one is going to play!" Mrs. Field cried, with visions of the
+rollicking good times she had heard so much about, and of which she had
+seen nothing so far. "Can't I look in?"
+
+Ridgeley was dubious. "I'll go and see," he said, and entered the door.
+"Boys, Mrs. Field wants to look in a minute. Go on with your fiddling,
+Sam--only I wanted to see that you weren't sitting around in dishabill."
+
+This seemed a good joke, and they all howled and haw-hawed gleefully.
+
+"So go right ahead with your evening prayers. All but--you understand!"
+
+"All right, captain," said Sam, the man with the fiddle.
+
+When Mrs. Field looked in, two men were furiously grinding axes; several
+were sewing on ragged garments; all were smoking; some were dressing
+chapped or bruised fingers. The atmosphere was horrible. The socks and
+shirts were steaming above the huge stove; the smoke and stench for a
+moment were sickening, but Ridgeley pushed them just inside the door.
+
+"It's better out of the draught."
+
+Sam jigged away on the violin. The men kept time with the cranks of the
+grindstone, and all faces turned with bashful smiles and bold grins at
+Mrs. Field. Most of them shrank a little from her look, like shy
+animals.
+
+Ridgeley threw open the window. "In the old days," he explained to Mrs.
+Field, "we used a fireplace, and that kept the air better."
+
+As her sense of smell became deadened the air seemed a little more
+tolerable to Mrs. Field.
+
+"Oh, we must change all this," she said. "It is horrible."
+
+"Play us a tune," said Sam, extending the violin to Field. He did not
+think Field could play. It was merely a shot in the dark on his part.
+
+Field took it and looked at it and sounded it. On every side the men
+turned face in eager expectancy.
+
+"He can play, that feller."
+
+"I'll bet he can. He handles her as if he knew her."
+
+"You bet your life. Tune up, Cap."
+
+Williams came from the obscurity somewhere, and looked over the
+shoulders of the men.
+
+"Down in front!" somebody called, and the men took seats on the benches,
+leaving Field standing with the violin in hand. He smiled around upon
+them in a frank, pleased way, quite ready to show his skill. He played
+_Annie Laurie_, and a storm of applause broke out.
+
+"_Hoo-ray!_ Bully for you!"
+
+"Sam, you're out of it!"
+
+"Sam, your name is Mud!"
+
+"Give us another, Cap!"
+
+"It ain't the same fiddle!"
+
+He played again some simple tune, and he played it with the touch which
+showed the skilled amateur. As he played, Mrs. Field noticed a growing
+restlessness on Williams' part. He moved about uneasily. He gnawed at
+his finger-nails. His eyes glowed with a singular fire. His hands
+drummed and fingered. At last he approached, and said, roughly:
+
+"Let me take that fiddle a minute."
+
+"Oh, cheese it, Williams!" the men cried. "Let the other man play."
+
+"What do _you_ want to do with the fiddle--think it's a music-box?"
+asked Sam, its owner.
+
+"Go to hell!" said Williams. As Field gave the violin over to him, his
+hands seemed to tremble with eagerness.
+
+He raised his bow, and struck into an imposing, brilliant strain, and
+the men fell back in astonishment.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" gasped the owner of the violin.
+
+"Keep quiet, Sam."
+
+Mrs. Field looked at her husband. "Why, Ed, he is playing _Sarasate_!"
+
+"That's what he is," he returned, slangily, too much astonished to do
+more than gaze. Williams played on.
+
+There was a faint defect in the high notes, as if his fingers did not
+touch the strings properly, but his bow action showed cultivation and
+breadth of feeling. As he struck into one of those difficult
+octave-leaping movements his face became savage. On the E string a
+squeal broke forth; he flung the violin into Sam's lap with a ferocious
+curse, and then, extending his hands, hard, crooked to fit the
+axe-helve, calloused and chapped, he said to Field:
+
+"Look at my hands! Lovely things to play with, aren't they?"
+
+His voice trembled with passion. He turned and went outside. As he
+passed Mrs. Field his head was bowed, and he was uttering a groaning cry
+like one suffering physical pain.
+
+"That's what drink does for a man," Ridgeley said, as they watched
+Williams disappear down the swampers' trail.
+
+"That man has been a violinist," said Field. "What's he doing up here?"
+
+"Came to get away from himself, I guess," Ridgeley replied.
+
+"I'm afraid he's failed," said Field, as he put his arm about his wife
+and led her to the sleigh.
+
+The ride home was made mainly in silence. "Oh, the splendid stillness!"
+the woman kept saying in her heart. "Oh, the splendid moonlight, the
+marvellous radiance!" Everywhere a heavenly serenity--not a footstep,
+not a bell, not a cry, not a cracking tree--nothing but vivid light,
+white snow dappled and lined with shadows, and trees etched against a
+starlit sky. Unutterable splendor of light and sheen and shadow. Wide
+wastes of snow so white the stumps stood like columns of charcoal. A
+night of Nature's making, when she is tired of noise and blare of color.
+
+And in the midst of it stood the camp, with its reek of obscenity, foul
+odors, and tobacco smoke, to which a tortured soul must return.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The following Saturday afternoon, as Ridgeley and Field entered the
+office, Williams rose to meet them. He looked different--finer some way,
+Field imagined. At any rate, he was perfectly sober. He was freshly
+shaven, and though his clothes were rough, he appeared the man of
+education he really was. His manner was cold and distant.
+
+"I'd like to be paid off, Mr. Ridgeley," he said. "I guess what's left
+of my pay will take me out of this."
+
+"Where do you propose to go?" Ridgeley asked, with kindly interest.
+
+Williams must have perceived his kindliness, for he answered: "I'm going
+home to my wife, to my violin. I am going to try living once more."
+
+After he had gone out, Field said, "I wonder if he'll do it?"
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't wonder. I've seen men brace up just as mysteriously as
+that and stay right by their resolutions. I thought he didn't look like
+a common lumber Jack when he came in."
+
+"Ed, your playing did it!" Mrs. Field cried, when she heard of Williams'
+resolution. "Oh, how happy his wife will be! She'll save him yet!"
+
+"Well, I don't know; depends on what kind of a woman she is."
+
+
+
+
+BEFORE THE LOW GREEN DOOR
+
+
+Matilda Bent was dying; there was no doubt of that now, if there had
+been before. The gruff old physician--one of the many overworked and
+underpaid country doctors--shook his head and pushed by Joe Bent, her
+husband, as he passed through the room which served as dining-room,
+sitting-room, and parlor. The poor fellow slouched back to his chair by
+the stove as if dazed, and before he could speak again the doctor was
+gone.
+
+Mrs. Ridings was just coming up the walk as the doctor stepped out of
+the door.
+
+"Oh, doctor, how is she?"
+
+"She is a dying woman, madam."
+
+"Oh, don't say that, doctor! What's the matter?"
+
+"Cancer."
+
+"Then the news was true--"
+
+"I don't know anything of the news, Mrs. Ridings, but Mrs. Bent is dying
+from the effects of a cancer primarily, which she has had for
+years--since her last child, which died in infancy, you remember."
+
+"But, doctor, she never told me--"
+
+"Neither did she tell me. But no matter now. I have done all I can for
+her. If you can make death any easier for her, go and do it. You will
+find some opiate powders there with directions. Keep the pain down at
+all hazards. Don't let her suffer; that is useless. She is likely to
+last a day or two; but if any change comes to-night, send for me."
+
+When the good matron entered the dowdy, suffocating little room where
+Matilda Bent lay gasping for breath, she was sick for a moment with
+sympathetic pain. There the dying woman lay, her world narrowed to four
+close walls, propped up on the pillows near the one little window. Her
+eyes seemed very large and bright, and the brow, made prominent by the
+sinking away of the cheeks, gave evidence that it was an uncommon woman
+who lay there quietly waiting the death angel.
+
+She smiled, and lifted her eyebrows in a ghastly way.
+
+"Oh, Marthy!" she breathed.
+
+"Matildy, I didn't know you was so bad or I'd 'a' come before. Why
+didn't you let me know?" said Mrs. Ridings, kneeling by the bed and
+taking the ghostly hands of the sufferer in her own warm and soft palms.
+She shuddered as she kissed the thin lips.
+
+"I think you'll soon be around ag'in," she added, in the customary
+mockery of an attempt at cheer. The other woman started slightly, turned
+her head, and gazed on her old friend long and intently. The hollowness
+of her neighbor's words stung her.
+
+"I hope not, Marthy--I'm ready to go. I want to go. I don't care to
+live."
+
+The two women communed by looking for a long time in each other's eyes,
+as if to get at the very secretest desires and hopes of the heart. Tears
+fell from Martha's eyes upon the cold and nerveless hands of her
+friend--poor, faithful hands, hacked and knotted and worn by thirty
+years of ceaseless daily toil. They lay there motionless upon the
+coverlet, pathetic protest for all the world to see.
+
+"Oh, Matildy, I wish I could do something for you! I want to help you
+so! I feel so bad that I didn't come before! Ain't they somethin'?"
+
+"Yes, Marthy--jest set there--till I die--it won't be long," whispered
+the pale lips. The sufferer, as usual, was calmer than her visitor, and
+her eyes were thoughtful.
+
+"I will! I will! But oh, must you go? Can't somethin' be done? Don't yo'
+want the minister to be sent for?"
+
+"No, I'm all ready. I ain't afraid to die. I ain't worth savin' now. Oh,
+Marthy, I never thought I'd come to this--did you? I never thought I'd
+die--so early in life--and die--unsatisfied."
+
+She lifted her head a little as she gasped out these words with an
+intensity of utterance that thrilled her hearer--a powerful, penetrating
+earnestness that burned like fire.
+
+"Are you satisfied?" pursued the steady lips. "My life's a failure,
+Marthy--I've known it all along--all but my children. Oh, Marthy,
+what'll become o' them? This is a hard world."
+
+The amazed Martha could only chafe the hands, and note sorrowfully the
+frightful changes in the face of her friend. The weirdly calm, slow
+voice began to shake a little.
+
+"I'm dyin', Marthy, without ever gittin' to the sunny place we
+girls--used to think--we'd git to, by-an'-by. I've been a-gittin' deeper
+'n' deeper--in the shade--till it's most dark. They ain't been no
+rest--n'r hope f'r me, Marthy--none. I ain't--"
+
+"There, there, Tillie, don't talk so--don't, dear! Try to think how
+bright it'll be over there--"
+
+"I don't know nawthin' about over there; I'm talkin' about here. I ain't
+had no chance here, Marthy."
+
+"He will heal all your care--"
+
+"He can't wipe out my sufferin's here."
+
+"Yes, He can, and He will. He can wipe away every tear and heal every
+wound."
+
+"No--he--can't. God Himself can't wipe out what has been. Oh, Mattie, if
+I was only there!--in the past--if I was only young and purty ag'in! You
+know how tall I was! How we used to run--oh, Mattie, if I was only
+there! The world was all bright then--wasn't it? We didn't expect--to
+work all our days. Life looked like a meadow, full of daisies and pinks,
+and the nicest ones and the sweetest birds were just a little ways
+on--where the sun was--it didn't look--wasn't we happy?"
+
+"Yes, yes, dear. But you mustn't talk so much." The good woman thought
+Matilda's mind was wandering. "Don't you want some med'cine? Is your
+fever risin'?"
+
+"But the daisies and pinks all turned to weeds," she went on, waiting a
+little, "when we picked 'em. An' the sunny place--has been always behind
+me, and the dark before me. Oh, if I was only there--in the sun--where
+the pinks and daisies are!"
+
+"You mustn't talk so, Mattie! Think about your children! You ain't sorry
+y'had them? They've been a comfort to y'? You ain't sorry you had 'em?"
+
+"I ain't glad," was the unhesitating reply of the failing woman; and
+then she went on, in growing excitement: "They'll haf to grow old jest
+as I have--git bent and gray, an' die. They ain't be'n much comfort to
+me: the boys are like their father, and Julyie's weak. They ain't no
+happiness--for such as me and them."
+
+She paused for breath, and Mrs. Ridings, not knowing what to say, did
+better than speak. She fell to stroking the poor face and the hands,
+getting more restless each moment. It was as if Matilda Fletcher had
+been silent so long, had borne so much without complaint, that now it
+burst from her in a torrent not to be stayed. All her most secret doubts
+and her sweetest hopes seemed trembling on her lips or surging in her
+brain, racking her poor, emaciated frame for utterence. Now that death
+was sure, she was determined to rid her bosom of its perilous stuff.
+Martha was appalled.
+
+"I used to think--that when I got married I'd be perfectly happy; but I
+never have been happy sence. It was the beginning of trouble to me. I
+never found things better than they looked; they was always worse. I've
+gone further an' further from the sunshiny meadow, an' the birds an'
+flowers--and I'll never git back to 'em again, never!" She ended with a
+sob and a low wail.
+
+Her face was horrifying with its intensity of pathetic regret. Her
+straining, wide-open eyes seemed to be seeing those sunny spots in the
+meadow.
+
+"Mattie, sometimes when I'm asleep I think I am back there ag'in--and
+you girls are there--an' we're pullin' off the leaves of the wild
+sunflower--'rich man, poor man, beggar man'--and I hear you all laugh
+when I pull off the last leaf; and then I come to myself--and I'm an
+old, dried-up woman, dyin'--unsatisfied!"
+
+"I've felt that way a little myself, Matildy," confessed the watcher, in
+a scared whisper.
+
+"I knew it, Mattie; I knew you'd know how I felt. Things have been
+better for you. You ain't had to live in an old log house all your life,
+an' work yourself to skin an' bone for a man you don't respect nor
+like."
+
+"Matildy Bent, take that back! Take it back, for mercy sake! Don't you
+dare die thinkin' that--don't you dare!"
+
+Bent, hearing her voice rising, came to the door, and the wife,
+recognizing his step, cried out:
+
+"Don't let him in! Don't! I can't bear him--keep him out; I don't want
+to see him ag'in."
+
+"Who do you mean? Not Joe?"
+
+"Yes! Him!"
+
+Had the dying woman confessed to murder, good Martha could not have been
+more shocked. She could not understand this terrible revulsion in
+feeling, for she herself had been absolutely loyal to her husband
+through all the trials which had come upon them.
+
+But she met Bent at the threshold, and, closing the door, went out with
+him into the summer kitchen, where the rest of the family were sitting.
+A gloomy silence fell on them all after the greetings were over. The men
+were smoking; all were seated in chairs tipped back against the wall.
+Joe Bent, a smallish man, with a weak, good-natured face, asked, in a
+hoarse whisper:
+
+"How is she, Mis' Ridings?"
+
+"She seems quite strong, Mr. Bent. I think you had all better go to bed;
+if I want you, I can call you. Doctor give me directions."
+
+"All right," responded the relieved man. "I'll sleep on the lounge in
+the other room. If you want me, just rap on the door."
+
+When, after making other arrangements, Martha went back to the bedroom,
+she was startled to hear the sick woman muttering to herself, or perhaps
+because she had forgotten Martha's absence.
+
+"But the shadows on the meadow didn't stay; they passed on, and then the
+sun was all the brighter on the flowers. We used to string
+sweet-williams on spears of grass--don't you remember?"
+
+Martha gave her a drink of the opiate in the glass, adjusted her on the
+pillow, and threw open the window, even to the point of removing the
+screen, and the gibbous moon flooded the room with light. She did not
+light a lamp, for its flame would heat the room. Besides, the moonlight
+was sufficient. It fell on the face of the sick woman till she looked
+like a thing of marble--all but her dark eyes.
+
+"Does the moon hurt you, Tilly? Shall I put down the curtain?"
+
+The woman heard with difficulty, and when the question was repeated,
+said slowly:
+
+"No, I like it." After a little: "Don't you remember, Mattie, how
+beautiful the moonlight seemed? It seemed to promise happiness--and
+love--but it never come for us. It makes me dream of the past now--just
+as it did of the future then; an' the whip-poor-wills, too--"
+
+The night was perfectly beautiful, such a night as makes dying an
+infinite sorrow. The summer was at its liberalest. Innumerable insects
+of the nocturnal sort were singing in unison with the frogs in the
+pools. A whip-poor-will called, and its neighbor answered like an echo.
+The leaves of the trees, glossy from the late rain, moved musically to
+the light west wind, and the exquisite perfume of many flowers came in
+on the breeze.
+
+When the failing woman sank into silence, Martha leaned her elbow on the
+window-sill, and, gazing far into the great deeps of space, gave herself
+up to unwonted musings upon the problems of human life. She sighed
+deeply at times. She found herself at moments in the almost terrifying
+position of a human soul in space. Not a wife, not a mother, but just a
+soul facing the questions which harass philosophers. As she realized her
+condition of mind she apprehended something of the thinking of the
+woman on the bed. Matilda had gone beyond--or far back--of the wife and
+mother.
+
+The hours wore on; the dying woman stirred uneasily now and then,
+whispering a word or phrase which related to her girlhood--never to her
+later life. Once she said:
+
+"Mother, hold me. I'm so tired."
+
+Martha took the thin form in her arms, and, laying her head close beside
+the sunken cheek, sang, in half breath, a lullaby till the sufferer grew
+quiet again.
+
+The lustrous moon passed over the house, leaving the room dark, and
+still the patient watcher sat beside the bed, listening to the slow
+breathing of the dying one. The cool air grew almost chill; the east
+began to lighten, and with the coming light the tide of life sank in the
+dying body. The head, hitherto restlessly turning, ceased to move. The
+eyes grew quiet and began to soften like a sleeper's.
+
+"How are you now, dear?" asked the watcher several times, bending over
+the bed, and bathing back the straying hair.
+
+"I'm tired--tired, mother--turn me," she murmured drowsily, with heavy
+lids drooping.
+
+Martha patted the pillows once again, and turned her friend's face to
+the wall. The poor, tortured, restless brain slowly stopped its grinding
+whirl, and the thin limbs, heavy with years of hopeless toil,
+straightened out in an endless sleep.
+
+Matilda Fletcher had found rest.
+
+
+
+
+A PREACHER'S LOVE STORY
+
+I
+
+
+The train drew out of the great Van Buren Street depot at 4.30 of a dark
+day in late October. A tall young man, with a timid look in his eyes,
+was almost the last passenger to get on, and his pale face wore a
+worried look as he dropped into an empty seat and peered out at the
+squalid city reeling past in the mist.
+
+The buildings grew smaller, and vacant lots appeared stretching away in
+flat spaces, broken here and there by ridges of ugly, squat, little
+tenement blocks. Over this landscape vast banners of smoke streamed,
+magnified by the misty rain which was driven in from the lake.
+
+At last there came a swell of land clothed on with trees. It was still
+light enough for him to see that they were burr oaks, and the young
+student's heart thrilled at sight of them. His forehead smoothed out,
+and his eyes grew tender with boyish memories.
+
+He was seated thus, with head leaning against the pane, when another
+young man came down the aisle from the smoking-car and took a seat
+beside him with a pleasant word.
+
+He was a handsome young fellow of twenty three or four. His face was
+large and beardless, and he had a bold and keen look, in spite of the
+bang of yellow hair which hung over his forehead. Some commonplaces
+passed between them, and then silence fell on each. The conductor coming
+through the car, the smooth-faced young fellow put up a card to be
+punched, and the student handed up a ticket, simply saying, "Kesota."
+
+After a decent pause the younger man said, "Going to Kesota, are you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So am I. I live there, in fact."
+
+"Do you? Then perhaps you can tell me the name of your County
+Superintendent. I'm looking for a school." He smiled frankly. "I'm just
+out of Jackson University, and--"
+
+"That so? I'm an Ann Arbor man myself." They took a moment for mutual
+warming up. "Yes, I know the Superintendent. Why not come right up to my
+boarding-place, and to-morrow I'll introduce you? Looking for a school,
+eh? What kind of a school?"
+
+"Oh, a village school, or even a country school. It's too late to get a
+good place; but I've been sick, and--"
+
+"Yes, the good positions are all snapped up; still, you might by
+accident hit on something. I know Mott; he'll do all he can for you.
+By-the-way, my name's Allen."
+
+The young student understood this hint and spoke. "Mine is Stacey."
+
+The younger man mused a few minutes, as if he had forgotten his new
+acquaintance. Suddenly he roused up.
+
+"Say, would you take a country school several miles out?"
+
+"I think I would, if nothing better offered."
+
+"Well, in my old district they're without a teacher. It's six miles out,
+and it isn't a lovely neighborhood! However, they will pay fifty dollars
+a month; that's ten dollars extra for the scrimmages. They wanted me to
+teach this winter--my sister tackles it in summer--but, great Peter! I
+can't waste my time teaching school, when I can run up to Chicago and
+take a shy at the pit and make a whole term's wages in thirty minutes!"
+
+"I don't understand," said Stacey.
+
+"Wheat Exchange. I've got a lot of friends in the pit, and I can come in
+any time on a little deal. I'm no Jim Keene, but I hope to get cash
+enough to handle five thousand. I wanted the old gent to start me up in
+it, but he said, 'Nix come arouse.' Fact is, I dropped the money he gave
+me to go through college with." He smiled at Stacey's disapproving look.
+"Yes, indeedy; there's where the jar came into our tender relations. Oh,
+I call on the Governor--always when I've got a wad. I have fun with
+him." He smiled brightly. "Ask him if he don't need a little cash to pay
+for hog-killin', or something like that." He laughed again. "No, I
+didn't graduate at Ann Arbor. Funny how things go, ain't it? I was on my
+way back the third year, when I stopped in to see the pit--it's one o'
+the sights of Chicago, you know--and Billy Krans saw me looking over the
+rail, I went in, won, and then took a flyer on December. Come a big
+slump, and I failed to materialize at school."
+
+"What did you do then?" asked Stacey, to whom this did not seem
+humorous.
+
+"I wrote a contrite letter to the Governor, stating case, requesting
+forgiveness--and money. No go! Couldn't raise neither. I then wrote,
+casting him off. 'You are no longer father of mine.'" He smiled again
+radiantly. "You should have seen me the next time I went home! Plug hat!
+Imported suit! Gold watch! Diamond shirt-stud! Cost me $200 to paralyze
+the General, but I did it. My glory absolutely turned him white as a
+sheet. I knew what he thought, so I said: 'Perfectly legitimate, Dad.
+The walls of Joliet are not gaping for me.' That about half-fetched
+him--calling him _Dad_, I mean; but he can't get reconciled to my
+business. 'Too many ups and downs,' he says. Fact is, he thinks it's
+gambling, and I don't argue the case with him. I'm on my way home now to
+stay over Sunday."
+
+The train whistled, and Allen looked out into the darkness. "We're
+coming to the crossing. Now, I can't go up to the boarding-place when
+you do, but I'll give you directions, and you tell the landlady I sent
+you, and it'll be all right. Allen, you remember--Herman Allen."
+
+Following directions, Stacey came at length to a two-story frame house
+situated on the edge of the bank, with its back to the river. It stood
+alone, with vacant lots all about. A pleasant-faced woman answered the
+ring.
+
+He explained briefly. "How do you do? I'm a teacher, and I'd like to get
+board here a few days while passing my examinations. Mr. Herman Allen
+sent me."
+
+The woman's quick eye and ear were satisfied. "All right. Walk in, sir.
+I'm pretty full, but I expect I can accommodate you--if you don't mind
+Mr. Allen for a room-mate."
+
+"Oh, not at all," he said, while taking off his coat.
+
+"Come right in this way. Supper will be ready soon."
+
+He went into a comfortable sitting-room, where a huge open fire of soft
+coal was blazing magnificently. The walls were papered in florid
+patterns, and several enlarged portraits were on the walls. The fire was
+the only adornment; all else was cheap, and some of it was tawdry.
+
+Stacey spread his thin hands to the blaze, while the landlady sat down a
+moment, out of politeness, to chat, scanning him keenly. She was a
+handsome woman, strong, well-rounded, about forty years of age, with
+quick, gray eyes, and a clean, firm-lipped mouth.
+
+"Did you just get in?"
+
+"Yes. I've been on the road all day," he said, on an impulse of
+communication. "Indeed, I'm just out of college."
+
+"Is that so!" exclaimed Mrs. Mills, stopping her rocking in an access of
+interest. "What college?"
+
+"Jackson University. I've been sick, and only came West--"
+
+There came a look into her face that transformed and transfigured her.
+"_My_ boy was in Ann Arbor. He was killed on the train on his way home
+one day." She stopped, for fear of breaking into a quaver, and smiled
+brightly. "That's why I always like college boys. They all stop here
+with me." She rose hastily. "Well, you'll excuse me, won't you, and I'll
+go an' 'tend to supper."
+
+There was a great deal that was feminine in Stacey, and he felt at once
+the pathos of the woman's life. He looked a refined, studious, rather
+delicate young man, as he sat low in his chair and observed the light
+and heat of the fire. His large head was heavy with learning, and his
+dark eyes deep with religious fervor.
+
+Several young women entered, and the room was filled with the clatter of
+tongues. Herman came in a few moments later, his face in a girlish glow
+of color. Everybody rushed at him with loud outcry. He was evidently a
+great favorite. He threw his arms about Mrs. Mills, giving her a hearty
+hug. The girls pretended to be shocked when he reached out for them, but
+they were not afraid of him. They hung on his arms and besieged him with
+questions till he cried out, in jolly perplexity:
+
+"Girls, girls! This will never do!"
+
+Mrs. Mills brushed out his damp yellow curls with her hands. "You're all
+wet."
+
+"Girls, if you'll let me sit down, I'll take one on each knee," he said,
+pleadingly, and they released him.
+
+Stacey grew red with sympathetic embarrassment, and shrank away into a
+corner.
+
+"Go get supper ready," commanded Herman. And it was only after they had
+left him that he said to Stacey: "Oh, you found your way all right." He
+took a seat by the fire and surveyed his wet shoes. "I took a run up to
+Mott's house--only a half block out o' the way. He said they'd be
+tickled to have you at Cyene. By-the-way, you're a theolog, aren't you?"
+Wallace nodded, and Herman went on: "So I told Mott. He said you might
+work up a society out there at Cyene."
+
+"Is there a church there?"
+
+"Used to be, but--say, I tell you what you do: you go out with me
+to-morrow, and I'll give you a history of the township."
+
+The ringing of the bell took them all out into the cheerful dining-room
+in a good-natured scramble. Mrs. Mills put Stacey at one end of the
+table, near a young woman who looked like a teacher, and he had full
+sweep of the table, which was surrounded by bright and happy faces. The
+station-hand was there, and a couple of grocery clerks, and a brakeman
+sat at Stacey's right hand. They all seemed very much at home, and
+called one another by their Christian names, and there was very obvious
+courtship on the part of several young couples.
+
+Stacey escaped from the table as soon as possible, and returned to his
+seat beside the fire. He was young enough to enjoy the chatter of the
+girls, but his timidity made him glad they paid so little attention to
+him. The rain had changed to sleet outside and hammered at the window
+viciously, but the blazing fire and the romping young people set it at
+defiance. The landlady came to the door of the dining-room, dish and
+cloth in hand, to share in each outburst of laughter, and not
+infrequently the hired girl peered over her shoulder with a broad smile
+on her face. A little later, having finished their work, they both came
+in and took active part in the light-hearted fun.
+
+Herman and one of the girls were having a great struggle over some
+trifle he had snatched from her hand, and the rest stood about laughing
+to see her desperate attempts to recover it. This was a familiar form of
+courtship in Kesota, and an evening filled with such romping was
+considered a "cracking good time." After the girl, red and dishevelled,
+had given up, Herman sat down at the organ, and they all sang Moody and
+Sankey hymns, negro melodies, and college songs till ten o'clock. Then
+Mrs. Mills called, "Come, now, boys and girls!" and they all said
+good-night, like obedient children.
+
+Herman and Wallace went up to their bedroom together.
+
+"Say, Stacey, have you got a policy?" Wallace shook his head. "And don't
+want any, I suppose. Well, I just asked you as a matter of form. You
+see," he went on, winking at Wallace comically, "nominally I'm an
+insurance agent, but practically I'm a 'lamb'--but I get a mouthful o'
+fur myself occasionally. What I'm working for is to get on that Wheat
+Exchange. That's where you get life! I'd rather be an established broker
+in that howling mob than go to Congress."
+
+He rose on his elbow in bed and looked at Wallace, who was rising from a
+silent prayer.
+
+"Say, why didn't you shout? I forgot all about it--I mean your
+profession."
+
+Wallace crept into bed beside his communicative bedfellow in silence.
+He didn't know how to deal with such spirits.
+
+"Say," called Herman suddenly, as Wallace was about dropping off to
+sleep, "you ain't got no picnic, old man!"
+
+"Why, what do you mean?"
+
+"Wait till you see Cyene Church. Oh, it's a daisy snarl!"
+
+"I wish you'd tell me about it."
+
+"Oh, it's quiet now. The calmness of death," said Herman. "Well, you
+see, it came this way. The church is made up of Baptists and Methodists,
+and the Methodists wanted an organ, because, you understand, father was
+the head centre, and Mattie is the only girl among the Methodists who
+can play. The old man has got a head like a mule. He can't be switched
+off, once he makes up his mind. Deacon Marsden, he don't believe in
+anything above tuning-forks, and he's tighter'n the bark on a bulldog.
+He stood out like a sore thumb, and Dad wouldn't give an inch.
+
+"You see, they held meetings every other Sunday. So Dad worked up the
+organ business and got one, and then locked it up when the Baptists held
+their services. Things went from bad to worse. They didn't speak as they
+passed by--that is, the old folks; we young folks didn't care a
+continental whether school kept or not. Well, upshot is, the church died
+out. The wind blew the horse-sheds down, and there they lie--and the
+church is standing there empty as an--old boot--and--Say, Stacey--by
+Jinks!--are you a Baptist?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, Peter! ain't that lovely!" He chuckled shamelessly, and went off to
+sleep without another word.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Herman was still sleeping when Stacey rose and dressed and went down to
+breakfast. Mrs. Mills defended Herman against the charge of laziness:
+"He's probably been out late all the week."
+
+Stacey found Mott in the county court-house, and a perfunctory
+examination soon put him in possession of a certificate. There was no
+question of his attainments.
+
+Herman met him at dinner-time.
+
+"Well, elder, I'm going down to get a rig to go out home in. It's
+colder'n a blue whetstone, so put on all the clothes you've got. Gimme
+your check, and I'll get your traps. Have you seen Mott?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then, everything's all fixed."
+
+He turned up about three o'clock, seated on the spring seat of a lumber
+wagon beside a woman, who drove the powerful team. Whether she was young
+or old could not be told through her wraps. She wore a cap and a thick,
+faded cloak.
+
+Mrs. Mills hurried to the door. "Why, Mattie Allen! What you doin' out
+such a day as this? Come in here instanter!"
+
+"Can't stop!" called a clear, boyish voice. "Too late!"
+
+"Well, land o' stars, you'll freeze!"
+
+When Wallace reached the wagon side, Herman said, "My sister, Stacey."
+
+The girl slipped her strong, brown hand out of her huge glove and gave
+him a friendly grip. "Get right in," she said. "Herman, you're going to
+stand up behind."
+
+Herman appealed to Mrs. Mills for sympathy. "This is what comes of
+having plebeian connections."
+
+"Oh, dry up," laughed the girl, "or I'll make you drive."
+
+Stacey scrambled in awkwardly beside her. She was not at all
+embarrassed, apparently.
+
+"Tuck yourself in tight. It's mighty cold on the prairie."
+
+"Why didn't you come down with the baroosh?" grumbled Herman.
+
+"Well, the corn was contracted for, and father wasn't able to come--he
+had another attack of neuralgia last night, after he got the corn
+loaded, so I had to come."
+
+"Sha'n't I drive for you?" asked Wallace.
+
+"No, thank you. You'll have all you can do to keep from freezing." She
+studied his thin coat and worn gloves with keen glance. He could see
+only her pink cheeks, strong nose, and dark, smiling eyes.
+
+It was one of those terrible Illinois days when the temperature drops
+suddenly to zero, and the churned mud of the highways hardens into
+scoriac rock, which cripples the horses and sends the heavy wagons
+booming and thundering along like mad things. The wind was keen as a
+saw-bladed sword, and smote incessantly. The desolate sky was one thick,
+impenetrable mass of swiftly flying clouds.
+
+When they swung out upon the long pike leading due north, Wallace drew
+his breath with a gasp, and bent his head to the wind.
+
+"Pretty strong, isn't it?" shouted Mattie.
+
+"Oh, the farmer's life is the life for me, tra-la!" sang Herman, from
+his shelter behind the seat.
+
+Mattie turned. "What do you think of _Penelope_ this month?"
+
+"She's a-gitten there," said Herman, pounding his shoe heels.
+
+"She's too smart for young Corey. She ought to marry a man like
+Bromfield. My, wouldn't they talk!"
+
+"Did y' get the second bundle of magazines last Saturday?"
+
+"Yes; and Dad found something in the _Popular Science_ that made him
+mad, and he burned it."
+
+"Did 'e? Tum-la-la! Oh, the farmer's life for me!"
+
+"Are you cold?" she asked Wallace.
+
+He turned a purple face upon her. "No--not much."
+
+"I guess you better slip right down under the blankets," she advised.
+
+The wind blew gray out of the north--a wild blast which stopped the
+young student's blood in his veins. He hated to give up, but he could no
+longer hold the blankets over his knees, so he slipped down into the
+corner of the box, with his back to the wind, while Mattie drew the
+blankets over his head, slapped the reins down on the backs of the
+snorting horses, and encouraged them with shouts like a man: "Get out o'
+this, Dan! Hup there, Nellie!"
+
+The wagon boomed and rattled. The floor of the box seemed beaten with a
+maul. The glimpses Wallace had of the land appalled him, it was so flat
+and gray and bare.
+
+Herman sang at the top of his voice, and danced, and pounded his feet
+against the wagon box. "This ends it! If I can't come home without
+freezing to death, I don't come. I should have hired a rig, irrespective
+of you--"
+
+The girl laughed. "Oh, you're getting thin-blooded, Herman. Life in the
+city has taken the starch all out of you."
+
+"Better grow limp in a great city than freeze stiff in the country," he
+replied.
+
+An hour's ride brought them into a yard before a large, gray-white frame
+house.
+
+Herman sprang out to meet a tall old man with head muffled up. "Hello,
+Dad! Take the team. We're just naturally froze solid--at least, I am.
+This is Mr. Stacey, the new teacher."
+
+"How de do? Run in; I'll take the horses."
+
+Herman and Wallace stumbled toward the house, stiff and bent.
+
+Herman flung his arms about a tall woman in the kitchen door. "Hello,
+muz!" he said. "This is Mr. Stacey, the new teacher."
+
+Mattie came in soon with a boyish rush, gleeful as a happy babe. She
+unwound the scarf from her head and neck, and hung up her cap and cloak
+like a man, but she gave her hair a little touch of feminine care, and
+came forward with both palms pressed to her burning cheeks.
+
+"Did you suffer, child?" asked Mrs. Allen.
+
+"No; I enjoyed it."
+
+Herman looked at Stacey. "I believe on my life she did."
+
+"Oh, it's fun. I don't get a chance to do anything so exciting very
+often."
+
+Herman clicked his tongue. "Exciting? Well, well!"
+
+"You must remember things are slower here," Mattie explained.
+
+She came to light much younger than Stacey thought her. She was not
+eighteen, but her supple and splendid figure was fully matured. Her hair
+hung down her back in a braid, which gave a distinct touch of
+childishness to her.
+
+"Sis, you're still a-growin'," Herman said, as he put his arm around her
+waist and looked up at her.
+
+She seemed to realize for the first time that Stacey was a young man,
+and her eyes fell.
+
+"Well, now, set up the chairs, child," said Mrs. Allen.
+
+When the young teacher returned from his cold spare room off the parlor
+the family sat waiting for him. They all drew up noisily, and Allen
+said:
+
+"Ask the blessing, sir?"
+
+Wallace said grace.
+
+As Allen passed the potatoes he continued:
+
+"My son tells me you are a minister of the gospel."
+
+"I have studied for it."
+
+"What denomination?"
+
+"Tut, tut!" warned Herman. "Don't start any theological rabbits
+to-night, Dad. With jaw swelled up you won't be able to hold your own."
+
+"I'm a Baptist," Stacey answered.
+
+The old man's face grew grim. It had been ludicrous before with its
+swollen jaw. "Baptist!" He turned a stern look upon his son, whose smile
+angered him. "Didn't you know no more'n to bring a Baptist preacher into
+this house?"
+
+"There, there, father!" began the wife.
+
+"Be quiet. I'm boss of this shanty, and I won't have you bringing--"
+
+Herman struck in: "Don't make a show of yourself, old man. Never mind
+the old gent, Stacey; he's mumpy to-day, anyhow."
+
+Stacey rose. "I guess I--I'd better not stay--I--"
+
+"Oh no, no! Sit down! It's all right. The old man's a little acid at me.
+He doesn't mean it."
+
+Stacey got his coat and hat. His heart was swollen with indignation. He
+felt as if something fine were lost to him, and the land outside was so
+desolate!
+
+Mrs. Allen was in tears; but the old man, having taken his stand, was
+going to keep it.
+
+Herman lost his temper a little. "Well, Dad, you're a little the
+cussedest Christian I ever knew! Stacey, sit down. Don't you be a fool
+just because he is--"
+
+Stacey was buttoning his coat with trembling hands when Martha went up
+to him.
+
+"Don't go," she said. "Father's sick and cross. He'll be sorry for this
+to-morrow."
+
+Wallace looked into her frank, kindly eyes, and hesitated.
+
+Herman said: "Dad, you are a lovely follower of Christ! You'll apologize
+for this, or I'll never set foot on your threshold again."
+
+Stacey still hesitated. He was hurt and angry, but being naturally of a
+sweet and gentle nature, he grew sad, and, yielding to the pressure of
+the girl's hand on his arm, he began to unbutton his overcoat.
+
+She helped him with it, and hung it back on the nail, and her mother and
+Herman tried to restore something of the brightness which had been lost;
+but Allen sat grimly eating, his chin pushed down like a hog's snout.
+
+After supper, as his father was about retiring to his bedroom, Herman
+fixed his bright eyes on him, and something very hard and masterful came
+into his face.
+
+"Old man, you and I haven't had a settlement on this thing yet. I'll see
+you later."
+
+Allen shrank before his son's look, but shuffled sullenly off without
+uttering a word.
+
+Herman turned to Wallace. "Stacey, I want to beg your pardon for getting
+you into this scrape. I didn't suppose the old gentleman would act like
+that. The older he gets, the more his New Hampshire granite shows. I
+hope you won't lay it up against me."
+
+Wallace was too conscientious to say he didn't mind it, but he took
+Herman's hand in a quick clasp.
+
+"Let's have a song," proposed Herman. "Music hath charms to soothe the
+savage breast, to charm a rock, and split a cabbage."
+
+They went into the best room, where a fire was blazing, and Mattie and
+Herman sang hymns and old-fashioned love-songs and college glees
+wonderfully intermingled. They ended with _Lorena_, a wailing, extra
+sentimental love-song current in war times, and when they looked around
+there was a lofty look on the face of the young preacher--a look of
+exaltation, of consecration and resolve.
+
+
+III
+
+
+The next morning, at breakfast, Herman said, as he seized a hot biscuit,
+"We'll dispense with grace this morning, and till after the war is
+over." But Wallace blessed his bread in a silent prayer, and Mattie
+thought it very brave of him to do so.
+
+Herman was full of mockery. "The sun rises just the same, whether it's
+'sprinkling' or 'immersion.' It's lucky Nature don't take a hand in
+these theological contests. She doesn't even referee the scrap; she
+never seems to care whether you are sparring for points or fighting to a
+finish. What you theologic middle-weights are really fighting for I
+can't see--and I don't care, till you fall over the ropes on to my
+corns."
+
+Stacey listened in a daze to Herman's tirade. He knew it was addressed
+to Allen, and that it deprecated war, and that it was mocking. The fresh
+face and smiling lips of the young girl seemed to put other affairs very
+far away. It was such a beautiful thing to sit at table with a lovely
+girl.
+
+After breakfast he put on his cap and coat, and went out into the clear,
+cold November air. All about him the prairie outspread, marked with
+farm-houses and lined with leafless hedges. Artificial groves surrounded
+each homestead, and these relieved, to some degree, the desolateness of
+the fields.
+
+Down the road he saw the spire of a small white church, and as he walked
+briskly toward it, Herman's description of it came to his mind.
+
+As he drew near, the ruined sheds, the rotting porch, and the windows
+boarded up told a sorry story, and his face grew sad. He tried one of
+the doors, and found it open. Some tramp had broken the lock. The inside
+was even more desolate than the outside. It was littered with rotting
+straw and plum stones and melon seeds. Obscene words were scrawled on
+the walls, and even on the pulpit itself.
+
+Taken altogether, it was an appalling picture to the young servant of
+the Man of Galilee--a blunt reminder of the inherent ferocity and
+depravity of man.
+
+As he pondered the fire burned, and there rose again the flame of his
+resolution. He lifted his face and prayed that he might be the one to
+bring these people into the living union of the Church of Christ.
+
+His blood set toward his heart with tremulous action.
+
+His eyes glowed with zeal like that of the prophets of the Middle Ages.
+He saw the people united once more in this desecrated hall. He heard the
+bells ringing, the sound of song, the voices of love and fellowship
+filling the anterooms where hate had scrawled hideous blasphemy against
+woman and against God.
+
+As he sat there Herman came in, his keen eyes seeking out every stain
+and evidence of vandalism.
+
+"Cheerful prospect, isn't it?"
+
+Wallace looked up with the blaze of his resolution still in his eyes.
+His pale face was sweet and solemn.
+
+"Oh, how these people need Christ!"
+
+Herman turned away. "They need killing--about two dozen of 'em. I'd like
+to have the job of indicating which ones. I wouldn't miss the old man,
+you bet!" he added, with cordial resentment.
+
+Wallace was helpless in the face of such reckless thought, and so sat
+silently watching the handsome young fellow as he walked about.
+
+"Well, now, Stacey, I guess you'll need to move. I had another session
+with the old man, but he won't give in, so I'm off for Chicago. Mother's
+brother, George Chapman, who lives about as near the schoolhouse on the
+other side, will take you in. I guess we'd better go right down now and
+see about it. I've said good-by to the old man--for good this time; we
+didn't shake hands, either," he said, as they started down the road
+together. He was very stern and hard. Something of the father was hidden
+under his laughing exterior.
+
+Stacey regretted deeply the necessity which drove him out of Allen's
+house. Mrs. Allen and Mattie had appealed to him very strongly. For
+years he had lived far from young women, and there was a magical power
+in the intimate home actions of this young girl. Her bare head, with
+simple arrangement of hair, someway seemed the most beautiful thing he
+had ever seen.
+
+He thought of her that night, as he sat at the table with Chapman and
+his aged mother. They lived alone, and their lives were curiously
+silent. Once in a while a low-voiced question, and that was all. George
+read the _Popular Science, Harper's Monthly Magazine_, and the _Open
+Court_, and brooded over them with slow intellectual movement. It was
+wonderful the amount of information he secreted from these periodicals.
+He was better informed than many college graduates. He had little
+curiosity about the young stranger. He understood that he was to teach
+the school; beyond that he did not care to go.
+
+He tried Wallace once or twice on the latest discoveries of John Fiske
+and Edison, and then gave him up and retired to his seat beside the
+sitting-room stove.
+
+On the following Monday morning school began, and as Wallace took his
+way down the lane the wrecked church came again to his eyes. He walked
+past it with slow feet. His was a deeply religious nature, one that
+sorrowed easily over sin. Suffering of the poor did not trouble him;
+hunger seemed a little thing beside losing one's everlasting soul.
+Therefore, to come from his studies upon such a monument of human
+depravity as this rotting church was to receive a shock and to hear a
+call to action.
+
+Approaching the schoolhouse, his thought took a turn toward the
+scholars and toward Mattie. He had forgotten to ask her if she intended
+to be one of his pupils.
+
+There were several children already gathered at the weather-beaten door
+as he came up. It was all very American--the box-like house of white,
+the slender teacher approaching, the roughly clad urchins waiting.
+
+He said, "Good morning, scholars!"
+
+They chorused a queer croak in reply--hesitating, inarticulate, shy. He
+unlocked the door and entered the cold, bare room--familiar, unlovely,
+with a certain power of primitive associations. In such a room he had
+studied his primer and his Ray's Arithmetic. In such a room he had made
+gradual recession from the smallest front seat to the back wall seat;
+and from one side of such a room to the other he had furtively
+worshipped a graceful, girlish head.
+
+He allowed himself but a moment of such dreaming before assuming
+command, and with his ready helpers a fire was soon started. Other
+children came in, timorous as rabbits, slipping by, each with an eye
+fixed on him like a scared chicken. They pre-empted their seats by
+putting down books and slates, and there arose sly wars for possession,
+which he watched with amusement--it was so like his own life at that
+age.
+
+He assumed control as nearly in the manner of the old-time teachers as
+he could recall, and the work of his teaching was begun. The day passed
+quickly, and, as he walked homeward again, there stood that rotting
+church, and in his mind there rose a surging emotion larger than he
+could himself comprehend--a desire to rebuild it by uniting the warring
+factions, of whose lack of Christianity this deserted chapel was a fatal
+witness.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Now this mystical thing happened. As this son of a line of preachers
+brooded on this unlovely strife among men, he lost the equipoise of the
+scholar and student of modern history. He grew narrower and more
+intense. The burden of his responsibility as a preacher of Christ grew
+daily more insupportable.
+
+Toward the end of the week he announced preaching in the schoolhouse on
+Sunday afternoon, and at the hour set he found the room crowded with
+people of all ages and sorts.
+
+His heart grew heavy as he looked out over the room--on women nursing
+querulous children, on the grizzled faces of grim-looking men, who
+studied him with keen, unsympathetic eyes. He had hard, unfriendly
+material to work with. There were but few of the opposite camp present,
+while the Baptist leaders were all there, with more curiosity than
+sympathy in their faces.
+
+They exulted to think the next preacher to come among them as an
+evangelist should be a Baptist.
+
+After the singing, which would have dribbled away into failure but for
+Mattie, Wallace rose, looking very white and weak, and began his
+prayer. Some of the boys laughed when his voice stuck in his throat, but
+he went on to the end of an earnest supplication, feeling he had not
+touched them at all.
+
+While they sang again, he sat looking down at them with dry throat and
+staring eyes. How hard, how unchristian-like, they all were. What could
+he say to them? He saw Mattie gazing up at him, and on the front seat
+sat three beautiful little girls huddled together with hands clasped;
+inexpressibly dainty by contrast. As he looked at them the thought came
+to him, What is the goodness of a girl--of a child? It is not
+partisan--it is not of creeds, of articles--it is goodness of thought,
+of deeds. His face lighted up with the inward feeling of this idea, and
+he rose resolutely.
+
+"Friends, with the help of Christ I am come among you to do you good. I
+shall hold meetings each night here in the schoolhouse until we can
+unite and rebuild the church again. Let me say now, friends, that I was
+educated a Baptist. My father was a faithful worker in the Baptist
+Church, and so was his father before him. I was educated in a Baptist
+college, and I came here hoping to build up a Baptist Church." He
+paused.
+
+"But I see my mistake. I am here to build up a Church of Christ, of good
+deeds and charity and peace, and so I here say I am no longer a Baptist
+or Methodist. I am only a preacher, and I will not rest until I rebuild
+the church which stands rotting away there." His voice rang with
+determination as he uttered those words.
+
+The people listened. There was no movement now. Even the babies seemed
+to feel the need of being silent. When he began again it was to describe
+that hideous wreck. He delineated the falling plaster, the litter around
+the pulpit, the profanation of the walls. "It is a symbol of your sinful
+hearts!" he cried.
+
+Much more he said, carried out of himself by his passion. It was as if
+the repentant spirit of his denominational fathers were speaking through
+him; and yet he was not so impassioned that he did not see, or at least
+feel, the eyes of the strong young girl fixed upon him; his resolutions
+were spoken to her, and a swift response seemed to leap from her eyes.
+
+When it was over, some of the Methodists and one of the Baptists came up
+to shake hands with him, awkwardly wordless, and the pressure of their
+hands helped him. Many of the Baptist brethren slipped outside to
+discuss the matter. Some were indignant, others much moved.
+
+Allen went by him with an audible grunt of derision, with a dark scowl
+on his face, but Mattie smiled at him, with tears still in her eyes. She
+had been touched by his vibrant voice; she had no sins to repent of.
+
+The skeptics of the neighborhood were quite generally sympathetic.
+"You've struck the right trail now, parson," said Chapman, as they
+walked homeward together. "The days of the old-time denominationalism
+are about played out."
+
+But the young preacher was not so sure of it, now that his inspiration
+was gone. He remembered his debt to his college, to his father, to the
+denomination, and it was not easy to set aside the grip of such
+memories.
+
+He sat late revolving the whole situation in his mind. When he went to
+bed his problem was still with him, and involved itself with his dreams;
+but always the young girl smiled upon him with sympathetic eyes and told
+him to go on--or so it seemed to him.
+
+He was silent at breakfast. He went to school with a feeling that a
+return to teaching little tow-heads to count and spell was now
+impossible. He sat at his scarred and dingy desk while they took their
+places, and his eyes had a passionate intensity of prayer in them which
+awed his pupils. He had assumed new grandeur and terror in their eyes.
+When they were seated he bowed his head and uttered a short plea for
+grace, and then he looked at them again.
+
+On the low front seat, with dangling legs and red, round faces, sat the
+little ones. Some way he could not call them to his knees and teach them
+to spell; he felt as if he ought to call them to him, as Christ did, to
+teach them love and reverence. It was impossible that they should not be
+touched by this hideous neighborhood strife.
+
+Behind them sat the older children, some of them with rough, hard, sly
+faces. One or two grinned rudely and nudged each other. The older girls
+sat with bated breath; they perceived something strange in the air. Most
+of them had heard his sermon of the night before.
+
+At last he broke silence. "Children, there is something I must say to
+you this morning. I'm going to have meeting here to-night, and it may
+be I shall not be your teacher any more--I mean in school. I wish you'd
+go home to-day and tell your people to come to church here to-night. I
+wish you'd all come yourselves. I want you to be good. I want you to
+love God and be good. I want you to go home and tell your people the
+teacher can't teach children how to read till he has taught the older
+people to be kind and generous. You may put your books away, and school
+will be dismissed."
+
+The wondering children obeyed--some with glad promptness, others with
+sadness, for they had already come to like their teacher very much.
+
+As he sat by the door and watched them file out, it was as if he were a
+king abdicating a throne, and these his faithful subjects.
+
+Mrs. Allen came over with Mattie to see him that day. She was a good
+woman, gentle and prayerful, and she said, with much emotion:
+
+"Oh, Mr. Stacey, I do hope you can patch things up here. If you could
+only touch his heart! He don't mean to do wrong, but he's so set in his
+ways--if he says a thing he sticks to it."
+
+Stacey turned to Mattie for a word of encouragement, but she only looked
+away. It was impossible for her to put into words her feeling in the
+matter, which was more of admiration for his courage than for any part
+of his religious zeal. He was so different from other men.
+
+It did him good to have these women come, and he repeated his vow:
+
+"By the grace of our Lord, I am going to rebuild the Cyene Church!" and
+his face paled and his eyes grew luminous.
+
+The girl shivered with emotion. He seemed to recede from her as he
+spoke, and to grow larger, too. Such nobility of purpose was new and
+splendid to her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The revival was wondrously dramatic. The little schoolhouse was crowded
+to the doors night by night. The reek of stable-stained coats and boots,
+the smell of strong tobacco, the effluvia of many breaths, the heat, the
+closeness were forgotten in the fervor of the young evangelist's
+utterances. His voice took on wild emotional cadences which sounded deep
+places in the heart. To these people, long unused to religious oratory,
+it was like the return of John and Isaiah. It was poetry and the drama,
+and processions and apocalyptic visions. This youth had the histrionic
+spell, too, and his slender body lifted and dilated, and his head took
+on majesty and power, and the fling of his white hand was a challenge
+and an appeal.
+
+A series of stirring events took place on the third night.
+
+On Wednesday Jacob Turner rose and asked the prayers of his neighbors,
+and was followed by two Baptist spearmen of the front rank. On Thursday
+the women were weeping on one another's bosoms; only one or two of the
+men held out--old Deacon Allen and his antagonist, Stewart Marsden.
+Grim-visaged old figures they were, placed among repentant men and
+weeping women. They sat like rocks in the rush of the two factions
+moving toward each other for peaceful union. Granitic, narrow, keen of
+thrust, they seemed unmoved, while all around them, one by one, skeptics
+acknowledged the pathos and dignity of the preacher's views of life and
+death.
+
+Meanwhile the young evangelist lived at high pressure. He grew thinner
+and whiter each night. He toiled in the daytime to formulate his
+thoughts for the evening. He could not sleep till far toward morning.
+The food he ate did him little good, while his heart went out constantly
+to his people in strenuous supplication. It was testimony of his human
+quality that he never for one moment lost that shining girl face out of
+his thought. He looked for it there night after night. It was his
+inspiration in speaking, as at the first.
+
+On the nights when Mattie was not there his speech was labored (as the
+elders noticed), but on the blessed nights when she came and sang, her
+voice, amid all the rest, came to him, and uttered poetry and peace like
+a rill of cool, sweet water. And afterward, when he walked home under
+the stars, his mind went with her, she was so strong and lithe and good
+to see. He did not realize the worshipping attitude the girl took before
+his divine duties.
+
+At last the great day came--the great night.
+
+In some way, perhaps by the growing mass of rushing emotion set in
+action by some deep-going phrase, or perhaps by some interior slow
+weakening of stubborn will, Deacon Allen gave way; and when the preacher
+called for penitents, the old man struggled to his feet, his seamed,
+weather-beaten face full of grotesque movement. He broke out:
+
+"Brethren, pray for me; I'm a miserable sinner. I want to confess my
+sins--here--before ye all." He broke into sobbing terrible to hear. "My
+heart is made--flesh again--by the blessed power of Christ...."
+
+He struggled to get his voice. One or two cried, "Praise God!" but most
+of them sat silent, awed into immobility.
+
+The old man walked up the aisle. "I've been rebellious--and now I want
+to shake hands with you all--and I ask your prayers." He bent down and
+thrust his hand to Marsden, his enemy, while the tears streamed down his
+face.
+
+Marsden turned white with a sort of fear, but he rose awkwardly and
+grasped the outstretched hand, and at the touch of palms every soul rose
+as if by electric shock. "Amens!" burst forth. The preacher began a
+fervent prayer, and came down toward the grizzled, weeping old men, and
+they all embraced, while some old lady with sweet, quavering voice
+raised a triumphal hymn, in which all joined, and found grateful relief
+from their emotional tension.
+
+Allen turned to Mattie and his wife. "My boy--send for him--Herman."
+
+It seemed as if the people could not go away. The dingy little
+schoolhouse was like unto the shining temple of God's grace, and the
+regenerated seemed to fear that to go home might permit a return to hate
+and strife. So they clung around the young preacher and would not let
+him go.
+
+At last he came out, with Allen holding to his arm. "You must come home
+with us to-night," he pleaded, and the young minister with glad heart
+consented, for he hoped he might walk beside Mattie; but this was not
+possible. There were several others in the group, and they moved off two
+and two up the deep hollows which formed the road in the snow.
+
+The young minister walked with head uplifted to the stars, hearing
+nothing of the low murmur of talk, conscious only of his great plans,
+his happy heart, and the strong young girl who walked before him.
+
+In the warm kitchen into which they came he lost something of his
+spiritual tension, and became more humanly aware of the significance of
+sitting again with these people. He gave the girl his coat and hat, and
+then watched her slip off her knitted hood and her cloak. Her eyes shone
+with returning laughter, and her cheeks were flushed with blood.
+
+Looking upon her, the young evangelist lost his look of exaltation, his
+eyes grew soft and his limbs relaxed. His silence was no longer rapt--it
+was the silence of delicious, drowsy reverie.
+
+
+V
+
+
+The next morning he did not rise at all. The collapse had come. The bad
+air, the nervous strain, the lack of sleep, had worn down his slender
+store of strength, and when the great victory came he fell like a tree
+whose trunk has been slowly gnawed across by teeth of silent saw. His
+drowse deepened into torpor.
+
+In the bright winter morning, seated in a gay cutter behind a bay colt
+strung with slashing bells, Mattie drove to Kesota for the doctor. She
+felt the discord between the joyous jangle of the bells, the stream of
+sunlight, and the sparkle of snow crystals, but it only added to the
+poignancy of her anxiety.
+
+She had not yet reached self-consciousness in her regard for the young
+preacher--she thought of him as a noble human being, liable to death,
+and she chirped again and again to the flying colt, whose broad hoofs
+flung the snow in stinging showers against her face.
+
+A call at the doctor's house set him jogging out along the lanes, while
+she sent a telegram to Herman. As she whirled bay Tom into the road to
+go home her heart rose in relief that was almost exaltation. She loved
+horses. She always sang under her breath, chiming to the beat of their
+bells, when alone, and now she loosened the rein and hummed an old
+love-song, while the powerful young horse squared away in a trot which
+was twelve miles an hour.
+
+In such air, in such sun, who could die? Her good animal strength rose
+dominant over fear of death.
+
+She came upon the doctor swinging along in his old blue cutter, dozing
+in country-doctor style, making up for lost sleep.
+
+"Out o' the way, doctor!" she gleefully called.
+
+The doctor roused up and looked around with a smile. He was not beyond
+admiring such a girl as that. He snapped his whip-lash lightly on old
+Sofia's back, who looked up surprised, and, seeming to comprehend
+matters, began to reach out broad, flat, thin legs in a pace which the
+proud colt respected. She came of illustrious line, did Sofia,
+scant-haired and ungracious as she now was.
+
+"Don't run over me!" called the doctor, ironically, and, with Sofia
+still leading, they swung into the yard.
+
+Mattie went in with the doctor, while Allen looked after both horses.
+They found Chapman attending Wallace, who lay in a dazed
+quiet--conscious, but not definitely aware of material things.
+
+The doctor looked his patient over carefully. Then he asked, "Who is the
+yoong mon?"
+
+"He's been teaching here, or, rather, preaching."
+
+"When did this coom on?"
+
+"Last night. Wound up a big revival last night, I believe. Kind o' caved
+in, I reckon."
+
+"That's all. Needs rest. He'll be wearin' a wood jacket if he doosna
+leave off preachin'."
+
+"Regular jamboree. I couldn't stop him. One of these periodical
+neighborhood 'awakenings,' they call it."
+
+"They have need of it here, na doot."
+
+"Well, they need something--love for God--or man."
+
+"M--well! It's lettle I can do. The wumman can do more, if the mon'll be
+eatin' what they cuke for 'im," said the candid old Scotchman. "Mak' 'im
+eat! Mak' 'im eat!"
+
+Once more Tom pounded along the shining road to Kesota to meet the
+six-o'clock train from Chicago.
+
+Herman, magnificently clothed in fur-lined ulster and cap, alighted with
+unusually grave face, and hurried toward Mattie.
+
+"Well, what is it, Sis? Mother sick?"
+
+"No; it's the teacher. He is unconscious. I've been for the doctor. Oh,
+we were scared!"
+
+He looked relieved, but a little chagrined. "Oh, well, I don't see why I
+should be yanked out of my boots by a telegram because the teacher is
+sick! He isn't kin--yet."
+
+For the first time a feeling of confusion swept over Mattie, and her
+face flushed.
+
+Herman's keen eyes half closed as he looked into her face.
+
+"Mat--what--what! Now look here--how's this? Where's Ben Holly's claim?"
+
+"He never had any." She shifted ground quickly. "Oh, Herman, we had a
+wonderful time last night! Father and Uncle Marsden shook hands--"
+
+"What!" shouted Herman, as he fell in a limp mass against the cutter.
+"Bring a physician--I'm stricken."
+
+"Don't act so! Everybody's looking."
+
+"They'd better look. I'm drowning while they wait."
+
+She untied the horse and came back.
+
+"Climb in there and stop your fooling, and I'll tell you all about it."
+
+He crawled in with tearing groans of mock agony, and then leaned his
+head against her shoulder. "Well, go on, Sis; I can bear it now."
+
+She nudged him to make him sit up.
+
+"Well, you know we've had a revival."
+
+"So you wrote. Must have been a screamer to fetch Dad and old Marsden. A
+regular Pentecost of Shinar."
+
+"It was--I mean it was beautiful. I saw father was getting stirred up.
+He prayed almost all day yesterday, and at night--Well, I can't tell
+you, but Wallace talked, oh, so beautiful and tender!"
+
+"She calls him Wallace?" mused Herman, like a comedian. "Hush! And then
+came the hand-shaking, and then the minister came home with us because
+father asked him to, and stayed because he liked the chicken."
+
+The girl was hurt, and she showed it. "If you make fun, I won't tell you
+another word," she said.
+
+"Away Chicago! enter Cyene! Well, come, I won't fool any more."
+
+"Then after Wallace--I mean--"
+
+"Let it stand. Come to the murder."
+
+"Then father came and asked me to send for you, and mother cried, and so
+did he. And, oh, Hermie, he's so sweet and kind! Don't make fun of him,
+will you? It's splendid to have him give in, and everybody feels glad
+that the district will be all friendly again."
+
+Herman did not gibe now. His voice was gentle. The pathos in the scene
+appealed to him. "So the old man sent for me himself, did he?"
+
+"Yes; he could hardly wait till morning. But this morning, when we came
+to call the teacher, he didn't answer, and father went in and found him
+unconscious. Then I went for the doctor."
+
+Bay Tom whirled along in the splendid dusk, his nostrils flaring ghostly
+banners of steam on the cold, crisp air. The stars overhead were points
+of green and blue and crimson light, low-hung, changing each moment.
+Their influence entered the soul of the mocking young fellow. He felt
+very solemn, almost melancholy, for a moment.
+
+"Well, Sis, I've got something to tell you all. I'm going to tell it to
+you by degrees. I'm going to be married."
+
+"Oh!" she gasped, with quick, indrawn breath. "Who?"
+
+"Don't be ungrammatical, whatever you do. She's a cashier in a
+restaurant, and she's a fine girl," he added, steadily, as if combating
+a prejudice. He forgot for the moment that such prejudices did not exist
+in Cyene.
+
+Sis was instantly tender, and very, very serious.
+
+"Of course she is, or you wouldn't care for her. Oh, I'd like to see
+her!"
+
+"I'll take you up some day and show her to you."
+
+"Oh, will you? Oh, when can I go?" She was smitten into gravity again.
+"Not till the teacher is well."
+
+Herman pretended to be angry. "Dog take the teacher, the old
+spindle-legs! If I'd known he was going to raise such a ruction in our
+quiet and peaceful neighborhood, I never would have brought him here."
+
+Mattie did not laugh; she pondered. She never quite understood her
+brother when he went off on those queer tirades, which might be a joke
+or an insult. He had grown away from her in his city life.
+
+They rode on in silence the rest of the way, except now and then an
+additional question from Mattie concerning his sweetheart.
+
+As they neared the farm-house she lost interest in all else but the
+condition of the young minister. They could see the light burning dimly
+in his room, and in the parlor and kitchen as well, and this unusual
+lighting stirred the careless young man deeply. It was associated in his
+mind with death and birth, and also with great joy. The house was
+lighted so the night his elder brother died, and it looked so to him
+when he whirled into the yard with the doctor when Mattie was born.
+
+"Oh, I hope he isn't worse!" said the girl, with deep feeling.
+
+Herman put his arm about her, and she knew he knew.
+
+"So do I, Sis."
+
+Allen came to the door as they drove in, and the careless boy realized
+suddenly the emotional tension his father was in. As the old man came to
+the sleigh-side he could not speak. His fingers trembled as he took the
+outstretched hand of his boy.
+
+Herman's voice shook a little:
+
+"Well, Dad, Mattie says the war is over."
+
+The old man tried to speak, but only coughed and then he blew his nose.
+At last he said, brokenly:
+
+"Go right in; your mother's waitin'."
+
+It was singularly dramatic to the youth. To come from the careless,
+superficial life of his city companions into contact with such primeval
+passions as these made him feel like a spectator at some new and
+powerful and tragic play.
+
+His mother fell upon his neck and cried, while Mattie stood by pale and
+anxious. Inside the parlor could be heard the mumble of men's voices.
+
+In such wise do death and the fear of death fall upon country homes. All
+day the house had swarmed with people. All day this mother had looked
+forward to the reconciliation of her husband with her son. All day had
+the pale and silent minister of God kept his corpse-like calm, while all
+about the white snow gleamed, and radiant shadows filled every hollow,
+and the cattle bawled and frisked in the barn-yard, and the fowls
+cackled joyously, what time the mild, soft wind breathed warmly over the
+land.
+
+Mattie cried out to her mother, in quick, low voice, "Oh mother, how is
+he?"
+
+"He ain't no worse. The doctor says there's no immediate danger."
+
+The girl brought her hands together girlishly, and said: "Oh, I'm so
+glad. Is he awake?"
+
+"No; he's asleep."
+
+"Is the doctor still here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I guess I'll step in," said Herman.
+
+The doctor and George Chapman sat beside the hard-coal heater, talking
+in low voices. The old doctor was permitting himself the luxury of a
+story of pioneer life. He arose with automatic courtesy, and shook hands
+with Herman.
+
+"How's the sick man getting on?"
+
+"Vera well--vera well--consederin' the mon is a complete
+worn-out--that's all--naethin' more. Thes floom-a-didale bezniss of
+rantin' away on the fear o' the Laird for sax weeks wull have worn out
+the frame of a bool-dawg."
+
+Herman and Chapman smiled. "I hope you'll tell him that."
+
+"Na fear, yoong mon," said the grim old warrior. "Weel, now, ai'll juist
+be takin' anither look at him."
+
+Herman went in with the doctor, and stood looking on while the old man
+peered and felt about. He came out soon, and, leaving a few directions
+with Herman and Chapman, took his departure. Everything seemed
+favorable, he said.
+
+There was no longer poignancy of anxiety in Mattie's mind, she was too
+much of a child to imagine the horror of loss, but she was grave and gay
+by turns. Her healthy and wholesome nature continually reasserted itself
+over the power of her newly attained woman's interest in the young
+preacher. She went to bed and slept dreamlessly, while Herman yawned and
+inwardly raged at the fix in which circumstances had placed him.
+
+Like many another lover, days away from his sweetheart were lost days.
+He wondered how she would take all this life in Cyene. It would be good
+fun to bring her down, anyway, and hear her talk. He planned such a
+trip, and grew so interested in the thought he forgot his patient.
+
+In the early dawn Wallace rallied and woke. Herman heard the rustle of
+the pillow, and turned to find the sick man's eyes looking at him
+fixedly, calm but puzzled. Herman's lips slowly changed into a beautiful
+boyish smile. "Hello, old man! How do you find yourself?" His hearty,
+humorous greeting seemed to do the sick man good. Herman approached the
+bed. "Know where you are?" Wallace slowly put out a hand, and Herman
+took it. "You're coming on all right. Want some breakfast? Make it
+bucks?" he said, in Chicago restaurant slang. "White wings--sunny--one
+up coff."
+
+All this was good tonic for Wallace, and an hour later he sipped broth,
+while Mrs. Allen and the Deacon and Herman stood watching the process
+with apparently consuming interest. Mattie was still soundly sleeping.
+
+Now began delicious days of convalescence, during which Wallace looked
+peacefully out at the coming and going of the two women, each possessing
+powerful appeal to him: one the motherly presence which had been denied
+him for many years, the other something he had never permitted himself
+to hope for--a sweetheart's daily companionship.
+
+He lay there planning his church, and also his home. Into the thought of
+a new church came shyly but persistently the thought of a fireside of
+his own, with this young girl sitting in the glow of it waiting for him.
+His life possessed little romance. He had earned his own way through
+school and to college. His slender physical energies had been taxed to
+their utmost at every stage of his climb, but now it seemed as though
+some blessed rest and peace were at hand.
+
+Meanwhile, the bitter partisans met each other coming and going out of
+the gate of the Allen estate, and the goodness of God shone in their
+softened faces. Herman was skeptical of its lasting quality, but was
+forced to acknowledge that it was a lovely light. He it was who made the
+electrical suggestion to rebuild the church as an evidence of good
+faith. "You say you're regenerated. Well, prove it--go ahead and
+regenerate the church," he said.
+
+The enthusiasm of the neighborhood took flame. It should be done. A
+meeting was called. Everybody subscribed money or work. It was a
+generous outpouring of love and faith.
+
+It was Herman also who counselled secrecy. "It would be a nice thing to
+surprise him," he said. "We'll agree to keep the scheme from him at
+home, if you don't give it away."
+
+They set to work like bees. The women came down one day and took
+possession with brooms and mops and soap, and while the carpenters
+repaired the windows they fell savagely upon the grime of the seats and
+floors. The walls of the church echoed with woman's gossip and girlish
+laughter. Everything was scoured, from the door-hinges to the altar
+rails. New doors were hung and a new stove secured, and then came the
+painters to put a new coat of paint on the inside. The cold weather
+forbade repainting the outside.
+
+The sheds were rebuilt by men whose hearts glowed with old-time fire. It
+was like pioneer days, when "barn-raisings" and "bees" made life worth
+while in a wild, stern land. The old men were moved to tears, and the
+younger rough men shouted cheery, boisterous cries to hide their own
+deep emotion. Hand met hand in heartiness never shown before. Neighbors
+frequented one another's homes, and the old times of visiting and
+brotherly love came back upon them. Nothing marred the perfect beauty of
+their revival--save the fear of its evanescence. It seemed too good to
+last.
+
+Meanwhile love of another and merrier sort went on. The young men and
+maidens turned prayer-meeting into trysts and scrubbing-bees into
+festivals. They rode from house to house under glittering stars, over
+sparkling snows, singing:
+
+  "Hallelujah! 'tis done:
+  I believe on the Son;
+  I am saved by the blood
+  Of the Crucified One."
+
+And their rejoicing chorus was timed to the clash of bells on swift
+young horses. Who shall say they did not right? Did the Galilean forbid
+love and joy?
+
+No matter. God's stars, the mysterious night, the bells, the watchful
+bay of dogs, the sting of snow, the croon of loving voices, the clasp of
+tender arms, the touch of parting lips--these things, these joys
+outweigh death and hell, and all that makes the criminal tremble. Being
+saved, they must of surety rejoice.
+
+And through it all Wallace crawled slowly back to life and strength. He
+ate of Mother Allen's chicken-broth and of toast from Mattie's
+care-taking hand, and gradually reassumed color and heart. His solemn
+eyes watched the young girl with an intensity which seemed to take her
+strength from her. She would gladly have given her blood for him, if it
+had occurred to her, or if it had been suggested as a good thing;
+instead, she gave him potatoes baked to a nicety, and buttered toast
+that would melt on the tongue, and, on the whole, they served the
+purpose.
+
+One day a smartly dressed man called to see Wallace. Mattie recognized
+him as the Baptist clergyman from Kesota. He came in, and, introducing
+himself said he had heard of the excellent work of Mr. Stacey, and that
+he would like to speak with him.
+
+Wallace was sitting in a rocking-chair in the parlor. Herman was in
+Chicago, and there was no one but Mrs. Allen and Mattie in the house.
+
+The Kesota minister introduced himself to Wallace, and then entered upon
+a long eulogium upon his work in Cyene. He asked after his credentials,
+his plans, his connections, and then he said:
+
+"You've done a _fine_ work in softening the hearts of these people. We
+had almost _despaired_ of doing anything with them. Yes, you have done a
+_won-der-ful work_, and now we must reorganize a regular society here. I
+will be out again when you get stronger, and we'll see about it."
+
+Wallace was too weak to take any stand in the talk, and so allowed him
+to get up and go away without protest or explanation of his own plans.
+
+When Herman came down on Saturday, he told him of the Baptist minister's
+visit and the proposition. Herman stretched his legs out toward the fire
+and put his hands in his pockets. Then he rose and took a strange
+attitude, such as Wallace had seen in comic pictures--it was, in fact,
+the attitude of a Bowery tough.
+
+"Say, look here! If you want 'o set dis community by de ears agin, you
+do dat ting--see? You play dat confidence game and dey'll rat ye--sure!
+You invite us to come into a non-partisan deal--see?--and den you
+springs your own platform on us in de joint corkus--and we won't stand
+it! Dis goes troo de way it began, or we don't play--see?"
+
+Out of all this Wallace deduced his own feeling--that continued peace
+and good-will lay in keeping clear of all doctrinal debates and
+disputes--the love of Christ, the desire to do good and to be clean.
+These emotions had been roused far more deeply than he realized, and he
+lifted his face to God in the hope that no lesser thing should come in
+to mar the beauty of His Church.
+
+There came a day when he walked out in the sunshine, and heard the hens
+caw-cawing about the yard, and saw the young colts playing about the
+barn. And the splendor of the winter day dazzled him as if he were
+looking upon the broad-flung robe of the Lord Most High. Everywhere the
+snow lay ridged with purple and brown hedges. Smoke rose peacefully from
+chimneys, and the sound of boys skating on a near-by pond added the
+human element.
+
+The trouble of concealing the work of the community upon the church
+increased daily, and Mattie feared that some hint of it had come to him.
+She had her plan. She wanted to drive him down herself, and let him see
+the reburnished temple alone. But this was impossible. On the day when
+he seemed able to go, her father drove them all down. Marsden was there
+also, and several of his women-folks, putting down a new carpet on the
+platform. As they drew near the church, Wallace said:
+
+"Why, they've fixed up the sheds!"
+
+Mattie nodded. She was trembling with the delicious excitement of
+it--she wanted him hurried into the church at once. He had hardly time
+to think before he was whirled up to the new porch, and Marsden came
+out, followed by several women. He was bewildered by it all. Marsden
+helped him out with hearty voice, sounding:
+
+"Careful now! Don't hurry!"
+
+Mattie took one arm, and so he entered the church. Everything repainted!
+Everything warm and bright and cozy!
+
+The significance of it came to him like a wave of light, and he took his
+seat in the pulpit chair and stared at them all with a look on his pale
+face which moved them more than words. He was like a man transfigured by
+an inward glow. His eyes for an instant flamed with this marvellous
+fire, then darkened, softened with tears, and his voice came back in a
+sob of joy, and he could only say:
+
+"Friends--brethren!"
+
+Marsden, after much coughing, said:
+
+"We all united on this. We wanted to have you come to the church
+and--Well, we couldn't bear to have you see it again the way it was."
+
+He understood it now. It was the sign of a united community. It set the
+seal of Christ's victory over evil passions, and the young preacher's
+head bowed in prayer, and they all knelt, while his weak voice returned
+thanks to the Lord for his gifts.
+
+Then they all rose and shook off the oppressive solemnity, and he had
+time to look around at all the changes. At last he turned to Mattie and
+reached out his hand--he had the boldness of a man in the shadow of some
+mighty event which makes false modesty and conventions shadowy things of
+little importance. His sharpened interior sense read her clear soul, and
+he knew she was his, therefore he reached her his hand, and she came to
+him with a flush on her face, which died out as she stood proudly by his
+side, while he said:
+
+"And Martha shall help me."
+
+Therefore, this good thing happened--that in the midst of his fervor and
+his consecration to God's work, the love of woman found a place.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+AN AFTERWORD: OF WINDS, SNOWS, AND THE STARS
+
+  O witchery of the winter night
+    (With broad moon shouldering to the west)
+
+  In the city streets the west wind sweeps
+  Before my feet in rustling flight;
+  The midnight snows in untracked heaps
+  Lie cold and desolate and white.
+  I stand and wait with upturned eyes,
+  Awed with the splendor of the skies
+  And star-trained progress of the moon.
+
+  The city walls dissolve like smoke
+  Beneath the magic of the moon,
+  And age falls from me like a cloak;
+  I hear sweet girlish voices ring
+  Clear as some softly stricken string--
+  (The moon is sailing to the west.)
+  The sleigh-bells clash in homeward flight;
+  With frost each horse's breast is white--
+  (The big moon sinking to the west.)
+
+       "Good night, Lettie!"
+       "Good night, Ben!"
+  (The moon is sinking at the west.)
+  "Good night, my sweetheart."  Once again
+  The parting kiss while comrades wait
+  Impatient at the roadside gate,
+  And the red moon sinks beyond the west.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Other Main-Travelled Roads, by Hamlin Garland
+
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