MOUNTAIN BLOOD

THE WORKS OFJOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

THE LAY ANTHONYMOUNTAIN BLOODTHE THREE BLACK PENNYSGOLD AND IRONJAVA HEADTHE HAPPY ENDLINDA CONDON

MOUNTAIN BLOOD

A NOVEL

BY

JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

NEW YORK

ALFRED · A · KNOPF

1919

COPYRIGHT, 1915, 1919, BYALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ToMY MOTHER

ONE

I

The fiery disk of the sun was just lifting above the shoulder of hillsthat held the city of Stenton when the Greenstream stage rolled brisklyfrom its depot, a dingy frame tavern, and commenced the long journey toits high destination. The tavern was on the outskirts of town; beyond, abroad, level plain reached to a shimmering blue silhouette of mountainsprinted on a silvery sky; and the stage immediately left the paved streetfor the soft, dusty country road. Stenton was not yet astir; except for anoccasional maid sleepily removing the milk from gleaming marble steps, orearly workmen with swollen, sullen countenances, the streets weredeserted. The dewy freshness of morning was already lost in the rapidlymounting heat of the June day. Above the blackened willows that half hidthe waterworks an oily column of smoke wavered upward in slow, thickcoils, mingling with the acid odor of ammonia from a neighboring icemanufacturing plant; a locomotive whistled harsh and persistent; the heatvibrated in visible fans above the pavement. 

From the vantage point of the back porches of Stenton the sluggish maidscould see the Greenstream stage fast diminishing. The dust rose andenveloped it, until it appeared to be a ball, gilded by the sun, rollingover the rank grey-green plain. Finally it disappeared from the vision ofthe awakening city. 

II

It was a mountain surrey, with a top and rolled curtains, three rigidseats, and drawn by ugly, powerful horses in highly simplified harness. Atthe rear a number of mailbags, already coated with a dun film, weresecurely strapped. 

The driver lounged forward, skilfully picking flies with his whip from thehorses' backs. He had a smooth countenance, deeply tanned, and pale, clearblue eyes. At his side sat a priest in black, a man past middle age, withashen, embittered lips, and a narrowed, chilling gaze. They were silent, contemplative; but, from the seat behind them, flowed a constant, buoyant, youthful chatter. A girl with a shining mass of chestnut hair gatheredloosely on a virgin neck was recounting the thrilling incidents of"commencement week" for the benefit of a heavily-built young man with ahandsome, masklike countenance. On the last seat a carelessly-garbed malewas drawing huge clouds of smoke from a formidable cigar. 

Gordon Makimmon, the driver, did not know the latter. He had engaged andpaid for his seat the night before, evading such indirect query asMakimmon had addressed to him. It was a fundamental principle ofGreenstream conduct that the direct question was inadmissible; at the sametime, the inhabitants of that far, isolated valley were, on all occasions, coldly curious about such strangers, their motives and complexions ofmind, as reached their self-sufficient territory. This combinedrestriction and necessity produced a wily type of local inquisitor. Buthere Gordon's diplomacy had been in vain, his surmising at sea. The otherswere intimate and familiar figures:

Father Merlier's advent into Greenstream had occurred a number of yearsbefore. He had arrived with papers of introduction to one of the fewpapist families in that rigorously protestant neighborhood; and, immediately, had erected outside the village of Greenstream a smallmission school and dwelling, where he addressed himself to the herculeantask of gaining converts to his faith. At first he had been regarded withunconcealed distrust--boys, when the priest's back was turned, had thrownstones at him; the turbulent element, on more than one occasion, haddiscussed the advisability of "running" him from the community. But it wastrue of both boys and men that, when they had confronted the beady, blackglitter of Merlier's unfaltering gaze, encountered the patent contempt ofhis rigid lips, they had subsided into an unintelligible mutter, and hadbeen glad to escape. 

He became an habitual sight, riding a blooded mare through the valley, over lonely trails, and was finally accepted as a recognized localinstitution. His title and exotic garb, the grim quality of his manhood, his austere disregard for bodily welfare, his unmistakable courage--morethan any other human quality extolled throughout Greenstream--became acause of prideful boasting in the County. 

Gordon Makimmon had known Lettice Hollidew, now speaking in little, girlish rushes behind him, since her first appearance in a baby carriage, nineteen or twenty years back. He had watched her without particularinterest, the daughter of the richest man in Greenstream, grow out ofsturdy, barelegged childhood into the girl he had now for five years beendriving, in early summer and fall, to and from the boarding school atStenton. 

She was, he had noted, reserved. Other schoolgirls, in their passages fromtheir scattered upland homes, were eager to share Gordon's seat by thewhip; and, with affected giggling, or ringing bursts of merriment, essayedto drive the wise, heedless mountain horses. But Lettice Hollidew hadalways shrunk from the prominent place on the stage; there was neitherbanter nor invitation in her tones as she greeted him at the outset oftheir repeated trips, or as she gravely thanked him at the end of theday's journey. 

Her father--he was reputed to possess almost half a million dollars--was asilent man, suspicious and wary in his contact and dealings with theworld; and it was probable that those qualities had been softened inPompey Hollidew's daughter to a habit of diffidence, to a customary, instinctive repression. 

No such characteristics laid their restraint on Buckley Simmons, herpresent companion. His immobile face, with its heavy, good features andslow-kindling comprehension, was at all times expressive of loudself-assertion, insatiable curiosity, facile confidence; from his cleanshaven lips fell always satisfied comment, pronouncement, impatientopinion. If Hollidew was the richest man in Greenstream Valentine Simmonswas a close second. Indeed, one might be found as wealthy as the other; asa matter of fact, the Simmons holdings in real estate, scattered broadcastover the county, would realize more than Hollidew could readilycommand--thus Valentine Simmons' son, Buckley. 

He was elaborately garbed in grey serge, relentlessly shaped to conform toan exaggerated, passing fashion, a flaring china silk tie with a broadlydisplayed handkerchief to match, yellow-red shoes with wide ribbands, anda stiff, claret-colored felt hat. 

Gordon Makimmon, with secret dissatisfaction, compared himself with thissartorial model. Gordon's attire, purely serviceable, had apparently takenon a protective coloring from the action of time and the elements; hisshirt had faded from a bright buff to a nondescript shade which blendedwith what had once been light corduroy trousers; his heavy shoes, treatedonly the evening before to a coat of preservative grease, were now coveredwith muck; and, pulled over his eyes, a shapeless canvas hat completed thelist of the visible items of his appearance. 

He swore moodily to himself as he considered the picture he must presentto the dapper youth and immaculate girl behind him. He should haveremembered that Lettice Hollidew would be returning from school to-day, and at least provided an emergency collar. His sister Clare was alwaysscolding him about his clothes ... But Clare's was very gentle scolding. 

A species of uncomfortable defiance, a studied contempt for appearance, possessed him: he was as good any day as Buckley Simmons, the clothes onwhose back had probably been stripped from the desperate need of some leanmountain inhabitant trading at the parental Simmons' counter. Thecarefully cherished sense of injury grew within him; he suspectedinnuendoes, allusions to his garb, in the half-heard conversation behindhim; he spoke to his horses in hard, sharp tones, and, without reason, swept the whip across their ears. 

III

Meanwhile, they drew steadily over the plain; the mountains before themgradually lost their aspect of mere silhouette; depths were discernible;the blue dissolved to green, to towering slopes dense with foliage. Directly before them a dark shadow steadily grew darker, until it wasresolved into a cleft through the range. They drew nearer and nearer tothe pierced barrier, the road mounted perceptibly, the trees thickened bythe wayside. A covey of dun partridge fluttered out of the underbrush. 

The sun was high in a burning grey vault, and flooded the plain withcolorless, bright light. The stage paused before entering the opening inthe rocky wall; the stranger in the rear seat turned for a comprehensive, last survey. Simmering in a calorific envelope the distant roofs andstacks of Stenton were visible, isolated in the white heat of the pitilessday. Above the city hung a smudge, a thumbprint of oily black smoke, carrying the suggestion of an intolerable concentration, a focal point ofthe fiery discomfort. In the foreground a buzzard wheeled, inevitable, depressing. 

With a sharp flourish of his whip Gordon urged the stage into the coldhumidity of the gorge. Stenton and the plain were lost as it passedbetween close, dripping rocks, rank verdure, masses of gigantic, paleolithic fern. 

IV

The dank, green smell hung in their nostrils after they had left theravine for a fertile tableland. They trotted through a village strungalong the road, a village of deeply-scrolled eaves under the thick foliageof maples, of an incredible number of churches--"Reformed, " "Established, "qualified Methodist, uncompromising Baptist. They were all built of wood, and in varying states of repair that bore mute witness to the persuasiveeloquence of their several pastors. 

Beyond, the way rose once more, sunny and dusty and monotonous. The priestwas absorbed, muttering unintelligibly over a small, flexible volume. Theconversation between Lettice Hollidew and Buckley fell into increasingperiods of silence. The stranger lit a fresh cigar, the smoke from whichhung out back in such clouds that the power of the stage might well havebeen mistaken for steam. 

The road grew steeper still, and, fastening the reins about the whipstock, Gordon swung out over the wheel and walked. He was a spare man, sinewy andupright, and past the golden age of youth. He lounged over the road in acareless manner that concealed his agile strength, his tireless endurance. This indolent carriage and his seemingly slight build had, on more thanone occasion, been disastrously misleading to importunate or beerystrangers. He could, and did, fight whenever chance offered, with a coldpassion, a destructive abandon, that had won him, throughout the turbulentconfines of Greenstream, a flattering measure of peace. 

In this manner his father, just such another, had fought before him, andhis grandfather before that. Nothing further back was known inGreenstream, It was well known that the first George Gordon Makimmon--theMac had been speedily debauched by the slurring, local speech--had madehis way to Virginia from Scotland, upon the final collapse of a LostCause. The instinct of the highlander had led him deep into the ruggedranges, where he had lived to see the town and county of Greenstreamcrystallize about his log walls and stony patch. 

There, finally breaking down the resistance of a heroic constitution, hehad succeeded in drinking himself to death. His son had grown up imbuedwith local tradition and ideas, and was settling seriously to a repetitionof the elder's fate, when the Civil War offered him a wide, recognizedfield for the family belligerent spirit. He was improving this chance tothe utmost with Morley's Raiders when a slug ended his activities in thesecond year of the war. 

It was characteristic of the Makimmons that they should each have lefttheir family in precarious circumstances. They were not, they wouldcontemptuously assert, farmers or merchants. When the timber was cut fromthe valley, the underbrush burned, and the superb cloth of grass startedthat had formed the foundation of a number of comfortable fortunes, theMakimmons, scornful of the effort, had remained outside the profit. 

Such income as they enjoyed had been obtained from renting their acres totransient and indifferent farmers. In the crises of life and death, orunder the desire for immediate and more liquor, they sold necessaryslices. This continued until nothing remained for the present GordonMakimmon but the original dwelling--now grotesquely misshapen from theaddition of casual sheds and extensions--and a small number of acres onthe outskirts of town. 

There he lived with Clare, his sister. Their mother, the widow of thatMakimmon whose disputatious temper had been dignified by the epitaph of"heroic sacrifice, " had died of a complicity of patent medicines thewinter before. An older brother had totally disappeared from thecognizance of Greenstream during Gordon's boyhood; and a married sister, completing the tale, lived at the opposite end of the county, held closeby poverty and her own large brood. 

Summer and winter Gordon Makimmon drove the stage between Greenstream andStenton. At dawn he left Greenstream, arriving in Stenton at the end ofday; the following morning he re-departed for Greenstream. Thismechanical, monotonous routine satisfied his need without placing toogreat a strain on his energy; he enjoyed rolling over the summer roads orin the crisp clear sunlight of winter; he liked the casual converse of thechance passengers, the inevitable deference to his local knowledge, thebirdlike chatter and flattery of the young women. He liked, so easily, toplay oracle and wiseman; he liked the admiration called forth by a certaintheatrical prowess with the reins and whip. 

On the occasions when he was too drunk to drive--not over often--asubstitute was quietly found until he recovered and little was said. Gordon Makimmon was invaluable in a public charge, a trust--he had neverlost a penny of the funds he continually carried for deposit in theStenton banks; no insult had been successfully offered to any daughter ofGreenstream accompanying him without other care in the stage. 

V

They rose steadily, crossing the roof of a ridge, and descended abruptlybeyond. Green prospects opened before them--a broad valley was disclosed, with a broad, shallow stream dividing its meadows; scattered farmhouses, orderly, prosperous, commanded their shorn acres. A mailbag was detachedand left at a crossroad in charge of two little girls, primly important, smothered in identical, starched pink sunbonnets. The Greenstream stagesplashed through the shallow, shining ford; the ascent on the far side ofthe valley imperceptibly began. 

The sun was almost at the zenith; the shadow of the stage fell short andsharp on the dry, loamy road; a brown film covered the horses and vehicle;it sifted through the apparel of the passengers and coated their lips. Therise to the roof of the succeeding range seemed interminable; the roadlooped fields blue with buckwheat, groves of towering, majestic chestnut, a rocky slope, where, by a crevice, a swollen and sluggish rattlesnakedropped from sight. 

At last, in the valley beyond, the half-way house, dinner and a change ofhorses were reached. The forest swept down in an unbroken tide to theporch of the isolated roadside tavern; a swift stream filled the woodenstructure with the ceaseless murmur of water. In the dusty, gold gloom ofa spacious stable Gordon unhitched his team. Outside, in a wooden trough, he splashed his hands and face, then entered the dining-room. 

A long table was occupied by an industrious company that broke theabsorbed silence only by explosive requests for particularized dishes. Above the table hovered the wife of the proprietor, constantly waving afly brush--streamers of colored paper fastened to a slender stick--abovethe heads of her husband and guests. 

Gordon Makimmon ate largely and rapidly, ably seconded by the strangepassenger and Buckley Simmons. The priest, Merlier, ate sparingly, in anabsent, perfunctory manner. Lettice Hollidew, at the opposite end of thetable, displayed the generous but dainty appetite of girlhood. The coat toher suit, with a piece of lace pinned about the collar, and a new, flatleather bag with a silver initial, hung from the back of her chair. 

They again listlessly took their places in the stage. Buckley Simmonsemulated the stranger in lighting a mahogany-colored cigar with anornamental band which Buckley moved toward his lips before the swiftlyapproaching conflagration. Gordon drove with his mind pleasantly vacant, lulled by the monotonous miles of road flickering through his vision, theshifting forms of distant peaks, virid vistas, nearby trees and bushes, all saturated in the slumberous, yellow, summer heat. 

Gradually the aspect of their surroundings changed, the forms of themountains grew bolder, streams raced whitely over broken, rocky beds; theranks of the forest closed up, only a rare trail broke the road. Theorderly farmhouses, the tilled fields, disappeared; a rare cabin, roughlyconstructed of unbarked logs, dominated a parched patch, cut from theheart-breaking tangle of the wild, a thread of smoke creeping from aprecarious chimney above the far, unbroken canopy of living green. Children with matted hair, beady-eyed like animals, in bag-like slips, filled the doorways; adults, gaunt-jawed and apathetic, straightenedmomentarily up from their toil with the stubborn earth. 

At the sharpest ascent yet encountered Gordon again left the stage. Buckley Simmons recalled a short cut through the wood, and noisilyentreated Lettice Hollidew to accompany him. 

"It's awfully pretty, " he urged, "and easy; no rocks to cut your shoes. I'll go ahead with a stick to look out for snakes. "

She shuddered charmingly at the final item, and vowed she would not go astep. But he persisted, and in the end persuaded her. The strangercontinued unmoved in his place; Merlier shifted not a pound's weight, butsat with a cold, indifferent face turned upon the straining horses. 

Gordon walked ahead, whistling under his breath, and, with a singleskilful twist, he rolled a cigarette from a muslin bag of tobacco labeledGreen Goose. 

The short cut into which Buckley and Lettice Hollidew disappeared refoundthe road, Gordon knew, over a mile above; and he was surprised, shortly, to see the girl's white waist moving rapidly into the open. She was alone, breathing in excited gasps, which she struggled to subdue. Her face thatfive minutes before had been so creamily, placidly composed was now hotlyred; her eyes shone with angry, unshed tears. 

Gordon's lips formed a silent exclamation ... Buckley evidently had madean error in judgment. Lettice stepped out into the road, and, plainlyunwilling to encounter the questioning eyes in the stage, walked rigidlybeside Gordon. Behind the obvious confusion, the hurt surprise of hercountenance, an unexpected, dormant quality had been stirred into being. The crimson flood in her cheeks had stained more than her clear skin--ithad colored her gracile and candid girlhood so that it would never againbe pellucid; into it had been spilled some of the indelible dye of woman. 

Gordon Makimmon gazed with newly-awakened interest at Lettice; for thefirst time he thought of her as other than a school-girl; for the firsttime he discovered in her the potent, magnetic, disturbing quality of sex. Buckley Simmons had clumsily forced it into consciousness. A fleeting, unformulated regret enveloped him in the shadow of its melancholy, anintangible, formless sorrow at the swift passage of youth, the inevitablelapse of time. A mounting anger at Buckley possessed him ... She had beenin his, Gordon Makimmon's, care. The anger touched his pride, hisself-esteem, and grew cold, deliberate: he watched with a contracted jawfor Simmons' appearance. 

"Why, " he exclaimed, in a lowered voice, "that lown tore your prettyshirtwaist!"

"He had no reason at all, " she protested; "it was just horrid. " A littleshiver ran over her. "He ... He held me and kissed ... Hateful. "

"I'll teach him to keep his kissing where it's liked, " Gordon proclaimed. His instinctively theatrical manner diminished not a jot the menace of thethreat. 

"Oh! please, please don't fight. " She turned a deeply concernedcountenance upon him. "That would hurt me very much more--"

"It won't be a fight, " he reassured her, "only a little hint, somethingfor Buck to think about. No one will know. " He could not resist adding, "Most people go a good length before fighting with me. "

"I have heard that you are awfully--" she hesitated, then, "brave. "

"It was 'ugly' you heard, " he quickly supplied the pause. "But that's nottrue; I don't fight like some men, just for a good time. Why, in the townsover the West Virginia line they fight all night; they'll fight--kill eachother--for two bits, or a drink of liquor.... There's Buckley now, comingin above. "

Buckley Simmons entered the road from a narrow trail a number of yardsahead of the stage. He tramped heavily, holding a hickory switch in onehand, cutting savagely at the underbrush. The stage leisurely caught up tohim until the horses' heads were opposite his thickset form. Gordon, fromthe other side of the team, swung himself into his seat. He grasped thewhip, and, leaning out, swept the heavy leather thong in a vicious circle. It whistled above the horses, causing them to plunge, and the lash, stopped suddenly, drew across Buckley Simmons' face. For an instant hisstartled countenance was white, and then it was wet, gleaming and scarlet. He pressed his hands to his mouth, and stumbled confused into the ditch. 

Gordon stopped the stage. Merlier gave vent to a sibilant exclamation, and Lattice Hollidew covered her eyes. The stranger sprang to the road, and hurried to the injured man's side. Gordon got down slowly. "Where didit get him?" he inquired, with a shallow show of concern. He regarded withindifferent eyes the gaping cut across Simmons' jaw, while the strangerwas converting a large linen handkerchief into a ready bandage. 

Buckley, in stammering, shocked rage, began to curse Gordon's clumsiness, and, in his excitement, the wound bled more redly. "You will have to keepquiet, " he was told, "for this afternoon anyhow. "

"I'm not a 'dam' blind bat, " Gordon informed his victim in a rapidundertone; "my eyes are sharper than usual to-day. " Above the stainedbandage Simmons' gaze was blankly enraged. "That won't danger you none, "Gordon continued, in louder, apparently unstudied tones; "but you can'tkiss the girls for a couple of weeks. "

Buckley Simmons was assisted into the rear seat; Lettice sat alone, herface hidden by the flowery rim of her hat; Merlier was silent, indifferent, bland. The way grew increasingly wilder, and climbed andclimbed; at their back dipped and spread mile upon mile of unbrokenhemlock; the minute clearings, the solitary cabins, were lost in the stillexpanse of tree tops; the mountain towered blue, abrupt, before them. Thestranger consulted a small map. "This is Buck Mountain, " he announcedrather than queried; "Greenstream Village is beyond, west from here, withthe valley running north and south. "

"You have got us laid out right, " Gordon assented; "this all's not new toyou. " It was as close to the direct question as Gordon Makimmon couldbring himself. And, in the sequel, it proved the wisdom of his creed; for, obviously, the other avoided the implied query. "The Government prints agood map, " he remarked, and turned his shoulder squarely upon anyprolongation of the conversation. 

They were now at the summit of Buck Mountain, but dense juniper thicketshid from them any extended view. After a turn, over the washed, rockyroad, the Greenstream Valley lay outspread below. 

The sun was lowering, and the shadow of the western range swept down thegreat, somber, wooded wall towering against an illimitable vault of rosylight; the lengthening shadows of the groves of trees on the lower slopefell into the dark, cool, emerald cleft. It was scarcely three fieldsacross the shorn, cultivated space to the opposite, precipitous barrier;between, the valley ran narrow and rich into a faint, broken haze of peaksthinly blue on either hand. And, held in the still green heart of thatwithdrawn, hidden space, the village lay along its white highway. 

The stage dropped with short, sharp rushes down the winding road; thehouses lost the toy-like aspect of distance; cowbells clashed faintly; adog's bark quivered, suspended in hushed space. The stage passed thefirst, scattered houses, and was speedily in the village: each dwellinghad, behind a white picket fence, a strip of sod and a tangle of simple, gay flowers--scarlet, white, purple and yellow, now coated with a fine, chalky, summer dust. The dwellings were, for the most part, frame, with arare structure of brick under mansard slates green with moss. The backyards were fenced from the fields, on which hay had been cut and stood inhigh ricks, now casting long, mauve shadows over the close, brilliantgreen. The stage passed the white board structure of the Methodist Church, and stopped before the shallow portico of the post-office. 

VI

A small, familiar group awaited the arrival of the mail; and from itseveral figures detached themselves. The postmaster stepped forward, andassisted Gordon in unfastening the mailbags; a clerk from ValentineSimmons' store, in shirtsleeves elaborately restrained by pink bowedelastics, inquired for a package by express; and Pompey Hollidew pushedimpatiently forward, apparently anxious for a speedy view of his daughter. This laudable assumption was, however, immediately upset by the absent nodhe bestowed upon Lettice, and the evident interest and relief with whichhe turned to the stranger descending from the stage. 

"Mr. Hollidew?" the latter inquired, with ill-concealed surprise. 

Pompey Hollidew, the richest man in Greenstream, wore--as was customarywith him--a crumpled yellow shirt, open at his stringy throat, andinnocent of tie; his trousers, one time lavender, had faded to arepulsive, colorless hue, and hung frayed about cheap, heavy shoesfastened by copper rivets. An ancient cutaway of broadcloth, spotted andgreenish, with an incomplete mustering of buttons, drooped about hisheavy, bowed shoulders; while a weather-beaten derby, seemingly unbrushedfor countless, grimy years, completed his forlorn adornment. 

His face was long, with vertical, pallid folds gathered loosely into achin frosted with unkempt silver; his mouth was lipless, close, shadowedby an overhanging, swollen nose; and, from beneath deep, troubled brows, pale blue eyes set close together regarded life skeptically, intently, with appalling avidity, veiled yet discernible. 

He disappeared, clutching the stranger's sleeve, with an effort atgeniality. Simmons' clerk ruefully tested the weight of a small, heavilynailed box. 

Lettice Hollidew slowly assembled her traveling effects. It was evidentthat she wished to say something to Gordon, for she lingered, patentlyplaying with her gloves, directing at him bright, nervous glances fromunder the straw brim of her hat. But she was forced to depart in silence, for Buckley Simmons, in reply to the queries of the cause of his accident, launched upon a loud, angry explanation of the obvious aspect of theincident. 

"The clumsy yap!" he pointedly exclaimed. 

Gordon entered the group of which Buckley was the hub. "It was too bad tospoil Buck for the girls, " he pronounced coolly; "but he'll be after themagain in a couple of weeks. "

He gazed with level disdain into the tempest gathering in Simmons' eyesabove the dark, spotted handkerchief. He paused, deliberately insolent, challenging a rejoinder, until, none breaking the strained silence, heswung about, and, at the horses' heads, led them to their stabling atPeterman's Hotel. He passed the unpainted, wooden front of the office ofthe _Greenstream Bugle_; the house of Senator Themeny in its lindens on aspreading lawn; on the opposite side the mellow brick face of theCourthouse under towering poplars, and Valentine Simmons' store. 

Gordon stopped at the latter on his way home. It was a long, shedlikestructure with a false façade; before it, elevated a man's height from theroad, was the broad platform where the mountain wagons unloaded theirmerchandise; on the side facing the Courthouse ran a wooden hitching rail. Inside, on the left, Simmons' private office was shut in glass from themain floor of the store; long counters led back into a semi-obscurity, where a clerk was lighting a row of swinging kerosene lamps. 

"Chalk them up, Sampson, " Gordon carelessly told the clerk who wrapped uphis purchases. "How much are those?" he added, indicating a pair ofwomen's low white shoes. 

"Four. They're real buck, and a topnotch article. Nothing better comes. "

Gordon turned them over in his hand; they would, he thought, just fitClare; she liked pretty articles of attire; she had not been so welllately. Clare was a faithful sister. "Just add them to the bundle, " hedirected in a lordly manner. 

The clerk hesitated, and glanced toward the private office, where Simmons'head could be seen pinkly bald. "Do you think you'd better, Gordon?" heasked; "the boss has been crabbed lately about some of the old accounts, and yours has waited as long as any. I wouldn't get nothing to catch hiseye--"

"Add the shoes to my bundle, " Gordon repeated with a narrowing gaze; "Ialways ask for the advice I need. "

Outside he endeavored to recall when he had last paid anything on hisaccount at Simmons' store. This was the last week in June ... Had he paidany in April? in November? He was not able to remember the occasion of hislast settlement. He must attend to that; he had other obligations, too, small but long overdue. He cursed the fluid quality of his wage, foreverflowing through his fingers. He must apportion his expenditures morecarefully; or, better yet, give all his money to Clare; the high-powerrifle he had purchased in Stenton the year before had crippled theirresources; his last Christmas present to Clare had been a heavy drain; hehad not yet recovered from the generous funeral he had given theirmother. 

He was unaccustomed to such considerations. They interfered with the largeview he held of himself, of his importance, his deserts; they limited hisnecessity for a natural indifference to penny matters; and he dismissedthem with an uneasy movement of his shoulders. 

He passed the discolored, plaster bulk of the Presbyterian Church, thedrug store and dwelling of Dr. Pelliter, and was on the outskirts of thevillage. The shadow of the western range had now slipped across the valleyand nearly climbed the opposite wall; lavender scarfs of mist veiled thefar, jumbled peaks in the darkling rift; slim, swaying columns of smokefrom the clustered chimneys of Greenstream towered dizzily through theshaded air to where, high above, they were transformed to gold by thelast, up-flung rays of the sun. 

VII

A smooth, conical hill rose sharply to the left, momentarily shutting outthe valley; and beyond, at the foot of a steep declivity, stood theMakimmon dwelling. Originally a four-square, log house, the logs had beencovered by boards, and to its present, irregular length, one room inwidth, had been added an uneven roofed porch broadside on a narrow lip ofsod by a wide, shallow stream. An indifferent stand of corn heldprecariously to the sharp slope from the public road; an unkempt cowgrazed the dank sod by a primitive well sweep; a heap of tin cans, brightor rusted, their fading paper labels loose and littering the grass, hadbeen untidily accumulated at a back door. 

Gordon passed about the end of his dwelling to the side that faced thewater. A wave of hot air, a heavy, greasy odor and the sputtering ofboiling fat, swept out from the kitchen. He filled a tin basin on theporch from a convenient bucket of water, and made a hasty toilet. 

Clare paused at the door, a long handled spoon in her attenuated grasp;she was an emaciated woman of thirty, with prominent cheek bones, a thin, sensitive nose, and a colorless mouth set in a harsh line by excessivephysical suffering. There was about her, in spite of her gaunt featuresand narrow, stooping frame, something appealingly simple, girlish. A blueribband made a gay note in her faded, scant hair; she had pinned a pieceof draggled color about her throat. "I've been looking for you the halfhour, " she said querulously; "draw up t' the table. "

"I stopped at Simmons', and brought you a pretty, too; it's in thebundle. "

"Gordon!" she exclaimed, as he unwrapped the shoes, "they are elegant! Hadyou ought to have got them? We need so much--mosquito bar, the flies areterrible wearing, the roof's crying for tin, and--"

"You're as bad as Sampson, " he interrupted her, almost shortly; "we've gotto have pleasures as well as profits. And too, " he directed, "don't putthose shoes away like you did that watered silk shawl I got you inStenton. Wear them ... To-night. "

"Oh, no!" she cried, "not just setting around; they'll get smudged. Notto-night, Gordon; maybe to-morrow, or when I go to church. "

"Tonight, " he repeated inexorably. 

A bare, stained table with spreading legs pinned through the oak board wasranged against a bench on the kitchen wall, where, in the watery light ofa small, glass lamp, Gordon and Clare Makimmon ate their supper of flat, dark, salt-raised bread, strips of bacon and dripping greens, andswimming, purplish preserves. 

After supper they sat on the narrow porch, facing the dark, whisperingstream, the night pouring into the deep, still valley. A cold air rosefrom the surface of the water, and Clare wrapped a worn piece of blanketabout her shoulders. At frequent intervals she gazed with palpable delightat her feet, shod in the "real buck. " A deep, melancholy chorus of frogsrose from the creek, mingling with the high, metallic shrilling ofcrickets, the reiterated calling of whippoorwills from a thicket ofpines. 

Gordon Makimmon settled into a waking somnolence, lulled by the familiar, profound, withdrawn repose of the valley. He could distinguish Clare'sform weaving back and forth in a low rocker; the moonless, summer nightembraced, hid, all; there were no lights in the house at his back, nolights visible in the village beyond; only the impenetrable blackness ofthe opposite range and the abrupt band of stars. 

Suddenly Clare's even breathing, the tracking sound of the chair, ceased;she drew two or three sharp, gasping inspirations. Gordon, instantlyalert, rose and stood over her. "Is it bad to-night again?" he askedsolicitously; "shall I get you the ginger water?"

"None ... In the house, " she articulated laboriously; "pretty ... Bad. "

"No, don't leave me; just set; I'll be better in a spell. " He fetched hera glass of water, from which she gulped spasmodically, clutching withcold, wet fingers to his wrist. Then the tension relaxed, her breathinggrew more normal. "It's by now, " she proclaimed unsteadily. 

"I'm going back the road for a little ginger, " he told her from the edgeof the porch; "we'd best have the bottle filled. "

The drug store was dark, closed for the night, and Gordon continued toSimmons' store. The row of swinging, kerosene lamps cast a thick yellowradiance over the long counters, the variously laden shelves. The storewas filled with the odor of coffee, the penetrating smell of printmuslins. 

"Mr. Simmons wants you a minute in the office, " the clerk respondedindirectly to his request for ginger. Gordon instinctively masked agathering premonition of trouble. "Fill her up the while, " he demanded, pushing forward the empty bottle. 

Valentine Simmons was a small man with a pinkly bald head ornamented withfluffs of white hair like cotton wool above his ears, and precise, shavenlips forever awry in the pronouncing of rallying or benevolent sentences;these, with appropriate religious sentiments, formed nine-tenths of hisdiscourse, through which the rare words that revealed his purposes, hisdesires, flashed like slender and ruthless knives. 

He was bending over a tall, narrow ledger when Gordon entered the office;but he immediately closed the book and swung about in his chair. The smallenclosure was hot, and filled with the odor of scorching metal, thebuzzing of a large, blundering fly. 

"Ah!" Valentine Simmons exclaimed pleasantly; "our link with the outerworld, our faithful messenger.... I wanted to see you; ah, yes. " He turnedover the pages of a second, heavier ledger at his hand. "Here itis--Gordon Makimmon, good Scotch Presbyterian name. Five hundred andthirty dollars, " he said suddenly, unexpectedly. 

Gordon was unable to credit his senses, the fact that this was the sum ofhis indebtedness; it was an absurd mistake, and he said so. 

"Everything listed against its date, " the other returned imperturbably, "down to a pair of white buck shoes for a lady to-day--a generous presentfor some enslaver. "

"My sister, " Gordon muttered ineptly. Five hundred and thirty dollars, herepeated incredulously to himself. Five hundred.... "How long has it beenstanding?" he asked. 

The other consulted the book. "Two years, a month and four days, " hereturned exactly. 

"But no notice was served on me; nothing was said about my bill. "

"Ah, we don't like to annoy old friends; just a little word at necessaryintervals. "

Old rumors, stories, came to Gordon's memory in regard to the long creditextended by Simmons to "old friends, " the absence of any renderedaccounts; and, in that connection, the thought of the number of homesteadsthroughout the county that had come, through forced sales, into thestorekeeper's hands. The circumstantial details of these events had beenbitten by impassioned oaths into his mind, together with the memory of thedreary ruin that had settled upon the evicted. 

"I can give you something day after to-morrow, when I am paid. "

"Entirely satisfactory; three hundred--no, for you two hundred and fiftydollars will be sufficient; the rest another time ... Whenever you areable. "

"I get two dollars and fifty cents a day, " Gordon reminded him, with a dryand bitter humor, "and I have a month's pay coming. "

Valentine Simmons had not, apparently, heard him. "Two hundred and fiftyonly, " he repeated; "we always like to accommodate old friends, especiallyPresbyterian friends. "

"I can give you fifty dollars, " Gordon told him, at once loud andconciliatory; wondering, at the same time, how, if he did, Clare andhimself would manage. He had to pay for his board in Stenton; the doctorfor Clare had to be met--fifty cents in hand a visit, or the visitsceased. 

"Have your little joke, then get out that hidden stocking, pry up thatparticular fire brick ... Only two hundred and fifty now ... But--now. "

A hopeless feeling of impotence enveloped Gordon: the small, dry manbefore him with the pink, bald head shining in the lamplight, the setgrin, was as remote from any appeal as an insensate figure cast in metal, a painted iron man in neat, grey alpaca, a stiff, white shirt with a smallblue button and an exact, prim muslin bow. 

Still, "I'll give you fifty, and thirty the next month. Why, damn it, I'llpay you off in the year. I'm not going to run away. I have steady work;you know what I am getting; you're safe. "

"But, " Valentine Simmons lifted a hand in a round, glistening cuff, "isanything certain in this human vale? Is anything secure that might hang onthe swing of a ... Whip?"

With an unaccustomed, violent effort of will Gordon Makimmon suppressedhis angry concern at the other's covert allusion: outside his occupationas stage driver he was totally without resources, without the ability topay for a bag of Green Goose tobacco. The Makimmons had never beenthrifty ... In the beginning they had let their wide share of valleyholding grow deep in thicket, where they might hunt the deer, theirstreams course through a woven wild where pheasant might feed and fall totheir accurate guns. 

"Two hundred and fifty dollars, " Valentine Simmons repeated pleasantly. 

"I haven't got it, and can't get it, all at once, " Gordon reiterated in aconciliatory manner. Then his straining, chafing pride, his assaultedself-esteem, overflowed a little his caution. "And you know it, " hedeclared in a loud, ugly voice; "you know the size of every pocketbook inGreenstream; I'll bet, by God, you and old man Hollidew know personalevery copper Indian on the pennies of the County. "

Valentine Simmons smiled at this conception. Gordon regarded him withhopeless, growing anger: Why, the old screw took that for a compliment!

"This is Wednesday, " the storekeeper pronounced; "say, by Saturday ... Thesum I mentioned. "

"It can't be done. " The last vestiges of Gordon's control were fastmelting in the heat of his passion. Simmons turned to the narrow ledger, picking up a pen. "When you bought, " he remarked precisely, over hisshoulders, "the white shoes and ammunition and silk fishing lines--didn'tyou intend to pay for them?"

"Yes, I did, and will. And when you said, 'Gordon, help yourself, load up, try those flies'; and 'Never mind the bill now, some other time, oldfriends pay when they please, ' didn't you know I was getting in over myhead? didn't you encourage it ... So you could get judgment on me? sell meout? Though what you settled on me for, what you see in my ramshacklehouse and used up ground, is over me. "

Simmons flashed a momentary, crafty glance at the other. "Never overlook alocation on good water, " he advised. 

Gordon Makimmon stood speechless, trembling with rage. For a momentSimmons' pen, scratching over the page, made the only sound in the smallenclosure, then, "The provident man, " he continued, "is always made atarget for the abuse of the--the thoughtless. But he usually comes to theassistance of his unfortunate brother. You might arrange a loan. "

"Why, so I might, " Gordon assented in a thick voice; "I could get it fromyour provident friend, Hollidew--three hundred dollars, say, at hell's percent; a little lien on my property. 'Never overlook a situation on goodwater. '

"By God!" he exclaimed, suddenly prescient, "but I've done for myself. "

And he thought of Clare, of Clare fighting eternally that sharp pain inher side, her face now drawn and glistening with the sweat of suffering, now girlishly gay. He thought of her fragile hands so impotent to copewith the bitter poverty of the mountains. What, with their home, her placeof retreat and security, gone, and--it now appeared more thanprobable--his occupation vanished, would she do?

"I've done for myself, for her, " he repeated, subconsciously aloud, in aharsh whisper. He stood rigid, unseeing; a pulse beat visibly in the brownthroat by the collarless and faded shirt. Simmons regarded him with acovert gaze, then, catching the attention of the clerk in the storeoutside, beckoned slightly with his head. The clerk approached, vigorouslybrushing the counters with a turkey wing. 

Gordon Makimmon's gaze concentrated on the storekeeper. "You're almost anold man, " he said, in a slow, unnatural voice; "you have been robbing menand women of their homes for a great many years, and you are still alive. It's surprising that some one has not killed you. "

"I have been shot at, " Valentine Simmons replied; "behind my back. The menwho fail are like that as a rule. "

"I'm not like that, " Gordon informed him; "it's pretty well known that Istand square in front of the man I'm after. Don't you think, this time, you have made a little mistake? Hadn't I better give you that fifty, andsomething more later?"

Valentine Simmons rose from his chair and turned, facing Gordon. Hismuslin bow had slipped awry on the polished, immaculate bosom of hisshirt, and it gave him a slightly ridiculous, birdlike expression. Hegazed coldly, with his thin lips firm and hands still, into the other'sthreatening, virulent countenance. "Two hundred and fifty dollars, " heinsisted. 

The thought of Clare, betrayed, persisted in Gordon's mind, battling withhis surging temper, his unreasoning resentment. Valentine Simmons stoodupright, still, against the lamplight. It was plain that he was not to beintimidated. An overwhelming wave of misery, a dim realization of thedisastrous possibilities of his folly, inundated Gordon, drowning allother considerations. He turned, and walked abruptly from the office intothe store. There the clerk placed on the counter the bottle, filled andwrapped. In a petty gust of rage, like a jet of steam escaping from adefective boiler, he swept the bottle to the floor, where he ground thesplintering fragments of glass, the torn and stained paper, into an untidyblot. 

VIII

Outside, the village, the Greenstream Valley, was folded in still, velvetydark. He crossed the street, and sat on one of the iron benches placedunder the trees on the Courthouse lawn. He could see a dull, reddish lightshining through the dusty window of the _Bugle_ office. Shining like that, through his egotistical pride, the facts of his failure and impotencetormented him. It hurt him the more that he had been, simply, diddled, nobetter than a child in Simmons' astute, practised hands. The latter'srascality was patent, but Simmons could not have been successful unabettedby his own blind negligence. The catastrophe that had overtaken himrankled in his most vulnerable spot--his self-esteem. 

He suffered inarticulately, an indistinguishable shape in the soft, summergloom; about his feet, in the lush grass, the greenish-gold sparks of thefireflies quivered; above the deep rift of the valley the stars were likepolished silver coins. 

Vaguely, and then more strongly, out of a chaos of vain, sick regrets, hiscombativeness, his deep-lying, indomitable determination, asserteditself--he would not fall like an over ripe apple into Simmons'complacent, waiting grasp. But to get, without resources, two hundred andfifty dollars by Saturday, was a preposterous task. Outside his, Clare's, home, he had nothing to sell; and to sell that now, he realized with aspoken oath, would be to throw it away--the vultures, Hollidew and Co. , would have heard of his necessity, and regulate their action, the localsupply of available currency, accordingly. 

There was no possible way of earning such a sum in four days; there waslittle more chance, he realized sardonically, of stealing it.... Sometimeslarge sums of money were won in a night's gambling in the lumber andmining towns over the West Virginia line. But, for that, he would requirecapital; he would have his wages to-morrow; however, if he gambled withthat and lost, Clare and himself would face immediate, irredeemable ruin. He dismissed that consideration from the range of possibilities. But itreturned, hovered on the border of his thoughts--he might risk a part ofhis capital, say thirty dollars. If he lost that they would be littleworse off than they were at present; while if he won ... He might easilywin. 

He mentally arranged the details, assuring himself, the while, that he wasonly toying with the idea. --He would pay the customary substitute todrive the stage to Stenton, and cross Cheap Mountain on foot; by dark hewould be in Sprucesap, play that night, and return the following day, Friday. 

With an effort he still put the scheme from his thoughts; but, while hekept it in abeyance, nothing further occurred to him. That gave him apossible reprieve; all else offered sure disaster. He rose, and walkedslowly toward his home, revolving, testing, the various aspects of thetrip to Sprucesap; at once deciding upon that venture, and repeating tohimself the incontestable fact of its utter folly. 

The dark was intense, blue-black, about his dwelling. He struck a match atthe edge of the porch, a pointed, orange exclamation on the impenetrablegloom. Clare, weary of waiting, had gone to bed; her door was shut, herwindow tightly closed. The invisible stream gurgled sadly past its banks, the whippoorwills throbbed with ceaseless, insistent passion. 

A sudden, jumbled vision of the past woven about this dwelling, his home, wheeled through Gordon's mind, scenes happy and unhappy; prevailing wantand slim, momentary plenty; his father dead, in his coffin with a stony, pinched countenance, a jaw still unrelaxed above the bright flag thatdraped his nondescript uniform. Later events followed--his elder, vanishedbrother bullying him; the brief romance of his sister's courtship; thehigh, strident voice of his mother, that had always reminded him of herangry red nose--events familiar, sordid, unlovely, but now they seemed allof a piece of desirable, melancholy happiness; they endowed with ahitherto unsuspected value every board of the rough footing of theMakimmon dwelling, every rood of the poor, rocky soil, the weedy grass. Hesaid aloud, in a subdued, jarring voice, "By God, but Simmons won't getit!" But the dreary whippoorwills, the feverish crickets, offered him noconfirmation, no assurance. 

IX

At noon, on the day following, he stood on the top of Cheap Mountain, gazing back into the deep, verdant cleft of Greenstream. From Cheap thereason for its name was clear--it flowed now direct, now turning, in avivid green stream along the bases of its mountainous ranges; it flowedtranquil and dark and smooth between banks of tangled saplings, matted, multifarious underbrush, towering, venerable trees. It slipped like ariver, bearing upon its balmy surface the promise of asylum, of sleep, ofplenty, through the primitive, ruthless forest, which in turn pressed uponit everywhere the menace of its oblivion, its fierce, strangling life. 

He saw below him stretches of the steep, rocky trail by which he hadmounted with the mounting sun; both had now reached the zenith of theirday's journey; from there he would sink into the shadow, thesecretiveness, of night.... Greenstream village lay twenty-eight milesbehind; it was seventeen more to Sprucesap: he hurried forward. 

In his pocket rested not the thirty dollars, to which he had limitedhimself in thought, but his entire month's salary, --he might lose all bythe lack of a paltry dollar or so. 

He was dressed with more care than on the day previous: he wore a darksuit, the coat to which now swung on a stick over his shoulder, a rubbercollar, a tie of orange brocade erected on a superstructure of cardboard;his head was covered by a hard, black felt hat, pushed back from hissweating brow, and his trousers hung from a pair of obviouslyhome-knitted, yarn suspenders. He shifted the stick from right to left. His revolver dragged chafing against a leg, and he removed it and thrustit into a pocket of the coat. 

He followed by turn an old rutted postroad and faint, forest trails, andshortened distances by breaking through the trackless underbrush, watchingsubconsciously for rattlesnakes. The sun slowly declined, its rays felldiagonally, lengthening, through the trees; in a glade the air seemedfilled with gold dust; the sky burned in a single flame of apricot. Theair, rather than grow dark, appeared to thicken with raw color, with mauveand ultramarine, silver and cinnabar. 

When he arrived at the little, deeply-grassed plain that held Sprucesap, it was bathed in a flaring after-glow, a magical, floating light. A doublerow of board structures faced each other across a street of raw clay andnarrow, wood sidewalks; they were, for the most part, unpainted, hastyerections of a single story. A building labelled the Steel Spud Hotel wasmore pretentious. The others were eating houses, stores with small windowsfilled with a threatening miscellany--revolvers, leather slung shots andbrass knuckles, besides lumbering boots, gaudy Mackinaw jackets, gleamingknives and ammunition. Beyond the street a single car track ranprecariously over the green, and ended abruptly, without roadbed orvisible terminus; at one side was a rude platform, on the other a greatpile of bark, rotting from long exposure--the result of some artificialcondition of the market, the spite of powerful and vindictive merchants. 

A second hotel stood alone, beyond the car tracks, and there Gordonremoved the marks of his journey, resettled his collar and the resplendenttie. He felt in his coat for the revolver, in order to transfer it to amore convenient pocket.... Its bulk, apparently, evaded his fingers. Hissearch quickened--it had gone! He had lost it somewhere on his long, devious passage of Cheap Mountain. Without it he would be in the power ofany spindling gambler who faced a dishonest ace. It would be necessary toprocure another weapon before proceeding with his purpose ... Ten dollars, perhaps fifteen; revolvers were highly priced in the turbulent distantwild. Could he afford to lose that amount from his slender store ofdollars? Intact it was absurdly inadequate. He debated the choice--on onehand the peril of gambling unarmed, on the other his desperate need formoney. Once more he considered Clare: in the end his arrogance of manhoodbrought a decision--he would preserve the money for play. He was, hethought insolently of himself, quick as a copperhead snake, and asdangerous. After supper he sat on the porch, twisting and consumingcigarettes, waiting for the night. 

X

Large kerosene lamps dilated by tin reflectors lit the front of the SteelSpud. In their radiance he saw the gaily-attired form of a woman. She worea white hat, with a sweeping, white ostrich plume, which hid her face withthe exception of a retreating chin and prominent, carmine lips; while afat, unwieldy body was covered by a waist of Scotch plaid silk--lines andsquares of black and primary colors--and a short, scant skirt of bluebroadcloth that, drawn up by her knees, exposed small feet in white kidand heavy ankles. 

Gordon Makimmon paused, and she leaned forward to meet his challenginggaze. "Just in from camp?" she inquired, in a voice hoarse, repellent, conciliatory, and with a mechanical grimace which he identified as asmile. He stopped at the invitation in her tones, and nodded. "And lookingfor a good time, " he further informed her; "perhaps a little game. "

"Stop right where you are, " she declared. "You've found them both. " Hemounted to the porch, and shook her extended hand, cushioned with fat, and oddly damp and lifeless. He could see her countenance now--it wasplaster white with insignificant features and rose like an amorphouscolumn from a swollen throat, a nose like a dab of putty, eyes obscured bydrooping, pouchy lids, leaden-hued. 

"It's a good thing you seen me, " she told him, endeavoring to establish arelationship of easy confidence, "instead of them diseased Mags down thestreet. Shall we have a little drink upstairs?"

"It's early, " he negligently interposed; "how about a turn of the cardsfirst? Do you know any one who would take a hand?"

"I got my friend here, and there's a gentleman at the hotel wouldaccommodate us. They're inside. " She rose, and moved toward the door, waving him to follow. Her slow, clumsy body and chinless, full-lidded headreminded him of a turtle; she gave a still deeper amphibiousimpression--there was something markedly cold-blooded, inhuman, deleted, in her incongruous, gaudy bulk--an impression of a low, primitiveorganism, the subtle smell of primal mud. 

"Jake!" she called at the entrance to the crude hotel office; "Jake! Mr. Ottinger! here's a gentleman wants a little game. "

Two men hastily rose and advanced toward the door. The first, Jake, wassmall, with the narrow, high shoulders, the long, pale face, the long, pale hands, of a cripple. The other, a young man with a sodden countenancediscolored by old purplish bruises, wore a misfitting suit that drewacross heavy, bowed shoulders, thick, powerful arms. He regarded GordonMakimmon with no light dawning upon his lowering face; no greetingdisturbed the dark, hard line of his mouth. But the other, with anapparently hearty, stereotyped flow of words, applauded Gordon's design, approved his qualities of sportsmanship, courage. 

"Give me the man from the woods for an open-handed sport, " he vociferated;"he ain't a fool neither, he's wise to the time of night. The city crowd, the wise ones, are the real ringside marks. "

"Come up to my room, " the woman directed from the foot of a stairway;"where no amateur John Condons will tell us how to play our cards. I gotsome good liquor, too. "

In her room she lit a small lamp, which proved insufficient, and Mr. Ottinger brought a second from his quarters. Gordon found himself in along, narrow chamber furnished with two wooden beds, two identical, insecure bureaus, stands with wash basins and pitchers, and a table. Thefloor, the walls, the ceiling, were resinous yellow pine, and gave out ahot, dry smell from which there was no escape but the door, for the roomwas without other outlet. 

A preliminary drink was indispensable; and, served in two glasses and acracked toothbrush mug--Mr. Ottinger elected to imbibe his "straight" fromthe bottle--it was drunk with mutual assurances of tender regard. "Happydays, " the woman pronounced. Only three chairs were available, and aftersome shuffling, appropriate references to "honest and plain" countryaccommodations, the table was ranged by a bed on which Em--"Call me Em, "she had invited Gordon, "let's be real homelike, "--seated herself. 

The smaller man ostentatiously broke the seal from a new pack of cards, dexterously spreading them across the table. His hands, Gordon saw, wereextraordinarily supple, and emanated a sickly odor of glycerine. Hiscompanion's were huge and misshapen, but they, too, were surprisinglydeft, quick. 

"What'll it be?" Jake demanded; "Jackpots; stud; straight draw--"

"Hell, let's throw cold hands, " Mr. Ottinger interrupted, "chop thetrimmings. We're here for the stuff, ain't we?" He was immediatelyreprehended for his brusque, unsociable manner. 

"He's got the idea, though, " Gordon approved; "we're here for the stuff. "It was finally arranged that poker hands should be dealt, a draw allowed, and the cards shown, the highest cards to take the visible money. "Adollar a go?" Jake queried, cutting for the deal. On the bed by thewoman's side was a tarnished, silver bag, with an ornate, meretriciousclasp; her two companions produced casual rolls of paper money; and Gordondetached five dollars from the slender amount of his wage, his paramountcapital. On a washstand, within easy reach, stood the bottle of whiskyflanked by the motley array of drinking vessels. 

Gordon Makimmon's five dollars vanished in as many minutes. Oppressed byconsuming anxiety he could scarcely breathe in the close, stale air. Emgambled with an affectation of careless indifference; she asked in anoff-hand manner for cards; paid her losses with a loud laugh. Jakeinvariably gave one rapid glance at his hand, and then threw it down uponthe table without separating his discard. Mr. Ottinger, it was plain, wassuperstitious--he edged his hand open by imperceptible degrees until thedenominations of the cards were visible, then hurriedly closed them fromsight; often he didn't look at his draw until all the hands were exposed. He wrinkled his face in painful efforts of concentration, protruded athick and unsavory tongue. At the loose corners of Jake's mouth flecks ofsaliva gathered whitely; in the fleering light of the kerosene the shadowson his face were cobalt. The woman's face shone with drops of perspirationthat formed slowly and rolled like a flash over her plastered skin. 

Another round of drinks was negotiated, adding to the fiery discomfort ofthe sealed room, of the dry, dead atmosphere. Gordon won back his fivedollars, and gained five more. "Let's make it two a throw, " the womanproposed. The thickset, young man remuttered the period that they werethere for the stuff. "Otty will have his little joke, " she proclaimed. 

"It's not funny, " he protested seriously. 

"Two?" Jake demanded of Gordon. The latter nodded. 

XI

Late in the night they were still playing without a change in theirpositions. Em still perspired; but Mr. Ottinger no longer protruded histongue, a sullen anger was evident in his every move; Jake's affable flowof conversation was hushed; Gordon's face set. It was, indisputably, notfunny--he had won nearly two hundred dollars. "Make it ten?" Jake queried. The others nodded. Now Gordon had two hundred and twenty dollars; anextraordinary, overwhelming luck presided over his cards, he won morefrequently than the other three together. A tense silence enveloped thelatter: they shuffled, demanded cards, threw down their hands, in ahurried, disorganized fashion. They glanced, each at the other, swiftly;it was evident that a common idea, other than the game, possessed them. Jake hovered a breath longer than necessary over the bottle, then presseda drink upon Gordon. He refused; this, he recognized, was not a time fordissipation; he needed every faculty. 

Two hundred and sixty dollars. The air of suppression, of tension, increased. Gordon's only concern now was to get away, to take the moneywith him. 

Em shuffled in a slipshod, inattentive manner; Mr. Ottinger opened hishand boldly, faced his bad luck with a stony eye; Jake labored under apainful excitement, obviously not connected with his losses; his long, waxy fingers quivered, a feverish point of fire flickered in eithercadaverous cheek; his eyes glowed between hollow, sunken temples. "Four, "he demanded, with shaking lips. Mr. Ottinger rapped out a request for one. "I'm satisfied, " Gordon said. 

"Don't that sucker beat hell!" Em declared, the solicitous manner that, earlier in the evening, had marked her manner toward Gordon, carelesslydiscarded. "I'm taking three. " A sudden, visible boredom fell upon her asshe glanced at her filled hand. "Leave us double it, " she remarked. Gordonnodded, and she threw her hand upon the table; it held four nines. Shereached her fat, chalky arm toward the money, but Gordon was before her. "Four queens, " he shot out, grasping the crumpled bills. 

Em cursed; then followed a short, awkward silence. It was Ottinger's deal, but he did not pick up the scattered cards. Gordon gathered himselfalertly, measuring the distance to the door. "I've got enough, " heremarked; "I'm going to quit. "

"You got enough, all right, " Em agreed. "Now, how'd you like to have areal good time?" She disposed herself upon her elbow, so that the saggingbulk of her body was emphasized through its straining apparel; one leg, incredible, leviathan, was largely visible. 

"I've had enough, " Gordon repeated; "I'll be moving. "

Em rose quickly, losing her air of coquetry. Gordon was facing the men, and was unprepared for the heavy blow she dealt upon the back of his neck. "Hang it on him, Otty!" she cried excitedly. 

Mr. Ottinger shoved the card table from his path. It was now evident thatit was, precisely, to "hang it on" whoever might be elected for thatdelicate attention which formed Otty's purpose, profession, preoccupation, in life. He was, for a heavy man, active; and, before Gordon Makimmoncould put out a protective arm, he returned the latter to theperpendicular with a jarring blow on the chin. Jake whipped out from aplace of concealment on his person a plaited leather weapon with aglobular end. 

It was Jake, Gordon instinctively knew, who threatened him most; he couldeasily stop the hulking shape before him. He regained his poise, andreturned blow for blow with Mr. Ottinger; neither man guarded, both weresolely intent upon marking, crippling, the other. A chair fell, slidingacross the floor; a washstand collapsed with a splintering crash of china, a miniature flood. Em stood on the outskirts of the conflict, armed withthe whisky bottle; Jake crouched watchful with the leather club. Gordoncut his opponent's face with short, vicious jabs; he was, as customary, cold--he saw clearly where every blow fell; he saw Otty's nose grotesquelyshapeless and blackened; he felt Otty's teeth cut the skin of his knucklesand break off; he heard his involuntary gasp as he struck him ahammer-like blow over the heart. 

Mr. Ottinger, in return, hit him frequently and with effect. Gordon wasconscious of a warm, gummy tide spreading over his face, he saw withdifficulty through rapidly closing eyes. "For Cri's sake, " Otty gasped, "get to him, the town'll be on us. "

Em made an ineffectual lunge with the bottle. Gordon swung the point ofhis elbow into her side, and she sat on the bed with a "G-G-God!" Jake hithim with the club on the shoulder blade; numbness radiated from the struckpoint; there was a loss of power in the corresponding arm. Jake hit himagain, and a stabbing pain entered his side and stayed apparently tangledin splintered bone. He paused for a moment, and all three fell upon him, beating, clubbing, kicking. He fought on, now rapidly losing power. Thewoman threw herself on his back, forced him to his knees. "Won't none ofyou do for him?" she complained hysterically. She pressed his head intoher breast, and Mr. Ottinger hit him below and just back of his ear. Gordon slipped out full length on the floor. 

He was waveringly conscious, but he had lost all interest, all sense ofpersonal connection, with the proceedings. He dully watched Ottinger drawback, tenderly fingering his damaged features; he saw Em breathingstormily, empurpled. Jake, with the crimson flames in his long, pallidmask, the white saliva flecking his jaw, hung over him with a glassy, intent stare. 

"Get the stuff, " the practical Ottinger urged; "it's the stuff we'reafter. Don't go bug again. "

"Jake don't hear you, " Em told him, "he's off. I'm glad the fella's goingto be fixed, he jolted me something fierce. "

Jake swung the little, flexuous club softly against his palm, and Gordonsuddenly realized that the cripple intended to kill him. --That was thelust which transfigured the gambler's countenance, which lit the fires inthe deathly cheeks, set the long fingers shaking. Gordon considered theidea, and, obscurely, it troubled him, moved him a space from his apathy. Instinctively, in response to a sudden movement of the figure above him, he drew his arm up in front of his head; and an intolerable pain shot upthrough his shoulder and flared, blindingly, in his eyes. It pierced hisindifference, set in motion his reason, his memory; he realized thenecessity, the danger, of his predicament ... The money!--he must guardit, take it back with him. Above, in a heated, orange mist, the woman'sface loomed blank and inhuman; farther back Mr. Ottinger's features wereindistinctly visible. 

He must rise.... 

His groping hand caught hold of the rung of the chair, and, with herculeanlabor, he turned and raised himself a fraction from the floor. Jakedirected a hasty blow at his head that missed him altogether. His otherhand caught the chair, and he dragged himself dizzily into a kneelingposture. A sudden change swept over the three above him. 

"Nail him where he is!" Em cried excitedly; "he's getting up on you. "Gordon's hands moved uncertainly upward on the chair; his knees rose fromthe floor. A shower of blows fell on him; the woman beat him with herpudgy fists; Mr. Ottinger was kicking at him; Jake was weeping, andendeavoring to get room in which to swing his club. 

Gordon had one foot on the floor. 

"Give me a chance at him, " Jake implored; "give me a chance. God, if I hada knife. "

If they took away the chair, Gordon knew, he was lost. He clung to it;pressed his breast against it; crept upward by means of it, slowly, slowly, through a storm of battering hands. It seemed to him that, inrising, he was shouldering aside the entire weight, the forces, of auniverse, bent on his destruction, and against which he was determined toprevail. It was as though his will, the vitality which animated him, whichwas his soul, stood aside from his beaten and suffering body, and, with acold, a cruel, detachment, commanded it upright. 

The woman's bulk got in Jake's way, and he struck her across the eyes withthe back of his hand, consigning her to eternal hell. Mr. Ottinger, confused by the irregularity of the turmoil, worked inefficiently, swinging at random his hard fists, kicking impartially. 

Gordon now had both feet upon the floor; he straightened up. For a breaththe three stood motionless, livid; and in that instant his hand fell uponthe door knob, he staggered back into the hall, carrying with him a visionof his brocaded tie lying upon the floor. 

XII

He stumbled hastily down the stairway, and found the narrow porch, theserene, enveloping night; down the street lamps made blots of brightness, but, beyond, the obscurity was profound, unbroken. Wave after wave ofnausea swept over him, he clung to a porch support with cold sweatstarting through the blood that smeared his countenance, stiffened in hisshirt, that was warm upon his side. The sound of footfalls, sharp, repressed voices from above, stirred him into a fresh realization of hisprecarious position. The gamblers would follow him, rob him with impunityin the shadows of Sprucesap's lawless street, drag him behind the angle ofa building, where Jake would have ample scope for the swinging of hisleathered lead.... 

He lurched down to the street, and silently merged into the awaitingnight. 

At dawn he appeared from a thicket, a mile beyond Sprucesap on the road toGreenstream, and negotiated successfully a ride on a load of fragrantupland hay to a point within a few miles of his destination. His coat, soiled and torn, was buttoned across a bare throat, for his shirt had beenripped into bandages; his face, apparently, had been harrowed for a redplanting; he moved awkwardly, breathed with a gasp from a stabbing pain inthe side ... But he moved, breathed. He drank with long delight from asparkling spring. He had the money, two hundred and eighty dollars, safelyin his pocket. 

XIII

The afternoon was waning when he gazed again into the deep, sombrous riftof Greenstream: from where Gordon stood, on the heights, in the floodingsun, it appeared to be already evening below. As he descended themountainside the cool shadows rose about him, enveloping him in thequietude, the sense of security, which brooded over the withdrawnvalley--the resplendent mirage of nature kind, beneficent, the illusion ofNature as a tender and loving parent ... Of Nature, as imminent, asautomatic, as a landslip crushing a path to the far, secret resting placeof its destiny. 

Dr. Pelliter's light carriage with its pair of weedy, young horses stoodhitched by the road above the Makimmon dwelling; and, on entering thehouse, Gordon found Clare in bed and Pelliter seated at her side. Agaily-patched quilt hid all but her head. She smiled at Gordon through herpale mask of suffering; but her greeting turned to swift concern at hisbattered countenance. "An accident, " he explained impatiently. 

The doctor greeted him seriously. He had, Gordon knew, a sovereign andinevitable remedy for all the ills of the flesh--pain, he argued, anddisease were inseparable, subdue the first and the latter ceased to existas an active ill, and a dexterously wielded hypodermic needle left behindhim a trail of narcotized and relieved sufferers. Bottles of patentmedicines, exhilarating or numbing as the purchaser might require, linedthe shelves of his drug store. 

But now his customary, soothing smile was absent, the small, worn casethat contained the glittering syringe and minute bottles filled with whiteor vivid yellow pellets was not to be seen. 

"Clare here's gone and got herself real miserable, " he stated, rising andbeckoning Gordon to follow him to the porch. "She's bad, " he pronouncedoutside; "that pain's got the best of her, and it's getting the best ofme. She ought to be cut, but she's so weak, it's gone so long, that I'mkind of slow about opening her. And the truth is, Gordon, if I wassuccessful she wouldn't have a chance of getting well here--it'll takeexpert nursing, awful nice food; and then, at the shortest, she would bein bed a couple of months. She ought to go to the hospital in Stenton. That's the real truth. I'm telling you the facts, Gordon; we can't handleher here, she'd die on us. "

Gordon only half comprehended the other's words--Clare dangerouslyill ... A question of dying, hospitals. She had suffered for so long that, without losing his sympathy for her, it had seemed to him her inevitablecondition. It had fallen naturally upon him to care for her, guard heragainst damp, prevent her from lifting objects beyond her strength. Thesecontinuous, small attentions held an important place in his existence--hethought about her in a mind devoted substantially to himself, and itbrought him a glow of contentment, a pleasant feeling of ministration andimportance. It had not occurred to him that Clare might grow worse, thatshe might, in fact, die. The idea filled him with sudden dismay. His heartcontracted with a sharp hurt. "The hospital, " he echoed dully, "Stenton. "

"By rights, " the doctor iterated; "of course we'll do what we can here, she might last for a couple of years more without cutting; and then, again, her heart might just quit. Still--"

"What would the hospital cost?" Gordon asked, almost unaware of havingpronounced the words. 

"It'd be dear--two hundred and some dollars anyway, and the money on thenail. The nursing would count up; then there would be something foroperating, if it was only a little ... A lot of things you don't allow forwould turn up. "

Two hundred and more dollars! Gordon had a fleeting vision, against theempurpling banks, the dark, sliding water, and the mountainous wallcapped with dissolving gold beyond, of a room filled with the hot glow ofkerosene lamps; he saw Jake's twitching, murderous countenance abovehim.... Two hundred dollars! He had two hundred and eighty dollars in hispocket. He had another vision--of Simmons; it was two hundred and fiftydollars that the latter wanted, must have, to-morrow. But Simmons swiftlyfaded before Clare's need, the pressure of sickness. 

"She couldn't go down in the stage, " he muttered, "the shaking would killher before ever she got there. "

"I'll drive her to Stenton, Gordon, " the doctor volunteered, "if you'vegot the money handy. "

"I've got her, " Gordon Makimmon declared grimly. 

"I'll take her right to the hospital and give her to the doctor in charge. Everything will be done for her comfort. She has an elegant chance ofpulling through, there. And you can see her when you go down with thestage--" Pelliter suddenly stopped; he appeared disconcerted by what hehad said. 

"Well, " Gordon demanded, his attention held by the other's manner, "can'tI?"

"You were away from Greenstream yesterday and to-day, " the doctor repliedevasively, "you didn't hear ... Oh, there's nothing in it if you didn't. I heard that Simmons had had you taken off the stage. Did you have troublewith Buckley, cut him with a whip? Buck has been blowing about showing youa thing or two. "

A feeling of angry dismay enveloped Gordon. He had recognized, obscurely, that Simmons and old man Hollidew dominated the community, but he hadnever before come in actual contact with their arbitrary power, he hadnever before been faced by the overmastering weapon of their materialpossessions, the sheer weight of their wealth. It stirred him to revolt, elemental and bitter; every instinct rose against the despotic power whichthreatened to overwhelm him. 

"By God!" he exclaimed, "but they will find that I'm no sheep to driveinto their lot and shear!"

"Now, about Clare, " the doctor interposed. 

"When will you come for her?" Gordon inquired. He took from his pocket theroll of money he had won at Sprucesap, and counted two hundred dollars, which he tended to the doctor. 

"To-morrow, about seven. Everything will be done for her, Gordon. I reckonthat's only an empty splash about the stage. "

The dusk had thickened in Clare's room; he could scarcely distinguish herface white against the darkened squares of the quilt. "Whoever will getyour supper, " she worried, when he had told her; "and the cow'll needbedding, and those cheeses brought in off the roof, and--"

He closed her mouth with a gentle palm. "I've done 'em all a hundredtimes, " he declared. "We're going to get you right, this spell, Clare, " heproclaimed; "you'll get professional, real stylish, care at Stenton. "

She rose, trembling, on her arms. "Are they going to cut at me?" sheasked. 

The lie on his lips perished silently before her grave tones. "It's notrightly a dangerous operation, " he protested; "thousands come out of itevery year. "

"Gordon, I'm afeared of it. "

"No, you're not, Clare Makimmon; there's not a drop of fear in you. "

"It's not just death I'm afeared of, it's--oh; you will never understandfor being a man, " her voice lowered instinctively; "somehow I hate thethought of those strange men hacking and spoiling my body. That's justfoolishness, I know, and my time's pretty well gone for foolishness. I'vealways sort of tended my body, Gordon, and kept it white and soft. Ithought if a man asked me in spite of--well, my face, he could take pridein me underneath. But that's all done with; I ought to be glad forthe ... Gordon!" she exclaimed more energetically, "it will cost a heapof money; how will you get it? don't borrow. "

"I got it, " he interrupted her tersely, "and I didn't borrow it neither. "

XIV

He woke at dawn. The whippoorwills, the frogs and crickets, were silent, and the sharp, sweet song of a mocking bird throbbed from a hedge. It wasdark in the valley, but, high above, the air was already brightening withthe sun; a symmetrical cloud caught the solar rays and flushed rosyagainst silver space. The valley turned from indistinct blue to grey, tosparkling green. The sun gilded the peaks of the western range, andslipped slowly down, spilling into the depth. It was almost cold, the pumphandle, the rough sward, the foliage beyond, were drenched with white dew;a damp, misty veil lifted from the surface of the stream. 

Clare declared that she felt stronger; she dressed, insisted upon fryinghis breakfast. "You ought to have somebody in, " she asserted later. Theywere on the shallow porch, waiting stiffly for the doctor. "But don't getthat eldest of your sister's; last time she wore my sateen waist and runthe colors. "

Just as she was leaving he slipped twenty dollars into her hand. "Writewhen you want more, " he directed; "and I'll be down to see you ... Yes, often ... The stage. " A leaden depression settled over him as the doctor'scarriage took her from sight. The house to which he turned was deserted, lonely. He locked the door to her room. 

XV

One of the canvas-covered mountain wagons was unloading on the platformbefore Simmons' store when Gordon entered the center of the village. Amiscellaneous pile of merchandise was growing, presided over by a clerkwith a pencil and tally book. Valentine Simmons, without his coat, in animmaculate, starched white waistcoat, stood upon one side. 

Gordon, without delay, approached him. "I can give you a hundred dollars, "he informed the other, exhibiting that sum. 

"Two hundred and fifty will be necessary, " Simmons informed him concisely, "to-day. "

"Come to reason--"

Valentine Simmons turned his back squarely upon him. A realization of theuselessness of further words possessed Gordon; he returned the money tohis pocket. The contemptuous neglect of the other lit the ever-trimmedlamp of his temper. "What's this, " he demanded, "I hear about drivingstage? about Buck boasting around that he had had me laid off?"

"That's not correct, " Simmons informed him smoothly; "Buckley has no powerto do that ... The owners of the privilege decided that you were toounreliable. "

"Then it's true, " Gordon interrupted him, "I'm off?" Simmons nodded. Gordon's temper swelled and flared whitely before his vision; ragepossessed him utterly; without balance, check, he was no more than aninsensate force in the grip of his mastering passion. He would stop thatmiserable, black heart forever. Old Valentine Simmons' lips tightened, hisfingers twitched; he turned his back deliberately upon Gordon. The metalbuckle which held the strap of his waistcoat caught the sun and reflectedit into Gordon's eyes. "How many gross pink celluloid rattles?" thestorekeeper demanded of the clerk. 

Gordon Makimmon's hand crept toward his pocket ... Then he remembered--hehad lost that which he sought ... On the side of Cheap Mountain. IfSimmons would turn, say something further, taunt him, he would kill himwith his hands. But Simmons did none of these things; instead he walkedslowly, unharmed, into the store. 

XVI

Gordon had intended to avoid the vicinity of the Courthouse on the day ofthe sale of his home, but an intangible attraction held him in itsneighborhood. He sat by the door to the office of the _Greenstream Bugle_, diagonally across the street. Within, the week's edition was going topress; a burly young individual was turning the cylinders by hand, whilethe editor and owner dexterously removed the printed sheets from thepress. The office was indescribably grimy, the rude ceiling was hung withdusty cobwebs, the windows obscured by a grey film. A small footpressstood to the left of the entrance, on the right were ranged typesetter'scases with high, precarious stools, a handpress for proof and a table tohold the leaded forms. These, with the larger press, an air-tight sheetiron stove and some nondescript chairs, completed the office furnishings. Over all hung the smell of mingled grease, ink, and damp paper, flat andpenetrating. 

Without, the sun shone ardently; it cast a rich pattern of light and shadeon the Courthouse lawn and the small assemblage of merely idle orinterested persons gathered for the sale. The sheriff stood facing themunder the towering pillars of the portico; his voice rang clearly throughthe air. To Gordon the occasion, the loud sing-song of the sheriff, appeared unreal, dreamlike; he listened incredulously to the meagercataloguing of his dwelling, the scant acreage, with an innate sense ofoutrage, of a shameful violation of his privacy. He was still unable torealize that his home and his father's, the clearing that his grandfatherhad cut from the wild, was actually passing from his possession. Hesummoned in vain the emotions which, he told himself, were appropriate. The profound discouragement within him would not be lifted to emotionalheights: lassitude settled over him like a fog. 

The bidding began in scattered, desultory fashion, mounting slowly byhundreds. Eighteen hundred dollars was offered, and there the priceobstinately hung. 

The owner of the _Bugle_ appeared at his door, and nodded mysteriously toGordon, who rose and listlessly obeyed the summons. The former closed thedoor with great care, and lowered a faded and torn shade over the frontwindow. Then he retired to a small space divided from the body of theoffice by a curtain suspended from a sagging wire. He brought his faceclose to Gordon's ear. "Have a nip?" he asked, in a solemn, guardedfashion. Gordon assented. 

A bottle was produced from a cupboard, and, together with a tin cup, handed to him. 

"Luck, " he pronounced half-heartedly, raising the cup to his lips. Whenthe other had gone through a similar proceeding the process was carefullyreversed--the bottle was returned to the cupboard, the tin cup suspendedupon its hook, the steps retraced and the curtain once more coaxed up, thedoor thrown open. 

The group on the Courthouse lawn were stringing away; on the steps thesheriff was conversing with Valentine Simmons' brother, a drab individualwho performed the storekeeper's public services and errands. The sale hadbeen consummated. The long, loose-jointed dwelling accumulated bysuccessive generations of Makimmons had passed out of their possession. 

A poignant feeling of loss flashed through Gordon's apathy; suddenly hiseyes burned, and an involuntary sharp inspiration resembled a gasp, a sob. A shadow ran over the earth. The owner of the _Bugle_ stepped out andgazed upward. At the sight of the soft, grey clouds assembling above anexpression of determined purpose settled upon his dark countenance. Hehurried into the office, and reappeared a few minutes later, a peakedcorduroy hat drawn over his eyes, a piece of pasteboard in one hand, and, under his arm, a long, slender bundle folded in black muslin. Thepasteboard he affixed to the door; it said, "Gone fishing. Backto-morrow. "

XVII

Minus certain costs and the amount of his indebtedness to ValentineSimmons, Gordon received the sum of one thousand and sixty dollars for thesale of his house. He was still sleeping in it, but the day was near whenhe must vacate. The greater part of his effects were gathered under acanvas cover on the porch, Clare's personal belongings were stilluntouched in her room. He must wait for the disposition of those until hehad learned the result of the operation. 

He heard from Clare on an evening when he was sitting on his lonely porch, twisting his dextrous cigarettes, and brooding darkly on the mischancesthat had overtaken him of late. It was hot and steamy in the valley, nostars were visible; the known world, muffled in a close and imponderablecloak, was without any sign of life, of motion, of variety. Gordon heardfootsteps descending heavily from the road, a bulky shape loomed up beforehim and disclosed the features of Dr. Pelliter. 

He greeted Gordon awkwardly, and then fell momentarily silent. "She sentyou a message, Gordon, " he pronounced at last. 

"Clare's dead, " Gordon replied involuntarily. So far away, he thought, andalone.... He must go at once and fetch her home. He rose. 

"Clare said, " the doctor continued, "if your sister's eldest was to comein to give her the sateen waist. " An extended silence fell upon the men;the whippoorwills sobbed and sobbed; the stream gurgled past its banks. Then:

"By God!" Gordon said passionately, "I don't know but I'm not glad Clare'sgone--Simmons has got our house, I'm not driving stage ... Clare wouldhave sorrowed herself out of living. Life's no jig tune. "

The doctor left. Gordon continued to sit on the porch; at intervals hemechanically rolled and lit cigarettes, which glowed for a moment and wentout, unsmoked. The feeling of depression that had cloaked him during thefew days past changed imperceptibly to one of callous indifference towardexistence in general. The seeds of revolt, of instability, which Clare anda measure of worldly position, of pressure, had held in abeyance, germinated in his disorganized mind, his bitter sense of injustice andinjury. He hardened, grew defiant ... The strain of lawlessness brought somany years before from warring Scotch highlands rose bright andtroublesome in him. 

XVIII

Clare's body was brought back to Greenstream on the following day. Hissister and her numerous brood descended solicitously upon Gordon later;neighbors, kindly and officious, arrived ... Clare was laid out. Therewere sibilant, whispered conversations about a mislaid petticoat with amechlin hem; drawers were searched and the missing garment triumphantlyunearthed; silk mitts were discussed, discarded; the white shoes--realbuck and a topnotch article--forced on. At last Clare was exhibited in theroom that had been hers. There was no place in the Makimmon dwelling forgeneral assemblage but the kitchen, and it had been pointed out by certaindelicate souls that the body and the preparations for the funeral repastwould accord but doubtfully. Besides, the kitchen was too hot. 

Clare's peaked, blue-white countenance was withdrawn and strange above afamiliar, harsh black silk dress; her hands, folded upon her flat breast, lay in a doubled attitude dreadfully impossible to life. A thin locket ofgold hung on a chain about her still throat. The odor of June roses thatfilled the corners, a subdued, red riot of the summer, the sun without, was overpowering. 

As the hour appointed for the funeral approached a gratifying number ofpeople assembled: the women clustered about the porch, hovered about thedoor which opened upon the remains; while the men gathered in a groupabove the stream, lingered by the fence. A row of dusty, hooded vehicles, rough-coated, intelligent horses, were hitched above. 

The minister took his station by a table on which a glass of water hadbeen placed upon a vivid red cover: he portentously cleared his throat. "The Lord giveth, " he began.... It was noon, pellucidly clear, still, hot;the foliage on the mountainsides was like solid walls of greenery risingto a canopy, a veil, of azure. Partridges whistled clear and flutelikefrom a nearby cover; the stream flashed in the sun, mirroring on itsunwrinkled surface the stiff, somber figures gathered for the funeral. 

The droning voice of the preacher drew out interminably through thesultry, golden hour. Women sniffed sharply, dabbled with toil-hardenedhands at their eyes; the men, standing in the grass, shuffled their feetuneasily. "Let us pray, " the speaker dropped upon his knees, and his voicerose, grew more insistent, shrill with a touch of hysteria. From the backof the house a hen clucked in an excited, aggravated manner. 

Gordon Makimmon stood at the end of the porch, morosely ill at ease: thememories of Clare as a girl, as a woman going about and performing theduties of their home, the dignity of his sense of loss and sorrow, hadvanished before this public ceremony; they had sunk to perfunctory, conventional emotions before the glib flood of the paid eulogist, thefacile emotion of the women. 

Suddenly he saw, partially hidden by the dull dresses of the older women, a white, ruffled skirt, the turn of a young shoulder, a drooping strawhat. A meager, intervening form moved, and he saw that Lettice Hollidewhad come to his sister's funeral. He wondered, in a momentary, instinctiveresentment, what had brought her among this largely negligent gathering. She had barely known Clare; Gordon was not certain that she had ever beenin their house. He could see her plainly now--she stood clasping whitegloves with firm, pink hands; her gaze was lowered upon the unevenflooring of the porch. He could see the soft contour of her chin, ashimmer of warm, brown hair. She was crisply fresh, incredibly young inthe group of gaunt, worn forms; her ruffled fairness was an affront to thethin, rigid shoulders in rusty black, the sallow, deeply-bitten faces ofthe other women. 

She looked up, and surprised his intent gaze: she flushed slightly, thegloves were twisted into a knot, but her eyes were unwavering--they heldan appeal to his understanding, his sympathy, not to be mistaken. It wasevident that that gaze cost her an effort. She was, Gordon remembered, adiffident girl. His resentment evaporated.... He speculated upon herreason for coming; and, speculating, involuntarily stood more erect. Witha swift, surreptitious motion he straightened his necktie. 

The Greenstream cemetery lay aslant on a rise above the village. From theside of the raw, yellow clay hole into which they lowered the coffinGordon could see, beyond the black form of the minister, over the rows ofuneven roofs, the bulk of the Courthouse, the sweep of the valley, glowingwith multifarious vitality. 

"Dust to dust, " said the minister; "ashes to ashes, " in the midst of thewarm, the resplendent, the palpitating day. One of Gordon's nephews--ashock of tow hair rising rebellious against an application of soap, stubby, scarred hands, shoes obviously come by in their descent from moremature extremities--who had been audibly snuffling for the past tenminutes, burst into a lugubrious, frightened wail. Through the solemn, appointed periods of the minister cut the sibilant, maternal promise of afamous "whopping. "

XIX

Gordon thought again of Lettice Hollidew as he was sitting for the lastevening on the porch of the dwelling that had passed out of his hands. Twilight had poured through the valley, thickening beneath the trees, overthe stream; the mountain ranges were dark, dusty blue against a maroonsky. He recalled the sympathy, the plea for comprehension, in Lettice'sgaze, lifted, for the first time, frankly against his own. 

Hers was not the feminine type which attracted him; he preferred a moreflamboyant beauty, ready repartee, the conscious presence and employmentof the lure of sex. His taste had been fed by the paid women of Stenton, the few, blowsy, loose females of the mountains; these and the surfacechatter of the stage, and Clare, formed his sole knowledge, experience, surmising, of women. He recalled Lettice condescendingly; she did not stirhis pulses, appeal to his imagination. Yet she moved his pride, hisinordinate self-esteem. It had been on his account, and not Clare's, thatshe had come to the funeral. The little affair with Buckley Simmons hadcaptured her attention and interest; he had not thought Lettice soimpressionable. 

It was, he remembered, Wednesday night--there would be prayer-meeting inthe Methodist Church; the Hollidews were Methodists; women, mostly, attended prayer meeting. If he strolled about in that vicinity he mightsee Lettice at the close of the service, thank her for attending poorClare's funeral. 

He rose and negligently made his way through the soft gloom past theCourthouse to the Methodist Church. The double doors were open, and aflood of hot radiance rolled out into the night, together with thefamiliar tones of old Martin Seeker loudly importuning his invisible, inscrutable Maker. There were no houses opposite the church, and, balancedobscurely on the fence of split rails against the unrelieved night, a rowof young men smoked redly glowing cigarettes; while, on the ground belowthem, shone the lanterns by the aid of which they escorted the variousmaidens of their choice on their various obscure ways. 

The prayer stopped abruptly, and, after a momentary silence, the dolorouswail of a small organ abetted a stridulent concourse of human voiceslifted in lamentable song, a song in which they were desirous of beingwinged like the dove. 

The sound mounted in a grievous minor into the profound stillness, thepeace, of the valley, of the garment of stars drawn from wall to wall. There was something animal-like in its long-drawn, quavering note--likethe baying of a dog out of the midst of his troubled darkness at theremote, silver serenity, the disturbing, effortless splendor, of themoon. 

The line of figures without, sitting on the fence with their feet caughtunder the second rail, smoked in imperturbable, masculine indifference. There was, shortly, a stir within, a moving blur of figures in the openeddoors, and the lanterns swung alertly to the foot of the steps, where, oneby one, the bobbing lights, detached from the constellation, vanished intothe night. 

Almost immediately Gordon saw Lettice Hollidew standing at the entrance, awaiting a conversing group of older women at the head of the aisle. Sherecognized him, and descended immediately with a faint, questioning smile. The smile vanished as she greeted him; her eyes were dark on a pale, stillcountenance. He noticed that she was without the heady perfume whichstirred him as the other girls passed, and he was silently critical of theomission. 

He delivered quickly, with a covert glance above, the customary periodabout seeing her home. Immediately she walked with him into the obscurity, the mystery, of the night. 

"It was certainly nice-hearted of you to come to Clare's funeral, " hebegan. 

Close beside him she shivered, it might be at the memory of that occasion. She was without a hat, and he was able to study her profile: it wasirregular, with a low, girlish brow and a nose too heavy for beauty; shehad a full under lip and a strongly modelled chin, a firm line ending in agenerous throat, milk-white in the gloom. Her figure too, he judged, wastoo heavy for his standard of feminine charm. His interest in her burnedlow, sustained only by what he recognized as a conquest. 

She walked slowly and more slowly as he dallied by her side. Almostsubconsciously he adopted the tone by which he endeavored to enlist theinterest of the opposite sex: he repeated in a perfunctory manner thestereotyped remarks appropriate for such occasions. 

She listened intently, with sudden, little glances from a momentarilylifted gaze. He grew impatient at the absence of the flattering responsesto which he was largely accustomed. And, dropping abruptly his artificialcourtesy, he maintained a sullen silence, quickened his stride. He drewsome satisfaction from the observation that his reticence hurt her. Herhands caught and strained together; she looked at him with a longer, questioning gaze. 

"I wanted to tell you, " she said finally, with palpable difficulty, "howsorry I am about ... About things; your home, and--and I heard of thestage, too. It was a shame, you drove beautifully, and took such care ofthe passengers. "

"It was that care cost me the place, " he answered with brutal directness;"old Simmons did it; him and his precious Buckley. "

She stopped with an expression of instant, deep concern. "Oh! I am sosorry ... Then it was my fault. But it's horrid that they should have donethat; that they should be able; it is all wrong--"

"Right nor wrong don't make any figure I've ever discovered, " he retorted;"Valentine Simmons has the power, he's got the money. That's it--money'sthe right of things; it took my house away from me, like it's taken awayso many houses, so many farms, in Greenstream--"

"But, " she objected timidly, "didn't they owe Mr. Simmons for things? Yousee, people borrow, borrow, borrow, and never pay back. My father, " sheproceeded with more confusion, "has lost lots of money in that way. "

"I can tell you all about that, " he informed her bitterly, proceeding tomimic Simmons' dry, cordial tones, "'Take the goods right along with you, pay when you like, no hurry between old friends. ' Then, when ZebenerHull's corn failed, 'I'll trouble you for that amount, ' the skinflintsays, and sells Zebener out. And what your father's lost, " he added moredirectly still, "wouldn't take you on the stage to Stenton. Your fatherand Simmons have got about everything worth getting in the county; they'vegot the money, they've got the land, they've got the men right in theiriron safes. Right and wrong, " he sneered, "it's money--"

"Oh! please, " she begged, "please don't be so unhappy, so hard. Life isn'tas dreadful as that. "

"It's worse, " he declared somberly. They turned by Simmons' store, butcontinued in the opposite direction from the one-time Makimmon dwelling. They passed a hedge of roses; the perfume hung heavy-sweet, poignant;there was apparently no sky, no earth, only a close, purple envelopment, imminent, palpable, lying languidly, unstirring, in a space without formor limit and of one color. 

Lettice walked silently by his side; he could hear her breathing, irregular, quick. She was very close to him, then moved suddenly, consciously, away; but, almost immediately, she drifted back, brushing hisshoulder; it seemed that she returned inevitably, blindly; in the gloomher gown fluttered like the soft, white wings of a moth against him. 

"It's worse, " he repeated, his voice loud and harsh, like a discordantbell clashing in the sostenuto passage of a symphony; "but it's all oneto me--there's nothing else they can take; I'm free, free to sleep orwake, to be drunk when I like with no responsibility to Simmons or any oneelse--"

Her breathing increasingly grew labored, oppressed; a little sob escaped, softly miserable. She was crying. He was completely callous, indifferent. They stood before the dark, porchless façade of her home. 

"I thought life was so happy, " she articulated, facing him; "but now ithurts me ... Here;" he saw her press her hand against the swelling, tenderline of her breast. His theatrical self-consciousness bowed him over theother hand, pressing upon it a half-calculated kiss. She stood motionless;he felt rather than saw the intensity of her gaze. "I wish I could mendthe hurt, " he began, appropriately, professionally. 

He was interrupted by a figure emerging from the obscurity of the house. Pompey Hollidew peered at them from the low, stone lintel. "Letty, " hepronounced, in a voice at once whining and truculent; "who?--oh! thatMakimmon.... Letty, come in the house. " He caught her arm and dragged herincontinently toward the door. "... Rascal, " Gordon heard him mutter, "spendthrift. If you ever walk again with Gordon Makimmon, " the old man, through his daughter, addressed the other, "don't walk back here, don'tcome home. Not a dollar of mine shall fall through the pockets of thatshiftless breed. "

XX

Clare's funeral deducted a further sum from the amount Gordon had receivedfor the sale of his home, but he had left still nine hundred and odddollars. He revolved in his mind the disposition of this sum, once moresitting with chair tilted back against the dingy wooden home of the_Greenstream Bugle_; he rehearsed its possibilities for frugality, forindependence, as a reserve ... Or for pleasure. It was the hottest hour ofthe day; the prospect before him, the uneven street, the houses beyond, were coated with dust, gilded by the refulgent sun. No one stirred; a redcow that had been cropping the grass in the broad, shallow gutter oppositesank down in the meager shadow of a chance pear tree; even the childrenwere absent, the piercing, staccato cries of their games unheard. 

To Gordon Makimmon Greenstream suddenly appeared insufferably dull, empty;the thought of monotonous, identical days spun thinly out, the ninehundred dollars extended to its greatest length, in that banal setting, suddenly grew unbearable.... There was no life in Greenstream.... 

The following morning found him on the front seat of the Stenton stage, sharing with the driver not his customary cigarettes but more portentouscigars from an ample pocketful. "Greenstream's dead, " he pronounced; "I'mgoing after some life. "

Late that night he leaned across the sloppy bar of an inferior saloon inStenton, and, with an uncertain wave of his hand, arrested the barkeeper'sattention. "I'm here, " he articulated thickly, "to see life, understand!And I can see it too--money's power. " The other regarded him with a brief, mechanical interest, a platitude shot suavely from hard, tobacco-stainedlips. 

Later still: "I'm here to see life, " he told a woman with a chalkycountenance, a countenance without any expression of the consciousness ofthe sound of his voice, a vague form lost in loose draperies. "Life, " heemphasized above the continuous, macabre rattle of a piano. 

In a breathless, hot dawn pouring redly into the grey city street, heswayed like a pendulum on the steaming pavement. His side was smeared, caked, with unnamable filth, refuse; a tremulous hand gripped feverishlythe shoulder of a policeman who had roused him from a constrained stuporin a casual angle. "I wan' to see life, " he mumbled dully, "I gotpower ... Money. " He fumbled through his pockets in search of the proofof his assertion. In vain--all that was left of the nine hundred and sixtydollars was some loose silver. 

XXI

Again sober, without the resources of the citybred parasite, and withoutmoney, his instinct, his longing, drew him irresistibly into the open; hisheredity forced him toward the mountains, into familiar paths, valleys, heights. 

He avoided the stage road, and progressed toward Greenstream by tangledtrails, rocky ascents, sharp declines. By late day he had penetrated tothe heart of the upland region. He stood gazing down upon the undulating, verdant hills, over which he could trace the course of a thunder gust. Thestorm moved swiftly, in a compact, circular shadow on the sunny slope; hecould distinguish the sudden twisting of limbs, the path of torn leaves, broken branches, left by the lash of the wind and rain. The livid, sinister spot on the placid greenery drew nearer; he could now hear thecontinuous rumble of thunder, see the stabbing, purplish flashes oflightning. The edge of the storm swept darkly over the spot where he wasstanding; he was soaked by a momentary assault of rain driving greyly outof a passing, profound gloom. Then the cloud vanished, leaving thecountryside sparkling and serene under a stainless evening sky. 

The water dripped down his back, swashed in his shoes; he was, in hislowered vitality, supremely uncomfortable. The way was slippery with mud;wet leaves bathed his face in sudden, chill showers, clung to his hands. He fell. 

When he arrived at the rim of Greenstream night had hidden that familiar, welcome vista. The lights of the houses shone pale yellow below. A newreluctance to enter this place of home possessed him, a shame born of hisdenuded pockets, his bedraggled exterior. He descended, but turned to theleft, finding a rude road which skirted the base of the eastern range. Hewas following no definite plan, moving slowly, without objective; but awindow glimmering in a square of orange light against the night broughthim to a halt. It marked, he knew, the dwelling of the Jesuit priest, Merlier. In a sudden impulse he advanced over a short path, and fumbling, found the door, where he knocked. A chair scraped within and the doorswung open. The form of the priest was dark against the lighted interiorwhich absorbed them. 

XXII

The room was singularly bare: a tin lamp with a green glass shade, on anuncovered deal table, illuminated an open book, wood chairs with roughlysplit, hickory backs, a couch with no covering over its wire springs andiron frame; there was no carpet on the floor of loosely grooved boards, nodecorations on the plastered walls save a dark engraving of a man inintricate armor, with a face as passionate, as keen, as relentless, as ahawk's, labelled, "Loyola. "

Merlier silently indicated a chair, but he remained standing with his gazelowered upon the floor. He was a burly man, with a heavy countenanceimpassive as an oriental's, out of which, startling in its unexpectedrapidity, a glance flashed and stabbed as steely as Loyola's sword. Hishands were clasped before him; they were, in that environment, strangelywhite, and covered with the scars of what, patently, were unaccustomedemployments. 

"It feels good inside, " Gordon observed tritely. He noted uneasily themuddy tracks his shoes had printed upon the otherwise spotless boardfloor, "I got caught in a gust on the mountain, " he explained awkwardly, in a constraint which deepened with the other's continued silence; "Iought to have cleaned up before I came in ... It's terrible dark out. " Herose, tentatively, but the priest waved him back into the chair. Opening adoor opposite the one by which Gordon had entered, and which obviouslygave upon an outer shed, Merlier procured a roughly made mop; and, returning, he obliterated all traces of the mud. Suddenly, to Gordon'sdismay, his supreme discomfort, he stooped to a knee, and began to removethe former's shoes. 

"Hey!" Gordon protested; "don't do that; I can tend to my own feet. " Hewas prepared to kick out, but he recognized that a struggle could onlymake the situation insufferable, and he submitted in an acute, writhingmisery to the ministrations. The priest rose with Gordon's shoes andplaced them, together with the mop, outside the door. He then brought froman inner room an immaculate, white cambric shirt, a pair of trousers, oldbut carefully ironed, and knitted, grey worsted slippers. 

"If you will change, " he said in a low, impersonal voice, "I will see whatthere is for you to eat. " He left the room, and Gordon gratefully shiftedinto the fresh, dry clothes. The trousers were far too large; theybelonged, he recognized, to the priest, but he belted them into baggyfolds. The other appeared shortly with a wooden tray bearing a platter ofcooked, yellow beans, a part loaf of coarse bread, raw eggs and a pitcherof milk. "I thought, " he explained, "you would wish something immediately;there is no fire; Bartamon is out. " The latter, Gordon knew, was asharp-witted old man who had made a precarious living in the local fieldsand woodsheds until the priest had taken him as a general helper. "Thereare neither coffee nor tea in the house, " Merlier stated further. 

He closed the book, moved the lamp to the end of the table, and stood withhis countenance lowered, his folded hands immovable as stone, while GordonMakimmon consumed the cold food. Once the priest replenished the other'sglass with milk. 

If there had been a gleam of fraternal feeling, the slightest indicationof generous impulse, a mere accent of hospitality, in the priest'sactions, Gordon, accepting them in such spirit, might have been at ease. But not the faintest spark of interest, of curiosity, the most perfunctorycommunion of sympathy, was evident on Merlier's immobile countenance; hismovements were machine-like, he seemed infinitely removed from hischaritable act, infinitely cold. 

Gordon's discomfort burned into a species of illogical, resentful anger. He cursed the priest under his breath, choked on the food; he was heartilysorry that he had obeyed the fleeting impulse to enter. But even theanger expired before Merlier's impassivity--he must as well curse a figurecarved from granite, cast in lead. He grew, in turn, uneasy at the other'ssupernatural detachment; it chilled his blood like the grip of anunexpected, icy hand, like the imminence of inevitable death. The priestresembled a dead man, a dead man who had remained quick in the merephysical operations of the body, while all the machinery of his thoughts, his feelings, lay motionless and cold within. 

Gordon found relief in a customary cigarette when the uncomfortable repastwas finished. The priest removed the dishes, and reappeared with bedlinen, with which he proceeded to convert the bare couch into a provisionfor sleeping. Then he returned the lamp to the center of the table, openedthe book and seated with his back squarely toward the room, addressedhimself to the pages. 

Gordon Makimmon's head throbbed, suddenly paining him--it was as thoughsharp, malicious fingers were compressing the spine at the base of hisbrain. That, and the profound weariness which swept over him, weredisconcerting; he was so seldom ill, so rarely tired, that those unwelcomesymptoms bore an aggravated menace; it was the slight, premonitoryrusting, the corrosion of time, upon the iron of his manhood. 

In an instinctive need for human support, the reassurance of thecomprehension of his kind, he directed an observation at the broad, squat, somber back. "I might have been drunk a month, " he asserted, "by the way Ifeel. " The priest paused in his reading, inserted a finger in the page, and half turned. Gordon could see the full, smooth cheek, the droopinggaze, against the green radiance of the lamp. 

"If you will drink, " Merlier said in a bitter, repressed voice, "if youwill indulge the flesh, don't whimper at the price. " He made a gesture, indicating the bed, then returned to his reading. 

"The man doesn't live who's heard me whimper, " Gordon began loudly; buthis angry protest trailed into silence. There was no comfort, no redress, to be obtained from that absorbed, ungainly figure. He slipped out of thebaggy trousers, the worsted slippers, and, extending himself on the couch, fell heavily asleep. 

XXIII

When he woke the room was bright with narrow strips of sun, already toohigh to shine broadly through the doors and windows. His clothes, dry andcomparatively clean, reposed on a chair at his side, and, washing in thebasin which he found outside the door, he hastily dressed. He looked, tentatively, for the priest, but found only his aged helper in theroughly-cleared space at the back of the house. 

Bartamon was a small man, with a skull-like head, to the hollows of which, the bony projections, dark skin clung dryly; his eyes were mere dimmingglints of watery consciousness; and from the sleeves of a faded blueshirt, the folds of formless, canvas trousers, knotted, blackish hands, grotesque feet, appeared to hang jerking on wires. 

"Where's the Father?" Gordon inquired. 

The other rested from the laborious sawing of a log, blinking andtremulous in the hard brilliancy of midday. "Beyond, " he answered vaguely, waving up the valley; "Sim Caley's wife sent for him from Hollidew's farm. Sim or his wife think they're going to die two or three times the year, and bother the Father.... But I wouldn't wonder they would, and themworking for Hollidew, dawn, day and dark, with never a proper skinful offood, only this and that, maybe, chick'ry and fat pork and moldy ends ofnothing. "

He filled the blackened ruin of a pipe, shaking in his palsied fingers, clasped it in mumbling, toothless gums: he was so sere, so juiceless, thatthe smoke trailing from his sunken lips might well have been thespontaneous conflagration of his desiccated interior. 

"Hollidew's a terrible man for money, " he continued, "it hurts him like acut with a hick'ry to see a dollar go. They say he won't hear tell ofquitting his fortune for purgatory, no, nor for heaven neither. He can'tget him to make a will, the lawyer can't. He was telling the Father theother day, sitting right in the house there, 'Pompey Hollidew, ' he says, 'won't even talk will.... ' He'd like to take it all with him to the devil, Pompey would. " He turned with a sigh to the log. A cross-cut saw, with ahandle at either end, lay upon the ground; and Gordon, grasping the farhandle, helped him to drag the slim, glittering steel through thepowdering fiber of the wood. 

As he worked mechanically Gordon's thoughts returned to the past, the pastwhich had collapsed so utterly, so disastrously, so swiftly upon hiscomplacency, robbing him of his sustenance, of Clare, of his home. Thecomplaining voice of the old man finally pierced his abstraction. "If youare going to ride, " Bartamon complained, "don't drag your feet. "

The two men consumed a formless, ample meal, after which Gordon stillwaited negligently for the priest. The sun sank toward the western range;the late afternoon grew as hushed, as rich in color, in vert shadows, ultramarine, and amber, as heavy in foliage bathed in aureate light, asthe nave of a cathedral under stained glass. 

In a corner of the shed Gordon found a fishing rod of split bamboo, sprungwith time and neglect, the wrappings hanging and effectually loose. Asmall brass reel was fastened to the butt, holding an amount of line. Hebalanced the rod in his grasp, discovering it to be the property of theold man. 

"What'll you take for it?" he demanded. His store of money had beenreduced to a precarious sum of silver; but the longing had seized him tofish in the open, to follow a stream into the tranquil dusk. 

"I got some flies too. " The other resurrected a cigar box, which held somefeathered hooks attached to doubtful guts. "They are dried out, " Gordonpronounced, testing them; "what will you take for the whole worthlesslot?" Bartamon demurred: the rod had been a good rod, it had been given tohim in the past by a mayor, or had it been a senator? It was not likecommon rods, made of six strips of bamboo, but of eight, the line wassilk.... He would take sixty cents. 

Delaying his expression of gratitude to the priest--he could stop on hisreturn with trout--Gordon was soon tramping over the soft, dusty road towhere he bordered a stream skirting the eastern range. A shelf ofpasturage ran, deep blue-green sod, against the rocky wall; to the left, through scattered trees, the valley was visible; on the right the rangemounted precipitant, verdant, to its far crown. The stream, now torn towhite foam on a rocky descent, now swept with a glassy rush between level, green banks, now moved slowly in a deep-shaded pool, where gleamingbubbles held filmed sliding replicas of the banks, the trees, the sky. 

The sun, growing less a source of light than a brilliant circle ofcarmine, almost touched the western range; the shadow troop swept down theslope and lengthened across the valley; cut by the trunks of trees thelight fell in dusty gold bars across the water. Gordon drew the linethrough the dipping tip, knotting on three of the flies. Then he quietlyfollowed the stream to where it fell into a circular, stone-bound basin. He made his cast with a quick turn of the wrist, skilfully avoiding thehigh underbrush, the overhanging limbs. The flies swung out and droppedsoftly on the water. On the second cast he caught a trout--a silvery, gleaming shape flecked with vermilion and black, shaded with mauve andemerald and maroon. 

In a shallow reach he waded, forgetful of his clothes. He caught anothertrout, another and another, stringing them on a green withe. He castindefatigably, but with the greatest possible economy of effort; hisprogress was all but soundless; he slipped down stream like a thing of thewoods, fishing with delicate art, with ardor, with ingenuity, and withcontinual success. 

The sun disappeared in a primrose void behind the darkening mountains; thehush deepened upon the valley, a hush in which the voice of the stream wasaudible, cool--a sound immemorially old, lingering from the timeless pastthrough vast, dim changes, cataclysms, carrying the melancholy, eloquent, incomprehensible plaint of primitive nature. 

Gordon was absorbed, content; the quiet, the magic veil of oblivion, ofthe woods, of the immobile mountains, enveloped and soothed him, releasedhis heart from its oppression, banished the fever, the struggle, from hisbrain. The barrier against which he still fished was mauve, the waterblack; the moon appeared buoyantly, like a rosy bubble blown upon acurtain of old blue velvet. He cast once more, and met his last strike, aheavy jar that broke the weakened line, in a broad, still expanse wherewhite moths fluttered above the water in a cold, stagnant gloom. He sawthe rotting wall of a primitive dam, the crumbling, fallen sides of a rudemill. Night fell augustly. The whippoorwills cried faint and distant. 

He sat on a log, draining his shoes, pressing the water from his trousers, and smoked while the light of the moon brightened into a silvery radiancein which objects, trees, were greyly visible; reaches sank into softobscurity. He recognized his position from the ruined mill--he was on theedge of that farm of Pompey Hollidew's of which Bartamon had spoken. Hollidew, he knew, seldom visited his outlying acres, then only in thecollection of rents or profits--they lay too far from his iron chest, fromthe communication of the Stenton banks. Gordon knew Sim Caley, and, suddenly, he decided to visit him; the trout would afford the Caleys andhimself an ample repast. 

He crossed the road, made his way through a fragrant tangle of fieldgrass, over shorn and orderly acres of grazing. The moon rose higher, grewbrighter; the vistas were clear, unreal, the shadows like spilled ink. Thehouse toward which he moved stood sharply defined, and enclosed by afence, flowers, from the farm. As he approached he saw that no lightswere visible, but a blur of white moved in the shadow of the portico. Hedecided that it was Sim Caley's wife; and, opening the gate, advanced witha query for Mrs. Caley's health forming on his lips. 

But it was Lettice Hollidew. 

XXIV

She retreated, as he advanced, within the deeper obscurity of an openeddoor but he had seen, in the shimmering, elusive light, her features, gathered the unmistakable, intangible impression of her person. 

"It's me, Gordon Makimmon, " he said. He paused by the step, on which helaid the trout, shining with sudden, liquid gleams of silver in themoonlight. 

"Oh!" she exclaimed in a low voice; "oh!" She moved forward, materializing, out of the dark, into a figure of white youth. Her face waspale, there were white ruffles on her neck, on her arms, her skirt clungsimply, whitely, about her knees and ankles. 

"I stopped to see Sim, " he explained further, "and took you for Mrs. Caley. I reckoned I'd bring them some trout: I didn't know your father washere. "

"Won't you sit down. Mrs. Caley is sick, and Sim's on the mountain withthe cattle. Father isn't here. "

He mounted to the portico, mentally formulating a way of speedy escape; hethought, everywhere he turned Lettice Hollidew stood with her tiresomesmile. "I come out here every summer, " she volunteered, sinking upon astep, "and spend two weeks. I was born here you see, and, " she added in astiller voice, "my mother died here. Father Merlier calls it my yearlyretreat. "

"I'd be pleased if you'd take the fish, " he remarked; "I guess I'd betterbe moving--I've got to see the priest. "

"Why, you haven't stopped a minute, " she protested, "not long enough tosmoke one of your little cigarettes. Visitors are too scarce here to letthem go off like that. "

At the implied suggestion he half-mechanically rolled a cigarette. Thechair he found was comfortable; he was very weary. He sat smoking andindifferently studying Lettice Hollidew. She was, to-night, prettier thanhe had remembered her. She was telling him, in a voice that rippled cooland low like the stream, of Mrs. Caley's indisposition. Her face, nowturned toward the fields, was dipped in the dreaming radiance; now it wasblurred, vaguely appealing, disturbing. Her soft youth was creamy, distilling an essence, a fragrance, like a flower; it was one with theimmaculate flood of light bathing the world in virginal beauty. 

A new interest stirred within him, a satisfaction grew from her palpableliking for him, and was reflected in the warmer tones of his replies; anew pain ordered his comments. The situation, too, appealed to him; hisinstinct responded to the obvious implications of the position in theexact degree of his habit of mind. The familiar, professional gallantrytook possession of him, directing the sensuality to which he abandonedhimself. 

He moved from the chair to the step by her side. Nearer she was moreappealing still; a lovely shadow dwelt at the base of her throat; thesimple dress took the soft curves of her girlish body, stirred with herbreathing. Her hands lay loosely in her lap, and the impulse seized him totake them up, but he repressed it ... For the moment. 

"I saw Buckley Simmons, yesterday, " she informed him, "his face is nearlywell. He wanted to come out here, but I wouldn't let him. He wants tomarry me, " she continued serenely; "I told him I didn't think I'd everymarry. "

"But you will--some lucky, young man. "

"I don't think I like young men, that is, " she qualified carefully, "notvery young. I like men who are able to act ever so quickly, no matter whatoccurs, and they must be terribly brave. I like them best if they havebeen unfortunate; something in me wants to make up to them for--for anyloss, " she paused, gazing at him with an elevated chin, serious lips, intent eyes. 

This, he told himself complacently, was but a description of himself, aspointed as she dared to make it. "A man who had had trouble couldn't dobetter than tell you about it, " he assured her; "I have had a good lot oftrouble. "

"Well, tell me, " she moved toward him. 

"Oh! you wouldn't care to hear about mine. I'm a sort of nobody atpresent. I haven't anything in the world--no home, nothing in the wholeworld. Even the little saving I had after the house was sold was--wastaken from me by sharpers. "

"Tell me, " she repeated, "more. "

"When Valentine Simmons had sold my place, the place my grandfather built, I had about a thousand dollars left, and I thought I would start a littlebusiness with it, a ... A gun store, --I like guns, --here in Greenstream. And I'd sharpen scythes, put sickles into condition, you know, things likethat. I went to Stenton with my capital in my pocket, looking for somestock to open with, and met a man in a hotel who said he was therepresentative of the Standard Hardware Company. He could let me haveeverything necessary, he said, at a half of what others would charge. Wehad dinner together, and he made a list of what I would need--files andvises and parts of guns. If I mailed my cheque immediately I could get thehalf off. He had cards, catalogues, references, from Richmond. I mightwrite there, but I'd lose time and money. 

"None of the Makimmons have been good business men; we are notdistrustful. I sent the cheque to the address he said, made out to him forthe Standard Hardware Company, so that he would get the commission, thecredit of the sale. " He drew a deep breath, gazing across the moonlitfields. "The Makimmons are not distrustful, " he reiterated; "he robbed meof all my savings. "

His lie would have fared badly with Pompey Hollidew, he thought grimly; itwas unconvincing, wordy; he was conscious that his assumed emotion rangthinly. But its calculated effect was instantaneous, beyond all his hopes, his plan. 

Lettice leaned close to him with a sobbing inspiration of sympathy andpity. "How terrible!" she cried in low tones; "you were so noble--" Hebreathed heavily once more. "What a wicked, wicked man. Couldn't you getanything back? did it all go?"

"All. " His hand fell upon hers, and neither of them appeared to notice itspressure. Her face was close to his, a tear gleamed on her young, moon-blanched cheek. A sudden impatience seized him at her credulity, acontempt at the ease with which she was victimized; the effort was almostwithout spice. Still his grasp tightened upon her hand, drew it towardhim. "In Greenstream, " he continued, "men don't like me, they are afraidof me; but the women make me unhappy--they tell me their troubles; I don'twant them to, I keep away from them. "

"I understand that, " she declared eagerly, "I would tell you anything. "

"You are different; I want you to tell me ... Things. But the things Iwant to hear may not come to you. I would never be satisfied with alittle. The Makimmons are all that way--everything or nothing. "

She gently loosened her hand, and stood up, facing him. Her countenance, turned to the light, shone like a white flame; it was tensely aquiver withpassionate earnestness, lambent with the flowering of her body, of dimdesire, the heritage of flesh. She spoke in a voice that startled Gordonby its new depth, the brave thrill of its undertone. 

"I could only give all, " she said. "I am like that too. What do you wishme to tell you? What can I say that will help you?"

"Ever since I first saw you going to the Stenton school, " he hurried on, "I have thought about you. I could hardly wait for the Christmas holidays, to have you in the stage, or for the summer when you came home. Nobodyknows; it has been a secret ... It seemed so useless. You were likea ... A star, " he told her. 

"How could I know?" she asked; "I was only a girl until--untilBuckley ... Until to-night, now. But I can never be that again, somethinghas happened ... In my heart, something has gone, and come, " her voicegrew shadowed, wistful. It carried to him, in an intangible manner, afleet warning, as though something immense, unguessed, august, utteredthrough Lettice Hollidew the whisper of a magnificent and terrible menace. He felt again as he had felt as a child before the vast mystery of night. An impulse seized him to hurry away from the portico, from the youthfulfigure at his side; a sudden, illogical fear chilled him. But he summonedthe hardihood, the skepticism, of his heart; he defied--while the sinkingwithin him persisted--not the girl, but the nameless force beyond, above, about them. "You are like a star, " he repeated, in forced tones. 

He rose and stood before her. She swayed toward him like a flower bowed bythe wind. He put his arms around her, her head lay back, and he kissed thesmooth fullness of her throat. He kissed her lips. 

The eternal, hapless cry of the whippoorwills throbbed on his hearing. Themoon slipped behind a corner of the house, and a wave of darkness sweptover them. Lettice began to tremble violently, and he led her back totheir place on the veranda's edge. She was silent, and clung to him with areluctant eagerness. He kissed her again and again, on a still mouth, butsoon her lips answered his desire. It grew constantly darker, the silveryvistas shortened, grew blurred, trees merged into indistinguishablegloom. 

Lettice murmured a shy, unaccustomed endearment. Gordon was stereotyped, commonplace; he was certain that even she must recognize the hollowness ofhis protestations. But she never doubted him; she accepted the dull, leaden note of his spurious passion for the clear ring of unalloyed andfine gold. 

Suddenly and unexpectedly she released herself from his arms. "Oh!" sheexclaimed, in conscience-stricken tones, "Mrs. Caley's medicine!I--forgot; she should have had some long ago. " He tried to catch her oncemore in his embrace, restrain her. "It would be better not to wake herup, " he protested, "sleep's what sick folks need. " But she continued toevade him. Mrs. Caley must have her medicine. The doctor had said that itwas important. "It's my duty, Gordon, " she told him, "and you would wantme to do that. "

He stifled with difficulty an impatient exclamation. "Then will you comeback?" he queried. He took her once more close in his arms. "Come back, "he whispered hotly in her ear. 

"But, dear Gordon, it is so late. "

"What does that matter? don't you love me? You said you were the sort of agirl to give all; and now, because it is a little late, you are afraid. What are you afraid of? Tell me that! You know I love you; we belong toeach other; what does it matter how late it is? Beside, no one will know, no one is here to spy on us. Come back, my little girl ... My littleLettice; come back to a lonely man with nothing else in the world but you. I'll come in with you, wait inside. "

"No, " she sobbed, "wait ... Here. I will see ... The medicine. Wait herefor me, I will come back. It doesn't matter how late it is, nothingmatters ... Trust in you. Love makes everything good. Only you love me, oh, truly?"

"Truly, " he reassured her. "Don't be long; and, remember, shut Mrs. Caley's door. "

She left him abruptly, and, standing alone in the dark, he cursed himselffor a fool for letting her go--a boy's trick. But then the whole affairdid not desperately engage him. He sat in the comfortable chair, and lit acigarette, shielding it with his hand so that she would not see it, recognize in its triviality his detachment. A wave of weariness swept overhim; the night was like a blanket on the land. Minutes passed without herreturn; soon he would go in search of her; he would find her ... In thedark house.... He shut his eyes for a moment, and opened them with aneffort. The whippoorwills never for a moment ceased their melancholycalling; they seemed to draw nearer to him; then retreat, far away. Hishead fell forward upon his breast. 

Lettice Hollidew! little fool; but what was that beyond her, blacker thannight?

He stirred, sat up sharply, his eyes dazzled by a blaze of intolerablebrilliancy. It was the sun, a full two hours above the horizon. He hadslept through the night. His muscles were cramped, his neck achedintolerably. He rose with a painful effort and something fell to thefloor. It was a rose, wilted, its fragrance fled. He realized that Letticehad laid it on his knee, last night, when the bud had been fresh. He hadslept while she stood above him, while the rose had faded. On the step thefish lay, no longer brightly colored, in a dull, stiff heap. The house wasstill; through the open door the sun fell on a strip of rag rug. He turnedand hurried down the steps, unlatched the gate, and almost ran across thefields to the cover of a wood, fleeing from an unsupportably humiliatingvision. 

XXV

He made his way to where Greenstream village lay somnolent beneath therefulgent day. The chairs before the office of the _Bugle_ wereunoccupied, from within came the monotonous, sliding rattle of the smallfootpress. Gordon sat absently revolving the possibilities held out by thenear future. Hay, he knew was still being made in the valley, but theprospect of long, arduous, days in the open fields, in the hot, dry chaffof the sere grass, was forbidding. He might take his gun and a fewpersonal necessities and disappear into such wild as yet remained, contracting steadily before the inexorable, smooth advance ofcivilization. He was aware that he could manage a degree of comfort, adequate food. But the thoughtless resiliency of sheer youth had desertedhim, the desire for mere, picturesque adventure had fled during the past, comfortable years. He dismissed contemptuously the possibility of clerkingin a local store. There was that still in the Makimmon blood which balkedat measuring ribbands, selling calico to captious women. 

The large, suave figure of the Universalist minister, in grey alpaca coatand black trousers, approached leisurely over the street, and stoppedbefore Gordon. The minister had a conspicuously well-fed paunch, hissmooth face expressed placid self-approval, his tones never for a momentlost the unctuous echo of the pulpiteer. 

"You have not worshipped with us lately, " he observed. "Remiss, remiss. Our services have been stirring--three souls redeemed from everlastingtorment at the Wednesday meeting, two adults and a child sealed to Christon Sunday. "

"I'll drop in, " Gordon told him pacifically. 

"A casual phrase to apply to the Mansion of the Son, " the ministerobserved, "more humility would become you.... God, I pray Thee that Thyfire descend upon this unhappy man and consume utterly away his carnalenvelope. What are you doing?" he demanded abruptly of Gordon. 

"Nothing particular just now. "

"There are some small occupations about the parsonage--a board or so looseon the ice house, a small field of provender for the animal. Let us say aweek's employment for a ready man. I could pay but a modeststipend ... But the privilege of my home, the close communion with ourMaker. You would be as my brother: what do you say?"

Gordon was well aware of the probable extent of the "small occupations, "the minister's reputation for exacting monumental labors in return for the"modest stipend" mentioned. However, the proposal furnished Gordon with asolution for immediate difficulties; it secured him a bed and food, anopportunity for the maturing of further plans. 

He rose, queried, "Shall I go right along?"

"Admirable, " the other approved. "My beloved helpmate will show you wherethe tools are kept, when you can begin immediately. "

Gordon made his way past Simmons' store to the plaster bulk of theUniversalist Church, its lawn shared by the four-square, shingled roof ofthe parsonage. Back of both structures reached a small field of heavygrass, where Gordon labored for the remainder of the day. 

Late in the afternoon an aged, gaunt man drove an incongruous, twowheeled, breaking cart into the stable yard behind the parsonage. Afterhitching an aged, gaunt white horse, he approached the field's edge, whereGordon was harvesting. It was the minister's father-in-law, himself aclergyman for the half century past, a half century that stretched backinto strenuous, bygone days of circuit riding. His flowing hair and aragged goatee were white, oddly stained and dappled with lemon yellow, hisskin was leather-like from years of exposure to the elements, to thebitter mountain winters, the ruthless suns of the August valleys. He wasas seasoned, as tough, as choice old hickory, and had pale, blue eyes inwhich the flame of religious fervor, of incandescent zeal, were scarcelydimmed. 

A long supper table was spread in a room where a sideboard supported ahuge silver-plated pitcher swung on elaborately engraved supports, a dozenblue glasses traced with gold, and a plate that pictured in a grey, blurred fashion the Last Supper. The gathering ranged variously from theaged circuit rider to the minister's next but one to the youngest: he hadfourteen children, of which nine were ravenously present. The oldest girlat the table, a possible sixteen years, had this defiant detachment underher immediate charge, acquitting herself notably by a constant stream ofsharp negations opposed to a varied clamor of proposals, attempted foragesupon the heaped plates, sly reprisals, and a sustained, hysterical notewhich threatened at any time, and in any youthful individual, to burstinto angry wails. 

Opposite Gordon Makimmon sat a slight, feminine figure, whom he recognizedas the teacher of the past season's local school. She had a pallid face, which she rarely raised, compressed lips, and hands which attracted Gordonby reason of their white deftness, the precise charm of their pointedfingers. During a seemingly interminable grace, pronounced in a rapidsing-song by the circuit rider, Gordon saw her flash her gaze about thetable, the room; and its somber, resentful fire, its restrained fury ofimpatience, of disdain, of hatred, coming from that fragile, silent shape, startled him. 

The Universalist minister addressed the company in sonorous periods, which, however, did not prevent him from assimilating a prodigious amountof food. Between forkfuls of chicken baked in macaroni, "I rejoice that myministrations are acceptable to Him, " he pronounced; "three soulsWednesday last, two adults and a child on Sunday. "

The aged evangelist could scarcely contain his contempt at this meagertally. "What would you say, Augustus, " he demanded in eager, tremuloustriumph, "to two hundred lost souls roaring up to the altar, casting offtheir wickedness like snakes shed their skins? Hey? Hey? What would yousay to two hundred dipped in the blood of the lamb and emerging white asthe Dove? Souls ain't what they were, " he muttered pessimistically; "itused to be you could hear the Redeemed a spell of miles from the church, now they're as confidential as a man borrowing money. The Lord will in nowise acknowledge the faint in spirit. " Suddenly, "Glory! Glory!" heshouted, and his old eyes flamed with the inextinguishable blaze of hisenthusiasm. 

The minister's wife inserted in the door from the kitchen a face brightred from bending over the stove. "Now, pa, " she admonished, "you'll scarethem children again. "

XXVI

The "board or so" to be replaced on the ice house, as Gordon had surmised, proved to be extensive--a large section of the inner wall had rotted fromthe constant dampness, the slowly seeping water. The ice house stood backof the dwelling, by the side of the small barn and beyond a number ofapple trees: it was a square structure of boards, with no opening save alow door under the peak of the roof with a small platform and exteriorflight of steps. 

In the gloomy, dank interior a rough ladder, fastened to the wall, leddown to the falling level of soggy sawdust, embedded in which theirregular pieces of ice were preserved against the summer. From theinterior the opening made a vivid square of blue sky; for long hours theblue increased in brilliancy, after which, veiled in a greyer haze ofheat, the patch of sky grew gradually paler, and then clear; thesuggestion of immeasurable space deepened; above the dark hole of the icehouse the illimitable distance was appalling. Gordon was resting from thesullen, muffled knocking of his hammer when a figure suddenly blotted outthe light, hid the sky. He recognized the sharply-cut silhouette of theschool-teacher. 

"What a horrid, spooky place, " she spoke with a shiver, peering within. 

"It's cool, " Gordon told her indifferently. 

"And quiet, " she added, seating herself upon the platform with an elbow inthe opening; "there's none of the bothersome clatter of a lot ofdetestable children. " She raised her voice in shrill mimicry, "'Teacher, kin I be excused? Teacher!... Teacher--!'"

"Don't you like children?"

"I loathe them, " she shot at him, out of the depths of a profound, long-accumulated exasperation; "the muddy little beasts. "

"Then I wouldn't be vexed with them. "

"Do you like nailing boards in a rotten ice house?"

"Oh, I'm dog poor; I've got to take anything that comes along. "

"And, you fool, do you suppose I'd be here if I had anything at all? Doyou suppose I'd stay in this damn lost hole if I could get anywhere else?Do you think I have no more possibilities than this?"

He mounted the ladder, and emerged upon the platform by her side, where hefound a place, a minute, for a cigarette. 

The woman's face was bitter, her body tense. 

"I'll grow old and die in places like this, " she continued passionately;"I'll grow old and die in pokey, little schools, and wear prim calicodresses, with a remade old white mull for commencements. I'll never hearanything but twice two, and Persia is bounded on the north by, --with allthe world beyond, Paris and London and Egypt, for the lucky. I want tolive, " she cried to Gordon Makimmon, idly curious, to the still branchesof the apple trees, the vista of village half-hid in dusty foliage. "Iwant to see things, things different, not these dumb, depressingmountains. I want to see life!"

Gordon had a swift memory of a city street grey in a reddening flood ofdawn, of his own voice in a reddening flood of dawn, of his own voicemumbling out of an overwhelming, nauseous desperation that samedetermination, desire. "Perhaps, " he ventured, "you wouldn't think so muchof it when you'd seen it. "

"Wouldn't I?" she exclaimed; "oh, wouldn't I?--smart crowds and gaystreets and shops on fire with jewels. That's where I belong; I'd showthem; I've got a style, if I only had a chance! I've got afigure ... Shoulders. "

He appraised in a veiled glance her physical pretensions. He discovered, to his surprise, that she had "shoulders"; her body resembled her hands, it was smoothly rounded, provocative; its graceful proportion deceivedthe casual eye. 

With a disdainful motion she kicked off a heavily clumsy slipper--herinstep arched narrowly to a delicate ankle, the small heel was sharplycut. "In silk, " she said, "and a little brocaded slipper, you would see. "She replaced the inadequate thing of leather. The animation died from hercountenance, she surveyed him with cold eyes, narrowed lips. Her gaze, hefelt, included him in the immediate, hateful scene; she gained freshrepugnance from his stained, collarless shirt, his bagging knees coatedwith sawdust. 

She rose, and, her skirt gathered in one hand, descended the precariousflight of steps. She crossed the grass slowly, her head bent, her handstightly clenched. 

Later, in the yard, Gordon saw, at a lighted, upper window, the silhouetteof her back, a gleam of white arm. The window cast an elongated rectangleof warm light on the blue gloom of the grass. It illuminated him, with hisgaze lifted; and, while, standing in the open window, she saw him clearly, she was as indifferent, as contemptuous of his presence, as though he hadbeen an animal. A film of cambric, golden in the lamplight, settled abouther smooth shoulders, fell in long diaphanous lines. She raised her armsto her head, her hair slid darkly across her face, and she turned anddisappeared. He moved away, but the memory rankled delicately in hisimagination, returned the following morning. The thought lingered of thatbody, as fine as ivory, unguessed, hidden, in a coarse sheath. 

XXVII

His miscellaneous labors at the minister's filled nearly a week ofunremitting labor. But, upon the advent of Sunday, mundane affairs weresuspended in the general confusion of preparation for church. It hadrained during the night, the day was cool and fragrant and clear, andGordon determined to evade the morning's services, and plunge aimlesslyinto the pleasant fields. He kept in the background until the cavalcadehad started, headed by the minister--the circuit rider had driven offearlier in his cart to an outlying chapel--and his wife. It was invitingon the deserted veranda, and Gordon lingered while the village emptiedinto the churches, the open. 

Finally he sauntered over the street, past the Courthouse, by PompeyHollidew's residence. It was, unlike the surrounding dwellings, built ofbrick; there was no porch, only three stone steps descending from the mainentrance, and no flowers. The path was overgrown with weeds, the frontshutters were indifferently flung back, half opened, closed. The doorstood wide open, and, as he passed, Gordon gathered the impression of adark heap on the hall floor. He dismissed an idle curiosity; and then, forno discoverable reason, halted, turned back, for a second glance. 

Even from the path he saw extending from the heap an arm, a gnarled hand. It was Pompey Hollidew himself, cold, still, on the floor. Gordon entered, looking outside for assistance: no one was in sight. Pompey Hollidew worethe familiar, greenish-black coat, the thread-bare trousers and faded, yellow shirt. The battered derby had rolled a short distance across thefloor. The dead man's face was a congested, olive shade, with purplesmudges beneath the up-rolled eyes, and lips like dried leaves. His end, it was apparent, had been as sudden as it was natural. 

Old Pompey ... Dead! Gordon straightened up. Simultaneously two ideasflashed into his mind--Lettice and Hollidew's gold. Then they grewcoherent, explicable. Lettice and the gold were one; she was the gold, thegold was Lettice. He recalled now, appositely, what Bartamon had told himbut a few days before ... Hollidew would consent to make no will; therewere no other children. The money would automatically go, principally, toLettice, without question or contest. If he had but considered before, acted with ordinary sense ... The girl had been in love with him; hemight have had it all. He gazed cautiously, but with no determined plan ofaction, out over the street--it lay deserted in the ambient sunlight. 

He quickly left the house, the old man sprawling grotesquely across thebare hall, forcing himself to walk with an assumed, deliberate ease overthe plank walk, past Simmons' corner. As he progressed a plan formulatedin his mind, a plan obvious, promising immediate, practicableresults ... Lettice had told him that she would remain for two weeks atthe farm. It was evident that she was still there. His gait quickened; ifhe could reach her now, before any one else.... He wished that he hadclosed the door upon the old man's body; any one passing as he had passedcould see the corpse; a wagon would be sent for the girl. 

He commenced, outside the village, to run, pounding over the dusty waywith long-drawn, painful gasps, his chest oppressed by the nowunaccustomed exercise, the rapid motion. When he came in sight of thefarmhouse that was his objective, he stopped and endeavored to remove alltraces of his haste; he rubbed off his shoes, fingered his necktie, moppedhis brow. 

There was a woman on the porch; it proved to be Mrs. Caley, folded in ashawl, pale and gaunt. Suddenly the possibility occurred to him thatLettice had driven into church. But she was in the garden patch beyond, Mrs. Caley said. Gordon strolled around the corner of the house ashastily, as slowly, as he dared. 

He saw her immediately. She wore a blue linen skirt, a white waist, andher sleeves were rolled up. The sun glinted on her uncovered hair, blazedin the bright tin basin into which she was dropping scarlet peppers. Sheappeared younger than he had remembered her; her arms were youthful andsoftly dimpled; her brow seemed again the calm, guileless brow of a girl;her eyes, as she raised them in greeting, were serene. 

"I wanted to explain to you, " he began obliquely, "about that--thatfalling asleep. It's been worrying me. You see, I hadn't had any rest forthree or four nights, I had been bothering about my affairs, and aboutsomething more important still. "

Bean poles, covered with bright green verdure, made a background of youngsummer for her own promise of early maturity. She placed the basin on theground, and stood with her arms hanging loosely, gazing at himexpectantly, frankly. 

"The most important thing in my life, " he added, then paused. "I thoughtfor a while that I had better go away without saying anything to you, andmore particularly since I have lost everything. " He could hear, comingover the road, the regular hoof-beats of a trotting horse, and he had thefeeling that it must be a messenger from the village, dispatched insearch of Lettice with the news of her father's death. For a moment thehorse seemed to be stopping; he was afraid that his opportunity had beenlost; but, after all, the hoof-beats passed, diminished over the road. Then, "Since I have lost everything, " he repeated. 

"Please tell me more, " she demanded, "I don't understand--"

"But, " he continued, in the manner he had hastily adopted, "when the timecame I couldn't; I couldn't go away and leave you. I thought, perhaps, youmight be different from others; I thought, perhaps, you might like a manfor what he was, and not for what he had. I would come to you, I decided, and tell you all this, tell you that I could work, yes, and would, andmake enough--" He paused in order to observe the effect of his speech uponher. She was gazing clear-eyed at him, in a sort of shining expectancy, agrave, eager comprehension, appealing, incongruous, to her girlhood. 

"But why?" she queried. 

"Because I'm in love with you: I want to marry you. "

Her gaze did not falter, but her color changed swiftly, a rosy tide sweptover her cheeks, and died away, leaving her pale. Her lips trembled. Apalpable, radiant content settled upon her. 

"Thank you, " she told him seriously; "it will make me very happy to marryyou, Gordon. "

With a fleeting, backward glance he moved closer to her, his arm fellabout her waist, he pressed a hasty, ill-directed kiss upon her chin. "Will you marry me now?" he asked eagerly. "You see, others wouldn'tunderstand, you remember what your father said about the Makimmon breed?They would repeat that I had nothing, or even that I was marrying you forold Pompey's money. You know better than that, you know he wouldn't giveus a penny. "

"It wouldn't matter now what any one said, " she returned serenely. 

"But it would be so much easier--we could slip off quietly somewhere, andcome back married, all the fuss avoided, all the say so's and say no'sshut up right at the beginning. "

"When do you want to be--be married?"

"Right away! now! to-day!"

"Oh ... Oh, Gordon, but we couldn't! I haven't even a white dress here. Imight go into Greenstream, be ready to-morrow--"

"No, no, no, I'm afraid it must be now or never; something would take youfrom me. I knew it, I was afraid of it, from the first ... I'll shootmyself. "

She started toward him in an excess of tender pity. "Do you care as muchas that?" She laid her palms upon his shoulders, lifting her face to his:"Then we will do what you say, we will go, yes, we will go immediately. You can hitch up the buggy, while I get a little thing or two. I have mybeads, and the bracelets that were mother's ... I wish my white organdiewas here. You mustn't think I'm silly! You see--marriage, for a girl ... Ithought it would all be so different. But, Gordon dear, we won't let yoube unhappy. "

He wished silently to God that she would get the stuff in the house, thatthey would get started. At any minute now word would come of the old man'sdeath, there would be delay, Lettice would learn that he had lied againand again to her. With a gesture of impatience he dislodged her hands fromhis shoulders. "Where's Sim?" he demanded. 

"In the long field. I'll show you the stable; it won't take me a minute toget ready. "

He hitched, in an incredibly short space of time, a tall, ungainly roanhorse into the buggy; his practised hands connected the straps, settledthe headstall, the collar, as if by magic. He stood in a fever ofuneasiness at the harnessed head. Lettice was longer than she hadindicated. 

When, at last, she appeared, she carried a neatly pinned paper bundle, anda fragrant mass of hastily pulled roses. Bright blue glass beads hung overthe soft contours of her virginal breasts, the bracelets that had beenher mother's--enamelled in black on old, reddish gold--encircled hersmooth wrists. 

He would have hurried her at once into the buggy, but she stopped him, andstood facing him with level, solemn eyes:

"I give myself to you, Gordon, " she said, "gladly and gladly, and I willgo wherever you go, and try all my life to be what you would like. " As sherepeated her simple words, erect and brave, with her arms filled withroses, for a fleeting second he was again conscious of the vague menacethat had towered darkly at her back on the night when she had laid in hisgrasp that other rose ... The rose that had faded. 

"Let's get along, " he urged. The whip swung out across the roan's ears, and the horse started forward with a vicious rush. The dewy fragrance ofthe flowers trailed out behind the buggy, mingling with the swirling dust, then both settled into the empty road, under the burning brightness of thesun, the insensate beauty of the azure sky. 

TWO

I

In the clear glow of a lengthening twilight of spring Gordon Makimmonsauntered into Simmons' store. The high, dusty windows facing theCourthouse were raised, and a warm air drifted in, faint eddies of thefragrance of flowering bushes, languorous draughts of a countryside newlygreen. 

A number of men idling over a counter greeted him with a familiar andinstantly alert curiosity. The clerk behind the counter bent forward withthe brisk assumption of a business-like air. "Certainly, " Gordon repliedto his query, pausing to allow his purpose to gain its full effect; "Iwant to order a suit of clothes. "

"Why, damn it t'ell, Gord!" exclaimed an individual, with a long, droopingnose, a jaw which hung loosely on a corded, bare throat; "it ain't threeweeks ago but you got a suit, and it ain't the one you have on now, neither. "

"Shut up, Tol'able, " Buckley Simmons interposed, "you'll hurt trade. Gordon's the Dandy Dick of Greenstream. "

"Haven't I a right to as many suits of clothes as I've a mind to?" Gordondemanded belligerently. 

"Sure you have, Gord. You certainly have, " a pacific chorus replied. 

"I want one like the last drummer wore through here, " he continued; "acheck suit with braid on all the edges. "

The clerk dropped a bulky volume heavily on the counter. "The ChicagoSartorial Company, " he asserted, "have got some swell checks. " He ranhastily over the pages, each with a sample rectangle of cloth pastedwithin a printed gold border, and a cabalistic sign beneath. Finally, "How's that?" he demanded, indicating a bold, mathematical design in paleorange, blue and grey. 

A combined whistle rose from the onlookers; comments of mock amazementcrowded one upon another. "Jin ... Go! He's got the wrong book--that's ragcarpet. Don't look at it too long, Gord, it'll cross your eyes. That ain'ta suit, it's a game. " A gaunt hand solemnly shook out imaginary dice uponthe counter, "It's my move and I can jump you. "

"Gentlemen! gentlemen!" the clerk protested; "this is the finest articlewoven, the very toniest. "

Gordon dismissed the sample with a gesture. "I'm a man, " he pronounced, "not a minstrel. " His attention was held by a smaller pattern, in blackand white, with an occasional red thread drawn through. "That's it, " hedecided; "that's it, with braid. What will that damage me?"

The clerk consulted the sign appended to the sample, then raced through asmaller, supplementary volume, where he located the item in question. "That cloth you picked out, " he announced importantly, "is one of the bestthe Chicago Sartorial Company put out. Cut ample, with sleeves lined insilkaleen and back in A1 mohair, it'll stand you thirty-eight dollars. Genuine Eytalian thread silk lining will come at four and a half more. "

"She'll do, " Gordon told him, "with the silk and the braid edge. "

The clerk noted the order; then with a tape measure affixed to a slim, wooden angle, came from behind the counter. "Remove the coat, please. "

Gordon, with a patent self-consciousness, took off his coat, revealing aflimsy white silk shirt striped like a child's stick of candy in vividgreen. 

The whistle arose with renewed force; gnarled and blackened fingersgingerly felt the shirt's texture. "Man dear! The lily of Lebanon. Arrayedlike a regular prostitute ... Silk shirt tails. "

The clerk skilfully conducted a series of measurements, noting results ona printed form; outer and inner seams were tallied, chest and thigh andknee recorded, the elbow crooked. "Don't forget his teeth, " the clerk wasadmonished; "remember the braid on the pants. "

Gordon resumed his coat, the clerk returned the books to their shelf, andthe factitious excitement subsided. The light faded, the depths of thestore swam in blue obscurity, but the fragrance of the spring dusk haddeepened. 

"When are you going to get the dog, Gord?" Tol'able asked. 

"What dog?" another interposed curiously. 

"Why, ain't you heard about Gord's dog, " the chorus demanded. "Where haveyou been--up with the Dutch on the South Fork? Gord's got a dog coming hegive two hundred dollars for. Yes, sir, he paid for a dog, he give realmoney for a four-legged, yelping wire-hound. It ain't a rabbit dog, nor asheep dog, nor even a bull-dog; but just plain, stinking dog. "

"Ah, he did like hell, give two hundred for a dog!"

"Yes, he did. That's right, didn't you, Gord? Two hundred! I saw thecheque. God dam' if he didn't!"

Gordon admitted the facts as far as they had been stated. "But this dog, "he explained, "is different from the just happen so hounds around here. This dog has got a pedigree, his parents were united by the church allregular and highly fashionable. He ain't expected to run rabbits nor mangysheep; he just sits on the stoop eating sausages and syrup, and takes aleg off any low down parties that visit with him without a collar on. He'll be on the Stenton stage this evening, " he added. "I got word lastnight he was coming. "

They lounged to the entrance of the store, gazing over the still road, inthe direction from which the stage would arrive. Valentine Simmons was inhis office; and, as Gordon passed, he knocked on the glass of theenclosure, and beckoned the other to enter. 

He greeted Gordon Makimmon cordially, waving him to a seat. ValentineSimmons never, apparently, changed; his countenance was always freshlypink, the tufts of hair above his ears like combed lamb's wool; his shirtwith its single, visible blue button never lacked its immaculate gloss. 

"You're looking as jaunty as a man should with the choice of the landbefore him. Lucky! lucky! charming little wife, large fortune at yourdisposal.... Pompey left one of the solidest estates in this section. Opportune for you, very ... Miraculous, if I may say so. But there, youornament the money as well as any other. You are right too--a free hand;yours is the time for liberality, no cares--they come later. Ah, Gordon, have you examined the details of your late father-in-law's property? Haveyou searched through all the items, made yourself familiar with allthe--er, petty and laborious details?"

"No, not just yet, I have been intending--"

Simmons stopped him with an upraised palm. "No more, I understand yourthought exactly. It's a tiresome business. Yours is the time forliberality, no cares. However, I had a slight knowledge of PompeyHollidew's arrangements. He was accustomed to discussing them with me. Heliked my judgment in certain little matters; and, in that way, I got ageneral idea of his enterprises. He was a great hand for timber, yourfather-in-law; against weighty advice at the time of his death he wasbuying timber options here and there in the valley. Though what he wantedwith them ... Beyond ordinary foresight. --No transportation, you see; norailroad nor way of getting lumber out. But then, he had some visionaryscheme or other. He held some thousand acres, most of it bought at anominal figure. No good to anybody now; but I have got the timber fevermyself--something may turn up in the far future, perhaps in anothergeneration.... What would you say to a flat eight dollars an acre for theoptions, the money banked right to your credit? A neat little sum forcurrent pleasures. Ah--" in spite of himself, Valentine Simmons becamegrave at the contemplation of the amount involved. "I don't say I wouldtake all, but the best, certainly the greater part. "

"Why, I don't know, " Gordon spoke slowly from an old-time suspicion of theother. "It's my wife's property. "

"But such a dutiful little wife--the husband's word. Remember, the moneyin your hand. "

"It certainly sounds all right. Lettice would have the cash to show. I'llspeak to her. "

"Better not delay. There are other options; owners are glad to sell. Ihave given you the privilege first--old friend, old Presbyterian friend. The time is necessarily limited. "

As he mentally revolved the proposal Gordon could find no palpableobjection: the options, the timber, was obviously standing fallow, with nomeans of transportation to a market, in exchange for ready money. Letticewould easily see the sense in the deal; besides, he had brought in hername only for form's sake--he, Gordon Makimmon, held the deciding vote inthe affairs of his home. 

"I don't rightly see anything against it, " he admitted finally. 

"Good!" Simmons declared with satisfaction; "an able man, you can see asfar as the next through a transaction. I'll have the county clerk go overthe options, bring you the result in a couple of weeks. Don't disturbyourself; yours is the time for pleasures, not papers. "

"Hey, Gord!" a voice called thinly from without; "here's your dog. "

Gordon rose and made his way to the platform before the store, where theStenton stage had stopped. A seat had been removed from the surrey, itsplace taken by a large box with a square opening, covered with heavy wirenet at one end, and a board fitted movably in grooves at the other. Therewere mutters incredulous, ironic, from the awaiting group of men; envy wasperceptible, bitterness "... For a dog. Two hundred! Old Pompey holleredout of the dirt. "

"There he is, Gord, " the driver proclaimed; "and fetching that dogpalace'll cost you seventy-five cents. " The box was shifted to theplatform; and, while Gordon unfastened the slide, the men gathered in acurious, mocking circle. 

The slide was raised, the box sharply tilted, and a grotesquely clumsy andgrave young dog slid out. There was a hoarse uproar of gibing laughter, backs and knees were slapped, heavy feet stamped. The dog stood puzzled bythe tumult: he had a long, square, shaggy head, the color of ripe wheat;clear, dark eyes and powerful jaw; his body was narrow, covered withstraight, wiry black hair; a short tail was half raised, tentative; andhis wheat colored legs were ludicrously, inappropriately, long andheavy. 

He stood patiently awaiting, evidently, some familiar note, somereassuring command, in that unintelligible human clamor. Gordon regardedhim through half-closed, indifferent eyes. "Here, doggy, " a hoarse, persuasive voice called; a hand was stretched out to him. But, as hereached it, "Two hundred dollars!" the voice exclaimed, and the hand gavethe animal a quick, unexpected thrust. The dog sprawled back, and fell onthe point of his shoulder. He rose swiftly to his feet without a whimper, standing once more at a loss in the midst of the inexplicable animosity. He watched them all intently, with wrinkles in his serious young brow. When, from behind, another hand thrust him sharply upon his jaw, he roseas quickly as possible, swaying a little upon the inappropriate legs. Another suddenly knocked his hind legs from under him, and he sat heavilyupon his haunches. The laughter ran renewed about the circle. 

The sum of money that had been expended upon that single dog--a dog eventhat could neither hunt rabbits nor herd sheep--had, it appeared, engendered a bitter animosity, a personal spite, in the hearts of the menon the store platform. They were men to whom two hundred dollars was thesymbol of arduous months of toil, endless days of precariously rewardedlabor with the stubborn, inimical forces of nature, with swamp and rockand thicket. Two hundred dollars! It was the price of a roof, of health, of life itself. 

A hard palm swung upon the dog's ribs, and, in instant response, he fellupon his side. He rose more slowly; stood isolated, obviously troubled. Hedrew back stumbling from a menacing gesture; but there was no cringingvisible in his immature, ill-proportioned body; his tail drooped, but fromweariness, discouragement; his head was level; his eyes met the circle ofeyes about him. 

Gordon took no part in the baiting; he lit a cigar, snapped the match overhis shoulder, carelessly watched his newest acquisition. A heavy, wooden-soled shoe shoved the dog forward. And Buckley Simmons, in anobvious improvement upon that manoeuver, kicked the animal behind the ear. The forelegs rose with the impact of the blow, and the body struck fulllength upon the platform, where it lay dazed. But, finally, the dog got upinsecurely, wabbling; a dark blot spread slowly across the straw-coloredhead. 

No one, it was evident, was prepared for the sudden knifelike menace ofGordon Makimmon's voice as he bent over the dog and wiped the blood uponhis sleeve. 

"Kick him again, Buck, " he said; "kick him again and see how funny it'llbe. "

"Why, Gordon, " Buckley Simmons protested, "we were all stirring him up alittle; you didn't say anything--"

Makimmon picked the dog up, holding him against his side, the awkward legsstreaming down in an uncomfortable confusion of joints and paws. "I paidtwo hundred dollars for this dog, " he pronounced, "as a piece of dam'foolishness, a sort of drunken joke on Greenstream. But it's no joke; thetwo hundred was cheap. I've seen a lot of good men--I'm not exactly apeafowl myself--but this young dog's better'n any man I ever stood up to;he's got more guts. "

He abruptly turned his back upon the gathering, and descended to the road, carrying the limp, warm body all the way home. 

II

It was his own home to which he returned, the original dwelling of theMakimmons in Greenstream. He could not, he had told Lettice, becomfortable anywhere else; he could not be content with it closed againstthe living sound of the stream, or in strange hands. Some changes had beenmade since his marriage--another space had been enclosed beyond thekitchen, a chamber occupied by Sim Caley and his wife, moved from theoutlying farm where Lettice had spent her weeks of "retreat" throughoutthe passing summers. The exterior had been painted leaden-grey, and a shedtransformed into a small, serviceable stable. But the immediatesurroundings were the same: the primitive sweep still rose from the well, a cow still grazed in the dank grass; the stream slipped by, mirroring itsstable banks, the foliage inexhaustibly replenished by nature; beyond thenarrow valley the mountain range shut out the rising sun, closedGreenstream into its deep, verdurous gorge. 

High above, the veil of light was still rosy, but it was dusk about GordonMakimmon's dwelling. Lettice, in white, with a dark shawl drawn about hershoulders, was standing on the porch. She spoke in a strain of queruloussweetness:

"Gordon, you've been the longest while. Mrs. Caley says your supper's allspoiled. You know she likes to get the table cleared right early in theevening. "

"Is Mrs. Caley to have her say in this house or am I? That's what I wantto know. Am I to eat so's she can clear the table, or is she to clear thetable when I have had my supper?"

"When it suits you, Gordon, of course. Oh, Gordon! whatever are youcarrying?"

"A dog!"

"I didn't know you wanted a dog. " An accent of doubt crept into her voice, a hesitation. "I don't know if I want a dog around ... Just now, Gordon. "

"He won't do any harm; he's only a young dog, anyhow. Ain't you a youngdog, a regular puppy? But, Lettice, he's got the grit of General Jackson;he stood right up against the crowd at the store. "

"Still, Gordon, right now--"

"I told you he wouldn't do any harm, " the man repeated in irritated tones;"he will be with me most of the time, and not around the house. You'regetting too cranky for living, Lettice. " He set the dog upon his feet. "What I'll call him I don't know; he's as gritty as--why, yes, I do, I'llcall him General Jackson. C'm here, General. "

The dog still wavered slightly. He stood intently regarding Gordon. "Here, here, General Jackson. " After another long scrutiny he walked slowly up toGordon, raised his head toward the man's countenance. Gordon Makimmon wasdelighted. "That's a smart dog!" he exclaimed; "smarter'n half the peopleI know. He's got to have something to eat. Lettice, will you tell Mrs. Caley to give General something to eat, and nothing's too good for him, either. "

Lettice walked to the door of the kitchen and transmitted Gordon's requestto the invisible Mrs. Caley. The latter appeared after a moment and stoodgazing somberly at the man and dog. She was a tall, ungainly woman, with aflat, sexless body and a deeply-lined face almost the color of her ownsalt-raised bread. "This is General Jackson, " Gordon explained out of thesettling dark; "he'd thank you for a panful of supper. Come on, General, come on in the kitchen. No, Mrs. Caley won't bite you; she'll give ussomething to eat. "

The room next to the kitchen, that had been Clare's, had been stripped ofits furnishing, and a glistening yellow pine table set in the middle, withsix painted wood chairs. The table was perpetually spread on a fringed redor blue cloth; the center occupied by a large silver-plated castor, itsvarious rings filled with differently shaped bottles and shakers. At theend where Lettice sat heavy white cups and saucers were piled; at Gordon'splace a knife and fork were propped up on their guards. On either sidewere the plates of Simeon and Mrs. Caley. Each place boasted a knife andformidable steel fork--the spoons were assembled in a glassreceptacle--and a napkin thrust into a ring of plaited hair plainly markedwith the sign of the respective owner. 

Mrs. Caley silently put before Gordon a pinkish loin of pork, boiledpotatoes and a bowl of purple, swimming huckleberries; this she fortifiedby a vessel of gravy and section of pie. There was tea. "Where's Lettice?"Gordon demanded. Apparently Mrs. Caley had not heard him. "Lettice, " heraised his voice; "here's supper. "

"I don't want anything to eat, thank you, Gordon, " she returned fromanother room. 

"You ought to eat, " he called back, attacking the pork. Then he muttered, "--full of ideas and airs. Soft. "

III

Beyond the dining room was their bedroom, and beyond that a chamber which, for years in a state of deserted, semi-ruin, Gordon had had newly flooredand rendered weather-proof, and now used as a place of assemblage. Hefound Lettice there when he had finished supper. 

She was sitting beside a small table which held a lighted lamp with ashade of minute, woven pieces of various silks. Behind her was a cottageorgan, a mass of fretted woodwork; a wall pierced by a window wasornamented by a framed photograph of a woman dead and in her coffin. Thephotograph had faded to a silvery monotony, but the details of the rigid, unnatural countenance, the fixed staring eyes, were still clear. Redlyvarnished chairs with green plush cushions and elaborate, threadantimacassars, a second table ranged against the wall, bearing a stoutvolume entitled "A Cloud of Witnesses, " and a cheap phonograph, completedthe furnishing. 

It was warm without, but Lettice had shut the window, the shawl was stillabout her shoulders. She was sewing upon a small piece of white material. 

"Here, General, here, " Gordon commanded, and the dog followed himseriously into the room. "Pat him, Lettice, so's he'll get to know you, "he urged. 

"I don't think I want to, " she began; but, at her husband's obviousimpatience, she experimented doubtfully, "Here, puppy. "

"Can't you call him by his name?" he interrupted. "How ever'll he come toknow it?"

"I don't want to call him at all, " she protested, a little wildly. "Idon't like him to-night; perhaps to-morrow I will feel different. "

"Well, do or don't, that dog's a part of the house, and I don't want tohear Mrs. Caley say this or that about it, neither. "

"Mrs. Caley isn't as bad as you make her out; it's me she's thinking aboutmost of the time. I tell her men are not like women, they never thinkabout the little things we do. Father was like that ... You are too. That's all the men I have known. " Her voice trailed off into an abruptsilence, she sat staring into the room with the needlework forgotten inher hand. 

Gordon turned to the dog, playing with him, pulling his ears. GeneralJackson, in remonstrance, softly bit Gordon's hand. "That's a dandy dog. Making yourself right at home, hey! Biting right back, are you! Let mefeel your teeth, phew--"

"Gordon, " Lettice exclaimed suddenly in a throaty voice, "I'm afraid.... Tell me it will be all right, Gordon. "

He looked up from the dog, startled by the unaccustomed vibration of hertones. "Of course it will be all right, " he reassured her hastily, makingan effort to keep his impatience from his voice; "I never guessed you wereso easy scared. "

"I'll try not, " she returned obediently. "Mrs. Caley says it will be allright, too. " She seemed, he thought, even younger than when he had marriedher. She was absurdly girlish. It annoyed him; it seemed, unjustly, toplace too great a demand upon his forbearance, his patience. A wife shouldbe able to give and take--this was almost like having a child to tend. Lately she had been frightened even at the dark, she had wakened him overnothing at all, fancies. 

He decided to pay no further attention to her imagining; and moved to thephonograph, where he selected one of a small number of waxy cylinders. "We'll see how the General likes music, " he proclaimed. He slipped thecylinder over a projection, and wound the mechanism. A sharp, highscratching responded, as painful as a pin dragging over the ear drum, ameaningless cacophony of sounds that gradually resolved into a thin, incredibly metallic melody which appeared, mercifully, to come from adistance. To this was presently joined a voice, the voice, as it were, ofa sinister, tin manikin galvanized into convulsive song. The words grewaudible in broken phrases:

 ... Was a lucky man, Rip van Winkle ... Grummmble ... Never saw the women At Coney Island swimming ... 

General Jackson sat abruptly on his haunches, and lifted a long, quaveringprotest. As the cylinder went round and round, and the shrill performancecontinued, the dog's howling grew wilder; it reached a point where itbroke into a hoarse cough, then again it recommenced lower in the scale, carrying over a gamut of indescribable, audible misery. 

Gordon slapped his leg in acute enjoyment. "The General's a regular operasinger, a high-rolling canary. Go after it ... A regular concert dog. "

"Gordon, " Lettice said, in a small, strained voice. Apparently he had notheard her. "Gordon, " she repeated more loudly. She had dropped the pieceof sewing, her hands were clenched, her face wet and pallid. "Gordon!" shecried, her voice cutting through the sound of the phonograph and thehowling dog; "stop it, do you hear! I'll go crazy! Stop it! Stop it! Stopit!"

He silenced the machine in genuine surprise. "Why, everything works you upto-night. I thought you'd like to hear General Jackson sing; he's got areal deep barytone. "

Lettice sat limply in her chair. "I stood it just as long as I could, " shehalf whispered. 

Gordon walked to the unshuttered window, gazing out; above theimpenetrable, velvety dark of the western range the stars gleamed likedrops of water. He felt unsettled, ill at ease; dissatisfaction irked histhoughts and emotions. His unrest was without tangible features; itpermeated him from an undivined cause, oppressed him with indefinablelonging. He got, he dimly realized, but a limited amount of satisfactionfrom the money now at his command. He was totally without financialinstinct--money for itself, the abstraction, was beyond his comprehension. He had bought a ponderous gold watch, which he continually neglected towind; the years of stage driving had sated him of horses; his clothes werealready a subject of jest in Greenstream; and he had seriously damaged histhroat, and the throat of Sim Caley, with cigars. He had been glad toreturn to the familiar, casual cigarettes, the generous bag of Green Goosefor five cents; Sim had reverted to his haggled plug. He had no desire tobuild a pretentious dwelling--his instinct, his clannish spirit, was tooclosely bound up in the house of his father and grandfather to derive anypleasure from that. 

After he had spent a limited amount, the principal at his disposal layuntouched, unrealized. He got a certain measure of content from its sheerbulk at his back; it ministered to his vanity, to his supreme selfimportance. He liked negligently to produce, in Simmons' store, a twentyor even fifty dollar currency note, and then conduct a search through hispockets for something smaller. He drank an adequate amount of whiskey, receiving it in jugs semi-surreptitiously by way of the Stenton stage;Greenstream County was "dry, " but whiskey in gallons was comparativelyinexpensive. He would have gambled, but two dollars was a momentous hazardto the habitual card players of the village. He thought, occasionally, oftaking a short trip, of two or three days, to nearby cities outside hisken, or to the ocean--Gordon had never seen a large body of water; but hislife had travelled such a narrow course, he was so accustomed by blood andexperience to the feel of the mountains, that, when the moment arrived toconsider an actual departure, he drew back ... Put it off. 

What he was subconsciously longing for was youth. He was instinctivelyrebelling, struggling, against the closing fetters of time, against thedilution of his blood by time, the hardening of his bones, theimperceptible slackening of his muscles. His intimate contact with thevigorous youth of Lettice had precipitated this rebellion, this strife inwhich he was doomed. He would have hotly repudiated the insinuation thathe was growing old; he would still, perhaps, have fought the man who saidthat he was failing. And such a statement would be beside the fact; noperceptible decay had yet set up at the heart of his manhood. But theinception of that process was imminent; the sloth consequent uponLettice's money was hastening it. 

Lettice's youthful aspect, persisting in the face of her approachingmotherhood, disconcerted him; it was inappropriate. Her freshly-flushed, rounded cheeks beside his own weather-beaten, lean jaw offered a commenttoo obvious for enjoyment. He resented, from his own depleting store, herunspent sum of days. It created in him an animosity which, as he turnedfrom the window, noted almost with relief faint lines about her mouth, thesinking of her color. 

She was sitting with her eyes shut, the sewing neglected in her lap, anddid not see Mrs. Caley standing in the doorway. The woman's gaze lingeredfor a moment, with an unmasked, burning contempt, upon Gordon Makimmon, then swept on to the girl. 

"Lettice!" she exclaimed, in a species of exasperated concern, "don't youknow better than to sit up to all hours?"

IV

The following morning, "Oh, Gordon!" Lettice cried, "I like him ever somuch; he played and played with me. "

Gordon had gone to the post-office, and was descending the slope from thepublic road to his dwelling. He found Lettice sitting on the edge of theporch, and, panting vigorously, the dog extended before her, an expressionof idiotic satisfaction on his shaggy face. They were, together, anepitome of extreme youth; and Gordon's discontent, revived from the nightbefore, overflowed in facile displeasure. 

"Don't you know better than to run him on a warm morning like this?" hecomplained; "as like as not now he'll take a fit; young dogs mustn't gettheir blood heated up. "

The animation died from her countenance, leaving it almost sullen, hershoulders drooped dejectedly. "It seems nothing suits you, " she observed;"you're cross when I don't like the dog and you're cross when I do. Ican't satisfy you, anyhow. "

"There's some difference in making over the dog and playing him out. Comehere, General Jackson. " The animal rose and yapped, backing playfullyaway. "Don't you hear me? Come right here. " The dog, sensitive to thegrowing menace in the voice, moved still further away. "C'm here, damnyou, " Gordon shot out. The dog grew stubborn, and refused to move forward;and Gordon, his anger thoroughly aroused, picked up a large stone andthrew it with all his force, missing General Jackson by a narrow margin. 

"It seems to me, " Lettice observed in a studiously detached voice, "Iwouldn't throw stones at a dog I had paid two hundred dollars for. "

Gordon was momentarily disconcerted. He had not intended to tell Letticehow much the General had cost. And yet, he reflected, since the villageknew, with Sim Caley's wife in the house, it had been folly to hope tokeep it from her. 

"It's his pedigree, " he explained lamely; "champion stock, imported. " Histemper again slowly got the better of his wisdom. "What if I did pay twohundred dollars for him?" he demanded; "it's harmless, ain't it? I'd asight better do that than some other things I might mention. "

"I only said, " she repeated impersonally, "that I would not throw stonesat a dog that had cost so much money. "

"You're getting on the money now, are you? Going to start that song?That'll come natural to you. When I first married you I couldn't see howyou were old Pompey's daughter, but I might have known it would come out. I might have known you weren't the daughter of the meanest man inGreenstream for nothing.... I suppose I'll hear about that money all therest of my life. "

"Perhaps I will die, and then you will have no bother. "

"That's a nice way to talk; that makes me out a fine figure of aman ... With Mrs. Caley in the kitchen there, laying right over everyword; the old vinegar bottle. "

"Don't you say another word about Mrs. Caley, " Lattice declaredpassionately; "she nursed my mother in her last sickness; and she tookcare of me for years, when there wasn't anybody else hardly knew if I wasalive or not. If it wasn't for Mrs. Caley right now I guess I'd be in anearly grave. "

Gordon Makimmon stood silenced by the last outburst. The tall, meagerfigure of Mrs. Caley appeared upon the porch. She was clad in blackcalico, and wore grey felt slippers. Her head was lowered, her closed lipsquivered, her bony fingers twitched. She never addressed a word to Gordondirectly; and, he decided, when she did, it would be monumental, dumbfounding. The present moment was more than usually unpropitious; and, discovering General Jackson at his heels, he picked the dog up anddeparted for the stable, where he saw Sim Caley putting the horse into thebuggy. 

"I thought I'd go over to the farm beyond the priest's, " he answeredGordon's query; "Tol'able's an awful slack hand with cattle. "

"Your wife ought to run that place; she'd walk those steers around on asnake fence. "

Simeon Caley preserved a diplomatic silence. He, too, was long and lean. He had eyes of the most innocent and tender blue imaginable in acountenance seamed and scarred by protracted debauch, disease, abuse. Itwas said of him that if all the liquor he had consumed were turned looseon the mountain it would sweep Greenstream village to the farther end ofthe valley. 

His voice, like his eyes, was gentle. "Come right along, Gord; there'ssome draining you ought to see to. It's a nice drive, anyways. " Gordontook the reins, slapping them on the rough, sturdy back of the horse, andthey started up the precarious track to the road. General Jackson's headhung panting, wild-eyed, from the side of the vehicle. 

V

It was late when they returned from the farm. Gordon left the buggy at theCourthouse. The thought of his dwelling, with Lattice's importunatefancies and complaints, was distasteful to him. A long-drawn-out eveningin the monotonous sitting room, with the grim form of Mrs. Caley in thebackground, was insupportable. There was no light in the office of the_Bugle_, but there was a pale yellow blur in the lower windows ofPeterman's hotel. It might be that a drummer had arrived, and wasentertaining a local circle with the pungent wit of the road; and Gordonmade his way toward the hotel. 

It was a painted, wooden structure, two stories in height, with a wingthat ran back from the road. The rooms in the latter section were reachedfrom an outside, uncovered gallery, gained by a flight of steps at theback. Contrary to his expectation no one was in the office; a lamp shoneon an empty array of chairs. But some one was on the gallery above; hecould see a white skirt through the railing, make out the dark blot of ahead upon the night. The illumination from within shone on his face. 

The form above him leaned forward over the railing. "Mr. Makimmon, " awoman's voice said, "if you want Mr. Peterman, I'll call him. He's at theback of the house. "

Gordon was totally unaware of her identity. 

"No, " he replied, hesitatingly, "I wasn't after him in particular--"

"You don't know me, " she challenged, laughing; "it's Meta Beggs; I teachthe school, you know. "

Instantly the memory returned to him of a woman's round, gleamingshoulders slipping into a web of soft white; he recalled theschool-teacher's bitter arraignment of her life, her prospects. "I didn'tknow you, " he admitted, "and that's the fact; it was the dark. " Hehesitated once more, conscious of the awkwardness of his position, talkingupward to an indistinguishable shape. "I heard you were back, " hecontinued impotently. 

"Yes, " she assented, "there was nothing else open.... Won't you come upand smoke a cigarette? It's pleasant here on the gallery. "

He mounted the steps, making his way over the narrow, hollow-soundingpassage to her side. She was seated overlooking the rift of the valley. "I'll get you a chair, " she said, rising. At her side a door opened into adim room. "No, no, " he protested, "let me--in here?"

He entered the room. It was, he divined, hers. His foot struck against achair, and his hand caught the back. A thin, clinging under-garment restedon it, which he deposited on a vague bed. It stuck to his fingers like acobweb. There was just room on the balcony to arrange the chairs side byside. 

VI

The spring night was potent, warm and damp; it was filled with intangibleinfluences which troubled the mind and stirred the memory to vain, melancholy groping. Meta Beggs was so close to Gordon that their shoulderstouched. He rolled a cigarette and lit it, resting his arms upon therailing. Her face was white in the gloom; not white as Lettice's had been, like a flower, but sharply cut like marble; her nose was finely modelled, her lips were delicately curved, but thin, compressed. He coulddistinguish over her the paramount air of dissatisfaction. 

She aroused in him unbidden thoughts; without the slightest freedom ofgesture or words she gave the impression of careless license. He grewinstinctively, at once, familiar, confidential, in his attitude towardher. And she responded in the same manner; she did not draw back whentheir arms accidentally met. 

An interest, a vivacity of manner, such as Gordon had not experienced forweeks stirred in him. Meta Beggs called back into being the old freedom ofstage-driving days, of the younger years. Her manner flattered his sexvanity. They progressed famously. 

"You don't like the children any better than you did?"

"They get more like rats every year. "

"I thought about you, held against your will. "

"Don't tell lies; I went right out of your mind. "

"Not as quick as I went out of yours. I did think about you, though--" hestopped, but she insisted upon his finishing the remark. "Well, Iremembered what you said about your shoulders, and I saw you that night atyour window.... "

"Men, somehow, are always curious about me, " she remarked indifferently;"they have bothered me ever since I was a girl. I make them mad. I neverworry about such things myself--from the way women talk, and men go on, there must be something left out of me ... It just seems silly to get allred in the face--"

He almost constructed her words into a challenge. Five years ago, hecontinued, or only two, he would have changed her conception of living, hewould have broken down her indifference, but now--His mental deliberationsended abruptly, for, even in his mind, he avoided all reference toLettice; they studiously omitted her name in their conversation. 

"Are you going to the camp meeting on South Fork next week?" shedemanded. "I have never seen one. Buckley Simmons says all sorts of thingshappen. He's going to take me on Saturday. I wish--" she broke offpointedly. 

"What?"

"I was going to say that I wish, well--I wish I were going with somebodyelse than Buckley; he bothers me all the time. "

"I'd like a lot to take you. It's not fit for you to go, though. The bestpeople in Greenstream don't. They get crazy with religion, and with rum;often as not there's shooting. "

"Oh! I had no idea. I don't know as I will go. I wish you would be there. If I go will you be there to look out for me?"

"I hadn't thought of it. Still, if you're there, and want me around, Iguess that's where I will be. "

"I feel better right away; I'll see you then; it's a sort of engagementbetween you and me. Buckley Simmons needn't know. Perhaps we can slip awayfrom him for a while. "

Voices rose from below them, and they drew back instinctively. Gordonfound in this desire to avoid observation an additional bond with MetaBeggs; the aspect of secrecy gave a flavor to their communion. Theyremained silent, with their shoulders pressed together, until the voices, the footfalls, faded into the distance. 

He rose to leave, and she held out her hand. At its touch he recalled howpointed the fingers were; it was incredibly cool and smooth, yet it seemedto instil a subtle fire in his palm. She stood framed in her doorway, bathed in the intimate, disturbing aroma of her person. Gordon recalledthe cobwebby garment on the bed. He made an involuntary step toward her, and she drew back into the room ... The night was breathlessly still. Ifhe took another step forward, he wondered, would she still retreat?Somewhere in the dark interior he would come close to her. 

"Good night. " Her level, impersonal voice was like a breath of cold airupon his face. 

"Good night, " he returned hastily. "I got turned right around. " Hisdeparture over the gallery was not unlike a flight. 

VII

The memory of Meta Beggs was woven like a bright thread through themonotonous texture of the days which immediately followed. She was neverentirely out of his thoughts; she stirred him out of all proportion to anyassignable cause; she irritated him. He remembered that she said she mademen "mad. " He recalled how ridiculous he had felt as he had said, "Goodnight. " He wished to repay her for that injury to his self-esteem. 

At the same time, curiously, he was more patient with Lettice, he had amore ready sympathy for her intangible fancies. Perhaps for the first timehe enjoyed sitting quietly on the porch of his house with her and GeneralJackson. He sat answering her endless queries, fears, assentinghalf-absently to her projections, with the thought of Meta Beggs at theback of his mind. He wanted to be as nice as possible to Lettice. Suddenlyshe seemed a little removed from him, from the world in general, the worldof the emotions and ideas that centered about the school-teacher. 

Lettice was--superior; he recognized it pridefully. Behind her temporary, rational vagaries there was a quality of steadfastness. It was clear tohim now from its contrast to his own devious mind. But he found a sharppleasure in the mental image of the Beggs woman. He recalled the burningsensation that had lingered in his palm from the touch of her hand, thepressure of her shoulder against his as they had drawn back from thevision of those below. 

He went early to the camp meeting on the Saturday appointed. 

VIII

He drove over the road that lay at the base of the western range away fromhis dwelling and Greenstream village. The mature spring day had almost theappearance of summer; the valley was flooded with sparkling sunlight; butthe young leaves were still red, the greenery still translucent, the treesblack with risen sap. The buggy rolled through the shallow, rocky fords, the horse's hoofs flinging up the water in shining drops. The road roseslightly, turning to the right, where an intermediate valley laydiagonally through the range. Save for small, scattered farms thebottomland was uncultivated, the tangled brush impenetrable. 

Gordon passed other vehicles, bound toward the camp meeting, usually asingle seat crowded with three, or even four, adult forms. He passed flatwagons with their bottoms filled with straw, on which women sat withstiffly-extended legs. The young women wore gay colors, their eyessparkled in hardy faces, their hands, broad and red and capable, awkwardlydisposed. The older women, with shawls folded about their stoopedshoulders, were close-lipped, somber. The men were sparely built, withhigh, prominent cheek bones, long, hollow cheeks and shaven mouths touchedwith sardonic humor, under undented, black felt hats. There were anappreciable number of invalids and leaden-faced idiots. 

The way grew wilder, the natural forms shrunk, the valley became a smallplain of broken, rocky hillocks matted with thorny bushes, surrounded bymarshes of rank grass, flags, half-grown osiers. The vehicles, drawn intoa single way, crowded together, progressed slowly. Gordon saw in the backof the buggy before him two whiskey jugs. Some one far ahead began to singa revival hymn, and it ran along the line of carriages like a trail ofignited powder. A deep bass caught it behind Gordon Makimmon, then thepiercing soprano of a woman farther back. 

The camp meeting spread over a small, irregular plateau surrounded byswamp and sluggish streams. Gordon turned off the road, and drove over arough, short descent to a ledge of solid ground by a stream and fringe ofwillows. The spring torrents had subsided, leaving the grass, the willows, covered with a grey, crackling coat of mud; the air had a damp, fetidsmell; beyond, the swamp bubbled gaseously. The close line of hitchedteams disappeared about an elbow of the thicket; groups of men gatheredin the noisome shadows, bottles were passed, heads thrown back and armsbent aloft. 

Above, a great, sagging tent was staked to the obdurate ground. To theleft a wooden floor had been temporarily laid about a four-square, opencounter, now bare, with a locked shed for storage. Before Gordon was thesleeping tent for women. The sun seemed unable to dispel the miasma of theswamp, the surrounding aspect of mean desolation. The scene was petty, depressing. It was surcharged by a curious air of tension, of suspense, abrooding, treacherous hysteria, an ugly, raw, emotional menace. A servicewas in progress; a sustained, convulsive murmur came from within, awordless, fluctuating lament. Suddenly it was pierced by a shrill, highscream, a voice tormented out of all semblance to reason. The sound grewdeeper and louder; it swung into a rhythm which formed into words, lines, a primitive chant that filled the plateau, swelled out over the swamp. Itcontinued for an incredible length of time, rising to an unbearable pitch, then it died away in a great gasp. 

A thin, sinister echo rose from among the willows--emotional, shrillcurses, a brief, raving outburst of passion, sharply punctuated withdouble shots, and falling abruptly to heavy silence. Gordon saw menobscurely running below. 

The curtained entrance to the tent was pushed aside, and a woman walkedstiffly out, her hands clenched, and her glassy eyes set in a fixed stare. Her hat was gone, and her grey hair lay upon one shoulder. She progressed, stumbling blindly over the inequalities of the ground, until she trippedon a stone. She lay where she had fallen, with her muscles jerking andshuddering, until a man appeared from behind the counter, and dragged herunceremoniously to the women's shelter. 

Gordon entered the tent where the service was in progress. A subdued lightfiltered through the canvas upon a horde that filled every foot of space;they sat pressed together on long, rough boards nailed together in thesemblance of benches. On a platform at the farther side a row of men andwomen sat against the canvas wall; to their left a folding organ had beenerected, and was presided over by a man with a blurred, greyishcountenance; while, standing at the forefront of the platform, a large, heavy man in a black frock coat was addressing the assemblage. He had around, pallid, smooth face with long, black hair brushed back upon hiscoat collar, and great, soft, white hands. 

"... It's rising, " he proclaimed, in a loud, sing-song voice, "the floodis rising; now it's about your pockets--praise God! now it's above yourwaists. It's rising! it's rising! Hallelujah! the sea of redemption isrising, " his voice rose with the figurative flood. "At last it's aboutyour hearts, your hearts are immersed in the Sacred Tide. "

A man beside Gordon groaned and dropped upon his knees. A woman cried, "God! God! God!" A spindling, overgrown boy rose fumbling at his throat. "I can't breathe, " he choked, "I can't--" His face grew purplish, congested. The tumult swelled, directed, dominated, by the voice of therevivalist. He dropped upon his knees, and, amid the sobbing silence, pledwith an invisible Judge hovering, apparently, over a decision to destroyat one bloody blow the recalcitrant peoples of the earth, the peoples ofHis making. 

"Spare us, " he implored; "spare us, the sheep of hell; lead us to Thyshining pasture ... Still water; lead us from the great fire of theeternal pit, from the boiling bodies of the unsaved.... "

Gordon Makimmon indifferently regarded the clamor. The process of "gettingreligion" was familiar, commonplace. He saw Tol'able sitting on a backbench; with a mutual gesture the two men rose and left the tent. 

"I had to bring m'wife, " Tol'able explained; "did you see her sitting onthe platform? She's one of the main grievers. I got some good licker inthe wagon--better have a comforter. "

They walked down to a dusty, two-seated surrey, where, from under a horseblanket, Tol'able produced a small jug. He wiped the mouth on his sleeveand passed it to Gordon; then held the gurgling vessel to his open throat. "There was some hell raised last night, " he proceeded; "a man from up backhad his head busted with a stone, and a drunken looney shot through thewomen's tent: an old girl hollered out they had Goddy right in there among'em. "

"They were shooting a while back, " Gordon observed indifferently. "Haveyou seen Buck Simmons here?"

"No, I hain't. He wouldn't be here noways. "

Gordon preserved a discreet silence in regard to his source of assuranceof Buckley's presence at the camp meeting. 

"Have another drink, Gord. "

The services were temporarily suspended, and the throng emptied from thetent. A renewed sanity clothed them--girls drew into squares of gigglingdefense against the verbal sallies of robustly-witted young men. Womencollected their offspring, gathering in circles about opened boxes oflunch: a multitude of papers and box lids littered the ground. A hot, steaming odor, analogous to coffee, rose from the crowded counter. Aprodigious amount of raw whiskey was consumed among the vehicles by thestream and mud-coated willows. 

Gordon slowly made his way through the throng, in search of Meta Beggs;perhaps, after all, she had decided not to come; he might easily miss herin that mob. It was not clear in his mind what he would do if he saw her. She would be with Buckley Simmons, and there was a well recognized courseof propriety for such occasions: he would be expected merely to greet inpassing a girl accompanying another man. Any other proceeding would be metwith instant resentment. And Buckley Simmons, Gordon knew, must stillnurse a secret antagonism toward him. However, he had disposed of Buckleyin the past ... If necessary he could do so again. 

At the entrance to the service tent the organist, his countenance stilllivid in the sunlight, blew a throaty summons on a cornet, and the crowdslowly trailed back within. In the thinning groups Gordon saw theschool-teacher, clad in a bright blue skirt and a hat with a stiff, bluefeather. She was at Buckley's side, consuming a slice of cake withdelicate, precise motions of her hand, and greeting with patentabstraction his solicitous attentions. 

IX

Meta Beggs saw Gordon at the same moment; and, without observation on thepart of her escort, beckoned him to her. She said promptly:

"Mr. Makimmon, please take care of me while Buckley goes down by thosecarriages, where we saw you a little while ago, and gets his share of therefreshment there. I'm certain that dusty road made him as dry aspossible. "

Buckley grinned; such frank feminine acknowledgment and solicitude for themasculine palate was rare in Greenstream. "Why, no, Miss Beggs, " herejoined; "I'm in good shape for a while yet. I got a flask under the seatof the buggy--"

"I insist on your tending to it at once. I know just how it is withmen--they have got to have that little refreshment ... Don't you call it'life preserver'? I'll be right by the counter; if Mr. Makimmon will be sokind--"

"Well, " Buckley agreed, "a drink don't go bad any time; the road was kindof dusty. If you insist, Miss Beggs. "

"I do! I do!" He turned and left them, striding toward the lower level. Then:

"The fool!" she exclaimed viciously; "my arm is all black and blue wherehe pinched it. My skin is not like the hides on these mountain girls, ittears and bruises dreadfully easy, it's so fine. Let's go back there, " shepointed to where, behind the platform and counter, a path was trampledthrough brush higher than their heads. Gordon glanced swiftly in thedirection in which Buckley Simmons had vanished. "He won't be back, " sheadded contemptuously, "for a half hour. He'll stay down there and drinkrotten whiskey and sputter over rotten stories. " Without further parleyshe proceeded in the direction indicated; and, following her, Gordondismissed Buckley from his thoughts. 

Meta Beggs wore a shirtwaist perforated like a sieve; through it he sawflimsy lace, a faded blue ribband, her gleaming shoulders. In an obscureturn of the path she stopped and faced him. "Just look, " she proclaimed, unfastening a bone button that held her cuff. She rolled her sleeve backover her arm. High up, near the soft under-turning, were visible thebluish prints of fingers. "You see, " she added; "and there areothers ... Where I can't show you. "

"Buck's pretty vigorous with the girls, " he admitted; "I once dropped himdown a spell for it. "

He was fascinated by her naked, shapely arm; it was slender at the wrist, and surprisingly round above, at a soft, brown shadow. He was seized by adesire to touch it, and he held her pointed elbow while he examined thebruises more minutely. "That's bad, " he pronounced; "on that pretty skin, too. " He was confused by the close proximity of her bare flesh, the pulsein his neck beat visibly. 

For a moment she stood motionless; then, with her eyes half closed, sulky, she drew away from him and rearranged her sleeve. 

The brush ended on a slope where pine trees had covered the ground with aglossy mat of bronzed needles; and his companion sank to a sittingposition with her back against a trunk. They were outside the influence ofthe camp meeting, beyond its unnatural excitation. The pine trees wereblack against the brilliant day; they might have been cast in iron, therewas no suggestion of growth in the dun covering below; it was asseasonless where they sat as the sea; the air, faintly spiced and still, seemed to have lain unchanged through countless ages. 

Meta Beggs sat motionless, with a look of inexpressible boredom on herpale countenance. Her hands, Gordon thought, were like folded buds of themountain magnolia. 

She said, unexpectedly, "You're rich now, aren't you, one of the richestmen in the county?"

"Why I--I got some money; that is, my wife has. "

She dismissed, with an impatient gesture, the distinction. "Money islife, " she continued, with a perceptible, envious longing, "it's freedom, all the things worth having. It makes women--it's their leather boxes fullof rings and pins and necklaces, their dresses of all-over lace, theirsilk and hand scalloped and embroidered underclothes; it's theirfascination and chance and power--"

"I would like to see you in some of those lace things, " he returned. 

"Well, get them for me, " she answered hardily. 

Utterly unprepared for this direct attack he was thoroughly disconcerted. "Why, certainly!" he replied, laboriously polite, "the next time--I'll doit!--when I'm in Stenton again I'll bring you a pair of silk stockings. "

"Black, " she said practically, "and size eight and a half. You will likeme in black silk stockings, " she added enigmatically. 

"I'll bet, " he replied with enthusiasm. "I won't wait to go, but send forthem. You would make the dollars dance. You are different from--" he wasgoing to say Lettice, but, instinctively, he changed it to, "the womenaround here. You've got an awful lot of ginger to you. "

"I know what I want, and I'm not afraid to pay for it. Almost everybodywants the same thing--plenty and pleasure, but they're afraid of theprice; they are afraid of it alive and when they will be dead. Women setsuch a store on what they call their virtue, and men tend so much to theopinion of others, that they don't get anywhere. "

"Don't you set anything on your--your virtue?"

"I'd make it serve me; I wouldn't be a silly slave to it all my life. If Ican get things with it that's what I'm going to do. "

Gordon Makimmon found these potent words from such a pleasing woman asMeta Beggs. Any philosophy underlying them, any ruthless strength, escapedhim entirely. They appealed solely to him as "gay, " highly suggestive. They stirred his blood into warm, heady tides of feeling. He moved overthe smooth covering of pine needles, closer to her. But with an expressionof petulance she rose. 

"I suppose we must look for Buckley, " she observed. Gordon had completelyforgotten Buckley Simmons' presence at the camp meeting. Theschool-teacher, swaying slimly, led the way over the path to the plateau. 

They saw Buckley Simmons at once: he was talking in an excited, angrymanner to a small group of men. A gesture was made toward Gordon and hiscompanion; Buckley turned, and his face flushed darkly, Gordon, stoodstill, Meta Beggs fell behind, as the former made his way toward them. Buckley spoke loudly when he was still an appreciable distance away:

"You were mighty considerate about my dusty throat, " he began with heavysarcasm; "I ought to have seen at the time that you had it made up betweenyou. This is the second time that you have broken in on me, Makimmon. I'mnot a boy any longer. You can't tread on me. It's going to stop ... Now. "

"There's nothing for you to get excited about, Buck. Miss Beggs and I tooka little stroll while you were away. "

"A 'little stroll. '" Buckley produced a heavy gold watch, the highlychased cover of which he snapped back. "Over half an hour, " he proclaimed;"you stayed too long this time. "

Gordon was aware of a form at his back. He turned, and saw Tol'able. 

"What's the trouble, Gord?" the latter asked. Two or three others werecompactly grouped behind him. 

"Why, Buckley's hot because I walked with Miss Beggs while he took adrink. "

The men about Buckley Simmons closed up. "Don't let Gordon crowd youdown, " they advised their principal; "put it up against him. "

"Haven't you got enough at home, " Buckley demanded, "without playingaround here?"

Anger swiftly rose to Gordon Makimmon's head. His hand fell and remainedclose by his side. "Keep your tongue off my home, " he commanded harshly, "or you will get more than a horsewhipping. "

"By God, " Buckley articulated. His face changed from dark to pale, hismouth opened, his eyes were staring. He fumbled desperately in his pocket. Gordon's hand closed smoothly, instantly, about the handle of hisrevolver. But, before he could level it, an arm shot out from behind him, and a stone the size of two fists sped like a bullet, striking BuckleySimmons where his hair and forehead joined. Gordon, in a species ofshocked curiosity and surprise, clearly saw the stone hit the other. Therewas a sound like that made by a heel breaking a scum of ice on a frozenroad. 

Buckley said, "Ah, " half turned, and dropped like a piece of carpet. 

The belligerent attitude instantly evaporated from the group behind thestricken man. "Gracious, " some one muttered foolishly. They all joined ina stooping circle about the prostrate figure. It was seen immediately thatthe skull was broken--a white splinter of bone stood up from a mattedsurface of blood and hair and dirt. Buckley's eyelids winked continuouslyand with great rapidity. 

A mingled concern and deep relief swept through Gordon Makimmon. He knewthat, had the stone not been thrown, he would have killed Buckley Simmons. He wondered if Tol'able had done him that act of loyalty. It had, probably, fatally wounded its object. He turned with a swift, silent lookof inquiry to Tol'able. The other, unmoved, dexterously shifted a mouthfulof tobacco. "Whoever did that, " he observed, "could sure throw a rock. "

A crowd gathered swiftly, cautious and murmuring. Simmons was lifted on ahorse blanket to the flooring by the counter. There was an outcry for adoctor, but none was present, and it was agreed that the wounded man mustbe hurried into Greenstream. "He won't get there alive, " it was freelypredicted; "the top of his head is crumbled right off. "

X

Gordon found Meta Beggs on the outskirt of the throng; she was pale butotherwise unshaken. "I was sure you were going to shoot Buckley, " she toldhim. 

"So was I, " he returned grimly. 

"Will he die?"

"It looks bad--his head's cracked. You didn't see anybody throw thatstone!" His voice had more the accent of a command than an inquiry. 

"I really didn't; the men were standing so closely ... Nobody saw. "

"That's good. You'll drive home with me, for certain. "

"I'm glad you didn't kill him, " she confided to Gordon in the buggy. Shewas sitting very close to him. "It would have--upset things. "

"I don't believe you were a scrap frightened, " he asserted admiringly. 

"I wasn't. I thought how foolish you would be to spoil everything foryourself. "

"I would have gone into the mountains, " he explained; "a hundred men wouldhave kept the law off me. I was a year and a half there, when--when I wasyounger, " he ended lamely. 

"I like that, " she replied, "I understand it. I've wanted to murder; butit would have been silly, I would have had to pay too dearly for a passingrage. " There was a menace in her even voice, a cold echo like that from aclosed, empty room, that oppressed Gordon unpleasantly. 

"I guess you're not as dangerous as that, " he responded, more lightly. Hewondered, unable to decide, if she were consciously pressing her bodyagainst him, or if it were merely the jolting of the buggy? They werepassing through the valley that led into Greenstream; the sun was loweringbehind them, the shadows creeping out. They dropped from the rough, minorforms into the bigger sweep--it was like a great, green bed half filledwith a gold flood. Gordon's horse walked, and, in their slow progress, thestream of light flowing between the ranges changed to a stream of shadow. A miraculous pink rose opened in the east and scattered its glowing petalsacross the sky. The buggy wound, like an infinitesimal toy, over thedarkening road. 

He passed his dwelling, a long, irregular roof against the veiled surfaceof the stream; a light shone from the kitchen window. The streets of thevillage, folded in warm dusk, were empty; the white columns of theCourthouse glimmered behind the shafts of the trees on the lawn. Supperwas in progress at Peterman's hotel; as Gordon and Meta Beggs left thebuggy they heard the rattle of dishes within. She walked a few steps, thenstopped, was about to speak, but she saw that Gordon had followed her, andturned and led the way to the steps giving to the gallery above. 

Gordon Makimmon followed her without reason, without plan, almostsubconsciously. He walked close behind her to where she opened the door toher room: it was grey within, a dim curtain swelled faintly with an unfeltair. 

"Black, " he repeated stupidly, "size eight and a half. "

She stepped into the room, and faced him; her lips were parted over aglimmer of teeth. He took her roughly in his arms, and she turned up herface. 

"For the stockings, " she said, as he kissed her. 

He kissed her again, and she murmured, faintly, "Two pairs. "

It enraged him that she was so collected; her body, pressed against himfrom knee to shoulder, was without a tremor, her breast was tranquil. Shemight have been, from her unstudied, total detachment, a fine, flexiblestatue in his straining embrace, under his eager lips. Suddenly, with noapparent effort, she released herself. 

She removed the hat with the blue feather, calmly laid it on theindistinct bed, and moved to the mirror of a small bureau, where her handsglided over her smooth hair. 

"Men are so--elementary, " she observed, "and all alike. I wish I couldfeel what you do, " she turned to Gordon, "just once. "

"What are you made of?" he demanded tensely; "stone?"

"I often wonder. "

She crossed the room to the gallery, where she glanced swiftly about. "Youmust leave, and I'll go down to supper. Next Sunday I am going towalk ... In the morning. "

"If you go out by the priest's, " he suggested, "and turn to the right, youwill find a pretty stream; further down there's an old mill. "

She drew back, waiting for him to descend to the ground below. 

Simmons' clerk was standing on the platform before the store, and Gordondrew up. "How's Buckley?" he inquired. 

"Bad, " the other answered laconically. "They sent to Stenton for help. Hishead's cracked. It's funny, " he commented, "with a hundred people aroundnobody saw that stone thrown 'tall. "

"It don't do sometimes to see this and that, " Gordon explained, tighteningthe reins. 

He unhitched the horse in his shedlike stable by the aid of a handlantern. He was reluctant to go into the house, and he prolonged theunbuckling of the familiar straps, the measuring of feed, beyond allnecessity. Outside, he thought he heard General Jackson by the stream, andhe stood whistling softly, but only the first notes of the whippoorwillsresponded. "The night's just come down all at once, " he said. Finally, with a rigid assumption of indifference covering an uneasy heart, he wentin. 

Lettice was asleep by the lamp in the sitting room. She looked youngerthan ever, but there were shadows under her eyes, her mouth was a littledrawn as if by the memory of pain. A shawl, he saw, had slipped from hershoulders, and he walked clumsily on the tips of his shoes and rearrangedit. Then he sat down and waited for her to wake. 

The flame of the lamp was like a section of an orange; it cast a warm, lowradiance through the room. His gaze rested on the photograph of Lettice'smother in her coffin. He imagined that paper effigy of inanimate claymoved, turned its dull head to regard him. "I'm getting old, " he toldhimself contemptuously, repressing an involuntary start of surprise. Hisheart rested like a lump of lead in his breast; it oppressed him so thathis breathing grew labored. His mind returned to Meta Beggs: coldness likehers was not natural, it was not right. He thought again, as men havevainly of such women since the dawning of consciousness, that it would bestirring to fire her indifference, to ignite a passion in response to hisown desire. The memory of her slender, full body, her cool lips, tormentedhim. 

Lettice woke abruptly. 

"Gordon!" she cried, in an odd, muffled voice; "you're always late; yoursupper is always spoiled. "

"I had my supper, " he hurriedly fabricated, "at Peterman's. It's nice inhere, Lettice, with you and all the things around. It has a comfortablelook. You're right pretty, Lettice, too. "

The unexpected compliment brought a flush to her cheeks. "I'm not prettynow, " she replied; "I'm all pulled out. " General Jackson ambled into theroom, sat between them. "Let's hear the General sing, " she proposed. 

Gordon wound the phonograph, and the distant, metallic voice repeated theundeniable fact that Rip Van Winkle had been unaware of the selectpleasures of Coney Island. The dog whimpered, then raised his head in adespairing bay. 

A time might come in a man's life, Gordon Makimmon realized, when thispeaceful interior would spell complete happiness. 

XI

On Sunday he strolled soon after breakfast in the direction of thepriest's. Merlier was standing at the door to his house. Gordon noted thatthe other was growing heavier, folds dropped from the corners of hisshaven lips, his eyes had retreated in fatty pouches. His gaze was stillsearchingly keen, but the priest was wearing out. Gordon stopped inresponse to his silent nod. 

"You ought to let up on yourself a little, " he advised. 

"Why?" the other briefly queried. 

"'Why?', so's you will last longer. "

To this the priest made no reply. A short, awkward silence followed duringwhich Gordon grew restive. "If I looked so glum about Greenstream, " hecontinued, "I'd move out. " It was as though he had not spoken. "I'd goback where I came from, " he persisted sharply. The priest's lips moved, formed words:

"'Che discese da Fiesole ab antico. '"

His imperturbable manner offered Gordon not the slightest opening; and hecontinued uncomfortably on his way. There was a quality about that thick, black-clad figure which cast a shadow over the cloudless day, it bluntedthe anticipated pleasure of his meeting with Meta Beggs. There was aboutMerlier a smell of death like the smell of sooty smoke. 

The stream lay shining along its wooded course; the range greenly aflamewith new foliage rose into radiant space; flickers hammered on resonant, dead wood. Gordon banished the somber memory of the priest. He wasconscious of a sudden excitement, a keenness of response to living like arenewal of youth. He wished that Meta Beggs would appear; his direction toher had been vague; she might easily go astray and miss him. But he sawher, after what seemed an interminable period, leaving the road andcrossing the strip of sod that bordered the stream. She had on a whitedress that clung to her figure, and a broad, flapping straw hat wound withwhite. She saw him and waved. The brush rose thickly along the water, butthere was a footway at its edge, with occasional, broader reaches of roughsod. In one of the latter she stooped, made a swift movement with the hemof her skirt. 

"See, " she smiled; "I said you would like me in them. "

He attempted to catch her in his arms, but she eluded him. "Please, " sheprotested coolly, "don't be tiresome.... We must talk. "

He followed her by the devious edge of the stream to the ruined mill. Hecould see the blurring impress of the black silk stockings through the webof her dress; the dress had shrunk from repeated washing, and drew tightlyacross her shoulders. She walked lightly and well, and sat with a gracefulsweep on a fallen, moldering beam. Beyond them the broad expanse of themill pond was paved with still shadows; a dust of minute insects sweptabove the clouded surface. The water ran slowly over the dam, everywherecushioned with deep moss, and fell with an eternal splatter on the rocksbelow. 

Gordon rolled a cigarette from the muslin bag of Green Goose. "Why do youstill smoke that grass?" she demanded curiously. "You could get the bestcigars from Cuba. " He explained, and she regarded him impatiently. "Can'tyou realize what possibilities you have!"

"I might, with assistance. "

"If you once saw the world! I've been reading about Paris, the avenues andcafés and theaters. Why, in the cafés there they drink only champagne anddance all night. The women come with their lovers in little closedcarriages, and go back to little closed rooms hung in brocade. They neverwear anything but evening clothes, for they are never out but atnight--satin gowns with trains and bare shoulders. "

He endeavored to picture himself in such a city, amid such a life, withMeta Beggs. He felt that she would be entirely in place in the littlecarriages, drinking champagne. "That's where they eat frogs, " he remarkedinanely. In the tensity of her feeling, the bitterness of her longing, herenvy, she cursed him for a dull fool. Then, recovering her composure witha struggle:

"I would make a man drunk with pleasure in a place like that. He would beproud of me, and all the other men would hate him; they would all wantme. "

"Some would come pretty near getting you, too, " he replied with a flash ofpenetration; "those with the fastest horses or longest pockets. "

"I would be true to whoever took me there, " she declared; "out ofgratitude. "

He drew a deep breath. "What would you say, " he inquired, leaning towardher, "to a trip to--to Richmond? We could be gone the best part of aweek. "

She laughed scornfully. "Do you think I am as cheap as that--to be boughtover Sunday?" She rose, and stood before him, sharply outlined against thefoliage, the water, the momentary, flittering insects, taunting, provocative, sensual. 

"Five years ago, " he told her, "if you had tried this foolery, I wouldhave choked you, and thrown what was left in the dam. "

"And now--" she jeered fearlessly. 

"It's different, " he admitted moodily. 

It was. Somewhere the lash had been lost from the whip of his desire. Hewas still eager, tormented by the wish to feel her disdainful mouthagainst his. The recrudescence of spring burned in his veins; but, at thesame time, there was a new reluctance upon his flesh. The inanimate, obesemask of the priest, Lettice's sleeping countenance faintly stamped withpain, hovered in his consciousness. "It's different, " he repeated. 

"You are losing your hold on pleasure, " she observed critically aloof. 

He leaned forward, and grasped her wrist, and, with a slight motion, forced her upon her knees. "If you are pleasure I'm not, " he challenged. 

"You are hurting my arm, " she said coldly. His grip tightened, and a smallgrimace crossed her lips. "Let go, " she demanded; and then a swift passionshrilled her voice. "Let go, you are crushing my wrist. Damn you to hell!if you spoil my wrist I'll kill you. "

For a moment, as he held her, she reminded Gordon of a venomous snake; hehad never seen such a lithe, wicked hatred in any other human being. "Youare a gentle object, " he satirized her, loosening his hold. 

She rose slowly and stood fingering her wrist. The emotion died from hercountenance. "You see, " she explained, "my body is all I have to take meout of this, " she motioned to the slumbering water, the towering range, "and I can't afford to have it spoiled. You wouldn't like me if I werelame or crooked. Men don't. The religious squashes can say all they likeabout the soul, but a woman's body is the only really important thing toher. No one bothers about your soul, but they judge your figure across thestreet. "

"Yours hasn't done you much good. "

"It will, " she returned somberly, "it must--real lace and wine and ease. "She came very close to him; he could feel the faint jarring of her heart, the moisture of her breath. "And you could get them for me. I would makeyou mad with sensation. "

He kissed her again and again, crushing her to him. She abandoned herselfto his arms, but she was as untouched, as impersonal, as a stuffed womanof cool satin. In the end he voluntarily released her. 

"You wouldn't take fire from a pine knot, " he said unsteadily. 

Her deft hands rearranged her hat. "Some day a man will murder me, " shereplied in level tones; "perhaps I'll get a thrill from that. " Her voicegrew as cutting as a surgeon's polished knife. "Please don't think I'm thekind of woman men take out in the woods and kiss. You may have discoveredthat I don't like kissing. I'm going to be honester still--last year, whenyou were mending the minister's ice house, and hadn't a dollar, I wasn'tthe smallest bit interested in you; and this year I am. --Not on account ofthe money itself, " she was careful to add, "but because of you and themoney together. Don't you see--it changed you; it's perfectly right thatit should, and that I should recognize it. "

"That sounds fair enough, " he agreed. "Now the question is, what are wegoing to do together, you and me and the money?"

"Would you do what I wanted?" she asked at his shoulder. 

"Would you?"

"Yes. "

"We might try Richmond. "

"Don't fool yourself, " she returned hardily; "I know all about those trialtrips. Any man I go with has got to go far: I don't intend to be left atsome pokey little way station with everything gone and nothingaccomplished. "

"But, " he objected, "a man who went with you could never come back. "

"Back to this wilderness, " she scoffed; "any one should thank God forbeing taken out of it. "

"I've always lived here, my father too, and his before him; and back ofthat we came from mountains. We're mountain blood; I don't know if wecould get used to anything else, live down yonder. "

"I'd civilize you, " she promised him. 

"Perhaps--" he assented slowly. 

Suddenly from beyond the ruin came the stir of a horse moving in harness, the sound stopped and the voices of men grew audible. Instinctively Gordonand Meta Beggs drew behind a standing fragment of wall. Gordon could see, through the displaced, rotting boards, a buggy and two men standing at theside of the road. One, he recognized, was Valentine Simmons; he easilymade out the small, alert figure. The other, with his back to the mill, held outspread a sheet of paper. There was something familiar about thecarriage of the head, a glimpse of beard, a cigar from which were expelledcopious volumes of smoke. Gordon vainly racked his memory for a clue tothe latter, elusive personality. He heard Simmons say:

"... By the South Fork entrance ... Through the valley. "

The stranger partially turned, and Gordon instantly recalled where he hadseen him before--it was the man he had driven from Stenton with thesurprising foreknowledge of the County, who had been met by PompeyHollidew. He replied to Simmons, "Exactly ... Timber sidings at theprincipal depots. "

They were, evidently, discussing a projected road. Gordon subconsciouslyexclaimed, half aloud, "Railroad!" A swift illumination bathed in completecomprehension the whole affair--the connection, of Simmons, old Pompey'soptions and the stranger. This railroad, the coming of which wouldincrease enormously the timber values of Greenstream County, had been thecovert reason for Simmons' desire to purchase the options held by theHollidew estate; it had been, during Pompey Hollidew's life, the reasonfor the acquisition of such extended timber interests. Hollidew, Simmonsand Company had joined in a conspiracy to purchase them throughout thecounty at a nominal sum and reap the benefits of the large enhancement. The death of the former had interrupted that satisfactory scheme; nowValentine Simmons had conceived the plan of gathering all the profit tohimself. And, Gordon admitted, he had nearly succeeded ... Nearly. A slowsmile crossed Gordon Makimmon's features as he realized what a pleasantconversation he would have with Simmons at the latter's expense. He hadnever conceived the possibility of getting the astute storekeeper intosuch a satisfactory, retaliatory position. He would extract the lastpenny of profit and enjoyment from the other's surprise. 

The men beyond re-entered the buggy and drove toward the village. 

"What is it?" Meta Beggs asked; "you look pleased. "

"Oh, I fell on a little scheme, " he replied evasively; "a trifle ... Wortha hundred thousand or more to me. "

Her eyes widened with avidity. "I didn't know the whole, God forsakenplace was worth a thousand, " she remarked. "A hundred thousand, " the mererepetition of that sum brought a new shine into her gaze, instinctivelydrew her closer to Gordon's side. 

"Just that alone would be enough--" she said, and paused. 

He ignored this opening in the anticipated pleasure of his cominginterview with Valentine Simmons. 

A palpable annoyance took possession of her at Gordon's absorption. "Itmust be near dinner at Peterman's, " she remarked; "on Sunday you've got tobe on time. "

In response to her suggestion he turned toward the road. They walked backsilently until they were opposite the priest's. "I'd better go on alone, "she decided. Her hands clung to his shoulders and she sought his lips. "Soon again, " she murmured. "Don't desert me; I am entirely alone exceptfor you. "

She left him and swiftly crossed the green to the road. 

XII

Gordon carefully explained the entire circumstance of the timber toLettice. "I just happened to be by the stream, " he continued, "andoverheard them. Your father and Simmons evidently had arranged the thing, and Simmons was going to crowd you out of all the gain. "

"You see to it, " she returned listlessly; "you have my name on that paper, the power of something or other. " She was seated on the porch of theirdwelling. A low-drifting mass of formless grey cloud filled the narrowopening of the ranges, drooping in nebulous veils of suspended moisturedown to the vivid green of the valley. The mountains seemed to dissolveinto the nothingness above; the stream was unusually noisy. 

"I might see him this evening, " he observed; "and I could find out howBuck was resting. "

"However did he come to get hurt?"

"I never knew rightly, there we were all standing with Buckley a-talking, when the stone flew out of the crowd and hit him on the head. Nobody sawwho did it. "

"I wish you hadn't been there, Gordon. You always seem to be around, toget talked about, when anything happens. "

He saw that she was irritable, in a mood for complaint, and he rose. "Youmean Mrs. Caley talks wherever I am, " he corrected. He left the porch andwalked over the road to the village. The store, he knew, would be closed;but Valentine Simmons, an indefatigable church worker, almost invariablyafter the service pleasantly passed the remainder of Sunday in thecontemplation and balancing of his long and satisfactory accounts andassets. 

He was, as Gordon had anticipated, in the enclosed office bent over hisledgers. The door to the store was unlocked. Simmons rose, and brieflyacknowledged Gordon's presence. 

"I was sorry Buckley got hurt, " the latter opened; "it wasn't any directfault of mine. We were having words. I don't deny but that it might havegone further with us, but some one else stepped in. "

"So I was informed. Buckley will probably live ... That is all the Stentondoctor will say; a piece of his skull has been removed. I am not preparedto discuss it right now ... Painful to me. "

"Certainly. But I didn't come to discuss that. I want to talk to you aboutthe timber--those options of Lettice's. "

"She doesn't agree to the deal?" Simmons queried sharply. 

"Whatever I say is good enough for Lettice, " Gordon replied. 

An expression of relief settled over the other. "The papers will be readythis week, " he said. "I have taken all that, and some expense, off you. You will make a nice thing out of it. "

"I will, " Gordon assented heartily. "And that reminds me--I saw an oldacquaintance of Pompey Hollidew's in Greenstream to-day. I don't know hisname; I drove him up in the stage, and Pompey greeted him like a long-lostdollar. "

A veiled, alert curiosity was plain on Simmons's smooth, pinkishcountenance. 

"I wonder if you know him too?--a man with a beard, a great hand for mapsand cigars. "

"Well?" Valentine Simmons temporized. 

"Could he have anything to do with those timber options of the old man's, with your offer for them?"

"Well?" Simmons repeated. His face was now absolutely blank; he sat turnedfrom his ledgers, facing Gordon, without a tremor. 

"It's no use, Simmons, " Gordon Makimmon admitted; "I was out by the oldmill this morning. I saw you both, heard something that was said. Thatrailroad will do a lot for values around here, but mostly for timber. "

Instantly, and with no wasted regrets over lost opportunities, Simmonschanged his tactics to meet existing conditions. "Your wife's estatecontrols about three thousand acres of timber, " he pronounced. "What willyou take for them?"

"How much do you control?" Gordon asked. 

"About twenty-five hundred at present. "

Gordon paused, then, "Lettice will take thirty dollars an acre. "

"Why!" the other protested, "Pompey bought them for little or nothing. You're after over two hundred per cent. Increase. "

"What do you figure to get out of yours?"

"That doesn't concern us now. I've had to put this through--a tremendousthing for Greenstream, a lasting benefit--entirely by myself. I will haveto guarantee a wicked profit outside; I stand alone to lose a big sum. I'll give you ten dollars for the options. "

Gordon rose. "I'll see the railroad people myself, " he observed; "and findout what I can do there. "

"Hold on, " Simmons waved him back to his chair. "If there's too much talkthe thing will get out. You know these thick skulls around here--at thewhisper of transportation you couldn't cut a sapling with a gold axe. Ittook managing to interest the Tennessee and Northern; they are goingthrough to Buffalo; a Greenstream branch is only a side issue to them. " Hepaused, thinking. "There's no good, " he resumed, "in you and me gettinginto each other. The best thing we can do is to control all the goodstuff, agree on a price, and divide the take. "

Gordon carefully considered this new proposal. It seemed to him palpablyfair. "All the papers would have to be made together, " he added; "what'sfor one's for the other. "

Now that the deal was fully exposed Valentine Simmons was impatient ofsmall precautions. "Can't you see how the plan lays?" he demandedirritably. "We'll draw up a partnership. Don't get full and talk, " headded discontentedly. It was evident that he keenly resented the absenceof Pompey Hollidew from the transaction. 

"A thing like this, " he informed the other, "ain't put through in a week. It will be two or three years yet before the company will be ready forconstruction. "

Minor details were rehearsed, concluded. Two weeks later Gordon signed anagreement of partnership with Valentine Simmons to purchase collectivelysuch timber options as were deemed desirable, and to merchandise theirinterests at a uniform price to the railroad company concerned. 

XIII

When Gordon returned to his dwelling he found Sim Caley and his sister'shusband taking the horse from the shafts of a dusty, two-seated carriage. Rutherford Berry was a slightly-built man with high, narrow shoulders, anda smooth, pasty-white face. He was clerk in a store at the farther end ofGreenstream valley, and had flat, fragile wrists and a constant, irritating cough. 

"H'y, Gord!" he shouted; "your sister wanted to visit with you over night, and see Lettice. We only brought two--the oldest and Barnwell K. "

The "oldest, " Gordon recalled, was the girl who had worn Clare's silkwaist and "run the colors"; Barnwell K. Berry was, approximately, ten. 

"That's right, " he returned cordially. He assisted in running the carriageback by the shed. Lettice and his sister were stiffly facing each other inthe sitting room. The latter had a fine, thin countenance with pale hairdrawn tightly back and fastened under a small hat pinned precariouslyaloft; her eyes were steady, like his own. She wore a black dressornamented with large carmine dots, with a scant black ribband about herwaist, her sole adornment a brassy wedding ring, that almost covered anentire joint. She spoke in a rapid, absent voice, as if her attention wereperpetually wandering down from the subject in hand to an invisiblekitchen stove, or a child temporarily unaccounted for. 

"Lettice looks right good, " she declared, "and, dear me, why shouldn'tshe, with nothing on her mind at all but what comes to every woman? When Ihad my last Rutherford was down with the influenza, the youngest was takenwith green-sickness, and we had worked out all our pay at the store insupplies. You're fixed nice here, " she added without a trace of envy inher tired voice. "I suppose that's Mrs. Hollidew in her shroud. We haveone of James--he died at three--sitting just as natural as life in therocker. "

"Where's Rose?" he asked. 

"In the kitchen, helping Mrs. Caley. I wanted to ask that nothing be saidbefore Rose of Lettice's expecting. We've brought her up very delicate;and besides there's a young man paying her attention, it's not a fittingtime--she might take a scare. I had promised to bring Barnwell K. The nexttime. "

They could hear from without the boy and the hysterical yelping of GeneralJackson. "That dog won't bite?" Mrs. Berry worried. Gordon, patentlyindignant, replied that the General never bit. "Barnwell might crosshim, " she answered; and, moving to the door, summoned her offspring. Itwas the sturdy individual who had burst into a wail at Clare's funeral, his hair still bristling against a formal application of soap. 

"C'm on in, doggy, " he called; "c'm in, Ginral. I wisht I had a doggy likethat, " he hung on his mother's knees lamenting the absence from theirhousehold of a General Jackson. "Our ol' houn' dog's nothing, " heasserted. 

Lettice, worn by her visitor's rapid monotone, the stir and clatter ofyoung shoes, remarked petulantly, "Gordon paid two hundred dollars forthat single dog; there ought to be something extra to him. "

Mrs. Berry received this item without signal amazement; it was evidentthat she was prepared to credit any vagaries to the possessors of PompeyHollidew's fabulous legacy. 

"Just think of that!" she exclaimed mildly; "I'll chance that dog gets apiece of liver every day. "

Rose, from the door, announced supper. She was an awkward girl ofseventeen, with the pallid face and blank brown eyes of her father, anddiffident speech. Gordon faced Lettice over her figured red cloth; on oneside Barnwell K. Sat flanked by his mother and Simeon Caley, on the otherRose sat by an empty chair, the place of the now energetically employedMrs. Caley. The great, tin pot of coffee rested at Lettice's hand, and, before Gordon, a portentous platter held three gaunt, brown chickens withbrilliant yellow legs stiffly in air. Between these two gastronomic poleswas a dish of heaped, quivering poached eggs, the inevitable gravy boat, steaming potatoes and a choice of pies. Gordon dismembered the chickens, and, as the plates circled the table, they accumulated potatoes and gravyand eggs. Barnwell K. , through an oversight, was defrauded of the lastitem, and proceeded to remedy the omission. He thrust his knife into theslippery, poached mass. At best a delicate operation, he erred, eggsslipped, and a thick yellow stream flowed sluggishly to the rim of theplate. His mother met this fault of manner with profuse, disconcertedapologies. She shook him so vigorously that his chair rattled. SimeonCaley lifted the heavy coffee pot for Lettice. 

Mrs. Caley's service was abrupt, efficient; she set down plates of hotbread with a clatter; she rattled the stove lids from without, andcomplained of General Jackson, faithfully following her every movement. 

Sim Caley wielded an adroit knife; but, under the extraordinary pressureof this bountiful repast, Rutherford Berry easily outdistanced him. Heconsumed such unlimited amounts that he gained the audible displeasure ofhis wife. 

"You're not a camel, " she truthfully observed, "you don't have to fill upfor a week; you get something home. What Lettice'll think of you I can'tmake out. "

Substantial sections of pie were dispatched. Barnwell K. , valiantlyendeavoring to emulate his father, struggled manfully; he poked the lastpiece of crust into his mouth with his fingers. Then, in a shrill aside, he inquired, "Will Aunt Lettice have the baby while we're here. " Hismother's hand rang like a shot on his face, and he responded instantlywith a yell of appalling volume. 

Lettice's cup struck sharply upon its saucer. The delicate Rose flushedappropriately, painfully. The culprit was hauled, incontinently, dolefullywailing, to bed. The three men preserved an embarrassed silence. FinallyGordon said, "Have a cigar. " His brother-in-law responded with alacrity, but Sim preferred his plug tobacco, and Gordon Makimmon twisted acigarette. Sim and Rutherford were patently uncomfortable amid theformality of the dining room; and, at Gordon's suggestion, trooped withrelief out to the shedlike stable. There they examined critically the twohorses. Facing the stalls was an open space, and on boxes and the remnantof a chair they found places and smoked and spat informally. 

"You could study a life on women, " Rutherford Berry pronounced, "andnever come to any satisfaction. It seems to me the better they be the moresharp-like they get. There's your sister, Gord--the way she does about thehouse, and with all the children to tend, is a caution to Dunkards. Shedoes all you could ask and again. But it just seems she can't be pleasantwith it. Now there's Nickles, next place to me, his old woman's not wortha pinch of powder, but she is the nicest, easiest spoken body you'd meetin a day on a horse. You mind Effie when she was young, Gord--she justtrailed song all over the house, but it wasn't hardly a year before shegot penetrating as a musket. Rose is just like her--she's all taffy now onthat young man, but in a little spell she'll clamp down on him. "

Gordon had a swift vision of Lettice sharpening with the years; theresounded in prospect on his ear an endless roll of acidulous remarks, accompanied by the fretful whine of children, intensified by Mrs. Caley'slowering silence. He thought of the change that had overtaken his sisterEffie, remarked by her husband, the change from a trim, upright figure tothe present stooped form, the turning of that voice brimming with song toa continuous, shrill troubling. 

The cool, disdainful countenance of Meta Beggs returned to him: time, hedivined, would not mark her in so sorry a fashion; to the last she wouldremain slimly rounded, graceful; her hands, like magnolia flowers, wouldnever thicken and grow rough. He thought of Paris, of that life which, shesaid, would civilize him; he tried in vain to form an image of the cafésand little carriages, the bare-necked women drinking champagne. Herecalled a burlesque show he had once seen in Stenton, called "The FrenchWidows"; the revealed amplitude of the "widows" had been clad in vivid, stained pink tights; the scene in which they disported with a comicIrishman, a lugubrious Jew, was set with gilded palms, a saloon bar on oneside and a tank on the other from which "Venus" rose flatly from a cottonsea. He dismissed that possibility of resemblance--it was too palpably atvariance with what Meta Beggs would consider desirable; but, somehow, pinktights and Paris were synonymous in his thoughts. At any rate it wascertain to be gay; the women would resemble Nickles' wife rather than hissister ... Than Lettice as she would be in a few years. 

He recalled suddenly a neglected rite of hospitality, and from an obscureangle of the shed, produced a gallon jug. Drinking vessels were procured, and a pale, pungent whiskey poured out. Rutherford Berry sputtered andgasped over his glass; Sim Caley absorbed a brimming measure betweenbreaths, without a wink of the eye; Gordon drank inattentively. Theceremony was repeated; a flare of color rose in Berry's pallidcountenance, Sim's portion apparently evaporated from the glass. Thewhiskey made no visible impression on Gordon Makimmon. The jug wascirculated again, and again. All at once Rutherford became drunk. He roseswaying, attempted to articulate, and fell, half in a stall. Simeon Caleypulled him out, slapped his back with a hard, gnarled palm, but was unableto arouse him from a profound stupor. 

"He ain't right strong, " Sim observed with a trace of contempt, proppingthe figure in a limp angle against the wall. It was dark now, and he litthe hand lantern, cautiously closing the door. Outside the whippoorwillshad begun to call. A determined rattling of pots and pans sounded from thekitchen. 

"How much is in her, Gord?" Sim asked. 

Gordon Makimmon investigated the jug. "She's near three quarters full, " heannounced. 

An expression of profound content settled upon Simeon Caley. The jug wentround and round. Gordon grew a shade more punctilious than customary, hewiped the jug's mouth before passing it to Sim--at the prematureretirement of Rutherford the glasses had been discarded as effete; but nota degree of the other's manner betrayed the influence of his Gargantuandraughts of liquor. The lantern flickered on the sloping, cobwebby roof, on the shaggy horses as they lay clumsily down to rest, on the crumpledfigure of Gordon's sister's husband. 

The potations were suddenly interrupted by a sharp knocking from without. An expression of concern instantly banished Sim's content; he gazeddoubtfully at the jug, then, as Gordon made no move, rose and with markeddiffidence proceeded to open the door. The lantern light fell on thegaunt, bitter countenance of his wife framed in imponderable night. Hereyes made liquid gleams in the wavering radiance which, directed atGordon, seemed to be visible points of hatred. 

"It's ten o'clock, " she said to her husband, "and if you hain't got enoughsense to go to bed I'll put you. "

"I'm coming right along, " he assured her pacifically; "we were just havinga drink around. "

"Mrs. Berry's asking for her husband, " she added, gazing at that insensateform. 

"He must be kind of bad to his stomach, " Sim remarked; "he dropped withnothing 'tall on him. " He bent and picked the other up. Rutherford Berry'sarms hung limply over Sim's grasp, his feet dragged heavily, in unexpectedangles, over the floor. "Coming, Gord?"

Gordon made no reply. He sat intent upon the jug before him. Simeonconsiderately shut the door. At regular intervals Gordon Makimmon took along drink. He drank mechanically, without any evidence of desire orpleasure; he resembled a man blindly performing a fatiguing operation inhis sleep; he had the fixed, open eyes of a sleep-walker, the precise, unnatural movements. The lantern burned steadily, the horses slept with anaudible breathing. Finally the jug was empty; he endeavored to drink twiceafter that was a fact before discovering it. 

He rose stiffly and threw open the door. Dawn was flushing behind theeastern range; the tops of the mountains were thinly visible on thebrightening sky. His dwelling, with every window closed, was silvery withdew. He walked slowly, but without faltering, to the porch, and mountedthe steps from the sod; the ascent seemed surprisingly steep, long. Thedoor to the dining room was unlocked and he entered; in the thinning gloomhe could distinguish the table set as usual, the coffee pot at Lettice'splace glimmering faintly. He turned to the left and passed into theirbedroom. The details of the chamber were growing clear: the bed was placedagainst the farther wall, projecting into the room, its low footboard heldbetween posts that rose slimly dark against the white counterpane beyond;on the right were a window and high chest of drawers, on the left a standwith a china toilet service and a couch covered with sheep skins, roughlytanned and untrimmed. A chair by the bed bore Lettice's clothes, anotherat the foot awaited his own. By his side a curtain hung out from the wall, forming a wardrobe. 

He vaguely made out the form of Lettice sitting upright in the bed, herhands clasped about her knees. 

"Your brother-in-law, " he observed, "is a powerful spindling man. " Shemade no rejoinder to this, and, after a short pause, he further remarked, "How he gets on sociable I don't see. "

His wife's eyes were opened wide, gazing intently into the greying room;not by a sound, a motion, did she show any consciousness of his presence. He was deliberate in his movements, very deliberate, laboriously exact inhis mental processes, but they were ordered, logical. It began to annoyhim that his wife had made no reply to his pleasantries; it was out ofreason; he wasn't drunk like Rutherford Berry. 

"I said, " he pronounced, "that Berry is a nubbin. Didn't you hear me?haven't you got an answer to you?"

She sat gazing into nothingness, ignoring him completely. 

His resentment changed to anger; he moved to the foot of the bed, where, in his shirt sleeves, he harangued her:

"I want a cheerful wife, one with a song to her, and not a dam' femaleelder around the house. A good woman is a--a jewel, but when your goodnessgives you a face ache it's ... It's something different, it's a nuisance. I'd almost rather have a wife that wasn't so good but had some give toher. " He sat down, clutching a heavy shoe which came off suddenly. Letticewas as immobile as the chest of drawers. 

"Goddy knows, " he burst out again, "it's solemn enough around here anyhowwith Sim Caley's old woman like a grave hole, and now you go and get ittoo.... Berry might put up with it, and Sim's just fool-hearted, but aregular man wouldn't abide it, he'd--he'd go to Paris, where the women arecivilized and dance all night. " He muttered an unintelligible period aboutFrench widows and pink.... "Buried before my time, " he proclaimed. Hestood with his head grizzled and harsh above an absurdly flowingnightshirt. In the deepening light Lettice's countenance seemed thinnerthan usual, her round, staring eyes were frightened, as though she hadseen in the night the visible apparition of the curse of suffering laidupon all birth. 

"You look like you've taken leave of your wits, " he exclaimed in anaccumulated exasperation; "say something. " He leaned across the bed, and, grasping her elbow, shook her. She was as rigid, as unyielding, as thebed posts. Then with a long, slow shudder she turned and buried her headin the pillow. 

XIV

Rutherford Berry and Effie, Barnwell K. And the delicate Rose, left afterbreakfast. Sim drove off behind the sturdy horse and Mrs. Caley wasaudibly energetic in the kitchen. When Gordon appeared on the porchLettice was seated in the low rocker that had so often held Clare. Sheresponded in a suppressed voice to her husband's salutation. "You went andspoiled Effie's whole visit, " she informed him, "making Rutherforddrunk. "

"Why, " he protested, "we never; he just got himself drunk. "

"It was mean anyway--sitting drinking all night in the stable. "

"You'll say I was drunk too next. "

"It doesn't matter to you what I say, or what I go through with. I'vestood more than I rightly ought, more than I'm going to--you must give meone thought in a day. You just act low. Father was self-headed, but he wasnever real trashy. He never got into fights at those common campmeetings. "

"I threw the stone that hit Buck, didn't I! I busted his head open, didn'tI! Oh, of course, I'm to blame for it all ... Put it on me. "

"Well, how did you get in it? how did you get mixed up with theschool-teacher?"

"I got Mrs. Caley to thank for this, and I'll thank her. " He hotly recitedthe obvious aspect of his connection at the camp meeting with Meta Beggs. 

"It sounds all right as far as it goes, " she retorted; "but I'll chancethere's a good deal more; I'll chance you had it made up to meet herthere. You would never have gone for any other reason; I don't believe youhave been to a revival for twenty years. You had it made up between you. And that Miss Beggs is too smart for you, she'll fool you all over themountain. I don't like her either, and I don't want you to give her thesatisfaction of making up to you. It's what she'd like--laughing at myback!"

"Miss Beggs never spoke any harm of you. "

She made a gesture, hopeless, impatient, at his innocence. Her resentmentburst out again, "Why does she want to speak to you--another woman'shusband? Anybody knows it's low down. When did you see her? What did youtalk about?"

"Of course when I see her coming I ought to go 'round by South Fork, " hereplied, heavily sarcastic. 

"Well, you don't have to stand and talk like I warrant you do. There'ssomething deep about her look. "

"I've taken care of myself for some years, and I guess I can keep on. "

"You can if you want to go to ruin, like you were when I married you, andyou only had one shirt to your name. "

"Throw it up to me. It's no wonder a man drinks here, he's got more toforget than to think about. " He stepped from the porch, preparing toleave. 

"Wait!" she commanded; "I'll put up with being left, and having you drinkall night with the beasts, and fooling my money away, but, " her voice roseand her eyes burned over dark shadows, "I won't put up with another woman, I won't put up with that thin thing making over my husband. I won't! Iwon't! do you understand that.... I--I can't. "

He went around the corner of the house with her last words ringing in hisears, kicking angrily at the rough sod. His house, between Mrs. Caley'sglum silence and Lettice's ceaseless complaining, was becominguninhabitable. And, as Rutherford Berry had pointed out, the latter wouldonly increase, sharpen, with the years. Lettice was a good wife, she wasnot like Nickles' old woman, worthless but the pleasantest body you'dmeet in a day on a horse. She was not like Meta Beggs. He had never seenany other like the latter. Lettice had said that she would fool him allover the mountain ... But not him, not Gordon Makimmon, he thoughtcomplacently. 

He was well versed in the ways of women; he would not go a step that hedid not intend, understand. This business of Paris, for example: he mighttell Meta Beggs that he'd go, and then, at--say, Norfolk, he would changehis mind. Anyhow that was a plan worth considering. He recalled theschool-teacher's level, penetrating gaze; she was as smart as Lettice haddivined; he would have difficulty in fooling her. He felt obscurely thatany step taken with her would prove irrevocable. 

Lettice kept at him and at him; after the baby arrived it would be nobetter; there would be others; he regarded a succession of such periods, asuccession of babies, with marked disfavor. He had been detached for solong from the restraints of commonplace, reputable relationships that theygrew increasingly irksome, they chafed the old, established freedom ofmorals and action. Meta Beggs blew into fresh flame the embers of dyingyears. And yet, as he had told her by the stream, an involuntarylassitude, a new stiffness, had fallen upon his desire. Although hismarriage was burdensome it was an accomplished fact; Lettice's wishes, her quality of steadfastness, exerted their influence upon him. 

They operated now to increase his resentment; they formed an almostdetached disapproval situated within his own breast, a criticism of histhoughts, his emotions, against which he vainly raged, setting himselfpointedly in its defiance. 

He lounged past the Courthouse, past Peterman's hotel, to the post-office. It was a small frame structure, with the wing of the postmaster'sresidence extending from the back. At the right of the entrance was asmall show window holding two watches with shut, chased silver lids, and asmall pasteboard box lined with faded olive-colored plush containing twoplated nut crackers and six picks. The postmaster was the local jeweller. Within, beyond the window which gave access to the governmental activitiesa glass case rested on the counter. It was filled with an assortment oftrinkets--rings with large, highly-colored stones, wedding bands, goldpins and bangles engraved with women's flowery names; and, laid by itself, a necklace of looped seed pearls. 

The latter captured Gordon's attention, it was so pale, and yet, at thesame time, so suggestive of elusive colors; it was so slender andgraceful, so finished, that it irresistibly recalled the person of MetaBeggs. 

"Let's see that string of pearls, " he requested. 

The postmaster laid it on top of the glass case. "The jobber sent it upby accident, " he explained; "I can't see anything to it--for the price;it's too slimsy. I wouldn't advise it, Gord. Why, for thirty dollars, andthat's what it costs--diamond clasp, you can get a string of fish skinpearls, experts can't tell 'em from original, as big as your finger endthat would go twice about the neck and then hang some. "

The necklace slipped coldly through Gordon Makimmon's hand; it remindedhim of a small, pearly snake with a diamond head; it increasingly remindedhim of Meta Beggs. She loved jewelry. If she had kissed him for a pair ofsilk stockings--

"I think I'll take it, " he decided slowly; "I don't know if I've got herright here in my pants. "

"Now, Gordon, " the other heartily reassured him, "whenever you like. Ofcourse it's a fine article--all strung on gold wire. I won't be surprisedbut Lettice'll think it's elegant. I often wondered why you didn't stop inlately and look over my stock; ladies put a lot on such little trifles. "

Meta Beggs would have to wear it under her dress in Greenstream, herealized; perhaps she had better not wear it at all until she was out ofthe valley. He would clasp the pearls about that smooth, round throat.... The postmaster wrapped the pearls into a small, square package, talkingvoluminously. A new driver of the Stenton stage had lost a mail bag, hehad lamed a horse--a satisfactory driver had not been discovered sinceGordon ... Left. He had heard of a law restraining the sale of patentmedicines, of Snibbs' Mixture, and what the local drinkers would do, already deprived of the more legitimate forms of spirituous refreshment, was difficult to say. The postmaster predicted they would take to "dope. "Then there was to be a sap-boiling over on the western mountain, to-morrownight, at old man Entriken's.... Everybody had been invited; if theweather was ugly it would take place the first clear spell. 

Sap-boilings, Gordon knew, held late in spring in the maple groves, lastedall night. Baskets of food were driven to the scene; the fires under thegreat, iron kettles were kept replenished; everybody stirred the bubblingsap, ate, gabbled; the young people even danced on the grass. 

It was a romantic ceremonial: the unusual hours of its celebration, themystery of night in close groves lit by the stars temporarily unsettledlife from its prosaic, arduous journey toward the inevitable, blindtermination. It moved the thoughts into unwonted fantasy, the heart tonew, unguessed possibilities. For that night established values, life-longhabits, negations, prudence, were set at naught. 

Gordon wondered whether Meta Beggs would be there? He would like to bewith her at a sap-boiling, in the sooty shadows. With the necklace ofseed pearls in his pocket he walked over the street revolving in his mindthe problem of asking her to accompany him. He could not hope to hide itfrom Lettice; and, to-day, he had recognized a note of finality in hiswife's voice with regard to the school-teacher. If he went with Meta Beggsserious trouble would ensue in his home ... He wished to avoid any actualoutbreak with Lettice. He remembered, tardily, her condition; it would bedangerous for her. He might, conceivably, at some time or another, goaway; even to Paris--yet, at that latter thought, the wish, almost thenecessity, of a return lingered at the back of his brain--but he would notgoad her into an explosion of misery and temper. He acknowledged tohimself, with a faint glow of pride, that he was not anxious to encounterLettice Makimmon's full displeasure; she possessed the capability oftenacity, an iron-like resolve, inherited from old Pompey. 

In the outcome his difficulty was unexpectedly solved for him--a largefarm wagon, with boards temporarily laid from side to side, was to conveya quantity of people, and among them Meta Beggs, from the village to thesap-boiling. He learned this from the idlers before the _Bugle_ office. Sitting with his chair canted against that dingy wooden façade he thoughtof the school-teacher and the coming night. It was late afternoon of theday on which he had bought the necklace. The small package still rested inhis pocket. It had been his intention to give the pearls to Meta Beggsbefore he returned to his home, but no opportunity had offered. Afterschool she had passed the seated row of men, uneasily stirring their hatsin response to her collected greeting; and, with Mrs. Peterman, gone intothe body of the hotel. Gordon could not follow her. Anyhow, thepresentation could be made with better effect in the obscurity of themaples to-morrow night ... Her gratitude could have fuller sweep. 

He made his way finally, reluctantly, home. There, alone in the bedroom, he swiftly withdrew the necklace from its pasteboard box, and dropped itinto the pocket of a coat hanging in the curtained wardrobe. It was, henoted, the checked suit with the red thread, the one he would wear to thesap-boiling. He heard approaching footsteps, and, hastily crumpling thepaper and small box into a compact unit, he flung it into a corner of thewardrobe, behind a heap of linen. 

XV

It was comparatively a short distance to the elder Entriken's farm, and, rather than invent a laborious explanation of the horse's absence allnight, Gordon walked. Numberless excuses offered him plausible reason forhis own delayed return home. --It was better to say nothing to Lettice ofhis actual intention; she was already suspicious of his sudden interest inlocal gatherings. 

The road beyond Greenstream village crossed a brook and mounted by sharpturns the western range. The day had faded to amethyst, pale in thetranslucent vault of the sky, deepening in the valley; the plum-coloredsmoke of evening fires ascended in tenuous columns to an incredibleheight. He walked rapidly, with the oppressed heart that had lately grownfamiliar, the sense of imminence, the feeling of advancing into a vague, towering shadow. That last sensation was at once new and familiar--wherebefore had he been conscious of a vast, indefinable peril, blacker thannight, looming implacably before him? He summoned his old hardihood andadvanced over the still, bosky side of the mountain. 

He descended, beyond the ridge, into the fact of evening accomplished. Atthe base of the range he crossed a softly-swelling expanse ofclose-cropped grass, skirted a bog and troop of naked-seeming birches, andcame in view of the maple grove toward which he was bound. 

The maple trees towered compact and majestic over the level sod, holdingtheir massed foliage black against the green sky. Low in the right the newmoon hung like a gold fillet above the odorous, crepuscular earth; and, atthe base of the trees, the fires were like bubbling, crimson sealing waxpoured into the deeper, indigo gloom. 

As Gordon advanced he saw a number of vehicles, from which the horses hadbeen taken and tied to an improvised railing. Figures moved darkly againstthe flames; beyond familiar features flickered like partial, painted maskson the night. In the grove the sap, stirred in the great iron kettles, kept up a constant, choking minor; the smooth trunks of the trees swept upfrom the unsteady radiance into the obscurity of invisible branches loopedwith silver strings of stars. 

Blurred forms moved everywhere. He searched for Meta Beggs. She was not bythe kettles of sap; beyond the trees, by covered baskets of provisionslanterns made a saffron pool of light, but she was not there. He felt inhis pocket the cool, sinuous necklace. Finally he found her; or, rather, she slipped illusively into his contracted field of vision. 

"You didn't tell me you were coming, " she reproached him. 

She wore a red dress, purple in the night, with a narrow, black velvetribband pinned about her throat; her straw hat was bound in red. Shegained an extraordinary potency from the dark; it almost seemed to GordonMakimmon that her skin had a luminous quality; he could see her pointedhands distinctly, and her small, cold face. All her dresses strained abouther provocative body, an emphasis rather than a covering of her slimmaturity. They drifted, without further speech, out of the circles ofwavering light, into the obscurity beyond. 

They sat, resting against a hillock of sod, facing the sinking visible rimof the moon. From the bog the frogs sounded like a continuously andlightly-struck xylophone. Meta Beggs shivered. 

"I'll go mad here, " she declared, "in this--this nothingness. Look--themoon dropping into wilderness; other lucky people are watching itdisappear behind great houses and gardens; women in the arms of theirlovers are watching it through silk curtains. "

He gazed critically over the valley, the mountains, into the sky scarfedby night. "I'm used to it, " he returned; "it doesn't bother me like itdoes you. Some people even like it. A man who came here from the city todie of lung trouble sat for weeks looking up Greenstream valley; hecouldn't get enough morning or evening. "

"But I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm going to live, too; I'vedecided--"

"What?"

"To stop teaching. When the term's over, in a few weeks, I'm going to takethe money I make and go to New York. It will be just enough to get methere and buy me a pretty hat, with a few dollars over. I am going withthose into a café and get a bottle of champagne, and pick out the man withthe best clothes. I'll tell him I'm a poor school-teacher from the Southwho came to New York to meet a man who promised to marry me, but who hadnot kept his word. I'll tell him that I'm good--I can, you know; no manhas ever fooled anything out of me--and that I bought wine to get thecourage to kill myself. "

"It sounds right smart, " he admitted; "you can do it too, you can lie likehell. But, " he added importantly, "I don't know that I will let you. "This, he assured himself, was purely experimental. He had decided nothing;his course in the future was hidden from him absolutely. He thoughtdiscontentedly of his home, of the imagined long, dun vista of years. 

He was now, he realized dimly, at the crucial point of his existence: withMeta Beggs, in that world of which Paris was the prefigurement, he mightstill wring from life a measure of the sharp pleasures of tempestuousyouth and manhood; he might still dance to the piping of the senses. WithLettice in Greenstream he would rapidly sink into the dullness ofincreasing age. 

He was vaguely conscious of the baseness of the mere weighing of such achoice; but he was engulfed in his overmastering egotism; his sense ofobligation was dulled by the supreme selfishness of a lifetime, of alifetime of unbridled temper and appetite, of a swaggering self-esteemwhich the remorseless operation of fate had ignored, had passedindifferently by, leaving him in complete ignorance of the terrible andgrim possibilities of human mischance. 

He had suffered at the loss of his dwelling, but principally it had beenhis pride that had borne the wound; Clare's death had affected him finallyas the arbitrary removal of a sentimental object for his care, on which tolavish the gifts of his large generosity. 

He sat revolving in his mind the choice of paths which seemed to open forhis decision in such different directions, which seemed to await thesimple ordering of his footsteps as he chose. The night deepened to itsdarkest hour; the moon, in obedience to its automatic, fixed course, hadvanished behind the mountains; the frogs, out of their slime, raised theirshrill plaint of life in death. 

XVI

"I've got something for you, " Gordon said suddenly. 

"I hope it's pretty, " she replied, leaning forward, resting against hisshoulder. 

He brought from his pocket the slender, looped necklace of seed pearls. Itwas faintly visible in the dark, the diamond clasp made a small glint. Shetook it eagerly from him. "I'll light a match, " he told her. In theminute, orange radiance the pearls shimmered in her fingers. 

"But it's wonderful!" she exclaimed, unable to suppress her surprise athis unerring choice; "it's exactly right. Have you been to Stenton?however could you get this here?"

"Oh, I know a few things, " he assured her; "I got an eye. Let me put it onfor you. " He took it from her, and his hands fumbled about her smooththroat. He required a long time to fasten it. The intoxication of thesubtlety of her sex welled from hand to head. He kissed her still lipsuntil he ceased from sheer lack of breath. He drew her close to him, withan arm about her pliant waist. 

"I've been thinking of you in those pretty clothes, " he admitted. 

"All lace and webby pink silk and ribbands underneath, " she reminded him;"but only for you, and satin trains and diamonds for the others. "

Her words winged like little flames into his imagination. He whispered inher ear, "Richmond. " She stiffened in his arms as if that single word hadthe power to freeze her. "We'll see, we'll see, " he added hastily, fearingto dispel her complacency. "Paris is a long way ... A man could never comeback. "

"I didn't know you were so cautious, " she challenged; "I thought you werebolder--that's your reputation in Greenstream, a bad one for a man orwoman to cross. "

"So I've been, " he acknowledged; "I told you I wouldn't have hesitated awhile back. "

"What is holding you now--your wife? She would soon get over it. She'sonly a girl, she hasn't had enough experience to hold a man. Besides, shemust know by now that you only married her for money; she must know youdon't care for her; women always find out. "

The bald, incontestable statement of his reason for marrying Letticedisconcerted him. He had never made the acknowledgment of putting it intowords to himself, and no one else had openly guessed, had dared.... 

Suddenly it appeared to him in the light of a possible act ofcowardice--Lettice, a girl, blinded by affection. And, equally, it wasundeniably true that he did not care for her ... He did not care for her?that realization too carried a slight sting. But neither did he care forMeta Beggs; something different attracted him to the latter; she--shebrought him out, that was it; she ministered to his pleasure, his desire, his--

"Don't, " she said firmly. 

His balked feelings overmastered him, and he disregarded her prohibition. She slipped from his grasp as lithely as the serpentine pearls had runthrough his fingers. 

"Haven't you learned, " she demanded, standing, "that I can't be boughtwith silk stockings or a little necklace? Or, perhaps, you are cheap, andI have been entirely wrong.... I'm going to get something to eat, with thepeople who brought me from Greenstream. I will be back here in two hours, but it will be for the last time. You must decide one way or the otherwhile I am gone. You may stay or leave; I'm going to leave. Remember--nomore penny kisses, no more meetings like this; it must be all or nothing. Some man will take me to Paris, have me. " She dissolved against the darkof the maple grove. 

XVII

But, curiously, sitting alone, he gave little consideration to thedecision, immediate and irrevocable, which confronted him. His thoughtsevaded, defied, him, retreated into night-like obscurity, returnedburdened with trivial and unexpected details of memory. It grew colder, the rich monotone of mountain and sky changed to an impenetrable, uglydensity above which the constellations wheeled without color. His back wastoward the maple grove; the removed, disembodied voices mingled in a soundnot more intelligible than the chorus of frogs. It occurred to himsuddenly that, perhaps, in a week, a month, he might not be inGreenstream, nor in the mountains, but with the white body of Meta Beggsin the midst of one of those vast, fabulous cities the lust of whichpossessed her so utterly.... Or she would be gone. 

He thought instinctively of the little cemetery on the slope above thevillage. One by one that rocky patch was absorbing family and familiars. Life appeared to be a stumbling procession winding through Greenstreamover the rise and sinking into that gaping, insatiable chasm. He wasconscious of an invisible force propelling him into that sorry parade, toward those unpretentious stones marked with the shibboleth of names anddates. A desperate anxiety to evade this fate set his soul cowering in itsfatal mask of clay. This, he realized, was unadulterated, childish fear, and he angrily aroused himself from its stifling influence. 

Meta Beggs would be back soon; she would require an answer to herresolve ... All or nothing. The heat, chilled by the night and loneliness, faded a little from his blood. She demanded a great deal--a man couldnever return. He bitterly cursed his indecision. He became aware of apervading weariness, a stiffness from his prolonged contact with theearth, and he rose, moved about. His legs were as rigid, as painful, as anold man's; he had been leaning on his elbow, and the arm was dead to thefingers. The nerves pricked and jerked in infinitesimal, fiery agonies. Heswung his arms, stamped his feet, aiding his stagnating circulation. Thefrogs ceased their complaint abruptly; the concerted jangle of voices inthe grove rose and fell. The replenished fires poured their energy overthe broad bottoms of the sap kettles. 

The night faded. 

The change, at first, was imperceptible: as always the easterly mountainsgrow visible against a lighter sky. The foliage of the maples, strippedof the looping stars, took the form of individual branches brighteningfrom black to green. There was a stir of dim figures about the impatienthorses. Meta Beggs came swiftly to him. He could see her face plainly now, and was surprised at its strained, anxious expression. Her hand closedupon his arm, she drew him to her:

"Which?" she whispered. 

"I don't know, " he dully replied. 

"Save me, " she implored; "take me away. " She whispered maddeningly in hisear, summoning the lust within him, the clamor in his brain, the throbbingin his throat, his wrists. He shut his eyes, and, when he opened them, thedawn had arrived. It forced her from him. Her gown changed to vivid red;about her throat the graceful pearls were faintly iridescent. 

"I don't know, " he repeated wearily. 

Over her shoulder he saw a buggy approaching across the grass. It wasdisconcertingly familiar, until he recognized, beyond any doubt, that itwas his own. Sim, he assured himself, had learned of his presence at thesap-boiling, and, in passing, had stopped to fetch him home. But there wasno man in the buggy ... Only two women. Meta Beggs, intercepting hisintent gaze, turned and followed it to its goal ... Gordon saw now thatMrs. Caley was driving, and by her side ... Lettice! Lettice--riding overthe rough field, over the dark stony roads, when now, so soon ... In hercondition ... It was insanity. Simeon Caley's wife should never haveallowed it. 

The horse, stolidly walking over the sod, stopped before them. Mrs. Caleyheld a rein in either hand, her head, framed in a rusty black bonnet andstrings, was as dark, as immobile as iron. Lettice gathered her shawltightly about her shoulders; she had on a white waist and her head wasbare. She descended clumsily from the buggy and walked slowly up toGordon. Her face was older than he had ever seen it, and pinched; in onehand she grasped a small pasteboard box. 

XVIII

Gordon Makimmon made one step toward her. Lettice held the box in anextended hand:

"Gordon, " she asked, "what was this for? It was in the clothes press lastevening: it couldn't have been there long. You see--it's a littlejewellery box from the post-office; here is the name on the lid. Somehow, Gordon, finding it upset me; I couldn't stop 'til I'd seen you and askedyou about it. Somehow there didn't seem to be any time to lose. I askedfor you last night in the village, but everybody had gone to thesap-boiling ... I sat up all night ... Waiting ... I couldn't wait anylonger, Gordon, somehow. I had to come out and find you, and everybody hadgone to the sap-boiling, and--"

"Why, Lettice, " he stammered, more disconcerted by the sudden loss ofyouth from her countenance than by her words; "it wasn't--wasn't much. "

"What was it, Gordon?" she insisted. 

Suddenly he was unable to lie to her. Her questioning eyes held a qualitythat dispelled petty and casual subterfuges. The evasion which hesummoned to his lips perished silently. 

"A string of pearls, " he muttered. 

"Why did you crush the pretty box if they were for--for me or for yoursister, if it was to be a surprise? I can't understand--"

"It, it was--"

"Who were they for, Gordon?"

A blundering panic swept over him; Lettice was more strange than familiar;she was unnatural; her hair didn't shine in the sunlight streaming intothe shallow, green basin; in the midst of the warm efflorescence sheseemed remote, chill. 

"For her, " he moved his head toward Meta Beggs. 

She withdrew her burning gaze from Gordon Makimmon and turned to theschool-teacher. 

"For Miss Beggs, " she repeated, "why ... Why, that's bad, Gordon. You'remarried to me; I'm your wife. Miss Beggs oughtn't ... She isn't anythingto you. "

Meta Beggs stood motionless, silent, her red cotton dress drawing andwrinkling over her rounded shoulders and hips. The necklace hunggracefully about the slender column of her throat. 

The two women standing in the foreground of Gordon Makimmon's vision, ofhis existence, summed up all the eternal contrast, the struggle, in thefeminine heart. And they summed up the duplicity, the weakness, thesensual and egotistical desires, the power and vanity and vain-longing, ofmen. 

Meta Beggs was the mask, smooth and sterile, of the hunger for adornment, for gold bands and jewels and perfume, for goffered linen and draperies ofsilk and scarlet. She was the naked idler stained with antimony in theclay courts of Sumeria; the Paphian with painted feet loitering on theroofs of Memphis while the blocks of red sandstone floated sluggishly downthe Nile for the pyramid of Khufu the King; she was the flushedvoluptuousness relaxed in the scented spray of pagan baths; the woman withpiled and white-powdered hair in a gold shift of Louis XIV; the prostitutewith a pinched waist and great flowered sleeves of the Maison Doree. Shewas as old as the first vice, as the first lust budding like a blackblossom in the morbidity of men successful, satiated. 

She was old, but Lettice was older. 

Lettice was more ancient than men walking cunning and erect, than thelithe life of sun-heated tangles, than the vital principle of floweringplants fertilized by the unerring chance of vagrant insects and airs. 

Standing in the flooding blue flame of day they opposed to each other theforces fatally locked in the body of humanity. Lettice, with her unbornchild, her youth haggard with apprehension and pain, the prefigurement ofthe agony of birth, gazed, dumb and bitter in her sacrifice, at thegraceful, cold figure that, as irrevocably as herself, denied all thatLettice affirmed, desired all that she feared and hated. 

"Why, that's bad, Gordon, " she reiterated, "I'm your wife. And Miss Beggsis bad, I'm certain of that. " A spasm of suffering crossed her face like acloud. 

"You ought not to have come, Lettice. Lettice, you ought not to havecome, " he told her. His dull voice reflected the lassitude that had fallenupon him, the sudden death of all emotion, the swift extinguishing of hisinterest in the world about him; it reflected, in his indifference todesire, an indifference to Meta Beggs. 

"Do you love her, Gordon?" his wife asked. 

"No, I don't, " he answered, perceptibly impatient at the question. 

"Do you like her better than you like me?"

The palpable answer to her query, that he thought of himself more thaneither, evaded him. "I don't like her better than I like you, " he repeatedbaldly. 

Lettice turned to the other woman. "There's not much you can say, " shedeclared, "caught like this trying to steal somebody's husband. And youset over a school of children!"

"I don't choose to be, " Meta Beggs retorted. "I hate it, but I had tolive. If you hadn't had all that money to keep you soft, yes, and get youa husband, you would have had to fight and do, too. You might have beenteaching a roomful of little sneaks, and sick to death of it before everyou began ... Or you might be on the street--better girls have than you. "

"And you bought her a necklace, Gordon, her--"

All that he now desired was to get Lettice safely home. Another wave ofpain rose whitely over her countenance. "Come on, Lettice, " he urged;"just step into the buggy. " He waved toward the vehicle, toward thepeacefully grazing horse, Mrs. Caley sitting upright and sallow. 

"And take him right along with you, " Meta Beggs added; "your money's tightaround his neck. "

Resentment at the implied ignominy penetrated his self-esteem. 

"We're going right on now, Lettice, " he continued; "we must drive ascareful as possible. "

"I don't know that I want you, " his wife articulated slowly. 

"You can decide that later, " he returned; "we're going home first. "

She relaxed her fingers, and dropped the pasteboard box on the turf. Shestood with her arms hanging limply, breathing in sharp inspirations. Shegazed about at the valley, the half-distant maple grove: suddenly theyouth momentarily returned to her, the frightened expression of a childabruptly conscious of isolation in an alien, unexpected setting. 

"Gordon, " she said rapidly, "I had to come--find you ... Something--" hervoice sharpened with apprehension. "Tell me it will be all right. Itwon't ... Kill me. " She stumbled toward him, he caught her, and halfcarried her to the buggy, where he lifted her over the step and into theseat. A red-clad arm was supporting her on the other side: it was MetaBeggs. 

"You drive, " he directed Mrs. Caley. He held Lettice with her face hiddenagainst his shoulder. The valley was refulgent with early summer, thewheat was swelling greenly, the meadows, threaded by shining streams weresown with flowers, grazed by herds of cattle with hides like satin, thepellucid air was filled with indefinite birdsong. The buggy lurched over ahillock of grass, his wife shuddered in his arms, and an unaccustomed, vicarious pain contracted his heart. Where the fields gave upon the roadthe buggy dropped sharply; Lettice cried out uncontrollably. He cursedMrs. Caley savagely under his breath, "Can't you drive, " he asked; "can'tyou?"

The ascent to the crown of the ridge was rough, but beyond, winding downto the Greenstream valley, it was worse. The buggy, badly hitched, bumpedagainst the flank of the horse, twisted over exposed boulders, brought upsuddenly in the gutters cut diagonally by the spring torrents. GordonMakimmon forgot everything else in the sole desire to get Lettice safelyto their house. He endeavored, by shifting her position, to reduce thejarring of the uneven progress. He realized that she was in a continualagony, and, in that new ability to share it through the dawningconsciousness of its brute actuality in Lettice, it roused in him animpotent fury of rebellion. It took the form of an increasing passion ofanger at the inanimate stones of the road, against Mrs. Caley's meagerprofile on the dusty hood of the buggy. He whispered enraged oaths, workedhimself into an insanity of temper. Lettice grew rigid in his arms. For awhile she iterated dully, like the beating of a sluggish heart"bad ... Bad ... Bad. " Then dread wiped all other expression from herface; then, again, pain pinched her features. 

The buggy creaked down the decline to their dwelling. Gordon supportedLettice to their room; then he stood on the porch without, waiting. Therugged horse, still hitched, snatched with coarse, yellow teeth at thegrass. Suddenly Mrs. Caley appeared at a door: she spoke, breaking theirascible silence of months, dispelling the accumulating ill-will of herpent resentment, with hasty, disjointed words:

"... Quick as you can ... The doctor. "

XIX

A hoarse, thin cry sounded from within the Makimmon dwelling. Itfluctuated with intolerable pain and died abruptly away, instantlyabsorbed in the brooding calm of the valley, lost in the vast, indifferentserenity of noon. But its echo persisted in Gordon's thoughts andemotions. He was sitting by the stream, before his house; and, as the cryhad risen, he had moved suddenly, as though an invisible hand had touchedhim upon the shoulder. He sat reflected on the sliding water against thereflection of the far, blue sky. One idea ran in a circle through hisbrain, his lips formed it soundlessly, he even spoke it aloud:

"It ain't as though I had gone, " he said. 

The possible consequence to Lettice of what had been a mere indecisionseemed to him out of any proportion. No, he thought, I wouldn't have gonewhen the time came; when the minute came I'd have held back. Then again, it ain't as though I had gone. A species of surprise alternated withresentment at the gravity of the situation which had resulted from hisindiscreet conduct; the agony of that cry from within the house was toodeep to have proceeded from ... It wasn't as though he had gone ... Hewouldn't have gone, anyway. 

He heard footsteps on the porch, and turned, recognizing Doctor Pelliter. He half rose to go to the other with an inquiry; but he dropped quicklyback on the bank, looked away. --Some time before the doctor had tied atowel about his waist ... It had been a white towel. 

His mind returned to Lettice and the terrible mischance that had beenbrought upon her; that he had brought on her. He tested the latter clause, and attempted to reject it: he had done nothing to provoke such a terribleactuality. He rehearsed the entire chain of events which had resulted inthe purchase of the pearl necklace; he followed it as far back as theevening when, from the minister's lawn, he had seen Meta Beggs undressingat her window. He could nowhere discover any desperate wrong committed. Heknew men, plenty of them, who were actually unfaithful to their wives: hehad done nothing of that sort. He endeavored to grow infuriated with MetaBeggs, then with Mrs. Caley; he endeavored to place upon them theresponsibility for that attenuated, agonized sound from the house; butwithout success. He had made a terrible blunder. But, in a universe wherethe slightest fairness ruled, he and not Lettice would pay for an errorpurely his own. 

Lettice was so young, he realized suddenly. 

He recalled her as she sat alone, under the lamp, with her shawl about hershuddering shoulders, waiting for the inevitable, begging him to assureher that it would be all right. It would, of course, be all right in theend. It must! Then things would be different. He made himself noextravagant promises of reform, no fevered reproaches; but things would bedifferent. --He would take Lettice driving; he had the prettiest young wifein Greenstream, and he would show people that he realized it. She had beenLettice Hollidew, the daughter of old Pompey, the richest man in thecounty. 

The importance of that latter fact had dimmed; the omnipotence of moneyhad dwindled: for instance, any conceivable sum would be powerless tostill that cry from within. In a way it had risen from the very fact ofPompey Hollidew's fortune--Meta Beggs would never have considered himaside from it. He endeavored to curse the old man's successful avarice, but without any satisfaction. Every cause contributing to the presentimpending catastrophe led directly back to himself, to his indecision. Theresponsibility, closing about him, seemed to shut out the air from hisvicinity, to make labored his breathing. He put out a hand, as though toward off the inimical forces everywhere pressing upon him. He had seensuffering before--what man had not?--but this was different; thisunsettled the foundations of his being; it found him vulnerable where hehad never been vulnerable before; he shrunk from it as he would shrinkfrom touching a white-hot surface. He was afraid of it. 

He thought of the ghastly activities inside the house; they haunted him inconfused, horrid details amid which Lettice suffered and cried out. 

He was unaware of the day wheeling splendidly through its golden hours, of the sun swinging across the narrow rift of the valley. At longintervals he heard muffled hoof-beats passing on the dusty road above. Hewatched a trout slip lazily out from under the bank, and lie headedupstream, slowly waving its fins. It recalled the trout he had left onthe porch of Hollidew's farmhouse on the night when he had attemptedto ... Seduce ... Lettice!

The details of that occasion returned vivid, complete, unsparing. It was amemory profoundly regrettable because of an obscure connection withLettice's present danger; it too--although he was unable to discover whyit should--took on the dark aspect of having helped to bring the otherabout. As the memory of that night recurred to him he became conscious ofan obscure, traitorous force lurking within him, betraying him, leadinghis complacency into foolish and fatal paths, into paths which totallymisrepresented him.... He would not really have gone away with MetaBeggs. 

He was a better man than all this would indicate! Yet--consider theresult; he might as well have committed a foul crime. But, in the end, itwould be all right. Doctors always predicted the darkest possibilities. 

He turned and saw Doctor Pelliter striding up the slope to where his teamwas hitched on the public road. A swift resentment swept over GordonMakimmon as he realized that the other had purposely avoided him. He roseto demand attention, to call; but, instinctively, he stifled his voice. The doctor stopped at the road, and saw him. Gordon waved toward thehouse, and the other nodded curtly. 

XX

He passed through the dining room to the inner doorway, where he brushedby Mrs. Caley. Her face was as harsh and twisted as an old root. Heproceeded directly to the bed. 

"Lettice, " he said; "Lettice. "

Then he saw the appalling futility of addressing that familiar name to thestrange head on the pillow. 

Lettice had gone: she had been destroyed as utterly as though a sinisterand ruthless magic had blasted every infinitesimal quality that had beenhers. A countenance the color of glazed white paper seemed to hold poolsof ink in the hollows of its eyes. The drawn mouth was the color of stalemilk. Nothing remained to summon either pity or sorrow. The only possibleemotion in the face of that revolting human disaster was an incredulousand shocked surprise. It struck like a terrible jest, a terrible, icyreminder, into the forgetful warmth of living; it mocked at the supposedmajesty of suffering, tore aside the assumed dignity, the domination, ofmen; it tampered ferociously with the beauty, the pride, the innocent andgracious pretensions, of youth, of women. 

Gordon Makimmon was conscious of an overwhelming desire to flee from thewhite grimace on the bed that had been Lettice's and his. He drew back, ina momentary, abject, shameful cowardice; then he forced himself toreturn.... The fleering lips quivered, there was a slight stir under thecounterpane. A little sound gathered, shaped into words barely audible inthe stillness of the room broken only by Gordon's breathing:

"It's ... Too much. Not any more ... Hurting. Oh! I can't--"

He found a chair, and sat down by her side. The palms of his hands werewet, and he wiped them upon his knees. His fear of the supine figure grew, destroying the arrogance of his manhood, his sentient reason. He wasafraid of what it intimated, threatened, for himself, and of itsunsupportable mockery. He felt as an animal might feel cornered by ahugely grim and playful cruelty. 

The westering sun fell through a window on the disordered huddle ofLettice's hastily discarded clothes streaming from a chair to thefloor--her stockings, her chemise threaded with a narrow blue ribband. Histhoughts turned to the little white garments she had fashioned in vain. 

It had been wonderfully comfortable in the evening in the sitting roomwith Lettice sewing. He recalled the time when he had first played thephonograph in order to hear the dog "sing. " Lettice had cried out, imploring him to stop; well--he had stopped, hadn't he? The delayedrealization of her patience of misery rankled like a barb. The wanderingthoughts returned to the long fabrication he had told her of the loss ofhis money in Stenton, of the fictitious agent of hardware. He had snaredthe girl in a net of such lies; scornful of Lettice's innocence, her"stupid" trust, he had brought her to this ruinous pass. It hadn't beennecessary. 

The window was open, and a breath of early summer drifted in--a breath ofpalpable sweetness. Mrs. Caley entered and bent over the bed, an angular, black silhouette against the white. She left without a word. 

If Lettice died he, Gordon Makimmon, would have killed her, he had killedmore ... He recognized that clearly. The knowledge spread through him likea virus, thinning his blood, attacking his brain, his nerves. He lifted ashaking hand to wipe his brow; and, for a brief space, his arm remained inair; it looked as though he were gazing beneath a shielding palm at a farprospect. The arm dropped suddenly to his side, the fingers struck dullyagainst the chair. He heard again the muffled beat of horse's hoofs onthe road above; the sun moved slowly over the narrow, gay strips of ragcarpet on the floor: life went on elsewhere. 

His fear changed to loathing, to absolute, sick repulsion from all thefacts of his existence. With the passing minutes the lines deepened on hishaggard countenance, his expression perceptibly aged. The stubble of beardthat had grown since the day before grizzled his lean jaw; the confidentline of his shoulders, of his back, was bowed. 

He looked up with a start to find the doctor once more in the room. Herose. "Doc, " he asked in a strained whisper, "Doc, will it be all right?"He wet his lips. "Will she live?"

"You needn't whisper, " the other told him; "she doesn't know ... Now. 'Will she live?' I can only tell you that she wanted to die a thousandtimes. "

Gordon turned away, looking out through the window. It gave upon the slopeplanted with corn; the vivid, green shoots everywhere pushed through thechocolate-colored soil; chickens were vigorously scratching in a corner. The shadow of the west range reached down and enfolded the Makimmondwelling; the sky burned in a sulphur-yellow flame. When he turned thedoctor had vanished, the room had grown dusky. He resumed his seat. 

"I didn't do right, " he acknowledged to the travesty on the bed; "therewas a good bit I didn't get the hang of. It seems like I hadn't learnedanything at all from being alive. I'm going to fix it up, " he proceeded, painfully earnest. "I'm--" He broke off suddenly at the stabbing memory ofthe doctor's words, "She wanted to die a thousand times. " He thought, I'vekilled her a thousand times already. The fear plucked at his throat. Herose and walked unsteadily to the door and out upon the porch. 

The evening drew its gauze over the valley, the shrill, tenuous chorus ofinsects had begun for the night, the gold caps were dissolving from theeastern peaks. He saw Simeon Caley at the stable door; Sim avoided him, moving behind a corner of the shed. His pending sense of blood-guiltinessdeepened. The impulse returned to flee, to vanish in the engulfing wild ofthe mountains. But he realized vaguely that that from which he longed toescape lay within him, he would carry it--the memories woven inexplicablyof past and present, dominated by this last, unforgettable specter on thebed--into the woods, the high, lonely clearings, the still valleys. It wasnot remorse now, it was not simple fear, but the old oppression, increaseda thousand-fold. 

He sat in the low rocking chair that had held his mother and Clare, and, only yesterday, Lettice, and its rockers made their familiar trackingsound over the uneven boards of the porch. At this hour there was usuallya stir and smell of cooking from the kitchen; but now the kitchen windowwas blank and still. Darkness gathered slowly about him; it obscured theblack and white check, the red thread, of his suit; it flowed in about himand reduced him to the common greyness of the porch, the sod, the stream. It changed him from a man with a puzzled, seamed visage into a man with noespecial, perceptible features, and then into a shadow, an inconsequentialblur less important than the supports for the wooden covering above. 

XXI

After a while he rose, impelled once more within. A lamp had been lit inthe bedroom, and, in its radiance, the countenance on the pillow glistenedlike the skin of a lemon. As before, Mrs. Caley left the room as heentered; and he thought that, as she passed him, she snarled like ananimal. 

He sat bowed by the bed. A moth perished in the flame of the lamp, and thelight flickered through the room--it seemed that Lettice grimaced, but itwas only the other. Her face had grown sharper: it was such a travesty ofher that, somehow, he ceased to associate it with Lettice at all. Insteadhe began to think of it as something exclusively of his own making--it waswhat he had done with things, with life. 

The sheet lay over the motionless body like a thin covering of snow on theturnings of the earth; it defined her breasts and a hip as crisply asthough they were cut in marble effigy on a tomb of youthful dissolution. He followed the impress of an arm to the hand; and, leaning forward, touched it. A coldness seemed to come through the cover to his fingers. He let his hand stay upon hers--perhaps the warmth would flow back intothe cold arm, the chill heart; perhaps he could give her some of hisvitality. The possibility afforded him a meager comfort, instilled a faintglow into his benumbed being. His hand closed upon that covered by thelinen like a shroud. He sat rigid, concentrated, in his effort, hispurpose. The light flickered again from the fiery perishing of a secondmoth. 

A strange feeling crept over him, a deepened sense of suspense, ofimminence. He fingered his throat, and his hand was icy where it touchedhis burning face. He stood up in an increasing, nameless disturbance. 

A faint spasm crossed the drained countenance beneath him; the mouth fellopen. 

He knew suddenly that Lettice was dead. 

There her clothes lay strewn on the chair and floor, the long, blackstockings and the rumpled chemise strung with narrow blue ribband. She hadworn them on her warm, young body; she had tied the ribband in the morningand untied it at night, untied it at night ... It was night now. 

A slow, exhausted deliberation of mind and act took the place of his latepanic. He smoothed the sheet where he had grasped her hand in the futileendeavor to instil into her some of his warmth. He gazed at her for amoment, at the shadows like pools of ink poured into the caverns of hereyes, at a glint of teeth no whiter than the rest, at the dark plait ofher hair lying sinuously over the pillow. Then he went to the door:

"Mrs. Caley, " he pronounced. The woman appeared in the doorway from thekitchen. "Mrs. Caley, " he repeated, "Lettice is dead. "

She started forward with a convulsive gasp, and he turned aside and walkedheavily out onto the porch. He stood for a moment gazing absently into thedarkened valley, at the few lights of Greenstream village, the stars likeclusters of silver grapes on high, ultra-blue arbors. The whippoorwillsthrobbed from beyond the stream, the stream itself whispered in apervasive monotone. The first George Gordon Makimmon, resting on the porchof his new house isolated in the alien wild, had heard the whippoorwillsand the stream. Gordon's father had heard them just as he, the presentMakimmon, heard them sounding in the night. But no other Makimmon wouldever listen to the persistent birds, the eternal whisper of the water, because he, the last, had killed his wife ... He had killed their child. 

He trod down the creaking steps to the soft, fragrant sod, and made hisway to where a thread of light outlined the stable door. Sim was seated ona box, the lantern at his feet casting a pale flicker over his riven faceand the horse muzzling the trough. Gordon sat down upon the broken chair. 

"She's dead, " he said, after a minute. Simeon Caley made no immediatereply, and he repeated in exactly the same manner:

"She's dead. "

A sudden bitterness of contempt flamed in the other's ineffable blue eyes. "God damn you to hell!" he exclaimed; "now you got the money and nothingto hinder you. "

His resentment vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He rose and pickedup the lantern, and with their puny illumination they went out togetherinto the dark. 

THREE

I

On an afternoon of the second autumn following Lettice's death Gordon wasfetching home a headstall resewn by Peterman. The latter, in a small shedfilled with the penetrating odor of dressed leather at the back of thehotel, exercised the additional trade of saddler. General Jackson ambledat Gordon's heel. 

The dog had grown until his shoulder reached the man's knee; he wascompact and powerful, with a long, heavy jaw and pronounced, gravewhiskers; the wheaten color of his legs and head had lightened, sharplydefining the coarse black hair upon his back. 

October was drawing to a close: the autumn had been dry, and the foliagewas not brilliantly colored, but exhibited a single shade of dusty brownthat, in the sun, took the somber gleams of clouded gold. It was warmstill, but a furtive wind, stirring the dead leaves uneasily over theground, was momentarily ominous, chill. 

The limp rim of a felt hat obscured Gordon's features, out of the shadowof which protruded his lean, sharp chin. His heavy shoes, hastily scrapedof mud, bore long cuts across the heels, while shapeless trousers, a coatwith gaping pockets, hung loosely about his thin body and bowed shoulders. He passed the idlers before the office of the _Bugle_ with a scarcelyperceptible nod; but, farther on, he stopped before a solitary figureadvancing over the narrow footway. 

It was Buckley Simmons. He was noticeably smaller since his injury at thecamp meeting; he had shrivelled; his face was peaked and wrinkled like theface of a very old man; the shadows in the sunken cheeks did not resemblethose on living skin, but were dry and dusty like the autumn leaves. Hisgaze was fixed upon the ground at his feet; but, as he drew up to Gordon, he raised his head. 

Into the dullness of his eyes, his slack lips, crept a dim recognition;among the ashes of his consciousness a spark glowed--a single, live coalof bitter hate. 

"How are you, Buckley?" Gordon pronounced slowly. 

The other's hands clenched as the wave of emotion crossed the blankcountenance. Then the hands relaxed, the face was again empty. Hecontinued, oblivious of Gordon's salutation, of his presence, upon hisway. 

Gordon Makimmon stood for a moment gazing after him. Then, as he turned, he saw that there was a small group of men on the Courthouse lawn; he sawthe sheriff standing facing them from the steps, gesticulating. 

II

The purpose of this gathering was instantly apparent to him, it stirredobscure memories into being. --A property was being publicly sold fordebt. 

The trooping thoughts of the past filled his mind; thoughts, it seemed tohim, of another than himself. Surely it had been another Gordon Makimmonthat, sitting before the _Bugle_ office, had heard the sheriff enumeratingthe scant properties of the old freehold by the stream to satisfy theinsatiable greed of Valentine Simmons. It had been a younger man thanhimself by fifteen years. Yet, actually, it had been scarcely more thanthree years since the storekeeper had had him sold out. 

That other Makimmon had been a man of incredibly vivid interests andemotions. Now it appeared to him that, in all the world, there was not acause for feeling, not an incentive to rouse the mind from apathy. 

Stray periods reached him from the sheriff's recounting of "a highlydesirable piece of property. " His loud, flat voice had not changed by aninflection since he had "called out" Gordon's home; the merely curious ormaterially interested onlookers were the same, the dragging bidding had, apparently, continued unbroken from the other occasion. The dun, identicalrepetition added to the overwhelming sense of universal monotony in GordonMakimmon's brain. He turned at the corner, by Simmons' store, while thememories faded; the customary greyness, like a formless drift of cloudobscuring a mountain height, once more descended upon him. 

At the back of the store a small open space was filled with broken crates, straw and boxes--the debris of unpacking. And there he saw a youthfulwoman sitting with her head turned partially from the road. As he passed asuppressed sob shook her. It captured his attention, and, with a slight, involuntary gasp, he saw her face. The memories returned in a tumultuous, dark tide--she reminded him vividly of Lettice. It was in the young curveof her cheeks, the blue of her eyes, and a sameness of roundedproportions, that the resemblance lay. 

He stopped, without formulated reason, and in spite of her obvious desirefor him to proceed. 

"It's hardly fit to sit here and cry before the whole County, " heobserved. 

"The whole County knows, " she returned in the egotism of youthful misery. 

Her voice, too, was like Lettice's--sweet with the premonition of thequerulous note that, Rutherford Berry had once said, distinguished allgood women. 

A sudden intuition directed his gaze upon the Courthouse lawn. 

"They're selling you out, " he hazarded, "for debt. "

She nodded, with trembling lips. "Cannon is, " she specified. 

Cannon was the storekeeper for whom his brother-in-law clerked. He thoughtagain, how monotonous, how everlastingly alike, life was. "You just letthe amount run on and on, " he continued; "you got this and that. Then, suddenly, Cannon wanted his money. "

Her eyes opened widely at his prescience. "But there was sickness too, "she added; "the baby died. "

"Ah, " Gordon said curtly. The lines in his worn face deepened, his mouthwas inscrutable. 

"If it hadn't been for that, " she confided, "we could have got through. Everything had started fine. Alexander's father had left him the place:there isn't a better in the Bottom. Alexander says Mr. Cannon has alwayswanted it. Now ... Now ... " her blue gaze blurred with slow tears. 

Her similarity to Lettice grew still more apparent--she presented the sameorder, her white shirtwaist had been crisply ironed, her shoes wererubbed bright and neatly tied. He recalled this similitude suddenly, andit brought before him a clearly defined vision of Lettice, not as hiswife, but of the girl he had driven to and from the school at Stenton. Hehad not thought of that Lettice for months, for three years; not sincebefore she had died; not, he corrected himself drearily, since he hadkilled her. He had remembered the last phase, of the glazed and bloodlesstravesty of her youth. But even that lately had been lost in the fog ofnothingness settling down upon him. 

And now this girl, on a box back of Simmons' store, brought the buriedmemories back into light. They disconcerted him, sweeping through thelassitude of his mind; they stirred shadowy specters of fear.... The voiceof the sheriff carried to them, describing the excellent repair ofincidental sheds. 

"I nailed all the tar-paper on the--the chicken house, " she told him in afresh accession of unhappiness, the tears spilling over her round, flushedcheeks. 

It annoyed him to see her cry: it was as though Lettice was sufferingagain from old misery. His irritation grew at this seeming renewal of whathad gone; it assumed the aspect of an intentional reproach, of Letticereturned to bother him with her pain and death. He turned sharply tocontinue on his way. But, almost immediately, he stopped. 

"Your name?" he demanded. 

"Adelaide Crandall. "

The Crandalls, he knew, were a reputable family living in the valleybottom east of Greenstream village. Matthew Crandall had died a few yearsbefore, and, as this girl had indicated, had left a substantial farm toeach of his sons. Cannon would get this one, and it was more thanprobable, the others. 

The old enmity against Valentine Simmons, directed at Cannon, flamedafresh. Simmons or the other--what did the name matter? they were thesame, a figurative apple press crushing the juice out of the country, leaving but a mash of hopes and lives. He stood irresolute, while AdelaideCrandall fought to control her emotions. 

The badgering voice of the sheriff sounded again on his hearing. Hecrossed the road, pushed open the grinding iron gate of the fence thatenclosed the Courthouse lawn, and made his way through the sere, fallenleaves to the steps. 

III

"Twenty-seven hundred and ninety dollars, " the sheriff reiterated; "onlytwenty-seven ninety ... This fine bottom land, all cleared and buildingsin best repair. Going! Going!"

"Three thousand, " a man called from the group facing the columnedportico. 

"Three thousand! Three thousand! Sale must be made. Going--"

"Thirty-one hundred, " Gordon pronounced abruptly. 

A stir of renewed interest animated the sale. Gordon heard his namepronounced in accents of surprise. He was surprised at himself: his bidhad been unpremeditated--it had leaped like a flash of ignited powder outof the resurrected enmity to Valentine Simmons, out of the memoriesstirred by the figure that resembled Lettice. 

The sheriff immediately took up his bid. "Thirty-one hundred! thirty-one, gentlemen; only thirty-one for this fine bottom land, all cleared--"

There was a prolonged pause in the bidding, during which even theauctioneer grew apathetic. He repeated the assertion that the buildingswere in the best repair; then, abruptly, concluded the sale. Gordon hadpurchased the farm for thirty-one hundred dollars. 

He despatched, in the Courthouse, the necessary formalities. When heemerged the group on the lawn had dwindled to three people conversingintently. A young man with heavy shoulders already bowed, clad inunaccustomed, stiff best clothes, advanced to meet him. 

"Mr. Makimmon, " he began; "you got my place.... There's none better. I'veput a lot of work into it. I'll--I'll get my things out soon's I can. Ifyou can give me some time; my wife--"

"I can give you a life, " Gordon replied brusquely. He walked pastAlexander Crandall to his wife. She turned her face from him. He said:

"You go back to the Bottom. I've fixed Cannon ... This time. Tell yourhusband he can pay me when it suits; the place is yours. " He swung on hisheel and strode away. 

IV

The fitful wind had, apparently, driven the warmth, the sun, from theearth. The mountains rose starkly to the slaty sky. 

Gordon Makimmon lighted a lamp in the dining room of his dwelling. Thetable still bore a red, fringed cloth, but was bare of all else save thecastor, most of the rings of which were empty. The room had a forlornappearance, there was dust everywhere; Gordon had pitched the headstallinto a corner, where it lay upon a miscellaneous, untidy pile. 

"I reckon you want something to eat, " he observed to General Jackson. Heproceeded, followed by the dog, to the kitchen. It revealed an appallingdisorder: the stove was spotted with grease, grey with settled ashes; apile of ashes and broken china rose beyond; on the other side coal andwood had been carelessly stored. A table was laden with unwashed dishes, unsavory pots, crusted pans. 

Gordon stood in the middle of the floor, a lamp in his hand, surveying therepellent confusion. It had accumulated without attracting his notice; butnow, suddenly detached from the aimless procession of the past months, itwas palpable to him, unendurable. "It's not fit for a dog, " hepronounced. 

An expression of determination settled on his seamed countenance; he tookoff his coat and hung it on a peg in the door. Outside, by an ash-pit, hefound a bucket and half-buried shovel. A minute after the kitchen wasfilled with grey clouds as he shoveled the ashes into the bucket forremoval. He worked vigorously, and the pile soon disappeared; the wood andcoal followed, carried out to where a bin was built against the house. Then he raked the fire from the stove. 

It was cold within, but Gordon glowed with the heat of his energy. Hefilled a basin with water, and, with an old brush and piece of sandsoap, attacked the stove. He scrubbed until the surface exhibited a dull, evenblack; then, in a cupboard, he discovered an old box of stove polish, andsoon the iron was gleaming in the lamplight. He laid and lit a fire, puton a tin boiler of water for heating; and then carried all the movablesinto the night. After which he fed General Jackson. 

He flooded the kitchen floor and scrubbed and scraped until the boardswere immaculate. Then, with a wet towel about a broom, he cleaned thewalls and ceiling; he washed the panes of window glass. The dishesfollowed; they were dried and ranged in rigid rows on the dresser; thepots were scoured and placed in the closets underneath. Now, he thoughtvindictively, when he had finished, the kitchen would suit even SimCaley's wife--the old vinegar bottle. 

The Caleys had left his house the morning following Lettice's funeral. Mrs. Caley had departed without a word; Sim with but a brief, awkwardfarewell. Since then Gordon had lived alone in the house; but he nowrealized that it was not desirable, practicable. Things, he knew, wouldsoon return to the dirt and disorder of a few hours ago. He needed someone, a woman, to keep the place decent. His necessity recalled thechildren of his sister.... There was only Rose; the next girl was tooyoung for dependence. The former had been married a year now, and had ababy. Her husband had been in the village only the week before in searchof employment, which he had been unable to secure, and it was immaterialwhere in the County they lived. 

V

The couple grasped avidly at the opportunity to live with him. The youthhad already evaporated from Rose's countenance; her minute mouth andconstantly lifted eyebrows expressed an inwardly-gratifying sense ofsuperiority, an effect strengthened by her thin, affected speech. Acrossher narrow brow a fringe of hair fell which she was continually crimpingwith an iron heated in the kitchen stove, permeating the room with alingering and villainous odor of burned hair. 

William Vibard was a man with a passion--the accordion. He arrived withthe instrument in a glossy black paper box, produced it at the firstopportunity, and sat by the stove drawing it out to incredible lengths inthe production of still more incredible sounds. He held one boxlike end, with its metallic stops, by his left ear, while his right hand, unfalteringly fixed in the strap of the other end, operated largely in theregion of his stomach. 

He had a book of instructions and melodies printed in highly-simplifiedand explanatory bars, which he balanced on his knee while he struggled intheir execution. 

He was a youth of large, palpable bones, joints and knuckles; his face waslong and preternaturally pale, and bore an abstracted expression whichdeepened almost to idiocy when bent above the quavering, unaccountableaccordion. 

The Vibard baby was alarmingly little, with a bluish face; and, as if inprotest against her father's interminable noise, lay wrapped in a knittedred blanket without a murmur, without a stir of her midgelike form, hourupon hour. 

VI

Some days after the Vibards' arrival Gordon Makimmon was standing by thestable door, in the crisp flood of midday, when an ungainly young manstrode about the corner of the dwelling and approached him. 

"You're Makimmon, " he half queried, half asserted. "I'm Edgar Crandall, Alexander's brother. " He took off his hat, and passed his hand in a quickgesture across his brow. He had close-cut, vivid red hair bristling like ahelmet over a long, narrow skull, and a thrusting grey gaze. "I came tosee you, " he continued, "because of what you did for Alec. I can't makeout just what it was; but he says you saved his farm, pulled it right outof Cannon's fingers, and that you've given him all the time he needs topay it back--" He paused. 

"Well, " Gordon responded, "and if I did?"

"I studied over it at first, " the other frankly admitted; "I thought youmust have a string tied to something. I know Alexander's place, it's agood farm, but ... I studied and studied until I saw there couldn't bemore in it than what appeared. I don't know why--"

"Why should you?" Gordon interrupted brusquely, annoyed by this searchinginto the reason for his purchase of the farm, into the region of hismemories. 

"I didn't come here to ask questions, " the other quickly assured him; "butto borrow four thousand dollars. "

"Why not forty?" Gordon asked dryly. 

"Because I couldn't put it out at profit, now. " Edgar Crandall ignored theother's factitious manner: "but I can turn four over two or three times ina reasonable period. I can't give you any security, everything's covered Iown; that's why I came to you. "

"You heard I was a fool with some money?"

"You didn't ask any security of Alexander, " he retorted. "No, I came toyou because there was something different in what you did from all I hadever known before. I can't tell what I mean; it had a--well, a sort of bigindifference about it. It seemed to me perhaps life hadn't got you in thefix it had most of us; that you were free. "

"You must think I'm free--with four thousand dollars. "

"Apples, " the other continued resolutely. "I've got the ground, acres ofprime sunny slope. I've read about apple growing and talked to men whoknow. I've been to Albermarle County. I can do the same thing in theBottom. Ask anybody who knows me if I'll work. I can pay the money backall right. But, if I know you from what you did, that's not the thing totalk about now. 

"I want a chance, " he drove a knotted fist into a hardened palm; "I want achance to bring out what's in me and in my land. I want my own! The placecame to me clear, with a little money; but I wasn't content with a crop offodder. I improved and experimented with the soil till I found out whatwas in her. Now I know; but I can't plant a sapling, I can't raise anapple, without binding myself to the Cannons and Hollidews of the Countyfor life. 

"I'd be their man, growing their fruit, paying them their profits. Theywould stop at the fence, behind their span of pacers, and watch me--theirslave--sweating in the field or orchard. "

"You seem to think, " Gordon observed, "that you ought to have some specialfavor, that what grinds other men ought to miss you. Old Pompey sold outmany a better man, and grabbed richer farms. And anyhow, if I was to moneyall that Cannon and Valentine Simmons got hold of where would Ibe?--Here's two of you in one family, in no time at all.... If that gotabout I'd have five hundred breaking the door in. "

The animation died from Edgar Crandall's face; he pulled his hat over theflaming helmet of hair. "I might have known such things ain't true, " hesaid; "it was just a freak that saved Alec. There's no chance for a man, for a living, in these dam' mountains. They look big and open and free, but Greenstream's the littlest, meanest place on the earth. Thepaper-shavers own the sky and air. Well, I'll let the ground rot, I won'twork my guts out for any one else. "

He turned sharply and disappeared about the corner of the dwelling. Gordonmoved to watch him stride up the slope to where a horse was tied by thepublic road. Crandall swung himself into the saddle, brought his heelssavagely into the horse's sides, and clattered over the road. 

Gordon Makimmon's annoyance quickly evaporated; he thought with a measureof amusement of the impetuous young man who was not content to grow a cropof fodder. If the men of Greenstream all resembled Edgar Crandall, herealized, the Cannons would have an uneasy time. He thought of thebrother, Alexander, of Alexander's wife, who resembled Lettice, anddetermined to drive soon to the Bottom and see them and the farm. He wouldhave to make a practicable arrangement with regard to the latter, securehis intention, avoid question, by a nominal scheme of payment. 

VII

He knew, generally, where Alexander Crandall's farm lay; and, shortlyafter, drove through the village and mounted the road over which plied theStenton stage. In the Bottom, beyond the east range, he went to the rightand passed over an ill-defined way with numerous and deep fords. It wasafternoon; an even, sullen expanse of cloud hid the deeps of sky throughwhich the sun moved like a newly-minted silver dollar. A sharp wind drewthrough the opening; the fallen leaves rose from the road in sudden, agitated whirling; the gaunt branches, printed sharply on the curtain ofcloud, revealed the deserted nests of past springs. 

He drove by solitary farms, their acres lying open and dead among thebrush; and stopped, undecided, before a fenced clearing that swept back tothe abrupt wall of the range, against which a low house was scarcelydistinguishable from the sere, rocky ascent. Finally he drove in, over afaintly marked track, past a corner of the fence railed about a trough forsheep shearing, to the house. A pine tree stood at either side of thelarge, uncut stone at the threshold; except for a massive exterior chimneythe somberly painted frame structure was without noticeable feature. 

He discovered immediately from the youthful feminine figure awaiting himat the door that he was not at fault. Mrs. Crandall's face radiated herpleasure. 

"Mr. Makimmon!" she cried; "there's just no one we'd rather see than you. Step right out, and Alexander'll take your horse. He's only at the back ofthe house.... Alec!" she called; "Alec, what do you suppose?--here's Mr. Makimmon. "

Alexander Crandall quickly appeared, in a hide apron covered with curlingsof wood. A slight concern was visible upon his countenance, as though heexpected at any moment to see revealed the "string" of which his brotherhad spoken. 

Gordon adequately met his salutation, and turned to the woman. He saw nowthat she was more mature than Lettice: the mouth before him, althoughyoung and red, was bitten in at the corners; already the eyes gazedthrough a shadow of care; the capable hands were rough and discolored fromtoil and astringent soaps. 

"Come in, come in, " Crandall urged, striving to banish the sudden anxietyfrom his voice. 

"And you go right around, Alec, " his wife added, "and twist the head offthat dominicker chicken. Pick some flat beans too, there's a mess stillhanging on the poles. Go in, Mr. Makimmon. "

He was ushered into the ceremonious, barely-furnished, best room. Therewas a small rag carpet at the door, with an archaic, woven animal, and atits feet an unsteady legend, "Mary's Little Lamb"; but the floor wasuncovered, and the walls, sealed in resinous pine, the pine ceiling, gavethe effect, singular and depressing, of standing inside a huge box. 

"It's mortal cold here, " Mrs. Crandall truthfully observed; "the grate'sbroken. If you wouldn't mind going out into the kitchen--"

In the kitchen, from a comfortable place by the fire, Gordon watched herdeft preparations for an early supper. Crandall appeared with the pickeddominicker, and sat rigidly before his guest. 

"I don't quite make out, " he at last essayed, "how you expect your money, what you want out of it. "

"I don't want anything out of it, " Gordon replied with an almost bittervigor; "leastways not any premium. I said you could pay me when you liked. I'll deed you the farm, and we'll draw up a paper to suit--to suitcrops. "

The apprehension in Alexander Crandall's face turned to perplexed relief. "I don't understand, " he admitted; "but I haven't got to. It's enough toknow that you pulled us out of ruination. Things will come right alongnow; we can see light; I'm extending the sheep-cots twice. "

Supper at an end he too launched upon the lack of opportunity inGreenstream. "Some day, " he asserted, "and not so far off either, we'llshake off the grip of these blood-money men; we'll have a state lawedbank; a rate of interest a man can carry without breaking his back. There's no better land than the Bottom, or the higher clearings forgrazing ... It's the men, some of 'em.... "

VIII

It was dark when Gordon closed the stable door and turned to his dwelling. A light streamed from a chink in the closed kitchen shutter like a goldarrow shot into the night. From within came the long-drawn quaver ofWilliam Vibard's performance of the Arkansas Traveller. He was sittingbowed over the accordion, his jaw dropped, his eyes glazed with theintoxication of his obsession. Rose was rigidly upright in a straightchair, her hands crossed at the wrists in her meager lap. 

The fluctuating, lamentable sounds of the instrument, Rose's expression ofconscious virtue, were suddenly petty, exasperating; and Gordon, after ashort acknowledgment of their greeting, proceeded through the house to thesitting room beyond. 

No fire had been laid in the small, air-tight stove; the room had aclosed, musty smell, and was more chill than the night without; his breathhung before him in a white vapor. Soon he had wood burning explosively, the stove grew rapidly red hot and the chill vanished. He saw beyond thelamp with its shade of minute, variously-colored silks the effigy of Mrs. Hollidew dead. Undisturbed in the film of dust that overlaid the tablestood a pink celluloid thimble ... Lettice had placed it there.... 

His thoughts turned to Alexander Crandall and his wife, to the extendedsheep-cots, and the "light" which they now saw. He recalled the former'sassertion that the land was all right, but that the blood-money men madelife arduous in Greenstream. He remembered Edgar Crandall's arraignment ofthe County as "the littlest, meanest place on earth, " a place where a manwho wanted his own, his chance, was helpless to survive the avarice of afew individuals, the avarice for gold. He had asked him, Gordon Makimmon, to give him that chance. But, obviously, it was impossible ... Absurd. 

His memory drifted back to the evening in the store when Valentine Simmonshad abruptly demanded payment of his neglected account, to the hopelessrage that had possessed him at the realization of his impotence, ofClare's illness. That scene, that bitter realization of ruin, had beenrepeated across the breadth of Greenstream. As a boy he had heard men inshaking tones curse Pompey Hollidew; only last week the red-headedCrandall had sworn he would let his ground rot rather than slave for thebreed of Cannon. It was, apparently, a perpetual evil, an endless burdenfor the shoulders of men momentarily forgetful or caught in a trap ofcircumstance. 

Yet he had, without effort, without deprivation, freed Alexander Crandall. He could have freed his brother, given him the chance his rebellious souldemanded, with equal ease. He had not done that last, he had said at thetime, because of the numbers that would immediately besiege him forassistance. This, he realized, was not a valid objection--the money washis to dispose of as he saw fit. He possessed large sums lying at theStenton banks, automatically returning him interest, profit; thrown in thescale their weight would go far toward balancing the greed of ValentineSimmons, of Cannon. 

He considered these facts totally ignorant of the fact that they were butthe reflection of his own inchoate need born in the anguish of his wife'sdeath; he was not conscious of the veering of his sensibility--sharpenedby the hoarse cry from the stiffening lips of Lettice--to the worldwithout. He thought of the possibility before him neither as a scheme ofphilanthropy nor of revenge, nor of rehabilitation. He considered itsolely in the light of his own experience, as a practical measure to givemen their chance, their own, in Greenstream. The cost to himself would besmall--his money had faded from his conceptions, his necessities, asabsolutely as though it had been fairy gold dissolved by the touch of amagic wand. He had never realized its potentiality; lately he had ignoredit with the contempt of supreme indifference. Now an actual employment forit occupied his mind. 

The stove glowed with calorific energy; General Jackson, who had beenlying at his feet, moved farther away. The lamplight grew faint andreddish, and then expired, trailing a thin, penetrating odor. In the darkthe heated cylinder of the stove shone rosy, mysterious. 

Gordon Makimmon was unaware of his own need; yet, at the anticipation ofthe vigorous course certain to follow a decision to use his money inopposition to the old, established, rapacious greed, he was conscious of asudden tightening of his mental and physical fibers. The belligerent bloodcarried by George Gordon Makimmon from world-old wars, from the endlessstrife of bitter and rugged men in high, austere places, stirred once morethrough his relaxed and rusting being. 

He thought, aglow like the stove, of the struggle that would follow such adetermination, a struggle with the pink fox, Valentine Simmons. He thoughtof himself as an equal with the other; for, if Simmons were practised incunning, if Simmons were deep, he, Gordon Makimmon, would have nonecessity for circuitous dealing; his course would be simple, unmistakable. --He would lend money at, say, three per cent, grantextensions of time wherever necessary, and knock the bottom out of thestorekeepers' usurious monopoly, drag the farms out of Cannon's graspingfingers. 

"By God!" he exclaimed, erect in the dark; "but Edgar Crandall will gethis apples. "

The dog licked his hand, faithful, uncomprehending. 

IX

On an afternoon of mid-August Gordon was sitting in the chamber of hisdwelling that had been formerly used as dining room. The table was bare ofthe castor and the red cloth, and held an inkpot, pens upright in a glassof shot, and torn envelopes on an old blotter. An iron safe stood againstthe wall at Gordon's back, and above it hung a large calendar, advertisingthe Stenton Realty and Trust Company. 

A sudden gloom swept over the room, and Gordon rose, proceeded to thedoor. A bank of purple cloud swept above the west range, opened in the skylike a gigantic, menacing fist; the greenery of the valley was overcast, and a white flash of lightning, accompanied by a shattering peal ofthunder, stabbed viciously at the earth. There was no rain. An edge ofserene light followed in the west a band of saffron radiance that wideneduntil the cloud had vanished beyond the eastern peaks. The sultry heat laylike a blanket over Greenstream. 

He turned back into the room, but, as he moved, he was aware of a figureat the porch door. It was a man with a round, freshly-coloredcountenance, bland eyes, and a limp mustache, clad in leather boots and aworn corduroy gunning coat. Gordon nodded familiarly; it was the youngerEntriken from the valley beyond. 

"I came to see you about my note, " he announced in a facile candor; "Ish'd take it up this month, but times are terrible bad, Gordon, and Iwondered if you'd give me another extension? There's no real reason whyyou sh'd wait again; I reckon I could make her, but it would certainly beaccommodating--" he paused interrogatively. 

"Well, " Gordon hesitated, "I'm not in a hurry for the note, if it comes tothat. But the fact is ... I've got a lot of money laid out. What's beenthe matter?--the weather has been good, it's rained regular--"

"That's just it, " Entriken interrupted; "it's rained too blamed regular. It is all right for crops, but we've got nothing besides cattle, andsteers wouldn't hardly put on anything the past weeks. Of course, in away, grass is cattle, but it just seems they wouldn't take any good in thewet. "

"I suppose it will be all right, " Gordon Makimmon assented; "but I canhardly have the money out so long ... Others too. "

X

The heat thickened with the dusk. The wailing clamor of William Vibard'saccordion rose from the porch. He had, of late, avoided sitting with Roseand her husband; they irritated him in countless, insignificant ways. Rose's superiority had risen above the commonplace details of the house;she sat on the porch and regarded Gordon with a strained, rigid smile. After a pretense at procuring work William Vibard had relapsed into anendless debauch of sound. His manner became increasingly abstracted; heate, he lived, with the gestures of a man playing an accordion. 

The lines on Gordon's thin, dark face had multiplied; his eyes, in theshadow of his bony forehead, burned steady, pale blue; his chin wasresolute; but a new doubt, a constant, faint perplexity, blurred the lineof his mouth. 

From the road above came the familiar sound of hoof-beats, muffled indust, but it stopped opposite his dwelling; and, soon after, the porchcreaked under slow, heavy feet, and a thick, black-clad figure knocked andentered. 

It was the priest, Merlier. 

In the past months Gordon had been conscious of an increasing concord withthe silent clerical. He vaguely felt in the other's isolation the wreckageof an old catastrophe, a loneliness not unlike his, Gordon Makimmon's, whohad killed his wife and their child. 

"The Nickles, " the priest pronounced, sudden and harsh, "are worthless, woman and man. They would be bad if they were better; as it is they areonly a drunken charge on charity and the church. They have been stewed inwhiskey now for a month. They make nothing amongst their weeds. --Is itpossible they got a sum from you?"

"Six weeks back, " Gordon replied briefly; "two hundred dollars to put afloor on the bare earth and stop a leaking roof. "

"Lies, " Merlier commented. "When any one in my church is deserving I willtell you myself. I think of an old woman now, but ten dollars would be afortune. " Silence fell upon them. Then:

"Charity is commanded, " he proceeded, "but out of the hands of authorityit is a difficult and treacherous virtue. The people are withoutcomprehension, " he made a gesture of contempt. 

"With age, " the deliberate voice went on, "the soul grows restless andmoves in strange directions, struggling to throw off the burden of flesh. But I that know tell you, " Merlier paused at the door, "the charity ofmaterial benevolence, of gold, will cure no spiritual sores; for spirit iseternal, but the flesh is only so much dung. " He stopped abruptly, coughed, as though he had carried his utterance beyond propriety. "TheNickles, " he repeated somberly, "are worthless; they make trouble in myparish; with money they make more. "

XI

The year, in the immemorial, minute shifting of season, grew brittle andcold; the dusk fell sooner and night lingered late into morning. 

William Vibard moved with his accordion from the porch to beside thekitchen stove. He was in the throes of a new piece, McGinty, and GordonMakimmon was correspondingly surprised when, as he was intent upon somepapers, Rose's husband voluntarily relinquished his instrument, and sat inthe room with him. 

"What's the matter, " Gordon indifferently inquired; "is she busted?"

William Vibard indignantly repudiated that possibility. A wave of purposerose to the long, corrugated countenance, but sank, without findingexpression in speech. Finally Gordon heard Rose calling her husband. Thatyoung man twitched in his chair, but he made no other move, no answer. Hervoice rose again, sharp and urgent, and Gordon observed:

"Your wife's a-calling. "

"I heard her, but I'd ruther sit right where I am. "

She appeared in the doorway, flushed and angry. 

"William, " she commanded, "you come straight out here to the kitchen. Igot a question for you. "

"I'll stay just where I am for a spell, " he replied, avoiding her gaze. 

"You do as I tell you right off. "

A stubborn expression settled over his face and shoulders. He made her nofurther reply. Rose's anger gathered in a tempest that she tried in vainto restrain. 

"William, " she demanded, "where is it? It's gone, you know what. "

"I ain't seen it, " he answered finally; "I really ain't, Rose. "

"That's a story, only you knew. Come out here. "

"Get along, " Gordon interrupted testily. "How can I figure in thisruction?"

"I ain't agoing a step, " William told them both; "I'm going to stop righthere with Uncle Gordon. "

"Well, then, " the latter insisted, "get it through with--what is it?"

"I'll tell you what it is, " William Vibard stammered; "it's a hundred andforty dollars Rose held out on you and kept in a drawer, that's what!"

Rose's emotion changed to a crimson consternation. 

"Why, William Vibard! what an awful thing to say. What little money I hadput by was saved from years. What a thing to say about me and UncleGordon. "

"'Tain't no such thing you saved it; you held it out on him, dollars at atime. You didn't have no more right to it than I did. "

Gordon's gaze centered keenly upon his niece's hot face. She endeavored tosustain, refute, the accusation successfully; but her valor wavered, broke. She disappeared abruptly. He surveyed Vibard without pleasure. 

"You're a ramshackle contraption, " he observed crisply. 

"I got as good a right to it as her, " the other repeated. 

"A hundred and forty dollars, " Gordon said bitterly; "that's a smallbusiness. Well, where is it? Have you got it?"

"No, I ain't, " William exploded. 

"Well--?"

"You can't never tell what might happen, " the young man observedenigmatically; "the bellowses wear out dreadful quick, the keys work looselike, and then they might stop making them. It's the best one on themarket. "

"What scrabble's this? What did you do with the money?"

"They're in the stable, " William Vibard answered more obscurely thanbefore. "With good treatment they ought to last a life. They come cheapertoo like that. "

Gordon relinquished all hope of extracting any meaning from the other'selliptical speech. He rose. "If 'they're' in the stable, " he announced, "I'll soon have some sense out of you. " He procured a lantern, and trampedshortly to the stable, closely followed by Rose's husband. 

"Now!" he exclaimed, loosening the hasp of the door, throwing it open. 

The former entered and bent over a heap in an obscure corner. When he rosethe lantern shone on two orderly piles of glossy black paper boxes. Gordonstrode across the contracted space and wrenched off a lid.... Withinreposed a brand new accordion. There were nine others. 

"You see, " William eagerly interposed; "now I'm fixed good. "

At the sight of the grotesque waste a swift resentment moved GordonMakimmon--it was a mockery of his money's use, a gibing at his capability, his planning. The petty treachery of Rose added its injury. He pitched thebox in his hands upon the clay floor, and the accordion fell out, quivering like a live thing. 

"Hey!" William Vibard remonstrated; "don't do like that ... Delicate--"He knelt, with an expression of concern, and, tenderly fingering theinstrument, replaced it in the box. 

Gordon turned sharply and returned to the house. Rose was in her room. Hecould hear her moving rapidly about, pulling at the bureau drawers. Depression settled upon him; he carried the lantern into the bedroom, where he sat bowed, troubled. He was aroused finally by the faint strainsof William's latest melodic effort drifting discreetly from the stable. 

The next morning the Vibards departed. Rose was silent, her face, red andswollen, was vindictive. On the back of the vehicle that conveyed them tothe parental Berrys was securely tied the square bundle that had "fixedgood" William Vibard musically for life. 

XII

Gordon Makimmon, absorbed in the difficult and elusive calculations of hisindefinable project was unaware of the change wrought by their departure, of the shifting of the year, the familiar acts and living about him. Helooked up abruptly from the road when Valentine Simmons, upon the platformof the store, arrested his progress homeward. 

Simmons' voice was high and shrill, as though time had tightened and driedhis vocal cords; his cheeks were still round and pink, but they weresapless, the color lingered like a film of desiccated paint. 

The store remained unchanged: Sampson, the clerk, had gone, but another, identical in shirt sleeves upheld by bowed elastics, was brushing thecounters with a turkey wing; the merchandise on the shelves, unloaded fromthe slow procession of capacious mountain wagons, flowed in endless, unvaried stream to the scattered, upland homes. 

Valentine Simmons took his familiar place in the glass enclosure, revolving his chair to fix on Gordon a birdlike attention. 

"As an old friend, " he declared, "an old Presbyterian friend, I want tolay some of my experience before you. I want to complain a little, Gordon;I have the right ... My years, Pompey's associate. The fact is--you'rehurting the County, you're hurting the people and me; you're hurtingyourself. Everybody is suffering from your--your mistaken generosity. Wehave all become out of sorts, unbalanced, from the exceptional conditionyou have brought about. It won't do, Gordon; credit has been upset, wedon't know where we stand, or who's who; it's bad. 

"I said you suffered with the rest of us, but you are worse off still. Howshall I put it?--the County is taking sad advantage of your, er--liberality. There's young Entriken; he was in the store a little timeago and told me that you had extended his note again. He thought it wassmart to hold out the money on you. There's not a likelier farm, norbetter conditioned cattle, than his in Greenstream. He could pay twentynotes like yours in a day's time. I hate to see money cheapened like that, it ain't healthy. 

"What is it you're after, Gordon? Is it at the incorruptible, theheavenly, treasure you're aiming? But if it is I'll venture this--that theLord doesn't love a fool. And the man with the talents, don't overlookhim. "

"I'm not aiming at anything, " Gordon answered, "I'm just doing. "

"And there's that Hagan that got five thousand from you, it's an open factabout him. He came from the other end of the state, clear from Norfolk, toget a slice. He gave you the address, the employment, of a kin inGreenstream and left for parts unknown. No, no, the Lord doesn't love afool. "

"I may be a fool as you see me, " Gordon contended stubbornly; "and the fewliars that get my money may laugh. But there's this, there's this, Simmons--I'm not cursed by the dispossessed and the ailing and the plumbpenniless. I don't go to a man with his crop a failure on the field like, well--we'll say, Cannon does, with a note in my hand for his breath. I'veput a good few out of--of Cannon's reach. Did you forget that I know howit feels to hear Ed Hincle, on the Courthouse steps, call out my place fordebt? Did you forget that I sat in this office while you talked of oldPresbyterian friends and sold me into the street?"

"Incorrigible, " Valentine Simmons said, "incorrigible; no sense ofresponsibility. I had hoped Pompey's estate would bring some out in you. But I should have known--it's the Makimmon blood; you are the son of yourfather. I knew your grandfather too, a man that fairly insultedopportunity. "

"We've never been storekeepers. "

"Never kept much of anything, have you, any of you? You can call it whatyou've a mind to, liberality or shiftlessness. But there's nothing savedby names. There: it seems as if you never got civilized, alwayscontemptuous and violent-handed ... It's the blood. I've studiedconsiderable about you lately; something'll have to be done for the goodof all. "

"What is it you want of me?"

"Call in your bad debts, " the other promptly responded; "shake off theworthless lot hanging to your pocket. Put the money rate back where itbelongs. Why, in days gone by, " Valentine Simmons chuckled, "seventy percent wasn't out of the way for a forced loan, forty was just so-so. Ah, Pompey and me made some close deals. Pompey multiplied his talents. TheCounty was an open ledger to him. "

"Didn't you ever think of the men who had to pay you seventy per cent?"Gordon asked, genuinely curious. 

"Certainly, " Simmons retorted; "we educated them, taught 'em thrift. Whileyou are promoting idleness and loose-living.... But this is only anopening for what I wanted to say. --I had a letter last week from theTennessee and Northern people, the Buffalo plan has matured, they'repushing the construction right along. "

"I intended to come to you about that. "

"Well?"

"I ain't going on with our agreement. "

Simmons' face exhibited not a trace of concern. 

"I may say, " he returned smoothly, "that I am not completely surprised. Ihave been looking for something of the kind. I must remind you that ourpartnership is a legal and binding instrument; you can't break it, northrow aside your responsibility, with a few words. It will be an expensivebusiness for you. "

"I'm willing to pay with what I've got. "

The other held up a palm in his familiar, arresting gesture. "Nothing ofthat magnitude; nothing out of the way; I only wanted to remind you that acompensation should follow your decision. It puts me in a very niceposition indeed. I gather from your refusal to continue the partnershipthat you do not intend to execute singly the original plan; it is possiblethat you will not hold the options against the coming of transportation. "

"You've got her, " Gordon declared; "I'm not going to profit seventy timesover, tie up all that timber, from the ignorance of men that ought torightly advantage from it. I--I--" Gordon rose to his feet in theharassing obscurity of his need; "I don't want to make! I don't want totake anything ... Never again! I want--"

"You forget, unfortunately, that I am forced to be accessory to your--yourchange of heart. I may say that I shall have to pay dearly for your--youreleventh hour conversion. Timber will be--unsteady. "

"Didn't you mention getting something out of it?"

"A mere detail to my effort, my time. What my timber will be worth, withwhat you throw on the market hawking up and down ... Problematic. "

Gordon Makimmon hesitated, a plan forming vaguely, painfully, in his mind. Finally, "I might buy you out, " he suggested; "if you didn't ask too dam'much. Then I could do as I pleased with the whole lot. "

"Now that, " Valentine Simmons admitted, dryly cordial, "is a plan worthconsideration. We might agree on a price, a low price to an old partner. You met the Company's agents, heard the agreement outlined; a solidproposal. And, as you say, with the timber control in your own hands, youcould arrange as you pleased with the people concerned. "

He grew silent, enveloped in thought. Then:

"I'll take a hundred thousand for all the options I bought, for myinterest in the partnership. "

"I don't know as I could manage that, " Gordon admitted. 

An unassumed astonishment marked the other's countenance. "Why!" heejaculated, "Pompey left an estate estimated at--" he stopped from sheersurprise. 

"Some of the investments went bad, " Gordon continued; "down in Stentonthey said I didn't move 'em fast enough. Then the old man had a lot laidout in ways I don't hold with, with people I wouldn't collect from. Andit's a fact a big amount's got out here lately. Of course it will comeback, the most part. "

Simmons' expression grew skeptical. 

"I know you too, " Gordon added; "you'll want the price in your hand. "

"I'm getting on, " the storekeeper admitted; "I can't wait now. "

"I don't know if I can make it, " Gordon repeated; "it'll strip me if Ido. "

Valentine Simmons swung back to his desk. "At least, " he observed, "keepthis quiet till something's settled. "

Gordon agreed. 

XIII

Even if he proved able to buy out Simmons, he thought walking home, itwould be a delicate operation to return the timber rights to where hethought they belonged. He considered the possibility of making a gift ofthe options to the men from whom they had been wrongfully obtained. Butsomething of Simmons' shrewd knowledge of the world, something of thepriest's contemptuous arraignment of material values, lingering inGordon's mind, convinced him of the potential folly of that course. Itwould be more practical to sell back the options to those from which theyhad been purchased at the nominal prices paid. He had only a vague idea ofhis balances at the Stenton banks, the possibilities of the investmentsfrom which he received profit. He was certain, however, that the sum askedby Valentine Simmons would obliterate his present resources. Yet he wasforced to admit that it did not seem exorbitant. 

He continued his altruistic deliberations throughout the evening at hisdwelling. It might be well, before investing such a paramount sum, tocommunicate with the Tennessee and Northern Company, receive a freshratification of their intention. Yet he could not do that withoutincurring the danger of premature questioning, investigation. It waspatent that he would have to be prepared to make an immediate distributionof the options when his intention became known in Greenstream. He wasaware that when the coming of a railroad to the County became commonknowledge the excitement of the valley would grow intense. 

Again, it might be better first to organize the timber of Greenstream, sothat a harmonious local condition would facilitate all negotiations, andavert the danger, which Valentine Simmons had pointed out, of individualblindness and competition. But, in order to accomplish that, he would haveto bring into concord fifty or more wary, suspicious, and largely ignorantadults. He would have to deal with swift and secret avarice, with vaingolden dreams born of years of bitter poverty, privation, ceaseless andincredible toil. The magnitude of the latter task appalled him; fact andfigure whirled in his confused mind. He was standing, and he suddenly feltdizzy, and sat down. The giddiness vanished, but left him with twitchingfingers, a clouded vision. He might get them all together, explain, persuade.... Goddy! it was for their good. They needn't be cross-grained. There it would be, the offer, for them to take or leave. But, if theydelayed, watch out! Railroad people couldn't be fooled with. They mightget left; that was all. 

This, he felt, was more than he could undertake, more than any reasonableperson would ask. If he paid Valentine Simmons all that money, and thenlet them have back their own again, without a cent to himself, they mustbe content. They should be able to bargain as well as he--who was gettingon and had difficulty in adding figures to the same amount twice--with theTennessee and Northern. 

The following morning he departed for Stenton. 

XIV

Gordon paid Valentine Simmons eighty-nine thousand dollars for thelatter's share of the timber options they had held in common. They wereseated in the room in which Gordon conducted his peculiar transactions. Heturned and placed Simmons' acknowledgment, the various papers of thedissolved partnership, in the safe. 

"That finishes all I had in Stenton, " he observed. 

Valentine Simmons made no immediate reply. He was intent, withtightly-folded lips, on the cheque in his hand. His shirt, as ever, wasimmaculately starched, the blue button was childlike, bland; but it wascold without, and hot in the room where they sat, and the color on hischeeks resembled dabs of vermilion on buffers of old white leather; thetufts of hair above his ears had dwindled to mere cottony scraps. 

"Prompt and satisfactory, " he said at last. "I tell you, Gordon, you cansee as far as another into a transaction. Promises are of no account butvalue received ... " he held up the cheque, a strip of pale orange paper, pinched between withered fingers. 

Suddenly he was in a hurry to get away; he drew his overcoat ofclose-haired, brown hide about his narrow shoulders, and trotted to thedoor, to his buggy awaiting him at the corner of the porch. 

XV

Gordon placed on the table before him the statements and accounts of hisnewly-augmented options. The papers, to his clerical inefficiency, presented a bewildering mass of inexplicable details and accounts. Hebrought them, with vast difficulty, into a rough order. In the lists ofthe acreages of timber controlled there were appended none of the names ofthose from whom his privilege of option had been obtained, no note of theslightly-varying sums paid--the sole, paramount facts to Gordon now. Forthe establishment of these he was obliged to refer to the original, individual contracts, to compare and add and check off. 

Old Pompey had conducted his transactions largely from his buggy, lendingthem a speciously casual aspect. The options made to him were written onslips of paper hastily torn from a cheap note book, engrossed on yellowingsheets of foolscap in tremulous Spencerian. Their wording was informal, often strictly local. One granted privilege of purchase of, "The pineytrees on Pap's and mine but not Henny's for nineteen years. " Another bore, above the date, "In this year of Jesus Christ's holy redemption. "

The sales made to Valentine Simmons were, invariably, formal in record, the signatures were all witnessed. 

It was a slow, fatiguing process. A number of the original vendors, Gordonknew, had died, their families were scattered; others had removed from theCounty; logical substitutes had to be evolved. The mere comparison of thevarious entries, the tracing of the tracts to the amounts involved, wasscarcely within Gordon's ability. 

He labored through the swiftly-falling dusk into the night, and took upthe task early the following morning. A large part of the work had to bedone a second, third, time--his brain, unaccustomed to concentrated mentalprocesses, soon grew weary; he repeated aloud a fact of figures withoutthe least comprehension of the sounds formed by his lips, and he would saythem again and again, until he had forced into his blurring mind somesignificance, some connection. 

He would fall asleep over his table, his scattered papers, in the greydaylight, or in the radiance of a large glass lamp, and stay immobile forhours, while his dog lay at his feet, or, uneasy, nosed his sharp, relaxedknees. 

No one would seek him, enter his house, break his exhausted slumbers. Lying on an outflung arm his head with its sunken, closed eyes, looselips, seemed hardly more alive than the photographed clay of Mrs. Hollidew in the sitting room. He would wake slowly, confused; the dogwould lick his inert hand, and they would go together in search of food tothe kitchen. 

On the occasions when he was forced to go to the post-office, the store, he went hurriedly, secretively, in a coat as green, as aged, as Pompey'sown. 

He was anxious to finish his labor, to be released from itsresponsibility, its weight. It appeared tremendously difficult toconsummate; it had developed far beyond his expectation, his originalconception. The thought pursued him that some needy individual would beoverlooked, his claim neglected. No one must be defrauded; all, all, musthave their own, must have their chance. He, Gordon Makimmon, was seeingthat they had, with Lettice's money ... Because ... Because.... 

The leaves had been swept from the trees; the mountains were gaunt, rocky, against swift, low clouds. There was no sunlight except for a brief, sullen red fire in the west at the end of day. At night the winds blewbleakly down Greenstream valley. Shutters were locked, shades drawn, inthe village; night obliterated it absolutely. No one passed, after dark, on the road above. 

He seemed to be toiling alone at a hopeless, interminable task isolated inthe midst of a vast, uninhabited desolation, in a black chasm filled withthe sound of whirling leaves and threshing branches. 

The morning, breaking late and grey and cold, appeared equally difficult, barren, in vain. The kitchen stove, continually neglected, wentcontinually out, the grate became clogged with ashes, the chimney refusedto draw. He relit it, on his knees, the dog patiently at his side; hefanned the kindling into flames, poured on the coal, the shining blackdust coruscating in instant, gold tracery. He bedded the horse morewarmly, fed him in a species of mechanical, inattentive regularity. 

Finally the list of timber options he possessed was completed with thenames of their original owners and the amounts for which they had beenbought. A deep sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment, took the place ofhis late anxiety. Even the weather changed, became complacent--the valleywas filled with the blue mirage of Indian summer, the apparent return of awarm, beneficent season. The decline of the year seemed to halt, relent, in still, sunny hours. It was as though nature, death, decay, had beenarrested, set at naught; that man might dwell forever amid peacefulmemories, slumberous vistas, lost in that valley hidden by shimmeringveils from all the implacable forces that bring the alternation of causeand effect upon subservient worlds and men. 

XVI

As customary on Saturday noon Gordon found his copy of the weekly _Bugle_projecting from his numbered compartment at the post-office. There were noletters. He thrust the paper into his pocket, and returned to the villagestreet. The day was warm, but the mists that had enveloped the peaks weredissolving, the sky was sparkling, clear. By evening, Gordon decided, itwould be cold again, and then the long, rigorous winter would close uponthe valley and mountains. 

He looked forward to it with relief, as a period of somnolence andprolonged rest--the mental stress and labor of the past days had weariedhim of the active contact with men and events. He was glad that they were, practically, solved, at an end--the towering columns of figures, theperplexing problems of equity, the far-reaching decisions. 

In rehearsing his course it seemed impossible to have hit upon a better, amore comprehensive, plan. There was hardly a family he knew of in thevalley of which some member might not now have his chance. That, anopportunity for all, was what Gordon was providing. 

A number of horses were already hitched along the rail outside ValentineSimmons' store; soon the rail would hardly afford room for another animal. He passed the Presbyterian Church, Dr. Pelliter's drugstore and dwelling, and approached his home. Seen from the road the long roof was variouslycolored from various additions; there were regions of rusty tar-paper, oftin with blistered remnants of dull red paint, of dark, irregularshingling. 

It was a dwelling weather-beaten and worn, the latest addition alreadydiscolored by the elements, blended with the nondescript whole. It waslike himself, Gordon Makimmon recognized; in him, as in the house below, things tedious or terrible had happened, the echoes of which lingeredwithin the old walls, within his brain.... Now it was good that winter wascoming, when they would lie through the long nights folded in snow, inbeneficent quietude. 

There were some final details to complete in his papers. He took off hisovercoat, laid it upon the safe, and flung the _Bugle_ on the table, whereit fell half open and neglected. The names traced by his scratching penbrought clearly before him the individuals designated: Elias Wellbogasthad a long, tangled grey beard and a gaze that peered anxiously through asettling blindness. Thirty acres--eight dollars an acre. P. Ville was aswarthy foreigner, called, in Greenstream, the Portugee; every crop heplanted grew as if by magic. Old Matthew Zane would endeavor to borrowfrom Gordon the money with which to repurchase the option he had granted. 

He worked steadily, while the rectangles of sunlight cast through thewindows on the floor shortened and shifted their place. He worked untilthe figures swam before his eyes, when he laid aside the pen, and pickedup the _Bugle_, glancing carelessly over the first page. 

His attention immediately concentrated on the headlines of the left-handcolumn, his gaze had caught the words, "Tennessee and Northern. "

"Goddy!" he exclaimed aloud; "they've got it in the _Bugle_, the railroadcoming and all. "

He was glad that the information had been printed, it would materiallyassist in the announcement and carrying out of his plan. He folded thepaper more compactly, leaned back in his chair to read ... Why!... Why, damn it! they had it all wrong; they were entirely mistaken; they hadprinted a deliberate--a deliberate--

He stopped reading to marshal his surprised and scattered faculties. Then, with a rigid countenance, he pursued the article to the end. When he hadfinished his gaze remained subconsciously fastened upon the paper, uponthe advertisement of a man who paid for and removed the bodies of deadanimals. 

Gordon Makimmon's lips formed, barely audibly, a name; he whispered, "Valentine Simmons. "

At last the storekeeper had utterly ruined him. He raised the paper fromwhere it had fallen and read the article once more. It was a floridly andviolently written account of how a projected branch of the Tennessee andNorthern System through Greenstream valley, long striven for by solid andpublic-spirited citizens of the County, had been prevented by the hiddenavarice of a well-known local figure, an ex-stage driver. 

The latter, the account proceeded, with a foreknowledge of the projectedtransportation, had secured for little or nothing an option on practicallyall the desirable timber of the valley, and had held it at such a highfigure that the railroad had been forced to abandon the scheme. 

"What Greenstream thus loses through blind gluttony cannot be enumeratedby a justly incensed pen. The loss to us, to our sons and daughters.... This secret and sinister schemer hid his purpose, it now appears, in acloak of seeming benevolence. We recall a feeling of doubt, which wegenerously and wrongfully suppressed at the time, concerning the motivesof such ill-considered ... "

"Valentine Simmons, " he repeated harshly. He controlled the _Bugle_ inaddition to countless other industries and interests of Greenstream. Thisarticle could not have been printed without Simmons' cognizance, hisco-operation. It was the crown of his long and victorious struggle withGordon Makimmon. The storekeeper had sold him the options knowing that therailroad was not coming to the valley--some inhibition had arisen in thenegotiations--he had destroyed him with Gordon's own blindness, credulity. And he had walked like a rat into the trap. 

The bitter irony of it rose in a wave of black mirth to his twisted lips;he, Gordon Makimmon, was exposed as an avaricious schemer with theprospects of Greenstream, with men's hopes, with their chances. WhileSimmons, it was plainly intimated, had labored faithfully and in vain forthe people. 

He rose and shook his clenched hands above his head. "If I had only shothim!" he cried. "If I had only shot him at first!"

It was too late now: nothing could be gained by crushing the flickeringvitality from that aged, pinkish husk. It was, Gordon dimly realized, agreater power than that contained by a single individual, by ValentineSimmons, that had beaten him. It was a stupendous and materialistic forceagainst the metallic sweep of which he had cast himself in vain--it wasthe power, the unconquerable godhead, of gold. 

The thought of the storekeeper was lost in the realization of the collapseof all that he had laboriously planned. The destruction was absolute; notan inner desire nor need escaped; not a projection remained. The papersbefore him, so painfully comprehended, with such a determination ofjustice, were but the visible marks of the futility, the waste, of hisdreaming. 

He sank heavily into the chair before his table. He recalled the youngerEntriken's smooth lies, the debauchery of his money by the Nickles;William Vibard's accordions mocked him again ... All, all, had been invain, worthless. General Jackson rose, and laid his long, shaggy, heavyhead upon Gordon's knee. 

"We're done for, " he told the dog; "we're finished this time. Everythinghas gone to hell. "

XVII

He felt strangely lost in the sudden emptiness of his existence, anexistence that, only a few hours before, had welcomed the prospect ofrelease from its bewildering fullness. He had gathered the results of hisslowly-formulating consciousness, his tragic memory, to a final resolve inthe return of the options to a county enhanced by the coming of a railroadwhose benefits he would distribute to all. And now the railroad was nomore than a myth, it had vanished into thin, false air, carrying withit.... 

He swept his hand through the papers of his vain endeavor, bringing asudden confusion upon their order. His arm struck the glass of shot, and, for a short space, there was a continuous sharp patter on the floor. Herose, and paced from wall to wall, a bent shape with open, hanging handsand a straggling grey wisp of hair across his dry, bony forehead. 

Footsteps crossed the porch, a knock fell upon the door, and Gordonresponded without raising his head. 

It was Simeon Caley. 

He had not been in the house since, together with his wife, he had left itafter Lettice's death. Sim's stained felt hat was pushed back from a wetbrow, his gestures were urgent. 

"Get your horse in the buggy!" he exclaimed; "I'll help you. Light out. "

"'Light out'?" Gordon's gaze centered upon the other's excitement, "where?"

"That doesn't make much difference, so's you light. The County's mad clearthrough, and it's pretty near all in the village. " Sim turned to the door. "I'll help you, and then--drive. "

"I ain't agoing to drive anywhere, " Gordon told him; "I'm where Ibelong. "

"You don't belong in Greenstream after that piece in the _Bugle_, " hishand rested on the knob. "Tie up anything you need, I'll hitch thebuggy. "

"Don't you touch a strap, " Gordon commanded; "because I won't put a footin her. "

"It'll all settle down in a little; then maybe you can come back. "

"What'll settle down?"

"Why, the deal with the railroad. "

"Sim, " Gordon demanded sharply, "you never believed that in the paper?"

"I don't know what to b'lieve, " the other replied evasively; "a good manysay those are the facts, that you have the options. "

"Get out of here!" Gordon shouted in a sudden moving rage; "and stay out;don't come back when you find what's what. "

"I c'n do that. And I'll point out to you we just came for Lettice, wenever took nothing of yours. I only stopped now to warn you away ... I'llhitch her up, Gordon; you get down the road. "

"It's mine now, whose ever it was awhile back. I've paid for it. You go. "

Simeon Caley lingered reluctantly at the door. Gordon stood rigidly; hiseyes were bright points of wrath, his arm rose, with a finger indicatingthe world without. The former slowly opened the door, stepped out upon theporch; he stayed a moment more, then closed himself from sight. 

XVIII

The stir and heat of Sim's presence died quickly away; the house waswithout a sound; General Jackson lay like an effigy in ravelled black andbuff wool. Gordon assembled the scattered papers on the table into anorderly pile. He moved into the kitchen, abstractedly surveyed thefamiliar walls; he walked through the house to the sitting room, where hestood lost in thought:

The County was "mad clear through"; Sim, supposing him guilty, had warnedhim to escape, advised him to run away.... That had never been a habit ofthe Makimmons, he would not form it now, at the end. He was notconsidering the mere probability of being shot, but of the greaterdisaster that had already smashed the spring of his living. Hissensibilities were deadened to any catastrophe of the flesh. 

At the same time he was conscious of a mounting rage at being sogigantically misunderstood, and his anger mingled with a bitter contemptfor Simeon Caley, for a people so blind, so credulous, so helpless in thegrasp of a single, shrewd individual. 

He heard subdued voices without, and, through a window, saw that thesweep by the stream was filling with a sullen concourse of men; he sawtheir faces, grim and resentful, turned toward the house; the sun struckupon the dusty, black expanse of their hats. 

He walked deliberately through the bedroom and out upon the porch. Asudden, profound silence met his appearance, a shifting of feet, aconcerted, bald, inimical stare. 

"Well?" Gordon Makimmon demanded; "you've read the _Bugle_, well?"

He heard a murmur from the back of the throng, "Give it to him, we didn't come here to talk. "

"'Give it to him, '" Gordon repeated thinly. "I see Ben Nickles there, behind that hulk from the South Fork; Nickles'll do it and glad. It willwipe off the two hundred dollars he had out of me for a new roof. Orthere's Entriken if Nickles is afraid, his note falls due again soon. "

"What about the railroad?"

"What about it? Greenstream's been settled for eighty years, why haven'tyou moved around and got one? Do you expect the President of the Tennesseeand Northern to come up and beg you to let them lay tracks to your doors?If you'd been men you'd had one long ago, but you're just--just stock. I'drather be an outlaw on the mountain than any of you; I'd ruther be whatyou think I am; by God!" he cried out of his bitterness of spirit, "butI'd ruther be Valentine Simmons!"

"Have you got the options?" Entriken demanded--"all them that Pompey hadand you bought?"

Gordon vanished into the house, and reappeared with the original contractsin his grasp. 

"Here they are, " he exclaimed; "I paid eighty-nine thousand dollars to getthem, and they're worth--that, " he flung them with a quick gesture intothe air, and the rising wind scattered them fluttering over the seregrass. "Scrabble for them in the dirt. "

"You c'n throw them away now the railroad's left you. "

"And before, " Gordon Makimmon demanded, "do you think I couldn't havegutted you if I'd had a mind to? do you think anybody couldn't gut you?Why, you've been the mutton of every little storekeeper that let you offwith a pound of coffee, of any note shaver that could write. The _Bugle_says I let out money to cover up the railway deal, but that'd be no betterthan giving it to stop the sight of the blind. God A'mighty! thistransportation business you're only whining about now was laid out fiveyears ago, the company's agents have driven in and out twenty times.... "

"Let him have it!"

"Spite yourselves!" Gordon Makimmon cried; "it's all that's left for you. "

General Jackson moved forward over the porch. He growled in response tothe menace of the throng on the sod, and jumped down to their level. Asudden, dangerous murmur rose:

"The two hundred dollar dog! The joke on Greenstream!"

He walked alertly forward, his ears pricked up on his long skull. 

"C'm here, General, " Gordon called, suddenly urgent; "c'm back here. "

The dog hesitated, turned toward his master, when a heavy stick, whirlingout of the press of men, struck the animal across the upper forelegs. Hefell forward, with a sharp whine, and attempted vainly to rise. Both legswere broken. He looked back again at Gordon, and then, growling, strove toreach their assailants. 

Gordon Makimmon started forward with a rasping oath, but, before he couldreach the ground, General Jackson had propelled himself to the fringe ofhumanity. He made a last, convulsive effort to rise, his jaws snapped.... A short, iron bar descended upon his head. 

Gordon's face became instantly, irrevocably, the shrunken face of an oldman. 

The clustered men with the dead, mangled body of the dog before them; theserene, sliding stream beyond; the towering east range bathed in keensunlight, blurred, mingled, in his vision. He put out a hand against oneof the porch supports--a faded shape of final and irremediable sorrow. 

He exhibited neither the courage of resistance nor the superiority ofcontempt; he offered, apparently, nothing material whatsoever to satisfythe vengeance of a populace cunningly defrauded of their justopportunities and profits; he seemed to be no more colored with life, nomore instinct with sap, than the crackling leaves blown by the increasingwind about the uneasy feet on the grass. 

He lipped a short, unintelligible period, gazing intent and troubled atthe throng. He shivered perceptibly: under the hard blue sky the windswept with the sting of an icy knout. Then, turning his obscure, infinitely dejected back upon the silent menace of the bitter, sallowcountenances, the harsh angular forms, of Greenstream, he walked slowly tothe door. He paused, his hand upon the knob, as if arrested by a memory, arealization. The door opened; the house absorbed him, presented unbrokenits weather-worn face. 

A deep, concerted sigh escaped from the men without, as though, with thevanishing of that bowed and shabby frame, they had seen vanish their lastchance for reprisal, for hope. 

XIX

The cold sharpened; the sky, toward evening, glittered like an emerald;the earth was black, it resembled a ball of iron spinning in the diffusedgreen radiance of a dayless and glacial void. The stream before theMakimmon dwelling moved without a sound under banked ledges of ice. 

A thread of light appeared against the façade of the house, it widened toan opening door, a brief glimpse of a bald interior, and then revealed thefigure of a man with a lantern upon the porch. The light descended to theground, wavered toward a spot where it disclosed the rigid, dead shape ofa dog. An uncertain hand followed the swell of the ribs to the sunkenside, attempted to free the clotted hair on a crushed skull. The body wascarefully raised and enveloped in a sack, laboriously borne to the edge ofthe silent stream. 

There it was lost in the dark as the light moved to where it cast alimited, swinging illumination over the wall of a shed. It returned to thestiffly distended sack, and there followed the ring of metal on theiron-like earth. In the pale circle of the lantern a figure stooped androse, a figure with an intent, furrowed countenance. 

The digging took a long while, the frozen clods of earth fell with ascattering thud, the shadow of the hole deepened by imperceptible degrees. Once the labor stopped, the sack was lowered into the ragged grave; butthe opening was too shallow, and the rise and fall of the solitary figurerecommenced. 

The sack was finally covered from sight, from the appalling frigidity andspace of the sky, from the frozen surface of the earth wrapped instillness, in night. The clods were scraped back into the hole, stampedinto an integral mass; the spade obliterated all trace of what lay hiddenbeneath, returned to the clay from which it had been momentarily animatedby the enigmatic, flitting spark of life. 

The lantern retraced its path to the shed, to the porch; where, in a briefthread of light, in the shutting of a door, it disappeared. 

XX

Gordon met Valentine Simmons squarely for the first time since thecollapse of his laborious planning outside the post-office. The latter, with a senile and pleased chuckle, tapped him on the chest. 

"Teach you to be provident, Gordon, " he said in his high, rasping voice;"teach you to see further than another through a transaction; as far ain'tnear enough; most don't see at all. "

The anger had evaporated from Gordon Makimmon's parched being: thestorekeeper, he recognized, was sharper than all the rest of the Countycombined; even now the raddled old man was more acute than the young andactive intelligences. He nodded, and would have passed on, but thestorekeeper, with a ponderous furred glove, halted him. 

"We haven't had any satisfaction lately with the Stenton stage, " heshrilled; "and I made out to ask--you can take it or leave it--if you'ddrive again? It might be a kind of--he! he!--relax from your securitiesand investments. "

Gordon, without an immediate reply, regarded him. He thought, in suddenapprobation of a part, at least, of the past, that he could drive a stagebetter than any other man in a hundred, in a thousand; there, at least, nohumiliating failure had overtaken his prowess with whip and reins. The oldoccupation, the monotonous, restful miles of road sweeping back under thewheels, the pleasant, casual detachment of the passengers, the pride ofaccomplishment, irresistibly appealed to him. 

Valentine Simmons' rheumy eyes interrogated him doubtfully above thefixed, dry color of his fallen cheeks. 

"By God, Valentine!" Gordon exclaimed, "I'll do it, I'll drive her, andright, too. It takes experience to carry a stage fifty miles over thesemountains, day and day; it takes a man that knows his horses, when toslack up on 'em and when to swing the leather ... I'm ready any time yousay. "

"The stage goes out from Greenstream to-morrow; you can take it the tripafter. Money same as before. And, Gordon, --he! he!--don't you go and lendit out at four per cent; fifty's talking but seventy's good. Pompey knewthe trick, he'd have dressed you down to an undershirt, Pompey would. "

Gordon returned slowly, absorbed in new considerations, to his dwelling. It was obvious that he could not live there alone and drive the Stentonstage; formerly Clare had attended to the house for him, but now therewas no one to keep the stoves lit, to attend to the countless dailynecessities. This was Tuesday--he would take the stage out on Thursday: hemight as well get together a few necessities and close the place at once. 

"I'll shut her right in, " he said aloud in the empty, echoing kitchen. 

He decided to touch nothing within. In the sitting room the swiftobscurity of the closing shutters obliterated its familiar features--thetable with the lamp and pink celluloid thimble, the phonograph, the fadedphotograph of what had been Mrs. Hollidew. The darkness spread to thebedroom that had been Lettice's and his: the curtained wardrobe was drawn, the bed lay smoothly sheeted with the quilt folded brightly at the foot, one of the many small glass lamps of the house stood filled upon thebureau. The iron safe was eclipsed, the pens upright in the glass of shot, the kitchen and spaces beyond. 

Finally, depositing an ancient bag of crumbling leather on the porch, helocked himself out. He moved the bag to the back of the buggy, and, hitching the horse into the worn gear, drove up the incline to the publicroad, to the village, without once turning his head. 

XXI

He rose at five on Thursday and consumed a hasty breakfast by a blur ofartificial light in the deserted hotel dining room. It was pitch blackwithout, the air heavy with moisture, and penetrating. He led the horsesfrom the shed under which he had hitched them to the stage, and climbedwith his lantern into the long-familiar place by the whip. A lightstreamed from the filmy window of the post-office, falling upon tarnishednutcrackers and picks in a faded plush-lined box ranged behind the glass. Gordon could see the dark, moving bulk of the postmaster within. Theleather mail bags, slippery in the wet atmosphere, were strapped in therear, and Gordon was tightening the reins when he was hailed by a manrunning over the road. It was Simmons' clerk. 

"The old man says, " he shot between labored breaths, "to keep a watch onBuck. Buckley's coming back with you to-morrow. He's been down to thehospital for a spell. There ain't liable to be anybody else on the stagethis time of year. "

The horses walked swiftly, almost without guidance, over the obscuredway. The stage mounted, turning over the long ascent to the crown of theeast range. Gordon put out the lantern. A faint grey diluted the dark; thenight sank thinly to morning, a morning overcast with sluggish clouds; thebare trees, growing slowly perceptible, dripped with moisture; atreacherous film of mud overlaid the adamantine road. 

The day broke inexpressibly featureless and dreary. The stage dropped tobald, brown valleys, soggy fields and clear, hurrying streams; it rosedeliberately to heights blurred in aqueous vapors. The moisture remainedsuspended throughout the day; the grey pall hid Stenton as he drove up tothe tavern that formed his depot on the outskirts of the city. 

Later, in the solitude of his room, he heard the hesitating patter of rainon the roof. He thought, stretching his weary frame on the rigorous bed, that if it turned cold through the night, the frozen road would bedangerous to-morrow. 

XXII

Buckley Simmons was late in arriving from the hospital, and it was pastseven before the stage departed for Greenstream. Buckley sat immediatelyback of Gordon Makimmon; the former's head, muffled in a long woolenscarf, showed only his dull, unwitting gaze. 

They rapidly left the dank stone streets and houses. The smoke ascendingfrom the waterworks was no greyer than the day. The rain fell in small, chill, gusty sweeps. 

Gordon Makimmon settled resolutely to the long drive; he was oblivious ofthe miles of sodden road stretching out behind, he was not aware of thepale, dripping, wintry landscape--he was lost in a continuous train ofmemories wheeling bright and distant through his mind. He was looking backupon the features of the past as he might have looked at a series ofdissolving pictures, his interest in which was solely that of spectator. 

They were without unity, unintelligible in the light of any concertedpurpose or result. They were, however, highly pleasant, or amazinglyinexplicable. For example:

His wife, Lettice, how young she was smiling at him from the sunny grass!She walked happily toward him, with her shawl about her shoulders, but shedidn't reach him; she was sitting in the rocking chair on theporch ... The day faded, she was singing a little throaty song, sewingupon a little square of white--she was gone as swiftly, as utterly, as ashadow. The shape of Meta Beggs, animated with incomprehensible gestures, took its place in the procession of his memories. She, grimacing, camealike to naught, vanished. All stopped for a moment and then disappeared, leaving no trace behind. 

He mechanically arrested the horses before the isolated buildings thatformed the midday halt. 

Buckley Simmons, crouching low over the table, consumed his dinner withformless, guttural approbation. The place above his forehead, where he hadbeen struck by the stone, was puckered and dark. He raised his eyes--theunquenchable hatred of Gordon Makimmon flared momentarily on his vacuouscountenance like the flame of a match lit in the wind. 

Once more on the road the rain stopped, the cold increased; high above theearth the masses of cloud gathered wind-herded in the south. The drippingfrom the trees ceased, the black branches took on a faint glitter; thedistant crash of a falling limb sounded from the woods. 

Gordon, doubting whether the horses' shoes had been lately roughed, descended, but, to his surprise, found that the scoring had been properlymaintained, in spite of the fact that it had not had his attention. He hadlittle cause to swing the heavy whip--the off horse, a raw-boned animalcolored yellowish-white, never ceased pulling valiantly on the traces; heassumed not only his own share of the labor but was willing to accept thatof his companion, and Gordon had continually to restrain him. 

The glitter spread transparently over the road; the horses dug their hoofsfirmly into the frozen ruts. Suddenly a burst of sunlight enveloped theland, and the land responded with an instant, intolerable brilliancy, ablinding sheet of white radiance. Every limb, every individual twig andblade of grass, was covered with a sparkling, transparent mail; everymound of brown earth scintillated in a crisp surface of ice like chocolateconfections glazed in clear sugar. The clouds dissolved; the trees, encased in crystal pipes, rose dazzling against a pale, luminous blueexpanse. Gigantic swords of incandescence shifted over the mountainside;shoals of frosty sparks filled the hollows; haloes immaculate anduncompassionate hung above the hills. 

Viewed from the necessity of the driver of the Stenton stage thisphenomenon was highly undesirable, --the glassy road enormously increasedthe labor of the horses; Gordon's vigilance might not for a minute berelaxed. The blazing sun blurred his vision, the cold crept insidiouslyinto his bones. The stage slowly made its way into the valleys, over theranges; and, with it, the sun made its way over valley and mountain towardthe west. 

At last the stage reached the foot of Buck Mountain; beyond lay thevillage, the end of day. The horses cautiously began the ascent, whileGordon, watching their progress, lent them the assistance of his judgmentand voice. The road looped a cleared field against the mountain, on theleft an icy slope fell away in a glittering tangle of underbrush. Thestage turned and the opening dropped upon the right. 

Gordon heard a thick, unintelligible sound from behind, and, lookingabout, saw Buckley Simmons clambering out over the wheel. He stopped thehorses, but Buckley slipped, fell upon the road. However, he quicklyscrambled erect, and walked beside the stage, over the incline. His headwas completely hidden by the woollen scarf; in one hand he carried a heavyswitch. The road swung about once more, and, at the turn, the fall wasabrupt. Buckley Simmons stumbled across the space that separated him fromthe horses. And Gordon, with an exclamation of incredulous surprise, sawthe other's arm sweep up. --The switch fell viciously across the back ofthe yellowish-white horse. 

The animal plunged back, dragging his companion against the stage. Gordonrose, lashing out with his voice and whip; the horses struggled to regaintheir foothold ... Slipped.... He felt the seat dropping away behind him. Then, with a violent wrench, a sliding crash, horses, stage and manlurched down the incline. 

XXIII

Gordon Makimmon rose to a sitting position on the glassy fall. Above him, to the right, the stage lay collapsed, its wheels broken in. Below theyellowish-white horse, upon his back, drew his legs together, kicked outconvulsively, and then rolled over, lay still. From the round belly thebroken end of a shaft squarely projected. The other horse was lost in athrashing thicket below. 

Gordon exclaimed, "God A'mighty!" Then the thought flashed through hismind that, extraordinarily, he had not been hurt--he had fallen away fromthe plunging hoofs, his heavy winter clothes had preserved him fromserious bruises. His face was scratched, his teeth ached intolerably, but, beyond that.... 

He rose shakily to his feet. As he moved a swift, numbing pain shot fromhis right side, through his shoulder to his brain, where, apparently, itcentered in a burning core of suffering. He choked unexpectedly on a warm, thick, salty tide welling into his throat. He said aloud, surprised, "Something's busted. "

He swayed, but preserved himself from falling, and spat. Instantly thereappeared before him on the shining ice a blot of vivid, living scarlet. 

"That's bad, " he added dully. 

He must get up to the road, out of this damned mess. The stage, he, hadnot fallen far; the road was but a few yards above him, but the ascent, with the pain licking through him like a burning tongue, the unaccustomed, disconcerting choking in his throat, was incredibly toilsome, long. 

Buckley Simmons was standing on the road with a lowered, vacantcountenance, a face as empty of content, of the trace of any purpose, as awashed slate. 

"You oughtn't to have done that, Buck, " Gordon told him impotently; "youought never to have done a thing like that. Why, just see.... " GordonMakimmon's voice was tremulous, his brain blurred from shock. "Youwent and killed that off horse, and a man never hitched a better. There's the mail, too; however it'll get to Greenstream on contractto-night I don't know. That was the hell of a thing to go and do!... Offhorse ... Willing--"

The sky flamed in a transcendent glory of aureate light; the molten goldpoured in streams over the land, dripped from the still branches. Thecrashing of falling limbs sounded everywhere. 

They were, Gordon knew, not half way up Buck Mountain. There were nodwellings between them and Greenstream village, no houses immediately attheir back. The road wound up before them toward the pure splendor ofsheer space. The cold steadily increased. Gordon's jaw chattered, and hesaw that Buckley's face was pinched and blue. 

"Got to move, " Gordon articulated; "freeze out here. " He lifted his feet, stamped them on the hard earth, while the pain leaped and flamed in hisside. He labored up the ascent, but Buckley Simmons remained where he wasstanding. I'll let him stay, Gordon decided, he can freeze to death andwelcome, no loss ... After a thing like that. He moved forward once more, but once more stopped. 

"C'm on, " he called impatiently; "you'll take no good here. " He retracedhis steps, and roughly grasped the other's arm, urging him forward. Buckley Simmons whimpered, but obeyed the pressure. 

The long, toilsome course began, a trail of frequent scarlet patchesmarking their way. Buckley lagged behind, shaking with exhaustion andchill, but Gordon commanded him on; he pulled him over deep ruts, cursedhim into renewed energy. This dangerously delayed their progress. 

"I got a good mind to leave you, " Gordon told him; "something's busted andI want to make the village soon's I can; and here you drag and hang back. You did it all, too. C'm on, you dam' fool: I could get along twice assmart without you. "

It seemed to Gordon Makimmon that, as he walked, the hurt within him wasconsuming flesh and bone; it was eating away his brain. The thick, saltytaste persisted in his mouth, nauseating him. 

The light faded swiftly to a mysterious violet glimmer in the sky, on theground, a cold phosphorescence that seemed to emanate from the ice. 

Buckley Simmons could scarcely proceed; he fell, and Gordon drew himsharply to his feet. Finally Gordon put an arm about his shoulder, steadying him, forcing him on. He must hurry, he realized, while the otherheld him back, delayed the assistance that Gordon so desperately needed. 

"I tell you, " he repeated querulously, "I got to get along; something'sbroke inside. I'll leave you, " he threatened; "I'll let you sit right hereand go cold. " It was an empty threat; he struggled on, giving Buckley hissupport, his determination, sharing the ebbing store of his strength. 

As they neared the top of the mountain a flood of light colder than theice poured from behind. The moon had risen, transforming the world into acrystal miracle.... Far below them was the Greenstream valley, thevillage. They struggled forward, an uncouth, slipping bulk, under thesoaring, dead planet. Gleams of light shot like quick-silver about theirfeet, quivered in the clear gloom like trails of pale fire igniting lakesof argent flame. It was magnificent and cruel, a superb fantasy ripplingover treacherous rocks, rock-like earth. 

"Y' dam' idiot, " Gordon mumbled, "if I die out here where'll y' be then?I'd like to know that.... Don't sit down on me again, I don't know's Icould get you up, don't b'lieve I could. Like as not we won't make her. That was an awful good horse. I'm under contract to--to ... Government. "

Buckley Simmons sank to his knees: once more Gordon kicked him erect. Hespat and spat, constantly growing weaker. "That's an awful lot of bloodfor a man to lose, " he complained. 

Suddenly he saw upon the right the lighted square of a window. 

"Why!" he exclaimed weakly, "here's the valley. "

He pushed Buckley toward the door, and there was an answering stirwithin ... Voices. 

XXIV

An overwhelming desire possessed Gordon Makimmon to go home. He forgot thepressing necessity for assistance, the searing hurt within ... He must gohome. He stumbled forward, turning into an aside that led directly behindDr. Pelliter's drug store to the road above the Makimmon dwelling. Hemoved blindly, instinctively, following the way bitten beneath hisconsciousness by a lifetime of usage. 

The house was dark, but it was hardly darker than Gordon's brain. Heclimbed the steps to the porch; his hands fumbled among the keys in hispocket. 

Feet tramped across the creaking boards, approaching him; a palm fell uponhis shoulder; a crisp voice rang out uncomprehended at his ear. It said:

"I'd knocked on all the doors, and was just going. I wanted to see you atonce--"

Gordon felt over the door in search of the place for the key. 

"I say I wanted to see you, " the voice persisted; "it's Edgar Crandall. You'll take pleasure from what I've got to tell. "

The key slipped into its place and the bolt shot back.... Well, he washome. No other thought, no other consciousness, lingered in his mind; eventhe pain, the unsupportable white core of suffering in his brain, wasdulled. He placed his foot upon the threshold, but the hand upon hisshoulder arrested him:

"Greenstream's going to have a bank, " the voice triumphantly declared;"it's settled--part outside capital, part guaranteed right here. Papershaving, robbery, finished ... Lawful rate ... Chance--"

It was no more to Gordon Makimmon than the crackling of the forestbranches, no more than an inexplicable hindrance to a desiredconsummation. 

"If it hadn't been for you, what you did for me ... Others ... Newcourage, example of bigness--Why! what's the matter with you, Makimmon?That's blood. "

Gordon made a tremendous effort of will, of grim concentration. He freedhimself from the detaining hand. "Moment, " he pronounced. The single wordwas expelled as dryly, as lifelessly, as a projectile, from a throatinsensate as the barrel of a gun. He vanished into the bitterly coldhouse. 

The bare floors echoed to his plodding footsteps as he entered the bedroombeyond the dismantled chamber of the safe. A flickering desire to see ledhim to where, on the bureau, a lamp had been left. The chimney fell with acrash of splintering glass upon the floor, a match flared in his stifffingers, and the unprotected wick burned with a choking, spectral bluelight. 

He saw, gazing at him from the black depths of the mirror above thebureau, a haggard face drained of all life, of all blood, with deep inkypools upon the eyes. A sudden emotion stirred in the chill immobilitycreeping upward through him. 

"Lettice!" he cried in a voice as flat as a spent echo; "Lettice!"

He stumbled back, sinking. 

Edgar Crandall found him kneeling at the bed, his arms outflung across thecounterpane, his head bowed between, with a blackening stain beneath hisclay-cold lips, beneath his face scarred with immeasurable suffering, fixed in a last surprise. 

THE END