CHAPTER XX.

A fervid Fourth-of-July sun was blazing in the sky, and Chattalla responded, for the first time since the war, with a celebration of the day. That favorite rural diversion, a barbecue, had been projected, and certain optimistic souls, spending the day thus in the forest beside a flowing rivulet, drinking of its crystal clear water, flavored with mint and dashed with “Robertson County,” grew patriotic enough by degrees to declare that it was altogether like the good old times, and “damn the bloody chasm.” The disaffected absentees who remained in the town were of opinion that it was a “mighty pore little Fourth,” for Independence Day was here represented only by a banner on the court-house, hanging motionless in the sultry air, and all the “under-foot trash” of the village, white and black, rioting in fire-crackers and small explosions of gunpowder.

The ringleader of this motley juvenile assemblage was Pickie Tait. How he came by so large a quantity of powder was then, and afterward remained, a mystery. When, through its agency, disaster was developed, there was some speculation on the subject. Very possibly he stole the money to buy it from the drawer in which his father kept the change taken in at the toll-gate; or he might have stolen the powder itself from the store where he had “done yerrands” for a week, and in that time had contrived to perpetrate more mischief than could be rectified in six. He never divulged the source of his secret supplies, and his silence baffled conjecture. As the morning waned he went home to dinner, and the town heard no more from him till late in the day.

At the barracks the patriotism was of a somewhat more glittering and imposing quality, and there was martial music and a dress parade. It was a great relief to Estwicke when it was all over, for every distraction grated on his preoccupied thoughts. He mounted his horse and galloped aimlessly away in the lingering sunset, glad of the solitude and the woodland quiet, and finding in the swift motion some expression for his impatient spirit.

He had determined to make General Vayne’s position as difficult as possible, and continued to visit the family as heretofore, divining that a man who held hospitality as a sacred obligation would flinch at the idea of forbidding him the house, and resolved that, unless this extreme measure were resorted to, he would see Marcia as often as he might. Now and then he had a twinge of self-reproach for thus making use of this fantastic view of the duties of a house-owner to persuade his host’s daughter to marry him without her father’s consent. But what could he do? Must he tamely give up the woman he loved, and who loved him, because, forsooth, her father was vaguely supposed to prefer another man? He swore that he would not, and he put his sensitive conscience down.

He carried his fierce moods there. Sometimes he bitterly upbraided Marcia with her broken promise. Sometimes it was almost a pleasure to him to know that, if he suffered, she too suffered. And then would come a great revulsion of feeling, and he would beg her with passionate tenderness to care for him no more, and protest that he was not worth one of her tears, and declare that, if she said the word, he would go away--he would go away and blow his brains out, and trouble her never again.

He had been more peremptory when he had last seen her. He had insisted that he must come to terms with this suspense; he could better endure despair. She must make her decision at once and forever. If she definitely gave him up, he would know how he stood; he would try to reconcile himself as best he might to the worthless conditions of his life. He might at least seek to make it of some value to others. He could go and fight the battles of his country with the Indians; he was still first-rate food for powder.

He had placed great hopes on this effort to coerce her from that neutral ground which she had striven to hold. But she had only cried and besought him not to be unhappy. And he had parted from her in anger.

To-day the horse had taken of his own accord the familiar, oft-travelled road, and checked the sweeping gallop only at her father’s gate. Estwicke, roused from his absorption, realized where he was with momentary surprise. He had not intended to come, but now that he was here, he hesitated. Then he suddenly turned the horse aside, and went on slowly down the road along the river bank.

The green expanse of the battle-field lay before him, stretching to the horizon, and set, a gigantic, enamelled circle, in a circumference of gold and crimson clouds,--for the east was flushed with western reflections. The cows were coming home through the haunted thickets; the faint clangor of their bells reached him on the perfumed stillness. And in the midst of the shining river rose the massive piers of the old bridge, burned so long ago, leaving these great, useless, detached columns as still another reminder of the days of conflict.

As he glanced toward them Estwicke abruptly checked his pace. On the summit of the central pier was a small figure pottering about with an uncanny show of industry. A dug-out was tied to a bush that grew in a niche near the base; this showed how the boy had gone, and how he proposed to return. But what could he be doing?

“Now, that’s odd,” murmured Estwicke speculatively. “I have seen that boy there every day for a week.”

A man was lying on the river bank with a crazy violin beside him, across which he now and then aimlessly drew a shuddering bow. Estwicke thought him a mowing idiot until he spoke. He was beginning to hold a long-range colloquy with the pigmy on the pier.

“Hello, Pickie!” he shouted in a convulsively chattering fashion. “What air ye up to?”

Pickie Tait turned his preternaturally solemn face toward his interlocutor.

“I’m up ter--_here_!” he replied.

Graffy changed the form of address.

“What be ye a-doin’ of?”

“It’s _me_ that’s killin’ this here cat,--ye onderstand?” said Quick Pickie significantly.

“Ef ye war ter fall off’n that pier ye’d git yer head bruk,” Graffy admonished him.

“’Tend ter yer own head--ye may find a use fur it some day,” retorted Pickie.

The sound of the horse’s hoofs as Estwicke approached diverted the man’s attention. He turned, leaning upon his elbow, to see who might be passing, and the casual curiosity expressed in his glance intensified to a deep concentrated interest.

It was a somewhat brilliant apparition thus springing up in the lonely country road. The young officer was gallantly mounted, and his blue uniform took the light like velvet. His bearing, surcharged with spirit and pride, and a certain challenging boldness in his eyes, suggested the phrase, “every inch a soldier.”

There was a melancholy envy in the gaze that intently followed him till the jagged bluffs of the river bank interposed, and he disappeared. Then Graffy sighed--not because of the contrast with the mettlesome full-pulsed soldier, but the band at the barracks was the best in the service, and there rode a man who heard it every day. He took up his old violin and began to draw gently forth the vaguest echoes of crashing melodies,--souvenirs of his pilgrimages thither, where he had earned notoriety among the troops as the “damn fool who would tramp fourteen miles just to hear the band play a march.” He was instantly aware when the regular dash of a paddle, growing momently more distinct, began to beat an accompaniment to his rhythmic recollections as they quivered along the string. But he was entranced with his own music, and gave no heed till his name was twice called in a nasal snuffling whine that was intended to be propitiatory.

The ragamuffin had come down from his airy perch, crossed the river in his dug-out, and run it upon the gravelly bank. Then he stood up in it, the paddle in his hand, and looked at the man from beneath his shapeless hat-brim with a blandishing expression in singular contrast with the cool impudence his dirty face had worn ten minutes ago. His tatters hung picturesquely about his skinny little limbs, and as he talked he placed one grimy, cut, and scarred bare foot upon the other, and thus clubbed he teetered forward and backward, as if this gesture were one of the accepted graces of cajolory.

“I kem over hyar,” he remarked affably, although somewhat indistinctly, for he investigated, even as he spoke, the corners of his wide mouth and a row of jagged, squirrel teeth, with his large, deprecatory, red tongue, “I kem over hyar ter--ax ye--ef ye plissir--do me a--a favior!”

“I dunno ez I hev enny call ter do ye no faviors--sech a sassy critter ez ye be,” said the musician, bending his head low to a series of deft touches.

Pickie looked up the river, then down the river, then high into the air, where he followed, as it were, a jay’s flight with the widening motions of his mouth. Then he teetered forward, and with his former beguiling demonstrations he glanced up once more at the man.

“I hev got some fi’-crackers thar on the pier what I’m a-aimin’ ter set off fur the Forf o’ July, an’--an’--an’ some gunpowder.” Graffy lifted his head to look at the boy, who suddenly became embarrassed. He succeeded in clubbing his feet together more tightly, and thus inspired, he speciously explained. “A _leetle_ gunpowder wropped up in a piece o’ newspaper. An’ I’m a-feard ter leave ’em thar whilst I skedadles home fur some candle wick fur a fuse, ’kase them Peters boys will raid on ’em, an’ set ’em off tharselfs fur the Forf o’ July. An’ I hev got the fi’-crackers all stuck round in the rocks, an’ I don’t want ter--ter--unfix ’em, an’ tote ’em off with me. So I ’lowed ez mebbe ye’d git inter the dug-out, an’ scoot over thar, an’ sot on the pier whilst I’m gone. Them sly, sneaky Peters boys mought kem up on t’ other side, an’ ye couldn’t see ’em from hyar.”

He stepped nimbly out of the dug-out, and waited for the man to signify his assent, but Graffy still delicately and deftly touched the instrument, and Pickie at last was fain to start off at a shambling gait, looking over his shoulder now and then to make sure that Graffy would relent toward him as of old. Presently the rocks intervened, but when the river next came into view he saw the dug-out in mid-stream and nearing the pier.

When Graffy had climbed it, which was no difficult matter, for some of the stones had fallen away, leaving crevices and jagged edges, he was surprised to see on the summit deep rifts into the interior.

“This hyar old pier ain’t haffen ez solid ez ye might think ter look at it. More’n likely cannon-balls or su’thin’ must hev hit it an’ jarred it powerful in the old war times.”

He looked down at the puerile preparations for noise--the fire-crackers set around in chinks in the mortar, a tin canister, flaring and empty, and a little roll of newspaper which he supposed contained the powder.

Then he seated himself and gazed silently upon the landscape.

It was all very still. Far away for a moment he heard the metallic jangle of trace-chains as some laborer jogged homeward on his plough-horse through the peaceful battlefield. A pair of mocking-birds fluttered back to their nest in a niche in the old pier, the male circling about the head of the motionless figure on the summit, and striking boldly at it. Then arose the shrill, vibrating clamor of the nestlings, and presently a line of light down the river marked the swift flight of the white wing-feathers of the little freeholder, still on provident thoughts intent. Graffy peered over to see the mother-bird hovering about her brood. “Ye air mighty nigh neighbors ter Pickie, I’m afeard,” he said, with melancholy forecast. Then once more there was no sound--and no motion save the silent shifting of the crimson and purple clouds and of their gorgeous reflections in the deep water below.

The subject never far from his thoughts had returned now. In these days, with his untutored intellect, his narrow experience, his poignant conscience, the man who had been accused and acquitted, sought to sift the evidence and weigh the argument. He was wont to lie in wait for the witnesses who had testified in his trial, forcing from them the story they had already told under oath, and waiving their half-angry, half-startled remonstrance with the breathless protest, “I hev furgot--I hev furgot--’Twar all so suddint--an’ so much come arterward.” In like manner he once stopped the judge, presenting a clumsy disguise of the circumstances, and begging an opinion on a “p’int o’ law.” When the judge instantly stripped them of their fictitious integuments, detecting his purpose, and admonishing him to rest satisfied of the justice of his acquittal, he burst forth suddenly, “Your little court and the jury’s say-so don’t seem ter hender me none now.” He smote his breast. “I hev jes’ come ter jedgmint!”

Perhaps it was well that his ragged following of street urchins and shiftless loafers would not let him and his crazy old fiddle be, and that it was exacted of him as an imperative public duty to play at all the rustic merry-makings. Thus intervals, such as this when he sat alone and idle on the old pier, were rare. Now, in his ignorant fashion, he was reviewing the prosecuting officer’s speech, weighing the fierce phrases as he muttered them. The cogent arguments of a man trained to debate had given voice to his dumb conscience. The trite truculence had for him all the actuality of doom. Once he rose to his feet, and with a violent gesture unconsciously imitated the muscular oratory of the Criminal Court as he mouthed the extravagant denunciations which had been forgotten long ago by the mild man who had first uttered them.

The muffled sound of hoofs pacing slowly on the grassy margin of the road restored Graffy to a sudden realization of the present. Captain Estwicke had wheeled his horse, and was riding back along the river bank. Under his intent, astonished scrutiny Graffy was painfully deprecatory; he mechanically laid hold on his violin. As he began to draw forth the strains of a melodious country-side song, he heard the plash of oars keeping time to the music. Presently the shrill voices of children broke on the air, singing,--

“When I lived down in Tennessee, U-li-_ah_! U-li-_ee_! Beneath the wild banana tree, U-li-_ah_! U-li-_ee_!”

There were five or six urchins, black, white, and yellow, in the approaching skiff, all in imminent danger of a watery grave under Pickie Tait’s guidance. But the tipsy craft reeled safely to the bank, and landed all but Quick Pickie, who then rowed across to the pier. He climbed it like a squirrel, and as he scuffled up on the summit he looked at Graffy with a triumphant grin on his broad, dirty face. It suddenly turned white beneath its grime. Graffy had filled his pipe, and was kindling it with a match which he flung aside still blazing. Its pale flicker disappeared as it dropped into a deep rift in the masonry, and a wild, incoherent protest from the boy rang out across the water.

Estwicke heard it. His eyes, following the sound, turned absently upon the great obeliscal pier, outlined in sombre tints against the gold and purple splendors still flaunting through the western sky. All at once there sprang into their midst an ethereal, corollated, crimson presence like some great evanescent flower of flame. Shooting through it, high into the air, were strange black projectiles. A sulphurous cloud of smoke surged over the placid waters, and far along the peaceful battle-field rang a mighty sound as if the very foundations of the earth were rent asunder.

And in an instant the flower of flame was gone as suddenly as it had bloomed. The smoke and the wind, in an airy embrace, swept together down the river. Here and there on the face of the current an ever-widening circle of golden light described its elastic periphery above the heavy masses of masonry that had fallen into the shining depths.

And with its jagged edges and maimed proportions, grotesquely defined against the calm sky, was the great pier, the right side torn away, leaving the other of a taller aspect. On its summit lay a writhing little figure.

The momentary silence that followed the report was broken with a shrill, quavering, wail of pain, terrible to hear.

The half dozen urchins on the bank were looking with frightened, deprecatory eyes at Estwicke as he flung himself from his horse.

“’Twarn’t us that done it,” they cried in chorus. “’Twar Pickie Tait. That’s him a-hollerin’ up there now. He had a fuse what he war goin’ ter fix ter light, an’ he laid off ter git away quicker ’n he done. But Graffy Beale drapped a match thar. _’Twarn’t us!_”

Two or three ploughmen returning from work came clattering down on their horses to join the little group at the water’s edge.

“Graffy an’ Quick Pickie?” said one.

“Well; they’ve blown themselves into Kingdom-Come this time, I reckon.”

“We must get them away at once,” exclaimed Estwicke, hastily tearing off his coat. “That pier is badly shaken. It may come down and crush them.”

“Hold on a minit, Cap’n,” said one of the men. “Then I’ll go along o’ ye--though it’s skeery under them shattered rocks, I tell ye. Still, if they hain’t got no more powder ’mongst ’em, I’m willin’ ter resk that fallin’ down on me.”

“Don’t try it jes’ _now_, Cap’n,” said another burly fellow. “I’ll bet that leetle scamp hev got that thar pier ez full o’ powder ez an aig o’ meat. Hold on a minit an’ I’ll go too when I’m sati’fied thar’s nothin’ thar likely ter explode. Any way ter die but that.”

The horror of being blown into the air, dismembered and torn, was upon Estwicke with a terrible realization. He hesitated; but once more the child’s woeful shriek, with all its cadenced anguish, rang out. And he flung himself into the water. He swam rapidly to the base of the pier, although the time seemed long to those who stood in suspense, watching him through the blue twilight which was softly slipping down upon the earth from the blue sky. He deftly climbed the jagged column and, as he neared the still figure of the man, he put out his hand and touched it. Then he spoke to the boy. From the bank they could not hear the words, but the sound of his voice came over the water. There were gentle suggestions in the tones, and after that the woeful shrieks were stilled. Even the distance did not disguise the careful tenderness with which he took the writhing, quivering creature in his arms. And suddenly, once more a-bloom in the blue twilight was that evanescent flower of flame. From among its fiery petals the black projectiles were flying upward--fallen instantly. And the red flower was withered. When the smoke cleared away the pier was a shapeless pile of stone hardly rising above the surface of the river, and the two men and the boy were gone.

It seemed a miracle to those who dragged them out of the water that there should be a spark of life retained in Pickie Tait’s mangled little body. And even that pulpy mass of agonies which they knew as Graffy Beale was yet all a-quiver. They could not judge whether Estwicke’s injuries were less serious. There were evidences of broken bones, he was insensible, and he bore some deep gashes and ghastly bruises that were unpleasant to look at. They carried him to the nearest house, which was the little log cabin by Fort Despair, and, when the physicians arrived, popular awe was increased by the professional utterance. After an examination they said, in consultation, that his left clavicle was fractured, and the joint of the scapula dislocated, and to the staring simple folks it seemed that no gentleman who had such things inside of him could be expected to survive. One of his ribs was broken and his left arm shattered in two places.

“Pretty bad fracture,--that arm,--I reckon,” suggested the local physician.

“Ah--I guess so--I guess so,” assented the post-surgeon, who had been summoned by telegram. “It’s--ah--um--humerus”--with a meditative smile--“humerus--don’t you know.”

A great country lout who was assisting in the quality of curious spectator, stepped suddenly out of the room with a surly, lowering brow.

“I’d like ter beat that derned Yank inter a jelly,” he declared to a crony outside. “Mighty funny ter _him_, I reckon, ‘_Humorous_’--hey!” with a sardonic sneer. “He wouldn’t think it was ‘humorous’ long if _I_ hed a crack at him.”

For this episode had roused an intense local sympathy for Captain Estwicke, and the feeling widened and deepened when all the circumstances were duly set forth in the Marston “Daily Chronicle.” Not every day does a man of “quality” risk his life to succor humble folks, and the reporter, who felt himself destined for better things than writing up dog-fights and ward politicians, made the most of the opportunity. It afforded as broad a scope as an obituary. In fact, it was quite as satisfactory to the reporter as if Captain Estwicke had really died. It enabled him to dwell upon the generosities of character intimated as well as that passion of courage illustrated. It admitted of biographical detail which the enterprising representative of the paper gleaned in abundance at the barracks from Estwicke’s brother officers, who were peculiarly eager, anxious, and enthusiastic. If their comrade had bravely encountered death and danger and paid the forfeit of serious wounds upon some stricken field, they would have held it an obvious duty and accorded varying degrees of soldierly commendation. But to have disastrous dealings with gunpowder out of the regular line of business seemed to these men of the sword abnormally daring and intrinsically heroic.

The reporter found much geniality housed in the unsubstantial white buildings with their flimsy galleries that shook beneath his tread. A potent nicotian fragrance permeated the air, as if it were geographically appurtenant to the spot--like the resinous odor of piney woods or the briny flavor of a sea-breeze. A veteran of the late war told some stirring stories with effect, annotated by the measured tread of the sentry without. A young lieutenant gave items of Estwicke’s experience as an “Indian Fighter;” and while the reporter took notes, he was ever and anon exhorted to take also what was modestly designated as “something.” And somehow the mellow generosities of this same “something,” and the manly good-fellowship of his entertainers, and that fine thrill which the contemplation of a deed of daring, blended with kindness, excites about the heart, were subtly infused into his simple narrative, and surprised him when he saw it printed on the smoking sheets in the morning.

It surprised others. It suggested to more than one subscriber of the “Daily Chronicle” that there might be some fine fellows among those Yankees at the barracks; and a wonder if it were not a trifle too unfriendly and inhospitable to leave them shut off there like aliens; and a resolve to go and see Captain Estwicke, who had been already removed to his quarters, and tell him what was thought of him, and virtually, though unavowedly, shake hands across the bloody chasm.

Now, this feat of moral gymnastics is remarkably simple when one fairly tries it, and was successfully exploited by his brother officers and _ses amis les ennemis_ so long as Estwicke lay too ill to take a hand in it. But in a short time, when he began to pull together and this amicable ceremony was celebrated in his quarters, a chill suddenly fell upon it. He hardly knew how to receive the unwise, ill-chosen superlatives of these fraternal strangers and his hearty, chorusing friends. Among them he was heavily badgered. He had all the shyness of intense self-consciousness. He was wont to approach his own identity with misgivings, and an undue respect. Had any man come to the barracks to pick a quarrel with him he would have been bold enough. Since they had only come to sing his praises he was all at once timid, gruff, uneasy, ashamed of himself, and very much ashamed of them.

The behests of hospitality held this grum mood painfully mute so long as the visitors were present. But the sudden change from whole-souled cordiality, which had earlier characterized their welcome, to this congealed stiffness was very marked, and the quality of his demeanor was variously reprehended as affectation, or “barrack manners,” by these ex-soldiers who had seen only service in the field, and knew little of the life and manners of barracks.

But plain-speaking is one of the prerogatives of friendship. “You mortify me with your confounded twaddle,” Estwicke was wont to say fiercely to his Damons when the wheels of the last departing guest were heard rolling away on the broad, gravelled drive. “Yes,--I do feel worse,--very much worse. They all make me worse. And _you_ make me sick! I’m sick with shame!”

Whereupon the Damons would roar with good-natured laughter, and demonstrate jovially the feasibility of once more taking “something.”

It was eminently characteristic that by his exacting reserve Estwicke should repel much kindly feeling, and that with this opportunity he should make not one friend in Marston for himself, but many for other men.

Beyond the reach of his personal influence, however, his action continued to levy a heavy tribute of good-will and admiration. It seemed in Chattalla an incredibly brave and generous thing to do,--so vast was the incongruity in the imperilling of a valuable life for poor Graffy Beale, that ill-starred fleer of fate, and “Quick Pickie,”--who, when he was pronounced out of danger, was universally conceded to be “a grand rascal, though I’m sorry for the little chap.”

And just here was where it appealed to General Vayne. The whole episode was instinct with a fine humanity. It gave evidence of high impulses and a latent nobility hitherto undivined in Estwicke’s character,--hitherto doubted.

And why doubted? In these days it seemed to General Vayne that his own conduct had been actuated by some strange, unreasoning malice. He could not recollect how his deep prejudice had taken root. He could not remember his grievance; the blow that Estwicke had seemed to sordidly deal him when he was already sore smitten and pressed to the wall. Mentally he fumbled for it. It was gone.

His own fine deeds of valiance stretched out in the darkness of the Lost Cause like the brilliant track of a falling star. He had thought them then only prosaic duty; now they had loosed all hold on his memory. But every enthusiastic pulse throbbed in accord with this fine deed that another man had done.

So it came about that he listened with an unclouded brow to something his daughter said one day,--something she said with her eyes full of tears, her face suffused with flushes, a quiver in her voice.

“Papa,” she cried, “I don’t need this to teach me how good--how good--Captain Estwicke is. It only teaches me how dearly I love him. And now--_now_--I shall never care again because _you_ choose to undervalue him. And I don’t want your forgiveness! He is more to me than you are. And some day when he comes again I shall tell him that now I--I will marry him,--whenever he likes.”

There was something hard in this too frank avowal of a transfer of allegiance. But father and daughter alike were inexpert at half-measures, and the thoroughness of the new departure surprised neither of them.

“Why, my dear child,” exclaimed the consistent man, with a fine gesture of expostulation, “I have not the slightest objection,--not the slightest.”

There was an unfilial flash in his daughter’s eyes as she looked at him. She remembered Estwicke’s passionate unhappiness, and her own conduct to him seemed very harsh. She had thought obedience to her father her first and highest duty. So it was valueless, intrinsically, and wasted besides. But obviously policy forbade her to urge upon him the grace of consistency, and she said nothing more.

She had wanted to go to see Estwicke. But Mrs. Kirby, with a heavy support of proprieties, took the field in force. “My dear,” remonstrated the old lady gravely, “you are not really, formally, engaged to him now.”

“Oh, he knows how it all was,” declared the girl impatiently.

“But other people know nothing about it,--nothing whatever. It would be very queer for you, and your papa, and me to go to him together as you suggest; very queer indeed, unless we could give out that you are engaged. You ought to have foreseen this, my dear. You broke it off; yes, you gave him back his ring. Very pretty ring, that. Oh, yes; I know what your papa said; he made you do it. But,”--with a funereal shake of the head,--“_never_ give back a ring. So significant; so-o conclusive. Remember that, my dear. _Never_ give back a ring,--no!” Mrs. Kirby laid down these valuable rules of guidance with as much solemnity as if her niece expected to be engaged a score of times yet, and be tempted as often to thrust back rings upon their donors.

So Marcia wrote a little note to Captain Estwicke, and Mrs. Kirby wrote a longer one, and only General Vayne drove over to the barracks. There were several other gentlemen present at this interview, and the conversation was chiefly general and impersonal; hence Estwicke had scant opportunity to exhibit that morose disinclination for laudatory sympathy which had so unfavorably impressed former visitors, and General Vayne went away with his rose-colored views of the incident unimpaired.

As it had occurred so near his plantation, he was popularly supposed to be peculiarly well posted, and more than once his account of it was sought by guests at his house. It gained much impressiveness from the noble graces of his rhetoric and the largess of his generous admiration. It was pretty to see Marcia listen on these occasions, her cheeks crimson and her crimson lips parted, an enthusiastic gravity on her face, and her eyes alight with that wonderful radiance which can shine in a mortal’s eyes but once in a lifetime. Most of these visitors were stolid, unspeculative people, long past their romantic hey-day. With them this voiceless language of love was already a dead language, and they translated none of its glowing characters. Horace Percy was younger, and he had his own reasons for being observant. When he saw that look on her face--although it was but a look--his heart sank like lead.

Any grief with him was nearly allied to a puerile irritation, and he was rather cruel to his horses as he drove homeward. He said little to Brennett, he was absorbed in canvassing the matter silently, and seeking to reconcile himself to giving up his love with the doubt still upon it. He did love her, but he loved himself more. He tenderly deprecated for himself the jeopardy of rejection. Hitherto he had felt so sure of her; he would have felt, equally sure of any woman whom he might seek in marriage. He had brought himself to regard the avowal of his preference, not as something that might give her to him, but as of great value because it would bind him to her. His was the important promise, and he was chary of bestowing it. That exaltation which dwarfs the opinion of others to but a mote in the wind was an exaltation to which Percy could never attain. The calamity of losing her, he dreaded less than that the world should know of his loss. It did occur to him for a moment that she might feel tenderly, in a manner, toward the love she could not requite; that she might respect it as a confidence. But no! his was a famous scalp. She would joy to wear it at her belt. At the least she would tell all to her aunt--that would be only natural. That Mrs. Kirby should not tell it to Mrs. Ridgeway would be supernatural. Mrs. Ridgeway would tell it to the county. And then it would go! A young man of great social prominence finds sometimes in his notoriety a painful difficulty.

But even should he draw off at once, he was not safe from the gossip. Percy ground his teeth when he reflected that if all he suspected were true, and it should become known that she had accepted Estwicke, the sharp-witted Maurice Brennett would understand his position, having witnessed throughout the summer his persistent efforts to propitiate General Vayne. Brennett was a man who gave no quarter, and Percy had a vivid realization of the infinite zest with which the _jeunesse dorée_ of New Orleans would laugh at the story of his fatuity in making love to the old gentleman while another fellow made love to the young lady.

And these cheap things vexed him. He continued moody and silent until they reached home, but at dinner he was vivacious in a desultory fashion, had much to say, and seemed to find nothing amiss with his appetite. When he and his guest were lighting their cigars in the library, he observed with a laugh: “Did you notice, Brennett, how much interest Miss Marcia takes in Captain Estwicke’s--a--a--blow-out--as you might call it?”

Brennett looked up with genuine surprise expressed in his face. “Why, yes,” he admitted, in a tone that was evidently meant to seem casual.

“Do you know,” said Percy, his eyes fixed on the dark shrubbery close by the open window as he lounged easily in his chair. “I’d be willing to bet you something very considerable that they are engaged.”

The crafty Brennett was embarrassed. “Why, I don’t know about that,” he said, hesitating.

After a moment he put a bold face on his uncertainty.

“To tell you the truth, I thought you were in love with her.”

Percy glanced up laughing. “With Miss Marcia?” he asked, a note of incredulity in his voice. “I never should have credited _you_ with a sentimental imagination, Brennett. What made you think that?”

Brennett vindicated his logic. “Because you seemed specially anxious to stand well with her father and please her,” he said sturdily.

Percy made no rejoinder for a moment, while the servant came in and placed the lamps on the table. Then he laughed again--a trifle mysteriously this time.

“Well,”--he glanced over his shoulder about the room--“is that old darkey out of hearing? Well, as I was about to say, General Vayne is a man of influence, and in fact I am a man of some influence myself. Moreover, I am twenty-four--nearly twenty-five years of age.”

Brennett stared. Percy turned his cigar between his fingers and gazed gravely at it.

“You’re not a man that blabs, Brennett,” he continued, presently. “I may as well say plainly that within a year I shall be eligible for Congress, and my friends want me to knock the old fossil, who has been going from this district, back into the Jurassic period where he belongs. I don’t know certainly whether I shall consent to make the race, but in view of that possibility, I must, in the meantime, propitiate men of influence, and smile at their daughters, and humbug their Mrs. Kirbys as well as I can.”

He filliped off the ash, grown long and white upon his cigar as he talked, looked brightly up at Brennett, and laughed again. He had told his little story very well, and the wily Brennett believed it--perhaps because he esteemed any scheme of advancement a stronger motive than love. Percy detected credulity in his face, and, having succeeded so well, concluded to delay. If she were in love with Estwicke she would demonstrate that fact by marrying him. If not, she would still be here next autumn on Percy’s return from a little tour of the northern seaside resorts which he had in contemplation. When he had determined upon this course he waited only for his friend’s departure to carry it into effect, and he waited in secret impatience, as Brennett showed no sign of bringing his visit to a close. Percy had lost all interest in the quiet rural existence that, but so short a time ago, was instinct with the keenest zest. It was painful to him to go to General Vayne’s house and meet Marcia. But Brennett often proposed a drive or ride tending thither, and he must accompany his guest as behooves a host. He bitterly upbraided his folly in having hampered himself at this crisis with the restrictions of hospitality, for who knew so well as he that a guest in the country is like a soul or a conscience, impossible to be decently rid of for a moment.

In these visits Mrs. Kirby observed with some surprise that Antoinette sedulously avoided Mr. Brennett, and, although he did not talk to her with an eager interest, as when he had first come among them, he adroitly contrived, continually but unobtrusively, to throw himself in her way as if to keep her attention directed to him--to remind her of him.

And Mrs. Kirby pitied the hopeless love of which she imagined he was the victim, and wondered helplessly that dear Antoinette should be so cold.

Marcia noticed nothing of all this, for she was absorbed in a fact which she had at first vaguely perceived in doubting, chilly apprehension, and realized at last with an amazed despair. Captain Estwicke intended to come no more. She had experienced a sharp surprise to hear from others that he was already out again with his arm in a sling. Naturally she had expected to be the first to see him. But she had accounted for this as an accident, and for a week thereafter she herself gathered the flowers for the vases in the library; and in the evenings the lamps and the fire-flies and the moon were early alight in the big, square windows, with their sheer snowy curtains and their clinging vines, where the dew glittered on the climbing roses, and the mocking-bird sang for his welcome. But only the lagging hours came in his stead. She began to take account of that last interview when he had said his suspense should end. Did he, indeed, hold it definitive? Had his love worn out--and now when she was ready to renounce for it all the world besides? She could not have so doubted him, but for the little letter she had written. If he had felt thus, she argued, it must have seemed an appeal, a recall. And he gave it no heed. To be sure, he had not been able for weeks past to hold a pen--but he might have come, if he liked. That letter grew to be a poignant humiliation. She brooded upon it until the words, simple and few, were burned into her brain. Yet the told herself scornfully that it was no great matter--the letter was doubtless gone long ago--it had served, perhaps, to light his cigar. And then she remembered the fervor of faith and the glow of delight with which she had written it, and she felt that the best of her, the essence of hope and youth and love was exhaled with the smoke, and that all her life had flickered with the paper and had faded and fallen to ashes.

Estwicke did not light his cigar with it, but he smoked many cigars over it, and it furnished him, too, midnight vigils and bitterness of spirit. This was the first time she had ever written to him. Heretofore he had come and gone so often that there had been no need of letters. He thought this little note stiff and formal. He could not know how beaming a face had bent over it. He could not conceive that what he had done should render him eligible in General Vayne’s eyes and demolish those formidable unacknowledged objections. He could not imagine that that long withheld consent had made her all at once shy of him--shyer than ever, when Mrs. Kirby sat by as she wrote and admonished her to remember that they were not engaged just now. Estwicke moodily compared the result with Mrs. Kirby’s own affectionate effusion, its superlatives straggling half across the page. The contrast seemed significant. It was all over between them. He had told Marcia she must decide, and she had decided. And she wrote now only because they had been friends, and because she must, since his other friends wrote too--sooth to say more kindly. He regarded General Vayne’s visit as the emptiest formality. Old Ridgeway, the merest acquaintance, had accompanied him, and there were many who came more than once. Estwicke’s pride, too, was reasserting itself. He declared that he would humble himself to General Vayne and his daughter no more. He would go there never again, though his heart should break. He grew taciturn, and rebellious, and irritable, and the post-surgeon rubbed his hands and said that the patient was coming on finely and that a strong, fierce temper was the best indication of rapid convalescence.

Meantime, General Vayne, all unaware of the havoc his consistency had wrought in Marcia’s life and the life of a brave man whom he admired, was reconciling himself with a good grace to that stern avenging dispensation which sends the “youth of flaunting feathers” close upon the heels of the father of a daughter. That opprobrious epithet “home-made Yankee” had been stricken from his vocabulary. He had substituted “loyal.” Loyal! That was a word of noble significations. And he was a man peculiarly susceptible to the gracious charm of fine words.

Somehow the future seemed more ideally appropriate reconstructed on the basis of this word “loyal.”

That notable issue of the “Daily Chronicle” was stale enough, when one day Tom Toole found his dinner wrapped in a fragment of it, as he sat eating from his tin pail in the brief interval of rest called “nooning.” Between bites he read from it, slowly and laboriously. And as he read, the yard of the furniture factory, with its piles of lumber and its high palings; the city’s hum; the strident voices of the street vendors; the heavy whir of the machinery that, even while it slackened and until it ceased, seemed to shake the massive building before him--all passed from his consciousness. Instead, he saw the long, sunlit stretches of the battle-field, beautiful and blooming beneath a summer sky. He heard the river sing, and remembered how the piers that stood in its midst roused its voice to a more passionate utterance, as if it too would tell the story of all that had happened here.

“An’ hain’t that thar old pier seen sights!” he exclaimed. “An’ it’s cur’ous fur it ter be this same man ter hev sech resky dealin’s thar--this hyar Estwicke what looked so powerful like the t’other one--ef”--even in the sunlight and in the far away city he glanced dubiously over his shoulder--“ef thar ever war enny other one.”

He munched for a time in meditative silence. Then he straightened the paper on the planks before him and began to spell out the closing sentence, sensible of a supplemental curiosity as to the man and boy whom Estwicke had sought to rescue.

The account of the officer’s exploit had occupied a column and a half of fine print. But only a paragraph was needed to say that the man, Graffy Beale, a low fellow of the neighborhood, was fatally injured in the accident, although the boy had been pronounced out of danger.

Through the surprise throbbing in his quickening blood, through the agitation that mustered great drops upon his forehead, blistering the crumpled bit of paper as they fell, through the incredulity that sought to possess him because the familiar name looked so unfamiliar in print, Toole was mastered by a tyrannous recollection of that morning when Graffy had sat on the rock by the dusty milestone, and implored forgiveness, and a friendly word, and a hearty hand-clasp before they parted.

And for a friendly word he was bidden to look to the graves he had filled.

Was this the last word to be spoken between them? Had he indeed gone hence forever? The ignorant fellow was battling with that maddening sense of irrevocability which alone is potent to give to mortals a realization of how finite is opportunity, how infinite is eternity.

“But Graffy air the frien’liest pore critter in all this worl’!” he broke forth presently. “He ain’t a-goin’ ter hold no grudge agin nobody, nuther hyar nur hyarafter. I hopes he knowed me that day, better’n I knowed myse’f. An’ ef the Lord lets me I’ll tell him that, ef I kin git back thar in time.”

Certainly conscience had little to do in Maurice Brennett’s schemes. And when it became a factor, it was the conscience of another man.