XXI.

The storm wrought great havoc in the aspect of the outer world. The dull light of the autumn days that ensued served to show how the red and gold of the leaves had faded, and what resources of brown and a sere tawny gray the ultimate stages of decay held in store. They were thickly massed on the ground now, and most of the boughs were bare and wintry, and swayed, black with moisture, against the clouds, that in their silent shifting illustrated an infinite gradation of neutral tints between pearl and purple. Yet they seemed still, these clouds, so imperceptibly did each evolution develop from the previous presentments of vapor.

Far away the gray mountains appeared akin to the dun cloud-masses they touched, as if range and peak were piled one above the other almost to the zenith. Certain fascinating outlines of the distance, familiars of the fair weather, were withdrawn beneath this lowering sky, and strangely enough the landscape seemed still complete and real without them, as if they had been merely some fine illusions of hope, some figment of a poetic mood, painted in tender tints upon an inconstant horizon. Close at hand the heights loomed grim and darkly definite. In dropping the mask of foliage they showed fierce features hitherto concealed,—gaunt crags and chasms, and awful beetling steeps; ravines, deeply cleft in the heart of the range; torrents, flung headlong down the precipices to be lost in the river; many sterile, bare rocky slopes.

To Marcella a new glow of interest was shed upon the sombre scene; often she looked up at those more open expanses, wondering where, in the vast bewilderment of the fastnesses, the stranger and his mountain guide had made their temporary home. Far away as they were, he seemed near in the definiteness of her new knowledge of him. And this she supplemented by knowledge not so definite. With this basis for speculation, her imagination constructed, with all the ease of that airy workmanship, a status for his previous life, endowed him with a series of predilections and prejudices, and many noble ideal qualities with which Rathburn might have found himself somewhat embarrassed, having had but scant experience with such fine æsthetic gear. There were circumstances connected with his recent danger which gave her an intense satisfaction,—she had requited the good deed he had done that night when he had come to her father’s aid through the storm. She had repaid the debt fourfold. She remembered, with a certain soft elation, how he had recognized the risk she had encountered, how he had esteemed it of no slight magnitude. It might have been vanity, it might have been some tenderer thrill astir, but it was sweet to her to hear again—as so easily she might, when she would—the quiver in his voice when he had declared that an angel of mercy, an angel had rescued him! Often she paused at her simple tasks to recall anew those fervent words, those earnest, swift glances, which said so much that the subtlest words might fail to convey. His gratitude held all the finest essences of the incense of flattery, and she recognized a unique delight in the fact that the words and the glances were so cleverly calculated for her alone. Always her lips curved, with that rarest relish of laughter, when it is for joy alone, unmarred by any element of scorn or ridicule, when she remembered her grandmother’s satiric flouts at his “n’angel” and subsequent speculation as to which of the mountain girls he fancied, in his sentimental folly, had any resemblance to a celestial being. These thoughts were undulled by repetition. But one afternoon, on a bleak hillside, into their midst a certain shadow fell—a shadow as gray, as chill, as prophetic, as if it were akin to the gray, chill, prophetic shadows of the day that stood, dejected, on every slope, and waited as for a doom. She had gone out to salt the sheep, and she carried a gourd of salt in her hand. Her bonnet—it was of a gay yellow calico—hung on her shoulders, the strings knotted about her neck, and her heavy, waving brown tresses falling over it almost hid its assertive color beneath their curling luxuriance. Her dress was of a more sombre tone; it had encountered disasters in its dyes, and had not withstood the test of soap and water. It was difficult to say whether the result were a darkly brownish green or a darkly greenish brown. It was not incongruous with the dulling tints of the landscape; as she stood, it served to define her light, lithe figure distinctly against the tawny stretches of broomsedge behind her, that rose gradually to the summit of the hill. There seemed the full development of its tentative shade in the dark green of the pines clustering along the background of the mountain. Gray rocks cropped out of the red clay gullies that scarred the descent at her feet. In all the monotony of the scene, the flaring yellow about her throat seemed a triumphant climax of color, so luminous and intense it was. Her eyes were fixed on the gray sky opposite, for she looked far over the sere valleys, where it bent its great concave to a low level. Her hand hesitated as it was thrust into the brown gourd that she held. The sullen elements had no power to dim the fair, rich tints of her face, and grave though it was, it bore the happy trace of recent smiles. The sheep pressed close about her, the black sheep of the flock, all unaware of his unenviable metaphorical notoriety among men, preferring his claim for salt with calm assurance. She was motionless for a moment, then, as if the thought had come to her for the first time, “Why hev he never, never kem agin?” she said.

Her mind went back slowly, to count the days. It was difficult to differentiate them, they were all so alike. As she reviewed the trivial incidents that might serve to individualize them, keeping a tally with her fingers on the gourd, she began to realize what she had not noticed before,—that lately there had been many visitors at the house, not her own, nor her grandmother’s; men, chiefly, wanting to see Eli Strobe. The doctor’s orders had precluded their entrance, being rigorously obeyed since they subserved the pride of the women, who had sought to shield Strobe’s infirmity from general observation in Broomsedge Cove.

“We-uns don’t want ’em ’round hyar a-crowin’ over Eli in the pride o’ sech brains ez they hev got, till he hev hed a fair chance ter git well,” Mrs. Strobe had said to her granddaughter. “Folks knowed ez he war out’n his head with fever an’ his mind wandered some whenst he war fust knocked down, but nobody suspicions ez he hev plumb gone deranged ’bout killin’ Teck Jepson ’ceptin’ them two doctor men an’ Andy Longwood, an’ I know they ain’t goin’ ter tell.”

Many, then, had been to the door of late, but the yellow-haired young stranger had come no more, and Marcella wondered, with a dull presage of gloom, would he ever come again.

When next the chords of memory vibrated with his declaration that an angel had saved him, it had a jarring clangor of doubt, of ridicule, that made its wonted dulcet iteration a discord. Human nature is not generally so recognizant of celestial condescension and kindness that much is necessarily implied in the protestation of equivalent gratitude and indebtedness to an earthly benefactor. Marcella did not realize this. Was it thus, she asked herself, that he would have passed her by if he had felt in his heart the word upon his lips?

Now and again the gourd in her hand was nudged by the soft nozzle of a sheep, and she would once more bethink herself to cast a handful of salt down upon the rock as the flock pressed about her. There was no other stir in all the broad spaces she overlooked save the vibrations of the wind in the bare boughs that clashed together with a dull rattling sound, and the rustling shiver through the tawny tufts of broomsedge.

She gave a great start when her eyes were abruptly concentrated upon an object in the midst of its tall growth half-way down the hill, beginning slowly to move, to rise. It seemed to her suddenly recalled attention, still dazed by the transition from the world of thought to the more exigent material sphere, as if it were some gigantic mushroom toiling up the ascent, having just come in sight above a projecting knoll of earth. Beneath the broad bent hat she presently discerned a chubby dark-eyed face, and the rest of the person of a fat young fellow-creature of the age of four, perhaps, arrayed in a short, stout homespun skirt and a straight waist tightly encircling a singularly round body, was revealed to view.

So unexpected was this apparition, despite its simplicity, that as she gazed she was not aware that a man had ascended the hill farther to the right, and stood leaning on a long rifle silently contemplating her. Not until he spoke did she turn.

“Ain’t ye goin’ ter gin me nare word, Marcelly?” said Teck Jepson.

She flushed deeply. Surprised and taken thus at a disadvantage, she forgot for a moment her anger toward him.

“I never seen ye—howdy,” she said meekly.

Her flush was instantly reflected on his face as the red glow of a sunset irradiates the alien eastern sky. There was a new light in his eyes. She detected in his voice something of the impetus of the false hope that lured him, although he only said casually, as if seeking to formally acquit her of any discourtesy,—

“I seen ye war noticin’ Bob, thar,—he air a mighty s’prisin’ sight down in the Cove, I know.”

Even so slight a pleasantry seemed odd from him, so exacting a gravity he bore in his daily walk and conversation. She subtly understood it as the outgushing happiness of the mistake under which he had fallen; so trifling a hope, so slight a relenting counted for much in the depths of despair into which he had sunk. She would have been glad to undeceive him, but she was still agitated and confused by the sudden severance of her troubled and absorbed train of thought, and the abrupt surprise of his presence here. She merely said, “Air that leetle Bob Bowles, yer nevy?”

He nodded, his face relaxing into its infrequent smile as he looked down at the plodding plumpness approaching through the broomsedge.

“He air visitin’ ye, then, I reckon.”

“Not edzac’ly; he hev runned away from home.”

The fat Bob sat down upon one of the outcropping ledges of the rock near where the sheep crowded about Marcella, at whom he looked with apprehensive eyes. Mrs. Bowles was the only woman in his very restricted social circle with whom he was acquainted, and his experience with her did not tend to foster confidence in the sex.

“He looks at me ez ef he ’lowed I’d hurt him,” cried Marcella, flushing and suddenly affronted. “I never knowed I war so turr’ble ez all that.”

“Bob—Bob, ye look the other way!” Jepson admonished him.

But Bob, with scant regard, evidently, for Jepson’s mandates, continued to gaze wincingly up at the fair face of the girl, meeting her indignant and grieved eyes. Detecting at last a protest in her expression, he lifted his chubby arm and crooked it over his head, a forlornly inadequate guard against the blow he expected.

“He thinks I’d hurt him!” she cried in a wounded manner. “Why, don’t ye know I wouldn’t fur nuthin’,—fur nuthin’?”

She sat down by him on the rock and took his little sunburned hand in her soft clasp. His eyes were alight and alert with fear. With a wonderful show of elasticity he edged bouncingly along the ledge to evade her overtures; but a sheep had lain down across the rock, and although he pressed close into the wool of the creature, it did not rise, and he was at the mercy of his captor. She still held the gourd of salt, and the flock crowded about with insistent, rummaging nozzles. One of the sheep, standing on the higher ground behind her, looked pensively over her shoulder at the broad mountain landscape, the delicate, slender head of the animal almost touching the bright hair so heavily curling on her yellow sun-bonnet, still hanging loosely about her neck.

The graceless Bob! Jepson could only lean his six feet of helplessness upon his long rifle, and earnestly breathe that sinking hope against hope known only to those who have callow relatives placed in a conspicuous and exacting position, with every opportunity for lamentable infringement of etiquette. Did ever so doubtful, suspicious, and terrified a look, as Bob cast upward, meet such suave, sweet, smiling eyes? Was ever a round, dodging, bullet head so evasively shifted from beneath so light a caress as the touch of those falling curling tresses? How wasted, how inopportunely wasted on Bob her soft words,—

“I love ye—an’ I want ye ter love me!”

But Bob, who evidently harbored a distrust in amazing disproportion to his small size and his tender years, was proof against even so enchanting a siren. He merely knitted his limited eyebrows in perplexity because of the unexpected nature of the attack, for that unhappy and striking developments were to ensue he did not permit himself to disbelieve for an instant. He left his hand in hers, for his theory that least resistance resulted in the minimum smart had been proved often enough to commend it. A short little puff of breath—in an adult it might have been called a sigh—escaped from his half-parted lips, and betokened suspense.

“How ye all mus’ hev treated him up on the mounting!” Marcella exclaimed, flashing her angry eyes upward at Teck Jepson. “He’s ’feard—an’ jes’ see the leetle size of him! He’s ’feard; he wouldn’t dodge that-a-way ef he hedn’t been hit a heap o’ times fur nuthin’. Who treats him so mean?”

Jepson hesitated. Certainly he owed naught to Mrs. Bowles, but they had been of the same household, and he had a reluctance to expose her to scorn and contumely, however richly merited.

Marcella noted his hesitation and broke forth impulsively, “I don’t wonder ye look ’shamed of it.”

He shifted his position suddenly, and as he gazed at her, still leaning on the rifle, his eyes widely open, his lips parted, his breath coming quick, it might have seemed that he had need of his weapon to uphold him,—he was shaken as if by a blow.

“Marcelly!” he exclaimed,—and the voice hardly seemed his, so unlike was the husky quaver to his wonted full, mellow tones,—“kin ye think that o’ me,—ez ’twar me ez hev persecuted that thar leetle bit of a critter?”

He paused and looked about him with an air of finality. His nerves were still distraught; his lip quivered. She sat, a little pale and shaken by the sight of his agitation, gazing up at him from under her eyebrows, and hardly lifting her head, expectant, waiting, but making no sign of denial.

“Waal,” he said, drawing himself to his full height, “this finishes it. I hev b’lieved, I hev lived in hope ez some day ye mought kem ter keer fur me, ’spite o’ all that hev kem an’ gone. But now ez I hev fund out how awful mean ye think I be, ez ye kin b’lieve fur one minnit ez I hed enny hand in tormentin’ a leetle trembly soul like that, I’ll gin hope up. I’ll trouble ye with my feelin’s no mo’. An’ I’ll never furgive ye whilst I live!”

Marcella sat quite still and with downcast eyes during this outburst. There was something very like a sob in his throat as he spoke the last words, but when she glanced up again his face was so calm, his gaze so loftily discursive as he cast his eyes over the landscape, his attitude so impressive and striking, that she interpreted this serenity of pride as triumph, and she suddenly felt a goad in his last avowal.

“Waal, strange ez it may seem,” she said, tossing her hair backward, and the breeze, catching the locks, flung them gayly about, “I kin live without it. An’ I hev hearn ye talk ’bout yer feelin’s an’ sech till thar’s mighty leetle entertainment lef’ in ’em. An’ treatin’ this hyar leetle chile mean, till he looks ter be beat ef a body glances thar eye at him, ’pears ter me mightily of a piece with bein’ the captain o’ a gang o’ lynchers an’ sech evil doin’s.”

There was a momentary silence. Her eyes, restless, unseeing, wandered vaguely over the broad brown expanse of valley and mountain. Once more she bethought herself of the sheep, and poured the salt out of the gourd on the ground. The excitement of the moment pulsed heavily in her temples; she felt a gnawing pain at her heart, and she was unhappy.

The cause of all this trouble hardly comported himself in a congruous manner. Bob was relieved when her attention was diverted from him, and gave a fat little sigh of content. He sat for a moment quite still, looking very rotund in build, contemplating the resources of the scene for juvenile enjoyment. Then leaning forward, he placed his broad white wool hat on the unsuspecting head of a sheep near at hand, and it was difficult to say whether the smothered “baa” that proceeded from the eclipsed beast, or its groping as it rose to its feet, or its unique aspect as it stood, with the hat on its head, uncertain what might ensue, was the chief factor in eliciting a low, jovial chuckle from the distended gleeful lips.

But neither of his elders noticed the wiles of the callow martyr, for Jepson’s attention was fixed upon the revelation contained in Marcella’s last words, and she, realizing now their full significance, was nervously biting her lips in futile regret that they had thence escaped.

“I hev no call ter gin account o’ sech ez I do ter you-uns,” he said, with that serene arrogance which she had always felt was intolerable, and which she had in vain sought to reduce. “I’d hev been mighty pleased ef ye hed thunk well o’ my deeds an’ could hev put enny dependence in me, but ef ye don’t, it don’t make me think no ill o’ myself nor my aims. I ain’t got two faces, ter turn this one, an’ ef ye don’t like its looks, turn that one. I be led by sech light ez the Sperit hev revealed ter me, an’ I don’t ax ye nor enny other human ter show me the way an’ guide my feet.” He paused, looking reflectively at the broomsedge waving about his high boots; then he recommenced suddenly. “Bein’ ez ye hev got a interus’ in the man ez tole ye I war a captain o’ a gang o’ lynchers, ye hed better warn him not ter let his jaw wag too slack,—not about _me_; I ain’t keerin’ what he say ’bout _me_, but them t’ other men mought hear o’ his talkin’ too free, an’ I ain’t round about the Settle_mint_ much, an’ couldn’t hender ’em ef they war ter set out ter do him a damage. Tell him that. They air powerful outdone with me ennyhow, kase I wouldn’t gin my cornsent ter sech ez they wanted that night he kem ter the forge.”

Marcella hardly breathed, so strong upon her was the terror of jeopardizing the safety of Rathburn.

“How do ye know who tole me?” she demanded, gazing up at him with a feint of defiance in her contracted eyebrows and curling lip. “Ye may be talkin’ ’bout one man, an’ me ’bout another.”

He looked straight into the clear depths of her eyes. They faltered suddenly, and the long lashes fell as he said,—

“Naw, we be both talkin’ ’bout’n that Doctor Rathburn, ez he calls hisse’f,—that be who we air talkin’ ’bout.”

She leaned back silently against a rugged bowlder amongst the outcropping ledges, the gourd, empty now, the neck of it still in her listless hand, lying beside her on the trampled broomsedge. Her greenish-brown dress was much like the mosses in the fissures of the gray rock, against the cold monotone of which her fair young face seemed so delicately and finely tinted. The flock had scattered, feeding amongst the brambles and on tufts of grass that seemed, beneath the fallen leaves, to have escaped the frost. The sheep that had worn the hat rid himself of it at last, and looked on stupidly when the little mountaineer, with an agile elasticity of gait incongruous with his infantile rotundity, ran out and triumphantly crowned another, slipping back to his seat beside Marcella, and attracting no notice save from the placid flock, pausing to gaze in mild-eyed wonder.

“I ain’t lookin’ ter see that man agin,” said Marcella, her eyes fixed on the summits across the broad valley. “I can’t tell him.”

She paused, in the hope that he might ask if she had not seen him lately, but Jepson could be betrayed into no unseemly show of curiosity, and she was presently fain to continue.

“I ain’t seen him sence he war at our house that night. I dunno what’s kem o’ him.”

He stood impassive, silent, leaning upon his rifle, which he held with one hand, while the other was thrust in his leather belt. When she spoke he looked down at her, and his eyes met hers, but when she was silent he glanced with grave preoccupation at the leaden sky or the sombre ranges.

“I ’lowed mebbe he hed gone home,” she said, after one of these intervals. It was so recently that she had become definitely aware how long it had been since he was at the house, how fully the recollection of his words had sufficed in the certain expectation of his return, that she was for the first time canvassing the probabilities.

“Mebbe so,” he replied non-committally.

She gave a sudden quick gasp, and turned pale.

“Them men—them men, mebbe, hev tuk him at las’. They waylaid him agin,—hev they?—hev they?”

“Not ez I hev hearn on,” he replied.

His evident lack of excitement in regard to the possibility roused her anger anew. Her nerves were all a-quiver under the unexpected strain. She hardly sought to control her words; they were a relief to her tense, overwrought anxiety.

“How kin ye stand thar an’ ’low, ‘Not ez I hev hearn on,’ ez keerless ez ef I war a-talkin’ ’bout a fox ketched in a trap? Ye _don’t_ keer, Teck Jepson, ye _don’t_ keer! Ye’d jes’ ez soon he would be kilt by them mis’able Brumsaidge rangers ez not. Ye air a cruel, bloodthirsty man. Ye _don’t_ keer ef the innercent stranger war kilt.”

Despite his protestations of independence of spirit, he was roused to defend himself against this imputation.

“Ef I hedn’t keered,” he said, his lip curling with a scornful half laugh, and his eyes far away, “I would’t hev gone with them fellers at the barn. I ’lowed I could hender ’em from doin’ ennything onjust, or hasty, or misch_iee_vious, though ef the stranger hed been at enny wicked device, I dunno ez I would hev pertected him an’ sot him free like I done.”

Marcella’s heart was throbbing with contending emotions, the dominant feeling a resentment that Teck Jepson should thus credit himself with the rescue of Rathburn, the merits of which that young gentleman’s rhetoric had greatly exalted in her estimation, for she had thought it a simple, natural, matter-of-course action when she had first been moved to do aught in his behalf. She had logic enough to realize, however, that her timely warning and Rathburn’s clever boldness would have availed little had not Jepson’s mood been judicial, and the sway which he exerted over his comrades perfect and complete. Nevertheless her claim was not to be easily belittled. Her ingenuity renewed its hold.

“Then,” she said, “ye let him off, I’ll be bound, not kase ye knowed ’twar right an’ jestice but jes’ kase ye fund out ez ’twar me ez hed warned the man, an’ ye ’lowed ’twould put me in a good humor with you-uns ef ye war ter holp me out an’ save his life. Ye done it ter please me.”

He was not quite sure he understood her at first. He seemed dumfounded; then, as the light of comprehension dawned in his eyes, he looked down into her face and laughed.

“Kem, Bob,” he said, turning away, “it’s time we-uns war a-travelin’.”

But Bob had met a young friend of somewhat his own tastes and disposition. A lamb had strayed near where he was sitting, and the two had spent some profitable moments in gazing silently at one another with that irresistible curiosity and manifest fellow-feeling which infancy has for infancy. What they thought each of the other no one can ever say. That the scrutiny was not mutually derogatory in its results may be inferred from the fact that the lamb leaped suddenly to one side on its slender, knobby little legs, with a sort of aquiline alacrity, and kicked up some very frolicsome heels. Whereupon Bob mitigated the intensity of his stare, and began to run about nimbly with his short skirts flying, his round body very straight, his agility seeming necessarily somewhat knock-kneed in order to give free play to such redundant calves. He showed a very merry pair of heels, that served him as well as the lamb’s two pairs, and neither of the blithe young things took the smallest notice of Jepson’s summons.

Marcella gave them no heed. She had never been so deeply wounded as by Jepson’s evident surprise, his laugh, disclaiming the motive to please her. Always he had seemed to her secretly subservient to her power, however he might seek to assert his own independence. She was humiliated that she should have suggested her influence and received a renunciation rather than a protestation. It was as if he had told her that he did not love her so much as she thought—not so blindly, so idolatrously. She had over-flattered herself; her vanity had palpably convicted her. Strangely enough she was not angry. Every emotion was absorbed in the idea that he did not love her as she had thought he did—he had laughed at the supreme power which she assumed to wield over him.

She glanced up at him aslant under her long lashes. He was not looking at her. He had shouldered his rifle and was advancing upon the swiftly revolving Bob and his nimble four-footed acquaintance.

“Kem on, bubby. Kem on, Bob. We-uns mus’ go home now.”

But the gleeful Bob, with distended ruddy cheeks, and two rows of snaggled white teeth, and gleaming eyes almost eclipsed in rolls of fat, continued his blithe circuit, finding a new joy in flapping his arms, in which he had an advantage over the lamb, who had no arms to flap, and who often paused with meditative lowered head to gaze at these gyrations.

“Kem on, Bob—or I’ll make ye! Ye’ll repent it, sir! Kem on!”

And once more Jepson approached the elusively whisking Bob. “Kem on! Like a good boy.” He resorted to entreaty.

But Bob evidently disbelieved in retribution from this source, and was hard-hearted enough to disregard softer suasion.

“He be a powerful obejient chile!” Marcella remarked, with a little satiric laugh.

“He’s young yit,” returned Jepson, flustered and mortified. “Whenst he gits a leetle older he’ll do better. Bob, I’ll let ye tote my shot-pouch, like ye love ter do.”

But Bob, with a soul above bribes, circled as before. Marcella, with an arch sidelong glance, turned from him to Jepson. “How mean ye must treat him! How ’feard o’ you-uns he do be!” she exclaimed with laughing irony.

A flush rose suddenly to his brow, and she saw anew how deeply wounded he had been by the ignoble and odious accusation. Little wonder, since he felt it so, that he had declared he would never forgive her.

“I furgot he hed a stepmother,” she faltered by way of excuse.

“I never said nuthin’ agin his stepmother,” he rejoined sternly, darkly frowning.

Bob was beginning to show signs of exhaustion. As Jepson turned toward him again Marcella gave a sudden start. She felt she had done him a grievous injustice and she repented it. With some vague apologetic intention she sought to detain him on some pretext,—on any pretext,—and she spoke upon the impulse of the moment.

“Mus’ I tell the folks at home ez ye never wunst thunk ter inquire arter them?” Her eyes were dewy and bright; a faint flush was in her cheek; the tender curves of her red lips wore a half-smiling sweetness; as she lifted her head upward to look at him, the hair curling on her shoulders fell still farther down over the dangling yellow sun-bonnet.

He turned a changed face. “I war ’feard ter ax, Marcelly,” he said, in his low melancholy drawl. “I know ye feel so hard ter me ’bout’n Eli—an’ I never kin forgive myself, though I never went ter do no harm. I hear ’bout Eli constant—’thout hevin’ ter harry yer feelin’s by axin’ ye arter him.”

The girl felt a certain reassurance, a satisfaction that in this at least he had not changed. Since he had wrought so grievous an injury to Eli Strobe, remorse was the meet sequence. But her alert intuition presently apprehended a tone not altogether applicable to the past.

“He air thrivin’ toler’ble, now,” she observed.

He glanced at her with the keen suspense of an unexpected hope shining in his eyes. “Then what they say at the Settlemint ain’t true!”

She felt a sudden fear clutch at her heart. Her face paled—her eyes dilated.

“What air they sayin’ agin him at the Settlemint?” she asked, trembling, yet roused into instant defiance.

“’Tain’t faultin’ Eli noways,” he explained anxiously. “They ’low, though, ez his ailment hev streck his brain, an’ he hev gone deranged.”

Her short, sudden scream rang out shrilly in the dull silence of the gray afternoon. She sprang to her feet. “Who hev tole that—who hev tole that on him? I’ll be bound them sly foxes at the Settlemint air plottin’ su’thin agin him. They won’t gin him time ter git well, an’ they don’t want ter let him be constable, what he hev done been ’lected ter be. Who hev tole it? Who hev tole it?” Her eyes flashed an insistent inquiry at him and he could only reply doubtfully,—

“I dunno, Marcelly. I jes’ hearn a whole pack of ’em at the store”—she winced visibly at the idea of this wide dissemination of the rumor—“a-talkin’ bout’n it. But I dunno who set it a-goin’ fust.”

“I do!” she exclaimed frantically. “That stranger—he ’peared tickled ter death whenst he fust noticed it. Never seen a man so streck by nuthin’ in yer life. Tuk an’ felt his pulse, sir, an’ ’peared like he’d ruther hear sech foolishness talked ’n the sober wisdom o’ Sol’mon! I war mad then—but what though bein’ called a n’angel”—She broke off suddenly. “’Twar him—’twar him—kase nobody else knowed it. Dad hain’t seen nobody else ’ceptin’ him an’ Andy Longwood one day,—but Andy hain’t got larnin’ enough ter feel folkses pulses an’ sense thar shortcomin’s an’ sech. ’Twar him! ’Twar him! Oh, ye air all alike. I never see nobody ez I take a notion air mighty good an’ fine, an’ I go round like a fool studyin’ ’bout ’em all day, but what—ef I know ’em long enough—I find out they air jes’ plain common men-folks sech ez hev been sence the worl’ began,—jes’ like Adam, rather guzzle a apple ’n bide in Paradise.” She smiled reflectively, a scornful retrospection, as if the thought of some past folly were both bitter and ludicrous.

“Waal,” she resumed, turning upon him, “what war they ’lowin’ at the store they war goin’ ter do ’bout’n it?”

He shifted his weight to the other foot, then leaned heavily on his gun. “I hate ter tell ye, Marcelly,” he said with a low-spirited cadence. “I hoped ’twarn’t true.”

“I mus’ know,” she asserted insistently.

“Waal,” he reluctantly began, “they ’lowed ez some o’ them ‘smart Alecks’ of politicians an’ sech hed gin information ez thar war a crazy in the county ez oughter be restrained o’ his liberty.” A short exclamation, little less than a scream, came from her with an accent as if it were wrung forth by physical pain. “Ef the county court app’ints the sher’ff ter summons a jury fur a inquisition o’ lunacy, an’ they see Eli an’ ’low he air insane, they think they kin git up perceedin’s ez will take away his office.”

She listened silently as she stood holding the empty gourd in her hand. He felt as if he were pronouncing a sentence of some terrible doom, in thus destroying her pride. She esteemed the humble office so high and noble an estate, its shattered incumbent the chief of men!

“Marcelly,” he said, “look here. No matter what ye want ter do ’bout’n it, ef ye kin do ennything, I stand ready ter help. Promise me ye’ll let me know. Promise me ye’ll let me help.”

She looked up at him. Her lips were compressed. Her eyes were dry and steady. “Help!” she echoed bitterly. “It’s you-uns ez hev brung all this torment on dad. An’ now ye talk about ‘help.’ It’s too late—too late ter help.” Then she turned away.

He stood watching her as she went; her dull greenish-brown dress was long visible against the tawny tints of the broomsedge; her head was bare, the yellow sun-bonnet still hanging upon her shoulders. A leaden cloud was coming down the opposite mountain side, rapidly advancing across the valley; she seemed to be going to meet the storm, and suddenly it was as if she had been caught up in it. The sombre vapors enfolded her; there was a swift, transient, ocherous gleam, then she was seen no more, and the dreary sound of the invisible rain, falling, falling in the beclouded valley, filled all the air.