XXII.

While hardly a tuft of the broomsedge stirred on the red clay slopes of the hill, the fitful gusts were rioting in the valley, and Teck Jepson, standing in the midst of the tawny growth, absently watched the cloud approaching in the air, and the dead leaves all set a-whirling in devious routes along the brown ground. He heard in the voice of the wind the first bated threatenings of the storm, though but a murmur, full of latent strength, and with a steadily increasing volume that bespoke the prescient elation of the liberated element, free to come and to go as it listed. There were occasionally black boughs—dead, doubtless, brittle, and easily wrenched from the tree, for the wind had not yet stretched its muscle—to be seen thrashing along clumsily for a little way, then falling to the earth, harried up again presently by the boisterous blast, and set a-going anew in their simulated flight.

Suddenly the broomsedge bowed down to the ground; he heard the forest quake; the clouds were closing in, and, with an abrupt realization that the storm was upon him, he caught the small Bob up on his shoulder and ran for home. It was a swift, short dash over the broken ground against the buffeting wind, so uncertain of mood, now rollicking, now fierce. The little mountaineer’s gay laughter and shrieks of exhilaration from his lofty perch mingled with its sound, as he clutched Jepson’s collar and looked back at the wild rout behind them; the clouds seeming to roll on the ground, and tossed by the turbulent wind; the erratic flight of leaves and sticks; the disheveled woods, all their boughs turning from the blast as if holding out deprecating, quivering arms in plea for mercy. Even after they had reached the haven of the porch, they heard once and again a wild aerial hilarity echoing along the deep chasm, in which the river was locked as in the isolation of a lake, and anon a low, menacing roar. But the storm was definitely angry when it fairly burst, and they were housed none to soon. The thunder’s peal was augmented to even alien ferocity by the reverberations in the rocky abysses, above the deeply sunken channel of the river; the lightning flashed, tracing sinister characters across the black clouds, fading out before one might read this terrible script; the slopes below and the crags above had disappeared in the multiplicity of the interposing lines of rain; the garden, sere and faded, save for a forlorn prince’s feather here and there clinging to the stalk, was gradually effaced from the world, and presently the mists were in the porch, and beginning to sift in at the open door. Jepson rose from before the fire which he had kindled, and shut them out, to stand shivering there, or to press pallid and white against the door, like some forlorn spectral outcasts, forbidden to haunt the place which that human love, which even death cannot kill, makes them fain to tread once more.

The white flames of the pine knots leaped with glad elastic bounds up the chimney; the shadows in the dark corners shifted continuously with the glancing shafts of light. The little house had many tokens of its previous occupants: a spinning-wheel, where now only the spiders drew out long, shining threads, stood in the corner; sundry gowns, all of rich, gay colors, despite their homely material, garnet, or orange, or dark blue, hung on the wall, as if Jepson’s mother had just placed them there. Her yarn, in dusty hanks, swung from the rafters, and the quilts she had “pieced,” folded somewhat eccentrically, were piled high on the “corner-shelf” which they had burdened of yore. Against the jamb of the chimney, on a slight out-jutting of the clay and sticks, serving as shelf, was a great brown gourd, half filled with bright-tinted scraps, and buttons, and the bulbs of plants that would never bloom now, but should lie idle and fall to dust, with all the further possibilities of life unfulfilled. In a splint basket at one side of the fire lay a rough coat, worn and torn: her needle had rusted in the patch; the coarse waxed thread would never be drawn through and her last stitch completed.

It was for these vagaries, the preservation of the tokens of the old home-life, that Mrs. Bowles esteemed Teck Jepson somewhat “teched in the head.” Could she have beheld the dust which plentifully covered them all, the sentiment which she contemned would have impressed her as but a distraught trifle in comparison with the rank madness which she would have deemed his system of housekeeping. Bob, however, gazed about with undisturbed serenity, as he stood sturdily on his fat legs in the middle of the floor. Only when he turned about in search of a seat did his countenance fall.

“This air the bes’ ez I kin do fur ye, bubby,” Jepson remarked, tendering him a full-grown chair. “I hev got no leetle cheers hyar.”

But when Bob’s plump bulk had scaled the heights of the chair, the soles of his feet reaching but little beyond its verge, and his aspect presenting a singular study of foreshortening as he sat and gazed at the fire, content descended upon him as before, and occasionally he glanced at Jepson with a lively little grin, all his snaggled teeth on parade, confident of sympathy in his satisfaction and unaffrighted freedom. But Jepson could not unreservedly share this placidity. As he sat opposite, smoking his pipe, his reflective face lighted by the fire, he observed: “Ye’re cornsider’ble of a puzzle, Bob. I dunno what I oughter do with ye. I reckon, ef the truth war knowed, I oughter take ye up the mounting ter yer mam. Likely ez not they air sarchin’ fur ye now.”

“No-o,” returned Bob, with a resolute rising inflection. “I be a-goin’ ter live in de Cove! Right hyar!” And he looked about him with a pleased, adoptive gaze. He had heard Mrs. Bowles bemoan her sad fate in being wrested away from the Cove, but the naturally high opinion of the locality which this fostered was hardly adequate to the reality, in his estimation, as for the first time in his memory he was within its charmed limits, resting in the security of Jepson’s coveted companionship.

The big man would not argue so unpleasing a subject with the little man; he still meditatively smoked, heedless of the discursive, juvenile babble, and answering only at random when a direct appeal was made to him. Presently these queries grew fewer; intervals of absolute silence ensued; a drowsy mutter, and Bob succumbed finally to the influences of warmth and quiet, and the fatigue of his long jaunt down the mountain before he had met Jepson in the road. He sat, or rather lay, in the armchair, his flushed round face with its happiness still upon it, as if the sweetness of security, of kindness, of the sense of being held of value, had pervaded his dreams. It would have been long, long, before the faces of Sim and A’minty could have learned those serene curves. But Bob’s adaptability had stood him in good stead hitherto, and one need hardly have wished him more retentively sensitive that his little life might have been still more dismal than it was.

The rain fell with dull monotony; only at long intervals a sudden acceleration betokened a down-pour in sheets, and the increased volume of the torrents washed with a heavy splashing from the eaves. The sound was melancholy, full of intimations of the waning year, of the killing frosts to come. Even the thunder, ceasing to roll, left an unwelcome void, having been as an incident to vary the dreary sameness of sounds and suggestions. The lightnings were quenched. The world was given over to the sobbing wind and the sad-voiced rain. Jepson had no cheerful thoughts to beguile the idle hour. His heart was heavy, and the further perspectives of the days gloomed full of shadows. He did not upbraid himself; he was spared that keenest edge of regret, so complete was his proud sense of rectitude, his unswerving faith in himself and his own motives. Nor did he resent Marcella’s anger. He admitted with a deep sigh its justification. He accepted it as a retribution, in some sort, not for his own sins, but for his unintentional contributive share, as he construed it, in the untoward circumstances that had resulted in Eli Strobe’s injuries. He rebelled, however, against his fate, this shipwreck of his love, more, indeed, than he was definitely conscious of doing, for he often boasted to himself, in the illusions of his piety that he meekly submitted to the Lord’s will, according to the example of the saints; then he would walk the floor all night in mental anguish, or wander forth in the dark, autumnal woods till dawn, in all the throes of despair. Of late, there had often come into his mind a bitterness with the thought of her which it had seldom before known. The image of the young stranger at the forge was continually associated with hers. His jealous eyes had been quick to note the changing expressions on her face, full of fear for Rathburn’s sake, when his strange absence had been mentioned. Oddly enough, Jepson was sensible of the glow of anger that the man she loved, if indeed she loved him, should fail in aught of homage; he took no satisfaction in the thought that it was a possibility—nay, a probability—that Rathburn did not love her. He deprecated the pangs she might feel, and still he sighed for his own.

So absorbed was he in these sombre meditations, as he sat, his elbow on the arm of the chair, his chin in his hand, his contemplative eyes upon the fire, that he took no heed of a step on the porch without, although he might have heard it, even through the long-drawn sighing of the wind and the fresh outburst of the tumultuous rain, for no caution restrained its demonstrations. The heavy stamping was obviously designed to free first one boot and then the other from the persistent clinging of the red clay mire. Only when the door was unceremoniously flung open from without did Jepson rouse himself with a start, and lift his head, seeing at first merely the white mist with the lines of rain all aslant across it, and imposed upon it the figure of a man at the threshold, the wind tossing the loose ends of his garments, and the water streaming from his bent old hat. For a moment his face was invisible, for the dull gray light of the beclouded landscape was behind him; but the draught from the opening door rekindled the coals of the dying fire, and sent the ashes scattering about the hearth, and as the flames flared up they revealed the familiar features of Jake Baintree. Jepson, rising slowly from his chair, experienced the odd doubting sensation that sometimes besets one in a dream, when its vagaries so transcend the probabilities as to rouse a skeptical application of verisimilitude to these airy fantasies. The next moment a definite appreciation of the reality of his visitor asserted itself. Jake Baintree had evidently been drinking heavily. But for that, what he said in response to Jepson’s query might have seemed stranger than it did.

“What did ye kem hyar fur?” sternly demanded the master of the house.

His manner evidently affected Baintree, who did not bear himself with the swaggering freedom with which he had flung open the door. He had looked threatening. He was cowed in an instant,—cowed, but very crafty.

“A-beggin’,” he said, with a sudden light in his eyes. “I want a hunk o’ bread.”

Jepson stood uncertain, reluctant, a frown knitting his brow, fairly coerced for once in his life. It was the only plea that could have restrained him from taking the intruder by the shoulders and turning him out of the door,—the only plea, and Baintree knew it. He could not accord his hospitality as ungraciously, perhaps, as he might have desired, and thus he was forced into more of a suave insincerity than had ever before been able to adjust itself to his face and manner. He turned toward a pine table, pushed aside in one corner, and indicated certain dishes beneath an inverted wooden bowl.

“Thar’s all in the house. He’p yerse’f, he’p yerse’f.” For his life he could not have hindered the heartiness of the intonation, or the unreserve of the invitation. The habits of a lifetime, the traditions of kith and kin and all the country-side, constrained him. He did not credit for an instant the sincerity of Baintree’s demand, but none could ask bread or shelter of him in vain. It was the first time that the unruly and absolute temper had been thus helplessly in the control of circumstances, and he was irked by a sense of feigning, as he turned about and threw a pile of pine knots on the fire,—for had he care for his guest’s cheer or warmth?

Baintree had possessed himself of a corn-dodger, and as he sat down before the fire, the rain still trickling from his garments, Jepson read in his thin, clear-cut face, the elation because of the success of his clever ruse. He had not come with the intention to ask for bread,—his manner at first had betokened a far more formidable errand; and as he sat there munching, with a mimetic show of hunger, Jepson was moved to marvel anew what had brought him into the house of a man whom he held his enemy, and who certainly was no friend.

“The fodder gins out wunst in a while up on the mounting,” Baintree observed presently, the whiskey that he had drunk imparting to him, despite his reticent habit, its characteristic loquacious glow. He cast a glance of thinly veiled antagonism upon his entertainer. Then he said, with a low chuckle of derision, in which he would hardly have ventured to indulge at a calmer moment, “I s’pose things never git ter sech a pass ez that in this house. Ye mus’ hev a bar’l o’ meal constant ez never gits empty, no matter how high ye feed, an’ a can o’ coal-ile ez hain’t got no bottom ez ye kin reach. Surely the Lord faviors a man ez views sech visions o’ yourn ez much ez he done ’Lijah.” He hesitated for a moment, staring with bloodshot eyes into the fire, then snapped his fingers. “’Twarn’t ’Lijah!” he exclaimed, with an air of discovery,—“’twarn’t ’Lijah! ’Twar the widder woman ez hed that mighty desirable brand o’ meal an’ ile. Now, Teck,” with mock persuasiveness, “ye ain’t goin’ ter tell me that, survigrous ez ye be, plumb captain o’ all Brumsaidge Cove, ye hev let that thar widder woman git ahead o’ ye? Whar’s yer everlastin’ meal an yer eternal coal-ile?”

He turned about, and affected to anxiously survey the culinary stores, scanty enough, arrayed on a hanging shelf suspended from the rafters, and, thus isolated, protected from the rats and the mice.

He enjoyed the immunity from retort or retaliation which men accord to the drunken, and which is incomprehensible to the more intolerant temperament of women. Jepson steadfastly regarded him in silence, and as Baintree turned again to the fire he seemed, in shifting his position, to have forgotten his jeer and the prospective joy with which he had thought to pursue it. A realization of the situation came upon him anew, and he made haste to gnaw at his corn-dodger with an affectation of great hunger.

“I’m mighty glad ter git it,” he mumbled.

Jepson had resumed his seat, and, with the white glow of the blazing pine knots irradiating his serious face, he demanded, “Whar’s the man ez war bidin’ with ye? That corn-dodger ez ye air eatin’ ain’t goin’ ter holp him.”

“He’ll make out. He ain’t one o’ the lackin’ kind,” Baintree responded cavalierly.

The heat of the fire perhaps aided the heady effect of his potations, for he was presently more definitely intoxicated than before. Few people had ever seen him thus affected; for though he drank deeply at times, the quantity that would set another man reeling hardly disturbed his equilibrium. The fiery courage distilled from the corn was in his veins now, and showed with a sturdy bravado.

“I’m leavin’ the kentry, Teck,” he exclaimed suddenly. “I’m leavin’ this hyar twisted an’ turmoiled e-end o’ the world ye call the mountings. I hope never ter see a mound o’ groun’ agin higher ’n this hat. I fund out what pore shakes the mountings air jes’ through goin ter—ter”—his voice faltered; his eyes were fixed intently on the empty space before them, as if he beheld something there invisible to others; he made a détour around the word “jail,” and went on with an air of triumphant inspiration in this obvious device—“through _visitin’_ a sure-enough town. An’ I never want ter see a mound o’ groun’ more ’n two inches high agin—’thout it air yer grave.”

He paused abruptly, turning his bloodshot eyes instantly upon Jepson to observe the effect of his words.

The acrid tone, the bitter hatred in his face, made a strong impression upon the man who had inspired them, now that he was constrained to be still and observe the demonstrations, which, for sheer humanity’s sake, he could not resent. He looked down meditatively into the fire. It was odd to him to think of his grave,—some scant measure of earth surely waiting for him somewhere, on which the weeds had grown apace this summer, and even now the autumn rains beat unrelenting, as the herbage would thrive and the torrents fall when he should lie unheeding below,—strange to think of these things, with the robust pulses a-throb in his blood.

“When ye see it,” he said, with the steady courage and calm strength which seemed to him, half consciously measuring their power, an expression of piety and spiritual grace and Christian resignation, “ef ever ye do, remember the man it kivers war mighty willin’ ter lie down thar whenst summoned.”

Baintree winced. Even when intoxicated he had not the faith in himself to vie with this hardihood. He resorted to recrimination, for still the whiskey made him bold.

“Ye ain’t goin’ ter be so powerful comfortable thar. Ye ain’t goin’ ter rest so easy in yer grave. The devil ain’t goin’ ter let ye alone. Ye’ll hev ter answer in the nex’ worl’ fur all ye hev done ter me in this. Ye’ll answer,—ye mark my words.”

Tears of maudlin grief stood in his eyes. Despite their source, Jepson melted to them in some sort.

“I’m willin’. I hain’t shirked none in this worl’. I reckon I ain’t goin’ ter ketch the complaint of shirkin’ in the nex’. I’ll answer. What ye want me ter answer fur?”

“Fur my soul,” said Baintree solemnly. “I’d hev saved my soul alive ef—ef ye hedn’t kem a-interferin’ ’twixt me an’ pa’son, and kep’ me from washin’ my sins away.”

Jepson seemed to take meditative account of the charge.

“I done accordin’ ter my conscience, ez the voice o’ the Lord ’peared ter lead. Ye hed no right in the fold, an’ arter I fund Sam’l Keale’s hat an’ coat I could not hold my peace. Jestice hed overlooked ye, but I spoke the word; not in malice, ef I know myse’f,—not in malice. But ef I hev done wrong,” he went on, knitting his brows and gazing into the fire, his arms folded across his breast, “I pray the Lord will visit it on me. I pray he’ll do sech unto me, an’ mo’.”

Baintree was stricken mute for a moment, vaguely impressed by his companion’s look and manner. Then his attention was concentrated anew upon his own grievance.

“That ain’t goin’ ter do _me_ no good”—he began.

“An’ no harm,” said Jepson. “Nuthin’ kin hurt ye ’ceptin’ what ye do yerse’f.”

Baintree looked with dark suspicion over his shoulder.

“What ails ye ter say that?” he demanded surlily.

Jepson did not reply directly.

“Ef a man air persecuted, an’ air innercent o’ crime, his persecutors air jes’ harryin’ tharselves ter hell. An’ that’s the long an’ the short o’ it. Ef ye hev done no crime, sech steps ez I tuk agin ye hev hurt me, not you-uns, an’ I’ll hev ter take ’em back’ards in hell.”

There was no arguing with a faith so very complete, so strongly grounded, as this.

Baintree said nothing for a time. Then he suddenly broke out as if the words were wrenched from him by some physical anguish which he could not resist:—

“I never hed no han’ in Keale’s takin’-off, but I mought ez well,—oh, my Lord, I mought ez well!”

He clasped his hands and wrung them hard, the poor subterfuge of the corn-dodger falling unheeded on the floor.

The shrill tones did not rouse the plump Bob, still asleep in the chair at one side of the fire, but he was vaguely conscious of them, and stirred uneasily, and again relapsed into motionless slumber.

“Look hyar!” exclaimed Jepson, agitated and excited. “Don’t kem hyar an’ tell me yer crimes over my own h’a’th-stone an’ a-eatin’ of my bread, fur I’ll use ’em agin ye. I’ll turn the sword on ye. I ain’t yer frien’, man. I never war.”

“Ye war the t’other night at the forge.” Baintree had hastily recovered himself. He spoke in his natural voice, a trifle more unctuous, perhaps, with its coaxing intonation. He even stooped down and picked up the bit of bread, carefully dusting the ashes from it as he turned it from side to side. “Ye war the t’other night, whenst—whenst my partner seen ye at the forge. Ye kep’ them men off’n us.”

“An’ ye ’low I done sech ez that fur you-uns, or him either, ye fool?” Jepson had risen. He had thrust his hand into his leather belt and was looking down upon Baintree with scornful irritation. “I done it fur right an’ jestice! I see no harm in yer sarchin’ fur silver; an’ though ’twarn’t right ter work on the sly in the forge, it air a leetle matter, not wuth harmin’ a man for. ’Twar kase I fund no harm—no harm, ’cordin’ ter my light—in them actions. These Brumsaidge critters”—he broke off abruptly, addressing himself instead of Baintree, and speaking of Broomsedge as if he had a wide experience of men and life elsewhere, when he knew scarcely any creature beyond its limits—“these Brumsaidge critters can’t sense right an’ jestice, nor nuthin’ done fur jestice’s sake. That’s jes’ what them men at the barn ’lowed,—_frien’s ter the two, the stranger an’ Baintree_! But I tell ye,”—he turned suddenly upon the man sitting by the hearth,—“I ain’t yer frien’, nor,” he added, with stronger emphasis, “_his_ frien’, nuther.”

Baintree’s face had lightened; his eyes glittered. It was a forlorn thing that a man should have cause to rejoice at his enemy’s misfortune in being suspected of becoming his friend.

Jepson had not resumed his chair. He still stood on the hearth, one hand in his leather belt, which supported his hunting-knife, of which he had not yet divested himself, the other on the high mantel-piece. He looked down with scowling impatience at Baintree, evidently eager to be rid of him, and presently he addressed himself to accomplish this end without too flagrant a breach of the hospitality which he held dear.

He had offered him something else to eat, and when this had been declined he demanded suddenly, “What ailed ye, ter kem hyar this evenin’? Ye know ye warn’t in no wise hongry.”

“I war drunk. That air the only reason I know,” said Baintree gloomily. He was becoming in some sort sober now, and was strangely quiet, with a deep despondency of manner.

“Air ye leavin’ the kentry fur true?” queried Jepson.

Baintree looked up craftily.

“Naw!” he exclaimed contemptuously, as if the suggestion had been broached by another than himself. “Whar would I go—an’ who would I go to—an’ what would I do thar? Naw! I’m goin’ ter stay hyar ter be treated like a dog, ez I always war. I hed a man ter kem nigh chokin’ me, not long ago”—he bared his throat to show his bruises—“look-a-hyar,—an’ he’d hev ’lowed ez I war crazy ef _I_ hed lifted a hand agin _him_.”

Jepson was silent, still meditating the feasibility of ridding himself of his unwelcome guest without violence to the canons of hospitality.

He had hardly noticed when the rain ceased its tumultuous beat on the roof; a fresh relay of winds was speeding down and down the valley; he heard, but absently, the snorting and champing of these aerial chargers as they swept by at a tremendous pace; the clouds were fain to race with them, for presently he saw upon the wet floor of the room, where the rain had splashed in under the door, the reflection of the yellow glare of the unveiled sky throwing its light upon the brown walls, and, albeit faintly, even to the dusky rafters. Jepson strode to the door and flung it open. As he stood with his back toward Baintree, he had one of those sudden premonitions, so conclusive, yet so illogical, that fall upon us sometimes with the cogent force of truth and an unaccountable extension of merely human mental vision. He turned abruptly and saw its confirmation in the lowering look of hatred that Baintree had bent upon him. As if in some sort conscious of self-betrayal, Baintree rose with a casual air and an incidental, empty glance, and followed to the door, where he lounged upon the porch, his hands in his pockets, aimlessly surveying the landscape. Yet Jepson knew now, as well as if Baintree had confessed it, that he had come there, with the courage of the “corn-juice” inflaming his blood, with some wild drunken scheme of violence and vengeance, which the presence or the words of his intended victim had somehow cowed and crushed. They were silent as they contemplated the great flaring west, all a splendid burnished golden glow, above the darkly purple mountain opposite, its summit imposed with a definite detail, in which every tufted, plumy pine top was distinct, upon the vivid yellow emblazonment. About the slopes white mists were slowly creeping, and down in the chasm the waters of the river, with all the graces of reflection, ran in molten golden currents. Clouds were yet in the sky, but now and again the colors of the iris flashed out, with a swift elasticity as of a bow that is bent, and hovered above the valleys. The drops still fell slowly from the eaves of the house, and the flooring of the porch was sodden and sleek with the rain; in the hollow of a warped plank the water stood still as in a bowl, reflecting the clapboards above, and an empty nest in a niche between the roof and the post of the porch. All the colors of wood and hill were clarified and heightened; the sere grasses, beaten down though they were, wore their brown and straw and amber tints more jauntily; the boles of the trees were black, and somehow the distances seemed clear and brought near. Jepson had not thought he could have seen so definitely, so far away, the figure of a man slowly strolling along the red clay road,—of a richer and deeper color it was, sodden with the rain. The presence of the figure intimated that the storm had subsided less recently than he had thought; the weight of the down-pour had beaten the ground hard, and had added but little to the mud here and there in deep, tough masses in the centre of the road.

He made no move to turn back into the house, yet Baintree lingered, as if his mission were but half accomplished. It is difficult to conceive of a more indelible expression of gloom than had fixed upon his face. It indicated a misery and hopelessness past all human help, past all human endurance. Jepson spoke suddenly upon an impulse which he hardly understood.

“Enny time ye feel ez ef the devil war arter ye, Jake, ef ye’ll kem hyar ter me, I’ll holp stave him off,” he said. He hesitated for a moment, for Baintree’s bright, rat-like, furtive eye was glancing up at him, informed by a spirit so alien to that which animated his words that it almost silenced them. “I hev been agin ye,” he went on presently; “ye know I hev. I always b’lieved mos’ faithful ez ye killed Sam’l Keale. But the jury say ye didn’t, an’ the kentry hev abided by the verdic’. An’ ef ye order yer walk aright an’ do no mo’ harm, I’ll stan’ by ye an’ won’t see ye persecuted,—though I ain’t yer frien’, an’ I never will be.”

Baintree’s expression had shifted more than once during this speech: it had softened, had become wistful, pathetic, but it hardened suddenly, as the last words fell on the air.

“An’ who air ter be the jedge o’ what’s harm, an’ what ain’t?” he asked with a sneer.

“I am,” said Jepson, with his unswerving faith in his own methods. “I dunno no way ter jedge o’ right an’ wrong ’cept by the light ez kems from within.”

“An’ ye air the only one it’s shed on, eh?” demanded Baintree, still bitterly sneering.

“Ye hev got good reason ter think so. The light lately shed on other folks, ’bout’n you-uns an’ yer pardner, would be a mighty scorchin’ light, sartain,” Jepson retorted significantly.

Baintree understood him to allude to the wrangling differences with the vigilantes in the barn. A prudential after-thought roused his suavity.

“Waal,” he observed, after a pause, “I never ’lowed ye war my frien’. I’ll say one thing fur ye,—thar ain’t no room fur mistakes ez ter whar ye stand. But I be toler’ble glad ez ye hev a mind ter keep them painters an’ wild wolves off’n my track. Will ye gimme yer han’ on it?”

He held out his own, bent on confirming the promise, as far as he might.

Once more a pang of pity stirred Jepson’s heart, albeit he looked down with a certain repulsion upon the long, trembling fingers awaiting his own. “’Cordin’ ter the conditions,—ef ye do no mo’ harm in my jedgmint.” And his strong, warm clasp closed upon Baintree’s cold, nerveless hand for an instant, in sanction of the promise.

The touch of that cold, nerveless hand remained strangely within Jepson’s palm after the two had separated, for Baintree’s perverse reluctance to be off had evaporated, somehow, in the open air, and he slouched out of the inclosure, taking his way, strangely enough, Jepson thought, down to the banks of the river, instead of up the mountain to his lair there, which he could hardly hope to reach, as it was, before the night should enfold him. Jepson stood aimlessly watching him, feeling the touch of his hand still cold and clammy within his own. Even after the rock and the laurel of the steep slope had interposed, and he saw him no more, he still motionlessly gazed at the spot where he had disappeared, a sense of discontent with himself to which he was a stranger, an irritated, angry regret for he hardly knew what in the interview, pervading all his consciousness.

“I lack the sperit,” he said suddenly. “I need ter be made strong. I gits sorry fur that wuthless trash, ez be held tergether ter look like a man, a-purpose, I reckon, for the devil ter beguile me. I gits ter feelin’ sorry an’ pitiful ter him. An’ I knowed that man would hev stabbed me ef he could ’thout harmin’ hisse’f,—I knowed it whenst I turned my back,—an’ stidder speakin’ out what war revealed ter me, an’ taxin him with the crime he would hev done, I gin him bread, an’ promised ter purtec’ him, an’ shuk han’s on it, ef he would walk right afore the law hyar-after. What ails _me_ ter keer? I need strengthening,—strengthenin’ from above.”

Despite his absorption he was moved to note, presently, with a pervasive sense of pleasure, how fresh, how soft, the air was. As he looked about, he noticed again the man whom he had observed some time ago walking along the red clay road. A slow pedestrian, certainly; it was almost inconceivable that he had been walking at all, since his progress had carried him so short a distance. Jepson gazed at him with curiosity. He might have recognized him, the light was so clear, had not the man at that moment drawn his broad hat far down over his brow, and then he turned about and began to retrace his way.

Before he was out of sight the incident had passed from Jepson’s mind. The freshness of the air was alluring, revivifying. He hesitated as he glanced over his shoulder at the recumbent Bob, asleep in the chair before the smouldering fire; then, without his hat, he strolled down the path, leaving the door open behind him.

He paused in the weed-tangled garden, with its bent and beaten growths forlorn for the desertion of the summer, the sport of the ruder season, and, standing with his elbow on the topmost rail of the fence, looked meditatively at the golden glamours of the rock-bound river. He had not intended to go farther, and presently he turned; he came to a sudden halt, and gazed with keen, narrowing eyes up the slope of the hill.

The man whom he had seen walking along the red clay road was long ago gone,—a tall man and slight, as he remembered the figure, all unlike the one whom he now saw threading his way slowly among the bowlders on the steep incline above the cabin. As the pedestrian emerged presently upon a comparatively open space, Jepson noted a certain burly dignity in his carriage, which even at the distance served to identify him.

Jepson started forward; then paused. He had not spoken to Eli Strobe since the day of the election, when they had conferred together in the interests of the constable’s candidacy, and his heart had beat with an intense partisan anxiety for Marcella’s sake. He began to appreciate definitely how much he had felt since then of love, and hope, and despair; how hard they had all gone with him. He was ill-suited to relinquishment. His domineering, intolerant spirit had been scantily acquainted with denial. “I’m goin’ ter die powerful hard,” he said in gloomy forecast. It seemed to him that he had felt already prescient pangs. As his eyes followed Strobe’s progress, he protested inwardly against a sort of humiliation to realize that he scarcely cared to accost him, and hear from him the reproaches so cruel on his daughter’s lips. Jepson had not a keen self-discernment, but he knew his imperious entity too well to believe himself capable of receiving these bitter words from others with a like patience and acquiescence. That the injury to Eli Strobe was an accident, through no fault of his, was instantly formulated in his consciousness with the vividness of a retort, as he forecast the constable’s upbraidings. Still he hesitated. Suddenly, with a new thought, he started up the slope. He had hardly credited hitherto the report of Eli Strobe’s insanity, and he knew nothing of the character of his delusion. Could it be that some fantastic vagary was luring him on amidst the bowlders, and the crags, and the mists of the dusk? Jepson had it in his mind to do a service. He suspected that Strobe had escaped from the careful guards of the fireside circle. As he approached, climbing among the crags, he wondered that he had not yet been observed, yet he forbore to hail his old friend. With the knowledge of the failure of his mental faculties was the vague, unreasoning impression of the impairment of the senses. He felt as if Eli Strobe might not hear his ringing halloo.

Thus it was that, as the earth grew darker and yet more shadowy, though still the sky flared above, albeit dulling from its burning golden hue to a deep copper tint with horizontal bars of red, while the river ran blood, Eli Strobe, turning a curve in the road about the base of a cliff, came abruptly upon Jepson standing in an open space, motionless, expectant, silent, bareheaded. The lurid flare of the skies flung its unnatural light upon Jepson’s face. He winced as he had never thought to do, for the doughty constable turned suddenly half round, and held up a quivering arm before his eyes, as if to shut out the sight or to ward off a blow.

Jepson spoke instantly, hurt and angry:—

“Ye hev got no call ter treat me that-a-way, Eli. Ye hev never hed no call ter be afeard o’ me.”

The constable had forgotten his threat of serving papers on “a harnt.” He trembled violently. He could hardly stand. He tottered to a bowlder near by, and sat down. As he hesitatingly looked up at Jepson and cast his eyes down once more, there was visible in his expression a surprise that his old friend should still be standing there.

“I hev always wished ye well,” Jepson declared, with a swelling heart.

“Thanky, sir, thanky kindly,” said Eli Strobe, with a faltering tongue and uncharacteristic humility.

Jepson detected something in the tone which he did not understand. He cast a sharp glance at his interlocutor as he demanded, “Don’t ye know me?” fearing that Strobe’s mental derangement included a failure of recognition of familiar things and faces.

“Oh, mighty well, mighty well indeed,” the constable hastened to assure him.

There was a momentary silence. Jepson hardly comprehended the restraint which irked him. Whatever of pain he had anticipated in the interview, he had never expected aught like this. He noticed that Strobe more than once cast his eyes down the long winding curves of the red clay road, stretching so far under the metallic lustre of that darkly yellow sky. The constable was, however, too heavy a man to attempt flight, too far spent by the agitation that rent his breath and heaved in his broad chest. His judgment was still very excellent, and he adjusted himself anew on the bowlder.

“Ef I ain’t wanted,” said Jepson, with a flare of his wonted arrogant spirit, “say the word, an’ I’ll make myse’f sca’ce. I jes’ ’lowed, though, ez mebbe ye mought hev a mind fur a few words, bein’ ez ye an’ me war always frien’ly tergether. But I ain’t one ter want ter bide whar I hev no place.”

Eli Strobe’s face could hardly have expressed more definitely than it did his relief at this intimation that the termination of the interview was subject to his wishes. He was, however, bent on insuring this if civility might suffice. In all his political experience he had never shown more suavity than now, when he said, with tremulous haste,—

“I’m obligated by yer comp’ny, sir.” Then he added, in a more natural tone, “I hev been wonderin’ a heap ’bout’n ye lately,—I hev been studyin’ ’bout’n ye mighty nigh all the time.”

“Nobody hev tole me that,” said Jepson, wondering to find him so friendly, and still struggling with that vague, undiscriminated restraint that hampered the conversation.

“I reckon nobody else hev viewed ye,” Eli Strobe said quickly, not without a certain anxiety. Ambition was an elastic passion in his breast. He was already piquing himself upon his unique opportunity, forgetting Rathburn’s experience.

Jepson keenly felt the obvious fact that Marcella never mentioned him at home. But it was only another pang, and he said doggedly to himself that he knew so many pangs, another might hardly matter. He did not answer directly. He said presently,—

“What war ye a-wonderin’ ’bout?”

“Ef—ef”—said Eli Strobe, a keen curiosity glancing out from under the brim of his hat, contending with a fear of giving offense—“ef ye ever ’sociate now with them folks ye useter be so tuk up with, G’liath, an’ David, an’ Sol’mon, an’ them.”

Jepson hesitated.

“I wouldn’t call it ’sociatin’”—he paused—“not edzac’ly.”

“They be sorter stuck up, eh?” said Eli Strobe, with a grin of relish. “I never did b’lieve ez worldly pride dies out ’fore ye git ter the nex’ worl’. It’s the main part o’ some folks. It’s all the soul they hev got, thar pride,—the rest is body.”

Jepson, dazed somewhat by the queer turn the conversation had taken, stood silent, till he was suddenly interrogated anew.

“Do ye set ez much store on Sol’mon ez ye useter?”

“I hev hed no call ter change my mind,” Jepson replied wonderingly, for the eagerness of Strobe’s interest in gossiping of these antique worthies was very fresh and immediate.

“Smart man?” Strobe nodded his own head as he asked the question, willing to be convinced.

“That ain’t the word fur it,” said Jepson, the fascination of the subject reasserting itself even in this stress of anxiety, “I hev been studyin’ a heap lately ’bout the house he built”—

“Thar, now, what did I tell ye ’bout pride?” Eli Strobe broke in. “I’ll be bound Sol’mon kerried the mem’ry o’ that thar house o’ his’n plumb ter the house not built with hands; an’ he ain’t the fust ez clings ter worldly deeds, an’ I’ll be bound he won’t be the las’.” He paused, with a sudden look of consciousness on his face. The parallel was too patent to escape the notice of so clever a man, ignorant though he was. He was realizing that the important pride incident to the office of constable of Broomsedge Cove was hardly meet equipment to bear to the golden shores. But he was sturdily hopeful. “I’ll cure myself o’ that ’fore I land on the further side o’ Jordan,” he muttered to himself with a chuckle, for the humorous suggestions of the prospect did not altogether escape him. “I ain’t goin’ ter cut no comical figger ’mongst the saints through pride o’ bein’ constable o’ Brumsaidge. Naw, sir! Pa’son an’ me hev got ter winnow me o’ that sure.”

The parson might have esteemed it a more difficult task, but Eli Strobe, with a cheerfulness predicated on the possibility of securing a spiritual mind in good season for spiritual needs, began to expand into more personal curiosity; for Goliath and Solomon were, after all, far-away subjects to his contemplation. Politics, perhaps, had rendered him suspicious, and he had become inured to doubting on principle a man’s claims for himself. He cast his old distrustful sidelong glance at Jepson, freighted with a wish to say more than he dared,—to elicit protestations by insinuating that his friend had not been so placed in the other world as to know whether Solomon was as “smart” as he had been proclaimed to be, or to associate with the best of the Biblical worthies.

“Do ye like yer new abidin’ place ez well ez yer old?” Strobe demanded.

“A hundred times better,” declared Jepson. “I ’lowed at fust I couldn’t bide thar”—Strobe pricked up his gossip-loving ears—“through so many old thoughts o’ old times. But I be useter ’em agin now, an’ they don’t hender me none.”

Again there was silence. A star was shining in the yellow west beside a flake of purple cloud. Mists shivered about the crags. High amongst them a screech-owl shrilled.

“I wisht ye’d kem an’ spen’ the night”—Jepson began; he paused abruptly, for Eli Strobe had sprung to his feet, with a white face, in which fear and resolution were oddly blended; he was wrestling with a frightful old superstition of the lures of a ghost to lead to hell; if he should follow the spectre for a step, he fancied himself lost—“or,” added Jepson, “bide ter supper.”

“Naw, naw!” Eli Strobe declined promptly. Then remembering his sedulous civility, he continued: “They’ll be waitin’ fur me at home,—an’ mam an’ Marcelly air powerful partic’lar. I’ll meet up with ye agin somewhar, I reckon. Good-night.”

Jepson stood in puzzled doubt, as the constable took his way with athletic swiftness down the homeward path. More than once Strobe looked backward, to see the motionless figure standing bareheaded amongst the crags and the shifting mists, and turned instantly and walked on more swiftly than before.

He was out of breath, and pale and chilly, when he reached home. Marcella and Isabel were awaiting him in the passage between the two rooms, and while the younger daughter ran in to announce his return to Mrs. Strobe, Marcella came down the steps to meet him.

“Whar hev ye been, dad, so late?” she asked.

“Marcelly,” he said in a mysterious, low tone, as they stood together on the porch, beneath the skeleton vines that flapped drearily in the wind, “I dunno what got inter me this evenin’. I tuk ter misdoubtin’ ef—ef Teck Jepson ever war kilt”—her heart gave a great joyous bound—“ef he ever war dead. An’ I started out ter go ter that leetle graveyard o’ his folks whar ye tole me he war buried,”—she convulsively clutched his arm,—“ter see fur myse’f ef thar war enny new grave thar.”

“An’—an’—what did ye find?” she cried, elated.

He stared down at her in the closing dusk, bewildered by her voice and manner. His tones were more huskily mysterious still. “I never got thar—fur I met his harnt”—She gave a sharp exclamation, and then caught one hand to her lips, as if to restrain the scream that might otherwise escape.

“Tell on,” she said.

“Waal, I hed some words with the harnt; an’ ’twar comical how much ’twar like Teck, a-settin’ up ter ’sociate with Sol’mon an’ them, whenst from some words he let drap I know he war in the t’other place. I know Teck. He could hev been mighty interestin’ this evenin’, ef he would. He tried ter git me ter foller him, but I war too smart fur him,—tellin’ me how proud Sol’mon air o’ the house he built.”

“Dad,” the girl gasped, mindful of the impending inquisition of lunacy, “I ain’t axed ye fur nuthin’ fur a good while. Promise me one thing.”

“Waal, Marcelly?” he replied expectantly, but cautious.

“Promise me ye won’t tell nobody ’bout yer seein’ the harnt.”

His countenance fell. It was a sensation to retail, to make him the joyful cynosure of all the gossips, when he should be once more able to join his cronies at the forge or the store. But her pleading eyes were on his face; his paternal heart stirred, and his affection could compass even such self-denial.

“Waal, Marcelly, I promise—though”—

She would not wait for argument. “An’, dad, ef ennybody axes ye how ye know Teck Jepson air dead, say yer darter Marcelly tole ye whar he war buried.”

“Yes,” he interrupted, with his burly bass chuckle, “an’ I’ll say I ’lowed they wouldn’t hev buried him ’thout he war dead.”

The white light of the newly kindled tallow dip within the room streamed out amongst the dusky brown shadows, and he went cheerfully in to his supper.