IV.

The day proved of variable mood. The mists clung sullenly to slope and ravine for a time; the clouds hung low, full of menace; even a muttering of thunder afar off now and again stirred their dense gray masses. The veiled mountains were withdrawn into invisibility. Below, the earth lay as if it consisted only of dull levels, limited, silent, comatose, for the dank, drowsy influence pervaded all energies alike of the animate and the inanimate; there was no sound of beast or bird, no stir of wind or rustle of leaf, and a lethargy dulled pulse and muscle and brain.

The sunburst came with the effect of revelation. A vague tremor pervaded the tissues of the gray mists, and all at once a great white glory was on the green mountain sides. The vast spaces to the blue zenith were filled with radiant flying fleecy forms as the transfigured vapor took wing. Far in the south the gray cloudage still held its consistency, and trembled with thunder and sudden elusive palpitating veins of yellow lightning. But the lithe arc of a rainbow presently sprang athwart it, and the wind came gayly piping down the gorge. In the actual perceptible jubilance of the earth, it might seem that the miracles of the goodness and the gladness of the sun were no common thing. There was a visible joy among the leaves as they fluttered together, and lifted up their dank fibres, and lustrously reflected the pervasive sheen, and tremulously murmured and chanted in elfin wise beneath the breath. How was it that the plaining river should suddenly find its melodies again as if light and song were interdependent? A tumultuous, rollicking stave it flung upon the air; and so, faster to the valley! The benignant revivification was on the very flocks; the dull, submissive sheep, huddled drowsily together in the gray menace of the morning, were astir once more, and dispersed here and there as they browsed. Even Luther was singing in the barn as he mended his ploughgear. All day the swift upward flights of the sheeny white figures continued at intervals, and when Adelicia set forth to drive the cows home, in the afternoon, only the more radiant aspects of the world gave token of the storm of the night. She hardly left the print of her shoe in the wild woodland ways through which she wandered, so had the warmth and the light dried the dank herbage. She was out betimes. There was something in the long, meditative strolls that harmonized with certain moods, and Cap'n Lucy sometimes sourly commented, "Ad'licia gone ter fotch home the cows? Waal, who be a-goin' ter fotch home Ad'licia?"

It might be an hour before Spot would think of turning her crumpled horns homeward. The sun shone aslant through the vast forests, but still hung well up in the western sky. Through the deeper gloom amongst the gigantic trees the rays hardly penetrated. She stopped once to gaze from the midst of the dark green shade of the umbrageous tangle at the strange effects of the light where it fell into an open space cleared long ago by "girdling" the trees, which betokened collapsed agricultural intentions, for the ground had never been broken by the plough. The enormous dead trees were still standing, and time and rain and wind had worn them to a pallid whiteness. She could see the successive clusters of columns, one after another, rising in the sunlight, until the roofing foliage nearer at hand cut off the view. To Kenniston's cultured experience they were reminiscent of the colonnades of some great cathedral, when he had observed the place and the same effect. She had naught in mind to which she could compare them, but those white, silent, columnated aisles in the midst of the savage fastnesses of the great wilderness always impressed her with a certain solemnity as she passed, and she was wont to pause to gaze at the spot in awe and with a vague sinking of the heart; for, despite her optimism, Adelicia's heart was not always light. She was sensible of its weight this evening, as she wandered on, leaving the still, white sanctuary in the midst of the forest glooms. Her face was wistful and pale. Her dark gray lustrous eyes were dreamy. She walked slowly and aimlessly, her brown dress brushing the undergrowth aside with a gentle murmur, her yellow calico sunbonnet hanging on her shoulders and leaving her auburn head bare. Her errand was far from her mind. She did not even bethink herself to call the cow, until suddenly she noticed how high upon the great boles of the trees the slanting sunlight registered the waning of the day. Then, as she set the echoes vibrating with the long-drawn cry of "Soo, cow! soo!" she turned at right angles, following the trend of the mountain stream, invisible in the labyrinth of the woods, but not far distant she knew by the vague murmur of waters borne by the wind. She had looked for no other listener than the somewhat arbitrary Spot, who would heed or not as she listed, and who might now be standing knee-deep in the limpid ripples near at hand, hearkening, but making no response, intending to fare home at her own good pleasure. But the long, musical, mellow call, with its trailing echoes, attracted other and more receptive attention, and as Adelicia turned suddenly into a straighter section of the path she saw at the end of the vista, before it curved again, standing beneath a tree and with his face toward her, a man apparently listening and waiting for her.

He had dismounted from his horse, a light-tinted yellow roan, who stood as still as if he were of bronze, while his master leaned against the saddle, with his hand on the bridle. He held the other arm akimbo, with his hand on the belt which supported a knife and a pair of pistols. They were unconcealed by a coat; he wore a blue shirt and blue jeans trousers, with heavy boots drawn to the knees; and she recognized him rather by his accoutrements than his face, for his wide white wool hat was pulled far over it. From under the broad brim he gazed at her with sullen, lowering eyes.

"I hearn ye callin' the cow, an' I knowed yer voice," he said. "I been waitin' fur ye."

She faltered for a moment; then, with an evident effort, quickened her step and went forward to meet him. She apprehended the anger in his face, apparently, for there was a disarming, deprecating look in her clear dark eyes as she cast them up at him. Her yellow sunbonnet hardly served more for shelter than an aureola might have done,--a background for her auburn head; her dark brown dress and the green shadows of the trees added a pallor to her white oval face with its small delicate chin. He did not heed her appealing gaze. It was with a stern, hard voice that he spoke, and a fiery eye.

"I hev got a word ter say ter ye, Ad'licia," he began, walking slowly by her side and leading his horse, the reins thrown over his arm and his uplifted hand near the bit.

The animal's head was close above his shoulder, and as Adelicia met the creature's large-eyed and liquid gaze it seemed to her as if she were doubly arraigned before them both.

"Ye needn't ter try ter fool me," said Jack Espey between his teeth.

"I ain't tryin' ter fool ye," protested Adelicia.

He looked at her narrowly, taking note of her evident discomposure, and placing disastrous construction upon it.

"Ye 'low ye kin fool me 'thout tryin', I reckon," he said, with a sarcastic smile.

"I ain't a-foolin' ye," gasped Adelicia. "Ye know--why, _ye know_ I ain't!"

He hesitated, half constrained to believe her. He still gazed searchingly at her from under the broad brim of his hat. Her wild, agitated look made him doubtful.

"Now, ye jes' ondertake ter fool me," he continued, with an accession of angry jealousy, "an'"--he laid his hand on the pistol in his belt--"I'll ondertake ter shoot ye dead on the spot."

The color surged to her face. The tears rushed to her eyes. A sharp conflict waged in her heart for a moment, and then she walked on beside him, pale, composed, silent, as if she were alone in the depths of the primeval wilderness.

Only the sound of the stir of the saddle with the breathing of the horse as the animal tramped on behind them, their muffled footfalls barely perceptible on the thick herbage of the cattle path, the light whisper of the wind in the leaves, broke the pause, while Jack Espey's touch trembled on the handle of the pistol as he walked beside her.

Her calmness shook his own composure.

"Ad'licia!" he exclaimed petulantly, but with an evident softening of his fierce mood, "whyn't ye say suthin'? Whyn't ye say suthin' ter me?"

"I dunno what ter say," she responded coolly.

"Ye know what I want ter hear," he declared passionately.

"'Tain't no use ter say it agin." She turned upon him her eyes, soft and lustrous, like some brownish-greenish moss in the depths of a crystal spring. "I done said it an' said it."

His hand released the pistol, and pushed his hat far back on his dark hair with a hasty gesture of impatience. Then, with a sudden calmness, "Ad'licia, ye oughtn't ter git mad with me! Ye oughtn't ter git mad so dad-burned easy!"

"Mebbe I oughtn't," she said, with a note of sarcasm in her vibrant voice. Her eyes were bright, her cheek flushed.

"'Tain't right," he continued didactically. "'Tain't religious." He looked at her with grave, admonitory eyes.

"Mebbe 'tain't," she responded. She laughed a little, unmirthfully, and her lip quivered.

He strode on a few steps in silence, at a loss for words for explanation. He dreaded and deferred it, and yet he longed for its possible reassurance. As his thoughts canvassed its probabilities, he broke out tumultuously once more:--

"I hev got good reason ter b'lieve ye air foolin' me,--good reason, I tell ye, now, Ad'licia!"

"Good reason agin my word?" she demanded, her pride in her eyes.

He stared at her. "A gal's word!" he said lightly, and then he laughed. As a guaranty it struck him humorously. "I reckon thar ain't many men ez would be willin' ter stand or fall by sech."

"Ye set store by it wunst," she said humbly.

"'Twar when ye promised ter marry me," he declared precipitately, unconsciously showing that it was the prospect which he had valued without trusting the promise. "An' I want ye ter 'bide by it, too," he sternly added, suddenly perceiving that it was not policy to adduce too freely precedents as to the friability of feminine promises.

She shook her head, regardless of his keen, fiery eye. "I ain't goin' ter marry nobody, I reckon," she said slowly. "Ye'll shoot me dead fust, some day, in one o' yer tantrums."

"Ye ain't a-goin' ter marry 'Renzo Taft, an' that I tell ye, now. I'll shoot ye fust, sure!" he cried furiously, his eyes blazing upon her.

The look in her face checked his passionate rage. An utter wonderment, a deep bewilderment, overspread it as she echoed, "_'Renzo Taft!_ The man over yander at Lost Time mine? War ye a-talkin' 'bout _him_?"

He controlled himself instantly, although his eyes were all ashine and alertly restless.

"Who war you-uns a-thinkin' 'bout, Ad'licia?" he asked gently and incidentally.

"Jasper Larrabee, o' course," she answered innocently.

He could only grind a curse between his teeth, and then he was speechless for a moment.

"I dunno nare nuther good-lookin' young man in the Cove," continued Adelicia, girlishly talking on, oblivious of the significance of her disclosures. "Though I b'lieve Jasper ain't studyin' 'bout sech ez marryin'. He jes' kems thar toler'ble frequent ter read out'n his book ter uncle Lucy. He kin read powerful well. Uncle Lucy 'lows he senses the Gorspel better from Jasper's readin' 'n the rider's, 'kase whenst he don't onderstan' he kin make Jasper stop an' spell it out an' read it over. An' sometimes"--she broke into a little dimpling laugh--"whenst the Gorspel goes agin uncle Lucy's policy an' practice, he makes Jasper spell an' _spell_, an' yit them times he can't spell it out to suit uncle Lucy. But it's plumb heartsome ter hear Jasper read of a stormy night," she added, recalling the one spiritual pleasure of her stunted, starveling spiritual life.

As she glanced at his face, there was something so gruesome, so strange, in its expression that she was fain to remonstrate. "Ye 'pear powerful techy, Jack," she said. "Ez ter 'Renzo Taft, it's jes' old uncle Lucy's foolishness; an' I wish he 'd quit it, too! Though 'tain't no harm, nuther. Uncle Lucy jes' makes out ez 'Renzo Taft air arter me or Julia fur a step-mammy fur his leetle gal, an' it tickles him ter talk 'bout'n it,--it's so foolish! Why, Jack, 'Renzo Taft is old enough purty nigh ter be _my_ dad; an'--he ain't ugly, edzac'ly--but, but--nowise desirable. Uncle Lucy air always peckin' at me fur puttin' myself out ter obligate other folks, but I ain't so powerful meek-tempered ez ter marry 'Renzo Taft ter be a step-mammy. Though he ain't axed me, nor nobody else ez I knows on. An' I ain't got nuthin' agin him."

He walked on beside her, hardly listening, and scarcely caring what she said or thought of Taft. For him, at the moment, Jasper Larrabee, and his gift of reading the Scriptures and interpreting them to Cap'n Lucy's satisfaction and her humble and incidental pleasure, filled all the horizon. His jealousy had taken a new lease on life with this more promising object, and with the surer foundation of what she said of Larrabee rather than of what Taft said of her. He hardly heeded her presence as he sought to gather together his faculties. He did not even feel the clumsy caress of the horse now and again rubbing his head against his master's shoulder, as he minced along behind him, accommodating his long stride to the shorter compass of the human step. The young man's eyes were hot; they seemed to burn the dry lids, as he gazed down through the cool leafy vistas of the forest; but his voice was calm enough when he suddenly said to her:--

"Ad'licia, ef ye keered ennything 'bout me wuth talkin' 'bout, ye'd marry me now."

The placidity which her face had resumed as she had talked disappeared abruptly. She was once more anxious, disquieted, on the brink of tears.

"Ye know, Jack," she expostulated, "I can't marry agin uncle Lucy's word."

"Ye would ef ye keered a straw, a bare straw."

"Uncle Lucy jes' say, 'Wait awhile.' It's jes' 'awhile,' else I would go agin his cornsent."

"Ye don't keer," he reiterated dolorously, for her protest was welcome to him.

"Uncle Lucy jes' say," she went on very fast, "jes' wait till that man ez you-uns shot in Tanglefoot Cove gits well. He'll git well, I reckon. Ye said he war powerful hearty an' big. Uncle Lucy say he ain't goin' ter lemme marry a man ez mought be tried fur his life, ef he kin holp it."

"Ef ye keered fur me, ye wouldn't gin _that_ fur Cap'n Lucy's word!" he asseverated, as he lifted his arm high in the air and snapped his fingers resonantly.

The horse shied suddenly at the sound, and pulled heavily on the hand that held the bit.

Her eyes were full of tears.

"Jack," she said in deep humiliation, "I can't 'low at this time o' day ez I don't keer fur uncle Lucy's word. I never eat none o' my own bread in my life."

She knew that he had turned and was staring at her, although she could not distinguish him through her tears. If she had never loved him, her heart might have warmed to him now, for the vehemence, the partisanship, with which he protested her independence.

"Eat yer own bread!" he cried in a ringing voice that made her shrink. "Ye never eat nuthin' else! Who churns, an' sweeps, an' mends, an' cooks, an' milks cows, this many an' many a day? That thar dough-faced Julia?"

To his amazement she burst out laughing, but the next moment she was sobbing in good earnest, and he hardly knew whether she was glad or sorry.

He scarcely paused to wonder. He went tumultuously on to repudiate the obligations that so lowered her pride and her title to self-respect. "Who hoes, an' sews, an' weaves, an' spins, an' raises the chickens an' tur-rkeys an' sech, an' answers old Cap'n Lucy's call 'Ad'licia! Ad'licia!' all day long? That thar long, lank, limp Julia? Ef I war ter marry ye an' take ye away from thar, that house would fall down, I reckon, an' old Cap'n Lucy knows it."

His well-set bluish-gray eyes had brightened as he spoke; he smiled genially; his face was handsome and intelligent with this expression. The next moment it clouded heavily. He could not do this as almost any other man might,--marry a wife and take her home. He was a fugitive and an exile by reason of the jeopardy of the man whom he had shot in Tanglefoot Cove, and who still hung between life and death, his own fate involving that of his enemy. Jack Espey felt sure that he could have proven self-defense, had he permitted himself to be apprehended at the time. But from the circumstance of his hasty flight, uncertain what he had done and animated by ignorant terrors of the law, the lapse of time, the dispersion of witnesses, he feared to submit his action to a legal arbitrament now.

The suspense was in itself a terrible retribution, but it is safe to say that Espey had hardly appreciated its rigors till now, when it hampered his every prospect in life. He had been a man of some substance in his native place, according to the humble rating of the mountaineers, and the lowering of pride involved in his present situation was very bitter to him. He could not ask to be received under Cap'n Lucy's roof, and its hospitalities certainly would not be offered. He repented of his candor in making known his circumstances when he had "asked for" Adelicia, for in the probation on which he had been placed he recognized the crafty hope of her uncle that the affair would soon blow over. He felt it a poor reward for his frankness, and he determined that it should not go without requital in turn. "Jes' lemme fix up that cussed bother in Tanglefoot, an' durned ef Cap'n Lucy ever shell see Ad'licia's face agin!" he often said to himself.

Meanwhile he hung around as best he might, fraternizing secretly with the moonshiners; for here was the best opportunity of earning enough to provide for his simple wants, and to keep him out of the observation of the law, while awaiting the result in Tanglefoot, whence the news had lately become more hopeful.

He had fallen in with Jasper Larrabee at the blacksmith's shop at the cross-roads, where he had paused in his flight for his horse to be shod; the two had "struck up" a mutual liking, and Espey had come with Larrabee to the Cove, where he divided his time pretty equally between his new friend's home and the Lost Time mine. His frankness had not extended to these acquaintances, who knew no reason why he should shun observation except that which they shared with him concerning the still. His utility there and its financial advantages were ample to justify the continuation of his stay in the Cove; and thus, but for his own attack of conscientiousness in revealing his true circumstances to Adelicia and Cap'n Lucy, he might have seemed as advantageously placed as any of his compeers.

"Waal," said Adelicia, unaccountably brightened, "we-uns hev ter 'bide by uncle Lucy's word an' wait awhile, bein' ez he hev tuk keer o' me all my days, mighty nigh. An' ye better be toler'ble perlite ter Julia, too," she added, with a radiant smile. "Julia's cornsider'ble apt ter take notice o' slights."

He promised humbly, swallowing his pride with a mighty gulp; and as they came out from the woods into the more open spaces shelving to the great crags, they encountered Kenniston, a cigar in his mouth, a memorandum in his hand of the boundaries of his land, taken from the calls of his title-deed, a good-humored triumph on his face, and a gay, kind voice as he instantly recognized and greeted Adelicia.

He called her to come and observe the splendor of the view from a certain craggy point where there would be an observatory, and his enthusiasm was not dashed even when she gazed off wonderingly into space, seeing nothing to which she was unaccustomed, and evidently apprehending naught of what he said. He wondered a trifle, subacutely, how much the perception of beauty may be promoted by the sense of contrast. Since she knew no dull levels or discordant scenes, the sublime was merely the natural daily presentment of creation, no more a marvel than the rising of the sun, and thus she was bereft of its appreciation. He wondered, too, if the converse of the proposition were true,--if those to whom nature is expressed in a meadow, or a series of knobs, or a pond, can have no mental conception of the austere splendors of the craggy heights or the stupendous area of infinite detail spread before the eye within a wide horizon piled with mountains. He showed her, too, a small drawing of the projected hotel, which she held awry and almost reversed to gaze upon it. His good humor extended to her companion, whom he had never before seen. Although usually aloof and averse to strangers, Espey found the suave words a salve to his sore heart. He did not know how much less pleasant Kenniston could be when not pleased. Just now even this new acquaintance harmonized most aptly with his gracious mood. Artistically viewed, poor Espey might have graced the romantic stage, as he stood, in his dark blue shirt and trousers and great spurred boots, defined against the yellow-bronze horse which he held by the bit, his belt full of weapons, his broad white hat far back on his black hair, and his defiant face at once wild and eager and wistful. The man of the alert pencil was moved to wish that he had the art to do him justice.

Kenniston's kind and ingratiating manner as he explained his plans and expectations, which could not interest the mountaineer, who was as foreign to such considerations as deer or bear, secured nevertheless Espey's attention and respectful silence. He looked now and again with a sort of reluctant liking at Kenniston's face as he talked, regretting that, since he attached so much hope and consequence to the project, it would be necessary to burn the buildings down as fast as they were erected.

In the plenitude of his access of amiability, Kenniston lagged behind and let them stroll away homeward together,--as pretty a pair of rustic lovers, he thought, as one could wish to see.

The sun was well down; the sky was red; the evening star was in a saffron haze; the nearest mountains had turned a deep purple, with a vague, translucent, overlaying gray hue like the bloom on a ripe grape; the distant ranges had vanished in the mystery of night. It was not dark, but the flare of the fire within the door of Cap'n Lucy's cabin was visible as it rose and fell on the puncheon floor in transitory flickers. It was a poor place, but it was home, and to the exile it looked like paradise. Julia had come to the door, and stood there half in the soft outer light, and half in the firelight within. Schooled and docile, Espey remembered his monitor's bidding, and roused his unwilling, flagging energies and his tired, sad heart to evolve some pleasantry as he called out a greeting from the bars. She turned her sleek head and smiled at him. There had never been such eyes in the Cove, except perhaps those which Cap'n Lucy had opened there first some sixty years before, nor such long, dark, curling lashes. She might, however, have been no more comely, for all Jack Espey cared, than old "T'bithy," Adelicia's cat, who arched her plebeian scantily furred back in the door, and surveyed the landscape with her yellow eyes, and yawned from sheer mental vacuity. He got through the interview with what poor grace he could, and from a sense of duty; and as he was about to mount, he offered, unobserved by the others, to take Adelicia's hand. To his amazement, she looked him full in the face with hard, angry eyes, struck down his hand with a petulant gesture, passed him like a flash, and disappeared within the door.

Jack Espey, who had no more recognition of the aspect of jealousy than if he had never felt its power, could but mount and ride away in angry bewilderment; and Kenniston, hearing the furious speed of his horse's hoofs as he went headlong down the dark, rocky road, looked wonderingly after him.

"He'll break his neck, at that rate," he said.