III.

The lightning flashed; the thunder pealed. The blind man lifted his head, listening. He hesitated between his righteous scorn, his sense of injury, and the hospitality that was the instinct of his nature. He yielded at last, shamefacedly, as to a weakness.

“Waal, waal,” he said, in an off-hand cavalier fashion, “keep Jerry dry; he’s mighty val’y’ble. Good men air sca’ce, Jerry; take keer o’ yerse’f!”

He laughed sarcastically and resumed his chair. As he did so his booted knee struck against the little girl, still staring at him with eyes full of wonder.

“What’s this?” he cried sharply, his nerves jarring yet with the excitement. He had not before noticed her. “I can’t see!” with a shrill rising inflection, as if the affliction were newly realized.

A propitiatory smile broke upon her face.

“Jes’ Rosamondy.” Her voice vibrated through the room—the high quavering treble of childhood that might have been shrill were it not so sweet.

“Jerry’s leetle gal,” said aunt Jemima.

“Shucks!” he exclaimed, contemptuously, and turned aside.

“Set down, Rosamondy,” said aunt Jemima, assuming a grandmotherly authority. “Set down like a good leetle gal.”

But Rosamond was not amenable to bidding and paid no heed. She had risen from her chair and stood by the side of the blind artillery-man.

“Set down,” aunt Jemima admonished her again. “_He_ can’t see.”

“Kin ye feel?” she said, suddenly laying her dimpled pink hand upon his. She gazed up at him, her eyes bright and soft, her lips parted, her cheek flushed. “Kin ye feel my hand?”

He looked surly, affronted for a moment. He shook the light hand from his own. It fell upon his knee where Rosamond leaned her weight upon it. There was a subtle change on his face. In his old debonair way he drawled, “Yes, I kin feel. What’s this?”—he laid his hand upon her hair—“Flax, I reckon. Hyar, Sis’ Jemimy, hyar’s that flax ye war goin’ ter hackle. Mus’ I han’ it over ter ye?”

He made a feint of lifting her by her hair, and she sank down beside him, screaming with laughter till the rafters rang.

Aunt Jemima had taken the sock from her knitting needles and was swiftly putting on the stitches for newly projected work.

“Lemme medjure ye fur a stockin’,” she said, reaching out for the little girl. “Look at the stitches this child’s stockin’ will take! The fatness of her is s’prisin’. An’ ef Ab air willin’,” she continued, “I want Rosamondy ter bide hyar till I can knit her a couple o’ pair o’ stockin’s an’ mend up her clothes.”

“I dunno ’bout’n that,” said Jerry Binwell. He had seated himself in a chair, his garments dripping with rain, and small puddles forming from them on the floor. “I dunno ez we-uns kin bide enny arter the rain’s over.”

The capable aunt Jemima cast upon him a glance which seemed to contrast his limp, forlorn, and ineffective personality with her own stalwart moral value.

“I ain’t talkin’ ter you-uns, Jerry, nor thinkin’ ’bout ye, nuther,” she remarked slightingly. “I done said my say,” she continued after the manner of a proclamation. “That thar child air goin’ ter bide hyar till I fix her clothes comfortable—ef it takes me a year.” Then with a recollection of her brother’s grievance she again added, “Ef Ab’s willin’.”

The stocking was already showing a ribbed top of an admirable circumference. Aunt Jemima evidently felt a pride in its proportions which was hardly decorous.

Jerry made no reply. He looked disconsolately at the fire from under the brim of his rain-soaked hat, that now and then contributed a drop to his cheek, which thus bore a tearful aspect. Presently he broke the silence, speaking in a strained rasping voice.

“Ef I hed knowed ez Ab held sech a pack o’ old gredges ag’in me I wouldn’t kem nigh hyar,”—he glanced at the stalwart soldierly form bending to the little laughing maiden. “Ab dunno what I tole the en’my—he warn’t thar. I never tole the en’my nuthin’. An’ ennybody ez be captured kin be accused o’ desertin’—ef folks air so minded. I never deserted, nuther. An’ sech gredges ez Ab hev got,” he continued, complainingly, “air fur what I done, an’ what I ain’t done whenst I war nuthin’ but a boy.”

Ab turned his imperious youthful face toward him. “Ye hesh up!” he said. “Thar ain’t no truce hyar fur you-uns.”

His attention reverted instantly to the babyish sorceress at his knee, who with an untiring repetition and an unfailing delight in the exercises would rise from her chair and gently touch his hand or brow crying out, with a joyous voice full of laughter, “Kin you-uns feel my hand!” Then he would pinch her rosy cheeks and retort in a gruff undertone, “Kin you-uns feel my hand!”

They all behaved, Ike thought, as if they had found something choice and of rare value. And if the truth must be known, he watched the scene with somewhat the same sentiments which animated the old dogs. He shared their sense of supersedure, and he noticed how they whined and could take comfort in no spot about the hearth; how they would walk around three times and lie down with a sigh of renunciation, to get up suddenly with an afflicted wheeze, and hunt about for another place where the distemper of their jealous hearts might let them find rest for their lazy bones. They all sought to intrude themselves upon notice. One of them crept to aunt Jemima and humbly licked her foot, only to have that stout and decided member deal him a prompt rebuke upon the nose, eliciting a yelp altogether out of proportion to the twinge inflicted; for the dog, since he was not going to be petted, was glad to have some grievance to howl about, as he might thus more potently appeal to her sympathy. The hound that was accustomed to lead the blind man was even more insistent in his manifestations. He went and rested his head on his master’s knee, while the little girl sat close in her chair on the opposite side, and he wagged his tail and looked imploringly up in the sightless face. But Rosamondy leaned across and patted the dog on the head, and let him take her hand between his teeth, and jovially pulled his ears, and finally caught him by both, when they lost their balance and went over on the hearth together in a wild scramble, about to be “scorched an’ scarified ter death,” as aunt Jemima said snappishly when she rescued the little girl, who was a very red rose now, and with a tender shake deposited her once more in her chair. Then the old dog left his master, and ran and sat by her and sought to incite more gambols.

But Ike was not so easily reconciled. He did not appreciate the gratulation in this acquisition that pervaded the fireside. She was nothing but a girl, and a little one at that. Girls were not uncommon; in fact they abounded. They were nothing to brag on—Ike was young as yet. They couldn’t do anything that was worth while. To be sure the miller’s daughter _was_ tolerably limber, and could walk on the timbers of the race, which were high above the stream. But how she worked her arms above her head to balance herself! And she pretended to shoot once in a while; he would rather be the mark than stand forty yards from it. That was the best he could say for her shooting. And she was the most valuable and desirable specimen of girlhood in his acquaintance. He noted with a sort of wonder that his mother, through sheer absorption, let the hoe-cake burn to a cinder, and had to make up and bake one anew. And when it was at last done, and placed on the table with the platter of venison and corn dodgers, he did not admire particularly the simple but vivid delight with which Rosamond greeted the prospect of supper. But even the saturnine Hiram Guyther looked at her with a smile as she ran glibly around the table, and with her hands on the edge stood on her tiptoes to see what they were to have, and he turned and said to Jerry Binwell, “She air a powerful bouncin’ leetle gal. I reckon we-uns’ll hev ter borry her, Jerry—ef,” recollecting in his turn that this was the child of his blind brother’s enemy, “ef Ab’s willin’.”

The dawdling Jerry, still staring disconsolately at the fire, drawled non-committally, “I dunno ’bout’n that.”

Despite all her fervor of anticipation, Rosamondy was not hungry. She knelt in her chair at the table to be tall enough to participate in the exercises, and her beaming pink face, and her tossing yellow hair, and her glittering rows of squirrel teeth—she showed a great many of them when she laughed—irradiated the space between aunt Jemima and Ab. Her conduct was what Ike mentally designated as “robustious.” She bounced up and down; she fed her supper to the dogs; she let the cat climb up the back of her chair and put two paws on her shoulder among her tangled yellow curls and lap milk out of her saucer. She shrieked and bobbed about till Ike did not know whether he was eating hoe-cake or sawdust. She looked as if she were out in a high wind. Aunt Jemima vainly sought to make her eat her supper, but the displeasure on her face was a feigned rebuke for which Rosamond cared as little as might be. When she concluded her defiance of all those observances, which Ike had been taught to respect, by taking her empty saucer, inverting it and perching it on her tousled yellow pate after the manner of a cap, Hiram Guyther, the meal being ended, caught her up delightedly and rode her to the fireplace on his shoulder.

“I declar’, Jerry,” he exclaimed cordially, his big bass voice booming amidst the trilling treble laughter, “we-uns’ll hev ter steal this hyar leetle gal from ye.”

And Jerry, demurely disconsolate, replied, “I reckon I couldn’t spare her, right handy.”

Presently Ike began to notice that it was very difficult for Rosamondy to get enough of a joke. She refused to descend from the gigantic mountaineer’s shoulder, and when he tried to put her down clung to his collar, around his neck, indeed she did not scruple to clutch his hair. Hiram Guyther had not for a long time taken such active exercise—for in this region men of his age assume all the privileges and ailments of advanced years—as during the time that he trotted up and down the floor with the little girl on his shoulder, playing he was a horse. A hard driver he had, to be sure, and he was obliged to stamp, and shy, and jump, and spurt, smartly. He did not look quite sensible Ike thought in unfilial surprise.

The whole domestic routine was upset. His mother and aunt Jemima had left the clearing away of the dishes and applied themselves to pulling out the old trundle-bed—long ago too short for any of the family—and they arranged it with loving care and much precaution against the cold and draughts.

“I’m fairly feared she mought roll out, an’ git her spine bruk, or her neck,” said aunt Jemima, knitting her wrinkled brows in affectionate alarm as she looked at the trundle-bed that was about two feet from the floor.

“I reckon not,” said Jerry meekly as he inoffensively watched the arrangement of the cosy nest. “She never fell off ’n the top o’ the kyart—an’ sometimes she napped ef the sun war hot.”

“An’ ye air the only man in Tennessee ez would hev sot the leetle critter up thar—an’ her tender bones so easy ter break,” said aunt Jemima, tartly.

“Waal, I done the bes’ I could fur her,” drawled Jerry in his tearful voice, looking harried and woeful.

And remembering how kind and gentle he had seemed to his little daughter, Ike wondered that he did not feel sorry for Jerry when aunt Jemima intimated that he was heedless of her safety and neglected her. But watching the man Ike was even more disapproving of the wholesale adoration which the family seemed disposed to lay at the feet of the little girl and of her adoption into a solicitude and love that was almost parental. He believed that Jerry had an inimical appreciation of all the slighting consideration of him, but offered no objection to the authority they had assumed over Rosamondy, thinking it well that she should get all she could out of them.

Her hilarity seemed to increase as the hour waxed later, and when aunt Jemima finally took her, squirming and wriggling and shouting with laughter, from Hiram Guyther’s shoulder and tucked her into the trundle-bed with a red quilt drawn up close under her dimpled white chin and her long yellow hair, Ike expected to see the whole bed paraphernalia rise up while she resurrected herself.

“Ye lie still, now,” said aunt Jemima sternly, laying a hand upon each shoulder.

A vague squirm, a sleepy chuckle, and Rosamond was eclipsed for the night.

“Waal, that beats my time,” said the grim aunt Jemima softly. “Asleep a’ready!”

She sat down and resumed her knitting. Hiram Guyther was mopping his brow with his handkerchief.

“I feel like ez ef I’d los’ ten pound o’ flesh,” he said. And Ike thought it not unlikely. His mother was washing the dishes; the blind man was reflectively smoking his pipe; the dogs came and disposed themselves with reproachful sighs prominently about the hearth. Jerry Binwell did not share their relief. He stirred uneasily in his chair, the legs grating on the puncheon floor, as if he feared that with this distraction removed the more unfriendly attention of the family might be directed to him. No one spoke for a moment, all listening to the tumult of the rain on the roof; they had not before noticed that the violence of the storm had subsided into a steady downpour. Then, after a glance at the sleeping face, pensive now and ethereal and sensitive, framed in the yellow hair that streamed over the red quilt, aunt Jemima turned a long calculating gaze on Jerry Binwell.

As its result she observed bluntly, “Her mother mus’ hev been a mighty pritty woman.”

If the inference that Rosamond inherited none of her beauty from her father was apprehended by Jerry, he did not resent it. His eyes filled with tears.

“Yes, she war,” he said, dropping his voice to a husky undertone. “She war a plumb beauty whenst she war young, afore she tuk ter ailin’.”

Another pause ensued. The rain beat monotonously; the eaves dripped and dripped; the trees on the mountain slopes swayed, and creaked, and crashed together.

“It hev been mighty hard on me,” Jerry again lifted up his dreary voice, “ter know how bes’ ter keer fur Rosamondy—not bein’ a ’oman myself an’ sech. I know she’s ragged, but I can’t mend her clothes so they’ll stay; she jumps so onexpected. I can’t sew fitten fur much, though I hev tried ter l’arn. I ’pear ter be slow an’ don’t get much purchase on it. I can’t keep no stiddy aim with a needle, nuther. An’ all the wimmen ez ever hed a chance at Rosamondy tuk ter quar’lin over her, like them done ez Sol’mon hed ter jedge a-twixt, till I war actially afeared she be tore in two. Ever since the war I hev been livin’ down in Persimmon Cove an’ thar it war I merried. ’Bout a year ago Em’line she died o’ the lung complaint. An’ then the ’tother wimmen, her sister an’ mother, they quar’led so over Rosamondy, an’ set tharse’fs so ter spite me every which-a-way, ez I jes’ ’lowed I’d fetch her up hyar fur this winter ter bide with my folks awhile. An’ I fund ’em all dead or moved away—jes’ my luck! Rosamondy an’ me hev hed a mighty hard time. I hev been mighty poor, never could git no good holt on nuthin’. I ain’t felt much like tryin’ noways sence Em’line lef’; ’pears mighty hard she couldn’t hev been let ter bide awhile longer.” And once more his eyes filled with tears.

“Waal, mournin’ the dead is grudgin’ ’em the glory,” said Mrs. Guyther in her comforting tones.

“I know that,” said Jerry, “I hev tried ter bow my mind;” his eyes were still full of tears. And Ike, looking at them, was disposed to wonder where he got them, so little did they seem genuine.

The tallow dip on the mantel-piece went out in a splutter and left them all sitting in the red glow of the fire, which was a mass of coals where the white flames had been. It was far later than the usual bed-time of the family, and thus they were reminded of it. Mrs. Guyther, kneeling on the hearth, began to cover the coals with the plentiful ashes that lay in great heaps on either side. The dogs, summoned by Hiram Guyther to leave the house, pulled themselves into various efforts at an upright posture, and sat gazing blinkingly at the fire with a determination to misunderstand the tenor of his discourse. One of them glanced over his shoulder at the door and shivered at the thought of the bleak dampness outside. Another yawned shrilly and was adjured by aunt Jemima to hesh his mouth—didn’t he know he’d wake the baby up if he kep’ yappin’ that-a-way.

“Let the dogs alone, Hiram,” said Mrs. Guyther, “they count on bein’ allowed ter stay till the las’ minit. Ye show Jerry whar he hev ter sleep whilst I fix the fire.”

After the host had shown Jerry up the ladder to the shadowy roof-room, Abner, who had not again spoken to the visitor, and seeming as if he were gazing ponderingly into the fire, said suddenly to the two women:—

“What do that leetle gal look like?”

Mrs. Guyther paused with the shovel in her hand, as she still knelt on the hearth.

Aunt Jemima dropped her knitting in her lap.

They replied in a breath:—

“The pritties’ yearthly human ever you see!”

“Bigges’ gray eyes!” cried Mrs. Guyther, “an’ black lashes!”

“An’ yaller hair—yaller ez gold an’ haffen a yard long,” exclaimed aunt Jemima.

“Fine bleached skin, white ez milk,” said Mrs. Guyther.

“An’ yit she’s all pink—special when she laughs,” cried aunt Jemima, “jes’ like these hyar wild roses—ye ’member ’em, don’t ye, Ab, growin’ in the fence corner in the June weather”—

—“Sech a many of ’em over yander by Keedon Bluffs,” put in Mrs. Guyther.

“I ’member ’em,” said Ab.

“Jes’ the color of ’em when she laughs—jes’ like they be, a-blowin’ about in the wind,” declared aunt Jemima.

“She’s named right—Rosy; she’s like ’em,” said Mrs. Guyther.

The red glow of the embers was full on the blind man’s face, encircled by shadows. It seemed half smiling, or perhaps that was some illusion of the fire-light, for it was pensive too, and wistful. He pondered for a while; then—“I’d like ter see her,” he said, simply. “I would.”

Every word was distinctly audible in the roof-room. Jerry Binwell sat in a rickety chair amongst the shadows, his head attentively bent down, his hands on his knees, his hat drooping half over his face. The rifts between the puncheons of the flooring admitted a red glow from the fire-lit room below, and illumined the dusky loft with longitudinal shafts of light. A triumphant smile played over his face as the women talked of the beauty of the little Rosamond—a smile that might have expressed only paternal pride and satisfaction in the comfortable results of the evening. But when the blind man’s rich low voice sounded, “I’d like ter see her—I would,” the listener’s face changed. The narrow gleam of light from the cracks in the floor played upon the mocking animosity in his eyes, the sneer on his lips as they parted. He stood suddenly erect, in a tense soldierly position—among the shadows, and the bags of “yerbs,” and the old clothes, and the peltry hanging from the ridge-pole—brought his heels together with a swift precision, and then the deserter mockingly carried his hand to his hat in a military salute.

“I would,” dreamily reiterated the blind soldier in the room below.

The deserter, relaxing his martial attitude to his normal slouch, noiselessly smote his thigh with his right hand, and burst into silent laughter.