{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_50271/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_50271","id":"gutenberg_50271","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50271","summary":null,"tags":["American fiction","Category: American Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Short Stories","Short stories, American"],"text":"TIOBA\n\nAND OTHER TALES\n\nBy Arthur Colton\n\nWith a Frontispiece by A. B. Frost\n\nNew York\n\nHenry Holt And Company\n\n1903\n\n\n[Illustration: 0002]\n\n\n[Illustration: 0009]\n\n\n[Illustration: 0010]\n\n\n\nDEDICATED TO\n\nA. G. BRINSMADE\n\n\n\n\nTIOBA\n\nFROM among the birches and pines, where we pitched our moving tent, you\nlooked over the flat meadow-lands; and through these went a river,\nslow and almost noiseless, wandering in the valley as if there were\nno necessity of arriving anywhere at appointed times. \u201cWhat is the\nnecessity?\u201d it said softly to any that would listen. And there was none;\nso that for many days the white tent stood among the trees, overlooking\nthe haycocks in the meadows. It was enough business in hand to study the\nphilosophy and the subtle rhetoric of Still River.\n\nOpposite rose a strangely ruined mountain-side. There was a nobly-poised\nhead and plenteous chest, the head three thousand feet nearer the\nstars--which was little enough from their point of view, no doubt, but\nto us it seemed a symbol of something higher than the stars, something\nbeyond them forever waiting and watching.\n\nFrom its feet upward half a mile the mountain was one raw wound. The\nshivered roots and tree-trunks stuck out helplessly from reddish soil,\nboulders were crushed and piled in angry heaps, veins of granite ripped\nopen--the skin and flesh of the mountain tom off with a curse, and the\nbones made a mockery. The wall of the precipice rose far above this\ndesolation, and, beyond, the hazy forests went up a mile or more clear\nto the sky-line. The peak stood over all, not with triumph or with\nshame, but with the clouds and stars.\n\nIt was a cloudy day, with rifts of sunlight. An acre of light crept\ndown the mountain: so you have seen, on the river-boats at night, the\nsearch-light feeling, fingering along the shore.\n\nIn the evening an Arcadian, an elderly man and garrulous, came up to see\nwhat it might be that glimmered among his pulp-trees. He was a surprise,\nand not as Arcadian as at first one might presume, for he sold milk and\neggs and blueberries at a price to make one suddenly rich. His name was\nFargus, and he it was whose hay-cutter clicked like a locust all day\nin the meadow-lands. He came and made himself amiable beside us, and\nconfided anything we might care to know which experience had left with\nhim.\n\n\u201cThat's Tioba,\u201d he said. \u201cThat's the name of that mountain.\u201d And he\ntold us the story of one whom he called \u201cJim Hawks,\u201d and of the fall of\nTioba.\n\nShe's a skinned mountain [he said]. She got wet inside and slid. Still\nRiver used to run ten rods further in, and there was a cemetery,\ntoo, and Jim Hawks's place; and the cemetery's there yet, six rods\nunderground, but the creek shied off and went through my plough-land\nscandalous.\n\nNow, Jim Hawks was a get-there kind, with a clawed face--by a wildcat,\nyes, sir. Tioba got there; and Jim he was a wicked one. I've been\nforty years in this valley, with the Petersons and the Storrses and the\nMerimys at Canada Center, all good, quiet folk. And nothing happened to\nus, for we did nothing to blame, till Jim came, and Tioba ups and drops\non him.\n\nNow look at it, this valley! There've been landslides over beyond in\nHelder's valley, but there's only one in mine. Looks as if the devil\ngone spit on it. It's Jim Hawks's trail.\n\nHe come one day with a buckboard and a yellow horse, and he says:\n\n\u201cSell me that land from here up the mountain.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho be you?\u201d says I.\n\n\u201cJim Hawks,\u201d says he, and that's all he appeared to know about it. And\nhe bought the land, and put up a house close to the mountain, so you\ncould throw a cat down his chimney if you wanted to, or two cats if you\nhad 'em.\n\nHe was a long, swing-shouldered man, with a light-colored mustache and a\nkind of flat gray eye that you couldn't see into. You look into a man's\neye naturally to see what his intentions are. Well, Jim Hawks's eye\nappeared to have nothing to say on the subject. And as to that, I told\nmy wife it was none of our business if he didn't bring into the valley\nanything but his name and a bit of money sufficient.\n\nHe got his face clawed by a wildcat by being reckless with it; and he\nran a deer into Helder's back yard once and shot it, and licked Helder\nfor claiming the deer. He was the recklessest chap! He swings his fist\ninto Helder's face, and he says:\n\n\u201cShoot, if you got a gun. If you hain't, get out!\u201d\n\nI told Jim that was no place to put a house, on account of Tioba\ndropping rocks off herself whenever it rained hard and the soil got\nmushy. I told him Tioba'd as soon drop a rock on his head as into his\ngridiron.\n\nYou can't see Canada Center from here. There's a post-office there, and\nthree houses, the Petersons', the Storrses' and the Merimys'. Merimy's\nhouse got a peaked roof on it. I see Jeaney Merimy climb it after her\nkitten a-yowling on the ridge. She wasn't but six years old then, and\nshe was gritty the day she was born. Her mother--she's old Peterson's\ndaughter--she whooped, and I fetched Jeaney down with Peterson's ladder.\nJeaney Merimy grew up, and she was a tidy little thing. The Storrs boys\ncalculated to marry her, one of 'em, only they weren't enterprising; and\nJeaney ups and goes over to Eastport one day with Jim Hawks--cuts out\nearly in the morning, and asks nobody. Pretty goings on in this valley!\nThen they come back when they were ready, and Jim says:\n\n\u201cWhat you got to say about it, Merimy?\u201d\n\nMerimy hadn't nothing to say about it, nor his wife hadn't nothing\nto say, nor Peterson, nor the Storrs boys. Dog-gone it! Nobody hadn't\nnothing to say; that is, they didn't say it to Jim.\n\nThat was five years ago, the spring they put up the Redman Hotel at\nHelder's. People's come into these parts now thicker'n bugs. They have\na band that plays music at the Redman Hotel. But in my time I've seen\nsights. The bears used to scoop my chickens. You could hear wildcats\n'most any night crying in the brush. I see a black bear come down\nJumping Brook over there, slapping his toes in the water and grunting\nlike a pig. Me, I was ploughing for buckwheat.\n\nJeaney Merimy went over to Eastport with her hair in a braid, and came\nback with it put up like a crow's nest on top of her head. She was a\nnice-looking girl, Jeaney, and born gritty, and it didn't do her any\ngood.\n\nI says to Jim: \u201cNow, you're always looking for fighting,\u201d says I. \u201cNow,\nme, I'm for peaceable doings. If you're looking for fighting any time,\nyou start in beyond me.\n\n\u201cYou!\u201d says Jim. \u201cI'd as soon scrap with a haystack.\u201d\n\nI do know how it would be, doing with a haystack that way, but you take\nit from Jim's point of view, and you see it wouldn't be what he'd care\nfor; and you take it from my point of view, and you see I didn't poke\ninto Jim's business. That's natural good sense. Only I'm free to say\nhe was a wicked one, 'stilling whiskey on the back side of Tioba, and\nfilling up the Storrs boys with it, and them gone to the devil off East\nwhere the railroads are. And laying Peterson to his front door, drunk.\nMy, he didn't know any more'n his front door! \u201cHe's my grandfather,\u201d\n says Jim. \u201cThat's the humor of it\u201d--meaning he was Jeaney's grandfather.\nAnd mixing the singularest drinks, and putting 'em into an old man named\nFargus, as ought to known better. My wife she said so, and she knew. I\ndo' know what Jeaney Merimy thought, but I had my point of view on that.\nJim got drunk himself on and off, and went wilder'n a wildcat, and\nslid over the mountains the Lord knows where. Pretty goings on in this\nvalley!\n\nThis is a good climate if you add it all up and take the average. But\nsometimes it won't rain till you're gray waiting for it, and sometimes\nit will snow so the only way to get home is to stay inside, and\nsometimes it will rain like the bottom fallen out of a tub. The way of\nit is that when you've lived with it forty years you know how to add up\nand take the average.\n\nThat summer Tioba kept her head out of sight from June to September\nmainly. She kept it done up in cotton, as you might say, and she leaked\nin her joints surprising. She's a queer mountain that way. Every now and\nthen she busts out a spring and dribbles down into Still River from a\nnew place.\n\nIn September they were all dark days and drizzly nights, and there was\noften the two sounds of the wind on Tioba that you hear on a bad night.\nOne of 'em is a kind of steady grumble and hiss that's made with the\npine-needles and maybe the tons of leaves shaking and falling. The other\nis the toot of the wind in the gullies on edges of rock. But if you\nstand in the open on a bad night and listen, you'd think Tioba was\ntalking to you. Maybe she is.\n\nIt come along the middle of September, and it was a bad night, drizzly,\nand Tioba talking double. I went over to the Hawkses' place early to\nborrow lantern-oil, and I saw Jeaney Merimy sitting over the fire\nalone, and the wind singing in the chimney. \u201cJim hasn't come,\u201d she says,\nspeaking quiet; and she gets me the lantern-oil. After, when I went\naway, she didn't seem to notice; and what with the wind in the chimney,\nand Jeaney sitting alone with her big black eyes staring, and Tioba\ntalking double, and the rain drizzling, and the night falling, I felt\nqueer enough to expect a ghost to be standing at my gate. And I came\nalong the road, and there _was_ one!\n\nYes, sir; she was a woman in a gray, wet cloak, standing at my gate, and\na horse and buggy in the middle of the road.\n\n\u201c'Mighty!\u201d says I, and drops my oil-can smack in the mud.\n\n\u201cDoes Mr. Hawks live here?\u201d she says, seeing me standing like a tomfool\nin the mud.\n\n\u201cNo, ma'am,\u201d says I. \u201cThat's his place across the flat half a mile. He\nain't at home, but his wife is.\u201d\n\nThe wind blew her cloak around her sharp, and I could see her face,\nthough it was more or less dark. She was some big and tall, and her face\nwas white and wet with the rain. After a while she says:\n\n\u201cHe's married?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, ma'am. You'd better not--'Mighty, ma'am!\u201d says I, \u201cwhere you\ngoing?\u201d\n\nShe swung herself into the buggy quicker'n women are apt to do, and she\nwhops the horse around and hits him a lick, and off he goes, splashing\nand galloping. Me, I was beat. But I got so far as to think if she\nwasn't a ghost, maybe Jim Hawks would as lief she would be, and if\nshe didn't drive more careful she'd be liable to oblige him that way.\nBecause it stands to reason a woman don't come looking for a man on a\nbad night, and cut away like that, unless she has something uncommon\non her mind. I heard the buggy-wheels and the splash of the horse dying\naway; and then there was nothing in the night but the drip of the rain\nand Tioba talking double--_um-hiss, toot-toot._\n\nThen I went into the house, and didn't tell my wife about it, she\ndisliking Jim on account of his singular drinks, which had a tidy taste,\nbut affecting a man sudden and surprising. My wife she went off to bed,\nand I sat by the fire, feeling like there was more wrong in the world\nthan common. And I kept thinking of Jeaney Merimy sitting by herself off\nthere beyond the rain, with the wind singing in the chimney, and Tioba\ngroaning and tooting over her. Then there was the extra woman looking\nfor Jim; and it seemed to me if I was looking for Jim on a dark night,\nI'd want to let him know beforehand it was all peaceable, so there\nwouldn't be a mistake, Jim being a sudden man and not particular. I had\nthe extra woman on my mind, so that after some while it seemed to me she\nhad come back and was driving _splish-splash_ around my house, though it\nwas only the wind. I was that foolish I kept counting how many times she\nwent round the house, and it was more than forty; and sometimes she came\nso close to the front door I thought she'd come through it--_bang!_\n\nThen somebody rapped sudden at the door, and I jumped, and my chair went\nslap under the table, and I says, \u201cCome in,\u201d though I'd rather it would\nhave stayed out, and in walks Jim Hawks. \u201c'Mighty!\u201d says I. \u201cI thought\nyou was a horse and buggy.\u201d\n\nHe picked up my chair and sat in it himself, rather cool, and began to\ndry off.\n\n\u201cHorse and buggy?\u201d says he. \u201cLooking for me?\u201d\n\nI just nodded, seeing he appeared to know all about it.\n\n\u201cSaw 'em in Eastport,\u201d says he. \u201cI suppose she's over there\u201d--meaning\nhis place. \u201cGone down the road! You don't say! Now, I might have known\nshe wouldn't do what you might call a rational thing. Never could bet\non that woman. If there was one of two things she'd be likely to do, she\nwouldn't do either of 'em.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d says I, \u201cspeaking generally, what might she want of you?\u201d\n\nJim looks at me kind of absent minded, rubbing his hair the wrong way.\n\n\u201cNow, look at it, Fargus,\u201d he says. \u201cIt ain't reasonable. Now, she and\nme, we got married about five years ago. And she had a brother named Tom\nCheever, and Tom and I didn't agree, and naturally he got hurt; not\nbut that he got well again--that is, partly. And she appeared to have\ndifferent ideas from me, and she appeared to think she'd had enough of\nme, and I took that to be reasonable. Now, here she wants me to come\nback and behave myself, cool as you please. And me inquiring why, she\nacts like the country was too small for us both. I don't see it that way\nmyself.\u201d And he shook his head, stretching his hands out over the fire.\n\n\u201cI don't see either end of it,\u201d says I. \u201cYou're a bad one, Jim, a\ndownright bad one.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat's so. It's Jeaney you mean,\u201d he says, looking kind of interested.\n\u201cIt'll be hell for Jeaney, won't it?\u201d\n\nThe wind and rain was whooping round the house so we could hardly hear\neach other. It was like a wild thing trying to get in, which didn't know\nhow to do it, and wouldn't give up; and then you'd hear like something\nwhimpering, and little fingers tapping at the window-glass.\n\nMy opinion of Jim Hawks was that I didn't seem to get on to him, and\nthat's my opinion up to now; and it appeared to me then that Jim might\nbe the proper explanation himself of anything the extra woman did which\nseemed unreasonable; but I didn't tell him that, because I didn't see\nrightly what it would mean if I said it.\n\nJim got up and stretched his legs. \u201cNow, I tell you, Fargus,\u201d says he,\n\u201cI'm going to put the thing to Jeaney, being a clipper little woman,\nnot to say sharp. If it comes to the worst, I daresay Canada Center will\ngive us a burying; or if she wants to slide over the mountains with me,\nthere's no trouble about it; or if she'd rather go her own way, and me\nmine, that's reasonable; or if she says to do nothing but hold the fort,\nwhy, that's all right, too, only Canada Center would be likely to take a\nhand, and then there'd surely be trouble, on account of me getting mad.\nNow, I have to say to you, Fargus, that you've been as friendly as a man\ncould be, as things are; and maybe you've seen the last of me, and maybe\nyou wouldn't mind if you had.\u201d\n\n\u201cSpeaking generally,\u201d says I, \u201cyou're about right, Jim.\u201d\n\nWith that he laughed, and went out, pulling the door to hard against the\nstorm.\n\nNext day the rain came streaming down, and my cellar was flooded, and\nthe valley was full of the noise of the flood brooks. I kept looking\ntoward the Hawkses' place, having a kind of notion something would blow\nup there. It appeared to me there was too much gunpowder in that family\nfor the house to stay quiet. Besides, I saw Tioba had been dropping\nrocks in the night, and there were new boulders around. One had ploughed\nthrough Jim's yard, and the road was cut up frightful. The boulder in\nJim's yard looked as if it might be eight feet high. I told my wife the\nHawkses ought to get out of there, and she said she didn't care, she\nbeing down on Jim on account of his mixed drinks, which had a way of\ngetting under a man, I'm free to say, and heaving him up.\n\nAbout four o'clock in the afternoon it come off misty, and I started\nover to tell Jim he'd better get out; and sudden I stops and looks,\nfor there was a crowd coming from Canada Center--the Storrses and the\nPetersons and the Merimys, and the extra woman in a buggy with Henry\nHall, who was county sheriff then. \u201cWell, 'Mighty!\u201d says I.\n\nThey pulled up in front of Jim's place, and I took it they were going to\nwalk in and settle things prompt. But you see, when I got there, it was\nJim a-standing by his door with his rifle, and the sheriff and Canada\nCenter was squeezing themselves through the gate and Jim shooting off\nsideways at the pickets on his fence. And the sheriff ups and yelled:\n\n\u201cHere, you Jim Hawks! That ain't any way to do.\u201d\n\nThen Jim walks down the road with his rifle over his arm, and Jeaney\nMerimy comes to the door. She looked some mad and some crying, a little\nof both.\n\n\u201cHall,\u201d says he, \u201cyou turn your horse and go back where you come from.\nMaybe I'll see you by and by. The rest of you go back to Canada Center,\nand if Jeaney wants anything of you she'll come and say so. You go,\nnow!\u201d\n\nAnd they went. The extra woman drove off with the sheriff, hanging her\nhead, and the sheriff saying, \u201cYou'll have to come to time, Jim Hawks,\nsoon or late.\u201d Jeaney Merimy sat in the door with her head hung down,\ntoo; and the only one as ought to have been ashamed, he was walking\naround uppish, like he meant to call down Tioba for throwing rocks into\nhis yard. Then Jeaney sees me, and she says:\n\n\u201cYou're all down on Jim. There's no one but me to stand up for Jim.\u201d\n\nShe began to cry, while Jim cocked his head and looked at her curious.\nAnd she kept saying, \u201cThere's no one but me to stand up for Jim.\u201d\n\nThat was a queer way for her to look at it.\n\nNow, that night set in, like the one before, with a drizzling rain. It\nwas the longest wet weather I ever knew. I kept going to the window to\nlook at the light over at the Hawkses' and wonder what would come of\nit, till it made my wife nervous, and she's apt to be sharp when she's\nnervous, so I quit. And the way Tioba talked double that night was\nterrible--_um-hiss, toot-toot_, hour after hour; and no sleep for me and\nmy wife, being nervous.\n\nI do' know what time it was, or what we heard. All I know is, my wife\njumps up with a yell, and I jumps up too, and I know we were terrible\nafraid and stood listening maybe a minute. It seemed like there was\nalmost dead silence in the night, only the um-m went on, but no hissing\nand no tooting, and if there was any sound of the rain or wind I\ndon't recollect it. And then, \u201cUm!\u201d says Tioba, louder and louder and\n_louder!_ till there was no top nor bottom to it, and the whole infernal\nworld went to pieces, and pitched me and my wife flat on the floor.\n\nThe first I knew, there was dead silence again; or maybe my hearing was\nupset, for soon after I began to hear the rain buzzing away quietly.\nThen I got up and took a lantern, and my wife grabs me.\n\n\u201cYou ain't going a step!\u201d says she, and the upshot was we both went, two\nold folks that was badly scared and bound to find out why. We went along\nthe road, looking about us cautious; and of a sudden, where the road\nought to be, we ran into a bank of mud that went up out of seeing in the\nnight. Then my wife sat down square in the road and began a-crying, and\nI knew Tioba had fallen down.\n\nNow, there's Tioba, and that's how she looked next morning, only\nworse--more mushy and generally clawed up, with the rain still falling\ndismal, and running little gullies in the mud like a million snakes.\n\nAccording to my guess, Jim and Jeaney and the cemetery were about ten\nrods in, or maybe not more than eight. Anyway, I says to Peterson, and\nhe agreed with me, that there wasn't any use for a funeral. I says: \u201cGod\nA'mighty buried 'em to suit himself.\u201d It looked like he didn't think\nmuch of the way Canada Center did its burying, seeing the cemetery was\ntook in and buried over again. Peterson and me thought the same on that\npoint. And we put up the white stone, sort of on top of things, that\nmaybe you've noticed, and lumped the folk in the cemetery together, and\nput their names on it, and a general epitaph; but not being strong\non the dates, we left them out mostly. We put Jeaney Merimy with her\nfamily, but Canada Center was singularly united against letting Jim in.\n\n\u201cYou puts his name on no stone with me or mine,\u201d says Merimy, and\nI'm not saying but what he was right. Yes, sir; Merimy had feelings,\nnaturally. But it seemed to me when a man was a hundred and fifty feet\nunderground, more or less, there ought to be some charity; and maybe I\nhad a weakness for Jim, though my wife wouldn't hear of him, on account\nof his drinks, which were slippery things. Anyway, I takes a chisel\nand a mallet, and I picks out a boulder on the slide a decent ways from\nCanada Center's monument, and I cuts in it, \u201cJim Hawks\u201d; and then I cuts\nin it an epitaph that I made myself, and it's there yet:\n\n\n                   HERE LIES JIM HAWKS, KILLED BY ROCKS.\n\n                   HE DIDN'T ACT THE WAY HE OUGHT.\n\n                   THAT'S ALL I'll SAY OF JIM.\n\n                   HERE HE LIES, WHAT'S LEFT OF HIM.\n\n\nAnd I thought that stated the facts, though the second line didn't\nrhyme really even. Speaking generally, Tioba appeared to have dropped\non things about the right time, and that being so, why not let it pass,\ngranting Merimy had a right to his feelings?\n\nNow, neither Sheriff Hall nor the extra woman showed up in the valley\nany more, so it seemed likely they had heard of Tioba falling, and\nagreed Jim wouldn't be any good, if they could find him. It was two\nweeks more before I saw the sheriff, him driving through, going over to\nHelder's. I saw him get out of his buggy to see the monument, and I went\nup after, and led him over to show Jim's epitaph, which I took to be a\ngood epitaph, except the second line.\n\nNow, what do you think he did? Why, he busted out a-haw-hawing\nridiculous, and it made me mad.\n\n\u201cShut up!\u201d says I. \u201cWhat's ailing you?\u201d\n\n\u201cHaw-haw!\u201d says he. \u201cJim ain't there! He's gone down the road.\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe you're a blamed liar,\u201d says I; and the sheriff sobered up,\nbeing mad himself, and he told me this.\n\n\u201cJim Hawks,\u201d says he, \u201ccame into East-port that night, meaning business.\nHe routed me out near twelve o'clock, and the lady staying at my house\nshe came into it, too, and there we had it in the kitchen at twelve\no'clock, the lady uncommon hot, and Jim steaming wet in his clothes and\nrather cool. He says: 'I'm backing Jeaney now, and she tells me to come\nin and settle it to let us alone, and she says we'll hand over all we've\ngot and leave. That appears to be her idea, and being hers, I'll put it\nas my own.' Now, the lady, if you'd believe it, she took on fearful, and\nwouldn't hear to reason unless he'd go with her, though what her idea\nwas of a happy time with Jim Hawks, the way he was likely to act, I give\nit up. But she cried and talked foolish, till I see Jim was awful bored,\nbut I didn't see there was much for me to do. Then Jim got up at last,\nand laughed very unpleasant, and he says: 'It's too much bother. I'll go\nwith you, Annie, but I think you're a fool.' And they left next morning,\ngoing south by train.\u201d\n\nThat's what Sheriff Hall said to me then and there. Well, now, I'm an\nold man, and I don't know as I'm particular clever, but it looks to me\nas if God A'mighty and Tioba had made a mistake between 'em. Else how\ncome they hit at Jim Hawks so close as that and missed him? And what was\nthe use of burying Jeaney Merimy eight rods deep, who was a good girl\nall her life, and was for standing up for Jim, and him leaving her\nbecause the extra woman got him disgusted? Maybe she'd rather Tioba\nwould light on her, that being the case--maybe she would have; but she\nnever knew what the case was.\n\nThat epitaph is there yet, as you might say, waiting for him to come\nand get under it; but it don't seem to have the right point now, and it\ndon't state the facts any more, except the second line, which is more\nfacts than rhyme. And Tioba is the messiest-look-ing mountain in these\nparts. And now, I say, Jim Hawks was in this valley little more than a\nyear, and he blazed his trail through the Merimy family, and the Storrs\nfamily, and the Peterson family, and there's Tioba Mountain, and that's\nhis trail.\n\nNo, sir; I don't get on to it. I hear Tioba talking double some nights,\nsort of uneasy, and it seems to me she isn't on to it either, and has\nher doubts maybe she throwed herself away. And there's the cemetery six\nto ten rods underground, with a monument to forty-five people on top,\nand an epitaph to Jim Hawks that ain't so, except the second line, there\nbeing no corpse to fit it.\n\nCanada Center thinks they'd fit Jim to it if he came round again; but\nthey wouldn't: for he was a wicked one, but sudden to act, and he was\nreckless, and he kept his luck. For Tioba drawed off and hit at him,\nslap! and he dodged her.\n\n\n\n\nA MAN FOR A' THAT\n\n\nCOMPANY A was cut up at Antietam, so that there was not enough of it\nleft for useful purposes, and Deacon Andrew Terrell became a member\nof Company G, which nicknamed him \u201c'is huliness.\u201d Company A came from\nDutchess County. There was a little white church in the village of\nBrewster, and a little white house with a meagre porch where that good\nwoman, Mrs. Terrell, had stood and shed several tears as the deacon\nwalked away down the street, looking extraordinary in his regimentals.\nShe dried her eyes, settled down to her sewing in that quiet south\nwindow, and hoped he would remember to keep his feet dry and not lose\nthe cough drops. That part of Dutchess County was a bit of New England\nspilled over. New England has been spilling over these many years.\n\nThe deacon took the cough drops regularly; he kept his gray chin beard\ntrimmed with a pair of domestic scissors, and drilling never persuaded\nhim to move his large frame with other than the same self-conscious\nrestraint; his sallow face had the same set lines. There is something in\nthe Saxon's blood that will not let him alter with circumstances, and it\nis by virtue of it that he conquers in the end.\n\nBut no doorkeeper in the house of God--the deacon's service in the\nmeeting-house at Brewster--who should come perforce to dwell in the\ntents of wickedness would pretend to like it. Besides, Company G had no\ntents. It came from the lower wards of the great city. Dinkey Cott, that\nthin-legged, stunted, imp-faced, hardened little Bowery sprout, put his\nleft fist in the deacon's eye the first day of their acquaintance, and\nswore in the pleasantest manner possible.\n\nThe deacon cuffed him, because he had been a schoolmaster in his day,\nand did not understand how he would be despised for knocking Dinkey down\nin that amateur fashion, and the lieutenant gave them both guard duty\nfor fighting in the ranks.\n\nThe deacon declared \u201cthat young man Cott hadn't no moral ideas,\u201d and did\nhis guard duty in bitterness and strict conscience to the last minute of\nit. Dinkey put his thumb to his nose and offered to show the lieutenant\nhow the thing should have been done, and that big man laughed, and both\nforgot about the guard duty.\n\nDinkey had no sense whatever of personal dignity, which was partly what\nthe deacon meant by \u201cmoral ideas,\u201d nor reverence for anything above or\nbeneath. He did not harbor any special anger, either, and only enough\nmalice to point his finger at the elder man, whenever he saw him, and\nsnicker loudly to the entertainment of Company G.\n\nDinkey's early recollections had to do with the cobblestones of Mulberry\nBend and bootblacking on Pearl Street. Deacon Terrell's began with a\nlonely farm where there were too many potato hills to hoe, a little\nschoolhouse where arithmetic was taught with a ferrule, a white\nmeeting-house where the wrath of God was preached with enthusiasm; both\nseemed far enough away from the weary tramp, tramp, the picket duty, and\nthe camp at last one misty night in thick woods on the Stafford hills,\nlooking over the Rappahannock to the town of Fredericksburg.\n\nWhat happened there was not clear to Company G. There seemed to be a\ndeal of noise and hurrying about, cannon smoke in the valley and cannon\nsmoke on the terraces across the valley. Somebody was building pontoon\nbridges, therefore it seemed likely somebody wanted to get across. They\nwere having hard luck with the bridges. That was probably the enemy on\nthe ridge beyond.\n\nThere seemed to be no end to him, anyway; up and down the valley, mile\nbeyond mile, the same line of wooded heights and drifting smoke.\n\nAnd the regiment found itself crossing a shaky pontoon bridge on a\nSaturday morning in the mist and climbing the bank into a most battered\nand tired-looking little town, which was smoldering sulkily with burned\nbuildings and thrilling with enormous noise. There they waited for\nsomething else to happen. The deacon felt a lump in his throat, stopping\nhis breath.\n\n\u201cGit out o' me tracks!\u201d snickered Dinkey Cott behind him. \u201cI'll step on\nyer.\u201d\n\nDinkey had never seemed more impish, unholy and incongruous. They seemed\nto stand there a long time. The shells kept howling and whizzing around;\nthey howled till they burst, and then they whizzed. And now and then\nsome one would cry out and fall. It was bad for the nerves. The men were\ngrowling.\n\n\u201cAw, cap, give us a chance!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt ain't my fault, boys. I got to wait for orders, same as you.\u201d\n\nDinkey poked the deacon's legs with the butt of his rifle.\n\n\u201cSay, it's rotten, ain't it? Say, cully, my ma don't like me full o'\nholes. How's yours?\u201d\n\nThe other gripped his rifle tight and thought of nothing in particular.\n\nWas it five hours that passed, or twenty, or one? Then they started, and\nthe town was gone behind their hurrying feet. Over a stretch of broken\nlevel, rush and tramp and gasping for breath; fences and rocks ahead,\nclumps of trees and gorges; ground growing rougher and steeper, but that\nwas nothing. If there was anything in the way you went at it and left\nit behind. You plunged up a hill, and didn't notice it. You dove into a\ngully, and it wasn't there. Time was a liar, obstacles were scared and\nran away. But half-way up the last pitch ran a turnpike, with a stone\nwall in front that spit fire and came nearer and nearer. It seemed\ncreeping down viciously to meet you. Up, up, till the powder of the guns\nalmost burned the deacon's face, and the smoke was so thick he could\nonly see the red flashes.\n\nAnd then suddenly he was alone. At least there was no one in sight, for\nthe smoke was very thick. Company G all dead, or fallen, or gone back.\nThere was a clump of brambles to his left. He dropped to the ground,\ncrept behind it and lay still. The roar went on, the smoke rolled down\nover him and sometimes a bullet would clip through the brambles, but\nafter a time the small fire dropped off little by little, though the\ncannon still boomed on.\n\nHis legs were numb and his heart beating his sides like a drum. The\nsmoke was blowing away down the slope. He lifted his head and peered\nthrough the brambles; there was the stone wall not five rods away, all\nlined along the top with grimy faces. A thousand rifles within as\nmany yards, wanting nothing better than to dig a round hole in him. He\ndropped his head and closed his eyes.\n\nHis thoughts were so stunned that the slowly lessening cannonade seemed\nlike a dream, and he hardly noticed when it had ceased, and he began\nto hear voices, cries of wounded men and other men talking. There was\na clump of trees to the right, and two or three crows in the treetops\ncawing familiarly. An hour or two must have passed, for the sun was down\nand the river mist creeping up. He lay on his back, staring blankly at\nthe pale sky and shivering a little with the chill.\n\nA group of men came down and stood on the rocks above. They could\nprobably see him, but a man on his back with his toes up was nothing\nparticular there. They talked with a soft drawl. \u201cDoggonedest clean-up I\never saw.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey hadn't no business to come up heah, yuh know. They come some\ndistance, now.\u201d\n\n\u201cShuah! We ain't huntin' rabbits. What'd yuh suppose?\u201d\n\nThen they went on.\n\nThe mist came up white and cold and covered it all over. He could not\nsee the wall any longer, though he could hear the voices. He turned on\nhis face and crawled along below the brambles and rocks to where the\nclump of trees stood with a deep hollow below them. They were chestnut\ntrees. Some one was sitting in the hollow with his back against the\nroots.\n\nDuring the rush Dinkey Cott fairly enjoyed himself. The sporting blood\nin him sang in his ears, an old song that the leopard knows, it may be,\nwaiting in the mottled shadow, that the rider knows on the race course,\nthe hunter in the snow--the song of a craving that only excitement\nsatisfies. The smoke blew in his face. He went down a hollow and up the\nother side. Then something hot and sudden came into the middle of him\nand he rolled back against the roots of a great tree.\n\n\u201cHully gee! I'm plunked!\u201d he grumbled disgustedly.\n\nFor the time he felt no pain, but his blood ceased to sing in his ears.\nEverything seemed to settle down around him, blank and dull and angry.\nHe felt as if either the army of the North or the army of the South had\nnot treated him rightly. If they had given him a minute more he might\nhave clubbed something worth while. He sat up against a tree, wondered\nwhat his chance was to pull through, thought it poor, and thought he\nwould sell it for a drink.\n\nThe firing dropped off little by little, and the mist was coming up.\nDinkey began to see sights. His face and hands were hot, and things\nseemed to be riproaring inside him generally. The mist was full of\nflickering lights, which presently seemed to be street lamps down the\nBowery. The front windows of Reilly's saloon were glaring, and opposite\nwas Gottstein's jewelry store, where he had happened to hit one Halligan\nin the eye for saying that Babby Reilly was his girl and not Dinkey's;\nand he bought Babby a 90-cent gold ring of Gottstein, which proved\nHalligan to be a liar. The cop saw him hit Halligan, too, and said\nnothing, being his friend. And Halligan enlisted in Company G with the\nrest of the boys, and was keeled over in the dark one night on picket\nduty, somewhere up country. All the gang went into Company G. The\ncaptain was one of the boys, and so was Pete Murphy, the big lieutenant.\nHe was a sort of ward sub-boss, was Pete.\n\n\u201cReilly, he's soured on me, Pete. I dun-no wot's got the ol' man.\u201d\n\nThe lights seemed to grow thick, till everything was ablaze.\n\n\u201cAw, come off! Dis ain't de Bowery,\u201d he muttered, and started and rubbed\nhis eyes.\n\nThe mist was cold and white all around him, ghostly and still, except\nthat there was a low, continual mutter of voices above, and now and then\na soft moan rose up from somewhere. And it seemed natural enough that a\nghost should come creeping out of the ghostly mist, even that it should\ncreep near to him and peer into his face, a ghost with a gray chin beard\nand haggard eyes.\n\n\u201cI'm going down,\u201d it whispered. \u201cCome on. Don't make any noise.\u201d\n\n\u201cHully gee!\u201d thought Dinkey. \u201cIt's the Pope!\u201d\n\nA number of things occurred to him in confusion. The deacon did not see\nhe was hit. He said to himself:\n\n\u201cI ain't no call to spoil 'is luck, if he is country.\u201d\n\nHe blinked a moment, then nodded and whispered hoarsely: \u201cGo on.\u201d\n\nThe deacon crept away into the mist. Dinkey leaned back feebly and\nclosed his eyes.\n\n\u201cWished I'd die quick. It's rotten luck. Wished I could see Pete.\u201d\n\nThe deacon crept down about two hundred yards, then stopped and waited\nfor the young man Cott. The night was closing in fast A cry in the\ndarkness made him shiver. He had never imagined anything could be so\ndesolate and sad. He thought he had better see what was the matter with\nDinkey. He never could make out afterward why it had seemed necessary\nto look after Dinkey. There were hundreds of better men on the slopes.\nDinkey might have passed him. It did not seem very sensible business\nto go back after that worthless little limb of Satan. The deacon never\nthought the adventure a credit to his judgment.\n\nBut he went back, guiding himself by the darker gloom of the trees\nagainst the sky, and groped his way down the hollow, and heard Dinkey\nmuttering and babbling things without sense. It made the deacon mad\nto have to do with irresponsible people, such as go to sleep under the\nenemy's rifles and talk aloud in dreams. He pulled him roughly by the\nboots, and he fell over, babbling and muttering. Then it came upon the\ndeacon that it was not sleep, but fever. He guessed the young man was\nhit somewhere. They had better be going, anyway. The Johnnies must have\nout a picket line somewhere. He slipped his hands under Dinkey and got\nup. He tried to climb out quietly, but fell against the bank. Some one\ntook a shot at the noise, spattering the dirt under his nose. He lifted\nDinkey higher and went on. Dinkey's mutterings ceased. He made no sound\nat all for a while, and at last said huskily:\n\n\u201cWot's up?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt's me.\u201d\n\n\u201cHully gee! Wot yer doin'?\u201d\n\nHis voice was weak and thin now. He felt as if he were being pulled in\ntwo in the middle.\n\n\u201cSay, ol' man, I won't jolly yer. Les' find Pete. There's a minie ball\nmessed up in me stomick awful.\u201d\n\n\u201c'Tain't far, Dinkey,\u201d said the deacon, gently.\n\nAnd he thought of Pete Murphy's red, fleshy face and black, oily\nmustache. It occurred to him that he had noticed most men in Company\nG, if they fell into trouble, wanted to find Pete. He thought he should\nwant to himself, though he could not tell why. If he happened to be\nkilled anywhere he thought he should like Pete Murphy to tell his wife\nabout it.\n\nDinkey lay limp and heavy in his arms. The wet blackness seemed like\nsomething pressed against his face. He could not realize that he was\nwalking, though in the night, down the same slope to a river called the\nRappahannock and a town called Fredericksburg. It was strange business\nfor him, Deacon Terrell of Brewster, to be in, stumbling down the\nbattlefield in the pit darkness, with a godless little brat like Dinkey\nCott in his arms.\n\nAnd why godless, if the same darkness were around us all, and the same\nlight, while we lived, would come to all in the morning? It was borne\nupon the deacon that no man was elected to the salvation of the sun or\ncondemned to the night apart from other men.\n\nThe deacon never could recall the details of his night's journey, except\nthat he fell down more than once, and ran against stone walls in the\ndark. It seemed to him that he had gone through an unknown, supernatural\ncountry. Dinkey lay so quiet that he thought he might be dead, but he\ncould not make up his mind to leave him. He wished he could find Pete\nMurphy. Pete would tell him if Dinkey was dead.\n\nHe walked not one mile, but several, in the blind night Dinkey had long\nbeen a limp weight. The last thing he said was, \u201cLes' find Pete,\u201d and\nthat was long before.\n\nAt last the deacon saw a little glow in the darkness, and, coming near,\nfound a dying campfire with a few flames only flickering, and beside it\ntwo men asleep. He might have heard the ripple of the Rappahannock, but,\nbeing so worn and dull in his mind, he laid Dinkey down by the fire and\nfell heavily to sleep himself before he knew it.\n\nWhen he woke Pete Murphy stood near him with a corporal and a guard.\nThey were looking for the pieces of Company G. \u201cDead, ain't he?\u201d said\nPete.\n\nThe deacon got up and brushed his clothes. The two men who were sleeping\nwoke up also, and they all stood around looking at Dinkey in awkward\nsilence.\n\n\u201cWho's his folks?\u201d\n\n\u201cHim!\u201d said the big lieutenant. \u201cHe ain't got any folks. Tell you what,\nol' man, I see a regiment drummer somewhere a minute ago. He'll do a\nroll over Dinkey, for luck, sure!\u201d\n\nThey put Dinkey's coat over his face and buried him on the bank of the\nRappahannock, and the drummer beat a roll over him.\n\nThen they sat down on the bank and waited for the next thing.\n\nThe troops were moving back now across the bridge hurriedly. Company G\nhad to take its turn. The deacon felt in his pockets and found the cough\ndrops and Mrs. Terrell's scissors. He took a cough drop and fell to\ntrimming his beard.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GREEN GRASSHOPPER\n\n\nANY one would have called Bobby Bell a comfortable boy--that is, any\none who did not mind bugs; and I am sure I do not see why any one should\nmind bugs, except the kind that taste badly in raspberries and some\nother kinds. It was among the things that are entertaining to see Bobby\nBell bobbing around among the buttercups looking for grasshoppers.\nGrasshoppers are interesting when you consider that they have heads\nlike door knobs or green cheeses and legs with crooks to them. \u201cBobbing\u201d\n means to go like Bobby Bell--that is, to go up and down, to talk to\none's self, and not to hear any one shout, unless it is some one whom\nnot to hear is to get into difficulties.\n\nAcross the Salem Road from Mr. Atherton Bell's house there were many\nlevel meadows of a pleasant greenness, as far as Cum-ming's alder swamp;\nand these meadows were called the Bow Meadows. If you take the alder\nswamp and the Bow Meadows together, they were like this: the swamp was\nmysterious and unvisited, except by those who went to fish in the Muck\nHole for turtles and eels. Frogs with solemn voices lived in the swamp.\nHerons flew over it slowly, and herons also are uncanny affairs. We\nbelieved that the people of the swamp knew things it was not good to\nknow, like witchcraft and the insides of the earth. In the meadows, on\nthe other hand, there were any number of cheerful and busy creatures,\nsome along the level of the buttercups, but most of them about the roots\nof the grasses. The people in the swamp were wet, cold, sluggish, and\nnot a great many of them. The people of the meadows were dry, warm,\ncontinually doing something, and in number not to be calculated by any\nrule in Wentworth's Arithmetic.\n\nSo you see how different were the two, and how it comes about that the\nmeadows were nearly the best places in the world to be in, both\nbecause of the society there, and because of the swamp near at hand and\ninteresting to think about. So, too, you see why it was that Bobby Bell\ncould be found almost any summer day \u201cbobbing\u201d for grasshoppers in the\nBow Meadows--\u201cbobbing\u201d meaning to go up and down like Bobby Bell, to\ntalk to one's self and not to hear any one shout; and \u201cgrasshoppers\u201d\n being interesting because of their heads resembling door knobs or green\ncheeses, because of the crooks in their legs, and because of their\nextraordinary habit of jumping.\n\nThere were in Hagar at this time four ladies who lived at a little\ndistance from the Salem Road and Mr. Atherton Bell's house, on a road\nwhich goes over a hill and off to a district called Scrabble Up and\nDown, where huckleberries and sweet fern mostly grow. They were known as\nthe Tuttle Four Women, being old Mrs. Tuttle and the three Miss Tuttles,\nof whom Miss Rachel was the eldest.\n\nIt is easy to understand why Miss Rachel and the children of the village\nof Hagar did not get along well together, when you consider how clean\nshe was, how she walked so as never to fall over anything, nor took\nany interest in squat tag, nor resembled the children of the village of\nHagar in any respect. And so you can understand how it was that, when\nshe came down the hill that Saturday afternoon and saw Bobby Bell\nthrough the bars in the Bow Meadows, she did not understand his actions,\nand disapproved of them, whatever they were.\n\nThe facts were these: In the first place a green grasshopper, who was\nreckless or had not been brought up rightly, had gone down Bobby's back\nnext the skin, where he had no business to be; and naturally Bobby stood\non his head to induce him to come out. That seems plain enough, for, if\nyou are a grasshopper and down a boy's back, and the boy stands on his\nhead, you almost always come out to see what he is about; because it\nmakes you curious, if not ill, to be down a boy's back and have him\nstand on his head. Any one can see that. And this is the reason I had\nto explain about Miss Rachel, in order to show you why she did not\nunderstand it, nor understand what followed after.\n\nIn the next place, Bobby knew that when you go where you have no\nbusiness to, you are sometimes spanked, but usually you are talked to\nunpleasantly, and tied up to something by the leg, and said to be in\ndisgrace. Usually you are tied to the sewing machine, and \u201cdisgrace\u201d\n means the corner of the sewing-room between the machine and the sofa. It\nnever occurred to him but that this was the right and natural order of\nthings. Very likely it is. It seemed so to Bobby.\n\nNow it is difficult to spank a grasshopper properly. And so there was\nnothing to do but to tie him up and talk to him unpleasantly. That seems\nquite simple and plain. But the trouble was that it was a long time\nsince Miss Rachel had stood on her head, or been spanked, or tied up to\nanything. This was unfortunate, of course. And when she saw Bobby\nstand violently on his head and then tie a string to a grasshopper, she\nthought it was extraordinary business, and probably bad, and she came up\nto the bars in haste.\n\n\u201cBobby!\u201d she said, \u201cyou naughty boy, are you pulling off that\ngrasshopper's leg?\u201d\n\nBobby thought this absurd. \u201cGasshoppers,\u201d he said calmly, \u201cithn't any\ngood 'ith their legth off.\u201d\n\nThis was plain enough, too, because grasshoppers are intended to jump,\nand cannot jump without their legs; consequently it would be quite\nabsurd to pull them off. Miss Rachel thought one could not know this\nwithout trying it, and especially know it in such a calm, matter-of-fact\nway as Bobby seemed to do, without trying it a vast number of times;\ntherefore she became very much excited. \u201cYou wicked, wicked boy!\u201d she\ncried. \u201cI shall tell your father!\u201d Then she went off.\n\nBobby wondered awhile what his father would say when Miss Rachel told\nhim that grasshoppers were no good with their legs off. When Bobby told\nhim that kind of thing, he generally chuckled to himself and called\nBobby \u201ca queer little chicken.\u201d If his father called Miss Rachel \u201ca\nqueer little chicken,\u201d Bobby felt that it would seem strange. But he had\nto look after the discipline of the grasshopper, and it is no use trying\nto think of two things at once. He tied the grasshopper to a mullein\nstalk and talked to him unpleasantly, and the grasshopper behaved very\nbadly all the time; so that Bobby was disgusted and went away to leave\nhim for a time--went down to the western end of the meadows, which is a\ndrowsy place. And there it came about that he fell asleep, because his\nlegs were tired, because the bees hummed continually, and because the\nsun was warm and the grass deep around him.\n\nMiss Rachel went into the village and saw Mr. Atherton Bell on the steps\nof the post-office. He was much astonished at being attacked in such\na disorderly manner by such an orderly person as Miss Rachel; but\nhe admitted, when it was put to him, that pulling off the legs of\ngrasshoppers was interfering with the rights of grasshoppers. Then Miss\nRachel went on her way, thinking that a good seed had been sown and the\nmorality of the community distinctly advanced.\n\nThe parents of other boys stood on the post-office steps in great\nnumber, for it was near mail-time; and here you might have seen what\nvarieties of human nature there are. For some were taken with the\nconviction that the attraction of the Bow Meadows to their children was\nall connected with the legs of grasshoppers; some suspected it only, and\nwere uneasy; some refused to imagine such a thing, and were indignant.\nBut they nearly all started for the Bow Meadows with a vague idea of\ndoing something, Mr. Atherton Bell and Father Durfey leading. It was not\na well-planned expedition, nor did any one know what was intended to be\ndone. They halted at the bars, but no Bobby Bell was in sight, nor\ndid the Bow Meadows seem to have anything to say about the matter. The\ngrasshoppers in sight had all the legs that rightly belonged to them.\nMr. Atherton Bell got up on the wall and shouted for Bobby. Father\nDurfey climbed over the bars.\n\nIt happened that there was no one in the Bow Meadows at this time,\nexcept Bobby, Moses Durfey, Chub Leroy, and one other. Bobby was asleep,\non account of the bumblebees humming in the sunlight; and the other\nthree were far up the farther side, on account of an expedition through\nthe alder swamp, supposing it to be Africa. There was a desperate battle\nsomewhere; but the expedition turned out badly in the end, and in this\nplace is neither here nor there. They heard Mr. Atherton Bell shouting,\nbut they did not care about it. It is more to the point that Father\nDurfey, walking around in the grass, did not see the grasshopper who was\ntied to the mullein stalk and as mad as he could be. For when tied up\nin disgrace, one is always exceedingly mad at this point; but repentance\ncomes afterwards. The grasshopper never got that far, for Father Durfey\nstepped on him with a boot as big as--big enough for Father Durfey to be\ncomfortable in--so that the grasshopper was quite dead. It was to him as\nif a precipice were to fall on you, when you were thinking of something\nelse. Then they all went away.\n\nBobby Bell woke up with a start, and was filled with remorse,\nremembering his grasshopper. The sun had slipped behind the shoulder of\nWindless Mountain. There was a faint light across the Bow Meadows, that\nmade them sweet to look on, but a little ghostly. Also it was dark in\nthe roots of the grasses, and difficult to find a green grasshopper\nwho was dead; at least it would have been if he had not been tied to a\nmullein stalk. Bobby found him at last sunk deep in the turf, with his\npoor legs limp and crookless, and his head, which had been like a\ngreen cheese or a door knob, no longer looking even like the head of a\ngrasshopper.\n\nThen Bobby Bell sat down and wept. Miss Rachel, who had turned the corner\nand was half way up to the house of the Tuttle Four Women, heard him,\nand turned back to the bars. She wondered if Mr. Atherton Bell had not\nbeen too harsh. The Bow Meadows looked dim and mournful in the twilight.\nMiss Rachel was feeling a trifle sad about herself, too, as she\nsometimes did; and the round-cheeked cherub weeping in the wide\nshadowy meadows seemed to her something like her own life in the great\nworld--not very well understood.\n\n\u201cHe wath geen!\u201d wailed Bobby, looking up at her, but not allowing his\ngrief to be interrupted. \u201cHe wath my geen bug!\u201d\n\nMiss Rachel melted still further, without knowing why.\n\n\u201cWhat was green?\u201d\n\nShe pulled down a bar and crawled through. She hoped Mr. Atherton Bell\nwas not looking from a window, for it was difficult to avoid making\none's self amusing to Mr. Atherton Bell. But Bobby was certainly in some\nkind of trouble.\n\n\u201cHe'th dead!\u201d wailed Bobby again. \u201cHe'th thtepped on!\u201d\n\nMiss Rachel bent over him stiffly. It was hard for one so austerely\nladylike as Miss Rachel to seem gracious and compassionate, but she did\npretty well.\n\n\u201cOh, it's a grasshopper!\u201d Then more severely: \u201cWhy did you tie him up?\u201d\n\nBobby's sobs subsided into hiccoughs.\n\n\u201cIt'th a disgace. I put him in disgace, and I forgotted him. He went\ndown my back.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you step on him?\u201d\n\n\u201cN-O-O-O!\u201d The hiccoughs rose into sobs again. \u201cHe wath the geenest\ngasshopper!\u201d\n\nThis was not strictly true; there were others just as green; but it was\na generous tribute to the dead and a credit to Bobby Bell that he felt\nthat way.\n\nNow there was much in all this that Miss Rachel did not understand; but\nshe understood enough to feel sharp twinges for the wrong that she had\ndone Bobby Bell, and whatever else may be said of Miss Rachel, up to her\nlight she was square. In fact, I should say that she had an acute-angled\nconscience. It was more than square; it was one of those consciences\nthat you are always spearing yourself on. She felt very humble, and went\nwith Bobby Bell to dig a grave for the green grasshopper under the lee\nof the wall. She dug it herself with her parasol, thinking how she must\ngo up with Bobby Bell, what she must say to Mr. Atherton Bell, and how\npainful it would be, because Mr. Atherton Bell was so easily amused.\n\nBobby patted the grave with his chubby palm and cooed contentedly. Then\nthey went up the hill in the twilight hand in hand.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ENEMIES\n\n\nTHE great fluted pillars in Ramoth church were taken away. They\ninterfered with the view and rental of the pews behind them. Albion Dee\nwas loud and persuasive for removing them, and Jay Dee secret, shy and\nresistant against it. That was their habit and method of hostility.\n\nThen in due season Jay Dee rented the first seat in the pew in front\nof Albion's pew. This was thought to be an act of hostility, subtle,\nnoiseless, far-reaching.\n\nHe was a tall man, Jay Dee, and wore a wide flapping coat, had flowing\nwhite hair, and walked with a creeping step; a bachelor, a miser, he\nhad gathered a property slowly with persistent fingers; a furtive,\nmeditating, venerable man, with a gentle piping voice. He lived on the\nhill in the old house of the Dees, built in the last century by one\n\u201cJohn Griswold Dee, who married Sarah Ballister and begat two sons,\u201d\n who respectively begat Jay and Albion Dee; and Albion founded Ironville,\nthree or four houses in the hollow at the west of Diggory Gorge, and a\nbolt and nail factory. He was a red-faced, burly man, with short legs\nand thick neck, who sought determined means to ends, stood squarely and\nstated opinions.\n\nThe beginnings of the feud lay backward in time, little underground\nresentments that trickled and collected. In Albion they foamed up and\ndisappeared. He called himself modern and progressive, and the bolt and\nnail factory was thought to be near bankruptcy. He liked to look men in\nthe eyes. If one could not see the minister, one could not tell if he\nmeant what he said, or preached shoddy doctrine. As regards all view and\nrental behind him, Jay Dee was as bad as one of the old fluted pillars.\nAlbion could not see the minister. He felt the act to be an act of\nhostility.\n\nBut he was progressive, and interested at the time in a question of the\nservice, as respected the choir which sang from the rear gallery. It\nseemed to him more determined and effective to hymnal devotion that the\ncongregation should rise and turn around during the singing, to the end\nthat congregation and choir might each see that all things were done\ndecently. He fixed on the idea and found it written as an interlinear to\nhis gospels, an imperative codicil to the duty of man.\n\nBut the congregation was satiated with change. They had still to make\npeace between their eyes and the new slender pillars, to convince\nthemselves by contemplation that the church was still not unstable, not\ndoctrinally weaker.\n\nSo it came about that Albion Dee stood up sternly and faced the choir\nalone, with the old red, fearless, Protestant face one knows of Luther\nand Cromwell. The congregation thought him within his rights there\nto bear witness to his conviction. Sabbaths came and went in Ramoth\npeacefully, milestones of the passing time, and all seemed well.\n\nPseudo-classic architecture is a pale, inhuman allegory of forgotten\nmeaning. If buildings like Ramoth church could in some plastic way\nassimilate their communicants, what gargoyles would be about the\ncornices, what wall paintings of patient saints, mystical and realistic.\nOn one of the roof cornices of an old church in France is the carved\nstone face of a demon with horns and a forked tongue, and around its\neyes a wrinkled smile of immense kindness. And within the church is the\nmural painting of a saint, some Beata Ursula or Catherine, with upturned\neyes; a likeable girl, capable of her saintship, of turning up her eyes\nwith sincerity because it fell to her to see a celestial vision;\nas capable of a blush and twittering laugh, and the better for her\ncapabilities.\n\nIt is not stated what Albion symbolized. He stood overtopping the\nbonnets and the gray heads of deacons, respected by the pews, popular\nwith the choir, protesting his conviction.\n\nAnd all the while secretly, with haunch and elbow, he nudged, bumped\nand rubbed the shoulders and silvery head of Jay Dee. It is here\nclaimed that he stood there in the conviction that it was his duty so\nto testify. It is not denied that he so bumped and squatted against Jay\nDee, cautiously, but with relish and pleasure.\n\nIn the bowed silver head, behind the shy, persistent eyes of Jay Dee,\nwhat were his thoughts, his purposes, coiling and constricting? None\nbut the two were aware of the locked throat grip of the spirit. In the\ndroning Sabbath peace the congregation pursued the minister through\nthe subdivisions of his text, and dragged the hymn behind the dragging\nchoir.\n\nIt was a June day and the orioles gurgled their warm nesting notes in\nthe maples. The boys in the gallery searched the surface of the quiet\nassembly for points of interest; only here and there nodding heads,\nwavering fans, glazed, abstracted eyes. They twisted and yawned. What to\nthem were brethren in unity, or the exegesis of a text, as if one were\nto count and classify, prickle by prickle, to no purpose the irritating\npoints of a chestnut burr? The sermon drowsed to its close. The choir\nand Albion rose. It was an outworn sight now, little more curious than\nMonday morning. The sunlight shone through the side windows, slanting\ndown over the young, worldly and impatient, and one selected ray fell on\nJay Dee's hair with spiritual radiance, and on Albion's red face, turned\nchoirward for a testimony.\n\nSuddenly Albion gave a guttural shout. He turned, he grasped Jay Dee's\ncollar, dragged him headlong into the aisle, and shook him to and fro,\nprotesting, \u201cYou stuck me! I'll teach you!\u201d\n\nHis red face worked with passion; Jay Dee's venerable head bobbed,\nhelpless, mild, piteous. The choir broke down. The minister rose with\nlifted hands and open mouth, the gallery in revelry, the body of\nthe church in exclamatory confusion. Albion saw outstretched hands\napproaching, left his enemy, and hat in hand strode down the aisle with\nred, glowering face, testifying, \u201cHe stuck me.\u201d\n\nJay Dee sat on the floor, his meek head swaying dizzily.\n\nOn Monday morning Albion set out for Hamilton down the narrow valley\nof the Pilgrim River. The sudden hills hid him and his purposes from\nRamoth. He came in time to sit in the office of Simeon Ballister, and\nSimeon's eyes gleamed. He took notes and snuffed the battle afar.\n\n\u201cHa! Witnesses to pin protruding from coat in region adjoining haunch.\nHum! Affidavits to actual puncture of inflamed character, arguing\npossibly venom of pin. Ha! Hum! Motive of concurrent animosity. A very\nrespectable case. I will come up and see your witnesses--Ha!--in a day\nor two. Good morning.\u201d\n\nBallister was a shining light in the county courts in those days,\nbut few speak of him now. Yet he wrote a Life of Byron, a History of\nHamilton County, and talked a half century with unflagging charm. Those\nwho remember will have in mind his long white beard and inflamed and\nswollen nose, his voice of varied melody. Alien whiskey and natural\nindolence kept his fame local. His voice is silent forever that once\nrose in the court-rooms like a fountain shot with rainbow fancies, in\nmusical enchantment, in liquid cadence. \u201cI have laid open, gentlemen,\nthe secret of a human heart, shadowed and mourning, to the illumination\nof your justice. You are the repository and temple of that sacred light.\nNot merely as a plaintiff, a petitioner, my client comes; but as a\nworshipper, in reverence of your function, he approaches the balm and\nradiance of that steadfast torch and vestal fire of civilization, an\nintelligent jury.\u201d Such was Ballister's inspired manner, such his habit\nof rhythm and climax, whenever he found twenty-four eyes fixed on his\nswollen nose, the fiery mesmeric core of his oratory beaconing juries to\nfollow it and discover truth.\n\nBut the Case of Dee v. Dee came only before a justice of the peace, in\nthe Town Hall of Ramoth, and Justice Kernegan was but a stout man with\nhairy ears and round, spectacled, benevolent eyes. Jay Dee brought no\nadvocate. His silvery hair floated about his head. His pale eyes gazed\nin mild terror at Ballister. He said it must have been a wasp stung\nAlbion.\n\n\u201cA wasp, sir! Your Honor, does a wasp carry for penetration, for\npuncture, for malignant attack or justifiable defence, for any purpose\nwhatsoever, a brass pin of palpable human manufacture, drawn, headed and\npointed by machinery, such as was inserted in my client's person? Does\nthe defendant wish your Honor to infer that wasps carry papers of brass\npins in their anatomies? I will ask the defendant, whose venerable\nthough dishonored head bears witness to his age, if, in his long\nexperience, he has ever met a wasp of such military outfit and arsenal?\nNot a wasp, your Honor, but a serpent; a serpent in human form.\u201d\n\nJay Dee had no answer to all this. He murmured--\n\n\u201cSat on me.\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn't catch your remark, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, you see,\u201d explained the Justice, \u201cJay says Albion's been squatting\non him, Mr. Ballister, every Sunday for six months. You see, Albion gets\nup when the choir sings, and watches 'em sharp to see they sing correct,\nbecause his ear ain't well tuned, but his eye's all right.\u201d\n\nThe Justice's round eyes blinked pleasantly. The court-room murmured\nwith approval, and Albion started to his feet.\n\n\u201cNow don't interrupt the Court,\u201d continued the Justice. \u201cYou see, Mr.\nBallister, sometimes Jay says it was a wasp and sometimes he says it\nwas because Albion squatted on him, don't you see, bumped him on the\near with his elbow. You see, Jay sets just in front of Albion. Now, you\nsee--\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, does it not appear to your Honor that a witness who voluntarily\noffers to swear to two contradictory explanations; first, that the\noperation in question, the puncture or insertion, was performed by a\nwasp; secondly, that, though he did it himself with a pin and in his\nhaste allowed that pin in damnatory evidence to remain, it was because,\nhe alleges, of my client's posture toward, and intermittent contact\nwith him--does it not seem to your Honor that such a witness is to be\ndiscredited in any statement he may make?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, really, Mr. Ballister, but you see Albion oughtn't to've squatted\non him.\u201d\n\n\u201cI find myself in a singular position. It has not been usual in my\nexperience to find the Court a pleader in opposition. I came hoping to\ninform and persuade your Honor regarding this case. I find myself in\nthe position of being informed and persuaded. I hope the Court sees\nno discourtesy in the remark, but if the Court is prepared already to\ndiscuss the case there seems little for me to do.\u201d\n\nThe Justice looked alarmed. He felt his popularity trembling. It would\nnot do to balk the public interest in Ballister's oratory. Doubtless Jay\nDee had stuck a pin into Albion, but maybe Albion had mussed Jay's hair\nand jabbed his ear, had dragged and shaken him in the aisle at least.\nThe rights of it did not seem difficult. They ought not to have acted\nthat way. No man has the right to sit on another man's head from the\nstandpoint or advantage of his own religious conviction. Nor has a man\na right to use another man for a pincushion whenever, as it may be,\nhe finds something about him in a way that's like a pincushion. But\nBallister's oratory was critical and important.\n\n\u201cWhy,\u201d said Kemegan hastily, \u201cthis Court is in a mighty uncertain state\nof mind. It couldn't make it up without hearing what you were going to\nsay.\u201d\n\nAgain the Court murmured with approval. Ballister rose.\n\n\u201cThis case presents singular features. The secret and sunless caverns,\nwhere human motives lie concealed, it is the function of justice to lay\nopen to vivifying light. Not only evil or good intentions are moving\nforces of apparent action, but mistakes and misjudgments.\nI conclude that your Honor puts down the defendant's fanciful and\npredatory wasp to the defendant's neglect of legal advice, to his feeble\nand guilty inepitude. I am willing to leave it there. I assume that he\nconfesses the assault on my client's person with a pin, an insidious and\nlawless pin, pointed with cruelty and propelled with spite; I infer\nand understand that he offers in defence a certain alleged provocation,\ncertain insertions of my client's elbow into the defendant's ear,\ncertain trespasses and disturbance of the defendant's hair, finally,\ncertain approximations and contacts between my client's adjacent quarter\nand the defendant's shoulders, denominated by him--and here we demur or\nobject--as an act of sitting or squatting, whereby the defendant alleges\nhimself to have been touched, grieved and annoyed. In the defendant's\nparsimonious neglect of counsel we generously supply him with a fair\nstatement of his case. I return to my client.\n\n\u201cYour Honor, what nobler quality is there in our defective nature than\nthat which enables the earnest man, whether as a citizen or in divine\nworship, whether in civil matters or religious, to abide steadfastly by\nhis conscience and convictions. He stands a pillar of principle, a rock\nin the midst of uncertain waters. The feeble look up to him and are\nencouraged, the false and shifty are ashamed. His eye is fixed on the\nfuture. Posterity shall judge him. Small matters of his environment\nescape his notice. His mind is on higher things.\n\n\u201cI am not prepared to forecast the judgment of posterity on that point\nof ritualistic devotion to which my client is so devoted an advocate.\nNeither am I anxious or troubled to seek opinion whether my client\ninserted his elbow into the defendant's ear, or the defendant,\nmaliciously or inadvertently, by some rotatory motion, applied, bumped\nor banged his ear against my client's elbow; whether the defendant\nrubbed or impinged with his head on the appendant coat tails of\nmy client, or the reverse. I am uninterested in the alternative,\nindifferent to the whole matter. It seems to me an academic question. If\nthe defendant so acted, it is not the action of which we complain. If\nmy client once, twice, or even at sundry times, in his stern absorption,\ndid not observe what may in casual accident have taken place behind,\nwhat then? I ask your Honor, what then? Did the defendant by a slight\nremoval, by suggestion, by courteous remonstrance, attempt to obviate\nthe difficulty? No! Did he remember those considerate virtues enjoined\nin Scripture, or the sacred place and ceremony in which he shared? No!\nLike a serpent, he coiled and waited. He hid his hypocrisy in white\nhairs, his venomous purpose in attitudes of reverence. He darkened his\nmorbid malice till it festered, corroded, corrupted. He brooded over his\nfancied injury and developed his base design. Resolved and prepared,\nhe watched his opportunity. With brazen and gangrened pin of malicious\npoint and incensed propulsion, with averted eye and perfidious hand,\nwith sudden, secret, backward thrust, with all the force of accumulated,\ndiseased, despicable spite, he darted like a serpent's fang this\nmisapplied instrument into the unprotected posterior, a sensitive\nportion, most outlying and exposed, of my client's person.\n\n\u201cThis action, your Honor, I conceive to be in intent and performance a\nfelonious, injurious and sufficient assault. For this injury, for\npain, indignity and insult, for the vindication of justice in state and\ncommunity, for the protection of the citizen from bold or treacherous\nattack, anterior or posterior, vanguard or rear, I ask your Honor that\ndamages be given my client adequate to that injury, adequate to that\nvindication and protection.\u201d\n\nSo much and more Ballister spoke. Mr. Kernegan took off his spectacles\nand rubbed his forehead.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d he said, \u201cI guess Mr. Ballister'll charge Albion about forty\ndollars--\u201d\n\nBallister started up.\n\n\u201cDon't interrupt the Court. It's worth all that. Albion and Jay haven't\nbeen acting right and they ought to pay for it between 'em. The Court\ndecides Jay Dee shall pay twenty dollars damages and costs.\u201d\n\nThe court-room murmured with approval.\n\n* * * * *\n\nThe twilight was gathering as Albion drove across the old covered bridge\nand turned into the road that leads to Ironville through a gloomy gorge\nof hemlock trees and low-browed rocks. The road keeps to the left above\nDiggory Brook, which murmurs in recesses below and waves little ghostly\nwhite garments over its waterfalls. Such is this murmur and the soft\nnoise of the wind in the hemlocks, that the gorge is ever filled with\na sound of low complaint. Twilight in the open sky is night below the\nhemlocks. At either end of the avenue you note where the light still\nglows fadingly. There lie the hopes and possibilities of a worldly day,\nskies, fields and market-places, to-days, to-morrows and yesterdays,\nand men walking about with confidence in their footing. But here the\nhemlocks stand beside in black order of pillars and whisper together\ndistrustfully. The man who passes you is a nameless shadow with an\nintrusive, heavy footfall. Low voices float up from the pit of the\ngorge, intimations, regrets, discouragements, temptations.\n\nA house and mill once stood at the lower end of it, and there, a century\nago, was a wild crime done on a certain night; the dead bodies of the\nmiller and his children lay on the floor, except one child, who hid and\ncrept out in the grass; little trickles of blood stole along the cracks;\nhouse and mill blazed and fell down into darkness; a maniac cast his\ndripping axe into Diggory Brook and fled away yelling among the hills.\nNot that this had made the gorge any darker, or that its whispers are\nsupposed to relate to any such memories. The brook comes from swamps\nand meadows like other brooks, and runs into the Pilgrim River. It is\nshallow and rapid, though several have contrived to fall and be drowned\nin it. One wonders how it could have happened. The old highway leading\nfrom Ramoth village to the valley has been grass-grown for generations,\nbut that is because the other road is more direct to the Valley\nsettlement and the station. The water of the brook is clear and pleasant\nenough. Much trillium, with its leaves like dark red splashes, a plant\nof sullen color and solitary station, used to grow there, but does so no\nmore. Slender birches now creep down almost to the mouth of the gorge,\nand stand with white stems and shrinking, trembling leaves. But birches\ngrow nearly everywhere.\n\nAlbion drove steadily up the darkened road, till his horse dropped\ninto a walk behind an indistinguishable object that crept in front with\ncreaking wheels. He shouted for passage and turned into the ditch on the\nside away from the gorge. The shadowy vehicle drifted slantingly aside.\nAlbion started his horse; the front wheels of the two clicked, grated,\nslid inside each other and locked. Albion spoke impatiently. He was ever\nfor quick decisions. He backed his horse, and the lock became hopeless.\nThe unknown made no comment, no noise. The hemlocks whispered, the\nbrook muttered in its pit and shook the little white garments of its\nwaterfalls.\n\n\u201cCrank your wheel a trifle now.\u201d\n\nThe other did not move.\n\n\u201cWho are you? Can't ye speak?\u201d\n\nNo answer.\n\nAlbion leaned over his wheel, felt the seat rail of the other vehicle,\nand brought his face close to something white--white hair about the\napproximate outline of a face. By the hair crossed by the falling hat\nbrim, by the shoulders seen vaguely to be bent forward, by the loose\ncreaking wheels of the buck-board he knew Jay Dee. The two stood\nclose and breathless, face to face, but featureless and apart by the\nunmeasured distance of obscurity.\n\nAlbion felt a sudden uneasy thrill and drew back. He dreaded to hear\nJay Dee's spiritless complaining voice, too much in the nature of that\ndusky, uncanny place. He felt as if something cold, damp and impalpable\nwere drawing closer to him, whispering, calling his attention to the\ngorge, how black and steep! to the presence of Jay Dee, how near! to\nthe close secret hemlocks covering the sky. This was not agreeable to a\npositive man, a man without fancies. Jay Dee sighed at last, softly, and\nspoke, piping, thin, half-moaning:\n\n\u201cYou're following me. Let me alone!\u201d\n\n\u201cI'm not following you,\u201d said Albion hoarsely. \u201cCrank your wheel!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou're following me. I'm an old man. You're only fifty.\u201d\n\nAlbion breathed hard in the darkness. He did not understand either Jay\nDee or himself. After a silence Jay Dee went on:\n\n\u201cI haven't any kin but you, Albion, except Stephen Ballister and the\nWinslows. They're only fourth cousins.\u201d\n\nAlbion growled.\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cWithout my making a will it'd come to you, wouldn't it? Seems to me as\nif you oughtn't to pester me, being my nearest kin, and me, I ain't made\nany will. I got a little property, though it ain't much. 'Twould clear\nyour mortgage and make you easy.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat d'you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cTwenty dollars and costs,\u201d moaned Jay Dee. \u201cAnd me an old man, getting\nready for his latter end soon. I ain't made my will, either. I ought\nto've done it.\u201d\n\nWhat could Jay Dee mean? If he made no will his property would come to\nAlbion. No will made yet. A hinted intention to make one in favor of\nStephen Ballister or the Winslows. The foundry was mortgaged.--Jay\nwas worth sixty thousand. Diggory Gorge was a dark whispering place\nof ancient crime, of more than one unexplained accident. The hemlocks\nwhispered, the brook gurgled and glimmered. Such darkness might well\ncloak and cover the sunny instincts that look upwards, scruples of the\nsocial daylight. Would Jay Dee trap him to his ruin? Jay Dee would not\nexpect to enjoy it if he were dead himself. But accidents befall, and\nmen not seldom meet sudden deaths, and an open, free-speaking neighbor\nis not suspected. Success lies before him in the broad road.\n\nIt rushed through Albion's mind, a flood, sudden, stupefying--thoughts\nthat he could not master, push back, or stamp down.\n\nHe started and roused himself; his hands were cold and shaking. He\nsprang from his buggy and cried angrily:\n\n\u201cWhat d'ye mean by all that? Tempt me, a God-fearing man? Throw ye off'n\nthe gorge! Break your old neck! I've good notion to it, if I wasn't a\nGod-fearing man. Crank your wheel there!\u201d\n\nHe jerked his buggy free, sprang in, and lashed his horse. The horse\nleaped, the wheels locked again. Jay Dee's buckboard, thrust slanting\naside, went over the edge, slid and stopped with a thud, caught by the\nhemlock trunks. A ghostly glimmer of white hair one instant, and Jay Dee\nwas gone down the black pit of the gorge. A wheezing moan, and nothing\nmore was heard in the confusion. Then only the complaining murmur of the\nbrook, the hemlocks at their secrets.\n\n\u201cJay! Jay!\u201d called Albion, and then leaped out, ran and whispered,\n\u201cJay!\u201d\n\nOnly the mutter of the brook and the shimmer of foam could be made out\nas he stared and listened, leaning over, clinging to a tree, feeling\nabout for the buckboard. He fumbled, lit a match and lifted it. The\nseat was empty, the left wheels still in the road. The two horses, with\ntwisted necks and glimmering eyes, were looking back quietly at him,\nAlbion Dee, a man of ideas and determination, now muttering things\nunintelligible in the same tone with the muttering water, with wet\nforehead and nerveless hands, heir of Jay Dee's thousands, staring down\nthe gorge of Diggory Brook, the scene of old crime. He gripped with\ndifficulty as he let himself slide past the first row of trees, and felt\nfor some footing below. He noticed dully that it was a steep slope, not\na precipice at that point. He lit more matches as he crept down, and\npeered around to find something crushed and huddled against some tree, a\nlifeless, fearful thing. The slope grew more moderate. There were thick\nferns. And closely above the brook, that gurgled and laughed quietly,\nnow near at hand, sat Jay Dee. He looked up and blinked dizzily,\nwhispered and piped:\n\n\u201cTwenty dollars and costs! You oughtn't to pester me. I ain't made my\nwill.\u201d\n\nAlbion sat down. They sat close together in the darkness some moments\nand were silent.\n\n\u201cYou ain't hurt?\u201d Albion asked at last. \u201cWe'll get out.\u201d\n\nThey went up the steep, groping and stumbling.\n\nAlbion half lifted his enemy into the buckboard, and led the horse, his\nown following. They were out into the now almost faded daylight. Jay sat\nholding his lines, bowed over, meek and venerable. The front of his coat\nwas torn. Albion came to his wheel.\n\n\u201cWill twenty dollars make peace between you and me, Jay Dee?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe costs was ten,\u201d piping sadly.\n\n\u201cThirty dollars, Jay Dee? Here it is.\u201d\n\nHe jumped into his buggy and drove rapidly. In sight of the foundry he\ndrew a huge breath.\n\n\u201cI been a sinner and a fool,\u201d and slapped his knee. \u201cIt's sixty thousand\ndollars, maybe seventy. A self-righteous sinner and a cocksure fool. God\nforgive me!\u201d\n\nBetween eight and nine Jay Dee sat down before his meagre fire and rusty\nstove, drank his weak tea and toasted his bread. The windows clicked\nwith the night wind. The furniture was old, worn, unstable, except the\nlarge desk behind him full of pigeonholes and drawers. Now and then\nhe turned and wrote on scraps of paper. Tea finished, he collected the\nscraps and copied:\n\nMr. Stephen Ballister: I feel, as growing somewhat old, I ought to make\nmy will, and sometime, leaving this world for a better, would ask you\nto make my will for me, for which reasonable charge, putting this so\nit cannot be broken by lawyers, who will talk too much and are vain\nof themselves, that is, leaving all my property of all kinds to my\nrelative, James Winslow of Wimberton, and not anything to Albion Dee;\nfor he has not much sense but is hasty; for to look after the choir is\nnot his business, and to sit on an old man and throw him from his own\nwagon and pay him thirty dollars is hasty, for it is not good sense, and\nnot anything to Stephen Ballister, for he must be rich with talking so\nmuch in courts of this world. Put this all in my will, but if unable or\nunwilling on account of remorse for speaking so in the court, please to\ninform that I may get another lawyer. Yours,\n\nJay Dee.\n\nHe sealed and addressed the letter, put it in his pocket, and noticed\nthe ruinous rent in his coat. He sighed, murmured over it complainingly,\nand turned up the lapel of the coat. Pins in great variety and number\nwere there in careful order, some new, some small, some long and old and\nyellow. He selected four and pinned the rent together, sighing. Then he\ntook three folded bills from his vest pocket, unfolded, counted and put\nthem back, felt of the letter in his coat gently, murmured, \u201cI had the\nbest of Albion there; I had him there,\u201d took his candle and went up\npeacefully and venerably to bed.\n\n\n\n\nA NIGHT'S LODGING\n\n\nFATHER WILISTON was a retired clergyman, so distinguished from his\nson Timothy, whose house stood on the ridge north of the old village\nof Win-throp, and whose daily path lay between his house and the new\ngrowing settlement around the valley station. It occurred at odd times\nto Father Wiliston that Timothy's path was somewhat undeviating. The\nclergyman had walked widely since Win-throp was first left behind\nfifty-five years back, at a time when the town was smaller and cows\ncropped the Green but never a lawn mower.\n\nAfter college and seminary had come the frontier, which lay this side\nof the Great Lakes until Clinton stretched his ribbon of waterway to\nthe sea; then a mission in Wisconsin, intended to modify the restless\nprofanity of lumbermen who broke legs under logs and drank disastrous\nwhiskey. A city and twenty mills were on the spot now, though the same\nmuddy river ran into the same blue lake. Some skidders and saw-tenders\nof old days were come to live in stone mansions and drive in\nnickel-plated carriages; some were dead; some drifting like the refuse\non the lake front; some skidding and saw-tending still. Distinction\nof social position was an idea that Father Wiliston never was able to\ngrasp.\n\nIn the memories of that raw city on the lake he had his place among its\nchoicest incongruities; and when his threescore and ten years were full,\nthe practical tenderness of his nickel-plated and mansioned parishioners\npacked him one day into an upholstered sleeping car, drew an astonishing\ncheck to his credit, and mailed it for safety to Timothy Wiliston of\nWinthrop. So Father Wiliston returned to Winthrop, where Timothy, his\nson, had been sent to take root thirty years before.\n\nOne advantage of single-mindedness is that life keeps on presenting us\nwith surprises. Father Wiliston occupied his own Arcadia, and Wisconsin\nor Winthrop merely sent in to him a succession of persons and events\nof curious interest. \u201cThe parson\u201d--Wisconsin so spoke of him, leaning\nsociably over its bar, or pausing among scented slabs and sawdust--\u201cthe\nparson resembles an egg as respects that it's innocent and some\nlopsided, but when you think he must be getting addled, he ain't. He\nsays to me, 'You'll make the Lord a deal of trouble, bless my soul!'\nhe says. I don't see how the Lord's going to arrange for you.\nBut'--thinking he might hurt my feelings--'I guess he'll undertake it by\nand by.' Then he goes wabbling down-street, picks up Mike Riley, who's\nconsiderable drunk, and takes him to see his chickens. And Mike gets so\ninterested in those chickens you'd like to die. Then parson goes off,\nabsent-minded and forgets him, and Mike sleeps the balmy night in the\nbarnyard, and steals a chicken in the morning, and parson says, 'Bless\nmy soul! How singular!' Well,\u201d concluded Wisconsin, \u201che's getting pretty\nyoung for his years. I hear they're going to send him East before he\nlearns bad habits.\u201d\n\nThe steadiness and repetition of Timothy's worldly career and semi-daily\nwalk to and from his business therefore seemed to Father Wiliston\nphenomenal, a problem not to be solved by algebra, for if _a_ equalled\nTimothy, _b_ his house, _c_ his business, _a + b + c_ was still not\na far-reaching formula, and there seemed no advantage in squaring it.\nGeometrically it was evident that by walking back and forth over the\nsame straight line you never so much as obtained an angle. Now,\nby arithmetic, \u201cFour times thirty, multiplied by--leaving out\nSundays--Bless me! How singular! Thirty-seven thousand five hundred and\nsixty times!\u201d\n\nHe wondered if it had ever occurred to Timothy to walk it backward, or,\nperhaps, to hop, partly on one foot, and then, of course, partly on\nthe other. Sixty years ago there was a method of progress known as\n\u201chop-skip-and-jump,\u201d which had variety and interest. Drawn in the train\nof this memory came other memories floating down the afternoon's slant\nsunbeams, rising from every meadow and clump of woods; from the elder\nswamp where the brown rabbits used to run zigzag, possibly still ran\nin the same interesting way; from the great sand bank beyond the Indian\ngraves. The old Wiliston house, with roof that sloped like a well-sweep,\nlay yonder, a mile or two. He seemed to remember some one said it was\nempty, but he could not associate it with emptiness. The bough apples\nthere, if he remembered rightly, were an efficacious balm for regret.\n\nHe sighed and took up his book. It was another cure for regret, a\nScott novel, \u201cThe Pirate.\u201d It had points of superiority over Cruden's\nConcordance. The surf began to beat on the Shetland Islands, and trouble\nwas imminent between Cleveland and Mor-daunt Mertoun.\n\nTimothy and his wife drove away visiting that afternoon, not to\nreturn till late at night, and Bettina, the Scandinavian, laid Father\nWiliston's supper by the open window, where he could look out across the\nporch and see the chickens clucking in the road.\n\n\u201cYou mus' eat, fater,\u201d she commanded.\n\n\u201cYes, yes, Bettina. Thank you, my dear. Quite right.\u201d\n\nHe came with his book and sat down at the table, but Bettina was\nexperienced and not satisfied.\n\n\u201cYou mus' eat firs'.\u201d\n\nHe sighed and laid down \u201cThe Pirate.\u201d Bettina captured and carried it to\nthe other end of the room, lit the lamp though it was still light, and\ndeparted after the mail. It was a rare opportunity for her to linger in\nthe company of one of her Scandinavian admirers. \u201cFater\u201d would not know\nthe difference between seven and nine or ten.\n\nHe leaned in the window and watched her safely out of sight, then went\nacross the room, recaptured \u201cThe Pirate,\u201d and chuckled in the tickling\npleasure of a forbidden thing, \u201casked the blessing,\u201d drank his tea\nshrewdly, knowing it would deteriorate, and settled to his book. The\nbrown soft dusk settled, shade by shade; moths fluttered around the\nlamp; sleepy birds twittered in the maples. But the beat of the surf\non the Shetland Islands was closer than these. Cleveland and Mordaunt\nMertoun were busy, and Norna--\u201creally, Norna was a remarkable\nwoman\u201d--and an hour slipped past.\n\nSome one hemmed! close by and scraped his feet. It was a large man\nwho stood there, dusty and ragged, one boot on the porch, with a red\nhandkerchief knotted under his thick tangled beard and jovial red face.\nHe had solid limbs and shoulders, and a stomach of sloth and heavy\nfeeding.\n\nThe stranger did not resemble the comely pirate, Cleveland; his linen\nwas not \u201cseventeen hun'red;\u201d it seemed doubtful if there were any linen.\nAnd yet, in a way there was something not inappropriate about him, a\ncertain chaotic ease; not piratical, perhaps, although he looked like\nan adventurous person. Father Wiliston took time to pass from one\nconception of things to another. He gazed mildly through his glasses.\n\n\u201cI ain't had no supper,\u201d began the stranger in a deep moaning bass; and\nFather Wiliston started.\n\n\u201cBless my soul! Neither have I.\u201d He shook out his napkin. \u201cBettina, you\nsee \u201c--\n\n\u201cLooks like there's enough for two,\u201d moaned and grumbled the other.\nHe mounted the porch and approached the window, so that the lamplight\nglimmered against his big, red, oily face.\n\n\u201cWhy, so there is!\u201d cried Father Wiliston, looking about the table in\nsurprise. \u201cI never could eat all that. Come in.\u201d And the stranger rolled\nmuttering and wheezing around through the door.\n\n\u201cWill you not bring a chair? And you might use the bread knife. These\nare fried eggs. And a little cold chicken? Really, I'm very glad you\ndropped in, Mr.\u201d--\n\n\u201cDel Toboso.\u201d By this time the stranger's mouth was full and his\nenunciation confused.\n\n\u201cWhy\u201d--Father Wiliston helped himself to an egg--\u201cI don't think I caught\nthe name.\u201d\n\n\u201cDel Toboso. Boozy's what they calls me in the push.\u201d\n\n\u201cI'm afraid your tea is quite cold. Boozy? How singular! I hope it\ndoesn't imply alcoholic habits.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d shaking his head gravely, so that his beard wagged to the judicial\nnegation. \u201cTakes so much to tank me up I can't afford it, let alone it\nain't moral.\u201d\n\nThe two ate with haste, the stranger from habit and experience, Father\nWiliston for fear of Bettina's sudden return. When the last egg and\nslice of bread had disappeared, the stranger sat back with a wheezing\nsigh.\n\n\u201cI wonder,\u201d began Father Wiliston mildly, \u201cMr. Toboso--Toboso is the\nlast name, isn't it, and Del the first?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh,\u201d the other wheezed mysteriously, \u201cI don't know about that, Elder.\nThat's always a question.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don't know! You don't know!\u201d\n\n\u201cGot it off'n another man,\u201d went on Toboso sociably. \u201cHe said he\nwouldn't take fifty dollars for it. I didn't have no money nor him\neither, and he rolled off'n the top of the train that night or maybe the\nnext I don't know. I didn't roll him. It was in Dakota, over a canyon\nwith no special bottom. He scattered himself on the way down. But I\nsays, if that name's worth fifty dollars, it's mine. Del Toboso. That's\nmine. Sounds valuable, don't it?\u201d\n\nFather Wiliston fell into a reverie. \u201cTo-boso? Why, yes. Dulcinea del\nToboso. I remember, now.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat's that? Dulcinea, was it? And you knowed him?\u201d\n\n\u201cA long while ago when I was younger. It was in a green cover. 'Don\nQuixote'--he was in a cage, 'The Knight of the Rueful Countenance.' He\nhad his face between the bars.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Toboso, \u201cyou must have knowed him. He always looked glum,\nand I've seen him in quad myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. Sancho Panza. Dulcinea del Toboso.\u201d\n\n\u201cI never knowed that part of it. Dulcinea del Toboso! Well, that's me.\nYou know a ruck of fine names, Elder. It sounds like thirteen trumps,\nnow, don't it?\u201d\n\nFather Wiliston roused himself, and discriminated. \u201cBut you look more\nlike Sancho Panza.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo? Well, I never knowed that one. Must've been a Greaser. Dulcinea's\ngood enough.\u201d\n\nFather Wiliston began to feel singularly happy and alive. The regular\nand even paced Timothy, his fidgeting wife, and the imperious Bettina\nwere to some extent shadows and troubles in the evening of his life.\nThey were careful people, who were hemmed in and restricted, who somehow\nhemmed in and restricted him. They lived up to precedents. Toboso did\nnot seem to depend on precedents. He had the free speech, the casual\ninconsequence, the primitive mystery, desired of the boy's will and the\nwind's will, and travelled after by the long thoughts of youth. He was\nwind-beaten, burned red by the sun, ragged of coat and beard, huge, fat,\nwallowing in the ease of his flesh. One looked at him and remembered the\nwide world full of crossed trails and slumbering swamps.\n\nFather Wiliston had long, straight white hair, falling beside his\npale-veined and spiritual forehead and thin cheeks. He propped\nhis forehead on one bony hand, and looked at Toboso with eyes of\nspeculation. If both men were what some would call eccentric, to each\nother they seemed only companionable, which, after all, is the main\nthing.\n\n\u201cI have thought of late,\u201d continued Father Wiliston after a pause, \u201cthat\nI should like to travel, to examine human life, say, on the highway. I\nshould think, now, your manner of living most interesting. You go from\nhouse to house, do you not?--from city to city? Like Ulysses, you see\nmen and their labors, and you pass on. Like the apostles--who surely\nwere wise men, besides that were especially maintained of God--like\nthem, and the pilgrims to shrines, you go with wallet and staff or\nmerely with Faith for your baggage.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere don't nothing bother you in warm weather, that's right,\u201d said\nToboso, \u201cexcept your grub. And that ain't any more than's interesting.\nIf it wasn't for looking after meals, a man on the road might get right\ndown lazy.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, just so! How wonderful! Now, do you suppose, Mr. Toboso, do you\nsuppose it feasible? I should very much like, if it could be equably\narranged, I should very much like to have this experience.\u201d\n\nToboso reflected. \u201cThere ain't many of your age on the road.\u201d An\nidea struck him suddenly. \u201cBut supposing you were going sort of\nexperimenting, like that--and there's some folks that do--supposing you\ncould lay your hands on a little bunch of money for luck, I don't see\nnothing to stop.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I think there is some in my desk.\u201d Toboso leaned forward and\npulled his beard. The table creaked under his elbow. \u201cHow much?\u201d\n\n\u201cI will see. Of course you are quite right.\u201d\n\n\u201cAt your age, Elder.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not as if I were younger.\u201d\n\nFather Wiliston rose and hurried out.\n\nToboso sat still and blinked at the lamp. \u201cMy Gord!\u201d he murmured and\nmoaned confidentially, \u201chere's a game!\u201d\n\nAfter some time Father Wiliston returned. \u201cDo you think we could start\nnow?\u201d he asked eagerly.\n\n\u201cWhy sure, Elder. What's hindering?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am fortunate to find sixty dollars. Really, I didn't remember. And\nhere's a note I have written to my son to explain. I wonder what Bettina\ndid with my hat.\u201d\n\nHe hurried back into the hall. Toboso took the note from the table and\npocketed it. \u201cAin't no use taking risks.\u201d\n\nThey went out into the warm night, under pleasant stars, and along the\nroad together arm in arm.\n\n\u201cI feel pretty gay, Elder.\u201d He broke into bellowing song, \u201cHey, Jinny!\nHo, Jinny! Listen, love, to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally, I feel cheerful, too, Mr. Toboso, wonderfully cheerful.\u201d\n\n\u201cDulcinea, Elder. Dulcinea's me name. Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny!\u201d\n\n\u201cHow singular it is! I feel very cheerful. I think--really, I think I\nshould like to learn that song about Jinny. It seems such a cheerful\nsong.\u201d\n\n\u201cHit her up, Elder,\u201d wheezed Toboso jovially. \u201cNow then\u201d--\n\n\u201cHey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny! Listen, love, to me.\u201d\n\nSo they went arm in arm with a roaring and a tremulous piping.\n\nThe lamp flickered by the open window as the night breeze rose. Bettina\ncame home betimes and cleared the table. The memory of a Scandinavian\ncaress was too recent to leave room for her to remark that there were\nsigns of devastating appetite, that dishes had been used unaccountably,\nand that \u201cFater\u201d had gone somewhat early to bed. Timothy and his wife\nreturned late. All windows and doors in the house of Timothy were\nclosed, and the last lamp was extinguished.\n\nFather Wiliston and Toboso went down the hill, silently, with furtive,\nlawless steps through the cluster of houses in the hollow, called\nIronville, and followed then the road up the chattering hidden brook.\nThe road came from the shadows of this gorge at last to meadows and wide\nglimmering skies, and joined the highway to Redfield. Presently they\ncame to where a grassy side road slipped into the highway from the\nright, out of a land of bush and swamp and small forest trees of twenty\nor thirty years' growth. A large chestnut stood at the corner.\n\n\u201cHey, Jinny!\u201d wheezed Toboso. \u201cLet's look at that tree, Elder.\u201d\n\n\u201cLook at it? Yes, yes. What for?\u201d Toboso examined the bark by the dim\nstarlight; Father Wiliston peered anxiously through his glasses to where\nToboso's finger pointed.\n\n\u201cSee those marks?\u201d\n\n\u201cI'm afraid I don't. Really, I'm sorry.\u201d\n\n\u201cFeel 'em, then.\u201d\n\nAnd Father Wiliston felt, with eager, excited finger.\n\n\u201cThem there mean there's lodging out here; empty house, likely.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo they, indeed. Very singular! Most interesting!\u201d And they turned into\nthe grassy road. The brushwood in places had grown close to it, though\nit seemed to be still used as a cart path. They came to a swamp, rank\nwith mouldering vegetation, then to rising ground where once had been\nmeadows, pastures, and plough lands.\n\nFather Wiliston was aware of vaguely stirring memories. Four vast and\naged maple trees stood close by the road, and their leaves whispered to\nthe night; behind them, darkly, was a house with a far sloping roof in\nthe rear. The windows were all glassless, all dark and dead-looking,\nexcept two in a front room, in which a wavering light from somewhere\nwithin trembled and cowered. They crept up, and looking through saw\ntattered wall paper and cracked plaster, and two men sitting on the\nfloor, playing cards in the ghostly light of a fire of boards in the\nhuge fireplace.\n\n\u201cHey, Jinny!\u201d roared Toboso, and the two jumped up with startled oaths.\n\u201cWhy, it's Boston Alley and the Newark Kid!\u201d cried Toboso. \u201cCome on,\nElder.\u201d\n\nThe younger man cast forth zigzag flashes of blasphemy. \u201cYou big fat\nfool! Don't know no mor' 'n to jump like that on _me!_ Holy Jims! I\nain't made of copper.\u201d\n\nToboso led Father Wiliston round by the open door. \u201cHold your face, Kid.\nGents, this here's a friend of mine we'll call the Elder, and let\nthat go. I'm backing him, and I hold that goes. The Kid,\u201d he went on\ndescriptively, addressing Father Wiliston, \u201cis what you see afore you,\nElder. His mouth is hot, his hands is cold, his nerves is shaky, he's\nalways feeling the cops gripping his shirt-collar. He didn't see no\nclergy around. He begs your pardon. Don't he? I says, don't he?\u201d\n\nHe laid a heavy red hand on the Newark Kid's shoulder, who wiped his\npallid mouth with the back of his hand, smiled, and nodded.\n\nBoston Alley seemed in his way an agreeable man. He was tall and slender\nlimbed, with a long, thin black mustache, sinewy neck and hollow chest,\nand spoke gently with a sweet, resonant voice, saying, \u201cGlad to see you,\nElder.\u201d\n\nThese two wore better clothes than Toboso, but he seemed to dominate\nthem with his red health and windy voice, his stomach and feet, and\nsolidity of standing on the earth.\n\nFather Wiliston stood the while gazing vaguely through his spectacles.\nThe sense of happy freedom and congenial companionship that had been\nwith him during the starlit walk had given way gradually to a stream of\nconfused memories, and now these memories stood ranged about, looking at\nhim with sad, faded eyes, asking him to explain the scene. The language\nof the Newark Kid had gone by him like a white hot blast. The past and\npresent seemed to have about the same proportions of vision and reality.\nHe could not explain them to each other. He looked up to Toboso,\npathetically, trusting in his help.\n\n\u201cIt was my house.\u201d\n\nToboso stared surprised. \u201cI ain't on to you, Elder.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was born here.\u201d\n\nIndeed Toboso was a tower of strength even against the ghosts of other\ndays, reproachful for their long durance in oblivion.\n\n\u201cOh! Well, by Jinny! I reckon you'll give us lodging, Elder,\u201d he puffed\ncheerfully. He took the coincidence so pleasantly and naturally that\nFather Wiliston was comforted, and thought that after all it was\npleasant and natural enough.\n\nThe only furniture in the room was a high-backed settle and an\noverturned kitchen table, with one leg gone, and the other three\nhelplessly in the air--so it had lain possibly many years. Boston Alley\ndrew forward the settle and threw more broken clapboards on the fire,\nwhich blazed up and filled the room with flickering cheer. Soon the\nthree outcasts were smoking their pipes and the conversation became\nanimated.\n\n\u201cWhen I was a boy,\u201d said Father Wiliston--\u201cI remember so\ndistinctly--there were remarkable early bough apples growing in the\norchard.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe pot's yours, Elder,\u201d thundered To-boso. They went out groping under\nthe old apple trees, and returned laden with plump pale green fruit.\nBoston Alley and the Newark Kid stretched themselves on the floor on\nheaps of pulled grass. Toboso and Father Wiliston sat on the settle. The\njuice of the bough apples ran with a sweet tang. The palate rejoiced and\nthe soul responded. The Newark Kid did swift, cunning card tricks that\nfilled Father Wiliston with wonder and pleasure.\n\n\u201cMy dear young man, I don't see how you do it!\u201d\n\nThe Kid was lately out of prison from a two years' sentence, \u201conly for\ngetting into a house by the window instead of the door,\u201d as Boston Alley\ndelicately explained, and the \u201cflies,\u201d meaning officers of the law, \u201care\nafter him again for reasons he ain't quite sure of.\u201d The pallor of slum\nbirth and breeding, and the additional prison pallor, made his skin\nlook curious where the grime had not darkened it. He had a short-jawed,\nsmooth-shaven face, a flat mouth and light hair, and was short and\nstocky, but lithe and noiseless in movement, and inclined to say little.\nBoston Alley was a man of some slight education, who now sometimes sung\nin winter variety shows, such songs as he picked up here and there in\nsummer wanderings, for in warm weather he liked footing the road better,\npartly because the green country sights were pleasant to him, and partly\nbecause he was irresolute and keeping engagements was a distress. He\nseemed agreeable and sympathetic.\n\n\u201cHe ain't got no more real feelings 'n a fish,\u201d said Toboso, gazing\ncandidly at Boston, but speaking to Father Wiliston, \u201cand yet he looks\nlike he had 'em, and a man's glad to see him. Ain't seen you since\nfall, Boston, but I see the Kid last week at a hang-out in Albany. Well,\ngents, this ain't a bad lay.\u201d\n\nToboso himself had been many years on the road. He was in a way a man\nof much force and decision, and probably it was another element in\nhim, craving sloth and easy feeding, which kept him in this submerged\nsociety; although here, too, there seemed room for the exercise of his\ndominance. He leaned back in the settle, and had his hand on Father\nWiliston's shoulder. His face gleamed redly over his bison beard.\n\n\u201cIt's a good lay. And we're gay, Elder. Ain't we gay? Hey, Jinny!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, Toboso. But this young man--I'm sure he must have great\ntalents, great talents, quite remarkable. Ah--yes, Jinny!\u201d\n\n\u201cHey, Jinny,\u201d they sang together, \u201cHo, Jinny! Listen, love, to me. I'll\nsing to you, and play to you, a dulcet melode-e-e\u201d--while Boston danced\na shuffle and the Kid snapped the cards in time. Then, at Toboso's\ninvitation and command, Boston sang a song, called \u201cThe Cheerful Man,\u201d\n resembling a ballad, to a somewhat monotonous tune, and perhaps known\nin the music halls of the time--all with a sweet, resonant voice and a\ncertain pathos of intonation:--\n\n                   \u201cI knew a man across this land\n\n                   Came waving of a cheerful hand,\n\n                   Who drew a gun and gave some one\n\n                   A violent contus-i-on,\n\n                        This cheerful man.\n\n\n                   \u201cThey sent him up, he fled from 'quad'\n\n                   By a window and the grace of God,\n\n                   Picked up a wife and children six,\n\n                   And wandered into politics,\n\n                        This cheerful man.\n\n\n                   \u201c'In politics he was, I hear,\n\n                   A secret, subtle financier--\n\n                   So the jury says, 'But we agree\n\n                   He quits this sad community,\n\n                        This cheerful man.'\n\n\n                   \u201cHis wife and six went on the town,\n\n                   And he went off; without a frown\n\n                   Reproaching Providence, went he\n\n                   And got another wife and three,\n\n                        This cheerful man.\n\n\n                   \u201cHe runs a cross-town car to-day\n\n                   From Bleecker Street to Avenue A.\n\n                   He swipes the fares with skilful ease,\n\n                   Keeps up his hope, and tries to please,\n\n                        This cheerful man.\n\n\n                   \u201cOur life is mingled woe and bliss,\n\n                   Man that is born of woman is\n\n                   Short-lived and goes to his long home.\n\n                   Take heart, and learn a lesson from\n\n                        This cheerful man.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cBut,\u201d said Father Wiliston, \u201cdon't you think really, Mr. Alley, that\nthe moral is a little confused? I don't mean intentionally,\u201d he\nadded, with anxious precaution, \u201cbut don't you think he should have\nreflected\u201d--\n\n\u201cYou're right, Elder,\u201d said Toboso, with decision. \u201cIt's like that.\nIt ain't moral. When a thing ain't moral that settles it.\u201d And Boston\nnodded and looked sympathetic with every one.\n\n\u201cI was sure you would agree with me,\u201d said Father Wiliston. He felt\nhimself growing weary now and heavy-eyed. Presently somehow he was\nleaning on Toboso with his head on his shoulder. Toboso's arm was around\nhim, and Toboso began to hum in a kind of wheezing lullaby, \u201cHey, Jinny!\nHo, Jinny!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am very grateful, my dear friends,\u201d murmured Father Wiliston. \u201cI have\nlived a long time. I fear I have not always been careful in my course,\nand am often forgetful. I think\u201d--drowsily--\u201cI think that happiness must\nin itself be pleasing to God. I was often happy before in this room. I\nremember--my dear mother sat here--who is now dead. We have been quite,\nreally quite cheerful to-night. My mother--was very judicious--an\nexcellent wise woman--she died long ago.\u201d So he was asleep before any\none was aware, while Toboso crooned huskily, \u201cHey, Jinny!\u201d and Boston\nAlley and the Newark Kid sat upright and stared curiously.\n\n\u201cHoly Jims!\u201d said the Kid.\n\nToboso motioned them to bring the pulled grass. They piled it on the\nsettle, let Father Wiliston down softly, brought the broken table, and\nplaced it so that he could not roll off.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Toboso, after a moment's silence, \u201cI guess we'd better pick\nhim and be off. He's got sixty in his pocket.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh,\u201d said Boston, \u201cthat's it, is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt's my find, but seeing you's here I takes half and give you fifteen\napiece.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, that's right.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I guess the Kid can take it out.\u201d\n\nThe Kid found the pocketbook with sensitive gliding fingers, and pulled\nit out. Toboso counted and divided the bills.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d whispered Toboso thoughtfully, \u201cif the Elder now was forty years\nyounger, I wouldn't want a better pardner.\u201d They tiptoed out into the\nnight. \u201cBut,\u201d he continued, \u201clooking at it that way, o' course he ain't\ngot no great use for his wad and won't remember it till next week.\nHeeled all right, anyhow. Only, I says now, I says, there ain't no vice\nin him.\u201d\n\n\u201cMammy tuck me up, no licks to-night,\u201d said the Kid, plodding in front.\n\u201cI ain't got nothing against him.\u201d\n\nBoston Alley only fingered the bills in his pocket.\n\nIt grew quite dark in the room they had left as the fire sunk to a few\nflames, then to dull embers and an occasional darting spark. The only\nsound was Father Wiliston's light breathing.\n\nWhen he awoke the morning was dim in the windows. He lay a moment\nconfused in mind, then sat up and looked around.\n\n\u201cDear me! Well, well, I dare say Toboso thought I was too old. I dare\nsay\u201d--getting on his feet--\u201cI dare say they thought it would be unkind\nto tell me so.\u201d\n\nHe wandered through the dusky old rooms and up and down the creaking\nstairs, picking up bits of recollection, some vivid, some more dim than\nthe dawn, some full of laughter, some that were leaden and sad; then\nout into the orchard to find a bough apple in the dewy grasses; and,\nkneeling under the gnarled old tree to make his morning prayer, which\nincluded in petition the three overnight revellers, he went in fluent\nphrase and broken tones among eldest memories.\n\nHe pushed cheerfully into the grassy road now, munching his apple and\nhumming, \u201cHey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny!\u201d He examined the tree at the highway\nwith fresh interest. \u201cHow singular! It means an empty house. Very\nintelligent man, Toboso.\u201d\n\nBits of grass were stuck on his back and a bramble dragged from his coat\ntail. He plodded along in the dust and wabbled absent-mindedly from one\nside of the road to the other. The dawn towered behind him in purple and\ncrimson, lifted its robe and canopy, and flung some kind of glittering\ngauze far beyond him. He did not notice it till he reached the top\nof the hill above Ironville with Timothy's house in sight. Then he\nstopped, turned, and was startled a moment; then smiled companionably\non the state and glory of the morning, much as on Toboso and the card\ntricks of the Newark Kid.\n\n\u201cReally,\u201d he murmured, \u201cI have had a very good time.\u201d\n\nHe met Timothy in the hall.\n\n\u201cBeen out to walk early, father? Wait--there's grass and sticks on your\ncoat.\u201d\n\nIt suddenly seemed difficult to explain the entire circumstances to\nTimothy, a settled man and girt with precedent.\n\n\u201cDid you enjoy it?--Letter you dropped? No, I haven't seen it. Breakfast\nis ready.\u201d\n\nNeither Bettina nor Mrs. Timothy had seen the letter.\n\n\u201cNo matter, my dear, no matter. I--really, I've had a very good time.\u201d\n\nAfterward he came out on the porch with his Bible and Concordance,\nsat down and heard Bettina brushing his hat and ejaculating, \u201cFater!\u201d\n Presently he began to nod drowsily and his head dropped low over the\nConcordance. The chickens clucked drowsily in the road.\n\n\n\n\nON EDOM HILL\n\n\nI.\n\n\nCHARLIE SEBASTIAN was a turfman, meaning that he had something to do\nwith race-horses, and knew property as rolls of bank bills, of which one\nnow and then suddenly has none at all; or as pacers and trotters that\nare given to breaking and unaccountably to falling off in their nervous\nsystems; or as \u201cAssociation Shares\u201d and partnership investments in a\ntraining stable; all capable of melting and going down in one vortex. So\nit happened at the October races. And from this it arose that in going\nbetween two heated cities and low by the sea he stopped among the high\nhills that were cold.\n\nHe was a tall man with a pointed beard, strong of shoulder and foot, and\nwithout fear in his eyes. After two hours' riding he woke from a doze\nand argued once more that he was a \u201cphenomenally busted man.\u201d It made\nno difference, after all, which city he was in. Looking out at the white\nhills that showed faintly in the storm, it occurred to him that this was\nnot the railway line one usually travelled to the end in view. It was\nsingular, the little difference between choices. You back the wrong\nhorse; then you drink beer instead of fizz, and the results of either\nare tolerable. Let a man live lustily and there's little to regret. He\nhad found ruin digestible before, and never yet gone to the dogs that\nwait to devour human remnants, but had gotten up and fallen again, and\non the whole rejoiced. Stomach and lungs of iron, a torrent of red\nblood in vein and artery maintain their consolations; hopes rise again,\nblunders and evil doings seem to be practically outlived. So without\ntheory ran Sebastian's experience. The theory used to be that his sin\nwould find a man out. There were enough of Sebastian's that had gone\nout, and never returned to look for him. So too with mistakes and\nfailures. A little while, a year or more, and you are busy with other\nmatters. It is a stirring world, and offers no occupation for ghosts.\nThe dragging sense of depression that he felt seemed natural enough; not\nto be argued down, but thrown aside in due time. Yet it was a feeling of\npallid and cold futility, like the spectral hills and wavering snow.\n\n\u201cI might as well go back!\u201d\n\nHe tossed a coin to see whether it was fated he should drop off at the\nnext station, and it was.\n\n\u201cRamoth!\u201d cried the brakeman.\n\nSebastian held in his surprise as a matter of habit.\n\nBut on the platform in the drift and float of the snow-storm he stared\naround at the white January valley, at the disappearing train, at the\nsign above the station door, \u201cRamoth.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat's the place,\u201d he remarked. \u201cThere wasn't any railroad then.\u201d\n\nThere were hidden virtues in a flipped coin. Sebastian had his\nsuperstitions.\n\nThe road to Ramoth village from the station curves about to the south\nof the great bare dome that is called Edom Hill, but Sebastian, without\ninquiry, took the fork to the left which climbed up the hill without\ncompromise, and seemed to be little used.\n\nYet in past times Edom Hill was noted in a small way as a hill that\nupheld the house of a stern abolitionist, and in a more secret way as a\nstation in the \u201cunderground railroad,\u201d or system by which runaway slaves\nwere passed on to Canada. But when Charlie Sebastian remembered his\nfather and Edom Hill, the days of those activities were passed. The\nabolitionist had nothing to exercise resistance and aggression on but\nhis wind-blown farm and a boy, who was aggressive to seek out mainly the\njoys of this world, and had faculties of resistance. There were bitter\nclashes; young Sebastian fled, and came upon a stable on a stud farm,\nand from there in due time went far and wide, and found tolerance in\ntime and wrote, offering to \u201ctrade grudges and come to see how he was.\u201d\n\nThe answer, in a small, faint, cramped, unskilful hand, stated the\nabolitionist's death. \u201cWon't you come back, Mr. Sebastian. It is lonely.\nHarriet Sebastian.\u201d And therefore Sebastian remarked:\n\n\u201cYou bet it is! Who's she? The old man must have married again.\u201d\n\nIn his new-found worldly tolerance he had admired such aggressive\nenterprise, but seeing no interest in the subject, had gone his way and\nforgotten it.\n\nBeating up Edom Hill through the snow was no easier than twenty years\nbefore. David Sebastian had built his house in a high place, and looking\nwidely over the top of the land, saw that it was evil.\n\nThe drifts were unbroken and lay in long barrows and windy ridges over\nthe roadway. The half-buried fences went parallel up the white breast\nand barren heave of the hill, and disappeared in the storm. Sebastian\npassed a house with closed blinds, then at a long interval a barn and\na stiff red chimney with a snow-covered heap of ruins at its foot. The\nstation was now some miles behind and the dusk was coming on. The broad\ntop of the hill was smooth and rounded gradually. Brambles, bushes,\nreeds, and the tops of fences broke the surface of the snow, and beside\nthese only a house by the road, looking dingy and gray, with a blackish\nbam attached, four old maples in front, an orchard behind. Far down the\nhill to the right lay the road to Ramoth, too far for its line of naked\ntrees to be seen in the storm. The house on Edom Hill had its white\nthrone to itself, and whatever dignity there might be in solitude.\n\nHe did not pause to examine the house, only noticed the faint smoke in\none chimney, opened the gate, and pushed through untrodden snow to\nthe side door and knocked. The woman who came and stood in the door\nsurprised him even more than \u201cRamoth!\u201d called by the brakeman. Without\ngreat reason for seeming remarkable, it seemed remarkable. He stepped\nback and stared, and the two, looking at each other, said nothing.\nSebastian recovered.\n\n\u201cMy feet are cold,\u201d he said slowly. \u201cI shouldn't like to freeze them.\u201d\n\nShe drew back and let him in, left him to find a chair and put his feet\nagainst the stove. She sat down near the window and went on knitting.\nThe knitting needles glittered and clicked. Her face was outlined\nagainst the gray window, the flakes too glittered and clicked. It\nlooked silent, secret, repressed, as seen against the gray window; like\nsomething chilled and snowed under, cold and sweet, smooth pale hair and\nforehead, deep bosom and slender waist. She looked young enough to be\ncalled in the early June of her years.\n\n\u201cThere's good proportion and feature, but not enough nerves for a\nthoroughbred. But,\u201d he thought, \u201cshe looks as if she needed, as you\nmight say, revelry,\u201d and he spoke aloud.\n\n\u201cOnce I was in this section and there was a man named Sebastian lived\nhere, or maybe it was farther on.\u201d\n\nShe said, \u201cIt was here\u201d in a low voice.\n\n\u201cDavid Sebastian now, that was it, or something that way. Stiff, sort\nof grim old--oh, but you might be a relative, you see. Likely enough. So\nyou might.\u201d\n\n\u201cI might be.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust so. You might be.\u201d\n\nHe rubbed his hands and leaned back, staring at the window. The wind was\nrising outside and blew the snow in whirls and sheets.\n\n\u201cGoing to be a bad night I came up from the station. If a man's going\nanywhere tonight, he'll be apt not to get there.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou ought to have taken the right hand at the fork.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I don't know.\u201d\n\nShe rose and took a cloak from the table. Sebastian watched her.\n\n\u201cI must feed the pony and shut up the chickens.\u201d\n\nShe hesitated. A refusal seemed to have been hinted to the hinted\nrequest for hospitality. But Sebastian saw another point.\n\n\u201cNow, that's what I'm going to do for you.\u201d\n\nShe looked on silently, as he passed her with assured step, not\nhesitating at doors, but through the kitchen to the woodshed, and there\nin the darkness of a pitch-black corner took down a jingling lantern and\nlit it. She followed him silently into the yard, that was full of drifts\nand wild storm, to the barn, where she listened to him shake down hay\nand bedding, measure oats, slap the pony's flank and chirp cheerfully.\nThen he plunged through a low door and she heard the bolt in the chicken\nshed rattle. It had grown dark outside. He came out and held the barn\ndoor, waiting for her to step out, and they stood side by side on the\nedge of the storm.\n\n\u201cHow did you know the lantern was there?\u201d\n\n\u201cLantern! Oh, farmhouses always keep the lantern in the nearest corner\nof the woodshed, if it isn't behind the kitchen door.\u201d\n\nBut she did not move to let him close the bam. He looked down at her a\nmoment and then out at the white raging night.\n\n\u201cCan't see forty feet, can you? But, of course, if you don't want to\ngive me a roof I'll have to take my chances. Look poor, don't they?\nGoing to let me shut this door?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am quite alone here.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo am I. That's the trouble.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don't think you understand,\u201d she said quietly, speaking in a manner\nlow, cool, and self-contained.\n\n\u201cI've got more understanding now than I'll have in an hour, maybe.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will lend you the lantern.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, you mightn't get it back.\u201d He drew the barn door to, which\nforced her to step forward. A gust of wind about the corner of the bam\nstaggered and threw her back. He caught her about her shoulders and held\nher steadily, and shot the bolt with the hand that held the lantern.\n\n\u201cThat's all right. A man has to take his chances. I dare say a woman had\nbetter not.\u201d\n\nIf Sebastian exaggerated the dangers of the night, if there were any\nfor him, looked at from her standpoint they might seem large and full of\ndread. The wind howled with wild hunting sound, and shrieked against the\neaves of the house. The snow drove thick and blinding. The chimneys\nwere invisible. A woman easily transfers her own feelings to a man and\ninterprets them there. In the interest of that interpretation it might\nno longer seem possible that man's ingratitude, or his failings and\npassions, could be as unkind as winter wind and bitter sky.\n\nShe caught her breath in a moment.\n\n\u201cYou will stay to supper,\u201d she said, and stepped aside.\n\n\u201cNo. As I'm going, I'd better go.\u201d\n\nShe went before him across the yard, opened the woodshed door and stood\nin it. He held out the lantern, but she did not take it. He lifted it to\nlook at her face, and she smiled faintly.\n\n\u201cPlease come in.\u201d\n\n\u201cBetter go on, if I'm going. Am I?\u201d\n\n\u201cI'm very cold. Please come in.\u201d\n\nThey went in and closed the doors against the storm. The house was\nwrapped round, and shut away from the sight of Edom Hill, and Edom Hill\nwas wrapped round and shut away from the rest of the world.\n\n\nII.\n\n\nRevelry has need of a certain co-operation. Sebastian drew heavily on\nhis memory for entertainment, told of the combination that had \u201ccleaned\nhim out,\u201d and how he might get in again in the Spring, only he felt\na bit tired in mind now, and things seemed dead. He explained the\nmysteries of \u201cshort prices, selling allowances, past choices, hurdles\nand handicaps,\u201d and told of the great October races, where Decatur won\nfrom Clifford and Lady Mary, and Lady Mary ran through the fence and\ndestroyed the features of the jockey. But the quiet, smooth-haired woman\nmaintained her calm, and offered neither question nor comment, only\nsmiled and flushed faintly now and then. She seemed as little stirred by\nnew tumultuous things as the white curtains at the windows, that moved\nslightly when the storm, which danced and shouted on Edom Hill, managed\nto force a whistling breath through a chink.\n\nSebastian decided she was frozen up with loneliness and the like. \u201cShe's\ngot no conversation, let alone revelry.\u201d He thought he knew what her\nlife was like. \u201cShe's sort of empty. Nothing doing any time. It's the\noff season all the year. No troubles. Sort of like a fish, as being\nchilly and calm, that lives in cold water till you have to put pepper on\nto taste it. I know how it goes on this old hill.\u201d\n\nShe left him soon. He heard her moving about in the kitchen, and\nsometimes the clink of a dish. He sat by the stove and mused and\nmuttered. She came and told him his room was on the left of the stair;\nit had a stove; would he not carry up wood and have his fire there?\nShe seemed to imply a preference that he should. But the burden\nand oppression of his musings kept him from wondering when she had\ncompromised her scruples and fears, or why she kept any of them. He\nmounted the stair with his wood. She followed with a lamp and left him.\nHe stared at the closed door and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then went\nto work with his fire. The house became silent, except for the outer\ntumult. She did not mount the stair again; it followed that she slept\nbelow.\n\nSebastian took a daguerreotype from the mantel and stared at it. It\nwas the likeness of a shaven, grim-faced man in early middle life. He\nexamined it long with a quizzical frown; finally went to the washstand,\nopened the drawer and took out a razor with a handle of yellow bone,\ncarried the washstand to the stove, balanced the mirror against the\npitcher, stropped the razor on his hand, heated water in a cup, slowly\ndismantled his face of beard and mustache, cast them in the stove, put\nthe daguerreotype beside the mirror, and compared critically. Except\nthat the face in the daguerreotype had a straight, set mouth, and the\nface in the mirror was one full-lipped and humorous and differently\nlined, they were nearly the same.\n\n\u201cI wouldn't have believed it\u201d\n\nHe put it aside and looked around, whistling in meditation. Then he went\nback again to wondering who the pale-haired woman was. Probably the\nfarm had changed hands. A man whose father had been dead going on\ntwenty years couldn't have that kind of widowed stepmother. He was\ndisqualified.\n\nA cold, unchanging place, Edom Hill, lifted out of the warm, sapping\ncurrents of life. It might be a woman could keep indefinitely there,\nlooking much the same. If her pulse beat once to an ordinary twice, she\nought to last twice as long. The house seemed unchanged. The old things\nwere in their old familiar places, David Sebastian's books on their\nshelves in the room below, on the side table there his great Bible, in\nwhich he used to write all family records, with those of his reforming\nactivity. Sebastian wondered what record stood of his own flight.\n\nHe sat a few moments longer, then took his lamp and crept softly out of\nthe room and down the stairs. The sitting-room was icily cold now; the\nwhite curtains stirred noiselessly. He sat down before the little side\ntable and opened the great book.\n\nThere were some thirty leaves between the Old and New Testaments, most\nof them stitched in. A few at the end were blank. Some of the records\nwere obscure.\n\n\u201cMarch 5th, 1840. Saw light on this subject.\u201d\n\nOthers ran:\n\n\u201cSept. 1 st, 1843. Rec. Peter Cavendish, fugitive.\u201d\n\n\u201cDec. 3d, ditto. Rec. Robert Henry.\u201d\n\n\u201cApril 15th, ditto. Rec. one, \u00c6sop,\u201d and so on.\n\n\u201cDec. 14th, 1848. Have had consolation from prayer for public evil.\u201d\n\n\u201cApril 20th, 1858. My son, Charles Sebastian, born.\u201d\n\n\u201cApril 7th, 1862. My wife, Jane Sebastian, died.\u201d\n\n\u201cJuly 5th, 1862. Rec. Keziah Andrews to keep my house.\u201d\n\nThe dates of the entries from that point grew further apart, random and\nobscure; here and there a fact.\n\n\u201cNov. 4th, 1876. Charles Sebastian departed.\u201d\n\n\u201cJune 9th, 1877. Rec. Harriet.\u201d\n\n\u201cJan. 19th, 1880. Have wrestled in prayer without consolation for\nCharles Sebastian.\u201d\n\nThis was the last entry. A faint line ran down across the page\nconnecting the end of \u201cHarriet\u201d with the beginning of \u201cCharles.\u201d\n Between the two blank leaves at the end was a photograph of himself\nat seventeen. He remembered suddenly how it was taken by a travelling\nphotographer, who had stirred his soul with curiosity and given him the\npicture; and David Sebastian had taken it and silently put it away among\nblank leaves of the Bible.\n\nSebastian shivered. The written leaves, the look of himself of twenty\nyears before, the cold, the wail of the wind, the clicking flakes on the\nwindow panes, these seemed now to be the dominant facts of life. Narrow\nwas it, poor and meagre, to live and labor with a barren farm? The old\nabolitionist had cut deeper into existence than he had. If to deal with\nthe fate of races, and wrestle alone with God on Edom Hill, were not\nknowledge and experience, what was knowledge or experience, or what\nshould a man call worth the trial of his brain and nerve?\n\n\u201cHe passed me. He won hands down,\u201d he muttered, bending over the page\nagain. \u201c'Rec. Harriet.' That's too much for me.\u201d And he heard a quick\nnoise behind him and turned.\n\nShe stood in the door, wide-eyed, smooth, pale hair falling over one\nshoulder, long cloak half slipped from the other, holding a shotgun,\nthreatening and stem.\n\n\u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d\n\n\u201cOut gunning for me?\u201d asked Sebastian gravely.\n\nShe stared wildly, put the gun down, cried:\n\n\u201cYou're Charlie Sebastian!\u201d and fell on her knees beside the stove,\nchoking, sobbing and shaking, crouching against the cold sheet iron in a\nkind of blind memory of its warmth and protection.\n\n\u201cYou still have the drop on me,\u201d said Sebastian.\n\nShe shivered and crouched still and whispered:\n\n\u201cI'm cold.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow long have you been here freezing?\u201d\n\nSebastian thrust anything inflammable at hand into the stove, lit it and\npiled in the wood.\n\n\u201cNot long. Only--only a few moments.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou still have the advantage of me. Who are you?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I'm Harriet,\u201d she said simply, and looked up.\n\n\u201cJust so. 'Received, 1877.' How old were you then?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I was eight.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust so. Don't tell lies, Harriet. You've been freezing a long while.\u201d\n\nShe drew her cloak closer over the thin white linen of her gown with\nshaking hand.\n\n\u201cI don't understand. I'm very cold. Why didn't you come before? It has\nbeen so long waiting.\u201d\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nThe draft began to roar and the dampers to glow. She crept in front of\nthe glow. He drew a chair and sat down close behind her.\n\n\u201cWhy didn't you come before?\u201d\n\nThe question was startling, for Sebastian was only conscious of a lack\nof reason for coming. If David Sebastian had left him the farm he would\nhave heard from it, and being prosperous, he had not cared. But the\nquestion seemed to imply some strong assumption and further knowledge.\n\n\u201cYou'd better tell me about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAbout what? At the beginning?\u201d\n\n\u201cAren't you anything except 'Received, Harriet'?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I hadn't any father or mother when Mr. Sebastian brought me here.\nIs that what you mean? But he taught me to say 'Harriet Sebastian,' and\na great many things he taught me. Didn't you know? And about his life\nand what he wanted you to do? Because, of course, we talked about you\nnearly always in the time just before he died. He said you would be sure\nto come, but he died, don't you see? only a few years after, and that\ndisappointed him. He gave me the picture and said, 'He'll come, and\nyou'll know him by this,' and he said, 'He will come poor and miserable.\nMy only son, so I leave him to you; and so, as I did, you will pray for\nhim twice each day.' It was just like that, 'Tell Charles there is no\nhappiness but in duty. Tell him I found it so.' It was a night like this\nwhen he died, and Kezzy was asleep in her chair out here, and I sat by\nthe bed. Then he told me I would pay him all in that way by doing what\nhe meant to do for you. I was so little, but I seemed to understand that\nI was to live for it, as he had lived to help free the slaves. Don't you\nsee? Then he began calling, 'Charles! Charles!' as if you were somewhere\nnear, and I fell asleep, and woke and lay still and listened to the\nwind; and when I tried to get up I couldn't, because he held my hair,\nand he was dead. But why didn't you come?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt looks odd enough now,\u201d Sebastian admitted, and wondered at the\nchange from still impassiveness, pale and cool silence, to eager speech,\nswift question, lifted and flushed face.\n\n\u201cThen you remember the letters? But you didn't come then. But I began\nto fancy how it would be when you came, and then somehow it seemed as\nif you were here. Out in the orchard sometimes, don't you see? And more\noften when Kezzy was cross. And when she went to sleep by the fire\nat night--she was so old--we were quite alone and talked. Don't you\nremember?--I mean--But Kezzy didn't like to hear me talking to myself.\n'Mutter, mutter!' like that. 'Never was such a child!' And then she\ndied, too, seven--seven years ago, and it was quite different. I--I grew\nolder. You seemed to be here quite and quite close to me always. There\nwas no one else, except--But, I don't know why, I had an aching from\nhaving to wait, and it has been a long time, hasn't it?\u201d\n\n\u201cRather long. Go on. There was no one else?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. We lived here--I mean--it grew that way, and you changed from the\npicture, too, and became like Mr. Sebastian, only younger, and just as\nyou are now, only--not quite.\u201d\n\nShe looked at him with sudden fear, then dropped her eyes, drew her long\nhair around under her cloak and leaned closer to the fire.\n\n\u201cBut there is so much to tell you it comes out all mixed.\u201d\n\nSebastian sat silently looking down at her, and felt the burden of his\nthinking grow heavier; the pondering how David Sebastian had left him an\ninheritance of advice, declaring his own life full and brimming, and to\nHarriet the inheritance of a curious duty that had grown to people her\nnights and days with intense sheltered dreams, and made her life,\ntoo, seem to her full and brimming, multitudinous with events and\ninterchanges, himself so close and cherished an actor in it that his own\nparallel unconsciousness of it had almost dropped out of conception.\nAnd the burden grew heavier still with the weight of memories, and\nthe record between the Old and New Testaments; with the sense of the\nisolation and covert of the midnight, and the storm; with the sight of\nHarriet crouching by the fire, her story, how David Sebastian left this\nworld and went out into the wild night crying, \u201cCharles! Charles!\u201d It\nwas something not logical, but compelling. It forced him to remark that\nhis own cup appeared partially empty from this point of view. Harriet\nseemed to feel that her hour had come and he was given to her hands..\nSuccess even in methods of living is a convincing thing over unsuccess.\nAh, well! too late to remodel to David Sebastian's notion. It was\nsingular, though, a woman silent, restrained, scrupulous, moving\nprobably to the dictates of village opinion--suddenly the key was\nturned, and she threw back the gates of her prison; threw open doors,\nwindows, intimate curtains; asked him to look in and explore everywhere\nand know all the history and the forecasts; became simple, primitive,\nunrestrained, willing to sit there at his feet and as innocent as her\nwhite linen gown. How smooth and pale her hair was and gentle cheek, and\nthere were little sleepy smiles in the corners of the lips. He thought\nhe would like most of all to put out his hand and touch her cheek and\nsleepy smiles, and draw her hair, long and soft and pale, from under the\ncloak. On the whole, it seemed probable that he might.\n\n\u201cHarriet,\u201d he said slowly, \u201cI'm going to play this hand.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I don't know what you mean.\u201d\n\n\u201cTake it, I'm not over and above a choice selection. I don't mention\ndetails, but take it as a general fact. Would you want to marry that\nkind of a selection, meaning me?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes! Didn't you come for that? I thought you would.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I thought you needed revelry! You must have had a lot of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don't know what you mean. Listen! It keeps knocking at the door!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, that's all right. Let it knock. Do you expect any more vagrants?\u201d\n\n\u201cVagrants?\u201d\n\n\u201cLike me.\u201d\n\n\u201cLike you? You only came home. Listen! It was like this when he died.\nBut he wouldn't come to-night and stand outside and knock, would he? Not\nto-night, when you've come at last. But he used to. Of course, I fancied\nthings. It's the storm. There's no one else now.\u201d\n\nA thousand spectres go whirling across Edom Hill such winter nights and\ncome with importunate messages, but if the door is close and the fire\ncourageous, it matters little. They are but wind and drift and out in\nthe dark, and if one is in the light, it is a great point to keep the\ndoor fast against them and all forebodings, and let the coming days be\nwhat they will.\n\nMen are not born in a night, or a year.\n\nBut if David Sebastian were a spectre there at the door, and thought\ndifferently on any question, or had more to say, he was not articulate.\nThere is no occupation for ghosts in a stirring world, nor efficiency in\ntheir repentance.\n\nHas any one more than a measure of hope, and a door against the storm?\nThere was that much, at least, on Edom Hill.\n\n\n\n\nSONS OF R. RAND\n\n\nSOME years ago, of a summer afternoon, a perspiring organ-grinder and\na leathery ape plodded along the road that goes between thin-soiled\nhillsides and the lake which is known as Elbow Lake and lies to the\nnortheast of the village of Salem. In those days it was a well-travelled\nhighway, as could be seen from its breadth and' dustiness. At about half\nthe length of its bordering on the lake there was a spring set in the\nhillside, and a little pool continually rippled by its inflow. Some\nsettler or later owner of the thin-soiled hillsides had left a clump of\ntrees about it, making as sightly and refreshing an Institute of\nCharity as could be found. Another philanthropist had added half a\ncocoanut-shell to the foundation.\n\nThe organ-grinder turned in under the trees with a smile, in which his\nfront teeth played a large part, and suddenly drew back with a guttural\nexclamation; the leathery ape bumped against his legs, and both assumed\nattitudes expressing respectively, in an Italian and tropical manner,\ngreat surprise and abandonment of ideas. A tall man lay stretched on\nhis back beside the spring, with a felt hat over his face. Pietro, the\ngrinder, hesitated. The American, if disturbed and irascible, takes by\nthe collar and kicks with the foot: it has sometimes so happened. The\ntall man pushed back his hat and sat up, showing a large-boned and\nsun-browned face, shaven except for a black mustache, clipped close. He\nlooked not irascible, though grave perhaps, at least unsmiling. He said:\n\u201cIt's free quarters, Dago. Come in. Entrez. Have a drink.\u201d\n\nPietro bowed and gesticulated with amiable violence. \u201cDry!\u201d he said.\n\u201cOh, hot!\u201d\n\n\u201cJust so. That a friend of yours?\u201d--pointing to the ape. \u201cHe ain't got a\nwithering sorrow, has he? Take a seat.\u201d\n\nElbow Lake is shaped as its name implies. If one were to imagine the arm\nto which the elbow belonged, it would be the arm of a muscular person in\nthe act of smiting a peaceable-looking farmhouse a quarter of a mile to\nthe east. Considering the bouldered front of the hill behind the house,\nthe imaginary blow would be bad for the imaginary knuckles. It is\na large house, with brown, unlikely looking hillsides around it,\nhuckleberry knobs and ice-grooved boulders here and there. The land\nbetween it and the lake is low, and was swampy forty years ago, before\nthe Rand boys began to drain it, about the time when R. Rand entered the\nthird quarter century of his unpleasant existence.\n\nR. Rand was, I suppose, a miser, if the term does not imply too definite\na type. The New England miser is seldom grotesque. He seems more like\ncongealed than distorted humanity. He does not pinch a penny so hard as\nsome of other races are said to do, but he pinches a dollar harder, and\nis quite as unlovely as any. R. Rand's methods of obtaining dollars\nto pinch were not altogether known, or not, at least, recorded--which\naccounts perhaps for the tradition that they were of doubtful\nuprightness. He held various mortgages about the county, and his\nfarm represented little to him except a means of keeping his two sons\ninexpensively employed in rooting out stones.\n\nAt the respective ages of sixteen and seventeen the two sons, Bob and\nTom Rand, discovered the rooting out of stones to be unproductive labor,\nif nothing grew, or was expected to grow, in their place, except more\nstones; and the nature of the counsels they took may be accurately\nimagined. In the autumn of '56 they began ditching the swamp in the\ndirection of the lake, and in the summer of '57 raised a crop of tobacco\nin the northeast corner, R. Rand, the father, making no comment the\nwhile. At the proper time he sold the tobacco to Packard & Co., cigar\nmakers, of the city of Hamilton, still making no comment, probably\nenjoying some mental titillation. Tom Rand then flung a rock of the size\nof his fist through one of the front windows, and ran away, also\nmaking no comment further than that. The broken window remained broken\ntwenty-five years, Tom returning neither to mend it nor to break\nanother. Bob Rand, by some bargain with his father, continued the\nditching and planting of the swamp with some profit to himself.\n\nHe evidently classed at least a portion of his father's manner of life\namong the things that are to be avoided. He acquired a family, and was\nin the way to bring it up in a reputable way. He further cultivated and\nbulwarked his reputation. Society, manifesting itself politically, made\nhim sheriff; society, manifesting itself ecclesiastically, made him\ndeacon. Society seldom fails to smile on systematic courtship.\n\nThe old man continued to go his way here and there, giving account of\nhimself to no one, contented enough no doubt to have one reputable son\nwho looked after his own children and paid steady rent for, or bought\npiece by piece, the land he used; and another floating between the\nRockies and the Mississippi, whose doings were of no importance in the\nvillage of Salem. But I doubt, on the whole, whether he was softened\nin heart by the deacon's manner or the ordering of the deacon's life to\nreflect unfilially on his own. Without claiming any great knowledge of\nthe proprieties, he may have thought the conduct of his younger son the\nmore filial of the two. Such was the history of the farmhouse between\nthe years '56 and '82.\n\nOne wet April day, the sixth of the month, in the year '82, R. Rand went\ngrimly elsewhere--where, his neighbors had little doubt. With true New\nEngland caution we will say that he went to the cemetery, the little\ngrass-grown cemetery of Salem, with its meagre memorials and absurd,\npathetic epitaphs. The minister preached a funeral sermon, out of\ndeference to his deacon, in which he said nothing whatever about R.\nRand, deceased; and R. Rand, sheriff and deacon, reigned in his stead.\n\nFollow certain documents and one statement of fact:\n\n_Document 1._\n\n_Codicil to the Will of R. Rand._\n\nThe Will shall stand as above, to wit, my son, Robert Rand, sole\nlegatee, failing the following condition: namely, I bequeath all my\nproperty as above mentioned, with the exception of this house and\nfarm, to my son, Thomas Rand, provided, that within three months of the\npresent date he returns and mends with his own hands the front window,\nthird from the north, previously broken by him.\n\n(Signed) R. Rand.\n\n_Statement of fact._ On the morning of the day following the funeral\nthe \u201ccondition\u201d appeared in singularly problematical shape, the broken\nwindow, third from the north, having been in fact promptly replaced _by\nthe hands of Deacon Rand himself_. The new pane stared defiantly across\nthe lake, westward.\n\n_Document 2_.\n\nLeadville, Cal., May 15.\n\nDear Bob: I hear the old man is gone. Saw it in a paper. I reckon maybe\nI didn't treat him any squarer than he did me. I'll go halves on a\nbang-up good monument, anyhow. Can we settle affairs without my coming\nEast? How are you, Bob?\n\nTom.\n\n_Document 3._\n\nSalem, May 29.\n\nDear Brother: The conditions of our father's will are such, I am\ncompelled to inform you, as to result in leaving the property wholly\nto me. My duty to a large and growing family gives me no choice but\nto accept it as it stands, and I trust and have no doubt that you will\nregard that result with fortitude. I remain yours,\n\nRobert Rand.\n\n_Document 4._\n\nLeadville, June 9.\n\nA. L. Moore.\n\nDear Sir: I have your name as a lawyer in Wimberton. Think likely there\nisn't any other. If you did not draw up the will of R. Rand, Salem, can\nyou forward this letter to the man who did? If you did, will you tell me\nwhat in thunder it was?\n\nYours, Thomas Rand.\n\n_Document 5._\n\nWimberton, June 18.\n\nThomas Rand.\n\nDear Sir: I did draw your father's will and enclose copy of the same,\nwith its codicil, which may truly be called remarkable. I think it right\nto add, that the window in question has been mended by your brother,\nwith evident purpose. Your letter comes opportunely, my efforts to find\nyou having been heretofore unsuccessful. I will add further, that I\nthink the case actionable, to say the least. In case you should see fit\nto contest, your immediate return is of course necessary. Very truly\nyours,\n\nA. L. Moore,\n\nAttorney-at-Law.\n\n_Document 6. Despatch._\n\nNew York, July 5.\n\nTo Robert Rand, Salem.\n\nWill be at Valley Station to-morrow. Meet me or not.\n\nT. Rand.\n\nThe deacon was a tall meagre man with a goatee that seemed to accentuate\nhim, to hint by its mere straightness at sharp decision, an unwavering\nline of rectitude.\n\nHe drove westward in his buckboard that hot summer afternoon, the 6th of\nJuly. The yellow road was empty before him all the length of the lake,\nexcept for the butterflies bobbing around in the sunshine. His lips\nlooked even more secretive than usual: a discouraging man to see, if one\nwere to come to him in a companionable mood desiring comments.\n\nOpposite the spring he drew up, hearing the sound of a hand-organ under\nthe trees. The tall man with a clipped mustache sat up deliberately\nand looked at him. The leathery ape ceased his funereal capers and also\nlooked at him; then retreated behind the spring. Pietro gazed back and\nforth between the deacon and the ape, dismissed his professional smile,\nand followed the ape. The tall man pulled his legs under him and got up.\n\n\u201cI reckon it's Bob,\u201d he said. \u201cIt's free quarters, Bob. Entrez. Come in.\nHave a drink.\u201d\n\nThe deacon's embarrassment, if he had any, only showed itself in an\nextra stiffening of the back.\n\n\u201cThe train--I did not suppose--I was going to meet you.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust so. I came by way of Wimberton.\u201d\n\nThe younger brother stretched himself again beside the spring and drew\nhis hat over his eyes. The elder stood up straight and not altogether\nunimpressive in front of it. Pietro in the rear of the spring reflected\nat this point that he and the ape could conduct a livelier conversation\nif it were left to them. Pietro could not imagine a conversation in\nwhich it was not desirable to be lively. The silence was long and,\nPietro thought, not pleasant.\n\n\u201cBob,\u201d said the apparent sleeper at last, \u201cever hear of the prodigal\nson?\u201d\n\nThe deacon frowned sharply, but said nothing. The other lifted the edge\nof his hat brim.\n\n\u201cNever heard of him? Oh--have I Then I won't tell about him. Too long.\nThat elder brother, now, he had good points;--no doubt of it, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cI confess I don't see your object--\u201d\n\n\u201cDon't? Well, I was just saying he had good points. I suppose he and the\nprodigal had an average good time together, knockin' around, stubbin'\ntheir toes, fishin' maybe, gettin' licked at inconvenient times, hookin'\napples most anytime. That sort of thing. Just so. He had something of\nan argument. Now, the prodigal had no end of fun, and the elder brother\nstayed at home and chopped wood; understood himself to be cultivating\nthe old man. I take it he didn't have a very soft job of it?\u201d--lifting\nhis hat brim once more.\n\nThe deacon said nothing, but observed the hat brim.\n\n\u201cNow I think of it, maybe strenuous sobriety wasn't a thing he naturally\nliked any more than the prodigal did. I've a notion there was more\nfamily likeness between 'em than other folks thought. What might be your\nidea?\u201d\n\nThe deacon still stood rigidly with his hands clasped behind him.\n\n\u201cI would rather,\u201d he said, \u201cyou would explain yourself without parable.\nYou received my letter. It referred to our father's will. I have\nreceived a telegram which I take to be threatening.\u201d\n\nThe other sat up and pulled a large satchel around from behind him.\n\n\u201cYou're a man of business, Bob,\u201d he said cheerfully. \u201cI like you, Bob.\nThat's so. That will--I've got it in my pocket. Now, Bob, I take it\nyou've got some cards, else you're putting up a creditable bluff. I play\nthis here Will, Codicil attached. You play,--window already mended; time\nexpired at twelve o'clock to-night. Good cards, Bob--first-rate. I play\nhere\u201d--opening the satchel--\u201ctwo panes of glass--allowin' for\naccidents--putty, et cetera, proposing to bust that window again. Good\ncards, Bob. How are you coming on?\u201d\n\nThe deacon's sallow cheeks flushed and his eyes glittered. Something\ncame into his face which suggested the family likeness. He drew a paper\nfrom his inner coat pocket, bent forward stiffly and laid it on the\ngrass.\n\n\u201cSheriff's warrant,\u201d he said, \u201cfor--hem--covering possible trespassing\non my premises; good for twenty-four hours' detention--hem.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood,\u201d said his brother briskly. \u201cI admire you, Bob. I'll be blessed if\nI don't. I play again.\u201d He drew a revolver and placed it on top of the\nglass. \u201cSix-shooter. Good for two hours' stand-off.\u201d\n\n\u201cHem,\u201d said the deacon. \u201cWarrant will be enlarged to cover the carrying\nof concealed weapons. Being myself the sheriff of this town, it\nis--hem--permissible for me.\u201d He placed a revolver on top of the\nwarrant.\n\n\u201cBob,\u201d said his brother, in huge delight, \u201cI'm proud of you. But--I\njudge you ain't on to the practical drop. _Stand back there!_\u201d The\ndeacon looked into the muzzle of the steady revolver covering him, and\nretreated a step, breathing hard. Tom Rand sprang to his feet, and\nthe two faced each other, the deacon looking as dangerous a man as the\nWesterner.\n\nSuddenly, the wheezy hand-organ beyond the spring began, seemingly\ntrying to play two tunes at once, with Pietro turning the crank as\ndesperately as if the muzzle of the revolver were pointed at him.\n\n\u201cHi, you monk! Dance!\u201d cried Pietro; and the leathery ape footed it\nsolemnly. The perspiration poured down Pietro's face. Over the faces of\nthe two stern men fronting each other a smile came and broadened slowly,\nfirst over the younger's, then over the deacon's.\n\nThe deacon's smile died out first. He sat down on a rock, hid his face\nand groaned.\n\n\u201cI'm an evil-minded man,\u201d he said; \u201cI'm beaten.\u201d\n\nThe other cocked his head on one side and listened. \u201cKnow what that tune\nis, Bob? I don't.\u201d\n\nHe sat down in the old place again, took up the panes of glass and the\ncopy of the will, hesitated, and put them down.\n\n\u201cI don't reckon you're beaten, Bob. You ain't got to the end of your\nhand yet. Got any children, Bob? Yes; said you had.\u201d\n\n\u201cFive.\u201d\n\n\u201cCall it a draw, Bob; I'll go you halves, counting in the monument.\u201d\n\nBut the deacon only muttered to himself: \u201cI'm an evil-minded man.\u201d\n\nTom Rand meditatively wrapped the two documents around the revolvers.\n\n\u201cHere, Dago, you drop 'em in the spring!\u201d which Pietro did, perspiring\nfreely. \u201cShake all that. Come along.\u201d\n\nThe two walked slowly toward the yellow road. Pietro raised his voice\ndespairingly. \u201cNo cent! Not a nicka!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat's so,\u201d said Tom, pausing. \u201cFive, by thunder! Come along, Dago.\nIt's free quarters. Entrez. Take a seat.\u201d\n\nThe breeze was blowing up over Elbow Lake, and the butterflies bobbed\nabout in the sunshine, as they drove along the yellow road. Pietro sat\nat the back of the buck-board, the leathery ape on his knee and a smile\non his face, broad, non-professional, and consisting largely of front\nteeth.\n\n\n\n\nCONLON\n\n\nCONLON, the strong, lay sick unto death with fever. The Water\nCommissioners sent champagne to express their sympathy. It was an\nunforced impulse of feeling.\n\nBut Conlon knew nothing of it. His lips were white, his cheeks sunken;\nhis eyes glared and wandered; he muttered, and clutched with his big\nfingers at nothing visible.\n\nThe doctor worked all day to force a perspiration. At six o'clock he\nsaid: \u201cI'm done. Send for the priest.\u201d\n\nWhen Kelly and Simon Harding came, Father Ryan and the doctor were going\ndown the steps.\n\n\u201c'Tis a solemn duty ye have, Kelly,\u201d said the priest, \u201cto watch the last\nmoments of a dying man, now made ready for his end.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, not Conlon! He'll not give up, not him,\u201d cried Kelly, \u201cthe shtrong\nman wid the will in him!\u201d\n\n\u201cAn' what's the sthrength of man in the hands of his Creathor?\u201d said the\npriest, turning to Harding, oratorically.\n\n\u201cI don' know,\u201d said Harding, calmly. \u201cDo you?\u201d\n\n\u201c'Tis naught!\u201d\n\nKelly murmured submissively.\n\n\u201cKind of monarchical institution, ain't it, what Conlon's run up\nagainst?\u201d Harding remarked. \u201cGive him a fair show in a caucus, an' he'd\nwin, sure.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe'll die if he don't sweat,\u201d said the doctor, wiping his forehead.\n\u201cIt's hot enough.\u201d Conlon lay muttering and glaring at the ceiling. The\nbig knuckles of his hands stood out like rope-knots. His wife nodded to\nKelly and Harding, and went out. She was a good-looking woman, large,\nmassive, muscular. Kelly looked after her, rubbing his short nose\nand blinking his watery eyes. He was small, with stooping shoulders,\naffectionate eyes, wavering knees. He had followed Conlon, the strong,\nand served him many years. Admiration of Conlon was a strenuous business\nin which to be engaged.\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d he said, \u201chis wife ten year, an' me his inchimate friend.\u201d\n\nIt was ten by the clock. The subsiding noise of the city came up over\nhousetops and vacant lots. The windows of the sickroom looked off the\nverge of a bluff; one saw the lights of the little city below, the\nlights of the stars above, and the hot black night between.\n\nKelly and Harding sat down by a window, facing each other. The lamplight\nwas dim. A screen shaded it from the bed, where Conlon muttered and\ncried out faintly, intermittently, as though in conversation with some\none who was present only to himself. His voice was like the ghost or\nshadow of a voice, not a whisper, but strained of all resonance. One\nmight fancy him standing on the bank of the deadly river and talking\nacross to some one beyond the fog, and fancy that the voices would so\ncreep through the fog stealthily, not leaping distances like earthly\nsounds, but struggling slowly through nameless obstruction.\n\nKelly rubbed his hands before the fire.\n\n\u201cI was his inchimate friend.\u201d\n\nHarding said: \u201cAre you going to talk like a blanked idiot all night, or\nleave off maybe about twelve?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know ye for a hard man, too, Simmy,\u201d said Kelly, pathetically; \u201can'\n'tis the nathur of men, for an Irishman is betther for blow-in' off his\nshteam, be it the wrath or the sorrow of him, an' the Yankee is betther\nfor bottlin' it up.\u201d\n\n\u201cUses it for driving his engine mostly.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo. But Conlon--\u201d\n\n\u201cConlon,\u201d said Harding slowly, \u201cthat's so. He had steam to drive with,\nand steam to blow with, and plenty left over to toot his whistle and\nscald his fingers and ache in his belly. Expanding that there figure, he\ncarried suction after him like the 1:40 express, he did.\u201d\n\n\u201c'Tis thrue.\u201d Kelly leaned forward and lowered his voice. \u201cI mind me\nwhen I first saw him I hadn't seen him before, unless so be when he was\nputtin' the wather-main through the sand-hills up the river an' bossin'\na gang o' men with a fog-horn voice till they didn't own their souls,\nan' they didn't have any, what's more, the dirty Polocks. But he\ncome into me shop one day, an' did I want the job o' plumbin' the\ncourt-house?\n\n\u201c'Have ye the court-house in your pocket?' says I, jokin'.\n\n\u201c'I have,' says he, onexpected, 'an' any plumbin' that's done for the\ncourt-house is done in the prisint risidence of the same.'\n\n\u201cAn' I looks up, an' 'O me God!' I says to meself, ''tis a man!' wid\nthe black eyebrows of him, an' the shoulders an' the legs of him. An' he\ntook me into the shwale of his wake from that day to this. But I niver\nthought to see him die.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat's so. You been his heeler straight through. I don't know but I\nlike your saying so. But I don't see the how. Why, look here; when I bid\nfor the old water contract he comes and offers to sell it to me, sort\nof personal asset. I don't know how. By the unbroke faces of the other\nWater Commissioners he didn't use his pile-driving fist to persuade\n'em, and what I paid him was no more'n comfortable for himself. How'd\nhe fetch it? How'd he do those things? Why, look here, Kelly, ain't he\nbullied you? Ain't you done dirty jobs for him, and small thanks?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have that.\u201d\n\nKelly's hands trembled. He was bowed down and thoughtful, but not angry.\n\u201cSuppose I ask you what for?\u201d\n\n\u201cSuppose ye do. Suppose I don' know. Maybe he was born to be king over\nme. Maybe he wasn't. But I know he was a mastherful man, an' he's dyin'\nhere, an' me blood's sour an' me bones sad wid thinkin' of it. Don'\nthrouble me, Simmy.\u201d\n\nHarding leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, where the\nlamp made a nebulous circle of light.\n\n\u201cWhy, that's so,\u201d he said at last, in conclusion of some unmentioned\ntrain of thought. \u201cWhy, I got a pup at home, and his affection ain't\nmeasured by the bones he's had, nor the licks he's had, not either of\n'em.\u201d\n\nKelly was deep in a reverie.\n\n\u201cNor it ain't measured by my virtues. Look here, now; I don' see what\nhis measure is.\u201d\n\n\u201cHey?\u201d Kelly roused himself.\n\n\u201cOh, I was just thinking.\u201d\n\nHarding thought he had known other men who had had in some degree\na magnetic power that seemed to consist in mere stormy energy of\ninitiative. They were like strong drink to weaker men. It was more\nphysical than mental. Conlon was to Kelly a stimulant, then an appetite.\nAnd Conlon was a bad lot. Fellows that had heeled for him were mostly\neither wrecked or dead now. Why, there was a chap named Patterson that\nused to be decent till he struck Conlon, when he went pretty low; and\nNora Reimer drowned herself on account of Patterson, when he got himself\nshot in a row at some shanty up the railroad. The last had seemed a\ngood enough riddance. But Nora went off her head and jumped in the new\nreservoir. Harding remembered it the more from being one of the Water\nCompany. They had had to empty the reservoir, which was expensive. And\nthere were others. A black, blustering sort of beast, Conlon. He had\nmore steam than was natural. Harding wondered vaguely at Kelly, who was\nspelling out the doctor's directions from a piece of paper.\n\n\u201cA powdher an' five dhrops from the short bottle. 'Tis no tin-course\ndinner wid the champagne an' entries he's givin' Conlon the night. Hey?\nA powdher an' five dhrops from the short bottle.\u201d\n\nHarding's mind wandered on among memories of the little city below, an\nintricate, irregular history, full of incidents, stories that were never\nfinished or dribbled off anywhere, black spots that he knew of in white\nlives, white spots in dark lives. He did not happen to know any white\nspots on Conlon.\n\n\u201cCourse if a man ain't in politics for his health he ain't in it for the\nhealth of the community, either, and that's all right. And if he opens\nthe morning by clumping Mrs. Conlon on the head, why, she clumps him\nback more or less, and that's all right.\u201d Then, if he went down-town and\nlied here and there ingeniously in the way of business, and came home at\nnight pretty drunk, but no more than was popular with his constituency,\nwhy, Conlon's life was some cluttered, but never dull. Still, Harding's\nown ways being quieter and less cluttered, he felt that if Conlon were\ngoing off naturally now, it was not, on the whole, a bad idea. It would\nconduce to quietness. It would perhaps be a pity if anything interfered.\n\nThe clock in a distant steeple struck twelve, a dull, unechoing sound.\n\n\u201cSimmy,\u201d said Kelly, pointing with his thumb, \u201cwhat do he be sayin',\ntalkin'--talkin' like one end of a tiliphone?\u201d\n\nThey both turned toward the bed and listened.\n\n\u201cTelephone! Likely there's a party at the other end, then. Where's the\nother end?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don' know,\u201d whispered Kelly. \u201cBut I have this in me head, for ye\nknow, when the priest has done his last, 'tis sure he's dhropped his\nman at the front door of wherever he's goin', wid a letther of\ninthroduction in his hatband. An' while the man was waitin' for the\nsame to be read an' him certified a thrue corpse, if he had a kettleful\nof boilin' impatience in himself like Tom Conlon, wouldn't he be passin'\nthe time o' day through the keyhole wid his friends be-yant?\u201d\n\n\u201c'Tain't a telephone, then? It's a keyhole, hey?\u201d\n\n\u201cTiliphone or keyhole, he'd be talkin' through it, Conlon would, do ye\nmind?\u201d\n\nHarding looked with some interest. Conlon muttered, and stopped, and\nmuttered again. Harding rose and walked to the bed. Kelly followed\ntremulously.\n\n\u201cListen, will ye?\u201d said Kelly, suddenly leaning down.\n\n\u201cI don' know,\u201d said Harding, with an instinct of hesitation. \u201cI don'\nknow as it's a square game. Maybe he's talkin' of things that ain't\nhealthy to mention. Maybe he's plugged somebody some time, or broke a\nbank--ain't any more'n likely. What of it?\u201d\n\n\u201cListen, will ye?\u201d\n\n\u201cDon' squat on a man when he's down, Kelly.\u201d\n\n\u201c'Sh!\u201d\n\n\u201c_Hold Tom's hand. Wait for Tom_,\u201d babbled the ghostly voice, a thin,\ndistant sound.\n\n\u201cWhat'd he say? What'd he say?\u201d Kelly was white and trembling.\n\nHarding stood up and rubbed his chin reflectively. He did not seem to\nhimself to make it out. He brought a chair, sat down, and leaned close\nto Conlon to study the matter.\n\n\u201c_What's the heart-scald, mother?_\u201d babbled Conlon. \u201c_Where'd ye get it\nfrom? Me! Wirra!_\u201d\n\n\u201c'Tis spheakin' to ghosteses he is, Simmy, ye take me worrd.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome off! He's harking back when he was a kid.\u201d\n\nKelly shook his head solemnly.\n\n\u201cHe's spheakin' to ghosteses.\u201d\n\n\u201c_What's that, mother? Arra! I'm sick, mother. What for? I don' see.\nWhere'm I goin'?_'\n\n\u201cYou got me,\u201d muttered Harding. \u201cI don' know.\u201d\n\n\u201c_Tom'll be good. It's main dark. Hold Tom's hand_.\u201d\n\nKelly was on his knees, saying prayers at terrific speed.\n\n\u201cHear to him!\u201d he stopped to whisper. \u201cGhosteses! Ora pro nobis--\u201d\n\n\u201c_Tom ain't afraid. Naw, he ain't afraid._\u201d\n\nHarding went back to his window. The air was heavy and motionless, the\nstars a little dim. He could see the dark line of the river with an\noccasional glint upon it, and the outline of the hills beyond.\n\nThe little city had drawn a robe of innocent obscurity over it. Only a\nmalicious sparkle gleamed here and there. He thought he knew that city\ninside and out, from end to end. He had lived in it, dealt with it,\nloved it, cheated it, helped to build it, shared its fortunes. Who knew\nit better than he? But every now and then it surprised with some hidden\ndetail or some impulse of civic emotion. And Kelly and Conlon, surely he\nknew them, as men may know men. But he never had thought to see\nConlon as to-night. It was odd. But there was some fact in the social\nconstitution, in human nature, at the basis of all the outward oddities\nof each.\n\n\u201cMaybe when a man's gettin' down to his reckonin' it's needful to show\nup what he's got at the bottom. Then he begins to peel off layers of\nhimself like an onion, and 'less there ain't anything to him but layers,\nby and by he comes to something that resembles a sort of aboriginal boy,\nwhich is mostly askin' questions and bein' surprised.\u201d\n\nMaybe there was more boyishness in Conlon than in most men. Come\nto think of it, there was. Conlon's leadership was ever of the\nmaybe-you-think-I-can't-lick-you order; and men followed him, admitting\nthat he could, in admiration and simplicity. You might see the same\nthing in the public-school yard. Maybe that was the reason. The sins of\nConlon were not sophisticated.\n\nThe low, irregular murmur from the bed, the heavy heat of the night,\nmade Harding drowsy. Kelly repeating the formula of his prayers, a kind\nof incantation against ghosts, Conlon with his gaunt face in the shadow\nand his big hands on the sheet clutching at nothing visible, both faded\naway, and Harding fell asleep.\n\nHe woke with a start. Kelly was dancing about the bed idiotically.\n\n\u201cHe's shweatin'!\u201d he gabbled. \u201cHe's shweatin'! He'll be well--Conlon.\u201d\n\nIt made Harding think of the \u201cpup,\u201d and how he would dance about him,\nwhen he went home, in the crude expression of joy. Conlon's face was\ndamp. He muttered no more. They piled the blankets on him till the\nperspiration stood out in drops. Conlon breathed softly and slept. Kelly\nbabbled gently, \u201cConlon! Conlon!\u201d\n\nHarding went back to the window and rubbed his eyes sleepily.\n\n\u201cKind of too bad, after all that trouble to get him peeled.\u201d\n\nThe morning was breaking, solemn, noiseless, with lifted banners and\nwide pageantries, over river and city.\n\nHarding yawned.\n\n\u201cIt's one on Father Ryan, anyway. That's a good thing. Blamed old\nwindbag!\u201d\n\nKelly murmured ecstatically, \u201cConlon will get well--Conlon!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nST CATHERINE'S\n\n\nST. CATHERINE'S was the life work of an old priest, who is remembered\nnow and presently will be forgotten. There are gargoyles over the\nentrance aside, with their mouths open to express astonishment. They\nspout rain water at times, but you need not get under them; and there\nare towers, and buttresses, a great clock, a gilded cross, and roofs\nthat go dimly heavenward.\n\nSt. Catherine's is new. The neighborhood squats around it in different\npathetic attitudes. Opposite is the saloon of the wooden-legged man; then\nthe three groceries whose cabbages all look unpleasant; the parochial\nschool with the green lattice; and all those little wooden houses--where\nlives, for instance, the dressmaker who funnily calls herself \u201cModiste.\u201d\n Beyond the street the land drops down to the freight yards.\n\nBut Father Connell died about the time they finished the east oriel, and\nFather Harra reigned over the house of the old man's dreams--a red-faced\nman, a high feeder, who looked as new as the church and said the virtues\nof Father Connell were reducing his flesh. That would seem to be no\nharm; but Father Harra meant it humorously. Father Connell had stumped\nabout too much among the workmen in the cold and wet, else there had\nbeen no need of his dying at eighty-eight. His tall black hat became a\nrelic that hung in the tiring room, and he cackled no more in his thin\nvoice the noble Latin of the service. Peace to his soul! The last\norder he wrote related to the position of the Christ figure and the\ninscription, \u201cCome unto me, weary and heavy-laden: I will give you\nrest.\u201d But the figure was not in place till the mid-December following.\n\nAnd it was the day before Christmas that Father Harra had a fine\nservice, with his boy choir and all; and Chubby Locke sang a solo,\n\u201cAngels ever bright and fair,\u201d that was all dripping with tears, so to\nspeak. Chubby Locke was an imp too. All around the altar the candles\nwere lighted, and there hung a cluster of gas jets over the head of the\nChrist figure on the edge of the south transept. So fine it was that\nFather Harra came out of his room into the aisle (when the people were\ngone, saying how fine it was, and the sexton was putting out the gas\nhere and there), to walk up and down and think about it, especially\nhow he should keep up with the virtues of Father Connell. Duskier and\nduskier it grew, as the candles went out cluster by cluster till only\nthose in the south transept were left; and Dennis, coming there, stopped\nand grunted.\n\n\u201cWhat!\u201d said Father Harra.\n\n\u201cIt's asleep he is,\u201d said the sexton. \u201cIt's a b'y, yer riverence.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, so it is! He went to sleep during the service. H'm--well--they\noften do that, Dennis.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnyways he don't belong here,\u201d said Dennis.\n\n\u201cThink so? I don't know about that. Wait a bit. I don't know about that\nDennis.\u201d\n\nThe boy lay curled up on the seat--a newsboy, by the papers that had\nslipped from his arms. But he did not look businesslike, and he did not\nsuggest the advantages of being poor in America. One does not become a\ncapitalist or president by going to church and to sleep in the best of\nbusiness hours, from four to six, when the streets are stirring with\nmen on their way to dinners, cigars and evening papers. The steps of St.\nCatherine's are not a bad place to sell papers after Vespers, and one\nmight as well go in, to be sure, and be warm while the service lasts;\nonly, as I said, if one falls asleep, one does not become a capitalist\nor president immediately. Father Harra considered, and Dennis waited\nrespectfully.\n\n\u201cIt's making plans I am against your natural rest, Dennis. I'm that\ninconsiderate of your feelings to think of keeping St. Catherine's open\nthis night. And why? Look ye, Dennis. St. Catherine's is getting itself\nconsecrated these days, being new, and of course--But I tell ye, Dennis,\nit's a straight church doctrine that the blessings of the poor are a\ngood assistance to the holy wather.\u201d\n\n\u201cAn' me wid children of me own to be missin' their father this Christmas\nEve!\u201d began Dennis indignantly.\n\n\u201cWho wouldn't mind, the little villains, if their father had another\ndollar of Christmas morning to buy 'em presents.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, well,\u201d said the sexton, \u201cyer riverence is that persuadin'.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt's plain enough for ye to see yourself, Dennis, though thick-headed\nsomewhat. There you are: 'Come unto me, weary and heavy-laden;' and\nhere he is. Plain enough. And who are the weary and heavy-laden in this\ncity?\u201d\n\n\u201cYer riverence will be meanin' everybody,\u201d chuckled Dennis.\n\n\u201cThink so? Rich and poor and all? Stuff! I don't believe it. Not\nto-night. It'll be the outcasts, I'm thinking, Dennis. Come on.\u201d\n\n\u201cAn' the b'y, yer riverence?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe what? Oh, why, yes, yes. He's all right. I don't see anything the\nmatter with him. He's come.\u201d\n\nIt was better weather to go with the wind than against it, for the\nsnow drove in gritty particles, and the sidewalks made themselves\ndisagreeable and apt to slip out from under a person. Little spurts\nof snow danced up St. Catherine's roofs and went off the ridgepoles in\npuffs. It ought to snow on Christmas Eve; but it rightly should snow\nwith better manners and not be so cold. The groceries closed early.\nFreiburger, the saloon man, looked over the curtains of his window.\n\n\u201cI don't know vat for Fater Harra tack up dings dis time by his kirch\ndoor, 'Come--come in here.' Himmel! der Irishman!\u201d\n\nFather Harra turned in to his supper, and thought how he would trouble\nFather Conner's reputation for enterprise and what a fine bit of\nconstructive ability himself was possessed of.\n\nThe great central door of St. Catherine's stood open, so that the drift\nblew in and piled in windrows on the cold floor of the vestibule. The\ntall front of the church went up into the darkness, pointing to no\nvisible stars; but over the doors two gas jets flickered across the big\nsign they use for fairs at the parochial school. \u201cCome in here.\u201d The\nvestibule was dark, barring another gas jet over a side door, with\nanother sign, \u201cCome in here,\u201d and within the great church was dark as\nwell, except for a cluster over the Christ figure. That was all; but\nFather Harra thought it a neat symbol, looking toward those who go from\nmeagre light to light through the darkness.\n\nLittle noises were in the church all night far up in the pitch darkness\nof rafter and buttress, as if people were whispering and crying softly\nto one another. Now and again, too, the swing door would open and remain\nso for a moment, suspicious, hesitating. But what they did, or who they\nwere that opened it, could hardly be told in the dusk and distance.\nDennis went to sleep in a chair by the chancel rail, and did not care\nwhat they did or who they were, granted they kept away from the chancel.\n\nHow the wind blew!--and the snow tapped impatiently at stained windows\nwith a multitude of little fingers. But if the noises among the rafters\nwere not merely echoes of the crying and calling wind without, if any\npresences moved and whispered there, and looked down on flat floor and\nstraight lines of pews, they must have seen the Christ figure, with\nwelcoming hands, dominant by reason of the light about it; and, just on\nthe edge of the circle of light, shapeless things stretched on cushions\nof pews, and motionless or stirring uneasily. Something now came dimly\nup the aisle from the swing door, stopped at a pew, and hesitated.\n\n\u201cGit out!\u201d growled a hoarse voice. \u201cDis my bunk.\u201d\n\nThe intruder gave a nervous giggle. \u201cBegawd!\u201d muttered the hoarse voice.\n\u201cIt's a lady!\u201d\n\nAnother voice said something angrily. \u201cWell,\u201d said the first, \u201cit ain't\nbehavin' nice to come into me boodwer.\u201d\n\nThe owner of the giggle had slipped away and disappeared in a distant\npew. In another pew to the right of the aisle a smaller shadow whispered\nto another:\n\n\u201cJimmy, that's a statoo up there.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat. I bet 'e's a king.\u201d\n\n\u201cAw, no 'e ain't. Kings has crowns an' wallups folks.\u201d\n\n\u201cGorry! What for?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don' know.\u201d\n\nThe other sighed plaintively. \u201cI thought 'e might be a king.\u201d\n\nThe rest were mainly silent. Some one had a bad cough. Once a sleeper\nrolled from the seat and fell heavily to the floor. There was an oath\nor two, a smothered laugh, and the distant owner of the giggle used it\nnervously. The last was an uncanny sound. The wakened sleeper objected\nto it. He said he would \u201clike to get hold of her,\u201d and then lay down\ncautiously on his cushion.\n\nArchitects have found that their art is cunning to play tricks with\nthem; whence come whispering galleries, comers of echoes, roofs that\ncrush the voice of the speaker, and roofs that enlarge it. Father\nConnell gave no orders to shape the roofs of St. Catherine's, that on\nstormy nights so many odd noises might congregate there, whispering,\ncalling, murmuring, now over the chancel, now the organ, now far up in\nthe secret high places of the roof, now seeming to gather in confidence\nabove the Christ figure and the circle of sleepers; or, if one vaguely\nimagined some inquisitively errant beings moving overhead, it would seem\nthat newcomers constantly entered, to whom it had all to be explained.\n\nBut against that eager motion in the darkness above the Christ figure\nbelow was bright in his long garment, and quiet and secure. The cluster\nof gas jets over his head made light but a little distance around, then\nsoftened the dusk for another distance, and beyond seemed not to touch\nthe darkness at all. The dusk was a debatable space. The sleepers all\nlay in the debatable space. They may have sought it by instinct; but\nthe more one looked at them the more they seemed like dull, half-animate\nthings, over whom the light and the darkness made their own compromises\nand the people up in the roof their own comments.\n\nThe clock in the steeple struck the hours; in the church the tremble was\nfelt more than the sound was heard. The chimes each hour started their\nmessage, \u201cGood will and peace;\u201d but the wind went after it and howled it\ndown, and the snow did not cease its petulance at the windows.\n\n*****\n\nThe clock in the steeple struck five. The man with the hoarse voice sat\nup, leaned over the back of the seat and touched his neighbor, who rose\nnoiselessly, a huge fat man and unkempt.\n\n\u201cTime to slope,\u201d whispered the first, motioning toward the chancel.\n\nThe other followed his motion.\n\n\u201cWhat's up there?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou're ignorance, you are. That's where they gives the show. There's\npickin's there.\u201d\n\nThe two slipped out and stole up the aisle with a peculiar noiseless\ntread. Even Fat Bill's step could not be heard a rod away. The aisle\nentered the circle of light before the Christ figure; but the two\nthieves glided through without haste and without looking up. The\nsmaller, in front, drew up at the end of the aisle, and Fat Bill ran\ninto him. Dennis sat in his chair against the chancel rail, asleep.\n\n\u201cGet onto his whiskers, Bill. Mebbe you'll have to stuff them whiskers\ndown his throat.\u201d\n\nThere was a nervous giggle behind them. Fat Bill shot into a pew,\ndragging his comrade after him, and crouched down. \u201cIt ain't no use,\u201d\n he whispered, shaking the other angrily. \u201cChurch business is bad luck. I\nalius said so. What's for them blemed noises all night? How'd come they\nstick that thing up there with the gas over it? What for'd they leave\nthe doors open, an' tell ye to come in, an' keep their damn devils\ngigglin' around? 'Taint straight I won't stand it.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt's only a woman, Bill,\u201d said the other patiently.\n\nHe rose on his knees and looked over the back of the seat. \u201c'Tain't\nstraight. I won't stand it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe won't fight, Bill. We'll get out, if you say so.\u201d\n\nThe owner of the giggle was sitting up, as they glided back, Fat Bill\nleading.\n\n\u201cI'll smash yer face,\u201d the smaller man said to her.\n\nBill turned and grabbed his collar.\n\n\u201cYou come along.\u201d\n\nThe woman stared stupidly after, till the swing door closed behind them.\nThen she put on her hat, decorated with too many disorderly flowers.\nMost of the sleepers were wakened. The wind outside had died in the\nnight, and the church was quite still. A man in a dress suit and\novercoat sat up in a pew beneath a window, and stared about him. His\nsilk hat lay on the floor. He leaned over the back of the seat and spoke\nto his neighbor, a tramp in checked trousers.\n\n\u201cHow'd I g-get here?\u201d he asked thickly.\n\n\u201cDon' know, pardner,\u201d said the tramp cheerfully. \u201cFloated in, same as\nme?\u201d He caught sight of the white tie and shirt front. \u201cMaybe you'd\ngive a cove a shiner to steady ye out They don't give breakfasts with\nlodgin's here.\u201d\n\nThe woman with the giggle and the broken-down flowers on her hat went\nout next; then a tall, thin man with a beard and a cough; the newsboy\nwith his papers shuffled after, his shoes being too large; then a lame\nman--something seemed the matter with his hip; and a decent-looking\nwoman, who wore a faded shawl over her head and kept it drawn across her\nface--she seemed ashamed to be there, as if it did not appear to her a\nrespectable place; last, two boys, one of them small, but rather stunted\nthan very young. He said:\n\n\u201c'E ain't a king, is 'e, Jimmy? You don' know who 'e is, do you, Jimmy?\u201d\n\n\u201cNaw.\u201d\n\n\u201cSay, Jimmy, it was warm, warn't it?\u201d\n\n*****\n\nDennis came down the aisle, put out the gas, and began to brush the\ncushions. The clock struck a quarter of six, and Father Harra came in.\n\n\u201cChristmas, Dennis, Christmas! H'm--anybody been here? What did they\nthink of it?\u201d\n\nDennis rubbed his nose sheepishly.\n\n\u201cThey wint to shleep, sor, an'--an' thin they wint out.\u201d\n\nFather Harra looked up at the Christ figure and stroked his red chin.\n\n\u201cI fancied they might see the point,\u201d he said slowly. \u201cWell, well, I\nhope they were warm.\u201d\n\nThe colored lights from the east oriel fell over the Christ figure and\ngave it a cheerful look; and from other windows blue and yellow and\nmagical deep-sea tints floated in the air, as if those who had whispered\nunseen in the darkness were now wandering about, silent but curiously\nvisible.\n\n\u201cYer riverince,\u201d said Dennis, \u201cwill not be forgettin' me dollar.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE SPIRAL STONE\n\n\nTHE graveyard on the brow of the hill was white with snow. The marbles\nwere white, the evergreens black. One tall spiral stone stood painfully\nnear the centre. The little brown church outside the gates turned its\nface in the more comfortable direction of the village.\n\nOnly three were out among the graves: \u201cAmbrose Chillingworth, \u00e6tat 30,\n1675;\u201d\n\n\u201cMargaret Vane, \u00e6tat 19, 1839;\u201d and \u201cThy Little One, O God, \u00e6tat 2,\u201d\n from the Mercer Lot. It is called the \u201cMercer Lot,\u201d but the Mercers are\nall dead or gone from the village.\n\nThe Little One trotted around busily, putting his tiny finger in the\nletterings and patting the faces of the cherubs. The other two sat on\nthe base of the spiral, which twisted in the moonlight over them.\n\n\u201cI wonder why it is?\u201d Margaret said. \u201cMost of them never come out at\nall. We and the Little One come out so often. You were wise and learned.\nI knew so little. Will you tell me?\u201d\n\n\u201cLearning is not wisdom,\u201d Ambrose answered. \u201cBut of this matter it was\nsaid that our containment in the grave depended on the spirit in which\nwe departed. I made certain researches. It appeared by common report\nthat only those came out whom desperate sin tormented, or labors\nincomplete and great desire at the point of death made restless. I\nhad doubts the matter were more subtle, the reasons of it reaching out\ndistantly.\u201d He sighed faintly, following with his eyes, tomb by tomb,\nthe broad white path that dropped down the hillside to the church. \u201cI\ndesired greatly to live.\u201d\n\n\u201cI, too. Is it because we desired it so much, then? But the Little\nOne\u201d---\n\n\u201cI do not know,\u201d he said.\n\nThe Little One trotted gravely here and there, seeming to know very well\nwhat he was about, and presently came to the spiral stone. The lettering\non it was new, and there was no cherub. He dropped down suddenly on the\nsnow, with a faint whimper. His small feet came out from under his gown,\nas he sat upright, gazing at the letters with round troubled eyes, and\nup to the top of the monument for the solution of some unstated problem.\n\n\u201cThe stone is but newly placed,\u201d said Ambrose, \u201cand the newcomer would\nseem to be of those who rest in peace.\u201d\n\nThey went and sat down on either side of him, on the snow. The peculiar\ncutting of the stone, with spirally ascending lines, together with the\nmoon's illusion, gave it a semblance of motion. Something twisted and\nclimbed continually, and vanished continually from the point. But the\nbase was broad, square, and heavily lettered: \u201cJohn Mareschelli Vane.\u201d\n\n\u201cVane? That was thy name,\u201d said Ambrose.\n\n1890. \u00c6tat 72.\n\nAn Eminent Citizen, a Public Benefactor, and Widely Esteemed.\n\nFor the Love of his Native Place returned to lay his Dust therein.\n\nThe Just Made Perfect.\n\n\u201cIt would seem he did well, and rounded his labors to a goodly end,\nlying down among his kindred as a sheaf that is garnered in the autumn.\nHe was fortunate.\u201d\n\nAnd Margaret spoke, in the thin, emotionless voice which those who are\nlong in the graveyard use: \u201cHe was my brother.\u201d\n\n\u201cThy brother?\u201d said Ambrose.\n\nThe Little One looked up and down the spiral with wide eyes. The other\ntwo looked past it into the deep white valley, where the river, covered\nwith ice and snow, was marked only by the lines of skeleton willows and\npoplars. A night wind, listless but continual, stirred the evergreens.\nThe moon swung low over the opposite hills, and for a moment slipped\nbehind a cloud.\n\n\u201cSays it not so, 'For the Love of his Native Place'?\u201d murmured Ambrose.\n\nAnd as the moon came out, there leaned against the pedestal, pointing\nwith a finger at the epitaph, one that seemed an old man, with bowed\nshoulders and keen, restless face, but in his manner cowed and weary.\n\n\u201cIt is a lie,\u201d he said slowly. \u201cI hated it, Margaret. I came because\nEllen Mercer called me.\u201d\n\n\u201cEllen isn't buried here.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot here!\u201d\n\n\u201cNot here.\u201d\n\n\u201cWas it you, then, Margaret? Why?\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn't call you.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho then?\u201d he shrieked. \u201cWho called me?\u201d\n\nThe night wind moved on monotonously, and the moonlight was undisturbed,\nlike glassy water.\n\n\u201cWhen I came away,\u201d she said, \u201cI thought you would marry her. You\ndidn't, then? But why should she call you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI left the village suddenly!\u201d he cried. \u201cI grew to dread, and then to\nhate it. I buried myself from the knowledge of it, and the memory of it\nwas my enemy. I wished for a distant death, and these fifty years have\nheard the summons to come and lay my bones in this graveyard. I thought\nit was Ellen. You, sir, wear an antique dress; you have been long in\nthis strange existence. Can you tell who called me? If not Ellen, where\nis Ellen?\u201d He wrung his hands, and rocked to and fro.\n\n\u201cThe mystery is with the dead as with the living,\u201d said Ambrose. \u201cThe\nshadows of the future and the past come among us. We look in their eyes,\nand understand them not. Now and again there is a call even here, and\nthe grave is henceforth untenanted of its spirit. Here, too, we know a\nnecessity which binds us, which speaks not with audible voice and will\nnot be questioned.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut tell me,\u201d moaned the other, \u201cdoes the weight of sin depend upon its\nconsequences? Then what weight do I bear? I do not know whether it was\nruin or death, or a thing gone by and forgotten. Is there no answer here\nto this?\u201d\n\n\u201cDeath is but a step in the process of life,\u201d answered Ambrose. \u201cI know\nnot if any are ruined or anything forgotten. Look up, to the order of\nthe stars, an handwriting on the wall of the firmament. But who hath\nread it? Mark this night wind, a still small voice. But what speaketh\nit? The earth is clothed in white garments as a bride. What mean the\nceremonials of the seasons? The will from without is only known as it is\nmanifested. Nor does it manifest where the consequences of the deed end\nor its causes began. Have they any end or a beginning? I cannot answer\nyou.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho called me, Margaret?\u201d\n\nAnd she said again monotonously, \u201cI didn't call you.\u201d\n\nThe Little One sat between Ambrose and Margaret, chuckling to himself\nand gazing up at the newcomer, who suddenly bent forward and looked into\nhis eyes, with a gasp.\n\n\u201cWhat is this?\u201d he whispered. \u201c'Thy Little One, O God, \u00e6tat 2,' from\nthe Mercer Lot,\u201d returned Ambrose gently. \u201cHe is very quiet. Art not\nneglecting thy business, Little One? The lower walks are unvisited\nto-night.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are Ellen's eyes!\u201d cried the other, moaning and rocking. \u201cDid you\ncall me? Were you mine?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is, written, 'Thy Little One, O God,'\u201d murmured Ambrose.\n\nBut the Little One only curled his feet up under his gown, and now\nchuckled contentedly.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MUSIDORA SONNET\n\n\nTHE clock in some invisible steeple struck one. The great snowflakes\nfell thickly, wavering and shrinking, delicate, barren seeds, conscious\nof their unfruitfulness. The sputter of the arc lights seemed explosive\nto the muffled silence of the street. With a bright corner at either end,\nthe block was a canon, a passage in a nether world of lurking ghosts,\nwhere a frightened gaslight trembled, hesitated midway. And Noel\nEndicott conceived suddenly, between curb and curb, a sonnet, to be\nentitled \u201cDante in Tenth Street,\u201d the appearance of it occupying,\nin black letter, a half page in the _Monthly Illustrated_, a gloomy\npencilling above, and below it \u201cNoel Endicott.\u201d The noiselessness of his\nsteps enlarged his imagination.\n\n               I walked in 19th Street, not the Florentine,\n\n               With ghosts more sad, and one like Beatrice\n\n               Laid on my lips the sanction of her kiss.\n\n               'Twas----\n\nIt should be in a purgatorial key, in effect something cold, white and\nspiritual, portraying \u201cher\u201d with Dantesque symbolism, a definite being,\na vision with a name. \u201c'Twas--\u201d In fact, who was she?\n\nHe stopped. Tenth Street was worth more than a sonnet's confined\nausterity. It should be a story. Noel was one who beat tragic\nconceptions into manuscript, suffering rejection for improbability.\nGreat actions thrilled him, great desires and despairs. The massive\nvillainies of Borgia had fallen in days when art was strenuous. Of old,\nmen threw a world away for a passion, an ambition. Intense and abundant\nlife--one was compelled now to spin their symbols out of thin air, be\nrejected for improbability, and in the midst of a bold conception, in a\nsnowstorm on canoned Tenth Street, be hungry and smitten with doubts of\none's landlady.\n\nMrs. Tibbett had been sharp that morning relative to a bill, and he\nhad remonstrated but too rashly: \u201cWhy discuss it, Mrs. Tibbett? It's\na negative, an unfruitful subject.\u201d And she had, in effect, raved, and\nwithout doubt now had locked the outer door. Her temper, roused at one\no'clock, would be hasty in action, final in result.\n\nHe stood still and looked about him. Counting two half blocks as one, it\nwas now one block to Mrs. Tibbett and that ambushed tragedy.\n\nIn his last novel, \u201cThe Sunless Treasure\u201d (to his own mind his\ngreatest), young Humphrey stands but a moment hesitating before the\noaken door, believing his enemies to be behind it with ready daggers. He\nhesitates but a moment. The die is cast. He enters. His enemies are not\nthere. But Mrs. Tibbett seemed different. For instance, she would be\nthere.\n\nThe house frontage of this, like the house frontage of the fatal next\nblock, was various, of brick, brownstone or dingy white surface,\nwith doorways at the top of high steps, doorways on the ground level,\ndoorways flush with the front, or sunken in pits. Not a light in any\nwindow, not a battlement that on its restless front bore a star, but\neach house stood grim as Child Roland's squat tower. The incessant\nsnowflakes fell past, no motion or method of any Byzantine palace\nintrigue so silken, so noiseless, so mysterious in beginnings and\nresults. All these locked caskets wedged together contained problems\nand solutions, to which Bassanio's was a simple chance of three with a\npointed hint. Noel decided that Tenth Street was too large for a story.\nIt was a literature. One must select.\n\nMeanwhile the snow fell and lay thickly, and there was no doubt that by\npersistent standing in the snow one's feet became wet. He stepped into\nthe nearest doorway, which was on the level of the street, one of three\ndoorways alike, all low, arched and deep.\n\nThey would be less noticeable in the daytime than in the night, when\ntheir cavernous gaping and exact repetition seemed either ominous or\ngrotesque, according to the observer. The outer door was open. He felt\nhis way in beyond the drift to the hard footing of the vestibule, kicked\nhis shoes free of snow and brushed his beard.\n\nThe heroes of novels were sometimes hungry and houseless, but it seemed\nto Noel that they seldom or never faced a problem such as Mrs. Tibbett\npresented. Desperate fortunes should be carried on the point of one's\nsword, but with Mrs. Tibbett the point was not to provoke her. She was\nincongruous. She must be thrust aside, put out of the plot. He made a\ngesture dismissing Mrs. Tibbett. His hand in the darkness struck the\njamb of the inner door, which swung back with a click of the half-caught\nlatch. His heart thumped, and he peered into the darkness, where a thin\nyellow pencil of light stretched level from a keyhole at the farther end\nof a long hall.\n\nDismissing Mrs. Tibbett, it was a position of dramatic advantage to\nstand in so dark and deep an arched entrance, between the silence and\nincessant motion of the snow on the one hand, and the yellow pencil\nof light, pointing significantly to something unknown, some crisis\nof fortune. He felt himself in a tale that had both force and form,\nresponsible for its progress.\n\nHe stepped in, closed the half door behind him softly, and crept through\nthe hall. The thin line of light barred the way, and seemed to say,\n\u201cHere is the place. Be bold, ready-minded, full of subtlety and\nresource.\u201d There was no sound within that he could hear, and no sound\nwithout, except his own oppressed breathing and pulses throbbing in his\nears.\n\nFaint heart never won anything, and as for luck, it belonged to those\nwho adventured with various chances, and of the blind paths that led\naway from their feet into the future, chose one, and another, and so\nkept on good terms with possibility. If one but cried saucily, \u201cOpen\nthis odd little box, you three gray women!\u201d And this, and this the\ngray Fates smiled indulgently, showing a latent motherliness. How many\ndestinies had been decided by the opening and shutting of a door, which\nto better or worse, never opened again for retreat? A touch on this door\nand Mrs. Tibbett might vanish from the story forever, to the benefit of\nthe story.\n\nHe lifted his hand, having in mind to tap lightly, with tact and\ninsinuation, but struck the door, in fact, nervously, with a bang that\nechoed in the hall. Some one spoke within. He opened and made entry in a\nprepared manner, which gave way to merely blinking wonder.\n\nIt was a large dining-room, brightly lit by a chandelier, warm from\na glowing grate, sumptuous with pictures and hangings, on the table a\nglitter of glass and silver, with meat, cakes and wine.\n\nOn the farther side of the table stood a woman in a black evening dress,\nwith jewels on her hair and bosom. She seemed to have just risen, and\ngrasped the back of her chair with one hand, while the other held open a\nbook on the table. The length of her white arm was in relief against her\nblack dress.\n\nNoel's artistic slouch hat, now taken off with uncertain hand, showed\nwavy brown hair over eyes not at all threatening, a beard pointed,\nsomewhat profuse, a face interestingly featured and astonished. No\nmental preparation to meet whatever came, of Arabic or mediaeval\nincident, availed him. He felt dumb, futile, blinking. The lady's\nsurprise, the startled fear on her face, was hardly seen before it\nchanged to relief, as if the apparition of Noel, compared with some\nforeboding of her own, were a mild event. She half smiled when he\nbegan:--\n\n\u201cI am an intruder, madam,\u201d and stopped with that embarrassed platitude.\n\u201cI passed your first door by accident, and your second by impulse.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat doesn't explain why you stay.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay I stay to explain?\u201d\n\nWhen two have exchanged remarks that touch the borders of wit, they\nhave passed a mental introduction. To each the mind of the other is a\npossible shade and bubbling spring by the dusty road of conversation.\nNoel felt the occasion. He bowed with a side sweep of his hat.\n\n\u201cMadam, I am a writer of poems, essays, stories. If you ask, What do I\nwrite in poems, essays, stories, I answer, My perception of things. If\nyou ask, In what form would I cast my present perceptions of things, I\nsay, Without doubt a poem.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are able to carry both sides of a conversation. I have not asked\nany of these.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have asked why I stay. I am explaining.\u201d\n\nThe lady's attitude relaxed its stiffness by a shade, her half smile\nbecame a degree more balmy.\n\n\u201cI think you must be a successful writer.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou touch the point,\u201d he said slowly. \u201cI am not. I am hungry and\nprobably houseless. And worse than that, I find hunger and houselessness\nare sordid, tame. The taste of them in the mouth is flat, like stale\nbeer. It is not like the bitter tang of a new experience, but like\nsomething the world shows its weariness of in me.\u201d\n\nThe amused smile vanished in large-eyed surprise, and something\nmore than surprise, as if his words gave her some intimate, personal\ninformation.\n\n\u201cYou say strange things in a very strange way. And you came in by an\naccident?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd an impulse?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don't understand. But you must sit down, and I can find you more to\neat, if this isn't enough.\u201d\n\nNoel could not have explained the strangeness of his language, if it was\nstrange, further than that he felt the need of saying something in\norder to find an opportunity of saying something to the point, and so\ndigplayed whatever came to his mind as likely to arrest attention. It\nwas a critical lesson in vagabondage, as familiar there as hunger and\nhouselessness. He attacked the cold meat, cakes and fruit with fervor,\nand the claret in the decanter. But what should be the next step in the\npursuit of fortune? At this point should there not come some revelation?\n\nThe lady did not seem to think so, but sat looking now at Noel and now\nat her own white hands in her lap. That she should have youth and beauty\nseemed to Noel as native to the issue as her jewels, the heavy curtains,\nthe silver and glass. As for youth, she might be twenty, twenty-one,\ntwo. All such ages, he observed to himself with a mental flourish,\nwere one in beauty. It was not a rosy loveliness like the claret in the\ndecanter, nor plump like the fruit in the silver basket, but dark-eyed,\nwhite and slender, with black hair drawn across the temples; of a\nfragile delicacy like the snowflakes, the frost flower of the century's\nculture, the symbol of its ultimate luxury. The rich room was her\nsetting. She was the center and reason for it, and the yellow point of\na diamond over her heart, glittering, but with a certain mellowness, was\nstill more central, intimate, interpretative, symbolic of all desirable\nthings. He began to see the story in it, to glow with the idea.\n\n\u201cMadam,\u201d he said, \u201cI am a writer of whose importance I have not as yet\nbeen able to persuade the public. The way I should naturally have gone\nto-night seemed to me something to avoid. I took another, which brought\nme here. The charm of existence--\u201d She seemed curiously attentive. \u201cThe\ncharm of existence is the unforeseen, and of all things our moods are\nthe most unforeseen. One's plans are not always and altogether futile.\nIf you propose to have salad for lunch, and see your way to it, it\nis not so improbable that you will have salad for lunch. But if you\nprefigure how it will all seem to you at lunch, you are never quite\nright. Man proposes and God disposes. I add that there is a third and\nfinal disposal, namely, what man is to think of the disposition after it\nis made. I hope, since you proposed or prefigured to-night, perhaps as\nI did, something different from this--this disposition\u201d--he lifted his\nglass of claret between him and the light--\u201cthat your disposition what\nto think of it is, perhaps, something like mine.\u201d\n\nThe lady was leaning forward with parted lips, listening intently,\nabsorbed in his words. For the life of him Noel could not see why she\nshould be absorbed in his words, but the fact filled him with happy\npride.\n\n\u201cTell me,\u201d she said quickly. \u201cYou speak so well--\u201d\n\nNoel filled in her pause of hesitation.\n\n\u201cThat means that my wisdom may be all in my mouth.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, indeed! I mean you must have experience. Will you tell me, is it so\ndreadful not to have money? People say different things.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey do.\u201d He felt elevated, borne along on a wave of ornamental\nexpression. \u201cIt is their salvation. Their common proverbs contradict\neach other. A man looks after his pence and trusts one proverb that the\npounds will look after themselves, till presently he is called penny\nwise and pound foolish, and brought up by another. And consider how less\nnoticeable life would be without its jostle of opinion, its conflicting\nlines of wisdom, its following of one truth to meet with another going\na different way. Give me for finest companionship some half truth, some\nironic veracity.\u201d\n\nShe shook her head. It came to him with a shock that it was not his\nornamental expression which interested her, but only as it might bear on\nsomething in her own mind more simple, direct and serious, something\nnot yet disclosed. \u201cIn fact,\u201d he thought, \u201cshe is right. One must get on\nwith the plot\u201d It was a grievous literary fault to break continuity, to\nbe led away from the issue by niceties of expression. The proper issue\nof a plot was simple, direct, serious, drawn from the motive which began\nit. Why did she sit here with her jewels, her white arms and black dress\nthese weird, still hours of the night? Propriety hinted his withdrawal,\nbut one must resist the commonplace.\n\n\u201cThe answer to the question does not satisfy you. But do you not see\nthat I only enlarged on your own answer? People say different things\nbecause they are different. The answer depends on temperaments, more\nnarrowly on moods; on tenses, too, whether it is present poverty\nand houselessness or past or future. And so it has to be answered\nparticularly, and you haven't made me able to answer it particularly to\nyou. And then one wouldn't imagine it could be a question particular to\nyou.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are very clever,\u201d she murmured, half smiling again. \u201cAre you not\ntoo clever for the purpose? You say so many things.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is true,\u201d said Noel plaintively. \u201cThe story has come to a\nstandstill. It has all run out into diction.\u201d\n\nAt that moment there was a loud noise in the hall.\n\nThe smile, which began hopefully, grew old while he watched it, and\nwithered away. The noise that echoed in the hall was of a banging door,\nthen of laden, dragging steps. The hall door was thrown open, and two\nsnowy hackmen entered, holding up between them a man wearing a tall hat.\n\n\u201cHe's some loaded, ma'am,\u201d said one of them cheerfully. \u201cI ain't seen\nhim so chucked in six months.\u201d\n\nThey dropped him in a chair, from which, after looking about him with\nhalf-open, glassy eyes, and closing them again, he slid limply to the\nfloor. The hackman regarded that choice of position with sympathy.\n\n\u201cWants to rest his load, he does,\u201d and backed out of the door with his\ncompanion.\n\n\u201cIt goes on the bill. Ain't seen him so chucked in six months.\u201d\n\nThe lady had not moved from her chair, but had sat white and still,\nlooking down into her lap. She gave a hard little laugh.\n\n\u201cIsn't it nice he's so 'chucked'? He would have acted dreadfully.\u201d She\nwas leaning on the table now, her dark eyes reading him intently. The\nman on the floor snorted and gurgled in his sleep.\n\n\u201cI couldn't kill anybody,\u201d she said. \u201cCould you?\u201d\n\nNoel shook his head.\n\n\u201cIt's so funny,\u201d she went on in a soft, speculative way, \u201cone can't do\nit. I'm afraid to go away and be alone and poor. I wish he would die.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt wouldn't work out that way,\u201d said Noel, struggling with his wits.\n\u201cHe's too healthy.\u201d\n\nIt seemed to him immediately that the comment was not the right one. It\nwas not even an impersonal fact to himself, an advantage merely to the\nplot, that the sleeper was unable to object to him and discard him from\nit, as he had resolved to discard Mrs. Tibbett, but with such brutal\nenergy as the sleeper's face indicated. For it repelled not so much by\nits present relaxed degradation as by its power, its solidity of flesh,\nits intolerant self-assertion, the physical vigor of the short bull\nneck, bulky shoulders, heavy mustache, heavy cheeks and jaw, bluish\nwith the shaving of a thick growth. He was dressed, barring his damp\ndishevelment, like a well-groomed clubman.\n\nBut the lady was looking Noel in the eyes, and her own seemed strangely\nlarge, but as if covering a spiritual rather than a physical space,\nsettled in melancholy, full of clouds, moving lights and dusky\ndistances.\n\n\u201cI was waiting for him because he ordered me. I'm so afraid of him,\u201d she\nsaid, shrinking with the words. \u201cHe likes me to be here and afraid of\nhim.\u201d\n\n\u201cTell me what I am to do?\u201d he said eagerly.\n\n\u201cI suppose you are not to do anything.\u201d\n\nNoel caught the thread of his fluency. He drew a ten-cent piece from\nhis pocket, tossed it on the table, gestured toward it with one hand\nand swung the other over the back of his chair with an air of polished\nrecklessness.\n\n\u201cBut your case seems desperate to you. Is it more than mine? You have\nfollowed this thing about to 'the end of the passage,' and there is my\nlast coin. My luck might change to-morrow. Who knows? Perhaps tonight.\nI would take it without question and full of hope. Will you experiment\nwith fortune and--and me?\u201d\n\nThe dark eyes neither consented nor refused. They looked at him gravely.\n\n\u201cIt is a black, cold night. The snow is thick in the air and deep on the\nstreet Put it so at the worst, but fortune and wit will go far.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour wit goes farther than your fortune, doesn't it?\u201d she said,\nsmiling.\n\n\u201cI don't conceal.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don't conceal either of them, do you? You spread them both out,\u201d\n and she laughed a pleasant little ripple of sound.\n\nNoel rose with distinction and bent toward her across the table.\n\n\u201cMy fortune is this ten-cent piece. As you see, on the front of it is\nstamped a throned woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, how clever.\u201d She laughed, and Noel flushed with the applause.\n\n\u201cShall we trust fortune and spin the coin? Heads, the throned woman, I\nshall presently worship you, an earthly divinity. Tails, a barren wreath\nand the denomination of a money value, meaning I take my fortunes away,\nand you,\u201d pointing in turn to the sleeper and the jewels, \u201cput up with\nyours as you can.\u201d\n\nShe seemed to shiver as he pointed. \u201cNo,\u201d she said, \u201cI couldn't do that.\nA woman never likes to spin a coin seriously.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill you go, then?\u201d\n\nThe sleeper grunted and turned over. She turned pale, put her hand to\nher throat, said hurriedly, \u201cWait here,\u201d and left the room, lifting and\ndrawing her skirt aside as she passed the sleeper.\n\nShe opened the door at last and came again, wrapped in a fur mantle,\ncarrying a travelling case, and stood looking down at the sleeper as if\nwith some struggle of the soul, some reluctant surrender.\n\nThey went out, shutting the door behind them.\n\nThe snow was falling still on Tenth Street, out of the crowding\nnight. He held her hand on his arm close to him. She glided beside him\nnoiselessly.\n\nThe express office was at the corner, a little dingy, gas-lit room.\n\n\u201cCarriage? Get it in a minute,\u201d said the sleepy clerk. \u201cIt's just round\nthe corner.\u201d\n\nThey stood together by a window, half opaque with dust. Her face was\nturned away, and he watched the slant of her white cheek.\n\n\u201cYou will have so much to tell me,\u201d he whispered at last.\n\n\u201cI am really very grateful. You helped me to resolve.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour carriage, sir.\u201d\n\nThe electric light sputtered over them standing on the curb.\n\n\u201cBut,\u201d she said, smiling up at him, \u201cI have nothing to tell you. There\nis nothing more. It ends here. Forgive me. It is my plot and it wouldn't\nwork out your way. There are too many conflicting lines of wisdom in\nyour way. My life lately has been what you would call, perhaps, a study\nin realism, and you want me to be, perhaps, a symbolic romance. I am\nsure you would express it very cleverly. But I think one lives by\ntaking resolutions rather than by spinning coins, which promise either\na throned woman, or a wreath and the denomination of a money value. One\nturns up so much that is none of these things. Men don't treat women\nthat way. I married to be rich, and was very wretched, and perhaps your\nfame, when it comes, will be as sad to you. Perhaps the trouble lies in\nwhat you called 'the third disposal.' But I did not like being a study\nin realism. I should not mind being something symbolic, if I might prove\nmy gratitude\u201d--she took her hand from his arm, put one foot on the step\nand laughed, a pleasant little ripple of sound--\u201cby becoming literary\nmaterial.\u201d The door shut to, and the carriage moved away into the storm\nwith a muffled roll of wheels.\n\nNoel stared after it blankly, and then looked around him. It was half\na block now to Mrs. Tibbett. He walked on mechanically, and mounted the\nsteps by habit. The outer door was not locked. A touch of compunction\nhad visited Mrs. Tibbett.\n\nHe crept into his bed, and lay noting the growing warmth and sense of\nsleep, and wondering whether that arched doorway was the third of the\nthree or the second. Strictly speaking he seemed to have gone in at the\nmiddle one and come out at the third, or was it not the first rather\nthan the middle entrance that he had sheltered in? The three arched\nentrances capered and contorted before him in the dark, piled themselves\ninto the portal of a Moorish palace, twisted themselves in a kind of\nmystical trinity and seal of Solomon, floated apart and became thin,\nfilmy, crescent moons over a frozen sea. He sat up in bed and smote the\ncoverlet.\n\n\u201cI don't know her name! She never told me!\u201d He clutched his hair, and\nthen released it cautiously. \u201cIt's Musidora! I forgot that sonnet!\u201d\n\n               'Twas Musidora, whom the mystic nine\n\n               Gave to my soul to be forever mine,\n\n               And, as through shadows manifold of Dis,\n\n               Showed in her eyes, through dusky distances\n\n               And clouds, the moving lights about their shrine;\n\n               Now ever on my soul her touch shall be\n\n               As on the cheek are touches of the snow,\n\n               Incessant, cool, and gone; so guiding me\n\n               From sorrow's house and triple portico.\n\n               And prone recumbrance of brute tyranny,\n\n               In a strict path shall teach my feet to go.\n\n\nThe clock in the invisible steeple struck three.","title":"Tioba, and Other Tales","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":36022}