[Illustration: "I GOT A CALL--A LAND CALL THAT I HAD TO ANSWER. "]

PARADISE RIDGE

A ROMANCE

BY

MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS

AUTHOR OF

"THE MELTING OF MOLLY" ETC. 

ILLUSTRATED

TO

BERNICE LANIER DICKINSON

CONTENTS

CHAP. 

I. THE BOOK OF FOOD

II. THE BOOK OF SHELTER

III. THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER

IV. THE BOOK OF LOVE

ILLUSTRATIONS

"I GOT A CALL--A LAND CALL THAT I HAD TO ANSWER"

THE BYRD WAS ATTIRED IN MINIATURES OF SAM'S OVERALLS

OVER PARADISE RIDGE

I

THE BOOK OF FOOD

Nobody knows what starts the sap along the twigs of a very young, tender, and green woman's nature. In my case it was Samuel FosterCrittenden, though how could he have counted on the amount ofGrandmother Nelson that was planted deep in my disposition, ready tospring up and bear fruit as soon as I was brought in direct acquaintancewith a seed-basket and a garden hoe? Also why should Sam's return to aprimitive state have forced my ancestry up to the point of flowering onthe surface? I do hope Sam will not have to suffer consequences, but Ican't help it if he does. What's born in us is not our fault. 

"Yes, Betty, I know I'm an awful shock to you as a farmer. I ought tohave impressed it on you more thoroughly before you--you saw me in theact. I'm sorry, dear, " Sam comforted me gently and tenderly as I weptwith dismay into the sleeve of his faded blue overalls. 

"I can't understand it, " I sniffed as I held on to his sustaining handwhile I balanced with him on the top of an old, moss-covered stone wallhe had begged me to climb to for a view of Harpeth Valley which hethought might turn my attention from him. "Have you mislaid yourbeautiful ambitions anywhere?"

"I must have planted them along with my corn crop, I reckon, " heanswered, quietly, as he steadied his shoulder against an old oak-treethat grew close to the fence and then steadied my shoulder against his. 

"It is just for a little while, to get evidence about mud and animalsand things like that, isn't it?" I asked, with great and undueeagerness, while an early blue jay flitted across from tree-top totree-top in so happy a spirit that I sympathized with the admiring ladytwit that came from a bush near the wall. "You are going back out intothe world where I left you, aren't you?"

"No, " answered Sam, in an even tone of voice that quieted me completely;it was the same he had used when he made me stand still the time hisfishhook caught in my arm at about our respective sixth and tenth years. "No, I'm going to be just a farmer. It's this way, Betty. That valleyyou are looking down into has the strength to feed hundreds of thousandsof hungry men, women, and children when they come down to us overParadise Ridge from the crowded old world; but men have to make hergive it up and be ready for them. At first I wasn't sure I could, butnow I'm going to put enough heart and brain and muscle into my couple ofhundred acres to dig out my share of food, and that of the other folks agreat strapping thing like I am ought to help to feed. I'll plow yourname deep into the potato-field, dear, " he ended, with a laugh, as helet go my hand, which he had almost dislocated while his eyes smolderedout over the Harpeth Valley, lying below us like an earthen cup full ofgreen richness, on whose surface floated a cream of mist. 

"It just breaks my heart to see you away from everything and everybody, all burned up and scratched up and muddy, and--and--" I was saying as helifted me back into the road again beside my shiny new Redwheels thatlooked like an enlarged and very gay sedan-chair. 

"Look, look, Betty!" Sam interrupted my distress over his farmer aspect, which was about to become tearful, and his eyes stopped regarding mewith sad seriousness and lit with affectionate excitement as he peeredinto the bushes on the side of the road. "There's my lost heifer calf!You run your car on up to my house beyond the bend there and I'll driveher back through the woods to meet you. Get out and head her off if shetries to pass you. " With which command he was gone just as I was aboutto begin to do determined battle for his rescue. 

I did not run my car up to his farm-house. I "negotiated a turn" just asthe man I bought it from in New York had taught me to do; only hehadn't counted on a rail fence on one side, a rock wall just fifty feetacross from it, and two stumps besides. It was almost like a maxixe, butI finally got headed toward Providence Road, down which, five milesaway, Hayesboro is firmly planted in a beautiful, dreamy, vine-coveredrustication. 

"Oh, I wonder if it could be a devil that is possessing Sam?" I askedmyself, stemming with my tongue a large tear that was taking ameandering course down my cheek because I was afraid to take either handoff the steering-gear for fear I would run into a slow, old farm horse, with a bronzed overalled driver and wagon piled high with all sorts ofuninteresting crates and bales and unspeakable pigs and chickens. As Iskidded past them I told myself I had more than a right to weep over Samwhen I thought of the last time I had seen him before this distressinginterview; the contrast was enough to cause grief. 

It had happened the night after Sam's graduation in June and just thenight before I had sailed with Mabel Vandyne and Miss Greenough for awander-year in Europe. Sam was perfectly wonderful to look at with histeam ribbon in the buttonhole of his dress-coat, and I was very proud ofhim. We were all having dinner at the Ritz with two of Sam's classmatesand the father of one, Judge Vandyne, who is one of the greatestcorporation lawyers in New York. He had just offered Sam a chance in hisoffices, together with his own son. 

"You'll buck right on up through center just as you do on the gridiron, old man, to the Supreme bench before you are forty. I'm glad thegovernor will have you, for I'll never make it. Oh, you Samboy!" saidPeter Vandyne, who was their class poet and who adored Sam from everyangle--from each of which Sam reciprocated. 

And all the rest raised their glasses and said:

"Oh, Samboy!"

The waiters even knew who Sam was on account of the last Thanksgivinggame, and beamed on him with the greatest awe and admiration. And Ibeamed with the rest, perhaps even more proudly. Still, that twinkle inSam's hazel eyes ought to have made me uneasy even then. I had seen itoften enough when Sam had made up his mind to things he was not talkingabout. 

"The ladies and all of us, " answered Sam to Peter's toast, as he raisedhis glass and set it down still full, then grinned at me as he said, solow that the others couldn't hear, "Will you meet me in Hayesboro aftera year and a day, Betty?"

I don't see why I didn't understand and begin to defend Sam from himselfright then instead of going carelessly and light-heartedly to Europe andletting him manage his own affairs. I didn't even write to him, exceptwhen I saw anything that interested or moved me, and then I justscribbled "remind me to tell you about this" on a post-card and sent itto him. You can seal some friends up in your heart and forget aboutthem, and when you take them out they are perfectly fresh and good, butthey may have changed flavor. That is what Sam did, and I am notsurprised that the rural flavor of what he offered me out there in dirtlane shocked me slightly. I didn't think then that I liked it and I alsofelt that I wished I had stayed by Sam at that wobbling period of hiscareer; but, on the other hand, it was plainly my duty to go to Europewith Mabel and Peter Vandyne and Miss Greenough. The inclination to dotwo things at once is a sword that slices you in two, as the man in theBible wanted to do to the baby to make enough of him for the twomothers; and that is the way I felt about Peter and Sam as I whirledalong the road. I am afraid Sam is going to be the hardest to manage. Heis harder than Peter by nature. If Sam had just taken to drink insteadof farming I would have known better what to do. I reformed Peter in onenight in Naples when he took too much of that queer Italian wine merelybecause it was his birthday. I used tears, and he said it should neverhappen again. I don't believe it has, or he wouldn't have got an act anda half of his "Epic of American Life" finished as he told me he had donewhen I dined with him in New York the night I landed. I missed Peterdreadfully when he left us in London in June, and so did Miss Greenoughand Mabel, though she is his sister. We all felt that if he had beenwith us it wouldn't have taken us all these months of that dreadful warto get comfortably home. Peter said at the dock that he hadn't drawn afull breath since war had been declared until he got my feet off thegang-plank on to American soil. He needn't have worried quite as muchas that, for we had a lovely, exciting time visiting at the Gregorys' upin Scotland while waiting for state-rooms. And it was while hearing allthose Scotchmen and Englishmen talk about statesmanship andjurisprudence and international law that I realized how America wouldneed great brains later on, more and more, as she would have toarbitrate, maybe, for the whole world. 

I smiled inwardly as I listened, for didn't I know that in just a fewyears the nation would have Samuel Foster Crittenden to rely on? Sam isa statesman by inheritance, for he has all sorts of remarkable Tennesseeancestry back of him from Colonial times down to his father's father, who was one of the great generals of our own Civil War. And as Ilistened to those splendid men talk about military matters, just asJudge Crittenden had talked to Sam and me about his father, the general, ever since we were big enough to sit up and hear about it, and discusswhat American brains and character could be depended upon to do, Iglowed with pride and confidence in Sam. I'm glad I didn't know thenabout the collapsed structure of my hopes for him that Sam was even thensecretly unsettling. At the thought my hand trembled on the wheel and Iturned my car hastily away from two chickens and a dog in the road andmy mind from the anxiety of Sam to further pleasant thoughts of Peter. 

I don't believe Judge Vandyne's thoughts of Peter are as pleasant asmine, for Peter doesn't go to the office at all any more; he spends hiswaking moments at a club where players and play-writers and all menplay a great deal of the time. I forget its name, but it makes the judgemad to mention it. 

"The dear old governor's mind is gold-bound, " said Peter, sadly, afterwe came away from luncheon with the judge down in Wall Street. "Whyshould I grub filthy money when he has extracted the bulk of it that hehas? I must go forward and he must realize that he should urge me on up. I ought not to be tied down to unimportant material things. I must notbe. You of all people understand me and my ambitions, Betty. " As he saidit he leaned toward me across the tea-table at the Astor, where we haddropped exhaustedly down to finish the discussion on life which thejudge's practical tirade had evoked. 

"But then, Peter, you know it was a very great thing Judge Vandyneshowed his bank how to do about that international war loan. In Englandand Scotland they speak of him with bated breath. It was so brilliantthat it saved awful complications for Belgium. "

"Oh, he's the greatest ever--in all material ways, " answered Peter, withhasty loyalty and some pride, "but I was speaking of those higherthings, Betty, of the spirit. The things over which your soul and mineseem to draw near to each other. Betty, the second act of 'TheEmergence' is almost finished, and Farrington is going to read ithimself when I have it ready. He told me so at the club just yesterday. You know he awarded my junior prize for the 'Idyl. ' Think ofit--_Farrington_!" And Peter leaned forward and took my hand. 

"Oh, Peter, I am so glad!" I said, with a catch of joy in my breath, butI drew away my hand. I knew I liked Peter in many wonderful ways, but insome others I was doubtful. I had only known Peter the three years I'vebeen away from Hayesboro, being finished in the North, and even if I didroom with his sister at the Manor on the Hudson and travel with her ayear, it is not the same as being born next door to him, as in the caseof Sam, for instance. But then I ought not to compare Peter and Sam. Peter is of so much finer clay than Sam. Just thinking about clay mademe remember those unspeakable boots of Sam's I had encountered out onthe road, and again I determinedly turned my thoughts back to thatwonderful afternoon with Peter at the Astor a few short days ago. MissGreenough kept telling Mabel and me all over Europe to look ateverything as material to build nests of pleasant thoughts for our soulsto rest in, as Ruskin directed in the book she had. I've made one thatwill last me for life of Peter, who is the most beautiful man in thewhole wide world; also of the yellow shade on the Astor lamp, thefountain, and the best chicken sandwich I ever ate. It will be a warmerplace to plump down in than most of the picture-galleries and cathedralsI had used for nest-construction purposes at Miss Greenough's direction. 

Yes, I drew my hand away from Peter's, but a little thing like thatwould never stop a poet; and before the waiter had quite swept us outwith the rest of the tea paraphernalia to make way for that of dinner hehad made me see that I was positively necessary to his career, especially as both his father and Mabel are so unsympathetic. It is agreat happiness to a woman to feel necessary to a man, though she maynot enjoy it entirely. 

"Oh, I know I can write it all--all that is in my heart if I feel thatit is--is for you, dearest dear Betty, " was the last thing that Petersaid as he put me on a train headed for the Harpeth Valley that night. 

I didn't answer--I don't know that I ever did answer Peter anything, buthe never noticed that when he thought of how my loving him would helpout with the play. 

Just here I was musing so deeply on the intricacies of love that Inearly ran over a nice, motherly old cow that had come to the middle ofthe road with perfectly good faith in me when she saw me coming. And asI rounded her off well to the left again my thoughts skidded back to Samand the way he had treated me as less than a heifer calf after _I_ hadnot seen him for a year, and _she_ had just seen him that morning atfeeding-time. 

"Head off that saucy young cow, indeed!" I sniffed, as I ran the carinto the side yard between my home and the old Crittenden house. 

"I wonder if he really expected me to be waiting there in that lane forhim?" I questioned myself. And the answer I got from the six-year-oldgirl that is buried alive in me was that Sam did expect me to do as hetold me, and that something serious might happen if I didn't. As Iturned Redwheels over to old Eph, who adores it because it is the onlyone he ever had his hands on, I felt a queer sinking somewhere in theheart of that same young self. I always had helped Sam--and suppose thatunspeakable animal had got lost to him for ever just because I hadn'tdone as he told me! I reached out my hand for the runabout to startright back; then I realized it was too late. The night had erected alovely spangled purple tent of twilight over Hayesboro, and theall-evening performances were about to begin. 

Lovely women were lighting lamps and drawing shades or meeting themasculine population at front gates with babies in their arms orbeau-catcher curls set on their cheeks with deadly intent. Negro cookswere hustling suppers on their smoking stoves, and one of the doves thatlives up in the vines under the eaves of my home moaned out and wasanswered by one from under the vines that grow over the gables at theCrittendens'. I haven't felt as lonesome as all that since the firstweek of Sam's freshman year at college. As I looked across the lilachedge, which was just beginning to show a green sap tint along its graybranches, I seemed to see my poor little blue-ginghamed, pigtailed selfcrouched at Judge Crittenden's feet on the front steps, sobbing mylonely heart away while he smoked his sorrow down with a long brierpipe, and the Byrd chirped his little three-year-old protest in concertwith us both. Most eighteen-year-old men would have resented having amotherless little brother and a long-legged girl neighbor eternally attheir heels, but Sam never had; or, if he did, he gently kicked the Byrdand me out of the way, and we never knew that was what he was doing. Weeven loved him for the kicks. Then as the tears misted across my eyes awoman with a baby in her arms came out and called in two children whowere playing under the old willow-tree over by the side gate--the willowthat had belonged to Sam and me--and my eyes dried themselves withindignant astonishment. 

"Who are those people over at the Crittendens', mother?" I asked, in astern voice, as I walked in and interrupted mother counting thefifteenth row on a lace mat she was making. 

"Why, the Burtons bought the place from Sam after the judge's death. Don't you remember I wrote you about it, Betty dear?" she answered, withthe gentle placidity with which she has always met all my tragicmoments. Mother raised seven boys before she produced me, and hercapacity for any sort of responsive excitement gave out long before Ineeded it. After her sons a woman seems to consider a daughter just atame edition of a child. Mother has calmly crocheted herself throughevery soul-storm I have ever had, and she is the most dear andirresponsible parent an executive girl would wish to have leave heraffairs alone. As for daddy, he has always smiled and beckoned me awayfrom her into a corner and given me what I was making a stand for. Myfather loves me with such confidence that he pays no attention to mewhatever except when he thinks it is about time for him to write my nameon a check. His phosphate deals have made him rich in anun-Hayesboro-like way, and all the boys are in business for him indifferent states, except the oldest one, who is Congressman from thisdistrict, and one other who is in a Chicago bank. Yes, I know I have themost satisfactorily aloof family in the wide world. I can just go onfeeding on their love and depend upon them not to interfere with any ofmy plans for living life. However, if anything happens to me I can besure that their love will spring up and growl. 

Now, when I stalked into the room and asked about the Crittenden home, daddy reared his head from his evening paper and immediately took noticeof whatever it was in my voice that sounded as if something had hurt me. 

"Daddy, " I asked him, with a little gulp, "did Sam--Sam sell hisancestral home even to the third and fourth generation and go to farmingjust for sheer wickedness?"

"No, madam, he did not, " he answered, looking at me over his glasses, and I could see a pain straighten out the corners of his mouth under hisfierce white mustache. "The judge's debts made a mortgage that nicelyblanketed the place, and Sam had only to turn it over to the creditorsand walk out to that little two-hundred-acre brier-patch the judge hadforgot to mortgage. "

"Then Sam can sell it for enough to go out and take his place in theworld, " I said, with the greatest relief in my voice. 

"He could, but he won't, " answered daddy, looking at me with keensympathy. "I tried that out on him. Just because that brier-patch hasnever had a deed against it since the grant from Virginia to old SamuelFoster Crittenden of 1793 he thinks it is his sacred duty to go out anddig a hole in a hollow log for Byrd and himself and get in it tosentimentalize and starve. "

"Oh, I think that is a beautiful thought about the land, and I wish Ihad known it earlier! But could they be really hungry--hungry, daddy?" Isaid, with a sudden vacant feeling just under my own ribs in the regionbetween my heart and my stomach. 

"Oh no, " answered daddy, comfortably. "They both looked fat enough thelast time I saw Sam coming to town in a wagon with Byrd, leading aremarkably fine Jersey calf. We'll go out in that new flying-machine youbrought home with you and pull them out of their burrow some day whenyou get the time. Fine boy, that; and, mother, when is thattwo-hundred-pound black beauty in your kitchen going to have supper?"

I didn't tell daddy I had gone to the ends of the earth to hunt for Samin less than thirty-six hours after I had landed in Hayesboro, but Iwent up to my room to slip into something clean and springy, walkingbehind a thin mist of tears of pure sentiment. That was the third timein about seven hours I had been crying over Sam Crittenden, and then Ihad to eat a supper of fried chicken and waffles that would have beendelicious if it hadn't been flavored by restrained sobs in my throat. Iwas so mad at my disloyal thoughts about a beautiful character, whichSam's reverence for his ancestral land proves his to be, and so afraidof what I had done to him about the calf, and so hungry to see him, thatby the time the apple-float came on the table I thought it would have tobe fed to me by old Eph. Mother made it worse by remarking, as she put alovely dab of thick cream right on top of my saucer:

"Did you hear, father, that all of Sam's cows had been sick and that hehas lost his two finest calves?"

I couldn't stand any more. I gulped the cream, remarked huskily on howwarm the April night was, and escaped down the front walk to the oldpurple lilac-bush by the gate where up to my seventh year I had alwayskept house with and for Sam whenever he would enter into the bonds of animaginary marriage with me for an hour or two. Sam made a good father ofa hollyhock doll family whenever he undertook the relation, and providedliberally for us all in the way of honey, locusts, and grass nuts. 

"And I, maybe, let him lose the last calf he has when he is noble andpoor and alone, " I sobbed into my silk sleeve, which was so thin that Ishivered in the cool April moonlight as I leaned against the gate andlooked away out at the dim blue hills that rim the Harpeth Valley, atthe foot of one of which I seemed to see Sam's and Byrd's hollow log. 

"Hello, Bettykin! Out putting our hollyhock family to bed?" laughed acrisp, comforting, jolly voice right at my elbow as a big, rough handruffled my beautifully smoothed hair and then gave a friendly shake tomy left shoulder. "How do you find all our children after a three-yearforeign sojourn?"

"I told you five years ago, when I put it up on my head, to stop ruffingmy hair, Sam Crittenden; and did you find that cow?" I answered, withboth defiance and anxiety in my voice. 

"I did, " answered Sam, cheerfully, "but how did I lose you in theshuffle? I tied her up in the shack with a rope and then beat it in allthese five miles, partly by foot and partly by a neighbor's buggy, tofind and--er--rope you in. I am glad to see you are standing quietly atthe bars waiting for me, and as soon as I've greeted your mother and DadHayes and got a little of the apple-float that I bet was the fatted calfthey killed for your prodigal return, I'll foot it the five miles backin a relieved and contented frame of mind. "

"How did you happen to let your cows get sick, Sam?" I demanded, sternly, instead of putting my arms around his neck to tell him hownoble I had found out he was, and how glad I was that he had come allthat way to see me, and not to be mad at me because I didn't obey himout in the lane. 

"I don't know, Betty, I just don't know, " answered Sam, as he lit acorn-cob pipe and leaned closer to me in a thoughtful manner. "Cows aresuch feminine things and so contrary. I don't know what I will do if Ilose any more. I--I may get discouraged. "

"Have you had a doctor?" I asked, briskly and unfeelingly, though I didtake his big rough hand in my own and hold on to it with a sympathy thatwas not in my voice. 

"No, I've sorter doctored them by a book I have. The only goodveterinary doctor about here lives way over by Spring Hill, and it wouldtake him a day to drive over and back, besides costing me about tendollars. Still, I ought to get him. Buttercup is pretty sick, " answeredSam, and I could see that his broad shoulders under his well-cut blueserge coat of last season seemed to sag with the weight of his animalresponsibilities. 

"I can take my car over to Spring Hill in less than an hour, get thedoctor, and have you and the doctor out to those animals by ten. Thismoon will last all night; and you go get the apple-float from motherwhile I make Eph run out the car and jump into my corduroys. Come on, quick!" And as I talked I opened the gate, drew him in, and startedleading him up the front walk by the sleeve of his coat. 

"Not if I know myself, Betty, will I let you undertake such a red-crossexpedition as that. They'll have to wait. I came in to call on you andwhisper sweet nothings to you in the parlor while you tell me--"

"Eat the float in a hurry if you want it, " I interrupted him, as Ideposited him beside mother, who was still sipping a last cup of coffeewith her jelly-cake, and went for my room and my motor clothes. 

And it was one grand dash that Redwheels and I made out Providence Roadand over Paradise Ridge down to Spring Hill in less than thirty-fiveminutes. In the moonlight the road was like a lovely silver ribbon thatwe wound up on a spool under the machine, and a Southern spring breezeseemed to be helping the gasoline to waft us on more rapidly in ourflight as it stung our faces with its coolness, which was scented withthe sap that was just beginning to rise against bark and bud in themeadows and woods past which we sped. 

"It will be great to die together, won't it, Betty?" said Sam once asRedwheels ran a few yards on two wheels, then tried the opposite twobefore it settled back to the prosaic though comfortable use of four aswe took a flying leap across a little creek ditch. 

"We can't die sentimentally; we've got to get back to those sufferingcows, " I answered him, firmly, as I whirled into Spring Hill and stoppedRedwheels, panting and hot, in front of the dry-goods, feed, and drugstore. There I knew we could find out anything we wanted to know aboutthe whereabouts or profession of any of the fifteen hundred inhabitantsof the little old hamlet which has nestled under the hills for a hundredyears or more. "Ask where the cow physician lives. Quick!"

And at my urge Sam sprang out and across the old, uneven brick pavementthat lay between us and the store door. Then in less than two minutes heappeared with a round, red-faced, white-headed old man who wheezedchuckles as he talked. 

His fear of the car was only equaled by his fascination at the idea ofthe long ride in it, which would be the first motor-driven sortie he hadever made out into life. 

"Air ye sure, little missie, that you can drive the contraption so asnot to run away with us? Old folks is tetchy, like a basket of pulleteggs, " he said, as Sam seated him in the back seat and sprang to myside. 

"I wish I had a rope to tie him in, " he muttered, as he sank into hisseat. "If you run as you did coming, we'll sure lose him. He'll bouncelike a butter-ball. "

"I'm not taking any risks, " I answered, and it was with greatestmildness that we sauntered up Paradise Ridge and started down the otherside. And as I drove along carefully my mind began to work out into thebyways of the situation. I don't see how my athletic and executivegeneration is going to do its appointed work in its day if we are goingto go on using the same set of social conventions that tied up ourmothers. As we neared the cross-road that turned off to Sam'sbrier-patch I began to wonder how long it would take me to rush backinto Hayesboro, bundle mother into Redwheels, and get back to the cows. It was just a quarter after nine o'clock, but I knew she would be sleepyand would have to be forced to come with me very gently and slowly. Still, I didn't see how I could go on out into the woods with only Samand the Butterball which was wheezing out cow conversation to Sam that Iwas intensely interested in and ought to have been listening to ratherthan wasting force on foolish proprieties. I was about to turn and takeSam's advice on the matter when he suddenly laid his fingers on my armand said:

"Stop a minute, Betty. What's that roosting on that stone wall?" And ashe spoke he peered out toward a strange, huge bird sitting by the sideof the road. 

I stopped just about opposite the object and Sam sprang out. 

"You, Byrd Crittenden, where did you come from?" I heard Sam demand ofthe huddled bundle as he lifted it off the wall. It was attired inscanty night-drawers and a short coat, and shivered as it stood, firston one foot and then on the other. 

"I ain't a-going to stay in no country with a hoot-owl, Sam. I'm goingto somewhere that a lady lives at, too. " And the manful little voicebroke as the bunch shivered up against Sam's legs. 

"Honest, Byrd, I thought you were asleep and wouldn't wake up tillmorning. You never did before; but when I go--go gallivanting, have Igot to take you or not go?" And Sam's voice was bravely jocular. 

"Bring him here to me, Sam, " I cried out, quickly. "Come in here withBetty, Byrd. " And I cuddled his long, thin, little legs down under mylap-blanket beyond the steering-gear. "You didn't forget Betty while shewas away, did you?" I asked, as we snuggled to each other and I startedthe motor, while Dr. Chubb chuckled and Sam still stood in the middle ofthe moonlit road as if uncertain what to do next. 

"Yes, I forgot you, " answered Byrd, candidly, though I had adored himsince his birth; "but I like to go see Mother Hayes and eat jelly-cake. Can I go home with you?"

"No. I'm going as fast as I can with you to your home to keep you fromfreezing to death, " I answered, quickly adopting this recovered oldfriend in the double capacity of an excuse and a chaperon. "Just sithere in the seat by me and watch me get us all back to your house in ahurry. You sit with the doctor, Sam. "

"Oh no, Betty, " answered Sam, quickly. "It is only a little over a milenow, and the doctor and Byrd and I can walk it all right. You come outin the morning and--"

"I'm going on with the doctor to those cows, Sam, and if you want to gowith us, get in quick, " I answered, in a tone of voice I have used onSam once or twice in our lives with great effect. He hopped in and Istarted at top speed. 

"Hic-chew! Fine goer that, " wheezed the doctor, and I didn't knowwhether he alluded to me or Redwheels. But there was evident relish ofreal pace in his voice, so I speeded up and shot away from the main roadinto the hard dirt lane in good style. 

"I'm a bird--I'm a bird!" shouted the picked fledgling at my side as wewhizzed under dark cedar boughs that waved funereal plumes over ourheads, and over stumps and stones with utter disregard of the heavy newtires. One of the lessons I learned early is that men are timid of awoman's driving them in any vehicle, and I was surprised that I at lastrounded the bend and drew up beside a long, low shed which Sam hadcalmly pointed out to me, without having had a single remonstrance fromthe back seat. 

"Moo, " came in a gentle, sad voice from the depths of the shed as we allbegan to disembark at the same time. 

"Well, one is alive, anyway, " said Sam as he set Byrd on the ground andheld up his arms to me. "It's good to have you back, Betty, " hewhispered, in an undertone, as he turned me against his shoulder to setme down. "It 'll all go right now that you are here to--"

"Now tell us what to do, Doctor. " I interrupted him determinedly, because I felt that it was not the occasion for friendlysentimentalities. 

If at any time in the three years that preceded that night I hadforeseen the way I was to spend it I would have been justified in flatlyrefusing to carry out my horoscope. Suppose, for instance, while I wasin the midst of the wonderful dinner Peter Vandyne's cousin, Count Henride Berssan, gave me in Brussels, a week before the storm broke thatcarried him before cannon and bayonet, I had seen a mental picture ofmyself six months from that minute, out in the woods on the side of aHarpeth hill under an old cedar-pole shed with my jacket off, myembroidered blouse sleeves rolled to the shoulder, filling a tin can, which had a long spout to be poked down a cow's throat, with a vile, greasy mixture out of a black bottle, at the directions of ashirt-sleeved little man and a red-headed farmer in blue overalls, whilea wisp of a boy writhed in and out and around and under a pathetic oldJersey cow, who was being rescued from the jaws of death. Now I wonderjust what I would have done to escape such an experience? Slated myselffor Belgian widowhood, perhaps, as a kinder fate, or stayed right therein New York to help Peter on "The Emergence. " I wonder if Peter ever sawa dear, big-eyed, trustful old Jersey cow have medicine poured down herthroat. It is called "drenching. " I wish he could see it before hefinishes that play. The sight produces a peculiar kind of emotion thatmight be worth recording in an all-comprehensive drama of American life. In fact, I know that what I felt at the end was worth recording in anykind of literature, by any kind of a poet--if we were equal to it. OldDr. Chubb leaned breathlessly against a rough post, I staggered down onan upturned bucket, and Sam reached out his long, blue-overalled armsand embraced Buttercup's neck and buried his head on her patientshoulder, just as a faint streak of April dawn showed behind theoak-trees, for we realized then that the dreadful cramp was gone andthat she could chew the wisp of hay offered by Byrd. 

"Hic-chew! All out of the woods, " wheezed Dr. Chubb, as he looked at oldButtercup and the two other young cows we had been working over allnight, with as fine an exaltation of achievement as any I ever saw, notexcepting that of an American man of letters I witnessed take his degreeat Oxford. 

But Sam's head was still bowed on old Buttercup's back and I went andstood beside him. 

"Will I ever learn how to take care the right way of--of life?" he saidunder his breath, as he stood up straight and tall with the early lightstreaming over his great mop of sun-bronzed hair and the bare breastfrom which his open shirt fell away. 

"I'll help you, " I said, as I came still nearer and leaned againstButtercup's warm, yellow side so closely that she looked around from hermeal from the Byrd's hand and mooed with grateful affection plussurprise to find us still standing by her so determinedly. "That is, if--if--I can learn myself. "

"You haven't found out you are a woman yet, have you, Betty?" answeredSam, with a laugh that embarrassed me. I would have considered itungrateful if it hadn't sounded so comfortable and warm out in the coldof the dawn--which had come before I realized that midnight had passed, about which time I had intended to go home. But how could a person feelguilty while playing Good Samaritan to a cow? I didn't. 

Then, as the streak of new day widened into a soft pink flush over thetops of the bare trees that etched their fine twigs into an archaicpattern against a purple sky lit by the gorgeous flame of the morningstar retreating before the coming sun, we all collected buckets and ragsand bottles and sponges. In Indian file we were led by Sam around thehill, up a steep path that was bordered by coral-strung buck-bushes andrasping blackberry brush, and to his little farm-house perched on aplateau almost up to the top of the hill. It was long and low, with awide red roof that seemed to hover in the whitewashed walls and greenshutters; while white smoke from an old gray-rock, mud-daubed chimneymelted away among the tree-tops into the lavender of the coming day. Itlooked like a great brooding white hen setting in a nest of radiantwoods, and I felt like a little cold chicken as Sam led the way throughthe low, wide door for me to creep under the sheltering wings. In abouttwo seconds we were all sheltered in complete comfort. At a huge firethat was a great glow of oak coals old Mammy Kitty, who hadsuperintended Sam's birth and childhood, as well as "neighbored" mine, was gently stirring a mixture that smelled like the kind of breakfastnectar they must have in heaven, while she also balanced a steamingcoffee-pot on a pair of crossed green sticks at one corner of thechimney. In the ashes I could see little mounds which I afterward foundto be flaky, nutty com-pones, and I flew to kneel at her side with myhead on her gaudy neckerchief. 

"Dah, dah, dah, child, " she crooned, as she smiled a queer, loving, oldsmile that showed me how glad she was to see me, but never another worddid she utter. I almost never remember hearing Mammy say an articulateword; but all children and those grown up who have any child left intheir hearts can understand her croon. It is cradle music--to theinitiated. 

"Mammy's rheumatism is mighty bad, but she can still shake up corn ashcake and chicken hash with the best, " said Sam, coming over to warm hishands and tower above us, while Byrd volunteered to lead Dr. Chubb outto what he called the wash-up bench on the back porch. 

I looked up at Sam as he stood above me in a mingling of fire-glow andthe early morning light with his low-beamed, deep-toned humble home as abackground, and he--he loomed. 

"I--I love this place, " I positively gasped, as I moved still closer toMammy and stirred the spoon in the pot of hash. 

"Shelter, fire, a chicken in the pot, and a woman crouched on the hearthstirring it--what more could any man want or get, no matter how heworked?" answered Sam, as he looked down at me with the smolder in hisblue-flecked hazel eyes to which Peter had once written a poem called"On the Gridiron. "

"Yes, but what would you do if you didn't have Mammy?" I ventured back, as I bent across Mammy's knee and began to stir more vigorously whileshe shook up her coffee-pot and raked a few last coals over the cakesfor their complete browning. "You always were a good provider, Sam, " Iadded, under the excitement of the bubbling over of the coffee. 

"Yes, locusts for hollyhock children and the wife of a summer day who--"

"Whew-shk! but my stomick have got a breakfas' notice, " interrupted Dr. Chubb. He and the Byrd had come into the room as hungry as raveningwolves. 

While Mammy stirred and shoveled off ashes I fed all three men to thepoint of utter repletion, feeding myself from Sam's plate as I broughtthe food back and forth. He didn't want me to wait on them, and Isuppose that is the reason I insisted on it, and partly ate hisbreakfast while doing it, just as an act of defiance. 

"You taught me to eat out of your hand, even when it was unspeakablydirty, and you had only saved me about two good bites and the core, " Ianswered one of his remonstrances. 

"But think of the pain it was to save even a third of a tea-cake inyour pocket when your stomach was so near it, " he answered as hefinished the bottom half of a pone I had spread thick with the juicyhash before I had greedily eaten the upper crust. 

"I'd rather eat my breakfast out of my own plate and let ladies eatthey's. Sam has to tie up cows that eat out of other's stalls, and theold white rooster has to be put in a coop 'cause he gobbles the henfeed; but 'cause you are company he lets you do it, " the Byrd remarked, all in one breath between two pieces of his pone. At which Dr. Chubbwheezed and chuckled delightedly and Sam roared. 

"Women critters ain't ever so free with vittels as men; they have tokinder toll 'em along to nibble feed, and life, too, " remarked thedoctor of distressed animals as we all rose from the table just as thesun burst in on the situation from over Paradise Ridge. 

And while he and the Byrd went to again look at the invalids, and MammyKitty removed the dishes into a little cupboard that served as butler'spantry and storeroom, Sam showed me the rest of his house--whichconsisted of his own room, that "leaned-to" the long living-roomopposite that of Mammy Kitty, and a back porch. That little room made mefeel queer and choky. It was neat and poor; and a narrow, old mahoganybed, that had always been in the Crittenden nursery, was pushed backunder the low side. It had a shelf or two with a curtain of dark chintzunder which farm clothes hung, a gun in the corner, a jolly little woodstove, and close beside Sam's bed was the young Byrd's cot with itslittle pillow my mother had made for him before he was ushered into theworld on the day his mother left it. I could almost see the big roughhand go out to comfort the little fledgling in the dark. I choked stillfurther, and turned hurriedly out on to the low, wide old porch that ranall the way across the back of the house and which apparently wasbath-room, refrigerator, seed-rack as to its beams, and the generaldepositing-place of the farm; but not before I had remarked, hanging byhis door, a grass basket I had woven for Sam to bring locust pods to thehollyhock family. Then I fled, only stopping to squeeze Mammy over herdish-pan and get my hat off the cedar pegs that stuck out of the side ofthe old chimney to serve just such a purpose. 

I found Dr. Chubb and the Byrd, who was now attired in overalls of theexact shade and cut of Sam's, standing by Redwheels with their mouthsand eyes wide open in rapture. 

"Well, 'fore I die I've saw a horse with steel innards and rid it, "remarked the old doctor. "Machines is jest the common sense of GodAlmighty made up by men, 'ste'd er animals made up by His-self. But Imust git on, missie, or some critter over at Spring Hill will have aconniption and die in it fer lack of a drench or a dose. "

I left Sam and the Byrd standing in the sunshine at the gate of cedarpoles that Sam had set up at the entrance of his wilderness, and Idon't believe I would have had the strength of character to go until Ihad been introduced to every stick and stone on the farm if I hadn'twanted so much to find out all about cows from Dr. Chubb. I drove slowlyand extracted the whole story from his enthusiastic old mind. What Idon't know about the bovine family now is not worth knowing, and Ibelieve I would enjoy undertaking to doctor a Texas herd. We parted withvows of eternal mutual interest, and I expect to cherish thatfriendship. It is not every day a girl has the chance to meet and profitby such wisdom as a successful seventy-year-old veterinary surgeon isobliged to possess. 

As I went up the stairs to my room I met mother coming down to herhalf-after-eight breakfast, and she was mildly surprised that I had notcome home at a proper time and gone to bed; but when she heard that Ihad been with Sam's sick cows all night she was perfectly satisfied, even pleased. Mother rarely remembers that I am a girl. She has thoughtin masculine terms so long that it is impossible for her to get her mindto bear directly on the small feminine proprieties. 

"That's right, Betty, be a doer, no matter whom you do, even if it isSam's cow, " said daddy, when I had finished my eulogy of Dr. Chubb andbeautiful old Mrs. Buttercup. Then he kissed mother and me and went ondown to his office, while she followed him to the gate, crocheting andquite forgetting me. 

Completely exhausted, but feeling really more effective in life than Iever had before, even at the Astor tea-table (because Peter had beenperfectly well and Sam's cows hadn't), I took a magazine with anentrancing portrayal of a Belgian soldier apparently eleven feet tall onthe cover and went out on the side porch to sit in the cool springsunshine and pick up the pieces of myself. When I put myself togetheragain I found that I made something that looked like an illustration toa farm article rather than the frontispiece to an American epic. Still, if for a friend I could grasp a farm problem with that executiveenthusiasm, had I any reason to doubt that I would have any trouble inhelping along an epic of American life? I decided that I would not, andsettled down to find out about the eleven-foot Belgian before I creptoff for a nap, when an interruption came and I had to prop my eyes open. It was Eph with a letter and the information that Redwheels had shed abolt in its flight last night. I settled the bolt question with aquarter and turned to the letter. It was from Peter, and I knew by theamount of ink splashed all over the envelope that it must contain a highexplosive splashed on the inside. 

Peter Vandyne really is a wonderful man, and he will enrich Americanletters greatly after he has had time to live a lot of the things he hasplanned to write. Farrington, the great producer and dramatist, had readthe first act of his epic and said good things about it, Farrington isnot a friend of Peter's sister, Mabel, nor does he own or want to buyany of Judge Vandyne's stock in railroads or things. He's just reallythe dean of the American stage. Could anybody blame Peter if he had usedten pounds of paper, if paper comes by the pound, and a quart of inktelling about it? But he didn't; about five of the seven pages were allabout me and Farrington. I never was so astonished. The morning I gothome I had written Peter about how all my friends had been glad to seeme, and the way the different ones had shown it, and Peter had read thatpart to Mr. Farrington and he had said that Peter ought to get me tosupply some of the human comedy that Peter's play lacked. Peter knows somuch about life from his literary researches that it goes off and hidesfrom him when he sets out in search for it, and I understood immediatelywhat the great dramatist meant, though Peter probably did not. 

 So weave some of your heart spells for me, dearest dear Betty [Peter wrote], I am sending you the manuscript of Act I and part of Act II, and I know you will read them carefully and let me know fully what you think of them. Criticize them from your splendid human viewpoint. The dear old governor has been rather hard on me of late, and I may have to go into the office yet. Death! Help, rescue me, dear, for to put a play across will be my salvation from his prejudices. I must do it this summer, and then--then by the new year perhaps I can lay the gems of success at your feet. May I come down and talk to you soon about it all? No one knows what's in my heart but you, my own Betty. May I come?

 PETER. 

I was extremely happy and excited over the poetical way in which Peterwas calling on my common sense to help him in his crisis, but I feltweighted down with the responsibility. Yes, I understood the greatFarrington. He felt as I did--that Peter's genius needed to see and helpold Dr. Chubb drench Buttercup with a can of condition-mixture. Now, could I supply all that, or enough of it to keep Peter from beingmurdered in his father's office? The inky bundle at my side began tolook as if it weighed a ton, but my loyalty and affection for Peter mademe know that I must put my back to the burden and raise it somehow. Ifit had been a simple burden, like three sick cows, it would have beeneasier to take upon my shoulders. Then suddenly, as I was about to be ina panic about it all, the thought of the cows reminded me of Sam, andimmediately, in my mind, I shared the weight of the manuscript with himand began to breathe easier. The way Sam and Peter love each otherinspires positive awe in my heart, though Mabel says it is provokingwhen they go off to their fraternity fishing-camp for week-ends insteadof coming to her delightful over-Sunday parties out on Long Island. Judge Vandyne feels as I do about it, and he loves Sam as much as Peterdoes, though I don't believe that he has any deeper affection for Peterthan Sam has. I've been intending to read up about David and Jonathan, but I feel sure, from dim memories, that their histories about describePeter and Sam. I couldn't for the life of me see why any woman shouldresent "a love that passes the love of" her, and I am sure she wouldn'tif one of them was a poet born to enlighten the world. Yes, I breathedeasier at the thought of Sam's affection for Peter, and went back to thecase of the giant Belgian, though I don't think the artist quiteintended him to be taken that way. 

Just as I had turned the front page I was interrupted by Clyde Tolbot, who came whistling down the street and broke out all over with smileswhen he saw me out sunning myself. 

"Gee! Betty, but it is good to see you at home!" he said. 

They wore almost the exact words Sam had used, but they soundeddifferent. The sound is about all that is different in any of the thingsmen say to girls when they like them a lot. Tolly and I are veryappreciative of each other, and always have been. 

"You are going to settle down and have a royal good time, aren't you, Betty? I learned a new foxtrot up in Louisville last week I'm dying toteach you, and now that Sue Bankhead has got a great big dance machinewe can fox almost every night. Will you come with me this evening?"

"I wish I could, Tolly, " I said, with utter sincerity, for Tolly is thevery best dancer in the Harpeth Valley, not excepting Tom Pollard overat Hillsboro. "But, Tolly, I must give up all thought of socialpleasures for a time. " I spoke with a dignified reserve that fitted thespirit that I ought to have when undertaking a great responsibility, though I did want to dance. "I have some hard mental work to do. "

"Well, blast old Hayesboro for a sad hole! You are going to go in forbrain athletics, Sam Crittenden for farmer heroics, and the only moviethat has peeped into town is going to be closed because it ran a LatinQuarter film the afternoon the ladies stopped in from the UnitedCharities sewing circle, expecting a Cuban missionary thriller. I mightas well have my left foot amputated, it itches so for good dancing. "Tolly was so furious that I was positively sorry for him, and to comfortand calm him I told him all about Peter's letter and the play, and theway I had to read and criticize and help. He sniffed at the idea ofPeter, but the dramatist impressed him slightly. 

"Say, that old boy is the real thing, Betty, child. He's the surewin-out on Broadway. But how long will it take you to write that playfor your mollycoddle poet? You can get through with it before theCountry Club gets going good, can't you? We've had a new floor in thedancing-pavilion built, and the directors ordered a foxy music machinelast night. "

"Oh yes, I ought to be able to tell Peter all I know in two and a halfmonths, " I answered, ignoring Tolly's disrespect for my poet friend. 

"And a lot you don't know, " Tolly added, with the candor of realaffection. "I wish Sam, the old calf, could be weaned from his cows andtake the position your dad is offering him at the Phosphate Works, so hewould be able to shake a foot occasionally. Can't you handle him a bit, Betty? It's as if he just came out and looked at life and then divedback in a hollow log. "

"I--I don't know, " I answered, doubtfully. A pang shot through me at thethought of any one extracting Sam from that wonderful retreat in thewoods, but then also this news of the honors that were coming to Petermade me long to have Samuel Foster Crittenden come forth and take hisplace in the world beside his friends. Sam, I felt sure, was made toshine, not to have his light hid under a farm basket. Why, even Tolly, there beside me on the steps, was the head of the new Electric LightCompany that Hayesboro has had a little over a year. He did it allhimself, though he had failed to pass his college examinations when hewent up for them with Sam. 

"I'm proud of the way you've been doing things, Tolly, " I added, warmly, putting my thoughts of Sam away where I keep them when I'm not usingthem. 

"Oh, I'm just an old money-grubber and nobody's genius child, but I'llrustle the gold boys to get up to New York to see your play, Betty, andsend you a wagon-load of florist's spinnach on the first night, "answered Tolly, beaming at my words of praise. 

"Oh, Tolly, please don't think I'm going to write a play, " I answered, quickly. "I'm--well, I'm just going to tell Peter a whole lot of usefulthings I find out about life. You see, Tolly, Peter's father has so manymillions of dollars that it has been almost impossible for Peter toclimb over them into real life as we have. I have to do it for him. Please pity Peter, Tolly, and tell me what you think would be nice inhis play if you find anything. "

"Well--er--well, I have right in stock at present a little love-interesttale I could unfold to you, Betty, about--Help! There comes the gentlechild Edith up the street now. I must go. I am too coarse-grained forassociation with her. " And before I could stop him he was gone throughthe house and out the back way. That is the way it always is with Tollyand Edith, either they are inseparable or entirely separate. They can'tseem to be coexistent citizens, and they have been fighting this waysince they both had on rompers. I wondered what Tolly had been doingnow. 

"Clyde Tolbot needn't have gone just because I came. I can endure himwhen I have other people to help me, " said Edith, as she kissed me andsat down sadly. She is always sad when Tolly has been sinful. 

"What has Tolly been doing now?" I asked her, as I put that fascinatingBelgian face down on the floor and ruthlessly sat upon him, for the stepwas getting cold, though the sun was delicious and had drawn out a niceold bumblebee from his winter quarters to scout about the buddinghoneysuckle over our heads. 

"I am so hurt that I wouldn't tell anybody about it but you, dear, butlast night as he walked home with me, after we had been dancing down atSue's to the new phonograph, he--he put his arm almost around me and Ithink--I think he was going to kiss me if I hadn't prevented him--thatis, he did kiss my hair--I think. " Edith is the pale-nun type, and Iwish she could have seen how lovely she was with the blush that even thefailure of Tolly to kiss her brought up under her deep-blue eyes. Edithdidn't get any farther north to school than Louisville, and her maidenaunt, Miss Editha Shelby Morris Carruthers, brought her up perfectlybeautifully. I didn't know how to comfort her because I had been twoyears at the Manor on the Hudson and then a year in Europe, and, thoughnobody ever has directly kissed me, a girl's hand and hair don't seem tocount out in the world. 

To take Edith's mind off Tolly's perfidy I told her about the play, andshe was as impressed as anybody could wish her to be, and promised tostand by me and make people understand why I couldn't dance and picniclike other people because of this great work I had to do for a dearfriend. I told her not to tell anybody but Sue, and she went homecompletely comforted by her friendly interest in Peter and me. In fact, she really adored the idea of helping me help Peter, and seemed toforget her anger at Tolly with a beautiful spirit. 

About that time Eph solemnly called me in to lunch. Eph is a nice, jolly old negro until he gets a white linen jacket and apron on, andthen he turns into a black mummy. I think it is because I used to wantto talk to him at the table when I still sat in a high chair. I don'tbelieve he has any confidence in my discretion even now, and that is whyhe seats me with such a grand and forbidding display of ceremony. 

"Betty dear, " said mother, after Eph had served her chicken soup andpassed her the beaten biscuits, "I found an old note-book of my mother'sthat has all the wonderful things she did to the negroes and other livestock on her farm out in Harpeth Valley. You know she ran the wholethousand acres herself after father's death in her twenty-seventh year, and she was a wonderful woman, though she did have three girls and onlyone son. There is a section of her notes devoted to cows and theirdiseases, and Sam might be interested to hear how she managed them sothat even then her cows sold for enormous sums. Suppose you look over itand tell him about it. "

"Oh, I will. Thank you, mother!" I answered, as I took three littlebrown biscuits, to Eph's affectionate delight, and also as a shock tohis proprieties. 

I had planned to open the bundle and begin my work for Peter right afterdinner, but I sat down and devoured whole that note-book of my maternalancestor's. I never was so thrilled over anything, and the chapter ongardening really reads like a beautiful idyl of summer. It changed myentire nature. As I read I glowed to think that I could go right toSam's wilderness and try it all out. I didn't own any land, and it mighttake a little time to force daddy to buy me some, and the plantingseason and fever were upon me. There is a wide plateau to the south ofSam's living-room, and I had in my mind cleared it of bushes, enrichedit with all the wonderful things grandmother had directed, beginningwith beautiful dead leaves, and I was planting out the row of greatblush peonies in my mind as I intended to plant it in Sam's garden whenthe tall old clock in the hall toned out four long strokes. Then Iremembered that I wanted to go down to the post-office to get my mailand to see everybody and hear the news. So with the greatest reluctanceI tucked the garden idyl in the old desk which had been that veryGrandmother Nelson's, and heaved Peter's heavy manuscript in on top ofit. 

No mass-meeting, no picnic, and no function out in the great world, evenNew-Year's reception at the White House or afternoon tea at the Plaza, could be half the fun that going to the Hayesboro post-office for theafternoon mail is. I think the distinct flavor is imparted by the factthat all our forefathers and foremothers have done it before us. TheHayesboro resurrection will be held right there, I feel sure. 

And if mail-time is fun usually, it is great when all the news is aboutyou and your friends all swarm around you with interest. Everybody hadheard about Peter and his play, though neither Edith nor Tolly thoughtthey had told, and that he was soon coming down to visit me, and, ofcourse, that meant to visit all of Hayesboro. Miss Henrietta Spain, whoteaches literature from spelling to the English poets, in the HayesboroAcademy, had read Peter's new poem--the one the _Literary Opinion_ hadcopied last month--and she was pink with excitement over the prospect ofhaving such a genius in our midst, "Look out that you don't get put in the play on the other side of thefootlights, Hayes, " said the mayor, slapping daddy on the back. "Becareful how you have a poet sitting around your house. "

"The South has long waited to have a genius come down and write afitting epic about her Homeric drama of Civil War, Elizabeth, " said oldColonel Menefee. "Let your young friend come, and I can give himmaterial, beginning with that Bedford Forest charge just beforeChickamauga that--"

"And just remember, " interrupted Mrs. Winston Polk, "how Elizabeth'smother, Betty's own Grandmother Nelson, rode fifty miles and back intwenty-four hours to get Morgan to send wagons for her barnful of cornto feed his soldiers, though she and her negroes were dependent on whatshe could grow between then and frost. She never faltered, but--"

"The Nashville and Louisville papers all wrote up the way Clyde Tolbotswam Salt River and stopped the L. & N. Express from going down in thecut during the storm last year, " Edith hastened to say when Mrs. Folk'sbreath had given out. Tolly's ugly good face was beautiful to see whenshe spoke of him thus, though Edith didn't notice it. 

When you start a Harpeth Valley town to telling how wonderful it is tothe third and fourth generation back, it is like a seething torrent andcan go on for ever. I glowed to think of all the wonderful things Icould write Peter, and we all started home from the post-office as lateas supper hour would admit. 

After I got home, escorted by the reunited Edith and Tolly, as well asby Billy Robertson, who wants to be Peter's hero, though he wasn'tdirectly saying so, I sat down determinedly to write to Peter atinspiring length and make him feel how I valued his confidence in me, also to mention the war drama. Just then I raised my eyes and thatwonderful notebook had pushed a corner of itself out of the desk fromunder the manuscript. I couldn't use my mind advising between a modernepic and a war drama while it was plowed up ready for peonies, so Idecided to wait and ask Sam's advice about advising Peter, and I readthe rest of the peony pages in comfort. Right then, too, I made up mymind that I was going to get ground bone to plant at the roots of allthe peonies if I had to use my own skeleton to do it and would only seethem bloom with astral eyes. 

I was still reading when the supper-bell rang, and was only interestedin reminiscences of Grandmother Nelson during the meal. 

"No, ma'am, Miss Caroline, you got it wrong. Ole Mis' didn't divideclover pinks 'cepting every third year 'stid of second. _Hers_ bloomed, they did, " Eph interrupted mother to say, indulging in perhaps his firstspeech while waiting on the table during the long and honorable life asa butler which that grandmother had started at his sixth year. He thenretired in the blackest consternation, and his yellow granddaughter, thehouse-girl, brought in the wine-jelly. 

One thing is certain--I must contrive some way to get Sam back and forthto me from The Briers in less time than it takes him to walk five miles. He has got just one old roan plow mare and he won't ride her after hehas worked her all day, and I am afraid it won't do for me to go afterhim with Redwheels every time I want him. I can go about two-thirds ofthe time, but he must be allowed some liberty about expressing hisdesire for my company. Of course a tactful woman can go nine-tenths ofthe way in all things to meet a man she likes, and he'll think shehasn't even started from home; but she ought to be honorable enough notto do it at that rate. I believe in liberty for men as well as women. 

Still, I can't express the strain it was on me to wait until after eighto'clock for Sam with Grandmother Nelson's farm-book on my knee, and Idon't want to do it ever again, especially if the Byrd or Mammy or thecows or any of the other live stock might be sick. I felt that it mustbe midnight before I got Sam seated by me on the deep old mahogany sofain front of one nice April blaze in behind the brass fender, and underanother from Tolly's power-house. He was pretty tired, as he had been upsince daylight, but the cows were all right and on feed again, Mammywasn't any stiffer than usual, and he had promised the Byrd the firstchicken that the old Dominicker hatched out to stay at home and let himcome to see me. Mammy had sent me five fresh eggs, and Sam presentedthem with a queer pod of little round black seeds, and a smile thatwouldn't look me in the face. 

"Hollyhocks! I climbed over the Johnson fence about two miles from townand stole them for you, " he said, as he squirmed around from me andpicked a brown burr off the leg of his trousers. 

"Aren't they sweeties?" I exclaimed, not noticing his entirelyunnecessary bashfulness. "And that is just what I want to talk to youabout. " With which I produced my ancestral treasure, and with our headsclose together we dove into it, didn't come up until after ten o'clock, and then were breathless. 

"Oh, Sam, can I do all these things out at your farm?" I exclaimed, andI fairly clung against his shoulder while his strong, rough hand foldedover mine as the husk did over the hollyhock seeds I had been holdingwarm and moist in my palm. 

"All of them, and then some, Betty, " he answered, blowing away a wisp ofmy hair that he had again roughed up instead of shaking hands ingreeting, despite my reproof. "I'll plow up that southern plot for youjust after daylight to-morrow, and every minute I can take fromgrubbing at the things I have to work to make the eats for all of usI'll put in on the posy-garden for you. "

"I'm much obliged to you for the plowing, but I'll be out at about nineo'clock and I'll bring my own spade and hoe and rake and things. I thinkI'll take those two young white lilacs that are crowded over by thefence in the front yard to start the garden. Don't you think lilacswould be a lovely corner for a garden like my grandmother's, Sam?"

"I--I think it would be nice to--plant the hollyhock seeds you have inyour hand the first thing, Betty, " answered Sam, with the gridironsmolder in his eyes which snapped up into a twinkle as he added, "Couldyou help me set onions for a few hours later on?"

"Oh, I'd adore it!" I answered, enthusiastically. "Of course, I mean tohelp plant all the eat things, too. I may like them best. Let's see whatgrandmother says about onions. " And I began to ruffle back the pages ofthe book that Sam held in both his hands for me. 

"Good gracious! Betty, couldn't the old lady write!" exclaimed Sam, ahalf-hour later, after we had finished with onions and many otherprofitable vegetables. "Why, that description of her hog's dying withcholera and the rescue reads like a--a Greek tragedy in its simplicity. "

"Oh, Sam, " I exclaimed in dismay, "that reminds me, I forgot to tell youabout the play, and now you ought to go home, with all those five milesto walk and plowing to do at daylight. " "Play? What play? Won't itkeep?" asked Sam, as he rose and reached for his hat on the table. "Let's enjoy this last ten minutes before my hike, down at the gate. "

"Oh no, it won't keep, and I don't know exactly what I will do about itand the garden. Here's Peter's letter; read it for yourself, " I wailed, as I drew the splashed letter out from the ruffle in the front of mydress where I had stuck it for safe keeping, and handed it to Sam. If Ihadn't been so distressed by the collision of the play and the garden inmy heart I never would have been so dishonorable as to let Sam read thelast paragraph in Peter's letter, which was more affectionate than Ifelt was really right for Peter to write me, even after the Astortea-party, and which had troubled me faintly until I had forgotten aboutit in my excitement about Farrington and the play. I saw Sam's handshake as he read that last page, and he held it away from me andfinished it, as I remembered and gasped and reached for it. 

"Good old Pete, " said Sam, in a voice that shook as his hand did whilehe handed me back the letter. "It is a great chance for him, and if youcan help you'll have to go to it, Betty. Pete only needs ballast, andyou are it--he seems to think. "

"But how will I find time enough from making our garden to help make hisplay?" I asked as I rose and clung to his sleeve as I had done in allserious moments of my life, even when his coat-sleeve had been that ofa roundabout jacket. My heart was weak and jumpy as I asked thequestion. 

"Betty, " said Sam, gently, lifting my hand from his arm into his for asecond and then handing it firmly back to me, "that garden was just adream you and I have been having this evening. It can't be. Don't yousee, dear, I am in a hard hand-to-hand struggle with my land, which isall I possess, for--for bread for myself and the kiddie, and I--I can'thave a woman's flower-garden. It looks as if you and old Petie can do areal literary stunt together. Just get at it, and God bless you both. Good night now; I must sprint. " And as he spoke he was through one ofthe long windows and out on the front porch in the moonlight. 

"Oh, wait, Sam, wait!" I gasped, as I flew after him and clung to himdeterminedly. 

"Well, " he said, patiently, as he stood on the step below me and turnedhis bronze head away from me out toward his dim hills sleeping in thesoft mystery of the moonlight. 

"I will, Sam, I _will_ have that garden, " I said, with the same angrydetermination in my voice I had used when I had clung to him and kickedand fought to go to places with him when he didn't want me, and when myskirts were several inches above my bare knees and his feet werescratched and innocent of shoes. 

"Betty, " said Sam, as he shook me away from him and then took myshoulders under their thin covering of chiffon in his plow-calloused, big, warm hands, "forget it! There are lots of dream gardens out in theworld you can play in when you have time away from the bright lights. Everybody grows 'em without a lick of work. I have to work mine orstarve. Good night!" Then with a rough of my hair down across my eyes hewas out in the moonlit road, running away from me to his hollow log in away he had never done before, no matter how I had tagged him. 

I ran as far as the gate to watch him out of sight, and then I put myhead down against the tall old post that had been one of Sam's percheswhen he wanted to climb away from me in former years, and sobbed andsobbed. I had never expected Sam to cast me off. 

Girls' hearts are covered all over with little thin crystallizations ofaffection, and men ought to be very careful not to smash any of themwith their superior strength. Sam had hurt me so that I didn't even darethink about it. I knew he was poor, and I hadn't expected him to plowand plant things for me while I went about in a picture-hat snippingthem with garden scissors. I had asked him to let me set onions and weedbeans and drop peas and corn for him and share his poverty and hard workas a true friend, and he had shut his cedar-pole gate in my face andheart. And I didn't understand why. I tried to think it was hisaffection for Peter that made him thus rudely switch my mind from himand his garden to Peter and his need of me, which Sam may have thoughtwas greater than the need of his onions and turnip salad; but I don'tsee how Sam could have construed cruelty to me as generosity to Peter. 

"Please God, " I prayed out into the everlasting hills toward which Samwas running away from me and from which I had heard intoned "comethhelp, " "give me dirt to work in somewhere except in just a yard if Ican't have Sam's. Help me to get somebody to help me to raise things forpeople to eat and milk, as well as to inspire a play. I'll do boththings, but I must have earth with rotted leaves in it. Amen. "

Then I went to bed heartbroken for life, and my sad eyes closed on thelittle glimpse which my window framed of Old Harpeth, the tallest hillin Paradise Ridge, while my hand still folded in the moist hollyhockseeds. 

II

THE BOOK OF SHELTER

Peter's play is remarkable; it really is. He has collected all the greatand wonderful things that life in America contains and put them togetherin a way that reads as if Edgar Allan Poe had helped Henry James toconstruct it, though they had forgotten to ask Mark Twain to dinner andhad never heard of John Burroughs. I felt when I got through the firstact as if I had been living for a week shut into an old Gothic cathedralaisle decorated by marble-carved inspired words, and I was both cold andhungry. The more I read of Peter's play the more congenial I felt withFarrington. I had enough education to see that it was a genuine literaryachievement, but I had heart enough to know that something had to bedone to rescue all his characters from the arctic region. Could I do itsingle-handed even for a person I cared as much for as I did for Peter?I decided that I could not, and that the only way I could prove myloyalty and affection for Peter was to abase myself before SamCrittenden and his cruelty to me, and get his help. Only for Peter wouldI have done such a thing, which in the end I didn't have to do at all. 

Since the night Sam refused me the use of his farm and put me out of hislife for ever I had not seen him until by his own intention. Or maybe itwas Tolly's. 

"See here, Betty, what you need is a good fox or tango and you hadbetter come to it up at Sue's to-night. "

Tolly had broken in upon my despairing meditations over the way in whichPeter's hero talks wicked business and congested charity to the poorlittle heroine in the very first act while she is full of a beautifulaffection Peter didn't seem to see, and ready to pour it forth to thehero before he started out on a long life mission. Maybe it wassorrowing with her at being thus suppressed by everybody that made mewrite her case to Peter with such fervor. I had just finished the letterwhen Tolly came to my rescue with the offer of a nice warm dance tonourish me up. 

"Don't make me kidnap you, Betty; go fluff and rose up a bit, " hecommanded, as he seated himself on the front steps with a determinationwhich was as business-like as his management of the Electric LightCompany. 

"I think I had better go to Sue's to thaw out some of my lonelinessover this play, " I answered him as I looked up with desperation and asmudge on my face. Then I went to my room and left Tolly alone withPeter's poor little heroine. "Say, tell the poet to get the man with thedinner-pail who is eating hunk sandwiches at lunch-time on the pavementin front of any construction job in New York to tell him what he did andsaid to his girl at the firemen's ball the night before, and thentranslate it into some of this first-class poetry. That'll be a greatplay, " said Tolly, as I came down-stairs just as he had turned pagetwenty-five of Peter's manuscript. Tolly's coarseness doesn't affect meas it does Edith because there is always so much point to it. 

"You don't quite understand Peter and his play, Tolly, dear, " I said, with dignity, though I felt exactly the same way about it and hadn'tknown how to express it in human interest terms as well as Tolly. 

"I sure don't, " answered Tolly, cheerfully, and not at all as if I hadput him in his place in regard to his criticism of our epic. "Come on;let's hurry. Everybody is waiting for us. "

It was good to be in a buzz of girls and men once more for the firsttime in two weeks since I settled down to do my worst or best by Peter, with my Grandmother Nelson's garden-book locked up in thepreserve-closet down in the darkest corner of the cellar, and Sam lostin the fastness of The Briers. 

Everybody wanted to dance with me at the same time, and the girlskissed me into a lovely, warm cheerfulness. The girls in Hayesboro arethe sustaining kind of friends, like pound-cake, sweetened andbeautifully frosted. "Has he consented to let the hero kiss the poorthing's hand before he goes to fight the case of the miners?" Juliawhispered, warmly, as she took a few tango steps with me in her armsbefore Billy Robertson claimed her and Tolly picked me up to juggle withme in his new Kentucky version of the fox-trot. 

"I'm expecting a letter to-morrow, " I answered her as Tolly slid me awaythree steps, skidded two, and slid back four. And then, having begun, Idanced; all of me danced; even my heart, which had started out as heavyas lead, got into the feather class before I went around the room threetimes. It is strange how even great responsibilities melt away beforedance music like icicles on the southern side of the house. It was in aperfectly melted condition that I at last dropped from Tolly's graspinto a pair of new arms which cradled me against a broad breast withsuch gentleness that I might have thought it was mother come to thedance if I hadn't caught a whiff of cedar woodsiness when I turned mynose into a miniature brier-patch of blue-berried cedar in thebuttonhole of the coat against which my face was pressed as my feetcaught step with a pair of smart shoes bearing a smear of moss loam onone side. 

"Sam!" I gasped, with emotional indignation that had a decided trace ofjoy. 

"Yes, I feel that way, too, " answered Sam, roughing my hair slightlywith his chin as both his hands were employed holding me to him while weslid and skidded and slid again. "I don't forgive you; I never shall, " Isaid, haughtily, as I drew away from him the fraction of an inch thatcame very near making us collide with Sue and Billy, who were dancingwildly, but in perfect accord. 

"You'll have to when you hear the worst, " answered Sam, as he firmlypressed my shoulder into his while he manoeuvered me first past Edithand Tolly and then across right in front of Pink Herriford, who weighsall of two hundred, dancing with Julia Buford, who must tip the scalesat one hundred and sixty. It was a hairbreadth rapture of escape. 

"Is anything the matter with the cows or anybody else?" I demanded, anxiously, from his shoulder. 

"Worse!"

"Oh, Sam, has anything died at The Briers?"

"Worse, " he answered again, while he defied Tolly with a double crossand then took a chance with Pink and Julia as I pressed him closer withmy arms and my questions. 

"Dance me out on the porch through the window and tell me, Sam, " Idemanded. 

"Not when this music and Julia and Pink hold out like that, Bettykin. It'll be bad enough when you do hear it, " answered Sam, laughing down atme with the same wide-mouthed smile he had always used on me whenholding something over my head and making me reach up for it. "Besides, it has been two whole weeks since I've--had you, " he added, and againhis strong arms cradled as well as guided. Getting back into somepeople's atmosphere is like recovering the use of a lung a person hadtemporarily lost; breathing improves. I've always breathed easily inSam's friendship. That was why I could dance with him as I did even upto the last bar of the music. Then he swung me out through one of thelong windows on to the porch under the dusky spring starlight. 

"I hate to tell you, Betty, though I have walked a five-mile blister onmy left heel in these dancing-shoes just to break the news to you, " Samanswered my repeated demand to be told his "worse. "

"Oh, Sam, a real blister?" I exclaimed, losing sight of the threatenedcatastrophe at the thought of his blistered heel. I knew how tenderSam's feet were, for I had doctored them since infancy. I used to paytribute in the form of apples and tea-cakes for the privilege of bindingup his ten and twelve year old wounded toes, and I suppose I hadn'treally got over my liking for thus operating. 

"Oh, not all from the walk, " answered Sam, as he smiled down on meconsolingly. "I've got a brand-new mule and I nearly plowed him andmyself to death to-day. I don't seem to be well heeled enough to plowand dance both. "

"What did you plow, Sam?" I came close up to his shoulder so that thebit of woods in his buttonhole grazed my cheek as my head drooped withan embarrassed hope. 

"I plowed for the early potatoes on the south slope and--and--"

"And what?"

"I'm thinking of growing a crop of--hollyhocks, if I get time to plant'em. "

"Where did you plow, Sam?"

"In spots all over the place. "

"Where?"

"Well, then, about a hundred feet south by southwest from my door-step, if you must have it. Great sakes! do you think this heel is going toswell, Betty, from your deep experience?"

"I--I'm so happy, Sam, " I faltered, with more emotion than I knew Samliked, but I think all apologies ought to be met enthusiastically at thefront gate, whether they intended to come in or not. 

"Well, I'm not--I'm blistered. " He again plaintively referred to hissufferings which I had forgotten in my joy at having him back in thebonds of friendship, even if slightly damaged. 

"Come over home with me and I'll plaster it so it won't break or swell. You know I know how, " I answered, eagerly. 

"Cold cream and an old handkerchief like you used to keep. Um--um! thethought is good, Betty, " he answered, as he stood on his left foot for asecond and then lifted it as if he were a huge crane. 

"Come, now, so I can get the cream before mother goes to bed, " I said, with energy; and I led him, faintly remonstrating, through the Bankheadback gate that opens opposite ours. 

Mother was glad to see Sam, heel and all, and sympathetically suppliedthe cream and handkerchief and a needle and thread without laying downthe mat she was putting in a difficult hundred-and-fifty round on. Mother is so used to Sam that she forgets that he is not her fifth orsixth son, and she treats him accordingly. After she had given us allthe surgical necessities she retired into the living-room by the lamp toput her mind entirely on the mat, in perfect confidence that I could dothe right thing by my wounded neighbor. And I did. 

First, as I had always done, I bathed Sam's great big pink-and-whitefoot in hot water and then in cold, sitting on the floor with abath-towel in my lap to get at it while Sam wriggled and squirmed atboth hot and cold just as he had always done. 

"Go on, boil me, " he said, as I poured the last flash of heat from thetea-kettle on the floor beside me. 

"Now a frost, " he groaned, as I dashed ice-water out of a pitcher on theblister and lifted the foot into my lap on the bath-towel. 

"If you touch the bottom of my foot I'll yell 'murder, '" he said as Ibegan to pat all around the blister in the gentlest and most consideratemanner possible. I knew he meant what he said, so I was careful as Iwound and clipped and sewed. 

"I never fixed as nice a one as that for you before, " I said, withpride, as he drew on his silk sock with its huge hole over as neat abandage as it was possible for human hands to accomplish. "I love to tieyou up, Sam. "

"Thank you, and I return the compliment, " answered Sam, both smoulderingand smiling down at me as if he were saying something to tease me. "Andnow as a reward for your kindness I am going to knock you down with somenews. " And as he spoke we went on out to the porch, Sam walking like anew man. 

"Oh, the 'worse' thing! I had forgotten about that. Tell me, Sam, " Ianswered, as I leaned against one of the pillars of the porch and heseated himself on the railing beside me. 

"Well, " said Sam, slowly, "this is not worse for you, just for me; thatis, at the present speaking, with nothing but the hay-loft handy. Idon't know just how I'll manage. "

"What?"

"Pete, " answered Sam. 

"What about Peter? Oh, Sam, Peter isn't ill, is he?" And I reached outand clutched Sam's arm frantically. It takes alarm to test the depths ofone's affection for a friend. I found mine for Peter deeper than I knew. If anything had happened, Sam would know it first. "Don't be cruel tome, Sam. " And I shook his arm. 

"Forgive me, Betty, " said Sam, quickly. "Pete's all right and he'll behere to demonstrate it to you just as soon as I can get a stall builtfor him out at The Briers. "

"At The Briers? Peter?" I gasped. 

"Even at that humble abode, Betty, whose latch-string is always out tofriends, " answered Sam. And I felt his arm stiffen under my fingers in away for which I could see no reason. 

"Just as I was going to begin my garden, " I wailed. And Sam's stiff armlimbered again and made a motion toward my hair that I dodged. "Whatdoes he want?"

"Direct life. I can give it to him, " answered Sam. "At least that iswhat he asked for in his letter to me. I don't know what he will requestin the one I wager you get by the morning mail. "

"Why, I had been writing him all that he needed of that, and we aregoing to be so busy gardening, how can we help him live it also? Peterdoes require so much affectionate attention. " I positively wailed thisto Sam, in the most ungenerous spirit. 

"Betty dear, " said Sam, gently, as he puffed at a little brier which hehad substituted for the adorable cob on account of the formality ofSue's dance, which we could hear going on comfortably without us, beyondthe privet hedge whose buds were just beginning to give forth adelicious tang, "Peter is a great, queer kind of sensitive plant that itmay be we will have to help cultivate. You know that for several yearshis poems have really got across in great style with the writing world, and I'm proud of him and--I--I--well, I love him. Suppose, just suppose, dear, that Keats had had a great hulking farmer like me to stand by. Don't you think that maybe the world would have had some grown-man stufffrom him that would have counted? I always have thought of that when Ilooked at old Pete and promised myself to back him up with my brawn andnerve when he needed it. Why, in the '13 game it was Pete's flaming faceup on the corner of the stadium that put the ginger in me to carryacross as I did. Yes, I am going to put Pete's hand to my plow and hislegs under old Buttercup at milking-time if it kills us both, if that iswhat he needs or you have made him think he needs. "

"Oh, Sam, I'm ashamed! I'm ashamed of not wanting precious Peter in mygarden. He can have half of all of it. You know I love him dearly. I'llwork all day with him and attend to all his blisters and get everybodyto give him work and help him. "

"Well, I don't believe I'd do all that to him, Betty, " answered Sam, with a laugh. Then his eyes glinted past mine for a second. "And say, Betty, you know my blisters are kind of--kind of old friends to you;Pete's might not have so many--many landmarks for you to work by, " headded, as he knocked the ashes carefully out of the brier and picked uphis hat. "Let's go for one fox, and then I'll trot on out to my patch. "

"I'll get Tolly to run you out in Redwheels while I do my promiseddances, and then I'll be out early in the morning to help plan aboutPeter. And--and, Sam, do you want to--to give me that garden?"

"Everything that is is yours, Bettykin, " he answered as we went down thesteps out on to the springy greening grass and across to the back gate. 

Some friends taste like bread and butter and peach preserves. Sam doesand he's a peach. 

When I got back to the Bankheads' everybody was wondering where we hadbeen, and as Sam and Tolly got right off in the car without answeringany questions, I was left to explain about Sam's foot and Peter. I paidno attention at all to Billy Robertson when he said his foot wasblistered, too; but I told them how beautiful Peter was, and howdistinguished, and all about the poor young Keats that most of themhadn't grieved over since their Junior years at school, telling it allin such an eloquent way that Julia's great blue eyes filled with tears, and I saw I could depend on her to be nice to our friend. 

"I knew most poets were kind of calves, but I didn't know they had tomilk their poetry out of a genuine cow, " said Pink, with a vulgarattempt to be funny, at which nobody laughed, not even Julia, and she isalmost too tall and big to dance with anybody but Pink. She and Edithand Sue and I forgot to save him the dances we had promised him; and hehad to dance with other girls he didn't like so much, until we all wenthome in time to meet the sun coming down over Paradise Ridge with hisdinner-pail. 

Then for five days it rained--heavy, determined, soggy drops; but thenext morning introduced one of those wily, flirtatious days that comealong about the last week in April in Tennessee. I awoke to the sound ofsobbing wind and weeping clouds in which I had no confidence, andsucceeded in convincing mother that it would be a beautiful day for meto go out to see Sam and Byrd and Mammy. She sent Byrd half a jelly-cakeand a bag of bananas, and I got a jar of jam for him when I went down inthe cellar to exhume Grandmother Nelson's garden-book. A bottle went toMammy, which I suspect of being a kind of liniment that mother had tolearn to make on account of the number of the boys and their bruises. 

Eph was a tragedy over my taking out Redwheels, and I am glad thatneither he nor I could prevision the plight the shiny new runabout wouldbe in before it was many hours older. With a stoical reserve he loadedin the two young lilacs that were in the exact state of sappinessGrandmother Nelson had recommended for transplanting, but his calmnessnearly gave way when I had him put in a dandy old rake and spade and hoethat I had found in my raid on the cellar. 

"Please ma'am, Miss Betty, don't go and leave ole mistis's gyarden toolsout in no rain, " he entreated, plaintively. 

"Oh, Eph, are they really Grandmother Nelson's?" I exclaimed, with suchradiance that it reflected from Eph's polished black face. 

"Yes'm, and they is too good to be throwed away on playing gyarden orsich, " he answered, with feeling. 

"Eph, " I answered, with almost a choke in my voice, "they'll be--besacred to me. Oh, thank you for telling me. "

"Go on, child! you shore is ole mistis herself, with your pretty wordsto push along your high-haided ways, " he answered me while he gaveRedwheels an affectionate shove as I started down the street. 

I didn't spend much time down-town, but I stopped at the post-office andgot my mail to read while I waited at the drug-store for Mr. Simmons toput up some of every kind of flower and vegetable grandmothermentioned--if it was still in stock. He offered me a book ofinstructions, which I declined. I meant to garden by ancestraltendencies. And while I waited I looked over my letters. The volume fromPeter I put aside to enjoy in a leisure hour, as I felt sure that I knewwhat was in it; but I opened another thin one that looked as if it mightbe from him, if he had written it in an unpoetic mood. It was from JudgeVandyne, and I then understood Peter's sudden determination to come downand live with Sam for a time, though I don't believe Peter knew the realreason of it himself. The judge is a great diplomat, and knows just whenand to whom to be frank. We have always understood each other from thefirst vacation I spent with Mabel, and I value his confidence highly. He wrote:

 No man can get a hold on the complex problems of this day and especially the next, who doesn't go at them with at least some sunburn on his neck and a few horny spots on his hands. Put Pete at it, you and Sam. Your description of Sam's habitation and vocation in letter to Mabel made me feel twenty-five again. I never had the real thing; but Peter shall. Ease him along. If he kicks over the traces let me know. When are you coming North again? Soon, I hope, Your aged admirer, PETER VANDYNE, Sr. 

 _P. S. _--Thought I'd better say that Dr. Herbrick doesn't like Peter's weight--one sixteen. You understand. 

I wonder what the paternal Keats was like. I don't remember, and I mustlook him up to see. It's funny how sturdy-oak fathers can haveferny-mimosa sons. Mothers can stand producing poets, but it is hard onfathers. I felt that I must help out Judge Vandyne, and with thatresolve I headed Redwheels out along Providence Road. 

As I had told mother, the sobs and tears of the April day had beenwilfully misleading demonstrations, for by ten o'clock the whole face ofnature wore a sun-sweetened smile that was positively entrancing. Theyoung April world seemed to spring dripping from a bath that glistenedall over with crystal water gems. Winter is staid and dignified andgrand with its stark trees and mantle of brown earth, and summer isglowing and glorious; but very young spring is so sappy and curly andyellow and green and lavender that you take it to heart and let itnestle there to suck its pink apple-blow thumb, and curl up its youngsprout toes sheltered away from the cold that sets it back and the sunthat forces it to break bud. Sometimes it stays with you a day andsometimes a week and a day, but you can't hold it back. You can just bethankful that you had it. I was. 

But if the five miles of Providence Road had been a delight, asRedwheels and I ran along it, the dirt lane that led to The Briers wasan intoxicating joy. The wet earth, the drenched cedars, the oak buds, the spongy moss, the reddening blackberry-bushes, and the sproutinggrain, all mingled in a queer creation odor that went right through thepores of my skin into my vitals and made me feel as strong as an ox, orrather, as Sam's new mule. I caught a glimpse of that mule through avista before I came out of the lane, plodding along before Sam and theplow with a great splendid lurch of a gait that threw the black dirt ashigh as Sam's knees as he plunged along at the plow-handles. I stoppedthe car at the cedar-pole gate of Eden and stood up and shouted at thetop of my lungs, but Sam plowed on heroically, with never a glance in mydirection, and I just stood and looked at him and the mule. Seeing a manplow cuts right down to the bottom of a woman's nature, because Isuppose it looks so--so fundamental. At least that is about the way Ifelt though it was much more so until I remembered the blistered heeland shouted again, this time in alarm. At my cry of distress Samsuddenly looked up and jerked the mule's head so that he, too, stoppedand regarded me. They looked like wary jungle things that had beenbelled from the thicket, but for just a second; then Sam threw his linearound the plow-handle, thus hitching the mule to himself, and camerunning across the field to me, as lightly as the blue jay skimmed fromover my head into the branches of another cedar in answer to the sametwit I had heard the day I first came out into the habitation of thebirds. The pleasure of seeing Sam run to me was almost as keen as thepain of seeing him run away from me, but it was mitigated by my alarmover the poor sore foot. 

"Gracious sakes, Betty! is that a mud-scow you came out in?" he asked, as he started to take my hand in his, which was brown with mud, andended by rubbing his cheek in my palm. That seemed to be about the onlymember he had kept clean enough for the greeting. 

"Aren't you hurting your heel plowing like that, Sam?" I asked, anxiously. 

"Heel--what heel? Oh, that's all right. I haven't heard from it sinceyou tucked it away in the cream Tuesday night. I have cold-bucketedmyself every morning, standing on one leg with it up on the wash-benchso as not to wake it up. Come on up to the house. I'll walk, because I'mtoo muddy to get in with you in your sedan-chair. "

"No; you go back to the plowing and I'll go and unload and begin mywork, " I answered, with positive heroism. I wanted to get out and go andbe introduced to the mule, but I came to Sam to be not a clinging vine, but a competent garden-hoe to him. 

"All right, " said Sam, in the nice way he has of acquiescing in all myserious moods until they pass. "I'll be through after about three morerounds and then I'll come and help you. Say, Bettykin, what do you thinkof that for good land?" And as he looked back at the great square ofblack earth he had upturned, Sam's eyes flecked with the blue sky andsnapped with enthusiasm. 

[Illustration: THE BYRD WAS ATTIRED IN MINIATURES OF SAM'S OVERALLS]

"It looks good enough to eat, " I answered, with a queer dirt enthusiasmrising in me that I had never even heard of one's having before. 

"Yes, and you will eat it in about four months' time in the form ofroasting ears, " answered Sam, smacking his lips, which had a streak ofthe mud delicacy across them at right angles. "But go on up and tellMammy to put your name in her dinner-pot and buy the Byrd to get youanything you need or want to the half of our kingdom. I'll be there inten shakes of the mule's tail. "

The road that leads from the cedar-pole gate through Sam's wilderness upto the farm-house curves in and out and around the hill past as manylovely spots as my enthusiasm could endure. Halfway up, there is aglimpse past a gray old tree with crimson thorns, of the valley with OldHarpeth looming opposite. Further on a rocky old road leads down arounda clump of age-distorted cedar-trees to the moss-greened stonespring-house, from which the water gurgles and pours past Sam's hugeearthern crocks of milk. Over it all broods the low white house on theplateau, from under whose wings I found one small blue chicken runningand cheeping wildly for a ride up the hill. 

The Byrd was, as usual, attired in miniatures of Sam's overalls, and hisred mop stood on ends all over his head, while his freckles shone forthresplendently from the excitement of my arrival. 

"Say, Betty, what you think? Old Buttercup found a calf out in the woodsand it has got a white nose and two spots. Sam wanted to name it Chubbfor the doctor that saved its life 'fore it got borned, but I saidladies first, and I calls it Betty. You can let it lick your fingers ifSam milks on 'em first. And Dominick have hatched 'fore the whitehen--eleven, and one what Sam calls a half chicken, because he don't seehow it is black when the eggs was bought thoroughbreds; but Mammy saysbecause they is Yankee eggs. Come see all everything. "

Sam's barn is an old tumble-down collection of sheds and the most lovelyplace I ever got into. It is running over with new-born life, and youcan get an armful of first one variety and then another. I liked thecollie puppies best, but the Byrd was crazy about the little fawn calfwhich old Buttercup is so proud of that she switches her tail in thegreatest complacency. He was just showing me how to tempt her littlewhite nose with a wisp of hay that she was learning to eat, and I wasluxuriating with one new-born wriggler in my arms and two yellow-downpuff-balls in my hand, when Sam and the mule came up from the field. 

"My, it's great to have a nice family party like this to plow for!" hesaid, as he led the mule into his stall and poured down his oats out ofa bucket the Byrd ran to bring him. "Any news from Petie, Bettykin?"

"I've got a letter from Peter that I haven't read, but one from JudgeVandyne that I have. Here it is--read it, " and I held the letter openfor Sam to read over my shoulder. 

"Read it to me, Betty; I'm too dirty to come that near you, " he said, ashe took the cob pipe out of his pocket and prepared to light up whilethe Byrd scampered to the house to hurry Mammy's dinner. 

"You're not exactly dirty, Sam, " I answered, surveying him with asatisfiedly critical eye. "You only look and smell like the earth andthe sky and the barn and--and--"

"Just call it cosmic, Betty, and let it go at that, " he answered, as hereached out and roughed my hair over my eyes with the long hickoryswitch with which he had been merely threatening the mule all day. "Goon, read me the judge's document on the subject of Peter while we waitfor Mammy's dinner cluck. "

As he had asked me to do, I read it all, slowly, while my heart, thathad been climbing like a squirrel to the tops of the trees, began toburrow down in the reverse manner of a chipmunk. I could see Sam'sspirits doing likewise. 

"The judge gets under Pete's skin and peels the fat off him, " said Sam, slowly, with sadness in his deep, strong voice. "I've just got to buildsome sort of a poet's corner to put him in, so he can come on down fromPhiladelphia from the opening of the spring Academy. He will have burnedhimself out by then, and he'll be so weak we can feed him out of abottle. "

"And it's his play, too, Sam, " I answered, despondently. "He's beginningon the third act, and just reading it all and suggesting in spots ismaking me thin. It is all the terrible heroic struggle of the poor heronow and he doesn't seem to let the heroine help him a bit. Oh, Sam, ifPeter were to fail with this play after Farrington has encouraged him Idon't know what might happen! I'm sorry you ever mentioned Keats to me. I dream about him at night. I adored him when I was at The Manor, and sodid Mabel, " and my lips quivered so I had to turn against the harnesshanging on the wall against which I drooped. 

"Keats or Peter?" asked Sam as he pressed his whip across my shouldersin comforting little licks because his hand was too muddy to pat me. 

"Both, " I sniffed. 

"Don't, " said Sam, with cheering command in his voice. "We are too lateto help Keats, and plenty early to pull Pete out of his divine fire. Let's go get some good grub from Mammy so we can plant the garden beforesundown, and stake out the poet's corner, too. I didn't have the moneyto hire the plowing done, but I am almost through for the present; and Ican whirl in now and get in shape for Petie's rescue in no time. "

"It's popped its skin with stuffing, and Mammy says come on while the'taters stands up stiff, " announced the Byrd, half-way up the path fromthe house to the barn. 

"He's talking about a duckling, but let's hope Peter can be mentioned inthe same terms in the near future, " said Sam, as he drove the fleet Byrdand me before him with the switch, in a scamper to Mammy and food. 

"Yes, " said Sam, as he stood an hour later in the middle of the plotunder the south window, which spread out in the sun like a great blacklake, smooth from his repeated plowing and harrowing, "that is therichest bit of land at The Briers or in Benton County. It will bringsome posies for you, Bettykin. "

"I'm not going to plant just flowers in it, Sam, " I answered in a tonethat admitted of no discussion, "Do you remember the part ofgrandmother's book that told what she made off of the southern half-acreof hers the year everything failed? I've got it right here, and I'mgoing to follow it, " and as I spoke I hugged the ancestral garden to mybreast with one arm, while I held the old grass basket I had made forSam in my infancy in the other hand, with all my town seeds in it. 

"Oh, there's plenty of garden-land all over the place, Betty. Come onand sow the posies. "

"There's not plenty of onion and beet and lettuce and okra and tomatoand celery land right at the well, Sam, that Byrd and I can carry waterfrom, " I answered, positively. "Is this land mine or yours?"

"Yours. "

"Wait. I forgot!" I exclaimed in sudden, embarrassed consternation. "Areyou renting this land to me, Sam?"

"Renting it to you, Betty?" For a second Sam's eyes blazed in a way Ihadn't seen since the time I didn't want to take all of the one fish wecaught after a hot day's fishing out at Little Harpeth at our tenth andfourteenth years. Then, suddenly, a queer expression came up and drownedthe anger in his eyes and twitched at the comers of his mouth until Irecognized it as humor. 

"I believe it would be better for us both to crop it on shares, as youare going to put in foodstuffs, too. I am cropping on onions with oldCharlie Wade, down the road, and with sugar-beets with Hen Bates. Inthis case it would be about fair for you to furnish the seeds and I theland, all labor that each of us puts in to be charged against the grossreceipts. I'll just enter you in my time-book now. Let's see--it isone-fifteen, " and as he spoke Sam took out, first his watch, and then amuddy little book that had time-tables and all sorts of almanac thingsin it. 

For a second I was as mad as I was when he handed me the two-inch fishand ordered me to take it in for the cook to have for my supper; but ina second I saw just what he had done to me and I didn't dareremonstrate. 

"How much do I get an hour?" I asked, with the greatest dignity, as Ithrew the seed-basket and my hat on the ground and picked up my rustyold hoe, ready for business. 

"I charge myself at twelve and a half cents. Are you worth about--aboutfifteen?" he asked in a business-like tone of voice, but I saw a twitchat the corners of his mouth that made me boil with rage. 

"Put me down at six and a quarter for the present, " I answered, haughtily. 

"Down she goes, " he answered, as he thus minimized me with his penciland put the book back in his pocket. "Now, where do you want me to heavein the lilacs so as to get the two corners of the garden to guide therows by? Shall they run north and south or east and west? It reallydoesn't make much difference. "

"East and west, then, " I answered, calmly, though my hand clenched overthe hollyhock seeds which I had put in an envelope in the pocket of mycorduroy skirt. It was cruelly thoughtless of him--this selection of thelilacs for the corner-stones of the garden after making me so happy, nota month ago, with that lovely sentiment about wanting to plant thehollyhock seeds first in memory of the dolls of our youth. "Peter willenjoy looking down the rows from the living-room window better thanacross them, " I added, quickly, for fear he would humiliate me byremembering that he had forgotten the hollyhock seeds he had stolen forme. 

"Say where and I'll dig for you, " he said; but I saw a glint ofsomething fairly shoot from his eyes. 

"Here, " I said, and stood at a nice right angle from the corner of thehouse and the old cedar-tree he had said he could nail the wires to tosave a post, when he had to put up a fence. 

He came over promptly with the spade and poised it to dig into theground--and my heart. 

Then he hesitated, and looked at me quickly for a second. Then he threwdown the spade and said, quietly:

"I'll go get that rotted stump dirt before I break ground for thelilacs, and you can think about things while you wait. " With that helifted the wheelbarrow and trundled out of the situation, leaving me inthe depths of a hurt uncertainty. 

But if Samuel Foster Crittenden thought I was as stupid as that, he hada chance to learn better--at least I thought I would give him one. I'mnot sure yet that I did. 

As soon as he was out of sight I flew to the end of the garden, where Ithought the row of hollyhocks would make a lovely background for all thelong lines of vegetables and flowers running into it, sighted with myeye, ran a trench with the rusty old hoe, flung in my seeds, and coveredit up in less time than it takes to tell it. When Sam came back I hadspaded out at least two and a half shovelfuls of dirt, that I foundsurprisingly heavy, from the hole for the first lilac. I saw him startand hesitate as if about to say something, and then I think--I think, but I can't be sure--his eyes rested on my hasty and surreptitiousgardening. 

"You are the real thing, Betty, " was all he said as he roughed my hair, first back and then down over my eyes, and took Grandmother Nelson'sspade from my hand and began to make the dirt fly out of the hole. Iwonder what I'll say when those hollyhocks come up. 

And then we all worked. It astonished me to find what one man, onewoman, and one small boy can do to a plot of earth in three hours, witha string, sharpened sticks, seed, hoes, spades, rakes, and radianthappiness. At four o'clock we all three sank down in a heap at the endof the last row of green peas in delicious exhaustion. 

"Nice little seed, I'll dig you up to-morrow to see how you feel, " saidthe Byrd as he patted in a stray pea he had found with the beets. "Ican't dig you all up, but I will as many as I can. "

"Yes, you will--not, " said Sam, reaching for him as he skimmed anddipped away. And then followed a lecture on floriculture, agriculture, and horticulture that I immensely enjoyed. 

"Yes, " assented the fledgling, with the greatest intellectualenthusiasm, "baby beets folds up jest that way, " and he illustratedafter Sam, with his grubby little paddies, "same as chickens in eggsand--"

"Come on, Betty, let's go select the spot for the cedar-log temple forPeter's muses, " Sam interrupted as he made a lightning grab for the Byrdand tumbled him back into the loamy earth. 

I realized then that up to a quarter of five o'clock on thattwenty-first-of-April day I had been really wretchedly uneasy aboutPeter in every way, that I did and did not understand since that sceneat the tea-table in the Astor when I had assumed the responsibility ofhim. But at that moment when Sam held back a tangle of blackberry-bushesand low-sweeping dogwood boughs, and we stepped out on a moss-coveredrock-ledge that commanded a view of the Harpeth Valley, stretching awayand away in an iridescent shimmer of springiness and sunshine, itcompletely vanished, for the time being, anyway. 

"Oh, " I said, with a great sigh of relief, "let's plant Peter here. He--he can grow his dream in this place. "

"Yes, " answered Sam, quietly, "I'll log up and daub up a shack righthere, with a stone fireplace. It won't cost anything, for I'll use myown logs and pick up my own stones. Thank God for shoulders and armswhich can make shelter for anybody that needs it anywhere, " and as hespoke Sam looked across the valley into the blaze of the sun that wasbeginning to go down behind Paradise Ridge, with that earth-smolder Iwas beginning to recognize. I knew that David and Moses and Christ hadall looked down across new life from a hillside, and Sam seemed almosttransfigured to me. And I had a--a vision. I saw that Sam was to be oneof a gigantic new kind of men to whom all who were ahungered and athirstwould come to be cared for. I had brought Peter to him first, and Iknew--I felt that others--that--

"Sam, " I said, as I reached out and laid a timid hand, for the firsttime stained with earth labor, on the blue sleeve of his overalls, "don't ever leave Peter and me anywhere you are not, will you?"

"I'm always here for you both when you need me, Betty. Just call, " heanswered. "And now you hustle home to Mother Hayes or she won't let mehave you at six and a quarter cents any more. "

"Make it five, Sam. I feel smaller now. "

"No, that'll be Pete's rate. Come on and take the mud-scow back to Eph. Present my compliments to him after he has washed it. "

Some people have a way of pruning a friend's spirit in a manner thatmakes it bush out more hardily than ever. That is the way Sam does me, and I intend to worship him delightfully if I want to and he continuesto deserve it. It is so much better for a woman to worship a man thanlove him; it puts a strong barrier between them to keep him from hurtingher, which loving him doesn't seem to, at least not with Edith andTolly; and I am always worried over Peter; but for long intervals I canforget Sam comfortably and find him right there when I need him. 

I am glad that I had that care-free day of hard work with Sam out at TheBriers to fatigue me so that I couldn't take Peter's letter completelyto heart. I read it, cried over it a minute, and then fell into my bedwithout even putting rose oil on my cheek curls to hold them in place. My first day at farming had done me up. Still, it's no use to cover upyour head from trouble; it's right here by the bed the minute you peepover the top of the sheet. I woke up, feeling that the whole world mustbe camping on the top of my crocheted lace counterpane; but soon Irealized that it was only Peter's play. Peter is stuck in the mud at thebeginning of the third act, and he thinks it is quicksands that aregoing to drown him. The last few sentences of the letter sound like abeautiful funeral oration to himself, and they made me so miserable thatI put on my clothes and fled to daddy, who was out smoking his cigar onthe front porch in the crisp morning air. 

"And Sam can't possibly get ready for him to come down in less than twoweeks. He has to build the house in between the plowing and milking andother things. Peter may die. What shall we do?" I wound up with a wail. 

"Sam paid off the note on two of the cows and cash for the mule lastMonday, " answered daddy. "Not a farmer in the Harpeth Valley has donebetter in less than two years, and I would leave Peter to him. I guesshe can fodder up the play, too. Have the poet down to visit mother whilehe waits. "

"He can't come for a week; he's going to be decorated at the Academy. He's the youngest that ever has been; but I'll write and ask him, " Ianswered, in a jumble, but very much comforted. 

Peter accepted my invitation and announced his arrival as ten dayslater. Then real work began among Sam's friends and mine in Hayesboro. 

I put the case to them plainly and movingly. Here was a young anddistinguished genius coming to settle down in Hayesboro to rescue hisplay, and it was the duty of everybody to help him in every way. Thefirst thing he had to have was shelter, and we ought to all help Sam asmuch as we could to provide it for him. He was willing to stay with usfor a few days, on mother's invitation, which I had to hide ninecrochet-needles to make her write him, but he wrote that his "spiritpanted for the wilderness, " and if he felt that way about it he ought tobe settled in the cabin as soon as possible. 

"Why, of course, " said Julia, with large and responsive enthusiasm, "wemust just all turn in and help Sam. I never helped build a house, but ifyou can, Betty, so can I. "

"I can make curtains and things and cushions for chairs, " said Edith, with no less enthusiasm than Julia's. "I have a lovely bureau-scarf allfinished and--"

"Chairs--bureau!" I fairly gasped. "Neither Sam nor I had thought offurniture. Sam paid a big note in the bank for the cows and mule, andhow can he buy more stock like chairs and bureaus and beds?"

"Why, hasn't Sam got furniture? The Crittenden house had the loveliestin Hayesboro, " asked Edith, plaintively. 

"He's sold it; Sam is poor, " I answered, proudly. "He hasn't gotanything but Mammy and Byrd and the other stock, and places for all tosleep and eat and keep warm. Now what are we going to do?"

"He wouldn't let us buy him anything, would he?" asked Sue, thoughtfully. 

"I know Sam better than that, " said Edith. 

"I'll tell you, " I exclaimed, suddenly and radiantly. "Of course, wecan't give Sam anything, but I believe--I believe that if I asked himvery kindly he would let us make a kind of museum of affection ofPeter's room and take all the lovely things we can borrow from people toput in the shack to help inspire him. Mother will let me start withGrandmother Nelson's desk, though it is dearer than life to me; and Iknow she'll crochet him a lamp-mat before he gets here--maybe several, if she likes the pattern she starts on. "

"Do you remember that mahogany table in my room?" exclaimed Julia, several minutes lost in deep reflection. "It is real Chippendale, AuntAmanda says, and I'll send that out. Oh, to think of a poet laying hispen down on it! Or does he use a pencil?"

And it is true that from very small beginnings great trees grow. Inthis case it was Peter's roof-tree, or rather what was under it. I neversaw anything like Hayesboro when it takes generosity in its teeth andruns away, as at the time when Mr. Stanton, the Methodist minister, hadthirty-five pounds of sausage sent him from different hog-killings justbecause in prayer-meeting, when he publicly thanked the Lord for hisseventh child, he mentioned that it was welcome, though one more mouthto feed. Of course, the baby didn't need the sausage any more than Peterreally needed all the things everybody wanted to send out to make thecabin comfortable for him. Fortunately, Sam kept his head, as theminister did when he sold the sausage and bought groceries for the wholefamily; he selected only five pieces out of the list of sixty that wegave him, and it took me a day and a half to go around and keep peoplefrom getting hurt because he didn't call in his wagon for the thingsthey had got out and rubbed and dusted. And before the sun set on thesecond day of my explanations I had talked Peter into the very heart ofHayesboro, which was all down to the station to meet him and welcomehim. The mayor wanted to have the brass band, but I persuaded him not todo that, but to make Peter a little speech. Miss Henrietta Spain askedto have her school children march down to throw jonquils in his path, and I had to give in to that. Besides, I thought Peter would like it; sodid Sam. 

But that came later, after six of the longest days any of us ever livedthrough. We spent them at The Briers, and every soft friend I had is nowa hardened specimen. Everybody went out to see Sam and advise him abouthow to care for a distinguished guest that they all felt that Hayesboroowned and was just lending to Sam for the time being, and they allremained to farm. Most of them had never been to see him before, andthey were so delighted that they lost their heads and hearts to thefarm. The Briers is like a great, big, beautiful dog that lies therebegging you to come and plow it and scratch it and hoe it and rake it, while it licks out green curly vegetable tongues for more. At first Samseemed slightly overwhelmed by all the offers of help that came with mein Redwheels, dressed in business-like corduroys that had been made likemine, in a hurry, and with hoes and seed-baskets, or that Pink or Tollydrove out in their cars; but he finally entered everybody in thetime-book at two and a half cents an hour, gave each a plot of groundthat wouldn't do for anything else, and started them off, while he kepton at real work. I'm glad to have every healthy assurance of being inthe world when Sam comes to the harvesting of his friendly crops. Itwill be a great occasion. If Edith's five rows of okra do not net orgross--I forget which is the right term for it--I know she will wiltaway, and I dread Sue if her fifty tomato-plants go down before thehumble cutworm. Sue won't be humble. Miss Editha came out with us oneafternoon and sowed a row of ladies'-slippers and princess-feathers, andit was funny to see old Dr. Chubb, who had driven the ten miles just forthe pleasure of seeing Sam (only, Sam said it was in hopes of seeingme), digging and raking for her, while Colonel Menefee, in true militarystyle, commanded them both. Father came once and took Sam away down to afield by himself, and from the look on both their faces I was afraid Samhad again refused to borrow money to buy the mate to the mule he neededso badly. Father was so mad he took off his coat, and he and Tolly splitwood enough for the big fireplace to last until midsummer. Sam says thatPink sweat enough soap-grease to make him worth more than two and a halfcents, if it could have been collected. He didn't mean us to hear himsay it to Pink, but Edith got pale with shock, while daddy roared sothat old Buttercup came up the hill to see what was the matter. Julialaughed, and so did I--when we got away from Edith. 

It took six good days of such chorus work to get every odd job at TheBriers nicely finished up, and daddy and the mayor and Colonel Menefeemended all the rail fences before they rested on the seventh. 

Then on Monday morning came the log-raising for the poet's lodge, andeverybody assembled long before Sam had nicked the last log with hisgreat big adz. We all sat around on the rocks and ends of the logs anddiscussed how to begin before Sam got ready to tell us the right way. The colonel and Miss Editha were standing a little to one side, and Iknew that he was being sentimental by the fluttering smile that came andwent on her tea-rose face; but suddenly he turned and said to daddy, with his fierce old face lighting:

"Just look, Hayes, there's pioneer blood in them yet--and brawn, too, "he added, as Tolly and Pink and Billy Robertson stripped off their coatsand came forward as Sam knocked the last crimson cedar chip from thelast log. 

"Steady--up now, Tolly, " said Sam, as Tolly bent to one end of one ofthe long, rough cedar logs, that had so lately been a forest king, butthat was now dethroned and shorn of its branching power with which towrestle with the wind. Pink and Billy got holds in between. "Up--up, boys! Now roll!" shouted Sam again, and with a strain and a heave theylanded the first log level and true on the stone underpinnings. 

"Hip--hip--hurrah for the poet's house!" shouted Tolly, as he rolled hisshirt-sleeves up and spat on his hands to show his readiness for morelogs; and we all clapped, while Edith picked up a button that had poppedoff his shirt with the strain of his big chest underneath. 

Then for a second Sam's kind eyes sank down deep into mine and smolderedthere. I know he was praying for Peter as the rest cheered. Then he bentand called out:

"Next. Up--up, boys! Steady!"

My eyes misted for a second, and Peter's pale face rose before them inthe mist. Peter is a man of dreams, for whom was being harnessed allthis sinew and brawn of reality. And men must plow and plant and reapand hew and lift for their vision-bringers, and women must do it also. It is only right. I am willing. Where were the neighbors to the Keatsesthat they didn't--And I was about to be dissolved in a sea of sentimentwhen Sam's voice hauled me to the surface as he shouted:

"Hi, Betty, get out and sight this end for a right angle-drop, as Ishowed you. Wait! Back, boys!"

And after that I held the metal square and sighted until I felt as if Ihad eaten a right angle, while Sam's crew heaved and raised and droppedand rolled, until all four of the low walls were fitted into thenotches, log for log, and the roof-poles were laid just as the sun beganto quit his job and get on toward China. 

"No four of their young Virginia pioneer ancestors who came over thewilderness trail did it any quicker or better, Colonel, " said daddy, ashe walked around to the back of the cabin and then again to the front. As he spoke he laid his arm across Sam's shoulder--and I knew that thebreach was healed until the next time daddy tried to help himfinancially. 

All the log-raisers went home by twilight, and daddy and I were thelast. The Byrd had insisted on showing daddy nine little curly-tailedpigs taking their evening repast at the maternal fount, which they wereshyly late in doing because the fledgling perched so near them on thefence to exhibit and direct the repast. 

This left me to help Sam gather up his tools and pick up the fragrantcedar chips for Mammy's vesper fire. 

"Now, the chimney next and Pete's housed, " said Sam, as he sat down on alog right where I was crouching, filling the basket with the chips. "Areyou happy, Bettykin?"

"Sam, when I know that Peter is tucked in that little old bed thatmatches yours that mother gave you out of our garret I am going tobreathe so deep that maybe I'll--I'll break my belt, " I answered, as Ipicked a chip from under one of his big farm shoes. "I couldn't standhim on my mind much longer. "

"Let him stay comfortably in your heart and don't get him on your mind, "answered Sam, as he calmly got out the cob pipe, filled and lighted it. "Pete's great enough to fill both for any woman. " And Sam's face took onthat devout young prophet-look it always does when he looks at his landor mentions Peter--the look which then began to irritate as well asimpress me, I don't exactly know why. 

"My mind's not very big and my heart is smaller, " I snapped, as I upsetpart of the basket of chips and had to begin to pick them all up again. 

"You're young--you'll grow up--to Pete, " said Sam, as he roughed my hairworse than he had ever done since I had forbidden him, picked up mybasket and started to the house, leaving me to follow, squaw-fashionand perfectly furious. Now if I don't know whether my troth is plightedto Peter, and Peter doesn't know, I am certain that I can't see whySamuel Foster Crittenden should be so sure of it; and he and I partedanything but friends, a fact over which I could feel daddy chuckle as hesat wedged beside me in the car, though he didn't dare smile. I wouldwager my first mess of peas that he winked at Sam. I had seen them actthat way about me only too often in my infancy. I felt that I hated thewhole world until I had to except the fledgling, who rode down to thegate on the running-board just over my left shoulder, while Sam camealong to hold him on. 

"Betty, you is the prettiest lady they is if your eyes do crinkle whenyou laugh, and ain't blue. I'd let you kiss me anywhere I'm cleanenough, if you bring me just one pigeon that will lay eggs for littleones, " he said, as I slowed up for him to climb down to open the gate. 

"She could get one cheaper than that, Byrd, " said Sam, as he got down toopen the gate, while for a second I snuggled the fledgling, whom Ialways hated to leave out in the woods in the dark, even with Sam'srough hand so near his pillow. 

"Thank you, " I said, pleasantly, as I drove through the gate, withoutstopping another ten minutes to chat, as I knew daddy wanted to. I'mglad Samuel Foster Crittenden will never know just exactly what I wascross about, as I wasn't sure myself. It is strange how you can hate aperson for whom you have the deep regard I have for Sam, when he hasdone nothing at all to offend you. 

That night I fought it all out with myself about Peter. I felt that Samhad brought the sore spot in my heart to head and I would have tooperate and find out what was really there. Accordingly, after I hadsafely anchored myself in the middle of my old four-poster bed I slashedmyself. This is what I found. That I had made up my mind to marry Peterjust as soon as he wanted me to, which I knew would not be until afterthe play was finished down in Sam's wilderness. I had two reasons for myintention. Nobody in the world ever loved and depended on me as Peterhas always done since he read me the winning poem that he sent in forhis Junior Prize. Peter needs me, and nobody else in the world does. What could love be but giving and cherishing the beloved? By the test ofhow I longed to do all that to Peter I found out how I loved him. Thatwas the reason I openly admitted, but I am afraid that I was afraid ofSam if I should fail his young David-Keats in any way. He had alreadywarned me what I must be to him, and I felt as I did about that heifer Ilet get by me the first day I went to dig Sam out of the hollow tree towhich he has now had to build a new crotch in order to take in Peter. This time I would head off his calf for him, though I didn't mean tocall Peter that, even in the heat of debate with myself. Oh, I couldtake such good care of Peter and Judge Vandyne, and Mabel would be soglad! My spirits rose at the thought of their joy, and as I felt better, I luxuriated in the thought of Sam's approbation. I would give Peter theanswer he had begged for in every letter, help him with the play untilit was finished, and then have a glorious wedding, with Edith and Sueand Julia and all the girls. I must have fallen asleep then, for Idreamed that Julia was the bride at my wedding and that I couldn't getthere. When I woke from that nightmare I decided to let Sam have thehappiness of hearing Peter tell him of my submission to their wishes;and that time I sobbed myself to sleep. 

From that fatal night until the afternoon of Peter's arrival, I saw Samonly three times, and those when there were many others with us. I wasso sweet and submissive to him that I saw I alarmed him greatly. 

Peter arrived according to schedule and was met in the manner plannedby our friends. As he stood on the train platform just behind a womanand a baby, I saw his great dark eyes, that seem fairly to glow out ofhis beautiful face, eagerly race over the crowd. When they rested on methey lit with what I thought was perfect joy until I saw them find Sam afew seconds later. That was the real thing, and I never loved Peterbetter than when I saw him hold Sam's hand in his while he was greetingme in a suppressed, lover-like way and was being introduced to people. Sam was also radiant. Peter and Sam and I are the eternal triangle thatPeter is always talking into plots for plays--only Sam is the apexinstead of me. Isn't it beautiful to have it that way?

III

THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER

Hayesboro took Peter into its heart of hearts and then sighed for moreto give him. This town is like the old man's horse whose natural gait isrunning away when it is not asleep. Peter woke it up and it took the bitin its mouth and bolted with him, while Peter clung to the saddle andhad the time of his young poetic life. 

Mother accepted Peter with her usual placidity. She took him into herroom and I suppose she examined him physically, for I saw her give him adose of sarsaparilla tea every morning he was with us. I bought her fivespools of the finest silk thread, ranging in shade from gray tolavender, to begin on a crocheted tie and pair of socks for him. Daddywas as good as gold to him and fell immediately into Judge Vandyne'sattitude toward him. I knew he would. Eph maintained the dignity of thehaphazard family at meal-times, and waited on Peter worshipfully at allothers. The black beauty in the kitchen was heard to remark to thehouse-girl:

"I hope that white man's skin will stretch, for I shore am going tostuff it. He am a insult to any respectable skillet or pot. " She did, and at times I trembled for the poet. 

He read to Miss Henrietta Spain's school the poem on "Space" which the_Literary Opinion_ had copied; and he was the greatest possible success. Most of it I feel sure the school didn't understand. But just as hefinished the last two lines--those lines the magazine had called "asperfect in winged lyric quality as any lines in the English languagecould be"--the Byrd, whom Sam had groomed carefully and brought in fromthe brier-patch for the occasion, rose, and, with his freckles blackwith the intensity of his comprehension of the poem, spread his littlearms and said:

"I fly! I fly!"

"I fly! I fly, too!" A little chubkin in a blue muslin dress justbehind him jumped to her feet and echoed him before they could berepressed. 

"That was the most perfect tribute I shall ever receive, " Peter said, that night out on the porch, after Sam had gone home, carrying theexhausted Byrd, who even in sleep held in one hand the handle of a fullbasket he had begged from mother, and in the other tightly grasped asack in which were two "little ones" daddy had got for him. Thesetreasures happened to be young rabbits, and Sam said he would chargedaddy with the damages. 

"Good old Sam, " said Peter, as we stood at the gate by the old lilac, who was beginning to beplume himself more richly than any of hiscompatriots in Hayesboro--in honor of Peter, I felt sure--and watchedSam and the Byrd jog away in the wagon down Providence Road. "He'll makehis mark on his generation yet, Betty. This is just a temporary eclipseof the effulgence of a young planet that will shine with the warm lightof humanity when the time comes. There is no man like him. O Samboy!"

"Oh, I love you, Peter, for feeling that way, " I exclaimed, heartily, asI grasped his arm with enthusiasm. "You are so wonderful, Peter. "

"Dear, dearest Betty, " said Peter, as he put his arm through mine, andwe both began to swing back and forth on the gate. "It is so marvelousto have a woman respond to your every mood as you do to mine. It is likehaving in one's possession an angel incarnate in her own harp. "

"Oh, Peter you _are_ wonderful!" I again exclaimed, because I felt thatway and had no other feeling to draw another remark from. It is sosatisfactory to love a man with no variations. I cannot see why girlslike to tremble and blush and chill and glow and get angry and repentantabout the men they love, as Edith does about Clyde Tolbot. I wish Icould make them all understand the great calmness of true love like minefor Peter. 

The five days that Peter stayed with mother, Hayesboro did many otherthings to him. The mayor got up a barbecue in his honor, and they hadnine political speeches and two roast pigs and a lamb. Peter came homepale, but we decided before we went to bed to let the hero of "TheEmergence" get beaten up a little in the strike before he made his greatspeech to the capitalist. I felt so happy for the play. 

But the next day Peter took tea alone with Miss Editha MorrisCarruthers, and he was so charmed with her that he almost decided to letthe whole play end in separation. 

"But it is so lonely for a woman to be a heroine of a separation, Peter, " I pleaded with him as we sauntered up and down the long porch. 

"Under such stress souls grow, Betty, " he answered, gloomily. "Togetherlovers feed on the material; apart, on the immaterial. Can we say whichis best for the final emergence of the superman and--" Just here Juliacame across the street and into our front gate, looking like a ripepeach, in a pink muslin gown, with a huge plate of hickory-nutbutter-candy in her hand, and we all three proceeded to materialnourishment. I left them for a few minutes while I went up to my roomand took out Grandmother Nelson's book. I wanted to be sure that not asingle thing would bloom before I got back to The Briers. Peter hadinsisted that he should not go forth into the wilderness until he coulddo it dramatically to stay, so I hadn't been out for five days or moreand I was wild--simply mad. To have a garden and be separated from it atsprouting and blooming time is worse than any soul separation that everhappened to any woman. Of that I feel sure. 

Sue Bankhead was as nice and lovely to Peter as could be, and even BillyRobertson's contentment with himself was slightly ruffled with the wayshe took him out horseback with her every morning, but her crowningattention was a dance for him. Sue has the loveliest dances in Hayesborobecause of her own charm and the fact that the double parlors in the oldBankhead house are sixty-two feet long and forty-six feet wide. Thegirls were as lovely as a bunch of spring blossoms, and Julia lookedlike the most gorgeous, pink, fragrant, drooping cabbage-rose as Peterdanced with her again and again. I was so glad, because he is as tall asshe is, and she is such a good dancer that it must have been as soothingto his tired nerves as a nice wide rocking-chair with billows of bluemull cushions. It was easy to see what she thought of him from the wayshe looked at him, and poor Pink took me out in the moonlight and sworeat me in polite language. 

"Why don't you feed your sick poet your own self, Betty, and not let himloose to eat up my girl?" he stormed. 

"Oh, Pink, how can you be so ungenerous, when you know how wonderful heis and how wonderful his play will be if you and everybody are kind andgood to him while he is writing it, " I chided him. 

"Well, he had better not put Julia into it without me, " he answered, somewhat mollified at my reproof. 

"He won't, I know he won't, " I hastened to assure him. "Especially ifyou are nice to him, as you promised. You know, Pink, you are an awfullyinteresting man in some ways, and I know it is going to do Peter a lotof good to be friends with you; you are so--so substantial. "

"That's it; slap my fat! Everybody does, " he answered, gloomily. 

"It was the mules I was talking about, not you, Pink, " I answered, hurriedly, for I know how sensitive he is. 

"Well, call me a mule then, " he again said, with the deepest depression. 

"Now don't be stupid, Pink, and--"

"I am stupid, too!"

"Pink Herriford, will you please tell my friend, Peter Vandyne, aboutyour heroism in stopping the stampede of those thousand mules you wereshipping to France in time to save the lives of all of them and aboutten men? I seem to have to speak to you in words of two syllablesto-night. " I could feel my cheeks burn with temper as I spoke and Pinkcame immediately out of his grouch and into his own happy personality. 

"Holy smoke! Betty, but that was some stunt! First I saw a big red mulelift his hind legs in ugly temper, and let fly right and left just as--"

"Oh, wait Pink, let me get Peter!" I exclaimed, as I heard the dancethat Pink and I had been arguing out, instead of sitting or dancing out, stop to get breath. 

Pink was a wonder as he stood in the center of everybody that I hadgathered around him to hear in particular what they had all been talkingabout in general. We were all spellbound, for it was a really excitingand tremendous recital, and even Julia came out of her daze over Peterto listen with rapt attention, though I imagine she had heard it before. 

"Immense!" exclaimed Peter, with his pale, thin face in a perfect flameof excitement just as Pink threw his own body right in front of thelargest mule and turned his neck and--

"What?" said Pink, as he glared at Peter suspiciously. 

"Perfectly great, " said Peter, laying his arm on Pink's. "And I don'tsee--"

Just here I slipped out onto the porch and sat down on the steps in thestarlight to get my breath while the tale of heroism went on from thereassured hero. 

And as I stood on the front steps, just out of the noise of "Too MuchMustard" that had again begun its syncopated wail in the house, I beganto worry about all my flower children in the country. Sam had not beenin for three days, and he had sent word by one of his neighbors that hecouldn't get to the dance because he had to cup up potatoes to plant. Hehad explained to Byrd and me all about how you cut out each little eyewith some potato around it for moisture and nourishment while it takesroot in the earth, and the Byrd had been especially interested in allthe potato-peels ever since. He had almost worn the life out of Mammybegging her not to cut through any of the "little ones" with her knifeuntil she had taken to boiling them whole. And as I sat and picturedthem all sitting on the back porch with the big lamp lighted, justcutting away, maybe Byrd still up for the emergency, the whole danceseemed to put on a mask of grinning foolishness and resolve itself, withits jiggy music, into a large bunch of nothing, with me included. I wasin a bad way for the best dancer in Hayesboro, not to sound likeboastful Billy. 

"Well, hello! Can this be Betty the wall-flower?" called a voice fromover the fence. It was so out of sight that it might have come from thehollow log out on Old Harpeth if it hadn't been so near. "Won't anybodydance with you, honey-bunch?"

"Nobody; unless you will, " I answered, running down toward the voice. And as I came nearer the hedge I saw that a wagon and mule were drawn upin the shadow behind a man. "It's fine for you to come in, after all, Sam. Peter will be so happy. "

"Overalls are not invited, " answered Sam, as he gave my hair the usualrough with his big horny hand while I reached up and grasped his sleeve, too glad to see him to remonstrate. "I came in for Pete's things, and Ibrought a load of new peas and ten dozen eggs at the same time, so Icouldn't dress for the dance, or have time to dance if I did. Sixseventy-five a barrel, and five barrels; how's that for wealth, Bettykin?" As he spoke Sam reached down in his overalls pocket, broughtup a big fistful of all kinds of money, and poured it into my tunic ofembroidered mull that I held up for it. 

"It is the most beautiful money I ever saw, " I said, and I had toswallow hard to keep out of my voice the sentiment I knew Sam would notlike. I knew how hard he had worked for every cent of it. 

"I'll give you that bright new quarter if you think it is so pretty, " hesaid, and of course it couldn't have been emotion that cut his voice offso indistinctly. 

"Come on, then, and let me dance for it, " I answered. Then myself andmoney and mull dress, --that came all the way from New York with athree-figured bill--I threw into the blue-jeans arms. And out on thesmooth, hard turnpike Sam and I had one glorious fox-trot with only thesurprised mule looking on. 

"Bring Pete out at about eleven. Your first pea is due to pod aboutnoon. No, I must go now or never, " said Sam as he shook me off when Iclung and begged for another dance. He climbed up in the wagon. "Goodnight, " he called. 

For a long time I stood and watched him standing bolt upright in thewagon and clattering away with his great ugly old mule in a lurchingtrot; then I went in to the dance. I didn't tell anybody that Sam hadbeen there, because they would all have been disappointed. The way Sam'shome town loves him and disapproves of his farming is pathetic. Fivemiles is a long way for anybody that knows Sam to be separated from him, at least that is the way I felt as Peter slid and skidded and dipped mearound while he told me how proud he was of my beauty and the lovely andworthy friends I possessed. He mentioned Julia and Pink and the mules indetail. I think Peter Vandyne has the most grateful, appreciative, sympathetic nature I ever encountered, and I told him so as we walkedhome across the lawn while the stars were beginning to grow pale andflicker with no more night to burn. 

"My heart is full, full, dear, dearest Betty, with you and--and thework. The vision becomes clearer, " Peter said, with his great dark eyeslooking up at the retreating stars. And as we walked up the steps hetold me another struggle he had thought up for the hero to have with hisconscience about the poor little waiting heroine. The mule story hadn'tdone him one bit of good, and I went to bed as cross as two sticks. 

"Oh, Samboy! I'm glad you are there and that you are Peter's next offriends or first or--Good night!" I muttered, as I closed my eyes on myfavorite glimpse of Old Harpeth. 

The next morning at about nine-thirty occurred Peter Vandyne'sintroduction into real life. He took it gallantly with his head up andswimming for shore. 

The day was one of young May's maiden efforts offered with a soft smileof tender sunshine and in a flutter of bird wing and apple-blow. Ofcourse, Sam had told me not to bring Peter out to The Briers until abouteleven o'clock, because he wanted to do some farm housekeeping, as Iafterward found out. But half past nine was the very limit of myendurance, and I sat and fidgeted with the wheel while mother and Ephpacked us up with the inevitable basket for Byrd plus the alsoinevitable "little ones" that daddy somehow managed to find for him. These young were three small kittens, attended in their blindness by ablack-and-white-spotted mother cat, all safely laced into a large basketand by that time resigned to their fate. I didn't mean to bedisrespectful to dear Peter in my thoughts, but somehow they reminded meof him as he was led to farm life; and I laughed outright as Eph gavePeter a parting pat and Redwheels and me a shove, while mother calledafter us not to forget the sarsaparilla. 

As long as I live I shall remember that journey along old ProvidenceRoad with a lovely nature like Peter's. He glowed with his inward flamethere at my side, until I felt that it would be bad for him. Peter hasseen all kinds of wonderful scenery all his life; but of course, thereis none in the world anything like the Harpeth Valley. All the other inthe world is either grand or placid or swept and garnished and tended orbrilliant or moist, but this valley under Paradise Ridge is different. Peter expressed it so that my throat tightened and I had to holdsteadier to the wheel as we passed an old farm wagon. 

"It's the hollow of God's hand in which He has gathered His children andtheir homes, Betty, " he said, huskily. "Look at that white-haired oldgrand dame in her frilled frock with the string of chickens followingher and the two kiddies bringing up the rear. And look at that oldred-gray brick house. England has nothing finer. "

"That is old Mrs. Georgetta Johnson, " I answered, as I waved my hand andgot a stately wave in return. "She is the fifth generation to live inthat house, and the two kiddies are the eighth. Her mother danced withLafayette, and she is over eighty-five. I'll take you to see her someday. "

"Betty, " said Peter, with positive awe, "I have never seen such homesand furniture and people as I have found here. What is it that makes itso--so satisfying?"

"It must be that everything has had time to root here, people and all, "I answered as I again avoided a farm wagon and a negro driving two finemilk-cows with cow babies wobbling along at their flanks. 

"Yes, " answered Peter, thoughtfully--"yes, I should say that 'rooted'would about express the life, and I am wondering--" But just here weturned off into Brier Lane, and Peter went up in the air and began tofloat among the tree-tops, only being able to take in the high-lightslike the gnarled old cedars that jutted out from the lichen-coveredstone wall and hung over the moss-green snake-rail fences, or the oldoaks which were beginning to draw young, green loveliness around them, or the feathery buckbushes and young hackberries that were harboring allvarieties of mating birds who were wooing and flirting and cheeping babytalk in a delightfully confidential and unabashed manner. Peter hadbecome wildly absorbed in a brilliant scarlet cardinal that followed thecar, scolding and swearing in the most pronounced bird language, all forno fault of ours that we could see, when we turned in the cedar-polegate of The Briers and began to wind our way up through the potato andcorn field on one side and the primeval forest on the other. It wasdifficult to get Peter past the old thorn-tree view of the HarpethValley we had come through, and he wanted to get out and stay for everat the milk-house; but I finally landed him in a Homeric daze up infront of the house, which stood with its hospitable old door wide openbut deserted. 

"Sam! Byrd! Mammy!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, while Peter satparalyzed at the sight of Sam's farm-house. Peter had got the oldCrittenden house and all the others where he had been entertained inhis mind's eye, and that Sam's present residence was a shock to him Icould see plainly. That was the beginning. 

"Hi, Betty, come here quick--I need you!" came in Sam's mostbusiness-like voice from the barn up on the hill, while I could hearwild and excited cheeps from the Byrd and disturbed clucks from Mammy. 

Leaving Peter to disembark as he recovered himself, I sped around thehouse and up to the barn. 

"Here, Betty, this blamed mule has kicked old Jude, and I must havesomebody to hold the edges together while I sew it up. Mammy's handsaren't steady enough. Now press the edges together and never mind theblood on your hands. Hold the halter, Mammy. You get that can of limeready to dust it, Byrd. " Thus in dirty, blood-stained overalls, with hishair on ends and an earth smudge as usual right across his face like aHeidelberg scar, Sam was commanding his forces of nature. 

"Ugh--uu--ow, Sam, " I shivered; but I came up under his arm and tried topush one dripping section of old-roan hide until it joined the other, though I couldn't quite make it. Over my shoulder Sam began to sew itacross with a huge crooked needle, helping me push the edges together asbest he could. At this auspicious moment the poet appeared at the barndoor in an absolutely dazed condition. 

"Here you, Pete, too!" Sam commanded, without looking up. "Get here onthe other side and press the hide together as Betty is doing. This isan awful long cut, but I can manage it, thanks to seeing Chubb sew upBates's mule. Whoah, Jude, old girl! Hold her steady, Mammy! Now, Pete, press hard; never mind the blood!"

At Sam's determined reiteration of the word blood, my senses reeled, andif it had been anybody but Sam sewing over my shoulder, I would havegone down in a crumpled heap. Also I was stirred by one glance atPeter's lovely long oval face with its Keats lock of jet-black hairtossed aloft, and I remained conscious from astonishment. 

This was a new Peter. His eyes burned in his face with determination. Hesquared his legs, clad in his elegant idea of farming corduroys, at theexact angle at which Sam's were set; then his long, white hands pulledthe bloody old hide together exactly in place. 

"That's it, Pete, hold it there. You slip out, Betty, and hold Judewhile Mammy gets the hot water ready to wash it when it is finished. Now, Pete, an inch farther along! Whoah, Jude!" And with his long needleSam began rapidly to draw the gaping wound together. 

"Here, Byrd, you hold Jude, " I said, suddenly; and giving the halter tothe dirty fledgling, who was snubbing tears in his distress over theaccident to his old friend, I quit the scene of the operation and fledto the woods to faint down on a log and be as ill as I wanted to. It wasrather bad; and it lasted about a quarter of an hour. 

Then, with my head turned determinedly away from the barn, I soughtdistraction in an interview with my garden. 

Oh, it was rapturous! Can anything in the world be as wonderful asputting queer little brown things in the earth, where it scares you tothink of their getting all cold and wet and rotted, and then coming tosee them sprout and curl and run out of the ground? No, nothing cancompare with it unless it is seeing whole rows of them bursting out intoblooms and tassels and little pods and burrs. I felt extravagant andwanted to kiss the whole vegetable family in a way of encouragement andgreeting. And the two lilacs were both most beautifully plumed out intheir long, white blossoms to greet me. Now, weren't they the pluckyyoung things to bloom that way in a perfectly strange place? Still, everybody always did have confidence in Sam. 

But then in every joy patch some weeds are bound to shoot up overnight, and I was horrified to look down the rows of purple beet fronds and seewhat a lot of bold pepper-grass and chickweed were doing in theirtrenches. Without waiting to get my gloves from my bag in the car, Ifell to and began a determined onslaught. Furiously I charged down tworows and up a third, at whose end I sank with exhaustion. 

"Say, Betty, could a cat give kitten dinner to a poor little duck thatall the hens peck?" asked the Byrd, anxiously, as he came and squattedbeside me with two of the new kittens and the duck orphan in question inhis arms. 

"No, Byrd, I don't believe so, " I answered, from instinct rather thandirect knowledge. 

"Why is they so many little ones in the world without mothers, me andthe duck and the cow that died 'fore Dr. Chubb came, her calf, and nowthat mean old dog have left her puppies to eat out of a plate?" heasked. He let the kittens slide to the ground, where they sprawled intheir blind helplessness, while he began to tenderly pry open the smallyellow ball's wide bill and insert crumbs of bread rolled into veryrealistic pills, but which the patient gobbled with evidentappreciation. 

"See, Byrd, you are just as good as a mother any day, " I said, a chokein my throat as I cuddled his thin little shoulder in the hollow betweenmy arm and my breast, and bent over to watch the orphan's meal. 

"Like Sam, " answered Byrd, with a queer little flash of his keen eyes upat me, and a grin that was so like Sam's that I tumbled him over ontothe grass, duck and all, and began a frolic with him which delighted hisheart and eased mine. I've loved that "little one" since the day theylet me hold him in my arms when he was only a few hours old andmotherless. Examining him from heels to head had comforted Sam in hisanguish and eased my own sympathetic sorrow. It is a tradition thatMammy Kitty rescued him just in time; but I've always felt that nothingwould have happened to him at Sam's sixteen-year-old hands if he hadbeen left for hours. 

In the midst of our frolic Peter and Sam came on the scene, and as faras Peter was concerned it was indeed a transformation scene. Sam wasvery much washed and slick from some time at the wash-bench, and Peterwas likewise, only Peter was not the Peter whom I had brought from townthat very morning. He was attired in a pair of Sam's overalls that couldhave been wrapped around him twice, and he had a bit of color in hischeeks under his eyes, though the eyes were slightly dazed as toexpression. 

"Good work, Betty, for only two hours, " said Sam, looking at the threelong ranks of slain weeds and then at his watch. "Pete and I are goingto pick peas for to-morrow's market right after dinner. Want to help?"

I assented from pure ignorance, and we all went in to devour one ofMammy's chicken dinners, the like of which is not cooked by anotherperson in the Harpeth Valley. The way Peter ate would have made theblack beauty in mother's kitchen swell with jealousy until there weredanger to her own black skin. Immediately after the gorge Sam gave me abasket, gave Peter another, and then looked around for the Byrd, with asmaller box; but the Byrd had flown. 

"I'll have to tan him for shirking like that, " said Sam, looking offinto the bushes. "You Byrd!" But there was no response. That ought tohave roused my suspicions, but it didn't. I went on down to thatpea-patch as innocent as a newly born lamb, with Peter walking besideme, enthusing over the landscape and swinging the light basket withelegant nonchalance. 

"I see, Betty dear--I see that there is a great satisfaction in thepragmatic accomplishment, and--" he was saying when we came out of thewoods onto the southern slope, where lie the long rows of peas, whichare making Sam's fortune. He got them in by working two days and all onenight in a bright spell in mid-February, and nobody for twenty milesaround has any, while he has more than he can gather to market at a topprice; that is, more than he can gather himself with Byrd's assistance, he explained to us, as he showed us just how to snap the pod against ourthumbs. 

"I ought to put five barrels into Hayesboro every day now for a weekbefore anybody else gets any, " he said, as he squatted at the head of arow between Peter and me, and we all began to pull at the beautifulgray-green vines and snap off the full, green pods. I looked across atpoor, innocent, enthusiastic Peter and saw his finish. 

About three o'clock I saw my own finish, and threw up the basket. 

"You poor, dear child!" exclaimed Peter as he came stiffly across therow Sam had long since finished. He, Sam, was four rows ahead of us, anda quarter of a mile away, more or less. I had collapsed, with my tiredlegs stuck out in front of me and my thumb, swollen from snapping thepods, in my mouth. "This is too hard work for you. "

"Yes, it is; but Sam won't think so, " I answered, with a glance at thestrong, broad back swinging so easily down the slope. "Now, Peter, wemust go right along picking the peas. Sam must get those five barrels, "I said, as I hastily scrambled up and began to pull at the vicious vinesagain. 

"Well, I certainly don't intend to stop until they are filled, " answeredPeter, stiffly, in more ways than one, and without any more waste ofsympathy he turned his back and went doggedly at the vines. That was myopportunity, and I took it. I rose, looked with fear at the two men atwork in front of me, and fled, basket and all. I stopped long enough toempty my full basket in one of the barrels that were already in thewagon; and as I climbed laboriously down over the wheels, with myparalyzed legs working slowly, I caught a glimpse of a flash of blue outin the bushes, topped by a glint of red that was too large to be that ofany bird inhabitant of The Briers. 

"Byrd, " I called, softly. 

No answer. 

"Byrd, do you want to go to town with me to see Mother Hayes?" I askedin subdued tones. That brought its response. 

There were difficulties; but we surmounted them. We were afraid to wakeMammy at her afternoon nap for the clean clothes of civilization, so wepurloined a fairly clean blue jumper hanging on the porch, while I lefta note for Sam pinned on my old doll seed-basket hanging by his door. Itwas large enough for him to see, and it read:

 I'm a good young mule, but I've broken down. Poor Peter! All that is left of BETTY. 

 _P. S. _--I've rescued the Byrd for overnight. I'll return him to his fate to-morrow. Poor Peter! Poor Peter!

I wish I could have seen Sam's face when he found it! The next morningmother's black beauty found my old grass basket full of delicious littlepeas on the front steps with this note in it:

 You'll be docked a quarter of a cent every hour you are off your job. Bring that brat home and both of you get to work. SAM. 

 _P. S. _--Something is sprouting in your garden that I don't understand. 

I knew those hollyhocks would rise up some day and bear witness againstme. For the life of me I couldn't make up my mind what to say aboutthem, so I sent the Byrd home by Tolly, who was going to take Edith outto see how her okra was progressing, and stayed in the safe shelter ofmy home. On the Byrd's rompers I pinned this note:

 Strike, if you will, my young back, But spare, oh spare, this little brat!

 BETTY. 

There are all kinds of poetry in the world. 

That night when I was beginning to get restless and wish I had gone outto my fate, even if it included being throttled with a pea-vine, Tollyand Edith came into town and stopped at my gate in such a condition thatI was positively alarmed about them. 

"Five baskets of peas!" gasped Tolly, as he fell forward limp over hiswheel. 

"My thumb! my thumb!" moaned Edith, with the afflicted member in hermouth. 

"But, say, Betty, " Tolly revived enough to say, "we are not going totell Sue and Billy and Julia and Pink. They are going out to-morrow tocall. Let 'em go--it's coming to 'em. "

"Oh no, I won't say a word, " I agreed, with the intensest joy. "Comeover to-morrow, Edith, and let's finish _My Lady's Fan_. I'm dying toknow what happened to her at the court ball. Good night!"

"No, you come over to my house; I'll be in bed, " Edith wailed from themiddle of the road as Tolly turned and made his machine buzz for home. 

Then for five days--glorious, warm, growing, blooming days--I stayed intown in a state of relapse from gardening of which the sorenesses in thecalves of my legs and my thumbs were the strongest symptoms, andlistened to my martyred friends' accounts of what Sam was doing toPeter. I also had a bulletin from Peter every day by the rural-deliveryroute. That is, they were in Peter's handwriting, but they read morelike government crop reports than a poet's letters to the girl to whomhe considered himself engaged. I sent them on to Judge Vandyne, and Igot a glorious written chuckle in return for them. 

Then, one morning when I had about got over the bashfulness about thehollyhocks, and had decided to deny them absolutely and stick to it, fora time at least, I happened to pick up Grandmother Nelson's book. It wasfull time--maybe past time--for thinning out my sugar-beets andresetting my cosmos. I fled out to the wilderness in greater speed thanI had left it, and fairly threw myself prostrate at the feet of myneglected garden. Peter helped me, a sun-blistered, brier-scratched, ragged Peter, whose face had lost none of its beautiful, lofty, aloofexpression, but which was rendered almost ordinary by a long scratchacross the top of its nose. The scratch was inflicted, he told me, whenhe held one of the thoroughbred Plymouth Rock biddies to be greased bySam for lice under her wings. 

"Yes, but what about the play, Peter dear?" I asked, after we had weededand dug and watered and pulled up for an hour or two and had then seatedourselves at the end of one of the long rows to rest. 

"The play--oh, Betty, it is--" And his old look of rapture shot acrosshis face. Then Sam yelled to him, and me, too. 

"Come on and help tie up onions, " he called. "You Byrd!"

We went and we tied up--a whole white smelly mountain of them; but Ididn't care, for Sam showed me his day-book, and in just one week hisbalance had shot up like the beautiful pink pie-plant in my garden. Agreat big entry was from my beets that he had thinned and sold withoutwaiting for me. 

"I'll give you a check when they are all sold, Betty, " he said, in abusiness-like way, and something in me made me glory in him and mybeets. "And isn't old Pete hitting the agricultural pace in fine style?"he asked, as we walked out into my garden between the rows of my blushpeonies which had been grateful for the bone meal, and had bloomed, though everybody who had given me the clumps had warned me that theywouldn't flower until the second season. 

"But isn't he going to write, too, Sam?" I asked, a trifle uneasily. "Now, you know, Sam, if somebody had kept Keats alive as a perfectlygood lawyer or bank clerk--or farmer--he wouldn't have been half as muchto the world as he is as a sadly dead poet. Now, would he?"

"Well, Pete will know all about the vegetable kingdom before he makesentry into the heavenly one, and we'll see what he reports when the timecomes. Just come over and look at the wheat in my north field. " Samanswered my anxiety so easily that I let it slip from my shoulders as Iwent with him to sit on a rail fence on the edge of a gray-green oceanof future food and be perfectly happy. "It'll fill dinner-pails and givebabies mother's milk, " said Sam, as he sat beside me and smoldered outover his crop. "The Commissioner of Agriculture was out here five timeslast week, and a complete report on the whole place goes in to the FoodCommission in Washington. Pretty good for a less-than-two-year-oldfarmer, eh, Bettykin?" And Sam tipped the rail enough to make me sure Iwas falling before he caught me. 

I didn't answer--I just clung, but Sam understood and roughed my hairinto my misty eyes and lifted me off the fence. 

Daddy got me two copies of that Agricultural Commissioner's report, andI sent one to Judge Vandyne and pasted the other in the front ofGrandmother Nelson's book. Little did I know that simple action of pridein Sam would bring such results to Samuel Foster Crittenden and toTennessee, and even to perhaps the third and fourth generation, ormaybe--

Daddy says that when a man owns a bottom field, a hillside, and a creekin the Harpeth Valley all he has to do is to go out and swing his hoearound his head a few times and he'll have a living before he is readyto harvest it. I don't know about that, and I do know that since I camehome in early April Sam has worked like two men, and maybe more. But hisharvests certainly amazed even the oldest inhabitants, who had sataround at the cross-roads grocery and spat tobacco-juice at the idea ofhis farming by government books, with no experience. They came to sit onthe rail fences around his fields and to spit out of the other side oftheir mouths before the end of July, and I never went out to marvel, myself, that I didn't step on that Commissioner of Agriculture, whocouldn't seem to keep away more than a few hours at a time. 

As things grew and bloomed and burst and flowered and seeded, Sam wentcalmly on his way of work with the crops from dawn to dark, and Peterdid likewise. I never saw anything like his friendly pride in everysuccessful test of Sam's work. And his own fat was getting packed on himat a rate that beat the record-breaking red pig down in the long, cleanpens that Sam maintained in the condition of a sanitary detentionhospital. Also Peter never mentioned the play, I never mentioned it, andSam appeared to have completely forgotten it. 

I didn't quite like for Sam to forget Peter's play like that, and Iliked it less when I heard Julia say that she thought it was sofortunate that Sam had cured Peter of being a poet, so he could go intohis father's office to learn to take care of his great fortune. Peterlikes Julia so much that I think she ought to have appreciated the greatthing in him more than she did. When the copy of the _Review_, withPeter's poem on the Ultimate, came, he read the whole poem to her whileshe embroidered an initial in the corner of a handkerchief for him. Thenext day she told me that she couldn't understand a word about it, andthat it made Pink mad because she wouldn't tell him what to say to Peterabout it. Pink has grown fond of Peter, but he wouldn't try to read thepoem after the third stanza. But Peter went on back to help with the ryecrop, knowing nothing of all that. 

Of course, I had all the confidence that there is in the world in Sam, but I, about the first week in July, again began to feel responsible tothe world for Peter's play; and I might have made the awful blunder ofremonstrating with Peter or Sam or both of them if I hadn't got into somuch trouble with Edith and Tolly. 

Now, Clyde Tolbot is a very business-like young man, and he ought to berespected and considered for it, but that is just what Edith doesn'tseem to understand how to do. She wants to go on with her head levelwith the moon, and Tolly wants to get married in November, and I thinkhe is perfectly right. He hasn't any family, and he says Edith's"highstrikes, " as he calls her moods and tenses, and the food at theHayesboro Inn, are making him thin and pale, and hurting the prospectsof The Electric Light Co. 

"She acts as if she thought I was a cinnamon bear if I put my paw on herfair hand. And she seems to think it is scandal because I wanted to buythat old mahogany sideboard that the Vertreeses had to sell when theyinherited old Mrs. Anderson and her furniture from his mother, " hegroaned, as he sat on my side porch with his head in his hands. 

"Tolly, " I said, with firm conviction in my voice and manner, "you mustdo something heroic to shock Edith down to earth again, or into openingher eyes as those kittens daddy gave Byrd did on their ninth day. Theevening of Edith's eighth day has about struck. "

"It most certainly has, and about eleven-thirty at that, " answeredTolly, sitting up as if about to rush forth and do what I suggested, though neither he nor I knew what it was. "But what is your idea of aheroic deed that will pluck the child Edith?" he asked, just as if Iwere one of the clerks out at the power-house and he was conducting abusiness detail. 

"Well, let me see, Tolly, " I said, slowly, while I ran over in my mindall the lover heroics I had ever heard of from runaway horses to the useof a hated blond rival. "You couldn't get hurt slightly out at thepower-house, could you?"

"And ruin my boast that I have the most perfectly organized force andmachinery in the state? Not if I know myself, " answered Tolly, withbusiness indignation and an utter lack of lover's enthusiasm at theprospect of getting his lady-love by a ruse. 

"Well, I don't know what you are going to do, " I said, limply, as I sawthat none of the things that had ever been acted before were withinTolly's reach. 

"I don't know, either, " answered Tolly; and again his head dropped intohis hands. 

"What did she say the last time you asked her?" I questioned. Iconsidered it my duty to get to the bottom of the matter, as I had beencalled in consultation. 

"Ask her? Thunderation! I never have asked her! I've never got that nearto her!" he exclaimed, in a perfect outburst of indignation. 

Then I laughed. I laughed so that Tolly had to pat me on the back tomake me get my breath, and a sleeping mocking-bird scolded outright froma tree by the porch. 

"Why don't you do it by telephone?" I gasped. 

"By George! that _is_ the idea, all right, Betty!" Tolly exclaimed, withhis face positively radiant. I had flung his love troubles into a classof affairs that he could handle. "I tell you what I am going to do. I amgoing to have my wire chief cut Edith's line and make me a directconnection with mine at about nine o'clock to-morrow morning, as that isthe time he is in less of a rush with all the other things to attend to. Then I'll put it to her good and straight if she holds on to thereceiver and hears me out. "

"But Edith might go over to Boliver to visit May Jessamine Ray for aweek at nine o'clock to-morrow. Oh, go do it to-night, Tolly!" Ipleaded. 

"And let that doll-faced girl at Central hear me? Not much!" answeredTolly, indignantly. 

"I didn't mean that, " I answered. "Go to her armed with your love, Tolly, and make--make her listen to you. "

"Armed with a sand-bag to slug her would be more like it, if I expectedto get anywhere with her. No, you've hit it, Betty, and I'm going ondown the street and see just where that Morris line goes into the trunk. Hope Judson won't have to run more than a mile of wire to make thatconnection. " And with no more gratitude or good night than that Tollywent down the street with his head up among his telephone wires, just asEdith keeps hers in the clouds. I hope some day they will run into eachother so hard that they will crash out ignition sparks and take fire. 

As I said, being so interested in Edith and Tolly, and trying to get herto postpone her visit until he could get the wires up between them bothin a material and a sentimental sense, and also wanting to let Sam andPeter miss me sadly, I let quite a few days elapse without being in anyof the events out at The Briers. When I did go back I found that thingshad happened. 

"Where's Peter?" I asked, as Sam came to unload me and a huge bag ofsmoke iris that old Mrs. Johnson had given me for my garden. There wasalso Byrd's basket from mother, and a pair of small alligators thatdaddy had got from Florida for him, having run out of natural animalinhabitants of the Harpeth Valley. 

"Pete's off with the bit in his mouth--haven't seen him for three days, "answered Sam as he lifted me and swung me way out into the middle of myown clover-pink bed. It was starred with sweet, white blossoms, havingbeen treated according to Eph's directions and those of GrandmotherNelson's book. 

"Peter off? Where? What's happened, Sam?" I exclaimed, with astonishedanxiety. 

"The play, " answered Sam, calmly, as he lit his cob pipe and blew aring of smoke. "It hit him in the middle of the night before last, andhe wrote me a note. Mammy grubs him, and I haven't seen him since. I'vepaid the Byrd a half interest in the next young that happens to us notto go down the hill to the shack, and we're all just going on as usual. "

"Maybe I'd better not go, either, " I said, with awe and sympathy forPeter fairly dropping from the words as I uttered them. 

"Betty, " said Sam as he looked at me through a ring of smoke that thewarm wind blew away over our heads, "you run just a little more sense tothe cubic foot of dirt than the average, it seems to me. Come on downand watch them begin to cut wheat. It is one week ahead of time, so Ican get all the harvesters and not a grain will be lost. They say it'llrun sixty bushels to the acre. Think of that, with only a thirty-sixrecord to beat in the Valley. It is that Canadian cross. TheCommissioner is down there, and so is your admirer, Chubb. He wastesmany hours riding over here to see you when you are in town on frivolouspursuits. "

"Frivolous!" I echoed as we went up the path back of the house; and onour way over the hill I told him about Tolly and Edith. Sam laughed; healways does when I want him to; but his eyes were grave after a second. 

"The mating season is a troublesome time, isn't it, Betty?" he asked, ashe swung me to the top rail of the fence, vaulted over it, and held uphis arms to lift me down on the other side; but I sat poised in midairto argue his proposition. 

"It ought not to be, Sam, " I said, with an experienced feeling rising inmy mind and voice at thus discussing fundamentals with a man that couldbreak a wheat record and be attended by the agricultural envoys of theUnited States government. "People ought to sensibly pick each other fromtheir needs, and not act unintelligent about it. "

At which perfectly sage remark a strange thing happened to Samuel FosterCrittenden. He laid his head down on the rail beside my knee and laugheduntil he almost shook me from my perch. It made me so furious that Islipped past him and ran on ahead. I vaulted the next fence in finestyle and landed among the Commissioner and Dr. Chubb and thetobacco-juice neighbors, who had come to see the output of the firstbook-grown acre. I did not speak again to Sam that day until he tuckedin Dr. Chubb beside me for a spin over to Spring Hill, leaving thedoctor's old roan for a week's complimentary grazing on Sam's eastmeadow of thick blue-grass, grown through a rock-lime dressing that allthe neighbors had assured him would kill the land outright. 

"Wheez-chekk! nice young buck for a husband, " wheezed the Butterball asI shot down the hill from under Sam's big hand reached out for my hair. 

"Sam?" I gasped. 

"Women critters always back and shy, but they git the wedding-bit from asteady hand--and like it, " he chuckled, still further. I felt as if Iought not to let Sam rest under such a suspicion, and that I ought totell him about Peter. But just then he launched forth on a case of aspavined horse he had beyond the cross-roads, which he wanted me to takehim to see, and I didn't do it. 

I don't much like to think about the long, hot July weeks that followed. The whole of Harpeth Valley sweltered, and everybody did likewise. Thatis, I suppose Peter did, for not one glimpse did I or anybody else getof him. Sam says Mammy set his meals down in the doorway of the shackwith one of her soft, soothing, "Dah, dah, chile, " which was answeredwith a growl from Peter. That ended the events of his life at TheBriers. 

Sam worked early and late, and got tanned to the most awful deepmahogany. All of him held out pretty well but his heels, which he camein three times to have me fix for him; and once mother and I had todress a blister on his back that he got from wearing a torn shirt in thepotato-field. 

I was wild with anxiety about Peter and the play and the poor littleheroine; I didn't know whether she was being murdered or separated forlife from the hero. Still, it was good to have Sam to myself for long, quiet, hot evenings out on the front porch under the brooding doves inthe eaves above us. Sam never talks much but he listens to me, andsometimes he tells me things from way down inside himself. And little bylittle I began to understand all about the things he had been too busydoing to tell me about. 

"You see, it is this way, Bettykin, " he said, one evening when the youngmoon was attempting to silver the dark all around us as we sat on thefront steps, with mother away rounding off the second pair of socks forPeter. "There wasn't one cent of money for me to take Byrd and Mammy andmake a start in New York. Even with the best sort of a backing, it isalways a ten-year pull for a youngster before he counts in the world. Icould have sold The Briers, but I couldn't make up my mind to do it, andthen while I hesitated I--I"--he paused a minute and steadied his voice, while I took his hand and held on to it tight--"I got a call--a landcall that I had to answer. God just picked me up and planted me here onmy bit of land, and I've got to root and grow or--or dishonor Him. "

"Oh, Sam, you have, you have honored Him, " I said as I crept closer tohis arm. 

"I've been all uprooted and pruned, Betty, and I've lost--lost--youknow! But for Him I must go on just the same and bear fruit. " At thepain in Sam's low voice something in me throbbed. 

"Lost? Oh, Sam, what?" I exclaimed, as I hugged his arm against mybreast. "What's happened to you, Sam? Tell--"

But just here we were interrupted by a clatter and a clash of hoofs, awild shout in Peter's voice, and a cheer in the fledgling's high treble. The biggest mule lurched up to the gate, and two figures took a flyingleap from his back to the pavement. With a rush they swept up the pathand brought up panting at the bottom of our steps. 

"Peter!" I gasped, descending to be sure that neither of them was bodilybroken or demented. 

"It's across! it's across!" shouted Peter as he reached out his arms andgrabbed me in a wild embrace. 

"What?" Sam and I both demanded, though, of course, in a way we knew. 

"The play!" exclaimed Peter, putting his head down on my shoulder andfairly sobbing out his relief. "Farrington is going to begin rehearsalsfrom the first two acts I've sent him, and I am to go right on to NewYork with the third that I finished an hour before the wire came overfrom the cross-roads station. You'll go with me, won't you, Betty? Ican't go without you and Sam. " And as he hugged me close Peter reachedout and grasped Sam's big hand that rested on his arm. 

"Of course Betty will go, and I'll come as soon as I get the whole cropin, " answered Sam in his deep, kind, strong voice that steadied all ournerves. "I knew you'd make it, Pete. I never doubted that all you neededwas a bit of brawn to punch from. "

"Peter--Sam!" I gasped, trying to get my balance as I felt as if I werebeing hurried through space without even being told where to. "I don'tknow. I--"

"I can't do without you, Betty, " Peter said again, as he held me closeand Sam withdrew from us for the distance of about two steps. 

"Betty is the real thing, Pete, and she'll stand by when you need her. She always does, " Sam said, in a quiet voice that sank down into thedepths of my soul and made a cold spot. 

"I--I--don't know. I--" I was just reiterating when daddy and Julia, with a plate of something, came through the gate and up the walk. Theyhad to be told, and they had to congratulate, and then mother came outto see what it was all about. They were all happy and gloriouslyexcited, and I was dead--dead. 

Then Sam took Peter home because he had to pack and get into town forthe morning train. I begged for the fledgling to be left with me, andSam consented without even mentioning the string-beans to be picked orthe weeds in the parsnips. He said good night to everybody before he didto me, and then started to go with just the farewell word, hesitated asecond, and came back and roughed my hair down over my eyes with thegreatest roughness he had ever employed in that action. It would havebroken my heart if he hadn't. 

"Betty, " said the Byrd, as he crouched at my side with his thin, scantily clad little body hovered against my skirts, "you ain't going tono New York with Pete and leave me and Sam and all the poor little ones, is you?"

"Oh, Byrd, I'm afraid I'll have to!" I sobbed, cuddling him close. 

"Well, then, damn Pete!" he exploded. 

IV

THE BOOK OF LOVE

Most men are only a fraction of the greatness that the world adds themup to be, but Farrington is a whole man and then a fraction over. Ienjoy talking to him just as much as I do to Sam or anybody else who isdoing interesting things in a perfectly simple way. When we talked aboutPeter and the play he reminded me in lots of ways of old Dr. Chubb whenhe gets on the subject of spavined horses or sick cows; of course Idon't mean any disrespect to Peter in that comparison. I told Mr. Farrington the same thing, and he didn't laugh at all; his eyes shoneout from under his bushy white eyebrows like two wise old stars, and hesaid he saw exactly what I meant, and that he hoped to meet Dr. Chubbsome day. And I continued to feel enthusiasm for him even after half anhour's talk on the subject of his treatment of Peter, which Peter hadled me to believe was atrocious. 

"Dear, dearest Betty, " said Peter, as he met me at the train on thefirst day of September, "how wonderful to have you come just when I needyou most! I am in the depths of despair. " And he looked it. 

"Oh, Peter, is it about the play?" I gasped as I fairly hung on to hisarm while he was languidly giving my traveling-bag to a footman. Peterlooked like a literary version of what Sam called "the last ofpea-time, " which is a very vivid expression to a person who has justseen her poor peas drop away in the August garden. "What has happened?"

"I care nothing more about the play, Betty. It is stolen from me, "answered Peter, gloomily, as he led me through the Pennsylvania Stationand up the steps toward the limousine, where I knew Mabel would bewaiting to eat me up and be in turn devoured. 

"Why, Peter, what can you mean?" I gasped. 

"I'll tell you all about it when I get you to myself. Don't mention itto Mabel--she doesn't understand, " he answered from behind his teeth ashe put me into the car and into Mabel's arms, and also into MissGreenough's. 

But for all my joy at seeing both those dear friends again I couldn'thelp being depressed by every glance at Peter, sitting opposite me, looking white and glum. 

"Don't notice him--he's more impossible than ever, " said Mabel, once, when Peter leaned out to be reproachful to the chauffeur for doing hisduty and keeping us waiting for the traffic signal. "I'll tell you allwhen I get you alone. "

Judge Vandyne met us at the lodge gate of the great Vandyne home out onthe Island. He, too, treated Peter like a sick baby. I never was sopuzzled; and dinner would have seemed long but for the fact that theyall wanted to hear so much about Sam and The Briers and the wholeHarpeth Valley. I never more enjoyed telling anything, and even Peter'sgloom lightened when I told him about the fat little duck the Byrd hadinsisted on sending him--alive in a box. Daddy was secretly expressingit to me, on the sleeping-car porter's kindly advice, when he saw it inmy baggage. 

"Well, well, " said Judge Vandyne, as he came into the drawing-room withus after dinner, "young Crittenden is really getting to goal on thatfarm question. I'm glad you sent me that report--it set some big thingsin motion. I'll tell you about it when I get you alone, " he added, underhis breath. And that was another time that made me feel as if I were ababy that ought to be sliced up to be divided. As it was, Peter got mefirst, and I don't blame him for being in agony. That is, I didn't blamePeter, but neither do I blame Farrington, now that I have talked to him. This was Peter's tale of woe:

"Stolen, it is absolutely stolen from me, Betty, and I am helpless toprotect the child of my brain, " he began. The judge and Mabel had atlast left us alone, probably because they hesitated to have Peter commitpatricide and fratricide, if those are the right terms for sister andfather murder. 

"How, Peter?" I asked, taking his hand with deep sympathy. 

"Betty, since the first three rehearsals I am not allowed even in thetheater, and Farrington is a brute. I do not know what he is doing to myplay, but I do know that he was at work on a horrible laugh in the firstpart of the first act that I did not intend at all. The leading womanis coarse, with no soul, and the star is a great hulking ass. I am wildand nobody sympathizes with me. Father has talked to Farrington, andthat is why he wired to you. Oh, I know he wired or you wouldn't havecome up to this inferno at this time of the year. That is one kindnesshe did me--it _is_ a comfort to me--oh, Betty. " And Peter put his headdown on my arm that was next him and sobbed, as the Byrd does whenanything happens to one of his "little ones. "

I didn't blame Peter at all, for that play was his "little one" and hisfirst. I just took it out in hating and vilifying Farrington, until Igot Peter much comforted, even interested in hearing about the splendidprice Sam had got for the north-field rye. Then it was time for us to goto bed, and I suppose it was best that it was too late for Mabel to comeinto my room to tell me her version of Peter's troubles. For that onenight I sympathized fully with him. The next morning I was shown anotherside of the question. And I felt decidedly different about Mr. Farrington when he talked to me for a little while, alone before dinnerthe next day, and after Judge Vandyne had also had me in solitaryconversation. 

"You see, my dear young lady, " said Mr. Farrington, with that twin-starsmile in his eyes I have mentioned, "the very wonderful nature thatgrows and flowers such an exquisite young first play as this of ouryoung friend's, is the undoing of the work and the producer, unless heis a heartless old brute like the one to whom you are at presenttalking. "

"Oh, I don't think you are that now, not at all. I--I think you arewonderful, and I trust you with the play even though you haven't told meanything about what you are doing to it, " I exclaimed in greatconfidence and enthusiasm. 

"You are a wonderful bit lass yourself, and I trust you with my poet, even if you haven't told me just what you are going to do with him, " heanswered, and looked at me with the real affection, tempered withamusement, that daddy and Judge Vandyne and Dr. Chubb all use toward me. 

I blushed and was just going to tell him that--well, I don't know justwhat I was going to tell him, but I am sure I'd have opened my innermostheart to him, for that is what he invites, when in came Peter and therest, and we all went in to dinner. I didn't see the great dean of theAmerican stage alone any more, but he whispered to me just as Mabel andMiss Greenough and I were leaving the room:

"Keep my poet easy, and you'll see what you see. "

I am glad now when I look back on it that my presence did help Peterthrough the ordeal of that two weeks. Also Mabel and I had schemestogether to take his mind off his dying child, which was being operatedon by Farrington to make it a success. The best diversion, however, wasJudge Vandyne's. He asked me to make out a list of ten of Peter'sHayesboro friends, for whom he would send a private car over one of hisrailroads, to bring them up for the first night of the play. That was tobe the 20th of September, and even then the bills were up all over NewYork. I could see, from the way Judge Vandyne was taking it all, that heintended to make the best of having a poet for a son, and to put itthrough with his usual energetic force. 

Peter was perfectly delighted at having all his Hayesboro friends come. He wrote them all letters, and Mabel wrote them notes. After that Petergot uneasy and made Judge Vandyne write to everybody, and the next dayhe insisted that I should write, too. 

"Oh, I wish Sam could come, but I know he can't, " I said, with a suddenhurt place just where I was about to swallow my mushroomed cutlet. 

"Sam not come?" said Peter, growing white about his mouth and throwingdown his napkin. 

"Oh, Peter, Sam didn't want me to say anything about it, but he doesn'tthink it is possible for him to get away and--and you know, Peter, Samhas to buy the sheep he wants to put in the woods; and I told you thatanother mule--"

"I can't, I can't stand it for Samboy not to be here, " said Peter as hepushed his cutlet away from him, upset his glass, and turned over a vasethat in turn knocked down the center vase of roses, besides upsettingthe composure of the butler and one footman. I saw it was going to be aregular poetic outburst, such as Mammy would have called a tantrum inSam or me, and that Mabel was positively scared and Miss Greenough muchpained. 

"Crittenden will be here, " said Judge Vandyne in a perfectly calm andcertain voice. "Don't worry, son!"

I knew he meant that he would lend Sam the money, or I thought I knewthat, and I felt perfectly sure that Sam wouldn't come. Nobody knowsSamuel Foster Crittenden as I do; and the reason he is so congenial withhis mules is that he is so like them in "setness" of disposition. I justraged at him in my heart, for I knew from the way I felt myself how poorPeter wanted him; but I controlled myself and went right on talkingabout how I knew the others would come and how much they would enjoy it. 

"Julia has never been to New York. Won't she be delicious?" I exclaimedas we came to her on the list. Peter had put her first. 

"Delicious is the right word, " said Peter, and he then launched forth ina description of Julia that I would hardly have recognized, though I hadbeen born across the street from her and have loved her devotedly fromour second years. It is such a joy to have two people whom you loveappreciative of each other, and I knew that Julia fully reciprocatedPeter's interested friendship for her. She had wept on my shoulder atparting from Peter, and had written him long and encouraging letters forme while I was going up to Nashville to have my clothes made for thetrip to New York and trying to get a little time in my garden out at TheBriers. I have to stop; I never let myself think of that parting withSam and The Briers. Some things are too deep for words. Then to continueabout Julia, I wrote her how to have her dresses made, but told her toget only one little traveling-hat and leave the rest to Mabel and me andFifth Avenue. I also advised Edith and Sue to do likewise, but I knewMiss Editha would have Miss Sally Pride make her a new bonnet on theframe of the old one, and Peter said she would not be the "wraith of anold rose" in anything else. 

It was glorious that Tolly and Pink could both come, though BillyRobertson was not sure. I did so hope that Clyde would get a real chanceto open Edith's kitten eyes for her through some heroic accident oftravel, and I was glad that Colonel Menefee was coming, because he wouldengage Miss Editha's attention away from Tolly's attentions to Edith andgive them a chance to come forward out of their backwardness. Thetelephone scheme had failed, Tolly told me, because the wire chief hadmade a mistake and still left them connected at Central. "Central" isthe little Pride girl, the milliner's youngest niece, and very pretty. Just as he was ready to begin firmly with Edith she sweetly said:

"Now your connection is good, Mr. Tolbot. "

When I left home poor Tolly was really becoming embittered against theworld and was absorbing himself in putting up a new telephone line overto Spring Hill. I told Peter how he ought to appreciate Tolly forleaving business in that state to come up for the first night of theplay; and Peter said:

"Dear old chap; we must find the shibboleth that will unleash the hoodedfalcon of his soul. " Isn't Peter wonderful?

If all the invited guests in Hayesboro were busy getting ready to dojustice to the first night of "The Emergence, " we were in the samestate. Judge Vandyne was planning to give a dinner that night to hismost distinguished lawyer friends in honor of Farrington, and daddy hadpromised to try to come. Of course, Peter was going to have a dinner ofhis own, to which he was inviting a lot of delightful friends to meethis Hayesboro friends, and they were having both dinners at the Ritz, soPeter could go in and make a speech to Judge Vandyne's party. Most ofthe friends had not come back from the lakes and the shore and theircountry homes, but were running into town for that one evening. It wasall the most delicious excitement, but--oh, a place way down deep in mebehind my excited breathing was so sore about Sam! I couldn't even thinkabout his not being there, but I went on and danced and had a good timein sheer desperation. Sam had to plow and hoe and reap and sow for food, while we ate and drank it and made merry!

Then the first night came, and everybody was there looking in highfeather, and some of them wearing very low dress. Judge Vandyne hadtaken all the boxes in the theater, and they were every one full tooverflowing with loving excitement about Peter. I was in the second boxon the right-hand side of the stage at the front, and Peter sat in theshadow back of me. Julia and one of Peter's classmates were just behindus. As the curtain went up Peter took a hard hold on my hand under mywhite chiffon scarf, and I heard him mutter under his breath:

"Oh, Samboy!"

I am not going to try to describe that play of Peter's. The newspapersused all the adjectives and things there are in the English language toexpress enthusiasm with, and I haven't got any left. I will simply tellabout it. 

When Peter had gone out and buried himself in the shack on the hillsideof The Briers, that looked out over the Harpeth Valley, he hadunconsciously buried that frozen hero in "The Emergence" and had gone towork and resurrected him in a kind of Samuel Foster Crittenden. Insteadof being a complicated, heroic, erratic genius he was just a big, simple, strong young man who was doing his part in the corner of theworld's vineyard where he had been sent to work. To help him Peter hadwritten in a wonderful girl with a great deal of brains for one soyoung. Just the sort of woman that men like Sam and the hero deserve tohave. She was so lovely that I caught my breath and--and suffered. Butwhat made everybody in that theater laugh themselves happy was theessence of Hayesboro that Peter had distilled and poured into hischaracters. Everybody was so mixed up with everybody else that nobodycould feel sensitive or fail to enjoy every character. I couldn't tellwhether I was the girl that practised tango steps all the time, evenwhen the minister (who had manners like those of Colonel Menefee and theMayor of Hayesboro) came to supper, or the girl that always had a plateof hickory-nut candy in her hand and kept saying sharp things whilegiving everybody something sweet to take away the taste. Julia said shewas that girl, but Peter indignantly denied anybody's being anybody, andthen we all kept still. Just then the curtain went down on the secondact, with the whole house in an uproar; and there was a call for Peterand Farrington. 

Peter went and left me sitting there in the shadow alone, while hestepped out on the stage all by himself--the stage of his life. And, oh, I was so glad to be in the shadow all by myself, for I had been as happyas I could and it was beginning to wear off. I wanted Sam--I wanted himeven if the wonderful woman in the play was going to have him in reallife, too, as I knew would have to happen some day. Also Sam deserved tobe there that night if anybody did, and he was way down in the HarpethValley working, working, working, it seemed to me, that all the rest ofthe world might play. I wanted him! I felt as if I couldn't stand itwhen Peter stepped forward, looking like the most beautiful Keats theworld had ever known, and the whole house gasped at his beauty and keptstill to hear what a man that looked like that would have to say. Istifled a sob and looked around to see if I could flee somewhere, whensuddenly my groping hand was taken in two big, warm, horny ones, andSam's deep voice said in the same old fish-hook tone:

"Steady, Bettykin, and watch old Pete take his first hurdle. "

I took one look at a great big glorious Sam in all sorts of fine linenthat was purple in the mist of my eyes, and then I was perfectly quiet, with no fish-hook at all in my arm or in my life. I heard every word ofPeter's speech, and laughed and almost cried over the one Farringtonmade about the young American drama, with his arm across Peter'sshoulder. I forgot all about Sam because he was there, and just reveledin being happier than I had been since I had adopted Peter and the play, now that it was successfully out of our systems. 

And it _was_ successfully out. Nobody who heard the thunder after thelast act could have doubted that. The _New Times_ the next day said itwas "The burgeoning of the American poetic drama, " and another papersaid, "Bubbles fresh from the fount of American youth. " We got thepapers and read them coming home from Peter's supper-party over at theAstor, which his New York friends gave because they wanted to see moreof his Hayesboro friends. Everybody was there and the success of theevening came when Pink Herriford told his mule story. Peter made him doit, and everybody adored it. And just as they were all laughing andexclaiming at the droll way in which he characterized those resurgentmules, I looked down the table and happened to see that Clyde Tolbot washolding Editha Morris Carruthers's hand in a way that anybody whounderstood these matters knew from the position of their shoulders thatsuch was the case. 

"A taxicab lost us on Broadway at ten dollars per second, and I madeconnection with her wires before found, " he whispered to me, as we allrose to go, just as the night was also taking its departure from NewYork. New York in the daytime is like a huge football game in which amillion or two players all fall on the ball of life at the same time andkick and squirm and fight over it; but at night it is a dragon withbillions of flaming eyes that only blink out when it is time to crawlaway from the rising sun and get in a hole until the dark comes again. It is the most wonderful city in the world to stay in until you areready to go home. 

Sam hadn't been at Peter's supper-party, and neither had Judge Vandyne, but I didn't worry about that. I never worry about Sam. I just like toknow he is somewhere near and then forget him--if I am allowed, which Iam not if Sam can think up some important work for me to do. At sixo'clock in the morning I laid down the papers with Peter's triumph inthem and rolled into bed, dead with sleep; and before seven Sam had sentme a note that forced me to open my eyes and stagger up and on. It said:

 DEAR BETTY, --Get a maid at the hotel to come with you to the following address. I need you badly. A reliable taxi is waiting. SAM. 

Horrible thoughts of somebody's having kidnapped Sam flashed across mybrain as I threw on my clothes. How had he happened to come to New York, anyway, and then disappear right after the play? What kind of troublecould he be in, and how could I help? I looked in my purse and foundonly ten dollars, but I felt the roll that I always carry in my stockingand it still felt a respectable size. I never count money when I amspending it, because you don't enjoy it so much; and I had been awayfrom home three weeks. Still, if I had to bribe or buy Sam out ofanything, I could get more some place. I must hurry to do as he told me, and then he would direct me how to rescue him. 

In less time than it would take most girls, as soggy with sleep as Iwas, to get dressed and down to a taxi, I was on my way to Sam. I forgotto get the maid to go with me; and, anyway, what was the use, with anice young white man like that taxi-car driver? He said, looking at meso pleasantly that I was sure he didn't really mean anything, "It'searly, isn't it, miss?"

I was so hustled and so dazed, and had such trouble in making the littlenew kind of hook-buttons on my gloves stay fastened, that before I knewit we drew up at a queer kind of old warehouse down in a part of NewYork where I had never been, with a line of the ocean or the bay or theriver or the harbor, I couldn't tell which, just beyond. Then I wasscared, for instead of Sam being in danger, I felt that maybe I wasbeing kidnapped. I hesitated at the curbing as I got out of the taxi. 

"Through that warehouse and to your left you'll find the gentleman. Goodmorning, miss, " said the nice taxi-man as he touched his cap and droveoff and left me to my fate. If I had had only my own fate to consider Iwould have taken to my good strong legs and fled, but Sam was alsoconcerned. At the thought of his needing me my courage came back, and Iwent on into the long shed where queer dirty boxes and bales and barrelsand things were piled. At last I came to a turn and stepped into a lowroom that was almost at the water's edge. It was still very earlymorning, and a mist from the sea made things dim, but in a crowd ofqueer people and bundles and voices I saw Sam standing and lookingperfectly helpless, while that Commissioner of Agriculture stood over bythe window, evidently perfectly furious and growling out expletives tothe saddest crowd of pitiful people I had ever seen. 

Sam was in his dress-suit with his overcoat off and his hair in a mop;and in a faltering jumble of several languages he was trying to tellsomething to a gaunt, fierce woman in a wide ragged skirt, a shapeless, torn man's coat, with a faded woolen scarf over her head. In her armsshe had a baby, and a woman with a baby in her arms knelt beside her;while a dozen other women with children, ragged, pale, frightened littlechildren in their arms, and at their skirts, hung in a sullen groupback of her. A crowd of dejected, hungry, gaunt men stood to one side, and one very old man had his old woolen cap off his white head, which Icould see was bowed in prayer. In a moment I knew from their Flemishpatois, which I had heard so often out in the fields of beautifulBelgium during that happy month just before the war, that they wererefugees, and my heart went out in a rush to them as I went in a rush toSam and grasped his arm. 

"Oh, what is it, Sam, and what do they want?" I asked. 

"They are emigrants from Belgium. The Commissioner has had me appointedto settle them in the Harpeth Valley on lands near my own, for which hehas options. I came on in response to his telegram to meet themto-morrow, but they were landed here on the dock at one o'clock in thenight, because of a fire on the steamer. I came right down from thetheater, but they are frightened and the women have lost all confidencein everything. They don't seem to want to go with me to the car that wehave ready to take them to Tennessee. I can't understand them, nor theyme, and I sent for you. You're a woman, Betty. See what you can do tocomfort and hearten them and make them ready to go with me when thetrain leaves in less than two hours. "

Oh, I know I am young and have been sheltered, and don't know what it isto be shot at and killed, and have my children torn from my arms and tobe hungry and cold. But women do understand other suffering women, andwhen I stretched out my hands to the fierce woman with her starvingchild at her breast, I knew what to falter out in a mixture of her ownpatois and mine. 

"_Il est bon_--a good, good man. _Alle avec_--go with him, " I pleaded. 

"But it is a fine gentleman! No, we come to a master, to work that we donot starve. A landowner, " she said, and regarded Sam in his purple andfine broadcloth with fierce and desperate distrust that the other womenalso expressed with hissing breaths which brought surly growls ofsuspicious acquiescence from the men. 

"But look, look!" I exclaimed. I turned to Sam and drew one of his big, farm-worn hands forward and held it in mine out to the fierce woman, behind whom the others cowered. There was the broad thumb, off of whichthe barrel of peas had smashed the nail. There were the deepplow-callouses in the palms, and the plow-ropes' hard gall around theleft wrist. The fierce woman's somber eyes lighted; for the first timeshe looked up past Sam's velvety white shirt-front with its pearl studs, up into the calm eyes that were smoldering their gridiron look down ather and the whimpering women and children. 

"And here look _encore_!" I exclaimed, as I drew from my breast thelarge silver "peasants' locket" I had bought in Belgium, perhaps in herown village, and which I always wear with my street clothes, and had puton even in the hurry of my summons. I snapped it open and let her seewhat it contained. Sam saw, also! It was a picture of Sam milking oldButtercup in the shed. Just as he turned to call me to bring an extrabucket to feed the calf, I had snapped it. I don't know just why I hadput it in the locket, except that it is safe to have Sam around in timeof trouble. 

"_Eh, le bon Dieu_--I see, I see!" she exclaimed, looking first at Samand then at the locket. Then suddenly she clasped my wrist and looked atthe two big, hard, live callouses in my own palm, that some kind of aqueer prophetic sentiment had warned me not to let a manicure work on. Also, she saw the pea-thumb that still held a trace of the blister. Intently she looked for a few seconds, first at me and then at Sam. Thenwith a cry of agonized joy she fell at Sam's feet, and I drew down on myknees beside her, while the other women crowded around, kneeling, too, as their leader bowed her tear-drenched eyes in Sam's big, warm hands. One woman thrust a tiny baby into my arms as she kissed my sleeve andleaned forward to clasp Sam's knees, while the old man who had beenpraying all the time spread out his hands in a joyful benediction. Themen's sullen faces lightened, and they bent to take up their pitiful oldbundles and baskets. 

For a long minute there was a sobbing silence while the Commissionerblew his nose over by the window. I clasped the little starved babyclose and pressed with the other women against Sam's knees, and Samstood calm over us all. I know, I _know_ he was praying down away fromthe sea, across half the world, into his own everlasting hills, overParadise Ridge. 

"Good, Bettykin!" he said as he bent and raised me and the fierce womanto our feet. The others began to bustle and hustle the children, andmen, brushing tears from faces that had begun to smile uncertainly, asif they had never smiled before. A big tear fell off Sam's own cheek ashe roughed my hair with his chin under the edge of my perky little hat, and took the woman's baby from my arms, as well as her bag and bundle, to carry them to the car. He led the way, and we all trailed after him. 

It was a strenuous hour that we spent getting them all settled in theemigrant-car the Commissioner and Judge Vandyne had ready to take themright on from the ship to Tennessee. In the midst of packing away boxesand bundles and seating and quieting babies and women, Sam told me insnatches the reason of it all. One of the great Belgian landowners hadwritten to Judge Vandyne, who was his friend, to find some suitableplace to colonize twenty of his peasant families in America. The letterhad come at about the time my copy of the government's report on Sam'sfarming had reached him. He hadn't said anything to Sam about it, buthad got hold of the Commissioner and secured options on four hundredacres back of Sam's farm in the wilderness of the Harpeth Valley. He hadfixed it all up before he offered Sam the commission of settling andfarming these people on shares for ten years. It was a little fortunepoured into Sam's hands, but he didn't seem to think about that at all. His mind was entirely occupied by the hungry, big-eyed babies and theirsadly smiling, clinging mothers. He had a whole bunch of ripe bananas, with other fruit and food in proportion, packed in the train for thelong trip to Tennessee. 

"Why didn't you write me all about it, Sam?" I asked as I patted asleeping infant over my shoulder while the mother jolted a big-eyed twinof the same variety. Sam was undoing a strap from a large bundle for thefierce woman, whose eyes now followed him like those of a great, faithful dog--or my eyes. 

"It was all settled less than a week ago, Bettykin, and I--I wanted tosurprise you and Pete at 'The Emergence' first night. This ship wasn'tdue until to-morrow, and I was to have had a frolic. I asked the judgenot to tell you. I wanted to break it to you myself. And I did with abrickbat, didn't I--at daylight to boot?"

"Where are you going to--to house them all, Sam?" I asked, anxiously, thinking of the little house with the Byrd and Mammy and all the basketsand seed and things, especially the one iron pot that only held chickenenough for them and--

"Got a tent village out of the colonel's Menefee Rifles' tents over bythe spring. It will be fine for them until I can divide out the land andset each man to log-rolling his shack. Dad Hayes is finishing the campfor me, and Chubb is helping to make things all shipshape, also buyinga fine mule for each family. Oh, they'll have a great welcome, or wouldhave if only you were there. " Sam didn't look at me, but smiled gentlyat the fierce woman's thanks and turned to another strap and anotherbundle. Again I went dead inside, and I turned away and hid my tears inthe back of the neck of the tiny Belgian in my arms. 

"Just about five minutes before we put you off, Miss Hayes, " said theCommissioner as he came bustling up to me, smiling with the same energyhe had used in swearing so short a time ago. 

Surreptitiously wiping my eyes and swallowing the sobs in my throat, Iheld out the baby to its mother and began to say a halting "adieu" toall of them. 

Then an uproar arose. They had thought I was going with them, and theyclung and wept and kissed my hand and begged in broken words for me notto leave them, though in their conduct there was not a trace of a lackof confidence in Sam. Of course, nobody that knew Samuel FosterCrittenden a whole hour, even in his dress clothes in the daytime, couldfail to have confidence in him for life. But those women wanted me, too, and they wanted me badly. I had to be torn from their arms and flung offthe train. Sam did the tearing and the flinging, and he did it tenderly. Just before the final shove, as I clung to his arm and sobbed, the bighand went to my hair, and he said under his breath against my ear:

"God bless and keep you, darling--and Pete!" Then he swung up on thelast step of the train and left me--shoved off into a hard, cold worldfull of luncheons and sight-seeing and dinner-parties and plays anddances and suppers and lights and music and flowers and like miseries. At the agony of the thought I staggered into the huge waiting-room atthe station and sank on one of the benches and closed my eyes to keepthe tears from dripping. 

At first I just sat dumb and suffering--reviewing all the wonderful andexciting and magnificent things I had been planning to do for and withPeter and all the rest of my dear friends who were then in New Yorkhaving the times of their aristocratically rustic lives. I remindedmyself of the shopping excursion Mabel and I were going to make withEdith and Julia on that very day. The responsibility of Julia's hats wascertainly mine, for I had told her to wait to get them in New York, andshe would surely need them immediately in the round of gaieties that hadbeen planned for them all. Then, who could help being delighted at thethought of seeing Miss Editha and the colonel introduced to one of thefollies at the Whiter Garden? I knew that I would be needed greatlythen, and had rather dreaded it; though from Miss Editha's pink cheeksat the supper-party the night before, as she sipped her champagne I hadrather hoped that she was making up her mind to a time of it. And thenthe joy of watching united Tolly and Edith! And Peter, how he would needme to help him to be responsible for all the wonderful things that weregoing to happen to him right along, now that he was the success of thehour. Even the papers had begun to speculate that first morning on his"next play. "

"I'm weaving the laurel wreath rapidly now to bind your tresses, am Inot, dear, dearest Betty?" he had whispered, as he told me good night atthe hotel only a few short hours ago. Yes, I was needed in life, even ifnot down in a brier-patch in the Harpeth Valley, Tennessee, and I mustbear my honors and responsibilities with as beautiful a spirit as Sambore his burden of Belgians. I would have all I could do out in theworld, and he would have his life full in the wilderness; but we wouldbe a thousand miles apart. 

And just here a very strange thing happened. From the weak, cowering, sobbing girl on the bench arose a very determined, red-cheeked, executive young woman who walked over to the nearest ticket-office anddemanded of the brisk young clerk what time the different trains leftfor Tennessee. She found that by going at ten o'clock direct throughCincinnati she could reach Hayesboro two hours ahead of that Belgianemigrant-train that was to go around through Atlanta. Then she went intothe dressing-room and got her wad of money out of her stocking, bought aticket and a Pullman berth, six magazines, some oranges, and a littletraveling powder-puff for the end of her red nose, and seated herself inthe train before she woke up and found she was I. 

Then I took a hand and sent Peter a telegram from Philadelphia, thoughto this day I can't remember what it said; and I settled down to the dayand night and part of another day's journey with peace in my heart andthe courage to take whatever was coming to me from Sam. 

When you are doing a thing you know is wholly wrong it is best to makeup your mind beforehand just what kind of a right action you are goingto claim it to be. It only took me until Pittsburg to have my coursewith Sam mapped out. I was just going to ask him fairly what right hehad to go to farming with a lot of strange and untried Belgians andrefuse to take me in, when I had proved myself a good and faithfulcomrade and worker for him ever since I could stand on my feet. 

"I just want him to answer me that, " I said to myself, and went to bedin the berth at six-thirty and didn't wake up any more until I was atLouisville at eleven. I had been in New York two weeks, and I neededsleep. The interval between that time and three o'clock, which was thehour that I stood before mother and her latest rose-crocheted mat, Ispent in strengthening and fortifying my position. 

"Why, Betty!" said mother, keeping the place open in the magazine shewas crocheting from, but kissing me so tenderly that I knew shesuspected something had happened to me. 

"I came home because I had to, and I'll tell you about it just as soonas I come back from out at Sam's, where I have to go as fast as I can onbusiness, " I said, as I hurried out to Eph for Redwheels and up to myroom for my corduroys and middy blouse. I knew Sam would get his newfamily off at the station at the cross-roads. I wanted to be at TheBriers all established and at work when he got there. I have heard lotsof times that possession is nine points of the law, and I was determinedto possess all nine. 

In less time than it takes to tell it Redwheels and I were spinning awayout Providence Road. I had gone out on that road in early April insearch of Sam, when I thought nothing could equal the young lovelinessof the valley; I had driven Peter out when it was in its May flowering, and back and forth I had gone through all its midsummering, but it hadnever looked to me as it did when I came down into it from a farcountry, in the ripeness of its mid-September. All the leaves were stillon the trees and many of them still rich green, but there was frost inthe air, and along the edges of the early sweet-gum and sugar-maplebranches there were crimson and bronze trimmings. Most of the gorgeous, molten-gold grain was in stacks in the fields, and everywhere for milesand miles were stretched the wigwams of the shocked corn, seeming tooffer homes for as many homeless as could come and ask shelter. Goldenrod stood up stiff and glorious in all the fence corners, whilegnarled vines, fairly dragged down with wild grapes, festoonedthemselves from tree to tree, some of which were already heavily loadedwith their own big, round, blackening walnuts. 

Along the road there was a procession of foodstuffs going to town inheavy old farm wagons with their overalled drivers. Wheat in bales andwheat in sacks was piled on wagon after wagon, and I counted eleventeams hauling in loads of shucked ears of corn that looked almost twofeet long. Oh, I was glad to think that those people who had fled from afamine-stricken land would meet that procession as soon as they got offthe train, and my eyes misted so, as I thought of the joy that must wellup in their hearts, that I came very near running over an old pig motherwho was waddling across the road in the lead of nine of the fattestlittle black-and-white sucklings I have ever seen, each one with histail curled at exactly the same angle. Giving her a wide run I swung offinto Brier Lane. The old cardinal that had been so cross to me allsummer, when poor Redwheels's puff had disturbed his family, wastrillingly glad to see me, and flew almost across my shoulder as hedarted and whirled his welcome. And what should I meet in the middle ofthe lane, evidently off playing hooky where she should not have been, but Mrs. Buttercup and my young spotted namesake! I immediately climbedout of the car and greeted them both so affectionately that, with myarms around Mrs. Buttercup's neck, I persuaded her to go back the wayshe had come, while I drove along behind her at a suitable snail's pace. I had to stop every once in a while, when she turned around, to assureher that I knew it was best for her to go home with her full udder, asSam would soon be there to be welcomed and with company to be fed. 

After I had turned her into the south meadow gate, opposite thecedar-pole entrance to The Briers, I went up the hill at a lightningpace because the nearer I got to the fledgling and my garden the moreanxious I was for a reunion with them both. I met the garden first, as Irounded up in front of the old hovering, red-roofed house that lookedmore like home to me than any building I had ever seen in my short andeventful life. 

There is no love in the world that reciprocates like that of a garden. If you work and love and plan for it, promptly it turns around and overand gives back a hundredfold more than you put into it. All summer longwe had been digging out of, picking from, and cutting off of that littleplot of ground, and there it was reaching out with more to return to me. Long rows of white and purple cosmos danced and fluttered round-eyedblossoms in welcome, while some bronze xenias fairly bobbed over andkissed my rough garden boots. Miss Editha's cock's-combs strutted in agorgeous row down the east walk, and what could have been a greatersurprise than that handed me by a row of jolly round squash, though Ihad been sure we had picked the last languishing fluted fruit from thevine the last week of August? But there lay long green vines completelyresuscitated by the September rains; and nestled among their draperiesof huge leaves were squash and squash, also big yellow blossoms andsmall green-yellow buds, I was so perfectly delighted at the recovery ofmy friends that I reached down and patted one of their head brancheswith its green tendril curls. There were a lot of gorgeous nasturtiumsunder the window of the living-room; but, of course, nobody expects moreof nasturtiums than for them to be faithful unto death by frost. However, I did pick off a red one and proceed to chew it up with thedeepest appreciation of its peppery flavor. And as I chewed withsmarting tongue I cast my eyes along a row of beans that was fairlyloaded with snaps, which made my thumb smart in anticipation of theirgathering, until my gaze was suddenly arrested by something that sent meflying down the walk to the south end of the garden. 

Now, a few weeks after I had hastily planted those hollyhock seeds Samand I had sentimentalized over, I had found in Grandmother Nelson's bookthat hollyhocks never bloom their first season, but have to root andgrow about twenty-four months before they blossom; and, somehow, thatdepressed me because everything in the world seemed slow at that time. How did I know where I would be after all that time, or that I wouldever see them bloom, though they were making great leafy heads whichboth Sam and I strenuously ignored, while every time I went to digaround their roots somebody had done it before me! There they were, perfectly huge with their great fluted leaves, and right at the end ofthe row an extra-large plant had sent up a tall, green spike on the endof which a great, pink doll-blossom was shaking out her rosy skirts inthe afternoon sun. I stood for a minute looking at her in utter rapture. Then I reached out my arms and gathered her in and put a kiss right inthe center of her sweet heart. After that I fled to the barn in searchof the fledgling. 

I found him sheltering in his small jacket five little late chicks thatwould insist in running out from under the old hen, who was busilyengaged hatching out their small brothers and sisters. He was afraidthey would get fatally chilled. 

"I needed you bad, Betty, if any more of these little ones was to actcrazy like this, " he said as I cautiously embraced him and his downybabies. "Put these three in your jacket so I can catch the next one thatcomes out. Old Dommie is 'most through, and then she can take them all. "His faith in old Dommie, who to my certain knowledge had hatched twoother families since spring, was not misplaced. In less than a half-hourall egg debris of the family advent had been removed and the babies putto bed under her breast and subjected to a sharp peck of her controllingbill. 

By this time the sun had begun to drop down over toward Old Harpeth, anda lovely purple was stealing all over the place which mingled with agreat veil of blue smoke from over by the spring, where, I felt sure, Dr. Chubb had lighted twenty new altar fires for the welcome of thehome-comers. I wanted to go and see the camp, but someway I felt that itwas time to go to the gate to meet Sam and his great big children, sodown the Byrd and I went. 

When we got to the gate they were not in sight, and we started up BrierLane to meet them. In my heart there was not the least particle of doubtthat they would all be glad to see me, but I never expected it to happenas it did. Just as we came to the bend in Brier Lane that skirts aroundthe first hill I heard beautiful voices raised in a weird joy-chant, andin a moment they all came into view, all walking and singing, with theirthings piled high on the wagons that followed them. In the midst of thetumbling, frolicking children, the chattering, pointing, exclaimingwomen, and the eagerly questioning men strode Sam with a small girlpickaback across his broad shoulders and the old praying-man walking byhis side in deep conversation. I stood still to wait and let them allsee me. The result was glorious. I had never known anything like itbefore. The women all laughed and cried in their excitable foreign way, and the men's faces showed great white teeth in radiant smiles. Theykissed my hands and even the sleeves of my dress, and some of thechildren danced around and around in a very ecstasy of welcome, for Ifelt sure that to them I was the keeper of mammoth banana-bags. And Ilaughed and sniffed and patted and hugged the women in return, andnodded and called broken Belgian-English greeting to the men--to all butSam. Sam stood perfectly still in the middle of the lane in the exactplace that he had been when he caught sight of me coming out of thesunset toward him. He let the child slip from his shoulders and nevertook his eyes off me during the five minutes of the reunion rejoicings. And I never looked at or spoke to Sam, but walked on back to The Briersahead of him, with the women chattering and gesticulating around me. 

When we came to the gate I waited for Sam to come forward to open it. Iwanted him to lead his flock into their promised land and--and I wantedto follow at his heels with them. 

Around up the hill he led us, down the old road, past the big rockspring-house with its nine crocks of milk that I could see the womeneagerly point out to one another, and into the little town of tents, atwhose entrance stood daddy and Dr. Chubb, with their sleeves rolled upand energetic welcome in their eyes. 

Then for an hour there was sorting of bundles and bedding; locating andhousing; assuring and reassuring; nursing babies by camp-fires, andfeeding little mouths out of the huge chicken-dumpling pots that Mammy, with Dr. Chubb's assistance, had been brewing since morning. A big heapof coals was shoveled off a perfect mound of corn-pones; and there wasplenty for all and some left over. I think I never saw anything so happyas the fledgling as he squatted on the ground and fed two toddlers froma bowl of corn-bread and gravy, strictly turnabout, the odd one to hisown mouth. 

Then, as the twilight came down softly like a beautiful benediction, weleft them all, strangers in a strange land, fed, housed, and comforted. 

We went up to the old white, hovering house, and while Mammy and Iplanned and in a measure mixed breakfast for the multitude down thehill, daddy and Dr. Chubb went with Sam, who had slipped on hisoveralls, to look at the new mules tied out behind the barn to longtemporary stable poles. The Byrd I could not get from the company downby the spring. Later Mammy had to go down and extract him, fast asleep, from the midst of the largest Belgian family, where he was watched overtenderly by the fierce-eyed woman and the mother of the twins. 

I had wiped the meal off my hands and taken off Mammy's apron when Samcame to the door and called me; and I felt very much as I used to whenat school I went in to get my examination marks, as I followed him downto Peter's shack on the hillside. I wasn't one bit afraid of SamuelFoster Crittenden, I told myself, while I walked along behind him as heheld the coral-strung buck-bushes out of my path; but my knees didtremble, and my teeth chattered so that I felt sure he would hear them. 

For a long moment Sam stood in front of the shack and looked out over toParadise Ridge. I knew that now was the time for me to marshal up mydefense and demand to be put on the same footing in life with thosepeasant women sleeping below us beside the covered camp-fires. 

"What right has any man to say that a woman shall not plow and sow andreap and dig if she wants to, and especially if it is so much in herblood that she can't keep away from it?" I was just getting ready todemand. Then suddenly Sam sobbed, choked, sobbed again, and reached outhis arms to fold me in against the sobs so closely that I could feelthem rising out of his very heart. 

"Betty, Betty, " he fairly groaned, with his face pressed close to mine. A tear wet my cheek, larger and warmer than the ones which werebeginning to drip from my own eyes. 

"I can't help it, Sam, " I sobbed. "I will be just as good as any of theother women; but I want a--a mule and twenty acres here with you. Idon't feel safe anywhere else. I might starve, away from you. "

And then, very quietly, very surely, I found out what it was I had beenhungry for and thirsty for, what it was I had been used to having fed meever since I could remember--it was Sam's love. He held me close, thencloser for a long second--and then he pressed his lips on mine until Iknew what it was to feel--fed. 

"My woman, " he said, when at last I turned my face away for breath andto get room to raise my arms around his neck and hold on tight until Icould get used to being certain that he was there. 

"I tried to let you give me away, Sam, but I couldn't, " I said, with adive into the breast of his overalls, which had that glorious barn andfield--was it cosmic he told me to call it?--smell. 

"When I've loved you a little longer I'm going to shake the life out ofyou for this mix-up, " said Sam, hollowing his long arms and breast stilldeeper to fold me fast. 

"I--I held Peter's hand all during that long play-making, and I can'tstand it any longer, " I said, squirming still closer and hiding myabashed eyes under his chin. 

"Just hold my heart awhile now, " Sam answered, as he sank down on thedoor-sill of the shack and cradled me close and warm, safe from thelittle chill breeze that blew up from the valley. 

I don't know how long we sat there with arms and breasts and cheeksclose, but I do know that some of the time Sam was praying, and Iprayed, too. That is, I thanked God for Sam in behalf of myself and thehelpless people in the camp below us and the rest of the world, even ifthey don't know about him yet. Amen. 

Of course, it is easy enough, if you have a little money in yourstocking, to cut any kind of hard knot and go off on a railroad train, leaving the ravelings behind you. But I believe that sooner or laterpeople always have to tie up all the strings of all the knots theyruthlessly cut. Sam made me do it the very next day, after a long talkout on the front porch under the honeysuckle that was still blowing afew late flowers. 

First he made me tell mother. She said:

"Why, of course, Betty dear, I always expected you to marry Sam, and Iam so glad that you are so like my mother and will be a good farmer'swife. Did I give you that gardening-book of hers that I found? It mightbe a help to you both. "

Did she give me that gardening-book which had made all the mischief? Ifelt Sam laugh, for I was hanging on to his arm just as I always didwhen he took me in to tell mother on myself. I was glad that shefinished the eighth row of the mat and began on the ninth at that exactmoment, so we could go on back to the honeysuckles and the young moon. 

Then Sam made me tell daddy. Daddy said:

"Now I suppose I will be allowed to purchase a mule and cow or anelectric reaper for that farm when I think it necessary?" And as hespoke he looked Sam straight in the face, with belligerency making thecorners of his white mustache stand straight up. 

"Make it a big steam-silo, first, Dad Hayes, " answered Sam, laughing andred up to the edges of his hair--and daddy got an arm around us both fora good hug. 

But the letter to Peter was another thing, and I didn't wait for Sam totell me to write it. I smudged and snubbed and scratched over it all dayand flung myself weeping into Sam's arms that night with it in my hand. 

"Why, I wrote to Peter that night--the night I--took you over, Bettykin. And here's the answer that came an hour ago by wire. Take your hair outof my eyes and let me read it to you. "

I snuggled two inches lower against Sam, and this is what he read:

 My life for your life, yours for mine, and joy to us both. PETE. 

I got a letter from Peter the next day, and it said such wonderfulthings about Sam that I pasted it in Grandmother Nelson's book with theCommissioner's report. I had to cut out a whole page about Julia'sbeauty and the way New York was crazy about her. Peter is the mostwonderful man in the world in some ways, and I believe that, as hedeserves all kinds of happiness, he'll get it; maybe a nice, big, pinkhappiness in a blue chiffon and gold dress that will rock his nervesthrough a long career of play-writing. I told Sam my hopes. 

He ruffled my hair with his big hand, and my lips with his, as hesmoldered out toward Old Harpeth. In his eyes was the gridiron land lookthat started the flow of sap along the twigs of my heart just a fewmonths ago. Then he said:

"A man must plow his field of life deep, Betty, but if a woman didn'ttrudge 'longside with her hoe and seed-basket, what would the harvestbe?"

THE END