The Desert and The Sown

MARY HALLOCK FOOTE

CONTENTS

I. A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS

II. INTRODUCING A SON-IN-LAW

III. THE INITIAL LOVE

IV. "A MAN THAT HAD A WELL IN HIS OWN COURT"

V. DISINHERITED

VI. AN APPEAL TO NATURE

VII. MARKING TIME

VIII. A HUNTER'S DIARY

IX. THE POWER OF WEAKNESS

X. THE WHITE PERIL

XI. A SEARCHING OF HEARTS

XII. THE BLOOD-WITE

XIII. CURTAIN

XIV. KIND INQUIRIES

XV. A BRIDEGROOM OF SNOW

XVI. THE NATURE OF AN OATH

XVII. THE HIDDEN TRAIL

XVIII. THE STAR IN THE EAST

XIX. PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS

XX. A STATION IN THE DESERT

XXI. INJURIOUS REPORTS CONCERNING AN OLD HOUSE

XXII. THE CASE STRIKES IN

XXIII. RESTIVENESS

XXIV. INDIAN SUMMER

XXV. THE FELL FROST

XXVI. PEACE TO THIS HOUSE

I

A COUNCIL OF THE ELDERS

It was an evening of sudden mildness following a dry October gale. Thecolonel had miscalculated the temperature by one log--only one, hedeclared, but that had proved a pitchy one, and the chimney bellowed withflame. From end to end the room was alight with it, as if the stored-upenergies of a whole pine-tree had been sacrificed in the consumption ofthat four-foot stick. 

The young persons of the house had escaped, laughing, into the fresh nightair, but the colonel was hemmed in on every side; deserted by hisdaughter, mocked by the work of his own hands, and torn between the dutiesof a host and the host's helpless craving for his after-dinner cigar. 

Across the hearth, filling with her silks all the visible room in his ownfavorite settle corner, sat the one woman on earth it most behooved him tobe civil to, --the future mother-in-law of his only child. That Moya was awilling, nay, a reckless hostage, did not lessen her father's awe of thesituation. 

Mrs. Bogardus, according to her wont at this hour, was composedly doingnothing. The colonel could not make his retreat under cover of her real orfeigned absorption in any of the small scattering pursuits which distractthe female mind. When she read she read--she never "looked at books. " Whenshe sewed she sewed--presumably, but no one ever saw her do it. Her mindwas economic and practical, and she saved it whole, like many men offorce, for whatever she deemed her best paying sphere of action. 

It was a silence that crackled with heat! The colonel, wrathfullyperspiring in the glow of that impenitent stick, frowned at it like aninquisitor. Presently Mrs. Bogardus looked up, and her expression softenedas she saw the energetic despair upon his face. 

"Colonel, don't you always smoke after dinner?"

"That is my bad habit, madam. I belong to the generation thatsmokes--after dinner and most other times--more than is good for us. "Colonel Middleton belonged also to the generation that can carry asentence through to the finish in handsome style, and he did it with asuave Virginian accent as easy as his seat in the saddle. Mrs. Bogardusalways gave him her respectful attention during his best performances, though she was a woman of short sentences herself. 

"Don't you smoke in this room sometimes?" she asked, with a barelyperceptible sniff the merest contraction of her housewifely nostrils. 

"Ah--h! Those rascally curtains and cushions! You ladies--women, I shouldsay--Moya won't let me say ladies--you bolster us up with comforts onpurpose to betray us!"

"You can say 'ladies' to me, " smiled the very handsome one before him. "That's the generation _I_ belong to. "

The colonel bowed playfully. "Well, you know, I don't detect myself, butthere's no doubt I have infected the premises. "

"Open fires are good ventilators. I wish you would smoke now. If youdon't, I shall have to go away, and I'm exceedingly comfortable. "

"You are exceedingly charming to say so--on top of that last stick, too!"The colonel had Irish as well as Virginian progenitors. "Well, " he sighed, proceeding to make himself conditionally happy, "Moya will never forgiveme! We spoil each other shamefully when we're alone, but of course we tryto jack each other up when company comes. It's a great comfort to havesome one to spoil, isn't it, now? I needn't ask which it is in yourfamily!"

"The spoiled one?" Mrs. Bogardus smiled rather coldly. "A woman we had forgoverness, when Christine was a little thing, used to say: 'That child isthe stuff that tyrants are made of!' Tyrants are made by the will of theirsubjects, don't you think, generally speaking?"

"Well, you couldn't have made a tyrant of your son, Mrs. Bogardus. He'sthe Universal Spoiler! He'll ruin my striker, Jephson. I shall have tosend the fellow back to the ranks. I don't know how you keep a servantgood for anything with Paul around. "

"Paul thinks he doesn't like to be waited on, " Paul's mother observedshrewdly. "He says that only invalids, old people, and children have anyclaim on the personal service of others. "

"By George! I found him blacking his own boots!"

Mrs. Bogardus laughed. 

"But I'm paying a man to do it for him. It upsets my contract with thatother fellow for Paul to do his work. We have a claim on what we pay forin this world. "

"I suppose we have. But Paul thinks that nothing can pay the price ofthose artificial relations between man and man. I think that's the way heputs it. "

"Good Heavens! Has the boy read history? It's a relation that began whenthe world was made, and will last while men are in it. "

"I am not defending Paul's ideas, Colonel. I have a great sympathy withtyrants myself. You must talk to him. He will amuse you. "

"My word! It's a ticklish kind of amusement when _we_ get talking. Why, the boy wants to turn the poor old world upside down--make us all stand onour heads to give our feet a rest. Now, I respect my feet, "--the coloneldrew them in a little as the lady's eyes involuntarily took the directionof his allusion, --"I take the best care I can of them; but I propose tokeep my head, such as it is, on top, till I go under altogether. Theseyoung philanthropists! They assume that the Hands and the Feet of theworld, the class that serves in that capacity, have got the same nerves asthe Brain. "

"There's a sort of connection, " said Mrs. Bogardus carelessly. "Some ofour Heads have come from the class that you call the Hands and Feet, haven't they?"

The colonel admitted the fact, but the fact was the exception. "Why, that's just the matter with us now! We've got no class of legislators. Idon't wish to plume myself, but, upon my word, the two services are aboutall we have left to show what selection and training can do. And we'reonly just getting the army into shape, after the raw material that wasdumped into it by the civil war. "

"Weren't you in the civil war yourself?"

"I was--a West Pointer, madam; and I was true to my salt and false to myblood. But, the flag over all!--at the cost of everything I held dear onearth. " After this speech the colonel looked hotter than ever and a trifleashamed of himself. 

Mrs. Bogardus's face wore its most unobservant expression. "I don't agreewith Paul, " she said. "I wish in some ways he were more like other youngmen--exercise, for instance. It's a pity for young men not to loveactivity and leadership. Besides, it's the fashion. A young man might aswell be out of the world as out of the fashion. Blood is a strange thing, "she mused. 

The colonel looked at her curiously. In a woman so unfrank, her occasionalbursts of frankness were surprising and, as he thought, not altogethercomplimentary. It was as if she felt herself so far removed from hisconception of her that she might say anything she pleased, sure of hismiscomprehension. 

"He is not lazy intellectually, " said the colonel, aiming to comfort her. 

"I did not say he was lazy--only he won't do things except to what hecalls some 'purpose. ' At his age amusement ought to be purpose enough. Heought to take his pleasures seriously--this hunting-trip, for instance. Ibelieve, on the very least encouragement, he would give it all up!"

"You mustn't let him do that, " said the colonel, warming. "All thatcountry above Yankee Fork, for a hundred miles, after you've gone fiftynorth from Bonanza, is practically virgin forest. Wonderful flora andfauna! It's late for the weeds and things, but if Paul wants game trophiesfor your country-house, he can load a pack-train. "

Mrs. Bogardus continued to be amused, in a quiet way. "He calls themrelics of barbarism! He would as soon festoon his walls with scalps, asdecorate them with the heads of beautiful animals, --nearer the Creator'sdesign than most men, he would say. "

"He's right there! But that doesn't change the distinction between men andanimals. He is your son, madam--and he's going to be mine. But, fine boyas he is, I call him a crank of the first water. "

"You'll find him quite good to Moya, " Mrs. Bogardus remarkeddispassionately. "And he's not quite twenty-four. "

"Very true. Well, _I_ should send him into the woods for the sake ofgetting a little sense into him, of an every-day sort. He 'll take insanity with every breath. "

"And you don't think it's too late in the season for them to go out?"

There was no change in Mrs. Bogardus's voice, unconcerned as it was; yetthe colonel felt at once that this simple question lay at the root of allher previous skirmishing. 

"The guide will decide as to that, " he said definitely. "If it is, hewon't go out with them. They have got a good man, you say?"

"They are waiting for a good man; they have waited too long, I think. Heis expected in with another party on Monday, perhaps, Paul is to meet theBowens at Challis, where they buy their outfit. I do believe"--she laughedconstrainedly--"that he is going up there more to head them off than forany other reason. "

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, it's very stupid of them! They seem to think an army post is part ofthe public domain. They have been threatening, if Paul gives up the trip, to come down here on a gratuitous visit. "

"Why, let them come by all means! The more the merrier! We will quarterthem on the garrison at large. "

"Wherever they were quartered, they would be here all the time. They arenot intimate friends of Paul's. _Mrs. _ Bowen is--a very great friend. Heis her right-hand in all that Hartley House work. The boys are justfashionable young men. "

"Can't they go hunting without Paul?"

"Wheels within wheels!" Mrs. Bogardus sighed impatiently. "Hunting tripsare expensive, and--when young men are living on their fathers, it isconvenient sometimes to have a third. However, Paul goes, I half believe, to prevent their making a descent upon us here. "

"Well; I should ask them to come, or make it plain they were notexpected. "

"Oh, would you?--if their mother was one of the nicest women, and yourfriend? Besides, the reservation does not cover the whole valley. BanksBowen talks of a mine he wants to look at--I don't think it will make muchdifference to the mine! This is simply to say that I wish Paul cared moreabout the trip for its own sake. "

"Well, frankly, I think he's better out of the way for the next fortnight. The girls ought to go to bed early, and keep the roses in their cheeks forthe wedding. Moya's head is full of her frocks and fripperies. She istrying to run a brace of sewing women; and all those boxes are coming fromthe East to be 'inspected, and condemned' mostly. The child seems to makea great many mistakes, doesn't she? About every other day I see a box asbig as a coffin in the hall, addressed to some dry-goods house, 'returnedby ----'"

"Moya should have sent to me for her things, " said Mrs. Bogardus. "I amthe one who makes her return them. She can do much better when she is intown herself. It doesn't matter, for the few weeks they will be away, whatshe wears. I shall take her measures home with me and set the people towork. She has never been _fitted_ in her life. "

The colonel looked rather aghast. He had seldom heard Mrs. Bogardus speakwith so much animation. He wondered if really his household was so veryfar behind the times. 

"It's very kind of you, I'm sure, if Moya will let you. Most girls thinkthey can manage these matters for themselves. "

"It's impossible to shop by mail, " Mrs. Bogardus said decidedly. "Theyalways keep a certain style of things for the Western and Southern trade. "

The colonel was crushed. Mrs. Bogardus rose, and he picked up herhandkerchief, breathing a little hard after the exertion. She passed out, thanking him with a smile as he opened the door. In the hall she stoppedto choose a wrap from a collection of unconventional garments hanging on arack of moose horns. 

"I think I shall go out, " she said. "The air is quite soft to-night. Doyou know which way the children went?" By the "children, " as the colonelhad noted, Mrs. Bogardus usually meant her daughter, the budding tyrant, Christine. 

"Fine woman!" he mused, alone with himself in his study. "Splendidcharacter head. Regular Dutch beauty. But hard--eh?--a trifle hard in thegrain. Eyes that tell you nothing. Mouth set like a stone. Never ramblesin her talk. Never speculates or exaggerates for fun. Never runs intohyperbole--the more fool some other folks! Speaks to the point or keepsstill. "

II

INTRODUCING A SON-IN-LAW

The colonel's papers failed to hold him somehow. He rose and paced theroom with his short, stiff-kneed tread. He stopped and stared into thefire; his face began to get red. 

"So! Moya's clothes are not good enough. Going to set the people to work, is she? Wants an outfit worthy of her son. And who's to pay for it, bygad? Post-nuptial bills for wedding finery are going to hurt poor littleMoya like the deuce. Confound the woman! Dressing my daughter for me, right in my own house. Takes it in her hands as if it were her right, by----!" The colonel let slip another expletive. "Well, " he sighed, halfamused at his own violence, "I'll write to Annie. I promised Moya, andit's high time I did. "

Annie was the colonel's sister, the wife of an infantry captain, stationedat Fort Sherman. She was a very understanding woman; at least sheunderstood her brother. But she was not solely dependent upon his laggardletters for information concerning his private affairs. The approachingwedding at Bisuka Barracks was the topic of most of the military familiesin the Department of the Columbia. Moya herself had written some timebefore, in the self-conscious manner of the newly engaged. Her aunt knewof course that Moya and Christine Bogardus had been room-mates at MissHoward's, that the girls had fallen in love with each other first, andwith visits at holidays and vacations, when the army girl could not go toher father, it was easily seen how the rest had followed. And well forMoya that it had, was Mrs. Creve's indorsement. As a family they werequite sufficiently represented in the army; and if one should ever get anEastern detail it would be very pleasant to have a young niece charminglysettled in New York. 

The colonel drew a match across the top bar of the grate and set it to hispipe. His big nostrils whitened as he took a deep in-breath. He reseatedhimself and began his duty letter in the tone of a judicious parent; but, warming as he wrote, under the influence of Annie's imagined sympathy, hepresently broke forth with his usual arrogant colloquialism. 

"She might have had her pick of the junior officers in both branches. Andthere was a captain of engineers at the Presidio, a widower, but anawfully good fellow. And she has chosen a boy, full of transcendentalmoonshine, who climbs upon a horse as if it were a stone fence, and hasmixed ideas which side of himself to hang a pistol on. 

"I have no particular quarrel with the lad, barring his great burlymouthful of a name, Bo--gardus! To call a child Moya and have her fetch upwith her soft, Irish vowels against such a name as that! She had a fondidea that it was from Beauregard. But she has had to give that up. It'sDutch--Hudson River Dutch--for something horticultural--a tree, or anorchard, or a brush-pile; and she says it's a good name where it belongs. Pity it couldn't have stayed where it belongs. 

"However, you won't find him quite so scrubby as he sounds. He's veryproper and clean-shaven, with a good pair of dark, Dutch eyes, which hegets from his mother; and I wish he had got her business ability withthem, and her horse sense, if the lady will excuse me. She runs theproperty and he spends it, as far as she'll let him, on the newestreforms. And there's another hitch!--To belong to the Truly Good attwenty-four! But beggars can't be choosers. He's going to settle somethinghandsome on Moya out of the portion Madame gives him on his marriage. Mypoor little girl, as you know, will get nothing from me but a few old bitsand trinkets and a father's blessing, --the same doesn't go for much inthese days. I have been a better dispenser than accumulator, like othersof our name. 

"I do assure you, Annie, it bores me down to the ground, this humanitarianracket from children with ugly names who have just chipped the shell. Thisone owns his surprise that we _work_ in the army! That our junior officersteach, and study a bit perforce themselves. His own idea is that everyWest Pointer, before he gets his commission, should serve a year or two inthe ranks, to raise the type of the enlisted man, and chiefly, mark you, to get his point of view, the which he is to bear in mind when he comes tohis command. Oh, we've had some pretty arguments! But I suspect the rascalof drawing it mild, at this stage, for the old dragon who guards hisGolden Apple. He doesn't want to poke me up. How far he'd go if he werenot hampered in his principles by the fact that he is in love, I cannotsay. And I'd rather not imagine. "

The commandant's house at Bisuka Barracks is the nearest one to theflag-pole as you go up a flight of wooden steps from the parade ground. These steps, and their landings, flanked by the dry grass terrace of theline, are a favorite gathering place for young persons of leisure at thePost. They face the valley and the mountains; they lead past theadjutant's office to the main road to town; they command the daily pageantof garrison duty as performed at such distant, unvisited posts, with onlythe ladies and the mountains looking on. 

Retreat had sounded at half after five, for the autumn days grew short. The colonel's orderly had been dismissed to his quarters. There was noexcuse, at this hour, for two young persons lingering in sentimentalcorners of the steps, beyond a flagrant satisfaction in the shadow thereofwhich covered them since the lighting of lamps on Officers' Row. 

The colonel stood at his study window keeping his pipe alive with slow anddreamy puffs. The moon was just clearing the roof of the men's quarters. His eye caught a shape, or a commingling of shapes, ensconced in an angleof the steps; the which he made out to be his daughter, in her lightevening frock with one of his own old army capes over her shoulders, seated in close formation beside the only man at the Post who worecivilian black. 

The colonel had the feelings of a man as well as a father. He went back tohis letter with a softened look in his face. He had said too much; healways did--to Annie; and now he must hedge a little or she would thinkthere was trouble brewing, and that he was going to be nasty about Moya'schoice. 

III

THE INITIAL LOVE

"Let us be simple! Not every one can be, but we can. We can afford to be, and we know how!"

Moya was speaking rapidly, in her singularly articulate tones. A reader ofvoices would have pronounced hers the physical record of unbroken healthand constant, joyous poise. 

"Hear the word of your prophet Emerson!" she brought a little fist downupon her knee for emphasis, a hand several sizes larger closed upon it andheld it fast. "Hear the word--are you listening? 'Only _two_ in the Gardenwalked and with Snake and Seraph talked. '"

The young man's answer was an instant's impassioned silence. Too close ittouched him, that vital image of the Garden. Then, with an effect ofsternness, he said, --

"Have we the right to do as we please? Have we the courage that comes ofright to cut ourselves off from all those calls and cries for help?"

"_I_ have, " said the girl; "I have just that right--of one who knowsexactly what she wants, and is going to get it if she can!"

He laughed at her happy insolence, with which all the youth and nature inhim made common cause. 

"I shouldn't mind thinking about your Poor Man, " she tripped along, "if heliked being poor, or if it seemed to improve him any; or if it were onlynow and then. But there is so dreadfully much of him! Once we begin, howshould we ever think about anything else? He'd rise up and sit down withus, and eat and drink with us, and tell us what to wear. Every pleasure ofour lives would be spoiled with his eternal 'Where do _I_ come in?' It wassimple enough in _that_ garden, with only those two and nobody outside tofeel injured. But we are those two, aren't we? Isn't everybody--once in alife, and once only?" She turned her face aside, slighting by her mannerthe excessive meaning of her words. "I ask for myself only what I think Ihave a right to give you--my absolute undivided attention for those firstfew years. They say it never lasts!" she hastened to add with playfulcynicism. 

Young Bogardus seemed incapable under the circumstances of any adequatereply. Free as they were in words, there was an extreme personal shynessbetween these proud young persons, undeveloped on the side of passion andbetter versed in theories of life than in life itself. They had separatedthe day after their sudden engagement, and their nearest approaches tointimacy had been through letters. Naturally the girl was the bolder, having less in herself to fear. 

"That is what _I_ call being simple, " she went on briskly. "If you thinkwe can be that in New York, let us live there. _I_ could be simple there, but not with you, sir! That terrible East Side would be shaking its gorylocks at us. We should feel that we did it--or you would! Then good-by tolife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!"

"You are my life, liberty, and happiness, and I will be your almoner, "said Paul, "and dispense you"--

"Dispense _with_ me!" laughed the girl. "And what shall I be doing whileyou are dispensing me on the East Side? New York has other sides. Whileyou go slumming with the Seraph, I shall be talking to the Snake! Now, _do_ laugh!" she entreated childishly, turning her sparkling face to his. 

"Am I expected to laugh at that?"

"Well, what shall we do? Don't make me harden my heart before it has hadtime to soften naturally. Give my poor pagan sympathies a little time toripen. "

"But you have lived in New York. Did you find it such a strain on yoursympathies?"

"I was a visitor; and a girl is not expected to have sympathies. But tobegin our home there: we should have to strike a note of some sort. How ifmy note should jar with yours? Paul, dear, it isn't nice to haveconvictions when one is young and going to be married. You know it isn't. It's not poetic, and it's not polite, and it's a dreadful bore!"

The altruist and lover winced at this. Allowing for exaggeration, whichwas the life of speech with her, he knew that Moya was giving him a bit ofher true self, that changeful, changeless self which goes behind all lawand "follows joy and only joy. " Her voice dropped into its sweetest tonesof intimacy. 

"Why need we live in a crowd? Why must we be pressed upon with all thisfuss and doing? Doing, doing! We are not ready to do anything yet. Everyday must have its dawn;--and I don't see my way yet; I'm hardly awake!"

"Darling, hush! You must not say such things to me. For you only to lookat me like that is the most terrible temptation of my life. You make meforget everything a man is bound--that I of all men am bound to remember. "

"Then I will keep on looking! Behold, I am Happiness, Selfishness, if youlike! I have come to stay. No, really, it's not nice of you to act as ifyou were under higher orders. You are under my orders. What right have weto choose each other if we are not to be better to each other than to anyone else?--if our lives belong to any one who needs us, or our time andmoney, more than we need it ourselves? Why did you choose me? Why notsomebody pathetic--one of your Poor Things; or else save yourself wholefor all the Poor Things?"

"Now you are 'talking for victory, '" he smiled. "You don't believe we mustbe as consistent as all that. Hearts don't have to be coddled like pearspicked for market. But I'm not preaching to you. The heavens forbid! I'mtrying to explain. You don't think this whole thing with me is a pose? Iknow I'm a bore with my convictions; but how do we come by such things?"

"Ah! How do I come not to have any, or to want any?" she rejoined. 

"Once for all, let me tell you how I came by mine. Then you will know justwhere and how those cries for help take hold on me. "

"I don't wish to know. Preserve me from knowing! Why didn't you choosesomebody different?"

He looked at her with all his passion in his eyes. "I did not choose. Didyou?"

"It isn't too late, " she whispered. Her face grew hot in the darkness. 

"Yes; it is too late--for anything but the truth. Will you listen, sweet?Will you let the nonsense wait?"

"Deeper and deeper! Haven't we reached the bottom yet?"

"Go on! It's the dearest nonsense, " she heard him say; but she detectedpain in his voice and a new constraint. 

"What is it? What is the 'truth'?"

"Oh, it's not so dreadful. Only, you always put me in quite a differentclass from where I belong, and I haven't had the courage to set youright. "

"Children, children!" a young voice called, from the lighted walk above. Two figures were going down the line, one in uniform keeping step beside agirl in white who reefed back her skirts with one hand, the other wasraised to her hair which was blowing across her forehead in bewitchingdisorder. Every gesture and turn of her shape announced that she waspretty and gay in the knowledge of her power. It was Chrissy, walking withLieutenant Lane. 

"Where are you--ridiculous ones? Don't you want to come with us?"

"'Now who were they?'" Paul quoted derisively out of the dark. 

"We are going to Captain Dawson's to play Hearts. Come! Don't be stupid!"

"We are not stupid, we are busy!" Moya called back. 

"Busy! Doing what?"

"Oh, deciding things. We are talking about the Poor Man. "

"The poor men, she means. " Christine's high laugh followed thelieutenant's speech, as the pair went on. 

"He _is_ a bore!" Moya declared. "We can't even use him for a joke. "

"Speaking of Lane, dear?"

"The Poor Man. Are you sure that you've got a sense of humor, Paul? Can'twe have charity for jokes among the other poor things?"

Paul had raised himself to the step beside her. "You are shivering, " hesaid, "I must let you go in. "

"I'm not shivering--I'm chattering, " she mocked. "Why should I go in whenwe are going to be really serious?"

Paul waited a moment; his breath came short, as if he were facing apostponed dread. "Moya, dear, " he began in a forced tone, "I can't help myconstraints and convictions that bore you so, any more than you can helpyour light heart--God bless it--and your theory of class which to me seemsmediaeval. I have cringed to it, like the coward a man is when he is inlove. But now I want you to know me. "

He took her hand and kissed it repeatedly, as if impressing upon her theone important fact back of all hypothesis and perilous efforts atstatement. 

"Well, are you bidding me good-by?"

"You must give me time, " he said. "It takes courage in these days for agood American to tell the girl he loves that his father was a hired man. "

He smiled, but there was little mirth and less color in his face. 

"What absurdity!" cried Moya. Then glancing at him she added quickly, "_My_ father is a hired man. Most fathers who are worth anything are!"

"My father was because he came of that class. His father was one beforehim. His mother took in tailoring in the village where he was born. He hadonly the commonest common-school education and not much of that. At elevenhe worked for his board and clothes at my Grandfather Van Elten's, andfrom that time he earned his bread with his hands. Don't imagine that I'mapologizing, " Paul went on rapidly. "The apology belongs on the otherside. In New York, for instance, the Bogardus blood is quite as good asthe Bevier or the Broderick or the Van Elten; but up the Hudson, owing tothose chances or mischances that selected our farming aristocracy for us, my father's people had slipped out of their holdings and sunk to the poorartisan class which the old Dutch landowners held in contempt. "

"We are not landowners, " said Moya. "What does it matter? What does any ofit matter?"

"It matters to be honest and not sail under false colors. I thought youwould not speak of the Poor Man as you do if you knew that I am his son. "

"Money has nothing to do with position in the army. I am a poor man'sdaughter. "

"Ah, child! Your father gives orders--mine took them, all his life. "

"My father has to take what he gives. There is no escaping 'orders. ' EvenI know that!" said Moya. A slight shiver passed over her as she spoke, laughing off as usual the touch of seriousness in her words. 

"Why did you do that?" Paul touched her shoulder. "Is it the wind? Thereis a wind creeping down these steps. " He improved the formation slightlyin respect to the wind. 

"Listen!" said Moya. "Isn't that your mother walking on the porch? Father, I know, is writing. She will be lonely. "

"She is never lonely, more or less. It is always the same loneliness--of awoman widowed for years. "

"How very much she must have cared for him!" Moya sighed incredulously. What a pity, she thought, that among the humbler vocations Paul's fathershould have been just a plain "hired man. " Cowboy, miner, man-o'-war'sman, even enlisted man, though that were bad enough--any of these he mighthave been in an accidental way, that at least would have been picturesque;but it is only the possession of land, by whatsoever means or title, thatcan dignify an habitual personal contact with it in the form of soil. Thatis one of the accepted prejudices which one does not meddle with atnineteen. "Youth is conservative because it is afraid. " Moya, for all herfighting blood, was traditionally and in social ways much more in bondsthan Paul, who had inherited his father's dreamy speculative habit ofthought, with something of the farm-hand's distrust of society and itsforms and shibboleth. 

Paul's voice took a narrative tone, and Moya gave herself up tolistening--to him rather more, perhaps, than to his story. 

Few young men of twenty-four can go very deeply into questions ofheredity. Of what follows here much was not known to Paul. Much that hedid know he would have interpreted differently. The old well at StoneRidge, for instance, had no place in his recital; and yet out of it sprangthe history of his shorn generation. Had Paul's mother grown up in ahouseful of brothers and sisters, governed by her mother instead of an oldignorant servant, in all likelihood she would have marrieddifferently--more wisely but not perhaps so well, her son would loyallyhave maintained. The sons of the rich farmers who would have been hersuitors were men inferior to their fathers. They inherited the vigor andcoarseness of constitution, the unabashed materialism of that earliergeneration that spent its energies coping with Nature on its stony farms, but the sons were spared the need of that hard labor which their bloodrequired. They supplied an element of force, but one of great corruptionlater, in the state politics of their time. 

IV

A MAN THAT HAD A WELL IN HIS OWN COURT

In the kitchen court called the "Airy" at Abraham Van Elten's, there wasone of those old family wells which our ancestors used to locate soartlessly. And when it tapped the kitchen drain, and typhoid took theelder children, and the mother followed the children, it was called thewill of God. A gloomy distinction rested on the house. Abraham felt theimportance attaching to any supreme experience in a community where liferuns on in the middle key. 

A young doctor who had been called in at the close of the last case wentprying about the premises, asking foolish questions that angered Abraham. It is easier for some natures to suffer than to change. If the farmer hadever drunk water himself, except as tea or coffee, or mixed with somethingstronger, he must have been an early victim, to his own crass ignorance. He was a vigorous, heavy-set man, a grand field for typhoid. But heprospered, and the young doctor was turned down with the full weight andbreadth of the Van Elten thumb, or the Broderick; Abraham's build was thatof his maternal grandmother, Hillotje Broderick. 

On the Ridge, which later developed into a valuable slate quarry, therewas a spring of water, cold and perpetual, flowing out of thetrap-formation. Abraham had piped this water down to his barns andcattle-sheds; it furnished power for the farm-work. But to bring it to thehouse, in obedience to the doctor's meddlesome advice, would be anacknowledgment of fatal mistakes in the past; would raise talk and blameamong the neighbors, and do away with the honor of a special visitation;would cost no trifle of money; would justify the doctor's interference, and insult the old well of his father and his father's father, thefountain of generations. To seal its mouth and bid its usefulness cease inthe house where it had ministered for upwards of a hundred years was anact of desecration impossible to the man who in his stolid way loved thevery stones that lined its slimy sides. The few sentiments that had takenhold on Abraham's arid nature went as deep as his obstinacy and clung asfast as his distrust of new opinions and new men. The question of watersupply was closed in his house; but the well remained open and kept up itsillicit connection with the drain. 

Old Becky, keeper of the widower's keys, had followed closely the historyof those unhappy "cases;" she had listened to discussions, violent orsuppressed, she had heard much talk that went on behind her master's back. 

Employers of that day and generation were masters; and masters are meantto be outwitted. Emily, the youngest and last of the flock, was now achild of four, dark like her mother, sturdy and strong like her father. Onan August day soon after the mother's funeral, Becky took her littlecharge to the well and showed her a tumbler filled, with water not freshlydrawn. 

"See them little specks and squirmy things?" Emmy saw them. She followedtheir wavering motion in the glass as the stern forefinger pointed. "Thoseare little baby snakes, " said Becky mysteriously. "The well is full of'em. Sometimes you can see 'em, sometimes you can't, but they're alwaysthere. They never grow big down the well; it's too dark 'n' cold. But youdrink that water and the snakes will grow and wriggle and work all throughye, and eat your insides out, and you'll die. Your mother"--in awhisper--"she drunk that water, and she died. Your sister Ruth, and Dirck, and Jimmy, they drunk it, and they died. Now if Emmy wants to die"--Largeeyes of horror fastened on the speaker's face. "No--o, she don't want todie, the Loveums! She don't want Becky to have no little girl left at all!No; we mustn't ever drink any of that bad water--all full of snakes, ugh!But if Emmy's thirsty, see here! Here's good nice water. It's going to bealways here in this pail--same water the little lambs drink up in thefields. Becky 'll take Emmy up on the hill sometime and show where thelittle lambs drink. "

Grief had not clouded the farmer's oversight in petty things. He noticedthe innocent pail on the area bench, never empty, always specklesslyclean. 

"What is this water?" he asked. 

Becky was surly. "Drinking water. Want some?"

"What's it doing here all the time?"

"I set it there for Emmy. She can't reach up to the bucket. "

Abraham tasted the water suspiciously. The well-water was hard, with atang of iron. The spring soft, and less cold for its journey to the barn. 

"Where did you get this water?"

"Help yourself. There's plenty more. "

"Becky, where did this water come from? Out o' the well?"

Becky gave a snort of exasperation. "Sam Lewis brought it from the barn!I'm too lame to be histin' buckets. I've got the rheumatiz' awful in myback and shoulders, if ye want to know!"

"Becky, you're lying to me. You've been listening to what don't concernyou. Now, see here. You are not going to ask the men to carry water foryou. They've got something else to do. _There's_ your water, as handy asever a woman had it; use that or go without. "

Abraham caught up the pail and flung its contents out upon the grass, scattering the hens that came sidling back with squawks of inquiringtemerity. 

When next Emmy came for water, the old woman took her by the hand insilence and led her into the dim meat-cellar, a half-basement with one lowwindow level with the grass. There was the pail, safe hidden behind thesoft-soap barrel. 

"I had to hide it from your pa, " Becky whispered. "Don't you never let himknow you're afraid o' the well-water. He drunk it when he was a littleboy. He don't believe in the snakes. But _there wa'n't none then_. It'swhen water gets old and rotten. You can believe what Becky says. _She_knows! But you mustn't ever tell. Your father 'd be as mad as fire if heknowed I said anything about snakes. He'd send me right away, and somestrange woman would come, and maybe she'd whip Emmy. Emmy want Becky togo?" Sobs, and little arms clinging wildly to Becky's aproned skirts. "No, no! Well, she ain't goin'. But Emmy mustn't tell tales or she might haveto. Tattlers are wicked anyway. 'Telltale tit! Your tongue shall be slit, and all the little dogs'--There! run now! There's your poppy. Don't younever, --never!"

Emmy let her eyes be wiped, and with one long, solemn, secret look of awedintelligence she ran out to meet her father. She did not love him, and thesmile with which she met him was no new lesson in diplomacy. But her firstsecret from him lay deep in the beautiful eyes, her mother's eyes, as sheraised them to his. 

"Ain't that wonderful!" said Becky, with a satisfied sigh, watching her. "Safe as a jug! An' she not five years old!" For vital reasons she hadtaught the child an ugly lesson. Such lessons were common enough in herexperience of family discipline. She never thought of it again. 

That year which took Emmy's mother from her brought to the child her firstyoung companion and friend. Adam Bogardus came as chore-boy to thefarm, --an only child himself, and sensitive through the clashing of gentleinstincts with rough and inferior surroundings; brought up in thatdepressed God-fearing attitude in which a widow not strong, and earningher bread, would do her duty by an only son. Not a natural fighter, shetook what little combativeness he had out of him, and made his school-daysmiserable--a record of humiliations that sunk deep and drove him from hiskind. He was a big, clumsy, sagacious boy, grave as an old man, alwayssnubbed and condescended to, yet always trusted. Little Emmy made him herbondslave at sight. His whole soul blossomed in adoration of thebeautiful, masterful child who ordered him about as her vassal, whileslipping a soft little trustful hand in his. She trotted at his heels likeone of the lambs or chickens that he fed. She brought him into perpetualdisgrace with Becky, for wasting his time through her imperious demands. She was the burden, the delight, the handicap, the incentive, and thereward of his humble apprenticeship. And when he was promoted to be one ofthe regular hands she followed him still, and got her pleasure out of hisday's work. No one had such patience to tell her things, to wait for herand help her over places where her tagging powers fell short. But thoughshe bullied him, she looked up to him as well. His occupations commandedher respect. He was the god of the orchards and of the cider-making; hepresided at all the functions of the farm year. He was a perfect calendarbesides of country sports in their season. He swept the ice pools in themeadow for winter sliding, after his day's work was done. He saved uppaper and string for kite-making in March. He knew when willow bark wouldslip for April's whistles. In the first heats of June he climbed the talllocust-trees to put up a swing in which she could dream away the perfumedhours. At harvest she waited in the meadow for him to toss her up on thehay-loads, and his great arms received her when she slid off in the barn. She knelt at his feet on the bumping boards of the farm-wagon while hebraced himself like a charioteer, holding the reins above her head. Hethreshed the nut-trees and routed marauding boys from her preserves, andcarved pumpkin lanterns to light her to her attic chamber on cold Novembernights, where she would lie awake watching strange shadows on the slopingroof, half worshiping, half afraid of her idol's ugliness in the dark. 

These were some of Paul's illustrations of that pastoral beginning, and nodoubt they were sympathetically close to the truth. He lingered over them, dressing up his mother's choice instinctively to the little aristocratbeside him. 

When Emmy grew big enough to go to the Academy, three miles from the farm, it was all in the day's work that Adam should take her and fetch her home. He combined her with the mail, the blacksmith, and other village errands. Whoever met her father's team on those long stony hills of Saugertieswould see his little daughter seated beside his hired man, her face turnedup to his in endless confiding talk. It was a face, as we say, to dreamof. But there were few dreamers in that little world. The farmers wouldnod gravely to Adam. "Abraham's girl takes after her mother; heartierlookin', though. Guess he'll need a set o' new tires before spring. " Thecomments went no deeper. 

Abraham was now well on in years; he made no visits, and he never drovehis own team at night. When his daughter began to let down her frocks andbe asked to evening parties, it was still Adam who escorted her. He sat inthe kitchen while she was amusing herself in the parlor. She discussed heryoung acquaintances with him on their way home. The time for distinctionshad come, but she was too innocent to feel them herself, and too proud toaccept the standards of others. He was absolutely honest and unworldly. Hethought it no treachery to love her for herself, and he believed, as mostof us do, that his family was as good as hers or any other. 

It would be hard to explain the old man's obliviousness. Perhaps he hadforgotten his own youth; or class prejudice had gone so deep with him asto preclude the bare thought of a child of his falling in love with one ofhis "men. " His imagination could not so insult his own blood. But when theawakening came, his passion of anger and resentment knew no bounds. Todischarge his faithless employee out of hand would be the cripple throwingaway his crutch. Though he called Adam _one_ of his men, and though hispay was that of a common laborer, his duties had long been of a muchhigher order. Abraham had made a very good bargain out of the widow's son. Adam knew well that he could not be spared, and pitied the old man'shelpless rage. He took his frantic insults as part of his senility, andfelt it no unmanliness to appease it by giving his promise that he wouldspeak no more of love to Emmy while he was taking her father's wages. ButEmmy did not indorse this promise fully. To her it looked like weakness, and implied a sort of patience which did not become a lover such as shewished hers to be. The winter wore on uncomfortably for all. Towardsspring, Becky's last illness and passing away brought the younger onestogether again, and closer than before. Adam kept his promise through daysand nights of sickroom intimacy; but though no word of love was spoken, each bore silent witness to what was loveliest in the other, and the bondbetween them deepened. 

Then spring came, and its restlessness was strong upon them both. But itwas Emmy to whom it meant action and rebellion. 

They stood on the orchard hill one Sunday afternoon at the pause of theyear. Buds were swelling and the edges of the woods wore a soft blushagainst the vaporous sky. The bare brown slopes were streaked with snow. Afloe of winter ice, grinding upon itself with the tide, glared yellow asan old man's teeth in the setting sun. From across the river came thethunder of a train, bound north, two engines dragging forty cars offreight piled up by some recent traffic-jam; it plunged into a tunnel, andthey waited, listening to the monster's smothered roar. Out it burst, itsbreath packed into clouds, the engines whooped, and round the curve wherea point of cedars cut the sky the huge creature unwound itself, the hillsechoing to its tread. 

Emmy watched it out of sight, and breathed again. "Hundreds, hundredsgoing every day! It seems easy enough for everybody else. Oh, if I were aman!"

"What do you want I should do, Emmy?" Adam knew well what man she wasthinking of. 

"_I_ want? Don't you ever want things yourself?"

"When I want a thing bad, I gen'ly think it's worth waiting for. "

"People don't get things by waiting. I don't know how you can standit, --to stay here year after year. And now you've tied yourself up with apromise, and you know you cannot keep it!"

"I'm trying to keep it. "

"You couldn't keep it if you cared--really and truly--as some do!" Shedropped her voice hurriedly. "To live here and eat your meals day afterday and pass me like a stick or a stone!"

The slow blood burned in Adam's face and hammered in his pulses. His blueeyes were bashful through its heat. "I don't feel like a stick nor astone. You know it, Emmy. You want to be careful, " he added gently. "Wouldgoing away look as if I cared?"

"Why--why don't you ask me to go with you?" The girl tried to meet hiseyes. She turned off her question with a proud laugh. 

"Be--careful, child! You know why I can't take you up on that. Would youwant we should leave him here alone--without even Becky? You're onlytrying me for fun. "

"No; I am not!" Emmy was pale now. Her breast was rising in strongexcitement. "If we were gone, he would know then what you are worth tohim. Now, you're only Adam! He thinks he can put you down like a boy. Hewon't believe I care for you. There's only one way to show him--that is, if we do care. In one month he would be sending for us back. Then we couldcome, and you would take your right place here, and be somebody. You wouldnot eat in the kitchen, then. Haven't you been like a son to him? And whyshouldn't he own it?"

"But if he won't? Suppose he don't send for us to come back?"

"Then you could strike out for yourself. What was Tom Madden, before hewent away to Colorado, or somewhere--where was it? And now everybody stopsto shake hands with him;--he's as much of a man as anybody. If you couldmake a little money. That's the proof he wants. If you were rich, you'd beall right with him. You know that!"

"I'd hate to think it. But I'll never be rich. Put that out of your mind, Emmy. It don't run in the blood. I don't come of a money-making breed. "

"What a silly thing to say! Of course, if you don't believe you can, youcan't. Who has made the money here for the last ten years?"

"It was his capital done it. It ain't hard to make money after you'vescraped the first few thousands together. But it's the first thousand thatcosts. "

"How much have you got ahead?"

Adam answered awkwardly, "Eleven hundred and sixty odd. " He did not liketo talk of money to the girl who was the prayer, the inspiration, of hislife. It hurt him to be questioned by her in this sordid way. 

"You earned it all, didn't you?"

"I've took no risks. Here was my home. He give me the chance and he showedme how. And--he's your father. I don't like to talk about his money, norabout my own, to you. "

"Oh, you are good, good! Nobody knows! But it's all wasted if you haven'tgot any push--anything inside of yourself that makes people know what youare. I wish I could put into you some of my _fury_ that I feel when thingsget in my way! You have held yourself in too long. You can't--_can't_ lovea girl, and be so careful--like a mother. Don't you understand?"

"Stop right there, Emmy! You needn't push no harder. I can let go wheneveryou say so. But--do _you_ understand, little girl? Man and wife it willhave to be. "

Emmy did not shrink at the words. Her face grew set, her dark eyes full ofmystery fixed themselves on the slow-moving ice-floe grinding along theshore. 

"I know, " she assented slowly. 

"I can't give you no farm, nor horses and carriages, nor help in thekitchen. It's bucklin' right down with our bare hands--me outside and youin? And you only eighteen. See what little hands--If I could do it all!"

"Your promise is broken, " she whispered. "I made you break it. You willhave to tell him now, or--we must go. "

"So be!" said Adam solemnly. "And God do so to me and more also, if I haveto hurt my little girl, --Emmy--wife!"

He folded her in his great arms clumsily--the man she had said was like amother. He was almost as ignorant as she, and more hopeful than he haddared to seem, as to their worldly chances. But the love he had for hertold him it was not love that made her so bold. The first touch of suchlove as his would have made her fear him as he feared her. And the subtlepain of this instinctive knowledge, together with that broken promise, shackled the wings of his great joy. It was not as he had hoped to win thecrown of life. 

Paul, it may be supposed, had never liked to think of his mother'selopement. It had been the one hard point to get over in his conception ofhis father, but he could never have explained it by such a scene as this. It would have hampered him terribly in his tale had he dreamed of it. Hepassed over the unfortunate incident with a romancer's touch, and dweltupon his grandfather's bitter resentment which he resented as the son ofhis mother's choice. The Van Eltens and Brodericks all fared hardly at thehands of their legatee. 

It was not only in the person of a hireling who had abused his trust thatAbraham had felt himself outraged. There were old neighborhood spites andfeuds going back, dividing blood from blood--even brothers of the sameblood. There was trouble between him and his brother Jacob, of New York, dating from the settlement of their father's, Broderick Van Elten's, estate; and no one knows what besides that was private and personal mayhave entered into it. It was years since they had met, but Jacob kept wellabreast of his brother's misfortunes. A bachelor himself, with no childrento lose or to quarrel with, it was not displeasing to him to hear of thebreaks in his brother's household. 

"What, what, what! The last one left him, --run off with one of his men!What a fool the man must be. Can't he look after his women folks betterthan that? Better have lost her with the others. Two boys, and Chrissy, and the girl--and now the last girl gone off with his hired man. PoorChrissy! Guess she had about enough of it. Things have come out prettymuch even, after all! There was more love and lickin's wasted on Abe. Father was proudest of him, but he couldn't break him. Hi! but I'vecrawled under the woodshed to hear him yell, and father would tan him witha raw-hide, but he couldn't break him; couldn't get a sound out of him. Big, and hard, and tough--Chrissy thought she knew a man; she thought shetook the best one. "

With slow, cold spite Jacob had tracked his brother's path in life throughits failures. Jacob had no failures, and no life. 

V

DISINHERITED

Proud little Emmy, heiress no longer, had put her spirit into herfarm-hand and incited him to the first rebellion of his life. They crossedthe river at night, poling through floating ice, and climbed aboard one ofthose great through trains whose rushing thunder had made the girlishheart so often beat. This was long before the West Shore Line was built. Neither of them had ever seen the inside of a Pullman sleeper. Emmy couldcount the purchased meals she had eaten in her life; she had never sleptin a hotel or hired lodging till after her marriage. Hardly any one couldbe so provincial in these days. 

Adam Bogardus was a plodder in the West as he had been in the East. He wasan honest man, and he was wise enough not to try to be a shrewd one. Hetried none of the short-cuts to a fortune. Hard work suited him best, andno work was too hard for his iron strength and patient resolution. But itbroke the spirit of a man in him to see his young wife's despair. Povertyfrightened and quelled her. The deep-rooted security of her old home wassomething she missed every day of her makeshift existence. It wasdegradation to live in "rooms, " or a room; to move for want of means topay the rent. She pined for the good food she had been used to. Her healthsuffered through anxiety and hard work. She was too proud to complain, butthe sight of her dumb unacceptance of what had come to her through himundoubtedly added the last straw to her husband's mental strain. 

 * * * * *

"It is hard for me to realize it as I once did, " said Paul, as the storypaused. "You make tragedy a dream. But there is a deep vein of tragedy inour blood. And my theory is that it always crops out in families whereit's the keynote, as it were. "

"Never mind, you old care-taker! We Middletons carry sail enough to need aton or two of lead in our keel. "

"But, you understand?"--

"I understand the distinction between what I call your good blood, and thesort of blood I thought you had. It explains a certain funny way you havewith arms--weapons. Do you mind?"

"Not at all, " said Paul coldly. "I hate a weapon. I am always ashamed ofmyself when I get one in my hand. "

"You act that way, dear!"

"God made tools and the Devil made weapons. "

"You are civil to my father's profession. "

"Your father is what he is aside from his profession. "

"You are quite mistaken, Paul. My father and his profession are one. Hissword is a symbol of healing. The army is the great surgeon of the nationwhen the time comes for a capital operation. "

"It grows harder to tell my story, " said Paul gloomily;--"the short andsimple annals of the poor. "

"Now come! Have I been a snob about my father's profession?"

"No; but you love it, naturally. You have grown up with its pomp andcircumstance around you. You are the history makers when history is mostexciting. "

"Go on with your story, you proud little Dutchman! When I despise you foryour farming relatives, you can taunt me with my history making. "

Paul was about two years old when his parents broke up in the Wood Rivercountry and came south by wagon on the old stage-road to Felton. Wheneverhe saw a "string-bean freighter's" outfit moving into Bisuka, if there wasa woman on the driver's seat, he wanted to take off his hat to her. For sohis mother sat beside his father and held him in her arms two hundredmiles across the Snake River desert. The stages have been laid off sincethe Oregon Short Line went through, but there were stations then all alongthe road. 

One night they made camp at a lonely place between Soul's Rest andMountain Home. Oneman Station it was called; afterwards Deadman Station, when the keeper's body was found one morning stiff and cold in his bunk. He died in the night alone. Emily Bogardus had cause to hate the man whenhe was living, and his dreary end was long a shuddering remembrance toher, like the answer to an unforgiving prayer. 

The station was in a hollow with bare hills around, rising to the highestpoint of that rolling plain country. The mountains sink below the plain, only their white tops showing. It was October. All the wild grass had beeneaten close for miles on both sides of the road, but over a gap in theWestern divide was the Bruneau Valley, where the bell-mare of the team hadbeen raised. In the night she broke her hopples and struck out across thesummit with the four mules at her heels. Towards morning a light snow felland covered their tracks. Adam was compelled to hunt his stock on foot;the keeper refusing him a horse, saying he had got himself into troublebefore through being friendly with the company's horses. He started outacross the hills, expecting that the same night would see him back, andhis wife was left in the wagon camp alone. 

 * * * * *

"I know this story very well, " said Paul, "and yet I never heard it butonce, when mother decided I was old enough to know all. But every word wasbitten into me--especially this ugly part I am coming to. I wish it neednot be told, yet all the rest depends on it; and that such an experiencecould come to a woman like my mother shows what exposure and humiliationlie in the straightest path if there is no money to smooth the way. Youhear it said that in the West the toughest men will be chivalrous to awoman if she is the right sort of a woman. I'm afraid that is a romantictheory of the Western man. 

"That night, before his team stampeded, as he sat by the keeper's fire, father had made up his mind that the less they had to do with that man thebetter. He may have warned mother; and she, left alone with the brute, didnot know the wisdom of hiding her fear and loathing of him. He may havemeant no more than a low kind of teasing, but her suffering was the same. 

"Father did not come. She dared not leave the camp. She knew no place togo to, and in his haste, believing he would soon be with her again, he hadtaken all their little stock of funds. But he had left her his gun, andwith this within reach of her hand in the shelter of the wagon hood, without fire and without cooked food, she kept a sleepless watch. 

"The stages came and went; help was within sound of her voice, but shedared make no sign. The passengers were few at that season, always men, onthe best of terms with the keeper. He had threatened--well, nomatter--such a threat as a more sophisticated woman would have smiled at. She was simple, but she was not weak. It was a moral battle between them. There were hours when she held him by the power of her eye alone; sheconquered, but it nearly killed her. 

"One morning a man jumped down from the stage whose face she knew. He hadrecognized my father's outfit and he came to speak to her, amazed to findher in that place alone. There was no need to put her worst fear intowords; he knew the keeper. He made the best he could of father'sdetention, but he assured her, as she knew too well, that she could notwait for him there. He was on his way East, and he took us with him as faras Mountain Home. To this day she believes that if Bud Granger had led thesearch, my father would have been found; but he went East to sell hiscattle, the snows set in, and the search party came straggling home. Theman, Granger, had left a letter of explanation, inclosing one from motherto father, with the keeper. He bribed and frightened him, but for yearsshe used to agonize over a fear that father had come back and the keeperhad withheld the letter and belied her to him with some devilish storythat maddened him and drove him from her. Such a fancy might have come outof her mental state at that time. I believe that Granger left the lettersimply to satisfy her. He must have believed my father was dead. He couldnot have conceived of a man's being lost in that broad country at thatseason; but my father was a man of hills and farms, all small, compact. The plains were another planet to him. 

"The letter was found in the keeper's clothing after his death; no oneever came to claim it of his successor. Somewhere in this great wildernessa tired man found rest. What would we not give if we knew where!

"And she worked in a hotel in Mountain Home. Can you imagine it! ThenChristine was born and the multiplied strain overcame her. Strangers tookcare of her children while she lay between life and death. She had beensilent about herself and her past, but they found a letter from one of herold schoolmates asking about teachers' salaries in the West, and theywrote to her begging her to make known my mother's condition to herrelatives if any were living. At length came a letter fromgrandfather--characteristic to the last. The old home was there, for herand for her children, but no home for the traitor, as he called father. She must give him up even to his name. No Bogardus could inherit of a VanElten. 

"She had not then lost all hope of father's return, and she never forgaveher father for trying to buy her back for the price of what she consideredher birthright. She settled down miserably to earn bread for her children. Then, when hope and pride were crushed in her, and faith had nothing leftto cling to, there came a letter from Uncle Jacob, the bachelor, who hadbided his time. Out of the division in his brother's house he proposed tobuild up his own; just as he would step in and buy depreciated bonds tohold them for a rise. He offered her a home and maintenance during hislifetime, and his estate for herself and her children when he was through. There were no conditions referring to our father, but it was understoodthat she should give up her own. This, mainly, to spite his brother, yetunder all there was an old man's plea. She felt she could make theobligation good, though there might not be much love on either side. Perhaps it came later; but I remember enough of that time to believe thather children's future was dearly paid for. Grandfather died alone, in theold rat-ridden house up the Hudson. He left no will, to every one'ssurprise. It might have been his negative way of owning his debt to natureat the last. 

"That is how we came to be rich; and no one detects in us now the crime ofthose early struggles. But my father was a hired man; and my mother hasdone every menial thing with those soft hands of hers. " A softer one wasfolded in his own. Its answering clasp was loyal and strong. 

"Is _this_ the story you had not the courage to tell me?"

"This is the story I had the courage to tell you--not any too soon, perhaps you think?"

"And do you think it needed courage?"

"The question is what you think. What are we to do with Uncle Jacob'smoney? Go off by ourselves and have a good time with it?"

"We will not decide to-night, " said Moya, tenderly subdued. But, thoughthe story had interested and touched her, as accounting for her lover'ssaddened, conscience-ridden youth, it was no argument against teaching himwhat youth meant in her philosophy. The differences were explained, butnot abolished. 

"It was spite money, remember, not love money, " he continued, reverting tohis story. "It purchased my mother's compliance to one who hated herfather, who forced her to listen, year after year, to bitter, unnaturalwords against him. I am not sure but it kept her from him at the last; forif Uncle Jacob had not stepped in and made her his, I can't help thinkingshe would have found somehow a way to the soft place in his heart. Something good ought to be done with that money to redeem its history. "

"You must not be morbid, Paul. "

"That sounds like mother, " said Paul, smiling. "She is always jealous forour happiness; because she lost her own, I think, and paid so heavily forours. She prizes pleasure and success, even worldly success, for us. "

"I don't blame her!" cried Moya. 

"No; of course not. But you mustn't both be against me, and Chrissy, too. She is so, unconsciously; she does not know the pull there is on me, through knowing things she doesn't dream of, and that I can never forget. "

"No, " said Moya. "I am sure she is perfectly unconscious. We exchangedbiographies at school, and there was nothing at all like this in hers. Whywas she never told?"

"She has always been too strained, too excitable. Every least incident isan emotion with her. When she laughs, her laugh is like a cry. Haven't younoticed that? Startle her, and her eyes are the very eyes of fear. Motherwas wise, I think, not to pour those old sorrows into her little fragilecup. "

"So she emptied them all into yours!"

"That was my right, of the elder and stronger. I wouldn't have missed theknowledge of our beginnings for the world. What a prosperous fool and assI might have made of myself!"

"Morbid again, " said Moya. "You belong to your own day and generation. Youmight as well wear country shoes and clothes because your father worethem. "

"Still, if we have such a thing in this country as class, then you and Ido not belong to the same class except by virtue of Uncle Jacob's money. Confess you are glad I am a Bevier and a Broderick and a Van Elten, aswell as a Bogardus. "

"I shall confess nothing of the kind. Now you do talk like a _nouveau_Paul, dear, " said Moya, with her caressing eyes on his--they had pausedunder the lamp at the top of the steps--"I think your father must havebeen a very good man. "

"All our fathers were, " Paul averred, smiling at her earnestness. 

"Yes, but yours in particular; because _you_ are an angel; and your motheris quite human, is she not?--almost as human as I am? That carriage of thehead, --if that does not mean the world!"--

"She has needed all her pride. "

"I don't object to pride, myself, " said the girl, "but you dwell so uponher humiliations. I see no such record in her face. "

"She has had much to hide, you must remember. "

"Well, she can hide things; but one's self must escape sometimes. What hasbecome of little Emily Van Elten who ran away with her father's hired man?What has become of the freighter's wife?"

"She is all mother now. She brought us back to the world, and for oursakes she has learned to take her place in it. Herself she has buried. "

"Yes; but which is--was herself?"

"And you cannot see her story in her face?"

"Not that story. "

"Not the crushing reserve, the long suspense, the silence of a sorrow thateven her children could not share?"

"I know her silence. Your mother is a most reticent woman. But is she nowthe woman of that story?"

"I don't understand you quite, " said Paul. "How much are we ourselvesafter we have passed through fires of grief, and been recast under thepressure of circumstances! She was that woman once. "

"The saddest part of the story to me is, that your father, who loved herso, and worked so hard for his family, should have served you all thebetter by his death. "

"Oh, don't say that, dear! Who knows what is best? But one thing we doknow. The sorrow that cut my mother's life in two brought you and metogether. It rent the stratum on which I was born and raised it to thelevel of yours, my lady!"

"I shall not forget, " whispered Moya with blissful irony, "that you arethe Poor Man's son!"

VI

AN APPEAL TO NATURE

The autumn days were shortening imperceptibly and the sunsets had gainedan almost articulate splendor: cloud calling unto cloud, the west horizonsignaling to the east, and answering again, while the mute dark circle ofhills sat like a council of chiefs with their blankets drawn over theirheads. Soon those blankets would be white with snow. 

Behind the Post where the hills climb toward the Cottonwood Creek divide, there is a little canon which at sunset is especially inviting. It hastenstwilight by at least an hour during midsummer, and in autumn it leads up astairway of shadow to the great spectacle of the day--the day's departurefrom the hills. 

The canon has its companion rivulet always coming down to meet thestage-road going up. As this road is the only outlet hillward for all thelife of the plain, and as the tendency of every valley population is toclimb, one thinks of it as a way out rather than a way in. Higher up, thestage-road becomes a pass cut through a wall of splintered cliffs; andhere it leads its companion, the brook, a wild dance over boulders, andunder culverts of fallen rock. At last it emerges on what is called TheSummit; and between are green, deep valleys where the little ranches, fields and fences and houses, seem to have slid down to the bottom and liethere at rest. 

A party of young riders from the post had gone up this road one evening, and two had come down, laughing and talking; but the other two remained inthe circle of light that rested on the summit. Prom where they sat in thedry grass they could hear a hollow sound of moving feet as the cattlewandered down through folds of the hills, seeking the willow copses by thewater. On the breast of her habit Moya wore the blossoms of the wildevening primrose, which in this region flowers till the coming of frost. They had been gathered for her on the way up, and as she had waited forthem, sitting her horse in silence, the brown owls gurgled and hootedoverhead from nest to nest in the crannies of the rocks. 

"You need not hold the horses, " she commanded, in her fresh voice. "Throwmy bridle over your saddle pommel and yours over mine. --There!" she said, watching the horses as they shuffled about interlinked. "That is like halfthe marriages in this world. They don't separate and they don't go astray, but they don't _get_ anywhere!"

"I have been thinking of those 'two in the Garden, '" mused Paul, restinghis dark, abstracted eyes on her. "Whether or no your humble servant has aclaim to unchallenged bliss in this world, there's no doubt about yourclaim. If my plans interfere, I must take myself out of the way. "

"Oh, you funny old croaker!" laughed the girl. "Take yourself out of theway, indeed! Haven't you chosen me to show you the way?"

"Moya, Moya!" said Paul in a smothered voice. 

"I know what you are thinking. But stop it!" she held one of her crushedblossoms to his lips. "What was this made for? Why hasn't it some work todo? Isn't it a skulker--blooming here for only a night?"

"'Ripen, fall, and cease!'" Paul murmured. 

"How much more am I--are you, then? The sum of us may amount to something, if we mind our own business and keep step with each other, and finish onething before we begin the next. I will not be in a hurry about being good. Goodness can take care of itself. What you need is to be happy! And it'smy first duty to make you so. "

"God knows what bliss it would be. "

"Don't say 'would be. '"

"God knows it is!"

"Then hush and be thankful!" There was a long hush. They heard the far, faint notes of a bugle sounding from the Post. 

"Lights out, " said Moya. "We must go. "

"You haven't told me yet where our Garden is to be, " he said. 

"I will tell you on the way home. "

When they had come down into the neighborhood of ranches, and Bisuka'slights were twinkling below them, she asked: "Who lives now in thegrandfather's house on the Hudson?"

"The farmer, Chauncey Dunlop. "

"Is there any other house on the place?"

"Yes. Mother built a new one on the Ridge some years ago. "

"What sort of a house is it?"

"It was called a good house once; but now it's rather everything itshouldn't be. It was one of the few rash things mother ever did; build ahouse for her children while they were children. Now she will not changeit. She says we shall build for ourselves, how and where we please. StoneRidge is her shop. Of course, if Chrissy liked it--But Chrissy considersit a 'hole. ' Mother goes up there and indulges in secret orgies ofeconomy; one man in the stable, one in the garden--'Economy has itspleasures for all healthy minds. '"

"Economy is as delicious as bread and butter after too much candy. Ishould love to go up to Stone Ridge and wear out my old clothes. Did anyone tell me that place would some day be yours?"

"It will be my wife's on the day we are married. "

"That is where your wife, sir, would like to live. "

"It is a stony Garden, dear! The summer people have their places nearerthe river. Our land lies back, with no view but hills. For one who has theworld before her where to choose, it strikes me she has picked out a veryhumble Paradise. "

"Did you think my idea was to travel--a poor army girl who spends her lifein trunks? Do we ever buy a book or frame a picture without thinking ofour next move? As for houses, who am I that I should be particular? In theArmy's House are many mansions, but none that we can call our own. Oh, I'mvery primitive; I have the savage instinct to gather sticks and stones, and get a roof over my head before winter sets in. "

To such a speech as this there was but one obvious answer, as she rode athis side, her appealing slenderness within reach of his arm. It did notmatter what thousands he proposed to spend upon the roof that should coverher; it was the same as if they were planning a hut of tules or a burrowin the snow. 

"It is a poor man's country, " he said; "stony hillsides, stony roads linedwith stone fences. The chief crop of the country is ice and stone. In oneof my grandfather's fields there is a great cairn which Adam Bogardus, they say, picked up, stone by stone, with his bare hands, and carted therewhen he was fourteen years old. We will build them into the walls of ournew house for a blessing. "

"No, " said Moya. "We will let sleeping stones lie!"

VII

MARKING TIME

There was impatience at the garrison for news that the hunters hadstarted. Every day's delay at Challis meant an abridgment of thebridegroom's leave, and the wedding was now but a fortnight away. It beganto seem preposterous that he should go at all, and the colonel was annoyedwith himself for his enthusiasm over the plan in the first place. Mrs. Bogardus's watchfulness of dates told the story of her thoughts, but shesaid nothing. 

"Mamsie is restless, " said Christine, putting an arm around her mother'ssolid waist and giving her a tight little hug apropos of nothing. "Ibelieve it's another case of 'mail-time fever. ' The colonel says it comeson with Moya every afternoon about First Sergeant's call. But Moya iscunning. She goes off and pretends she isn't listening for the bugle. "

"'First Sergeant or Second, ' it's all one to me, " said Mrs. Bogardus. "Inever know one call from another, except when the gun goes off. "

"Mamsie! 'When the gun goes off!' What a civilian way of talking. You arenot getting on at all with your military training. Now let me give yousome useful information. In two seconds the bugle will call the firstsergeant--of each company--to the adjutant's office, and there he'll getthe mail for his men. The orderly trumpeter will bring it to the houses onthe line, and the colonel's orderly--beautiful creature! There he goes!How I wish we could take him home with us and have him in our front hall. Fancy the feelings of the maids! And the rage on the noble brow ofParkins--awful Parkins. I should like to give his pride a bump. "

Mother and daughter were pacing the colonel's veranda, behind a partialscreen of rose vines--October vines fast shedding their leaves. Everybreeze shook a handful down, which the women's skirts swept with them asthey walked. Mrs. Bogardus turned and clasped Christine's arm above theelbow; through the thin sleeve she could feel its cool roundness. It was asoft, small, unmuscular arm, that had never borne its own burdens, to saynothing of a share in the burdens of others. 

"Get your jacket, " said the mother. "There is a chill in the air. "

"There is no chill in me, " laughed Christine. "You know, mamsie, youaren't a girl. I should simply die in those awful things that you wear. Did you ever know such a hot house as the colonel keeps!"

"The rooms are small, and the colonel is--impulsive, " Mrs. Bogardus addedwith a smile. 

"There is something very like him about his fire-making. I should know bythe way he puts on wood that he never would have "--Mrs. Bogardus checkedherself. 

"A large bank account?" Christine supplied, with her quick wit, which wasnot of a highly sensitive order. 

"He has a large heart, " said her mother. 

"And plenty of room for it, bless him! The slope of his chest is like theroof of a house. The only time I envy Moya is when she lays her head downon it and tries to meet her arms around him as if he were a tree, and hestrokes her hair as if his hand was a bough! If ever I marry a soldier heshall be a colonel with a white mustache and a burnt-sienna complexion, and a sword-belt that measures--what is the colonel's waist-measure, doyou suppose?"

Mrs. Bogardus listened to this nonsense with the smile of a silent womanwho has borne a child that can talk. Moya had often noticed how uncriticalshe was of Christine's "unruly member. "

"It isn't polite to speak of waist-measures to middle-aged persons likeyour mother and the colonel, " she said placidly. "You like it very muchout here?"

"Fascinating! Never had such a good time in my whole life. "

"And you like the West altogether? Would you like to live here?"

"Oh, if it came to living, I should want to be sure there was a way out. "

"There generally is a way out of most things. But it costs something. "Mrs. Bogardus was so concise in her speech as at times to be almostoracular. 

"Army people are sure of their way out, " said Christine, "and I guess theyfind it costs something. "

"Why do they buy so many books, I wonder? If I moved as often as they do, I'd have only paper covers and leave them behind. "

"You are not a reader, mummy. You're a business woman. You look ateverything from the practical side. "

"And if I didn't, who would?" Mrs. Bogardus spoke with earnestness. "Wecan't all be dreamers like Paul or privileged persons like you. There hasto be one in every family to say the things no one likes to hear and dothe things nobody likes to do. "

"We are the rich repiners and you are the household drudge!" Christineshouted, laughing at her own wit. 

"Hush, hush!" her mother smiled. "Don't make so much noise. "

"I should like to know who's to be the drudge in Paul's privileged family. It doesn't strike me it's going to be Moya. And Paul only drudges forpeople he doesn't know. "

"Moya is a girl you can expect anything of. She is a wonderful mixture ofopposites. She has the Irish quickness, and yet she has learned to obey. She has had the freedom and the discipline of these little lordly armyposts. She is one of the few girls of her age who does not measureeverything from her own point of view. "

"Is that a dig at me, ma'am?"

At that moment Moya came out upon the porch. 

She was very striking with the high color and brilliant eyes thatmail-time fever breeds. Christine looked at her with freshly arousedcuriosity, moved by her mother's unwonted burst of praise. The faintesttinge of jealousy made her feel naughty. As Moya went down the board walk, the colonel's orderly came springing up the steps to meet her with themail-bag. He saluted and turned off at an angle down the embankment not topresent his back to the ladies. 

"Did you see that! He never raised his eyes. They are like priests. Youcan't make them look at you. " Moya looked at Christine in amazement. Theman himself might have heard her. It was not the first time thisprivileged guest had rubbed against garrison customs in certain directionshardly worth mentioning. Moya hesitated. Then she laughed a little, andsaid: "Only a raw recruity would look at an officer's daughter, or anylady of the line. "

"Oh, you horrid little aristocrat! Well, I look at them, when they are aspretty as that one, and I forgive them if they look at me. "

Moya turned and hovered over the contents of the mail-bag. In the exerciseof one of her prerogatives, it was her habit to sort its contents beforedelivering it at the official door. 

"All, all for you!" she offered a huge packet of letters, smiling, to Mrs. Bogardus. It was faced with one on top in Paul's handwriting. "All butone, " she added, and proceeded to open her own much fatter one in the samehand. She stood reading it in the hall. 

Mrs. Bogardus presently followed and remained beside her. "Could I speakto your father a moment?" she asked. 

"Certainly, I will call him, " said Moya. 

"Wait: I hear him now. " The study door opened and Colonel Middleton joinedthem. Mrs. Bogardus leading the way into the sitting-room, the colonelfollowed her, and Moya, not having been invited, lingered in the hall. 

"Well, have the hunters started yet?" the colonel inquired in his breezyvoice, which made you want to open the doors and windows to give it room. "Be seated! Be seated! I hope you have got a long letter to read me. "

Mrs. Bogardus stood reflecting. "The day this letter was mailed they gotoff--only two days ago, " she said. "Could I reach them, Colonel, with atelegram?"

"Two days ago, " the colonel considered. "They must have made Yankee Forkby yesterday. Today they are deep in the woods. No; I should say a man onhorseback would be your surest telegram. Is it anything important?"

"Colonel, I wish we could call them back! They have gone off, it seems tome, in a most crazy way--against the judgment of every one who knows. Theguide, this man whom they waited for, refused, it appears, to go out againwith another party so late in the fall. But the Bowens were determined. They insisted on making arrangements with another man. Then, when 'PackerJohn, ' they call him, heard of this, he went to Paul and urged him, if hecould not prevent the others from going, to give up the trip himself. TheBowens were very much annoyed at his interference, and with Paul forlistening to him. And Paul, rather than make things unpleasant, gave in. You know how young men are! What silly grounds are enough for the mostserious decisions when it is a question of pride or good faith. The Bowenshad bought their outfit on Paul's assurance that he would go. He felt hecould not leave them in the lurch. On that, the guide suddenly changed hismind and said he would go with them sooner than see them fall into worsehands. They were, in a way, committed to the other man, so they took _him_along as cook--the whole thing done in haste, you see, and unpleasantfeelings all around. Do you call that a good start for a pleasure trip?"

"It's very much the way with young troops when they start out--everythingwrong end foremost, everybody mad with everybody else. A day in the saddlewill set their little tempers all right. "

"That isn't the point, " Mrs. Bogardus persisted gloomily. As she spoke, the two girls came into the room and stood listening. 

"What is the point, then?" Christine demanded. "Moya has no news; allthose pages and pages, and nothing for anybody or about anybody!"

"'Such an intolerable deal of sack to such a poor pennyworth of bread, '"the colonel quoted, smiling at Moya's bloated envelope. 

"But what do you think?" Mrs. Bogardus recalled him. "Don't you think it'sa mistake all around?"

"Not at all, if they have a good man. This flat-footed fellow, John, willtake command, as he should. There is no danger in the woods at any seasonunless the party gets rattled and goes to pieces for want of a head. "

"Father!" exclaimed Moya. "You know there is danger. Often, things havehappened!"

"Why, what could happen?" asked Christine, with wide eyes. 

"Many things very interesting could happen, " the colonel boastedcheerfully. "That is the object of the trip. You want things to happen. Itis the emergency that makes the man--sifts him, and takes the chaff out ofhim. "

"Take the chaff out of Banks Bowen, " Moya imprudently struck in, "and whatwould you have left?" She had met Banks Bowen in New York. 

"Tut, tut!" said the colonel. "Silence, or a good word for theabsent--same as the"--The colonel stopped short. 

"You are so scornful about the other men, now you have chosen one!"Christine's face turned red. 

"Why, Chrissy! You would not compare your brother to those men! Papa, Ibeg your pardon; this is only for argument. "

"I don't compare him; but that's not to say all the other men are chaff!"Christine joined constrainedly in the laugh that followed her speech. 

"You need not go fancying things, Moya, " she cried, in answer to aquizzical look. "As if I hadn't known the Bowen boys since I was so high!"

"You might know them from the cradle to the grave, my dear young lady, andnot know them as Paul will, after a week in the woods with them. "

The colonel had missed the drift of the girls' discussion. He wasconsidering, privately, whether he had not better send a special messengeron the young men's trail. His assurances to the women left a wide marginfor personal doubt as to the prudence of the trip. Aside from the latenessof the start, it was, undoubtedly, an ill-assorted company for the woods. There was a wide margin also for suspense, as all mail facilities ceasedat Challis. 

VIII

A HUNTER'S DIARY

Early in November, about a week before the hunters were expected home, apacket came addressed to Moya. It was a journal letter from Paul, mailedby some returning prospector chance encountered in the forest as the partywere going in. Moya read it aloud, with asterisks, to a family audiencewhich did not include her father. 

"To-day, " one of the first entries read, "we halt at Twelve-Mile Cabin, the last roof we shall sleep under. There are pine-trees near the cabincut off fifteen feet above the ground, felled in winter, John tells us, _at the level of the snow!_

"These cabins are all deserted now; the tide of prospecting has turnedanother way. The great hills that crowd one another up against the sky areso infested and overridden by this enormous forest-growth, and theunderbrush is so dense, it would be impossible for a 'tenderfoot' to gainany clear idea of his direction. I should be a lost man the moment Iventured out of call. Woodcraft must be a sixth sense which we lost withthe rest of our Eden birthright when we strayed from innocence, when weceased to sleep with one ear on the ground, and to spell our way by themoss on tree-trunks. In these solitudes, as we call them, ranks and cloudsof witnesses rise up to prove us deaf and blind. Busy couriers are passingevery moment of the day; and we do not see, nor hear, nor understand. Weare the stocks and stones. Packer John is our only wood-sharp;--yet thelast half of the name doesn't altogether fit him. He is a one-sidedcharacter, handicapped, I should say, by some experience that has humbledand perplexed him. Two and two perhaps refused to make four in his accountwith men, and he gave up the proposition. And now he consorts with trees, and hunts to live, not to kill. He has an impersonal, out-door odor abouthim, such as the cleanest animals have. I would as soon eat out of hisdry, hard, cool hand, as from a chunk of pine-bark. 

"It is amusing to see him with a certain member of the party who tries tobe fresh with him. He has a disconcerting eye when he fixes it on a man, or turns it away from one who has said a coarse or a foolish thing. 

"'The jungle is large, ' he seems to say, 'and the cub he is small. Let himthink and be still!'"

"Who is this 'certain member' who tries to be 'fresh'?" Christine inquiredwith perceptible warmth. 

"The cook, perhaps, " said Moya prudently. 

"The cook isn't a 'member'!--Well, can't you go on, Moya? Paul seems toneed a lot of editing. " Moya had paused and was glancing ahead, smiling toherself constrainedly. 

"Is there more disparagement of his comrades?" Christine persisted. 

"Christine, be still!" Mrs. Bogardus interfered. "Moya ought to have thefirst reading of her own letter. It's very good of her to let us hear itat all. "

"Oh dear, there's no disparagement. Quite the contrary! I'll go on withpleasure if you don't mind. " Moya read hurriedly, laughing through herwords:--

"'If you were here, (Ah, _if_ you were here!)You should lend me an ear--One at the leastOf a pair the prettiest'--

which is, within a foot or two, the rhythm of 'Wood Notes. ' Of course youdon't know it!"

"This is a gibe at me, " Moya explained, "because I don't read Emerson. 'Itis the very measure of a marching chorus, ' he goes on to say, 'where thestep is broken by rocks and tree-roots;'--and he is chanting it to himself(to her it was in the original) as they go in single file through these'haughty solitudes, the twilight of the gods!'"

"'Haughty solitudes'!" Christine derided. 

Mrs. Bogardus sighed with impatience, and Moya's face became set. "Well, here he quotes again, " she haughtily resumed. "Anybody who is tired ofthis can be excused. Emerson won't mind, and I'm sure Paul won't!" Shelooked a mute apology to Paul's mother, who smiled and said, "Go on, dear. I don't read Emerson either, but I like him when Paul reads him for me. "

"Well, I warn you there is an awful lot of him here!" Moya's voice was atrifle husky as she read on. 

"Old as Jove, Old as Love'"

"I thought Love was young!"--Christine in a whisper aside. 

"'Who of meTells the pedigree?Only the mountains old, Only the waters cold, Only the moon and stars, My coevals are. '"

Moya sighed, and sank into prose again. "There is a gaudy yellow moss inthese woods that flecks the straight and mournful tree-trunks like awandering glint of sunlight; and there is a crêpe-like black moss thathangs funeral scarfs upon the boughs, as if there had been a death in theforest, and the trees were in line for the burial procession. The gratingof our voices on this supreme silence reminds one of 'Why will you stillbe talking, Monsieur Benedick?--nobody marks you. '

"There are silences, and again there are whole symphonies of sound. Thewinds smites the tree-tops over our heads, a surf-like roar comes up theslope, and the yellow pine-needles fall across the deepest darks as motessail down a sunbeam. One wearies of the constant perpendicular, alwaysthese stiff, columnar lines, varied only by the melancholy incline wheresome great pine-chieftain is leaning to his fall supported in the arms ofhis comrades, or by the tragic prostration of the 'down timber'--beautifulstraight-cut English these woodsmen talk. 

"Last evening John and I sat by the stove in the men's tent, while theothers were in the cabin playing penny-ante with the cook (a sodden brutewho toadies to the Bowens, and sulks with John because he objected to ourhiring the fellow--an objection which I sustained, hence his logical spiteincludes me). John was melting pine gum and elk tallow into a dressing forour boots. I took a mean advantage of him, his hands being in the tallowand the tent-flap down, and tried on him a little of--now, don't derideme!--'Wood Notes. ' It is seldom one can get the comment of a genuinewoodsman on Nature according to the poets. '"

Moya read on perfunctorily, feeling that she was not carrying her audiencewith her, and longing for the time when she could take her letter away andhave it all to herself. If she stopped now, Christine, in this sudden newfreak of distrustfulness, would be sure to misunderstand. 

 "'For Nature ever faithful is To such as trust her faithfulness. When the forest shall mislead me, When the night and morning lie, When sea and land refuse to feed me, Will be time enough to die. 

 Then will yet my Mother yield A pillow in her greenest field; Nor the June flowers scorn to cover The clay of their departed lover. '"

"That is beautiful, " Mrs. Bogardus murmured hastily. "Even I canunderstand that. " Moya thanked her with a glance. 

"And what did the infallible John say?" Christine inquired. 

"John looked at me and smiled, as at a babbling infant"--

"Good for John!"

"Christine, be still!"

"John looked at me and smiled, " Moya repeated steadily. Nothing could havestopped her now. She only hoped for some further scattering mention ofthat "certain member" who had set them all at odds and spoiled what shouldhave been an hour's pure happiness. "'You'll get the pillow all right, ' hesaid. 'It might not be a green one, nor I wouldn't bank much on theflowers; but you'll be tired enough to sleep without rocking about thetime you trust to Nature's tuckin' you in and puttin' victuals in yourmouth. I never _see_ nature till I came out here. I'd seen pretty woodsand views, that a young lady could take down with her paints; but how areyou going to paint that?'--he waved his tallow-stick towards the nightoutside. 'Ears can't reach the bottom of that stillness. That's creationbefore God ever thought of man. Long as I've been in the woods, I neverget over the feeling that there's _something behind me_. If you go towardsthe trees, they come to meet you; if you go backwards, they go back; butyou can't sit down and sit still without they'll come a-creeping up andcreeping up, and crowding in'--

"He stirred his 'dope' awhile, and then he struck another note. 'I'vewintered alone in these mountains, ' he said, 'and I've seen snowslidespounce out of a clear sky--a puff and a flash and a roar; an' trees fourfoot across snappin' like kindlin' wood--not because it hit 'em; only thebreath of it struck them; and maybe a man lying dead somewheres under hiscabin timbers. That's no mother's love-tap. Pillows and flowers ain't init. But it's good poetry, ' he added condescendingly. 

"I have not quoted him right, not being much of a snap-shot at dialect;and his is an undefined, unclassifiable mixture. Eastern farm-hand andWestern ranchman, prospector, who knows what? His real language is in hiseye and his rare, pure smile. And just as his countenance expresses histhoughts without circumlocution or attempt at effect, so his body informshis clothing. Wind and rain have moulded his hat to his head, his shoesgrip the ground like paws; his buckskins have a surface like a cast afterRodin. They are repousséed by the hard bones and sinews underneath. I canthink of nothing but the clothing of Millet's peasants to compare withthis exterior of John's. He is himself a peasant of the woods. He has notthe predatory instincts. If he could have his way, not a shot would befired by any of us for the mere idle sport of killing. Shooting theseinnocent, fearless creatures, who have not learned that we are here fortheir destruction, is too like murder and treachery combined. Hungershould be our only excuse. My forbearance, or weakness, is a sort ofunspoken bond between us. But I am a peasant, too, you know. I do not comeof the lordly, arms-bearing blood. I shoot at a live mark always underprotest; and when I fairly catch the look in the great eye of a dying elkor black-tail, it knocks me out for that day's hunt. "

"Paul is perfectly happy!" Christine broke in. "He has got one of hisbeloved People to grovel to. They can sleep in the same tent and eat fromthe same plate, if you like. Why, it's better than the East Side! He'll beblood brother to Packer John before they leave the woods. "

Moya blushed with anger. 

"You have said enough on that subject, Christine. " Mrs. Bogardus bent herdark, keen gaze upon her daughter's face. "Come"--she rose. "Come withme!"

Christine sat still. "Come!" her mother repeated sternly. "Moya, "--in adifferent voice, --"your letter was lovely. Shall you read it to yourfather?"

"Hardly, " said Moya, flushing. "Father does not care for descriptions, andthe woods are an old story to him. "

Mrs. Bogardus placed her hands on the girl's shoulders and gave her one ofher infrequent, ceremonious kisses, which, like her finest smile, she keptfor occasions too nice for words. 

IX

THE POWER OF WEAKNESS

Christine followed her mother to their room, and the two faced each othera moment in pale silence. 

Mrs. Bogardus spoke first. "What does this mean?"--her breath came short, perhaps from climbing the stairs. She was a large woman. 

"What does what mean? I don't understand you, mother. "

"Ah, child, don't repulse me! Twice you and Moya have nearly quarreledabout those men. Why were you so rude to her? Why did you behave so abouther letter?"

"Paul is so intolerant! And the airs he puts on! If he is my own brother Imust say he's an awful prig about other men. "

"We are not discussing Paul. That is not the question now. Have youanything to tell me, Christine?"

"To tell you?--about what, mother?" Christine spoke lower. 

"You know what I mean. Which of them is it? Is it Banks?--don't say it isBanks!"

"Mother, how can I say anything when you begin like that?"

"Have you any idea what sort of a man Banks Bowen really is? His fathersupports him entirely--six years now, ever since he left the law school. He does nothing, never will do anything. He has no will or purpose inlife, except about trifles like this hunting-trip. As far as I can see heis without common sense. "

Christine stood by the dressing-table pleating the cover-frilling with hersmall fingers that were loaded with rings. She pinched the folds hard andlet them go. "Why did no one ever say these things before?"

"We don't say things about the sons of our friends, unless we arecompelled to. They were implied in every way possible. When have I askedBanks Bowen to the house except when everybody was asked! I would never inthe world have come out in Mr. Borland's car if I had known the Bowenswere to be of the party. "

"That made no difference, " said Christine loftily. 

"It was all settled before then, was it?"

"Have I said it was settled, mother? He asked me if I could ever care forhim; and I said that I did--a little. Why shouldn't I? He does what I likea man to do. I don't enjoy people who have wills and purposes. It may bevery horrid of me, but I wouldn't be in Moya's place for worlds. "

"You poor child! You poor, unhappy child!"

"Why am I unhappy? Has Paul added so much to our income since he leftcollege?"

"Paul does not make money; neither does he selfishly waste it. He has aconscience in his use of what he has. "

"I don't see what conscience has to do with it. When it is gone it'sgone. "

"You will learn what conscience has to do with a man's spending if everyou try to make both ends meet with Banks Bowen. I suppose he will gothrough the form of speaking to me?"

"Mother dear! He has only just spoken to me. How fast you go!"

"Not fast enough to keep up with my children, it seems. Was it you, Christine, who asked them to come here?"

Christine was silent. 

"Where did you learn such ways?--such want of frankness, of delicacy, ofthe commonest consideration for others? To be looking out for your ownlittle schemes at a time like this!" Mrs. Bogardus saw now what must havebeen Paul's reason for doing what, with all her forced explanations of thehunting-trip, she had never until now understood. He had taken the alarmbefore she had, and done what he could to postpone this familycatastrophe. 

Christine retreated to a deep-cushioned chair, and threw herself into it, her slender hands, palm upwards, extended upon its arms. Total surrenderunder pressure of cruel odds was the expression of her pointed eyebrowsand drooping mouth. She looked exasperatingly pretty and irresponsiblyfragile. Her blue-veined eyelids quivered, her breath came in distinctpants. 

"Perhaps you will not be troubled with my 'ways' for very many years, mother. If you could feel my heart now! It jumps like something trying toget out. It will get out some day. Have patience!"

"That is a poor way to retaliate upon your mother, Christine. Your healthis too serious a matter to trifle with. If you choose to make it a shieldagainst everything I say that doesn't please you, you can cut yourself offfrom me entirely. I cannot beat down such a defense as that. Anger me younever can, but you can make me helpless to help you. "

"I dare say it's better that I should never marry at all, " said Christine, her eyes closed in resignation. "You never would like anybody I like. "

"I shall say no more. You are a woman. I have protected you as far as Iwas able on account of your weakness. I cannot protect you from theweakness itself. "

Mrs. Bogardus rose. She did not offer to comfort her child with caresses, but in her eyes as she looked at her there was a profound, inalienable, sorrowing tenderness, a depth of understanding beyond words. 

"I know so well, " the dark eyes seemed to say, "how you came to be thepoor thing that you are!"

The constraint which she felt towards her mother threw Chrissy back uponMoya. Being a lesser power, she was always seeking alliances. Moya had putaside their foolish tiff as unworthy of another thought; she wasembarrassed when at bedtime Christine came humbly to her door, and puttingher arms around her neck implored her not to be cross with her "poorpussy. " It was always the other person who was "cross" with Christine. 

"Nobody is cross with anybody, so far as I know, " said Moya briskly. Acertain sort of sentimentality always made her feel like whistling orsinging or asserting the commonplace side of life in some way. 

X

THE WHITE PERIL

Mrs. Bogardus received many letters, chiefly on business, and these sheanswered with manlike brevity, in a strong, provincial hand. They took upmuch of her time, and mercifully, for it was now the last week in Novemberand the young men did not return. 

The range cattle had been driven down into the valleys, deer-tracksmultiplied by lonely mountain fords; War Eagle and his brethren of theOwyhees were taking council under their winter blankets. The nights werestill, the mornings rimy with hoarfrost. Fogs arose from the river and cutoff the bases of the mountains, converting the valley before sunrise intothe likeness of a polar sea. 

"You have let your fire go out, " said the colonel briskly. He had invadedthe sitting-room at an unaccustomed hour, finding the lady at her lettersas usual. She turned and held her pen poised above her paper as she lookedat him. 

"You did not come to see about the fire?" she said. 

"No; I have had letters from the north. Would you step into my study amoment?"

Moya was in her father's room when they entered. She had been weeping, butat sight of Paul's mother she rose and stood picking at the handkerchiefshe held, without raising her eyes. 

"Don't be alarmed at Moya's face, " said the colonel stoutly. "Paul was allright at last accounts. We will have a merry Christmas yet. "

"This is not from Paul!" Mrs. Bogardus fixed her eyes upon a letter whichshe held at arm's length, feeling for her glasses. "It's not forme--'_Miss_ Bogardus. '"

"Ah, well. I saw it was postmarked Lemhi--Fort Lemhi, you know. Sit down, madam. Suppose I give you Mr. Winslow's report first--Lieutenant Winslow. You heard of his going to Lemhi?"

"She doesn't know, " whispered Moya. 

"True. Well, two weeks ago I gave Mr. Winslow a hunter's leave, as we callit in the army, to beat up the trail of those boys. I thought it was timewe heard from them, but it wasn't worth while to raise a hue and cry. Hestarted out with a few picked men from Lemhi, the Indian Reservation, youknow. I couldn't have sent a better man; the thing hasn't got into thelocal papers even. My object, of course, has been to save unnecessaryalarm. Mr. Winslow has just got back to Challis. He rounded up the Bowenyouths and the cook and the helper, in bad shape, all of them, but able totell a story. The details we shall get later, but I have Mr. Winslow'sreport to me. It is short and probably correct. "

"Was Paul not with them?" his mother questioned in a hard, dry voice. "Where is he then?"

"He is in camp, madam, in charge of the wounded. "

"Dear father! if you would speak plain!" Moya whispered nervously. 

"Certainly. There is nothing whatever to hide. We know now that on theirlast day's hunt they met with an accident which resulted in a division ofthe party. A fall of snow had covered the ice on the trails, and theguide's horse fell and rolled on him--nature of his injuries notdescribed. This happened a day's journey from their camp at Ten-Milecabin, and the retreat with the wounded man was slow and of coursedifficult over such a trail. They put together a sort of horse-litter madeof pine poles and carried him on that, slung between two mules tandem. Abeastly business, winding and twisting over fallen timber, hugging thecañon wall, near a thousand feet down--'Impassable' the trail is marked, on the government military maps. This first day's march was sodiscouraging that at Ten Mile they called a council, and the packer spokeup like a man. He disposed of his own case in this way. If he were tolive, they could send back help to fetch him out. If not, no help would beneeded. The snows were upon them; there was danger in every hour's delay. It was insane to sacrifice four sound men for one, badly hurt, with notmany hours perhaps to suffer. "

A murmur from the mother announced her appreciation of the packer'sargument. 

"It was no more than a man should do; but as to taking him at his word, why, that's another question. " The colonel paused and gustily cleared histhroat. "They were up against it right then and there, and the party splitupon it. Three of them went on, --for help, as they put it, --and Paulstayed behind with the wounded man. "

"Paul stayed--alone?" Mrs. Bogardus uttered with hoarse emphasis. "Was notthat a very strange way to divide? Among them all, I should think theymight have brought the man out with them. "

"Their story is that his injuries were such that he could not have bornethe pain of the journey. Rather an unusual case, " the colonel added dryly. "In my experience, a wounded man will stand anything sooner than be lefton the field. "

"I cannot understand it, " Mrs. Bogardus repeated, in a voice of indignantpain. "Such a strange division! One man left alone--to nurse, and hunt, and cook, and keep up fires! Suppose the guide should die!"

"Paul was not _left_, you know, " the colonel said emphatically. "He_stayed_. And I should be thankful in your place, madam, that my son wasthe man who made that choice. But setting conduct aside, for we are notprepared to judge, it is merely a matter of time our getting in there, nowthat we know where he is. "

"How much time?" Mrs. Bogardus opened her ashen lips to say. 

The colonel's face fell. "Mr. Winslow reports heavy snows for the pastweek, --soft, clogging snow, --too deep to wade through and too soft tobear. A little later, when the cold has formed a crust, our men can get inon snowshoes. There is nothing for it but patience, Mrs. Bogardus, andfaith in the boy's endurance. The pluck that made him stay behind willhelp him to hold out. "

Moya gave a hurt sob; the colonel stepped to the desk and stood there amoment turning over his papers. Behind his back the mother sent a glanceto Moya expressive of despair. 

"Do you know what happened to his father? Did he ever tell you?" shewhispered. 

Moya assented; she could not speak. 

"Twice, twice in a lifetime!" said the older woman. 

With a gesture, Moya protested against this wild prophecy; but as Paul'smother left the room she rushed upon her father, crying: "Tell _me_ thetruth! What do you think of it? Did you ever hear of such a dastardlything?"

"It was a rout, " said the colonel coolly. "They were in full flight beforethe enemy. "

"What enemy? They deserted a wounded comrade, and a servant at that!"

"The enemy was panic, --panic, my dear. In these woods I've seen strong mengo half beside themselves with fear of something--the Lord knows what!Then, add the winter and what they had seen and heard of that. Anyway, youcan afford to be easy on the other boys. The honors of the day are withPaul--and the old packer, though it's all in the day's work to him. "

"And you are satisfied with Paul, father?"

"He didn't desert his command to save his own skin. " The colonel smiledgrimly. 

"When the men of the Fourth discovered those other fellows they hadliterally sat down in the snow to die. Not a man of them knew how to packa mule. Their meat pack slipped, going along one of those high trails, andscared the mule, and in trying to kick himself free the beast fell off thetrail--mule and meat both gone. They got tired of carrying their stuff andmade a raft to float it down the river, and lost that! Paul has been muchbetter off in camp than he would have been with them. So cheer up, mygirl, and think how you'd like to have your bridegroom out on an Indiancampaign!"

"Ah, but that would be orders! It's the uselessness that hurts. There wasnothing to do or to gain. He didn't want to go. Oh, daddy dear, I made funof his shooting, --I did! I laughed at his way with firearms. Wretched fooland snob that I was! As if I cared! I thought of what other people wouldsay. You remember, --he went shooting up the gulch with Mr. Lane, and whenhe hit but didn't kill he wouldn't--couldn't put the birds out of pain. Jephson had to do it for him, and he told it in barracks and the menlaughed. "

"How did you know that! And what does it all amount to! Blame yourself allyou like, dear, if it does you any good, but don't make him out a fool!There's not much that comes to us straight in this world--not even orders, you'll find. But we have to take it straight and leave the muddles and theblunders as they are. That's the brave man's courage and the bravewoman's. Orders are mixed, but duty is clear. And the boy out there in thewoods has found his duty and done it like a man. That should be enough forany soldier's daughter. "

An hour passed in suspense. Moya was disappointed in her expectation ofsharing in whatever the letter from Fort Lemhi might contain. Christinewas in bed with a headache, her mother dully gave out, with no apparentexpectation that any one would accept this excuse for the girl's completewithdrawal. The letter, she told Moya, was from Banks Bowen. "There wasnothing in it of consequence--to us, " she added, and Moya took the wordsto mean "you and me" to the unhappy exclusion of Christine. 

Mrs. Bogardus's face had settled into lines of anxiety printed yearsbefore, as the creases in an old garment, smoothed and laid away, willreappear with fresh wear. Her plan was to go back to New York withChristine, who was plainly unfit to bear a long siege of suspense. Thereshe could leave the girl with friends and learn what particulars could begathered from the Bowens, who would have arrived. She would then returnalone and wait for news at the garrison. That night, with Moya's help, shecompleted her packing, and on the following day the wedding party brokeup. 

XI

A SEARCHING OF HEARTS

Fine, dry snowflakes were drifting past the upper square of a window setin a wall of logs. The lower half was obscured by a white bulk thatshouldered up against the sash in the likeness of a muffled figurestooping to peer in. 

Lying in his bunk against the wall, the packer watched this sentinelsnowdrift grow and become human and bold and familiar. His deep-linedvisage was reduced to its bony structure. The hand was a claw with whichhe plucked at the ancient fever-crust shredding from his lips: anoccupation at once so absorbing and so exhausting that often the handwould drop and the blankets rise upon the arch of the chest in a sigh ofretarded respiration. The sigh would be followed by a cough, controlled, as in dread of the shock to a sore and shattered frame. The snow camefaster and faster until the dim, wintry pane was a blur. Millions of atomscrossed the watcher's weary vision, whirling, wavering, driven with anaimless persistence, unable to pause or to stop. And the blind whitesnowdrift climbed, fed, like human circumstance, from disconnected atomsimpelled by a common law. 

There were sounds in the cabin: wet wood sweating on hot coals; a stepthat went to and fro. Outside, a snow-weighted bough let go its load andsprang up, scraping against the logs. Some heavy soft thing slid off theroof and dropped with a _chug_. Then the door, that hung awry like adrooping eyelid, gave a disreputable wink, and the whole front gable ofthe cabin loomed a giant countenance with a silly forehead and an evilleer. Now it seemed that a hand was hurling snow against the door, as asower scatters grain, --snow that lay like beach sand on the floor, ormelted into a crawling pool--red in the firelight, red as blood!

These and other phantasms had now for an unmeasured time been tenants ofthe packer's brain, sharing and often overpowering the reality of thehuman step that went to and fro. To-day the shapes and relations of thingswere more natural, and the step aroused a querulous curiosity. 

"Who's there?" the sick man imagined himself to have said. A croakingsound in his throat, which was all he could do by way of speech, broughtthe step to his bedside. A young face, lightly bearded, and gaunt almostas his own, bent over him. Large, black eyes rested on his; a hand withwomanish nails placed its fingers on his wrist. 

"You are better to-day. Your pulse is down. I wouldn't try to talk. "

"Who's that--outside?"

"There is no one outside, " Paul answered, following the direction of hispatient's eyes. "That? That is only a snowdrift. It grows faster than Ican shovel it away. "

The packer had forgotten his own question. He dozed off, and presentlyroused again as suddenly as he had slept. His utterance was clearer, butnot his meaning. 

"What--you want to fetch me back for?"

"Back?" Paul repeated. 

"I was most gone, wa'n't I?"

"Back to life, you mean? You came back of yourself. I hadn't much to dowith it. "

"What's been the matter--gen'ly speaking?"

"You were hurt, don't you remember? Something like wound fever set in. Thealtitude is bad for fevers. You have had a pretty close call. "

"Been here all the time?"

"Have I been here?--yes. "

"'Lone?"

"With you. How is your chest? Does it hurt you still when you breathe?"

The sick man filled his lungs experimentally. "Something busted inside, Iguess, " he panted. "'Tain't no killing matter, though. "

Nourishment, in a tin cup, warm from the fire was offered him, refusedwith a gesture, and firmly urged upon him. This necessitated another rest. It was long before he spoke again--out of some remoter train of thoughtapparently. 

"Family all in New York?"

"My family? They were at Bisuka when I left them. "

"You don't _live_ West!"

"No. I was born in the West, though. Idaho is my native state. "

The patient fell to whimpering suddenly like a hurt child. He drew up theblanket to cover his face. Paul, interpreting this as a signal for morenourishment, brought the sad decoction, --rinds of dried beef cooked withrice in snow water. 

"Guess that'll do, thank ye. My tongue feels like an old buckskin glove. "

"When I was a little fellow, " said the nurse, beguiling the patient whilehe tucked the spoonfuls down, "I was like you: I wouldn't take what thedoctor ordered, and they used to pretend I must take it for the others ofthe family, --a kind of vicarious milk diet, or gruel, or whatever it was. 'Here's a spoonful for mother, poor mother, ' they would say; and of courseit couldn't be refused when mother needed it so much. 'And now one forChrissy'"--

"Who?"

"My sister, Christine. And then I'd take one for 'uncle' and one for eachof the servants; and the cupful would go down to the health of thehousehold, and I the dupe of my sympathies! Now you are taking this forme, because it's nicer to be shut up here with a live man than a dead one;and we haven't the conveniences for a first-class funeral. "

"You never took a spoonful for 'father, '--eh?"

Paul answered the question with gravity. "No. We never used that name incommon. "

"Dead was he?"

"I will tell you some time. Better try to sleep now. "

Paul returned the saucepan to the fire, after piecing out its contentswith water, and retired out of his patient's sight. 

Again came a murmur, chiefly unintelligible, from the bunk. 

"Did you ask for anything?"

The sick man heaved a worried sigh. "See what a mis'rable presumptuouspiece of work!" he muttered, addressing the logs overhead. "But thatClauson--he wa'n't no more fit to guide ye than to go to heaven! Couldn't'a' done much worse than this, though!"

"He has done worse!" Paul came over to the bunk-side to reason on thismatter. "They started back from here, four strong men with all the animalsand all the food they needed for a six weeks' trip. We came in in one. Ifthey got through at all, where is the help they were to send us?"

"Help!" The packer roused. "They helped themselves, and pretty frequent. Isaid to them more than once--they didn't like it any too well: 'We can'tdrink up here like they do down to the coast. The air is too light. What aman would take with his dinner down there would fit him out with afirst-class jag up here, 'leven thousand above the sea!'"

"It's a waste of breath to talk about them--breath burns up food and wehaven't much to spare. We rushed into this trouble and we dragged you inafter us. We have hurt you a good deal more than you have us. "

The sick man groaned. He flung one hand back against the logs, dislodgingancient dust that fell upon his corpse-like forehead. It was carefullywiped away. Helpless tears stole down the rigid face. 

"John, " said Paul with animation, "your general appearance just nowreminds me of those worked-out placer claims we passed in Ruby Gulch, thefirst day out. The fever and my cooking have ground-sluiced you to thebone. "

John smiled faintly. "Don't look very fat yourself. Where'd you git allthat baird on your face?"

"We have been here some time, you know--or you don't know; you have beenliving in places far away from here. I used to envy you sometimes. Andother times I didn't. "

"You mean I was off my head?"

"At times. But more of the time you were dreaming and talking in yourdreams; seeing things out loud by the flash-light of fever. "

"Talking, was I? Guess there wa'n't much sense in any of it?" The hazardwas a question. 

"A kind of sense, --out of focus, distorted. Some of it was opium. Didn'tyou coax a little of his favorite medicine out of the cook?"

Packer John apologized sheepishly, "I cal'lated I was going to be left. You put it up on me--making out you were off with the rest. _That_ was allright. But I wa'n't going to suffer it out; why should I? A gunshot wouldhave cured me quicker, perhaps. Then some critter might 'a' found me andcalled it murder. A word like that set going can hang a man. No, I justtook a little to deaden the pain. "

"The whole discussion was rather nasty, right before the man we weretalking about, " said Paul. "I wanted to get them off and out of hearing. Then we had a few words. "

At intervals during that day and the next, Paul's patient expended hisstrength in questions, apparently trivial. His eyes, whenever they wereopen, followed his nurse with a shrinking intelligence. Paul was on hisguard. 

"What day of the month do you make it out to be?"

"The second of December. "

"December!" The packer lay still considering. "Game all gone down?"

"I am not much of a pot-hunter, " said Paul. "There may be game, but Ican't seem to get it. The snow is pretty deep. "

"Wouldn't bear a man on snowshoes?"

"He would go out of sight. "

"Snowing a little every day?"

"Right along, quietly, for I don't know how many days! I think the sky ispacked with it a mile deep. "

"How much grub have we got?"

Paul gave a flattering estimate of their resources. The patient was notdeceived. 

"Where's it all gone to? You ain't eat anything. "

"I've eaten a good deal more than you have. "

"I was livin' on fever. "

"You can't live on fever any longer. The fever has left you, and you'll gowith it if you don't obey your doctor. "

"But where's all the stuff _gone_ to?"

"There were four of them, and they allowed for some delay in getting out, "Paul explained, with a sickly smile. 

"Well, they was hogs! I knew how they'd pan out! That was why"--He weariedof speech and left the point unfinished. 

On the evening following, when the two could no longer see each other'sfaces in the dusk, Paul spoke, controlling his voice:--

"I need not ask you, John, what you think of our chances?"

"I guess they ain't much worth thinking about. " The fire hissed andcrackled; the soft subsidence of the snow could be heard outside. 

"We are 'free among the dead, ' how does it go? 'Like unto them that arewounded and lie in the grave. ' What we say to each other here will stophere with our breath. Let us put our memories in order for the lastreckoning. I think, John, you must, at some time in your life, have knownmy father, Adam Bogardus? He was lost on the Snake River plains, twenty-one years ago this autumn. "

Receiving no answer, the pale young inquisitor went on, choosing his wordswith intense deliberation as one feeling his way in the dark. 

"Most of us believe in some form of communication that we can't explain, between those who are separated in body, in this world, but closely unitedin thought. Do I make myself clear?"

There was a sound of deep breathing from the bunk; it produced a similarconscious excitement in the speaker. He halted, recovered himself, andcontinued:--

"After my father's disappearance, my mother had a distinctpresentiment--it haunted her for years--that something had happened to himat a place called One Man Station. Did you ever know the place?"

"I might have. " The words came huskily. 

"Father had left her at this place, and to her knowledge he never cameback. But she had this intimation--and suffered from it--that he did comeback and was foully dealt with there--wronged in body or mind. The placehad most evil associations for her; it was not strange she should haveconnected it with the great disaster of her life. As you lay talking toyourself in your fever, you took me back on that lost trail that ended, aswe thought, in the grave. But we might have been mistaken. Is thereanything it would not be safe for you and me to speak of now? Do you knowany tie between men that should be closer than the tie between us? Anysafer place where a man could lay off the secret burdens of his life andbe himself for a little while--before the end answers all? I know you havea secret. I believe that a share of it belongs to me. "

"We are better off sometimes if we don't get all that belongs to us, " saidJohn gratingly. 

"It doesn't seem to be a matter of choice, does it? If you were not meantto tell me--what you have partly told me already--where is there anymeaning in our being here at all? Let us have some excuse for thissenseless accident. Do you believe much in accidents? How foolish"--Paulsighed--"for you and me to be afraid of each other! Two men who haveparted with everything but the privilege of speaking the truth!"

The packer raised himself in his bunk slowly, like one in pain. He lookedlong at the listless figure crouching by the fire; then he sank back againwith a low groan. "What was it you heared me say? Come!"

"I can't give you the exact words. The words were nothing. Haven't youwatched the sparks blow up, at night, when the wind goes searching overthe ashes of an old camp-fire? It was the fever made you talk, and yourwords were the sparks that showed where there had been fire once. PerhapsI had no right to track you by your own words when you lay helpless, but Icouldn't always leave you. Now I'd like to have my share of that--whateverit was--that hurt you so, at One Man Station. "

"You ought to been a lawyer, " said the packer, releasing his breath. Therewas less strain in his voice. It broke with feeling. "You put up a mightystrong case for your way of looking at it. I don't say it's best. There, if you will have it! Sonny--my son! It--it's like startin' a snow-slide. "

The sick man broke down and sobbed childishly. 

"Take it quietly! Oh, take it quietly!" Paul shivered. "I have known it along time. "

Hours later they were still awake, the packer in his bunk, Paul in hisblankets by the winking brands. The pines were moving, and in pauses ofthe wind they could hear the incessant soft crowding of the snow. 

"When they find us here in the spring, " said the packer humbly, "it won'tmatter much which on us was 'Mister' and which was 'John. '"

"Are you thinking of that!" Paul answered with nervous irritation. "Ithought you had lived in the woods long enough to have got rid of all thatnonsense!"

"I guess there was some of it where you've been living. "

"We are done with all that now. Go to sleep, --Father. " He pronounced theword conscientiously to punish himself for dreading it. The darknessseemed to ring with it and give it back to him ironically. "Father!"muttered the pines outside, and the snow, listening, let fall the word inelfin whispers. Paul turned over desperately in his blankets. "Father!" herepeated out loud. "Do _you_ believe it? Does it do you any good?"

"I wouldn't distress myself, one way or t' other, if it don't comenatural, " the packer spoke, out of his corner in the darkness. "Wait tillyou can feel to say it. The word ain't nothing. "

"But do you feel it? Is it any comfort to you at all?"

"I ain't in any hurry to feel it. We'll get there. Don't worry. And s'posewe don't! We're men. Man to man is good enough for me. "

Paul spent some wakeful hours after that, trying not to think of Moya, ofhis mother and Christine. They were of another world, --a world that dieshard at twenty-four. Towards morning he slept, but not without dreams. 

He was in the pent-road at Stone Ridge. It was sunset and long shadowsstriped the lane. A man stood, back towards him, leaning both arms on thestone fence that bounds the lane to the eastward, --a plain farmer figure, gazing down across the misty fields as he might have stood a hundred timesin that place at that hour. Paul could not see his face, but somethingtold him who it must be. His heart stood still, for he saw his mothercoming up the lane. She carried something in her hand covered with anapkin, and she smiled, walking carefully as if carrying a treat to a sickchild. She passed the man at the fence, not appearing to have seen him. 

"Won't you speak to him, mother? Won't you speak to"--He could not utterthe name. She looked at him bewildered. "Speak? who shall I speak to?" Theman at the fence had turned and he watched her, or so Paul imagined. Hefelt himself choking, faint, with the effort to speak that one word. Toolate! The moment passed. The man whom he knew was his father, the solemn, quiet figure, moved away up the road unquestioned. He never looked back. Paul grew dizzy with the lines of shadow; they stretched on and on, theybecame the ties of a railroad--interminable. He awoke, very faint andtired, with a lost feeling and the sense upon him of some greatcatastrophe. The old man was sleeping deeply in his bunk, a ray of whitesunlight falling on his yellow features. He looked like one who wouldnever wake again. But as Paul gazed at him he smiled, and sighed heavily. His lips formed a name; and all the blood in Paul's body dyed his facecrimson. The name was his mother's. 

XII

THE BLOOD-WITE

A few hours seemed days, after the great disclosure. Both men had recoiledfrom it and were feeling the strain of the new relation. Three times sincetheir first meeting the elder had adjusted himself quietly to a change inthe younger's manner to him. First there had been respectful curiosity inthe presence of a new type, combined with the deference due a leader andan expert in strange fields. Then indignant partisanship, pity, and theslight condescension of the nurse. This had hurt the packer, but he tookit as he accepted his physical downfall. The last change was hardest tobear; for now the time was short, and, as Paul himself had said, they werein the presence of the final unveiling. 

So when Paul made artificial remarks to break the pauses, avoiding hisfather's eye and giving him neither name nor title, the latter becamesilent and lay staring at the logs and picking at his hands. 

"If I was hunting up a father, " he said to himself aloud one day, "I'd tryto find a better lookin' one. I wouldn't pa'm off on myself no such oldwarped stick as I be. " The remark seemed a tentative one. 

"I had the choice, to take or leave you, " Paul responded. "You were anunconscious witness. Why should I have opened the subject at all?"

Both knew that this answer was an evasion. By forcing the tie they hadmerely marked the want of ease and confidence between them. As "PackerJohn" Paul could have enjoyed, nay, loved this man; as his father, the sumand finality of his filial dreams, the supplanter of that imaginaryhusband of his mother's youth, the thing was impossible. And the fatherknew it and did not resent it in the least, only pitied the boy for hisneedless struggle. He was curious about him, too. He wanted to understandhim and the life he had come out of: his roundabout way of reaching thesimplest conclusions; his courage in argument, and his personal shyingaway from the truth when found. More than all he longed for a little plaintalk, the exile's hunger for news from home. It pleased him when Paul, rousing at this deliberate challenge, spoke up with animation, as if hehad come to some conclusion in his own mind. It could not be expected hewould express it simply. The packer had become used to his oddly elaborateway of putting things. 

"If we had food enough and time, we might afford to waste them discussingeach other's personal appearance. _I_ propose we talk to some purpose. "

"Talking sure burns up the food. " The packer waited. 

"I wish I knew what my father was doing with himself, all those years whenhis family were giving him the honors of the dead. "

"I warned ye about this pumping out old shafts. You can't tell what you'llfind in the bottom. I suppose you know there are things in this world, Boy, a good deal worse than death?"

"Desertion is worse. It is not my father's death I want explained, it ishis life, your life, in secret, these twenty years! Can you explain that?"

The packer doubled his bony fist and brought it down on the bunk-side. "Now you talk like a man! I been waiting to hear you say that. Yes, I cananswer that question, if you ain't afeard of the answer!"

"I am keeping alive to hear it!" said Paul in a guarded voice. 

"You might say you're keeping me alive to tell it. It's a good thing togit off of one's mind; but it's a poor thing to hand over to a son. AllI've got to leave ye, though: the truth if you can stand it! Where do youwant I should begin?"

"At the night when you came back to One Man Station. "

"How'd you know I come back?"

"You were back there in your fever, living over something that happened inthat place. There was a wind blowing and the door wouldn't shut. Andsomething had to be lifted, "--the old man's eyes, fixed upon his son, tooka look of awful comprehensions, --"something heavy. "

"Yes; great Lord, it was heavy! And I been carrying it ever since!" Hischest rose as if the weight of that load lay on it still, and his breathexpired with a hoarse "haugh. " "I got out of the way because it was _my_load. I didn't want no help from them. " He paused and sat picking at hishands. "It's a dreadful ugly story. I'd most as soon live it over again ashave to tell it in cold blood. I feel sometimes it _can't be!_"

"You need not go back beyond that night. I know how my mother was left, and what sort of a man you were forced to leave her with. Was it--thekeeper?"

"That's what it was. That was the hard knot in my thread. Nothing wouldn'tgo past that. Some, when they git things in a tangle, they just reach forthe shears an' cut the thread. I wa'n't brought up that way. I was taughtto leave the shears alone. So I went on stringin' one year after another. But they wouldn't join on to them that went before. There was the knot. "

"It was between you and him--and the law?" said Paul. 

"You've got it! I was there alone with it, --witness an' judge an' jury; Iworked up my own case. Manslaughter with extenuatin' circumstances, I madeit--though he was more beast than man. I give myself the outsidepenalty, --imprisonment for life. And I been working out my sentence eversince. The Western country wa'n't home to me then--more like a big prison. It's been my prison these twenty-odd years, while your mother was enjoyingwhat belonged to her, and making a splendid job of your education. If Ihad let things alone I might have finished my time out: but I didn't, andnow the rest of it's commuted--for the life of my son!"

"Don't put it that way! I am no lamb of sacrifice. Why, how can we letthings alone in this world! Should I have stood off from this secret andnever asked my father for his defense?"

"Do you mean to say a boy like you can take hold of this thing andunderstand it?"

"I can, " said Paul. "I could almost tell the story myself. "

"Put it up then!" said the packer. The fascination of confession wasstrong upon him. 

"You had been out in the mountains--how long?"

"Two days and three nights, just as I left camp. "

"You were crazed with anxiety for us. You came back to find your campempty, the wife and baby gone. You had reason to distrust the keeper. Notfor what he did--for what you knew he meant to do. "

"For what he meant and tried to do. I seen it in his eye. The devil thatwanted him incited him to play with me and tell me lies about my wife. Shescorned the brute and he took his mean revenge. He kep' back her letter, and he says to me, leerin' at me out of his wicked eyes, 'Your livestockseems to be the strayin' kind. The man she went off with give methat, '--he lugged a gold piece out of his clothes and showed me, --'give methat, ' he says, 'to keep it quiet. ' He kep' it quiet! Half starved andsick's I was, the strength was in me. But vengeance in the hand of a man, it cuts both ways, my son! His bunk had a sharp edge to it like this. Hefell acrost it with my weight on top of him and he never raised up again. There wasn't a mark on him. His back was broke. He died slow, his eyesmocking me. 

"'You fool, ' he says. 'Go look in that coat hangin' on the wall. ' I foundher letter there inside of one from Granger. He watched me read it and helaughed. 'Now, go tell her you've killed a man!' He knew I didn't come ofa killin' breed. There was four hours to think it over. Four hours! Ithought hard, I tell you! 'T was six of one and half a dozen of t' other'twixt him and me, but I worked it back 'n' forth a good long while abouther. First, taking her away from her father, an old man whose bread I'deat. She was like a child of my own raising. I always had felt mean aboutthat. We'd had bad luck from the start, --my luck, --and now disgrace to capit all. Whether I hid it or told her and stood my trial, I'd never be afree man again. There he lay! And a sin done in secret, it's like a dropof nitric acid: it's going to eat its way out--and in!

"I knew she'd have friends enough, once she was quit of me. That was thecase between us. The thing that hurt me most was to put her letter backwhere I found it, and leave it, there with him. Her little cry to me--andI couldn't come! I read the words over and over, I've said 'em to myselfever since. I've lived on them. But I had to leave the letter there toshow I'd never come back. I put it back after he was dead. 

"The sins of the parents shall be visited, --when it's in the blood! But Ideclare to the Almighty, murder wa'n't in my blood! It come on me like astroke of lightning hits a tree, and I had a clear show to fall alone. 

"That's the answer. Maybe I didn't see all sides of it, but there neverwas no opening to do different, after that night. Now, you've had aneducation. I should be glad to hear your way of looking at it?"

"I should think you might stand your trial, now, before any judge or jury, in this world or the next, " Paul answered. 

"There is only one Judge. " The packer smiled a beautiful quiet smile thatcovered a world of meanings. "What a man re'ly wants, if he'd own up it, is a leetle shade of partiality. Maybe that's what we're all going toneed, before we git through. "

Paul was glad to be saved the necessity of speech, and he felt the swiftdiscernment with which the packer resumed his usual manner. "Got any moreof that stuff you call soup? Divide even! I won't be made no baby of. "

"We might as well finish it up. It's hardly worth making two bites of acherry. "

"Call this 'cherry'! It's been a good while on the bough. What's it mostlymade of?"

"Rind of bacon, snow water, --plenty of water, --and a tablespoonful ofrice. "

"Good work! Hungry folks can live on what the full bellies throw away. "

"Oh, I can save. But there comes a time when you can't live by saving whatyou haven't got. "

"That's right! Well, let's talk, then, before the bacon-rind fades out ofus. "

The packer's face and voice, his whole manner, showed the joy of a soulthat has found relief. Paul was not trying now to behave dutifully; theywere man to man once more. The quaint, subdued humor asserted itself, andthe narrator's speech flowed on in the homely dialect which expressed theman. 

"I stayed out all that winter, workin' towards the coast. One day, alongin March, I fetched a charcoal burner's camp, and the critter took me inand nursed my frost-bites and didn't ask no questions, nor I of him. Westruck up a trade, my drivin' stock, mostly skin and bone, for a show inhis business. He wa'n't gettin' rich at it, that was as plain as the hipbones on my mules. I kep' in the woods, cuttin' timber and tendin' kiln, and he hauled and did the sellin'. Next year he went below to Portland andbrought home smallpox with him. It broke out on him on the road. He was aterrible sick man. I buried him, and waited for my turn. It didn't come. Iseemed kind o' insured. I've been in lots of trouble since then, butnothing ever touched me till now. I banked on it too strong, though. Isure did! My pardner was just such another lone bird like me. If he hadany folks of his own he kep' still about them. So I took his name--whetherit was his name there's no knowing. Guess I've took full as good care ofit as he would. 'Hagar?' folk would say, sort o' lookin' me over. 'Youain't Jim Hagar. ' No, but I was John, and they let it go at that. 

"I heard of your mother that summer, from a prospector who came up past mycamp. He'd wintered in Mountain Home. He told me my own story, the waythey had it down there, and what straits your mother was in. I had scrapedup quite a few dollars by then, and was thinking how I'd shove it into abank like an old debt coming to Adam Bogardus. I was studying how I wasgoing to rig it. There wasn't any one who knew me down there, so I feltsafe to ventur' a few inquiries. What I heard was that she'd gone home toher folks and was as well off as anybody need be. That broke me all up atfirst. I must have had a sneakin' notion that maybe some day I could seemy way to go back to her, but that let me out completely. I quit then, andI've stayed quit. The only break I made was showin' up here at the'leventh hour, thinking I could be some use to my son!"

"It was to be, " said Paul. "For years our lives have been shaping towardsthis meeting. There were a thousand chances against it. Yet here we are!"

"Here we are!" the packer repeated soberly. "But don't think that I layany of my foolishness on the Almighty! Maybe it was meant my son shouldclose my eyes, but it's too dear at the price. Anybody would say so, Idon't care who. "

"But aside from the 'price, ' is it something to you?"

"More--more than I've got words to say. And yet it grinds me, every breathI take! Not that I wish you'd done different--you couldn't and be a man. Iknew it even when I was kickin' against it. Oh, well! It ain't no use tokick. I thought I'd learned something, but I ain't--learned--a thing!"

XIII

CURTAIN

A greater freedom followed this confession, as was natural. It became thebasis for lighter confidences and bits of autobiography that came to thesurface easily after this tremendous effort at sincerity. Paul found thathe could speak even of the family past, into which by degrees he began tofit the real man in place of that bucolic abstraction which had walked thefields of fancy. He had never dared to actuate the "hired man, " hisfather, on a basis of fact. He knew the speech and manners of the classfrom which he came, --knew men of that class, and talked with them everysummer at Stone Ridge; but he had brooded so deeply over the tragic andsentimental side of his father's fate as to have lost sight of the factthat he was a man. 

Reality has its own convincing charm, not inconsistent with plainness oreven with commonness. To know it is to lose one's taste for toys of theimagination. Paul, at last, could look back almost with, a sense of humorat the doll-like progenitor he had played with so long. But when it cameto placing the real man, Adam Bogardus, beside that real woman, once hiswife, their son could but own with awe that there is mercy in extinction, after all; in the chance, however it may come to us, for slipping offthose cruel disguises that life weaves around us. 

In the strange, wakeful nights, full of starvation dreams, he saw hismother as she would look on state occasions in the hostess's place at herluxurious table; the odor of flowers, the smell of meats and wines, tantalized and sickened him. Christine would come in her dancing frocks, always laughing, greedy in her mirth; but Moya, face to face, he couldnever see. It was torture to feel her near him, a disembodied embrace. Passionate panegyrics and hopeless adjurations he would pour out to thathovering loveliness just beyond his reach. The agony of frustration wouldwaken him, if indeed it were sleep that dissolved his consciousness, andhe would be irritable if spoken to. 

The packer broke in, one morning, on these unnerving dreams. "You wouldn'thappen to have a picture of her along with you?"

Paul stared at him. 

"No, of course you wouldn't! And I'd be 'most afeard to look at it, if youhad. She must have changed considerable. Time hasn't stood still with herany more than the rest of us. "

"I have no picture of my mother, " Paul replied. 

The packer saw that his question had jarred; he had waited weeks to askit. He passed it off now with one of his homely similes. "If you was tobreak a cup clean in two, and put the halves together again while thebreak was fresh, they'd knit so you wouldn't hardly see a crack. But youtake one half and set it in the chainy closet and chuck the other half outon the ash-heap, --them halves won't look much like pieces of the same cup, come a year or two. The edges won't jine no more than the lips of an oldcut that's healed without stitches. No; married folks they grow togetheror they grow apart, and they're a-doing of the one or the other everyminute of the time, breaks or no breaks. Does she go up to the old placesummers?"

"Not lately, except on business, " said Paul. "A company was formed to openslate quarries on the upper farm, a good many years ago. They are worthmore than all the land forty times over. "

"I always said so; always told the old man he had a gold mine in thatridge. Was this before he died?"

"Long after. It was my mother's scheme mainly. She controls it now. She isa very strong business woman. "

"She got her training, likely, from that uncle in New York. He had thebusiness head. The old man had no more contrivance than one of the bullsin his pastures. He could lock horns and stay there, but it wa'nt notrouble to outflank him. More than once his brother Jacob got to thewindward of him in a bargain. He was made a good deal like his own land. Winters of frost it took to break up that ground, and sun and rain tomeller it, and then't was a hatful of soil to a cartful of stone. Theplough would jump the furrows if you drew it deep. My arms used to ache asif they'd been pounded, with the jar of them stones. They used to tell uschildren a story how Satan, he flew over the earth a-sowing it with rocksand stones, and as he was passing over our county a hole bu'st through hisleather apron and he lost his whole load right slam there. I could 'a'p'inted out the very spot where the heft on it fell. Ten Stone meadow, so-called. Ten million stone! I was pickin' stone in that field all of onesummer when I was fifteen year old. We built a mile of fence with it. 

"Them quarries must have brought a mint of money into the country. Different sort of labor, too. Well, the world grows richer and poorerevery year. More difference every year between the way rich folks and poorfolks live. I wouldn't know where I belonged, 't ain't likely, if I was togo back there. I'd be way off! One while I used to think a good deal aboutgoing back, just to take a look around. It comes over me lately likehunger and thirst. I think about the most curious things when I'masleep--foolish, like a child! I can smell all the good home smells of afrosty morning: apple pomace, steaming in the barnyard; sausage frying;Becky scouring the brass furnace-kittle with salt and vinegar. Killin'time, you know--makes you think of boiling souse and head-cheese. You evereat souse?" The packer sucked in his breath with a lean smile. "It ain'tbest to dwell on it. But you can't help yourself, at night. I can smellBecky's fresh bread, in my dreams, just out of the brick oven. Never eatbread cooked in a stove till I came out here. I never drunk any water likethat spring on the ridge. Last night I was back there, and the maples wereall yellow like sunshine. Once it was spring, and apple-blooms up in thehill orchard. And little Emmy, a-setting on the fence, with her bunnitthrowed back on her neck. 'Addy!' she called, way across the lot; 'Addy, come, help me down!' She was a master hand for venturin' up on places, butshe didn't like the gettin' down. 

"Well, she 'a learned the ups and downs by this time. She don't need Addyto help her. I'd have helped a big sight more if I had kep' my distance. It's a thing so con-demned foolish and unnecessary--I can't be reconciledto it noway!"

"You see only one side of it, " said Paul. Unspeakable thoughts had keptpace with his father's words. "Nothing that happens, happens throughus--or to us--alone. There was a girl I knew, outside. She was as happy, when I knew her first, as you say my mother used to be. Then she met someone--a man--and the shadow of his life crossed hers. He would have wrappedher up in it and put out her sunshine if he had stayed in the same world. Now she can be herself again, after a while. It cannot take long to forgeta person you have known only a little over a year. "

The packer rose on one elbow. He reached across and shook his son. 

"Where is that girl? Answer me! Take your face out of your hands!"

"At Bisuka Barracks. She is the commandant's daughter. I came out to marryher. "

"What possessed ye not to tell me?"

"Why should I tell you? We buried the wedding-day months back, in thesnow. "

"Boy, boy!" the packer groaned. 

"What difference can it make now?"

"_All_ the difference--all the difference there is! I thought you were outhere touring it with them fool boys and they were all the chance you hadfor help outside. You suppose her father is going to see her git left?_They_'ll get in here, if they have to crawl on their bellies or climbthrough the tree-limbs. They know how! And we've wasted the grub andtalked like a couple of women!"

"Oh, don't--don't torment me!" Paul groaned. "It was all over. Can't youleave the dead in peace!"

"We are not the dead! I 'most wish we were. Boy, I've got a big word tosay to you about that. Come closer!" The packer's speech hoarsened andfailed. They could only hear each other breathe. Then it seemed to thepacker that his was the only breath in the darkness. He listened. A faintcheer arose in the forest and a crashing of the dead underlimbs of thepines. 

He turned frantically upon his son, but no pledge could be extorted now. Paul's lips were closed. He had lost consciousness. 

XIV

KIND INQUIRIES

The colonel's drawing-room was as hot as usual the first hour afterdinner, and as usual it was full of kindly participant neighbors who haddropped in to repeat their congratulations on the good news, now almost aweek old. Mrs. Bogardus had not come down, and, though asked after by all, the talk was noticeably freer for her absence. 

Mrs. Creve, in response to a telegram from her brother, had arrived fromFort Sherman on the day before, prepared for anything, from frozen feet toa wedding. She had spent the afternoon in town doing errands for Moya, andbeing late for dinner had not changed her dress. There never was such a"natural" person as aunt Annie. At present she was addressing the companyat large, as if they were all her promising children. 

"Nobody talks about their star in these days. I used to have a star. Iforget which it was. I know it was a pretty lucky one. Now I trust inProvidence and the major and wear thick shoes. " She exhibited the shoes, aparticularly large and sensible kind which she imported from the East. Everybody laughed and longed to embrace her. "Has Moya got a star?" sheasked seriously. 

"The whole galaxy!" a male voice replied. "Doesn't the luck prove it?"

"Moya has got a 'temperament, '" said Doctor Fleming, the Post surgeon. "That's as good as having a star. You know there are persons who attractmisfortune just as sickly children catch all the diseases that are going. I knew that boy was sure to be found. Anything of Moya's would be. "

"So you think it was Moya's 'temperament' that pulled him out of thesnow?" said the colonel, wheeling his chair into the discussion. 

"How about Mr. Winslow's temperament? I prefer to leave a little of thecredit to him, " said Moya sweetly. 

A young officer, who had been suffering in the corner by the fire, jumpedto his feet and bowed, then blushed and sat down again, regretting hisrashness. Moya continued to look at him with steadfast friendliness. Winslow had led the rescue that brought her lover home. A glow of sympathyunited these friends and neighbors; the air was electrical and full ofemotion. 

"I suppose no date has been fixed for the wedding?" Mrs. Dawson, on thedivan, murmured to Mrs. Creve. The latter smiled a non-committal assent. 

"I should think they would just put the doctor aside and be marriedanyhow. My husband says he ought to go to a warmer climate at once. "

"My dear, a young man can't be married in his dressing-gown and slippers!"

"No! It's not as bad as that?"

"Well, not quite. He's up and dressed and walks about, but he doesn't comedown to his meals, --he can eat so very little at a time, and it tires himto sit through a dinner. It isn't one of those ravenous recoveries. Itwent too far with him for that. "

"His mother was perfectly magnificent through it all, they say. "

"Have you seen much of Mrs. Bogardus?"

"No; we left them alone, poor things, when the pinch came. But I used tosee her walking the porch, up and down, up and down. Moya would go off onthe hills. They couldn't walk together! That was after Miss Chrissy wenthome. Her mother took her back, you know, and then returned alone. Perfectly heroic! They say she dressed every evening for dinner ascarefully as if she were in New York, and led the conversation. She usedto make Moya read aloud to her--history, novels--anything to pretend theywere not thinking. The strain must have begun before any of us knew. Thecolonel kept it so quiet. What is the dear man doing with your bonnet?"

The colonel had plucked his sister's walking-hat, a pert piece ofmillinery froward in feathers, from the trunk of the headless Victory, where she had reposed it in her haste before dinner. 

"Mustn't be disrespectful to the household Lar, " he kindly reminded her. 

"Where am I to put my hats, then? I shall wear them on my head and comedown to breakfast in them. Moya, dear, will you please rescue my hat? Putit anywhere, dear, --under your chair. There is not really a place in thishouse to put a thing. A wedding that goes off on time is bad enough, butone that hangs on from month to month--and doesn't even take care of itsclothes! Forgive me, dear! The clothes are very pretty. I open abureau-drawer to put away my middle-aged bonnet--a puff of violets! A pileof something white, and, behold, a wedding veil! There isn't a hook in thecloset that doesn't say, 'Standing-room only, ' and the standing-room isall stood on by a regiment of new shoes. "

"My dear woman, go light on our sore spots. We are only just out of thewoods. "

"Isn't it bad to coddle your sore spots, Doctor? Like a saddle-gall, ridethem down!" Mrs. Creve and Dr. Fleming exchanged a friendly smile on thestrength of this nonsense. On the doctor's side it covered a suspicion:"'The lady, methinks, protests too much'!" The colonel, too, was restless, and Moya's sweet color came and went. She appeared to be listening forsteps or sounds from some other part of the house. 

The men all rose now as Mrs. Bogardus entered; one or two of the ladiesrose also, compelled by something in her look certainly not intended. Shewas careful to greet everybody; she even crossed the room and gave herhand to Lieutenant Winslow, whom she had not seen since the night of hisreturn. The doctor she casually passed over with a bow; they had metbefore that day. It was in the mind of each person present not of thefamily, and excepting the doctor, to ask her: 'How is your son thisevening?' But for some reason the inquiry did not come off. 

The company began suddenly to feel itself _de trop_. Mrs. Dawson, who hadcome under the doctor's escort, glanced at him, awaiting the moment whenit would do to make the first move. 

"I hear you lost a patient from the hospital yesterday?" said LieutenantWinslow, at the doctor's side. 

"_From_, did you say? That's right! He was to have been operated onto-day. " The doctor shrugged his shoulders. 

"What!"

"Two broken ribs. One grown fast to the lung. "

"Wh-ew!"

"He just walked out. Said I had ordered him to have fresh air. There was anew hall-boy, a greenhorn. "

"He can't go far in that shape, can he?"

"Oh, there's no telling. The constitution of those men is beyond anything. You can't kill him. He'll suffer of course, suffer like an animal, and dielike one--away from the herd. Maybe not this time, though. "

"Was he afraid of the operation?"

"I can't say. He did not seem to be either afraid or anxious for help. Notused to being helped. He would be taken to the Sisters' Hospital. Wouldn'tcome up here as the guest of the Post, not a bit! I believe from the firsthe meant to give us the slip, and take his chance in his own way. "

"Did you hear, "--Mrs. Creve spoke up from the opposite side of the roomunder that hypnotic influence by which a dangerous topic spreads, --"didyou hear about the poor guide who ran away from the hospital to escapefrom our wicked doctor here? What a reputation you must have, Doctor!"

"All talk, my dear; town gossip, " said the colonel. "You gave him hisdischarge, didn't you, Doctor?" The colonel looked hard at the medicalofficer; he had prepared the way for a statement suited to a mixedcompany, including ladies. But Doctor Fleming stated things usually tosuit himself. 

"There was a man who left the Sisters' Hospital rather informallyyesterday. I won't say he is not just as well off to-day as if he hadstayed. "

"Who was it? Was it our man, father?"

"The doctor has more than one patient at the hospital. " Colonel Middletonlooked reproachfully at the doctor, who continued to put aside as childishthese clumsy subterfuges. "I think you ladies frightened him away withyour attentions. He knew he was under heavy liabilities for all yourflowers and fancy cookery. "

"Attentions! Are we going to let him die on the road somewhere?" criedMoya. 

"Miss Moya?" Lieutenant Winslow spoke up with a mixture of embarrassmentand resolution to be heard, though every voice in the room conspiredagainst him. "Those men are a big fraternity. They have their outfittingplaces where they put in for repairs. Packer John had his blankets sent tothe Green Meadow corral. They know him there. They say he had money at oneof the stores. They all have a little money cached here and there. Andthey _can't_ get lost, you know!"

Moya's eyes shone with a suspicious brightness. 

 "'When the forest shall mislead me; When the night and morning lie. '"

She turned her swimming eyes upon Paul's mother, who would be sure toremember the quotation. 

Mrs. Bogardus remained perfectly still, her lips slightly parted. She grewvery pale. Then she rose and walked quickly to the door. 

"Just a breath of cold air!" she panted. The doctor, Moya, and Mrs. Crevehad followed her into the hall. Moya placed herself on the settle besideher and leaned to support her, but she sat back rigidly with her eyesclosed. Mrs. Creve looked on in quiet concern. "Let me take you into thestudy, Mrs. Bogardus!" the doctor commanded. "A glass of water, Moya, please. "

"How is she? What is it? Can we do anything?" The company crowded aroundMrs. Creve on her return to the drawing-room. She glanced at her brother. There was no clue there. He stood looking embarrassed and mystified. "Itis only the warm welcome we give our friends, " she said aloud, smilingcalmly. "Mrs. Bogardus found the room too hot. I think I should havesuccumbed myself but for that little recess in the hall. "

The colonel attacked his fire. He thought he was being played with. Thingswere not right in the house, and no one, not the doctor, or even Annie, was frank with him. His kind face flushed as he straightened up to bid hisguests good-night. 

"Well, if it's not anything serious, you think. But you'll be sure to letus know?" said Mrs. Dawson. "Well, good-night, Mrs. Creve. _Good_-night, Colonel! You'll say good-night to Moya? Do let us know if there isanything we can do. "

Dr. Fleming was in the hall looking for his cape. The colonel touched himon the shoulder. "Don't be in a hurry, Doctor. Mrs. Dawson will excuseyou. "

"I don't think you need me any more to-night. Moya is with Mrs. Bogardus. She is not ill. The room was a little close. "

"Never mind the _room_! Come in here. I want a word with you. "

The doctor laughed oddly, and obeyed. 

"Annie, you needn't leave us. "

"Why, thank you, dear boy! It's awfully good of you, " Annie mocked him. "But I must go and relieve Moya. "

"I don't believe you are wanted in there, " said Doctor Fleming. 

"It's more than obvious that I'm not in here. "

"Oh, do sit down, " said the teased colonel. 

The fire sulked and smoked a trifle with its brands apart. Doctor Flemingleaned forward upon his knees and regarded it thoughtfully. The colonelsat fondling the tongs. In a deep chair Mrs. Creve lay back and shaded herface with the end of her lace scarf. By her manner she might have beenalone in the room, yet she was keenly observant of the men, for she feltthat developments were taking place. 

"What is the matter with your patient upstairs, Doctor?" the colonel beganhis cross-examination. Doctor Fleming raised his eyebrows. 

"He's had nothing to eat to speak of for six weeks, at an altitude"--

"Yes; we know all that. But he's twenty-four years old. They made an easytrip back, and he has been here a week, nearly. He's not as strong as hewas when they brought him in, is he?"

"That was excitement. You have to allow for the reaction. He has had ashock to the entire system, --nerves, digestion, --must give him time. Verynervous temperament too much controlled. "

"Make it as you like. But I'm disappointed in his rallying powers, unlessyou are keeping something back. A boy with the grit to do what he did, andstand it as he did--why isn't he standing it better now?"

"We are all suffering from reaction, I think, " said Mrs. Crevediplomatically; "and we show it by making too much of little things. Tom, we oughtn't to keep the doctor up here talking nonsense. He wants to go tobed. "

"_I_'m not talking nonsense, " said the doctor. "I should be if I pretendedthere was anything mysterious about that boy's case upstairs. He has had atremendous experience, say what you will; and it's pulled him downnervously, and every other way. He isn't ready or able to talk of it yet. And he knows as soon as he comes down there'll be forty people waiting tocongratulate him and ask him how it was. I don't wonder he fights shy. Ifhe could take his bride by the hand and walk out of the house with her Ibelieve he could start to-morrow; but if there must be a wedding and a lotof fuss"--

Mrs. Creve nodded her head approvingly. The three had risen and stoodaround the hearth, while the colonel put the brands delicately togetherwith the skill of an old campaigner. The flames breathed again. 

"I don't offer this as a professional opinion, " said the doctor. "But acase like his is not a disease, it's a condition"--

"Of the mind, perhaps?" the colonel added significantly. He glanced atMrs. Creve. "You've thought about that, Doctor? The letter his motherconsulted you about?"

"Have you been worrying about that, Colonel? Why didn't you say so? Thereis nothing in it whatever. Why, it's so plain a case the other way--anyone can see where the animus comes from!"

"Now you _are_ getting mysterious, and I'm going to bed!" said Mrs. Creve. 

"No; we're coming to the point now, " said the colonel. 

"What is it you want Bogardus to do?" asked Doctor Fleming. "Want him toget up and walk out of the house as my patient did at the hospital? Daresay he could do it, but what then? Will you let me speak out, Colonel? Noregard to anybody's feelings? Now, this may be gossip, but I think it hasa bearing on the case upstairs. I'm going to have it off my mind anyhow!When Mrs. Bogardus came to see the guide, --Packer John, --day beforeyesterday, was it?--he asked to see her alone. Said he had somethingparticular to say to her about her son. We thought it a queer start, butshe was willing to humor him. Well, she wasn't in there above ten minutes, but in that time something passed between them that hit her very hard, nodoubt of that! Now, Bogardus holds his tongue like a gentleman as to whathappened in the woods. He doesn't mention his comrades' names. And thepacker has disappeared; so he can't be questioned. Seems to me a littlebird told me there was an attachment between one of those Bowen boys andMiss Christine?

"Now we, who know what brutes brute fear will make of men, are not goingto deny that those boys behaved badly. There are some things that can't beacknowledged among men, you know, if there is a hole to crawl out of. Cowardice is one of them. Well then, they lied, that's the whole of it. The little boys lied. They wrote Mrs. Bogardus a long letter fromLemhi, "--the doctor was reviewing now for Mrs. Creve's benefit, --"whenthey first got out. They probably judged, by the time they had had, thatPaul and the packer would never tell their own story. Very well: itcouldn't hurt Paul, it might be the saving of them, if they could showthat something had queered him in the woods. They asked his mother if shehad heard of the effects of altitude upon highly sensitive organizations. They recounted some instances--I will mention them later. One of the boysis a lawyer, isn't he? They are a pair of ingenious youths. Bogardus, theyclaim, avoided them almost from the time they entered the woods, --almostlived with the packer, behaved like a crank about the shooting. Whereasthey had gone there to kill things, he made it a personal matter wheneverthey pursued this intention in a natural and undisguised manner. He hadpangs, like a girl, when the creatures expired. He hated the carcases, theblood--forgive me, Mrs. Creve. In short, he called the whole businessbutchery. "

"Do you make _that_ a sign of lunacy?" Mrs. Creve flung in. 

"I am quoting, you know. " The doctor smiled indulgently. "They declarethat they offered--even begged--to stay behind with him, one of them, atleast, but he rejected their company in a manner so unpleasant that theysaw it would only be courting a quarrel to remain. And so, treating himperforce like a child _or_ a lunatic _pro tem. _, and having but littletime to decide in, they cut loose and hurried back for help. This is thetale, composed on reflection. They said nothing of this to Winslow--tosave publicity, of course! Mrs. Bogardus's lips are doubly sealed, for herson's sake and for the sake of the young scamp who is to be her son, byand by! I saw she winced at my opinion, which I gave herplainly--brutally, perhaps. And she asked me particularly to say nothing, which I am particularly not doing. 

"This, I think, you will find is the bitter drop in the cup of rejoicingupstairs. And they are swallowing it in silence, those two, for the sakeof the little girl and the old friends in New York. Of course she has keptfrom Paul that last shot in the back from those sweet boys! The packer hadsome unruly testimony he was bursting with, which he had sense enough tokeep for her alone, and she doesn't want the case to spread. It issingular how a man in his condition could get out of the way as suddenlyas he did. You might think he'd been taken up in a cloud. "

"Doctor, what do you mean by such an insinuation as that?"

"Colonel, have I insinuated anything? Did I say she had oiled the wheelsof his departure?"

"Come, come! You go too far!"

"Not at all. That's your own construction. I merely say that I am notconcerned about that man's disappearance. I think he'll be looked after, as a valuable witness should be. "

"Well, " the colonel grumbled uneasily, "I don't like mysteries myself, andI don't like family quarrels nor skeletons at the feasts of old friends. But I suppose there must be a drop in every cup. What were your altitudecases, Doctor?"

"The same old ones; poor Addison, you know. All those stories they tell anEasterner. As I pointed out to Mrs. Bogardus, in every case there was somepredisposing cause. Addison had been too long in the mountains, and he wasfrightfully overworked; short of company officers. He came to me about aninsect he said had got into his ear; buzzed, and bothered him day andnight. The story got to the men's quarters. They joked about the colonel's'bug. ' I knew it was no joke. I condemned him for duty, but the Sioux wereout. They thought at Washington no one but Addison could handle an Indiancampaign. He was on the ground, too. So they sent him up higher where itwas dry, with a thousand men in his hands. I knew he'd be a madman or adead man in a month! There were a good many of the dead! By Jove! The boyswho took his orders and loved the old fellow and knew he was sending themto their death! Well for him that he'll never know. "

"The 'altitude of heartbreak, '" sighed Mrs. Creve. The phrase was her own, for many a reason deeply known unto herself, but she gave it the effect ofa quotation before the men. 

"Then you think there is no 'altitude' in ours?"

"No; nor 'heartbreak' either, " said the doctor, helping himself to one ofthe colonel's cigars. "But I don't say there isn't enough to keep a womanawake nights, and to make those young men avoid the sight of each otherfor a time. Thanks, I won't smoke now. I'm going to take a look at Mrs. Bogardus as I go out. "

XV

A BRIDEGROOM OF SNOW

The doctor had taken his look, feeling a trifle guilty under his patient'scounter gaze, yet glad to have relieved the good colonel's anxiety. If heloved to gossip, at least he was particular as to whom he gossiped with. 

Moya closed the door after him and silently resumed her seat. Mrs. Bogardus helped herself to a sip of water. She was struggling with a dryconstriction of the throat, and Moya protested a little, seeing the effortthat it cost her to speak, even in the hoarse, unnatural tone which wasall the voice she had left. 

"I want to finish now, " she said, "and never speak of this again. It was Iwho accused them first--and then I asked him:--if there was anything hecould say in their defense, to say it, for Chrissy's sake! 'I will neverbreak bread with them again, ' said he, --'either Banks or Horace. I willnot eat with them, or drink with them, or speak with them again!' Think ofit! How are we to live? How are they to inhabit the same city? He thinks Ihave been weak. I am weak! The only power I have is through--the property. Banks will never marry a poor girl. But that would be a dear-boughtvictory. Let her keep what faith in him she can. No; in families, the oneswho can control themselves have to give in--to those who can't. If youargue with Christine she simply gives way, and then she gets hysterical, and then she is ill. It's a disease. Mothers know how theirchildren--Christine was marked--marked with trouble! I am thankful she hasany mind at all. She needs me more than Paul does. I cannot be parted frommy power to help her--such as it is. "

"When she is Banks Bowen's wife she will need you more than ever!" saidMoya. 

"She will. I could prevent the marriage, but I am afraid to. I am afraid!So, as the family is cut in two--in three, for I"--Mrs. Bogardus stoppedand moistened her lips again. "So--I think you and Paul had better makeyour arrangements and go as soon as you can wherever it suits you, withoutminding about the rest of us. "

Moya gave a little sobbing laugh. "You don't expect me to make the firstmove!"

"Doesn't he say anything to you--anything at all?"

"He is too ill. "

"He is not ill!" Mrs. Bogardus denied it fiercely. "Who says he is ill? Heis starved and frozen. He is just out of the grave. You must be good tohim, Moya. Warm him, comfort him! You can give him the life he needs. Yourhands are as soft as little birds. They comfort even me. Oh, don't youunderstand!"

"Of course I understand!" Moya answered, her face aflame. "But I cannotmarry Paul. He has got to marry me. "

"What nonsense that is! People say to a girl: 'You can't be too coldbefore you are married or too kind after!' That does not mean you andPaul. If you are not kind to him _now_, you will make a great mistake. "

"He is not thinking of marriage, " said Moya. "Something weighs on him allthe time. I cannot ask him questions. If he wanted to tell me he would. That is why I come downstairs and leave him. But he won't come down! Is itnot strange? If we could believe such things I would say a Presence camewith, him out of that place. It is with him when I find him alone. It isin his eyes when he looks at me. It is not something past and done with, it is here--now--in this house! _What_ is it? What do _you_ believe?"

The eyes she sought to question hardened under her gaze. Here, too, was aveil. Mrs. Bogardus sat with her hands clasped in her lap. She wasmotionless, but the creaking of her silks could be heard as her bosom roseand fell. After a moment she said: "Paul's tray is on the table in thedining-room. Will you take it when you go up?"

Moya altered her own manner instantly. "But you?" she hesitated. "I mustnot crowd you out of all your mother privileges. You have handed overeverything to me. "

"A mother's privilege is to see herself no longer needed. I can do nothingmore for my son"--her smile was hard--"except take care of his money. "

"Paul's mother!"

"My dear, do you suppose we mind? It is a very great privilege to beallowed to step aside when your work is done. "

"Paul's _mother!_" Moya insisted. 

Mrs. Bogardus rose. "You don't remember your own mother, my dear. You havean exaggerated idea of the--the importance of mothers. They are only atemporary arrangement. " She put out her hands and the girl's cheek touchedhers for an instant; then she straightened herself and walked calmly outof the room. Moya remained a little longer, afraid to follow her. "If shewould not smile! If she would do anything but smile!"

Paul was walking about his room, half an hour later, when Moya stoppedoutside his door. She placed the tray on a table in the hall. The door wasopened from within. Paul had heard his mother go up before, heard herpause at the stairs, and, after a silence, enter her own room. 

"She knows that I know, " he said to himself. "That knowledge will bealways between us; we can never look each other in the face again. " ToMoya he endeavored to speak lightly. 

"It sounded very gay downstairs to-night. You must have had a houseful. "

"I have been with your mother the last hour, " answered Moya, vaguely onthe defensive. Since Paul's return there had been little of the old freeintercourse in words between them, and without this outlet their mutualconsciousness became acute. Often as they saw each other during the day, the keenest emotion attached to the first meeting of their eyes. 

Paul was unnerved by his sudden recall from death to life. Its contrastswere overwhelming to his starved senses: from the dirt and dearth andgrimy despair of his burial hutch in the snow to this softly lighted, close-curtained room, warm and sweet with flowers; from the gaunt, unshaven spectre of the packer and his ghostly revelations, to Moya, meekly beautiful, her bright eyes lowered as she trailed her soft skirtsacross the carpet; Moya seated opposite, silent, conscious of him in everylook and movement. Her lovely hands lay in her lap, and the thought ofholding them in his made him tremble; and when he recalled the last timehe had kissed her he grew faint. He longed to throw off this exhaustingself-restraint, but feared to betray his helpless passion which he deemedan insult to his soul's worship of her. 

And she was thinking: "Is this all it is going to mean--his cominghome--our being together? And I was almost his wife!"

"So it was my mother you were talking to in the study? I thought I heard aman's voice. "

"It was the doctor. Your mother was not quite herself this evening. Hecame in to see her, but he does not think she is ill. 'Rest and change, 'he says she needs. "

Paul gave the words a certain depth of consideration. "Are you as well asusual, Moya?"

"Oh, I am always well, " she answered cheerlessly. "I seem to thrive onanything--everything, " she corrected herself, and blushed. 

The blush made him gasp. "You are more beautiful than ever. I hadforgotten that beauty is a physical fact. The sight of you confuses me. "

"I always told you you were morbid. " Moya's happy audacity returned. "Now, how long are you going to sit and think about that?"

"Do I sit and think about things?" His reluctant, boyish smile, which allwomen loved, captured his features for a moment. "It is very rude of me. "

"Suppose I should ask you what you are thinking about?"

"Ah! I am afraid you would say 'morbid' again. "

"Try me! You ought to let me know at once if you are going to break out inany new form of morbidness. "

"I wish it might amuse you, but it wouldn't. Let me put you acase--seriously. "

Moya smiled. "Once we were serious--ages ago. Do you remember?"

"Do I remember!"

"Well? You are you, and I am I, still. "

"Yes; and as full of fateful surprises for each other. "

"I bar 'fateful'! That word has the true taint of morbidness. "

"But you can't 'bar' fate. Listen: this is a supposing, you know. Supposethat an accident had happened to our leader on the way home--to yourLieutenant Winslow, we'll say"--

"_My_ lieutenant!"

"Your father's--the regiment's--Lieutenant Winslow 'of ours. ' Suppose wehad brought him back in a state to need a surgeon's help; and without aword to any one he should get up and walk out of the hospital with hishurts not healed, and no one knew why, or where he had gone? There wouldbe a stir about it, would there not? And if such a poor spectre of abridegroom as I were allowed to join the search, no one would think itstrange, or call it a slight to his bride if the fellow went?"

"I take your case, " said Moya with a beaming look. "You want to go afterthat poor man who suffered with you. "

"Who went with us to save us from our own headstrong folly, and would havedied there alone"--

"Yes; oh, yes!--before you begin to think about yourself, or me. Becausehe is nobody 'of ours, ' and no one seems to feel responsible, and we go ontalking and laughing just the same!"

"Do they talk of this downstairs?"

"To-night they were talking--oh, with such philosophy! But how came you toknow it?"

Paul did not answer this question. "Then"--he drew a long breath, --"thenyou could bear it, dear?--the comment, even if they called it a slight toyou and a piece of quixotic lunacy? Others will not take my case, remember. "

"What others?"

"They will say: 'Why doesn't he send a better man? He is no trailer. ' Itis true. Money might find him and bring him back, but all the money in theworld could not teach him to trust his friends. There is amisunderstanding here which is too bitter to be borne. It is hard toexplain, --the intimacy that grows up between men placed as we were. But assoon as help reached us, the old lines were drawn. I belonged with theofficers, he with the men. We could starve together, but we could not eattogether. He accepted it--put himself on that basis at once. He would notcome up here as the guest of the Post. He is done with us because hethinks we are done with him. And he knows that I must know his occupationis gone. He will never guide nor pack a mule again. "

"Your mother and my father, they will understand. What do the othersmatter?"

"I must tell you, dear, that I do not propose to tell them--especiallythem--why I go. For I am going. I must go! There are reasons I cannotexplain. " He sighed, and looked wildly at Moya, whose smile was becomingmechanical. "I hate the excuse, but it will have to be said that I go fora change--for my health. My health! Great God! But it's 'orders, ' dear. "

"Your orders are my orders. You are never going anywhere again withoutme, " said Moya slowly. Her smile was gone. She stood up and faced him, pale and beautiful. He rose, too, and stooped above her, taking her handsand gazing into her full blue eyes arched like the eyes of angels. 

"I thought she was a girl! But she is a woman, " he said in a voice ofcaressing wonder. "A woman, and not afraid!"

"I am afraid. I will not be left--I will not be left again! Oh, you won'ttake me, even when I offer myself to you!"

"Don't--don't tempt me!" Paul caught her to him with a groan. "You don'tknow me well enough to be afraid of _me!_"

"You! You will not let me know you. "

"Oh, hush, dear--hush, my darling! This isn't thinking. We must think forour lives. I must take care of you, precious. We don't know where thissearch may take us, or where it will end, or what the end will be. " Hekissed the sleeve of her dress, and put her gently from him, so that hecould look her in the eyes. She gave him her full pure gaze. 

"It is the poor man again. You said he would spoil our lives. "

"He is _our_ poor man. You didn't go out of your way to find him. And yourway is mine. "

"It is so heavenly to be convinced! Who taught you to see things at aglance, --things I have toiled and bungled over and don't know now if I amright! _Who_ taught you?"

"Do you think I stood still while you were away! Oh, my heart was siftedout by little pieces. "

"You shall sift mine. You shall tell me what to do. For I know nothing!Not even if I may dare to take this angel at her word!"

"I knew you would not take me!" the girl whispered wildly. "But I shallgo. "

XVI

THE NATURE OF AN OATH

"Your tray! It is after ten o'clock. Your 'angel' is a bad nurse. " Moyabrought the tray and set it on a little stand beside Paul's chair. Hewatched her shy, excited preparations as she moved about, conscious of hiseyes. The saucepan staggered upon the coals and they both sprang to savethe broth, and pouring it she burnt her thumb a little, and he behavedquite like any ordinary young man. They were ecstatic to find themselvesat ease with each other once more. Moya became disrespectful to hercharge; such sweet daring looked from her eyes into his as made himriotous with joy. 

"Won't you take some with me?" He turned the cup towards her and watchedher as she sipped. 

"'It was roast with fire, '" he pronounced softly and dreamily, 'because ofthe dreadful pains. It was to be eaten with bitter herbs'"--

"What _are_ you saying?"--

"'To remind them of their bondage. '"

"I object to your talking about bondage and bitter herbs when you areeating aunt Annie's delicious consommé. "

He gravely sipped in turn, still with his eyes in hers. "Can you rememberwhat you were doing on the second of November?"

"Can I remember!"

"Yes; tell me. I have a reason for asking. "

"Tell _me_ the reason first. "

"May we have a little more fire, darling? It gives me chills to think ofthat day. It was the last of my wretched pot-hunting. There was nothing tohunt for--the game had all gone down, but I did not know that. Somewherein the woods, a long way from the cabin, it began to occur to me that Ishould not make shelter that night. A fool and his strength are soonparted. It was a little hollow with trees all around so deep that in thedistance their trunks closed in like a wall. Snow can make a wonderfulsilence in the woods. I seemed to hear the thoughts of everybody I lovedin the world outside. There had been a dullness over me for weeks. I couldnot make it true that I had ever been happy--that you really loved me. Allthat part of my life was a dream. Now, in that silence suddenly I feltyou! I knew that you cared. It was cruel to die so if you did love me! Itbrought the 'pang and spur'! I fought the drowsiness that was taking awaymy pain. I had begun to lean on it as a comfortable breast. I woke up andtore myself away from that siren sleep. It was my darling, --her love thatsaved me. Without that thought of you, I never would have stirred again. Where were you, what were you thinking that brought you so close to me?"

"Ah, " said Moya in a whisper. "I was in that room across the hall, alone. They were good to me that day; they made excuses and left me to myself. Inthe afternoon a box came, --from poor father, --white roses, oh, sweet andcold as snow! I took them up to that room and forced myself to go in. Itwas where my things were kept, the trunks half packed, all the drawers andclosets full. And my wedding dress laid out on the bed. We girls used togo up there at first and look at the things, and there was laughing andjoking. Sometimes I went up alone and tried on my hats before the glass, and thought where I should be when I wore them, and--Well! all thatstopped. I dreaded to pass the door. Everything was left just as it was;the shutters open, the poor dress covered with a sheet on the bed. Theroom was a death-chamber. I went in. I carried the roses to my dead. Idrew down the sheet and put my face in that empty dress. It was my selfishself laid out there--the girl who knew just what she wanted and was goingto get it if she could. Happiness I dared not even pray for--onlyremembrance--everlasting remembrance. That we might know each other againwhen no more life was left to part us--_my_ life. It seemed long to wait, but that was my--marriage vow. I gave you all I could, remembrance, faithtill death. "

"Then you are my own!" said Paul, his face transformed. "God was ourwitness. Life of my life--for life and death!" Solemnly he took abridegroom's kiss from her lips. 

"How do _you_ know that it is life that parts?"

"Speak so I can understand you!" Moya cried. "Ah, if I might! A man mustnot have secrets from his wife. Secrets are destruction, don't you think?"

Moya waited in silence. 

"Now we come to this bondage!" He let the words fall like a load from hisbreast. "This is a hideous thing to tell you, but it will cut us apartunless you know it. It compels me to do things. " He paused, and they hearda door down the passage open, --the door of his mother's room. A step cameforward a few paces. Silence; it retreated, and the door closed againstealthily. 

"She has not slept, " Paul murmured. "Poor soul, poor soul! Now, in what Iam going to say, please listen to the facts, Moya dear. Try not to inferanything from my way of putting things. I shall contradict myself, but thefacts do that. 

"The--the guide--John, we will call him, had a long fever in the woods. Itwould come on worse at night, and then--he talked--words, of a shockingintimacy. They say that nothing the mind has come in contact with understrong emotion is ever lost, no matter how long in the past. It willreturn under similar excitement. This man had kept stored away in hismind, under some such pressure, the words of a woman's message, a woman ingreat distress. Over and over, as his pulse rose, countless times he wouldrepeat that message. I went out of the hut at night and stood outside inthe snow not to hear it, but I knew it as well as he did before we gotthrough. Now, this was what he said, word for word. 

"'Do not blame me, my dear husband. I have held out in this place as longas I can. Don't wait for anything. Don't worry about anything. Come backto me with your bare hands. Come!--to your loving Emmy!'

"'Come, come!' he would shout out loud. Then in another voice he wouldwhisper, 'Come back to me with your bare hands!' And he would stare at hishands and his face would grow awful. "

Moya drew a long sigh of scared attention. 

"Those words were all over the cabin walls. I heard them and saw themeverywhere. There was no rest from them. I could have torn the roof downto stop his talking, but the words it was not possible to forget. Andwhere was the horror of it? Was not this what we had asked, for years, toknow?"

"You need not explain to me, " said Moya, shuddering. 

"Yes; but all one's meanest motives were unearthed in a place like that. Would I have felt so with a different man? Some one less uncouth? Was itthe man himself, or his"--

"Paul, if anything could make you a snob, it would be your deadly fear ofbeing one!"

"Well, if they had found us then, God knows how that fight would haveended. But I won it--when there was nothing left to fight for. I ownedhim--in the grave. We owned each other and took a bashful sort of comfortin it, after we had shuffled off the 'Mister' and 'John. ' I grew quitefond of him, when we were so near death that his English didn't matter, orhis way of eating. I thought him a very remarkable man, you remember, whenhe was just material for description. He was, he is remarkable. Mostremarkable in this, he was not ashamed of his son. "

"Do please let that part alone. I want to know what he was doing, hidingaway by himself all these years? I believe he is an impostor!"

"We came to that, of course; though somehow I forgave him before he couldanswer the question. In the long watch beside him I got very close to him. It was not possible to believe him a deserter, a sneak. Can you take myword for his answer? It was given as a death-bed confession and he isliving. "

"I would take your word for anything except yourself!" Moya did not smile, or think what she was saying. 

"That answer cleared him, in my mind, with something over to the credit ofblind, stupid heroism. He is not a clever man. But, speaking as one whohas teen face to face with the end of things, I can say that I know of noact of his that should prevent his returning to his family--if he had afamily--not even his deserting them for twenty years. _If_, I say!

"When the soldiers found us we were too far gone to realize the issue thatwas upon us. He was the first to take it in. It was on the march home, atnight, he touched me and began speaking low in our corner of the tent. 'Aswe came in here, so we go out again, and so we stay, ' he said. I told himit could not be. To suppress what I had learned would make the whole oflife a lie, a coward's lie. That knowledge belonged to my mother. I mustrender it up to her. To do otherwise would be to treat her like a childand to meddle with the purposes of God. 'No honest man robs another of hissecrets, ' he said. He was very much excited. She was the only one now tobe considered--and what did I know about God's purposes? He refused totake my scruples into consideration, except such as concerned her. But, after a long argument, very painful, weak as we were and whispering in thedark, he yielded this much. If I were bent on digging up the dead, as hecalled it, it must be done in such a way as to leave her free. Free shewas in law, and she must be given a chance to claim her freedom withouttalk or publicity. Absolute secrecy he demanded of me in the mean time. Ibegged him to see how unfair it was to her to bring her face to face withsuch a discovery without one word of preparation, of excuse for him. Shewould condemn him on the very fact of his being alive. So she would, hesaid, if she were going to judge him; not if she felt towards him as--as awife feels to her husband. It was that he wanted to know. It was that ornothing he would have from her. 'Bring me face to face with her alone, andas sudden as you like. If she knows me, I am the man. And if she wants meback, she will know me--and that way I'll come and no other way. ' Was notthat wonderful? A gentleman could hardly have improved on that. Whateverfeeling he might be supposed to have towards her in the matter we couldnever touch upon. But I think he had his hopes. That decision was hangingover us--and I trembled for her. Day before yesterday, was it, I persuadedher to see the sick guide. She wondered why I was faint as she kissed megood-by. I ought to have prepared her. It was a horrible snare. And yet hemeant it all in delicacy, a passionate consideration for her. Poor fool. How could I prepare _him!_ How could he keep pace with the changes in her!After all, it is externals that make us, --habits, clothes. Great God!Things you could not speak of to a naked soul like him. But he would haveit 'straight, ' he said--and straight he got it. And he is gone; broke awaylike an animal out of a trap. And I am going to find him, to see at leastthat he has a roof over his head. God knows, he may not die for years!"

"She has got years before her too. "

"She!--What am I saying! We have plunged into those damnable inferencesand I haven't given you the facts. Wait. I shall contradict all this in amoment. I thought, she must have done this for her children. She must begiven another chance. And I approached the thing on my very knees--not tolet her know that I knew, only to hint that I was not unprepared, hadguessed--could meet it, and help her to meet the problems it would bringinto our lives. Help her! She stood and faced me as if I had insulted her. 'I have been your father's widow for twenty-two years. If that fact is notsacred to you, it is to me. Never dare to speak of this to me again!'"

"Ah, " said Moya in a long-drawn sigh, "then she did not"--

"Oh, she did, explicitly! For I went on to speak of it. It was my lastchance. I asked her how she--we--could possibly go through with it; howwith this knowledge between us we could look each other in the face--andgo on living. 

"'Put this hallucination out of your mind, ' she said. 'That man and I arestrangers. '"

"Was that--would you call that a lie?" asked Moya fearfully. 

"You can see your answer in her face. I do not say that hers was the firstlie. It must always be foolish, I think, to evade the facts of life as wemake them for ourselves. He refused to meet his facts, from the noblestmotives;--but now I'm tangling you all up again! Rest your head here, darling. This is such a business! It is a pity I cannot tell you his wholestory. Half the meaning of all this is lost. But--here is a solemndeclaration in writing, signed John Hagar, in which this man we arespeaking of says that Adam Bogardus was his partner, who died in the woodsand was buried by his hand; that he knew his story, all the scenes andcircumstances of his life in many a long talk they had together, as wellas he knew his own. In his delirium he must have confused himself with hisold partner, and half in dreams, he said, half in the crazy satisfactionof pretending to himself he had a son, he allowed the delusion to go on;saw it work upon me, and half feared it, half encouraged it. Afterwards hewas frightened at the thought of meeting my mother, who would know him foran impostor. His seeming scruples were fear of exposure, not considerationfor her. This was why he guarded their interview so carefully. 'No harm'sbeen done, ' he says, 'if you'll act now like a sensible man. I'll bedisappointed in you if you make your mother any trouble about this. You'vetreated me as square as any man could treat another. Remember, I say so, and think as kindly as you can of a harmless, loony old impostor'--and hesigns himself 'John Hagar, '--which shows again how one lie leads toanother. We go to find 'John Hagar. '"

"Have you shown your mother this letter? You have not? Paul, you will notrob her of her just defense!"

"I will not heap coals of fire on her head! This letter simply completeshis renunciation, and he meant it for her defense. But when a man signshimself 'John Hagar' in the handwriting of my father, it shows thatsomebody is not telling the truth. I used to pore over the old farmrecords in my father's hand at Stone Ridge in the old account books stowedaway in places where a boy loves to poke and pry. I know it as well as Iknow yours. Do you suppose she would not know it? When a man writes as fewletters as he does, the handwriting does not change. " Paul laid the letterupon the coals. "It is the only witness against her, but it loses thecase. "

"She never could have loved him. I never believed she did!" said Moya. 

"She thinks she can live out this deep-down, deliberate--But it will killher, Moya. Her life is ended from this on. How could I have driven her tothat excruciating choice! I ought to have listened to him altogether ornot at all. There is a hell for meddlers, and the ones who meddle forconscience' sake are the deepest damned, I think. "

Moya came and wreathed her arm in his, and they paced the room in silence. At length she said, "If we go to find John Hagar, shall we not be meddlingagain? A man who respects a woman's freedom must love his own. It is thelast thing left him. Don't hunt him down. I believe nothing could hurt himnow like seeing you again. "

"He shall not see me unless he wants to, but he shall know where I standon this question of the Impostor. It shall be managed so that even he cansee I am protecting her. No, call himself what he will, the tie betweenhim and me is another of those facts. "

"But do you love him, Paul?"

"Oh--I cannot forget him! He is--just as he used to be--'poor father outthere in the cold. ' We must find him and comfort him somehow. "

"For our own peace of mind? Forgive me for arguing when everything is sodifficult. But he is a man--a brave man who would rather be forever out inthe cold than be a burden. Do not rob him of his right to _be_ John Hagarif he wants to, for the sake of those he loves. You do not tell me it waslove, but I am sure it was, in some mistaken way, that drove him intoexile. Only love as pure as his can be our excuse for dragging him back. He did not want shelter and comfort from her. Only one thing. Have we gotthat to give him?"

"Well then, I go for my own sake--it is a physical necessity; and I go forhers. She has put it out of her own power to help him. It will ease her alittle to know I am trying to reach him in his forlorn disguise. "

"But you were not going to tell her?"

"In words, no. But she will understand. There is a strange clairvoyancebetween us, as if we were accomplices in a crime!"

Moya reflected silently. This search which Paul had set his heart uponwould equally work his own cure, she saw. Nor could she now imagine forthemselves any lover's paradise inseparable from this moral tragedy, whichshe saw would be fibre of their fibre, life of their life. A family is anorganism; one part may think to deny or defy another, but with strangepains the subtle union exerts itself; distance cannot break the thread. 

They kissed each other solemnly like little children on the eve of a longjourney full of awed expectancy. 

Mrs. Bogardus stood holding her door ajar as Moya passed on her waydownstairs. "You are very late, " she uttered hoarsely. "Is nothing settledyet?"

"Everything!" Moya hesitated and forced a smile, "everything but where weshall go. We will start--and decide afterwards. "

"You go together? That is right. Moya, you have a genius for happiness!"

"I wish I had a genius for making people sleep who lie awake hours in thenight thinking about other people!"

"If you mean me, people of my age need very little sleep. "

"May I kiss you good-night, Paul's mother?"

"You may kiss me because I am Paul's mother, not because I do not sleep. "

Moya's lips touched a cheek as white and almost as cold as the frostedwindow-panes through which the moon was glimmering. She thought of the icyroses on her wedding dress. 

Downstairs her father was smoking his bedtime cigar. Mrs. Creve, verysleepy and cosy and flushed, leaned over the smouldering bed of coals. Sheheld out her plump, soft hand to Moya. 

"Come here and be scolded! We have been scolding you steadily for the lasthour. "

"If you want that young man to get his strength back, you'd better notkeep him up talking half the night, " the colonel growled softly. "Do yousee what time it is?"

Moya knelt and leaned her head against her father. She reached one hand toMrs. Creve. They did not speak again till her weak moment had passed. "Itwill be very soon, " she said, pressing the warm hand that stroked her own. "You will help me pack, aunt Annie; and then you'll stay--with father? Iknow you are glad to have me out of the way at last!"

XVII

THE HIDDEN TRAIL

Because they had set forth on a grim and sorrowful quest, it need not besupposed that Paul and Moya were a pair of sorrowful pilgrims. It wastheir wedding journey. At the outset Moya had said: "We are doing the bestwe know. For what we don't know, let us leave it and not brood. "

They did not enter at once upon the more eccentric stages of the search. They went by way of the Great Northern to Portland, descending from snowto roses and drenching rains. At Pendleton, which is at the junction ofthree great roads, Paul sent tracers out through express agents and trainofficials along the remotest slender feeders of these lines. Through thesame agents it was made known that for any service rendered or expenseincurred on behalf of the person described, his friends would holdthemselves gratefully responsible. 

At Portland, Paul searched the steamer lists and left confidential ordersin the different transportation offices; and Moya wrote to his mother--awoman's letter, every page shining with happiness and as free fromapparent forethought as a running brook. 

They returned by the Great Northern and Lake Coeur d'Alene, stopping overat Fort Sherman to visit Mrs. Creve, who was giddy with joy over thewholesome change in Paul. She, too, wrote a woman's letter concerning thatvisit, to the colonel, which cleared a crowd of shadows from his lonelyhearth. 

Thence again to Pendleton came the seekers, and Paul gathered in hislines, but found nothing; so cast them forth again. But through all thesedistant elaborations of the search, in his own mind he saw the old mancreeping away by some near, familiar trail and lying hid in some warmvalley in the hills, his prison and his home. 

It was now the last week in March. The travelers' bags were in the office, the carriage at the door, when a letter--pigeon-holed and forgotten sincereceived some three weeks before--was put into Paul's hand. 

I run up against your ad. In the Silver City Times [the communicationbegan]. If you haven't found your man yet, maybe I can put you onto theright lead. I'm driving a jerky on the road from Mountain Home to Oriana, but me and the old man we don't jibe any too well. I've got a sort ofdisgust on me. Think I'll quit soon and go to mining. Jimmy Breen he runsthe Ferry, he can tell you all I know. Fifty miles from Mountain Home goodroad can make it in one day. Yours Respecfully, J. STRATTON. 

It was in following up this belated clue that the pilgrims had come to theFerry inn, crossing by team from valley to valley, cutting off a greatbend of the Oregon Short Line as it traverses the Snake River desert;those bare high plains escarped with basalt bluffs that open every fiftymiles or so to let a road crawl down to some little rope-ferry supportedby sheep-herders, ditch contractors, miners, emigrants, ranchmen, all thewild industries of a country in the dawn of enterprise. 

Business at the Ferry had shrunk since the railroad went through. Thehouse-staff consisted of Jimmy Breen, a Chinese cook of the bony, tartarbreed, sundry dogs, and a large bachelor cat that mooned about the emptypiazzas. In a young farming country, hungry for capital, Jimmy could notdo a cash business, but everything was grist that came to his mill; and hewas quick to distinguish the perennial dead beat from a genuine case ofhard luck. 

"That's a good axe ye have there, " pointing suggestively to a new onesticking out of the rear baggage of an emigrant outfit. "Ye better l'avethat with me for the dollar that's owing me. If ye have money to buy newaxes ye can't be broke entirely. " Or: "Slip the halter on that calf behindthere. The mother hasn't enough to keep it alive. There's har'ly adollar's wort' of hide on its bones, but I'll take it to save it droppin'on the road. " Or, he would try sarcasm: "Well, we'll be shuttin' her downin the spring. Then ye can go round be Walter's Ferry and see if they'lltrust ye there. " Or: "Why wasn't ye workin' on the Ditch last winter?Settin' smokin' your poipe in the tules, the wife and young ones packin'sagebrush to kape ye warm!"

On the morning after their distinguished arrival, Jimmy's guests came downlate to a devastated breakfast-table. Little heaps of crumbs here andthere showed where earlier appetites had had their destined hour and gonetheir way. At an impartial distance from the top and the foot of the tablestood the familiar group of sauce and pickle bottles, every brand dear tothe cowboy, including the "surrup-jug" adhering to its saucer. There was afresh-gathered bunch of wild phlox by Moya's plate in a tumbler printedround the edge with impressions of a large moist male thumb. 

"Catchee plenty, " the Chinaman grinned, pointing to the plain outsidewhere the pale sage-brush quivered stiffly in the wind. "Bymbye plentycome. Pretty col' now. "

"You'll be getting a large hump on yourself, Han, me boy. 'T is a cashcrowd we have here--and a lady, by me sowl!" Thus Jimmy exhorted hishousehold. Times were looking up. They would be a summer resort before theDitch went through; it should be mentioned in the Ditch company'sprospectus. Jimmy had put his savings into land-office fees and had ahopeful interest in the Ditch. 

A spur in the head is worth two in the heel. Without a word from "theboss" Han had found time to shave and powder and polish his brown foreheadand put on his whitest raiment over his baggiest trousers. There was loudpanic among the fowls in the corral. The cat had disappeared; the jealousdogs hung about the doors and were pushed out of the way by friends ofother days. 

Seated by the office fire, Paul was conferring with Jimmy, who was happywith a fresh pipe and a long story to tell to a patient and payinglistener. He rubbed the red curls back from his shining forehead, took thepipe from his teeth, and guided a puff of smoke away from his auditor. 

"I seen him settin' over there on his blankets, "--he pointed with his pipeto the opposite shore plainly visible through the office windows, --"but heniver hailed me, so I knowed he was broke. Some, whin they're broke, theyholler all the louder. Ye would think they had an appointment wit' theGovernor and he sint his car'iage to meet them. But he was as humble, hewas, as a yaller dog. --Out! Git out from here--the pack of yez! Han, shutthe dure an' drive thim bloody curs off the piazzy. They're trackin' upthe whole place. --As I was sayin', sor, there he stayed hunched up in thewind, waitin' on the chanst of a team comin', and I seen he was an oulddaddy. I stud the sight of him as long as I cud, me comin' and goin'. Hefair wore me out. So I tuk the boat over for 'im. One of his arrums hecouldn't lift from the shoulder, and I give him a h'ist wit' his bundle. Faith, it was light! 'Twinty years a-getherin', ' he cackles, slappin' it. 'Ye've had harrud luck, ' I says. ''T is not much of a sheaf ye are packin'home. ' 'That's as ye look at it, ' he says. 

"I axed him what way was he goin'. He was thinking to get a lift as far asOriana, if the stages was runnin' on that road. 'Then ye 'll have to bidehere till morning, ' I says, 'for ye must have met the stage goin' theother way. ' 'I met nothing, ' says he; 'I come be way of thebluffs, '--which is a strange way for one man travelin' afoot. 

"The grub was on the table, and I says, 'Sit by and fill yourself up. ' Hischeeks was fallin' in wit' the hunger. With that his poor ould eye begunto water. 'Twas one weak eye he had that was weepin' all the time. 'I'vegot out of the habit of reg'lar aitin', ' he says. 'It don't take much tokape me goin'. ' 'Niver desave yourself, sor! 'T is betther feed threehungry men than wan "no occasion. "' His appetite it grew on him wit' everymouthful. There was a boundless emptiness to him. He lay there on thebench and slep' the rest of the evening, and I left him there wit' a bigfire at night. And the next day at noon we h'isted him up beside of JoeStratton. A rip-snorter of a wind was blowin' off the Silver City peaks. His face was drawed like a winter apple, but he wint off happy. I think hewas warm inside of himself. "

"Did you ask him his name?"

"Sure. Why not? John Treagar he called himself. "

"Treagar? Hagar, you mean!"

"It was Treagar he said. "

"John Hagar is the man I am looking for. "

"Treagar--Hagar? 'T is comin' pretty close to it. "

"About what height and build was he?"

"He was not to say a tall man; and he wasn't so turrible short neither. His back was as round as a Bible. A kind of pepper and saltish beard hehad, and his hair was blacker than his beard but white in streaks. "

"A _dark_ man, was he?"

"He would be a _dark_ man if he was younger. "

"The man I want is blue-eyed. "

"His eyes was blue--a kind of washed-out gray that maybe was blue wanst;and one of them always weepin' wit' the cold. "

"And light brown hair mixed with gray, like sand and ashes--mostly ashes;and a thin straggling beard, thinner on the cheeks? A high head and a tallstooping figure--six feet at least; hands with large joints and a habit ofpicking at them when"--

"Ye are goin' too fast for me now, sor. He was not that description of aman, nayther the height nor the hair of him. Sure't is a pity for yecomin' this far, and him not the man at all. Faith, I wish I was the manmeself! I wonder at Joe Stratton anyhow! He's a very hasty man, is Joe. Hejumps in wit' both feet, so he does. I could have told ye that. "

 * * * * *

Moya, always helplessly natural, and now very tired as well, when Pauldescribed with his usual gravity this anti-climax, fell below all thedignities at once in a burst of childish giggling. Paul looked on with anembarrassed smile, like a puzzled affectionate dog at the incomprehensiblemirth of humans. Paul was certainly deficient in humor and therefore inbreadth. But what woman ever loved her lover the less for havingdiscovered his limitations? Humor runs in families of the intensercultivation. The son of the soil remains serious in the face of life's andnature's ironies. 

XVIII

THE STAR IN THE EAST

So the search paused, while the searchers rested and revised their plans. Spring opened in the valley as if for them alone. There were mornings"proud and sweet, " when the humblest imagination could have picturedAurora and her train in the jocund clouds that trooped along thesky, --wind-built processions which the wind dispersed. Wild flowers spreadso fast they might have been spilled from the rainbow scarf of Irisfleeting overhead. The river was in flood, digging its elbows into itsmuddy banks. The willow and wild-rose thickets stooped and washed theirspring garments in its tide. 

Primeval life and love were all around them. Meadow larks flung theirbrief jets of song into the sunlight; the copses rustled with wings;wood-doves cooed from the warm sunny hollows, and the soft booming oftheir throaty call was like a beating in the air, --the pulse of spring. They had found their Garden. Humanity in the valley passed before them informs as interesting and as alien as the brother beasts to Adam: thehandsome driver of the jerky, Joe Stratton's successor, who sat at dinneropposite and combed his flowing mustache with his fork in a lazy, dandified way; the darkened faces of sheep-herders enameled by sun andwind, their hair like the winter coats of animals; the slow-eyed farmerswith the appetites of horses; the spring recruits for the ranks of laborfooting it to distant ranches, each with his back-load of bedding, and thedust of three counties on his garments. 

The sweet forces of Nature shut out, for a season, Paul's _cri du coeur_. One may keep a chamber sacred to one's sadder obligations and yet thehouse be filled with joy. Further ramifications of the search were mappedout with Jimmy's indifferent assistance. For good reasons of his own, Jimmy did little to encourage an early start. He would explain that hismaps were of ancient date and full of misinformation as to stage routes. "See that now! The stages was pulled off that line five year ago, onaccount of the railroad cuttin' in on them. Ye couldn't make it wid'out yetook a camp outfit. There's ne'er a station left, and when ye come to it, it's ruins ye'll find. A chimbly and a few rails, if the mule-skinnershasn't burned them. 'Tis a country very devoid of fuel; sagebrush andgrease-wood, and a wind, bedad! that blows the grass-seeds into the nextcounty. "

When these camping-trips were proposed to Moya, she hesitated andresponded languidly; but when Paul suggested leaving her even for a day, her fears fluttered across his path and wiled him another way. Vaguely hefelt that she was unlike herself--less buoyant, though often restless; andsometimes he fancied she was pale underneath her sun-burned color likethat of rose-hips in October. Various causes kept him inert, whilestrength mounted in his veins, and life seemed made for the pure joy ofliving. 

The moon of May in that valley is the moon of roses, for the heats oncedue come on apace. The young people gave up their all-day horseback ridesand took morning walks instead, following the shore-paths lazily to shadedcoverts dedicated to those happy silences which it takes two to make. Or, they climbed the bluffs and gazed at the impenetrable vast horizon, andthought perhaps of their errand with that pang of self-reproach which, when shared, becomes a subtler form of self-indulgence. 

But at night, all the teeming life of the plain rushed up into the sky andblazed there in a million friendly stars. After the languor of the sleepyafternoons, it was like a fresh awakening--the dawn of those white Maynights. The wide plain stirred softly through all its miles of sage. Theriver's cadenced roar paused beyond the bend and outbroke again. All thatwas eerie and furtive in the wild dark found a curdling voice in thecoyote's hunting-call. 

In a hollow concealed by sage, not ten minutes' walk from the Ferry inn, unknown to the map-maker and innocent of all use, lay a perfect floor forevening pacing with one's eyes upon the stars. It was the death mask of anancient lake, done in purest alkali silt, and needing only the shadowscast by a low moon to make the illusion almost unbelievable. Slowprecipitation, season after season, as the water dried, had left the lakebed smooth as a cast in plaster. Subsequent warpings had lifted the alkalicrust into thin-lipped wavelets. But once upon the floor itself theresemblance to water vanished. The warpings and Grumblings took the shapeof earth as made by water and baked by fire. Moya compared it to a bit ofthe dead moon fallen to show us what we are coming to. They paced itsoft-footed in tennis shoes lest they should crumble its talc-likewhiteness. But they read no horoscopes, for they were shy of the future inspeaking to each other, --and they made no plans. 

One evening Moya had said to Paul: "I can understand your mother so muchbetter now that I am a wife. I think most women have a tendency towardsthe state of being _un_married. And if one had--children, it wouldincrease upon one very fast. A widow and a mother--for twenty years. Howcould she be a wife again?"

Paul made no reply to this speech which long continued to haunt him;especially as Moya wrote more frequently to his mother and did not offerto show him her letters. In their evening walks she seemed distrait, andduring the day more restless. 

One night of their nightly pacings she stopped and stood long, her headthrown back, her eyes fixed upon the dizzy star-deeps. Paul waited a stepbehind her, touching her shoulders with his hands. Suddenly she reeled andsank backwards into his arms. He held her, watching her lovely face growwhiter; her eyelids closed. She breathed slowly, leaning her whole weightupon him. 

Coming to herself, she smiled and said it was nothing. She had been thatway before. "But--we must go home. We must have a home--somewhere. I wantto see your mother. Paul, be good to her--forgive her--for my sake!"

XIX

PILGRIMS AND STRANGERS

Aunt Polly Lewis was disappointed in the latest of her beneficiaries. Itwas nine years since her husband had locked up his savings in the MudSprings ranch, a neglected little health-plant at the mouth of theBruneau. If you were troubled with rheumatism, or a crick in the back, oryour "pancrees" didn't act or your blood was "out o' fix, why, you'dbetter go up to Looanders' for a spell and soak yourself in that blue mudand let aunt Polly diet ye and dost ye with yerb tea. "

When Leander courted aunt Polly in the interests of his sanitarium, shewas reputed the best nurse in Ada County. The widow--by desertion--of anotorious quack doctor of those parts: it was an open question whether hismedicine had killed or her nursing had cured the greater number ofconfiding sick folk. Leander drove fifty miles to catechise this notablewoman, and finding her sound on the theory of packs hot and cold, andskilled in the practice of rubbing, --and having made the incidentaldiscovery that she was a person not without magnetism, --he decided on thespot to add her to the other attractions of Mud Springs ranch; and shedrove home with him next day, her trunk in the back of his wagon. 

The place was no sinecure. Bricks without straw were a child's pastime tothe cures aunt Polly and the Springs effected without a pretense to thecomforts of life in health, to say nothing of sickness. Modernconveniences are costly, and how are you to get the facilities for "paypatients" when you have no patients that pay! Prosperity had overlookedthe Bruneau, or had made false starts there, through detrimental schemesthat gave the valley a bad name with investors. The railroad was stillfifty miles away, and the invalid public would not seek life itself, inthese days of luxurious travel, at the cost of a twelve hours' stage-ride. However, as long as the couple had a roof over their heads and the Springscontinued to plop and vomit their strange, chameleon-colored slime, Leander would continue to bring home the sick and the suffering for Pollyand the Springs to practice on. Health became his hobby, and in time, withisolation thrown in, it began to invade his common sense. He tried insuccession all the diet fads of the day and wound up a convert to the"Ralston" school of eating. Aunt Polly had clung a little longer to theflesh-pots, but the charms of a system that abolished half the labor ofcooking prevailed with her at last, and in the end she kept a sharper eyeupon Leander at mealtime than ever he had upon her. 

The ignorant gorgings of their neighbors were a head-shaking and a warningto them, and more than once Leander's person was in jeopardy through hiszealous but unappreciated concern for the brother who eats in darkness. 

He had started out one winter morning from Bisuka, a virtuous man. Histeam had breakfasted, but not he. A Ralstonite does not load up hisstomach at dawn after the manner of cattle, and such pious substitutes fora cup of coffee as are permitted the faithful cannot always be had for aprice. At Indian Creek he hauled up to water his team, and to make forhimself a cinnamon-colored decoction by boiling in hot water a preparationof parched grains which he carried with him. This he accomplished in anangle of the old corral fence out of the wind. There is no comfort noreven virtue in eating cold dust with one's sandwiches. Leander sunk hisgreat white tushes through the thick slices of whole-wheat bread andtasted the paste of peanut meal with which they were spread. He atestanding and slapped his leg to warm his driving hand. 

A flutter of something colored, as a garment, caught his eye, directing itto the shape of a man, rolled in an old blue blanket, lying motionless ina corner of the tumble-down wall. "Drunk, drunk as a hog!" pronouncedLeander. For no man in command of himself would lie down to sleep in sucha place. As if to refute this accusation, the wind turned a corner of theblanket quietly off a white face with closed eyelids, --an old, worn, gentle face, appealing in its homeliness, though stamped now with thedignity of death. Leander knelt and handled the body tenderly. It was longbefore he satisfied himself that life was still there. Another case forPolly and the Springs. A man worth saving, if Leander knew a man; one ofthe trustful, trustworthy sort. His heart went out to him on the instantas to a friend from home. 

It was closing in for dusk when he reached the Ferry. Jimmy was away, andHan, in high dudgeon, brought the boat over in answer to Leander's hail. He had grouse to dress for supper, inconsiderately flung in upon him atthe last moment by the stage, four hours late. 

"Huh! Why you no come one hour ago? All time 'Hullo, hullo'! Je' Cli'! meno dam felly-man--me dam cook! Too much man say 'Hullo'!"

The prospect was not good for help at the Ferry inn, so, putting his trustin Polly and the Springs, Leander pushed on up the valley. 

When Aunt Polly's patients were of the right sort, they stayed on aftertheir recovery and helped Leander with the ranch work. But for the mostpart they "hit the trail" again as soon as their ills were healed, notforgetting to advertise the Springs to other patients of their own class. The only limit to this unenviable popularity was the size of the house. Leander saw no present advantage in building. 

But in case they ever did build--and the time was surely coming!--here wasthe very person they had been looking for. Cast your bread upon thewaters. The winter's bread and care and shelter so ungrudgingly bestowedhad returned to them many-fold in the comfortable sense of dependence andunity they felt in this last beneficiary, the old man of Indian Creek whomthey called "Uncle John. "

"The kindest old creetur' ever lived! Some forgitful, but everybody'sliable to forgit. Only tell him one thing at once, and don't confuse him, and he'll git through an amazin' sight of chores in a day. "

"Just the very one we'll want to wait on the men patients, " Aunt Pollychimed in. "He can carry up meals and keep the bathrooms clean, and washout the towels, and he's the best hand with poultry. He takes such goodcare of the old hens they're re'lly ashamed not to lay!"

It was spring again; old hopes were putting forth new leaves. Leander hadheard of a capitalist in the valley; a young one, too, more prone toenthusiasm if shown the right thing. 

"I'm going down to Jimmy's to fetch them up here!" Leander announced. 

"Are there two of them?"

"He has brought his wife out with him. They are a young couple. He's theonly son of a rich widow in New York, and Jimmy says they've got money toburn. Jimmy don't take much stock in this 'ere 'wounded guide'story--thinks it's more or less of a blind. He's feeling around for a goodinvestment--desert land or mining claims. Jimmy thinks he represents biginterests back East. "

Aunt Polly considered, and the corners of her mouth moistened as shethought of the dinner she would snatch from the jaws of the system on theday these young strangers should visit the ranch. 

"By Gum!" Leander shouted. "I wonder if Uncle John wouldn't know somethingabout the party they're advertising for. That'd be the way to find out ifthey're really on the scent. I'll take him down with me--that's what I'll_do_--and let him have a talk with the young man himself. It'll make agood opening. Are you listening, Polly?" She was not. "I wish you'd githim to fix himself up a little. Layout one o' my clean shirts for him, andI'll take him down with me day after to-morrow. "

"I'll have a fresh churning to-morrow, " Aunt Polly mused. "You can take alittle pat of it with you. I won't put no salt in it, and I'll send alonga glass or two of my wild strawberry jam. It takes an awful time to pickthe berries, but I guess it'll be appreciated after the table Jimmy sets. I don't believe Jimmy'll be offended?"

"Bogardus is their name, " continued Leander. "Mr. And Mrs. Bogardus, fromNew York. Jimmy's got it down in his hotel book and he's showing it toeverybody. Jimmy's reel childish about it. I tell him one swallow don'tmake a summer. "

Uncle John had come into the room and sat listening, while a yellow pallorcrept over his forehead and cheeks. He moved to get up once, and then satdown again weakly. 

"What's the matter, Uncle?" Aunt Polly eyed him sharply. "You been outthere chopping wood too long in this hot sun. What did I tell you?"

She cleared the decks for action. Paler and paler the old man grew. He wasnot able to withstand her vigorous sympathies. She had him tucked up onthe calico lounge and his shoes off and a hot iron at his feet; but whileshe was hurrying up the kettle to make him a drink of something hot, herose and slipped up the outside stairs to his bedroom in the attic. Therehe seated himself on the side of his neat bed which he always made himselfcamp fashion, --the blankets folded lengthwise with just room for one quietsleeper to crawl inside; and there he sat, opening and clinching hishands, a deep perplexity upon his features. 

Aunt Polly called to him and began to read the riot act, but Leander said:"Let him be! He gits tired o' being fussed over. You're at him aboutsomething or other the whole blessed time. "

"Well, I have to! My gracious! He'd forgit to come in to his meals if Ididn't keep him on my mind. "

"It just strikes me--what am I going to call him when I introduce him tothose folks? Did he ever tell you what his last name is?"

"I wouldn't be surprised, " Aunt Polly lowered her voice, "if he couldn'tremember it himself! I've heard of such cases. Whenever I try to draw himout to talk about himself and what happened to him before you found him, it breaks him all up; seemingly gives him a back-set every time. He sortof slinks into himself in that queer, lost way--just like he was when hefirst come to. "

"He's had a powerful jar to his constitution, and his mind is taking arest. " Leander was fond of a diagnosis. "There wasn't enough life left inhim to keep his faculties and his bod'ly organs all a-going at once. Theupper story's to let. "

"I wish you'd go upstairs, and see what he is doing up there. "

"Aw, no! Let him be. He likes to go off by himself and do his thinking. Inotice it rattles him to be talked to much. He sets out there on thechoppin'-block, looking at the bluffs--ever notice? He looks and don't seenothin', and his lips keep moving like he was learning a spellin'-lesson. If I speak to him sharp, he hauls himself together and smiles uneasy, buthe don't know what I said. I tell you he's waking up; coming to hismemories, and trying to sort 'em out. "

"That's just what _I_ say, " Aunt Polly retorted, "but he's got to eat hismeals. He can't live on memories. "

Uncle John was restless that evening, and appeared to be excited. Hewaited upon Aunt Polly after supper with a feverish eagerness to be ofuse. When all was in order for bedtime, and Leander rose to wind theclock, he spoke. It was getting about time to roll up his blankets andpull out, he said. Leander felt for the ledge where the clock-keybelonged, and made no answer. 

"I was saying--I guess it's about time for me to be moving on. The grassis starting"--

"Are you cal'latin' to live on grass?" Leander drawled with cutting irony. "Gettin' tired of the old woman's cooking? Well, she ain't much of acook!"

Uncle John remained silent, working at his hands. His mouth, trembledunder his thin straggling beard. "I never was better treated in my life, and you know it. It ain't handsome of you, Lewis, to talk that way!"

"He don't mean nothing, Uncle John! What makes you so foolish, Looander!He just wants you to know there's no begrudgers around here. You'rewelcome, and more than welcome, to settle down and camp right along withus. "

"Winter and summer!" Leander put in, "if you're satisfied. There's nobodyin a hurry to see the last of ye. "

Uncle John's mild but determined resistance was a keen disappointment tohis friends. Leander thought himself offended. "What fly's stung you, anyhow! Heard from any of your folks lately?"

The old man smiled. 

"Got any money salted down that needs turning?"

"Looander! Quit teasing of him!"

"Let him have his fun, ma'am. It's all he's likely to get out of me. Ihave got a little money, " he pursued. "'T would be an insult to name it inthe same breath with what you've done for me. I'd like to leave it here, though. You could pass it on. You'll have chances enough. 'T ain't likelyI'll be the last one you'll take in and do for, and never git nothing outof it in return. "

There was a mild sensation, as the speaker, fumbling in his loose trousers, appeared to be seeking for that money. Aunt Polly's eyes flamed indignationbehind her tears. She was a foolish, warm-hearted creature, and her eyeswatered on the least excuse. 

"Looander, you shouldn't have taunted him, " she admonished her husband, who felt he had been a little rough. 

"Look here, Uncle John, d'you ever know anybody who wasn't by way ofneeding help some time in their lives? We don't ask any one who comeshere"--

"He didn't come!" Aunt Polly corrected. 

"Well, who was brought, then! We don't ask for their character, nor theirprivate history, nor their bank account. I don't know but you're the firstone for years I've ever took a real personal shine to, and we've h'isted agood many up them stairs that wasn't able to walk much further. I'd likeyou to stay as a favor to us, dang it!"

Leander delivered this invitation as if it were a threat. His straight-cutmustache stiffened and projected itself by the pressure of his big lips;his dark red throat showed as many obstinate creases as an oldsnapping-turtle's. 

"I'm much obliged to you both. I want you to remember that. We--I--I'lltalk with ye in the morning. "

"That means he's going all the same, " said Leander, after Uncle John hadclosed the outside door. 

Sure enough, next morning he had made up his little pack, oiled his boots, and by breakfast-time was ready for the road. They argued the point longand fiercely with him whether he should set out on foot or wait a day andride with Leander to the Ferry. It was not supposed he could be thinkingof any other road. By to-morrow, if he would but wait, Aunt Polly wouldhave comfortably outfitted him after the custom of the house; given hisclothes a final "going over" to see everything taut for the journey, shoved a week's rations into a corn-sack, choosing such condensed forms ofnourishment as the system allowed--nay, straining a point and smuggling ina nefarious pound or two of real miner's coffee. 

Aunt Polly's distress so weighed with her patient that he consented toremain overnight and ride with Leander as far as the dam across theBruneau, at its junction with the Snake. There he would cross and take thetrail down the river, cutting off several miles of the road to the Ferry. As for going on to see Jimmy or Jimmy's "folks, " the nervous resistancewhich this plan excited warned the good couple not to press the old mantoo far, or he might give them the slip altogether. 

A strangeness in his manner which this last discussion had brought out, lay heavy on aunt Polly's mind all day after the departure of the team forthe Ferry. She watched the two men drive off in silence, Leander's bushbeard reddening in the sun, his big body filling more than his half of theseat. 

"Well, by Gum! If he ain't the blamedest, most per-sistent old fool!" hecomplained to his wife that night. Their first words were of the old man, already missed like one of the family from the humble place he had madefor himself. Leander was still irritable over his loss. "I set him downwith his grub and blankets, and I watched him footing it acrost the dam. He done it real handsome, steady on his pins. Then he set down and waited, kind o' dreaming, like he used to, settin' on the choppin'-block. I hailedhim. 'What's the matter?' I says. 'Left anything?' No: every time I hailedhe took off his hat and waved to me real pleasant. Nothing the matter. There he set. Well, thinks I, I can't stay here all day watching ye takeroot. So I drove on a piece. And, by Gum! when I looked back going aroundthe bend, there he went a-pikin' off up the bluffs--just a-humping himselffor all he was worth. I wouldn't like to think he was cunning, but itlooked that way for sure, --turning me off the scent and then taking to thebluffs like he was sent for! Where in thunder is he making for? He knowsjust as well as I do--you have heard me tell him a dozen times--the stageswere hauled off that Wood River road five year and more ago. He won't gitnowhere! And he won't meet up with a team in a week's walking. "

"His food will last him a week if he's careful; he's no great eater. Iain't afraid his feet will get lost; he's to home out of doors almostanywhere;--it's his head I'm afraid of. He's got some sort of a skew onhim. I used to notice if he went out for a little walk anywhere, he'dalways slope for the East. "

XX

A STATION IN THE DESERT

That forsworn identity which Adam Bogardus had submitted to be clothed inas a burial garment was now become a thing for the living to flee from. Hehad seen a woman in full health whiten and cower before it;--she who stoodbeside his bed and looked at him with dreadful eyes, eyes of his girl-wifegrowing old in the likeness of her father. Hard, reluctant eyes forced toown the truth which the ashen lips denied. Are we responsible for oursilences? He had not spoken to her. Nay, the living must speak first, orthe ghostly dead depart unquestioned. He asked only that he might forgether and be himself forgotten. If it were that woman's right to callherself Emily Bogardus, then was there no Adam her husband. Better the olddisguise which left him free to work out his own sentence and pay hisforfeit to the law. He had never desired that one breath of it should becommuted, or wished to accept an enslaving pardon from those for whosesake he had put himself out of the way. If he could have taken his owncomparative spiritual measurement, he might have smiled at the humor ofthat forgiveness promised him in the name of the Highest by his son. 

For many peaceful years solitude had been the habit of his soul. Gently ashe bore with human obligations, he escaped from them with a sense ofrelief which shamed him somewhat when he thought of the good friends towhom he owed this very blessed power to flee. It was quite as Leander hadsurmised. He could not command his faculties--memory especially--when anoise of many words and questions bruised his brain. 

The stillness of the desert closed about him with delicious healing. Hewas a world-weary child returned to the womb of Nature. His old camp-craftcame back; his eye for distance, his sense of the trail, his little peteconomies with food and fire. There was no one to tell him what to eat andwhen to eat it. He was invisible to men. Each day's march built up hismuscle, and every night's deep sleep under the great high stars steadiedhis nerves and tightened his resolve. 

He thought of the young man--his son--with a mixture of pain andtenderness. But Paul was not the baby-boy he had put out of his armswith a father's smile at One Man station. Paul was himself a man now; hehad coerced him at the last, neither did he understand. 

The blind instinct of flight began after a while to shape its owndirection. It was no new leaning with the packer. As many times as hehad crossed this trail he never had failed to experience the same pull. He resisted no longer. He gave way to strange fancies and made them hisguides. 

At some time during his flight from the hospital, in one of those blanksthat overtook him, he knew not how, he had met with a great loss. Thewords had slipped from his memory--of that message which had kept him infancied touch with his wife all these many deluding years. Without them hewas like a drunkard deprived of his habitual stimulant. The craving toconnect and hold them--for they came to him sometimes in tantalizingfreaks of memory, and slipped away again like beads rolling off a brokenthread--was almost the only form of mental suffering he was now consciousof. What had become of the message itself? Had they left it exposed toevery heartless desecration in that abandoned spot?--a scrap of paperdriven like a bit of tumble-weed before the wind, snatched at by spikes ofsage, trampled into the mire of cattle, nuzzled by wild beasts? Or, hadthey put it away with that other beast where he lay with the scoff on hisdead face? Out of dreams and visions of the night that place of theparting ways called to him, and the time was now come when he must go. 

He approached it by one of those desert trails that circle for miles onthe track of water and pounce as a bird drops upon its prey into thetrampled hollow at One Man station--a place for the gathering of hoofs inthe midst of the plain. 

He could trace what might have been the foundation of a house, a fewblackened stones, a hearthstone showing where a chimney perhaps had stood, but these evidences of habitation would never have been marked except byone who knew where to look. He searched the ground over for signs of thetragedy that bound him to that spot--a smiling desolation, a sunnynothingness. The effect of this careless obliteration was quieting. Naturehad played here once with two men and a woman. One of the toy men waslost, the other broken. She had forgotten where she put the broken one. There were mounds which looked like graves, but the seeker knew thatartificial mounds in a place like this soon sink into hollows; and therewere hollows like open graves, filled with unsightly human rubbish, washedin by the yearly rains. 

He spent three days in the hollow, doing nothing, steeped in sunshine, lying down to rest broad awake in the tender twilight, making his peacewith this place of bitter memory before bidding it good-by. His thoughtsturned eastward as the planets rose. Time he was working back towardshome. He would hardly get there if he started now, before his day wasdone. He saw his mother's grave beside his father's, in the southeastcorner of the burying-ground, where the trees were thin. All who drove inthrough the big gate of funerals could see the tall white shafts of theBeviers and Brodericks and Van Eltens, but only those who came on footcould approach his people in the gravelly side-hill plots. "I'd like to beput there alongside the old folks in that warm south corner. " He could seetheir names on the plain gray slate stones, rain-stained and green withmoss. 

On the third May evening of his stay the horizon became a dust-cloud, thesetting sun a ball of fire. Loomed the figure of a rider topping theheaving backs of his herd. All together they came lumbering down theslopes, all heading fiercely for the water. The rider plunged down aside-draw out of the main cloud. Clanking bells, shuffling hoofs, the"Whoop-ee-youp!" came fainter up the gulch. The cowboy was not pleased ashe dashed by to see an earlier camp-fire smoking in the hollow. But he wasless displeased, being half French, than if he had been pure-bredAmerican. 

The old man, squatting by his cooking-fire, gave him a civil nod, and heresponded with a flourish of his quirt. The reek of sage smoke, the smellof dust and cattle rose rank on the cooling air. It was good to Boniface, son of the desert; it meant supper and bed, or supper and talk, for"Bonny" Maupin ("Bonny Moppin, " it went in the vernacular) would talkevery other man to sleep, full or empty, with songs thrown in. To-night, however, he must talk on an empty stomach, for his chuck wagon was not insight. 

"W'ich way you travelin'?" he began, lighting up after a long pull at hisflask. The old man had declined, though he looked as if he needed a drink. 

"East about, " was the answer. 

"Goin' far?"

"Well; summer's before us. I cal'late to keep moving till snow falls. "

"Shucks! You ain' pressed for time. Maybe you got some friend back there. Goin' back to git married?" He winked genially to point the jest and theold man smiled indulgently. 

"Won't you set up and take a bite with me? You don't look to have much ofa show for supper along. "

"Thanks, very much! I had bully breakfast at Rock Spring middlin' latethis morning. They butcherin' at that place. Five fat hog. My chuck wagonhe stay behin' for chunk of fresh pig. I won' spoil my appetide for thattenderloin. Hol' on yourself an' take supper wis me. No?--That fellah be'long 'bout Chris'mas if he don' git los'! He always behin', pig or nopig!"

Bonny strolled away collecting fire-wood. Presently he called back, pointing dramatically with his small-toed boot. "Who's been coyotin' roundhere?" The hard ground was freshly disturbed in spots as by the paws ofsome small inquisitive animal. There was no answer. 

"What you say? Whose surface diggin's is these? I never know anybody dosome mining here. "

"That was me"--Bonny backed a little nearer to catch the old man's words. "I was looking round here for something I lost. "

"What luck you have? You fin' him?"

"Well, now, doos it reely matter to you, sonny?"

"Pardner, it don' matter to me a d--n, if you say so! I was jus' askin'myself what a man _would_ look for if he los' it here. Since I strike this'ell of a place the very groun' been chewed up and spit out reg'lar, onehundred times a year. 'T'is a gris' mill!"

"I didn't gretly expect to find what I was lookin' for. I was just foolin'around to satisfy myself. "

"That satisfy me!" said Bonny pleasantly; and yet he was a triflediscomfited. He strolled away again and began to sing with a boyish showof indifference to having been called "sonny. "

"Oh, Sally is the gal for me!Oh, Sally's the gal for me!On moonlight night when the star is bright--Oh"--

"Halloa! This some more your work, oncle? You ain' got no chicken wing forarm if you lif' this. --Ah, be dam! I see what you lif' him with. All samestove-lid. " Talking and swearing to himself cheerfully, Bonny applied theend of a broken whiffletree to the blunt lip of the old hearthstone whichmarked the stage-house chimney. He had tried a step-dance on it and foundit hollow. More fresh digging, and marks upon the stone where some pryingtool had taken hold and slipped, showed he was not the first who had beencurious. 

"There you go, over on you' back, like snap' turtle; I see where you laythere before. What the dev'! I say!" Bonny, much excited with his find, extracted a rusty tin tobacco-box from the hole, pried open the spring lidand drew forth its contents: a discolored canvas bag bulging with coin andwhipped around the neck with a leather whang. The canvas was rotten; Bonnysupported its contents tenderly as he brought it over to the old man. 

"Oncle, I ask you' pardon for tappin' that safe. Pretty good lil'nest-egg, eh? But now you got to find her some other place. "

"That don't belong to me, " said the old man indifferently. 

"Aw--don't be bashful! I onderstan' now what you los'. You dighere--there--migs up the scent. I just happen to step on that stone--ringhim, so, with my boot-heel!"

"That ain't my pile, " the other persisted. "I started to build a fire onthat stone two nights ago. It rung hollow like you say. I looked and foundwhat you found. "

--"And put her back! My soul to God! An' you here all by you'self!"

"Why not? The stuff ain't mine. "

"Who _is_ she? How long since anybody live here?"

"I don't know, --good while, I guess. "

"Well, sar! Look here! I open that bag. I count two hondre' thirteendolla'--make it twelve for luck, an' call it you' divvee! You strike herfirst. What you say: we go snac'?"

"I haven't got any use for that money. You needn't talk to me about it. "

"Got no h'use!--are you a reech man? Got you' private car waitin' for youout in d' sagebrush? Sol' a mine lately?"

"I don't know why it strikes you so funny. It's no concern of mine if aman puts his money in the ground and goes off and leaves it. "

"Goes off and die! There was one man live here by himself--he die, theysay, 'with his boots on. ' He, I think, mus' be that man belong to thismoney. What an old stiff want with two hondre' thirteen dolla'? That moneygoin' into a live man's clothes. " Bonny slapped his chappereros, and thedust flew. 

"I've no objection to its going into _your_ clothes, " said the old man. 

"You thing I ain' particular, me? Well, eef the party underground was myfrien', and I knew his fam'ly, and was sure the money was belong tohim--I'd do differend--perhaps. Mais, --it is going--going--gone! You won'go snac'?"

The old man smiled and looked steadily away. 

"Blas' me to h--l! but you aire the firs' man ever I strike that jib atthe sight of col' coin. She don' frighten me!"

Bonny always swore when he felt embarrassed. 

"Well, sar! Look here! You fin' you'self so blame indifferend--s'pose you_so_ indifferend not to say nothing 'bout this, when my swamper fellah gitin. I don' wish to go snac' wis him. I don' feel oblige'. See?"

"What you want to pester me about this money for!" The old man was weary. "I didn't come here, lookin' for money, and I don't expect to take noneaway with me. So I'll say good-night to ye. "

"Hol' on, hol' on! Don' git mad. What time you goin' off in the morning?"

"Before you do, I shouldn't wonder. "

"But hol'! One fine idea--blazin' good idea--just hit me now in the head!Wan' to come on to Chicago wis me? I drop this fellah at Felton. He takethe team back, and I get some one to help me on the treep. Why not you?Ever tek' care of stock?"

"Some consid'able years ago I used to look after stock. Guess I'd know anox from a heifer. "

"Ever handle 'em on cattle-car?"

"Never. "

"Well, all there is, you feed 'em, and water 'em, and keep 'em on theirfeets. If one fall down, all the others they have too much play. Theyrock"--Bonny exhibited--"and fall over and pile up in heap. I like to doone turn for you. We goin' the same way--you bring me the good luck, likea bird in the han'. This is my clean-up, you understand. You bring me thebeautiful luck. You turn me up right bower first slap. Now it's goin' bemy deal. I like to do by you!"

The packer turned over and looked up at the cool sky, pricked through withearly stars. He was silent a long time. His pale old face was like a finebit of carving in the dusk. 

"What you think?" asked Moppin, almost tenderly. "I thing you better comewis me. You too hold a man to go like so--alone. "

"I'll have to think about it first;--let you know in the morning. "

XXI

INJURIOUS REPORTS CONCERNING AN OLD HOUSE

A Rush of wheels and a spatter of hoofs coming up the drive sent Mrs. Dunlop to the sitting-room window. She tried to see out through streamingshowers that darkened the panes. 

"Isn't that Mrs. Bogardus? Why, it is! Put on your shoes, Chauncey, quick!Help her in 'n' take her horse to the shed. Take an umbrella with you. "Chauncey the younger, meekly drying his shoes by the kitchen fire, putthem on, not stopping to lace them, and slumped down the porch steps, pursued by his mother's orders. She watched him a moment struggling with acranky umbrella, and then turned her attention to herself and the room. 

Mrs. Bogardus made her calls in the morning, and always plainly onbusiness. She had not seen the inside of Cerissa's parlor for ten years. This was a grievance which Cerissa referred to spasmodically, being seizedwith it when she was otherwise low in her mind. 

"My sakes! Can't I remember my mother telling how _her_ mother used todrive over and spend the afternoon, and bring her sewing and thebaby--whichever one was the baby. They called each other Chrissy andAngevine, and now she don't even speak of her own children to us by theirfirst names. It's 'Mrs. Bowen' and 'Mr. Paul;' just as if she was talkingto her servants. "

"What's that to us? We've got a good home here for as long as we want tostay. She's easy to work for, if you do what she says. "

Chauncey respected Mrs. Bogardus's judgment and her straightforwardbusiness habits. Other matters he left alone. But Cerissa was ambitiousand emotional, and she stayed indoors, doing little things and thinkingsmall thoughts. She resented her commanding neighbor's casual manners. There was something puzzling and difficult to meet in her plainness ofspeech, which excluded the personal relation. It was like the cut andfinish of her clothes--mysterious in their simplicity, and not to beimitated cheaply. 

When the two met, Cerissa was immediately reduced to a state of flimsyapology which she made up for by being particularly hot and self-assertivein speaking of the lady afterward. 

"There is the parlor, in perfect order, " she fretted, as she stood waitingto open the front door; "but of course she wouldn't let me take her inthere--that would be too much like visiting. "

The next moment she had corrected her facial expression, and was offeringsmiling condolences to Mrs. Bogardus on the state of her attire. 

"It is only my jacket. You might put that somewhere to dry, " said the ladycurtly. Raindrops sparkled on the wave of thick iron-gray hair that lifteditself, with a slight turn to one side, from her square low brow. Her eyesshone dark against the fresh wind color in her cheeks. She had thestraight, hard, ophidian line concealing the eyelid, which gives such apeculiar strength to the direct gaze of a pair of dark eyes. If onesuspects the least touch of tenderness, possibly of pain, behind that ironfold, it lends a fascination equal to the strength. There was someexcitement in Mrs. Bogardus's manner, but Cerissa did not know her wellenough to perceive it. She merely thought her looking handsomer, and, ifpossible, more formidable than usual. 

She sat by the fire, folding her skirts across her knees, and showing theedges of the most discouragingly beautiful petticoats, --a taste perhapsinherited from her wide-hipped Dutch progenitresses. Mrs. Bogardus reveledin costly petticoats, and had an unnecessary number of them. 

"How nice it is in here!" she said, looking about her. Cerissa, with theusual apologies, had taken her into the kitchen to dry her skirts. Therewas a slight taint of steaming shoe leather, left by Chauncey when drivenforth. Otherwise the kitchen was perfection, --the family room of an oldDutch farmhouse, built when stone and hardwood lumber were cheap, --thickwalls; deep, low window-seats; beams showing on the ceiling; a moderncooking-stove, where Emily Bogardus could remember the wrought brassandirons and iron backlog, for this room had been her father'sdining-room. The brick tiled hearth remained, and the color of thosecentury and a half old bricks made a pitiful thing of Cerissa's newoil-cloth. The woodwork had been painted--by Mrs. Bogardus's orders, andmuch to Cerissa's disgust--a dark kitchen green, --not that she liked thecolor herself, but it was the artistic demand of the moment, --and theplace was filled with a green golden light from the cherry-trees close tothe window, which a break in the clouds had suddenly illumined. 

"You keep it beautifully, " said Mrs. Bogardus, her eyes sheddingcompliments as she looked around. "I should not dare go in my own kitchenat this time of day. There are no women nowadays who know how to work inthe way ladies used to work. If I could have such a housekeeper as you, Cerissa. "

Cerissa flushed and bridled. "What would Chauncey do!"

"I don't expect you to be my housekeeper, " Mrs. Bogardus smiled. "But Ienvy Chauncey. "

"She has come to ask a favor, " thought Cerissa. "I never knew her sopleasant, for nothing. She wants me to do up her fruit, I guess. " Cerissawas mistaken. Mrs. Bogardus simply was happy--or almost happy--and deeplystirred over a piece of news which had come to her in that morning's mail. 

"I have telephoned Bradley not to send his men over on Monday. My son isbringing his wife home. They may be here all summer. The place belongs tothem now. Did Chauncey tell you? Mr. Paul writes that he has some buildingplans of his own, and he wishes everything left as it is for the present, especially this house. He wants his wife to see it first just as it is. "

"Well, to be sure! They've been traveling a long time, haven't they? Andhow is his health now?"

"Oh, he is very well indeed. You will be glad not to have the trouble ofthose carpenters, Cerissa? Pulling down old houses is dirty work. "

"Oh, dear! I wouldn't mind the dirt. Anything to get rid of that old rat'snest on top of the kitchen chamber. I hate to have such out of the wayplaces on my mind. I can't get around to do every single thing, and it'syears--years, Mrs. Bogardus, since I could get a woman to do a half-day'scleaning up there in broad daylight!"

Mrs. Bogardus stared. What was the woman talking about!

"I call it a regular eyesore on the looks of the house besides. And itkeeps all the old stories alive. "

"What stories?"

"Why, of course your father wasn't out of his head--we all know that--whenhe built that upstairs room and slep' there and locked himself in everynight of his life. It was only on one point he was a little warped: thefear of bein' robbed. A natural fear, too, --an old man over eighty livin'in such a lonesome place and known to be well off. But--you'll excuse myrepeating the talk--but the story goes now that he re'ly went insane andwas confined up there all the last years of his life. And that's why thewindows have got bars acrost them. Everybody notices it, and they askquestions. It's real embarrassin', for of course I don't want to discussthe family. "

"Who asks questions?" Mrs. Bogardus's eyes were hard to meet when hervoice took that tone. 

"Why, the city folks out driving. They often drive in the big gate andmake the circle through the grounds, and they're always struck when theysee that tower bedroom with windows like a prison. They say, 'What's thestory about that room, up there?'"

"When people ask you questions about the house, you can say you did notlive here in the owner's time and you don't know. That's perfectly simple, isn't it?"

"But I do know! Everybody knows, " said Cerissa hotly. "It was the talk ofthe whole neighborhood when that room was put up; and I remember howscared I used to be when mother sent me over here of an errand. "

Mrs. Bogardus rose and shook out her skirts. "Will Chauncey bring my horsewhen it stops raining? By the way, did you get the furniture down that wasin that room, Cerissa?--the old secretary? I am going to have it put inorder for Mr. Paul's room. Old furniture is the fashion now, you know. "

Cerissa caught her breath nervously. "Mrs. Bogardus--I couldn't do a thingabout it! I wanted Chauncey to tell you. All last week I tried to get awoman, or a man, to come and help me clear out that place, but just assoon as they find out what's wanted--'You'll have to get somebody else forthat job, ' they say. "

"What is the matter with them?"

"It's the room, Mrs. Bogardus; if I was you--I'm doing now just as I'd bedone by--I would not take Mrs. Paul Bogardus up into that room--not evenin broad daylight; not if it was my son's wife, in the third month of herbeing a wife. "

"Well, upon my word!" said Mrs. Bogardus, smiling coldly. "Do you mean tosay these women are afraid to go up there?"

"It was old Mary Hornbeck who started the talk. She got what she calledher 'warning' up there. And the fact is, she was a corpse within sixmonths from that day. Chauncey and me, we used to hear noises, but oldhouses are full of noises. We never thought much about it; only, I mustsay I never had any use for that part of the house. Chauncey keeps hisseeds and tools in the lower room, and some of the winter vegetables, andwe store the parlor stove in there in summer. "

"Well, about this 'warning'?" Mrs. Bogardus interrupted. 

"Yes! It was three years ago in May, and I remember it was some such a dayas this--showery and broken overhead, and Mary disappointed me; but shecame about noon, and said she'd put in half a day anyhow. She got her pailand house-cloths; but she wasn't gone not half an hour when down she comewhite as a sheet, and her mouth as dry as chalk. She set down all of ashake, and I give her a drink of tea, and she said: 'I wouldn't go upthere again, not for a thousand dollars. ' She unlocked the door, she said, and stepped inside without thinkin'. Your father's old rocker with thegreen moreen cushions stood over by the east window, where he used to sit. She heard a creak like a heavy step on the floor, and that empty chairacross the room, as far as from here to the window, begun to rock as ifsomebody had just rose up from them cushions. She watched it till itstopped. Then she took another step, and the step she couldn't seeanswered her, and the chair begun to rock again. "

"Was that all?"

"No, ma'am; that wasn't all. I don't know if you remember an old wallclock with a brass ball on top and brass scrolls down the sides and apainted glass door in front of the pendulum with a picture of a castle anda lake? The paint's been wore off the glass with cleaning, so the pendulumshows plain. That clock has not been wound since we come to live here. Idon't believe a hand has touched it since the night he was carried feetforemost out of that room. But Mary said she could count the strokes gotick, tick, tick! She listened till she could have counted fifty, for shewas struck dumb, and just as plain as the clock before her face she couldsee the minute-hand and the pendulum, both of 'em dead still. Now, how doyou account for that!

"I told Chauncey about it, and he said it was all foolishness. Do all Icould he would go up there himself, that same evening. But he come downagain after a while, and he was almost as white as Mary. 'Did you seeanything?' I says. 'I saw what Mary said she saw, ' says he, 'and I heardwhat she heard. ' But no one can make Chauncey own up that he believes itwas anything supernatural. 'There is a reason for everything, ' he says. 'The miracles and ghosts of one generation are just school-book learningto the next; and more of a miracle than the miracles themselves. '"

"Chauncey shows his sense, " Mrs. Bogardus observed. 

"He was real disturbed, though, I could see; and he told me particular notto make any talk about it. I never have opened the subject to a livingsoul. But when Mary died, within six months, folks repeated what she hadbeen saying about her 'warning. ' The 'death watch' she called it. We can'tall of us control our feelings about such things, and she was a lonelywidow woman. "

"Well, do you believe that ticking is going on up there now?" asked Mrs. Bogardus. 

Cerissa looked uneasy. 

"Is the door locked?"

"I re'ly couldn't say, " she confessed. 

"Do you mean to say that all you sensible people in this house haveavoided that room for three years? And you don't even know if the door islocked?"

"I--I don't use that part for anything, and cleaning is wasted on a placethat's never used, and I can't _get_ anybody"--

"I am not criticising your housekeeping. Will you go up there with me now, Cerissa? I want to understand about this. "

"What, just now, do you mean? I'm afraid I haven't got the time thismorning, Mrs. Bogardus. Dinner's at half-past twelve. It's a quarter toeleven"--

"Very well. You think the door is not locked?"

"If it is, the key must be in the door. Oh, don't go, please, Mrs. Bogardus. Wait till Chauncey conies in"--

"I wish you'd send Chauncey up when he does come in. Ask him to bring ascrew-driver. " Mrs. Bogardus rose and examined her jacket. It was stilldamp. She asked for a cape, or some sort of wrap, as her waist was thin, and the rain had chilled the morning air. 

For the sake of decency, Cerissa escorted her visitor across the hallpassage into the loom-room--a loom-room in name only for upwards of threegenerations. Becky had devoted it to the rough work of the house, and tocertain special uses, such as the care of the butchering products, themaking of soft soap and root beer. Here the churning was done, by hand, with a wooden dasher, which spread a circle of white drops, later tobecome grease-spots. The floor of the loom-room was laid in large bricktiles, more or less loose in their sockets, with an occasional earthydepression marking the grave of a missing tile. Becky's method of cleaningwas to sluice it out and scrub it with an old broom. The seepage ofgenerations before her time had thus added their constant quota to the oldwell's sum of iniquity. 

Mrs. Bogardus had not visited this part of the old house for many years. After her father's death she had shrunk from its painful associations. Later she grew indifferent; but as she passed now into the gloomyplace--doubly dark with the deep foliage of June on a rainy morning--shewas afraid of her own thoughts. Henceforth she was a woman with a diseasedconsciousness. "What can't be cured must be _seared_, " flashed over her asshe set her face to the stairway. 

These stairs, leading up into the back attic or "kitchen chamber, " beingsomewhat crowded for space, advanced two steps into the room below. As thestair door opened outward, and the stairs were exceedingly steep and dark, every child of the house, in turn, had suffered a bad fall in consequence;but the arrangement remained in all its natural depravity, for "childrenmust learn. "

Little Emmy of the old days had loved to sit upon these steps, a trifleraised above the kitchen traffic, yet cognizant of all that was going on, and ready to descend promptly if she smelled fresh crullers frying, orbaked sweet apples steaming hot from the oven. If Becky's foot were heardupon the stairs above, she would jump quick enough; but if the step had aclumping, boyish precipitancy, she sat still and laughed, and planted herback against the door. Often she had teased Adam in this way, keeping himprisoner from his duties, helpless in his good nature either to scold heror push her off. But once he circumvented her, slipping off his shoes andcreeping up the stairs again, and making his escape by the roof and theboughs of the old maple. Then it was Emmy who was teased, who sat afoolish half hour on the stairs alone and missed a beautiful ride to thewood lot; but she would not speak to Adam for two days afterward. 

Becky's had been the larger of the two bedrooms in the attic, Adam's thesmaller--tucked low under the eaves, and entered by crawling around thebig chimney that came bulking up to the light like a great tree caughtbetween house walls. The stairs hugged the chimney and made use of itssupport. Adam would warm his hands upon it coming down on bitter mornings. From force of habit, Emily Bogardus laid her smooth white hand upon theclammy bricks. No tombstone could be colder than that heart of housewarmth now. 

The roof of the kitchen chamber had been raised a story higher, and thechimney as it went up contracted to quite a modern size. This elevationgave room for the incongruous tower bedroom that had hurt the symmetry ofthe old house, spoiled its noble sweep of roof, and given rise to so muchunpleasant conjecture as to its use. It was this excrescence, the recordof those last unloved and unloving years of her father's life, which Mrs. Bogardus would have removed, but was prevented by her son. 

"You go back now, Cerissa, " she said to the panting woman behind her. "Isee the key is in the lock. You may send Chauncey after a while; there isno hurry. "

"Oh!" gasped Cerissa. "Do you see _that!_"

"What?"

"I thought there was something--something behind that slit. "

"There isn't. Step this way. There, can't you see the light?"

Mrs. Bogardus grasped Cerissa by the shoulders and held her firmly infront of a narrow loophole that pierced the partition close beside thedoor. Light from the room within showed plainly; but it gave anunpleasantly human expression to the entrance, like a furtive eye on thewatch. 

"He would always be there, " Cerissa whispered. 

"Who?"

"Your father. If anybody wanted to see him after he shut himself in therefor the night, they had to stand to be questioned through that wall-slitbefore he opened the door. Yes, ma'am! He was on the watch in there thewhole time like a thing in a trap. "

"Are you afraid to go back alone?" Mrs. Bogardus spoke with chillingirony. 

Cerissa backed away in silence, her heart thumping. "She's putting it on, "she said to herself. "I never see her turn so pale. Don't tell _me_ sheain't afraid!"

There was a hanging shelf against the chimney on which a bundle of dryherbs had been left to turn into dust. Old Becky might have put them therethe autumn before she died; or some successor of hers in the years thatwere blank to the daughter of the house. As she pushed open the door asighing draught swept past her and seemed to draw her inward. It shook thesere bundle. Its skeleton leaves, dissolving into motes, flickered aninstant athwart the light. They sifted down like ashes on the woman's darkhead as she passed in. Her color had faded, but not through fear of ghostclocks. It was the searing process she had to face. And any room where shesat alone with certain memories of her youth was to her a torture chamber. 

 * * * * *

"She's been up there an awful long time. I wouldn't wonder if she'sfainted away. "

"What would she faint at? I guess it's pretty cold, though. Give me somemore tea; put plenty of milk so I can drink it quick. "

Chauncey's matter of fact tone always comforted Cerissa when she wasnervous. She did not mind that he jeered or that his words were oftenrude; no man of her acquaintance could say things nicely to women, or evertried. A certain amount of roughness passed for household wit. Chaunceyput the screw-driver in his pocket, his wife and son watching him withrespectful anxiety. He thought rather well of his own courage privately. But the familiar details of the loom-room cheered him on his way, thehomely tools of his every-day work were like friendly faces nodding athim. He knocked loudly on the door above, and was answered by Mrs. Bogardus in her natural voice. 

"Bosh--every bit of it bosh!" he repeated courageously. 

She was seated by the window in the chair with the green cushions. Herface was turned towards the view outside. "What a pity those cherries werenot picked before the rain, " she observed. "The fruit is bursting ripe;I'm afraid you'll lose the crop. "

Chauncey moved forward awkwardly without answering. 

"Stop there one moment, will you?" Mrs. Bogardus rose and demonstrated. "You notice those two boards are loose. Now, I put this chair here, "--shelaid her hand on the back to still its motion. "Step this way. You see?The chair rocks of itself. So would any chair with a spring board underit. That accounts for _that_, I think. Now come over here. " Chaunceyplaced himself as she directed in front of the high mantel with the clockabove it. She stood at his side and they listened in silence to that soundwhich Mary Hornbeck, deceased, had deemed a spiritual warning. 

"Would you call that a 'ticking'? Is that like any sound an insect couldmake?" the mistress asked. 

"I should call it more like a 'ting, '" said Chauncey. "It comes kind o'muffled like through the chimbly--a person might be mistaken if they wasupset in their nerves considerable. "

"What old people call the 'death-watch' is supposed to be an insect thatlives in the walls of old houses, isn't it? and gives warning with aticking sound when somebody is going to be called away? Now to me thatsounds like a soft blow struck regularly on a piece of hollow iron--saythe end of a stove-pipe sticking in the chimney. When I first came uphere, there was only a steady murmur of wind and rain. Then the cloudsthinned and the sun came out and drops began to fall--distinctly. Yourwife says the ticking was heard on a day like this, broken and showery. Now, if you will unscrew that clock, I think you will find there's astove-pipe hole behind it; and a piece of pipe shoved into the chimneyjust far enough to catch the drops as they gather and fall. "

Chauncey went to work. He sweated in the airless room. The powerful screwsblunted the lips of his tool but would not start. 

"I guess I'll have to give it up for to-day. The screws are rusted insolid. Want I should pry her out of the woodwork?"

"No, don't do that, " said Mrs. Bogardus. "Why should we spoil the panel?This seems a very comfortable room. My son is right. It would be foolishto tear it down. Such a place as this might be very useful if you peoplewould get over your notions about it. "

"I never had no notions, " Chauncey asserted. "When the women git talkin'they like to make out a good story, and whichever one sees the most andhears the most makes the biggest sensation. "

Mrs. Bogardus waited till he had finished without appearing to have heardwhat he was saying. 

"Where is the key to this door?" she laid her hand over a knob to theright of the stairs. 

"I guess if there is one it's on the other side. Yes, it's in thekey-hole. " Chauncey turned the knob and shoved and lifted. The dooryielded to his full strength, and he allowed Mrs. Bogardus to precede him. She stepped into a room hardly bigger than a closet with one window, barred like those in the outer room. It was fitted up with toiletconveniences according to the best advices of its day. Over all the neatpersonal arrangements there was the slur of neglect, a sad squalor whicheven a king's palace wears with time. 

Chauncey tested the plumbing with a noise that was plainly offensive tohis companion, but she bore with it--also with his reminiscences gatheredfrom neighborhood gossip. "He wa'n't fond of spending money, but he didn'tspare it here: this was his ship cabin when he started on his last voyage. It looked funny--a man with all his land and houses cooped up in a placelike this; but he wanted to be independent of the women. He hated to have'em fussin' around him. He had a woman to come and cook up stuff for himto help himself to; but she wouldn't stay here overnight, nor he wouldn'tlet her. As for a man in the house, --most men were thieves, he thought, orwaiting their chance to be. It was real pitiful the way he made his end. "

"Open that window and shut the door when you come out, " said Mrs. Bogardus. "I will send some one to help you down with that secretary. Cerissa knows about it. It is to be sent up on the Hill. "

XXII

THE CASE STRIKES IN

Christine's marriage took place while Paul and Moya were lingering in theBruneau, for Paul's health ostensibly. Banks and Horace had been left tothe smiling irony of justice. They never had a straight chance to definetheir conduct in the woods; for no one accused them. No awkward questionswere asked in the city drawing-rooms or at the clubs. For a tough halfhour or so at Fort Lemhi they had realized how they stood in the eyes ofthose unbiased military judges. The shock had a bracing effect for a time. Both boys were said to be much improved by their Western trip and by thehardships of that frightful homeward march. 

Mrs. Bogardus had matched her gift of Stone Ridge to her son, which was agift of sentiment, with one of more substantial value to herdaughter, --the income from certain securities settled upon her and herheirs. Banks was carefully unprovided for. The big house in town was fullof ghosts--the ghosts that haunt such homes, made desolate by a breach ofhearts. The city itself was crowded with opportunities for giving andreceiving pain between mother and daughter. Christine had developed allthe latent hardness of her mother's race with a sickly frivolity of herown. She made a great show of faith in her marriage venture. She boomed itin her occasional letters, which were full of scarce concealed bravado asgraceful as snapping her fingers in her mother's face. 

Mrs. Bogardus leased her house in town, and retired before the ghosts, butnot escaping them; Stone Ridge must be put in order for its new master andmistress, and Stone Ridge had its own ghosts. She informed her absenteesthat, before their return, she should have left for Southern California tolook after some investments which she had neglected there of late. It wasthen she spoke of her plan for restoring the old house by pulling downthat addition which disfigured it; and Paul had objected to this erasure. It would take from the house's veracity, he said. The words carried theirunintentional sting. 

But it was Moya's six lines at the bottom of his page that changed andsoftened everything. Moya--always blessed when she took theinitiative--contrived, as swiftly as she could set them down, to say thevery words that made the home-coming a coming home indeed. 

"Will Madam Bogardus be pleased to keep her place as the head of her son'shouse?" she wrote. "This foolish person he has married wants to beanything rather than the mistress of Stone Ridge. She wants to be alwaysout of doors, and she needs to be. Oh, must you go away now--now when weneed you so much? It cannot be said here on paper how much _I_ need you!Am I not your motherless daughter? Please be there when we come, andplease stay there!"

"For a little while then, " said the lonely woman, smiling at the image ofthat sweet, foolish person in her thoughts. "For a little while, till shelearns her mistake. " Such mistakes are the cornerstone of familyfriendship. 

 * * * * *

It was an uneventful summer on the Hill, but one of rather wearingintensity in the inner relations of the household, one with another; fornothing could be quite natural with a pit of concealment to be avoided byall, and an air of unconsciousness to be carefully preserved in avoidingit. Moya's success in this way was so remarkable that Paul half hated it. How was it possible for her to speak to his mother so lightly; never theleast apparent premeditation or fear of tripping; how look at her withsuch sweet surface looks that never questioned or saw beneath? He couldnot meet his mother's eyes at all when they were alone together, or endurea silence in her company. 

Both women were of the type called elemental. They understood each otherwithout knowing why. Moya felt the desperate truth contained in themother's falsehood, and broke forth into passionate defense of her asagainst her husband's silence. 

He answered her one day by looking up a little green book of fairy talesand reading aloud this fragment of "The Golden Key. "

"'I never tell lies, even in fun. ' (The mysterious Grandmother speaks. )

"'How good of you!' (says the Child in the Wood. )

"'I couldn't if I tried. It would come true if I said it, and then Ishould be punished enough. '"

Moya's eyes narrowed reflectively. 

"How constantly you are thinking of this! I think of it only when I amwith you. As if a woman like your mother, who has done _one thing_, shouldbe all that thing, and nothing more to us, her children!"

Moya was giving herself up, almost immorally, Paul sometimes thought, tothe fascination Mrs. Bogardus's personality had for her. In a keenlysusceptible state herself, at that time, there was something calming andstrengthening in the older woman's perfected beauty, her physical poise, and the fitness of everything she did and said and wore to the givenoccasion. As a dark woman she was particularly striking in summerclothing. Her white effects were tremendous. She did not pretend to studythese matters herself, but in years of experience, with money to spend, she had learned well in whom to confide. When women are shut up togetherin country houses for the summer, they can irritate each other in the mostfoolish ways. Mrs. Bogardus never got upon your nerves. 

But, for Paul, there was a poison in his mother's beauty, a dread in herinfluence over his impressionable young wife, thrilled with the awakeningforces of her consonant being. Moya would drink deep of every cup thatlife presented. Motherhood was her lesson for the day. "She is a queen ofmothers!" she would exclaim with an abandon that was painful to Paul; hesaw deformity where Moya was ready to kneel. "I love her perfect love foryou--for me, even! She is above all jealousy. She doesn't even ask to beunderstood. "

Paul was silent. 

"And oh, she knows, she knows! She has been through it all--in suchdespair and misery--all that is before me, with everything in the world tomake it easy and all the beautiful care she gives me. She is the suprememother. And I never had a mother to speak to before. Don't, don't, please, keep putting that dreadful thing between us now!"

So Paul took the dreadful thing away with him and was alone with it, andknew that his mother saw it in his eyes when their eyes met and avoided. When, after a brief household absence, he would see her again he wondered, "Has she been alone with it? Has it passed into another phase?"--as of anincurable disease that must take its time and course. 

Mrs. Bogardus did not spare her conscience in social ways all this time. It was a part of her life to remember that she had neighbors--certainneighbors. She included Paul without particularly consulting him wheneverit was proper for him to support her in her introduction of his wife tothe country-house folk, many of whom they knew in town. 

All his mother's friends liked Paul and supposed him to be very clever, but they had never taken him seriously. "Now, at last, " they said, "he hasdone something like other people. He is coming out. " Experienced matronswere pleased to flatter him on his choice of a bride. The daughtersstudied Moya, and decided that she was "different, " but "all right. " Shehad a careless distinction of her own. Some of her "things" weresurprisingly lovely--probably heirlooms; and army women are so cleverabout clothes. 

Would they spend the winter in town?

Paul replied absently: they had not decided. Probably they would not godown till after the holidays. 

What an attractive plan? What an ideal family Christmas they would haveall together in the country! Christine had not been up all summer, hadshe? Here Moya came to her husband's relief, through a wife's dualconsciousness in company, and covered his want of spirits with a flood offoolish chatter. 

The smiling way in which women the most sincere can posture and prance onthe brink of dissimulation was particularly sickening to Paul at thistime. Why need they put themselves in situations where it was required?The situations were of his mother's creation. He imagined she must suffer, but had little sympathy with that side of her martyrdom. Moya seemed atrifle feverish in her acceptance of these affairs of which she wasnaturally the life and centre. A day of entertaining often faded into anevening of subtle sadness. 

Paul would take her out into the moonlight of that deep inland country. The trees were dark with leaves and brooded close above them; oldwater-fences and milldams cast inky shadows on the still, shallow pondsclasped in wooded hills. No region could have offered a more strikingcontrast to the empty plains. Moya felt shut in with old histories. Thevery ground was but moulding sand in which generations of human lives hadbeen poured, and the sand swept over to be reshaped for them. 

"We are not living our own life yet, " Paul would say; not adding, "We areprotecting her. " Here was the beginning of punishment helplessly meted outto this proud woman whose sole desire was towards her children--to give, and not to receive. 

"But this is our Garden?" Moya would muse. "We are as nearly two alone asany two could be. "

"If you include the Snake. We can't leave out the Snake, you know. "

"Snake or Seraph--I don't believe I know the difference. Paul, I cannothave you thinking things. "

"I?--what do I think?"

"You are thinking it is bad for me to be so much with her. You, as a manand a husband, resent what she, as a woman and a wife, has dared to do. And I, as another woman and wife, I say she could do nothing else and betrue. For, don't you see? She never loved him. The wifehood in her hasnever been reached. She was a girl, then a mother, then a widow. How couldshe"--

"Do you think he would have claimed her as his wife? Oh, you do not knowhim;--she has never known him. If we could be brave and face our duty tothe whole truth, and leave the rest to those sequences, never dreamed of, that wait upon great acts. Such surprises come straight from God. Now wecan never know how he would have risen to meet a nobler choice in her. Hehad not far to rise! Well, we have our share of blessings, includingpiazza teas; but as a family we have missed one of the greatest spiritualopportunities, --such as come but once in a lifetime. "

"Ah, if she was not ready for it, it was not _her_ opportunity. God isvery patient with us, I believe. "

XXIII

RESTIVENESS

Mothers and sons are rarely very personal in their intimacy after the sonhas taken to himself a wife. Apart from certain moments not appropriate topiazza teas, Paul and his mother were perhaps as comfortable together asthe relation averages. It was much that they never talked emotionally. Private judgments which we have refrained from putting into words may dieunfruitful and many a bitter crop be spared. 

"This is Paul's apology for being happy in spite of himself--and of us!"Moya teased, as she admired the beautifully drawn plans for thequarrymen's club-house. 

"It doesn't need any apology; it's a very good thing, " said Mrs. Bogardus, ignoring double meanings. No caps that were flying around ever fitted herhead. Paul's dreams and his mother's practical experience had met oncemore on a common ground of philanthropy. This time it was a workingmen'sclub in which the interests of social and mental improvement wereconjoined with facilities for outdoor sport. Up to date philanthropy is anexpensive toy. Paul, though now a landowner, was far from rich in his ownright. His mother financed this as she had many another scheme for him. She was more openhanded than heretofore, but all was done with thatennuyéd air which she ever wore as of an older child who has outgrown thegame. It was in Moya and Moya's prospective maternity that her pridereinstated itself. Her own history and generation she trod underfoot. Mistakes, humiliations, whichever way she turned. Paul had never satisfiedher entirely in anything he did until he chose this girl for the mother ofhis children. Now their house might come to something. Moya moved beforeher eyes crowned in the light of the future. And that this noble andinnocent girl, with her perfect intuitions, should turn to _her_ now withsuch impetuous affection was perhaps the sweetest pain the blighted womanhad ever known. She lay awake many a night thinking mute blessings on themother and the child to be. Yet she resisted that generous initiative sodear to herself, aware with a subtle agony of the pain it gave her son. 

One day she said to Paul (they were driving home together through a bit ofwoodland, the horses stepping softly on the mould of fallen leaves)--"Idon't expect you to account for every dollar of mine you spend in helpingthose who can be helped that way. You have a free hand. "

"I understand, " said Paul. "I have used your money freely--for a purposethat I never have accounted for. "

"Don't you need more?"

"No; there is no need now. "

"Why is there not?"

Paul was silent. "I cannot go into particulars. It is a long story. "

"Does the purpose still exist?" his mother asked sharply. 

"It does; but not as a claim--for that sort of help. "

"Let me know if such a claim should ever return. "

"I will, mother, " said Paul. 

 * * * * *

There came a day when mother and son reaped the reward of their mutualforbearance. There was a night and a day when Paul became a boy again inhis mother's hands, and she took the place that was hers in Nature. Shewas the priestess acquainted with mysteries. He followed her, and hungupon her words. The expression of her face meant life and death to him. The dreadful consciousness passed out of his eyes; tears washed it out ashe rose from his knees by Moya's bed, and his mother kissed him, and laidhis son in his arms. 

The following summer saw the club-house and all its affiliations inworking order. The beneficiaries took to it most kindly, but were disposedto manage it in their own way: not in all respects the way of thefounder's intention. 

"To make a gift complete, you must keep yourself out of it, " Mrs. Bogardusadvised. "You have done your part; now let them have it and run itthemselves. "

Paul was not hungry for leadership, but he had hoped that his interest inthe men's amusements would bring him closer to them and equalize thedifference between the Hill and the quarry. 

"You have never worked with them; how can you expect to play with them?"was another of his mother's cool aphorisms. Alas! Paul, the son of thepoor man, had no work, and hence no play. 

It was time to be making winter plans again. Mrs. Bogardus knew that herson's young family was now complete without her presence. Moya had gainedconfidence in the care of her child; she no longer brought every newsymptom to the grandmother. Yet Mrs. Bogardus put off discussing thechange, dreading to expose her own isolation, a point on which she was assensitive as if it were a crime. Paul was never entirely frank with her:she knew he would not be frank in this. They never expressed their willsor their won'ts to each other with the careless rudeness of a sound familyfaith, and always she felt the burden of his unrelenting pity. She beganto take long drives alone, coming in late and excusing herself for dinner. At such times she would send for her grandson in his nurse's arms to bidhim good-night. The mother would put off her own good-night, not tointrude at these sessions. One evening, going up later to kiss her littleson, she found his crib empty, the nurse gone to her dinner. He was fastasleep in his grandmother's arms, where she had held him for an hour infront of the open fire in her bedroom. She looked up guiltily. "He was socomfortable! And his crib is cold. Will he take cold when Ellen puts himback?"

"I am sure he won't, " Moya whispered, gathering up the rosy sleeper. Butshe was disturbed by the breach of bedtime rules. 

In the drawing-room a few nights later she said energetically to Paul. 

"One might as well be dead as to live with a grudge. "

"A good grudge?"

"There are no good grudges. "

"There are some honest ones--honestly come by. "

"I don't care how they are come by. Grudges 'is p'ison. '" She laughed, buther cheeks were hot. 

"Do you know that Christine has been at death's door? Your mother heard ofit--through Mrs. Bowen! Was that why you didn't show me her letter?"

"It was not in my letter from Mrs. Bowen. "

"I think she has known it some time, " said Moya, "and kept it to herself. "

"Mrs. Bowen!"

"Your mother. Isn't it terrible? Think how Chrissy must have needed her. They need each other so! Christine was her constant thought. How can allthat change in one year! But she cannot go to Banks Bowen's house withoutan invitation. We must go to New York and make her come with us--we mustopen the way. "

"Yes, " said Paul, "I have seen it was coming. In the end we always do thething we have forsworn. "

"_I_ was the one. I take it back. Your work is there. I know it calls you. Was not Mrs. Bowen's letter an appeal?"

Paul was silent. 

"She must think you a deserter. And there is bigger work for you, too!Here is a great political fight on, and my husband is not in it. Every manmust slay his dragon. There is a whole city of dragons!"

"Yes, " smiled Paul; "I see. You want me to put my legs under the samecloth with Banks and ask him about his golf score. "

"If you want to fight him, have it out on public grounds; fight him inpolitics. "

"We are on the same side!"

Moya laughed, but she looked a little dashed. 

"Banks comes of gentlemen. He inherited his opinions, " said Paul. 

"He may have inherited a few other things, if we could have patience withhim. "

"Are you sorry for Banks?"

"I shall be sorry for him--when he meets you. He has been spared that toolong. "

"Dispenser of destinies, I bow as I always do!"

"You will speak to your mother at once?"

"I will. "

"And do it beautifully?"

"As well as I know how. "

"Ah, you have had such practice! How good it would be if we could onlydare to quarrel in this family! You and I--of course!"

"_We_ quarrel, of course!" laughed Paul. 

"I _love_ to quarrel with you!"

"You do it beautifully. You have had such practice!"

"I am so happy! It is clear to me now that we shall live down this misery. Christine will love to see me again; I know she will. A wife is a verydifferent thing from a girl--a haughty girl!"

"I should think the wife of Banks Bowen might be. "

"And we'll part with our ancient and honorable grudge! We are getting toobig for it. _We_ are parents!"

Paul made the proposition to his mother and she agreed to it in everyparticular save the one. She would remain at Stone Ridge. It wasimpossible to move her. Moya was in despair. She had cultivated anoverweening conscience in her relations with Mrs. Bogardus. It turned uponher now and showed her the true state of her own mind at the thought ofbeing Two once more and alone with the child God had given them. Mrs. Bogardus appeared to see nothing but her own interests in the matter. Shehad made up her mind. And in spite of the conscientious scruples on allsides, the hedging and pleading and explaining, all were happier in theend for her decision. She herself was softened by it, and she yielded onepoint in return. Paul had steadily opposed his mother's plan ofhousekeeping, alone with one maid and a man who slept at the stables. TheDunlops, as it happened, were childless for the winter, young Chaunceyattending a "commercial college" in a neighboring town. After manyinterviews and a good deal of self-importance on Cerissa's part, the pairwere persuaded to close the old house and occupy the servants' wing on theHill, as a distinct family, yet at hand in case of need. It was lateautumn before all these arrangements could be made. Paul and Moya, leavingthe young scion aged nineteen months in the care of his nurse and hisgrandmother, went down the river to open the New York house. 

XXIV

INDIAN SUMMER

The upper fields of Stone Ridge, so the farmers said, were infested thatautumn by a shy and solitary vagrant, who never could be met with face toface, but numbers of times had been seen across the width of a lot, climbing the bars, or closing a gate, or vanishing up some crooked lanethat quickly shut him from view. 

"I would look after that old chap if I was you, Chauncey. He'll be smokingin your hay barns, and burn you out some o' these cold nights. "

Chauncey took these neighborly warnings with good-humored indifference. "Ihaven't seen no signs of his doin' any harm, " he said. "Anybody's atliberty to walk in the fields if there ain't a 'No Trespass' posted. Irather guess he makes his bed among the corn stouks. I see prints ofsomeone's feet, goin' and comin'. "

Mrs. Bogardus was more herself in those days than she had been at any timesince the great North-western wilderness sent her its second message offear. Old memories were losing their sting. She could bear to review herdecision with a certain shrinking hardihood. Had the choice been given herto repeat, her action had been the same. In so far as she had perjuredherself for the sake of peace in the family, she owned the sacrifice wasvain; but her own personality was the true reason for what she had done. She was free in her unimpeachable widowhood--a mother who had never beenat heart a wife. She feared no ghosts this keen autumn weather, at thesummit of her conscious powers. Her dark eye unsheathed its glance ofauthority. It was an eye that went everywhere, and everywhere was met withsigns that praised its oversight. Here was an out-worn inheritance whichone woman, in less than a third of her lifetime, had developed into acompetence for her son. He could afford to dream dreams of beneficencewith his mother to make them good. Yes, he needed her still. His child wasin her keeping; and, though brief the lease, that trust was no accident. It was the surest proof he could have given her of his vital allegiance. In the step which Paul and Moya were taking, she saw the first promise ofthat wisdom she had despaired of in her son. In the course of years hewould understand her. And Christine? She rested bitterly secure in herdaughter's inevitable physical need of her. Christine was a born parasite. She had no true pride; she was capable merely of pique which would wearitself out and pass into other forms of selfishness. 

This woman had been governed all her life by a habit of decision, and astrong personality rooted in the powers of nature. Therefore she wasseldom mistaken in her conclusions when they dealt with material results. Occasionally she left out the spirit; but the spirit leaves out no one. 

Her long dark skirts were sweeping the autumn grass at sunset as she pacedback and forth under the red-gold tents of the maples. It was a row ofyoung trees she had planted to grace a certain turf walk at the top of thelow wall that divided, by a drop of a few feet, the west lawn at StoneRidge from the meadow where the beautiful Alderneys were pastured. Themaples turned purple as the light faded out of their tops and struck flatacross the meadow, making the grass vivid as in spring. Two spots of colormoved across it slowly--a young woman capped and aproned, urging along alittle trotting child. Down the path of their united shadows they came, and the shadows had reached already the dividing wall. The waiting smilewas sweet upon the grandmother's features; her face was transformed likethe meadow into a memory of spring. The child saw her, and waved to herwith something scarlet which he held in his free hand. She admired thestride of his brown legs above their crumpled socks, the imperishable lookof health on his broad, sweet glowing face. She lifted him high in herembrace and bore him up the hill, his dusty shoes dangling against hersilk front breadths, his knees pressed tight against her waist, and overher shoulder he flourished the scarlet cardinal flower. 

"Where have you been with him so long?" she asked the nursemaid. 

"Only up in the lane, as far as the three gates, ma'am. "

"Then where did he get this flower?"

"Oh, " said the pretty Irish girl, half scared by her tone, and tempted toprevaricate. "Why--he must have picked it, I guess. "

"Not in the lane. It's a swamp-flower. It doesn't grow anywhere withinfour miles of the lane!"

"It must have been the old man gev it him then, " said the maid. "Is itunhealthy, ma'am? I tried to get it from him, but he screamed and fussedso. "

"What old man do you mean?"

"Why, him that was passin' up the lane. I didn't see him till he was cleanby--and Middy had the flower. I don't know where in the world he couldhave got it, else, for we wasn't one step out of the lane, was we, Middy!That's the very truth. "

"But where were you when strangers were giving him flowers?"

"Why, sure, ma'am, I was only just a step away be the fence, having a wordwith one o' the boys. I was lookin' in the field, speakin' to him and hewas lookin' at me with me back to the lane. 'There's the old man again, 'he says, shiftin' his eye. I turned me round and there, so he was, but hewas by and walkin' on up the lane. And Middy had the flower. He wouldn'tbe parted from it and squeezed it so tight I thought the juice might bebad on his hands, and he promised he'd not put it to his mouth. I kep' myeye on him. Ah, the nasty, na-asty flower! Give it here to Katy till Ithrow it!"

"There's no harm in the flower. But there is harm in strangers making upto him when your back is turned. Don't you know the dreadful things weread in the papers?"

Mrs. Bogardus said no more. It was Middy's supper-time. But later shequestioned Katy particularly concerning this old man who was spoken ofquite as if his appearance were taken for granted in the heart of thefarm. Katy recalled one other day when she had seen him asleep as shethought in a corner of the fence by the big chestnut tree when she and theboy were nutting. They had moved away to the other side of the tree, butwhile she was busy hunting for nuts Middy had strayed off a bit andforegathered with the old man, who was not asleep at all, but stood withhis back to her pouring a handful of big fat chestnuts into the child'slittle skirt, which he held up. She called to him and the old man hadstepped back, and the nuts were spilled. Middy had cried and made her pickthem up, and when that was done the stranger was gone quite out of sight. 

Chauncey, too, was questioned, and testified that the old man of thefields was no myth. But he deprecated all this exaggerated alarm. Thestranger was some simple-minded old work-house candidate putting off theevil day. In a few weeks he would have to make for shelter in one of theneighboring towns. Chauncey could not see what legal hold they had uponhim even if they could catch him. He hardly came under the vagrancy law, since he had neither begged, nor helped himself appreciably to the meansof subsistence. 

"That is just the point, " Mrs. Bogardus insisted. "He has the means--fromsomewhere--to lurk around here and make friends with that child. There maybe a gang of kidnappers behind him. He is the harmless looking decoy. Iinsist that you keep a sharp lookout, Chauncey. There shall be a hold uponhim, law or no law, if we catch him on our ground. "

A cold rain set in. Paul and Moya wrote of delays in the housepreparations, and hoped the grandmother was not growing tired of hercharge. On the last of the rainy days, in a burst of dubious sunshine, came a young girl on horseback to have tea with Mrs. Bogardus. She was oneof that lady's discoverers, so she claimed, Miss Sallie Remsen, verypretty and full of fantastic little affectations founded on her intenseappreciation of the picturesque. She called Mrs. Bogardus "Madam, " andlikened her to various female personages in history more celebrated forstrength of purpose than for the Christian virtues. Mrs. Bogardus, in herrestful ignorance of such futilities, went no deeper into these allusionsthan their intention, which she took to be complimentary. Miss Salliehugged herself with joy when the rain came down in torrents for a clear-upshower. Her groom was sent home with a note to inform her mother that Mrs. Bogardus wished to keep her overnight. All the mothers were flattered whenMrs. Bogardus took notice of their daughters, --even much grander damesthan she herself could pretend to be. 

They had a charming little dinner by themselves to the tune of the rainoutside, and were having their coffee by the drawing-room fire; and MissSallie was thinking by what phrase one could do justice to the massive, crass ugliness of that self-satisfied apartment, furnished in the hideoussixties, when the word was sent in that Mrs. Dunlop wished to speak withMrs. Bogardus. Something of Cerissa's injured importance survived thetransmission of the message, causing Mrs. Bogardus to smile to herself asshe rose. Cerissa was waiting in the dining-room. She kept her seat asMrs. Bogardus entered. Her eyes did not rise higher than the lady's dress, which she examined with a fierce intentness of comparison while she openedher errand. 

"I thought you'd like to know you've got a strange lodger down to the oldhouse. I don't seem to ever get moved!" she enlarged. "I'm always runnin'down there after first one thing 'n' another we've forgot. This morning 'twas my stone batter-pot. Chauncey said he thought it was getting coldenough for buckwheat cakes. I don't suppose you want to have stray trampsin there in the old house, building fires in the loom-room, where, if aspark got loose, it would blaze up them draughty stairs, and the wholehouse would go in a minute. " Cerissa stopped to gain breath. 

"Making fires? Are you sure of that? Has any smoke been seen coming out ofthat chimney?"

"Why, it's been raining so! And the trees have got so tall! But I couldshow you the shucks an' shells he's left there. I know how we left it!"

"You had better speak--No; I will see Chauncey in the morning. " Mrs. Bogardus never, if she could avoid it, gave an order through a thirdperson. 

"Well, I thought I'd just step in. Chauncey said 't was no use disturbingyou to-night, but he's just that way--so easy about everything! I thoughtyou wouldn't want to be harboring tramps this wet weather when mostanybody would be tempted to build a fire. I'm more concerned about whatgoes on down there now we're _out_ of the house! I seem to have it on mymind the whole time. A house is just like a child: the more you don't seeit the more you worry about it. "

"I'm glad you have such a home feeling about the place, " said Mrs. Bogardus, avoiding the onset of words. "Well, good-evening, Cerissa. Thankyou for your trouble. I will see about it in the morning. "

Mrs. Bogardus mentioned what she had just heard to Miss Sallie, whoremarked, with her keen sense of antithesis, what a contrast _that_fireside must be to _this_. 

"Which fireside?"

"Oh, your lodger upon the cold ground, --making his little bit of a stolenblaze in that cavern of a chimney in the midst of the wet trees! What anice thing to have an unwatched place like that where a poor bird ofpassage can creep in and make his nest, and not trouble any one. Thinkwhat Jean Valjeans one might shelter"--

"Who?"

"What 'angels unawares. '"

"It will be unawares, my dear, --very much unawares, --when I shelter anyangels of that sort. "

"Oh, you wouldn't turn him out, such weather as this?"

"The house is not mine, in the first place, " Mrs. Bogardus explained as toa child. "I can't entertain tramps or even angels on my son's premises, when he's away. "

"Oh, he! He would build the fires himself, and make up their beds, "laughed Miss Sallie. "If he were here, I believe he would start down therenow, and stock the place with everything you've got in the house to eat. "

"I hope he'd leave us a little something for breakfast, " said Mrs. Bogardus a trifle coldly. But she did not mention the cause of heruneasiness about this particular visitor. She never defended herself. 

Miss Sallie was delighted with her callousness to the sentimental rebukewhich had been rather rubbed in. It was so unmodern; one got so weary offashionable philanthropy, women who talked of their social sympathies andtheir principles in life. She almost hoped that Mrs. Bogardus had neither. Certainly she never mentioned them. 

"What did she say? Did she tell you what I said to her last night?"Cerissa questioned her husband feverishly after his interview with Mrs. Bogardus. 

"She didn't mention your name, " Chauncey took some pleasure in stating. "If you hadn't told me yourself, I shouldn't have known you'd meddled init at all. "

"What's she going to do about it?"

"How crazy you women are! 'Cause some poor old Sooner-die-than-work warmshis bones by a bit of fire that wouldn't scare a chimbly swaller out ofits nest! Don't you s'pose if there'd been any fire there to speak of, I'd'a' seen it? What am I here for? Now I've got to drop everything, and gita padlock on that door, and lock it up every night, and search the wholeplace from top to bottom for fear there's some one in there hidin' in arathole!"

"Chauncey! If you've got to do that I don't want you to go in there alone. You take one of the men with you; and you better have a pistol or one ofthe dogs anyhow. Suppose you was to ketch some one in there, and cornerhim! He might turn on you, and shoot you!"

"I wish you wouldn't work yourself up so about nothin' at all! Want me tomake a blame jackass of myself raisin' the whole place about a potato-peelor a bacon-rind!"

"I think you might have some little regard for my feelings, " Cerissawhimpered. "If you ain't afraid, I'm afraid for you; and I don't seeanything to be ashamed of either. I wish you _wouldn't_ go _alone_searching through that spooky old place. It just puts me beside myself tothink of it!"

"Well, well! That's enough about it anyhow. I ain't going to do anythingfoolish, and you needn't think no more about it. "

Whether it was the effect of his wife's fears, or his promise to her, orthe inhospitable nature of his errand founded on suspicion, certainlyChauncey showed no spirit of rashness in conducting his search. He knockedthe mud off his boots loudly on the doorsill before proceeding to attachthe padlock to the outer door. He searched the loom-room, lighting acandle and peering into all its cobwebbed corners. He examined the roomslately inhabited, unlocking and locking doors behind him noisily withincreasing confidence in the good old house's emptiness. Still, in thefireplace in the loom-room there were signs of furtive cooking which ahousekeeper's eye would infallibly detect. He saw that the search mustproceed. It was not all a question of his wife's fears, as he opened thestair-door cautiously and tramped slowly up towards the tower bedroom. Hecould not remember who had gone out last, on the day the old secretary wasmoved down. There had been four men up there, and--yes, the key was stillin the lock outside. He clutched it and it fell rattling on the steps. Heswung the door open and stared into the further darkness beyond his rangeof vision. He waved his candle as far as his arm would reach. "Anybody_in_ here?" he shouted. The silence made his flesh prick. "I'm goin' tolock up now. Better show up. It's the last chance. " He waited while onecould count ten. "Anybody in here that wants to be let free? Nobody'sgoin' to hurt ye. "

To his anxious relief there was no reply. But as he listened, he heard theloud, measured tick, tick, of the old clock, appalling in the darkness, onthe silence of that empty room. Chauncey could not have told just how hegot the door to, nor where he found strength to lock it and drag his feetdownstairs, but the hand that held the key was moist with coldperspiration as he reached the open air. 

"Well, if that's rain I'd like to know where it comes from!" He looked upat the moon breaking through drifting clouds. The night was keen andclear. 

"If I was to tell that to Cerissa she'd never go within a mile o' thathouse again! Maybe I was mistaken--but I ain't goin' back to see!"

Next morning on calmer reflection he changed his mind about removing thelawn-mower and other hand-tools from the loom-room as he had determinedovernight should be done. The place continued to be used as a storeroom, open by day. 

At night it was Chauncey's business to lock it up, and he was careful torepeat his search--as far as the stair-door. Never did the silent roomabove give forth a protest, a sound of human restraint or occupation. Hereported to the mistress that all was snug at the old house, and nobodyanywhere about the place. 

XXV

THE FELL FROST

After the rain came milder days. The still white mornings slowlybrightened into hazy afternoons. The old moon like a sleep walker stoodexposed in the morning sky. The roads to Stone Ridge were deep in fallenleaves. Soft-tired wheels rustled up the avenue and horses' feet felllight, as the last of the summer neighbors came to say good-by. 

It was a party of four--Miss Sallie and a good-looking youth of thefootball cult on horseback, her mother and an elder sister, the delicateMiss Remsen, in a hired carriage. Their own traps had been sent to town. 

Tea was served promptly, as the visitors had a long road home before theirdinner-hour. In the reduced state of the establishment it was Katy whobrought the tea while Cerissa looked after her little charge. Cerissa saton the kitchen porch sewing and expanding under the deep attention of thecook; they could see Middy a little way off on the tennis-court wiping themud gravely from a truant ball he had found among the nasturtiums. All wasas peaceful as the time of day and the season of the year. 

"Yes, " said Cerissa solemnly. "Old Abraham Van Elten was too much cumberedup with this world to get quit of it as easy as some. If his spirit isburdened with a message to anybody it's to _her_. He died unreconciled toher, and she inherited all this place in spite of him, as you may say. I've come as near believin' in such things since the goings on up there inthat room"--

"She wants Middy fetched in to see the comp'ny, " cried Katy, bursting intothe sentence. "Where is he, till I clean him? And she wants some morebread and butter as quick as ye can spread it. "

"Well, Katy!" said Cerissa slowly, with severe emphasis. "When I was agirl, my mother used to tell me it wasn't manners to"--

"I haven't got time to hear about yer mother, " said Katy rudely. "Whathave ye done with me boy?" The tennis-court lay vacant on the terrace inthe sun; the steep lawn sloped away and dipped into the trees. 

"Don't call, " said the cook warily. "It'll only scare her. He was thereonly a minute ago. Run, Katy, and see if he's at the stables. "

It was not noticed, except by Mrs. Bogardus, that no Katy, and no boy, andno bread and butter, had appeared. Possibly the last deficiency hadattracted a little playful attention from the young horseback riders, whowere accusing each other of eating more than their respective shares. 

At length Miss Sallie perceived there was something on her hostess's mind. "Where is John Middleton?" she whispered. "Katy is dressing him all over, from head to foot, isn't she? I hope she isn't curling his hair. JohnMiddleton has such wonderful hair! I refuse to go back to New York till Ihave introduced you to John Middleton Bogardus, " she announced to theyoung man, who laughed at everything she said. Mrs. Bogardus smiledvacantly and glanced at the door. 

"Let me go find Katy, " cried Miss Sally. Katy entered as she spoke, andsaid a few words to the mistress. "Excuse me. " Mrs. Bogardus rose hastily. She asked Miss Sallie to take her place at the tea-tray. 

"What is it?"

"The boy--they cannot find him. Don't say anything. " She had turned ashywhite, and Katy's pretty flushed face had a wild expression. 

In five minutes the search had begun. Mrs. Bogardus was at the telephone, calling up the quarry, for she was short of men. One order followedanother quickly. Her voice was harsh and deep. She had frankly forgottenher guests. Embarrassed by their own uselessness, yet unable to takeleave, they lingered and discussed the mystery of this sudden, acutealarm. 

"It is the sore spot, " said Miss Sally sentimentally. "You know herhusband was missing for years before she gave him up; and then thatdreadful time, three years ago, when they were so frightened about Paul. "

Having spread the alarm, Mrs. Bogardus took the field in person. Her headwas bare in the keen, sunset light. She moved with strong, fleet steps, but a look of sudden age stamped her face. 

"Go back, all of you!" she said to the women, who crowded on her heels. "There are plenty of places to look. " Her stern eyes resisted theirfrightened sympathy. She was not ready to yield to the consciousness ofher own fears. 

To the old house she went, by some sure instinct that told her the road totrouble. But her trouble stood off from her, and spared her for one momentof exquisite relief; as if the child of Paul and Moya had no part in whatwas waiting for her. The door at the foot of the stairs stood open. Sheheard a soft, repeated thud. Panting, she climbed the stairs; and as sherounded the shoulder of the chimney, there, on the top step above her, stood the fair-haired child, making the only light in the place. He wasknocking, with his foolish ball, on the door of the chamber of fear. Threegenerations of the living and the dead were brought together in this coilof fate, and the child, in his happy innocence, had joined the knot. 

The woman crouching on the stairs could barely whisper, "Middy!" lest ifshe startled him he might turn and fall. He looked down at her, unsurprised, and paused in his knocking. "Man--in there--won't 'peak toMiddy!" he said. 

She crept towards him and sat below him, coaxing him into her lap. Thestrange motions of her breast, as she pressed his head against her, keptthe boy quiet, and in that silence she heard an inner sound--the awfulpulse of the old clock beating steadily, calling her, demanding theevidence of her senses, --she who feared no ghosts, --beating out the hoursof an agony she was there to witness. And she was yet in time. The haplesscreature entrapped within that room dragged its weight slowly across thefloor. The clock, sole witness and companion of its sufferings, ticked onimpartially. Neither is this any new thing, it seemed to say. A life wasstarved in here before--not for lack of food, but love, --love, --love!

She carried the child out into the air, and he ran before her like abreeze. The women who met them stared at her sick and desperate face. Shemade herself quickly understood, and as each listener drained her meaningthe horror spread. There was but one man left on the place, within call, he with the boyish face and clean brown hands, who had ridden across thefields for an afternoon's idle pleasure. He stepped to her side and tookthe key out of her hand. "You ought not to do this, " he said gently, astheir eyes met. 

"Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, " she counted mechanically. "He has been inthere six days and seven nights by my orders. " She looked straight beforeher, seeing no one, as she gave her commands to the women: fire and hotwater and stimulants, in the kitchen of the old house at once, and anotherman, if one could be found to follow her. 

The two figures moving across the grass might have stepped out of anillustration in the pages of some current magazine. In their thoughts theyhad already unlocked the door of that living death and were face to facewith the insupportable facts of nature. 

The morbid, sickening, prison odor met them at the door--humanity'shelpless protest against bolts and bars. Again the young man begged hiscompanion not to enter. She took one deep breath of the pure outside airand stepped before him. They searched the emptiness of the barelyfurnished room. The clock ticked on to itself. Mrs. Bogardus's companionstood irresolute, not knowing the place. The fetid air confused hissenses. But she went past him through the inner door, guided byremembrance of the sounds she had heard. 

She had seen it. She approached it cautiously, stooping for a better view, and closing in upon it warily, as one cuts off the retreat of a creaturein the last agonies of flight. Her companion heard her say: "Show me yourface!--Uncover his face, " she repeated, not moving her eyes as he steppedbehind her. "He will not let me near him. Uncover it. "

The thing in the corner had some time been a man. There was still enoughmanhood left to feel her eyes and to shrink as an earthworm from thespade. He had crawled close to the baseboard of the room. An old man'sashen beard straggled through the brown claws wrapped about the face. Asthe dust of the threshing floor to the summer grain, so was his likenessto one she remembered. 

"I must see that man's face!" she panted. "He will die if I touch him. Take away his hands. " It was done, with set teeth, and the face of thefootball hero was bathed in sweat. He breathed through tense nostrils, anda sickly whiteness spread backward from his lips. Suddenly he loosed hisburden. It fell, doubling in a ghastly heap, and he rushed for the openair. 

Mrs. Bogardus groaned. She raised herself up slowly, stretching back herhead. Her face was like the terrible tortured mask of the Medusa. She hadbut a moment in which to recover herself. Deliberately she spoke when hercompanion returned and stood beside her. 

"That was my husband. If he lives I am still his wife. You are not toforget this. It is no secret. Are you able to help me now? Get a blanketfrom the women. I hear some one coming. "

She waited, with head erect and eyes closed and rigid tortured lips apart, till the feet were heard at the door. 

XXVI

PEACE TO THIS HOUSE

Mrs. Remsen and her delicate daughter had driven away to avoid excitementand the night air. 

Chauncey hovered round the piazza steps, talking, with but littleencouragement, to Miss Sallie and the young man who had become the centreof all eyes. 

"I don't see how anybody on the face of the earth could blame her, nor meeither!" Chauncey protested. "If the critter wanted to git out, whycouldn't he say so? I stood there holdin' the door open much as fiveminutes. 'Who's in there?' I says. I called it loud enough to wake thedead. 'Nobody wants to hurt ye, ' says I. There want nothing to be afraidof. He hadn't done nothing anyway. It's the strangest case ever I heardtell of. And the doctor don't think he was much crazy either. "

"Can he live?" asked Miss Sallie. 

"He's alive now, but doctor don't know how long he'll last. There he comesnow. I must go and git his horse. "

The doctor, who seemed nervous, --he was a young local practitioner, --askedto speak with Miss Sallie's hero apart. 

"Did Mrs. Bogardus say anything when she first saw that man? Did younotice what she said?--how she took it?"

The hero, who was also a gentleman, looked at the doctor coolly. 

"It was not a nice thing, " he said. "I saw just as little as I could. "

"You don't understand me, " said the doctor. "I want to know if Mrs. Bogardus appeared to you to have made any discovery--received any shocknot to be accounted for by--by what you both saw?"

"I shouldn't attempt to answer such a question, " said the youngsterbluntly. "I never saw Mrs. Bogardus in my life before to-day. "

The doctor colored. "Mrs. Bogardus has given me a telegram to send, and Idon't know whether to send it or not. It's going to make a whole lot oftalk. I am not much acquainted with Mrs. Bogardus myself, except byhearsay. That's partly what surprises me. It looks a little reckless tosend out such a message as that, by the first hand that comes along. Hadn't we better give her time to think it over?" He opened the telegramfor the other to read. "The man himself can't speak. But he just pants forbreath every time she comes near him: he tries to hide his face. He actslike a criminal afraid of being caught. "

"He didn't look that way to me--what was left of him. Not in the leastlike a criminal. "

"Well, no; that's a fact, too. Now they've got him laid out clean andneat, he looks as if he might have been a very decent sort of man. But_that_, you know--that's incredible. If she knows him, why doesn't he knowher? Why won't he own her? He's afraid of her. His eyes are ready to burstout of his head whenever she comes near him. "

"Did Mrs. Bogardus write that telegram herself?"

"She did. "

"And what did she tell you to do with it?"

"Send it to her son. "

"Then why don't you send it?"

This was the disputed message: "Come. Your father has been found. BringDoctor Gainsworth. "

In the local man's opinion, the writer of that dispatch was DoctorGainsworth's true patient. What could induce a woman in Mrs. Bogardus'sposition to give such hasty publicity to this shocking disclosure, allowing it were true? The more he dwelt on it the less he liked theresponsibility he was taking. He discussed it openly; and, with the bestintentions, this much-impressed young man gave out his own counter-theoryof the case, hoping to forestall whatever mischief might have been done. He put himself in the place of Mr. Paul Bogardus, whom he liked extremely, and tried to imagine that young gentleman's state of mind when he shouldlook upon this new-found parent, and learn the manner of his resurrection. 

This was the explanation he boldly set forth in behalf of those mostnearly concerned. [He was getting up his diagnosis for an interesting halfhour with the great doctor who had been called in consultation. ] The shockof that awful discovery in the locked chamber, he attested, had put Mrs. Bogardus temporarily beside herself. Outwardly composed, her nerves wereripped and torn by the terrible sight that met her eyes. She was the preyof an hallucination founded on memories of former suffering, which hadworn a channel for every fresh fear to seek. There was something trulynoble and loyal and pathetic in the nature of her possession. It threw asoftened light upon her past. How must she have brooded, all these years, for that one thought to have ploughed so deep! It was quite commonly knownin the neighborhood that she had come back from the West years ago withouther husband, yet with no proof of his death. But who could have believedshe would cling for half a lifetime to this forlorn expectancy, depictingher own loss in every sad hulk of humanity cast upon her prosperousshores!

Every one believed she was deceiving herself, but great honor was hersamong the neighbors for the plain truth and courage of her astonishingavowal. They had thought her proud, exclusive, hard in the security ofwealth. Here she stood by a pauper's bed in the name of simple constancy, stripping herself of all earthly surplusage, exposing her deepest wound, proclaiming the bond--herself its only witness--between her and thisspeechless wreck, drifting out on the tide of death. She had but to lethim go. It was the wild word she had spoken in the name of truth anddeathless love that fired the imagination of that slow countryside. It wasthe touch beyond nature that appeals to the higher sense of a community, and there is no community without a soul. 

The straight demands of justice are frequently hard to meet, but itsironies are crushing. Mrs. Bogardus had fallen back on the line of amother's duty since that moment of personal accountability. She read theunspoken reverence in the eyes of all around her, but she put in nodisclaimer. Her past was not her own. She could not sin alone. Only thosewho have been honest are privileged under all conditions to remain so. 

On his arrival with the doctor, Paul endeavored first to see his motheralone. For some reason she would not have it so. She took the unspeakablesituation as it came. He was shown into the room where she sat, and by herorders Doctor Gainsworth was with him. 

She rose quietly and came to meet them. Placing her hand in her son's arm, and looking towards the bed, she said:--

"Doctor--my husband. "

"Madam!" said Doctor Gainsworth. He had been Mrs. Bogardus's familyphysician for many years. 

"My husband, " she repeated. 

The doctor appeared to accept the statement. As the three approached thebed Mrs. Bogardus leaned heavily upon her son. Paul released his arm andplaced it firmly around her. He felt her shudder. "Mother, " he said to herwith an indescribable accent that tore her heart. 

The doctor began his examination. He addressed his patient as "Mr. Bogardus. "

"Mistake, " said a low, husky voice from the bed. "This ain't the man. "

Doctor Gainsworth pursued his investigations. "What is your name?" heasked the patient suddenly. 

The hunted eyes turned with ghastly appeal upon the faces around him. 

"Paul, speak to him! Own your father, " Mrs. Bogardus whisperedpassionately. 

"It is for him to speak now, " said Paul. "When he is well, Doctor, " headded aloud, "he will know his own name. "

"This man will never be well, " the doctor answered. "If there is anythingto prove, for or against the identity you claim for him, it will have tobe done within a very few days. "

Doctor Gainsworth rose and held out his hand. He was a man of delicateperceptions. His respect at that moment for Mrs. Bogardus, though foundedon blindest conjecture, was an emotion which the mask of his professionalmanner could barely conceal. "As a friend, Mrs. Bogardus, I hope you willcommand me--but you need no doctor here. "

"As a friend I ask you to believe me, " she said. "This man _is_ myhusband. He came back here because this was his home. I cannot tell youany more, but this we expect you and every one who knows"--

The dissenting voice from the bed closed her assertion with a hoarse "No!Not the man. "

"Good-by, Mrs. Bogardus, " said the doctor. "Don't trouble to explain. Youand I have lived too long and seen too much of life not to recognize itsfatalities: the mysterious trend in the actions of men and women thatcannot be comprised in--in the locking of a door. "

"It is of little consequence--what was done, compared to what was notdone. " This was all the room for truth she could give herself to turn in. The doctor did not try to understand her: yet she had snatched a littlecomfort from merely uttering the words. 

Paul and the doctor dined together, Mrs. Bogardus excusing herself. 

"There seems to be an impression here, " said the doctor, examining theinitials on his fish-fork, "that your mother is indulging an overstrainedfancy in this melancholy resemblance she has traced. It does not appear tohave made much headway as a fact, which rather surprises me in a countryneighborhood. Possibly your doctor here, who seems a very good fellow, haswished to spare the family any unnecessary explanations. If you'll let meadvise you, Paul, I would leave it as it is, --open to conjecture. But, inwhatever shape this impression may reach you from outside, I hope youwon't let it disturb you in the least, so far as it describes yourmother's condition. She is one of the few well-balanced women I have hadthe honor to know. "

Paul did not take advantage of the doctor's period. He went on. 

"Not that I do know her. Possibly you may not yourself feel that youaltogether understand your mother? She has had many demands upon herpowers of adaptation. I should imagine her not one who would adapt herselfeasily, yet, once she had recognized a necessity of that sort, I believeshe would fit herself to its conditions with an exacting thoroughnesswhich in time would become almost, one might say, a second, an externalself. The 'lendings' we must all of us wear. "

"There will be no explanations, " said Paul, not coldly, but helplessly. 

"Much the best way, " said the doctor relieved, and glad to be done with adifficult undertaking. "If we are ever understood in this world, it is notthrough our own explanations, but in spite of them. My daughters hope tosee a good deal of your charming wife this winter. I hear great pleasureexpressed at your coming back to town. "

"Thank you, Doctor. She will be up this evening. We shall stay here withmy mother for a time. It will be her desire to carry outthis--recognition--to the end. We must honor her wishes in the matter. "

The talk then fell upon the patient's condition. The doctor left certaindirections and took shelter in professional platitudes, but his eyesrested with candid kindness upon the young man, and his farewellhand-clasp was a second prolonged. 

He went away in a state of simple wonderment, deeply marveling at Paul'sserenity. 

"Extraordinary poise! Where does it come from? No: the boy is happy! Hehides it; but it is the one change in him. He has experienced a greatrelief. Is it possible"--

On his way down the river the doctor continued to muse upon the dignity, the amazingly beautiful behavior of this rising family in whose somewhatcommonplace city fortunes he had taken a friendly interest for years. Heowned that he had sounded them with too short a line. 

 * * * * *

Watching with the dying man hours when she was with him alone, EmilyBogardus continued to test his resolution. He never retracted by alook--faithful to the word she had spoken which made them strangers. 

It was the slightest shell of mortality that ever detained a soul onearth. The face, small like the face of an old, old child, waxed finer andmore spiritual, yet ever more startlingly did it bear the stamp of thatindividuality which the spirit had held so cheap--the earthly soimpenetrated with the spiritual part that the face had become asublimation. As one sees a sheet of paper covered with writing wither inflame and become a quivering ash, yet to the last attenuation of its fibrethe human characters will stand forth, till all is blown up chimney to thestars. 

Still, peaceful, implacable in its peace, settling down for the silence ofeternity. Still no sign. 

The younger ones came and went. The little boy stole in alone and pushedagainst his grandmother's knee, --she seated always by the bed, --gazed, puzzled, at the strange, still face, and whispered obediently, "Gran'faver. " There was no response. Once she took the boy and drew himclose and placed his little tender hand within the dry, crumpled huskextended on the bedclothes. The eyes unclosed and rested long andearnestly on the face of the child, who yawned as if hypnotized and flunghis head back on the grandmother's breast. She bent suddenly and laid herown hand where the child's had been. The eyes turned inward and shutagain, but a sigh, so deep it seemed that another breath might never come, was all her answer. 

Past midnight of the fourth night's watch Paul was awakened by a light inhis room. His mother stood beside him, white and worn. "He is going, " shesaid. It was the final rally of the body's resistance. A few moments'expenditure, and that stubborn vitality would loose its hold. --Thestrength of the soil!

The wife stood aside and gave up her place to the children. Her expressionwas noble, like a queen rebuked before her people. There was comfort inthat, too. A great, solemn, mutual understanding drew this death-bed grouptogether. Within the sickle's compass so they stood: the woman God gavethis man to found a home; the son who inherited his father's gentlenessand purity of purpose; the fair flower of the generations that father'ssacrifice had helped him win; the bud of promise on the topmost bough. Those astonished eyes shed their last earthly light on this human group, turned and rested in the eyes of the woman, faded, and the light went out. He died, blessing her in one whispered word. Her name. 

Before daybreak on the morning of the funeral, Paul awoke under pressureof disturbing dreams. There were sounds of hushed movements in the house. He traced them to the door of the room below stairs where his father lay. Some one had softly unlocked that door, and entered. He knew who that onemust be. His place was there alone with his mother, before they werecalled together as a family, and the mask of decency resumed for thoseironic rites in the presence of the unaccusing dead. 

The windows had been lowered behind closed curtains, and the air of thedeath chamber, as he entered, was like the touch of chilled iron to thewarm pulse of sleep. Without, a still dark night of November had frostedthe dead grass. 

The unappeasable curiosity of the living concerning the Great Transition, for the moment appeared to have swept all that was personal out of thewatcher's gaze, as she bent above the straightened body. And something ofthe peace there dawning on the cold, still face was reflected in her own. 

"You have never seen your father before. There he is. " She drew a deepsigh, as if she had been too intent to breathe naturally. All herself-consciousness suddenly was gone. And Paul remembered his dream, thathad goaded him out of sleep, and vanished with the shock of waking. Itgave him the key to this long-expected moment of confidence. 

"The old likeness has come back, " his mother repeated, with that newquietness which restored her to herself. 

"I dreamed of that likeness, " said Paul, "only it was muchstronger--startling--so that the room was full of whispers andexclamations as the neighbors--there were hundreds of them--filed past. And you stood there, mother, flushed, and talking to each person whopassed and looked at him and then at you; you said--you"--

Mrs. Bogardus raised her head. "I know! I have been thinking all night. AmI to do that? Is that what you wish me to do? Don't hesitate--to spareme. "

"Mother! I could not imagine you doing such a thing. It was like insanity. I wanted to tell you how horrible, how unseemly it was, because I was sureyou had been dwelling on some form--some outward"--

"No, " she said. "I know how I should face this if it were left to me. Butyou are my only earthly judge, my son. Judge now between us two. Ask of meanything you think is due to him. As to outsiders, what do they matter! Iwill do anything you say. "

"_I_ say! Oh, mother! Every hand he loved was against him--bruising hisgentle will. Each one of us has cast a stone upon his grave. But you tookthe brunt of it. You spoke out plain the denial that was in my coward'sheart from the first. And I judged you! I--who uncovered my father's soulto ease my own conscience, and put him to shame and torture, and you to atrial worse than death. Now let us think of the whole of his life. I havemuch to tell you. You could not listen before; but now he is listening. Ispeak for him. This is how he loved us!"

In hard, brief words Paul told the story of his father's sin andself-judgment; his abdication in the flesh; what he esteemed the rights tobe of a woman placed as he had placed his wife; how carefully he hadguarded her in those rights, and perjured himself at the last to leave herfree in peace and honor with her children. She listened, not weeping, butwith her great eyes shining in her pallid face. 

"All that came after, " said Paul, taking her cold hands in his--"after hislast solemn recantation does not touch the true spirit of his sacrifice. It was finished. My father died to us then as he meant to die. The bodyremained--to serve out its time, as he said. But his brain was tired. I donot think he connected the past very clearly with the present. I think youshould forget what has happened here. It was a hideous net of circumstancethat did it. "

"There is no such thing as circumstance, " said Mrs. Bogardus withloftiness. Her face was calm and sweet in its exaltation. "I cannot saythings as you can, but this is what I mean. I was the wife of hisbody--sworn flesh of his flesh. In the flesh that made us one I deniedhim, and caused his death. And if I could believe as I used to aboutpunishment, I would lock myself in that room, and for every hour hesuffered there, I would suffer two. And no one should prevent me, orhasten the end. And the feet of the young men that carried out my husbandwho lied to save me, should wait there for me who lied to save myself. Alllies are death. But what is a made-up punishment to me! I shall take it asit comes--drop by drop--slowly. "

"Mother--my mother! The fashion of this world does not last; but one thingdoes. Is it nothing to you, mother?"

"Have I my son--after all?" she said as one dreaming. 

The night lamp expired in smoke that tainted the cold air. Paul drew backthe curtains one by one, and let in the new-born day. 

"'Peace to this house, '" he said; "'not as the world giveth, '" his thoughtconcluded.