CHAPTER XIV
HI’S HOUN’ DAWG
It was Saturday and Hi Kitchell and Jim McBirney, having done their chores, met by appointment at the spring under the tulip trees where Azalea intended to build her bungalow when she became very rich.
It was a lovely spot and they threw themselves down in perfect content, their dogs near at hand, and looked off at what Hi called a “purty worl’.”
“It jes’ seems like everything worth speakin’ about hed come my way,” sighed Hi contently. “You-all remember what a pore little forsaken cuss I was, Jim, when me and ’Zalie came draggin’ along with that thar show of Sisson’s a year back an’ more?”
“’Taint more’n a year, Hi.”
“Seems like a century. An’ no sooner hed we laid eyes on your pa and ma than things began to go right. An’ now look at us. ’Zalie’s like your sister and gettin’ a tip-top education, and is off ridin’ the country over with the Carsons; and me and ma hev a home anybody would be proud to own, and that thar Industries business is lookin’ up more’n more every livelong day. Why we’re so happy we’re in danger of bustin’. I asked ma t’other day if she didn’t feel most like bustin’, and she said she did.”
“It’s a good place to live here-abouts,” agreed Jim. “Pleasant things have a way of happenin’ ’round here. If it wa’n’t for that dod-gasted hard luck of Annie Laurie’s, I’d think this was where the nicest folks in creation lived. But some one done her a mean, low-down trick.”
“It was that scowlin’, grumblin’ Disbrow,” averred Hi. “I know it. Ma says she feels it in her bones, and so do I, and Kitchell bones is simply great for givin’ pointers. I say, what’s the use in you and me loafin’ ’round here while that mis’able, sneakin’ houn’ gets off with Annie Laurie’s money? Ain’t we her friends and as nigh kin as she’s got? What say to you and me hikin’ out after that thar Disbrow an’ findin’ him and bringin’ him back to justice?”
Hi’s sharp black eyes sparkled with the high intent of protecting the friendless. The bright light of adventure shone round about him, and Jim thrilled to it. Here was a friend worth having—a friend like those knights of old of whom Azalea read to him, one who would go out and conquer. Jim stared off across the purple valley, rejoicing in his good fortune at living in days when there was still a man’s work to do in the world.
“Hi,” he breathed after a time, “I’m with you.”
“Then,” said Hi, with something of the air of an Arctic explorer about to embark on his hazardous voyage, “we must make ready. Thar’s no use in waitin’ around here, dreamin’ and sighin’ the way the rest of the town is doin’. Let’s get our grub together and be on our way.”
“I wish I could take Peter,” said Jim wistfully. Peter was his hound. “But he’s got such a sore foot I don’t dast. Ma, she doctors it up every morning and she says we’ll have to be mighty careful or we won’t have no dog at all—he’ll die from blood poisonin’.”
“It’s too bad,” agreed Hi, “but we-all ken take Bike.” Bike, Hi’s hound, wagged his tail in recognition of the attention paid him.
“It will make me feel awful bad for you to take Bike and me to be goin’ along without no dog at all,” mused Jim.
There seemed to be no limit to Hi’s chivalry to-day.
“Well then, by gum, I won’t take Bike,” he declared, his face lighting with the glow of sacrifice. Jim was not unappreciative.
“Honest, Hi!”
“Honest.”
“Well then, let’s send the dogs home and we can go right on from here. We don’t need no provisions. I’ve got some money—”
“So have I.”
“What’s the use of delayin’ then. Let’s set off.”
So the dogs were commanded to go to their respective homes, and with lowered tails and drooping ears, they obeyed. Bike writhed along on his belly, beating the ground with his tail. He actually shed tears of humiliation and depression, but Peter, more absorbed with the discomfort in his foot, limped lamely and obediently on his way toward home.
“Pore houn’s,” sighed Hi, “they sure are cast down.”
“Ain’t it just their luck,” Jim sympathized. “Pore critters.”
Both boys were talking their worst and enjoying it. This spang-up grammar was well enough to catch on to when a fellow was talking with Mrs. Carson, or even to Azalea, but there was such a thing as letting down and enjoying oneself when the ladies were out of the way. Men must be men now and then.
So, in all the freemasonry of their kind, the two set off across the mountain. Neither one would have confessed that the “wander-thirst” was on them too. But the truth was, Mr. Carson had set a most infectious example. Mountain folks have pretty hard work staying at home. The roads call, and they long to be up and away. It always seems as if something wonderful must be waiting for them over the next hill. Jim and Hi had the gypsy mood on them this day. They actually ran for a long time, taking the cut-offs that led them over the spur of the mountain to Mulberry Valley, which lay “over-yon” and which they had seldom visited, and then always under the guidance of some grown person who insisted on pushing them along and getting home again.
Getting home seemed to them just now as the last thing in the world that a fellow would care to do. What was the use in getting home when a person could run along paths bordered with trim huckleberry bushes, or rest on a stone where lichen had woven a pale green lace? There were partridge berries peeping up between dark green leaves; here was tender wintergreen; yonder the “sweet buds” were coming out, weighting the air with their fruity odor. Dear me, why should anybody go home?
There was an eagle hanging over the valley, strong, and calm, and sure. Three buzzards sat on a blasted pine and shook their evil heads; a king snake gave them a chase and got away from them in spite of their best endeavors. And still the little path went on and on. It passed by a deserted house, where the bats hung from the roof. It wound by wooded hills and fields that once had been tilled, but had perhaps proved too unfertile, and so been left; it crept on up the farther mountain,—the unknown mountain—and still coaxed, and lured, and solicited; and the boys kept on.
Their brown, dusty feet had grown weary and their throats were dry when at length they came upon a cabin. They weren’t sure at first whether it was lived in or not. The heavy shutters—there were no windows—were closed, but the door stood slightly ajar. The chimney, which was made of field stone held together with the red clay of the field, blossomed like a garden with ferns and vines. The yard was bare of grass, but the old stone wall round about it was overgrown with green things, though it was still so early in the year, and the myrtle and mimosa showed their green beside that of the laurel and rhododendron. There was a small well with a sweep, and on the bench lay a broken gourd which had been used as a drinking cup. But over the place was the deepest silence, save for one early bee which made a cheerful buzzing, and seemed to fairly boom, so still was the place.
“I say,” whispered Hi, “don’t it look spooky?”
“Maybe a hermit lives here,” Jim suggested.
“Or a skelington,” added Hi.
It was Hi who had the courage to push back the warped door and look in. Jim was a few feet behind him and he never forgot the yell of horror that came from Hi’s throat, a yell that had fear in it, fear for the next second’s happening. Jim heard a swishing and a hissing, and he knew. Neither formed the word “rattlers!” on their frozen tongues. Hi tried to leap backward and fell over a stub of a bush and lay prone. Jim seized his arm and dragged him along for a dozen feet, and even in the rush they could hear their hearts beating frantically. That swishing and hissing kept up. It seemed to grow louder. Hi turned himself and got on his feet like a monkey. They both ran without looking behind. And after they had started and had got away from the real danger, they began to fear imaginary evils. Panic was on them. With their blistered bare feet they sped on and on, taking no note of where they were going. Their throats, which had been dry to start with, became like paper. Their eyes bulged from their heads. They had started out great heroes, but they had undergone a transformation and were two terribly frightened and tired little boys.
Even as they sank exhausted beneath a pine tree they looked about them shudderingly for snakes, but seeing none they lay there and gasped, their hearts straining in their sides. Then, as their panting ceased, a soft noise struck their ears. It sounded very familiar, and yet in their utter bewilderment they could not at first tell what it was. The meaning penetrated first to Jim.
“A spring,” he whispered. “A spring!”
They made their way toward it, dragging their feet like weary dogs, and when they saw it, clear, cold and beautiful, gushing from the ground amid wild forget-me-nots, they sank on their knees and drank long. After that they lay still, staring at the sky. The world swam before them dreamily, the clouds rocked back and forth; they slept.
When they awoke it was dark. It was not just partly dark as it is most nights of the year. No, it was black. They might have been shut up in a black velvet box or lost in a large bottle of black ink. There was nothing above, below, around, so far as their sense could inform them. It was Jim who had opened his eyes first. At least, he thought he had opened them, but when he found he could see nothing at all he had his doubts about having done it. He felt of his eyelids. Yes, they were open, beyond doubt. Had he then suddenly gone blind? He couldn’t imagine why he should, and yet, judging from his present plight, it seemed probable.
“Hi!” he shouted, as if Hi were on the other side of a forty-acre lot.
Hi’s voice answered close at hand, sleepily. “Yep!”
“Hi, I believe I’ve gone blind. I can’t see nothing—not a blamed thing.”
There was a short silence.
“I can’t neither,” cried Hi. “Maybe we’re both blind.”
“It’s being so hungry, I reckon,” said Jim. “Don’t you think a fellah could get so run down from eatin’ nothing that he’d go blind?”
“I reckon he might,” sighed Hi.
Silence fell again. They could hear the needles as they fell from the trees, the low whispering of the spring, and the far-away sound of wind or rain, they were not sure which.
Then suddenly they knew that they were not blind. All the world was lit up—lit up terribly and then engulfed in darkness again. Then the thunder came, clamoring and roaring about them. They were mountain boys and they had heard thunder roar and rumble over the hills many times, but had it ever had such a frightful bellow as this? It kept on and on and before the first volley had quite died, again the world was lighted with that fiery light—that forked flame—and again the voice of the sky awoke the thousand voices of the hills.
“Oh, gosh!” groaned Hi.
“Ain’t there no place to hide?” demanded Jim with trembling voice.
No, there was no place to hide. The storm king owned everything around there that night. It was all his domain and he meant to do with it as he would. So he blasted an oak, and the boys saw it; and he cracked his horrid whip at the invisible horses of the air, and they rushed by screaming. And then the rain came; not drop by drop as rain should, but in drops that chased each other so that they became streams; in streams that became inverted fountains.
The boys couldn’t even call out to each other. They fought for breath as the furious winds whipped them and the drenching rain engulfed them almost like a wave. It was a cloudburst, they knew that much, and finally, from mere animal instinct, they turned their faces to the ground, wreathed their arms about their heads and lay prone. Still the lightning flashed and the thunder bellowed; still the winds wailed and the trees snapped. It seemed at last merely a question of keeping alive till it was over.
But by and by it was over. It ceased almost as suddenly as it had come, and weak as half-drowned rats the two boys got to their feet, and looking up into a clear sky, saw the morning star shining down at them.
“We’ve got to get home,” said Jim, breathing deep.
“Yes,” agreed Hi.
It was some time before they could find any sort of a trail whatever, but after a while they came upon one, though whether it had been made by human feet long since and overgrown, or whether it was merely a rabbit run they could not decide. However, they decided to take it. The dawn was flushing the sky and they could make their way without much difficulty now, so far as seeing was concerned, but their feet were blistered and their bodies felt as sore as if they had been pounded. They went on and on, doggedly.
“We’re bound to come to a road soon,” they kept telling each other.
“Oh, yes, we’ll get somewhere.”
And they got “somewhere,” beyond any manner of doubt. Lifting their eyes at length, they saw before them that frightful cabin of “rattlers,” and stealing to the door to greet the brightly shining sun was a fine, confident father of rattlers. Hi gave one despairing whoop and fled, Jim following, and once more they sped on, taking however an opposite direction from that of the night before and trying to keep their faces toward home. There was the mountain before them to cross, and then Mulberry Valley, and then there was Tennyson mountain to climb. It was really quite simple.
“Anybody ought to be able to do that,” said Hi stoutly.
But the trouble was that after an hour’s hard plodding they came to a sort of opening and thought they had reached a road at last, and there before them once more was the House of Rattlers. And that was the time they gave up and cried. They dared not stay near there, so they went on their way hastily, but not running now, sobbing as they went.
They were lost, that was all there was to it. They were quite completely lost on a mountain they never had visited before—a mountain where nobody lived and where the only neighborly things were rattle snakes.
They were both wondering if they were going to die there, to starve and be heard of no more. Of course, years and years from then their “skelingtons” might be found. But however interesting that might be for others, it really would do them no good at all, when you came to think of it.
Ugh, how chilly the morning air was! And how wet their clothes were! And how empty their stomachs! And the rattlers—the rattlers!
There was a strange, bell-like sound in the distance, a deep, musical, beautiful sound. It rang over the hills with a note at once sad and glad. The boys stopped in their tracks and listened. It came again, like church bells, only faster. It thrilled the two forlorn wanderers, and brought the light back to their faces.
“Bike!” shouted Hi. “It’s Bike. He’s followed us. Oh, Bike, Bike, here we are, you blessed old houn’ dawg! Here! Here!”
They put their fingers in their mouths and whistled, they shouted, they laughed, they hugged each other; and then, over a rise came Bike, wild-eyed with delight, large, it seemed, as a bear, and bursting with importance.
He leaped on them till he knocked them down; he insisted on licking their faces, on pretending to bite their calves, on lathering them as if they were puppies. He couldn’t have enough of them nor they of him. But after all, he came to his senses sooner than they.
“Enough of this,” he seemed to say. “For goodness sake, let’s be getting home.”
He turned his back on them and started over the rise, wagging his tail and giving vent to sharp, scolding barks.
“A fine lot of trouble you’ve put me to,” he appeared to be saying. “Hustle yourselves now and get home. Don’t you know your folks are worried to death about you? Such boys! Such boys! It wears a respectable hound out trying to take care of you.”
And the boys understood and agreed with him. So they followed meekly enough, limping first on one foot and then on the other and calling to him every few minutes not to go so fast.
They went on for hours and hours, as it seemed, but at last they stood beneath the tulip trees by the spring on Azalea’s plateau.
“Well,” said Hi, “this here is whar we part. We-all don’t seem to be bringin’ the Disbrows back to get their just punishment.”
“I reckon we’d better not say much about punishment,” grinned the leg-weary Jim. “So long, Hi. Hope it don’t hurt much.”
“Same to you,” called Hi. He and Bike were already on their way down the mountain, and Jim, tired almost to collapse, made his way up the road to where Ma McBirney paced back and forth, pouring out her soul in prayer.
But Pa McBirney seemed to have some feelings which did not come under the head of gratitude for his son’s return. He knew what such a night of torture meant to the dear woman beside him, who already had suffered too many shocks. He looked Jim over with a sternly parental eye.
“If you got what’s coming to you, son,” he said, “you’d be well lathered.”
“I know it, sir,” said Jim with conviction.
Pa hesitated. He was a gentle man.
“Well,” he said, “if you know it, and if you think you’ll remember it, latherin’ wouldn’t teach you nothing. Go in with your ma and get some food, and then wash yourself up and go to bed. Ma’d better give you some of that salve o’ hern for your feet. And Jim—”
“Yes, sir.”
“You watch out jest as hard as you can, and don’t grow up a plumb fool.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jim.
CHAPTER XV
THE VOICE IN THE MIST
It has been said that Mr. Carson set an example for the people at Lee which many were tempted to follow. And partly it was the spring calling them; partly it was an itching desire to find the Disbrows. Lee was pretty well disgusted with itself as time went on, for not starting after the absconding undertaker and his family immediately after their disappearance, and they told themselves they certainly would have done it if Mr. Carson hadn’t been so dead set against it. And he was put up to acting the way he did, they knew, by Annie Laurie, who was too soft-hearted altogether.
It was a little surprising, all things considered, that the Reverend Absalom Summers should have been the next after Hi and Jim to yield to the temptation to take to the hills. Resisting temptation, as his little wife pointed out to him, ought to be his specialty. But he contrived to down her argument.
“You don’t seem to understand my noble soul at all, Barbara,” he said. “My real reason for taking to the hills is that I want to visit my two uncles back on Longstreet Mountain.”
“But why should you visit them, Absalom, dear? Do you really care about seeing them? Aren’t they two quarrelsome old men?”
“Well, they are some quarrelsome, Barbara, and that’s why I think I ought to see them, carrying a dove of peace on my shoulder.”
“They’d kill a dove of peace and eat it, wouldn’t they?” she asked laughingly. “Don’t they shoot everything in sight?”
“Pretty nigh,” agreed Absalom. “They certainly do have nervous dispositions. They own a lot of land up there on Longstreet Mountain, and the two of them used to live side by side. But their chickens were so inquisitive about what was doing in the next yard, and they got so mixed up running through the fence and forgetting which place was home, that there was a row on early and late between my uncles. It was the same with the calves. If they wanted to break into a field and eat up the corn, they always picked out the field of the next door neighbor. And that made the brothers just dancing mad. Then once Uncle Ephriam shot a hound of Uncle Aaron’s—said he thought it was a timber wolf.
“And so it went. There was always trouble. When they heard I’d become a preacher they sent for me to come up and straighten things out. I stayed up there a month and talked things over and I couldn’t get either old stiff-neck to give an inch. So I worked out a plan. Aaron had a likely building site for his house, but Uncle Ephriam’s was on a slope and water ran into the cellar when it rained. Well, just in front of them was a deep ravine—mighty pretty it is too. I proposed that Ephriam should move across to the other side of that gulley. I told him if he would, I’d stay and help him put up his house. So Aaron bought Ephriam’s old house to use for a barn, and Ephriam moved—chickens, stock, truck and all—across the gulley. We got him a nice sizable house there, and settled him and his wife as comfortable as you please. It was altogether too much work for the calves and the chickens to get across that crack in the earth, and so everyone lived in peace.”
“That was fine. But why should you leave Jonathan and me to go to see them if they’re doing so well?”
“They aren’t doing so well as you might think, wife. No sooner had I got those families separated, by a convulsion of nature, so to speak, than they took to pining for each other.”
“Nonsense, Absalom.”
“It’s a fact, my dear. They were as lonely as owls. Said they didn’t have anyone to talk to, and that it wore them all out plunging up and down that gulley.”
“Well, what can you do about that? You don’t propose moving Uncle Ephriam back again, do you?”
“Not at all, Barbara, not at all. I merely propose making conversation easy and simple for them.”
“With a telephone?”
“Not at all. A telephone would be out of place in the hands of my reverend uncles. I can’t precisely tell you why, but you’ll have to take my word that it would. No, what I propose to do is to carry them megaphones.”
“Megaphones, Absalom!”
“Certainly. Megaphones will become them. They are sturdy, seafaring sort of men—”
“Why, they’ve never seen the sea!”
“Don’t be so literal, dear. They are sturdy, space-roaming, wilderness-faring men in whose hands megaphones will be appropriate. I shall strap one on each side of my horse and set forth—to-morrow.”
“But will you get your sermon prepared?”
“I shall prepare it while I’m riding. Seriously, Barbara, the wild man in me is uppermost. You have tried to civilize me. Our young son has labored to do the same thing. But you scratch a Russian and find a Tartar; and you scratch a mountain man and you find a rover.”
“And you’ve been scratched, wild man?”
“I have. I’m off to-morrow. Bear with me, dear. I’ll come back as tame as a house cat.”
Barbara looked at him with shining eyes.
“You’ll have a wonderful sermon,” she said. “I know you, dear. Go to your hills—”
“From whence,” broke in the Reverend Absalom, his voice changing, “cometh help.”
So away he went in the early morning, knapsack well filled, blankets rolled, and a megaphone dangling from each side of his excellent horse.
Yes, he was glad to leave domesticity and towns behind him; glad to be away from the sound of voices and from the need of proprieties. He was a hill man, after all, he told himself, and lifting his face to the sky he thanked God that he was. They satisfied him, these ancient mountains which once had been lofty peaks and which through all the changing centuries had crumbled and shrunken till they were the friendly little mountains that he knew. They were so old—so old and so full of secrets. And they satisfied his restless, longing, laughing, dreaming soul, the curious soul of Absalom Summers, which differed from all the other souls on earth. Yes, he mused, each soul must differ from another, as the stars in heaven differ.
On he rode through the long day, thinking, dreaming, living a deep and silent life. At night he made his meal, fed his horse, smoked his pipe and thought of his sermon. The stars rolled over him in their silent and majestic courses, and beneath them he knelt to pray for his wife and babe, those inestimably dear treasures of his, those lovely creatures of the hearth-side. They liked their roof; he liked his sky. Well, blessings on them, and might he be forgiven if he harbored too wild a nature in his bosom! It was not a silent prayer that the Reverend Absalom put up. Far from it. He shouted to the whispering pines; he addressed the distant stars; he felt as if he must send his voice beyond the barriers of silence and reach his God. For that was the kind of man the Reverend Absalom was.
Then, as trusting as a child in his mother’s arms, he laid him down to sleep. For he felt the “Everlasting Arms” about him.
The next morning he arose at sunup and went singing on his way. He breakfasted at about seven o’clock, and stimulated by his powerful cup of coffee—which, truth to tell, was a fearsome liquid—he pushed onward. The road he had chosen was difficult to keep and hard to traverse. There were, of course, easier ways of reaching Longstreet Mountain, but in order to reach them he would have had to take a train, and nothing was further from his inclination at present than riding by steam. He wanted just what he was having, the heave of good horseflesh beneath him.
The day passed without events other than the sort he desired: the lift of a bird from a bush, the rippling of a stream across his path, the nosing of the horse at the ford, a burst of laurel blossoms in a sunny path. He went on, whistling and singing. Oftenest it was his old, best-loved hymn: “A mighty fortress is our Lord.”
Along late in the afternoon a mist began to gather over the mountain. It blurred everything delicately; it put a soft, filmy veil over the face of the landscape and enhanced its beauty by so doing. But after a while it began to be a bit eerie. As the wanderer cooked his evening meal it seemed as if shadowy white figures drew near, bending over him, and then flitting away as he arose. It did no more than amuse him, of course. He knew the tricks of the mountain mist. But he couldn’t help remembering how terrified he had been once as a child when he had been out on a night much like this, and had had a five mile walk alone with a lantern in his hand, which seemed to summon ghostly figures from the roadside.
“It would be a bad night for a man with a bad conscience,” he said aloud. “He would think there were avenging spirits on his track, sure enough. Come to think of it, I’ve plenty of things to have a bad conscience about myself. I’d better be watching out or the goblins will get me. And whatever would wife Barbara and baby Jonathan do then, poor things!”
The place where he had lighted his camp fire was in a little hollow and the mist gathered very thickly there, so he concluded that it would be better to go on farther up the mountain. It was possible that he might find an airier place where the draft would keep the heavier clouds away. So once more he put his horse to the path and went on silently, rather weary, and heartily wishing that the night were fair.
He was very far from the beaten road, in a place so solitary that he could not hope to meet anyone, so it was with no little surprise that he found himself, suddenly, almost upon a group of human beings. They were sitting, three of them, around a fire, well wrapped from the chill. There was a sort of rude hut beside them, fashioned of saplings and thatched with pine boughs. Here, apparently, they slept. They were not then like himself, wanderers, but campers. Well, it was a quiet place for a camp, and no doubt a sightly one—
His thoughts broke off like a thread that is snapped. He recognized the persons at whom he was looking. They were the Disbrows! They were the fugitives. At first he thought of going right up to them, but something withheld him. He could hear Mrs. Disbrow’s voice, and he slid from his horse and having tied him, crept nearer with as much stealth and skill in silence as an Indian, that he might listen. There were things he felt that he must know, and that as Sam’s friend he had a right to know.
“I don’t mean to go on, pa,” Mrs. Disbrow was saying. “What’s the use of going on? Whatever would it mean for me but another house to look after, and me lacking the strength to do it? Hannah would drudge and drudge, and that’s all there’d be to it. Living like this there aren’t any pantry shelves to clean or doorsteps to scrub. That’s a great point to a woman with no elbow grease. You understand, pa, it’s been pretty dull for me these last few years back. You can’t tell what it is to lie awake all night wondering if the morning will ever come, and when the morning comes, hating it because the light tears your eyes out and the noise splits your ears.”
“But you seem to stand the light and the noise here well enough, ma.”
“So I do. That’s why I want to stay. The only noise is what the crickets and birds make, with now and then a bee humming or an owl screeching. And the light is green, coming through the trees. Why, it’s as if a thousand years had rolled off my back. There’s no one around wondering about me, and trying this trick and that to get a sight of me.”
“No one ever did that, ma,” cried out the shrill voice of Hannah. “That was just your imagination. It was your being sick made you think that way.”
“Well, however that may be, out here we’re free. Now I propose, since you’ve got some money, pa, that we move around here and there, like a nice family of bears—the father, and the mother and the baby bear.”
She gave a curious, unaccustomed laugh. Then suddenly she turned toward her husband, and Mr. Summers could see her wild eyes gleaming in the firelight.
“But what I can’t make out, Hector,” she said, “is where you got that money. Why don’t you talk out the way a husband should to a wife? Here we’ve been living so close to the wind that we hadn’t enough to satisfy us, and Hannah’s been going without enough to clothe her decently. Now, of a sudden, your pockets are full of money! What does it mean, Hector? And why did you clear out of Lee in the night? When you gave the word to go I was feeling so dull in my head that I didn’t care whether the thing was right or wrong. But now I seem to have come to life. I’ve got to thinking again, like I was a real human being. And Hector—”
Her voice carried on the air with the wild note of a loon.
“Hector!”
“Well, ma, go on, for goodness sake.”
“How did it come that you got that money just when Simeon Pace’s money disappeared? Tell me that, husband! Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with it! My life’s been queer and dark, but it’s been honest. You’ve turned out a different man from what I thought you’d be. I hoped on and on for you, but you didn’t get anywhere, and I got worn out and took to my bed and meant never to get out of it. But even when you’d taken all the spunk out of me I never thought you was anything but honest. Are you, Hector? Are you honest—or a thief?”
It wrung Summers’ heart; yet he knew that the time had come for judgment. He had been a boy of wild pranks and he loved a prank still. An idea came flashing into his head. He crept back to his horse, loosened one of the megaphones and put it to his mouth, and in that voice which had electrified great camp meetings, magnified many times by the horn, he bellowed into the mist:
“Disbrow, thief! Give back the money you stole! Make restitution! Return the money of the orphan! Simeon Pace is in his grave, and his orphan’s money is in your pocket! Disbrow, thief!”
The great megaphone waved up and down in the air, and the accusing voice was borne to the group around the fire, as if carried on winds from the furthermost heaven. In the white gloom, with the wreathing wraiths of the mist dancing about them, the dark cavern below, the sighing trees above, the monstrous voice, like that of an angry angel, besieged their ears. Summers was too far from them to see them cower, and he could not see their stricken faces. His heart secretly misgave him for what he might be doing to the woman and the girl, but he did not flinch for all that. He gave out one last call:
“Make restitution! To-morrow at sunrise set out upon your journey. Do not pause till wrong has been made right. This is the first warning. Beware the second!”
The mountain echoes caught it up and shouted the words back, while up and down the chasm below the roadway the mist figures writhed and climbed. Summers mounted his horse and stole back the way he had come till he reached the bottom of the gulch, then taking the path on the other side of it, he proceeded on his way. It was almost dawn when he drew rein, tethered his horse, and laid him down to sleep.
“I hope,” he said to his horse, “that I haven’t scared those poor women to death. But it had to be, you see—nothing else for it.” And then suddenly he burst into a wild torrent of laughter. It rolled out of him in waves; it shook him like a convulsion. And having eased his soul, he lay down and slept.
CHAPTER XVI
GOOD FOR EVIL
The Carsons and the Paces, with Azalea, came driving home one chilly evening in a light fall of rain. They were tired and cold and had altogether an after-the-picnic sort of feeling. Indeed, when Azalea, who was to stay in the valley for the night, and Annie Laurie had helped the aunts into the house, they found them so travelworn that they insisted that they should get into bed at once and have their suppers brought to them.
A few weeks before, Aunt Adnah would have perished rather than submit to such an indignity, no matter how comfortable she found it. And Aunt Zillah would not have indulged in such a luxury with her sister’s stern eye upon her. But more and more Annie Laurie’s determined will was having its way in that household, and when to her command was added Azalea’s importunities, the aunts yielded.
Sam had the fires burning for them in a few minutes, and as the old ladies undressed and toasted their shins before the blaze, and thought of the two competent young girls down in the kitchen who were preparing supper for them, they experienced the luxurious feeling of those who are old, well-loved, and carefully looked after.
“If they were girls who would be getting everything out of its place,” said Miss Zillah to Miss Adnah, “I don’t suppose we’d feel as comfortable as we do; but they take hold just as we would ourselves. I’m bound to say that I wouldn’t know how to stand on my feet to get supper to-night.”
“And here Annie Laurie has filled those new fangled water bottles for us, and looked out our warmest nightgowns. We certainly have a lot to be thankful for, Zillah. When brother passed away I thought that I would just naturally step in and take charge of things—I believed I had the strength for it and the brains for it,—but it seems it was not to be. Whether it was the shock of Simeon’s death or merely that I’m getting old, I wouldn’t undertake to say, but certainly I’m not the woman I was. Why, suddenly when I think to be the strongest, I find myself all shaky in the knees and confused in the head.”
“It’s just the nervous shock, sister. You’ll be all right by and by. Trouble is like sickness, it takes a while to recuperate from it.”
There was a knock at the door and Annie Laurie entered bearing a tray. Behind her was Azalea with another. Tea, toast, little golden omelettes, preserves and other dainties tempting to the appetites of two jaded old ladies appeared on the best dishes and the whitest napery that could be found in the Pace household.
“My, my, what a fuss you make over us,” said Aunt Adnah, disapprovingly. “I’m sure the common dishes would have done perfectly well, Ann.”
Annie Laurie shook her finger at her aunt.
“Don’t you call me Ann,” she laughed. “The best dishes are none too good for you two; and anyway, we’re celebrating because we’re home!”
Aunt Zillah narrowed her eyes in a way she had.
“You’re sure you love your home, child, now that there are only us two old souls in it, and that we’re so poor and all?”
“Of course I love my home,” declared Annie Laurie. “I should say I did! And we’re not going to be poor. I simply won’t be poor. And I don’t feel poor anyway. It’s so meachin to feel poor! Please don’t use the word, Aunt. How can you, when we have a fire like this and suppers as good as those on the trays, and when we can ask a friend in whenever we please, and go on lovely vacations? Poor!”
She gave a little shiver of disgust at the word.
“Well, I’m sure you do put heart into one,” sighed Aunt Zillah, as if she needed all the good cheer that anybody could spare her. “Sometimes I do think we’re falling off in our spirits, Adnah and I.”
The girls stood laughing and talking with the aunts a few minutes more, and then ran down to get their own suppers.
“Let’s eat it before the living room fire,” said Azalea. “We’ll put it on the sewing table.”
“And we’ll have Sam to eat with us. He simply must, that’s all, we’ve so much to tell him,” added Annie Laurie.
It was a much easier thing for Azalea to cook the supper than it was for Annie Laurie to persuade Sam to come in and eat with them. But the bright-faced girl, with her good will shining in her face, succeeded in overcoming his scruples. It was very hard for so social a creature as Sam to keep to himself, holding before himself the hard fact:
“I am the son of a man who is under suspicion. I must not be the friend of honest folk until I am proved of an honest family.”
To-night, at any rate, he permitted himself to forget. So, while the rain dashed against the windowpane, the three sat, warm and dry, in the familiar room and ate their supper, while the girls told stories of the curious people they had seen, and of the nice and interesting ones, and of dangers from which they had thrillingly escaped.
In the midst of it there came a knock at the door.
“I’ll go,” said Annie Laurie, “I’m nearest. Who can it be on such a night?”
She flung wide the door, and then as the other two turned to see who it was, she half closed it again, involuntarily, and stepped back. Something was the matter, Sam perceived as he started to his feet; then he saw Annie Laurie fling open the door again and back away from it.
“Come in,” she said in a strange voice.
And a man entered with a curiously swift movement, almost as if he were hunted. The rain ran from his clothes and his beard; he was covered with red clay, and he seemed to shrink from observation. Yet after a second he took off his hat, and then Sam saw that it was his father. Mr. Disbrow came into the room at last and closed the door behind him.
“Father!” Sam breathed, but Annie Laurie held up her hand and Sam said no more. She seemed for the moment to be carried out of herself, and to cease to be a very young and inexperienced girl, and to take on the grave look of one who was sitting in judgment.
Disbrow’s eyes, usually so wavering, fixed themselves on Annie Laurie’s. They were quite on a level, these two, as to height, but the man looked broken and beaten; the girl was strong and free and, in her simple way, proud. She stood there waiting, and Disbrow came on toward her.
“I’ve come to make it up to you, miss,” he said with trembling lips. “I’ve come to give back what I took from you.”
Above the crackling of the fire and the beating of the rain on the windows they heard her say:
The man tore off his dripping coat, and taking a knife from his pocket, began cutting at the lining. He took out package after package of bills and laid them on the table. And still he clipped, and still the money appeared from the wadded lining of the coat. Then he flung the coat on a chair.
“I’ll leave it there,” he said. “If there is more you can find it.” He folded his arms and looked at the girl.
“Well, that’s over,” he said. “I tried to go on with the plan I’d laid out for myself, but I couldn’t sleep for thinking I was a thief. And then a voice came from Heaven and told me so. Don’t smile at that, miss—my poor wife heard the voice, and Hannah heard it. I’ve left them out in the mountains and God only knows what will come to them, for I reckon you’ll be wanting to hand me over to the sheriff.”
“Oh, Mr. Disbrow,” cried Annie Laurie, “you know I’ll not do anything of the kind. I couldn’t do such a thing to an old neighbor, and to Sam’s father at that!”
Disbrow raised one arm in the air.
“I’ll make a clean breast of everything now,” he said in his deep quavering voice. “Sam ain’t my boy; nor he ain’t my wife’s boy. He’s taken from the asylum, Sam is. We thought we wasn’t going to have a child, and we took him and never told him. Anybody could see he wa’n’t our boy, if they’d had sense.”
Annie Laurie half turned. There was a consuming pity in her heart, and a great hope that Sam would not disappoint her. And he did not. He took three strides and stood by the man he had all his life called father.
“I reckon we won’t go back on the relationship,” he said. “If you took me out of an asylum and cared for me when I was little, I don’t mean to go back on you just now, sir, when you’re—when you’re down on your luck.”
“He’s not down on his luck,” said Annie Laurie in her clear tones. “He’s a lucky man to have the courage to bring back the thing he took that wasn’t his, Sam. Not everyone could have done it. You ought to feel proud of a father who could do that, Sam.”
“I am,” said Sam. “I’m mighty proud of him.”
Their youth, and the generosity of their youth, their desire to do the best they could for each other’s sake, had winged them up to that high place where Mercy sits. Azalea, watching them, thrilled to think they were her friends. They were doing precisely what Ma McBirney would have wished them to do if she had been there to advise them. They were not being just—they were much, much better than just. They were merciful. Annie Laurie went on:
“I don’t know how much money there is there, sir,” she said, pointing to the pile of bills on the table, “but I am sure there is a good deal and that you have given me back all you took.”
“All but two hundred dollars, miss. I gave Sam a hundred, and I used a hundred myself. I’ll pay it back some day, if I can.”
“What I was going to say was that I want you to count out a thousand dollars of that money for yourself. I’m not going to lend it to you. I don’t want you to go on thinking you have a debt like that. I know you’ve had a hard time, Mr. Disbrow. Father used to speak of it and feel sorry; and I’ve felt dreadfully sorry for you times and times. Now, you’re to take a thousand and just pretend, if you like, that my father willed it to you, and then you’re to go away where you can begin over with a little shop, or farm, and make your way.”
Pretend that Simeon Pace had willed it to him—Simeon Pace whom he had hated because Pace was a successful man and he an unsuccessful one! And Pace had felt sorry for him! But if that was the case, why hadn’t he helped him? Yet Hector Disbrow knew why—he knew it was because of his lazy ways and his bitter tongue, and for the first time in his life he saw himself as his neighbors had seen him, as a hang-dog man whom it was anything but pleasant to meet. Yes, he had missed the road, someway. He hadn’t known how to find the House of Good Will. He had broken his wife’s spirit, and had darkened the lives of the two children who lived beneath his roof. He had made a failure of everything—had even sunk to be a thief. And now here was this girl giving him another chance. And Sam was saying that he’d still be his son!
He was cold and hungry, worn with sleeplessness, shaken with the memory of the terrible voice that had cried in the mist, and this unexpected kindness was too much for him. He had not meant to do it—did not know that he ever could do such a thing—but he burst into the sobs of a broken man, and when Sam had led him to a chair he dropped his head on the table and wept.
They talked together, the four of them, when Mr. Disbrow had grown calmer. Azalea would have left them, but Annie Laurie wanted her to stay. She held her hand and kept her close beside her.
“You understand everything, Azalea,” she whispered. “You don’t seem surprised at good times or at bad times, dear. You take things as they come. Stay with me, Azalea, I need you very much.”
“What will you do, miss?” Disbrow had asked. “Will you let the people know how you got your money back?”
Annie Laurie thought a moment.
“Don’t you think they have been suspecting you, Mr. Disbrow?” she asked.
The man nodded miserably.
“There wa’n’t a man in town would shake hands with me,” he confessed.
“And don’t you think,” went on the girl, “that they thought it fine of Sam to give up his school and to come back here and help out the aunts and myself?”
“They must have thought he was trying to give a square deal,” said Disbrow.
“Well, then,” Annie Laurie went on, holding tight to Azalea’s hand to gather courage, “I think I ought to tell them. It will let them know you were honest in your heart after all, and it will make them give Sam credit for what he’s done. I’m sure that’s the right way, Mr. Disbrow. When I was naughty I used to like to be punished—it made me feel fair and honest again. And you’ll feel better if the neighbors know. That will be your punishment. And what’s more, it will explain everything. I don’t want to have to tell a lie when I say how I got my money back. I never yet told a lie and I don’t want to begin now.”
The man bowed his head and sat staring into the fire.
“I reckon what you say is right,” he admitted.
Azalea had placed a heaping plate of food before him. She made hot coffee and urged him to drink it. And she found a pouch of tobacco and forced that on him. His clothes had dried before the hearty fire, and when he had lighted his pipe he began to feel master of himself again.
“I think, dad,” said Sam, “that the best thing for you to do is to get out of here to-night before you’re seen. I’ve some heavy new boots that you can wear and you can have my raincoat and sou’wester. That’s my advice—hit the trail to-night and get so far out of the way that none of your old neighbors will meet you. Settle in some live town over the mountain; put mother in a nice, light, little house—and whatever you do, don’t have green shades to the windows—and maybe she’ll get well again.”
“She’s better now,” said Mr. Disbrow. “Fifty percent better. But of course she looks with contempt on me. I don’t know whether she’ll let me go back to her or not, Sam.”
“Mother!” cried Sam. “Of course she will! You go back and don’t take no for an answer. You-all just hike over the mountain to a new place and get a new start all ’round. And one of the first things is to get Hannah’s eyes straightened. She can’t enjoy herself the way she is. It just spoils her life.”
“Yes, it does, Mr. Disbrow,” put in Azalea. “It makes her so shy that it’s terrible for her. Do say you’ll have her eyes made right.”
Disbrow looked up at Azalea with something almost like a smile. She was bending forward pleading with him, her own odd, intense look on her face. She did indeed seem to have a way of understanding the troubles of people.
“I’ll do it, miss,” he said, “and I’ll tell Hannah you-all told me to.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Mr. Disbrow turned his eyes on Sam and a deep flush spread over his face.
“It’s all right for you to say you’ll stand by me, son,” he said, “but if I go sneakin’ off and hidin’ away, how am I going to be able to stand by you? What will ’come of you, anyway?”
“Now don’t worry about me, sir,” Sam said independently; “I’ll get on somehow.”
“Oh, it’s going to be easy for Sam,” Annie Laurie broke in enthusiastically. “You see it’s this way. Now I have my money I’ll be able to pay for all the work he’s been doing for me, and he’ll keep right on working and saving up his money, and next October he’ll go back to the Rutherford Academy. It’s not so far away but that he can afford to run down here every week or two to go over the books, and he’ll get some good man in to take his place while he’s away. Vacations, he can take charge himself. Oh, we’ll get on now, Mr. Disbrow, both Sam and I, and we’ll have plenty of schooling too.”
Hector Disbrow looked at the tall boy sitting beside him and at the bright-faced girl who had spoken, and started to say something, but thought better of it and put his hand up to his mouth instead.
“Oh, yes,” he heard Azalea murmur. “They’ll get on now. Things are coming all right for them just as they have for me. There’s an end to trouble, isn’t there, if you just hang on and wait?”
“Well, there is, miss,” agreed Mr. Disbrow. “And now I reckon I better take the advice you all gave me and hike.”
“Are you going to walk, sir?” Sam asked.
“No, I’ve got one of the horses hid back here a ways. I’ll slip on him and get up the mountain before daybreak. Your ma and Hannah will be worrying about me, I reckon. Ma’s down on me, but that won’t keep her from worrying about me, you know.”
Sam nodded.
“They’re sleeping in a little tent I rigged up for them—kind of half house, half tent. Durn it, I wish I could buy something to take to ’em. The food supply’s getting mighty low.”
“Have you saddle bags on your horse, Mr. Disbrow?” Annie Laurie asked.
“I reckon,” said Disbrow dryly, ashamed to test her generosity further.
“Then drive up to the storehouse door and we’ll be out with a lantern. I’ve enough food to feed a little army and you-all mustn’t go hungry while that’s the case.”
He avoided her look as he thanked her. Was she going to remember her offer to him of a thousand dollars? She surely was.
“Azalea,” she said, “count out the money I promised Mr. Disbrow.”
Azalea turned to the table where the fascinating rolls lay. There was indeed, much of it. Most of the bills were of the hundred dollar denomination. None of the children had seen anything like it—it was like looking into Aladdin’s cave to stand there beside that old table with rolls of bank notes. Perhaps each one of the young persons wished that it had been in gold instead of paper money, but even as it was it thrilled them. Azalea’s fingers trembled, as slowly and accurately she counted out the ten one hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Annie Laurie, who in turn gave them to Mr. Disbrow. He would have liked, in the shamed soul of him, to make some sort of a joke of it, but he could not and the cheap words he tried to speak died on his lips.
“Thank you—thank you,” was all he said.
“It’s not because you brought back my money,” Annie Laurie added, with something of the stern accent of her Aunt Adnah; “it’s because you’re an old neighbor, as I said, and because I’ve known you ever since I was a little girl and I have seen that things were hard for you. Most of all, it’s because Sam would like me to do it. That’s so, isn’t it, Sam; you like me to do it?”
“Oh, Annie Laurie,” Sam cried, choking, “I like you to do it.”
He lifted the old coat from the chair and helped his father into it, but it was soaking wet and he flung it down again.
“Wait,” he said; “I’ll be back with the dry things in a minute.”
So in the new, dry boots, a reefer, raincoat and storm hat—fed, warmed, forgiven, the man who had so failed went out from Annie Laurie’s door.
“We’ll be waiting at the storehouse for you,” she called after him. And half an hour later, with his saddle bags well filled, he was off up the mountain, never to come into their lives again.
“Come back by the fire,” pleaded Azalea. “Come, Sam, come back and get warm before you go to bed.”
“I don’t see how it can be so chilly again after all the lovely days we’ve had,” Annie Laurie remarked. She was deeply moved and glad of the opportunity to talk about something besides the man who had just ridden away from them.
So the three went in and sat before the fire.
“Oh, Sam,” said Azalea, “you didn’t ask Mr. Disbrow who your father really was.”
“I don’t suppose he knew,” Sam said, “and I’m not sure I want to.” He dropped his head in his hands and sat staring at the dying fire.
“Oh, well,” Annie Laurie said, “America’s for individuals. That’s what Mr. Summers says and that’s what I think too. And as an individual, Sam, you’ll pass muster, eh?”
Sam laughed rather bitterly.
“Oh,” he half groaned, “I wish—”
“What?” asked Azalea.
“Oh, I don’t know what. I was just thinking what a queer, lonely trio we are—orphans, the three of us.”
“Yes,” said the girls, “that’s so.”
They sat for a time in silence, each absorbed in thought. The fire crackled a little now and then, and sank lower and lower. By and by Annie Laurie spoke softly—
“Yes,” she said, “we’re orphans, but I reckon we’ll be taken care of.”
“Oh, yes,” murmured Azalea’s soft voice. “I’m sure of it. Why Ma McBirney—”
“The rest of us have no Ma McBirney,” Sam reminded her.
But after all, though they were pensive, they were not unhappy. The feeling that they were close and trusted friends comforted them. High adventure seemed to be before them. The fortune, so curiously lost and so strangely regained lay there on the table by them. Sam and Azalea wondered that Annie Laurie did not count it to find out how much it was, but she seemed oddly indifferent to that fact. Only after a time she arose, brushed the bills into her apron and stood for a moment smiling.
“Sam,” she said shyly, “creep up to the attic, softly, so as not to disturb the aunts, and bring me down dad’s old tin arm!”
“Oh!” cried Sam, horrified.
“Please,” begged the girl.
So Sam brought it and the three laid the rolls of bills neatly within it.
“It will comfort father,” said Annie Laurie quaintly, “but to-morrow I’m going to put it in the bank.”
CHAPTER XVII
AZALEA’S PARTY
Baby Jonathan had just been stung by one of Pa McBirney’s bees.
“I don’t like the way he kisseth,” he screamed, standing beside the clump of golden glow. “I don’t like it a bit.”
“I should think not, indeed, mamma’s own honey-bird,” soothed Mrs. Barbara, dashing for him and gathering him into her arms. “He thought you were a flower, son-son, and just lighted on you.”
“He kisseth too hard,” sobbed Jonathan, plunging his golden head into the hollow of his mother’s arm. “I don’t want to play with him any more, ever.”
“What a shame that he should be stung at his first party,” said his mother indignantly, as she carried him to the seat at the McBirney outlook where she had been sitting with young Richard Heller, Sam Disbrow’s friend—the one who had spoken the cruel-kind words of truth to him which had sent him away from the Rutherford Academy without so much as putting his name on the register. They had been talking about Sam now, and when Mrs. Summers had plastered clay over the wounded cheek of her son, and had soothed him with many kisses, they resumed their conversation.
“It’s going to come all right with him next term,” Dick said to Mrs. Summers. “All the fellows in the country who know him at all realize what a brick he’s been, staying right here and looking his trouble in the face and helping the Paces out the way he did. Why, some of the men wanted him to change his name when it turned out that Disbrow was such a thief, but he wouldn’t do it. He said he’d promised his dad—he will call him that—to stick to him, and that it wouldn’t be keeping his word to take another name. He said Disbrow was as good a name as any if he made it good. So he’ll be given a hearty reception when he comes back to Rutherford. I’ve frozen onto the room next to mine there at the Ballenger dormitories and I’m going to get the prefect to put him in there. The fellows shall see that he and I are friends, anyway. I don’t know as that counts for such a tremendous lot, but I’ll let it stand for all it will.”
“Bless you,” said Mrs. Summers, turning her bright smile on the lad. “I can’t tell you what it means to me that my Sam is going to be happy. As you know, he’s been living with us the past few months, and never, never did I see a boy who tried harder to do what was right. But, dear me, that isn’t all. I’ve known good folk who almost wore me out. But Sam is charming. Now that he’s happy once more he’s the very life of the place, and that’s saying a good deal of a house where my husband lives. Besides, Jonathan rather keeps things going. Altogether, I suppose we’re the noisiest and the happiest lot in Lee.”
“I dare say you are,” smiled the youth admiringly. “I know Sam’s a wonder at keeping things humming. He’s been like that from the time he was a little boy, and I never could make out how such a live one could belong to a sour, down-in-the-mouth family like the Disbrows. It was quite a relief to me when I found he wasn’t really related to them after all, but had just been dropped in the nest, so to speak.”
“It was a relief to everyone who cared for him, I imagine,” Mrs. Summers said. “But am I not keeping you here, Dick, away from the young people?”
“I wouldn’t stay here if I didn’t want to, Mrs. Summers,” Dick replied gallantly. “You see I don’t know these girls very well, but Sam wanted me to come up with him, and Azalea was good enough to say she’d love to have me, so of course I came. I’ve often ridden by the McBirneys and thought what a delightful little place it was, but I didn’t suppose I’d ever be coming to a birthday party here.”
“Well, naturally you wouldn’t have supposed it. There are you in your fine, handsome home, the banker’s son, all of your paths running in a different direction from those of the McBirneys, yet I doubt if ever in your life you visited a house where there was more real courtesy and hospitality than there is here.”
“Oh, I’m sure of that, Mrs. Summers. And then Azalea—isn’t she a wonder? She fascinates everybody. As my mother was saying this morning, if ever there was a girl who would make you forget all about social distinction and just join in on a happy human basis to have a good time—all hands ’round—that person is Azalea. Of course, as mother reminded me, Azalea came from as cultivated a family as ever lived in this district, although she is now to all intents the daughter of these mountain people.”
“It’s a privilege,” said Barbara Summers, “to live with Mrs. McBirney, and anyone who has the sense to get the most out of it will grow up to be good and patient and wise.”
Perhaps these virtues were not the ones which most appealed to Dick Heller at that period of his life, but however that may be, he could not keep his eyes off the mountain girl. He could see her in her white, hand-wrought frock, her hair blown about her dark face, flashing here and there with her friends. He saw her run to serve some one who was merely driving along the road—for the road over Tennyson Mountain to Lee ran quite through the McBirney yard, as has been said before. It was evident that the McBirney’s were asking everyone who passed to congratulate them on their adopted daughter’s fifteenth birthday, and in return they were served with the drink of sweetened limes and the honey cake which Ma McBirney had prepared for the occasion.
And there was Pa McBirney in his white linen clothes—they had been his father’s—talking with Mr. Carson, in his smart white flannels; and Miss Adnah and Miss Zillah in new figured lawns, carrying their old fringed parasols bought years before on a great occasion at Charleston; and near them was Mrs. Kitchell with the younger children, brown and strong, and quite in the spirit of the occasion; and Hi and Jim were putting boards on saw horses, ready for the feast; and Carin and Annie Laurie were running down the road to welcome some freshly arrived guests.
“I say,” boomed the great voice of the Reverend Absalom Summers, “there never was another spot like this one! Now, was there ever, anywhere? When I get up here I feel just like a boy, I’m so happy—why, I’m just silly with happiness. I like the way the grass smells, and the road winds, and the spring gushes, and the flowers blossom, and the clouds sail, and the valley lies, and Mrs. McBirney cooks, and Mr. McBirney tells stories, and Jim whistles, and I’ll be plagued if I don’t like everything about it.”
“Well, be calm, Absalom dear,” smiled his wife. “You don’t have to hoot like an owl because you’re happy.”
“You know how to stop the hooting of an owl?” demanded the irrepressible man of the company in general. “You just stand it as long as you can without swearing and then you take off your right slipper and put it on your left foot and the owl will stop. I’ve tried it dozens of times—and the owl always stopped.”
“Git along!” called a voice from somewhere up among the trees. “That way don’t compare with my way.”
“Who is that challenging me?” roared Mr. Summers. But he had no need to ask. It was Haystack Thompson who was dropping down on them from somewhere up in the mountain, and who of course had his fiddle under his arm. For to go to a party without a fiddle was something of which Mr. Thompson never yet had been guilty.
“What’s your receipt for stopping a hootin’ owl, Mr. Bones?” demanded Mr. Summers.
“Why,” answered Haystack seriously, “you jest heat a poker white hot and wave it in the air three times and they’ll stop clean off.”
Absalom Summers shook his great fist under Haystack’s nose—“What’s the use in trying to force a fool superstition like that down our throats, Thompson?” he roared. “Changing slippers is the only up-to-date, scientific way and Heller here, who’s been to school, can tell you so.”
But Haystack refused to yield an inch. A heated poker was the thing for him, he said.
“A fiddle’s the thing for you, Mr. Thompson,” cried Mrs. Carson. “I don’t believe you know how to handle anything else—not even a porridge spoon.”