The Bishop's flock consisted of two distinct classes: Cottontowners and Hillites.
“There's only a fair sprinklin' of Hillites that lives nigh about here,” said the Bishop, “an' they come because it suits them better than the high f'lutin' services in town. When a Christian gits into a church that's over his head, he is soon food for devil-fish.”
The line of demarcation, even in the Bishop's small flock, was easily seen. The Hillites, though lean and lanky, were swarthy, healthy and full of life. “But Cottontown,” said the Bishop, as he looked down on his congregation—“Cottontown jes' naturally feels tired.”
It was true. Years in the factory had made them dead, listless, soulless and ambitionless creatures. To look into their faces was like looking into the cracked and muddy bottom of a stream which once ran.
Their children were there also—little tots, many of them, who worked in the factory because no man nor woman in all the State cared enough for them to make a fight for their childhood.
They were children only in age. Their little forms were not the forms of children, but of diminutive men and women, on whose backs the burden of earning their living had been laid, ere the frames had acquired the strength to bear it.
Stunted in mind and body, they were little solemn, pygmy peoples, whom poverty and overwork had canned up and compressed into concentrated extracts of humanity. The flavor—the juices of childhood—had been pressed out.
“'N no wonder,” thought the Bishop, as he looked down upon them from his crude platform, “for them little things works six days every week in the factory from sun-up till dark, an' often into the night, with jes' forty minutes at noon to bolt their food. O God,” he said softly to himself, “You who caused a stream of water to spring up in the wilderness that the life of an Ishmaelite might be saved, make a stream of sentiment to flow from the heart of the world to save these little folks.”
Miss Patsy Butts, whose father, Elder Butts of the Hard-shell faith, owned a fertile little valley farm beyond the mountain, was organist. She was fat and so red-faced that at times she seemed to be oiled.
She was painfully frank and suffered from acute earnestness.
And now, being marriageable, she looked always about her with shy, quick, expectant glances.
The other object in life, to Patsy, was to watch her younger brother, Archie B., and see that he kept out of mischief. And perhaps the commonest remark of her life was:
“Maw, jus' look at Archie B.!”
This was a great cross for Archie B., who had been known to say concerning it: “If I ever has any kids, I'll never let the old'uns nuss the young'uns. They gits into a bossin' kind of a habit that sticks to 'em all they lives.”
To-day Miss Patsy was radiantly shy and happy, caused by the fact that her fat, honest feet were encased in a pair of beautiful new shoes, the uppers of which were clasped so tightly over her ankles as to cause the fat members to bulge in creases over the tops, as uncomfortable as two Sancho Panzas in armor.
“Side-but'ners,” said Mrs. Butts triumphantly to Mrs. O'Hooligan of Cottontown,—“side-but'ners—I got 'em for her yistiddy—the fust that this town's ever seed. La, but it was a job gittin' 'em on Patsy. I had to soak her legs in cold water nearly all night, an' then I broke every knittin' needle in the house abut'nin' them side but'ners.
“But fashion is fashion, an' when I send my gal out into society, I'll send her in style. Patsy Butts,” she whispered so loud that everybody on her side of the house heard her—“when you starts up that ole wheez-in' one gallus organ, go slow or you'll bust them side-but'ners wide open.”
When the Bishop came forward to preach his sermon, or talk to his flock, as he called it, his surplice would have astonished anyone, except those who had seen him thus attired so often. A stranger might have laughed, but he would not have laughed long—the old man's earnestness, sincerity, reverence and devotion were over-shadowing. Its pathos was too deep for fun.
Instead of a clergyman's frock he wore a faded coat of blue buttoned up to his neck. It had been the coat of an officer in the artillery, and had evidently passed through the Civil War. There was a bullet hole in the shoulder and a sabre cut in the sleeve.
No one had ever heard the Bishop explain his curious surplice but once, and that had been several years before, when the little chapel, by the aid of a concert Miss Alice gave, contributions from the Excelsior Mill headed by Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley, and other sources had been furnished, and the Bishop came forward to make his first talk:
“This is the only church of its kind in the worl', I reckin',” he said. “I've figured it out an' find we're made up of Baptis', Metherdis', Presbyterian, 'Piscopalian, Cam'elites an' Hard-shells. You've 'lected me Bishop, I reckon, 'cause I've jined all of 'em, an' so far as I know I am the only man in the worl' who ever done that an' lived to tell the tale. An' I'm not ashamed to say it, for I've allers foun' somethin' in each one of 'em that's a little better than somethin' in the other. An' if there's any other church that'll teach me somethin' new about Jesus Christ, that puffect Man, I'll jine it. I've never seed a church that had Him in it that wa'n't good enough for me.”
The old man smiled in humorous retrospection as he went on:
“The first company of Christians I jined was the Hard-shells. I was young an' a raw recruit an' nachully fell into the awkward squad. I liked their solar plexus way of goin' at the Devil, an' I liked the way they'd allers deal out a good ration of whiskey, after the fight, to ev'ry true soldier of the Cross—especially if we got our feet too wet, which we mos' always of'ntimes gen'ally did.”
This brought out visible smiles all down the line, from the others at the Hard-shells and their custom of foot-washing.
“But somehow,” went on the old man, “I didn't grow in grace—spent too much time in singin' an' takin' toddies to keep off the effect of cold from wet feet. Good company, but I wanted to go higher, so I drapt into the Baptis' rigiment, brave an' hones', but they spen' too much time a-campin' in the valley of the still water, an' when on the march, instid of buildin' bridges to cross dry-shod over rivers an' cricks, they plunge in with their guns stropped to their backs, their powder tied up in their socks in their hats, their shoes tied 'round their necks an' their butcher-knife in their teeth. After they lan' they seem to think it's the greates' thing in the worl' that they've been permitted to wade through water instead of crossin' on a log, an' they spen' the balance of their time marchin' 'roun' an' singin':
“Don't want to fly to heaven—want to swim there. An' if they find too much lan' after they get there, they'll spen' the res' of eternity prayin' for a deluge.
“Bes' ole relig'un in the worl', tho,—good fighters, too, in the Lord's cause. Ole timey, an' a trifle keerless about their accoutrements, an' too much water nachully keeps their guns rusty an' their powder damp, but if it comes to a square-up fight agin the cohorts of sin, an' the powder in their pans is too damp for flashin', they'd jes' as soon wade in with the butcher-knife an' the meat axe. I nachully out-grow'd 'em, for I seed if the Great Captain 'ud command us all to jine armies an' fight the worl', the Baptis' 'ud never go in, unless it was a sea-fight.
“From them to the Cam'elites was easy, for I seed they was web-footed, too. The only diff'rence betwix' them an' the Baptis' is that they are willin' to jine in with any other rigiment, provided allers that you let them 'pint the sappers an' miners an' blaze out the way. Good fellers, tho', an' learned me lots. They beats the worl' for standin' up for each other an' votin' allers for fust place. If there's a promotion in camp they want it; 'n' when they ain't out a-drillin' their companies they're sho' to be in camp 'sputin' with other rigiments as to how to do it. Good, hones' fighters, tho', and tort me how to use my side arms in a tight place. Scatterin' in some localities, but like the Baptises, whenever you find a mill-dam there'll be their camp an' plenty o' corn.
“Lord, how I did enjoy it when I struck the Methodis' rigiment! The others had tort me faith an' zeal, but these tort me discipline. They are the best drilled lot in the army of the Lord, an' their drill masters run all the way from wet-nurses to old maids. For furagin' an' free love for ev'rything they beats the worl', an' they pay mo' 'tenshun to their com'sary department than they do to their ord'nance. They'll march anywhere you want 'em, swim rivers or build bridges, fight on ship or sho', strong in camp-meetin's or battle songs, an' when they go, they go like clockwuck an' carry their dead with 'em!
“The only thing they need is an incubator, to keep up their hennery department an' supply their captains with the yellow legs of the land. Oh, but I love them big hearted Methodists!
“I foun' the Presbyterian phalanx a pow'ful army, steady, true an' ole-fashioned, their powder strong of brimstone an' sulphur an' their ordnance antique. Why, they're usin' the same old mortars John Knox fired at the Popes, an' the same ole blunderbusses that scatter wide enough to cover all creation an' is as liable to kick an' kill anything in the rear as in front. They won't sleep in tents an' nothin' suits 'em better'n being caught in a shower on the march. In battle they know no fear, for they know no ball is goin' to kill you if you're predistined to be hung. In the fight they know no stragglers an' fallers from grace.
“Ay, but they're brave. I jined 'em Sunday night after the battle of Shiloh, when I saw one of their captains stan' up amid the dead an' dyin' of that bloody field, with the shells from the Yankee gun-boats fallin' aroun' him. Standin' there tellin' of God an' His forgiveness, until many a po' dyin' soldier, both frien' an' foe, like the thief on the cross, found peace at the last hour.
“Befo' I jined the 'Piscopal corps I didn't think I cu'd stan' 'em—too high furlutin' for my raisin'. They seemed to pay mo' attenshun to their uniforms than their ordnance, an' their drum-majors outshine any other churches' major generals. An' drillin'? They can go through mo' monkey manoeuvers in five minutes than any other church can in a year. It's drillin'—drillin' with 'em all the time, an' red-tape an' knee breeches, an' when they ain't drillin' they're dancin'. They have signs an' countersigns, worl' without end, ah-men. An' I've knowed many of them to put all his three months' pay into a Sunday uniform for dress parade.
“Weepons? They've got the fines' in the worl' an' they don't think they can bring down the Devil les' they shoot at him with a silver bullet. Everything goes by red-tape with 'em, an' the ban'-wagon goes in front.
“But I jined 'em,” went on the old man, “an' I'll tell you why.”
He paused—his voice trembled, and the good natured, bubbling humor, which had floated down the smooth channel of his talk, vanished as bubbles do when they float out into the deep pool beyond.
“Here,” he said, lifting his arm, and showing the coat of the Captain of Artillery—“this is what made me jine 'em. This is the coat of Cap'n Tom, that saved my life at the risk of his own an' that was struck down at Franklin; an' no common man of clay, as I be, ever befo' had so God-like a man of marble to pattern after. I saw him in the thick of the fight with his guns parked an' double-shotted, stop our victorious rush almos' up to the river bank an' saved Grant's army from defeat an' capture. I was on the other side, an' chief of scouts for Albert Sidney Johnston, but I see him now in his blue Yankee coat, fightin' his guns like the hero that he was. I was foolish an' rushed in. I was captured an' in a prison pen, I drawed the black ball with 'leven others that was sentenced to be shot. It was Cap'n Tom who came to me in the early dawn of the day of the execution an' said: 'They shall not shoot you, Bishop—put on my blue coat an' go through the lines. I owe much to my country—I am giving it all.
“'I owe something to you. They shall not shoot you like a dog. I will tell my colonel what I have done to-morrow. If they think it is treason they may shoot me instead. I have nothing to live for—you, all. Go.'
“I have never seed him sence.
“We are mortals and must think as mortals. If we conceive of God, we can conceive of Him only as in human form. An' I love to think that the blessed an' brave an' sweet Christ looked like Cap'n Tom looked in the early dawn of that morning when he come an' offered himself,—captain that he was—to be shot, if need be, in my place—so gran', so gentle, so brave, so forgivin', so like a captain—so like God.”
His voice had dropped lower and lower still. It died away in a sobbing murmur, as a deep stream purls and its echo dies in a deeper eddy.
“It was his church an' I jined it. This was his coat, an' so, let us pray.”
There passed out of the church, after the service, a woman leading a boy of twelve.
He was a handsome lad with a proud and independent way about him. He carried his head up and there was that calmness that showed good blood. There was even a haughtiness which was pathetic, knowing as the village did the story of his life.
The woman herself was of middle age, with neat, well-fitting clothes, which, in the smallest arrangement of pattern and make-up, bespoke a natural refinement.
Her's was a sweet face, with dark eyes, and in their depths lay the shadow of resignation.
Throughout the sermon she had not taken her eyes off the old man in the pulpit, and so interested was she, and so earnestly did she drink in all he said, that any one noticing could tell that, to her, the plain old man in the pulpit was more than a pastor.
She sat off by herself. Not one of them in all Cottontown would come near her.
“Our virtue is all we po' fo'ks has got—if we lose that we ain't got nothin' lef',” Mrs. Banks of grass-widow fame had once said, and saying it had expressed Cottontown's opinion.
Mrs. Banks was very severe when the question of woman's purity was up. She was the fastest woman at the loom in all Cottontown. She was quick, with a bright, deep-seeing eye. She had been pretty—but now at forty-five she was angular and coarse-looking, with a sharp tongue.
The Bishop had smiled when he heard her say it, and then he looked at Margaret Adams sitting in the corner with her boy. In saying it, Mrs. Banks had elevated her nose as she looked in the direction where sat the Magdalene.
The old man smiled, because he of all others knew the past history of Mrs. Banks, the mistress of the loom.
He replied quietly: “Well, I dun'no—the best thing that can be said of any of us in general is, that up to date, it ain't recorded that the Almighty has appinted any one of us, on account of our supreme purity, to act as chief stoner of the Universe. Mighty few of us, even, has any license to throw pebbles.”
Of all his congregation there was no more devoted member than Margaret Adams—“an' as far as I kno',” the old man had often said, “if there is an angel on earth, it is that same little woman.”
When she came into church that day, the old man noticed that even the little Hillites drew away from her. Often they would point at the little boy by her side and make faces at him. To-day they had carried it too far when one of them, just out in the church yard, pushed him rudely as he walked proudly by the side of his mother, looking straight before him, in his military way, and not so much as giving them a glance.
“Wood's-colt,” sneered the boy in his ear, as he pushed him.
“No—thoroughbred”—came back, and with it a blow which sent the intruder backward on the grass.
Several old men nodded at him approvingly as he walked calmly on by the side of his mother.
“Jimmie—Jimmie!” was all she said as she slipped into the church.
“I guess you must be a new-comer,” remarked Archie B. indifferently to the boy who was wiping the blood from his face as he arose from the ground and looked sillily around. “That boy Jim Adams is my pardner an' I could er tole you what you'd git by meddlin' with him. He's gone in with his mother now, but him an' me—we're in alliance—we fights for each other. Feel like you got enough?”—and Archie B. got up closer and made motions as if to shed his coat.
The other boy grinned good naturedly and walked off.
To-day, just outside of the church Ben Butler had been hitched up and the Bishop sat in the old buggy.
Bud Billings stood by holding the bit, stroking the old horse's neck and every now and then striking a fierce attitude, saying “Whoa—whoa—suh!”
As usual, Ben Butler was asleep.
“Turn him loose, Bud,” said the old man humoring the slubber—“I've got the reins an' he can't run away now. I can't take you home to-day—I'm gwinter take Margaret, an' you an' Jimmie can come along together.”
No other man could have taken Margaret Adams home and had any standing left, in Cottontown.
And soon they were jogging along down the mountain side, toward the cabin where the woman lived and supported herself and boy by her needle.
To-day Margaret was agitated and excited—more than the Bishop had ever known her to be. He knew the reason, for clean-shaved and neatly dressed, Jack Bracken passed her on the road to church that morning, and as they rode along the Bishop told her it was indeed Jack whom she had seen, “an' he loves you yet, Margaret,” he said.
She turned pink under her bonnet. How pretty and fresh she looked—thought the Bishop—and what purity in a face to have such a name.
“It was Jack, then,” she said simply—“tell me about him, please.”
“By the grace of God he has reformed,” said the old man—“and—Margaret—he loves you yet, as I sed. He is going under the name of Jack Smith, the blacksmith here, an' he'll lead another life—but he loves you yet,” he whispered again.
Then he told her what had happened, knowing that Jack's secret would be safe with her.
When he told her how they had buried little Jack, and of the father's admission that his determination to lead the life of an outlaw had come when he found that she had been untrue to him, she was shaken with grief. She could only sit and weep. Not even at the gate, when the old man left her, did she say anything.
Within, she stopped before a picture which hung over the mantle-piece and looked at it, through eyes that filled again and again with tears. It was the picture of a pretty mountain girl with dark eyes and sensual lip.
Margaret knelt before it and wept.
The boy had come and stood moodily at the front gate. The hot and resentful blood still tinged in his cheek. He looked at his knuckles—they were cut and swollen where he had struck the boy who had jeered him. It hurt him, but he only smiled grimly.
Never before had any one called him a wood's-colt. He had never heard the word before, but he knew what it meant. For the first time in his life, he hated his mother. He heard her weeping in the little room they called home. He merely shut his lips tightly and, in spite of the stoicism that was his by nature, the tears swelled up in his eyes.
They were hot tears and he could not shake them off. For the first time the wonder and the mystery of it all came over him. For the first time he felt that he was not as other boys,—that there was a meaning in this lonely cabin and the shunned woman he called mother, and the glances, some of pity, some of contempt, which he had met all of his life.
As he stood thinking this, Richard Travis rode slowly down the main road leading from the town to The Gaffs. And this went through the boy successively—not in words, scarcely—but in feelings:
“What a beautiful horse he is riding—it thrills me to see it—I love it naturally—oh, but to own one!
“What a handsome man he is—and how like a gentleman he looks! I like the way he sits his horse. I like that way he has of not noticing people. He has got the same way about him I have got—that I've always had—that I love—a way that shows me I'm not afraid, and that I have got nerve and bravery.
“He sits that horse just as I would sit him—his head—his face—the way that foot slopes to the stirrup—why that's me—”
He stopped—he turned pale—he trembled with pride and rage. Then he turned and walked into the room where Margaret Adams sat. She held out her arms to him pleadingly.
But he did not notice her, and never before had she seen such a look on his face as he said calmly:
“Mother, if you will come to the door I will show you my father.”
Margaret Adams had already seen. She turned white with a hidden shame as she said:
“Jimmie—Jimmie—who—who—?”
“No one,” he shouted fiercely—“by God”—she had never before heard him swear—“I tell you no one—on my honor as a Travis—no one! It has come to me of itself—I know it—I feel it.”
He was too excited to talk. He walked up and down the little room, his proud head lifted and his eyes ablaze.
“I know now why I love honesty, why I despise those common things beneath me—why I am not afraid—why I struck that boy as I did this morning—why—” he walked into the little shed room that was his own and came back with a long single barrel pistol in his hand and fondled it lovingly—“why all my life I have been able to shoot this as I have—”
He held in his hand a long, single barrel, rifle-bored duelling pistol—of the type used by gentlemen at the beginning of the century. Where he had got it she did not know, but always it had been his plaything.
“O Jimmie—you would not—” exclaimed the woman rising and reaching for it.
“Tush—” he said bitterly—“tush—that's the way Richard Travis talks, ain't it? Does not my very voice sound like his? No—but I expect you now, mother”—he said it softly—“tell me—tell me all about it.”
For a moment Margaret Adams was staggered. She only shook her head.
He looked at her cynically—then bitterly. A dangerous flash leaped into his eyes.
“Then, by God,” he cried fiercely, “this moment will I walk over to his house with this pistol in my hand and I will ask him. If he fails to tell me—damn him—I dare him—”
She jumped up and seized him in her arms.
“Promise me that if I tell you all—all, Jimmy, when you are fifteen—promise me—will you be patient now—with poor mother, who loves you so?” And she kissed him fondly again and again.
He looked into her eyes and saw all her suffering there.
The bitterness went out of his.
“I'll promise, mother,” he said simply, and walked back into his little room.
“This bein' Hard-shell Sunday,” said the Bishop that afternoon when his congregation met, “cattle of that faith will come up to the front rack for fodder. Elder Butts will he'p me conduct these exercises.”
“It's been so long sence I've been in a Hard-shell lodge, I may be a little rusty on the grip an' pass word, but I'm a member in good standin' if I am rusty.”
There was some laughing at this, from the other members, and after the Hard-shells had come to the front the Bishop caught the infection and went on with a sly wink at the others.
“The fact is, I've sometimes been mighty sorry I jined any other lodge; for makin' honorable exception, the other churches don't know the diff'r'nce betwixt twenty-year-old Lincoln County an' Michigan pine-top.
“The Hard-shells was the fust church I jined, as I sed. I hadn't sampled none of the others”—he whispered aside—“an' I didn't know there was any better licker in the jug. But the Baptists is a little riper, the Presbyterians is much mellower, an' compared to all of them the 'Piscopalians rises to the excellence of syllabub an' champagne.
“A hones' dram tuck now an' then, prayerfully, is a good thing for any religion. I've knowed many a man to take a dram jes' in time to keep him out of a divorce court. An' I've never knowed it to do anybody no harm but old elder Shotts of Clay County. An' ef he'd a stuck to it straight he'd abeen all right now. But one of these old-time Virginia gentlemen stopped with him all night onct, an' tor't the old man how to make a mint julip; an' when I went down the next year to hold services his wife told me the good old man had been gathered to his fathers. 'He was all right' she 'lowed, 'till a little feller from Virginia came along an' tort 'im ter mix greens in his licker, an' then he jes drunk hisself to death.'
“There's another thing I like about two of the churches I'm in—the Hard-shells an' the Presbyterians—an' that is special Providence. If I didn't believe in special Providence I'd lose my faith in God.
“My father tuck care of me when I was a babe, an' we're all babes in God's sight.
“The night befo' the battle of Shiloh, I preached to some of our po' boys the last sermon that many of 'em ever heard. An' I told 'em not to dodge the nex' day, but to stan' up an' 'quit themselves like men, for ever' shell an' ball would hit where God intended it should hit.
“In the battle nex' day I was chaplain no longer, but chief of scouts, an' on the firin' line where it was hot enough. In the hottest part of it General Johnston rid up, an' when he saw our exposed position he told us to hold the line, but to lay down for shelter. A big tree was nigh me an' I got behin' it. The Gineral seed me an' he smiled an' sed:
“'Oh, Bishop,'”—his voice fell to a proud and tender tone—“did you know it was Gineral Johnston that fust named me the Bishop?”
“'Oh, Bishop,' he said, 'I can see you puttin' a tree betwixt yo'se'f an' special Providence.' 'Yes, Gineral,' I sed, 'an' I looks on it as a very special Providence jus' at this time.'
“He laughed, an' the boys hoorawed an' he rid off.
“Our lives an' the destiny of our course is fixed as firmly as the laws that wheel the planets. Why, I have knowed men to try to hew out their own destiny an' they'd make it look like a gum-log hewed out with a broad axe, until God would run the rip-saw of His purpose into them, an' square them out an' smooth them over an' polish them into pillars for His Temple.
“What is, was goin' to be; an' the things that's got to come to us has already happened in God's mind.
“I've knowed poor an' unpretentious, God-fearin' men an' women to put out their hands to build shanties for their humble lives, an' God would turn them into castles of character an' temples of truth for all time.
“Elder Butts will lead in prayer.”
It was a long prayer and was proceeding smoothly, until, in its midst, from the front row, Archie B.'s head bobbed cautiously up. Keeping one eye on his father, the praying Elder, he went through a pantomime for the benefit of the young Hillites around him, who, like himself, had had enough of prayer. Before coming to the meeting he had cut from a black sheep's skin a gorgeous set of whiskers and a huge mustache. These now adorned his face.
There was a convulsive snicker among the young Hillites behind him. The Elder opened one eye to see what it meant. They were natural children, whose childhood had not been dwarfed in a cotton mill, and it was exceedingly funny to them.
But the young Cottontowners laughed not. They looked on in stoical wonder at the presumption of the young Hillites who dared to do such a deed.
Humor had never been known to them. There is no humor in the all-day buzz of the cotton factory; and fun and the fight of life for daily bread do not sleep in the same crib.
The Hillites tittered and giggled.
“Maw,” whispered Miss Butts, “look at Archie B.”
Mrs. Butts hastily reached over the bench and yanked Archie B. down. His whiskers were confiscated and in a moment he was on his knees and deeply devotional, while the young Hillites nudged each other, and giggled and the young Cottontowners stared and wondered, and looked to see when Archie B. would be hung up by the thumbs.
The Bishop was reading the afternoon chapter when the animal in Archie B. broke out in another spot. The chapter was where Zacharias climbed into a sycamore tree to see his passing Lord. There was a rattling of the stove pipe in one corner.
“Maw,” whispered Miss Butts, “Jes' look at Archie B.—he's climbin' the stove pipe like Zacharias did the sycamo'.”
Horror again swept over Cottontown, while the Hillites cackled aloud. The Elder settled it by calmly laying aside his spectacles and starting down the pulpit steps. But Archie B. guessed his purpose and before he had reached the last step he was sitting demurely by the side of his pious brother, intently engaged in reading the New Testament.
Without his glasses, the Elder never knew one twin from the other, but presuming that the studious one was Ozzie B., he seized the other by the ear, pulled him to the open window and pitched him out on the grass.
It was Ozzie B. of course, and Archie B. turned cautiously around to the Hillites behind, after the Elder had gone hack to his chapter, and whispered:
“Venture pee-wee under the bridge—bam—bam—bam.”
Throughout the sermon Archie B. kept the young Hillites in a paroxysm of smirks.
Elder Butts' legs were brackets, or more properly parentheses, and as he preached and thundered and gesticulated and whined and sang his sermon, he forgot all earthly things.
Knowing this, Archie B. would crawl up behind his father and thrusting his head in between his legs, where the brackets were most pronounced, would emphasize all that was said with wry grimaces and gestures.
No language can fittingly describe the way Elder Butts delivered his discourse. The sentences were whined, howled or sung, ending always in the vocal expletive—“ah—ah.”
When the elder had finished and sat down, Archie B. was sitting demurely on the platform steps.
Then the latest Scruggs baby was brought forward to be baptised. There were already ten in the family.
The Bishop took the infant tenderly and said: “Sister Scruggs, which church shall I put him into?”
“'Piscopal,” whispered the good Mrs. Scruggs.
The Bishop looked the red-headed young candidate over solemnly. There was a howl of protest from the lusty Scruggs.
“He's a Cam'elite,” said the Bishop dryly—“ready to dispute a'ready”—here the young Scruggs sent out a kick which caught the Bishop in the mouth.
“With Baptis' propensities,” added the Bishop. “Fetch the baptismal fount.”
“Please, pap,” said little Appomattox Watts from the front bench, “but Archie B. has drunk up all the baptismal water endurin' the first prayer.”
“I had to,” spoke up Archie B., from the platform steps—“I et dried mackerel for breakfas'.”
“We'll postpone the baptism' till nex' Sunday,” said the Bishop.
It was Sunday and Jack Bracken had been out all the afternoon, hunting for Cap'n Tom—as he had been in the morning, when not at church. Hitching up the old horse, the Bishop started out to hunt also.
He did not go far on the road toward Westmoreland, for as Ben Butler plodded sleepily along, he almost ran over a crowd of boys in the public road, teasing what they took to be a tramp, because of his unkempt beard, his tattered clothes, and his old army cap.
They had angered the man and with many gestures he was endeavoring to expostulate with his tormentors, at the same time attempting imprecations which could not be uttered and ended in a low pitiful sound. He shook his fist at them—he made violent gestures, but from his mouth came only a guttural sound which had no meaning.
At a word from the Bishop his tormentors vanished, and when he pulled up before the uncouth figure he found him to be a man not yet in his prime, with an open face, now blank and expressionless, overgrown with a black, tangled, and untrimmed beard.
He was evidently a demented tramp.
But at a second look the Bishop started. It was the man's eyes which startled him. There was in them something so familiar and yet so unknown that the Bishop had to study a while before he could remember.
Then there crept into his face a wave of pitying sorrow as he said to himself:
“Cap'n Tom—Cap'n Tom's eyes.”
And from that moment the homeless and demented tramp had a warm place in the old man's heart.
The Bishop watched him closely. His tattered cap had fallen off, showing a shock of heavy, uncut hair, streaked prematurely with gray.
“What yo' name?” asked the Bishop kindly.
The man, flushed and angered, still gesticulated and muttered to himself. But at the sound of the Bishop's voice, for a moment there flashed into his eyes almost the saneness of returned reason. His anger vanished. A kindly smile spread over his face. He came toward the Bishop pleadingly—holding out both hands and striving to speak. Climbing into the buggy, he sat down by the old man's side, quite happy and satisfied—and as a little child.
“Where are you from?” asked the Bishop again.
The man shook his head. He pointed to his head and looked meaningly at the Bishop.
“Can't you tell me where you're gwine, then?”
He looked at the Bishop inquisitively, and for a moment, only, the same look—almost of intelligence—shone in his eyes. Slowly and with much difficulty—ay, even as if he were spelling it out, he said:
“A-l-i-c-e”—
The old man turned quickly. Then he paled tremblingly to his very forehead. The word itself—the sound of that voice sent the blood rushing to his heart.
“Alice?—and what does he mean? An' his voice an' his eyes—Alice—my God—it's Cap'n Tom!”
Tenderly, calmly he pulled the cap from off the strange being's head and felt amid the unkempt locks. But his hands trembled so he could scarcely control them, and the sight of the poor, broken, half demented thing before him—so satisfied and happy that he had found a voice he knew—this creature, the brave, the chivalrous, the heroic Captain Tom! He could scarcely see for the tears which ran down his cheeks.
But as he felt, in the depth of his shock of hair, his finger slipped into an ugly scar, sinking into a cup-shaped hollow fracture which gleamed in his hair.
“Cap'n Tom, Cap'n Tom,” he whispered—“don't you know me—the Bishop?”
The man smiled reassuringly and slipped his hand, as a child might, into that of the old man.
“A-l-i-c-e”—he slowly and stutteringly pronounced again, as he pointed down the road toward Westmoreland.
“My God,” said the Bishop as he wiped away the tears on the back of his hand—“my God, but that blow has spiled God's noblest gentleman.” Then there rushed over him a wave of self-reproach as he raised his head heavenward and said:
“Almighty Father, forgive me! Only this morning I doubted You; and now, now, You have sent me po' Cap'n Tom!”
“You'll go home with me, Cap'n Tom!” he added cheerily.
The man smiled and nodded.
“A-l-i-c-e,” again he repeated.
There was the sound of some one riding, and as the Bishop turned Ben Butler around Alice Westmore rode up, sitting her saddle mare with that natural grace which comes only when the horse and rider have been friends long enough to become as one. Richard Travis rode with her.
The Bishop paled again: “My God,” he muttered—“but she mustn't know this is Cap'n Tom! I'd ruther she'd think he's dead—to remember him only as she knowed him last.”
The man's eyes were riveted on her—they seemed to devour her as she rode up, a picture of grace and beauty, sitting her cantering mare with the ease of long years of riding. She smiled and nodded brightly at the Bishop, as she cantered past, but scarcely glanced at the man beside him.
Travis followed at a brisk gait:
“Hello, Bishop,” he said banteringly—“got a new boarder to-day?”
He glanced at the man as he spoke, and then galloped on without turning his head.
“Alice!—Alice!”—whispered the man, holding out his hands pleadingly, in the way he had held them when he first saw the Bishop. “Alice!”—but she disappeared behind a turn in the road. She had not noticed him.
The Bishop was relieved.
“We'll go home, Cap'n Tom—you'll want for nothin' whilst I live. An' who knows—ay, Cap'n Tom, who knows but maybe God has sent you here to-day to begin the unraveling of the only injustice I've ever knowed Him to let go so long. It 'ud be so easy for Him—He's done bigger things than jes' to straighten out little tangles like that. Cap'n Tom! Cap'n Tom!” he said excitedly—“God'll do it—God'll do it—for He is just!”
As he turned to go a negro came up hurriedly: “I was fetchin' him to you, Marse Hillard—been lookin' for yo' home all day. I had gone to the spring for water an' 'lowed I'd be back in a minute.”
“Why, it's Eph,” said the Bishop. “Come on to my home, Eph, we'll take keer of Cap'n Tom.”
It was Sunday night. They had eaten their supper, and the old man was taking his smoke before going to bed. Shiloh, as usual, had climbed up into his lap and lay looking at the distant line of trees that girdled the mountain side. There was a flush on her cheeks and a brightness in her eyes which the old man had noticed for several weeks.
Shiloh was his pet—his baby. All the affection of his strong nature found its outlet in this little soul—this motherless little waif, who likewise found in the old man that rare comradeship of extremes—the inexplicable law of the physical world which brings the snow-flower in winter. The one real serious quarrel the old man had had with his stubborn and ignorant old wife had been when Shiloh was sent to the factory. But it was always starvation times with them; and when aroused, the temper and tongue of Mrs. Watts was more than the peaceful old man could stand up against. And as there were a dozen other tots of her age in the factory, he had been forced to acquiesce.
Long after all others had retired—long after the evening star had arisen, and now, high overhead, looked down through the chinks in the roof of the cabin on the mountain side, saying it was midnight and past, the patient old man sat with Shiloh on his lap, watching her quick, restless breathing, and fearing to put her to bed, lest he might awaken her.
He put her in bed at last and then slipped into Captain Tom's cabin before he himself lay down.
To his surprise he was up and reading an old dictionary—studying and puzzling over the words. It was the only book except the Bible the Bishop had in his cabin, and this book proved to be Captain Tom's solace.
After that, day after day, he would sit out under the oak tree by his cabin intently reading the dictionary.
Eph, his body servant, slept on the floor by his side, and Jack Bracken sat near him like a sturdy mastiff guarding a child. Sympathy, pity—were written in the outlaw's face, as he looked at the once splendid manhood shorn of its strength, and from that day Jack Bracken showered on Captain Tom all the affection of his generous soul—all that would have gone to little Jack.
“For he's but a child—the same as little Jack was,” he would say.
“Put up yo' novel, Cap'n Tom,” said the old man cheerily, when he went in, “an' let's have prayers.”
The sound of the old man's voice was soothing to Captain Tom. Quickly the book was closed and down on their knees went the three men.
It was a queer trio—the three kneeling in prayer.
“Almighty God,” prayed the old man—“me an' Cap'n Tom an' Jack Bracken here, we thank You for bein' so much kinder to us than we deserves. One of us, lost to his friends, is brought back home; one of us, lost in wickedness but yestiddy, is redeemed to-day; an' me that doubted You only yestiddy, to me You have fotcht Cap'n Tom back, a reproach for my doubts an' my disbelief, lame in his head, it is true, but You've fotcht him back where I can keer for him an' nuss him. An' I hope You'll see fit, Almighty God, You who made the worl' an' holds it in the hollow of Yo' han', You, who raised up the dead Christ, to give po' Cap'n Tom back his reason, that he may fulfill the things in life ordained by You that he should fulfill since the beginning of things.
“An' hold Jack Bracken to the mark, Almighty God,—let him toe the line an' shoot, hereafter, only for good. An' guide me, for I need it—me that in spite of all You've done for me, doubted You but yestiddy. Amen.”
It was a simple, homely prayer, but it comforted even Captain Tom, and when Jack Bracken put him to bed that night, even the outlaw felt that the morning of a new era would awaken them.