Part 4 (2/2)

Near a doorway between parlor and hall sat the fiddlers three. Gallant bows and dainty courtesyings and nimble feet were tripping measures quite new to the backwoodsman. Barbara nodded, smiled, and after the dance ran up to ask him to take part, but he shook his head. Hugh had looked at him as from a superior height, and the boy noticed him frowning while Barbara was challenging him to dance. The next dance was even more of a mystery, for the dancers glided by in couples, Mr.

Byron's diatribe not having prevented the importation of the waltz to the new world, but the next cleared his face and set his feet to keeping time, for the square dance had, of course, reached the wilds.

”I know that,” he said to Harry, who told Barbara, and the little girl went up to him again, and this time, flus.h.i.+ng, he took place with her on the floor. Hugh came up.

”Cousin Barbara, this is our dance, I believe,” he said a little thickly.

The girl took him aside and Hugh went surlily away. Harry saw the incident and he looked after Hugh, frowning. The backwoodsman conducted himself very well. He was lithe and graceful and at first very dignified, but as he grew in confidence he began to execute steps that were new to that polite land and rather boisterous, but Barbara looked pleased and all onlookers seemed greatly amused-all except Hugh. And when the old fiddler sang out sonorously:

”Genelmen to right-cheat an' swing!” the boy cheated outrageously, cheated all but his little partner, to whom each time he turned with open loyalty, and Hugh was openly sneering now and genuinely angry.

”You shall have the last dance,” whispered Barbara, ”the Virginia reel.”

”I know that dance,” said the boy.

And when that dance came and the dancers were drawn in two lines, the boy who was third from the end heard Harry's low voice behind him:

”He is my cousin and my guest and you will answer to me.”

The lad wheeled, saw Harry with Hugh, left his place, and went to them.

He spoke to Harry, but he looked at Hugh with a sword-flash in each black eye:

”I don't want n.o.body to take up for me.”

Again he wheeled and was in his place, but Barbara saw and looked troubled, and so did Colonel Dale. He went over to the two boys and put his arm around Hugh's shoulder.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”I don't want n.o.body to take up for me”]

”Tut, tut, my boys,” he said, with pleasant firmness, and led Hugh away, and when General Willoughby would have followed, the colonel nodded him back with a smile, and Hugh was seen no more that night. The guests left with gayety, smiles, and laughter, and every one gave the stranger a kindly good-by. Again Harry went with him to his room and the lad stopped again under the crossed swords.

”You fight with 'em?”

”Yes, and with pistols.”

”I've never had a pistol. I want to learn how to use _them_.”

Harry looked at him searchingly, but the boy's face gave hint of no more purpose than when he first asked the same question.

”All right,” said Harry.

The lad blew out his candle, but he went to his window instead of his bed. The moonlight was brilliant-among the trees and on the sleeping flowers and the slow run of the broad river, and it was very still out there and very lovely, but he had no wish to be out there. With wind and storm and sun, moon and stars, he had lived face to face all his life, but here they were not the same. Trees, flowers, house, people had reared some wall between him and them, and they seemed now to be very far away. Everybody had been kind to him-all but Hugh. Veiled hostility he had never known before and he could not understand. Everybody had surely been kind, and yet-he turned to his bed, and all night his brain was flas.h.i.+ng to and fro between the reel of vivid pictures etched on it in a day and the grim background that had hitherto been his life beyond the hills.

VI

From pioneer habit he awoke before dawn, and for a moment the softness where he lay puzzled him. There was no sound of anybody stirring and he thought he must have waked up in the middle of the night, but he could smell the dawn and he started to spring up. But there was nothing to be done, nothing that he could do. He felt hot and stuffy, though Harry had put up his windows, and he could not lie there wide awake. He could not go out in the heavy dew in the gay clothes and fragile shoes he had taken off, so he slid into his own buckskin clothes and moccasins and out the still open front door and down the path toward the river.

Instinctively he had picked up his rifle, bullet-pouch, and powder-horn.

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