Part 55 (1/2)

WORKS.

A Brother to Dragons.

Farrier La.s.s o' Piping Pebworth.

Virginia of Virginia.

The Quick or the Dead?

According to St. John.

Athelwold, [drama].

Barbara Dering, [sequel to The Quick or the Dead?]

Nurse Crumpet Tells the Story.

Story of Arnon.

Inja.

Witness of the Sun.

Herod and Mariamne, [drama].

Poems, [scattered in magazines].

Tanis, the Sang-Digger.

TANIS.

(_From Tanis, the Sang-Digger._[49])

Gilman was driving along one of the well-kept turnpikes that wind about the Warm Springs Valley. He recognized the austere and solemn beauty that hemmed him in from the far-off outer world; but at the same time he was contrasting it with the sea-coast of his native State, Ma.s.sachusetts, and a certain creeping homesickness began to rise about his heart.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ~Model School, Peabody Normal College.~]

In addition to this, he had left his delicate wife suffering with an acute neuralgic headache, and also saddened by a yearning for the picturesque old farm-house in which he had been born, and where they had lived during the first year of marriage. The trap which Gilman drove was filled with surveying instruments, and, as he turned into the rough mountain road, which led towards the site of the new railway for which he was now prospecting, the smaller ones began to rattle together and slide from the seat beside him. Finally, as the cart slipped against a stone, the level bounced into a puddle. He was about to jump out when a bold, ringing voice called to him:

”Set still--A'll pick hit up.”

Then a figure slid down the rocky bank at his right, her one garment wrinkling from her bare, st.u.r.dy legs during the performance.

Gilman had never seen anything like her in his thirty years of varied experience.

She was very tall. A curtain of rough, glittering curls hung to her knees. Her face, clear with that clearness which only a mountain wind can bring, was white as a seagull's breast, except where a dark, yet vivid pink melted into the blue veins on her temples and throat. Her round, fresh lips, smooth as a peony-leaf, were parted in a wide laugh, over teeth large and yellow-white, like the grains on an ear of corn. She wore a loose tunic of blue-gray stuff, which reached to the middle of her legs, covered with gra.s.s stains and patches of mould.

Her bare feet, somewhat broadened by walking, were well-shaped, the great toe standing apart from the others, the strong, round ankles, although scratched and bruised, perfectly symmetrical. Her arms, bare almost to the shoulder, were like those with which in imagination we complete the Milo. Eyes, round and colored like the edges of broken gla.s.s, looked out boldly from under her long black eyebrows. Her nose was straight and well cut, but set impertinently.

As she picked up the muddy level she laughed boisterously and wiped it on her frock.

”Thank you,” said Gilman, and then, after a second's hesitation, added: ”Where are you going? Perhaps I can give you a lift on your way? Will you get in?”

”Well, a done keer ef a do,” she said, still staring at him.

She got in and took the level on her knee, then burst out laughing again--