Part 4 (1/2)

Time restored to Dundas his former place in life and the esteem of his fellow-citizens. His stay in the mountains was an episode which he will not often recall, but sometimes volition fails, and he marvels at the strange fulfilment of the girl's vision; he winces to think that her solicitude for his safety should have cost her her lover; he wonders whether she yet lives, and whether that tender troubled phantom, on nights when the wind is still and the moon is low and the mists rise, again joins the strange, elusive, woful company crossing the quaking foot-bridge.

HIS ”DAY IN COURT”

It had been a hard winter along the slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains, and still the towering treeless domes were covered with snow, and the vagrant winds were abroad, rioting among the clifty heights where they held their tryst, or raiding down into the sheltered depths of the Cove, where they seldom intruded. Nevertheless, on this turbulent rush was borne in the fair spring of the year. The fragrance of the budding wild-cherry was to be discerned amidst the keen slanting javelins of the rain. A cognition of the renewal and the expanding of the forces of nature pervaded the senses as distinctly as if one might hear the gra.s.s growing, or feel along the chill currents of the air the vernal pulses thrill. Night after night in the rifts of the breaking clouds close to the horizon was glimpsed the stately sidereal Virgo, prefiguring and promising the harvest, holding in her hand a gleaming ear of corn. But it was not the constellation which the tumultuous torrent at the mountain's base reflected in a starry glitter. From the hill-side above a light cast its broken image among the ripples, as it shone for an instant through the bosky laurel, white, stellular, splendid--only a tallow dip suddenly placed in the window of a log-cabin, and as suddenly withdrawn.

For a gruff voice within growled out a remonstrance: ”What ye doin' that fur, Steve? Hev that thar candle got enny call ter bide in that thar winder?”

The interior, contrary to the customary aspect of the humble homes of the region, was in great disarray. Cooking utensils stood uncleaned about the hearth; dishes and bowls of earthen-ware were a.s.sembled upon the table in such numbers as to suggest that several meals had been eaten without the ceremony of laying the cloth anew, and that in default of was.h.i.+ng the crockery it had been re-enforced from the shelf so far as the limited store might admit. Saddles and spinning-wheels, an ox-yoke and trace-chains, reels and wash-tubs, were incongruously pushed together in the corners. Only one of the three men in the room made any effort to reduce the confusion to order. This was the square-faced, black-bearded, thick-set young fellow who took the candle from the window, and now advanced with it toward the hearth, holding it at an angle that caused the flame to swiftly melt the tallow, which dripped generously upon the floor.

”I hev seen Eveliny do it,” he said, excitedly justifying himself. ”I noticed her sot the candle in the winder jes' las' night arter supper.”

He glanced about uncertainly, and his patience seemed to give way suddenly. ”Dad-burn the old candle! I dunno _whar_ ter set it,” he cried, desperately, as he flung it from him, and it fell upon the floor close to the wall.

The dogs lifted their heads to look, and one soft-stepping old hound got up with the nimbleness of expectation, and, with a prescient grat.i.tude astir in his tail, went and sniffed at it. His aspect drooped suddenly, and he looked around in reproach at Stephen Quimbey, as if suspecting a practical joke. But there was no merriment in the young mountaineer's face. He threw himself into his chair with a heavy sigh, and desisted for a time from the unaccustomed duty of clearing away the dishes after supper.

”An' 'ain't ye got the gumption ter sense what Eveliny sot the candle in the winder fur?” his brother Timothy demanded, abruptly--”ez a sign ter that thar durned Abs'lom Kittredge.”

The other two men turned their heads and looked at the speaker with a poignant intensity of interest. ”I 'lowed ez much when I seen that light ez I war a-kemin' home las' night,” he continued; ”it s.h.i.+ned spang down the slope acrost the ruver an' through all the laurel; it looked plumb like a star that hed fell ter yearth in that pitch-black night. I dunno how I s'picioned it, but ez I stood thar an' gazed I knowed somebody war a-standin' an' gazin' too on the foot-bredge a mite ahead o' me. I couldn't see him, an' he couldn't turn back an' pa.s.s me, the bredge bein' too narrer. He war jes obligated ter go on. I hearn him breathe quick; then--pit-pat, pit-pat, ez he walked straight toward that light.

An' he be 'bleeged ter hev hearn me, fur arter I crost I stopped.

Nuthin'. Jes' a whisper o' wind, an' jes' a swis.h.i.+n' from the ruver. I knowed then he hed turned off inter the laurel. An' I went on, a-whistlin' ter make him 'low ez I never s'picioned nuthin'. An' I kem inter the house an' tole dad ez he'd better be a-lookin' arter Eveliny, fur I b'lieved she war a-settin' her head ter run away an' marry Abs'lom Kittredge.”

”Waal, I ain't right up an' down sati'fied we oughter done what we done,” exclaimed Stephen, fretfully. ”It don't 'pear edzacly right fur three men ter fire on one.”

Old Joel Quimbey, in his arm-chair in the chimney-corner, suddenly lifted his head--a thin head with fine white hair, short and spa.r.s.e, upon it. His thin, lined face was clear-cut, with a pointed chin and an aquiline nose. He maintained an air of indignant and rebellious grief, and had hitherto sat silent, a gnarled and knotted hand on either arm of his chair. His eyes gleamed keenly from under his heavy brows as he turned his face upon his sons. ”How could we know thar warn't but one, eh?”

He had not been a candidate for justice of the peace for nothing; he had absorbed something of the methods and spirit of the law through sheer propinquity to the office. ”We-uns wouldn't be persumed ter _know_.” And he ungrudgingly gave himself all the benefit of the doubt that the law accords.

”That's a true word!” exclaimed Stephen, quick to console his conscience. ”Jes' look at the fac's, now. We-uns in a plumb black midnight hear a man a-gittin' over our fence; we git our rifles; a-peekin' through the c.h.i.n.kin' we ketch a glimge o' him--”

”Ha!” cried out Timothy, with savage satisfaction, ”we seen him by the light she set ter lead him on!”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”OLD JOEL QUIMBEY”]

He was tall and lank, with a delicately hooked nose, high cheek-bones, fierce dark eyes, and dark eyebrows, which were continually elevated, corrugating his forehead. His hair was black, short and straight, and he was clad in brown jeans, as were the others, with great cowhide boots reaching to the knee. He fixed his fiery intent gaze on his brother as the slower Stephen continued, ”An' so we blaze away--”

”An' one durned fool's so onlucky ez ter hit him an' not kill him,”

growled Timothy, again interrupting. ”An' so whilst Eveliny runs out a-screamin', 'He's dead! he's dead!--ye hev shot him dead!' we-uns make no doubt but he _is_ dead, an' load up agin, lest his frien's mought rush in on we-uns whilst we hedn't no use o' our shootin'-irons. An'

suddint--ye can't hear nuthin' but jes' a owel hootin' in the woods, or old Pa'son Bates's dogs a-howlin' acrost the Cove. An' we go out with a lantern, an' thar's jes' a pool o' blood in the dooryard, an' b.l.o.o.d.y tracks down ter the laurel.”

”Eveliny gone!” cried the old man, smiting his hands together; ”my leetle darter! The only one ez never gin me enny trouble. I couldn't hev made out ter put up with this hyar worl' no longer when my wife died ef it hedn't been fur Eveliny. Boys war wild an' mischeevious, an' folks outside don't keer nuthin' 'bout ye--ef they _war_ ter 'lect ye ter office 'twould be ter keep some other feller from hevin' it, 'kase they 'spise him more'n ye. An' hyar she's runned off an' married old Tom Kittredge's gran'son, Josiah Kittredge's son--when our folks 'ain't spoke ter none o' 'em fur fifty year--Josiah Kittredge's son--ha! ha!

ha!” He laughed aloud in tuneless scorn of himself and of this freak of froward destiny and then fell to wringing his hands and calling upon Evelina.

The flare from the great chimney place genially played over the huddled confusion of the room and the brown logs of the wall, where the gigantic shadows of the three men mimicked their every gesture with grotesque exaggeration. The rainbow yarn on the warping bars, the strings of red-pepper hanging from the ceiling, the burnished metallic flash from the guns on their racks of deer antlers, served as incidents in the monotony of the alternate yellow flicker and brown shadow. Deep under the blaze the red coals pulsated, and in the farthest vistas of the fire quivered a white heat.

”Old Tom Kittredge,” the father resumed, after a time, ”he jes' branded yer gran'dad's cattle with his mark; he jes' cheated yer gran'dad, my dad, out'n six head o' cattle.”

”But then,” said the warlike Timothy, not willing to lose sight of reprisal even in vague reminiscence, ”he hed only one hand ter rob with arter that, fur I hev hearn ez how when gran'dad got through with him the doctor hed ter take his arm off.”

”Sartainly, sartainly,” admitted the old man, in quiet a.s.sent ”An'