← catalogue

Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885

by Various · English · Gutenberg #14530 · 429,332 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885

Author: Various


        
Release date: December 30, 2004 [eBook #14530]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14530

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Gundry and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, AUGUST, 1885 ***

[Note: The Table of Contents was added by the transcriber.
Footnotes will be found at the end of the text.]




LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE.

AUGUST, 1885.




TABLE OF CONTENTS.


ON THIS SIDE. by F.C. BAYLOR.
  VIII.

OUR VILLE. by MARGARET BERTHA WRIGHT.

THE PRIMITIVE COUPLE. by M.H. CATHERWOOD.
  I.     PARADISE.
  II.    FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
  III.   THE FLAMING SWORD.

PROBATION. by FLORENCE EARLE COATES.

THE PIONEERS OF THE SOUTHWEST. by EDMUND KIRKE.
  TWO PAPERS.    II.

A PLEASANT SPIRIT. by MARGARET VANDEGRIFT.

FISHING IN ELK RIVER. by TOBE HODGE.

ON A NOBLE CHARACTER MARRED BY LITTLENESS. by
    CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES.

THE SCOTTISH CROFTERS. by DAVID BENNETT KING.

MY FRIEND GEORGE RANDALL. by FRANK PARKE.

THE WOOD-THRUSH AT SUNSET. by MARY C. PECKHAM.

A FOREST BEAUTY. by MAURICE THOMPSON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
  Daniel Webster's "Moods." by F.C.M.
  Feuds and Lynch-Law in the Southwest. by J.A.M.
  The Etymology of "Babe." by S.E.T.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Recent Fiction.

FOOTNOTES.


       *       *       *       *       *




LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE.


_AUGUST, 1885_.


       *       *       *       *       *




ON THIS SIDE.

VIII.


Not the least delightful of Sir Robert's qualities was his capacity for
enjoying most things that came in his way, and finding some interest in
all. When Mr. Ketchum joined him in the library, where he was jotting
down "the _sobriquets_ of the American States and cities," and told him
of the Niagara plan, his ruddy visage beamed with pleasure.

"A delightful idea. Capital," he said. "I suppose I can read up a bit
about it before we start, and not go there with my eyes shut.
Ni-a-ga-rah,--monstrously soft and pretty name. Isn't there something on
your shelves that would give me the information I want? But we can come
to that presently. Just now I want to find out, if I can, how these
nicknames came to be given. They must have originated in some great
popular movement, eh? I thought I saw my way, as, for example, the
'Empire State' and the 'Crescent City' and some others, but this 'Sucker
State,' now, and 'Buckeye' business,--what may that mean in plain
English?"

Mr. Ketchum shed what light he could on these interesting questions, and
Sir Robert thoughtfully ran his hands through his side-whiskers, while,
with an apologetic "One moment, I beg," or "Very odd, very; that must go
down verbatim," he entered the gist of Mr. Ketchum's queer remarks in
his note-book.

On the following morning he rose with Niagara in his soul. He had more
questions to ask at the breakfast-table than anybody could answer, and
was eager to be off. Mr. Ketchum, who had that week made no less than
fifty thousand dollars by a lucky investment, was in high spirits.
Captain Kendall, who had been allowed to join the party, was vastly
pleased by the prospect of another week in Ethel's society. Mrs. Sykes
was tired of Fairfield, and longed to be "on the move" again, as she
frankly said. So that, altogether, it was a merry company that finally
set off.

The very first view of "the ocean unbound" increased their pleasure to
enthusiasm. Mrs. Sykes, without reservation, admitted that it was "a
grand spot," and felt as though she were giving the place a certificate
when she added, "_Quite_ up to the mark." She was out on the Suspension
Bridge, making a sketch, as soon as she could get there; she took one
from every other spot about the place; and when tired of her pencil, she
stalked about with her hammer, chipping off bits of rock that promised
geological interest. But she found her greatest amusement in the brides
that "infested the place" (to quote from her letter to her sister
Caroline), indulged in much satirical comment on them, and, choosing one
foolish young rustic who was there as her text, wrote in her diary,
"American brides like to go from the altar to some large hotel, where
they can display their finery, wear their wedding-dresses every evening,
and attract as much attention as possible. The national passion for
display makes them delight in anything that renders them conspicuous, no
matter how vulgar that display may be. If one must have a fools'
paradise, generally known as a honeymoon, this is about as pleasant a
place as any other for it; and, as there are several runaway couples
stopping here, and the place is just on the border, this is doubtless
the American Gretna Green, where silly women and temporarily-infatuated
men can marry in haste, to repent at leisure."

Mr. Heathcote gave his camera enough to do, as may be imagined. He and
Sir Robert traced the Niagara River from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, and
photographed it at every turn, made careful estimates of its length,
breadth, depth, the flow of currents, scale of descent to the mile, wear
of precipice, and time necessary for the river to retire from the falls
business altogether and meander tranquilly along on a level like other
rivers. They arrayed themselves in oil-skin suits and spent an
unconscionable time at the back of the Horseshoe Fall, roaring out
observations about it that were rarely heard, owing to the deafening
din, and had more than one narrow escape from tumbling into the water in
these expeditions. They carefully bottled some of it, which they
afterward carefully sealed with red wax and duly labelled, intending to
add it to a collection of similar phials which Sir Robert had made of
famous waters in many countries. They went over the mills and factories
in the neighborhood, and Sir Robert had long confabs with the managers,
of whom he asked permission to "jot down" the interesting facts
developed in the course of their conversations, surprising them by his
knowledge of mechanics and the subjects in hand.

"Man alive! what do you want with _those_?" said he to one of them, a
keen-faced young fellow, who was showing him the boiler-fires. He
pointed with his stick as he spoke, and rattled it briskly about the
brick-work by way of accompaniment as he went on: "Such a waste of
force, of money! downright stupidity! You don't want it. You don't need
it, any more than you need an hydraulic machine tacked to the back of
your trains. You have got water enough running past your very door to--"

"I've told that old fool Glass that a thousand times," broke in the
young man; "but if he wants to try and warm and light the world with a
gas-stove when the sun is up I guess it's no business of mine, though it
does rile me to see the power thrown away and good coal wasted. If I had
the capital, here's what _I_'d do. Here."

Seizing Sir Robert's stick, the enthusiast drew a fondly-loved ideal
mill in the coal-dust at his feet, while Sir Robert looked and listened,
differed, suggested, with keen interest, and Mr. Heathcote gave but
haughty and ignorant attention to the talk that followed.

"Yes, that's the way of it; but Glass has lived all his life with his
head in a bag, and he can't see it. I am surprised to see you take an
interest in it. Ever worked at it?" said the man in conclusion.

"A little," said Sir Robert affably, who could truthfully have said as
much of anything. "Who is this Glass?"

"Oh, he's the man that owns all this; the stupidest owl that ever lived.
I wish he could catch on like you. I'd like very well to work with you,"
was the reply.

"A bumptious fellow, that," commented Mr. Heathcote when they left.
"He'd 'like to work with you,' indeed!"

"A fellow with ideas. I'd like to work with him," replied his uncle;
"though he isn't burdened with respect for his employers."

Miss Noel meanwhile tied on her large straw hat, took her cane, basket,
trowel, tin box, and, followed by Parsons with her sketching-apparatus,
went off to hunt plants or wash in sketches, a most blissfully occupied
and preoccupied old lady.

To Mr. Ketchum's great amusement, Miss Noel, Mrs. Sykes, and Mr.
Heathcote all arrived at a particular spot within a few moments of each
other one morning, all alike prepared and determined to get the view it
commanded.

Miss Noel had said to Job _en route,_ "Do you think that I shall be able
to get a fly and drive about the country a bit? I should so like it. Are
they to be had there?"

And he had replied, "You will have some difficulty in _not_ taking 'a
fly' there, I guess. The hackmen would rather drive your dead body
around town for nothing than let you enjoy the luxury of walking about
unmolested. But I will see to all that."

Accordingly, a carriage had been placed at their disposal, and they had
taken some charming drives, in the course of which Parsons, occupying
the box on one occasion, was seen to be peering very curiously about
her.

"A great pity, is it not, Parsons, that we can't see all this in the
autumn, when the thickets of scarlet and gold are said to be so very
beautiful?" said Miss Noel, addressing her affably.

"Yes, mem," agreed Parsons. "And, if you please, mem, where are the
estates of the gentry, as I 'ave been lookin' for ever since we came
hover?"

"Not in this part," replied Miss Noel. "The red Indians were here not
very long since. You should really get a pin-cushion of their
descendants, those mild, dirty creatures that work in bark and beads.
Buy of one that has been baptized: one shouldn't encourage them to
remain heathens, you know. Your friends in England will like to see
something made by them; and they were once very powerful and spread all
over the country as far as--as--I really forget where; but I know they
were very wild and dreadful, and lived in wigwams, and wore moccasins."

"Oh, indeed, mem!" responded Parsons, impressed by the extent of her
mistress's information.

"A wigwam is three upright poles, such as the gypsies use for their
kettles, thatched with the leaves of the palm and the plantain," Miss
Noel went on. "Dear me! It is very odd! I certainly remember to have
read that; but perhaps I am getting back to the Southern Americans
again, which does so vex Robert. I wonder if one couldn't see a wigwam
for one's self? It can't be plantain, after all: there is none growing
about here."

She asked Mabel about this that evening, and the latter told her husband
how Miss Noel was always mixing up the two continents.

"I don't despair, Mabel. They will find this potato-patch of ours after
a while," he said good-humoredly.

But he was less amiable when Mrs. Sykes said at dinner next day, "I
should like to try your maize. Quite simply boiled, and eaten with
butter and salt, I am told it is quite good, really. I have heard that
the Duke of Slumborough thought it excellent."

"You don't say so! I am so glad to hear it! I shall make it generally
known as far as I can. Such things encourage us to go on trying to make
a nation of ourselves. It would have paralyzed all growth and
development in this country for twenty years if he had thought it
'nasty,'" said Job. "Foreigners can't be too particular how they express
their opinions about us. Over and over again we have come within an ace
of putting up the shutters and confessing that it was no use pretending
that we could go on independently having a country of our own, with
distinct institutions, peculiarities, customs, manners, and even
productions. It would be so much better and easier to turn ourselves
over to a syndicate of distinguished foreigners who would govern us
properly,--stamp out ice-water and hot rolls from the first, as unlawful
and not agreeing with the Constitution, give us cool summers, prevent
children from teething hard, make it a penal offence to talk through the
nose, and put a bunch of Bourbons in the White House, with a divine
right to all the canvas-back ducks in the country. There are so many
kings out of business now that they could easily give us a bankrupt one
to put on our trade dollar, or something really _sweet_ in emperors who
have seen better days. And a standing army of a hundred thousand men,
all drum-majors, in gorgeous uniforms, helmets, feathers, gold lace,
would certainly scare the Mexicans into caniptious and unconditional
surrender. The more I think of it, the more delightful it seems. It is
mere stupid obstinacy our people keeping up this farce of
self-government, when anybody can see that it is a perfect failure, and
that the country has no future whatever."

"Oh, you talk in that way; but I don't think you would really like it,"
said Mrs. Sykes. "Americans seem to think that they know everything:
they are above taking any hints from the Old World, and get as angry as
possible with me when I point out a few of the more glaring defects that
strike me."

"I am surprised at that. Our great complaint is that we can't get any
advice from Europeans. If we only had a little, even, we might in time
loom up as a fifth-rate power. But no: they leave us over here in this
wilderness without one word of counsel or criticism, or so much as a
suggestion, and they ought not to be surprised that we are going to the
dogs. What else can they expect?" said Mr. Ketchum.

"Husband, dear, you were very sharp with my cousin to-day, and it was
not like you to show temper,--at least, not temper exactly, but
vexation," said Mabel to him afterward in mild rebuke. "She has told me
that you quite detest the English, so that she wonders you should have
married me. And I said that you were far too intelligent and just to
cherish wrong feelings toward any people, much less my people."

"Well, if _she_ represented England I should drop England quietly over
the rapids some day when I could no longer stand her infernal
patronizing, impertinent airs, and rid the world of a nuisance," said
Mr. Ketchum, with energy. "Excuse my warmth, but that woman would poison
a prairie for me. Fortunately, I happen to know that she only represents
a class which neither Church nor State there has the authority to shoot,
_yet_, and I am not going to cry down white wool because there are black
sheep. Look at Sir Robert, and Miss Noel, and all the rest of them, how
different they are."

Captain Kendall certainly found Niagara delightful, for, owing to the
absorption of the party in their different pursuits, he was able to see
more of Ethel than he had ever done. He was so different from the men
she had known that he was a continual study to her. Instead of the
studied indifference, shy avoidance, shy advances, culminating in a
blunt and straightforward declaration of "intentions," which she would
have thought natural in an admirer, followed by transparent, honest
delight in the event of acceptance, or manly submission to the
inevitable in the event of rejection, Captain Kendall had surprised her
by liking her immediately, or at least by showing that he did, and
seeking her persistently, without any pretence of concealment. He talked
to her of politics, of social questions in the broadest sense, of books,
scientific discoveries, his travels, and the travels of others. He read
whole volumes of poetry to her. He discoursed by the hour on the manly
character, its faults, merits, peculiarities, and possibilities, and
then contrasted it with the womanly one, trait for trait, and it seemed
to her that women had never been praised so eloquently,
enthusiastically, copiously. At no time was he in the least choked by
his feelings or at a loss for a fresh word or sentiment. Such romance,
such ideality, such universality, as it were, she had never met. When
his admiration was most unbridled it seemed to be offered to her as the
representative of a sex entirely perfect and lovely. Everything in
heaven and earth, apparently, ministered to his passion and made him
talk all around the beloved subject with a wealth of simile and
suggestion that she had never dreamed of. But, if he gave full
expression to his agitated feelings in these ways, he was extremely
delicate, respectful, reserved, in others. He wrapped up his heart in so
many napkins, indeed, that, being a practical woman not extraordinarily
gifted in the matter of imagination, she frequently lost sight of it
altogether, and she sometimes failed to follow him in a broad road of
sentiment that (like the Western ones which Longfellow has described)
narrowed and narrowed until it disappeared, a mere thread, up a tree. If
he looked long, after one of these flights, at her sweet English face to
see what impression he had made, he was often forced to see that it was
not the one he had meant to make at all.

"Is anything amiss?" she asked once, in her cool, level tone, fixing
upon him her sincerely honest eyes. "Are there blacks on my nose?"
Although she had distinctly refused him at Kalsing, as became a girl
destitute of vanity and coquetry and attached to some one else, she had
not found him the less fluent, omnipresent, persuasive, at Niagara. It
was diverting to see them seated side by side on Goat Island, he waving
his hand toward the blue sky, apostrophizing the water, the foliage, the
clouds, and what not, in prose and verse, quite content if he but got a
quiet glance and assenting word now and then, she listening demurely in
a state of protestant satisfaction, her fair hair very dazzling in the
sunshine, an unvarying apple-blossom tint in her calm face, her fingers
tatting industriously not to waste the time outright. It was very
agreeable in a way, she told herself, but something must really be done
to get rid of the man. And so, one morning when they chanced to be
alone, and he was being unusually ethereal and beautiful in his remarks,
telling her that, as Byron had said, she would be "the morning star of
memory" for him, she broke in squarely, "That is all very nice; very
pretty, I am sure. But I do hope you quite understand that I have not
the least idea of marrying you. There is no use in going on like this,
you know, and you would have a right to reproach me if I kept silent and
led you to think that I was being won over by your fine speeches. You
see, you don't really want a star at all. You want a wife; though
military men, as a rule, are better off single. I do thank you heartily
for liking me for myself, and all that, and I shall always remember the
kind things you have done, and our acquaintance, but you must put me
quite out of your head as a wife. I should not suit you at all. You
would have to leave the American service, and I should hate feeling I
had tied you down, and I couldn't contribute a penny toward the
household expenses, and, altogether, we are much better apart. It would
not answer at all. So, thank you again for the honor you have conferred
upon me, and be--be rather more--like other people, won't you, for the
future? Auntie fancies that I am encouraging you, and is getting very
vexed about it. Perhaps you had better go away? Yes, that would be best,
I think."

Thus solicited, Captain Kendall went away, taking a mournfully-eloquent
farewell of Ethel, which she thought final; but in this she was
mistaken.

Our party did not linger long after this. Sir Robert met a titled
acquaintance, who inflamed his mind so much about Manitoba that he
decided to go to Canada at once, taking Miss Noel, Ethel, and Mr.
Heathcote; Mrs. Sykes had taken up on her first arrival with some New
York people, who asked her to visit them in the central part of the
State,--which disposed of her; Mabel was secretly longing to get back to
her "American child," as Mrs. Sykes called little Jared Ponsonby; and
they separated, with the understanding that they should meet again
before the English guests left the country, and with a warm liking for
each other, the Sykes not being represented in the pleasant covenants of
friendship formed.

"I am glad that we have not to bid Ketchum good-by here," said Sir
Robert. "Such a hearty, genial fellow! And how kind he has been to us!
His hospitality is the true one; not merely so much food and drink and
moneyed outlay for some social or selfish end, but the entertainment of
friends because they _are_ friends, with every possible care for their
pleasure and comfort, and the most unselfish willingness to do anything
that can contribute to either. I am afraid he would not find many such
hosts as himself with us. We entertain more than the Americans, but I do
not think we have as much of the real spirit of hospitality as a nation.
The relation between host and guest is less personal, there is little
sense of obligation, or rather sacredness, on either side, and the
convenience, interest, or amusement of the Amphitryon is more apt to be
considered, as a general thing, than the pleasure of the guest: at least
this has been growing more and more the case in the last twenty years,
as our society has broken away from old traditions and levelled all its
barriers, to the detriment of our social graces, not to speak of our
morals and manners. As for that charmingly gentle, sweet woman Mrs.
Ketchum, it is my opinion that we are not likely to improve on that type
of Englishwoman. A modest, simple, religious creature, a thorough
gentlewoman, and a devoted wife and mother. My cousin Guy Rathbone is
engaged to a specimen of a new variety,--one of the 'emancipated,'
forsooth; a woman who has a betting-book instead of a Bible and plays
cards all day Sunday. He tells me that she is wonderfully clever, and
that it is all he can do to keep her from running about the kingdom
delivering lectures on Agnosticism; as if one wanted one's wife to be a
trapesing, atheistical Punch-and-Judy! And the fellow seemed actually
pleased and flattered. He told me that she had 'an astonishing grasp of
such subjects' and was 'attracting a great deal of attention.' And I
told him that if I had a wife who attracted attention in such ways I
would lock her up until she came to her senses and the public had
forgotten her want of modesty and discretion. This ought to be called
the Age of Fireworks. The craze for notoriety is penetrating our very
almshouses, and every toothless old mumbler of ninety wants to get
himself palmed off as a centenarian in the papers and have a lot of
stuff printed about him."

"I see what you mean, Robert," said Miss Noel, "and it certainly cannot
be wholesome for women to thirst for excitement, and one would think a
lady would shrink from being conspicuous in any way; but things are very
much changed, as you say. And I agree with you in your estimate of the
Ketchums. She is a sweet young thing, and I heartily like him. Only
think! his last act was to send a great basket of fine fruits up to my
room, and quite an armful of railway-novels for the journey. Such
beautiful thought for our comfort as they have shown!"

"He is rather a good sort in some ways, but a very ignorant man. I
showed him some of my specimens the other day, and he thought them
granitic, when they were really Silurian mica schist of some kind," put
in Mrs. Sykes, who never could bear unqualified praise. "Still, on the
whole, the Americans are less ignorant than might have been expected."

"_I_ consider Mr. Ketchum a most kind, gentlemanly, sociable, clever
man," said Miss Noel, with an emphatic nod of her head to each
adjective, "geology or no geology. And I must say that it is very
ungrateful of you to speak of him so sneeringly always."

Sir Robert only waited to write the usual batch of letters, including a
last appeal to the editor of the "Columbia Eagle" to know whether he
intended to apologize for and publicly retract a certain article, and
asking "whether it was possible that any considerable or respectable
portion of the Americans could be so arbitrary, illiberal, and exclusive
as to wish to exclude the English from America." This done, he left for
Canada with his relatives. With his stay there we have nothing to do. It
consumed six weeks of exhaustive travel and study of Canadian conditions
and resources, resulting ultimately in the conclusion that Manitoba was
not the place he was looking for. The ladies, who had been left in
Montreal, were then taken for a short tour through the country, which
they all enjoyed, after which Sir Robert asked Miss Noel whether she
would be willing to take Ethel back to Niagara and wait there a
fortnight, or perhaps a little longer, while he and Mr. Heathcote came
back by way of New England and from there went down into Maryland and
Virginia, where, according to "a member of the Canadian Parliament,"
lands were to be had for a song.

"A fortnight? I could spend a twelve-month there," exclaimed she. "Had
it not been that I was ashamed to insist upon being let off this
journey, I should have stopped there as it was."

To Niagara the aunt and niece and Parsons went, as agreed, and there
they found Mr. Bates wandering languidly about the place in chronic
discontent with everything for not being something else. He had burned a
good deal of incense on Ethel's shrine when she was at Kalsing, and now
hailed their advent with some approach to enthusiasm, and attached
himself to their suite, _vice_ Captain Kendall, retired. He liked to be
seen with them, thought the views from the Canadian side were "deucedly
fine," was cruelly affected by the advertisements in the neighborhood,
which he denounced as "dreadfully American," trickled out much feeble
criticism of and acid comment on his surroundings, gave utterance to
fervent wishes that he was "abrard," and in his own unpleasant way gave
Ethel to understand that she might make a fellow-countryman happy by
becoming Mrs. Samuel Bates if she liked to avail herself of a golden
opportunity. "I would live in England, you know. I am really far more at
home there than here," said the expatriated suitor. "I have been taken
for an Englishman as often as three times in one week, do you know.
Curious, isn't it? I ought to be down in Kent now, visiting Lady
Simpson, a great friend of mine, who has asked me there again and again.
You would like her if you knew her. She is quite the great lady down
there."

"A foolish little man, and evidently a great snob, or else rather daft
upon some points," Ethel reported to her aunt. "And such a dull,
discontented creature, with all his money!" Ethel had some trials of her
own just then, and it was no great felicity to listen to Mr. Bates's
endless complaints, nor could she spare much sympathy for the sufferings
of the exile of Tecumseh, with his rose-leaf sensibilities, inanities,
absurdities.

Meanwhile, the young gentleman who was indirectly responsible for many a
sad thought of two charming girls that we know of--and who shall say how
many more?--was enjoying as much happiness as ever fell to any man in
the capacity of ardent sportsman. He had joined the duke and his party
at St. Louis, and from there they had gone "well away from anywhere," as
he said in describing his adventures to Mr. Heathcote. He had at last
reached the ideal spot of all his wildest imaginations and most
cherished hopes,--"the wild part,"--really the great prairies, about two
hundred miles west of the Mississippi and east of the Rockies. The dream
of his life was being fulfilled. He related, in a style not conspicuous
for literary merit, but very well suited to the simple annals of the
rich, how, having first procured guides, tents, ambulances,
camp-equipage, they had pushed on briskly to a military fort, where,
having made friends with "a pleasant, gentlemanly set of fellows," the
commanding officer, "a friendly old buffer," had courteously given them
an escort to protect them from "those dirty, treacherous brutes, the
Indians." Not a joy was wanting in this crowning bliss. The guide was "a
wonderful chap named Big-Foot Williams, so called by the Indians, good
all around from knocking over a rabbit to tackling a grizzly," with an
amazing knowledge of woodcraft, "a nose like a bloodhound, an eye as
cool as a toad's." No special mention was made of his ear; but the first
time he got off his horse and applied it to the earth, listening for
the tramp of distant hoofs in a hushed silence, one bosom could hardly
hold all the rapture that filled Mr. Ramsay's figurative cup up to the
brim. And the tales he told of savageness long drawn out were as dew to
the parched herb, greedily absorbed at every pore. A portrait of "Black
Eagle," a noted chief, was given when they got among the Indians,--"a
great hulking slugger of a savage, awfully interesting, long, reaching
step, magnificent muscles, snake eye, could thrash us all in turn if he
liked. The best of the lot."

Even the noble red man was not insensible to the charms of this
graceful, handsome young athlete who smiled at them perpetually and
said, "_Amigo! amigo_!" at short intervals,--a phrase suggested by the
redoubtable Williams and varied occasionally by a prefix of his own,
"_Muchee amigo_!" The way in which he tested the elasticity of their
bows, inspected their guns, the game they had killed, the other natural
objects about them, aroused a certain sympathy, perhaps. At any rate,
they were soon teaching him their mode of using the most picturesquely
murderous of all weapons, and Black Eagle offered, through the
interpreter, to give him a mustang and a fine wolf-skin. The pony was
declined, the skin accepted, a _quid pro quo_ being bestowed on the
chief in the shape of one of Mr. Ramsay's breech-loaders, a gift that
made the snake eyes glitter. But what earthly return can be made for
some friendly offices? Could a thousand guns be considered as an
adequate payment for the delirious thrill that Mr. Ramsay felt when he
shot an arrow straight through the neck of a big buffalo, and, wheeling,
galloped madly away, like the hero of one of his favorite stories? Was
not the duke, who "knew a thing or two about shooting" and had hunted
the noble bison in Lithuania, almost as much delighted as though he had
done it himself? Is it any wonder that these intoxicating pleasures were
all-sufficient for the time to Mr. Ramsay? Perhaps Thekla would have
been forgotten by her Max, and Romeo would never have sighed and died
for love of Juliet, if those interesting lovers had ceased from wooing
and gone a-hunting of the buffalo instead. Not the most deadly and cruel
pangs of the most unfortunate attachment could have taken away all the
zest from such an occupation, provided they had had what the Mexican
journals call the "_corazon de los sportsmans_." Youth, strength,
courage, skill, exercised in a vagabondage that has all the nomadic
charm without any of its drawbacks, are apt to sponge the old figures
off the slate of life, leaving a teary smear, perhaps, to show where
they have been, and room for fresh problems. At night over the camp-fire
Mr. Ramsay gave a few pensive thoughts to the girl who regularly put two
handkerchiefs under her pillow to receive the tears that welled out
copiously when she was at last alone and unobserved after a day of
virtuous hypocrisy. Poor child! The pain was very real, and the tears
were bitter and salty enough, though they were to be dried in due time.
If he had known of them, perhaps he might have kept awake a little
longer; but when he wasn't sleepy he was hungry, and when he wasn't
hungry he was tired, and when he wasn't tired he was too actively
employed to think of anything but the business in hand. Happily, at
five-and-twenty it is perfectly possible to postpone being miserable
until a more convenient season; and, though he would have denied it
emphatically afterward, he certainly thought only occasionally of Bijou
at this period, and of Ethel not at all.

Miss Noel heard very regularly from Mrs. Sykes all this while; and that
energetic traveller had not been idle. She had made her new friends
"take her about tremendously," she said. She had seen all the large
towns in that part of the country, and thought them "very ugly and
monotonously commonplace, but prosperous-looking,--like the
inhabitants." The scenery she had found "far too uninteresting to repay
the bother of sketching it." But she had made a few pictures of "the
views most cracked up in the White Mountains,"--where she had been,--"a
sort of second-hand Switzerland of a place; really nothing after the
Himalayas, but made a great fuss over by the Americans." She described
with withering scorn a drive she took there.

"We came suddenly one day upon a party in a kind of Cheap-Jack van," she
wrote,--"gayly-dressed people, tricked off in smart finery, and larking
like a lot of Ramsgate tradesmen on the public road. One of the impudent
creatures made a trumpet of his great ugly fist and spelt out the name
of the hotel at which they were stopping, and then put his hand to his
ear, as if to listen for the response. Expecting _me_ to tell _them_
anything about myself! But I flatter myself that I was a match for them.
I just got out my umbrella and shot it up in their very faces as we
passed, in a way not to be mistaken. And--would you believe it?--the
rude wretches called out, 'The shower is over now! and 'What's the price
of starch?' and roared with laughing." A highly-colored description of "a
visit to a great Dissenting stronghold, Marbury Park," followed: "I was
immensely curious to see one of these characteristic national
exhibitions of hysteria, ignorance, superstition, and immorality, called
a 'camp-meeting.' to which the Americans of all classes flock annually
by the thousands, so I quite insisted upon being taken to one, though my
friends would have got out of it if they could. I fancy they were very
ashamed of it; and they had need to be. I will not attempt to describe
it in detail here,--you will hear what I have said of it in my
diary,--but a more glaringly vulgar, intensely American performance you
can't fancy. I have made a number of sketches of the grounds, the tents
and tent-life, with the people bathing and dressing and all that in the
most exposed manner; of the pavilion, where the roaring and ranting is
done; and of the great revivalist who was holding forth when I got
there, and who had got such a red face and seemed so excited that it is
my belief he was _regularly screwed_, though my friends denied it, of
course. With such a preacher, you can 'realize,' as they say, what the
people were like. A regular Derby-day crowd having a religious
saturnalia,--that is what it is. It would not be allowed at home, I am
sure. Disgusting! One can't wonder at the state of society in America
when one sees what their religion is. An unpleasant incident occurred to
me while sketching in the pavilion, that shows what I have often pointed
out to you,--the radicalism and odious impertinence of this people. I
was just putting the finishing-touches to my picture of the Rev. (?)
'Galusha Wickers' (the revivalist: such names as these Americans have!),
when I heard a voice behind me saying, 'Lor! Why, that's splendid!
perfectly splendid! Well, I declare, you've got him to a t. Lemmy see.'
And, if you please, a hand was thrust over my shoulder and the sketch
seized, without so much as a 'By your leave.' Can you fancy a more
unwarrantable, insufferable liberty? But they are all alike over here. I
turned about, and saw a woman who was examining the reverend revivalist
with much satisfaction. 'Well, you _have_ got him, to be sure,' she
said, returning my angry glance with one of admiration, and quite
unabashed. 'What'll you take for it? I've sat under him for five years;
and for taking texteses from one end of the Bible to the other, and
leading in prayer, and filling the mourners' bench in five minutes, I
will say he hasn't got his equal in the universe. He's got a towering
intellect, I tell you. I'll give you fifty cents for this, if you'll
color it up nice for me and throw in a frame.' Of course I took the
picture away from the brazen creature and told her what I thought of her
conduct. 'Well, you air techy,' she said, and walked off leisurely."
Before closing her letter, Mrs. Sykes remarked of her hostess, "Quite
good for nothing physically, and absurdly romantic. She has been abroad
a good deal, and bores me dreadfully with her European reminiscences.
She is always talking in a foolish, rapturous sort of way about 'dear
Melrose,' or 'noble Tintern Abbey,' or 'enchanting Warwick Castle;' and
she has read simply libraries of books about England, and puts me
through a sort of examination about dozens of places and events, as
though I could carry all England about in my head. I really know less of
it than of most other countries: there is nothing to be got by running
about it. If one knew every foot of it, everybody would think it a
matter of course; but to be able to talk of Siam and the Fiji Islands,
Cambodia and Alaska, and the like, is really an advantage in society.
One gets the name of being a great traveller, and all that, and is asked
about tremendously and taken up to a wonderful extent. I know a man that
didn't wish to go to the trouble and expense of rambling all over the
world, and wanted the reputation of having done it, so he went into
lodgings at intervals near the British Museum and got all the books that
were to be had about a particular country, and, having read them, would
come back to the West End and give out that he had been there. It
answered beautifully for a while, and he was by way of being asked to
become a Fellow of the Royal Geographical, and was thought quite an
authority and wonderfully clever; but somehow he got found out, which
must have been a nuisance and spoiled everything. I can see that these
people consider it quite an honor to have me visit them, all because of
my having been around the world, I dare say. And of course I have let
them see that I know who is who and what is what. They are imploring me
to stay on; but I told them yesterday that it wouldn't suit my book at
all to stay over two weeks longer, when I had seen all there was to see.
That young Ramsay seems to be enjoying himself out there among those
nasty savages; and, as hunting is about the only thing he is fit for, he
had best stay out there altogether."

The unwritten history of Mrs. Sykes's visit to Marbury Park would have
been more interesting than the account she gave. She took with her a
camp-chair, which she placed in any and every spot that suited her or
commanded the pictorial situations which she wished to make her own
permanently. To the horror and surprise of her friends, she plumped it
down immediately in front of Mr. Wickers (after marching past an immense
congregation), and, wholly unembarrassed by her conspicuous position,
settled herself comfortably, took out her block and pencil, and
proceeded to jot down that worthy's features line upon line, as though
he had been a newly-imported animal at the "Zoo" on exhibition, paying
no attention to the precept upon precept he was trying to impress upon
his audience.

She walked all over the place repeatedly, went poking and prying into
such tents as she chanced to find empty, nor considered this an
essential requisite to the conferring of this honor. When less sociably
inclined, she established herself outside, close at hand, and in this
way made those valuable observations and spirited drawings which
subsequently enriched her diary and delighted a discerning British
public. But this is anticipating. When she tired of New York, she wrote
to Sir Robert that she wished to give as much time as possible to the
Mormons, and would leave at once for Salt Lake City, where she would
busy herself in laying bare the domestic system as it really existed,
and hold herself in readiness to join the party again when they should
arrive there _en route_ to the Yosemite.

Sir Robert, being an heroic creature, felt that he could bear this
temporary separation with fortitude, and, being about to start for
Boston when he got the news, forthwith threw himself upon the New
England States in a frenzied search for all the information to be had
about them,--their exact geographical position, by whom discovered, when
settled, climate, productions, population, principal towns and rivers.
He studied three maps of the region as he rattled along in the
south-bound train, and devoted the rest of the time to getting an
outline of its history: so that his nephew found him but an indifferent
companion.

"I suppose there are authorized maps and charts, geographical,
hydrographical, and topographical, issued by the government, and to be
seen at the libraries. I must get a look at them at once. These are
amateur productions, the work of irresponsible men, contradicting each
other in important particulars as to the relative positions of places,
and inaccurate in many respects, as I find by comparison," he said,
emerging from a prolonged study of his authorities. "You don't seem to
take much interest in all this. You should be at the pains to inform
yourself upon every possible point in connection with this country, or
any other in which you may find yourself; else why travel at all?"

Mr. Heathcote, not having his uncle's thirst for information, was
reading a French novel at the time, and did not attempt to defend his
position, knowing it probably to be indefensible.

Before getting to Boston the air turned very chill, and a fine,
penetrating rain set in that for a while disturbed the student of
American history with visions of rheumatism. "God bless my soul! I shall
be laid by the heels here for weeks. Damp is the one thing that I can't
stand up against. And I have not left my coat out!" he exclaimed,
tugging anxiously at his side-whiskers and annoyed to find how dependent
he had grown on his valet. "What shall I do? Ah! I have an idea. Damp.
What resists it and is practically water-proof? _Newspapers_!" With this
he stood up, seized the "Times" supplement, made a hole in the middle of
the central fold, and put it over his head. "Now I have improvised a
South-American _serape_" he observed, in a tone that betrayed the
pleasure it gave him to exercise his ingenuity. He then took two other
sheets and successively wrapped them around his legs, after the fashion
in vogue among gardeners intent upon protecting valuable plants from the
rigors of winter. This done, he smoothed down the _serape_, which showed
a volatile tendency to blow up a good deal, and, with a brief comment to
the effect that "oilskin or india-rubber could not be better," and no
staring about him to observe the effect of his action on the passengers,
replaced his hat, sat down, picked up his book again, readjusted his
eye-glasses, and went on with the episode he had been reading aloud to
his nephew, who, mildly bored by King Philip's war, was mildly amused by
the spectacle the baronet presented, and surprised to see that their
fellow-travellers thought it an excellent joke. A loud "Haw! haw!" and
many convulsive titters testified their appreciation of the absurd
contrast between Sir Robert's highly-respectable head, his grave,
absorbed air, and the remarkable way in which he was finished off below
the ears; but he read on and on, in his round, agreeable voice,
unconscious of the effect he was producing, until the train came to the
final stop, when Mr. Porter and a very dignified, rigid style of friend
came into the car to look for him.

"My dear Porter, I am delighted to see you, and I shall be with you in
one moment. I shall then have ceased to be a grub and have become a most
beautiful butterfly, ready to fly away home with you as soon as ever you
like," he called out in greeting, and in a twinkling had torn off his
wrappers, and stood there a revealed acquaintance, carefully collecting
his "traps," and beaming cheerfully even upon the friend, who had not
come to a pantomime and showed that he disapproved of harlequins in
private life.

Mr. Porter, however, was all cordiality, and very speedily transferred
his guests to his own house in the vicinity of Boston.

The season was not the one for gaining a fair idea of the society of the
city and neighborhood; but if all the people who were away at the
sea-side and the mountains were half as charming as those left behind
and invited by Mr. Porter, to meet his friends, it is certain that Sir
Robert lost a great deal. On the other hand, it is equally certain that
if they had been at home Sir Robert would most likely be there now, and
this chronicle of his travels would end here. As it was, he found
something novel and agreeable at every step, a fresh interest every hour
of his stay. He began at the beginning, and promptly found out what kind
of soil the city was built on, went on to consider such questions as
drainage, elevation, water-supply, wharves, quays, bridges, and worked
up to libraries, museums, public and private collections of pictures,
and what not. He ordered three pictures of Boston artists,--two autumnal
scenes, and an interior, a negro cabin, with an hilarious sable group
variously employed, called "Christmas in the Quarters." Then the
questions of fisheries, maritime traffic, coast and harbor defences,
light-houses, the ship-building interests, life-saving associations, and
railway systems, pressed for investigation, to say nothing of the mills
and manufactories, wages of operatives, trades-unions, trade problems,
and all the pros and cons of free trade _versus_ protective tariff. Over
these he pondered and pored until all hours every night; and the diary
had now to be girt about with two stout rubber bands to keep it from
scattering instructive leaflets about promiscuously and prematurely. And
by day there were sites literary, historical, or generally interesting
to be visited, engagements with many friends to keep, endless
occupations apparently.

There was so much to see and do that the place was delightful to him,
and he certainly made himself vastly agreeable in return to such of its
inhabitants as came in his way.

"I have added to my circle some very valuable acquaintances, whom I
shall hope to retain as friends," he wrote to England, "notably a
medical man who confirms my germ-propagation theory of the 'vomito,'
which is now raging in the Southern part of the States (I had it, you
remember, on the west coast of Africa, and studied it in the
Barbadoes),--an exceptionally clever man, and, like all such men,
inclined to be eccentric. I think I was never more surprised than to
come upon him the other day in a side-street, where he was positively
having his boots polished _in public_ by a ragged gamin who offered to
'shine' me for a 'dime.' He behaved sensibly about it,--betrayed no
embarrassment, though he must have felt excessively annoyed, made no
apologies, and only remarked that he had been out in the country, and
did not wish to be taken for a miller in the town.

"I was led to believe before coming here that I should not be able to
tell that Boston was not an English town. It did not so impress me on a
surface-view, but it was not long before I recognized that the warp and
woof of the social fabric is that of our looms, though the pattern is a
little different,--a good sort of stuff, I think, warranted _to wash_
and wear. The variation, such as it is, tried by what I call my
differential nationometer, gives to the place its own peculiar,
delightful quality." The rigid gentleman, who was a great deal at the
Porters', was rather inclined to insist upon the great purity and beauty
of his English, to which he repeatedly invited attention, and, as Mr.
Ramsay would have said, "went in for" certain philological refinements
which Sir Robert had never heard before, and thoroughly disliked. But as
there are more Scotchmen in London than in Edinburgh, and better oranges
can be bought for less money in New York than in New Orleans, so it may
be that if you want to find really superior English you must leave
England altogether,--abandon it to its defective but firmly-rooted
_patois_, and seek in more classic shades for the well--spring of Saxon
undefiled. But Sir Robert was not inclined to do this. There were limits
to his liberality and spirit of investigation. When the rigid gentleman
instanced certain words to which he gave a pronunciation that made them
bear small resemblance to the same words as spoken by any class of
people laboring under the disadvantage of having been born and bred in
England, Sir Robert got impatient, and testily dismissed the subject
with, "Oh, come, now! I can stand a good deal, but I can't stand being
told that we don't know how to speak English in England." Something,
however, must be pardoned to a foreigner. If Sir Robert would not
consent to set Emerson a little higher than the angels, as some other
Bostonians could have wished, and had never so much as heard of Thoreau
and other American celebrities not wholly insignificant, he had an
immense admiration for Longfellow, and could spout "Hiawatha" or
"Evangeline" with the best, associated Hawthorne with something besides
his own hedges in the month of May, and was eager to be taken out to
Beverly Farms, that he might "do himself the honor to call upon" the
wisest, wittiest, least-dreaded, and best-loved of Autocrats. When the
day fixed for his departure came, he was still revelling in what the
Historical Society of Massachusetts had to show him, and actually
stayed over a day that he might see the finest collection of cacti in
the country, and at last tore himself away with much difficulty and
lively regrets, carrying with him a collection of Indian curiosities
given him by Mr. Porter, whom he considered to have behaved "most
handsomely" in making him such a present. "I can't rob you outright, my
dear fellow. I feel a cut-purse, almost, when I think of taking all
these valuable and deeply-interesting objects illustrative of the life
and civilization of the aborigines," he said. "Give me duplicates, if
you will be so generous, but nothing unique, I insist." He finally
accepted one gem in the collection,--a towering structure of feathers
that formed "a most delightful head-dress, quite irresistibly
fascinating," tried it on before a mirror that gave back faithfully the
comical reflection, and incidentally delivered a lecture on the
head-ornaments of many savage and civilized nations of every age, though
not at all in the style of the famous Mr. Barlow.

Mr. Heathcote at least was not sorry to find that they were, as he said.
"booked for Baltimore." The image of the beautiful Miss Bascombe had not
been effaced. Perhaps he had photographed it by some private process on
his heart with the lover's camera, which takes rather idealized but very
charming pictures, some of which never fade. At all events, there it
was, very distinct and very lovely, and always hung on the line in his
mental picture-gallery. It was positively with trepidation that he
presented himself before her very soon after his arrival; and an
undeniable blush "mantled" his cheek--if a blush can be said with any
propriety to mantle the male cheek--- when he marched into the
drawing-room, where she was doing a dainty bit of embroidery, and with
much simplicity and directness said, "You said I might come, you know,
and I have come; and I begged of Ethel to come too, but she could not
leave my aunt," before he had so much as shaken hands. Of course no
well-regulated and well-bred young woman--and Miss Bascombe was
both--ever permits herself to remember any man until she is engaged to
him; but she need not forget one that has impressed her agreeably. Miss
Bascombe had not forgotten the handsome Englishman she had met at Jenny
De Witt's, nor the little lecture she had given him on the duties of
brothers to sisters, and it did not strike her that his inaugural
address was at all eccentric or mysterious. He had been told what he
ought to do; he had tried to do it, as was quite right and proper. He
deserved some reward. And he got it,--though only as an encouragement to
abstract virtue, of course. The young lady was pleased to be friendly,
gracious, charming. Her mother came in presently, was equally friendly
and gracious, and almost as charming. Her father came home to dinner,
and was friendly too, and hearty, and very hospitable. Her brothers were
friendliest of all. He knew quite well that he had no claim on them,
that he had not saved the life of any member of the family or laid them
under any sort of obligation, individually or collectively, and no
reception could have seemed more special and dangerously cordial, yet no
anxieties oppressed, no fears distracted him. The weight of excessive
eligibility suddenly slipped off him, like the albatross from the neck
of the Ancient Mariner, leaving him a thankful and a happy man, and in
a week he had established himself firmly at the Bascombes', declined to
accompany his uncle to Virginia, and definitely settled in his own mind
that he would take the step matrimonial,--the step from the sublime
to--well, not always the ridiculous. With this resolution he naturally
thought that the greatest obstacle to success had been removed; but he
was soon disillusionized. He had already come to see that American girls
were very much in the habit of being gracious to everybody, and saying
pretty and pleasant things, with no thought of an hereafter; also that
they did not live with St. George's, Hanover Square, or its American
equivalent, Trinity Church, New York, stamped on the mental retina. Miss
Bascombe was "very nice" to him, he told himself, but she was quite as
nice to a dozen other men. She was uniformly kind, courteous, agreeable,
to every one who came to the house. Her cordiality to him meant nothing
whatever. Yes, he was quite free,--free as air; he saw that plainly, and
perversely longed to assume the fetters he had so long and so skilfully
avoided. What was the use of having serious intentions when not the
slightest notice was taken of the most compromising behavior? It was
true that he was perfectly at liberty to see more of Edith than an
Englishman ever does of any woman not related to him, and to say and do
a thousand things any one of which at home would have necessitated a
proposal or instant flight. But no importance whatever seemed to be
attached to them here, and he was utterly at a loss how to make his
seriousness felt. Yet it was quite clear that if there was to be any
wooing done, he would have to do it,--go every step of the way himself,
with no assistance from Miss Bascombe. "How on earth am I to show her
that I care for her?" he thought. "Other men send her dozens of
bouquets, and box after box of expensive sweets, and loads of books, and
music without end, and they come to see her continually, and take her
about everywhere, and are entirely devoted to her. I wonder what
fellows over here do when they are serious? How do they make themselves
understood when they go on in this way habitually? It is a most
extraordinary state of affairs! And neither party seems to feel in the
least compromised by it. There is that fellow Clinch, who fairly lives
at the Bascombes', and when I asked her if she was engaged to him she
said, 'Engaged to George Clinch? What an idea! _No_. What put that in
your head? He is a nice fellow, and I like him immensely, but there's
nothing of that sort between us. What made you think there was? And when
I explained, she said, 'Oh, _that's_ nothing! He is just as nice to lots
of other girls.' And when I suggested to him that he was attached to
her, he said, 'Edith Bascombe? Oh, no! She is a great friend of mine,
and a charming girl, but I have never thought of that, nor has she. I go
there a good deal, but I have never paid her any marked attention.' No
marked attention, indeed! Nothing seems to mean anything here: it is
worse than being in England, where everything means something. No, it
isn't, either. I vow that when I am at the Clintons' in Surrey I
scarcely dare offer the girls so much as a muffin, and if I ask the
carroty one, Beatrice, the simplest question, she blushes and stammers
as if I were proposing out of hand. But what am I to do? I can't sing
and take to serenading Edith on moonlit nights with a guitar and a blue
ribbon around my neck. I can't push her into the river that I may pull
her out again. I dare say there is nothing for it but to adopt the
American method,--enter with about fifty others for a sort of
sentimental steeple-chase, elbow or knock every other fellow out of the
way in the running, work awfully hard to please the girl, and get in by
half a length, if one wins at all. There is no feeling sure of her until
one is coming back from the altar, evidently."

Some of his conversations with Edith were certainly anything but
encouraging. At other times he felt morally sure that she shared that
derangement of the bivalvular organ technically defined as "a muscular
viscus which is the primary instrument of the blood's motion," whose
worst pains are said to be worth more than the greatest pleasures. He
was very much in earnest, and entirely straightforward, There were no
balancing indecisions now, but the most downright affirmation of
preference. His little speeches were not veiled in rosy clouds of
metaphor and poetry and distant allusions, like Captain Kendall's, nor
did they flow out in an unfailing stream of romantic eloquence, like
that gifted warrior's. They were so honest and so clumsy, indeed, that
Edith could not help laughing at them merrily sometimes, to his great
discomfiture, consisting as they did chiefly of such statements as, "You
know that I am most awfully fond of you. I was tremendously hard hit
from the first. If you don't believe me, you can ask Ramsay. I told him
all about it. You aren't in the least like any other girl that I have
ever known, except Mrs. De Witt a little. I suppose you know that I
would have married her at the dropping of a hat if I could have done so.
But that is all over now. I care an awful lot for you now, and shall be
quite frightfully cut up if you won't have anything to say to me,--I
shall, really. I have got quite wrapped up in you, upon my word. And I
shall be intensely glad and proud if you will consent to be my wife."

When Edith failed to take such speeches as these seriously, poor Mr.
Heathcote was quite beside himself, and, in reply to her bantering
accusations as to his being "a great flirt" and not "really meaning one
word that he said," opposed either burly negation or a deeply-vexed
silence. They looked at so many things differently that they found a
piquant interest in discussing every subject that came up.

"There go May Dunbar and Fred Beach," she said to him one Sunday as they
were coming home from church. "Isn't he handsome? They have been engaged
_three years_. Did you ever hear of such constancy?"

"Do you call that constancy? Why, if a fellow can't wait three years for
a lovely girl like that, he must be a poor stick. Why, my uncle
Montgomery was engaged to his wife seventeen years, while he went out to
India and shook the pagoda-tree, after which he came back, paid all his
father's debts, and they married and went into the house they had picked
out before he sailed," said Mr. Heathcote.

"Good gracious! what a time! I hope the poor things were happy at last.
Were they?" asked Edith.

"H-m--pretty well. He is a rather fiery, tyrannical old party. She
doesn't get her own way to hurt," he replied.

"I have heard that Englishwomen give way to the men in everything and
are always, voluntarily or involuntarily, sacrificed to them. It must be
so bad for both," said Edith sweetly.

"Oh, you go in for woman's rights and that sort of thing, I suppose," he
said, in a tone of annoyance.

"Indeed I don't do anything of the kind," replied she, with warmth. "If
I did, I should be aping the men when I wasn't sneering at them. But I
respect your sex most when they most deserve to be respected, and I
don't see anything to admire in a selfish, tyrannical man that is always
imposing his will, opinions, and wishes upon the ladies of his household
and expects to be the first consideration from the cradle to the grave
because he happens to be a man."

"But he is the head of his house. He ought to get his own way, if
anybody does, and, if he is not a coward, he will, too," said Mr.
Heathcote rather hotly. "Would you have a man a molly-coddle, tied to
his wife's apron-string, and not daring to call his soul his own?"

"Not at all," replied Edith. "It is the cowards that are the tyrants.
'The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring,' as our
American poet says. And women have souls of their own, except in the
East. Why shouldn't _they_ be the first consideration and do as they
please, pray? They are the weaker, the more delicate and daintily bred.
If there is any pampering and spoiling to be done, they should be the
objects of it. And as to rights, there is no divine right of way given
to man, that I know of. I don't believe in that sort of thing at all. Of
course no reasonable woman wants or expects everybody to kootoo before
her and everything to give way to her."

"And no gentleman fails to show a proper respect for his wife's wishes
and comfort, not to mention her happiness," said Mr. Heathcote. "But of
course that sort of thing is only to be found in America. Englishmen are
all selfish, and tyrants, and domestic monsters, I know."

"I didn't say anything of the kind," replied Edith quickly, her cheeks
pink with excitement. "I don't know anything about Englishmen or the
domestic system of England, and I never expect to. But, if what I have
heard is true, it is a system that tends to make men mortally selfish;
and selfish people, whether they are men or women, and whether they know
it or not, are _all_ monsters. But I apologize for my remarks, and, as I
am not interested in the subject _in the least_, we will talk of
something else, if you please."

This very feminine conclusion, delivered loftily and with sudden
reserve, left Mr. Heathcote in anything but an agreeable frame of mind,
and for an hour or two made him doubt the wisdom of international
marriages; but this mood passed away, and he remained a fixture at the
_maison_ Bascombe, where the very postman came to know him and
generously sympathized with the malady from which he was suffering. Nor
was this the only house in which he was made very welcome. Baltimore is
one of many American cities that suffer from the vague but painful
accusation of being "provincial;" but, admitting this dreadful charge,
it has social, gastronomic, and other charms of its own that ought to
compensate for the absence of that doubtful good, cosmopolitanism. Mr.
Heathcote certainly found no fault with it, and did not miss the
population, pauperism, or other institutions of Paris, London, or
Vienna. On the contrary, he took very kindly to the pretty place, and
heartily liked the people. There was nothing oppressive or ostentatious
in the attentions he received, but just the cordiality, grace, and charm
of an old-established society of most refined traditions, perfect
_savoir-vivre_, and chronic hospitality.

"You are making a Baltimorean of me, you are so awfully kind to me," he
would say, pronouncing the _a_ in Bal as he would have done in sal; but
the truth was that he had become primarily a Bascomite and only very
incidentally a Baltimorean. The city counts hundreds of such converts
every year. He was so happy and entirely content that he would have
quite forgotten what it was to be bored just at this period but for
certain individuals,--a boastful, disagreeable Irishman, who fastened
upon him apparently for no other reason than that he might abuse England
at great length and talk of his own valor, accomplishments, and
"paddygree" (as he very properly called the record that established his
connection with Brian Boroo and Irish kings generally), and a lady who
seemed to take the most astounding, unquenchable interest in the English
nobility, as more than one lady had seemed to him to do, to his great
annoyance.

"I don't know a bit about them, I assure you," he said to her; "but I
have the 'Peerage.' If you would like to see that, I will send it you
with pleasure."

This only diverted her conversation into a different but equally
distasteful channel,--the great distinction and antiquity of her own
family. It really seemed as though she had a dread of Mr. Heathcote's
leaving the country with some wrong impression on this important subject
and was determined that he should be put in possession of all the
information she had or imagined herself to have about it. She talked to
him about it so much that the poor man was at incredible pains to keep
out of her way.

"I don't care a brass copper about her," he complained to Edith; "and
if the family has been producing women like her as long as she says, and
is going on at it, all I can say is that it is a pity they have lasted
this long, and the sooner they die out the better. What do I care about
her family, pray? I never heard as much about family in all my life, I
give you my word, as I have done since I came to America. The stories
told me are something wonderful,--all about the two brothers that left
England, and all that, you know. They seem all to have come away in
pairs, like the animals in the ark. I said to one fellow that was
beginning with those two brothers, '_Couldn't you make it three_, don't
you think?' And you'll not believe me, but I speak quite without
exaggeration, when I say that one woman out in Raising assured me
gravely that she was descended from the houses of York and Lancaster!"

"_She didn't!"_ exclaimed Edith. "That is, if she did, she must have
been _crazy_; and I won't have you going back to England and giving
false impressions of us by repeating such stories. Promise me that you
will never repeat it there."

"Oh, that's all right," he replied soothingly. "It's an extreme case, I
grant, and I'll say no more about it if it vexes you, but it is a true
tale all the same. Howe was her name, I remember; and I felt like
saying,--I'll eat my hand if I understand Howe this can possibly
be,'--that's in the Bab Ballads,--but I didn't."

Sir Robert had small opportunity of making acquaintance with Baltimore.
He was very eager to get down into Virginia, and stayed there but two
days. On the second of these he attended a gentleman's dinner-party, the
annual mile-stone of a military society composed of men who had worn the
gray and marked the well-known tendency of tempus to fugit in this
agreeable fashion. Their ex-enemies of the blue were also there, but not
in the original overwhelming numbers, and the battle was now to one
party, now to the other, the race to the best _raconteur_, rivers of
champagne flowed instead of brave blood, and the smoke of cannon was
exchanged for that of Havanas. Sir Robert's face beamed more and more
brightly as the evening wore on, and reminiscences, anecdotes, stories,
jests, songs, were fluently and cleverly poured out in rapid succession
by the hilarious company. The fun was at its height, when he suddenly
leaned forward with his body at an insinuating angle and smilingly
addressed an officer opposite: "You must really let me say that I have
been delighted by all that I have heard here to-night, and appreciate
the compliment you have paid me in permitting me to join you. And now I
am going to ask a great favor. Could you, would you, give me some idea
of 'the rebel yell,' as it was called? We heard so much about that. I am
most curious to hear it. It is always spoken of as perfectly terrifying,
almost unearthly."

The gentleman whom he addressed looked down the table and rapped to call
attention to what he had to say: "Boys, this English gentleman is asking
whether we can't give him some idea of what the rebel yell is like. What
do you say? If our Federal friends are afraid, they can get under the
table, where they will be perfectly safe, and a good deal more
comfortable than they used to be behind trees or in baggage-wagons," he
called out.


A hearty laugh followed, and, their blood having got bubbles in it by
this time, a general assenting murmur was heard.

The next instant a shriek, sky-rending, blood-curdling, savage beyond
description, went up,--a truly terrific yell in peace, and enough to
create a panic, one would think, in the Old Guard in time of war.

"Thank you, thank you. _I am entirely satisfied"_ said Sir Robert, in a
comically rueful tone, as soon as he could say anything for the uproar.
"I never imagined anything like it, never. Where did you get it? Who
invented it? Is it an adaptation of some war-cry of the North American
Indians? It sounds like what one would fancy their cries might be,
doesn't it? It has got all the beasts of the forest in it; and I confess
that I for one, would have fled before it and stayed in the wagons as
long as there was the slightest danger of hearing it. By Jove! it must
have been heard in Boston when given in Virginia. It is curious how very
ancient the practice of--"

But the company heard no more of curious practices, for their yell had
been heard, if not in Boston, in a far more remarkable quarter,--namely,
by the police, who now rushed in, prepared to club, arrest, and carry
off any and all disorderly and dreadful disturbers of the peace.

If Sir Robert had been in any danger of being murdered, all experience
goes to show that no policeman could have been found before the
following morning, and then only in the remotest part of the city. As he
was merely being wined, dined, and amused, quite a formidable body of
these devoted but easily-misled guardians of respectability and
innocence poured into the room, where at first they could see nothing
for the smoke. Matters were explained, they were invited to "take
something" before they went, and took it, and, quite placated, filed out
into the passage again, and from thence into the street.

Sir Robert sat up late that night, or rather began early on the
following day, to copy the stories he had most relished into the diary,
and do what justice he could to "the rebel yell," and, having added an
admirably discriminating chapter on "the present political situation in
the States," concluded with, "How striking is the good sense, the good
feeling, that both the conquerors and the conquered have shown, on the
whole! In other countries, how often has a war far less bloody and
protracted left in its wake evils far greater than the original one, in
guerilla warfare, murders, ceaseless revolt, and smouldering hatred
lasting for centuries on one side, and centuries of tyranny, oppression,
executions, confiscations, on the other! A brave and fine race this, not
made of the stuff that goes to keep up vendettas, shoot landlords, blow
up rulers, assassinate enemies. They can fight as well as any, and they
have shown that they can forgive better than most,--taken together, true
manliness. It may be that they are influenced by a consideration which
is said to be always present to an American,--'Will it pay?' and of
course so practical a people as this see that anarchy doesn't pay; but I
would rather attribute their conduct to nobler, more generous motives,
and in doing this seem to myself to be doing them no more than justice."

     F.C. BAYLOR.

[TO BE CONCLUDED.]




OUR VILLE.


The picturesqueness of France in our day is confined almost exclusively
to its humble life. The Renaissance and the Revolution swept away in
most parts of the country moated castle, abbaye, grange, and chateau, to
replace them with luxurious but conventional piles and ruins humbly
restored and humbly inhabited. Many a farmhouse with unkempt _cour_
and dishevelled _pelouse_ is the relic of a turreted château,
stables are often desecrated churches, seigneurial _colombiers_
shelter swine, and battlemented portals to fortified walls serve, as
does the one of our ville, to house hideously-uniformed _douaniers_
watching the luggage of arriving travellers.

Our ville was never an aristocratic one, and to this day very few of our
names are preceded by the idealizing particle _de_. We have an
ancient history, however,--so ancient that all historians place our
origin at _un temps trèsrecule_. We had houses and walls when Rouen
yonder was a marsh, and we saw Havre spring up like a mushroom only two
little centuries and a half ago. Besieged and taken, burned and ravaged,
alternately by Protestant and Catholic, no wonder our ville has not even
ruins to show that we are older than the fifteen hundreds. Still,
ancient though we are, we have always been a ville of humble
folk,--hardy sailors, brave fishers, and thrifty bourgeois,--and to-day,
as always, our highest families buy and sell and build their philistine
homes back toward the _côte_, while our humble ones picturesquely
haunt the _quais_.

The town is exquisitely situated at the foot of abrupt _côtes_,
just where the broad and tranquil river shudders with mysterious deep
heavings and meets its dolphin-hued death in the all-devouring sea. Away
off in the shimmering distance is the second seaport city of France. On
still days,--and our gray or golden Norman days are almost always
still,--faint muffled sounds of life, the throbbing of factories, the
farewell boom of cannon from ships setting forth across the Atlantic,
even the musical notes of the Angelus, float across the water to us as
dreamily vague as perhaps our earth-throbs and passion-pulses reach a
world beyond the clouds. This city is our metropolis, with which we are
connected by small steamers crossing to and fro with the tide, and where
all our shopping is done, our own ville being too thoroughly limited and
_roturier_ in taste to merit many of our shekels.

In fact, such of our shopping as is done in our ville is in the quaint
marketplace, where black house-walls are beetling and bent, and
Sainte-Cathérine's ancient wooden tower stands the whole width of the
Place away from its Gothic church. Here we bargain and chaffer with
towering _bonnets blancs_ for peasant pottery and faïence,
paintable half-worn stuffs, and delicious ancestral odds and ends of
broken peasant households.

We have many streets over which wide eaves meet, and within which
twilight dwells at noonday. Some of the hand-wide streets run straight
up the _côte_, and are a succession of steep stairs climbing beside
crouching, timber-skeletoned houses perforated by narrow windows opening
upon vistas of shadow. Others seem only to run down from the _côte_
to the sea as steeply as black planks set against a high building. Upon
the very apex of the _côte_, visible miles away at sea, lives our
richest citizen. His house smiles serenely modern even if only
pseudo-classic contempt on all the quaint duskiness and irregularity
below, and is pillared, corniced, entablatured, and friezed, with lines
severely straight, although the building itself is as round as any
mediæval campanile and surmounted with a Gothic bell-turret, while the
entrance-gate is turreted, machicolated, castellated, like the
fortress-castles of the Goths.

Lower down the _côte_, convent walls raise themselves above
red-tiled and lichen-grown roofs. In one of these convents, behind
eyeless grim walls, are hidden cloistered nuns; from others the Sisters
go freely forth upon errands of both business and mercy. The convent of
cloisters, Couvent des Augustines, is passing rich, and has houses and
lands to let. Once upon a time an _Américaine_ coveted one of these
picturesque houses. She entered the convent and interviewed the
business-manager, a veiled nun behind close bars.

"Madame may occupy the house," said _ma Soeur_, "by paying five
hundred francs a year, by observing every fast and feast of the Church,
by attending either matins or vespers every day, and by attending
confession and partaking of the holy sacrament every month."

Madame is a zealous Catholic, therefore the terms, although peculiar,
did not seem too severe. She was about to remove into the house, when,
lo! she received word that, it having come to the knowledge of the
convent that the husband of Madame was a heretic, he could not be
allowed to occupy any tenement of the Communauté.

Although this cloistered sisterhood is vowed to perpetual seclusion,
once a year even heretics may gaze upon their pale faces. This annual
occasion is the prize-day of the school they teach, when the school-room
is decorated with white cloth and paper roses, the _curés_ of
neighboring parishes and the Maire of our ville, with invited
distinguished guests, occupy the platform, and the floor below is free
to everybody furnished with invitation-cards.

I had always longed to enter these prison-like walls and gaze from my
tempestuous distance upon those peaceful lives set apart from earth's
rush and turmoil in a fair and blessed haven of the Lord. I longed to
see those pure visionaries, pale spouses of Christ, and read upon
illumined faces the unspeakable rapture of mystic union with the Lamb of
God.

Monsieur le Docteur S----, our family physician, is also physician of
the convent.

"You will see nobody," he said, remarking my sentimental curiosity
concerning cloistered nuns,--"you will see nobody but a lot of
lace-mending and stocking-knitting old maids who failed to get
husbands."

I had already heard queer stories of our old doctor's forty years of
attendance upon the convent, and I was not so easily discouraged. I was
especially anxious to see the Mother Superior, having many times heard
the story of her flight in slippers and dressing-gown from the
breakfast-table to bury herself forever within the walls that have held
her now these twenty-five years. In all these years her unforgiving
father has never seen her face, nor she his, although they live within
stone's throw of each other.

"Know about him? of course she does," answered Victoire to my question.
"She knows all about him, and more too. Do you suppose there is an item
of news in the whole town that those cloistered nuns do not hear? If you
had been educated by them, as we were, and pumped dry every day as to
what went on in our own and our neighbors' families, you would not ask
that question."

Victoire and I penetrated into the convent that very same day. We
followed a crowd of women, _paysannes_ and _citoyennes_, into
a sunny court paved with large stones and arched by the noontide sky,
but unsoftened by tree or flower, and surrounded by the open windows of
dormitories. Over the threshold we had just crossed the nuns pass but
once after their vows,--pass outward, feet foremost, deaf and unseeing,
to a closer, darker home than even their cloistered one. Some of them
have seen nothing beyond their convent walls for forty years, while one
has here worn away sixty years.

_Sixty years_ without one single glimpse of sweet dawn or fair
sunset, without one single vision of the sea in winter majesty of storm
or summer glory! _Sixty years_ without sound of lisping music
running through tall grass, without one single whisper of the æolian
pines, or glimpse of blooming orchards against pure skies! _Sixty
years_!

Beside me in the school-room sat a buxom peasant-woman, who, as a little
girl crowned with a gaudy tinsel wreath descended from the platform,
confidentially informed me, "_C'est ma fille._ She has taken the
prize for good conduct, and there isn't a worse _coquine_ in our
whole commune."

I saw the pale visionaries, a circle of black-robed figures, with
dead-white bands, like coffin-cerements, across their brows. I saw them
almost unanimously fat, with pendulous jowls and black and broken teeth,
as remote from any expression of mystic fervors and spiritual espousals
as could be well imagined, _"Vieilles commères_!" grunted my
_paysanne,_ who was evidently neither amiable nor saintly.

Mother Mary-of-the-Angels, once Elise Gautier, was short, fat, and
bustling, with large round-eyed spectacles upon her nose, and the pasty
complexion and premature flaccid wrinkles that come with long seclusion
from sunshine and exercise. She marched about like one who had chosen
Martha's rather than Mary's manner of serving her Lord, and we saw her
chat a full half-hour with the wife of the Maire, bowing, smiling,
gesticulating meantime with all the florid grace of a French woman of
the world.

"The Maire's wife was her former intimate friend," whispered Victoire.
"See how much younger and healthier she looks than the Mother Superior,
and how much happier. _On dit_ that it was chagrin at the marriage
of this friend that caused Élise Gautier to desert her widowed father
and dependent little brothers and sisters to bury herself in a convent."

A more interesting story than Élise Gautier's is told in our ville. Some
years ago a nun left the Couvent des Augustines in open day, passing out
from the central door in her nun's garb, and meeting there a
foreign-looking man accompanied by a posse of gendarmes. The couple,
followed by a half-hooting, half-cheering mob, drove directly to the
hôtel-de-ville, where they were united in marriage. Then they went away
from our ville, where both were born, to the husband's home in Spain.
When those convent doors had closed upon her, a quarter of a century
before, and the lovers believed themselves eternally separated, she was
a lovely girl of twenty, he a bright youth of twenty-five. She passed
away from his despairing sight, fair and fresh as a spring flower, with
beautiful golden hair and violet eyes; she came out from that fatal
portal a woman of forty-five, stout, spectacled, with faded, thin hair
beneath her nun's cowl, to meet a portly gray-haired man of fifty, in
whom not even love's eye could detect the faintest vestige of the
slender bright-eyed lover of her youth.

The unhappy Laure had been forced to unwilling vows to keep her from
this beggarly lover, and, when he fled to Spain, both became dead to our
ville for long years. Twenty-two years after Laure became Soeur Angelica
it was known in the convent that the machinery of the civil law, which
had only lately forbidden eternal religious vows, had been set in motion
to secure her release; but it remained a mystery who the spring of the
movement was, her parents having long been dead. Soeur Angelica herself
seemed almost more terrified than otherwise at the knowledge, for every
conventual influence was brought to bear upon her morbid conscience to
assure her that eternal damnation follows broken vows. It seems,
however, that amid all her spiritual stress she never confessed, even to
her spiritual director, what desecration had come upon that dovecote by
her constant correspondence with the lover of her youth, now a wealthy
wine-merchant in Spain. When she left the convent, some of these
love-letters were left behind; and to this day those scandalized doves,
to whom Soeur Angelica is forever a lost soul, wonder futilely how those
emissaries of Satan penetrated their holy walls.

"How _did_ they, do you suppose?" I asked.

Victoire and Clarice smiled curiously, while Émile, with an expression
savoring of paganism and pig-tails, squinted obliquely toward our
doctor.

"_Nous n'en savons rien_" they answered me.

The social amusements of our ville are few, as must naturally be the
case in a provincial town ruled by the Draconian law that a _jeune
fille à marier_ must be no more than an animated puppet, while
_jeunes gens_ must have their coarse fling before they are fit for
refined society. Occasionally an ambulant theatrical troupe gives an
entertainment in our little theatre. Once a year Talbot comes, during
vacation at the Francais, and gives us "L'Avare" or "Le Roi s'amuse;"
but such are small events, to our provincial taste, compared with the
vaulting and grimacing of the more frequent English and American circus
troupes in our Place Thiers.

Perhaps the chief distraction of our young people is going to early
mass, whither our young ladies go accompanied by _bonnes_, Maman
having not yet emerged from the French mamma's chrysalis condition of
morning crimping-pins, petticoat and short gown, and list slippers. The
_bonnes_ who thus serve as chaperons are often as young as or even
younger than the demoiselles whose virginal modesty they are supposed to
protect. That they are anything more than a mere form of guardian, a
figment of the social fiction that a young French girl never leaves her
mother's side till she goes to her husband's, it is unnecessary to
observe. Human nature, especially French human nature, is human nature
all the world over, and Romeo will woo and Juliet be won during early
mass or twilight vespers as well as from a balcony, in spite of all the
Montagues and Capulets. Girl-chaperons are oftener in sympathy with
ardent daughters than with worldly mothers, while even the oldest and
most sedate of French _bonnes_ are malleable to other influences
than those of their legitimate employers. It was across our river,
yonder from whence the sound of the Angelus comes across the summer
water like the music of dreams, that Balzac's Modest Mignon carried on
her intrigues of hifalutin gush, by means of a facile _bonne_, with
a man whom she had never seen, and who deceived her by personating the
poet she wished him to be. Modest Mignons are not rare in our ville, and
the Gothic vaults of Saint-Léonard and the pillared aisles of
Sainte-Cathérine witness almost as many little intrigues, as many
heart-beats and blushes, as does "evenin' meetin'" in our own bucolic
regions.

Désirée, our _femme-de-chambre,_ before she came to us, lived in a
wealthy _roturier_ family.

"It was a good place, and I was sorry to lose it when Mademoiselle
Eugénie was married," said she. "The little gifts the _jeunes gens_
slipped into my panier as I came with mademoiselle from mass almost
equalled my wages. Mademoiselle had a good _dot_ as well as beauty,
and _ces jeunes gens_ expected to lose nothing by what they gave
me. Mademoiselle herself often said, 'Désirée, walk a few steps behind
me, and, while I keep my eyes upon the pavement, tell me all the young
men who turn to look after me. If you hear any of them say, "_Comme
elle est jolie!_" (How pretty she is!) you shall have my _batiste
mouchoirs_.'"

On Sunday afternoons all the bourgeois world of our ville disports
itself upon the jetty. Not only then do all the mothers of the town with
daughters "to marry" bring those daughters to the weekly matrimonial
mart, but many of the mothers and chaperons of the near country round
about come in from rural _propriété_ and rustic _chalet_ to
exhibit their candidates. The method of procedure is eminently French,
of course, and eminently naïve, as even the intrigues and machinations
of Balzac's _bourgeoisie_, although intended as marvels of finesse,
seem so often naïveté itself to our blunter and less-plotting minds. The
mothers and daughters, or chaperons and charges, walk slowly arm in arm
up and down one side the jetty, facing the counter-current of young men
and men not young who have not lost interest in feminine attractions.
Back and forth, back and forth, for hours, move the two separate
streams, never for one instant commingling, each discussing the other's
prospects, characters, appearance, and, above all, _dots_ and
_rentes_, till twilight falls and all the world goes home to
dinner.

Once upon a time a retired man of business came to our ville,
accompanied by his son. He was one of the class known in England as
"Commys," and so obnoxious in France as _commis-voyageurs._ He
stopped at the Cheval Blanc, and in conversation with mine host inquired
if it might chance that some café-keeper in the town desired to sell his
café and marry his daughter. Monsieur Brissom mentioned to him our
café-keepers blessed with marriageable daughters, and "Commy" made the
rounds among them, announcing that he had a son whom he wished to marry
to some charming demoiselle _dot_ed with a café. One of the
café-keepers had "_précisément votre affaire_." It was arranged
that Mademoiselle Clothilde should be promenaded by her mother the next
Sunday on the jetty, where the young man should join the
counter-current, and thus each take observations of the other.

As said, so done. Monsieur Henri and Mademoiselle Clothilde declared
themselves enchanted with each other.

"_Très-bien_," said the reflective parents. "Now fall in love as
fast as ever you please."

Monsieur and mademoiselle not only "fell," but plunged.

Two weeks afterward, however, the papas fell out. Cafétier exacted more
than Commis could promise, and Commis declared Mademoiselle Clothilde
_pas grand' chose_: her eyebrows were too white, and her toes
turned in.

The marriage was declared "off," and the young people were ordered to
fall out of love the quickest possible.

"Too late!" they cried.

"You have seen each other but four times."

"Quite enough," declared the lovers.

"You shall not marry," shouted the parents.

"We _will_!" screamed their offspring.

Nevertheless they could not, for the French law gives almost absolute
power to parents. Mademoiselle would have no _dot_ unless her
father chose to give her one, and no French marriage is legal without
paternal consent or the almost disgraceful expedient of _sommations
respectueuses_. Mademoiselle threatened to enter a convent. Cafétier
assured her that no convent opens cordial doors to _dot_less girls.

Juliet was ready to defy all the Capulets when she had seen Romeo but
once; Corinne was ready to fling all her laurels at Oswald's feet at
their second interview; Rosamond Vincy planned her house-furnishing
during her second meeting with Lydgate; even Dorothea Brooke felt a
"trembling hope" the very next day after her first sight of Mr.
Casaubon. How, then, could one expect poor Clothilde to yield up her
undersized, thin-moustached, and very unheroic-looking Henri, having
seen him _four_ times?

There was one way out of her troubles,--that to which Alphonse Daudet's
and André Theuriet's people gravitate as needles to their pole. She
walked one dark midnight upon the jetty alone. Nobody saw the end; but
the next Sunday, three weeks to a day from the one when the two had
countermarched in matrimonial procession, Mademoiselle Clothilde was
laid in her grave.

The whole French social system revolves around the _dot_.

"How dare you speak to my father so!" I once heard a daughter reproach
her mother. "How dare you, who brought him no _dot_!"

"It is a pity Madame Marais has no more influence in her family," I
heard remarked in a social company. "It is a pity, for she is a good
woman, and her husband and sons are all going to the bad."

"Yes, it is a pity," answered another; "but, then, what else can she
expect? She brought no _dot_ into the family."

Once upon a time a young man made a friendly call upon a family in our
ville, he a distant relative of the family. He sat in the _salon_
with mother and daughter, when suddenly the mother was called away a
moment. When she returned, not more than two minutes later,--horror!
_she could not enter the room!_ In closing the door she had somehow
disarranged the handles; screws had dropped out and could not be found;
the knob would not turn. What a situation! A young girl shut up in a
locked room with a young man! What a scandal if the story got out in the
town! and what could the poor, distracted mamma do to release her
daughter from that damning situation without the knowledge of the
servants? She dared not even summon a locksmith, for locksmith tongues
are free; and who would not shoot out the lip at poor Jeanne, hearing
the miserable story at breakfast-tables to-morrow?

"You must marry Jeanne, _mon cousin_," cried mamma through the
keyhole.

"Impossible, _ma cousine_. You know I am _fiancé_," laughed
he.

Nevertheless he did!

For when papa heard that Jeanne had remained two whole hours shut up
with Cousin Pierre in a brilliantly-lighted _salon_, with a frantic
mother at the keyhole and all the servants grinning upon their knees
searching for the missing screws, he added twenty thousand francs to her
_dot_ on the spot, and Pierre wrote to his other _fiancée_ that he had
"changed his intentions."

"Mamma's _tapage_ was too funny," laughed Madame Pierre, telling me
this story herself. "Pierre and I laughed well on our side of the door,
although we were careful not to let maman hear us. For we had often been
alone together before when _nobody knew it_."

Which makes all the difference in the world in our ville, as well as
elsewhere.

Pierre's funny experience did not end with his betrothal. In relating
the adventure which follows, I wish it distinctly to be understood that
I do it in all respect, admiration, and reverence for the Church which
is the mother of all Churches calling themselves Christian. The Holy
Roman Catholic Church is no less holy that her servants are so often
base and vile and that her livery is so often stolen to serve evil in.
What wickedness and hypocrisy have we not in our own Protestant clergy,
and without even the tremendous excuse for it which the conditions of
European society give for the occasional levity of its priesthood! In
France the Church is a recognized profession, to which parents destine
and for which they educate their sons without waiting for them to
exhibit any special bias toward a religious life. In spite of
themselves, many young men are even forced into the priesthood, not only
by strong family influence, but through having been educated so as to be
absolutely unfitted for any other walk of life. With us the priesthood
is a matter of deliberate and perfectly voluntary choice, and he who
wears it as a cloak is ten thousand times the hypocrite his Catholic
brother is.

It happened that our _curé_ of Saint-Étienne was a jolly good
fellow, somewhat given to wine-bibbing, and much given to Rabelaisian
stories. He was also hail-fellow-well-met with Pierre, and Pierre, like
most of the young men of France, prided himself upon his entire freedom
from the "superstitious." Père Duhaut lived by teaching and preaching.

In France the church sacrament of marriage cannot be performed unless
both the contracting parties furnish certificates of having made
confession within three weeks. To secure his certificate it would be
necessary for Pierre to confess to the _curé_ of Saint-Étienne,
Père Duhaut.

"_I_ confess to Duhaut!" he laughed in our house. "I'll
be--what's-his-named first. Old Duhaut might as well confess to me. I
shall simply give him six francs and get my certificate without any more
ado, just as the other fellows get theirs."

That very afternoon Père Duhaut took tea with us, and Émile was mean
enough to betray Pierre's intentions.

"We'll see," said our _curé_.

The next day Pierre passed our windows. He bowed gayly, and called up
that he was going for his six francs' worth of ante-nuptial absolution.
An hour later he passed again, but he did not look up. In the evening
Père Duhaut came, bursting with laughter.

"Ask Pierre how he got his certificate," he guffawed. Then he told us
the story. Pierre, it seems, had offered the six francs, which offer the
confessor had rejected with scorn.

"In to the confessional," he cried, "and make your confession like a
penitent!"

"I'll make it fifteen," grinned Pierre.

"Not for a thousand. In! _in_!"

"Come, now, Duhaut, this is all humbug. You know I'm not penitent, and
I'll be---- if I'll confess to you."

Without more words, the burly priest seized the recalcitrant and grabbed
him by the neck, trying to force him into the confession-box. Pierre
resisted, and, as the _curé_ told us bursting with laughter, the
two wrestled and waltzed half around the church. Finally Pierre was
brought to his knees.

"_Eh bien, allez_! What am I to confess?" he grumbled.

"Every sin you have committed since your last confession."

How malicious was Père Duhaut in this! for he knew Pierre had not kept
the observances of the Church since he left home at seventeen, and had
not been an anchorite either.

"I'll make it an even hundred," begged the now exasperated yet humbled
Pierre. "Come, now, do be reasonable; that's a jolly old boy."

"Confess! confess!" roared the confessor, dealing the kneeling
impenitent a sounding cuff on the ear.

"Ask Pierre how he got his certificate," roared Père Duhaut.
"_Demandez-lui! Demandez-lui!_"

But we never did.

Until his grave received him, only a few weeks ago, a marked character
of our ville was a stooping old man, of a ghastly paleness, noted
through all the region for avarice and for speaking every one of his
many languages each with worse accent than the other. His Spanish
sounded like German, his German had the strongest possible American
accent, his English was vividly Teutonic, and after forty years of
marriage his Norman wife never ceased to mock at his atrociously-mouthed
French. He was wine-merchant and banker combined, and, though his social
position was among the best in our bourgeoise ville, all the world
smiled with the knowledge that the rich old _banquier_, whose nose
had a strong Hebraic curve, delivered his own merchandise at night from
under his long coat, in order to escape the tax on every bottle of wine
transported from one domicile to another.

The stately gate-post of "Père S----'s" pretentious and philistine
mansion is decorated with the coats-of-arms of several nations.
England's is there, Germany's, Spain's, Portugal's, as well as our own
Eagle; while upon days when our own exiled hearts beat most proudly--4th
of July and 22d of February--our star-spangled banner floats from his
roof-top as well as from our own, the only two, of course, in our ville.
Our ville, so important to us, has scarcely an existence for our home
government, and administrative changes there float over us like clouds
of heaven, without touching us in their changefulness. Thus Père S----,
though so courteous and cordial to Americans, has been long years
forgotten at Washington, whence every living servitor of the
administration that appointed him our consul here has long since passed
away forever. He was born in Pennsylvania, of German parents, nearly
eighty years ago. He received his appointment in 1837, and held it
through fourteen administrations since Van Buren, without ever returning
to America, till he faded away one little month ago and was buried in
the parish cemetery of Saint-Léonard by a Lutheran pastor brought over
for the occasion from Havre. No church-bells tolled for his death, and
the street-children did not go on their way singing, as they always do,
to the sound of funeral bells.

"_Viens, corps, ta fosse t'attend!_" for Pere S---- was a heretic,
and could not have slept in consecrated ground had he died before the
République Française removed religious restrictions from all
burial-places. All the consular corps in all the region round about
followed the old man to his long home, all our public buildings hung
their flags half-mast high, all our little world told queer stories of
the dead old man. But our own hearts grew tender with thoughts of this
life finished at fourscore years with its longing of almost half a
century unfulfilled. "Philip Nolan" we often called the old man, who
sometimes said to us, with yearning, pathetic voice,--

"I am an American; I am here only till I make my fortune. When I am rich
enough I shall go _Home_. I shall die and be buried at Home,--when
I am rich enough."

Temperament is Fate. Père S----'s temperament of Harpagon fated him to
die as he had lived,--a man without a country.

     MARGARET BERTHA WRIGHT.




THE PRIMITIVE COUPLE.

I.

PARADISE.


The island in Magog Lake was like a world by itself. Though there were
but fifteen or twenty acres of land in it, that land was so diversified
by dense woods, rocks, verdant open spots, and smooth shore-rims that it
seemed many places in one.

Adam's tent was set in the arena of an amphitheatre of hills, upon
close, smooth sward sloping down to the lake-margin of milk-white sand.
Beyond the lake stood up a picture as heavenly to man's vision as the
New Jerusalem appearing in the clouds.

This was a mountain bounded at the base by two spurs of the lake, and
clothed by a plumage of woods, except upon spaces near the centre of its
slope. Here green fields disclosed themselves and two farm-houses were
nested, basking in the light of a sky which deepened and deepened
through infinite blues.

Though it was high noon, dew yet remained upon the abundance of ferns
and rock-mosses on those heights around the camp. The tent stood open at
both ends, framing a triangular bit of lake-water and shore. Within it
were a table piled with books, an oval mirror hung over a toilet-stand,
garments suspended along a line, a small square rug overlying the sward,
and camp-chairs.

The two cots had been stripped of their blankets--which were out sunning
upon a pole--and set in the thickest shade, and upon one of these cots
Eva was stretched out, having a pillow under her head. Her dress was of
a green woollen stuff, and barely reached the instep of her low shoes. A
mighty bunch of trailing ferns, starred with furry azure flowers and
ox-eyed daisies, was fastened from her neck to her girdle. She had drawn
her broad sun-hat partly over the bewitching mystery of her eyes and
forehead, to keep the sky-glow at bay, but left space enough through
which to search the whole visible world, and her face was smiling with
pure joy. To be alive beside Lake Magog was sufficient; and she was both
alive and beloved.

She thought within herself how indescribable all this beauty was. A
pleasant wind smelling of world-old fern-loam fanned her. There were
neither mosquitoes nor flies to sting, and, had there been, Adam was
provided with a bottle of pennyroyal oil, wherewith he would anoint her
face and hands, kissing any lump planted there before he came to the
rescue.

Eva felt sure she never wanted to go back to civilization again. Days
and days of shining weather, fog-or dew-drenched in the morning,
wine-colored or opaline in the evening; cool, starry nights, so cool, so
dense with woods-shade that they drove her to hide her head in the
blankets under Adam's arm; glowing noons, when the world swam in
ecstasy; long pulls at the oars from point to point of this magic lake,
she holding the trolling-line at the stern of the boat, her husband
sometimes resting and leaning forward to get her smile at nearer range
upon his face; plunges into the warm lake-water in the afternoon when
time stood still in a trance of satisfaction:--what a honeymoon she was
having! Why should it ever end? There were responsible folks enough to
carry the world's work forward. Two people might be allowed to spend
their lives in paradise, if a change of seasons could only be prevented.
Anyhow, Eva was soaking up present joy. She half closed her eyes, and
whispered fragmentary words, feeling that her heart was a censer of
incense, swinging off clouds of thanksgiving at every beat.

Adam came from the spring with a dripping pail. A fret-work of cool
drops stood all over the tin surface, even when he set the pail beside
his heated stove. That water had been filtered through moss and pebbles
and chilled by overlaced boughs until its nature was glacial.

The cooking-stove stood quite apart from the tent, under a tree. Blue
woodsmoke escaped from its pipe and straight-way disappeared. A covered
pot was already steaming, and Adam filled and put the kettle to boil.
Not far from the stove was a stationary table, made of boards fastened
upon posts. The potato-cellar and the cold-chest were boxes sunk in the
ground. Some dippers, griddles, and pans hung upon nails driven in the
tree.

Adam spread the table with a red cloth, brought chairs from the tent,
and came and leaned over Eva's cot. He was a sandy-haired, blue-eyed,
hardy-looking Scotchman, gentlemanly in his carriage, and bearing upon
his visible character the stamp of Edinbro' colleges and of Calvinistic
sincerity. He wore the Highland cap or bonnet, a belted blouse,
knickerbockers, long gray stockings, and heavy-soled shoes.

"Well, Mrs. Macgregor," said Adam, giving the name a joyful burr in his
throat, "my sweethairt. I must have a look of your eyes before you taste
a bit of my baked muskalunge."

"Well, Mr. Macgregor. And will I get up and set the table and help put
on dinner?"

"No, my darling. It's all ready,--or all but a bit of fixing."

"I am so happy," said Eva, "so lazy and happy, it doesn't seem fair to
the rest of the world."

"There is at this time no rest of the world," responded Adam. "Nothing
has been created but an island and one man and woman. Do you belaive
me?"

"I would if I didn't see those farm-houses, and the boats occasionally
coming and going on the lake; yes, and if you didn't have to row across
there for butter and milk, and to Magog village for other supplies."

"That's a mere illusion. We live here on ambrosial distillations from
the rocks and muskalunge from the lake. I never came to Canada from old
Glazka town, and never saw Loch Achray, or Loch Lomond, or any body of
water save this, since I was created in God's image without any
knowledge of the catechism. And let me see a mon set foot on this
strond!"

"Oh, you inhospitable creature!"

"I but said let me see him."

"Yes, but I know what you meant. You meant you didn't want anybody."

"My wants are all satisfied, thank God," said Adam, lifting his cap. "I
have you, and the breath o' life, and the camp-outfit."

"And the mountains, and the lake, and the rocks, and the woods," added
Eva. "I never could have believed there were such sublime things in the
world if I hadn't seen them."

"Neither could I," owned the Scotchman. "Especially such a sublime thing
as me wife."

Eva struck at him, restraining her palm from bringing more than a pat
upon his cheek.

"How your little hand makes me tremble!" said Adam, drawing his breath
from chest-depths. "Will I ever grow to glimpse at you without having
the blood spurt quick from me hairt, or to touch you without this
faintness o' joy? And don't mock me wi' your eyes, bonnie wee one, for
it's bonnie wee one you'll be to me when you're a fat auld woman the
size of yonder mountain. And _that_ changes the laughter in your eyes."

"I didn't suppose you ever _could_ call me a fat old woman."

"I'll be an auld man then meself, me fiery locks powthered with ashes,
and my auld knees knocking one at the ither," laughed Adam.

    "But hand in hand we'll go,"
sang Eva,
    "And sleep thegither at the foot,
    Joh--n Ander--son, my jo--o."

"Oh, don't!" said Adam, with a sudden grasp on her wrist. "My God! one
must go first; and I could naither leave you nor close these eyes of
yours." He put his other hand across his eyelids, his lower features
wincing. "Sweetheart," said Adam, removing it, and taking her head
between his palms, "for what we have already received the Lord make us
duly thankful. And shut up about the rest. And there's grace said for
dinner: excepting I didn't uncover me head. Excuse me bonnet."

"Take off your ridiculous bonnet," said Eva, emerging from the eclipse
of a long kiss, "and drag me out of my web. If I am to be your helpmeet,
make me help."

"You naidn't lift a finger, my darling. I don't afford and won't have a
sairvant in the camp, so I should sairve you myself."

Passing over this argument, Eva crept up on the stretcher and had him
lift her to the ground. Her shape was very slender and elegant, and when
the two passed each an arm across the other's back to walk together
school-girl fashion, Adam's grasp sloped far downward. She did not quite
reach his shoulder.

They made coffee, and served up their dinner in various pieces of
pottery. The baked muskalunge was portioned upon two plates and
surrounded with stewed potato. Potatoes with scorched jackets, enclosing
their own utmost fragrance, also came out of the ashes. Adam poured
coffee for Eva into a fragile china cup, and coffee for himself into a
tin pint-measure. The sugar was in a glass fruit-jar, and the cream came
directly off a pan in the cold-box. They had pressed beef in slices,
chow-chow through the neck of the bottle, apricot jam in a little white
pot, baker's rolls, and a cracked platter heaped with wild strawberries.
Around the second point of Magog Island, down one whole stony hill-side,
those strawberries grew too thick for stepping. The hugest, most deadly
sweet of cultivated berries could not match them. You ate in them the
light of the sky and the ancient life of the mountain.

"I never was so hungry at home," said Eva, accepting a finely-done bit
of fish with which her lord fed her as a nestling. "Perhaps things taste
better eaten out of unmatched crockery and under a roof of leaves. I
wouldn't have a plate different in the whole camp."

"Nor would I," said Adam.

She looked across at the mountain-panorama, for, though stationary, it
was also forever changing, and the light of intense and burning noon was
different from the humid veil of morning.

"And yonder goes a sail," she tacked to the end of her
mountain-observations.

"Heaven speed it!" responded Adam, carrying his cup for a second filling
to the coffee-pot on the stove. "Will ye have a drop more?"

"Indeed, yes. I don't know how many drops more I shall drink. We get so
fierce and reckless about our victuals. Will it be the spirit of the old
counterfeiters who used to inhabit this island entering into us?"
suggested Eva, using the English-Canadian idiom of the western
provinces.

"Without doot. It was their custom never to let a body leave this strond
alive, and they can only hairm us by making us eat oursels to death."

"Nearly a hundred years ago, wasn't it, they lived here and made
counterfeit money and drew silly folks in to buy it of them? When I hear
the rocks all over this island sounding hollow like muffled drumming
under our feet, I scare myself thinking that gang may be hid hereabouts
yet and may come and peep into the tent some night."

"Behind them all the army of bones they drowned in Magog watther or
buried in the island," laughed Adam. "It's not for a few old ghosts we'd
take up our pans and kettles and move out of the Gairden of Eden. I'll
keep you safe from the counterfeiters, my darling, never fear."

"You said heaven speed that sail yonder; but the man has taken it down
and is rowing in here."

"Then he's an impudent loon. Who asked him?"

"The sight of our tent, very likely. And maybe it will be some friend of
ours, stopping at the Magog House. He wears a white helmet-hat; and
isn't that a yachting-suit of white flannel?"

"He comes clothed as an angel of light," said Adam.

They both watched the figure and the boat growing larger in perspective.
Features formed in the blur under the rower's hat; his individuality
sprung suddenly from a shape which a moment ago might have been any
man's.

"Oh, Adam, it will be Louis Satanette from Toronto," exclaimed Eva.

"And what's a Toronto man doing away up on Lake Magog?"

"What will a Glasgow man be doing away off here on Lake Magog?"

"Camping with his wife, and getting more religion than ever was taught
in the creeds."

"I'm not so sure of that, then."

"Because I don't love a Frenchman?"

"A French-Canadian. And a member of Parliament, too. Think of that at
his age! They say in Toronto he is one of the most promising men in the
provinces."

"Can he spear a salmon with a gaff, and does he know a pairch from a
lunge? And he couldn't be a Macgregor, anyhow, if he was first man in
Canada."

Eva laughed, and, forming her lips into a kiss, slyly impressed the same
upon the air, as if it could reach Adam through some invisible pneumatic
tube. He was not ashamed to make a return in kind; and, the boat being
now within their bay, they went down to the sand to meet it.




II.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT.


In spotless procession the days moved along until that morning on which
Adam dreamed his dream. He waked up trembling with joy and feeling the
tears run down his face. His watch ticked like the beating of a pulse
under his pillow, and he kept time to its rhythm with whispered words no
human ear would ever hear him utter with such rapture.

He had dreamed of breasting oceans and groping through darkness after
his wife until he was ready to die. Then, while he lay helpless, she
came to him and lifted him up in her arms. There was perfect and
unearthly union between them. His happiness became awful. He woke up
shaken by it as by a hand of infinite power.

Instead of turning toward her, he was still. Such experiences cannot be
told. The tongue falters and words limp when we try to repeat them to
the one beloved. A divine shame keeps us silent. Perhaps the glory of
that perfect love puts a halo around our common thoughts and actions for
days afterward, but no man or woman can fitly say, "I was in heaven with
you, my other soul, and the gladness was so mighty that I cried
helplessly long after I woke."

Adam kept his sleeve across his eyes. He had risked his life in many an
adventure without changing a pulse-beat, but now he was an infant in the
grasp of emotion.

When at last he cast a furtive glance at Eva's cot, she was not there.
She often slipped out in the early morning to drench herself with dew.
Once he had discovered her stooping on the sand, washing soiled clothes
in the lake. She clapped and rubbed the garments between soap and her
little fists. The sun was just coming up in the far northeast. Shapes of
mist gyrated slowly upward in the distance, and all the morning birds
were rushing about, full of eager business. Eva stopped her humming song
when she saw him, and laughed over her unusual employment. The first
time she ever washed clothes in her life she wanted to have Magog for
her tub and accomplish the labor on a vast and princess-like scale. Adam
helped her spread the wet things on bushes, and they both marvelled at
the bleached dazzle which the sun gave to those garments.

He did not move from the cot, hoping awhile that she might come in,
dew-footed, and yet kiss him. That clear shining of the face which one
sometimes observes in pure-minded devotees, or in young mothers over
their firstborn, gave him a look of nobility in the pallid shadow of the
tent.

He thought of all their days on the island, and, incidentally, of Louis
Satanette's frequent comings. The Frenchman was a beautiful, versatile
fellow. He sailed a boat, he swam, he fished knowingly, he sang like an
angel, leaning his head back against a tree to let the moonlight touch
up his ivory face and silky moustache and eyebrows. He had firm,
marble-white fingers, nicely veined, on which reckless exposure to sun
and wind had no effect, and the kindliest blue eyes that ever beamed
equal esteem upon man and woman. Sometimes this Satanette came in a
blue-flannel suit, the collar turned well back from the throat, and in a
broad straw hat wound with pink and white tarlatan. He looked like a
flower,--if any flower ever expressed along with its beauty the powerful
nerve of manliness.

Frequently he sailed out from Magog House and stayed all night on the
island, slinging his own hammock between trees. Then he and Adam rose
early and trolled for lunge in deep water under the cliff. In the
afternoon they all plunged into the lake, Eva swimming like a
cardinal-flower afloat. Adam was careful to keep near her, and finally
to help her into the boat, where she sat with her scarlet bathing-dress
shining in the sun and her drenched hair curling in an arch around her
face.

All these days flashed before Adam while he put a slow foot out on the
tent-rug.

There was nobody about the camp when he had made his morning toilet and
unclosed the tent-flaps, so he built a fire in the stove, hung the
bedding to sun, and set out the cots. A blueness which was not humid
filtered itself through the air everywhere, and fold upon fold of it
seemed rising from invisible censers on the mainland.

Eva hailed him from the lake. She came rowing across the sun's track.
The water was fresh and blue, glittering like millions of alternately
dull and burnished scales.

Adam drew the boat in and lifted her out, more tenderly but with more
reticence than usual.

"You don't know where I have been, laddie," exclaimed Eva. "Look at all
the fern and broken bushes in the boat; and I have my pocket sagged
down with gold-streaked quartz. I went around to the other side of the
island, where the counterfeiters' hole is, to look into it while the
morning sun on the lake threw a reflection."

"There's nothing wonderful to be seen there."

"How will we know that? The rocks sound hollow all about, and there may
be a great cavern full of counterfeiters' relics. Oh, Adam, I saw Louis
Satanette's sail!"

"He comes early this morn."

"I think he has been camping by himself over on the lake-shore. He says
we'll explore the counterfeiters' hole, and let us go directly after
breakfast."

"What is it worth the exploring?" said Adam. "Four rocks set on end, and
you crawl in on your hands and knees, look at the dark, and back out
again. It's but a burrow, and ends against the hill's heart of rock.
I've to row across yonder for the eggs and butter and milk."

The smoke rising from different points on the mainland kept sifting and
sifting until at high noon the air was pearl-gray. As if there was not
enough shadow betwixt him and the sun, Adam sat in his boat at the foot
of the cliff, where brown glooms never rose quite off the water. He
looked down until sight could pierce no farther, and, though a fish or
two glided in beautiful curves beneath his eye, he had no hook dropped
in as his excuse for loitering.

The eggs and butter and milk for which he had rowed across the lake were
covered with green leaves under one of the boat-benches.

Straight above him, mass on mass, rose those protruding ribs of the
earth, the rocks. He lay back in the boat's stern and gazed at their
summit of pinetrees and ferns. Bunches of gigantic ferns sprouted from
every crevice, and not a leaf of the array but was worth half a
lifetime's study. Yet Adam's eye wandered aimlessly over it all, as if
it gave him no pleasure. Nor did he seem to wish that a little figure
would bend from the summit, half swallowed in greenness and made a
vegetable mermaid from the waist downward, to call to him. He was so
haggard the freckles stood in bold relief upon his face and neck.

The hiss of a boat and the sound of row-locks failed to move him from
his listless attitude. He did, however, turn his eyes and set his jaws
in the direction of the passing oarsman. Louis Satanette was all in
white flannel, and flush-faced like a cream-pink rose with pleasant
exhilaration. He held his oars poised and let his boat run slowly past
Adam.

"What have you the matter?" he exclaimed, with sincere anxiety.

"Oh, it's naught," said Adam. "I'm just weary, weary."

"You have been gone a very, very long time," said Louis, using the
double Canadian adjective. "Mrs. Macgregor is on the lookout."

Adam thought of her when she was _not_ on the lookout. He also thought
of her tidying things about the camp in the morning, and singing as he
pulled from the bay. Perhaps she was on another sort of lookout then.

"I'll go in presently," he muttered.

"Beg pardon?" said Louis Satanette, bending forward, and giving the
upward inflection to that graceful Canadian phrase which asks a
repetition while implying that the fault is with the hearer.

"I said I'd go in presently. There's no hurry."

"Allow me to take you in," said Louis. "You have approached too close
to the altars of the sylvan gods, and their sacrificial smoke has
overcome you. Don't you see it rising everywhere from the woods?"

"The sylvan gods are none of my clan," remarked Adam, shifting his
position impatiently, "and it's little I know of them. There's a graat
dail of ignorance consailed aboot my pairson."

Louis Satanette laughed with enjoyment:

"Well, _au revoir_. I will put up my sail when I turn the points. It
will be a long run up the lakes, with this haze hanging and not wind
enough to lift it."

"Good-day to ye," responded Adam. "We'll likely shift camp before you're
this way."

"In so short a time?" exclaimed Louis.

"In so lang a time. I'm soul-sick of it. It's lone; it's heavy. The
fine's too great for the pleasure of the feight. Look, now,--there were
two rough laddies up Glazka way, in my country, and they came to fists
aboot a sweethairt, the fools. But when they are stripped and ready, one
hits the table wi's hond, and says he, 'Ay, Georgie, I'm wullin' to
feight ye, but wha's goin' to pay the fine?'"

Louis Satanette laughed again, but as if he did not know just what was
meant."

"It's a cautious mon, is the Scotchmon," said Adam, "but no' so slow,
after all."

"Oh, never slow!" said Louis. "Very, very fast indeed, to leave this
paradise in the midst of the summer."

"'Farewell to lovely Loch Achray,'" sighed Adam:
    "Where shall we find, in any land,
    So lone a lake, so sweet a strand?"

Louis made a sign of adieu and dipped his oars.

"It's only _au revoir_," said he, shooting past. "Be very, very far from
parting with Magog too early."

"'So lone a lake, so sweet a strand,'" repeated Adam, dropping his head
back against the stern.

He did not move while the sound of the other's oars died away behind
him. He did not move while the afternoon shadows spread far over the
water.

The long Canadian twilight advanced stage by stage. First, all Magog
flushed, as if a repetition of the old miracle had turned it to wine.
Then innumerable night-hawks uttered their four musical notes in endless
succession, upon the heights, down in the woods, from the mainland
mountain. The north star became discernible almost overhead. Then, with
slow and irregular strokes, Adam pulled away from the cliff, and brought
his keel to grate the sand in front of his tent.

Eva was sitting there on a rock, huddling a shawl around her.

"Oh, Adam Macgregor!" she began, in a low voice, "and do you condescend
to bring your wraith back to me at last?"

"It's nothing but my wraith," said Adam, lifting his eggs and butter and
milk, and stepping from the boat. "The mon in me died aboot noon."

Eva walked along by his side to the cool-box, where he deposited his
load.

"What is the matter with you, laddie, that you look and talk so
strangely?"

"Oh, naught," said Adam, turning and facing her. "I but saw you kissing
Louis Satanette on the hill to-day."




III.


THE FLAMING SWORD.

The changes which passed over her face were half concealed by the
twilight. She was grieved, indignant, and frightened, but over all other
expressions lurked the mischievous mirth of a bad child.

"I meant to tell you about it," she said.

"Hearken," said Adam, with a fierce stare. "I've stayed out on the lake
all day, and I'm quiet. At first I wasn't. But when he came by I gave
him nothing but a good word."

"I wish you'd scolded him instead of me," said Eva, propping her back
against the table and puckering her lips.

"_He_ did naught," said Adam, "but what any man would do that got lave.
It's you that gave him lave that are to blame."

"Don't be so serious about a little thing," put forth Eva. "We just
walked over to the counterfeiters' hole, and coming back we picked
strawberries, and he teased me like a girl, and caught hold of me and
kissed me. We've been such good friends in camp. I think it's this easy,
wild life made me do it."

"She'll blame the very sky over her instead of taking blame to
herself," ground out Adam from between his jaws. "I sat in me boat
below and saw you arch your head and look at him ways that I remember.
My God! why did you make this woman so false, and yet so sweet that a
mon canna help loving her in spite o' his teeth?"

"Because I'd die if folks didn't love me," burst out Eva, with a sob.
"And if men can't help loving me, what do you blame me for?"

"What right have you to breathe such a word when you're married to me?"

"But I'm not used to being married yet," pleaded Eva. "And I forgot,
this once."

"It's once and for all," said Adam, "You'll never be to me what you were
before. Is it the English-Canadian way to bring up women to kiss every
comer?"

"I didn't kiss anybody but Louis Satanette," maintained Eva, "and I
didn't really _want_ to kiss _him_"

"Never mind," said Adam. "Don't trouble your butterfly soul about it."
And he turned away and walked toward the tent.

"I'll not love you if you say such awful things to me," she flashed
after him.

"Ye can't take the breeks off a Hielandman," he replied, facing about,
"Ye never loved me. Not as I loved you. And it's no loss I've met, if I
could but think it."

"Oh, Adam!" Now she ran forward and caught him around the waist. "Don't
be so hard with me. I know I am very bad, but I didn't mean to be."

Some faint perception of that coarse fibre within her was breaking with
horror through her face. She held to his hands after he had separated
her from his person and held her off.

"All that you do still has its effect on me," said the man, gazing
sternly at her. "I love ye; but I despise myself for loving ye. This
morn I adored ye with reverence; this night you're as a bit o' that
earth."

Eva let go his hands and sat down on the ground. As he made his
preparations in the tent he could not help seeing with compassion how
abjectly her figure drooped. All its flexible proud lines, were suddenly
gone. She was dazed by his treatment and by the light in which he put
her trifling. She sat motionless until Adam came out with one of the
cots in his arms.

"I'm to sleep upon the hill in the pine woods to-night," said he. "Go
into the tent, and I'll fasten the flaps. You shan't be scared by
anything."

"Let me get in the boat and leave the island, if you can't breathe the
same air with me," said Eva. staggering up.

"No, I can't breathe the same air with ye to-night, but ye'll go into
the tent," said Adam, with authority.

"I'll not stay there," she rebelled. "I'll follow you. You don't know
what may be on this island."

"There can be nothing worse than what I've seen," said Adam; "and that's
done all the hairm it can do."

"Oh, Adam, are we both crazy?" the small creature burst out, weeping as
if her heart would break. "Don't go away and leave me so. I am not real
bad in my heart, I know I am not; and if you would be a little patient
with me and help me, I shall get over my silly ways. There is something
in me, you can depend upon, if I _did_ do that foolish thing. And my
mother didn't live long enough to train me, Adam; remember that. Won't
you please kiss me? My heart is breaking."

He put down the cot and took her by the shoulders, trembling as he did
so from head to foot:

"My wife, I belaive what you say. I'd give all the days remaining to me
if I could strain ye against my breast with the feeling I had this morn.
But there comes that sight. I never shall see the hill again, I never
shall see a spot of this island again, without seeing your mouth kissing
another man. Go into the tent. God knows I'd die before hairm should
come to you. But not to-night can I stay beside you. Or kiss you."

He carried her into the tent and put her on her bed. She had made all
the night-preparations herself, placing the pillows on both cots and
turning back the sun-sweetened blankets.

Adam left her sobbing, buttoned the tent-flaps outside, and placed a
barricade of kettles and pans which could not be touched without
disturbing him on the hill. Then, taking up his own bed, he marched off
through the ferns, edging his burden among dense boughs as he ascended.

When he had made the joints of his couch creak with many uneasy
turnings, had clinched at leaves, and started up to return to the tent,
only to check himself in the act as often as he started, he lost
consciousness in uneasy dreams rather than fell asleep.

He was smothering, and yet could not open his lips to gasp for a breath
of air. Then he was drowning: he gulped in vast sheets of water upon his
lungs. An alarm sounded from Eva's barricade. He heard the pans and
kettles clanging and her own voice in screams which pierced him, yet he
could not move. A nightmare of heat enveloped him; the smothering
element pouring upon his lungs was not water, but smoke; and he knew if
no effort of will could move his body to her rescue he must be perishing
himself.

After these brief sensations his existence was as blank as the empty
void outside the worlds, until his ears began to throb like drums, and
he felt water, like the tears he had shed in the morning, running all
over his face. Eva held him in her arms, and alternately kissed his head
and drenched it from the lake.

Moreover, he was in the boat, outside the bay, and their island glowed
like a furnace before his dazzled eyes.

Those pine woods where he had gone to sleep were roaring up toward
heaven in a column of fire. The tent was burning, all its interior
illuminated until every object showed its minutest lines. He thought he
saw some of Eva's dark hairs in an upturned hair-brush on the
wash-stand.

Fire ran along the cliff-edge and dropped hissing brands into the lake.
Old moss logs and pine-trees dry as tinder sent out sickening heat. The
light ran like a flash up the tree over their stove, and in an instant
its crown was wavering with flames. The grass itself caught here and
there, and in whatever direction the eye turned, new fires as
instantaneously sprang out to meet it.

Stumps blazed up like lighted altars, or like huge gas-jets suddenly
turned on. Adam saw one log lying endwise downhill, one side of which
was crumbling into coals of fierce and tremulous heat, while from the
other side still sprung unsinged a delicate tuft of ferns.

The smoke was driving straight upward in a quivering current, and in
Lake Magog's depths another island seemed to be on fire.

Sublime as the sight was, all these details impressed themselves on the
man in an instant, and he turned his face directly up toward the woman.

"Darling, your face looks blistered," said Adam.

"It feels blistered," replied Eva. "I'll put some water on it, now that
you've caught your breath again. I thought I could not get you out from
those burning trees."

"But you dragged me down the hill?"

"Yes, and then dipped you in the lake and pushed off with you in the
boat. I don't know how I did it. But here we are together."

Adam bathed her face carefully himself, and held her tight in his arms.
The unspeakable love of which he had dreamed, and the heat of the
burning island, seemed welding them together without other sign than the
fact.

Not a word was sighed out for forgiveness on either side. They held each
other and floated back into the lake. Adam took an oar and occasionally
paddled, without wholly releasing his hold of Eva.

"Don't you remember our fish's nest?" she whispered beside his neck. "I
wonder if the slim little silver thing is swimming around over the
gravel hollow, frightened by all this glare? I hope those overhanging
bushes won't catch fire and drop coals on her; for she's a silly
thing,--she might not want to dart out in deep water and lose her
unhatched family."

Adam smiled into his wife's eyes. He was quite singed, but did not know
it.

"Ay, burn," he spoke out exultantly, apostrophizing the island. "Burn up
our first home and all. It's worth it. We're the other side o' the world
of fire now. We've passed through it, and are afloat on the sea of
glass."

     M. H. CATHERWOOD.




PROBATION.


Full slow to part with her best gifts is Fate:
  The choicest fruitage comes not with the spring,
But still for summer's mellowing touch must wait,
  For storms and tears that seasoned excellence bring;
And Love doth fix his joyfullest estate
  In hearts that have been hushed 'neath Sorrow's brooding wing.
Youth sues to Fame: she coldly answers, "Toil!"
  He sighs for Nature's treasures: with reserve
Responds the goddess, "Woo them from the soil."
  Then fervently he cries, "Thee will I serve,--
Thee only, blissful Love." With proud recoil
  The heavenly boy replies, "To serve me well--deserve."

     FLORENCE EARLE COATES.




THE PIONEERS OF THE SOUTHWEST.

TWO PAPERS. II.


The route of Robertson lay over the great Indian war-path, which led, in
a southwesterly direction, from the valley of Virginia to the Cherokee
towns on the lower Tennessee, not far from the present city of
Chattanooga. He would, however, turn aside at the Tellico and visit
Echota, which was the home of the principal chiefs. While he is pursuing
his perilous way, it may be as well to glance for a moment at the people
among whom he is going at so much hazard.

The Cherokees were the mountaineers of aboriginal America, and, like
most mountaineers, had an intense love of country and a keen
appreciation of the beautiful in nature, as is shown by the poetical
names they have bequeathed to their rivers and mountains. They were
physically a fine race of men, tall and athletic, of great bravery and
superior natural intelligence. It was their military prowess alone that
enabled them to hold possession of the country they occupied against the
many warlike tribes by whom they were surrounded.

They had no considerable cities, or even villages, but dwelt in
scattered townships in the vicinity of some stream where fish and game
were found in abundance. A number of these towns, bearing the musical
names of Tallassee, Tamotee, Chilhowee, Citico, Tennassee, and Echota,
were at this time located upon the rich lowlands lying between the
Tellico and Little Tennessee Rivers. These towns contained a population,
in men, women, and children, estimated at from seven to eight thousand,
of whom perhaps twelve hundred were warriors. These were known as the
Ottari (or "among the mountains") Cherokees.

About the same number, near the head-waters of the Savannah, in the
great highland belt between the Blue Ridge and the Smoky Mountains, were
styled the Erati (or "in the valley") Cherokees. Another body (among
whom were many Creeks), nearly as large, and much more lawless than
either of the others, occupied towns lower down the Tennessee and in the
vicinity of Lookout Mountain. These, from their residence near the
stream of that name, were known as the Chickamaugas.

These various bodies were one people, governed by an Archimagus, or
King, who, with a supreme council of chiefs, which sat at Echota,
decided all important questions in peace or war. Under him were the
half-or vice-king and the several chiefs who governed the scattered
townships and together composed the supreme council. In them was lodged
the temporal power. Spiritual authority was of a far more despotic form
and character. It was vested in one person, styled the Beloved man or
woman of the tribe, who, over a people so superstitious as the
Cherokees, held a control that was wellnigh absolute. This person was
generally of superior intelligence, who, like the famous Prophet of the
Shawnees, officiated as physician, prophet, and intercessor with the
invisible powers; and, by virtue of the supernatural authority which he
claimed, he often by a single word decided the most important questions,
even when opposed by the king and the principal chiefs.

Echota was located on the northern bank of the Tellico, about five miles
from the ruins of Fort Loudon, and thirty southwest from the present
city of Knoxville. It was the Cherokee City of Refuge. Once within its
bounds, an open foe, or even a red-handed criminal, could dwell in peace
and security. The danger to an enemy was in going and returning. It is
related that an Englishman who, in self-defence, once slew a Cherokee,
fled to this sacred city to escape the vengeance of the kindred of his
victim. He was treated here with such kindness that after a time he
thought it safe to leave his asylum. The Indians warned him against the
danger, but he left, and on the following morning his body was found on
the outskirts of the town, pierced through and through with a score of
arrows.

About two hundred cabins and wigwams, scattered, with some order but at
wide intervals, along the bank of the river, composed the village. The
cabins, like those of the white settlers, were square and built of logs;
the wigwams were conical, with a frame of slender poles gathered
together at the top and covered with buffalo-robes, dressed and smoked
to render them impervious to the weather. An opening at the side formed
the entrance, and over it was hung a buffalo-hide, which served as a
door. The fire was built in the centre of the lodge, and directly
overhead was an aperture to let out the smoke. Here the women performed
culinary operations, except in warm weather, when such employments were
carried on outside in the open air. At night the occupants of the lodge
spread their skins and buffalo-robes on the ground, and then men, women,
and children, stretching themselves upon them, went to sleep, with their
feet to the fire. By day the robes were rolled into mats and made to
serve as seats. A lodge of ordinary size would comfortably house a dozen
persons; but two families never occupied one domicile, and, the
Cherokees seldom having a numerous progeny, not more than five or six
persons were often tenants of a single wigwam.

These rude dwellings were mostly strung along the two sides of a wide
avenue, which was shaded here and there with large oaks and poplars and
trodden hard with the feet of men and horses. At the back of each lodge
was a small patch of cleared land, where the women and the negro slaves
(stolen from the white settlers over the mountains) cultivated beans,
corn, and potatoes, and occasionally some such fruits as apples, pears,
and plums. All labor was performed by the women and slaves, as it was
considered beneath the dignity of an Indian brave to follow any
occupation but that of killing, either wild beasts in the hunt or
enemies in war. The house-lots were without fences, and not an enclosure
could be seen in the whole settlement, cattle and horses being left to
roam at large in the woods and openings.

In the centre of Echota, occupying a wide opening, was a circular,
tower-shaped structure, some twenty feet high and ninety in
circumference. It was rudely built of stout poles, plastered with clay,
and had a roof of the same material sloping down to broad eaves, which
effectually protected the walls from moisture. It had a wide entrance,
protected by two large buffalo-hides hung so as to meet together in the
middle. There were no windows, but an aperture in the roof, shielded by
a flap of skins a few feet above the opening, let out the smoke and
admitted just enough light to dissipate a portion of the gloom that
always shrouded the interior. Low benches, neatly made of cane, were
ranged around the circumference of the room. This was the great
council-house of the Cherokees. Here they met to celebrate the
green-corn dance and their other national ceremonials; and here the king
and half-king and the princes and head-men of the various towns
consulted together on important occasions, such as making peace or
declaring war.

At the time of which I write, several of the log cabins of Echota were
occupied by traders, adventurous white men who, tempted by the profit of
the traffic with the Cherokees, had been led to a more or less constant
residence among them. Their cabins contained their stock in
trade,--traps, guns, powder and lead, hatchets, looking-glasses,
"stroud," beads, scarlet cloth, and other trinkets, articles generally
of small cost, but highly prized by the red-men, and for which they gave
in exchange peltries of great value. The trade was one of slow returns,
but of great profits to the trader. And it was of about equal advantage
to the Indian; for with the trap or rifle he had gotten for a few skins
he was able to secure more game in a day than his bow and arrow and rude
"dead-fall" would procure for him in a month of toilsome hunting. The
traders were therefore held in high esteem among the Cherokees, who
encouraged their living and even marrying among them. In fact, such
alliances were deemed highly honorable, and were often sought by the
daughters of the most distinguished chiefs. Consequently, among the
trader's other chattels would often be found a dusky mate and a
half-dozen half-breed children; and this, too, when he had already a
wife and family somewhere in the white settlements.

These traders were an important class in the early history of the
country. Of necessity well acquainted with the various routes traversing
the Indian territory, and with the state of feeling among the savages,
and passing frequently to and fro between the Indian towns and the white
settlements, they were often enabled to warn the whites of intended
attacks, and to guide such hostile parties as invaded the Cherokee
territory. Though often natives of North Carolina or Virginia, and in
sympathy with the colonists, they were, if prudent of speech and
behavior, allowed to remain unmolested in the Indian towns, even when
the warriors were singing the war-song and brandishing the war-club on
the eve of an intended massacre of the settlers.

Living in Echota at this time was one of this class who, on account of
his great services to the colonists, is deserving of special mention.
His name was Isaac Thomas, and he is said to have been a native of
Virginia. He is described as a man about forty years of age, over six
feet in height, straight, long-limbed, and wiry, and with a frame so
steeled by twenty years of mountain-life that he could endure any
conceivable hardship. His features were strongly marked and regular, and
they wore an habitual expression of comic gravity; but on occasion his
dark, deep-set eye had been known to light up with a look of
unconquerable pluck and determination. He wore moccasins and
hunting-shirt of buckskin, and his face, neck, and hands, from long
exposure, had grown to be of the same color as that material. His
coolness and intrepidity had been shown on many occasions, and these
qualities, together with his immense strength, had secured him high
esteem among the Cherokees, who, like all uncivilized people, set the
highest value upon personal courage and physical prowess. It is related
that shortly before the massacre at Fort Loudon he interfered in a
desperate feud between two Cherokee braves who had drawn their tomahawks
to hew each other in pieces. Stepping between them, he wrenched the
weapons from their hands, and then, both setting upon him at once, he
cooled their heated valor by lifting one after the other into the air
and gently tossing him into the Tellico. Subsequently, one of these
braves saved his life at the Loudon massacre, at the imminent risk of
his own. If I were writing fiction, I might make of this man an
interesting character: as it is, it will be seen that facts hereinafter
related will fully justify the length of this description.

A wigwam, larger and more pretentious than most of the others in Echota,
stood a little apart from the rest, and not far from the council-house.
Like the others, it had a frame of poles covered with tanned skins; but
it was distinguished from them by a singular "totem,"--an otter in the
coils of a water-snake. Its interior was furnished with a sort of rude
splendor. The floor was carpeted with buffalo-hides and panther-skins,
and round the walls were hung eagles' tails, and the peltries of the
fox, the wolf, the badger, the otter, and other wild animals. From a
pole in the centre was suspended a small bag,--the mysterious
medicine-bag of the occupant. She was a woman who to this day is held in
grateful remembrance by many of the descendants of the early settlers
beyond the Alleghanies. Her personal appearance is lost to tradition,
but it is said to have been queenly and commanding. She was more than
the queen, she was the prophetess and Beloved Woman, of the Cherokees.

At this time she is supposed to have been about thirty-five years of
age. Her father was an English officer named Ward, but her mother was of
the "blood royal," a sister of the reigning half-king Atta-Culla-Culla.
The records we have of her are scanty, as they are of all her people,
but enough has come down to us to show that she had a kind heart and a
sense of justice keen enough to recognize the rights of even her
enemies. She must have possessed very strong traits of character to
exercise as she did almost autocratic control over the fierce and
wellnigh untamable Cherokees when she was known to sympathize with and
befriend their enemies the white settlers. Not long before the time of
which I am writing, she had saved the lives of two whites,--Jeremiah
Jack and William Rankin,--who had come into collision with a party of
Cherokees; and subsequently she performed many similar services to the
frontier people.

Other wigwams as imposing as that of Nancy Ward, and not far from the
council-house, were the habitations of the head-king Oconostota, the
half-king Atta-Culla-Culla, and the prince of Echota, Savanuca,
otherwise called the Raven. Of these men it will be necessary to say
more hereafter: here I need only remark that they have now gathered in
the council-house, with many of the principal warriors and head-men of
the Ottari Cherokees, and that the present fate of civilization in the
Southwest is hanging on their deliberations.

They are of a gigantic race, and none of those at this conclave, except
Atta-Culla-Culla, are less than six feet in height "without their
moccasins." Squatted as they are gravely around the council-fire, they
present a most picturesque appearance. Among them are the
Bread-Slave-Catcher, noted for his exploits in stealing negroes; the
Tennassee Warrior, prince of the town of that name; Noon-Day, a
wide-awake brave; Bloody Fellow, whose subsequent exploits will show the
appropriateness of his name; Old Tassell, a wise and reasonably just
old man, afterward Archimagus; and John Watts, a promising young
half-breed, destined to achieve eminence in slaughtering white people.

As one after another of them rises to speak, the rest, with downcast
eyes and cloudy visages, listen with silent gravity, only now and then
expressing assent by a solitary "Ugh!"

There is strong, though suppressed, passion among them; but it is
passion under the control of reason. Whatever they decide to do will be
done without haste, and after a careful weighing of all the
consequences. In the midst of their deliberations the rapid tread of a
horse's feet is heard coming up the long avenue. The horseman halts
before the council-house, and soon the buffalo-hide parts in twain, and
a tall young warrior, decorated with eagles' feathers and half clad in
the highest style of Cherokee fashion, enters the door-way. He stands
silent, motionless, not moving a pace beyond the entrance, till
Oconostota, raising his eyes and lifting his huge form into an erect
posture, bids him speak and make known his errand.

The young brave explains that the chief of the pale-faces has come down
the great war-path to an outlying town to see the head-men of the
Ottari. The warriors have detained him till they can know the will of
their father the Archimagus.

The answer is brief: "Let him come. Oconostota will hear him."

And now an hour goes by, during which these grave chiefs sit as silent
and motionless as if keeping watch around a sepulchre. At its close the
tramp of a body of horsemen is heard, and soon Robertson, escorted by a
score of painted warriors, enters the council-chamber. Like the rest,
the new-comers are of fine physical proportions; and, as the others rise
to their feet and all form in a circle about him, Robertson, who stands
only five feet nine inches and is not so robust as in later years, seems
like a pygmy among giants. Yet he is as cool, as collected, as
apparently unconscious of danger, as if every one of those painted
savages (when aroused, red devils) was his near friend or
blood-relation. The chiefs glance at him, and then at one another, with
as much wonderment in their eyes as was ever seen in the eyes of a
Cherokee. They know he is but one man and they twelve hundred, and that
by their law of retaliation his life is forfeit; and yet he stands
there, a look of singular power on his face, as if not they but he were
master of the situation. They have seen physical bravery; but this is
moral courage, which, when a man has a great purpose, lifts him above
all personal considerations and makes his life no more to him than the
bauble he wears upon his finger.

Robertson waits for the others to speak, and there is a short pause
before the old chief breaks the silence. Then, extending his hand to
Robertson, he says, "Our white brother is welcome. We have eaten of his
venison and drunk of his fire-water. He is welcome. Let him speak.
Oconostota will listen."

The white man returns cordially the grasp of the Indian; and then, still
standing, while all about him seat themselves on the ground, he makes
known the object of his coming. I regret I cannot give here his exact
answer, for all who read this would wish to know the very words he used
on this momentous occasion. No doubt they were, like all he said, terse,
pithy, and in such scriptural phrase as was with him so habitual. I know
only the substance of what he said, and it was as follows: that the
young brave had been killed by one not belonging to the Watauga
community; that the murderer had fled, but when apprehended would be
dealt with as his crime deserved; and he added that he and his
companion-settlers had come into the country desiring to live in peace
with all men, but more especially with their near neighbors the brave
Cherokees, with whom they should always endeavor to cultivate relations
of friendliness and good-fellowship.

The Indians heard him at first with silent gravity, but, as he went on,
their feelings warmed to him, and found vent in a few expressive
"Ughs!" and when he closed, the old Archimagus rose, and, turning to the
chiefs, said, "What our white brother says is like the truth. What say
my brothers? are not his words good?"

The response was, "They are good."

A general hand-shaking followed; and then they all pressed Robertson to
remain with them and partake of their hospitality. Though extremely
anxious to return at once with the peaceful tidings, he did so, and thus
converted possible enemies into positive friends; and the friendship
thus formed was not broken till the outbreak of the Revolution.

While Robertson had been away, Sevier had not been idle. He had put
Watauga into the best possible state of defence. With the surprising
energy that was characteristic of him, he had built a fort and gathered
every white settler into it or safe within range of its muskets. His
force was not a hundred strong; but if Robertson had been safely out of
the savage hold, he might have enjoyed a visit from Oconostota and his
twelve hundred Ottari warriors.

The fort was planned by Sevier, who had no military training except such
as he had received under his patron and friend Lord Dunmore. Though rude
and hastily built, it was a model of military architecture, and in the
construction of it Sevier displayed such a genius for war as readily
accounts for his subsequent achievements.

It was located on Gap Creek, about half a mile northeast of the Watauga,
upon a gentle knoll, from about which the trees, and even stumps, were
carefully cleared, to prevent their sheltering a lurking enemy. The
buildings have now altogether crumbled away; but the spot is still
identified by a few graves and a large locust-tree,--then a slender
sapling, now a burly patriarch, which has remained to our day to point
out the spot where occurred the first conflict between civilization and
savagery in the new empire beyond the Alleghanies. For the conflict was
between those two forces; and the forts along the frontier--of which
this at Watauga was the original and model--were the forerunners of
civilization,--the "voice crying in the wilderness," announcing the
reign of peace which was to follow.

The fort covered a parallelogram of about an acre, and was built of log
cabins placed at intervals along the four sides, the logs notched
closely together, so that the walls were bullet-proof. One side of the
cabins formed the exterior of the fort, and the spaces between them were
filled with palisades of heavy timber, eight feet long, sharpened at the
ends, and set firmly into the ground. At each of the angles was a
block-house, about twenty feet square and two stories high, the upper
story projecting about two feet beyond the lower, so as to command the
sides of the fort and enable the besieged to repel a close attack or any
attempt to set fire to the buildings. Port-holes were placed at suitable
distances. There were two wide gate-ways, constructed to open quickly to
permit a sudden sally or the speedy rescue of outside fugitives. On one
of these was a lookout station, which commanded a wide view of the
surrounding country. The various buildings would comfortably house two
hundred people, but on an emergency a much larger number might find
shelter within the enclosure.

The fort was admirably adapted to its design, and, properly manned,
would repel any attack of fire-arms in the hands of such desultory
warriors as the Indians. In the arithmetic of the frontier it came to be
adopted as a rule that one white man behind a wall of logs was a match
for twenty-five Indians in the open field; and subsequent events showed
this to have been not a vainglorious reckoning.

There were much older men at Watauga than either Sevier or
Robertson,--one of whom was now only twenty-eight and the other
thirty,--but they had from the first been recognized as natural leaders.
These two events--the building of the fort and the Cherokee mission,
which displayed Sevier's uncommon military genius and Robertson's
ability and address as a negotiator--elevated them still higher in the
regard of their associates, and at once the cares and responsibilities
of leadership in both civil and military affairs were thrust upon them.
But Sevier, with a modesty which he showed throughout his whole career,
whenever it was necessary that one should take precedence of the other,
always insisted upon Robertson's having the higher position; and so it
was that in the military company which was now formed Sevier, who had
served as a captain under Dunmore, was made lieutenant, while Robertson
was appointed captain.

The Watauga community had been till now living under no organized
government. This worked very well so long as the newly-arriving
immigrants were of the class which is "a law unto itself;" but when
another class came in,--men fleeing from debt in the older settlements
or hoping on the remote and inaccessible frontier to escape the penalty
of their crimes,--some organization which should have the sanction of
the whole body of settlers became necessary. Therefore, speaking in the
language of Sevier, they, "by consent of the people, formed a court,
taking the Virginia laws as a guide, as near as the situation of affairs
would admit."

The settlers met in convention at the fort, and selected thirteen of
their number to draft articles of association for the management of the
colony. From these thirteen, five (among whom were Sevier and Robertson)
were chosen commissioners, and to them was given power to adjudicate
upon all matters of controversy and to adopt and direct all measures
having a bearing upon the peace, safety, good order, and well-being of
the community. By them, in the language of the articles, "all things
were to be settled."

These articles of association were the first compact of civil government
anywhere west of the Alleghanies. They were adopted in 1772, three years
prior to the association formed for Kentucky "under the great elm-tree
outside of the fort at Boonesboro." The simple government thus
established was sufficient to secure good order in the colony for
several years following.

Now ensued four more years of uninterrupted peace and prosperity, during
which the settlement increased greatly in numbers and extended its
borders in all directions. The Indians, true to their pledges to
Robertson, continued friendly, though suffering frequently from the
depredations of lawless white men from the old settlements. These were
reckless, desperate characters, who had fled from the order and law of
established society to find freedom for unbridled license in the new
community. Driven out by the Watauga settlers, they herded together in
the wilderness, where they subsisted by hunting and fishing and preying
upon the now peaceable Cherokees. They were an annoyance to both the
peaceable white man and the red; but at length, when the Indians showed
feelings of hostility, they became a barrier between the savages and the
industrious cultivators of the soil, and thus unintentionally
contributed to the well-being of the Watauga community.

No event materially affecting the interests of the colony occurred
during the four years following Robertson's visit to the Cherokees at
Echota. The battles of Lexington and Concord had been fought, but the
shot which was "heard round the world" did not echo till months
afterward in that secluded hamlet on the Watauga. But when it did
reverberate amid those old woods, every backwoodsman sprang to his feet
and asked to be enrolled to rush to the rescue of his countrymen on the
seaboard. His patriotism was not stimulated by British oppression, for
he was beyond the reach of the "king's minions." He had no grievances to
complain of, for he drank no tea, used no stamps, and never saw a
tax-gatherer. It was the "glorious cause of liberty," as Sevier
expressed it, which called them all to arms to do battle for freedom and
their countrymen.

"A company of fine riflemen was accordingly enlisted, and embodied at
the expense and risque of their private fortunes, to act in defence of
the common cause on the sea-shore."[001] But before the volunteers could
be despatched over the mountains it became apparent that their services
would be needed at home for the defence of the frontier against the
Indians.

Through the trader Isaac Thomas it soon became known to the settlers
that Cameron, the British agent, was among the Cherokees, endeavoring to
incite them to hostilities against the Americans. At first the Indians
resisted the enticements--the hopes of spoil and plunder and the
recovery of their hunting-grounds--which Cameron held out to them. They
could not understand how men of the same race and language could be at
war with one another. It was never so known in Indian tradition. But
soon--late in 1775--an event occurred which showed that the virus spread
among them by the crafty Scotchman had begun to work, at least with the
younger braves, and that it might at any moment break out among the
whole nation. A trader named Andrew Grear, who lived at Watauga, had
been at Echota. He had disposed of his wares, and was about to return
with the furs he had taken in exchange, when he perceived signs of
hostile feeling among some of the young warriors, and on his return,
fearing an ambuscade on the great war-path, he left it before he reached
the crossing at the French Broad, and went homeward by a less-frequented
trail along the Nolachucky. Two other traders, named Boyd and Dagget,
who left Echota on the following day, pursued the usual route, and were
waylaid and murdered at a small stream which has ever since borne the
name of Boyd's Creek. In a few days their bodies were found, only half
concealed in the shallow water; and as the tidings flew among the
scattered settlements they excited universal alarm and indignation.

The settlers had been so long at peace with the Cherokees that they had
been lulled into a false security; but, the savage having once tasted
blood, they knew his appetite would "grow by what it fed on," and they
prepared for a deadly struggle with an enemy of more than twenty times
their number. The fort at Watauga was at once put into a state of
efficient defence, smaller forts were erected in the centre of every
scattered settlement, and a larger one was built on the frontier, near
the confluence of the north and south forks of the Holston River, to
protect the more remote settlements. This last was called Fort Patrick
Henry, in honor of the patriotic governor of Virginia. The one at
Watauga received the name of Fort Lee.

All the able-bodied males sixteen years of age and over were enrolled,
put under competent officers, and drilled for the coming struggle. But
the winter passed without any further act of hostility on the part of
the disaffected Cherokees. The older chiefs, true to their pledges to
Robertson, still held back, and were able to restrain the younger
braves, who thirsted for the conflict from a passion for the excitement
and glory they could find only in battle.

Nancy Ward was in the secrets of the Cherokee leaders, and every word
uttered in their councils she faithfully repeated to the trader Isaac
Thomas, who conveyed the intelligence personally or by trusty messengers
to Sevier and Robertson at Watauga. Thus the settlers were enabled to
circumvent the machinations of Cameron until a more powerful enemy
appeared among the Cherokees in the spring of 1776. This was John
Stuart, British superintendent of Southern Indian affairs, a man of
great address and ability, and universally known and beloved among all
the Southwestern tribes. Fifteen years before, his life had been saved
at the Fort Loudon massacre by Atta-Culla-Culla, and a friendship had
then been contracted between them which now secured the influence of the
half-king in plunging the Cherokees into hostilities with the settlers.

The plan of operations had been concerted between Stuart and the
British commander-in-chief, General Gage. It was for a universal rising
among the Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Shawnees, who were to
invade the frontiers of Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas, while
simultaneously a large military and naval force under Sir Peter Parker
descended upon the Southern seaboard and captured Charleston. It was
also intended to enlist the co-operation of such inhabitants of the back
settlements as were known to be favorable to the British. Thus the
feeble colonists were to be not only encircled by a cordon of fire, but
a conflagration was to be lighted which should consume every patriot's
dwelling. It was an able but pitiless and bloodthirsty plan, for it
would let loose upon the settler every savage atrocity and make his
worst foes those of his own household. If successful, it would have
strangled in fire and blood the spirit of independence in the Southern
colonies.

That it did not succeed seems to us, who know the means employed to
thwart it, little short of a miracle. Those means were the four hundred
and forty-five raw militia under Moultrie, who, behind a pile of
palmetto logs, on the 28th of June, 1776, repulsed Sir Peter Parker in
his attack on Sullivan's Island in the harbor of Charleston, South
Carolina, and the two hundred and ten "over-mountain men," under Sevier,
Robertson, and Isaac Shelby, who beat back, on the 20th and 21st of
July, the Cherokee invasion of the western frontier.

As early as the 30th of May, Sevier and Robertson were apprised by their
faithful friend Nancy Ward of the intended attack, and at once they sent
messengers to Colonel Preston, of the Virginia Committee of Safety, for
an additional supply of powder and lead and a reinforcement of such men
as could be spared from home-service. One hundred pounds of powder and
twice as much lead, and one hundred militiamen, were despatched in
answer to the summons. The powder and lead were distributed among the
stations, and the hundred men were sent to strengthen the garrison of
Fort Patrick Henry, the most exposed position on the frontier. The
entire force of the settlers was now two hundred and ten, forty of whom
were at Watauga under Sevier and Robertson, the remainder at and near
Fort Patrick Henry under no less than six militia captains, no one of
whom was bound to obey the command of any of the others. This
many-headed authority would doubtless have worked disastrously to the
loosely-jointed force had there not been in it as a volunteer a young
man of twenty-five who in the moment of supreme danger seized the
absolute command and rallied the men to victory. His name was Isaac
Shelby, and this was the first act in a long career in the whole of
which "he deserved well of his country."

Thus, from the 30th of May till the 11th of July the settlers slept with
their rifles in their hands, expecting every night to hear the Indian
war-whoop, and every day to receive some messenger from Nancy Ward with
tidings that the warriors were on the march for the settlements. At last
the messengers came,--four of them at once,--as we may see from the
following letter, in which Sevier announces their arrival to the
Committee of Safety of Fincastle County, Virginia:

     "FORT LEE, July 11, 1776.

     DEAR GENTLEMEN,--Isaac Thomas, William Falling, Jarot Williams, and
     one more, have this moment come in, by making their escape from the
     Indians, and say six hundred Indians and whites were to start for
     this fort, and intend to drive the country up to New River before
     they return.

     JOHN SEVIER."

He says nothing of the feeble fort and his slender garrison of only
forty men; he shows no sign of fear, nor does he ask for aid in the
great peril. The letter is characteristic of the man, and it displays
that utter fearlessness which, with other great qualities, made him the
hero of the Border. The details of the information brought by Thomas to
Sevier and Robertson showed how truthfully Nancy Ward had previously
reported to them the secret designs of the Cherokees. The whole nation
was about to set out upon the war-path. With the Creeks they were to
make a descent upon Georgia, and with the Shawnees, Mingoes, and
Delawares upon Kentucky and the exposed parts of Virginia, while seven
hundred chosen Ottari warriors were to fall upon the settlers on the
Watauga, Holston, and Nolachucky. This last force was to be divided into
two bodies of three hundred and fifty each, one of which, under
Oconostota, was to attack Fort Watauga; the other, under Dragging-Canoe,
head-chief of the Chickamaugas, was to attempt the capture of Fort
Patrick Henry, which they supposed to be still defended by only about
seventy men. But the two bodies were to act together, the one supporting
the other in case it should be found that the settlers were better
prepared for defence than was anticipated. The preparation for the
expedition Thomas had himself seen: its object and the points of attack
he had learned from Nancy Ward, who had come to his cabin at midnight on
the 7th of July and urged his immediate departure. He had delayed
setting out till the following night, to impart his information to
William Falling and Jarot and Isaac Williams, men who could be trusted,
and who he proposed should set out at the same time, but by different
routes, to warn the settlements, so that in case one or more of them was
waylaid and killed the others might have a chance to get through in
safety. However, at the last moment the British agent Cameron had
himself disclosed the purpose of the expedition to Falling and the two
brothers Williams, and detailed them with a Captain Guest to go along
with the Indians as far as the Nolachucky, when they were to scatter
among the settlements and warn any "king's men" to join the Indians or
to wear a certain badge by which they would be known and protected in
any attack from the savages. These men had set out with the Indians, but
had escaped from them during the night of the 8th, and all had arrived
at Watauga in safety.

Thomas and Falling were despatched at once with the tidings into
Virginia, the two Williamses were sent to warn the garrison at Fort
Patrick Henry, and then the little force at Watauga furbished up their
rifles and waited in grim expectation the coming of Oconostota.

But the garrison at Fort Patrick Henry was the first to have tidings
from the Cherokees. Only a few men were at the fort, the rest being
scattered among the outlying stations, but all were within
supporting-distance. On the 19th of July the scouts came in and reported
that a large body of Indians was only about twenty miles away and
marching directly upon the garrison. Runners were at once despatched to
bring in the scattered forces, and by nightfall the one hundred and
seventy were gathered at the fort, ready to meet the enemy. Then a
council of war was held by the six militia captains to determine upon
the best plan of action. Some were in favor of awaiting the attack of
the savages behind the walls of the fort, but one of them, William
Cocke, who afterward became honorably conspicuous in the history of
Tennessee, proposed the bolder course of encountering the enemy in the
open field. If they did not, he contended that the Indians, passing them
on the flank, would fall on and butcher the defenceless women of the
settlements in their rear.

It was a step of extreme boldness, for they supposed they would
encounter the whole body of seven hundred Cherokees; but it was
unanimously agreed to, and early on the following morning the little
army, with flankers and an advance guard of twelve men, marched out to
meet the enemy. They had not gone far when the advance guard came upon a
force of about twenty Indians. The latter fled, and the whites pursued
for several miles, the main body following close upon the heels of the
advance, but without coming upon any considerable force of the enemy.
Then, being in a country favorable to an ambuscade, and the evening
coming on, they held a council and decided to return to the fort.

They had not gone upward of a mile when a large force of the enemy
appeared in their rear. The whites wheeled about at once, and were
forming into line, when the whole body of Indians rushed upon them with
great fury, shouting, "The Unacas are running! Come on! scalp them!"
They attacked simultaneously the centre and left flank of the whites;
and then was seen the hazard of going into battle with a many-headed
commander. For a moment all was confusion, and the companies in
attempting to form in the face of the impetuous attack were being
broken, when Isaac Shelby rushed to the front and ordered each company a
few steps to the rear, where they should reform, while he, with
Lieutenant Moore, Robert Edmiston, and John Morrison, and a private
named John Findlay,--in all five men,--should meet the onset of the
savages. Instantly the six captains obeyed the command, recognizing in
the volunteer of twenty-five their natural leader, and then the battle
became general. The Indians attacked furiously, and for a few moments
those five men bore the brunt of the assault. With his own hand Robert
Edmiston slew six of the more forward of the enemy, Morrison nearly as
many, and then Moore became engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand fight
with an herculean chieftain of the Cherokees. They were a few paces in
advance of the main body, and, as if by common consent, the firing was
partly suspended on both sides to await the issue of the conflict.
"Moore had shot the chief, wounding him in the knee, but not so badly as
to prevent him from standing. Moore advanced toward him, and the Indian
threw his tomahawk, but missed him. Moore sprung at him with his large
butcher-knife drawn, which the Indian caught by the blade and attempted
to wrest from the hand of his antagonist. Holding on with desperate
tenacity to the knife, both clinched with their left hands. A scuffle
ensued, in which the Indian was thrown to the ground, his right hand
being nearly dissevered, and bleeding profusely. Moore, still holding
the handle of his knife in the right hand, succeeded with the other in
disengaging his own tomahawk from his belt, and ended the strife by
sinking it in the skull of the Indian. Until this conflict was ended,
the Indians fought with unyielding spirit. After its issue became known,
they retreated."[002] "Our men pursued in a cautious manner, lest they
might be led into an ambuscade, hardly crediting their own senses that
so numerous a foe was completely routed. In this miracle of a battle we
had not a man killed, and only five wounded, who all recovered. But the
wounded of the enemy died till the whole loss in killed amounted to
upward of forty."[003]

As soon as this conflict was over, a horseman was sent off to Watauga
with tidings of the astonishing victory. "A great day's work in the
woods," was Sevier's remark when speaking subsequently of this battle.

Meanwhile, Oconostota, with his three hundred and fifty warriors, had
followed the trail along the Nolachucky, and on the morning of the 20th
had come upon the house of William Bean, the hospitable entertainer of
Robertson on his first visit to Watauga, Bean himself was at the fort,
to which had fled all the women and children in the settlement, but his
wife had preferred to remain at home. She had many friends among the
Indians, and she felt confident they would pass her without molestation.
She was mistaken. They took her captive, and removed her to their
station-camp on the Nolachucky. There a warrior pointed his rifle at
her, as if to fire; but Oconostota threw up the barrel and began to
question her as to the strength of the whites. She gave him misleading
replies, with which he appeared satisfied, for he soon told her she was
not to be killed, but taken to their towns to teach their women how to
manage a dairy.

Those at the fort knew that Oconostota was near by on the Nolachucky,
but he had deferred the attack so long that they concluded the wary and
cautious old chief was waiting to be reinforced by the body under
Dragging-Canoe, which had gone to attack Fort Patrick Henry. News had
reached them of Shelby's victory, and, as it would be some time before
the broken Cherokees could rally and join Oconostota, they were in no
apprehension of immediate danger. Accordingly, they went about their
usual vocations, and so it happened that a number of the women ventured
outside the fort as usual to milk the cows on the morning of the 21st of
July. Among them was one who was destined to occupy for many years the
position of the "first lady in Tennessee."

Her name was Catherine Sherrell, and she was the daughter of Samuel
Sherrell, one of the first settlers on the Watauga. In age she was
verging upon twenty, and she was tall, straight as an arrow, and lithe
as a hickory sapling. I know of no portrait of her in existence, but
tradition describes her as having dark eyes, flexible nostrils, regular
features, a clear, transparent skin, a neck like a swan, and a wealth of
wavy brown hair, which was a wonder to look at and was in striking
contrast to the whiteness of her complexion. A free life in the open air
had made her as supple as an eel and as agile as a deer. It was said
that, encumbered by her womanly raiment, she had been known to place one
hand upon a six-barred fence and clear it at a single bound. And now her
agility was to do her essential service.

While she and the other women, unconscious of danger, were "coaxing the
snowy fluid from the yielding udders of the kine," suddenly the
war-whoop sounded through the woods, and a band of yelling savages
rushed out upon them. Quick as thought the women turned and darted for
the gate of the fort; but the savages were close upon them in a
neck-and-neck race, and Kate, more remote than the rest, was cut off
from the entrance. Seeing her danger, Sevier and a dozen others opened
the gate and were about to rush out upon the savages, hundreds of whom
were now in front of the fort; but Robertson held them back, saying they
could not rescue her, and to go out would insure their own destruction.
At a glance Kate took in the situation. She could have no help from her
friends, and the tomahawk and scalping-knife were close behind her.
Instantly she turned, and, fleeter than a deer, made for a point in the
stockade some distance from the entrance. The palisades were eight feet
high, but with one bound she reached the top, and with another was over
the wall, falling into the arms of Sevier, who for the first time called
her his "bonnie Kate," his "brave girl for a foot-race." The other women
reached the entrance of the fort in safety.

Then the baffled savages opened fire, and for a full hour it rained
bullets upon the little enclosure. But the missiles fell harmless: not a
man was wounded. Driven by the light charges the Indians were accustomed
to use, the bullets simply bounded off from the thick logs and did no
damage. But it was not so with the fire of the besieged. The order was,
"Wait till you see the whites of your enemies' eyes, and then make sure
of your man." And so every one of those forty rifles did terrible
execution.

For twenty days the Indians hung about the fort, returning again and
again to the attack; but not a man who kept within the walls was even
wounded. It was not so with a man and a boy who, emboldened by a few
days' absence of the Indians, ventured outside to go down to the river.
The man was scalped on the spot; the boy was taken prisoner, and
subjected to a worse fate in one of the Indian villages. His name was
Moore, and he was a younger brother of the lieutenant who fought so
bravely in the battle near Fort Patrick Henry.

At last, baffled and dispirited, the Indians fell back to the Tellico.
They had lost about sixty killed and a larger number wounded, and they
had inflicted next to no damage upon the white settlers. They were
enraged beyond bounds and thirsting for vengeance. Only two prisoners
were in their power; but on them they resolved to wreak their extremest
tortures. Young Moore was taken to the village of his captor, high up in
the mountains, and there burned at a stake. A like fate was determined
upon for good Mrs. Bean, the kindly woman whose hospitable door had ever
been open to all, white man or Indian. Oconostota would not have her
die; but Dragging-Canoe insisted that she should be offered up as a
sacrifice to the _manes_ of his fallen warriors; and the head-king was
not powerful enough to prevent it.

She was taken to the summit of one of the burial-mounds,--those relics
of a forgotten race which are so numerous along the banks of the
Tellico. She was tied to a stake, the fagots were heaped about her, and
the fire was about to be lighted, when suddenly Nancy Ward appeared
among the crowd of savages and ordered a stay of the execution.
Dragging-Canoe was a powerful brave, but not powerful enough to combat
the will of this woman. Mrs. Bean was not only liberated, but sent back
with an honorable escort to her husband.

The village in which young Moore was executed was soon visited by Sevier
with a terrible retribution; and from that day for twenty years his name
was a terror among the Cherokees.

Before many months there was a wedding in the fort at Watauga. It was
that of John Sevier and the "bonnie Kate," famous to this day for
leaping stockades and six-barred fences. He lived to be twelve years
governor of Tennessee and the idol of a whole people. She shared all his
love and all his honors; but in her highest estate she was never ashamed
of her lowly days, and never tired of relating her desperate leap at
Watauga; and, even in her old age, she would merrily add, "I would make
it again--every day in the week--for such a husband."

     EDMUND KIRKE.




A PLEASANT SPIRIT.


It was drawing toward nine o'clock, and symptoms of closing for the
night were beginning to manifest themselves in Mr. Pegram's store. The
few among the nightly loungers there who had still a remnant of domestic
conscience left had already risen from boxes and "kags," and gathered up
the pound packages of sugar and coffee which had served as the pretext
for their coming, but which would not, alas! sufficiently account for
the length of their stay. The older stagers still sat composedly in the
seats of honor immediately surrounding the red-hot stove, and a look of
disapproval passed over their faces as Mr. Pegram, opening the door and
thereby letting in a blast of cold air upon their legs, proceeded to put
up the outside shutters.

"In a hurry to-night, ain't you, Pegram?" inquired Mr. Dickey, as the
proprietor returned, brushing flakes of snow from his coat and shivering
expressively.

"Well, not particular," replied Mr. Pegram, with a deliberation which
confirmed his words, "but it's pretty nigh nine, and Sally she ast me
not to be later _than_ nine to-night, for our hired girl's gone
home for a spell, and that makes it kind of lonesome for Sally: the baby
don't count for much, only when he cries, and I'll do him the justice to
say that isn't often."

"It's a new thing for Sally to be scary, ain't it?" queried Mr.
Crumlish, with an expression of mild surprise.

"Well, yes, I may say it is," admitted Mr. Pegram; "but, you know, we
had a kind of a warning, before we moved in, that all wasn't quite as it
should be, and, as bad luck would have it, there was a Boston paper come
round her new coat, with a story in it that laid out to be true, of
noises and appearances, and one thing and another, in a house right
there to Boston, and Sally she says to me, 'If they believe in them
things to Boston, where they don't believe in nothing they can't see and
handle, if all we hear's true, there must be something in it, and I only
wish I'd read that piece before we took the house.'

"I keep a-telling her we've neither seen nor heard nothing out of the
common, so far, but all she'll say to that is, 'That's no reason we
won't;' and sure enough it isn't, though I don't tell her so."

"But surely," said Mr. Birchard, the young schoolmaster, who boarded
with Mr. Dickey, "you don't believe any such trash as that account of a
haunted house in Boston?" There was a non-committal silence, and he went
on impatiently, "I could give you a dozen instances in which mysteries
of this kind, when they were energetically followed up, were proved to
be the results of the most simple and natural causes."

"Like enough, like enough, young man," said Uncle Jabez Snyder, in his
tremulous tones, "and mebbe some folks not a hunderd miles from here
could tell you another dozen that hadn't no natural causes."

"I should like very much to hear them," replied the young man, with an
exasperatingly incredulous smile.

"If Pegram here wasn't in such a durned hurry to turn us out and shet
up," said Mr. Dickey, with manifest irritation, "Uncle Jabez could tell
you all you want to hear."

Mr. Pegram looked disturbed. It was with him a fixed principle never to
disoblige a customer, and he saw that he was disobliging at least half a
dozen. On the other hand, he was not prepared to face his wife should he
so daringly disregard her wishes as to keep the store open half an hour
later than usual. He pondered for a few moments, and then his face
suddenly brightened, and he said, "If one of you gentlemen that passes
my house on your way home would undertake to put coal on the fire, put
the lights out, lock the door, and bring me the key, the store's at your
disposal till ten o'clock; and I'm only sorry I can't stay myself."

Two or three immediately volunteered, but as the schoolmaster and Mr.
Dickey were the only ones whose way lay directly past Mr. Pegram's door,
it was decided that they should divide the labors and honors between
them.

"I'd like you not to stop later _than_ ten," said Mr. Pegram
deprecatingly, as he buttoned his great-coat and drew his hat down over
his eyes, "for I have to be up so early, since that boy cleared out,
that I need to go to bed sooner than I mostly do."

Compliance with this modest request was readily promised, good-nights
were exchanged, and the lessened circle drew in more closely around the
stove, for several of the company had reluctantly decided that, all
things considered, it would be the better part of valor for them to go
when Mr. Pegram went.

There was a few minutes' silence, and then Mr. Dickey said impatiently,
"We're all ready, Uncle Jabez. Why don't you fire away, so's to be
through by ten o'clock?"

"I was a-thinkin' which one I'd best tell him," said Uncle Jabez mildly.
"They're all convincin' to a mind that's open to convincement, but I'd
like to pick out the one that's most so."

"There's the one about Alviry Pratt's grandfather," suggested Mr.
Crumlish encouragingly.

"No," mused the old man. "I've no doubt of that myself, but then it
didn't happen to me in person, and I've a notion he'd rather hear one
I've experienced than two I've heard tell of."

"Of course I would, Uncle Jabez," said Mr. Birchard kindly, but with an
amused twinkle in his eyes. "You take your own time: it's only just
struck nine, and there's no hurry at all."

"Supposin' I was to tell him that one about my first wife?" said the old
man presently, and with an inquiring look around the circle.

Several heads were nodded approvingly, and Mr. Crumlish said, "The very
one I'd 'a' chosen myself if you'd ast me."

Thus encouraged, Uncle Jabez, with a sort of deliberate promptness,
began: "We married very young, Lavina and me,--too young, some said, but
I never could see why, for I had a good farm, with health and strength
to carry it on, and she was a master-hand with butter and cheese. At any
rate, we thriv; and if we had plenty of children, there was plenty for
'em to eat, and they grew as fast as everything else did. She wasn't
what you'd fairly call handsome, Lavina wasn't, but she was
pleasant-appearin', very,--plump as a pa'tridge, with nice brown hair
and eyes and a clean-lookin' skin. But it was her smile in particular
that took me; and when she set in to laugh you couldn't no more' help
laughin' along with her than one bobolink can help laughin' back when he
hears another. She was the tenderest-hearted woman that ever breathed
the breath of life: she couldn't bear to hurt the feelin's of a cat, and
she'd go 'ithout a chicken-dinner any day sooner'n kill a chicken. As
time passed on and she begun to age a little, she grew stouter 'n'
stouter; but it didn't seem to worry her none. She'd puff and blow a
good bit when she went up-stairs, but she'd always laugh about it, and
say that when we was rich enough we'd put in an elevator, like they had
at a big hotel we saw once. It would suit her fine, she said, to set
down on a cushioned seat and be up-stairs afore she could git up again.
Now, you needn't think I'm wanderin' from the p'int," and Uncle Jabez
looked severely at Mr. Dickey, who was manifestly fidgeting. "All you
folks that have lived about here all your lives knew Lavina 'ithout my
tellin' you this; but Mr. Birchard he's a stranger in the neighborhood,
and it's needful to the understandin' of my story that he should know
just what sort of a woman she was,--or is, as I should say."

Mr. Dickey subsided, while Mr. Birchard tried to throw still more of an
expression of the deepest interest and attention into his face. He must
have succeeded, for the old man, going on with his story, fixed his eyes
more and more frequently upon those of the young one. They were large,
gentle, appealing blue eyes, with a mildly surprised expression, which
Mr. Birchard found exceedingly attractive. Whether or not the fact that
the youngest of Uncle Jabez's children, a daughter, had precisely
similar eyes, in any way accounted for the attraction, I leave to minds
more astute than my own.

"You may think," the narrator resumed, when he felt that he had settled
Mr. Dickey, "whether or not you'd miss a woman like that, when you'd
summered and wintered with her more'n forty year. She always said she
hoped she'd go sudden, for she was so heavy it would 'a' took three or
four of the common run of folks to lift her, and she dreaded a long
sickness. Well, she was took at her word. We was settin', as it might be
now, one on one side the fire, the other on t'other, in the big
easy-cheers that Samuel--that's our oldest son, and a good boy, if I do
say it--had sent us with the fust spare money he had. She'd been
laughin' and jokin', as she so often did, five minutes afore.
Gracie--she was a little thing then, and, bein' the youngest, a little
sassy and sp'iled, mebbe--had been on a trip to the city, and she'd
brought her ma a present of a shoe-buttoner with a handle a full foot
long.

"'There, ma,' she says, laughin' up in her mother's face; 'you was
complainin' about the distance it seemed to be to your feet: here's a
kind of a telegraft-pole to shorten it a little.'

"My, how we did laugh! And Lavina must needs try it right away, to
please Gracie; and she said it worked beautiful. But whether it was the
laughin' so much right on top of a hearty supper, or the bendin' down to
try her new toy, or both, she jest says, as natural as I'm speakin' now,
'Jabez, I'm a-goin'--' and then stopped. And when I looked up to see why
she didn't finish, she was gone, sure enough."

His voice broke, and he stopped abruptly. Mr. Birchard, without in the
least intending to do it, grasped his hand, and held it with
affectionate warmth for a moment.

"Thank you, young man, thank you kindly," said Uncle Jabez, recovering
his voice and shaking Mr. Birchard's hand heartily at the same moment.
"You've an uncommon feelin' heart for one so young.

"To say I was lonesome after she went don't say much; but time evens
things out after a while, or we couldn't stand it as long as we do.
Gracie she settled into a little woman all at once, as you may say, and
seemed older for a while than she does now. The rest was all married and
gone, but one boy,--a good boy, too. But they came around me, comfortin'
and helpin', though each one of 'em mourned her nigh as much as I did
myself; and after a while, as I said, I got used, in a manner, to doin'
'ithout her."

Here he made a long pause, with his eyes intently fixed upon the
darkness of the adjoining store-room. The heat from the stove had become
too great after the shutting of the shutters, and one of the men had
opened an inner door for ventilation.

Now, as one pair of eyes after another followed those of the old man,
there was a sort of subdued stir around the circle, and the
schoolmaster, to his intense disgust, caught himself looking hastily
over his shoulder,--the door being behind him.

Mr. Dickey broke the spell by suddenly rising, with the exclamation, "I
think we're cooled off about enough; and, as I'm a little rheumaticky
to-night, I'll shut that door, if you've none of you no objections."

There was a subdued murmur of assent, the door was closed, and Uncle
Jabez returned to the thread of his discourse:

"Lemme see: where was I? Oh, yes. You may think it a little strange,
now, but I didn't neither see nor hear tell of her for a full six
months. If I was makin' this story up, and anxious to make a _good_
story of it, you can see, if you're fair-minded, that I'd say she came
back right away. Now, wouldn't I be most likely to? Say?"

He appealed so directly to Mr. Birchard, pausing for a reply, that the
sceptic was obliged to answer in some way, and, with a curious sort of
reluctance, he said slowly, "Yes--I suppose--I'm sure you would."

This seemed to satisfy Uncle Jabez, and he went on with his story:

"I came home from town one stormy night, about six months after she
died, pretty well beat out,--entirely so, I may say. I'd been drivin'
some cattle into the city, and I'd had only a poor concern of a boy to
help me. The cattle was contrai-ry,--contrai-rier'n common; and I
remember thinkin', when the feller at the drove-yard handed me my check,
that I'd earned it pretty hard. That's the last about it I do remember.
I s'pose I must 'a' put it in my pocket-book, the same as usual; but I
rode home in a sort of a maze, I was so tired and drowsy, and I'd barely
sense enough to eat my supper and grease my boots afore I went to bed. I
had a bill to pay the next day, and I opened my pocket-book, quite
confident, to take out the check. It wasn't there. I always kep' a
number of papers in that pocket-book, and I thought at fust it had got
mislaid among 'em: so I turned everything out, and unfolded 'em one by
one, and poked my finger through a hole between the leather and the
linin', and made it a good deal bigger,--but that's neither here nor
there,--and before I was through I was certain sure of one thing,---
that wherever else that check was, it wasn't in that pocket-book. Then I
tried my pockets, one after the other,--four in my coat, four in my
overcoat, three in my vest, two in my pants: no, it wasn't in any of
them, and I begun to feel pretty queer, I can tell you. It was my only
sale of cattle for the season; I was dependin' on it to pay a bill and
buy one or two things for Gracie; and, anyhow, it's no fun to lose a
hunderd-dollar check and feel as if it must have been bewitched away
from you. I rode back to the drove-yard, though I wasn't more'n half
rested from the day before, and they said they'd stop payment on the
check and give me a chance to look right good for it, and if I couldn't
find it they'd draw me another. You see, they knowed me right well, and
they wasn't afraid I was tryin' to play any sort of a game on 'em.
Still, it wasn't a pleasant thing to have happen, for, say the best you
could of it, it argued that I'd lost a considerable share of my wits.
So, when I come home, I felt so kind of worried and down-hearted that I
couldn't half eat my supper; and that worried Gracie,--she was a
thin-skinned little critter, and if I didn't eat the same as usual she'd
always take it into her head there was something wrong with the
victuals. I fell asleep in my cheer right after supper, and slept till
nine o'clock; and then Gracie woke me, and ast me if I didn't think I'd
better go to bed. I said yes, I s'posed I had; but by that time I was
hungry, and I ast her what she had good in the pantry. She brightened up
wonderful at that,--though when I come to look closer at her I see she'd
been cryin',--and she said there was doughnuts, fresh fried that day,
and the best half of a mince pie. I told her that was all right so far
as it went, but I'd like somethin' a little solider to begin with: so
she found me a few slices of cold pork and one of her cowcumber pickles,
and I eat a right good supper. She picked at a piece of pie, by way of
keepin' me company, but she didn't eat much. Now, I tell you this, which
you may think isn't revelant to the subject, to let you see I went to
bed comfortable. We laughed and talked over our little supper, and
pretended we was city-folks, on our way home from the theater, gettin' a
fancy supper at Delmonico's. And I forgot all about the check for the
time bein', as slick and clean as if I'd never had it nor lost it. But,
nevertheless, when I went to sleep I begun to dream about it, and was to
the full as much worried in my dream as I was when I was awake. I seemed
to myself to be huntin' all over the house, in every hole and corner I
could think of, and sometimes I'd come on pieces of paper that looked so
like it outside I'd make sure I'd found it, and then when I opened 'em
they'd be ridickilous rhymes, 'ithout any sense to 'em; when all of a
sudden I heard Lavina's voice, as plain as you hear mine now. It seemed
to come from a good ways off just at first, callin' 'Father,'--she
always called me 'Father,' partly because she didn't like the name of
Jabez, and it is a humbly name, I'm free to confess,--and then again
nearer, 'Father;' and then again, as if it was right at the foot of the
stairs. And this time it went on to say, loud and plain, so's 't I could
hear every word, 'You look in the little black teapot on the top shelf
of the pantry, where I kep' the missionary money, and see what you'll
find.' And with that I heard her laugh; and I'd know Lavina's laugh
among a thousand. I was too dazed like to do it right away, and I must
'a' fell asleep while I was thinkin' about it, for when I woke up it was
broad daylight and Gracie was callin' to me to get up. But I hadn't
forgot a word that Lavina'd said, and I went for that teapot as quick as
I was dressed, and there was the check, sure enough, in good order and
condition!"

He paused to look round at his audience and see the effect of this
statement, and the schoolmaster took advantage of the pause to ask,
"Were you in the habit of putting money in that teapot for safe-keeping,
Uncle Jabez?"

"Young man, I was not," said Uncle Jabez emphatically, and evidently
annoyed both by the question and by the tone in which it was uttered.
"It was a little notion of Lavina's, and I'd never meddled with it, one
way or the other. But I'd left it be there after she died, because I
liked to look at it. I'd no more 'a' dreamed of puttin' that check in it
than I would of puttin' it into Gracie's work-box. But there it was, and
how it come there it wasn't vouchsafed me to know.

"I think it must have been a matter of three or four months after this,
though I wouldn't like to say too positive, that I fell into my first
and last lawsuit. A man I'd always counted a good neighbor made out he'd
found an old title-deed which give him a right to a smart slice off'n my
best meadow-land. It dated fifty years back, and old Peter Pinnell, that
was the only surveyor in the township at that time, made out he
recollected runnin' the lines; and when McKellop, the feller that
claimed the track, took old Pinnell over the ground, to see if he could
find any landmarks that would help to make the claim good, they found a
big pine-tree jest where they wanted to find it, and cut into it at the
right height to find a 'blaze,' if there was one. The rings was marked
as plain as the lines on a map, and when they'd cut through fifty, there
was the mark, sure enough, and McKellop's lawyer crowed ready to hurt
himself. I was a good deal cut down, I can tell you, for I could see
pretty well that it was goin' to turn the scale; and when supper-time
came, Gracie could hardly coax me to the table. I said no, I didn't feel
to be hungry; for I couldn't get that strip of meadow-land out of my
head. And it wasn't so much the value of the land, either, though I
couldn't well afford to lose it, as it was the idee of McKellop's
crowin' and cacklin' all over the neighborhood about it. But Gracie
looked so anxious and tired that I come to the table, jest to satisfy
her; and I found I was hungry, after all, for I'd been trampin' round
the farm most of the day, lookin' for some landmark or sign that would
prove my claim, that dated seventy years back. I recollect we had soused
pigs' feet for supper that night; and I don't think I ever tasted better
in my life. I eat pretty free of them, as I always did of anything I
liked, and we wound up with some of her canned peaches, that she'd got
out to coax me to eat, and cream on 'em 'most as thick as butter: she
had a skimmer with holes into it that she always skimmed the cream with
for our own use. She'd made as good a pot of coffee as I ever tasted.
And when I'd had all I wanted, I felt a good deal better, and I says to
her,--'I'll fret over it no more, Gracie: if it's his'n, let him take it
'ithout more words.'

"She read me a story out of the paper that made us both laugh right
hearty, and then a chapter, as usual, and then we 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/14530