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Sally Dows

by Bret Harte · English · Gutenberg #2705 · 345,367 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Sally Dows

Author: Bret Harte


        
Release date: May 25, 2006 [eBook #2705]
                Most recently updated: March 5, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2705

Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALLY DOWS ***




Produced by Donald Lainson





SALLY DOWS


By Bret Harte




CONTENTS


SALLY DOWS

THE CONSPIRACY OF MRS. BUNKER

THE TRANSFORMATION OF BUCKEYE CAMP

THEIR UNCLE FROM CALIFORNIA




SALLY DOWS.


PROLOGUE.

THE LAST GUN AT SNAKE RIVER.


What had been in the cool gray of that summer morning a dewy country
lane, marked only by a few wagon tracks that never encroached upon its
grassy border, and indented only by the faint footprints of a crossing
fox or coon, was now, before high noon, already crushed, beaten down,
and trampled out of all semblance of its former graciousness. The heavy
springless jolt of gun-carriage and caisson had cut deeply through the
middle track; the hoofs of crowding cavalry had struck down and shredded
the wayside vines and bushes to bury them under a cloud of following
dust, and the short, plunging double-quick of infantry had trodden out
this hideous ruin into one dusty level chaos. Along that rudely widened
highway useless muskets, torn accoutrements, knapsacks, caps, and
articles of clothing were scattered, with here and there the larger
wrecks of broken-down wagons, roughly thrown aside into the ditch to
make way for the living current. For two hours the greater part of
an army corps had passed and repassed that way, but, coming or going,
always with faces turned eagerly towards an open slope on the right
which ran parallel to the lane. And yet nothing was to be seen there.
For two hours a gray and bluish cloud, rent and shaken with explosion
after explosion, but always closing and thickening after each discharge,
was all that had met their eyes. Nevertheless, into this ominous cloud
solid moving masses of men in gray or blue had that morning melted away,
or emerged from it only as scattered fragments that crept, crawled,
ran, or clung together in groups, to be followed, and overtaken in the
rolling vapor.

But for the last half hour the desolated track had stretched empty and
deserted. While there was no cessation of the rattling, crackling, and
detonations on the fateful slope beyond, it had still been silent. Once
or twice it had been crossed by timid, hurrying wings, and frightened
and hesitating little feet, or later by skulkers and stragglers from
the main column who were tempted to enter it from the hedges and bushes
where they had been creeping and hiding. Suddenly a prolonged yell from
the hidden slope beyond--the nearest sound that had yet been heard from
that ominous distance--sent them to cover again. It was followed by
the furious galloping of horses in the lane, and a handsome, red-capped
officer, accompanied by an orderly, dashed down the track, wheeled,
leaped the hedge, rode out on the slope and halted. In another instant a
cloud of dust came whirling down the lane after him. Out of it strained
the heavy shoulders and tightened chain-traces of six frantic horses
dragging the swaying gun that in this tempest of motion alone seemed
passive and helpless with an awful foreknowledge of its power. As in
obedience to a signal from the officer they crashed through the hedge
after him, a sudden jolt threw an artilleryman from the limber before
the wheel. A driver glanced back on the tense chain and hesitated. “Go
on!” yelled the prostrate man, and the wheel went over him. Another and
another gun followed out of the dust cloud, until the whole battery had
deployed on the slope. Before the drifting dust had fairly settled, the
falling back of the panting horses with their drivers gave a momentary
glimpse of the nearest gun already in position and of the four erect
figures beside it. The yell that seemed to have evoked this sudden
apparition again sounded nearer; a blinding flash broke from the
gun, which was instantly hidden by the closing group around it, and
a deafening crash with the high ringing of metal ran down the lane. A
column of white, woolly smoke arose as another flash broke beside it.
This was quickly followed by another and another, with a response from
the gun first fired, until the whole slope shook and thundered. And the
smoke, no longer white and woolly, but darkening and thickening as with
unburnt grains of gunpowder, mingled into the one ominous vapor, and
driving along the lane hid even the slope from view.

The yelling had ceased, but the grinding and rattling heard through the
detonation of cannon came nearer still, and suddenly there was a shower
of leaves and twigs from the lower branches of a chestnut-tree near the
broken hedge. As the smoke thinned again a rising and falling medley of
flapping hats, tossing horses' heads and shining steel appeared for an
instant, advancing tumultuously up the slope. But the apparition was as
instantly cloven by flame from the two nearest guns, and went down in a
gush of smoke and roar of sound. So level was the delivery and so close
the impact that a space seemed suddenly cleared between, in which
the whirling of the shattered remnants of the charging cavalry was
distinctly seen, and the shouts and oaths of the inextricably struggling
mass became plain and articulate. Then a gunner serving the nearest
piece suddenly dropped his swab and seized a carbine, for out of
the whirling confusion before them a single rider was seen galloping
furiously towards the gun.

The red-capped young officer rode forward and knocked up the gunner's
weapon with his sword. For in that rapid glance he had seen that the
rider's reins were hanging loosely on the neck of his horse, who was
still dashing forwards with the frantic impetus of the charge, and
that the youthful figure of the rider, wearing the stripes of a
lieutenant,--although still erect, exercised no control over the animal.
The face was boyish, blond, and ghastly; the eyes were set and glassy.
It seemed as if Death itself were charging the gun.

Within a few feet of it the horse swerved before a brandished rammer,
and striking the cheeks of the gun-carriage pitched his inanimate rider
across the gun. The hot blood of the dead man smoked on the hotter brass
with the reek of the shambles, and be-spattered the hand of the gunner
who still mechanically served the vent. As they lifted the dead body
down the order came to “cease firing.” For the yells from below had
ceased too; the rattling and grinding were receding with the smoke
farther to the left. The ominous central cloud parted for a brief moment
and showed the unexpected sun glittering down the slope upon a near and
peaceful river.

The young artillery officer had dismounted and was now gently examining
the dead man. His breast had been crushed by a fragment of shell; he
must have died instantly. The same missile had cut the chain of a locket
which slipped from his opened coat. The officer picked it up with a
strange feeling--perhaps because he was conscious himself of wearing a
similar one, perhaps because it might give him some clue to the man's
identity. It contained only the photograph of a pretty girl, a tendril
of fair hair, and the word “Sally.” In the breast-pocket was a sealed
letter with the inscription, “For Miss Sally Dows. To be delivered if I
fall by the mudsill's hand.” A faint smile came over the officer's face;
he was about to hand the articles to a sergeant, but changed his mind
and put them in his pocket.

Meantime the lane and woods beyond, and even the slope itself, were
crowding with supports and waiting troops. His own battery was still
unlimbered, waiting orders. There was a slight commotion in the lane.

“Very well done, captain. Smartly taken and gallantly held.”

It was the voice of a general officer passing with his staff. There was
a note of pleasant relief in its tone, and the middle-aged, care-drawn
face of its owner was relaxed in a paternal smile. The young captain
flushed with pleasure.

“And you seem to have had close work too,” added the general, pointing
to the dead man.

The young officer hurriedly explained. The general nodded, saluted, and
passed on. But a youthful aide airily lingered.

“The old man's feeling good, Courtland,” he said. “We've rolled 'em up
all along the line. It's all over now. In point of fact, I reckon you've
fired the last round in this particular fratricidal engagement.”

The last round! Courtland remained silent, looking abstractedly at the
man it had crushed and broken at his feet.

“And I shouldn't wonder if you got your gold-leaf for to-day's work.
But who's your sunny Southern friend here?” he added, following his
companion's eyes.

Courtland repeated his story a little more seriously, which, however,
failed to subdue the young aide's levity. “So he concluded to stop
over,” he interrupted cheerfully. “But,” looking at the letter and
photograph, “I say--look here! 'Sally Dows?' Why, there was another man
picked up yesterday with a letter to the same girl! Doc Murphy has it.
And, by Jove! the same picture too!--eh? I say, Sally must have gathered
in the boys, and raked down the whole pile! Look here, Courty! you might
get Doc Murphy's letter and hunt her up when this cruel war is over. Say
you're 'fulfilling a sacred trust!' See? Good idea, old man! Ta-ta!” and
he trotted quickly after his superior.

Courtland remained with the letter and photograph in his hand, gazing
abstractedly after him. The smoke had rolled quite away from the fields
on the left, but still hung heavily down the south on the heels of the
flying cavalry. A long bugle call swelled up musically from below. The
freed sun caught the white flags of two field hospitals in the woods
and glanced tranquilly on the broad, cypress-fringed, lazy-flowing,
and cruel but beautiful Southern river, which had all unseen crept so
smilingly that morning through the very heart of the battle.


CHAPTER I.


The two o'clock express from Redlands to Forestville, Georgia, had
been proceeding with the languid placidity of the river whose banks it
skirted for more than two hours. But, unlike the river, it had stopped
frequently; sometimes at recognized stations and villages, sometimes at
the apparition of straw-hatted and linen-coated natives in the solitude
of pine woods, where, after a decent interval of cheery conversation
with the conductor and engineer, it either took the stranger on board,
or relieved him of his parcel, letter, basket, or even the verbal
message with which he was charged. Much of the way lay through
pine-barren and swampy woods which had never been cleared or cultivated;
much through decayed settlements and ruined villages that had remained
unchanged since the War of the Rebellion, now three years past. There
were vestiges of the severity of a former military occupation; the
blackened timbers of railway bridges still unrepaired; and along the
line of a certain memorable march, sections of iron rails taken from
the torn-up track, roasted in bonfires and bent while red-hot around the
trunks of trees, were still to be seen. These mementos of defeat seemed
to excite neither revenge nor the energy to remove them; the dull apathy
which had succeeded the days of hysterical passion and convulsion still
lingered; even the slow improvement that could be detected was marked
by the languor of convalescence. The helplessness of a race, hitherto
dependent upon certain barbaric conditions or political place and power,
unskilled in invention, and suddenly confronted with the necessity of
personal labor, was visible everywhere. Eyes that but three short years
before had turned vindictively to the North, now gazed wistfully to that
quarter for help and direction. They scanned eagerly the faces of their
energetic and prosperous neighbors--and quondam foes--upon the verandas
of Southern hotels and the decks of Southern steamboats, and were even
now watching from a group in the woods the windows of the halted train,
where the faces appeared of two men of manifestly different types, but
still alien to the country in dress, features, and accent.

Two negroes were slowly loading the engine tender from a woodpile. The
rich brown smoke of the turpentine knots was filling the train with its
stinging fragrance. The elder of the two Northern passengers, with sharp
New England angles in his face, impatiently glanced at his watch.

“Of all created shiftlessness, this beats everything! Why couldn't we
have taken in enough wood to last the ten miles farther to the terminus
when we last stopped? And why in thunder, with all this firing up, can't
we go faster?”

The younger passenger, whose quiet, well-bred face seemed to indicate
more discipline of character, smiled.

“If you really wish to know and as we've only ten miles farther to
go--I'll show you WHY. Come with me.”

He led the way through the car to the platform and leaped down. Then he
pointed significantly to the rails below them. His companion started.
The metal was scaling off in thin strips from the rails, and in some
places its thickness had been reduced a quarter of an inch, while in
others the projecting edges were torn off, or hanging in iron shreds,
so that the wheels actually ran on the narrow central strip. It seemed
marvelous that the train could keep the track.

“NOW you know why we don't go more than five miles an hour, and--are
thankful that we don't,” said the young traveler quietly.

“But this is disgraceful!--criminal!” ejaculated the other nervously.

“Not at their rate of speed,” returned the younger man. “The crime would
be in going faster. And now you can understand why a good deal of the
other progress in this State is obliged to go as slowly over their
equally decaying and rotten foundations. You can't rush things here as
we do in the North.”

The other passenger shrugged his shoulders as they remounted the
platform, and the train moved on. It was not the first time that the two
fellow-travelers had differed, although their mission was a common
one. The elder, Mr. Cyrus Drummond, was the vice-president of a large
Northern land and mill company, which had bought extensive tracts of
land in Georgia, and the younger, Colonel Courtland, was the consulting
surveyor and engineer for the company. Drummond's opinions were a good
deal affected by sectional prejudice, and a self-satisfied and righteous
ignorance of the actual conditions and limitations of the people with
whom he was to deal; while the younger man, who had served through the
war with distinction, retained a soldier's respect and esteem for his
late antagonists, with a conscientious and thoughtful observation of
their character. Although he had resigned from the army, the fact that
he had previously graduated at West Point with high honors had given
him preferment in this technical appointment, and his knowledge of the
country and its people made him a valuable counselor. And it was a fact
that the country people had preferred this soldier with whom they had
once personally grappled to the capitalist they had never known during
the struggle.

The train rolled slowly through the woods, so slowly that the fragrant
pine smoke from the engine still hung round the windows of the cars.
Gradually the “clearings” became larger; they saw the distant white
wooden colonnades of some planter's house, looking still opulent and
pretentious, although the fence of its inclosure had broken gaps, and
the gate sagged on its single hinge.

Mr. Drummond sniffed at this damning record of neglect and indifference.
“Even if they were ruined, they might still have spent a few cents for
nails and slats to enable them to look decent before folks, and not
parade their poverty before their neighbors,” he said.

“But that's just where you misunderstand them, Drummond,” said
Courtland, smiling. “They have no reason to keep up an attitude towards
their neighbors, who still know them as 'Squire' so-and-so, 'Colonel'
this and that, and the 'Judge,'--owners of their vast but crippled
estates. They are not ashamed of being poor, which is an accident.”

“But they are of working, which is DELIBERATION,” interrupted Drummond.
“They are ashamed to mend their fences themselves, now that they have no
slaves to do it for them.”

“I doubt very much if some of them know how to drive a nail, for the
matter of that,” said Courtland, still good-humoredly, “but that's
the fault of a system older than themselves, which the founders of the
Republic retained. We cannot give them experience in their new condition
in one day, and in fact, Drummond, I am very much afraid that for our
purposes--and I honestly believe for THEIR good--we must help to keep
them for the present as they are.”

“Perhaps,” said Drummond sarcastically, “you would like to reinstate
slavery?”

“No. But I should like to reinstate the MASTER. And not for HIS sake
alone, but for freedom's sake and OURS. To be plain: since I have taken
up this matter for the company, I have satisfied myself from personal
observation that the negro--even more than his master--cannot handle his
new condition. He is accustomed to his old traditional task-master, and
I doubt if he will work fairly for any other--particularly for those who
don't understand him. Don't mistake me: I don't propose to go back to
the whip; to that brutal institution, the irresponsible overseer; to
the buying and selling, and separation of the family, nor any of the
old wrongs; but I propose to make the old master OUR OVERSEER, and
responsible to US. He is not a fool, and has already learned that it
is more profitable to pay wages to his old slaves and have the power
of dismissal, like any other employer, than be obliged, under the old
system of enforced labor and life servitude, to undergo the cost of
maintaining incompetence and idleness. The old sentiment of slave-owning
has disappeared before natural common-sense and selfishness. I am
satisfied that by some such process as this utilizing of the old master
and the new freedom we will be better able to cultivate our lands than
by buying up their estates, and setting the old owners adrift, with a
little money in their pockets, as an idle, discontented class to
revive old political dogmas, and foment new issues, or perhaps set up a
dangerous opposition to us.

“You don't mean to say that those infernal niggers would give the
preference to their old oppressors?”

“Dollar for dollar in wages--yes! And why shouldn't they? Their old
masters understand them better--and treat them generally better. They
know our interest in them is only an abstract sentiment, not a real
liking. We show it at every turn. But we are nearing Redlands, and Major
Reed will, I have no doubt, corroborate my impressions. He insists upon
our staying at his house, although the poor old fellow, I imagine, can
ill afford to entertain company. But he will be offended if we refuse.”

“He is a friend of yours, then?” asked Drummond.

“I fought against his division at Stony Creek,” said Courtland grimly.
“He never tires of talking of it to me--so I suppose I am.”

A few moments later the train glided beside the Redlands platform. As
the two travelers descended a hand was laid on Courtland's shoulder, and
a stout figure in the blackest and shiniest of alpaca jackets, and the
whitest and broadest of Panama hats, welcomed him. “Glad to see yo',
cun'nel. I reckoned I'd waltz over and bring along the boy,” pointing to
a grizzled negro servant of sixty who was bowing before them, “to
tote yo'r things over instead of using a hack. I haven't run much on
horseflesh since the wah--ha! ha! What I didn't use up for remounts I
reckon yo'r commissary gobbled up with the other live stock, eh?” He
laughed heartily, as if the recollections were purely humorous, and
again clapped Courtland on the back.

“Let me introduce my friend, Mr. Drummond, Major Reed,” said Courtland,
smiling.

“Yo' were in the wah, sir?”

“No--I”--returned Drummond, hesitating, he knew not why, and angry at
his own embarrassment.

“Mr. Drummond, the vice-president of the company,” interposed Courtland
cheerfully, “was engaged in furnishing to us the sinews of war.”

Major Reed bowed a little more formally. “Most of us heah, sir, were
in the wah some time or other, and if you gentlemen will honah me by
joining in a social glass at the hotel across the way, I'll introduce
you to Captain Prendergast, who left a leg at Fair Oaks.” Drummond would
have declined, but a significant pressure on his arm from Courtland
changed his determination. He followed them to the hotel and into the
presence of the one-legged warrior (who turned out to be the landlord
and barkeeper), to whom Courtland was hilariously introduced by Major
Reed as “the man, sir, who had pounded my division for three hours at
Stony Creek!”

Major Reed's house was but a few minutes' walk down the dusty lane,
and was presently heralded by the baying of three or four foxhounds and
foreshadowed by a dilapidated condition of picket-fence and stuccoed
gate front. Beyond it stretched the wooden Doric columns of the
usual Southern mansion, dimly seen through the broad leaves of the
horse-chestnut-trees that shaded it. There were the usual listless black
shadows haunting the veranda and outer offices--former slaves and still
attached house-servants, arrested like lizards in breathless attitudes
at the approach of strange footsteps, and still holding the brush,
broom, duster, or home implement they had been lazily using, in their
fixed hands. From the doorway of the detached kitchen, connected by a
gallery to the wing of the mansion, “Aunt Martha,” the cook, gazed also,
with a saucepan clasped to her bosom, and her revolving hand with the
scrubbing cloth in it apparently stopped on a dead centre.

Drummond, whose gorge had risen at these evidences of hopeless
incapacity and utter shiftlessness, was not relieved by the presence of
Mrs. Reed--a soured, disappointed woman of forty, who still carried in
her small dark eyes and thin handsome lips something of the bitterness
and antagonism of the typical “Southern rights” woman; nor of her two
daughters, Octavia and Augusta, whose languid atrabiliousness seemed a
part of the mourning they still wore. The optimistic gallantry and good
fellowship of the major appeared the more remarkable by contrast with
his cypress-shadowed family and their venomous possibilities. Perhaps
there might have been a light vein of Southern insincerity in his good
humor. “Paw,” said Miss Octavia, with gloomy confidence to Courtland,
but with a pretty curl of the hereditary lip, “is about the only
'reconstructed' one of the entire family. We don't make 'em much about
yer. But I'd advise yo' friend, Mr. Drummond, if he's coming here
carpet-bagging, not to trust too much to paw's 'reconstruction.' It
won't wash.” But when Courtland hastened to assure her that Drummond
was not a “carpet-bagger,” was not only free from any of the political
intrigue implied under that baleful title, but was a wealthy Northern
capitalist simply seeking investment, the young lady was scarcely more
hopeful. “I suppose he reckons to pay paw for those niggers yo' stole?”
 she suggested with gloomy sarcasm.

“No,” said Courtland, smiling; “but what if he reckoned to pay those
niggers for working for your father and him?”

“If paw is going into trading business with him; if Major Reed--a
So'th'n gentleman--is going to keep shop, he ain't such a fool as to
believe niggers will work when they ain't obliged to. THAT'S been tried
over at Mirandy Dows's, not five miles from here, and the niggers are
half the time hangin' round here takin' holiday. She put up new quarters
for 'em, and tried to make 'em eat together at a long table like those
low-down folks up North, and did away with their cabins and their melon
patches, and allowed it would get 'em out of lying round too much, and
wanted 'em to work over-time and get mo' pay. And the result was that
she and her niece, and a lot of poor whites, Irish and Scotch, that she
had to pick up ''long the river,' do all the work. And her niece Sally
was mo' than half Union woman during the wah, and up to all No'th'n
tricks and dodges, and swearin' by them; and yet, for all that--the
thing won't work.”

“But isn't that partly the reason? Isn't her failure a great deal due to
this lack of sympathy from her neighbors? Discontent is easily sown,
and the negro is still weighted down by superstition; the Fifteenth
Amendment did not quite knock off ALL his chains.”

“Yes, but that is nothing to HER. For if there ever was a person in this
world who reckoned she was just born to manage everything and everybody,
it is Sally Dows!”

“Sally Dows!” repeated Courtland, with a slight start.

“Yes, Sally Dows, of Pineville.”

“You say she was half Union, but did she have any relations
or--or--friends--in the war--on your side? Any--who--were killed in
battle?”

“They were all killed, I reckon,” returned Miss Reed darkly. “There was
her cousin, Jule Jeffcourt, shot in the cemetery with her beau, who,
they say, was Sally's too; there were Chet Brooks and Joyce Masterton,
who were both gone on her and both killed too; and there was old Captain
Dows himself, who never lifted his head again after Richmond was taken,
and drank himself to death. It wasn't considered healthy to be Miss
Sally's relations in those times, or to be even wantin' to be one.”

Colonel Courtland did not reply. The face of the dead young officer
coming towards him out of the blue smoke rose as vividly as on that
memorable day. The picture and letter he had taken from the dead man's
breast, which he had retained ever since; the romantic and fruitless
quest he had made for the fair original in after days; and the strange
and fateful interest in her which had grown up in his heart since then,
he now knew had only been lulled to sleep in the busy preoccupation of
the last six months, for it all came back to him with redoubled force.
His present mission and its practical object, his honest zeal in its
pursuit, and the cautious skill and experience he had brought to it,
all seemed to be suddenly displaced by this romantic and unreal fantasy.
Oddly enough it appeared now to be the only reality in his life, the
rest was an incoherent, purposeless dream.

“Is--is--Miss Sally married?” he asked, collecting himself with an
effort.

“Married? Yes, to that farm of her aunt's! I reckon that's the only
thing she cares for.”

Courtland looked up, recovering his usual cheerful calm. “Well, I think
that after luncheon I'll pay my respects to her family. From what you
have just told me the farm is certainly an experiment worth seeing. I
suppose your father will have no objection to give me a letter to Miss
Dows?”


CHAPTER II.


Nevertheless, as Colonel Courtland rode deliberately towards Dows'
Folly, as the new experiment was locally called, although he had not
abated his romantic enthusiasm in the least, he was not sorry that he
was able to visit it under a practical pretext. It was rather late now
to seek out Miss Sally Dows with the avowed intent of bringing her a
letter from an admirer who had been dead three years, and whose memory
she had probably buried. Neither was it tactful to recall a sentiment
which might have been a weakness of which she was ashamed. Yet,
clear-headed and logical as Courtland was in his ordinary affairs, he
was nevertheless not entirely free from that peculiar superstition which
surrounds every man's romance. He believed there was something more than
a mere coincidence in his unexpectedly finding himself in such favorable
conditions for making her acquaintance. For the rest--if there was any
rest--he would simply trust to fate. And so, believing himself a
cool, sagacious reasoner, but being actually, as far as Miss Dows was
concerned, as blind, fatuous, and unreasoning as any of her previous
admirers, he rode complacently forward until he reached the lane that
led to the Dows plantation.

Here a better kept roadway and fence, whose careful repair would
have delighted Drummond, seemed to augur well for the new enterprise.
Presently, even the old-fashioned local form of the fence, a slanting
zigzag, gave way to the more direct line of post and rail in the
Northern fashion. Beyond it presently appeared a long low frontage of
modern buildings which, to Courtland's surprise, were entirely new in
structure and design. There was no reminiscence of the usual Southern
porticoed gable or columned veranda. Yet it was not Northern either. The
factory-like outline of facade was partly hidden in Cherokee rose and
jessamine.

A long roofed gallery connected the buildings and became a veranda to
one. A broad, well-rolled gravel drive led from the open gate to the
newest building, which seemed to be the office; a smaller path diverged
from it to the corner house, which, despite its severe simplicity, had a
more residential appearance. Unlike Reed's house, there were no lounging
servants or field hands to be seen; they were evidently attending to
their respective duties. Dismounting, Courtland tied his horse to a post
at the office door and took the smaller path to the corner house.

The door was open to the fragrant afternoon breeze wafted through the
rose and jessamine. So also was a side door opening from the hall into
a long parlor or sitting-room that ran the whole width of the house.
Courtland entered it. It was prettily furnished, but everything had the
air of freshness and of being uncharacteristically new. It was empty,
but a faint hammering was audible on the rear wall of the house, through
the two open French windows at the back, curtained with trailing vines,
which gave upon a sunlit courtyard. Courtland walked to the window. Just
before it, on the ground, stood a small light ladder, which he gently
put aside to gain a better view of the courtyard as he put on his hat,
and stepped out of the open window.

In this attitude he suddenly felt his hat tipped from his head, followed
almost instantaneously by a falling slipper, and the distinct impression
of a very small foot on the crown of his head. An indescribable
sensation passed over him. He hurriedly stepped back into the room, just
as a small striped-stockinged foot was as hastily drawn up above the top
of the window with the feminine exclamation, “Good gracious me!”

Lingering for an instant, only to assure himself that the fair speaker
had secured her foothold and was in no danger of falling, Courtland
snatched up his hat, which had providentially fallen inside the room,
and retreated ingloriously to the other end of the parlor. The voice
came again from the window, and struck him as being very sweet and
clear:--

“Sophy, is that YOU?”

Courtland discreetly retired to the hall. To his great relief a voice
from the outside answered, “Whar, Miss Sally?”

“What did yo' move the ladder for? Yo' might have killed me.”

“Fo' God, Miss Sally, I didn't move no ladder!”

“Don't tell me, but go down and get my slipper. And bring up some more
nails.”

Courtland waited silently in the hall. In a few moments he heard a heavy
footstep outside the rear window. This was his opportunity. Re-entering
the parlor somewhat ostentatiously, he confronted a tall negro girl
who was passing through the room carrying a tiny slipper in her hand.
“Excuse me,” he said politely, “but I could not find any one to announce
me. Is Miss Dows at home?”

The girl instantly whipped the slipper behind her. “Is yo' wanting Miss
Mirandy Dows,” she asked with great dignity, “oah Miss Sally Dows--her
niece? Miss Mirandy's bin gone to Atlanta for a week.”

“I have a letter for Miss Miranda, but I shall be very glad if Miss
Sally Dows will receive me,” returned Courtland, handing the letter and
his card to the girl.

She received it with a still greater access of dignity and marked
deliberation. “It's clean gone outer my mind, sah, ef Miss Sally is in
de resumption of visitahs at dis houah. In fac', sah,” she continued,
with intensified gravity and an exaggeration of thoughtfulness as the
sounds of Miss Sally's hammering came shamelessly from the wall, “I
doahn know exac'ly ef she's engaged playin' de harp, practicin' de
languages, or paintin' in oil and watah colors, o' givin' audiences to
offishals from de Court House. It might be de houah for de one or de
odder. But I'll communicate wid her, sah, in de budwoh on de uppah
flo'.” She backed dexterously, so as to keep the slipper behind her, but
with no diminution of dignity, out of a side door. In another moment the
hammering ceased, followed by the sound of rapid whispering without; a
few tiny twigs and leaves slowly rustled to the ground, and then there
was complete silence. He ventured to walk to the fateful window again.

Presently he heard a faint rustle at the other end of the room, and he
turned. A sudden tremulousness swept along his pulses, and then they
seemed to pause; he drew a deep breath that was almost a sigh, and
remained motionless.

He had no preconceived idea of falling in love with Miss Sally at first
sight, nor had he dreamed such a thing possible. Even the girlish face
that he had seen in the locket, although it had stirred him with a
singular emotion, had not suggested that. And the ideal he had evolved
from it was never a potent presence. But the exquisitely pretty face
and figure before him, although it might have been painted from his own
fancy of her, was still something more and something unexpected. All
that had gone before had never prepared him for the beautiful girl who
now stood there. It was a poor explanation to say that Miss Sally was
four or five years older than her picture, and that later experiences,
enlarged capacity, a different life, and new ambition had impressed her
youthful face with a refined mobility; it was a weird fancy to imagine
that the blood of those who had died for her had in some vague,
mysterious way imparted an actual fascination to her, and he dismissed
it. But even the most familiar spectator, like Sophy, could see that
Miss Sally had the softest pink complexion, the silkiest hair, that
looked as the floss of the Indian corn might look if curled, or golden
spider threads if materialized, and eyes that were in bright gray
harmony with both; that the frock of India muslin, albeit home-made,
fitted her figure perfectly, from the azure bows on her shoulders to the
ribbon around her waist; and that the hem of its billowy skirt showed a
foot which had the reputation of being the smallest foot south of Mason
and Dixon's Line! But it was something more intangible than this which
kept Courtland breathless and silent.

“I'm not Miss Miranda Dows,” said the vision with a frankness that was
half childlike and half practical, as she extended a little hand, “but I
can talk 'fahm' with yo' about as well as aunty, and I reckon from what
Major Reed says heah,” holding up the letter between her fingers, “as
long as yo' get the persimmons yo' don't mind what kind o' pole yo'
knock 'em down with.”

The voice that carried this speech was so fresh, clear, and sweet that I
am afraid Courtland thought little of its bluntness or its conventional
transgressions. But it brought him his own tongue quite unemotionally
and quietly. “I don't know what was in that note, Miss Dows, but I can
hardly believe that Major Reed ever put my present felicity quite in
that way.”

Miss Sally laughed. Then with a charming exaggeration she waved her
little hand towards the sofa.

“There! Yo' naturally wanted a little room for that, co'nnle, but now
that yo' 've got it off,--and mighty pooty it was, too,--yo' can sit
down.” And with that she sank down at one end of the sofa, prettily drew
aside a white billow of skirt so as to leave ample room for Courtland
at the other, and clasping her fingers over her knees, looked demurely
expectant.

“But let me hope that I am not disturbing you unseasonably,” said
Courtland, catching sight of the fateful little slipper beneath her
skirt, and remembering the window. “I was so preoccupied in thinking of
your aunt as the business manager of these estates that I quite forget
that she might have a lady's hours for receiving.”

“We haven't got any company hours,” said Miss Sally, “and we haven't
just now any servants for company manners, for we're short-handed in the
fields and barns. When yo' came I was nailing up the laths for the vines
outside, because we couldn't spare carpenters from the factory. But,”
 she added, with a faint accession of mischief in her voice, “yo' came to
talk about the fahm?”

“Yes,” said Courtland, rising, “but not to interrupt the work on it.
Will you let me help you nail up the laths on the wall? I have some
experience that way, and we can talk as we work. Do oblige me!”

The young girl looked at him brightly.

“Well, now, there's nothing mean about THAT. Yo' mean it for sure?”

“Perfectly. I shall feel so much less as if I was enjoying your company
under false pretenses.”

“Yo' just wait here, then.”

She jumped from the sofa, ran out of the room, and returned presently,
tying the string of a long striped cotton blouse--evidently an extra one
of Sophy's--behind her back as she returned. It was gathered under her
oval chin by a tape also tied behind her, while her fair hair was tucked
under the usual red bandana handkerchief of the negro housemaid. It is
scarcely necessary to add that the effect was bewitching.

“But,” said Miss Sally, eying her guest's smartly fitting frock-coat,
“yo' 'll spoil yo'r pooty clothes, sure! Take off yo'r coat--don't mind
me--and work in yo'r shirtsleeves.”

Courtland obediently flung aside his coat and followed his active
hostess through the French window to the platform outside. Above them a
wooden ledge or cornice, projecting several inches, ran the whole length
of the building. It was on this that Miss Sally had evidently found a
foothold while she was nailing up a trellis-work of laths between it and
the windows of the second floor. Courtland found the ladder, mounted
to the ledge, followed by the young girl, who smilingly waived his
proffered hand to help her up, and the two gravely set to work. But in
the intervals of hammering and tying up the vines Miss Sally's tongue
was not idle. Her talk was as fresh, as quaint, as original as herself,
and yet so practical and to the purpose of Courtland's visit as to
excuse his delight in it and her own fascinating propinquity. Whether
she stopped to take a nail from between her pretty lips when she spoke
to him, or whether holding on perilously with one hand to the trellis
while she gesticulated with the hammer, pointing out the divisions of
the plantation from her coign of vantage, he thought she was as clear
and convincing to his intellect as she was distracting to his senses.

She told him how the war had broken up their old home in Pineville,
sending her father to serve in the Confederate councils of Richmond,
and leaving her aunt and herself to manage the property alone; how the
estate had been devastated, the house destroyed, and how they had
barely time to remove a few valuables; how, although SHE had always been
opposed to secession and the war, she had not gone North, preferring to
stay with her people, and take with them the punishment of the folly she
had foreseen. How after the war and her father's death she and her aunt
had determined to “reconstruct THEMSELVES” after their own fashion on
this bit of property, which had survived their fortunes because it had
always been considered valueless and unprofitable for negro labor. How
at first they had undergone serious difficulty, through the incompetence
and ignorance of the freed laborer, and the equal apathy and prejudice
of their neighbors. How they had gradually succeeded with the adoption
of new methods and ideas that she herself had conceived, which she now
briefly and clearly stated. Courtland listened with a new, breathless,
and almost superstitious interest: they were HIS OWN THEORIES--perfected
and demonstrated!

“But you must have had capital for this?”

Ah, yes! that was where they were fortunate. There were some French
cousins with whom she had once stayed in Paris, who advanced enough to
stock the estate. There were some English friends of her father's, old
blockade runners, who had taken shares, provided them with more capital,
and imported some skilled laborers and a kind of steward or agent to
represent them. But they were getting on, and perhaps it was better for
their reputation with their neighbors that they had not been BEHOLDEN to
the “No'th.” Seeing a cloud pass over Courtland's face, the young lady
added with an affected sigh, and the first touch of feminine coquetry
which had invaded their wholesome camaraderie:--

“Yo' ought to have found us out BEFORE, co'nnle.”

For an impulsive moment Courtland felt like telling her then and there
the story of his romantic quest; but the reflection that they were
standing on a narrow ledge with no room for the emotions, and that Miss
Sally had just put a nail in her mouth and a start might be dangerous,
checked him. To this may be added a new jealousy of her previous
experiences, which he had not felt before. Nevertheless, he managed to
say with some effusion:--

“But I hope we are not too late NOW. I think my principals are quite
ready and able to buy up any English or French investor now or to come.”

“Yo' might try yo' hand on that one,” said Miss Sally, pointing to a
young fellow who had just emerged from the office and was crossing the
courtyard. “He's the English agent.”

He was square-shouldered and round-headed, fresh and clean looking in
his white flannels, but with an air of being utterly distinct and alien
to everything around him, and mentally and morally irreconcilable to it.
As he passed the house he glanced shyly at it; his eye brightened and
his manner became self-conscious as he caught sight of the young girl,
but changed again when he saw her companion. Courtland likewise was
conscious of a certain uneasiness; it was one thing to be helping Miss
Sally ALONE, but certainly another thing to be doing so under the eye
of a stranger; and I am afraid that he met the stony observation of the
Englishman with an equally cold stare. Miss Sally alone retained her
languid ease and self-possession. She called out, “Wait a moment, Mr.
Champney,” slipped lightly down the ladder, and leaning against it with
one foot on its lowest rung awaited his approach.

“I reckoned yo' might be passing by,” she said, as he came forward.
“Co'nnle Courtland,” with an explanatory wave of the hammer towards her
companion, who remained erect and slightly stiffened on the cornice,
“is no relation to those figures along the frieze of the Redlands Court
House, but a No'th'n officer, a friend of Major Reed's, who's come down
here to look after So'th'n property for some No'th'n capitalists. Mr.
Champney,” she continued, turning and lifting her eyes to Courtland as
she indicated Champney with her hammer, “when he isn't talking English,
seeing English, thinking English, dressing English, and wondering why
God didn't make everything English, is trying to do the same for
HIS folks. Mr. Champney, Co'nnle Courtland. Co'nnle Courtland, Mr.
Champney!” The two men bowed formally. “And now, Co'nnle, if yo'll
come down, Mr. Champney will show yo' round the fahm. When yo' 've got
through yo'll find me here at work.”

Courtland would have preferred, and half looked for her company
and commentary on this round of inspection, but he concealed his
disappointment and descended. It did not exactly please him that
Champney seemed relieved, and appeared to accept him as a bona fide
stranger who could not possibly interfere with any confidential
relations that he might have with Miss Sally. Nevertheless, he met the
Englishman's offer to accompany him with polite gratitude, and they left
the house together.

In less than an hour they returned. It had not even taken that time for
Courtland to discover that the real improvements and the new methods
had originated with Miss Sally; that she was virtually the controlling
influence there, and that she was probably retarded rather than assisted
by the old-fashioned and traditional conservatism of the company of
which Champney was steward. It was equally plain, however, that the
young fellow was dimly conscious of this, and was frankly communicative
about it.

“You see, over there they work things in a different way, and, by Jove!
they can't understand that there is any other, don't you know? They're
always wigging me as if I could help it, although I've tried to explain
the nigger business, and all that, don't you know? They want Miss Dows
to refer her plans to me, and expect me to report on them, and then
they'll submit them to the Board and wait for its decision. Fancy Miss
Dows doing that! But, by Jove! they can't conceive of her AT ALL over
there, don't you know?”

“Which Miss Dows do you mean?” asked Courtland dryly.

“Miss Sally, of course,” said the young fellow briskly. “SHE manages
everything--her aunt included. She can make those niggers work when no
one else can, a word or smile from her is enough. She can make terms
with dealers and contractors--her own terms, too--when they won't look
at MY figures. By Jove! she even gets points out of those traveling
agents and inventors, don't you know, who come along the road with
patents and samples. She got one of those lightning-rod and wire-fence
men to show her how to put up an arbor for her trailing roses. Why, when
I first saw YOU up on the cornice, I thought you were some other chap
that she'd asked--don't you know--that is, at first, of course!--you
know what I mean--ha, by Jove!--before we were introduced, don't you
know.”

“I think I OFFERED to help Miss Dows,” said Courtland with a quickness
that he at once regretted.

“So did HE, don't you know? Miss Sally does not ASK anybody. Don't you
see? a fellow don't like to stand by and see a young lady like her doing
such work.” Vaguely aware of some infelicity in his speech, he awkwardly
turned the subject: “I don't think I shall stay here long, myself.”

“You expect to return to England?” asked Courtland.

“Oh, no! But I shall go out of the company's service and try my own
hand. There's a good bit of land about three miles from here that's in
the market, and I think I could make something out of it. A fellow ought
to settle down and be his own master,” he answered tentatively, “eh?”

“But how will Miss Dows be able to spare you?” asked Courtland, uneasily
conscious that he was assuming an indifference.

“Oh, I'm not much use to her, don't you know--at least not HERE. But
I might, if I had my own land and if we were neighbors. I told you SHE
runs the place, no matter who's here, or whose money is invested.”

“I presume you are speaking now of young Miss Dows?” said Courtland
dryly.

“Miss Sally--of course--always,” said Champney simply. “She runs the
shop.”

“Were there not some French investors--relations of Miss Dows? Does
anybody represent THEM?” asked Courtland pointedly.

Yet he was not quite prepared for the naive change in his companion's
face. “No. There was a sort of French cousin who used to be a good deal
to the fore, don't you know? But I rather fancy he didn't come here to
look after the PROPERTY,” returned Champney with a quick laugh. “I think
the aunt must have written to his friends, for they 'called him off,'
and I don't think Miss Sally broke her heart about him. She's not that
sort of girl--eh? She could have her pick of the State if she went in
for that sort of thing--eh?”

Although this was exactly what Courtland was thinking, it pleased him
to answer in a distrait sort of fashion, “Certainly, I should think so,”
 and to relapse into an apparently business abstraction.

“I think I won't go in,” continued Champney as they neared the house
again. “I suppose you'll have something more to say to Miss Dows. If
there's anything else you want of ME, come to the office. But SHE'LL
know. And--er--er--if you're--er--staying long in this part of the
country, ride over and look me up, don't you know? and have a smoke
and a julep; I have a boy who knows how to mix them, and I've some old
brandy sent me from the other side. Good-by.”

More awkward in his kindliness than in his simple business confidences,
but apparently equally honest in both, he shook Courtland's hand and
walked away. Courtland turned towards the house. He had seen the farm
and its improvements; he had found some of his own ideas practically
discounted; clearly there was nothing left for him to do but to thank
his hostess and take his leave. But he felt far more uneasy than when
he had arrived; and there was a singular sense of incompleteness in
his visit that he could not entirely account for. His conversation with
Champney had complicated--he knew not why--his previous theories of Miss
Dows, and although he was half conscious that this had nothing to do
with the business that brought him there, he tried to think that it had.
If Miss Sally was really--a--a--distracting element to contiguous man,
it was certainly something to be considered in a matter of business of
which she would take a managerial part. It was true that Champney had
said she was “not that sort of girl,” but this was the testimony of one
who was clearly under her influence. He entered the house through the
open French window. The parlor was deserted. He walked through the front
hall and porch; no one was there. He lingered a few moments, a slight
chagrin beginning to mingle with his uneasiness. She might have been on
the lookout for him. She or Sophy must have seen him returning. He would
ring for Sophy, and leave his thanks and regrets for her mistress.
He looked for a bell, touched it, but on being confronted with Sophy,
changed his mind and asked to SEE Miss Dows. In the interval between her
departure and the appearance of Miss Sally he resolved to do the very
thing which he had dismissed from his thoughts but an hour before as
ill-timed and doubtful. He had the photograph and letter in his pocket;
he would make them his excuse for personally taking leave of her.

She entered with her fair eyebrows lifted in a pretty surprise.

“I declare to goodness, I thought yo' 'd ridden over to the red barn and
gone home from there. I got through my work on the vines earlier than
I thought. One of Judge Garret's nephews dropped in in time to help me
with the last row. Yo' needn't have troubled yo'self to send up for me
for mere company manners, but Sophy says yo' looked sort of 'anxious and
particular' when yo' asked for me--so I suppose yo' want to see me for
something.”

Mentally objurgating Sophy, and with an unpleasant impression in his
mind of the unknown neighbor who had been helping Miss Sally in his
place, he nevertheless tried to collect himself gallantly.

“I don't know what my expression conveyed to Sophy,” he said with a
smile, “but I trust that what I have to tell you may be interesting
enough to make you forget my second intrusion.” He paused, and still
smiling continued: “For more than three years, Miss Dows, you have more
or less occupied my thoughts; and although we have actually met to-day
only for the first time, I have during that time carried your image
with me constantly. Even this meeting, which was only the result of an
accident, I had been seeking for three years. I find you here under your
own peaceful vine and fig-tree, and yet three years ago you came to me
out of the thunder-cloud of battle.”

“My good gracious!” said Miss Sally.

She had been clasping her knee with her linked fingers, but separated
them and leaned backward on the sofa with affected consternation, but
an expression of growing amusement in her bright eyes. Courtland saw the
mistake of his tone, but it was too late to change it now. He handed
her the locket and the letter, and briefly, and perhaps a little more
seriously, recounted the incident that had put him in possession of
them. But he entirely suppressed the more dramatic and ghastly details,
and his own superstition and strange prepossession towards her.

Miss Sally took the articles without a tremor, or the least deepening
or paling of the delicate, faint suffusion of her cheek. When she had
glanced over the letter, which appeared to be brief, she said, with
smiling, half-pitying tranquillity:--

“Yes!--it WAS that poor Chet Brooks, sure! I heard that he was killed
at Snake River. It was just like him to rush in and get killed the first
pop! And all for nothing, too,--pure foolishness!”

Shocked, yet relieved, but uneasy under both sensations, Courtland went
on blindly:

“But he was not the only one, Miss Dows. There was another man picked up
who also had your picture.”

“Yes--Joyce Masterton. They sent it to me. But you didn't kill HIM,
too?”

“I don't know that I personally killed either,” he said a little coldly.
He paused, and continued with a gravity which he could not help feeling
very inconsistent and even ludicrous: “They were brave men, Miss Dows.”

“To have worn my picture?” said Miss Sally brightly.

“To have THOUGHT they had so much to live for, and yet to have willingly
laid down their lives for what they believed was right.”

“Yo' didn't go huntin' me for three years to tell ME, a So'th'n girl,
that So'th'n men know how to fight, did yo', co'nnle?” returned the
young lady, with the slightest lifting of her head and drooping of her
blue-veined lids in a divine hauteur. “They were always ready enough for
that, even among themselves. It was much easier for these pooah boys to
fight a thing out than think it out, or work it out. Yo' folks in the
No'th learned to do all three; that's where you got the grip on us. Yo'
look surprised, co'nnle.”

“I didn't expect you would look at it--quite in--in--that way,” said
Courtland awkwardly.

“I am sorry I disappointed yo' after yo' 'd taken such a heap o'
trouble,” returned the young lady with a puzzling assumption of humility
as she rose and smoothed out her skirts, “but I couldn't know exactly
what yo' might be expecting after three years; if I HAD, I might have
put on mo'ning.” She stopped and adjusted a straying tendril of her hair
with the sharp corner of the dead man's letter. “But I thank yo', all
the same, co'nnle. It was real good in yo' to think of toting these
things over here.” And she held out her hand frankly.

Courtland took it with the sickening consciousness that for the last
five minutes he had been an unconscionable ass. He could not prolong the
interview after she had so significantly risen. If he had only taken
his leave and kept the letter and locket for a later visit, perhaps when
they were older friends! It was too late now. He bent over her hand for
a moment, again thanked her for her courtesy, and withdrew. A moment
later she heard the receding beat of his horse's hoofs on the road.

She opened the drawer of a brass-handled cabinet, and after a moment's
critical survey of her picture in the dead man's locket, tossed it and
the letter into the recesses of the drawer. Then she stopped, removed
her little slipper from her foot, looked at THAT, too, thoughtfully, and
called “Sophy!”

“Miss Sally?” said the girl, reappearing at the door.

“Are you sure you did not move that ladder?”

“I 'clare to goodness, Miss Sally, I never teched it!”

Miss Sally directed a critical glance at her handmaiden's red-coifed
head. “No,” she said to herself softly, “it felt nicer than wool,
anyway!”


CHAPTER III.


In spite of the awkward termination of his visit,--or perhaps BECAUSE of
it,--Courtland called again at the plantation within the week. But this
time he was accompanied by Drummond, and was received by Miss Miranda
Dows, a tall, aquiline-nosed spinster of fifty, whose old-time
politeness had become slightly affected, and whose old beliefs had given
way to a half-cynical acceptance of new facts. Mr. Drummond, delighted
with the farm and its management, was no less fascinated by Miss Sally,
while Courtland was now discreet enough to divide his attentions between
her and her aunt, with the result that he was far from participating in
Champney's conviction of Miss Miranda's unimportance. To the freedmen
she still represented the old implacable task-mistress, and it was
evident that they superstitiously believed that she still retained a
vague power of overriding the Fourteenth Amendment at her pleasure,
and was only to be restrained by the mediation of the good-humored
and sensible Miss Sally. Courtland was quick to see the value of this
influence in the transition state of the freedmen, and pointed it out
to his principal. Drummond's previous doubts and skepticism, already
weakened by Miss Sally's fascinations, vanished entirely at this
prospect of beneficially utilizing these lingering evils of slavery. He
was convinced, he was even enthusiastic. The foreign investors were men
to be bought out; the estate improved and enlarged by the company,
and the fair owners retained in the management and control. Like most
prejudiced men, Drummond's conversion was sudden and extreme, and, being
a practical man, was at once acted upon. At a second and third interview
the preliminaries were arranged, and in three weeks from Courtland's
first visit, the Dows' plantation and part of Major Reed's were merged
in the “Drummond Syndicate,” and placed beyond financial uncertainty.
Courtland remained to represent the company as superintendent at
Redlands, and with the transfer of the English investments Champney
retired, as he had suggested, to a smaller venture of his own, on a
plantation a few miles distant which the company had been unable to
secure.

During this interval Courtland had frequent interviews with Miss Sally,
and easy and unrestrained access to her presence. He had never again
erred on the side of romance or emotion; he had never again referred to
the infelix letter and photograph; and, without being obliged to confine
himself strictly to business affairs, he had maintained an even, quiet,
neighborly intercourse with her. Much of this was the result of his own
self-control and soldierly training, and gave little indication of the
deeper feeling that he was conscious lay beneath it. At times he caught
the young girl's eyes fixed upon him with a mischievous curiosity. A
strange thrill went through him; there are few situations so subtle and
dangerous as the accidental confidences and understandings of two young
people of opposite sex, even though the question of any sentimental
inclination be still in abeyance. Courtland knew that Miss Sally
remembered the too serious attitude he had taken towards her past. She
might laugh at it, and even resent it, but she KNEW it, remembered
it, knew that HE did, and this precious knowledge was confined to
themselves. It was in their minds when there was a pause in their more
practical and conventional conversation, and was even revealed in the
excessive care which Miss Sally later took to avert at the right moment
her mischievously smiling eyes. Once she went farther. Courtland had
just finished explaining to her a plan for substituting small farm
buildings for the usual half-cultivated garden-patches dear to the negro
field-hand, and had laid down the drawings on the table in the office,
when the young lady, leaning against it with her hands behind her, fixed
her bright gray eyes on his serious face.

“I vow and protest, co'nnle,” she said, dropping into one of the quaint
survivals of an old-time phraseology peculiar to her people, “I never
allowed yo' could just give yo'self up to business, soul and body, as
yo' do, when I first met yo' that day.”

“Why, what did you think me?” he asked quickly.

Miss Sally, who had a Southern aptitude for gesture, took one little
hand from behind her, twirled it above her head with a pretty air of
disposing of some airy nothing in a presumably masculine fashion, and
said, “Oh, THAT.”

“I am afraid I did not impress you then as a very practical man,” he
said, with a faint color.

“I thought you roosted rather high, co'nnle, to pick up many worms in
the mo'ning. But,” she added with a dazzling smile, “I reckon from what
yo' said about the photograph, yo' thought I wasn't exactly what yo'
believed I ought to be, either.”

He would have liked to tell her then and there that he would have been
content if those bright, beautiful eyes had never kindled with anything
but love or womanly aspiration; that that soft, lazy, caressing voice
had never been lifted beyond the fireside or domestic circle; that the
sunny, tendriled hair and pink ears had never inclined to anything but
whispered admiration; and that the graceful, lithe, erect figure, so
independent and self-contained, had been satisfied to lean only upon his
arm for support. He was conscious that this had been in his mind when he
first saw her; he was equally conscious that she was more bewilderingly
fascinating to him in her present inaccessible intelligence and
practicality.

“I confess,” he said, looking into her eyes with a vague smile, “I did
not expect you would be so forgetful of some one who had evidently cared
for you.”

“Meaning Mr. Chet Brooks, or Mr. Joyce Masterton, or both. That's like
most yo' men, co'nnle. Yo' reckon because a girl pleases yo' she ought
to be grateful all her life--and yo'rs, too! Yo' think different
now! But yo' needn't act up to it quite so much.” She made a little
deprecating gesture with her disengaged hand as if to ward off any
retaliating gallantry. “I ain't speaking for myself, co'nnle. Yo' and me
are good enough friends. But the girls round here think yo' 're a trifle
too much taken up with rice and niggers. And looking at it even in yo'r
light, co'nnle, it ain't BUSINESS. Yo' want to keep straight with Major
Reed, so it would be just as well to square the major's woman folks.
Tavy and Gussie Reed ain't exactly poisonous, co'nnle, and yo' might see
one or the other home from church next Sunday. The Sunday after that,
just to show yo' ain't particular, and that yo' go in for being a
regular beau, yo' might walk home with ME. Don't be frightened--I've got
a better gown than this. It's a new one, just come home from Louisville,
and I'll wear it for the occasion.”

He did not dare to say that the quaint frock she was then wearing--a
plain “checked” household gingham used for children's pinafores, with
its ribbons of the same pattern, gathered in bows at the smart apron
pockets--had become a part of her beauty, for he was already hopelessly
conscious that she was lovely in anything, and he might be impelled to
say so. He thanked her gravely and earnestly, but without gallantry or
effusion, and had the satisfaction of seeing the mischief in her eyes
increase in proportion to his seriousness, and heard her say with
affected concern: “Bear up, co'nnle! Don't let it worry yo' till the
time comes,” and took his leave.

On the following Sunday he was present at the Redlands Episcopal Church,
and after the service stood with outward composure but some inward
chafing among the gallant youth who, after the local fashion, had ranged
themselves outside the doors of the building. He was somewhat surprised
to find Mr. Champney, evidently as much out of place as himself, but
less self-contained, waiting in the crowd of expectant cavaliers.
Although convinced that the young Englishman had come only to see Miss
Sally, he was glad to share his awkward isolation with another stranger,
and greeted him pleasantly. The Dows' pew, being nearer to the entrance
than the Reeds', gave up its occupants first. Colonel Courtland lifted
his hat to Miss Miranda and her niece at the same moment that Champney
moved forward and ranged himself beside them. Miss Sally, catching
Courtland's eye, showed the whites of her own in a backward glance of
mischievous significance to indicate the following Reeds. When they
approached, Courtland joined them, and finding himself beside Miss
Octavia entered into conversation. Apparently the suppressed passion
and sardonic melancholy of that dark-eyed young lady spurred him to a
lighter, gayer humor even in proportion as Miss Sally's good-natured
levity and sunny practicality always made him serious. They presently
fell to the rear with other couples, and were soon quite alone.

A little haughty, but tall and erect in her well-preserved black
grenadine dress, which gave her the appearance of a youthful but
implacable widow, Miss Reed declared she had not seen the co'nnle for
“a coon's age,” and certainly had not expected to have the honor of his
company as long as there were niggers to be elevated or painted to look
like white men. She hoped that he and paw and Sally Dows were happy!
They hadn't yet got so far as to put up a nigger preacher in the place
of Mr. Symes, their rector, but she understood that there was some talk
of running Hannibal Johnson--Miss Dows' coachman--for county judge next
year! No! she had not heard that the co'nnle HIMSELF had thought of
running for the office! He might laugh at her as much as he liked--he
seemed to be in better spirits than when she first saw him--only she
would like to know if it was “No'th'n style” to laugh coming home
from church? Of course if it WAS she would have to adopt it with the
Fourteenth Amendment. But, just now, she noticed the folks were staring
at them, and Miss Sally Dows had turned round to look. Nevertheless,
Miss Octavia's sallow cheek nearest the colonel--the sunny side--had
taken a faint brunette's flush, and the corners of her proud mouth were
slightly lifted.

“But, candidly, Miss Reed, don't you think that you would prefer to
have old Hannibal, whom you know, as county judge, than a stranger and a
Northern man like ME?”

Miss Reed's dark eyes glanced sideways at the handsome face and elegant
figure beside her. Something like a saucy smile struggled to her thin
lips.

“There mightn't be much to choose, Co'nnle.”

“I admit it. We should both acknowledge our mistress, and be like wax in
her hands.”

“Yo' ought to make that pooty speech to Sally Dows, she's generally
mistress around here. But,” she added, suddenly fixing her eyes on him,
“how does it happen that yo' ain't walking with her instead of that
Englishman? Yo' know that it's as plain as day that he took that land
over there just to be near her, when he was no longer agent.”

But Courtland was always master of himself and quite at ease regarding
Miss Sally when not in that lady's presence. “You forget,” he said
smilingly, “that I'm still a stranger and knew little of the local
gossip; and if I did know it, I am afraid we didn't bargain to buy up
with the LAND Mr. Champney's personal interest in the LANDLADY.”

“Yo' 'd have had your hands full, for I reckon she's pooty heavily
mortgaged in that fashion, already,” returned Miss Reed with mere
badinage than spitefulness in the suggestion. “And Mr. Champney was run
pooty close by a French cousin of hers when he was here. Yo' haven't got
any French books to lend me, co'nnle--have yo'? Paw says you read a heap
of French, and I find it mighty hard to keep up MY practice since I
left the Convent at St. Louis, for paw don't knew what sort of books to
order, and I reckon he makes awful mistakes sometimes.”

The conversation here turning upon polite literature, it appeared that
Miss Octavia's French reading, through a shy, proud innocence and
an imperfect knowledge of the wicked subtleties of the language, was
somewhat broad and unconventional for a young lady. Courtland promised
to send her some books, and even ventured to suggest some American and
English novels not intensely “No'th'n” nor “metaphysical”--according
to the accepted Southern beliefs. A new respect and pitying interest
in this sullen, solitary girl, cramped by tradition, and bruised rather
than enlightened by sad experiences, came over him. He found himself
talking quite confidentially to the lifted head, arched eyebrows, and
aquiline nose beside him, and even thinking what a handsome high-bred
BROTHER she might have been to some one. When they had reached the
house, in compliance with the familiar custom, he sat down on one of
the lower steps of the veranda, while she, shaking out her skirt, took a
seat a step or two above him. This enabled him, after the languid local
fashion, to lean on his elbow and gaze up into the eyes of the young
lady, while she with equal languor looked down upon him. But in the
present instance Miss Reed leaned forward suddenly, and darting a sharp
quick glance into his very consciousness said:--

“And yo' mean to say, co'nnle, there's nothing between yo' and Sally
Dows?”

Courtland neither flushed, trembled, grew confused, nor prevaricated.

“We are good friends, I think,” he replied quietly, without evasion or
hesitation.

Miss Reed looked at him thoughtfully, “I reckon that is so--and no more.
And that's why yo' 've been so lucky in everything,” she said slowly.

“I don't think I quite understand,” returned Courtland, smiling. “Is
this a paradox--or a consolation?”

“It's the TRUTH,” said Miss Reed gravely. “Those who try to be anything
more to Sally Dows lose their luck.”

“That is--are rejected by her. Is she really so relentless?” continued
Courtland gayly.

“I mean that they lose their luck in everything. Something is sure to
happen. And SHE can't help it either.”

“Is this a Sibylline warning, Miss Reed?”

“No. It's nigger superstition. It came from Mammy Judy, Sally's old
nurse. It's part of their regular Hoo-doo. She bewitched Miss Sally when
she was a baby, so that everybody is bound to HER as long as they care
for her, and she isn't bound to THEM in any way. All their luck goes to
her as soon as the spell is on them,” she added darkly.

“I think I know the rest,” returned Courtland with still greater
solemnity. “You gather the buds of the witch-hazel in April when the
moon is full. You then pluck three hairs from the young lady's right
eyebrow when she isn't looking”--

“Yo' can laugh, co'nnle, for yo' 're lucky--because yo' 're free.”

“I'm not so sure of that,” he said gallantly, “for I ought to be riding
at this moment over to the Infirmary to visit my Sunday sick. If being
made to pleasantly forget one's time and duty is a sign of witchcraft
I am afraid Mammy Judy's enchantments were not confined to only one
Southern young lady.”

The sound of quick footsteps on the gravel path caused them both to look
up. A surly looking young fellow, ostentatiously booted and spurred,
and carrying a heavy rawhide riding-whip in his swinging hand, was
approaching them. Deliberately, yet with uneasy self-consciousness,
ignoring the presence of Courtland, he nodded abruptly to Miss Reed,
ascended the steps, brushed past them both without pausing, and entered
the house.

“Is that yo'r manners, Mr. Tom?” called the young lady after him,
a slight flush rising to her sallow cheek. The young man muttered
something from the hall which Courtland did not catch. “It's Cousin Tom
Higbee,” she explained half disdainfully. “He's had some ugliness with
his horse, I reckon; but paw ought to teach him how to behave. And--I
don't think he likes No'th'n men,” she added gravely.

Courtland, who had kept his temper with his full understanding of the
intruder's meaning, smiled as he took Miss Reed's hand in parting.
“That's quite enough explanation, and I don't know why it shouldn't be
even an apology.”

Yet the incident left little impression on him as he strolled back to
Redlands. It was not the first time he had tasted the dregs of former
sectional hatred in incivility and discourtesy, but as it seldom came
from his old personal antagonists--the soldiers--and was confined to the
callow youth, previous non-combatants and politicians, he could afford
to overlook it. He did not see Miss Sally during the following week.


CHAPTER IV.


On the next Sunday he was early at church. But he had perhaps
accented the occasion by driving there in a light buggy behind a fast
thoroughbred, possibly selected more to the taste of a smart cavalry
officer than an agricultural superintendent. He was already in a side
pew, his eyes dreamily fixed on the prayer-book ledge before him, when
there was a rustle at the church door, and a thrill of curiosity and
admiration passed over the expectant congregation. It was the entrance
of the Dows party, Miss Sally well to the fore. She was in her new
clothes, the latest fashion in Louisville, the latest but two in Paris
and New York.

It was over twenty years ago. I shall not imperil the effect of that
lovely vision by recalling to the eye of to-day a fashion of yesterday.
Enough, that it enabled her to set her sweet face and vapory golden hair
in a horseshoe frame of delicate flowers, and to lift her oval chin
out of a bewildering mist of tulle. Nor did a certain light polonaise
conceal the outlines of her charming figure. Even those who were
constrained to whisper to each other that “Miss Sally” must “be now
going on twenty-five,” did so because she still carried the slender
graces of seventeen. The organ swelled as if to welcome her; as she took
her seat a ray of sunlight, that would have been cruel and searching to
any other complexion, drifted across the faint pink of her cheeks,
and nestling in her nebulous hair became itself transfigured. A few
stained-glass Virtues on the windows did not come out of this effulgence
as triumphantly, and it was small wonder that the devotional eyes of the
worshipers wandered from them to the face of Sally Dows.

When the service was over, as the congregation filed slowly into the
aisle, Courtland slipped mutely behind her. As she reached the porch he
said in an undertone:

“I brought my horse and buggy. I thought you might possibly allow me
to drive”--But he was stopped by a distressful knitting of her golden
brows. “No,” she said quickly, but firmly, “you must not--it won't do.”
 As Courtland hesitated in momentary perplexity, she smiled sweetly:
“We'll walk round by the cemetery, if you like; it will take about as
long as a drive.” Courtland vanished, gave hurried instructions and a
dollar to a lounging negro, and rejoined Miss Sally as the delighted and
proud freedman drove out of the gate. Miss Sally heaved a slight sigh
as the gallant equipage passed. “It was a mighty pooty turnout, co'nnle,
and I'd have just admired to go, but it would have been rather hard on
the other folks. There's the Reeds and Maxwells and Robertsons that are
too pooah to keep blood horses, and too proud to ride behind anything
else. It wouldn't be the right thing for us to go whirling by,
scattering our dust over them.” There was something so subtly pleasant
in this implied partnership of responsibility, that Courtland forgot
the abrupt refusal and thought only of the tact that prompted it.
Nevertheless, here a spell seemed to fall upon his usually ready speech.
Now that they were together for the first time in a distinctly social
fashion, he found himself vacantly, meaninglessly silent, content to
walk beside this charming, summery presence, brushed by its delicate
draperies, and inhaling its freshness. Presently it spoke.

“It would take more than a thousand feet of lumber to patch up the
cowsheds beyond the Moseley pasture, and an entirely new building with
an improved dairy would require only about two thousand more. All the
old material would come in good for fencing, and could be used with
the new post and rails. Don't yo' think it would be better to have an
out-and-out new building?”

“Yes, certainly,” returned Courtland a little confusedly. He had
not calculated upon this practical conversation, and was the more
disconcerted as they were passing some of the other couples, who had
purposely lingered to overhear them.

“And,” continued the young girl brightly, “the freight question is
getting to be a pretty serious one. Aunt Miranda holds some shares in
the Briggsville branch line, and thinks something could be done with
the directors for a new tariff of charges if she put a pressure on them;
Tyler says that there was some talk of their reducing it one sixteenth
per cent. before we move this year's crop.”

Courtland glanced quickly at his companion's face. It was grave, but
there was the faintest wrinkling of the corner of the eyelid nearest
him. “Had we not better leave these serious questions until to-morrow?”
 he said, smiling.

Miss Sally opened her eyes demurely. “Why, yo' seemed SO quiet, I
reckoned yo' must be full of business this morning; but if yo' prefer
company talk, we'll change the subject. They say that yo' and Miss Reed
didn't have much trouble to find one last Sunday. She don't usually talk
much, but she keeps up a power of thinking. I should reckon,” she added,
suddenly eying him critically, “that yo' and she might have a heap o'
things to say to each other. She's a good deal in yo' fashion,
co'nnle, she don't forget, but”--more slowly--“I don't know that THAT'S
altogether the best thing for YO'!”

Courtland lifted his eyes with affected consternation. “If this is in
the light of another mysterious warning, Miss Dows, I warn you that my
intellect is already tottering with them. Last Sunday Miss Reed thrilled
me for an hour with superstition and Cassandra-like prophecy. Don't
things ever happen accidentally here, and without warning?”

“I mean,” returned the young lady with her usual practical directness,
“that Tave Reed remembers a good many horrid things about the wah that
she ought to forget, but don't. But,” she continued, looking at him
curiously, “she allows she was mighty cut up by her cousin's manner to
yo'.”

“I am afraid that Miss Reed was more annoyed than I was,” said
Courtland. “I should be very sorry if she attached any importance to
it,” he added earnestly.

“And YO' don't?” continued Miss Sally.

“No. Why should I?” She noticed, however, that he had slightly drawn
himself up a little more erect, and she smiled as he continued, “I dare
say I should feel as he does if I were in his place.”

“But YO' wouldn't do anything underhanded,” she said quietly. As he
glanced at her quickly she added dryly: “Don't trust too much to people
always acting in yo' fashion, co'nnle. And don't think too much nor too
little of what yo' hear here. Yo' 're just the kind of man to make a
good many silly enemies, and as many foolish friends. And I don't know
which will give yo' the most trouble. Only don't yo' underrate EITHER,
or hold yo' head so high, yo' don't see what's crawlin' around yo'.
That's why, in a copperhead swamp, a horse is bitten oftener than a
hog.”

She smiled, yet with knitted brows and such a pretty affectation of
concern for her companion that he suddenly took heart.

“I wish I had ONE friend I could call my own,” he said boldly, looking
straight into her eyes. “I'd care little for other friends, and fear no
enemies.”

“Yo' 're right, co'nnle,” she said, ostentatiously slanting her parasol
in a marvelous simulation of hiding a purely imaginative blush on a
cheek that was perfectly infantine in its unchanged pink; “company talk
is much pootier than what we've been saying. And--meaning me--for I
reckon yo' wouldn't say that of any other girl but the one yo' 're
walking with--what's the matter with me?”

He could not help smiling, though he hesitated. “Nothing! but others
have been disappointed.”

“And that bothers YO'?”

“I mean I have as yet had no right to put your feelings to any test,
while”--

“Poor Chet had, yo' were going to say! Well, here we are at the
cemetery! I reckoned yo' were bound to get back to the dead again before
we'd gone far, and that's why I thought we might take the cemetery on
our way. It may put me in a more proper frame of mind to please yo'.”

As he raised his eyes he could not repress a slight start. He had not
noticed before that they had passed through a small gateway on diverging
from the road, and was quite unprepared to find himself on the edge of a
gentle slope leading to a beautiful valley, and before him a long vista
of tombs, white head-stones and low crosses, edged by drooping cypress
and trailing feathery vines. Some vines had fallen and been caught in
long loops from bough to bough, like funeral garlands, and here and
there the tops of isolated palmettos lifted a cluster of hearse-like
plumes. Yet in spite of this dominance of sombre but graceful shadow,
the drooping delicacy of dark-tasseled foliage and leafy fringes,
and the waving mourning veils of gray, translucent moss, a glorious
vivifying Southern sun smiled and glittered everywhere as through tears.
The balm of bay, southernwood, pine, and syringa breathed through the
long alleys; the stimulating scent of roses moved with every zephyr,
and the closer odors of jessamine, honeysuckle, and orange flowers hung
heavily in the hollows. It seemed to Courtland like the mourning of
beautiful and youthful widowhood, seductive even in its dissembling
trappings, provocative in the contrast of its own still strong virility.
Everywhere the grass grew thick and luxuriant; the quick earth was
teeming with the germination of the dead below.

They moved slowly along side by side, speaking only of the beauty of the
spot and the glory of that summer day, which seemed to have completed
its perfection here. Perhaps from the heat, the overpowering perfume,
or some unsuspected sentiment, the young lady became presently as silent
and preoccupied as her companion. She began to linger and loiter behind,
hovering like a butterfly over some flowering shrub or clustered sheaf
of lilies, until, encountered suddenly in her floating draperies, she
might have been taken for a somewhat early and far too becoming ghost.
It seemed to him, also, that her bright eyes were slightly shadowed by
a gentle thoughtfulness. He moved close to her side with an irresistible
impulse of tenderness, but she turned suddenly, and saying, “Come!”
 moved at a quicker pace down a narrow side path. Courtland followed. He
had not gone far before he noticed that the graves seemed to fall into
regular lines, the emblems became cheaper and more common; wooden head
and foot stones of one monotonous pattern took the place of carved
freestone or marble, and he knew that they had reached that part of the
cemetery reserved for those who had fallen in the war. The long lines
drawn with military precision stretched through the little valley, and
again up the opposite hill in an odd semblance of hollow squares, ranks,
and columns. A vague recollection of the fateful slope of Snake River
came over him. It was intensified as Miss Sally, who was still preceding
him, suddenly stopped before an isolated mound bearing a broken marble
shaft and a pedestal with the inscription, “Chester Brooks.” A few
withered garlands and immortelles were lying at its base, but encircling
the broken shaft was a perfectly fresh, unfaded wreath.

“You never told me he was buried here!” said Courtland quickly, half
shocked at the unexpected revelation. “Was he from this State?”

“No, but his regiment was,” said Miss Sally, eying the wreath
critically.

“And this wreath, is it from you?” continued Courtland gently.

“Yes, I thought yo' 'd like to see something fresh and pooty, instead of
those stale ones.”

“And were they also from you?” he asked even more gently.

“Dear no! They were left over from last anniversary day by some of the
veterans. That's the only one I put there--that is--I got Mr. Champney
to leave it here on his way to his house. He lives just yonder, yo'
know.”

It was impossible to resist this invincible naivete. Courtland bit
his lip as the vision arose before him of this still more naif English
admirer bringing hither, at Miss Sally's bidding, the tribute which
she wished to place on the grave of an old lover to please a THIRD
man. Meantime, she had put her two little hands behind her back in the
simulated attitude of “a good girl,” and was saying half smilingly, and
he even thought half wistfully:--

“Are yo' satisfied?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then let's go away. It's mighty hot here.”

They turned away, and descending the slope again re-entered the thicker
shade of the main avenue. Here they seemed to have left the sterner
aspect of Death. They walked slowly; the air was heavy with the hot
incense of flowers; the road sinking a little left a grassy bank on one
side. Here Miss Sally halted and listlessly seated herself, motioning
Courtland to do the same. He obeyed eagerly. The incident of the wreath
had troubled him, albeit with contending sensations. She had given it to
please HIM; why should HE question the manner, or torment himself with
any retrospective thought? He would have given worlds to have been able
to accept it lightly or gallantly,--with any other girl he could; but
he knew he was trembling on the verge of a passionate declaration; the
magnitude of the stake was too great to be imperiled by a levity
of which she was more a mistress than himself, and he knew that his
sentiment had failed to impress her. His pride kept him from appealing
to her strangely practical nature, although he had recognized and
accepted it, and had even begun to believe it an essential part of the
strong fascination she had over him. But being neither a coward nor a
weak, hesitating idealist, when he deliberately took his seat beside
her he as deliberately made up his mind to accept his fate, whatever it
might be, then and there.

Perhaps there was something of this in his face. “I thought yo' were
looking a little white, co'nnle,” she said quietly, “and I reckoned
we might sit down a spell, and then take it slowly home. Yo' ain't
accustomed to the So'th'n sun, and the air in the hollow WAS swampy.” As
he made a slight gesture of denial, she went on with a pretty sisterly
superiority: “That's the way of yo' No'th'n men. Yo' think yo' can
do everything just as if yo' were reared to it, and yo' never make
allowance for different climates, different blood, and different
customs. That's where yo' slip up.”

But he was already leaning towards her with his dark earnest eyes fixed
upon her in a way she could no longer mistake. “At the risk of slipping
up again, Miss Dows,” he said gently, dropping into her dialect with
utterly unconscious flattery, “I am going to ask you to teach me
everything YOU wish, to be all that YOU demand--which would be far
better. You have said we were good friends; I want you to let me hope to
be more. I want you to overlook my deficiencies and the differences of
my race and let me meet you on the only level where I can claim to be
the equal of your own people--that of loving you. Give me only the same
chance you gave the other poor fellow who sleeps yonder--the same chance
you gave the luckier man who carried the wreath for you to put upon his
grave.”

She had listened with delicately knitted brows, the faintest touch of
color, and a half-laughing, half-superior disapprobation. When he had
finished, she uttered a plaintive little sigh. “Yo' oughtn't to have
said that, co'nnle, but yo' and me are too good friends to let even THAT
stand between us. And to prove it to yo' I'm going to forget it right
away--and so are yo'.”

“But I cannot,” he said quickly; “if I could I should be unworthy of
even your friendship. If you must reject it, do not make me feel the
shame of thinking you believe me capable of wanton trifling. I know that
this avowal is abrupt to you, but it is not to me. You have known
me only for three months, but these three months have been to me the
realization of three years' dreaming!” As she remained looking at him
with bright, curious eyes, but still shaking her fair head distressedly,
he moved nearer and caught her hand in the little pale lilac thread
glove that was, nevertheless, too wide for her small fingers, and said
appealingly: “But why should YOU forget it? Why must it be a forbidden
topic? What is the barrier? Are you no longer free? Speak, Miss
Dows--give me some hope. Miss Dows!--Sally!”

She had drawn herself away, distressed, protesting, her fair head turned
aside, until with a slight twist and narrowing of her hand she succeeded
in slipping it from the glove which she left a prisoner in his eager
clasp. “There! Yo' can keep the glove, co'nnle,” she said, breathing
quickly. “Sit down! This is not the place nor the weather for husking
frolics! Well!--yo' want to know WHY yo' mustn't speak to me in that
way. Be still, and I'll tell yo'.”

She smoothed down the folds of her frock, sitting sideways on the bank,
one little foot touching the road. “Yo' mustn't speak that way to me,”
 she went on slowly, “because it's as much as yo' company's wo'th, as
much as OUR property's wo'th, as much maybe as yo' life's wo'th! Don't
lift yo' comb, co'nnle; if you don't care for THAT, others may. Sit
still, I tell yo'! Well, yo' come here from the No'th to run this
property for money--that's square and fair business; THAT any fool here
can understand--it's No'th'n style; it don't interfere with these fools'
family affairs; it don't bring into their blood any No'th'n taint;
it don't divide their clannishness; it don't separate father and son,
sister and brother; and even if yo' got a foothold here and settled
down, they know they can always outvote yo' five to one! But let these
same fools know that yo' 're courtin' a So'th'n girl known to be 'Union'
during the wah, that girl who has laughed at their foolishness; let them
even THINK that he wants that girl to mix up the family and the race and
the property for him, and there ain't a young or old fool that believes
in So'th'n isolation as the price of So'th'n salvation that wouldn't
rise against yo'! There isn't one that wouldn't make shipwreck of yo'r
syndicate and yo'r capital and the prosperity of Redlands for the next
four years to come, and think they were doing right! They began to
suspect yo' from the first! They suspected yo' when yo' never went
anywhere, but stuck close to the fahm and me. That's why I wanted yo'
to show yourself among the girls; they wouldn't have minded yo' flirting
with them with the chance of yo' breaking yo' heart over Tave Reed or
Lympy Morris! They're fools enough to believe that a snub or a jilt
from a So'th'n girl would pay them back for a lost battle or a ruined
plantation!”

For the first time Miss Sally saw Courtland's calm blood fly to his
cheek and kindle in his eye. “You surely do not expect ME to tolerate
this blind and insolent interference!” he said, rising to his feet.

She lifted her ungloved hand in deprecation. “Sit still, co'nnle. Yo'
've been a soldier, and yo' know what duty is. Well! what's yo' duty to
yo' company?”

“It neither includes my private affairs nor regulates the beating of my
heart. I will resign.”

“And leave me and Aunt Miranda and the plantation?”

“No! The company will find another superintendent to look after your
aunt's affairs and carry out our plans. And you, Sally--you will let me
find you a home and fortune North? There is work for me there; there is
room for you among my people.”

She shook her head slowly with a sweet but superior smile. “No, co'nnle!
I didn't believe in the wah, but the least I could do was to stand by my
folks and share the punishment that I knew was coming from it. I despise
this foolishness as much as yo', but I can't run away from it. Come,
co'nnle, I won't ask yo' to forget this; mo', I'll even believe yo'
MEANT it, but yo' 'll promise me yo' won't speak of it again as long
as yo' are with the company and Aunt Miranda and me! There mustn't be
more--there mustn't even SEEM to be more--between us.”

“But then I may hope?” he said, eagerly grasping her hand.

“I promise nothing, for yo' must not even have THAT excuse for speaking
of this again, either from anything I do or may seem to do.” She
stopped, released her hand, as her eyes were suddenly fixed on the
distance. Then she said with a slight smile, but without the least
embarrassment or impatience: “There's Mr. Champney coming here now. I
reckon he's looking to see if that wreath is safe.”

Courtland looked up quickly. He could see the straw hat of the young
Englishman just above the myrtle bushes in a path intersecting the
avenue. A faint shadow crossed his face. “Let me know one thing more,”
 he said hurriedly. “I know I have no right to ask the question, but
has--has--has Mr. Champney anything to do with your decision?”

She smiled brightly. “Yo' asked just now if yo' could have the same
chance he and Chet Brooks had. Well, poor Chet is dead, and Mr.
Champney--well!--wait and see.” She lifted her voice and called, “Mr.
Champney!” The young fellow came briskly towards them; his face betrayed
a slight surprise, but no discomfiture, as he recognized her companion.

“Oh, Mr. Champney,” said Miss Sally plaintively, “I've lost my glove
somewhere near pooah Brooks's tomb in the hollow. Won't you go and fetch
it, and come back here to take me home? The co'nnle has got to go and
see his sick niggers in the hospital.” Champney lifted his hat, nodded
genially to Courtland, and disappeared below the cypresses on the slope.
“Yo' mustn't be mad,” she said, turning in explanation to her companion,
“but we have been here too long already, and it's better that I should
be seen coming home with him than yo'.”

“Then this sectional interference does not touch him?” said Courtland
bitterly.

“No. He's an Englishman; his father was a known friend of the
Confederacy, and bought their cotton bonds.”

She stopped, gazing into Courtland's face with a pretty vague impatience
and a slight pouting of her lip.

“Co'nnle!”

“Miss Sally.”

“Yo' say yo' had known me for three years before yo' saw me. Well, we
met once before we ever spoke to each other!”

Courtland looked in her laughing eyes with admiring wonder. “When?” he
asked.

“The first day yo' came! Yo' moved the ladder when I was on the cornice,
and I walked all ever yo' head. And, like a gentleman, yo' never said a
word about it. I reckon I stood on yo' head for five minutes.”

“Not as long as that,” said Courtland laughing, “if I remember rightly.”

“Yes,” said Miss Sally with dancing eyes. “I, a So'th'n girl, actually
set my foot on the head of a No'th'n scum of a co'nnle! My!”

“Let that satisfy your friends then.”

“No! I want to apologize. Sit down, co'nnle.”

“But, Miss Sally”--

“Sit down, quick!”

He did so, seating himself sideways on the bank. Miss Sally stood beside
him.

“Take off yo' hat, sir.”

He obeyed smilingly. Miss Sally suddenly slipped behind him. He felt the
soft touch of her small hands on his shoulders; warm breath stirred the
roots of his hair, and then--the light pressure on his scalp of what
seemed the lips of a child.

He leaped to his feet, yet before he could turn completely round--a
difficulty the young lady had evidently calculated upon--he was too
late! The floating draperies of the artful and shameless Miss Sally were
already disappearing among the tombs in the direction of the hollow.


CHAPTER V.


The house occupied by the manager of the Drummond Syndicate in
Redlands--the former residence of a local lawyer and justice of the
peace--was not large, but had an imposing portico of wooden Doric
columns, which extended to the roof and fronted the main street. The
all-pervading creeper closely covered it; the sidewalk before it was
shaded by a row of broad-leaved ailantus. The front room, with French
windows opening on the portico, was used by Colonel Courtland as a
general office; beyond this a sitting-room and dining-room overlooked
the old-fashioned garden with its detached kitchen and inevitable negro
cabin. It was a close evening; there were dark clouds coming up in the
direction of the turnpike road, but the leaves of the ailantus hung
heavy and motionless in the hush of an impending storm. The sparks of
lazily floating fireflies softly expanded and went out in the gloom of
the black foliage, or in the dark recesses of the office, whose windows
were widely open, and whose lights Courtland had extinguished when he
brought his armchair to the portico for coolness. One of these sparks
beyond the fence, although alternately glowing and paling, was still so
persistent and stationary that Courtland leaned forward to watch it more
closely, at which it disappeared, and a voice from the street said:--

“Is that you, Courtland?”

“Yes. Come in, won't you?”

The voice was Champney's, and the light was from his cigar. As he
opened the gate and came slowly up the steps of the portico the usual
hesitation of his manner seemed to have increased. A long sigh trilled
the limp leaves of the ailantus and as quickly subsided. A few heavy
perpendicular raindrops crashed and spattered through the foliage like
molten lead.

“You've just escaped the shower,” said Courtland pleasantly. He had not
seen Champney since they parted in the cemetery six weeks before.

“Yes!--I--I thought I'd like to have a little talk with you, Courtland,”
 said Champney. He hesitated a moment before the proffered chair, and
then added, with a cautious glance towards the street, “Hadn't we better
go inside?”

“As you like. But you'll find it wofully hot. We're quite alone here;
there's nobody in the house, and this shower will drive any loungers
from the street.” He was quite frank, although their relations to each
other in regard to Miss Sally were still so undefined as to scarcely
invite his confidence.

Howbeit Champney took the proffered chair and the glass of julep which
Courtland brought him.

“You remember my speaking to you of Dumont?” he said hesitatingly, “Miss
Dows' French cousin, you know? Well--he's coming here: he's got property
here--those three houses opposite the Court House. From what I hear,
he's come over with a lot of new-fangled French ideas on the nigger
question--rot about equality and fraternity, don't you know--and the
highest education and highest offices for them. You know what the
feeling is here already? You know what happened at the last election at
Coolidgeville--how the whites wouldn't let the niggers go to the polls
and the jolly row that was kicked up over it? Well, it looks as if that
sort of thing might happen HERE, don't you know, if Miss Dows takes up
these ideas.”

“But I've reason to suppose--I mean,” said Courtland correcting himself
with some deliberation, “that any one who knows Miss Dows' opinions
knows that these are not her views. Why should she take them up?”

“Because she takes HIM up,” returned Champney hurriedly; “and even
if she didn't believe in them herself, she'd have to share the
responsibility with him in the eyes of every unreconstructed rowdy like
Tom Higbee and the rest of them. They'd make short work of her niggers
all the same.”

“But I don't see why she should be made responsible for the opinions of
her cousin, nor do I exactly knew what 'taking him up' means,” returned
Courtland quietly.

Champney moistened his dry lips with the julep and uttered a nervous
laugh. “Suppose we say her husband--for that's what his coming back here
means. Everybody knows that; you would, too, if you ever talked with her
about anything but business.”

A bright flash of lightning that lit up the faces of the two men would
have revealed Champney's flushed features and Courtland's lack of color
had they been looking at each other. But they were not, and the long
reverberating crash of thunder which followed prevented any audible
reply from Courtland, and covered his agitation.

For without fully accepting Champney's conclusions he was cruelly
shocked at the young man's utterance of them. He had scrupulously
respected the wishes of Miss Sally and had faithfully--although never
hopelessly--held back any expression of his own love since their
conversation in the cemetery. But while his native truthfulness and
sense of honor had overlooked the seeming insincerity of her attitude
towards Champney, he had never justified his own tacit participation
in it, and the concealment of his own pretensions before his possible
rival. It was true that she had forbidden him to openly enter the
lists with her admirers, but Champney's innocent assumption of his
indifference to her and his consequent half confidences added poignancy
to his story. There seemed to be only one way to extricate himself,
and that was by a quarrel. Whether he did or did not believe Champney's
story, whether it was only the jealous exaggeration of a rival, or
Miss Sally was actually deceiving them both, his position had become
intolerable.

“I must remind you, Champney,” he said, with freezing deliberation,
“that Miss Miranda Dows and her niece now represent the Drummond Company
equally with myself, and that you cannot expect me to listen to any
reflections upon the way they choose to administer their part in its
affairs, either now, or to come. Still less do I care to discuss the
idle gossip which can affect only the PRIVATE interests of these ladies,
with which neither you nor I have any right to interfere.”

But the naivete of the young Englishman was as invincible as Miss
Sally's own, and as fatal to Courtland's attitude. “Of course I haven't
any RIGHT, you know,” he said, calmly ignoring the severe preamble of
his companion's speech, “but I say! hang it all! even if a fellow has
no chance HIMSELF, he don't like to see a girl throw herself and her
property away on a man like that.”

“One moment, Champney,” said Courtland, under the infection of his
guest's simplicity, abandoning his former superior attitude. “You say
you have no chance. Do you want me to understand that you are regularly
a suitor of Miss Dows?”

“Y-e-e-s,” said the young fellow, but with the hesitation of
conscientiousness rather than evasion. “That is--you know I WAS. But
don't you see, it couldn't be. It wouldn't do, you know. If those
clannish neighbors of hers--that Southern set--suspected that Miss
Sally was courted by an Englishman, don't you know--a poacher on their
preserves--it would be all up with her position on the property and her
influence over them. I don't mind telling you that's one reason why I
left the company and took that other plantation. But even that didn't
work; they had their suspicions excited already.”

“Did Miss Dows give that as a reason for declining your suit?” asked
Courtland slowly.

“Yes. You know what a straightforward girl she is. She didn't come no
rot about 'not expecting anything of the kind,' or about 'being a sister
to me,' and all that, for, by Jove! she's always more like a fellow's
sister, don't you know, than his girl. Of course, it was hard lines for
me, but I suppose she was about right.” He stopped, and then added with
a kind of gentle persistency: “YOU think she was about right, don't
you?”

With what was passing in Courtland's mind the question seemed so
bitterly ironical that at first he leaned half angrily forward, in an
unconscious attempt to catch the speaker's expression in the darkness.
“I should hardly venture to give an opinion,” he said, after a pause.
“Miss Dows' relations with her neighbors are so very peculiar. And from
what you tell me of her cousin it would seem that her desire to placate
them is not always to be depended upon.”

“I'm not finding fault with HER, you know,” said Champney hastily. “I'm
not such a beastly cad as that; I wouldn't have spoken of my affairs at
all, but you asked, you know. I only thought, if she was going to get
herself into trouble on account of that Frenchman, you might talk to
her--she'd listen to you, because she'd know you only did it out of
business reasons. And they're really business reasons, you know. I
suppose you don't think much of my business capacity, colonel, and you
wouldn't go much on my judgment--especially now; but I've been here
longer than you and”--he lowered his voice slightly and dragged his
chair nearer Courtland--“I don't like the looks of things here. There's
some devilment plotting among those rascals. They're only awaiting an
opportunity; a single flash would be enough to set them in a blaze, even
if the fire wasn't lit and smouldering already like a spark in a bale of
cotton. I'd cut the whole thing and clear out if I didn't think it would
make it harder for Miss Dows, who would be left alone.”

“You're a good fellow, Champney,” said Courtland, laying his hand on
the young man's shoulder with a sudden impulse, “and I forgive you for
overlooking any concern that I might have. Indeed,” he added, with an
odd seriousness and a half sigh, “it's not strange that you should. But
I must remind you that the Dowses are strictly the agents and tenants of
the company I represent, and that their rights and property under that
tenancy shall not be interfered with by others as long as I am here.
I have no right, however,” he added gravely, “to keep Miss Dows from
imperiling them by her social relations.”

Champney rose and shook hands with him awkwardly. “The shower seems to
be holding up,” he said, “and I'll toddle along before it starts afresh.
Good-night! I say--you didn't mind my coming to you this way, did you?
By Jove! I thought you were a little stand-offish at first. But you know
what I meant?”

“Perfectly, and I thank you.” They shook hands again. Champney stepped
from the portico, and, reaching the gate, seemed to vanish as he had
come, out of the darkness.

The storm was not yet over; the air had again become close and
suffocating. Courtland remained brooding in his chair. Whether he could
accept Champney's news as true or not, he felt that he must end this
suspense at once. A half-guilty consciousness that he was thinking more
of it in reference to his own passion than his duty to the company
did not render his meditations less unpleasant. Yet while he could
not reconcile Miss Sally's confidences in the cemetery concerning the
indifference of her people to Champney's attentions with what Champney
had just told him of the reasons she had given HIM for declining them,
I am afraid he was not shocked by her peculiar ethics. A lover seldom
finds fault with his mistress for deceiving his rival, and is as little
apt to consider the logical deduction that she could deceive him also,
as Othello was to accept Brabantio's warning, The masculine sense of
honor which might have resented the friendship of a man capable of such
treachery did not hesitate to accept the love of a woman under the same
conditions. Perhaps there was an implied compliment in thus allowing her
to take the sole ethical responsibility, which few women would resist.

In the midst of this gloomy abstraction Courtland suddenly raised his
head and listened.

“Cato.”

“Yes, sah.”

There was a sound of heavy footsteps in the hall coming from the rear of
the house, and presently a darker bulk appeared in the shadowed doorway.
It was his principal overseer--a strong and superior negro, selected
by his fellow-freedmen from among their number in accordance with
Courtland's new regime.

“Did you come here from the plantation or the town?”

“The town, sah.”

“I think you had better keep out of the town in the evenings for the
present,” said Courtland in a tone of quiet but positive authority.

“Are dey goin' to bring back de ole 'patter rollers,' * sah?” asked the
man with a slight sneer.

     * The “patrol” or local police who formerly had the
     surveillance of slaves.

“I don't know,” returned Courtland calmly, ignoring his overseer's
manner. “But if they did you must comply with the local regulations
unless they conflict with the Federal laws, when you must appeal to the
Federal authorities. I prefer you should avoid any trouble until you are
sure.”

“I reckon they won't try any games on me,” said the negro with a short
laugh.

Courtland looked at him intently.

“I thought as much! You're carrying arms, Cato! Hand them over.”

The overseer hesitated for a moment, and then unstrapped a revolver from
his belt, and handed it to Courtland.

“Now how many of you are in the habit of going round the town armed like
this?”

“Only de men who've been insulted, sah.”

“And how have YOU been insulted?”

“Marse Tom Highee down in de market reckoned it was high time fancy
niggers was drov into de swamp, and I allowed that loafers and beggars
had better roost high when workin' folks was around, and Marse Tom said
he'd cut my haht out.”

“And do you think your carrying a revolver will prevent him and his
friends performing that operation if you provoked them?”

“You said we was to pertect ourse'fs, sah,” returned the negro gloomily.
“What foh den did you drill us to use dem rifles in de armory?”

“To defend yourselves TOGETHER under orders if attacked, not to singly
threaten with them in a street row. Together, you would stand some
chance against those men; separately they could eat you up, Cato.”

“I wouldn't trust too much to some of dem niggers standing together,
sah,” said Gate darkly. “Dey'd run before de old masters--if they didn't
run to 'em. Shuah!”

A fear of this kind had crossed Courtland's mind before, but he made no
present comment. “I found two of the armory rifles in the men's cabins
yesterday,” he resumed quietly. “See that it does not occur again! They
must not be taken from the armory except to defend it.”

“Yes, sah.”

There was a moment of silence. Then it was broken by a sudden gust that
swept through the columns of the portico, stirring the vines. The broad
leaves of the ailantus began to rustle; an ominous pattering followed;
the rain had recommenced. And as Courtland rose and walked towards the
open window its blank panes and the interior of the office were suddenly
illuminated by a gleam of returning lightning.

He entered the office, bidding Cato follow, and lit the lamp above
his desk. The negro remained standing gloomily but respectfully by the
window.

“Cato, do you know anything of Mr. Dumont--Miss Dows' cousin?”

The negro's white teeth suddenly flashed in the lamplight. “Ya! ha! I
reckon, sah.”

“Then he's a great friend of your people?”

“I don't know about dat, sah. But he's a pow'ful enemy of de Reeds and
de Higbees!”

“On account of his views, of course?”

“'Deed no!” said Cato with an astounded air. “Jess on account of de
vendetta!”

“The vendetta?”

“Yes, sah. De old blood quo'll of de families. It's been goin' on over
fifty years, sah. De granfader, fader, and brudder of de Higbees was
killed by de granfader, fader, and brudder of de Doomonts. De Reeds
chipped in when all de Higbees was played out, fo' dey was relations,
but dey was chawed up by some of de Dowses, first cousins to de
Doomonts.”

“What? Are the Dows in this vendetta?”

“No, sah. No mo'. Dey's bin no man in de family since Miss Sally's fader
died--dat's let de Dows out fo' ever. De las' shootin' was done by
Marse Jack Doomont, who crippled Marse Tom Higbee's brudder Jo, and
den skipped to Europe. Dey say he's come back, and is lying low over at
Atlanty. Dar'll be lively times of he comes here to see Miss Sally.”

“But he may have changed his ideas while living abroad, where this sort
of thing is simple murder.”

The negro shook his head grimly. “Den he wouldn't come, sah. No, sah. He
knows dat Tom Higbee's bound to go fo' him or leave de place, and Marse
Jack wouldn't mind settlin' HIM too as well as his brudder, for de
scores is agin' de Doomonts yet. And Marse Jack ain't no slouch wid a
scatter gun.”

At any other time the imminence of this survival of a lawless barbarism
of which he had heard so much would have impressed Courtland; now he was
only interested in it on account of the inconceivable position in which
it left Miss Sally. Had she anything to do with this baleful cousin's
return, or was she only to be a helpless victim of it?

A white, dazzling, and bewildering flash of lightning suddenly lit
up the room, the porch, the dripping ailantus, and the flooded street
beyond. It was followed presently by a crash of thunder, with what
seemed to be a second fainter flash of lightning, or rather as if the
first flash had suddenly ignited some inflammable substance. With the
long reverberation of the thunder still shaking the house, Courtland
slipped quickly out of the window and passed down to the gate.

“Did it strike anything, sah?” said the startled negro, as Courtland
returned.

“Not that I can see,” said his employer shortly. “Go inside, and call
Zoe and her daughter from the cabin and bring them in the hall. Stay
till I come. Go!--I'll shut the windows myself.”

“It must have struck somewhere, sah, shuah! Deh's a pow'ful smell of
sulphur right here,” said the negro as he left the room.

Courtland thought so too, but it was a kind of sulphur that he had
smelled before--on the battlefield! For when the door was closed behind
his overseer he took the lamp to the opposite wall and examined it
carefully. There was the distinct hole made by a bullet which had missed
Cato's head at the open window by an inch.


CHAPTER VI.


In an instant Courtland had regained complete possession of himself. His
distracting passion--how distracting he had never before realized--was
gone! His clear sight--no longer distorted by sentiment--had come back;
he saw everything in its just proportion--his duty, the plantation, the
helpless freedman threatened by lawless fury; the two women--no longer
his one tantalizing vision, but now only a passing detail of the work
before him. He saw them through no aberrating mist of tenderness or
expediency--but with the single directness of the man of action.

The shot had clearly been intended for Cato. Even if it were an act
of mere personal revenge, it showed a confidence and security in the
would-be assassin that betokened cooperation and an organized plan.
He had availed himself of the thunderstorm, the flash and long
reverberating roll of sound--an artifice not unknown to border
ambush--to confuse discovery at the instant. Yet the attack might be
only an isolated one; or it might be the beginning of a general raid
upon the Syndicate's freedmen. If the former he could protect Cato from
its repetition by guarding him in the office until he could be conveyed
to a place of safety; if the latter, he must at once collect the negroes
at their quarters, and take Cato with him. He resolved upon the latter
course. The quarters were half a mile from the Dows' dwelling--which was
two miles away.

He sat down and wrote a few lines to Miss Dows stating that, in view
of some threatened disturbances in the town, he thought it advisable
to keep the negroes in their quarters, whither he was himself going. He
sent her his housekeeper and the child, as they had both better remain
in a place of security until he returned to town. He gave the note to
Zoe, bidding her hasten by the back garden across the fields. Then he
turned to Cato.

“I am going with you to the quarters tonight,” he said quietly, “and you
can carry your pistol back to the armory yourself.” He handed him the
weapon. The negro received it gratefully, but suddenly cast a searching
glance at his employer. Courtland's face, however, betrayed no change.
When Zoe had gone, he continued tranquilly, “We will go by the back way
through the woods.” As the negro started slightly, Courtland continued
in the same even tone: “The sulphur you smelled just now, Cato, was the
smoke of a gun fired at YOU from the street. I don't propose that the
shot shall be repeated under the same advantages.”

The negro became violently agitated. “It was dat sneakin' hound, Tom
Higbee,” he said huskily.

Courtland looked at him sharply. “Then there was something more than
WORDS passed between him and you, Cato. What happened? Come, speak out!”

“He lashed me with his whip, and I gib him one right under the yeah, and
drupped him,” said Cato, recovering his courage with his anger at the
recollection. “I had a right to defend myse'f, sah.”

“Yes, and I hope you'll be able to do it, now,” said Courtland calmly,
his face giving no sign of his conviction that Cato's fate was doomed by
that single retaliating blow, “but you'll be safer at the quarters.”
 He passed into his bedroom, took a revolver from his bedhead and a
derringer from the drawer, both of which he quickly slipped beneath his
buttoned coat, and returned.

“When we are in the fields, clear of the house, keep close by my side,
and even try to keep step with me. What you have to say, say NOW; there
must be no talking to betray our position--we must go silently, and
you'll have enough to do to exercise your eyes and ears. I shall stand
between you and any attack, but I expect you to obey orders without
hesitation.” He opened the back door, motioned to Cato to pass out,
followed him, locked the door behind them, and taking the negro's arm
walked beside the low palings to the end of the garden, where they
climbed the fence and stood upon the open field beyond.

Unfortunately, it had grown lighter with the breaking of the heavy
clouds, and gusty gleams of moonlight chased each other over the
field, or struck a glitter from standing rain-pools between the little
hillocks. To cross the open field and gain the fringe of woods on the
other side was the nearest way to the quarters, but for the moment was
the most exposed course; to follow the hedge to the bottom of the field
and the boundary fence and then cross at right angles, in its shadow,
would be safer, but they would lose valuable time. Believing that Cato's
vengeful assailant was still hovering near with his comrades, Courtland
cast a quick glance down the shadowy line of Osage hedge beside them.
Suddenly Cato grasped his arm and pointed in the same direction, where
the boundary fence he had noticed--a barrier of rough palings--crossed
the field. With the moon low on the other side of it, it was a mere
black silhouette, broken only by bright silver openings and gaps along
its surface that indicated the moonlit field beyond. At first Courtland
saw nothing else. Then he was struck by the fact that these openings
became successively and regularly eclipsed, as with the passing of some
opaque object behind them. It was a file of men on the other side of
the fence, keeping in its shelter as they crossed the field towards his
house. Roughly calculating from the passing obscurations, there must
have been twelve or fifteen in all.

He could no longer doubt their combined intentions, nor hesitate how to
meet them. He must at once make for the quarters with Cato, even if he
had to cross that open field before them. He knew that they would avoid
injuring him personally, in the fear of possible Federal and political
complications, and he resolved to use that fear to insure Cato's safety.
Placing his hands on the negro's shoulders, he shoved him forwards,
falling into a “lock step” so close behind him that it became impossible
for the most expert marksman to fire at one without imperiling the
other's life. When half way across the field he noticed that the shadows
seen through the openings of the fence had paused. The ambushed men
had evidently seen the double apparition, understood it, and, as he
expected, dared not fire. He reached the other side with Cato in safety,
but not before he saw the fateful shadows again moving, and this time in
their own direction. They were evidently intending to pursue them. But
once within the woods Courtland knew that his chances were equal.
He breathed more freely. Cato, now less agitated, had even regained
something of his former emotional combativeness which Courtland had
checked. Although far from confident of his henchman's prowess in an
emergency, the prospect of getting him safe into the quarters seemed
brighter.

It was necessary, also, to trust to his superior wood-craft and
knowledge of the locality, and Courtland still walking between him and
his pursuers and covering his retreat allowed him to lead the way. It
lay over ground that was beginning to slope gently; the underbrush
was presently exchanged for springy moss, the character of the trees
changed, the black trunks of cypresses made the gloom thicker. Trailing
vines and parasites brushed their faces, a current of damp air seemed to
flow just above the soil in which their lower limbs moved sluggishly as
through stagnant water. As yet there was no indication of pursuit. But
Courtland felt that it was not abandoned. Indeed, he had barely time
to check an exclamation from the negro, before the dull gallop of
horse-hoofs in the open ahead of them was plain to them both. It was a
second party of their pursuers, mounted, who had evidently been sent
to prevent their final egress from the woods, while those they had just
evaded were no doubt slowly and silently following them on foot. They
were to be caught between two fires!

“What is there to the left of us?” whispered Courtland quickly.

“De swamp.”

Courtland set his teeth together. His dull-witted companion had
evidently walked them both into the trap! Nevertheless, his resolve was
quickly made. He could already see through the thinning fringe of timber
the figures of the mounted men in the moonlight.

“This should be the boundary line of the plantation? This field beside
us is ours?” he said interrogatively.

“Yes,” returned the negro, “but de quarters is a mile furder.”

“Good! Stay here until I come back or call you; I'm going to talk to
these fellows. But if you value your life, don't YOU speak nor stir.”

He strode quickly through the intervening trees and stepped out into the
moonlight. A suppressed shout greeted him, and half a dozen mounted
men, masked and carrying rifles, rode down towards him, but he remained
quietly waiting there, and as the nearest approached him, he made a step
forward and cried, “Halt!”

The men pulled up sharply and mechanically at that ring of military
imperiousness.

“What are you doing here?” said Courtland.

“We reckon that's OUR business, co'nnle.”

“It's mine, when you're on property that I control.”

The man hesitated and looked interrogatively towards his fellows. “I
allow you've got us there, co'nnle,” he said at last with the lazy
insolence of conscious power, “but I don't mind telling you we're wanting
a nigger about the size of your Cato. We hain't got anything agin YOU,
co'nnle; we don't want to interfere with YOUR property, and YOUR ways,
but we don't calculate to have strangers interfere with OUR ways and
OUR customs. Trot out your nigger--you No'th'n folks don't call HIM
'property,' you know--and we'll clear off your land.”

“And may I ask what you want of Cato?” said Courtland quietly.

“To show him that all the Federal law in h-ll won't protect him when
he strikes a white man!” burst out one of the masked figures, riding
forward.

“Then you compel me to show YOU,” said Courtland immovably, “what any
Federal citizen may do in the defense of Federal law. For I'll kill the
first man that attempts to lay hands upon him on my property. Some of
you, who have already tried to assassinate him in cold blood, I have met
before in less dishonorable warfare than this, and THEY know I am able
to keep my word.”

There was a moment's silence; the barrel of the revolver he was holding
at his side glistened for an instant in the moonlight, but he did not
move. The two men rode up to the first speaker and exchanged words. A
light laugh followed, and the first speaker turned again to Courtland
with a mocking politeness.

“Very well, co'nnle, if that's your opinion, and you allow we can't
follow our game over your property, why, we reckon we'll have to give
way TO THOSE WHO CAN. Sorry to have troubled YOU. Good-night.”

He lifted his hat ironically, waved it to his followers, and the next
moment the whole party were galloping furiously towards the high road.

For the first time that evening a nervous sense of apprehension passed
over Courtland. The impending of some unknown danger is always more
terrible to a brave man than the most overwhelming odds that he can
see and realize. He felt instinctively that they had uttered no vague
bravado to cover up their defeat; there was still some advantage on
which they confidently reckoned--but what? Was it only a reference to
the other party tracking them through the woods on which their enemies
now solely relied? He regained Cato quickly; the white teeth of the
foolishly confident negro were already flashing his imagined triumph to
his employer. Courtland's heart grew sick as he saw it.

“We're not out of the woods yet, Cato,” he said dryly; “nor are they.
Keep your eyes and ears open, and attend to me. How long can we keep
in the cover of these woods, and still push on in the direction of the
quarters?”

“There's a way roun' de edge o' de swamp, sah, but we'd have to go back
a spell to find it.”

“Go on!”

“And dar's moccasins and copperheads lying round here in de trail! Dey
don't go for us ginerally--but,” he hesitated, “white men don't stand
much show.”

“Good! Then it is as bad for those who are chasing us as for me. That
will do. Lead on.”

They retraced their steps cautiously, until the negro turned into a
lighter by-way. A strange mephitic odor seemed to come from sodden
leaves and mosses that began to ooze under their feet. They had picked
their way in silence for some minutes; the stunted willows and cypress
standing farther and farther apart, and the openings with clumps of
sedge were frequent. Courtland was beginning to fear this exposure
of his follower, and had moved up beside him, when suddenly the negro
caught his arm, and trembled violently. His lips were parted over
his teeth, the whites of his eyes glistened, he seemed gasping and
speechless with fear.

“What's the matter, Cato?” said Courtland glancing instinctively at the
ground beneath. “Speak, man!--have you been bitten?”

The word seemed to wring an agonized cry from the miserable man.

“Bitten! No; but don't you hear 'em coming, sah! God Almighty! don't you
hear dat?”

“What?”

“De dogs! de houns!--DE BLOODHOUNS! Dey've set 'em loose on me!”

It was true! A faint baying in the distance was now distinctly audible
to Courtland. He knew now plainly the full, cruel purport of the
leader's speech,--those who could go anywhere were tracking their game!

Every trace of manhood had vanished from the negro's cowering frame.
Courtland laid his hand assuringly, appealingly, and then savagely on
his shoulder.

“Come! Enough of this! I am here, and will stand by you, whatever comes.
These dogs are no more to be feared than the others. Rouse yourself,
man, and at least help ME make a fight of it.”

“No! no!” screamed the terrified man. “Lemme go! Lemme go back to de
Massas! Tell 'em I'll come! Tell 'em to call de houns off me, and I'll
go quiet! Lemme go!” He struggled violently in his companion's grasp.

In all Courtland's self-control, habits of coolness, and discipline, it
is to be feared there was still something of the old Berserker temper.
His face was white, his eyes blazed in the darkness; only his voice kept
that level distinctness which made it for a moment more terrible than
even the baying of the tracking hounds to the negro's ear. “Cato,” he
said, “attempt to run now, and, by God! I'll save the dogs the trouble
of grappling your living carcass! Come here! Up that tree with you!”
 pointing to a swamp magnolia. “Don't move as long as I can stand here,
and when I'm down--but not till then--save yourself--the best you can.”

He half helped, half dragged, the now passive African to the solitary
tree; as the bay of a single hound came nearer, the negro convulsively
scrambled from Courtland's knee and shoulder to the fork of branches a
dozen feet from the ground. Courtland drew his revolver, and, stepping
back a few yards into the open, awaited the attack.

It came unexpectedly from behind. A sudden yelp of panting cruelty and
frenzied anticipation at Courtland's back caused him to change front
quickly, and the dripping fangs and snaky boa-like neck of a gray weird
shadow passed him. With an awful supernaturalness of instinct, it kept
on in an unerring line to the fateful tree. But that dread directness of
scent was Courtland's opportunity. His revolver flashed out in an aim as
unerring. The brute, pierced through neck and brain, dashed on against
the tree in his impetus, and then rolled over against it in a quivering
bulk. Again another bay coming from the same direction told Courtland
that his pursuers had outflanked him, and the whole pack were crossing
the swamp. But he was prepared; again the same weird shadow, as spectral
and monstrous as a dream, dashed out into the brief light of the open,
but this time it was stopped, and rolled over convulsively before it had
crossed. Flushed, with the fire of fight in his veins, Courtland turned
almost furiously from the fallen brutes at his feet to meet the onset of
the more cowardly hunters whom he knew were at his heels. At that moment
it would have fared ill with the foremost. No longer the calculating
steward and diplomatic manager, no longer the cool-headed arbiter of
conflicting interests, he was ready to meet them, not only with the
intrepid instincts of a soldier, but with an aroused partisan fury equal
to their own. To his surprise no one followed; the baying of a third
hound seemed to be silenced and checked; the silence was broken only by
the sound of distant disputing voices and the uneasy trampling of hoofs.
This was followed by two or three rifle shots in the distance, but not
either in the direction of the quarters nor the Dows' dwelling-house.
There evidently was some interruption in the pursuit,--a diversion of
some kind had taken place,--but what he knew not. He could think of
no one who might have interfered on his behalf, and the shouting and
wrangling seemed to be carried on in the accents of the one sectional
party. He called cautiously to Cato. The negro did not reply. He crossed
to the tree and shook it impatiently. Its boughs were empty; Cato
was gone! The miserable negro must have taken advantage of the first
diversion in his favor to escape. But where, and how, there was nothing
left to indicate.

As Courtland had taken little note of the trail, he had no idea of his
own whereabouts. He knew he must return to the fringe of cypress to be
able to cross the open field and gain the negro quarters, where it was
still possible that Cato had fled. Taking a general direction from the
few stars visible above the opening, he began to retrace his steps. But
he had no longer the negro's woodcraft to guide him. At times his feet
were caught in trailing vines which seemed to coil around his ankles
with ominous suggestiveness; at times the yielding soil beneath his
tread showed his perilous proximity to the swamp, as well as the fact
that he was beginning to incline towards that dread circle which is the
hopeless instinct of all lost and straying humanity. Luckily the edge of
the swamp was more open, and he would be enabled to correct his changed
course again by the position of the stars. But he was becoming chilled
and exhausted by these fruitless efforts, and at length, after a more
devious and prolonged detour, which brought him back to the swamp again,
he resolved to skirt its edge in search of some other mode of issuance.
Beyond him, the light seemed stronger, as of a more extended opening
or clearing, and there was even a superficial gleam from the end of the
swamp itself, as if from some ignis fatuus or the glancing of a pool of
unbroken water. A few rods farther brought him to it and a full view of
the unencumbered expanse. Beyond him, far across the swamp, he could see
a hillside bathed in the moonlight with symmetrical lines of small white
squares dotting its slopes and stretching down into a valley of gleaming
shafts, pyramids, and tombs. It was the cemetery; the white squares
on the hillside were the soldiers' graves. And among them even at that
distance, uplifting solemnly, like a reproachful phantom, was the broken
shaft above the dust of Chester Brooks.

With the view of that fateful spot, which he had not seen since his last
meeting there with Sally Dows, a flood of recollection rushed upon him.
In the white mist that hung low along the farther edge of the swamp he
fancied he could see again the battery smoke through which the ghostly
figure of the dead rider had charged his gun three years before; in
the vapory white plumes of a funereal plant in the long avenue he was
reminded of the light figure of Miss Sally as she appeared at their last
meeting. In another moment, in his already dazed condition, he might
have succumbed to some sensuous memory of her former fascinations, but
he threw it off savagely now, with a quick and bitter recalling of her
deceit and his own weakness. Turning his back upon the scene with a
half-superstitious tremor, he plunged once more into the trackless
covert. But he was conscious that his eyesight was gradually growing dim
and his strength falling. He was obliged from time to time to stop and
rally his sluggish senses, that seemed to grow heavier under some deadly
exhalation that flowed around him. He even seemed to hear familiar
voices,--but that must be delusion. At last he stumbled. Throwing out an
arm to protect himself, he came heavily down upon the ooze, striking
a dull, half-elastic root that seemed--it must have been another
delusion--to move beneath him, and even--so confused were his senses
now--to strike back angrily upon his prostrate arm. A sharp pain
ran from his elbow to shoulder and for a moment stung him to full
consciousness again. There were voices surely,--the voices of their
former pursuers! If they were seeking to revenge themselves upon him for
Cato's escape, he was ready for them. He cocked his revolver and stood
erect. A torch flashed through the wood. But even at that moment a film
came over his eyes; he staggered and fell.

An interval of helpless semi-consciousness ensued. He felt himself
lifted by strong arms and carried forward, his arm hanging uselessly at
his side. The dank odor of the wood was presently exchanged for the free
air of the open field; the flaming pine-knot torches were extinguished
in the bright moonlight. People pressed around him, but so indistinctly
he could not recognize them. All his consciousness seemed centred in
the burning, throbbing pain of his arm. He felt himself laid upon the
gravel; the sleeve cut from his shoulder, the cool sensation of the hot
and bursting skin bared to the night air, and then a soft, cool, and
indescribable pressure upon a wound he had not felt before. A voice
followed,--high, lazily petulant, and familiar to him, and yet one he
strove in vain to recall.

“De Lawdy-Gawd save us, Miss Sally! Wot yo' doin' dah? Chile! Chile! Yo'
'll kill yo'se'f, shuah!”

The pressure continued, strange and potent even through his pain, and
was then withdrawn. And a voice that thrilled him said:--

“It's the only thing to save him! Hush, ye chattering black crow! Say
anything about this to a living soul, and I'll have yo' flogged! Now
trot out the whiskey bottle and pour it down him.”


CHAPTER VII.


When Courtland's eyes opened again, he was in bed in his own room at
Redlands, with the vivid morning sun occasionally lighting up the wall
whenever the closely drawn curtains were lightly blown aside by the
freshening breeze. The whole events of the night might have been a
dream but for the insupportable languor which numbed his senses, and
the torpor of his arm, that, swollen and discolored, lay outside the
coverlet on a pillow before him. Cloths that had been wrung out in
iced water were replaced upon it from time to time by Sophy, Miss Dows'
housekeeper, who, seated near his bedhead, was lazily fanning him. Their
eyes met.

“Broken?” he said interrogatively, with a faint return of his old
deliberate manner, glancing at his helpless arm.

“Deedy no, cunnle! Snake bite,” responded the negress.

“Snake bite!” repeated Courtland with languid interest, “what snake?”

“Moccasin o' copperhead--if you doun know yo'se'f which,” she replied.
“But it's all right now, honey! De pizen's draw'd out and clean gone.
Wot yer feels now is de whiskey. De whiskey STAYS, sah. It gets into de
lubrications of de skin, sah, and has to be abso'bed.”

Some faint chord of memory was touched by the girl's peculiar
vocabulary.

“Ah,” said Courtland quickly, “you're Miss Dows' Sophy. Then you can
tell me”--

“Nuffin, sah absomlutely nuffin!” interrupted the girl, shaking her head
with impressive official dignity. “It's done gone fo'bid by de doctor!
Yo' 're to lie dar and shut yo'r eye, honey,” she added, for the moment
reverting unconsciously to the native maternal tenderness of her race,
“and yo' 're not to bodder yo'se'f ef school keeps o' not. De medical
man say distinctly, sah,” she concluded, sternly recalling her duty
again, “no conversation wid de patient.”

But Courtland had winning ways with all dependents. “But you will answer
me ONE question, Sophy, and I'll not ask another. Has”--he hesitated
in his still uncertainty as to the actuality of his experience and its
probable extent--“has--Cato--escaped?”

“If yo' mean dat sassy, bull-nigger oberseer of yo'se, cunnle, HE'S
safe, yo' bet!” returned Sophy sharply. “Safe in his own quo'tahs night
afo' las', after braggin' about the bloodhaowns he killed; and safe ober
the county line yes'day moan'in, after kicking up all dis rumpus. If
dar is a sassy, highfalutin' nigger I jiss 'spises--its dat black nigger
Cato o' yo'se! Now,”--relenting--“yo' jiss wink yo' eye, honey,
and don't excite yo'se'f about sach black trash; drap off to sleep
comfor'ble. Fo' you do'an get annuder word out o' Sophy, shuah!”

As if in obedience, Courtland closed his eyes. But even in his weak
state he was conscious of the blood coming into his cheek at Sophy's
relentless criticism of the man for whom he had just periled his life
and position. Much of it he felt was true; but how far had he been a
dupe in his quixotic defense of a quarrelsome blusterer and cowardly
bully? Yet there was the unmistakable shot and cold-blooded attempt at
Cato's assassination! And there were the bloodhounds sent to track the
unfortunate man! That was no dream--but a brutal inexcusable fact!

The medical practitioner of Redlands he remembered was conservative,
old-fashioned, and diplomatic. But his sympathies had been broadened by
some army experiences, and Courtland trusted to some soldierly and frank
exposition of the matter from him. Nevertheless, Dr. Maynard was first
healer, and, like Sophy, professionally cautious. The colonel had better
not talk about it now. It was already two days old; the colonel had been
nearly forty-eight hours in bed. It was a regrettable affair, but the
natural climax of long-continued political and racial irritation--and
not without GREAT provocation! Assassination was a strong word; could
Colonel Courtland swear that Cato was actually AIMED AT, or was it not
merely a demonstration to frighten a bullying negro? It might have been
necessary to teach him a lesson--which the colonel by this time ought
to know could only be taught to these inferior races by FEAR. The
bloodhounds! Ah, yes!--well, the bloodhounds were, in fact, only a
part of that wholesome discipline. Surely Colonel Courtland was not so
foolish as to believe that, even in the old slave-holding days, planters
sent dogs after runaways to mangle and destroy THEIR OWN PROPERTY? They
might as well, at once, let them escape! No, sir! They were used only
to frighten and drive the niggers out of swamps, brakes, and
hiding-places--as no nigger had ever dared to face 'em. Cato might lie
as much as he liked, but everybody knew WHO it was that killed Major
Reed's hounds. Nobody blamed the colonel for it,--not even Major
Reed,--but if the colonel had lived a little longer in the South, he'd
have known it wasn't necessary to do that in self-preservation, as the
hounds would never have gone for a white man. But that was not a matter
for the colonel to bother about NOW. He was doing well; he had slept
nearly thirty hours; there was no fever, he must continue to doze off
the exhaustion of his powerful stimulant, and he, the doctor, would
return later in the afternoon.

Perhaps it was his very inability to grasp in that exhausted state the
full comprehension of the doctor's meaning, perhaps because the physical
benumbing of his brain was stronger than any mental excitement, but he
slept again until the doctor reappeared. “You're doing well enough now,
colonel,” said the physician, after a brief examination of his patient,
“and I think we can afford to wake you up a bit, and even let you move
your arm. You're luckier than poor Tom Higbee, who won't be able to
set his leg to the floor for three weeks to come. I haven't got all the
buckshot out of it yet that Jack Dumont put there the other night.”

Courtland started slightly. Jack Dumont! That was the name of Sally Dows
cousin of whom Champney had spoken! He had resolutely put aside from his
returning memory the hazy recollection of the young girl's voice--the
last thing he had heard that night--and the mystery that seemed to
surround it. But there was no delusion in this cousin--his rival,
and that of the equally deceived Champney. He controlled himself and
repeated coldly:--

“Jack Dumont!”

“Yes. But of course you knew nothing of all that, while you were off
in the swamp there. Yet, by Jingo! it was Dumont's shooting Higbee that
helped YOU to get off your nigger a darned sight more than YOUR killing
the dogs.”

“I don't understand,” returned Courtland coldly.

“Well, you see, Dumont, who had taken up No'th'n principles, I reckon,
more to goad the Higbees and please Sally Dows than from any conviction,
came over here that night. Whether he suspected anything was up, or
wanted to dare Higbee for bedevilment, or was only dancing attendance on
Miss Sally, no one knows. But he rode slap into Highee's party, called
out, 'If you're out hunting, Tom, here's a chance for your score!'
meaning their old vendetta feud, and brings his shot-gun up to his
shoulder. Higbee wasn't quick enough, Dumont lets fly, drops Higbee, and
then gallops off chased by the Reeds to avenge Higbee, and followed
by the whole crowd to see the fun, which was a little better than
nigger-driving. And that let you and Cato out, colonel.”

“And Dumont?”

“Got clean away to Foxboro' Station, leaving another score on his side
for the Reeds and Higbees to wipe out as best they can. You No'th'n men
don't believe in these sort of things, colonel, but taken as a straight
dash and hit o' raiding, that stroke of Sally Dows' cousin was mighty
fine!”

Courtland controlled himself with difficulty. The doctor had spoken
truly. The hero of this miserable affair was HER cousin--HIS RIVAL! And
to him--perhaps influenced by some pitying appeal of Miss Sally for the
man she had deceived--Courtland owed his life! He instinctively drew a
quick, sharp breath.

“Are you in pain?”

“Not at all. When can I get up?”

“Perhaps to-morrow.”

“And this arm?”

“Better not use it for a week or two.” He stopped, and, glancing
paternally at the younger man, added gravely but kindly: “If you'll
take my unprofessional advice, Colonel Courtland, you'll let this matter
simmer down. It won't hurt you and your affairs here that folks have had
a taste of your quality, and the nigger a lesson that his fellows won't
forget.”

“I thank you,” returned Courtland coldly; “but I think I already
understand my duty to the company I represent and the Government I have
served.”

“Possibly, colonel,” said the doctor quietly; “but you'll let an older
man remind you and the Government that you can't change the habits or
relations of two distinct races in a few years. Your friend, Miss Sally
Dows--although not quite in my way of thinking--has never attempted
THAT.”

“I am fully aware that Miss Dows possesses diplomatic accomplishments
and graces that I cannot lay claim to,” returned Courtland bitterly.

The doctor lifted his eyebrows slightly and changed the subject.

When he had gone, Courtland called for writing materials. He had already
made up his mind, and one course alone seemed proper to him. He wrote to
the president of the company, detailing the circumstances that had just
occurred, admitting the alleged provocation given by his overseer,
but pointing out the terrorism of a mob-law which rendered his
own discipline impossible. He asked that the matter be reported to
Washington, and some measures taken for the protection of the freedmen,
in the mean time he begged to tender his own resignation, but he would
stay until his successor was appointed, or the safety of his employees
secured. Until then, he should act upon his own responsibility and
according to his judgment. He made no personal charges, mentioned no
names, asked for no exemplary prosecution or trial of the offenders, but
only demanded a safeguard against a repetition of the offense. His next
letter, although less formal and official, was more difficult. It was
addressed to the commandant of the nearest Federal barracks, who was an
old friend and former companion-in-arms. He alluded to some conversation
they had previously exchanged in regard to the presence of a small
detachment of troops at Redlands during the elections, which Courtland
at the time, however, had diplomatically opposed. He suggested it now
as a matter of public expediency and prevention. When he had sealed
the letters, not caring to expose them to the espionage of the local
postmaster or his ordinary servants, he intrusted them to one of Miss
Sally's own henchmen, to be posted at the next office, at Bitter Creek
Station, ten miles distant.

Unfortunately, this duty accomplished, the reaction consequent on
his still weak physical condition threw him back upon himself and his
memory. He had resolutely refused to think of Miss Sally; he had
been able to withstand the suggestions of her in the presence of her
handmaid--supposed to be potent in nursing and herb-lore--whom she
had detached to wait upon him, and he had returned politely formal
acknowledgments to her inquiries. He had determined to continue this
personal avoidance as far as possible until he was relieved, on
the ground of that BUSINESS expediency which these events had made
necessary. She would see that he was only accepting the arguments with
which she had met his previous advances. Briefly, he had recourse to
that hopeless logic by which a man proves to himself that he has no
reason for loving a certain woman, and is as incontestably convinced
by the same process that he has. And in the midst of it he weakly fell
asleep, and dreamed that he and Miss Sally were walking in the cemetery;
that a hideous snake concealed among some lilies, over which the young
girl was bending, had uplifted its triangular head to strike. That he
seized it by the neck, struggled with it until he was nearly exhausted,
when it suddenly collapsed and shrunk, leaving in his palm the limp,
crushed, and delicately perfumed little thread glove which he remembered
to have once slipped from her hand.

When he awoke, that perfume seemed to be still in the air, distinct
from the fresh but homelier scents of the garden which stole through the
window. A sense of delicious coolness came with the afternoon breeze,
that faintly trilled the slanting slats of the blind with a slumberous
humming as of bees. The golden glory of a sinking southern sun was
penciling the cheap paper on the wall with leafy tracery and glowing
arabesques. But more than that, the calm of some potent influence--or
some unseen presence--was upon him, which he feared a movement might
dispel. The chair at the foot of his bed was empty. Sophy had gone
out. He did not turn his head to look further; his languid eyes falling
aimlessly upon the carpet at his bedside suddenly dilated. For they fell
also on the “smallest foot in the State.”

He started to his elbow, but a soft hand was laid gently yet firmly upon
his shoulder, and with a faint rustle of muslin skirts Miss Sally rose
from an unseen chair at the head of his bed, and stood beside him.

“Don't stir, co'nnle, I didn't sit where I could look in yo'r face for
fear of waking yo'. But I'll change seats now.” She moved to the chair
which Sophy had vacated, drew it slightly nearer the bed, and sat down.

“It was very kind of you--to come,” said Courtland hesitatingly, as with
a strong effort he drew his eyes away from the fascinating vision, and
regained a certain cold composure, “but I am afraid my illness has been
greatly magnified. I really am quite well enough to be up and about my
business, if the doctor would permit it. But I shall certainly manage to
attend to my duty to-morrow, and I hope to be at your service.

“Meaning that yo' don't care to see me NOW, co'nnle,” she said lightly,
with a faint twinkle in her wise, sweet eyes. “I thought of that, but as
my business wouldn't wait, I brought it to yo'.” She took from the folds
of her gown a letter. To his utter amazement it was the one he had given
his overseer to post to the commandant that morning. To his greater
indignation the seal was broken.

“Who has dared?” he demanded, half rising.

Her little hand was thrust out half deprecatingly. “No one yo' can
fight, co'nnle; only ME. I don't generally open other folks' letters,
and I wouldn't have done it for MYSELF; I did for yo'.”

“For me?”

“For yo'. I reckoned what yo' MIGHT do, and I told Sam to bring ME the
letters first. I didn't mind what yo' wrote to the company--for they'll
take care of yo', and their own eggs are all in the same basket. I
didn't open THAT one, but I did THIS when I saw the address. It was as
I expected, and yo' 'd given yo'self away! For if yo' had those soldiers
down here, yo' 'd have a row, sure! Don't move, co'nnle, YO' may not
care for that, it's in YO'R line. But folks will say that the soldiers
weren't sent to prevent RIOTING, but that Co'nnle Courtland was using
his old comrades to keep order on his property at Gov'ment expense. Hol'
on! Hol' on! co'nnle,” said the little figure, rising and waving its
pretty arms with a mischievous simulation of terrified deprecation.
“Don't shoot! Of course yo' didn't mean THAT, but that's about the way
that So'th'n men will put it to yo'r Gov'ment. For,” she continued, more
gently, yet with the shrewdest twinkle in her gray eyes, “if yo' really
thought the niggers might need Federal protection, yo' 'd have let ME
write to the commandant to send an escort--not to YO, but to CATO--that
HE might be able to come back in safety. Yo' 'd have had yo'r soldiers;
I'd have had back my nigger, which”--demurely--“yo' don't seem to worry
yo'self much about, co'nnle; and there isn't a So'th'n man would have
objected. But,” still more demurely, and affectedly smoothing out her
crisp skirt with her little hands, “yo' haven't been troubling me much
with yo'r counsel lately.”

A swift and utterly new comprehension swept over Courtland. For the
first time in his knowledge of her he suddenly grasped what was,
perhaps, the true conception of her character. Looking at her clearly
now, he understood the meaning of those pliant graces, so unaffected
and yet always controlled by the reasoning of an unbiased intellect; her
frank speech and plausible intonations! Before him stood the true-born
daughter of a long race of politicians! All that he had heard of their
dexterity, tact, and expediency rose here incarnate, with the added
grace of womanhood. A strange sense of relief--perhaps a dawning of
hope--stole over him.

“But how will this insure Cato's safety hereafter, or give protection to
the others?” he said, fixing his eyes upon her.

“The future won't concern YO' much, co'nnle, if as yo' say here yo'r
resignation is sent in, and yo'r successor appointed,” she replied, with
more gravity than she had previously shown.

“But you do not think I will leave YOU in this uncertainty,” he said
passionately. He stopped suddenly, his brow darkened. “I forgot,” he
added coldly, “you will be well protected. Your--COUSIN--will give you
the counsel of race--and--closer ties.”

To his infinite astonishment, Miss Sally leaned forward in her chair
and buried her laughing face in both of her hands. When her dimples
had become again visible, she said with an effort, “Don't yo' think,
co'nnle, that as a peacemaker my cousin was even a bigger failure than
yo'self?”

“I don't understand,” stammered Courtland.

“Don't yo' think,” she continued, wiping her eyes demurely, “that if a
young woman about my size, who had got perfectly tired and sick of
all this fuss made about yo', because yo' were a No'th'n man, managing
niggers--if that young woman wanted to show her people what sort of a
radical and abolitionist a SO'TH'N man of their own sort might become,
she'd have sent for Jack Dumont as a sample? Eh? Only, I declare
to goodness, I never reckoned that he and Higbee would revive the
tomfooling of the vendetta, and take to shootin' each other at once.”

“And your sending for your cousin was only a feint to protect me?” said
Courtland faintly.

“Perhaps he didn't have to be SENT for, co'nnle,” she said, with a
slight touch of coquetry. “Suppose we say, I LET HIM COME. He'd be
hanging round, for he has property here, and wanted to get me to take it
up with mine in the company. I knew what his new views and ideas were,
and I thought I'd better consult Champney--who, being a foreigner, and
an older resident than yo', was quite neutral. He didn't happen to tell
YO' anything about it--did he, co'nnle?” she added with a grave mouth,
but an indescribable twinkle in her eyes.

Courtland's face darkened. “He did--and he further told me, Miss Dows,
that he himself was your suitor, and that you had refused him because of
the objections of your people.”

She raised her eyes to his swiftly and dropped them.

“And yo' think I ought to have accepted him?” she said slowly.

“No! but--you know--you told me”--he began hurriedly. But she had
already risen, and was shaking out the folds of her dress.

“We're not talking BUSINESS co'nnle--and business was my only excuse for
coming here, and taking Sophy's place. I'll send her in to yo', now.”

“But, Miss Dows!--Miss Sally!”

She stopped--hesitated--a singular weakness for so self-contained a
nature--and then slowly produced from her pocket a second letter--the
one that Courtland had directed to the company. “I didn't read THIS
letter, as I just told yo' co'nnle, for I reckon I know what's in it,
but I thought I'd bring it with me too, in case YO' CHANGED YO'R MIND.”

He raised himself on his pillow as she turned quickly away; but in that
single vanishing glimpse of her bright face he saw what neither he nor
any one else had ever seen upon the face of Sally Dows--a burning blush!

“Miss Sally!” He almost leaped from the bed, but she was gone. There was
another rustle at the door--the entrance of Sophy.

“Call her back, Sophy, quick!” he said.

The negress shook her turbaned head. “Not much, honey! When Miss Sally
say she goes--she done gone, shuah!”

“But, Sophy!” Perhaps something in the significant face of the girl
tempted him; perhaps it was only an impulse of his forgotten youth.
“Sophy!” appealingly--“tell me!--is Miss Sally engaged to her cousin?”

“Wat dat?” said Sophy in indignant scorn. “Miss Sally engaged to dat
Dumont! What fo'? Yo' 're crazy! No!”

“Nor Champney? Tell me, Sophy, has she a LOVER?”

For a moment the whites of Sophy's eyes were uplifted in speechless
scorn. “Yo' ask dat! Yo' lyin' dar wid dat snake-bit arm! Yo' lyin' dar,
and Miss Sally--who has only to whistle to call de fust quality in de
State raoun her--coming and going here wid you, and trotting on yo'r
arrants--and yo' ask dat! Yes! she has a lover, and what's me', she
CAN'T HELP IT; and yo' 're her lover; and what's me', YO' can't help it
either! And yo' can't back out of it now--bo'fe of yo'--nebber! Fo' yo'
're hers, and she's yo'rs--fo' ebber. For she sucked yo' blood.”

“What!” gasped Courtland, aghast at what he believed to be the sudden
insanity of the negress.

“Yes! Whar's yo'r eyes? whar's yo'r years? who's yo' dat yo' didn't see
nor heah nuffin? When dey dragged yo' outer de swamp dat night--wid de
snake-bite freshen yo'r arm--didn't SHE, dat poh chile!--dat same Miss
Sally--frow herself down on yo', and put dat baby mouf of hers to de
wound and suck out de pizen and sabe de life ob yo' at de risk ob her
own? Say? And if dey's any troof in Hoodoo, don't dat make yo' one blood
and one soul! Go way, white man! I'm sick of yo'. Stop dar! Lie down
dar! Hol' on, co'nnle, for massy's sake. Well, dar--I'll call her back!”

And she did!


“Look here--don't you know--it rather took me by surprise,” said
Champney, a few days later, with a hearty grip of the colonel's
uninjured hand; “but I don't bear malice, old fellow, and, by Jove! it
was SUCH a sensible, all-round, business-like choice for the girl to
make that no wonder we never thought of it before. Hang it all, you see
a fellow was always so certain it would be something out of the way and
detrimental, don't you know, that would take the fancy of a girl like
that--somebody like that cousin of hers or Higbee, or even ME, by Jove
that we never thought of looking beyond our noses--never thought of the
BUSINESS! And YOU all the time so cold and silent and matter-of-fact
about it! But I congratulate you! You've got the business down on a safe
basis now, and what's more, you've got the one woman who can run it.”

They say he was a true prophet. At least the Syndicate affairs
prospered, and in course of time even the Reeds and the Higbees
participated in the benefits. There were no more racial disturbances;
only the districts polled a peaceful and SMALLER Democratic majority at
the next election. There were not wanting those who alleged that Colonel
Courtland had simply become MRS. COURTLAND'S SUPERINTENDENT; that she
had absorbed him as she had every one who had come under her influence,
and that she would not rest until she had made him a Senator (to
represent Mrs. Courtland) in the councils of the nation. But when I last
dined with them in Washington, ten years ago, I found them both very
happy and comfortable, and I remember that Mrs. Courtland's remarks upon
Federal and State interests, the proper education of young girls, and
the management of the family, were eminently wise and practical.




THE CONSPIRACY OF MRS. BUNKER.


PART I.


On the northerly shore of San Francisco Bay a line of bluffs terminates
in a promontory, at whose base, formed by the crumbling debris of the
cliff above, there is a narrow stretch of beach, salt meadow, and scrub
oak. The abrupt wall of rock behind it seems to isolate it as completely
from the mainland as the sea before it separates it from the opposite
shore. In spite of its contiguity to San Francisco,--opposite also, but
hidden by the sharp re-entering curve of coast,--the locality was wild,
uncultivated, and unfrequented. A solitary fisherman's cabin half hidden
in the rocks was the only trace of habitation. White drifts of sea-gulls
and pelican across the face of the cliff, gray clouds of sandpipers
rising from the beach, the dripping flight of ducks over the salt
meadows, and the occasional splash of a seal from the rocks, were the
only signs of life that could be seen from the decks of passing ships.
And yet the fisherman's cabin was occupied by Zephas Bunker and
his young wife, and he had succeeded in wresting from the hard soil
pasturage for a cow and goats, while his lateen-sailed fishing-boat
occasionally rode quietly in the sheltered cove below.

Three years ago Zephas Bunker, an ex-whaler, had found himself stranded
on a San Francisco wharf and had “hired out” to a small Petaluma farmer.
At the end of a year he had acquired little taste for the farmer's
business, but considerable for the farmer's youthful daughter, who,
equally weary of small agriculture, had consented to elope with him
in order to escape it. They were married at Oakland; he put his scant
earnings into a fishing-boat, discovered the site for his cabin, and
brought his bride thither. The novelty of the change pleased her,
although perhaps it was but little advance on her previous humble
position. Yet she preferred her present freedom to the bare restricted
home life of her past; the perpetual presence of the restless sea was a
relief to the old monotony of the wheat field and its isolated drudgery.
For Mary's youthful fancy, thinly sustained in childhood by the lightest
literary food, had neither been stimulated nor disillusioned by her
marriage. That practical experience which is usually the end of girlish
romance had left her still a child in sentiment. The long absences
of her husband in his fishing-boat kept her from wearying of or even
knowing his older and unequal companionship; it gave her a freedom her
girlhood had never known, yet added a protection that suited her still
childish dependency, while it tickled her pride with its equality. When
not engaged in her easy household duties in her three-roomed cottage, or
the care of her rocky garden patch, she found time enough to indulge her
fancy over the mysterious haze that wrapped the invisible city so near
and yet unknown to her; in the sails that slipped in and out of the
Golden Gate, but of whose destination she knew nothing; and in the long
smoke trail of the mail steamer which had yet brought her no message.
Like all dwellers by the sea, her face and her thoughts were more
frequently turned towards it; and as with them, it also seemed to her
that whatever change was coming into her life would come across that
vast unknown expanse. But it was here that Mrs. Bunker was mistaken.

It had been a sparkling summer morning. The waves were running before
the dry northwest trade winds with crystalline but colorless brilliancy.
Sheltered by the high, northerly bluff, the house and its garden were
exposed to the untempered heat of the cloudless sun refracted from the
rocky wall behind it. Some tarpaulin and ropes lying among the rocks
were sticky and odorous; the scrub oaks and manzanita bushes gave out
the aroma of baking wood; occasionally a faint pot-pourri fragrance from
the hot wild roses and beach grass was blown along the shore; even the
lingering odors of Bunker's vocation, and of Mrs. Bunker's cooking, were
idealized and refined by the saline breath of the sea at the doors and
windows. Mrs. Bunker, in the dazzling sun, bending over her peas
and lettuces with a small hoe, felt the comfort of her brown holland
sunbonnet. Secure in her isolation, she unbuttoned the neck of her gown
for air, and did not put up the strand of black hair that had escaped
over her shoulder. It was very hot in the lee of the bluff, and very
quiet in that still air. So quiet that she heard two distinct reports,
following each other quickly, but very faint and far. She glanced
mechanically towards the sea. Two merchant-men in midstream were shaking
out their wings for a long flight, a pilot boat and coasting schooner
were rounding the point, but there was no smoke from their decks. She
bent over her work again, and in another moment had forgotten it. But
the heat, with the dazzling reflection from the cliff, forced her to
suspend her gardening, and stroll along the beach to the extreme limit
of her domain. Here she looked after the cow that had also strayed
away through the tangled bush for coolness. The goats, impervious to
temperature, were basking in inaccessible fastnesses on the cliff
itself that made her eyes ache to climb. Over an hour passed, she was
returning, and had neared her house, when she was suddenly startled to
see the figure of a man between her and the cliff. He was engaged in
brushing his dusty clothes with a handkerchief, and although he saw her
coming, and even moved slowly towards her, continued his occupation
with a half-impatient, half-abstracted air. Her feminine perception was
struck with the circumstance that he was in deep black, with scarcely a
gleam of white showing even at his throat, and that he wore a tall black
hat. Without knowing anything of social customs, it seemed to her that
his dress was inconsistent with his appearance there.

“Good-morning,” he said, lifting his hat with a preoccupied air. “Do you
live here?”

“Yes,” she said wonderingly.

“Anybody else?”

“My husband.”

“I mean any other people? Are there any other houses?” he said with a
slight impatience.

“No.”

He looked at her and then towards the sea. “I expect some friends who
are coming for me in a boat. I suppose they can land easily here?”

“Didn't you yourself land here just now?” she said quickly.

He half hesitated, and then, as if scorning an equivocation, made a
hasty gesture over her shoulder and said bluntly, “No, I came over the
cliff.”

“Down the cliff?” she repeated incredulously.

“Yes,” he said, glancing at his clothes; “it was a rough scramble, but
the goats showed me the way.”

“And you were up on the bluff all the time?” she went on curiously.

“Yes. You see--I”--he stopped suddenly at what seemed to be the
beginning of a prearranged and plausible explanation, as if impatient of
its weakness or hypocrisy, and said briefly, “Yes, I was there.”

Like most women, more observant of his face and figure, she did not miss
this lack of explanation. He was a very good-looking man of middle age,
with a thin, proud, high-bred face, which in a country of bearded men
had the further distinction of being smoothly shaven. She had never seen
any one like him before. She thought he looked like an illustration of
some novel she had read, but also somewhat melancholy, worn, and tired.

“Won't you come in and rest yourself?” she said, motioning to the cabin.

“Thank you,” he said, still half absently. “Perhaps I'd better. It may
be some time yet before they come.”

She led the way to the cabin, entered the living room--a plainly
furnished little apartment between the bedroom and the kitchen--pointed
to a large bamboo armchair, and placed a bottle of whiskey and some
water on the table before him. He thanked her again very gently, poured
out some spirits in his glass, and mixed it with water. But when she
glanced towards him again he had apparently risen without tasting it,
and going to the door was standing there with his hand in the breast
of his buttoned frock coat, gazing silently towards the sea. There was
something vaguely historical in his attitude--or what she thought might
be historical--as of somebody of great importance who had halted on the
eve of some great event at the door of her humble cabin.

His apparent unconsciousness of her and of his surroundings, his
preoccupation with something far beyond her ken, far from piquing her,
only excited her interest the more. And then there was such an odd
sadness in his eyes.

“Are you anxious for your folks' coming?” she said at last, following
his outlook.

“I--oh no!” he returned, quickly recalling himself, “they'll be sure to
come--sooner or later. No fear of that,” he added, half smilingly, half
wearily.

Mrs. Bunker passed into the kitchen, where, while apparently attending
to her household duties, she could still observe her singular guest.
Left alone, he seated himself mechanically in the chair, and gazed
fixedly at the fireplace. He remained a long time so quiet and unmoved,
in spite of the marked ostentatious clatter Mrs. Bunker found it
necessary to make with her dishes, that an odd fancy that he was
scarcely a human visitant began to take possession of her. Yet she was
not frightened. She remembered distinctly afterwards that, far from
having any concern for herself, she was only moved by a strange and
vague admiration of him.

But her prolonged scrutiny was not without effect. Suddenly he raised
his dark eyes, and she felt them pierce the obscurity of her kitchen
with a quick, suspicious, impatient penetration, which as they met hers
gave way, however, to a look that she thought was gently reproachful.
Then he rose, stretched himself to his full height, and approaching the
kitchen door leaned listlessly against the door-post.

“I don't suppose you are ever lonely here?”

“No, sir.”

“Of course not. You have yourself and husband. Nobody interferes with
you. You are contented and happy together.”

Mrs. Bunker did not say, what was the fact, that she had never before
connected the sole companionship of her husband with her happiness.
Perhaps it had never occurred to her until that moment how little it had
to do with it. She only smiled gratefully at the change in her guest's
abstraction.

“Do you often go to San Francisco?” he continued.

“I have never been there at all. Some day I expect we will go there to
live.”

“I wouldn't advise you to,” he said, looking at her gravely. “I don't
think it will pay you. You'll never be happy there as here. You'll never
have the independence and freedom you have here. You'll never be
your own mistress again. But how does it happen you never were in San
Francisco?” he said suddenly.

If he would not talk of himself, here at least was a chance for Mrs.
Bunker to say something. She related how her family had emigrated from
Kansas across the plains and had taken up a “location” at Contra Costa.
How she didn't care for it, and how she came to marry the seafaring man
who brought her here--all with great simplicity and frankness and as
unreservedly as to a superior being--albeit his attention wandered at
times, and a rare but melancholy smile that he had apparently evoked
to meet her conversational advances became fixed occasionally. Even his
dark eyes, which had obliged Mrs. Bunker to put up her hair and button
her collar, rested upon her without seeing her.

“Then your husband's name is Bunker?” he said when she paused at last.
“That's one of those Nantucket Quaker names--sailors and whalers for
generations--and yours, you say, was MacEwan. Well, Mrs. Bunker, YOUR
family came from Kentucky to Kansas only lately, though I suppose your
father calls himself a Free-States man. You ought to know something of
farming and cattle, for your ancestors were old Scotch Covenanters who
emigrated a hundred years ago, and were great stock raisers.”

All this seemed only the natural omniscience of a superior being. And
Mrs. Bunker perhaps was not pained to learn that her husband's family
was of a lower degree than her own. But the stranger's knowledge did not
end there. He talked of her husband's business--he explained the vast
fishing resources of the bay and coast. He showed her how the large
colony of Italian fishermen were inimical to the interests of California
and to her husband--particularly as a native American trader. He told
her of the volcanic changes of the bay and coast line, of the formation
of the rocky ledge on which she lived. He pointed out to her its value
to the Government for defensive purposes, and how it naturally commanded
the entrance of the Golden Gate far better than Fort Point, and that it
ought to be in its hands. If the Federal Government did not buy it of
her husband, certainly the State of California should. And here he fell
into an abstraction as deep and as gloomy as before. He walked to the
window, paced the floor with his hand in his breast, went to the door,
and finally stepped out of the cabin, moving along the ledge of rocks to
the shore, where he stood motionless.

Mrs. Bunker had listened to him with parted lips and eyes of eloquent
admiration. She had never before heard anyone talk like THAT--she had
not believed it possible that any one could have such knowledge. Perhaps
she could not understand all he said, but she would try to remember it
after he had gone. She could only think now how kind it was of him that
in all this mystery of his coming, and in the singular sadness that was
oppressing him, he should try to interest her. And thus looking at him,
and wondering, an idea came to her.

She went into her bedroom and took down her husband's heavy pilot
overcoat and sou'wester, and handed them to her guest.

“You'd better put them on if you're going to stand there,” she said.

“But I am not cold,” he said wonderingly.

“But you might be SEEN,” she said simply. It was the first suggestion
that had passed between them that his presence there was a secret. He
looked at her intently, then he smiled and said, “I think you're right,
for many reasons,” put the pilot coat over his frock coat, removed
his hat with the gesture of a bow, handed it to her, and placed the
sou'wester in its stead. Then for an instant he hesitated as if about
to speak, but Mrs. Bunker, with a delicacy that she could not herself
comprehend at the moment, hurried back to the cabin without giving him
an opportunity.

Nor did she again intrude upon his meditations. Hidden in his disguise,
which to her eyes did not, however, seem to conceal his characteristic
figure, he wandered for nearly an hour under the bluff and along the
shore, returning at last almost mechanically to the cabin, where,
oblivious of his surroundings, he reseated himself in silence by
the table with his cheek resting on his hand. Presently, her quick,
experienced ear detected the sound of oars in their row-locks; she could
plainly see from her kitchen window a small boat with two strangers
seated at the stern being pulled to the shore. With the same strange
instinct of delicacy, she determined not to go out lest her presence
might embarrass her guest's reception of his friends. But as she turned
towards the living room she found he had already risen and was removing
his hat and pilot coat. She was struck, however, by the circumstance
that not only did he exhibit no feeling of relief at his deliverance,
but that a half-cynical, half-savage expression had taken the place of
his former melancholy. As he went to the door, the two gentlemen hastily
clambered up the rocks to greet him.

“Jim reckoned it was you hangin' round the rocks, but I couldn't tell at
that distance. Seemed you borrowed a hat and coat. Well--it's all fixed,
and we've no time to lose. There's a coasting steamer just dropping down
below the Heads, and it will take you aboard. But I can tell you you've
kicked up a h-ll of a row over there.” He stopped, evidently at some
sign from her guest. The rest of the man's speech followed in a hurried
whisper, which was stopped again by the voice she knew. “No. Certainly
not.” The next moment his tall figure was darkening the door of the
kitchen; his hand was outstretched. “Good-by, Mrs. Bunker, and many
thanks for your hospitality. My friends here,” he turned grimly to the
men behind him, “think I ought to ask you to keep this a secret even
from your husband. I DON'T! They also think that I ought to offer you
money for your kindness. I DON'T! But if you will honor me by keeping
this ring in remembrance of it”--he took a heavy seal ring from his
finger--“it's the only bit of jewelry I have about me--I'll be very
glad. Good-by!” She felt for a moment the firm, soft pressure of his
long, thin fingers around her own, and then--he was gone. The sound of
retreating oars grew fainter and fainter and was lost. The same reserve
of delicacy which now appeared to her as a duty kept her from going to
the window to watch the destination of the boat. No, he should go as he
came, without her supervision or knowledge.

Nor did she feel lonely afterwards. On the contrary, the silence and
solitude of the isolated domain had a new charm. They kept the memory of
her experience intact, and enabled her to refill it with his presence.
She could see his tall figure again pausing before her cabin, without
the incongruous association of another personality; she could hear his
voice again, unmingled with one more familiar. For the first time, the
regular absence of her husband seemed an essential good fortune instead
of an accident of their life. For the experience belonged to HER, and
not to him and her together. He could not understand it; he would have
acted differently and spoiled it. She should not tell him anything of
it, in spite of the stranger's suggestion, which, of course, he had only
made because he didn't know Zephas as well as she did. For Mrs. Bunker
was getting on rapidly; it was her first admission of the conjugal
knowledge that one's husband is inferior to the outside estimate of
him. The next step--the belief that he was deceiving HER as he was
THEM--would be comparatively easy.

Nor should she show him the ring. The stranger had certainly never said
anything about that! It was a heavy ring, with a helmeted head carved on
its red carnelian stone, and what looked like strange letters around it.
It fitted her third finger perfectly; but HIS fingers were small, and
he had taken it from his little finger. She should keep it herself. Of
course, if it had been money, she would have given it to Zephas; but the
stranger knew that she wouldn't take money. How firmly he had said that
“I don't!” She felt the warm blood fly to her fresh young face at the
thought of it. He had understood her. She might be living in a
poor cabin, doing all the housework herself, and her husband only a
fisherman, but he had treated her like a lady.

And so the afternoon passed. The outlying fog began to roll in at the
Golden Gate, obliterating the headland and stretching a fleecy bar
across the channel as if shutting out from vulgar eyes the way that he
had gone. Night fell, but Zephas had not yet come. This was unusual,
for he was generally as regular as the afternoon “trades” which blew
him there. There was nothing to detain him in this weather and at this
season. She began to be vaguely uneasy; then a little angry at this new
development of his incompatibility. Then it occurred to her, for the
first time in her wifehood, to think what she would do if he were lost.
Yet, in spite of some pain, terror, and perplexity at the possibility,
her dominant thought was that she would be a free woman to order her
life as she liked.

It was after ten before his lateen sail flapped in the little cove. She
was waiting to receive him on the shore. His good-humored hirsute face
was slightly apologetic in expression, but flushed and disturbed with
some new excitement to which an extra glass or two of spirits had
apparently added intensity. The contrast between his evident
indulgence and the previous abstemiousness of her late guest struck her
unpleasantly. “Well--I declare,” she said indignantly, “so THAT'S what
kept you!”

“No,” he said quickly; “there's been awful times over in 'Frisco!
Everybody just wild, and the Vigilance Committee in session. Jo
Henderson's killed! Shot by Wynyard Marion in a duel! He'll be lynched,
sure as a gun, if they ketch him.”

“But I thought men who fought duels always went free.”

“Yes, but this ain't no common duel; they say the whole thing was
planned beforehand by them Southern fire-eaters to get rid o' Henderson
because he's a Northern man and anti-slavery, and that they picked out
Colonel Marion to do it because he was a dead shot. They got him to
insult Henderson, so he was bound to challenge Marion, and that giv'
Marion the chyce of weppings. It was a reg'lar put up job to kill him.”

“And what's all this to do with you?” she asked, with irritation.

“Hold on, won't you! and I'll tell you. I was pickin' up nets off
Saucelito about noon, when I was hailed by one of them Vigilance tugs,
and they set me to stand off and on the shore and watch that Marion
didn't get away, while they were scoutin' inland. Ye see THE DUEL TOOK
PLACE JUST OVER THE BLUFF THERE--BEHIND YE--and they allowed that
Marion had struck away north for Mendocino to take ship there. For after
overhaulin' his second's boat, they found out that they had come away
from Saucelito ALONE. But they sent a tug around by sea to Mendocino to
head him off there, while they're closin' in around him inland. They're
bound to catch him sooner or later. But you ain't listenin', Mollie?”

She was--in every fibre--but with her head turned towards the window,
and the invisible Golden Gate through which the fugitive had escaped.
For she saw it all now--that glorious vision--her high-bred, handsome
guest and Wynyard Marion were one and the same person. And this rough,
commonplace man before her--her own husband--had been basely set to
capture him!


PART II.


During that evening and the next Mrs. Bunker, without betraying her
secret, or exciting the least suspicion on the part of her husband,
managed to extract from him not only a rough description of Marion which
tallied with her own impressions, but a short history of his career. He
was a famous politician who had held high office in the South; he was an
accomplished lawyer; he had served in the army; he was a fiery speaker;
he had a singular command of men. He was unmarried, but there were queer
stories of his relations with some of the wives of prominent officials,
and there was no doubt that he used them in some of his political
intrigues. He, Zephas, would bet something that it was a woman who had
helped him off! Did she speak?

Yes, she had spoken. It made her sick to sit there and hear such
stories! Because a man did not agree with some people in politics it
was perfectly awful to think how they would abuse him and take away his
character! Men were so awfully jealous, too; if another man happened to
be superior and fine-looking there wasn't anything bad enough for them
to say about him! No! she wasn't a slavery sympathizer either, and
hadn't anything to do with man politics, although she was a Southern
woman, and the MacEwans had come from Kentucky and owned slaves. Of
course, he, Zephas, whose ancestors were Cape Cod Quakers and had always
been sailors, couldn't understand. She did not know what he meant by
saying “what a long tail our cat's got,” but if he meant to call her
a cat, and was going to use such language to her, he had better have
stayed in San Francisco with his Vigilance friends. And perhaps it would
have been better if he had stayed there before he took her away from her
parents at Martinez. Then she wouldn't have been left on a desert rock
without any chance of seeing the world, or ever making any friends or
acquaintances!

It was their first quarrel. Discreetly made up by Mrs. Bunker in some
alarm at betraying herself; honestly forgiven by Zephas in a rude,
remorseful consciousness of her limited life. One or two nights later,
when he returned, it was with a mingled air of mystery and satisfaction.
“Well, Mollie,” he said cheerfully, “it looks as if your pets were not
as bad as I thought them.”

“My pets!” repeated Mrs. Bunker, with a faint rising of color.

“Well, I call these Southern Chivs your pets, Mollie, because you stuck
up for them so the other night. But never mind that now. What do you
suppose has happened? Jim Rider, you know, the Southern banker and
speculator, who's a regular big Injin among the 'Chivs,' he sent Cap
Simmons down to the wharf while I was unloadin' to come up and see him.
Well, I went, and what do y'u think? He told me he was gettin' up an
American Fishin' Company, and wanted me to take charge of a first-class
schooner on shares. Said he heard of me afore, and knew I was an
American and a white man, and just the chap ez could knock them
Eytalians outer the market.”

“Yes,” interrupted Mrs. Bunker quickly, but emphatically, “the fishing
interest ought to be American and protected by the State, with regular
charters and treaties.”

“I say, Mollie,” said her astonished but admiring husband, “you've been
readin' the papers or listenin' to stump speakin' sure.”

“Go on,” returned Mrs. Bunker impatiently, “and say what happened next.”

“Well,” returned Zephas, “I first thought, you see, that it had suthin'
to do with that Marion business, particklerly ez folks allowed he was
hidin' somewhere yet, and they wanted me to run him off. So I thought
Rider might as well know that I wasn't to be bribed, so I ups and tells
him how I'd been lyin' off Saucelito the other day workin' for the
other side agin him. With that he laughs, says he didn't want any better
friends than me, but that I must be livin' in the backwoods not to
know that Wynyard Marion had escaped, and was then at sea on his way
to Mexico or Central America. Then we agreed to terms, and the long and
short of it is, Mollie, that I'm to have the schooner with a hundred and
fifty dollars a month, and ten per cent. shares after a year! Looks like
biz, eh, Mollie, old girl? but you don't seem pleased.”

She had put aside the arm with which he was drawing her to him, and
had turned her white face away to the window. So HE had gone--this
stranger--this one friend of her life--she would never see him again,
and all that would ever come of it was this pecuniary benefit to her
husband, who had done nothing. He would not even offer her money, but he
had managed to pay his debt to her in this way that their vulgar poverty
would appreciate. And this was the end of her dream!

“You don't seem to take it in, Mollie,” continued the surprised Zephas.
“It means a house in 'Frisco and a little cabin for you on the schooner
when you like.”

“I don't want it! I won't have it! I shall stay here,” she burst out
with a half-passionate, half-childish cry, and ran into her bedroom,
leaving the astonished Zephas helpless in his awkward consternation.

“By Gum! I must take her to 'Frisco right off, or she'll be havin' the
high strikes here alone. I oughter knowed it would come to this!” But
although he consulted “Cap” Simmons the next day, who informed him it
was all woman's ways when “struck,” and advised him to pay out all the
line he could at such delicate moments, she had no recurrence of the
outbreak. On the contrary, for days and weeks following she seemed
calmer, older, and more “growed up;” although she resisted changing her
seashore dwelling for San Francisco, she accompanied him on one or two
of his “deep sea” trips down the coast, and seemed happier on their
southern limits. She had taken to reading the political papers and
speeches, and some cheap American histories. Captain Bunker's crew,
profoundly convinced that their skipper's wife was a “woman's rights”
 fanatic, with the baleful qualities of “sea lawyer” superadded, marveled
at his bringing her.

It was on returning home from one of these trips that they touched
briefly at San Francisco, where the Secretary of the Fishing Company
came on board. Mrs. Bunker was startled to recognize in him one of the
two gentlemen who had taken Mr. Marion off in the boat, but as he did
not appear to recognize her even after an awkward introduction by her
husband, she would have recovered her equanimity but for a singular
incident. As her husband turned momentarily away, the Secretary, with a
significant gesture, slipped a letter into her hand. She felt the blood
rush to her face as, with a smile, he moved away to follow her husband.
She came down to the little cabin and impatiently tore open the
envelope, which bore no address. A small folded note contained the
following lines:--


“I never intended to burden you with my confidence, but the discretion,
tact, and courage you displayed on our first meeting, and what I know
of your loyalty since, have prompted me to trust myself again to your
kindness, even though you are now aware whom you have helped, and the
risks you ran. My friends wish to communicate with me and to forward to
me, from time to time, certain papers of importance, which, owing to the
tyrannical espionage of the Government, would be discovered and stopped
in passing through the express or post-office. These papers will be left
at your house, but here I must trust entirely to your wit and judgment
as to the way in which they should be delivered to my agent at the
nearest Mexican port. To facilitate your action, your husband will
receive directions to pursue his course as far south as Todos Santos,
where a boat will be ready to take charge of them when he is sighted. I
know I am asking a great favor, but I have such confidence in you that I
do not even ask you to commit yourself to a reply to this. If it can
be done I know that you will do it; if it cannot, I will understand and
appreciate the reason why. I will only ask you that when you are ready
to receive the papers you will fly a small red pennant from the little
flagstaff among the rocks. Believe me, your friend and grateful debtor,

“W. M.”


Mrs. Bunker cast a hasty glance around her, and pressed the letter
to her lips. It was a sudden consummation of her vaguest, half-formed
wishes, the realization of her wildest dreams! To be the confidante of
the gallant but melancholy hero in his lonely exile and persecution was
to satisfy all the unformulated romantic fancies of her girlish reading;
to be later, perhaps, the Flora Macdonald of a middle-aged Prince
Charlie did not, however, evoke any ludicrous associations in her mind.
Her feminine fancy exalted the escaped duelist and alleged assassin into
a social martyr. His actual small political intrigues and ignoble aims
of office seemed to her little different from those aspirations of
royalty which she had read about--as perhaps they were. Indeed, it is to
be feared that in foolish little Mrs. Bunker, Wynyard Marion had found
the old feminine adoration of pretension and privilege which every
rascal has taken advantage of since the flood.

Howbeit, the next morning after she had returned and Zephas had sailed
away, she flew a red bandana handkerchief on the little flagstaff before
the house. A few hours later, a boat appeared mysteriously from around
the Point. Its only occupant--a common sailor--asked her name, and
handed her a sealed package. Mrs. Bunker's invention had already been
at work. She had created an aunt in Mexico, for whom she had, with some
ostentation, made some small purchases while in San Francisco. When her
husband spoke of going as far south as Todos Santos, she begged him to
deliver the parcel to her aunt's messenger, and even addressed it boldly
to her. Inside the outer wrapper she wrote a note to Marion, which, with
a new and amazing diffidence, she composed and altered a dozen times, at
last addressing the following in a large, school-girl hand: “Sir, I obey
your commands to the last. Whatever your oppressors or enemies may do,
you can always rely and trust upon She who in deepest sympathy signs
herself ever, Mollie Rosalie MacEwan.” The substitution of her maiden
name in full seemed in her simplicity to be a delicate exclusion of
her husband from the affair, and a certain disguise of herself to alien
eyes. The superscription, “To Mrs. Marion MacEwan from Mollie Bunker, to
be called for by hand at Todos Santos,” also struck her as a marvel of
ingenuity. The package was safely and punctually delivered by Zephas,
who brought back a small packet directed to her, which on private
examination proved to contain a letter addressed to “J. E. Kirby, to
be called for,” with the hurried line: “A thousand thanks, W. M.” Mrs.
Bunker drew a long, quick breath. He might have written more; he might
have--but the wish remained still unformulated. The next day she ran up
a signal; the same boat and solitary rower appeared around the Point,
and took the package. A week later, when her husband was ready for sea,
she again hoisted her signal. It brought a return package for Mexico,
which she inclosed and readdressed, and gave to her husband. The
recurrence of this incident apparently struck a bright idea from the
simple Zephas.

“Look here, Mollie, why don't you come YOURSELF and see your aunt. I
can't go into port without a license, and them port charges cost a heap
o' red tape, for they've got a Filibuster scare on down there just
now, but you can go ashore in the boat and I'll get permission from the
Secretary to stand off and wait for you there for twenty-four hours.”
 Mrs. Bunker flushed and paled at the thought. She could see him! The
letter would be sufficient excuse, the distrust suggested by her husband
would give color to her delivering it in person. There was perhaps a
brief twinge of conscience in taking this advantage of Zephas' kindness,
but the next moment, with that peculiar logic known only to the sex, she
made the unfortunate man's suggestion a condonation of her deceit. SHE
hadn't asked to go; HE had offered to take her. He had only himself to
thank.

Meantime the political excitement in which she had become a partisan
without understanding or even conviction, presently culminated with the
Presidential campaign and the election of Abraham Lincoln. The intrigues
of Southern statesmen were revealed in open expression, and echoed in
California by those citizens of Southern birth and extraction who
had long, held place, power, and opinion there. There were rumors
of secession, of California joining the South, or of her founding an
independent Pacific Empire. A note from “J. E. Kirby” informed Mrs.
Bunker that she was to carefully retain any correspondence that might be
in her hands until further orders, almost at the same time that Zephas
as regretfully told her that his projected Southern trip had been
suspended. Mrs. Bunker was disappointed, and yet, in some singular
conditions of her feelings, felt relieved that her meeting with Marion
was postponed. It is to be feared that some dim conviction, unworthy
a partisan, that in the magnitude of political events her own petty
personality might be overlooked by her hero tended somewhat to her
resignation.

Meanwhile the seasons had changed. The winter rains had set in; the
trade winds had shifted to the southeast, and the cottage, although
strengthened, enlarged, and made more comfortable through the good
fortunes of the Bunkers, was no longer sheltered by the cliff, but
was exposed to the full strength of the Pacific gales. There were long
nights when she could hear the rain fall monotonously on the shingles,
or startle her with a short, sharp reveille en the windows; there were
brief days of flying clouds and drifting sunshine, and intervals of
dull gray shadow, when the heaving white breakers beyond the Gate slowly
lifted themselves and sank before her like wraiths of warning. At such
times, in her accepted solitude, Mrs. Bunker gave herself up to strange
moods and singular visions; the more audacious and more striking it
seemed to her from their very remoteness, and the difficulty she was
beginning to have in materializing them. The actual personality of
Wynyard Marion, as she knew it in her one interview, had become very
shadowy and faint in the months that passed, yet when the days were
heavy she sometimes saw herself standing by his side in some vague
tropical surroundings, and hailed by the multitude as the faithful wife
and consort of the great Leader, President, Emperor--she knew not what!
Exactly how this was to be managed, and the manner of Zephas' effacement
from the scene, never troubled her childish fancy, and, it is but fair
to say, her woman's conscience. In the logic before alluded to, it
seemed to her that all ethical responsibility for her actions rested
with the husband who had unduly married her. Nor were those visions
always roseate. In the wild declamation of that exciting epoch which
filled the newspapers there was talk of short shrift with traitors. So
there were days when the sudden onset of a squall of hail against her
window caused her to start as if she had heard the sharp fusillade of
that file of muskets of which she had sometimes read in history.

One day she had a singular fright. She had heard the sound of oars
falling with a precision and regularity unknown to her. She was startled
to see the approach of a large eight-oared barge rowed by men in
uniform, with two officers wrapped in cloaks in the stern sheets, and
before them the glitter of musket barrels. The two officers appeared to
be conversing earnestly, and occasionally pointing to the shore and the
bluff above. For an instant she trembled, and then an instinct of revolt
and resistance followed. She hurriedly removed the ring, which she
usually wore when alone, from her finger, slipped it with the packet
under the mattress of her bed, and prepared with blazing eyes to face
the intruders. But when the boat was beached, the two officers, with
scarcely a glance towards the cottage, proceeded leisurely along the
shore. Relieved, yet it must be confessed a little piqued at their
indifference, she snatched up her hat and sallied forth to confront
them.

“I suppose you don't know that this is private property?” she said
sharply.

The group halted and turned towards her. The orderly, who was following,
turned his face aside and smiled. The younger officer demurely lifted
his cap. The elder, gray, handsome, in a general's uniform, after a
moment's half-astounded, half-amused scrutiny of the little figure,
gravely raised his gauntleted fingers in a military salute.

“I beg your pardon, madam, but I am afraid we never even thought of
that. We are making a preliminary survey for the Government with a
possible view of fortifying the bluff. It is very doubtful if you will
be disturbed in any rights you may have, but if you are, the Government
will not fail to make it good to you.” He turned carelessly to the aide
beside him. “I suppose the bluff is quite inaccessible from here?”

“I don't know about that, general. They say that Marion, after he killed
Henderson, escaped down this way,” said the young man.

“Indeed, what good was that? How did he get away from here?”

“They say that Mrs. Fairfax was hanging round in a boat, waiting for
him. The story of the escape is all out now.”

They moved away with a slight perfunctory bow to Mrs. Bunker, only the
younger officer noting that the pert, pretty little Western woman wasn't
as sharp and snappy to his superior as she had at first promised to be.

She turned back to the cottage astounded, angry, and vaguely alarmed.
Who was this Mrs. Fairfax who had usurped her fame and solitary
devotion? There was no woman in the boat that took him off; it was
equally well known that he went in the ship alone. If they had heard
that some woman was with him here--why should they have supposed it was
Mrs. Fairfax? Zephas might know something--but he was away. The thought
haunted her that day and the next. On the third came a more startling
incident.

She had been wandering along the edge of her domain in a state of
restlessness which had driven her from the monotony of the house when
she heard the barking of the big Newfoundland dog which Zephas had
lately bought for protection and company. She looked up and saw the boat
and its solitary rower at the landing. She ran quickly to the house to
bring the packet. As she entered she started back in amazement. For the
sitting-room was already in possession of a woman who was seated calmly
by the table.

The stranger turned on Mrs. Bunker that frankly insolent glance and
deliberate examination which only one woman can give another. In that
glance Mrs. Bunker felt herself in the presence of a superior, even if
her own eyes had not told her that in beauty, attire, and bearing the
intruder was of a type and condition far beyond her own, or even that of
any she had known. It was the more crushing that there also seemed to be
in this haughty woman the same incongruousness and sharp contrast to the
plain and homely surroundings of the cottage that she remembered in HIM.

“Yo' aw Mrs. Bunker, I believe,” she said in languid Southern accents.
“How de doh?”

“I am Mrs. Bunker,” said Mrs. Bunker shortly.

“And so this is where Cunnle Marion stopped when he waited fo' the
boat to take him off,” 

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