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True, and Other Stories

by George Parsons Lathrop · English · Gutenberg #35946 · 447,636 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: True, and Other Stories

Author: George Parsons Lathrop


        
Release date: April 24, 2011 [eBook #35946]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRUE, AND OTHER STORIES ***




Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan North Carolina
History & Fiction was the original source for the images.
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive)









                                TRUE

                                AND

                            OTHER STORIES

                      BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP

           AUTHOR OF "AN ECHO OF PASSION," "NEWPORT," ETC.


    FUNK & WAGNALLS

    1884

    NEW YORK
    10 AND 12 DEY STREET

    LONDON
    44 FLEET STREET

    _All Rights Reserved_

    Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by
    FUNK & WAGNALLS,
    In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C.




CONTENTS.


TRUE.

CHAPTER I. HER EYES WERE GRAY

CHAPTER II. THE DE VINES

CHAPTER III. TWILIGHT

CHAPTER IV. A VISION

CHAPTER V. BIRTHDAY TOKENS

CHAPTER VI. A NEW LESSON IN BOTANY

CHAPTER VII. THE RACES, AND THE MOTTO

CHAPTER VIII. ADELA'S LEGEND

CHAPTER IX. LANCE AND SYLVESTER

CHAPTER X. THE LIKENESS

CHAPTER XI. LANCE RETURNS

CHAPTER XII. SYLV'S TROUBLE

CHAPTER XIII. LANCE AND ADELA

CHAPTER XIV. DENNIE'S TROUBLE

CHAPTER XV. ELBOW-CROOK SWAMP

CHAPTER XVI. "I LIVE, HOW LONG I TROW NOT"


MAJOR BARRINGTON'S MARRIAGE


"BAD PEPPERS"


THREE BRIDGES.

I. THE IMPORTANCE OF A HAT

II. FATHER, DAUGHTER, AND--WHO ELSE?

III. LISTENING

IV. THE THIRD BRIDGE


IN EACH OTHER'S SHOES




TRUE.




CHAPTER I.

HER EYES WERE GRAY.


It might have been yesterday, but in simple fact it was three hundred
years ago, that something happened which has an important bearing on
this story of the present.

Antiquity is a great discourager of the sympathies: the centuries are
apt to weigh like lead on an individual human sentiment. Yet we find it
pleasant sometimes to throw off their weight, and thereby to discover
that it is a mere feather in the scale as against the beating of a
heart.

I know that when I speak of Guy Wharton as having been alive and in love
in the year 1587, you will feel a certain patronizing pity for
him--because he is not alive now. So do I. But then it is possible that
you will be interested, notwithstanding--because he was a lover. Would
you like to hear what experience he had? I promise not to go through the
history of those three hundred years. The story of Guy is merely the
starting-point of my narrative.

He was in love with a sweet English girl, Gertrude Wylde, who lived in
Surrey; and she, for her part, was the daughter of a small tenant-farmer
there, well connected as to family, but not well furnished with worldly
goods, Guy's father was a country gentleman; but that circumstance
failed to affect the young man's eyesight and emotions injuriously; he
beheld Gertrude, and he loved her. I can see it all, now, as if it were
something that had happened to myself--how they strolled together in
those wondrous lanes hedged with hawthorn and brier and hazel, which
stray so sweetly over the rolling lands about Dorking; how they met
beneath the old yew tree where, half way up Box Hill, it hung out its
foliage black as night, spotted with strange waxen blossoms of scarlet,
like drops of blood upon a funeral-pall; how they wandered in the
untamed forest of great box trees at the top; what joys they had, what
anxieties beset them.

"And will thy father indeed take his leave of old England so soon?" he
asked her, when they had reached the brow of the hill.

"Yes, in truth," she answered, sadly enough, looking out over the white
chalk highlands, and the arborous glades and open downs, to where the
waters of the English Channel showed soft against the hazy sky at the
horizon, like a blue vein on a circling arm. "And that means that I must
take leave of _thee_, Guy."

"Never, my darling!" cried Guy, drawing her to him. "If thou goest, I go
as well."

"What! Forsake all here--estate and fortune and family? Nay, dearest,
that can never be." But, as she spoke these words, Gertrude pressed her
face upon his shoulder and gave way to tears. Then presently, raising
her head and gazing up into his face: "How should it be possible?" she
asked.

"Easily enough, if thou wilt," he replied. "I would go as thy affianced
husband."

Thus it was settled that he also should join the colonizing expedition
with which Gertrude's father had resolved to embark, under the patronage
of Sir Walter Raleigh. Its goal was Roanoke Island, Virginia.

As the lovers walked homeward in company, and parted to go their
separate ways, they felt as if their feet already trod the shores of the
New World. "But when we are there," said Wharton before he left her at
the turnstile that ushered the way to her father's farm--"there we shall
have no more partings."

Alas, he was but a poor prophet!

Difficulties came up. Wharton's father violently opposed the plan that
Guy had made. That, however, might not have prevented its execution, had
not a fatal thing happened just at the critical time. On the eve of the
sailing of the expedition, Guy's father died. That which his bitterest
activity while alive failed to effect was accomplished by his white and
silent presence as he lay dead in the old manor-house. At such a moment
Guy could not go away; the unspoken edict of death restrained him
absolutely. Besides, the elder Wharton's affairs were left in a
confusion which it would take long to clear up.

So the ship sailed without Guy; but you may be sure he was at the wharf
when she weighed anchor, and that he bade a tender farewell to Gertrude,
promising that he would follow with the first convoy that should be sent
to re-enforce and victual the new colony. At the instant when he had to
leave her, she said, as if answering his words, uttered many weeks
before at the turnstile: "Yes, dearest, we shall meet soon in that other
world, and there shall be no more parting."

Guy did not think of the exact expression, just then; but as he
travelled back to the manor-house, now his own, he kept saying to
himself involuntarily: "That other world? God grant it may not mean the
world beyond!" When he stepped within the door, his eye rested on the
inscription over the great fireplace of the hall:

    "I live, how long I trow not;
    I die, but where I know not;
    I journey, but whither I cannot see:
    'Tis strange that I can merry be."

Many a festival had been held beneath the unnoticed shadow of those
solemn lines; the laughter and the cheer, the sobs and murmurs of many a
voice forever hushed, had echoed from the wall where the verses were
graven; but it seemed to him that the motto had never gained its full
meaning until now.

    "I journey, but whither I cannot see."

Gertrude had gone out into the great void of the unknown spaces; and he
was to follow her--whither?

It would indeed have been strange if he could have been merry; and, to
say truth, he was not greatly so; but he kept up his hope indomitably.

At last everything was arranged: he was ready to go. But he had to wait
for the relief expedition to sail. In those days it was a great
undertaking to prepare for a journey across the Atlantic. Raleigh was
busy, perplexed, anxious: three years went by before Admiral John White
started from Plymouth with three little ships (one for each year) and
two shallops. But when he did start, Guy was on board.

It had been agreed with the colonists that, if anything went wrong and
they should find it best to look for a new site, they should remove to a
spot fifty miles inland among the friendly Indians, and should carve
upon a tree the name of the place to which they were going. In case
misfortune befell them, a cross was also to be carved above the name of
their destination.

When, after a five weeks' voyage, Admiral White's vessels approached the
shore of Hatteras, they anchored some miles out, for safety, and sent a
boat in to the shallow Sound. Guy was in the bow of the boat which
steered for Roanoke Island. The crew, when they had come near enough,
blew trumpet-blasts as a signal of their approach, and sang songs of
home--old English glees and madrigals--that had often echoed in the
fields, the groves, the farmhouses of Surrey and Kent. Attracted by the
sound the colonists, they hoped, would make their appearance the sooner.
But how strangely these familiar strains fell upon the ear in the
primeval solitude of those lonely waters, on that lovely April day! So
strangely, indeed, that one might almost fancy the colonists did not
recognize them anymore, and hence failed to respond. Yet the trumpets
continued to ring out on the air, and the gay songs were trolled
cheerily, as the boat drew near the landing-place.

It may be imagined what an eager lookout Guy kept up at the bow. Ho
believed every moment that, at the next, he should see Gertrude emerging
from the woods and waving her hand to him. Still, not a sign of life had
been given when he stepped ashore.

The little party began to be oppressed by forebodings. They set out
through the forest, eagerly searching for some token of their
countrymen's presence; but no voice answered their calls, except those
of unaccustomed birds and astonished squirrels; and no trail was found
upon the light brown soil, other than the marks of an Indian moccasin or
the curious dottings made by the feet of furtive animals.

At last, however, the seekers came to a tree which confronted them with
three rudely carved letters cut upon its side.

    C. R. O.

That was all. There was no indication of the cross, the symbol of
distress. The men burst into exclamations of delight; yet Guy, though
his heart bounded high with reviving hope, suffered a terrible suspense.
The sturdy tree had, as it were, found a voice and spoken; but it had
uttered only one vague, baffling syllable. Of what use was that feeble
clew? Still he pressed on, having no idea which way to turn, but guided
by some inspiration; and presently, shouting to his companions, he
pointed to another conspicuous tree which bore upon its blazed trunk the
full name of the colony's new abiding-place. The letters missing from
the first inscription had doubtless been worn away by storms. The word
engraved upon the fibre of the second tree was "Croatan."

The friends of the colonists did not know precisely where Croatan lay;
and though Guy urged an immediate exploration, the rest thought it
impracticable. The distance from the ships threatened danger of being
separated from the expedition by some accident, and left alone without
supplies. So, having read the brief message of the departed colonists,
the boat party returned to the little squadron and reported.

A storm arose; anchors were lost; the supply of fresh water had run low;
and a council called by the Admiral decided that prudence required
taking a southerly course to find some safer harbor; advising also that
an attempt should be made to capture some Spanish vessels and return
with the booty and provisions to find the lost colony. In vain Guy
pleaded, with anguish in every word, that at least one of the ships
should cruise near the coast off which they now lay and await the first
favorable moment for prosecuting the search. The Admiral and his
captains were inexorable; and the southern course was taken.

None of the vessels ever went back to the aid of the English at Croatan.

The captain of that one on which Guy Wharton was a passenger turned her
prow toward England after a little time. Once more at home, Guy made
every endeavor to have a new fleet equipped; but all his attempts
failed. He was on the point of selling everything he owned, in order to
fit out at least one ship and carry substantial aid to the exiles, when
certain commercial ventures, in which a great deal of the property left
to him was involved, went amiss and left him helpless. Restless,
unhappy, almost broken-hearted, he entered on the struggle to
re-establish himself; no opportunity occurred for him to sail to
Virginia again; and so much time passed by, that such an undertaking
came to look hopeless. Even could he have gone, what would he have
found? Perhaps Gertrude by this time had died. Or, perhaps, thinking
herself forsaken or forgotten, as the whole community of emigrants
seemingly had been, she might have married one of the colonists.

The old hope went out of Guy Wharton's life; but though, after some
years, he took a wife, he never lost the pain which this tragedy of his
youth had planted in his breast.

And they, meanwhile, the vanished exiles--what was their life; what were
their thoughts? How long their hope survived, no one can even guess.
Without resources beyond those which the friendly Croatans themselves
had; living a rude and simple life among the natives in that wild and
lonely land; did they watch day after day for some sign of sail or
fluttering pennon coming up the river, or listen for some sudden
bugle-note or gun-shot, announcing the approach of relief? Did Gertrude
keep up her faith through the weary years, hourly awaiting her
lover?--fancying she heard his voice close by?--then waking again to the
reality of the lonely stream, the fluttering forest-leaves, the uncouth
habitations, the garments of deerskin and the swarthy savage children at
play?

God only knows; for of all those hundred and fifteen wanderers, men and
women, not one was ever seen among the civilized again. They passed from
the region of the known and the recorded into the vagueness of
unlettered tradition. From the midst of history they were transplanted
into myth. They faded out amid those dusky tribes in the forest, as the
last streak of light in the west fades into darkness at nightfall.

A hundred years afterward the Indians of the Hatteras shore were
described as declaring with pride that some of their ancestors were
white and could "talk in a book," like the later Englishmen who were
then established in Virginia. It was taken as confirmation of this
story, that some of the Indians who told it had gray eyes.

_Her_ eyes were gray.




CHAPTER II.

THE DE VINES.


On a little headland at the southern end of Pamlico Sound where it
narrows in to the waters of Core Sound, a small dwelling-house, half hut
and half cottage, looked forth over the liquid expanses with an air of
long habitude and battered self-reliance. It had but two meagre windows,
and its chimney was short and black, suggesting an old tobacco-pipe; but
the little house leaned comfortably against the low sandy ridge at its
back, and did not seem to mind any of the imperfections in its own
facial aspect. Along the ridge live oaks and red cedars flourished
gracefully, and the ancient structure was closely enfolded at either
side by thickets of that kind of holly known in the region as _yaupon_,
the polished leaves and warm red berries of which glistened cheerily in
the sunlight. Indeed, the whole place, dilapidated though it was, had
the reassuring appearance of a home; and when from its narrow doorway a
beautiful young woman stepped forth into the breezy afternoon, nothing
more was needed to complete the effect.

If it was a home before, it now looked the ideal of a home.

The young woman turned to the holly bushes at the left and began
clipping from them some of their lighter branches, which she let fall
into a large basket, held gracefully against her hip with one rounded
arm, while the other plied the shears. She was tall, but not fair. No
daughter of the gods, but firmly and robustly human; yet, at the same
time, there was in her humanity something noble and inspiriting. Am I
not going too fast? Why talk in this way about a young girl in a calico
gown, cutting holly-sprigs beside a tumble-down old cabin on the Nawth
Ca'liny shore? No, she was not fair as to complexion; her skin was
richly browned by out-door life, though a clear rose-tint shone faintly
through the brown. She was beautiful, nevertheless; and yet--and yet
what was it? It seemed as if that outer hue could never under any
circumstances wear off. But a mere glance at her features would convince
any one that she was not of octoroon or metif parentage. Only it was as
if the sun, watching over her loveliness from birth, and searching into
the depths of her nature, had warmed her blood until it had darkened a
little and her pulses had spread a shadow in their flowing.

Suddenly she desisted from her work and, bending her head forward, gazed
off across the light green waves that stretched for miles between her
and the low-lying strip of sand that barred out the sea. Had she heard a
distant hail from the boat that was scudding fast toward the headland?
At any rate, there was the burly little craft, careening to the lively
breeze amid a shower of spray, with a recklessness characteristic of the
young helmsman, whom the girl's bright eyes would have recognized even
farther away. And now, as the craft abruptly veered to windward, to
approach the landing, her master's careless handling received a
startling illustration, for she almost broached to; the sails were laid
aback, and for an instant the boat threatened to capsize.

There was one passenger, an old woman, who sat near the helmsman; and at
this juncture she snatched from her lips a short clay pipe, emitting a
shrill cry of fright, together with an alarmed whiff of smoke--as if she
herself had unexpectedly exploded.

"Lord save our souls, Dennis! What be you thinkin' on?"

"All right, auntie!" cried the young man, heartily. "The critter'll
come straight in half a turn." And, exerting all his force, he caused
the dug-out to round into her course again, with the breeze on her
quarter. Two or three minutes later she touched the shore.

The young woman, having thrown down her basket, stood ready to greet the
new-comers.

"Well, Deely dear!"

"Why, Aunty Losh, it don't seem possible that it's you come back again.
And so you're really here."

"Yes; a'most really--though, as you see just now, I come nearer
drowndin' in front o' my own door, Deely."

Dennis submitted his stout frame to a convulsive laugh, which for an
instant gave him some resemblance to a dog shaking himself on emerging
from the water, "Drownded in half a fathom," he exclaimed, hilariously.
"I'll be dog-goned if that ain't the cutest, aunty! Why, I'm almost
sorry we didn't overset the old boat, to show you. It would have livened
you up fit to kill."

"Dennis!" exclaimed Deely, her eyes flashing indignantly, "you ought to
be ashamed."

"Oh, never mind the boy," Aunty Losh soothingly interposed. "It's his
natur' to be wild, ye know. He ain't never happy unless he's in some
dare-devil scrape. But where's Sylvester?"

Deely, with eyes cast down, appeared needlessly embarrassed. "He went up
to Beaufort to market," she explained.

Something in her tone caused Dennis to glance at her rather fiercely, as
if he were jealous. "Yes, that suits _him_," he muttered, with a trace
of contempt. "Market business is just about what Sylv is good for;
that's what it is."

"It aren't right to speak so of your only brother, Dennis," said Aunty
Losh, mildly.

"Oh, dog gone it!" (Dennis reverted to his favorite expletive.) "What
does it matter whose brother he is? I speak my mind. Deely, don't look
so down on me. What's the trouble?"

"Only you're so rough," said the girl, laying her hand on his arm. "You
know I love you, don't you, Dennie? But it goes against me to hear you
talk so."

He placed his own rough hand on her smooth one and patted it softly for
an instant; then he moved it somewhat brusquely from its resting-place
on his shoulder, and Deely drew away a step or two.

"I _catch_ all the fish," he said, "and Sylv _takes_ 'em for himself."
There seemed to be an undertone of double meaning in his remark. But the
next instant he changed from gloom to sunny cheer. "Come, aunty, you
mustn't stand here on the mud. I reckon you've been away so long you'll
be kind o' glad to see the inside of the old cabin again; hey?"

He was tall and sturdy, this Dennis De Vine; and though he could not
have been described as handsome, his reddish hair and ruddy coloring,
united with the glance of his blue eye and a certain good-humored Irish
daring of expression, made his presence gay and attractive. Aunty Losh
was quick to act on his suggestion, and they all went into the cabin,
which despite its limited frontage spread out sufficiently, within, to
afford rooms for the old woman and her two nephews.

"Now, aunty," said the girl, "the tarrapin is most ready, and I'll brew
you a good cup of yaupon. I was just cutting some to dry when you came."
And thereupon Adela, taking a handful of the seasoned leaves from their
place of storage in a cupboard, swung the kettle from the fire and
proceeded to infuse this local substitute for tea.

"My patience, but it's dear to my buddy and heart," Aunty Losh murmured,
as she sipped from the smoking cup. "An' now tell me what's happened
while I been away."

"Why, Sylv wrote you everything that happened hyar," Adela reminded her,
in some surprise.

"Oh, I know, I know!" was the rejoinder. "But it didn't seem nachul-like
when I had to have folks read it to me. I didn't mo'n half get it in."

"There ain't nothin' very novel," said Dennis, "except old Sukey strayed
off on to the main yistiddy." Sukey was the cow.

"Sho! It'll allays be so, long as I live. Nothin' but stray and find,
stray and find. Ye _mout_ hev dug that ditch across the neck, Dennie,
when ye knowed I wanted it so bad. If you'll do it one o' these
near-comin' days, I'll knit ye a new pair o' socks."

The headland on which Aunty Losh's house had been built was connected
with the main only by a narrow neck, and it was one of the grievances of
her life that her cow and her two or three sheep, when turned loose to
graze, could so easily make their way to the adjoining territory.

"I'm fearsome o' the tides," Dennis explained. "They run so strong that
mebbe they'd cut a wider channel than you want, aunty. But I'll try it;
I'll dig that ditch by-and-by--or arterward."

The talk then turned to other matters, and Miss Jessie Floyd was
mentioned, the daughter of an ex-Confederate colonel who lived a few
miles inland on an "estate" of some dozen acres, magnificently entitled
"Fairleigh Park."

"Miss Jessie's been down hyar two or three times," Adela said, "to buy
bluefish and tarrapin for the manor; and she was very kind to the boys.
Wasn't she, Dennie?"

"That she was. She brought us jelly, one time." Dennis gently smacked
his lips, in a reminiscent way.

"I reckon she hain't brought any money, though," his aunt skeptically
meditated, aloud. "Any company up at the manor?"

"Why, yes," said the girl. "There's a young gen'l'man from the Nawth--a
sort of English chap, I reckon; anyhow, he comes from New York. Mr.
Lance; that's what they call him. I hain't seen him, but Dennis can tell
you."

"Certain shore," said Dennis. "That's his name. He's got idees about
buildin' up. He wants to eddicate folks all round--sort of free snack of
knowledge for everybody."

"I reckon he'll be eddicating Miss Jessie to fall in love with him,"
Adela observed. "That's what."

"Well, I sha'n't find no fault with him if he do," Dennis returned.
"Only he needn't come down hyar away with his idees and all. 'Pears like
him and Sylv 'ud be chancey to take up with one another, though."

"What makes you think that?" Aunty Losh asked, with a trace of
apprehension.

"'Cause Sylv don't think of nothin' now but book-larnin', and he's been
hevin' talks with that ar fellow."

"Sylv'll be goin' off and leavin' us one o' these days," the old woman
mused, as she put a match to the short pipe she had been filling for
herself.

"Oh no, aunty! You ortenter think he'd be so mean!" Deely protested,
with energy.

Dennis turned upon her, angered. "You keep still, d'you har!" he
exclaimed. "What matters if he do go? I reckon I can take car o' you and
aunty, all by myself, when it comes to that."

Deely was evidently impressed by his dictatorial manner, but she assumed
a haughty air. "_I_ reckon it's about time for me to go," she retorted,
"if you can't be more civil. Just when aunty hain't no more'n set her
foot inside o' home, too." And, despite her tone, there was a slight
appearance about the girl's lips and eyelids as if she would like to
cry.

"Oh, well; I didn't mean nothin', you know I didn't," Dennis answered,
becoming penitent. "And when you go," he added, "I'm a-goin' with you as
far as your dad's."

The rising trouble was thus allayed, and all three were soon engaged
again in talking over the news, or the local affairs of the last few
weeks. For Aunty Losh had achieved one of the most remarkable events of
her life, in going to see some of her relatives at Norfolk, Virginia.
She had much to tell about the journey and the ways of the people in
that great city, and dwelt especially upon the hardship she had been
compelled to suffer in drinking "China tea," instead of that far
superior docoction, yaupon. The young people, in their turn, gradually
discovered many little items which they must impart to her.

Aunty Losh, strange as it may seem, was the sole female representative
of a stock which once gave promise of making itself distinguished. Her
lineage was traceable from a certain Major De Vine, a young Irishman
who, stirred by the sympathy that led the natives of two widely separate
but oppressed countries to join the cause of the American colonies, had
enlisted in the cavalry corps raised by Count Pulaski to join the
Continental army, during our Revolution. Pulaski was a Pole, and De Vine
an Irishman, but they had the same inspiration: they fought for freedom
in America with the hope that their own people might also become free.
De Vine performed many a gallant deed, in the course of the war, and
rose to be a major; but the consciousness of his good service was his
only recompense.

At the peace he retired from the struggle poor, and ill fitted to make
his way by other means than the sword. He settled in the South, where
the soil was not favorable for such a man as he. What little property he
possessed was soon lost. Moreover, he and his children having
surrendered to the reigning prejudice against work, there was no way
open to a retrieval of even the meagre comfort they had at first
commanded. The family, failing to make any advantageous alliance by
marriage--which, indeed, would scarcely have been possible in their
circumstances--soon declined into still deeper poverty. The Major died,
followed by all his children excepting one son, who drifted across the
border into North Carolina; and his posterity became a part of that
strange population known as "poor whites."

Listless and inefficient as those people are, germs of energy are known
to have been fostered among them, which have sometimes developed; and
the De Vines always retained enough of their ancestral vigor to
counteract their ancestral pride, as well as their sense of unmerited
misfortune, and to keep them somewhat above the general hopeless
prostration of the class into which they had fallen.

Aunty Losh, widowed by the Rebellion, and left childless, had settled in
the little hut on the headland, with her two nephews, mere boys at the
time, but now grown to efficient manhood. The elder one, Dennis, was
stalwart and courageous, and became a successful fisherman on a small
scale. Sylvester had also assisted in the common support, and together
they had made a little headway. But in Sylvester the ambition for
something higher had awaked: he had not only learned to read, but had
actually become a student, and was now taking steps toward what seemed
to his aunt and brother the attainment of a distant and dangerous
witchcraft--namely, making himself a lawyer. Neither of them believed
that he would ever accomplish this chimerical design, but Sylvester's
scheme was always present to them in the guise of an impending danger,
which was just as dreadful as if it had been realized. In fact, it was
worse, because it seemed to them a spell in which he had been caught,
and to which his life would ultimately be sacrificed. They regarded him
with the mingled envy and commiseration that we are apt to bestow upon
those who have the strength to devote themselves to an idea which we
think is going to prove a failure.

Dennis, on the contrary, had never troubled himself to learn anything
beyond that which his own instinct and contact with the forces around
him could teach. There was a vague tradition stored up in the dust-heaps
of Aunty Losh's mind, to the effect that his ancestor, the Major, had
once at the siege of Savannah cut his way through the British with a
detachment of Pulaski's Legion, and that in so doing he had slain with
his own hand eleven of the enemy. Well, it was with the same sort of
desperate rush that Dennis cut his way through the problems of
existence. He was good for a short, sharp struggle, but he was not
steady, and had no ability to plan long manoeuvres or patient
campaigns.

A streak of fierceness remained in him, also, derived from the man who
had been so deadly to his enemies when placed in a perilous dilemma. As
there were no British opposed to him, it did not manifest itself in just
the same way; and, thus far, being temperate in his habits and having no
foes so far as any one knew, he had not slain anybody. But his
passionate impulses asserted themselves plainly enough at times, to the
discomfort not only of others, but also of himself.

Here they were, then, these three people, the remote offspring of that
old Revolutionary officer, living humbly on the North Carolina shore,
unlike as possible to what Major De Vine might at one time have supposed
his descendants would be, yet bearing his blood in their veins, and
acting out every day his traits or those of some still earlier
progenitor, with as much exactness as if what they did and said had been
a part written for them in a play.

They knew nothing about the romance of Guy Wharton and Gertrude Wylde,
so far back, so musty with age as it seems, yet so alive and fragrant, I
think, when we pluck it out from the crumbled ruins of the past where it
grew. They knew nothing of the deposit of stones in the waters up by
Shallowbag Point, near Roanoke, which--being of foreign character--are
probably the ballast of one of Raleigh's vessels thrown overboard there,
in the stress of weather; nothing, except that Dennis had learned to
steer clear of it at low tide. But when you consider the destiny that
had befallen the family of the gallant young Revolutionary fighter, how
much did it differ from that of the English colonists whose race had
been extinguished in savagery? The change which had taken place was,
essentially, of the same kind.




CHAPTER III.

TWILIGHT.


When the group at Aunty Losh's cabin had finished what they had to say,
Adela Reefe rose to go; and Dennis, taking his gun from a corner of the
room, prepared as a matter of course to accompany her.

"Sun'll be goin' down," he remarked, languidly, "by the time I'm
a-comin' back, and I'll have a right smart call to get a few birds."

"I wish ye was goin' t'other way," Aunty Losh said, fretfully. "Ye mout
see suthin' o' Sylv. It's quare he don't come 'long when he knows his
old aunty's a-waitin' for him."

"Oh, he's young, aunty. You got to give him some play," said Dennis,
with fine sarcasm, though he knew well enough that his younger brother
was more mature and better balanced than he.

But his demeanor underwent a change as soon as he had passed out of the
doorway with Adela. The air of lazy jesting disappeared; his face became
earnest, and he walked with a kind of meekness beside the girl, looking
at her guardedly with a devotion that did not lose the grace of a single
motion of her lithe figure. Leaving the headland, they took the
direction of Hunting Quarters, a fishing village several miles distant,
where Adela lived alone with her father, a nondescript personage
depending for his livelihood upon equally nondescript and fragmentary
lore of a supposed medical character. Old Reefe, to say truth, was held
in awe by some of the simple neighborhood folk, as a man possessed of
mysterious and magical powers.

The two had gone some distance without speaking, when Dennis began
abruptly: "I got somethin' to say to ye, Deely, what I was waitin' to
say till aunty come back. It didn't seem everyways fair to say it
afore."

"What in time is it wouldn't be fair for you to say to me, Dennie?" she
asked, turning her face quickly toward him, her lips parted in a smile,
or perhaps only in eagerness.

"Why, when you was comin' over, tendin' me and Sylv and the cabin, it
didn't look like it was right," Dennis said. "But now there's a free
course, and I want to lay for home."

"That's a good word," Adela threw in, seeing him pause.

"Yes, and you know what I'm after. I want ye to say when you'll marry
me."

Deely, at this, was quick to avert her glance. She remained silent.

"Well, what's in the wind now?" he persisted. "Ain't ye goin' to pass me
an answer?"

"What _can_ I say to you?" she returned, earnestly. "I love you, Dennie,
as I told you long ago; and I want to be your wife. But where are we to
go? What have we got to live on?"

Adela's speech varied from the customary manner of the locality to a
more precise and refined utterance, according to her mood; for she had
shared in Sylv's progress to the extent of taking lessons from him in
reading. This had caused her to observe Miss Jessie Floyd's
pronunciation, and that of the few other cultivated persons whom she
occasionally saw, so that she had learned to copy it. The instant she
found herself in opposition to Dennis, she unconsciously assumed that
superior accent, the effect of which upon him was by no means
mollifying.

"Oh, don't go for to go on that tack now!" he exclaimed. "I've hearn
enough on it a'ready. I mean squar' talk now, and I ain't goin' to be
fooled, neither."

"Answer _my_ question, then," said the girl, peremptorily. "That's no
more than fair."

"Why, there ain't no trouble," Dennis assured her, becoming amiable
again. "I reckon we can make out to live together as well as we can
separate one from t'other."

"How?"

"Just like we do now. 'Pears to me the fish 'll bite as easy when they
know they've got to make a dinner for we uns, stead o' for Aunty and
Sylv, and the tarrapin 'll walk up to be cotched, and ground-nuts and
rice 'll allays be plenty."

"Yes, yes, Dennie; but who's goin' to take keer of Aunty Losh?" said
Adela, dropping back into the easier way of talking.

The young man's face fell, and he wrinkled his forehead. "That's a fact;
that's a fact," he murmured, sadly. "Poor ole aunty! She's been a true
mammy to we uns, and it ain't nachul to leave her be by herself. But
Sylv mout take keer on her, Deely."

"Sylv's younger than you," she objected. "'Tain't his portion to do
that."

"Mebbe he ar young," said Dennis; "but he's got a darn'd sight cuter
head, some ways, than I have. And you mind now what I say, Deely, this
hyar thing has got to stop one o' these hyar days. If it hadn't been for
Sylv's mopin' over them books, and a-glowerin' and tryin' to make his
self too wise, I'd a-been a heap better fixed."

"But Sylv wouldn't a-been," was the answer; "and he's worth thinkin' on
a little."

Dennis laughed scornfully. "A little! He's a heap too much wuth thinkin'
on."

Adela ceased walking, and faced round upon him, at the same time
brushing away with one hand a tress of her crispy black hair, which the
wind had blown across her eyes. She wanted to meet his gaze directly.
"What do you mean by that?" she demanded.

Dennis was her match for belligerency. "I mean," he said, "that that ar
youngster takes up too much 'tention. Thar ar'n't no time for
considerin' on no one else. It's allays Sylv's ways and Sylv's idees,
and he can't do nothin' for himself, but some one else hev got to do it
for him. An' here am I, one month arter another, findin' the ways for
him and aunty to live, lettin' alone myself; whiles he goes smellin'
arter them old books what's made o' yaller hide that ain't no better
than the skin off'n our Sukey's back. An' that's whar the bits and the
dollars go, that you and I might be enjoyin' if 'twarn't for his
dog-goned concayt of lawyer's jawin' and politics and parla_ments_.
That's what! An' I'm tired on it, I tell ye. What I mean?" Here the
young fellow's handsome, free-colored face became clouded with passion
that darkened it as with the shadows of a thunder-cloud. "I mean, Deely,
that if you are a-goin' to put Sylv up agin me, every chance comes
along, thinkin' o' his good and not o' mine, ye're not nigh so lovin' o'
me as ye are o' him. D'ye un'stan' me, now?"

Adela shrank back slightly, as if he had levelled a sudden blow at her.
Then she replied: "If that's all ye got to say to me, Dennie De Vine, ye
can just go back on your tracks to the cabin, and I'll go to the
Quarters alone."

Dennis forgot his anger in anxiety. "But there's the tide-way ye can't
cross," he said.

"I've done it afore now, by myself," replied the girl. "'Twant for
nothin' you learned me to row and sail. Ah, Dennie"--her under-lip
trembled as she spoke--"it ar'n't right in you to treat me so. If you'd
only remember those times when we were children! You was always good to
me, then. Why ar'n't you good to me now? I feel just the same about you
as I did in those way-off days. I never loved any but you--and old dad."

The poor child's head was drooping, as she finished; and, but for pride,
she would have wept.

"All right, then, Deely," began Dennis. "If that's so, I'm sorry--I
started for to say, I'm glad. Only, give me your squar' promise that you
won't let him stand in the way no more. I've kept my hand to the helm,
and I've waited. I've been waitin' a long time. Sylv won't never be no
'count, if he go on as he ar', and we won't be no 'count, nuther. Only
say the word that you'll marry me soon, and that you ain't goin' to let
Sylv stand in the way."

"But you said I cared more for him than I do for you," Adela objected,
less inclined to make peace than before.

"Well then, you can say you don't," he suggested.

"No, I'll never tell you so!" she cried, her eyes flashing. She laid a
hand upon her bosom, which was heaving. "There's somethin' here, Dennie,
makes it hard to say it. I can't! I can't!"

What she intended by this was no more than that, if he could not trust
her without such assurance, it was impossible for her to speak. But
Dennis took it quite otherwise.

"By God, it's true, all an' all!" he stormed. He paused an instant,
seemingly dazed, and then went on: "I didn't fairly believe it afore,
but a little black devil come allays whisperin' it into my ear, when I
was alone, and I couldn't get him out'n my mind. It was Sylv, Sylv,
Sylv--my own brother! Oh yes, you can bet I began to see it, then! I
done my best, and I've waited; but it's _him_ you love, and now I'm to
be throwed over, _I_ am. _I'm_ the one that don't count nary fip. An'
now I believe it, you needn't be afeared. I believe it, and I _know_
it."

Adela was stung by his doubt, and, recoiling from it, made her next move
in precisely the opposite direction to that which her heart prompted her
to take.

"You've done your best?" she echoed, tauntingly. "And what's that?
Mighty little. You can't read, like--like Sylv."

"Sylv be d--d!" shouted her lover. "If ye say another word, I'll kill
him!"

Adela Reefe stood before him, quite calm and unshaken. However she might
fear his violence toward others, she felt no alarm for herself. She knew
her power.

"No, you won't kill him, Dennie," she said. "You're not wicked: you
can't do that wrong. But I'm goin' to tell you what you'll do. You're to
leave me here, and go back by yourself, as I said."

Dennis tossed out a little defiant laugh. "No, I ain't a-goin', nuther.
You'll see me walkin' right alongside o' you till we get to old man
Reefe's, and then I'm a-goin' to tell him the whole yarn, and we'll fix
the weddin'."

"You will go straight back to aunty's," she reaffirmed, quietly.

Dennis's features softened into a pleading expression. "You'll let me go
as far as the tide-way?" he petitioned.

"No."

He hesitated, but presently turned and walked a few steps over the
ground they had just traversed. His gun was slung in the bend of his
right arm. Once more he reverted to her, appealingly, but without a
word.

"You must go," said Adela, gently, standing on one of the little
hummocks into which the land was broken, with the glow of the sinking
sun irradiating her brown and rosy cheeks, her dark gray eyes, and wild
black hair.

Dennis obeyed. She remained stationary, watching him as he withdrew.

But before he had gone out of earshot, he called out to her, defiantly,
like a truant schoolboy: "I'm not goin' back to aunty's. Some o' those
birds yonder got to smell powder, fust."

Accordingly, he sauntered along over the uneven ground, scanning the
narrow territory, the stretches of adjacent marsh, and the clear,
pink-illumined air around him, for snipe or plover. He was the picture,
outwardly, of careless ease and confident health; but, inwardly, he was
far from being placid. There was a turmoil of clashing sentiments and
impulses within him, which he did not understand. He was not sure as to
what he thought, nor could he have told what he felt: he knew only that
he was thwarted, miserable, and angry. He was hurt and helpless, and
drifting on toward some fresh injury, the nature of which he could not
foresee and did not so much as try to guess; for he had no more control
over the passions that tossed his soul than if they had been a raging
sea. Yet, all the while, his gunner's instinct was alert, and the winged
creatures doomed for his prey could not, even had they been gifted with
understanding, have guessed that he was about to avenge his own wounds
by those he would inflict on them.

Adela waited a few moments where she stood; for she, too, was
distressed, and hardly knew which way to turn. The thought of the dreary
home of the herb-doctor, to which she must return, was not alluring; but
she could not go after Dennis, either, to make up with him. Suddenly she
heard a short, hollow report, that was lost immediately in the echoless
spaces over land and water. She started; an indescribable dread seized
her. Why, at that instant, did she think of the foolish threat--empty as
his gun-barrel--which Dennis had made against his brother?

It was nothing but a flying plover that he had knocked out of existence;
she could guess that well enough. But she did not stay to reflect. Like
a frightened thing seeking shelter, she sprang from her place, along the
open stretch, taking the opposite edge of the open ground to that which
Dennis had chosen, and ran lightly on under shelter of the low hillocks,
so as to reach some spot abreast of him.

A strange sight--this maiden running so featly under the sunset-light on
one side, while her unconscious lover strolled along the other! She
glided over the sod with a swiftness and an intuitive caution worthy of
an Indian. Then all at once she halted, so promptly that it might have
been with a premonition of the shock of sound that came almost
simultaneously from a second discharge of the gun--nearer, this time;
much nearer; so near that Adela, standing still, quivering but not
breathless, heard the faint rush of several shot that fell with a sharp
"pat" on the ground, close by her. Glancing up, she saw a small bird
driving through the sky, with dropped feet and frantic little wings,
which seemed to melt away out of sight in a moment, as if by magic.
Dennis had tried too high a shot and missed his aim.

Adela did not flinch, but she continued on her way more slowly.

Dennis also proceeded, popping at the feathered game now and then. He
did not fire again toward the quarter where Adela was lurking; she half
wished that he would. The dangerous greeting of those leaden pellets
would be better than no message at all. She longed to cross over and
speak to Dennis, but could not persuade herself to. He, meanwhile,
gathered only two small birds; the rest that came in his way either
escaped or fell out of reach among the sedges. Slinging the little
creatures into his pocket, indifferently, he went on; and when he
reached the point where he should have diverged toward the cabin, he
resolved to strike into the pine-woods and meet the Beaufort road.

Moody and dissatisfied, he was not inclined to shut himself up in
solitude at this hour with Aunty Losh; for he knew that Sylv, though he
had set out for Beaufort before sunrise, was not likely to have
accomplished the return journey before now. It was a distance of more
than fifteen miles; Sylv had taken his load of fish on a borrowed wagon
which must be left at the town, and therefore would be obliged to foot
the whole way back. Dennis preferred to wait on the road and meet him
there.

Possibly Adela had suspected that he would do this. At all events, on
arriving where she could see him if he had been going toward the hut,
she discovered that he must have taken the other course, and she, too,
protected by the trees which now were frequent enough to afford a cover,
slipped cautiously into the piny woods.

Dennis had not gone far along the rough thoroughfare when a second
figure appeared, moving toward him in the gradual twilight, between the
ranks of long-leaved pines. It was the figure of a man, young and of
vigorous frame, but slightly bent; though that may have been due only to
fatigue or revery. His face was darkened, rendered still more serious in
its thoughtful expression by a straggling beard, which, however, grew in
a picturesque entanglement that added character, instead of obscuring
it. He was dressed with a modest style and care that made an outward
difference between him and the ordinary dwellers on that shore, but his
clothes were of simple "sheep's gray." Under his arms he carried two
books, heavy tomes, the smoky yellow of which, discernible even in that
fading light, showed that they were the ripe husks in which the fruits
of the law are stored.

This was Sylvester.

Dennis waited in the shadow of the trees until Sylv came nearly abreast
of him.

"Hullo, Sylv," he said.

The younger brother gave a start, and stopped abruptly in the rutty
roadway, looking toward the speaker. Then, with a smile of singular
frankness and sweetness, he said in a low, unperturbed voice: "Why,
Dennie, I wasn't looking to find you here. Seems queer, but I was
thinking so hard, all alone, that you almost frightened me."

He spoke with great precision, as was natural in a person of his
studious turn, but without the least primness or affectation. Carefully
transferring a ponderous volume from its place under his right arm-pit
to his left hand, he held the other hand out for a greeting. "Seems as
if I'd been away a week," he said, wearily. "Has aunty come?"

Dennis made no motion to take the proffered hand. "Yes," he said, "she's
thar, and she's waitin' for ye."

His manner was so unusual, so withdrawn, that Sylv was surprised, and
let his right arm fall to his side.

"Why, what's the trouble?" he asked. "You're not like yourself, Dennie.
You are dispirited."

"Anybody could see that," answered the senior in a surly tone, "without
those thar long words. Yes, I am sort o' down; I'm out o' gear. That's
the fact."

"Well, let's go along to the cabin," Sylv proposed, throwing into his
words a soothing tenderness as unconscious as that of a woman's voice.
"Whatever's ailing, we'll consult over it there."

"No," said his brother, refusing to stir. "I want to talk to you hyar."

"I'm downright tired," Sylv objected, mildly. "I've been walking so
long. I made a good trade, though, Dennie. See here."

He laid his books down in the road, and put his hand into his pocket.
Then he withdrew it suddenly, looking alarmed, and began to search
another pocket. Dennis waxed visibly impatient. Finally, plunging into a
third receptacle, Sylv brought to light five silver dollars. "That's
what I got!" he exclaimed, triumphantly.

"That all!" cried Dennis. "Oh, I knowed it, I knowed it! And those thar
books--you worked shares on 'em."

"Yes, I found I could get those, too," said Sylv, with honest
exultation.

Dennis emitted a groan. "Ye've done it agin," he muttered, gloomily.
"Now look hyar, Sylv, ye wisht a second; I'm goin' to give ye my mind.
You're a-takin' the life right out'n me and ruinin' my hopes, and I
ain't stood out about it afore; but dog-gone me if I don't stand out
now. I wouldn't 'a' keered if it hadn't been none but me and aunty,
but--" Here the unhappy man's voice broke. His right arm was occupied
with holding his gun, but he raised his left and wiped away upon the
sleeve the moisture which had gathered in his eyes. "But when it comes
to Deely," he continued, "I ain't a-goin' to let things run as they
hev."

With the instinct of the collector, Sylv stooped and picked up his
books; but, as he rose, he offered to Dennis the money which he held. "I
don't understand," he said, looking puzzled. "What are you talking
about?"

Dennis remained immobile in the shadow of the pines, ignoring the
younger man's gesture. "Keep your money," he said. "D'ye think I'm a
highway robber, to stop ye for what ye've got? It's bad enough that ye
barter away our livin'; but 'tain't that I'm a-thinkin' on. Ye've took
Deely away from me. That's worse; a heap sight worse!"

His brother gazed blankly at him, apparently not understanding. "Deely?"
he said. "_I_ didn't take her. What d' you mean. Where is she?"

"Coward!" cried Dennis, growing violent.

At that word Sylv quivered visibly, and drew himself up, with a pride he
had not shown before.

Dennis, after pausing, went on: "D'ye dar' to tell me ye don't know what
I mean? Deely's home, but I've been a-talkin' with her, and I know it's
so and ain't no other way. She sees how you been a-playin' it on me, but
'tain't no 'count to her. She wants you to go right on, the same way.
'Tain't nothin' to her that you hold us off from bein' married, by that
foolishness and studyin' o' yourn. It's cl'ar as day she thinks a heap
more on you than she does on me. An' I tell ye ye're the one that's to
blame. Ye done it, and ye knowed it. Ye took her heart away from me."

A new perception broke upon Sylv. He contemplated Dennis with a sort of
curiosity, and a smile stirred the loose dark beard about his lips. Any
one but his angry brother might have seen that he regarded the idea of
his being enamored of a woman with a disdain curbed only by a sense of
the comic.

"So you stand up here and tell me that, do you?" he retorted. "Well, all
I've got to say, Dennie, is that you're acting like a fool."

Dennis's hand clutched the stock of the gun, nervously, under the strain
of the effort he made to control himself. "No, I ain't," he declared. "I
been a fool afore, but I ain't one now. I see the whole thing, I tell
ye. She's set her heart on you, and you've set yourn on her."

Sylv braced himself a little, and looked resolute. "Now I give you fair
warning," he said. "I tell you square that I don't care about Adela
Reefe more than as a sister--my sister and your wife that is to be. Are
you going to deny my word?"

"Yes, I am," the other asserted, doggedly.

"And you're going on, after that, to assert that I took her love away
from you?"

"Yes, I am."

"Then I say, _you lie_!" Sylv returned, hotly. The same passionateness
that ruled Dennis was present in him, also, though well concealed under
his habitual calm; but it had broken loose now.

In an instant Dennis lifted his gun to an aim. "No man can say that to
me," he thundered.

His finger slid down to the trigger, and he drew the hammer back.

Sylv stood in the road, unmoved, the books under his arms. "It's too
easy a shot," he said, quickly, but in a low voice. "Besides, I can't
fire back."

"You won't have any call for that," Dennis assured him, grimly. He spoke
coolly, but his rage completely mastered him.

"Stop!" cried Sylv, when the gun-mouth seemed about to burst into flame.

"Stop!"

The syllable was repeated from the woods close by them. Was it an echo?
No; that was impossible; there was no echo in that place, and both men
knew it. Besides, there was a different tone in the voice which seemed
to ring out from the shadow of the pines--an accent of alarm and agony,
unlike the peremptory cry which Sylv had uttered.

Dennis brought down his gun, instantly. "What's that?" he exclaimed,
thoroughly unnerved. He felt as if some supernatural warning had been
given him.

"It sounded," said Sylv, "like--" Here he checked himself, and stared
across the road, trying to make out something among the trees.

Dennis turned in the same direction, and in a moment they had both moved
thither, and were straining their eyes to discover the source of the
sound. But their scrutiny was in vain: nothing appeared. It is true,
they fancied a noise as of some one stirring, some one making a hasty
retreat; but that might have been only the wind that came with stealthy
swiftness from the ocean side and set all the murmurous branches in
movement. Was there a figure flying through the piny arcade? Of that,
also, they could not be sure; for the twilight had increased more and
more, and darkness seemed to ooze through the air like a palpable
exudation from the gummy trees.

The brothers faced half around and exchanged a peculiar glance that was
tinged with awe. But Dennis fell to trembling.

"Hyar! Take it!" he said, in a voice of horror. "Take the gun, Sylv. I
was crazy. What was I a-doin' just now? Oh, take it away from me; don't
let me touch it!"

Sylv, on the point of complying, paused and said slowly: "No, Dennie, I
won't take it. You didn't think what you were doing. I trust you."

Still shaking, Dennis looked at him with a dumb, bewildered gratitude.

"Come," said his brother, stepping again into the path.

Dennis followed him, but as they left the spot he said: "It war like
Deely's voice, Sylv. She saved me, this time."




CHAPTER IV.

A VISION.


That which Adela had seen and overheard so startled and horrified her,
it raised such a war of emotions, that she was unable to reflect upon
what she ought to do. In coming through the woods, obedient to the vague
need she felt of following Dennis, she had heard the rising voices of
the disputants, and when she reached a spot where she could command a
view, she beheld her lover with his gun raised, on the very verge of
committing murder.

For a moment her every faculty was paralyzed. Had the weapon been
levelled at herself, her dread would have been less freezing: she could
have been brave and active on her own behalf. To see another person
threatened with mortal danger, and he the brother of Dennis, was
different. In the presence of impending crimes, human beings seem to
yield to a painless lethargy like that which is said to overcome the
victim of a tiger, even before the claws have made a single wound. The
extreme of terror suspends the faculty of feeling, as of action; and
this is what renders possible the enactment of the most dreadful deeds
in broad day, before a crowd of witnesses.

To shriek would have been the easy resource of some women. Adela Reefe
did not know how to shriek. She might have bounded forward, to stay
Dennis's hand or divert his aim; but her muscles failed her as if they
had been caught and webbed with invisible cords. Besides, any sudden
movement might have resulted only in precipitating a tragic end.

Just then it was that Sylv called out; and Adela echoed him,
half-unconsciously, but with a wilder earnestness. The two exclamations
dissolved the spell that had held her. The crisis was over, and the
catastrophe had been warded off. What was she to do next? If she
appeared, the effect of her sharp outcry might be lost; Dennis might be
maddened to some fresh outbreak worse than the first, by the knowledge
that she had seen him in that awful situation. The difficulties, the
quarrel that might ensue, were she to confront the brothers then, would
be full of peril. There was nothing for it but to hide; and, gliding
from tree to tree, she made her escape.

It was a long time before she finally reached her father's house at
Hunting Quarters that night; for, driven by the agitation which followed
the episode in the woods, and troubled by a cloud of doubts, wonders,
and anxieties that rose upon her mind, she wandered restlessly along the
shore, as homeless and unfettered as the marsh-ponies that were tossing
their manes above the dim, low line of that outer strip of land which,
across the Sound, ran out thirty or forty miles under the evening sky
toward Ocracoke and Hatteras.

Now it happened that Mr. Edward Lance, the guest at Colonel Floyd's, had
been out on a solitary excursion of scientific inquiry, diversified by
fishing, along that same sandy barrier. He stayed later than he
expected; and, boating over to the main in the nightfall, he came
walking along the uneven and indented shore, on his way to Fairleigh
Park, while Adela was still abroad.

Lance was sorry to be so late, but he had abundant material for
agreeable revery with which to occupy himself until he should get back
to the society of Miss Jessie and her father. Some three weeks had
passed since he had come to the hospitable shelter of the colonel's
roof, and he had had time to become much interested in other things than
the errand which had originally brought him hither.

The young man, it should be explained, was a New Yorker, whose tastes
were cultivated and progressive; fortunately for him, he likewise had
money enough to admit of following his bent.

"He is the son of my agent's former partner in business," Colonel Floyd
had told his daughter, when he received the letter which led to his
sending Lance an invitation to visit them. "You don't know his name, my
dear, and indeed it is unfamiliar to me. Mr. Lance senior died some
years since, before my relations with Mr. Hedson, who was in business
with him, began. But I understand that he is an accomplished young
gentleman, who wishes to inquire into the resources of our State--more
especially the coast-belt."

"That's where _we_ live, isn't it, pa?" Miss Jessie inquired.

"Yes, my child," said the colonel, impressively. "He desires to study
our fisheries and other industries--with a view, perhaps, to
establishing some manufacturing or agricultural enterprise. It would not
be at all strange, Jessie, if he were to put capital into something in
our neighborhood. I think he may invest. Yes; he is probably seeking a
field for his capital."

Colonel Floyd said all this as if he were reading a letter or quoting
from a cyclopaedia. That was his habitual way of saying things. I should
hardly call it an affectation, but he seldom spoke at any length without
producing the effect of his being a standard work of reference, which
would always tell you exactly what you wanted to know, and would state
it in the best language.

He was a slender man, with a small but well-shaped head encased in
closely cut hair that had begun to silver; the gray and the black
intermingled, and shone with a glimmering changefulness, like the sheen
of mica. He wore spectacles, and had that precise, tactical expression
noticeable in Confederate veterans of the war and so wholly at variance
with our conventional idea of the romantic Southern type. As the colonel
held the lease of a turpentine plantation which he was working, near his
own modest estate, he was naturally interested in the development of the
"coast-belt," and was disposed to welcome the young Northern capitalist
of whom his agent, Hedson, spoke so highly.

"What do you say, my daughter?" he asked Jessie, after a pause. "Would
it be agreeable to you to have a visitor? Shall we invite Mr. Lance to
stay with us?"

He inspected her kindly through his glasses, as if she had been some
harmless little prisoner of war.

"It shall be just as you like, pa dear," said Jessie, artlessly. "And if
Mr. Lance is coming--why, there's no other place for him to stay. Is
there?"

The unsuspicious would have been forced to suppose, from the forlorn
manner in which Miss Jessie cast her eyes around, that she regretted the
absence of any convenient hostelry for the stranger's harborage.

The veteran, however, saw through her, or fancied that he did. At all
events, he knew that the solitude of the Park, with only a few liberated
slaves and the old housekeeper for company, could not be much more
desirable for his daughter than the presence of a promising young man
like Lance.

Accordingly, it was settled that Lance should come. Here he was, then,
fully established, and--thanks to the perfect hospitality of the old
officer--rejoicing in an unexpected sense of being thoroughly at home in
those warm latitudes. It was now the end of July--a hot time to be so
far South--but Lance's satisfaction with his new surroundings was so
great, that he had decided to remain through the summer, and already
began to think that that period would seem all too short.

While his scientific eye had been riveted upon the processes of
turpentine manufacture, on the number and kinds of food-fish inhabiting
the shallows of the sea, and on the feasibility of turning Elbow Crook
Swamp into a luxuriant market-garden, a finer vision--which he possessed
in common with some others of us who belong to the masculine side of our
species--had been occupied with the dainty yet commanding outline of
Jessie Floyd's face; the saucy charm of her dark hair parted on one
side; her novel, half-childish, yet imperious ways.

He was thinking of her, now, as he traversed the bit of open,
marsh-bordered land alongside the pines, where Dennis and Adela had
taken their unpropitious walk, that day.

The sun had set long before; the twilight had deepened and deepened
until all at once it seemed to meet, in its meditativeness, a thought,
an inspiration, a celestial surprise--and the moon rose, silent and
beautiful, like the embodiment of that thought.

A panorama of memory passed before Lance's mind, embracing pictures of
all the things he had observed during the day, and all that he had seen
since he came to North Carolina. He stood there alone, with the ocean
moaning subduedly beyond the sandy dunes, four miles away, yet audible
through the plash of the nearer waters of the Sound, across which the
warm breeze brought its voice to him. He saw in fancy the green waves,
the ardent sunshine, the low shore with huts or hamlets clustering
occasionally in some favoring nook, surrounded by evergreen oaks and
other verdant growths; the chalky lighthouses, the random sails of
shore-fishers; the green, inaccessible marshes that fringed so much of
the mainland. The poor folk he had met in his rambles, hearty, simple,
ignorant and superstitious, came back to his eye in groups, with the
surroundings amid which he had happened to encounter them. The gloomy
recesses of Elbow Crook Swamp filled in the background of his
memory-pictures; wild birds rose and flew across the sky, as it seemed;
and all the while Lance was oppressed with a sense of the great natural
resources of the region, against which its loneliness, the prevailing
ague, and the shiftless languor of the population opposed themselves as
a dead-weight on all improvement. Yet, stranger and alone though he was,
his soul expanded with the idea of somehow bettering the condition of
affairs and making life there brighter and more prosperous.

Then he, too, emerged from revery as the twilight had from its
sombreness, and faced clearly the new thought that glowed upon him like
the large, sweet moon so dreamily brooding in the sky.

Suddenly he was aware of a shape looming up in the faint moonlight not
far from him; the form of a woman, half of whose body was concealed by a
curve of the ground, in such a way that it might have been thought she
was just rising out of the earth.

The woman was looking seaward. She did not observe his presence.

Such an apparition would, in any case, have given pause to a preoccupied
man upon whom it came without warning; but there was a special reason
why it should affect Lance in an extraordinary manner. Her face offered
itself to him in profile, and was so irradiated by the nocturnal light
that it came out clearly against the sky. Seeing it thus, Lance was
instantly--I might say, appallingly--struck by its resemblance to a face
he had many times seen, one that, in fact, he had been thinking about
only a little while before.

The face was like a darker profile of Jessie Floyd, touched with
moonlight.

At first, of course, Lance thought that he must be suffering from
hallucination; that the day's exposure to the sun had affected his brain
and brought out in a visible form the thought of Jessie, which had been
so constantly with him. But the unknown woman stirred, and he saw that
she was real. Hereupon he scanned her more carefully, guessing that at
least the resemblance which he traced was an illusion. No; it remained
intact. He could not get rid of it. Clearly, the resemblance was real,
no less than the woman.

I have hinted that Lance was of a modestly scientific turn; but he also
had in his constitution many susceptibilities whereof science as yet
knows little, and the phenomenon so abruptly thrust upon his notice
stirred these susceptibilities to their depths. He did not at all know
what to make of it. A fear crossed him that he was becoming as
superstitious as the ignorant folk on whom he had lately shed the balm
of his pity. What did this strange presence and resemblance mean or
portend? Was there not some omen hidden in them?

Another thing disturbed him, affecting his mind very much as a sudden
contact with the supernatural might have done. In Lance's family, which
had sprung from England, fragments of an old story were still extant,
about an ancestor who had been involved with one of the colonizing
expeditions to Virginia. He did not recall every particular of the
story, but sundry items of it were quite distinct. It was said that this
early predecessor had fallen in love with an Indian girl, from whom he
had been cruelly separated; or that he had come to these virgin shores
in search of some one whom he had lost: accounts differed as to that.
But Lance's belief was, that this long-dead member of his long-dead
English family had been in quest of his plighted wife, and that he had
somehow missed her, returning to England alone. Virginia, in those days,
included the territory of North Carolina--the very place to which Lance
had drifted, propelled by a rather vague purpose and a desire for
knowledge as well as recreation. There was nothing very remarkable in
this, perhaps. The young man himself had not thought much about it; for
one does not have time, in the present age, to linger over little
coincidences and bits of ancient family gossip. The old tale had once or
twice flitted through his mind since his installation at the colonel's
manor, but it was not a thing he would have considered worth mentioning.

Nevertheless, because of those occult susceptibilities which I have
mentioned, at the moment of encountering this mysterious woman with her
face turned seaward, the remembrance flashed up over his mental horizon
like a kindling beacon-fire. A marvelling awe took hold of him, and for
his life he could not have shaken off the fantasy that made him conceive
of her as a projection from the shadowy past, an image that typified the
lost mistress, or the forgotten Indian maiden, with whom his ancestor's
life-history had been linked. The circumstance that she was gazing
eastward also had an effect upon him; he could easily have persuaded
himself that she was waiting for her vanished lover to come to her over
the waves.

But the fancied resemblance to Jessie--that was the most bewildering
element of all. Why should it occur to him? And why should he feel such
an unwonted shiver running through his veins?

The simplest way to banish all this nonsense was, doubtless, to go
forward and speak to the girl. The good nature of the inhabitants, Lance
knew, made such an informality excusable; but, as he was about to try
that solution of his perplexity, and find out who this woman really was,
the figure began to descend the slope on the farther side from him, and
disappeared so noiselessly that she seemed to have crumbled and dropped
back into the earth from which she came.

Lance stood still; that curious warm shiver thrilled his veins anew.
Then he turned away and resumed his tardy progress toward the distant
manor-house, muttering aloud: "How can I be such a fool?"

But the vision, notwithstanding, remained imprinted on his
consciousness, and troubled him.




CHAPTER V.

BIRTHDAY TOKENS.


The next morning ushered in Miss Jessie Floyd's birthday anniversary.
The emancipated housemaid, ancient Sally, had given Lance timely warning
of this occasion, and he had taken the precaution to send to New York
for a present which he thought might be acceptable.

The question as to what sort of a gift he should select had been a hard
one to decide. If the truth must be told, he had allowed himself the
inappropriate but impassioned notion that he would like to give her a
ring; inappropriate because he had not yet succeeded in effecting those
preliminaries which justify a young man in giving a ring to a young
woman; though, except for that, it was exactly what would best have
conveyed his sentiments. Just why an ornament for a lady's hand should
have this potent significance, when it is her ear that receives the
lover's confession, was not perfectly clear to him; yet it was plain
that there was no insurmountable objection to his offering Miss Jessie a
pair of ear-drops. He therefore ordered some pearl ones, hoping to
please her. To please himself, he ordered a ring. But the little packet
which lay beside her plate at the breakfast-table, that morning,
contained only the ear-drops. The ring was securely locked in Lance's
private consciousness and his trunk.

Perhaps in order to appease his own self-reproaches for cherishing this
jewelled secret, but also to prevent any embarrassment in Jessie's
receiving a costly trifle from him, Lance thought it best to let Colonel
Floyd know of his intention beforehand. He did so, late in the evening,
after returning from his solitary expedition.

"I hope this will be quite agreeable to you, sir," he ventured, with
becoming deference, when he had explained.

The colonel remembered that he himself had once been young, and probably
found it easy to gauge the effort it cost his youthful friend to
maintain this deference in a case where he was positive that he had an
inalienable right to do as he pleased.

"My dear Lance," he replied, "neither my daughter nor myself can need
any outward token to assure us of the kindly feeling you entertain
toward us. That is the only reason why I might regret that you have
decided to offer one. A simple congratulation or good wishes would have
been enough, I assure you; but I appreciate your thoughtfulness, and
Jessie, I am sure, will be delighted."

"Thank you, colonel. Then it is all right," said Lance, decisively,
feeling as if he had just snapped the cover tight over the pearls and
rescued them from loss.

They were sitting in the room which the colonel, with innocent grandeur,
called his library, surrounded with a few editions of English and Latin
classics, flanked by rows of obsolete works largely relating to
politics; and they were engaged in the unscholarly pastime of sipping
whiskey and water. It may be that the beverage had softened the colonel
into a pensive mood.

"Speaking of congratulations," he said, "these anniversaries begin to
make me think that my Jessie perhaps hasn't got so much to be
congratulated for."

"I think she has a great deal," said his guest, with some fervor. "More
than I have, at any rate. She still has her father--" his listener
smiled sedately--"she has her old home, and--and herself!"

Lance had not known in advance that he was going to wind up with those
words, and was himself rather astonished at them.

The colonel braced his neck and looked at the young man somewhat
narrowly for an instant; after which he subsided, and observed,
good-humoredly: "That is saying a good deal, too. What I had in mind,
however, was the changed condition of everything here--the melancholy
changes that have come since the war. When Fairleigh Park, sir, embraced
five hundred acres instead of twelve, and when I had a hundred good
niggers, it was a very different matter. Why, sir, even in this poor
house there was hardly a stick or a rag left on my return from the
field. My books"--here the colonel waved his arm with proprietary pride
at the faded volumes on his shelves--"my books fortunately had been
removed to Wilmington, where my wife and daughter were in the care of
friends; but a foraging party of the Northern soldiery came here, sir,
in my absence, and, though there wasn't a soul opposed them, they broke
the mirrors, chopped my piano into kindling, stabbed and maimed the
pictures on the walls, and tore the hangings into shreds. Yes, sir, that
was the noble revenge they took upon me for daring to fight in defence
of my native land. Ah, I must not recall those things," he added,
recovering himself. "Thank God, we are a united country once more, and I
don't regret my share of the loss. But I was also thinking, sir, of
Jessie's mother."

The veteran leaned his head on his hand, unable to speak further. There
was a quivering of the muscles in his good old, honest, disciplinarian
face, that touched Lance's heart.

"I can understand what a loss that has been to you," he said,
gently--"and to Miss Jessie."

The colonel raised his head again, and looked with determination at the
opposite wall, mustering his self-control.

Lance resumed, with some hesitation, but impelled to speak at this
precise moment, though he had not contemplated doing so. "I--I have
reflected a great deal about Miss Jessie," he said.

Colonel Floyd's attention was prompt and watchful at once. He regarded
the speaker with mingled friendliness and jealousy. "You are very good,
my friend," said he.

The younger man smiled involuntarily. "I see no great merit in my
thinking of her. I can't help it."

His host hemmed, and gave evidence, by his restless manner, of being ill
at ease. "I don't know that I fully understand you," he began, moved by
a conviction that he did understand with the greatest distinctness.

"Well," said Lance, "I suppose it ought to be very easy to explain
myself; but I find it extremely difficult. I have thought about Miss
Jessie--I wish it were possible to add in any way to her happiness."

The colonel rose. "Pray say nothing more," he begged, not unkindly, but
with some reserve.

"I will say nothing, if you prefer, beyond this: that her welfare and
her future cannot possibly be of greater moment to you than to me."

Lance looked at the colonel squarely until he had finished, and then he
dropped his eyes. There was no mistaking the purport of his tone, which
went farther than his words.

"My dear fellow," said the colonel, stretching out his hand, "from what
I have seen of you I like you; I may say, I esteem you. If you have
anything to say which concerns Jessie more than it does me, tell it to
her."

The other accepted his hand, and pressed it. They stood thus for a
moment, before parting for the night, and Lance saw that the old soldier
approved of him. A strange feeling also came over him, that his host and
he met not so much on the basis of a possible father-and-son
relationship as on that of brotherhood. There was a community in their
love for Jessie; each felt the depth of the other's devotion to her,
different though it was from his own; and to Lance this mutual trust was
of good omen.

Before the breakfast-hour they met again in the pleasant dining-room.
The colonel was mixing a mint-julep by an open window which gave upon
the garden.

"I'm not feeling quite well," he said, "and so concluded to tone myself
up a little. It's a great thing to have a Virginian's grave in your
garden."

"Virginian's grave" was the facetious term, as Lance had learned,
applied to a bed of mint; in allusion to the theory that where a
Virginia gentleman is buried the plant essential to his favorite
beverage in life will spring up and multiply.

He laughingly declined to share in the refreshment, and the two said
little to each other. Their talk of the night before lingered with them
in the form of a slight constraint, mixed with suspense.

But Jessie put all this to flight, when she slipped into the room fresh
as the morning sunbeams. She was quick to notice the white packet on the
table.

"Oh, how lovely of you, pa," she exclaimed as she opened it, "to take so
much trouble! Why, they're exquisite!"

She held the case up admiringly.

The colonel glanced over at their guest, a slight smile wrinkling his
bronzed cheeks with fine lines like those in old engravings; and there
was a trace of guiltiness in his look, as if he and Lance had been
fellow conspirators.

"Don't thank me, my dear," he said. "It's Mr. Lance who was lovely."

"Oh!" cried Jessie. She fastened her eyes on Lance, with a sort of
reproach; and his heart sank.

"They're beautiful, though," she continued. "Thank you _so_ much, Mr.
Lance. Then you didn't get anything for me, pa? Well, I shall have a
kiss, anyway." And she ran toward him.

The old man's gray mustache appeared to revive, as he received the
salute and gave one in return. "Look under your plate, child," he said,
"and you'll find something, will do to give you a treat when we go up to
the races at Newbern."

Jessie trotted back to her place, and the treasure under the plate
proved to be a gold eagle. Another demonstration of filial fondness
ensued, and they all sat down in a good humor; albeit Lance suffered a
feeling of unenviable exclusion.

But in a moment or two Jessie jumped up again, and, with the earrings in
her hand, went to the glass to put them on. She faced around brightly
from her reflected image there, to thank Lance again. "I never _dreamed_
of getting anything so nice," she said, frankly.

And Lance told himself that he, on the contrary, had many times dreamed
of some creature as captivating as she was, but had never quite expected
to find the realization. He wondered how, in this solitude and with no
one to set her the example, she could have grown up into such charming
womanliness.

The doors of Fairleigh Manor, excepting in the most inclement weather,
stood always open--a symbol of the owner's frank and hospitable heart.
And now when the breakfast was over and Jessie had betaken herself with
the two gentlemen to the little morning-room across the hall, a train of
darkies--men and women--presented itself at the entrance, bringing good
wishes and simple gifts to their young mistress. First of all came old
Sally, who folded the fair maiden in her faithful arms and covered her
forehead and neck with kisses. Lance, with his abstract theories of
equality and his concrete prejudices, which made equality impossible,
was rather amazed at this proceeding. He did not relish the spectacle of
the black face in such close proximity to the white one. Involuntarily
he turned toward the colonel, expecting to find in him some support for
his own displeasure; but there was a kindly light in the colonel's eye,
and he looked on with approval as the servants approached, one after
another, to give greeting in their several ways--the women with less
effusion than was permitted to Sally, and the men with awkward bows or
friendly grins that attested their speechless affection. Those who
shared in this demonstration were elderly servants who had once been
slaves, though they were accompanied by a few younger ones--their
children, born in freedom. They all brought flowers and leaves; the
fragrant yellow jessamine being a favorite form of tribute, alternating
with festoons of the trailing vines found in Elbow Crook Swamp, baskets
adorned with gray moss, and little ornaments of woven straw.

The colonel's face grew radiant and tender as he watched them. "Faithful
creatures!" he said, in undertone to Lance. "Most of my people stayed by
me when the fight was over. I told them they were free to go where they
liked, that they didn't belong to me any more, and I couldn't tell
whether I could give them work--much less support them. But they
wouldn't go. They clung round me; and little by little we all got on our
feet again. They said: 'You's been a good massa to us, and we ain't
gwine to leave you now yore in trouble, Massa Cunnel.' And so we built
up, together, what small prosperity there is here now. I had fed and
clothed them, Lance, and spent many thousand dollars in buying them, but
they did not forget everything, as many white people do. I little
thought it would be my old slaves who would help me out in the hour of
need--I to whom _they_ had always looked for help. But so it was. My
God, it has been worth all the cost and the suffering! We are more human
than we were."

The veteran planter was deeply affected; and, as he spoke, a mist seemed
to clear away from the young man's mind, and he beheld the simple
ceremony that was taking place, in a transfigured light.

Here, close to his eyes, was an act in the endless changes and
developments through which humanity is forever passing: the lifting up,
the pulling down, the growth of new types and phases, the subsidence of
old forms of life, accompanied by the survival of certain among their
features.

One of the negroes, bolder than the rest, after wishing Jessie happiness
all her days, said he knew it wasn't right to ask her for anything now,
but if she "would only give him a little book to read in." ... The book
was instantly forthcoming. Jessie went to her secretary, and took one
from the slender row of volumes on its upper shelf. But at this Sally
came forward again.

"Why, missy," she said softly, in Jessie's ear, where Lance's pearl was
trembling, "ole Scip ain't no 'count. He war on'y coachman, you know,
befo'. He didn't nevah b'long to _you_ and the missus. But I come from
_yo'_ side de house, yo' know I does; and now yo' dun gone give him
suffin', why I'd kin' o' like dat ar pink frock what you mos' got fru
wearin'. 'Tain't good nuff for yo', nohow, missy, and ole Sally she'd be
mighty glad on't, ef you don' want it no mo'."

So Jessie laughed, and sent Sally up-stairs to get the garment of her
desire; and from that moment on the reception was metamorphosed into an
exchange of gifts.

The darkies brought in their vines and clusters, and laid them on the
table or draped them with primitive art about the room, until it became
a sort of bower, verdant and perfumed with their offerings; and Jessie
sat there like an unaffected little queen, distributing tokens to this
and that adherent. She knew their humble demands were not prompted by
greed, but that they simply loved the old custom of receiving something
from their mistress, and could not give it up even though times were so
greatly changed.

Lance had now fully entered into the spirit of the scene, and the fancy
struck him that it was a repetition of the old story of savages on the
New World shores worshipping the first white person who came among them.

What if these negroes had been the aborigines, and his Jessie--or Miss
Jessie, rather--had been that Gertrude Wylde whom tradition told of,
receiving their homage? The idle query of imagination, thus propounded,
brought up to him with renewed force the vision, still unexplained,
which had crossed his path on the sea-shore.




CHAPTER VI.

A NEW LESSON IN BOTANY.


In the cool of the afternoon the Floyds and their guest took a drive,
rattling gayly on, in the old carry-all, which was the colonel's chariot
of state, over many miles of light-earthed road screened for the most
part by groves of pine.

The old gentleman discoursed to Lance a good deal about the country and
the people, and gave vent to his natural regret that the class once
dominant had yielded more and more to a hard, pushing set, who were no
doubt doing much to increase the general welfare, but lacked the graces
and the repose of the whilom aristocracy. The young Northerner's own
conviction was that the old aristocracy had succumbed to a relentless
law of nature, for which he entertained the admiration that he believed
all natural laws were entitled to; but he could not help regretting
somewhat the fate that had overcome his friends and their kind; and it
was borne in upon him strongly that so fine a flower of heredity as
Jessie appeared to be--however defective the structure of the species to
which she belonged--ought not to be involved in this decadence.

You will observe that I am giving you his thoughts in the formal and
strictly rational phraseology which it pleased him to adopt. Plainly
speaking, he was very much in love with Jessie, and did not care a rap
about natural laws or anything else, if they conflicted with her
happiness or his chances of winning her.

Meanwhile, as they passed Elbow Crook Swamp, which the road skirted for
a considerable distance, he reverted, with every appearance of absorbed
interest, to his scheme for reclaiming that tract and converting it into
a source of wealth and the means of building up a prosperous, highly
intelligent community. The swamp covered a territory of many hundreds of
acres. It was rank with cypress, evergreen, oak, and laurel, from which
parasitic gray mosses depended in endless garlands, locked in the
embrace of luxuriant vines, that hung or crept down to the edge of that
slow brown stream, the angular turnings of which gave the place its
name. The rich, alluvial soil in which all this greenery rooted held a
promise of unlimited fertility; but the only profit which men derived
from the splendid waste was found in the cane-brakes, that yielded
succulent fodder for hogs or cattle. Lance imagined in this wild expanse
a possibility of great results, which might play in well with his
humanitarian schemes. He had brooded over the matter ever since first
seeing the spot; but the commercial and educational interest attaching
thereto was not the only one that kept him thinking about it. Its
mysteriousness, its lone solemnity; the frowning masses of dense and
forbidding trees; its impenetrability in parts; the danger and
savageness of its hidden depths--all these had wrought upon and excited
him, until it became impossible for him to get the swamp out of his
mind, and he felt that it was somehow connected with his destiny.

In answer to his exposition of his schemes, the colonel, who was fond of
a classical allusion, said: "That's all very fine, Lance; but you
propose a labor beside which Hercules slaying the Lernean Hydra would be
insignificant. You know, that myth is supposed to refer to the draining
of a morass. Hercules was the first man who discovered the still
mythical disease of malaria, and tried to kill it."

But Lance was not to be discouraged by banter. When they got back to the
mansion the colonel judiciously disappeared, and the two young people
were left alone on the veranda. Lance began to talk over his theories
anew with Jessie, as they sat there just outside the window of the
morning-room whence the scent of the pine-boughs, the jessamine, and
flowering vines drifted toward them in occasional puffs of fragrant air.

"The people here need so much help, so much enlightening," he said. "I
can't give up the idea that something might be done in the way of
elevating them."

"Oh, that's only because you're so restless," said Jessie. "You come
from the North, and you find it so dull here that you have to think of
something to keep you busy."

Her lips pretended that they were smiling with indolent mockery; but she
looked so charming, and the contrast between her gray eyes and the
Spanish jauntiness of her dark hair was so attractive, that the young
man began to think opposition was the pleasantest form of encouragement.

"No," he said, quite earnestly; "I don't think it's mere restlessness. I
mean what I say, and I can't help it. And certainly it isn't dull here
for me."

He fixed his eyes for a moment on the boards of the veranda-floor, as if
meditating. Jessie, in her turn, considered him. In his loose blue
flannel suit, with a soft straw hat perched upon his thoughtful head,
but throwing no shadow on his features, to which a small brown mustache
gave additional emphasis, he certainly was handsome; she had never
denied to herself that he was handsome, but she was just now especially
impressed with the fact.

"I am going to tell you something curious," he said, lifting his eyes
unexpectedly, so that she turned hers quickly toward the garden. He had
evidently arrived at the result of his meditation. "It has several times
occurred to me," he continued, "that my interest in this locality may
have a queer, remote sort of origin that no one would ever suspect."

"Why, what's that?" asked Jessie, in a dreamy tone, feeling sure now
that he could not be going to speak of her, since she was neither
"queer" nor "remote."

Thereupon Lance went on to relate to her the legend of Gertrude Wylde
and Guy Wharton, as well as he could from the stories which he
remembered to have heard half jestingly repeated in his father's
household. "I am directly descended from Guy Wharton," he stated, in
conclusion, "but my name is different, because the male line died out
and my father belonged to the posterity of one of the daughters. It's
true, all that romance happened a hundred miles or more from here, way
up by Roanoke, and I didn't think of it in the least when I started to
make this visit; but, some way or other, the thing has come back into my
mind, and I begin to fancy that by an occult law of thought it may
account for my interest in this place--at least, partly."

Jessie was absorbed by his narration, as her attentiveness and her eager
interruptions had shown; but what she said was: "It must be a very
occult law indeed." She also emitted a little impertinent laugh, which
she did not mean to be impertinent.

Lance was somewhat taken aback. "I dare say it's all foolishness," he
admitted; "and there are other elements of interest which are much more
obvious."

She was sorry to have brought such confusion upon him, and hastened to
revive the conversation.

They got to talking about the negroes; and Lance, alluding to the scene
that morning, proceeded to speculate on the problem of the colored race.
"There is something very fine in their relation to you," he said, "but
it belongs to a phase that has passed away. They ought to be educated,
too."

"I'm sure," Jessie answered, "we educate them as much as we can. Didn't
you see me give Scip a book? And I've helped to cultivate Aunt Sally's
aesthetic tastes by letting her have my pink frock. What more can you
ask?"

"You insist upon making fun of me," said Lance, forcing a smile, though
a trifle mortified by her lack of enthusiasm. "But you know I'm right."

"Indeed I don't know it!" exclaimed Miss Jessie, vigorously. "You want
to change everything, but you can't tell what you would get by the
change. You would like to cut down those splendid old trees in the
swamp, and turn it into fresh vegetables and berries for New York. But
the trees are much nobler than the berries, or even wild-flowers."

"Oh no, I beg your pardon; they're not!" said Lance. "Most of the trees
around here are simply monsters. They represent rude, primitive types of
vegetation; they are the earliest specimens of Nature's effort to
produce flowering plants. Why, the common ox-eye daisy is a far more
refined product than they."

"Oh, dear me," cried Jessie, "I never heard that. How much you know! But
I like daisies, too; I don't want any of these things destroyed."

"They sha'n't be, then," Lance declared, with offhand omnipotence.

After that, he branched out into an informal lecture on the
relationships of various plants and flowers, trying, in the sketchy way
that he had learned from cheerfully popular books of science, to give
her some conception of the evolution of new types and the persistence of
old ones in the flora of the earth, together with the manifold delicate
ties of kinship between the different existing forms.

"Then, they are all one big family!" said Jessie, her face lighting with
a sympathy that Lance reverently recorded as being maternal. She was as
much pleased as if she had discovered a new set of thoroughly desirable
relatives. "But oh, Mr. Lance," she added, quickly reflecting, "doesn't
that prove that all these types have got to exist? You say that after
one crude attempt has been followed by a better development, specimens
of the old sort continue--like the pine trees. Now, it seems to me that
it's just the same with the human family. We're all related, but we're
very unlike; and while some of us have gone on improving, the others
have stayed just as they were. The negroes and the poor whites around
here are our monsters--for you say the pine trees are monsters--but if
we have the pines, why shouldn't we have the others?"

She clapped her hands, in her glee at the argument she had discovered;
and it must be admitted that Lance was nonplussed by her swift sagacity.

"But then you must remember," he said, after pausing, "that the human
creation has a much greater capacity for growth than the vegetable; and
we ought to help it forward in its growth. There's Sylvester De Vine as
an example. See how he's rising above his condition! I take the greatest
interest in that young fellow, and I believe I'm bound to assist him as
far as I can."

"Yes, that's true," Jessie acknowledged. "But it's very nice to have all
these contrasts. I don't want them abolished."

Lance could not but be aware that he didn't want them abolished, either.
Would he have been willing to obliterate all the differences that
existed between Jessie and the majority of the surrounding population?
Did he want all other women to be just like her? On the contrary, the
reason why he preferred her was that she represented a higher
development, a "more specialized" form, an exception to the common mass
of inferior beings.

"You're right," he said. "It _is_ nice to have the contrasts. I admit
myself vanquished."

In her triumph Jessie rose from the cane chair where she had sat
reclining. "Oh, how splendid!" she cried. "I never expected such a
victory. I must find pa, and tell him how I've vanquished you."

Lance also rose, but to detain her. "Don't go yet," he said; "I have
something else to say. You have conquered me in another way, too, and I
want to hear from you whether you will accept my surrender." In saying
this he drew a little closer, and gazed with earnest expectancy into her
face.

The sudden stillness and frightened silence with which Jessie at first
met his advance were not exactly what one would expect in a conqueror.
After an instant, however, she regained her self-possession. Her natural
merriment and archness returned as she asked, with her head leaning
sideward: "Is the surrender unconditional, Mr. Lance?"

"No. There is one condition, of supreme importance. Ah! Miss Jessie, you
understand. Will you listen to me?"

"I can't promise, but I'll try," said Jessie, in a faltering tone.
Imperceptibly, as it were, she resumed her place in the chair, and
waited. The sun was declining; a faint rumor of odd clucking cries came
from the turkey-field at the end of the grounds; but otherwise the air
was still, and a spicy coolness stole in to them from the
pine-plantations and the distant Sound. "Now tell me," she said, softly.

You may be sure Lance eagerly complied. With an eloquence that had never
been his before, he told her what he thought of her; how he loved her,
and wished her to be his wife. In his confession he likewise mingled
unpremeditated touches about the daisies and the pines, and all that
marvel of nature of which they had been talking; and he made her see how
to him she was the culminating blossom of creation.

"If you could only guess," he ended, hopeless of conveying all that he
wished to, "what a delight your presence is to me--how it is almost
enough just to look at you and watch every movement that you make!"

So fine and frank was Jessie's maiden mind, that she no longer thought
of concealment. "Why, then you know," she answered, with the surprise of
a child, "exactly how I feel about _you_!"

I do not care to describe what happened after that; for in the first
place it belongs only to those two lovers, and in the second place I
know it could not be described without tarnishing the pure beauty of it.

In the long interchange of confidences that followed their union, Lance
was moved to tell Jessie of the woman he had seen in the moonlight, the
night before. "Strange, that she should have made me think of you and of
the old Wharton story, isn't it? Who do you suppose she could have
been?"

"I can't imagine," said Jessie. "Perhaps you had a moonstroke; isn't
there such a thing? Or, perhaps it was a ghost."

When they came in to tea they found the colonel carefully dozing over
the market columns of his newspaper. "May I go and get the ring?"
whispered Lance, who had owned to her the secret of his hopeful
purchase.

Jessie gave a silent assent. He returned quickly, and slipped the emblem
on to her finger.

"Mr. Lance has been telling me the most wonderful things!" said Jessie
to her father, as they sat at table. "All about flowers and legends and
ghosts."

She was holding up a cup at that instant, for the servant to take, and
the colonel noticed the sparkle of the new ring on her hand. His eyes
threw back an answering sparkle; he gazed fondly at his daughter for an
instant, and then, with forgiving kindness, at Lance.

"Miss Jessie refers to an old family history," the young man hastily
explained. "I mean the Wyldes and Whartons. It wouldn't seem so
wonderful to you, sir."

The colonel threw himself back in his chair, with raised eyebrows. "The
Wyldes!" he exclaimed. "You never told me you knew _my_ family history.
How does it happen? Or is it, perhaps, only a coincidence of name? By
George, it strikes me as _very_ wonderful!"

As Lance, in his turn, showed equal astonishment, it became necessary
for him to ask questions; and, by a rapid interchange of replies, they
arrived at an extraordinary revelation. The colonel raked out from his
library a dingy and ruinous old "family tree," by which ocular
demonstration was given of his descent from a branch of the identical
Surrey Wyldes that the Gertrude of Lance's story belonged to. Puzzling
out the different lines on the old diagram, which represented a trunk
and branches, with here and there a big circle like some impossible
fruit or an abnormal knot in the wood of the "tree"--the said knots or
circles representing fathers of families--they ascertained that the Miss
Wylde whose life-current had long ago blended with that of the Floyds
was a first cousin of Gertrude Wylde, who had been Guy Wharton's
lady-love.

The colonel glowed with interest and enthusiasm. "I never came upon
anything more thrilling," he declared, roundly.

"But you never said a word about the Wyldes," said Jessie, to Lance. "If
you had, I could have told you there was some connection between us and
them."

"I didn't think of it," he assured her, "because there was a sort of
doubt in my mind whether the girl was English or an Indian--as I told
you. But I knew the name of Wylde was mixed up with the affair, anyhow;
and the more I reflect upon it, the more clearly it comes back to me
that Gertrude Wylde was the woman whom Guy Wharton came to this country
to find, and who was lost here."

They referred once more to the "family tree," and detected there, surely
enough, a small branch terminating suddenly with the names of Matthew
Wylde and his daughter Gertrude, accompanied by the inscription:
"Emigrated to America, 1587."

The colonel, much excited, now brought forth a faded tome devoted to the
history of North Carolina. Turning its pages, he unearthed the record of
Raleigh's expedition and the search-party that came after it. But the
names of the emigrants, of course, were not given.

"I remember," said he, musingly, "that I read of this incident, years
ago, and was struck with it. But I should never have imagined that it
concerned a collateral branch of my own ancestry. How singular! The
Floyds immigrated to this country long after that time, and yet here am
I, their representative, who have spent my life in this spot, so near
where Gertrude Wylde disappeared from civilization--and I never knew of
it!"

The discovery supplied them with a theme for meditation and remark, that
lasted the rest of the evening.

Jessie bestirred herself, in the midst of a revery which had enveloped
all three, after they had talked for some time, saying: "How much it's
like the flowers! We're all one great family--at least, _nearly_ one."

"Yes," echoed Lance, "nearly one!"

She blushed, and rose to say good-night.

After she had gone, the colonel came to Lance and, drawing his arm
around him, said: "God bless you, my boy--and her. I see how it is, and
I'm satisfied."

"So am I," said Lance; "except that no man is good enough for her."

What a night that was! Did ever darkness close round a pair more happy
than Lance and Jessie? The great heavens seemed to Lance the only canopy
that overhung his slumbers; for the thoughts and images that filled his
dreaming brain rose beyond the barriers of roof and wall, and included a
vast realm of peaceful joy, in which the stars burned ever mildly. He
had taken a spray of the yellow jessamine with him to his room. He
fancied that its fragrance repeated to him all night long, in
untranslatable sweetness, the name so like its own and now so dear to
him: "Jessie--Jessie--Jessie." And the knowledge that she was a late
comer in the line of the woman whom his ancestor had loved, contributed
still another element to his trance of silent rejoicing.

Yet, through the whole delicious maze of happiness, he was aware of a
surmise which had not presented itself while he had been awake. It was
this: since Jessie had the Wylde blood in her veins, and the woman whom
he had met by the shore so strongly suggested a resemblance to Jessie,
might there not be some hidden bond between them, dating from the lost
Gertrude?




CHAPTER VII.

THE RACES, AND THE MOTTO.


It so happened that Lance, up to this point in his sojourn with the
Floyds, had never, to his knowledge, seen Adela Reefe, although she had
come once or twice to the house while he was there. On a single occasion
he had ridden with Jessie to the cottage at the headland, and had met
"the De Vine boys." Becoming interested in Sylvester and his ambitions,
he had stopped to see him at other times in the course of his excursions
roundabout, and had also received one or two visits from him at
Fairleigh Park. He had, to be sure, heard something of Adela Reefe; but
the fact that he lacked the smallest idea as to what she looked like was
the absent link in his knowledge, which made it impossible to guess who
the mysterious girl of the night encounter might be. In fact, he never
so much as thought of Adela, and he gave up the riddle as one not likely
to be solved. But an event was now approaching which brought him sudden
enlightenment.

The date of the races to be held at Newbern had been fixed--somewhat
early in the season, it is true--for a time shortly after the
occurrences which I have already described; and this affair was the
excuse for a general rally of inhabitants from the surrounding
districts. Colonel Floyd meant to attend it, with a large part of his
household, and Lance, as a matter of course, was going with him.

Dennis De Vine had also looked forward to the festival as the excuse for
a great holiday. It had been his intention to take Aunty Losh, Adela,
and Sylv in his dug-out sloop, and sail a hundred miles up the Neuse
River, to the scene of the merrymaking. But the quarrel with Sylv, which
had come so near to a fatal result, threw a cloud over him, and for a
time threatened to mar the pleasure of this prospect.

The day after that incident Dennis disappeared from the cabin, and was
not seen there again until evening. He was supposed to be out fishing,
and did, I believe, actually pass his time in sailing outside the
network of sandy spits and islands, as if engaged in trolling for
bluefish; but when he returned he brought but few trophies of the hook.
I know that during the afternoon he beached his boat on the inner shore
beyond Ocracoke, and took to wandering disconsolately along the dreary
dunes. The hour of sunset approached as he found himself near the old
graveyard of Portsmouth. It was a rough, melancholy, neglected spot; and
the thick-sown graves lay near the racing tides that the land which held
the dead was gradually crumbling away, and delivered to the sea, from
time to time, its mournful burden of forgotten humanity.

Dennis, while trudging unconsciously hither, had been lost in mingled
reflections upon the quarrel--alternately grateful for his escape from
crime, and remorseful for the passionate temper which had almost swept
him on, without premeditation, to the consummation of a terrible deed.
All at once he became aware that he stood at the edge of this grim and
pathetic graveyard. A shudder ran through him.

"To think," he muttered, "that I was nigh on to bringin' Sylv to such a
place as this! And then how would I ha' felt? Oh, God, forgive me! We
die soon enough, the best way we can fix it. Why should one man want to
kill another?"

Near the water the ground was ragged and worn away, where the chafing of
the tides had carried it off piecemeal; and from the gaunt earth several
coffins projected, which were soon to fall a prey to the waves. Dennis
gazed upon them with a fascinated horror, and as he looked it seemed to
him that in the mouldering receptacle of death nearest to him he could
see something bright shining through the crevices of the boarding that,
warped by long inhumation, leaned partly open. For a moment the wild
fancy presented itself that impossible wealth, in the shape of sparkling
jewels, had been buried with the unknown inmate of the coffin. He bent a
little closer to examine it. At that instant the bank beneath crumbled
slightly--some of the sandy soil slipped into the water--and a fresh
breeze, sweeping in from the sea, shook the side-plank so that it fell,
disclosing the dusty and shapeless contents. Sweat started to the brow
of Dennis; he beheld there a row of toads, sitting inert and hideous
inside the coffin, with glittering eyes.

No more awful example of the ghastiliness of burial could have
confronted him than that. The sight redoubled the agony he was already
suffering, and with a staggering motion he turned to retrace his steps.

Dennis was not a reflective man; perhaps he had never before meditated
very deeply on the transitoriness of life, and the thousand ways in
which oblivion is forever clutching at us, obliterating the few poor
traces of our existence that are left when we depart from this world.
But the conjunction of circumstances, bringing such a sight to him at
that precise moment, wrought powerfully on his mind. "If I could only
change!" he said to himself, as he plodded back to his boat. "If I could
only be better!"

Yet he was by no means certain that he could improve.

Throughout the next few days he devoted himself to Sylv with a careful
tenderness that was almost pathetic. He offered to do him little
services; he tried to exhibit an interest in Sylv's reading; he was
anxious not to have Slyv expose himself to any undue fatigues or risks
or dangers. He would not let him go out in the boat.

"'Pears like you thought you was married a'ready and Sylv was your
baby," Aunty Losh observed, with kindly sarcasm, noticing his unwonted
solicitude. "But I'm glad on't, Dennie. Bein' as you're older'n him, it
ar' right, and I'm glad on't." And thereupon she again betook herself to
"paddling" snuff, with a pleasant sense of duty performed.

Sylv understood his brother's contrition, but did his best to banish all
remembrance of their saturnine controversy in the wood. "How 'bout
Beaufort," he asked, as the time approached for making the final
arrangements; "have you seen Deely?"

Now, the truth was that neither of them had seen Deely for several days;
she had stayed at home punctiliously, dreading to meet Sylvester by
chance, and dreading still more to see Dennis, after what she had
overheard.

"No," said Dennis; "but I will see her."

Accordingly he went over to the so-called Doctor Reefe's house at
Hunting Quarters, the next day. Adela was at home, but she came out of
the house to receive him, and did not ask him in.

"I'm not going," she said at first, facing him with a reserved majesty
like that of some wild princess.

"Why not?" he inquired, his eyes still downcast.

"Because I'm afraid. Something might happen."

Dennis shot a swift, indignant glance at her. "What'd happen, I'd like
to know?"

"I didn't mean anything," said Adela. "I'm not going; that's what." She
saw that she had been too abrupt, and she was determined not to disclose
that she knew anything of the altercation.

But Dennis besought her in every way he could think of. "I won't talk to
you so, like I did last time," he said, penitently. "I know I'm a rough
kind o' fellow. I ain't got no temper--or mebbe I got too much. But I'm
sorry for what I done, and sorry for mor'n what you know, Deely. I'll
promise to be good if ye'll go."

And so, at last, she consented.

Old Reefe regarded the races as a matter of business, being in the
habit, I regret to say, of selling considerable quantities of his
untrustworthy herb-medicines on these occasions. He was peculiar and of
a solitary turn, and had his own way of going to Newbern. He started
three or four days in advance, on foot, and did more or less peddling in
the sparsely settled country through which he passed. This arrangement
was also quite satisfactory to Dennis. His sloop was made out of two
large hollowed cypress logs--as is the custom in those latitudes, where
the hard knocks that boats must endure on the shoals soon wear out any
lighter craft--and the accommodations aboard were limited; there was
really no room for "ole man Reefe."

To people leading so plain and secluded a life as that of the shore, you
may imagine what a change and what an outlook of wild excitement this
extensive trip to Newbern afforded. Adela was always interested in the
boat; Dennis had given her lessons in sailing, and often let her take
the helm. Once on board, her old delight returned; doubts and troubles
vanished, and it was soon a gay party that sat beneath the sail, now
briskly speeding midway up the five-mile-wide current, now tacking from
side to side.

An informal, impromptu sort of fair clustered around the races,
embracing booths and stalls for the sale of various trumpery, with
perhaps a circus in a tent, or merely a nomadic little "show,"
consisting chiefly of over-colored pictures, that hung upon the canvas
wall, flapping and trembling in the breeze as if frightened by their own
mendacity. Then, as I have said, "Doctor" Reefe went about, lean and
sombre, with grayish hair straggling round his dark cheeks, to hawk his
"great Indian remedies," although it did not appear that there were any
Indians to be remedied. Adela, who possessed a knack for making
ornamental baskets and bead-work, likewise availed herself of the brief
season to sell some of her pretty wares, in a modest and desultory way.

Lance, Jessie, and Colonel Floyd occupied themselves at first with
looking at the trotters and watching the false starts, the true starts,
the judges incessantly ringing a bell in the most confusing way, and the
fine, steady rush of the horses around the track, with small sulkies and
eager drivers apparently glued to their haunches. But after a time, when
a number of heats had been run, there was an intermission, and Lance and
Jessie began to stroll about in the crowd, examining the limited means
of entertainment, while the colonel talked with some of his cronies
among the horse-owners. Blacks and whites were slowly sauntering from
point to point, chiefly in separate groups, and our friends kept on the
edge of the white crowd. There was a fresh odor of bruised grass in the
air, from the treading of many feet, and the beating of a drum sounded
from the small tent where an outrageous effigy of the Great Giant of
Tartary alternately swelled out threateningly and crumpled itself up
ineffectually, as the gusts of wind came and went that fluttered the
streamers above him.

Here and there a game of some sort was in progress, though without
enlisting much energy from the participants, except in one
instance. The exception was due to a newly introduced sport--that of
"egg-jumping"--the point of which was that each contestant, in trying to
make the longest jump, should carry an egg in either hand. The natural
tendency to close the fingers at the moment of leaping was relied on to
make jumpers crush the eggs; and most of them came to grief in that way,
for a failure to bring either egg intact through the experiment ruined
the competitors chance for that time. The enterprising individual who
presided over this game had put up several cheap prizes, among which was
a brilliant neckerchief for feminine adornment, and charged each person
who entered the sum of five cents, the low rate being due to the fact
that the eggs consumed were no longer marketable; and their condition
was supposed to increase the dismay of the defeated.

The men toed a chalk line on the grass, and jumped from it successively.
The line never lacked for the boots of some ambitious contestant ready
to make his attempt; and as Lance reached the spot with his companion,
the stalwart form of Dennis De Vine was discovered there, gathering
itself together for a saltatory effort. He had set his heart on winning
the neckerchief for Adela; but, with the eyes of the spectators upon
him, he was conscious of being in an absurd position, and his greatest
difficulty seemed to be to suppress a smile that was broadening on his
lips. Twice or thrice he seemed on the point of jumping, but each time
he paused to give way to a bashful guffaw and stamp his bouts on the
ground with humorous emphasis. Finally he nerved himself, and,
readjusting the fragile burdens in either fist, made his spring. For an
instant the sunlight showed brightly on his ruddy cheeks and red hair as
he flew from the line, rising a few inches from the sod. Then he landed
suddenly, several feet away, slipped, and went down, with the yolks
gushing in yellow spurts from the shells. A roar of laughter rose from
the crowd.

Dennis looked a little angry, but hastened to rub off the egg-yolks on
the grass, and, producing another five cents, took his stand at the line
again. He waited for one or two companions in misfortune to repeat his
failure; but there was no awkward merriment about him, this time. He was
too intent upon success. Holding the new eggs firmly and lightly,
swinging his arms and then keeping them well up as he started, he made
his second energetic venture; and when his feet struck the turf he
raised the two small white objects triumphantly. They were unbroken.

He was rewarded with plaudits and shouts of approbation--the length of
the jump was respectable--and, with a reluctant flourish of the
kerchief, the proprietor of the game awarded him that prize.

"Good for you, Dennie!" cried a deep and rather musical voice near
Lance.

He turned, and recognised Sylv. "Why, how are you?" he asked, cordially.

He would have stepped toward him and shaken hands, but Sylv merely took
off his hat, bowing, and gave no sign of expecting further advances. The
truth was, he was afraid of Jessie, whose notions of caste made her
think it proper to keep these folk at a distance in public places.

"Come," she said to her lover; "let us be going back to the racecourse."

"I wanted to speak a moment with De Vine," Lance objected, mildly. "I
intend to make him part of my schemes; don't you see?"

"Oh, well, not here; not now," said Jessie. "He's not your friend, if he
_is_ to be your workman. And this is hardly the place."

"Very well," he assented, though not wholly pleased.

But by this time Dennis had elbowed his way through the press of
onlookers, bearing his prize like a victorious banner, and Jessie all at
once became interested in seeing what he would do with it. "Look!" she
exclaimed, abandoning her position of careful reserve. "He's going to
give it to his sweetheart--Adela Reefe. Don't you remember my telling
you about her? She's really a handsome girl--very handsome. And that
reminds me--I _must_ buy one of her baskets or boxes. She'd be
dreadfully disappointed if I didn't."

The result was that Jessie impulsively carried him off in pursuit of
Dennis, whom Sylv also followed.

Old Reefe, mounted on a box under the spreading branches of a tree, not
far away, was dispensing his medicaments with an impressively stoical
air, now and then addressing the bystanders in a curiously grave manner,
quite at variance with the usual volubility of nostrum-dealers; and near
him Adela was moving to and fro with a bundle of her handiwork on her
arm, waiting for purchasers, but never soliciting them. Aunty Losh
smoked her pipe serenely in the background, beneath the shade of the
trees.

Lance and Jessie witnessed the pleasant little scene that was enacted,
of Dennie's presenting the scarf loyally to his lady-love, and her
unfeigned satisfaction in receiving it, while Sylv stood apart for a
moment, and then came up to take a share in describing his brother's
achievement. They all three broke into smiles and laughter at the
recital.

But Lance stood motionless with astonishment. "Is _that_ Adela Reefe?"
he inquired.

"Certainly," Jessie assured him. "Why shouldn't she be?"

Lance was too much surprised to answer. It appeared to him certain, at
the very first glance, that this was the same young woman who had of
late been so often in his mind; and, as she looked so much like his
recollection of her, the resemblance to Jessie which he had before
imagined also struck him now. But he could not as yet be quite sure that
it existed. He waited until they came nearer before making up his mind
on this point.

Meanwhile Jessie pressed forward, and he with her. She greeted Adela
with smiles, nodded with the affability of a natural superior to Dennis,
and congratulated them both on his success, in a way that made them feel
that she had bestowed a favor. She then began to examine Adela's
stock-in-trade, holding up the different articles that took her fancy,
turning them this way and that, and bringing out their meek decorative
value by the sunniness of the light from her own eyes. "This is pretty.
_That's_ remarkably good!" she said, like a connoisseur inspecting rare
bric-a-brac. "Oh, I _must_ have this box of bark and moss! And that
belt--just see how quaint it is, Ned."

Lance quietly received each piece that she selected, and kept every one;
so that when she had done choosing and he had paid for them, Adela
conceived that it would be unnecessary to sell anything more that day.

The belt which Lance was called upon to admire especially was made of
simple undressed leather, but it was embroidered with a design in
varicolored beads, so original and ingenious that the thing became
positively charming. Through the pattern there ran a series of angular
lines that suggested an inscription; as this, however, seemed to be only
a whim of the designer, and was illegible, it fell into the general plan
of ornament, with an effect like that of hieroglyphics. Miss Jessie's
cavalier glanced at it hastily, as they moved away, and was decidedly
pleased with the acquisition. But he had no time to consider it, and he
was, moreover, exceedingly occupied with the result of the closer
scrutiny he had given to Adela.

It had confirmed his idea that there was a degree of likeness in her
features to Jessie's; and the fact so impressed him, that he forgot to
seize the chance which had offered of a chat with Sylv. He said to the
young man only: "I want to see you soon, De Vine, about an important
matter. Come up to the manor when you can."

It was impossible to keep the subject out of his mind, as he returned to
the racecourse with Jessie; and it recurred again and again that night,
which he passed, with the Floyds, in the house of friends at Newbern. A
whole rout of bewildering surmises and baffled guesses beset him. If
Adela really looked at all like his Jessie, why, he asked himself, had
not others discovered it? Why hadn't Jessie herself remarked the fact?
But then, on the other hand, the thing was so unlikely, and the
positions of the two women were so far apart, that no one here would be
apt to notice or for a moment consider such a supposition.

It was not until they were once more, at Fairleigh Park that he looked a
second time at the belt which they had bought From Adela. Sitting with
Jessie and her father, in the evening, when they were talking over the
experience on the rail and at the races, he glanced over the various
purchases which had been made, most of them of a more ambitious sort;
but when they came to the belt, he studied it with a good deal of care,
feeling an interest both in its novelty and in the maker.

Did he dream, or was this another illusion? The angular pattern in the
midst of the design, which he had before noticed, unexpectedly assumed a
meaning to his eyes. The more sharply he scanned it, the less he doubted
his senses, for the beaded lines took with increasing clearness the
forms of letters; and, on tracing these out, one after another, he saw
that they composed a series of words arranged in coherent
order--briefly, a motto.

I am not afraid of being old-fashioned. Therefore I shall ask my reader
if he ever came upon any sight--ever was smitten, either in thought or
in reading, by any feeling that set a thousand flame-points tingling
around his brain, and sent irresistible waves of cold, nervous thrill
down his spine. By this I do not mean a thrill of horror, but of supreme
and overwhelming emotion that instantly suggests your being in the grasp
of some more than human power--the power of endless, ideal forces,
directed upon the human organism from without, as the harper's hand is
directed with omnipotent sweep upon the strings of his instrument. If my
reader, as aforesaid, has had such experience, he will understand the
strange, exalting shock of wonder and awe that vibrated through Lance's
system when he discerned in the wording on the belt:

    "I journey whither I cannot see.
    'Tis strange that I can merry be."

The old motto of Wharton Hall, in Surrey, England, was perfectly
familiar to him, because he had visited the place with his father, on
one of their journeys abroad, and having noted down the lines, which
still remained engraven on the wall, he had committed them to memory.
And here was the last half of that quatrain, obscurely inscribed--as if
the embroiderer had hardly understood their full significance--on the
handiwork of Adela Reefe. Could there be anything more astounding than
this? Did Adela know the origin of those verses? And if she did, what
momentous secret did the fact involve?

The next moment, naturally enough, a simple and matter-of-fact solution
occurred to him. Adela might have learned the motto from the Floyds.

"Do you see how it reads?" he asked, holding up the bead-work so that
Jessie could survey the whole pattern.

"No," said she.

He pointed out the letters with his finger, and gradually spelled the
inscription through, until she caught its purport.

"How very odd!" she exclaimed, at the end. But the look with which she
accompanied the remark showed that the verses touched no chord of memory
or knowledge in her mind. "Where do you suppose the girl got the idea?"
she concluded.

The quivering sensation which Lance had felt, at first, renewed itself.
He laid the belt down, and, as he did so, his hands trembled.

"Do _you_ know anything about this motto?" he said, appealing to the
colonel.

But the colonel was also a blank on the subject.

Lance, therefore, was reduced to telling them where he had seen it. In
doing this he was quite methodical, but he could not conceal the
peculiar agitation which affected him.

Both the colonel and his daughter were much impressed by his strange
disclosure, and were utterly at a loss to account for the reappearance
of the traditional rhymes in a way so unlooked for; but they did not
take the mystery so much to heart as Lance did.

"It's not only extraordinary, but incredible," he affirmed. "I must see
that girl and ask her about it."




CHAPTER VIII.

ADELA'S LEGEND.


Jessie was not much inclined to give heed to her lover's curiosity about
Adela, and his desire to consult her respecting the enigma which had so
piqued him. But he continued so persistent, that she was obliged to
humor him; and before a week passed he persuaded her to ride with him to
Hunting Quarters and search out the mysterious maiden.

Both Adela and her father were at home, the latter being engaged, when
the visitors entered, with some jugs and bottles, in which were stored
his marvellous decoctions. Promptly desisting from his work, he invited
the young pair to seat themselves; and Adela, who was just then
stitching at some of her semi-savage contrivances, also rose to offer
welcome.

The interior of the house at Hunting Quarters was rude enough. The room
in which these four people met was badly lighted from two small windows
facing toward Core Sound, one of which was open, so that the dull
booming of the sea continually entered, supplying an uncouth refrain to
their conversation. On one side was a large hearth; on the other, a door
leading to the remaining part of the house--what there was of it. The
furniture was scanty: a table, a bench, a couple of stools, some shelves
holding bottles, boxes, a few books and various cooking utensils as well
as dishes. The lack of sufficient seats for guests was supplied by
several blocks of wood sawed off from the stumps of trees; and to these
primitive perches old Reefe and his daughter resorted, in order to make
room for their callers.

Jessie presented an excuse for coming, to the effect that Aunt Sally was
desirous of having a bottle of Doctor Reefe's famous specific; but, when
this business was over, she turned the conversation to Adela's work.

"Mr. Lance is ever so much pleased with those things you let us have,"
she said. "And I can assure you he takes the greatest interest in some
of them. I think he wants to ask you how you sew the beads, and how you
make those moss-boxes."

Adela laughed. "I don't know," she said. "I've done it so long--ever
since I was a tiny girl. Ain't it so, dad?"

Old Reefe, thus referred to, gave a nod, without saying anything. But
Lance took advantage of the cue Jessie had given him to go into
particulars with Adela as to her mode of manufacture and the several
beauties of the articles she produced. Finally he came around to the
subject of the belt and the pattern woven upon it. "Have you got any
more of those?" he asked.

"No," said Adela; "it was the last--the one you took. I can make
another, if you want. I've got it all in my head."

"And the rhyme, too?" Lance inquired, eagerly.

"What? What's that?" Adela appeared a little dazed.

"I mean the words," he explained. "Didn't you know there were words in
it?"

"Oh, that part along the middle," said the girl. Her gray eyes took on a
far-off, dreamy expression. "Yes; they are words."

Lance controlled his excitement, which still seemed to him causeless and
rather annoying. "I wonder if I read them right?" he hazarded. "Would
you like to see how they looked to me?"

He drew out a bit of paper on which he had written them, and showed it
to her. The action seemed to rouse her taciturn father slightly. But
Adela gazed at the paper, and said, with an incredulous laugh: "Oh, no,
they don't look like that!"

"Can you read?" Lance demanded.

"Yes, a little; but they don't look like that."

"Well, at any rate, they mean something," he retorted; "and this is what
they mean."

He read the rhyme aloud, and their eyes met.

"Yes," she admitted; "I suppose that's how it goes;" and she crooned the
distich over, as if singing to herself.

"But what I want to know," he continued, "is how you got it. How did you
come to know it?"

Adela remained silent; but her father spoke, after a pause, in a
serious, hollow voice. "It is very old," he said. "It is a great charm.
We have always known it."

"How do you mean--'you'?"

"Our people," replied the old man, gravely.

"But not all the people around here," Lance interposed. "Miss Jessie
doesn't know it."

Reefe made a gesture of dissent that approached the disdainful. "No," he
exclaimed, with a sort of gutteral grunt after the word; "_she_ don't
know--of course."

"But _I_ have known it well," Lance said. "I saw it years ago in
England."

"You?" cried Reefe, with the first indication of marked feeling that he
had betrayed during the interview. "Who are you, then?"

"Oh, I'm a humble citizen named Lance!" said the young man, quietly.
"But I know that motto; it has been in our family for a long time."

The old man seemed to withdraw suddenly into himself. "It is a great
charm," he repeated, slowly. "Wonderful! It keeps off harm and trouble.
My father gave it to me."

"Where did he find it?" Lance inquired.

"He found it far, far back," Reefe responded. But his tone was so vague,
and his expression grew so introspective, that Lance half imagined that
the old face was growing still older--immeasurably more ancient--as he
gazed upon it, and that the speaker was removing himself, by some occult
spell, into a distant past.

"You spoke of our people," he said, at length. "Did you mean your
family?"

"Where we came from. Our people--over there," the herb doctor answered,
pointing uncertainly to his right, in a direction, Lance noticed, which
signified farther to the North, up the Sound.

"Yes, they always had that charm," Adela now said. "I don't know why.
Who can tell? It all comes from the old story of the Indians and the
white folks."

Her father appeared to have lapsed into a semi-trance, or to be dozing;
but Adela looked aroused; her interest was kindled, and she was
evidently prepared to be communicative.

"Oh, is there a story?" Jessie cried. "Why, I never heard it. Do tell
us, Deely!"

Some judicious urging was required before the girl would speak; but, in
the end, the inquisitive lovers succeeded in persuading her, and at last
she narrated to them the legend of her "people," the substance of which
shall here be given, though not precisely in her language.

       *       *       *       *       *

A great many years ago--as many as there are buds on a tree--an old man
dwelt in a wigwam beside the sweet waters, with his only child, a
beautiful girl. They had come out of the sea together, no man could
remember when; but, while the other people in the wigwams were dark and
red, these were almost white. They had been so long in the sea that the
foam of the waves, touching their faces, had made them so white. And the
old man loved his daughter very much. They spoke a strange language
together, but when others talked to them, they replied in the words that
all understood.

The old man had no name; but his daughter was called Ewayea, which meant
Lullaby or Rest-Song. She, too, loved her father. They lived for each
other; and the old man seemed always waiting for something, uneasy and
troubled, but Ewayea made him rest and sang him to sleep; and he slept
much, and was happy. But when he was resting, Ewayea would go to the top
of a little hill near the wigwam and look far away, seeming also to
expect that some one would come.

By and by he came. His name was Sharp Arrow; and he came suddenly, as if
some hand had bent a bow and sent him there swiftly. He loved Ewayea,
but at first she did not love him, because she had not waited for him,
and he was a red color; and she told him he must go and stay in the sea
and let the foam dash over him, to wash his face and make him white.
Then he went away, but when he came back his face was still red; and the
Old-man-without-a-name told him that he could not have his daughter. But
Sharp Arrow stayed there, and he flew in and out of the forest, always
returning to the maiden with love and with some presents, or bringing
food to her father. So at last he struck her heart. It bled for him, and
she longed to go with him, to comfort him, and be happy herself. But she
said: "Not yet, not yet! The Old-man-without-a-name would die if I left
him now. I must sing him to sleep many times before we go."

Her father saw that she loved Sharp Arrow, and he was very jealous. He
looked at the young man with enmity, while his face every day grew
harder, more angry, and stern, like iron. Often, too, he spoke to Ewayea
in the strange language, and pointed to the East, as if he would have
her go there. But she only shook her head and sighed; and sometimes she
wept.

The summer flew away, and the birds flew away to find it. But those two
lovers did not know it had gone, for their hearts were warm, and
thoughts of love grew in them, like the leaves of June. The days parted,
one from another, and the seasons separated; but for Ewayea and her
lover there was no separation. They were man and wife. Their two
children played in the shade of the forest, and Ewayea sang lullabies to
them. She taught Sharp Arrow charms and spells. She gave him words out
of a book. Her children learned the strange language; and she looked at
the trees, the water and the sky, and made them talk as they had not
talked till then. And Sharp Arrow promised that her spells should never
be forgotten among his people if she should die.

But she never died.

The old man slept a long while; then at last he woke. And when he woke
his face was wrinkled with anger--it was hard like ice in the sweet
waters--and when he looked at Sharp Arrow the look seemed to freeze the
young man's face, so that hatred stiffened it into a hardness like that
of the old man's. Then, one night in winter, the old man came to the
door of his wigwam and stood there like a spirit. He beckoned to Sharp
Arrow, with one finger upraised; the moonlight gleamed white on his
bitter white face, and behind him there was much white snow. "I am
dead," he said to Sharp Arrow, "and you must come with me!"

The look of hate was still in all his features; and as Sharp Arrow rose
to obey the command, his own face reflected that hatred. The moonlight
fell on him, too--his face grew white in it--and no one could have told
which face was most like the other, then. But he went forward, and
followed the old man.

Just at that moment Ewayea awoke from her sleep beside the children. She
stretched out her arms, tried to catch her husband and hold him, and saw
him pass away out of her reach; saw her father, also, standing beyond,
and beckoning.

"Father! father!" she cried, "why do you leave me? Where are you going?"
And to her husband she cried: "Oh my heart, my heart, come back to me!"

But they gave no heed to her. The old man moved away, noiseless, on feet
of air--always turning backward that icy, malignant gaze--and the young
man followed, staring fixedly, helplessly upon him, with the same dumb
and frozen wrath upon his own countenance.

And so, as if they had been spirits, they passed noiselessly on and on,
disappearing in the pale night and the snow, until all that Ewayea could
see in the quarter where they had vanished was the crescent of the
sinking moon, like an uplifted, crooked finger, beckoning some one to
follow.

Ewayea hoped that they would come back. At first she wanted to go after
them, but when she tried to move she could not: her limbs were as weak
and cold as snow, and invisible arms were thrown around her, holding her
back. There was nothing for her to do but to wait. When the spring came
again she was always waiting and watching. She stayed every day in the
same place, looking out and expecting her father and her lover to
return; but still they came not. At last she ceased to speak: she sat
there motionless and voiceless on the ground, ever longing for them, but
afraid to stir, for fear that they would come back and not find her. The
years passed, and her children grew up and departed, carrying with them
the spells and charms they had learned. Yes; they went away and forgot
their mother, who sat there so patiently. But she never once called to
them, and only waited--waited--waited. They say she is still waiting in
that spot. Summer after summer has blossomed above her, and the new
leaves have started and rustled with surprise as they caught sight of
her, and have whispered one another all day long about the strangeness
of her silent presence. The slow autumns, one after another, have
wreathed her brow with weird, unnatural flame; and the snows of many,
many winters have crept around her feet and drifted higher until they
almost buried her. But she cares nothing for all these changes; does not
even turn her head one way or the other, but simply gazes straight
forward, expectantly, just as she used to when she went to the top of
the little hill looking eastward. In summer, again, come the butterflies
and softly touch her cheek with sympathetic wings, as they hover around;
the humming-birds flash and tremble near her lips, as if expecting to
find honey there; and other birds look curiously with their bright eyes
into hers that make no answer, while the squirrels that chatter on the
boughs near by, and nibble nuts, seem to wonder that she does not ask to
share their food. Still, she gives heed to nothing. She crouches low,
and her weary head has drooped; and the leaves and dust have fallen
thick upon her from the underbrush that has sprung up so rankly about
her; so that sometimes you might think she was not a woman at all, but
only a mound of earth. Yet she is not dead. No! The rains and winds, of
course, have worn away the expression from her face, until it looks dull
and sad and lifeless; but, for all that, she is not dead. Her arms and
knees must have grown very tired in the long vigil she has been keeping,
and one would suppose they would have crumbled into earth before now.
But, you see, the wild vines have reached out from the surrounding trees
to support her; and they have encircled her lovingly, lending their
strength, that she may not fail of her purpose.

No; she is not dead. If you could only discover the exact place, you
would find her still alive. But we do not know where it is.

       *       *       *       *       *

All four remained silent for a few moments, after Adela had finished her
legend. Lance had listened with profound attention; and the shadowy,
fantastic outlines of the narrative were so extraordinary, that he was
at first too much astonished and perplexed to know what to think or say
about it. Clearly enough, that which the girl had told might be
interpreted as a sequel to the history of Gertrude Wylde, after his
ancestor, Guy Wharton, had lost trace of her. It was impossible to say
just what the tradition, now so vague and impossible, had originally
come from. But the blending of the white and Indian races at which it
hinted, the looking eastward, and the idea of endless waiting and
expectancy that ran all through it--did not these things point plainly
toward the old romance with which his family was connected?

He did not believe that his imagination alone was responsible for these
suggestions, because Adela could not possibly know what he knew--her
story was an inheritance so carefully guarded, that even Jessie had not
heard it until now--and yet here were these salient details that fitted
on so naturally to his own tradition, and supplemented it. Then, too,
there was the old, transmitted rhyme. Ah, that was the clew! It clinched
all the parts of his guess-work together.

"Was Ewayea one of your people, then?" he asked, at length.

Adela looked at him with surprise, as if he were asking about something
which had already been explained.

"Why, I thought I said so," she answered. "We _came_ from her."

Old Reefe, roused perhaps by Lance's voice, opened his eyes, and,
hearing his daughter's statement, nodded a silent corroboration.

"And that charm," Lance continued--"the one that you put on the
belt--came from her, too? Did she teach it to her children?"

"Yes; that came from her, too," said Adela.

Lance turned toward Jessie in a bewildered way, gazing at her as if he
expected her to say or do something which would dispel the phantasm that
was growing so like a reality. But Jessie only reflected his amazement
in the glance which she gave him in return.

"Isn't this very remarkable?" he said.

"Very," said Jessie. "It's a perfect puzzle. I don't see what to make of
it. But, Adela," she went on, addressing the girl, "why have you never
told me this before?"

Adela responded only with a reticent smile, and her luminous gray eyes
roved from Jessie to Lance and back again without betraying what she
thought.

"We don't tell it," muttered her father. "It was our story--only for
us."

"But you _have_ told it now," Jessie argued. "You've told Mr. Lance, and
he is a stranger." Here Jessie blushed, and corrected herself: "Any way,
he _was_ a stranger to you."

The old man raised his hand to point at Lance; and--by an odd
coincidence--his forefinger, separated from the others, was curved with
a beckoning emphasis, as if he were himself the Old-man-without-a-name
of the legend. "_He_ is one of us," he declared.

"I'm not so sure of that!" Lance exclaimed, feeling that the mystery was
going almost too far. "I don't see it at all."

"You knew the charm," old Reefe retorted; and his eyes twinkled
obscurely, as he fixed them upon his visitor.

"That doesn't prove that I'm one of you," said Lance, rising, for the
situation vexed him; he was becoming indignant. "It only shows that my
people in England knew the rhyme long before yours were heard of."

Jessie rose as well. "I don't see what your father is thinking of," she
observed, frigidly, to Adela. "Mr. Lance belongs to a very old family."

Something like a sarcastic chuckle seemed to escape from Reefe's bearded
lips; but he remained quite impassive. It was impossible to tell whether
or not he had made any sound.

"Before I go," Lance began, desperately, "I wish you'd tell me what this
legend means. Did you have Indian ancestors, as well as English?"

He fixed his gaze intently and strenuously upon Adela as he spoke.

"I told you all I could," Adela answered, evasively; and began to resume
her work upon one of the moss-boxes.

Reefe looked at him, with a trace of defiance now. "We have as good
blood as any," he averred. "But we ask you no questions, and I don't see
that we've got a call to answer any more. If ye want any yarb
medicine--" And there he paused, indicating that he was ready for
business.

There could not have been a completer collapse of the climax which Lance
had thought to force. He turned away in disgust. "Come, Jessie," he
said, "let us go." And Jessie was more than ready to accede.

But before they went he thanked Adela for her story, and bade good-by to
her and her father. As he faced them in doing this, he noticed once more
the baffling resemblance between Adela and Jessie, which their
unlikeness in stature and general bearing rendered all the more
peculiar; and the gray eyes of the Reefes troubled him by their
enigmatic expression. The conviction was strong in his mind, that the
cause of their silence was that they really had nothing more definite to
tell him about their ancestry than what they had imparted. Yet he wished
that they had not stopped at this point. Why did they have gray eyes?
And yet, why should they not have them? Save for a slight bronze or
coppery hue in their complexions, they were of the same European race
that Lance and Jessie belonged to.

Nevertheless, their eyes and their strange legend pursued and haunted
him long after he and Jessie had cantered away from the herb-doctor's
door.




CHAPTER IX.

LANCE AND SYLVESTER.


So mingled and conflicting were the considerations in Lance's mind, on
leaving the Reefes, that he was not sure he would want to see Adela
again. But his mood soon changed; he was not able to evade the
importance which she had assumed for him.

"I hope you are satisfied now," said Jessie, as they rode homeward
together.

"No, I'm not," he answered. "I suspect myself of being very much
_dis_satisfied."

Somehow he did not dare to speak to her, as yet, of the theory he
entertained, that Adela was a descendant of Gertrude Wylde. And how
could he tell her that he thought they looked alike?

But within a few days, so incessantly did the notion pursue him, that he
was forced to make a limited confession of it. Jessie observed that he
was preoccupied and thinking of something which he would not tell her.
"Do let me know what it is that troubles you, Ned," she whispered to
him, laying her arm gently around his neck one evening on the veranda,
when she found him brooding there alone.

Thereupon he made his disclosure, and was rewarded by a rather
tumultuous dialogue, in which Jessie demonstrated clearly that she was
not pleased with the idea which he presented.

"But how can it be any other way, Jessie?" he demanded, reproachfully.
"Everything leads up to this conclusion; and, surely, if Adela Reefe
represents to-day the line of that poor girl, Gertrude, who would have
been your own cousin if you had been living then, how can we be
indifferent to the fact that the same blood is in your veins and hers?"

"I won't have it so!" Jessie returned. "I don't care if it is. And,
besides, she has Indian blood; that makes all the difference. It is no
longer the same."

Lance bethought him of those reported cases in which the stock of
negroes and whites had been blended, and he feared that it would be next
to hopeless for him to overcome Jessie's aversion. Still he said: "But
that is so far off, child. She is so like us now, that I can't help
thinking of her as if she might be a kinswoman of yours--can't help
taking an interest in her welfare."

"Never say that to me again!" cried Jessie. "No one in that class shall
be considered as a kinswoman of mine. If you are going to give yourself
up to such fancies as these, you may as well choose between them and
me."

Her tone exasperated Lance, but he controlled himself. "Dearest," he
said, "I have given myself up only to you. You know it; don't you?"

Then Jessie showed contrition, and humbly, while the tears rose to her
eyes, acknowledged her hastiness; and the little quarrel proved to be
only a convenient groundwork for new demonstrations of mutual
tenderness. But there remained in Lance's mind a residuum of doubt, lest
his betrothed should not fully sympathize with all his impulses, his
desire to be true to every one who could justly make a claim upon him.
He did not abandon the project, which had unconsciously been taking
shape, of somehow including Adela in his schemes of improvement.

While this dubious colloquy was fresh in his thoughts, it chanced that
Sylvester De Vine, responding to the invitation he had thrown out at the
races, trudged up to the manor to see him. Lance's love affair, and the
misty problem concerning Adela, had not prevented him from giving a good
deal of meditation to his plans, which he had also talked over with
Colonel Floyd, regarding investment in new enterprises. Consequently, he
was primed for the interview with Sylv.

At that time the process of making paper from the refuse of Louisiana
sugar-cane, commonly called "bagasse," had scarcely been thought of;
Lance, at any rate, had never heard it suggested; but it had occurred to
him that the glutinous reeds, which grew in such unmeasured abundance
along this marshy North Carolina coast, might be utilized in
paper-manufacture; and he had annexed the idea to his other pet desire
of reclaiming Elbow Crook Swamp. He was anxious to enlist Sylv in both
these enterprises, having already ascertained that the young fellow was
far more receptive and progressive than Colonel Floyd. What he needed
was an assistant who would give time and energy to the preliminary steps
and experiments, animated by faith and assisted by due compensation in
money.

"Would you undertake to explore the swamp for me, and give me a detailed
report?" he asked Sylv.

"It would be very difficult," Sylv answered, "and would take time. I
might do it for you, though, by and by."

"Oh, there's no immediate hurry. You can wait a while. I shall probably
have to go North during the winter on business and to arrange about
mobilizing capital to work with here. I want to find out what is
practicable before I do anything serious. But, in the meanwhile, we
might start in on a trial of the reed-pulp for paper."

Sylv pulled his tangled beard meditatively, and replied: "That won't
help me much with my law studies."

"Yes, it will, indirectly," Lance declared. Then, after reflecting, he
added: "I'll tell you what I'll do! I'll give you some assistance for
the present, so that you can go on reading. It won't do you any harm.
Afterward, you can undertake my job."

It was not to be wondered at that, from this beginning, they should go
on to speak of Adela. "She astonishes me," said Lance. "I did not expect
to find any one like her here. It's a pity that she can't have a chance
to develop, too."

Sylv cast a sharp glance at the young philanthropist. It may have been
that the remark threw a new light for him upon Lance, or upon Adela.

"Yes, it would be a good thing for her," he replied, with moderate
enthusiasm. "She's engaged to marry my brother--Dennie."

This was news to Lance, and it took him by surprise. Somehow, his first
sensation was one of disappointment, though he could not have explained
to himself or anyone else why. In Sylv's accent, also, there was a vague
hint of despondency, as he made his announcement. Possibly it was the
first sign of a sentiment which he had not, up to that time, suspected.
The two men dropped into silence for a moment.

"Well," said Lance, with abrupt energy, "that's all right, I suppose.
And _I'm_ engaged to Miss Jessie. It will be all the pleasanter to have
you and Dennie and Adela working with us for a common end."

It was taking a sanguine view, to suppose that such a harmony could be
maintained; but it gave Sylv great pleasure, although he saw the
difficulties in the way. His face lighted with surprise, which gradually
changed to quiet satisfaction.

The two men talked long and earnestly, and by the time Sylv set out for
home they had agreed that they would try to persuade Adela to go to
school at Newbern, Lance undertaking the expenses.

"I'm not main certain Dennie'll let her," Sylv warned him, as they
parted.

"But he ought to be very glad to have her go," Lance replied. He had no
misgivings on that score.

Sylv was brimming with eagerness and anticipation for Adela's future as
it expanded before his vision, in the light of his friend's generous
offer; and it was a new experience to him to be treated as an equal,
almost a companion, by one so much above him in position and fortune.
Altogether, he felt very happy. His desire for intellectual improvement
was so single and controlling, that he was able to extend to another the
same congratulation he gave himself; and the prospect just opened for
Adela filled him with keen, unselfish delight. As he had told Dennie,
his regard for her was simply that of a brother; and it was only in the
opportunity as presented to a sister that he rejoiced. Yet he found,
when he came to mention the matter to Dennie, that it threatened to
renew in some measure the trouble which had recently come between them.

"I'm glad for _your_ luck, Sylv," said Dennie, in a cordial tone, "But
'pears to me you uns might kinder be satisfied with polishin' and
rubbin' on your own brains and makin' 'em all smooth and shiny, 'thout
interferin' with Deely. 'Pears to me like she ar' good enough the way
she ar' now. That's what."

"So she is," Sylv assented. "But it would make her happier, and she'd
have a heap more real pleasure in life, if she could be educated. She
was very glad to learn to read, you know. Now, this is one chance out of
a thousand; she may never get another."

Dennie, however, was not open to argument. He looked with favor on the
scheme of Sylv's receiving money and employment from Lance, partly
because it would gratify his brother and partly because it would lighten
his own cares and bring him nearer to marriage with Deely; but if Deely
was to be included in the abstract movement for unnecessary culture, he
would be as badly off as before.

In spite of Dennie's opposition, Sylv could not relinquish the plan; and
he had the imprudence to broach it with Deely on his own account. She
did not manifest any pronounced desire to enter into it, but they talked
of it several times, and it was evident that she was considering it.

Dennie heard of these consultations, of course, and reproached his
brother. He exerted great force of self-command, and avoided any
outbreak of temper; he was resolved never to be jealous again. But Sylv
saw that the subject was a dangerous one, and he promised not to urge it
upon Deely any further. Sorrowfully and apologetically he conveyed to
Lance the information of this obstacle to Deely's acceptance of his
proposal, and said that he feared she could do nothing about it.

It was reserved for Dennie himself to bring about, unwillingly, the
consummation of Lance's philanthropic design.

There was to be a wedding-party at a house in the woods, near Hunting
Quarters, to which the young people were invited. Dennie came to Reefe's
early, in order to escort Deely to the scene of the ceremony; and on
their way to the wedding he spoke of the school idea.

"We ought to be goin' to the parson, 'stead of your goin' to that thar
school," he said. He urged her again to fix the time for their marriage.

Deely still demurred. "I'm only nineteen," she answered. "I reckon I
won't be too old if I do wait a while."

Dennie was very much put out by her obduracy. "I don't know what to make
out'n the way you go on," he complained. "Mebbe you're goin' to that
thar school, after all."

"'Twouldn't be strange if I did," said she, although she had in reality
abandoned the thought.

He persisted in urging his wishes; she continued in a contrary mood; and
Dennie at last refused to talk. They completed their walk to the house
of the hymeneal merrymaking in a bitter silence, both very miserable.
But Deely possessed the advantage of expressing her unhappiness by means
of the greatest gayety, while Dennie had to fall back upon the more
ordinary masculine resource of looking glum and morose.

There was an abundance of corn-whiskey and of "common doin's," as well
as of "chicken fixin's" with other delicacies, at the supper and dance
which followed the brief formality of the wedding-service. The
simple-hearted and jolly guests proceeded to have a very good time; and
while the bride and groom remained in one corner, happy at being
ignored, the rest shuffled to and fro in a lively jig, stamping their
heels, indulging in sundry gratuitous capers, and shouting with
laughter. Dennie, meanwhile, devoted a much closer attention than was
needful to the corn-whiskey, the forcible quality of which he could have
ascertained by a single drink.

It may have been due to his diligence in reducing the supply of the
beverage that, as the hilarity of the others increased, and as Deely
grew more and more excited with the dance, his depression and gloom
deepened portentously. He had taken no part in the dancing, and had
begun by affecting to watch Deely's energetic share in it with
indifference. But it was impossible for him to keep up this pretence,
and the climax came when he saw his betrothed giving her hand for the
third or fourth time to Dan Billings, a handsome young fisherman against
whom she knew that Dennie cherished a special grudge.

Dennie stepped forth upon the floor that trembled with the heavy tread
of the athletic revellers, and, shoving his way between the astonished
pairs of youths and maidens, struck a commanding posture.

"This hyar's enough!" he screamed, confronting Deely. "It's time to go
home; and I'm goin' to take ye with me right now. D'ye hear?"

Tho old fiddler, mounted on a box at one side of the room, stopped the
frantic discord he had been sawing from the strings, and began
mechanically to rosin his bow with a lump of the best virgin-pine rosin.

"I could ha' heard you if you'd stayed over t'other side," Deely
retorted, her dark cheeks flaming angrily; "if you war goin' to shout
out so, what do you want to come so close?"

"I say," repeated Dennie, in a more subdued voice, "I'm goin' along, and
I mean for to take you with me. Dan Billings ain't goin' to dance with
you no more this night."

Upon this Billings, who was a vigorous young fellow, asserted his
rights, and gave Dennie to understand roundly that no one should dictate
to him his choice of partners, "when the lady was willin'."

A serious result was imminent; for Billings, elated by his apparent
success with Deely, became increasingly noisy and bumptious, and retorts
flew hotly from one man to the other, until Billings raised his fist to
strike a blow at Dennie. When it came to that, Deely stepped between the
wranglers, and prevented their fighting.

"Now _you're_ wrong, Dan!" she exclaimed, "You both ought to be ashamed,
making me so much trouble. But there sha'n't be a fight, whatever. I'm
goin' home this minute, along with Dennie."

The other girls had drawn aside, dumb and frightened, and the men were
disposed in a group around the chief actors, feeling that they ought to
interfere, but restrained by a respect for the privilege of fighting,
which they might some time wish to exercise on their own account.
Billings relaxed his clinched fingers, quite abashed at being so
abruptly robbed of his dignity as Deely's champion; but it took a few
moments to cool Dennie's wrath. He insisted that the fisherman had "told
him insults," and must be punished.

"I'm waiting," Deely reminded him. "You said you was going, and now I'm
ready."

The bride and groom remained oblivious of all this stir, but the bride's
mother came forward, urging Deely not to leave them. The girl, however,
would not yield. Every one could see that she was greatly incensed at
Dennie's conduct, but there was a decisive calm about her that made
persuasion useless. She had, in fact, arrived at a conclusion much more
far-reaching, which she lost no time in imparting to Dennie when they
had left the house.

"My mind's made up," she said to him, without heat. "I've borne your
tantrums as long as I can, and it's no use. By and by it'll get so that
I can't have any will or way of my own, and I don't think you'll ever be
any better, Dennie, until I'm far away where you can't tease me. Yes;
I've made up my mind. I'm goin' to that school."

To Dennie the announcement was like a knell. His burst of temper had
left him much quieter and, as usual, rather ashamed; and he felt that
Deely's intention of punishing him was quite justifiable. Still, he
could not as yet believe that she would carry it out.

"You won't treat me so hard as that," he protested. "Think it over
another time, Deely. Everything'd be all right if you'd only marry me."

"I don't want to talk about it," was her answer. "I've decided, now, and
I'm goin' away."

In the course of the next few days her lover was forced to recognize
that she was in earnest, and her resolve irrevocable. An extra session
at the small academy for young ladies which Lance had selected was about
to begin; and, through Sylv, Adela obtained a conference with him on the
subject of going thither. Old Reefe put in some objections; but as Adela
was determined he gave way, and the final arrangements were soon made.

The conference just referred to took place near the manor. Lance met
Sylv and Adela in the grounds, by appointment, and talked over the
details with them. But just as they were bidding him good-by Colonel
Floyd came strolling along; and Lance, in walking back to the house with
him, told him, full of enthusiasm, what he had done. The colonel seemed
to think it rather strange.

"My dear fellow, what has put this into your head?" he asked.

"Why, it seems to me the most natural thing in the world," Lance
replied. "It grew out of my plans, when I was consulting young De Vine.
Besides"--he hesitated an instant--"something leads me to feel a
peculiar interest in this young woman."

"Evidently," said the colonel, "or you never would become her
benefactor." But he volunteered no criticism further than to say: "I'm
not altogether sure, Lance, that you are doing wisely."

"If you think," said his prospective son-in-law, "that there's any good
reason why I shouldn't befriend her, I suppose I could abandon the
thing, though I've committed myself now."

The colonel devoted a few moments to reflection, under cover of his
spectacles. Then he said: "No, I am not clear that there is any
sufficient reason. It struck me as odd, and may seem so to others. But
then, in your character--You see, you are something of a professed
philanthropist, and people will learn to understand it on that ground.
Otherwise--" Once more he broke off, and resumed: "You are the next
thing to a married man, now, which makes it proper enough for you to
take the poor girl under your wing. Perhaps you had better talk with
Jessie about it."

Somehow the phrase "poor girl" grated slightly upon Lance's ear. Nor did
he relish the prospect of debating with Jessie the wisdom of his
proceeding; but it was plain that he would have to do so. It was true
there had been no trace of the clandestine in his undertaking, and he
had asked Sylv to bring Adela to the garden only because he considered
the whole transaction as a side-issue, in which he was separately
concerned; hence he preferred not to thrust it upon the colonel or his
daughter. But it was also true that Jessie's vigorous rejection of his
theory about Adela had made him less sure of her approval than he would
have liked to be.

By one of the surprises frequent in the moods of women, even though one
supposes their views to be settled on a particular point, it turned out
that Jessie, when consulted, did not oppose his design.

"I have been thinking over what you said, dear, about educating people,"
she announced to him, "and perhaps you are right. If you're wrong,
you'll find it out by an experiment. So all I have to say is, 'Go
ahead.' That's the way you'd like to have me put it, isn't it?"

Her whole manner was sweet and trustful; she wanted to make amends to
him. But, unless I am mistaken, Lance's effort on behalf of Adela was
not entirely to her taste.

Thus, while they endeavored to keep up a good understanding, an entering
wedge of doubt and possible division had been put in place.

The day having come for Adela's departure, difficulty arose as to her
escort, if she was to have any. Aunty Losh was not precisely the person
to introduce her at a Young Ladies' Academy; and Dennis also felt
himself to be inadequate for that duty. Sylv, as was natural, refrained
from offering his services. Neither was it possible for Lance to
accompany her. The end of it was that Aunty Losh and Dennis went with
her by wagon as far as Beaufort, and there she took the train alone for
Newbern. Lance had been to the city and prepared the way for her, so
that she might be received by the principal of the school, at the
station.

But the time which followed was a dreary period to poor Dennis. Knowing
his own faults, and that his loss in Adela's exile had been brought on
by himself, he made no remonstrance after he saw that her purpose could
not be altered. But his wonted cheeriness and energy forsook him as soon
as she had gone; he performed his daily tasks in a listless and
perfunctory way; he talked little, and did not forget his misery long
enough to smile. On the other hand, he abstained from complaint; but
occasionally, when alone with Aunty Losh, he would confer with her
briefly about Adela and the change that had occurred. The jealousy that
took root with such ease in his uncultivated mind, and sprang up there
like a weed at the slightest encouragement, soon began to flourish again
on a suspicion that Lance must have some interested motive in helping
Adela. Aunty Losh, it must be said, was not a good counsellor. Much as
Dennis tried to conceal this new source of trouble, it was perfectly
apparent to her; and, because Dennis was her favorite and she
instinctively aided against all innovations, she fanned the flame
instead of quenching it.

"I reckon Deely may be your wife one o' these hyar days," she said, when
they had been discussing his affairs and Lance's connection with them
over a cup of yaupon. "Who would ha' thout you wouldn't been her husband
now? But there's an old sayin' what's in my head, that the man as has
got his hand on the back o' the chair is mighty often the one as sits
down in it."

Dennis saw the application, and was filled with alarm. Possibly it had
its effect in prompting him to seek assistance from Sylv; but his
loneliness, and the harassing thought that Adela might also be lonely,
or that something might go amiss in her new surroundings, where he could
not be present to help her, had a great deal to do with his impulse.
Besides, in contrition both for his jealousy of Sylv and his general
disagreeableness toward his betrothed, he fancied that it would be a
fine thing to show that he cared for her at a distance, and that he
trusted his brother.

"Sylv," said he, one evening, while they were finishing the bestowment
of the day's catch in the shed at one side of the cabin, where they kept
the fish cool by means of spring water--"Sylv, I'd like right well to
have you do somethin' for me."

"Say the word, Dennie," Sylv returned.

"I--I want you to go up thar to the city and stay thar, whar ye can see
Deely and make her feel like she had a real, true friend--some one to
'tend on her as I mout, if I was fit--and to help her if she want any
help. Dog-gone it! Mebbe it's foolish, and I reckon she ar' happy enough
and won't need nothin', but 'pears like I couldn't stand it, the way
'tis now. I want ye to go, Sylv--for me."

"You ask _me_ to do this, Dennie?" said Sylv. "Why did you think of _my_
going? Why not go yourself?"

"'Cause I'm not fit for't. An' what's more, she don't want me. She said
she war a-goin' away, so's she could be alone, and I could be alone. An'
I couldn't do nothin' if I was thar, Sylv."

"I see. It would be some comfort to you if I were to go. If you're sure
you want it, Dennie, I reckon I can manage."

"There ain't no more doubt on it," answered Dennie, "than when I put my
helm down to starboard to get the east breeze, steerin' north'ard. There
ain't no one else I can count on, Sylv, 'less it be you. An', Sylv, I--I
trust you; I got faith in you!"

He held out his rough hand, and Sylv grasped it firmly. There were tears
in Dennie's eyes, seeing which Sylv pressed his brother's weather-beaten
palm the harder.

"All right, Dennie. I won't fail you."

And so the compact was made.

Sylv was absolutely honest in what he said. He knew but one ambition,
and the gaining of any woman's love had never formed a part of it. Why
was it, then, that his spirits rose so at the thought of being near
Adela once more?




CHAPTER X.

THE LIKENESS.


You remember how little Lance had seen of Adela Reefe, and that he knew
her scarcely at all. But this makes it the stranger, and rendered it at
the time all the more unaccountable to him, that, on her removal from
his neighborhood, he should have been afflicted with a sense of vacancy,
and should have suffered from the melancholy which one might expect to
feel when suddenly separated from a dear friend. Was he not engaged to
Jessie, and thoroughly contented in his love? Moreover, Adela had not
entered into his life as an important factor. Yet, now that she was
gone, he perceived how quickly and completely the web of surmises which
he had thrown around her had taken him also into its tangles. Her
identity and destiny had engaged his thoughts far more deeply than he
had guessed.

Acting on his offer of assistance, and obeying Dennie's wish, Sylv
presently came to him to suggest that he would like to go to Newbern to
pursue his studies.

"But I have just made arrangements," Lance told him, "to put up a small
building where we can experiment with reed-pulp; and I expected you to
assist me."

Not without embarrassment, Sylv made known the special reason proposed
by Dennie for his going. Lance thought the plan a rather curious one,
and allowed himself a queer, vicarious jealousy on Dennie's account, at
the notion of his being so far from Adela when his brother should be in
the same town with her. But he had promised to help Sylv; so he
consented to send him to Newbern and maintain him there for a while, the
cost to be returned in future services.

"Perhaps Dennie will take a hand with me in the pulp experiments," he
reflected.

Thus it came to pass that a shed was built in the woods not far from the
manor, where a boiler and a small beater and washer were placed,
convenient to the limited water supply from a "run" or creek. An
experienced vatman was sent for from the North; Dennie was engaged to
collect and haul reeds, and aid in other ways when he could. All this
involved a good deal of expense, and the colonel watched the work with
suppressed horror at the young man's extravagance. But the experiments
went on, and Lance became enthusiastic over the details of drying the
reeds, getting the mixture of caustic alkali just right for boiling, and
trying rags in various proportions. Finally he was able to produce from
the vat a few sheets of tolerably good hand-made paper, on which he
fancied that he could see already inscribed a record of the profits that
were to be his.

It took many weeks, however, to accomplish that much. At first Jessie
entered into the new enterprise with great interest, and made it doubly
charming to him; but after a while, finding that it consumed her lover's
time and distracted his attention from her, she began to regard the
fascinating shed, with its boiler and engine and rude apparatus, as a
dangerous rival. Nothing daunted by such symptoms of her discontent as
he observed, Lance continued his application with a fervor that seemed
to her little less than fanatical. Meanwhile he saw Dennie very often,
and was constantly in receipt of news about Adela from him.

Indeed, since neither Aunty Losh nor Dennie had ever become enslaved to
the luxury of reading, it was necessary for Lance to interpret Adela's
letters to them. These epistles, in the beginning, were somewhat slight
and informal. They would begin thus: "I write to inform you that I am
enjoying good health. I hope you are the same." But as she went on with
her studies, and as the various particulars of her new life appealed
more decidedly to her attention, her style became more familiar and
cordial; she described what happened at the school, day by day, and
often lit up her account of events with flashes of humor that, to Lance,
were delightful. She hit off some of the absurdities of modern routine
education with a surprising sharpness of perception, and was greatly
amused at the old theologian who attended to the religious instruction
of the girls. He had shown her some books of Hebrew, the characters in
which reminded her of her own invented patterns in silk and beads. But
withal it transpired from what she wrote, that she made astounding
progress in her lessons. She quickly outstripped her classmates in their
work, and was promoted to a higher grade. Lance wondered whether this
were due to the stored-up energy of a nature that was in some respects
primitive, or whether it came from inherited aptitude--an aptitude
derived partly, through the dim centuries, from Gertrude Wylde. Several
times she alluded to Lance, and sent to him reserved messages of
friendly thanks for his kindness; but perhaps she would not have written
so familiarly on other topics if she had known that he was to see her
letters. The truth was, it had not occurred to her that her betrothed
and his aunt would apply to Lance to decipher her letters. And Lance,
embarrassed by these references to himself, refrained from disclosing
them.

Inevitably, from the supervision which thus fell to his lot over
everything Adela did or said or thought, so far as her letters formed a
record, it ensued that his interest in her increased. I am afraid he
watched those letters with an alertness not to be excused, for some
trace of a thoughtfulness respecting him, equal to his own toward her;
and when she addressed to him directly a short communication, to tell
him how she was getting on, and how grateful she was for his assistance,
it was in a mood closely akin to disappointment that he read it through
without having detected a word that could be construed as indicating
even a commencement of friendship.

Now and again he contemplated turning the letters over to Jessie, and
felt a desire to talk with her about the progress of his pupil. But he
fancied that she would receive the confidence coldly, and he forbore to
say anything, except in the most general terms. Why, in the mean time,
he should expect anything more from Adela than a formal recognition of
indebtedness, was a riddle to him; but nevertheless he knew that he was
unsatisfied.

It should be understood that his peculiar state of mind was not at any
one time clearly apparent to him; he merely caught glimpses of it. His
preoccupation with the paper manufacture all the while kept his
attention busy, and it was but dimly that he perceived what was going on
in other regards. But when his experiments had reached their
culmination, and he had decided to build a mill and begin operations, it
became necessary for him to go North. He resolved to run up to Newbern,
first, and see Adela Reefe, before bidding good-by to Jessie. This
intention he was about to confide to Jessie, when one morning she
unexpectedly presented herself at the engine-shed, at the moment when he
was perusing a recent letter from his charge.

"So I've found you at last!" cried Jessie, standing by the sill of the
open shed-door, wrapped in a light shawl, with a broad hat bent archly
over her head, and looking wonderfully pretty. She caught sight of the
letter. "Aha!" she said. "I thought you came here to work. But it's only
make-believe, I see. Well, I've a great mind to write you letters myself
and send them down to you here to read."

"Oh, it's only a letter from Adela Reefe," Lance answered. "Dennie De
Vine brought it; he's just gone away again. Would you like to see it?"

The vatman was occupied at the other end of the shed. Jessie took the
letter and glanced at it; then returned it to her lover, indifferently.
"Deely seems to be quite contented," she observed. "When are you going
to finish, Ned?"

"Finish? You mean what I'm doing here? Why, I can go with you now, if
you want."

"I wish you would, then. I feel just like having a little walk and talk.
You're going away so soon, it's only fair I should see something of
you."

"I know that, dearest," said Lance, "and I'm afraid I've spent too much
time over this business. It's only fair to me, too, that we should be
together."

They sauntered away in company, and strolled through the woods. "I have
been thinking," he told her, "that I ought to start in two or three
days. But I must see Adela and Sylv first. I don't want to go North
without knowing just how they seem up there, in their new life."

A change came over Jessie's manner. "You mustn't go!" she said, with
sudden vehemence. "It isn't right, Ned."

"Not right, my dear. Why?" Lance bent his earnest, clean-cut features to
look down at her more searchingly.

But Jessie lowered her eyes, and would not meet his glance. "Oh, I have
watched you," she said, "and you are often talking with Dennie; you talk
about that girl, I am sure. And now she is writing to you. Don't you
think you have done enough for her, without going to see her?"

"Perhaps so," said Lance, his energetic mind arrested by a sudden
discontent, and by a wonder as to whether he had unconsciously fallen
into error. "But surely you don't allow yourself to be troubled about
it, do you?"

"Why, no," Jessie answered. "It would be foolish to do that. Why should
I? Only, it may be that you don't think what you're doing, Ned. She is
not our _friend_, and she never can be. I have agreed that you should be
her benefactor if you want to. But think how it might seem for you to go
up there and call on her. Isn't it too much?"

"I will do as you think best, my dear," Lance assented.

"Thank you," said Jessie, at once growing radiant.

They passed on through the sun-flecked gallery of the spicy woods,
chatting on various topics, and were outwardly quite content. But Lance
could not banish the idea that he had been deprived of something which
was his right; and Jessie, for her part, was not nearly so serene as she
appeared to be. A subtle intuition had warned her that Lance was wrapped
up in his care for Adela to an extent which he himself was not able to
measure. The circumstance weighed upon her with increasing force; and
many times at night she had been awakened by her own tears, only to fret
out the solitary hours with vain questionings and attempts at
reassurance. Her trouble seemed needless and absurd; but somehow Adela
Reefe came flitting across her dreams, and even darkened her waking
moments, like a shadow revived from the past, that had the power to blot
out the vivid and sunny present.

That evening the lovers looked over some old miniatures of former Floyds
and of the Wyldes, from whom the colonel traced his inheritance. In
every one of the female faces Lance instinctively hunted for traits that
should account for Jessie's features; but he could not find any. Not
only was he baffled in the search, but when he retired to rest the old
puzzle as to the similarity between Jessie's face and Adela's grew upon
him, as more complicated and less easy to shake off than ever.

A few nights afterward his hands clasped Jessie's cheeks as he bade her
farewell, on his departure for Beaufort, where he was to take a
coast-wise steamer for New York.

It was late October. There was a chill in the air. The leaves of the
deciduous trees had turned, and were already falling. The pines were
rusty in places, their needles showered to the ground in great numbers;
the snow-goose had already been heard piping in the air, on its
southward flight; and the waves of the Sound and the sea, as they broke
upon the shore, seemed to shiver with a knowledge of approaching winter.
But Jessie stood with her lover on the veranda, in the darkness; and her
face rested so yieldingly in his palms that Lance half imagined he could
carry it away with him. There in the night it was like a picture painted
long ago and dimmed by time, yet shining out through the obscurity with
its youth and loveliness and passion still intact. No; he could not
carry it bodily away with him, but he could take it in his heart; and so
he did, holding it there long after the farewell kiss had left his lips.

But after he reached New York, and during the long months of winter, the
magic of fancy played strange tricks with the image he had brought in
his heart. Strive as he would, he could not prevent it from wavering and
flickering, as it were, and occasionally taking on a darker hue, so that
he seemed at times to be contemplating Adela, instead of Jessie.

One of the first things he did was to hunt up some old memoranda in
which the tradition concerning Guy Wharton was definitely set down. This
cleared up his recollection of it; and his next act was to write to a
lawyer of his acquaintance in England, who knew something about the
Wharton history, asking him to use his best endeavors to get some
authentic likeness of Gertrude Wylde.

Unfolding to Hedson, his father's old partner, the paper-mill project,
and finding it received with favor, he next exerted himself to form a
small syndicate for purchasing and reclaiming the swamp-lands, since
that undertaking would require more capital than he cared to venture.
But the swamp was not the Treasury of the United States, nor was it a
fantasy of such vast dimensions as the Panama Canal; so the syndicate
could not be formed. For capital, despite all the cant about its
conservatism, is really moved by extremes: it is allured either by a
dead certainty or by an equally defunct impossibility. Elbow Crook Swamp
was a something between the two.

"Wait until spring," Hedson advised. "Then you will have time to
explore; and, besides, I may get down there myself to take a look!"

Hedson enjoyed the harmless pride of believing that anything at which
Hedson had "taken a look," and was able to speak well of, must
necessarily glitter like gold to his brother bondholders.

This affair and others detained Lance a long time. His mind was fixed on
settling in North Carolina, at least for the first years of his married
life, and he was anxious to get all his investments in good order before
making the change. At Christmas he took a flying trip to Fairleigh Park,
and enjoyed a brief season of jollity and of companionship with Jessie;
but he was soon back again among the snowy streets. He had seen Sylv,
but would not permit himself an interview with Adela. On his return
Hedson informed him that he was about to sail for England, being called
thither by business, to be absent a couple of months. Lance had received
no news from his legal friend in London, and did not indeed expect
anything valuable from that source; the records of the Surrey Wyldes
were doubtless too scattered to be traceable, and it was scarcely
possible that any vestige of Gertrude's features would have been
retained among the possessions of the Whartons. But, not wishing to
forego any chance, he petitioned Hedson to see the solicitor and
co-operate with him. The acute perception of the American man of
business might perhaps aid the careful British lawyer in getting at
something, even in so sentimental an inquiry. Lance would have gone
himself, so active was his interest in the question, had it not been for
his reluctance to place the ocean between himself and Jessie.

Toward the end of February Hedson sent him a half-page letter, which
ended with the words: "Think I have got something for you." Exasperating
silence followed this communication. But, in latter March, Hedson landed
at New York, and brought Lance a drawing. "It's from an old picture," he
said. "Had the devil's own time getting it; but I bored everybody
concerned, until they couldn't stand it any longer, and had to help me
ferret it out."

"And you're sure this was Gertrude Wylde?" asked Lance.

"Why, my boy, you don't think I'd say so if I wasn't sure, do you?
Besides, look at this curious monogram on the back. It seems to be two
Gs and two Ws intertwined. You see, G. W. alone would stand for either
Gertrude Wylde or Guy Wharton--a singular coincidence. The fact that the
letters are repeated seems to show that Wharton had noticed this and
resolved that his initials should be linked with hers, which were the
same, so that in that way at least they might be united. It's a mark of
identity. But why do you ask?" he added. "Is there anything wrong about
it?"

Lance was excited, evidently. The drawing shook in his hand. "No," he
said; "nothing wrong. Quite the contrary. It's exactly like her in some
ways."

"You don't _look_ crazy, Lance; but how can you possibly know whether
it's like or not?"

"Oh, I mean--I forgot; you never saw Adela--Miss Jessie, I mean."

"No," said Hedson. "I take, now. Like _her_, eh?"

Lance nodded silently. To him the picture resembled Adela more than
Jessie.




CHAPTER XI.

LANCE RETURNS.


April, coming to thaw the ice on Northern streams, and to mould the
first buds that started out timidly as a young artist's efforts at
creation, also dissolved the spell of solitude which had so long
encompassed Jessie.

Lance was ready to build the paper-mill, and had written that he would
take the rail southward as soon as possible. It had been agreed at
Christmas-time that the wedding should come off in May or June. Activity
began in the turpentine plantation; the trees were "boxed" and "tapped;"
the sap commenced to flow. The air grew milder, the stars shone with a
more hazy lustre in the night heavens, and birds renewed their notes in
the thickets about the manor, or flew with transient greetings over the
lonely land, on their mission of heralding the return of spring to
higher latitudes. But Jessie could not rid herself of the mournfulness
and the partial lethargy that had so long clung to her. She knew that
Lance was coming, and her heart throbbed the more warmly: she waited
eagerly to feel his arms clasped round her. Yet a lingering fear
persuaded her that the happiness might still be deferred or, in the end,
frustrated.

It was in such a mood that she leaned, one evening, on the railing of
the old veranda, vaguely musing and inclined to sadness. There was no
certainty as to the hour of Lance's advent, for he had not named a time,
and into that far-off nook where she lived the lightning of the
telegraph never penetrated. But of late Jessie had adopted a custom of
straying out upon the veranda, as if she expected to see Lance
approaching.

Suddenly she heard the click and crunch of unwonted wheels upon the
drive near the house. She started up and listened, in a tremor of
incredulous delight. The sounds drew nearer; presently a light flashed
across the moist branches of the shade-trees, and the next moment she
beheld the lanterns of a carriage, dimly illuminating its battered
varnish, the smoking backs of two horses and the muffled torso of a
sable driver. Then Lance's young, energetic face appeared in the square
of the carriage-door, faintly roseate with the light from the house. He
was fumbling at the door-handle before the wheels stopped turning.

The sable driver subsided completely into the depths of his sableness,
as the two figures clasped each other at the top of the steps.

"Ah, Ned, I have waited for you so long!"

"And so have I for you, dear."

"Do you know, I felt almost as if I were that poor Gertrude, waiting and
waiting still?"

"You _are_, dearest--you are _my_ Gertrude!"

And then the colonel, always discreet, allowed himself to be seen in the
hallway, prepared to welcome the wanderer.

Lance barely restrained himself until the next day before seeking an
opportunity to tell Jessie about the drawing which Hedson had brought
from England.

"You've written me next to nothing about Adela Reefe," he said to her.
"But I suppose you have kept on taking charge of her letters for
Dennie."

"Oh yes," said Jessie; "he brought them all the way up to me. Poor
fellow!"

"Why do you call him that?"

"It seems so severe for him, having her stay away at such a distance,
and for so long. He's dreadfully in love with her."

"Yes, I know he is," Lance confessed. "Those times when I was with him
so much, and you hardly liked it, I was talking with him about her and
trying to console him. He let me into his confidence, and told me how he
was afraid he had driven her from him and should never get her back. But
Sylv used to send an encouraging message, now and then. Has he sent any
more?"

"Sylv has hardly written at all," said Jessie.

Lance mused aloud: "That's strange."

"Yes," responded his sweetheart, in a tone as if she were about to say
more; but she did not go on.

At this point Lance thought it best to bring forward his little
surprise. Excusing himself, he went to his room and came back with the
drawing. "By the way," he began, reseating himself, "I wonder if Adela
has changed much in looks, under the influence of education. It would be
curious to see her, wouldn't it?"

"I saw her," said Jessie, "just before she went back, after you left us,
at Christmas."

"Well, then, you can tell. What do you think of this?" And her lover
produced the portrait.

Jessie stared at it in some astonishment. "Where under the sun did that
come from?" she exclaimed. "Was it done for you?"

"What do you think of it?" he repeated.

"It isn't perfect," was the answer; "but still, I should know it, I
think. Why, Ned, are you cheating me? It isn't meant for Adela, is it?
You naughty boy, I could almost think it was an attempt to show how _I_
shall look when I'm stouter! It's a joke."

"Then you think it's like you?" he inquired. "Does it strike you?"

"I won't say another word, until you tell me _what_ it is."

"It is a picture of Gertrude Wylde," Lance returned.

Then there was silence for a moment. Jessie took the drawing and looked
at it intently. Her voice was low, and quivered with a sort of
frightened tremor when she next spoke. "Why didn't you tell me at first,
Ned? And what did you mean by speaking as if it were Adela Reefe? It
_is_ like her; and it is like me, too. Oh, what this secret? What is the
meaning of it all?"

"As well as I can make it out," said Lance, "the meaning is that Adela
is a direct descendant of Gertrude Wylde, and a kinswoman of yours. The
only thing remaining, in my mind, is to find out whether her father or
his family came from Croatan. If that is proved--"

"And if that is proved, what then?"

"I know of nothing to follow, except that we should recognize her as a
relative."

"Never!" cried Jessie. "This is a mere dream. It's impossible to prove
her descent from our stock. I can have nothing to do with her."

Her vehemence was such that another man might have suspected some
underlying motive of feminine jealousy. But Lance merely laughed. "Oh,
there's no legal claim involved," said he, lightly. "Of course, I don't
expect that anything tremendous is going to happen, even if she does
turn out to be of your blood. But suppose we appoint your father
arbitrator as to this portrait?"

Jessie consented, and they referred the picture to Colonel Floyd.

"If this is a well-authenticated reproduction," said the colonel,
deploying his finest hand-book manner, "the appearances would seem to
indicate some connection. 'Pon my soul, I never noticed any resemblance
till now; but while the similarity to our Jessie is perceptible, it is
not nearly so pronounced as the likeness to this Adela Reefe. Is it
possible that an inherited type of countenance should last so long,
under such conditions? Very singular; very strange!"

He did not evince enthusiasm, and he paced the room restlessly.

"What we want is to go and see old Mr. Reefe," suggested Lance, "and ask
him about Croatan."

The colonel fell in with this proposition; and on the morrow they rode
down to Hunting Quarters. It was not an easy matter to draw Reefe into
conversation; but they at last succeeded in pinning him down to facts,
and, without discovering their purpose, he assured them that, to the
best of his knowledge, his predecessors had lived in the region of
Croatan, until the time of his father, who crossed Pamlico Sound and
settled near Hunting Quarters. To make a clean breast of it, he also
admitted that his stock probably contained Indian blood; but of this he
was rather proud than otherwise.

"It is settled," said Lance, when he came to tell Jessie the result of
the inquiry. "There can be no reasonable doubt now. I must go up and let
Adela and Sylv know about it at once."

Jessie leaned back in her chair and fixed her mild gray eyes upon him.
She had never looked more captivating than at that instant, the
side-part in her hair giving an accent of dainty self-reliance to her
whole pose and demeanor. "Let me ask you a question," she said.

"Willingly."

"About poor Dennie. Has it ever occurred to you, Ned, that you may be
doing him a great injury by sending Adela off in this way, and throwing
her with Sylv?"

"No, of course not," answered Lance, somewhat nettled. "Would I have
been a party to it if I had thought so?" But the mention of Sylv in this
sort of way caused him an inward shudder. If there were any peril of
Dennie's losing Adela, why should it be Sylv who should win her?

"I think you are helping to separate them," Jessie continued, "and you
ought to reflect, and stop. Besides, why should you go on so, mixing
yourself up in her affairs?"

"I'm not. I ought at least to see her and tell her my discovery."

Jessie suddenly rose. "I _hate_ that woman!" she cried, sharply. And, at
the same instant, Lance saw his engagement ring flashing upon her
finger.

"You shall not hate her," he declared, with passion. "She is your
kinswoman--one of us. It isn't right that you should say that, and I
won't endure it."

"Never mind whether you will endure it or not," Jessie retorted. "She
has occupied enough of your attention already."

"My dear child," Lance remonstrated, "it's impossible that you should be
jealous of that girl! But what else can you mean? What do you demand?"

"I think that you ought to just drop her, from this time on," said
Jessie, closing her lips decisively.

There are scientific thinkers who tell us that the will is not a cause,
but merely a state of consciousness resulting from previous conditions
of the nerves and the emotions. However this may be, Lance's will
asserted itself in strong opposition to Jessie's. The probability that
Adela was a lineal descendant of Gertrude Wylde appealed strongly to his
imagination. Now that his theory seemed so well established, he was
resolved to have her kinship acknowledged; and, further, he experienced
a strong attraction toward her, the stress of which he did not fully
comprehend. He himself represented the man who had loved Gertrude, who
had vainly searched for and lost her. Was it not fair that he should
have some hand in the destiny of the girl thus reclaimed, after the
lapse of centuries, from the oblivion which had overtaken Gertrude's
life?

"I will not drop her," he said, unyieldingly. "And, what's more, Jessie,
I am going to see her, and shall stand by her."




CHAPTER XII.

SYLV'S TROUBLE.


Exactly what was to be the issue of Lance's sentiment respecting Adela,
it would have been hard to say. No fatal breach had as yet been made in
his relations with Jessie; yet they parted, after the difference which I
have just detailed, with a coldness that promised ill; and, for the
first time, Lance met the issue that had for weeks past unobtrusively
put itself in his way. If Jessie would persist in being so narrow, so
unsympathetic, what was to come? And if any trouble from this source
should divide them, what was there left to him? Facing this alternative,
Lance was forced to perceive that the interest which he had allowed
himself to feel in Adela had, unawares, grown into a dangerous emotion.
In one way it seemed absurd. In another, it was tragical. Did he
actually, in view of the rupture which now seemed likely to occur
between himself and Jessie, contemplate such a possibility as giving his
life up to Adela? If he were to do that, the question of treachery to
his humble friend, Dennis De Vine, would be involved. Nevertheless, some
unseen power seemed to propel him toward an erratic solution of this
sort. He wondered whether at last the yearning of his ancestor, long
ago, was fated to meet fulfilment by his own union with the latest
offspring of Gertrude Wylde. No! he would not think of it: he refused to
surrender himself to such fantasies. And still he could not escape their
importuning.

He was involved in a struggle. He did not know what to make of it; but
he resolved to maintain his own dignity, first, by going to see Adela,
and then, after that, everything concerning Jessie and himself might be
righted. Meanwhile he kept one idea firmly before him, which was, to
remain true to Jessie so long as she would let him do so without
sacrificing Adela.

But before he had time to carry out his determination of seeing Adela,
an unlooked-for incident occurred, which altered the situation
materially.

The last bell for the day had sounded at the "academy" where Adela
pursued her studies, or rather was pursued by them, for they followed
her steps from morning to night in a race with which it was hard to keep
even, notwithstanding her prowess. The bell signified freedom for a
brief period. When it sounded she was allowed to go out for a walk, the
usual discipline of the school having been relaxed in her favor, to
admit of her taking her recreation in Sylv's company. Sylv was duly
accredited as Dennie's ambassador, to look after Adela's welfare; hence
it was considered very proper that he should see her every day. In this
way he had taken a great many walks with her.

When the bell rang, therefore, he met her at the gate of the garden
surrounding the academy, and they strolled away together. Had Lance seen
them at that moment, he would have been surprised by the noticeable
change which had come over them both. Adela had now been at school some
ten months--nearly a year--and her steady application, with the loss of
that out-door life to which she had been accustomed, had subdued the
color in her cheeks, though it had not made them pale. The delicate
brown tinge was always there. But the stiff black hair that had formerly
blown so carelessly about her head was demurely combed and orderly, now,
and a serene, womanly thoughtfulness had somehow drifted into the lines
of her face, making its wild beauty sweeter.

Sylv, too, had acquired a more polished air. It was not a gawky polish.
His clothes were very plain, but he appeared at ease in them; and
although his tangled beard was reduced to comparative trimness, it
hinted nothing of the incipient dandy. On the whole, they were a very
serious and simple pair, who would have looked extremely "countrified"
in Richmond, and still more so in New York. But they had altered very
much since the days on the shore.

Had Lance seen them then, he would have been surprised--and perhaps
displeased--by another thing. This was, that as they moved down the road
leading away from the town, they looked so like a pair of lovers.

Ah, while they had been growing so neat and orderly on the surface, and
had come to show marks of the educational mould, had they poss

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