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Viola Gwyn

by George Barr McCutcheon · English · Gutenberg #6013 · 607,613 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Viola Gwyn

Author: George Barr McCutcheon


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6013]
                Most recently updated: April 11, 2013

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIOLA GWYN ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.









[Illustration: "I shall get married when and where I please,--and
to whom I please, Mr. Gwynne."]

VIOLA GWYN

BY George Barr McCutcheon





CONTENTS

PROLOGUE--THE BEGINNING

CHAPTER

     I SHELTER FOR THE NIGHT
    II THE STRANGE YOUNG WOMAN
   III SOMETHING ABOUT CLOTHES, AND MEN, AND CATS
    IV VIOLA GWYN
     V REFLECTIONS AND AN ENCOUNTER
    VI BARRY LAPELLE
   VII THE END OF THE LONG ROAD
  VIII RACHEL CARTER
    IX BROTHER AND SISTER
     X MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
    XI A ROADSIDE MEETING
   XII ISAAC STAIN APPEARS BY NIGHT
  XIII THE GRACIOUS ENEMY
   XIV A MAN FROM DOWN THE RIVER
    XV THE LANDING OF THE "PAUL REVERE"
   XVI CONCERNING TEMPESTS AND INDIANS
  XVII REVELATIONS
 XVIII RACHEL DELIVERS A MESSAGE
   XIX LAPELLE SHOWS HIS TEETH
    XX THE BLOW
   XXI THE AFFAIR AT HAWK'S CABIN
  XXII THE PRISONERS
 XXIII CHALLENGE AND RETORT
  XXIV IN AN UPSTAIRS ROOM
   XXV MINDA CARTER
  XXVI THE FLIGHT OF MARTIN HAWK
 XXVII THE TRIAL OF MOLL HAWK
XXVIII THE TRYSTING PLACE OF THOUGHTS
  XXIX THE ENDING




PROLOGUE

THE BEGINNING


Kenneth Gwynne was five years old when his father ran away with
Rachel Carter, a widow. This was in the spring of 1812, and in
the fall his mother died. His grandparents brought him up to hate
Rachel Carter, an evil woman.

She was his mother's friend and she had slain her with the viper's
tooth. From the day that his questioning intelligence seized upon
the truth that had been so carefully withheld from him by his
broken-hearted mother and those who spoke behind the hand when
he was near,--from that day he hated Rachel Carter with all his
hot and outraged heart. He came to think of her as the embodiment
of all that was evil,--for those were the days when there was no
middle-ground for sin and women were either white or scarlet.

He rejoiced in the belief that in good time Rachel Carter would come
to roast in the everlasting fires of hell, grovelling and wailing
at the feet of Satan, the while his lovely mother looked down
upon her in pity,--even then he wondered if such a thing were
possible,--from her seat beside God in His Heaven. He had no doubts
about this. Hell and heaven were real to him, and all sinners went
below. On the other hand, his father would be permitted to repent and
would instantly go to heaven. It was inconceivable that his big,
strong, well-beloved father should go to the bad place. But Mrs. Carter
would! Nothing could save her! God would not pay any attention to
her if she tried to repent; He would know it was only "make-believe"
if she got down on her knees and prayed for forgiveness. He was
convinced that Rachel Carter could not fool God. Besides, would
not his mother be there to remind Him in case He could not exactly
remember what Rachel Carter had done? And were there not dozens of
good, honest people in the village who would probably be in Heaven
by that time and ready to stand before the throne and bear witness
that she was a bad woman?

No, Rachel Carter could never get into Heaven. He was glad.
No matter if the Scriptures did say all that about the sinner who
repents, he did not believe that God would let her in. He supported
this belief by the profoundly childish contention that if God let
EVERYBODY in, then there would be no use having a hell at all. What
was the use of being good all your life if the bad people could
get into Heaven at the last minute by telling God they were sorry
and never would do anything bad again as long as they lived? And
was not God the wisest Being in all the world? He knew EVERYTHING!
He knew all about Rachel Carter. She would go to the bad place and
stay there forever, even after the "resurrection" and the end of
the world by fire in 1883, a calamity to which he looked forward
with grave concern and no little trepidation at the thoughtful age
of six.

At first they told him his father had gone off as a soldier to
fight against the Indians and the British. He knew that a war was
going on.  Men with guns were drilling in the pasture up beyond
his grandfather's house, and there was talk of Indian "massacrees,"
and Simon Girty's warriors, and British red-coats, and the awful
things that happened to little boys who disobeyed their elders
and went swimming, or berrying, or told even the teeniest kind of
fibs. He overheard his grandfather and the neighbours discussing
a battle on Lake Erie, and rejoiced with them over the report of
a great victory for "our side." Vaguely he had grasped the news of
a horrible battle on the Tippecanoe River, far away in the wilderness
to the north and west, in which millions of Indians were slain,
and he wondered how many of them his father had killed with his
rifle,--a weapon so big and long that he came less than half way
up the barrel when he stood beside it.

His father was a great shot. Everybody said so. He could kill wild
turkeys a million miles away as easy as rolling off a log, and deer,
and catamounts, and squirrels, and herons, and everything. So his
father must have killed heaps of Indians and red-coats and renegades.

He put this daily question to his mother: "How many do you s'pose
Pa has killed by this time, Ma?"

And then, in the fall, his mother went away and left him. They did
not tell him she had gone to the war. He would not have believed
them if they had, for she was too sick to go. She had been in bed
for a long, long time; the doctor came to see her every day, and
finally the preacher. He hated both of them, especially the latter,
who prayed so loudly and so vehemently that his mother must have
been terribly disturbed. Why should every one caution him to be
quiet and not make a noise because it disturbed mother, and yet say
nothing when that old preacher went right into her room and yelled
same as he always did in church? He was very bitter about it,
and longed for his father to come home with his rifle and shoot
everybody, including his grandfather who had "switched" him severely
and unjustly because he threw stones at Parson Hook's saddle horse
while the good man was offering up petitions from the sick room.

He went to the "burying," and was more impressed by the fact that
nearly all of the men who rode or drove to the graveyard down in
the "hollow" carried rifles and pistols than he was by the strange
solemnity of the occasion, for, while he realized in a vague,
mistrustful way that his mother was to be put under the ground,
his trust clung resolutely to God's promise, accepted in its most
literal sense, that the dead shall rise again and that "ye shall
be born again." That was what the preacher said,--and he had cried
a little when the streaming-eyed clergyman took him on his knee
and whispered that all was well with his dear mother and that he
would meet her one day in that beautiful land beyond the River.

He was very lonely after that. His "granny" tucked him in his big
feather bed every night, and listened to his little prayer, but she
was not the same as mother. She did not kiss him in the same way,
nor did her hand feel like mother's when she smoothed his rumpled
hair or buttoned his flannel nightgown about his neck or closed
his eyes playfully with her fingers before she went away with the
candle. Yet he adored her. She was sweet and gentle, she told such
wonderful fairy tales to him, and she always smiled at him. He
wondered a great deal.  Why was it that she did not FEEL the same
as mother? He was deeply puzzled. Was it because her hair was grey?

His grandfather lived in the biggest house in town. It
had an "upstairs,"--a real "upstairs,"--not just an attic. And
his grandfather was a very important person. Everybody called him
"Squire"; sometimes they said "your honour"; most people touched
their hats to him. When his father went off to the war, he and his
mother came to live at "grandpa's house." The cabin in which he was
born was at the other end of the street, fully half-a-mile away,
out beyond the grist mill. It had but three rooms and no "upstairs"
at all except the place under the roof where they kept the dried
apples, and the walnuts and hickory nuts, some old saddle-bags and
boxes, and his discarded cradle. You had to climb up a ladder and
through a square hole in the ceiling to get into this place, and
you would have to be very careful not to stand up straight or you
would bump your head,--unless you were exactly in the middle, where
the ridge-pole was.

He remembered that it was a very long walk to "grandpa's house"; he
used to get very tired and his father would lift him up and place
him on his shoulder; from this lofty, even perilous, height he could
look down upon the top of his mother's bonnet,--a most astonishing
view and one that filled him with glee.

His father was the biggest man in all the world, there could be no
doubt about that. Why, he was bigger even than grandpa, or Doctor
Flint, or the parson, or Mr. Carter, who lived in the cabin next door
and was Minda's father. For the matter of that, he was, himself, a
great deal bigger than Minda, who was only two years old and could
not say anywhere near as many words as he could say--and did not
know her ABC's, or the Golden Rule, or who George Washington was.

And his father was ever so much taller than his mother. He was tall
enough to be her father or her grandfather; why, she did not come
up to his shoulder when she walked beside him. He was a million
times bigger than she was. He was bigger than anybody else in all
the world.

The little border town in Kentucky, despite its population of
less than a thousand, was the biggest city in the world. There was
no doubt about that either in Kenneth's loyal little mind. It was
bigger than Philadelphia--(he called it Fil-LEF-ily),--where his
mother used to live when she was a little girl, or Massashooshoo,
where Minda's father and mother comed from.

He was secretly distressed by the superior physical proportions of
his "Auntie" Rachel. There was no denying the fact that she was a
great deal taller than his mother. He had an abiding faith, however,
that some day his mother would grow up and be lots taller than
Minda's mother. He challenged his toddling playmate to deny that
his mother would be as big as hers some day, a lofty taunt that
left Minda quite unmoved.

Nevertheless, he was very fond of "Auntie" Rachel. She was good
to him. She gave him cakes and crullers and spread maple sugar on
many a surreptitious piece of bread and butter, and she had a jolly
way of laughing, and she never told him to wash his hands or face,
no matter how dirty they were. In that one respect, at least, she
was much nicer than his mother. He liked Mr. Carter, too. In fact, he
liked everybody except old Boose, the tin pedlar, who took little
boys out into the woods and left them for the wolves to eat if they
were not very, very good.

He was four when they brought Mr. Carter home in a wagon one day.
Some men carried him into the house, and Aunt Rachel cried, and
his mother went over and stayed a long, long time with her, and
his father got on his horse and rode off as fast as he could go
for Doctor Flint, and he was not allowed to go outside the house
all day,--or old Boose would get him.

Then, one day, he saw "Auntie" Rachel all dressed in black, and he
was frightened. He ran away crying. She looked so tall and scary,---like
the witches Biddy Shay whispered about when his grandma was not
around,--the witches and hags that flew up to the sky on broomsticks
and never came out except at night.

His father did the "chores" for '"Auntie" Rachel for a long time,
because Mr. Carter was not there to attend to them.

There came a day when the buds were fresh on the twigs, and the
grass was very green, and the birds that had been gone for a long
time were singing again in the trees, and it was not raining. So he
went down the road to play in Minda's yard. He called to her, but
she did not appear. No one appeared. The house was silent. "Auntie"
Rachel was not there. Even the dogs were gone, and Mr. Carter's
horses and his wagon.  He could not understand. Only yesterday he
had played in the barn with Minda.

Then his grandma came hurrying through the trees from his own home,
where she had been with grandpa and Uncle Fred and Uncle Dan since
breakfast time. She took him up in her arms and told him that Minda
was gone. He had never seen his grandma look so stern and angry.
Biddy Shay had been there all morning too, and several of the
neighbours. He wondered if it could be the Sabbath, and yet that
did not seem possible, because it was only two days since he went
to Sunday school, and yesterday his mother had done the washing.
She always washed on Monday and ironed on Tuesday. This must be
Tuesday, but maybe he was wrong about that. She was not ironing,
so it could not be Tuesday. He was very much bewildered.

His mother was in the bedroom with grandpa and Aunt Hettie, and he
was not allowed to go in to see her. Uncle Fred and Uncle Dan were
very solemn and scowling so terribly that he was afraid to go near
them.

He remembered that his mother had cried while she was cooking
breakfast, and sat down a great many times to rest her head on her
arms. She had cried a good deal lately, because of the headache, she
always said. And right after breakfast she had put on her bonnet
and shawl, telling him to stay in the house till she came back
from grandpa's. Then she had gone away, leaving him all alone until
Biddy Shay came, all out of breath, and began to clear the table
and wash the dishes, all the while talking to herself in a way that
he was sure God would not like, and probably would send her to the
bad place for it when she died.

After a while all of the men went out to the barn-lot, where their
horses were tethered. Uncle Fred and Uncle Dan had their rifles.
He stood at the kitchen window and watched them with wide, excited
eyes.  Were they going off to kill Indians, or bears, or cattymunks?
They all talked at once, especially his uncles,--and they swore,
too. Then his grandpa stood in front of them and spoke very loudly,
pointing his finger at them. He heard him say, over and over again:

"Let them go, I say! I tell you, let them go!"

He wondered why his father was not there, if there was any fighting
to be done. His father was a great fighter. He was the bestest shot
in all the world. He could kill an Injin a million miles away, or
a squirrel, or a groundhog. So he asked Biddy Shay.

"Ast me no questions and I'll tell ye no lies," was all the answer
he got from Biddy.

The next day he went up to grandpa's with his mother to stay, and
Uncle Fred told him that his pa had gone off to the war. He believed
this, for were not the rifle, the powder horn and the shot flask
missing from the pegs over the fireplace, and was not Bob, the very
fastest horse in all the world, gone from the barn? He was vastly
thrilled. His father would shoot millions and millions of Injins,
and they would have a house full of scalps and tommyhawks and bows
and arrers.

But he was troubled about Minda. Uncle Fred, driven to corner by
persistent inquiry, finally confessed that Minda also had gone to
the war, and at last report had killed several extremely ferocious
redskins. Despite this very notable achievement, Kenneth was troubled.
In the first place, Minda was a baby, and always screamed when she
heard a gun go off; in the second place, she always fell down when
she tried to run and squalled like everything if he did not wait
for her; in the third place, Injins always beat little girls' heads
off against a tree if they caught 'em.

Moreover, Uncle Dan, upon being consulted, declared that a
good-sized Injin could swaller Minda in one gulp if he happened to
be 'specially hungry,--or in a hurry. Uncle Dan also appeared to
be very much surprised when he heard that she had gone off to the
war. He said that Uncle Fred ought to be ashamed of himself; and
the next time he asked Uncle Fred about Minda he was considerably
relieved to hear that his little playmate had given up fighting
altogether and was living quite peaceably in a house made of a
pumpkin over yonder where the sun went down at night.

It was not until sometime after his mother went away,--after the
long-to-be-remembered "fooneral," with its hymns, and weeping, and
praying,--that he heard the grown-ups talking about the war being
over. The redcoats were thrashed and there was much boasting and
bragging among the men of the settlement. Strange men appeared on
the street, and other men slapped their backs and shook hands with
them and shouted loudly and happily at them. In time, he came to
understand that these were the citizens who had gone off to fight
in the war and were now home again, all safe and sound. He began
to watch for his father. He would know him a million miles off, he
was so big, and he had the biggest rifle in the world.

"Do you s'pose Pa will know how to find me, grandma?" he would
inquire. "'Cause, you see, I don't live where I used to."

And his grandmother, beset with this and similar questions from
one day's end to the other, would become very busy over what she
was doing at the time and tell him not to pester her. He did not
like to ask his grandfather. He was so stern,--even when he was
sitting all alone on the porch and was not busy at all.

Then one day he saw his grandparents talking together on the porch.
Aunt Hettie was with them, but she was not talking. She was just
looking at him as he played down by the watering trough. He distinctly
heard his grandma say:

"I think he ought to be told, Richard. It's a sin to let him go
on thinking---" The rest of the sentence was lost to him when she
suddenly lowered her voice. They were all looking at him.

Presently his grandfather called to him, and beckoned with his
finger. He marched up to the porch with his little bow and arrow.
Grandma turned to go into the house, and Aunt Hettie hurried away.

"Don't be afraid, Granny," he sang out. "I won't shoot you. 'Sides,
I've only got one arrer, Aunt Hettie."

His grandfather took him on his knee, and then and there told him
the truth about his father. He spoke very slowly and did not say
any of those great big words that he always used when he was with
grown-up people, or even with the darkies.

"Now, pay strict attention, Kenneth. You must understand everything I
say to you. Do you hear? Your father is never coming home. We told
you he had gone to the war. We thought it was best to let you think
so. It is time for you to know the truth. You are always asking
questions about him. After this, when you want to know about your
father, you must come to me. I will tell you. Do not bother your
grandma. You make her unhappy when you ask questions. You see, your
Ma was once her little girl and mine. She used to be as little as
you are. Your Pa was her husband. You know what a husband is, don't
you?"

"Yes, sir," said Kenneth, wide-eyed. "It's a boy's father."

"You are nearly six years old. Quite a man, my lad." He paused to
look searchingly into the child's face, his bushy eyebrows meeting
in a frown.

"The devil of it is," he burst out, "you are the living image of
your father. You are going to grow up to look like him." He groaned
audibly, spat viciously over his shoulder, and went on in a strange,
hard voice. "Do you know what it is to steal? It means taking
something that belongs to somebody else."

"Yes, sir. 'Thou shalt not steal.' It's in the Bible."

"Well, you know that Indians and gipsies steal little boys, don't
you? It is the very worst kind of stealing, because it breaks the
boy's mother's heart. It sometimes kills them. Now, suppose that
somebody stole a husband. A husband is a boy's father, as you say.
Your father was a husband. He was your dear mother's husband. You
loved your mother very, very much, didn't you? Don't cry, lad,--there,
there, now! Be a little man. Now, listen. Somebody stole your
mother's husband. She loved him better than anything in the world.
She loved him, I guess, even better than she loved you, Kenneth.
She just couldn't live without him. Do you see? That is why she
died and went away. She is in Heaven now. Now, let me hear you say
this after me: My mother died because somebody stole her husband
away from her."

"'My mother died because somebody stoled her husband away from
her,'" repeated the boy, slowly.

"You will never forget that, will you?"

"No,--sir."

"Say this: My mother's heart was broken and so she died."

"'My mother's heart was broken and she--and so she died.'"

"You will never forget that either, will you, Kenneth?"

"No, sir."

"Now, I am going to tell you who stole your mother's husband away
from her. You know who your mother's husband was, don't you?"

"Yes, sir. My Pa."

"One night,--the night before you came up here to live--your Auntie
Rachel,--that is what you called her, isn't it? Well, she was not
your real aunt. She was your neighbour,--just as Mr. Collins over
there is my neighbour,--and she was your mother's friend. Well,
that night she stole your Pa from your Ma, and took him away with
her,--far, far away, and she never let him come back again. She
took him away in the night, away from your mother and you forever
and forever. She---"

"But Pa was bigger'n she was," interrupted Kenneth, frowning. "Why
didn't he kill her and get away?"

The old Squire was silent for a moment. "It is not fair for me to
put all the blame on Rachel Carter. Your father was willing to go.
He did not kill Rachel Carter. Together he and Rachel Carter killed
your mother. But Rachel Carter was more guilty than he was. She was
a woman and she stole what belonged in the sight of God to another
woman. She was a bad woman. If she had been a good woman she would
not have stolen your father away from your mother. So now you know
that your Pa did not go to the war. He went away with Rachel Carter
and left your mother to die of a broken heart. He went off into
the wilderness with that bad, evil woman. Your mother was unhappy.
She died. She is under the ground up in the graveyard, all alone.
Rachel Carter put her there, Kenneth. I cannot ask you to hate
your father. It would not be right. He is your father in spite of
everything. You know what the Good Book says? 'Honour thy father
and--' how does the rest of it go, my lad?"

"'Honour thy father and thy mother that thou days may be long upon
thou earth,'" murmured Kenneth, bravely.

"When you are a little older you will realize that your father did
not honour his father and mother, and then you may understand more
than you do now. But you may hate Rachel Carter. You MUST hate her.
She killed your mother. She stole your father. She made an orphan
of you. She destroyed the home where you used to live. As you
grow older I will try to tell you how she did all these things.
You would not understand now. There is one of the Ten Commandments
that you do not understand,--I mean one in particular. It is enough
for you to know the meaning of the one that says 'Thou shalt not
steal.' You must not be unhappy over what I have told you. Everything
will be all right with you. You will be safe here with granny and
me. But you must no longer believe that your father went to the
war like other men in the village. If he were MY son, I would---"

"Don't say it, Richard," cried Kenneth's grandma, from the doorway
behind them. "Don't ever say that to him."




CHAPTER I

SHELTER FOR THE NIGHT


Night was falling as two horsemen drew rein in front of a cabin
at the edge of a clearing in the far-reaching sombre forest.
Their approach across the stump-strewn tract had been heralded by
the barking of dogs,--two bristling beasts that came out upon the
muddy, deep-rutted road to greet them with furious inhospitality.
A man stood partially revealed in the doorway. His left arm and
shoulder were screened from view by the jamb, his head was bent
forward as he peered intently through narrowed eyes at the strangers
in the road.

"Who are you, and what do you want?" he called out.

"Friends. How far is it to the tavern at Clark's Point?"

"Clark's Point is three miles back," replied the settler. "I guess
you must have passed it without seein' it," he added drily. "If
it happened to be rainin' when you come through you'd have missed
seein' it fer the raindrops. Where you bound fer?"

"Lafayette. I guess we're off the right road. We took the left turn
four or five miles back."

"You'd ought to have kept straight on. Come 'ere, Shep! You, Pete!
Down with ye!"

The two dogs, still bristling, slunk off in the direction of the
squat log barn. A woman appeared behind the man and stared out
over his shoulder. From the tall stone chimney at the back of the
cabin rose the blue smoke of the kitchen fire, to be whirled away
on the wind that was guiding the storm out of the rumbling north.
There was a dull, wavering glow in the room behind her. At one of
the two small windows gleamed a candle-light.

"What's takin' you to Clark's Point? There ain't no tavern there.
There ain't nothin' there but a hitch-post and a waterin'-trough.
Oh, yes, I forgot. Right behind the hitch-post is Jake Stone's
store and a couple of ash-hoppers and a town-hall, but you wouldn't
notice 'em if you happened to be on the wrong side of the post.
Mebby it's Middleton you're lookin' fer."

"I am looking for a place to put up for the night, friend. We met
a man back yonder, half an hour ago, who said the nearest tavern
was at Clark's Point."

"What fer sort of lookin' man was he?"

"Tall fellow with red whiskers, riding a grey horse."

"That was Jake Stone hisself. Beats all how that feller tries to
advertise his town. He says it beats Crawfordsville and Lafayette
all to smash, an' it's only three or four months old. Which way
was he goin'?"

"I suppose you'd call it south. I've lost my bearings, you see."

"That's it. He was on his way down to Attica to get drunk. They
say Attica's goin' to be the biggest town on the Wabash. Did I ask
you what your name was, stranger?"

"My name is Gwynne. I left Crawfordsville this morning, hoping to
reach Lafayette before night. But the road is so heavy we couldn't---"

"Been rainin' steady for nearly two weeks," interrupted the settler.
"Hub-deep everywhere. It's a good twenty-five or thirty mile from
Crawfordsville to Lafayette. Looks like more rain, too. I think
she'll be on us in about two minutes. I guess mebby we c'n find a
place fer you to sleep to-night, and we c'n give you somethin' fer
man an' beast. If you'll jest ride around here to the barn, we'll
put the hosses up an' feed 'em, and--Eliza, set out a couple more
plates, an' double the rations all around." His left arm and hand
came into view. "Set this here gun back in the corner, Eliza. I
guess I ain't goin' to need it. Gimme my hat, too, will ye?"

As the woman drew back from the door, a third figure came up behind
the man and took her place. The horseman down at the roadside,
fifty feet away, made out the figure of a woman. She touched the
man's arm and he turned as he was in the act of stepping down from
the door-log. She spoke to him in a low voice that failed to reach
the ears of the travellers.

The man shook his head slowly, and then called out:

"I didn't jist ketch your name, mister. The wind's makin' such a
noise I--Say it again, will ye?"

"My name is Kenneth Gwynne. Get it?" shouted the horseman. "And
this is my servant, Zachariah."

The man in the door bent his head, without taking his eyes from the
horseman, while the woman murmured something in his ear, something
that caused him to straighten up suddenly.

"Where do you come from?" he inquired, after a moment's hesitation.

"My home is in Kentucky. I live at---"

"Kentucky, eh? Well, that's a good place to come from. I guess
you're all right, stranger." He turned to speak to his companion.
A few words passed between them, and then she drew back into
the room. The woman called Eliza came up with the man's hat and a
lighted lantern. She closed the door after him as he stepped out
into the yard.

"'Round this way," he called out, making off toward the corner of
the cabin. "Don't mind the dogs. They won't bite, long as I'm here."

The wind was wailing through the stripped trees behind the
house,--a sombre, limitless wall of trees that seemed to close in
with smothering relentlessness about the lonely cabin and its raw
field of stumps. The angry, low-lying clouds and the hastening
dusk of an early April day had by this time cast the gloom of
semi-darkness over the scene. Spasmodic bursts of lightning laid
thin dull, unearthly flares upon the desolate land, and the rumble
of apple-carts filled the ear with promise of disaster. The chickens
had gone to roost; several cows, confined in a pen surrounded by the
customary stockade of poles driven deep into the earth and lashed
together with the bark of the sturdy elm, were huddled in front of
a rude shed; a number of squealing, grunting pigs nosed the cracks
in the rail fence that formed still another pen; three or four pompous
turkey gobblers strutted unhurriedly about the barnlot, while some
of their less theatrical hens perched stiffly, watchfully on the
sides of a clumsy wagon-bed over against the barn. Martins and
chimney-swallows darted above the cabin and out-buildings, swirling
in mad circles, dipping and careening with incredible swiftness.

The gaunt settler conducted the unexpected guests to the barn,
where, after they had dismounted, he assisted in the removal of
the well-filled saddle-bags and rolls from the backs of their jaded
horses.

"Water?" he inquired briefly.

"No, suh," replied Zachariah, blinking as the other held the
lantern up the better to look into his face. Zachariah was a young
negro,--as black as night, with gleaming white teeth which he
revealed in a broad and friendly grin. "Had all dey could drink,
Marster, back yander at de crick."

"You couldn't have forded the Wea this time last week," said the
host, addressing Gwynne. "She's gone down considerable the last
four-five days. Out of the banks last week an' runnin' all over
creation."

"Still pretty high," remarked the other. "Came near to sweeping
Zack's mare downstream but--well, she made it and Zack has turned
black again."

The settler raised his lantern again at the stable door and looked
dubiously at the negro.

"You're from Kentucky, Mr. Gwynne," he said, frowning. "I got to
tell you right here an' now that if this here boy is a slave, you
can't stop here,--an' what's more, you can't stay in this county.
We settled the slavery question in this state quite a spell back,
an' we make it purty hot for people who try to smuggle niggers
across the border. I got to ask you plain an' straight; is this
boy a slave?"

"He is not," replied Gwynne. "He is a free man. If he elects to
leave my service to-morrow, he is at liberty to go. My grandfather
freed all of his slaves shortly before he died, and that was when
Zachariah here was not more than fifteen years of age. He is as
free as I am,--or you, sir. He is my servant, not my slave. I know
the laws of this state, and I intend to abide by them. I expect
to make my home here in Indiana,--in Lafayette, as a matter of
fact. This boy's name is Zachariah Button. Ten years ago he was a
slave. He has with him, sir, the proper credentials to support my
statement,--and his, if he chooses to make one. On at least a dozen
occasions, first in Ohio and then in Indiana, I have been obliged
to convince official and unofficial inquirers that my--"

"That's all right, Mr. Gwynne," cried the settler heartily. "I take
your word for it. If you say he's not a slave, why, he ain't, so
that's the end of it. And it ain't necessary for Zachariah to swear
to it, neither. We can't offer you much in the way of entertainment,
Mr. Gwynne, but what we've got you're welcome to. I came to this
country from Ohio seven years ago, an' I learned a whole lot about
hospitality durin' the journey. I learned how to treat a stranger
in a strange land fer one thing, an' I learned that even a hoss-thief
ain't an ongrateful cuss if you give him a night's lodgin' and a
meal or two."

"I shall be greatly indebted to you, sir. The time will surely
come when I may repay you,--not in money, but in friendship. Pray
do not let us discommode you or your household. I will be satisfied
to sleep on the floor or in the barn, and as for Zachariah, he--"

"The barn is for the hosses to sleep in," interrupted the host,
"and the floor is for the cat. 'Tain't my idee of fairness to allow
human bein's to squat on proppety that rightfully belongs to hosses
an' cats,--so I guess you'll have to sleep in a bed, Mr. Gwynne."
He spoke with a drawl. "Zachariah c'n spread his blankets on the
kitchen floor an' make out somehow. Now, if you'll jist step over
to the well yander, you'll find a wash pan. Eliza,--I mean Mrs.
Striker,--will give you a towel when you're ready. Jest sing out
to her. Here, you, Zachariah, carry this plunder over an' put it
in the kitchen. Mrs. Striker will show you. Be careful of them
rifles of your'n. They go off mighty sudden if you stub your toe.
You'll find a comb and lookin' glass in the settin' room, Mr. Gwynne.
You'll probably want to put a few extry touches on yourself when
I tell you there's an all-fired purty girl spendin' the night with
us. Go along, now. I'll put the feed down fer your hosses an' be
with you in less'n no time."

"You are very kind, Mr.--Did you say Striker?"

"Phineas Striker, sir,--Phin fer short."

"I am prepared and amply able to pay for lodging and food, Mr.
Striker, so do not hesitate to--"

"Save your breath, stranger. I'm as deef as a post. The storm's
goin' to bust in two shakes of a dead lamb's tail, so you'd better
be a leetle spry if you want to git inside afore she comes."

With that he entered the barn door, leading the horses. Gwynne and
his servant hurried through the darkness toward the light in the
kitchen window. The former rapped politely on the door. It was
opened by Mrs. Striker, a tall, comely woman well under thirty,
who favoured the good-looking stranger with a direct and smileless
stare. He removed his tall, sorry-looking beaver.

"Madam, your husband has instructed my servant to leave our belongings
in your kitchen. I fear they are not overly clean, what with mud
and rain, devil-needles and burrs. Your kitchen is as clean as a
pin. Shall I instruct him to return with them to the barn and--"

"Bring them in," she said, melting in spite of herself as she looked
down from the doorstep into his dark, smiling eyes. His strong,
tanned face was beardless, his teeth were white, his abundant brown
hair tousled and boyishly awry,--and there were mud splashes on
his cheek and chin. He was tall and straight and his figure was
shapely, despite the thick blue cape that hung from his shoulders.
"I guess they ain't any dirtier than Phin Striker's boots are
this time o' the year. Put them over here, boy, 'longside o' that
cupboard. Supper'll be ready in ten or fifteen minutes, Mr. Gwynne."

His smile broadened. He sniffed gratefully. A far more exacting
woman than Eliza Striker would have forgiven this lack of dignity
on his part.

"You will find me ready for it, Mrs. Striker. The smell of side-meat
goes straight to my heart, and nothing in all this world could be
more wonderful than the coffee you are making."

"Go 'long with you!" she cried, vastly pleased, and turned to her
sizzling skillets.

Zachariah deposited the saddle-bags and rolls in the corner and then
returned to the door where he received the long blue cape, gloves
and the towering beaver from his master's hands. He also received
instructions which sent him back to open a bulging saddle-bag and
remove therefrom a pair of soft, almost satiny calf-skin boots. As
he hurried past Mrs. Striker, he held them up for her inspection,
grinning from ear to ear. She gazed in astonishment at the white
and silver ornamented tops, such as were affected by only the most
fastidious dandies of the day and were so rarely seen in this raw,
new land that the beholder could scarce believe her eyes.

"Well, I never!" she exclaimed, and then went to the sitting-room
to whisper excitedly to the solitary occupant, who, it so chanced,
was at the moment busily and hastily employed in rearranging her
brown, wind-blown hair before the round-topped little looking-glass
over the fireplace.

"I thought you said you wasn't goin' to see him," observed Mrs.
Striker, after imparting her information. "If you ain't, what are
you fixin' yourself up fer?"

"I have changed my mind, Eliza," said the young lady, loftily. "In
the first place, I am hungry, and in the second place it would not
be right for me to put you to any further trouble about supper.
I shall have supper with the rest of you and not in the bedroom,
after all. How does my hair look?"

"You've got the purtiest hair in all the--"

"How does it look?"

"It would look fine if you NEVER combed it. If I had hair like
your'n, I'd be the proudest woman in--"

"Don't be silly. It's terrible, most of the time."

"Well, it's spick an' span now, if that's what you want to know,"
grumbled Eliza, and vanished, fingering her straight, straw-coloured
hair somewhat resentfully.

Meanwhile, Kenneth Gwynne, having divested himself of his dark
blue "swallow-tail," was washing his face and hands at the well.
The settler approached with the lantern.

"She's comin'," he shouted above the howling wind. "I guess you'd
better dry yourself in the kitchen. Hear her whizzin' through the
trees? Gosh all hemlock! She's goin' to be a snorter, stranger.
Hurry inside!"

They bolted for the door and dashed into the kitchen just as the
deluge came. Phineas Striker, leaning his weight against the door,
closed it and dropped the bolt.

"Whew! She's a reg'lar harricane, that's what she is. Mighty
suddent, too. Been holdin' back fer ten minutes,--an' now she lets
loose with all she's got. Gosh! Jest listen to her!"

The hiss of the torrent on the clapboard roof was deafening, the
little window panes were streaming; a dark, glistening shadow crept
out from the bottom of the door and began to spread; the howling
wind shook the very walls of the staunch cabin, while all about
them roared the ear-splitting cannonade, the crash of splintered
skies, the crackling of musketry, the rending and tearing of all
the garments that clothe the universe.

Eliza Striker, hardy frontierswoman though she was, put her fingers to
her ears and shrank away from the stove,--for she had been taught
that all metal "drew lightning." Her husband busied himself stemming
the stream of water that seeped beneath the door with empty grain
or coffee bags, snatched from the top of a cupboard where they
were stored, evidently for the very purpose to which they were now
being put.

Gwynne stood coatless in the centre of the kitchen, rolling down
his white shirt-sleeves. Behind him cringed Zachariah, holding his
master's boots and coat in his shaking hands, his eyes rolling with
terror, his lips mumbling an unheard appeal for mercy.

The sitting-room door opened suddenly and the other guest of the
house glided into the kitchen. Her eyes were crinkled up as if
with an almost unendurable pain, her fingers were pressed to her
temples, her red lips were parted.

"Goodness!" she gasped, with a hysterical laugh, not born of mirth,
nor of courage, but of the sheerest dismay.

"Don't be skeered," cried Phineas, looking at her over his
shoulder. "She'll soon be over. Long as the roof stays on, we're
all right,--an' I guess she'll stay."

Kenneth Gwynne bowed very low to the newcomer. The dim candle-light
afforded him a most unsatisfactory glimpse of her features. He
took in at a glance, however, her tall, trim figure, the burnished
crown of hair, and the surprisingly modish frock she wore. He had
seen no other like it since leaving the older, more advanced towns
along the Ohio,--not even in the thriving settlements of Wayne and
Madison Counties or in the boastful village of Crawfordsville. He
was startled. In all his journeyings through the land he had seen
no one arrayed like this. It was with difficulty that he overcame
a quite natural impulse to stare at her as if she were some fantastic
curiosity.

The contrast between this surprising creature and the gingham
aproned Eliza was unbelievable. There was but one explanation: She
was the mistress of the house, Eliza the servant. And yet, even
so, how strangely out-of-place, out-of-keeping she was here in the
wilderness.

In some confusion he strode over to lend a hand to Phineas Striker.
The rustle of silk behind him and the quick clatter of heels,
evidenced the fact that the girl had crossed swiftly to Eliza's
side.

Later on he had the opportunity to take in all the details of her
costume, and he did so with a practised, sophisticated eye. It was,
after all, of a fashion two years old, evidence of the slowness
with which the modes reached these outposts of civilization. Here
was a perfect fitting blue frock of the then popular changeable
gros de zane, the skirt very wide, set on the body in large plaits,
one in front, one on each side and two behind. The sleeves also
were wide from shoulder to elbow, where they were tightly fitted
to the lower arm. The ruffles around the neck, which was open and
rather low, and about the wrists were of plain bobinet quilling.
Her slippers were black, with cross-straps. He had seen such frocks
as this, he was reminded, in fashionable Richmond and New York
only a year or so before, but nowhere in the west. Add a Dunstable
straw bonnet with its strings of satin and the frilled pelerine, and
this strange young woman might have just stepped from her carriage
in the most fashionable avenue in the land.

Zachariah, lacking his master's good manners, gazed in open-mouthed
wonder at the lady, forgetting for the moment his fear of the
tempest's wrath. Only the most hair-raising crash of thunder broke
the spell, causing him to close his eyes and resume his supplication.

"Now's your chance to get at the lookin' glass, Mr. Gwynne," said
Striker. "Right there in the sittin'-room. Go ahead; I'll manage
this."

Muttering a word of thanks, the young man turned to leave the room.
He shot a glance at his fellow guest. Her back was toward him, she
had her hands to her ears, and something told him that her eyes
were tightly closed. A particularly loud crash caused her to draw
her pretty shoulders up as if to receive the death-dealing bolt of
lightning. He heard her murmur again:

"Goodness--gracious!"

Eliza suddenly put an arm about her waist and drew the slender,
shivering figure close. As the girl buried her face upon the older
woman's shoulder, the latter cried out:

"Land sakes, child, you'll never get over bein' a baby, will ye?"

To which Phineas Striker added in a great voice: "Nor you, neither,
Eliza. Ef we didn't have company here you'd be crawlin' under the
table or something. She ain't afraid of wild cats or rattlesnakes
or Injins or even spiders," he went on, addressing Gwynne, "but
she's skeered to death of lightnin'. An' as fer that young lady
there, she wouldn't be afeared to walk from here to Lafayette all
alone on the darkest night,--an' look at her now! Skeered out of
her boots by a triflin' little thunderstorm. Why, I wouldn't give
two--"

"My goodness, Phin Striker," broke in his wife, a new note of alarm
in her voice, "I do hope them chickens an' turkeys have got sense
enough to get under something in this downpour. If they ain't, the
whole kit an' boodle of 'em will be drownded, sure as--"

"I never yet see a hen that liked water," interrupted Phineas. "Er
a turkey either. Don't you worry about 'em. You better worry about
that side-meat you're fryin'. Ef my nose is what it ort to be, I'd
say that piece o' meat was bein' burnt to death,--an' that's a lot
wuss than bein' drownded. They say drowndin' is the easiest death--"

"You men clear out o' this kitchen," snapped Eliza. "Out with ye!
You too, Phin Striker. I'll call ye when the table's set. Now, you
go an' set over there in the corner, away from the window, deary,
where the lightnin' can't git at you, an'--You'll find a comb on
the mantel-piece, Mr. Gwynne, an' Phineas will git you a boot-jack
out o' the bedroom if that darkey is too weak to pull your boots
off for you. Don't any of you go trampin' all over the room with
your muddy boots. I've got work enough to do without scrubbin'
floors after a pack of--My land! I do believe it's scorched. An'
the corn-bread must be--"

Phineas, after a doubtful look at the stopped-up door-crack, led
the way into the sitting-room. Zachariah came last with his master's
boots and coat. He was mumbling with suppressed fervour:

"Oh, Lord, jes' lemme hab one mo' chaince,--jes' one mo' chaince.
Good Lord! I been a wicked, ornery nigger,--only jes' gimme jes'
one mo' chaince. I been a wicked,--Yassuh, Marster Kenneth, I got
your boots. Yassuh. Right heah, suh. Oh, Lordy-Lordy! Yassuh,
yassuh!"

Seated in a big wooden rocker before the fireplace, Gwynne stretched
out his long legs one after the other; Zachariah tugged at the
heavy, mud-caked riding-boots, grunting mightily over a task that
gave him sufficient excuse for interjecting sundry irrelevant appeals
for mercy and an occasional reference to his own unworthiness as
a nigger.

The tempest continued with unabated violence. The big, raw-boned
Striker, pulling nervously at his beard, stood near a window
which looked out upon the barn and sheds, plainly revealed in the
blinding, almost uninterrupted flashes of lightning. Such sentences
as these fell from his lips as he turned his face from the bleaching
flares before they ended in mighty crashes: "That struck powerful
nigh,"--or "I seen that one runnin' along the ground like a ball
of fire," or "There goes somethin' near," or "That was a tree jest
back o' the barn, you'll see in the mornin'."

"Dere won't never be any mo'nin'," gulped the unhappy Zachariah,
bending lower to his task, which now had to do with the boot-straps
at the bottoms of his master's trouser-legs. Getting to his feet,
he proceeded, with a well-trained dexterity that even his terror
failed to divert, to draw on the immaculate calf-skin boots with
the gorgeous tops. Then he pulled the trouser-legs down over the
boots, obscuring their upper glory; after which he smoothed out the
wrinkles and fastened the instep straps. Whereupon, Kenneth arose,
stamped severely on the hearth several times to settle his feet
in the snug-fitting boots, and turned to the looking-glass. He was
wielding the comb with extreme care and precision when his host
turned from the window and approached.

"Seems to me you're goin' to a heap o' trouble, friend," he remarked,
surveying the tall, graceful figure with a rather disdainful eye.
"We don't dress up much in these parts, 'cept on Sunday."

"Please do not consider me vain," said the young man, flushing. He
smarted under the implied rebuke,--in fact, he was uncomfortably
aware of ridicule. "My riding-boots were filthy. I--I--Yes, I know,"
he broke in upon himself as Phineas extended one of his own muddy
boots for inspection. "I know, but, you see, I am the unbidden
guest of yourself and Mrs. Striker. The least I can do in return
for your hospitality is to make myself presentable--"

"You'll have to excuse my grinnin', Mr. Gwynne," interrupted the
other. "I didn't mean any offence. It's jest that we ain't used to
good clothes an' servants to pull our boots off an' on, an'--butternut
pants an' so on. We're 'way out here on the edge of the wilderness
where bluejeans is as good as broadcloth or doe-skin, an' a chaw
of tobacco is as good as the state seal fer bindin' a bargain. Lord
bless ye, I don't keer how much you dress up. I guess I might as
well tell ye the only men up at Lafayette who wear as good clothes
as you do are a couple of gamblers that work up an' down the river,
an' Barry Lapelle. I reckon you've heerd of Barry Lapelle. He's
known from one end of the state to the other, an' over in Ohio an'
Kentucky too."

"I have never heard of him."

Striker looked surprised. He glanced at the closed sitting-room
door before continuing.

"Well, he owns a couple steamboats that come up the river. Got 'em
when his father died a couple o' years ago. His home used to be in
Terry Hut, but he's been livin' at Bob Johnson's tavern for a matter
of six months now, workin' up trade fer his boats, I understand.
He's as wild as a hawk an'--but you'll run across him if you're
goin' to live in Lafayette."

"By the way, what is the population of Lafayette?"

Phineas studied the board ceiling thoughtfully for a moment or two.
"Well, 'cordin' to people who live in Attica she's got about five
hundred. People who live in Crawfordsville give her seven hundred.
Down at Covington an' Williamsport they say she's got about four
hundred an' twelve. When you git to Lafayette Bob Johnson an' the
rest of 'em will tell you she's over two thousand an' growin' so
fast they cain't keep track of her. There's so much lyin' goin' on
about Lafayette that it's impossible to tell jest how big she is.
Countin' in the dogs, I guess she must have a population of between
six hundred and fifty an' three thousand. You see, everybody up
there's got a dog, an' some of 'em two er three. One feller I know
has got seven. But, on the whole, I guess you'll like the place.
It's the head of navigation at high water, an' if they ever build
the Wabash an' Erie Canal they're talkin' about she'll be a regular
seaport, like New York er Boston. 'Pears to me the worst is over,
don't you reckon so?"

Kenneth, having adjusted his stock and white roll-over collar to
suit his most exacting eye, slipped his arms into the coat Zachariah
was holding for him, settled the shoulders with a shrug or two and
a pull at the flaring lapels, smoothed his yellow brocaded waist-coat
carefully, and then, spreading his long, shapely legs and at the
same time the tails of his coat, took a commanding position with
his back to the blazing logs.

"Are you referring to my toilet, Mr. Striker?" he inquired amiably.

"I was talkin' about the storm," explained Phineas hastily. "Take
the boots out to the kitchen, Zachariah. Eliza'll git into your wool
if she ketches you leavin' 'em in here. Yes, sir, she's certainly
lettin' up. Goin' down the river hell-bent. They'll be gettin' her
at Attica 'fore long. Are you plannin' to work the farm yourself,
Mr. Gwynne, or are you goin' to sell er rent on shares?"

Gwynne looked at him in surprise. "You appear to know who I am,
after all, Mr. Striker."

Striker grinned. "I guess everybody in this neck o' the woods has
heerd about you. Dan Bugher,--he's the county recorder,--an' Rube
Kelsey, John Bishop, Larry Stockton, an' a lot more of the folks
up in town, have been lookin' down the Crawfordsville road fer you
ever since your father died last August. You 'pear to be a very
important cuss fer one who ain't never set foot in Indianny before."

"I see," said the other reflectively. "Were you acquainted with my
father, Mr. Striker?"

"Much so as anybody could be. He wasn't much of a hand fer makin'
friends. Stuck purty close to the farm, an' made it about the best
piece o' propetty in the whole valley. I was jest wonderin' whether
you was plannin' to live on the farm er up in town."

"Well, you see, I am a lawyer by profession. I know little or
nothing about farming. My plans are not actually made, however.
A great deal depends on how I find things. Judge Wylie wishes me
to enter into partnership with him, and Providence M. Curry says
there is a splendid chance for me in his office at Crawfordsville.
I shall do nothing until I have gone thoroughly into the matter.
You know the farm, Mr. Striker?"

"Yes. It's not far from here,--five or six mile, I'd say, to
the north an' east. Takes in some of the finest land on the Wea
Plain,--mostly clear, some fine timber, plenty of water, an' about
the best stocked farm anywheres around. Your father was one of the
first to edge up this way ten er twelve year ago, an' he got the
pick o' the new land. He came from some'eres down the river, 'bout
Vincennes er Montezuma er some such place. I reckon you know that
he left another passel of land over this way, close to the Wabash,
an' some propetty up in Lafayette an' some more down in Crawfordsville."

"I have been so informed," said his guest, rather shortly.

"I bought this sixty acre piece offen him two year ago. All timber
when I took hold of it, 'cept seventeen acres out thataway," jerking
his thumb, "along the Middleton road." He hesitated a moment. "You
see, I worked for your father fer a considerable time, as a hand.
That's how he came to sell to me. I got married an' wanted a place of
my own. He said he'd sooner sell to me than let some other feller
cheat the eye-teeth outen me, me bein' a good deal of fool when
it comes to business an' all. Yep, I'd saved up a few dollars, so
I sez what's the sense of me workin' my gizzard out fer somebody
else an' all that, when land's so cheap an' life so doggoned short.
'Course, there's a small mortgage on the place, but I c'n take keer
of that, I reckon."

"Ahem! The mortgage, I fancy, is held by--er--the other heirs to
his property." "You're right. His widder holds it, but she ain't
the kind to press me. She's purty comfortable, what with this land
along the edge o' the plain out here an' a whole section up in the
Grand Prairie neighbourhood, besides half a dozen buildin' lots
in town an' a two story house to live in up there. To say nothin'
of--"

"Come to supper," called out Mrs. Striker from the doorway.

"That's somethin' I'm always ready fer," announced Mr. Striker.
"Winter an' summer, spring an' fall. Step right ahead, Mr.--"

"Just a moment, if you please," said the young man, laying his hand
on the settler's arm. "You will do me a great favour if you refrain
from discussing these matters in the presence of your other
guest to-night. My father, as you doubtless know, meant very
little in my life. I prefer not to discuss him in the presence of
strangers,--especially curious-minded young women."

Phineas looked at him narrowly for an instant, a queer expression
lurking in his eyes.

"Jest as you say, Mr. Gwynne. Not a word in front of strangers. I
don't know as you know it, but up to the time your father's will
was perduced there wasn't a soul in these parts as knowed such a
feller as you wuz on earth. He never spoke of a son, er havin' been
married before, er bein' a widower, er anything like--"

"I am thoroughly convinced of that, Mr. Striker," said Kenneth, a
trifle austerely, and passed on ahead of his host into the kitchen.

"Bring in them two candlesticks, Phin," ordered Mrs. Striker. "We
got to be able to see what each other looks like, an' goodness knows
we cain't with this taller dip I got out here to cook by. 'Tain't
often we have people right out o' the fashion-plates to supper, so
let's have all the light we kin."




CHAPTER II

THE STRANGE YOUNG WOMAN


The tempest by now had subsided to a distant, rumbling murmur,
although the rain still beat against the window-panes in fitful
gusts, the while it gently played the long roll on the clapboards
a scant two feet above the tallest head. Far-off flashes of lightning
cast ghastly reminders athwart the windows, fighting the yellow
candle glow with a sickly, livid glare.

Kenneth's fellow-guest was standing near the stove, her back toward
him as he entered the kitchen. The slant of the "ceiling" brought
the crown of her head to within a foot or so of the round, peeled
beams that supported the shed-like roof, giving her the appearance
of abnormal height. As a matter of fact, she was not as tall as
the gaunt Eliza, who, like her husband and the six-foot guest, was
obliged to lower her head when passing through the kitchen door to
the yard.

The table was set for four, in the middle of the little kitchen;
rude hand-made stools, without backs, were in place. A figured red
cloth covered the board, its fringe of green hanging down over the
edges. The plates, saucers and coffee-cups were thick and clumsy
and gaudily decorated with indescribable flowers and vines done entirely
in green--a "set," no doubt, selected with great satisfaction in
advance of the Striker nuptials. There were black-handled case-knives,
huge four-tined forks, and pewter spoons. A blackened coffee-pot,
a brass tea-kettle and a couple of shallow skillets stood on the
square sheet-iron stove. "Come in and set down, Mr. Gwynne," said
Mrs. Striker, pointing to a stool. With the other hand she deftly
"flopped" an odorous corn-cake in one of the skillets. There was
a far from unpleasant odor of grease.

"I can't help thanking my lucky stars, Mrs. Striker, that I got
here ahead of that storm," said he, moving over to his appointed
place, where he remained standing. "We were just in time, too. Ten
minutes later and we would have been in the thick of it. And here
we are, safe and sound and dry as toast, in the presence of a
most inviting feast. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your
kindness."

"Oh, it's--it's nothing," said she, diffidently. Then to Striker:
"Put 'em here on the table, you big lummix. Set down, everybody."

The young lady sat opposite Gwynne. She lowered her head immediately
as Phineas began to offer up his established form of grace. The unhappy
host got himself into a dire state of confusion when he attempted
to vary the habitual prayer by tacking on a few words appertaining
to the recent hurricane and God's goodness in preserving them all
from destruction as well as the hope that no serious damage had been
done to other live-stock and fowls, or to the life and property of
his neighbours,--amen!

To which Zachariah, seated on a roll of blankets in the corner,
appended a heartfelt amen, and then sank back to watch his betters
eat, much as a hungry dog feasts upon anticipation. He knew that he
was to have what was left over, and he offered up a silent prayer
of his own while wistfully speculating on the prospects.

The two colonial candlesticks stood in the centre of the table, a
foot or two apart. When Gwynne lifted his head after "grace," he
looked directly between them at his vis-a-vis. For a few seconds
he stared as if spell-bound. Then, realizing his rudeness and
conscious of an unmistakable resentment in her eyes, he felt the
blood rush to his face, and quickly turned to stammer something to
his host,--he knew not what it was.

Never had he looked upon a face so beautiful, never had he seen
any one so lovely as this strange young woman who shared with him
the hospitality of the humble board. He had gazed for a moment full
into her deep, violet eyes,--eyes in which there was no smile but
rather a cool intentness not far removed from unfriendliness,--and
in that moment he forgot himself, his manners and his composure.

The soft light fell upon warm, smooth cheeks; a broad, white
brow; red, sensitive lips and a perfect mouth; a round firm chin;
a delicate nose,--and the faint shadows of imperishable dimples
that even her unsmiling expression failed to disturb.

Not even in his dreams had he conjured up a face so bewilderingly
beautiful.

Her hair, which was puffed and waved over her ears, took on the shade
of brown spun silk on which the light played in changing tones of
bronze. It was worn high on her head, banded a la grecque, with a
small knot on the crown from which depended a number of ringlets
ornamented with bowknots. Her ears were completely hidden by the
soft mass that came down over them in shapely knobs. She wore no
earrings,--for which he was acutely grateful, although they were
the fashion of the day and cumbersomely hideous,--and her shapely
throat was barren of ornament. He judged her to be not more than
twenty-two or -three. A second furtive glance caught her looking
down at her plate. He marvelled at the long, dark eyelashes.

Who was she? What was she doing here in the humble cot of the
Strikers? Certainly she was out of place here. She was a tender,
radiant flower set down amongst gross, unlovely weeds. That she was
a person of consequence, to whom the Strikers paid a rude sort of
deference, softened by the familiarity of long association but in
no way suggestive of relationship, he was in no manner of doubt.

He was not slow to remark their failure to present him to her. The
omission may have been due to ignorance or uncertainty on their
part, but that was not the construction he put upon it. Striker was
the free-and-easy type who would have made these strangers known
to each other in some bluff, awkward manner,--probably by their
Christian names; he would never have overlooked this little formality,
no matter how clumsily he may have gone about performing it. It
was perfectly plain to Gwynne that it was not an oversight. It was
deliberate.

His slight feeling of embarrassment, and perhaps annoyance, evidently
was not shared by the young lady; so far as she was concerned the
situation was by no means strained. She was as calm and serene and
impervious as a princess royal.

She joined in the conversation, addressed herself to him without
constraint, smiled amiably (and adorably) upon the busy Eliza and
her jovial spouse, and even laughed aloud over the latter's account
of Zachariah and the silver-top boots. Gwynne remarked that it was
a soft, musical laugh, singularly free from the shrill, boisterous
qualities so characteristic of the backwoods-woman. She possessed
the poise of refinement. He had seen her counterpart,--barring
her radiant beauty,--many a time during his years in the cultured
east: in Richmond, in Philadelphia, and in New York, where he had
attended college.

He was subtly aware of the lively but carefully guarded interest she
was taking in him. He felt rather than knew that she was studying
him closely, if furtively, when his face was turned toward the
talkative host. Twice he caught her in the act of averting her gaze
when he suddenly glanced in her direction, and once he surprised
her in a very intense scrutiny,--which, he was gratified to observe,
gave way to a swift flush of confusion and the hasty lowering of
her eyes. No doubt, he surmised with some satisfaction, she was
as vastly puzzled as himself, for he must have appeared equally
out-of-place in these surroundings. His thoughts went delightedly
to the old, well-beloved story of Cinderella. Was this a Cinderella
in the flesh,--and in the morning would he find her in rags and
tatters, slaving in the kitchen?

He noticed her hands. They were long and slim and, while browned
by exposure to wind and sun, bore no evidence of the grinding toil
to which the women and girls of the frontier were subjected. And
they were strong, competent hands, at that.

The food was coarse, substantial, plentiful. (Even Zachariah could
see that it was plentiful.) Solid food for sturdy people. There were
potatoes fried in grease, wide strips of side meat, apple butter,
corn-cakes piping hot, boiled turnips, coffee and dried apple pie.
The smoky odor of frying grease arose from the skillets and, with
the grateful smell of coffee, permeated the tight little kitchen.
It was a savoury that consoled rather than offended the appetite
of these hardy eaters.

Striker ate largely with his knife, and smacked his lips resoundingly;
swigged coffee from his saucer through an overlapping moustache
and afterwards hissingly strained the aforesaid obstruction with
his nether lip; talked and laughed with his mouth full,--but all
with such magnificent zest that his guests overlooked the shocking
exhibition. Indeed, the girl seemed quite accustomed to Mr.
Striker's table-habits, a circumstance which created in Kenneth's
questing mind the conviction that she was not new to these parts,
despite the garments and airs of the fastidious East.

They were vastly interested in the account of his journey through
the wilderness.

"Nowadays," said Striker, "most people come up the river, 'cept them
as hail from Ohio. You must ha' come by way of Wayne an' Madison
Counties."

"I did," said his guest. "We found it fairly comfortable travelling
through Wayne County. The roads are decent enough and the settlers
are numerous. It was after we left Madison County that we encountered
hardships. We travelled for a while with a party of emigrants who
were heading for the settlement at Strawtown. There were three
families of them, including a dozen children. Our progress was
slow, as they travelled by wagon. Rumours that the Indians were
threatening to go on the warpath caused me to stay close by this
slow-moving caravan for many miles, not only for my own safety but
for the help I might be able to render them in case of an attack.
At Strawtown we learned that the Indians were peaceable and that
there was no truth in the stories. So Zachariah and I crossed the
White River at that point and struck off alone. We followed the
wilderness road,--the old Indian trace, you know,--and we travelled
nearly thirty miles without seeing a house. At Brown's Wonder we
met a party of men who had been out in this country looking things
over. They were so full of enthusiasm about the prairies around
here,--the Wea, the Wild Cat and Shawnee prairies,--that I was
quite thrilled over the prospect ahead, and no longer regretted
the journey which had been so full of privations and hardships and
which I had been so loath to undertake in the beginning. Have you
been at Thorntown recently?"

"Nope. Not sence I came through there some years ago. It was purty
well deserted in those days. Nothin' there but Injin wigwams an'
they was mostly run to seed. At that time, Crawfordsville was the
only town to speak of between Terry Hut an' Fort Wayne, 'way up
above here."

"Well, there are signs of a white settlement there now. Some of the
old French settlers are still there and other whites are coming in.
I had heard a great deal about the big Indian village at Thorntown,
and was vastly disappointed in what I found. I am quite romantic,
Miss--ahem!--quite romantic by nature, having read and listened to
tales of thrilling adventures among the redskins, as we call them
down my way, until I could scarce contain myself. I have always
longed for the chance to rescue a beautiful white captive from the
clutches of the cruel redskins. My valour--"

"And I suppose you always dreamed of marrying her as they always
do in stories?" said she, smiling.

"Invariably," said he. "Alas, if I had rescued all the fair maidens
my dreams have placed in jeopardy, I should by this time have as
many wives as Solomon. Only, I must say in defence of my ambitions,
I should not have had as great a variety. Strange as it may seem,
I remained through all my adventures singularly constant to a
certain idealistic captive. She looked, I may say, precisely alike
in each and every case. Poor old Solomon could not say as much for
his thousand wives. Mine, if I had them, would be so much alike in
face and form that I could not tell one from the other,--and, now
that I am older and wiser,--though not as wise as Solomon,--I am
thankful that not one of these daring rescues was ever consummated,
for I should be very much distressed now if I found myself married
to even the most beautiful of the ladies my feeble imagination
conceived."

This subtle touch of gallantry was over the heads of Mr. and Mrs.
Striker. As for the girl, she looked momentarily startled, and
then as the dimples deepened, a faint flush rose to her cheeks.
An instant later, the colour faded, and into her lovely eyes came
a cold, unfriendly light. Realizing that he had offended her with
this gay compliment,--although he had never before experienced
rebuff in like circumstances,--he hastened to resume his narrative.

"We finally came to Sugar River and followed the road along the
southern bank. You may know some of the settlers we found along
the river. Wisehart and Kinworthy and Dewey? They were among the
first to come to this part of the country, I am informed. Fine,
brave men, all of them. In Crawfordsville I stopped at the tavern
conducted by Major Ristine. While there I consulted with Mr. Elston
and Mr. Wilson and others about the advisability of selling my land
up here and my building lots in Lafayette. They earnestly advised
me not to sell. In their opinion Lafayette is the most promising
town on the Wabash, while the farming land in this section is not
equalled anywhere else in the world. Of course, I realize that they
are financially interested in the town of Lafayette, owning quite
a lot of property there, so perhaps I should not be guided solely
by their enthusiasm."

"They are the men who bought most of Sam Sargeant's lots some
years back," said Striker, "when there wasn't much of anything in
the way of a town,--them and Jonathan Powers, I think it was. They
paid somethin' like a hundred an' fifty dollars for more'n half
of the lots he owned, an' then they started right in to crow about
the place. I was workin' down at Crawfordsville at the time. They
had plenty of chance to talk, 'cause that town was full of emigrants,
land-grabbers, travellers an' setch like. That was before the new
county was laid out, you see. Up to that time all the land north
of Montgomery County was what was called Wabash County. It run up
as fer as Lake Michigan, with the jedges an' courts an' land offices
fer the whole district all located in Crawfordsville. Maybe you
don't know it, but Tippecanoe County is only about six years old.
She was organized by the legislature in 1826. To show you how
smart Elston and them other fellers was, they donated a lot of
their property up in Lafayette to the county on condition that the
commissioners located the county seat there. That's how she come
to be the county seat, spite of the claims of Americus up on the
east bank of the Wabash.

"Maybe you've heard of Bill Digby. He's the feller that started
the town o' Lafayette. Well, a couple o' days after he laid out
the town o' Lafayette,--named after a Frenchman you've most likely
heerd about,--he up an' sold the whole place to Sam Sargeant fer
a couple o' hundred dollars, they say. He kept enough ground fer a
ferry landin' an' a twenty-acre piece up above the town fer specolatin'
purposes, I understand. He afterwards sold this twenty-acre piece
to Sam fer sixty dollars, an' thought he done mighty well. When I
first come to the Wea, Lafayette didn't have more'n half a dozen
cabins. I went through her once on my way up to the tradin' house
at Longlois, couple a mile above. You wouldn't believe a town could
grow as fast as Lafayette has in the last couple o' years. If she
keeps on she'll be as big as all get-out, an' Crawfordsville won't
be nowhere. Tim Horran laid out Fairfield two-three years back,
over east o' here. Been a heap o' new towns laid out this summer,
all around here. But I guess they won't amount to much. Josiah
Halstead and Henry Ristine have jest laid out the town o' Columbia,
down near the Montgomery line. Over on Lauramie Crick is a town
called Cleveland, an' near that is Monroe, jest laid out by a
feller named Major. There's another town called Concord over east
o' Columbia. There may be more of 'em, but I ain't heerd of 'em
yet. They come up like mushrooms, an' 'fore you know it, why, there
they are.

"This land o' yours, Mr. Gwynne, lays 'tween here an' this new
settlement o' Columbia, an' I c'n tell you that it ain't to be
beat anywheres in the country. I'd say it is the best land your
fa--er--ahem!" The speaker was seized with a violent and obviously
unnecessary spell of coughing. "Somethin' must ha' gone the wrong
way," he explained, lamely. "Feller ort to have more sense'n to
try to swaller when he's talkin'."

"Comes of eatin' like a pig," remarked his wife, glaring at him
as she poured coffee into Gwynne's empty cup. "Mr. Gwynne'll think
you don't know any better. He never eats like this on Sunday," she
explained to their male guest.

"I got a week-day style of eatin' an' one strickly held back fer
Sunday," said Phineas. "Same as clothes er havin' my boots greased."

Kenneth was watching the face of the girl opposite. She was looking
down at her plate. He observed a little frown on her brow. When she
raised her eyes to meet his, he saw that they were sullen, almost
unpleasantly so. She did not turn away instantly, but continued
to regard him with a rather disconcerting intensity. Suddenly she
smiled. The cloud vanished from her brow, her eyes sparkled. He
was bewildered. There was no mistaking the unfriendliness that had
lurked in her eyes the instant before. But in heaven's name, what
reason had she for disliking him?

"If you believe all that Phineas says, you will think you have
come to Paradise," she said. At no time had she uttered his name,
in addressing him, although it was frequently used by the Strikers.
She seemed to be deliberately avoiding it.

"It is a present comfort, at least, to believe him," he returned.
"I hope I may not see the day when I shall have to take him to task
for misleading me in so vital a matter."

"I hope not," said she, quietly.

As he turned to Striker, he caught that worthy gazing at him with
a fixed, inquisitive stare. He began to feel annoyed and uncomfortable.
It was not the first time he had surprised a similar scrutiny on
the part of one or the other of the Strikers. Phineas, on being
detected, looked away abruptly and mumbled something about "God's
country."

The young man decided it was time to speak. "By the way you all look
at me, Mr. Striker, I am led to suspect that you do not believe I
am all I represent myself to be. If you have any doubts, pray do
not hesitate to express them."

Striker was boisterously reassuring. "I don't doubt you fer
a second, Mr. Gwynne. As I said before, the whole county has been
expectin' you to turn up. We heerd a few days back that you was in
Crawfordsville. If me an' Eliza seem to act queer it's because we
knowed your father an'--an', well, I can't help noticin' how much
you look like him. When he was your age he must have looked enough
like you to be your twin brother. We don't mean no disrespect, an'
I hope you'll overlook our nateral curiosity."

Kenneth was relieved. The furtive looks were explained.

"I am glad to hear that you do not look upon me as an outlaw or--"

"Lord bless you," cried Striker, "there ain't nobody as would take
you fer an outlaw. You ain't cut out fer a renegade. We know 'em
the minute we lay eyes on 'em. Same as we know a Pottawatomy Injin
from a Shawnee, er a jack-knife from a Bowie. No, there ain't
no doubt in my mind about you bein' your father's son--an' heir,
as the sayin' goes. If you turn out to be a scalawag, I'll never
trust my eyes ag'in."

The young man laughed. "In any case, you are very good to have
taken me in for the night, and I shall not forget your trust or
your hospitality. Wolves go about in sheep's clothing, you see,
and the smartest of men are sometimes fooled." He turned abruptly
to the girl. "Did you know my father, too?"

She started violently and for the moment was speechless, a curious
expression in her eyes.

"Yes," she said, at last, looking straight at him: "Yes, I knew
your father very well."

"Then, you must have lived in these parts longer than I have
suspected," said he. "I should have said you were a newcomer."

Mrs. Striker made a great clatter of pans and skillets at the stove.
The girl waited until this kindly noise subsided.

"I have lived in this neighbourhood since I was eight years old,"
she said, quietly.

Striker hastened to add: "Somethin' like ten or 'leven years,--'leven,
I reckon, ain't it?"

"Eleven years," she replied.

Gwynne was secretly astonished and rather skeptical. He would have
taken oath that she was twenty-two or -three years old, and not
nineteen as computation made her.

"She ain't lived here all the time," volunteered Eliza, somewhat
defensively. "She was to school in St. Louis fer two or three years
an'--"

The young lady interrupted the speaker coldly. "Please, Eliza!"

Eliza, looking considerably crestfallen, accepted the rebuke meekly.
"I jest thought he'd be interested," she murmured.

"She came up the Wabash when she was nothin' but a striplin',"
began Striker, not profiting by his wife's experience. He might
have gone on at considerable length if he had not met the reproving,
violet eye. He changed the subject hastily. "As I was sayin',
we've had a powerful lot o' rain lately. Why, by gosh, last week
you could have went fishin' in our pertato patch up yander an' got
a mess o' sunfish in less'n no time. I never knowed the Wabash to
be on setch a rampage. An' as fer the Wild Cat Crick and Tippecanoe
River, why, they tell me there ain't been anything like--How's
that?"

"Is Wabash an Indian name?" repeated Kenneth.

"That's what they say. Named after a tribe that used to hunt an'
fish up an' down her, they say."

"There was once a tribe of Indians in this part of the country,"
broke in the girl, with sudden zest, "known as the Ouabachi. We
know very little about them nowadays, however. They were absorbed
by other and stronger tribes far back in the days of the French
occupation, I suppose. French trappers and voyageurs are known to
have traversed and explored the wilderness below here at least one
hundred and fifty years ago. There is an old French fort quite near
here,--Ouiatanon."

"She knows purty nigh everything," said Phineas, proudly. "Well, I
guess we're about as full as it's safe to be, so now's your chance,
Zachariah."

He pushed back his stool noisily and arose. Taking up the two
candlesticks, he led the way to the sitting-room, stopping at the
door for a word of instruction to the negro. "You c'n put your
blankets down here on the kitchen floor when you're ready to go to
bed. Mrs. Striker will kick you in the mornin' if you ain't awake
when she comes out to start breakfast."

"Yassuh, yassuh," grinned the hungry darkey. "Missus won't need fo'
to kick more'n once, suh,--'cause Ise gwine to be hungry all over
ag'in 'long about breakfus time,--yas-SUH!"

"Zachariah will wash the dishes and--" began Kenneth, addressing
Mrs. Striker, who was already preparing to cleanse and dry her
pots and pans. She interrupted him.

"He won't do nothin' of the kind. I don't let nobody wash my dishes
but myself. Set down here, Zachariah, an' help yourself. When you're
done, you c'n go out an' carry me in a couple of buckets o' water
from the well,--an, that's all you CAN do."

"I guess I'll go out an' take a look around the barn an' pens,"
said Phineas, depositing the candles on the mantelpiece. "See
if everything's still there after the storm. No, Mr. Gwynne,--you
set down. No need o' you goin' out there an' gettin' them boots o'
your'n all muddy."

He took up the lantern and lighted the tallow wick from one of the
candles. Then he fished a corncob pipe from his coattail pocket
and stuffed it full of tobacco from a small buckskin bag hanging
at the end of the mantel.

"He'p yourself to tobaccer if you keer to smoke. There's a couple
o' fresh pipes up there,--jest made 'em yesterday,--an' it ain't
ag'inst the law to smoke in the house on rainy nights. Used to be
a time when we was first married that I had to go out an' git wet
to the skin jest because she wouldn't 'low no tobaccer smoke in
the house. Many's the time I've sot on the doorstep here enjoyin'
a smoke with the rain comin' down so hard it'd wash the tobaccer
right out o' the pipe, an' twice er maybe it was three times it
biled over an'--What's that you say?"

"I did not say anything, Phineas," said the girl, shaking her head
mournfully. "I am wondering, though, where you will go when you
die."

"Where I c'n smoke 'thout runnin' the risk o' takin' cold, more'n
likely," replied Phineas, winking at the young man. Then he went
out into the windy night, closing the door behind him.




CHAPTER III

SOMETHING ABOUT CLOTHES, AND MEN, AND CATS


Smiling over the settler's whimsical humour, Gwynne turned to his
companion, anticipating a responsive smile. Instead he was rewarded
by an expression of acute dismay in her dark eyes. He recalled seeing
just such a look in the eyes of a cornered deer. She met his gaze
for a fleeting instant and then, turning away, walked rapidly over
to the little window, where she peered out into the darkness. He
waited a few moments for her to recover the composure so inexplicably
lost, and then spoke,--not without a trace of coldness in his voice.

"Pray have this chair." He drew the rocking-chair up to the fireplace,
setting it down rather sharply upon the strip of rag carpet that
fronted the wide rock-made hearth. "You need not be afraid to be
left alone with me. I am a most inoffensive person."

He saw her figure straighten. Then she faced him, her chin raised,
a flash of indignation in her eyes.

"I am not afraid of you," she said haughtily. "Why should you
presume to make such a remark to me?"

"I beg your pardon," he said, bowing. "I am sorry if I have offended
you. No doubt, in my stupidity, I have been misled by your manner.
Now, will you sit down--and be friendly?"

His smile was so engaging, his humility so genuine, that her manner
underwent a swift and agreeable change. She advanced slowly to the
fireplace, a shy, abashed smile playing about her lips.

"May I not stand up for a little while?" she pleaded, with mock
submissiveness. "I do so want to grow tall."

"To that I can offer no objection," he returned; "although in my
humble opinion you would do yourself a very grave injustice if you
added so much as the eighth of an inch to your present height."

"I feel quite small beside you, sir," she said, taking her stand
at the opposite end of the hearth, from which position she looked
up into his admiring eyes.

"I am an overgrown, awkward lummix," he said airily. "The boys
called me 'beanpole' at college."

"You are not an awkward lummix, as you call yourself,--though what
a lummix is I have not the slightest notion. Mayhap if you stood
long enough you might grow shorter. They say men do,--as they become
older." She ran a cool, amused eye over his long, well-proportioned
figure, taking in the butter-nut coloured trousers, the foppish
waistcoat, the high-collared blue coat, and the handsome brown-thatched
head that topped the whole creation. He was almost a head taller
than she, and yet she was well above medium height.

"How old are you?" she asked, abruptly. Again she was serious,
unsmiling.

"Twenty-five," he replied, looking down into her dark, inquiring
eyes with something like eagerness in his own. He was saying over
and over again to himself that never had he seen any one so lovely
as she. "I am six years older than you. Somehow, I feel that I am
younger. Rather odd, is it not?"

"Six years," she mused, looking into the fire. The glow of the
blazing logs cast changing, throbbing shadows across her face, now
soft and dusky, like velvet, under the warm caress of the firelight.
"Sometimes I feel much older than nineteen," she went on, shaking
her head as if puzzled. "I remember that I was supposed to be very
large for my age when I was a little girl. Everybody commented on
my size. I used to be ashamed of my great, gawky self. But," she
continued, shrugging her pretty shoulders, "that was ages ago."

He drew a step nearer and leaned an elbow on the mantel.

"You say you knew my father," he said, haltingly. "What was he
like?"

She raised her eyes quickly and for an instant studied his face
curiously, as if searching for something that baffled her understanding.

"He was very tall," she said in a low voice. "As tall as you are."

"I have only a dim recollection of him," he said. "You see, I made
my home with my grandparents after I was five years old." He did
not offer any further information. "As a tiny lad I remember wishing
that I might grow up to be as big as my father. Did you know him
well?"

If she heard, she gave no sign as she turned away again. This time
she walked over to the cabin door, which she opened wide, letting
in a rush of chill, damp air. He felt his choler rise. It was a
deliberate, intentional act on her part. She desired to terminate
the conversation and took this rude, insolent means of doing so.
Never had he been so flagrantly insulted,--and for what reason? He
had been courteous, deferential, friendly. What right had she,--this
insufferable peacock,--to consider herself his superior? Hot words
rushed to his lips, but he checked them. He contented himself with
an angry contemplation of her slender, graceful figure as she poised
in the open doorway, holding the latch in one hand while the other
was pressed against her bare throat for protection against the
cold night air. Her ringlets, flouted by the wind, threshed merrily
about the crown of her head. He noted the thick coil of hair that
capped the shapely white neck. Despite his rancour and the glowering
gaze he bent upon her, he was still lamentably conscious of her
perfections. He had it in his heart to go over and shake her soundly.
It would be a relief to see her break down and whimper. It would
teach her not to be rude to gentlemen!

The two dogs came racing up to the threshold. She half-knelt and
stroked their heads.

"No, no!" she cried out to them. "You cannot come in! Back with
you, Shep! Pete! That's a good dog!"

Then she arose and quickly closed the door.

"The wind is veering to the south," she said calmly, as she advanced
to the fireplace. She was shivering. "That means fair weather and
warmer. We may even see the sun to-morrow."

She held out her hands to the blaze.

"Won't you have this chair now?" he said stiffly, formally. She
was looking down into the fire, but he saw the dimple deepen in
her cheek and an almost imperceptible twitching at the corner of
her mouth. Confound her, was she laughing at him? Was he a source
of amusement to her?

She turned her head and glanced up at him over her shoulder. He
caught a strained, appealing gleam in her eyes.

"Please forgive me if I was rude," she said, quite humbly.

He melted a little. He no longer desired to shake her. "I feared
I had in some way offended you," he said.

She shook her head and was silent for a moment or two, staring
thoughtfully at the flames. A faint sigh escaped her, and then she
faced him resolutely, frankly.

"You have succeeded fairly well in concealing your astonishment at
seeing me here in this hut, dressed as I am," she said, somewhat
hurriedly. "You have been greatly puzzled. I am about to confess
something to you. You will see me again,--often perhaps,--if you
remain long in this country. It is my wish that you should not
know who I am to-night. You will gain nothing by asking questions,
either of me or of the Strikers. You will know in the near future,
so let that be sufficient. At first I--"

"You have my promise not to disregard your wishes in this or any
other matter," he said, bowing gravely. "I shall ask no questions."

"Ah, but you have been asking questions all to yourself ever since
you came into this cabin and saw me--in all this finery--and you
will continue to ask them," she declared positively. "I do not blame
you. I can at least account for my incomprehensible costume. That
much you shall have, if no more. This frock is a new one. It has
just come up the river from St. Louis. I have never had it on until
to-day. Another one, equally as startling, lies in that bedroom
over there, and beside it on the bed is the dress I came here in
this afternoon. It is a plain black dress, and there is a veil and
a hideous black bonnet to go with it." She paused, a bright little
gleam of mingled excitement and defiance in her eyes.

"You--you have lost--I mean, you are in mourning for some one?" he
exclaimed. The thought rushed into his mind: Was she a widow? This
radiantly beautiful girl a widow?

"For my father," she stated succinctly. "He died almost a year
ago. I was in school at St. Louis when it happened. I had not seen
him for two years. My mother sent for me to come home. Since that
time I have worn nothing but black,--plain, horrible black. Do not
misjudge me. I am not vain, nor am I as heartless as you may be
thinking. I had and still have the greatest respect for my father.
He was a good man, a fine man. But in all the years of my life he
never spoke a loving word to me, he never caressed me, he never
kissed me. He was kindness itself, but--he never looked at me with
love in his eyes. I don't suppose you can understand. I was the
flesh of his flesh, and yet he never looked at me with love in his
eyes.

"As I grew older I began to think that he hated me. That is
a terrible thing to say,--and you must think it vile of me to say
it to you, a stranger. But I have said it, and I would not take
it back. I have seen in his eyes,--they were brooding, thoughtful
eyes,--I have seen in them at times a look--Oh, I cannot tell you
what it seemed like to me. I can only say that it had something
like despair in it,--sadness, unhappiness,--and I could not help
feeling that I was the cause of it. When I was a tiny girl he
never carried me in his arms. My mother always did that. When I
was thirteen years old he hired me out as a servant in a farmer's
family and I worked there until I was fourteen. It was not in this
neighbourhood. I worked for my board and keep, a thing I could not
understand and bitterly resented because he was prosperous. Then
my mother fell ill. She was a strong woman, but she broke down in
health. He came and got me and took me home. I was a big girl for
my age,--as big as I am now,--and strong. I did all the work about
the house until my mother was well again. He never gave me a word
of appreciation or one of encouragement.

"He was never unkind, he never found fault with me, he never in all
his life scolded or switched me when I was bad. Then, one day,--it
was three years ago,--he told me to get ready to go down to St. Louis
to school. He put me in charge of a trader and his wife who were
going down the river by perogue. He gave them money to buy suitable
clothes for me,--a large sum of money, it must have been,--and he
provided me with some for my own personal use. All arrangements
had been made in advance, without my knowing anything about it.

"I stayed there until I was called home by his death. I expected
to return to school, but my mother refused to let me go back. She
said my place was with her. That was last fall. She is still in the
deepest mourning, and I believe will never dress otherwise. I have
said all there is to say about my father. I did not love him, I
was not grieved when he passed away. It was almost as if a stranger
had died."

She paused. He took occasion to remark, sympathetically: "He must
have been a strange man."

"He was," she said. "I hope I have made you understand what kind
of a man he was, and what kind of a father he was to me. Now, I am
coming to the point. This finery you see me in now was purchased
without my mother's knowledge or consent,--with money of my own.
The box was delivered to Phineas Striker day before yesterday up
in Lafayette. I came here to spend the night, in order that I might
try them on. I live in town, with my mother. She left the farm after
my father's death. She adored him. She could not bear to live out
there on the lonely--but, that is of no interest to you. A few weeks
ago I asked her if I might not take off the black. She refused at
first, but finally consented. I have her promise that I may put on
colours sometime this spring. So I wrote to the woman who used to
make my dresses in St. Louis,--my father was not stingy with me,
so I always had pretty frocks,--and now they have come. My mother
does not know about them. She will be shocked when I tell her I have
them, but she will not be angry. She loves me. Is your curiosity
satisfied? It will have to be, for this is all I care to divulge
at present."

He smiled down into her earnest eyes. "My curiosity is appeased,"
he said. "I should not have slept tonight if you had not explained
this tantalizing mystery. Therefore, I thank you. May I have your
permission to say that you are very lovely in your new frock and
that you are marvellously becoming to it?"

"As you have already said it, I must decline to give you the
permission," she replied, naively.

He thought her adorable in this mood. "As a lawyer," he said, "I make
a practice of never withdrawing a statement, unless I am convinced
by incontrovertible evidence that I was wrong in the first place,--and
you will have great difficulty in producing the proof."

"Wait till you see me in my black dress and bonnet,--and mittens,"
she challenged.

He bowed gallantly. "Only the addition of the veil,--it would have
to be a very thick one,--I am sure,--could make me doubt my own
eyes. They are witnesses whose testimony it will be very hard to
shake."

Her manner underwent another transformation, as swift as it was
unexpected. A troubled, harassed expression came into her eyes,
driving out the sparkle that had filled them during that all too
brief exchange. The smile died on her lips, which remained drawn
and slightly parted as if frozen; she seemed for the moment to
have stopped breathing. He was acutely alive to the old searching,
penetrating look,--only now there was an added note of uneasiness.
In another moment all this had vanished, and she was smiling
again,--not warmly, frankly as before, but with a strange wistfulness
that left him more deeply perplexed than ever.

"I wonder,--" she began, and then shook her head without completing
the sentence. After a moment she went on: "Phineas is a long time.
I hope all is well."

They heard the kitchen door open and close and Striker's voice
loudly proclaiming the staunchness of his outbuildings, a speech
cut short by Eliza's exasperation.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Phin Striker, not to come
in this here kitchen without wipin' your feet? Might as well be
the barn, fer as you're concerned. Go out an' scrape that mud offen
your boots."

Deep mumbling and then the opening and shutting of the door again.

"Sometimes, I fear, poor Phineas finds matrimony very trying," said
the girl, her eyes twinkling.

Eliza appeared in the doorway. She was rolling down her sleeves.

"How are you two gettin' along?" she inquired, looking from one
to the other keenly. "I thought Phin was in here amusin' you the
whole time with lies about him an' Dan'l Boone. He used to hunt
with old Dan'l when he was a boy, an' if ever'thing happened to
them two fellers that he sez happened, why, Phin'd have to be nearly
two hundred years old by now an' there wouldn't be a live animal
or Indian between here an' the Gulf of Mexico." She seemed a little
uneasy. "I hope you two made out all right."

The girl spoke quickly, before her companion could reply. "We have
had a most agreeable chat, Eliza. Are you through in the kitchen?
If you are, would you mind coming into the bedroom with me? I want
you to see the other dress on me, and besides I have a good many
things I wish to talk over with you. Good night," she said to
Gwynne. "No doubt we shall meet again."

He was dumbfounded. "Am I not to see you in the new dress?" he
cried, visibly disappointed. "Surely you are not going to deny me
the joy of beholding you in--"

She interrupted him almost cavalierly. "Pray save up some of your
compliments against the day when you behold me in my sombre black,
for I shall need them then. Again, good night."

"Good night," he returned, bowing stiffly and in high dudgeon.

Eliza, in hurrying past, had snatched one of the candlesticks from
the mantel, and now stood holding the bedroom door open for the
queenly young personage. A moment later the door closed behind
them.

Gwynne was still scowling at the inoffensive door when Striker came
blustering into the room.

"Where are the women?" he demanded, stopping short.

A jerk of the thumb was his answer.

"Gone to bed?" with something like an accusing gleam in his eye as
his gaze returned to the young man.

"I believe so," replied Gwynne carelessly, as he sat down in the
despised rocker and stretched his long legs out to the fire. "I
fancy we are safe to smoke now, Striker. We have the parlor all to
ourselves. The ladies have deserted us."

Striker took the tobacco pouch from the peg on the mantel and handed
it to his guest.

"Fill up," he said shortly, and then walked over to the bedroom
door. He rapped timorously on one of the thick boards. "Want me
fer anything?" he inquired softly, as his wife opened the door an
inch or two.

"No. Go to bed when you're ready an' don't ferget to smother that
fire."

"Good night, Phineas," called out another voice merrily.

"Good night," responded Striker, with a dubious shake of his head.
He returned to the fireplace.

"Women are funny things," said he, dragging up another chair.
"'Specially about boots. I go out 'long about sun-up an' work like
a dog all day, an' then when I come in to supper what happens? First
thing my wife does is to look at my boots. Then she tells me to go
out an' scrape the mud off'm 'em. Then she looks up at my face to
see if it's me. Sometimes I get so doggoned mad I wish it wasn't
me, so's I could turn out to be the preacher er somebody like that
an' learn her to be keerful who she's talkin' to. Supposin' I do
track a little mud into her kitchen? It's OUR mud, ain't it? 'Tain't
as if it was somebody else's land I'm bringin' into her kitchen.
Between us we own every danged bit of land from here to the Middleton
dirt-road an' it ain't my fault if it happens to be mud once in
awhile. You'd think, the way she acts, I'd been out stealin' somebody
else's mud just for the sake of bringin' it into her kitchen.

"An' what makes me madder'n anything else is the way she scolds
them pore dogs when they come in with a little mud. As if a dog
understood he had to scrape his feet off an' wash his paws an'
everything 'fore he c'n step inside his master's cabin. Now you
take cats, they're as smart as all get out. They're jist like women.
Allus thinkin' about their pussonal appearance. Ever notice a cat
walk across a muddy strip o' ground? Why, you'd think they was
walkin' on a red hot stove, the way they step. I've seen a cat go
fifty rods out of her way to get around a mud-puddle. I recollect
seein' ole Maje,--he's our principal tom-cat,--seein' him creepin'
along a rail fence nearly half a mile from the house so's he
wouldn't have to cross a stretch o' wet ground jist outside the
kitchen door. Now, a dog would have splashed right through it an'
took the consequences. But ole Maje--NO, SIR! He goes miles out'n
his way an' then when he gits home he sets down on the doorstep
an' licks his feet fer half an hour er so before he begins to meow
so's Eliza'll open the door an' let him in.

"Ever' so often I got to tie a litter of kittens up in a meal-bag
an' take 'em over to the river an' drownd 'em, an' I want to tell
you it's a pleasure to do it. You never in all your life heerd of
anybody puttin' a litter of pups in a bag an' throwin' 'em in the
river, did ye? No, sirree! Dogs is like men. They grow up to be
useful citizens, mud er no mud. Why, if I had a dog what sat down
on the doorstep an' licked his paws ever' time he got mud on 'em
I'd take him out an' shoot him, 'cause I'd know he wasn't no kind
of a dog at all. Now, Eliza's tryin' to make me act like a cat,
an' me hatin' cats wuss'n pison. There's setch a thing as bein' too
danged clean, don't you think so? Sort o' takes the self-respect
away from a man. Makes you feel as if you'd ort to have petticoats
on in place o' pants. How do you like that terbaccer?"

Throughout the foregoing dissertation, Gwynne had sat with his
moody gaze fixed upon the flaring logs, which Striker had kicked
into renewed life with the heel of one of his ponderous boots,
disdaining the stout charred poker that leaned against the chimney
wall. He was pulling dreamily at the corncob pipe; the fragrant blue
smoke, drifting toward the open fireplace, was suddenly caught by
the draft and drawn stringily into the hot cavern where it was lost
in the hickory volume that swept up the chimney.

He had taken in but a portion of his host's remarks; his thoughts
were not of dogs and cats but of the perplexing girl who eagerly
gave him her confidence in one moment and shrank into the iciest
reticence the next. Her unreserved revelations concerning her own
father, uttered with all the frankness of an intimate, and the
childish ingenuousness with which she accounted for her raiment,
followed so closely, so abruptly by the most insolent display of
bad manners he had ever known, gave him ample excuse for reflection,
and if he failed to obtain the full benefit of Striker's discourse
it was because he had no power to command his addled thoughts. As
a matter of fact, he was debating within himself the advisability
of asking his host a few direct and pointed questions. A fine regard
for Striker's position deterred him,--and to this regard was added
the conviction that his host would probably tell him to mind his own
business and not go prying into the affairs of others. He came out
of his reverie in good time to avoid injury to his host's feelings.

"It is admirable," he assured him promptly. "Do you cure it yourself
or does it come up the river from Kentucky?"

"Comes from Kentucky. We don't have much luck tryin' to raise
terbaccer in these parts."

Whereupon Mr. Striker went into a long and intelligent lecture
upon the products of the soil in that section of Indiana; what to
avoid and what to cultivate; how to buy and how to sell; the traders
one could trust and those who could not be trusted out of sight;
the short corn crop of the year before and the way he lost half a
dozen as fine shoats as you'd see in a lifetime on account of wild
hogs coming out of the woods and enticin' 'em off. He interrupted
himself at one stage in order to get up and close the door to the
kitchen. Zachariah was snoring lustily.

"Whenever you feel like goin' to bed, jist say so," he said at
last, as his guest drew his huge old silver watch from his pocket
and glanced at it.

"I have been doing a little surmising, Mr. Striker," said the other.
"You have only this sitting-room and one bedroom. The ladies are
occupying the latter. My servant has gone to bed in the kitchen.
I am wondering where you and I are to dispose ourselves."

"I could see you was doin' some figgerin', friend. Well, fer that
matter, so was I. 'Tain't often she comes to spend the night here,
an' when she does me an' Eliza give her our room an' bed an' we pull
an extry straw tick out here in the room an' make the best of it.
Now, as I figger it out, Eliza is usin' that straw tick herself,
'cause she certainly wouldn't ever dream of gettin' into bed
with--with--er--her. Not but what she's clean an' all that,--I
mean Eliza,--but you see, she used to be a hired girl once upon a
time, an'--an'--well, that sort of makes a--"

"My fellow-guest confided to me a little while ago that she too
had been a hired girl, Mr. Striker, so I don't see--"

"Did she tell you that?" demanded Phineas sharply.

"She did," replied Gwynne, enjoying his host's consternation.

"Well, I'll be tee-totally danged," exploded the settler. He got
up suddenly and turning his back to his guest, knocked the burnt
tobacco from his pipe against the stone arch of the fireplace.
"I guess I better rake the ashes over these here coals," said he,
"'cause if I don't an' the cabin took fire an' burnt us all alive
Eliza'd never git done jawin' me about it." Presently he stood off
and critically surveyed his work. "I guess that'll fix her so's
she won't spit any sparks out here an' set fire to the carpet. As
I was sayin', I reckon I'll have to make up a bed here in front of
the fireplace fer myself, an' let you go up to the attic. We got
a--"

"I was afraid of this, Mr. Striker. You are putting yourselves out
terribly on my account. I can't allow it, sir. It is too much to ask--"

"Now, don't you worry about us. You ain't puttin' us out at all.
One night last winter,--the coldest night we had,--Eliza an' me
slep' on the kitchen floor with nary a blanket er quilt, an' I had
to git up every half hour to put wood on the fire so's we wouldn't
freeze to death, all because Joe Wadley an' his wife an' her father
an' mother an' his sister with her three children dropped in sort
of unexpected on account of havin' their two wagons git stuck in
a snow drift a mile er so from here. No, sirree, don't you worry.
There's a spare tick up in the attic what we use fer strangers when
they happen along, an' Zachariah has put your blankets right here
by the door,--an' your pistols, too, I see,--so whenever you're
ready, I'll lead the way up the ladder an' show you where you're
to roost. There's a little winder at one end, so's you c'n have
all the air you want,--an', my stars, there's a lot of it to-night,
ain't there? Jist listen to her whistle. Sounds like winter. She's
changed, though, an' I wouldn't be surprised if we'd find the moon
is shinin'."




CHAPTER IV

VIOLA GWYN


They stepped outside the cabin, into the fresh, brisk gale that
was blowing. A gibbous moon hung in the eastern star-specked sky.
Scurrying moonlit clouds off in the west sped northward on the
sweep of the inconstant wind, which had shifted within the hour. A
light shone dimly through the square little window of the bedroom.
Kenneth's imagination penetrated to sacred precincts beyond the
solid logs: he pictured her in the other frock, moving gracefully
before the fascinated eyes of the settler's wife, proud as a peacock
and yet as gay as the lark.

"Women like to talk," observed Striker, with a sidelong glance at
the lighted window. He led the way to the opposite end of the cabin
and pointed off into the night. "Lafayette's off in yan direction.
There's a big stretch of open prairie in between, once you git
out'n these woods, an' further on there's more timber. The town's
down in a sort of valley, shaped somethin' like a saucer, with hills
on all sides an' the river cuttin' straight through the middle.
Considerable buildin' goin' on this spring. There's talk of the
Baptists an' the Methodists puttin' up new churches an' havin'
regular preachers instead of the circuit riders. But you'll see
all this fer yourself when you git there. Plenty of licker to be
had at Sol Hamer's grocery,--mostly Mononga-Durkee whisky,--in case
you git the Wabash shakes or suddenly feel homesick."

"I drink very little," said Kenneth.

"Well, you'll soon git over that," prophesied his host. "Everybody
does. A spell of aguer like we have along the river every fall an'
winter an' spring will make you mighty thankful fer Sol Hamer's
medicine, an' by the time summer comes you'll be able to stand
more'n you ever thought you could stand. What worries me is how
the women manage to git along without it. You see big strong men
goin' around shakin' their teeth out an' docterin' day an' night
at Sol's, but I'll be doggoned if you ever see a woman takin' it.
Seems as if they'd ruther shake theirselves to death than tetch a
drop o' whisky."

"You would not have them otherwise, would you?"

"Why, if I ever caught my wife takin' a swaller o' whisky, I'd--well,
by gosh, I don't know what I would do. First place, I'd think the
world was comin' to an end, and second place, I guess I'd be glad
it was. No, sirree, I don't want to see whisky goin' down a woman's
gullet. But that don't explain how they come to git along without
it when they've got the aguer. They won't even take it when a
rattlesnake bites 'em. Sooner die. An' in spite of all that, they
bring he-children into the world that can't git over a skeeter bite
unless they drink a pint or two of whisky. Well, I guess we better
go to roost, Mr. Gwynne. Must be nine o'clock. Everything's all
right out at the barn an' the chicken coops. Wolves an' foxes an'
weasels visit us sometimes at night, but I got things fixed so's
they go away hungry. In the day time, Eliza's got an ole musket
o' mine standin' in the kitchen to skeer the hawks away, an' I got
a rifle in the settin' room fer whatever varmint comes along at
night,--includin' hoss-thieves an' setch-like."

"Horse-thieves?"

"Yep. Why, only last month a set of hoss-thieves from down the
river went through the Wea plains an' stole sixteen yearlin' colts,
drove 'em down to the river, loaded 'em on a flat-boat an' got away
without losin' a hair. Done it on a Sunday night, too."

It was a few minutes past nine when Kenneth followed his host
up the ladder and through the trap-door into the stuffy attic. He
carried his rough riding-boots, which Zachariah had cleaned and
greased with a piece of bacon-rind.

"I'll leave the ladder here," said Striker, depositing the candlestick
on the floor. "So's I c'n stick my head in here in the mornin' an'
rouse you up. There's your straw-tick over yander, an' I'll fotch
your blankets up in a minute or two. I reckon you'll have to crawl
on your hands an' knees; this attic wasn't built fer full-size
men."

"I will be all right," his guest assured him. "Beggars cannot be
choosers. A place to lay my head, a roof to keep the rain off, and
a generous host--what more can the wayfarer ask?"

The clapboard roof was a scant three feet above the dusty floor
of the attic. Stooping, the young man made his way to the bed-tick
near the little window. He did not sniff with scorn at his humble
surroundings. He had travelled long and far and he had slept in
worse places than this. He was drawing off his boots when Striker
again stuck his head and shoulders through the opening and laid
his roll of blankets on the floor.

"Eliza jist stuck her head out to tell me to shut this trap-door,
so's my snorin' won't keep you awake. I fergot all about my snorin'.
Like as not if I left this door open the whole danged roof would
be lifted right off'm the cabin 'fore I'd been asleep five minutes.
Well, good night. I'll call you in the mornin' bright an' early."

The trap-door was slowly lowered into place as the shaggy head and
broad shoulders of the settler disappeared. The young man heard the
scraping of the ladder as it was being removed to a place against
the wall.

He pried open the tight little window, letting a draft of fresh air
rush into the stifling attic. Then he sat on the edge of the tick
for a few minutes, ruminating, his gaze fixed thoughtfully on the
sputtering, imperilled candle. Finally he shook his head, sighed,
and began to unstrap his roll of blankets. He had decided to remove
only his coat and waistcoat. The sharp, staccato barking of a fox
up in the woods fell upon his ears. He paused to listen. Then came
the faraway, unmistakable howl of a wolf, the solemn, familiar hoot
of the wilderness owl and the raucous call of the great night heron.
But there was no sound from the farmyard. He said his prayers--he
never forgot to say the prayer his mother had taught him--blew out
the candle, pulled the blankets up to his chin, and was soon fast
asleep.

He did not know what time it was when he was aroused by the barking
of Striker's dogs, loud, furious barking and ugly growls, signifying
the presence in the immediate neighbourhood of the house of some
intruder, man or beast. Shaking off the sleep that held him, he
crept to the window and looked out. The moon was gone and the stars
had almost faded from the inky black dome. He guessed the hour
with the acute instinct of one to whom the vagaries of night have
become familiar through long understanding. It would now be about
three o'clock in the morning, with the creeping dawn an hour and
a half away.

Suddenly his gaze fell upon a light moving among the trees some
distance from the cabin. It appeared and disappeared, like a jack
o' lantern, but always it moved southward, obscured every few feet
by an intervening trunk or a clump of brush. As he watched the
bobbing light, he heard some one stirring in the room below. Then
the cabin door creaked on its rusty hinges and almost immediately
a jumble of subdued hoarse voices came up to him. He felt for his
pistols and realized with something of a shock that he had left them
in the kitchen with Zachariah. For the first time in his travels
he had neglected to place them beside his bed.

The dogs, admonished by a sharp word or two, ceased their barking.
This reassured him, for they would obey no one except Phineas
Striker. Whoever was at the cabin door, there was no longer any
question in his mind as to the peaceful nature of the visit. He
crept over to the trap-door and cautiously attempted to lift it
an inch or so, the better to hear what was going on, but try as he
would he could not budge the covering. The murmur of voices went on
for a few minutes longer, and then he heard the soft, light pad of
feet on the floor below; sibilant, penetrating whispers; a suppressed
feminine ejaculation followed by the low laugh of a man, a laugh
that might well have been described as a chuckle.

For a long time he lay there listening to the confused sound of
whispers, the stealthy shuffling of feet, the quiet opening and
closing of a door, and then there was silence.

Several minutes passed. He stole back to the window. The light in
the forest had vanished. Just as he was on the point of crawling
into bed again, another sound struck his ear: the unmistakable
rattle of wagon wheels on their axles, the straining of harness,
the rasp of tug chains,--quite near at hand. The clack-clack of
the hubs gradually diminished as the heavy vehicle made its slow,
tortuous way off through the ruts and mire of the road. Presently
the front door of the cabin squealed on its hinges, the latch
snapped and the bolt fell carefully into place.

He could not go to sleep again. His brain was awake and active,
filled with unanswered questions, beset by endless speculation.
The first faint sign of dawn, creeping through the window, found
him watching eagerly, impatiently for its appearance. The presence
of a wagon, even at that black hour of the night, while perhaps
unusual, was readily to be accounted for in more ways than one, none
of them possessing a sinister significance. A neighbouring farmer
making an early start for town stopping to carry out some friendly
commission for Phineas Striker; a settler calling for assistance
in the case of illness at his home; hunters on their way to the
marshes for wild ducks and geese; or even guardians of the law in
search of malefactors. But the mysterious light in the woods,--that
was something not so easily to be explained.

The square little aperture was clearly defined against the greying
sky before he distinguished signs of activity in the room below.
Striker was up and moving about. He could hear him stacking logs
in the fireplace, and presently there came up to him the welcome
crackle of kindling-wood ablaze. A door opened and a gruff voice
spoke. The settler was routing Zachariah out of his slumbers.
Far off in some unknown, remote land a rooster crowed,--the day's
champion, the first of all to greet the rising sun. Almost instantly,
a cock in Striker's barnyard awoke in confusion and dismay, and
sent up a hurried, raucous cock-a-doodle-doo,--too late by half
a minute to claim the honours of the day, but still a valiant
challenger. Then other chanticleers, big and little, sounded their
clarion call,--and the day was born.

Kenneth, despite his longing for this very hour to come, now perversely
wished to sleep. A belated but beatific drowsiness seized him. He
was only half-conscious of the noise that attended the lifting of
the trap-door.

"Wake up! Time to git up," a distant voice was calling, and he
suddenly opened his eyes very wide and found himself staring at a
shaggy, unkempt head sticking up out of the floor, rendered grim
and terrifying by the fitful play of a ruddy light from the depths
below. For a second he was bewildered.

"That you, Striker?" he mumbled.

"Yep,--it's me. Time to git up. Five o'clock. Breakfass'll soon be
ready. You c'n wash up out at the well. Sleep well?"

"Passably. I was awakened some time in the night by your visitors."

He was sitting up on the edge of the tick, drawing on his boots.
Striker was silent for a moment.

"Thought maybe you'd be disturbed, spite of all we could do to be
as quiet as possible. People from a farm 'tother side of the plains."

The head disappeared, and in a very few minutes Gwynne, carrying
his coat and waistcoat, descended the ladder into the presence of
a roaring fire. He shot a glance at the closed bedroom door, and
then hastily made his way out of the cabin and around to the well.
Eliza was preparing breakfast. In the grey half-light he made out
Striker and Zachariah moving about the barnlot. A rough but clean
towel hung across the board wall of the well, while a fresh bucket
of water stood on the shelf inside, its chain hanging limply from
the towering end of the "h'isting pole."

As he completed his ablutions, the darkey boy approached.

"Good morning, Zachariah," he spluttered, over the edge of the
towel. "Did you sleep well?"

"No, suh, Marse Kenneth, Ah slep' powerful porely. Ah don't reckon
Ah had mah eyes close' more'n fifteen seconds all night long, suh."

His master peered at him. Zachariah's eyes were not yet thoroughly
open.

"You mean you did not have them open more than fifteen seconds,
you rascal. Why, you were asleep and snoring by nine o'clock."

"Yas, suh, yas, suh,--but Ah done got 'em wide open ag'in 'side o'
no time. Ah jes' couldn't holp worryin', Marse Kenneth, 'bout you
all. Ah sez to mahself, ef Marse Kenneth he ain' got no fitten
place to lay his weary haid--"

"Oh, then you were not kept awake by noises or--by the by, did you
hear any noises?"

"Noises? No, SUH! Dis yere cabin hit was like a grave. Thass what
kep' me awake, mos' likely. Ah reckon Ah is used to noises. Ah jes'
couldn't go to sleep widdout 'em, Marse Kenneth. Wuzzen't even a
cricket er a--"

His master's hearty laugh caused him to cut his speech short. A
wary glance out of the corner of his eye satisfied him that it was
now time to change the subject.

"Done fed de hosses, suh, an' mos' ready to packen up fo' de juhney,
suh. Yas, SUH! Ev'thing all hunky-dory jes' soon as Marse Kenneth
done had his breakfuss. YAS, suh! Yas, SUH!"

They ate breakfast by candle-light, Striker and Eliza and Kenneth.
There was no sign of the beautiful and exasperating girl. Phineas
was strangely glum and preoccupied, his wife too busy with her
flap-jacks to take even the slightest interest in the desultory
conversation.

"A little too early for my fellow-guest to be up and about, I
see," ventured Kenneth at last, taking the bull by the horns. His
curiosity had to be satisfied.

Striker did not look up from his plate. "She's gone. She ain't
here."

"Gone?"

"Yep. Left jist a little while 'fore sun-up."

"Her ma sent for her," volunteered Eliza.

"Sent fer her to come in a hurry," added Striker, trying to be
casual.

"Then it was she who went away in the wagon last night," said the
young man, a note of disappointment in his voice.

"Airly this mornin'," corrected his host. "Jist half an hour or so
'fore sun-up."

"I trust her mother is not ill."

"No tellin'," was Striker's non-committal response.

It was quite apparent to Kenneth that they did not wish to discuss
the matter. He waited a few moments before remarking:

"I saw a light moving through the woods above here,--a lantern,
I took it to be,--just after I was awakened by the barking of the
dogs. I thought at first it was that which set the dogs off on a
rampage."

Striker was looking at him intently under his bushy eyebrows, his
knife poised halfway to his lips. While he could not see Eliza, who
was at the stove behind him, he was struck by the fact that there
was a brief, significant suspension of activity on her part; the
scrape of the "turnover" in the frying-pan ceased abruptly.

"A lantern up in the woods?" said Striker slowly, looking past
Gwynne at Eliza.

"A light. It may not have been a lantern."

"Which way was it movin'?"

"In that direction," indicating the south.

The turning of the flap-jacks in the pan was resumed. Striker
relaxed a little.

"Hunters, I reckon, goin' down stream for wild duck and geese this
mornin'. There's a heap o' ducks an' geese passin' over--"

"See here, Phineas," broke in his wife suddenly, "what's the sense
of sayin' that? You know it wasn't duck hunters. Nobody's out
shooting ducks with the river as high as it is down this way, an'
Mr. Gwynne knows it, if he's got half as much sense as I think he
has."

"When I heard people out in front of the cabin shortly afterward,
I naturally concluded that the lantern belonged to them," remarked
the young man.

"Well, it didn't," said Striker, laying down his knife. "I guess it
won't hurt you to know now somethin' that will be of considerable
interest to you later on. I ain't betrayin' nobody's secret, 'cause
I said I was goin' to tell you the whole story."

"Don't you think you'd better let it come from somebody else, Phin?"
interposed his wife nervously.

"No, I don't, Eliza. 'Cause why? 'Cause I think he'd ort to know.
Maybe he'll be able to put a stop to her foolishness. We didn't know
until long after you went to bed that her real reason fer comin'
here yesterday was to run off an' get married to Barry Lapelle.
She didn't tell you no lies about her clothes an' all that, 'cause
her ma had put her foot down on her takin' off black. They had it
all planned out beforehand, her an' this Lapelle. He was to come
fer her some time before daybreak with a couple of hosses an' they
was to be off before the sun was up on their way to Attica where
they was to be married, an' then go on down the river to his home
in Terry Hut. Me an' Eliza set up all night in that bedroom, tryin'
to coax her out of it. I don't like this Lapelle feller. He's a
handsome cuss, but he's as wild as all get out,--drinks, gambles,
an' all setch. Well, to make a long story short, that was prob'ly
him up yander on the ole Injin trace, with his hosses, waitin' fer
the time to come when they could be off. Her ma must have found
out about their plans, 'cause she come here herself with two of her
hired men an' old Cap'n Scott, a friend of the fam'ly, an' took her
daughter right out from under Barry's nose. It was them you heared
down here last night. I will say this fer the girl, she kinder
made up her mind 'long about midnight that it was a foolish thing
to do, runnin' off like this with Barry, an' like as not when the
time come she'd have backed out."

"She's a mighty headstrong girl," said Eliza. "Sot in her ways an'
sp'iled a good deal by goin' to school down to St. Louis." "Her
mother don't want her to marry Lapelle. She's dead sot ag'inst it.
It's a mighty funny way fer the girl to act, when she's so fond of
her mother. I can't understand it in her. All the more reason fer
her to stick to her mother when it's a fact that the old woman
ain't got what you'd call a friend in the whole deestrict. She's a
queer sort of woman,--close an' stingy as all get out, an' as hard
as a hickory log. Never been seen at a church meetin'. She makes
her daughter go whenever there's a meetin', but as fer herself,--no,
sirree. 'Course, I understand why she's so sot ag'inst Barry. She's
purty well off an' the girl will be rich some day."

"Shucks!" exclaimed Eliza. "Barry Lapelle's after her 'cause she's
the purtiest girl him or anybody else has ever seen. He ain't the
only man that's in love with her. They ALL are,--clear from Lafayette
to Terry Hut, an' maybe beyond. Don't you tell me it's her money
he's after, Phin Striker. He's after HER. He's got plenty of money
himself, so they say, so why--"

"I ain't so sure about that," broke in her husband. "There's a lot
of talk about him gamblin' away most everything his father left him.
Lost one of his boats last winter in a poker game up at Lafayette,
an' had to borrer money on some land he's got down the river to
git it back. The packet Paul Revere it was. Used to run on the
Mississippi. I guess she kinder lost her head over him," he went
on musingly. "He's an awful feller with women, so good-lookin' an'
all, an' so different from the farm boys aroun' here. Allus got
good clothes on, an' they say he has fit a couple of duels down
the river. Somehow that allus appeals to young girls. But I can't
understand it in her. She's setch a level-headed girl,--but, then, I
guess they're all alike when a good-lookin' man comes along. Look
at Eliza here. The minute she sot eyes on me she--" "I didn't marry
you, Phin Striker, because you was purty, let me tell you that,"
exclaimed Eliza, witheringly.

Gwynne, who had been listening to all this with a queer sinking of
the heart, interrupted what promised to develop into an acrimonious
wrangle over pre-connubial impressions. He was decidedly upset by
the revelations; a vague dream, barely begun, came to a sharp and
disagreeable end.

"She actually had planned to run away with this man Lapelle?" he
exclaimed, frowning. "It was all arranged?"

"So I take it," said Striker. "She brought some of her personal
trinkets with her, but Eliza never suspected anything queer about
that."

"The fellow must be an arrant scoundrel," declared the young man
angrily. "No gentleman would subject an innocent girl to such--"

"All's well that ends well, as the feller says," interrupted
Striker, arising from the table. "At least fer the present. She
seemed sort of willin' to go home with her ma, so I guess her heart
ain't everlastingly busted. I thought it was best to tell you all
this, Mr. Gwynne, 'cause I got a sneakin' idee you're goin' to
see a lot of that girl, an' maybe you'll turn out to be a source
of help in time o' trouble to her."

"I fail to understand just what you mean, Striker. She is an absolute
stranger to me."

"Well, we'll see what we shall see," said Striker, cryptically.
He opened the kitchen door and called to Zachariah to hurry in and
get his breakfast.

Half an hour later Kenneth and his servant mounted their horses in
the barnyard and prepared to depart. The sun was shining and there
was a taste and tang of spring in the breeze that flouted the faces
of the horsemen.

"Follow this road back to the crossin' an' turn to your left,"
directed Striker, "an' 'fore you know it you'll be in Lay-flat, as
they call it down in Crawfordsville. Remember, you're allus most
welcome here. I reckon we'll see somethin' of each other as time
goes on. It ain't difficult fer honest men to be friends as well
as neighbours in this part of the world. I'm glad you happened my
way last night."

He walked alongside Gwynne's stirrup as they moved down toward the
road.

"Some day," said the young man, "I should like to have a long talk
with you about my father. You knew him well and I--by the way, your
love-lorn friend knew him also."

The other was silent for half a dozen paces, looking straight ahead.

"Yes," said he, with curious deliberation. "She was sayin' as how
she told you a lot about him last night,--what sort of a man he
was, an' all that."

"She told me nothing that--"

"Jist a minute, Mr. Gwynne," said Striker, laying his hand on the
rider's knee. Kenneth drew rein. "I guess maybe you didn't know
who she was talkin' about at the time, but it was your father she
was describin'. We all three knowed somethin' that you didn't know,
an' it's only fair fer me to tell you the truth, now that she's
out of the way. That girl was Viola Gwyn, an' she's your half-sister."




CHAPTER V

REFLECTIONS AND AN ENCOUNTER


The sun was barely above the eastward wall of trees when Kenneth and
his man rode away from the home of Phineas Striker. Their progress
was slow and arduous, for the black mud was well up to the fetlocks
of the horses in this new road across the boggy clearing. He rode
ahead, as was the custom, followed a short distance behind by his
servant on the strong, well-laden pack-horse.

The master was in a thoughtful, troubled mood. He paid little
attention to the glories of the fresh spring day. What he had just
heard from the lips of the settler disturbed him greatly. That
beautiful girl his half-sister! The child of his own father and the
hated Rachel Carter! Rachel Carter, the woman he had been brought
up to despise, the harlot who had stolen his father away, the scarlet
wanton at whose door the death of his mother was laid! That evil
woman, Rachel Carter!

Could she, this foulest of thieves, be the mother of so lovely, so
sensitive, so perfect a creature as Viola Gwyn?

As he rode frowningly along, oblivious to the low chant of the
darkey and the song of the first spring warblers, he revisualized
the woman he had known in his earliest childhood. Strangely enough,
the face of Rachel Carter had always remained more firmly, more
indelibly impressed upon his memory than that of his own mother.

This queer, unusual circumstance may be easily, reasonably accounted
for: his grandfather's dogged, almost daily lessons in hate. He was
not allowed to forget Rachel Carter,--not for one instant. Always
she was kept before him by that bitter, vindictive old man who was
his mother's father,--even up to the day that he lay on his deathbed.
Small wonder, then, that his own mother's face had faded from his
memory while that of Rachel Carter remained clear and vivid, as he
had known it now for twenty years. The passing years might perforce
bring about changes in the face and figure of Rachel Carter, but
they could not, even in the smallest detail, alter the picture his
mind's eye had carried so long and faithfully. He could think of
her only as she was when he last saw her, twenty years ago: tall
and straight, with laughing eyes and white teeth, and the colour
of tan-bark in her cheeks.

Then there had been little Minda,--tiny Minda who existed vaguely
as a name, nothing more. He had a dim recollection of hearing his
elders say that the babe with the yellow curls had been drowned
when a boat turned over far away in the big brown river. Some one
had come to his grandfather's house with the news. He recalled
hearing the talk about the accident, and his grandfather lifting
his fist toward the sky and actually blaming God for something! He
never forgot that. His grandfather had blamed God!

He had thought of asking Striker about his father's widow, after
hearing the truth about Viola, but a stubborn pride prevented. It
had been on his tongue to inquire when and where Robert Gwynne and
Rachel Carter were married,--he did not doubt that they had been
legally married,--but he realized in time that in all probability
the settler, as well as every one else in the community, was totally
uninformed as to the past life of Robert and Rachel Gwynne. Besides,
the query would reveal an ignorance on his part that he was loath
to expose to speculation.

Striker had explained the somewhat distasteful scrutiny to which
he had been subjected the night before. All three of them, knowing
him to be Viola's blood relation, were studying his features with
interest, seeking for a trace of family resemblance, not alone
to his father but to the girl herself. This had set him thinking.
There was not, so far as he could determine, the slightest likeness
between him and his beautiful half-sister; there was absolutely
nothing to indicate that their sire was one and the same man.

Pondering, he now understood what Striker meant in declaring that
he ought to know the truth about the frustrated elopement. Even
though the honest settler was aware of the strained relations existing
between the widow and her husband's son by a former wife,--(the
deceased in his will had declared in so many words that he owed more
than mere reparation to the neglected but unforgotten son born to
him and his beloved but long dead wife, Laura Gwynne),--even though
Striker knew all this, it was evident that he looked upon this son
as the natural protector of the wilful girl, notwithstanding the
feud between step-mother and step-son.

And Kenneth, as he rode away, felt a new weight of responsibility
as unwelcome to him as it was certain to be to Viola; for, when
all was said and done, she was her mother's daughter and as such
doubtless looked upon him through the mother's eyes, seeing a common
enemy. Still, she was his half-sister, and whether he liked it or
not he was morally bound to stand between her and disaster,--and if
Striker was right, marriage with the wild Lapelle spelled disaster
of the worst kind. He had only to recall, however, the unaccountable
look of hostility with which she had favoured him more than once
during the evening to realize that he was not likely to be called
upon for either advice or protection.

He mused aloud, with the shrug of a philosopher: "Heigh-ho! I fear
me I shall have small say as to the conduct of this newly found
relation. The only tie that bound us is gone. She is not only
the child of my father, whom she feared and perhaps hated, but of
mine enemy, whom she loves,--so the case is clear. There is a wall
between us, and I shall not attempt to surmount it. What a demnition
mess it has turned out to be. I came prepared to find only the
creature I have scorned and despised, and I discover that I have
a sister so beautiful that, not knowing her at all, my eyes are
dazzled and my heart goes to thumping like any silly school boy's.
Aye, 'tis a very sorry pass. Were it not so demned upsetting,
it would be amusing. Fate never played a wilder prank. What, ho,
Zachariah! Where are we now? Whose farm is that upon the ridge?"

Zachariah, urging his horse forward, consulted his memory. Striker
had mentioned the farms they were to pass en route, and the features
by which they were to be identified. Far away on a rise in the
sweep of prairie-land stood a lonely cabin, with a clump of trees
behind it.

"Well, Marse Kenneth, ef hit ain' de Sherry place hit shorely am de
Sheridan place, an' ef hit ain't nuther one o' dem hit mus' belong
to Marse Dimmit er---"

"It is neither of these, you rascal. We are to the north of them,
if I remember our directions rightly. Mr. Hollingsworth and the
Kisers live hereabouts, according to Phineas Striker. A house with
a clump of trees,--it is Mr. Huff's farm. Soon we will come to the
Martin and Talbot places, and then the land that is mine, Zachariah.
It lies for the most part on this side of the Crawfordsville road."

"Is yo' gwine to stop dere, Marse Kenneth?"

"No. I shall ride out from town some day soon to look the place over,"
said his master with a pardonable lordliness of mien, becoming to
a landed gentleman. "Our affairs at present lie in the town, for
there is much to be settled before I take charge. Striker tells me
the man who is farming the place is an able, honest fellow. I shall
not disturb him. From what he says, my property is more desirable
in every way than the land that fell to my father's widow. Her
farm lies off to our left, it seems, and reaches almost to the
bottomlands of the river. We, Zachariah, are out here in the fertile
prairie land. Our west line extends along the full length of her
property. So, you see, the only thing that separates the two farms
is an imaginary line no wider than your little finger, drawn by
a surveyor and established by law. You will observe, my faithful
fellow,--assuming that you are a faithful fellow,--that as we
draw farther away from the woods along the river, the road becomes
firmer, the soil less soggy, the--If you will cast your worthless
eye about you, instead of at these mud-puddles, you will also
observe the vast fields of stubble, the immense stretches of corn
stalks and the signs of spring ploughing on all sides. Truly 'tis
a wonderful country. See yon pasture, Zachariah, with the cows and
calves,--a good score of them. And have you, by the way, noticed
what a glorious day it is? This is life!"

"Yas, suh, Marse Kenneth, Ah done notice dat, an' Ah done notice
somefin ailse. Ah done notice dem buzzards flyin' low over yan way.
Dat means death, Marse Kenneth. Somefin sho' am daid over yan way."

"You are a melancholy croaker, Zachariah. You see naught but the
buzzards, when all about you are the newly come birds of spring,
the bluebird, the robin, and the thrush. Soon the meadow lark will
be in the fields, and the young quail and the prairie-hen."

"Yas, suh," agreed Zachariah, brightening, "an' de yaller-hammer
an' de blue-jay an' de--an' de rattlesnake," he concluded, with a
roving, uneasy look along the roadside.

"Do not forget the saucy parroquets we saw yesterday as we came
through the forest. You went so far in your excitement over those
little green and golden birds, with their scarlet heads, that you
declared they reminded you of the Garden of Eden. Look about you,
Zachariah. Here is the Garden of Eden, right at your feet. Do you
see those plum trees over yonder? Well, sir, old Adam and Eve used
to sit under those very trees during the middle of the day, resting
themselves in the shade. And right over there behind that big rock
is where the serpent had his nest. He gave Eve a plum instead of
an apple, because Eve was especially fond of plums and did not care
at all for apples. She--"

"'Scuse me, Marse Kenneth, but dem is hawthorn trees," said Zachariah,
grinning.

"So they are, so they are. Now that I come to think of it, it
was the red-haw that Eve fancied more than any other fruit in the
garden."

"Yas, suh,--an' ole Adam he was powerful fond ob snappin'-turtles
fo' breakfas'," said Zachariah, pointing to a tortoise creeping
slowly along the ditch. "An' lil Cain an' Abel,--my lan', how dem
chillum used to gobble up de mud pies ole Mammy Eve used to make
right out ob dish yere road we's ridin' on."

And so, in this sportive mood, master and man, warmed by the golden
sun and cheered by the spring wind of an April morn, traversed this
new-found realm of Cerus, forded the turbulent, swollen creek that
later on ran through the heart of the Gwynne acres, and came at
length to the main road leading into the town.

They passed log cabins and here and there pretentious frame houses
standing back from the road in the shelter of oak and locust
groves. Their passing was watched by curious women and children
in dooryards and porches, while from the fields men waved greeting
and farewell with the single sweep of a hat. On every barn door
the pelts of foxes and raccoons were stretched and nailed.

Presently they drew near to a lane reaching off to the west, and
apparently ending in a wooded knoll, a quarter of a mile away.

"There," said Kenneth, with a wave of his hand, "is where I shall
some day erect a mansion, Zachariah, that will be the wonder and the
envy of all the people in the country. For unless I am mistaken, that
is the grove of oaks that Striker mentioned. Behold, Zachariah,--all
that is mine. Four hundred acres of as fine farm-land as there is
in all the world, and timber unparalleled. Yes, I am right. There
is the house that Striker described, the place where my father
lived he first came to the Wea. Egad, 'tis not a regal palace, is
it, Zachariah? The most imposing thing about it is the chimney."

They were gazing at a cabin that squatted meekly over against the
wall of oaks. Its roof was barely visible above the surrounding
stockade, while the barn and styes and sheds were hidden entirely
beyond the slope. It was, in truth, the most primitive and
insignificant house they had seen that day.

"He was one of the first to build in this virgin waste," mused the
young man aloud. "Rough and parlous were the days when he came to
this land, Zachariah. There was no town of Lafayette, no neighbours
save the rude, uncultured trappers. Now see how the times have
changed. And, mark my guess, Zachariah, there will be still greater
changes before we are laid away. There will be cities and--Ha!
Look, Zachariah,--to the right of the grove. It is all as Striker
said. There is the other house,--two miles or more to the westward.
That is HER house. It is new, scarce two years old, built of lumber
instead of logs, and quite spacious. There are, he tells me, two
stories, containing four rooms, with a kitchen off the back, a
smoke-house and a granary besides the barn,--yes, I see them all,
just as he said we should see them after we rounded the grove."

He drew rein and gazed at the distant house, set on a ridge and
backed by the seemingly endless forest that stretched off to the
north and south. His face clouded, his jaw was set, and his eyes
were hard.

"Yes, that would be Rachel Carter's house," he continued, harshly.
"Her land and my land lying side by side, with only a fence between.
Her grain and my grain growing out of the same soil. What an unholy
trick for fate to play. Perhaps she is over there, even now. She
and Viola. It is not likely that they would have started for town
at an earlier hour than this. And to think of the damnable situation
I shall find in town. She will be my neighbour,--just as she was
twenty years ago. We shall live within speaking distance of each
other, we shall see each other perhaps a dozen times a day, and
yet we may neither speak nor see. Egad, I wonder what I'll do if
she even attempts to address me! Heigh-ho! 'Tis the mischief of
Satan himself. Come, Zachariah,--you lazy rascal! As if you had
not slept soundly all night long, you must now fall asleep sitting
bolt upright in the saddle."

And so on they rode again, at times breaking into a smart canter
where the road was solid, but for the most part proceeding with
irksome slowness through the evil slough. Ahead lay the dense wood
they were to traverse before coming to the town. Soon the broad,
open prairie would be behind them, they would be plunged into the
depths of a forest primeval, wending their way through five miles
of solitude to the rim of the vale in which the town was situated.
But the forest had no terrors for them. They were accustomed to the
long silences, the sombre shades, the seemingly endless stretches
of wildwood wherein no mortal dwelt. They had come from afar and
they were young, and hardy, and fearless. Beyond that wide wall of
trees lay journey's end; a new life awaited them on the other side
of the barrier forest.

Suddenly Zachariah called his master's attention to a horseman who
rode swiftly, even recklessly across the fields to their left and
well ahead of them. They watched the rider with interest, struck by
the furious pace he was holding, regardless of consequences either
to himself or his steed.

"Mus' be somebody pow'ful sick, Marse Kenneth, fo' dat man to be
ridin' so fas'," remarked Zachariah.

"Going for a doctor, I sup--Begad, he must have come from Rachel
Carter's farm! There is no other house in sight over in that
direction. I wonder if--" He did not complete the sentence, but
frowned anxiously as he looked over his shoulder at the distant
house.

Judging by the manner and the direction in which he was galloping,
the rider would reach the main road a quarter of a mile ahead of
them, about at the point where it entered the wood. Kenneth now
made out an unfenced wagon-road through the field, evidently a
short-cut from Rachel Carter's farm to the highway. He permitted
himself a faint, sardonic smile. This, then, was to be her means
of reaching the highway rather than to use the lane that ran past
his house and no doubt crossed a section of his farm.

Sure enough the horseman turned into the road some distance ahead
of them and rode straight for the forest. Then, for the first time,
Gwynne observed a second rider, motionless at the roadside, and in
the shadow of the towering, leafless trees that marked the portal
through which they must enter the forest. The flying horseman slowed
down as he neared this solitary figure, coming to a standstill when
he reached his side. A moment later, both riders were cantering
toward the wood, apparently in excited, earnest conversation. A
few rods farther on, both turned to look over their shoulders at
the slow-moving travellers. Then they stopped, wheeled about, and
stood still, awaiting their approach.

Kenneth experienced a poignant thrill of apprehension What was he
to expect: a friendly or a sanguinary encounter? He slipped his
right hand into the saddle pocket and drew forth a pistol which he
shoved hastily inside his waistcoat, covering the stock with the
folds of his cape.

"Keep a little way behind me," he said to his servant, a trace of
excitement in his voice.

"Yas, suh," said Zachariah, with more alacrity than valour, the
whites of his eyes betraying something more than a readiness to
obey this conservative order. It was a foregone conclusion that
Zachariah would turn tail and flee the instant there was a sign
of danger. "Slave hunters, Marse Kenneth, dat's what dey is," he
announced with conviction. "Ah c'n smell 'em five miles away. Yas,
suh,--dey's gwine a' make trouble fo' you, Marse Kenneth, sho' as
you is--" But by this time he had dropped so far behind that his
opinions were valueless.

When not more than fifty yards separated the two parties, one
of the men, with a word and an imperative jerk of the head to his
companion, advanced slowly to meet Kenneth. This man was the one
who had waited for the other at the edge of the wood.

Gwynne beheld a tall, strongly built young man who rode his horse
with the matchless grace of an Indian. Although his companion was
roughly dressed and wore a coon-skin cap, this man was unmistakably
a dandy. His high beaver hat observed a jaunty, rakish tilt; his
brass-buttoned coat was the colour of wine and of the latest fashion,
while his snug fitting pantaloons were the shade of the mouse. He
wore no cumbersome cape, but fashioned about his neck and shoulders
was a broad, sloping collar of mink. There were silver spurs on
his stout riding boots, and the wide cuffs of his gauntlets were
embroidered in silver.

He was a handsome fellow of the type described as dashing. Dark
gleaming eyes peered out beneath thick black eyebrows which met in
an unbroken line above his nose. Set in a face of unusual pallor,
they were no doubt rendered superlatively brilliant by contrast. His
skin was singularly white above the bluish, freshly shaven cheeks
and chin. His hair was black and long and curling. The thin lips,
set and unsmiling, were nevertheless drawn up slightly at one
corner of the mouth in what appeared to be a permanent stamp of
superiority and disdain,--or even contempt. Altogether, a most striking
face, thought Gwynne,--and the man himself a person of importance.
The very manner in which he jerked his head to his companion was
proof enough of that.

"Good morning," said this lordly gentleman, bringing his horse
to a standstill and raising his "gad" to the brim of his hat in a
graceful salute.

Gwynne drew rein alongside. He had observed in a swift glance that
the stranger was apparently unarmed, except for the short, leather
gad.

"Good morning," he returned. "I am on the right road to Lafayette,
I take it." "You are," said the other. "From Crawfordsville way?"

"Yes. I left that place yesterday. I come from afar, however. This
is a strange country to me."

"It is strange to most of us. Unless I am mistaken, sir, you are
Mr. Kenneth Gwynne."

The other smiled. "My approach appears to be fairly well heralded.
Were I a vain person I should feel highly complimented."

"Then you ARE Kenneth Gwynne?" said the stranger, rather curtly.

"Yes. That is my name."

"Permit me to make myself known to you. My name is Lapelle,--Barry
Lapelle. While mine no doubt is unfamiliar to you, yours is well
known to me. In fact, it is known to every one in these parts. You
have long been expected. You will find the town anxiously awaiting
your appearance." He smiled slightly. "If you could arrange to arrive
after nightfall, I am sure you would find bonfires and perhaps a
torchlight procession in your honour. As it is, I rather suspect
our enterprising citizen, Mr. William Smith, will fire a salute
when you appear in view."

"A salute?" exclaimed Kenneth blankly.

"A joyful habit of his, but rather neglected of late. It used to
be his custom, I hear, to put a charge of powder in a stump and
set it off whenever a steamboat drew up to the landing. That was
his way of letting the farmers for miles around know that a fresh
supply of goods had arrived and they were to hurry in and do the
necessary trading at the store. He almost blew himself and his
store to Hallelujah a year or two ago, and so he isn't quite so
enterprising as he was. I am on my way to town, Mr. Gwynne, so if
you do not mind, I shall give myself the pleasure of riding along
with you for a short distance. I shall have to leave you soon,
however, as I am due in the town by ten o'clock. You are too heavily
laden, I see, to travel at top speed,--and that is the way I am
obliged to ride, curse the luck. When I have set you straight at the
branch of the roads a little way ahead, I shall use the spurs,--and
see you later on."

"You are very kind. I will be pleased to have you jog along with
me."




CHAPTER VI

BARRY LAPELLE


So this was Barry Lapelle. This was the wild rake who might yet
become his brother-in-law, and whose sprightly enterprise had been
frustrated by a woman who had, herself, stolen away in the dark of
a far-off night.

As they rode slowly along, side by side, into the thick of the
forest, Kenneth found himself studying the lover's face. He looked
for the signs of the reckless dissipated life he was supposed
to have led,--and found them not. Lapelle's eyes were bright and
clear, his skin unblemished, his hand steady, his infrequent smile
distinctly engaging. The slight, disdainful twist never left the
corner of his mouth, however. It lurked there as a constant reminder
to all the world that he, Barry Lapelle, was a devil of a fellow
and was proud of it. While he was affable, there was no disguising
the fact that he was also condescending. Unquestionably he was
arrogant, domineering, even pompous at times, absolutely sure of
himself.

He spoke with a slight drawl, in a mellow, agreeable voice, and
with meticulous regard for the King's English,--an educated youth
who had enjoyed advantages and associations uncommon to young men
of the frontier. His untanned face testified to a life of ease and
comfort, spent in sheltered places and not in the staining open,
where sun and wind laid bronze upon the skin. A lordly fellow, decided
Kenneth, and forthwith took a keen dislike for him. Nevertheless,
it was not difficult to account for Viola's interest in him; nor,
to a certain extent, the folly which led her to undertake the exploit
of the night before. Barry Lapelle would have his way with women.

"You come from Kentucky, Mr. Gwynne," Lapelle was saying. "I
am from Louisiana. My father came up to St. Louis a few years ago
after establishing a line of steamboats between Terre Haute and the
gulf. Two of our company's boats come as far north as Lafayette,
so I spend considerable of my time there at this season of the
year. You will find, sir, a number of Kentucky and Virginia people
in this part of the state. Splendid stock, some of them. I understand
you have spent several years in the East, at college and in pursuit
of your study of the law."

"Principally in New York and Philadelphia," responded the other,
subduing a smile. "My fame seems to have preceded me, Mr. Lapelle.
Even in remote parts of the country I find my arrival anticipated.
The farmer with whom I spent the night was thoroughly familiar with
my affairs."

"You are an object of interest to every one in this section," said
Lapelle, indifferently. "Where did you spend the night?"

"At the farm of a man named Striker,--Phineas Striker."

Lapelle started. His body appeared to stiffen in the saddle.

"Phineas Striker?" he exclaimed, with a swift, searching look into
the speaker's eyes. Suddenly a flush mantled his cheek. "You were
at Phineas Striker's last night?"

"Yes. We had lost our way and came to his place just before the
storm," said Kenneth, watching his companion narrowly. Lapelle's
face was a study. Doubt, indecision, even dismay, were expressed
in swift succession.

"Then you must have met,--but no, it isn't likely," he said, in
some confusion.

Kenneth hesitated a moment, enjoying the other's discomfiture. Then
he said: "I met no one there except my sister, who also happened
to be spending the night with the Strikers."

The colour faded from Lapelle's face, leaving it a sickly white.
"Were you in any way responsible for--well, for her departure, Mr.
Gwynne?" he demanded, his eyes flaming with swift, sudden anger.

"I was not aware of her departure until I arose this morning, Mr.
Lapelle. Striker informed me that she went away before sunrise."

For a moment Lapelle glared at him suspiciously, and then gave vent
to a short, contemptuous laugh.

"A thousand apologies," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I might
have known you would not be consulted."

"I never laid eyes on my half-sister until last night," said
Kenneth, determined to hold his temper. "It is not likely that she
would have asked the advice of a total stranger, is it? Especially
in so simple a matter as going home when she felt like it."

Lapelle shrugged his shoulders again. "I quite forgot that you are
a lawyer, Mr. Gwynne," he said, drily. "Is it your purpose to hang
out your shingle in the town of Lafayette?"

"My plans are indefinite."

"You could do worse, I assure you. The town is bound to grow. It
will be an important town in a very few years." And so the subject
uppermost in the minds of both was summarily dismissed.

They came at last to the point where a road branched off to the
right. The stillness was intense. There was no sign of either
human or animal life in the depths of this wide, primeval forest.

"Follow this road," said Lapelle, pointing straight ahead. "It will
take you into the town. You will find the bridge over Durkee's Run
somewhat shaky after the rain, but it is safe. I must leave you
here. I shall no doubt see you at Johnson's Inn, in case you intend
to stop there. Good morning, sir."

He lifted his hat and, touching the spirited mare with the gad, rode
swiftly away. A few hundred feet ahead he overtook his mud-spattered
friend and the two of them were soon lost to sight among the trees.

Kenneth fell into profound cogitation. Evidently Lapelle had waited
at the edge of the forest for a report of some description from the
farmhouse belonging to Rachel Carter. In all probability Viola was
still at the farm with her mother, and either she had sent a message
to her lover or had received one from him. Or, it was possible,
Lapelle had despatched his man to the farmhouse to ascertain
whether the girl was there, or had been hurried on into the town
by her mother. In any case, the disgruntled lover was not content
to acknowledge himself thwarted or even discouraged by the
miscarriage of his plans of the night just ended. Kenneth found
himself wondering if the incomprehensible Viola would prove herself
to be equally determined. If so, they would triumph over opposition
and be married, whether or no. He was conscious of an astounding,
almost unbelievable desire to stand with Rachel Carter in her hour
of trouble.

His thoughts went back, as they had done more than once that
morning, to Viola's artful account of his own father. He had felt
sorry for her during and after the recital and now, with the truth
revealed to him, he was even more concerned than before,--for he
saw unhappiness ahead of her if she married this fellow Lapelle.
He went even farther back and recalled his own caustic opinions
of certain young rakes he had known in the East, wherein he had
invariably asseverated that if he "had a sister he would sooner
see her dead than married to that rascal." Well,--here he was with
a sister,--and what was he to do about it?

Zachariah, observing the dark frown upon his master's face, and
receiving no answer to a thrice repeated question, fell silent
except for the almost inaudible hymn with which he invited consolation.

From afar in the thick wood now came the occasional report of a
gun, proof that hunters were abroad. Many times Kenneth was roused
from his reverie by the boom and whiz of pheasants, or the ring of
a woodman's axe, or the lively scurrying of ground squirrels across
his path. They forded three creeks before emerging upon a boggy,
open space, covered with a mass of flattened, wind-broken reeds
and swamp grass, in the centre of which lay a wide, still bayou
partially fringed by willows with the first sickly signs of spring
upon them in the shape of timid mole-ear leaves. Beyond the bridge
over the canal-like stream which fed the bayou was a ridge of hills
along whose base the road wound with tortuous indecision.

The first log cabin they had seen since entering the wood nestled
among the scrub oaks of the hill hard by. The front wall of the hut
was literally covered with the pegged-up skins of foxes, raccoons
and what were described to Kenneth as the hides of "linxes," but
which, in reality, were from the catamount. A tall, bewhiskered
man, smoking a corncob pipe, leaned upon the rail fence, regarding
the strangers with lazy interest.

Kenneth drew rein and inquired how far it was to Lafayette.

"'Bout two mile an' a half," replied the man. "My name is Stain,
Isaac Stain. I reckon you must be Mister Kenneth Gwynne. I heerd
you'd be along this way some time this mornin'."

"I suppose Mr. Lapelle informed you that I was coming along behind,"
said Kenneth, smiling.

"'Twuzn't Barry Lapelle as told me. I hain't seen him to-day."

"Didn't he pass here within the hour?"

"Nope," was the laconic response.

"I met him back along the road. He was coming this way."

"Must 'a' changed his mind."

"He probably took another road."

"There hain't no other road. I reckon he turned off into the wood
an' 'lowed you to pass," said Mr. Stain slowly.

"But he was in great haste to reach town. He may have passed when
you were not--"

"He didn't pass this place unless he was astraddle of an eagle er
somethin' like that," declared the other, grinning. "An' even then
he'd have to be flyin' purty doggone high ef I couldn't see him.
Nope. I guess he took to the woods, Mr. Gwynne, for one reason er
'nother,--an' it must ha' been a mighty good reason, 'cause from
what I know about Barry Lapelle he allus knows which way he's goin'
to leap long before he leaps. He's sorter like a painter in that
way."

Kenneth, knowing that he meant panther when he said painter, was
properly impressed.

"It is very strange," he said, frowning. It was suddenly revealed
to him that if Lapelle had tricked him it was because the messenger
had brought word from Viola, at the farmhouse, and that the baffled
lovers might even now be laying fresh plans to outwit the girl's
mother. This fear was instantly dissipated by the next remark of
Isaac Stain.

"Nope. It wuzn't him that told me about you, pardner. It wuz Violy
Gwyn. She went by here with her ma, jes' as I wuz startin' off to
look at my traps,--'long about seven o'clock, I reckon,--headed
for town. She sez to me, sez she: 'Ike, there'll be a young man
an' a darkey boy come ridin' this way some time this forenoon an'
I want you to give him a message for me.' 'With pleasure,' sez I;
'anything you ask,' sez I. 'Well,' sez she, 'it's this. Fust you
ask him ef his name is Kenneth Gwynne, an 'ef he sez it is, then
you look an' see ef he is a tall feller an' very good-lookin',
without a beard, an' wearin' a blue cape, an' when you see that he
answers that description, why, you tell him to come an' see me as
soon as he gits to town. Tell him it's very important.' 'All right,'
sez I, 'I'll tell him.'"

"Where was her mother all this time?"

"Settin' right there in the buggy beside her, holdin' the reins.
Where else would she be?"

"Did she say anything about my coming to see her daughter?"

"Nope. She never said anythin' 'cept 'Good mornin', Ike,' an' I
sez 'Good mornin', Mrs. Gwyn.' She don't talk much, she don't. You
see, she's in mournin' fer her husband. I guess he wuz your pa,
wuzn't he?"

"Yes," said Kenneth briefly. "Was there anything else?"

"Nothin' to amount to anything. Violy sez, 'When did you get the
linx skins, Ike?' an' I sez, 'Last Friday, Miss Violy,' an' she
sez, 'Ain't they beautiful?' an' I sez--"

"She wants me to come to her house?" broke in Kenneth, his brow
darkening.

"I reckon so."

"Well, I thank you, Mr. Stain. You are very kind to have waited so
long for me to arrive. I--"

"Oh, I'd do a whole lot more'n that fer her," said the hunter
quickly. "You see, I've knowed her ever since she wuz knee-high
to a duck. She wuzn't more'n five or six when I brung her an' her
folks up the Wabash in my perogue, all the way from Vincennes, an'
it wuz me that took her down to St. Louis when she went off to
school--her an' some friends of her pa's. Skinny, gangling sort
of a young 'un she wuz, but let me tell you, as purty as a picter.
I allus said she'd be the purtiest woman in all creation when she
got her growth an' filled out, an', by hokey, I wuz right. Yes,
sir, I used to run a boat on the river down below, but I give it
up quite awhile ago an' come up here to live like a gentleman."
He waved his hand proudly over his acre and a half estate. "I wuz
talkin' to Bill Digby not long ago an' he sez this is a wonderful
location for a town, right here at the fork of two o' the best
fishin' cricks in the state. An' Bill he'd ort to know, 'cause he's
laid out more towns than anybody I know of. The only trouble with
Bill is that as soon as he lays 'em out somebody comes along an'
offers him a hundred dollars er so fer 'em, er a team of hosses,
er a good coon dog, an' he up an' sells. Now, with me, I--Got to
be movin' along, have you? Well, good-bye, an' be a little keerful
when you come to Durkee's Run bridge. It's kinder wobbly."

They were fording a creek some distance beyond Stain's cabin when
Kenneth broke the silence that had followed the conversation with
the hunter by exploding violently:

"Under no circumstances,--and that's all there is to it."

Zachariah, ever ready to seize an opportunity to raise his voice,
either in expostulation or agreement, took this as a generous
opening. He exclaimed with commendable feeling:

"Yas, suh! Undeh no suckemstances! No, suh!"

"It is not even to be thought of," declared his master, frowning
heavily.

"No, suh! We can't even think about it, Marse Kenneth," said
Zachariah, a trifle less decisively.

"So that is the end of it,--absolutely the end."

"Dat's what Ah say,--yas, suh, dat's what Ah say all along, suh!"

His master suddenly turned upon him. "I cannot go to that woman's
house. It is unthinkable, Zachariah."

Zachariah began to see light. "Yo' all got to be mighty car'ful
'bout dese yere strange women, Marse Kenneth. Don' you forget what
done happen in 'at ole Garden of Eden. Dis yere old Eve, she--"

"Still I am greatly relieved to know that she is in town and not
out on the farm. It is a relief, isn't it, Zachariah?"

"Yas, suh,--hit sho'ly am."

They progressed slowly up a long hill and came to an extensive
clearing, over which perhaps half a dozen farmhouses were scattered.
Beyond this open space they entered a narrow strip of wood and,
upon emerging, had their first glimpse of the Wabash River.

Stopping at the brow of the hill, they looked long and curiously
over the valley into which they were about to descend. The panorama
was magnificent. To the left flowed the swollen, turgid river,
high among the willows and sycamores that guarded the low-lying
bank. Far to the north it could be seen, a clayish, ugly monster,
crawling down through the heart of the bowl-like depression. Mile
after mile of sparsely wooded country lay revealed to the gaze of
the travellers, sunken between densely covered ridges, one on either
side of the river. Half a mile beyond where they stood feathery
blue plumes of smoke rose out of the tree tops and, dispersing,
floated away on the breeze,--and there lay the town of Lafayette,
completely hidden from view.

The road wound down the hill and across a clumsily constructed bridge
spanning the Run and thence along the flat shelf that rimmed the
bottom-land, through a maze of wild plum and hazel brush squatting,
as it were, at the feet of the towering forest giants that covered
the hills.

Presently the travellers came upon widely separated cabins
and gardens, and then, after passing through a lofty grove, found
themselves entering the town itself. Signs of life and enterprise
greeted them from all sides. Here, there and everywhere houses were
in process of erection,--log-cabins, frame structures, and even an
occasional brick dwelling-place. Turning into what appeared to be
a well-travelled road,--(he afterwards found it to be Wabash Street),
Kenneth came in the course of a few minutes to the centre of the
town. Here was the little brick courthouse and the jail, standing
in the middle of a square which still contained the stumps of many
of the trees that originally had flourished there. At the southwest
corner of the square was the tavern, a long story and a half log
house,--and it was a welcome sight to Gwynne and his servant, both
of whom were ravenously hungry by this time.

The former observed, with considerable satisfaction, that there were
quite a number of substantial looking buildings about the square,
mostly stores, all of them with hitching-racks along the edge of the
dirt sidewalks. As far as the eye could reach, in every direction,
the muddy streets were lined with trees.

Half a dozen men were standing in front of the tavern when the
newcomers rode up. Kenneth dismounted and threw the reins to his
servant. Landlord Johnson hurried out to greet him.




CHAPTER VII

THE END OF THE LONG ROAD


"We've been expecting you, Mr. Gwynne," he said in his most genial
manner. "Step right in. Dinner'll soon be ready, and I reckon
you must be hungry. Take the hosses around to the stable, nigger,
and put 'em up. I allowed you'd be delayed some by the bad roads,
but I guess you must have got a late start this mornin' from Phin
Striker's. Mrs.--er--ahem! I mean your step-mother sent word that
you were on the way and to have accommodations ready for you. Say,
I'd like to make you acquainted with--"

"My step-mother sent word to you?" demanded Kenneth, incredulously.

"She did. What would you expect her to do, long as she knew you
were headed this way? I admit she isn't specially given to worryin'
about other people's comforts, but, when you get right down to it,
I guess she considers you a sort of connection of hers, spite of
everything, and so she lays herself out a little. But I want to tell
you one thing, Mr. Gwynne, you're not going to find her particularly
cordial, as the sayin' is. She's about as stand-offish and
unneighbourly as a Kickapoo Indian. But, as I was sayin', I'd like
to make you acquainted with some of our leadin' citizens. This is
Daniel Bugher, the recorder, and Doctor Davis, Matt Scudder, Tom
Benbridge and John McCormick. It was moved and seconded, soon as
you heaved in sight, that we repair at once to Sol Hamer's grocery
for a little--"

"Excuse me," broke in Kenneth, laughing; "I have heard of that
grocery, and I think it would be wise for me to become a little better
acquainted with my surroundings before I begin trading there."

The landlord rubbed his chin and the other gentlemen laughed
uproariously.

"Well," said the former, "I can see one thing mighty plain. You're
going to be popular with my wife and all the other women in town.
They'll point to you and say to practically nine-tenths of the
married men in Lafayette: 'There's a man that don't drink, and
goodness knows HE isn't a preacher!'"

"I am hardly what you would call a teetotaler, gentlemen," said
Gwynne, still smiling.

"Wait till you get down with a spell of the Wabash shakes," said
Mr. McCormick. "That'll make a new man of him, won't it, Doc?"

"Depends somewhat on his constitution and the way he was brought
up," said the doctor, with a professional frown which slowly relaxed
into an unprofessional smile.

"I was brought up by my grandmother," explained Kenneth, vastly
amused.

"That settles it," groaned Mr. Johnson. "You're not long for this
world. Before we go in I wish you'd take a look at the new courthouse.
We're mighty proud of that building. There isn't a finer courthouse
in the state of Indiana,--or maybe I'd better say there won't
be if it's ever finished." "I noticed it as I came by," said the
newcomer, dismissing the structure with a glance. "If you will
conduct me to my room, Mr. Johnson, I--"

"Just a second," broke in the landlord, his gaze fixed on a horseman
who had turned into the street some distance below. "Here comes
Barry Lapelle,--down there by that clump of sugar trees. He's the
most elegant fellow we've got in town, and you'll want to know him.
Makes Lafayette his headquarters most of the--"

"I have met Mr. Lapelle," interrupted Kenneth. "This morning, out
in the country."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Johnson. The citizens exchanged a
general look of surprise.

"Thought you said he went down the river on yesterday's boat," said
Scudder.

"That's just what he did," said Johnson, puzzled. "Packed some of
his things and said he'd be gone a week or so. He must have got off
at Attica,--but, no, he couldn't have got here this soon by road.
By glory, I hope the boat didn't strike a snag or a rock, or run
ashore somewhere. Looks kind of serious, boys."

"Couldn't he have landed almost anywhere in a skiff?" inquired
Gwynne, his eyes on the approaching horseman.

"Certainly he could,--but why? He had business down at Covington,
he said."

"He told me this morning he had very important business here.
That is why he could not ride in with me," said Kenneth, affecting
indifference. "By the way, is he riding his own horse?"

"Yes," said Benbridge. "That's his mare Fancy,--thoroughbred
filly by King Philip out of Shawnee Belle. He sent her down to Joe
Fell's to stud yesterday and--Say, that accounts for him being on
her now. You made a good guess, Mr. Gwynne. He must have landed
at La Grange, rowed across the river, and hoofed it up to Fell's
farm. But what do you suppose made him change his mind so suddenly?"

"He'll probably tell you to go to thunder if you ask him," said
the landlord.

"I'm not going to ask him anything," retorted Benbridge.

"He's working tooth and nail against the Wabash and Erie Canal that's
projected to run from Lake Erie to the mouth of the Tippecanoe,
Mr. Gwynne," said one of the citizens. "But it's coming through
in spite of him and all the rest of the river hogs."

"I see," said the young man, a grim smile playing about his lips.

He knew that the mare Fancy had been in waiting for her master when
he clambered ashore on the river bank opposite La Grange, and he
also suspected that the little steamboat had remained tied up at
the landing all night long and well into the morning, expecting
two passengers who failed to come aboard. He could not suppress a
chuckle of satisfaction.

Lapelle rode up at this instant and, throwing the bridle rein to
a boy who had come running up from the stable, dismounted quickly.
He came straight to Gwynne, smiling cordially.

"I see you beat me in. After we parted I decided to cut through
the woods to have a look at Jack Moxley's keel boat, stuck in the
mud on this side of the river. You'd think the blame fool would
have sense enough to keep well out in mid stream at a time like
this. Happy to have you here with us, and I hope you will like us
well enough to stay."

"Thank you. I shall like you all better after I have had something
to eat," said Kenneth.

"And drink," added Lapelle. It was then that Kenneth noticed that
his eyes were slightly blurred and his voice a trifle thick. He
had been drinking.

"What turned you back, Barry?" inquired McCormick. "Thought you
were to be gone a week or--"

"Changed my mind," said Lapelle curtly, and then, apparently on
second thought, added: "I got off the boat at La Grange and crossed
over to spend the night at Martin Hawk's, the man you saw with me
this morning, Mr. Gwynne. He is a hunter down Middleton way. I fish
and hunt with him a good deal. Well, I reckon I'd better go in and
get out of these muddy boots and pants."

Without another word, he strode up the steps, across the porch and
into the tavern, his head high, his gait noticeably unsteady.

"Martin Hawk!" growled the landlord. "The orneriest cuss this side
of hell. Plain no-good scalawag. Barry'll find it out some day,
and then maybe he'll wish he had paid some attention to what I've
been tellin' him."

"Wouldn't surprise me a bit if Mart knows a whole lot more about
what became of some mighty good yearlin' colts that used to belong
to honest men down on the Wea," said one of the group, darkly.

"I wouldn't trust Mart Hawk as far as I could throw a thousand pound
rock," observed Mr. Johnson, compressing his lips. "Well, come on
in, Mr. Gwynne, and slick up a bit. The dinner bell will be ringin'
in a few minutes, and I want you to meet the cook before you risk
eatin' any of her victuals. My wife's the cook, so you needn't look
scared. Governor Noble almost died of over-feedin' the last time
he was here,--but that wasn't her fault. And my daughters, big and
little, seem anxious to get acquainted with the celebrated Kenneth
Gwynne. People have been talkin' so much about you for the last six
months that nearly everybody calls you by your first name, and Jim
Crouch's wife is so taken with it that she has made up her mind to
call her baby Kenneth,--that is, providing nature does the right
thing. Next week some time, ain't it, Doc?"

"That's what most everybody in town says, Bob," replied the doctor
solemnly, "so I guess it must be true."

"We begin counting the inhabitants of the town as far as a month
ahead sometimes," explained Mr. McCormick drily. "I don't know as
we've been out of the way more than a day or a day-and-a-half on
any baby that's been born here in the last two years. Hope to see
you in my store down there, Mr. Gwynne--any time you're passing
that way. You can't miss it. It's just across the street from that
white frame building with the green stripes running criss-cross on
the front door,--Joe Hanna's store."

"Robert Gwyn's son is always welcome at my store and my home," said
another cordially. "We didn't know till last fall that he had a son,
and--well, I hope you don't mind my saying we couldn't believe it
at first."

"You spell the name different from the way he spelled it," answered
Bugher, the recorder. "I noticed it in your letters, and it struck
me as queer."

"My father appears to have reverted to the original way of spelling
the name," said Kenneth, from the upper step. "My forebears were
Welsh, you see. The manner of spelling it was changed when they
came to America, over a hundred years ago."

His bedroom was in the small wing off the dining-room. Its one window
looked out upon the courthouse, the view being somewhat restricted
by the presence of a pair of low-branched oak trees in the side-yard,
almost within arm's length of the wall,--they were so close, in
fact, that their limbs stretched out over the rough shingle roof,
producing in the wind an everlasting sound of scratching and
scraping. There was a huge four-poster feather bed of mountainous
proportions, leaving the occupant scant space in which to move
about the room.

"Last people to occupy this room," said Mr. Johnson, standing in
the doorway, "were George Ripley and Edna Cole, three weeks ago
last night. They came in from the Grand Prairie and only stayed
the one night. Had to get back to the farm next day on account
of it bein' wash-day. I guess I forgot to say they were on their
weddin'-trip. Generally speaking, it takes about three years
for people to get over callin' a girl by her maiden name,--so you
needn't think there was anything wrong about George and Edna stayin'
here. I wish you could have been here to drive out to the infare
at her pa's house two nights after the weddin'. It was the biggest
ever held on that side of the river,--and as for the shiveree,--my
Lord, it WAS something to talk about. Tin cans, cowbells, shot-guns,
tenor-drums,--but I'm keeping you, Mr. Gwynne. You'll find water
in that jug over there, and a towel by the lookin' glass. Come out
when you're ready."

When Kenneth returned to the dining-room, he found Johnson waiting
there with his wife and two of his comely daughters. They were
presented to the new guest with due informality, and then the
landlord went out upon the front porch to ring the dinner-bell.

"I guess you won't be stayin' here long, Mr. Gwynne," said Mrs.
Johnson. "Your mother,--I should say, your step-mother,--has got
your house all ready for you to move right in. Job Turner moved
out last week, and she took some of the furniture and things over
so's you could be sort of at home right away." Observing his start,
and the sudden tightening of his lips, she went on complacently:
"'Twasn't much trouble for her. Your house isn't more than fifty
yards from hers,--just across lots, you might say. She--"

Kenneth, forgetting himself in his agitation, interrupted her with
the startling question:

"Where does Rachel Carter live?"

"Rachel who?"

He collected his wits, stammering:

"I believe that was her name before she--before she married my
father."

"Oh, I see. Her name is Rachel, of course. Well, her house
is up Columbia street,--that's the one on the other side of the
square,--almost to the hill where Isaac Edwards has his brickyard,
just this side of the swamp."

After dinner, which was eaten at a long table in company with eight
or ten "customers," to whom he was introduced by the genial host,
he repaired to the office of Recorder Bugher.

"Everything's in good shape," announced Bugher. "There ain't
a claim against the property, now that Mrs. Gwyn has given up her
idea of contesting the will. The property is in your name now, Mr.
Gwynne,--and that reminds me that your father, in his will, spells
your name with a double n and an e, while he spells hers with only
one n. He took into consideration the fact that you spelled your
name in the new-fangled way, as you say he used to spell it in
Kentucky. And that also accounts for his signing the will 'Robert
Gwyn, formerly known as Robert Gwynne.' It's legal, all right,
properly witnessed and attested by two reliable men of this county."

"I have seen a copy of the will."

"Another queer thing about it is that he bequeathed certain property
to you as 'my son, Kenneth Gwynne,'--while he fails to mention his
daughter Viola at all, except to say that he bequeaths so-and-so
to 'Rachel Gwyn, to give, bequeath and devise as she sees fit.' Of
course, Viola, by law, is entitled to a share of the estate and it
should have been so designated. Judge Wylie says she can contest
the will if she so desires, on the ground that she is entitled to
as much as you, Mr. Gwynne. But she has decided to let it stand
as it is, and I guess she's sensible. All that her mother now has
will go to her when said Rachel dies, and as it will be a full
half of the estate instead of what might have been only a third,
I guess she's had pretty good advice from some one."

"The fact that my half-sister was not mentioned in the will naturally
led me to conclude that no such person existed. I did not know till
this morning, Mr. Bugher, that I had a half-sister."

"Well," began the recorder, pursing his lips, "for that matter she
didn't know she had a half-brother till the will was read, so she
was almost as ignorant as you."

"It's all very strange,--exceedingly strange."

"When did your own mother die, if it's a fair question?"

"In the year 1812. My father was away when she died."

"Off to the war, I suppose."

"Yes," said the young man steadily. "Off to the war," he lied,
still staring out of the window. "I was left with my grandparents
when he went off to make his fortune in this new country. It was
not until I was fairly well grown that we heard that he was married
to a woman named Rachel Carter."

"Well, I guess it's something you don't like to talk about," said
Mr. Bugher, and turned his attention to the records they were
consulting.

Later the young man called at the office of Mr. Cornell, the lawyer
who had charge of his affairs. He had come to Lafayette prepared to
denounce Rachel Carter, to drive her in shame and disgrace from the
town, if necessary. Now he found himself confronted by a condition
that distressed and perplexed him; his bitter resolve was rudely
shaken and he was in a dire state of uncertainty. He was faced by
a most unexpected and staggering situation.

To denounce Rachel Carter would be to deliberately strike a
cruel, devastating blow at the happiness and peace of an innocent
person,--Viola Gwyn, his own half-sister. A word from him, and that
lovely girl, serene in her beliefs, would be crushed for life. The
whole scheme of life had been changed for him in the twinkling of
an eye, as it were. He could not wreak vengeance upon Rachel Carter
without destroying Viola Gwyn,--and the mere thought of that caused
him to turn cold with repugnance. How could he publish Rachel Carter's
infamy to the world with that innocent girl standing beside her to
receive and sustain the worst of the shock? Impossible! Viola must
be spared,--and so with her, Rachel Carter!

Then there was the strange message he had received from Viola,
through the hunter, Stain. What was back of the earnest request for
him to come and see her at her mother's house? Was she in trouble?
Was she in need of his help? Was she depending upon him, her blood
relation, for counsel in an hour of duress? He was sadly beset by
conflicting emotions.

In the course of his interview with the lawyer, from whom he had
decided to withhold much that he had meant to divulge, he took
occasion to inquire into the present attitude of Rachel Carter,--or
Gwyn, as he reluctantly spoke of her,--toward him, an open and
admitted antagonist.

"Well," said Cornell, shaking his head, "I don't believe you will
catch her asking any favours of you. She has laid down her arms,
so to speak, but that doesn't mean she intends to be friendly. As
a matter of fact, she simply accepts the situation,--with very bad
grace, of course,--but she'll never be able to alter her nature or
her feelings. She considers herself cheated, and that's all there
is to it. I doubt very much whether she will even speak to you,
Mr. Gwynne. She is a strange woman, and a hard one to understand.
She fought desperately against your coming here at all. One of
her propositions was that she should be allowed to buy your share
of the estate, if such a transaction could be arranged, you will
remember. You declined to consider it. This was after she withdrew
her proposed contest of the will. Then she got certain Crawfordsville
men interested in the purchase of your land, and they made you a
bona fide offer,--I think they offered more than the property is
worth, by the way. I think, back of everything, she could not bear
the thought of you, the son of a former wife, living next door to
her. Jealousy, I suppose,--but not unnatural, after all, in a second
wife, is it? They're usually pretty cantankerous when it comes to
the first wife's children. As regards her present attitude, I think
she'll let you alone if you let her alone."

"My sister has asked me to come up to the house to see her this
afternoon," said Kenneth.

The lawyer looked surprised. "Is that so? Well," with a puzzled
frown, "I don't quite understand how she came to do that. I was
under the impression that she felt about as bitterly toward you
as her mother does. In fact, she has said some rather nasty things
about you. Boasted to more than one of her friends that she would
slap your face if you ever tried to speak to her."

Kenneth smiled, a reminiscent light in his eyes. "She has done
so, figuratively speaking, Mr. Cornell. I am confident she hates
me,--but if that's the case, why should she leave word for me to
come and see her?"

"Experience has taught me that women have a very definite object
in view when they let on as if they had changed their minds," was
the judicial opinion of Mr. Cornell. "Maybe they don't realize it,
but they are as wily as the devil when they think, and you think,
and everybody else thinks, they're behaving like an angel. It's
not for me to say whether you should go to see her or not, but I
believe I would if I were in your place. Maybe she has made up her
mind to be friendly, on the surface at least, and as you are bound
to meet each other at people's houses, parties, and all such, perhaps
it would be better to bury the hatchet. I think you will be quite
safe in going up there to-day, so far as Mrs. Gwyn is concerned.
She will not appear on the scene, I am confident. You will not come
in contact with her. You say that she has put some of her furniture
at your disposal, but she doubtless did so on the advice of her
lawyer. You must not forget that your father, in his will, left
half of his personal effects to you. She is just smart enough to
select in advance the part that she is willing for you to have,
feeling that you will not be captious about it."

"I have no desire to exact anything of--"

"Quite so, quite so," broke in the lawyer. "But she could not be
expected to know that. She is a long-headed woman, Mr. Gwynne. I
suspect she is considerably worried about Viola. Your half-sister
is being rather assiduously courted by a young man named Lapelle. Mrs.
Gwyn does not approve of him. She is strait-laced and--er--puritanical."

"Puritanical, eh?" said Kenneth, with a short laugh that Mr. Cornell
totally misinterpreted.

"Barry isn't exactly what you would call sanctimonious," admitted
the lawyer, with a dry smile. "The worst of it is, I'm afraid Viola
is in love with him."

His client was silent for a moment, reflecting. Then he arose
abruptly and announced:

"I agree with you, Mr. Cornell. I will go up to see her this
afternoon. I bear her no grudge,--and after all, she is my sister.
Good day, sir. I shall give myself the pleasure of calling in to
see you to-morrow."




CHAPTER VIII

RACHEL CARTER


Kenneth strolled about the town for awhile before returning to the
tavern to shave, change his boots, and "smarten" himself up a bit
in preparation for the ceremonious call he had dreaded to make.
On all sides he encountered the friendliest interest and civility
from the townspeople. The news of his arrival had spread over the
place with incredible swiftness. Scores of absolute strangers turned
to him and tendered to him the welcome to be found in a broad and
friendly smile.

Shortly after three o'clock he set forth upon his new adventure.
Assailed by a strange and unaccustomed timidity,--he would have
called it bashfulness had Viola been other than his sister--he
approached the young lady's home by the longest and most round-about
way, a course which caused him to make the complete circuit of the
three-acre pond situated a short distance above the public square--a
shallow body of water dignified during the wet season of the year
by the high-sounding title of "Lake Stansbury," but spoken of
scornfully as the "slough" after the summer's sun had reduced its
surface to a few scattered wallows, foul and green with scum. It
was now full of water and presented quite an imposing appearance
to the new citizen as he skirted its brush-covered banks; in his
ignorance he was counting the probability of one day building a
handsome home on the edge of this tiny lake.

A man working in a garden pointed out to him Mrs. Gwyn's house
half-hidden among the trees at the foot of a small slope.

"That other house, a couple of hundred foot further on,--you
can just see it from here,--well, that belonged to Robert Gwyn. I
understand his long-lost son is comin' to live in it one of these
days. They say this boy when he was a baby was stolen by the Injins
and never heard of ag'in until a few months ago. Lived with the
Injins right up to the time he was found and couldn't speak a word
of English. I have heard that he--what are ye laughin' at, mister?"

"I was laughing at the thought of how surprised you are going to
be some day, my friend. Thank you. The house with the green window
blinds, you say?"

He proceeded first to the house that was to be his home. It was a
good stone's throw from the pretentious two-story frame structure in
which Rachel Carter and her daughter lived, but nearer the centre
of the town when approached by a more direct route than he had
followed. This smaller house, an insignificant, weather-beaten
story and a half frame, snuggling among the underbrush, was where
his father had lived when he first came to Lafayette. Later on he
had erected the larger house and moved into it with his family,
renting the older place to a man named Turner.

It was faced by a crudely constructed picket fence, once white but
now mottled with scales of dirty sun-blistered paint, and inside
the fence rank weeds, burdocks and wild grass flourished without
hindrance. He strode up the narrow path to the low front door.
Finding it unlocked, he opened it and stepped into the low, roughly
plastered sitting-room. The window blinds were open, permitting
light and air to enter, and while the room was comparatively bare,
there was ample evidence that it had been made ready for occupancy
by a hand which, though niggardly, was well trained in the art of
making a little go a long way. The bedroom and the kitchen were
in order. There were rag carpets on the floors, and the place was
immaculately clean. A narrow, enclosed stairway ran from the end
of the sitting-room to the attic, where he discovered a bed for his
servant. Out at the back was the stable and a wagonshed. These he
did not inspect. A high rail fence stretched between the two yards.

As he walked up the path to the front door of the new house, he
was wondering how Viola Gwyn would look in her garb of black,--the
hated black she had cast aside for one night only. He was oppressed
by a dull, cold fear, assuaged to some extent by the thrill of
excitement which attended the adventure. What was he to do or say
if the door was opened by Rachel Carter? His jaw was set, the palms
of his hands were moist, and there was a strange, tight feeling
about his chest, as if his lungs were full and could not be emptied.
After a moment's hesitation, he rapped firmly on the door with his
bare knuckles.

The door was opened by a young coloured woman who wore a blue
sunbonnet and carried a red shawl over her arm.

"Is Miss Viola at home?" he inquired.

"Is dis Mistah Gwynne, suh?"

"Yes."

"Come right in, suh, an' set down."

He entered a small box of a hallway, opening upon a steep set of
stairs.

"Right in heah, suh," said the girl, throwing open a door at his
left.

As he walked into this room, he heard the servant shuffling up the
staircase. He deposited his hat and gloves on a small marble-top
table in the centre of the room and then sent a swift look of
investigation about him. Logs were smouldering in the deep, wide
fireplace at the far end of the room, giving out little spurts
of flame occasionally from their charred, ash-grey skeletons. The
floor was covered with a bright, new rag carpet, and there was a
horse-hair sofa in the corner, and two or three stiff, round-backed
little chairs, the seats also covered with black horse-hair. A
thick, gilt-decorated Holy Bible lay in the centre of the marble-top
table, shamed now by contact with the crown of his unsaintly
hat. On the mantel stood a large, flat mahogany clock with floral
decorations and a broad, white face with vivid black numerals and
long black hands. The walls were covered with a gaudy but expensive
paper, in which huge, indescribable red flowers mingled regularly
with glaring green leaves. Two "mottoes," worked in red and blue
worsted and framed with narrow cross-pieces of oak, hung suspended
in the corners beside the fireplace. One of them read "God Bless
Our Home," the other a sombre line done in black: "Faith, Hope and
Charity."

Three black oval oak frames, laden with stiff leaves that glistened
under a coat of varnish, contained faded, unlovely portraits,--one
of a bewhiskered man wearing a tall beaver hat and a stiff black
stock: another of a sloping-shouldered woman with a bonnet, from
which a face, vague and indistinct, sought vainly to emerge. The
third contained a mass of dry, brown leaves, some wisps of straw,
and a few colourless pressed blossoms. On a table in front of one
of the two windows stood a spindling Dutch lamp of white and delft
blue, with a long, narrow chimney. There were two candlesticks on
the mantel.

All these features of the room he took in while he stood beside
the centre table, awaiting the entrance of Viola Gwyn. He heard a
door open softly and close upstairs, and then some one descending
the steps; a few words spoken in the subdued voice of a woman and
the less gentle response of the darky servant, who mumbled "Yas'm,"
and an instant later went out by the front door. Through the window
he saw her go down the walk, the red shawl drawn tightly about her
shoulders.

He smiled. The clever Viola getting rid of the servant so that she
could be alone with him, he thought, as he turned toward the door.

A tall woman in black appeared in the doorway, paused there for a
second or two, and then advanced slowly into the room. He felt the
blood rush to his head, almost blinding him. His hand went out for
the support of the table, his body stiffened and suddenly turned
cold. The smile with which he intended to greet Viola froze on his
lips.

"God Al--" started to ooze from his stiff lips, but the words broke
off sharply as the woman stopped a few steps away and regarded
him steadily, silently, unsmilingly. He stood there like a statue
staring into the dark, brilliant eyes, sunken deep under the straight
black eyebrows. Even in the uncertain light from the curtained
windows he could see that her face was absolutely colourless,--the
pallor of death seemed to have been laid upon it. Swiftly she lifted
a hand to her throat, her eyes closed for a second and then flew
wide open again, now filled with an expression of utter bewilderment.

"Is it--is it you, Robert? Is it really you, or am I--" she murmured,
scarcely above a whisper. Once more she closed her eyes, tightly;
as if to shut out the vision of a ghost,--an unreal thing that
would not be there when she looked again.

The sound of her voice released him from the brief spell of
stupefaction.

"I know you. I remember you. You are Rachel Carter," he said
hoarsely.

She was staring at him as if fascinated. Her lips moved, but no
sound issued from them.

He hesitated for an instant and then turned to pick up his hat and
gloves. "I came to see your daughter, madame,--as well you know.
Permit me to take my departure."

"You are so like your--" she began with an effort, her voice deep
and low with emotion. "So like him I--I was frightened. I thought
he had--" She broke off abruptly, lowered her head in an attempt
to hide from him the trembling lips and chin, and to regain, if
possible, the composure that had been so desperately shaken. "Wait!"
she cried, stridently. "Wait! Do not go away. Give me time to--to--"

"There is no need for us to prolong--" he began in a harsh voice.

"I will not keep you long," she interrupted, every trace of emotion
vanishing like a shadow that has passed. She was facing him now,
her head erect, her voice steady. Her dark, cavernous eyes were
upon him; he experienced an odd, indescribable sensation,--as of
shrinking,--and without being fully aware of what he was doing,
replaced his hat upon the table, an act which signified involuntary
surrender on his part.

"Where is Viola?" he demanded sternly. "She left word for me to
come here. Where is she?"

"She is not here," said the woman.

He started. "You don't mean she has--has gone away with--"

"No. She has gone over to spend the afternoon with Effie Wardlow.
I will be frank with you. This is not the time for misunderstanding.
She asked Isaac Stain to give you that message at my request,--or
command, if you want the truth. I sent her away because what I
have to say to you must be said in private. There is no one in the
house besides ourselves. Will you do me the favour to be seated?
Very well; we will stand."

She turned away to close the hall door. Then she walked to one
of the windows and, drawing the curtain aside, swept the yard and
adjacent roadway with a long, searching look.

The strong light fell full upon her face; its warmth seemed
suddenly to paint the glow of life upon her pallid skin. He gazed
at her intently. Out of the past there came to him with startling
vividness the face of the Rachel Carter he had known. Despite
the fact that she was now an old woman,--he knew that she must be
at least forty-six or -seven,--she was still remarkably handsome.
She was very tall, deep-chested, and as straight as an arrow. Her
smoothly brushed hair was as black as the raven's wing. Time and
the toil of long, hard hours had brought deep furrows to her cheeks,
like lines chiselled in a face of marble, but they had not broken
the magnificent body of the Rachel Carter who used to toss him
joyously into the air with her strong young arms and sure hands. But
there was left no sign of the broad, rollicking smile that always
attended those gay rompings. Her lips were firm-set, straight and
unyielding,--a hard mouth flanked by what seemed to be absolutely
immovable lines. Her chin was square; her nose firm and noticeably
"hawk-like" in shape; her eyes clear, brilliant and keenly penetrating.

She faced him, standing with her back to the light.

"Sooner or later we would have had to meet," she said. "It is best
for both of us to have it over with at the very start."

"I suppose you are right," said he stiffly. "You know how I feel
toward you, Rachel Carter. There is nothing either of us can say
that will make the situation easier or harder, for that matter."

"Yes,--I understand," said she calmly. "You hate me. You have been
brought up to hate me. I do not question the verdict of those who
condemned me, but you may as well understand at once that I do not
regret what I did twenty years ago. I have not repented. I shall
never repent. We need not discuss that side of the question any
farther. You know my history, Kenneth Gwynne. You are the only person
in this part of the world who does know it. When the controversy
first came up over the settlement of your father's estate, I feared
that you would reveal the story of my--"

He held up his hand, interrupting her. "Permit me to observe, Rachel
Carter, that for many months after being notified of my father's
death and the fact 

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