Title: The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895
Author: Murfree, Mary Noailles
Language: English
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THE PHANTOMS OF THE FOOT-BRIDGE

By Charles Egbert Craddock

1895


Across the narrow gorge the little foot-bridge stretched-a brace of
logs, the upper surface hewn, and a slight hand-rail formed of a cedar
pole. A flimsy structure, one might think, looking down at the dark and
rocky depths beneath, through which flowed the mountain stream, swift
and strong, but it was doubtless substantial enough for all ordinary
usage, and certainly sufficient for the imponderable and elusive
travellers who by common report frequented it.

“We ain’t likely ter meet nobody. Few folks kem this way nowadays,
‘thout it air jes’ ter ford the creek down along hyar a piece, sence
harnts an’ sech onlikely critters hev been viewed a-crossin’ the
foot-bredge. An’ it hev got the name o’ bein’ toler’ble onlucky, too,”
 said Roxby.

His interlocutor drew back slightly. He had his own reasons to recoil
from the subject of death. For him it was invested with a more immediate
terror than is usual to many of the living, with that flattering
persuasion of immortality in every strong pulsation repudiating all
possibility of cessation. Then, lifting his gloomy, long-lashed eyes to
the bridge far up the stream, he asked, “Whose ‘harms?”

His voice had a low, repressed cadence, as of one who speaks seldom,
grave, even melancholy, and little indicative of the averse interest
that had kindled in his sombre eyes. In comparison the drawl of the
mountaineer, who had found him heavy company by the way, seemed imbued
with an abnormal vivacity, and keyed a tone or two higher than was its
wont.

“Thar ain’t a few,” he replied, with a sudden glow of the pride of the
cicerone. “Thar’s a graveyard t’other side o’ the gorge, an’ not more
than a haffen-mile off, an’ a cornsider’ble passel o’ folks hev
been buried thar off an’ on, an’ the foot-bredge ain’t in nowise
ill-convenient ter them.”

Thus demonstrating the spectral resources of the locality, he rode his
horse well into the stream as he spoke, and dropped the reins that the
animal’s impatient lips might reach the water. He sat fac-, ing the
foot-bridge, flecked with the alternate shifting of the sunshine and the
shadows of the tremulous firs that grew on either side of the high
banks on the ever-ascending slope, thus arching both above and below
the haunted bridge. His companion had joined him in the centre of
the stream; but while the horses drank, the stranger’s eyes were
persistently bent on the concentric circles of the water that the
movement of the animals had set astir in the current, as if he feared
that too close or curious a gaze might discern some pilgrim, whom he
cared not to see, traversing that shadowy quivering foot-bridge. He
was mounted on a strong, handsome chestnut, as marked a contrast to his
guide’s lank and trace-galled sorrel as were the two riders. A slender
gloved hand had fallen with the reins to the pommel of the saddle. His
soft felt hat, like a sombrero, shadowed his clear-cut face. He was
carefully shaven, save for a long drooping dark mustache and imperial.
His suit of dark cloth was much concealed by a black cloak, one end of
which thrown back across his shoulder showed a bright blue lining, the
color giving a sudden heightening touch to his attire, as if he were “in
costume.” It was a fleeting fashion of the day, but it added a certain
picturesqueness to a horseman, and seemed far enough from the times
that produced the square-tailed frock-coat which the mountaineer wore,
constructed of brown jeans, the skirts of which stood stiffly out on
each side of the saddle, and gave him, with his broad-brimmed hat, a
certain Quakerish aspect.

“I dun’no’ why folks be so ‘feared of ‘em,” Rox-by remarked,
speculatively. “The dead ain’t so oncommon, nohow. Them ez hev been
in the war, like you an’ me done, oughter be in an’ ‘bout used ter
corpses-though I never seen none o’ ‘em afoot agin. Lookin’ at a smit
field o’ battle, arter the rage is jes’ passed, oughter gin a body a
realizin’ sense how easy the sperit kin flee, an’ what pore vessels fur
holdin’ the spark o’ life human clay be.”

Simeon Roxby had a keen, not unkindly face, and he had that look of
extreme intelligence which is entirely distinct from intellectuality,
and which one sometimes sees in a minor degree in a very clever dog or a
fine horse. One might rely on him to understand instinctively everything
one might say to him, even in its subtler aesthetic values, although he
had consciously learned little. He was of the endowed natures to whom
much is given, rather than of those who are set to acquire. He had
many lines in his face-even his simple life had gone hard with him, its
sorrows un assuaged by its simplicity. His hair was grizzled, and hung
long and straight on his collar. He wore a grizzled beard cut broad and
short. His boots had big spurs, although the lank old sorrel had never
felt them. He sat his horse like the cavalryman he had been for four
years of hard riding and raiding, but his face had a certain gentleness
that accented the Quaker-like suggestion of his garb, a look of
communing with the higher things.

“I never blamed ‘em,’” he went on, evidently reverting to the spectres
of the bridge-“I never blamed ‘em for comin’ back wunst in a while. It
‘pears ter me ‘twould take me a long time ter git familiar with heaven,
an’ sociable with them ez hev gone before. An’, my Lord, jes’ think what
the good green yearth is! Leastwise the mountings. I ain’t settin’ store
on the valley lands I seen whenst I went ter the wars. I kin remember
yit what them streets in the valley towns smelt like.”

He lifted his head, drawing a long breath to inhale the exquisite
fragrance of the fir, the freshness of the pellucid water, the aroma of
the autumn wind, blowing through the sere leaves still clinging red and
yellow to the boughs of the forest.

“Naw, I ain’t blamin’ ‘em, though I don’t hanker ter view ‘em,” he
resumed. “One of ‘em I wouldn’t be afeard of, though. I feel mighty
sorry fur her. The old folks used ter tell about her. A young ‘oman she
war, a-crossin’ this bredge with her child in her arms. She war young,
an’ mus’ have been keerless, I reckon; though ez ‘twar her fust baby,
she moightn’t hev been practised in holdin’ it an’ sech, an’ somehows
it slipped through her arms an’ fell inter the ruver, an’ war killed in
a minit, dashin’ agin the rocks. She jes’ stood fur a second a-screamin’
like a wild painter, an’ jumped off’n the bredge arter it. She got it
agin; for when they dragged her body out’n the ruver she hed it in her
arms too tight fur even death ter onloose. An’ thar they air together in
the buryin’-ground.”

He gave a nod toward the slope of the mountain that intercepted the
melancholy view of the graveyard.

“Got it yit!” he continued; “bekase” (he lowered his voice) “on windy
nights, whenst the moon is on the wane, she is viewed kerryin’ the baby
along the bredge--kerryin’ it clear over, _safe an’ sound_, like she
thought she oughter done, I reckon, in that one minute, whilst she stood
an’ screamed an’ surveyed what she hed done. That child would hev been
nigh ter my age ef he hed lived.”

Only the sunbeams wavered athwart the bridge now as the firs swayed
above, giving glimpses of the sky, and their fibrous shadows flickered
back and forth. The wild mountain stream flashed white between the brown
bowlders, and plunged down the gorge in a succession of cascades, each
seeming more transparently green and amber and brown than the other. The
chestnut horse gazed meditatively at these limpid out-gushings, having
drunk his fill; then thought better of his moderation, and once more
thrust his head down to the water. The hand of his rider, which had
made a motion to gather up the reins, dropped leniently on his neck, as
Simeon Roxby spoke again:

“Several--several others hev been viewed, actin’ accordin’ ter thar
motions in life. Now thar war a peddler--some say he slipped one icy
evenin’, ‘bout dusk in winter--some say evil ones waylaid him fur his
gear an’ his goods in his pack, but the settlemint mostly believes
he war alone whenst he fell. His pack ‘pears ter be full still, they
say--but ye air ‘bleeged ter know he hev hed ter set that pack down fur
good ‘fore this time. We kin take nuthin’ out’n this world, no matter
what kind o’ a line o’ goods we kerry in life. Heaven’s no place fur
tradin’, I understan’, an’ I _do_ wonder sometimes how in the worl’ them
merchants an’ sech in the valley towns air goin’ ter entertain tharse’fs
in the happy land o’ Canaan. It’s goin’ ter be sorter bleak fur them,
sure’s ye air born.”

With a look of freshened recollection, he suddenly drew a plug of
tobacco from his pocket, and he talked on even as he gnawed a piece from
it.

“Durin’ the war a cavalry-man got shot out hyar whilst runnin’ ‘crost
that thar foot-bredge. Thar hed been a scrimmage an’ his horse war kilt,
an’ he tuk ter the bresh on foot, hopin’ ter hide in the laurel. But ez
he war crossin’ the foot-bredge some o’ the pursuin’ party war fordin’
the ruver over thar, an’ thinkin’ he’d make out ter escape they fired
on him, jes’ ez the feller tried ter surrender. He turned this way an’
flung up both arms--but thar’s mighty leetle truce in a pistol-ball.
That minute it tuk him right through the brain. Seems toler’ble long
range fur a pistol, don’t it? He kin be viewed now most enny moonlight
night out hyar on the foot-bredge, throwin’ up both hands in sign of
surrender.”

The wild-geese were a-wing on the way southward. Looking up to that
narrow section of the blue sky which the incision of the gorge into
the very depths of the woods made visible, he could see the tiny files
deploying along the azure or the flecking cirrus, and hear the vague
clangor of their leader’s cry. He lifted his head to mechanically follow
their flight. Then, as his eyes came back to earth, they rested again on
the old bridge.

“Strange enough,” he said, suddenly, “the sker-riest tale I hev ever
hearn ‘bout that thar old bredge is one that my niece set a-goin’. She
_seen_ the harnt _herself_, an’ it shakes me wuss ‘n the idee o’ all the
rest.”

His companion’s gloomy gaze was lifted for a moment with an expression
of inquiry from the slowly widening circles of the water about the
horse’s head as he drank. But Roxby’s eyes, with a certain gleam of
excitement, a superstitious dilation, still dwelt upon the bridge at
the end of the upward vista. He went on merely from the impetus of the
subject. “Yes, sir--she _seen_ it a-pacin’ of its sorrowful way acrost
that bredge, same ez the t’others of the percession o’ harnts. ‘Twar
my niece, Mill’cent--brother’s darter--by name, Mill’cent Roxby. Waal,
Mill’cent an’ a lot o’ young fools o’ her age--little over fryin’
size--they ‘tended camp-meetin’ down hyar on Tomahawk Creek--‘tain’t
so long ago--along with the old folks. An’ ‘bout twenty went huddled up
tergether in a road-wagin. An’, lo! the wagin it bruk down on the way
home, an’ what with proppin’ it up on a crotch, they made out ter reach
the cross-roads over yander at the Notch, an’ thar the sober old folks
called a halt, an’ hed the wagin mended at the blacksmith-shop. Waal, it
tuk some two hours, fur Pete Rodd ain’t a-goin’ ter hurry hisself--in my
opinion the angel Gabriel will hev ter blow his bugle oftener’n wunst
at the last day ‘fore Pete Rodd makes up his mind ter rise from the
dead an’ answer the roll-call--an’ this hyar young lot sorter found it
tiresome waitin’ on thar elders’ solemn company. The old folks, whilst
waitin’, set outside on the porches of the houses at the settlemint,
an’ repeated some o’ the sermons they hed hearn at camp, an’ more’n one
raised a hyme chune. An’ the young fry--they hed hed a steady diet o’
sermons an’ hyme chunes fur fower days--they tuk ter stragglin’ off
down the road, two an’ two, like the same sorter id jits the world over,
leavin’ word with the old folks that the wagin would overtake ‘em an’
pick ‘em up on the road when it passed. Waal, they walked several mile,
an’ time they got ter the crest o’ the hill over yander the moon hed
riz, an’ they could look down an’ see the mist in the valley. The
moon war bright in the buryin’-groun’ when they passed it, an’ the
head-boards stood up white an’ stiff, an’ a light frost hed fell on the
mounds, an’ they showed plain, an’ shone sorter lonesome an’ cold.
The young folks begun ter look behind em’ fur the wagin. Some said--I
b’lieve ‘twar Em’ry Keen an--they could read the names on the boards
plain, ‘twar so light, the moon bein’ nigh the full: but Em’ry never
read nuthin’ at night by the moon in his life; he ain’t enny too capable
o’ wrastlin’ with the alphabet with a strong daytime on his book ter
light him ter knowledge. An’ the shadows war black an’ still, an’ all
the yearth looked ez ef nuthin’ lived nor ever would agin, an’ they
hearn a wolf howl. Waal, that disaccommodated the gals mightily, an’
they hed a heap more interes’ in that old wagin, all smellin’ rank with
wagin-grease an’ tar, than they did in thar lovyers; an’ they hed ruther
hev hearn that old botch of a wheel that Pete Rodd hed set onto it com
in’ a-creakin’ an’ a-com-plainin’ along the road than the sweetest words
them boys war able ter make up or remember. So they stood thar in the
road--a-stare-gazin’ them head-boards, like they expected every grave
ter open an’ the reveilly ter sound--a-waitin’ ter be overtook by the
wagin, a-listenin’, but hearin’ nuthin’ in the silence o’ the frost--not
a dead leaf a-twirlin’, nor a frozen blade o’ grass astir. An’ then
two or three o’ the gals ‘lowed they hed ruther walk back ter meet the
wagin, an’ whenst the boys ‘lowed ter go on--nuthin’ war likely ter
ketch ‘em--one of ‘em bust out a-cryin’. Waal, thar war the eend o’ that
much! So the gay party set out on the back track, a-keepin’ step
ter sobs an’ sniffles, an’ that’s how kem _they_ seen no harnt. But
Mill’-cent an’ three or four o’ the t’others ‘lowed they’d go on. They
warn’t two mile from home, an’ full five from the cross-roads. So Em’ry
Keenan--he hev been waitin’ on her sence the year one--so he put his
skeer in his pocket an’ kem along with her, a-shakin’ in his shoes, I’ll
be bound! So down the hill in the frosty moonlight them few kem--purty
nigh beat out, I reckon, Mill’cent war, what with the sermonizin’ an’
the hyme-singin’ an’ hevin’ ter look continual at the sheep’s-eyes o’
Em’ry Keenan--he wears my patience ter the bone! So she concluded ter
take the short-cut. An’ Em’ry he agreed. So they tuk the lead, the rest
a following an’ kem down thar through all that black growth”--he lifted
his arm and pointed at the great slope, dense with fir and pine and the
heavy underbrush--“keepin’ the bridle-path--easy enough even at night,
fur the bresh is so thick they couldn’t lose thar way. But the moonlight
war mightily slivered up, fallin’ through the needles of the pines an’
the skeins of dead vines, an’ looked bleached and onnatural, an’ holped
the dark mighty leetle. An’ they seen the water a-shinin’ an’ a-plungin’
down the gorge, an’ the glistenin’ of the frost on the floor o’ the
bredge. Thar war a few icicles on the hand-rail, an’ the branches o’ the
firs hung ez still ez death; only that cold, racin’, shoutin’, jouncin’
water moved. Jes ez they got toler’ble nigh the foot-bredge a sudden
cloud kem over the face o’ the sky. Thar warn’t no wind on the yearth,
but up above the air war a-stirrin’. An’ Em’ry he ‘lowed Mill’cent
shouldn’t cross the foot-bredge whilst the light warn’t clar--I wonder
the critter hed that much sense! An’ she jes’ drapped down on that rock
thar ter rest”--he pointed up the slope to a great fragment that had
broken off from the ledges and lay near the bank: the bulk of the mass
was overgrown with moss and lichen, but the jagged edges of the recent
fracture gleamed white and crystalline among the brown and olive-green
shadows about it. A tree was close beside it. “Agin that thar pine trunk
Em’ry he stood an’ leaned. The rest war behind, a-comin’ down the
hill. An’ all of a suddenty a light fell on the furder eend o’
the foot-bredge--a waverin’ light, mighty white an’ misty in the
darksomeness. Mill’cent ‘lowed ez fust she thunk it war the moon. An’
lookin’ up, she seen the cloud; it held the moon close kivered. An’
lookin’ down, she seen the light war movin’--movin’ from the furder eend
o’ the bredge, straight acrost it. Sometimes a hand war held afore it,
ez ef ter shield it from the draught, an’ then Mill’cent ‘seen twar a
candle, an’ the white in the mistiness war a ‘oman wearin’ white an’
carryn’ it.

[Illustration: The Phantom of the Foot-bridge 025]

Lookin’ ter right an’ then ter lef the ‘oman kem, with now her right
hand shieldin’ the candle she held, an’ now layin’ it on the hand-rail.
The candle shone on the water, fur it didn’t flare, an’ when the ‘oman
held her hand before it the light made a bright spot on the foot-bredge
an’ in the dark air about her, an’ on the fir branches over her head.
An’ a thin mist seemed to hang about her white frock, but not over her
face, fur when she reached the middle o’ the foot-bredge she laid her
hand agin on the rail, an’ in the clear light o’ the candle Mill’cent
seen the harnt’s face. An’ thar she beheld her own face; _her own
face_ she looked upon ez she waited thar under the tree watchin’ the
foot-bredge; _her own face_ pale an’ troubled; her own self dressed in
white, crossin’ the foot-bredge, an’ lightin’ her steps with a corpse’s
candle.” He drew up the reins abruptly. He seemed in sudden haste to go.
His companion looked with deepening interest at the bridge, although he
followed his guide’s surging pathway to the opposite bank. As the two
dripping horses struggled up the steep incline he asked, “Did the man
with her see the manifestation also?”

“He _‘lows_ he did,” responded Roxby, equivocally. “But when Mill’cent
fust got so she could tell it, ‘peared ter me ez Em’ry Keen an fund it
ez much news ez the rest o’ we-uns. Mill’cent jes’ drapped stone-dead,
accordin’ ter all accounts, an’ he an’ the t’other young folks flung
water in her face till she kem out’n her faint; an’ jes’ then they hearn
the wagin a-rattlin’ along the road, an’ they stopped it an’ fetched her
home in it. She never told the tale till she war home, an’ it skeered
me an’ my mother powerful, fur Mill’cent is all the kin we hev got.
Mill’cent is gran’daddy an’ gran’mam-my, sons an’ daughters, uncles an’
aunts, cousins, nieces, an’ nephews, all in one. The only thing I ain’t
pervided with is a nephew-in-law, an’ I don’t need him. Leastwise I
ain’t lookin’ fur Em’ry Keenan jes’ at present.”

The pace was brisker when the two horses, bending their strength
sturdily to the task, had pressed up the massive slope from the deep
cleft of the gorge. As the road curved about the outer verge of the
mountain, the valley far beneath came into view, with intersecting
valleys and transverse ranges, dense with the growths of primeval
wildernesses, and rugged with the tilted strata of great upheavals, and
with chasms cut in the solid rock by centuries of erosion, traces
of some remote cataclysmal period, registering thus its throes and
turmoils. The blue sky, seen beyond a gaunt profile of one of the
farther summits that defined its craggy serrated edge against the
ultimate distances of the western heavens, seemed of a singularly suave
tint, incongruous with the savagery of the scene, which clouds and
portents of storm might better have befitted. The little graveyard,
which John Dundas discerned with recognizing eyes, albeit they had never
before rested upon it, was revealed suddenly, lying high on the opposite
side of the gorge. No frost glimmered now on the lowly mounds; the
flickering autumnal sunshine loitered unafraid among them, according
to its languid wont for many a year. Shadows of the gray un-painted
head-boards lay on the withered grass, brown and crisp, with never
a cicada left to break the deathlike silence. A tuft of red leaves,
vagrant in the wind, had been caught on one of the primitive monuments,
and swayed there with a decorative effect. The enclosure seemed, to
unaccustomed eyes, of small compass, and few the denizens who had found
shelter here and a resting-place, but it numbered all the dead of the
country-side for many a mile and many a year, and somehow the loneliness
was assuaged to a degree by the reflection that they had known each
other in life, unlike the great herds of cities, and that it was a
common fate which the neighbors, huddled together, encountered in
company.

It had no discordant effect in the pervasive sense of gloom, of mighty
antagonistic forces with which the scene was replete; it fostered a
realization of the pitiable minuteness and helplessness of human nature
in the midst of the vastness of inanimate nature and the evidences of
infinite lengths of forgotten time, of the long reaches of unimagined
history, eventful, fateful, which the landscape at once suggested and
revealed and concealed.

Like the sudden flippant clatter of castanets in the pause of some
solemn funeral music was the impression given by the first glimpse along
the winding woodland way of a great flimsy white building, with its
many pillars, its piazzas, its “observatory,” its band-stand, its garish
intimations of the giddy, gay world of a summer hotel. But, alack! it,
too, had its surfeit of woe.

“The guerrillas an’ bushwhackers tuk it out on the old hotel, sure!”
 observed Sim Roxby, by way of introduction. “Thar warn’t much fightin’
hyar-abouts, an’ few sure-enough soldiers ever kem along. But wunst in a
while a band o’ guerrillas went through like a suddint wind-storm, an’
I tell ye they made things whurl while they war about it. They made a
sorter barracks o’ the old place. Looks some like lightning hed struck
it.”

He had reined up his horse about one hundred yards in front of the
edifice, where the weed-grown gravelled drive--carefully tended ten
years agone--had diverged from the straight avenue of poplars, sweeping
in a circle around to the broad flight of steps.

“Though,” he qualified abruptly, as if a sudden thought had struck
him, “ef ye air countin’ on buyin’ it, a leetle money spent ter keerful
purpose will go a long way toward makin’ it ez good ez new.”

His companion did not reply, and for the first time Roxby cast upon him
a covert glance charged with the curiosity which would have been earlier
and more easily aroused in another man by the manner of the stranger. A
letter--infrequent missive in his experience--had come from an ancient
companion-in-arms, his former colonel, requesting him in behalf of a
friend of the old commander to repair to the railway station, thirty
miles distant, to meet and guide this prospective purchaser of the old
hotel to the site of the property. And now as Roxby looked at him the
suspicion which his kind heart had not been quick to entertain was
seized upon by his alert brain.

“The cunnel’s been fooled somehows,” he said to himself.

For the look with which John Dundas contemplated the place was not the
gaze of him concerned with possible investment--with the problems of
repair, the details of the glazier and the painter and the plasterer.
The mind was evidently neither braced for resistance nor resigned to
despair, as behooves one smitten by the foreknowledge of the certainty
of the excess of the expenditures over the estimates. Only with pensive,
listless melancholy, void of any intention, his eyes traversed the
long rows of open doors, riven by rude hands from their locks, swinging
helplessly to and fro in the wind, and giving to the deserted and
desolate old place a spurious air of motion and life. Many of the
shutters had been wrenched from their hinges, and lay rotting on the
floors. The ball-room windows caught on their shattered glass the
reflection of the clouds, and it seemed as if here and there a wan face
looked through at the riders wending along the weed-grown path. Where so
many faces had been what wonder that a similitude should linger in the
loneliness! The pallid face seemed to draw back as they glanced up while
slowly pacing around the drive. A rabbit sitting motionless on the front
piazza did not draw back, although observing them with sedate eyes as
he poised himself upright on his haunches, with his listless fore-paws
suspended in the air, and it occurred to Dundas that he was probably
unfamiliar with the presence of human beings, and had never heard the
crack of a gun. A great swirl of swallows came soaring out of the big
kitchen chimneys and circled in the sky, darting down again and again
upward. Through an open passage was a glimpse of a quadrangle, with its
weed-grown spaces and litter of yellow leaves. A tawny streak, a red
fox, sped through it as Dundas looked. A half-moon, all a-tilt, hung
above it. He saw the glimmer through the bare boughs of the leafless
locust-trees here and there still standing, although outside on the lawn
many a stump bore token how ruthlessly the bushwhackers had furnished
their fires.

“That thar moon’s a-hangin’ fur rain,” said the mountaineer, commenting
upon the aspect of the luminary, which he, too, had noticed as they
passed. “I ain’t s’prised none ef we hev fallin’ weather agin ‘fore
day, an’ the man--by name Morgan Holden--that hev charge o’ the hotel
property can’t git back fur a week an’ better.”

A vague wonder to find himself so suspicious flitted through his mind,
with the thought that perhaps the colonel might have reckoned on this
delay. “Surely the ruvers down yander at Knoxville mus’ be a-boomin’,
with all this wet weather,” he said to himself.

Then aloud: “Morgan Holden he went ter Col-bury ter ‘tend ter some
business in court, an’ the ruvers hev riz so that, what with the bredges
bein’ washed away an’ the fords so onsartain an’ tricky, he’ll stay till
the ruver falls. He don’t know ye war kemin’, ye see. The mail-rider hev
quit, ‘count o’ the rise in the ruver, an’ thar’s no way ter git word
ter him. Still, ef ye air minded ter wait, I’ll be powerful obligated
fur yer comp’ny down ter my house till the ruver falls an’ Holden he
gits back.”

The stranger murmured his obligations, but his eyes dwelt lingeringly
upon the old hotel, with its flapping doors and its shattered windows.
Through the recurrent vistas of these, placed opposite in the rooms,
came again broken glimpses of the grassy space within the quadrangle,
with its leafless locust-trees, first of all to yield their foliage to
the autumn wind, where a tiny owl was shrilling stridulously under the
lonely red sky and the melancholy moon.

“Hed ye ‘lowed ter, put up at the old hotel?” asked Roxby, some inherent
quickness supplying the lack of a definite answer.

For the first time the stranger turned upon him a look more expressive
than the casual fragmentary attention with which he had half heeded,
half ignored his talk since their first encounter at the railway
station.

“A simple fellow, but good as gold,” was the phrase with which Simeon
Roxby had been commended as guide and in some sort guard.

“Not so simple, perhaps,” the sophisticated man thought as their eyes
met. Not so simple but that the truth must serve. “The colonel suggested
that it might be best,” he replied, more alert to the present moment
than his languid preoccupation had heretofore permitted.

The answer was good as far as it went. A few days spent in the old
hostelry certainly would serve well to acquaint the prospective
purchaser with its actual condition and the measures and means needed
for its repair; but as Sim Roxby stood there, with the cry of the owl
shrilling in the desert air, the lonely red sky, the ominous tilted
moon, the doors drearily flapping to and fro as the wind stole into the
forlorn and empty place and sped back affrighted, he marvelled at the
refuge contemplated.

“I believe there is some of the furniture here yet. We could contrive to
set up a bed from what is left. The colonel could make it all right with
Holden, and I could stay a day or two, as we originally planned.”

“Ye-es. I don’t mind Holden: a man ain’t much in charge of a place ez
ain’t got a lock or a key ter bless itself with, an’ takes the owel an’
the fox an’ the gopher fur boarders; but, ennyhow, kem with me home ter
supper. Mill’cent will hev it ready by now ennyhows, an’ ye need suthin’
hearty an’ hot ter stiffen ye up ter move inter sech quarters ez these.”
 Dundas hesitated, but the mountaineer had already taken assent for
granted, and pushed his horse into a sharp trot. Evidently a refusal was
not in order. Dundas pressed forward, and they rode together along the
winding way past the ten-pin alley, its long low roof half hidden in the
encroaching undergrowth springing up apace beneath the great trees; past
the stables; past a line of summer cottages, strangely staring of aspect
out of the yawning doors and windows, giving, instead of an impression
of vacancy, a sense of covert watching, of secret occupancy. If one’s
glances were only quick enough, were there not faces pressed to those
shattered panes--scarcely seen--swiftly withdrawn?

He was in a desert; he had hardly been so utterly alone in all his life;
yet he bore through the empty place a feeling of espionage, and ever
and anon he glanced keenly at the overgrown lawns, with their deepening
drifts of autumn leaves, at the staring windows and flaring doors, which
emitted sometimes sudden creaking wails in the silence, as if he sought
to assure himself of the vacancy of which his mind took cognizance and
yet all his senses denied.

Little of his sentiment, although sedulously cloaked, was lost on Sim
Roxby; and he was aware, too, in some subtle way, of the relief his
guest experienced when they plunged into the darkening forest and left
the forlorn place behind them. The clearing in which it was situated
seemed an oasis of light in the desert of night in which the rest of
the world lay. From the obscurity of the forest Dundas saw, through the
vistas of the giant trees, the clustering cottages, the great hotel,
gables and chimneys and tower, stark and distinct as in some weird
dream-light in the midst of the encircling gloom. The after-glow of
sunset was still aflare on the western windows; the whole empty place
was alight with a reminiscence of its old aspect--its old gay life. Who
knows what memories were a-stalk there--what semblance of former times?
What might not the darkness foster, the impunity of desertion, the
associations that inhabited the place with almost the strength of human
occupancy itself? Who knows--who knows?

He remembered the scene afterward, the impression he received. And from
this, he thought, arose his regret for his decision to take up here his
abiding-place.

The forest shut out the illumined landscape, and the night seemed indeed
at hand; the gigantic boles of the trees loomed through the encompassing
gloom, that was yet a semi-transparent medium, like some dark but clear
fluid through which objects were dimly visible, albeit tinged with its
own sombre hue. The lank, rawboned sorrel had set a sharp pace, to
which the chestnut, after momentary lagging, as if weary with the day’s
travel, responded briskly. He had received in some way intimations that
his companion’s corn-crib was near at hand, and if he had not deduced
from these premises the probability of sharing his fare, his mental
processes served him quite as well as reason, and brought him to the
same result. On and on they sped, neck and neck, through the darkening
woods; fire flashed now and again from their iron-shod hoofs; often
a splash and a shower of drops told of a swift dashing through the
mud-holes that recent rains had fostered in the shallows. The dank odor
of dripping boughs came on the clear air. Once the chestnut shied from a
sudden strange shining point springing up in the darkness close at
hand, which the country-bred horse discriminated as fox-fire, and
kept steadily on, unmindful of the rotting log where it glowed. Far in
advance, in the dank depths of the woods, a Will-o’-the-wisp danced and
flickered and lured the traveller’s eye. The stranger was not sure of
the different quality of another light, appearing down a vista as the
road turned, until the sorrel, making a tremendous spurt, headed for it,
uttering a joyous neigh at the sight.

The deep-voiced barking of hounds rose melodiously on the silence,
and as the horses burst out of the woods into a small clearing, Dundas
beheld in the brighter light a half-dozen of the animals nimbly afoot in
the road, one springing over the fence, another in the act of climbing,
his fore-paws on the topmost rail, his long neck stretched, and his head
turning about in attitudes of observation. He evidently wished to assure
himself whether the excitement of his friends was warranted by the facts
before he troubled himself to vault over the fence. Three or four still
lingered near the door of a log-cabin, fawning about a girl who stood on
the porch. Her pose was alert, expectant; a fire in the dooryard, where
the domestic manufacture of soap had been in progress, cast a red flare
on the house, its appurtenances, the great dark forest looming all
around, and, more than the glow of the hearth within, lighted up the
central figure of the scene. She was tall, straight, and strong; a
wealth of fair hair was clustered in a knot at the back of her head, and
fleecy tendrils fell over her brow; on it was perched a soldier’s-cap;
and certainly more gallant and fearless eyes had never looked out from
under the straight, stiff brim. Her chin, firm, round, dimpled, was
uplifted as she raised her head, descrying the horsemen’s approach. She
wore a full dark-red skirt, a dark brown waist, and around her neck
was twisted a gray cotton kerchief, faded to a pale ashen hue, the
neutrality of which somehow aided the delicate brilliancy of the
blended roseate and pearly tints of her face. Was this the seer of
ghosts--Dundas marvelled--this the Millicent whose pallid and troubled
phantom already-paced the foot-bridge?

He did not realize that he had drawn up his horse suddenly at the sight
of her, nor did he notice that his host had dismounted, until Roxby was
at the chestnut’s head, ready to lead the animal to supper in the barn.
His evident surprise, his preoccupation, were not lost upon Roxby,
however. His hand hesitated on the girth of the chestnut’s saddle when
he stood between the two horses in the barn. He had half intended to
disregard the stranger’s declination of his invitation, and stable the
creature. Then he shook his head slowly; the mystery that hung about the
new-comer was not reassuring. “A heap o’ wuthless cattle ‘mongst them
valley men,” he said; for the war had been in some sort an education to
his simplicity. “Let him stay whar the cunnel expected him ter stay. I
ain’t wantin’ no stranger a-hangin’ round about Mill’cent, nohow. Em’ry
Keenan ain’t a pattern o’ perfection, but I be toler’ble well acquainted
with the cut o’ his foolishness, an’ I know his daddy an’ mammy, an’
both sets o’ gran’daddies an’ gran’mammies, an’ I could tell ye exac’ly
which one the critter got his nose an’ his mouth from, an’ them lean
sheep’s-eyes o’ his’n, an’ nigh every tone o’ his voice. Em’ry never
thunk afore ez I set store on bein’ acquainted with him. He ‘lowed I
knowed him _too_ well.”

He laughed as he glanced through the open door into the darkening
landscape. Horizontal gray clouds were slipping fast across the pearly
spaces of the sky. The yellow stubble gleamed among the brown earth
of the farther field, still striped with its furrows. The black forest
encircled the little cleared space, and a wind was astir among the
tree-tops. A white star gleamed through the broken clapboards of the
roof, the fire still flared under the soap-kettle in the dooryard, and
the silence was suddenly smitten by a high cracked old voice, which told
him that his mother had perceived the dismounted stranger at the gate,
and was graciously welcoming him.

She had come to the door, where the girl still stood, but half withdrawn
in the shadow. Dundas silently bowed as he passed her, following his
aged hostess into the low room, all bedight with the firelight of a huge
chimney-place, and comfortable with the realization of a journey’s end.
The wilderness might stretch its weary miles around, the weird wind
wander in the solitudes, the star look coldly on unmoved by aught it
beheld, the moon show sad portents, but at the door they all failed,
for here waited rest and peace and human companionship and the sense of
home.

“Take a cheer, stranger, an’ make yerself at home. Powerful glad ter
see ye---war ‘feard night would overtake ye. Ye fund the water toler’ble
high in all the creeks an’ sech, I reckon, an’ fords shifty an’
onsartain. Yes, sir. Fall rains kem on earlier’n common, an’ more’n
we need. Wisht we could divide it with that thar drought we had in the
summer. Craps war cut toler’ble short, sir--toler’ble short.”

Mrs. Roxby’s spectacles beamed upon him with an expression of the utmost
benignity as the firelight played on the lenses, but her eyes peering
over them seemed endowed in some sort with independence of outlook. It
was as if from behind some bland mask a critical observation was poised
for unbiased judgment. He felt in some degree under surveillance. But
when a light step heralded an approach he looked up, regardless of
the betrayal of interest, and bent a steady gaze upon Millicent as she
paused in the doorway.

And as she stood there, distinct in the firelight and outlined against
the black background of the night, she seemed some modern half-military
ideal of Diana, with her two gaunt hounds beside her, the rest of the
pack vaguely glimpsed at her heels outside, the perfect outline and
chiselling of her features, her fine, strong, supple figure, the look of
steady courage in her eyes, and the soldier’s cap on her fair hair. Her
face so impressed itself upon his mind that he seemed to have seen her
often. It was some resemblance to a picture of a vivandière, doubtless,
in a foreign gallery--he could not say when or where; a remnant of a
tourist’s overcrowded impressions; a half-realized reminiscence, he
thought, with an uneasy sense of recognition.

“Hello, Mill’cent! home agin!” Roxby cried, in cheery greeting as he
entered at the back door opposite. “What sorter topknot is that ye got
on?” he demanded, looking jocosely at her head-gear.

The girl put up her hand with an expression of horror. A deep red
flush dyed her cheek as she touched the cap. “I forgot ‘twar thar,” she
murmured, contritely. Then, with a sudden rush of anger as she tore it
off: “‘Twar granny’s fault. She axed me ter put it on, so ez ter see
which one I looked most like.”

“Stranger,” quavered the old woman, with a painful break in her voice,
“I los’ fower sons in the war, an’ Mill’cent hev got the fambly favor.”

“Ye _mought_ hev let me know ez I war a-perlitin’ round in this hyar
men’s gear yit,” the girl muttered, as she hung the cap on a prong of
the deer antlers on which rested the rifle of the master of the house.

Roxby’s face had clouded at the mention of the four sons who had gone
out from the mountains never to return, leaving to their mother’s aching
heart only the vague comfort of an elusive resemblance in a girl’s
face; but as he noted Millicent’s pettish manner, and divined her
mortification because of her unseemly head-gear in the stranger’s
presence, he addressed her again in that jocose tone without which he
seldom spoke to her.

[Illustration: Warn’t you-uns apologizin’ ter me 006]

“Warn’t you-uns apologizin’ ter me t’other day fur not bein’ a nephew
‘stiddier a niece? Looked sorter like a nephew ter-night.”

She shook her head, covered now only with its own charming tresses
waving in thick undulations to the coil at the nape of her neck--a
trifle dishevelled from the rude haste with which the cap had been torn
off.

Roxby had seated himself, and with his elbows on his knees he looked
up at her with a teasing jocularity, such as one might assume toward a
child.

“_Ye war_,” he declared, with affected solemnity--“ye war ‘pologizin’
fur not bein’ a nephew, an’ ‘lowed ef ye war a nephew we could go
a-huntin’ tergether, an’ ye could holp me in all my quar’ls an’ fights.
I been aging some lately, an’ ef I war ter go ter the settlemint an’ git
inter a fight I mought not be able ter hold my own. Think what ‘twould
be ter a pore old man ter hev a dutiful nephew step up an’”--he doubled
his fists and squared off--“jes’ let daylight through some o’ them
cusses. An’ didn’t _ye say_”--he dropped his belligerent attitude and
pointed an insistent finger at her, as if to fix the matter in her
recollection--“ef ye war a nephew ‘stiddier a niece ye could fire a gun
‘thout shettin’ yer eyes? An’ I told ye then ez that would mend yer aim
mightily. I told ye that I’d be powerful mortified ef I hed a nephew ez
hed ter shet his eyes ter keep the noise out’n his ears whenst he fired
a rifle. The tale would go mighty hard with me at the settlemint.”

The girl’s eyes glowed upon him with the fixity and the lustre of those
of a child who is entertained and absorbed by an elder’s jovial wiles.
A flash of laughter broke over her face, and the low, gurgling,
half-dreamy sound was pleasant to hear. She was evidently no more than
a child to these bereft old people, and by them cherished as naught else
on earth.

“An’ didn’t _I tell you-uns,_” he went on, affecting to warm to the
discussion, and in reality oblivious of the presence of the
guest’--“didn’t I tell ye ez how ef ye war a nephew ‘stiddier a niece ye
wouldn’t hev sech cattle ez Em’ry Keenan a-dan-glin’ round underfoot,
like a puppy ye can’t gin away, an’ that _won’t_ git lost, an’ ye ain’t
got the heart ter kill?”

The girl’s lip suddenly curled with scorn. “Yer nephew would be
obligated ter make a ch’ice fur marryin’ ‘mongst these hyar mounting
gals--Par-mely Lepstone, or Belindy M’ria Matthews, or one o’ the
Windrow gals. Waal, sir, I’d ruther be yer niece--even ef Em’ry Keenan
_air_ like a puppy underfoot, that ye can’t gin away, an’ won’t git
lost, an’ ye ain’t got the heart ter kill.” She laughed again,
showing her white teeth. She evidently relished the description of the
persistent adherence of poor Emory Keenan. “But which one o’ these hyar
gals would ye recommend ter yer nephew ter marry--ef ye hed a nephew?”

She looked at him with flashing eyes, conscious of having propounded a
poser.

He hesitated for a moment. Then--“I’m surrounded,” he said, with a
laugh. “Ez I couldn’t find a wife fur myself, I can’t undertake
ter recommend one ter my nephew. Mighty fine boy he’d hev been, an’
saaft-spoken an’ perlite ter aged men--not sassy an’ makin’ game o’ old
uncles like a niece. Mighty fine boy!”

“Ye air welcome ter him,” she said, with a simulation of scorn, as she
turned away to the table.

Whether it were the military cap she had worn, or the fancied
resemblance to the young soldiers, never to grow old, who had gone forth
from this humble abode to return no more, there was still to the guest’s
mind the suggestion of the vivandière about her as she set the table
and spread upon it the simple fare. To and from the fireplace she was
followed by two or three of the younger dogs, their callowness expressed
in their lack of manners and perfervid interest in the approaching meal.
This induced their brief journeys back and forth, albeit embarrassed
by their physical conformation, short turns on four legs not being
apparently the easy thing it would seem from so much youthful
suppleness. The dignity of the elder hounds did not suffer them to move,
but they looked on from erect postures about the hearth with glistening
eyes and slobbering jaws.

Ever and anon the deep blue eyes of Millicent were lifted to the outer
gloom, as if she took note of its sinister aspect. She showed scant
interest in the stranger, whose gaze seldom left her as he sat beside
the fire. He was a handsome man, his face and figure illumined by the
firelight, and it might have been that he felt a certain pique, an
unaccustomed slight, in that his presence was so indifferent an element
in the estimation of any young and comely specimen of the feminine sex.
Certainly he had rarely encountered such absolute preoccupation as her
smiling far-away look betokened as she went back and forth with her
young canine friends at her heels, or stood at the table deftly slicing
the salt-rising bread, the dogs poised skilfully upon their hind-legs
to better view the appetizing performance; whenever she turned her face
toward them they laid their heads languish-ingly askew, as if to remind
her that supper could not be more fitly bestowed than on them. One, to
steady himself, placed unobserved his fore-paw on the edge of the table,
his well-padded toes leaving a vague imprint as of fingers upon the
coarse white cloth; but John Dundas was a sportsman, and could the
better relax an exacting nicety where so pleasant-featured and affable
a beggar was concerned. He forgot the turmoils of his own troubles as
he gazed at Millicent, the dreary aspect of the solitudes without, the
exile from his accustomed sphere of culture and comfort, the poverty
and coarseness of her surroundings. He was sorry that he had declined
a longer lease of Roxby’s hospitality, and it was in his mind to
reconsider when it should be again proffered. Her attitude, her gesture,
her face, her environment, all appealed to his sense of beauty, his
interest, his curiosity, as little ever had done heretofore. Slice after
slice of the firm fragrant bread was deftly cut and laid on the plate,
as again and again she lifted her eyes with a look that might seem to
expect to rest on summer in the full flush of a June noontide without,
rather than on the wan, wintry night sky and the plundered, quaking
woods, while the robber wind sped on his raids hither and thither so
swiftly that none might follow, so stealthily that none might hinder. A
sudden radiance broke upon her face, a sudden shadow fell on the
firelit floor, and there was entering at the doorway a tall, lithe young
mountaineer, whose first glance, animated with a responsive brightness,
was for the girl, but whose punctilious greeting was addressed to the
old woman.

“Howdy, Mis’ Roxby--howdy? Air yer rheumatics mendin’ enny?” he
demanded, with the condolent suavity of the would-be son-in-law, or
grand-son-in-law, as the case may be. And he hung with a transfixed
interest upon her reply, prolix and discursive according to the wont of
those who cultivate “rheumatics,” as if each separate twinge racked his
own sympathetic and filial sensibilities. Not until the tale was ended
did he set his gun against the wall and advance to the seat which Roxby
had indicated with the end of the stick he was whittling. He observed
the stranger with only slight interest, till Dundas drew up his chair
opposite at the table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in
the centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended
beard and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on
his taper finger.

“Like a gal, by gum!” thought Emory Keenan. “Rings on his fingers--yit
six feet high!”

He looked at his elders, marvelling that they so hospitably repressed
the disgust which this effeminate adornment must occasion, forgetting
that it was possible that they did not even observe it. In the gala-days
of the old hotel, before the war, they had seen much “finicking finery”
 in garb and equipage and habits affected by the _jeunesse dorée_ who
frequented the place in those halcyon times, and were accustomed to
such details. It might be that they and Millicent approved such flimsy
daintiness. He began to fume inwardly with a sense of inferiority in her
estimation. One of his fingers had been frosted last winter, and with
the first twinge of cold weather it was beginning to look very red and
sad and clumsy, as if it had just remembered its ancient woe; he glanced
from it once more at the delicate ringed hand of the stranger.

Dundas was looking up with a slow, deferential, decorous smile that
nevertheless lightened and transfigured his expression. It seemed
somehow communicated to Millicent’s face as she looked down at him from
beneath her white eyelids and long, thick, dark lashes, for she was
standing beside him, handing him the plate of bread. Then, still
smiling, she passed noiselessly on to the others.

Emory was indeed clumsy, for he had stretched his hand downward to
offer a morsel to a friend of his under the table--he was on terms of
exceeding amity with the four-footed members of the household--and in
his absorption not withdrawing it as swiftly as one accustomed to canine
manners should do, he had his frosted finger well mumbled before he
could, as it were, repossess himself of it.

“I wonder what they charge fur iron over yander at the settlemint,
Em’ry?” observed Sim Roxby presently.

“Dun’no’, sir,” responded Emory, glumly, his sullen black eyes full of
smouldering fire--“hevin’ no call ter know, ez I ain’t no blacksmith.”

“I war jes’ wonderin’ ef tenpenny nails didn’t cost toler’ble high ez
reg’lar feed,” observed Roxby, gravely.

But his mother laughed out with a gleeful cracked treble, always a ready
sequence of her son’s rustic sallies. “He got ye that time, Em’ry,” she
cried.

A forced smile crossed Emory’s face. He tossed back his tangled dark
hair with a gasp that was like the snort of an unruly horse submitting
to the inevitable, but with restive projects in his brain. “I let the
dog hyar ketch my finger whilst feedin’ him,” he said. His plausible
excuse for the ten-penny expression was complete; but he added, his
darker mood recurring instantly, “An’, Mis’ Roxby, I hev put a stop ter
them ez hev tuk ter callin’ me Em’ly, I hev.”

The old woman looked up, her small wrinkled mouth round and amazed.
“_I_ never called ye Emily,” she declared.

Swift repentance seized him.

“Naw, ‘m,” he said, with hurried propitiation. “I ‘lowed ye did.”

“I didn’t,” said the old woman. “But ef I warter find it toothsome ter
call ye ‘Emily,’ I dun’no’ how ye air goin’ ter pervent it. Ye can’t go
gun-nin’ fur me, like ye done fur the men at the mill, fur callin’ ye
‘Emily.’”

“Law, Mis’ Roxby!” he could only exclaim, in his horror and contrition
at this picture he had thus conjured up. “Ye air welcome ter call me
ennything ye air a mind ter,” he protested.

And then he gasped once more. The eyes of the guest, contemptuous,
amused, seeing through him, were fixed upon him. And he himself had
furnished the lily-handed stranger with the information that he had been
stigmatized “Em’ly” in the banter of his associates, until he had taken
up arms, as it were, to repress this derision.

“It takes powerful little ter put ye down, Em’ry,” said Roxby, with
rallying laughter. “Mam hev sent ye skedaddlin’ in no time at all. I
don’t b’lieve the Lord made woman out’n the man’s rib. He made her out’n
the man’s backbone; fur the man ain’t hed none ter speak of sence.”

Millicent, with a low gurgle of laughter, sat down beside Emory at the
table, and fixed her eyes, softly lighted with mirth, upon him. The
others too had laughed, the stranger with a flattering intonation, but
young Keenan looked at her with a dumb appealing humility that did not
altogether fail of its effect, for she busied herself to help his plate
with an air of proprietorship as if he were a child, and returned
it with a smile very radiant and sufficient at close range. She then
addressed herself to her own meal. The young dogs under the table ceased
to beg, and gambolled and gnawed and tugged at her stout little shoes,
the sound of their callow mirthful growls rising occasionally above
the talk. Sometimes she rose again to wait on the table, when they came
leaping out after her, jumping and catching at her skirts, now and then
casting themselves on the ground prone before her feet, and rolling over
and over in the sheer joy of existence.

The stranger took little part in the talk at the table. Never a question
was asked him as to his mission in the mountains, or the length of
his stay, his vocation, or his home. That extreme courtesy of the
mountaineers, exemplified in their singular abstinence from any
expressions of curiosity, accepted such account of himself as he had
volunteered, and asked for no more. In the face of this standard of
manners any inquisitiveness on his part, such as might have elicited
points of interest for his merely momentary entertainment, was tabooed.
Nevertheless, silent though he was for the most part, the relish with
which he listened, his half-covert interest in the girl, his quick
observation of the others, the sudden very apparent enlivening of his
mental atmosphere, betokened that his quarters were not displeasing
to him. It seemed only a short time before the meal was ended and the
circle all, save Millicent, with pipes alight before the fire again. The
dogs, well fed, had ranged themselves on the glowing hearth, lying prone
on the hot stones; one old hound, however, who conserved the air of
listening to the conversation, sat upright and nodded from time to time,
now and again losing his balance and tipping forward in a truly human
fashion, then gazing round on the circle with an open luminous eye, as
who should say he had not slept.

It was all very cheerful within, but outside the wind still blared
mournfully. Once more Dundas was sorry that he had declined the
invitation to remain, and it was with a somewhat tentative intention
that he made a motion to return to the hotel. But his host seemed
to regard his resolution as final, and rose with a regret, not an
insistence. The two women stared in silent amazement at the mere idea
of his camping out, as it were, in the old hotel. The ascendency of
masculine government here, notwithstanding Roxby’s assertion that
Eve was made of Adam’s backbone, was very apparent in their mute
acquiescence and the alacrity with which they began to collect various
articles, according to his directions, to make the stranger’s stay more
comfortable.

“Em’ry kin go along an’ holp,” he said, heartlessly; for poor Emory’s
joy in perceiving that the guest was not a fixture, and that his
presence was not to be an embargo on any word between himself and
Millicent during the entire evening, was pitiably manifest. But the
situation was still not without its comforts, since Dundas was to go
too. Hence he was not poor company when once in the saddle, and was
civil to a degree of which his former dismayed surliness had given no
promise.

Night had become a definite element. The twilight had fled. Above their
heads, as they galloped through the dank woods, the bare boughs of the
trees clashed together--so high above their heads that to the town
man, unaccustomed to these great growths, the sound seemed not of the
vicinage, but unfamiliar, uncanny, and more than once he checked his
horse to listen. As they approached the mountain’s verge and overlooked
the valley and beheld the sky, the sense of the predominance of darkness
was redoubled. The ranges gloomed against the clearer spaces, but a
cloud, deep gray with curling white edges, was coming up from the
west, with an invisible convoy of vague films, beneath which the stars,
glimmering white points, disappeared one by one. The swift motion of
this aerial fleet sailing with the wind might be inferred from the
seemingly hurried pace of the moon making hard for the west. Still
bright was the illumined segment, but despite its glitter the shadowy
space of the full disk was distinctly visible, its dusky field spangled
with myriads of minute, dully golden points. Down, down it took its
way in haste--in disordered fright, it seemed, as if it had no heart
to witness the storm which the wind and the clouds foreboded--to fairer
skies somewhere behind those western mountains. Soon even its vague
light would encroach no more upon the darkness. The great hotel would be
invisible, annihilated as it were in the gloom, and not even thus dimly
exist, glimmering, alone, forlorn, so incongruous to the wilderness that
it seemed even now some mere figment of the brain, as the two horsemen
came with a freshened burst of speed along the deserted avenue and
reined up beside a small gate at the side.

“No use ter ride all the way around,” observed Emory Keenan. “Mought jes
ez well ‘light an’ hitch hyar.”

The moon gave him the escort of a great grotesque shadow as he
threw himself from his horse and passed the reins over a decrepit
hitching-post near at hand. Then he essayed the latch of the small gate.
He glanced up at Dundas, the moonlight in his dark eyes, with a smile as
it resisted his strength.

He was a fairly good-looking fellow when rid of the self-consciousness
of jealousy. His eyes, mouth, chin, and nose, acquired from reliable
and recognizable sources, were good features, and statuesque in their
immobility beneath the drooping curves of his broad soft hat. He was
tall, with the slenderness of youth, despite his evident weight and
strength. He was long-waisted and lithe and small of girth, with broad
square shoulders, whose play of muscles as he strove with the gate was
not altogether concealed by the butternut jeans coat belted in with his
pistols by a broad leathern belt. His boots reached high on his long
legs, and jingled with a pair of huge cavalry spurs. His stalwart
strength seemed as if it must break the obdurate gate rather than open
it, but finally, with a rasping creak, dismally loud in the silence, it
swung slowly back.

The young mountaineer stood gazing for a moment at the red rust on the
hinges. “How long sence this gate must hev been opened afore?” he said,
again looking up at Dundas with a smile.

Somehow the words struck a chill to the stranger’s heart. The sense of
the loneliness of the place, of isolation, filled him with a sort of
awe. The night-bound wilderness itself was not more daunting than these
solitary tiers of piazzas, these vacant series of rooms and corridors,
all instinct with vanished human presence, all alert with echoes of
human voices. A step, a laugh, a rustle of garments--he could have sworn
he heard them at any open doorway as he followed his guide along the dim
moonlit piazza, with its pillars duplicated at regular intervals by the
shadows on the floor. How their tread echoed down these lonely ways!
From the opposite side of the house he heard Kee-nan’s spurs jangling,
his soldierly stride sounding back as if their entrance had roused
barracks. He winced once to see his own shadow with its stealthier
movement. It seemed painfully furtive. For the first time during the
evening his jaded mind, that had instinctively sought the solace of
contemplating trifles, reverted to its own tormented processes. “Am
I not hiding?” he said to himself, in a sort of sarcastic pity of his
plight.

The idea seemed never to enter the mind of the transparent Keenan. He
laughed out gayly as they turned into the weed-grown quadrangle, and
the red fox that Dundas had earlier observed slipped past him with
affrighted speed and dashed among the shadows of the dense shrubbery of
the old lawn without. Again and again the sound rang back from wall to
wall, first with the jollity of seeming imitation, then with an appalled
effect sinking to silence, and suddenly rising again in a grewsome
_staccato_ that suggested some terrible unearthly laughter, and bore but
scant resemblance to the hearty mirth which had evoked it Keenan paused
and looked back with friendly gleaming eyes. “Oughter been a leetle
handier with these hyar consarns,” he said, touching the pistols in his
belt.

It vaguely occurred to Dundas that the young man went strangely heavily
armed for an evening visit at a neighbor’s house. But it was a lawless
country and lawless times, and the sub-current of suggestion did not
definitely fix itself in his mind until he remembered it later. He
was looking into each vacant open doorway, seeing the still moonlight
starkly white upon the floor; the cobwebbed and broken window-panes,
through which a section of leafless trees beyond was visible; bits of
furniture here and there, broken by the vandalism of the guerillas. Now
and then a scurrying movement told of a gopher, hiding too, and on one
mantel-piece, the black fireplace yawning below, sat a tiny tawny-tinted
owl, whose motionless beadlike eyes met his with a stare of stolid
surprise. After he had passed, its sudden ill-omened cry set the silence
to shuddering.

Keenan, leading the way, paused in displeasure. “I wisht I hed viewed
that critter,” he said, glumly. “I’d hev purvented that screechin’ ter
call the devil, sure. It’s jes a certain sign o’ death.”

He was about to turn, to wreak his vengeance, perchance. But the bird,
sufficiently fortunate itself, whatever woe it presaged for others,
suddenly took its awkward flight through sheen and shadow across the
quadrangle, and when they heard its cry again it came from some remote
section of the building, with a doleful echo as a refrain.

The circumstance was soon forgotten by Keenan. He seemed a happy,
mercurial, lucid nature, and he began presently to dwell with interest
on the availability of the old music-stand in the centre of the square
as a manger. “Hyar,” he said, striking the rotten old structure with
a heavy hand, which sent a quiver and a thrill through all the
timbers--“hyar’s whar the guerillas always hitched thar beastises. Thar
feed an’ forage war piled up thar on the fiddlers’ seats. Ye can’t do no
better’n ter pattern arter them, till ye git ready ter hev fiddlers an’
sech a-sawin’ away in hyar agin.”

And he sauntered away from the little pavilion, followed by Dundas, who
had not accepted his suggestion of a room on the first floor as being
less liable to leakage, but finally made choice of an inner apartment in
the second story. He looked hard at Keenan, when he stood in the doorway
surveying the selection. The room opened into a cross-hall which gave
upon a broad piazza that was latticed; tiny squares of moonlight were
all sharply drawn on the floor, and, seen through a vista of gray
shadow, seemed truly of a gilded lustre. From the windows of this room
on a court-yard no light Could be visible to any passer-by without.
Another door gave on an inner gallery, and through its floor a staircase
came up from the quadrangle close to the threshold. Dundas wondered if
these features were of possible significance in Keenan’s estimation. The
young mountaineer turned suddenly, and snatching up a handful of slats
broken from the shutters, remarked:

“Let’s see how the chimbly draws--that’s the main p’int.”

There was no defect in the chimney’s constitution. It drew admirably,
and with the white and red flames dancing in the fireplace, two or
three chairs, more or less disabled, a table, and an upholstered lounge
gathered at random from the rooms near at hand, the possibility of
sojourning comfortably for a few days in the deserted hostelry seemed
amply assured.

Once more Dundas gazed fixedly at the face of the young mountaineer,
who still bent on one knee on the hearth, watching with smiling eyes
the triumphs of his fire-making. It seemed to him afterwards that his
judgment was strangely at fault; he perceived naught of import in the
shallow brightness of the young man’s eyes, like the polished surface of
jet; in the instability of his jealousy, his anger; in his hap-hazard,
mercurial temperament. Once he might have noted how flat were the
spaces beneath the eyes, how few were the lines that defined the lid,
the socket, the curve of the cheekbone, the bridge of the nose, and how
expressionless. It was doubtless the warmth and glow of the fire,
the clinging desire of companionship, the earnest determination to be
content, pathetic in one who had but little reason for optimism, that
caused him to ignore the vacillating glancing moods that successively
swayed Keenan, strong while they lasted, but with scanty augury because
of their evanescence. He was like some newly discovered property in
physics of untried potentialities, of which nothing is ascertained but
its uncertainties.

And yet he seemed to Dundas a simple country fellow, good-natured in the
main, unsuspicious, and helpful. So, giving a long sigh of relief and
fatigue, Dundas sank down in one of the large arm-chairs that had once
done duty for the summer loungers on the piazza.

In the light of the fire Emory was once more looking at him. A certain
air of distinction, a grace and ease of movement, an indescribable
quality of bearing which he could not discriminate, yet which he
instinctively recognized as superior, offended him in some sort. He
noticed again the ring on the stranger’s hand as he drew off his glove.
Gloves! Emory Keen an would as soon have thought of wearing a petticoat.
Once more the fear that these effeminate graces found favor in
Millicent’s estimation smote upon his heart. It made the surface of his
opaque eyes glisten as Dundas rose and took up a pipe and tobacco-pouch
which he had laid on the mantelpiece, his full height and fine figure
shown in the changed posture.

“Ez tall ez me, ef not taller, an’, by gum! a good thirty pound
heavier,” Emory reflected, with, a growing dismay that he had not those
stalwart claims to precedence in height and weight as an offset to the
smoother fascinations of the stranger’s polish.

He had risen hastily to his feet. He would not linger to smoke
fraternally over the fire, and thus cement friendly relations.

“I guided him hyar, like old Sim Roxby axed me ter do, an’ that’s all. I
ain’t keerin’ ef I never lay eyes on him again,” he said to himself.

“Going?” said Dundas, pleasantly, noticing the motion. “You’ll look in
again, won’t you?”

“Wunst in a while, I reckon,” drawled Keenan, a trifle thrown off his
balance by this courtesy.

He paused at the door, looking back over his shoulder for a moment at
the illumined room, then stepped out into the night, leaving the tenant
of the lonely old house filling his pipe by the fire.

His tread rang along the deserted gallery, and sudden echoes came
tramping down the vacant halls as if many a denizen of the once populous
place was once more astir within its walls. Long after Dundas had heard
him spring from the lower piazza to the ground, and the rusty gate clang
behind him, vague footfalls were audible far away, and were still again,
and once more a pattering tread in some gaunt and empty apartment near
at hand, faint and fainter yet, till he hardly knew whether it were the
reverberations of sound or fancy that held his senses in thrall.

And when all was still and silent at last he felt less solitary than
when these elusive tokens of human presence were astir.

Late, late he sat over the dwindling embers. His mind, no longer
diverted by the events of the day, recurred with melancholy persistence
to a theme which even they, although fraught with novelty and presage
of danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril
dulled, the craft of sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him
in these dim watches of the night. Self-reproach had found him out here,
defenceless so far from the specious wiles and ways of men. All the line
of provocations seemed slight, seemed naught, as he reviewed them and
balanced them against a human life. True, it was not in some mad quarrel
that his skill had taken it and had served to keep his own--a duel, a
fair fight, strictly regular according to the code of “honorable men”
 for ages past--and he sought to argue that it was doubtless but the
morbid sense of the wild fastnesses without, the illimitable vastness
of the black night, the unutterable indurability of nature to the
influences of civilization, which made it taste like murder. He had
brought away even from the scene of action, to which he had gone with
decorous deliberation--his worldly affairs arranged for the possibility
of death, his will made, his volition surrendered, and his sacred honor
in the hands of his seconds--a humiliating recollection of the sudden
revulsion of the aspect of all things; the criminal sense of haste with
which he was hurried away after that first straight shot; the agitation,
nay, the fright of his seconds; their eagerness to be swiftly rid of
him, their insistence that he should go away for a time, get out of the
country, out of the embarrassing purview of the law, which was prone to
regard the matter as he himself saw it now, and which had an ugly trick
of calling things by their right names in the sincere phraseology of an
indictment. And thus it was that he was here, remote from all the usual
lines of flight, with his affectation of being a possible purchaser for
the old hotel, far from the railroad, the telegraph, even the postal
service. Some time--soon, indeed, it might be, when the first flush
of excitement and indignation should be overpast, and the law, like a
barking dog that will not bite, should have noisily exhausted the gamut
of its devoirs--he would go back and live according to his habit in his
wonted place, as did other men whom he had known to be “called out,” and
who had survived their opponents. Meantime he heard the ash crumble; he
saw the lighted room wane from glancing yellow to a dull steady red,
and so to dusky brown; he marked the wind rise, and die away, and come
again, banging the doors of the empty rooms, and setting timbers all
strangely to creaking as under sudden trampling feet; then lift into the
air with a rustling sound like the stir of garments and the flutter of
wings, calling out weirdly in the great voids of the upper atmosphere.

He had welcomed the sense of fatigue earlier in the evening, for it
promised sleep. Now it had slipped away from him. He was strong and
young, and the burning sensation that the frosty air had left on his
face was the only token of the long journey. It seemed as if he
would never sleep again as he lay on the lounge watching the gray ash
gradually overgrow the embers, till presently only a vague dull glow
gave intimation of the position of the hearth in the room. And then,
bereft of this dim sense of companionship, he stared wide-eyed in the
darkness, feeling the only creature alive and awake in all the world.
No; the fox was suddenly barking within the quadrangle--a strangely wild
and alien tone. And presently he heard the animal trot past his door
on the piazza, the cushioned footfalls like those of a swift dog. He
thought with a certain anxiety of the tawny tiny owl that had sat like
a stuffed ornament on the mantel-piece of a neighboring room, and he
listened with a quaking vicarious presentiment of woe for the sounds of
capture and despair. He was sensible of waiting and hoping for the fox’s
bootless return, when he suddenly lost consciousness.

How long he slept he did not know, but it seemed only a momentary
respite from the torture of memory, when, still in the darkness,
thousands of tremulous penetrating sounds were astir, and with a great
start he recognized the rain on the roof. It was coming down in steady
torrents that made the house rock before the tumult of his plunging
heart was still, and he was longing again for the forgetfulness of
sleep. In vain. The hours dragged by; the windows slowly, slowly denned
their dull gray squares against the dull gray day dawning without.
The walls that had been left with only the first dark coat of plaster,
awaiting another season for the final decoration, showed their drapings
of cobweb, and the names and pencilled scribblings with which the fancy
of transient bushwhackers had chosen to deface them. The locust-trees
within the quadrangle drearily tossed their branches to and fro in the
wind, the bark very black and distinct against the persistent gray lines
of rain and the white walls of the galleried buildings opposite; the
gutters were brimming, roaring along like miniature torrents; nowhere
was the fox or the owl to be seen. Somehow their presence would have
been a relief--the sight of any living thing reassuring. As he walked
slowly along the deserted piazzas, in turning sudden corners, again and
again he paused, expecting that something, some one, was approaching to
meet him. When at last he mounted his horse, that had neighed gleefully
to see him, and rode away through the avenue and along the empty ways
among the untenanted summer cottages, all the drearier and more forlorn
because of the rain, he felt as if he had left an aberration, some
hideous dream, behind, instead of the stark reality of the gaunt and
vacant and dilapidated old house.

The transition to the glow and cheer of Sim Roxby’s fireside was like
a rescue, a restoration. The smiling welcome in the women’s eyes, their
soft drawling voices, with mellifluous intonations that gave a value to
each commonplace simple word, braced his nerves like a tonic. It might
have been only the contrast with the recollections of the night, with
the prospect visible through the open door--the serried lines of rain
dropping aslant from the gray sky and elusively outlined against the
dark masses of leafless woods that encircled the clearing; the dooryard
half submerged with puddles of a clay-brown tint, embossed always with
myriads of protruding drops of rain, for however they melted away the
downpour renewed them, and to the eye they were stationary, albeit
pervaded with a continual tremor--but somehow he was cognizant of a
certain coddling tenderness in the old woman’s manner that might have
been relished by a petted child, an unaffected friendliness in the
girl’s clear eyes. They made him sit close to the great wood fire; the
blue and yellow flames gushed out from the piles of hickory logs, and
the bed of coals gleamed at red and white heat beneath. They took his
hat to carefully dry it, and they spread out his cloak on two chairs
at one side of the room, where it dismally dripped. When he ventured to
sneeze, Mrs. Roxby compounded and administered a “yerb tea,” a sovereign
remedy against colds, which he tasted on compulsion and in great doubt,
and swallowed with alacrity and confidence, finding its basis the easily
recognizable “toddy.” He had little knowledge how white and troubled
his face had looked as he came in from the gray day, how strongly marked
were those lines of sharp mental distress, how piteously apparent was
his mute appeal for sympathy and comfort.

“Mill’cent,” said the old woman in the shed-room, as they washed and
wiped the dishes after the cozy breakfast of venison and corn-dodgers
and honey and milk, “that thar man hev run agin the law, sure’s ye air
born.”

Millicent turned her reflective fair face, that seemed whiter and
more delicate in the damp dark day, and looked doubtfully out over the
fields, where the water ran in steely lines in the furrows.

“Mus’ hev been by accident or suthin’. _He_ ain’t no hardened sinner.”

“Shucks!” the old woman commented upon her reluctant acquiescence. “I
ain’t keerin’ for the law! ‘Tain’t none o’ my job. The tomfool men make
an’ break it. Ennybody ez hev seen this war air obleeged to take note
o’ the wickedness o’ men in gineral. This hyer man air a sorter pitiful
sinner, an’ he hev got a look in his eyes that plumb teches my heart.
I ‘ain’t got no call ter know nuthin’ ‘bout the law, bein’ a ‘oman an’
naterally ignorant. I dun’no’ ez he hev run agin it.”

“Mus’ hev been by accident,” said Millicent, dreamily, still gazing over
the sodden fields.

The suspicion did nothing to diminish his comfort or their cordiality.
The morning dragged by without change in the outer aspects. The noontide
dinner came and went without Roxby’s return, for the report of the
washing away of a bridge some miles distant down the river had early
called him out to the scene of the disaster, to verify in his own
interests the rumor, since he had expected to haul his wheat to the
settlement the ensuing day. The afternoon found the desultory talk still
in progress about the fire, the old woman alternately carding cotton
and nodding in her chair in the corner; the dogs eying the stranger,
listening much of the time with the air of children taking instruction,
only occasionally wandering out-of-doors, the floor here and there
bearing the damp imprint of their feet; and Millicent on her knees in
the other corner, the firelight on her bright hair, her delicate cheek,
her quickly glancing eyes, as she deftly moulded bullets.

“Uncle Sim hed ter s’render his shootin’-irons,” she explained, “an’ he
‘ain’t got no ca’tridge-loadin’ ones lef. So he makes out with his old
muzzle-loadin’ rifle that he hed afore the war, an’ I moulds his bullets
for him rainy days.”

As she held up a moulded ball and dexterously clipped off the surplus
lead, the gesture was so culinary in its delicacy that one of the dogs
in front of the fire extended his head, making a long neck, with a
tentative sniff and a glistening gluttonous eye.

“Ef I swallered enny mo’ lead, I wouldn’t take it hot, Towse,” she said,
holding out the bullet for canine inspection. “‘Tain’t healthy!”

But the dog, perceiving the nature of the commodity, drew back with a
look of deep reproach, rose precipitately, and with a drooping tail went
out skulkingly into the wet gray day.

“Towse can’t abide a bullet,” she observed, “nor nuthin’ ‘bout a gun.
He got shot wunst a-huntin’, an’ he never furgot it. Jes show him a gun
an’ he ain’t nowhar ter be seen--like he war cotch up in the clouds.”

“Good watch-dog, I suppose,” suggested Dundas, striving to enter into
the spirit of her talk.

“Naw; too sp’ilt for a gyard-dog--granny coddled him so whenst he
got shot. He’s jest vally’ble fur his conversation, I reckon,” she
continued, with a smile in her eyes. “I dun’no’ what else, but he _is_
toler’ble good company.”

The other dogs pressed about her, the heads of the great hounds as high
as her own as she sat among them on the floor. With bright eyes and
knitted brows they followed the motions of pouring in the melted metal,
the lifting of the bullets from the mould, the clipping off of the
surplus lead, and the flash of the keen knife.

Outside the sad light waned; the wind sighed and sighed; the dreary
rain fell; the trees clashed their boughs dolorously together, and their
turbulence deadened the sound of galloping horses. As Dundas sat and
gazed at the girl’s intent head, with its fleecy tendrils and its
massive coil, the great hounds beside her, all emblazoned by the
firelight upon the brown wall near by, with the vast fireplace at hand,
the whole less like reality than some artist’s pictured fancy, he knew
naught of a sudden entrance, until she moved, breaking the spell, and
looked up to meet the displeasure in Roxby’s eyes and the dark scowl on
Emory Keenan’s face.

*****

That night the wind shifted to the north. Morning found the chilled
world still, ice where the water had lodged, all the trees incased in
glittering garb that followed the symmetry alike of every bough and
the tiniest twig, and made splendid the splintered remnants of the
lightning-riven. The fields were laced across from furrow to furrow, in
which the frozen water still stood gleaming, with white arabesques which
had known a more humble identity as stubble and crab-grass; the sky was
slate-colored, and from its sad tint this white splendor gained added
values of contrast. When the sun should shine abroad much of the effect
would be lost in the too dazzling glister; but the sun did not shine.

All day the gray mood held unchanged. Night was imperceptibly sifting
down upon all this whiteness, that seemed as if it would not be
obscured, as if it held within itself some property of luminosity, when
Millicent, a white apron tied over her golden head, improvising a hood,
its superfluous fulness gathered in many folds and pleats around her
neck, fichu-wise, stood beside the ice-draped fodder-stack and essayed
with half-numbed hands to insert a tallow dip into the socket of a
lantern, all incrusted and clumsy with previous drippings.

“I dun’no’ whether I be a-goin’ ter need this hyar consarn whilst
milkin’ or no,” she observed, half to herself, half to Emory, who,
chewing a straw, somewhat surlily had followed her out for a word apart.
“The dusk ‘pears slow ter-night, but Spot’s mighty late comin’ home, an’
old Sue air fractious an’ contrairy-minded, and feels mighty anxious
an’ oneasy ‘boutn her calf, that’s ez tall ez she is nowadays, an’ don’t
keer no mo’ ‘bout her mammy ‘n a half-grown human does. I tell her she
oughtn’t ter be mad with me, but with the way she brung up her chile, ez
won’t notice her now.”

She looked up with a laugh, her eyes and teeth gleaming; her golden hair
still showed its color beneath the spotless whiteness of her voluminous
headgear, and the clear tints of her complexion seemed all the more
delicate and fresh in the snowy pallor of the surroundings and the
grayness of the evening.

“I reckon I’d better take it along,” and once more she addressed herself
to the effort to insert the dip into the lantern.

Emory hardly heard. His pulse was quick. His eye glittered. He breathed
hard as, with both hands in his pockets, he came close to her.

“Mill’cent,” he said, “I told ye the t’other day ez ye thunk a heap too
much o’ that thar stran-ger-”

“An’ I tole ye, bubby, that I didn’t think nuthin’ o’ nobody but
you-uns,” she interrupted, with an effort to placate his jealousy. The
little jocularity which she affected dwindled and died before the steady
glow of his gaze, and she falteringly looked at him, her unguided hands
futilely fumbling with the lantern.

“Ye can’t fool me,” he stoutly asseverated. “Ye think mo’ o’ him ‘n o’
me, kase ye ‘low he air rich, an’ book-larned, an’ smooth-fingered, an’
fini-fied ez a gal, an’ goin’ ter buy the hotel. I say, _hotel!_ Now
_I’ll_ tell ye what he is--I’ll tell ye! He’s a criminal. He’s runnin’
from the law. He’s hidin’ in the old hotel that he’s purtendin’ ter
buy.”

She stared wide-eyed and pallid, breathless and waiting.

He interpreted her expression as doubt, denial.

“It’s gospel sure,” he cried. “Fur this very evenin’ I met a gang o’
men an’ the sheriff’s deputy down yander by the sulphur spring ‘bout
sundown, an’ he ‘lowed ez they war a-sarchin’ fur a criminal ez war
skulkin’ round hyarabout lately--ez they wanted a man fur hevin’
c’mitted murder.”

“But ye didn’t accuse _him_, surely; ye hed no right ter s’picion _him_.
Uncle Sim! Oh, my Lord! Ye surely wouldn’t! Oh, Uncle Sim!”

Her tremulous words broke into a quavering cry as she caught his arm
convulsively, for his face confirmed her fears. She thrust him wildly
away, and started toward the house.

“Ye needn’t go tattlin’ on me,” he said, roughly pushing her aside.
“I’ll tell Mr. Roxby myself. I ain’t ‘shamed o’ what I done. I’ll
tell him. I’ll tell him myself.” And animated with this intention to
forestall her disclosure, his long strides bore him swiftly past and
into the house.

It seemed to him that he lingered there only a moment or two, for Roxby
was not at the cabin, and he said nothing of the quarrel to the old
woman. Already his heart had revolted against his treachery, and then
there came to him the further reflection that he did not know enough
to justify suspicion. Was not the stranger furnished with the fullest
credentials--a letter to Roxby from the Colonel? Perhaps he had allowed
his jealousy to endanger the man, to place him in jeopardy even of his
life should he resist arrest.

Keenan tarried at the house merely long enough to devise a plausible
excuse for his sudden excited entrance, and then took his way back to
the barnyard.

It was vacant. The cows still stood lowing at the bars; the sheep
cowered together in their shed; the great whitened cone of the
fodder-stack gleamed icily in the purple air; beside it lay the lantern
where Millicent had cast it aside. She was gone! He would not believe
it till he had run to the barn, calling her name in the shadowy place,
while the horse at his manger left his corn to look over the walls of
his stall with inquisitive surprised eyes, luminous in the dusk. He
searched the hen-house, where the fowls on their perches crowded close
because of the chill of the evening. He even ran to the bars and looked
down across the narrow ravine to which the clearing sloped. Beyond the
chasm-like gorge he saw presently on the high ascent opposite footprints
that had broken the light frostlike coating of ice on the dead leaves
and moss--climbing footprints, swift, disordered. He looked back again
at the lantern where Millicent had flung it in her haste. Her mission
was plain now. She had gone to warn Dundas. She had taken a direct line
through the woods. She hoped to forestall the deputy sheriff and his
posse, following the circuitous mountain road.

Keenan’s lip curled in triumph. His heart burned hot with scornful anger
and contempt of the futility of her effort. “They’re there afore she
started!” he said, looking up at the aspects of the hour shown by the
sky, and judging of the interval since the encounter by the spring.
Through a rift in the gray cloud a star looked down with an icy
scintillation and disappeared again. He heard a branch in the woods snap
beneath the weight of ice. A light sprang into the window of the cabin
hard by, and came in a great gush of orange-tinted glow out into the
snowy bleak wintry space. He suddenly leaped over the fence and ran like
a deer through the woods.

Millicent too had been swift. He had thought to overtake her before he
emerged from the woods into the more open space where the hotel stood.
In this quarter the cloud-break had been greater. Toward the west a
fading amber glow still lingered in long horizontal bars upon the opaque
gray sky. The white mountains opposite were hung with purple shadows
borrowed from a glimpse of sunset somewhere far away over the valley
of East Tennessee; one distant lofty range was drawn in elusive snowy
suggestions, rather than lines, against a green space of intense yet
pale tint. The moon, now nearing the full, hung over the wooded valley,
and aided the ice and the crust of snow to show its bleak, wan, wintry
aspect; a tiny spark glowed in its depths from some open door of an
isolated home. Over it all a mist was rising from the east, drawing its
fleecy but opaque curtain. Already it had climbed the mountain-side and
advanced, windless, soundless, overwhelming, annihilating all before and
beneath it. The old hotel had disappeared, save that here and there a
gaunt gable protruded and was withdrawn, showed once more, and once more
was submerged.

A horse’s head suddenly looking out of the enveloping mist close to his
shoulder gave him the first intimation of the arrival, the secret silent
waiting, of those whom he had directed hither. That the saddles were
empty he saw a moment later. The animals stood together in a row,
hitched to the rack. No disturbance sounded from the silent building.
The event was in abeyance. The fugitive in hiding was doubtless at
ease, unsuspecting, while the noiseless search of the officers for his
quarters was under way.

With a thrill of excitement Keenan crept stealthily through an open
passage and into the old grass-grown spaces of the quadrangle. Night
possessed the place, but the cloud seemed denser than the darkness. He
was somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall
and strained his eyes into the dusk. Suddenly it was penetrated by a
milky-white glimmer, a glimmer duplicated at equidistant points, each
fading as its successor sprang into brilliance. The next moment he
understood its significance. It had come from the blurred windows of the
old ball-room. Milli-cent had lighted her candle as she searched for the
fugitive’s quarters; she was passing down the length of the old house
on the second story, and suddenly she emerged upon the gallery. She
shielded the feeble flicker with her Hand; her white-hooded head gleamed
as with an aureola as the divergent rays rested on the opaque mist; and
now and again she clutched the baluster and walked with tremulous care,
for the flooring was rotten here and there, and ready to crumble away.
Her face was pallid, troubled; and Dundas, who had been warned by the
tramp of horses and the tread of men, and who had descended the stairs,
revolver in hand, ready to slip away if he might under cover of
the mist, paused appalled, gazing across the quadrangle as on an
apparition--the sight so familiar to his senses, so strange to his
experience. He saw in an abrupt shifting of the mist that there were
other figures skulking in doorways, watching her progress. The next
moment she leaned forward to clutch the baluster, and the light of the
candle fell full on Emory Keenan, lurking in the open passage. A sudden
sharp cry of “Surrender!” The young mountaineer, confused, swiftly drew
his pistol. Others were swifter still. A sharp report rang out into
the chill crisp air, rousing all the affrighted echoes--a few faltering
steps, a heavy fall, and for a long time Emory Keenan’s life-blood
stained the floor of the promenade. Even when it had faded, the rustic
gossips came often and gazed at the spot with morbid interest, until, a
decade later, an enterprising proprietor removed the floor and altered
the shape of that section of the building out of recognition.

The escape of Dundas was easily effected. The deputy sheriff, confronted
with the problem of satisfactorily accounting for the death of a man
who had committed no offence against public polity, was no longer
formidable. His errand had been the arrest of a horse-thief, well-known
to him, and he had no interest in pursuing a fugitive, however obnoxious
to the law, whose personal description was so different from that of the
object of his search.

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





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895" ***

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