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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 45652
   :PG.Title: Jack Ballington, Forester
   :PG.Released: 2014-05-23
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: John Trotwood Moore
   :MARCREL.ill: George Gibbs
   :DC.Title: Jack Ballington, Forester
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1911
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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JACK BALLINGTON, FORESTER
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   .. _`I WAS NEVER SO HAPPY`:

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      I WAS NEVER SO HAPPY (Page `80`_)

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      JACK BALLINGTON
      FORESTER

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      BY

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      JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE

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      AUTHOR OF "OLD MISTIS;" "A SUMMER HYMNAL;"
      "THE BISHOP OF COTTONTOWN;"
      "UNCLE WASH," ETC.

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      ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE GIBBS

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      THOMAS LANGTON
      TORONTO, CANADA.

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      Copyright, 1911, by
      THE JOHN C. WINSTON Co.

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      TO THE TWINS
      HELEN AND MARY DANIEL MOORE

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   CONTENTS

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   I

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   THE HEIR OF THE BLUEGRASS

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CHAPTER

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I  `Soul Dreams and the Soil`_
II  `Little Sister`_

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   II

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   "A TWILIGHT PIECE"

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I  `The Flame in the Wood`_
II  `The Home-Stretch`_
III  `The Hickories`_
IV  `Colonel Goff`_
V  `Pedigrees and Principles`_
VI  `The Make-Believe`_
VII  `The Chimes of the Wisteria`_
VIII  `The Stone-Crop`_
IX  `The Transplanted Pine`_
X  `Conquering Satan`_
XI  `Two Ways of Love`_
XII  `Work and Mine Acre`_
XIII  `The Unattainable`_
XIV  `God and a Butterfly`_
XV  `Hickories and Old Hickory`_
XVI  `Heart's Ease`_
XVII  `"Lady Carfax"`_
XVIII  `The Last Dance`_
XIX  `The High Jump`_

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   III

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   THE HICKORY'S SON

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I  `"Love is not Love That Alters"`_
II  `A Dream and Its Ending`_
III  `The Awakening`_
IV  `The Call of the Drum`_
V  `The First Tennessee`_
VI  `The Battle in the Bacaue Mountains`_
VII  `The Juramentados`_

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   IV

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   THE BURGEONING

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I  `Two of a Kind`_
II  `How Aunt Lucretia Ran Away`_
III  `A Night with Captain Skipper`_
IV  `My First Automobile`_
V  `The Sick Tree`_

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   ILLUSTRATIONS

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`I Was Never So Happy`_ . . . . . . *Frontispiece*

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`"Stop Her—He'll Kill Her," I Cried`_

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`"Love is not Love that Alters."`_

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`I was on Him, My Knee on His Breast`_

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   FOREWORD

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*I am the child of the Centuries.  I am the son
of the Æons which were.  I have always been,
and I shall always be.  To make me it has taken
fire, star-dust, and the Spirit of God—the lives
of billions of people, and the lights of a million
suns.*

*I have grown from sun and star-dust to the
Thing-Which-Thinks.*

*It were the basest ingratitude if I were not both
thankful to God and proud of my pedigree.*

*What has come to me has been good; what shall
come will be better: for I am Evolution, and I
grow ever to greater things.  Life has been good;
death will be better; for it is the cause of all my
past, making for a still greater future.*

*And this I know, not from Books nor from
Knowledge, but from the unafraid, never silent
voice of Instinct within me, which is God.*

*My debt to the past is great: I can never, in
full, repay it; for they, my creditors, passed with
it.  They left me a world beautiful: shall I make
it a world bare?  They left a world bountiful:
shall I leave it blazed and barren to the sands of
death?*

*I am in debt to the Past.  Shall the Future
present the bill to find that I have gone to my grave
a bankrupt?  Find that I have wantonly laid
waste the land, leaving no root of wild flower,
no shade of tree, no spring that falleth from the
hills?*

*Shall I destroy their trees for the little gain it
may bring to my short Life-tenantry?  Shall I
make of their land a desert by day and a deluge
by night? Shall I stamp with the degeneracy of
gullies my own offspring, and scar with the red
birth-mark of poverty the unborn of my own
breed?*

*I live, charged with a great Goodness from the
Past: I can die, paying it, only by a greater
Kindness for the Future.*





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.. _`SOUL DREAMS AND THE SOIL`:

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   I

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   THE HEIR OF THE BLUEGRASS

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   JACK BALLINGTON,
   FORESTER

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   CHAPTER I

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   SOUL-DREAMS AND THE SOIL

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Those who live near to Nature learn much: for
it is only by living close to her that we learn from
her.  The best advice ever given on longevity was
from the cheery old gentleman who said: "To
live long, live naturally; eat what you want, and
walk on the sunny side of the street."

School children think that some wise man made
all the hard rules of grammar that grown-up folks
try to teach them.  They do not know that the
child-man learned to talk first and that the rules
were made from his speech.  It is like the simple
people at the circus who think the trained horse
is dancing to the music; it is the music that is
dancing to him.  From the facts of life we draw
our rules just as the scholars made rules of
grammar from the facts of language.

Nature is the One great Fact.

I was thinking of one of her facts the other
day—she has so many—but one I had noticed very
plainly: the man who lives close to her is an
optimist.

Let the farmer fail year after year, and still he
plants, hoping.  Let the merchant fall behind one
year and he is shaken; another year, and he quits.
One season of deep water-hauling sends the
fisherman home to his fields.  When the wild game
vanishes the pioneer hunter becomes the pioneer
farmer.  The merchant, the lawyer, the doctor,—there
never was one who did not dream, betimes,
over his books, that he would yet live to
retire and till his acres.

Every failure in life goes back to the soil for a
new start.

That is the fact; now for the rule.  It is this:
God intended that man should be, first of all, a
soil-worker.  And tilling the soil includes not only
planting, but bringing all growing and living things
thereon to strength.

Rearing things on the soil is man's natural vocation,
since neither drought, nor flood, nor failure,
can shut out from his heart that instinct of hope
which has come down through so many centuries
of soil-loving ancestors.  The hoping instinct has
been housed in him so long that it is part of his
heredity.

Maritime nations found empires, but not
religions.  Religions come from the soil.  Men,
living in the open, watching their flocks by night, find
in the eternal wonder of the soul-questioning stars
that which satisfies their own souls.

Imagine fighting Rome founding a religion!
Or bookish Greece!  Or the trading Saxon!

Religions come from mangers.  All great
soul-dreams were born amid flocks and herds.

This is my own story, and the telling of it shall
be in my own way.  And as I am not a writer,
but a forester, doubtless my telling will be all
awry.  For I have seen enough of life to know
that the generals who have won in the field of
fiction, like the generals who have won in the field
of fact, have won because they have had the drilling.

And in my case the drilling has been only
trees—trees, and their children, the flowers.





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.. _`LITTLE SISTER`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   LITTLE SISTER

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This is my story, as I said, and the telling of
it must be in my own way.  That is why I am
giving this chapter first—because it happened
first—four years before the real story began.
Another reason is that in the telling of it I
can set forth the characters of the old general,
my grandsire, who believed in fighting; of my
Aunt Lucretia, his daughter, who believed in
pedigrees; of Eloise, the beautiful and daring one, who
believed in dancing and riding and shooting, and
in making those who loved her miserable; of
Colonel Goff, an Englishman, who believed in horses
and hounds; and of Little Sister, who believed in
Uncle Jack; and even of myself, Uncle Jack, who
believed in trees.

Little Sister is the three-year-old daughter of
my brother Ned Ballington, who, with his lovely
wife, Thesis, and his major domo, Uncle Wash
(a colored gentleman of the Old School), and his
other live things and birds, resides on the farm
adjoining ours.

But Little Sister, whose real name is Mildred,
and her brother, two years younger, who was
baptized Edward, but whom Uncle Jack had
nicknamed Captain Skipper, because nothing could
keep him still, spent the most of their time at The
Home Stretch, the home of their great grandsire,
General John Rutherford, where also lived their
Aunt Lucretia, and Eloise, and Uncle Jack.

It was either very hot or very cold on those
days when Uncle Jack did not drive them over to
spend the day, and maybe a night, too.  Once in
a great while the footing was too slippery for the
pony.  But these omissions occurred, at the most,
perhaps twice each summer and winter; for the
heart of the Middle Basin, that beautiful bluegrass
country in which they live, beats in the breast
of Summer.

John Rutherford, the First, built The Home
Stretch in 1800.  It adjoined the lands of
Andrew Jackson, and the very spirit of the old
fighter hangs over the place.  For John Rutherford
had loved him—nay, had lived, fought, and
died for him—at New Orleans.  There is a
tradition that Old Hickory himself named the
place—in fact, that John Rutherford owned it for no
other reason than that his horse beat Andrew
Jackson's in the home stretch.  The bet was a
thousand acres of land.  The race track may still
be seen at Clover Bottom, just across the way,
where Stone's River makes a bend around a
hundred acres of land, rich as ever the crow made
a granary of, and as level as Chalmette Plain,
where Jackson's riflemen stopped the British
before New Orleans.

Little Sister was a fair, frail, sensitive little tot.
Her bright blue eyes, pale pink face and dark
brown hair kept one thinking of full summer
moons rainbowed at night.  And her temper—she
was fire and powder there—a flash, maybe a
clenched small fist, a small foot brought down in
sudden scorn—an explosion—and then she was
sobbing for forgiveness in your arms.  That was
Little Sister.

Once she slapped Aunt Lucretia in the face.
"I can't see where in the world she gets her
temper from," Aunt Lucretia said; "for if there is
an angel on earth it is Thesis, her mother.
General Rutherford" (Aunt Lucretia always called
her father General Rutherford), "this child ought
to be spanked till she is conquered.  Her mother
sends her over here expecting us to make her behave."

"Tut, tut, Madam," said the General (he
always called his daughter madam), "that is not
the way to break colts.  That kind of a conquering
would spoil her.  She'll need all of that temper,
when she knows enough to control it, to get
through life and land anywhere near the wire first.
Besides, with her sensitiveness, don't you see she
is suffering now more than if we had punished
her?  If she were a plug now" (for the General
hated nothing so much as a plug), "she would
never be sorry till you made her sorry with a
beating.  But the conscience of a thoroughbred
beats hickory, and gentleness, Madam, is away
ahead of blows in everything but war—and we
are not fighting now."

Then to make sure that she did not get a whipping,
Uncle Jack, who was eighteen and preparing
for college, would snatch her away from Aunt
Lucretia and take her out to see the colts.  At
sight of them her troubles vanished; for her love
of all live things which are born on a stock farm
was as deep as her Ballington blood.  A great
burst of sunshine would spread over her
conscience-stricken face.

"O Uncle Jack, aren't they just too sweet for
anything?  Do let me get down this minute and
hug them—every one!"  And Uncle Jack would
let her, if he had to catch each colt himself.

The clear-cut way she talked English!  And
her great heart of motherhood!  These were the
two wonderful things in a tot so small.  It was
not difficult to see where she inherited the first.
But how could so tiny a thing have such a great
mother-heart?  She loved everything little—everything
*just born* on the place.  The fact that
anything in hair, hide or feathers had arrived was
a cause of jollification.  "O do let me see the
dear little things!" would be her cry.  And she
generally saw them if Uncle Jack were around.

One day they missed her from the house and
Uncle Jack quickly tracked her to the cow barn.
It had occurred to him that the day before he had
shown her the Short-Horn's latest edition, a big,
double-jointed, ugly, hungry male calf, who slept
all day in a bedded stall, a young Hercules in
repose, and only waked up long enough to wrinkle
his huge nose and sleep again.

There Uncle Jack found her.  She had climbed
over the high stall-gate to pet and coddle the great
calf.  She had placed her own beautiful string of
beads around his tawny neck.

"Come out of there," laughed Uncle Jack.
"What do you see pretty about that great ugly
calf?"

"O Uncle Jack," and she sighed affectedly, "I
am truly sorry for him.  He is not pretty, to be
sure—and so I have given him my beads.  And
he doesn't seem to be very bright, nor at all well
mannered, poor dear—but—but," she added
reflectively—"he has a lovely curly head and he
seems to be such a healthy child!"

On another occasion they missed her.  It was
nearly night.  Everybody started out in alarm to
hunt for her.  Aunt Lucretia was the first to find
her, coming from the brood-sow's lot.

"Where in the world have you been, child?"
she asked as she picked her up.

"Playing with the little yesterday-pigs," said
Little Sister.  "And Aunt Lucretia, I ought to
have come home sooner, I know, but I kissed one
of the cunningest of the little pigs good night,
and all the others looked so hurt, and squealed
so because I didn't kiss them too, I just had to
catch and kiss every one before they would go to
sleep."

Inheritance had played a tremendous part in
Little Sister.  Most children crow and lisp and
talk in divers languages before they learn to talk
English; while some never learn at all.  But not
so with her.  The first long word she attempted
was perfectly pronounced.  The first sentence she
put together was grammatically correct.  The
correctness of her language for one so small made
it sound so quaint that Uncle Jack had her always
talking.  Her earnestness and intensity only added
to her originality.

Pete was a little darky on the farm whose chief
business was to entertain Little Sister when everything
else failed.  His repertoire consisted of all
the funny tricks of a monkey.  But his two-star
performances were racking like Deacon Jones'
old clay-bank pacer and playing 'possum.  Little
Sister never tired of having Pete do these two
things.  They were very comical.  Everybody
knew Deacon Jones, with his angular, sedate,
solemn way of riding, and the double-shuffling,
twisting, cork-screw gait of the old pacer.  The
ludicrous motions of the pacer had struck Pete
early in life, and he had soon learned to get down
on all-fours and make Deacon Jones's horse
ashamed of himself.  The imitation was so
perfect that Ned and Uncle Jack used to call in their
friends to see the show, which consisted of Pete's
doing the racking act, while Little Sister, astraddle
of his back, with one hand in his shirt collar, and
the other wielding a hickory switch, played the
Deacon.

One evening, before company, Pete had paced
around so many times that he was leg-weary.
Little Sister, astride his back, whacked him in the
flanks vigorously and exclaimed: "Come, pace
along there, damn you, or I'll put a head on you!"

The company nearly fell out of their chairs,
while Thesis blushed and Ned stammered an
apology.  Then he remembered that only a few days
before he had heard his grandsire, the swearing
old Indian Fighter, make the same remark to
Pete for being slow about bringing his shaving
water; and he knew that if Little Sister was
proud of anyone, it was of her great grandsire,
who fought valiantly with "Stonewall" in the
Valley.

Ned and Thesis gave the old gentleman a talk,
and begged him to be careful of his oaths in the
presence of Little Sister: but when he had heard
it, he laughed more than he had laughed for a
year, and straightway proceeded to buy her a doll
that cost a gold eagle, and was as large, and nearly
as beautiful, as Little Sister herself.

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The spring that Little Sister was four years old,
the General, as was his custom every morning
before breakfast, went out to the barn and paddock
to see the brood mares and colts.  A stately brown
mare, ankle-deep in blue grass, stood in the
paddock nearest the house, under a great maple tree,
its falling branches almost concealing her.  She
turned every now and then in a nervous, unhappy
way, and, going up to the brown, new-born weakling
of a colt lying in the blue grass, and which
seemed unable to rise, she lowered her shapely
head till her nozzle caressed it and then she
whinnied softly.  Something was very badly wrong
and she knew it.

The old General had been looking on for quite
a while, frowning.  When the General was sorry
for anything he expressed his sympathy by a
nervous strutting and swearing.  When he was
angry or fighting—as his battles in Virginia
proved—he was as silent as a stone wall, and as
staunch.  *Then* he never swore.

"The damned little thing's deformed, Jim,"
he said to the negro stable boy who was standing
near.  "Poor old Betty," and he rubbed his
favorite saddle mare's nose, "she is distressed."

There was the sound of fox hunters coming up
the pike.  The hounds passed first, in a trot,
nosing.  Then the two hunters rode up to the rock
fence where the General stood.  One of them rode
a docked hunter with ungainly long head and
sloping rump and shoulders.  Both horse and rider
were unmistakably English; the man was
middle-aged, portly, and handsome.  The other rider
was a young man riding a Tennessee saddle horse.

"Good morning, General," said the
Englishman, saluting, "can't you join us to-day?
Thought we'd exercise the pack a bit.  The
blooming old chap was out last night—over in
the hills after a negro's chickens—and we'll take
up his trail and have a little chase.  Fawncy
striking him in that stretch of Stone's River
bottom—aw—but we'll have a chase!"

"No—no—Goff," said the old General, impatiently,
"I'm pestered to death with this little
colt.  I don't know what to do with it."

The hunter glanced over into the paddock.

"O that old ambling saddle mare of yours!
Aw—you know what we did with them in
England—two centuries ago—anything with that
Andalusian jennet blood in it—that old pacing
gait—killed 'em—aw! exterminated 'em, sir!
Always told you so.  They're fit for nothing but
for old women to ride to church on."

The younger man broke out into a boisterous
laugh.  His face was round and weak, his mouth
wide, his eyes insincere, and his laugh was affected
and betook of his eyes.

"The Colonel's right, Grandpa.  Tell Jim to
kill it an' come on with us."

The old General glanced at him quickly.
"Braxton Bragg Rutherford, my son, when you
enter West Point you will find it a rule there that
very young officers do not try to impress their
views on their superiors until asked."

"Colonel Goff, suh," he said, turning to the
Englishman, "that old mare has carried me for
fifteen years and never stumped her toe.  Her
dam carried me through the Valley campaign with
Stonewall Jackson.  She helped us chase Banks
and Fremont out of God's country.  She saved
my life once because she could outfoot Yankee
cavalry.  You were with me and know it.  I
owe the whole family a debt I can never repay,
and suh, I'll be damned if I don't hate to kill her
colt."

Colonel Goff looked over the fence at the colt
lying in the grass.  Then he said to the negro,
aside: "Pull out its legs, my man—there—that
will do.  Hold them up!"

The legs were knuckled over at the ankles,
deformed evidently.  When it tried to stand it came
down limply in a heap.

Colonel Goff turned and, beckoning to the
negro, whispered: "Jim, take it into the stall there
and destroy it without letting the General know."  Then
he added in a louder tone, "Come, General,
we'll wait till you get your cup of coffee and join us."

But the General shook his head.  Rough he was
and used to war and death, yet this was old
Betty's colt.  Goff, knowing his stubbornness, saluted,
and rode on after the hounds.

The old man stood thinking.  He examined
the deformed limbs again.  Very sternly he looked
the colt over.  Very sternly he reached his
conclusion, and once reached it was irrevocable.
Jim, knowing, put in apologetically:

"Giner'l, hit'll never walk, we'll hafter kill it."

"I don't want to see it done, Jim.  I'll go in.
Po' ole Betty—that she should be played off on
like that!"  He stroked the mare's neck with a
kindly pat, and went in.

Breakfast was ready for him.  He sat down,
abstracted, worried.  Uncle Jack, his grandson,
eighteen, slender, and slightly lame, and who
didn't love to talk of the war, nor the thought of
going to West Point, and who wanted always to
study about trees and a better way of farming,
sat next to Little Sister.  The General told him of
his misfortune.  "It is a great disappointment to
me, suh, old Betty, my favorite saddle mare—I've
ridden her for fifteen years—the best mare
in Tennessee, by gad, suh, the very best!

"It's weak, puny and no-count, Jack," he went
on as he tested his coffee—"deformed or something
in its front, and knuckles over, can't stand
up."

"That's too bad," said Uncle Jack; "I'll go
out after breakfast and see what I can do for it,
Grandfather."

"No use," said the General, gruffly.  "It'll
be merciful to destroy it.  I've told Jim, too; it'll
be better off dead."

Little Sister had not seemed to listen, but she
had heard.  This last remark of her grandsire
stopped a spoonful of oatmeal half way to her
mouth.  The next instant, unobserved, she had
slipped from her chair and gone to the barn.

"I tell you, Jack, I think this breeding business
is a poor lottery," went on the old General after
a while.  "To think of old Betty, the gamest,
speediest, best mare I ever owned—"

There were protesting screams from the barn.
They were instantly recognized as Little Sister's.
Uncle Jack glanced at her empty place, paled,
kicked over two chairs and a setter dog which
blocked the door, and rushed to the barn.

A tragedy was on there.  A negro stood in
old Betty's stall with an ax in his hand.  On some
straw in a far corner lay a sorry-looking colt.
But it was not alone, for Little Sister stood over
it, shaking her tiny fist at the black executioner,
and screaming with grief and anger:

"You shan't kill this baby colt—you shan't—don't
you come in here—don't!  How dare you, Jim?"

The flash of her keen blue eyes had awed the
negro in the doorway.  He had stopped,
hesitating, in confusion.

"Go away, Jim," said Uncle Jack firmly.
"Come, Little Sister, let us go back to grandpa."  But
for once in her life Uncle Jack had no influence
over her.  She was indignant, grieved.  She
fairly blazed through her tears and sobs: she would
never speak to grandpa again as long as she lived!
As for Jim, she would kill him as soon as she
got big enough!  She wouldn't even speak to
Uncle Jack unless he promised her that the baby
colt should not be killed!

"Poor little colt," she said as she put her arms
around its neck and her tears fell over its big, soft
eyes, "God sent you last night and they want to
kill you to-day."

Uncle Jack brushed away a tear himself and,
stooping, picked up the colt's feet, one at a time,
examining the little filly.

Little Sister watched him intently: to her mind
Uncle Jack knew everything.  The tears were
still in her eyes when Uncle Jack looked up
quickly and said in his jolliest way: "Hello,
Little Sister, this filly is all right!  Deformed be
hanged!  She's sound as a hound's tooth, just
weak in her tendons and we can soon fix them.
Give her a little time for strength.  No, they'll
not kill her, little one—" and he caught the little
girl up, giving her a hug.

The tears gave way to a crackling little laugh.
Little Sister was dancing in the straw for joy!
What fun it was to help Uncle Jack fix her up!
She brought him the cotton batting herself and
gravely watched him as he made stays for the
weak tendons and bent ankles.  Finally, when he
had the filly fixed and had called Jim, who held
her in his arms to the mother's flank until she had
had a good breakfast, the little girl could not keep
still.  In a burst Of generosity she begged Jim's
pardon and said she intended to give him a pair
of grandpa's boots that very day.  In return for
this Jim promptly named the filly "Little Sister."

But having once said that the colt was
"no-count," the old General refused to notice it.
"Po' little thing," said he, a month after it was
able to pace around without help from its stays,
"po' little thing!  What a pity they didn't kill it."

But Uncle Jack and Little Sister, with the help
of old Uncle Wash, nursed it, petted it and helped
old Betty to raise it.  And the next spring their
reward came in a nervous, high-strung but delicate
looking little slip that was indeed a beauty.  The
General would surely relent now!  But those who
thought so did not know the old man.  He merely
glanced at the weanling and remarked again:
"The damned little weakling!  That old Betty
should ever have played off on me like that!"  He
turned indifferently away.  Whereupon both
the filly and the little girl turned up their noses
behind his back.

The fall that the filly was three years old the
big county fair came off, with pacing stakes for
the best three-year-old.  The purse was a
thousand dollars, but greater still was the glory!

The old General had entered a big colt named
Princewood for the stakes.  This colt had been
carefully trained for two seasons and had already
cost his owner more than he was worth.  "But
it's the reputation I am after, suh," the General
said to the driver, "the honor of the thing.
Our farm has already taken it twice, you know."

Now Uncle Jack was something of a whip
himself.  He could not ride because of a lame knee,
so he became an expert in driving.  The old
General had failed to notice how all the fall he had
been giving Betty's filly special attention with a
hot brush now and then.  Wrapped up as he was
in Princewood's wonderful speed, he had not
noticed that Uncle Jack had frequently called for his
light road wagon, and that he and Little Sister,
now six years old, had taken delightful spins down
the shady places in the cool byways, where the
footing was good and there was no gravel or stones,
and nobody could see them when they asked the
high-strung little filly "to step some," as Little
Sister expressed it.

Then at supper one night, when Colonel Goff
had dropped in as he often did, the old General
began to brag about Princewood's wonderful speed
and of the way in which his favorite grandson,
Braxton Bragg, could drive him.

"Why, Goff," said the General, "that boy is
a wonder!  He drove the colt to-day a mile with
one hand in 2:25."

Uncle Jack winked at Little Sister, and she had
to cram her mouth full of peach preserves to keep
from laughing.  The General saw and guessed
there was a joke on him somewhere, and being
one of those who loved to joke others, but did not
love to be joked himself, he flushed red and began
to praise Braxton Bragg openly, hoping it would
go home to his other grandson who sat so quietly
at the table winking at Little Sister and with
something evidently up his sleeve....

"Yes, suh," said the General after a while,
"Princewood will simply eat up the field, and
Braxton Bragg—ay, there's a boy for you!—he'll
be a great soldier some day—Braxton
Bragg will simply drive the hoofs off the whole
bunch."

Then Eloise looked up.  Eloise was fifteen and
lithe, with her red-gold hair just being put up,
and so graceful and beautiful that Little Sister
worshipped her, as did also Uncle Jack and
Braxton Bragg, and Colonel Goff for that matter.

Eloise had caught the wink that Uncle Jack
gave, and understood it in an instant.  For Eloise
knew things, especially about horses.

"And you really think Braxton Bragg and
Princewood will eat up the field," she said ever
so sweetly and respectfully to the old General.
"My, I'd like ever so much to take the field end
of that," she added indifferently, but winking at
Uncle Jack.

"My dear," said the old General, "I don't
gamble with sweet school girls; but if Princewood
fails to make good, I'll just give you that fine
Whiteman saddle you've been wanting all the
time——"

"I can't play a one-sided bet like that; it
isn't fair," said Eloise.  "I'd like to be as
generous as you are, sir, and put up a forfeit.  But
dear me," and she sighed like the exiled queen in
the fairy tale, "I'm dowerless and own nothing."

"Good," said Colonel Goff.  "Brave girl! now
that lets *me* in.  General, just let me take the bet
off your hands.  Now then, Eloise, I'll take you
dowerless—for you are a dower all unto
yourself," he said, bowing grandly, "and I'll bet
you—mark me now—I'll bet you that new English
saddle mare I've just imported, against your own
sweet self, that my friend the General's Princewood
will win that race!"

"It's a go," cried Eloise, rising gracefully and
taking his hand, "red-leather-bargain-done-for-ever,"
she added laughing.

The General looked pleased—he showed it in
his bland smile and the vigorous nodding of his
head.  He whispered to Goff: "By gad, Goff,
but all joking aside—she'll make you the finest
wife alive!"

Eloise heard and looked over at Jack with a
smile, but Jack's head was down on his breast and
there was no smile on his lips.

Never remotely—in any way—in his dreams—(and
being a poet, he dreamed often) had he
thought of Eloise belonging to anyone but
him!...

It looked as if all the county was there on the
fine fall day of the race.  It was one of those
sweet old country fairs where the yeomanry of
the hills and the lassies from the valleys make
holiday, and the heifers with polished horns share
the glory with the fillies, bedecked with ribbons,
and stepping proudly in air to music.

The field was a large one; for the purse was
rich and the honor even richer.

"And Princewood's a prime favorite, suh,"
chuckled the old General as he walked around,
holding by the hand a little girl who went
everywhere with him, and who wondered whether,
after all, Uncle Jack really knew.  And so
hearing so much that was braggart of Princewood, she
all but lost faith: as is the way of us all if
we do not touch, now and then, the shrine of our
Truth.

Eloise was there, now flirting with the country
beaux, and now riding Colonel Goff's saddle mare
in the rings for blue ribbons.  By two o'clock she
had the mare's head-stall full of them, and one big
one adorned her own riding whip as "the best
lady rider."  Seeing her beauty and grace, Colonel
Goff murmured to himself:

"By gad, but I'll make her Lady Carfax some day."

The bell had already rung twice for the race and
all the owners and horses were supposed to be
preparing to score down, when a new entry drove
in.  He sat in a spider-framed four-wheeled
gentleman's road cart instead of in a sulky, which
would make him at least four seconds slow in a
race like that.  And he wore a cutaway business
suit and a soft felt hat, and not a gaudy jockey
cap and silk coat as did Braxton Bragg, who drove
Princewood and was bragging about what he was
going to do.

The newcomer nodded familiarly to the starting
judge and paced his nervous looking little filly up
the stretch.

"Who is that coming into this race in that
kind of a thing?" asked the old General of a
farmer standing near, for his eyesight was failing
him.

"Why, General, don't you know yo' own grandson?
That's young Jack Ballington," said the man.

"The hell you say!" shouted the excited old
man.  "Why dammit, has Jack gone crazy?  He
always was a fool!"  And he clattered over a
bench with his wooden leg and hobbled up the
stretch to head off the pair.

"By gad, suh, Jack," he shouted, "are you
going to drive in this race?"

Jack nodded and smiled, while he soothed the
nervous little filly with gentle words.

"And what's that little rakish looking thing
you've got there?"

"That's Little Sister, Grandfather," he said,
good-naturedly.  "I'm really just driving her to
please our little girl and see how she'll act in company."

The old General was amazed, indignant, outraged.
"Why, you're the daddy of all damned
fools that ever lived!" he blurted.  "They'll
lose you both in this race!  Get off the track,
Jack, for God's sake, and don't disgrace old Betty
this way—why, that old mare—I've ridden her
for fifteen years!  Why, I rode her dam clear
through the war.  She helped chase Banks and
Fremont out of the valley—why that little no-count
thing—Jack, she'll drop dead if you extend her."

Jack smiled.  "It's just for a little fun, Grandfather,
and to please the little girl; for it's her
pet, you know.  I'll just trail them and if she's
too soft I'll pull out the second heat.  But she's
better than you think," he added indifferently.

The old General expostulated, threatened; but
Jack laughed good-naturedly and drove off.  Then
the old General repented.  It was comically
pathetic to hear him call out: "Jack, Jack, don't
tell anybody it's old Betty's colt, will you?
Promise me, boy.  Why, I rode her for fifteen years.
I rode her dam all through the valley of Virginia
with Stonewall Jackson."  But Uncle Jack drove
on, chuckling to himself: "I'll bet ten to one he'll
be telling it before I do."

When the little filly got into company she was
positively gay.  She forgot all about herself, and
like great people the world over she lost her
nervous ways when the great effort was on, and
went away at the go of the starter with a rush that
almost took Uncle Jack's breath from him.

He pulled her quickly down.  "Ho—ho, Little
Sister—if you do that again you'll give us
all dead away, and that will spoil the fun."  He
glanced quickly around to see if anyone saw him.
But the crowd were all busy watching Princewood.
So Uncle Jack trailed behind, the very
last of the bunch, but with the little filly fighting
indignantly for her head all the way.

Nobody seemed to see them at all, that is,
nobody but a little girl, who clung nervously to the
old General's middle finger, and wondered, with
her child's faith fiercely battered, if her Uncle
Jack, her Uncle Jack who knew it all and
could do anything, if he, the mighty, was really
going to tumble from his lofty throne in her
mind?

Then she got behind the General's big Prince
Albert coat tail, and wiped away two nervous little
tears.  Princewood had paced in way ahead.
She stuck her fingers in her ears, so that she could
not hear the shouts, and her little nervous lips
closed tight with indignant shame.  When she
took them out the shouting was over, but she
heard the old General say, "Wasn't it a
walkover?  That fool grandson of mine has always
made me tired.  I don't believe the little thing
can go round again."

This cut into the soul of the little girl.  She
pretended to go after a glass of the big red
lemonade that they sold under a near-by tree; but really
she went to cry in the dark hall under the grand
stand and to wipe her tears on the frills of the
pretty little petticoat Mother Thesis had made for
her just to wear to the fair.

There was one who knew, however, because she
really had horse sense.  She was riding a beautiful
English saddle mare across the infield, and she
looked like a young Diana in her dark blue riding
suit, and she sat her horse like the Centaur's wife.
As she rode across the grassy infield, Braxton
Bragg came up, and catching her mare by the bit,
stopped her short.  His little round, weak face
was focused into a smile.  Eloise flushed, vexed
that he should seize a moving mare by the bit, for
it is against all good horsemanship to do it; just as
one pilot would resent another interfering with
his wheel.  She looked down on him without a smile.

"Say, Eloise," he said as one who seeks a
compliment, "how do you like the way I did it?"

Long ago Eloise had said of Braxton Bragg:
"Answer a fool according to his folly."  Therefore
she smiled dryly now and said, "Beautifully.
How entirely and completely you do fill that sulky
seat, Braggy."  Braxton Bragg, not knowing
what satire was, took this for a compliment, and
smiled again.  Then, encouraged, he whispered
low to her: "You've never given me a chance to
show you just how much I could do for love of
you, Eloise."

"Oh," she answered, ever so sweetly.

"Yes," he sighed affectedly, trying to look
love-lorn, cocking his head with affected sadness
and succeeding only in looking ridiculous.

"Oh," she said sweetly again.  If he had had
sense he would have seen the sweetness was for
ends of her own.  "Oh, how sweet of you and
how cruel of me, Braggy."  Her tone was very
clear.  If he had only looked down the past he
might have remembered that whenever she had
called him Braggy she had been planning to do
him.

He sighed again, which shut his mouth the
second time.  Eloise, demurely, but inwardly
nearly bursting, did likewise.  "Well?" he
asked, expectantly.

"Yes," said Eloise encouragingly.

"I mean—can't—I now?"

"There's never a better time than the present,
Braggy, you remember the school books say."  Then
she reached down and, pretending earnestness,
said:

"You've got a walk-over, it's plain.  It's yours
for the asking, Braggy.  And so—well—it's
big odds I'm giving you, Braggy," and she laughed
like a wood thrush, "but if you win that race
I'll be yours alone henceforth and forever,
Braggy."

He paled, taking her hand, which fell
sidewise down past her saddletree, in his.

"Oh Eloise—dearest,"—he started bookishly,
but ended in his own way, which was mentally
unlearned: "Gee—but I'll win or bust!"

"And if you don't," began Eloise, ever so
indifferently.  "Of course you will," she smiled;
"but if you don't, Braggy, now dear, why you'll
just send me that set of seal-skins for that fashionable
hennery I'm going to at Washington?"

"Good!  Good!" he cried boisterously.
"What odds you give me!  You against a hundred
dollar seal-skin!  Oh, my, let me get busy!"  And
he rushed off, smirking back sillily at her.

"A saddle mare, a saddle, and a set of
sealskins all in one day.  Well, that's going some,"
Eloise chuckled as she rode up to the fence where
Uncle Jack stood.  Reaching down from her
saddle, she tapped him on the shoulder.

He looked up into her laughing eyes, and
flushed, for he had always loved her.

"Jack, Jack, you are a dandy!  You did it
beautifully!  O, the stride of that rush before
you called her down!  Say, how do you like my
mare?  Isn't she a beauty?"

"If you say so," he said slowly, testing her,
"I'll lay up the next heat; let *him* win."  He had
remembered Goff's bet.

She flushed.  Then she rapped him over the
shoulder lightly with her whip.

"Why, Jack, that would be horrible!  Do you
think I'd have made the bet if I hadn't believed
in you, loved you, brother mine?"

Jack flushed.  "Do you, Eloise—do you—"

Eloise laughed.  "Like a sister.  Aunt Lucretia
says we've got to marry each other, so what's
the use of my kicking?  But listen—now—say,
Jack—you've played right into my hand.
I'll need that Whiteman saddle for this beautiful
thing.  So hold up a while till I ride over and
close that bet with the General.  Now is my time!
He's crazy about that great lobster of his and
I could win The Home Stretch on this bet if I
had anything to put up."

She wheeled her horse, threw a kiss down at
Jack, and galloped off to find the General.

When Little Sister got back from her cry
the General was gone.  He was over at the table
talking to Uncle Jack.

"Now, Jack," said he, "don't disgrace old
Betty any more.  Why, I rode her fifteen years.
I rode her—"

Uncle Jack had always been so quiet that it was
a distinct surprise to the old General when he
showed an unsuspected grit and gameness.

"Hang her old dam, Grandfather, and your
cursed old war in Virginia!  Drop dead, will she?
Well, sir, you are likely to see something drop
yourself before this heat is over."  And he turned
on his heels and walked off.

The old General looked at him astounded, and
with positive admiration.

"By gad," he said to himself, "he's either
crazy or got more sense than us all.  By gad, to
think of him getting mad and having grit like
that!  He may make a soldier yet," and he
chuckled with pride.

Now Uncle Jack meant business.  He changed
his cart for a sulky.  Again they got the word.
Princewood, having the pole and all advantage,
flashed ahead in his big lumbering pace, Little
Sister in the very rear, struggling for her head.
Slowly, gradually, Uncle Jack let her have it.
Steadily, like moving machinery set in grooves
of steel, she came up on them, relentlessly,
mercilessly cutting them down, one after another.  At
the half there was nothing but Princewood ahead
and no one even saw her yet, for the shout was:
"Princewood!  Princewood!"  This heat would
make the race his.

"Princewood's got 'em, General!" yelled a
countryman, his mouth so wide open from excitement
that tobacco juice ran down his chin whiskers
and into his shirt collar.  "Princewood's got
'em!  There's nothin' that kin head 'im!"

"He's got 'em!" yelled the partisans of the
old General, packed solidly around him and
cackling with half crazy joy.  "Now jes watch
sum'thin' drop."

But a girl sitting on her horse and looking over
the crowd saw it differently.  A daring, knowing,
triumphant smile lingered around her mouth.
And not in heaven, nor in the star-lighted lake
below, ever shone two stars rippling into little
wavelets of glint and glory like those in the eyes
of her.

The General, seeing her, shouted: "Yes, watch
it drop!  No saddle for you, young lady!"

Down went her keen, fun-loving eyes to those
of the old soldier.  "It's dropped already,
General—see!  I own that saddle now!"

Something had happened.  The little filly felt
the reins relax and a kindly chirrup come from
her driver.  In a twinkling, in the whir of a
spinning wheel, she was up with the big fellow,
half frightened at her own speed, half doubting
that it was really she who did it, half sobbing
with the keen thrill of it, like a great singer who
for the first time hears her own voice filling a
great hall.

"*Princewood!  Princewood!*" shouted the
crowd around their idol, the General, "*Princewood's
broke the record!*"

The old General rose in happy anticipation:
"Yes, boys, it looks like the record is busted by—"

Here his jaw dropped as if paralyzed; for his
trained eye took in the situation and the word
died in his mouth.  What was that little bay
thing that had so gamely collared his big horse?
Who is that quiet-looking fellow in the soft hat
handling the reins like a veteran and leading the
march like Stonewall's Foot-Cavalry in the Valley?
His grandson, Jack, was in a cart; this man sat
in a sulky.  And Jack was driving a little
limp-waisted, hollow-flanked—

"Who the devil—" he began, when someone
clinging to his middle finger looked up, great
smiles chasing tears down her cheeks and so excited
she could scarcely breathe.

"Why, it's Little Sister, Grandpa!  Now isn't
she just too sweet for anything?"

The next instant the little filly laughed in the
big pacer's face, who had quit in a tangled break,
as much as to say: "*You big braggart duffer, have
you quit already?*" and then, like a homing
pigeon loosed for the first time, she sailed away
from the field.

"Princewood—Princewood has broke the
record—" shouted the farmer who hadn't caught
on and was shouting for Princewood, but was
looking at the champion pumpkin in the window
of the Agricultural Hall.

And then the old General lost his head and
what little religion he had left.  For he jumped
on a bench, his wooden leg rattling as he danced
up and down, like a flock of goats in a barn loft,
and this is what the town crier in the courthouse
window, a mile away, heard him yelling:

"*Damn Princewood!  Damn the record!
It's Little Sister—Little Sister—my own mare—old
Betty's filly.  I rode her fifteen years!  I
rode her dam—*"

"Oh—" sang out mockingly a beautiful girl,
sitting her horse beside him, with a laugh that
sounded like a wood thrush's.  "But I've won a
saddle and a seal-skin cloak and the sweetest
mare in the world!  Say, Braggy," for Braxton
Bragg just then drove in, the last of the whole
procession—"that engagement is all off, isn't it?"

Then Uncle Jack, who had stopped and got out
of the sulky, came up, his face aglow.  And she,
her eyes still fired to starry beauty, leaned from
the saddle and kissed him.

"You darling Jack, how can I ever get even
for this?"

"I said he'd be telling about it first," said
Uncle Jack, wagging his head at the crowd, where
the old General stood telling them that it was *he*
who had bred the great little filly and that it was
*his old mare* who was the dam of her!

"And the little old no-count thing did play off
on you sure enough, didn't she, Grandpa?" came
from the tear-eyed tot beside him, so naively in
earnest and telling such a plain unvarnished truth
that even the old General's partisans had to wink
and nudge each other as they walked off.  The
old General laughed as he picked her up and said:
"And here's the little girl that saved her,
gentlemen, the smartest girl in Tennessee; and she's got
more horse sense than her old granddaddy!"

There was one more heat, of course; but it was
only a procession, and those behind—and that
meant the field—cannot swear to this day which
way Little Sister went....





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FLAME IN THE WOOD`:

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   II

.. class:: center large bold

   "A TWILIGHT PIECE"

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  ... "And all that I was born to be
   |  and do, a twilight piece."
   |                  —*Robert Browning*.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FLAME IN THE WOOD

.. vspace:: 2

Home again and Tennessee in April!  When
the train swept over the Highland Rim, the woods,
not yet in full leaf, seemed afire with the clustering
blooms of the pink azaleas.  On both sides, in
little sudden and short valleys, and farther off on
dwarf-oak hillsides, they blazed.  Far beyond
their faint, mist-like flush mingled with the sky
line in the distant openings, and seemed an arc
of soft sunset clouds.

Cream-white dogwoods rose up in open spaces
against the blurred, pink backgrounds, clustering
like evening stars in rose cloud-banks.  Anon they
grew in separate groups, down in little dells, and
each of these tiny bowls was full of them.

Their odor, soft and fragrant, swept through
the train, dew-damp and like old memories in
sweetness.

This seems to me to be the main thought about
all wild flowers, that they alone are God's idea of
beauty and not those that bloom in gardens and
hot houses through the skill of man.  If, from
any cause, such as the gas from a comet's tail,
men should vanish in a night, none of these last
would live to bloom again.  Like their makers
they would pass from the earth.  But like Nature's
Maker the wild sweet things of the wood and
meadows and mountains would bloom again,
although man were not, mirroring God's idea of
beauty even to the desert.

If it is Nature's great desire that that which is
best shall live, the wild flowers have Nature's
underwriting of approval.  Ancient Linnæus said
of one unfolding: "I saw God in his glory passing
near me and bowed my head in worship."

Through all the ages those who see, whether
poet or planter, think the same great thoughts.
Tennyson said of the flower plucked from the
crannied wall, that if he could know what it was
he should know what God and man were.  They
bring a larger thought even than that, for they
prove that God *is Beauty*.

Even as I was thinking this the train rushed
through what had once been a wood, but was now
a burnt and scarred spot, bare of life.  The
azaleas in their beauty, were the flame in the woods
which Nature had kindled: but this desolate spot
was the flame which had come from the hand of
man...

When the train stopped for water at the little
station I got out and gathered a great bunch of
flowers for Eloise....

Then as we dropped down into the Middle
Basin, filled with the blue grass in its spring glory,
whole acres of hepaticas twinkled up at us like
fallen fireflies.

At last I was home again, and home with a
new mission, new ideas.  For four years I had
studied trees and flowers in a German university.
I had prepared myself to be a forester.  Now I
was looking out of the car window at the wantonness
that had turned hillsides into gullies and rich
loam into beds of clay.  The little streams that I
had remembered running from a familiar wood,
now crawled, winding amid sand dunes bare of
trees.  The folly of it hurt me.  I saw that here
was work for me to do.





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.. _`THE HOME-STRETCH`:

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   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE HOME-STRETCH

.. vspace:: 2

How familiar were the hills around the little
Hermitage Station!  And how grateful was the
sweet clear air of its dew-bathed meadows after
the noise and smoke of the train!

My Aunt Lucretia imprinted two chilly kisses
from tight-shut lips on each of my cheeks.  She
was a large, strong, stout woman, with a fine,
high nose and full mouth, which, when it would,
could settle quickly into close-shut lips of
determination.  Her eyes were hazel and keen: kindly
when quiet; but quick to flash and far-seeing.

Without a word and very deliberately she looked
me over through her gold nose glasses.  I smiled
as I remembered how often I had seen her pass
on a horse she was purchasing in the same way.
Down the six feet of my height her keen eyes
went, dwelling, I imagine, a bit longer on my legs
where the old lameness had been in my knee since
my boyhood sickness from typhoid fever.  Again
I smiled, for in that same way I had seen her
linger over the doubtful tendon of a horse.  But
the noted German surgeon, Hoffman, had, in my
first year at Berlin, skillfully removed the floating
cartilage, and I saw my Aunt Lucretia's face light
up, satisfied with the straight limb, and my weight
upon it.  Then she looked lengthwise across my
shoulders, and a surprised pleasure shone in her
eyes.  I had grown from a frail boy into an
athlete.

We had not said a word.  I stood smiling at
her, and she, as was her custom, would not speak
until her survey was done.  Very deliberately she
looked me over.  I had seen her examine Young
Hickory, lineal descendant of Andrew Jackson's
famous Truxton in the same way.

I was eager to say something and get to Eloise.
I had caught a glimpse of her face at the surrey's
door.

"I thought you would grow into that," Aunt
Lucretia remarked, as she readjusted her glasses.
Then, as if to impress on me her long expressed
thought, she added, "You have grown beautifully
up to your pedigree, Jack."

I laughed.  "Well, if you have passed on me,
here goes," I said boisterously, as I seized her
around the neck and gave her a kiss, which
knocked off her glasses.

"Tut—tut, Jack, that will do!  Kissing is
silly and thoroughly unsanity.  There is Eloise
waiting for you—but no kissing—no hugging
her—none of it," she added.

I saw the straight, fine figure draw back half
haughtily into the carriage, and a half-protesting
look flash for an instant over the pretty face,
profiled through the open space.  She threw back
her head in the old tribute-demanding way, and
her half-closed lids veiled her eyes under great
curving, brown-red brows.  I caught a gleam of
the old daring fun in them, as she smiled and held
out both her hands, taking mine.

"Awfully glad to see you, Jack—welcome home."

My heart betrayed itself in the quick glance I
gave her.  She had developed so wonderfully in
those four years.  And how I had longed to see
her!

She sat smiling kindly into my eyes; I stood
looking sillily into hers, holding both of her hands
in mine, forgetful of Aunt Lucretia, and with no
word that I could say to Eloise.

"Eloise," I began haltingly at last, "is it—have
you—is it really you?"

I bent down to kiss her, but she fenced away
and drew back smiling.

I dropped her hand, hurt.

"Jack," and her tone tried to compensate me,
"behave now—everybody is looking."  Then
she added louder, "Have you really grown into
this handsome chap—and no lameness any more?"

"Tut—tut," broke in Aunt Lucretia, half
irritated, "you two make me tired.  Of course he
has—you have both grown wonderfully up to
your pedigree—I always said so—nothing
strange in that.  And as you are both grown
now," she added patronizingly and with the
old return of authority, "I intend to marry
you to each other before Christmas—see if I
don't."

I blushed and Eloise smiled—a trace of the
old fun-loving tease breaking across the corners
of her mouth.  Her beautiful clear blue-hazel eyes
smiled up into mine, full of the old fun and daring.

I bent over her.  "Eloise, aren't you really
going to kiss me?"

"It is unsanitary, Jack,—and—" she glanced
at Aunt Lucretia—"bad form and—"

I turned, hurt, and shook hands with old
Thomas, the driver.

"Mighty glad to see you back home, Marse
Jack, mighty glad!" said he.

I looked closely at his horses, with that
pretended admiration that I knew would please him,
in order to hide my chagrin.  There was embarrassment
in it too, for I knew I was under inspection
from the eyes of Eloise.

"I declare, Marse Jack," he went on, "dis
sho'ly ain't you, is it?  I declar to goodness if
you ain't biggern yo' daddy wuz, and yo' gran'pa—the
ole Jineral."  He grew easily loquacious.
"When I fust seed you a-comin' out dat cyar dore,
I didn't know you, and yit I sed to myself, *sholy
I've seed dat face—hit 'pears mighty complicated
to me somehow*."

A smothered laugh from Eloise.  "That is
what I've been trying to say, Thomas, but couldn't,
to save me, think of the right word.  Thank you
so much—'*complicated,*' Jack—that's too
good!"

I showed plainly that I did not like this from
Eloise.  Ridicule we may bear, but not from our
beloved.  And I had loved Eloise always, but
never so much as now.  Then she suddenly broke
into a smile, and said in her sweet sisterly way of
old: "Forgive me, Jack—I haven't lost my old
teasing way with you, have I?"

"I don't want you to," I said quietly.

"Well, what do you think of her?" broke in
Aunt Lucretia.

"I can't tell you how beautiful I think she is,
Aunt Lucretia," said I.

Eloise laughed, and looked dreamily up.  How
quickly her eyes had changed from daring to
dreams.  In her low, even laugh lay four years
of fashionable Washington schooling.  In the
soft tones of her voice were a thousand music
lessons.  In the well-gowned girl before me was
training, the spirit of gentlefolk, centuries of
correct pedigrees.  She had always been strong, and
with a form as lithe as a young frost-pinched
hickory.  How she could ride a horse and handle
a gun!  Her hair had been yellowish and flossy,
now it was like the distant flush of a red-top
meadow, mower-ripe.  I had left her an over-long
school girl, thin and callow, daring, caring
for nothing so much as running a risk of her neck
and limbs in trees, and bare-back gallops on any
half-broken colt on the farm.  But now—

Aunt Lucretia, watching me, guessed.

"Oh, well, she'll pass, won't she?" she said
rather braggartly for her, I thought.  "You'll
believe what I kept writing you now, eh?  Though
you never referred to it once, not once."

"Oh!  Aunt Lucretia," began Eloise protestingly.
Even her voice had changed.  It was not
the imperative, rollicking, colt-breaking voice of
the school girl I had known four years ago.  It
was now like a fall of soft, freestone water over
a moss-lined rock bed, purling into a deep pool
below, sand-bordered and waveless.

"Please don't tease him," she began again.

Aunt Lucretia laughed triumphantly: "Oh,
never mind.  I want to rub it in on Jack.  He needs
it curried into him.  He hasn't written me a line
to show that he intended to carry out my wishes
until I grew positively uneasy, for fear he'd marry
one of those Hessians, whose ancestors Washington
crossed the Delaware to whip that night."

(Hadn't written, I thought.  But no one shall
ever know what I had dreamed and hoped in those
four years.)

I was looking into Eloise's eyes; she flushed,
for I saw she knew my thoughts.

"You shan't be hard on Jack," she said, taking
my part as it seemed to save herself.  "Jack,
dear," and she took my hand in hers, her eyes for
the first time flashed with sympathy, "we must
do as of old, we must pool interests, when she is
against us we must combine to beat her.  And to
prove it I am going to defy her and kiss you, for
you've heard her say that we are betrothed, and
this is always the first thing after a betrothal,"
and with the old daring in her eyes she looked up
at me.

I remember into what a perfect Cupid's bow
her hitherto straight lips curved, and I flushed
crimson as my lips met hers.  Aunt Lucretia,
seeing this, said with emphatic shame, "Tut—tut,
unsanitary and silly!  Get into the surrey, Jack.
Thomas, drive these two fools home!"

In my heart I thanked Aunt Lucretia for that
tirade.  I knew Eloise of old.  She was always
on the side of the under dog.  For that reason
she had kissed me.  Still, with all her pretense I
noticed that Aunt Lucretia had arranged that we
should sit together, and had seated herself in front
with Thomas, where she could watch her roan
span trot off.

"Eloise," I whispered, dropping my hand on
hers, "is it really you?  I never dreamed you
would be so beautiful.  I have loved you always,
Little Sister.  Don't you love me a little?"

She laughed at my low voice.  Then she suddenly
grew serious, and said in a tone that hurt
me, "Of course I do, Jack, as your adopted sister.
But don't!" she protested, as I tried to kiss
her cheek.  "You are acting so queerly; as if we
were really in love!"

I drew back, very much hurt.  "Eloise!"

"Don't be silly, Jack, or you'll spoil it all.
Haven't I always been your little sister?"

"But surely, Eloise," I said, my heart in my
throat, "after all these years—you don't know
how I've loved you always, and lately yearned for
home and you."

She gave me a startled look.  "Jack, we must
stop this.  I have something to tell you."

The hills swayed as the surrey rushed by.  I
saw the old field mistily, the distant trees and the
white lime roads.  I was almost reeling in the
fear which her tone had brought.

"What do you think of them?" asked Aunt
Lucretia proudly.

I looked at the handsome pair, stepping like
one, at a good three minutes' gait.

"Splendid," I said.  "I should guess they
were Young Hickory's, and their dam, Nuthunter."

Uncle Thomas could not restrain a laugh.
These horses were his pride.  "Ain't los' none
of yo' hoss sense hobnobbin' with them furrin'
folks, Marse Jack.  You sho' hit it 'zactly!"

"I was afraid," went on Aunt Lucretia, "that
I might not be successful in straightening out the
Nuthunter legs; he hasn't the best of hocks, you
know.  But did you ever see anything more
beautiful?" she added.

"I never," I answered, looking steadily into
Eloise's eyes.

"Jack," laughed Eloise, "I must discipline you."

For answer I caught up her hand behind Aunt
Lucretia's back and kissed it.

"I'm sorry for you, Jack," she said with her
old quietness, "but—but—well, I'll see you
to-night and explain."  Then she looked out and
exclaimed, "The Home Stretch, Jack!  Isn't it
beautiful?  Has it changed any?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE HICKORIES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE HICKORIES

.. vspace:: 2

We drove up to the great mansion built of
home-baked bricks.  It sat on a blue grass slope,
and before it lay twenty acres of blue grass lawn,
tree-peopled: oaks, ash, poplars; and elms, red
and white; and a great broad-topped gum.  Eloise
and I remembered this last best of all, for in
the fall it early turned into a great, flaming
brushheap of red, crimson streaked with black.
Scattered about on the lawn, filling the gaps, were
single trees of dogwood.  In the dusk they shone
like silver nosegays in dark vases.

The evening dank was in the air as we drove
up; that rare odor, which is really no odor, but
only a memory of one; and as we whirled up
the drive there came a whisp of perfume, blue
grass cut before its time, fresh spring hay, for
a sick brood mare, in the meadow beyond.

The night sounds made me homesick, even
though I was at home; a whippoorwill, a
whinnying mare, the lowing of a lonesome calf in the
barn.  Far off, in the faint purple twilight, stood
the hills; and nearer was the black fringe of trees
which moated Stone's River.  Here was home
and April, and my heart was eager for them.

This was The Home Stretch, the home of my
grandsire, General John Rutherford.  His
daughter, my Aunt Lucretia, ran the farm for him,
as she did everything else within ten miles of
her, for my grandsire was old, and had lost a
leg while fighting with Stonewall Jackson in the
Valley.

Eloise guessed my thoughts.  Her voice was
quiet and tender as she said, "You should see
our hickories, Jack!"

I jumped from the surrey at the door, and drew
her with me.  "Let us look at them first of all,"
I said, "because there was our playhouse, there
were our dreams."

She smiled as she pointed to the walks still
lined with sunken ale bottles, their mouths
projecting upward as borders for our flower beds.

Aunt Lucretia had gone into the house.
Thomas had wheeled the surrey and team to the
barn.

The land we stood on had once belonged to
Andrew Jackson.  Here he had lived before he
had moved to the farm four miles away known
as the Hermitage.  Clover Bottom had been the
pride of a great, strong heart.  In the field
beyond had stood the pioneer store where Jackson
and Coffee had traded, with Indians.  Beyond
that was the far-famed circular field, in the great
bend of Stone's River, and level as a floor, where
Truxton and Plowboy and the unbeaten Maria
had once raced.  Still farther beyond Stone's
River circled like a tube of quicksilver through
the green of the wooded hills.

Never before was honesty put to such a test
as when Andrew Jackson gave up this home to
pay an unjust debt.  Without complaint he
moved further into the wilderness, and built his
great double log-cabin home.  That cabin is now
a shrine!

Here stood the giant hickories in a group, the
rugged, stately trees.  Why did he plant them
here?  Or had the old hero, with that love of
his for the unbending tree for which he was
named, let them stand unscathed, as Nature had
placed them?  They stood in a great group,
cathedral-like, one taller and more stately than
his fellows, like a spire.

Of all the trees the hickory is the conqueror.
Its purpose in life is to withstand.  It is a
fighting tree, rough of dress, careless of manner, rude
in its unpolished bark.  To be frightened by the
hails of heaven is not for it.  The hurricane
cannot quell it.  From its youth it has fought the
storm, and when the storm has tired it has still
stood, tattered but glorious.

Every fall in one great flaming pyre as of a
burning bush wherein there is Divinity, they have
blazed and burned before our wondering eyes.  A
warrior tree, and yet, withal, what no warrior
ever was: a giver of gifts, not a wrecker of those
already garnered; not bullets, not shells, not grape
shot dropped on the land; but nuts.  Some day,
truly, the real conqueror of the world will conquer
like this tree—overcoming in a hail of kindness
flung from loving hands.

"It was these trees," I said, turning to Eloise,
"that sent me to Germany to study forestry;
these trees and Dr. Gottlieb.  How is he?  I
can hardly wait till morning to run over to his
cabin."

Eloise laughed.  "Oh! you were always a
poet, Jack.  Dr. Gottlieb is the same, and he is
famous now; such books he has written of flowers
and trees!"

"Do you know they use his text-books in
Germany?" I asked proudly; "and that last work
of his, 'Tree Influence on Precipitation,' was
talked about in all the universities.  Look," I
said, pointing to a scarred and gullied hillside
across the road, showing bare even in the twilight,
"there is the great work to be done in our land,
there is the coming field for the young brains of
our country—that, and better farming, and the
watering of our great barren spots in the West.
We've cut down our trees wantonly—our
pioneer sires did so before us,—for the land had
to be cleared or they would have died.  But now
if I can only get them to change!  You should
see the German and French system.  When I
came through France, along their coasts, both on
the Mediterranean and the Channel, were great
forests planted to break the winds and storms.
I was told that a century ago the winds began
to make deserts of their coasts, encroaching mile
after mile into the land.  Now, with the trees
planted, it is a garden again."

Eloise was listening silently.  Then she said,
"Jack, that is all very fine, and it took courage
in you to do it, to go over there.  It was not
Aunt Lucretia's idea; hers was a horse-farm for
you; and the General's was West Point and war.
He has never been the same toward you, Jack—I
can see it—since you would not go to West
Point."

"He never cared for me as he did for Braxton,"
I said.  I winced, for I loved my old grandsire.

"He has not written me a line since I have
been gone," I went on.

"Poor Jack," and she took my hand in hers
in the old way, "and I have always teased you
cruelly, Jack."

"And Eloise," I said, "I have always loved you."

"Jack," she said, "Little Brother,"—those
words I knew of old meant condescension—"I
knew it would not do.  I wanted you to love
someone else.  You know Aunt Lucretia's silly
conditions."  She flushed in the twilight.  "I
hoped while you were away," she went on, "if we
didn't write you'd forget me."

"And instead," I said, bringing her hand to
my lips, "I thought of no one else but you.  I
came back loving you, Eloise, more than ever; as
a man's love is greater than a boy's."

She grew suddenly stern.  "Jack, Jack, haven't
I told you not to?"

"Not?" I cried.  "Did any real lover ever
have a choice?  It's not his part to decide—"

"Listen, Jack; you know I would not lie to
you, but you must understand how foolish—how
useless—"

"Come to supper, Jack—Eloise."  It was
Aunt Lucretia calling.  "Here is father and
Colonel Goff," she added as we walked up the
steps.  "Father has grown quite deaf, Jack,
since you saw him."

Colonel Goff, handsome, alert, and quick even
to bluntness, came forward, and shook my hand.

"Glad to see you back again, Jack—welcome home."

My grandfather sat in his great chair, facing
the lawn.  His wooden leg rested on the railing.
Great curls of tobacco smoke rose from his
corner of the porch.

There was the old nervous, staccato clatter of
wood and cane meeting on the floor as he arose
to greet me.  I saw the stern, unyielding face give
back no smile of pleasure as he took my hand.
He stood looking at me doubtfully, his mind
evidently weakening with old age.  The sadness
of it flashed over me, for his mind had been the
mind of a strong man in his day.  My Aunt
Lucretia promptly screamed in his ear, "This is
Jack, Father; he has come home."

"Jack, ah—ah—Jack, glad to see you, suh;
and who did you say it was, Lucretia?"

"Your grandson, Jack Ballington.  He has
been away studying in Germany," she screamed
again.

"Aha," said the old man, "aha—of
course—wouldn't go to West Point, though the
President himself gave him the appointment in my
behalf.  Aha—Jack—a brooding, dreaming
sort of a feller—always mooning around trees
and writing poetry.  Won't fight—not a damn
one of 'em will.  And what a chance to fight you
would have now!  What a bully scrap we are
going to have!  Have you heard, suh," he turned,
and spoke sharply to me, "have you heard that
the Spaniards blew up our battleship the other
month, and that we are going to blow hell out
of 'em?  And they've been needing it for
two centuries.  Ah!  If I were only younger,
wouldn't I be in!  Imagine it, Goff," he said,
turning to him, "imagine me fighting under the
old flag again!  Didn't think I'd ever live to see
that day when we were charging Banks in the
Valley.  Ah, 'twas a family scrap—only a family
fight—like old man Tully and wife—have
to fight a little at home now and then, so they'd
love each other more when they made up.  Ah,
suh, I'd give this farm to be your age again, and
a chance to fight under the old flag once more.
Joe Wheeler wrote me the other day that
President McKinley would make me a Brigadier, if
I'd go in.  By gad, suh, I sat down, and shed
tears to think I was too old!"

He was silent awhile; then, "Ha, ha, but I
read in the paper to-day that the Spanish Prime
Minister is out in a statement saying it'll be easy
to whip us, because we're divided North and
South, and that the Southern Confederacy will
arise again!  He is right.  We have already
arisen.  I see in every Southern State ten times
more have volunteered than their quota calls for.
Yes, we'll arise, and will help McKinley whip hell
out of them!"  He stamped his wooden leg on
the floor.

"Now, Braxton Bragg—ah, he's in it.  Do
you know, suh, that he's a Captain in the First
Tennessee, and they are preparing now to go to
the Philippines?  Ah, what a chance, what a
chance you had, suh!  And what do you say you
did in Germany?"

"I studied forestry and farming, sir," I said,
flushing hot under his words, "and with it I took
two years' training in the military school at
Berlin, taking instructions up to the rank of
captain in the Emperor's Guards."

"The hell you did!" he shouted excitedly.
"Did you have sense enough to do that?  Those
soldiers are the best drilled soldiers in the world,
Goff.  Your damned English to the contrary
notwithstanding," he added, smiling at the
Colonel.  "In the Emperor's Guards!  Strike a
match, Lucretia, and let me see him."  In the
light of the match he stood up I stood above
him six good inches.  That and my shoulders
breadth surprised him, for he went on: "You
left here a crippled stripling, mooning all the
time over flowers and such cat-hair, and crying
if anybody cut down a tree.  But you'll never
fight, none of you ever have!  Sissy is the word
for the whole kit of the world's mooners.  Still,
you do surprise me, suh, now and then; I'll be
honest about it; like this studying military in
Germany.  Ha—ha—think of it!"

"And beating you and your whole bragging
bunch with Little Sister—have you forgotten
that, sir?" asked Eloise, nervily thrusting her
intense face into his, her eyes flashing, ready as
she always had been to fight my battles for me.

My grandsire laughed good-naturedly.  He had
always had respect for Eloise in her fighting
moods, as had everybody else on the farm.  His
voice was decidedly conciliatory as he said,
"There, dear,—maybe I am too hard on
Jack—ha—ha—guess that was neatly turned, and
we took our medicine like men and soldiers.  Eh,
Goff?"  He turned to me suddenly.  "If you'd
only quit this tree foolishness and fight; but you
won't do it, suh—not a damned one of you ever
did!  And your lameness?"

"It was a cartilage in my knee, sir; Dr. Hoffman,
the famous surgeon, took it out soon
after I went over.  I am not lame now, sir, at
all."

"Glad to hear it, suh, glad to hear it."

He was silent for a moment, looking out into
the dusk.  "And you know all about trees—aha—well,
there's only one tree in the world I care
a damn for; there it is, and it is dying.  My
mother loved it.  She used to nurse me there,"
he added tenderly, his voice dropping low.

"It's that beautiful elm at the dining-room
window, Jack," explained my Aunt.

"The most perfect tree I ever saw," went on
my grandsire, reminiscently.  "The others just
grew up any way, but that one stood like the
great feathered eagle plume in the hair of the
Comanche chief, Setting Sun.  He was the first
Indian I killed on the plains—in a hand to
hand fight—and that eagle feather in his
hair—I'll never forget it.  And that elm was like
it—and—and my mother loved it," he said, his
voice muffled up in huskiness.  He blew his nose
vigorously, and went on more cheerily, "Make
yourself at home, suh—do what you please.  I
wanted you to be a soldier, suh, like Braxton
Bragg, ah, what a man that boy has developed
into at West Point!  But it isn't born in
you—can't make a fighter out of a dreamer."

He sat down, and Aunt Lucretia, taking my
hand, led me in.  "Goff," I heard him say, "that
fight at Winchester when we charged into the
town—you led me a little you know, and—"

I felt Eloise's hand in mine as we went down
the hall.  "I hate him," she said, tossing her head
back toward the old man.  "It's mean and
sinful; but I hate him!  After all these years to
greet you in that way.  And Braxton Bragg—you
should see what a fool he is, Jack, in his
captain's straps, and living hourly up to his
name!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`COLONEL GOFF`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   COLONEL GOFF

.. vspace:: 2

Colonel Goff followed us shortly afterwards
into the hall.  He had ridden over on his
English hunter while Eloise and I had been on the
lawn greeting our tree friends.  He was
immaculately groomed, in polished boots, puttees
and cap, an English crop in his hands.  Fifty
years old, his black hair slightly streaked with
gray, he was handsome, and there was a masterful
air about him that even an enemy must have
admired.  A younger son of the Earl of Carfax,
he had come to America when my grandsire was
fighting with Stonewall Jackson in Virginia.  He
had volunteered for service, and had been placed
in Jackson's corps, and on my grandsire's staff.
Here his real, sterling qualities found birth and
he proved to be a brilliant soldier.  It was he
who charged ahead of the rebel yell and led the
advance that scattered Banks.  It was he who
led again at Cedar Creek, caught the brilliant
Sheridan napping, and sent his command reeling
back in a retreat which would have meant
demoralization for anyone but Sheridan.  His
fondness for my grandsire was no less than the
old man's for him, and after the war Colonel
Goff, being in disgrace, it was said, with his father
at home, moved to Tennessee to be near his old
commander.  He had bought a fine place near
ours, and here he had lived the life of an English
gentleman, with his hounds, his horses, and his
utter disregard of all the local and established
ideas of country temperance or morals.  He was
not a man who asked for things, he took them.

Even before I left home I had secretly rebelled
at his admiration for Eloise.  In all her masterful
ways, her riding, her fox chasing, her hunting
with the men, following Goff or the General
all day on her pony, and killing quail dead-straight,
in the flush of the covey, he had openly
admired her.  Afterwards I heard him say that
she was a duchess born, and the only one he had
seen in America.  He had humored, petted and
helped to spoil her as a child.  As a girl, there
never was a costly thing she wanted but he gave
it to her.

In the dining-room, when supper had been
announced, I noticed the flushed pleasure in Eloise's
eyes at sight of him.  It was half a daring look,
as of the hunted defying the hunter, that I saw
in her eyes, but I could not rightly decipher it,
or tell whether it meant she was conquered or as
yet unconquered.

My heart burned with jealousy at the sight of
it.  The great joy of my home-coming was
gone!  I knew his way, and that he would stay
for supper.

"I had thought," I whispered sourly to Eloise,
"that I would at least have this first evening
alone with you."

Eloise laughed.  "Oh, he comes when he
pleases, and I—I send him home when I please."

He had greeted me pleasantly, but during
supper he paid little attention to me.  Once he
laughed at my study of forestry, and added,
"And to go to Germany for it, when you might
have gone to England!"

After supper, when I had gone with Aunt
Lucretia to the barn to help her with a sick colt,
I smelt the odor of his cigar coming up from
our old seat under the elm.  I grew bitter at
the thought that anyone but I should sit there
with Eloise.  My Aunt must have noticed
this, for she called: "Come in here—both of
you.  This isn't fair to Jack."

Aunt Lucretia and Colonel Goff could never
meet ten minutes in their lives without a heated
argument over American and English horses.
She generally worsted him, because she had all
the records at her tongue's end, and because in
any kind of controversy she was fearless.  For
an hour to-night, and until he left, she scored him
fearlessly.  "Take that nick-tailed horse of
yours," said Aunt Lucretia, "Colonel Goff,
couldn't you do better than that in England?"  There
were two things which always especially
incensed her; one was to cut off a horse's tail and
the other to import an animal from England,
when a better one might be had here.

Colonel Goff explained that there were no such
horses in America.  "He is a four-mile hurdler,"
said he.  "You've nothing of the kind in this
blooming country."

"Why, madam, he holds the record jump
behind the Quoin hounds at Melton-Mowbry.  The
kill was in the main driveway of a manor and
his rider cleared the picket fence to be in
first.  That fence measured five and a half feet
and to this day it is the record at Melton-Mowbry."

"A four-miler, that means a running horse,"
said my Aunt.  "Of course we have them.  And
a hurdler—that's only a jumping horse.  Now,
we've never cared much for jumpers.  Why, I've
a mule in my barn that can go over a ten rail
fence any day.  Uncle Ned says she just climbs
it; anyway, I've never been able to build one high
enough to keep her out of the cornfield on the
other side.  But there's Eloise's Satan, son of
Young Hickory, scion of General Jackson's
Truxton.  The man his sire is named for used to beat
your English at any kind of a game at New Orleans,
and I'll wager that Satan would be a mighty
hurdler and high jumper if he only had a chawnce,"
she said, smiling, in funny mimicry of Goff.

"Fawncy!" laughed Goff, twisting his
mustache.  "Why, he couldn't jump over a chalk
line!  It's all in the training and pedigree!  My
Nestor colt holds the record for the Melton-Mowbry
meet, and his high jump was five feet six."

My Aunt turned the subject as if it were
forgotten.  But I knew she never forgot, and that
she had something up her sleeve.

I was worried that Goff should linger so on
my first night, for I saw plainly that he hoped
we would retire and that he wanted to get Eloise
off for a *tête-à-tête*.  Aunt Lucretia saw this also,
and whispered to me when she got the chance,
"Freeze him out, Jack; he shan't have her to-night!"

"Why, Major Hawthorn," she said presently,
turning and rising abruptly.

The major came in on us silently, in his soft,
well-bred way.  I rose instantly to greet him.

"Jack, my boy!" said he, throwing one arm
around me, and drawing me to him.  "How you
have grown!  I heard you had come home, and I
had to see you to-night."

"And you didn't want to see *me*?" said Eloise,
coming up, and kissing him; for the Major was
her ideal, and she was always his pet.  "Now,
Major, you always said that you loved me as
much as you did Jack," she teased, winding an
arm into his.

"Just the same as ever, my dear; you are both
my two children always," he laughed.  "Why,
good evening, Goff—and the General, where is
he?" he asked my Aunt Lucretia.  "I have news
that will please him."

My Aunt went after my grandfather.

"Jack," he turned to me, "what a man you
have grown into!  I'm hungry for a long talk
with you."

The Major sat down, and Colonel Goff offered
him a cigar.  He struck a match, but before
using it, held it a moment to my face.
"Inspection, Jack," said he, smiling; "you know how
hard it is to break an old soldier of his habits."

I saw his finely-cut, sensitive face light up.  I
noticed the familiar turn of his mustache, his
kindly mouth, the correct dress, the straight,
martial bearing, and the courtesy, that seemed a
gift of his own.

"And it looks as if I might die in harness,"
he went on.  "Ah, here's the General."

He rose and shook hands with my grandsire.
"I have come over to tell you, General, of a
telegram I received this afternoon from the
President, and I should so like to have your advice
before answering—the advice of all of you,"
he said kindly, turning and bowing our way.

"Ah, Hawthorne," said my grandsire, "I
know what it is—I knew it was coming—I
wrote Joe Wheeler—"

"I thought you had something to do with it,"
said the Major, "and I shall abide by your
decision, my General," he added softly.

"McKinley has appointed you Brigadier-General,"
went on my grandsire quietly.  "The
First Tennessee will be in your brigade.  I can't
talk of it, Hawthorne—I want to go to the
Philippines with you so bad, and give the damned
Yankees—ah, pardon—pardon me—I mean
the damned Spaniards another good drubbing!"

There was a burst of laughter from us all.
My grandsire sat down confused.

"It is as you said," Major Hawthorne replied,
"and I am going to do as you say, General.  I
have taken your orders in Virginia too often to
refuse now."

"Hawthorne, I envy you; by gad, I envy you,"
said the old man.

"General, do you know that I never was so
happy before?  I have so wanted to fight under
the old flag.  Jack," he turned to me, his face
smiling, "Jack, I have come to see you for this
purpose—I want you on my staff—I know the
training you have had, I know the stuff that is
in you.  I want you, my boy.  I've ridden ten
miles to-night to tell you."

"Tut—tut—Hawthorne—nonsense!" broke
in the General.  "Don't start out making breaks
like that.  Jack is a good boy, but he is not a
fighter—now, there's Braxton Bragg—"

"My grandfather is doubtless right, General
Hawthorne," I said quietly.  "I thank you from
my heart for your kindness—but—"

Eloise arose flushing, indignant.  "Jack *is* a
fighter; a better fighter than some people who
strut around in khaki, and make great pretense,
but amount to nothing," she said deliberately and
with emphasis.

Then she came over and put one arm affectionately
on my shoulder.  "And General Rutherford,"
she went on, her voice trembling
with anger, "I mean this for you, and I mean
no disrespect; but it is cruel of you the way you
have slurred Jack, and I almost doubt that you
ever made the good fighting record you have,
when I think how easily you can be fooled into
taking a tin soldier for the real thing!  I do,
and now you know what *I* think."

Colonel Goff laughed, pleased.  "You pinked
him just right, Eloise.  Been thinking I'd tell the
General that myself—eh, General?" and he
slapped the old man familiarly on the back.

The old General answered testily, "Tut—tut—madam;"
and then he laughed.  "Gad,
but I wish you were a man!  Damned if *you*
wouldn't fight!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PEDIGREES AND PRINCIPLES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   PEDIGREES AND PRINCIPLES

.. vspace:: 2

My Aunt Lucretia undoubtedly was the real
master of The Home Stretch.  She ruled its
thousand acres of low, rolling, blue grass land,
which bore in pioneer days the canebrake and the
poplar, and for a century had been the nursery
of thoroughbreds.

My Aunt lived and dreamed in pedigrees.
Heaven, according to her, was a blue-grass
meadow filled with pedigreed people, and
hell—I remember how I had laughed when she said,
"Why, Jack, if there is such a place, it's a low
jockey-yard filled with scrubs!"

Pedigrees, I am certain, was her gauge of life.
She was more man than woman, handsome though
she was.  She should have been a bewigged,
knee-breeched, ruffle-shirted, horse-racing Virginia
gentleman of the old school, as many of her
ancestors had been.  She still clung to a few blooded
horses, though her immaculate dairy of Jersey
cows was her greatest pride.  When my parents
died, even before I could remember, she had
adopted me.  She intended that I should inherit
The Home Stretch.  Then, true to her ideas, she
had planned a proper mate for me.  She had been
a success in mating everything but herself.  Her
ribbons won at State Fairs and in Horse Shows
proved it; for her Merino sheep she held a great
cup from the International Exhibit in Paris.
The wool of her Tennessee sheep had gone back
across the ocean, and beaten the parent wool on
its own soil.  This great, heavy, solid silver cup
sat on the mantel in the library, and every spring,
when I had a cold, she had given me punch cobbler
out of it.

She had early paired me off with Eloise Ward,
who was an orphan, and a distant relative of her
mother.  My Aunt had adopted her, as she had
me, and given her every grace of a fashionable
education.  At ten she had, as she expressed it,
engaged us.  I remember it was Eloise's tenth
birthday and my twelfth.  She bought a little
turquoise ring and made me give it to Eloise.

"Now, Jack, Eloise is yours!  Eloise, you will
marry him when you are grown.  Now kiss each
other as sensibly engaged people do, to seal it.
After this no more kissing."

The last advice was unneeded.  Up to then
we had never kissed, but had fought continually.
Knowing Aunt Lucretia, and that if we did not
do as she said, something uncomfortable would
happen to us, we screwed up our mouths, each
trying to outdo the other in mock martyrdom, and
complied.

After that Aunt Lucretia was very gracious.
I think we showed remarkable horse-sense, young
as we were, in carrying out her wishes, inasmuch
as we expected some day to own the great farm
and house.

To comfort me she used to say—for she knew
my love of blooded stock: "She is beautiful,
Jack, well built and coupled just right in the back.
One link more of vertebræ would have spoiled her,
turned her up too sloping between the shoulders,
and made her gangling in the hips.  If there's too
many links in a filly's back, when the pinch of
contest comes, you know, Jack, as well as I do,
there will be a crumpling—and it is generally in
their legs.  And Eloise's, Jack—well, you should
see it—thoroughbred—taut as a bow string—holding
hip and head together.  And not too short,
either, Jack; the little dicky, short-backed ones,
with schooner hips, are a sure sign of several
vertebræ being lost by sitting on them for too many
generations at the loom or the wheel, or carrying home
the week's washing on their heads!  It's the scrub
sign, my boy.  And Eloise is clean-limbed with
good flat bones.  Jack, as you love me and your
God, never marry a woman that can't span her
ankle with her thumb and forefinger—that kind
of a fetlock is a scrub of the most pronounced
type!  It came from ancestors before them for a
thousand years, who had all their weight on their
ankles—just hauling plows like beasts of
burden.  And Eloise has great style with a fine sweep
and action.  Look how boldly she steps and clean
and true!  No loblolling, lazy ambling there—hitting
even on the ground—and her hair,
Jack—red-chestnut—it is beautiful and not too
much.  Shun the brood-mare with mane thick and
heavy.  It is pretty but comes from the scrub
Shetlands or Andalusian jennets.  Look—look,
Jack—isn't she beautiful?"

I watched her myself, tall, her scornful, daring
head thrown back, her fine braids of sorrel, silken
hair flying out, as in a long-limbed, leaping sweep,
she chased the collie across the yard.

The comparison was fitting—as a thoroughbred,
Eloise was superb.  My Aunt had copied
it all by herself, tabulating for me, most
elaborately and artistically, on a great sheet of
parchment, Eloise's pedigree.  It was such a tabulation
as I had seen her work over night after night,
often for months, handing down volume after
volume of the English and Bruce's Stud Book
and the Trotting and Pacing Register.  In bold,
block, decorated letters, she gradually evolved
Eloise's sire and dam, as she grimly called them,
and thence on to granddams and g. g. dams
(every g. as I learned standing for another generation)
until it looked, when finished, like a great
river, with a hundred branching streams flowing
in, and an endless row of g. g. g. g. g.'s

Under each sire and dam, and in red ink, in
contrast to the black of their names, she had
written their records, short and pointed, and often with
astonishing frankness.  I remember that under
her grandsire—a Governor of Virginia—the
red ink ran: *Died of a wetting, while drunk at
a horse race!  Watch your children for too much
crude liquor!*

Under one of her dams, daughter of a
Carolina judge, she had: *She had a streak of
common, for she ate onions.  If you have daughters,
don't plant the things in your garden!*

Another of her great Virginia ancestors was a
preacher, noted for his zeal in proselyting; under
him was: *Too religious—the reaction may
come in your grandson, who is likely to be an
infidel, Nature maintaining her balance in morals
as in matter*.

Now that I had come home from Germany
it was evidently my Aunt's intention that Eloise
and I should marry.

"Come, Eloise," said she, after our guests had
left, and my grandfather had retired, "we will
light Jack to bed in the old way."

Eloise jumped up, slipping her arm into mine.
Then she two-stepped with me up the hall,
humming "A Hot Time In The Old Town To-night."

Aunt Lucretia looked on, her stern face relaxed
into a satisfied smile.

I slipped my arm around Eloise's slim waist,
and, bending over, tried to kiss her cheek.  But
she drew back laughing, and Aunt Lucretia's
voice came sternly from behind.  "Jack—Eloise!"

We stopped instantly under the chandelier.
Aunt Lucretia shut the heavy doors, and came
up with all the sternness of a Roman lictor in her
face.

"Turn her loose, Jack.  Listen, both of you:
I had intended to inform you to-morrow finally,
but this is as good a time as any."

We stood silent before her.  Eloise's pretty
mouth drooped in pretended humbleness.

"You know how I love you both, and—well,
how you respect each other.  You know that I
have planned and dreamed for you both, ever
since I brought you together here.  Now let me
see.  This is April—well, I am going to marry
you to each other in the fall, and until I marry
you off," she went on sternly, "I have only one
rule—no hugging—no kissing.  It is bad
before marriage, and after you are married," she
added with becoming stiffness, "you will not want to."

"Don't you think your conditions are awfully
severe for engaged people?" asked Eloise demurely.

"And I may seal it with a kiss surely, Aunt
Lucretia," I said, "for once."

"No, not for once.  That silly performance
has caused more trouble in the world than all
the sins of Satan combined.  We will never have
a decent race of people till kissing is cut out,"
she exclaimed.  "There, no more at present—march!"

And she marched us into my room.

"Isn't this fine!" I said, looking around at
the old room, glad to be home again.

It was twenty by twenty, the pioneer size, with
a great fireplace, built of oak and ash.  In a
corner was my old mahogany tester bed, big
posted and canopy-topped.  The little cherry
writing desk stood near, and so did the quaint
mahogany bureau, resting on dragon claws, with
great drawers for a base, and ending pyramid-like
in a top of granite finish, set off by a little mirror,
and with a tiny shaving drawer for my razors.
Big windows looked out on all sides.

After Eloise had left Aunt Lucretia sat quietly
thinking, looking now and then at a pedigree of
Eloise which she had once made and hung over
my mantel.  It was framed in walnut and
decorated with fancy letters.  At last she smiled.

"Isn't she a thoroughbred, Jack?"

"I haven't really got my breath yet, Aunt
Lucretia," I answered.  "I never dreamed she
would grow into a being so beautiful.  Don't you
really believe you might er—er—hurry up
this—er—affair—" and I stopped, blushing.

Aunt Lucretia broke out in her rare,
good-humored laugh.

"Poor boy!  Jack, you must be careful.  You
talk as if you had a real case of the silly,
unsensible thing."

"Always had it, Aunt Lucretia," I smiled weakly.

"Jack, that would be very unfortunate.  I
want you to marry on common sense—not love."

"You know how I have always loved her," I
went on.  Aunt Lucretia glanced sharply at me.
"I mean how I've cared for her," I amended.
"But do you—do you honestly believe, Aunt
Lucretia, that she loves me—cares for me that way?"

"Tut—tut," she said sharply, "what nonsense
you talk!  What does it matter?  This silly love
business has spoiled more good pedigrees and
brought more fools into the world, I tell you, than
anything else under the sun.  What a fine breed
of folks we'd have had in the world by now if
so many idiots had not fallen in love and married
without a moment's thought of results.  You
ought to be grateful to me, Jack," she continued
after a while; "you will be grateful, I am sure,
some day, that you had me to select a wife for
you and didn't just happen to fall in love.  That's
an accident often as fatal as happening to fall
down the steps.

"It is awful, Jack, this haphazard of
humanity!" she went on in a moment.  "No
wonder only one in a hundred is born who has got
any brains in his head.  Think of it, Jack, our
race is so pig-headed from thoughtless marryings
that it took them three hundred years after they
invented a saddle before it dawned upon them
that they needed stirrups to complete it.  Rode
three centuries on bare saddles for lack of sense
enough to invent stirrups!  Some day for the
benefit of humanity I am going to open a human
Registry.  I want to do this because I think it is our
duty to try to teach people to take as much
interest in their own children's pedigree as they do
in their horses' or dogs'.  Many a man falls in
love with and marries a woman whose qualities
and character, and pedigree, if she were a horse,
he wouldn't be caught trading a blind mule for!
And many a woman, under the same divine influence,
marries some vicious brute of a man for
no other reason than because she has just fallen
in love with him, or maybe wants to reform him,
who, if he were turned into a buggy horse she
wouldn't be caught risking her neck behind.

"And this is the way I'd go to registering my
people," she continued.  "In all registration
there must be a foundation stock.  For man, I'd
let Truthfulness, Bravery, Honesty, Manliness,
and Ability to Do Things, count as Foundations.
This would change the present social system
radically and let into good society and life a flood of
good blood that is at present badly needed but
is shut out, unless it suddenly happens to get rich
and comes in under a dress suit.  I would make
accomplishments, the *Ability to Do Things*, from
the Ability to do Poetry, Art, Drama, Music—everything
that is worth while—to the ability to
make two blades of grass grow, the greatest of
them all, count as my classes, and it wouldn't
take me long to straighten out Old Humanity
and breed a race of people, who, in a few generations,
as old Horace says, would strike the stars
with their uplifted heads!"

She laughed.  "Look, Jack, here it is.  I have
worked it all out, just for fun."  She unrolled a
parchment, as immaculately executed in decorated
letters as Eloise's pedigree had been.  Then she
read, glancing over her glasses now and then to
emphasize her remarks.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

   "*A STANDARD OF HUMAN REGISTRATION*.

.. vspace:: 1

When white men and women meet the following requirements
and are duly registered, they shall be accepted
as standard bred, and shall be permitted to marry:

FIRST: Any white man, who has a home of his own and
is honest, industrious, and truthful, and sound
in wind, limb and eye.

SECOND: Any white woman, who can cook a good meal,
make her own clothes, keep a home clean, lives
a pure life, and has some moral standard for
herself and children, and will agree to raise
them under it.

THIRD: Every man who is the father of a great man or
woman.

FOURTH: Every woman who is the mother of a great
man or woman.

.. vspace:: 1

*NON-STANDARD*:

The following shall be Non-Standard, and neither they
nor their children shall be registered.

FIRST: Fools.

SECOND: Liars.

THIRD: Cranks.

FOURTH: Idiots.

FIFTH: Geniuses.  They are freaks merely, and fools
in another form.

SIXTH: Sissy men.

SEVENTH: Consumptives, the cancerous, the insane.

EIGHTH: Impure women.

NINTH: Society people wherever found, and their one
child.

TENTH: Married men who lead Germans.

ELEVENTH: The children of women who play cards for
money and prizes.

TWELFTH: Evangelists who preach slang from the pulpit.

THIRTEENTH: Praying lawyers.

FOURTEENTH: Trading preachers.

FIFTEENTH: Professional politicians.

SIXTEENTH: Bank cashiers who run Sunday Schools.

SEVENTEENTH: Doctors who cut open people quickly,
or dope them with much medicine.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

LUCRETIA RUTHERFORD,
    Registrar."

.. vspace:: 2

I laughed.  "It wouldn't do any harm to try
it awhile, Aunt Lucretia; but—referring again
to Eloise—"

"We'll not refer again to Eloise," she said,
seeing what I was coming to; "this thing is settled.
You two will marry this fall, and until then I
want no foolishness around me."

"But, suppose she—" I began.

"She is not to suppose anything—nor you.
Get her a beautiful ring the next time you go to
town.  I'll attend to the rest of it."

We talked for an hour or two.  I could see
how glad she was that I was at home again, for,
with all of her stern ways, my Aunt Lucretia was
very fond of me.

"And to think of your being the man you are,
Jack," she said finally, "and that lameness all gone.
Ah, but that is what I'm telling you—the
Germans are the greatest thinkers in the
world—because—well, because they have been bred to
think.  Yes, it is good to see you here again,
Jack, and sound, and you will earn your oats
from now on, young man, remember that."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE MAKE-BELIEVE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE MAKE-BELIEVE

.. vspace:: 2

After Aunt Lucretia had gone there was a
faint tap at my window, which I knew of old.
When I raised the sash Eloise stood outside,
smiling at me.  On the veranda she slipped her
arm through mine, and led the way to our old
seat under the hickories.

"Jack," she began, and her serious tone
seemed to bode no good, "I just couldn't go to
sleep until I had talked with you.  Aunt Lucretia
thinks I'm in bed; just as she used to think
we both were when we weren't, Little Brother."  She
smiled half tenderly.  "I think I ought to
speak to you.  This thing is getting serious,
don't you think?"

"It's been that way with me all the time," I
said earnestly, "if I could only get you to look
at it seriously—"

For reply she thumped my cheek with her
thumb and forefinger.  It was a trick Aunt
Lucretia had used when I had been naughty as a
boy, and Eloise knew that nothing made me
madder.

"Now, Jack—no nonsense—listen.  We
must do something—about—"

"Our marriage this fall?" I interrupted.

Eloise laughed.  "Isn't it nonsense?"

"Well, I don't know," I said.  "She has always
said so, and we have always done as she said.
I have always found it was the best thing for me,"
I added.

Eloise pretended indignation.  "Well, now,
let me tell you, Jack, this is my funeral as well as
yours, and for once this isn't the right idea!"

"Oh," said I, "maybe you've grown big enough
since I saw you to defy Aunt Lucretia.  Well, *I*
haven't; and dear, dear Little Sister," I went on,
taking her slim hand in mine with more warmth
than she seemed to like, "I have learned to hold
my own among men, but Aunt Lucretia is a very
different thing!  I am not going to defy her, or
go contrary to her wishes—I've tried it and
know better!  And you?"

"Of course I am," she said, moving a little
away from me; "the idea!  Why, Jack, it is
absurd!  Jack—" and instantly she stopped.  Her
voice dropped with a sad little wilt, and she laid
her head upon my shoulder.

I knew that she was brave and never cried, or
else I would have believed she was in tears.

"Dear Little Sister," I said consolingly, "why,
what is it?  What has happened since I left?
This has been Aunt Lucretia's dream all her life,
and mine too," I said, tenderly kissing her cheek.

Eloise sighed; then after a while she answered.
"Of course, Jack, she has said that always, ever
since we were children, and being children, why
we couldn't say anything, for our very home and
living depended on it.  But Jack, I see it all now.
I'm ashamed of it—though I couldn't help
it—this—this awful buy-and-sell way, this bartering
me because I am poor and an orphan, this closing
the chance of the great dream of my life for
me—that one dream which every woman loves
more than life, Jack.  It's—why, I've treated
you so badly.  I wonder that you care for me at
all.  But—oh, Jack, I had such ideas of love,
and now to be mated off like her cattle!"

"I know it," I said, "only you were never as
mean as you say.  Young as we were I felt it,
too, and that is why I didn't blame you.  But it
never made any difference with me, Eloise—I
have loved you always, and I'm as proud of you
now as anyone can be."

.. _`80`:

"Oh, you dear boy," said she.  She laid her
head upon my shoulder, then reached up and
kissed me on the cheek.  She was silent and I was
never so happy, with her head lying there, and the
perfume of her hair in my face.

At last she laughed.  "Jack, you neglected me
shamefully while you were away, studying."

"I wrote you a love letter every week!" I exclaimed.

"But people in love write to each other every
day," she said.  "You don't really love me, Jack!"

"Eloise, I couldn't write every day, but I
thought of you the last thing every night before I
went to sleep, and I slept with your picture under
my pillow, and I used to play that we were
married, and that my dressing gown in the chair was
you."

"O, Jack," and she clasped my hand in hers,
"you dear boy!  And I must say I never dreamed
you'd be so big and handsome!"

I seized her hands, holding them in mine:
"And let me tell you, Eloise, you almost took my
breath when I saw you for the first time this morning!"

There was a long silence before Eloise spoke.
"Jack, what are we going to do about—about—Aunt
Lucretia?"

"Why, I tell you there is nothing to do but to
do as she says—marry—you know how she has
planned this all her life.  It would break her
heart; and mine," I added softly.

"Listen now," said Eloise earnestly.  "Jack,
that is nonsense.  I don't love you that way nor
you me.  I don't care what she says.  Love is
made from higher, nobler motives, and true
marriages should be made in heaven as they say.  I,"
she went on with a sigh, "Jack, I have given up;
I was not made for love like that—as you want
to love me.  I am too selfish, I care too much for
the fine world around me, for my own self, for
pleasure.  I love to will, to conquer, Jack.  I
don't want to love, to give myself up to any man
and his whims unless—"

"Unless what?" I asked eagerly.

"Well, two things," she said.  "First; unless
I loved him—oh, if I only could!  How I would
love him!  And if not that—well, for—for—it
would have to be compensation of another kind,
such as great wealth, and all that, to have a great
name like that of the Countess of Carfax."

"The Countess of Carfax?" I asked.

She was looking at me very earnestly.  I felt
her eyes on my face.  Something unpleasant
began to dawn upon me.

"Jack, I cannot deceive you.  I do not, I
cannot love anyone that way—that one sweet way.
It is not in me.  I might have loved you that
way, Jack, it is the truth, but Aunt Lucretia has
thwarted the chance you had with me, with her
blooded stock idea of it.  That is why I've treated
you so all my life; it was not I, it was Love
resenting this profanity of itself."

I could not speak.  Eloise, I saw, had much to
tell that I did not know.

"Four years is a long time to be away, and
after you left I was so lonely, I had no comrade,
no Little Brother in my summer vacations.  And
you were far away, and Colonel Goff—you know
how queerly he has always persisted in wanting
to marry me some day—not quite as bad as
Aunt Lucretia's way, but almost as bad—because,
well, I think for no other reason than because I
ride well—" she was speaking brokenly.  "Aunt
Lucretia wants me to marry you because I've got
a good pedigree, and Colonel Goff wants me to
marry him because I ride well, but I want to marry
someone because I love him.  You know how
grandfather is about Colonel Goff, Jack?  Oh, I
can't tell it all, but he has made it so unpleasant
for me since you left, worrying me about—that
I should marry Colonel Goff—that I had
nothing, and how great a man Colonel Goff
was—and—oh, he has seemed to become childish of
late, so irritable and strange, and so he has almost
driven me away from home or into marrying
Colonel Goff; and you were far away, Jack.  And
so when Colonel Goff—well, he was as persistent
as grandfather, and so kind always and good to
me—Jack, you see how I was placed between them—"

"Well?" I said bitterly, "go on."

"And so when Colonel Goff asked me, I—"

The great trees above me seemed to reel, and
my heart to stop, and then thump fiercely in my
throat.

"Eloise, please don't," I begged.  "Do you—you
don't love that man!"

"Of course not," she answered coolly, and very
quietly, "but—and this is my secret, Jack.
Promise me—it isn't known yet, but it will be
before long.  You know since he came home from
the war with grandfather and lived here he has
been at outs with his people in England.  You
know how he had to leave them.  Well, it seems
that all of his brothers over there have died but
one, and that Colonel Goff is next heir, and that
he has received a letter from the physician
asking him to come and see his brother before he dies,
that he wants to arrange about the estates, for
they are large, and the brother is the Earl of Carfax."

I had dropped her hand, and my head was
bent.  I knew what was coming.

"But you don't love him, Eloise, surely—" I
arose, the stars whirling above my head, the
great trees soughing as in sorrow.  She came up
in the starlight and put her arms around my neck.
She tried to laugh and pull me back to our seat.

"Jack," she said, "I want you to help me—will
you not do something—the last something I
shall ever ask you for?"

"I love you enough to give you my life," I said.

"You were always so good to me.  It is this,
Jack—our secret: Colonel Goff and I will be
married as soon as he can arrange to go back to
England, in a month or two.  I don't want any
scene with Aunt Lucretia, and so, and so, Jack,
we'll just make-believe—let her believe it is all
right—that we are carrying out her plans up to
the very day."

"I'll say nothing," I answered; "you and Aunt
Lucretia can arrange it."

"You'll have to act as if you loved me, Jack."

"I cannot act any other way," I said.

She laughed, her voice floating up triumphantly.
"And you will have to send me that diamond ring,
you know—"

"Eloise," I said again, after a moment, "this
is desecration!  You know you don't love that old man!"

"I like him enough to be the Countess of
Carfax.  If I've got to be sold to anyone, Jack,"
she said with bitterness, "got to be traded off like
a Jersey, why I'd rather be traded off as the
Countess of Carfax than any other way!"

I flushed hot.

"But Jack, think of grandfather.  It is that
or be turned out."

"Eloise," I cried, "you know I wouldn't stand
for that!"

"No," she whispered softly, "not if you could
help.  But Jack, I forgot to tell you, you are
already out."

I could only look my astonishment.

"I wanted to write you," she went on, "but I
was afraid.  I learned it all from Braxton
Bragg."

"What did he have to do with it?"

"You know he has had a silly idea that he was
going to marry me himself some day, though you
know how I have always despised him.  Well,
Jack, you'll never know what he has done; because
you don't know the conditions on The Home
Stretch.  I, myself, didn't, till Braxton Bragg
showed me the papers the very month you left.
You know how grandfather has always kept that
secret drawer in his safe locked?  But you
remember how we children learned all about it?"

"I remember Braxton showed it to me," I said.
"I never knew how he found it out."

"Nor I, nor how he stole the parchment from
it, the one that grandfather kept from all eyes, even
Aunt Lucretia's, for she knows nothing of it yet.
But he did, and he showed it to me, thinking—well,
you'll guess why.  Jack, we're outcasts, you
and I, we have nothing."

She hesitated a moment, then went on.  "It
seems that the first John Rutherford, the Old
Indian fighter, who was killed at New Orleans,
left a secret paper with his will, in which he
begged the heir who inherited from him, your
great-grandfather, John Rutherford, second, who
fought in the Mexican war, you know, to bequeath
the estate to that son of his who should be
a soldier, and that it should be passed on in that
way secretly to each generation.  Now John
Rutherford the second, had only one son, your
grandfather, and his son, Braxton's father, was
killed in the war.

"Oh, I see now," I said amazed, "and that
was why he wanted me to go to West Point."

"And why Braxton Bragg, who is a coward,"
she cried indignantly, "did go to West Point,
after he stole that parchment and read it.  And
as proof of it, when grandfather was trying to
persuade me to listen to Colonel Goff, he told me
he was going to leave The Home Stretch so that
it would go to Braxton Bragg after Aunt
Lucretia's death."

In an instant I saw it all.  I understood things
that I had given no serious thought to before.

"Yes, I am out," I agreed.

"Jack, Little Brother, I hope I haven't made
you unhappy on your first night at home."

I did not speak; she sighed.

"And so I am going to marry Colonel Goff,
Jack, and be the Countess of Carfax, and you'll
do as I say—you'll make-believe with me.  I'd
so hate to have Aunt Lucretia know now."

"I'll go on as if it were I," I said bitterly.
"I'd do anything for you, Eloise—and—and
I do hope you'll be happy yet."

She shook her head: "Jack, you do not know
me—that kind of happiness that I have craved
all my life is not for me, and it is so hard that
it should be, for I have always had such beautiful
dreams of that kind of happiness—I, who could
love so if I only might—I who wish it so, to be
widowed of it all my life."

"I could make you if you'd only wait—give
me a chance to prove mine—to make you love
me, Eloise."

"It is too late.  O, Jack, you deserve better
of me than this; you do not deserve so poor
return as this make-believe—a make-belief—only
this—a little sisterly kiss," and she held up her
face in the starlight to mine.

But I sat silent.  My heart—it would not take
such a make-believe tribute.

I rose from our seat.  "Good night, Eloise, I
wish now that I had stayed in Germany," I said as
I walked in.

"Jack, come back, don't be angry with me.
I've done the best I could."

I saw her turn defiantly, like one who, receiving
a hurt, fights back.  I left her sitting under
the trees.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CHIMES OF THE WISTERIA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CHIMES OF THE WISTERIA

.. vspace:: 2

I was up and out the next morning before Aunt
Lucretia or any of the servants.  I wanted to get
to the dairy in time to see Tammas milk.  I
longed to see his whitewashed cottage and the
clean, stone dairy under the hill, near the spring.

I walked through the lot where the Jersey
herd had lain the night before, leaving shimmering
shapes of themselves impressed in the hollow
mold of blue grass, crushed and shining for lack
of dew.  Nearby was the brood-mare paddock,
sloping downward to the meadow.  Beyond, the
tree-covered hills.

It was a perfect picture; the sun flushing the
green of the hills, the air damp and tainted with
the earth-odor of early day.  But I had not
beaten Tammas nor Marget, his good wife;
nobody ever beat them up, not even the cows.  He
was calling them to the barn in the same way as
of old, in the voice that I had heard ever since I
could remember.  He stood squarely in the barn
door, blocky and bowed of legs, his broad Scotch
face split wide across with a big, kindly mouth
from which came, like the deep tones of a
cathedral's bell down the valley: "Coom,
lassies—coom, noo!"

Like children called into supper they obeyed;
silver grays, fawns, chocolates, red-fawns and
pied, crumpled of horns and slim of tail, marching
solemnly down.  One, a three-year old heifer,
with her first calf, answered him like a school girl,
whirling half around in awkward romp and elephantine
effort to kick up her stiff heels even as
she had seen the standard-bred filly do!

How restful and natural Tammas's cottage
looked!  I could see Marget bestirring herself for
greater cleanliness of an already over-clean
cottage.  She was humming, and I guessed it was
one of her old kirk hymns or maybe Bobbie
Burns.  For it was Marget who could read
Bobbie Burns!  How rich and grand the lines came
in her broad dialect!  I was a child when she
had begun to read Bobbie Burns to me; and though
I knew not what she said I hung upon her
numbers, and a queer, fine feeling swept over me.  I
was nearly grown before I learned the dialect
myself, from hearing them talk to each other, and
knew the greatness of Bobbie Burns in the original.

Tammas and Marget were good people, as
genuine as the rocksalt they gave the herd to lick,
hiding it in the deep grasses of the meadow, where
the thirsty cows would come upon it in unexpected
places.  Once when I found a cube of it, gleaming
in the grass for the cows, I thought how much
their own lives were like that pure cube of
comfort, doing their work in kindliness and obscurity.
Then the clamoring tongues of the beagles
thrilled me as of old, as the game little fellows
came down the slope of the hill.  They had
followed me from the house and struck the trail of
an early stray rabbit.  Across the hills they went,
their little piping tongues echoing slowly as they
nosed along.

.. vspace::  2

For many years Tammas and Marget had run
my Aunt's dairy in the hollow where the great
stream came tumbling down from the hills.  I
looked at it there in the valley, and I tasted again
in anticipation the cottage cheese, the buttermilk,
and the Scotch rye bread.

Now I saw Marget bestirring herself and again
up the valley I heard the call, "*Coom, lassies,
coom, noo!*"

In changing their home, Tammas and Marget
had changed little else.  Even after twenty-five
years of life at The Home Stretch they still spoke
to each other in their native tongue, though to
others they often spoke English with their broad
brogue.  Even then, Scotch words would break
in on their English with the suddenness and sweep
of a tidal wave flowing in from the firth.
Though they could speak English purely, and
were well read in their way, their earnestness might
always be gauged by the number of Scotch words
which crept into their talk.

Marget had not yet seen me.  I went up the
path to the little cottage porch, over which
wisteria, in full bloom, hung in purple bunches, and
whorls of clustering chimes.  As I stood there
listening, I seemed to hear their chimes, for the
odor of the wisteria is a chime of memory.  I
heard the melody of other days, faint and yet so
clear, memories that were almost legendary, of the
little boy, motherless, and who had never seen
his father, always a nature-worshiper, and a
tree-lover; of his Aunt Lucretia; of his adopted
sister, Eloise; of his fighting old grandsire, who had
been the right hand to Stonewall Jackson when he
swept clean the valley of the Shenandoah; and
of these two good Scotch people who had taken
him to their hearts even as their own.  Here had
he dreamed and grown up, loving them and the
things they loved, and his dreams had been of
writing, of poetry, of music; and not of war, as
his grandsire had wished.  Young as he was he
had seen war with clear eyes.  How it took the
bravest and the best,—and left the weaklings to
reproduce themselves.  It reversed all the laws of
Nature.  If Nature had done the same thing for
the flowers, not a larkspur purpling the meadows
in blossoming ladders, not a wild lupine in whorls
of stars, not a nodding head of clover blossom,
not a stone-crop of the early spring, nor the flushes
of wild hepatica would have survived to-day.

Dog fennel alone would inherit the earth!

Marget, her keen black eyes lighting up with
that joy I knew so well, came to meet me.
She seized my hands in both of hers, and
shouted to Tammas: "Tammas, whaur are ye,
Tammas?  Come quick an' see whit I hae to
show ye!"

"Weel, weel, I'm comin', wumman," said
Tammas, wobbling up in his great awkward way,
his broad mouth smiling.  He grasped both my
hands in his.  "It's Jack, oor Jack!  Whit wey
did ye no' tell me ye were here?  Eh, Marget,
but jist see whit a man oor Jack is!"

I felt Marget's keen eyes sweep over me.
"Ay, Tammas, but is na he a wee bit shilpit like?
I dinna like to see him sae pale like."

I laughed.  "Oh, Marget, you and Tammas,
come, you make me think of the lecture room and
the discipline of the German drill-master.  I smell
those Scotch scones right there upon the table, and
the cottage cheese, I haven't had any for four
years."

"Oh," laughed Marget, "he's jist like he aye
was, oor laddie.  His appetite and his heart were
aye the biggest pairts o' him.  Eh, but I'm that
glad tae see ye laddie, if ever I kissed ony that
was o' the male gender, it's you I'd be kissing.
Come on ben."

They led me in, Marget holding my hand and
beaming up into my face.  "Wha ever wad hae
thocht it, oor wee Jack," she kept saying proudly
to Tammas.

"Wheest," said Tammas, vainly trying to say
one thing and mean another, "Wheest wumman,
it's Mr. Jack noo."

For answer I stopped and looked at him with
feigned pain, and Marget clapped her hands and
laughed.

"Where is Elsie?" I said, suddenly remembering.
"Has she grown any?"

I thought Tammas's smile would spread over
the rest of him when I asked for his granddaughter.

"Has she grown any?  My, my!  Why listen,
Jack, 'tis four years since you saw her—she was
twelve then—our little lassie, and four years
make a deal o' difference in a lassie."

"She has jist gane oot to the dairy to get some
cream for breakfast," said Marget.  "See,
yonder she comes.  Look an' tell me if she's the
same," and Marget pointed with a smile.

I saw a tall girl coming down the little path,
carrying a pitcher of cream in one hand and
twirling a Scotch sunbonnet in the other.  Her dark
red-brown hair fell in two school girl braids down
her back.  Her every line showed gentleness of
breeding; and her beauty of face was really
wonderful.

"She's jist pat on ane o' her low necked morning
gowns, an' she's that thin that they show ower
muckle o' her neck," said Marget apologetically.

"She is lovely," I said; "you should have
named her Annie Laurie," and I hummed the old
song:

   |  "Her cheek is like the snow drift,
   |  Her neck is like the swan."

.. vspace::  2

"Dae ye really think she is that bonnie?"  Tammas
smiled, pleased that I should have compared
her to Annie Laurie.

"It is not exactly beauty so much, Tammas," I
said; "it is something like royalty.  She looks like
some Greek nymph of the woods that has stepped
out of a water lily."

Marget was smiling at my praise.

"Ay, but it's jist as ye say, Jack," said
Tammas.  "Oor lassie looks that way."  He stopped
and his voice dropped.  "An' her bonnie mother,
oor daughter,—it is that like her that Elsie is,—aye,
the very twin star o' oor ain bairn, Marget."

"Look," said Marget, "dae you ken I canna
mak her wear her shoes yet, when there's nobody
aboot, and the pools o' the spring sae inviting.
Look ye, if ever there was a child," and she
laughed, pulling Tammas and me to the door to
see better.

Elsie had stopped, and sat down on the grass
above the pool, her pitcher beside her, and was
splashing her feet in the water.

"She may be grown, Tammas, but she is the
same child I've known always.  I remember the
funny little thing when she was two years old."

"Three," corrected Marget, "that was when
we took her after the passing of oor bonnie lassie."

"And how she loved to follow me around like
a kitten."

I had never asked Tammas and Marget for
Elsie's history.  I knew it had been sad to
them.

"I did not tell you about her.  I did not tell
you, lad, it was all too sad," said Marget, as if
guessing my thoughts, "but noo that it is so long
ago and you have grown, you and Elsie, I think
it only fair that we tell you only a bit of it, so that
you may not misjudge her, nor us," and she
looked inquiringly at Tammas.

Tammas nodded.

"She was oor only daughter," she said, "we
never saw him.  He stole oor lassie when she
lookit jist as ye see yon ane, and nae aulder, an'
because she wasna' o' his station, his graun' folk
scorned her and her bairn.  Aye, but he was true,
tho', standing up for oor lassie till—till.  Weel,
there was a tragedy, an' he had to flee for his life.
He gaed to the war somewhere—we never saw
him—an' we dinna ken.  Then she died, and
syne we cam' here wi' Elsie."

I saw the tears start into her eyes.  "E-lsie,
E-lsie, here's our Mr. Jack come back," she
called.

Instantly there was a flutter of feet withdrawn
from the pool.  The pitcher was left on the bank,
and the hat also.  She came running, her blue
eyes smiling at me, quite unembarrassed, and even
singularly calm.

She came up, put both her hands into mine, and
her blue eyes flashed at me.

"Kiss him," laughed Marget, "it's oor ain
Mr. Jack."

She instantly obeyed, touching me lightly on
one cheek.  Then in an earnest little voice she
said, "Mr. Jack, I'm so glad you have come home.
How I have missed you these four years!"

"If I had dreamed that you had grown to be
so beautiful," I said teasingly, "I'd have come
home sooner."

She glanced at me quickly and seriously.  "Oh,
I've forgotten my cream and it's time for
breakfast," she said hastily, and ran back down the
path.

"I should say so, Marget," I said.  "How
hungry I am!"

"It's good to be here again," I added, as I sat
down to the little table; "and, Tammas, there is
Elsie back with the cream.  Put on some of that
clotted cream in the pot, cream thick, for it is a
long lost brother that I've been separated from."

"Ay, but the cottage cheese.  Don't forget
that is your appetizer," cried Marget authoritatively,
as she pushed a great saucer, flaked up to
white foaminess, toward me.

For answer I fell to.

"Hold!" cried Tammas, his hand going up
and the great fun-loving mouth changing to quick
solemnity.  Often as a boy I had seen his hand
raised most unexpectedly, and never had I failed
to obey.  My head bent.  Then Tammas, his
great knotted hand uplifted, prayed in Scotch, as
was his wont:

   |  "'Oh, Thou wha kindly dost provide,
   |    For every creature's want!
   |  We bless Thee, God o' Nature wide,
   |    For a' Thy goodness lent:
   |  An' gin it please Thee, heavenly guide,
   |    May never waur be sent;
   |  But whether granted or denied,
   |    Lord, bless us wi' content!'

And to-day thanks be added, greatest of all, that
our Jackie is with us again.  Amen!"

"Amen," chimed in Marget.

I looked over the table at the Scotch scones, the
poached eggs, the funny little cuts of butter,
miniature loaves of it pressed and decorated.  "I
see you've got the same bill of fare, Marget," I
said.

"Well," she answered, falling again into English,
"we are two old people set in our ways, and
it seems to suit us."

"Noo, if you'd only told us you were coming,"
said Tammas, trying to speak ironically, "I'd 'a
had some o' thae auld things ye're sae fond o',
Jackie, such as sliced Indian turnips like ye got
up in the lodge of the rocks on the hill yon day,"
and he laughed as he recalled the burning my lips
got from the raw turnip.

I laughed.  "Tammas, it must not go back to
Aunt Lucretia that I ate my first breakfast with
you."

"It's a mile to the hoose," said Marget, "an
it's only sax o'clock, sae there's a graun' excuse for
ye to eat anither breakfast, when ye gang back."  She
smiled with that funny little smile I had
known of old when she wanted one to know that
she was meaning the opposite, but was too Scotch
to express it.

"Weel, we winna say onything about it," said
Tammas.  "Jackie, lad, if ye've got onything
like ye're auld appetite, ye'll be ready for anither
at the hoose when ye get back.  Dae ye mind hoo
ye used to dae that when ye were jist oor wee
laddie, running aboot the dairy an' dipping your
fingers on the sly in oor cream pots?"

So I let him launch into his favorite subject,
the cows, and the wonderful record they had made
since I left.  Of Gladys Gaily, who had made her
pound of butter from less than five pounds of milk.

"Aye, lad, 'tis the ould Top Sawyer bluid
that's doing it," he said proudly.  And that I would
find it all in the last "Butter Tests of Jersey
Cows."  Several of my old friends had died and
one—"Ou, but it hurts me sadly, my boy, to tell
it—Gladys Gaily, herself, has passed with that
milk fever.  Aye, but it takes only the rich ones."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE STONE-CROP`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE STONE-CROP

.. vspace:: 2

I remember that April day when I first saw the
stone-crop in bloom.

Across the valley from the dairy is the blue grass
pasture of the cows; and on a hillside studded with
dwarf cedars, Nature's first efforts to cover up her
nakedness after man's ax has passed, runs a streak
of bare, brown limestone, winding across the hills
an acre wide.  Above it the grass and cedars grew
down to the bare rocks, and then they stopped
short, for no soil was there.  Years before,
pioneer men, fighting, unthinking, world-conquering,
with the primal instinct of the Aryan *wander-lust*
in their blood, had stripped that spot of earth
of its clothing, leaving the naked ground beneath,
lifeless and bare.  In all the beautiful blue grass
pasture this was the one scar: on this green shield
of Nature, the one rent.  The birds, which love the
deep shade of the cedars, stopped at its borders
and flew back from the strip of brown desert.

The rabbits, hiding in the tangled thickets
above, and whose spring-water ran in the glen
below, made a path around it, through the concealing
grass and cedar boughs that brushed their furry
coats.  None would cross this bare spot, hot to
their feet in summer and freezing to them in
winter, where they would be stared at by every bird,
or hunted by the eyes of men.

Even the crows drew their line there, and would
not fly over it; for the crow makes no path in the
sky above that does not parallel a path of supplies
below.  Often had I seen the Jersey herd, brown
and gray and chocolate, browsing in a phalanx,
following the earliest grass which grew closest to
the rocks, come to the very border of this scar
in the cheek of the earth and then in sudden anger
plunge in and seek the cedars on the hill, anywhere
to forget this outrage on Nature!

I remember the spring I first saw the stone-crop.
The winter had been long and raw.  Even the
blue grass had had a struggle to keep green, and
the cedars' stems had become black under the bite
of frost.  But blacker yet lay the earth's scar
beyond them.

Then one day in the spring I went over the hill
to Tammas's home.  As I came up from the slope
and out from the great lindens, and looked across
at the other hill for the ugly scar, I stopped thrilled
with a strange and nameless beauty.  I have no
word for the exultation that swept over me.

But I remembered when Elizabeth Browning
was dying—she so unbeautiful in face and so
star-like in mind,—she uttered a poem which seemed
to me to surpass all that great woman ever wrote.
For the characters in it were she, her husband, and
her God: and the subject was The Beauty of Immortality.

"How do you feel, dearest?" he asked, holding
her in his arms and looking into her dying face.

"Oh, I feel beautiful," she said, as she smiled
back into his face and died.

Oh, frail little woman, who never wrote a
weak line!  O, earth-bound and earth-found one,
who never created save of heaven!  O, little
homely one, whose portrait I did not till then even
love to recall, so different it seemed from the soul
which could write as it wrote: now it hangs the
most beautiful thing on my study wall.

I stood there, looking, steeped in the thrill of
it.  I thought a pink rainbow had fallen across
the hills.

Then the nobility of this pink flower went into
me, for there is nobleness even among flowers and
trees.  The blue grass is the aristocrat, who sits
only at the richest tables, with cedars to wait on
him, refreshed with the waters of a thousand hills.
The bermuda runs hither and yon, sending its
stolons after the fat things of earth; and the
redtop grows only where it can reach the richest
granaries.  The stone-crop alone clings to this bare
brown rock, shielding its poverty.

Seeing this, I gloried in the chance that faced
me, the chance to be another type of pioneer, and
to undo the wrongs and ravages of my forbears.
For this I had sacrificed the love of my grandsire,
the General, who had wanted me to be a soldier,
and of my Aunt Lucretia, and even of Eloise, it
seemed, that one sweet dream of my life.  For in
the four years I had been gone from her I had
lost my chance to win her.  What did her talk of
the night before mean but that she meant to wed
another?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TRANSPLANTED PINE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE TRANSPLANTED PINE

.. vspace:: 2

Tradition, that greatest of all historians, had
it, that the first settlers on the lands of The Home
Stretch had been a young pioneer and his bride
from Virginia; and that she, leaving her old home
for a new one in the wilderness, yielded to the
pretty sentiment of her girl's heart, and brought
away with her a young pine from under her own
roof tree.  Nursed and watered through all the
long journey, over mountains, wilderness and
river, she planted it among the great oaks and
poplars of her western home.  Tradition told
how, when the young husband had built his double
log-cabin from the solid trunks of the black walnut
and thatched it with the rich red hearts of the
cedar shingles, the little bride cherished the pine.
The story was full of pathos; she and her baby
had died that first year, and both were buried in
the same grave under the little pine.  It was a
great pine now, but lonely.  It had been a great
pine since I could remember.  It had always
appealed to me, standing alone amid the other trees.
For miles I could see it, towering above all the
others.  And always a little tremor of loneliness
came, as one who passes a deserted schoolhouse
door where once children have played.  The great
trees around it, oaks, elms, poplars, maples, seemed
at home.  This was *their soil*, these were their
friends and kindred.  But the pine was not of
them.  It had been transplanted.  Were trees
men, the pine would be a Highlander of the clan
McGregor.  And away from its clan, in a valley
where it belonged not, in soil that made for
fatness and richness but not for religion and art, it
was lonely.  For trees are but men who are dumb.

Often, as a boy, staying with Dr. Gottlieb in his
cabin, I would awake at night and hear the pine
sighing.  Once I remember there had been a fierce
storm, and as it swept through the forest it
maddened the other trees until they roared in their
wrath.  But the lonely pine tree had called above
the roar of the others.  One would not look in the
Swiss mountains for the cherries of the valley,
nor for the cedars of Lebanon in the rich loam
of the rivers.  This pine was the Scotch McGregor
in an English court.  It was Bonaparte on Elba.
It was Thomas Carlyle in Gaiety street.  It was
a tree without a country....

Dr. Gottlieb lived among the trees in a double
log-cabin, and had lived there since I could
remember.  My Aunt Lucretia's heart was as big
as her farm, and for many years she and Dr. Gottlieb
had been friends.  He, being a scholar and a
botanist, a very babe in a strange land in spite of
all his learning, had been easily parted from what
little he had brought to America, and had actually
come to sickness and want.  Then it was that my
Aunt Lucretia took him in and gave him this cabin
on her farm.  Since then he had grown famous,
and was known over two continents as one of the
greatest living botanists.  In fall and winter he
was dean of that department in a noted college,
but in spring and summer nothing could keep him
from his walnut log-cabin by the great pine in the
little valley, where his wild flowers grew in the
hills behind him and the trees were his friends
and comrades.

His story was like that of many who claim
America as home.  In the discontent of the
Bavarians in their struggle for a more liberal
government, many republican ideas were advanced.
Gottlieb, then a student in Munich, with a number
of other young men, attempted to celebrate
Washington's birthday in the Bavarian capital
with speeches so revolutionary that they brought
on a riot.  In the fighting his roommate and best
friend killed a police officer.  Gottlieb's family
was influential and stood high in royal favor.  But
the boy who had done the killing was not so
fortunate.  To be found out meant certain death for
him.  So Gottlieb pleaded guilty for his friend's
sake, and would have been executed, but for the
influence of his family.  Even they could not save
him from banishment, and so he had lived with
us, as great a patriot as I ever knew, loving his
country so that the thought of it would bring tears
to his eyes, loving his Fatherland, and yet himself
a man without a country.

Now I stood looking down on the double log-cabin
that was his home.  All around it was peace
and calmness.  Here had I learned under Dr. Gottlieb
to love the flowers, and the trees, and his books.

What a picture his home made!  A great
wooded blue grass hill rose gradually, slope on
slope, above it, and on a little plateau sat the solid
log-cabin.  At the foot of the slope and running
like a horseshoe around it, was a bubbling stream,
coming from the hills to the north, circling around
and running into the valley below.  Over this, a
rustic foot-bridge led to the house.  The meadows
lay in front of it all.  I stood back and wondered
how that young pioneer had known so accurately
and artistically where to place this cabin?  Had it
been placed ten yards either way, to right or left,
it would have ruined the center of the background
of trees beyond, and fifty feet further in front
would have placed it too far down the dead level
of the center.

In stately distances around stood maples,
beeches and poplars, some towering high above the
cabin.  Lengthwise to the rustic bridge it stood,
a beautiful, solid home of walnut, and the red
heart of the cedar, its dark, rich logs chinked with
the white cement of the lime hills.  Clear across
the front ran the big porch, solid floored; both
ends flanked with purple stars of clematis,
hanging overhead, and drooping low over the entrance
its great masses of bloom.

The orchard, of apple, peach, plum, and cherry
trees, lay off to the right.  The old-fashioned
flowers were all to the right and the pine tree
towered over them all.

I raised the latch and entered.  Dr. Gottlieb
stood before me, framed by shelves of dried flowers
and herbs, a small man with a large head, kind
blue eyes.  The broad brow wrinkled into its smile
as he saw me.  I pointed to the stone-crop running
across the hill.  "Oh, Dr. Gottlieb," I cried,
"what is it that in one night makes the bare spots
so beautiful?"

He quit his books and came forward, taking
both of my hands in his.  "Jack, Jack, my boy,
you have come back to us again—and from the
Fatherland—the Fatherland! ... Let me
hold your hand—it has touched the soil of the
Fatherland—let me look into your eyes, they
have seen the Rhine!"  There were tears in his
blue eyes.

"Do you remember how it changes every
spring, Dr. Gottlieb?" I asked, pointing to the
distant crowned hills, the rainbow of stone-crop
beneath, and the level stretches of pasture land.

He smiled as he looked across at the crimson
covering of the bare hillside.  "Ay; but I've not
been idle, Jack, since you left.  You remember
what I had done before you went away—fifteen
hundred species all catalogued in my book."  He
turned and pointed to the glass shelves around.
"Now I have added four hundred more."

We talked long over our pipes.  He had saved
some rare old German ale in cobwebbed bottles,
and these we broke in honor of my return.  I had
to go over my entire life in Germany, and all the
four years' work there.  As I dwelt on this, as I
told of the old places and scenes, he sat with his
head down, and I suspected tears.

I cannot remember when Dr. Gottlieb was not
in love with my Aunt Lucretia, though he had
never spoken to her on the subject.  He spoke
only to me, and that always in the same way.
So I knew what was coming.  I had heard it
before, and when I arose to go I could not help
but smile as he said, "Ah, Jack, but your Aunt
Lucretia!  That most beautiful and charming of
women!  Did you know that each of us has our
prototype in a plant or flower; did you know that
she resembles the great red wood lily—*lilium
Philadelphicum*?  Ah, Jack, it has always been my
favorite."





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.. _`CONQUERING SATAN`:

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   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   CONQUERING SATAN

.. vspace:: 2

Eloise and I had always enjoyed riding over The
Home Stretch with Aunt Lucretia.  Since I could
remember she had ridden the same horse, a great
raw-boned sorrel pacer, full seventeen hands high,
and so powerful that he carried my aunt, large
woman though she was, as if she had been a child.
"His beauty is in his gait," she used to say; "there
is but one saddle gait fit for business, and that is
the nodding fox-trot, and Tempest has that perfectly."

It was amusing to watch them in action.  With
his head down and nodding with every stride,
Tempest seemed fairly to butt his way into space,
reeling off the miles like a great machine in
motion, and Aunt Lucretia, in her great,
high-pommeled side saddle, double girthed and double
decked, sat him as comfortably as if she were in
her rocker.

Her saddle-bags, thrown over the saddle, were
in themselves unusual, for they held everything
needed in an emergency on the farm.  In one
pocket were the hatchet and nails, for she never
rode by a loose plank but she nailed it on again,
and in the other were her medicines, everything
needed on the farm from a hypodermic syringe
to a package of salts.

The day after I came home I rode over the
farm with her.  "It's good to ride Little Sister,"
I said, stroking her crest.  "What a beautiful
saddle mare she has made."

"Eloise did it," said my Aunt.  "Jack, do
you know she was always foolish about that mare
after you left?"

She squared her big horse up to me.  "Jack,"
she whispered, "I don't believe in the stuff, of
course.  It is all foolishness and not fit to marry
on, but there is a great vein of sentiment in that
girl in spite of her make-believe and her
indifference.  After you left she wouldn't ride
anything but that mare and I knew it was because of
you, and the clever way you did up those two old
braggarts of ours in that race."

"Did she, Aunt Lucretia?"

She looked at me cuttingly and then burst into
a laugh.  "Jack, what shall I do with you?  You
are so in love with Eloise that it's positively
painful.  You must overcome it before you marry
her; it's not good policy, not manly nor becoming.
The greatest race of men was in the days when
a man took his wife by force, conquered her and
beat her into submission.  He couldn't own her
until he proved he was a better man than she.
Now, the woman rules in everything.  Take your
silly weddings; they're a glorification of the bride.
To see them one would think the poor devil of
a groom was a kind of matrimonial valet, a
second fiddler, used chiefly to make a background
for the bride to show off on—he is not marrying—oh,
no, it is the woman—and it's the same
everywhere.  The women are writing our novels,
our magazines, our poetry, running our conventions,
starring in our theatres and churches, and
doing everything else worth while except making
the money.  The men have become unconsciously
so enslaved that the few of them who do write
novels or poetry write effeminate things because the
age is under the influence of woman.  There is
no man-poetry any longer, that's why I never
read it.  If we don't get a man-age into the world
again," she added vehemently, "we are all going
to the devil, going to be wiped out by some heathen
man-race of the Nibelungen woods, not yet born!"

I smiled guiltily, for I saw Eloise coming out
of the house and my heart fluttered queerly at
sight of her.  She came forward and I saw Goff's
roses pinned on her breast.

"This is like old times, Jack," she said
laughing, "but where is my horse?"  She looked
around, glancing at the little pony-mare we had
saddled for her.

"I thought you'd like to ride the pony-mare
again," said Jim, who stood holding the reins,
"like you useter ride with Mr. Jack," he added.

Eloise tossed her head.  "No, no; now, Jim,
you may saddle Satan for me.  Why, I've been
dreaming of this for months, a chance to show
the splendid fellow and his paces to Jack.  I
wouldn't miss it for anything."

Jim stood scratching his chin thoughtfully.
"Dat devil horse, he ain't a good horse, this
mohnin', ma'am, 'specially for ladies."

"Jim," she said sternly, "look me in the eye!
What have you been doing to Satan?"

Jim grinned apologetically.  "I had to ride
him las' night for some med'cine for my sick
chile."

"And I told you never to ride him, that he
hated the very smell of a negro."

Jim still grinned.

"But you tried him?" she went on.

"Yes'um, and he flung me!"

Eloise laughed.  "Served you right.  You
know that horse doesn't like you."

"An' when I went into the stall to saddle him,
he remembered it."

"Of course he did.  I told him never to let
you or anyone else ride him—no one but me."

"That horse," said Aunt Lucretia, as we
followed Eloise to the barn, "is dangerous.  I have
been expecting to hear of him killing her.  It's
all in his pedigree, Jack; he can't help being mean.
His sire was a rattle-headed but game and iron
horse—fast, but utterly unreliable.  You may
remember how fast he was, but would go crazy,
and ran away in a race, running into another horse
and getting a sulky shaft driven through his heart.
All of his colts I ever saw are crazy, fast and
game—but cruelly mean when roused.  Still I'm
to blame for this one.  I thought Little Sister's
brain and sweet temper might overcome it in the sire."

"Little Sister is his dam, then?" I said, patting
the neck of the mare I was riding.

"Yes, he was foaled the year after you left for
school, and is now three," she answered.

I heard Satan before I saw him.  He was walking
the length of his halter, now and then neighing,
then whinnying to Eloise softly.  It was the
sound of her voice that had softened him.  Above
the anger which shook his frame, maddened at
the sight of the groom who had offended him, he
had heard the soothing voice of Eloise, and
responded with a gentle whinny.

She smiled.  "Just listen to him!  Dangerous—he's
an angel!  Bring him out, Jim."  She
winked at Aunt Lucretia and me.

Jim grinned sillily.  "'Scuse me, Miss 'Leeze;
you's jes' sayin' that to guy me.  He loves my
leetle boy, an' he feeds him an' keers for 'im," he
added, "but it looks like he thinks I put an
insultment on him.  'Scuse me, Miss Leeze, but I
wouldn't go in there for no money."

It was true.  At the sound of Jim's voice,
Satan's eyes had kindled, and he threw back his
head, trying to break his halter to get to him.

"You try him, Jack," said Eloise; "I'm sure
he loves you.  I never knew one that didn't."

I opened the door.  Never had I looked upon
so superb a horse: a great star stood out beneath
the tangled foretop of his mane, on a great square,
broad forehead, so black it was silken.  The rest
of him, too, was midnight, except one white satin
foot.  His tail was a heavy hemp of black, shiny
silk; his shoulders sloped in the line of strength.
His chest was splendid, his muscles, fore and aft,
bunched above the cleanest of bony legs.  There
was great strength, brain, and self-will in his head.

He was watching me keenly, as a wild beast
eyes a new keeper.  An animal knows friend or
foe instantly.  Their instinct is unerring and
surpasses man's reason.  I saw his eyes light up
doubtfully, hesitate, and then gleam when I put
my hands out and rubbed his cheek.  "You
splendid fellow; mean?  It's not true.  Did
Jim put an insultment on you, old boy?"  I
laughed.

Then he rubbed my shoulder with his clean-cut nose.

Eloise laughed behind me.  "I knew he'd love
you, Jack."

Satan came out playing.  Rearing, he stood on
two legs like a great boy, showing off before
another.  Then he came up, rubbing his nose on my
shoulder and reaching for the apple Eloise had
for him.  Meanwhile Aunt Lucretia sat smiling
doubtfully.

I saddled him, and when Eloise sprang up they
looked superbly splendid, the horse proud of his
rider.

"Well, we'll go," said Aunt Lucretia, starting off.

We turned to go to the left.  Satan made two
quick leaps, playfully, as if to follow, and then,
taking the bit he wheeled to the right despite
Eloise's protest.  He saw Jim holding the gate
open for us.  He wheeled and refused to go
through it; he laid back his ears and quivered with
rage at the sight of the negro.

Aunt Lucretia stopped.  I pulled up sharply.
Eloise sat white with anger on her uncontrollable
mount.

"Oh, don't be angry with him," said Aunt
Lucretia.  "You will have to go as he says."

Eloise touched him with her whip and he reared,
leaping high into the air.  I caught my breath
when she came down firmly with him.  He stood
backing his ears at Jim.  Again she urged him,
again he refused.  She brought her whip down
sharply.

"Don't, Eloise," I cried, "he's dangerous."

Again he leaped high in the air, tossing his
head.

Eloise slid down, white with anger.  "Jack,
put your saddle on him," she said quietly.

"I think we'd better," I said.  "I'll ride him for
you for a while.  It's Jim.  He'll never forget him."

"You have a sharp knife?" asked Eloise, after
I had put my saddle on the horse.  She took the
reins in her hands.  "No, no, I'll hold him.
Don't put my saddle on your mare.  Wait."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Eloise," said Aunt Lucretia, "you shan't get
up on that horse again."

But Eloise did not notice her; her lips were set;
her face white.  I knew the meaning of old.

"Jack," she said quietly, "grasp my skirt at
the hem, petticoat and all, and cut it clean down
from above my knees.  Don't listen to Aunt
Lucretia.  Please, Jack, it is life and death with
the horse and me.  I'd rather die than have him
conquer me."

I knew from her voice that she meant it.

Grasping her skirts at the hem in an instant I
had ripped them through.

"Now behind," she said; "it's my old riding
skirt, Jack."

In an instant it, too, was split.

She smiled, a flash of her old humor behind her
sternness.  "Now, turn, Jack."

When I turned back again she had slipped both
her garters over her divided skirts, so that they
were held firmly to her ankles.  The next instant
she was in my saddle, astride.

"You, dear, sweet, old, stubborn Satan," she
said softly, "I am sorry I must punish you.  Shut
the gate, Jim; I am going to make him do his
best stunt to pay for this."

At the first blow from her whip he sprang up
in anger, but the whip fell fast and with fury.
Her lithe body sat him easily, like a part of him,
her two heels buried in his flanks.  He made leap
after leap, but still she sat him, cutting his sides
into whelks.  He leaped high to dismount her;
he wheeled suddenly, but never caught her off her
guard.  The whip never let up.  Frighted,
angry, he bolted for the plank fence.  The gate was
shut, but Eloise gave him the whip at every jump.

"Stop her—he'll kill her!" I cried, as I saw
him rise for the leap.

.. _`"Stop Her—He'll Kill Her," I Cried`:

.. figure:: images/img-118.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "STOP HER—HE'LL KILL HER," I CRIED.

   "STOP HER—HE'LL KILL HER," I CRIED.

I expected to see him strike the fence midway,
and come back on her in a heap.  Instead I saw
Eloise lift him, with a quick firm hand, straight
up towards the sky and I saw the horse land on
the other side clean, and clear, without losing a
stride.  Then they vanished in a whirl of dust
up the pike.

"I'll ride after her," I cried to Aunt Lucretia.
"He'll kill her yet."

"Don't worry," she smiled, "she's more apt
to kill him.  But that jump, Jack, that
jump—did you see it?"

My Aunt's eyes were ablaze with a kindled fire.
I had seen it often when a race was on.  She
rode up to the fence.  "Five feet six, Jack," she
said laughing; "why, the record cross-country is
five feet six—that's the record held by Colonel
Goff's horse—" and she laughed again meaningly.

It was fifteen minutes before we saw Satan
coming back!  He came in a gentle canter, his great
head held high in pride, because Eloise was
laughing and joking with him, patting his mane and
calling him sweet names.  "You darling Satan,"
she cried, as she leaped down, "I did so hate to
punish you!"

They say horses do not weep, but there were
tears in the eyes of Satan as he rubbed his head
against her breast, and nibbled the apple she held
out to him.

Up the road cantered a horseman in haste,
riding an English hunter.  Eloise looked up and
smiled.  "I can't go with you to-day, Jack.
Here comes Colonel Goff.  I wanted you to see
that jump.  Isn't he great?  He's done it a dozen
times, and yet Colonel Goff really thinks he owns
the champion."  She laughed, her eyes shining.
"I must run in and change my habit for the scolding
I know is coming."

I turned sullenly in my saddle and rode off.  I
did not wish to see Goff take her away from us.

I did not enjoy the ride over the farm.  The
sick brood mare, with the young colt, which
nickered so distressingly for Aunt Lucretia, alone
excited my sympathy.  I was heartsick myself.  I
did not even enjoy seeing Tammas and Marget.

As we rode away from the dairy we met Elsie
coming down the wooded path, a smile on her
pretty lips.

"That girl," said my Aunt, "is a fine creature,
and do you know, Jack, if I know anything of
breeding, she's got rare blood in her.  It shows in
a hundred ways.  Now, watch her."

She was dressed in white, her hair hanging in
two plaits down her back.  "I am playing at
being in Scotland," she said as we came up, "and
I have gathered these Scotch wild flowers for
Mr. Jack."  She handed them up to me, and when my
eyes met hers in thanks Aunt Lucretia saw the
blush that flushed her face.  She looked sharply
at me a moment and then smiled.  I walked to
the barn gate, Elsie going with us, and telling me
of the Scotch flowers and trees.  "I would be
quite happy here," she said, "if we only had the
heather on these hills."

Aunt Lucretia turned at the gate.  "You must
come up to the house some night this week, and
we'll have a Bobbie Burns evening," said she.

"Oh, thank you," Elsie answered, smiling at
me instead of at Aunt Lucretia.

"Who was that you were talking to before we
met you?" I asked.  "The gentleman who rode
off when he saw us coming?"

"That was Captain Braxton.  He has asked
my hand in marriage, but I dinna think I shall,"
she added, with a little sigh.  "I dinna like him
as I should, but I dinna say yet, for I shall think
it over.  He's noo like Mr. Jack."  Her little
Scotch words would slip in now and then.

I flushed and looked at Aunt Lucretia, who sat
biting her lips as if in anger.  Elsie was all
frankness.  She put her hand in mine trustingly, and
instantly I knew why she had told me.

"No brother could love you more than I do,"
I said.  "Tammas and Marget raised me, too,
so I'm really your brother."  I laughed to hide
my anger at Braxton Bragg and the turn affairs
had taken.

She had lifted my hand with a loyal little
gesture and pressed it to her cheek before I could
withdraw it.  "You'll come to see me, often,
won't you, Mr. Jack?  I need you to help me."

"Jack," I said, smiling at her, "just Jack from
now on."

"Oh, but that's not respectful, and I'd not be
wanting in respect for you for the world."

"I'll not call you Elsie then, any more," I
answered, "nor make the request of you I'm going
to make."

"Jack, then," she said.  "And your request—it
is already granted."

"That you'll not see Braxton Bragg alone until—well,
until I have talked with you," I said earnestly.

"O—h," and her eyes opened wide.  "Jack,
why, of course.  If he writes to me again I'll
send the letter to you before I answer it."

"Bring it," I said; "I want to see it right away."

We rode back to the house.

"Jack," said my aunt, "he is the most
contemptible reversion to a scrub that ever came
from a good pedigree!  But if he tries that
game on that child—he has played it recklessly
since you left—I'll kill him myself—damn him!"

I soon forgot Elsie.  I caught sight of Eloise
entertaining Goff in our old bower, and I could
see that as he sat there, smoking and watching her,
he already thought she was the Countess of Carfax.





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.. _`TWO WAYS OF LOVE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   TWO WAYS OF LOVE

.. vspace:: 2

I knew that Colonel Goff would not only stay
the afternoon but the evening also.  He had been
doing it ever since the war, for he regarded his
General's home as his also.  The assurance of
the man incensed me.  The divine right of his old
kings seemed to have been born in him; and now
that he had won Eloise, she and The Home Stretch
and all that it contained were his whenever he
chose to have them.

Eloise would tease him in pure wantonness, and
scorn him, and even ridicule him; for all of which
he worshipped her, as is apt to be the way with
men.  Yet I very quickly noticed the little touch
of sadness, which, despite her efforts, fell over her
so suddenly.  To her wit and repartee, her fun
and humor, his only answer would be flashes of his
fine teeth, and his favorite exclamation, "Fawncy
now, but isn't that a blooming good one?"  I
was convinced that he loved Eloise and was proud
of her; but I thought it was such a feeling as he
might have for any beautiful animal, the same
worship he might easily have bestowed upon an
Arab mare of the desert.

It was not long before Colonel Goff and Aunt
Lucretia were in their usual dispute about horses
and he was scolding her for letting Eloise ride
Satan: "Ah, that unregistered fool!  Really, my
dear madam, you should not let her go near him,
he'll be the death of her yet.  Now, there is my
imported Irish hunter; he's got a head as well
as legs; say now—suppose I just send him over
for her," and he looked at Eloise to see what she
would say.

Eloise threw up her fine head significantly.

"The idea, Colonel Goff!  Why, I wouldn't
be caught riding him!  That big thing better than
Satan!  Why His Satanic Majesty can gallop
rings all around him."

Colonel Goff laughed.  "Fawncy!"

"Yes, fawncy!" said Eloise, mimicking him,
which made him flush again and then look at her
admiringly.

Aunt Lucretia broke in.  "He can," she said
very firmly.  "I wonder, Colonel Goff, why you
should send to England for a horse when you have
better ones at home?"

Colonel Goff laughed loudly.

"Why you even think that bang-tailed son of
Nestor can jump," went on Aunt Lucretia, laying
her trap quietly for him.

This was the one strong point of the son of
Nestor, and the one thing about him that his owner
had published on his arrival.

"Madam," he said with great seriousness, a
bit offended, "madam, I think I told you before
that he held the championship for cross-country
at Melton-Mowbry."

"Oh, so you did," said my Aunt Lucretia, ever
so sweetly, "and yet I believe Satan can beat him
both at the distance and over the hurdles."

Goff laughed, but not as though pleased.  He
was too well-bred to reply to Aunt Lucretia in her
kind.  So he only tapped his boot, and looked at
Eloise, who smiled sweetly at him, as if urging
him on.

"I was talking the other day to Secretary
Roswick of our State Fair," went on Aunt Lucretia
calmly, "and was entering some of my own things.
Now, Roswick, you know, makes me put up about
half of his programmes.  He has asked me to
get up some novelties on the side.  We'll just have
a hurdle race if you say so."

"Capital, capital!" said Goff, for the first time
showing excitement.  Then he quieted down
suddenly.  "What am I thinking about?  What, in
this unregistered country, could go against Nestor,
champion hurdler of his class?"

"Satan," said Aunt Lucretia, smiling sweetly.

"Fawncy!" shouted the Colonel decisively.

"I'll lay you five hundred that he can," said my
Aunt, "and I don't know a thing in the world
about your game."

"Madam," said Goff, quietly, "I have never
taken an unfair advantage of a woman."

"Colonel Goff," said my Aunt very seriously,
"you know as well as you know anything, that if
I know anything it is horses, that I am of age,
and that I am good for all my obligations.  I'll
bet you five hundred dollars that Satan will beat
your horse at his own game."

"Do you know, madam," said Goff, "that a
jumping horse is born to jump?  Not one in a
thousand can go over a three-foot hurdle, and this
brute of yours—"

"Brute?" said Eloise, icily.  "Brute, Colonel
Goff, he is an angel!  He can do anything."

"And you will ride him?" he asked.

"Nobody else can," said my Aunt.  "Yes,
she'll ride him and beat you, too."

"I'll take your bet," said he.  "I'd give five
hundred dollars to ride once in a race with the
only girl in America who is really English.  How
she ever got into this blooming country I can't see!"

I left my Aunt and the Colonel arranging their
new game for the Cumberland meeting.  I did
not take much interest in Eloise riding against him!

I had ordered my horse, intending to ride over
to Ned's; I wanted to see my pets there, Little
Sister, and Captain Skipper and the new arrival.
Eloise followed me through the wood lot.  She
came up and slipped her arm through mine, and
its very touch carried a sadness, it seemed as if the
quick electric pulse was gone.  In her eyes there
was a weariness, an indefinable longing.  It
touched me to see her so, my live, light-hearted,
foster sister of old.

"Jack," she sighed, "I am—I am—"  She
stopped and looked up into my face.

"What?" I asked.  "I should think you would
be happy, so soon to marry an Earl."

"It is sooner than you suppose," she said
seriously.  "He does not wish it known yet
because the proper notification has not come from
his attorneys in England, but—but—Jack—Jack,
his brother is already dead and he wants me
to marry him.  I have already promised to marry
him next month."

I knew she saw me pale.  I could have cursed
myself for the weakness.

She went on.  "When I promised him six
months ago it was all so vague, so far off, and I
was so miserable, Jack—so homeless and
badgered, and dependent, it was all so far off, I
thought—waiting for his brother to die, and
now!  You know how these English are, they take
these things so seriously, their marriages and
promises, they are so matter-of-fact about it, and so
consistent: why, Jack, he looks on me already as
his bride.  He is just as busy planning for our
future, arranging how the estate is to be remodeled,
what home we are to have, I couldn't get out
of it honorably even—Jack, even if—"

"Even if you should happen to love me?" I
said, looking very earnestly into her eyes.

She nodded, her head dropped low.  For the
first time in her life I saw tears in her eyes.

"Oh, Jack, I am miserable!  It was all so far
off once,—now—only next month,—and you
know I'd die before I'd deceive him—big boy
that he is, and trusting and worshipping me, Jack.
Yes, that is what hurts me—worshipping me as he
does—I couldn't.  I couldn't, Jack!  If I have
any one strong thing in me, you know it is—"

"Keeping your faith with your friends," said
I.  She nodded.  "Do you think I am wicked to
marry him this way?  Won't you come, in after
years, to despise me?"

For answer I stooped and kissed her.  She put
both her arms around my neck.  "Please stay
with me," she cried, "I do so need you.  I just
heard it to-day.  It was why he came and stayed
so long.  Please stay and be with me till he leaves.
Just stay with me, Little Brother, this time."

"Why," I said, "this time?  Surely he will
resent it.  Any man would want this night of all
others to be with you."

"Jack, you don't understand.  I am miserable.
That is why I rode Satan as I did.  When I put
him at that fence I hoped—it is wicked I
know—but I hoped that he would kill me."

She was sobbing in my arms.

"Eloise, don't," I said; "let me go.  Don't
you know that it is harder on me than it is on
you?  Do you think I am made of stone—of
wood—to come home expecting sweetness and
find it all rue—my dreams about you—"

"Just to-night, Jack.  You'll—you'll laugh at
me when I say why, but, but, you know how punctilious
these Englishmen are, and he thinks I must
kiss him to-night when he goes."

I felt the hot blood rush to my heart.  It was
instinct, the reversion of a past ancestor who
fought another man for kissing his wilderness
bride.

"Eloise, you wouldn't?"

"If you'll kiss me again, Jack, as you did just
now.  I never felt so before—until—but it
you'll kiss me again—that way, I'll never kiss
him—never!"

I held her in my arms.  I kissed her eyes, which
were moist.  I kissed her mouth, and it seemed
as though my soul went into hers; for when, in
desperation, in an exhilaration which was all but
madness I broke away I heard her cry faintly,
"*Jack, Jack!*" ...

I saw her arms around the great fatherly tree,
her head against it.





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.. _`WORK AND MINE ACRE`:

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   CHAPTER XII


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   WORK AND MINE ACRE

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There is but one balm for a heartache, and that
is work.

Nothing in all my life had left me so stranded;
had killed so utterly the sweetness of all my dreams
as this giving up of Eloise.  And with no dream
there is no life.

I felt that she was lost to me now: if she were
not engaged to Colonel Goff, there was nothing
in me now, I thought bitterly, that could awaken
in her the real love she had never felt for anyone.
Yet with all her spirit, her apparent indifference,
and even recklessness, I knew she had a throne
in her heart of hearts for love on a higher plane
than those who love easily.  I knew that only one
side of her had ever been revealed, either to
herself or to the world; that beautiful as she was
there was a yet more beautiful side to her; and
that brave as she was there were yet deeper depths
of bravery within her, a moral bravery which
under the spur of her soul would take another leap,
as far greater than that she took on Satan as the
brave leap of Pegasus over the clouds.  I had
known her always.  I knew what she did not
know: that I was loving an Eloise that was yet,
and forever would be, an unseen star in an
unknown heaven, above the head of the man who had
never yet learned to look up.  Should I sit still and
let him take her, let him do this irreparable wrong
both to himself, and to her and to me?  My
heart cowered a moment at the thought of its
hopelessness.  Then—how wonderful is the word
of the soul unto the soul, the passed soul to the
passing soul, the absent soul to the present soul,—I
thought of the words of Aunt Lucretia: "What
would Andrew Jackson do, Jack?"  Into my soul
came the steel of Andrew Jackson.  With the
quickness of the thought came the change.  "*Aye,
my unseeing old grandsire," I said, "you shall see
whether I am a fighter or not! ... For Eloise.*"

From that moment I resolved to fight.  God's
blessings on the memory of Andrew Jackson!

But I would fight in my own way.  For I knew
that Eloise's idea of love was a love of life and
death: she who would ride a mad horse over a
five-foot fence for the conquering instinct of a
mastering nature, what would she not do for
love—*her love*—and she a woman?  For let it be
writ both of history and life, 'tis woman at last
who loves.  Man knows not love.  Even as his
own life came to him the babe of Love and
Passion, so only can he give that unto another.  But
she who gave it being, *her name was Love*!
Oh, to win such a love as I knew Eloise would
bring to me; which she herself knew not was
there.

I lost my bitterness of it all when it came clear
to me.  Before, I had been maddened to think
she would barter this love of hers for title and
wealth and the place it bought.  But now I saw
clearly, now I knew that she was blameless,
because never having had that love, she knew not
what she was giving away.  Like an Indian
princess, who owned an island of pearls, but did
not know their value, she would give them to the
first foreigner, coming down in ships, for the
baubles of his forecastle.

But I would show my Princess what her pearls
were worth.  I would string them in globes of
beauty around her neck, and brow, and belt, and
I would put my crowning Great Pearl of Sacrifice
into the diadem of her hair, and then I would lead
her down to the sweet glassy sea of her own
unbartered, unbought home, her own sweet kingdom
of kindness and content, and by the still waters,
in God's own groves, I would lead her until her
feet dipped into the mirroring pools, and, kissing
her, bid her look for the first time and behold
Love crowned.

.. vspace::  2

Would she barter herself for baubles then?
Would she not know the difference between pearls
and paste beads?  I, yes, happy I, would show it
to her; I would introduce Eloise to herself—Eloise
loveless to Eloise in love.

I laughed now in the happiness of my little
conceit.  Very distinctly I could hear my Aunt
Lucretia say: "*Sure, Jack, that is the way Andrew
Jackson did—took her from the toad who had
deceived her, right out of his arms, and then killed
every other toad who croaked about it.  Sure!*" ...

There was much for me to do, both of love and
duty.  My duty was work, and that came first.
For I had faith both in God and myself, and if I
did my duty and my work, God would give the
rest to me.

Work—the glory and sweetness of it!  And
to find one's work in one's life—that One Work
which fits the One Life: this to me has always
been the greatest gift of the Giver.

There was so much for me to do.  I was the
pioneer of a great truth in the world's greatest
country.  In all great causes it is the pioneer who
is the sacrifice, it is he who is held up to contempt
and scorn.  Strange that it should be so!  That
he who sees first the Great New Truth, the
Blessing that has been withheld because of no one to
see it, the Great Invention uplifting through one
man all men into a new world, that it is he who
must suffer....

The hurt does not matter from those who love
us not.  I was willing that the herd should think
of me as it would, as its own little light permitted,
but I had that pride of race which every honest
man has, and I wanted the love of my fighting old
grandsire.  And he openly despised my profession,
and he secretly despised me.  "What's the
use of worrying about making more on an acre of
this rich soil?" he would say.  "Ain't The Home
Stretch rich enough?  And fiddling about saving
trees—why damn it, ain't there too many of them
already?  Didn't I have all the hard work of my
life clearing some of the land, and my father
before me, that it might make us a living!"

He would never understand me, of course.  The
discoverer is never understood, and the forester
falls in the same class, more maligned than any
of them.  He would never understand that it was
not a sentimental dream to save trees because they
are trees, but to grow them and harvest them in
the right way, even as wheat is harvested: that
we did not want to see rich acres, the homes of
unborn people, covered only with trees, when the
land was needed for bread, but the unfertile
hillside, and the heads of our water streams.  There,
we insisted, trees should remain because that was
Nature's own way of protecting the land from
droughts and floods.  Nor could I hope to make
him understand that rich as the land was—even
as a man of genius—it should have a chance to
bring forth all the fruit that was in it.  That our
waste was something appalling, our methods
crude, and that our people, with all their plenty,
were only half fed; that while we were rich and
The Home Stretch was a garden, the poor farmers
of the hills and less fertile places were living only
half lives, they and their families, because there
was no one to show them something better.

My Aunt I knew was sorry for me; but I could
see she hoped and believed I would yet get over
it.  And in my own heart I felt that if I had
chosen West Point, perhaps Eloise—

I flushed, ashamed.  How prone our little weak
Self always is to play Arnold with our Soul!

I began at once to work.  It is what one does
with one's own acre, not what one preaches should
be done to the acres of others, that convinces his
neighbors at last, and settles the standard of his
life's text among them.

I started it on a gullied hillside of The Home
Stretch.  These gullies I filled.  Young trees were
easy to transplant from the over-crowded growth
of the woodland.  Nature is at last her own
greatest doctor.  I gave her the soil she had been
begging for, and very quickly she studded it with
little pioneers of the game black locust, to hold
back that which she had, to shadow it with
coolness and damp that grass might grow beneath,
and mold form, and the blistered soil have yet
another chance, and that later the trees might
rear their great heads high, stealing from the
clouds the moisture for the earth.

My neighbors knew me, had known me from a
boy, and it was not difficult to get them to meet
me at the little schoolhouse once a week and hear
my talk.  Now talks all depend upon one's honesty
and earnestness, not on one's brightness; in
a month they became interested and were one with
me.  They had always looked upon a forest as
a necessary evil, as a great wood put there to
be cut down, burnt, destroyed, that man might
till the land.  Indeed, from their pioneer fathers,
whose greatest burden was clearing the land, there
had come down to them the instinct of forest
hatred, just as had come their instinct of Indian
hatred, bear and wolf and panther hatred.  But
at the same time I knew that they had in the
heart of their pedigrees another and sweeter
instinct, and that it came from their forest-loving
Briton and Saxon and even remote Aryan sires,
whose ancestors before them, had long ago gone
through the same fight with the primeval forest,
but whose children after them for a thousand
years, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean,
were forced to go back to tree-planting, to
forest preservation, or die with their soil.  It did
not take much to make this forest preserving,
land-preserving, life-preserving instinct outcrop
again among their children here.  It was a
revelation to them when I explained that the true
forester was he who assisted the farmer and the
lumberman in rearing more trees and better trees
where they should be, and destroying the
worthless ones, even all of them if need were, where
they should not be.  In their prejudice they
thought a forester was a dreamer, an impractical
person, who preached forest preservation from
sentiment, and would let the trees grow where
children ought to grow.  I won them all when
I explained that a tree, when ripe, should be
garnered, just as corn or wheat, or any other
product of the soil.  But during the years while it
ripens for the saw, the young things beneath it,
which should take its place, must be protected,
and their life preserved in the harvesting of the
ripe trees; or if the land was to be cleared for
tilling, other places on the farm, especially the
unproductive hillside, and the sources of the stream,
should be given over to forestry.  This would
save the hillsides from washing and depositing
their flinty soil over the rich valleys below, and
guarding the water head, preserve the springs.
But when the tree is ripe it should be harvested,
unless it stood in some park or yard or town for
a street ornament or shade.  If it were in any
of these places it should die in the ripeness of
beautiful old age, a younger one taking its place.
It was not long before I had a class of forestry,
and there was much of the German methods I
had learned in every branch of farming which I
gave them for nothing, that helped me greatly.
It is what one gives for nothing that brings in the
greatest returns at last.

But my greatest help was in a flood early in
May.  The headwaters of the Cumberland lie
in the Appalachian range, that great wooded
mountain strip which mothers the headwaters of
the Ohio, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland,
and so of all the states they water.  That long
ridge of wooded slope had been a sponge, the
gauge that controlled the flow from half the
tillable Union.  On the Tennessee, the forest had
been brutally butchered, and on the Cumberland
as badly treated.  The flood came.  There was
but little to hold, and check it, and we had a
deluge such as was never known before.  Even
my grandsire, seeing it, admitted what I said.
The seemingly wasted word had fallen as the
drift of the elm tree's shaft had taken root in
a corner of the old field.





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.. _`THE UNATTAINABLE`:

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   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE UNATTAINABLE

.. vspace:: 2

My work took me daily to Tammas's cottage.
There was nothing so restful to me as these two
good people, and their sweetness and cheer, and
Elsie held my interest.  I had always been fond
of her, and now that she had grown into this
rare, delicate flower, so sensitively turned, so
romantically original, I found the greatest
pleasure in studying her, and, in humoring her, as
everybody did who came into her sphere.  She
commanded obedience as readily as she gave it.
Every day was a different mood, and always a
romance with her.  One day she had on a large
white apron, and was helping Tammas with the
churning.

"I am playing a new game, to-day, Jack," she
said, pulling me to a corner of the dairy where
the spring water whirled through the stone
troughs.  "You'll laugh when you hear it," she
added, her eyes shining into mine.

"I'll not," I said, "I'll be more apt to play
with you.  What is the game to-day?"

She laughed merrily.  "Well, to-day I am a
duke's daughter, who was secretly exchanged in
her cradle with the dairyman's baby.  Now only
three people know it; the dairyman, who is old,
and about to die; and who is so sorry that he ever
did it, but he did so want his own daughter to
be a lady in the land; and me, whom he has told
at the last minute, and the bad, bold knight, very
dashing, who has bribed the dairyman to tell
him, and who wishes very much to marry me.
But I want to marry my own bonny prince, you see."

"I should think he'd be proud and loyally love
his dairymaid bride," I laughed, pinching her
cheek.

"But, Jack, you are so stupid," she said,
pouting.  "You don't catch on.  I can't play a game
by myself.  I want you to play the prince."

Tammas stood looking on, his face in its
favorite Scotch grin.  "Weel, weel, did ye ever
hear the like o' that, an' it's no' leap-year either!"

I could see that he was pleased and proud.

"And it is the prince I'll play from now on,
my ane braw lassie," I said, dropping into her
own dialect.  "Isn't that what you call them in
Scotch?" I asked.

"An' noo," said Tammas, "a' lasses get unco
thrang when their lovers are aboot, to gar them
think they are unco worthy."

Elsie laughed and went vigorously to work,
molding butter pounds.  I stood watching her
while I talked to Tammas.  She was not all a
child.  There was a certain queenliness, a quiet
dignity about her that was very attractive.  In
her fine-cut face, deep down in her great blue eyes,
in her very poise there was a quiet naturalness,
a pretty aloofness which spoke of reserve forces,
that seemed to soothe me.  God only knew how
I needed it!

After an hour with her and Tammas I felt, as
I went down the wooded path, under the great
trees of the dairy lot, as I had when I heard for
the first time, in the deep hours of the night,
the chimes of the bells of Munich.  I had not
cared for the service with all its symbols and,
to me, its meaningless metaphors; but I had
loved its music, the great bells which calmed my
soul.

I wish to join a new church.  I am tired of
these which preach.  I want to join one where
there is no preaching, no talking, nothing but
music, music which makes you feel God.  Why
all this preaching anyway?  God and talk do not
go together.  Religion is not a science to be
proven, not a thesis to be demonstrated, not a
problem to be solved, but a silent Soul-Force to
be felt.

Preachers and priests in their vanity to be
heard, or their zeal to proselyte, or their
over-humanness just to talk, talk, talk, have robbed
the church of half its sweetness and power.  Will
they never learn that God's house was made for
God's children and in it they should do as God
does,—be silent and worship?  And if there be
a voice to break it, let it be the Voice of that
which is nearest to God on earth—Music....
It was this feeling that Elsie gave me—of
calmness, of restfulness, of devotion.  There are
those who irritate us, and they cannot help it;
there are those who provoke us, anger us, madden
us by their very presence.  There are others who
stir us up for trade and money-making; the sound
of whose very voice makes us wish to own land,
or buy stock or build houses; and there are
those—God help them—whose talk, be it ever so
brief, falls over us like an unwholesome thing.

Elsie read much of romance, and her small
library was choice; but the love-poems of Burns
she knew best of all, and she always read them
to me when I was about to leave, as if she would
hold me longer.  Then I would remember them
far into the night and the radiant-faced, spiritual
girl with the deep eyes, reading them.  I needed
the restfulness which Elsie's friendship gave.  I
needed her sweetness that calmed me, her fresh
friendship that was like a great rose at the window
of my soul.  In her utter unseekingness, her
loyal trustfulness, I saw that she did not even
suspect that I loved Eloise.

I stayed all day at the cottage and she flitted
around with her great white apron on, now and
then calling me her bonny prince, especially if
Tammas and Marget were not around.  I
humored her, seeing how much pleasure she took
in it.

"If I am your Prince," I said, when I had
her alone in the butter room, "I am going to
call you my Heart's-Ease."

She looked up quickly and a faint blush came
into her face.  She did not reply, but busied
herself about the house, while Tammas and I talked
of the new test of Lass o' Lowrie, one of his
cows, which, from five gallons of milk daily was
making three pounds of butter.

"Dae ye ken Mr. Jack, whit's daeing it?"
said the old man.  "It's nae ither than the auld
Top Sawyer bluid!"

Elsie, daintily gowned in a pretty white frock
and for the first time with her hair up in a comical
little Scotch top-knot, walked with me down the
wooded path to the parting of our ways.  A
tiny heart's-ease had just thrust out its fragrant
leaves in the rich mold under the trees.  She
plucked the leaf, and there was the faintest trace
of a twinkle in her blue eyes as she came up and
pinned it on my lapel.

"Here is your heart's-ease, my Prince," she
said slyly.

I felt a flush upon my cheek.  She was silent,
and then she said slowly, "Do you know
Mr. Jack—Jack, that I believe every prince at times
has need of a heart's-ease friend, and—and—well,
maids need a prince to help them."

I looked at her quickly.

"I am your good Knight always if I can help
you, Elsie."

She flushed and turned her face aside that I
might not see it.

"And you won't misunderstand?" she asked.

"I don't think I could misunderstand you,
Elsie.  I don't think anybody could."

She came up closer.

"Well, it's this, Jack.  Sit down here by me.
I have no one I can confide in but you.  You
know how kind you have always been to me.
Ever since I was a wee bairn in a strange land.
I can't talk to Tammas about it, but I feel there
is something strange between Colonel Goff and
me.  I feel that there is—"

I started.  She was pale, but went on.

"Well, you know, I didn't come here with
them.  I didn't come here with them—with my
grandparents; that was so long ago I don't
remember what is back of it.  Anyway, soon after
I came I remember Colonel Goff.  And do you
know," she went on, "he has been so good to
me that—that I cannot understand it at all—only
I feel when I am with him that I am drawn
to him so!  Oh, I have seen so much in him that
others don't see—and when I see him watching
me so closely and saying nothing, it hurts me."

She did not finish, but looked down the path,
up which Colonel Goff, himself, was riding
towards us.

Elsie paled and then flushed quickly.  He was
smiling at us, his little eyes twinkling kindly.
He gave us a quick military salute.

"My word, a *tête-à-tête*, and a bloomin' fool
it is who'd break in on it.  Hello, lassie—Jack!"

He got down from his horse, shaking hands
with us gravely.  I noticed that he was watching
Elsie, and she, knowing it, was reddening.

"You are a good guesser, Colonel," I said,
with feigned lightness, for I felt that he was
taking it too seriously, "and pray tell me who
would not like to be with so fine a lassie?"

He looked at me quickly.  "If you mean that,
Jack," he said, in his blunt, unseeing English way,
"here is my hand."

Elsie broke into a little confused laugh.  "The
idea of pinning Mr. Jack down like that," she
said, looking bravely into Goff's eyes.  "What
else could he say?  Now give me that box of
candy.  I see it sticking out of your pocket."

Goff pulled out the box of candy, and catching
her to him, kissed her on the cheek.

"She is my own lassie, Jack," he said, holding
her an instant in his arms.  "I have loved
her since she was so high."  He paused.  "Well,
perhaps it was because I was an exile in your
country, and she is the Scotch flower I found
blooming here.  Eh, lassie?"

Elsie kissed his cheek.

"You have been mighty good to me, Colonel
Goff.  But go your way.  Tammas said he
wanted to see you if you came by
and—well—Mr. Jack and I want some candy!"

For a moment he looked at us queerly, trying
to smile.  He glanced into my eyes, but I met his
squarely and unflinchingly.  He was not a man
whose mental action was quick.  He saw but one
side of things at a time.  I saw that he was
embarrassed in his slow way.  Very awkwardly he
left us, going up to Tammas's cottage.  Elsie
walked on with me.

The wind blew her hair around her temples
and the reflection of the blue hills of Scotland was
in her eyes.  "This is such an inconsistent world,
Jack," she said after a while.  "I can't ever learn
it, and I get so lonely up here with only Tammas
and Marget, I often wish that they would tell
me more of myself.  I should so love to know
who my father is."

"Did it ever occur to you that it might not
be at all pleasant for you to know?  They love
you and they want you to be happy."

She paled.  "I had never thought of that.  I
had never thought of that—oh, why didn't I
think of it!"

"Elsie," I said, taking her hand in mine, and
drawing her to me as I had when she was a
child, and I her big brother, "you have no better
friend than I.  Tell me what it is that is
troubling you?"

"You would hate me, Jack," she said, looking
up quickly into my face with great, earnest
eyes.

"Hate you?  Nonsense," and I laughed,
pinching her ear.  "Tell me," I pleaded, smiling.

"Nay, nay, bide a wee—bide a wee," she said
abstractedly falling into her childhood's dialect
as she so often did when she forgot.  "And
first," she went on, "why, first I'd have to kind
of explain it, Jack; but it is like this now:
suppose one was not satisfied with one's lot and had
those feelings I have been telling you of."

I nodded.

"And suppose—now this is the worst of it—now
suppose one really loved another—one
found one's soul dream," she paused, blushing.

"Soul dreams, Elsie, ay, I think I understand,"
I said.  "I too have them—they are the great,
unattainable things of our life.  Do you know
I think that their being unattainable is what
makes them great?"

She looked up.  "If it is worth so much—this
unattainable thing—why then does it hurt
so?"

"Ay, ay, that's it.  It is the things that hurt
which count.  'Our sweetest love is always
sweetest pain,'" I said, quoting the line of a poem.

"Oh," she said, clasping my arm.  "You
have said it, Jack."

I looked at her quickly.

"Elsie," I said, "you once told me—do you
remember what you said to me and Aunt
Lucretia—about your hand being sought in marriage?
Is it the same person you now speak of?"

"It is Captain Rutherford," she said, her face
drawn tensely.

I started, angry, flushed.

"Elsie, this will never do.  Do you love him
at all?"

"No, Jack, not as compared to the other—the
unattainable.  Well, I should say about as
the difference between a—well—say a star and
a little firefly."

A dry, fighting anger clinched my throat and
I could scarcely speak.  I could have throttled
Braxton Bragg then!

"Tell me, Elsie," I said, controlling my anger
and trying to speak calmly, "tell your big brother all."

But she was silent, her face turned from me;
at last she said, "It is all so strange, Jack; those
we love, love us not, and those we do not love
want to marry us even if they are not fit to."

"Not fit to hold your shoe, let alone your
heart," I added angrily.

She put her hand over my mouth.

"Have I done wrong?  Have I said too much?
Come, I must go.  I see the Colonel waiting for me."

I took her by both hands, holding her before
me, for I was strangely worried and I wished to
know—I looked earnestly into her eyes.

"Do you love me, Elsie?"

She blushed crimson.  In an instant her arms
were around my neck.

Shamed and stricken with my own thoughtlessness
I tore her arms from me.

"Elsie, forgive me, you don't understand!"

In reply she gave me one shamed, hurt look and
fled up the path.  I saw Goff waiting for her.





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.. _`GOD AND A BUTTERFLY`:

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   CHAPTER XIV


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   GOD AND A BUTTERFLY

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I saw a race for life the other day.  It
occurred in mid-air in a kingdom not of earth—not
of our own; but the air was sweet where
the fight was on, and the fields were green, and
the woods lay calm and soothing beneath, and
the great, kind sun was above.

It was the pursuit of a golden-winged butterfly,
one of those filmy creatures that is more of sky
than of earth, made of rainbow and a rose, of
light and a lily's blossom.  It seemed strange to
me that this beautiful thing, thrown off from the
rim of a rainbow, living on the nectar of a flower,
sleeping on the bosom of a nodding lily and floating
on the breath of a zephyr, so spiritual it was,
should fall under the cruel laws of life, and be
forced to fight for its brief but beautiful existence.

Who were its enemies?  Two glorious mocking
birds that had sung like spirits from an
heavenly choir around the house all spring and
summer, that had been permitted to live and rear
their young in contentment and happiness and
should have held no grudge against any other
creature.

Golden-Wings was in the garden, and he was
content until that which sustained life gave
out—food.  Ay, there is the rub!  We would all
be angels if it were not for food, we would be
saints but for our stomachs.  He had sucked
every flower in his pasture, he must go to
pastures fresh or die.  The distance was only a few
hundred yards of air, but he knew that in that air
was death.  He thought of it a long time as he
hovered from flower to flower; of life, of his
mate, of death.  Had he been all spirit he would
have stayed forever among the flowers, but he
was like all of us, half spirit and half flesh, and
the flesh of him was rebelling and begging for
food.  He must go.  He rose slowly, and with
uncertain wing, frightened, straight up, every
sense awake, every nerve keyed, his eyes on the
lookout for his enemy.  Up, up he rose, quivering,
scared, frightened, then he winged his way
across the ether in a flight which proved to be
for his life.

The mocking bird is a flycatcher, but not an
expert one.  Compared with the swallow, the
martin, the crested flycatcher or the bold king
bird he is a poor imitation; but the mocking bird
is also a poet and everything is grist that comes
to the poet's mill, from the grasshopper on the
ground to the butterfly in the air.

The male bird saw Golden-Wings and gave him
the first heat for his life; up in the air he darted,
circled and swooped.  Golden-Wings, terrified,
ducked, dived and escaped.  The poet dropped
to a twig in disgust and his mate took up the
fight.  Golden-Wings saw her coming and his
heart swelled with fear; he stood quivering in the
air, he knew not which way to turn.  She darted
straight and all but caught him; for a moment
in mid-air they whirled, twisted and tumbled,
Golden-Wings, panting and fluttering for a chance
once more for home and love and life, and the
poetess for a morsel to eat.  It ended in the
butterfly getting above the bird, which always seemed
to be his tactics, and the latter dropped down in
disgust to her mate.

Then, maddened, they both started after
Golden-Wings, and it looked as if this flight was
to be his last.

It was a terrible chase that the two poets gave
him, the tumbling, darting, circling of the birds
in maddened earnestness.  Their wings were
often so close that they fanned him about like
a whiff of gold tissue paper in the wind.  Twice
they got above him, dropped and missed!  Then
he was lost altogether, and only by watching the
circling of the birds could one guess where he
was.  When seen again he had got above his
enemies, and was steadily pursuing his zigzag,
frightened, graceless, paper-fluttering flight for
the distant trees and life!

"Luck to you, O Golden-Wings!" I cried.
"For already you have taught me a lesson for
Life.  Let us keep *above* our enemies if we would
be safe, not beneath them—for there we are a
prey to their talons, besmirched with dirt; nor on
their level, for there we are no better than they;
but *above* them where they cannot reach us, and
where we may go on to our destiny with only the
sunlight around us and the unseen stars above."

The birds dropped down, baffled, to rest in the
top of a sugar-maple tree.  Like all poets, in
losing their game they had lost their temper, and
now between panting and hard breathing they
could be heard quarreling.  "It was you," said
the wife, "you conceited thing; it is all your fault!
I had him once if you had let me alone."  "Oh,
you had him, did you," sneered the mate; "if
your talents only equaled your tongue you would
be better off!"  They almost spat upon each
other; they were beaten and angry and they took
it out that way.

Golden-Wings was safe.  He was high up in
the air.  His very flight was now the flight of
victory.  Twenty yards more and he would drop
down into the great splotch of green below where
his wife was waiting him on the blossom of a
wild cherry.

I was about to cheer him with the silent
approval of true applause when I saw a lightning
bolt of red drop from the jagged bar of the dead
limb of a great oak near by, in the midst of the
forest and high above the weary, yet happy
Golden-Wings.  I paled at the sight, for I knew
that no butterfly would ever escape this
new-comer.  Even Golden-Wings recognized his fate,
and, paralyzed with fear, stopped his flight in
mid-air in a few yards of his home, and lay
quivering in hopeless fear.  Well he might, for
the red and white bolt was a red-headed woodpecker,
a very king in the tribe of the flycatchers.
Often I had seen him poise above an air-bound
moth, then drop like a dead bird in the air and
no moth would be there.

The hand of the world is against the marauder,
be he bird or man.  But they revere the man who
robs by rule.

Straight at Golden-Wings he went.  The
race was up.  He used the same old tactics:
above the butterfly he soared, then, gauging the
distance from his own great beak to butterfly
beneath he folded his wings and dropped like a
plummet of lead.

I was out that morning with the twelve gauge,
smokeless shells and seven and a half chilled shot.
It was thieving crow I had come after, thinking
I might get a shot.  To the marauder my
thought was as lightning, for when I caught the
first flash of his crimson head, this went distinctly
through my mind: "*Nature is Nature even to
tooth and claw, and yet there is that which says
even when a butterfly shall fall.  He makes our
lives and marks out our destiny.  Sometimes amid
injustice, He calls himself Retribution.  And then
He has been known to raise up a man, and a gun,
invent smokeless powder and deadly chilled shot,
give accuracy of aim, and, most wonderful of all,
the Voice of a Purpose to say that harm shall not
happen to a Butterfly.*"

There was no smoke from the report, and so
I distinctly saw Golden-Wings drop joyfully
among the green leaves.  But a red marauder lies
in the field where he fell.





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.. _`HICKORIES AND OLD HICKORY`:

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   CHAPTER XV


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   HICKORIES AND OLD HICKORY

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June, and June as it breaks only over the
Middle Basin.

There had been great rains, saturating the
leaves and grasses until they were almost
blackened in their deep greenness.  There had
followed, flushing the grass on all the hills around
the Hermitage, the mauve tints of coming dandelions,
followed by the red, white, and blue flags
of the clovers, until across deep valleys and on
distant slopes there was a pale light much like
moonlight.

I had been very busy.  There was much for
me to do, and I sought it eagerly, for I wished to
forget and not to see.  It is what we fail to forget
that hurts.  And so I worked.

Colonel Goff, as was his race, had acted
straight-forwardly in the matter of his marriage to Eloise.
Over a month ago he had sought out Aunt
Lucretia and told her frankly that he sought the
hand of her ward in marriage, that he wished to
marry her and take her at once to England.  He
said that his brother, the Earl of Carfax, had
died without heirs, and that he inherited the
estate.  The family name, he told her, was Goff,
and he had kept it while in America.  In the early
fall his attorneys would have every legal provision
complete for his return, and for immediate
occupation of his estate.  And he told her with
equal frankness why it could not be done sooner,
that in his younger days he had married out of
his class, and had been blacklisted by his family
for it, especially by his elder brother; that they
had had not only hot words but a stand-up fight
in which he had all but killed, and had really
maimed the older brother for life.  "I had to
get out," he said brusquely, "and get out quick.
As it was they tried to disinherit me, but
England's laws are greater than England's men.  My
wife was to follow, but she died."

My Aunt was a woman of great sense and said
nothing.  But I noticed that she thought much,
because she was very silent, and that she grew
suddenly very tender to me.  When Eloise had
gone to Washington my Aunt went with her.
Two things happened before they left, which I
remember quite distinctly.

My Aunt's admiration for the character and
achievements of Andrew Jackson bordered on the
idolatrous.  As a boy she would take me often
to the Hermitage, and tell me of the wilderness
giant who lived there.  She knew more about
him than anyone I ever met.  She understood
the thousand sides of this man's great nature,
from his horse-racing to his religion.  In the spot
where he had lived so long there was, of course,
a world of tradition.  It came down from lip to
lip.  Of these stories my Aunt remembered all.
A few days after Goff had talked with her as
my Aunt and I were going over the grounds she
stopped before the log-cabin in the pasture near
the great spring where Jackson lived before he
built the present Hermitage.

"Jack," said she, "Andrew Jackson was the
gamest thing God ever gave to humanity, and
the gentlest.  It is staggering to think what he
had to overcome to do his life's work.  The
fights, the sicknesses, the suffering, the slander,
the insults, the lies, the butcheries they called
battles, starvation, mutinies of his own men, all met
and overcome by one tall, slim, sallow,
pain-wracked man, on one thoroughbred horse, with
a gun in his hand, and two in his eyes.  Talk
of Indian fights—Mills, and Cooks and Custers—they
were child's play to the great Creek Nation
Jackson had to fight.  And England behind
them—selfish always and forever wanting that
of others."

She looked at me quickly, and went on: "But
he waited and then hit them hard.  No one, from
Hannibal to Cæsar and Bonaparte, would ever
have attacked Keane and his troops, just landed
and in an open plain with New Orleans at their
mercy before them, in the night-time as did
Jackson and his ragged, half-armed militia.  No one
would ever have risked it but Jackson; he was
greater than them all!  For that seemingly
foolhardy night attack saved him.  He cut the very
vitals out of them in the dark.  He hacked them
as a game cock does when he sticks his gaffs into
the very heart of his foe.  That was why on
January eighth they could not go over his
breastworks, even with the combined force of
Packenham and Gibbs and the troops that afterwards
won Waterloo.  He had gaffed them in the ditch
in the dark.  He cut them into giblets.  It was
hell with the lid on.  They say it was a useless
battle, but they lie, Jack.  If Jackson hadn't
stopped them, they would never have given up
the Louisiana Purchase until we drove them out
with another war.  There are two kinds of men,
Jack—talkers and doers.  The talkers are
all orators—they are all liars.  They began
with Aaron, whom God made a mouthpiece to
Moses.  Moses was the doer, but he could not
talk.  Aaron, the orator, talked for him, but it
is Moses who lives.  Jackson was a Moses, Clay
an Aaron, a dead one, Jack, as all Aarons are,
and growing deader every year.  All orators,
being liars, fool people while they live.  Dead, they
do not even fool themselves.

It was Clay and Crawford who let the British
make that treaty of December twenty-fourth in
which they said that they would not be bound by
Bonaparte's constructions.  At that time Lord
Castlereagh had every reason to believe that
Packenham, sent out November twenty-fourth,
with the best army and navy that ever left
Portsmouth for a foreign shore, had taken the 'crown
colony of Louisiana,' as they called it.  And under
that treaty they would have held it.  It was Jackson
who stopped them, just one day before that treaty
was signed.

"Yes, Clay is dead," she said laconically; "he
ought to be.

"They wanted New Orleans, and they wanted
it bad.  'Booty and Beauty' was the word they
passed down the line when they landed and
started across the Chalmette plain, to take the
fair Creole City.  They were going to take her
and then rape her as they did the cities of Spain,
and they would if Jackson had not gaffed their
very vitals out in that night attack of December
twenty-third."

She turned suddenly on me, her eyes ablaze.
"Do you think, Jack, if he had loved a girl and
an Englishman wanted her bad enough to take
her right out of his arms that he would have
given her up?"

I looked up quickly and her face flushed with
fighting fire.

"And he was the tenderest, Jack," she went on
calmly.  "Old Parton tells a pretty story about
him.  One bitter, sleeting March day, an early
lamb had all but died in the field here, and his
little adopted grandchild, a tot of four, found the
lamb and cried for it; and so Jackson brought
them both to the house, and by the fire; and to
comfort the child he took them both into his arms
and so sat here, before this great hearth, holding
them both in his arms.

"He, who had killed bad men as he had dogs,
who had cut to death the pick of the army that
later won Waterloo, he sat coddling a lamb and
a child and thinking of his dead wife, and she,—oh,
Jack, I all but shed tears when I think of
it!  The night she died, and he would not have it
so, but lay all night beside her, holding her in his
arms, and trying to get her warm again, with the
great love of his own great heart."

There were tears in Aunt Lucretia's eyes.  Oh,
the depths of her stern heart!  It is like the
mountain capped with snow.  But when the snow
melts and the flowers come up among the crannied
rocks there are no flowers in the valleys below that
equal them.

The other recollection was of Eloise.  It was
the night before she left for Washington.  Colonel
Goff, who had spent the evening with her, had
ridden off.  I, pretending to work, was really
listening for her footstep, as she came back to her
room up the great steps.

"Jack," she said, standing just outside the
window, "come."  And she beckoned to me.

We sat down under the wisteria vine, which
grew over the porch.

"Jack," she said, "I want you to do me one
favor.  No one loves Satan here but you and me.
Won't you take care of him while I am gone?
Ride him whenever you can, the harder the
better, for he is made of iron and needs it."

"He and I are good friends," I said.  "I
have ridden him daily.  We understand each
other," I added softly; "we both love you."

"And Jack," her hand was instantly in mine in
the old way, "in after years you won't think evil
of me for selling myself this way, will you?"

"Why, no," I said seriously.  "I have been
thinking of it, and all life is just a barter and
trade."

I saw her face in the starlight.

"I've no right to make you wretched like this,
Jack," she said, rising.  "I am going in; and
when I return do you be gone Jack,
somewhere—anywhere."  Her voice trembled.  She stood
quiet, and I by her, dazed and helpless.

"There is one thing I am going to take to
England with me, Jack," and she pulled out from
beneath her gown yoke, a little token I had
forgotten.  I recognized the locket and the chain I
had given her years ago.  "And this little picture
in it is you, Jack.  You gave them both to me the
day I helped you lick Braxton Bragg."

Then she turned quickly and left me.

"Jack," said my Aunt, as we parted the next
day at the station, "I am afraid things are all
against us.  Father, I see, is going to will The
Home Stretch to Braxton Bragg.  If I were you—"

"I have already done it," I said.  "I am
going to move to-day to Dr. Gottlieb's; there I shall
work out my plans."

My Aunt smiled grimly.  "I want you to
remember one thing when I am gone.  Don't give
up—remember Old Hickory."

I looked up at her quickly.  I saw something
in her eye that gave me heart again.  I bade her
good-by.  I dared not say it to Eloise.  I slipped
away, but I watched the train of cars die away
behind the trail of smoke in the distance as I rode
back home, and it seemed as if my whole afterlife
lay clouded in that path of smoke.  It was
hard to give up my home, the old home, every
tree I knew, and with them Eloise and my life-dream....

One's dream and one's home—what else is
there which grips so the very tendrils of one's soul.
To give up one cuts deeply into the roots of the
heart, but when the blow is doubled, there is only
one thing that can make one stand upright and not
fall, and that is the Spirit Within.  People have
different ideas of God as their souls reveal.  It
runs all the way from the pitiable, crude, faint
conception which comes to the savage in cloud, a
sun, or star or image of stone, to the higher mind
which perceives Him in the Great Spirit of the
Universe.  None of these is my idea of God.  I
have never been able to dissociate God from my
own self.  I have never been able to conceive of
Him as apart from me....  And not always
the same, but always there....  In my
meaner self so little of Him is there, so tiny a spot
of the divine light ... so faint, so seemingly
nothing.  And this is the greatest of it—this
is the test—the very divinest evidence.
*He is always there*; and when a blow comes,
humbling the material, the meaner of me, then He
claims His own—my nobler self—taking it unto
His care, flooding it with His presence.  It is
then, searching yourself and your own heart that
you find Him—that you know that you are a
part of God because He is there!

Riding home it all swept over me so.  In my
innermost soul I knew it: like a flash came the
inspiration of it, the old Prophet of Deuteronomy:
"*As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over
her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh
them, beareth them on her wings.*"  Did God
mean in this, the wrecking of my nest, that I
should fly—even as a young eagle?

"And remember Satan, Jack, to keep him fit,"
I heard Eloise's voice say.





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.. _`HEART'S EASE`:

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   CHAPTER XVI


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   HEART'S-EASE

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Never was there a quieter, better place to work
than at Dr. Gottlieb's, whither I had gone after
Aunt Lucretia and Eloise had left.  In a short
while I had become reconciled, in my hard work,
to my lot; for to live with Dr. Gottlieb meant to
work, to classify, to probe into things, and this
meant to put aside all else, even for awhile one's
heart's trouble for the hard mental strain of it.  I
remember those study nights well and with such
pleasure.  I can recall the little quiet man with
his books, his abstraction, his quaint comments, the
learned deductions that fell now and then from
his lips as if he were unconscious that he was
speaking.  From studying the pollen of a flower
he would look up abstractedly and drawl, "*Ah,
Jack; and Miss Lucretia—that most beautiful
and charming of women!  Did I ever tell you
that each of us has our prototype in a plant?
And how much to my mind—ah, Jack, and to
my heart, how much she resembles the beautiful
red wood lily!*"

He would put down his book, and look longingly
out over the hills.  It was the only foolish
thing he ever did, I thought, and so I forgave him,
knowing that each of us has at least one foolish
thought within us.

He always had a smile for me; often he would
walk around all the evening thinking abstractedly,
or puttering among his books and plants and
geographical specimens, and then start into real work
at midnight.  And I would work with him; for,
besides studying my forestry, I was carrying on
some experiments, testing the various effects of
fertilizers on the soil of The Home Stretch.
Dr. Gottlieb would say: "It is not the time, it is the
inspiration, Jack; catch it when it comes."

Exercising Satan daily as I did, I became as
attached to the great game fellow as did he to me.
He was a singular horse, of a type entirely his own.
The harder the ride, the more difficult the feat,
the stubborner, gamer he grew.  Not every horse
is an individual, in fact few are; they are horses
merely.  But Satan was one, almost human in his
idiosyncrasies.  If he had been a man he would
have been one of the world's leaders.  There was
nothing he would not do for me after he learned
to love me.

Even in my heartache, in my despair at giving
up Eloise, I thought often of Elsie; for, having
known her since she was a tot of three years,
when she came to live with Tammas and Marget,
riding her, a wee girl in front of me on my pony,
going with her, a little maid, over the hills to
hunt for some Scotch flowers, I had that attachment
for her that one has for a little sister.  She
had developed far more beautifully than I had
dreamed of, both spiritually and in body; for the
connection between them at last is the same.  I
had never thought before that there was any
mystery about Elsie.  Tammas and Marget, with
all their apparent frankness, had the greatest
inherited trait of their race, a shrewd secretiveness
when it was best.  Heretofore I had thought of
Elsie only as their orphaned grandchild.  I
supposed her father was some sturdy Scotchman of
their own class, who, perhaps, died after his wife,
or, if alive, had given her to her grandparents.
But now I saw differently; perhaps her beauty,
and the romantic turn events had taken; the
Juliet outpouring of her own exquisite nature had
touched in me some subtle instinct.

It was this affair of Braxton Bragg which
worried me most of all.  I had not seen him since I
returned.  I did not want to.  There are those
born into our lives who seem always to oppose,
thwart, counteract what we do.  Braxton Bragg
had played this part in my life.  I could not
escape him, try as I would.  Even when I was in
Germany, with an ocean between us, had he not
cheated me of my own birthright?  He was with
his company in the city of Nashville, where the
Tennessee troops were mobilized for the war.
They expected orders to sail for the Philippines
any day.  All his life Braxton Bragg, weak as he
was in character and mind, with that conceit which
often goes with weakness, had really believed
that, after he had acquired The Home Stretch, or
a greater military reputation in the army, he would
marry Eloise.  All his life he had openly
proclaimed it.  His mentality was not great, and he
had not yet learned that in real love monies,
farms, reputation, fame, are the least that count.

Goff had won her.  Braxton Bragg now knew
that.  Goff had always befriended him, and bore
with him more than anyone else.  Goff had
confided in him and trusted him.  Braxton Bragg
was as immoral as he was weak.  Therefore I
reasoned this matter lay in one of two ways.
Either he was recklessly scheming to deceive and
ruin Elsie, or else he had found out something
that none of us knew and was scheming to marry
her on account of it.  Besides deceiving my
grandsire, as he had all his life, I now learned
that he had further deceived him:—that,
graduating from West Point, he had been appointed
to the army, but even before he went on duty, he
had been caught in an act unbecoming a soldier
and gentleman, and to escape courtmartial had
resigned.  My grandfather's influence had saved
him and got him elected captain of a company
which my grandsire had himself raised and
equipped for the war.

Absorbed in my own affairs, numbed by the
wreckage which had come to my soul's dream, I
had neglected Elsie of late.  When I realized it,
and what it meant to a sensitive nature such as
hers, I went over at once, fearing that, since our
last meeting she might have misunderstood my
absence, and brooded over imaginary wrongs to
her own hurt.  I found it was high time when I
learned the real situation.

Tammas met me, his face weary; for the first
time in all our greetings with no broad smile.

"Tammas," I said, "where is Elsie?  I want
to see her."

"Come, Mr. Jack," said he, taking off his big
butter apron; "we'll gang ben into Marget's room,
for we baith want to talk to you."

I found Marget quite as troubled as Tammas.

"I feel that I've been neglecting you," I said,
trying to talk cheerfully, "but—I have—there
have been great changes in my life—I have gone
to live with—"

"Ay, we ken aboot it," said Marget, "and
though we didna understand, we thocht ye'd come
ower in your ain guid time to tell us."

"If we can help you, Mr. Jack," began
Tammas quietly, "we will be glad to do it."

"Thank you, good friends," I said, taking his
hand.  "I can't explain it all now; only this," I
went on, forcing a smile that I did not feel, "there
has been scheming against me all around, everywhere,
since I left home, and—well," I smiled,
"I've been turned out of home, and—and—everything."

Marget's eyes flashed: "They'll no' turn ye oot
o' onything," she cried hotly, "no' as long as we're
here, Tammas an' me.  Ye'll jist come ower and
bide wi' us.  Here's your room, Mr. Jack.  An'
Tammas an' me—we love ye as much as we dae
oor ain bairn.  I ken fine wha it is.  Tammas,
didna I tell ye?  It's juist that Braxton Bragg!
He's been plotting against ye ever since he was a
wee bairn, an' ye're no' the only one that he's
mistreating; an' it breaks ma heart to think that ony
man in this country whaur we and oor lassie hae
lived so correctly, should be sae bold as to write
this, an' it's been wanting to see ye we have, an'
to show it to ye.  Ye are a' we hae to protect her,
Jack; we are truthful folks, an' oor lassie is a
sweet and pure lass, that has been a' her life here
in this valley, like as to ony lily in it, an' we dinna
think she should be insulted by the like o' that."

She had taken a note from her bosom and
handed it to me.

"Haud on a wee, afore ye read it," said Tammas.
"Afore ye cam' hame," he went on, "I
didna like his attention to oor lassie, an' the
untoward way he had o' trying to meet her secretly
gin she but gaed oot o' oor sicht, an' ye ken
Mr. Jack, hoo fond she was since a bairn, to hunt
flo'ers an' birds on the hills aroun'.  Sae very
frankly I gaed to him, as I thocht it my duty to
do, an I tell't him we had oor ain plans for the
lassie, an that he was in anither class frae her,
an' any attention he showed her wad be to the
hurt o' the lassie, an' it wad be maist unbecoming
in him as a gentleman to persist.  Eh, but it
maddened me to hear him explain and pass it a' aff
as a joke, an' the flattery o' him fair scunnert me,
it did.  But for a' I said till him he didna stop
it, but kept dogging the steps o' the lassie an'
writing her love notes.  Sae I gaed till him again
an' maist pintedly I made him understaun', that
I wad appeal to his grandfaither for protection.
I am a man of peace, but this maitter has reached
its leemit, an' noo we're gaun to turn it ower to
you.  Marget an' masel' hae thocht it a' oot,
because if ever Elsie had a brither it's oor Jack," he
added.  "There's only ae thing mair I'll be
asking ye afore ye act, an' it's jist this, that seeing
the matter's sae delicate an' talking aboot it micht
injure oor lassie, I'll jist ask ye to consult wi'
Colonel Goff in the maitter."

"Ay, an' ae day ye'll ken the reason," said
Marget very quietly, nodding approval to
Tammas's remarks.

I never was so angry as when I read the letter.
I was fighting mad, no other word will do.

"Where is Elsie?" I asked, controlling myself.
"I must talk with our little lassie."

"Weel, ye see," said Marget, "Jack, I dinna
ken.  The puir bairn is a' but crushed—she's
just like a lily that has grown a' simmer in the
valley, an' opens for the first time ae morning
to find there's such a thing in God's worl' as rain
an' hail."

Tammas came up to me whispering quietly.
"We maun tell ye this, Mr. Jack, it's only fair
that ye should ken.  We hae keepit' oor ain
counsel a' these years about oor lassie, an' that which
we wad like ye to ken aboot her Colonel Goff will
tell ye.  But this ye maun ken, there is behind
her on her faither's side that verra intensity of
nature so highly keyed for joy or sorrow, that it
has sent mony o' her forbears amang the gentle
leddies o' her hoose to early deaths, even to
taking their ain lives.  Ay, Elsie is jist sae like her
faither's sister, the bonnie ane that suicided for
love.  Eh, but oor hearts are wae aboot oor
bairn.  She's shut hersel' in her room a' day, but
jist afore ye cam' she gaed off to the wood ower
yonder."

"Ay, ay, if there's ony ane in this worl' that
can help us it's you, as I said to Tammas afore
ye cam'.  The Lord be thankit for your coming!"

"Ay, but the lassie;—Mr. Jack, would you
let them that raised you be plain to your face as
becomes honest folks with those they love?"

I nodded.  "Then Elsie cares na' a bawbee
for this bold rascallion—it's you she loves,
Mr. Jack, an' wi' a' respect and deference for so
delicate a thing, you'll sune ken that ye hae the love
o' a lassie wham the highest in England and
Scotland wad be prood to mate wi'."

At first I could not find her.  She was hidden
in her favorite place, a natural arbor of low
dogwoods overgrown with a beautiful root of tangled
wild-grape.

I was never before more calm, for the seriousness
of it all was on me.  Not only was her own
reputation, her future happiness and life at stake,
but that of others also.  The hint given me by
Marget made things clear.  If I ever needed tact
I needed it now.  I was ready for any concession
to save her from the position she was in, even to
forget Eloise, if I could.

I decided that it was best that she should not
know that I knew anything.  My first glance
showed me how seriously she was taking her
trouble.  I had never seen such sorrow in her eyes,
eyes which now fought defiantly the gloom that
was settling in them, as a child's when it knows
for the first time its mother has died.

I sat down beside her, and without speaking
drew her to me.  "My little Heart's-Ease," I
said, "you'll let your prince help you?"  I let
her cry on my shoulder until she cared to
talk—stroking her hair.

"I thought you had forgotten me," she said.
"Where have you been so long?"

"Oh, I had much to do—to think about—that
needed doing quickly.  First I had to move
and get settled.  I live with Dr. Gottlieb
now—well—it is a long story, but I'm—I have no
home now, Heart's-Ease."

"You shall live with us if you wish—if you
will—Tammas and Marget and me."

I laughed boyishly.  "I will if it comes to a rub."

"I am so glad you've come.  I have been so
troubled, Jack.  Just before you came I was
sitting here, and I thought I saw Ophelia in that
pool down there where the spring branch goes into
the deep hole under the willows, like my picture
in Shakespeare."

"Nonsense," I said, drawing her to me.  "Tell
me what you ate for supper last night?  I believe
you are in love."

She turned white, and her lips were drawn.

"No one loves me," she said, and she blushed
crimson, "no one in the right way.  It is just
like Ophelia, and so I was thinking—"

"No one shall love you any other way," I said,
"unless they first reckon with me, for I love
you," I added tenderly, for I pitied her so
much.

She looked up, smiling through her tears.

Then both of her arms were around my neck.
"Jack, Jack!"

Her hands were in mine: her eyes, looking up
to mine, had tears in them.  I saw that she had
misunderstood, but I saw that if I were to save
her I must save her through love.  I felt the hot
blood rush, for very shame, into my face, stinging
it red for punishment.

"Forgive me, Elsie," I began, my throat choked
with shame, "I can't explain, I didn't—"

For answer she kissed me, both arms around
my neck, as she said, "Oh, I am so happy."

She was silent, her hands in mine.  They
burned me, yet to turn them loose, to tell her
truthfully, and she keyed so to the sensitiveness and
unthinking romance—I thought of the pool and
Ophelia....  She laughed happily: "Tell
me, Jack, your Elsie, when did you find that you
loved me so?  Was it because of my thoughts of
you in the horror and folly of my flirtation with
Braxton Bragg?"

"Never mind," I said; "you are never to
mention that name to me."

"Oh, Jack," she hid her face on my bosom.

"You are not to speak of anything disagreeable.
Only we'll just love each other, Elsie."

"Oh, please, please, just let me tell you a
little, so that you will always understand me—your
silly Heart's-Ease.  It was this way, Jack: suppose
now, suppose you were placed this way—that
you were very lonely—always had lived in a
cabin, and so much you wished to see the world—that
in you was a strange, queer longing, a feeling
that you had been born for higher things—and—all
at once right out of the sky—that which
you longed for came—the star of your soul."

She hid her head on my arm.  She was weeping.

"Go on, child," I said; "I am listening.

"And he—he would not tell you he was your
prince; then you felt that strange feeling again,
only worse—to go away—to leave yourself—well,
then another comes—I do not know, only
he did—I had only seen him twice, and each time
he was very kind, but so fulsome and so bold, that
well—I would not meet him again and so he
wrote...."

She was silent for a moment and then she spoke
suddenly.  "Oh, I fear I did wrong to see the
other—to answer his note.  I was so unhappy
then—so wretched then, for I did not know
that—that—you loved me—then!"

"Elsie, promise me—" I began.

"Please don't, Jack, dear Jack, it is all right
now.  I have written him already.  I wrote him
I'd never see him again and never to write me."

"And if he does, will you tell me, turn his note
over to me?"

She laughed.  "Why, Jack, of course I will."

The setting sunlight streamed on her hair till
it looked like banked western clouds.  The very
skies of Heaven were in her eyes, and her dignity
and poise were like a queen's.

She took off the heart's-ease she had pinned on
my coat.

"You don't need this now, my sweet prince."

"Don't, Elsie," I said; "my God, I can't
explain, but, child—I need it now more than I
ever did in my life."

For a moment she looked at me with pretended
offended eyes.

"Ay, ay, I see; but you shall have me when
you will, and you will need it, my bonny prince,
until I am there," and she pinned it back between
hot flushes and tears.  "And you will see me soon,
Jack, right here in our sweet trysting place?

"Good-by," she said in time.  "You will see
me soon, Jack?"  Then taking my hand before
I could prevent, she pressed it to her bosom,
kissing it.

"Elsie, Elsie, don't—I would die to save you
pain!  I would die to save you pain!  Don't!"

"I am so happy.  Good-by, Jack."

"Elsie!" I called.  "Oh, you misunderstood
me—you don't understand."

But she only laughed back gladly as a child
would, throwing kisses to me as she ran like the
doe of her own heather up the hill.

I saw Marget and Tammas at the door, smiling;
and I knew that they saw Elsie's happiness.





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.. _`"LADY CARFAX"`:

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   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   "LADY CARFAX"

.. vspace:: 2

I knew that I must save Elsie from the false,
unthinking fate her own romantic nature and
Braxton Bragg's infamy might thrust upon her.
I loved Elsie as my own sister and knew that now
I stood in a false position toward her.  Once as
I strode home in the gathering darkness I was
tempted to turn back.  I would right myself.  I
could not stand my false position even until
to-morrow.  I had but a few days to act.  Elsie had
gone home happy—I, miserable—hating myself.
Always before me was the glad smile I saw
on Tammas' and Marget's faces as Elsie went up
the path—the smile of hopes fulfilled, of Elsie
safe, of a great wish come to pass....  How
they stabbed me now—Elsie's words: "You
shall have me when you will, your Heart's-Ease."

And yet if I did?  Great God!  I might be a
murderer!  I saw how much Elsie was like
Ophelia.  I saw it all: the pale, conscience-stricken,
helpless little soul, the proud spirit
scorned, the unthinking creature, of romance and
of hopes destroyed.  The deep pool in the valley
might hide her in its waters before another day.
So I went on, choosing what seemed to be the
lesser of two wrongs.

As I rode Satan over to The Manor after supper
I thought of all my past life in which Braxton
Bragg had figured.  I remembered him first as a
large, bullying, overgrown boy, three years older
and much larger than I.  I remembered his small,
bullet-shaped head, the fat, heavy jowls, the short
neck, and the loud laugh.  From the first he had
teased and derided me.  I did not understand it
then, but it was plain now.  Young as he was,
he had set his plans to work to discredit me with
my grandsire; to own The Home Stretch himself,
and to win Eloise.  The conceit of him!  Only
one great thing Braxton Bragg had in him,
his aim.  That was something to his credit: but
without brain and heart behind it, of what availed
the aim?  He was like a wharf-rat, stealing on
board a man-of-war, to shoot a thirteen-inch gun
at the moon!  He had never been a boy, a real
playmate to me.  He had always been cruel to
the little negroes around us, and to dumb animals,
and in everything he had been a coward and a
bully.  I had never taken his designs on Eloise
seriously, nor had she.  Yet his persistency was
notable, even up to now, when her engagement to
Colonel Goff had been announced.

Braxton Bragg, I decided, meant to deceive
Elsie, to play with her, this little creature of fun
and love, this pure little flower that was as much
of The Home Stretch as the flowers on the hills,
the locust blossoms that perfumed all the air in
spring.

He had beaten me out of my birthright by
deceit and make-believe.  I could stand that.  I
could make my own Home Stretch, as every man
must make his, whether he will it or not, if he
and his home shall ever become two halves that
make one.  And he must make it by work of heart
as well as of brain and of body if he hold it truly:
for God is inexorable, and His law of possession
is: *if you have not earned it, you shall not hold it*!
In vain do men subterfuge with that law, by gifts,
inheritance, entail, by trustees and trusts;
shambling along they may go a generation: then God
and His Higher Court decrees, and the little
tenants by courtesy pass out.  The little mice who
have not the love of it, which has been born of
labor, the pride of it begot of sacrifices given, find
themselves food in the claws of the great eagles
which work and dare.

This last act of Braxton Bragg roused me to
an anger I had never felt before in all my life.  I
had always been for quietness and peace.  I did
not know it then, but I know now that there are
Three of me—Me, Myself, and my Soul—which
are almost as distinct one from another as
three separate personalities.

In grief and despair, in times of crisis only, do
we see them most distinctly; or, after a sweet sleep
at night you do not quite waken in the morning,
they are then all so plainly distinct: there is
Me—the carnal one, selfish one, the animal one: the
lowest: and there is Myself, that is part of both, that
would be spiritual, would be good, only that not
always may it be.  And highest and loftiest, and
altogether greatest, and incomprehensible, and
exclusive, standing alone, and aloof above Me
and Myself, the Supreme Judge of the others,
and the final arbiter of all their little efforts and
aims is I, the Spiritual, God-given small,
silent-voiced I.

It governs, controls, is king.

Me—is a man merely: given to eating and
drinking, to stomach troubles and pills; to
subterfuges and make-believes; to vacillations—changes:
to thinking this one day and that another—full
of policies and conceits and deceits; of
whims and caprices: changeable; consistent only in
one thing that it is always animal, deceiving its
own self all the time, and Myself half the time, but
deceiving *I—never*!

I only smiles, and lets the other two go on till
they need the judgment and the whip—then they
get them.

ME—a miserable, little animal that came from
the fishes, or perhaps what is left of my anthropoid
ancestors, full of fun one day and to-morrow a lion
full of fight, always an animal, sensual; money-getting,
love-getting, land-getting, place-getting,
fame-getting—always and forever, with an eye
out for ME and My Chance.

ME—a thing with a liver and two legs—Me!
And above that is the second Me, Myself—half
spirit and half flesh.

It is this that weeps, laughs or curses the acts
of the First, yet has no power to change them; it
can arrest him somewhat, haul him up a little
while before the court—a kind of a police officer
for a brief trial—but only the Supreme Judge—only
*I* may pass the act that stops him.  When the
First has groveled in the dust of things, it is This
that fights back with the spirit's disgust, giving due
notice to the flesh that it is not all supreme, not all
in all, that there is really something else,
somewhere, somehow, or else we would not have
sorrow after sin, penitence after pain, fear after a
fall.

MYSELF, my little soul—a half-bred mongrel
Compromising Thing it is—a bird with gills and
a bladder, a chrysalis that has yet to burst and be
a butterfly; a tadpole with a tail unshed, which
one day may be dropped in that metamorphosis to
a higher state and yet more likely to die a tadpole!

And then there is I, the still, small, silent I.
ME, it talks, and struts and brags; and MYSELF
and its little soul is full of whines and little
pretenses, of platitudes to Men and Things.  But I—it
never speaks, never sleeps, never compromises,
but always commands.

It exercises its authority as it is needed in great
sorrows, or the great crises of the other little lives.
And it comes sweetest and clearest (which is proof
positive that it exists) before even the others are
awake, in the first dawn of day, or in the still
night watches of dreams; and it fairly crushes you
with the sweetness of its presence, in that quiet
kingdom through which you loiter, and then pass
through—that Kingdom between the Dawn and
the Daylight.  Suddenly we awake enough to
know that we are there—*It* is there—in another
world—painfully, awfully, preciously there.
Then we see how truly Me and Myself—my
little body of ME may die and pass away, and be as
naught—but that *I*, the still, small, silent I of
Me has come from Æons to go on to Eternities;
and after all the little plans of me, and the
braggart, *this I will do and that I will not do of Me,
this I will be and that I will not be of Me*, and
after all my resolves and final decisions, and my
well-laid plans of Me—*I*, the kingly *I of Me*
has only to appear, sitting silent as a burning flame
in the throne room of my soul, and all My's plans
both of doing and being, and all of my soul's
resolve of purpose—the great decisions of my very
soul—become as slaves to fall down before and
crawl to do its bidding! ...

Braxton Bragg's perfidy had aroused me to an
anger that I had never known before: I had
been a quiet boy, I loved not strife, "*Oh, he won't
fight, not one of them will,*" I caught myself
mimicking my grandsire, and in hot forgetfulness, I
struck the big horse I was riding with a quick touch
of my heel—I was almost unseated with the leap
he made.

"Steady, quiet, forgive me, old boy!" I cried,
stroking his crest to calmness—"that only means
I see things differently; that in this little world our
ethics is one thing, our little religions, laws, our
civilization is one thing, and God and His laws
are another.  One says if he smite you, turn your
other cheek; the other says, if he strike you, strike
back harder.  One says peace—the other says
it is war, even in the name of peace; one says
Justice and her scales, the other says the Eagle and
the Battleship.  There is a time in every honest
man's life when he must fight or die.  Satan, old
boy, I am going to fight awhile!"

I was lusty and twenty—ME.

So I pondered as I rode over to see Colonel
Goff.  I found him in the library of The Manor,
and was soon seated with him.  I noticed the
sterling beauty of the furniture, the trophies of
the chase, both in India and America, and a full
portrait of Eloise over the mantel.  I had been
a boy to Colonel Goff until my return.  Now I
imagined that my sudden change into a full-grown
man had never quite come home to him,
remembering me only as he had known me last.

"You have given me an unexpected pleasure,
my boy," he said with a touch of cordiality in his
voice.  "I have been beastly lonely since Eloise
left."  He eyed me through his half-closed lids
as he lighted a cigar and watched me light mine.

I flushed, and I fear he noticed it.  Then I
broke abruptly into my subject.  "It is your help
and advice I want to-night, sir.  I have come to
talk of Elsie."

He looked at me surprised, holding a half-lit
match in his finger.  Instantly the match was
snuffed out with a sudden twist and a smile broke
over his face.

"It's all right, Jack," he said warmly; "I
think I can guess—I have seen for a month that
you have cut me out—all of us—why—"

"I fear you are mistaken, Colonel Goff," I said
quietly.  "I know how much you think of her,
that you are her friend, and I thought the two
of us together might help her out of an
unfortunate affair."

He turned on me quickly.

"Why, what has happened?  I saw her
to-day; she was all right."

"Nothing has happened yet," I said; "nor
is it likely to now, since I am going to do some
acting myself, with your help."

I handed him the note.  I had heard my old
grandsire say that in critical places Goff was always
coolest.  He smoked while he read, not a muscle
moving.

"This thing is so out of all our English ideas
of sense and decency, and so unusual, that I'm lost
in it," he said quietly at last.  "It seems that he
has actually induced my romantic little girl to
agree to a secret clandestine marriage with him,
and his regiment leaves for the Philippines
to-morrow, marry her secretly, and claim her when
he comes back!"

Instead of being angry Goff laughed, half
ironically but with intent behind it.  He rose and
walked to the door, calling his butler.  "Tell
James to saddle my horse at once," I heard him
say.  Then he closed the door and came up to
me.  "Jack, this is the damnedest piece of
blackguardism I ever had to kick out of my mind;
we'll settle it in a jiffy with him,—just as I'd kick
a little cur out of my pack of running hounds.
You'll ride with me, of course, and witness it."

"I will, Colonel Goff," I said sullenly, "if
you'll let me do it in my own way.  It is I who
want you to witness it."

He slapped me on the shoulder.

"You're all right, Jack, I've always known
that: and if it is nothing rash—you see if it were,
why, the child would be talked about.  Oh, yes,
damn him, if it wasn't for her I'd kill him myself."

"Colonel Goff," I said rising, "I'm going to
thrash him to-night before I go to bed.  I'm going
to do it in my own way."

He laughed outright and grasped my hand.
"You must not," he said, "and I will tell you
why; you've earned it.  This is my great secret.
I've seen all along that you have loved her—and,
well, it's plain she loves you.  But I see through
this affair much further than you because you don't
know.  I'll tell you, you have earned both my
friendship and my gratitude.  First, there is no
insult here, in this note.  I've been the scoundrel's
friend all his life.  He had so few, and I told
him in confidence what I've never told anyone—did
not intend to tell till the announcement of my
marriage next month—Elsie is my daughter—she
is Lady Carfax by birthright and by title, and
this little scoundrel has taken advantage of my
confidence.  He has always had a sneaking idea
that he would marry Eloise, and now that he can't,
he loves me so much he'd like to be my son-in-law,
though he ruined my daughter's chances in life to
do it, with his fool secret marriage."

He stopped and looked at me, thinking quietly
for a moment.

"You'll excuse me, Jack, for plainness, but
we've no time for anything else, and I mean it all
kindly.  But you, yourself, are mostly to blame
for this.  I have read it in Elsie, but I thought
you'd never see it, never tell her of your love.
Now, it's this way, my boy; and I'll be frank.  I
am going to take Lady Carfax home and finish her
education, and give her the chance her place
demands.  You are always welcome to come and
be with us at any time as long as you choose, and
if, on her majority, she still loves you, and you
her, why—" he stopped, smiling kindly.

"Colonel Goff," I said rising, "you certainly
misunderstand me.  All that I'll talk to you about
later.  I'm in a mood to-night I've never been in
before.  Get your horse and go with me.  I want
you to see that I have a fair fight."

"It won't do, Jack," he said.  "I'll not even
let you go with me.  It's Elsie I'm thinking of,
Elsie and you.  The quieter this thing is settled,
the better for all.  I see through it—as I told
you.  I'll ride over to see him.  I'll catch him
to-night, and when I have finished with him, he'll
never mention Elsie again, let alone try to marry
her secretly.  I saw her to-night just before you
came.  Jack, my little girl is happy.  It pleases
me—let her stay happy, and you shall be, some
day, if you will—"

I did not reply.  We rose to go.  At the parting
of the road I galloped home, he to the city.





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.. _`THE LAST DANCE`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LAST DANCE

.. vspace:: 2

It was a night in early June.  The Home
Stretch was all a-glitter, its porches and the great
trees on the lawn lighted with rows of colored
lanterns.

My Aunt and Eloise had returned; the Cumberland
races, the social event of the year, began
the next day, and in accordance with her custom
my Aunt was giving her annual ball.  This time
it was to serve a two-fold purpose; for it was also
in honor of Eloise and Colonel Goff and was to be
the formal announcement of their coming marriage.

I rode over early.  If I was needed I wanted
to help as of old; and I had seen neither of
them since they had returned a week ago, for
I had been away for several weeks, in an adjoining
county, earning my first fee in forestry.  I had
been employed by a corporation to pass upon a
large tract of timber, to report its millage and
availability, but best of all I was to put my plans
into effect in its harvesting, cutting out only the
ripe trees, and preserving the young ones beneath
from death and mutilation.

I had spent two weeks among them.  There
were many different kinds, and they had become
almost like children to me, and like children, they
each had different temperaments—these trees—different
forms, dispositions, dreams, and they always
talked to me, through their little leaves, but
sweetest of all in the night, even as children do,
when, full of themselves and of life, they gossip
so friendly in the balm of the June moon.  They
told me like village gossipers, of their every little
affair, their little vexes, turmoils, the very little
scandals of their wood.  And in more stirring
moods when the night winds would arise and
sweep through them the writers, minstrels and
poets, stirred to historic flights, quivered with their
greater dreams, sang their tales of tree tragedies,
of wars had, of fights for life and of martyr and
hero deaths.

And I had lain and listened, and felt my heart
grow big with throbbing even as when I first read
of the wanderings of Ulysses.

I came from out among them older, braver,
better.  I came with higher motives for my own
life and eyes which saw clearer into the future and
read more kindly the lives of others.

And gladly would I have stayed in the wood
among them, to go back—rather than to see what
I must see—Eloise betrothed to another.  No
tree tragedy could be more cruel than that which
had killed the love of my own life.

In withholdingness and sorrow I left them:
"duty" not as someone has said, "is the
sublimest word in the English language" because
duty is often done in pleasure, but the real
sublimity of duty is the duty done in pain.  To fail
to go were cowardice, and I was no coward even
if my grandsire did think so.

But when I went into the great hall of The
Home Stretch, filled with chattering guests, the
contrast was poignant.  It was as if deep in the
sleeping and silent forces a cloud of chattering birds had
landed suddenly among my trees.

"It is good to see you home again, Jack."

It was Eloise who spoke.  Her eyes told me
that she had been waiting, and a brave lingering
smile went with her words.  There were little
tired, hard lines around her sweet mouth.  She
looked tired but game, as when, in a long day's
hunt after quail and the route home was long, and
our luck nil, it needed a good heart to smile.

She stood with Goff in the reception room, as
though she were Countess of Carfax already.
The hand I held trembled for the first time in mine.

"Glad to see you back, Jack," said Goff, his
face aglow with the pride he felt.

"Where have you been, Jack?  I thought you
were never coming to see me again?" Eloise asked.

She gradually moved away with me from the
crowd in the center of the room until we stood
apart in the large bay window.

"Come," I said teasingly, "you have got away
from your lord; he will miss you."

It was not fun to her.  Her face flushed, then
paled.  "Jack, you must dance with me once
to-night—our last dance.  I have something to tell
you then."

"I don't think you ought to punish me any
more than you have already, Eloise," I said
frankly.

"Maybe I am punishing myself more," she said
softly.

"Eloise, Eloise—"

But she had turned and was receiving the newly
arrived and merry crowd behind us.

My Aunt held to some customs which she
permitted none of the innovations of society to
alter.  One was that her balls must open with
the Virginia Reel.  I saw her coming and
understood.

"Jack," she nodded, commandingly, "we are
ready, you and Eloise open it up."

Eloise stood behind her smiling.  She placed
both her hands in mine and together we glided
to the head of the line.  We stood holding hands
and waiting for the music.  Coming closer, my
Aunt smiled and whispered, "I wish you two
children could see what a fine pair you make.
Pedigree counts even in a Virginia Reel, and you
two were bred for it."

We both laughed.

"Look into that mirror across yonder," she
laughed, "and see how much better I am at
pairing off people than they are themselves."

We glanced across and saw Goff and a fat lady
from town.

"They are matched perfectly," said my Aunt
Lucretia, "both grass-fed."

"Please don't, Aunt Lucretia," said Eloise,
"that isn't fair.  You are trying your best to
keep me from being a countess."  Then she
added suddenly, "Oh, Jack, tell me about Satan.
You don't know how I've missed him.  Where
have you two been?"

"In the wood together.  No—n-o—you
shall never have him, such a horse—such a
comrade."

Eloise pouted.  "You'll see.  Why Colonel
Goff has promised I shall take him to England
with me.  And Jack—how about his exercise?
My heart is set on beating him in that hurdle race,
and Aunt Lucretia would have apoplexy if she lost
that bet."

"Oh, he's hard enough.  I rode him two hundred
miles to Obion County and back.  I honestly
believe he could run across the county to-morrow;
and jump!  I am glad you mentioned it—-it was
wonderful—he is foolish about me.  It is
because he knows I love you, dear," I said,
whispering in her ear.

"Please don't, Jack, you only hurt me."

"I was across a small ravine from him one day,
had hitched him and was looking at some timber.
He broke his halter and came to me.  I heard his
calling neigh and I answered him, and he came
to me, clearing a ten-foot ravine in a jump."

Eloise clapped her hands, and my Aunt, who
had come up and heard it, smiled.  Then she said,
with her usual red-tape accuracy, "I hope you
took the measurements.  Was it really ten feet, Jack?"

"I measured it," I said, "and it was nearly
bottomless.  If one foot had missed—"

My Aunt nodded to Eloise.  "That little
branch in Cumberland Park is only ten across from
bank to bank.  Oh, we'll play it on his lordship
fine!  Come!"

There was a crash of music.  With radiant
cheeks and eyes that I saw many a night
afterwards in my dreams, and a proud smile she went
with me down the line.

There was a pretty surprise for us at the
supper.  We had filed into the dining hall.  My
grandfather sat alone, his hair white under the
candles.  On the right of him stood Eloise and
Colonel Goff, and the long line of expectant guests
stood around down the long table.

My grandfather rapped, and, raising his glass,
proposed a toast to the future Earl and Countess
of Carfax.  There was a burst of applause.  The
guests lifted their glasses.

"My friends," said Colonel Goff, bravely,
when the room became quiet, "I came to you
years ago, an exiled Englishman, and I found a
home here, following my old commander from
the war.  I came lonely and alone.  I go back with
a sorrow in my heart at leaving many friends
behind, but instead of going alone, I return taking
with me one who will be the peer of any countess
of the long line of Carfax."

He turned, bowing grandly to Eloise, who,
pale, and with trembling lips listened.  I could
see her breast faltering with quickened breathing.
Her parted lips panted for air, even though she
stood beaming graciously to the greeting.  "I
have another announcement to make," he went on
very quietly, "and I think it right that I do it
now, that I may be just to myself, to the good
people who have reared her, and to my child whom
I love.  My coming here was not altogether
purposeless.  You will understand when I introduce
to you my daughter, Lady Elsie."

There was a stir at the lower end of the table,
and I saw my Aunt Lucretia open the folding
doors and Tammas followed by Marget enter.
Elsie followed, her face ablaze with that beauty
which was always hers when excited.  She was
more like an angel of light than a girl, and around
her neck and in her hair were the jewels of the
house of Carfax.

Goff met and kissed her, and very simply and
sweetly she advanced and kissed Eloise, graciously,
almost unconsciously, a kiss both of love and
tribute.  She stood between them, bowing and
smiling so graciously down the table that her
breeding was evident.

All who knew her loved her, and for the next
ten minutes they thronged around her with kisses
and congratulations.

I did not go, for there were tears in my eyes
and a great choking in my throat.  When I
looked up Tammas and Marget were standing by
me, Tammas making a bold effort at winking his
tears away and smiling.  He mopped his brow
vigorously, and said mechanically, "'Tis a bonny
night for us, a bonny night and a glorious for our
lassie!"

"Ay, weel," said Marget between her sobs,
"but dinna she look it—like her ain sweet
mother?  Oh, but she was that bonny, and 'tis
she, our lassie, Tammas, can be looking down
on her this blessed minute, her bairn who has come
into her own."

Then Elsie saw us and came quietly forward.
She clasped me impulsively around the neck and
kissed me, whispering, "Oh, it is mine, Jack,
that I felt but could not tell.  'Tis the unattainable
come true, and now, Jack, dear Jack, that I
am Lady Elsie, now that I am worthy of you—"
she could not speak.  Her lips were deadly white
as if with faintness.  I held her, stroking her hair.

"You were always worthy of anyone, sweet
one.  Be brave, be brave, now," I whispered,
"and go back to your father's side."

I looked up to find Eloise's eyes upon me, and
a strange understanding in their depths.

"I am staying with papa, at The Manor now,"
said Elsie as she left me and Marget.  "You will
not let it keep you from coming to see me often,
will you, Jack?"

"Ay, weel, to be sure, lassie," broke in
Tammas, and I caught the pleased look that seemed
part of his countenance that night as if now his
heart's desire had already come to pass, "ay, weel,
to be sure, for our Mr. Jack will always be our
Mr. Jack to us, lassie." ...

It was the last waltz.  Eloise beckoned to me,
and when I reached her, she opened her arms and
I took her in mine.  I could not speak, my heart
beating almost strangled me.  I held her tight,
and into the sweetness of the music and the lure
of the waltz came again all the past sweetness
from her girlhood up, all blending in memory with
the perfume of her hair, the whiteness of her
throat, and the firm supple touch of her lithe,
strong body against mine.  Again she was my
Little Sister and comrade of the long past.  My
life, my love, my all that I dreamed and hoped,
danced with her in that last dance....

I felt her heart beating against mine.  Her
breathing was a sob.  I felt her wilt, her limbs
give way beneath her, her arms hang limp, her
head fall back.  I carried her in my arms to the
sofa....

"A little ice water," said my Aunt Lucretia.
When I looked up Colonel Goff stood over her
bathing her face.  "I should not have let her
dance so much—it was all too much for her."  He
bent again, stroking the beautiful hair.  I
could not see more for my anger.

In the cool air outside I came to myself.  My
anger died, all but my own bitterness.  I saw the
long line of carriages and the men sleeping on
boxes, and then I heard a nicker, a friendly little
recalling whinny from Satan's stall, and the next
instant I had swung into his saddle, and touched
my heel to his flank.

I saw the grooms on the boxes sit up, and stare
into the night, for straight to the banks of a little
creek I rode him, not down the old road.  He
leaped high into the air, enjoying even more than I
did the glory of the risk and jump.  He swept like
a whirlwind through the gate.  The mad ride
home soothed me.





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.. _`THE HIGH JUMP`:

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   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE HIGH JUMP

.. vspace:: 2

From the crush of the great crowds around the
grand stand at the race-course, lining up far down
the in-field, and jamming the betting sheds, I saw
my Aunt Lucretia forcing her sorrel horse
through the gathering.  She had been a familiar
figure at every fair and race meeting as far back
as I could remember.  No secretary for twenty
years had questioned her judgment or her orders;
they were too glad to have her help.  I was in
the judges' stand helping them out.  I had ridden
over early, leaving Satan to my Aunt's stable boy,
who had already worked him out with a stiff
gallop of two miles, and rubbed him down for the
hurdle race and the high jump.

My Aunt Lucretia rode up close to the little
canopied stand and beckoned to me.  "Ever see
such a crowd?" she said, smiling proudly.  "I
told Roswick this special high jump and hurdle
would draw 'em.  I'll bet there are twenty
thousand people in that crowd."

"What is the programme?" I asked indifferently,
though I knew it as well as she.  I had come
out under protest with myself as it were; I would
rather have been deep in the heart of my wood
where I might not see Eloise.  I had tossed all
night on my bed.  If I dozed it was only to
awaken, feeling that I held Eloise fainting in my
arms.  I did not want to see her, for in my heart,
since I last danced, there had been such a tempest
of conflicting emotions as made me pace the floor
all night; and by day I knew not my own mind.
Yet somehow it was not all sorrow.  For I knew
now that Eloise loved me and at thought of it
my heart almost burst with gladness.  Gladness
was mingled so with sorrow that I wondered if
both were not sweeter for the mingling.

"Colonel Goff and I have put up a few three-foot
hurdles," my Aunt said, sweeping the track
with her hand, "and he and Eloise and a few of
the younger people are going to gallop over them
just for fun.  Goff really wants to show off his
record-breaking jumper and his *fiancée* at the
same time," she said, smiling carelessly at me.
"The hurdles will be for any of them who care
to go over them, but the high jump," and she
pointed to a movable gate of bars, flanked with
high panels on each side, "will be put across the
wire at the finish for Goff and his hunter only,"
and she laughed, winking at me slyly.  "The
record is five feet six; Goff thinks that is what
he is going after again; but I've put up another
bar for fun.  I want to see Goff's imported
record-breaking 'lepper,' as he calls him, break his
blooming knees on that top bar."

I turned impatiently.  "Aunt Lucretia, that's
dangerous, six feet—and under the whip, after a
mile dash!"

Aunt Lucretia smiled.  "None of them is supposed
to go after the high jump but the Colonel,
and he swears he can do it.  H-u-s-h!" she
whispered.  "Not a word of this.  Just let Eloise
fix him.  I've been twenty years arguing with him
about importing these worthless brutes and the
superiority of our own horses, now I am going to
make him pay for his obstinacy—s-sh!  There
they come now," and she pointed to the in-field,
through which a jolly group of riders came, society
people mostly, girls and boys and members of the
hunting club who were out for the mile gallop over
the short hurdles.

"There are ten couples of them in all," she said,
"our smartest boys and girls.  Many of them
will not even try the low hurdles and none of them
the high jump except the Colonel."

"You ought not to try it," I said resolutely.
"Don't you know that nothing can keep Eloise
and Satan from trying that gate of bars?"

"Of course," said my Aunt, "but Goff doesn't
know it, and that is where he will part with his
ducats.  He has even forgotten the bet, he has
been so happy; but I'll remind him.  He hasn't
the least idea that Satan could jump over his
shadow in the road.  O-h, no!"

As we talked they rode up.  "Now see here,"
said Colonel Goff to his crowd, as he lined them
up, "some of these hurdles are going to take a
bit of going, and you boys must give the ladies
the front, for your dust might blind the horses
to the hurdles and make them rush over them with
chances for bad tumbles and broken knees.  We'll
finish the last quarter flat; but I'll go over the gate
and bars here for exhibition.  It's a pretty stiff
affair and will take a bit of going, so the rest of
you will please be so kind as to give me the lead
here and an open field; just hack around this last
quarter, following me, and dodge the gate.
There's plenty of room."

The Colonel sat his horse near me as I stood,
watch in hand in the judges' stand.  Eloise had
not looked my way.  She sat her great,
steel-limbed mount as unconcernedly as if she were
going on a fox chase.  The others were laughing
and excited, the untried horses nervous and
restless, but Satan stood still, looking as if carved
out of the black granite of the hills.  Eloise
glanced up and saw me.  I turned my head
quickly, but she came over, her face pale, but her
eyes smiling kindly into mine.  The old fun was
in them, the old daring, colt-breaking fun I had
not seen there since my return.

"Jack," she said, laughing, "if I could only
get you behind the barn to split my skirts again;
this side-saddle is too heavy."  She was looking
me bravely in the eye, laughing as she said it.
Then all at once I saw all the make-believe go out
of her face and her eyes fall before mine.

Riding up softly she whispered, "Jack, do you
remember the Story of Atalanta?"

I nodded.

"If he doesn't beat me this mile, and over that
high jump he shall never have me, I have told him
so."

There are little things even in big events that
count more than the big things themselves.  I
sat utterly wretched.  I heard her calling her
horse pet names, and saw her rubbing his neck
with her whip.  I saw the old daring nervousness
that showed in the very shoulders of her, the
keen, fine play of her eyes, and the white lines
that lay like a rim of moonlight around the red
of her lips.  The next five minutes were spent
by the starter telling of the record of Goff's
horse.

They lined up ready for the word.  It was I
who gave it.  Instantly from Eloise, even in the
thunder of the great leap of her horse I saw two
fingers fly to her lips in a kiss to me in her old
daring, fun-loving way.  "Go!" I had cried.

"But I am coming back, Jack.  Good-by."

The Colonel's horse, trained as he was, strode
easily ahead of the noisy, awkward bunch.  I saw
Eloise turn Satan loose, and in an instant he had
collared the imported one.  They went over the
first hurdle like a pair, the field behind Nestor
and Satan running neck and neck.  With my
glasses I could see that Goff was smiling in the
delight of the race she was giving him.  They
were not going fast—it was more of a gallop—for
the Colonel set the pace to suit the slower field
of amateurs behind him.  They mounted the last
hurdle together, and came into the back stretch
for the last quarter of the mile.  The six-foot gate
sat in the middle of the track.  The judges rose
and stood with their timers in their hands.  I
heard the grand stand hum and buzz with expectancy.

"Now, hold back!" shouted Goff to all as he
turned his horse loose in the stretch.  "Give me
the right of way!"

He came the last quarter with great speed, and
then I saw the grand stand rise to its feet, and a
wild roar followed, for Eloise had passed him as
a full-set yacht a tug, headed straight for the bars.
I heard Goff shouting to her; he had lost his head
in the fear for her safety.  They rose for the
leap, Eloise two lengths ahead.  I saw Satan rise
high, true to his stride, high up—straight up,
his great form silhouetted against the sky, Eloise
smiling, triumphantly, beautifully, splendidly
lifting him over.

It was Goff's horse that did it.  In the excitement
his rider did not hold him true; he wavered
a moment, dodged faint-heartedly, ducked, shied
the perilous leap before him, and, bolting, struck
the nigh post of the movable gate, hurling it
forward ten feet, full under the flanks of Satan, who
had cleared it.  It caught him cruelly as he came
down, under the flanks, making him turn a
summersault, hurling Eloise into the fence.  I heard
the grand stand groan.

It was I who held her lifeless form in my arms....

I remember but little of the tent and the
surgeons.  I heard someone say, "*She'll die, her
back is broken!*"

A horse, riderless, had followed us to the tent's
very door; he had thrust his head in, whinnying.
It broke my heart to feel his cold nose against
my cheek.  It was then I led him away, so blinded
by tears that I did not see where we went.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"LOVE IS NOT LOVE THAT ALTERS"`:

.. class:: center large bold

   III

.. class:: center large bold

   THE HICKORY'S SON

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I

.. class:: center medium bold

"LOVE IS NOT LOVE THAT ALTERS WHEN IT ALTERATION FINDS"

.. vspace:: 2

Three weeks after Eloise was injured and while
her life was yet despaired of by the physician,
my Aunt Lucretia came to me.  I was sitting on
the rustic bench beneath the hickories.  Night
after night I had sat there, watching the light
from her window, and the coming and going of
the physician and nurses.  To-day there had been
a consultation.  My Aunt had sent for a famous
surgeon of Philadelphia, and all afternoon he had
been in the sick room.  When I saw my Aunt I
knew that his decision had been reached, and
though I sat still, apparently calm, my heart was
smothered within me.  She said very distinctly,
"It's her spine, Jack, he says she will never walk
again."

.. vspace:: 2

I found myself an hour afterwards taking the
old path to the dairy.  I saw the light from
Tammas's cottage shining far out into the night.
I was wandering around numbed, stunned.  As
I passed the paddock I heard Satan whinny
appealingly to me.  From the little window in his
stall he had thrust out his great head.  This was
the horse we had all feared, and had cruelly
misnamed.  The great vicious horse that had almost
killed the groom, that had only been conquered
by one woman, had his head on my shoulder and
was whinnying softly.  I knew that he was
begging for news of Eloise, and for sympathy; and,
dumb as he was, he knew that I would understand.

.. vspace:: 2

"She insists that she must see you to-night,"
said my Aunt Lucretia, when I reached the house.

She led me up the old, familiar stairs, and down
the great hall to Eloise's room.  She stopped at
the door.

"You will find her very brave," said my Aunt,
"very brave, and so must you be," she added,
giving me a quick look.

Then she opened the door, and I stood looking
at Eloise, with drawn, tied lips, and a great
choking in my throat, trying to return the smile she
was giving me from among her pillows.  I stood
still, I could not move, my limbs seemed to have
caught the dead numbness of my heart.

"I want you right here by me a moment, Jack,"
she said calmly.  "You'll let him sit on the side
of the bed, Miss Rose, just a moment.  I'll not
exert myself."

She was more beautiful than ever.  Her brave
body had lost none of its suppleness and grace;
her face shone, and over the pillow her hair was
massed in great red-gold waves against the white
of the linen.

"See," she said, taking my hand, "see, Jack, I
can move my head and both my arms.  Isn't that
fine?  And the doctor says I shall always be able
to do that, and, well—" she smiled, "he says
there is no reason why I should not outlive all of
you to be an old woman.  A crippled old woman—"

I turned my head quickly.  As she had spoken
I saw again the brave, beautiful creature, coming
in head-long flight at the six-foot bar, and the
triumphant smile that lit her face, sky-lined forever
in my memory, as she lifted her horse almost
straight up towards the sky.

She was speaking now to the nurse.  "If you
please, just a moment Miss Rose—Aunt Lucretia,
I would like to speak to Jack alone.  I shall not
exert myself."  I heard them go out.  "There!
I have been thinking, Jack, all these weeks—one
can think so very much lying in bed, and see so
very, very far.  I have been thinking and seeing,
Jack.  It's so easy to think and so hard to see.
But—but—I have prayed, too, about it—to
help me see.  Praying is seeing's eyesight, Jack.
I want you to promise me something.  It is
what I have seen in my prayer—it is the last
thing I shall ever ask of you—for you have done
me so many favors, dear Jack."

I could not speak.

"The Earl—Colonel Goff—they let me see
him to-day.  It hurt me more than my own hurt
to see the poor man suffer so in the blame he puts
upon himself for the accident.  He won't see,
Jack,—he can't—that it was God's way of
settling it—God's way.  For He alone knew how
foolish I was—how wicked to sell myself as I
did—and how my heart, though I did not know
it till that day, Jack—has always been yours!"

I took her in my arms, my face pressed against
her cheek.

She lay still, patting my face with her hand and
saying: "I am—it is—well, it seems also to
be one of God's ways:

   |  'We look before and after
   |  And pine for what is not.'"
   |

I heard her try to laugh in her old, brave way.
She was looking again into my eyes, and I sat
holding her hand.

"But Colonel Goff," she went on, "gentleman
that he is, thinks he must settle the account for
his blundering ride, and begs me to marry him
anyway; I, a cripple for life.  He forgets that
God balanced it when he stopped me from the sin
of selling my heart for—for—his bauble—

"I have sent him away satisfied, Jack.  I
believe he would love me truly," and she smiled,
"now that he sees that I cannot ride.  Love me
for myself and not for my riding; but I shall
love only you, Jack, till I die—the old crippled
woman."

She was silent for a moment.  "And the
compensation for my admitting it—you know it is
costing me something—you don't know how hard
it is for me to say it first, Jack; but the compensation
I claim, will you give it to your little lame
girl?  It is this, and now nod your head, say
'*yes*' Jack.  I've seen—Elsie loves you, and you
must—you must marry the child.  She is everything
you want, and you half-way love her already.
It will be easy now, Jack, promise it; for your
sake—for both your sakes, I'm asking.  Promise me,
Jack, I want to see you happy."

She had my hand against her cheek, fondling
it.  Her eyes had never seemed so beautiful.

.. _`"LOVE IS NOT LOVE THAT ALTERS."`:

.. figure:: images/img-213.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "LOVE IS NOT LOVE THAT ALTERS."

   "LOVE IS NOT LOVE THAT ALTERS."

"Do you remember the kind of love I said I
had for you that first night after I came
home?"  She pressed my hand against her cheek again.
"And the kind you said you'd never felt, but
would give your life to feel?"  Again I felt the
pressure.  "That kind which I told you of, and
which I have had for you all the time, is that kind
that Shakespeare told of when he said:

   |  "'Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.'
   |

"That's the kind I have for you, Eloise—have
always had; and do you remember the love
you said you wanted, you'd give your life for,
yourself, your soul and your body.  '*I, who wish it
so, to be widowed of it all my life*'—those were
your words.  How they cut into my heart—that
love, Eloise, can't you see?  Don't you know
that it is yours and you are widowed of it no
longer?"

She put her arms around my neck and pulled
my face down to hers, smothering her mouth in
my kisses.

"Oh, Jack, why did you say it—see it?  Why
did you not let me fool myself—fool you?
Why—and—oh, if you had only not seen it—not
let me know you saw it!  Love?  Don't you
know now that the kind I said I'd have is as I
said it was?  Worth life—worth death—worth
all—worth all—then God help me, Jack, if I
sin—God forgive me, but I'd rather hold it to my
heart a helpless cripple that I am—hold it never
to satisfy it—never to know what it means,
helpless, bed-ridden cripple that I am than to be the
well, strong thing I was without it.  Oh, Jack,
don't you know now what I mean?"

She kissed me again and again, holding my
cheek to hers.

"Good-by, you'll not see me again, Jack, so
good-by, Jack, forever.  And in time, though
you'll never forget me nor cease to love me, you
will do as I said; for yours is youth and love and
strength, and they must be mated.  When you can
think of me without tears, without sorrow or pity,
but as one who has lived and is gone—only as
the memory of a sweet dream that might have
been—then, dear, dear Jack, remember the last
request I made of you, remember to make Elsie
happy; and in time—in time, Jack, oh, what a
love-maker he is! be happy yourself.  Hold me
a moment, just a moment to your heart—then—kiss
me again and say with me the little prayer
Aunt Lucretia used to make us say, holding hands
in the long ago."

Holding her face against mine, and with clasped
hands as of old, we said:

   |  "Now I lay me down to sleep,
   |  I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
   |  If I should die before I wake,
   |  I pray the Lord my soul to take."
   |

Although the words of Eloise came to me again
and again as I rode home that night, I was never
so happy, nor so hopeful.  Yet she had said,
"Good-by, good-by, Jack, I shall never see you
again."

"I shall see her to-morrow night," my heart
kept saying over and over.  "I will not give her
up; I will marry her, if I have to carry her in my
arms through life!"

But the next night when I rode over my
grandfather met me at the door.  He greeted me with
petulant indifference.  Both Eloise and Aunt
Lucretia had left that morning—where, he did not
know.  She was a hopeless cripple with a broken
spine, and was carried away in a cot to some
institution where she might be cared for properly for
the balance of her life.  I forgave the old man
because he was old—the reiterated statement that
he had made allowance for her care himself, for
although she was no blood kin, and had no claim
upon him, she had been with him all her life, and
was a ward of his daughter.

I could learn nothing from the servants.  Aunt
Lucretia, Eloise, and the nurse had gone.  They
had carried Eloise in a cot to the train and boarded
it.  It was Thomas, the driver, who gave me Aunt
Lucretia's letter.  She wrote, "I have thought it
all over, Jack, and this is the only thing to do.
All of them are agreed, that she can never walk
again.  To keep her at home will only make life
a tragedy to you both.  It is best that you never
see her again, nor she you.  Sentiment is one
thing, and life another.  Sometimes they go
together, and it is well.  But when they cannot,
when sentiment lives and that love of nature which
reproduces life is dead, it is folly to quibble, for
the loss of being is the loss of life.  Be sensible,
brave, and manly as you have always been and
forget Eloise.  Changed conditions change one's
life.  You must change yours.  I have a request
to make.  I shall be at home in a month, but I
do not want you ever to mention Eloise to me,
for I shall not tell you where she is.  This is
hard, but I am doing it for your good, as I have
always done, my dear boy.  When I return if
she is alive you may write to her, since she has
begged me so, and this is the only one happiness
the poor child will have in her stunted life, and
I will see that she gets the letters, though she
can never reply.  It is best to forget."

The little note Eloise sent brought tears.  It
was a heart's-ease that Aunt Lucretia had
evidently gathered for her, and under it was written,
"*I am widowed of love but I am wedded.  Forgive
me, forget me, but love me always, Jack, as
I shall you—Eloise.*"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A DREAM AND ITS ENDING`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   A DREAM AND ITS ENDING

.. vspace:: 2

In my grief at the going of Eloise I remember
little of what I did in the next few days.  Then I
received a note from Colonel Goff asking me to
ride over to The Manor, as both he and Elsie
wanted to see me.

On the way I stopped to see Tammas and
Marget.  In their worship of Elsie I believe they
thought only of her and her happiness.  They
had certainly not understood about my relations
with Eloise.  Their happiness was plain to be
seen, the very laughter which at times broke over
their honest faces told me clearly their pride and
happiness in the turn affairs had taken with Elsie
and me.

But despite my efforts not to show what was
crushing my heart, they perceived that something
was very seriously wrong with me.

"Ay, Jackie, 'tis a hard time you have been
having, my lad," said Tammas, "and it's unreasonable
to think the old General would turn you
out of home like this; but the final word in the
book of every honest man's life is the word good,
and you'll not be losing out in the end—na, na."

"I think you are going now to see our lassie,"
said Marget, smiling slyly, "and sure, Jackie, if
ever man had recompense in the sweetness of love
'tis you.  Never have I seen anything sae near
an angel of light in spirit and sae beautiful in body,
since she came up the hill to us that evening with her
doubts all gone; ay, it is Tammas and I who are
as happy as you, Jackie!"

She sighed.  "I dinna ken that it's a' gladness,"
she went on; "for the Earl is preparing to
leave soon for his estate in the auld country, and
he wants us to gang wi' him—of course—but—"
and she looked at me gravely as if seeking
answer.

But I only shook my head sadly.  "I do not
know, Marget—I do not know.  My plans—you
see—Aunt Lucretia and Eloise—that awful
accident!"

Marget started to speak, but Tammas stopped
her quickly, whispering to her, "Wheest, wumman,
dinna ye see, dinna ye understaun—she was as
his ain sister.  It's that that's saddening
him."  And then he added louder, "Eh, but it was a
terrible thing—she that was sae young an' daring
and sae bonnie—to be an invalid a' her days—the
bold beautiful thing that loved life sae weel!
An' it's a' but upset the Earl.  I hae never kent
him to be sae troubled, for he was unco fond o'
her, an' a grand Countess she wad hae made him.
An' to think it was his ain horse!  The puir man
is nearly daft!"

I was silent.  I could not speak.  For once the
kindly talk of these two good folks annoyed me.
Marget saw this, and with a motherly tenderness
that touched me deeply, said, "Weel—weel,
Jackie, dinna take it sae to heart.  When you go
to her ain land an' see what you have won in oor
lassie, ye'll be sayin' with Rabbie Burns that 'tis
the only place to live and love in.  But awa' ye
gang," she said, giving me a gentle push; "it's
near supper time a' ready an' fine I ken that she
an' the Earl are wanting ye at The Manor.  For
three days she has come ower here, wondering whit
wey ye had na come; she kens aboot the accident
an' is sorrowfu', tae, but she's sae keen to see ye,
Jackie, an' she'll be a bit o' comfort till ye if ye
will."

Colonel Goff was already making preparations
for his going.  I found him more quiet and serious
than I had ever seen him.  I understood that he
would give anything in the world to undo the
accident, and that he now found that he cared more
for Eloise since she was lost to us than he had
himself known, and that, like me, he was in total
ignorance as to where Aunt Lucretia had taken her.

"Jack, Jack!" he kept repeating as he walked
the floor, "I can never forgive myself!  That
beastly, beastly ride!  To have loved horses as
I have all my life, to have done so much for them
and their sport and to have my pride in them all
thrown away and the whole of my life changed
like that! ... There is Elsie—go with
her, Jack—the child wants you!" he added as he
headed towards his stable.

I pitied him, but I pitied myself more.  For,
looking at him, hearing him talk, I saw that he
did not know and would never know.  God had
not made him to know as Eloise and I knew, not
even as Elsie would know.  In spite of all that
had passed before him, and all that he had seen,
he did not know that as he talked of Eloise it was
I who was suffering most.  He did not even see
remotely that it was I who loved her, not he....
There are fish in the deep sea which
carry their own electric light....  There
are others there which have not even eyes! ...

Elsie was openly happy all the afternoon with
me.  Such dreams as she had dreamt of our
future!  Such dreams as had come true even in her
own castle!

I let her talk and plan for our future.  I did
not know what it all meant, whither Fate was
hurrying me.  I could not see the end, but I knew
that the end would be well.  For the real architect
of our lives is God.  The very shadow of our
doubt becomes pictures done in beauty.

It takes shadows to make pictures.  In the
foreground of every shadow already stands the picture
from His hand.  And as for the sorrows sent of
Him, they are not sorrows; rather are they crowns
of Great Joy for brows chosen of Martyrdom....
So I let her dream and love and plan,
knowing that whatever was coming to me would
be good, that behind the Wish of our own little
dreams lay the larger Will of the Great Dreamer....

In the afternoon I had slipped away to a place
where two great maples threw their shadows across
the lawn.  I was tired, and my heart was full of
conflicts.  I wanted to think of Eloise.

It was a quiet, sweet place.  Then I heard Elsie
coming, full of happiness, to judge from the very
tread of her feet on the grass.

I was lying half propped against a tree.  Looking
up I saw she was kneeling above me, her eyes
laughing as she shyly peeped from behind the
trunk.  There was a sofa pillow in her hands and
she was trying to place it under my head.  "You
must sleep, now," she said softly.  "You are so
tired and hollow-cheeked, Jack, my bonnie Jack.
I am going to begin to learn now to take care of
you.  I will come to waken you in an hour, then
we are going to drive into town, father and you
and me!"

She lingered a moment slyly; then stooped to
kiss my forehead and was gone.

I had not come to sleep, I had come to think
of Eloise, to dream of her once more.  I took
her note from my pocket; I kissed it and with tears
I read it.  "*I was widowed of love but I am
wedded.  Forgive me, forget me, but love me
always, Jack, as I shall you,—Eloise.*"  How
strange it is, this joy-sorrow!  There can be but
one explanation of it: down the endless chain of
our ancestry so much sorrow has come that the
taint of it lies sweetly in the pedigree of our own
breast.

I kissed the withered heart's-ease.  Later I
must have fallen asleep...

It was Colonel Goff who wakened me, coming
on a run.

"Quick, Jack!" he cried.

I was up in an instant.  He stood beside me
panting, almost faint.  He held a little slip in his
hand.  His face was white, his lips drawn, but a
battle coolness that went like cold steel into my
own soul was in his voice.

"Elsie, Jack!  Stone's River bridge—you
may save her yet!  She is drowning herself!
Your horse, quick!  I'll follow as best I can!"

Instantly I understood.  I glanced down.  Eloise's
note was gone.  Elsie's hat lay on the grass
instead.

Satan had been saddled for my ride to town
and stood at the rack.  In two quick leaps I was
by his side.  The next minute I held the reins.

"If you ever rode in your life," I heard her
father saying behind me, "if you ever rode in
your life, Jack!  You may save her yet—straight
down the pike to the bridge!"

The horse seemed to know.  He wheeled as
the reins went over his head, pivoted, as I'd seen
him so often do, on two legs, for quickness, up
into the air, wheeling.

I held a good clutch on the pommel and as I
rose his own great bound jerked me like a bolt
into the saddle.  I saw the old butler,
bare-headed, running to open the gate, and Colonel
Goff panting, helpless, crossing the grass.  But
even Satan knew we'd lose if we waited.  It was
only a four-foot rock wall; it was play for him to
clear it.  He landed squarely and already in a full
run.

The bridge was a mile away.  It was made of
iron and its sides were protected by a railing.  It
was high where the pike reached it, spanning a
gorge cut through the hills.

A rock fence ran along the pike up to the bridge
on each side.  There the bluff was sheer twenty
feet straight down to the river.  Satan ran like
a tube of quick-silver down the long white
pathway of the pike.  As we flashed up the slope
leading to it, I caught just a glimpse of a white
gown going over the bridge from the middle
railing.  I had to throw all my weight on his left
rein to send him over the rock fence at the foot
of the bridge and I knew when he felt my heel
go into his flank and my pull that shot his great
game head into the fence, that he thought I was
crazy, was sending us both to death!

But he never faltered.  It all depended on how
he cleared that four-foot fence and the twenty feet
down to the river.  I knew when he rose for the
leap that he expected firm ground on the other
side.  Would he balk, falter and fail me when
he saw?

I drove my heel into him.  I felt him quiver
just a moment beneath me.  Then I held my
breath.  A white figure floated midway of the
river before me.  Up went his head, the water
only flashed beneath him twenty full feet below.
I watched the play of his ears for his thoughts.
If they fluttered, wavered, showed fright, I knew
he would balk and quit.  For an instant I saw
them flutter back and forth, little tell-tales of
surprise, then down they came angrily, glued to his
neck as one grits one's teeth in a crisis, and he shot
over the wall, balanced squarely, holding himself
superbly, down!

I clutched the pommel with both hands, locking my
legs under his chest as we struck the stinging,
biting waters and went under.  It seemed long
before we came up and I could see the white
gown going down again.  I clutched it with one
hand, drawing her head clear of the water against
my breast.  I felt the horse moving easily beneath
me.  Would he see the great bluffs and understand,
or would he strike straight across for them
and drown us all, whirling round and round,
trying to find a passway up straight walls of rock?
It all lay with him.  It was correct instinct now or
death.

I threw the reins over his head, crying, "*Go
out—your way, Satan!*"

It was his good sense that saved us, his instinct
rather, that is greater than sense.  He lost no
strength in useless floundering against steep walls
for a landing.  He seemed to know instantly.  I
felt him moving beneath me down stream while
I held Elsie safe.  Two, three, four hundred feet
he swam, the great game chap, till we passed the
bluff; then he floundered up and out on the bank like
a great dog, shaking himself.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE AWAKENING`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE AWAKENING

.. vspace:: 2

It was Colonel Goff who met me at the door
of The Manor when I called the next night.
Marget and Tammas were both there, silent, and
with awed, sorrowful faces.  Two doctors were
in the house, for Elsie's life and mind lay in the
balance, and it seemed that a straw would turn
them either way.

It was Marget who spoke first.  "Ay,
Jackie—Jackie—'tis as I hinted to you, lad," said she,
"it was in the blood of the Carfaxes, and but for
your ride and leap, lad, our lassie had done what
two of her grandames, two of the ladies of
Carfax, did before her."

Tammas, tears standing in his eyes, could only
hold my hand.

Colonel Goff led me into the library.  For a
while he was silent, his stolid face expressionless.
Then he said very quietly, "Jack, the chances are
all against her, one way or the other; it looks as
if my little lassie is doomed to go the way of her
house.  If she survives the shock I am afraid her
mind will not; that is what is hinging now, that is
why we have sent for you again.  It is only a
chance—one chance in ten—but the doctors
thought—as the shock that unminded her came
through you, that you might—"

I nodded.  "I understand.  I would give my
life for her."

He pressed my hand, his voice choking.  "You
proved that, my boy, you proved that.  How you
escaped, how that horse ever cleared that fence
and cliff—

"Jack," he went on, turning impulsively, "I
am a blunt man, plain and not farseeing in things
like all of these, that have come to me so swift and
fast.  I don't mean these accidents—I'm used to
them—life and the whole little game of it is
all a blind chance.  I have taken mine all my
life—and—and—well, they've always been against
me, Jack—always, even now.  I've lost—always—even
as I shall lose now—Elsie.  The
great hand of Fate that flings the dice for us has
always thrown them loaded for me—Jack."

He was silent.  I thought of God and the
Butterfly.  I pitied him, seeing nothing as he did.

"No, I am not farseeing—not farseeing—in
things like the other side of all this—not the
blind chance side which has always been mine—but
the side you make yourself, someway,
somehow, like this."

He drew a blurred and crumpled note from his
pocket.  It was Eloise's.  I had seen it last when,
holding it to my breast, I had fallen asleep that
afternoon under the trees.

"This kind of a little thing, Jack," he said,
handing me the little relic.  "I am a blundering
fool—and I have to tell you so—to tell you
what an unseeing fool I have been.  I see it all
now—and yet I'd never have seen.  I found this
clutched in Elsie's hand.  This was her shock—this
was my folly—my unseeing folly.  No,
no," he cried quickly, seeing I was about to say
something.  "No, no, Jack, I see it all—don't
say a word.  You've been a man all through
it—a white man, Jack.  I am not talking to put you
on trial.  I'm passing judgment on myself for
your sake, my boy; that you may understand what
a selfish, unseeing fool I have been.

"Well, it's down to this—it's all past—let
it go," he added.  "But Elsie—she is of the
living present.  You must help me, help me a little
yet awhile Jack—till—till the crisis is past."

I pressed his hand silently.  "Thank you," he
said simply, "and now just a word of explanation.
This trouble of hers runs in the blood of
the Carfaxes.  My grandmother, my own sister,
went this way.  They are keyed high, and if
a shock like this comes, it's death or an
unbalancing.  When she read that," he said, "which
unseeing one that I have been, was all my fault,
when she read it, Jack, she lost her reason, she
was temporarily insane when she made that leap.
She is conscious now and stronger; but still she
remembers nothing up to that mental shock, the
shock of that note, that showed her all,
and—oh well, I'm only a blunt kind of a man—I can't
tell it—you alone could do that.  But it's this
now, Jack, you go in and talk to her.  You stay
with her—till we get her right—and we've a
chance to yet—Jack, until we get her right—just
let her believe—believe—  Oh, you know, Jack!"

The tears were in his eyes as he led me into
Elsie's room.

Tammas and Marget were by the bed.  Elsie
lay amid her pillows, a strange startled look in
her eyes.

"You and the old people, Jack," whispered the
doctor, rising and taking Goff by the arm, "you
all just talk to her, get her back to the dairy and
the old ways again, if you can.  If she can be
quieted and her mind bridged over the shock, she'll
be all right again.  And to-night will tell," he
added quietly, "so be very calm.  I have given
her all the morphine she'll stand, tried everything,
but if she can't be made to sleep she'll lose her
mind and if she doesn't sleep to-night her mind is
doomed."

I was not certain, but I had always suspected
that I possessed the power of suggestion.  I had
felt it in dealing with dumb animals and weaker
people.

I sat by her, talking to her in the old way.
"It is Jack, Elsie," I said, "your own Jack.
We've met in our old trysting place.  We are
under our old trees, and Tammas and Marget are
here and you are tired and are going to sleep while
your head is on my lap.  I'll watch you sleep—sleep
now," I said softly, stroking her forehead.

There was a deep sigh, then the frightened wild
look died out of her eyes and with a smile like her
old one she slept.

The doctor beckoned me.  "That's good," he
said in the hallway.  "Just let the nurse and
Marget stay with her, let her sleep all night if she
will."

"But I will have to waken her," I said.

He smiled.  "Oh no; she'll waken herself."

"I'll stay here all night, Colonel Goff," I
assured her father.

"Thank you, Jack," he said, his face brightening
for the first time.  "Of course you will stay
with her."

"The crisis will come with her awakening,"
said the doctor.  "She will awaken sound of mind
and at death's door, or she will awaken to live,
her mind gone.  It is all in her sleeping, and
to-night will decide it.  I will retire, waken me if I
am needed."

All night Colonel Goff and I sat up.  Every
little while we went into her room to see Elsie
sleeping, Marget by her side, the nurse asleep on
the cot.

Twice the doctor came in.  "Her pulse and
temperature are normal," he would say.  "That's
good.  Let her sleep."

But Colonel Goff and I could not sleep.  All
night he smoked, talked and walked the floor.  He
told me his life's story, and in the hopefulness
of Elsie's sleeping he seemed to have taken a new
hold of things.  "If the hand that has flung the
loaded dice for me all my life will only give me one
clean deal now," he cried, as he paced the floor
with his steady military stride.

"It will," I said, "Colonel Goff.  It gives a
clean deal to a clean heart always, and yours is
a different heart now.  I see it; you are a
different man now.  Now, I would give my very life
for you and my poor little Elsie."

There was deep emotion in the man before
me, his eyes were moist.  "Great God, Jack, do
you mean that, man?  Do you know you have said
it?  It is even so—I see it—have seen it all
night—wondering, how—

"God help me," he went on, "and save Elsie
as He has saved me—from myself—through it
all.  I see it now—through all my life—my
own fool will, my obstinacy, madness,
sin—unseeingness: brought me through it all, back to
my own, my family name, my earldom—my
own—Great God, think of it—what has been done
to unseeing, uncaring me!  How much I have
received—how little I have earned!"

I left him a strong man pacing the floor, his
face aglow with a new life.

Elsie had slept twelve hours.

"We can't awaken her," said the doctor as I
went in after a short sleep.  "I suspect you
possess unconsciously hypnotic power, Jack.  It all
looks like it.  You must awaken her if you can.
I don't wish to use heroic means."

"If I have," I said, "I am not aware of it.
But let me talk to her.  And if you please I would
rather only Marget stayed."

"Surely," he said nodding.  "If she wakens
we want no one with her but you.  And you'll
just keep her thinking she's at her old place by the
dairy."

I sat down by her, taking her hand in the old
way.  She was smiling in her sleep.  Then I
said laughingly in her ear, slapping her cheek with
the back of my hand, "Wake up, little Heart's
Ease; we are going to the spring.  It's Jack.  I
will not go unless you go with me, to gather the
Bluebells of Scotland on the hills—come—wake up!"

Instantly she sat up, her blue eyes resting
calmly on me.

"Jack," she said, putting her arms about my
neck, "I had wondered—I have worried because—for
so long a time I seem not to be able to
remember—where you were."

I laughed.  "Nonsense; you have only
dreamed a bad dream last night," said I.

Marget was bustling around the room
pretending to clean up.  Her voice choked so that
she could scarcely speak and yet she said bravely,
"Surely, Elsie.  It is as Mr. Jack says.  You've
been sick a little and had bad dreams."

Elsie clung to me sobbing.  "Jack, my bonny
Jack," she said, "it's good of you, but I am all
right now; I am strong again, so much stronger
than you would ever believe."

"You must not let yourself think of anything
unpleasant," I said quietly, "for my sake now,
Elsie, and daddy's."

"I couldn't, Jack," she said with all her old
frank candor, "with you here.  It all came
because I thought you were gone.  Call Daddy in,"
she said firmly, "I want to talk to you all."

Colonel Goff was already in the room, the smile
on his face telling of his great joy.  He knelt by
the bedside, kissing her.  He was laughing
boyishly.  "Bless me, but my Lady Elsie is feeling
fine, isn't she?" said he.

Elsie nodded happily.

"And you and I have been so blind, Daddy,"
she said, laying her hand on mine.  "So blind,
both of us.  Now, you know what we are going
to do?  I am going to be very strong and well in
a few days and then we are all going to our English
home, you and me, Marget and Tammas, and we
are going to find Eloise.  Find her, Daddy, and
make her well—for Jack—if it takes half of
all that earldom of yours."

Colonel Goff kissed her again and again, and
reaching out, gripped my hand.  "Thank God,
Jack!  Elsie," he added, "you're not to talk
now, but sleep again.  I'll do as you say."

"Now look here," she said in her old teasing
way, "don't you for a moment—don't you try
any funny things on me.  I'm as well as any of
you, and I'm going to get up, right soon.  And I
don't want ever to hear of that dream I had
again," she said, raising a commanding little finger
at us.

"We have both been very foolish, Daddy, you
and me," she went on, "foolish and unseeing; but
now we're both going to be very sensible and
brave, so you'll all go out but Marget, and
Mr. Jack."  She turned to me, her eyes smiling in
the old way, "You'll kiss me good-by now till
you come to see us at Carfax Hall—you
and—and—"  She clasped my neck, kissing me quickly,
"Good-by, my bonny, bonny Prince!  I'll bring
her back to you, see if I don't!"





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.. _`THE CALL OF THE DRUM`:

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   CHAPTER IV


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   THE CALL OF THE DRUM

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The Tennessee troops were to make a last
parade before leaving for the war in the Philippines.

All the night before they left a strange, weird
feeling had been upon me.  For hours I could
not sleep, and when I did it seemed as if I were
going down a dimly remembered path, hearing a
far-off call in far-away mountains, the battle cry
of my ancient Aryan people rallying against the
Mongrel and the Mongol.  Then I awoke with
the fire of battle in my heart and the hot sweat of
the conflict beaded over my face, to call it a dream.
But it was no dream.  There are dreams, and
there is that which is more than dreams.  There
is the spirit's walk into wayside lands.

I rose and dressed.  I went out for calmness
among my trees.  They had been my friends, my
thousand-voiced leaf-whispering friends.  But in
this strange feeling, this fighting mood which,
despite all my efforts, had overwhelmed me, I cared
for them no longer.  And they scorned me.  Not
one leaf whispered to me.  I had not one friend
among them.  They were no longer my brothers
in green.  They were merely trees.  My soul had
been torn up to its very roots by the Hand that
had planted it and told to grow into another soul
or die!

Everything I had held to in life had reversed
itself on me.  Every star-enthroned truth which
I had worshipped had fallen to earth, a clay idol
to mock me with its grinning lying lips of dirt!
I had been turned out from my home unjustly;
the love of my very life was gone, dead, perhaps;
and Elsie—

Nothing since the tragedy that had fallen to
Eloise had cut into my soul like that nightmare
leap over a rock wall into cold air and the
stinging whirl of yellow water and the glory of her
courage and unselfishness as she had said, "I'll
bring her back to you, Jack—see if I don't!"

And there had been the good-by of Tammas
and Marget.  Tammas could not speak, he could
only hold my hand with tears in his eyes.  But
Marget spoke, kissing me for the first and last
time.  "Ay, but our Jackie, good-by, 'tis God
that stirs up the nest of His eagles.  An' so God
bide ye, lad.  God bless and God guide ye—for
'tis God that leads ye, Jackie!"

At the cabin Dr. Gottlieb had tried to explain
to me the great book he was writing, which was
called "The Effect of the Insect Pollen-Gatherers
on Flower Life."

But I would have none of it.  I could not listen.
I slipped out, knowing he could read it all night to
the big arm chair I had sat in, and not know it was
empty.

The drum was calling to me—I who had been
for peace, for trees, for love, for poems, I knew
I must now fight or my soul would die within me,
die like a Chinese foot in its wooden shoe.

I saddled Satan and rode over to the Hermitage.
Was it this horse, this brave-souled, unafraid brute
that had sent the fighting spirit into me, since my
first touch of him?  For on him I felt that I
could ride over a regiment.  I walked alone in the
moonlight over the grounds of the Hermitage.

How bulwarked, restful and yet martial-walled
was the old brick mansion!  And down the long
avenues of cedars which ran from the gate to the
home, I met the fighting ghosts of my ancestors.

Was it a dream or not?  But what is the difference,
since they are the same.  What is the difference?

If a child comes into your home, smiling, from
out the sunshine, is it any more your child than
the one which enters from out the still, dead night,
motherless and homeless, a fantastic waif, but your
very own?

I had walked through the old-fashioned garden,
rose bordered and lined with hollyhocks and rare
old pinks that Aunt Rachel loved.  And I had
stood bareheaded before the tomb of the old
warrior and his bride.  I had gone across the meadow
to the log cabin they had loved best of all....

Then, very plainly I saw the great fireplace
light up with the blaze of hickory logs, and the
shadows come and go across the smoked rafters
above.  And before that fire sat the slim, grim,
sword-faced fighter and lover, with a child on one
knee and a lamb on the other, even as old Parton
had told it.

He turned, smiled, and reaching, took his sword
from the wall behind him and, beckoning to me,
pointed to the west....

I rushed toward him.  The solid door met me,
knocking me to my knees on the grass.  I arose
stunned, but thrilled.  My doubts had gone, the
spirit of Andrew Jackson pointed me the way.
On the grass I knelt for a moment before that hut
which is a shrine.  *A lamb and a child and the
sword of the Lord and of Gideon: I thank thee,
Lord; for it takes them all to make a man!*
... I had not slept but had ridden into town
to see the Tennessee troops go by in their last
parade.

They came by in battalions, the old battle flag
of Jackson at their head, and beside it rode old
Hawthorne, sitting his horse as gallantly as when
in younger days he rode with Forrest and Morgan.

He saw me, smiled, and saluted.

I watched Braxton Bragg go by at the head of
his company, and I saw him look covetously at the
beautiful horse I rode.

Following an old custom, a fife and drum corps
followed.  I heard them coming and my blood
leaped fiercely as they marched by, playing "*The
Girl I Left Behind Me*."

It was their last call for enlistment, and as they
passed I stepped in behind the big drum, throwing
my silver dollar into its head.

So I enlisted for the war.

The old drummer smiled and nodded, the crowd
cheered—I looked up—Old Hawthorne had
ridden back and sat his horse smiling down on me.
"God bless you, Jack, Jack!" he cried.  "Do
you know that I rode back to see you do it?  I
knew you would do it—'tis the call of the
drum—the blood of the men of your tribe who could
both pray and fight!  Come, you shall be on my
staff.  Captain Jack Ballington from the home of
Old Hickory."

I smiled.  "General, you are good to me, too
good.  But let me prove my own worth, if there
is any in me.  No soldier was ever made except
by merit.  Give me a chance to make myself.  I
am going to the war and I am going with you.
But under two conditions: that this horse I am
riding goes with us, is yours.  This is Eloise's," I
added softly, "and I loved her.  'Tis the only
horse in Tennessee fit to carry our General.  She
gave him to me.  I give him to you."

He was silent; he understood.

"And the other is that you give me a rifle in
the ranks." ...

After I had enlisted I wanted to see the
homestead again, the hickories that Eloise and I had
loved, and to bid my old grandsire farewell.

He was sitting under his favorite elm tree
smoking when I rode up.  I did not see who was
with him until I had dismounted and stood before
him, hat off, holding my horse's reins.

Then I saw that it was Braxton Bragg who was
talking excitedly and loudly; and I knew that he
had been drinking.  He did not speak to me nor
see me.  The old man did not know me in the
gathering darkness.

"I am Jack, Grandfather, Jack Ballington.
And I have come to bid you good-by."

"Ah, Jack—Jack—" he repeated—"and you
are my grandson—ha-ha.  I'd about forgotten
it.  And you have come to tell me good-by—why
I thought you had gone, somewhere—ha-ha."

I heard a short laugh from Braxton Bragg.  I
saw the sneering smile that was unconcealed in
his face.  I turned on him with fighting anger,
cut to the heart.  And then I remembered the first
lesson of every soldier is to command himself.
Very calmly I said, "I have not gone far, sir;
only to Dr. Gottlieb's; but to-morrow I am going
to the war.  I have enlisted with the First Tennessee,
and I felt that it was my duty, sir, to call
and tell you good-by."

Instantly he was on his feet, holding to a crutch
he now carried.

"Going to the war!  Enlisted with the First
Tennessee?  By God, sir, do you really mean that?"

"I am, sir," I said.

He pulled me to him and clasped me.  "Jack,
Jack, my boy!"

He turned to Braxton Bragg.  "Braxton, now
by God, sir, this boy is indeed my grandson; the
lost has been found, the prodigal has returned!  I
knew the old Rutherford blood would redeem him
yet!"

He laughed happily, still holding me to him.
"Braxton, take him by the hand, for 'by the
Eternal,' as Old Hickory would say, he is the same
blood kin as you, and I am going to give him the
same chance!  Hey there, Thomas!  Oh, Thomas!"
he called to his old body servant.  "Bring me a
light, and paper and pencil!  I'll drop a line to
Hawthorne—to put you on his staff as Captain.
And my check book, Thomas!  By God, sir—Jack—my
grandson, Jack, I'll give you a little
ready money, only a thousand dollars to see that
you go like a soldier and a Rutherford—ha-ha—damn
him, I knew he'd do it!"

"I'm going as a private, Grandfather; General
Hawthorne has already offered me the rank you
suggest—but—"

"You damned mooning fool, you shall not do
it!" he cried.  "No Rutherford ever went to any
war a private.  Tut—tut—I'll fix that.  You
are now my grandson, Jack."

His voice fell.  He spoke through tears.
"Your mother, Jack—Emily—ay, my boy—I
can see her now with her sweet dreamy eyes of
poetry, the finely chiseled half sad face of religion,
the heart of romance and of sorrow.  I loved her
best of them all—Jack—and you are her
son—my grandson."

"Grandfather," I said, "I thank you, and I
shall try to be worthy of you and of my mother
and my father who died a gentleman.  But I shall
ask only for this horse, for our General to ride,
and that he shall be near me, for I promised
Eloise I would always care for him.  She gave
him to me," I added.

Instantly Braxton Bragg was on his feet.

"Eloise never owned him.  Why, it's what I
have come by for, Grandfather.  What you had
just promised me I could have when he rode up."  He
came up to me, catching at the reins.  "No
sir, you shall never ride him off this place, he is
mine."

My grandfather rose and stood between us.
"Sit down, Braxton Bragg," he said angrily.
"You've been drinking and you've not too much
sense when you are sober.  Now, I had forgotten—I
forget so much of late: come to think of it,
it was Eloise's horse, no one else could touch him,
and the way that girl could ride him—no—no—if
she gave him to Jack he shall have him."

"He has lied," Braxton Bragg cried, pushing
the old man angrily aside to shoulder up to me.
"He is lying.  She didn't give him the horse—"

My fist shut the rest of his words in his mouth.
I felt the cut of his teeth where my knuckles
struck them as I sent him suddenly full length on
the ground.

He tried to rise, drawing his Colt's.  But my
grandfather struck it from his hand with his
crutch, knocking the weapon across the road.

Cursing he tried to rise, but I was on him, my
knee on his breast, his two arms pinned to the
ground.

.. _`I WAS ON HIM, MY KNEE ON HIS BREAST`:

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   :alt: I WAS ON HIM, MY KNEE ON HIS BREAST.

   I WAS ON HIM, MY KNEE ON HIS BREAST.

"Grandfather," I said, "I don't want to hurt
him, but you heard him give me the lie."

"I did," said the old man grimly.  "I did,
and I waited to see if you would strike.  If you
had not, I was going to knock you down with my
crutch!  Mount your horse and go to war, Jack
Ballington, my grandson; for by the living God
I know now I'll have a fighter in that war worthy
the name of Rutherford when this cur turns
coward and quits!"





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.. _`THE FIRST TENNESSEE`:

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   CHAPTER V.


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FIRST TENNESSEE

.. vspace:: 2

I do not know where you are, Eloise.  I do not
even know that you are alive; but if you are, I
have the promise of Aunt Lucretia that this letter
shall go to you; and Aunt Lucretia, you know, does
not break her promises.

And if you be dead, Dear Heart, as I do deep
in my mind fear, for I have not heard from you,
nor Aunt Lucretia since that June day was turned
into December in a night—that day when I went
to the old familiar, sweet places, to find no longer
there her who had made them sweet—why, what
matters so much?  For the passing of the soul of
a dear one, when we see that it is passed, is such a
natural thing at last, such a little change to make
so great a transition!  While they lived and life
looked full and wholesome, it all seemed so large,
their life and ours.  But they go in a night, in a
breath's draught.  And then we see how small it
was: a little finger-width zone across the world
of things.  A little too much heat, a little too
much cold, a tiny vein broken, a severed cord,
and it is whiffed out.  Even in the fullness of
strength and brave life a dash at bars on a great
game horse....

Forgive me, dear one, if you be alive to read
this; for I would not remind you now of a time
you were different.  'Tis God's way, and since
He has kept in my heart my love of you, and
through your accident showed me your love for
me, have we not His two greatest gifts for our very
own?

And as to that other world, do you know what
instinct tells me it is?  That there we will have
a hundred senses where we now have but five;
and there we shall see the Thought as well as the
Thing: every thought, every dream, every hope,
every love, these we know not as words but as
beautiful beings whom we shall meet face to face.
And its only law is Balance, Compensation,
Recompense, Poise; the Equation of the Universe.  We
wonder here why there should be such things as
sin and sorrow and injustice.  But there we shall
know that sin is not sin, but the prism which shows
us goodness, that sorrow is not sorrow but the
prism of gladness, and that death, as we now know
it, is not a stopping, but the prism through which
we see another light.  Here, on our little earth,
with only our five small senses, we see only the
prism.  There we shall see the rays.  It is the
difference between the star and its light.

And if we hold the prism of sorrow here, Dear
Heart, as I do now, shall I not hold a handful
of the joys which stream through it there?  For
here 'tis a poem written, but there the meaning
of it.  Here 'tis the sun rising, there the dawn.
Here the giving of alms, there the joy of the
giving.  Here it is the instrument that makes music,
there the music.  Here 'tis only a picture, there
the soul that made it.

And if you be passed, Eloise, if you be passed,
even yet will I keep writing to you.  For if
letters be written with one's heart's blood, I know, in
my soul of souls, that our dead will read them.
For though I have lived but a little while according
to the span of things, and less according to
the knowledge of things, yet the little span
and the little knowledge have made known to me
the greatest of all truths: *that I do not know*:
that even with my little knowing I have seen things
come to pass which were more wonderful than
those which I thought could ever be; that we live
on the borderland of a world wonderful,
mysterious; that we are clasping hands with eternity,
and need only the language that will yet come
to spell out the touch for us.  And so I shall
write to you even though you are dead, write
to you, sweetheart, a love letter for your heaven,
knowing that not only will you read it, but that
I, in the writing, as in all giving, will at last be
the one who will get.

It is selfishness in me at last, Eloise, selfishness
that I may hold through life and forever this
love of you in my heart, now that it has only
memory and not your own sweet self to live on.
And no greater love and more constant can there
be than that which lives on memory.  For the
living-love, being flesh, must change with the
years.  But memory-love, being eternal, can never
change.

I am at Iloilo; and the gap is great since that
long ago June, that June of Tennessee blue grass
and roses, and the old home and you, sweetheart.

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There is little to tell of my leaving; of my
quick decision to fight for my country and for
you, Eloise.  For, cast from my father's house
there was nothing left but my country's, and losing
the love of my kindred there was only your own
great love left me, yours and my country's.  For
these I am fighting.  But at the last—I know
you will want to hear it all—at the last our old
grandsire seemed strangely touched, and the
memory of it has burned my heart, once strangely
amid flying Filipino bullets on the firing line, and
once amid the thunders of the great thirteen-inch
guns from the Monadnoc.  And right glad I
believe he will be when he learns, that though he
called me a fool for refusing a soft place as aide
to dear old Hawthorne, and a greater fool because
I refused a commission which he himself could
have got for me for the asking, and took a musket
in the ranks instead, that I have risen from a
private to the Captaincy of the crack company of
the First Tennessee.  So say the Regulars of the
Bloody Fourth that we backed to a fight to the
death against the Filipino trenches.  So says old
Hawthorne himself—God's blessing on his old
white head!—now commanding our brigade, who
led us in with the rebel yell in his throat!  And
riding Satan, Dear Heart; cannot you see the
picture, such a man on such a horse!  And you should
have seen how Satan loves the firing line and
how he hates the smell of a Filipino and his pony!

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But this story must be told straight even in a
love letter to my unseen love in an unknown land.

When I left home I only took my father's sword
and Satan.  I took him because of my love of
you, and that old Hawthorne, our General, might
have a horse to ride into battle that should be
worthy of his rider.  For if you have ever thought
of it, sweetheart, you will know that no great
soldier ever owned a mean horse.

I joined a company of the First Tennessee.
In the company next to me was Braxton Bragg,
commanding it by the influence of our old grandsire.

My first promotion came in San Francisco, where
we camped for a month before sailing for Manila,
via Honolulu.  Our Captain was a Tennessee
lawyer who knew little of the game.  It was I who
drilled the company, my German work stood me
in good stead, and we won on dress parade drill.
We were the best drilled company of the First
Tennessee.  Then our Captain resigned to practice
law in San Francisco, and I was made First Lieutenant.

We dropped anchor off the city of Manila,
November 28.  It was an inspiring sight as we sailed
into the Bay, to see the sunken Spanish ships, and
Dewey's flag ship with Old Glory flying,
proclaiming Republican Liberty for the first time to
the waters of the great Far East.

Our first fight came early in February.  We had
lain outside of the walled city on the Lunetta
Driveway for nearly three months.  We knew that
Aguinaldo, with eighty thousand men, armed with
guns we had given him, and those of the Spanish,
was in our front, feeling his way.

It was nine o'clock Saturday night, February
4th, when the attack began.  We heard shots
from the enemy, then three in rapid succession
from our pickets.  It meant help.  The men, who
had been grumbling for three months for fear
they would have to go back home without a scrap,
sprang like school boys to a playground.  Then
the front lit up with a crackle of fire.  Our rear
was another sheet of it from the fleet in the bay,
firing over our heads.

It was a hot fighting front, the First Colorado,
Tenth Pennsylvania, Thirteenth Minnesota,
Fifty-First Iowa, and First North Dakota standing the
brunt.  We chafed all night, standing in line down
by the beach, away in the rear, the very base of
our half-circle battle line.  All night we stood
hoping that we might go into it before it was over,
our blood stirred by the battle and roar in front,
and the thunder behind.

At breakfast Sunday morning we still stood in
line, expectant, keyed to a fiddle's string, eager.
The cook passed our Sunday fare up the line,
chicken and hot coffee.  How little things stick in
excitement!  Then we saw a courier come out of
the smoke and flame, and old Hawthorne rode
Satan to our front.

"Boys," he said quietly, "they have asked us
to take the Filipino trenches, and we are going to
take them.  Attention, regiment! right shoulder
arms, fours right, march!"

A Utah battery and the Nebraska boys
supported us as we charged over San Juan bridge
under fire and across a rice field.

We kept step to the *boom—boom—boom*—of
the thirteen-inch shells firing over us from the
guns of the Monadnoc.  Down the bloody lane
we charged, the bullets humming like hornets.

"Listen, boys," said a man in my company,
"listen how they hum!"

An old sergeant of the Regulars passed us,
going to the rear.  He was binding a handkerchief
around his arm, from which the blood was squirting.
But he laughed and called to us, "Oh, don't
worry about those that you hear humming—them
you hear won't hurt you!"

Then the trenches grinned in our front, spitting
fire.  We prepared to charge.  Behind us were
Regulars, and in the crisis of it all I saw Braxton
Bragg.  I hate to write this of the blood of a
Rutherford.  My shame, my sorrow was greater
than his.  His nerve had simply left him.  He
had got down from the hissing bullets behind a
sandhill.  He had quit before his own men.
They did not shoot him, they did not have time;
they charged with me, backing my own company.
It was a quick rush and soon over.  The Filipinos
left their breakfast of rice in the trenches.  But
we left some of our bravest there, too.

But battered and tired as we were, the real fight
was just on.  In sweeping the Filipinos out of
their trenches we had hurled them to the left on
our own water-works that supplied the city and
the army.  If these were held by the Filipinos
and our supply cut off our fight would be in vain.
It is said that twenty thousand of them stood
between our water and our line.  Luck again was
with us.  The First Tennessee happened to be
nearest to them and it was we who cut through,
and only four hundred, a battalion, at that.  In
a quick bloody charge we took the works.  Old
Hawthorne and Satan led us as if on dress parade,
a target for twenty thousand Filipino rifles, and
not a bullet touched them.  With cheers we
followed the white hair of the old Confederate on
his black horse with the north star on his head.
We were holding a perilous place, for we were in
the rear of the Filipino army, with our backs
against the water-tanks, and foes in front and rear.
But we held it for two days until help came.
And the first battalion and third battalion had
equally as good a record when the fighting was
over.

A week afterwards old Hawthorne came to my
tent.  He was holding a telegram from the
Secretary of War.  "Jack," he said, "I am a Major
General, and you are the Captain of Braxton
Bragg's company.  The boys of it wired petitions
and elected you.  They said you led them twice to
victory.  They want you to lead them always."

Our hardest fight was at Iloilo last week.  We
took the city, but once out of the water we had
to fight down barricaded walls, hemmed in and
shot at from walls and house tops.  For two hours
we were busier than a bull-terrier in a den of cats.
They were the best fighters we struck.  They were
officered, we learned, by the brave and brainy little
Japs.

At the Lapaz sugar mill they tried to cut off
some of the Regulars.  We were nearest.  It was
merely our luck.  Any other regiment would have
cut through the enemy to save their comrades.
At Naglocan they made a stand and there we
finished them.

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That was written a month ago.  I will finish
and let it all go together, finding you if it can;
and if not, well my heart has found yours
somewhere, sweetheart; in the writing my thoughts
have met, somewhere, yours.

We stay and hold Iloilo, but General Hawthorne
with a battalion of our boys went a month
ago to Cebu to help out the Twenty-third regiment
of Regulars who were hemmed up there in the
mountains and fighting for their lives.

Would you like to hear how close I came to
death yesterday, and not on the firing line at
that?  It was a nasty close call I had and the
horror of it still twangs on my nerves.  It is that,
and not knowing what the morrow may bring, that
has brought me to the writing of this last love
letter should either of us pass into the shadow of
things.

On the nearby Island of Mindanao live the
savage fanatics, the Moros.  These people have been
a terror to the Spaniards and are the nightmare
of our own men.  They are Mohammedans, and
the fiercest, most treacherous fighters of all the
Philippine Islands.  They cannot be civilized,
they cannot be conquered, they can only be killed.
There is a bloody tradition about them and the
Spaniards; how, hemmed up for slaughter, when
their warriors have all fallen, the women have
been known to rush on the Spanish lines with their
babes in their arms, and, as the Spaniards would
meet them with their bayonets, hurl their babes
onto the steel, blocking both it and the fire
behind it, and cut down the soldiers with the deadly
*borangs* of their dead husbands.  Then there with
their babes on the bayonets they would die.

Of these Moros, there is one the soldier dreads
more than the firing line of death, more than the
panther that springs at night, or the rattlesnake
that strikes in the grass.  It is the *Juramentado*.

When one of the Moros is adjudged guilty of
thieving, impurity or half a hundred other crimes
and sentenced to death he becomes a *Juramentado*.
Strange, mystic ceremonies are performed over
him by the priest in the black wood of the black
night.  Cruel tortures are inflicted; his head, face,
eyebrows, and mustache are shaved clean, his face
painted, his body left half naked.

There is but one atonement for him.  He must
kill as many Christians as he can before dying
himself.  Dying in the act he is transplanted to
Paradise.

They are great sailors and are liable to run
amuck and then float out to distant places, to any
place where they can find a Christian.  Stealthily
they creep into a camp, or town, or church, or
wherever there is a gathering.  Their keen *borang*
is sheathed between two bamboo reeds; its blade is
a razor, its weight that of lead.  With a blow
they have cut heads clean from shoulders, or split
a soldier from neck to hip.

At a word they will turn in a crowd and kill
all those around them.  The Spaniards tell how
five of these fanatics slipped up to a company of
their men peacefully, and then in sudden frenzy
killed nineteen soldiers before they could shoot
them down.

Our orders are strict concerning them: a soldier
must never be out of lines without his side
arms.  And so nameless a danger is in their very
name that it is the unwritten law of the camp to
courtmartial any soldier who cries out for a joke,
*Juramentado*!

I was visiting the camp of the Regulars and as
I went through the gate a file passed out for guard
mounting.  A *Juramentado* had paddled over
from Mindanao, slipped in, and suddenly attacked
a soldier of the Eighteenth Regulars, as he was
returning on a pony from some duty.  The first
blow of the *borang* took off the man's arm at
the shoulder.  Clapping spurs to his pony he
rushed for the main entrance just as I passed out,
with the file of soldiers behind me.  In an instant
the frenzied, howling, painted thing was on us.

I heard the officer in charge cry "fire," and
a dozen Krags snarled their smokeless call, sending
twelve steel-jacketed bullets into the charging
demon whose painted face, and sharp black teeth
were grinning like a wolf in my very face, and
whose *borang* was at my throat.

The bugler got him with his Colt's 45.  Twelve
steel bullets had cut twelve clean pin-point holes
through him, and not one had stopped him, not
being in the brain.

The Krag is a failure.  It shoots too clean and
hard to kill quick.  That old time Colt 45 saved
my life.  I saw the dead snarling thing all night.
When I waked his black painted teeth grinned in
my face.  I was never un-nerved before.

And so I am writing you, Dear Heart, for I
realize now how near to death I have been, how
nearer I may yet be.  And maybe another thing
makes me write to-night.  It is such a story as
Clarke, our First Lieutenant, has brought back
to me to-night.  It has set me to dreaming, and
made the camp and men and guns sleeping under
the mango trees seem like ghosts from another
land.  Like ghosts, Dear Heart, for in the dream
which is always more real than the real, it is you
and Old Tennessee that I see to-night, not
slumbering guns under mango trees, nor tropical
mountain tops, smoking mistily to the moonlighted
skies, nor the palm trees, sentineling the ghostly
beach.

Clarke has filled my thoughts to overflowing
to-night.  So I have left him and the sleeping camp.
And I lie alone on the beach looking across the
ocean toward home.

He told of a girl in Cebu, where our main
hospital is, one of the Red Cross nurses from the
States.  She came over a month ago.  Clarke has
talked of her till I can see only you.  If I did
not know you were ill I'd swear it could be only
you, peerless, bravest, gamest, most beautiful
woman that ever was.  She is a trained nurse, but
she rode with old Hawthorne, rode Satan, too, to
the relief of the Twenty-third Regulars.

Who could have done what she did but you
and Satan, clear a ten-foot fissure of a yawning
volcanic abyss, outfooting the Filipino ponies
when they thought they had cut her off?  And her
shooting!  Again I saw the brown stubble of
Tennessee wheatfields, the blue hills circling the sky
line, the flush and whir and the crack of the sweet
little twenty gauge!  If you are not dead or in
the hospital it was you—the only one in all the
world—there can be no other!

But I shall not see her, for we leave for the
States in the fall.  They are sending other boys
to relieve us, others who want to serve their country.

I shall go home then to my work.  I shall take
up the life I left, the life of labor and of love, of
love, Dear Heart, love of all loves, love of a
Memory.  And now good-night and for my pen,
good-by, Eloise! ...





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.. _`THE BATTLE IN THE BACAUE MOUNTAINS`:

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   CHAPTER VI


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   THE BATTLE IN THE BACAUE MOUNTAINS

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I wrote you last from Iloilo, but no word has
come back to me.  And toward the late fall, our
term of service having expired, and so many others
crowding for a chance to serve, we were mustered
out and ordered home.  The big transport Indiana
stood by for our home-taking.

It was good news for the boys, but sad for me.
They were going home to wife or sweetheart, but
I had no home.

There is one great thing about war, the steel
it puts into the heart to stand things, to die
smiling and unafraid, to take life as a battle, and fight
it out on the firing line.  There are many living,
but few on the firing line of life.  They think they
are soldiers, but they are sutlers.

In a short time we sighted Cebu.  Our General,
Hawthorne, and a battalion of us were there,
as I wrote you before, sent to help out the
Regulars.  We were ordered to pick up this
battalion; it completed what was left of the First
Tennessee, for some would sleep forever under
far-off Pacific skies.

Cebu is a little city on the island of the same
name in the center tier of the Archipelago.  Bitter
and desperate are the inhabitants and savage in
the extreme, and to take the place has cost us a
hard battle; and to hold it almost cost the life of
the Twenty-third, for they had been cut off in the
mountains and all but lost when Hawthorne came
to their aid, three months before.

It is a long narrow island with a backbone of
volcanic mountains, in the recesses of which live a
race of savage fighters who do not quibble to rush,
half naked, and with bolos and spears, upon lines
of steel and Gatlings.

Their mountain fastnesses are all but impregnable.
The volcanic mountains run sheer up
straight and the level plateaus yawn with the most
dangerous and sudden chasms.

Here were the forts and fortifications of the
savage Insurgents, and here they had again
threatened portions of the Sixth, Nineteenth and
Twenty-third Regulars under General Snyder.

It was night when we heard it; we had anchored
and prepared to take General Hawthorne and our
boys on the homeward journey.

Then like a bolt came the news: portions of the
Nineteenth Regulars were surrounded and cut off
in the mountains by ten thousand yellow savages.
They were doomed.

And Hawthorne and his battalion, instead of
being on the beach to embark for home, had
already gone back to the mountains to fight.

I drew up our men in line of dress parade on
the Indiana's decks.  "Men," I said, "we have
been mustered out!  We are no longer soldiers but
citizens of the Republic, homeward bound, with all
it means to every man of you who has done his
duty as you all have.  No man of you may be
ordered to go one step from this transport's deck till
you reach your own land.  But news has come
that the enemy has attacked and cut off our
comrades.  Our General and a small battalion have
already gone to their aid.  I ask no man to follow
me.  I am going, and every man who would go
with me take two steps forward."

The First Tennessee to a man moved two steps
forward on the deck.

At daybreak we were off for the mountains
eight miles away.  All forenoon we marched
under the hot sun, passed mango trees and squalid
huts over ashes of dead volcanoes.  We established
headquarters on Elpado Mountain across
the Labanyon Valley.  Along the low mountains
in our front ran the forts of the Filipinos, a rude
fringe to the crest of the hills.

A detachment of the Sixth and Nineteenth
Regulars had been over-daring.  They had got in
behind the enemy, and being a new regiment sent
to relieve us, they had not known the true
situation.  They were surrounded in front and rear.
It was for us to cut through to them.

They are peculiar little mountains.  Volcanic in
origin they have been shaken by earthquakes until
often their sides are precipices; on top there are
narrow plateaus, and along their whole length
bristle the savage fortifications.

There we found old Hawthorne waiting for us.
He knew we would come!

At his word we began the ascent.  It was a hand
over hand climb, from rock to rock, from scrub
to scrub, with a spear or a bolo at any time from
above or behind any rock.  And at unlooked for
intervals would come avalanches of rock and
volcanic stones, rolled down by the savages above.

It was five hundred feet up, but it took us all
the afternoon to reach the first plateau, and half
the night to derrick our cannon up with rope and
pulley.  The tired men had had no sleep for
eighteen hours and at daylight they must fight.
We camped within three hundred and fifty yards
of their fortifications, with all lights out.  We
made the assault at daylight.

Our guns knocked their forts down around their
ears and when we charged they went over the
other ridge to the last line of what was left of the
forts.

At the bloodiest angle of it when I came back to
report to the General our burying squad was
already busy:

"This," said a tough old sergeant to me as he
pointed to their dead piled up, "is a cordwood of
good Filipinos."

Such are the genialities of war.

Our fiercest fighting was before us.  Hand
over hand and holding to trees we went up to the
next fort in an avalanche of stones, arrows, bolos,
and spears.

We fought from rock to rock.  Often a Krag
or a Colt would speak straight up, and a dead
Filipino would come vaulting down to our feet.

Again came the derricking of guns.  Then we
went through a deep aisle where only one man
could rush in at a time, with Filipino sharp-shooters
above us.  But our last fight cut them from
our front and we reached the Regulars.  They
had held their place and escaped death only
because they had lain for two days in an old fissure
with empty shells beside it and canteens as dry as
the old volcano.  But weak as they were they
charged with us after the Filipinos, scattering them
like mountain goats over the hills.

There was a tropic moon that tropic night.
The Mango trees circled the farther mountain
sides and the bamboos stood in groups in the
valley below.  The kingly palms towered high over
all.  The weird tropic night sounds were borne to
us on the breeze.  The tired battle line of my
brave boys lolled by camp fires in one long line
of sentinel light with the last wrecked forts of the
beaten enemy at their backs.  The field guns,
rapid of fire, poked their long blue noses out
into the night.  "Still smellin' for the varmints
loike blood houns for nagurs," said Moriarty, our
fighting Irishman, and the wit of the regiment.

Then he would walk over and pet the blue steel
beauties, for they were his.  Moriarty it was who
had brought them over mountain side and
*crevasses* where no man dreamed they could go.

"An' it's aisy it is," he would laugh and say
when I praised him to his face.  "It's aisy,
Cap'n; I've done nothin' but pet 'em, an' so they
jus' foller me loike dogs."

Half a mile out a line of pickets faced the way
the beaten enemy had fled.  Our fighting was
over.  Cebu's island would no longer be troubled
with Insurgents.  And the next day would be the
Indiana and home!

Our General had thrown off his sword belt and
come over to my camp, and together we had
smoked and talked of home and the war, of
everything but you, sweetheart.  But when he left he
smiled and said a puzzling thing to me.  "I've
a surprise for you to-morrow, at Cebu, Jack, that
will knock the war and even the homegoing out
of your head."

Then he twisted his gray mustache and smiled
delightedly.  Had the old man, as we all loved
to call him, received word of another promotion
for me, I wondered.  For myself I wanted no
more war.  I wanted only you, Eloise,
somewhere, somehow, living; or the memory of you
amid my own Tennessee trees.

"General," I said, "there are worthier men
here than I for any promotion you may have.  I
will go back to my land and my work; but if you
could arrange for Moriarty here—" I added,
pointing to the game little Irishman.

"Oh, Pat's fixed already," he answered.  "He
has brought these guns over hills, through fissures,
and the walls of hell.  He'll be First Lieutenant
in the regular army as soon as I can wire this day's
work to the President.  But you, Jack,—"

I pressed his hand.  "General, dear General,
believe me, I want nothing more, nothing but a
chance to work and make a home in Tennessee."

I was serious almost to that old gripping in
the throat.  But he laughed and pressed my hand.

"To-morrow, Jack, to-morrow!  You are tired
now; I want you to sleep.  You have earned your
reward this day, my boy, and it shall be yours
to-morrow, a promotion that you will love."

I followed him to his own tent door.  A black
horse stood haltered near by, saddled as he had
been for two days and nights.

I took the General's whistle, the one I had used
to train Satan to my call in the old days, and which
on the firing line the General himself used in calls
for his aides and orderlies.  I blew softly the
three blasts I had taught him to know in the forest.
He had not seen me for months.  He did not
know I was there; but his head went up quickly
with the old devil fire in his eyes.  The next
minute he had thrown his great weight back on the
halter, snapping it.

His head was on my shoulder, and he was whinnying.

The General laughed.  "It beats the world,
Jack, that horse's love for you.  Take him to your
own tent to-night, he'll rage like a hyena around
here all night, now that he knows you are here."

It was true.  But tethered at my own camp he
was quiet.  The confusion had been so great and
my men were so scattered that when I came back
I ordered Moriarty to call the roll before taps.
He came back quickly with word that Ross and
Billings of our company were absent.  I was
surprised.  Investigation among the men, tired and
half asleep, showed that they had not stopped
when we took the last fort, but had been swept on
with a squad of the Regulars after the flying
Filipinos, carried away with the excitement of it.

I went quickly to the bivouac of the Regulars.
They remembered the two men, but thought they
had returned, as they went off toward the right
of the little village Colena, two miles in our front
and through which the enemy had fled.

"If they aren't here now," said an old sergeant,
"no use to look for 'em again; when we come
back through that village, there wasn't a sound,
not a kid, nor a chicken, nor a coon, nor a dog; and
when you don't hear nothin' in a Filipino village,
when you go through, look out for hell when you
come back."

I looked at my watch.  It had been full three
hours since the Regulars had returned.

"I am going after them," I said, turning to go.

"Ballington," it was the swarthy old Captain,
of the Nineteenth who spoke, "you'd be a fool to
risk it."  He pointed silently to a faint glow across
the valley on the side of the mountain beyond.  I
had thought it was a rising star.  "Yonder," he
said, "see that other one on the mountain top,
that's the signal fire of the little yellow hyenas,
that means guerrilla bands in them mountains, they
go in packs like wolves, and the night is their time.
They know every foot of the mountain, every
gorge, valley and *crevasse*.  Why, two men lost
over there ain't got no more show than a pair of
fool goats in a jungle.  Why, if them little hyenas
couldn't see 'em, which they can—for they see
better by night than by day—they can smell 'em,
like all jungle breeds."

"Boy," he said again, looking at me kindly and
smiling an apology for the title which we both
bore, "I wouldn't let you go.  I'd go to old
Hawthorne and have you arrested first.  You
Tennessee fellows," he said, laying his big rough hand
on my shoulder, "have done the whitest thing ever
done in this war.  It ain't often we old Regulars
that never go home and have to serve 'till the last
taps, takes much notice of you volunteer fellows
that fights awhile for fun and quits when the time
is up; but when you biled out of that transport and
came over them mountains an' cut through to us,
you done a thing that'll warm the cockles of our
boys till the last tattoo and the taps.  Now I
ain't goin' to let you go out there in no such fool
thing.  I'm an old soldier, I fought with Miles
and Cook on the plains, and I tell you now, Sitting
Bull and his Sioux were lambs to them little
mountain savages.  You go back now," he said
kindly, taking my hand in his own, "go back and
go to sleep.  You are a boy yet, though you proved
you are full grown to-day, my lad, and ain't
even got up a beard.  Of course you have got
a sweetheart waiting in Tennessee.  Go back to
her, and the next year send old Brawley of the
Nineteenth a picture of her and the kid.  He ain't
never had no time to marry, it's been fighting all his
life with him from hell to breakfast."

I smiled, saluted, and went back to camp.

Moriarty was waiting for me, and, when
Moriarty does not smile, I know what to expect.

"Cap'n," he said, "it's not Moriarty that can
sleep peaceful the night till we find them, dead or
alive."

"And I, too, if you please, Cap'n," said Davis,
my corporal, who had been listening.

"There is no need for a call then, men," I said,
"we three will go down to the village, we will
doubtless find them near it.  A Krag for rapid
firing and two Colts each," I added, "and plenty
of shells.  Don't let the other men know; we'll
be back by midnight."

As we slipped out of the lines of camp I saw
a thing that touched me.  Moriarty had stopped
at the long, slim, blue-barreled rapid fire and for a
moment, lingering over it, one arm around it, he
laid his cheek against its lips.  It was Moriarty's
farewell kiss to the only bride he had ever known.





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.. _`THE JURAMENTADOS`:

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   CHAPTER VII


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   THE JURAMENTADOS

.. vspace:: 2

There was a mistiness among the mango trees
as we went out into the moonlight.  It was a mist
from the ocean, but it made an uncanny milkiness
in the air, which seemed to cling to the long
dew-damp leaves of the tropic trees as we descended
into the Labanyon Valley; and that queer
uncanniness stayed with me.  I could not throw it off.

At the picket line I left a note to be carried
back with the relief.  It was to my First Lieutenant,
explaining my absence and stating that, if I
were not back by daylight, he was to assume the
command.  And if, before daylight, he heard any
continual rapid fire, he was to send the company
to the sound of it, for it would mean that we
needed help.

The picket would be relieved at midnight.  I
asked him not to awaken Lieutenant Clarke until
then.

"Captain," said the picket, touching his cap,
"excuse me, but if you weren't here I'd arrest
Moriarty and Davis and send them back into
camp.  'Tis a fool thing they are doing."

"But what about our comrades out there, cut
off, doubtless, and surrounded by these savages?"

"Then why not take a company?" he asked
respectfully.

"They'd be butchered," said Moriarty.  "It's
the three of us slippin' around an' nosin' in that
can save 'em if we find 'em.  And with these
rifles and six Colts we'll be all of a company for
arrows and bolos."

"Look," said the sentinel, "do you see that?"
He pointed to a dim red star, glowing just above
the mountain top.  "That's a signal fire—and
that, and that.  Captain," he pleaded earnestly,
"go back and let the boys all go with you.  It's
a fool thing, but if you will go—now listen—when
I hear you shoot, if shooting is on, I am
going to fire and waken the camp; the boys will
want to come to your relief."

Moriarty laughed.  "Now don't let your old
gun go off too suddent loike.  We'll be back
without firin' a shot!"

But I, Eloise, as I went down into that valley,
became for a moment all but a weakling when
I thought of you!  We went quietly out into the
moonlight, slipping along from the shadow of one
great mango to another.  Sometimes these trees
made a continuous shadow—so thick they
were—and our going was easy.  But when we
emerged into a moonlit space we stooped and
crawled through the high grass, for we were an
easy target for their sharpshooters on the peaks
above.

We were fully a mile from camp before we
crossed a *crevasse*, about twelve feet wide, spanned
by a culvert or small bridge.  I remember noticing
the little bridge and thinking that if it should be
burnt by the enemy in our rear, we would never be
likely to get back into our camp again.

There was a Filipino village which lay off to the
left in a mountain gorge, and, scouting carefully
around the side of the mountain, we approached
it over the last one-hundred yards, crawling
through the grass and under mango and cocoanut
trees up to within fifty yards.  It lay before us,
a dozen shacks on bamboo cane shocked with the
coarse straw of the rice stalk.  The usual squalor
and emptiness was around, but there was not a
sound, not a living thing.  Moriarty nudged me.
"There's hell in there somewhere, Cap'n," he
whispered, "it looks too peaceful loike."

It was a Filipino cur that gave us the first clue.
They are a half wild breed but little beyond the
wild things from which they came.  As we lay in
the grass listening, this dog which had come back
for some morsel he knew of, smelt us, and,
barking, bolted down a wooded path to the right.  We
saw him clearly as he ran up a hillside and over
into a gorge beyond.

"There's where we'll find the family," said
Moriarty.  "We'll cut around and go into the rear."

It took us a good hour to do it, crawling through
bamboo and cane, under mango and desert palm,
through the tall grasses, and over *crevasses*.
Often we lay quiet in them, resting.

It was a weird and unexpected sight that we
saw.  Before us lay a little cup in the mountain
gorge, a natural amphitheater, framed by a small
grove of palms and cocoanuts.  Savage figures
were going through queer rites.

We stopped, puzzled.  "That isn't the village
people," whispered Davis.  "There are no
women or children there, they are headmen and
warriors, and that is some ceremony they are
performing."

We crawled up within fifty yards, and then I
wished I had not come, for Moriarty gripped me
quickly, and pointing to two naked men bound and
laid out on the ground, whispered, "Ross and
Billings!"

"We're too late, Captain, they've been killed
and now they are fixing to mutilate them, cut off
their heads and cut out their hearts and fill their
stomachs with stones."

I nodded.  It was the savage's way of mutilating
all our dead.

We recognized the fighting men easily.  There
were dozens of them, squatted in a circle, armed
with *bolos*, *borangs*, and *spears*.  But in the center
stood a strange figure in a long black robe, his
parted hair hanging down his back.  Around him
stood six men, fierce savages, with shaved heads,
and half naked bodies.

"*Juramentado!*" I whispered.  "That's a
Mohammedan priest in the center and he is making
*Juramentado* of the six—look!"

I heard both Davis and Moriarty slip the bolts
of their Krags.  To say *Juramentado* to any
soldier was like crying wolf to a shepherd and his
flock.

We lay still, seeing the mystic savage rite no
white man ever saw before.  We could hear the
words of the priest which, spoken in a mixed
Moro-Spanish, we easily interpreted.  The six we soon
learned were Moros from Mindanao and had
sailed over to sacrifice themselves to our army.

It was indeed a weird rite he went through, and
strange words he used:—how, if each killed his
Christian before dying, it meant first heaven and
an *houri*; and if two Christians a second heaven
and two *houri*, up to the seventh heaven and a
harem if they died within our lines with seven of
our dead each to his credit.

"And now behead them," he ordered, pointing
to the two American soldiers, "and anoint
your bodies with their blood!"

Instantly we saw our error in supposing our
friends were dead, for when the bound soldiers
saw two of the *Juramentados* seize their *borangs*,
each made a violent effort to break his bonds.

"That priest is mine," said Moriarty, "I've
always loved 'em."

We fired together.  The priest, two
*Juramentados*, and five warriors lay dead or dying.
The others were instantly an awakened den of
wolves.

I flinch, Eloise, in writing you this, for it brings
the tears even now as I write.  Its ending was in
blood and the passing of two I loved as only one
man learns to love another who has backed him
to death in the last ditch.  They rushed us quickly,
for their leaders were *Juramentados* and they
never retreat, but like a wounded jungle lion
charge instantly the men who have wounded them.
They were ten to one against us, and fast and
furious was their rush, but, though it was only a
short distance, we bunched, and shoulder to back
shingled the ground with their dead, stopping many
of them, who died at our very feet.  The others
swarmed upon us, led by howling *Juramentados*,
until even now I awake at night with their
twanging hyena howl in my ears.  Our Colts crackled
fiercely for an instant in their faces.  Then Davis
fell and I would have followed him had not
Moriarty, shooting quick and shouldering between
us, blown out the brute's brains with the last shell
in his revolver....

I was dazed, bloody, and knocked down into the
fissure at our backs by the glancing *borang* blow
of the last of the *Juramentados*....  When
I came fully to myself I crawled for protection
under an outcropping rock, and none too soon, for
the fanatic above hurled a spear the next instant
that quivered in the spot I had just left.

And, emboldened by the frenzied *Juramentado*,
and seeking my blood, I saw other heads, peering
from over the fissure side and around boulder and
rock.

I was protected for a time under the boulder.
I was faint, and hearing running water I drank.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



I prayed that I might not faint again.  The
wound on my head was a clean cut.  "If only I
do not faint again," I kept saying while I bathed
my wound, and, packing my cap with my handkerchief,
pulled it tight over my temples to shut
off the blood.

Then I became calm and indifferent.  I marvel
even now to think how undreading of death I was,
feeling that I was so soon to die; undreading, for
in all the queerness of my head and the dizziness
and throbbing and the bitterness of the knowledge
of the unequal fight, I thought always of you
and of Andrew Jackson, who when shot by Dickinson,
clinched his teeth on a bullet to keep from
biting his tongue, clinched, stood, and killed his
man! ...

Down in that death hole with savages above me
waiting for a chance to brain me or bolo me to
death, I heard—I'll swear I heard Aunt Lucretia
say, "*Would Andrew Jackson faint or fight here,
Jack?*"

Yes, Eloise, believe me or not, but then I knew
I would not faint again.  I crawled further under
the rock, lying flat, face up, and drew both my
Colts....

My belt still held the shells.  The fight I had
with myself must have been long, for they found
forty-three empty shells at my side next day....
I don't remember distinctly what happened, for my
head would spin every now and then and I had to
close my eyes.

Then I fired twice, thrice...  A fool was starting
down to see where I was, a fool, and he met a fool's
fate at my feet...  So for hours I shot that way and
none dared to try to come down again, none but one
who suddenly dropped upon me from the left like a
tiger from a cliff, the last of the red painted things
who sought death in order to gain Paradise.

He died literally on me; and he died quickly.
He did not know that having killed his companions
with my right, I was on my back with a Colt also
in my left.  So died the last of the *Juramentados*....

I knew this would end it, and I was glad, for I
was beginning to forget, with the fever flame
licking amid the fagots of my brain.  I had strange
deliriums....  Æons passed with me wallowing
in the water beneath me, thrusting my burning
head into it and not knowing it....  And then
came the end of the delirium in the great joy of
the volley of shots above me and the cheers of the
First Tennessee.  I heard our General telling me
I was all right, and then the dreams returned, for
I saw you on Satan, in *khaki*, riding with the firing
line; and then my head was in your lap, and you
were crying over me and kissing me, before all
the boys.  And like one in a nightmare, when
strange things happen, I told them it was not real,
that I was touched of a *borang* in my head, and
was a double weakling for dreaming and then
being such a fool as to weep over a dream.  But
they only cheered me and laughed.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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I remember very distinctly when I awoke in
the hospital at Cebu.  It was night and the tropic
moon lay half masted in the sea.  I saw the
gunboats out in the bay and Old Glory floating from
fort and mast head.  But I did not see the
Indiana.  I knew I was feverish and yet so sane,
so sane that it hurt as does all great saneness which
follows a great sleep.  Then a sea-gull cried as it
swept past my window, and that lone sea-gull's
cry quite overcame me: for then I remembered my
first dream, and you, and now I awoke and you were
not there....  I turned my face to the wall.
Then I felt someone kneeling by me, her arms
around me, her kisses on my cheek.  I heard
someone saying, "Jack, Jack, be still, and be very calm,
for it is I, Eloise, your Eloise.  I have nursed you
a month—I have slept by your side, darling,
right here by your side, your own Eloise.  And
now it is all right and so sweet that—hold my
hands—Jack—tight—tight Jack—we are
going to say again our little prayer, thanking God
together as of old...."

Then the next day when I was stronger and the
danger had passed, we spent the morning alone in
the little hospital ward holding hands sillily,
talking always, and kissing when we could.  And you
told me how it had all been: how Elsie and her
father had found you and taken you home with
them to the great English surgeon who had cured
you: how, knowing I was here in the Philippines
you had come as a trained nurse to be near me:
and how it had been fixed between the General and
you that we were to meet the very day that came
so near being my last.  And you told of the
strange dream you had that night, of my call that
seemed to come to you, and how, mounting a
pony and dressed in *khaki* that you might pass the
line as a soldier, you rode to our camp alone
through the night, following the army's path over
the mountain, reaching our last line at daylight,
to find the battalion gone since midnight, to our
rescue.  Taking Satan you followed: and it was
Satan and you who found me: for they had
rescued Ross and Billings and found the bodies
of poor Davis and Moriarty, but they could not
find me.  All day they had ridden and searched;
and all day, delirious and fever stricken, I had lain
in the fissure under the boulder: and in the still of
the evening, when the boys had all but despaired,
and you, heart-wrung and broken, had rested a
moment in the General's fly, suddenly there came
a strange whistling up the canyon, and Satan had
broken loose going to it, the boys following: and
they had found me in wild delirium, but dreaming
of home and blowing the call of old for Satan
with the whistle I had forgotten was in my pocket.
Even as you told me all this, old Hawthorne
came in with the familiar twinkle in his eye and
bending over me stroked my forehead as my dead
sire would have done, saying, "Well, Colonel
Ballington, how do you feel to-day?

"Jack," you cried, "he shall not tell you first!
I hadn't got to that, General.  Please let me tell
it all to him, my own self."

The General laughed and nodded, enjoying our
happiness as if it were his own.

"It is all too good, Jack," you went on, "but
the President himself has appointed you a Colonel
in the regular army.  And see—we have saved
it till you wakened—our dear old General and
I—here is the message President McKinley sent
when he heard you had led them from the
Indiana's deck to the rescue of the Regulars."

Then you read the message yourself, with
tremor and tears:

.. vspace:: 2

"No more splendid exhibition of patriotism was ever
shown than was shown a few days ago in the Philippines.
That gallant Tennessee Regiment from our Southern
border, that had been absent from home and family and
friends for more than a year, and was embarked on the
good ship *Indiana* homeward bound—when the enemy
attacked our forces remaining near Cebu, these magnificent
soldiers disembarked from their ship, joined their
comrades on the firing line and achieved a glorious
triumph for American arms.  That is an example of
patriotism that should be an inspiration to duty to all of us
in every part of our common country."

.. vspace:: 2

"It is good of him," I said, "God bless him—the
sweetest, gentlest man who ever sat in that
chair.  But if I get well I am going home and to
my trees."

But still the old General stood smiling, and I
knew there was more to come.  And, seeing it, you
came over, smiling funnily yourself, and with little
tears, too; and kneeling, you laid your face against
mine.  "Jack, forgive us, it was a mean thing
to do, but you have been married a month to-day
and don't know it!  But when we brought you
here, you talked all right—though you were a
little flighty—and begged so hard for me to
marry you then—and—and—somebody had
to sleep right here with you, nursing you day and
night, for the surgeon said it would all be in the
nursing and a mighty poor little chance at
that—Jack—for it was a terrible blow, cutting to
your brain—and you begged so—and—I
didn't want ever to leave you again while you lived,
and after the Chaplain married us holding your
hands in mine and kneeling here just as I am
now—it looked as if marrying had killed you,
Jack—you went down so quickly and deeply into the
valley—and now to see you well—"

You were crying in my arms.  I could only
kiss you, calling you wife.

Then your old fun came back as of old.  "It
wasn't a square deal, Jack—to take advantage
of a sick man like that, and so, well—well, if you
are willing we will call it all off and wait till we
get back home where we will have a grand
wedding at The Home Stretch; for I have been
cheated out of my *trousseau*, and my honeymoon,
my new shoes and the rice that ought to be in my
back."

"I have had make-believe enough," I said,
kissing you again.  "That marriage holds and is
good enough for me."

Then the home going, overtaking the regiment
at San Francisco and the thunder of guns and
welcoming whistles as we reached our native
Tennessee.  And there, amid the great hubbub, and
the welcoming committee as our train rolled in,
stood the old General, my grandsire, holding
back the crowd with his crutch that he might get
to me first, and rattling around on his wooden
leg, shouting to my great embarrassment:—"*By
God, there he is—Jack—my grandson,
Jack!  I raised him—He's my daughter's son—a
game cock—the old blue hen's chicken!...*"

We have it framed now, Eloise, that telegram
from the President.

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"EXECUTIVE MANSION,
    WASHINGTON.  NOVEMBER 21, 1899.

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On the Nation's roll of honor is the First Tennessee
Regiment U.S. Volunteers, and nobly has the distinction
been won.  Their country's gratitude awaits the
homecoming of these brave men.

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WILLIAM McKINLEY."

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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Home again, Eloise, Home and June.  Born
of the same May mother, but differing so, this
and that other June!  How un-of-kin they seem to
be!  That last dance, the death ride over the
bars, homeless, the despair of that June a year ago.

And now home again and The Home Stretch mine!

June, and writing this to you as I sit in the old
sweet place under the old sweet trees, under the
hickories we loved so, and afar off is the flush of
old gold above the violet of the western hills.

And the same June sounds come over to me:
the call of an ewe to an errant lamb; the neigh
of a mare and the answering whinny of her colt;
the distant staccato clatter of binders amid the
wheat.

And a wood-thrush deep in our laurel thicket
rinsing clear the air around with her liquid notes....

Since Christmas I have seen it all, for it was
Christmas when the boys came marching home,
seen it again and again, never tiring of seeing it,
life as it shuttles across the loom of the Middle
Basin.  If the canvas were a meadow backgrounded
in green, this is how the picture would
be: a patch of red-bud now and then for early
spring; and later, a green sheen creeping like a
high-tide over the hills.  But later still, after the
wheat is harvested it were a stubblefield canvassed
to cleanness; there would run a riot of passion
flowers and morning glories in brave, bold colors
of beauty.  And the picture would be June in the
Middle Basin.

I have sat this afternoon watching the trees
on the round breast of the hill across the way, a
shield of green on the round shoulder of the hill;
and as I looked I had a strange upliftingness
which I knew was of poetry and that it was the
melting of my heart because it was June again and
home and because of the love of you.

Why should I potter and make excuse of it?
If there be love there is a poem.

Take mine as it is—this voice of the trees—as
the sweetness of it all came over me, listening,
listening and loving you, Eloise.

   |  WHAT SAY THE BEECHES?

   |  What say the beeches, heart of my heart?
   |          (Comrades we three!)
   |  Wise in their canopied gallery of art—
   |  Clear-visioned, true, in their cloisters apart
   |  From the life which dwarfs when the soul is the mart
   |          Of passions set free.
   |  Write it, dear beeches—historian tree—
   |          Write it for me.

   |  My heart, it hath doubted; my soul, it hath slept.
   |  Alone with the trees and the stars it hath wept,
   |  Not knowing the mystery, not seeing the end—
   |  Oh, be to it, beeches—calm beeches—its friend!
   |  For part of the Infinite—you and the stars—
   |  Sing it the Truth with your infinite bars.

   |  The little leaves whisper'd, baby-voiced, low;
   |  The finger-limbs wrote it 'mid starlighted glow:
   |        "*Love and believe, and be kind as you go!*"
   |            (O Heart, it is so!)

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Why should you care for me to write of war
and that last bloody fight, now that I am at home
again, and my heart in the melting?  Is it because
it takes it all to make life, the melting, the June
days, and the fight?

And why have I written all this, here, at The
Home Stretch, months after it has happened, with
you coming, even as I write it, down the old sweet
path to me, in the old sweet way?  Coming to see
if I have finished my letter to you.  And I wrote it
because but yesterday you said, "Jack, dear, I
want you to finish that letter you wrote me in the
Philippines, the one you wrote to *your love that
was lost*.  Finish it, Jack, this one here at home
for me, in our own home, *ours*, and *for your love
that was found!*"

And so I have done it, sweetheart.





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.. _`TWO OF A KIND`:

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   IV

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   THE BURGEONING

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..

   |  "Now burgeons every maze of quick
   |  About the flowering squares, and thick
   |  By ashen roots the violets blow."
   |                        —Tennyson.

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.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I

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   TWO OF A KIND

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As I said at the beginning, this is my story, and
the telling of it must be in my own way.  It does
not satisfy me to end it with our home-coming,
and I hold that no story is complete unless it
satisfies, first of all, him who tells it.

Why should love stories end at the altar?  For
there is that in life which surpasses the altar in
sweetness.  It is the hearth.  And there is that
which is greater than love making.  It is the home
making.  And there are those in every marriage
that is a marriage, of far greater worth to the
world—since only through them may the world's
work go on—than the two who joined their lives
at the altar, and they are the children who come
of the marriage.

If my love for Eloise was great before, it is
greater now, for in the sweet years that have
passed have I not proved it a thousand times, as
hath she, in the little things of life, the
knight-errantries of love, the battle and the gauge that
tests us all daily?  And are not the still, calm
depths in the eyes of the wife more satisfying to
the soul than the merry frothy shoals that gleam
so riotously in the eyes of the sweetheart?

No man has truly loved a woman until she has
borne him children; not for the child alone,
uplifting as is the first sight of this tiny sweet seed
of the blossoming of their doubly growing souls,
but as an evidence that there is nothing worth
while in the world except love, since not only does
it create every great, beautiful, sweet dream that
has been given to the world, but even the dreamer
himself!

No man has loved until he has seen the child
of his love.  It is not the row-boat of the calm
waters that the sailor loves as his very life, but
the good ship of the mid-seas that holds fast and
true, even in the throes of the tempest, bringing
him to port and to joy in the morning.

And so I have small respect, and a wholesome
contempt for those story-tellers who make of
married love a marred love; who paint its ending
with the coming of children; and who would leave
the wife at the last page waiting for a lover's love
lost in the husband's love.

I did not know at first what it was that made
Eloise change that first year, from the brilliant,
riding, hunting, dancing Eloise of old to this
thoughtful, beautiful creature who wanted always
to slip off and read Keats by herself, and was
slyly making what I thought were doll clothes for
Little Sister; and when I was most happy with her
to see now and then, through the day, little strange,
unnatural flashes of sadness come into her deep,
thoughtful eyes, and little, queer, unsatisfying
doubts that would creep in.  Unknowing, I would
see her watching me; and it would end at night in
our own room with her in my lap in tears and
her arms around me.

"Jack!  Jack!" she cried.  "Oh, I am so foolish;
but are you sure that you will never love
anybody better than you do me, not even your own
child?"

How well I remember that day of my greatest
agony and blessing, and the long, long hours in
which her life hung in the balance.  I remember
the good old doctor who came first, and then, as
the day wore on, the graveness that settled in his
eyes and the hurried sending to the city for another
one.  I walked sorrowfully among the trees, a
coward, a weakling, for the first time in my life.

Aunt Lucretia was my only comforter, and a
stern, unflinching, rude comforter she was.
"Jack, *Colonel* Ballington, actually wilted, a
weakling, ruined by matrimony and too much love, as
I always said you'd be, if you didn't look out.
Jack, you make me tired; born on this stock farm,
seeing my crop of colts and calves, my spring
lambs, too, and whatnots; the finest and most
high-bred matrons of my paddock, bringing in their
first borns and not a fool doctor in ten miles to
meddle with them and Nature and her ways!  And
now Eloise, the gamiest, nerviest, bravest
thoroughbred of them all!  You make me tired!
Come, I want to make a man of you."

She seized my arm and led me into the house.
In the library she took down her huge silver
goblet, an international trophy won in France, her
prize for the best merino wool, and then she led
me down into the cellar.

I had never been in it but once before.  It was
cool and damp, its sleepers lined with cobwebs.
She lit a lantern and led me into the farthest,
darkest, cobwebbiest corner.  She stood before a small
ten-gallon cask, and said with some show of grim
humor, "Jack, it was fifteen years ago to-day—Did
you know this was an anniversary?  Well,
fifteen years ago to-day I brought Eloise here,
adopted her and gave her to you; and that day I
told my old friend, Jack Daniel, to send me this
ten-gallon cask of pure whiskey, to be put away,
and to get good and mellow for just what I knew
would one day happen—the first colt!  And now
we are going to tap it in his honor!"

"*His* honor, Aunt Lucretia?" I said shamedly.
"I had set my heart on her being a—a—why,
we are going to name her Lucretia," I added
timidly and with some confusion.

"Jack, you were always a fool; a bigger one
since you married, just as I knew you'd be, all of
'em are.  Why, of course he'll be a good lusty
chap; and I have already named him *Andrew Jackson*,
and that's what he'll be, name and all.  I am
going to give his daddy a drink; he needs it,
weak-kneeing around here like an old run-down
selling-plater in the home stretch."

In the dining-room she took down a cut-glass
goblet and pottered around in the side-board till
she had found her old-time loaf sugar.  This she
broke into bits, and, putting a piece in the goblet,
she held it up to the light and eyed me queerly.

I knew Aunt Lucretia, and that this ceremony
was her way of playing for time and a kindly way
of diverting my mind from Eloise.

"Very few people, Jack," she went on, "know
how to make a toddy.  Now you pour a little
water over this sugar and let it melt; if you crush it
with the spoon it spoils the whole thing, and then
pour the whiskey in slowly, stirring it all the time.
The nutmeg; ah—"

We took one each, and Aunt Lucretia smiled.
"Feel better?  Well, you'd better stop at that!
Another one might make you see double—directly—and
that would be horrible—twins!
Why, Jack, I've known men to be driving along,
single, and after taking two of these to swear
they were driving a span!  One more makes them
think they are holding a four-in-hand!  Now, that
boy of yours," she began, "why, Jack, I wouldn't
have him divided up into twins for anything."

We stopped and looked quickly up.  The old
doctor was smiling at us.  He had slipped into the
room while we were talking.

"You have missed it, Miss Lucretia," he said,
pouring out a half-glass for himself and taking it
straight.  "Phew!  But I need a bracer myself
after all that!  It's a girl, Jack, a most beautiful,
bloodlike little girl."

"Jack!" cried my Aunt, throwing up both
hands, "Jack, get out of my sight!  But we'll
drink to her," she added gamely.

And we did.

"Two of them!" cried the doctor, warmly
shaking my hand.  "Two beautiful little girls,
Jack!  My boy, I congratulate you!  And the
mother is doing fine, just tickled to death and
begging me to let you come in at once!"

"Heaven help us!" cried my Aunt Lucretia,
with feigned anger, but real exultation shining in
her eyes.  "Twin colts never amount to a hill of
beans.  We'll go in directly, Doctor, and drown
one of them; it will give the other a chance in
life."

I turned quickly.  "Hand me that glass, Doctor,"
I said firmly.  "I am never going to be
partial to my little ones.  We've drunk to the first
one, here's to the second!"

"Yes, even in our disappointment let us be just,"
said my Aunt, joining me.

And we drank to the second one, my Aunt laughing,
pleased for all her seeming anger.

But my own heart was pounding under me with
the same gripping in my throat that I had felt as
I stood on the deck of the Indiana and, looking
up, beheld Old Glory above me....

They were lying together by their mother, pink
and white little creatures, with heads quite
hairless, and blue eyes that were already smiling as
plain as could be, twinkling, fun-loving eyes, which
said, then, as they have always said, "*It's a joke
on Daddy we've played!*"

Eloise, lying smiling by them, was holding out
her arms to me.  "I am quite comfortable, and
oh, so happy, Jack!" she whispered as I kissed
her again and again.  "You can't love them both
better than you do me!  And please don't inspect
them too closely, Daddy," she went on, "for you
know what old Josh Billings said: '*There is two
things no man is ever prepared for—twins!*'  So
we've had to dress up one of them in Aunt Lucretia's
old flannel skirt and a crash towel, but
she's just as sweet as the other one and so like her
own, sweet daddy!"

"That Jack Daniel whiskey, sweetheart," I said,
choking up sillily,—"but I am so thankful, now
that you are safe—and—and—I was so proud
and happy that I drank to each of their healths,
till, Eloise, really are you sure, but I'll swear I
am seeing four little heads here under the cover—and
if there are—of course, if it is, it's all right
with me—and—and—Eloise, aren't they
holding hands already?"

Eloise broke out into her old laugh.  "Of
course they are," she cried happily, "and there
aren't but two of them, Jack; honest, just
two—on my word of honor, none of them have got
away; but that's the funniest part of it all—they
clasped hands as soon as they were placed together—just
two sweet for anything!  Such devotion
to each other!  Look!  And oh, Jack, you must
never, never show any partiality, or love one more
than the other, or either of them more than me.
And don't take any more of Aunt Lucretia's Jack
Daniel, for it makes me afraid to have you see
double this way!  Don't now, for if you took two
more of those old drinks you might see
triplets—oh,—the thought of it!  Now kiss us all
goodnight; we want to sleep.  And here—your hands,
Jack, and our little prayer."





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.. _`HOW AUNT LUCRETIA RAN AWAY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   HOW AUNT LUCRETIA RAN AWAY

.. vspace:: 2

There never was a fall like Aunt Lucretia's
when she did fall in love.  It is historic at The
Home Stretch to this day, and the record is as
Aunt Lucretia wrote it to me after she had
married Dr. Gottlieb.

"Ran away!" exclaimed Eloise, after she had
read the letter; "and everybody on the place has
been trying to marry them off to each other for
twenty years.  But of course Aunt Lucretia had to
do something different!"

"Of course, I knew, Jack," wrote Aunt
Lucretia from Dr. Gottlieb's old home in Germany,
where they were spending their honeymoon, "that
old Gott,—bless the dear heart of him!—had
been loving me all these years.  Women folks have
a kind of a dog nose for the man that really loves
them—they know it by instinct.  There are some
men who court women naturally, but there are lots
of them every sensible woman has to court a little
herself.  Old Gott was one of these.  I knew if
I ever married him I'd have to court him myself,
although he was crazy about me.  But I didn't
love him then; he was so silly and made me so
mad the way he did it—always hinting around
that I was that great red flower he was trying to
find, and writing me silly letters, begging me to
kiss the postage stamp when I replied, so he might
kiss it also!  Of course I was proud of Gott and
awfully fond of him.  I knew he had a great mind
and an international reputation as a botanist, but
as a lover, Jack, he was very poor.

"He courted me every way but the right way.
Now there is only one way to court a woman and
that is to kiss her.  You can get some of them
to marry you the other way—that is, by making
them think they are little tin goddesses, or stars
'way up above you, and all that, or by writing them
poetry and not daring to look at them except
through a long-distance telescope!

"After five or six years and an innumerable
number of family prayers and pink teas you can
get that kind to wed you.  But she isn't worth
much after you win her; for you get a little pink-tea
wife who presents you, in the course of the first
ten years, with one little offspring, and devotes
the rest of her time to pills and hospital operations
for appendicitis.  Instead of going in for addition
they go in for subtraction, Jack."

"Well, Jack, after you and Eloise married, I
began to feel lonesome, and I felt sorry for poor
old Gott, pottering around out there among his
books and flowers, with nobody to take care of
him.  I used to ride by to see him every day,
thinking maybe he'd have sense enough to court
me in a decent way; but every time he would act
worse, until it got so that the poor man couldn't
talk at all in my presence; he could only fold his
hands and sigh.

"I knew the disease was running its course, and
I became very uneasy.  In this stage the patient,
in addition to all the previous symptoms, has a
steady rising temperature and becomes mentally
unbalanced.  This is shown in intense jealousy, a
disease of mind produced by nothing else in the
world but this malady.  This hallucination takes
violent possession of the mind, so that he is ready
to shoot, kill or stab anyone whom he thinks
stands in the way of his one great love; or, failing
in that, to kill himself on the slightest
provocation.  It makes them do all kinds of queer
things.

"And he rapidly developed into the last stage,
which is complete imbecility.

"There was nothing for me to do, Jack; I must
save poor Gott's life and mind.  It would be hard
on me, I knew, but for thirty years I had taken
care of him, even giving him a home; and I could
not bear to see the poor man, in his old age,
become an imbecile and a suicide for want of a little
help from me.

"As he was practically an imbecile already I
decided to treat him as such; to cajole him, to
entrap him, to lead him into matrimony by making
him think it was something beautiful, and enchanting,
'up a winding stair,' so to speak; a hot house
at the end of a rainbow!

"And this is the way it happened: I first
hunted up that old red flower and pinned it over
my heart.  Then I took a flask of Tennessee
whiskey in my saddle-bag and rode over to his
house.

"I caught him just right.  He had been up all
night, writing a thesis for the University of Berlin
on the 'Propagation of Pollen by Differentiation,'
and having finished that, he was beginning to tell
his pet parrot how much I resembled that great,
red flower he was so fond of, and talking about
the evening star which he said was just rising.  It
was ten o'clock in the morning and I knew at
once what had happened.  He had begun his
thesis the afternoon before, and had become so
absorbed that he had worked all night without
knowing it, and now thought it was tea time!

"I was greatly distressed at the inroads the
disease had made in his mind, and I knew I must
act with the greatest tact and foresight.  He was
just telling the parrot all the beautiful things about
me and my resemblance to the red flower when I
walked in, wearing the flower over my heart.

"He gave one look at me and the flower, and
that was almost too much for him.  He began to
mumble something, and then became speechless in
his chair.

"I was almost heartbroken to see the swift
inroads the disease had made on him, poor
dear.

"'Gott,' I said gently, sitting down by him,
'you must take a little of this,' and I made him
drink a good stiff toddy.

"He drank it, looking bewilderingly around,
like the poor inmates of the insane asylum I have
seen, and every now and then looking at the red
lily and sighing as if in great pain.

"At last he spoke.  'Er—Miss—Miss—er'—

"'Lucretia,' I said, smiling encouragingly at
him; 'just Lucretia always, dear Gott, between
you and me!'

"This would have landed any sensible man, but
thirty years of the disease had made Gott abnormal.

"Again I saw the color leave his cheek, and
his face turn pale.  Another good bracer, and he
was better.

"'As I was just going to remark,' he said,
turning pale again, 'Lu—Lu—Lu—ere—' he
stammered.

"'Lucretia,' I said.  'Of course, Gott, dear
heart, dear heart, that is my name—your name
for me.'

"He tried to faint again, but the Tennessee
whiskey stood staunch.  So he threw up his hands
with a little happy, pitiful gesture, and again lost
his voice!

"After awhile I said to him: 'I am going
to scold you, dear Gott; I am going to take better
care of you.  You have been sitting up all night
writing and you are tired.'

"'Oh, no,' he said; 'oh, no.  I began to write
a few hours ago.  It is now tea time.  Won't
you take tea with me?'

"Jack, it was pitiful.  I thought I'd take him
in my arms and kiss him then and there—just
make him my own—only I was afraid the shock
might kill him!  I must do it gradually.  So I
went on humoring him.  'Sure, Gott, dear, old,
precious Gott,' I said.  'Sure, it is just tea time,
and I'm going to sit out on the little porch under
the wisteria vine and the stars.  Won't you come
with me, precious?'

"Jack, it proved near being fatal.  He tried
to speak, but had only a kind of a gurgling spasm
of a breath, panted violently, and turned red.

"I let that soak in and got up and got busy.
I thought if anything in the world would fetch him,
or any man, it would be to see a good-looking
woman, in a white apron, with rosy cheeks and eyes
full of fun, buzzing around in his old bachelor's
den getting him a meal that was worth while.

"Poor old Gott!  The disease of thirty years'
standing had nearly ruined him!

"I cooked him one of my famous steaks, Jack;
you know how.  Skillet red hot, a little butter on
it, then drop the steak on, and, as quick as it sears
on that side, over it goes on the other, and quick
again back, and so on, holding the juice in rich
and sweet.  And the tea, Jack, the rare old china
I had brought in my saddle-bags, too; and the
omelet; if anything in the world would put heart
into a man!

"Eat it?  You should have seen the dear old
sweetheart.  It almost made me cry.  God only
knows when he'd had a meal before.  I found out
afterwards that he had been writing two days,
Jack, and then thought every day was to-morrow!

"He was so near gone, you may judge of it
yourself.  After those two toddies and that good
meal he—he—well, he didn't seem to catch
on yet!  His mind didn't seem to be any clearer.
But it helped him, for he had courage enough to
take my hand in his, and say, 'Lucretia, shall we
sit out under the wisteria—and—and—look at
the moon?'

"'I said *spoon*,' I replied firmly, for I saw then,
Jack, that I must be very gentle and firm with
Gott, he was so badly afflicted!

"I felt his hand quiver beneath mine.  He
tried to faint, but very firmly I led him out into
the full daylight under the wisteria vine.  And
then very gently but firmly I began to woo him;
poor dear, he was nearly gone!

"He looked so killing, too, Jack; the little
fellow with his gray hair, his handsome, red face,
the fine turn of his large, intellectual head!  Oh,
that horrid disease!  For he sat there in broad
daylight mistaking the sun for the moon, and the
little white jasmine blossoms above us for stars!
I thought the best way to win him would be through
the red lily he had worshipped so long.  So, after
sitting by him and taking his hand in mine, I said,
'Dear heart, do you notice what flower I am
wearing to-day?'

"Imagine my exasperation when he stammered,
shook all over, and began mechanically, 'Yes,
madam, it is the *Lilium Philadelphium*, the red,
wood, flame, or Philadelphia Lily.  Flowers:
erect, tawny, or red-tinted, outside: vermilion or
sometimes reddish orange, and spotted with
madder brown within; one to five on separate
peduncles, borne at the summit.  Periant of six distincts,
spreading spatulate segments, each narrowing into
a claw and with a nectar groove at the base: six
stamens: one style; the club-shaped stigma
three-lobed.  Stem: one to three feet tall, from a bulb
composed of narrow jointed fleshy scales.
Leaves: in whorls of threes to eights, lance-shaped,
sealed at intervals on the stem.  Preferred
habitat: dry-woods, sandy soil, borders and thickets;
flower season, June and July; distribution, Northern
border United States and westward to Ontario,
south to the Carolinas and Virginia!'

"He said it all like a parrot, looking up at the
wisteria vine.  Jack, I saw that I must fight hard
to save him.  'Dear heart,' I said, holding his
hand, 'don't you think you need someone always
with you to take care of you, cook your meals,
nurse you?  I fear you are sick now, darling,' I
added, laying my head on his bosom.

"I could feel his heart panting like a trip-hammer.
I saw him wince, struggle, grit his teeth,
as one who tries to overcome a terrible thing,
fighting for mastery of his mind; and then, Jack—I
was so mad I could have choked him!  That
terrible disease!

"'Yes—Lucretia—dear—Miss—er—Miss
Lucretia, I mean—do you think I could hire
some good old woman who—ah—whom would
you suggest?'

"'I could suggest a great many, Gott, I said,
my arm around him; 'but I will suggest only one.
*I* need a husband for my old age, and *you*,' I
said, 'darling,' and I put one arm around his neck.

"He shivered, paled, and I thought he was
dying; but I went on, 'Gott—you dear, old Gott—I
have loved you a long time, but I've been too
busy to tell you so; but now, dear sweetheart, I
want to make you my wife—I mean, Gott, my
husband, of course, and—and—kiss me, Gott;
kiss me, dearie!'

"Oh, Jack, the divinity of it!  I am ashamed
of all I have said before!  Tear down that
pedigree from your wall!  Forget all I've said about
marrying people off like animals—about improving
the breed—about anything but love—love—love.
For, when my lips touched his, life grew
different!  I had never felt it before!  From that
moment I was in love—divinely, gloriously in
love!

"He keeled over, of course.  It all but killed
him.  It was the crisis of the disease of thirty
years' standing, but I had my nerve with me, and
when he came to he was so bashful and happy,
Jack.  He said shyly, 'But, darling Lucretia,
don't you think our parents might object; wouldn't
it be romantic if we ran away?'

"And we did, Jack, that very night.  I had
him put a ladder up to his bed room window,
and that night I slipped out, brought him down
the ladder, and we ran off to town and were married!

"Oh, it was so romantic, such a sweet dream!
And here we are in his old home in Germany and
so happy!

"Forgive and forget all that I have ever said
about people falling in love, for mine at last was
the hardest fall!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A NIGHT WITH CAPTAIN SKIPPER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   A NIGHT WITH CAPTAIN SKIPPER

.. vspace:: 2

Blessed is that man who is born with the
saving grace of humor!  Blessings on the memory of
my Celtic sires!

One night when Eloise and the twins were away,
I rode over to spend the night with my brother
Ned.  He had been elected to Congress from the
Hermitage District, and together we were to frame
a Forestry Bill—the first of that series of acts
which have steadily legislated toward the
Conservation of our national resources, and which will
yet lead on to greater things; first and foremost
of which, and most vital, will be the taking over
for preservation by the national Government
of the entire Appalachian mountain range, the
forests of which are at the headwaters of nearly
all the Eastern half of our country.

My brother was not home, but the others were,
and to my great delight a girl baby as much like
her mother as two turquoise shells.  Little Sister
had grown into a slim, pretty girl, and Captain
Skipper, more positive than ever, began early
begging his mother, since his father was away, to let
him sleep with his Uncle Jack that night.

"Oh, do, Thesis," I said, after supper.  "Let
him have his way."

"And that's where you'll drop your candy,"
said Little Sister in her serio-quaint way.

Thesis, who is so good that she says only what
she thinks and is so honest that she never suspects
others of diplomatic pretenses, took me at my
word.  Captain Skipper should sleep with his dear
Uncle Jack that night!

You who read this, did you ever sleep with a
boy?  I don't mean one of those good boys that
you read of in Sunday-school books—the
impossible kind—who lives like a saint every day and
says his prayers and retires like a gentleman at
night: but one of those lusty, growing young
devils, born with a spring in his back, who howls
out the first year, sleeps out the second, and by the
time of the third is ready to chase the cat around
and fight brave battles with the hen folks.  At
four he is ready for the birds' nests and tin cans
for the dogs' tails, and a little later he breaks
every colt that tries to keep the Sabbath in the
meadow by the still waters.

When night comes—ay, there is the rub!  He
howls away the twilight hours and spends the
night kicking, coughing, rolling out of bed or
having fits, and yet sleeping through it all like a cub
in winter quarters.

The weather that night was warm, one of those
hot April nights that lies humid and close.  "The
dear little fellow will be so proud to sleep with his
Uncle Jack," said his fond mother, when she
kissed him good night; "and he does sleep so
sound and quietly."

Never having owned a boy, I believed all of
this.  Did you ever try to undress a lad of four
that had chased the cat around until he was hot?
His clothes stick to him like a plaster.  Being a
novice, I got everything unbuttoned and then
skinned him, peeled them off.  To my surprise—and
I found later that there were all kinds of
surprises in that boy—in fact, that he was made out
of surprises—he insisted upon saying his prayers!
But I never saw anything go more promptly to
sleep at his devotions.  I had to derrick him up
into the bed.

One of the strange things about a boy is that
when he starts to wiggle around over the bed in
his sleep he does it diagonally.  I pulled him
back on his own side of the bed five times within
the next hour.  Then I would hear him scuffling
and flopping about, always ending in a
long-drawn, dismal and dreary sigh, that would have
made his fortune as Romeo.  It always ended in
his rounding up against the footboard in the
opposite corner, flat on his back, each limb and arm
pointing to its own cardinal point of the compass,
his nightgown rolled up in a wad under his neck,
and his body looking like that of a young bull
frog in a Kentucky horse-pond.

If there is anything more absurd than a boy in
this attitude I have never seen it.  I tried to
awaken him and get him back, but he only sighed
one of those long sighs, unlimbered and slept on.
I went back to my window and began to work
on my bill, but my thoughts were soon dispelled
with a start.  I heard a choking, gasping,
frightfully suffocating sound, mingled with a dolorous
wheezing: "*O-woo,—oo—oo—wow—O-woo—oo!*"

I was at his side in an instant, this time frightened.
He was sitting stolidly up in bed, a strange
gaze in his wide-open eyes, his face beaded with a
clammy moisture, his face drawn in a spasm.  I
had seen a boy have a fit before and I went
upstairs after his mother, two jumps at a time.

"Quick," I cried, "hurry down!  He'll not
live until we can get the doctor!"

She was rocking the baby to sleep.  She did
not become excited, but smiled and whispered,
"He isn't dying, Jack, it is just poor circulation.
Don't notice him at all."

This made me cynical, bitter.

"Poor circulation?" I said in disgust.  "He
has the best circulation I ever saw; he has
circulated all over that bed three times already.  Not
notice him?  It would take the mental aberration
of a stone man to do it."

I fear I was a bit satirical, for it is not pleasant
to be made a laughing stock of by a boy who was
not even awake.  I was not assured, however,
and half expected to find him dead when I got
back.  But I was disappointed.  He had flopped
across his pillow on his back, his arms and legs
curled up.  And sleeping!  No ground-hog in
mid-winter ever surpassed it.

I spent the next hour planning how I would
like to fix him so as to keep him on his side of the
bed and let me go to sleep.  In fact, I quit everything
else and thought.  If there is anything I like
to do it is to sleep when the time comes.  These
are some of the stunts that boy did in that hour:
Fits, three;—very distinct and prolonged:
snorts,—one every ten minutes: choking spells, at
intervals: kicked the pitcher off of the table near
the bed twice: jumped up and talked perfectly
naturally—so naturally that I felt that he was
awake,—but he was not.  More snorts; and then:
"*Catch him!  There he goes in that hole—hooray!*"

I would have sworn then that he was awake, and
examined him closely, cuffing and shaking him.
But he was not.  He sighed and slept on....

The brilliant plan I finally settled on was to
put the pillows between us.  It was nearly
midnight before I had courage enough to retire at
all.  I pulled him up on his side, straightened him
out and put the barrier between us, and then crept
gingerly in.  I lay still for a while listening.  My
success was so complete I wanted to stay awake
a while and enjoy it.  He would start out on his
journey across the bed, but would wind up
suddenly against my barricade.  There he would lie
a while, and I could feel his thumps against it.

In my vanity I chuckled.

I had dozed off in this state of self-conceit when
I felt something rammed into my mouth.  I
thought at first that burglars had entered and that
I had been chloroformed and gagged.  It was not
so.  That boy had shot his foot through under the
pillow and popped me square in the mouth.  I
had been told that it was not well to sleep with
one's mouth open—now I knew it.

When people treat me that way, asleep or
awake, I resent it.  I fight.  I boxed that boy's
ears.  I pounded his head against the headboard
so that I would awaken him.  I shook him, kicked
him, and used words I should not have wished his
mother to hear.  When I had finished, he quietly
sighed another of his long, peaceful, happy sighs,
and slept on.

Sleep was not for me after that, and I spent the
next hour lying awake and cataloguing the
different things he would do.  These were only a
few of them:—Another fit; seeing cats, and
wolves and dragons around his bed; chasing rabbits;
talking in his sleep; telling of seeing a bear
ride a bicycle down the pike; breaking a colt;
swimming in the creek; fighting another boy; wheezing
and thumping and making strange noises; dreaming
he was an infant again and imbibing from an
imaginary bottle; smacking his lips so loud that
the noise could be heard all over the house.

It was three o'clock before a bright idea entered
into my head.  I remembered that the only
request that his mother had made of me was to see
that he did not fall out of bed.  I remembered
that in all his circulations and maneuverings, this
was the one thing that he never did, like a
runaway mule he knew how to take care of himself
even in his sleep.  I began to anticipate him.  I
determined to humor some of his little whims.  I
put a pitcher of ice water by the bed.  I got a
link of the garden hose that felt clammy and
looked like a snake.  I doubled up my pillow so
I could strike hard with it.  Then I sat up and
waited.  I would make him realize all he dreamed.

I did not have long to wait.  This time he was
falling from a tree or down an endless precipice,
for he sat on the edge of the bed, yelling:
"Catch me—catch me—I'm falling!"

I let him fall.  In fact I helped him along.  I
put a lot of force into that pillow and it caught
him squarely under the ear.  He went out of the
bed, hitting the floor in a heap.  It wakened him.
"Where am I, mamma?  O, mamma?" he called.

"Come to your mamma," I said softly; "dear
little boy, you have fallen out of the bed.  Be
careful how you roll."

He was asleep before he touched the pillow.
But in the next half hour he did not roll any more,
and so I learned that a boy may be taught things
even in his sleep if only the proper implements
are used.

But he was not yet cured of swimming in his
sleep, for, just as I began to doze off, thinking
that he was properly broken, he began to splash
around in the bed, lamming me on the head and
stomach, and shouting: "Look out!  There's a
snake—pull for the shore!"

This gave me my cue.  Seizing a water pitcher
I turned it over on him, at the same time
wrapping the clumsy hose around his leg.

"Snakes," I cried in his ear, "dive for the
shore!"

He gave a wide-awake yell that time, and rolled
backward out of bed.  One jump and he had
cleared the room, going up stairs yelling:
"Snakes, mamma, s-n-a-k-e-s!"

I let him go.  Nay, I locked the door behind
him and went to sleep.

The breakfast bell rang twice, but I did not
hear it.  Little Sister had to come to awaken me.
They were all at breakfast when I came down,
Thesis, the baby, and the boy.

"How soundly you must have slept!" she said,
smiling.  "I forgot to tell you that the dear little
fellow sometimes walks in his sleep; and do you
know, this morning I found him fast asleep on the
first stair landing?"

Little Sister, however, was wiser.  She looked
at me in her quaint way and said, funnily:
"Uncle Jack, you look real tired; like you'd
dropped your candy last night, sure enough."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MY FIRST AUTOMOBILE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   MY FIRST AUTOMOBILE

.. vspace:: 2

It was one of those beautiful December mornings
when the frost had hung his laces everywhere,
and a hunting fever fairly burned within me.  It
comes over me at times, and then—well—I run
away and obey it.

As though through mental telepathy my
telephone rang.  "Hello!  Is that you, Jack?  This
is Horace Raymond, your old neighbor.  I'm in
town to-day.  Ever see such a pretty day?  Let's
take a quail hunt."

"Glad to hear your voice again, Horace.  No,
I never did.  I am ready for a quail hunt any day
except Sunday.  Never had any luck on Sunday at
all."

"I have just bought a new automobile," he
went on, "and I want to try it out to-day.  I
will be right out in a hurry."

"Oh, say, Horace, now that's another thing.
I have never ridden in one of those things; they
aren't bred right, don't like their gait; and loving
horses as I do, confound them, I've got religious
scruples on the subject.  Now you come out here
in the thing and I will have the little mare and
the buggy hooked up, a good lunch and the setters
in, and—"

I heard him laugh derisively.  "Nonsense!
Why, man, we're going way out beyond you on
the Lebanon pike—ten miles—and we want to
go in a hurry.  I'll have you there in thirty
minutes.  Now the little mare would be fully an hour
making it, and then dead tired for a long drive
back, with a pointer and two setters crowding us
out of the buggy.  I'll be at your place in twenty
minutes with two dogs—have that champion
pointer of yours ready."  And he rang off.

I hung up the receiver.  "I guess I'm up against
it," I said, as I went off to put on my hunting
clothes, "but if it gets out on me I can prove
I didn't want to do it.  Besides, this new hunting
cap I've just bought would make Moses look like
a Turk in Hades; nobody would recognize me."

"Jack, I'm ashamed of you," said Eloise with
becoming scorn.  "What would Satan say?  But
of course, if you are going in that thing, and
happen to bag any birds—which I know you'll
never do—please remember the luncheon I am
going to give to-morrow, dear.  But you'll never
get them, going back on your raising like
that—see if you do!"

"No, see if you do," said one of the twins, now
aged four.

And the other added, "No, see if you do!"

For which I kissed them both, because they were
so femininely consistent.

The truth is, I wanted to go hunting.  It was
in my blood that morning, and these beautiful
December days with a hazy glow on the blue hills
and that stillness that comes like a dropping nut
in a forest would put it into anybody's blood,
anybody who had it.  And when the infection
hits you there is only one antidote, a dog, a
gun, a tramp over the hills, and—whir! bang! bang!

And to-day was ideal.  I had felt it all morning;
the cool, bracing air with that little frosty
aroma of leaves curling to crispness under the first
blight of things, and that other delightful odor of
pungent woodland damp with frost-biting dew.
And the hills blue and beautiful are alone worth
going to meet, and the trees crimson in the hectic
flush of the dying year.

Dick, my pointer, was jumping all over me and
turning dogsprings of delight.

"Down, Dick!  Heigh ho, old boy; that machine
is against my religion, but I'd go hunting in
a negro hearse to-day.  Besides," I said, with a
twinge of conscience, "he'll get us to the field in
forty minutes, and the little mare is getting old
and we've got a late start."

I sighed and felt better.  I had fought so long
and said so much for the horse, and now—now—it
was inexorable; they were being driven to their
fate; they had to go before the relentless wheel of
progress.  I was virtually admitting it, I, who had
said I'd never—

I shouldered my gun.  Somehow it didn't seem
like the old, joyous hunt.

At the front gate the automobile stood, a pretty
thing, to be sure.  Its owner was smiling, goggle-eyed
and all aglow, his hand on the wheel, or whatever
you call the steering end of it.

"Jump in, Jack, old man; we must be in a
hurry.  Slap Dick in there behind with my two
setters.  Be in a hurry!  By George!  I know
where there are a dozen coveys, and we'll be there
in forty minutes.  Hi, Dick!  What's the matter?
Get in!  Confound him, what's the matter with
that old dog?"

I was lugging Dick and trying to get him in.
He was kicking like a half-roped steer.  He had
always jumped to his place in the little buggy, but
now—

I knew what was the matter.  Even Dick, dog
that he was, had his principles, and he was man
enough to say so.  While I—

I turned crimson.

"Get in, old boy," I begged.  "We'll be there
in a jiffy.  Dead bird—good doggie."

I got him in, with his head down and his tail
between his legs.  To all intents he was going to
a funeral.  I turned quickly away, for I could not
stand the scorn and dumb reproach of his eyes.
Right then I would have quit and gone back, but
I didn't want to hurt my friend's feelings.

"Jump in, jump in, let's be going," he shouted,
in his nervous, business way.  "Oh, just a
minute!  There—you're on the ground.  Say, here,
take this and give that starting crank a turn.
I'm not very expert myself," he went on, "and
I sometimes forget; but you're on the
ground—there—right there!"

I gave her a whirl, several of them.  I whirled
her like blue blazes.  I kept on whirling, while
her owner grasped the wheel and his eyes danced
nervously, as he expected her to flash into the
throb that said steam was on.

But she didn't fire, and I kept cranking.

"Faster, Jack, harder!" he cried.

I whirled and whirled.  I began to get warm.
The sweat began to pour off.

"Say," I said, gasping for breath, "this beats
turning a grindstone.  What the devil—"

"Why, I canth—thee," he lisped, "turnth
again—quick—a tharp, sthnappy onth!"

I turned her again, quick, sharp and snappy.
The thing pulled heavy and felt like an unoiled
grindstone, just out of the store.  My arms ached,
the sweat poured off, and my back was nearly
broken.

I gave her a final desperate twist, and—there
she was!  Dead as a log wagon.

"Confound it," I said, mopping my forehead
and staggering up; "I could have curried the mare
and hitched her up six times.  Why, something's
wrong with your old gas wagon," I went on,
getting hot.  "I'll not turn this crank any more," I
said; "I'll be so sore in my arms I couldn't hold
my gun straight to-day."

He looked puzzled, annoyed.

"Why, I can't thee—" he began to lisp again.

"What's that you've got in your mouth?" I
jerked out.  "You don't lisp that way naturally."

A smile broke over his face.  He took out a
little, black peg, and roared.  It was too
funny—to him.

"Beg yo' pardon, old boy—beg yo'
pardon—ha-ha-ha!  Good joke.  That's the switch
plug.  You take it out when the machine's idle,
and I forgot to put it back in the little hole.
Here," he said, sticking it in, "it connects the
current—ha-ha—good joke—now give her a
whirl."  I gave the whirl, but in no manner to
enjoy the joke.  I heard her fire up and begin
to throb.  We moved off beautifully.  We began
to fly up the smooth pike, my hand back in Dick's
collar, for fear he'd jump out and commit suicide.
I dared not turn round to look the honest dog in
the eyes.

"Fine, fine—ain't this fine, old man?" cried
my friend enthusiastically, as he buzzed up the
road.  "Look at your watch—nine-twenty.
Ah, now we'll be in the field at ten sharp—sharp—two
good hours for hunting before we eat our
pocket lunch.

"Now your little old mare," he laughed,
"would take up those fifteen miles by now?  Say,
ha! ha!—acknowledge the corn, old man—the
decree has gone forth—it's all over with the old
pacers."

I growled and said nothing.  So did Dick.
It was good, though, the way we were eating up
space and getting nearer to the birds, those game,
nervy, whirring birds that dart like winged flashes
of thunder before your gun.  We whirled over
the bridge at the river at lightning speed.  I saw
the sign up about the fine for going faster than a
walk, but how—

"How can an automobile walk—ha! ha!"
he shouted, for he had read it also and divined my
thoughts and winked knowingly at me.  "That
applies to horses and jackasses and such," he
laughed—"things that walk.  But this don't
walk, eh?"

Honk!  Honk!

He was blowing for a stray mule to get out of
his way.

The mule got, tail up, and settled into a barbed
wire fence, which he tried to jump, but only
succeeded in cutting up his countenance.

Honk!  Honk!  "Get out of the way, if
that's all the sense, you've got.  My! but ain't we
buzzing?"

I nodded, beginning to become exhilarated myself.

"This is pretty good," I admitted.  "I begin
to see how you people soon become speed-crazy.
We'll get the birds to-day," I warmed up, "and
I thank you for—look out!  Stop!"

He stopped, but not in time.  It was a nervous-looking,
old, fleabitten, gray mare, full of Stackpole,
Traveler, Dan Rice and Boston blood.  I
had seen it so often that I knew the very turn
of its tail.  In the buckboard she was pulling
were three country girls, fat, solid, happy, their
lines wabbling around anywhere, and the old mare
going where she listeth.  They were the kind of
girls I knew and loved in my sappy days.  I used
to commence to kiss 'em about Christmas,
knowing they'd wake up and respond about the Fourth
of July.  Two of them amply filled up the buckboard,
but, as usual, a third one had piled on top
of the others somewhere, and—

"Great heaven, Horace!" I shouted.  "Stop—that
one there on top is holding a baby!"

I sprang out, for I saw the old mare begin to
squat, her old, scared, brown eyes blazing in her
white face like holes in a big lard can.  I heard
her snort like a scared bear and saw her feet
pattering jigs all over the pike.  Then she whirled,
running into a fence, where, between the overturned
buckboard, the shafts and the rail fence, she
stood wedged upon her hind legs, pawing the air.

But the girls surprised me.  Without a change
in their fat, immutable, expressionless faces, they
simply rolled out on the pike in a bunch, the baby
on top, like snow folks tilted over by a boy.

They got up, dusting their frocks.  They had
taken it for granted.  It was all right.  There
was not a squawk, not even from the baby, as one
of them picked it up and I grabbed the bits and
straightened out the old mare.

"I hope you ladies aren't hurt," said my friend
from the roadside, in his machine.

"Sally, is you hurt?" asked the fattest one.

"Naw," she grunted.

"Mamie, is you?"

Mamie merely wiggled.

"Is Tootsy hurt?"

Tootsy was eating an apple, with unblinking
eyes fixed on the wonderful machine.

Nothing was hurt but the harness.

That was hurt before they started, but I had to
spend the next twenty minutes patching it up.
Finally we got them all in, Tootsy on top.  No
word had they spoken, but I could see they were
eyeing me, with that country suspicion that makes
every maid of them rate every man she meets in
the road as Lothario, Jr., or a prince in disguise.

"Now, ladies, you are all right," I said,
trying to keep cheerful.  "And I am so glad none
of you was hurt."

Then one of them drawled, but looking over
toward the distant horizon, "Ain't you named
Mister Jack?"

I turned red and pleaded guilty.

"After all you've writ, I don't think you had
oughter done this," she said, and then they all
drove sedately off, still looking toward the horizon.

"Now that's the worst thing about automobiles,"
said Horace, after we started again,
"these fool country horses.  Why, I waited till
this time of day, thinking they'd all be in town by
now, for they get up with the chickens.  Anyway,
we're not likely to meet any more of them."

"I hope not," I sighed, pulling out a cigar and
a match, as I'd always done in the buggy.  It was
blown out before the sulphur burned.

"You can't do that in an automobile," he
yelled, "we're going too fast.  Like to stop for
you, but we're fairly humming—be there in half
an hour, old man."  Honk!  Honk!

We had turned a bend in the road.

"Great Cæsar!" I shouted.  "Nobody going
to town!  Look!"

His jaws dropped.  There they were.  We
could see for half a mile, and so help me heaven,
but this was the procession that passed as we pulled
out of the narrow pike on the roadside, consumed
with impatience to get to the field, the machine
throbbing beneath us like a loft over a barn dance:

First an old sorrel mare, a worn-out buggy of
the vintage of 1874, and two old ladies.

The whole thing approached gingerly, creeping
up like a yellow cat.  It was a toss-up as to
which of the two's eyes popped the biggest, or
which had her mouth shut tightest.  The old
mare was game, and sidled up, and just as I saw
the wheels begin to form in her head the occupants
threw down the lines and began to pop two pairs
of country-yarned legs out of the two sides of the
buggy, exclaiming, "Fur ther Lord's sake thar,
Mister, ketch 'er!"

I jumped out and had her by the bits.

One of them relieved herself by spitting snuff
over the dashboard, while the other took it out
on me, deprecating the day when "Sech folks
an' things blocks up ther public trail—an' so help
me, ain't that thar Mister Jack, an' my old man
bred this mar' by his say so!  Jack,—Ananias,"
she sniffed, as she drove off.

The next were right on us, two slick, three-year-old
sugar-mules, hauling a load of darkies.
They came on at a rattling clip, making more
noise than a freight train, jollying, laughing and
cackling.  The men were on plank seats across
the wagon, the women in high-back hickory chairs,
squatting low and feeling as good as Senegambians
usually do in a white man's country, where he
does all the worrying and thinking and they do all
the loafing and eating.

They passed us without a wabble.  I expected
that, for a mule, like a negro, never sees anything
until he has passed it.  I saw the gate of the
wagon had been taken out in the rear to let the
damsels in: also the chickens, the coop of ducks,
a bundle of coon-skins, pumpkins, a sack of
unwashed wool, some spare ribs and a tub of only
such nice chitlings as a country mammy can
prepare.  They passed, and then the scare got into
those three-year-old corn feds good by way of their
tails.  For I saw these straighten out first, then
their ears.  I saw the big driver fall back on the
lines, and—

"Whoa, dar!"

They jumped twenty feet in the first jump, and
ran half a mile in spite of his lugging and sawing.
But the first jump was enough.  The damage
was done then, for everything in it but the driver,
who held on to the reins, came boiling out of the
rear.  Up the road for half a mile was a
telegraph line of chitlings, the rest were mixed up.
They all rose but one damsel, weighing close to
468 pounds.  She sat still.  A young buck went
to help her up.

"G'way f'm heah, nigger, wait till I see ef
my condiments is busted," she cried, feeling her
sides and her chest.  "'Sides, I wants Brer Simon
to hope me up."

Brother Simon helped her and she was all right.

We gave her a dollar and the others a quarter
each.  It was expensive, but I deemed it just.

The following then passed with more or less
hesitancy, shying and plunging: a surrey and team;
a boy and his best girl; a log wagon and four
mules, the leaders rushing by in terror, pulling the
wheelers by the neck, as they were trying to go
the other way.

Then came Old 'Squire Jones on his roan Hal
pacer.  The horse got half-way by before he
decided that the goggle eyes on the roadside had
him.  Well—no goggle eyes had ever caught
any of his tribe—not yet!  In bucking to wheel,
he tapped the old 'Squire in the mouth with his
poll.  The old man had been raised a Presbyterian,
with Baptist propensities, and he made the
ozone sulphuric.  He brought his horse back to
the scratch, spurring and swearing.  It was all
right this time, till the old horse looked into the
back of the machine.  True to the fool in his
pedigree, he knew what the machine was, because
he had never seen one before; but the dogs—they
were things he had seen all his life, and he
bolted backward again, jamming the old 'Squire's
stomach against the pommel and his back against
the cantle.  It was the time to go, and we shot
out, leaving the old horse waltzing into town on
his hind legs.

"I didn't hear his last remarks," I said, as we
went along.  "They seemed to be rather personal."

"Let 'em go," said Horace.  "You wouldn't
want to put them in your scrap-book."

"I don't think the mare and buggy would have
made us all these enemies," I remarked, "and we
would have been there by now.  Do you know it's
eleven o'clock?"

"We've got a fine run, now," he apologized.
"We'll be there in thirty minutes."

"We'll be there by night," I snarled.  "Say,
we'll just call it a possum hunt, eh?"

This made him mad, and he did not speak till
he got to the big hill.

Here at the foot we stopped and sat, throbbing.

Horace fumbled with a side brake a moment,
touched a pedal and looked wise.

"What's all this for?" I said.

"I'm resting for a little headway before taking
that steep hill.  And say, while we're at it, you
ought to know something about a machine, you
might be called on to help me in an emergency."

I turned pale.  Up to this time I had felt
secure.  Now I understood something of the
feelings of that pair of mules that never saw danger
until they had passed it.

"Why, I thought you knew all about it," I began.

"Of course I do, but something might happen
to me.  You might be thrown on your own
resources.  Now here," he went on.  "This little
lever on the wheel is the spark-control—it
quickens things—the next one is the throttle;
that means more power.  This is the switch-plug
here: this is the clutch, and this the brake.  Now,
remember, and watch me start."

He did, the thing starting slowly up the hill
and then beginning to go in little jumps, exactly
like a horse galloping.

"Pull him down," I growled, "he's broken his
gait."  For I felt every moment as if it would
soon wabble and quit.  But he kept galloping and
I settled down and began unconsciously to wabble
my body as I would in motion to a galloping
horse.  I couldn't help it.  I glanced at Horace,
he was doing the same, but hitching at the side
lever all the time, and we were bobbing like two
Muscovy ducks over a mud hole.

It was uncomfortable, it was uncanny.

"Confound you," I growled, "I tell you the
thing's galloping—he's all tangled up; bring him
down."

*Snap* went something, and Horace breathed easy.

"All right now," he said, as we began to climb
the hill beautifully.  Over the top we went, and
then—down—down!  How she did fly!  My
heart jumped into my throat!  I held my breath
and felt that same feeling I used to feel pumping
in a swing when I'd soar up to the top and start
down again, the same when I started down the
elevator from the 19th story of the Masonic
Temple and felt my legs give way and threw my
arms around the neck of the elevator boy and
begged him for heaven's sake to stop until I got
my breath and my legs in speaking distance of
each other, and collected the rest of myself.

"Stop her," I cried, "down-this-hill-I'm-feeling-queer-Lord-I'm-stop,
I tell you!"

"It's easy," he laughed.  "Do it yourself—on
that brake—there—just to teach you—there!"

Gasping for breath and pale with fright, I
kicked up a little pedal.

The thing jumped twenty feet!

"Don't!" I heard him yell, "Good Lord,
that's the throttle!"

I saw a big ditch on the other side of us.  I saw
his hand dart quickly to his side.

Like all man and woman-kind, in emergencies
with a horse, I do the fool thing, grab at the reins.
This instinct overpowered me.  I grabbed the
brakes to help him.  I over-did it.  It stopped too
quickly; it actually kicked up behind.  It stopped
like a twelve-inch ball striking armor plate.  I
went over clear across the ditch.  The three dogs
were faithful and they followed.

Horace tried it, but the steering wheel stopped
him.

"It was my fault," I said, as I limped up, after
the dogs got off of me.  "I grabbed at your
reins, I guess—thought you were running away."

But the sudden stop had sprung something, and
Horace was out fixing it.  He had pulled off his
cap and got under the machine, and I saw the
beaded sweat begin to rise on the crown of his
bald head, like bubbles on a mill pond.

This did me a world of good.  I lighted a
cigar, propped up and began to smoke.

For half an hour he tinkered and tinkered.  I
smoked and gave him such bits of sarcastic
encouragement as happened into my head.  I
reminded him that Tempus was fugiting, and that
it was already quite 9:50 and we were still ten
miles from nowhere; that the little mare would
have been there by now, and we would still have
some friends left on the pike.

"Consider the lilies that ride in automobiles,"
I quoted, "they toil not, neither do they spin, and
yet I say unto you that old gray mare, in all her
glory, never worked as hard as you are working now."

It was my time, and Dick and I enjoyed it,
sensible dog that he was.  After every bit of such
talk he'd wink and fairly guffaw.

Horace was working hard.  He was groveling
in the dirt to do it, too, and that suited me also.  I
could gauge his efforts by the sweat drops that
arose on his bald spot, growing and then bursting
like soap bubbles, to roll down his collar.

"Plague it!" he said at last, rising, "I can't
see very well without my glasses.  Say, stop your
guying, now, and look under here and see if you
can see what's wrong."

I got out as leisurely as a lord; all I could see
was a small coil of wire, red hot.  "I see it," I
said, solemnly.  "The thing's appendix is red
hot.  Give me an axe and I'll open it up."

Dick howled with delight.  I thought he'd die.
Horace smiled grimly, but it was a smile that
said, "I'll even this up yet."

"Put in your shells; we'll hunt around toward
that farm house, and up there I'll 'phone to town
and have Smith come out and fix it."

Thus he spoke, and I agreed.  In fact, there
was nothing else to do.  We rolled the machine
aside, the dogs were let out, and we were soon
quartering a field toward a farm house.

"Whose place is this?" I asked, as the dogs
began to hunt down the wind.

"Old Bogair's, a French Canadian.  He came
here three years ago from Canada; ticklish old
fellow, but he knows me, and it's all right."

I felt secure, for while the game law is very
strict, requiring written permission to hunt on one's
premises, intended as a guard against pot hunters,
no gentleman ever objected to another hunting on
his farm.

We started through a cedar wood in a gladey
spot and I saw Dick beginning to nose the wind
and to throw up his head for quail.  Then I heard
my companion calling lustily for me to come.  I
rushed up, Dick at my heels.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A coon—a big coon—up in that cedar tree.
Get on the other side, quick!"

I ran around, and, sure enough, up among the
branches, trying to hide, but showing the end of
a brindled and streaked tail, was the coon.

In a trice I let him have it, and he came
crashing through the branches.  Dick ran up and
seized it, shaking.  I saw yellow eyes, ears laid
back, and the coon spitting and fighting for life.
It was dying, but struck out, tearing Dick's nose
to threads.  I ran up and planted the heel of my
hunting boot on its neck, while Dick howled with
his lacerated nose.

"That's a funny looking coon," I said, as I
eyed the thing suspiciously.  I heard Horace
laugh and saw him turn and make a break for the
road.  I looked up.  Old Bogair had run up,
red-faced and breathless.

"By gar," he yelled, as soon as he saw what
I'd done, "vut fur you keeled ze house cat fur?
Vut fur?"

It was true; but never had I seen a tomcat
look more like a coon.  On a distant hillside I
could see my deserting friend rolling on the grass
and shouting.

In vain I apologized.  Old Bogair kept dancing
around and shouting, "Vut fur you keel ze
house cat fur?  Vut fur?"

"What are you damaged?" I said at last, with
disgust.

"Ah, en passant—dees one from T'ronto, I
breeng.  Hee's registraire—fife taller, an' fife fur
treespaire."

I paid it like a man.  Old Bogair smiled and
bowed, with his hand on his stomach.

"Eet vus all right now."

I took up the cat by the tail.

"Vut fur?  You don't vant heem?" he gasped.

"Yes, I do," I said, hotly.  "He's mine.  I've
paid for him and I want to take him over yonder
and rub him under the nose of that villain that
induced me to go hunting in an automobile and
steered me on the premises of a damned Dago who
keeps registered cats that look exactly like coons
when up a tree."

He thought I was complimenting him.

"Voilà—I t'ank you," he said, bowing again,
with his hand on his stomach.

I hunted around an hour before I went to the
machine.  I waited to cool off.  Dick found a
fine covey, and I missed them right and left.  I
had lost my nerve and my luck.

When I reached the machine, Horace was in,
blinking, and we said not a word.  It was my time
to freeze.  Smith had run out from town and
fixed it.  A little wire the size of a pencil-point
had got an inch out of place, and it had been as
dead as a log wagon on us.

It was now exactly 3:30, but we decided we still
had a chance to get a covey.  We made the next
three miles in beautiful time, meeting only one man
driving a game, high-headed horse that swept by
us without giving us the least notice.

"If they were all bred like that one," I said,
"a man in a machine might think he had some
rights on the road."

"Glad you are beginning to see the other side,"
said Horace.

"We'll be there by four," he said; "just the
time the birds begin to feed good.  Oh, we'll get
a few yet.  It's a long lane, you know.  Our luck
is turning."

"This is fun," I said, as we flew along the
newly-graveled road parallel with the creek,
"fine, give it to her."

The scenery was beautiful; the bluffs were
draped in clustering red berries, and the woods old
gold and crimson.  The water foamed over the
lime rocks, glowing iridescent in the sun, and the
air was bracing as we buzzed along.

*Honk!  Honk!*  "Let her out!" I cried, as
a touch of speed mania got into me.  "Say, I
see how it is," I said, "why a man soon gets the
speed mania in him.  Horsemen can't blame you,
for they have got it, too."

"Oh, we're riding," he cried.  "You have an
hour yet."

We were indeed riding, along a narrow path of
the road rising to a rather abrupt hill.  Rising and
peeping over, I saw a long procession of creeping
things, their ears just shining above the hill we
were both ascending.

"Halt!  Stop!" I cried.

It was too late, everlastingly too late!  We were
meeting a negro funeral procession, that of good
old Uncle Thomas, as good an old time darky
as ever lived.  I had known him well, a fellow
of infinite jest.  But I did not recognize him
promptly now.

I hate to write what followed.  I felt faint and sick.

Be it known that every negro loves to be buried
behind white mules.  It is his glory and his
religion.  This kind was hauling Uncle Thomas.
Now, a white mule is an old mule, and the older
the mule, the bigger the fool, and when they
peeped over the top of that hill, only to butt into
a goggle-eyed demon, they did what mules always
do.  When I first saw them I was looking at the
north end of that negro hearse.  The next
instant I was looking at the south end.  And as
the thing turned over once to adjust itself to
different direction, a venerable old darkey shot out
of the rear end of that hearse, followed by a
two-dollar coffin, and everything in that two miles of
vehicles turned tail at the same time.

I jumped out, grabbing my hunting coat, which
I knew held a flask of whiskey, and rushed
pell-mell through the woods for the creek bank.  All
I wanted was a little water in that whiskey.

After satisfying myself I would not faint, I went
back in time to see that everything had been fixed
and the procession headed north again.

"No, sah, it didn't hurt Brer Thomas," the
preacher was explaining to Horace; "but it did
upsot some of the sisterin, an' they fainted when
he come outer the back end of that kerridge so
nachul an' briefly.  No, sah; nobody's hurt, sah;
it wuz jes' a sivigerus accerdent."

"How much money have you, Horace?  I've
spent all mine on dead and registered cats," I said,
bitterly.

He had plenty, and tipped the whole two miles
of them, as they passed by, singing: "*Jordan is a
hard road to travel.*"

Never had that old song seemed so real to me!

"I stop right here," I said, after assuring
myself that I would not faint again.  "The sun is
setting; we've been out all day, and found nothing
but a cat and a corpse."

Our experience had taken our nerve, and we
waited two hours by the roadside, way after
dark, until we'd seen everything we met in the
morning go back home.

Then we lit up, and reached home at ten o'clock.

Eloise and the twins met me at the gate, scared
to death.

"So glad you're safe," she cried, kissing me.
"I know you've got a full bag, you've never
failed, and, oh, dearie, I've invited a dozen ladies
over to-morrow for lunch, promising quail on
toast, so I hope nothing has happened."

By this time one of the twins was climbing
over me, shouting, "Daddy, show me old Bob
White—show me old Brer Rabbit."  And the
other echoed, "Daddy, show me old Bob
White—show me old Brer Rabbit."

The bitterness of it went into me.

"Quail on toast?" I cried with sarcasm.
"Change it now, my dear; write them all a note
at once and tell them tomcat is better, for that's
all I've killed to-day!  Just make it tomcat on
toast!"

Eloise looked at me curiously.  "Jack, I
believe you have taken one of those cheap drinks."

"One?" I said.  "I drank a flask of it.  I
had to or faint when I saw poor old Uncle Thomas
come out of the rear end of that hearse as natural
as life."

"Oh!" said Eloise, putting her fingers in her
ears.  "Come in, dearie, and I'll give you
another, poor dear!"

But it was rubbed in on me that night.  It was
midnight when Eloise came to my room.  I heard
one of the twins crying.  "Come here, Jack," she
said laughing.  "One of them wants you, has
waked up crying for you."

She was sitting up in bed and her lamentations
were loud.  At sight of me she broke out,
"Daddy—you brought sister a dead cat
and—and—wouldn't—bring me—me—one!"

To jolly her into good humor, as I often did,
I picked her up and turned her a somersault in
the bed: I was unfortunate again—that accursed
cat and automobile!

Accidentally her head was bumped.

In blazing indignation, she sat up and spat
upon me!

I retreated as best I could: "Your mother will
spank you for that"—I said.

She quieted—ashamed: but almost instantly
the other one sat up in bed, crying lustily.

"What do *you* want?" I said.  "I thought
you were asleep."

"Tum back here," she wailed heart-brokenly,
"*and let me spit on you too!*"

I heard Eloise laugh.

"Hang an automobile and a dead cat," I said,
as I went out—"they are two Jonahs that will
always smell alike to me hereafter!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SICK TREE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SICK TREE

.. vspace:: 2

The going of my old grandsire was pathetic,
for towards the last he lost interest in the living,
in everything except the great elm he had always
loved because his mother had nursed him under it.

"And it is dying, Jack, just as I am going;
but I do so want it to live until I am gone!"

"It shall, Grandfather," I said, "it is sick, but
with a little surgery I can save it.  It shall live
twenty years longer."

The old tree, tall and beautiful even in death,
was half rotted as it stood.  Any violent wind
was likely to snap it off.  Any great storm would
beat it to the earth.

Every morning the old man would rise and look
first of all to see if his tree was still standing.

He was greatly interested in the way I cured it.
I cut away the dead rot up the entire trunk; and
when I had finished, little, except a shell,
remained.  Into this I drove a section of iron
railing from a railway track, fully fifteen feet high,
driven five feet into the ground, down among the
old roots of the tree.  Around this and entirely
filling the hollow to the top of the iron rail, I
poured cement, casing it in to fit the old body that
was gone, tucking sheets of zinc under the edges
of the bark whose layers carry the sap up and down.

When this was painted and treated to a coating
of tar, it looked like the great tree in its youth,
and under a strong wind it swayed, supported by
the cement and its rod of steel, with all the
strength of its younger days.

There one evening, clasping it in the twilight,
we found the old General asleep.  It was the last
sleep of a second childhood, and having no mother
for the lullaby, he had slept, his arms around the
tree she had loved.

The sun had set; the twilight had come; the
great trees shadowed the eternal hills.

The old warrior had died a tree-lover; the
young tree-lover had been forced, of God, to fight.

We plan, and, like the rough ashlar, we cut
and hew; but the Sculptor is God....

.. vspace:: 2

I do not know why Eloise should have risked
it, but she did; and though I would not have her
try it again for The Home Stretch nor feel again
that memory-pang of horror when, for one brief
second, I saw what she meant to do, yet when it
was done my heart beat fiercely with pride and
love for her.  How blessed are those children
who have a mother both brave and beautiful!

We had ridden to town one day, as we often
did when the weather was fit.  And for a
pretense she had me ride out to the Fair Grounds to
see a new colt in training.  I suspect she had fixed
it all before; for I had seen her practicing Satan
on nearly every little ride, at jumps, stone walls,
mainly, and old rail fences up to four feet.

"Oh, it's just to see if age and the campaigns
of honorable war," she laughed, "have stiffened
the old fellow's muscles or softened his heart";
and she would reach over and pat his great neck.

At the track the old bars stood across.

I sickened at the sight of them, remembering.
But Eloise, pretending not to notice, glanced
quickly at me.

"Who's put them back there?" I asked, paling
with fear of my own suspicion.  "I'll tear
them down now and burn them," I said,
dismounting quickly.

But Eloise was too quick for me.  Even Satan
knew her thought and at the sound of her bantering
laugh and the old sideway flash of the whip
above his ears, he flew like a winged horse at the
bars.

I did not breathe, when, for one short, awful
moment, I saw them mount straight up toward
the sky.  Then, realizing that age and service had
hampered his driving power behind, the game
horse threw his front easily over, and like a great
see-saw swung across, bringing his rear limbs, not
straight, to tap the bars and be tangled, but
sidewise and parallel, barely saving his neck!

"Well, I did it!"  She rode up laughing,
Satan trembling so with excitement and the effort
I could see his knees quivering, his flank fluttering
wildly.  And in Eloise's face there was the
white flag of peril yet lingering before the red
of victory.

She rode up close to me, her eyes lit with the
tenderness of love's light, and bedewed with its
tears: "*Kiss me, Jack, dearest—for that is
what I had sworn all the time I would do.   If—if
they had only let me break the world's record
that first time.*"

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   THE END

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