Abner Daniel: A Novel

Abner Daniel

By Will N. Harben

Author Of “Westerfelt”

New York and London

Harper And Brothers

1902

To

My Sister

Mrs. Ray Knight

Abner Daniel

I

[Illustration: 9007]

HE young man stood in the field road giving directions to a robust negro who was ploughing the corn, which, in parallel rows, stretched on to the main road a quarter of a mile distant. The negro placed the point of his ploughshare a few inches from the first stalk of corn, wound the line around his wrist, and clucked to his horse. With a jangling jerk of the trace-chains the animal lunged ahead: the polished ploughshare cut into the mellow soil and sped onward, curling the gray earth like shavings, and uprooting and burying the tenacious crab-grass and succulent purslane.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining brightly, but the atmosphere had dropped a dim veil over the near-by mountain. Even the two-storied farm-house, with its veranda and white columns, to which the field road led up a gradual slope, showed only its outlines. However, Alan Bishop, as he steadied his gaze upon the house, saw the figure of an elderly woman come out of the gate and with a quick step hurry down to him. It was his mother; she was tall and angular, and had high cheek-bones and small blue eyes. She had rather thin gray hair, which was wound into a knot behind her head, and over it she wore only a small red breakfast shawl which she held in place by one of her long hands.

“Alan,” she said, panting from her brisk walk, “I want you to come to the house right off. Mr. Trabue has come to see yore pa again an' I can't do a thing with 'im.”

“Well, what does he want with him?” asked the young man. His glance was on the ploughman and his horse. They had turned the far end of the corn-row and were coming back, only the nodding head of the animal being visible beyond a little rise.

“He's come to draw up the papers fer another land trade yore pa's makin'. He's the lawyer fer the Tompkins estate. Yore pa tried to buy the land a yeer ago, but it wasn't in shape to dispose of. Oh, Alan, don't you see he's goin' to ruin us with his fool notions? Folks all about are a-laughin' at him fer buyin' so much useless mountain-land. I'm powerful afeered his mind is wrong.”

“Well, mother, what could I do?” Alan Bishop asked impatiently. “You know he won't listen to me.”

“I reckon you can' t stop 'im,” sighed the woman, “but I wish you'd come on to the house. I knowed he was up to some 'n'. Ever'day fer the last week he's been ridin' up the valley an' rollin' and tumblin' at night an' chawin' ten times as much tobacco as he ort. Oh, he's goin' to ruin us! Brother Abner says he is buyin' beca'se he thinks it's goin' to advance in value, but sech property hain't advanced a speck sence I kin remember, an' is bein' sold ever' yeer fer tax money.”

“No, it's very foolish of him,” said the young man as the two turned towards the house. “Father keeps talking about the fine timber on such property, but it is entirely too far from a railroad ever to be worth anything. I asked Rayburn Miller about it and he told me to do all I could to stop father from investing, and you know he's as sharp a speculator as ever lived; but it's his money.”

There was a paling fence around the house, and the enclosure was alive with chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, and peafowls. In the sunshine on the veranda two pointers lay sleeping, but at the sound of the opening gate they rose, stretched themselves lazily, and gaped.

“They are in the parlor,” said Mrs. Bishop, as she whisked off her breakfast shawl. “Go right in, I 'll come in a minute. I want to see how Linda is makin' out with the churnin'. La! I feel like it's a waste o' time to do a lick o' work with him in thar actin' like a child. Ef we both go in together it 'll look like we've concocked somethin', but we must stop 'im ef we kin.”

Alan went into the parlor on the left of the wide, uncarpeted hall. The room had white plastered walls, but the ceiling was of boards planed by hand and painted sky blue. In one corner stood a very old piano with pointed, octagonal legs and a stool with hair-cloth covering. The fireplace was wide and high, and had a screen made of a decorated window-shade tightly pasted on a wooden frame. Old man Bishop sat near a window, and through his steel-framed nose-glasses was carefully reading a long document written on legal-cap paper. He paid no attention to the entrance of his son, but the lawyer, a short, fat man of sixty-five with thick black hair that fell below his coat-collar, rose and extended his hand.

“How's Alan?” he asked, pleasantly. “I saw you down in the field as I come along, but I couldn't catch your eye. You see I'm out after some o' your dad's cash. He's buying hisse'f rich. My Lord! if it ever _does_ turn his way he 'll scoop in enough money to set you and your sister up for life. Folks tell me he owns mighty near every stick of timber-land in the Cohutta Valley, and what he has he got at the bottom figure.”

“If it ever turns his way,” said Alan; “but do you see any prospect of it's ever doing so, Mr. Trabue?” The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. “I never bet on another man's trick, my boy, and I never throw cold water on the plans of a speculator. I used to when I was about your age, but I saw so many of 'em get rich by paying no attention to me that I quit right off. A man ought to be allowed to use his own judgment.” Old Bishop was evidently not hearing a word of this conversation, being wholly absorbed in studying the details of the deed before him. “I reckon it's all right,” he finally said. “You say the Tompkins children are all of age?”

“Yes, Effie was the youngest,” answered Trabue, “and she stepped over the line last Tuesday. There's her signature in black and white. The deed's all right. I don't draw up any other sort.”

Alan went to his father and leaned over him. “Father,” he said, softly, and yet with firmness, “I wish you'd not act hastily in this deal. You ought to consider mother's wishes, and she is nearly distracted over it.”

Bishop was angry. His massive, clean-shaven face was red. “I'd like to know what I'd consult her fer,” he said. “In a matter o' this kind a woman's about as responsible as a suckin' baby.”

Trabue laughed heartily. “Well, I reckon it's a good thing your wife didn't hear that or she'd show you whether she was responsible or not. I couldn't have got the first word of that off my tongue before my wife would 'a' knocked me clean through that wall.”

Alfred Bishop seemed not to care for levity during business hours, for he greeted this remark only with a frown. He scanned the paper again and said: “Well, ef thar's any flaw in this I reckon you 'll make it right.”

“Oh yes, I 'll make any mistake of mine good,” returned Trabue. “The paper's all right.”

“You see,” said Alan to the lawyer, “mother and I think father has already more of this sort of property than he can carry, and--”

“I wish you and yore mother'd let my business alone,” broke in Bishop, firing up again. “Trabue heer knows I've been worryin' 'im fer the last two months to get the property in salable shape. Do you reckon after he gets it that away I want to listen to yore two tongues a-waggin' in open opposition to it?”

Trabue rubbed his hands together. “It really don't make a bit of difference to me, Alan, one way or the other,” he said, pacifically. “I'm only acting as attorney for the Tompkins estate, and get my fee whether there's a transfer or not. That's where I stand in the matter.”

“But it's not whar I stand in it, Mr. Trabue,” said a firm voice in the doorway. It was Mrs. Bishop, her blue eyes flashing, her face pale and rigid. “I think I've got a right--and a big one--to have a say-so in this kind of a trade. A woman 'at 's stayed by a man's side fer thirty odd yeer an' raked an' scraped to he'p save a little handful o' property fer her two children has got a right to raise a rumpus when her husband goes crooked like Alfred has an' starts in to bankrupt 'em all jest fer a blind notion o' his'n.”

“Oh, thar you are!” said Bishop, lifting his eyes from the paper and glaring at her over his glasses. “I knowed I'd have to have a knock-down-an'-drag-out fight with you 'fore I signed my name, so sail in an' git it over. Trabue's got to ride back to town.”

“But whar in the name o' common-sense is the money to come from?” the woman hurled at her husband, as she rested one of her bony hands on the edge of the table and glared at him. “As I understand it, thar's about five thousand acres in this piece alone, an' yo're a-payin' a dollar a acre. Whar's it a-comin' from, I'd like to know? Whar's it to come from?”

Bishop sniffed and ran a steady hand over his short, gray hair. “You see how little she knows o' my business,” he said to the lawyer. “Heer she's raisin' the devil an' Tom Walker about the trade an' she don't so much as know whar the money's to come from.”

“How _was_ I to know?” retorted the woman, “when you've been tellin' me fer the last six months that thar wasn't enough in the bank to give the house a coat o' fresh paint an' patch the barn roof.”

“You knowed I had five thousand dollars wuth o' stock in the Shoal River Cotton Mills, didn't you?” asked Bishop, defiantly, and yet with the manner of a man throwing a missile which he hoped would fall lightly.

“Yes, I knowed that, but--” The woman's eyes were two small fires burning hungrily for information beyond their reach.

“Well, it happens that Shoal stock is jest the same on the market as ready money, up a little to-day an' down to-morrow, but never varyin' more'n a fraction of a cent on the dollar, an' so the Tompkins heirs say they'd jest as lieve have it, an' as I'm itchin' to relieve them of the'r land, it didn't take us long to come together.”

If he had struck the woman squarely in the face, she could not have shown more surprise. She became white to the lips, and with a low cry turned to her son. “Oh, Alan, don't--don't let 'im do it, it's all we have left that we can depend on! It will ruin us!”

“Why, father, surely,” protested Alan, as he put his arm around his mother, “surely you can't mean to let go your mill investment which is paying fifteen per cent, to put the money into lands that may never advance in value and always be a dead weight on your hands! Think of the loss of interest and the taxes to be kept up. Father, you must listen to--”

“Listen to nothin',” thundered Bishop, half rising from his chair. “Nobody axed you two to put in. It's my business an' I'm a-goin' to attend to it. I believe I'm doin' the right thing, an' that settles it.”

“The right thing,” moaned the old woman, as she sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands. “Mr. Trabue,” she went on, fiercely, “when that factory stock leaves our hands we won't have a single thing to our names that will bring in a cent of income. You kin see how bad it is on a woman who has worked as hard to do fer her children as I have. Mr. Bishop always said Adele, who is visitin' her uncle's family in Atlanta, should have that stock for a weddin'-gift, ef she ever married, an' Alan was to have the lower half of this farm. Now what would we have to give the girl--nothin' but thousands o' acres o' hills, mountains an' gulches full o' bear, wild-cats, and catamounts--land that it ud break any young couple to hold on to--much less put to any use. Oh, I feel perfectly sick over it.”

There was a heavy, dragging step in the hall, and a long, lank man of sixty or sixty-five years of age paused in the doorway. He had no beard except a tuft of gray hair on his chin, and his teeth, being few and far between, gave to his cheeks a hollow appearance. He was Abner Daniel, Mrs. Bishop's bachelor brother, who lived in the family.

“Hello!” he exclaimed, shifting a big quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other; “plottin' agin the whites? Ef you are, I 'll decamp, as the feller said when the bull yeerlin' butted 'im in the small o' the back. How are you, Mr. Trabue? Have they run you out o' town fer some o' yore legal rascality?”

“I reckon your sister thinks it's rascality that's brought me out to-day,” laughed the lawyer. “We are on a little land deal.”

“Oh, well, I 'll move on,” said Abner Daniel. “I jest wanted to tell Alan that Rigg's hogs got into his young corn in the bottom jest now an' rooted up about as many acres as Pole Baker's ploughed all day. Ef they'd a-rooted in straight rows an' not gone too nigh the stalks they mought 'a' done the crap more good than harm, but the'r aim or intention, one or t'other, was bad. Folks is that away; mighty few of 'em root--when they root at all--fer anybody but the'rse'ves. Well, I 'll git along to my room.”

“Don't go, brother Ab,” pleaded his sister. “I want you to he'p me stand up fer my rights. Alfred is about to swap our cotton-mill stock fer some more wild mountain-land.”

In spite of his natural tendency to turn everything into a jest--even the serious things of life--the sallow face of the tall man lengthened. He stared into the faces around him for a moment, then a slow twinkle dawned in his eye.

“I've never been knowed to take sides in any connubial tustle yet,” he said to Trabue, in a dry tone. “Alf may not know what he's about right now, but he's Solomon hisse'f compared to a feller that will undertake to settle a dispute betwixt a man an' his wife--more especially the wife. Geewhilikins! I never shall forget the time old Jane Hardeway come heer to spend a week an' Alf thar an' Betsy split over buyin' a hat-rack fer the hall. Betsy had seed one over at Mason's, at the camp-ground, an' determined she'd have one. Maybe you noticed that fancy contraption in the hall as you come in. Well, Alf seed a nigger unloadin' it from a wagon at the door one mornin', an' when Betsy, in feer an' tremblin', told 'im what it was fer he mighty nigh had a fit. He said his folks never had been above hangin' the'r coats an' hats on good stout nails an' pegs, an' as fer them umbrella-pans to ketch the drip, he said they was fancy spit-boxes, an' wanted to know ef she expected a body to do the'r chawin' an' smokin' in that windy hall. He said it jest should not stand thar with all them prongs an' arms to attack unwary folks in the dark, an' he toted it out to the buggy-shed. That got Betsy's dander up an' she put it back agin the wall an' said it ud stay thar ef she had to stand behind it an' hold it in place. Alf wasn't done yet; he 'lowed ef they was to have sech a purty trick as that on the hill it had to stay in the best room in the house, so he put it heer in the parlor by the piano. But Betsy took it back two or three times an' he larnt that he was a-doin' a sight o' work fer nothin', an' finally quit totin' it about. But that ain't what I started in to tell. As I was a-sayin', old Jane Hardeway thought she'd sorter put a word in the dispute to pay fer her board an' keep, an' she told Betsy that it was all owin' to the way the Bishops was raised that Alf couldn't stand to have things nice about 'im. She said all the Bishops she'd ever knowed had a natural stoop that they got by livin' in cabins with low roofs. She wasn't spreadin' 'er butter as thick as she thought she was--ur maybe it was the sort she was spreadin '--fer Betsy blazed up like the woods afire in a high wind. It didn't take old Jane long to diskiver that thar was several breeds o' Bishops out o' jail, an' she spent most o' the rest o' her visit braggin' on some she'd read about. She said the name sounded like the start of 'em had been religious an' substanch.”

“Brother Abner,” whined Mrs. Bishop, “I wisht you'd hush all that foolishness an' help me 'n the children out o' this awful fix. Alfred always would listen to you.”

“Well,” and the old man smiled, and winked at the lawyer, “I 'll give you both all the advice I kin. Now, the Shoal River stock is a good thing right now; but ef the mill was to ketch on fire an' burn down thar'd be a loss. Then as fer timber-land, it ain't easy to sell, but it mought take a start before another flood. I say it mought, an' then agin it moughtn't. The mill mought burn, an' then agin it moughtn't. Now, ef you-uns kin be helped by this advice you are welcome to it free o' charge. Not changin' the subject, did you-uns know Mrs. Richardson's heffer's got a calf? I reckon she won't borrow so much milk after hers gits good.”

Trabue smiled broadly as the gaunt man withdrew; but his amusement was short-lived, for Mrs. Bishop began to cry, and she soon rose in despair and left the room. Alan stood for a moment looking at the unmoved face of his father, who had found something in the last clause of the document which needed explanation; then he, too, went out.

II

[Illustration: 9017]

LAN found his uncle on the back porch washing his face and hands in a basin on the water-shelf. The young man leaned against one of the wooden posts which supported the low roof of the porch and waited for him to conclude the puffing, sputtering operation, which he finally did by enveloping his head in a long towel hanging from a wooden roller on the weather-boarding.

“Well,” he laughed, “yore uncle Ab didn't better matters in thar overly much. But what could a feller do? Yore pa's as bull-headed as a young steer, an' he's already played smash anyway. Yore ma's wastin' breath; but a woman seems to have plenty of it to spare. A woman' s tongue's like a windmill--it takes breath to keep it a-goin', an' a dead calm ud kill her business.”

“It's no laughing matter, Uncle Ab,” said Alan, despondently. “Something must have gone wrong with father's judgment. He never has acted this way before.”

The old man dropped the towel and thrust his long, almost jointless fingers into his vest pocket for a horn comb which folded up like a jack-knife. “I was jest a-wonderin',” as he began to rake his shaggy hair straight down to his eyes--“I was jest a-wonderin' ef he could 'a' bent his skull in a little that time his mule th'owed 'im agin the sweet-gum. They say that often changes a body powerful. Folks do think he's off his cazip on the land question, an' now that he's traded his best nest-egg fer another swipe o' the earth's surface, I reckon they 'll talk harder. But yore pa ain't no fool; no plumb idiot could 'a' managed yore ma as well as he has. You see I know what he's accomplished, fer I've been with 'em ever since they was yoked together. When they was married she was as wild as a buck, an' certainly made our daddy walk a chalk-line; but Alfred has tapered 'er down beautiful. She didn't want this thing done one bit, an' yet it is settled by this time”--the old man looked through the hall to the front gate--“yes, Trabue's unhitchin'; he's got them stock certificates in his pocket, an' yore pa has the deeds in his note-case. When this gits out, moss-backs from heer clean to Gilmer 'll be trapsin' in to dispose o' land at so much a front foot.”

“But what under high heaven will he do with it all?”

“Hold on to it,” grinned Abner, “that is, ef he kin rake an' scrape enough together to pay the taxes. Why, last yeer his taxes mighty nigh floored 'im, an' the expenses on this county he's jest annexed will push 'im like rips; fer now, you know, he 'll have to do without the income on his factory stock; but he thinks he's got the right sow by the yeer. Before long he may yell out to us to come he'p 'im turn 'er loose, but he's waltzin' with 'er now.”

At this juncture Mrs. Bishop came out of the dining-room wiping her eyes on her apron.

“Mother,” said Alan, tenderly, “try not to worry over this any more than you can help.”

“Your pa's gettin' old an' childish,” whimpered Mrs. Bishop. “He's heerd somebody say timber-land up in the mountains will some day advance, an' he forgets that he's too old to get the benefit of it. He's goin' to bankrupt us.”

“Ef I do,” the man accused thundered from the hall, as he strode out, “it 'll be my money that's lost--money that I made by hard work.”

He stood before them, glaring over his eye-glasses at his wife. “I've had enough of yore tongue, my lady; ef I'd not had so much to think about in thar jest now I'd 'a' shut you up sooner. Dry up now--not another word! I'm doin' the best I kin accordin' to my lights to provide fer my children, an' I won't be interfered with.”

No one spoke for a moment. However, Mrs. Bishop finally retorted, as her brother knew she would, in her own time.

“I don't call buyin' thousands o' acres o' unsalable land providin' fer anything, except the pore-house,” she fumed.

“That's beca'se you don't happen to know as much about the business as I do,” said Bishop, with a satisfied chuckle, which, to the observant Daniel, sounded very much like exultation. “When you all know what I know you 'll be laughin' on t'other sides o' yore mouths.”

He started down the steps into the yard as if going to the row of bee-hives along the fence, but paused and came back. He had evidently changed his mind. “I reckon,” he said, “I 'll jest _have_ to let you all know about this or I won't have a speck o' peace from now on. I didn't tell you at fust beca'se nobody kin keep a secret as well as the man it belongs to, an' I was afeerd it ud leak out an' damage my interests; but this last five thousand acres jest about sweeps all the best timber in the whole Cohutta section, an' I mought as well let up. I reckon you all know that ef--I say _ef_--my land was nigh a railroad it ud be low at five times what I paid fer it, don't you? Well, then! The long an' short of it is that I happen to be on the inside an' know that a railroad is goin' to be run from Blue Lick Junction to Darley. It 'll be started inside of the next yeer an' 'll run smack dab through my property. Thar now, you know more'n you thought you did, don't you?”

The little group stared into his glowing face incredulously.

“A railroad is to be built, father?” exclaimed Alan.

“That's what I said.”

Mrs. Bishop's eyes flashed with sudden hope, and then, as if remembering her husband's limitations, her face fell.

“Alfred,” she asked, sceptically, “how does it happen that you know about the railroad before other folks does?”

“How do I? That's it now--how do I?” and the old man laughed freely. “I've had my fun out o' this thing, listenin' to what every crank said about me bein' cracked, an' so on; but I was jest a-lyin' low waitin' fer my time.”

“Well, I 'll be switched!” ejaculated Abner Daniel, half seriously, half sarcastically. “Geewhilikins! a railroad! I've always said one would pay like rips an' open up a dern good, God-fersaken country. I'm glad you are a-goin' to start one, Alfred.”

Alan's face was filled with an expression of blended doubt and pity for his father's credulity. “Father,” he said, gently, “are you sure you got your information straight?”

“I got it from headquarters.” The old man raised himself on his toes and knocked his heels together, a habit he had not indulged in for many a year. “It was told to me confidentially by a man who knows all about the whole thing, a man who is in the employ o' the company that's goin' to build it.”

“Huh!” the exclamation was Abner Daniel's, “do you mean that Atlanta lawyer, Perkins?”

Bishop stared, his mouth lost some of its pleased firmness, and he ceased the motion of his feet.

“What made you mention his name?” he asked, curiously.

“Oh, I dunno; somehow I jest thought o' him. He looks to me like he mought be buildin' a railroad ur two.”

“Well, that's the man I mean,” said Bishop, more uneasily.

Somehow the others were all looking at Abner Daniel, who grunted suddenly and almost angrily.

“I wouldn't trust that skunk no furder'n I could fling a bull by the tail.”

“You say you wouldn't?” Bishop tried to smile, but the effort was a facial failure.

“I wouldn't trust 'im nuther, brother Ab,” chimed in Mrs. Bishop. “As soon as I laid eyes on 'im I knowed he wouldn't do. He's too mealy-mouthed an' fawnin'. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth; he bragged on ever'thing we had while he was heer. Now, Alfred, what we must git at is, what was his object in tellin' you that tale.”

“Object?” thundered her husband, losing his temper in the face of the awful possibility that her words hinted at. “Are you all a pack an' passle o' fools? If you must dive an' probe, then I 'll tell you he owns a slice o' timber-land above Holley Creek, j'inin' some o' mine, an' so he let me into the secret out o' puore good will. Oh, you all cayn't skeer me; I ain't one o' the skeerin' kind.”

But, notwithstanding this outburst, it was plain that doubt had actually taken root in the ordinarily cautious mind of the crude speculator. His face lengthened, the light of triumph went out of his eyes, leaving the shifting expression of a man taking desperate chances.

Abner Daniel laughed out harshly all at once and then was silent. “What's the matter?” asked his sister, in despair.

“I was jest a-wonderin',” replied her brother.

“You are?” said Bishop, angrily. “It seems to me you don't do much else.”

“Folks 'at wonders a lot ain't so apt to believe ever'thing they heer,” retorted Abner. “I was just a-wonderin' why that little, spindle-shanked Peter Mosely has been holdin' his head so high the last week or so. I 'll bet I could make a durn good guess now.”

“What under the sun's Peter Mosely got to do with my business?” burst from Bishop's impatient lips.

“He's got a sorter roundabout connection with it, I reckon,” smiled Abner, grimly. “I happen to know that Abe Tompkins sold 'im two thousand acres o' timber-land on Huckleberry Ridge jest atter yore Atlanta man spent the day lookin' round in these parts.”

Bishop was no fool, and he grasped Abner's meaning even before it was quite clear to the others.

“Looky heer,” he said, sharply, “what do you take me fur?”

“I'ain't tuck you fer nothin',” said Abner, with a grin. “Leastwise, I'ain't tuck you fer five thousand dollars' wuth o' cotton-mill stock. To make a long story short, the Atlanta jack-leg lawyer is akin to the Tompkins family some way. I don't know exactly what kin, but Joe Tompkins's wife stayed at Perkins's house when she was down thar havin' er spine straightened. I'd bet a new hat to a ginger-cake that Perkins never owned a spoonful o' land up heer, an' that he's jest he'pin' the Tompkins folks on the sly to unload some o' the'r land, so they kin move West, whar they've always wanted to go. Peter Mosely is a man on the watch-out fer rail soft snaps, an' when Perkins whispered the big secret in his yeer, like he did to you, he started out on a still hunt fer timbered land on the line of the proposed trunk line due west vy-ah Lickskillet to Darley, with stop-over privileges at Buzzard Roost, an' fifteen minutes fer hash at Dog Trot Springs. Then, somehow or other, by hook or crook--mostly crook--Abe Tompkins wasn't dodgin' anybody about that time; Peter Mosely could 'a' run agin 'im with his eyes shut on a dark night. I was at Neil Fulmore's store when the two met, an' ef a trade was ever made quicker betwixt two folks it was done by telegraph an' the paper was signed by lightnin'. Abe said he had the land an' wouldn't part with it at any price ef he hadn't been bad in need o' money, fer he believed it was chuck-full o' iron ore, soapstone, black marble, an' water-power, to say nothin' o' timber, but he'd been troubled so much about cash, he said, that he'd made up his mind to let 'er slide an' the devil take the contents. I never seed two parties to a deal better satisfied. They both left the store with a strut. Mosely's strut was the biggest, fer he wasn't afeerd o' nothin'. Tompkins looked like he was afeerd Mosely ud call 'im back an' want to rue.”

“You mean to say--” But old Bishop seemed unable to put his growing fear into words.

“Oh, I don't know nothin' fer certain,” said Abner Daniel, sympathetically; “but ef I was you I'd go down to Atlanta an' see Perkins. You kin tell by the way he acts whether thar's anything in his railroad story or not; but, by gum, you ort to know whar you stand. You've loaded yorese'f from hind to fore quarters, an' ef you don't plant yore feet on some'n you 'll go down.”

Bishop clutched this proposition as a drowning man would a straw. “Well, I will go see 'im,” he said. “I 'll go jest to satisfy you. As fer as I'm concerned, I know he wasn't tellin' me no lie; but I reckon you all never 'll rest till you are satisfied.”

He descended the steps and crossed the yard to the barn. They saw him lean over the rail fence for a moment as if in troubled thought, and then he seemed to shake himself, as if to rid himself of an unpleasant mental burden, and passed through the little sagging gate into the stable to feed his horses. It was now noon. The sun was shining broadly on the fields, and ploughmen were riding their horses home in their clanking harnesses.

“Poor father,” said Alan to his uncle, as his mother retired slowly into the house. “He seems troubled, and it may mean our ruin--absolute ruin.”

“It ain't no triflin' matter,” admitted Daniel. “Thar's no tellin' how many thousand acres he may have bought; he's keepin' somethin' to hisse'f. I remember jest when that durn skunk of a lawyer put that flea in his yeer. They was at Hanson's mill, an' talked confidential together mighty nigh all mornin'. But let's not cross a bridge tell we git to it. Let's talk about some'n else. I hain't never had a chance to tell you, but I seed that gal in town yesterday, an' talked to 'er.”

“Did you, Uncle Ab?” the face of the young man brightened. His tone was eager and expectant.

“Yes, I'd hitched in the wagon-yard an' run into Hazen's drug-store to git a box o' axle-grease, an' was comin' out with the durn stuff under my arm when I run upon 'er a-settin' in a buggy waitin' to git a clerk to fetch 'er out a glass o' sody-water. She recognized me, an' fer no other earthly reason than that I'm yore uncle she spoke to me as pleasin' as a basket o' chips. What was I to do? I never was in such a plight in my life. I'd been unloadin' side-meat at Bartow's warehouse, an' was kivered from head to foot with salt and grease. I didn't have on no coat, an' the seat o' my pants was non est--I don't think thar was any est about 'em, to tell the truth; but I knowed it wouldn't be the part of a gentleman to let 'er set thar stretchin' 'er neck out o' socket to call a clerk when I was handy, so I wheeled about, hopin' an' prayin' ef she did look at me she'd take a fancy to the back o' my head, an' went in the store an' told 'em to git a hustle on the'r-se'ves. When I come out, she hauled me up to ax some questions about when camp-meetin' was goin' to set in this yeer, and when Adele was comin' home. I let my box o' axle-grease drap, an' it rolled like a wagon-wheel off duty, an' me after it, bendin'--_bendin_' of all positions--heer an' yan in the most ridiculous way. I tell you I'd never play croquet ur leapfrog in them pants. All the way home I thought how I'd disgraced you.”

“Oh, you are all right, Uncle Ab,” laughed Alan. “She's told me several times that she likes you very much. She says you are genuine--genuine through and through, and she's right.”

“I'd ruther have her say it than any other gal I know,” said Abner. “She's purty as red shoes, an', ef I'm any judge, she's genuwine too. I've got another idee about 'er, but I ain't a-givin' it away jest now.”

“You mean that she--”

“No,” and the old man smiled mischievously, “I didn't mean nothin' o' the sort. I wonder how on earth you could 'a' got sech a notion in yore head. I'm goin' to see how that black scamp has left my cotton land. I 'll bet he hain't scratched it any deeper'n a old hen would 'a' done lookin' fer worms.”

III

[Illustration: 0026]

HE next morning at breakfast Alfred Bishop announced his intention of going to Atlanta to talk to Perkins, and incidentally to call on his brother William, who was a successful wholesale merchant in that city.

“I believe I would,” said Mrs. Bishop. “Maybe William will tell you what to do.”

“I'd see Perkins fust,” advised Abner Daniel. “Ef I felt shore Perkins had buncoed me I'd steer cleer o' William. I'd hate to heer 'im let out on that subject. He's made his pile by keepin' a sharp lookout.”

“I hain't had no reason to think I have been lied to,” said Bishop, doggedly, as he poured his coffee into his saucer and shook it about to cool. “A body could hear his death-knell rung every minute ef he'd jest listen to old women an'--”

“Old bachelors,” interpolated Abner. “I reckon they _are_ alike. The longer a man lives without a woman the more he gits like one. I reckon that's beca'se the man 'at lives with one don't see nothin' wuth copyin' in 'er, an' vice-a-versy.”

Mrs. Bishop had never been an appreciative listener to her brother's philosophy. She ignored what he had just said and its accompanying smile, which was always Abner's subtle apology for such observations.

“Are you goin' to tell Adele about the railroad?” she asked.

“I reckon I won't tell 'er to git up a' excursion over it, 'fore the cross-ties is laid,” retorted Bishop, sharply, and Abner Daniel laughed--that sort of response being in his own vein.

“I was goin' to say,” pursued the softly treading wife, “that I wouldn't mention it to 'er, ef--ef--Mr. Perkins ain't to be relied on, beca'se she worries enough already about our pore way o' livin' compared to her uncle's folks. Ef she knowed how I spent last night she'd want to come back. But I ain't a-goin' to let brother Ab skeer me yet. It is jest too awful to think about. What on earth would we do? What would we, I say?”

That afternoon Bishop was driven to Darley by a negro boy who was to bring the buggy back home. He first repaired to a barber-shop, where he was shaved, had his hair cut, and his shoes blacked; then he went to the station half an hour before time and impatiently walked up and down the platform till the train arrived.

It was six o'clock when he reached Atlanta and made his way through the jostling crowd in the big passenger depot out into the streets. He had his choice of going at once to the residence of his brother, on Peachtree Street, the most fashionable avenue of the city, or looking up Perkins in his office. He decided to unburden his mind by at once calling on the lawyer, whose office was in a tall building quite near at hand.

It was the hour at which Perkins usually left for home, but the old planter found him in.

“Oh, it's you, Mr. Bishop,” he said, suavely, as he rose from his desk in the dingy, disordered little room with its single window. He pushed a chair forward. “Sit down; didn't know you were in town. At your brother's, I reckon. How are the crops up the road? Too much rain last month, I'm afraid.”

Bishop sank wearily into the chair. He had tired himself out thinking over what he would say to the man before him and with the awful contemplation of what the man might say to him.

“They are doin' as well as can be expected,” he made answer; but he didn't approve of even that platitude, for he was plain and outspoken, and hadn't come all that distance for a mere exchange of courtesies. Still, he lacked the faculty to approach easily the subject which had grown so heavy within the last twenty-four hours, and of which he now almost stood in terror.

“Well, that's good,” returned Perkins. He took up a pen as he resumed his seat, and began to touch it idly to the broad nail of his thumb. He was a swarthy man of fifty-five or sixty, rather tall and slender, with a bald head that sloped back sharply from heavy, jutting brows, under which a pair of keen, black eyes shone and shifted. “Come down to see your daughter,” he said. “Good thing for her that you have a brother in town. By-the-way, he's a fine type of a man. He's making headway, too; his trade is stretching out in all directions--funny how different you two are! He seems to take to a swallow-tail coat and good cigars like a duck to water, while you want the open sky above you, sweet-smelling fields around, an' fishing, hunting, sowing, reaping, and chickens--fat, juicy ones, like your wife fried when I was there. And her apple-butter! Ice-cream can' t hold a candle to it.”

“I 'lowed I'd see William 'fore I went back,” said Bishop, rather irrelevantly, and, for the lack of something else to do, he took out his eye-glasses and perched them on his sharp nose, only, on discovering the inutility of the act, to restore them clumsily to his pocket. He was trying to persuade himself, in the silence that followed, that, if the lawyer had known of his trade with the Tompkins heirs, he would naturally have alluded to it. Then, seeing that Perkins was staring at him rather fixedly, he said--it was a verbal plunge: “I bought some more timber-land yesterday!”

“Oh, you did? That's good.” Perkins's eyes fluttered once or twice before his gaze steadied itself on the face of the man before him. “Well, as I told you, Mr. Bishop, that sort of a thing is a good investment. I reckon it's already climbing up a little, ain't it?”

“Not much yet.” It struck Bishop that he had given the lawyer a splendid opportunity to speak of the chief cause for an advance in value, and his heart felt heavier as he finished. “But I took quite a slice the last time--five thousand acres at the old figure, you know--a dollar a acre.”

“You don't say! That _was_ a slice.”

Bishop drew himself up in his chair and inhaled a deep breath. It was as if he took into himself in that way the courage to make his next remark.

“I got it from the Tompkins estate.”

“You don't say. I didn't know they had that much on hand.”

There was a certain skill displayed in the lawyer's choice of questions and observations that somehow held him aloof from the unlettered man, and there was, too, something in his easy, bland manner that defied the open charge of underhand dealing, and yet Bishop had not paid out his railroad fare for nothing. He was not going back to his home-circle no wiser than when he left it. His next remark surprised himself; it was bluntness hardened by despair.

“Sence I bought the land I've accidentally heerd that you are some kin o' that family.”

Perkins started slightly and raised his brows.

“Oh yes; on my wife's side, away off, some way or other. I believe the original Tompkins that settled there from Virginia was my wife's grandfather. I never was much of a hand to go into such matters.”

The wily lawyer had erected as strong a verbal fence as was possible on such short notice, and for a moment it looked as if Bishop's frankness would not attempt to surmount it; but it did, in a fashion.

“When I heerd that, Perkins, it was natural fer me to wonder why you, you see--why you didn't tell _them_ about the railroad.”

The sallow features of the lawyer seemed to stiffen. He drew himself up coldly and a wicked expression flashed in his eyes.

“Take my advice, old man,” he snarled, as he threw down his pen and stared doggedly into Bishop's face, “stick to your farming and don't waste your time asking a professional lawyer questions which have no bearing on your business whatever. Now, really, do I have to explain to you my personal reasons for not favoring the Tompkins people with a--I may say--any piece of information?”

Bishop was now as white as death; his worst suspicions were confirmed; he was a ruined man; there was no further doubt about that. Suddenly he felt unable to bridle the contemptuous fury that raged within him.

“I think I know _why_ you didn't tell 'em,” was what he hurled at the lawyer.

“You think you do.”

“Yes, it was beca'se you knowed no road was goin' to be built. You told Pete Mosely the same tale you did me, an' Abe Tompkins unloaded on 'im. That's a way you have o' doin' business.”

Perkins stood up. He took his silk hat from the top of his desk and put it on. “Oh yes, old man,” he sneered, “I'm a terribly dishonest fellow; but I've got company in this world. Now, really, the only thing that has worried me has been your unchristian act in buying all that land from the Tompkins heirs at such a low figure when the railroad will advance its value so greatly. Mr. Bishop, I thought you were a good Methodist.”

“Oh, you kin laugh an' jeer all you like,” cried Bishop, “but I can handle you fer this.”

“You are not as well versed in the law as you are in fertilizers, Mr. Bishop,” sneered the lawyer. “In order to make a case against me, you'd have to publicly betray a matter I told to you in confidence, and then what would you gain? I doubt if the court would force me to explain a private matter like this where the interests of my clients are concerned. And if the court did, I could simply show the letters I have regarding the possible construction of a railroad in your section. If you remember rightly, I did not say the thing was an absolute certainty. On top of all this, you'd be obliged to prove collusion between me and the Tompkins heirs over a sale made by their attorney, Mr. Trabue. There is one thing certain, Mr. Bishop, and that is that you have forfeited your right to any further confidence in this matter. If the road is built you 'll find out about it with the rest of your people. You think you acted wisely in attacking me this way, but you have simply cut off your nose to spite your face. Now I have a long car-ride before me, and it's growing late.”

Bishop stood up. He was quivering as with palsy. His voice shook and rang like that of a madman.

“You are a scoundrel, Perkins,” he said--“a dirty black snake in the grass. I want to tell you that.”

“Well, I hope you won't make any charge for it.”

“No, it's free.” Bishop turned to the door. There was a droop upon his whole body. He dragged his feet as he moved out into the unlighted corridor, where he paused irresolutely. So great was his agony that he almost obeyed an impulse to go back and fall at the feet of Perkins and implore his aid to rescue him and his family from impending ruin. The lawyer was moving about the room, closing his desk and drawing down the window-shade. Up from the street came the clanging of locomotive bells under the car-shed, the whir of street-cars, the clatter of cabs on the cobble-stones.

“It's no use,” sighed Bishop, as he made his way down-stairs. “I'm ruined--Alan an' Adele hain't a cent to their names, an' that devil--” Bishop paused on the first landing like an animal at bay. He heard the steady step of Perkins on the floor above, and for a moment his fingers tingled with the thought of waiting there in the darkness and choking the life out of the subtle scoundrel who had taken advantage of his credulity.

But with a groan that was half a prayer he went on down the steps and out into the lighted streets. At the first corner he saw a car which would take him to his brother's, and he hastened to catch it.

William Bishop's house was a modern brick structure, standing on a well-clipped lawn which held a gothic summer-house and two or three marble statues. It was in the best portion of the avenue. Reaching it, the planter left the car and approached the iron gate which opened on to the granite steps leading up the terrace. It was now quite dark and many pedestrians were hurrying homeward along the sidewalks. Obeying a sudden impulse, the old man irresolutely passed by the gate and walked farther up the street. He wanted to gain time, to think whether it would be best for him in his present state of mind to meet those fashionable relatives--above all, his matter-of-fact, progressive brother.

“Somehow I don't feel one bit like it,” he mused. “I couldn't tell William. He'd think I wanted to borrow money an' ud git skeerd right off. He always was afeerd I'd mismanage. An' then I'd hate to sp'ile Adele's visit, an' she could tell thar was some'n wrong by me bein' heer in sech a flurry. I reckon I _do_ show it. How could a body he'p it? Oh, my Lord, have mercy! It's all gone, all--all me'n Betsy has saved.”

He turned at the corner of his brother's property and slowly retraced his halting steps to the gate, but he did not pause, continuing his way back towards the station. A glance at the house showed that all the lower rooms were lighted, as well as the big prismatic lamp that hung over the front door. Bishop saw forms in light summer clothing on the wide veranda. “I 'll bet that tallest one is Sis,” he said, pathetically. “I jest wish I could see 'er a little while. Maybe it ud stop this awful hurtin' a little jest to look at 'er an' heer 'er laugh like she always did at home. She'd be brave; she wouldn't cry an' take on; but it would hurt 'er away down in 'er heart, especially when she's mixin' with sech high-flyers an' money-spenders. Lord, what 'll I do fer cash to send 'er next month? I'm the land-porest man in my county.”

As he went along he passed several fashionable hotels, from which orchestral music came. Through the plate-glass windows he saw men and women, amid palms and flowers, dining in evening dress and sparkling jewels.

Reaching the station, he inquired about a train to Darley, and was told that one left at midnight. He decided to take it, and in the mean time he would have nothing to occupy him. He was not hungry; the travel and worry had killed his appetite; but he went into a little café across the street from the depot and ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee. He drank the coffee at a gulp, but the food seemed to stick in his throat. After this he went into the waiting-room, which was thronged with tired women holding babies in their arms, and roughly clad emigrants with packs and oil-cloth bags. He sat in one of the iron-armed seats without moving till he heard his train announced, and then he went into the smoking-car and sat down in a corner.

He reached Darley at half-past three in the morning and went to the only hotel in the place. The sleepy night-clerk rose from his lounge behind the counter in the office and assigned him to a room to which a colored boy, vigorously rubbing his eyes, conducted him. Left alone in his room, he sat down on the edge of his bed and started to undress, but with a sigh he stopped.

“What's the use o' me lyin' down almost at daybreak?” he asked himself. “I mought as well be on the way home. I cayn't sleep nohow.”

Blowing out his lamp, he went down-stairs and roused the clerk again. “Will I have to pay fer that bed ef I don't use it?” he questioned.

“Why, no, Mr. Bishop,” said the clerk.

“Well, I believe I 'll start out home.”

“Is your team in town?” asked the clerk.

“The team I'm a-goin' to use is. I'm goin' to foot it. I've done the like before this.”

“Well, it's a purty tough stretch,” smiled the clerk. “But the roads are good.”

IV

[Illustration: 9035]

T was a little after sunrise; the family had just left the breakfast-table when Bishop walked in; his shoes and trousers were damp with dew and covered with the dust of the road. His wife saw him entering the gate and called out to him from the hall:

“Well, I declare! Didn't you go to Atlanta?”

He came slowly up the steps, dragging his feet after him. He had the appearance of a man beaten by every storm that could fall upon a human being.

“Yes, I went,” he said, doggedly. He passed her and went into the sitting-room, where his brother-inlaw stood at the fireplace lighting his pipe with a live coal of fire on the tip of a stick. Abner Daniel looked at him critically, his brows raised a little as he puffed, but he said nothing. Mrs. Bishop came in behind her husband, sweeping him from head to foot with her searching eyes.

“You don't mean to tell me you walked out heer this mornin',” she cried. “Lord have mercy!”

“I don't know as I've prepared any set speech on the subject,” said her husband, testily; “but I walked. I could 'a' gone to a livery an' ordered out a team, but I believe thar's more'n one way o' wearin' sackcloth an' ashes, an' the sooner I begin the better I 'll feel.” Abner Daniel winked; the scriptural allusion appealed to his fancy, and he smiled impulsively.

“That thar is,” he said. “Thar's a whole way an' a half way. Some folks jest wear it next to the skin whar it don't show, with broadcloth ur silk on the outside. They think ef it scratches a little that 'll satisfy the Lord an' hoodwink other folks. But I believe He meant it to be whole hog or none.”

Mrs. Bishop was deaf to this philosophy. “I don't see,” she said, in her own field of reflection--“I don't see, I say, how you got to Atlanta; attended to business; seed Adele; an' got back heer at sunrise. Why, Alfred--”

But Bishop interrupted her. “Have you all had prayers yet?”

“No, you know we hain't,” said his wife, wondering over his strange manner. “I reckon it can pass jest this once, bein' as you are tired an' hain't had nothin' to eat.”

“No, it can't pass, nuther; I don't want to touch a mouthful; tell the rest of 'em to come in, an' you fetch me the Book.”

“Well!” Mrs. Bishop went out and told the negro woman and her daughter to stop washing the dishes and go in to prayer. Then she hurried out to the back porch, where Alan was oiling his gun.

“Something's happened to yore pa,” she said. “He acts queer, an' says sech strange things. He walked all the way from Darley this morning, an' now wants to have prayers 'fore he touches a bite o' breakfast. I reckon we are ruined.”

“I'm afraid that's it,” opined her son, as he put down his gun and followed her into the sitting-room. Here the two negroes stood against the wall. Abner Daniel was smoking and Bishop held the big family Bible on his quivering knees.

“Ef you mean to keep it up,” Abner was saying, argumentatively, “all right an' good; but I don't believe in sudden spurts o' worship. My hosses is hitched up ready to haul a load o' bark to the tannery, an' it may throw me a little late at dinner; but ef you are a-goin' to make a daily business of it I'm with you.”

“I'm a-goin' to be regular from now on,” said Bishop, slowly turning the leaves of the tome. “I forgot whar I read last.”

“You didn't finish about Samson tyin' all them foxes' tails together,” said Abner Daniel, as he knocked the hot ashes from his pipe into the palm of his hand and tossed them into the chimney. “That sorter interested me. I wondered how that was a-goin' to end. I'd hate to have a passle o' foxes with torches to the'r tails turned loose in my wheat jest 'fore cuttin' time. It must 'a' been a sight. I wondered how that was a-goin' to end.”

“You 'll wonder how _yo're_ a-goin' to end if you don't be more respectful,” said his sister.

“Like the foxes, I reckon,” grinned Abner, “with a eternal torch tied to me. Well, ef I am treated that away, I 'll go into the business o' destruction an' set fire to everything I run across.”

“Ain' t you goin' to tell us what you did in Atlanta 'fore you have prayer?” asked Mrs. Bishop, almost resentfully.

“No, I hain't!” Bishop snapped. “I 'll tell you soon enough. I reckon I won't read this mornin'; let's pray.”

They all knelt reverently, and yet with some curiosity, for Bishop often suited his prayers to important occasions, and it struck them that he might now allude to the subject bound up within him.

“Lord, God Almighty,” he began, his lower lip hanging and quivering, as were his hands clasped in the seat of his chair, “Thou knowest the struggle Thy creatures are makin' on the face of Thy green globe to live up to the best of the'r lights an' standards. As I bend before Thee this mornin' I realize how small a bein' I am in Thy sight, an' that I ort to bow in humble submission to Thy will, an' I do. For many yeers this family has enjoyed Thy bounteous blessings. We've had good health, an' the influence of a Bible-readin', God-fearin' community, an' our childern has been educated in a way that raised 'em head an' shoulders above many o' the'r associates an' even blood kin. I don't know exactly whar an' how I've sinned; but I know I have displeased Thee, fer Thy scourge has fallen hard an' heavy on my ambitions. I wanted to see my boy heer, a good, obedient son, an' my daughter thar in Atlanta, able to hold the'r heads up among the folks they mix with, an' so I reached out. Maybe it was forbidden fruit helt out by a snake in the devil's service. I don't know--Thou knowest. Anyways, I steered my course out o' the calm waters o' content an' peace o' soul into the whirlpool rapids o' avarice an' greed. I'lowed I was in a safe haven an' didn't dream o' the storm-clouds hangin' over me till they bust in fury on my head. Now, Lord, my Father, give them hearts of patience an' forgiveness fer the blunders of Thy servant. What I done, I done in the bull-headed way that I've always done things; but I meant good an' not harm. These things we ask in the name o' Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord an' Master. Amen.”

During the latter part of the prayer Mrs. Bishop had been staring at her husband through her parted fingers, her face pale and agitated, and as she rose her eyes were glued to his face.

“Now, Alfred,” she said, “what are you goin' to tell us about the railroad? Is it as bad as brother Ab thought it would be?”

Bishop hesitated. It seemed as if he had even then to tear himself from the clutch of his natural stubbornness. He looked into all the anxious, waiting faces before he spoke, and then he gave in.

“Ab made a good guess. Ef I'd 'a' had his sense, or Alan' s, I'd 'a' made a better trader. It's like Ab said it was, only a sight wuss--a powerful sight wuss!”

“Wuss?” gasped his wife, In fresh alarm. “How could it be wuss? Why, brother Ab said--”

“I never have told you the extent o' my draim's,” went on Bishop in the current of confession. “I never even told Perkins yesterday. Fust an' last I've managed to rake in fully twenty thousand acres o' mountain-land. I was goin' on what I'lowed was a dead-shore thing. I secured all I could lay my hands on, an' I did it in secret. I was afeerd even to tell you about what Perkins said, thinkin' it mought leak out an' sp'ile my chances.”

“But, father,” said Alan, “you didn't have enough money to buy all that land.”

“I got it up”--Bishop's face was doggedly pale, almost defiant of his overwhelming disaster--“I mortgaged this farm to get money to buy Maybry and Morton's four thousand acres.”

“The farm you was going to deed to Alan?” gasped his wife. “You didn't include that?”

“Not in _that_ deal,” groaned Bishop. “I swapped that to Phil Parsons fer his poplar an' cypress belt.” The words seemed to cut raspingly into the silence of the big room. Abner Daniel was the only one who seemed unmoved by the confession. He filled his pipe from the bowl on the mantel-piece and pressed the tobacco down with his forefinger; then he kicked the ashes in the chimney till he uncovered a small five coal. He eyed it for a moment, then dipped it up in the shovel, rolled it into his pipe, and began to smoke.

“So I ain't a-goin' to git no yeerly pass over the new road,” he said, his object being to draw his brother-in-law back to Perkins's action in the matter.

“Perkins was a-lyin' to me,” answered Bishop. “He hain't admitted it yet; but he was a-lyin'. His object was to he'p the Tompkins sell out fer a decent price, but he can' t be handled; he's got me on the hip.”

“No,” said Abner. “I'd ruther keep on swappin' gold dollars fer mountain-land an' lettin' it go fer taxes 'an to try to beat a lawyer at his own game. A court-house is like the devil's abode, easy to git into, no outlet, an' nothin' but scorch while you are thar.”

“Hush, fer the name o' goodness!” cried Mrs. Bishop, looking at her husband. “Don't you see he's dyin' from it? Are you all a-goin' to kill 'im? What does a few acres o' land ur debts amount to beside killin' a man 'at's been tryin' to help us all? Alfred, it ain't so mighty awful. You know it ain't! What did me 'n' you have when we started out but a log-house boarded up on the outside? an' now we've got our childern educated an' all of us in good health. I railly believe it's a sin agin God's mercy fer us to moan an' fret under a thing like this.”

“That's the talk,” exclaimed Abner Daniel, enthusiastically. “Now you are gittin' down to brass tacks. I've always contended--”

“For God's sake, don't talk that way!” said Bishop to his wife. “You don't mean a word of it. You are jest a-sayin' it to try to keep me from seein' what a fool I am.”

“You needn't worry about me, father,” said Alan, firmly. “I am able to look out for myself an' for you and mother. It's done, and the best thing to do is to look at it in a sensible way. Besides, a man with twenty thousand acres of mountain-land paid for is not broken, by a long jump.”

“Yes, I'm gone,” said Bishop, a wavering look of gratitude in his eye as he turned to his son. “I figured on it all last night. I can't pay the heavy interest an' come out. I was playin' for big stakes an' got left. Thar's nothin' to do but give up. Me buyin' so much land has made it rise a little, but when I begin to try to sell I won't be able to give it away.”

“Thar's some'n in that,” opined Abner Daniel, as he turned to leave the room. “I reckon I mought as well go haul that tan-bark. I reckon you won't move out 'fore dinner.”

Alan followed him out to the wagon.

“It's pretty tough, Uncle Ab,” he said. “I hadn't the slightest idea it was so bad.”

“I wasn't so shore,” said Daniel. “But I was jest a-thinkin' in thar. You've got a powerful good friend in Rayburn Miller. He's the sharpest speculator in North Georgia; ef I was you, I'd see him an' lay the whole thing before him. He 'll be able to give you good advice, an' I'd take it. A feller that's made as much money as he has at his age won't give a friend bad advice.”

“I thought of him,” said Alan; “but I am a little afraid he will think we want to borrow money, and he never lets out a cent without the best security.”

“Well, you needn't be afeerd on that score,” laughed the old man, as he reached up on the high wagon-seat for his whip. “I once heerd 'im say that business an' friendship wouldn't mix any better'n oil an' water.”

V

[Illustration: 9042]

HE following Saturday Alan went to Darley, as he frequently did, to spend Sunday. On such visits he usually stayed at the Johnston House, a great, old-fashioned brick building that had survived the Civil War and remained untouched by the shot and shell that hurtled over it during that dismal period when most of the population had “refugeed farther south.” It had four stories, and was too big for the town, which could boast of only two thousand inhabitants, one-third of whom were black. However, the smallness of the town was in the hotel's favor, for in a place where no one would have patronized a second-class hotel, opposition would have died a natural death. The genial proprietor and his family were of the best blood, and the Johnston House was a sort of social club-house, where the church people held their affairs and the less serious element gave dances. To be admitted to the hotel without having to pay for one's dinner was the hallmark of social approval. It was near the ancient-looking brick car-shed under which the trains of two main lines ran, and a long freight warehouse of the same date and architecture. Around the hotel were clustered the chief financial enterprises of the town--its stores, post-office, banks, and a hall for theatrical purposes. Darley was the seat of its county, and another relic of the days before the war was its court house. The principal sidewalks were paved with brick, which in places were damp and green, and sometimes raised above their common level by the undergrowing roots of the sycamore-trees that edged the streets.

In the office of the hotel, just after registering his name, Alan met his friend Rayburn Miller, for whose business ability, it may be remembered, Abner Daniel had such high regard. He was a fine-looking man of thirty-three, tall and of athletic build; he had dark eyes and hair, and a ruddy, out-door complexion.

“Hello,” he said, cordially. “I thought you might get in to-day, so I came round to see. Sorry you've taken a room. I wanted you to sleep with me to-night. Sister's gone, and no one is there but the cook. Hello, I must be careful. I'm drumming for business right under Sanford's nose.”

“I 'll make you stay with me to make up for it,” said Alan, as the clerk behind the counter laughed good-naturedly over the allusion to himself.

“Blamed if I don't think about it,” said Miller. “Come round to the office. I want to talk to you. I reckon you've got every plough going such weather as this.”

“Took my horse out of the field to drive over,” said Alan, as they went out and turned down to a side street where there was a row of law offices, all two-roomed buildings, single-storied, built of brick, and bearing battered tin signs. One of these buildings was Miller's, which, like all its fellows, had its door wide open, thus inviting all the lawyers in the “row” and all students of law to enter and borrow books or use the ever-open desk.

Rayburn Miller was a man among ten thousand in his class. Just after being graduated at the State University he was admitted to the bar and took up the practice of law. He could undoubtedly have made his way at this alone, had not other and more absorbing talents developed within him. Having had a few thousand dollars left him at his father's death, he began to utilize this capital in “note shaving,” and other methods of turning over money for a handsome profit furnished by the unsettled conditions, the time, and locality. He soon became an adept in many lines of speculation, and as he was remarkably shrewd and cautious, it is not to be wondered at that he soon accumulated quite a fortune.

“Take a seat,” he said to Alan, as they went into the office, and he threw himself into the revolving-chair at his littered desk. “I want to talk to you. I suppose you are in for some fun. The boys are getting up a dance at the hotel and they want your dollar to help pay the band. It's a good one this time. They've ordered it from Chattanooga. It will be down on the seven-thirty-five. Got a match?”

Alan had not, and Miller turned his head to the open door. An old negro happened to be passing, with an axe on his shoulder.

“Heigh, there, Uncle Ned!” Miller called out.

The negro had passed, but he heard his name called and he came back and looked in at the door.

“Want me, Marse Rayburn?”

“Yes, you old scamp; get me a match or I 'll shoot the top of your head off.”

“All right, suh; all right, Marse Rayburn!”

“You ought to know him,” said Miller, with a smile, as the negro hurried into the adjoining office. “His wife cooks for Colonel Barclay; he might tell you if Miss Dolly's going to-night, but I know she is. Frank Hillhouse checked her name off the list, and I heard him say she'd accepted. By-the-way, that fellow will do to watch. I think he and the Colonel are pretty thick.”

“Will you never let up on that?” Alan asked with a flush.

“I don't know that I shall,” laughed Rayburn. “It seems so funny to see you in love, or, rather, to see you think you are.”

“I have never said I was,” said Alan, sharply.

“But you show it so blamed plain,” said Miller.

“Heer 'tis, Marse Rayburn. Marse Trabue said you could have a whole box ef you'd put up wid sulphur ones.”

Miller took the matches from the outstretched hand and tossed a cigar to Alan. “Say, Uncle Ned,” he asked, “do you know that gentleman?” indicating Alan with a nod of his head.

A quizzical look dawned in the old negro's eyes, and then he gave a resounding guffaw and shook all over.

“I reckon I know his hoss, Marse Rayburn,” he tittered.

“That's a good one on you, Alan,” laughed Miller. “He knows your 'hoss.'I 'll have to spring that on you when I see you two together.”

As the negro left the office Mr. Trabue leaned in the doorway, holding his battered silk hat in his hand and mopping his perspiring face.

He nodded to Alan, and said to Miller: “Do you want to write?”

“Not any more for you, thanks,” said Miller. “I have the back-ache now from those depositions I made out for you yesterday.”

“Oh, I don't mean that,” the old lawyer assured him, “but I had to borrow yore ink just now, and seein' you at yore desk I thought you might need it.”

“Oh, if I do,” jested Miller, “I can buy another bottle at the book-store. They pay me a commission on the ink I furnish the row. They let me have it cheap by the case. What stumps me is that you looked in to see if I needed it. You are breaking the rule, Mr. Trabue. They generally make me hunt for my office furniture when I need it. They've borrowed everything I have except my iron safe. Their ignorance of the combination, its weight, and their confirmed laziness is all that saved it.”

When the old lawyer had gone the two friends sat and smoked in silence for several minutes. Alan was studying Miller's face. Something told him that the news of his father's disaster had reached him, and that Miller was going to speak of it. He was not mistaken, for the lawyer soon broached the subject.

“I've been intending to ride out to see you almost every day this week,” he said, “but business has always prevented my leaving town.”

“Then you have heard--”

“Yes, Alan, I'm sorry, but it's all over the country. A man's bad luck spreads as fast as good war news. I heard it the next day after your father returned from Atlanta, and saw the whole thing in a flash. The truth is, Perkins had the cheek to try his scheme on me. I'm the first target of every scoundrel who has something to sell, and I've learned many of their tricks. I didn't listen to all he had to say, but got rid of him as soon as I could. You must not blame the old man. As I see it now, it was a most plausible scheme, and the shame of it is that no one can be handled for it. I don't think the Tompkins heirs knew anything of Perkins's plans at all, except that he was to get a commission, perhaps, if the property was sold. Trabue is innocent, too--a cat's-paw. As for Perkins, he has kept his skirts clear of prosecution. Your father will have to grin and bear it. He really didn't pay a fabulous price for the land, and if he were in a condition to hold on to it for, say, twenty-five years, he might not lose money; but who can do that sort of thing? I have acres and acres of mountain-land offered me at a much lower figure, but what little money I've made has been made by turning my capital rapidly. Have you seen Dolly since it happened?”

“No, not for two weeks,” replied Alan. “I went to church with her Sunday before last, and have not seen her since. I was wondering if she had heard about it.”

“Oh yes; she's heard it from the Colonel. It may surprise you, but the thing has rubbed him the wrong way.”

“Why, I don't understand,” exclaimed Alan. “Has he--”

“The old man has had about two thousand acres of land over near your father's purchases, and it seems that he was closely watching all your father's deals, and, in spite of his judgment to the contrary, Mr. Bishop's confidence in that sort of real-estate has made him put a higher valuation on his holdings over there. So you see, now that your father's mistake is common talk, he is forced to realize a big slump, and he wants to blame some one for it. I don't know but that your father or some one else made him an offer for his land which he refused. So you see it is only natural for him to be disgruntled.”

“I see,” said Alan. “I reckon you heard that from Miss Dolly?”

Miller smoked slowly.

“Yes”--after a pause--“I dropped in there night before last and she told me about it. She's not one of your surface creatures. She talks sensibly on all sorts of subjects. Of course, she's not going to show her heart to me, but she couldn't hide the fact that your trouble was worrying her a good deal. I think she'd like to see you at the ball to-night. Frank Hillhouse will give you a dance or two. He's going to be hard to beat. He's the most attentive fellow I ever run across. He's got a new buggy--a regular hug-me-tight--and a high-stepping Kentucky mare for the summer campaign. He 'll have some money at his father's death, and all the old women say he's the best catch in town because he doesn't drink, has a Sunday-school class, and will have money. We are all going to wear evening-suits to-night. There are some girls from Rome visiting Hattie Alexander, and we don't want them to smell hay in our hair. You know how the boys are; unless all of us wear spike-tails no one will, so we took a vote on it and we 'll be on a big dike. There 'll be a devilish lot of misfits. Those who haven't suits are borrowing in all directions. Frank Buford will rig out in Colonel Day's antebellum toggery. Did you bring yours?”

“It happens to be at Parker's shop, being pressed,” said Alan.

“I've had three in the last six years,” laughed Miller. “You know how much larger Todd Selman is than I am; he bursted one of mine from collar to waist last summer at the Springs, and sweated so much that you could dust salt out of it for a month afterwards. I can't refuse 'em, God bless 'em! Jeff Higgins married in my best Prince Albert last week and spilled boiled custard on it; but he's got a good wife and a fair job on a railroad in Tennessee now. I'd have given him the coat, but he'd never have accepted it, and been mad the rest of his life at my offer. Parker said somebody had tried to scrape the custard off with a sharp knife, and that he had a lot of trouble cleaning it. I wore the coat yesterday and felt like I was going to be married. Todd must have left some of his shivers in it I reckon that's as near as I 'll ever come to the hitching-post.”

Just then a tall, thin man entered. He wore a rather threadbare frock-coat, unevenly bound with braid, and had a sallow, sunken, and rather long face. It was Samuel Craig, one of the two private bankers of the town. He was about sixty years of age and had a pronounced stoop.

“Hello!” he said, pleasantly; “you young bloods are a-goin' to play smash with the gals' hearts to-night, I reckon. I say go it while you are young. Rayburn, I want to get one of them iron-clad mortgage-blanks. I've got a feller that is disposed to wiggle, an' I want to tie 'im up. The inventor of that form is a blessing to mankind.”

“Help yourself,” smiled Miller. “I was just telling Mr. Trabue that I was running a stationery store, and if I was out of anything in the line I'd order it for him.”

The banker laughed good-humoredly as he selected several of the blanks from the drawer Rayburn had opened in the desk.

“I hope you won't complain as much of hard times as Jake Pitner does,” he chuckled. “I passed his store the other day, where he was standin' over some old magazines that he'd marked down.

“'How's trade?' I asked 'im. 'It's gone clean to hell,' he said, and I noticed he'd been drinking. 'I 'll give you a sample of my customers,' he went on. 'A feller from the mountains come in jest now an' asked the price of these magazines. I told him the regular price was twenty-five cents apiece, but I'd marked 'em down to five. He looked at 'em for about half a hour an' then said he wasn't goin' out o' town till sundown an' believed he'd take one if I'd read it to him.'”

Craig laughed heartily as he finished the story, and Alan and Miller joined in.

“I want you to remember that yarn when you get to over-checkin' on me,” said Craig, jestingly. “I was just noticing this morning that you have drawn more than your deposit.”

“Over-checked?” said Miller. “You 'll think I have when all my checks get in. I mailed a dozen to-day. They 'll slide in on you in about a week and you 'll telegraph _Bradstreet's_ to know how I stand. This is a _fine_ banker,” Miller went on to Alan. “He twits me about over-checking occasionally. Let me tell you something. Last year I happened to have ten thousand dollars on my hands waiting for a cotton factory to begin operations down in Alabama, and as I had no idea when the money would be called for I placed it with his nibs here 'on call.'Things got in a tangle at the mill and they kept waiting, and our friend here concluded I had given it to him.”

“I thought you had forgotten you had it,” said Craig, with another of his loud, infectious laughs.

“Anyway,” went on Miller, “I got a sudden order for the amount and ran in on him on my way from the post-office. I made out my check and stuck it under his nose. Great Scott! you ought to have seen him wilt. I don't believe he had half of it in the house, but he had ten million excuses. He kept me waiting two days and hustled around to beat the band. He thought I was going to close him up.”

“That was a close shave,” admitted Craig. “Never mind about the over-checking, my boy; keep it up, if it will help you. You are doing altogether too much business with the other bank to suit me, anyway.”

VI

[Illustration: 9051]

HE young people assembled slowly at the dance that evening. Towards dark it had begun raining, and according to custom two livery-stable carriages, called “hacks,” were engaged to convey all the couples to and from the hotel. There was no disputing over who should have the first use of the vehicles, for the young ladies who had the reputation of getting ready early on such occasions were gone after first, and those who liked to take their time in making preparations were left till later.

Everything in life is relative, and to young people who often went to even less pretentious entertainments this affair was rather impressive in its elegance. Lamps shone everywhere, and bunches of candles blazed and sputtered in nooks hung about with evergreens. The girls were becomingly attired in light evening-gowns, and many of them were good-looking, refined, and graceful. All were soft-spoken and easy in their manners, and either wore or carried flowers. The evening-suits of the young men were well in evidence, and more noticeable to the wearers themselves than they would have been to a spectator used to conventional style of dress. They could be seen in all stages of inadaptability to figures too large or too small, and even after the dance began there were several swaps, and a due amount of congratulation on the improvement from the appreciative fair sex. The young lady accompanying each young man had pinned a small bouquet on his lapel, so that it would have been impossible to tell whether a man had a natural taste for flowers or was the willing victim to a taste higher than his own.

Rayburn Miller and Alan sat smoking and talking in the room of the latter till about half-past nine o' clock, and then they went down. As a general rule, young men were expected to escort ladies to dances, when the young men went at all; but Alan was often excused from so doing on account of living in the country, and Miller had broken down every precedent in that respect and never invited a girl to go with him. He atoned for this shortcoming by contributing most liberally to every entertainment given by the young people, even when he was out of town. He used to say he liked to graze and nibble at such things and feel free to go to bed or business at will.

As the two friends entered the big parlor, Alan espied the girl about whom he had been thinking all day. She was seated in one of the deep, lace-curtained windows behind the piano. Frank Hillhouse was just presenting to her a faultlessly attired travelling salesman. At this juncture one of the floor-managers with a white rosette on his lapel called Miller away to ask his advice about some details, and Alan turned out of the parlor into the wide corridor which ran through the house. He did this in obedience to another unwritten law governing Darley's social intercourse--that it would be impolite for a resident gentleman to intrude himself upon a stranger who had just been introduced to a lady. So he went down to the ground floor and strolled into the office. It was full of tobacco smoke and a throng of men, some of whom were from the country and others from the town, drawn to the hotel by the festivities. From the office a door opened into a bar and billiard room, whence came the clicking of ivory balls and the grounding of cues. Another door led into the large dining-room, which had been cleared of its tables that it might be used for dancing. There was a sawing of fiddles, the twanging of guitars, the jingle of tambourines, and the groaning of a bass-viol. The musicians, black and yellow, occupied chairs on one of the tables, which had been placed against the wall, and one of the floor-managers was engaged in whittling paraffine-candles over the floor and rubbing it in with his feet. Seeing what he was doing, some of the young men, desirous of trying their new patent-leather pumps, came in and began to waltz singly and in couples.

When everything was in readiness the floor-managers piloted the dancers down-stairs. From the office Alan saw them filing into the big room and taking seats in the chairs arranged against the walls on all sides. He saw Frank Hillhouse and Dolly Barclay sit down near the band; the salesman had disappeared. Alan threw his cigar away and went straight to her.

“Oh, here you are,” laughed Frank Hillhouse, as Alan shook hands with her. “I told Miss Dolly coming on that the west wind would blow you this way, and when I saw Ray Miller just now I knew you'd struck the town.”

“It wasn't exactly the wind,” replied Alan. “I'm afraid you will forget me if I stay on the farm all the time.”

“We certainly are glad to have you,” smiled Miss Barclay.

“I knew she'd say that--I knew it--I knew it,” said Hillhouse. “A girl can always think of nicer things to say to a feller than his rival can. Old Squire Trabue was teasing me the other day about how hard you was to beat, Bishop, but I told him the bigger the war the more victory for somebody; and, as the feller said, I tote fair and am above board.”

Alan greeted this with an all but visible shudder. There was much in his dignified bearing and good appearance to commend him to the preference of any thinking woman, especially when contrasted to Hill-house, who was only a little taller than Dolly, and was showing himself even at a greater disadvantage in his unrefined allusions to his and Alan' s attentions to her. Indeed, Alan was sorry for the spectacle the fellow was making of himself, and tried to pass it over.

“I usually come in on Saturdays,” he explained.

“That's true,” said Dolly, with one of her rare smiles.

“Yes”--Hillhouse took another header into forbidden waters--“he's about joined your church, they tell me.”

Alan treated this with an indulgent smile. He did not dislike Hillhouse, but he did not admire him, and he had never quite liked his constant attentions to Miss Barclay. But it was an acknowledged fact among the society girls of Darley that if a girl refused to go out with any young man in good standing it was not long before she was left at home oftener than was pleasant. Dolly was easily the best-looking girl in the room; not, perhaps, the most daintily pretty, but she possessed a beauty which strength of character and intellect alone could give to a face already well featured. Even her physical beauty alone was of that texture which gives the beholder an agreeable sense of solidity. She was well formed, above medium height, had a beautiful neck and shoulders, dark-gray eyes, and abundant golden-brown hair.

“May I see your card?” asked Alan. “I came early to secure at least one.”

At this Frank Hillhouse burst out laughing and she smiled up at Alan. “He's been teasing me all evening about the predicament I'm in,” she explained. “The truth is, I'm not going to dance at all. The presiding elder happened in town to-day, on his way through, and is at our house. You know how bitter he is against church-members dancing. At first mamma said I shouldn't come a step; but Mr. Hillhouse and I succeeded in getting up a compromise. I can only look on. But my friends are having pity on me and filling my card for what they call stationary dances.”

Alan laughed as he took the card, which was already almost filled, and wrote his name in one of the blank spaces. Some one called Hillhouse away, and then an awkward silence fell upon them. For the first time Alan noticed a worried expression on her face, now that it was in repose, but it lighted up again when she spoke.

“You have no button-hole bouquet,” she said, noticing his bare lapel. “That's what you get for not bringing a girl. Let me make you one.”

“I wish you would,” he said, thoughtfully, for as she began to search among her flowers for some rosebuds and leaves he noted again the expression of countenance that had already puzzled him.

“Since you are so popular,” he went on, his eyes on her deft fingers, “I'd better try to make another engagement. I'd as well confess that I came in town solely to ask you to let me take you to church tomorrow evening.”

He saw her start; she raised her eyes to his almost imploringly, and then she looked down. He saw her breast heave suddenly as with tightened lips she leaned forward to pin the flowers on his coat. The jewels in her rings flashed under his eyes; there was a delicate perfume in the air about her glorious head. He had never seen her look so beautiful before. He wondered at her silence at just such a moment. The tightness of her lips gave way and they fell to trembling when she started to speak.

“I hardly know what to say,” she began. “I--I--you know I said the presiding elder was at our house, and--”

“Oh, I understand,” broke in Alan; “that's all right. Of course, use your own--”

“No, I must be plain with you,” she broke in, raising a pair of helpless, tortured eyes to his; “you will not think I had anything to do with it. In fact, my heart is almost broken. I'm very, very unhappy.”

He was still totally at sea as to the cause of her strange distress. “Perhaps you'd rather not tell me at all,” he said, sympathetically; his tone never had been so tender. “You need not, you know.”

“But it's a thing I could not keep from you long, anyway,” she said, tremulously. “In fact, it is due you--an explanation, I mean. Oh, Alan, papa has taken up the idea that we--that we like each other too much, and--”

The life and soul seemed to leave Alan' s face.

“I understand,” he heard himself saying; “he does not want me to visit you any more.”

She made no reply; he saw her catch a deep breath, and her eyes went down to her flowers. The music struck up. The mulatto leader stood waving his fiddle and calling for “the grand march” in loud, melodious tones. There was a scrambling for partners; the young men gave their left arms to the ladies and merrily dragged them to their places.

“I hope you do not blame me--that you don't think that I--” but the clatter and clamor ingulfed her words.

“No, not at all,” he told her; “but it's awful--simply awful I I know you are a true friend, and that's some sort of comfort.”

“And I always shall be,” she gulped. “You must try not to feel hurt. You know my father is a very peculiar man, and has an awful will, and nobody was ever so obstinate.”

Then Alan' s sense of the great injustice of the thing rose up within him and his blood began to boil. “Perhaps I ought to take my name off your card,” he said, drawing himself up slightly; “if he were to hear that I talked to you to-night he might make it unpleasant for you.”

“If you do I shall never--_never forgive you_,” she answered, in a voice that shook. There was, too, a glistening in her eyes, as if tears were springing. “Wouldn't that show that you harbored ill-will against me, when I am so helpless and troubled?”

“Yes, it would; and I shall come back,” he made answer. He rose, for Hillhouse, calling loudly over his shoulder to some one, was thrusting his bowed arm down towards her.

“I beg your pardon,” he said to Dolly. “I didn't know they had called the march. We've got some ice-cream hid out up-stairs, and some of us are going for it. Won't you take some, Bishop?”

“No, thank you,” said Alan, and they left him.

VI

[Illustration: 9058]

LAN made his way along the wall, out of the track of the promenaders, into the office, anxious to escape being spoken to by any one. But here several jovial men from the mountains who knew him intimately gathered around him and began to make laughing remarks about his dress.

“You look fer the world like a dirt-dauber.” This comparison to a kind of black wasp came from Pole Baker, a tall, heavily built farmer with an enormous head, thick eyebrows, and long, shaggy hair. He lived on Bishop's farm, and had been brought up with Alan. “I 'll be derned ef you ain't nimble on yore feet, though. I've seed you cut the pigeon-wing over on Mossy Creek with them big, strappin' gals 'fore you had yore sights as high as these town folks.”

“It's that thar vest that gits me,” said another. “I reckon it's cut low so you won't drap saft victuals on it; but I guess you don't do much eatin' with that collar on. It don't look like yore Adam's-apple could stir a peg under it.”

With a good-natured reply and a laugh he did not feel, Alan hurried out of the office and up to his room, where he had left his lamp burning. Rayburn Miller's hat and light overcoat were on the bed. Alan sat down in one of the stiff-backed, split-bottom chairs and stared straight in front of him. Never in his life had he suffered as he was now suffering. He could see no hope ahead; the girl he loved was lost to him. Her father had heard of the foolhardiness of old man Bishop, and, like many another well-meaning parent, had determined to save his daughter from the folly of marrying a penniless man, who had doubtless inherited his father's lack of judgment and caution.

There was a rap on the closed door, and immediately afterwards Rayburn Miller turned the knob and came in. His kindly glance swept the face of his friend, and he said, with forced lightness:

“I was doing the cake-walk with that fat Howard girl from Rome when I saw you leave the room. She can' t hide the fact that she is from a city of ten thousand population. She kept calling my attention to what our girls had on and sniggering. She's been to school in Boston and looked across the ocean from there. You know I don't think we lead the world, but it makes me fighting mad to have our town sneered at. When she was making so much fun of the girls' dresses, I came in an inch of asking her if she was a dressmaker. By God, I did! You remember,” Miller went on lightly, as if he had divined Alan' s misery and was trying to cheer him up--“you remember how Percy Lee, Hamilton's shoe-clerk, hit back at that Savannah girl. She was stopping in this house for a month one summer, and he called on her and took her driving several times; but one day she let herself out. 'Everything is so different up here, Mr. Lee,' she giggled. 'Down home, girls in good society never receive young men in your business.'It was a lick between the eyes; but old North Georgia was ready for it. 'Oh,' said Percy, whose mother's blood is as blue as indigo, 'the Darley girls draw the line, too; I only get to go with hotel girls.'”

Alan looked up and smiled, but his face seemed frozen. Miller sat down, and an awkward silence fell for several minutes. It was broken by the lawyer.

“I don't want to bore you, old man,” he said, “but I just had to follow you. I saw from your looks as you left the ballroom that something was wrong, and I am afraid I know what it is.”

“You think you do?” asked Alan, flashing a glance of surprise upward.

“Yes. You see, Colonel Barclay is a rough, outspoken man, and he made a remark the other day which reached me. I wasn't sure it was true, so I didn't mention it; but I reckon my informant knew what he was talking about.”

Alan nodded despondently. “I asked her to go to church with me to-morrow night. She was awfully embarrassed, and finally told me of her father's objections.”

“I think I know what fired the old devil up,” said Miller.

“You do?”

“Yes, it was that mistake of your father's. As I told you, the Colonel is as mad as a wet hen about the whole thing. He's got a rope tied to every nickel he's got, and he intends to leave Dolly a good deal of money. He thinks Frank Hillhouse is just the thing; he shows that as plain as day. He noticed how frequently you came to see Dolly and scented danger ahead, and simply put his foot down on it, just as fathers have been doing ever since the Flood. My dear boy, you've got a bitter pill to take, but you've got to swallow it like a man. You've reached a point where two roads fork. It is for you to decide which one you 'll take.”

Alan made no reply. Rayburn Miller lighted a cigar and began to smoke steadily. There was a sound of boisterous laughter in a room across the corridor. It had been set aside as the dressing-room for the male revellers, and some of them were there, ordering drinks up from the bar. Now and then from below came muffled strains of music and the monotonous shuffling of feet.

“It's none of my business,” Miller burst out, suddenly; “but I'm friend enough of yours to feel this thing like the devil. However, I don't know what to say. I only wish I knew how far you've gone into it.”

Alan smiled mechanically.

“If you can' t look at me and see how far I've gone you are blind,” he said.

“I don't mean that,” replied Miller. “I was wondering how far you had committed yourself--oh, damn it!--made love, and all that sort of thing.”

“I've never spoken to her on the subject,” Alan informed him, gloomily.

“Good, good! Splendid!”

Alan stared in surprise.

“I don't understand,” he said. “She knows--that is, I think she knows how I feel, and I have hoped that--”

“Never mind about that,” interrupted Miller, laconically. “There is a chance for both of you if you 'll turn square around like sensible human beings and look the facts in the face.”

“You mean--”

“That it will be stupid, childish idiocy for either or both of you to let this thing spoil your lives.”

“I don't understand you.”

“Well, you will before I'm through with you, and I 'll do you up brown. There are simply two courses open to you, my boy. One is to treat Colonel Barclay's wishes with dignified respect, and bow and retire just as any European gentleman would do when told that his pile was too small to be considered.”

“And the other?” asked Alan, sharply.

“The other is to follow in the footsteps of nearly every sentimental fool that ever was born, and go around looking like a last year's bird's-nest, looking good for nothing, and being good for nothing; or, worse yet, persuading the girl to elope, and thus angering her father so that he will cut her out of what's coming to her and what is her right, my boy. She may be willing to live on a bread-and-water diet for a while, but she 'll lose flesh and temper in the long run. If you don't make as much money for her as you cause her to lose she 'll tell you of it some day, or at least let you see it, an' that's as long as it's wide. You are now giving yourself a treatment in self-hypnotism, telling yourself that life has not and cannot produce a thing for you beyond that particular pink frock and yellow head. I know how you feel. I've been there six different times, beginning with a terrible long first attack and dwindling down, as I became inoculated with experience, till now the complaint amounts to hardly more than a momentary throe when I see a fresh one in a train for an hour's ride. I can do you a lot of good if you 'll listen to me. I 'll give you the benefit of my experience.”

“What good would your devilish experience do me?” said Alan, impatiently.

“It would fit any man's case if he'd only believe it. I've made a study of love. I've observed hundreds of typical cases, and watched marriage from inception through protracted illness or boredom down to dumb resignation or sudden death. I don't mean that no lovers of the ideal, sentimental brand are ever happy after marriage, but I do believe that open-eyed courtship will beat the blind sort all hollow, and that, in nine cases out of ten, if people were mated by law according to the judgment of a sensible, open-eyed jury, they would be happier than they now are. Nothing ever spoken is truer than the commandment, 'Thou shalt have no other God but me.'Let a man put anything above the principle of living right and he will be miserable. The man who holds gold as the chief thing in life will starve to death in its cold glitter, while a pauper in rags will have a laugh that rings with the music of immortal joy. In the same way the man who declares that only one woman is suited to him is making a god of her--raising her to a seat that won't support her dead, material weight. I frankly believe that the glamour of love is simply a sort of insanity that has never been correctly named and treated because so many people have been the victims of it.”

“Do you know,” Alan burst in, almost angrily, “when you talk that way I think you are off. I know what's the matter with you; you have simply frittered away your heart, your ability to love and appreciate a good woman. Thank Heaven! your experience has not been mine. I don't see how you could ever be happy with a woman. I couldn't look a pure wife in the face and remember all the flirtations you've indulged in--that is, if they were mine.”

“There you go,” laughed Miller; “make it personal, that's the only way the average lover argues. I am speaking in general terms. Let me finish. Take two examples: first, the chap crazily in love, who faces life with the red rag of his infatuation--his girl. No parental objection, everything smooth, and a car-load of silverware--a clock for every room in the house. They start out on their honeymoon, doing the chief cities at the biggest hotels and the theatres in the three-dollar seats. They soon tire of themselves and lay it to the trip. Every day they rake away a handful of glamour from each other, till, when they reach home, they have come to the conclusion that they are only human, and not the highest order at that. For a while they have a siege of discontent, wondering where it's all gone. Finally, the man is forced to go about his work, and the woman gets to making things to go on the backs of chairs and trying to spread her trousseau over the next year, and they begin to court resignation. Now if they had not had the glamour attack they would have got down to business sooner, that's all, and they would have set a better example to other plungers. Now for the second illustration. Poverty on one side, boodle on the other; more glamour than in other case, because of the gulf between. They get married--they have to; they've inherited the stupid idea that the Lord is at the bottom of it and that the glamour is His smile. Like the other couple, their eyes are finally opened to the facts, and they begin to secretly wonder what it's all about; the one with the spondoolix wonders harder than the one who has none. If the man has the money, he will feel good at first over doing so much for his affinity; but if he has an eye for earthly values--and good business men have--there will be times when he will envy Jones, whose wife had as many rocks as Jones. Love and capital go together like rain and sunshine; they are productive of something. Then if the woman has the money and the man hasn't, there's tragedy--a slow cutting of throats. She is irresistibly drawn with the rest of the world into the thought that she has tied herself and her money to an automaton, for such men are invariably lifeless. They seem to lose the faculty of earning money--in any other way. And as for a proper title for the penniless young idiot that publicly advertises himself as worth enough, in himself, for a girl to sacrifice her money to live with him--well, the unabridged does not furnish it. Jack Ass in bill-board letters would come nearer to it than anything that occurs to me now. I'm not afraid to say it, for I know you'd never cause any girl to give up her fortune without knowing, at least, whether you could replace it or not.”

Alan rose and paced the room. “That,” he said, as he stood between the lace curtains at the window, against which the rain beat steadily--“that is why I feel so blue. I don't believe Colonel Barclay would ever forgive her, and I'd die before I'd make her lose a thing.”

“You are right,” returned Miller, relighting his cigar at the lamp, “and he'd cut her off without a cent. I know him. But what is troubling me is that you may not be benefited by my logic. Don't allow this to go any further. Let her alone from to-night on and you 'll find in a few months that you are resigned to it, just like the average widower who wants to get married six months after his loss. And when she is married and has a baby, she 'll meet you on the street and not care a rap whether her hat's on right or not. She 'll tell her husband all about it, and allude to you as her first, second, or third fancy, as the case may be. I have faith in your future, but you've got a long, rocky row to hoe, and a thing like this could spoil your usefulness and misdirect your talents. If I could see how you could profit by waiting I'd let your flame burn unmolested; but circumstances are agin us.”

“I'd already seen my duty,” said Alan, in a low tone, as he came away from the window. “I have an engagement with her later, and the subject shall be avoided.”

“Good man!” Miller's cigar was so short that he stuck the blade of his penknife through it that he might enjoy it to the end without burning his fingers. “That's the talk! Now I must mosey on down-stairs and dance with that Miss Fewclothes from Rome--the one with the auburn tresses, that says 'delighted' whenever she is spoken to.”

Alan went back to the window. The rain was still beating on it. For a long time he stood looking out into the blackness. The bad luck which had come to his father had been a blow to him; but its later offspring had the grim, cold countenance of death itself. He had never realized till now that Dolly Barclay was so much a part of his very life. For a moment he almost gave way to a sob that rose and struggled within him. He sat down again and clasped his hands before him in dumb self-pity. He told himself that Rayburn Miller was right, that only weak men would act contrary to such advice. No, it was over--all, all over.

VIII

[Illustration: 9067]

FTER the dance Frank Hillhouse took Dolly home in one of the drenched and bespattered hacks. The Barclay residence was one of the best-made and largest in town. It was an old-style Southern frame-house, painted white, and had white-columned verandas on two sides. It was in the edge of the town, and had an extensive lawn in front and almost a little farm behind.

Dolly's mother had never forgotten that she was once a girl herself, and she took the most active interest in everything pertaining to Dolly's social life. On occasions like the one just described she found it impossible to sleep till her daughter returned, and then she slipped up-stairs, and made the girl tell all about it while she was disrobing. To-night she was more alert and wide-awake than usual. She opened the front door for Dolly and almost stepped on the girl's heels as she followed her up-stairs.

“Was it nice?” she asked.

“Yes, very,” Dolly replied. Reaching her room, she turned up the low-burning lamp, and, standing before a mirror, began to take some flowers out of her hair. Mrs. Barclay sat down on the edge of the high-posted mahogany bed and raised one of her bare feet and held it in her hand. She was a thin woman with iron-gray hair, and about fifty years of age. She looked as if she were cold; but, for reasons of her own, she was not willing for Dolly to remark it.

“Who was there?” she asked.

“Oh, everybody.”

“Is that so? I thought a good many would stay away because it was a bad night; but I reckon they are as anxious to go as we used to be. Then you all did have the hacks?”

“Yes, they had the hacks.” There was a pause, during which one pair of eyes was fixed rather vacantly on the image in the mirror; the other pair, full of impatient inquiry, rested alternately on the image and its maker.

“I don't believe you had a good time,” broke the silence, in a rising, tentative tone.

“Yes, I did, mother.”

“Then what's the matter with you?” Mrs. Barclay's voice rang with impatience. “I never saw you act like you do to-night, never in my life.”

“I didn't know anything was wrong with me, mother.”

“You act queer; I declare you do,” asserted Mrs. Barclay. “You generally have a lot to say. Have you and Frank had a falling out?”

Dolly gave her shoulders a sudden shrug of contempt.

“No, we got along as well as we ever did.”

“I thought maybe he was a little mad because you wouldn't dance to-night; but surely he's got enough sense to see that you oughtn't to insult brother Dill-beck that way when he's visiting our house and everybody knows what he thinks about dancing.”

“No, he thought I did right about it,” said Dolly.

“Then what in the name of common-sense is the matter with you, Dolly? You can' t pull the wool over my eyes, and you needn't try it.”

Dolly faced about suddenly.

“I reckon you 'll sit there all night unless I tell you all about it,” she said, sharply. “Mother, Alan Bishop was there.”

“You don't say!”

“Yes, and asked me to let him take me to church to-morrow evening.”

“Oh, he did?”

“Yes, and as I didn't want father to insult him, I--”

“You told him what your pa said?”

“No, I just told him father didn't want me to receive him any more. Heaven knows, that was enough.”

“Well, that was the best thing for you to do.” Mrs. Barclay took a deep breath, as if she were inhaling a delicious perfume. “It's much better than to have him plunge in here some day and have your father break out like he does in his rough way. What did Alan say?”

“He said very little; but he looked it. You ought to have seen him. Frank came up just about that time and invited me to have some ice-cream, and I had to leave him. He was as white as a sheet. He had made an engagement with me to sit out a dance, and he didn't come in the room again till that dance was called, and then he didn't even mention it. He acted so peculiarly, I could see it was nearly killing him, but he wouldn't let me bring up the subject again. I came near doing it; but he always steered round it.”

“He's a sensible young man,” declared Mrs. Barclay. “Any one can see that by looking at him. He's not responsible for his father's foolhardy venture, but it certainly leaves him in a bad fix as a marrying man. He's had bad luck, and he must put up with the consequences. There are plenty of girls who have no money or prospects who would be glad to have him, but--”

“Mother,” broke in Dolly, as if she had been listening to her own troubled thoughts rather than her mother's words; “he didn't act as if he wanted to see me alone. The other couples who had engagements to talk during that dance were sitting in windows and out-of-the-way corners, but he kept me right where I was, and was as carefully polite as if we had just been introduced. I was sorry for him and mad at the same time. I could have pulled his ears.”

“He's sensible, very sensible,” said Mrs. Barclay, in a tone of warm admiration. “A man like that ought to get along, and I reckon he will do well some day.”

“But, mother,” said Dolly, her rich, round voice rising like a wave and breaking in her throat, “he may never think about me any more.”

“Well, that really would be best, dear, under the circumstances.”

“Best?” Dolly blurted out. “How can you say that, when--when--”

“Dolly, you are not really foolish about him, are you?” Mrs. Barclay's face dropped into deeper seriousness.

Dolly looked away and was silent for a moment; then she faltered: “I don't know, mother, I--I'm afraid if I keep on feeling like I do now I 'll never get over it.”

“Ah, but you 'll not keep on feeling like you do now,” consoled the older woman. “Of course, right now, just after seeing how hard he took it, you will kind o' sympathize with him and want to help him; but that will all pass away. I remember when I was about your age I had a falling out with Will Despree--a young man my father didn't like because his grandfather had been an overseer. And, do you know, I thought I would actually kill myself. I refused to eat a bite and threatened to run away with Will. To this day I really don't know what I would have done if your grandfather hadn't scared him away with a shot-gun. Will kept writing notes to me. I was afraid to answer them, but my father got hold of one and went after him on a fast horse. Will's family heard what was up and they kept him out in the swamp for a few days, and then they sent him to Texas. The whole Despree family took it up and talked scand'lous about us.”

“And you soon got over it, mother?” asked Dolly, almost in a tone of dismay.

“Well,” said Mrs. Barclay, reflectively, “Will acted the fool so terribly; he wasn't out in Texas three months before he sent back a marked paper with an article in it about his engagement to the daughter of a rich man who, we found out afterwards, used to keep a livery-stable; then I reckon hardly any girl would keep caring for a boy when his folks was telling such lies about her family.”

Dolly was staring studiously at the speaker.

“Mother,” she asked, “don't you believe in real love?”

Mrs. Barclay laughed as if highly amused. “I believe in a different sort to the puppy love I had for that boy. Then after that there was another young man that I thought more of, if anything, than I did of Will; but he was as poor as Job's turkey, and my folks was all crazy for me 'n' your pa, who I'd never seen, to get married. I held out against the idea, just like you are doing with Frank, I reckon; but when your pa come with his shiny broadcloth coat and spotted silk vest--no, it was satin, I think, with red spots on it--and every girl in town was crazy to catch him, and there was no end of reports about the niggers he owned and his high connections--well, as I say, it wasn't a week before I was afraid he'd see Joe Tinsley and hear about me 'n' him. My father was in for the match from the very jump, and so was your pa's folks. He put up at our house with his nigger servant and didn't want to go about town much. I reckon I was pleased to have him pick me out, and so we soon fixed it up. Lordy, he only had to mention Joe Tinsley to me after we got married to make me do anything he wanted. To this day he throws him up to me, for Joe never did amount to anything. He tried to borrow money from your pa after you was born. The neighbors had to feed his children.”

“But you loved father, didn't you?” Dolly breathed, in some relief over what she thought was coming.

“Well, I can' t say I did,” said Mrs. Barclay. “We had a terrible time getting used to one another's ways. You see, he'd waited a good while, and was some older than I was. After a while, though, we settled down, and now I'm awful glad I let my father manage for me. You see, what your pa had and what my father settled on me made us comfortable, and if a couple is that it's a sight more than the pore ones are.”

Dolly stood before her mother, close enough to touch her. Her face wore an indescribable expression of dissatisfaction with what she had heard.

“Mother, tell me one thing,” she said. “Did you ever let either of those boys--the two that you didn't marry, I mean--kiss you?”

Mrs. Barclay stared up at her daughter for an instant and then her face broke into a broad smile of genuine amusement. She lowered her head to her knee and laughed out.

“Dolly Barclay, you are _such_ a fool!” she said, and then she laughed again almost immoderately, her face in her lap.

“I know what _that_ means,” said Dolly, in high disgust. “Mother, I don't think you can do me any good. You'd better go to bed.”

Mrs. Barclay rose promptly.

“I think I'd better, too,” she said. “It makes your pa awful mad for me to sit up this way. I don't want to hear him rail out like he always does when he catches me at it.”

After her mother had gone, Dolly sat down on her bed. “She never was in love,” she told herself. “Never, never, never! And it is a pity. She never could have talked that way if she had really loved anybody as much as--” But Dolly did not finish what lay on her tongue. However, when she had drawn the covers up over her the cold tears rose in her eyes and rolled down on her pillow as she thought of Alan Bishop's brave and dignified suffering.

“Poor fellow!” she said. “Poor, dear Alan!”

IX

[Illustration: 9074]

HERE is a certain class of individuals that will gather around a man in misfortune, and it differs very little, if it differs at all, from the class that warms itself in the glow of a man' s prosperity. It is made up of human failures, in the first instance, congratulating themselves on not being alone in bad luck; in the second, desirous of seeing how a fortunate man would look and act and guessing at his feelings. From the appearance of Bishop's home for the first fortnight after his return from Atlanta, you would have thought that some one was seriously ill in the house or that some general favorite had returned to the family after a long absence.

Horses were hitched to the fence from the front gate all the way round to the side entrance. The mountain people seemed to have left their various occupations to subtly enjoy the spectacle of a common man like themselves who had reached too far after forbidden fruit and lay maimed and torn before them. It was a sort of feast at which the baser part of their spiritual natures was fed, and, starved as they were, it tasted good. Many of them had never aspired to bettering their lot even with small ventures such as buying Jersey cows at double the value of common cattle when it was reported that the former gave four times as much milk and ate less, and to these cautious individuals Bishop's visible writhing was sweet confirmation of their own judgment.

Their disapproval of the old man's effort to hurry Providence could not have been better shown than in the failure of them all to comment on the rascally conduct of the Atlanta lawyer; they even chuckled over that part of the incident. To their minds Perkins was a sort of far-off personification of a necessary evil--who, like the devil himself, was evidently created to show mortals their limitations. They were not going to say what the lawyer had a right to do or should avoid doing, for they didn't pretend to know; but they did know what their old neighbor ought to have done, and if they didn't tell him so to his face they would let him see it by their actions. Yes, Bishop was a different thing altogether. He belonged to them and theirs. He led in their meetings, prayed in public, and had till now headed the list in all charitable movements.

The Reverend Charles B. Dole, a tall, spare man of sixty, who preached the first, second, third, and fourth Sundays of each month in four different meetinghouses within a day's ride of Bishop's, came around as the guest of the farm-house as often as his circuit would permit. He was called the “fightin' preacher,” because he had had several fearless hand-to-hand encounters with certain moonshiners whose conduct he had ventured to call ungodly, because unlawful.

On the second Saturday after Bishop's mishap, as Dole was to preach the next day at Rock Crest meetinghouse, he rode up as usual and turned his horse into the stable and fed him with his own hands. Then he joined Abner Daniel on the veranda. Abner had seen him ride up and purposely buried his head in his newspaper to keep from offering to take the horse, for Abner did not like the preacher “any to hurt,” as he would have put it.

Dole did not care much for Abner either. They had engaged in several doctrinal discussions in which the preacher had waxed furious over some of Daniel's views, which he described as decidedly unorthodox. Daniel had kept his temper beautifully and had the appearance of being amused through it all, and this Dole found harder to forgive than anything Abner had said.

“You all have had some trouble, I heer, sence I saw you last,” said the preacher as he sat down and began to wipe his perspiring brow with a big handkerchief.

“Well, I reckon it mought be called that,” Abner replied, as he carefully folded his newspaper and put it into his coat-pocket. “None of us was expectin' of it an' it sorter bu'sted our calculations. Alf had laid out to put new high-back benches in Rock Crest, an' new lamps an' one thing another, an' it seems to me”--Abner wiped his too facile mouth--“like I heerd 'im say one day that you wasn't paid enough fer yore thunder, an' that he'd stir around an' see what could be done.” Abner's eyes twinkled. “But lawsy me! I reckon ef he kin possibly raise the scads to pay the tax on his investment next yeer he 'll do all the Lord expects.”

“Huh, I reckon!” grunted Dole, irritated as usual by Abner's double meaning. “I take it that the Lord hain't got much to do with human speculations one way or other.”

“Ef I just had that scamp that roped 'im in before me a minute I'd fix 'im,” said Abner. “Do you know what denomination Perkins belongs to?”

“No, I don't,” Dole blurted out, “an' what's more, I don't care.”

“Well, I acknowledge it sorter interests me,” went on our philosopher, in an inscrutable tone, “beca'se, brother Dole, you kin often trace a man' s good ur bad doin' s to his belief in Bible matters. Maybe you don't remember Jabe Lynan that stold Thad Wilson's stump-suckin' hoss an' was ketched an' put up. I was at the court-house in Darley when he received his sentence. His wife sent me to 'im to carry his pipe an' one thing or other--a pair o' socks an' other necessary tricks--a little can o' lye-soap, fer one thing. She hadn't the time to go, as she said she had a patch o' young corn to hoe out. I found 'im as happy as ef he was goin' off on a excursion. He laughed an' 'lowed it ud be some time 'fore he got back, an' I wondered what could 'a' made him so contented, so I made some inquiries on that line. I found that he was a firm believer in predestination, an' that what was to be was foreordained. He said that he firmly believed he was predestinated to go to the coal-mines fer hoss-stealin', an' that life was too short to be kickin' agin the Lord's way o' runnin' matters; besides, he said, he'd heerd that they issued a plug o'.tobacco a week to chawin' prisoners, an' he could prove that he was one o' that sort ef they'd look how he'd ground his jaw-teeth down to the gums.”

“Huh!” grunted Dole again, his sharp, gray eyes on Abner's face, as if he half believed that some of his own theories were being sneered at. It was true that he, being a Methodist, had not advocated a belief in predestination, but Abner Daniel had on more than one occasion shown a decided tendency to bunch all stringent religious opinions together and cast them down as out of date. When in doubt in a conversation with Abner, the preacher assumed a coldness on the outside that was often not consistent with the fires within him. “I don't see what all that's got to do with brother Bishop's mistake,” he said, frigidly, as he leaned back in his chair.

“It sets me to wonderin' what denomination Perkins belongs to, that's all,” said Abner, with another smile. “I know in reason he's a big Ike in some church in Atlanta, fer I never knowed a lawyer that wasn't foremost in that way o' doin' good. I 'll bet a hoe-cake he belongs to some highfalutin crowd o' worshippers that kneel down on saft cushions an' believe in scoopin' in all they kin in the Lord's name, an' that charity begins at home. I think that myse'f, brother Dole, fer thar never was a plant as hard to git rooted as charity is, an' a body ought to have it whar they kin watch it close. It 'll die a heap o' times ef you jest look at it, an' it mighty nigh always has bad soil ur a drougth to contend with.”

Just then Pole Baker, who has already been introduced to the reader, rode up to the fence and hitched his horse. He nodded to the two men on the veranda, and went round to the smoke-house to get a piece of bacon Bishop had promised to sell him on credit.

“Huh!” Dole grunted, and he crossed his long legs and swung his foot up and down nervously. He had the look of a man who was wondering why such insufferable bores as Abner should so often accompany a free dinner. He had never felt drawn to the man, and it irritated him to think that just when his mental faculties needed rest, Abner always managed to introduce the very topics which made it necessary for him to keep his wits about him.

“Take that feller thar,” Abner went on, referring to Baker. “He's about the hardest customer in this county, an' yet he's bein' managed right now. He's got a wife an' seven children an' is a holy terror when he gits drunk. He used to be the biggest dare-devil moonshiner in all these mountains; but Alan kept befriendin' 'im fust one way an' another tell he up one day an' axed Alan what he could do fer 'im. Alan ain't none o' yore shoutin' kind o' Christians. He shakes a nimble toe at a shindig when he wants to, an' knows the ace from a ten-spot; but he gits thar with every claw in the air when some 'n' has to be done. So, when Pole axed 'im that, Alan jest said, as quiet as ef he was axin' 'im fer a match to light a cigar, 'Quit yore moonshinin', Pole.' That was all he said. Pole looked 'im straight in the eye fer a minute, an' then said:

“'The hell you say! By God, Alan Bishop, you don't mean that!'

“'Yes, I do, Pole,' said Alan, 'quit! Quit smack off!'

“'You ax that as a favor?' said Pole.

“'Yes, as a favor,' said Alan, 'an' you are a-goin' to do it, too.'

“Then Pole begun to contend with 'im. 'You are a-axin' that beca'se you think I 'll be ketched up with,' he said; 'but I tell you the' ain't no man on the face o' the earth that could find my still now. You could stand in two feet of the door to it all day an' not find it if you looked fer it with a spy-glass. I kin make bug-juice all the rest o' my life an' sell it without bein' ketched.'

“'I want you to give it up,' said Alan, an' Pole did. It was like pullin' an eye-tooth, but Pole yanked it out. Alan is workin' on 'im now to git 'im to quit liquor, but that ain't so easy. He could walk a crack with a gallon sloshin' about in 'im. Now, as I started to say, Alan 'ain't got no cut-and-dried denomination, an' don't have to walk any particular kind o' foot-log to do his work, but it's a-goin' on jest the same. Now I don't mean no reflection on yore way o' hitchin' wings on folks, but I believe you could preach yore sermons--sech as they are--in Pole Baker's yeers till Gabriel blowed his lungs out, an' Pole ud still be moonshinin'. An' sometimes I think that sech fellers as Alan Bishop ort to be paid fer what they do in betterin' the world. I don't see why you fellers ort always to be allowed to rake in the jack-pot unless you'd accomplish more'n outsiders, that jest turn the'r hands to the job at odd times.”

Dole drew himself up straight and glared at the offender.

“I think that is a rather personal remark, brother Daniel,” he said, coldly.

“Well, maybe it is,” returned Abner; “but I didn't mean fer it to be. I've heerd you praise up certain preachers fer the good they was a-doin', an' I saw no harm in mentionin' Alan's method. I reckon it's jest a case o' the shoe bein' on another foot. I was goin' to tell you how this misfortune o' Alf's had affected Pole; he's been like a crazy man ever since it happened. It's been all Alan could do to keep 'im from goin' to Atlanta and chokin' the life out o' Perkins. Pole got so mad when he wouldn't let 'im go that he went off cussin' 'im fer all he was worth. I wonder what sort of a denomination a man ud fit into that 'll cuss his best friends black an' blue beca'se they won't let 'im fight fer 'em. Yes, he 'll fight, an' ef he ever does jine the ranks above he 'll do the work o' ten men when thar's blood to spill. I seed 'im in a row once durin' election when he was leggin' fer a friend o' his'n; he stood right at the polls an' wanted to slug every man that voted agin 'im. He knocked three men's teeth down the'r throats an' bunged up two more so that they looked like they had on false-faces.”

Here the preacher permitted himself to laugh. Being a fighting man himself, his heart warmed towards a man who seemed to be born to that sort of thing.

“He looks like he could do a sight of it,” was his comment.

At this juncture the subject of the conversation came round the house, carrying a big piece of bacon wrapped in a tow grain-bag.

“Say thar, Pole,” Abner called out to the long, lank fellow. “We are a-goin' to have preachin' at Rock Crest to-morrow; you'd better have a shirt washed an' hung out to dry. They are a-beatin' the bushes fer yore sort.”

Pole Baker paused and brushed back his long, thick hair from his heavy eyebrows.

“I've been a-waitin' to see ef meetin' ever'd do you any good, Uncle Ab,” he laughed. “They tell me the more you go the wuss you git to be. Neil Filmore said t'other day ef you didn't quit shootin' off yore mouth they'd give you a trial in meetin'.”

Abner laughed good-naturedly as he spat over the edge of the veranda floor to the ground.

“That's been talked, I know, Pole,” he said, “but they don't mean it. They all know how to take my fun. But you come on to meetin'; it will do you good.”

“Well, maybe I will,” promised Pole, and he came to the steps, and, putting his bacon down, he bent towards them.

“It's a powerful hard matter to know exactly what's right an' what's wrong, in some things,” he said. “Now looky heer.” Thrusting his hand down into the pocket of his trousers he drew out a piece of quartz-rock with a lump of yellow gold about the size of a pea half embedded in it. “That thar's puore gold. I got it this away: A feller that used to be my right bower in my still business left me when I swore off an' went over to Dalonega to work in them mines. T'other day he was back on a visit, an' he give me this chunk an' said he'd found it. Now I know in reason that he nabbed it while he was at work, but I don't think I'd have a right to report it to the minin' company, an' so I'm jest obleeged to receive stolen goods. It ain't wuth more'n a dollar, they tell me, an' I 'll hang on to it, I reckon, ruther'n have a laborin' man discharged from a job. I'm tryin' my level best to live up to the line now, an' I don't know how to manage sech a thing as that. I've come to the conclusion that no harm will be done nohow, beca'se miners ain't too well paid anyway, an' ef I jest keep it an' don't git no good out of it, I won't be in it any more'n ef I'd never got hold o' the blamed thing.”

“But the law, brother Baker,” said Dole, solemnly; “without the law we'd be an awful lot o' people, an' every man ort to uphold it. Render the things that are Caesar's unto Caesar.”

Pole's face was blank for a moment, and Abner came to his rescue with a broad smile and sudden laugh.

“I reckon you don't remember him, Pole,” he said. “He's dead. He was a nigger that used to belong to old man Throgmartin in the cove. He used to be sech an awful thief during slavery days that it got to be a common sayin' that everything lyin' round mought as well be his'n, fer he'd take it sooner ur later, anyways.”

“I've heerd o' that nigger,” said Pole, much to the preacher's disgust, which grew as Pole continued: “Well, they say a feller that knows the law is broke an' don't report it is as guilty as the man who does the breakin'. Now, Mr. Dole, you know how I come by this nugget, an' ef you want to do your full duty you 'll ride over to Dalonega an' report it to the right parties. I can't afford the trip.”

Abner laughed out at this, and then forced a serious look on his face. “That's what you railly ort to do, brother Dole,” he said. “Them Cæsars over thar ud appreciate it.”

Then Mrs. Bishop came out to shake hands with the preacher, and invited him to go to his room to wash his face and hands. As the tall man followed his hostess away, Abner winked slyly at Pole and laughed under his long, scrawny hand.

“Uncle Ab, you ort to be killed,” smiled Pole. “You've been settin' heer the last half-hour pokin' fun at that feller, an' you know it. Well, I'm goin' on home. Sally's a-goin' to fry some o' this truck fer me, an' I'm as hungry as a bear.”

A few minutes after he had gone, Dole came out of his room and sat down in his chair again. “That seems to be a sorter bright young man,” he remarked.

“As bright as a new dollar,” returned Abner, in a tone of warm admiration. “Did you notice that big, wedge-shaped head o' his'n? It's plumb full o' brains. One day a feller come down to Filmore's store. He made a business o' feelin' o' heads an' writin' out charts at twenty-five cents apiece. He didn't waste much time on the rest o' the scabs he examined; but when he got to Pole's noggin he talked fer a good hour. I never heerd the like. He said ef his talents had been properly directed Pole ud 'a' made a big public man. He said he hadn't run across sech a head in a month o' Sundays. He was right, you bet, an' every one o' the seven brats Pole's got is jest as peert as he is. They are a-growin' up in idleness an' rags, too. I wisht I could meet some o' them dum big Yankees that are a-sendin' the'r money down heer an' buildin' fine schools to educate niggers an' neglectin' the'r own race beca'se it fit agin 'em. You cayn't hardly beat larnin' into a nigger's head, an' it ud be only common-sense to spend money whar it ud do the most good. I 'ain't got nothin' agin a nigger bein' larnt to read an' write, but I cayn't stomach the'r bein' forced ahead o' deservin' white folks sooner 'n the Lord counted on. Them kind o' Yankees is the same sort that makes pets o' dogs, an' pampers 'em up when pore white children is in need of food an' affection.”

“Pole looks like he had natural capacity,” said Dole. He was fond of conversing with Abner on any topic except that of religious matters.

“He'd make a bang-up detective,” laughed Abner. “One day I was at Filmore's store. Neil sometimes, when he's rushed, gits Pole to clerk fer 'im, beca'se he's quick at figures. It happened that Pole had the store to 'imse'f one day when Neil had gone off to cut down a bee-tree with a passle o' neighbors, an' a triflin' feller come in an' begun to nose about. An' when Pole's back was turned to weigh up some cotton in the seed he stole a pocket-book out o' the show-case. I reckon Pole didn't like his looks much nohow, fer as soon as the skunk had gone he begun to look about to see ef he'd tuck anything. All at once he missed the pocket-book, an' told Neil that night that he was mighty nigh shore the feller lifted it, but he couldn't railly swear to it. About a week after that he seed the same feller comin' down the road headed fer the store on his gray mule. Me 'n' Neil was both thar an' Pole hustled us in the back room, an' told us to stay thar. He said he was a-goin' to find out ef the feller stold the book. Neil was afeerd of a row an' tried to prevent 'im, but he jest shoved us back an' shet the door on us. Neil got 'im a crack in the partition an' I found me a knothole.

“The feller hitched an' come in an' said howdy-do, an' started to take a cheer nigh the door, but Pole stopped 'im.

“'Come heer to the show-case,' ses he; 'I want to show you some 'n'.'The feller went, an' I seed Pole yank out the box 'at had the rest o' the pocket-books in it. 'Look y'heer,' Pole said, in a loud, steady voice--you could 'a' heerd 'im clean to the creek--'look y'heer. The regular price o' these books is fifty cents; that's what we sell 'em fer; but you've got to run yore hand down in yore pocket an' give me a dollar fer one quicker'n you ever made a trade in yore life.'

“'What in the hell do you mean?' the feller said.

“'I mean exactly what I said, an' you are a-losin' time.' said Pole, talkin' louder an' louder. 'The price is fifty cents; but you got to gi'me a dollar fer one. Haul 'er out, my friend; haul 'er out! It 'll be the cheapest thing you ever bought in yore life.'

“The feller was as white as a sheet. He gulped two or three times 'fore he spoke, then he said: 'I know what you think; you think I took one t'other day when I was lookin' in the show-case; but you are mistaken.'

“'I never said a word about you takin' one,' Pole yelled at 'im, 'but you'd better yank out that dollar an' buy one; you need it.'

“The feller did it. I heerd the money clink as he laid it on the glass an' I knowed he was convicted.

“'They are only wuth fifty cents,' he said, kinder faint-like.

“'Yo're a liar,' Pole yelled at 'im, 'fer you've jest paid a dollar fer one on yore own accord. Now I 'll jest give you two minutes to straddle that mule. Ef you don't I 'll take you to the sheriff myself, you damned thief.

“'I've always done my tradin' heer,' said the feller, thinkin' that ud sorter pacify Pole, but he said: 'Yes, an' yore stealin', too, I reckon, you black-livered jailbird. Git out, git out!'

“Me 'n' Neil come in when the feller'd gone, but Pole was actually too mad to speak. 'He got off too durned light,' he said, after a while. 'I could 'a' sold 'im a big bill o' goods at a hundred per cent, profit, fer he had plenty o' money. Now he's ridin' off laughin' at me.'”

X

[Illustration: 9086]

EIL FILMORE'S store was about half a mile from Bishop's house, at the crossing of the Darley road and another leading into East Tennessee. Alan had gone down there one day to engage white labor to work in his growing cotton, negroes being scarce, owing to the tendency of that race to flock into the towns. With the aid of Pole Baker, who was clerking that day for Filmore, he soon employed the men he wanted and started to walk back home. On the way he was overtaken by his uncle, who was returning from Darley in his wagon.

“Hold on thar,” the old man called out; “ef you are a-goin' home I 'll rest yore legs.”

Alan smiled as he climbed up into the seat by the old man.

“I shall certainly appreciate it,” he said. “I'm tired out to-day.”

“I sorter thought you looked flabbergasted,” returned Abner, as he swung his whip over the backs of his sleek horses. “Well, I reckon I could afford to give you a ride. I hauled that cuss Dole three miles goin' t'other way. He had the cheek to yell at me from Habbersham's gin-house an' axed me ef I'd haul 'im. Then he kept me waitin' till he'd helt prayer an' read to the family.”

“You don't seem to like him,” said Alan. “I've noticed that for some time.”

“I reckon I don't to any great extent,” said Abner, clucking to his tired horses; “but it ain't raily to my credit. A feller's wrong som 'er's, Alan, that allows hisse'f to hate anything the Lord ever made. I've struggled agin that proposition fer twenty-five yeer. All this talk about the devil makin' the bad an' the Lord the good is talk through a hat. Bad things was made 'fore the devil ever jumped from his high estate ur he'd never preferred a fork to a harp. I've tuck notice, too, that the wust things I ever seed was sometimes at the root o' the best. Manure is a bad thing, but a cake of it will produce a daisy bigger 'n any in the field. Dole makes me gag sometimes; but as narrer as he is twixt the eyes, he may do some good. I reckon that hell-fire sermon he give us last August made some of the crowd sweat out a little o' the'r meanness. I'd 'a' been more merciful on sech a hot day, though. He mought 'a' reserved that harangue fer some cold day in December when the stove-flues wouldn't work. Ef I'd 'a' been a-goin' tell about future torment that hot day I'd 'a' said that every lost soul was made to set on a cake o' ice in a windy spot through all eternity, an' I'd 'a' started out by singin' 'On Greenland's Icy Mountain.' But that ain't what I axed you to git in my wagon fer.”

“You didn't intend to try to convert me, then?”

“No, I didn't, fer you are jest my sort of a Christian--better'n me, a sight, fer you don't shoot off yore bazoo on one side or t'other, an' that's the habit I'm tryin' to quit. Ef I could hold in when Dole gits to spoutin' I'd be a better man. I think I 'll do better now. I've got a tenpenny nail in my pocket an' whenever he starts in I'm goin' to bite it an' keep my holt on it till he stops. Yes, you are jest my sort of a Christian. You believe in breathin' fresh air into yore windpipe, thankin' God with a clear eye an' a good muscle, an' takin' what He gives you an' axin' 'Im to pass more ef it's handy. You know the Lord has sent you a invite to His table, an' you believe in eatin' an' drinkin' an' makin' merry, jest like you'd have a body do that was stoppin' over night with you. Yes, I wanted to say some 'n' else to you. As I got to the widder Snowden's house, a mile this side o' Darley, she came out an' axed me ef I'd object to deliverin' a couple o' smoke-cured hams to a feller in town that had ordered 'em. Of course that's what a' old bach' like me 's heer fer, so I let 'er fling 'em in the back end.”

The speaker paused and smiled knowingly, and Alan noticed that he slowed his horses up by drawing firmly on the reins as if he feared that their arrival at the farm-house might interrupt what he had to say.

“Well,” said Alan, “you delivered the hams?”

“Yes.” Abner was looking straight ahead of him. “They was fer Colonel Seth Barclay. I driv' up to the side gate, after I'd helloed in front till I was hoarse, an' who do you reckon come trippin' out o' the dinin'-room?

It was _her_. Ef you hain't never ketched 'er off'n her guard round the house, you've missed a treat. Durned ef I don't like 'er better without a hat on than with all the fluffy flamdoodle that gals put on when they go out. She was as neat as a new pin, an' seemed powerful glad to see me. That made me bless the widder Snowden fer sendin' me thar. She said the cook was off som 'er's, an' that old nigger Ned, the stable-man, was in the garden-patch behind the house, so she was thar by 'erse'f. She actually looked like she wanted to tote in the hams 'erse'f ruther'n bother me; but you bet my old bones hopped off'n this seat quicker'n you could say Jack Robinson with yore mouth open. I was afeerd my team wouldn't stand, fer fellers was a-scootin' by on bicycles; but I tuck the hams to the back porch an' put 'em on a shelf out'n re'ch o' the dogs. Then I went back to my wagon. She follered me to the fence, an' I noticed that some 'n' was wrong with 'er. She looked so funny, an' droopy about the mouth, an' kept a-talkin' like she was afeerd I'd fly off. She axed all about Adele an' how she was a-makin' out down in Atlanta, an' said she'd heerd that Sis was mighty popular with the young men, an' from that she axed about my craps an' the meetin' goin' on at Big Bethel. Finally she got right white about the mouth, an' said, kinder shaky, that she was afeerd you was mad about some 'n' her pa'd said about you, an' I never seed a woman as nigh cryin' as she was without doin' of it.

“I told 'er I was at the fust of it; but I'd noticed how worried you've looked heer of late, an' so I told 'er I'd been afeerd some 'n' had come betwixt you two. Then she put her head down on the top rail o' the fence an' helt it thar fer a good minute. After a while she looked up an' told me all about it an' ended by axin' me ef I thought she was to blame in the matter. I told 'er no; but her old skunk of a daddy had acted sech a fool that I couldn't hold in. I reckon I told 'er jest about what I thought o' him an' the more I raked up agin 'im the better she seemed pleased. I tried to pin' er down to what she'd be willin' to do in a pinch ef her pa continued to hold out agin you, but she was too sharp to commit 'erse'f. It jest looked like she wanted to make up with you an' didn't want no row nuther.”

The horses stopped to drink at a clear stream of water which ran across the road on a bed of brown pebbles. The bridles were too tight to allow them to lower their heads, so Alan went out on the heavy tongue between the pair and unfastened the reins. When he had regained his seat he told the old man in detail all that had happened at the dance at the hotel, ending with the advice he had received from Rayburn Miller.

“I don't know about that,” Abner said. “Maybe Miller could call a halt like that an' go on like nothin' had happened. I don't say he could nur couldn't; but it's fool advice. You mought miss it, an' regret it to yore dyin' day.”

Alan looked at him in some surprise; he had hardly expected just that stand on the part of a confirmed old bachelor like his uncle. The old man's glance swept dreamily over the green fields on either side of the road across which the red rays of the setting sun were streaming. Then he took a deep breath and lowered the reins till they rested on the backs of the horses.

“My boy,” he began, “I'm a good mind to tell you some 'n' that I hain't mentioned fer mighty nigh forty yeer. I don't believe anything but my intrust in that town gal an' you would make me bring it up. Huh! Ray Miller says you kin pass 'er over jest as ef you'd never seed 'er, does he? An' go on an' pick an' choose agin. Huh! I wasn't as old as you are by five yeer when the one I'm talkin' about passed away, jest a week after me 'n' her 'd come to a understandin'. I've seed women, women, women, sence I seed 'er corpse that day amongst all that pile o' wild flowers that old an' young fetched from the woods whar me 'n' 'er used to walk, but ef I live to be as old as that thar hill I 'll never forget my feelin'. I kin see 'er right now as plain as I did then, an' sometimes my heart aches as bad. I reckon you know now why I never got married. Folks has poked a lots o' fun at me, an' I tuck it as it was intended, but a lots o' times what they said made me suffer simply awful. They've picked out this un an' that un, from spring chickins to hags o' all ages, shapes, an' sizes; but the very thought o' givin' anybody her place made me sick. Thar never was but one fer me. I may be a fool, but I believe I was intended fer her. Shucks! Sech skip-abouts as Miller may talk sech bosh as that, but it's because the Lord never give 'em the glory o' the other thing. It larnt me the truth about the after-life; I know thar's a time to come, an' a blessed one, ur the Lord never would 'a' give me that taste of it. She's som 'er's out o' harm's way, an' when me 'n' her meet I 'll not have a wrinkle, an' I 'll be able to walk as spry an' hopeful as I did when she was heer. Thar ort to be punishment reserved fer hard-headed fools that separate lovin' young folks beca'se one ur t'other hain't jest so many dollars tied in a rag. Don't you listen to Miller. I don't say you ort to plunge right in an' make the old man mad; but don't give up. Ef she's what I think she is, an' she sees you ain't a-goin' to run after no fresh face, she 'll stick to you like the bark on a tree. The wait won't hurt nuther one of you, either. My wait ain't a-hurtin' me, an' yore'n won't you. I never seed a young woman I liked better 'n I do the one you selected, an' I've sent up many a petition that you'd both make it all right.”

The old man raised his reins and clucked to his horses.

“Uncle Ab,” said Alan, “you've made a better man of me. I've had a lot of trouble over this, but you make me hope. I've tried to give her up, but I simply cannot do it.”

“She ain't a-goin' to give you up, nuther,” replied Abner; “that's the purty part about it. Thar ain't no give up in 'er. She ain't that sort. She's goin' to give that daddy o' her'n a tussle.”

XI

[Illustration: 9092]

NE morning early in July, as Alan was passing Pole Baker's cabin, on his way to Darley, Pole's wife came out to the fence and stopped him. She was a slender, ill-clad woman, who had once been pretty, and her face still had a sort of wistful attractiveness that was appealing to one who knew what she had been through since her marriage.

“Are you goin' to town, Mr. Alan?” she asked, nervously.

“Yes, Mrs. Baker,” Alan answered. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

She did not reply at once, but came through the little gate, which swung on wooden hinges, and stood looking up at him, a thin, hesitating hand on his bridle-rein.

“I'm afeerd some 'n' s happened to Pole,” she faltered. “He hain't been home fer two whole days an' nights. It's about time fer 'im to spree agin, an' I'm powerful afeerd he's in trouble. I 'lowed while you was in town that you mought inquire about 'im, an' let me know when you come back. That ud sorter free my mind a little. I didn't close my eyes all last night.”

“I 'll do all I can, Mrs. Baker,” Alan promised. “But you mustn't worry; Pole can take care of himself, drunk or sober. I 'll be back to-night.”

Alan rode on, leaving the pathetic figure at the gate looking after him. “I wonder,” he mused, “what Uncle Ab would say about love that has that sort of reward. Poor woman! Pole was her choice, and she has to make the best of it. Perhaps she loves the good that's in the rascal.”

He found Rayburn Miller at his desk, making out some legal document. “Take a seat,” said Miller, “I 'll be through in a minute. What's the news out your way?” he asked, as he finished his work and put down his pen.

“Nothing new, I believe,” said Alan. “I've been away for two days. Not having anything else to do, I made it my business to ride over every foot of my father's big investment, and, to tell you the truth, I've come to you with a huge idea. Don't laugh; I can't help it. It popped in my head and sticks, that's all.”

“Good. Let me have it.”

“Before I tell you what it is,” said Alan, “I want you to promise not to ridicule me. I'm as green as a gourd in business matters; but the idea has hold of me, and I don't know that even your disapproval will make me let it loose.”

“That's a good way to put it,” laughed Miller. “The idea has hold of you and you can't let it loose. It applies more closely to investments than anything else. Once git into a deal and you are afraid to let it go--like the chap that held the calf and called for help.”

“Well, here it is,” said Alan. “I've made up my mind that a railroad can--and shall--be built from these two main lines to my father's lumber bonanza.” Miller whistled. A broad smile ingulfed the pucker of his lips, and then his face dropped into seriousness. A look almost of pity for his friend's credulity and inexperience came into his eyes.

“I must say you don't want a little thing, my boy,” he said, indulgently. “Remember you are talking to a fellow that has rubbed up against the moneyed world considerable for a chap raised in the country. The trouble with you, Alan, is that you have got heredity to contend with; you are a chip off the old block in spite of your belonging to a later generation. You have inherited your father's big ideas. You are a sort of Colonel Sellers, who sees millions in everything you look at.”

Alan' s face fell, but there remained in it a tenacious expression that won Miller's admiration even while he deplored it. There was, too, a ring of confidence in the young farmer's tone when he replied:

“How much would a railroad through that country, eighteen miles in length, cost?”

“Nothing but a survey by an expert could answer that, even approximately,” said the lawyer, leaning back in his creaking chair. “If you had the right of way, a charter from the State, and no big tunnels to make nor long bridges to build, you might, I should say, construct the road alone--without locomotives and rolling-stock generally--for a little matter of one hundred and fifty thousand. I don't know; I'm only guessing; but it wouldn't fall under that estimate.”

“I didn't think it would,” replied Alan, growing more enthusiastic. “Now then, if there _was_ a railroad to my father's property, how much would his twenty thousand acres be worth?”

Miller smiled again and began to figure on a scrap of paper with a pencil. “Oh, as for that,” he said, “it would really be worth--standing uncut, unsawn, including a world of tan-bark--at least twenty-five dollars an acre, say a clear half million for it all. Oh, I know it looks as plain as your nose on your face; things always do on paper. It looks big and it shines; so does a spider-web in the sunshine to a fly; but you don't want to be no fly, my boy; and you don't want any spider-webs--on the brain, anyway.”

Alan stood up and walked to the door and back; finally he shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don't care what you say,” he declared, bringing his hand down firmly on Miller's desk. “It will pay, as sure as I'm alive. There's no getting around the facts. It will take a quarter of a million investment to market a half-million-dollar bunch of timber with the land thrown in and the traffic such a road would secure to help pay expenses. There are men in the world looking for such opportunities and I'm going to give somebody a chance.”

“You have not looked deep enough into it, my boy,” mildly protested Miller. “You haven't figured on the enormous expense of running such a road and the dead loss of the investment after the lumber is moved out. You'd have a railroad property worth a quarter of a million on your hands. I can't make you see my position. I simply say to you that I wouldn't touch a deal like that with a ten-foot pole.”

Alan laughed good-naturedly as he laid his hand on his friend's shoulder. “I reckon you think I'm off,” he said, “but sooner or later I'm going to put this thing through. Do you hear me? I 'll put it through if it takes ten years to do it. I want to make the old man feel that he has not made such a fool of himself; I want to get even with the Thompson crowd, and Perkins, and everybody that is now poking fun at a helpless old man. I shall begin by raising money some way or other to pay taxes, and hold on to every inch of the ground.”

Miller's glance fell before the fierce fire of Alan's eyes, and for the first time his tone wavered.

“Well,” he said, “you may have the stuff in you that big speculators are made of, and I may simply be prejudiced against the scheme on account of your father's blind plunging, and what some men would call over-cautiousness on my part. I may be trying to prevent what you really ought to do; but I am advising you as a friend. I only know _I_ would be more cautious. Of course, you may try. You'd not lose in doing that; in fact, you'd gain experience. I should say that big dealers in lumber are the men you ought to see first. They know the values of such investments, and they are reaching out in all directions now. They have cleaned up the timber near the railroads.”

XII

[Illustration: 9097]

ILLER accompanied Alan to the door. Old Trabue stood in front of his office in his shirt-sleeves, his battered silk hat on the back part of his head. He was fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan and freely using his handkerchief on his brow. He bowed cordially to Alan and came towards him.

“I want to ask you,” he began, “as Pole Baker any way of raisin' money?”

“Not that I know of,” laughed Alan. “I don't know whether he's got a clear title to the shirt on his back. He owes everybody out our way. My father is supplying him on time now.”

“That was my impression,” said Trabue. “He wanted me to defend 'im the other day, but he couldn't satisfy me about the fee, an' I let him go. He first said he could give me a lien on a mule, but he finally admitted that it wasn't his.”

“He's not in trouble, is he?” exclaimed Alan, suddenly recalling Mrs. Baker's uneasiness.

Trabue looked at Miller, who stood leaning in the doorway, and laughed. “Well, I reckon he might call it that. That chap owned the town two days ago. He got blind, stavin' drunk, an' wanted to whip us from one end o' the place to the other. The marshals are afraid of 'im, for they know he 'll shoot at the drop of a hat, an' the butt of it was stickin' out o' his hippocket in plain sight. Was you thar, Rayburn? Well, it was better 'n a circus. Day before yesterday thar was a sort o' street temperance lecturer in front o' the Johnston House, speakin' on a dry-goods box. He had a lot o' gaudy pictures illustratin' the appearance of a drinkin' man' s stomach an' liver, compared to one in a healthy condition. He was a sort of a snide faker, out fer what he could git dropped in a hat, an' Pole was sober enough to git on to his game. Pole stood thar with the rest, jest about able to stand, an' that was all. Finally, when the feller got warmed up an' got to screechin', Pole begun to deny what he was sayin'. As fast as he'd make a statement Pole would flatly deny it. The feller on the box didn't know what a tough customer he had to handle or he'd 'a' gone slow. As it was, he p'inted a finger o' scorn at Pole an' helt 'im up fer a example. Pole wasn't sober by a long shot, but you'd 'a' thought he was, fer he was as steady as a post. He kept grinnin', as cool as a cucumber, an' sayin', 'Now you know yo' re a-lyin', stranger--jest a-lyin' to get a few dimes drapped in yore hat. You know nobody's stomach don't look like that durn chromo. You never seed inside of a drinkin' man, an' yo' re the biggest liar that ever walked the earth.' This made the crowd laugh at the little, dried-up feller, an' he got as mad as Old Nick. He begun to tell Pole his liver was swelled from too much whiskey, an' that he'd bet he was jest the sort to beat his wife. Most of us thought that ud make Pole jump on 'im, but he seemed to enjoy naggin' the feller too much to sp'ile it by a fight. A nigger boy had been carryin' round a bell and a sign advertisin' Webb's auction sale, an' stopped to see the fun. Pole heerd the tinkle of the bell, an' tuck it an' begun t