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Title: The circuit rider
A tale of the Heroic Age
Author: Edward Eggleston
Release date: December 5, 2024 [eBook #74840]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: J. B. Ford & Company
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CIRCUIT RIDER ***
[Frontispiece: SPINNING-WHEEL AND RIFLE. _See page 56._]
THE
CIRCUIT RIDER
A Tale of the Heroic Age,
BY
EDWARD EGGLESTON,
_Author of "The Hoosier School-master" "The End of the
World," etc._
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness."--_Isaiah._
"----Beginners of a better time,
And glorying in their vows."--_Tennyson._
NEW YORK:
J. B. FORD & COMPANY
1874.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by
J. B. FORD & COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.
TO MY COMRADES OF OTHER YEARS,
THE BRAVE AND SELF-SACRIFICING MEN WITH WHOM I HAD THE
HONOR TO BE ASSOCIATED IN A FRONTIER MINISTRY,
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I.--The Corn Shucking
II.--The Frolic
III.--Going to Meeting
IV.--A Battle
V.--A Crisis
VI.--The Fall Hunt
VII.--Treeing a Preacher
VIII.--A Lesson in Syntax
IX.--The Coming of the Circuit Rider
X.--Patty in the Spring-House
XI.--The Voice in the Wilderness
XII.--Mr. Brady Prophesies
XIII.--Two to One
XIV.--Kike's Sermon
XV.--Morton's Retreat
XVI.--Short Shrift
XVII.--Deliverance
XVIII.--The Prodigal Returns
XIX.--Patty
XX.--The Conference at Hickory Ridge
XXI.--Convalescence
XXII.--The Decision
XXIII.--Russell Bigelow's Sermon
XXIV.--Drawing the Latch-String in
XXV.--Ann Eliza
XXVI.--Engagement
XXVII.--The Camp-Meeting
XXVIII.--Patty and her Patient
XXIX.--Patty's Journey
XXX.--The Schoolmaster and the Widow
XXXI.--Kike
XXXII.--Pinkey's Discovery
XXXIII.--The Alabaster Box Broken
XXXIV.--The Brother
XXXV.--Plnkey and Ann Eliza
XXXVI.--Getting the Answer
ILLUSTRATIONS.
1. Spinning-wheel and Rifle ... Frontispiece
2. Captain Lumsden
3. Mort Goodwin
4. Homely S'manthy
5. Patty and Jemima
6. Little Gabe's Discomfiture
7. In the Stable
8. Mort, Dolly and Kike
9. Good Bye!
10. The Altercation
11. The Irish Schoolmaster
12. Electioneering
13. Patty in her Chamber
14. Colonel Wheeler's Dooryard
15. Patty in the Spring-House
16. Job Goodwin
17. Two to One
18. Gambling
19. A Last Hope
20. The Choice
21. Going to Conference
22. Convalescence
23. The Connecticut Peddler
24. Ann Eliza
25. Facing a Mob
26. "Hair-hung and Breeze-shaken"
27. The School-Teacher of Hickory Ridge
28. The Reunion
29. The Brothers
30. An Accusing Memory
31. At the Spring-House Again
PREFACE.
Whatever is incredible in this story is true. The tale I have to
tell will seem strange to those who know little of the social life of
the West at the beginning of this century. These sharp contrasts of
corn-shuckings and camp-meetings, of wild revels followed by wild
revivals; these contacts of highwayman and preacher; this _mélange_
of picturesque simplicity, grotesque humor and savage ferocity, of
abandoned wickedness and austere piety, can hardly seem real to those
who know the country now. But the books of biography and
reminiscence which preserve the memory of that time more than justify
what is marvelous in these pages.
Living, in early boyhood, on the very ground where my
grandfather--brave old Indian-fighter!--had defended his family in a
block-house built in a wilderness by his own hands, I grew up
familiar with this strange wild life. At the age when other children
hear fables and fairy stories, my childish fancy was filled with
traditions of battles with Indians and highwaymen. Instead of
imaginary giant-killers, children then heard of real Indian-slayers;
instead of Blue-Beards, we had Murrell and his robbers; instead of
Little Red Riding Hood's wolf, we were regaled with the daring
adventures of the generation before us, in conflict with wild beasts
on the very road we traveled to school. In many households the old
customs still held sway; the wool was carded, spun, dyed, woven, cut
and made up in the house: the corn-shucking, wood-chopping, quilting,
apple-peeling and country "hoe-down" had not yet fallen into disuse.
In a true picture of this life neither the Indian nor the hunter is
the center-piece, but the circuit-rider. More than any one else, the
early circuit preachers brought order out of this chaos. In no other
class was the real heroic element so finely displayed. How do I
remember the forms and weather-beaten visages of the old preachers,
whose constitutions had conquered starvation and exposure--who had
survived swamps, alligators, Indians, highway robbers and bilious
fevers! How was my boyish soul tickled with their anecdotes of rude
experience--how was my imagination wrought upon by the recital of
their hair-breadth escapes! How was my heart set afire by their
contagious religious enthusiasm, so that at eighteen years of age I
bestrode the saddle-bags myself and laid upon a feeble frame the
heavy burden of emulating their toils! Surely I have a right to
celebrate them, since they came so near being the death of me.
It is not possible to write of this heroic race of men without
enthusiasm. But nothing has been further from my mind than the
glorifying of a sect. If I were capable of sectarian pride, I should
not come upon the platform of Christian union* to display it. There
are those, indeed, whose sectarian pride will be offended that I have
frankly shown the rude as well as the heroic side of early Methodism.
I beg they will remember the solemn obligations of a novelist to tell
the truth. Lawyers and even ministers are permitted to speak
entirely on one side. But no man is worthy to be called a novelist
who does not endeavor with his whole soul to produce the higher form
of history, by writing truly of men as they are, and dispassionately
of those forms of life that come within his scope.
* "The Circuit Rider" originally appeared as a serial in _The
Christian Union_.
Much as I have laughed at every sort of grotesquerie, I could not
treat the early religious life of the West otherwise than with the
most cordial sympathy and admiration. And yet this is not a
"religious novel," one in which all the bad people are as bad as they
can be, and all the good people a little better than they can be. I
have not even asked myself what may be the "moral." The story of any
true life is wholesome, if only the writer will tell it simply,
keeping impertinent preachment of his own out of the way.
Doubtless I shall hopelessly damage myself with some good people by
confessing in the start that, from the first chapter to the last,
this is a love-story. But it is not my fault. It is God who made
love so universal that no picture of human life can be complete where
love is left out.
E. E.
BROOKLYN, _March_, 1874.
"NEC PROPTER VITAM, VIVENDI PERDERE CAUSAS."
THE CIRCUIT RIDER
A TALE OF THE HEROIC AGE.
_CHAPTER I._
THE CORN-SHUCKING.
Subtraction is the hardest "ciphering" in the book. Fifty or sixty
years off the date at the head of your letter is easy enough to the
"organ of number," but a severe strain on the imagination. It is
hard to go back to the good old days your grandmother talks
about--that golden age when people were not roasted alive in a
sleeping coach, but gently tipped over a toppling cliff by a drunken
stage-driver.
Grand old times were those in which boys politely took off their hats
to preacher or schoolmaster, solacing their fresh young hearts
afterward by making mouths at the back of his great-coat. Blessed
days! in which parsons wore stiff, white stocks, and walked with
starched dignity, and yet were not too good to drink peach-brandy and
cherry-bounce with folks; when Congressmen were so honorable that
they scorned bribes, and were only kept from killing one another by
the exertions of the sergeant-at-arms. It was in those old times of
the beginning of the reign of Madison, that the people of the
Hissawachee settlement, in Southern Ohio, prepared to attend "the
corn-shuckin' down at Cap'n Lumsden's."
There is a peculiar freshness about the entertainment that opens the
gayeties of the season. The shucking at Lumsden's had the advantage
of being set off by a dim back-ground of other shuckings, and
quiltings, and wood-choppings, and apple-peelings that were to
follow, to say nothing of the frolics pure and simple--parties
alloyed with no utilitarian purposes.
Lumsden's corn lay ready for husking, in a whitey-brown ridge five or
six feet high. The Captain was not insensible to considerations of
economy. He knew quite well that it would be cheaper in the long run
to have it husked by his own farm hands; the expense of an
entertainment in whiskey and other needful provisions, and the
wasteful handling of the corn, not to mention the obligation to send
a hand to other huskings, more than counter-balanced the gratuitous
labor. But who can resist the public sentiment that requires a man
to be a gentleman according to the standard of his neighbors?
Captain Lumsden had the reputation of doing many things which were
oppressive, and unjust, but to have "shucked" his own corn would have
been to forfeit his respectability entirely. It would have placed
him on the Pariah level of the contemptible Connecticut Yankee who
had bought a place farther up the creek, and who dared to husk his
own corn, practise certain forbidden economies, and even take pay for
such trifles as butter, and eggs, and the surplus veal of a calf
which he had killed. The propriety of "ducking" this Yankee had been
a matter of serious debate. A man "as tight as the bark on a beech
tree," and a Yankee besides, was next door to a horse-thief.
So there was a corn-shucking at Cap'n Lumsden's. The "women-folks"
turned the festive occasion into farther use by stretching a quilt on
the frames, and having the ladies of the party spend the afternoon in
quilting and gossiping--the younger women blushing inwardly, and
sometimes outwardly, with hope and fear, as the names of certain
young men were mentioned. Who could tell what disclosures the
evening frolic might produce? For, though "circumstances alter
cases," they have no power to change human nature; and the natural
history of the delightful creature which we call a young woman was
essentially the same in the Hissawachee Bottom, sixty odd years ago,
that it is on Murray or Beacon Street Hill in these modern times.
Difference enough of manner and costume--linsey-woolsey, with a rare
calico now and then for Sundays; the dropping of "kercheys" by polite
young girls--but these things are only outward. The dainty girl that
turns away from my story with disgust, because "the people are so
rough," little suspects how entirely of the cuticle is her
refinement--how, after all, there is a touch of nature that makes
Polly Ann and Sary Jane cousins-german to Jennie, and Hattie, and
Blanche, and Mabel.
It was just dark--the rising full moon was blazing like a bonfire
among the trees on Campbell's Hill, across the creek--when the
shucking party gathered rapidly around the Captain's ridge of corn.
The first comers waited for the others, and spent the time looking at
the heap, and speculating as to how many bushels it would "shuck
out." Captain Lumsden, an active, eager man, under the medium size,
welcomed his neighbors cordially, but with certain reserves. That is
to say, he spoke with hospitable warmth to each new comer, but
brought his voice up at the last like a whip-cracker; there was a
something in what Dr. Rush would call the "vanish" of his
enunciation, which reminded the person addressed that Captain
Lumsden, though he knew how to treat a man with politeness, as became
an old Virginia gentleman, was not a man whose supremacy was to be
questioned for a moment. He reached out his hand, with a "Howdy,
Bill?" "Howdy, Jeems? how's your mother gittin', eh?" and "Hello,
Bob, I thought you had the shakes--got out at last, did you?" Under
this superficial familiarity a certain reserve of conscious
superiority and flinty self-will never failed to make itself
appreciated.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN LUMSDEN.]
Let us understand ourselves. When we speak of Captain Lumsden as an
old Virginia gentleman, we speak from his own standpoint. In his
native state his hereditary rank was low--his father was an
"upstart," who, besides lacking any claims to "good blood," had made
money by doubtful means. But such is the advantage of emigration
that among outside barbarians the fact of having been born in "Ole
Virginny" was credential enough. Was not the Old Dominion the mother
of presidents, and of gentlemen? And so Captain Lumsden was
accustomed to tap his pantaloons with his raw-hide riding-whip, while
he alluded to his relationships to "the old families," the Carys, the
Archers, the Lees, the Peytons, and the far-famed William and Evelyn
Bird; and he was especially fond of mentioning his relationship to
that family whose aristocratic surname is spelled "Enroughty," while
it is mysteriously and inexplicably pronounced "Darby," and to the
"Tolivars," whose name is spelled "Taliaferro." Nothing smacks more
of hereditary nobility than a divorce betwixt spelling and
pronouncing. In all the Captain's strutting talk there was this
shade of truth, that he was related to the old families through his
wife. For Captain Lumsden would have scorned a _prima facie_ lie.
But, in his fertile mind, the truth was ever germinal--little acorns
of fact grew to great oaks of fable.
How quickly a crowd gathers! While I have been introducing you to
Lumsden, the Captain has been shaking hands in his way, giving a
cordial grip, and then suddenly relaxing, and withdrawing his hand as
if afraid of compromising dignity, and all the while calling out,
"Ho, Tom! Howdy, Stevens? Hello, Johnson! is that you? Did come
after all, eh?"
When once the company was about complete, the next step was to divide
the heap. To do this, judges were selected, to wit: Mr. Butterfield,
a slow-speaking man, who was believed to know a great deal because he
said little, and looked at things carefully; and Jake Sniger, who
also had a reputation for knowing a great deal, because he talked
glibly, and was good at off-hand guessing. Butterfield looked at the
corn, first on one side, and then on the end of the heap. Then he
shook his head in uncertainty, and walked round to the other end of
the pile, squinted one eye, took sight along the top of the ridge,
measured its base, walked from one end to the other with long strides
as if pacing the distance, and again took bearings with one eye shut,
while the young lads stared at him with awe. Jake Sniger strode away
from the corn and took a panoramic view of it, as one who scorned to
examine anything minutely. He pointed to the left, and remarked to
his admirers that he "'low'd they was a heap sight more corn in the
left hand eend of the pile, but it was the long, yaller gourd-seed,
and powerful easy to shuck, while t'other eend wuz the leetle, flint,
hominy corn, and had a right smart sprinklin' of nubbins." He
"'low'd whoever got aholt of them air nubbins would git sucked in.
It was neck-and-neck twixt this ere and that air, and fer his own
part, he thought the thing mout be nigh about even, and had orter be
divided in the middle of the pile." Strange to say, Butterfield,
after all his sighting, and pacing, and measuring, arrived at the
same difficult and complex conclusion, which remarkable coincidence
served to confirm the popular confidence in the infallibility of the
two judges.
So the ridge of corn was measured, and divided exactly in the middle.
A fence rail, leaning against either side, marked the boundary
between the territories of the two parties. The next thing to be
done was to select the captains. Lumsden, as a prudent man, desiring
an election to the legislature, declined to appoint them, laughing
his chuckling kind of laugh, and saying, "Choose for yourselves,
boys, choose for yourselves."
Bill McConkey was on the ground, and there was no better husker. He
wanted to be captain on one side, but somebody in the crowd objected
that there was no one present who could "hold a taller dip to Bill's
shuckin."
"Whar's Mort Goodwin?" demanded Bill; "he's the one they say kin lick
me. I'd like to lay him out wunst."
"He ain't yer."
"That air's him a comin' through the cornstalks, I 'low," said Jake
Sniger, as a tall, well-built young man came striding hurriedly
through the stripped corn stalks, put two hands on the eight-rail
fence, and cleared it at a bound.
"That's him! that's his jump," said "little Kike," a nephew of
Captain Lumsden. "Couldn't many fellers do that eight-rail fence so
clean."
"Hello, Mort!" they all cried at once as he came up taking off his
wide-rimmed straw hat and wiping his forehead. "We thought you
wuzn't a comin'. Here, you and Conkey choose up."
[Illustration: MORT GOODWIN.]
"Let somebody else," said Morton, who was shy, and ready to give up
such a distinction to others.
"Backs out!" said Conkey, sneering.
"Not a bit of it," said Mort. "You don't appreciate kindness;
where's your stick?"
By tossing a stick from one to the other, and then passing the hand
of one above that of the other, it was soon decided that Bill
McConkey should have the first choice of men, and Morton Goodwin the
first choice of corn. The shuckers were thus all divided into two
parts. Captain Lumsden, as host, declining to be upon either side.
Goodwin chose the end of the corn which had, as the boys declared, "a
desp'rate sight of nubbins." Then, at a signal, all hands went to
work.
The corn had to be husked and thrown into a crib, a mere pen of
fence-rails.
"Now, boys, crib your corn," said Captain Lumsden, as he started the
whiskey bottle on its encouraging travels along the line of shuckers.
"Hurrah, boys!" shouted McConkey. "Pull away, my sweats! work like
dogs in a meat-pot; beat 'em all to thunder, er bust a biler, by
jimminy! Peel 'em off! Thunder and blazes! Hurrah!"
This loud hallooing may have cheered his own men, but it certainly
stimulated those on the other side. Morton was more prudent; he
husked with all his might, and called down the lines in an undertone,
"Let them holler, boys, never mind Bill; all the breath he spends in
noise we'll spend in gittin' the corn peeled. Here, you! don't you
shove that corn back in the shucks! No cheats allowed on this side!"
Goodwin had taken his place in the middle of his own men, where he
could overlook them and husk, without intermission, himself; knowing
that his own dexterity was worth almost as much as the work of two
men. When one or two boys on his side began to run over to see how
the others were getting along, he ordered them back with great
firmness. "Let them alone," he said, "you are only losing time; work
hard at first, everybody will work hard at the last."
For nearly an hour the huskers had been stripping husks with
unremitting eagerness; the heap of unshucked corn had grown smaller,
the crib was nearly full of the white and yellow ears, and a great
billow of light husks had arisen behind the eager workers.
"Why don't you drink?" asked Jake Sniger, who sat next to Morton.
"Want's to keep his breath sweet for Patty Lumsden," said Ben North,
with a chuckle.
Morton did not knock Ben over, and Ben never knew how near he came to
getting a whipping.
It was now the last heavy pull of the shuckers. McConkey had drunk
rather freely, and his "Pull away, sweats!" became louder than ever.
Morton found it necessary to run up and down his line once or twice,
and hearten his men by telling them that they were "sure to beat if
they only stuck to it well."
The two parties were pretty evenly matched; the side led by Goodwin
would have given it up once if it had not been for his cheers; the
others were so near to victory that they began to shout in advance,
and that cheer, before they were through, lost them the battle,--for
Goodwin, calling to his men, fell to work in a way that set them wild
by contagion, and for the last minute they made almost superhuman
exertions, sending a perfect hail of white corn into the crib, and
licking up the last ear in time to rush with a shout into the
territory of the other party, and seize on one or two dozen ears, all
that were left, to show that Morton had clearly gained the victory.
Then there was a general wiping of foreheads, and a general
expression of good feeling. But Bill McConkey vowed that he "knowed
what the other side done with their corn," pointing to the husk pile.
"I'll bet you six bits," said Morton, "that I can find more corn in
your shucks than you kin in mine." But Bill did not accept the wager.
After husking the corn that remained under the rails, the whole party
adjourned to the house, washing their hands and faces in the woodshed
as they passed into the old hybrid building, half log-cabin, the
other half block-house fortification.
The quilting frames were gone; and a substantial supper was set in
the apartment which was commonly used for parlor and sitting room,
and which was now pressed into service for a dining room. The ladies
stood around against the wall with a self-conscious air of modesty,
debating, no doubt, the effect of their linsey-woolsey dresses. For
what is the use of carding and spinning, winding and weaving, cutting
and sewing to get a new linsey dress, if you cannot have it admired?
_CHAPTER II._
THE FROLIC.
The supper was soon dispatched; the huskers eating with awkward
embarrassment, as frontiermen always do in company,--even in the
company of each other. To eat with decency and composure is the
final triumph of civilization, and the shuckers of Hissawachee Bottom
got through with the disagreeable performance as hurriedly as
possible, the more so that their exciting strife had given them
vigorous relish for Mrs. Lumsden's "chicken fixin's," and
batter-cakes, and "punkin-pies." The quilters had taken their supper
an hour before, the table not affording room for both parties. When
supper was over the "things" were quickly put away, the table folded
up and removed to the kitchen--and the company were then ready to
enjoy themselves. There was much gawky timidity on the part of the
young men, and not a little shy dropping of the eyes on the part of
the young women; but the most courageous presently got some of the
rude, country plays a-going. The pawns were sold over the head of
the blindfold Mort Goodwin, who, as the wit of the company, devised
all manner of penalties for the owners. Susan Tomkins had to stand
up in the corner, and say,
"Here I stand all ragged and dirty,
Kiss me quick, or I'll run like a turkey."
These lines were supposed to rhyme. When Aleck Tilley essayed to
comply with her request, she tried to run like a turkey, but was
stopped in time.
The good taste of people who enjoy society novels will decide at once
that these boisterous, unrefined sports are not a promising
beginning. It is easy enough to imagine heroism, generosity and
courage in people who dance on velvet carpets; but the great heroes,
the world's demigods, grew in just such rough social states as that
of Ohio in the early part of this century. There is nothing more
important for an over-refined generation than to understand that it
has not a monopoly of the great qualities of humanity, and that it
must not only tolerate rude folk, but sometimes admire in them traits
that have grown scarce as refinement has increased. So that I may
not shrink from telling that one kissing-play took the place of
another until the excitement and merriment reached a pitch which
would be thought not consonant with propriety by the society that
loves round-dances with _roués_, and "the German"
untranslated--though, for that matter, there are people old-fashioned
enough to think that refined deviltry is not much better than rude
freedom, after all.
Goodwin entered with the hearty animal spirits of his time of life
into the boisterous sport; but there was one drawback to his
pleasure--Patty Lumsden would not play. He was glad, indeed, that
she did not; he could not bear to see her kissed by his companions.
But, then, did Patty like the part he was taking in the rustic revel?
He inly rejoiced that his position as the blindfold Justice, meting
out punishment to the owner of each forfeit, saved him, to some
extent, the necessity of going through the ordeal of kissing. True,
it was quite possible that the severest prescription he should make
might fall on his own head, if the pawn happened to be his; but he
was saved by his good luck and the penetration which enabled him to
guess, from the suppressed chuckle of the seller, when the offered
pawn was his own.
At last, "forfeits" in every shape became too dull for the growing
mirth of the company. They ranged themselves round the room on
benches and chairs, and began to sing the old song:
"Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow--
Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow--
You nor I, but the farmers, know
Where oats, peas, beans, and barley grow.
"Thus the farmer sows his seed,
Thus he stands and takes his ease,
Stamps his foot, and claps his hands,
And whirls around and views his lands.
"Sure as grass grows in the field,
Down on this carpet you must kneel,
Salute your true love, kiss her sweet,
And rise again upon your feet."
It is not very different from the little children's play--an old
rustic sport, I doubt not, that has existed in England from
immemorial time. McConkey took the handkerchief first, and, while
the company were singing, he pretended to be looking around and
puzzling himself to decide whom he would favor with his affection.
But the girls nudged one another, and looked significantly at Jemima
Huddlestone. Of course, everybody knew that Bill would take Jemima.
That was fore-ordained. Everybody knew it except Bill and Jemima!
Bill fancied that he was standing in entire indecision, and
Jemima--radiant peony!--turned her large, red-cheeked face away from
Bill, and studied meditatively a knot in a floor-board. But her
averted gaze only made her expectancy the more visible, and the
significant titter of the company deepened the hue and widened the
area of red in her cheeks. Attempts to seem unconscious generally
result disastrously. But the tittering, and nudging, and looking
toward Jemima, did not prevent the singing from moving on; and now
the singers have reached the line which prescribes the kneeling.
Bill shakes off his feigned indecision, and with a sudden effort
recovers from his vacant and wandering stare, wheels about, spreads
the "handkercher" at the feet of the backwoods Hebe, and diffidently
kneels upon the outer edge, while she, in compliance with the order
of the play, and with reluctance only apparent, also drops upon her
knees on the handkerchief, and, with downcast eyes, receives upon her
red cheek a kiss so hearty and unreserved that it awakens laughter
and applause. Bill now arises with the air of a man who has done his
whole duty under difficult circumstances. Jemima lifts the
handkerchief, and, while the song repeats itself, selects some
gentleman before whom she kneels, bestowing on him a kiss in the same
fashion, leaving him the handkerchief to spread before some new
divinity.
[Illustration: HOMELY S'MANTHY.]
This alternation had gone on for some time. Poor, sanguine, homely
Samantha Britton had looked smilingly and expectantly at each
successive gentleman who bore the handkerchief; but in vain.
"S'manthy" could never understand why her seductive smiles were so
unavailing. Presently, Betty Harsha was chosen by somebody--Betty
had a pretty, round face, and pink cheeks, and was sure to be chosen,
sooner or later. Everybody knew whom she would choose. Morton
Goodwin was the desire of her heart. She dressed to win him; she
fixed her eyes on him in church; she put herself adroitly in his way;
she compelled him to escort her home against his will; and now that
she held the handkerchief, everybody looked at Goodwin. Morton, for
his part, was too young to be insensible to the charms of the little
round, impulsive face, the twinkling eyes, the red, pouting lips; and
he was not averse to having the pretty girl, in her new, bright,
linsey frock, single him but for her admiration. But just at this
moment he wished she might choose some one else. For Patty Lumsden,
now that all her guests were interested in the play, was relieved
from her cares as hostess, and was watching the progress of the
exciting amusement. She stood behind Jemima Huddleston, and never
was there finer contrast than between the large, healthful,
high-colored Jemima, a typical country belle, and the slight,
intelligent, fair-skinned Patty, whose black hair and eyes made her
complexion seem whiter, and whose resolute lips and proud carriage
heightened the refinement of her face. Patty, as folks said,
"favored" her mother, a woman of considerable pride and much
refinement, who, by her unwillingness to accept the rude customs of
the neighborhood, had about as bad a reputation as one can have in a
frontier community. She was regarded as excessively "stuck up."
This stigma of aristocracy was very pleasing to the Captain. His
family was part of himself, and he liked to believe them better than
anybody's else. But he heartily wished that Patty would sacrifice
her dignity, at this juncture, to further his political aspirations.
[Illustration: PATTY AND JEMIMA.]
Seeing the vision of Patty standing there in her bright new
calico--an extraordinary bit of finery in those days--Goodwin wished
that Betty would attack somebody else, for once. But Betty Harsha
bore down on the perplexed Morton, and, in her eagerness, did not
wait for the appropriate line to come--she did not give the farmer
time to "stomp" his foot, and clap his hands, much less to whirl
around and view his lands--but plumped down upon the handkerchief
before Morton, who took his own time to kneel. But draw it out as he
would, he presently found himself, after having been kissed by Betty,
standing foolishly, handkerchief in hand, while the verses intended
for Betty were not yet finished. Betty's precipitancy, and her
inevitable gravitation toward Morton, had set all the players
laughing, and the laugh seemed to Goodwin to be partly at himself.
For, indeed, he was perplexed. To choose any other woman for his
"true love" even in play, with Patty standing by, was more than he
could do; to offer to kneel before her was more than he dared to do.
He hesitated a moment; he feared to offend Patty; he must select some
one. Just at the instant he caught sight of the eager face of
S'manthy Britton stretched up to him, as it had been to the others,
with an anxious smile. Morton saw a way out. Patty could not be
jealous of S'manthy. He spread the handkerchief before the delighted
girl, and a moment later she held in her hand the right to choose a
partner.
The fop of the party was "Little Gabe," that is to say, Gabriel
Powers, junior. His father was "Old Gabe," the most miserly farmer
of the neighborhood. But Little Gabe had run away in boyhood, and
had been over the mountains, had made some money, nobody could tell
how, and had invested his entire capital in "store clothes." He wore
a mustache, too, which, being an unheard-of innovation in those
primitive times, marked him as a man who had seen the world.
Everybody laughed at him for a fop, and yet everybody admired him.
None of the girls had yet dared to select Little Gabe. To bring
their linsey near to store-cloth--to venture to salute his divine
mustache--who could be guilty of such profanity? But S'manthy was
morally certain that she would not soon again have a chance to select
a "true love," and she determined to strike high. The players did
not laugh when she spread her handkerchief at the feet of Little
Gabe. They were appalled. But Gabe dropped on one knee,
condescended to receive her salute, and lifted the handkerchief with
a delicate flourish of the hand which wore a ring with a large jewel,
avouched by Little Gabe to be a diamond--a jewel that was at least
transparent.
Whom would Little Gabe choose? became at once a question of solemn
import to every young woman of the company; for even girls in linsey
are not free from that liking for a fop, so often seen in ladies
better dressed. In her heart nearly every young woman wished that
Gabe would choose herself. But Gabe was one of those men who, having
done many things by the magic of effrontery, imagine that any thing
can be obtained by impudence, if only the impudence be sufficiently
transcendent. He knew that Miss Lumsden held herself aloof from the
kissing-plays, and he knew equally that she looked favorably on
Morton Goodwin; he had divined Morton's struggle, and he had already
marked out his own line of action. He stood in quiet repose while
the first two stanzas were sung. As the third began, he stepped
quickly round the chair on which Jemima Huddleston sat, and stood
before Patty Lumsden, while everybody held breath. Patty's cheeks
did not grow red, but pale, she turned suddenly and called out toward
the kitchen:
"What do you want? I am coming," and then walked quietly out, as if
unconscious of Little Gabe's presence or purpose. But poor Little
Gabe had already begun to kneel; he had gone too far to recover
himself; he dropped upon one knee, and got up immediately, but not in
time to escape the general chorus of laughter and jeers. He sneered
at the departing figure of Patty, and said, "I knew I could make her
run." But he could not conceal his discomfiture.
[Illustration: LITTLE GABE'S DISCOMFITURE.]
When, at last, the party broke up, Morton essayed to have a word with
Patty. He found her standing in the deserted kitchen, and his heart
beat quick with the thought that she might be waiting for him. The
ruddy glow of the hickory coals in the wide fire-place made the logs
of the kitchen walls bright, and gave a tint to Patty's white face.
But just as Morton was about to speak, Captain Lumsden's quick, jerky
tread sounded in the entry, and he came in, laughing his aggravating
metallic little laugh, and saying, "Morton, where's your manners?
There's nobody to go home with Betty Harsha."
"Dog on Betty Harsha!" muttered Morton, but not loud enough for the
Captain to hear. And he escorted Betty home.
_CHAPTER III._
GOING TO MEETING.
Every history has one quality in common with eternity. Begin where
you will, there is always a beginning back of the beginning. And,
for that matter, there is always a shadowy ending beyond the ending.
Only because we may not always begin, like Knickerbocker, at the
foundation of the world, is it that we get courage to break somewhere
into the interlaced web of human histories--of loves and marriages,
of births and deaths, of hopes and fears, of successes and
disappointments, of gettings and havings, and spendings and losings.
Yet, break in where we may, there is always just a little behind the
beginning, something that needs to be told.
I find it necessary that the reader should understand how from
childhood Morton had rather worshiped than loved Patty Lumsden. When
the long spelling-class, at the close of school, counted off its
numbers, to enable each scholar to remember his relative standing,
Patty was always "one," and Morton "two." On one memorable occasion,
when the all but infallible Patty misspelled a word, the all but
infallible Morton, disliking to "turn her down," missed also, and
went down with her. When she afterward regained her place, he took
pains to stand always "next to head." Bulwer calls first love a
great "purifier of youth," and, despite his fondness for hunting,
horse-racing, gaming, and the other wild excitements that were
prevalent among the young men of that day, Morton was kept from worse
vices by his devotion to Patty, and by a certain ingrained manliness.
Had he worshiped her less, he might long since have proposed to her,
and thus have ended his suspense; but he had an awful sense of
Patty's nobility? and of his own unworthiness. Moreover, there was
a lion in the way. Morton trembled before the face of Captain
Lumsden.
Lumsden was one of the earliest settlers, and was by far the largest
land-owner in the settlement. In that day of long credit, he had
managed to place himself in such a way that he could make his power
felt, directly or indirectly, by nearly every man within twenty miles
of him. The very judges on the bench were in debt to him. On those
rare occasions when he had been opposed, Captain Lumsden had struck
so ruthlessly, and with such regardlessness of means or consequences,
that he had become a terror to everybody. Two or three families had
been compelled to leave the settlement by his vindictive
persecutions, so that his name had come to carry a sort of royal
authority. Morton Goodwin's father was but a small farmer on the
hill, a man naturally unthrifty, who had lost the greater part of a
considerable patrimony. How could Morton, therefore, make direct
advances to so proud a girl as Patty, with the chances in favor of
refusal by her, and the certainty of rejection by her father?
Illusion is not the dreadfulest thing, but disillusion--Morton
preferred to cherish his hopeless hope, living in vain expectation of
some improbable change that should place him at better advantage in
his addresses to Patty.
At first, Lumsden had left him in no uncertainty in regard to his own
disposition in the matter. He had frowned upon Goodwin's advances by
treating him with that sort of repellant patronage which is so
aggravating, because it affords one no good excuse for knocking down
the author of the insult. But of late, having observed the growing
force and independence of Morton's character, and his ascendancy over
the men of his own age, the Captain appreciated the necessity of
attaching such a person to himself, particularly for the election
which was to take place in the autumn. Not that he had any intention
of suffering Patty to marry Morton. He only meant to play fast and
loose a while. Had he even intended to give his approval to the
marriage at last, he would have played fast and loose all the same,
for the sake of making Patty and her lover feel his power as long as
possible. At present, he meant to hold out just enough of hope to
bind the ardent young man to his interest. Morton, on his part,
reasoned that if Lumsden's kindness should continue to increase in
the future as it had in the three weeks past, it would become even
cordial, after a while. To young men in love, all good things are
progressive.
On the Sunday morning following the shucking, Morton rose early, and
went to the stable. Did you ever have the happiness to see a quiet
autumn Sunday in the backwoods? Did you ever observe the stillness,
the solitude, the softness of sunshine, the gentleness of wind, the
chip-chip-chlurr-r-r of great flocks of blackbirds getting ready for
migration, the lazy cawing of crows, softened by distance, the
half-laughing bark of cunning squirrel, nibbling his prism-shaped
beech-nut, and twinkling his jolly, child-like eye at you the while,
as if to say, "Don't you wish you might guess?"
Not that Morton saw aught of these things. He never heard voices, or
saw sights, out of the common, and that very October Sunday had been
set apart for a horse-race down at "The Forks." The one piece of
property which our young friend had acquired during his minority was
a thorough-bred filley, and he felt certain that she--being a horse
of the first families--would be able to "lay out" anything that could
be brought against her. He was very anxious about the race, and
therefore rose early, and went out into the morning light that he
might look at his mare, and feel of her perfect legs, to make sure
that she was in good condition.
"All right, Dolly?" he said--"all right this morning, old lady? eh?
You'll beat all the scrubs; won't you?"
In this exhilarating state of anxiety and expectation, Morton came to
breakfast, only to have his breath taken away. His mother asked him
to ride to meeting with her, and it was almost as hard to deny her as
it was to give up the race at "The Forks."
Rough associations had made young Goodwin a rough man. His was a
nature buoyant, generous, and complaisant, very likely to take the
color of his surroundings. The catalogue of his bad habits is
sufficiently shocking to us who live in this better day of
Sunday-school morality. He often swore in a way that might have
edified the army in Flanders. He spent his Sundays in hunting,
fishing, and riding horse-races, except when he was needed to escort
his mother to meeting. He bet on cards, and I am afraid he drank to
intoxication sometimes. Though he was too proud and manly to lie,
and too pure to be unchaste, he was not a promising young man. The
chances that he would make a fairly successful trip through life did
not preponderate over the chances that he would wreck himself by
intemperance and gambling. But his roughness was strangely veined by
nobleness. This rude, rollicking, swearing young fellow had a
chivalrous loyalty to his mother, which held him always ready to
devote himself in any way to her service.
On her part, she was, indeed, a woman worthy of reverence. Her
father had been one of those fine old Irish gentlemen, with grand
manners, extravagant habits, generous impulses, brilliant wit, a
ruddy nose, and final bankruptcy. His daughter, Jane Morton, had
married Job Goodwin, a returned soldier of the Revolution--a man who
was "a poor manager." He lost his patrimony, and, what is worse,
lost heart. Upon his wife, therefore, had devolved heavy burdens.
But her face was yet fresh, and her hair, even when anchored back to
a great tuck-comb, showed an errant, Irish tendency to curl.
Morton's hung in waves about his neck, and he cherished his curls,
proud of the resemblance to his mother, whom he considered a very
queen, to be served right royally.
But it was hard--when he had been training the filley from a
colt--when he had looked forward for months to this race as a time of
triumph--to have so severe a strain put upon his devotion to his
mother. When she made the request, he did not reply. He went to the
barn and stroked the filley's legs--how perfect they were!--and gave
vent to some very old and wicked oaths. He was just making up his
mind to throw the saddle on Dolly and be off to the Forks, when his
decision was curiously turned by a word from his brother Henry, a lad
of twelve, who had followed Morton to the stable, and now stood in
the door.
"Mort," said he, "I'd go anyhow, if I was you. I wouldn't stand it.
You go and run Doll, and lick Bill Conkey's bay fer him. He'll think
you're afeard, ef you don't. The old lady hain't got no right to
make you set and listen to old Donaldson on sech a purty day as this."
"Looky here, Hen!" broke out Morton, looking up from the meditative
scratching of Dolly's fetlocks, "don't you talk that away about
mother. She's every inch a lady, and it's a blamed hard life she's
had to foller, between pappy's mopin' and the girls all a-dyin' and
Lew's bad end--and you and me not promisin' much better. It's mighty
little I kin do to make things kind of easy for her, and I'll go to
meetin' every day in the week, ef she says so."
[Illustration: IN THE STABLE.]
"She'll make a Persbyterian outen you, Mort; see ef she don't."
"Nary Presbyterian. They's no Presbyterian in me. I'm a hard nut.
I would like to be a elder, or a minister, if it was in me, though,
just to see the smile spread all over her face whenever she'd think
about it. Looky here, Hen! I'll tell you something. Mother's about
forty times too good for us. When I had the scarlet fever, and was
cross, she used to set on the side of the bed, and tell me stories,
about knights and such like, that she'd read about in grandfather's
books when she was a girl--jam up good stories, too, you better
believe. I liked the knights, because they rode fine horses, and was
always ready to fight anything that come along, but always fair and
square, you know. And she told me how the knights fit fer their
religion, and fer ladies, and fer everybody that had got tromped down
by somebody else. I wished I'd been a knight myself. I 'lowed it
would be some to fight for somebody in trouble, or somethin' good.
But then it seemed as if I couldn't find nothin' worth the fightin'
fer. One day I lay a-thinkin', and a-lookin' at mother's white lady
hands, and face fit fer a queen's. And in them days she let her hair
hang down in long curls, and her black eyes was bright like as if
they had a light _inside_ of 'em, you know. She was a queen, _I_
tell you! And all at wunst it come right acrost me, like a flash,
that I mout as well be mother's knight through thick and thin; and
I've been at it ever since. I 'low I've give her a sight of trouble,
with my plaguey wild ways, and I come mighty blamed nigh runnin' this
mornin', dogged ef I didn't. But here goes."
And with that he proceeded to saddle the restless Dolly, while Henry
put the side-saddle on old Blaze, saying, as he drew the surcingle
tight, "For my part, I don't want to fight for nobody. I want to do
as I dog-on please." He was meditating the fun he would have
catching a certain ground-hog, when once his mother should be safely
off to meeting.
Morton led old Blaze up to the stile and helped his mother to mount,
gallantly put her foot in the stirrup, arranged her long
riding-skirt, and then mounted his own mare. Dolly sprang forward
prancing and dashing, and chafing against the bit in a way highly
pleasing to Morton, who thought that going to meeting would be a dull
affair, if it were not for the fun of letting Dolly know who was her
master. The ride to church was a long one, for there had never been
preaching nearer to the Hissawachee settlement than ten miles away.
Morton found the sermon rather more interesting than usual. There
still lingered in the West at this time the remains of the
controversy between "Old-side" and "New-side" Presbyterians, that
dated its origin before the Revolution. Parson Donaldson belonged to
the Old side. With square, combative face, and hard, combative
voice, he made war upon the laxity of New-side Presbyterians, and the
grievous heresies of the Arminians, and in particular upon the
exciting meetings of the Methodists. The great Cane Ridge
Camp-meeting was yet fresh in the memories of the people, and for the
hundredth time Mr. Donaldson inveighed against the Presbyterian
ministers who had originated this first of camp-meetings, and set
agoing the wild excitements now fostered by the Methodists. He said
that Presbyterians who had anything to do with this fanaticism were
led astray of the devil, and the Synod did right in driving some of
them out. As for Methodists, they denied "the Decrees." What was
that but a denial of salvation by grace? And this involved the
overthrow of the great Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith.
This is rather the mental process by which the parson landed himself
at his conclusions, than his way of stating them to his hearers. In
preaching, he did not find it necessary to say that a denial of the
decrees logically involved the rest. He translated his conclusions
into a statement of fact, and boldly asserted that these crazy,
illiterate, noisy, vagabond circuit riders were traitors to
Protestantism, denying the doctrine of Justification, and teaching
salvation by the merit of works. There were many divines, on both
sides, in that day who thought zeal for their creed justified any
amount of unfairness. (But all that is past!)
Morton's combativeness was greatly tickled by this discourse, and
when they were again in the saddle to ride the ten miles home, he
assured his mother that he wouldn't mind coming to meeting often,
rain or shine, if the preacher would only pitch into somebody every
time. He thought it wouldn't be hard to be good, if a body could
only have something bad to fight. "Don't you remember, mother, how
you used to read to me out of that old "Pilgrim's Progress," and show
me the picture of Christian thrashing Apollyon till his hide wouldn't
hold shucks? If I could fight the devil that way, I wouldn't mind
being a Christian."
Morton felt especially pleased with the minister to-day, for Mr.
Donaldson delighted to have the young men come so far to meeting; and
imagining that he might be in a "hopeful state of mind," had
hospitably urged Morton and his mother to take some refreshment
before starting on their homeward journey. It is barely possible
that the stimulus of the good parson's cherry-bounce had quite as
much to do with Morton's valiant impulses as the stirring effect of
his discourse.
_CHAPTER IV._
A BATTLE.
The fight so much desired by Morton came soon enough.
As he and his mother rode home by a "near cut," little traveled,
Morton found time to master Dolly's fiery spirit and yet to scan the
woods with the habitual searching glance of a hunter. He observed on
one of the trees a notice posted. A notice put up in this
out-of-the-way place surprised him. He endeavored to make his
restless steed approach the tree, that he might read, but her wild
Arabian temper took fright at something--a blooded horse is apt to
see visions--and she would not stand near the tree. Time after time
Morton drove her forward, but she as often shied away. At last, Mrs.
Goodwin begged him to give over the attempt and come on; but Morton's
love of mastery was now excited, and he said,
"Ride on, mother, if you want to; this question between Dolly and me
will have to be discussed and settled right here. Either she will
stand still by this sugar-tree, or we will fight away till one or
t'other lays down to rest."
The mother contented herself with letting old Blaze browse by the
road-side, and with shaping her thoughts into a formal regret that
Morton should spend the holy Sabbath in such fashion; but in her
maternal heart she admired his will and courage. He was so like her
own father, she thought--such a gentleman! And she could not but
hope that he was one of God's elect. If so, what a fine Christian he
would be when he should be converted! And, quiet as she was without,
her heart was in a moment filled with agony and prayer and
questionings. How could she live in heaven without Morton? Her
eldest son had already died a violent death in prodigal wanderings
from home. But Morton would surely be saved!
Morton, for his part, cared at the moment far less for anything in
heaven than he did to master the rebellious Dolly. He rode her all
round the tree; he circled that maple, first in one direction, then
in another, until the mare was so dizzy she could hardly see. Then
he held her while he read the notice, saying with exultation, "Now,
my lady, do you think you can stand still?"
Beyond a momentary impulse of idle curiosity, Morton had not cared to
know the contents of the paper. Even curiosity had been forgotten in
his combat with Dolly. But as soon as he saw the signature, "Enoch
Lumsden, administrator of the estate of Hezekiah Lumsden, deceased,"
he forgot his victory over his horse in his interest in the document
itself. It was therein set forth that, by order of the probate court
in and for the county aforesaid, the said Enoch Lumsden,
administrator, would sell at public auction all that parcel of land
belonging to the estate of the said Hezekiah Lumsden, deceased, known
and described as follows, to wit, namely, etc., etc.
"By thunder!" broke out Morton, angrily, as he rode away (I am afraid
he swore by thunder instead of by something else, out of a filial
regard for his mother). "By thunder! if that ain't too devilish
mean! I s'pose 'tain't enough for Captain Lumsden to mistreat little
Kike--he has gone to robbing him. He means to buy that land himself;
or, what's the same thing, git somebody to do it for him. That's
what he put that notice in this holler fer. The judge is afraid of
him; and so's everybody else. Poor Kike won't have a dollar when
he's a man."
"Somebody ought to take Kike's part," said Mrs. Goodwin. "It's a
shame for a whole settlement to be cowards, and to let one man rule
them. It's worse than having a king."
Morton loved "Little Kike," and hated Captain Lumsden; and this
appeal to the anti-monarchic feeling of the time moved him. He could
not bear that his mother, of all, should think him cowardly. His
pride was already chafed by Lumsden's condescension, and his
provoking way of keeping Patty and himself apart. Why should he not
break with him, and have done with it, rather than stand by and see
Kike robbed? But to interfere in behalf of Kike was to put Patty
Lumsden farther away from him. He was a knight who had suddenly come
in sight of his long-sought adversary while his own hands were tied.
And so he fell into the brownest of studies, and scarcely spoke a
word to his mother all the rest of his ride. For here were his
friendship for little Kike, his innate antagonism to Captain Lumsden,
and his strong sense of justice, on one side; his love for
Patty--stronger than all the rest--on the other. In the stories of
chivalry which his mother had told, the love of woman had always been
a motive to valiant deeds for the right. And how often had he
dreamed of doing some brave thing while Patty applauded! Now, when
the brave thing offered, Patty was on the other side. This
unexpected entanglement of motives irritated him, as such
embarrassment always does a person disposed to act impulsively and in
right lines. And so it happened that he rode on in moody silence,
while the mother, always looking for signs of seriousness in the son,
mentally reviewed the sermon of the day, in vain endeavor to recall
some passages that might have "found a lodgment in his mind."
Had the issue been squarely presented to Morton, he might even then
have chosen Patty, letting the interests of his friends take care of
themselves. But he did not decide it squarely. He began by excusing
himself to himself:--What could he do for Kike? He had no influence
with the judge; he had no money to buy the land, and he had no
influential friends. He might agitate the question and sacrifice his
own hope, and, after all, accomplish nothing for Kike. No doubt all
these considerations of futility had their weight with him;
nevertheless he had an angry consciousness that he was not acting
bravely in the matter. That he, Morton Goodwin, who had often vowed
that he would not truckle to any man, was ready to shut his eyes to
Captain Lumsden's rascality, in the hope of one day getting his
consent to marry his daughter! It was this anger with himself that
made Morton restless, and his restlessness took him down to the Forks
that Sunday evening, and led him to drink two or three times, in
spite of his good resolution not to drink more than once. It was
this restlessness that carried him at last to the cabin of the widow
Lumsden, that evening, to see her son Kike.
[Illustration: MORT, DOLLY, AND KIKE.]
Kike was sixteen; one of those sallow-skinned boys with straight
black hair that one sees so often in southern latitudes. He was
called "Little Kike" only to distinguish him from his father, who had
also borne the name of Hezekiah. Delicate in health and quiet in
manner, he was a boy of profound feeling, and his emotions were not
only profound but persistent. Dressed in buck-skin breeches and
homespun cotton overshirt, he was milking old Molly when Morton came
up. The fixed lines of his half-melancholy face relaxed a little, as
with a smile deeper than it was broad he lifted himself up and said,
"Hello, Mort! come in, old feller!"
But Mort only sat still on Dolly, while Kike came round and stroked
her fine neck, and expressed his regret that she hadn't run at the
Forks and beat Bill McConkey's bay horse. He wished he owned such "a
beast."
"Never mind; one of these days, when I get a little stronger, I will
open that crick bottom, and then I shall make some money and be able
to buy a blooded horse like Dolly. Maybe it'll be a colt of Dolly's;
who knows?" And Kike smiled with a half-hopefulness at the vision of
his impending prosperity. But Morton could not smile, nor could he
bear to tell Kike that his uncle had determined to seize upon that
very piece of land regardless of the air-castles Kike had built upon
it. Morton had made up his mind not to tell Kike. Why should he?
Kike would hear of his uncle's fraud in time, and any mention on his
part would only destroy his own hopes without doing anything for
Kike. But if Morton meant to be prudent and keep silence, why had he
not staid at home? Why come here, where the sight of Kike's slender
frame was a constant provocation to speech? Was there a self
contending against a self?
"Have you got over your chills yet?" asked Morton.
"No," said the black-haired boy, a little bitterly. "I was nearly
well when I went down to Uncle Enoch's to work; and he made me work
in the rain. 'Come, Kike,' he would say, jerking his words, and
throwing them at me like gravel, 'get out in the rain. It'll do you
good. Your mother has ruined you, keeping you over the fire. You
want hardening. Rain is good for you, water makes you grow; you're a
perfect baby.' I tell you, he come plaguey nigh puttin' a finishment
to me, though."
Doubtless, what Morton had drunk at the Forks had not increased his
prudence. As usual in such cases, the prudent Morton and the
impulsive Morton stood the one over against the other; and, as always
the imprudent self is prone to spring up without warning, and take
the other by surprise, so now the young man suddenly threw prudence
and Patty behind, and broke out with--
"Your uncle Enoch is a rascal!" adding some maledictions for emphasis.
That was not exactly telling what he had resolved not to tell, but it
rendered it much more difficult to keep the secret; for Kike grew a
little red in the face, and was silent a minute. He himself was fond
of roundly denouncing his uncle. But abusing one's relations is a
luxury which is labeled "strictly private," and this savage outburst
from his friend touched Kike's family pride a little.
"I know that as well as you do," was all he said, however.
"He would swindle his own children," said Morton, spurred to greater
vehemence by Kike's evident disrelish of his invective. "He will
chisel you out of everything you've got before you're of age, and
then make the settlement too hot to hold you if you shake your head."
And Morton looked off down the road.
"What's the matter, Mort? What set you off on Uncle Nuck to-night?
He's bad enough, Lord knows; but something must have gone wrong with
you. Did he tell you that he did not want you to talk to Patty?"
"No, he didn't," said Morton. And now that Patty was recalled to his
mind, he was vexed to think that he had gone so far in the matter.
His tone provoked Kike in turn.
"Mort, you've been drinking! What brought you down here?"
Here the imprudent Morton got the upper hand again. Patty and
prudence were out of sight at once, and the young man swore between
his teeth.
"Come, old fellow; there's something wrong," said Kike, alarmed.
"What's up?"
"Nothing; nothing," said Morton, bitterly. "Nothing, only your
affectionate uncle has stuck a notice in Jackson's holler--on the
side of the tree furthest from the road--advertising your crick
bottom for sale. That's all. Old Virginia gentleman! Old Virginia
_devil_! Call a horse-thief a parson, will you?" And then he added
something about hell and damnation. These two last words had no
grammatical relation with the rest of his speech; but in the mind of
Morton Goodwin they had very logical relations with Captain Lumsden
and the subject under discussion. Nobody is quite a Universalist in
moments of indignation. Every man keeps a private and select
perdition for the objects of his wrath.
When Morton had thus let out the secret he had meant to retain, Kike
trembled and grew white about the lips. "I'll never forgive him," he
said, huskily. "I'll be even with him, and one to carry; see if I
ain't!" He spoke with that slow, revengeful, relentless air that
belongs to a black-haired, Southern race.
"Mort, loan me Doll to-morry?" he said, presently.
"Can you ride her? Where are you going?" Morton was loth to commit
himself by lending his horse.
"I am going to Jonesville, to see if I can stop that sale; and I've
got a right to choose a gardeen. I mean to take one that will make
Uncle Enoch open his eyes. I'm goin' to take Colonel Wheeler; he
hates Uncle Enoch, and he'll see jestice done. As for ridin' Dolly,
you know I can back any critter with four legs."
"Well, I guess you can have Dolly," said Morton, reluctantly. He
knew that if Kike rode Dolly, the Captain would hear of it; and then,
farewell to Patty! But looking at Kike's face, so full of pain and
wrath, he could not quite refuse. Dolly went home at a tremendous
pace, and Morton, commonly full of good nature, was, for once,
insufferably cross at supper-time.
"Mort, meetin' must 'a' soured on you," said Henry, provokingly.
"You're cross as a coon when it's cornered."
"Don't fret Morton; he's worried," said Mrs. Goodwin. The fond
mother still hoped that the struggle in his mind was the great battle
of Armageddon that should be the beginning of a better life.
Morton went to his bed in the loft filled with a contempt for
himself. He tried in vain to acquit himself of cowardice--the
quality which a border man considers the most criminal. Early in the
morning he fed Dolly, and got her ready for Kike; but no Kike came.
After a while, he saw some one ascending the hill on the other side
of the creek. Could it be Kike? Was he going to walk to Jonesville,
twenty miles away? And with his ague-shaken body? How roundly
Morton cursed himself for the fear that made him half refuse the
horse! For, with one so sensitive as Kike, a half refusal was
equivalent to the most positive denial. It was not too late. Morton
threw the saddle and bridle on Dolly, and mounted. Dolly sprang
forward, throwing her heels saucily in the air, and in fifteen
minutes Morton rode up alongside Kike.
"Here, Kike, you don't escape that way! Take Dolly."
"No, I won't, Morton. I oughtn't to have axed you to let me have
her. I know how you feel about Patty."
"Confound--no, I won't say confound Patty--but confound me, if I'm
mean enough to let you walk to Jonesville. I was a devlish coward
yesterday. Here, take the horse, dog on you, or I'll thrash you,"
and Morton laughed.
"I tell you, Mort, I won't do it," said Kike, "I'm goin' to walk."
"Yes, you look like it! You'll die before you git half-way, you
blamed little fool you! If you won't take Dolly, then I'll go along
to bury your bones. They's no danger of the buzzard's picking such
bones, though."
Just then came by Jake Sniger, who was remarkable for his servility
to Lumsden.
"Hello, boys, which ways?" he asked.
"No ways jest now," said Morton.
"Are you a travelin', or only a goin' some place?" asked Sniger,
smiling.
"I 'low I'm travelin', and Kike's a goin' some place," said Morton.
When Sniger had gone on, Morton said, "Now Kike, the fat's all in the
fire. When the Captain finds out what you've done, Sniger is sure to
tell that he see us together. I've got to fight it out now anyhow,
and you've got to take Dolly."
"No, Morton, I can't."
If Kike had been any less obstinate the weakness of his knees would
have persuaded him to relent.
[Illustration: GOOD-BYE!]
"Well, hold Dolly a minute for me, anyhow," said Morton, dismounting.
As soon as Kike had obligingly taken hold of the bridle, Morton
started toward home, singing Burns's "Highland Mary" at the top of
his rich, melodious voice, never looking back at Kike till he had
finished the song, and reached the summit of the hill. Then he had
the satisfaction of seeing Kike in the saddle, laughing to think how
his friend had outwitted him. Morton waved his hat heartily, and
Kike, nodding his head, gave Dolly the rein, and she plunged forward,
carrying him out of sight in a few minutes. Morton's mother was
disappointed, when he came in late to breakfast, to see that his brow
was clear. She feared that the good impressions of the day before
had worn away. How little does one know of the real nature of the
struggle between God and the devil, in the heart of another! But
long before Kike had brought Dolly back to her stall, the
exhilaration of self-sacrifice in the mind of Morton had worn away,
and the possible consequences of his action made him uncomfortable.
_CHAPTER V._
A CRISIS.
Work, Morton could not. After his noonday dinner he lifted his
flint-lock gun from the forked sticks upon the wall where it was
laid, and set out to seek for deer,--rather to seek forgetfulness of
the anxiety that preyed upon him. Excitement was almost a necessity
with him, even at ordinary times; now, it seemed the only remedy for
his depression. But instead of forgetting Patty, he forgot
everything but Patty, and for the first time in his life he found it
impossible to absorb himself in hunting. For when a frontierman
loves, he loves with his whole nature. The interests of his life are
few, and love, having undisputed sway, becomes a consuming passion.
After two hours' walking through the unbroken forest he started a
deer, but did not see at in time to shoot. He had tramped through
the brush without caution or vigilance. He now saw that it would be
of no avail to keep up this mockery of hunting. He was seized with
an eager desire to see Patty, and talk with her once more before the
door should be closed against him. He might strike the trail, and
reach the settlement in an hour, arriving at Lumsden's while yet the
Captain was away from the house. His only chance was to see her in
the absence of her father, who would surely contrive some
interruption if he were present.
So eagerly did Morton travel, that when his return was about half
accomplished he ran headlong into the very midst of a flock of wild
turkeys. They ran swiftly away in two or three directions, but not
until the two barrels of Morton's gun had brought down two glossy
young gobblers. Tying their legs together with a strip of paw-paw
bark, he slung them across his gun, and laid his gun over his
shoulder, pleased that he would not have to go home quite
empty-handed.
As he steps into Captain Lumsden's yard that Autumn afternoon, he is
such a man as one likes to see: quite six feet high, well made,
broad, but not too broad, about the shoulders, with legs whose
litheness indicate the reserve force of muscle and nerve coiled away
somewhere for an emergency. His walk is direct, elastic, unflagging;
he is like his horse, a clean stepper; there is neither slouchiness,
timidity, nor craftiness in his gait. The legs are as much a test of
character as the face, and in both one can read resolute eagerness.
His forehead is high rather than broad, his blue eye and curly hair,
and a certain sweetness and dignity in his smile, are from his
Scotch-Irish mother. His picturesque coon-skin cap gives him the
look of a hunter. The homespun "hunting shirt" hangs outside his
buckskin breeches, and these terminate below inside his rawhide boots.
The great yellow dog, Watch, knows him well enough by this time, but,
like a policeman on duty, Watch is quite unwilling to seem to neglect
his function; and so he bristles up a little, meets Morton at the
gate, and snuffs at his cowhide boots with an air of surly vigilance.
The young man hails him with a friendly "Hello, Watch!" and the old
fellow smooths his back hair a little, and gives his clumsy bobbed
tail three solemn little wags of recognition, comical enough if
Goodwin were only in a mood to observe.
Morton hears the hum of the spinning-wheel in the old cabin portion
of the building, used for a kitchen and loom-room. The monotonous
rise and fall of the wheel's tune, now buzzing gently, then louder
and louder till its whirr could be heard a furlong, then slacking,
then stopping abruptly, then rising to a new climax--this cadenced
hum, as he hears it, is made rhythmical by the tread of feet that run
back across the room after each climax of sound. He knows the quick,
elastic step; he turns away from the straight-ahead entrance to the
house, and passes round to the kitchen door. It is Patty, as he
thought, and, as his shadow falls in at the door, she is in the very
act of urging the wheel to it highest impetus; she whirls it till it
roars, and at the same time nods merrily at Morton over the top of
it; then she trips back across the room, drawing the yarn with her
left hand, which she holds stretched out; when the impulse is
somewhat spent, and the yarn sufficiently twisted, Patty catches the
wheel, winds the yarn upon the spindle, and turns to the door. She
changes her spinning stick to the left hand, and extends her right
with a genial "Howdy, Morton? killed some turkeys, I see."
"Yes, one for you and one for mother."
"For me? much obliged! come in and take a chair."
"No, this'll do," and Morton sat upon the doorsill, doffing his
coon-skin cap, and wiping his forehead with his red handkerchief.
"Go on with your spinning, Patty, I like to see you spin."
"Well, I will. I mean to spin two dozen cuts to-day. I've been at
it since five o'clock."
Morton was glad, indeed, to have her spin. He was, in his present
perplexed state, willing to avoid all conversation except such broken
talk as might be carried on while Patty wound the spun yarn upon the
spindle, or adjusted a new roll of wool.
Nothing shows off the grace of the female figure as did the old
spinning-wheel. Patty's perfect form was disfigured by no stays, or
pads, or paniers--her swift tread backwards with her up-raised left
hand, her movement of the wheel with the right, all kept her agile
figure in lithe action. If plastic art were not an impossibility to
us Americans, our stone-cutters might long since have ceased, like
school-boys, to send us back from Rome imitation Venuses, and
counterfeit Hebes, and lank Lincolns aping Roman senators, and stagey
Washingtons on stage-horses;--they would by this time have found out
that in our primitive life there are subjects enough, and that in
mythology and heroics we must ever be dead copyists. But I do not
believe Morton was thinking of art at all, as he sat there in the
October evening sun and watched the little feet, yet full of
unexhausted energy after traveling to and fro all day. He did not
know, or care, that Patty, with her head thrown back and her left arm
half outstretched to guide her thread, was a glorious subject for a
statue. He had never seen marble, and had never heard of statues
except in the talk of the old schoolmaster. How should her think to
call her statuesque? Or how should he know that the wide old
log-kitchen, with its loom in one corner, its vast fireplace, wherein
sit the two huge, black andirons, and wherein swings an iron crane on
which hang pot-hooks with iron pots depending--the old kitchen, with
its bark-covered joists high overhead, from which are festooned
strings of drying pumpkins--how should Morton Goodwin know that this
wide old kitchen, with its rare centre-piece of a fine-featured,
fresh-hearted young girl straining every nerve to spin two dozen cuts
of yarn in a day, would make a _genre_ piece, the subject of which
would be good enough for one of the old Dutch masters? He could not
know all this, but he did know, as he watched the feet treading
swiftly and rhythmically back and forth, and as he saw the fine face,
ruddy with the vigorous exercise, looking at him over the top of a
whirling wheel whose spokes were invisible--he did know that Patty
Lumsden was a little higher than angels, and he shuddered when he
remembered that to-morrow, and indefinitely afterward, he might be
shut out from her father's house.
It was while he sat thus and listened to Patty's broken patches of
sprightly talk and the monotonous symphony of her wheel, that Captain
Lumsden came into the yard, snapping his rawhide whip against his
boots, and walking, in his eager, jerky fashion, around to the
kitchen door.
"Hello, Morton! here, eh? Been hunting? This don't pay. A young
man that is going to get on in the world oughtn't to set here in the
sunshine talking to the girls. Leave that for nights and Sundays.
I'm afeard you won't get on if you don't work early and late. Eh?"
And the captain chuckled his hard little laugh.
Morton felt all the pleasure of the glorious afternoon vanish, as he
rose to go. He laid the turkey destined for Patty inside the door,
took up the other, and was about to leave. Meantime the captain had
lifted the white gourd at the well-curb, to satisfy his thirst.
"I saw Kike just now," he said, in a fragmentary way, between his
sips of water--and Morton felt his face color at the first mention of
Kike. "I saw Kike crossing the creek on your mare. You oughtn't to
let him ride her; she'll break his fool neck yet. Here comes Kike
himself. I wonder where he's been to?"
Morton saw, in the fixed look of Kike's eyes, as he opened the gate,
evidence of deep passion; but Captain Enoch Lumsden was not looking
for anything remarkable about Kike, and he was accustomed to treat
him with peculiar indignity because he was a relative.
"Hello, Kike!" he said, as his nephew approached, while Watch
faithfully sniffed at his heels, "where've you been cavorting on that
filley to-day? I told Mort he was a fool to let a snipe like you
ride that she-devil. She'll break your blamed neck some day, and
then there'll be one fool less." And the captain chuckled
triumphantly at the wit in his way of putting the thing. "Don't kick
the dog! What an ill-natured ground-hog you air! If I had the
training of you, I'd take some of that out."
"You haven't got the training of me, and you never will have."
Kike's face was livid, and his voice almost inaudible.
"Come, come, don't be impudent, young man," chuckled Captain Lumsden.
"I don't know what you call impudence," said Kike, stretching his
slender frame up to its full height, and shaking as if he had an
ague-chill; "but you are a tyrant and a scoundrel!"
"Tut! tut! Kike, you're crazy, you little brute. What's up?"
"You know what's up. You want to cheat me out of that bottom land;
you have got it advertised on the back side of a tree in North's
holler, without consulting mother or me. I have been over to
Jonesville to-day, and picked out Colonel Wheeler to act as my
gardeen."
"Colonel Wheeler? Why, that's an insult to me!" And the captain
ceased to laugh, and grew red.
"I hope it is. I couldn't get the judge to take back the order for
the sale of the land; he's afeard of you. But now let me tell you
something, Enoch Lumsden! If you sell my land by that order of the
court, you'll lose more'n you'll make. I ain't afeard of the devil
nor none of his angels; and I recken you're one of the blackest.
It'll cost you more burnt barns and dead hosses and cows and hogs and
sheep than what you make will pay for. You cheated pappy, but you
shan't make nothin' out of Little Kike. I'll turn Ingin, and take
Ingin law onto you, you old thief and--"
[Illustration: THE ALTERCATION.]
Here Captain Lumsden stepped forward and raised his cowhide. "I'll
teach you some manners, you impudent little brat!"
Kike quivered all over, but did not move hand or foot. "Hit me if
you dare, Enoch Lumsden, and they'll be blood betwixt us then. You
hit me wunst, and they'll be one less Lumsden alive in a year. You
or me'll have to go to the bone-yard."
Patty had stopped her wheel, had forgotten all about her two dozen a
day, and stood frightened in the door, near Morton. Morton advanced
and took hold of Kike.
"Come, Kike! Kike! don't be so wrothy," said he.
"Keep hands offen me, Mort Goodwin," said Kike, shaking loose. "I've
got an account to settle, and ef he tetches a thread of my coat with
a cowhide, it'll be a bad day fer both on us. We'll settle with
blood then."
"It's no use for you to interfere, Mort," snarled the captain. "I
know well enough who put Kike up to this. I'll settle with both of
you, some day." Then, with an oath, the captain went into the house,
while the two young men moved away down the road, Morton not daring
to look at Patty.
What Morton dreaded most had come upon him. As for Kike, when once
they were out of sight of Lumsden's, the reaction on his feeble frame
was terrible. He sat down on a log and cried with grief and anger.
"The worst of it is, I've ruined your chances, Mort," said he.
And Morton did not reply.
_CHAPTER VI._
THE FALL HUNT.
Morton led Kike home in silence, and then returned to his father's
house, deposited his turkey outside the door, and sat down on a
broken chair by the fire-place. His father, a hypochondriac, hard of
hearing, and slow of thought and motion, looked at him steadily a
moment, and then said:
"Sick, Mort? Goin' to have a chill?"
"No, sir."
"You look powerful dauncy," said the old man, as he stuffed his pipe
full of leaf tobacco which he had chafed in his hand, and sat down on
the other side of the fire-place. "I feel a kind of all-overishness
myself. I 'low we'll have the fever in the bottoms this year. Hey?"
"I don't know, sir."
"What?"
"I said I didn't know." Morton found it hard to answer his father
with decency. The old man said "Oh," when he understood Morton's
last reply; and perceiving that his son was averse to talking, he
devoted himself to his pipe, and to a cheerful revery on the awful
consequences that might result if "the fever," which was rumored to
have broken out at Chilicothe, should spread to the Hissawachee
bottom. Mrs. Goodwin took Morton's moodiness to be a fresh evidence
of the working of the Divine Spirit in his heart, and she began to
hope more than ever that he might prove to be one of the elect.
Indeed, she thought it quite probable that a boy so good to his
mother would be one of the precious few; for though she knew that the
election was unconditional, and of grace, she could not help feeling
that there was an antecedent probability of Morton's being chosen.
She went quietly and cheerfully to her work, spreading the thin
corn-meal dough on the clean hoe used in that day instead of a
griddle, for baking the "hoe-cake," and putting the hoe in its place
before the fire, setting the sassafras tea to draw, skimming the
milk, and arranging the plates--white, with blue edges--and the
yellow cups and saucers on the table, and all the while praying that
Morton might be found one of those chosen before the foundation of
the world to be sanctified and saved to the glory of God.
The revery of Mr. Goodwin about the possible breaking out of the
fever, and the meditation of his wife about the hopeful state of her
son, and the painful reflections of Morton about the disastrous break
with Captain Lumsden--all three set agoing primarily by one
cause--were all three simultaneously interrupted by the appearance of
the younger son, Henry, at the door, with a turkey.
"Where did you get that?" asked his mother.
"Captain Lumsden, or Patty, sent it."
"Captain Lumsden, eh?" said the father. "Well, the captain's feeling
clever, I 'low."
"He sent it to Mort by little black Bob, and said it was with Miss
Patty's somethin' or other--couplements, Bob called 'em."
"Compliments, eh?" and the father looked at Morton, smiling. "Well,
you're gettin' on there mighty fast, Mort; but how did Patty come to
send a turkey?" The mother looked anxiously at her son, seeing he
did not evince any pleasure at so singular a present from Patty.
Morton was obliged to explain the state of affairs between himself
and the captain, which he did in as few words as possible. Of
course, he knew that the use of Patty's name in returning the turkey
was a ruse of Lumsden's, to give him additional pain.
"It's bad," said the father, as he filled his pipe again, after
supper. "Quarreled with Lumsden! He'll drive us off. We'll all
take the fever"--for every evil that Job Goodwin thought of
immediately became inevitable, in his imagination--"we'll all take
the fever, and have to make a new settlement in winter time." Saying
this, Goodwin took his pipe out of his mouth, rested his elbow on his
knee, and his head on his hand, diligently exerting his imagination
to make real and vivid the worst possible events conceivable from
this new and improved stand-point of despair.
But the wise mother set herself to planning; and when eight o'clock
had come, and Job Goodwin had forgotten the fever, having fallen into
a doze in his shuck-bottom chair, Mrs. Goodwin told Morton that the
best thing for him and Kike would be to get out of the settlement
until the captain should have time to cool off.
"Kike ought to be got away before he does anything desperate. We
want some meat for winter; and though it's a little early yet, you'd
better start off with Kike in the morning," she said.
Always fond of hunting, anxious now to drown pain and forebodings in
some excitement, Morton did not need a second suggestion from his
mother. He feared bad results from Kike's temper; and though he had
little hope of any relenting on Lumsden's part, he had an eager
desire to forget his trouble in a chase after bears and deer. He
seized his cap, saddled and mounted Dolly, and started at once to the
house of Kike's mother. Soon after Morton went, his father woke up,
and, finding his son gone out, complained, as he got ready for bed,
that the boy would "ketch the fever, certain, runnin' 'round that
away at night."
[Illustration: THE IRISH SCHOOL-MASTER.]
Morton found Kike in a state of exhaustion--pale, angry, and sick.
Mr. Brady, the Irish school-master, from whom the boys had received
most of their education and many a sound whipping, was doing his best
to divert Kike from his revengeful mood. It is a singular fact in
the history of the West, that so large a proportion of the first
school-masters were Irishmen of uncertain history.
"Ha! Moirton, is it you?" said Brady. "I'm roight glad to see ye.
Here's this b'y says hay'd a shot his own uncle as shore as hay'd a
toiched him with his roidin'-fwhip. An' I've been a-axin ov him fwoi
hay hain't blowed out me brains a dozen times, sayin' oive lathered
him with baich switches. I didn't guiss fwat a saltpayter kag hay
wuz, sure. Else I'd a had him sarched for foire-arms before iver I'd
a venter'd to inform him which end of the alphabet was the
bayginnin'. Hay moight a busted me impty pate for tellin' him that A
wusn't B."
It was impossible for Morton to keep from smiling at the good old
fellow's banter. Brady was bent on mollifying Kike, who was one of
his brightest and most troublesome pupils, standing next to Patty and
Morton in scholarship though much younger.
Kike's mother, a shrewd but illiterate woman, was much troubled to
see him in so dangerous a passion. "I wish he was leetle-er, ur
bigger," she said.
"An' fwoi air ye afther wishing that same, me dair madam?" asked the
Irishman.
"Bekase," said the widow, "ef he was leetle-er, I could whip it outen
him; ef he was bigger, he wouldn't be sich a fool. Boys is allers
powerful troublesome when they're kinder 'twixt and 'tween--nary man
nor boy. They air boys, but they feel so much bigger'n they used to
be, that they think theirselves men, and talk about shootin', and all
sich like. Deliver me from a boy jest a leetle too big to be laid
acrost your lap, and larnt what's what. Tho', ef I do say it, Kike's
been a oncommon good sort of boy to me mostly, on'y he's got a
oncommon lot of red pepper into him, like his pappy afore him, and
he's one of them you can't turn. An', as for Enoch Lumsden, I
_would_ be glad ef he wuz shot, on'y I don't want no little fool like
Kike to go to fightin' a man like Nuck Lumsden. Nobody but God
A'mighty kin ever do jestice to his case; an' it's a blessed comfort
to me that I'll meet him at the Jedgment-day. Nothin' does my heart
so much good, like, as to think what a bill Nuck'll have to settle
_then_, and how he can't browbeat the Jedge, nor shake a mortgage in
_his_ face. It's the on'y rale nice thing about the Day of Jedgment,
akordin' to my thinkin'. I mean to call his attention to some things
then. He won't say much about his wife's belongin' to fust families
thar, I 'low."
Brady laughed long and loud at this sally of Mrs. Hezekiah Lumsden's;
and even Kike smiled a little, partly at his mother's way of putting
things, and partly from the contagion of Brady's merry disposition.
Morton now proposed Mrs. Goodwin's plan, that he and Kike should
leave early in the morning, on the fall hunt. Kike felt the first
dignity of manhood on him; he knew that, after his high tragic stand
with his uncle, he ought to stay, and fight it out; but then the
opportunity to go on a long hunt with Morton was a rare one, and
killing a bear would be almost as pleasant to his boyish ambition as
shooting his uncle.
"I don't want to run away from him. He'll think I've backed out," he
said, hesitatingly.
"Now, I'll tell ye fwat," said Brady, winking; "you put out and git
some bear's ile for your noice black hair. If the cap'n makes so
bowld as to sell ye out of house and home, and crick bottom, fwoile
ye're gone, it's yerself as can do the burnin' afther ye git back.
The barn's noo, and 'tain't quoit saysoned yit. It'll burn a dale
better fwen ye're ray-turned, me lad. An', as for the shootin' part,
practice on the bears fust! 'Twould be a pity to miss foire on the
captain, and him ye're own dair uncle, ye know. He'll keep till ye
come back. If I say anybody a goin' to crack him owver, I'll jist
spake a good word for ye, an' till him as the captin's own
affictionate niphew has got the fust pop at him, by roight of bayin'
blood kin, sure."
Kike could not help smiling grimly at this presentation of the
matter; and while he hesitated, his mother said he should go. She'd
bundle him off in the early morning. And long before daylight, the
two boys, neither of whom had slept during the night, started, with
guns on their shoulders, and with the venerable Blaze for a
pack-horse. Dolly was a giddy young thing, that could not be trusted
in business so grave.
_CHAPTER VII._
TREEING A PREACHER.
Had I but bethought myself in time to call this history by one of
those gentle titles now in vogue, as "The Wild Hunters of the Far
West," or even by one of the labels with which juvenile and
Sunday-school literature--milk for babes--is now made attractive, as,
for instance, "Kike, the Young Bear Hunter." I might here have
entertained the reader with a vigorous description of the death of
Bruin, fierce and fat, at the hands of the triumphant Kike, and of
the exciting chase after deer under the direction of Morton.
After two weeks of such varying success as hunters have, they found
that it would be necessary to forego the discomforts of camp-life for
a day, and visit the nearest settlement in order to replenish their
stock of ammunition. Wilkins' store, which was the center of a
settlement, was a double log-building. In one end the proprietor
kept for sale powder and lead, a few bonnets, cheap ribbons, and
artificial flowers, a small stock of earthenware, and cheap crockery,
a little homespun cotton cloth, some bolts of jeans and linsey, hanks
of yarn and skeins of thread, tobacco for smoking and tobacco for
"chawing," a little "store-tea"--so called in contra-distinction to
the sage, sassafras and crop-vine teas in general use--with a
plentiful stock of whisky, and some apple-brandy. The other end of
this building was a large room, festooned with strings of drying
pumpkin, cheered by an enormous fireplace, and lighted by one small
window with four lights of glass. In this room, which contained
three beds, and in the loft above, Wilkins and his family lived and
kept a first-class hotel.
In the early West, Sunday was a day sacred to Diana and Bacchus. Our
young friends visited the settlement at Wilkins' on that day, not
because they wished to rest, but because they had begun to get
lonely, and they knew that Sunday would not fail to find some frolic
in progress, and in making new acquaintances, fifty miles from home,
they would be able to relieve the tedium of the wilderness with games
at cards, and other social enjoyments.
Morton and Kike arrived at Wilkins' combined store and tavern at ten
o'clock in the morning, and found the expected crowd of loafers. The
new-comers "took a hand" in all the sports, the jumping, the
foot-racing, the quoit-pitching, the "wras'lin'," the
target-shooting, the poker-playing, and the rest, and were soon
accepted as clever fellows. A frontierman could bestow no higher
praise--to be a clever fellow in his sense was to know how to lose at
cards, without grumbling, the peltries hard-earned in hunting, to be
always ready to change your coon-skins into "drinks for the crowd,"
and to be able to hit a three-inch "mark" at two hundred paces
without bragging.
Just as the sports had begun to lose their zest a little, there
walked up to the tavern door a man in homespun dress, carrying one of
his shoes in his hand, and yet not seeming to be a plain
backwoodsman. He looked a trifle over thirty years of age, and an
acute observer might have guessed from his face that his life had
been one of daring adventure, and many vicissitudes. There were
traces also of conflicting purposes, of a certain strength, and a
certain weakness of character; the melancholy history of good
intentions overslaughed by bad passions and evil associations was
written in his countenance.
[Illustration: ELECTIONEERING.]
"Some feller 'lectioneerin', I'll bet," said one of Morton's
companions.
The crowd gathered about the stranger, who spoke to each one as
though he had known him always. He proposed "the drinks" as the
surest road to an acquaintance, and when all had drunk, the stranger
paid the score, not in skins but in silver coin.
"See here, stranger," said Morton, mischievously, "you're mighty
clever, by hokey. What are you running fer?"
"Well, gentlemen, you guessed me out that time. I 'low to run for
sheriff next heat," said the stranger, who affected dialect for the
sake of popularity.
"What mout your name be?" asked one of the company.
"Marcus Burchard's my name when I'm at home. I live at Jenkinsville.
I sot out in life a poor boy. I'm so used to bein' bar'footed that
my shoes hurts my feet an' I have to pack one of 'em in my hand most
of the time."
Morton here set down his glass, and looking at the stranger with
perfect seriousness said, dryly: "Well, Mr. Burchard, I never heard
that speech so well done before. We're all goin' to vote for you,
without t'other man happens to do it up slicker'n you do. I don't
believe he can, though. That was got off very nice."
Burchard was acute enough to join in the laugh which this sally
produced, and to make friends with Morton, who was clearly the leader
of the party, and whose influence was worth securing.
Nothing grows wearisome so soon as idleness and play, and as evening
drew on, the crowd tired even of Mr. Burchard's choice collection of
funny anecdotes--little stories that had been aired in the same order
at every other tavern and store in the county. From sheer _ennui_ it
was proposed that they should attend Methodist preaching at a house
two miles away. They could at least get some fun out of it.
Burchard, foreseeing a disturbance, excused himself. He wished he
might enjoy the sport, but he must push on. And "push on" he did.
In a closely contested election even Methodist votes were not to be
thrown away.
Morton and Kike relished the expedition. They had heard that the
Methodists were a rude, canting, illiterate race, cloaking the worst
practices under an appearance of piety. Mr. Donaldson had often
fulminated against them from the pulpit, and they felt almost sure
that they could count on his apostolic approval in their laudable
enterprise of disturbing a Methodist meeting.
The preacher whom they heard was of the roughest type. His speech
was full of dialectic forms and ungrammatical phrases. His
illustrations were exceedingly uncouth. It by no means followed that
he was not an effective preacher. All these defects were rather to
his advantage,--the backwoods rhetoric was suited to move the
backwoods audience. But the party from the tavern were in no mood to
be moved by anything. They came for amusement, and set themselves
diligently to seek it. Morton was ambitious to lead among his new
friends, as he did at home, and on this occasion he made use of his
rarest gift. The preacher, Mr. Mellen, was just getting "warmed up"
with his theme; he was beginning to sling his rude metaphors to the
right and left, and the audience was fast coming under his influence,
when Morton Goodwin, who had cultivated a ventriloquial gift for the
diversion of country parties, and the disturbance of Mr. Brady's
school, now began to squeak like a rat in a trap, looking all the
while straight at the preacher, as if profoundly interested in the
discourse. The women were startled and the grave brethren turned
their austere faces round to look stern reproofs at the young men.
In a moment the squeaking ceased, and there began the shrill yelping
of a little dog, which seemed to be on the women's side of the room.
Brother Mellen, the preacher, paused, and was about to request that
the dog should be removed, when he began to suspect from the
sensation among the young men that the disturbance was from them.
"You needn't be afeard, sisters," he said, "puppies will bark, even
when they walk on two legs instid of four."
This rude joke produced a laugh, but gained no permanent advantage to
the preacher, for Morton, being a stranger, did not care for the good
opinion of the audience, but for the applause of the young revelers
with whom he had come. He kept silence now, until the preacher again
approached a climax, swinging his stalwart arms and raising his voice
to a tremendous pitch in the endeavor to make the day of doom seem
sufficiently terrible to his hearers. At last, when he got to the
terror of the wicked, he cried out dramatically, "What are these
awful sounds I hear?" At this point he made a pause, which would
have been very effective, had it not been for young Goodwin.
"Caw! caw! caw-aw! cah!" he said, mimicking a crow.
"Young man," roared the preacher, "you are hair-hung and
breeze-shaken over that pit that has no bottom."
"Oh, golly!" piped the voice of Morton, seeming to come from nowhere
in particular. Mr. Mellen now ceased preaching, and started toward
the part of the room in which the young men sat, evidently intending
to deal out summary justice to some one. He was a man of immense
strength, and his face indicated that he meant to eject the whole
party. But they all left in haste except Morton, who staid and met
the preacher's gaze with a look of offended innocence. Mr. Mellen
was perplexed. A disembodied voice wandering about the room would
have been too much for Hercules himself. When the baffled orator
turned back to begin to preach again, Morton squeaked in an
aggravating falsetto, but with a good imitation of Mr. Mellen's
inflections, "Hair-hung and breeze-shaken!"
And when the angry preacher turned fiercely upon him, the scoffer was
already fleeing through the door.
_CHAPTER VIII._
A LESSON IN SYNTAX.
The young men were gone until the latter part of November. Several
persons longed for their return. Mr. Job Goodwin, for one, began to
feel a strong conviction that Mort had taken the fever and died in
the woods. He was also very sure that each succeeding day would
witness some act of hostility toward himself on the part of Captain
Lumsden; and as each day failed to see any evil result from the anger
of his powerful neighbor, or to bring any tidings of disaster to
Morton, Job Goodwin faithfully carried forward the dark foreboding
with compound interest to the next day. He abounded in quotations of
such Scripture texts as set forth the fact that man's days were few
and full of trouble. The book of Ecclesiastes was to him a perennial
fountain of misery--he delighted to found his despairing auguries
upon the superior wisdom of Solomon. He looked for Morton's return
with great anxiety, hoping to find that nothing worse had happened to
him than the shooting away of an arm. Mrs. Goodwin, for her part,
dreaded the evil influences of the excitements of hunting. She
feared lest Morton should fall into the bad habits that had carried
away from home an older brother, for whose untimely death in an
affray she had never ceased to mourn.
And Patty! When her father had on that angry afternoon discovered
the turkey that Morton had given her, and had sent it home with a
message in her name, Patty had borne herself like the proud girl that
she was. She held her head aloft; she neither indicated pleasure nor
displeasure at her father's course; she would not disclose any liking
for Morton, nor any complaisance toward her father. This air of
defiance about her Captain Lumsden admired. It showed her mettle, he
said to himself. Patty would almost have finished that two dozen
cuts of yarn if it had cost her life. She even managed to sing,
toward the last of her weary day of work; and when, at nine o'clock,
she reeled off her twenty-fourth cut,--drawing a sigh of relief when
the reel snapped,--and hung her twelve hanks up together, she seemed
as blithe as ever. Her sickly mother sitting, knitting in hand, with
wan face bordered by white cap-frill, looked approvingly on Patty's
achievement. Patty showed her good blood, was the mother's
reflection.
[Illustration: PATTY IN HER CHAMBER.]
But Patty? She did not hurry. She put everything away carefully.
She was rather slow about retiring. But when at last she went aloft
into her room in the old block-house part of the building, and shut
and latched her door, and set her candle-stick on the high,
old-fashioned, home-made dressing-stand, she looked at herself in the
little looking-glass and did not see there the face she had been able
to keep while the eyes of others were upon her. She saw weariness,
disappointment, and dejection. Her strong will held her up. She
undressed herself with habitual quietness. She even stopped to look
again in self-pity at her face as she stood by the glass to tie on
her night-cap. But when at last she had blown out the candle, and
carefully extinguished the wick, and had climbed into the great,
high, billowy feather-bed under the rafters, she buried her tired
head in the pillow and cried a long time, hardly once admitting to
herself what she was crying about.
And as the days wore on, and her father ceased to speak of Kike or
Morton, and she heard that they were out of the settlement, she found
in herself an ever-increasing desire to see Morton. The more she
tried to smother her feeling, and the more she denied to herself the
existence of the feeling, the more intense did it become. Whenever
hunters passed the gate, going after or returning laden with game,
she stopped involuntarily to gaze at them. But she never failed, a
moment later, to affect an indifferent expression of countenance and
to rebuke herself for curiosity so idle. What were hunters to her?
But one evening the travelers whom she looked for went by. They were
worse for wear; their buckskin pantaloons were torn by briers; their
tread was heavy, for they had traveled since daylight; but Patty,
peering through one of the port-holes of the blockhouse, did not fail
to recognize old Blaze, burdened as he was with venison, bear-meat
and skins, nor to note how Morton looked long and steadfastly at
Captain Lumsden's house as if hoping to catch a glimpse of herself.
That look of Morton's sent a blush of pleasure over her face, which
she could not quite conceal when she met the inquiring eyes of a
younger brother a minute later. But when she saw her father gallop
rapidly down the road as if in pursuit of the young men, her sense of
pleasure changed quickly to foreboding.
Morton and Kike had managed, for the most part, to throw off their
troubles in the excitement of hunting. But when at last they had
accumulated all the meat old Blaze could carry and all the furs they
could "pack," they had turned their steps toward home. And with the
turning of their steps toward home had come the inevitable turning of
their thoughts toward old perplexities. Morton then confided to Kike
his intention of leaving the settlement and leading the life of a
hermit in the wilderness in case it should prove to be "all off"
between him and Patty. And Kike said that his mind was made up. If
he found that his uncle Enoch had sold the land, he would be revenged
in some way and then run off and live with the Indians. It is not
uncommon for boys now-a-days to make stern resolutions in moments of
wretchedness which they never attempt to carry out. But the rude
life of the West developed deep feeling and a hardy persistence in a
purpose once formed. Many a young man crossed in love or incited to
revenge had already taken to the wilderness, becoming either a morose
hermit or a desperado among the savages. At the period of life when
the animal fights hard for supremacy in the soul of man, destiny
often hangs very perilously balanced. It was at that day a question
in many cases whether a young man of force would become a rowdy or a
class-leader.
When once our hunters had entered the settlement they became more
depressed than ever. Morton's eyes searched Captain Lumsden's house
and yard in vain for a sight of Patty. Kike looked sternly ahead of
him, full of rage that he should have to be reminded of his uncle's
existence. And when, five minutes later, they heard horse-hoofs
behind them, and, looking back, saw Captain Lumsden himself galloping
after them on his sleek, "clay-bank" saddle-horse, their hearts beat
fast with excitement. Morton wondered what the Captain could want
with them, seeing it was not his way to carry on his conflicts by
direct attack; and Kike contented himself with looking carefully to
the priming of his flintlock, compressing his lips and walking
straight forward.
"Hello, boys! Howdy? Got a nice passel of furs, eh? Had a good
time?"
"Pretty good, thank you, sir!" said Morton, astonished at the
greeting, but eager enough to be on good terms again with Patty's
father. Kike said not a word, but grew white with speechless anger.
"Nice saddle of ven'son that!" and the Captain tapped it with his
cow-hide whip. "Killed a bar, too; who killed it?"
"Kike," said Morton.
"Purty good fer you, Kike! Got over your pout about that land yet?"
Kike did not speak, for the reason that he could not.
"What a little fool you was to make sich a fuss about nothing! I
didn't sell it, of course, when you didn't want me to, but you ought
to have a little manners in your way of speaking. Come to me next
time, and don't go running to the judge and old Wheeler. If you
won't be a fool, you'll find your own kin your best friends. Come
over and see me to-morry, Mort. I've got some business with you.
Good-by!" and the Captain galloped home.
Nor did he fail to observe how inquiringly Patty looked at his face
to see what had been the nature of his interview with the boys. With
a characteristic love of exerting power over the moods of another, he
said, in Patty's hearing: "That Kike is the sulkiest little brute I
ever did see."
And Patty spent most of her time during the night in trying to guess
what this saying indicated. It was what Captain Lumsden had wished.
Neither Morton nor Kike could guess what the Captain's cordiality
might signify. Kike was pleased that his land had not been sold, but
he was not in the least mollified by that fact. He was glad of his
victory and hated his uncle all the more.
After the weary weeks of camping, Morton greatly enjoyed the warm
hoe-cakes, the sassafras tea, the milk and butter, that he got at his
mother's table. His father was pleased to have his boy back safe and
sound, but reckoned the fever was shore to ketch them all before
Christmas or Noo Years. Morton told of his meeting with the Captain
in some elation, but Job Goodwin shook his head. He "knowed what
that meant," he said. "The Cap'n always wuz sorter deep. He'd hit
sometime when you didn't know whar the lick come from. And he'd hit
powerful hard when he _did_ hit, you be shore."
Before the supper was over, who should come in but Brady. He had
heard, he said, that Morton had come home, and he was dayloighted to
say him agin. Full of quaint fun and queer anecdotes, knowing all
the gossip of the settlement, and having a most miscellaneous and
disordered lot of information besides, Brady was always welcome; he
filled the place of a local newspaper. He was a man of much reading,
but with no mental discipline. He had treasured all the strange and
delightful things he had ever heard or read--the bloody murders, the
sudden deaths, the wonderful accidents and incidents of life, the ups
and downs of noted people, and especially a rare fund of humorous
stories. He had so many of these at command that it was often
surmised that he manufactured them. He "boarded 'round" during
school-time, and sponged 'round the rest of the year, if, indeed, a
man can be said to sponge who paid for his board so amply in
amusement, information, flattery, and a thousand other good offices.
Good company is scarcer and higher in price in the back settlements
than in civilization; and many a backwoods housewife, perishing of
_ennui_, has declared that the genial Brady's "company wuz worth his
keep,"--an opinion in which husbands and children always coincided.
For welcome belongs primarily to woman; no man makes another's
reception sure until he is pretty certain of his wife's disposition
toward the guest.
Mrs. Goodwin set a place for the "master" with right good will, and
Brady catechised "Moirton" about his adventures. The story of Kike's
first bear roused the good Irishman's enthusiasm, and when Morton
told of his encounter with the circuit-rider, Brady laughed merrily.
Nothing was too bad in his eyes for "a man that undertook to prache
afore hay could parse." Brady's own grammatical knowledge, indeed,
had more influence on his parsing than on his speech.
At last, when supper was ended, Morton came to the strangest of all
his adventures--the meeting with Captain Lumsden; and while he told
it, the schoolmaster's eyes were brimming full of fun. By the time
the story was finished, Morton began to suspect that Brady knew more
about it than he affected to.
"Looky here, Mr. Brady," he said, "I believe you could tell something
about this thing. What made the coon come down so easy?"
"Tut! tut! and ye shouldn't call yer own dair father-in-law (that is
to bay) a coun. Ye ought to have larn't some manners agin this
toime, with all the batins I've gin ye for disrespect to yer
supayriors. An' ispicially to thim as is closte akin to ye."
Little Henry, who sat squat upon the hearth, tickling the ears of a
sleepy dog with a straw, saw an infinite deal of fun in this rig on
Morton.
"Well, but you didn't answer my question, Mr. Brady. How did you
fetch the Captain round? For I think you did it."
"Be gorra I did!" and Brady looked up from under his eyebrows with
his face all a-twinkle with fun. "I jist parsed the sintince in sich
a way as to put the Captin in the nominative case. He loikes to be
put in the nominative case, does the Captin. If iver yer goin' to
win the devoine craycher that calls him father ye'll hev to larn to
parse with Captin Lumsden for the nominative." Here Brady gave the
whole party a look of triumphant mystery, and dropped his head
reflectively upon his bosom.
"Well, but you'll have to teach me that way of parsing. You left
that rule of syntax out last winter." said Morton, seeking to draw
out the master by humoring his fancy. "How did you parse the
sentence with him, while Kike and I were gone?"
"Aisy enough! don't you say? the nominative governs the varb, and
thin the varb governs 'most all the rist of the sintince."
"Give an instance," said Morton, mimicking at the same time the
pompous air and authoritative voice with which Brady was accustomed
to make such a demand of a pupil.
"Will, thin, I'll till ye, Moirton. But ye must all be quiet about
it. I wint to say the Captin soon afther yerself and Koike carried
yer two impty skulls into the woods. An' I looked koind of
confidintial-loike at the Captin, an' I siz, 'Captin, ye ought to
riprisint this county in the ligislater,' siz I."
"'Do you think so, Brady?' siz he.
"'It's fwat I've been a-sayin' down at the Forks,' siz I, 'till the
folks is all a-gittin' of me opinion,' siz I; 'ye've got more
interest in the county,' siz I, 'than the rist,' siz I, 'an' ye've
got the brains to exart an anfluence whin ye git thar,' siz I. Will,
ye see, Moirton, the Captin loiked that, and he siz, 'Will, Brady,'
siz he, 'I'm obleeged fer yer anfluence,' siz he. An' I saw I had
'im. I'd jist put 'im in the nominative case governin' the varb.
And I was the varb. An' I mint to govern, the rist." Here Brady
stopped to smile complacently and enjoy the mystification of the rest.
"Will, I said to 'im afther that: 'Captain' siz I, 'ye must be
moighty keerful not to give the inimy any handle onto ye,' siz I.
An' he siz 'Will, Brady, I'll be keerful,' siz he. An' I siz,
'Captin, be pertik'ler keerful about that matter of Koike, if I may
make so bowld,' siz I. 'Fer they'll use that ivery fwere. They're
a-talkin' about it now.' An' the Captin siz, 'Will, Brady, I say I
kin thrust ye,' siz he. An' I siz, 'That ye kin, Captain Lumsden: ye
kin thrust the honor of an Oirish gintleman,' siz I. 'Brady,' siz
he, 'this mess of Koike's is a bad one fer me, since the little
brat's gone and brought ole Whayler into it,' siz he. 'Ye bitter
belave it is, Captin,' siz I. 'Fwat shill I do, Brady?' siz he.
'Spoike the guns, Captin,' siz I. 'How?' siz he. 'Make it all
roight with Koike and Moirton,' siz I. 'As fer Moirton,' siz I,
'he's the smartest _young_ man,' siz I (puttin' imphasis on
'_young_,' you say), he's the smartest young man,' siz I, 'in the
bottoms; and if ye kin make an alloiance with him,' siz I, 'ye've got
the smartest old man managin' the smartest young man. An' if ye kin
make a matrimonial alloiance,' siz I, a-winkin' me oi at 'im, 'atwixt
that devoine young craycher, yer charmin' dauther Patty,' siz I, 'and
Moirton, ye've got him tethered for loife, and the guns is spoiked,'
siz I. An' he siz, 'Brady, yer Oirish head is good, afther all.
I'll think about it,' siz he. An' that's how I made Captin Lumsden
the nominative case governin' the varb--that's myself--and thin the
varb rigilates the rist. But I must go and say Koike, or the little
black-hidded fool'll spoil all me conthrivin' and parsin' wid the
captin. Betwixt Moirton and Koike and the captin, it's meself as has
got a hard sum in the rule of thray. This toime I hope the answer'll
come out all roight, Moirton, me b'y!" and Brady slapped him on the
shoulder and went out. Then he put his head into the door again to
say that the answer set down in the book was: "Misthress Patty
Goodwin."
_CHAPTER IX._
THE COMING OF THE CIRCUIT RIDER.
Colonel Wheeler was the standard-bearer of the flag of independence
in the Hissawachee bottom. He had been a Captain in the Revolution;
but Revolutionary titles showed a marked tendency to grow during the
quarter of a century that followed the close of the war. An
ex-officer's neighbors carried him forward with his advancing age; a
sort of ideal promotion by brevet gauged the appreciation of military
titles as the Revolution passed into history and heroes became
scarcer. And emigration always advanced a man several degrees--new
neighbors, in their uncertainty about his rank, being prone to give
him the benefit of all doubts, and exalt as far as possible the
lustre which the new-comer conferred upon the settlement. Thus
Captain Wheeler in Maryland was Major Wheeler in Western
Pennsylvania, and a full-blown Colonel by the time he had made his
second move, into the settlement on Hissawachee Creek. And yet I may
be wrong. Perhaps it was not the transplanting that did it. Even
had he remained on the "Eastern Shore," he might have passed through
a process of canonization as he advanced in life that would have
brought him to a colonelcy: other men did. For what is a Colonel but
a Captain gone to seed?
"Gone to seed" may be considered a slang expression; and, as a
conscientious writer, far be it from me to use slang. And I take
great credit to myself for avoiding it just now, since nothing could
more perfectly describe Wheeler. His hair was grizzling, his
shoulders had a chronic shrug, his under lip protruded in an
expression of perpetual resistance, and his prominent chin and brow
seemed to have been jammed together; the space between was too small.
He had an air of defense; his nature was always in a
"guard-against-cavalry" attitude. He had entered into the spirit of
colonial resistance from childhood; he was born in antagonism to
kings and all that are in authority; it was a family tradition that
he had been flogged in boyhood for shooting pop-gun wads into the
face of a portrait of the reigning monarch.
When he settled in the Hissawachee bottom, he of course looked about
for the power that was to be resisted, and was not long in finding it
in his neighbor, Captain Lumsden. He was the one opponent whom
Lumsden could not annoy into submission or departure. To Wheeler
this fight against Lumsden was the one delightful element of life in
the Bottoms. He had now the comfortable prospect of spending his
declining years in a fertile valley where there was a powerful foe,
whose encroachments on the rights and privileges of his neighbors
would afford him an inexhaustible theme for denunciation, and a
delightful incitement to the exercise of his powers of resistance.
And thus for years he had eaten his dinners with better relish
because of his contest with Lumsden. Mordecai could not have had
half so much pleasure in staring stiffly at the wicked Haman as
Isaiah Wheeler found in meeting Captain Lumsden on the road without
so much as a nod of recognition. And Haman's feelings were not more
deeply wounded than Lumsden's.
Colonel Wheeler was not very happily married; for at home he could
find no encroachments to resist. The perfect temper of his wife
disarmed even his opposition. He had begun his married life by
fighting his wife's Methodism; but when he came to the Hissawachee
and found Methodism unpopular, he took up arms in its defense.
Such was the man whom Kike had selected as guardian--a man who, with
all his disagreeableness, was possessed of honesty, a virtue not
inconsistent with oppugnancy. But Kike's chief motive in choosing
him was that he knew that the choice would be a stab to his uncle's
pride. Moreover, Wheeler was the only man who would care to brave
Lumsden's anger by taking the trust.
Wheeler lived in a log house on the hillside, and to this house, on
the day after the return of Morton and Kike, there rode a stranger.
He was a broad-shouldered, stalwart, swarthy man, of thirty-five,
with a serious but aggressive countenance, a broad-brim white hat, a
coat made of country jeans, cut straight-breasted and buttoned to the
chin, rawhide boots, and "linsey" leggings tied about his legs below
the knees. He rode a stout horse, and carried an ample pair of
saddlebags.
Reining his horse in front of the colonel's double cabin, he shouted,
after the Western fashion, "Hello! Hello the house!"
[Illustration: COLONEL WHEELER'S DOORYARD.]
At this a quartette of dogs set up a vociferous barking, ranging in
key all the way from the contemptible treble of an ill-natured "fice"
to the deep baying of a huge bull-dog.
"Hello the house!" cried the stranger.
"Hello! hello!" answered back Isaiah Wheeler, opening the door, and
shouting to the dogs, "You, Bull, come here! Git out, pup! Clear
out, all of you!" And he accompanied this command by threateningly
lifting a stick, at which two of the dogs scampered away, and a third
sneakingly retreated; but the bull-dog turned with reluctance, and,
without smoothing his bristles at all, slowly marched back toward the
house, protesting with surly growls against this authoritative
interruption.
"Hello, stranger, howdy?" said Colonel Wheeler, advancing with
caution, but without much cordiality. He would not commit himself to
a welcome too rashly; strangers needed inspection. "'Light, won't
you?" he said, presently; and the stranger proceeded to dismount,
while the Colonel ordered one of his sons who came out at that moment
to "put up the stranger's horse, and give him some fodder and corn."
Then turning to the new-comer, he scanned him a moment, and said: "A
preacher, I reckon, sir?"
"Yes, sir, I'm a Methodist preacher, and I heard that your wife was a
member of the Methodist Church, and that you were very friendly; so I
came round this way to see if you wouldn't open your doors for
preaching. I have one or two vacant days on my round, and thought
maybe I might as well take Hissawachee Bottom into the circuit, if I
didn't find anything to prevent."
By this time the colonel and his guest had reached the door, and the
former only said, "Well, sir, let's go in, and see what the old woman
says. I don't agree with you Methodists about everything, but I do
think that you are doing good, and so I don't allow anybody to say
anything against circuit riders without taking it up."
Mrs. Wheeler, a dignified woman, with a placidly religious face--a
countenance in which scruples are balanced by evenness of
temperament--was at the moment engaged in dipping yarn into a blue
dye that stood in a great iron kettle by the fire. She made haste to
wash and dry her hands, that she might have a "good, old-fashioned
Methodist shake-hands" with Brother Magruder, "the first Methodist
preacher she had seen since she left Pittsburg."
Colonel Wheeler readily assented that Mr. Magruder should preach in
his house. Methodists had just the same rights in a free country
that other people had. He "reckoned the Hissawachee settlement
didn't belong to one man, and he had fit aginst the King of England
in his time, and was jist as ready to fight aginst the King of
Hissawachee Bottom." The Colonel almost relaxed his stubborn lips
into a smile when he said this. Besides, he proceeded, his wife was
a Methodist; and she had a right to be, if she chose. He was
friendly to religion himself, though he wasn't a professor. If his
wife didn't want to wear rings or artificials, it was money in his
pocket, and nobody had a right to object. Colonel Wheeler plumed
himself before the new preacher upon his general friendliness toward
religion, and really thought it might be set down on the credit side
of that account in which he imagined some angelic book-keeper entered
all his transactions. He felt in his own mind "middlin' certain," as
he would have told you, that "betwixt the prayin' for he got from
_such_ a wife as his, and his own gineral friendliness to the
preachers and the Methodis' meetings, he would be saved at the last,
_somehow or nother_." It was not in the man to reflect that his
"gineral friendliness" for the preacher had its origin in a gineral
spitefulness toward Captain Lumsden.
Colonel Wheeler's son was dispatched through the settlement to inform
everybody that there would be preaching in his house that evening.
The news was told at the Forks, where there was always a crowd of
loafers; and each individual loafer, in riding home that afternoon,
called a "Hello!" at every house he passed; and when the salutation
from within was answered, remarked that he "thought liker'n not they
had'n heern tell of the preacher's comin' to Colonel Wheeler's." And
then the eager listener, generally the woman of the house, would cry
out, "Laws-a-massy! You don't say! A Methodis'? One of the
shoutin' kind, that knocks folks down when he preaches! What will
the Captin' do? They do say he _does_ hate the Methodis' worse nor
copperhead snakes, now. Some old quarrel, liker'n not. Well, I'm
agoin', jist to see how _red_ikl'us them Methodis' _does_ do!"
The news was sent to Brady's school, which had "tuck up" for the
winter, and from this centre also it soon spread throughout the
neighborhood. It reached Lumsden's very early in the forenoon.
"Well!" said Lumsden, excitedly, but still with his little crowing
chuckle; "so Wheeler's took the Methodists in! We'll have to see
about that. A man that brings such people to the settlement ought to
be lynched. But I'll match the Methodists. Where's Patty? Patty!
O, Patty! Bob, run and find Miss Patty."
And the little negro ran out, calling, "Miss Patty! O' Miss Patty!
Whah is ye?"
He looked into the smoke-house, and then ran down toward the barn,
shouting, "Miss Patty! O! Miss Patty!"
Where was Patty?
_CHAPTER X._
PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.
Patty had that morning gone to the spring-house, as usual, to strain
the milk.
Can it be possible that any benighted reader does not know what a
spring-house is? A little log cabin six feet long by five feet wide,
without floor, built where the great stream of water issues clear and
icy cold from beneath the hill. The little cabin-like spring-house
sits always in the hollow; as you approach it you look down upon the
roof of rough shingles which Western people call "clapboards," you
see the green moss that overgrows them and the logs, you see the
new-born brook rush out from beneath the logs that hide its cradle,
you lift the home-made latch and open the low door which creaks on
its wooden hinges, you see the great perennial spring rushing up
eagerly from its subterranean prison, you note how its clear cold
waters lave the sides of the earthen crocks, and in the dim light and
the fresh coolness, in the presence of the rich creaminess, you feel
whole eclogues of poetry which you can never turn into words.
It was in just such a spring-house that Patty Lumsden had hidden
herself.
She brought clean crocks--earthenware milk pans--from the shelf
outside, where they had been airing to keep them sweet; she held the
strainer in her left hand and poured the milk through it until each
crock was nearly full; she adjusted them in their places among the
stones, so that they stood half immersed in the cold current of
spring water; she laid the smooth pine cover on each crock, and put a
clean stone atop that to secure it.
While she was thus putting away the milk her mind was on Morton. She
wondered what her father had said to him yesterday. In the heart of
her heart she resolved that if Morton loved her she would marry him
in the face of her father's displeasure. She had never rebelled
against the iron rule, but she felt herself full of power and full of
endurance. She could go off into the wilderness with Morton; they
would build them a cabin, with chinking and daubing, with puncheon
floor and stick chimney; they would sleep, like other poor settlers,
on beds of dry leaves, and they would subsist upon the food which
Morton's unerring rifle would bring them from the forest. These were
the humble cabin castles she was building. All girls weave a
tapestry of the future; on Patty's the knight wore buck-skin clothes
and a wolf-skin cap, and brought home, not the shields or spoils of
the enemy, but saddles of venison and luscious bits of bear-meat to a
lady in linsey or cheap cotton who looked out of no balcony but a
cabin window, and who smoked her eyes with hanging pots upon a crane
in a great fire-place. I know it sounds old-fashioned and
sentimental in me to bay so, and yet how can it matter to a heart
like Patty's what may be the scenery on the tapestry, if love be the
warp and faith the woof?
[Illustration: PATTY IN THE SPRING-HOUSE.]
Morton on his part was at the same time endeavoring to plan his own
and Patty's partnership future, but he drew a more cheerful picture
than she did, for he had no longer any reason to fear Captain
Lumsden's displeasure. He was at the moment going to meet the
Captain, walking down the foot-path through the woods, kicking the
dry beech leaves into billows before him and singing a Scotch
love-song of Burns's which he had learned from his mother.
He planned one future, she another; and in after years they might
have laughed to think how far wrong were both guesses. The path
which Morton followed led by the spring-house, and Patty, standing on
the stones inside, caught the sound of his fine baritone voice as he
approached, singing tender words that made her heart stand still:
"Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear;
Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear
Nocht of ill shall come thee near,
My bonnie dearie."
And as he came right by the spring-house, he sang, now in a lower
tone lest he should be heard at the house, but still more earnestly,
and so audibly that the listening Patty could hear every word, the
last stanza:
"Fair and lovely as thou art,
Thou hast stown my very heart;
I can die--but cannot part,
My bonnie dearie."
And even as she listened to the last line, Morton had discovered that
the spring-house door was ajar, and turned, shading his eyes, to see
if perchance Patty might not be within. He saw her and reached out
his hand, greeting her warmly; but his eyes yet unaccustomed to the
imperfect light did not see how full of blushes was her face--for she
feared that he might guess all that she had just been dreaming. But
she was resolved at any rate to show him more kindness than she would
have shown had it not been for the displeasure which she supposed her
father had manifested. And so she covered the last crock and came
and stood by him at the door of the spring-house, and he talked right
on in the tender strain of his song. And she did not protest, but
answered back timidly and almost as warmly.
And that is how little negro Bob at last found Patty at the
spring-house and found Morton with her. "Law's sake! Miss Patty,
done look for ye mos' every whah. Yer paw wants ye." And with that
Bob rolled the whites of his eyes up, parted his black lips into a
broad white grin, and looked at Morton knowingly.
_CHAPTER XI._
THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS.
"Ha! ha! good morning, Morton!" said the Captain. "You've been
keeping Patty down at the spring-house when she should have been at
the loom by this time. In my time young men and women didn't waste
their mornings. Nights and Sundays are good enough for visiting.
Now, see here, Patty, there's one of them plagued Methodist preachers
brought into the settlement by Wheeler. These circuit riders are
worse than third day fever 'n' ager. They go against dancing and
artificials and singing songs and reading novels and all other
amusements. They give people the jerks wherever they go. The
devil's in 'em. Now I want you to go to work and get up a dance
to-night, and ask all you can get along with. Nothing'll make the
preacher so mad as to dance right under his nose; and we'll keep a
good many people away who might get the jerks, or fall down with the
power and break their necks, maybe."
Patty was always ready to dance, and she only said: "If Morton will
help me send the invitations."
"I'll do that," said Morton, and then he told of the discomfiture he
had wrought in a Methodist meeting while he was gone. And he had the
satisfaction of seeing that the narrative greatly pleased Captain
Lumsden.
"We'll have to send Wheeler afloat sometime, eh, Mort?" said the
Captain, chuckling interrogatively. Morton did not like this
proposition, for, notwithstanding theological, differences about
election, Mrs. Wheeler was a fast friend of his mother. He evaded an
answer by hastening to consult with Patty and her mother concerning
the guests.
Those who got "invites" danced cotillions and reels nearly all night.
Morton danced with Patty to his heart's content, and in the happiness
of Morton's assured love and of a truce in her father's interruptions
she was a queen indeed. She wore the antique earrings that were an
heir-loom in her mother's family, and a showy breast-pin which her
father had bought her. These and her new dress of English calico
made her the envy of all the others. Pretty Betty Harsha was led out
by some one at almost every dance, but she would have given all of
these for one dance with Morton Goodwin.
Meantime Mr. Magruder was preaching. Behold in Hissawachee Bottom
the world's evils in miniature! Here are religion and amusement
divorced--set over the one against the other as hostile camps.
Brady, who was boarding for a few days with the widow Lumsden, went
to the meeting with Kike and his mother, explaining his views as he
went along.
"I'm no Mithodist, Mrs. Lumsden. Me father was a Catholic and me
mother a Prisbytarian, and they compromised on me by making me a
mimber of the Episcopalian Church and throyin' to edicate me for
orders, and intoirely spoiling me for iverything else but a school
taycher in these haythen backwoods. But it does same to me that the
Mithodists air the only payple that can do any good among sich pagans
as we air. What would a parson from the ould counthry do here? He
moight spake as grammathical as Lindley Murray himsilf, and nobody
would be the better of it. What good does me own grammathical
acquoirements do towards reforming the sittlement? With all me
grammar I can't kape me boys from makin' God's name the nominative
case before very bad words. Hey, Koike? Now, the Mithodists air a
narry sort of a payple. But if you want to make a strame strong you
hev to make it narry. I've read a good dale of history, and in me
own estimation the ould Anglish Puritans and the Mithodists air both
torrents, because they're both shet up by narry banks. The
Mithodists is ferninst the wearin' of jewelry and dancin' and singin'
songs, which is all vairy foolish in me own estimation. But it's
kind o' nat'ral for the mill-race that turns the whale that fades the
worruld to git mad at the babblin', oidle brook that wastes its toime
among the mossy shtones and grinds nobody's grist. But the brook
ain't so bad afther all. Hey, Mrs. Lumsden?"
Mrs. Lumsden answered that she didn't think it was. It was very good
for watering stock.
"Thrue as praychin', Mrs. Lumsden," said the schoolmaster, with a
laugh. "And to me own oi the wanderin' brook, a-goin' where it
chooses and doin' what it plazes, is a dale plizenter to look at
than, the sthraight-travelin' mill-race. But I wish these Mithodists
would convart the souls of some of these youngsters, and make 'em
quit their gamblin' and swearin' and bettin' on horses and gettin'
dthrunk. And maybe if some of 'em would git convarted, they wouldn't
be quoite so anxious to skelp their own uncles. Hey, Koike?"
Kike had no time to reply if he had cared to, for by this time they
were at the door of Colonel Wheeler's house. Despite the dance there
were present, from near and far, all the house would hold. For those
who got no "invite" to Lumsden's had a double motive for going to
meeting; a disposition to resent the slight was added to their
curiosity to hear the Methodist preacher. The dance had taken away
those who were most likely to disturb the meeting; people left out
did not feel under any obligation to gratify Captain Lumsden by
raising a row. Kike had been invited, but had disdained to dance in
his uncle's house.
Both lower rooms of Wheeler's log house were crowded with people. A
little open space was left at the door between the rooms for the
preacher, who presently came edging his way in through the crowd. He
had been at prayer in that favorite oratory of the early Methodist
preacher, the forest.
Magruder was a short, stout man, with wide shoulders, powerful arms,
shaggy brows, and bristling black hair. He read the hymn, two lines
at a time, and led the singing himself. He prayed with the utmost
sincerity, but in a voice that shook the cabin windows and gave the
simple people a deeper reverence for the dreadfulness of the
preacher's message. He prayed as a man talking face to face with the
Almighty Judge of the generations of men; he prayed with an
undoubting assurance of his own acceptance with God, and with the
sincerest conviction of the infinite peril of his unforgiven hearers.
It is not argument that reaches men, but conviction; and for
immediate, practical purposes, one Tishbite Elijah, that can thunder
out of a heart that never doubts, is worth a thousand acute writers
of ingenious apologies.
When Magruder read his text, which was, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit
of God," he seemed to his hearers a prophet come to lay bare their
hearts. Magruder had not been educated for his ministry by years of
study of Hebrew and Greek, of Exegesis and Systematics; but he knew
what was of vastly more consequence to him--how to read and expound
the hearts and lives of the impulsive, simple, reckless race among
whom he labored. He was of their very fibre.
He commenced with a fierce attack on Captain Lumsden's dance, which
was prompted, he said, by the devil, to keep men out of heaven. With
half a dozen quick, bold strokes, he depicted Lumsden's selfish
arrogance and proud meanness so exactly that the audience fluttered
with sensation. Magruder had a vicarious conscience; but a vicarious
conscience is good for nothing unless it first cuts close at home.
Whitefield said that he never preached a sermon to others till he had
first preached it to George Whitefield; and Magruder's severities had
all the more effect that his audience could see that they had full
force upon himself.
If is hard for us to understand the elements that produced such
incredible excitements as resulted from the early Methodist
preaching. How at a camp-meeting, for instance, five hundred people,
indifferent enough to everything of the sort one hour before, should
be seized during a sermon with terror--should cry aloud to God for
mercy, some of them falling in trances and cataleptic
unconsciousness; and how, out of all this excitement, there should
come forth, in very many cases, the fruit of transformed lives seems
to us a puzzle beyond solution. But the early Westerners were as
inflammable as tow; they did not deliberate, they were swept into
most of their decisions by contagious excitements. And never did any
class of men understand the art of exciting by oratory more perfectly
than the old Western preachers. The simple hunters to whom they
preached had the most absolute faith in the invisible. The Day of
Judgment, the doom of the wicked, and the blessedness of the
righteous were as real and substantial in their conception as any
facts in life. They could abide no refinements. The terribleness of
Indian warfare, the relentlessness of their own revengefulness, the
sudden lynchings, the abandoned wickedness of the lawless, and the
ruthlessness of mobs of "regulators" were a background upon which
they founded the most materialistic conception of hell and the most
literal understanding of the Day of Judgment. Men like Magruder knew
how to handle these few positive ideas of a future life so that they
were indeed terrible weapons.
On this evening he seized upon the particular sins of the people as
things by which they drove away the Spirit of God. The audience
trembled as he moved on in his rude speech and solemn indignation.
Every man found himself in turn called to the bar of his own
conscience. There was excitement throughout the house. Some were
angry, some sobbed aloud, as he alluded to "promises made to dying
friends," "vows offered to God by the new-made graves of their
children,"--for pioneer people are very susceptible to all such
appeals to sensibility.
When at last he came to speak of revenge, Kike, who had listened
intently from the first, found himself breathing hard. The preacher
showed how the revengeful man was "as much a murderer as if he had
already killed his enemy and hid his mangled body in the leaves of
the woods where none but the wolf could ever find him!"
At these words he turned to the part of the room where Kike sat,
white with feeling. Magruder, looking always for the effect of his
arrows, noted Kike's emotion and paused. The house was utterly
still, save now and then a sob from some anguish-smitten soul. The
people were sitting as if waiting their doom. Kike already saw in
his imagination the mutilated form of his uncle Enoch hidden in the
leaves and scented by hungry wolves. He waited to hear his own
sentence. Hitherto the preacher had spoken with vehemence. Now, he
stopped and began again with tears, and in a tone broken with
emotion, looking in a general way toward where Kike sat: "O, young
man, there are stains of blood on your hands! How dare you hold them
up before the Judge of all? You are another Cain, and God sends his
messenger to you to-day to inquire after him whom you have already
killed in your heart. _You are a murderer_! Nothing but God's mercy
can snatch you from hell!"
No doubt all this is rude in refined ears. But is it nothing that by
these rude words he laid bare Kike's sins to Kike's conscience? That
in this moment Kike heard the voice of God denouncing his sins, and
trembled? Can you do a man any higher service than to make him know
himself, in the light of the highest sense of right that he capable
of? Kike, for his part, bowed to the rebuke of the preacher as to
the rebuke of God. His frail frame shook with fear and penitence, as
it had before shaken with wrath. "O, God! what a wretch I am!" cried
he, hiding his face in his hands.
"Thank God for showing it to you, my young friend," responded the
preacher. "What a wonder that your sins did not drive away the Holy
Ghost, leaving you with your day of grace sinned away, as good as
damned already!" And with this he turned and appealed yet more
powerfully to the rest, already excited by the fresh contagion of
Kike's penitence, until there were cries and sobs in all parts of the
house. Some left in haste to avoid yielding to their feeling, while
many fell upon their knees and prayed.
The preacher now thought it time to change, and offer some
consolation. You would say that his view of the atonement was crude,
conventional and commercial; that he mistook figures of speech in
Scripture for general and formulated postulates. But however
imperfect his symbols, he succeeded in making known to his hearers
the mercy of God. And surely that is the main thing. The figure of
speech is but the vessel; the great truth that God is merciful to the
guilty, what is this but the water of life?--not less refreshing
because the jar in which it is brought is rude! The preacher's whole
manner changed. Many weeping and sobbing people were swept now to
the other extreme, and cried aloud with joy. Perhaps Magruder
exaggerated the change that had taken place in them. But is it
nothing that a man has bowed his soul in penitence before God's
justice, and then lifted his face in childlike trust to God's mercy?
It is hard for one who has once passed through this experience not to
date from it a revolution. There were many who had not much root in
themselves, doubtless, but among Magruder's hearers this day were
those who, living half a century afterward, counted their better
living from the hour of his forceful presentation of God's antagonism
to sin, and God's tender mercy for the sinner. It was not in Kike to
change quickly. Smitten with a sense of his guilt; he rose from his
seat and slowly knelt, quivering with feeling. When the preacher had
finished preaching, amid cries of sorrow and joy, he began to sing,
to an exquisitely pathetic tune, Watts' hymn:
"Show pity, Lord, O! Lord, forgive,
Let a repenting rebel live.
Are not thy mercies large and free?
May not a sinner trust in thee?"
The meeting was held until late. Kike remained quietly kneeling, the
tears trickling through his fingers. He did not utter a word or cry.
In all the confusion he was still. What deliberate recounting of his
own misdoings took place then, no one can know. Thoughtless readers
may scoff at the poor backwoods boy in his trouble. But who of us
would not be better if we could be brought thus face to face with our
own souls? His simple penitent faith did more for him than all our
philosophy has done for us, maybe.
At last the meeting was dismissed. Brady, who had been awe-stricken
at sight of Kike's agony of contrition, now thought it best that he
and Kike's mother should go home, leaving the young man to follow
when he chose. But Kike staid immovable upon his knees. His sense
of guilt had become an agony. All those allowances which we in a
more intelligent age make for inherited peculiarities and the defects
of education, Kike knew nothing about. He believed all his
revengefulness to be voluntary; he had a feeling that unless he found
some assurance of God's mercy then he could not live till morning.
So the minister and Mrs. Wheeler and two or three brethren that had
come from adjoining settlements staid and prayed and talked with the
distressed youth until after midnight. The early Methodists regarded
this persistence as a sure sign of a "sound" awakening.
At last the preacher knelt again by Kike, and asked "Sister Wheeler"
to pray. There was nothing in the old Methodist meetings so
excellent as the audible prayers of women. Women oftener than men
have a genius for prayer. Mrs. Wheeler began tenderly, penitently to
confess, not Kike's sins, but the sins of all of them; her penitence
fell in with Kike's; she confessed the very sins that he was grieving
over. Then slowly--slowly, as one who waits for another to
follow--she began to turn toward trustfulness. Like a little child
she spoke to God; under the influence of her praying Kike sobbed
audibly. Then he seemed to feel the contagion of her faith; he, too,
looked to God as a father; he, too, felt the peace of a trustful
child.
The great struggle was over. Kike was revengeful no longer. He was
distrustful and terrified no longer. He had "crept into the heart of
God" and found rest. Call it what you like, when a man passes
through such an experience, however induced, it separates the life
that is passed from the life that follows by a great gulf.
Kike, the new Kike, forgiving and forgiven, rose up at the close of
the prayer, and with a peaceful face shook hands with the preacher
and the brethren, rejoicing in this new fellowship. He said nothing,
but when Magruder sang
"Oh! how happy are they
Who their Saviour obey,
And have laid up their treasure above!
Tongue can never express
The sweet comfort and peace
Of a soul in its earliest love,"
Kike shook hands with them all again, bade them good-night, and went
home about the time that his friend Morton, flushed and weary with
dancing and pleasure, laid himself down to rest.
_CHAPTER XII._
MR. BRADY PROPHESIES.
The Methodists had actually made a break in the settlement. Dancing
had not availed to keep them out. It was no longer a question of
getting "shet" of Wheeler and his Methodist wife, thus extirpating
the contagion. There would now be a "class" formed, a leader
appointed, a regular preaching place established; Hissawachee would
become part of that great wheel called a circuit; there would be
revivals and conversions; the peace of the settlement would be
destroyed. For now one might never again dance at a "hoe-down,"
drink whiskey at a shuckin', or race "hosses" on Sunday, without a
lecture from somebody. It might be your own wife, too. Once let the
Methodists in, and there was no knowin'.
Lumsden, for his part, saw more serious consequences. By his
opposition, he had unfortunately spoken for the enmity of the
Methodists in advance. The preacher had openly defied him. Kike
would join the class, and the Methodists would naturally resist his
ascendancy. No concession on his part short of absolute surrender
would avail. He resolved therefore that the Methodists should find
out "who they were fighting."
Brady was pleased. Gossips are always delighted to have something
happen out of the usual course. It gives them a theme, something to
exercise their wits upon. Let us not be too hard upon gossip. It is
one form of communicative intellectual activity. Brady, under
different conditions, might have been a journalist, writing relishful
leaders on "topics of the time." For what is journalism but elevated
and organized gossip? The greatest benefactor of an out-of-the-way
neighborhood is the man or woman with a talent for good-natured
gossip. Such an one averts absolute mental stagnation, diffuses
intelligence, and keeps alive a healthful public opinion on local
questions.
Brady wanted to taste some of Mrs. Goodwin's "ry-al hoe-cake." That
was the reason he assigned for his visit on the evening after the
meeting. He was always hungry for hoe-cake when anything had
happened about which he wanted to talk. But on this evening Job
Goodwin, got the lead in conversation at first.
"Mr. Brady," said he, "what's going to happen to us all? These
Methodis' sets people crazy with the jerks, I've hearn tell. Hey? I
hear dreadful things about 'em. Oh dear, it seems like as if
everything come upon folks at once. Hey? The fever's spreadin' at
Chilicothe, they tell me. And then, if we should git into a war with
England, you know, and the Indians should come and skelp us, they'd
be precious few left, betwixt them that went crazy and them that got
skelped. Precious few, _I_ tell you. Hey?"
Here Mr. Goodwin knocked the ashes out of his pipe and laid it away,
and punched the fire meditatively, endeavoring to discover in his
imagination some new and darker pigment for his picture of the
future. But failing to think of anything more lugubrious than
Methodists, Indians, and fever, he set the tongs in the corner,
heaved a sigh of discouragement, and looked at Brady inquiringly.
[Illustration: JOB GOODWIN.]
"Ye're loike the hootin' owl, Misther Goodwin; it's the black side
ye're afther lookin' at all the toime. Where's Moirton? He aint
been to school yet since this quarter took up."
"Morton? He's got to stay out, I expect. My rheumatiz is mighty
bad, and I'm powerful weak. I don't think craps'll be good next
year, and I expect we'll have a hard row to hoe, partic'lar if we all
have the fever, and the Methodis' keep up their excitement and
driving people crazy with jerks, and war breaks out with England, and
the Indians come on us. But here's Mort now."
"Ha! Moirton, and ye wasn't at matin' last noight? Ye heerd fwat a
toime we had. Most iverybody got struck harmless, excipt mesilf and
a few other hardened sinners. Ye heerd about Koike? I reckon the
Captain's good and glad he's got the blissin'; it's a warrantee on
the Captain's skull, maybe. Fwat would ye do for a crony now,
Moirton, if Koike come to be a praycher?"
"He aint such a fool, I guess," said Morton, with whom Kike's
"getting religion" was an unpleasant topic. "It'll all wear off with
Kike soon enough."
"Don't be too shore, Moirton. Things wear off with you, sometoimes.
Ye swear ye'll niver swear no more, and ye're willin' to bet that
ye'll niver bet agin, and ye're always a-talkin' about a brave loife;
but the flesh is ferninst ye. When Koike's bad, he's bad all over;
lickin' won't take it out of him; I've throid it mesilf. Now he's
got good, the divil'll have as hard a toime makin' him bad as I had
makin' him good. I'm roight glad it's the divil now, and not his
school-masther, as has got to throy to handle the lad. Got ivery
lisson to-day, and didn't break a single rule of the school! What do
you say to that, Moirton? The divil's got his hands full thair.
Hey, Moirton?"
"Yes, but he'll never be a preacher. He wants to get rich just to
spite the Captain."
"But the spoite's clean gone with the rist, Moirton. And he'll be a
praycher yit. Didn't he give me a talkin' to this mornin', at
breakfast? Think of the impudent little scoundrel a-venturin' to
tell his ould masther that he ought to repint of his sins! He talked
to his mother, too, till she croid. He'll make her belave she is a
great sinner whin she aint wicked a bit, excipt in her grammar, which
couldn't be worse. I've talked to her about that mesilf. Now,
Moirton, I'll tell ye the symptoms of a praycher among the
Mithodists. Those that take it aisy, and don't bother a body, you
needn't be afeard of. But those that git it bad, and are
throublesome, and middlesome, and aggravatin', ten to one'll turn out
praychers. The lad that'll tackle his masther and his mother at
breakfast the very mornin' afther he's got the blissin, while he's
yit a babe, so to spake, and prayche to 'em single-handed, two to
one, is a-takin' the short cut acrost the faild to be a praycher of
the worst sort; one of the kind that's as thorny as a honey-locust."
"Well, why can't they be peaceable, and let other people alone? That
meddling is just what I don't like," growled Morton.
"Bedad, Moirton, that's jist fwat Ahab and Jizebel thought about ould
Elijy! We don't any of us loike to have our wickedness or laziness
middled with. 'Twas middlin', sure, that the Pharisays objicted to;
and if the blissed Jaysus hadn't been so throublesome, he wouldn't
niver a been crucified."
"Why, Brady, you'll be a Methodist yourself," said Mr. Job Goodwin.
"Niver a bit of it, Mr. Goodwin. I'm rale lazy. This lookin' at the
state of me moind's insoides, and this chasin' afther me sins up hill
and down dale all the toime, would niver agray with me frail
constitootion. This havin' me spiritooal pulse examined ivery wake
in class-matin', and this watchin' and prayin', aren't for sich
oidlers as me. I'm too good-natered to trate mesilf that way, sure.
Didn't you iver notice that the highest vartoos ain't possible to a
rale good-nater'd man?"
Here Mrs. Goodwin looked at the cake on the hoe in front of the fire,
and found it well browned. Supper was ready, and the conversation
drifted to Morton's prospective arrangement with Captain Lumsden to
cultivate his hill farm on the "sheers." Morton's father shook his
head ominously. Didn't believe the Captain was in 'arnest. Ef he
was, Mort mout git the fever in the winter, or die, or be laid up.
'Twouldn't do to depend on no sech promises, no way.
But, notwithstanding his father's croaking, Morton did hold to the
Captain's promise, and to the hope of Patty. To the Captain's plans
for mobbing Wheeler he offered a strong resistance. But he was ready
enough to engage in making sport of the despised religionists, and
even organized a party to interrupt Magruder with tin horns when he
should preach again. But all this time Morton was uneasy in himself.
What had become of his dreams of being a hero? Here was Kike bearing
all manner of persecution with patience, devoting himself to the
welfare of others, while all his own purposes of noble and knightly
living were hopelessly sunk in a morass of adverse circumstances.
One of Morton's temperament must either grow better or worse, and,
chafing under these embarassments, he played and drank more freely
than ever.
_CHAPTER XIII._
TWO TO ONE.
Magruder had been so pleased with his success in organizing a class
in the Hissawachee settlement that he resolved to favor them with a
Sunday sermon on his next round. He was accustomed to preach twice
every week-day and three times on every Sunday, after the laborious
manner of the circuit-rider of his time. And since he expected to
leave Hissawachee as soon as meeting should be over, for his next
appointment, he determined to reach the settlement before breakfast
that he might have time to confirm the brethren and set things in
order.
When the Sunday set apart for the second sermon drew near, Morton,
with the enthusiastic approval of Captain Lumsden, made ready his tin
horns to interrupt the preacher with a serenade. But Lumsden had
other plans of which Morton had no knowledge.
John Wesley's rule was, that a preacher should rise at four o'clock
and spend the hour until five in reading, meditation and prayer.
Five o'clock found Magruder in the saddle on his way to Hissawachee,
reflecting upon the sermon he intended to preach. When he had ridden
more than an hour, keeping himself company by a lusty singing of
hymns, he came suddenly out upon the brow of a hill overlooking the
Hissawachee valley. The gray dawn was streaking the clouds, the
preacher checked his horse and looked forth on the valley just
disclosing its salient features in the twilight, as a General looks
over a battle-field before the engagement begins. Then he
dismounted, and, kneeling upon the leaves, prayed with apostolic
fervor for victory over "the hosts of sin and the devil." When at
last he got into the saddle again the winter sun was sending its
first horizontal beams into his eyes, and all the eastern sky was
ablaze. Magruder had the habit of turning the whole universe to
spiritual account, and now, as he descended the hill, he made the
woods ring with John Wesley's hymn, which might have been composed in
the presence of such a scene:
"O sun of righteousness, arise
With healing in thy wing;
To my diseased, my fainting soul,
Life and salvation bring.
"These clouds of pride and sin dispel,
By thy all-piercing beam;
Lighten my eyes with faith; my heart
With holy hopes inflame."
By the time he had finished the second stanza, the bridle-path that
he was following brought him into a dense forest of beech and maple,
and he saw walking toward him two stout men, none other than our old
acquaintances, Bill McConkey and Jake Sniger.
"Looky yer," said Bill, catching the preacher's horse by the bridle:
"you git down!"
"What for?" said Magruder.
"We're goin' to lick you tell you promise to go back and never stick
your head into the Hissawachee Bottom agin."
"But I won't promise."
"Then we'll put a finishment to ye."
"You are two to one. Will you give me time to draw my coat?"
"Wal, yes, I 'low we will."
[Illustration: TWO TO ONE.]
The preacher dismounted with quiet deliberation, tied his bridle to a
beech limb, offering a mental prayer to the God of Samson, and then
laid his coat across the saddle.
"My friends," he said, "I don't want to whip you. I advise you now
to let me alone. As an American citizen, I have a right to go where
I please. My father was a revolutionary soldier, and I mean to fight
for my rights."
"Shet up your jaw!" said Jake, swearing, and approaching the preacher
from one side, while Bill came up on the other. Magruder was one of
those short, stocky men who have no end of muscular force and
endurance. In his unregenerate days he had been celebrated for his
victories in several rude encounters. Never seeking a fight even
then, he had, nevertheless, when any ambitious champion came from
afar for the purpose of testing his strength, felt himself bound to
"give him what he came after." He had now greatly the advantage of
the two bullies in his knowledge of the art of boxing.
Before Jake had fairly finished his preliminary swearing the preacher
had surprised him by delivering a blow that knocked him down. But
Bill had taken advantage of this to strike Magruder heavily on the
cheek. Jake, having felt the awful weight of Magruder's fist, was a
little slow in coming to time, and the preacher had a chance to give
Bill a most polemical blow on his nose; then turning suddenly, he
rushed like a mad bull upon Sniger, and dealt him one tremendous blow
that fractured two of his ribs and felled him to the earth. But Bill
struck Magruder behind, knocked him over, and threw himself upon him
after the fashion of the Western free fight. Nothing saved Magruder
but his immense strength. He rose right up with Bill upon him, and
then, by a deft use of his legs, tripped his antagonist and hurled
him to the ground. He did not dare take advantage of his fall,
however, for Jake had regained his feet and was coming up on him
cautiously. But when Sniger saw Magruder rushing at him again, he
made a speedy retreat into the bushes, leaving Magruder to fight it
out with Bill, who, despite his sorry-looking nose, was again ready.
But he now "fought shy," and kept retreating slowly backward and
calling out, "Come up on him behind, Jake! Come up behind!" But the
demoralized Jake had somehow got a superstitious notion that the
preacher bristled with fists before and behind, having as many arms
as a Hindoo deity. Bill kept backing until he tripped and fell over
a bit of brush, and then picked himself up and made off, muttering:
"I aint a-goin' to try to handle him alone! He must have the very
devil into him!"
About nine o'clock on that same Sunday morning, the Irish
school-master, who was now boarding at Goodwin's, and who had just
made an early visit to the Forks for news, accosted Morton with: "An'
did ye hear the nooze, Moirton? Bill Conkey and Jake Sniger hev had
a bit of Sunday morning ricreation. They throid to thrash the
praycher as he was a-comin' through North's Holler, this mornin'; but
they didn't make no allowance for the Oirish blood Magruder's got in
him. He larruped 'em both single-handed, and Jake's ribs are
cracked, and ye'd lawf to see Bill's nose! Captain must 'a' had some
proivate intherest in that muss; hey, Moirton?"
"It's thunderin' mean!" said Morton; "two men on one, and him a
preacher; and all I've got to say is, I wish he'd killed 'em both."
"And yer futer father-in-law into the bargain? Hey, Moirton? But
fwat did I tell ye about Koike? The praycher's jaw is lamed by a
lick Bill gave him, and Koike's to exhort in his place. I tould ye
he had the botherin' sperit of prophecy in him."
The manliness in a character like Morton's must react, if depressed
too far; and he now notified those who were to help him interrupt the
meeting that if any disturbance were made, he should take it on
himself to punish the offender. He would not fight alongside Bill
McConkey and Jake Sniger, and he felt like seeking a quarrel with
Lumsden, for the sake of justitifying himself to himself.
_CHAPTER XIV._
KIKE'S SERMON.
During the time that had intervened between Kike's conversion and
Magruder's second visit to the settlement, Kike had developed a very
considerable gift for earnest speech in the class meetings. In that
day every influence in Methodist association contributed to make a
preacher of a man of force. The reverence with which a self-denying
preacher was regarded by the people was a great compensation for the
poverty and toil that pertained to the office. To be a preacher was
to be canonized during one's lifetime. The moment a young man showed
zeal and fluency he was pitched on by all the brethren and sisters as
one whose duty it was to preach the Gospel; he was asked whether he
did not feel that he had a divine call; he was set upon watching the
movements within him to see whether or not he ought to be among the
sons of the prophets. Oftentimes a man was made to feel, in spite of
his own better judgment, that he was a veritable Jonah, slinking from
duty, and in imminent peril of a whale in the shape of some
providential disaster. Kike, indeed, needed none of these urgings to
impel him toward the ministry. He was a man of the prophetic
temperament--one of those men whose beliefs take hold of them more
strongly than the objects of sense. The future life, as preached by
the early Methodists, with all its joys and all its awful torments,
became the most substantial of realities to him. He was in constant
astonishment that people could believe these things theoretically and
ignore them in practice. If men were going headlong to perdition,
and could be saved and brought into a paradise of eternal bliss by
preaching, then what nobler work could there be than that of saving
them? And, let a man take what view he may of a future life, Kike's
opinion was the right one--no work can be so excellent as that of
helping men to better living.
Kike had been poring over some works of Methodist biography which he
had borrowed, and the sublimated life of Fletcher was the only one
that fulfilled his ideal. Methodism preached consecration to its
disciples. Kike had already learned from Mrs. Wheeler, who was the
class-leader at Hissawachee settlement, and from Methodist
literature, that he must "keep all on the altar." He must be ready
to do, to suffer, or to perish, for the Master. The sternest sayings
of Christ about forsaking father and mother, and hating one's own
life and kindred, he heard often repeated in exhortations. Most
people are not harmed by a literal understanding of hyperbolical
expressions. Laziness and selfishness are great antidotes to
fanaticism, and often pass current for common sense. Kike had no
such buffers; taught to accept the words of the Gospel with the dry
literalness of statutory enactments, he was too honest to evade their
force, too earnest to slacken his obedience. He was already prepared
to accept any burden and endure any trial that might be given as a
test of discipleship. All his natural ambition, vehemence, and
persistence, found exercise in his religious life; and the
simple-hearted brethren, not knowing that the one sort of intensity
was but the counter-part of the other, pointed to the transformation
as a "beautiful conversion," a standing miracle. So it was, indeed,
and, like all moral miracles, it was worked in the direction of
individuality, not in opposition to it.
It was a grievous disappointment to the little band of Methodists
that Brother Magruder's face was so swollen, after his encounter, as
to prevent his preaching. They had counted much upon the success of
this day's work, and now the devil seemed about to snatch the
victory. Mrs. Wheeler enthusiastically recommended Kike as a
substitute, and Magruder sent for him in haste. Kike was gratified
to hear that the preacher wanted to see him personally. His sallow
face flushed with pleasure as he stood, a slender stripling, before
the messenger of God.
"Brother Lumsden," said Mr. Magruder, "are you ready to do and to
suffer for Christ?"
"I trust I am," said Kike, wondering what the preacher could mean.
"You see how the devil has planned to defeat the Lord's work to-day.
My lip is swelled, and my jaw so stiff that I can hardly speak. Are
you ready to do the duty the Lord shall put upon you?"
Kike trembled from head to foot. He had often fancied himself
preaching his first sermon in a strange neighborhood, and he had even
picked out his text; but to stand up suddenly before his
school-mates, before his mother, before Brady, and, worse than all,
before Morton, was terrible. And yet, had he not that very morning
made a solemn vow that he would not shrink from death itself!
"Do you think I am fit to preach?" he asked, evasively.
"None of us are fit; but here will be two or three hundred people
hungry for the bread of life. The Master has fed you; he offers you
the bread to distribute among your friends and neighbors. Now, will
you let the fear of man make you deny the blessed Lord who has taken
you out of a horrible pit and set your feet upon the Rock of Ages?"
Kike trembled a moment, and then said: "I will do whatever you say,
if you will pray for me."
"I'll do that, my brother. And now take your Bible, and go into the
woods and pray. The Lord will show you the way, if you put your
whole trust in him."
The preacher's allusion to the bread of life gave Kike his subject,
and he soon gathered a few thoughts which he wrote down on a fly-leaf
of the Bible, in the shape of a skeleton. But it occurred to him
that he had not one word to say on the subject of the bread of life
beyond the sentences of his skeleton. The more this became evident
to him, the greater was his agony of fear. He knelt on the brown
leaves by a prostrate log; he made a "new consecration" of himself;
he tried to feel willing to fail, so far as his own feelings were
involved; he reminded the Lord of his promises to be with them he had
sent; and then there came into his memory a text of Scripture: "For
it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak." Taking
it, after the manner of the early Methodist mysticism, that the text
had been supernaturally "suggested" to him, he became calm; and
finding, from the height of the sun, that it was about the hour for
meeting, he returned to the house of Colonel Wheeler, and was
appalled at the sight that met his eyes. All the settlement, and
many from other settlements, had come. The house, the yard, the
fences, were full of people. Kike was seized with a tremor. He did
not feel able to run the gauntlet of such a throng. He made a
detour, and crept in at the back door like a criminal. For
stage-fright--this fear of human presence--is not a thing to be
overcome by the will. Susceptible natures are always liable to it,
and neither moral nor physical courage can avert it.
A chair had been placed in the front door of the log house, for Kike,
that he might preach to the congregation indoors and the much larger
one outdoors. Mr. Magruder, much battered up, sat on a wooden bench
just outside. Kike crept into the empty chair in the doorway with
the feeling of one who intrudes where he does not belong. The
brethren were singing, as a congregational voluntary, to the solemn
tune of "Kentucky," the hymn which begins:
"A charge to keep I have,
A God to glorify;
A never-dying soul to save
And fit it for the sky."
Magruder saw Kike's fright, and, leaning over to him, said: "If you
get confused, tell your own experience." The early preacher's
universal refuge was his own experience. It was a sure key to the
sympathies of the audience.
Kike got through the opening exercises very well. He could pray, for
in praying he shut his eyes and uttered the cry of his trembling soul
for help. He had been beating about among two or three texts, either
of which would do for a head-piece to the remarks he intended to
make; but now one fixed itself in his mind as he stood appalled by
his situation in the presence of such a throng. He rose and read,
with a tremulous voice:
"There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two small
fishes; but what are they among so many?"
The text arrested the attention of all. Magruder, though unable to
speak without pain, could not refrain from saying aloud, after the
free old Methodist fashion: "The Lord multiply the loaves! Bless and
break to the multitude!" "Amen!" responded an old brother from
another settlement, "and the Lord help the lad!" But Kike felt that
the advantage which the text had given him would be of short
duration. The novelty of his position bewildered him. His face
flushed; his thoughts became confused; he turned his back on the
audience out of doors, and talked rapidly to the few friends in the
house: the old brethren leaned their heads upon their hands and began
to pray. Whatever spiritual help their prayers may have brought him,
their lugubrious groaning, and their doleful, audible prayers of
"Lord, help!" depressed Kike immeasurably, and kept the precipice on
which he stood constantly present to him. He tried in succession
each division that he had sketched on the fly-leaf of the Bible, and
found little to say on any of them. At last, he could not see the
audience distinctly for confusion--there was a dim vision of heads
swimming before him. He stopped still, and Magruder, expecting him
to sit down, resolved to "exhort" if the pain should kill him. The
Philistines meanwhile were laughing at Kike's evident discomfiture.
But Kike had no notion of sitting down. The laughter awakened his
combativeness, and his combativeness restored his self-control.
Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure.
He was through with the sermon, and it had occupied just six minutes.
The lad's scanty provisions had not been multiplied. But he felt
relieved. The sermon over, there was no longer necessity for trying
to speak against time, nor for observing the outward manner of a
preacher.
"Now," he said, doggedly, "you have all seen that I cannot preach
worth a cent. When David went out to fight, he had the good sense
not to put on Saul's armor. I was fool enough to try to wear Brother
Magruder's. Now, I'm done with that. The text and sermon are gone.
But I'm not ashamed of Jesus Christ. And before I sit down, I am
going to tell you all what he has done for a poor lost sinner like
me."
Kike told the story with sincere directness. His recital of his own
sins was a rebuke to others; with a trembling voice and a simple
earnestness absolutely electrical, he told of his revengefulness, and
of the effect of Magruder's preaching on him. And now that the
flood-gates of emotion were opened, all trepidation departed, and
there came instead the fine glow of martial courage. He could have
faced the universe. From his own life the transition to the lives of
those around him was easy. He hit right and left. The excitable
crowd swayed with consternation as, in a rapid and vehement
utterance, he denounced their sins with the particularity of one who
had been familiar with them all his life. Magruder forgot to
respond; he only leaned back and looked in bewilderment, with open
eyes and mouth, at the fiery boy whose contagious excitement was fast
setting the whole audience ablaze. Slowly the people pressed forward
off the fences. All at once there was a loud bellowing cry from some
one who had fallen prostrate outside the fence, and who began to cry
aloud as if the portals of an endless perdition were yawning in his
face. Magruder pressed through the crowd to find that the fallen man
was his antagonist of the morning--Bill McConkey! Bill had concealed
his bruised nose behind a tree, but had been drawn forth by the
fascination of Kike's earnestness, and had finally fallen under the
effect of his own terror. This outburst of agony from McConkey was
fuel to the flames, and the excitement now spread to all parts of the
audience. Kike went from man to man, and exhorted and rebuked each
one in particular. Brady, not wishing to hear a public commentary on
his own life, waddled away when he saw Kike coming; his mother wept
bitterly under his exhortation; and Morton sat stock still on the
fence listening, half in anguish and half in anger, to Kike's public
recital of his sins.
At last Kike approached his uncle; for Captain Lumsden had come on
purpose to enjoy Morton's proposed interruption. He listened a
minute to Kike's exhortation, and the contrary emotions of alarm at
the thought of God's judgment and anger at Kike's impudence contended
within him until he started for his horse and was seized with that
curious nervous affection which originated in these religious
excitements and disappeared with them.* He jerked violently--his
jerking only adding to his excitement, which in turn increased the
severity of his contortions. This nervous affection was doubtless a
natural physical result of violent excitement; but the people of that
day imagined that it was produced by some supernatural agency, some
attributing it to God, others to the devil, and yet others to some
subtle charm voluntarily exercised by the preachers. Lumsden went
home jerking all the way, and cursing the Methodists more bitterly
than ever.
* It bore, however, a curious resemblance to the "dancing disease"
which prevailed in Italy in the Middle Ages.
_CHAPTER XV._
MORTON'S RETREAT.
It would be hard to analyze the emotions with which Morton had
listened to Kike's hot exhortation. In vain he argued with himself
that a man need not be a Methodist and "go shouting and crying all
over the country," in order to be good. He knew that Kike's life was
better than his own, and that he had not force enough to break his
habits and associations unless he did so by putting himself into
direct antagonism with them. He inwardly condemned himself for his
fear of Lumsden, and he inly cursed Kike for telling him the blunt
truth about himself. But ever as there came the impulse to close the
conflict and be at peace with himself by "putting himself boldly on
the Lord's side," as Kike phrased it, he thought of Patty, whose
aristocratic Virginia pride would regard marriage with a Methodist as
worse than death.
And so, in mortal terror, lest he should yield to his emotions so far
as to compromise himself, he rushed out of the crowd, hurried home,
took down his rifle, and rode away, intent only on getting out of the
excitement.
As he rode away from home he met Captain Lumsden hurrying from the
meeting with the jerks, and leading his horse--the contortions of his
body not allowing him to ride. With every step he took he grew more
and more furious. Seeing Morton, he endeavored to vent his passion
upon him.
"Why didn't--you--blow--why didn't--why didn't you blow your tin
horns, this----" but at this point the jerks became so violent as to
throw off his hat and shut off all utterance, and he only gnashed his
teeth and hurried on with irregular steps toward home, leaving Morton
to gauge the degree of the Captain's wrath by the involuntary
distortion of his visage.
Goodwin rode listlessly forward, caring little whither he went;
endeavoring only to allay the excitement, of his conscience, and to
imagine some sort of future in which he might hope to return and win
Patty in spite of Lumsden's opposition. Night found him in front of
the "City Hotel," in the county-seat village of Jonesville; and he
was rejoiced to find there, on some political errand, Mr. Burchard,
whom he had met awhile before at Wilkins', in the character of a
candidate for sheriff.
"How do you do, Mr. Morton? Howdy do?" said Burchard, cordially,
having only heard Morton's first name and mistaking it for his last.
"I'm lucky to meet you in this town. Do you live over this way? I
thought you lived in our county and 'lectioneered you--expecting to
get your vote."
[Illustration: GAMBLING.]
The conjunction of Morton and Burchard on a Sunday evening (or any
other) meant a game at cards, and as Burchard was the more skillful
and just now in great need of funds, it meant that all the contents
of Morton's pockets should soon transfer themselves to Burchard's,
the more that Morton in his contending with the religious excitement
of the morning rushed easily into the opposite excitement of
gambling. The violent awakening of a religious revival has a sharp
polarity--it has sent many a man headlong to the devil. When Morton
had frantically bet and lost all his money, he proceeded to bet his
rifle, then his grandfather's watch--an ancient time-piece, that
Burchard examined with much curiosity. Having lost this, he staked
his pocket-knife, his hat, his coat, and offered to put up his boots,
but Burchard refused them. The madness of gambling was on the young
man, however. He had no difficulty in persuading Burchard to take
his mare as security for a hundred dollars, which he proceeded to
gamble away by the easy process of winning once and losing twice.
When the last dollar was gone, his face was very white and calm. He
leaned back in the chair and looked at Burchard a moment or two in
silence.
"Burchard," said he, at last, "I'm a picked goose. I don't know
whether I've got any brains or not. But if you'll lend me the rifle
you won long enough for me to have a farewell shot, I'll find out
what's inside this good-for-nothing cocoa-nut of mine."
Burchard was not without generous traits, and he was alarmed. "Come,
Mr. Morton, don't be desperate. The luck's against you, but you'll
have better another time. Here's your hat and coat, and you're
welcome. I've been flat of my back many a time, but I've always
found a way out. I'll pay your bill here to-morrow morning. Don't
think of doing anything desperate. There's plenty to live for yet.
You'll break some girl's heart if you kill yourself, maybe."
This thrust hurt Morton keenly. But Burchard was determined to
divert him from his suicidal impulse.
"Come, old fellow, you're excited. Come out into the air. Now,
don't kill yourself. You looked troubled when you got here. I take
it, there's some trouble at home. Now, if there is"--here Burchard
hesitated--"if there is trouble at home, I can put you on the track
of a band of fellows that have been in trouble themselves. They help
one another. Of course, I haven't anything to do with them; but
they'll be mighty glad to get a hold of a fellow like you, that's a
good shot and not afraid."
For a moment even outlawry seemed attractive to Morton, so utterly
had hope died out of his heart. But only for a moment; then his
moral sense recoiled.
"No; I'd rather shoot myself than kill somebody else. I can't take
that road, Mr. Burchard."
"Of course you can't," said Burchard, affecting to laugh. "I knew
you wouldn't. But I wanted to turn your thoughts away from bullets
and all that. Now, Mr. Morton----"
"My name's not Morton. My last name is Goodwin--Morton Goodwin."
This correction was made as a man always attends to trifles when he
is trying to decide a momentous question.
"Morton Goodwin?" said Burchard, looking at him keenly, as the two
stood together in the moonlight. Then, after pausing a moment, he
added: "I had a crony by the name of Lew Goodwin, once. Devilish
hard case he was, but good-hearted. Got killed in a fight in
Pittsburg."
"He was my brother," said Morton.
"Your brother? thunder! You don't mean it. Let's see; he told me
once his father's name was Moses--no; Job. Yes, that's it--Job. Is
that your father's name?"
"Yes."
"I reckon the old folks must a took Lew's deviltry hard. Didn't kill
'em, did it?"
"No."
"Both alive yet?"
"Yes."
"And now you want to kill both of 'em by committing suicide. You
ought to think a little of your mother----"
"Shut your mouth," said Morton, turning fiercely on Burchard; for he
suddenly saw a vision of the agony his mother must suffer.
"Oh! don't get mad. I'm going to let you have back your horse and
gun, only you must give me a bill of sale so that I may be sure you
won't gamble them away to somebody else. You must redeem them on
your honor in six months, with a hundred and twenty-five dollars.
I'll do that much for the sake of my old friend, Lew Goodwin, who
stood by me in many a tight place, and was a good-hearted fellow
after all."
Morton accepted this little respite, and Burchard left the tavern.
As it was now past midnight, Goodwin did not go to bed. At two
o'clock he gave Dolly corn, and before daylight he rode out of the
village. But not toward home. His gambling and losses would be
speedily reported at home and to Captain Lumsden. And moreover, Kike
would persecute him worse than ever. He rode out of town in the
direction opposite to that he would have taken in returning to
Hissawachee, and he only knew that it was opposite. He was trying
what so many other men have tried in vain to do--to run away from
himself.
But not the fleetest Arabian charger, nor the swiftest lightning
express, ever yet enabled a man to leave a disagreeable self behind.
The wise man knows better, and turns round and faces it.
About noon Morton, who had followed an obscure and circuitous trail
of which he knew nothing, drew near to a low log-house with deer's
horns over the door, a sign that the cabin was devoted to hotel
purposes--a place where a stranger might get a little food, a place
to rest on the floor, and plenty of whiskey. There were a dozen
horses hitched to trees about it, and Goodwin got down and went in
from a spirit of idle curiosity. Certainly the place was not
attractive. The landlord had a cut-throat way of looking closely at
a guest from under his eye-brows; the guests all wore black beards,
and Morton soon found reason to suspect that these beards were not
indigenous. He was himself the object of much disagreeable scrutiny,
but he could hardly restrain a mischievous smile at thought of the
disappointment to which any highwayman was doomed who should attempt
to rob him in his present penniless condition. The very worst that
could happen would be the loss of Dolly and his rifle. It soon
occurred to him that this lonely place was none other than "Brewer's
Hole," one of the favorite resorts of Micajah Harp's noted band of
desperadoes, a place into which few honest men ever ventured.
One of the men presently stepped to the window, rested his foot upon
the low sill, and taking up a piece of chalk, drew a line from the
toe to the top of his boot.* Several others imitated him; and
Morton, in a spirit of reckless mischief and adventure, took the
chalk and marked his right boot in the same way.
* In relating this incident, I give the local tradition as it is yet
told in the neighborhood. It does not seem that chalking one's boot
is a very prudent mode of recognizing the members of a secret band,
but I do not suppose that men who follow a highwayman's life are very
wise people.
"Will you drink?" said the man who had first chalked his boot.
Goodwin accepted the invitation, and as they stood near together,
Morton could plainly discover the falseness of his companion's beard.
Presently the man fixed his eyes on Goodwin and asked, in an
indifferent tone: "Cut or carry?"
"Carry," answered Morton, not knowing the meaning of the lingo, but
finding himself in a predicament from which there was no escape but
by drifting with the current. A few minutes later a bag, which
seemed to contain some hundreds of dollars, was thrust into his hand,
and Morton, not knowing what to do with it, thought best to "carry"
it off. He mounted his mare and rode away in a direction opposite to
that in which he had come. He had not gone more than three miles
when he met Burchard.
"Why, Burchard, how did you come here?"
"Oh, I came by a short cut."
But Burchard did not say that he had traveled in the night, to avoid
observation.
"Hello! Goodwin," cried Burchard, "you've got chalk on your boot! I
hope you haven't joined the--"
"Well, I'll tell you, Burchard, how that come. I found the greatest
set of disguised cut-throats you ever saw, at this little hole back
here. You hadn't better go there, if you don't want to be relieved
of all the money you got last night. I saw them chalking their
boots, and I chalked mine, just to see what would come of it. And
here's what come of it;" and with that, Morton showed his bag of
money. "Now," he said, "if I could find the right owner of this
money, I'd give it to him; but I take it he's buried in some holler,
without nary coffin or grave-stone. I 'low to pay you what I owe
you, and take the rest out to Vincennes, or somewheres else, and use
it for a nest-egg. 'Finders, keepers,' you know."
Burchard looked at him darkly a moment. "Look here, Morton--Goodwin,
I mean. You'll lose your head, if you fool with chalk that way. If
you don't give that money up to the first man that asks for it, you
are a dead man. They can't be fooled for long. They'll be after
you. There's no way now but to hold on to it and give it up to the
first man that asks; and if he don't shoot first, you'll be lucky.
I'm going down this trail a way. I want to see old Brewer. He's got
a good deal of political influence. Good-bye!"
Morton rode forward uneasily until he came to a place two miles
farther on, where another trail joined the one he was traveling.
Here there stood a man with a huge beard, a blanket over his
shoulders, holes cut through for arms, after the frontier fashion, a
belt with pistols and knives, and a bearskin cap. The stranger
stepped up to him, reaching out his hand and saying nothing. Morton
was only too glad to give up the money. And he set Dolly off at her
best pace, seeking to get as far as possible from the head-quarters
of the cut-or-carry gang. He could not but wonder how Burchard
should seem to know them so well. He did not much like the thought
that Burchard's forbearance had bound him to support that gentleman's
political aspirations when he had opportunity. This friendly
relation with thieves was not what he would have liked to see in a
favorite candidate, but a cursed fatality seemed to be dragging down
all his high aspirations. It was like one of those old legends he
had heard his mother recite, of men who had begun by little bargains
with the devil, and had presently found themselves involved in evil
entanglements on every hand.
_CHAPTER XVI._
SHORT SHRIFT.
But Morton had no time to busy himself now with nice scruples. Bread
and meat are considerations more imperative to a healthy man than
conscience. He had no money. He might turn aside from the trail to
hunt; indeed this was what he had meant to do when he started. But
ever, as he traveled, he had become more and more desirous of getting
away from himself. He was now full sixty or seventy miles from home,
but he could not make up his mind to stop and devote himself to
hunting. At four o'clock the valley of the Mustoga lay before him,
and Morton, still purposeless, rode on. And now at last the habitual
thought of his duty to his mother was returning upon him, and he
began to be hesitant about going on. After all, his flight seemed
foolish. Patty might not yet be lost; and as for Kike's revival, why
should he yield to it, unless he chose?
In this painful indecision he resolved to stop and crave a night's
lodging at the crossing of the river. He was the more disposed to
this that Dolly, having been ridden hard all day without food, showed
unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and it was now snowing. He would
give her a night's rest, and then perhaps take the road back to the
Hissawachee, or go into the wilderness and hunt.
"Hello the house!" he called. "Hello!"
A long, lank man, in butternut jeans, opened the door, and responded
with a "Hello!"
"Can I get to stay here all night?"
"Wal, no, I 'low not, stranger. Kinder full to-night. You mout git
a place about a mile furder on whar you could hang up for the night,
mos' likely; but I can't keep you, no ways."
"My mare's dreadful tired, and I can sleep anywhere," plead Morton.
"She does look sorter tuckered out, sartain; blamed if she don't!
Whar did you git her?"
"Raised her," said Morton.
"Whar abouts?"
"Hissawachee."
"You don't say! How far you rid her to-day?"
"From Jonesville."
"Jam up fifty miles, and over tough roads! Mighty purty critter,
that air. Powerful clean legs. She's number one. Is she your'n,
did you say?"
"Well, not exactly mine. That is--". Here Morton hesitated.
"Stranger," said the settler, "you can't put up here, no ways. I
tuck in one of your sort a month ago, and he rid my sorrel mare off
in the middle of the night. I'll bore a hole through him, ef I ever
set eyes on him." And the man had disappeared in the house before
Morton could reply.
To be in a snow-storm without shelter was unpleasant; to be refused a
lodging and to be mistaken for a horse-thief filled the cup of
Morton's bitterness. He reluctantly turned his horse's head toward
the river. There was no ferry, and the stream was so swollen that he
must needs swim Dolly across.
He tightened his girth and stroked Dolly affectionately, with a
feeling that she was the only friend he had left. "Well, Dolly," he
said, "it's too bad to make you swim, after such a day; but you must.
If we drown, we'll drown together."
The weary Dolly put her head against his cheek in a dumb trustfulness.
There was a road cut through the steep bank on the other side, so
that travelers might ride down to the water's edge. Knowing that he
would have to come out at that place, young Goodwin rode into the
water as far up the stream as he could find a suitable place. Then,
turning the mare's head upward, he started across. Dolly swam
bravely enough until she reached the middle of the stream; then,
finding her strength well nigh exhausted after her travel, and under
the burden of her master, she refused his guidance, and turned her
head directly toward the road, which offered the only place of exit.
The rapid current swept horse and rider down the stream; but still
Dolly fought bravely, and at last struck land just below the road.
Morton grasped the bushes over his head, urged Dolly to greater
exertions, and the well-bred creature, rousing all the remains of her
magnificent force, succeeded in reaching the road. Then the young
man got down and caressed her, and, looking back at the water,
wondered why he should have struggled to preserve a life that he was
not able to regulate, and that promised him nothing but misery and
embarrassment.
The snow was now falling rapidly, and Morton pushed his tired filley
on another mile. Again he hallooed. This time he was welcomed by an
old woman, who, in answer to his inquiry, said he might put the mare
in the stable. She didn't ginerally keep no travelers, but it was
too orful a night fer a livin' human bein' to be out in. Her son
Jake would be in thireckly, and she 'lowed he wouldn't turn nobody
out in sech a night. 'Twuz good ten miles to the next house.
Morton hastened to stable Dolly, and to feed her, and to take his
place by the fire.
Presently the son came in.
"Howdy, stranger?" said the youth, eyeing Morton suspiciously. "Is
that air your mar in the stable?"
"Ye-es," said Morton, hesitatingly, uncertain whether he could call
Dolly his or not, seeing she had been transferred to Burchard.
"Whar did you come from?"
"From Hissawachee."
"Whar you makin' fer?"
"I don't exactly know."
"See here, mister! Akordin' to my tell, that air's a mighty peart
sort of a hoss fer a feller to ride what don' know, to save his
gizzard, whar he mout be a travelin'. We don't keep no sich people
as them what rides purty hosses and can't giv no straight account of
theirselves. Akordin' to my tell, you'll hev to hitch up yer mar and
putt. It mout gin us trouble to keep you."
"You ain't going to send me out such a night as this, when I've rode
fifty mile a'ready?" said Morton.
"What in thunder'd you ride fifty mile to-day fer? Yer health, I
reckon. Now, stranger, I've jist got one word to say to you, and
that is this ere: _Putt_! PUTT THIRECKLY! Clar out of these 'ere
diggin's! That's all. Jist putt!"
The young man pronounced the vowel in "put" very flat, as it is
sounded in the first syllable of "putty," and seemed disposed to add
a great many words to this emphatic imperative when he saw how much
Morton was disinclined to leave the warm hearth. "Putt out, I say!
I ain't afeard of none of yer gang. I hain't got nary 'nother word."
"Well," said Morton, "I have only got one word--_I won't_! You
haven't got any right to turn a stranger out on such a night."
"Well, then, I'll let the reggilators know abouten you."
"Let them know, then," said Morton; and he drew nearer the fire.
The strapping young fellow straightened himself up and looked at
Morton in wonder, more and more convinced that nobody but an outlaw
would venture on a move so bold, and less and less inclined to
attempt to use force as his conviction of Morton's desperate
character increased. Goodwin, for his part, was not a little amused;
the old mischievous love of fun reasserted itself in him as he saw
the decline of the young man's courage.
"If you think I am one of Micajah Harp's band, why don't you be
careful how you treat me? The band might give you trouble. Let's
have something to eat. I haven't had anything since last night; I am
starving."
"Marm," said the young man, "git him sompin'. He's tuck the house
and we can't help ourselves."
Morton had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and in his amusement
at the success of his ruse and in the comfortable enjoyment of food
after his long fast his good spirits returned.
When he awoke the next morning in his rude bed in the loft, he became
aware that there were a number of men in the room below, and he could
gather that they were talking about him. He dressed quickly and came
down-stairs. The first thing he noticed was that the settler who had
refused him lodging the night before was the centre of the group, the
next that they had taken possession of his rifle. This settler had
roused the "reggilators," and they had crossed the creek in a
flat-boat some miles below and come up the stream determined to
capture this young horse-thief. It is a singular tribute to the
value of the horse that among barbarous or half-civilized peoples
horse-stealing is accounted an offense more atrocious than homicide.
In such a community to steal a man's horse is the grandest of
larcenies--it is to rob him of the stepping-stone to civilization.
For such philosophical reflections as this last, however, Morton had
no time. He was in the hands of an indignant crowd, some of whom had
lost horses and other property from the depredations of the famous
band of Micajah Harp, and all of whom were bent on exacting the
forfeit from this indifferently dressed young man who rode a horse
altogether too good for him.
Morton was conducted three miles down the river to a log tavern, that
being a public and appropriate place for the rendering of the
decisions of Judge Lynch, and affording, moreover, the convenient
refreshments of whiskey and tobacco to those who might become
exhausted in their arduous labors on behalf of public justice. There
was no formal trial. The evidence was given in in a disjointed and
spontaneous fashion; the jury was composed of the whole crowd, and
what the Quakers call the "sense of the meeting" was gathered from
the general outcry. Educated in Indian wars and having been left at
first without any courts or forms of justice, the settlers had come
to believe their own expeditious modes of dealing with the enemies of
peace and order much superior to the prolix method of the lawyers and
judges.
And as for Morton, nothing could be much clearer than that he was one
of the gang. The settler who had refused him a lodging first spoke:
"You see, I seed in three winks," he began, "that that feller didn't
own the hoss. He looked kinder sheepish. Well, I poked a few
questions at him and I reckon I am the beatin'est man to ax questions
in this neck of timber. I axed him whar he come from, and he let it
out that he'd rid more'n fifty miles. And I kinder blazed away at
praisin' his hoss tell I got him off his guard, and then, unbeknownst
to him, I treed him suddently. I jest axed him ef the hoss was his'n
and he hemmed and hawed and says, says he: 'Well, not exactly mine.'
Then I tole him to putt out."
"Did he tell you the mar wuzn't adzackly his'n?" put in the youth
whose unwilling hospitality Morton had enjoyed.
"Yes."
"Well, then, he lied one time or nuther, that's sartain shore. He
tole me she wuz. And when I axed him whar he was agoin', he tole me
he didn' know. I suspicioned him then, and I tole him to clar out;
and he wouldn'. Well, I wuz agoin' to git down my gun and blow his
brains out; but marm got skeered and didn' want me to, and I 'lowed
it was better to let him stay, and I 'low'd you fellers mout maybe
come over and cotch him, or liker'n not some feller'd come along and
inquire arter that air mar. Then he ups and says ef the ole woman
don' give him sompin' to eat she'd ketch it from Micajah Harp's band.
He said as how he was a member of that gang. An' he said he hadn't
had nothin' to eat sence the night before, havin' rid fer twenty-four
hours."
"I didn't say----" began Morton.
"Shet up your mouth tell I'm done. Haint you got no manners? I tole
him as how I didn't keer three continental derns* fer his whole band
weth Micajah Harp throw'd onto the top, but the ole woman wuz kinder
sorter afeared to find she'd cotch a rale hoss-thief and she gin him
a little sompin' to eat. And he did gobble it, I tell _you_!"
* A saying having its origin, no doubt, in the worthlessness of the
paper money issued by the Continental Congress.
Young rawbones had repeated this statement a dozen times already
since leaving home with the prisoner. But he liked to tell it.
Morton made the best defense he could, and asked them to send to
Hissawachee and inquire, but the crowd thought that this was only a
ruse to gain time, and that if they delayed his execution long,
Micajah Harp and his whole band would be upon them.
The mob-court was unanimously in favor of hanging. The cry of "Come
on, boys, let's string him up," was raised several times, and
"rushes" at him were attempted, but these rushes never went further
than the incipient stage, for the very good reason that while many
were anxious to have him hung, none were quite ready to adjust the
rope. The law threatened them on one side, and a dread of the
vengeance of Micajah Harp's cut-throats appalled them on the other.
The predicament in which the crowd found themselves was a very
embarrassing one, but these administrators of impromptu justice
consoled themselves by whispering that it was best to wait till night.
And the rawboned young man, who had given such eager testimony that
he "warn't afeard of the whole gang with ole Micajah throw'd onto the
top," concluded about noon that he had better go home--the ole woman
mout git skeered, you know. She wuz powerful skeery and mout git
fits liker'n not, you know.
The weary hours of suspense drew on. However ready Morton may have
been to commit suicide in a moment of rash despair, life looked very
attractive to him now that its duration was measured by the
descending sun. And what a quickener of conscience is the prospect
of immediate death! In these hours the voice of Kike, reproving him
for his reckless living, rang in his memory ceaselessly. He saw what
a distorted failure he had made of life; he longed for a chance to
try it over again. But unless help should come from some unexpected
quarter, he saw that his probation was ended.
It is barely possible that the crowd might have become so demoralized
by waiting as to have let Morton go, or at least to have handed him
over to the authorities, had there not come along at that moment Mr.
Mellen, the stern and ungrammatical Methodist preacher of whom Morton
had made so much sport in Wilkins's Settlement. Having to preach at
fifty-eight appointments in four weeks, he was somewhat itinerant,
and was now hastening to a preaching place near by. One of the
crowd, seeing Mr. Mellen, suggested that Morton had orter be allowed
to see a preacher, and git "fixed up," afore he died. Some of the
others disagreed. They warn't nothin' in the nex' world too bad fer
a hoss-thief, by jeeminy hoe-cakes. They warn't a stringin' men up
to send 'em to heaven, but to t' other place.
Mellen was called in, however, and at once recognized Morton as the
ungodly young man who had insulted him and disturbed the worship of
God. He exhorted him to repent, and to tell who was the owner of the
horse, and to seek a Saviour who was ready to forgive even the dying
thief upon the cross. In vain Morton protested his innocence.
Mellen told him that he could not escape, though he advised the crowd
to hand him over to the sheriff. But Mellen's additional testimony
to Morton's bad character had destroyed his last chance of being
given up to the courts. As soon as Mr. Mellen went away, the
arrangements for hanging him at nightfall began to take definite
shape, and a rope was hung over a limb, in full sight of the
condemned man. Mr. Mellen used with telling effect, at every one of
the fifty-eight places upon his next round, the story of the sad end
of this hardened young man, who had begun as a scoffer and ended as
an impenitent thief.
Morton sat in a sort of stupor, watching the sun descending toward
the horizon. He heard the rude voices of the mob about him. But he
thought of Patty and his mother.
While the mob was thus waiting for night, and Morton waiting for
death, there passed upon the road an elderly man. He was just going
out of sight, when Morton roused himself enough to observe him. When
he had disappeared, Goodwin was haunted with the notion that it must
be Mr. Donaldson, the old Presbyterian preacher, whose sermons he had
so often heard at the Scotch Settlement. Could it be that thoughts
of home and mother had suggested Donaldson? At least, the faintest
hope was worth clutching at in a time of despair.
"Call him back!" cried Morton. "Won't somebody call that old man
back? He knows me."
[Illustration: A LAST HOPE.]
Nobody was disposed to serve the culprit. The leaders looked
knowingly the one at the other, and shrugged their shoulders.
"If you don't call him back you will be a set of murderers!" cried
the despairing Goodwin.
_CHAPTER XVII._
DELIVERANCE.
Parson Donaldson was journeying down to Cincinnati--at that time a
thriving village of about two thousand people--to attend Presbytery
and to contend manfully against the sinful laxity of some of his
brethren in the matters of doctrine and revivals. In previous years
Mr. Donaldson had been beaten a little in his endeavors to have
carried through the extremest measures against his more progressive
"new-side" brethren. He considered the doctrines of these zealous
Presbyterians as very little better than the crazy ranting of the
ungrammatical circuit riders. At the moment of passing the tavern
where Morton sat, condemned to death, he was eagerly engaged in
"laying out" a speech with which he intended to rout false doctrines
and annihilate forever incipient fanaticism. His square head had
fallen forward, and he only observed that there was a crowd of
godless and noisy men about the tavern. He could not spare time to
note anything farther, for the fate of Zion seemed to hang upon the
weight and cogency of the speech which he meant to deliver at
Cincinnati. He had almost passed out of sight when Morton first
caught sight of him; and when the young man, finding that no one
would go after him, set up a vigorous calling of his name, Mr.
Donaldson did not hear it, or at least did not think for an instant
that anybody in that crowd could be calling his own name. How should
he hear Morton's cry? For just at that moment he had reached the
portion of his argument in which he triumphantly proved that his
new-side friends, however unconscious they might be of the fact, were
of necessity Pelagians, and, hence, guilty of fatal error.
Morton's earnest entreaties at last moved one of the crowd.
"Well, I don't mind," he said; "I'll call him. 'Pears like as ef
he's a-lyin' any how. I don't 'low as he knows the ole coon, or the
ole coon knows him--liker'n not he's a-foolin' by lettin' on; but 't
won't do no harm to call him back." Saying which, he mounted his
gaunt horse and rode away after Mr. Donaldson.
"Hello, stranger! I say, there! Mister! O, mister! Hello, you ole
man on horseback!"
This was the polite manner of address with which the messenger
interrupted the theological meditations of the worthy Mr. Donaldson
at the moment of his most triumphant anticipations of victory over
his opponents.
"Well, what is it?" asked the minister, turning round on the
messenger a little tartly; much as one would who is suddenly awakened
and not at all pleased to be awakened.
"They's a feller back here as we tuck up fer a hoss-thief, and we had
three-quarters of a notion of stringin' on him up; but he says as how
as he knows you, and ef you kin do him any good, I hope you'll do it,
for I do hate to see a feller being hung, that's sartain shore."
"A horse-thief says that he knows me?" said the parson, not yet
fairly awake to the situation. "Indeed? I'm in a great hurry. What
does he want? Wants me to pray with him, I suppose. Well, it is
never too late. God's election is of grace, and often he seems to
select the greatest sinners that he may thereby magnify his grace and
get to himself a great name. I'll go and see him."
And with that, Donaldson rode back to the tavern, endeavoring to turn
his thoughts out of the polemical groove in which they had been
running all day, that he might think of some fitting words to say to
a malefactor. But when he stood before the young man he started with
surprise.
"What! Morton Goodwin! Have you taken to stealing horses? I should
have thought that the unhappy career of your brother, so soon cut
short in God's righteousness, would have been a warning to you. My
dear young man, how could you bring such disgrace and shame on the
gray hairs----"
Before Mr. Donaldson had gotten to this point, a murmur of excitement
went through the crowd. They believed that the prisoner's own
witness had turned against him and that they had a second quasi
sanction from the clergy for the deed of violence they were
meditating. Perceiving this, Morton interrupted the minister with
some impatience, crying out:
"But, Mr. Donaldson, hold on; you have judged me too quick. These
folks are going to hang me without any evidence at all, except that I
was riding a good horse. Now, I want you to tell them whose filley
yon is."
Mr. Donaldson looked at the mare and declared to the crowd that he
had seen this young man riding that colt for more than a year past,
and that if they were proceeding against him on a charge of stealing
that mare, they were acting most unwarrantably.
"Why couldn't he tell a feller whose mar he had, and whar he was
a-goin'?" said the man from the other side of the river.
"I don't know. How did you come here, Morton?"
"Well, I'll tell you a straight story. I was gambling on Sunday
night----"
"Breaking two Commandments at once," broke in the minister.
"Yes, sir, I know it; and I lost everything I had--horse and gun and
all--I seemed clean crazy. I lost a hundred dollars more'n I had,
and I give the man I was playing with a bill of sale for my horse and
gun. Then he agreed to let me go where I pleased and keep 'em for
six months and I was ashamed to go home; so I rode off, like a fool,
hoping to find some place where I could make the money to redeem my
colt with. That's how I didn't give straight answers about whose
horse it was, and where I was going."
"Well, neighbors, it seems clear to me that you'll have to let the
young man go. You ought to be thankful that God in his good
providence has saved you from the guilt of those who shed innocent
blood. He is a very respectable young man, indeed, and often attends
church with his mother. I am sorry he has got into bad habits."
"I'm right glad to git shed of a ugly job," said one of the party;
and as the rest offered no objection, he cut the cords that bound
Morton's arms and let him go. The landlord had stabled Dolly and fed
her, hoping that some accident would leave her in his hands; the man
from the other side of the creek had taken possession of the rifle as
"his sheer, considerin' the trouble he'd tuck." The horse and gun
were now reluctantly given up, and the party made haste to disperse,
each one having suddenly remembered some duty that demanded immediate
attention. In a little while Morton sat on his horse listening to
some very earnest words from the minister on the sinfulness of
gambling and Sabbath-breaking. But Mr. Donaldson, having heard of
the Methodistic excitement in the Hissawachee settlement, slipped
easily to that, and urged Morton not to have anything whatever to do
with this mushroom religion, that grew up in a night and withered in
a day. In fact the old man delivered to Morton most of the speech he
had prepared for the Presbytery on the evil of religious excitements.
Then he shook hands with him, exacted a promise that he would go
directly home, and, with a few seasonable words on God's mercy in
rescuing him from a miserable death, he parted from the young man.
Somehow, after that he did not get on quite so well with his speech.
After all, was it not better, perhaps, that this young man should be
drawn into the whirlpool of a Methodist excitement than that he
should become a gambler? After thinking over it a while, however,
the logical intellect of the preacher luckily enabled him to escape
this dangerous quicksand, in reaching the sound conclusion that a
religious excitement could only result in spiritual pride and
Pelagian doctrine, and that the man involved in these would be lost
as certainly as a gambler or a thief.
Now, lest some refined Methodist of the present day should be a
little too severe on our good friend Mr. Donaldson, I must express my
sympathy for the worthy old gentleman as he goes riding along toward
the scene of conflict. Dear, genteel, and cultivated Methodist
reader, you who rejoice in the patristic glory of Methodism, though
you have so far departed from the standard of the fathers as to wear
gold and costly apparel and sing songs and read some novels, be not
too hard upon our good friend Donaldson. Had you, fastidious
Methodist friend, who listen to organs and choirs, and refined
preachers, as you sit in your cushioned pew--had you lived in Ohio
sixty years ago, would you have belonged to the Methodists, think
you? Not at all! your nerves would have been racked by their
shouting, your musical and poetical taste outraged by their ditties,
your grammatical knowledge shocked beyond recovery by their English;
you could never have worshiped in an excitement that prostrated
people in religious catalepsy, and threw weak saints and obstinate
sinners alike into the contortions of the jerks. It is easy to build
the tombs of the prophets while you reap the harvest they sowed, and
after they have been already canonized. It is easy to build the
tombs of the early prophets now while we stone the prophets of our
own time, maybe. Permit me, Methodist brother, to believe that had
you lived in the days of Parson Donaldson, you would have condemned
these rude Tishbites as sharply as he did. But you would have been
wrong, as he was. For without them there must have been barbarism,
worse than that of Arkansas and Texas. Methodism was to the West all
that Puritanism was to New England. Both of them are sublime when
considered historically; neither of them were very agreeable to live
with, maybe.
But, alas! I am growing as theological as Mr. Donaldson himself.
Meantime Morton has forded the creek at a point more favorable than
his crossing of the night before, and is riding rapidly homeward; and
ever, as he recedes from the scene of his peril and approaches his
home, do the embarrassments of his situation become more appalling.
If he could only be sure of himself in the future, there would be
hope. But to a nature so energetic as his, there is no action
possible but in a right line and with the whole heart.
In returning, Morton had been directed to follow a "trace" that led
him toward home by a much nearer way than he had come. After riding
twenty miles, he emerged from the wilderness into a settlement just
as the sun was sitting. It happened that the house where he found a
hospitable supper and lodging was already set apart for Methodist
preaching that evening. After supper the shuck-bottom chairs and
rude benches were arranged about the walls, and the intermediate
space was left to be filled by seats which should be brought in by
friendly neighbors. Morton gathered from the conversation that the
preacher was none other than the celebrated Valentine Cook, who was
held in such esteem that it was even believed that he had a prophetic
inspiration and a miraculous gift of healing. This "class" had been
founded by his preaching, in the days of his vigor. He had long
since given up "traveling," on account of his health. He was now a
teacher in Kentucky, being, by all odds, the most scholarly of the
Western itinerants. He had set out on a journey among the churches
with whom he had labored, seeking to strengthen the hands of the
brethren, who were like a few sheep in the wilderness. The old
Levantine churches did not more heartily welcome the final visit of
Paul the Aged than did the backwoods churches this farewell tour of
Valentine Cook.
Finding himself thus fairly entrapped again by a Methodist meeting,
Morton felt no little agitation. His mother had heard Cook in his
younger days, in Pennsylvania, and he was thus familiar with his fame
as a man and as a preacher. Morton was not only curious to hear him;
he entertained a faint hope that the great preacher might lead him
out of his embarrassment.
After supper Goodwin strolled out through the trees trying to collect
his thoughts; determined at one moment to become a Methodist and end
his struggles, seeking, the next, to build a breastwork of resistance
against the sermon that he must hear. Having walked some distance
from the house into the bushes, he came suddenly upon the preacher
himself, kneeling in earnest audible prayer. So rapt was the old man
in his devotion that he did not note the approach of Goodwin, until
the latter, awed at sight of a man talking face to face with God,
stopped, trembling, where he stood. Cook then saw him, and, arising,
reached out his hand to the young man, saying in a voice tremulous
with emotion: "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a
crown of life." Morton endeavored, in a few stammering words, to
explain his accidental intrusion, but the venerable man seemed almost
at once to have forgotten his presence, for he had taken his seat
upon a log and appeared absorbed in thought. Morton retreated just
in time to secure a place in the cabin, now almost full. The members
of the church, men and women, as they entered, knelt in silent prayer
before taking their seats. Hardly silent either, for the old
Methodist could do nothing without noise, and even while he knelt in
what he considered silent prayer, he burst forth, continually in
audible ejaculations of "Ah--ah!" "O my Lord, help!" "Hah!" and
other groaning expressions of his inward wrestling--groanings easily
uttered, but entirely without a possible orthography. With most,
this was the simple habit of an uncultivated and unreserved nature;
in later times the ostentatious and hypocritical did not fail to
cultivate it as an evidence of superior piety.
But now the room is full. People are crowding the doorways. The
good old-class leader has shut his eyes and turned his face
heavenward. Presently he strikes up lustily, leading the
congregation in singing:
"How tedious and tasteless the hours
When Jesus no longer I see!"
When he reached the stanza that declares:
"While blest with a sense of his love
A palace a toy would appear;
And prisons would palaces prove,
If Jesus would dwell with me there."
there were shouts of "Halleluiah!" "Praise the Lord!" and so forth.
At the last quatrain, which runs,
"O! drive these dark clouds from my sky!
Thy soul-cheering presence restore;
Or take me to thee up on high,
Where winter and clouds are no more!"
there were the heartiest "Amens," though they must have been spoken
in a poetic sense. I cannot believe that any of the excellent
brethren, even in that moment of exaltation, would really have
desired translation to the world beyond the clouds.
The preacher, in his meditations, had forgotten his congregation--a
very common bit of absent-mindedness with Valentine Cook; and so,
when this hymn was finished, a sister, with a rich but uncultivated
soprano, started, to the tune called "Indian Philosopher," that
inspiring song which begins:
"Come on, my partners in distress,
My comrades in this wilderness,
Who still your bodies feel;
Awhile forget your griefs and tears,
Look forward through this vale of tears
To that celestial hill."
The hymn was long, and by the time it was completed the preacher,
having suddenly come to himself, entered hurriedly, and pushed
forward to the place arranged for him. The festoons of dried pumpkin
hanging from the joists reached nearly to his head; a tallow dip,
sitting in the window, shed a feeble light upon his face as he stood
there, tall, gaunt, awkward, weather-beaten, with deep-sunken, weird,
hazel eyes, a low forehead, a prominent nose, coarse black hair
resisting yet the approach of age, and a _tout ensemble_ unpromising,
but peculiar. He began immediately to repeat his hymn:
"I saw one hanging on a tree
In agony and blood;
He fixed his languid eye on me,
As near the cross I stood."
His tone was monotonous, his eyes seemed to have a fascination, and
the pathos of his voice, quivering with suppressed emotion, was
indescribable. Before his prayer was concluded the enthusiastic
Morton felt that he could follow such a leader to the world's end.
He repeated his text: "_Behold, the day cometh_," and launched at
once into a strongly impressive introduction about the all-pervading
presence of God, until the whole house seemed full of God, and Morton
found himself breathing fearfully, with a sense of God's presence and
ineffable holiness. Then he took up that never-failing theme of the
pioneer preacher--the sinfulness of sin--and there were suppressed
cries of anguish over the whole house. Morton could hardly feel more
contempt for himself than he had felt for two days past; but when the
preacher advanced to his climax of the Atonement and the Forgiveness
of Sins, Goodwin felt himself carried away as with a flood. In that
hour, with God around, above, beneath, without and within--with a
feeling that since his escape he held his life by a sort of
reprieve--with the inspiring and persuasive accents of this weird
prophet ringing in his ears, he cast behind him all human loves, all
ambitious purposes, all recollections of theological puzzles, and set
himself to a self-denying life. With one final battle he closed his
conflict about Patty. He would do right at all hazards.
Morton never had other conversion than this. He could not tell of
such a struggle as Kike's. All he knew was that there had been
conflict. When once he decided, there was harmony and peace. When
Valentine Cook had concluded his rapt peroration, setting the whole
house ablaze with feeling, and then proceeded to "open the doors of
the church" by singing,
"Am I a soldier of the Cross,
A follower of the Lamb,
And shall I fear to own his cause,
Or blush to speak his name?"
it was with a sort of military exaltation--a defiance of the world,
the flesh, and the devil--that Morton went forward and took the hand
of the preacher, as a sign that he solemnly enrolled himself among
those who meant to
"----conquer though they die."
He was accustomed to say in after years, using the Methodist
phraseology, that "God spoke peace to his soul the moment he made up
his mind to give up all." That God does speak to the heart of man in
its great crises I cannot doubt; but God works with, and not against,
the laws of mind. When Morton ceased to contend with his highest
impulses there was no more discord, and he was of too healthful and
objective a temperament to have subjective fights with fanciful
Apollyons. When peace came he accepted it. One of the old brethren
who crowded round him that night and questioned him about his
experience was "afeard it warn't a rale deep conversion. They wuzn't
wras'lin' and strugglin' enough." But the wise Valentine Cook said,
when he took Morton's hand to say good-bye, and looked into his clear
blue eye, "Hold fast the beginning of thy confidence, brother."
_CHAPTER XVIII._
THE PRODIGAL RETURNS.
At last the knight was in the saddle. Much as Morton grieved when he
thought of Patty, he rejoiced now in the wholeness of his moral
purpose. Vacillation was over. He was ready to fight, to sacrifice,
to die, for a good cause. It had been the dream of his boyhood; it
had been the longing of his youth, marred and disfigured by
irregularities as his youth had been. In the early twilight of the
winter morning he rode bravely toward his first battle field, and, as
was his wont in moments of cheerfulness, he sang. But not now the
"Highland Mary," or "Ca' the yowe's to the knowes," but a hymn of
Charles Wesley's he had heard Cook sing the night before, some
stanzas of which had strongly impressed him and accorded exactly with
his new mood, and his anticipation of trouble and the loss of Patty,
perhaps, from his religious life:
"In hope of that immortal crown
I now the Cross sustain,
And gladly wander up and down,
And smile at toil and pain;
I suffer on my threescore years,
Till my Deliv'rer come
And wipe away his servant's tears,
And take his exile home.
* * * * * * * *
"O, what are all my sufferings here
If, Lord, thou count me meet
With that enraptured host to appear
And worship at thy feet!
Give joy or grief, give ease or pain,
Take life or friends away,
But let me find them all again
In that eternal day."
Long before he had reached Hissawachee he had ceased to sing. He was
painfully endeavoring to imagine how he would be received at home and
at Captain Lumsden's.
At home, the wan mother sat in the dull winter twilight, trying to
keep her heart from fainting entirely. The story of Morton's losses
at cards had quickly reached the settlement--with the easy addition
that he had fled to escape paying his debt of dishonor, and had
carried off the horse and gun which another had won from him in
gambling. This last, the mother steadily refused to believe. It
could not be that Morton would quench all the manly impulses of his
youth and follow in the steps of his prodigal brother, Lewis. For
Morton was such a boy as Lewis had never been, and the thought of his
deserting his home and falling finally into bad practices, had
brought to Mrs. Goodwin an agony that was next door to heart-break.
Job Goodwin had abandoned all work and taken to his congenial
employment of sighing and croaking in the chimney-corner, building
innumerable Castles of Doubt for the Giant Despair.
Mrs. Wheeler came in to comfort her friend. "I am sure, Mrs.
Goodwin," she said, "Morton will yet be saved; I have been enabled to
pray for him with faith."
In spite of her sorrow, Mrs. Goodwin could not help thinking that it
was very inconsistent for an Arminian to believe that God would
convert a man in answer to prayer, when Arminians professed to
believe that a man could be a Christian or not as he pleased.
Willing, however, to lay the blame of her misfortune on anybody but
Morton, she said, half peevishly, that she wished the Methodists had
never come to the settlement. Morton had been in a hopeful state of
mind, and they had driven him to wickedness. Otherwise he would
doubtless have been a Christian by this time.
And now Mrs. Wheeler, on her part, thought--but did not say--that it
was most absurd for Mrs. Goodwin to complain of anything having
driven Morton away from salvation, since, according to her
Calvinistic doctrine, he must be saved anyhow if he were elected. It
is so easy to be inconsistent when we try to reason about God's
relation to his creatures; and so easy to see absurdity in any creed
but our own!
The twilight deepened, and Mrs. Goodwin, unable now to endure the
darkness, lit her candle. Then there was a knock at the door. Ever
since Sunday the mother, waiting between hope and despair, had turned
pale at every sound of footsteps without. Now she called out, "Come
in!" in a broken voice, and Mr. Brady entered, having just dismissed
his school.
"Troth, me dair madam, it's not meself that can give comfort. I'm
sure to say something not intoirely proper to the occasion, whiniver
I talk to anybody in throuble--something that jars loike a varb that
disagrees with its nominative in number and parson, as I may say.
But I thought I ought to come and say you, and till you as I don't
belave Moirton would do anything very bad, an' I'm shoore he'll be
home afore the wake's out. I've soiphered it out by the Rule of
Thray. As Moirton Goodwin wuz to his other throubles--comin' out all
roight--so is Moirton Goodwin to his present dif_fic_culties. If the
first term and the third is the same, then the sicond and the fourth
has got to be idintical. Perhaps I'm talkin' too larned; but you're
an eddicated woman, Mrs. Goodwin, and you can say that me
dimonsthration's entoirely corrict. Moirton'll fetch the answer set
down in the book ivery toime, without any remainder or mistake.
Thair's no vulgar fractions about him."
"Fractious, did you say?" spoke in Job Goodwin, who had held his hand
up to his best ear, to hear what Brady was saying. "No, I don't 'low
he was fractious, fer the mos' part. But he's gone now, and he'll
git killed like Lew did, and we'll all hev the fever, and then
they'll be a war weth the Bridish, and the Injuns'll be on us, and it
'pears like as if they wa'n't no eend of troubles a-comin'. Hey?"
At that very moment the latch was jerked up and Henry came bursting
into the room, gasping from excitement.
"What is it? Injuns?" asked Mr. Goodwin, getting to his feet.
But Henry gasped again.
"Spake!" said Brady. "Out wid it!"
"Mort's--a-puttin'--Dolly--in the stable!" said the breathless boy.
"Dolly's in the stable, did you say?" queried Job Goodwin, sitting
down again hopelessly. "Then somebody--Injuns, robbers, or
somebody--'s killed Mort, and she's found her way back!"
While Mr. Goodwin was speaking, Mrs. Wheeler slipped out of the open
door, that she might not intrude upon the meeting; but Brady--oral
newspaper that he was--waited, with the true journalistic spirit, for
an interview. Hardly had Job Goodwin finished his doleful speech,
when Morton himself crossed the threshold and reached out his hand to
his mother, while she reached out both hands and--did what mothers
have done for returning prodigals since the world was made. Her
husband stood by bewildered, trying to collect his wits enough to
understand how Morton could have been murdered by robbers or Indians
and yet stand there. Not until the mother released him, and Morton
turned and shook hands with his father, did the father get rid of the
illusion that his son was certainly dead.
"Well, Moirton," said Brady, coming out of the shadow, "I'm roight
glad to see ye back. I tould 'em ye'd bay home to-noight, maybe. I
soiphered it out by the Single Rule of Thray that ye'd git back about
this toime. One day fer sinnin', one day fer throyin' to run away
from yersilf, one day for repintance, and the nixt the prodigal son
falls on his mother's neck and confisses his sins."
Morton was glad to find Brady present; he was a safeguard against too
much of a scene. And to avoid speaking of subjects more unpleasant,
he plunged at once into an account of his adventure at Brewer's Hole,
and of his arrest for stealing his own horse. Then he told how he
had escaped by the good offices of Mr. Donaldson. Mrs. Goodwin was
secretly delighted at this. It was a new bond between the young man
and the minister, and now at last she should see Morton converted.
The religious experience Morton reserved. He wanted to break it to
his mother alone, and he wanted to be the first to speak of it to
Patty. And so it happened that Brady, having gotten, as he supposed,
a full account of Morton's adventures, and being eager to tell so
choice and fresh a story, found himself unable to stay longer. But
just as he reached the door, it occurred to him that if he did not
tell Morton at once what had happened in his absence, some one else
would anticipate him. He had sole possession of Morton's adventure
anyhow; so he straightened himself up against the door and said:
"An' did ye hear what happened to Koike, the whoile ye was gone,
Moirton?"
"Nothing bad, I hope," said Morton.
"Ye may belave it was bad, or ye may take it to be good, as ye plase.
Ye know how Koike was bilin' over to shoot his uncle, afore ye went
away in the fall. Will, on'y yisterday the Captin he jist met Koike
in the road, and gives him some hard words fer sayin' what he did to
him last Sunthay. An' fwat does Koike do but bowldly begins another
exhortation, tellin' the Captin he was a sinner as desarved to go to
hill, an' that he'd git there if he didn't whale about and take the
other thrack. An' fwat does the Captin do but up wid the flat of his
hand and boxes Koike's jaw. An' I thought Koike would 'a' sarved him
as Magruder did Jake Sniger. But not a bit of it! He fired up rid,
and thin got pale immajiately. Thin he turned round t'other soide of
his face, and, wid a thremblin' voice, axed the Captin if he didn't
want to slap that chake too? An' the Captin swore at him fer a
hypocrite, and thin put out for home wid the jerks; an' he's been
a-lookin' loike a sintince that couldn' be parsed iver sence."
"I wonder Kike bore it. I don't think I could," said Morton,
meditatively.
"Av coorse ye couldn't. Ye're not a convarted Mithodist, But I must
be goin'. I'm a-boardin' at the Captin's now."
_CHAPTER XIX._
PATTY.
Patty's whole education tended to foster her pride, and in Patty's
circumstances pride was conservative; it saved her from possible
assimilation with the vulgarity about her. She was a lily among
hollyhocks. Her mother had come of an "old family"--in truth, of two
or three old families. All of them had considered that attachment to
the Established Church was part and parcel of their gentility, and
most of them had been staunch Tories in the Revolution. Patty had
inherited from her mother refinement, pride, and a certain lofty
inflexibility of disposition. In this congenial soil Mrs. Lumsden
had planted traditional prejudices. Patty read her Prayer-book, and
wished that she might once attend the stately Episcopal service; she
disliked the lowness of all the sects: the sing-song of the Baptist
preacher and the rant of the Methodist itinerant were equally
distasteful. She had never seen a clergyman in robes, but she tried,
from her mother's descriptions, to form a mental picture of the
long-drawn dignity of the service in an Old Virginia country church.
Patty was imaginative, like most girls of her age; but her ideals
were ruled by the pride in which she had been cradled.
For the Methodists she entertained a peculiar aversion. Methodism
was new, and, like everything new, lacked traditions,
picturesqueness, mustiness, and all the other essentials of gentility
in religious matters. The converts were rude, vulgar, and poor; the
preachers were illiterate, and often rough in voice and speech; they
made war on dancing and jewelry, and dancing and jewelry appertained
to good-breeding. Ever since her father had been taken with that
strange disorder called "the jerks," she had hated the Methodists
worse than ever. They had made a direct attack on her pride.
The story of Morton's gambling had duly reached the ears of Patty.
The thoughtful unkindness of her father could not leave her without
so delectable a morsel of news. He felt sure that Patty's pride
would be outraged by conduct so reckless, and he omitted nothing from
the tale--the loss of horse and gun, the offer to stake his hat and
coat, the proposal to commit suicide, the flight upon the forfeited
horse--such were the items of Captain Lumsden's story. He told it at
the table in order to mortify Patty as much as possible in the
presence of her brothers and sisters and the hired men. But the
effect was quite different from his expectations. With that
inconsistency characteristic of the most sensible women when they are
in love, Patty only pitied Morton's misfortunes. She saw him, in her
imagination, a hapless and homeless wanderer. She would not abandon
him in his misfortunes. He should have one friend at least. She was
sorry he had gambled, but gambling was not inconsistent with
gentlemanliness. She had often heard that her mother would have
inherited a plantation if her grandfather had been able to let cards
alone. Gambling was the vice of gentlemen, a generous and impulsive
weakness. Then, too, she laid the blame on her favorite scape-goat.
If it had not been for Kike's exciting exhortation and the
inconsiderate violence of the Methodist revival, Morton's misfortune
would not have befallen him. Patty forgave in advance. Love
condones all sins except sins against love.
It was with more than his usual enjoyment of gossip that the
school-master hurried home to the Captain's that evening to tell the
story of Morton's return, and to boast that he had already soiphered
it out by the single Rule of Thray that Moirton would come out
roight. The Captain, as he ate his waffles with country molasses,
slurred the whole thing, and wanted to know if he was going to refuse
to pay a debt of honor and keep the mare, when he had fairly lost her
gambling with Burchard. But Patty inly resolved to show her lover
more affection than ever. She would make him feel that her love
would be constant when the friendship of others failed. She liked to
flatter herself, as other young women have to their cost, that her
love would reform her lover.
Patty knew he would come. She went about her work next morning,
humming some trifling air, that she might seem nonchalant. But after
awhile she happened to think that her humming was an indication of
pre-occupation. So she ceased to hum. Then she remembered that
people would certainly interpret silence as indicative of meditation;
she immediately fell a-talking with might and main, until one of the
younger girls asked: "What does make Patty talk so much?" Upon
which, Patty ceased to talk and went to work harder than ever; but,
being afraid that the eagerness with which she worked would betray
her, she tried to work more slowly until that was observed. The very
devices by which we seek to hide mental pre-occupation generally
reveal it.
At last Patty was fain to betake herself to the loom-room, where she
could think without having her thoughts guessed at. Here, too, she
would be alone when Morton should come.
Poor Morton, having told his mother of his religious change, found it
hard indeed to tell Patty. But he counted certainly that she would
censure him for gambling, which would make it so much easier for him
to explain to her that the only way for him to escape from vice was
to join the Methodists, and thus give up all to a better life. He
shaped some sentences founded upon this supposition. But after all
his effort at courage, and all his praying for grace to help him to
"confess Christ before men," he found the cross exceedingly hard to
bear; and when he set his foot upon the threshold of the loom-room,
his heart was in his mouth and his face was suffused with guilty
blushes. Ah, weak nature! He was not blushing for his sins, but for
his repentance!
Patty, seeing his confusion, determined to make him feel how full of
forgiveness love was. She saw nobleness in his very shame, and she
generously resolved that she would not ask, that she would not allow,
a confession. She extended her hand cordially and beamed upon him,
and told him how glad she was that he had come back,
and--and--well--; she couldn't find anything else to say, but she
urged him to sit down and handed him a splint-bottom chair, and tried
for the life of her to think of something to say--the silence was so
embarrassing. But talking for talk's sake is always hard. One talks
as one breathes--best when volition has nothing to do with it.
The silence was embarrassing to Morton, but not half so much so as
Patty's talk. For he had not expected this sort of an opening. If
she had accused him of gambling, if she had spurned him, the road
would have been plain. But now that she loved him and forgave him of
her own sweet generosity, how should he smite her pride in the face
by telling her that he had joined himself to the illiterate, vulgar
fanatical sect of ranting Methodists, whom she utterly despised?
Truly the Enemy had set an unexpected snare for his unwary feet. He
had resolved to confess his religious devotion with heroic courage,
but he had not expected to be disarmed in this fashion. He talked
about everything else, he temporized, he allowed her to turn the
conversation as she would, hoping vainly that she would allude to his
gambling. But she did not. Could it be that she had not heard of
it? Must he then reveal that to her also?
While he was debating the question in his mind, Patty, imagining that
he was reproaching himself for the sin and folly of gambling, began
to talk of what had happened in the neighborhood--how Jake Sniger
"fell with the power" on Sunday and got drunk on Tuesday: "that's all
this Methodist fuss amounts to, you know," she said. Morton thought
it ungracious to blurt out at this moment that he was a Methodist:
there would be an air of contradiction in the avowal; so he sat still
while Patty turned all the sobbing and sighing, and shouting and loud
praying of the meetings into ridicule. And Morton became conscious
that it was getting every minute more and more difficult for him to
confess his conversion. He thought it better to return to his
gambling for a starting point.
"Did you hear what a bad boy I've been, Patty?"
"Oh! yes. I'm sorry you got into such a bad scrape; but don't say
any more about it, Morton. You're too good for me with all your
faults, and you won't do it any more."
"But I want to tell you all about it, and what happened while I was
gone. I'm afraid you'll think too hard of me--"
"But I don't think hard of you at all, and I don't want to hear about
it because it isn't pleasant. It'll all come out right at last: I'd
a great deal rather have you a little wild at first than a hard
Methodist, like Kike, for instance."
"But--"
"I tell you, Morton, I won't hear a word. Not one word. I want you
to feel that whatever anybody else may say, I know you're all right."
You think Morton very weak. But, do you know how exceedingly sweet
is confidence from one you love, when there is only censure, and
suspicion, and dark predictions of evil from everybody else? Poor
Morton could not refuse to bask in the sunshine for a moment after so
much of storm. It is not the north wind, but the southern breezes
that are fatal to the ice-berg's voyage into sunny climes.
At last he rose to go. He felt himself a Peter. He had denied the
Master!
"Patty," he said, with resolution, "I have not been honest with you.
I meant to tell you something when I first came, and I didn't. It is
hard to have to give up your love. But I'm afraid you won't care for
me when I tell you--"
The severity of Morton's penitence only touched Patty the more deeply.
"Morton," she said, interrupting, "if you've done anything naughty, I
forgive you without knowing it. But I don't want to hear any more
about it, I tell you." And with that the blushing Patty held her
cheek up for her betrothed to kiss, and when Morton, trembling with
conflicting emotions, had kissed her for the first time, she slipped
away quickly to prevent his making any painful confessions.
For a moment Morton stood charmed with her goodness. When he
believed himself to have conquered, he found himself vanquished.
In a dazed sort of way he walked the greater part of the distance
home. He might write to her about it. He might let her hear it from
others. But he rejected both as unworthy of a man. The memory of
the kiss thrilled him, and he was tempted to throw away his Methodism
and rejoice in the love of Patty, now so assured. But suddenly he
seemed to himself to be another Judas. He had not denied the
Lord--he had betrayed him; and with a kiss!
Horrified by this thought, Morton hastened back toward Captain
Lumsden's. He entered the loom-room, but it was vacant. He went
into the living-room, and there he saw not Patty alone, but the whole
family. Captain Lumsden had at that moment entered by the opposite
door. Patty was carding wool with hand-cards, and she looked up,
startled at this reappearance of her lover when she thought him
happily dismissed.
"Patty," said Morton, determined not to fall into any devil's snare
by delay, and to atone for his great sin by making his profession as
public as possible, "Patty, what I wanted to say was, that I have
determined to be a Christian, and I have
joined--the--Methodist--Church."
Morton's sense of inner conflict gave this utterance an unfortunate
sound of defiance, and it aroused all Patty's combativeness. It was
in fact a death wound to her pride. She had feared sometimes that
Morton would be drawn into Methodism, but that he should join the
despised sect without so much as consulting her was more than she
could bear. This, then, was the way in which her forbearance and
forgiveness were rewarded! There stood her father, sneering like a
Mephistopheles. She would resent the indignity, and at the same time
show her power over her lover.
"Morton, if you are a Methodist, I never want to see you again," she
said, with lofty pride, and a solemn awfulness of passion more
terrible than an oath.
"Don't say that, Patty!" stammered Morton, stretching his hands out
in eager, despairing entreaty. But this only gave Patty the greater
assurance that a little decision on her part would make him give up
his Methodism.
[Illustration: THE CHOICE.]
"I do say it, Morton, and I will never take it back." There was a
sternness in the white face and a fire in the black eyes that left
Morton no hope.
But he straightened himself up now to his full six feet, and said,
with manly stubbornness: "Then, Patty, since you make me choose, I
shall not give up the Lord, even for you. But," he added, with a
broken voice, as he turned away, "may God help me to bear it."
Ah, Matilda Maria! if Morton were a knight in armor giving up his
ladye love for the sake of monastic religiousness, how admirable he
would be! But even in his homespun he is a man making the greatest
of sacrifices. It is not the garb or the age that makes sublime a
soul's offering of heart and hope to duty. When Morton was gone
Lumsden chuckled not a little, and undertook to praise Patty for her
courage; but I have understood that she resented his compliments, and
poured upon him some severe denunciation, in which the Captain heard
more truth than even Kike had ventured to utter. Such are the
inconsistencies of a woman when her heart is wounded.
It seems a trifle to tell just here, when Morton and Patty are in
trouble--but you will want to know about Brady. He was at Colonel
Wheeler's that evening, eagerly telling of Morton's escape from
lynching, when Mrs. Wheeler expressed her gratification that Morton
had ceased to gamble and become a Methodist.
"Mithodist? He's no Mithodist."
"Yes, he is," responded Mrs. Wheeler, "his mother told me so; and
what's more, she said she was glad of it." Then, seeing Brady's
discomfiture, she added: "You didn't get all the news that time, Mr.
Brady."
"Well, me dair madam, when I'm admithed to a family intervoo, it's
not proper fer me to tell all I heerd. I didn't know the fact was
made public yit, and so I had to denoy it. It's the honor of a
Oirish gintleman, ye know."
What a journalist he would have made!
_CHAPTER XX._
THE CONFERENCE AT HICKORY RIDGE.
More than two years have passed since Morton made his great
sacrifice. You may see him now riding up to the Hickory Ridge
Church--a "hewed-log" country meeting-house. He is dressed in
homespun clothes. At the risk of compromising him forever, I must
confess that his coat is straight-breasted--shad-bellied as the
profane call it--and his best hat a white one with a broad brim. The
face is still fresh, despite the conflicts and hardships of one
year's travel in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, and the sickness
and exposure of another year in the malarious cane-brakes of Western
Tennessee. Perils of Indians, perils of floods, perils of
alligators, perils of bad food, perils of cold beds, perils of
robbers, perils of rowdies, perils of fevers, and the weariness of
five thousand miles of horseback riding in a year, with five or six
hundred preachings in the same time, and the care of numberless
scattered churches in the wilderness have conspired to give
sedateness to his countenance. And yet there is a youthfulness about
the sun-browned cheeks, and a lingering expression of that sort of
humor which Western people call "mischief" about the eyes, that match
but grotesquely with white hat and shad-bellied coat.
[Illustration: GOING TO CONFERENCE.]
He has been a preacher almost ever since he became a Methodist. How
did he get his theological education? It used to be said that
Methodist preachers were educated by the old ones telling the young
ones all they knew; but besides this oral instruction Morton carried
in his saddle-bags John Wesley's simple, solid sermons, Charles
Wesley's hymns, and a Bible. Having little of the theory and system
of theology, he was free to take lessons in the larger school of life
and practical observation. For the rest, the free criticism to which
he was subject from other preachers, and the contact with a few
families of refinement, had obliterated his dialect. Naturally a
gentleman at heart, he had, from the few stately gentlemen that he
met, quickly learned to be a gentleman in manners. He is regarded as
a young man of great promise by the older brethren; his clear voice
is very charming, his strong and manly speech and his tender feeling
are very inspiring, and on his two circuits he has reported
extraordinary revivals. Some of the old men sagely predict that
"he's got bishop-timber in him," but no such ambitious dreams disturb
his sleep. He has not "gone into a decline" on account of Patty. A
healthy nature will bear heavy blows. But there is a pain,
somewhere--everywhere--in his being, when he thinks of the girl who
stood just above him in the spelling-class, and who looked so divine
when she was spinning her two dozen cuts a day. He does not like
this regretful feeling. He prays to be forgiven for it. He
acknowledges in class-meeting and in love-feast that he is too much
like Lot's wife--he finds his heart prone to look back toward the
objects he once loved. Often in riding through the stillness of a
deep forest--and the primeval forest is to him the peculiar abode of
the Almighty--his noble voice rings out fervently and even
pathetically with that stanza:
"The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne
And worship only Thee!"
No man can enjoy a joke with more zest than he, and none can tell a
story more effectively in a generation of preachers who are all good
story-tellers. He loves his work; its dangers and difficulties
satisfy the ambition of his boyhood; and he has had no misgivings,
except when once or twice he has revisited his parents in the
Hissawachee Bottom. Then the longing to see Patty has seized him and
he has been fain to hurry away, praying to be delivered from every
snare of the enemy.
He is not the only man in a straight-breasted coat who is approaching
the country meeting-house. It is conference-time, and the greetings
are hearty and familiar. Everybody is glad to see everybody, and,
after a year of separation, nobody can afford to stand on ceremony
with anybody else. Morton has hardly alighted before half a dozen
preachers have rushed up to him and taken him by the hand. A tall
brother, with a grotesque twitch in his face, cries out:
"How do you do, Brother Goodwin? Glad to see the alligators haven't
finished you!"
To which Morton returns a laughing reply; but suddenly he sees,
standing back of the rest and waiting his turn, a young man with a
solemn, sallow face, pinched by sickness and exposure, and bordered
by the straight black hair that falls on each side of it. He wears
over his clothes a blanket with arm-holes cut through, and seems to
be perpetually awaiting an ague-chill. Seeing him, Morton pushes the
rest aside, and catches the wan hand in both of his own with a cry:
"Kike, God bless you! How are you, dear old fellow? You look sick."
Kike smiled faintly, and Morton threw his arm over his shoulder and
looked in his face. "I am sick, Mort. Cast down, but not destroyed,
you know. I hope I am ready to be offered up."
"Not a bit of it. You've got to get better. Offered up? Why, you
aren't fit to offer to an alligator. Where are you staying?"
"Out there." Kike pointed to the tents of a camp-meeting barely
visible through the trees. The people in the neighborhood of the
Hickory Ridge Church, being unable to entertain the Conference in
their homes, had resorted to the device of getting up a camp-meeting.
It was easier to take care of the preachers out of doors than in.
Morton shook his head as he walked with Kike to the thin canvas tent
under which he had been assigned to sleep. The white spot on the end
of Kike's nose and the blue lines under his finger-nails told plainly
of the on-coming chill, and Morton hurried away to find some better
shelter for him than under this thin sheet. But this was hard to do.
The few brethren in the neighborhood had already filled their cabins
full of guests, mostly in infirm health, and Kike, being one of the
younger men, renowned only for his piety and his revivals, had not
been thought of for a place elsewhere than on the camp-ground.
Finding it impossible to get a more comfortable resting place for his
friend, Morton turned to seek for a physician. The only doctor in
the neighborhood was a Presbyterian minister, retired from the
ministry on account of his impaired health. To him Morton went to
ask for medicine for Kike.
"Dr. Morgan, there is a preacher sick down at the camp-ground," said
Morton, "and--"
"And you want me to see him," said the doctor, in an alert,
anticipative fashion, seizing his "pill-bags" and donning his hat.
When the two rode up to the tent in which Kike was lodged they found
a prayer-meeting of a very exciting kind going on in the tent
adjoining. There were cries and groans and amens and hallelujahs
commingled in a way quite intelligible to the experienced ear of
Morton, but quite unendurable to the orderly doctor.
"A bad place for a sick man, sir," he said to Morton, with great
positiveness.
"I know it is, doctor," said Morton; "and I've done my best to get
him out of it, but I cannot. See how thin this tent-cover is."
"And the malaria of these woods is awful. Camp-meetings, sir, are
always bad. And this fuss is enough to drive a patient crazy."
Morton thought the doctor prejudiced, but he said nothing. They had
now reached the corner of the tent where Kike lay on a straw pallet,
holding his hands to his head. The noise from the prayer-meeting was
more than his weary brain would bear.
"Can you sit on my horse?" said the doctor, promptly proceeding to
lift Kike without even explaining to him who he was, or where he
proposed to take him.
Morton helped to place Kike in the saddle, but the poor fellow was
shaking so that he could not sit there. Morton then brought out
Dolly--she was all his own now--and took the slight form of Kike in
his arms, he riding on the croup, and the sick man in the saddle.
"Where shall I ride to, doctor?"
"To my house," said the doctor, mounting his own horse and spurring
off to have a bed made ready for Kike.
As Morton rode up to the doctor's gate, the shaking Kike roused a
little and said, "She's the same fine old Dolly, Mort."
"A little more sober. The long rides in the cane-brakes, and the
responsibility of the Methodist itinerancy, have given her the
gravity that belongs to the ministry."
Such a bed as Kike found in Dr. Morgan's house! After the rude
bear-skins upon which he had languished in the backwoods cabins,
after the musty feather-beds in freezing lofts, and the pallets of
leaves upon which he had shivered and scorched and fought fleas and
musquitoes, this clean white bed was like a foretaste of heaven. But
Kike was almost too sick to be grateful. The poor frame had been
kept up by will so long, that now that he was in a good bed and had
Morton he felt that he could afford to be sick. What had been ague
settled into that wearisome disease called bilious fever. Morton
staid by him nearly all of the time, looking into the conference now
and then to see the venerable Asbury in the chair, listening to a
grand speech from McKendree, attending on the third day of the
session, when, with the others who had been preaching two years on
probation, he was called forward to answer the "Questions" always
propounded to "Candidates for admission to the conference." Kike
only was missing from the list of those who were to have heard the
bishop's exhortations, full of martial fire, and to have answered his
questions in regard to their spiritual state. For above all gifts of
speech or depths of learning, or acuteness of reasoning, the early
Methodists esteemed devout affections; and no man was of account for
the ministry who was not "groaning to be made perfect in this life."
The question stands in the discipline yet, but very many young men
who assent to it groan after nothing so much as a city church with
full galleries.
The strange mystery in which appointments were involved could not but
pique curiosity. Morton having had one year of mountains, and one
year of cane-brakes, had come to wish for one year of a little more
comfort, and a little better support. There is a romance about going
threadbare and tattered in a good cause, but even the romance gets
threadbare and tattered if it last too long, and one wishes for a
little sober reality of warm clothes to relieve a romance, charming
enough in itself, but dull when it grows monotonous.
The awful hour of appointments came on at last. The brave-hearted
men sat down before the bishop, and before God, not knowing what was
to be their fate. Morton could not guess where he was going. A
miasmatic cane-brake, or a deadly cypress swamp, might be his doom,
or he might--but no, he would not hope that his lot might fall in
Ohio. He was a young man, and a young man must take his chances.
Morton found himself more anxious about Kike than about himself.
Where would the bishop send the invalid? With Kike it might be a
matter of life and death, and Kike would not hear to being left
without work. He meant, he said, to cease at once to work and live.
The brethren, still in sublime ignorance of their destiny, sang
fervently that fiery hymn of Charles Wesley's:
"Jesus, the name high over all,
In hell or earth or sky,
Angels and men before him fall,
And devils fear and fly.
"O that the world might taste and see,
The riches of his grace,
The arms of love that compass me
Would all mankind embrace."
And when they reached the last stanzas there was the ring of soldiers
ready for battle in their martial voices. That some of them would
die from exposure, malaria, or accident during the next year was
probable. Tears came to their eyes, and they involuntarily began to
grasp the hands of those who stood next them as they approached the
climax of the hymn, which the bishop read impressively, two lines at
a time, for them to sing:
"His only righteousness I show,
His saving truth proclaim,
'Tis all my business here below
To cry, 'Behold the Lamb!'
"Happy if with my latest breath
I may but gasp his name,
Preach him to all and cry in death,
'Behold, behold the Lamb!'"
Then, with suffused eyes, they resumed their seats, and the venerable
Asbury, with calmness and with a voice faltering with age, made them
a brief address; tender and sympathetic at first, earnest as he
proceeded, and full of ardor and courage at the close.
"When the British Admiralty," he said, "wanted some man to take
Quebec, they began with the oldest General first, asking him:
'General, will you go and take Quebec?' To which he made reply, 'It
is a very difficult enterprise.' 'You may stand aside,' they said.
One after another the Generals answered that they would, in some more
or less indefinite manner, until the youngest man on the list was
reached. 'General Wolfe,' they said, 'will you go and take Quebec?'
'I'll do it or die,' he replied." Here the bishop paused, looked
round about upon them, and added, with a voice full of emotion, "He
went, and did both. We send you first to take the country allotted
to you. We want only men who are determined to do it or die! Some
of you, dear brethren, will do both. If you fall, let us hear that
you fell like Methodist preachers at your post, face to the foe, and
the shout of victory on your lips."
The effect of this speech was beyond description. There were sobs,
and cries of "Amen," "God grant it," "Halleluiah!" from every part of
the old log church. Every man was ready for the hardest place, if he
must. Gravely, as one who trembles at his responsibility, the bishop
brought out his list. No man looked any more upon his fellow. Every
one kept his eyes fixed upon the paper from which the bishop read the
appointments, until his own name was reached. Some showed pleasure
when their names were called, some could not conceal a look of pain.
When the reading had proceeded half way down the list, Morton heard,
with a little start, the words slowly enounced as the bishop's eyes
fell on him:
"Jenkinsville Circuit--Morton Goodwin."
Well, at least Jenkinsville was in Ohio. But it was in the wickedest
part of Ohio. Morton half suspected that he was indebted to his
muscle, his courage, and his quick wit for the appointment. The
rowdies of Jenkinsville Circuit were worse than the alligators of
Mississippi. But he was young, hopeful and brave, and rather
relished a difficult field than otherwise. He listened now for
Kike's name. It came at the bottom of the list:
"Pottawottomie Creek--W. T. Smith, Hezekiah Lumsden."
The bishop had not dared to entrust a circuit to a man so sick as
Kike was. He had, therefore, sent him as "second man" or "junior
preacher" on a circuit in the wilderness of Michigan.
The last appointment having been announced, a simple benediction
closed the services, and the brethren who had foregone houses and
homes and fathers and mothers and wives and children for the kingdom
of heaven's sake saddled their horses, called, one by one, at Dr.
Morgan's to say a brotherly "God bless you!" to the sick Kike, and
rode away, each in his own direction, and all with a self-immolation
to the cause rarely seen since the Middle-Age.
They rode away, all but Kike, languishing yet with fever, and Morton,
watching by his side.
_CHAPTER XXI._
CONVALESCENCE.
At last Kike is getting better, and Morton can be spared. There is
no longer any reason why the rowdies on Jenkinsville Circuit should
pine for the muscular young preacher whom they have vowed to "lick as
soon as they lay eyes on to him." Dolly's legs are aching for a
gallop. Morton and Dr. Morgan have exhausted their several systems
of theology in discussion. So, at last, the impatient Morton mounts
the impatient Dolly, and gallops away to preach to the impatient
brethren and face the impatient ruffians of Jenkinsville Circuit.
Kike is left yet in his quiet harbor to recover. The doctor has
taken a strange fancy to the zealous young prophet, and looks forward
with sadness to the time when he will leave.
Ah, happiest experience of life, when the flood tide sets back
through the veins! You have no longer any pain; you are not well
enough to feel any responsibility; you cannot work; there is no
obligation resting on you but one--that is rest. Such perfect
passivity Kike had never known before. He could walk but little. He
sat the livelong day by the open window, as listless as the grass
that waved before the wind. All the sense of dire responsibility,
all those feelings of the awfulness of life, and the fearfulness of
his work, and the dreadfulness of his accountability, were in
abeyance. To eat, to drink, to sleep, to wake and breathe, to suffer
as a passive instrument the play of whatever feeling might chance to
come, was Kike's life.
In this state the severity of his character was laid aside. He
listened to the quick and eager conversation of Dr. Morgan with a
gentle pleasure; he answered the motherly questions of Mrs. Morgan
with quiet gratitude; he admired the goodness of Miss Jane Morgan,
their eldest and most exemplary daughter, as a far off spectator.
There were but two things that had a real interest for him. He felt
a keen delight in watching the wayward flight of the barn swallows as
they went chattering out from under the eaves--their airy vagabondage
was so restful. And he liked to watch the quick, careless tread of
Henrietta Morgan, the youngest of the doctor's daughters, who went on
forever talking and laughing with as little reck as the swallows
themselves. Though she was eighteen, there was in her full
child-like cheeks, in her contagious laugh--a laugh most unprovoked,
coming of itself--in her playful way of performing even her duties, a
something that so contrasted with and relieved the habitual austerity
of Kike's temper, and that so fell in with his present lassitude and
happy carelessness, that he allowed his head, resting weakly upon a
pillow, to turn from side to side, that his eyes might follow her.
So diverting were her merry replies, that he soon came to talk with
her for the sake of hearing them. He was not forgetful of the solemn
injunctions Mr. Wesley had left for the prudent behavior of young
ministers in the presence of women. With Miss Jane he was very
careful lest he should in any way compromise himself, or awaken her
affections. Jane was the kind of a girl he would want to marry, if
he were to marry. But Nettie was a child--a cheerful butterfly--as
refreshing to his weary mind as a drink of cold water to a
fever-patient. When she was out of the room, Kike was impatient;
when she returned, he was glad. When she sewed, he drew the large
chair in which he rested in front of her, and talked in his grave
fashion, while she, in turn, amused him with a hundred fancies. She
seemed to shine all about him like sunlight. Poor Kike could not
refuse to enjoy a fellowship so delightful, and Nettie Morgan's
reverence for young Lumsden's saintliness, and pity for his sickness,
grew apace into a love for him.
Long before Kike discovered or Nettie suspected this, the doctor had
penetrated it. Kike's whole-hearted devotion to his work had charmed
the ex-minister, who moved about in his alert fashion, talking with
eager rapidity, anticipating Kike's grave sentences before he was
half through--seeing and hearing everything while he seemed to note
nothing. He was not averse to this attachment between the two.
Provided always, that Kike should give up traveling. It was all but
impossible, indeed, for a man to be a Methodist preacher in that day
and "lead about a wife." A very few managed to combine the ministry
with marriage, but in most cases marriage rendered "location" or
secularization imperative.
[Illustration: CONVALESCENCE.]
Kike sat one day talking in the half-listless way that is
characteristic of convalescence, watching Nettie Morgan as she sewed
and laughed, when Dr. Morgan came in, put his pill-bags upon the high
bureau, glanced quickly at the two, and said:
"Nettie, I think you'd better help your mother. The
double-and-twisting is hard work."
Nettie laid her sewing down. Kike watched her until she had
disappeared through the door; then he listened until the more
vigorous spinning indicated to him that younger hands had taken the
wheel. His heart sank a little--it might be hours before Nettie
could return.
Dr. Morgan busied himself, or pretended to busy himself, with his
medicines, but he was observing how the young preacher's eyes
followed his daughter, how his countenance relapsed into its habitual
melancholy when she was gone. He thought he could not be mistaken in
his diagnosis.
"Mr. Lumsden," he said, kindly, "I don't know what we shall do when
you get well. I can't bear to have you go away."
"You have been too good, doctor. I am afraid you have spoiled me."
The thought of going to Pottawottomie Creek was growing more and more
painful to Kike. He had put all thoughts of the sort out of his
mind, because the doctor wished him to keep his mind quiet. Now, for
some reason, Doctor Morgan seemed to force the disagreeable future
upon him. Why was it unpleasant? Why had he lost his relish for his
work? Had he indeed backslidden?
While the doctor fumbled over his bottles, and for the fourth time
held a large phial, marked _Sulph. de Quin._, up to the light, as
though he were counting the grains, the young preacher was
instituting an inquiry into his own religious state. Why did he
shrink from Pottawottomie Creek circuit? He had braved much harder
toil and greater danger. On Pottawottomie Creek he would have a
senior colleague upon whom all administrative responsibilities would
devolve, and the year promised to be an easy one in comparison with
the preceding. On inquiring of himself he found that there was no
circuit that would be attractive to him in his present state of mind,
except the one that lay all around Dr. Morgan's house. At first Kike
Lumsden, playing hide-and-seek with his own motives, as other men do
under like circumstances, gave himself much credit for his grateful
attachment to the family. Surely gratitude is a generous quality,
and had not Dr. Morgan, though of another denomination, taken him
under his roof and given him professional attention free of charge?
And Mrs. Morgan and Jane and Nettie, had they not cared for him as
though he were a brother? What could be more commendable than that
he should find himself loth to leave people who were so good?
But Kike had not been in the habit of cheating himself. He had
always dealt hardly with Kike Lumsden. He could not rest now in this
subterfuge; he would not give himself credit that he did not deserve.
So while the doctor walked to the window and senselessly examined the
contents of one of his bottles marked "_Hydrarg._," Kike took another
and closer look at his own mind and saw that the one person whose
loss would be painful to him was not Dr. Morgan, nor his excellent
wife, nor the admirable Jane, but the volatile Nettie, the cadence of
whose spinning wheel he was even then hearkening to. The
consciousness that he was in love came to him suddenly--a
consciousness not without pleasure, but with a plentiful admixture of
pain.
Doctor Morgan's eyes, glancing with characteristic alertness, caught
the expression of a new self-knowledge and of an anxious pain upon
the forehead of Lumsden. Then the physician seemed all at once
satisfied with his medicines. The bottle labelled "_Hydrarg._" and
the "_Sulph. de Quin._" were now replaced in the saddle bags.
At this moment Nettie herself came into the room on some errand.
Kike had heard her wheel stop--had looked toward the door--had caught
her glance as she came in, and had, in that moment, become aware that
he was not the only person in love. Was it, then, that the doctor
wished to prevent the attachment going further that he had delicately
reminded his guest of the approach of the time when he must leave?
These thoughts aroused Kike from the lassitude of his slow
convalescence. Nettie went back to her wheel, and set it humming
louder than ever, but Kike heard now in its tones some note of
anxiety that disturbed him. The doctor came and sat down by him and
felt his pulse, ostensibly to see if he had fever, really to add yet
another link to the chain of evidence that his surmise was correct.
"Mr. Lumsden," said he, "a constitution so much impaired as yours
cannot recuperate in a few days."
"I know that, sir," said Kike, "and I am anxious to get to my
mother's for a rest there, that I may not burden you any longer,
and----"
"You misunderstand me, my dear fellow, if you think I want to be rid
of you. I wish you would stay with me always; I do indeed."
For a moment Kike looked out of the window. To stay with the doctor
always would, it seemed to him, be a heaven upon earth. But had he
not renounced all thought of a heaven on earth? Had he not said
plainly that here he had no abiding place? Having put his hand to
the plow, should he look back?
"But I ought not to give up my work."
It was not in this tone that Kike would have spurned such a
temptation awhile before.
"Mr. Lumsden," said the doctor, "you see that I am useful here. I
cannot preach a great deal, but I think that I have never done so
much good as since I began to practice medicine. I need somebody to
help me. I cannot take care of the farm and my practice too. You
could look after the farm, and preach every Sunday in the country
twenty miles round. You might even study medicine after awhile, and
take the practice as I grow older. You will die, if you go on with
your circuit-riding. Come and live with me, and be my----assistant."
The doctor had almost said "my son." It was in his mind, and Kike
divined it.
"Think about it," said Dr. Morgan, as he rose to go, "and remember
that nobody is obliged to kill himself."
And all day long Kike thought and prayed, and tried to see the right;
and all day long Nettie found occasion to come in on little errands,
and as often as she came in did it seem clear to Kike that he would
be justified in accepting Dr. Morgan's offer; and as often as she
went out did he tremble lest he were about to betray the trust
committed to him.
_CHAPTER XXII._
THE DECISION.
The austerity of Kike's conscience had slumbered during his
convalescence. It was wide awake now. He sat that evening in his
room trying to see the right way. According to old Methodist custom
he looked for some inward movement of the spirit--some
"impression"--that should guide him.
During the great religious excitement of the early part of this
century, Western pietists referred everything to God in prayer, and
the belief in immmediate divine direction was often carried to a
ludicrous extent. It is related that one man retired to the hills
and prayed a week that he might know how he should be baptized, and
that at last he came rushing out of the woods, shouting "Hallelujah!
Immersion!" Various devices were invented for obtaining divine
direction--devices not unworthy the ancient augurs. Lorenzo Dow used
to suffer his horse to take his own course at each divergence of the
road. It seems to have been a favorite delusion of pietism, in all
ages, that God could direct an inanimate object, guide a dumb brute,
or impress a blind impulse upon the human mind, but could not
enlighten or guide the judgment itself. The opening of a Bible at
random for a directing text became so common during the Wesleyan
movement in England, that Dr. Adam Clarke thought it necessary to
utter a stout Irish philippic against what he called "Bible
sortilege."
These devout divinings, these vanes set to catch the direction of
heavenly breezes, could not but impress so earnest a nature as
Kike's. Now in his distress he prayed with eagerness and opened his
Bible at random to find his eye lighting, not on any intelligible or
remotely applicable passage, but upon a bead-roll of unpronounceable
names in one of the early chapters of the Book of Chronicles. This
disappointment he accepted as a trial of his faith. Faith like
Kike's is not to be dashed by disappointment. He prayed again for
direction, and opened at last at the text: "Simon, son of Jonas,
lovest thou me more than these?" The marked trait in Kike's piety
was an enthusiastic personal loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. This
question seemed directed to him, as it had been to Peter, in
reproach. He would hesitate no longer. Love, and life itself,
should be sacrificed for the Christ who died for him. Then he prayed
once more, and there came to his mind the memory of that saying about
leaving houses and homes and lands and wives, for Christ's sake. It
came to him, doubtless, by a perfectly natural law of mental
association. But what did Kike know of the association of ideas, or
of any other law of mental action? Wesley's sermons and Benson's
Life of Fletcher constituted his library. To him it seemed certain
that this text of scripture was "suggested." It was a call from
Christ to give up all for him. And in the spirit of the sublimest
self-sacrifice, he said: "Lord, I will keep back nothing!"
But emotions and resolutions that are at high tide in the evening
often ebb before morning. Kike thought himself strong enough to
begin again to rise at four o'clock, as Wesley had ordained in those
"rules for a preacher's conduct" which every Methodist preacher even
yet _promises_ to keep. Following the same rules, he proceeded to
set apart the first hour for prayer and meditation. The night before
all had seemed clear; but now that morning had come and he must soon
proceed to execute his stern resolve, he found himself full of doubt
and irresolution. Such vacillation was not characteristic of Kike,
but it marked the depth of his feeling for Nettie. Doubtless, too,
the enervation of convalescence had to do with it. Certainly in that
raw and foggy dawn the forsaking of the paradise of rest and love in
which he had lingered seemed to require more courage than he could
muster. After all, why should he leave? Might he not be mistaken in
regard to his duty? Was he obliged to sacrifice his life?
He conducted his devotions in a state of great mental distraction.
Seeing a copy of Baxter's Reformed Pastor which belonged to Dr.
Morgan lying on the window-seat, he took it up, hoping to get some
light from its stimulating pages. He remembered that Wesley spoke
well of Baxter; but he could not fix his mind upon the book. He kept
listlessly turning the leaves until his eye lighted upon a sentence
in Latin. Kike knew not a single word of Latin, and for that very
reason his attention was the more readily attracted by the sentence
in an unknown tongue. He read it, "_Nec propter vitam, vivendi
perdere causas_." He found written in the margin a free rendering:
"Let us not, for the sake of life, sacrifice the only things worth
living for." He knelt down now and gave thanks for what seemed to
him Divine direction. He had been delivered from a temptation to
sacrifice the great end of living for the sake of saving his life.
It cost him a pang to bid adieu to Dr. Morgan and his motherly wife
and the excellent Jane. It cost him a great pang to say good-bye to
Nettie Morgan. Her mobile face could ill conceal her feeling. She
did not venture to come to the door. Kike found her alone in the
little porch at the back of the house, trying to look unconcerned.
Afraid to trust himself he bade her farewell dryly, taking her hand
coldly for a moment. But the sight of her pain-stricken face touched
him to the quick: he seized her hand again, and, with eyes full of
tears, said huskily: "Good-bye, Nettie! God bless you, and keep you
forever!" and then turned suddenly away, bidding the rest a hasty
adieu and riding off eagerly, almost afraid to look back. He was
more severe than ever in the watch he kept over himself after this.
He could never again trust his treacherous heart.
Kike rode to his old home in the Hissawachee Settlement, "The Forks"
had now come to be quite a village; the valley was filling with
people borne on that great wave of migration that swept over the
Alleghanies in the first dozen years of the century. The cabin in
which his mother lived was very little different from what it was
when he left it. The old stick chimney showed signs of decrepitude;
the barrel which served for chimney-pot was canted a little on one
side, giving to the cabin, as Kike thought, an unpleasant air, as of
a man a little exhilarated with whiskey, who has tipped his hat upon
the side of his head to leer at you saucily. The mother received him
joyously, and wiped her eyes with her apron when she saw how sick he
had been. Brady was at the widow's cabin, and though he stood by the
fire-place when Kike entered, the two splint-bottomed chairs sat
suspiciously close together. Brady had long thought of changing his
state, but both Brady and the widow were in mortal fear of Kike,
whose severity of judgment and sternness of reproof appalled them.
"If it wasn't for Koike," said Brady to himself, "I'd propose to the
widdy. But what would the lad say to sich follies at my toime of
loife? And the widdy's more afeard of him than I am. Did iver
anybody say the loikes of a b'y that skeers his schoolmasther out of
courtin' his mother, and his mother out of resavin' the attintions of
a larnt grammairian loike mesilf? The misfortin' is that Koike don't
have no wakenisses himsilf. I wish he had jist one, and thin I
wouldn't keer. If I could only foind that he'd iver looked jist a
little swate loike at iny young girl, I wouldn't moind his cinsure.
But, somehow, I kape a-thinkin' what would Koike say, loike a ould
coward that I am."
Kike had come home to have his tattered wardrobe improved, and the
thoughtful mother had already made him a warm, though not very
shapely, suit of jeans. It cost Kike a struggle to leave her again.
She did not think him fit to go. But she did not dare to say so.
How should she venture to advise one who seemed to her wondering
heart to live in the very secrets of the Almighty? God had laid
hands on him--the child was hers no longer. But still she looked her
heart-breaking apprehensions as he set out from home, leaving her
standing disconsolate in the doorway wiping her eyes with her apron.
And Brady, seeing Kike as he rode by the school-house, ventured to
give him advice--partly by way of finding out whether Kike had any
"wakeniss" or not.
"Now, Koike, me son, as your ould taycher, I thrust you'll bear with
me if I give you some advoice, though ye have got to be sich a
praycher. Ye'll not take offinse, me lad?"
"O no; certainly not, Mr. Brady," said Kike, smiling sadly.
"Will, thin, ye're of a delicate constitooshun as shure as ye're
born, and it's me own opinion as ye ought to git a good wife to nurse
ye, and thin you could git a home and maybe do more good than ye do
now."
Kike's face settled into more than its wonted severity. The
remembrance of his recent vacillation and the sense of his present
weakness were fresh in his mind. He would not again give place to
the devil.
"Mr. Brady, there's something more important than our own ease or
happiness. We were not made to seek comfort, but to give ourselves
to the work of Christ. And see! your head is already blossoming for
eternity, and yet you talk as if this world were all."
Saying this, Kike shook hands with the master solemnly and rode away,
and Mr. Brady was more appalled than ever.
"The lad haint got a wakeniss," he said, disconsolately. "Not a
wakeniss," he repeated, as he walked gloomily into the school-house,
took down a switch and proceeded to punish Pete Sniger, who, as the
worst boy in the school, and a sort of evil genius, often suffered on
general principles when the master was out of humor.
Was Kike unhappy when he made his way to the distant Pottawottomie
Creek circuit?
Do you think the Jesuit missionaries, who traversed the wilds of
America at the call of duty as they heard it, were unhappy men? The
highest happiness comes not from the satisfaction of our desires, but
from the denial of them for the sake of a high purpose. I doubt not
the happiest man that ever sailed through Levantine seas, or climbed
Cappadocian mountains, was Paul of Tarsus. Do you think that he
envied the voluptuaries of Cyprus, or the rich merchants of Corinth?
Can you believe that one of the idlers in the Epicurean gardens, or
one of the Stoic loafers in the covered sidewalks of Athens, could
imagine the joy that tided the soul of Paul over all tribulations?
For there is a sort of awful delight in self-sacrifice, and Kike
defied the storms of a northern winter, and all the difficulties and
dangers of the wilderness, and all the hardships of his lonely lot,
with one saying often on his lips: "O Lord, I have kept back nothing!"
I have heard that about this time young Lumsden was accustomed to
electrify his audiences by his fervent preaching upon the Christian
duty of Glorying in Tribulation, and that shrewd old country women
would nod their heads one to another as they went home afterward, and
say: "He's seed a mighty sight o' trouble in his time, I 'low, fer a
young man." "Yes; but he's got the victory; and how powerful sweet
he talks about it! I never heerd the beat in all my born days."
_CHAPTER XXIII._
RUSSELL BIGELOW'S SERMON.
Two years have ripened Patty from the girl to the woman. If Kike is
happy in his self-abnegation, Patty is not happy in hers. Pride has
no balm in it. However powerful it may be as a stimulant, it is poor
food. And Patty has little but pride to feed upon. The invalid
mother has now been dead a year, and Patty is almost without
companionship, though not without suitors. Land brings
lovers--land-lovers, if nothing more--and the estate of Patty's
father is not her only attraction. She is a young woman of a certain
nobility of figure and carriage; she is not large, but her bearing
makes her seem quite commanding. Even her father respects her, and
all the more does he wish to torment her whenever he finds
opportunity. Patty is thrifty, and in the early West no attraction
outweighed this wifely ordering of a household. But Patty will not
marry any of the suitors who calculate the infirm health of her
father and the probable division of his estate, and who mentally
transfer to their future homes the thrift and orderliness they see in
Captain Lumsden's. By refusing them all she has won the name of a
proud girl. There are times when out of sight of everybody she
weeps, hardly knowing why. And since her mother's death she reads
the prayer-book more than ever, finding in the severe confessions
therein framed for us miserable sinners, and the plaintive cries of
the litany, a voice for her innermost soul.
Captain Lumsden fears she will marry and leave him, and yet it angers
him that she refuses to marry. His hatred of Methodists has assumed
the intensity of a monomania since he was defeated for the
legislature partly by Methodist opposition. All his love of power
has turned to bitterest resentment, and every thought that there may
be yet the remotest possibility of Patty's marrying Morton afflicts
him beyond measure. He cannot fathom the reason for her obstinate
rejection of all lovers; he dislikes her growing seriousness and her
fondness for the prayer-book. Even the prayer-book's earnestness has
something Methodistic about it. But Patty has never yet been in a
Methodist meeting, and with this fact he comforts himself. He has
taken pains to buy her jewelry and "artificials" in abundance, that
he may, by dressing her finely, remove her as far as possible from
temptations to become a Methodist. For in that time, when fine
dressing was not common and country neighborhoods were polarized by
the advent of Methodism in its most aggressive form, every artificial
flower and every earring was a banner of antagonism to the new sect;
a well-dressed woman in a congregation was almost a defiance to the
preacher. It seemed to Lumsden, therefore, that Patty had
prophylactic ornaments enough to save her from Methodism. And to all
of these he added covert threats that if any child of his should ever
join these crazy Methodist loons, he would turn him out of doors and
never see him again. This threat was always indirect--a remark
dropped incidentally; the pronoun which represented the unknown
quantity of a Methodist Lumsden was always masculine, but Patty did
not fail to comprehend.
[Illustration: THE CONNECTICUT PEDDLER.]
One day there came to Captain Lumsden's door that out-cast of New
England--a tin-peddler. Western people had never heard of Yale
College or any other glory of Connecticut or New England. To them it
was but a land that bred pestilent peripatetic peddlers of tin-ware
and wooden clocks. Western rogues would cheat you out of your horse
or your farm if a good chance offered, but this vile vender of Yankee
tins, who called a bucket a "pail," and said "noo" for new, and
talked nasally, would work an hour to cheat you out of a "fipenny
bit." The tin-peddler, one Munson, thrust his sharpened visage in at
Lumsden's door and "made bold" to _in_quire if he could git a night's
lodging, which the Captain, like other settlers, granted without
charge. Having unloaded his stock of "tins" and "put up" his horse,
the Connecticut peddler "made bold" to ask many leading questions
about the family and personal history of the Lumsdens, collectively
and individually. Having thus taken the first steps toward
acquaintance by this display of an aggravating interest in the
welfare of his new friends, he proceeded to give elaborate and
truthful accounts--with variations--of his own recent adventures, to
the boundless amusement of the younger Lumsdens, who laughed more
heartily at the Connecticut man's words and pronunciation than at his
stories. He said, among other things, that he had ben to
Jinkinsville t'other day to what the Methodis' called a "basket
meetin'." But when he had proceeded so far with his narrative, he
prudently stopped and made bold to _in_quire what the Captain thought
of these Methodists. The Captain was not slow to express his
opinion, and the man of tins, having thus reassured himself by taking
soundings, proceeded to tell that they was a dreffle craoud of folks
to that meetin'. And he, hevin' a sharp eye to business, hed went
forrard to the mourner's bench to be prayed fer. Didn't do no
pertik'ler harm to hev folks pray fer ye, ye know. Well, ye see, the
Methodis' they wanted to _in_courage a seeker, and so they all bought
some tins. Purty nigh tuck the hull load offen his hands! (And here
the peddler winked one eye at the Captain and then the other at
Patty.) Fer they was seen a dreffle lot of folks there. Come to
hear a young preacher as is 'mazin' elo'kent--Parson Goodwin by name,
and he was a _good one_ to preach, sartain.
This startled Patty and the Captain.
"Goodwin?" said the Captain; "Morton Goodwin?"
"The identikle," said the peddler.
"Raised only half a mile from here," said Lumsden, "and we don't
think much of him."
"Neither did I," said the peddler, trimming his sails to Lumsden's
breezes. "I calkilate I could preach e'en a'most as well as he does,
myself, and I wa'n't brought up to preachin', nother. But he's got a
good v'ice fer singin'--sich a ring to't, ye see, and he's got a
smart way thet comes the sympathies over the women folks and
weak-eyed men, and sets 'em cryin' at a desp'ate rate. Was brought
up here, was he? Du tell! He's powerful pop'lar." Then, catching
the Captain's eye, he added: "Among the women, I mean."
"He'll marry some shouting girl, I suppose," said the Captain, with a
chuckle.
"That's jist what he's going to do," said the peddler, pleased to
have some information to give. Seeing that the Captain and his
daughter were interested in his communication, the peddler paused a
moment. A bit of gossip is too good a possession for one to part
with too quickly.
"You guessed good, that time," said the tinware man. "I heerd say as
he was a goin' to splice with a gal that could pray like a angel
afire. An' I heerd her pray. She nearly peeled the shingles off the
skewl-haouse. Sich another _ex_citement as she perjuced, I never did
see. An' I went up to her after meetin' and axed a interest in her
prayers. Don't do no harm, ye know, to git sich lightnin' on yer own
side! An' I took keer to git a good look at her face, for preachers
ginerally marry purty faces. Preachers is a good deal like other
folks, ef they do purtend to be better, hey? Well, naow, that Ann
Elizer Meacham _is_ purty, sartain. An' everybody says he's goin' to
marry her; an' somebody said the presidin' elder mout tie 'em up next
Sunday at Quartily Meetin', maybe. Then they'll divide the work in
the middle and go halves. She'll pray and he'll preach." At this
the peddler broke into a sinister laugh, sure that he had conciliated
both the Captain and Patty by his news. He now proposed to sell some
tinware, thinking he had worked his audience up to the right state of
mind.
Patty did not know why she should feel vexed at hearing this bit of
intelligence from Jenkinsville. What was Morton Goodwin to her? She
went around the house as usual this evening, trying to hide all
appearance of feeling. She even persuaded her father to buy
half-a-dozen tin cups and some milk-buckets--she smiled at the
peddler for calling them _pails_. She was not willing to gratify the
Captain by showing him how much she disliked the scoffing "Yankee."
But when she was alone that evening, even the prayer-book had lost
its power to soothe. She was mortified, vexed, humiliated on every
hand. She felt hard and bitter, above all, toward the sect that had
first made a division between Morton and herself, and cordially
blamed the Methodists for all her misfortunes.
It happened that upon the very next Sunday Russell Bigelow was to
preach. Far and wide over the West had traveled the fame of this
great preacher, who, though born in Vermont, was wholly Western in
his impassioned manner. "An orator is to be judged not by his
printed discourses, but by the memory of the effect he has produced,"
says a French writer; and if we may judge of Russell Bigelow by the
fame that fills Ohio and Indiana even to this day, he was surely an
orator of the highest order. He is known as the "indescribable."
The news that he was to preach had set the Hissawachee Settlement
afire with eager curiosity to hear him. Even Patty declared her
intention of going, much to the Captain's regret. The meeting was
not to be held at Wheeler's, but in the woods, and she could go for
this time without entering the house of her father's foe. She had no
other motive than a vague hope of hearing something that would divert
her; life had grown so heavy that she craved excitement of any kind.
She would take a back seat and hear the famous Methodist for herself.
But Patty put on all of her gold and costly apparel. She was
determined that nobody should suspect her of any intention of
"joining the church." Her mood was one of curiosity on the surface,
and of proud hatred and quiet defiance below.
No religious meeting is ever so delightful as a meeting held in the
forest; no forest is so satisfying as a forest of beech; the
wide-spreading boughs--drooping when they start from the trunk, but
well sustained at the last--stretch out regularly and with a steady
horizontalness, the last year's leaves form a carpet like a cushion,
while the dense foliage shuts out the sun. To this meeting in the
beech, woods Patty chose to walk, since it was less than a mile
away.* As she passed through a little cove, she saw a man lying flat
on his face in prayer. It was the preacher. Awe-stricken, Patty
hurried on to the meeting. She had fully intended to take a seat in
the rear of the congregation, but being a little confused and
absent-minded she did not observe at first where the stand had been
erected, and that she was entering the congregation at the side
nearest to the pulpit. When she discovered her mistake it was too
late to withdraw, the aisle beyond her was already full of standing
people; there was nothing for her but to take the only vacant seat in
sight. This put her in the very midst of the members, and in this
position she was quite conspicuous; even strangers from other
settlements saw with astonishment a woman elegantly dressed, for that
time, sitting in the very midst of the devout sisters--for the men
and women sat apart. All around Patty there was not a single
"artificial," or piece of jewelry. Indeed, most of the women wore
calico sunbonnets. The Hissawachee people who knew her were
astounded to see Patty at meeting at all. They remembered her
treatment of Morton, and they looked upon Captain Lumsden as Gog and
Magog incarnated in one. This sense of the conspicuousness of her
position was painful to Patty, but she presently forgot herself in
listening to the singing. There never was such a chorus as a
backwoods Methodist congregation, and here among the trees they sang
hymn after hymn, now with the tenderest pathos, now with triumphant
joy, now with solemn earnestness. They sang "Children of the
Heavenly King," and "Come let us anew," and "Blow ye the trumpet,
blow," and "Arise my soul, arise," and "How happy every child of
grace!" While they were singing this last, the celebrated preacher
entered the pulpit, and there ran through the audience a movement of
wonder, almost of disappointment. His clothes were of that sort of
cheap cotton cloth known as "blue drilling," and did not fit him. He
was rather short, and inexpressibly awkward. His hair hung unkempt
over the best portion of his face--the broad projecting forehead.
His eyebrows were overhanging; his nose, cheek-bones and chin large.
His mouth was wide and with a sorrowful depression at the corners,
his nostrils thin, his eyes keen, and his face perfectly mobile. He
took for his text the words of Eleazar to Laban,--"Seeking a bride
for his master," and, according to the custom of the time, he first
expounded the incident, and then proceeded to "spiritualize" it, by
applying it to the soul's marriage to Christ. Notwithstanding the
ungainliness of his frame and the awkwardness of his postures, there
was a gentlemanliness about his address that indicated a man not
unaccustomed to good society. His words were well-chosen; his
pronunciation always correct; his speech grammatical. In all of
these regards Patty was disappointed.
* I give the local tradition of Bigelow's text, sermon, and the
accompanying incident.
But the sermon. Who shall describe "the indescribable"? As the
servant, he proceeded to set forth the character of the Master. What
struck Patty was not the nobleness of his speech, nor the force of
his argument; she seemed to see in the countenance that every divine
trait which he described had reflected itself in the life of the
preacher himself. For none but the manliest of men can ever speak
worthily of Jesus Christ. As Bigelow proceeded he won her famished
heart to Christ. For such a Master she could live or die; in such a
life there was what Patty needed most--a purpose; in such a life
there was a friend; in such a life she would escape that sense of the
ignobleness of her own pursuits, and the unworthiness of her own
pride. All that he said of Christ's love and condescension filled
her with a sense of sinfulness and meanness, and she wept bitterly.
There were a hundred others as much affected, but the eyes of all her
neighbors were upon her. If Patty should be converted, what a
victory!
And as the preacher proceeded to describe the joy of a soul wedded
forever to Christ--living nobly after the pattern of His life--Patty
resolved that she would devote herself to this life and this Saviour,
and rejoiced in sympathy with the rising note of triumph in the
sermon. Then Bigelow, last of all, appealed to courage and to
pride--to pride in its best sense. Who would be ashamed of such a
Bridegroom? And as he depicted the trials that some must pass
through in accepting Him, Patty saw her own situation, and mentally
made the sacrifice. As he described the glory of renouncing the
world, she thought of her jewelry and the spirit of defiance in which
she had put it on. There, in the midst of that congregation, she
took out her earrings, and stripped the flowers from the bonnet. We
may smile at the unnecessary sacrifice to an over-strained
literalism, but to Patty it was the solemn renunciation of the
world--the whole-hearted espousal of herself, for all eternity, to
Him who stands for all that is noblest in life. Of course this
action was visible to most of the congregation--most of all to the
preacher himself. To the Methodists it was the greatest of triumphs,
this public conversion of Captain Lumsden's daughter, and they showed
their joy in many pious ejaculations. Patty did not seek
concealment. She scorned to creep into the kingdom of heaven. It
seemed to her that she owed this publicity. For a moment all eyes
were turned away from the orator. He paused in his discourse until
Patty had removed the emblems of her pride and antagonism. Then,
turning with tearful eyes to the audience, the preacher, with
simple-hearted sincerity and inconceivable effect, burst out with,
"Hallelujah! I have found a bride for my Master!"
_CHAPTER XXIV_
DRAWING THE LATCH-STRING IN.
Up to this point Captain Lumsden had been a spectator--having decided
to risk a new attack of the jerks that he might stand guard over
Patty. But Patty was so far forward that he could not see her,
except now and then as he stretched his small frame to peep over the
shoulders of some taller man standing in front. It was only when
Bigelow uttered these exulting words that he gathered from the
whispers about him that Patty was the center of excitement. He
instantly began to swear and to push through the crowd, declaring
that he would take Patty home and teach her to behave herself. The
excitement which he produced presently attracted the attention of the
preacher and of the audience. But Patty was too much occupied with
the solemn emotions that engaged her heart, to give any attention to
it.
"She is my daughter, and she's _got_ to learn to obey," said Lumsden
in his quick, rasping voice, pushing energetically toward the heart
of the dense assemblage with the purpose of carrying Patty off by
force. Patty heard this last threat, and turned round just at the
moment when her father had forced his way through the fringe of
standing people that bordered the densely packed congregation, and
was essaying, in his headlong anger, to reach her and drag her forth.
The Methodists of that day generally took pains to put themselves
under the protection of the law in order to avoid disturbance from
the chronic rowdyism of a portion of the people. There was a
magistrate and a constable on the ground, and Lumsden, in penetrating
the cordon of standing men, had come directly upon the country
justice, who, though not a Methodist, had been greatly moved by
Bigelow's oratory, and who, furthermore, was prone, as country
justices sometimes are, to exaggerate the dignity of his office. At
any rate, he was not a little proud of the fact that this great
orator and this assemblage of people had in some sense put themselves
under the protection of the Majesty of the Law as represented in his
own important self. And for Captain Lumsden to come swearing and
fuming right against his sacred person was not only a breach of the
law, it was--what the justice considered much worse--a contempt of
court. Hence ensued a dialogue:
_The Court_--Captain Lumsden, I am a magistrate. In interrupting the
worship of Almighty God by this peaceful assemblage you are violating
the law. I do not want to arrest a citizen of your standing; but if
you do not cease your disturbance I shall be obliged to vindicate the
majesty of the law by ordering the constable to arrest you for a
breach of the peace, as against this assembly. (J. P. here draws
himself up to his full stature, in the endeavor to represent the
dignity of the law.)
_Outraged Father_--Squire, I'll have you know that Patty Lumsden's my
daughter, and I have a right to control her; and you'd better mind
your own business.
_Justice of the Peace_ (lowering his voice to a solemn and very
judicial bass)--Is she under eighteen years of age?
_By-stander_ (who doesn't like Lumsden)--She's twenty.
_Justice_--If your daughter is past eighteen, she is of age. If you
lay hands on her I'll have to take you up for a salt and battery. If
you carry her off I'll take her back on a writ of replevin. Now,
Captain, I could arrest you here and fine you for this disturbance;
and if you don't leave the meeting at once I'll do it.
Here Captain Lumsden grew angrier than ever, but a stalwart
class-leader from another settlement, provoked by the interruption of
the eloquent sermon and out of patience with "the law's delay," laid
off his coat and spat on his hands preparatory to ejecting Lumsden,
neck and heels, on his own account. At the same moment an old sister
near at hand began to pray aloud, vehemently: "O Lord, convert him!
Strike him down, Lord, right where he stands, like Saul of Tarsus. O
Lord, smite the stiff-necked persecutor by almighty power!"
This last was too much for the Captain. He might have risked arrest,
he might have faced the herculean class-leader, but he had already
felt the jerks and was quite superstitious about them. This prayer
agitated him. He was not ambitious to emulate Paul, and he began to
believe that if he stood still a minute longer he would surely be
smitten to the ground at the request of the sister with a relish for
dramatic conversions. Casting one terrified glance at the old
sister, whose confident eyes were turned toward heaven, Lumsden broke
through the surrounding crowd and started toward home at a most
undignified pace.
Patty's devout feelings were sadly interrupted during the remainder
of the sermon by forebodings. But she had a will as inflexible as
her father's, and now that her will was backed by convictions of duty
it was more firmly set than ever. Bigelow announced that he would
"open the door of the church," and the excited congregation made the
forest ring with that hymn of Watts' which has always been the
recruiting song of Methodism. The application to Patty's case
produced great emotion when the singing reached the stanzas:
"Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize
And sailed through bloody seas?
"Are there no foes for me to face?
Must I not stem the flood?
Is this vile world a friend to grace
To help me on to God?"
At this point Patty slowly rose from the place where she had been
sitting weeping, and marched resolutely through the excited crowd
until she reached the preacher, to whom she extended her hand in
token of her desire to become a church-member. While she came
forward, the congregation sang with great fervor, and not a little
sensation:
"Since I must fight if I would reign,
Increase my courage, Lord;
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain,
Supported by thy word."
After many had followed Patty's example the meeting closed. Every
Methodist shook hands with the new converts, particularly with Patty,
uttering words of sympathy and encouragement. Some offered to go
home with her to keep her in countenance in the inevitable conflict
with her father, but, with a true delicacy and filial dutifulness,
Patty insisted on going alone. There are battles which are fought
better without allies.
That ten minutes' walk was a time of agony and suspense. As she came
up to the house she saw her father sitting on the door-step,
riding-whip in hand. Though she knew his nervous habit of carrying
his raw-hide whip long after he had dismounted--a habit having its
root in a domineering disposition--she was not without apprehension
that he would use personal violence. But he was quiet now, from
extreme anger.
"Patty," he said, "either you will promise me on the spot to give up
this infernal Methodism, or you can't come in here to bring your
praying and groaning into my ears. Are you going to give it up?"
"Don't turn me off, father," pleaded Patty. "You need me. I can
stand it, but what will you do when your rheumatism comes on next
winter? Do let me stay and take care of you. I won't bother you
about my religion."
"I won't have this blubbering, shouting nonsense in my house,"
screamed the father, frantically. He would have said more, but he
choked. "You've disgraced the family," he gasped, after a minute.
Patty stood still, and said no more.
"Will you give up your nonsense about being religious?"
Patty shook her head.
"Then, clear out!" cried the Captain, and with an oath he went into
the house and pulled the latch-string in. The latch-string was the
symbol of hospitality. To say that "the latch-string was out" was to
open your door to a friend; to pull it in was the most significant
and inhospitable act Lumsden could perform. For when the
latch-string is in, the door is locked. The daughter was not only to
be a daughter no longer, she was now an enemy at whose approach the
latch-string was withdrawn.
Patty was full of natural affection. She turned away to seek a home.
Where? She walked aimlessly down the road at first. She had but one
thought as she receded from the old house that had been her home from
infancy----
The latch-string was drawn in.
_CHAPTER XXV._
ANN ELIZA.
How shall I make you understand this book, reader of mine, who never
knew the influences that surrounded a Methodist of the old sort. Up
to this point I have walked by faith; I could not see how the present
generation could be made to comprehend the earnestness of their
grandfathers. But I have hoped that, none the less, they might dimly
perceive the possibility of a religious fervor that was as a fire in
the bones.
But now?
You have never been a young Methodist preacher of the olden time.
You never had over you a presiding elder who held your fate in his
hands; who, more than that, was the man appointed by the church to be
your godly counsellor. In the olden time especially, presiding
elders were generally leaders of men, the best and greatest men that
the early Methodist ministry afforded; greatest in the qualities most
prized in ecclesiastical organization--practical shrewdness,
executive force, and a piety of unction and lustre. How shall I make
you understand the weight which the words of such a man had when he
thought it needful to counsel or admonish a young preacher?
Our old friend Magruder, having shown his value as an organizer, had
been made an "elder," and just now he thought it his duty to have a
solemn conversation with the "preacher-in-charge" of Jenkinsville
circuit, upon matters of great delicacy. Magruder was not a man of
nice perceptions, and he was dimly conscious of his own unfitness for
the task before him. It was on the Saturday of a quarterly meeting.
He had said to the "preacher-in-charge" that he would like to have a
word with him, and they were walking side by side through the woods.
Neither of them looked at the other. The "elder" was trying in vain
to think of a point at which to begin; the young preacher was
wondering what the elder would say.
"Let us sit down here on this lind log, brother," said Magruder,
desperately.
When they had sat down there was a pause.
"Have you ever thought of marrying, brother Goodwin?" he broke out
abruptly at last.
"I have, brother Magruder," said Morton, curtly, not disposed to help
the presiding elder out of his difficulty. Then he added: "But not
thinking it a profitable subject for meditation, I have turned my
thoughts to other things."
"Ahem! But have you not taken some steps toward matrimony without
consulting with your brethren, as the discipline prescribes?"
"No, sir."
"But, Brother Goodwin, I understand that you have done a great wrong
to a defenceless girl, who is a stranger in a strange land."
"Do you mean Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?" asked Morton, startled by the
solemnity with which the presiding elder spoke.
"I am glad to see that you feel enough in the matter to guess who the
person is. You have encouraged her to think that you meant to marry
her. If I am correctly informed, you even advised Holston, who was
her lover, not to annoy her any more, and you assumed to defend her
rights in the lawsuit about a piece of land. Whether you meant to
marry her or not, you have at least compromised her. And in such
circumstances there is but one course open to a Christian or a
gentleman." The elder spoke severely.
[Illustration: ANN ELIZA.]
"Brother Magruder, I will tell you the plain truth," said Morton,
rising and speaking with vehemence. "I have been very much struck
with the eloquence of Sister Ann Eliza when she leads in prayer or
speaks in love-feast. I did not mean to marry anybody. I have
always defended the poor and the helpless. She told me her history
one day, and I felt sorry for her. I determined to befriend her."
Here Morton paused in some embarrassment, not knowing just how to
proceed.
"Befriend a woman! That is the most imprudent thing in the world for
a minister to do, my dear brother. You cannot befriend a woman
without doing harm."
"Well, she wanted help, and I could not refuse to give it to her.
She told me that she had refused Bob Holston five times, and that he
kept troubling her. I met Bob alone one day, and I remonstrated with
him pretty earnestly, and he went all round the country and said that
I told him I was engaged to Ann Eliza, and would whip him if he
didn't let her alone. What I did tell him was, that I was Ann
Eliza's friend, because she had no other, and that I thought, as a
gentleman, he ought to take five refusals as sufficient, and not wait
till he was knocked down by refusals."
"Why, my brother," said the elder, "when you take up a woman's cause
that way, you have got to marry her or ruin her and yourself, too.
If you were not a minister you might have a female friend or two; and
you might help a woman in distress. But you are a sheep in the midst
of--of--wolves. Half the girls on this circuit would like to marry
you, and if you were to help one of them over the fence, or hold her
bridle-rein for her while she gets on the horse, or talk five minutes
with her about the turnip crop, she would consider herself next thing
to engaged. Now, as to Sister Ann Eliza, you have given occasion to
gossip over the whole circuit."
"Who told you so?" asked Morton, with rising indignation.
"Why, everybody. I hadn't more than touched the circuit at Boggs'
Corners till I heard that you were to be married at this very
Quarterly Meeting. And I felt a little grieved that you should go so
far without any consultation with me. I stopped at Sister
Sims's--she's Ann Eliza's aunt I believe--and told her that I
supposed you and Sister Ann Eliza were going to require my aid pretty
soon, and she burst into tears. She said that if there had been
anything between you and Ann Eliza, it must be broken off, for you
hadn't stopped there at all on your last round. Now tell me the
plain truth, brother. Did you not at one time entertain a thought of
marrying Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?"
"I have thought about it. She is good-looking and I could not be
with her without liking her. Then, too, everybody said that she was
cut out for a preacher's wife. But I never paid her any attention
that could be called courtship. I stopped going there because
somebody had bantered me about her. I was afraid of talk. I will
not deny that I was a little taken with her, at first, but when I
thought of marrying her I found that I did not love her as one ought
to love a wife--as much as I had once loved somebody else. And then,
too, you know that nine out of every ten who marry have to locate
sooner or later, and I don't want to give up the ministry. I think
it's hard if a man cannot help a girl in distress without being
forced to marry her."
"Well, Brother Goodwin, we'll not discuss the matter further," said
the elder, who was more than ever convinced by Morton's admissions
that he had acted reprehensibly. "I have confidence in you. You
have done a great wrong, whether you meant it or not. There is only
one way of making the thing right. It's a bad thing for a preacher
to have a broken heart laid at his door. Now I tell you that I don't
know anybody who would make a better preacher's wife than Sister
Meacham. If the case stands as it does now I may have to object to
the passage of your character at the next conference."
This last was an awful threat. In that time when the preachers lived
far apart, the word of a presiding elder was almost enough to ruin a
man. But instead of terrifying Morton, the threat made him sullenly
stubborn. If the elder and the conference could be so unjust he
would bear the consequences, but would never submit.
The congregation was too large to sit in the school-house, and the
presiding elder accordingly preached in the grove. All the time of
his preaching Morton Goodwin was scanning the audience to see if the
zealous Ann Eliza were there. But no Ann Eliza appeared. Nothing
but grief could thus keep her away from the meeting. The more Morton
meditated upon it, the more guilty did he feel. He had acted from
the highest motives. He did not know that Ann Eliza's aunt--the
weak-looking Sister Sims--had adroitly intrigued to give his kindness
the appearance of courtship. How could he suspect Sister Sims or Ann
Eliza of any design? Old ministers know better than to trust
implicitly to the goodness and truthfulness of all pious people.
There are people, pious in their way, in whose natures intrigue and
fraud are so indigenous that they grow all unsuspected by themselves.
Intrigue is one of the Diabolonians of whom Bunyan speaks--a small
but very wicked devil that creeps into the city of Mansoul under an
alias.
A susceptible nature like Morton's takes color from other people. He
was conscious that Magruder's confidence in him was weakened, and it
seemed to him that all the brethren and sisters looked at him
askance. When he came to make the concluding prayer he had a sense
of hollowness in his devotions, and he really began to suspect that
he might be a hypocrite.
In the afternoon the Quarterly Conference met, and in the presence of
class-leaders, stewards, local preachers and exhorters from different
parts of the circuit, the once popular preacher felt that he had
somehow lost caste. He received fifteen dollars of the twenty which
the circuit owed him, according to the discipline, for three months
of labor; and small as was the amount, the scrupulous and now morbid
Morton doubted whether he were fairly entitled to it. Sometimes he
thought seriously of satisfying his doubting conscience by marrying
Ann Eliza with or without love. But his whole proud, courageous
nature rebelled against submitting to marry under compulsion of
Magruder's threat.
At the evening service Goodwin had to preach, and he got on but
poorly. He looked in vain for Miss Ann Eliza Meacham. She was not
there to go through the audience and with winning voice persuade
those who were smitten with conviction to come to the mourner's bench
for prayer. She was not there to pray audibly until every heart
should be shaken. Morton was not the only person who missed her. So
famous a "working Christian" could not but be a general favorite; and
the people were not slow to divine the cause of her absence. Brother
Goodwin found the faces of his brethren averted, and the grasp of
their hands less cordial. But this only made him sulky and stubborn.
He had never meant to excite Sister Meacham's expectations, and he
would not be driven to marry her.
The early Sunday morning of that Quarterly Meeting saw all the roads
crowded with people. Everybody was on horseback, and almost every
horse carried "double." At half-past eight o'clock the love-feast
began in the large school-house. No one was admitted who did not
hold a ticket, and even of those who had tickets some were turned
away on account of their naughty curls, their sinful "artificials,"
or their wicked ear-rings. At the moment when the love-feast began
the door was locked, and no tardy member gained admission. Plates,
with bread cut into half-inch cubes, were passed round, and after
these glasses of water, from which each sipped in turn--this meagre
provision standing ideally for a feast. Then the speaking was opened
by some of the older brethren, who were particularly careful as to
dates, announcing, for instance, that it would be just thirty-seven
years ago the twenty-first day of next November since the Lord "spoke
peace to my never-dying soul while I was kneeling at the mourner's
bench in Logan's school-house on the banks of the South Fork of the
Roanoke River in Old Virginny." This statement the brethren had
heard for many years, with a proper variation in date as the time
advanced, but now, as in duty bound, they greeted it again with pious
ejaculations of thanksgiving. There was a sameness in the
perorations of these little speeches. Most of the old men wound up
by asking an interest in the prayers of the brethren, that their
"last days might be their best days," and that their "path might grow
brighter and brighter unto the perfect day." Soon the elder sisters
began to speak of their trials and victories, of their "ups and
downs," their "many crooked paths," and the religion that "happifies
the soul." With their pathetic voices the fire spread, until the
whole meeting was at a white-heat, and cries of "Hallelujah!" "Amen!"
"Bless the Lord!" "Glory to God!" and so on expressed the fervor of
feeling. Of course, you, sitting out of the atmosphere of it and
judging coldly, laugh at this indecorous fervor. Perhaps it is just
as well to laugh, but for my part I cannot. I know too well how deep
and vital were the emotions out of which came these utterances of
simple and earnest hearts. I find it hard to get over an early
prejudice that piety is of more consequence than propriety.
Morton was looking in vain for Ann Eliza. If she were present he
could hardly tell it. Make the bonnets of women cover their faces
and make them all alike, and set them in meeting with faces resting
forward upon their hands, and then dress them in a uniform of
homespun cotton, and there is not much individuality left. If Ann
Eliza Meacham were present she would, according to custom, speak
early; and all that this love-feast lacked was one of her rapt and
eloquent utterances. So when the speaking and singing had gone on
for an hour, and the voice of Sister Meacham was not heard, Morton
sadly concluded that she must have remained at home, heart-broken on
account of disappointment at his neglect. In this he was wrong.
Just at that moment a sister rose in the further corner of the room
and began to speak in a low and plaintive voice. It was Ann Eliza.
But how changed!
She proceeded to say that she had passed through many fiery trials in
her life. Of late she had been led through deep waters of
temptation, and the floods of affliction had gone over her soul.
(Here some of the brethren sighed, and some of the sisters looked at
Brother Goodwin.) The devil had tempted her to stay at home. He had
tempted her to sit silent this morning, telling her that her voice
would only discourage others. But at last she had got the victory
and received strength to bear her cross. With this, her voice rose
and she spoke in tones of plaintive triumph to the end. Morton was
greatly affected, not because her affliction was universally laid at
his door, but because he now began to feel, as he had not felt
before, that he had indeed wrought her a great injury. As she stood
there, sorrowful and eloquent, he almost loved her. He pitied her;
and Pity lives on the next floor below Love.
As for Ann Eliza, I would not have the reader think too meanly of
her. She had resolved to "catch" Rev. Morton Goodwin from the moment
she saw him. But one of the oldest and most incontestable of the
rights which the highest civilization accords to woman is that of
"bringing down" the chosen man if she can. Ann Eliza was not
consciously hypocritical. Her deep religious feeling was genuine.
She had a native genius for devotion--and a genius for devotion is as
much a natural gift as a genius for poetry. Notwithstanding her
eloquence and her rare talent for devotion, her gifts in the
direction of honesty and truthfulness were few and feeble. A
phrenologist would have described such a character as possessing
"Spirituality and Veneration very large; Conscientiousness small."
You have seen such people, and the world is ever prone to rank them
at first as saints, afterwards as hypocrites; for the world
classifies people in gross--it has no nice distinctions. Ann Eliza,
like most people of the oratorical temperament, was not
over-scrupulous in her way of producing effects. She could sway her
own mind as easily as she could that of others. In the case of
Morton, she managed to believe herself the victim of misplaced
confidence. She saw nothing reprehensible either in her own or her
aunt's manœuvering. She only knew that she had been bitterly
disappointed, and characteristically blamed him through whom the
disappointment had come.
Morton was accustomed to judge by the standards of his time. Such
genuine fervor was, in his estimation, evidence of a high state of
piety. One "who lived so near the throne of grace," in Methodist
phrase, must be honest and pure and good. So Morton reasoned. He
had wounded such an one. He owed reparation. In marrying Ann Eliza
he would be acting generously, honestly and wisely, according to the
opinion of the presiding elder, the highest authority he knew. For
in Ann Eliza Meacham he would get the most saintly of wives, the most
zealous of Christians, the most useful of women. So when Mr.
Magruder exhorted the brethren at the close of the service to put
away every sin out of their hearts before they ventured to take the
communion, Morton, with many tears, resolved to atone for all the
harm he had unwittingly done to Sister Ann Eliza Meacham, and to
marry her--if the Lord should open the way.
But neither could he remain firm in this conclusion. His high spirit
resented the threat of the presiding elder. He would not be driven
into marriage. In this uncomfortable frame of mind he passed the
night. But Magruder being a shrewd man, guessed the state of
Morton's feelings, and perceived his own mistake. As he mounted his
horse on Monday morning, Morton stood with averted eyes, ready to bid
an official farewell to his presiding elder, but not ready to give
his usual cordial adieu to Brother Magruder.
"Goodwin," said Magruder, looking at Morton with sincere pity,
"forgive me; I ought not to have spoken as I did. I know you will do
right, and I had no right to threaten you. Be a man; that is all.
Live above reproach and act like a Christian. I am sorry you have
involved yourself. It is better not to marry, maybe, though I have
always maintained that a married man can live in the ministry if he
is careful and has a good wife. Besides, Sister Meacham has some
land."
So saying, he shook hands and rode away a little distance. Then he
turned back and said:
"You heard that Brother Jones was dead?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'm going to send word to Brother Lumsden to take his place on
Peterborough circuit till Conference. I suppose some young exhorter
can be found to take Lumsden's place as second man on Pottawottomie
Creek, and Peterborough is too important a place to be left vacant."
"I'm afraid Kike won't stand it," said Morton, coldly.
"Oh! I hope he will. Peterborough isn't much more unhealthy than
Pottawottomie Creek. A little more intermittent fever, maybe. But
it is the best I can do. The work is everything. The men are the
Lord's. Lumsden is a good man, and I should hate to lose him,
though. He'll stop and see you as he comes through, I suppose. I
think I'd better give you the plan of his circuit, which I got the
other day." After adieux, a little more friendly than the first, the
two preachers parted again.
Morton mounted Dolly. The day was far advanced, and he had an
appointment to preach that very evening at the Salt Fork
school-house. He had never yet failed to suffer from a disturbance
of some sort when he had preached in this rude neighborhood; and
having spoken very boldly in his last round, he was sure of a
perilous encounter. But now the prospect of fighting with the wild
beasts of Salt Fork was almost enchanting. It would divert him from
graver apprehensions.
_CHAPTER XXVI._
ENGAGEMENT.
You do not like Morton in his vacillating state of mind as he rides
toward Salt Fork, weighing considerations of right and wrong, of duty
and disinclination, in the balance. He is not an epic hero, for epic
heroes act straightforwardly, they either know by intuition just what
is right, or they are like Milton's Satan, unencumbered with a sense
of duty. But Morton was neither infallible nor a devil. A man of
sensitive conscience cannot, even by accident, break a woman's heart
without compunction.
When Goodwin approached Salt Fork he was met by Burchard, now sheriff
of the county, and warned that he would be attacked. Burchard begged
him to turn back. Morton might have scoffed at the cowardice and
time-serving of the sheriff, if he had not been under such
obligations to him, and had not been touched by this new evidence of
his friendship. But Goodwin had never turned back from peril in his
life.
"I have a right to preach at Salt Fork, Burchard," he said, "and I
will do it or die."
Even in the struggle at Salt Fork Morton could not get rid of his
love affair. He was touched to find lying on the desk in the
school-house a little unsigned billet in Ann Eliza's handwriting,
uttering a warning similar to that just given by Burchard.
It was with some tremor that he looked round, in the dim light of two
candles, upon the turbulent faces between him and the door. His
prayer and singing were a little faint. But when once he began to
preach, his combative courage returned, and his ringing voice rose
above all the shuffling sounds of disorder. The interruptions,
however, soon became so distinct that he dared not any longer ignore
them. Then he paused in his discourse and looked at the rioters
steadily.
"You think you will scare me. It is my business to rebuke sin. I
tell you that you are a set of ungodly ruffians and law breakers. I
tell your neighbors here that they are miserable cowards. They let
lawless men trample on them. I say, shame on them! They ought to
organize and arrest you if it cost their lives."
Here a click was heard as of some one cocking a horse-pistol. Morton
turned pale; but something in his warm, Irish blood impelled him to
proceed. "I called you ruffians awhile ago," he said, huskily. "Now
I tell you that you are cut-throats. If you kill me here to-night, I
will show your neighbors that it is better to die like a man than to
live like a coward. The law will yet be put in force whether you
kill me or not. There are some of you that would belong to Micajah
Harp's gang of robbers if you dared. But you are afraid; and so you
only give information and help to those who are no worse, only a
little braver than you are."
[Illustration: FACING A MOB.]
Goodwin had let his impetuous temper carry him too far. He now saw
that his denunciation had degenerated into a taunt, and this taunt
had provoked his enemies beyond measure. He had been foolhardy; for
what good could it do for him to throw away his life in a row? There
was murder in the eyes of the ruffians. Half-a-dozen pistols were
cocked in quick succession and he caught the glitter of knives. A
hasty consultation was taking place in the back part of the room, and
the few Methodists near him huddled together like sheep. If he
intended to save his life there was no time to spare. The address
and presence of mind for which he had been noted in boyhood did not
fail him now. It would not do to seem to quail. Without lowering
his fiercely indignant tone, he raised his right hand and demanded
that honest citizens should rally to his support and put down the
riot. His descending hand knocked one of the two candles from the
pulpit in the most accidental way in the world. Starting back
suddenly, he managed to upset, and extinguish the other just at the
instant when the infuriated roughs were making a combined rush upon
him. The room was thus made totally dark. Morton plunged into the
on-coming crowd. Twice he was seized and interrogated, but he
changed his voice and avoided detection. When at last the crowd gave
up the search and began to leave the house, he drifted with them into
the outer darkness and rain. Once upon Dolly he was safe from any
pursuit.
When the swift-footed mare had put him beyond danger, Morton was in
better spirits than at any time since the elder's solemn talk on the
preceding Saturday. He had the exhilaration of a sense of danger and
of a sense of triumph. So bold a speech, and so masterly an escape
as he had made could not but demoralize men like the Salt Forkers.
He laughed a little at himself for talking about dying and then
running away, but he inly determined to take the earliest opportunity
to urge upon Burchard the duty of a total suppression of these
lawless gangs. He would himself head a party against them if
necessary.
This cheerful mood gradually subsided into depression as his mind
reverted to the note in Ann Eliza's writing. How thoughtful in her
to send it! How delicate she was in not signing it! How forgiving
must her temper be! What a stupid wretch he was to attract her
affection, and now what a perverse soul he was to break her devoted
heart!
This was the light in which Morton saw the situation. A more
suspicious man might have reasoned that Ann Eliza probably knew no
more of Goodwin's peril at Salt Fork than was known in all the
neighboring country, and that her note was a gratuitous thrusting of
herself on his attention. A suspicious person would have reasoned
that her delicacy in not signing the note was only a pretense, since
Morton had become familiar with her peculiar handwriting in the
affair of the lawsuit in which he had assisted her. But Morton was
not suspicious. How could he be suspicious of one upon whom the Lord
had so manifestly poured out his Spirit? Besides, the suspicious
view would not have been wholly correct, since Ann Eliza did love
Morton almost to distraction, and had entertained the liveliest
apprehensions of hie peril at Salt Fork.
But with however much gratitude he might regard Ann Eliza's action,
Morton Goodwin could not quite bring himself to decide on marriage.
He could not help thinking of the morning when negro Bob had
discovered him talking to Patty by the spring-house, nor could he
help contrasting that strong love with the feebleness of the best
affection he could muster for the handsome, pious, and effusive Ann
Eliza Meacham.
But as he proceeded round the circuit it became more and more evident
to Morton that he had suffered in reputation by his cool treatment of
Miss Meacham. Elderly people love romance, and they could not
forgive him for not bringing the story out in the way they wished.
They felt that nothing could be so appropriate as the marriage of a
popular preacher with so zealous a woman. It was a shock to their
sense of poetic completeness that he should thus destroy the only
fitting denouement. So that between people who were disappointed at
the come-out, and young men who were jealous of the general
popularity of the youthful preacher, Morton's acceptability had
visibly declined. Nevertheless there was quite a party of young
women who approved of his course. He had found the minx out at last!
One of the results of the Methodist circuit system, with its great
quarterly meetings, was the bringing of people scattered over a wide
region into a sort of organic unity and a community of feeling. It
widened the horizon. It was a curious and, doubtless, also a
beneficial thing, that over the whole vast extent of half-civilized
territory called Jenkinsville circuit there was now a common topic
for gossip and discussion. When Morton reached the very northernmost
of his forty-nine preaching places, he had not yet escaped from the
excitement.
"Brother Goodwin," said Sister Sharp, as they sat at breakfast,
"whatever folks may say, I am sure you had a perfect right to give up
Sister Meacham. A man ain't bound to marry a girl when he finds her
out. _I_ don't think it would take a smart man like you long to find
out that Sister Meacham isn't all she pretends to be. I have heard
some things about her standing in Pennsylvania. I guess you found
them out."
"I never meant to marry Sister Meacham," said Morton, as soon as he
could recover from the shock, and interrupt the stream of Sister
Sharp's talk.
"Everybody thought you did."
"Everybody was wrong, then; and as for finding out anything, I can
tell you that Sister Meacham is, I believe, one of the best and most
useful Christians in the world."
"That's what everybody thought," replied the other, maliciously,
"until you quit off going with her so suddenly. People have thought
different since."
This shot took effect. Morton could bear that people should slander
him. But, behold! a crop of slanders on Ann Eliza herself was likely
to grow out of his mistake. In the midst of a most unheroic and, as
it seemed to him, contemptible vacillation and perplexity, he came at
last to Mount Zion meeting-house. It was here that Ann Eliza
belonged, and here he must decide whether he would still leave her to
suffer reproach while he also endured the loss of his own good name,
or make a marriage which, to those wiser than he, seemed in every way
advisable. Ann Eliza was not at meeting on this day. When once the
benediction was pronounced, Goodwin resolved to free himself from
remorse and obloquy by the only honorable course. He would ride over
to Sister Sims's, and end the matter by engaging himself to Ann Eliza.
Was it some latent, half-perception of Sister Meacham's true
character that made him hesitate? Or was it that a pure-hearted man
always shrinks from marriage without love? He reined his horse at
the road-fork, and at last took the other path and claimed the
hospitality of the old class-leader of Mount Zion class, instead of
receiving Sister Sims's welcome. He intended by this means to
postpone his decision till afternoon.
Out of the frying-pan into the fire! The leader took Brother Goodwin
aside and informed him that Sister Ann Eliza was very ill. She might
never recover. It was understood that she was slowly dying of a
broken heart.
Morton could bear no more. To have made so faithful a person, who
had even interfered to save his life, suffer in her spirit was bad
enough; to have brought reproach upon her, worse; to kill her
outright was ingratitude and murder. He wondered at his own
stupidity and wickedness. He rode in haste to Sister Sims's. Ann
Eliza, in fact, was not dangerously ill, and was ill more of a
malarious fever than of a broken heart; though her chagrin and
disappointment had much to do with it. Morton, convinced that he was
the author of her woes, felt more tenderness to her in her emaciation
than he had ever felt toward her in her beauty. He could not profess
a great deal of love, so he contented himself with expressing his
gratitude for the Salt Fork warning. Explanations about the past
were awkward, but fortunately Ann Eliza was ill and ought not to talk
much on exciting subjects. Besides, she did not seem to be very
exacting. Morton's offer of marriage was accepted with a readiness
that annoyed him. When he rode away to his next appointment, he did
not feel so much relieved by having done his duty as he had expected
to. He could not get rid of a thought that the high-spirited Patty
would have resented an offer of marriage under these circumstances,
and on such terms as Ann Eliza had accepted. And yet, one must not
expect all qualities in one person. What could be finer than Ann
Eliza's lustrous piety? She was another Hester Ann Rogers, a second
Mrs. Fletcher, maybe. And how much she must love him to pine away
thus! And how forgiving she was!
_CHAPTER XXVII._
THE CAMP MEETING.
The incessant activity of a traveling preacher's life did not allow
Morton much opportunity for the society of the convalescent Ann
Eliza. Fortunately. For when he was with her out of meeting he
found her rather dull. To all expression of religious sentiment and
emotion she responded sincerely and with unction; to Morton's highest
aspirations for a life of real self-sacrifice she only answered with
a look of perplexity. She could not understand him. He was "so
queer," she said.
But people whose lives are joined ought to make the best of each
other. Ann Eliza loved Morton, and because she loved him she could
endure what seemed to her an unaccountable eccentricity. If Goodwin
found himself tempted to think her lacking in some of the highest
qualities, he comforted himself with reflecting that all women were
probably deficient in these regards. For men generalize about women,
not from many but from one. And men, being egotists, suffer a
woman's love for themselves to hide a multitude of sins. And then
Morton took refuge in other people's opinions. Everybody thought
that Sister Meacham was just the wife for him. It is pleasant to
have the opinion of all the world on your side where your own heart
is doubtful.
Sometimes, alas! the ghost of an old love flitted through the mind of
Morton Goodwin and gave him a moment of fright. But Patty was one of
the things of this world which he had solemnly given up. Of her
conversion he had not heard. Mails were few and postage cost a
silver quarter on every letter; with poor people, correspondence was
an extravagance not to be thought of except on the occasion of a
death or wedding. At farthest, one letter a year was all that might
be afforded. As it was, Morton was neither very happy nor very
miserable as he rode up to the New Canaan camp-ground on a pleasant
midsummer afternoon with Ann Eliza by his side.
Sister Meacham did not lack hospitable entertainment. So earnest and
gifted a Christian as she was always welcome; and now that she held a
mortgage on the popular preacher every tent on the ground would have
been honored by her presence. Morton found a lodging in the
preacher's tent, where one bed, larger, transversely, than that of
the giant Og, was provided for the collective repose of the
preachers, of whom there were half-a-dozen present. It was always a
solemn mystery to me, by what ingenious over-lapping of sheets,
blankets and blue-coverlets the sisters who made this bed gave a
cross-wise continuity to the bed-clothing.
This meeting was held just six weeks after the quarterly meeting
spoken of in the last chapter. Goodwin's circuit lay on the west
bank of the Big Wiaki River, and this camp-meeting was held on the
east bank of that stream.
It was customary for all the neighboring preachers to leave their
circuits and lend their help in a camp-meeting. All detached parties
were drawn in to make ready for a pitched battle. Morton had, in his
ringing voice, earnest delivery, unfaltering courage and quick wit,
rare qualifications for the rude campaign, and, as the nearest
preacher, he was, of course, expected to help.
The presiding elder's order to Kike to repair to Jonesville circuit
had gone after the zealous itinerant like "an arrow after a wild
goose," and he had only received it in season to close his affairs on
Pottawottomie Creek circuit and reach this camp-meeting on his way to
his new work. His emaciated face smote Morton's heart with terror.
The old comrade thought that the death which Kike all but longed for
could not be very far away. And even now the zealous and austere
young man was so eager to reach his circuit of Peterborough that he
would only consent to tarry long enough to preach on the first
evening. His voice was weak, and his appeals were often drowned in
the uproar of a mob that had come determined to make an end of the
meeting.
So violent was the opposition of the rowdies from Jenkinsville and
Salt Fork that the brethren were demoralized. After the close of the
service they gathered in groups debating whether or not they should
give up the meeting. But two invincible men stood in the pulpit
looking out over the scene. Without a thought of surrendering,
Magruder and Morton Goodwin were consulting in regard to police
arrangements.
"Brother Goodwin," said Magruder, "we shall have the sheriff here in
the morning. I am afraid he hasn't got back-bone enough to handle
these fellows. Do you know him?"
"Burchard? Yes; I've known him two or three years."
Morton could not help liking the man who had so generously forgiven
his gambling debt, but he had reason to believe that a sheriff who
went to Brewer's Hole to get votes would find his hands tied by his
political alliances.
"Goodwin," said Magruder, "I don't know how to spare you from
preaching and exhorting, but you must take charge of the police and
keep order."
"You had better not trust me," said Goodwin.
"Why?"
"If I am in command there'll be a fight. I don't believe in letting
rowdies run over you. If you put me in authority, and give me the
law to back me, somebody'll be hurt before morning. The rowdies hate
me and I am not fond of them. I've wanted such a chance at these
Jenkinsville and Salt Fork fellows ever since I've been on the
circuit."
"I wish you _would_ clean them out," said the sturdy old elder, the
martial fire shining from under his shaggy brows.
Morton soon had the brethren organized into a police. Every man was
to carry a heavy club; some were armed with pistols to be used in an
emergency. Part of the force was mounted, part marched afoot.
Goodwin said that his father had fought King George, and he would not
be ruled by a mob. By such fannings of the embers of revolutionary
patriotism he managed to infuse into them some of his own courage.
At midnight Morton Goodwin sat in the pulpit and sent out scouts.
Platforms of poles, six feet high and covered with earth, stood on
each side of the stand or pulpit. On these were bright fires which
threw their light over the whole space within the circle of tents.
Outside the circle were a multitude of wagons covered with cotton
cloth, in which slept people from a distance who had no other
shelter. In this outer darkness Morton, as military dictator, had
ordered other platforms erected, and on these fires were now kindling.
The returning scouts reported at midnight that the ruffians, seeing
the completeness of the preparations, had left the camp-ground.
Goodwin was the only man who was indisposed to trust this treacherous
truce. He immediately posted his mounted scouts farther away than
before on every road leading to the ground, with instructions to let
him know instantly, if any body of men should be seen approaching.
From Morton's previous knowledge of the people, he was convinced that
in the mob were some men more than suspected of belonging to Micajah
Harp's gang of thieves. Others were allies of the gang--of that
class which hesitates between a lawless disposition and a wholesome
fear of the law, but whose protection and assistance is the right
foot upon which every form of brigandage stands. Besides these there
were the reckless young men who persecuted a camp-meeting from a love
of mischief for its own sake; men who were not yet thieves, but from
whose ranks the bands of thieves were recruited. With these last
Morton's history gave him a certain sympathy. As the classes
represented by the mob held the balance of power in the politics of
the county, Morton knew that he had not much to hope from a trimmer
such as Burchard.
About four o'clock in the morning one of the mounted sentinels who
had been posted far down the road came riding in at full speed, with
intelligence that the rowdies were coming in force from the direction
of Jenkinsville. Goodwin had anticipated this, and he immediately
awakened his whole reserve, concentrating the scattered squads and
setting them in ambush on either side of the wagon track that led to
the camp-ground. With a dozen mounted men well armed with clubs, he
took his own stand at a narrow place where the foliage on either side
was thickest, prepared to dispute the passage to the camp. The men
in ambush had orders to fall upon the enemy's flanks as soon as the
fight should begin in front. It was a simple piece of strategy
learned of the Indians.
The marauders rode on two by two until the leaders, coming round a
curve, caught sight of Morton and his right hand man. Then there was
a surprised reining up on the one hand, and a sudden dashing charge
on the other. At the first blow Goodwin felled his man, and the
riderless horse ran backward through the ranks. The mob was taken by
surprise, and before the ruffians could rally Morton uttered a cry to
his men in the bushes, which brought an attack upon both flanks. The
rowdies fought hard, but from the beginning the victory of the guard
was assured by the advantage of ambush and surprise. The only
question to be settled was that of capture, for Morton had ordered
the arrest of every man that the guard could bring in. But so sturdy
was the fight that only three were taken. One of the guard received
a bad flesh wound from a pistol shot. Goodwin did not give up
pursuing the retreating enemy until he saw them dash into the river
opposite Jenkinsville. He then rode back, and as it was getting
light threw himself upon one side of the great bunk in the preachers'
tent, and slept until he was awakened by the horn blown in the pulpit
for the eight o'clock preaching.
When Sheriff Burchard arrived on the ground that day he was evidently
frightened at the earnestness of Morton's defence. Burchard was one
of those politicians who would have endeavored to patch up a
compromise with a typhoon. He was in a strait between his fear of
the animosity of the mob and his anxiety to please the Methodists.
Goodwin, taking advantage of this latter feeling, got himself
appointed a deputy-sheriff, and, going before a magistrate, he
secured the issuing of writs for the arrest of those whom he knew to
be leaders. Then he summoned his guard as a posse, and, having thus
put law on his side, he announced that if the ruffians came again the
guard must follow him until they were entirely subdued.
Burchard took him aside, and warned him solemnly that such extreme
measures would cost his life. Some of these men belonged to Harp's
band, and he would not be safe anywhere if he made enemies of the
gang. "Don't throw away your life," entreated Burchard.
"That's what life is for," said Morton. "If a man's life is too good
to throw away in fighting the devil, it isn't worth having." Goodwin
said this in a way that made Burchard ashamed of his own cowardice.
But Kike, who stood by ready to depart, could not help thinking that
if Patty were in place of Ann Eliza, Morton might think life good for
something else than to be thrown away in a fight with rowdies.
As there was every sign of an approaching riot during the evening
service, and as no man could manage the tempest so well as Brother
Goodwin, he was appointed to preach. A young theologian of the
present day would have drifted helpless on the waves of such a mob.
When one has a congregation that listens because it ought to listen,
one can afford to be prosy; but an audience that will only listen
when it is compelled to listen is the best discipline in the world
for an orator. It will teach him methods of homiletic arrangement
which learned writers on Sacred Rhetoric have never dreamed of.
The disorder had already begun when Morton Goodwin's tall figure
appeared in the stand. Frontier-men are very susceptible to physical
effects, and there was a clarion-like sound to Morton's voice well
calculated to impress them. Goodwin enjoyed battle; every power of
his mind and body was at its best in the presence of a storm. He
knew better than to take a text. He must surprise the mob into
curiosity.
"There is a man standing back in the crowd there," he began, pointing
his finger in a certain direction where there was much disorder, and
pausing until everybody was still, "who reminds me of a funny story I
once heard." At this point the turbulent sons of Belial, who loved
nothing so much as a funny story, concluded to postpone their riot
until they should have their laugh. Laugh they did, first at one
funny story, and then at another--stories with no moral in
particular, except the moral there is in a laugh. Brother Mellen,
who sat behind Morton, and who had never more than half forgiven him
for not coming to a bad end as the result of disturbing a meeting,
was greatly shocked at Morton's levity in the pulpit, but Magruder,
the presiding elder, was delighted. He laughed at each story, and
laughed loud enough for Goodwin to hear and appreciate the senior's
approval of his drollery. But somehow--the crowd did not know
how,--at some time in his discourse--the Salt Fork rowdies did not
observe when,--Morton managed to cease his drollery without
detection, and to tell stories that brought tears instead of
laughter. The mob was demoralized, and, by keeping their curiosity
perpetually excited, Goodwin did not give them time to rally at all.
Whenever an interruption was attempted, the preacher would turn the
ridicule of the audience upon the interlocutor, and so gain the
sympathy of the rough crowd who were habituated to laugh on the side
of the winner in all rude tournaments of body or mind. Knowing
perfectly well that he would have to fight before the night was over,
Morton's mind was stimulated to its utmost. If only he could get the
religious interest agoing, he might save some of these men instead of
punishing them. His soul yearned over the people. His oratory at
last swept out triumphant over everything; there was weeping and
sobbing; some fell in uttering cries of anguish; others ran away in
terror. Even Burchard shivered with emotion when Morton described
how, step by step, a young man was led from bad to worse, and then
recited his own experience. At last there was the utmost excitement.
As soon as this hurricane of feeling had reached the point of
confusion, the rioters broke the spell of Morton's speech and began
their disturbance. Goodwin immediately invited the penitents into
the enclosed pen-like place called the altar, and the whole space was
filled with kneeling mourners, whose cries and groans made the woods
resound. But at the same moment the rioters increased their noisy
demonstrations, and Morton, finding Burchard inefficient to quell
them, descended from the pulpit and took command of his camp-meeting
police.
Perhaps the mob would not have secured headway enough to have
necessitated the severest measures if it had not been for Mr. Mellen.
As soon as he detected the rising storm he felt impelled to try the
effect of his stentorian voice in quelling it. He did not ask
permission of the presiding elder, as he was in duty bound to do, but
as soon as there was a pause in the singing he began to exhort. His
style was violently aggressive, and only served to provoke the mob.
He began with the true old Homeric epithets of early Methodism,
exploding them like bomb-shells. "You are hair-hung and
breeze-shaken over hell," he cried.
"You don't say!" responded one of the rioters, to the infinite
amusement of the rest.
[Illustration: "HAIR-HUNG AND BREEZE-SHAKEN."]
For five minutes Mellen proceeded to drop this kind of religious aqua
fortis upon the turbulent crowd, which grew more and more turbulent
under his inflammatory treatment. Finding himself likely to be
defeated, he turned toward Goodwin and demanded that the camp-meeting
police should enforce order. But Morton was contemplating a
master-stroke that should annihilate the disorder in one battle, and
he was not to be hurried into too precipitate an attack.
Brother Mellen resumed his exhortation, and, as small doses of
nitric-acid had not allayed the irritation, he thought it necessary
to administer stronger ones. "You'll go to hell," he cried, "and
when you get there your ribs will be nothing but a gridiron to roast
your souls in!"
"Hurrah for the gridiron!" cried the unappalled ruffians, and Brother
Mellen gave up the fight, reproaching Morton hotly for not
suppressing the mob. "I thought you was a man," he said.
"They'll get enough of it before daylight," said Goodwin, savagely.
"Do you get a club and ride by my side to-night, Brother Mellen; I am
sure you are a man."
Mellen went for his horse and club, grumbling all the while at
Morton's tardiness.
"Where's Burchard?" cried Morton.
But Burchard could not be found, and Morton felt internal
maledictions at Burchard's cowardice.
Goodwin had given orders that his scouts should report to him the
first attempt at concentration on the part of the rowdies. He had
not been deceived by their feints in different parts of the camp, but
had drawn his men together. He knew that there was some directing
head to the mob, and that the only effectual way to beat it was to
beat it in solid form.
At last a young man came running to where Goodwin stood, saying:
"They're tearing down a tent."
"The fight will be there," said Morton, mounting deliberately.
"Catch all you can, boys. Don't shoot if you can help it. Keep
close together. We have got to ride all night."
He had increased his guard by mustering in every able-bodied man,
except such as were needed to conduct the meetings. Most of these
men were Methodists, but they were all frontiermen who knew that
peace and civilization have often to be won by breaking heads. By
the time this guard started the camp was in extreme confusion; women
were running in every direction, children were crying and men were
stoutly denouncing Goodwin for his tardiness.
Dividing his mounted guard of thirty men into two parts, he sent one
half round the outside of the camp-ground in one direction, while he
rode with the other to attack the mob on the other side. The
foot-police were sent through the circle to attack them in a third
direction.
As Morton anticipated, his delay tended to throw the mob off their
guard. They had demolished one tent and, in great exultation, had
begun on another, when Morton's cavalry rode in upon them on two
sides, dealing heavy and almost deadly blows with their ironwood and
hickory clubs. Then the footmen charged them in front, and the mob
were forced to scatter and mount their horses as best they could. As
Morton had captured some of them, the rest rallied on horseback and
attempted a rescue. For two or three minutes the fight was a severe
one. The roughs made several rushes upon Morton, and nothing but the
savage blows that Mellen laid about him saved the leader from falling
into their hands. At last, however, after firing several shots, and
wounding one of the guard, they retreated, Goodwin vigorously
persuading his men to continue the charge. When the rowdies had been
driven a short distance, Morton saw by the light of a platform torch,
the same strangely dressed man who had taken the money from his hand
that day near Brewer's Hole. This man, in his disguise of long beard
and wolf-skin cap, was trying to get past Mellen and into the camp by
creeping through the bushes.
"Knock him over," shouted Goodwin to Mellen. "I know him--he's a
thief."
No sooner said than Mellen's club had felled him, and but for the
intervening brush-wood, which broke the force of the blow, it might
have killed him.
"Carry him back and lock him up," said Morton to his men; but the
other side now made a strong rush and bore off the fallen highwayman.
Then they fled, and this time, letting the less guilty rowdies
escape, Morton pursued the well-known thieves and their allies into
and through Jenkinsville, and on through the country, until the
hunted fellows abandoned their horses and fled to the woods on foot.
For two days more Morton harried them, arresting one of them now and
then until he had captured eight or ten. He chased one of these into
Brewer's Hole itself. The shoes had been torn from his feet by
briers in his rough flight, and he left tracks of blood upon the
floor. The orderly citizens of the county were so much heartened by
this boldness and severity on Morton's part that they combined
against the roughs and took the work into their own hands, driving
some of the thieves away and terrifying the rest into a sullen
submission. The camp-meeting went on in great triumph.
Burchard had disappeared--how, nobody knew. Weeks afterward a
stranger passing through Jenkinsville reported that he had seen such
a man on a keel-boat leaving Cincinnati for the lower Mississippi,
and it soon came to be accepted that Burchard had found a home in New
Orleans, that refuge of broken adventurers. Why he had fled no one
could guess.
_CHAPTER XXVIII._
PATTY AND HER PATIENT.
We left Patty standing irresolute in the road. The latch-string of
her father's house was drawn in; she must find another home. Every
Methodist cabin would be open to her, of course; Colonel Wheeler
would be only too glad to receive her. But Colonel Wheeler and all
the Methodist people were openly hostile to her father, and delicacy
forbade her allying herself so closely with her father's foes. She
did not want to foreclose every door to a reconciliation. Mrs.
Goodwin's was not to be thought of. There was but one place, and
that was with Kike's mother, the widow Lumsden, who, as a relative,
was naturally her first resort in exile.
Here she found a cordial welcome, and here she found the
schoolmaster, still attentive to the widow, though neither he nor she
dared think of marriage with Kike's awful displeasure in the
back-ground.
"Well, well," said Brady, when the homeless Patty had received
permission to stay in the cabin of her aunt-in-law: "Well, well, how
sthrange things comes to pass, Miss Lumsden. You turned Moirton off
yersilf fer bein' a Mithodis' and now ye're the one that gits sint
adrift." Then, half musingly, he added: "I wish Moirton noo, now
don't oi? Revinge is swate, and this sort of revinge would be swater
on many accounts."
The helpless Patty could say nothing, and Brady looked out of the
window and continued, in a sort of soliloquy: "Moirton would be
_that_ glad. Ha! ha! He'd say the divil niver sarved him a better
thrick than by promptin' the Captin to turn ye out. It'll simplify
matters fer Moirton. A sum's aisier to do when its simplified,
loike. An' now it'll be as aisy to Moirton when he hears about it,
as twice one is two--as simple as puttin' two halves togither to make
a unit." Here the master rubbed his hands in glee. He was pleased
with the success of his illustration. Then he muttered: "They'll
agree in ginder, number and parson!"
"Mr. Brady, I don't think you ought to make fun of me."
"Make fun of ye! Bliss yer dair little heart, it aint in yer ould
schoolmasther to make fun of ye, whin ye've done yer dooty. I was
only throyin' to congratilate ye on how aisy Moirton would conjugate
the whole thing whin he hears about it."
"Now, Mr. Brady," said Patty, drawing herself up with her old pride,
"I know there will be those who will say that I joined the church to
get Morton back, I want you to say that Morton is to be married--was
probably married to-day--and that I knew of it some days ago."
Brady's countenance fell. "Things niver come out roight," he said,
as he absently put on his hat. "They talk about spicial
providinces," he soliloquized, as he walked away, "and I thought as I
had caught one at last. But it does same sometoimes as if a
bluntherin' Oirishman loike mesilf could turn the univarse better if
he had aholt of the stairin' oar. But, psha! Oi've only got one or
two pets of me own to look afther. God has to git husbands fer ivery
woman ixcipt the old maids. An' some women has to have two, of which
I hope is the Widdy Lumsden! But Mithodism upsets iverything.
Koike's so religious that he can't love anybody but God, and he don't
know how to pity thim that does. And Koike's made us both mortally
afeard of his goodness. I wish he'd fall dead in love himself once;
thin he'd know how it fales!"
Patty soon found that her father could not brook her presence in the
neighborhood, and that the widow's hospitality to her was resented as
an act of hostility to him. She accordingly set herself to find some
means of getting away from the neighborhood, and at the same time of
earning her living.
Happily, at this moment came presiding elder Magruder to a quarterly
meeting on the circuit to which Ilissawachee belonged, and, hearing
of Patty's case, he proposed to get her employment as a teacher. He
had heard that a teacher was wanted in the neighborhood of the
Hickory Ridge church, where the conference had met. So Patty was
settled as a teacher. For ten hours a day she showed children how to
"do sums," heard their lessons in Lindley Murray, listened to them
droning through the moralizing poems in the "Didactic" department of
the old English Reader, and taught them spelling from the "a-b abs"
to "in-com-pre-hen-si-bil-i-ty" and its octopedal companions. And
she boarded round, but Dr. Morgan, the Presbyterian ex-minister, when
he learned that she was Kike's cousin, and a sufferer for her
religion, insisted that her Sundays should be passed in his house.
And being almost as much a pastor as a doctor among the people, he
soon found Patty a rare helper in his labors among the poor and the
sick. Something of good-breeding and refinement there was in her
manner that made her seem a being above the poor North Carolinans who
had moved into the hollows, and her kindness was all the more
grateful on account of her dignity. She was "a grand lady," they
declared, and besides was "a kinder sorter angel, like, ye know, in
her way of tendin' folks what's sick." They loved to tell how "she
nussed Bill Turner's wife through the awfulest spell of the yaller
janders you ever seed; an' toted _Miss_ Cole's baby roun' all night
the night her ole man was fotch home shot through the arm with his
own good-fer-nothin' keerlessness. She's better'n forty doctors,
root or calomile."
[Illustration: THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS OF HICKORY RIDGE.]
One day Doctor Morgan called at the school-house door just as the
long spelling-class had broken up, and Patty was getting ready to
send the children home. The doctor sat on his horse while each of
the boys, with hat in one hand and dinner-basket in the other, walked
to the door, and, after the fashion of those good old days, turned
round and bowed awkwardly at the teacher. Some bobbed their heads
forward on their breasts; some jerked them sidewise; some, more
respectful, bent their bodies into crescents. Each seemed alike glad
when he was through with this abominable bit of ceremony, the only
bit of ceremony in the whole round of their lives. The girls, in
short linsey dresses, with copperas-dyed cotton pantalettes, came
after, dropping "curcheys" in a style that would have bewildered a
dancing-master.
"Miss Lumsden," said the doctor, when the teacher appeared, "I am
sorry to see you so tired. I want you to go home with me. I have
some work for you to do to-morrow."
There were no buggies in that day. The roads were mostly
bridle-paths, and those that would admit wagons would have shaken a
buggy to pieces. Patty climbed upon a fence-corner, and the doctor
rode as close as possible to the fence where she stood. Then she
dropped upon the horse behind him, and the two rode off together.
Doctor Morgan explained to Patty that a strange man was lying wounded
at the house of a family named Barkins, on Higgins's Run. The man
refused to give his name, and the family would not tell what they
knew about him. As Barkins bore a bad reputation, it was quite
likely that the stranger belonged to some band of thieves who lived
by horse-stealing and plundering emigrants. He seemed to be in great
mental anguish, but evidently distrusted the doctor. The doctor
therefore wished Patty to spend Saturday at Barkins's, and do what
she could for the patient. "It is our business to do the man good,"
said Doctor Morgan, "not to have him arrested. Gospel is always
better than Law."
On Saturday morning the doctor had a horse saddled with a side-saddle
for Patty, and he and she rode to Higgins's Hollow, a desolate, rocky
glen, where once lived a noted outlaw from whom the hollow took its
name, and where now resided a man who was suspected of giving much
indirect assistance to the gangs of thieves that infested the
country, though he was too lame to be actively engaged in any bold
enterprises.
Barkins nodded his head in a surly fashion at Patty as she crossed
the threshold, and Mrs. Barkins, a square-shouldered, raw-boned
woman, looked half inclined to dispute the passage of any woman over
her door-sill. Patty felt a shudder of fear go through her frame at
the thought of staying in such a place all day; but Doctor Morgan had
an authoritative way with such people. When called to attend a
patient, he put the whole house under martial law.
"Mrs. Barkins, I hope our patient's better. He needs a good deal
done for him to-day, and I brought the school-mistress to help you,
knowing you had a houseful of children and plenty of work."
"I've got a powerful sight to do, Doctor Morgan, but you had orter
know'd better'n to fetch a school-miss in to spy out a body's
housekeepin' 'thout givin' folks half a chance to bresh up a little.
I 'low she haint never lived in no holler, in no log-house weth ten
of the wust childern you ever seed and a decreppled ole man." She
sulkily brushed off a stool with her apron and offered it to Patty.
But Patty, with quick tact, laid her sunbonnet on the bed, and, while
the doctor went into the only other room of the house to see the
patient, she seized upon the woman's dish-towel and went to wiping
the yellow crockery as Mrs. Barkins washed it, and to prevent the
crabbed remonstrance which that lady had ready, she began to tell how
she had tried to wipe dishes when she was little, and how she had
upset the table and spilt everything on the floor. She looked into
Mrs. Barkins's face with so much friendly confidence, her laugh had
so much assurance of Mrs. Barkins's concurrence in it, that the
square visage relaxed a little, and the woman proceeded to show her
increasing friendliness by boxing "Jane Marier" for "stan'in' too
closte to the lady and starrin at her that a-way."
Just then the doctor opened the squeaky door and beckoned to Patty.
"I've brought you the only medicine that will do you any good," he
said, rapidly, to the sick man. "This is Miss Lumsden, our
school-mistress, and the best hand in sickness you ever saw. She
will stay with you an hour."
The patient turned his wan face over and looked wearily at Patty. He
seemed to be a man of forty, but suffering and his unshorn beard had
given him a haggard look, and he might be ten years younger. He had
evidently some gentlemanly instincts, for he looked about the room
for a seat for Patty. "I'll take care of myself," said Patty,
cheerfully--seeing his anxious desire to be polite.
"I will write down some directions for you," said Dr. Morgan, taking
out pencil and paper. When he handed the directions to Patty they
read:
"I leave you a lamb among wolves. But the Shepherd is here! It is
the only chance to save the poor fellow's life or his soul. I will
send Nettie over in an hour with jelly, and if you want to come home
with her you can do so. I will stop at noon."
With that he bade her good-bye and was gone. Patty put the room in
order, wiped off the sick man's temples, and he soon fell into a
sleep. When he awoke she again wiped his face with cold water. "My
mother used to do that," he said.
"Is she dead?" asked Patty, reverently.
"I think not. I have been a bad man, and it is a wonder that I
didn't break her heart. I would like to see her!"
"Where is she?" asked Patty.
The patient looked at her suspiciously: "What's the use of bringing
my disgrace home to her door?" he said.
"But I think she would bear your disgrace and everything else for the
sake of wiping your face as I do."
"I believe she would," said the wounded man, tremulously. "I would
like to go to her, and ever since I came away I have meant to go as
soon as I could get in the way of doing better. But I get worse all
the time. I'll soon be dead now, and I don't care how soon. The
sooner the better;" and he sighed wearily.
Patty had the tact not to contradict him.
"Did your mother ever read to you?" she asked.
"Yes; she used to read the Bible on Sundays and I used to run away to
keep from hearing it. I'd give everything to hear her read now."
"Shall I read to you?"
"If you please."
"Shall I read your mother's favorite chapter?" said Patty.
"How do you know which that is?--I don't!"
"Don't you think one woman knows how another woman feels?" asked
Patty. And she sat by the little four-light window and took out her
pocket Testament and read the three immortal parables in the
fifteenth of Luke. The man's curiosity was now wide awake; he
listened to the story of the sheep lost and found, but when Patty
glanced at his face, it was unsatisfied; he hearkened to the story of
the coin that was lost and found, and still he looked at her with
faint eagerness, as if trying to guess why she should call that his
mother's favorite chapter. Then she read slowly, and with sincere
emotion, that truest of fictions, the tale of the prodigal son and
his hunger, and his good resolution, and his tattered return, and the
old father's joy. And when she looked up, his eyes tightly closed
could not hide his tears.
"Do you think that is her favorite chapter?" he asked.
"Of course it must be," said Patty, conclusively. "And you'll notice
that this prodigal son didn't wait to make himself better, or even
until he could get a new suit of clothes."
The sick man said nothing.
The raw-boned Mrs. Barkins came to the door at that moment and said:
"The doctor's gal's out yer and want's to see you."
"You won't go away yet?" asked the patient, anxiously.
"I'll stay," said Patty, as she left the room.
Nettie, with her fresh face and dimpled cheeks, was standing timidly
at the outside door. Patty took the jelly from her hand and sent a
note to the Doctor:
"The patient is doing well every way, and I am in the safest place in
the world--doing my duty."
And when the doctor read it he said, in his nervously abrupt fashion:
"Perfect angel!"
_CHAPTER XXIX._
PATTY'S JOURNEY.
Even wounds and bruises heal more rapidly when the heart is cheered,
and as Patty, after spending Saturday and Sunday with the patient,
found time to come in and give him his breakfast every morning before
she went to school, he grew more and more cheerful, and the doctor
announced in his sudden style that he'd "get along." In all her
interviews Patty was not only a woman but a Methodist. She read the
Bible and talked to the man about repentance; and she would not have
been a Methodist of that day had she neglected to pray with him. She
could not penetrate his reserve. She could not guess whether what
she said had any influence on him or not. Once she was startled and
lost faith in any good result of her labors when she happened, in
arranging things about the room, to come upon a hideous wolf-skin cap
and some heavy false-whiskers. She had more than suspected all along
that her patient was a highwayman, but upon seeing the very disguises
in which his crimes had been committed, she shuddered, and asked
herself whether a man so hardened that he was capable of
theft--perhaps of murder--could ever be any better. She found
herself, after that, trying to imagine how the wounded man would look
in so fierce a mask. But she soon remembered all that she had
learned of the Methodist faith in the power of the Divine Spirit
working in the worst of sinners, and she got her testament and read
aloud to the highwayman the story of the crucified thief.
It was on Thursday morning, as she helped him take his breakfast--he
was sitting propped up in bed--that he startled her most effectually.
Lifting his eyes, and looking straight at her with the sort of stare
that comes of feebleness, he asked:
"Did you ever know a young Methodist circuit rider named Goodwin?"
Patty thought that he was penetrating her secret. She turned away to
hide her face, and said:
"I used to go to school with him when we were children."
"I heard him preach a sermon awhile ago," said the patient, "that
made me tremble all over. He's a great preacher. I wish I was as
good as he is."
Patty made some remark about his having been a good boy.
"Well, I don't know," said the patient; "I used to hear that he had
been a little hard--swore and drank and gambled, to say nothing of
dancing and betting on horses. But they said some girl jilted him in
that day. I suppose he got into bad habits because she jilted him,
or else she jilted him because he was bad. Do you know anything
about it?"
"Yes."
"She's a heartless thing, I suppose?"
Patty reddened, but the sick man did not see it. She was going to
defend herself--he must know that she was the person--but how? Then
she remembered that he was only repeating what had been a matter of
common gossip, and some feeling of mischievousness led her to answer:
"She acted badly--turned him off because he became a Methodist."
"But there was trouble before that, I thought. When he gambled away
his coat and hat one night."
"Trouble with her father, I think," said Patty, casting about in her
own mind how she might change the conversation.
"Is she alive yet?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Give her head to marry Goodwin now, I'll bet," said the man.
Patty now plead that she must hasten to school. She omitted reading
the Bible and prayer with the patient for that morning. It was just
as well. There are states of mind not favorable to any but the most
private devotions.
On Friday evening Patty intended to go by the cabin a moment, but on
coming near she saw horses tied in front of it, and her heart failed
her. She reasoned that these horses belonged to members of the gang
and she could not bring herself to plunge into their midst in the
dusk of the evening. But on Saturday morning she found the strangers
not yet gone, and heard them speak of the sick man as "Pinkey." "Too
soft! too soft! altogether," said one. "We ought to have shipped
him----" Here the conversation was broken off.
The sick man, whom the others called Pinkey, she found very uneasy.
He was glad to see her, and told her she must stay by him. He seemed
anxious for the men to go away, which at last they did. Then he
listened until Mrs. Barkins and her children became sufficiently
uproarious to warrant him in talking.
"I want you to save a man's life."
"Whose?"
"Preacher Goodwin's."
Patty turned pale. She had not the heart to ask a question.
"Promise me that you will not betray me and I'll tell you all about
it."
Patty promised.
"He's to be killed as he goes through Wild Cat Woods on Sunday
afternoon. He preaches in Jenkinsville at eleven, and at Salt Fork
at three. Between the two he will be killed. You must go yourself.
They'll never suspect you of such a ride. If any man goes out of
this settlement, and there's a warning given, he'll be shot. You
must go through the woods to-night. If you go in the daytime, you
and I will both be killed, maybe. Will you do it?"
Patty had her full share of timidity. But in a moment she saw a
vision of Morton Goodwin slain.
"I will go."
"You must not tell the doctor a word about where you're going; you
must not tell Goodwin how you got the information."
"He may not believe me."
"Anybody would believe you."
"But he will think that I have been deceived, and he cannot bear to
look like a coward."
"That's true," said Pinkey. "Give me a piece of paper. I will write
a word that will convince him."
He took a little piece of paper, wrote one word and folded it. "I
can trust you; you must not open this paper," he said.
"I will not," said Patty.
"And now you must leave and not come back here until Monday or
Tuesday. Do not leave the settlement until five o'clock. Barkins
will watch you when you leave here. Don't go to Dr. Morgan's till
afternoon and you will get rid of all suspicion. Take the east road
when you start, and then if anybody is watching they will think that
you are going to the lower settlement. Turn round at Wright's
corner. It will be dark by the time you reach the Long Bottom, but
there is only one trail through the woods. You must ride through
to-night or you cannot reach Jenkinsville to-morrow. God will help
you, I suppose, if He ever helps anybody, which I don't more than
half believe."
Patty went away bewildered. The journey did not seem so dreadful as
the long waiting. She had to appear unconcerned to the people with
whom she boarded. Toward evening she told them she was going away
until Monday, and at five o'clock she was at the doctor's door,
trembling lest some mishap should prevent her getting a horse.
"Patty, howdy?" said the doctor, eyeing her agitated face sharply.
"I didn't find you at Barkins's as I expected when I got there this
morning. Sick man did not say much. Anything wrong? What scared
you away?"
"Doctor, I want to ask a favor."
"You shall have anything you ask."
"But I want you to let me have it on trust, and ask me no questions
and make no objections."
"I will trust you."
"I must have a horse at once for a journey."
"This evening?"
"This evening."
"But, Patty, I said I would trust you; but to go away so late, unless
it is a matter of life and death----"
"It is a matter of life and death."
"And you can't trust me?"
"It is not my secret. I promised not to tell you."
"Now, Patty, I must break my promise and ask questions. Are you
certain you are not deceived? Mayn't there be some plot? Mayn't I
go with you? Is it likely that a robber should take any interest in
saving the life of the person you speak of?"
Patty looked a little startled. "I may be deceived, but I feel so
sure that I ought to go that I will try to go on foot, if I cannot
get a horse."
"Patty, I don't like this. But I can only trust your judgment. You
ought not to have been bound not to tell me."
"It is a matter of life and death that I shall go. It is a matter of
life and death to another that it shall not be known that I went. It
is a matter of life and death to you and me both that you shall not
go with me."
"Is the life you are going to save worth risking your own for? Is it
only the life of a robber?"
"It is a life worth more than mine. Ask me no more questions, but
have Bob saddled for me." Patty spoke as one not to be refused.
The horse was brought out, and Patty mounted, half eagerly and half
timidly.
"When will you come back?"
"In time for school, Monday."
"Patty, think again before you start," called the doctor.
"There's no time to think," said Patty, as she rode away.
"I ought to have forbidden it," the doctor muttered to himself half a
hundred times in the next forty-eight hours.
When she had ridden a mile on the road that led to the "lower
settlement" she turned an acute angle, and came back on the
hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, if I may speak so
geometrically. She thus went more than two miles to strike the main
trail toward Jenkinsville, at a point only a mile away from her
starting-place. She reached the woods in Long Bottom just as Pinkey
told her she would, at dark. She was appalled at the thought of
riding sixteen miles through a dense forest of beech trees in the
night over a bridle-path. She reined up her horse, folded her hands,
and offered a fervent prayer for courage and help, and then rode into
the blackness ahead.
There is a local tradition yet lingering in this very valley in Ohio
in regard to this dark ride of Patty's. I know it will be thought
incredible, but in that day marvelous things were not yet out of
date. This legend, which reaches me from the very neighborhood of
the occurrence, is that, when Patty had nerved herself for her lonely
and perilous ride by prayer, there came to her, out of the darkness
of the forest, two beautiful dogs. One of them started ahead of her
horse and one of them became her rear-guard. Protected and comforted
by her dumb companions, Patty rode all those lonesome hours in that
wilderness bridle-path. She came, at midnight, to a settler's house
on the farther verge of the unbroken forest and found lodging. The
dogs lay in the yard. In the early morning the settler's wife came
out and spoke to them but they gave her no recognition at all. Patty
came a few moments later, when they arose and greeted her with all
the eloquence of dumb friends, and then, having seen her safely
through the woods and through the night, the two beautiful dogs,
wagging a friendly farewell, plunged again into the forest and
went--no man knows whither.
Such is the legend of Patty's Ride as it came to me well avouched.
Doubtless Mr. John Fiske or Mr. M. D. Conway could explain it all
away and show how there was only one dog, and that he was not
beautiful, but a stray bull-dog with a stumpy tail. Or that the
whole thing is but a "solar myth." The middle-ages have not a more
pleasant story than this of angels sent in the form of dogs to convoy
a brave lady on a noble mission through a dangerous forest. At any
rate, Patty believed that the dumb guardians were answers to her
prayer. She bade them good-by as they disappeared in the mystery
whence they came, and rode on, rejoicing in so signal a mark of God's
favor to her enterprise. Sometimes her heart was sorely troubled at
the thought of Morton's being already the husband of another, and all
that Sunday morning she took lessons in that hardest part of
Christian living--the uttering of the little petition which gives all
the inevitable over into God's hands and submits to the
accomplishment of His will.
She reached Jenkinsville at half-past eleven. Meeting had already
begun. She knew the Methodist church by its general air of square
ugliness, and near it she hitched old Bob.
When she entered the church Morton was preaching. Her long
sun-bonnet was a sufficient disguise, and she sat upon the back seat
listening to the voice whose music was once all her own. Morton was
preaching on self-denial, and he made some allusions to his own
trials when he became a Christian which deeply touched the audience,
but which moved none so much as Patty.
The congregation was dismissed but the members remained to "class,"
which was always led by the preacher when he was present. Most of
the members sat near the pulpit, but when the "outsiders" had gone
Patty sat lonesomely on the back seat, with a large space between her
and the rest. Morton asked each one to speak, exhorting each in
turn. At last, when all the rest had spoken, he walked back to where
Patty sat, with her face hidden in her sun-bonnet, and thus addressed
her:
"My strange sister, will you tell us how it is with you to-day? Do
you feel that you have an interest in the Savior?"
Very earnestly, simply, and with a tinge of melancholy Patty spoke.
There was that in her superior diction and in her delicacy of
expression that won upon the listeners, so that, as she ceased, the
brethren and sisters uttered cordial ejaculations of "The Lord bless
our strange sister," and so on. But Morton? From the first word he
was thrilled with the familiar sound of the voice. It could not be
Patty, for why should Patty be in Jenkinsville? And above all, why
should she be in class-meeting? Of her conversion he had not heard.
But though it seemed to him impossible that it could be Patty, there
was yet a something in voice and manner and choice of words that had
almost overcome him; and though he was noted for the freshness of the
counsels that he gave in class-meeting, he was so embarrassed by the
sense of having known the speaker, that he could not think of
anything to say. He fell hopelessly into that trite exhortation with
which the old leaders were wont to cover their inanity.
"Sister," he said, "you know the way--walk in it."
Then the brethren and sisters sang:
"O brethren will you meet me
On Canaan's happy shore?"
And the meeting was dismissed.
The members thought themselves bound to speak to the strange sister.
She evaded their kindly questions as they each shook hands with her,
only answering that she wished to speak with Brother Goodwin. The
preacher was eager and curious to converse with her, but one of the
old brethren had button-holed him to complain that Brother Hawkins
had 'tended a barbecue the week before, and he thought that he had
ought to be "read out" if he didn't make confession. When the old
brother had finished his complaint and had left the church, Morton
was glad to see the strange sister lingering at the door. He offered
his hand and said:
"A stranger here, I suppose?"
"Not quite a stranger, Morton."
"Patty, is this you?" Morton exclaimed
Patty for her part was pleased and silent.
"Are you a Methodist then?"
"I am."
"And what brought you to Jenkinsville?" he said, greatly agitated.
"To save your life. I am glad I can make you some amend for the way
I treated you the last time I saw you."
"To save my life! How?"
"I came to tell you that if you go to Salt Fork this afternoon you
will be killed on the way."
"How do you know?"
"You must not ask any questions. I cannot tell you anything more."
"I am afraid, Patty, you have believed somebody who wanted to scare
me."
Patty here remembered the mysterious piece of paper which Pinkey had
given her. She handed it to Morton, saying:
"I don't know what is in this, but the person who sent the message
said that you would understand."
Morton opened the paper and started. "Where is he?" he asked.
"You must not ask questions," said Patty, smiling faintly.
"And you rode all the way from Hissawachee to tell me?"
"Not at all. When I joined the church Father pulled the latch-string
in. I am teaching school at Hickory Ridge."
"Come, Patty, you must have some dinner." Morton led her horse to
the house of one of the members, introduced her as an old schoolmate,
who had brought him an important warning, and asked that she receive
some dinner.
He then asked Patty to let him go back with her or send an escort,
both of which she firmly refused. He left the house and in a minute
sat on his Dolly before the gate. At sight of Dolly Patty could have
wept. He called her to the gate.
"If you won't let me go with you I must go to Salt Fork. These men
must understand that I am not afraid. I shall ride ten miles farther
round and they will never know how I did it. Dolly can do it,
though. How shall I thank you for risking your life for me? Patty,
if I can ever serve you let me know, and I'll die for you. I would
rather die for you than not."
"Thank you, Morton. You are married, I hear."
"Not married, but I am to be married." He spoke half bitterly, but
Patty was too busy suppressing her own emotion to observe his tone.
"I hope you'll be happy." She had determined to say so much.
"Patty, I tell you I am wretched, and will be till I die. I am
marrying one I never chose. I am utterly miserable. Why didn't you
leave me to be waylaid and killed? My life isn't worth the saving.
But God bless you, Patty."
So saying, he touched Dolly with the spurs and was soon gone away
around the Wolf Creek road--a long hard ride, with no dinner, and a
sermon to preach at three o'clock.
And all the hour that Patty ate and rested in Jenkinsville, her
hostess entertained her with accounts of Sister Ann Eliza Meacham,
whom Brother Goodwin was to marry. She heard how eloquent was Sister
Meacham in prayer, how earnest in Christian labor, and what a model
preacher's wife she would be. But the good sister added slyly that
she didn't more than half believe Brother Goodwin wanted to marry at
all. He'd tried his best to give Ann Eliza up once, but couldn't do
it.
When Patty rode out of the village that afternoon she did her best,
as a good Christian, to feel sorry that Morton could not love the one
he was to marry. In an intellectual way she did regret it, but in
her heart she was a woman.
_CHAPTER XXX._
THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE WIDOW.
When Kike had appeared at the camp meeting, as we related, it was not
difficult to forecast his fate. Everybody saw that he was going into
a consumption. One year, two years at farthest, he might manage to
live, but not longer. Nobody knew this so well as Kike himself. He
rejoiced in it. He was one of those rare spirits to whom the
invisible world is not a dream but a reality, and to whom religious
duty is a voice never neglected. That he had sacrificed his own life
to his zeal he understood perfectly well, and he had no regrets
except that he had not been more zealous. What was life if he could
save even one soul?
"But," said Morton to him one day, "you are wrong, Kike. If you had
taken care of yourself you might have lived to save so many more."
"Morton, if your eye were fastened on one man drowning," replied
Kike, "and you thought you could save him at the risk of your health,
you wouldn't stop to calculate that by avoiding that peril you might
live long enough to save many others. When God puts a soul before me
I save that one if il costs my life. When I am gone God will find
others. It is glorious to work for God, but it is awful. What if by
some neglect of mine a soul should drop into hell? O! Morton, I am
oppressed with responsibility! I will be glad when God shall say, It
is enough."
Few of the preachers remonstrated with Kike. He was but fulfilling
the Methodist ideal; they admired him while most of them could not
quite emulate him. Read the minutes of the old conferences and you
will see everywhere among the brief obituaries, headstones in memory
of young men who laid down their lives as Kike was doing. Men were
nothing--the work was everything. Methodism let the dead bury their
dead; it could hardly stop to plant a spear of grass over the grave
of one of its own heroes.
But Pottawottomie Creek circuit was poor and wild, and it had paid
Kike only five dollars for his whole nine months' work. Two of this
he had spent for horse-shoes, and two he had given away. The other
one had gone for quinine. Now he had no clothes that would long hold
together. He would ride to Hissawachee and get what his mother had
carded and spun, and woven, and cut, and sewed for the son whom she
loved all the more that he seemed no longer to be entirely hers. He
could come back in three days. Two days more would suffice to reach
Peterborough circuit. So he sent on to the circuit, in advance, his
appointments to preach, and rode off to Hissawachee. But he did not
get back to camp-meeting. An attack of fever held him at home for
several weeks.
At last he was better and had set the day for his departure from
home. His mother saw what everybody saw, that if Kike ever lived to
return to his home it would only be to die. And as this was,
perhaps, his last visit, Mrs. Lumsden felt in duty bound to tell him
of her intention to marry Brady. While Brady thought to do the
handsome thing by secretly getting a marriage license, intending,
whenever the widow should mention the subject to Kike, to immediately
propose that Kike should perform the ceremony of marriage. It was
quite contrary to the custom of that day for a minister to officiate
at a wedding of one of his own family; Brady defied custom, however.
But whenever Mrs. Lumsden tried to approach Kike on the subject, her
heart failed her. He was so wrapped up in heavenly subjects, so full
of exhortations and aspirations, that she despaired beforehand of
making him understand her feelings. Once she began by alluding to
her loneliness, upon which Kike assured her that if she put her trust
in the Lord he would be with her. What was she to do? How make a
rapt seer like Kike understand the wants of ordinary mortals? And
that, too, when he was already bidding adieu to this world?
The last morning had come, and Brady was urging on the weeping widow
that she must go into the room where Kike was stuffing his small
wardrobe into his saddle-bags, and tell him what was in their hearts.
"Oh, I can't bear to," said she. "I won't never see him any more and
I might hurt him, and----"
"Will," said Brady, "thin I'll hev to do it mesilf."
"If you only would!" said she, imploringly.
"But it's so much more appropriate for you to do it, Mrs. Lumsden.
If I do it, it'll same jist loike axin' the b'y's consint to marry
his mother."
"But I can't noways do it," said the widow. "If you love me you
might take that load offen me."
"I'll do it if it kills me, sthraight," and Brady marched into the
sitting-room, where Kike, exhausted by his slight exertion, was
resting in the shuck-bottom rocking-chair. Brady took a seat
opposite to him on a chair made out of a transformed barrel, and
reached up his iron gray hair uneasily. To his surprise Kike began
the conversation.
"Mr. Brady, you and mother a'n't acting very wisely, I think," said
Kike.
"Ye've noticed us, thin," said Brady, in terror.
"To be sure I have."
"Will, now, Koike, I'll till you fwat I'm thinkin'. Ye're pecooliar
loike; ye don't know how to sympathoize with other folks because
ye're livin' roight up in hiven all the toime."
"Why don't you live more in heaven?"
"Will, I think I'd throy if I had somebody to help me," said Brady,
adroitly. "But I'm one of the koind that's lonesome, and in doire
nade of company. I was jilted whin I was young, and I thought I'd
niver be a fool agin. But ye see ye ain't niver been in love in all
yer loife, and how kin ye fale fer others?"
"Maybe I have been in love, too," said Kike, a strange softness
coming into his voice.
"Did ye iver! Who'd a thought it?" And Brady made large eyes at
him. "Thin ye ought to fale fer the infarmities of others," he added
with some exultation.
"I do. That's why I said you and mother were very foolish."
"Fwy, now; there it is agin. Fwat do ye mane?"
"Why this. When I was here before I saw that you and mother had
taken a liking to each other. I thought by this time you'd have been
married. And I didn't see any reason why you shouldn't. But you're
as far away as ever. Here's mother's land that needs somebody to
take care of it. I am going away never to come back. If I could see
you married the only earthly care I have would be gone, and I could
die in peace, whenever and wherever the Lord calls me."
"God bliss ye, Koike," said Brady, wiping his eyes. "Fwy didn't you
say that before? Ye're a prophet and a angel, I belave. I wish I
was half as good, or a quarther. God bliss ye, me boy. I wish--I
wish ye would thry to live afwoile, I've been athrying' and your
mother's been athryin' to muster up courage to spake to ye about
this, and ye samed so hivenly we thought ye would be displased. Now,
will ye marry us before ye go?"
"I haven't got any license."
"Here 'tis, in me pocket."
"Where's a witness or two?"
"I hear some women-folks come to say good-bye to ye in the other
room."
"I'd like to marry you now," said Kike. "I must get away in an hour."
And he married them. They wept over him, and he made no concealment
that he was going away for the last time. He rode out from
Hissawachee never to come back. Not sad, but exultant, that he had
sacrificed everything for Christ and was soon to enter into the life
everlasting. For, faithless as we are in this day, let us never hide
from ourselves the fact that the faith of a martyr is indeed a
hundred fold more a source of joy than houses and lands, and wife and
children.
_CHAPTER XXXI._
KIKE.
To reach Peterborough Kike had to go through Morton's great diocese
of Jenkinsville Circuit. He could not ride far. Even so intemperate
a zealot as Kike admitted so much economy of force into his
calculations. He must save his strength in journeying or he could
not reach his circuit, much less preach when he got there. At the
close of his second day he inquired for a Methodist house at which to
stop, and was directed to the double-cabin of a "located"
preacher--one who had been a "travelling" preacher, but, having
married, was under the necessity of entangling himself with the
things of this world that he might get bread for his children. As he
rode up to the house Kike gladly noted the horses hitched to the
fence as an evidence that there must be a meeting in progress. He
was in Morton's circuit; who could tell that he should not meet him
here?
When Kike entered the house, Morton stood in the door between the two
rooms preaching, with the back of a "split-bottomed" chair for a
pulpit. For a moment the pale face of Kike, so evidently smitten
with death, appalled him; then it inspired him, and Morton never
spoke better on that favorite theme of the early Methodist
evangelist--the rest in heaven--than while drawing his inspiration
from the pallid countenance of his comrade.
"Ah! Kike!" he said, when the meeting was dismissed, "I wish you had
my body."
"What do you want to keep me out of heaven for, Mort? Let God have
his way," said Kike, smiling contentedly.
But long after Kike slept that night Morton lay awake. He could not
let the poor fellow go off alone. So in the morning he arranged with
the located brother to take his appointments for awhile and let him
ride one day with Kike.
"Ride ten or twenty if you want to," said the ex-preacher. "The
corn's laid by and I've got nothing to do, and I'm spoiling for a
preach."
Peterborough circuit lay off to the southeast of Hickory Ridge, and
Morton, persuaded that Kike was unfit to preach, endeavored to induce
him to turn aside and rest at Dr. Morgan's, only ten miles out of his
road.
"I tell you, Morton, I've got very little strength left. I cannot
spend it better than in trying to save souls. There's Peterborough
vacant three months since Brother Jones was first taken sick. I want
to make one or two rounds at least, preaching with all the heart I
have. Then I'll cease at once to work and live, and who knows but
that I may slay more in my death than in my life?"
But Morton feared that he would not be able to make one round. He
thought he had an overestimate of his strength, and that the final
break-down might come at any moment. So, on the morning of the
second day he refused to yield to Kike's entreaties to return. He
would see him safe among the members on Peterborough circuit, anyhow.
Now it happened that they missed the trail and wandered far out of
their way. It rained all the afternoon, and Kike got drenched in
crossing a stream. Then a chill came on, and Morton sought shelter.
He stopped at a cabin.
"Come in, come in, brethren," said the settler, as soon as he saw
them. "I 'low ye're preachers. Brother Goodwin I know. Heerd him
down at camp-meetin' last fall,--time conference met on the Ridge.
And this brother looks mis'rable. Got the shakes, I 'low? Your
name, brother, is--"
"Brother Lumsden," said Morton.
"Lumsden? Wy, that air's the very name of our school-miss, and she's
stayin' here jes' now. I kinder recolleck that you was sick up at
Dr. Morgan's, conference time. Hey?"
Morton looked bewildered.
"How far is Dr. Morgan's from here?"
"Nigh onto three quarter 'round the road, I 'low. Ain't it, Sister
Lumsden?" This last to Patty, who at that moment appeared from the
bedroom, and without answering the question, greeted Morton and Kike
with a cry of joy. Patty was "boarding round," and it was her time
to stay here.
"How did we get here? We aimed at Lanham's Ferry," said Morton,
bewildered.
"Tuck the wrong trail ten mile back, I 'low. You should've gone by
Hanks's Mills."
[Illustration: THE REUNION.]
Despite all protestations from the Methodist brother, Morton was
determined to take Kike to Dr. Morgan's. Kike was just sick enough
to be passive, and he suffered himself to be put back into the saddle
to ride to the doctor's. Patty, meanwhile, ran across the fields and
gave warning, so that Kike was summarily stowed away in the bed he
had occupied before. Thus do men try to run away from fate, and rush
into her arms in spite of themselves.
It did not require very great medical skill to understand what must
be the result of Kike's sickness.
"What is the matter with him, Doctor?" asked Morton, next morning.
"Absolute physical bankruptcy, sir," answered the physician, in his
abrupt manner. "There's not water enough left in the branch to run
the mill seven days. Wasted life, sir, wasted life. It is a pity
but you Methodists had a little moderation in your zeal."
Kike uneasily watched the door, hoping every minute that he might see
Nettie come in. But she did not come. He had wished to avoid her
father's house for fear of seeing her, but he could not bear to be
thus near her and not see her. Toward evening he called Patty to him.
"Lean down here!" he said.
Patty put her ear down that nobody might hear.
"Where's Nettie?" asked Kike.
"About the house, somewhere," said Patty.
"Why don't she come in to see me?"
"Not because she doesn't care for you," said Patty; "she seems to be
crying half the time."
Kike watched the door uneasily all that evening. But Nettie did not
come. To have come into Kike's room would have been to have revealed
her love for one who had never declared his love for her. The mobile
face of Nettie disclosed every emotion. No wonder she was fain to
keep away. And yet the desire to see him almost overcame her fear of
seeing him.
When the doctor came in to see Kike after breakfast the next morning,
the patient looked at him wistfully.
"Doctor Morgan, tell me the truth. Will I ever get up?"
"You can never get up, my dear boy," said the physician, huskily.
A smile of relief spread over Kike's face. At that word the awful
burden of his morbid sense of responsibility for the world's
salvation, the awful burden of a self-sacrifice that was terrible and
that must be life-long, slipped from his weary soul. There was then
nothing more to be done but to wait for the Master's release. He
shut his eyes, murmured a "Thank God!" and lay for minutes,
motionless. As the doctor made a movement to leave him, Kike opened
his eyes and looked at him eagerly.
"What is it, my boy?" said Morgan, stroking the straight black hair
off Kike's forehead, and petting him as though he were a child.
"What do you want?"
"Doctor----" said Kike, and then closed his eyes again.
"Don't be afraid to tell me what is in your heart, dear boy." The
tears were in the doctor's eyes.
"If you think it best--if you think it best, mind--I would like to
see Nettie."
"Of course it is best. I am glad you mentioned it. It will do her
good, poor soul."
"If you think it best----"
"Well?" said the doctor, seeing that Kike hesitated. "Speak out."
"All alone."
"Yes, you shall see her alone. That is best." The doctor's
utterance was choked as he hastened out.
Kike lay with eyes fixed on the door. It seemed a long time after
the doctor went before Nettie came in. It was only three
minutes--three minutes in which Nettie vainly strove to wipe away
tears that flowed faster than she could remove them. At last her
hand was on the latch. She gained a momentary self-control. But
when she opened the door and saw his emaciated face, and his black
eyes looking so eagerly for her, it was too much for the poor little
heart. The next moment she was on her knees by his bed, sobbing
violently. And Kike put out his feeble hands and drew the golden
head up close to his bosom, and spoke tenderer words than he had ever
heard spoken in his life. And then he closed his eyes, and for a
long time nothing was said. It came about after Nettie's tears were
spent that they talked of all that they had felt; of the life past
and of the immortal life to come. Hours went by and none intruded
upon this betrothal for eternity. Patty had waited without,
expecting to be called to take her place again by her cousin's
bedside. But she did not like to remain in conversation with Morton.
It could bring nothing but pain to them both. It occurred to her
that she had not seen her patient in Higgins's Hollow since Kike
came. She started immediately, glad to escape from the regrets
excited by the presence of Morton, and touched with remorse that she
had so long neglected a man on whose heart she thought she had been
able to make some religious impression.
_CHAPTER XXXII._
PINKEY'S DISCOVERY.
Pinkey was grum. He didn't like to be neglected, if he was a
highwayman. He had gotten out of bed and drawn on his boots.
"So you couldn't come to see me because there was a young preacher
sick at the doctor's?" he said, when Patty entered.
"The young preacher is my cousin," said Patty, "and he is going to
die."
"Your cousin," said Pinkey, softened a little. "But Goodwin is
there, too. I hope you didn't tell him anything about me?"
"Not a word."
"He ought to be grateful to you for saving his life."
"He seems to be."
"And people that are grateful are very likely to have other feelings
after awhile." There was a significance in Pinkey's manner that
Patty greatly disliked.
"You should not talk in that way. Mr. Goodwin is engaged to be
married."
"Is he? Do you mind telling me her name?"
"To a lady named Meacham, I believe."
"What?--Who?--To Ann Eliza? How did it happen that I have never
heard of that? To Ann Eliza! Confound her; what a witch that girl
is! I wish I could spoil her game this time. Goodwin's too good for
her and she sha'n't have him." Then he sat still as if in
meditation. After a moment he resumed: "Now, Miss Lumsden, you've
done one good turn for him, you must do another. I want to send a
note to this Ann Eliza."
"_I_ cannot take it," said Patty, trembling.
"You saved his life, and now you are unwilling to save him from a
worse evil. You ought not to refuse."
"You ought not to ask it. The circumstances of the case are
peculiar. I will not take it."
"Will you take a note to Goodwin?"
"Not on this business."
Pinkey was startled at the emotion she showed, and looked at her
inquiringly: "You were a schoolmate of Morton's--of Goodwin's, I
mean--and a body would think that you might be the identical
sweetheart that sent him adrift for joining the Methodists--and then
joined the Methodists herself, eh?"
Patty said nothing, but turned away.
"By the holy Moses," said Pinkey, in a half-soliloquy, "if that's the
case, I'll break the net of that fisherwoman this time or drown
myself a-trying."
Patty had intended to read the Bible to her patient, but her mind was
so disturbed that she thought best to say good-morning. Pinkey
roused himself from a reverie to call her back.
"Will you answer me one question?" he asked. "Does Goodwin want to
marry this girl? Is he happy about it, do you think?"
"I am sure he isn't," said Patty, reproaching herself in a moment
that she had said so much.
Patty made some kindly remark to Mrs. Barkins as she went out, walked
briskly to the fence, halted, looked off over the field a moment,
turned round and came back. When she re-entered Pinkey's room he had
put on his great false-whiskers and wolf-skin cap, and she trembled
at the transformation. He started, but said: "Don't be afraid, Miss
Lumsden, I am not meditating mischief. I will not hurt you,
certainly, and you must not betray me. Now, what is it?"
"Don't do anything wrong in this matter," said Patty. "Don't do
anything that'll lie heavy on your soul when you come to die.--I'm
afraid you'll do something wrong for Mr. Goodwin's sake, or--mine."
"No. But if I was able to ride I'd do one thunderin' good thing.
But I am too weak to do anything, plague on it!"
"I wish you would put these deceits in the fire and do right," she
said, indicating his disguises. "I am disappointed to see that you
are going back to your old ways."
He made no reply, but laid off his disguises and lay down on the bed,
exhausted. And Patty departed, grieved that all her labors were in
vain, while Pinkey only muttered to himself, "I'm too weak, confound
it!"
_CHAPTER XXXIII._
THE ALABASTER BOX BROKEN.
Not until Dr. Morgan came in at noon did any one venture to open the
door of Kike's room. He found the patient much better. But the
improvement could not be permanent, the sedative of mental rest and
the tonic of joy had come too late.
"Morton," said Kike, "I want Dolly to do me one more service. Nettie
will explain to you what it is."
After a talk with Nettie, Morton rode Dolly away, leading Kike's
horse with him. The doctor thought he could guess what Morton went
for, but, even in melancholy circumstances, lovers, like children,
are fond of having secrets, and he did not try to penetrate that
which it gave Kike and Nettie pleasure to keep to themselves. At ten
o'clock that night Morton came back without Kike's horse.
"Did you get it?" whispered Kike, who had grown visibly weaker.
Morton nodded.
"And you sent the message?"
"Yes."
Kike gave Nettie a look of pleasure, and then sank into a satisfied
sleep, while Morton proceeded to relate to Doctor Morgan and Patty
that he had seen in the moonlight a notorious highwayman. "His
nickname is Pinkey; nobody knows who he is or where he comes from or
goes to. He got a hard blow in a fight with the police force of the
camp meeting. It's a wonder it didn't break his head. I searched
for him everywhere, but he had effectually disappeared. If I had
been armed to-night I should have tried to arrest him, for he was
alone."
Patty and the doctor exchanged looks.
"Our patient, Patty."
But Patty did not say a word.
"You must have got that information through him!" said Morton, with
surprise.
But Patty only kept still.
"I won't ask you any questions, but what if I had killed my
deliverer! Strange that he should be the bearer of a message to me,
though. I should rather expect him to kill me than to save me."
Patty wondered that Pinkey had ventured away while yet so weak, and
found in herself the flutterings of a hope for which she knew there
was no satisfactory ground.
When Saturday morning came, Kike was sinking. "Doctor Morgan," he
said, "do not leave me long. Nettie and I want to be married before
I die."
"But the license?" said the doctor, affecting not to suspect Kike's
secret.
"Morton got it the other day. And I am looking for my mother to-day.
I don't want to be married till she comes. Morton took my horse and
sent for her."
Saturday passed and Kike's mother had not arrived. On Sunday morning
he was almost past speaking. Nettie had gone out of the room, and
Kike was apparently asleep.
"Splendid life wasted," said the doctor, sadly, to Morton, pointing
to the dying man.
"Yes, indeed. What a pity he had no care for himself," answered
Morton.
"Patty," said Kike, opening his eyes, "the Bible."
Patty got the Bible.
"Read in the twenty-sixth of Matthew, from the seventh verse to the
thirteenth, inclusive," Kike spoke as if he were announcing a text.
Then, when Patty was about to read, he said: "Stop. Call Nettie."
When Nettie came he nodded to Patty, and she read all about the
alabaster box of ointment, very precious, that was broken over the
head of Jesus, and the complaint that it was wasted, with the Lord's
reply.
"You are right, my dear boy," said Doctor Morgan, with effusion,
"what is spent for love is never wasted. It is a very precious box
of ointment that you have broken upon Christ's head, my son. The
Lord will not forget it."
When Kike's mother and Brady rode up to the door on Sunday morning,
the people had already begun to gather in crowds, drawn by the
expectation that Morton would preach in the Hickory Ridge church.
Hearing that Kike, whose piety was famous all the country over, was
dying, they filled Doctor Morgan's house and yard, sitting in sad,
silent groups on the fences and door-steps, and standing in the shade
of the yard trees. As the dying preacher's mother passed through,
the crowd of country people fell back and looked reverently at her.
Kike was already far gone. He was barely able to greet his mother
and the good-hearted Brady, whose demonstrative Irish grief knew no
bounds. Then Kike and Nettie were married, amidst the tears of all.
This sort of a wedding is more hopelessly melancholy than a funeral.
After the marriage Nettie knelt by Kike's side, and he rallied for a
moment and solemnly pronounced a benediction on her. Then he lifted
up his hands, crying faintly, "O Lord! I have kept back nothing.
Amen."
His hands dropped upon the head of Nettie. The people had crowded
into the hall and stood at the windows. For awhile all thought him
dead.
A white pigeon flew in at one of the windows and lighted upon the bed
of the dying man. The early Western people believed in marvels, and
Kike was to them a saint. At sight of the snow-white dove pluming
itself upon his breast they all started back. Was it a heavenly
visitant? Kike opened his eyes and gazed upon the dove a moment.
Then he looked significantly at Nettie, then at the people. The dove
plumed itself a moment longer, looked round on the people out of its
mute and gentle eyes, then flitted out of the window again and
disappeared in the sunlight. A smile overspread the dying man's
face, he clasped his hands upon his bosom, and it was a full minute
before anybody discovered that the pure, heroic spirit of Hezekiah
Lumsden had gone to its rest.
He had requested that no name should be placed over his grave. "Let
God have any glory that may come from my labors, and let everybody
but Nettie forget me," he said. But Doctor Morgan had a slab of the
common blue limestone of the hills--marble was not to be had--cut out
for a headstone. The device upon it was a dove, the only
inscription: "An alabaster box of very precious ointment."
Death is not always matter for grief. If you have ever beheld a rich
sunset from the summit of a lofty mountain, you will remember how the
world was transfigured before you in the glory of resplendent light,
and how, long after the light had faded from the cloud-drapery, and
long after the hills had begun to lose themselves in the abyss of
darkness, there lingered a glory in the western horizon--a joyous
memory of the splendid pomp of the evening. Even so the glory of
Kike's dying made all who saw it feel like those who have witnessed a
sublime spectacle, which they may never see again. The memory of it
lingered with them like the long-lingering glow behind the western
mountains. Sorry that the suffering life had ended in peace, one
could not be; and never did stormy day find more placid sunset than
his. Even Nettie had never felt that he belonged to her. When he
was gone she was as one whom an angel of God had embraced. She
regretted his absence, but rejoiced in the memory of his love; and
she had not entertained any hopes that could be disappointed.
The only commemoration his name received was in the conference
minutes, where, like other such heroes, he was curtly embalmed in the
usual four lines:
"Hezekiah Lumsden was a man of God, who freely gave up his life for
his work. He was tireless in labor, patient in suffering, bold in
rebuking sin, holy in life and conversation, and triumphant in death."
The early Methodists had no time for eulogies. A handful of earth, a
few hurried words of tribute, and the bugle called to the battle.
The man who died was at rest, the men who staid had the more work to
do.
NOTE. In the striking incident of the dove lighting upon Kike's bed,
I have followed strictly the statement of eye-witnesses.--E.E.
_CHAPTER XXXIV._
THE BROTHERS.
Patty had received, by the hand of Brady, a letter from her father,
asking her to come home. Do not think that Captain Lumsden wrote
penitently and asked Patty's forgiveness. Captain Lumsden never did
anything otherwise than meanly. He wrote that he was now bedridden
with rheumatism, and it seemed hard that he should be forsaken by his
oldest daughter, who ought to be the stay of his declining years. He
did not understand how Patty could pretend to be so religious and yet
leave him to suffer without the comfort of her presence. The other
children were young, and the house was in hopeless confusion. If the
Methodists had not quite turned her heart away from her poor
afflicted father, she would come at once and help him in his
troubles. He was ready to forgive the past, and as for her religion,
if she did not trouble him with it, she could do as she pleased. He
did not think much of a religion that set a daughter against her
father, though.
Patty was too much rejoiced at the open door that it set before her
to feel the sting very keenly. There was another pain that had grown
worse with every day she had spent with Morton. Beside her own
sorrow she felt for him. There was a strange restlessness in his
eyes, an eager and vacillating activity in what he was doing, that
indicated how fearfully the tempest raged within. For Morton's old
desperation was upon him, and Patty was in terror for the result.
About the time of Kike's death the dove settled upon his soul also.
He had mastered himself, and the restless wildness had given place to
a look of constraint and suffering that was less alarming but hardly
less distressing to Patty, who had also the agony of hiding her own
agony. But the disappearance of Pinkey had awakened some hope in
her. Not one jot of this trembling hopefulness did she dare impart
to Morton, who for his part had but one consolation--he would throw
away his life in the battle, as Kike had done before him.
So eager was Patty to leave her school now and hasten to her father,
that she could not endure to stay the weeks that were necessary to
complete her term. She had canvassed with Doctor Morgan the
possibility of getting some one to take her place, and both had
concluded that there was no one available, Miss Jane Morgan being too
much out of health. But to their surprise Nettie offered her
services. She had not been of much more use in the world than a
humming-bird, she said, and now it seemed to her that Kike would be
better pleased that she should make herself useful.
Thus released, Patty started home immediately, and Morton, who could
not reach the distant part of his circuit, upon which his supply was
now preaching, in time to resume his work at once, concluded to set
out for Hissawachee also, that he might see how his parents fared.
But he concealed his purpose from Patty, who departed in company with
Brady and his wife. Morton would not trust himself in her society
longer. He therefore rode round by a circuitous way, and, thanks to
Dolly, reached Hissawachee before them.
I may not describe the enthusiasm with which Morton was received at
home. Scarcely had he kissed his mother and shaken hands with his
father, who was surprised that none of his dolorous predictions had
been fulfilled, and greeted young Henry, now shooting up into
manhood, when his mother whispered to him that his brother Lewis was
alive and had come home.
"What! Lewis alive?" exclaimed Morton, "I thought he was killed in
Pittsburg ten years ago."
"That was a false report. He had been doing badly, and he did not
want to return, and so he let us believe him dead. But now he has
come back and he is afraid you will not receive him kindly. I
suppose he thinks because you are a preacher you will be hard on his
evil ways. But you won't be too hard, will you?"
"I? God knows I have been too great a sinner myself for that. Where
is Lew? I can just remember how he used to whittle boats for me when
I was a little boy. I remember the morning he ran off, and how after
that you always wanted to move West. Poor Lew! Where has he gone?"
His mother opened the door of the little bed-room and led out the
brother.
"What! Burchard?" cried Morton. "What does this mean? Are you
Lewis Goodwin?"
[Illustration: THE BROTHERS.]
"I am!"
"That's why you gave me back my horse and gun when you found out who
I was. That's how you saved me that day at Brewer's Hole. And
that's why you warned me at Salt Fork and sent me that other warning.
Well, Lewis, I would be glad to see you anyhow, but I ought to be not
only glad as a brother, but glad that I can thank you for saving my
life."
"But I've been a worse man than you think, Mort."
"What of that? God forgives, and I am sure that it is not for such a
sinner as I am to condemn you. If you knew what desperate thoughts
have tempted me in the last week you would know how much I am your
brother."
Just here Brady knocked at the door and pushed it open, with a
"Howdy, Misses Goodwin? Howdy, Mr. Goodwin? and, Moirton, howdy do?"
"This is my brother Lewis, Mr. Brady. We thought he was dead."
"Heigh-ho! The prodigal's come back agin, eh? Mrs. Goodwin, I
congratilate ye."
And then Mrs. Brady was introduced to Lewis. Patty, who stood
behind, came forward, and Morton said: "Miss Lumsden, my brother
Lewis."
"You needn't introduce her," said Lewis. "She knows me already. If
it hadn't been for her I might have been dead, and in perdition, I
suppose.
"Why, how's that?" asked Morton, bewildered.
"She nursed me in sickness, and read the parable of the Prodigal Son,
and told me that it was my mother's favorite chapter."
"So it is," said Mrs. Goodwin; "I've read it every day for years.
But how did you know that, Patty?"
"Why," said Lewis, "she said that one woman knew how another woman
felt. But you don't know how good Miss Lumsden is. She did not know
me as Lewis Goodwin or Burchard, but in quite a different character.
I suppose I'd as well make a clean breast of it, Mort, at once. Then
there'll be no surprises afterward. And if you hate me when you know
it all, I can't help it." With that he stepped into the bedroom and
came forth with long beard and wolf-skin cap.
"What! Pinkey?" said Morton, with horror.
"The Pinkey that you told that big preacher to knock down, and then
hunted all over the country to find."
Seeing Morton's pained expression at this discovery of his brother's
bad character, Patty added adroitly: "The Pinkey that saved your
life, Morton."
Morton got up and stood before his brother. "Give me your hand
again, Lewis. I am so glad you came home at last. God bless you."
Lewis sat down and rested his head in his hands. "I have been a very
wicked man, Morton, but I never committed a murder. I am guilty of
complicity. I got tangled in the net of Micajah Harp's band. I
helped them because they had a hold on me, and I was too weak to risk
the consequences of breaking with them. That complicity has spoiled
all my life. But the crimes they laid on Pinkey were mostly
committed by others. Pinkey was a sort of ghost at whose doors all
sins were laid."
"I must hurry home," said Patty. "I only stopped to shake hands,"
and she rose to go.
"Miss Lumsden," said Lewis, "you wanted me to destroy these lies.
You shall have them to do what you like with. I wish you could take
my sins, too."
Patty put the disguises into the fire. "Only God can take your
sins," she said.
"Even he can't make me forget them," said Lewis, with bitterness.
Patty went home in anxiety. Lewis Goodwin seemed to have forgotten
the resolution he had made as Pinkey to save Morton from Ann Eliza.
But Patty went home bravely and let thoughts of present duty crowd
out thoughts of possible happiness. She bore the peculiar paternal
greetings of her father; she installed herself at once, and began,
like a good genius, to evolve order out of chaos. By the time
evening arrived the place had come to know its mistress again.
CHAPTER XXXV.
PINKEY AND ANN ELIZA.
That evening, after dark, Morton and his Brother Lewis strolled into
the woods together. It was not safe for Lewis to walk about in the
day time. The law was on one side and the vengeance of Micajah
Harp's band, perhaps, on the other. But in the twilight he told
Morton something which interested the latter greatly, and which
increased his gratitude to Lewis. That you may understand what this
communication was, I must go back to an event that happened the week
before--to the very last adventure that Lewis Goodwin had in his
character of Pinkey.
Ann Eliza Meacham had been disappointed. She had ridden ten miles to
Mount Tabor Church, one of Morton's principal appointments. No doubt
Ann Eliza persuaded herself--she never had any trouble in persuading
herself--that zeal for religious worship was the motive that impelled
her to ride so far to church. But why, then, did she wish she had
not come, when instead of the fine form and wavy locks of Brother
Goodwin, she found in the pulpit only the located brother who was
supplying his place in his absence at Kike's bedside? Why did she
not go on to the afternoon appointment as she had intended? Certain
it is that when Ann Eliza left that little log church--called Mount
Tabor because it was built in a hollow, perhaps--she felt
unaccountably depressed. She considered it a spiritual struggle, a
veritable hand to hand conflict with Satan. She told the brethren
and sisters that she must return home, she even declined to stay to
dinner. She led the horse up to a log and sprang into the saddle,
riding away toward home as rapidly as the awkward old natural pacer
would carry her. She was vexed that Morton should stay away from his
appointments on this part of his circuit to see anybody die. He
might know that it would be a disappointment to her. She satisfied
herself, however, by picturing to her own imagination the
half-coldness with which she would treat Brother Goodwin when she
should meet him. She inly rehearsed the scene. But with most people
there is a more secret self, kept secret even from themselves. And
in her more secret self, Ann Eliza knew that she would not dare treat
Brother Goodwin coolly. She had a sense of insecurity in her hold
upon him.
Riding thus through the great forests of beech and maple Ann Eliza
had reached Cherry Run, only half a mile from her aunt's house, and
the old horse, scenting the liberty and green grass of the pasture
ahead of him, had quickened his pace after crossing the "run," when
what should she see ahead but a man in wolf-skin cap and long
whiskers. She had heard of Pinkey, the highwayman, and surely this
must be he. Her heart fluttered, she reined her horse, and the
highwayman advanced.
"I haven't anything to give you. What do you want?"
"I don't want anything but to persuade you to do your duty," he said,
seating himself by the side of the trail on a stump.
[Illustration: AN ACCUSING MEMORY.]
"Let me go on," said Miss Meacham, frightened, starting her horse.
"Not yet," said Pinkey, seizing the bridle, "I want to talk to you."
And he sat down again, holding fast to her bridle-rein.
"What is it?" asked Ann Eliza, subdued by a sense of helplessness.
"Do you think, Sister Meacham," he said in a canting tone, "that you
are doing just right? Is not there something in your life that is
wrong? With all your praying, and singing, and shouting, you are a
wicked woman."
Ann Eliza's resentment now took fire. "Who are you, that talk in
this way? You are a robber, and you know it! If you don't repent
you will be lost! Seek religion now. You will soon sin away your
day of grace, and what an awful eternity--"
Miss Meacham had fallen into this hortatory vein, partly because it
was habitual with her, and consequently easier in a moment of
confusion than any other, and partly because it was her forte and she
thought that these earnest and pathetic exhortations were her best
weapons. But when she reached the words "awful eternity," Pinkey
cried out sneeringly:
"Hold up, Ann Eliza! You don't run over me that way. I'm bad
enough, God knows, and I'm afraid I shall find my way to hell some
day. But if I do I expect to give you a civil good morning on my
arrival, or welcome you if you get there after I do. You see I know
all about you, and it's no use for you to glory-hallelujah me."
Ann Eliza did not think of anything appropriate to the occasion, and
so she remained silent.
"I hear you have got young Goodwin on your hooks, now, and that you
mean to marry him against his will. Is that so?"
"No, it isn't. He proposed to me himself."
"O, yes! I suppose he did. You made him!"
"I didn't."
"I suppose not. You never did. Not even in Pennsylvania. How about
young Harlow? Who made him?"
Ann Eliza changed color. "Who are you?" she asked.
"And that fellow with dark hair, what's his name? The one you danced
with down at Stevens's one night."
"What do you bring up all my old sins for?" asked Ann Eliza, weeping.
"You know I have repented of all of them, and now that I am trying to
lead a new life, and now that God has forgiven my sins and let me see
the light of his reconciled countenance----"
"Stop, Ann Eliza," broke out Pinkey. "You sha'n't glory-hallelujah
me in that style, confound you! Maybe God has forgiven you for
driving Harlow to drink himself into tremens and the grave, and for
sending that other fellow to the devil, and for that other thing, you
know. You wouldn't like me to mention it. You've got a very pretty
face, Ann Eliza,--you know you have. But Brother Goodwin don't love
you. You entangled him; you know you did. Has God forgiven you for
that, yet? Don't you think you'd better go to the mourners' bench
next time yourself, instead of talking to the mourners as if you were
an angel? Come, Ann Eliza, look at yourself and see if you can sing
glory-hallelujah. Hey?"
"Let me go," plead the young woman, in terror.
"Not yet, you angelic creature. Now that I come to think of it,
piety suits your style of feature. Ann Eliza, I want to ask you one
question before we part, to meet down below, perhaps. If you are so
pious, why can't you be honest? Why can't you tell Preacher Goodwin
what you left Pennsylvania for? Why the devil don't you let him know
beforehand what sort of a horse he's getting when he invests in you?
Is it pious to cheat a man into marrying you, when you know he
wouldn't do it if he knew the whole truth? Come now, you talk a good
deal about the 'bar of God,' what do you think will become of such a
swindle as you are, at the bar of God?"
"You are a wicked man," cried she, "to bring up the sins that I have
put behind my back. Why should I talk with--with Brother Goodwin or
anybody about them?"
For Ann Eliza always quieted her conscience by reasoning that God's
forgiveness had made the unpleasant facts of her life as though they
were not. It was very unpleasant, when she had put down her memory
entirely upon certain points, to have it march up to her from
without, wearing a wolf-skin cap and false whiskers, and speaking
about the most disagreeable subjects.
"Ann Eliza, I thought maybe you had a conscience, but you don't seem
to have any. You are totally depraved, I believe, if you do love to
sing and shout and pray. Now, when a preacher cannot get a man to be
good by talking at his conscience, he talks damnation to him. But
you think you have managed to get round on the blind side of God, and
I don't suppose you are afraid of hell itself. So, as conscience and
perdition won't touch you, I'll try something else. You are going to
write a note to Preacher Goodwin and let him off. I am going to
carry it."
"I won't write any such a note, if you shoot me!"
"You aren't afraid of gunpowder. You think you'd sail into heaven
straight, by virtue of your experiences. I am not going to shoot
you, but here is a pencil and a piece of paper. You may write to
Goodwin, or I shall. If I write I will put down a truthful history
of all Ann Eliza Meacham's life, and I shall be quite particular to
tell him why you left Pennsylvania and came out here to evangelize
the wilderness, and play the mischief with your heavenly blue eyes.
But, if you write, I'll keep still."
"I'll write, then," she said, in trepidation.
"You'll write now, honey," replied her mysterious tormentor, leading
the horse up to the stump.
Ann Eliza dismounted, sat down and took the pencil. Her ingenious
mind immediately set itself to devising some way by which she might
satisfy the man who was so strangely acquainted with her life, and
yet keep a sort of hold upon the young preacher. But the man stood
behind her and said, as she began, "Now write what I say. I don't
care how you open. Call him any sweet name you please. But you'd
better say 'Dear Sir.'"
Ann Eliza wrote: "Dear Sir."
"Now say: 'The engagement between us is broken off. It is my fault,
not yours.'"
"I won't write that."
"Yes, you will, my pious friend. Now, Ann Eliza, you've got a nice
face; when a man once gets in love with you he can't quite get out.
I suppose I will feel tender toward you when we meet to part no more,
down below. I was in love with you once."
"Who are you?"
"O, that don't matter! I was going to say that if I hadn't been in
love with your blue eyes once I wouldn't have taken the trouble to
come forty miles to get you to write this letter. I was only a mile
away from Brother Goodwin, as you call him, when I heard that you had
victimized him. I could have sent him a note. I came over here to
save you from the ruin you deserve. I would have told him more than
the people in Pennsylvania ever knew. Come, my dear, scribble away
as I say, or I will tell him and everybody else what will take the
music out of your love-feast speeches in all this country."
With a tremulous hand Ann Eliza wrote, reflecting that she could send
another note after this and tell Brother Goodwin that a highwayman
who entertained an insane love for her had met her in a lonely spot
and extorted this from her. She handed the note to Pinkey.
"Now, Ann Eliza, you'd better ask God to forgive this sin, too. You
may pray and shout till you die. I'll never say anything--unless you
open communication with preacher Goodwin again. Do that, and I'll
blow you sky-high."
"You are cruel, and wicked, and mean, and--"
"Come, Ann Eliza, you used to call me sweeter names than that, and
you don't look half so fascinating when you're mad as when you are
talking heavenly. Good by, Miss Meacham." And with that Pinkey went
into a thicket and brought forth his own horse and rode away, not on
the road but through the woods.
If Ann Eliza could have guessed which one of her many lovers this
might be she would have set about forming some plan for circumventing
him. But the mystery was too much for her. She sincerely loved
Morton, and the bitter cup she had given to others had now come back
to her own lips. And with it came a little humility. She could not
again forget her early sins so totally. She looked to see them start
out of the bushes by the wayside at her.
After this recital it is not necessary that I should tell you what
Lewis Goodwin told his brother that night as they strolled in the
woods.
At midnight Lewis left home, where he could not stay longer with
safety. The war with Great Britain had broken out and he joined the
army at Chillicothe under his own name, which was his best disguise.
He was wounded at Lundy's Lane, and wrote home that he was trying to
wipe the stain off his name. He afterward moved West and led an
honest life, but the memory of his wild youth never ceased to give
him pain. Indeed nothing is so dangerous to a reformed sinner as
forgetfulness.
_CHAPTER XXXVI._
GETTING THE ANSWER.
When Patty went down to strain the milk on the morning after her
return, the hope of some deliverance through Lewis Goodwin had
well-nigh died out. If he had had anything to communicate, Morton
would not have delayed so long to come to see her. But, standing
there as of old, in the moss-covered spring-house, she was, in spite
of herself, dreaming dreams of Morton, and wondering whether she
could have misunderstood the hint that Lewis Goodwin, while he was
yet Pinkey, had dropped. By the time the first crock was filled with
milk and adjusted to its place in the cold current, she had recalled
that morning of nearly three years before, when she had resolved to
forsake father and mother and cleave to Morton; by the time the
second crock had been neatly covered with its clean block she thought
she could almost hear him, as she had heard him singing on that
morning:
"Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear,
Thou'rt to love and heaven sae dear,
Nocht of ill may come thee near,
My bonnie dearie."
Both she and Morton had long since, in accordance with the Book of
Discipline, given up "singing those songs that do not tend to the
glory of God," but she felt a longing to hear Morton's voice again,
assuring her of his strong protection, as it had on that morning
three years ago. Meanwhile, she had filled all the crocks, and now
turned to pass out of the low door when she saw, standing there as he
had stood on that other morning, Morton Goodwin. He was more manly,
more self-contained, than then. Years of discipline had ripened them
both. He stepped back and let her emerge into the light; he handed
her that note which Pinkey had dictated to Ann Eliza, and which Patty
read:
"REV. MORTON GOODWIN:
"Dear Sir--The engagement between us is broken off. It is my fault
and not yours.
"ANN E. MEACHAM."
"It must have cost her a great deal," said Patty, in pity. Morton
loved her better for her first unselfish thought.
[Illustration: AT THE SPRING-HOUSE AGAIN.]
He told her frankly the history of the engagement; and then he and
Patty sat and talked in a happiness so great that it made them quiet,
until some one came to call her, when Morton walked up to the house
to renew his acquaintance with the invalid and mollified Captain
Lumsden.
"Faix, Moirton," said Brady, afterward, when he came to understand
how matters stood, "you've got the answer in the book. It's quare
enough. Now, 'one and one is two' is aisy enough, but 'one and one
is one' makes the hardest sum iver given to anybody. You've got it,
and I'm glad of it. May ye niver conjugate the varb 'to love'
anyways excipt prisent tinse, indicative mood, first parson, plural
number, 'we love.' I don't keer ef ye add the futur' tinse, and say,
'we will love,' nor ef ye put in the parfect and say, 'we have
loved,' but may ye always stick fast to first parson, plural number,
prisint tinse, indicative mood, active v'ice!"
Morton returned to Jenkinsville circuit in some trepidation. He
feared that the old brethren would blame him more than ever. But
this time he found himself the object of much sympathy. Ann Eliza
had forestalled all gossip by renewing her engagement with the very
willing Bob Holston, who chuckled a great deal to think how he had
"cut out" the preacher, after all. And when Brother Magruder came to
understand that he had not understood Morton's case at all, and to
understand that he never should be able to understand it, he thought
to atone for any mistake he might have made by advising the bishop to
send Brother Goodwin to the circuit that included Hissawachee. And
Morton liked the appointment better than Magruder had expected.
Instead of living with his mother, as became a dutiful son, he soon
installed himself for the year at the house of Captain Lumsden, in
the double capacity of general supervisor of the moribund man's
affairs and son-in-law.
There rise before me, as I write these last lines, visions of
circuits and stations of which Morton was afterward the
preacher-in-charge, and of districts of which he came to be presiding
elder. Are not all of these written in the Book of the Minutes of
the Conferences? But the silent and unobtrusive heroism of Patty and
her brave and life-long sacrifices are recorded nowhere but in the
Book of God's Remembrance.
THE END.
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