Chapter II: Part 2

“I hadn’t a thing in the world agin him,” the old man went on without noticing the interruption; “’twas only that two other churches was a-runnin’ opposition to us and their preachers were young men and were drawing off our young people; I thought if we had a young man to preach for us we might get ’em all back again. ’Twas zeal that made me do it, misguided zeal; you see I hadn’t studied it out about religious secks then as I have since.”

But we need not give a full report of that meeting. It was not conducted by parliamentary rules, but its enactments went into effect next day.

Grover Cleveland and gran’daddy, side by side in the old farm wagon, took the road while it was still so dark that they must needs give the mules the rein. But there were other early risers in that community, for by sunrise Campbell and Greenlee and Brevard and others were playing away with hammer and trowel upon the Ledbetter cabin. They repaired the roof, they cemented into place the loose stones of the fireplace, and topped out the fallen chimney; between the logs they spatted clay—taken from the road in front but good as imperial Cæsar’s—and stopped the cracks “to keep the wind away.” They propped the leaning cow shed and before noon an occupant, “mighty nigh all Jersey,” was chewing her cud, while over her head was stored fodder sufficient to keep her chewing till pastures were green. Her neighbour on the other side of a partition was a Kentucky-bred roan mare, which but a few hours ago had been the property of Captain Campbell; he had appeared upon the scene riding a gray and leading the roan all saddled and ready for the road and had made her comfortable in this new home.

In durance a heterogeneous collection of chickens were making one another’s acquaintance over a collation of corn, the only unsociable one among them being Aunt Dicey’s old black hen; her powers were all employed in an effort to rid herself of a streamer of red flannel which the old lady had tied to her tail to discourage her sitting propensities.

Within doors the Christmas tree with its unshed mask still monopolized one room, but in the other cheerful hands worked a metamorphosis. Cobwebs, litter, and soil disappeared, and furniture, country made but adapted to its purpose, took its place. Upon the tough and rough old chestnut floor they levelled a bed of hay and, so that it was soft as pillows to the tread, what matter that each breadth of the rag carpet they spread upon it showed different tones of homemade dyes and the weave of a different loom? In one corner they corded together a bedstead in the good old fashion of their great-grandparents, and the bed they reared upon it was a marvel. There was a mattress of oat straw and one of corn-husks, a bed of stripped hens’ feathers and one of geese feathers, and bolsters and pillows in numbers sufficient to accommodate a family of hydras. Aunt Dicey furnished blankets spun and woven by her own hands from wool of her own shearing, and among a collection of quilts was a wonderful one of old Mis’ Jimson’s piecing. It contained, by actual count, three thousand one hundred and seventy-nine pieces and she called it “The Foundation of the Great Deep.” When at last that bed was made up, the turkey red cherubs on the pillow-shams (almost the only shams that modernity had introduced among those artless people) lay very close to the rafters. Its makers viewed it with admiration and complacency, but Deacon Higgins looked dubious:

“They’re a tollable spry old couple,” he said, “but”—and he wheeled a barrel of potatoes alongside as a suggestion of means of getting into bed.

It would take a readier pen than mine to enumerate and describe all the gifts that were brought to that plenishing. The cupboard door refused to close upon the array of ham, hominy, and honey (the three h’s of the mountaineer), the salt-rising bread, and the soda biscuit.

Major Greenlee was a carpenter. For half a day he planed, sawed, and hammered in a corner and when his work took form it was a capacious meal bin. When bagfuls of corn meal had been emptied into it till it was “plumb full” they all surveyed it with satisfaction and “reckoned the gourd wouldn’t scrape the bottom of that before spring.”

All day long pedestrians and vehicles had been coming and going before the old house as never before in its history and yet when the sun had set the sky on fire behind the Bald, the gathered people were still awaiting an arrival.

They scanned a mountain road above them, visible only in short lengths where it emerged from the forests into the clearings.

“I see ’em!” a far-sighted old man shouted with a boy’s enthusiasm, “I see Colonel Ledbetter’s white mules! Now they’re behind May’s Peak, you’ll see ’em come out on t’other side.”

And so they watched them from point to point and every time they came into view a squad ran in to re-inspect the cabin and see that every thing was in order.

At last the white mules stood before the door. Colonel Ledbetter and Grover Cleveland sat on the front seat of the wagon, and on chairs behind them sat Preacher Carr and his wife.

Strong hands assisted the wife to alight, but the preacher sprang over the wheel to greet his people. They crowded round him and the young cried, “Merry Christmas,” and the old said, “Welcome Home.”

They seated the pair beside their old beloved fireside. They were eight years older than when they had left it. The preacher had “held his own,” but when they took off the good wife’s bonnet her hair showed very white. A tender hand smoothed it.

“We are growing old,” said the preacher, but they told him that the gospel that he preached and lived would never grow old. They told him too of repairs to be made in the old church; it would look just as it used to look but over the door there would be the inscription:

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all
thy soul and with all thy mind and thy neighbour as thyself.

The tree was stripped; the white mules were headed homeward; old man Ledbetter gathered up his reins and a tired little lad nestled close to his side.

“Wake up, Grover Cleveland, wake up! Don’t you hear ’em singing! Jine in, Grover Cleveland, jine in!”

Within the cabin a chorus swelled; without, one thin little voice piped free and clear:

“Crown Him, crown Him, crown Him, Lord of all.”

III

UNCONSCIOUS MENTALITY

What their acquaintances called an “understanding,” existed between Arsula Jordan and Thaddeus Garrett and he had taken her with him up on the mountain to consult Dan Cutter about hauling the timber for a new house. Their horse, Beauregard, having taken the road leisurely, eleven o’clock found them winding along the downhill road but still two miles from their homes in the village.

On their right the Junaluska swirled between its wooded banks. The moon was on their right too, throwing shadows across their road, dense or skeleton, as evergreen or deciduous trees obstructed its radiance.

“I think I see things a-skulkin’ ’cross the road,” said Arsula, crowding Thad more closely; “do you reckon any wild-cats could have come down off the Bald?”

“It’s only the shadders a-shiftin’ theirselves when the wind bends the trees; I didn’t reckon you was that scary, Suly; why there’s nothin’ to be scairt of; _I’m_ here Suly! And _I_ ain’t scairt of anything that travels these yer mountings—leastwise not of anything in flesh and blood.”

“Well I ain’t scart of anything that _isn’t_ flesh and blood.”

“_You say you ain’t?_”

“La, no; I don’t b’lieve in ha’nts.”

“_You say you don’t?_”

“No I don’t; I b’lieve that when a body’s once plumb dead and buried in the ground, he ain’t goin’ to show hisself on the top side of the earth again till judgment day.

“Oh lawdy!” the ejaculation was only aspirated, and Thad brought Beauregard to a stand without speaking to him. They were at a bend of the road where it crossed the river. Above the ford, dark hemlocks arched the stream and the foot log lay in their dense shadow. Upon it something moved like a pale gray cloud, not outlined against the blackness, but softly blending with it.

Beauregard saw it too and pricked up his ears. Thad wound the reins round his right hand and even brought his left into action though with a soft apology to Suly:

“Looks like I might want all the hands I’ve got to hold him. You take a tight holt of me,” he counselled under his breath and, as the spectre neared the farther side, proceeded chidingly: “It’s powerful triflin’, Suly, to go to talkin’ ’bout ha’nts when you’re out in the woods at night—it’s tollable sure to call ’em up”—a rustling among the dry leaves under the bushes changed the course of his remarks.

“If the durn thing ’ud move a little faster, I’d drive into the water and stand a spell; witches and ha’nts and all them things is shy of water.” There was a closer scurry among the leaves and at a twitch of the reins Beauregard drew them into the ford and stopped there in obedience to another silent signal.

Above the rustling they heard a panting breath, and another ghost, a nimbler one, was on the log, a light, flying shadow against the dark, stationary ones.

“Sho,” said Suly, “it’s only a dog.” She started to whistle but Thad clapped his hand over her mouth:

“For gracious sake, Suly, don’t do that—it’s awful darin’.”

She was gurgling and spurting in an effort to regain her right of free speech when together the apparitions seemed to slip off the log upon the other side.

“I tell you it’s Colonel Ledbetter’s Dixie,” she cried as a dog frisked out into the moonlight; “and sure’s you’re born that’s little Grover Cleveland! and he’s walkin’ in his sleep again—poor little soul! Git up Beau!” She clutched at the reins, but Thad caught her hand.

“Poor little soul!” she repeated. “His gran’daddy’d go plumb distracted if he knowed that little soul was out on the mountings this time o’ night; nothin’ on him either, I reckon, but just his little shirt! Thad, if you don’t drive on right now, I’ll jump into the crick, I vow I will! I want to get my hands on him—poor little soul!”

When Beauregard trailed out upon the other side Suly leaped to the ground. “I want to see how he looks when he’s took this-a-way.”

The boy was several rods ahead trudging abstractedly along, his little, faded, blue-checked shirt playing about his knees, his bare feet taking the road unhesitatingly, his half-closed eyes looking neither right nor left nor seemingly before him. Curious, pitiful, Arsula walked beside him for a few steps in silence. He didn’t hear her nor the creak of the wagon behind her. His physical senses were in suspension. He was intently acting out some dream that dominated his little brain.

Head and tail adroop, Dixie was following so closely that now and again his muzzle touched the little loosely hanging hand. He seemed to take no more notice of Arsula as she came abreast than did his child master; but _he_ was not walking in his sleep, for, though his dejected head never swerved, his eyes turned sidewise in their sockets and his lips wrinkled in very unbecoming folds above his teeth.

“Grover Cleveland,” Suly spoke softly, for, despite her brave common sense, she felt awed in this presence of a ruling, supernatural mentality; besides she wanted to spare the little favourite the shock of a too sudden awakening. But the boy walked on.

“Grover Cleveland, oh, Grover Cleveland!” she said more emphatically and gently put out her hand to take him by the shoulder.

“Gr-r-r-r-r-r!” said Dixie.

“Now look here Dixie Ledbetter,” she scolded severely, “you needn’t go to putting on any such airs as that when I’m around. I wouldn’t do Grover Cleveland mean a mite sooner’n you would, and you know it. And more than that, if I’d been in your place I’d have found some way to wake him up before he’d tramped this far in the cold. And more than that, t’other side the ford you went tearin’ off after a rabbit or a ’possum or a coon, and left him to find his way all by hisself. Now you get over there and don’t you say no more to _me_!”

Ashamed of his shortcomings or awed by her gestures, which were imperious, Dixie slunk to the other side of his master who, partially recovered by the unusual tones, came to a stand dazed and trembling.

“Poor little soul!” she said dropping to her knees and putting her arms about him. “Wake up, dear, and don’t you be scairt a mite, for it’s only Suly; you know Suly, don’t you?” her voice broke and a tear or two ran over her cheeks.

The child, coming slowly back to consciousness, gazed blankly into her face, then turned and peered into the woods, drawing his breath in hard, dry sobs. Then he recognized Dixie and felt of his tattered ears with a weakly caressing motion.

“Yes, Dixie’s here,” coaxed Suly, “and I’m here and Thad’s here with the wagon and we’re goin’ to carry you right home to your gran’daddy.”

By now Thaddeus was beside them. “Well, what about it!” was all he could say, but he acted promptly upon Suly’s bidding and lifted the boy into the wagon.

Suly wrapped him in a time-worn blanket of confederate gray that had been doing duty as a cushion and set him between them.

“Now where was you a-goin’ to?” interrogated the amazed Thaddeus, taking up the reins and driving slowly on.

“I—don’t—know,” sobbed the child.

“Why he was going home,” kindly assisted Suly.

“Where have you been at?” persisted Thaddeus.

“I—don’t—know.”

“Well how’d you _git_ here, anyway?”

“Now Thad, you quit pesterin’ him,” commanded Suly.

By now the boy was quite himself and making desperate efforts to breathe without sobbing. “It’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help,” he faltered, and the girl essayed to change the current of his thoughts.

“You knowed your Aunt Carliny and little Jakey had come back here to live, didn’t you, Grover Cleveland?”

“She done gran’daddy mean,” answered the boy and added after a long, tremulous breath, “Jakey’s shoes is wore out.”

They drove on in silence. When the boy had become quiet and too sleepy, Arsula believed, to take notice of what she was saying, she ventured to relieve her mind of some of its distracting emotions.

“If Carliny was where she’d ought to be, a-keepin’ house for her father, this little soul’d never get out of the house at night without her knowin’ it—I’m plumb sure of that. To think of her livin’ away off up there in that gully where nary somebody passes, month in and month out, in a ole hut with nothin’ but a dirt floor and no window; and chinks between the logs that you can put your hand into and her father the best-off man round yer! What you reckon he’d say if they was found froze plumb to death? And he such a powerful pious man and a-standin’ way up high in the church! Free-handed too—where he takes a notion—givin’ the preacher his rent free and all the wood he’s a mind to cut and haul and all the apples and corn and potatoes he’s a mind to harvest; and a-pilin’ up fodder stacks close to ole Mis’ Jimson’s fence and a-pullin’ out a rail with his own hands so’s her ole cow can get her head through and help herself.

“Carliny told me with her own lips that after she and her boy had come all the way from Yancey County—mighty nigh every step afoot too—her father wouldn’t let her in. She wouldn’t have come—for she’s got along tollable since she’s been a widow—only but she heard that he and Grover Cleveland wasn’t doin’ any good a housekeepin’ by theirselves; and it hurt her powerful to think that her sister Missouri’s little boy wasn’t gettin’ the right kind of care.

“Everybody’s clean done out about it. The preacher, he set out to labour with him, but Colonel Ledbetter he give him to understand that he was oversteppin’ his authority and since then nary neighbour darst speak up. But I’d give a pretty to tell Colonel Ledbetter what _I_ think of him, and I aim to do it this very night.”

“Don’t you, Suly; ole man Ledbetter ain’t pleasant to talk to when he’s riled.”

There came the sound of some one tearing through the woods, and Thad brought Beauregard to a sudden stand. “Here we are,” he shouted.

“You-all got him!” called a quavering voice out of the darkness.

“Got him sure-’nough, Colonel Ledbetter. Captured him way off down by the ford!”

“I been trampin’ the woods for a hour lookin’ for him and I’m hoarse as a crow callin’ for him. Is he dressed up much?”

“Not much. Some durn fools would have took him for a ha’nt but I don’t never run from nothin’ and Suly here, she’s some spunky too.”

They drove slowly to the house the old man keeping abreast. The door stood open and from within shone the light of a flickering hearth fire.

Grover Cleveland shed his blanket, sprang over the wheel while it was yet in motion, and fled into the house and out of sight.

The old man chuckled. “The little feller’s right much ashamed of hisself when he’s found out in one of his spells. I reckon he cried some when you-all woke him up—he gen’ally does.

“Them that’s had nothin’ to cry for’s the ones that’s done the cryin’,” teased Thad.

“I don’t care if I did,” said Suly preparing to accept the invitation to “stop in by a spell.” “It must be a mighty nasty feelin’ to wake up in the woods at night and not know how you got there.”

“So it is, so it is,” said Colonel Ledbetter leading the way into the house. “I ain’t no mind to be stern with him, for he comes true and honest by the trick. I done it myself when I was a boy.”

He replenished the fire and lit a candle.

“He sleeps right there betwixt me and the wall,” he pointed to a bed in the corner, “and I can’t contrive how he manages to give me the slip so often; he’s got some sort of sleepin’ slyness that he ain’t no more notion of when he’s awake, than a angel. Barricadin’ the door ain’t no good. One night I tied him fast to my wrist so’s he couldn’t move without wakin’ me up, but that seemed to hurt the little fellow’s feelin’s powerful an’ I didn’t try it again.”

Nothing was to be seen of Grover Cleveland. Suly went to the bed.

“I should think he’d smother to death,” she said, “he’s drawed the Valley of the Mississippi clean over his head and he’s fast asleep.” She arranged a little breathing place for him.

The old man came and stood beside her.

“I helped quilt this quilt,” she went on, carefully folding it away from the face of the child, “it was the first quiltin’ party I ever went to and I took the tuck out of my frock to go. This was the first Valley of the Mississippi ever seen round yer and Missouri was mighty proud of it; she had the pattern sent from Georgy.”

“Them blue pieces over there,” said the old man, “is pieces of her frock; it was a store frock; and these yer streaked pieces on this side” (he traced them with an unsteady finger), “was my wife’s. Grover Cleveland, he calls that side his, because it’s pieces of his mother’s frock, and this side mine and he won’t never get into bed till his half’s on his side.”

Suly lifted a corner of the quilt into the light; “Here’s some of Carliny’s frock,” she led, but he would not follow.

“I bought Grover Cleveland a pair of boots this mornin’ and he was the proudest little somebody you ever looked at. Now where is them boots at?”—he was looking under the bed—“he set ’em up right here as careful as if they was glass and they was there after he went to sleep.”

This owner in fee-simple of eleven hundred acres of land, more or less, was living in one room and dishes, cooking utensils, clothing, shovels, rakes and various paraphernalia of his farming and housekeeping operations were littered about in bewildering confusion. He moved everything in his search for the boots, Arsula assisting.

“Carliny’s a mighty good housekeeper,” she remarked as she shook out and hung up some wearing apparel that had been piled in a corner. “She’d make things look a heap different if she was here.”

“Was he barefoot when you come acrost him?”

“Yes. Carliny, she’d manage it so that poor little soul wouldn’t go caperin’ about at night.”

“Them boots has taken to theirselves wings.”

“I’m afraid Carliny’s goin’ to freeze to death up there this winter—or starve—one.”

“Them boots had blue tops; they was Grover Cleveland’s own choice; blue always takes his eye.”

“It’s time we was movin’ on, Suly,” said Thad going to the door.

The girl had to stop beating the bush. “Carliny and Jakey ain’t a-doin’ any good up there, Colonel Ledbetter; they’re both a-lookin’ puny. She wants you and you want her, and Grover Cleveland, he wants her powerful, poor little soul! ’Tain’t right, nor Christian, nor human, nor common sense, nor horse sense, nor nonsense, nor any kind of sense for you to be so set. She’s your own flesh”—she stopped, awed by his steady stare at her.

“You go home,” he said, “and you sew the tuck back into that ar frock you wore to Missouri’s quiltin’ and you wear it and be a little gal again till you’re smart enough not to handle no such talk as that in my house. Carliny, she made her own bed and thar she must lie. I told her when she married that ar no-’count that she shouldn’t never put foot into house of mine again; and you go ask your daddy if he ever knowed a Ledbetter to go back on his word. And I’m bringin’ up Grover Cleveland the same way; he believes like I do; he thinks Carliny’d ought to go her own gait now.”

Arsula went out of the house with her hand to her eyes.

“I ’low you mean right,” he said softening a little, “and I’m a heap o’ times obliged to you for bringin’ him home, but you ain’t no call to go to interferin’ in _my_ family affairs.”

All the next day Grover Cleveland hunted for his boots. “I sot ’em right here,” he said, “and I ain’t touched ’em since.” In the house he had turned every thing over and over again, had gone through the barn and out-houses in the same way and at sundown was searching the woods when Arsula a-mule-back rode up to the house. Colonel Ledbetter was chopping wood but he put down his axe and went to her.

“I’ve come from Carliny’s,” she said, “and here’s them blue-top boots. Carliny found ’em outside her door this morning and she’d no more notion than the dead whose they was or how they got there, till I told her ’bout last night.”

The old man turned them in his hands confusedly. “If Grover Cleveland took these boots up thar last night,” he said, “his sleepin’ opinion is a heap different from his wakin’ opinion. When he’s awake he ’grees with me; he thinks if she was so set on goin’ her own gait, now she’d ought to keep on goin it.”

Arsula rode off and he went into the house and tucked the boots out of sight.

By the by his grandson came in dispirited and weary, ate a little supper, and crept away under his side of the Valley of the Mississippi.

“He ain’t eatin’ as much as he’d ought to,” mused his grandfather as he scraped the remnant of their meal upon the hearth for Dixie. “If Missouri was alive she’d make somethin’ to tempt his appetite, but I ’low I ain’t got the sleight o’ cookin’.” He went to the bed and tucked the quilt closely about the child’s shoulders.

“He’ll lay quiet enough to-night; I never knowed him to get up two nights runnin’. Seem like he gets scairt and keeps still a spell. I’m mighty nigh beat out myself, bein’ up so late yesterday evenin’; I reckon I can sleep without any rockin’,” and he went to bed.

He awoke after a three-hours’ nap. The room was cold and his first thought was to see if the Valley of the Mississippi was doing its duty by his grandson. It was not; and when he attempted to pull it into place he found there was no grandson there; neither did there appear to be a complement of the Valley of the Mississippi.

“Grover Cleveland! Grover Cleveland!” he shouted and the only answer was a stampede of rats from the hearth. He got up, lighted his candle, and held it low over the bed. The boy was surely gone. He pulled the quilt toward him and as he did so the big old shears that served them in their various household operations fell to the floor. The quilt had been cut through from end to end; the side containing the striped pieces had been left in its place but the blue had disappeared!

He got into his clothes and hurrying out among the shadows of the moonlight night took his direction with the certainty of prescience. When he set foot upon the highroad, he began to follow by sight, for, excepting where the shadows were heaviest, he could discern the little trudging figure of Grover Cleveland, its outline marred by something slung in man-like fashion across his shoulder and by the dog following closely.

He didn’t try to overtake the child, but, though the road was crooked, he never let him get out of his sight for a second. Sometimes in dark, rough places the man stumbled. “Seem like some spirit’s a-guidin’ the boy,” he said. “He don’t ’pear to make a false step”; and, like Suly, he was awed.

As they neared the ford he lessened the distance between them but, though his heart stood still when the boy got upon the foot log (for the stream was running high) he made no sign but to take off his coat ready for a plunge if emergency called for it.

They crossed in close procession, the little sleeper, the dog, and the old man. Upon the other side the leader kept the highroad for a furlong or more and then, where a rough culvert conducted a small branch into the Junaluska, turned into a rocky gully and ascended by a rough, steep path, the others following. Two or three times Dixie, turning to the old man, entreated with tail and eyes for an explanation of these strange proceedings, but by pantomime was ordered into line again.

Upward and onward they went, no sound accompanying but the tramp of their feet, the rustle of leaves as some frightened animal darted from its lair, the gurgle of the brook, and the recoil of the low-hanging branches which two of them nimbly dodged, but the old man put aside with his hands.

At last they came out upon a table of shale, dry and white in the moonlight. On its edge, backed by a cliff, stood a forlorn cabin, built for a stable one might have thought, but for the pile of clay and stones that showed at which end of it a chimney had once stood.

Straight up to its sagging door marched the little sleeper, laid the blue-blocked half of the Valley of the Mississippi upon the rotten step, and then—the silent procession “marched down again.”

Next morning the sun was shining through the open doorway and Colonel Ledbetter with an awl and a waxed-end was splicing a strap when Grover Cleveland sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes open with his fists. Suddenly he shouted:

“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! here’s the Valley of the Mississippi cut plumb in half and your part’s here and”—he wriggled to the floor and grabbed his gran’daddy by the shoulder—“where’s my half gone to, gran’daddy?” Without waiting for an answer the child went back to the bed and made a more thorough examination.

“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! don’t you reckon ’twas a mighty low-down somebody to do that trick?”

“I ’low ’twas, Grover Cleveland—that is, if he knowed what he was doin’, ’twas.”

The boy’s eyes grew bigger and bigger.

“Maybe you been a-performin’ in your sleep again, Grover Cleveland.”

“No I ain’t gran’daddy, no I ain’t,” the blue eyes were very earnest. “I done been in bed close up to you all night.”

“Maybe you have, Grover Cleveland, but ’pears like you overslept yourself a spell this morning. There’s the pone and some bacon keeping warm for you by the fire.”

Puzzled that his grandfather didn’t take a more active interest in the calamity that had befallen him, the boy ran half-dressed to the door.

“Gran’daddy! gran’daddy! what you got Bonaparte and Butterfly geared up to the cart for?”

“I been down to Junaluska. And now you eat your breakfast quick, and we’ll go hunt up your half of the Valley of the Mississippi; and you put on them blue-top boots Grover Cleveland; them old shoes lets the water in.”

“Why them boots is done gone!” he shook his grandfather as if to wake him up, “don’t you ’member—oh-ee-ee,” he went diving under the bed and, coming up again with the blue-tops hugged close to his breast and another pair in his hand, stood before his grandfather dumb as to the vocal organs but his eyes questioning wildly.

“Them red-tops is for Jakey.”

“You aim to carry them boots up to him, gran’daddy?”

“No, gran’son, I aim to bring Jakey down to the boots.”

In the Ledbetter home that afternoon Carolina dropped the broom as two little boys came frolicking about her, and capturing the larger one, she squeezed him rapturously!

“If you ever get out of this house at night again, Grover Cleveland,” she said, “you’ll be smarter than I am; that’s what.”

IV

OLD-TIME RELIGION

Autumn in the Southern Appalachians.

The little boy sat on the prize pumpkin that his grandfather had put in front of the house to challenge the comment of passers-by. He was chewing sorghum-cane and singing in snatches:

“Give me that old-time aligion,
Give me that old-time aligion,
It is good enough for me.
It was good for Paul and Silas,
It is good enough for me——”

His Aunt Carolina stood on the porch spinning stocking yarn, while near her sat his grandfather, cobbling shoes as diligently and contentedly as if born and bred to that lowly occupation instead of being a forehanded farmer holding county and township offices.

“Grover Cleveland certainly is a good singer,” said Carolina. “He can carry the tune of every last hymn he hears ’em sing down to church and he can carry the words too, clean up to twenty verses I reckon, and what he can’t remember he can make up.”

The old man laid down his implements, bowed himself to his “studyin’” attitude, and looked fondly and proudly at his grandson. Carolina let her eyes range the highroad.

“Here comes old man Sumter a-drivin’ that ar’ Sal he bought over to Nantahala. She was round and plump as ary one of our mules when he brought her here, but now I declare she’s the gauntedest mule that travels the road. I reckon he’s jerked and jawed the flesh right off her bones.”

“You say Cap’n Sumter’s a-comin’?” asked her father, and he got up and went out to the road side. At his signal his neighbour twitched Sal to a stand and stared at him without a relaxing line in his hard old face or a gleam of friendliness in his eyes.

Colonel Ledbetter had pleasant information to impart. He lifted one foot to the hub of the clumsy fore wheel, rested an arm across his knees and looked hard into the sandy road lest his eyes should forestall his tongue as the bearer of good news.

“You sold me them ’leven wa’nut trees on Sundown Hill for thirty dollars apiece, Cap’n Sumter?”

“I reckon that’s ’bout how the case stands,” the grim face looked steadily at the smiling one and not a line softened.

“Well, sir,” the pleasant eyes looked up with a lively sparkle that might have been borrowed from Grover Cleveland’s own, “I hadn’t examined them trees as close as I ought to, and ’pears like you hadn’t either; there’s a little mistake about one of ’em and I expected we’d better rectify it right now——”

“G’long!” old man Sumter hit the mule a “lick,” saying viciously as she sprang forward, “You got the timber and I got the money and I don’t rectify no mistakes now; you’re old enough to have knowed what you was gittin’ ’fore you paid for it.”

“Jes’ as you please Sam Sumter, jes’ as you please”; the indignant old gentleman made a gesture as one who gladly washes his hands of a responsibility and yielding to curiosity Sumter turned toward him.

Colonel Ledbetter didn’t pause in his slow walk toward the house but he said in a tone of supreme indifference:

“I’ve had my men up there a-fellin’ them trees and the biggest of ’em, the one furthest up the hill, is a curly walnut. Five years ago I sold one like it for twelve hundred dollars and I could have give you points ’bout sellin’ yours; but seein’ you don’t rectify no mistakes, why that’s all there is about it and we’ll stick to the bargain.”

Again Sal was jerked to a stand and twisting round on a pivotal hand pressed to the seat, old man Sumter regarded his interlocutor with intense concern. But Colonel Ledbetter proceeded to the house without looking right or left and, disappointed and ireful, his neighbour went on his way.

Colonel Ledbetter resumed his seat and his grandson came and leaned against him:

“Looks like he’s plumb mad, gran’daddy.”

“Yes he is, Grover Cleveland, he’s plumb mad and he’s been so ever since I’ve knowed him and that’s mighty nigh sixty years. He’s so rarin’ mad that when the Lord throws a good thing in his way he’s too mad to see it. Now like that ar wa’nut; any man that was a-lookin’ out for virtues instid of _de_fects would have discovered that ’twas a curly. But old man Sumter’s mad at every thing under the sun whether it’s human or beast or tree or stone; and he’s mad at ’em all the time and he’s so mad that he won’t take no notice to ’em. Jes’ like he wouldn’t take notice to me jes’ now, when I was goin’ to put more than a thousand dollars right into his hand; it would mighty nigh paid off that ar mortgage that he’s been skinnin’ himself to pay int’rest on these twenty years—for he jes’ keeps a-goin’ behind and a-goin’ behind for no airthly reason that I can see but jes’ ’cause he’s so mad all the time that he can’t study any of the arts of peace. Why his very crops fails because he hates ’em so. Grover Cleveland, don’t you never go to bein’ mad at every body all the time. Tain’t Christian, an’ more’n that it kind o’ spiles your aim so that you don’t bring down no game.”

“Was he borned that-a-way, gran’daddy?”

“I expect he was, Grover Cleveland, I expect he was.”

“I’m mighty sorry for him”; the little fellow twisted his hands together and looked afar; “it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help.”

The old man’s attention and sympathy were his in an instant. “Don’t you go to takin’ on about sleep walkin’, Grover Cleveland,” he said drawing his arm tightly about the child; “you’re bound to outgrow that before long.”

“I paid him,” the old man went on addressing his daughter, “I paid him more for them trees than ary other somebody had offered him, jes’ because I was willin’ to help make up to him the loss of his barn that burnt down; but he didn’ thank me for it.”

“What’s curly wa’nuts good for, gran’daddy?”

“They’re good for veneerin’, Grover Cleveland. You see this is how ’tis: they don’t saw the logs through like they do down to Campbell’s saw-mill but they saw ’em, round and round, into sheets mighty nigh as thin as writin’-paper. There hadn’t ought to be any cuts or holes in the log, so that they can make big smooth sheets of it, and they’ll saw that log up till there ain’t a core left that’s as thick as my arm.”

“What can they make out of timber as thin as writin’-paper, gran’daddy?”

Then to the extent of his own imperfect knowledge of the veneering process, the old man explained it to the child.

“So far as I know, there’s only three veneering mills in the country. When I sold my tree I wrote a letter to all three of ’em and told ’em what I had to sell and they wrote back and made me a offer—only that Kentucky fellow, he’s the nearest by and he made out like he had business in this direction and he stopped round to see it; and ’twas him I sold the tree to.

“And I aimed to work it jes’ that-a-way for Cap’n Sumter; I aimed to write the letters for him—for he ain’t a mite handy with a pen, Sam Sumter ain’t (a education is a mighty handy thing to get hold of Grover Cleveland), and get in the three bids for the tree and let him take up with ary one he see fit.”

“You’ve sure done your duty by him now, daddy,” said Carolina, “and that tree is yours anyway you can fix it.”

“_Is_ it yours, gran’daddy?”

“It’s mine by rule o’ law, Grover Cleveland, but I don’t know as it’s mine by that ar golden rule that you and Preacher Carr let on to know so much about.”

His doting grandparent considered the child a prodigy of ethical understanding, or “jedgment,” as he would have expressed it, and, although he was continually plying him with information and advice on all sorts of subjects, it was no uncommon thing for him to consult the little fellow even in matters of moment. It was as if he stored his maxims and admonitions into the laboratory of the child’s mind and then requisitioned it for them in convenient form for practical use.

“What’s your opinion, Grover Cleveland?’”

The child hesitated, his bright face raised earnestly to the grizzled one:

“Me and you, gran’daddy, me and you, we don’t want anything that ain’t sure ’nough ours; do we?”

“_No-o sir-ee!_ That settles it, Carliny; Grover Cleveland and me we want a golden rule title to every thing we claim.”

So Colonel Ledbetter got his ink bottle and pen off the shelf, a sheet and a half of writing-paper out of the front of the Bible, and three envelopes out of the back, and laboriously indited the letters to the veneering mills, while out in the shadow of the prize pumpkin his grandson cracked butternuts for the tame gray squirrels. But all the while new ideas were whirling through the little boy’s head, and they concentred in that curly walnut.

That night “when there was naught but starre light” a little human figure, bareheaded, barefooted, and clad in a single, loosely hanging garment came out of the Ledbetter house. It proceeded noiselessly, though without stealth, for it kept in the open, taking the middle of the road with a free and fearless tread. Though the eyes were partly shut and the night was dark, it made no false or stumbling step; some intuition or spiritual sight or maybe an angelic presence was guiding it. Dixie came yawning and stretching to the edge of the porch, settled meditatively upon his haunches, watched it to the first bend in the road, then followed boundingly until he came abreast when, demurely dropping head and tail, he fell behind but kept so close that the little wind-blown shirt fluttered in his face.

When half a mile had been travelled a branching wagon track, scarcely discernible even in the daytime, led up to some bars in the worm-fence that outlined the road. The little dreamer climbed over and took the rough road beyond without a sign of doubt or hesitation. It zigzagged through the woods but steadily upward to where those walnut trees, with a goodly company of peers, oak, chestnut, and whitewood had crowned a summit. He had followed it a few times before, but wide-awake beside his grandfather in the ox wagon, with Butterfly and Bonaparte for motive power. It was overgrown with grass and weeds that shed their dew upon his little feet and perfumed them with pennyroyal and dittany, while overhead interweaving branches hid even the stars from sight.

Though tempted from duty’s path by many a springing cotton tail, Dixie kept close behind his master until the sound of an axe came thudding through the forest, at which he cocked his remnant for ears, stood for a second on the _qui vive_, then shot away in the direction of the sound.

He returned panting and, planting himself in front of the little sleepwalker, tried to head him in a different direction, but the child only swerved and continued his upward course. Again the dog headed him off, again and again until he had turned him quite out of the road way, but the boy threaded his way through undergrowth and over rocks and hummocks as easily as if he had been of spiritual rather than material substance.

Finally Dixie grabbed in his teeth the border of the little shirt and tugged so lustily that his master could not advance a single step farther, and as he tugged he whined in thorough frenzy; and if his language could have been rendered into the vernacular it would have been:

“There’s danger ahead, Grover Cleveland! There’s a bad old man up there, a man that never sees me without making a lick at me with his stick, and if he does you mean and there’s only I left to tell the tale, who’ll I tell it to, I’d like to know? for there’s not a human that’s smart enough to understand _my_ language, though I’ve understood English ever since I was a pup. Come back, Grover Cleveland! _come back, I say, come back!_” and with that last “come back,” Dixie gave such a sudden and powerful jerk that Grover Cleveland came tumbling backward into a bed of galax.

He righted himself and sat there with a hand on either side pressing the leaves down into the turf, the dog crouched close with his paws across the little bare knees and his tongue spasmodically licking the bewildered face.

The child heaved a slow, sobbing sigh or two and became his conscious self, a little boy alone at night in the dark, silent woods, frightened, not by darkness or silence or apprehension of danger, but by the thought of that mysterious power that could convey him so far from home and gran’daddy, and Aunt Carliny without any of their knowledge or consent. So he laid his head upon Dixie’s neck and cried it out and then got upon his feet, once more a practical little mountaineer with a mind curious to see and to understand, a loving heart and willing, eager little hands and feet to wait upon its promptings.

He knew that downward must be homeward and cautiously (less confident now than when guided by that unconscious mentality) he began to grope for his footing. Then again the sound of that axe came cleaving the silence and this time Grover Cleveland heard it as plainly as Dixie did.

He turned to investigate the phenomenon, Dixie following contentedly now that his master was himself again. The undergrowth had become thinner as they had ascended and soon they came out where great trees rose in stately exclusiveness unintruded upon by lesser growths. Here the darkness was less dense, stars looked down through rifts in the leafy canopy, and a little farther up the hill one fixed star gleamed scarcely eight feet from the ground as if intercepted upon an earthward trip and impaled upon a bough. It dispensed only a dim circle of light, but in it the boy could discern the figure of the wood chopper, could even catch an occasional glint reflected from the blade of the swinging axe. He had come up against a fallen tree and he climbed up and sat upon the trunk, hugging his knees while he peered into the gloom.

All at once a suspicion of his whereabouts entered his head and to confirm it he got off the log and made his way to its larger end. Yes, there stood the stump from which it had been cut but recently and green chips littered the ground. He explored farther. Nearby lay another log, just over there another—why they were all about him! He knew perfectly well where he was. On old man Sumter’s hill and these were his grandfather’s walnut trees!

But that man! Why was he here in the dark, dark night chopping away with might and main? The boy made his way toward him, Dixie quiet but alert and as full of curiosity as his master.

That star was a lantern pendant from a chestnut limb; its light shone upon the man’s face. Why it was old man Sumter himself! and that log was the curly walnut, for it was the one highest on the hillside, and he was gashing it all along its length! And he was right mad at that curly too (just like gran’daddy said he was always mad at everything), for he kept talking right ugly to it!

“Hi!” the child sprang forward shouting to the full capacity of his sturdy lungs and caught the old man by the coat tails. “Wake up! oh, wake up! Don’t you see what you’re a-doin’!”

Grover Cleveland tugged and shouted, Dixie barked and leaped and growled and the echoes multiplied the tumult. Stunned by the suddenness of the attack the old man let the axe slip from his hand and backed round against the log. He was feeble, he had been exerting himself beyond his strength and he was frightened too—had it not been for Dixie’s very earthly performance he would have been sure he had met up with a ha’nt.

“What be you anyway?” he asked quaveringly, sinking to a seat upon the log.

“Why I’m Grover Cleveland, gran’daddy’s grandson.”

The boy looked the man over with a face full of compassion. Here was a big man afflicted just as he was, and that fellow-feeling that makes us all so wondrous kind enthralled him.

“Are you sure you’re broad awake now?” he asked coming very close and laying his hand upon the old man’s knee. “It’s awful to walk in your sleep; I feel mighty sorry for you.” He scrambled up on the log, wriggled himself as close to the night-walker as he could get, took a coarse, limp old hand in his, and patted it. “I certainly am sorry for you ’cause I know jes’ how it feels to be woked up in the dark, away off from home and not know how you got there. I walk in my sleep too—that’s how I come out yer to-night—but you’ve got it worse than me, you have; for I don’t do mischief when I’m took, but you—why-e-e-e!” twisting himself about and surveying the log—“you’ve done hacked your tree all to pieces and ’twon’t be no more good for veneerin’! Gran’daddy says they don’t want nary snag in it.

“But maybe this ain’t the curly,” he peered eagerly into the woods; “it ain’t ’less it’s the furtherest one up.”

“This is the curly wa’nut all right,” growled Sumter with a malevolent twang unintelligible to the child.

“I certainly am sorry for you. Gran’daddy wrote three letters ’bout this yer tree and he was goin’ to turn the answers over to you so’t you could take up with ary one you’d a mind to—that’s what he said——”

“You say he did? Didn’t he ’low he’d bought the tree fair ’nough?”

“That ain’t the way he thought about it—and me and gran’daddy, you know, we don’t want anything that ain’t sure ’nough ours; he said you could sell it for enough money to pay all you owed. He was plumb glad of it and now he’ll be mighty nigh as sorry as you and me is.”

For a moment sad, silent thought held sway.

“There’s one good thing about it though,” the child tucked his garment tightly under his knees, “you don’t get out without dressin’ yourself, the way I do; you ought to be glad about that. Gran’daddy says there’s always some good even in the baddest things if we watch out for it.”

His companion made no response and the boy resumed his role of sympathizer.

“I reckon you was borned that-a-way, jes’ like me, and it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help; and you ain’t got any Dixie to watch out for you. And Aunt Carliny, she makes me sleep with her and Jakey, so’s she can catch me at it, but I don’t guess you’ve got any Aunt Carliny either.”

“Naw,” old man Sumter got up and reached for his lantern, “I ain’t got nary somebody that cares what becomes of me.”

The boy got down off the log and pityingly took his hand.

“Le’s go home,” he said, “I know where I be now an’ if you’re kind o’ mixed up yet, why I can show you the trail,” and he led away as shamefaced an old sinner as ever trod the mountains.

(Seeing the pair on friendly terms, Dixie indulged in a brief interview with a ’possum.)

“As I was a-sayin’,” comforted the child as they picked their way by the lantern’s light, “it’s powerful mizzable to be borned with ways that you can’t help; but don’t you go to takin’-on about it, for we’re bound to outgrow it—so gran’daddy says. And there’s another thing where you’re worse off than me: gran’daddy says you was borned mad at everybody all the time—that must be powerful mizzable too, but I reckon you’ll outgrow that too.”

They parted at Sumter’s door and then Grover Cleveland and Dixie sped homeward. Noiselessly the little fellow entered the house, crept into bed beside his Aunt Carliny and straightway forgot his “mizzable” inheritance.

But he had it embarrassingly recalled to his mind next morning at breakfast when Aunt Carliny said as she gave him his second helping of hominy:

“Grover Cleveland’s getting right good ’bout stayin’ in bed o’ nights; he ain’t tried to get up in a dog’s age. Of course he couldn’t get up without my catchin’ him, for I’m always sleepin’ with one eye open, but seem like he don’t try any more.”

“I reckon he’s outgrowin’ them kind of capers,” gran’daddy reached out, stroked the yellow pate and the yellow pate bent lower and lower and finally the whole boy went down under the table.

He next appeared tagging dumbly at the heels of the old gentleman as he was making his morning tour among his stock, who, when a sudden turn brought them into collision, reached behind him and brought the boy out of his obscurity.

“’Pears like you ain’t a mite peart this morning, Grover Cleveland; you got something on your mind?”

The child bored the soil with his toes:

“I—wasn’t in bed _all_ night, gran’daddy, not _every minute_, I wasn’t.”

“You been a-walkin’ in your sleep again?”

The child nodded guiltily and a very awkward pause ensued. Gran’daddy looked serious, but as soon as distressful symptoms began to develop in the little culprit, he applied, as usual, the healing balm of consolation.

“I wouldn’t take-on about it, Grover Cleveland, not a mite, I wouldn’t, for you’re plumb sure to outgrow it. Gran’daddy used to be up to them same tricks but he’s outgrowed ’em. I jes’ go to bed and I lay there as firm as a island in a goose pond and you couldn’t drag me out—not with Butterfly and Bonaparte you couldn’t—not unless something was the matter with Grover Cleveland and _he_ wanted me in the night; if he did, if he ever does, I’ll shoot out of that bed like lightning out of a thunder cloud.” And so he coaxed and petted until the shamed little face was ready to look the world squarely in the eyes again.

“Where was you at, last night, eh?”

“When I come to, I was up to Sundown Hill where them wa’nut trees is.”