Chapter VI

The Hermitage of 1814 did not look like the Hermitage of to-day. Not until later did the hero of New Orleans erect the substantial home which for many years was the Mecca of those who believed in Jacksonian Democracy. At the time of this story it was a plain but comfortable log structure, differing but little from similar ones built by the pioneers of that age in their efforts to establish homes in the wilderness.

But even as it stood it was no ordinary home, sitting back from the pike near the stone spring dairy, the castle of hundreds of acres of as good lands as ever the wilderness gave to civilization.

To-night it was lighted up and ablaze with youth and gaiety. It was a farewell party for Juliette Templeton, and the youth of the land were there. Out in the yard bonfires burned, tended by negro slaves, whose dusky forms, slipping like shadows here and there, were silhouetted against the dark background, huge giants of the night. The fires lighted the lawn and the ancient trees; above, a half moon was rising, and the lighted lawn and moon-lighted woods made a typical scene of beauty and romance. Within the house hundreds of candles were stuck about in every conceivable nook and corner, on window sill, on shelf and on the huge logs themselves. Upon the lawn were clusters of horses tied to the limbs of trees, and carriages in groups around them.

Within, the long dining tables gleamed in linen and silver.

The dancing had already begun, opening with a Virginia reel, in which General Jackson led his fair guest down the line with all that courtly grace he could command when he wished. And, indeed, there was incentive for this gallantry, for never had the old soldier led so stately a beauty down the cotillion line, though in his younger and cock-fighting North Carolina days he had danced with some beautiful women—and some who were not!

He was smiling good-naturedly; evidently he was thinking of them to-night. “I have danced with some famous ones in my youth, my dear,” he said, bowing low over her hand, “but never any that could compare with you.”

She laughed, twinkling: “Tell me, General, how old must a man be before he quits giving the girls his sweet talk?”

“Ah! that depends on the girl. Now, in your case I would say about the age of Methuselah.”

They were standing at the head of the line waiting for their turn again. Some one began to talk to her partner, giving Juliette a chance to run her eyes quickly down the room full of the Hermitage neighbors and friends. Neither Bristow nor Trevellian was there. She was not surprised, for she never expected to see Trevellian again, and Bristow had not come back since that night at the supper table when he had dropped a careless remark about Trevellian and met such a subdued but pointed rebuke that it took all of Aunt Rachael’s good nature and Juliette’s tact to prevent an open rupture. Yet, since then, in every other way had Bristow shown his attention—flowers, notes and all the lover’s resources which his shrewd nature could command.

But as for Trevellian—the shock of that day had never left her. She had put him resolutely aside; and yet, often since then, in the night when alone with her thoughts, she had begun to doubt and to wonder—and then to weep.

To weep. Ah, then it was she knew she loved Trevellian! But that had only been at night. In the day, never had any one carried herself with more dignity and poise.

She was glad that he was not here.

There was a hubbub around her. It was their time again and the General was tapping her on the arm. Again they went down the line beneath the eyes of an admiring crowd, and then he gallantly led her to a seat.

“Now, Juliette,” he said, “I must leave you to a younger and handsomer beau, but while I have this chance, there is something I must tell you, because you will know of it soon enough.”

He took his favorite seat. They were alone in the corner of the room, and the rough floor was shaking with the boisterous dancing of healthy and hilarious yeomanry.

“You are going to New Orleans to-morrow and you will stop at Natchez a day or two to catch the boat there. We are sending you under the escort of an old friend and his wife—Captain Royston and wife—but the Captain will report for duty there. I do not know how the situation is at the front. It is possible that you may have to stop at Natchez for awhile, which brings me to the point I wish to impress upon you.”

She looked up at him quickly.

“The British,” he continued, “will be on us very soon.”

“Not at New Orleans?” she paled. “Everybody says at Pensacola or Mobile, if at all.”

“Everybody knows but little,” said the General, quietly. “My dear, I am going to have to whip them at New Orleans, and that before anybody dreams of.”

“Oh, General—my mother—”

“Now if I had my way,” he went on, “I would rather you stay here awhile, for the British, whom I shall have to fight, are the same that are beating Bonaparte allies in Spain, and the depredations they have committed there have been notorious. But you must, of course, go on to your mother—but for that Mrs. Jackson and I should not think of permitting you to leave us, for it will be a fight to the finish at New Orleans and—”

“I thank you so much for telling me this, General. I shall tell mother as soon as I arrive, and we shall pack up everything so as to be prepared for flight.”

The General rose quickly, his keen eyes flashing and his face purpling with rage.

“Prepare for flight? Do you think I have told you my official business to scare you? Do you think those damned ruffians will ever get to New Orleans except over the dead bodies of me and my troops? I’ll drive them into the river, what is left of them, and you shall be there to see it. By the Eternal, I swear it, and you shall see the river red with their bloating carcasses! I’ll pay off the score they have piled on us on the lakes and at Washington and on the sea. Prepare for flight!” he said, cooling down, “why, my dear, and you old Joe Templeton’s daughter!”

He sat down, blowing his nose vigorously. He looked around half shamedly. She could almost see the purple anger retiring before the mastery of a mind whose first great instinct was unmeasured calmness—a calmness which, in spite of his nature, he could command when he wished at all times. A man who could both bluff and fight.

“No,” he went on, after awhile, “prepare to stay. I hate to see you go, but aside from the fact that there will be some very extraordinary fighting, which you will have nothing to do with, and need not see, New Orleans will be as safe as the Hermitage.”

“Oh, General,” she apologized, “please forgive me, I did not understand you.”

His good nature returned, even his jollity. It was his way—a thunderbolt one moment, the next Jupiter himself in all his calmness. He went on talking to himself more than to her.

“A thousand of my Tennesseans have started to-day. Let me see—they should be at Ditto Landing by—”

There was a volley in the yard and loud cheers.

The General sprang up and went quickly out. The dancers flocked to windows, doors and out into the yard. When Juliette went out she saw the General surrounded by a strange crowd. A glance told her it was troops on their way to the front, and Mrs. Jackson, who stood at her side, said:

“Captain Trevellian’s company going South, dear.”

The crowd had surged out into the lawn where General Jackson had gone to greet them, and Juliette found herself also in the crowd, while around her flocked the dancers to see their friends and neighbors off once more to the war.

Their commander had drawn them up in line of battle, a gaunt, sinewy, tanned and splendid sight under the flaring lights of the bonfires. It was not a very straight alignment as it surged forward on both flanks, half surrounding General Jackson and their captain, both of whom they idolized. They had given the General a volley and salute, and now surged forward to hear what he and their captain had to say.

It was a picturesque sight and one never to be forgotten. They were dressed in typical costume of their time, and yet there was a liveness and manliness about it which stirred the deeper emotions. Long hair above swarthy, sunburnt faces, heavy coon skin caps, hunting coats and buckskin trousers, ending in the top of rawhide boots. Powder horns, some of gourds, but nearly all of buffalo horns, hung over their shoulders by a thong of deer hide. In their hands they held, with butts on the ground, the tall Decherd rifle, often taller than the man behind it. In their belts was a weapon no other army since the days of Rome and Britain had ever carried into war. It was a heavy bear knife, often a foot or more long, some of them two-edged, enclosed in a holster of buckskin or calf. In the faces themselves there dwelt a strange mixture of fun and fight, of strange horse talk and stranger horse plays. And so they stood up, a grand and picturesque sight, under the glare of the lights, a more formidable and savage foe than any they had ever driven from the land.

There was another yell and volley of huzzahs as General Jackson came forward. The line was now broken and they thronged around him. It was Bill, Tom and Jim to him as he clasped the hands that shook his. They were friends of his, they loved him and that was enough. The regiment had camped for the night not far off after their first day’s march.

“We hurd you was ginnin’ a treat, Gin’ral,” shouted a long-haired, buckskin-clad fellow in the line, “and we ’lowed we’d gin you a s’prize party.”

There was a roar at this hint and another yell from the crowd, and in the midst of it a negro came up with two buckets full of whiskey, and tin dippers, which General Jackson had ordered from the smokehouse near the kitchen.

“Attention, there, men! Ground f’lock and get into line!” said their captain.

The line surged back; the butts of the rifles rested on the ground.

“Pass that whiskey down the line, there,” said General Jackson to his servants, and as the blacks started, one at each flank, there was a deep silence. They drank from the tin dippers as indifferently as if it were water. Jackson and Trevellian drank last, touching their dippers “to health and a good fight,” as the General said, at which there was a cry from the line from a swarthy sergeant:

“And a quick one—b’ar or British! Lead us ag’in’ everything!”

It was indeed the sentiment. Arms were now stacked and they broke into groups, thronging around their commanders as they talked to them, man to man and face to face.

There was nothing concealed. It was a big family of yeomanry, brave and bent on ridding their country of any foe their leaders pitted them against. And General Jackson was their father. Around him they gathered, proud, trustful, with all the confidence of big children and all the daring, strong love of big men. And their hearts were hot and vengeful—for they were children in their tenderer natures and saw things with the eyes of children.

And the things they had seen had stirred them to their fierce, quick fighting depths. Cut off from the rest of the world, wedged in between the mountains, which barred them from the east, and the savages on the south and west, their government had neglected them, left them to fight their own battles against savage foe and savage nature.

But they had fought, and now they had followed Jackson from the Tennessee to the Horse Shoe Bend—they had swept a goodly land of a savage foe, opened it for the white race, destroyed their hated enemy’s most formidable ally, and had an open and unmolested road to the sea.

This they had done and asked nothing from their country. This they had done on acorns and parched corn, in pestilence and swamp, in deadly savage-brooding woods—fighting famine and foe alike.

And now a greater fight was on. Their country, she who had counted them as naught until now, who had paid no heed to their wants and their sufferings, was now in a death struggle with her ancient and bitterest foe. And that foe had walked through the land above them with rifle, torch and tomahawk until it seemed that nothing could stand up before them. They had whipped the American army and scattered her few weak, little ships and now scoffed and derided her army to the nations of the earth.

And though their country had forgotten them, in the hearing of it all their hearts burned but for vengeance, and they forgot all their injustice when they remembered it was their country and that they, too, were Americans.

And then had come Jackson, and his call to arms and his fierce fighting spirit and the fiercer fighting love they bore him.

“B’ar or British, Indian or devil, lead us ag’in’ ’em, General!” they kept shouting, again and again.

Juliette felt someone touch her arm. It was Mrs. Jackson:

“Come, Juliette, all you girls—we are going to hand them out the cakes. I heard a hint of this—in fact, I was warned, and Aunt Hannah, I think, has baked them cakes enough.”

There was another shout from the lines when great waiters of sliced cake were brought out, and with the buckets not yet empty and the tin dippers in demand, there was a roar of jollity and laughter and jokes.

As Juliette passed in among them with a hamper of cake, a respectful silence fell. Never had they seen such a beautiful being as she. They were backwoodsmen, and she from another land. At first they stood back. Their roughness and coarseness was only skin deep—in their hearts was chivalry. At last one reached out his hand to help himself under the tactful smile and reassuring nod of invitation and the tie was broken by a loud banter at his elbow:

“Stop right thar, Bill; you can’t reach out an’ take poun’ cake from an angel an’ me not be in it!”

In the roar of this sally they all thronged round her to get some of that cake from an angel. She was passing around among them when someone seized her by the shoulder and brought her about face with:

“Come, fair waitress; forget not your humbler friends.”

And she stood facing Trevellian and General Jackson, who had thus called her. Her heart pounded, the color, despite her efforts at calmness, left her cheeks; her knees trembled and she almost dropped the waiter in his hands. She saw his agitated but reserved bearing, his hand going up nervously to his hat, and in her confusion she pushed forward her cake:

“Please have some.”

“I thank you, madam,” he replied as indifferently as if she were an unknown person to him and he reached out to take it from the tray. But two slices were uncut, and in her effort to help him her hand touched his and she felt the hot blood surge in her cheeks. Looking up she met his eyes, resigned, sad, but hotly determined in the old flash that dared all, hoped all and was afraid of nothing.

She read a thousand things in that brief look, while her own heart all but burst within her and her knees trembled in feminine weakness.

And that which she read above all else was that he had put her out of his life.

Indignant—hurt—crushed by the look, her pride stirred to madness with herself and the world, with fierce hatred of herself that she should care at all, she pushed madly into the crowd and away. Then she heard the General calling her impatiently:

“Juliette, Juliette, my dear, you have forgotten me.”

In shame and confusion she turned again, though she felt that she should die if she looked again into Trevellian’s face.

And then she almost fell when she did see. She stiffened frigidly and hot, cruel anger swept over her as her flashing eyes fell on William Trevellian.

The boy had ridden up as she turned to go away. And now, on the small, sinewy pony, which she remembered too well, he sat his horse just behind General Jackson, looking at her with eyes that spoke as much admiration as any old soldier in the group.

General Jackson himself had forgotten her as he turned in laughing enthusiasm to the boy and his pony. Grasping him by the shoulder, he cried:

“Why, little Ireland, you game little devil, how came you here? And Paddy Whack—ha—ha!”

The boy sat proud and beaming. To his saddle was strapped a kettle drum. He also was clad in buckskin and carried a smaller rifle, while the big hunting knife in his belt brought another smile from the General.

“He ran off from school, General,” she heard Trevellian saying; “came into our camp to-night just as we were leaving. He wants to go, and I haven’t the heart to send him back.”

“General, don’t say I cannot,” pleaded the boy. “I can shoot better than I can ride. Let me go.”

General Jackson glanced up into the little, excited face, the determined eye. How handsome he was, and as he turned his thoughts flashed, how like Trevellian!

“General, General,” came again, “we need a drummer, and I want to fight them, too. I am a Trevellian; didn’t you know it?”

“There is no doubt of that, boy. Yes, go if you want to.” He turned to Trevellian:

“By the Eternal, Trevellian, how can the British expect to whip a people whose very children beg to go out and fight them?” He turned to the boy: “Yes—go, boy; go fight the invaders of your country, and God bless and preserve you!”

Pale, trembling and with a bursting heart which hated itself for her weakness, Juliette slipped away and into the house. From her own room she heard the huzzahs, the rattling volley of parting salute, and Trevellian’s command of “fall in!” She heard the soft tread if moccasined feet going into the wooded night. Then there was wafted faintly the uncouth, broken notes of a tune that somehow held together till it reached her:

“The girl I left behind me.”

She ran to the bed and buried her head in the pillow. Was she the girl he had left behind him? Would she ever see him again? He hated her now; she knew it, and yet she was so weak as to love him. Why did she not hate him also? Hate him as he deserved to be for—

The rattle of a kettle-drum burst into the music. Then cheers faint and far-off, but saying: “Hurrah for the drummer boy of the First Tennessee!”

She buried deeper her head and sobbed louder.

[_To be continued._]

MELLIE’S MAN

By William McLeod Raine

“Why don’t you-all git a man, Mellie?”

Mrs. Chunn waited impatiently for an answer, her potato knife poised in air. She was a sallow lath of a woman, dry and hard, with piercing little black eyes that bored like gimlets. Efficiency of management was the dominant note of the widow. She ruled like an autocrat, a kindly one if people submitted gracefully, but a firm one in any event. Three deceased husbands had endured her sway not unhappily. Each of them had fortunately possessed the requisite sense of humor.

Just now the gimlet eyes were turned on the slim, fair girl who sat shelling peas on the porch steps at her feet. Mellie stirred uneasily, as under compulsion, but offered no answer in words. From her childhood she had been much given to silence, an unconscious refuge from the commonplace world of Cache Bayou that misunderstood her of necessity. A sweet, shy creature with a rare color easily moved to paint charming pictures of maidenly embarrassment, one might well wonder how this daughter of the swamps had come to be endowed with so alien a beauty. She suggested a native refinement foreign alike to her training and her environment.

Her stepmother repeated the question with exactly the same inflection as before.

“Don’t yo’, please,” implored the girl, the color sweeping into her face. Then, as if feeling the futility of protest, she added, “I cayn’t, Maw. Yo’ know I ain’t that-a-way.”

“I reckon yo’ kin if yo’ try. You-all air turned nineteen now. Do yo’ ’low nevah to marry? Trouble is, you-all air so meachin’ an’ touch-me-not. Hit don’t do to be dumb’s a wild hawg the whole enjurin’ time when men folks is ’round. Yo’ got to brisk up an’ be peart.”

The widow’s experience entitled her to speak with authority. “Gittin’ a man” had become almost a habit with her. It spoke volumes for her efficiency that men naturally gravitated her way, despite her lack of feminine graces. Temporarily, by reason of a dispensation of Providence, she happened to be husbandless, but it was a condition she expected to change as soon as she could decide on a suitable successor for the late Shep Chunn. To this selection she was giving her judgment with cool detachment, quite unhampered by the superfluous baggage of sentiment. As a preliminary she purposed to do her duty by her stepdaughter and make her happy whether she wanted to be or not.

“Co’se hit stands to reason that a gyurl’s gotten to git a man or be plumb looked down on,” she continued, a note of finality in her voice. “Yo’ hain’t aimin’ to be a’ ol’ maid, air yo’, Mellie? Well, yo’ shorely air hailed that-a-way. Me’n Dave Wilson was ma’ied befo’ I was sixteen. When he up’n died I mo’ned a fittin’ time and then tuk yo’ paw. I met up with Shep ayfter yo’ po’ paw died. All told I haint be’n a widow more’n fo’ years.” The pardonable complacency of success voiced itself in Mirandy Wilson-Briscoe-Chunn’s recital. “This yere kentry’s full of men an’ taint no trick to make ’em think this yearth won’t turn ’f they-all don’t git you. But yo’ cayn’t do hit by folding yo’ hands in yo’ lap and actin’ like men folks plumb skeer yo’ to death. Yo’ got to show ’em yo’re right smart partial to ’em. An’ yit yo’ got to keep ’em jubious. Naow the’ was Jim Dascom, jes’ possessed to git you-all. He plumb thought the world an’ all of yo’. Him a-comin’ yere an’ a-comin’, slickin’ up to go co’tin’ ever’ last night, an’ yo’ takin’ on like he was p’isen. Consequence is, he up an’ tuk Seliny. ’N she c’udn’t hold a candle to you-all fer looks.”

The averted eyes of the slim, young thing looked wistfully across the slash to the bayou beyond. A poignant shame flooded her, the sense of sacred things profaned. Oh, if only her mother had lived, the girl mother who had died at her birth! Surely she would have understood! Or even the quiet slow-speeched father who had petted and “muched” her in secret. Since his death, ten years before, she had been terribly alone. She had only Jed—Jed Wilson, her stepmother’s boy, the magnificent big brother of her youth, who could do everything well and yet condescended to like her and be her comrade. But Jed was in far-away Texas somewhere and had been for four years.

“So I jes’ natchelly makes up my mind to help yo’. I ’low to do by you-all like yo’ own maw would. Air yo’ near through with them peas? I want ’em done right spank at twelve. Mose Hughey’s a-comin’ to dinner.”

Mellie turned a startled face on her stepmother. Her lips parted for speech, but the protest died unvoiced. What she had feared had come at last. A kind of terror surged through her. She was being prepared for the inevitable. If Mrs. Chunn had set her iron will on her marrying Hughey there would be no escape for her. Yet she knew she would rather die.

“I don’t want to—to marry,” she besought. “I druther stay with yo’, Maw.” The girl’s sweet, slow voice seemed to caress the dialect and make it lovable. “You-all have always be’n so good to me sence I was a little trick. Don’t yo’ make me marry ary man, Maw Chunn.”

“Hit ce’tainly riles me to hear you-all talk that-a-way. Hit’s plumb foolish. I reckon yo’ got to do like other folkses, Mellie Briscoe. But yo’ ain’t time to talk about that naow. Yo’ run along an’ slick up. I’ll ’tend to the dinner.”

Hughey’s narrow little shifting eyes gloated on the girl’s dainty youth and ravished the innocence of her pure outline, even while he ate voraciously of the food before him. A wolf were as fit to be mated with a lamb as the long-jawed, yellow-toothed usurer’s cunning with her fine maiden reserve. Even to Mellie’s stepmother his outstanding merit was the forty acres of rich cotton land he owned.

That he had an understanding with Mrs. Chunn was apparent, not less clear than that he counted the girl already his and the wooing a mere formality.

“Seems like nobody nevah cooked sweet taters an’ co’n pone like you’uns Miz Chunn. I ’low o’ co’se yo’ done learned Miss Mellie haow.” His wolfish little eyes leered at the girl.

Mrs. Chunn tossed the ball back, to cover her stepdaughter’s silence.

“Mellie’s a mighty good cook, Mistah Hughey, an’s yo’ say, I kin recommend her pone.”

“Tha’s good. I’m a steady man an’ don’t go devilin’ ’round none. ’F I ma’ied again,”—he was talking pointedly at Mellie—“I druther have a woman that c’d work an’ keep her mouth shet than anything else. Kin you-all tell me where I c’n git one that-a-way, Miz Chunn?”

Mellie waited on him with a padlocked tongue. When he had gorged himself she slipped away and fled to the hickory lead at the edge of the bayou. In the heavy shade of the forest she buried herself, trying to hide from the shame and the horror of it all. What could she do? How could she escape the net which enmeshed her? To whom could she turn for help? Her throat ached with the intensity of the passion of despair that swept her.

Jed would have known what to do. Jed would have saved her. But he was a thousand miles away on some unknown ranch. His mother’s domineering temper had driven him away from home in anger. They had heard of him just once in the four years. That was when the editor of their country paper, stopping at Mrs. Chunn’s over night, had mentioned that her son was still one of the subscribers to the _Beebee Bee_.

“Texas is a mighty big place, an’ a mighty fine country I’ve heard, but I reckon, Madam”—with a courtly bow to Mrs. Chunn—“be it nevah so humble the’s no place like home!”

“I ’low that’s why he makes out without evah seeing it,” Jed’s mother had returned dryly to the burst of editorial oratory. Her boy was the one weak spot in her inflexible armor of autocracy. To have had him home again she would willingly have made him an exception to her own rule, though she never admitted it even to herself.

It was to Jed’s strength that the girl’s weakness went fluttering out in her hour of need. He would have understood, as nobody else could. The indolent, masterful force of him would have won her battle for her. But without him—fear rose in her throat and choked her. She could not hold out—she knew she could not hold out against the quiet, steadfast, terrible pressure her stepmother would bring to bear.

Texas was a big country and far away. The paper man from Beebee had said that. But he had said, too, that he sent his paper to Jed. If so, he must know where he was living. In the midst of the desert of her despair there began to rise a tiny wellspring of hope. She would write to Jed.

As it happened, Buck Drumley was going to Beebee next day. Buck rented on shares the west bottom from Mrs. Chunn and worked it in cotton. No faintest accent of intelligence disturbed the blur of his vacant features, and he got along very comfortably without a chin. But Mellie could depend upon the loyalty of this lank, tow-headed product of the bayous even if she could not upon his wisdom. Her letter to the editor made verbal explanations unnecessary.

Buck was delighted to oblige her, and he swore himself to secrecy with an air of conspiracy so patent that the contorted winks he attempted just before setting out threatened to disclose everything to Mrs. Chunn.

“What in time’s ailin’ with yo’, Buck Drumley?” demanded the widow.

Buck’s jaw fell. It was Mellie who suggested neuralgia.

“Tha’s hit, Miz Chunn, this yere neuralgatism. Hit keeps a-devilin’ around me wuss’n toothache.”

He had to take half a cup full of vile tasting “yarb” medicine, but he got away at last with his secret still undivulged. Fifty yards away he slewed round in his seat to call back with a fatuous smile, “I’ll sho’ly be back by evenin’, Miss Mellie—three o’clock at the furdest.” Fortunately Mrs. Chunn had returned to her soapmaking at the back door.

Mellie took the precaution to meet her messenger down the road lest he should blow up prematurely with his information in the presence of her stepmother. Buck fished, with much difficulty, a slip of paper and a quarter from the pocket of his jeans. The girl selected them from a promiscuous collection of buttons, strings, peppermints and chewing tobacco.

“This yere’s the place where Jed lives, leastways he useter,” pointing to the address on the slip—“’n it didn’t cost but six bits to put the piece in the paper. Hit’s done fixed to go ever week for a month.”

When Buck next went to town he carried with him a letter addressed to Jed Wilson, 99 Ranch, What Cheer, Texas. A copy of the _Beebee Bee_ came back in his pocket. Mellie hid the paper hurriedly, and waited to look at it till she could get away to the shadows of the hickory lead at the edge of the bayou.

Among the advertisements she found what she was seeking. A chance copy of a New York paper, flung from a train window by a traveling man, had given her a model for her first appearance in type.

“If this should meet the eye of Jed he will know that the girl who hunted ’possums with him six years ago is in great need.”

Hughey pushed his curious wooing persistently. Nearly every evening now he squirted tobacco juice from the porch and bragged of himself and his possessions at Mellie _via_ Mrs. Chunn. His greedy, cruel smile filled the girl with a sick fear. Divining the repulsion he inspired in her, he offered no chance to give expression to it. That the pressure of her environment would wear out her will he was confident, and he could afford to wait till he was sure before he punished her for her detestation of him. But he scored it up against her none the less.

His approaches were no more obtrusive than those of a spider, but they were just as certain. Mellie felt herself being taken for granted. He said no word of love and asked none of the privileges usually accorded the successful wooer. None the less he obsessed her every waking moment. She was never oblivious of the encroaching web he spun about her. The time came when he and Mrs. Chunn could discuss before her the details of his marriage to her without spoken protest on her part. She sat in an unconsenting silence that became passionate protest when she was alone with her stepmother.

But she knew that she fluttered in vain and that every passing week brought her nearer the inevitable sacrifice. If she could only die—but it takes more than a breaking heart to kill a healthy young woman! Her misery could steal the roses from her cheeks, could keep her tossing through the long nights in an agony of sleepless horror, but in the daytime she dragged herself listlessly about her work as usual.

“Mose ’lows he won’t be yere to-night. He’s done gone to Beebee,” Mrs. Chunn explained one evening.

Mellie faintly sighed her relief.

Mrs. Chunn laid her string of peppers on the table and began on another. She was watching the girl without appearing to do so. “Ain’t you-all keerin’ what fer he’s gone?”

Her stepdaughter’s hands fell into her lap. She looked up with a face out of which the color had been suddenly driven.

“Yo’ gump, he’s aimin’ to git the license to-morrow.”

Everything went black before Mellie’s eyes. She caught at the arms of the rocking chair and gripped them desperately. Presently the blood beat back to her heart.

Mrs. Chunn’s dry voice—miles away in the haze—came to her distantly. “’N’s I say, a gyurl that gits fohty acres of good Arkinsaw bottom land with her man is mighty lucky. I reckon I done mighty well by you-all, Mellie. Yo’ hadn’t ought to be so ill and ongrateful.”

Mellie hurried out into the quiet night. She was stifling, oppressed by a deadly choking at her throat. She fled through the slashed field, as if driven by some impotent instinct to attempt escape from the evil fate. Habit led her to the big tree in the hickory lead where she and Jed used to play. Her despair was long past tears. She could only lean her head against the bark and give herself to long, dry sobbing till her passion of self-pity had spent itself.

Not till the man was almost beside her did she hear the approaching footsteps deadened by the soft carpet of moss. Wheeling, she stood poised for flight, an arrested picture of youth far gone in grief.

Then, “Jed!” she cried, and he, “Mel!”

It was too good to be true. The girl’s voice quavered her doubt.

“Is it really you, Jed?”

“Hit shorely is, Mel. I seen yo’ advertisement three days ago in an old paper. I be’n away off on the roundup and jest got back. Co’se I burnt the wind back to help you-all out. I seen someone slippin’ acrost the slash an’ I suspicioned it might be my little sis Mellie.”

She began to sob. “Oh, Jed, yo’ don’t know haow bad I be’n feelin’! Yo’ can’t think haow often I be’n wishin’ I was dead!”

His indolent, good-looking face took on the dark expression she had seen only once or twice.

“If anybody’s done you-all any meanness, sis—”

The blood surged into her cheeks. “Maw’s bound an’ ’termined that I’ll ma’ie Mose Hughey. He’s gittin’ the license to-day.”

“Mose Hughey?” The loose, graceful Southern figure stiffened. “Maw must be crazy!”

“He’s be’n a-pesterin’ me fer nea’ly two months—an’ I hate him wuss than a rattlesnake,” she flamed.

“He won’t pester yo’ any more, sis,” said Jed grimly, and laid a caressing arm across her shoulders.

Mellie moved out of the shadows into the moonlight and instantly Jed’s arm fell to his side. He stared at her in dumb surprise. The thin, awkward child of angles he had left had gone forever, and in her place stood a graceful creature of pliant curves. Never had he seen so sweet and lovable a face as the one upturned to him with such frank confidence. No need to question his heart. He had loved her as a child, as a woman he loved her still. That first, long look surprised the truth from them both, made it clear first to themselves and then to each other.

* * * * *

Mrs. Chunn came out from the wide gallery to the porch and peered into the night. Two figures were moving slowly toward the house along the cedar shadowed path.

“Mellie, is that you?”

“Yes, Maw.”

“Who’s that with you?”

“It’s me, Mother. I’ve come home—to stay.”

A sudden joy flashed into the hard eyes of the mother, but she instantly hid her tenderness as if it had been a vice.

“Hit’s time,” was her grim comment.

He kissed her gaily. “That’s what I thought, Mother.”

“Did Mellie tell you-all that she’s a-goin’ to git married to-morrow?”

“Yes, we be’n talkin’ about it.”

“She’s a-gittin’ a good man,” defiantly.

Jed laughed. “He ain’t good enough fer her.”

“Don’t yo’ put sech notions in her head,” his mother told him sharply.

“No, Maw,” answered Jed with unwonted humility. “Co’se I want her to think she gits a good man when she gits me.”

Mrs. Chunn’s beady eyes fastened on him. Instantly she recognized a defeat that was sweeter than victory, but she was not yet prepared to admit it. “Oh, she gits you-all, does she? Well, I ’low she don’t git much ’f yo’ don’t make a better husban’ than yo’ do a son.”

She turned on her heel and went into the house without more words. Another woman stood first with her boy now. Her jealousy was bitter. But it was for the moment only, and beneath it was to grow a deep satisfaction that Jed had at last come to anchorage near her.

Mellie followed her timidly into the house. She found her stepmother stringing peppers with an impassive face. Kneeling down beside the older woman, she slipped an arm round her.

“I jes’ cu’dn’t help loving Jed, Maw. I reckon I always have, but I didn’t know hit till I seen him so sudden-like in the hickory lead. We’uns are goin’ to be good child’en to you-all and obedient.”

Mrs. Chunn gave a parched little laugh. “Yes, hit looks like it.”

An impressionist’s sketch of a smile touched Mellie’s lips.

“I done like yo’ said. I got a man, Maw.”

SENTIMENT AND STORY

In an article accredited to my pen, in the December number of this magazine, the types had me telling a curious tale of the singing of a whippoorwill, on a certain joyous night in the blessed Christmas of the sweet long ago, and the question is raised by certain ornithological experts whether that doleful bird does its warblings in the winter. It is best to copy what the _Washington Herald_ says under the heading:

“SWEET BELLS OUT OF TUNE.”

Senator-elect Robert Love Taylor in one of his famous lectures
describes Christmas in the mountains of his native state, and
says:

“When I was a young man in my teens and twenties, the Christmas
season was the brightest of the year. I used to take my fiddle
under my arm at evening, when the whippoorwill began to
sing and the stars began to twinkle, and hie me away to the
merrymakings in the mountains.”

To this statement the _Nashville American_ takes exception, and
declares that no one ever heard a whippoorwill singing in the
mountains of Tennessee during the latter part of December. The
_American_ hints that Mr. Taylor has tuned his instrument to an
unheard-of pitch, and that the music he makes is discordant and
badly out of gear.

This treason right at the future Senator’s very front door is
hard for outsiders to understand. It is very much to be feared
that the _American_ has failed to measure fully up to the
opportunities offered for intimate personal relations with the
foremost fiddler of the age. Perhaps the _American_ never heard
a whippoorwill singing in December, but that does not prove
that “Bob” Taylor hasn’t. Where “Bob” Taylor is, there, also,
are the whippoorwills, the mockingbirds, the catbirds, and all
the sweet and soulful singers known to Dixieland. It matters
not the season, nor the hour, we take it. Song birds hover ever
in his wake, and music hangs upon the lightest trembling of his
bow. Flowers have their hours to fade, and the sun has its time
to set, but for “Bob” Taylor’s fiddle, all hours and times are
the same.

But even were it possible to believe that whippoorwills came
not to the melodious pleadings of his bow, as a matter of
cold and prosaic fact, nevertheless, by reason of the license
granted all poets, this music master of the hills and dales of
Tennessee would still have the right to claim their presence.
Why should the _American_ be captious about a little thing like
that; especially when the sentimental nature of the state’s
favorite son is so inevitably interwoven with the warp and woof
of the argument? A prophet may be without honor save in his own
country, but a fiddler of “Bob” Taylor’s fame deserves loyalty
and cordial praise from all.

Let the _American_ cease from troubling, and concede that the
Senator-to-be has “rings on his fingers and bells on his toes,
and that he shall have music wherever he goes!”

It must be remembered, at the very outset of this discussion, that the incident happened in the days of my callow youth, when all sorts of melodies and things were buzzing in my head, and life itself was one sweet song of tuneful melody; that I was in love and had a fiddle under my arm, alone in a moonlit mountain cove on my way to a dance, with a heart throbbing in happy expectancy. It was just at this excruciatingly delightful junction that the twittering occurred which constitutes the bone of this contention (if a twitter can be called a bone) and to that I deem it important to add some observations by way of explanation, refutation, and extenuation.

Observe, no man has ever heard me say that it was in the nature of a whippoorwill to sing at any season, but if one lone bird upon a frozen limb away up the mountain gorge in the dead silence of a moonlit winter’s night, should choose to violate its nature and change its graveyard croakings into purling song in harmony with the melodies so sweetly and vociferously vibrating in the heart of its lone, love-lorn auditor, where is the harm? My critics limit their denial to the time of year, and I call my biographers’ attention to the implied admission that the whippoorwill _does_ sing at some other season. I leave them suspended upon the horns of this dilemma of their own brewing (horns are sometimes brewed) and bid them extricate themselves if they can, for I shall not lend a hand, while I pass on to graver meditations.

That there were sweet and heavenly harmonies hovering and quavering in that mountain cove that ever-blessed night in the happy long ago, is certain, but whence came they? Was it really the whippoorwill? And even if it were, and its song was of that doleful, screeching soul-rending stridulance that startles ghosts and gives haunts the creeps was it not sweet music to the only ear that heard it?

Might it not have been the soul of the fiddle stirred by a mountain breeze to life, getting itself in tune with the frantic transports of the heart against which it lay? They say a soundpost sometimes comes to life, and that all the tuneful sprites that burrow and buzz in the vibrant caverns of a fiddle are set a-humming and a-thrumming when Cupid peeps in at the slit. Who can tell but that this might have been the mellifluous sound that ravished my ear then and is raising such a hullabulloo now?

That there was heavenly music in the air that night I take it none will dare dispute, and that the heart of that care-free swain trudging up the echoless cove to swing corners with love the live-long night and lave and slosh his soul in rapturous revels, was tuned to catch its faintest twang and magnify into pealing orchestras of roaring symphonies, and whooping, heavenly harmonies, all living souls will surely admit. What wonder then, that in the tumultuous union of chromatic confusion, when all the lyrics were raving mad with ecstasy, that the croaking of a whippoorwill might have been taken for an angel’s harp or the twittering of a catbird?

Thus much for speculation! Thus much in tribute to the harmonies! And now I come to hurl the cold truth slap into the faces of my critics and bid them make the most of it!

The types did do me wrong, aided by some unmeant pencil slip along the line between this cushioned sanctum and the cobwebbed den where sits and broods and rends his hair, a careworn proofreader with genius in his dreamy eye and smut upon his classic nose. What I did write was changed, transmogrified, warped, varied, and subverted.

I mentioned not the whippoorwill. I never heard one sing then, since, or before; at any season, time, or place. I heard a ravishing song that might have wrought my very soul to ecstasy, but as plain as pen can make it, I wrote it then and there, “raccoon.”

* * * * *

I am a King. My realm hath no boundary lines; the world is my kingdom. I stamp my foot upon the earth and jostle the universe. The sun gives light for my pleasure, and the timid stars tremble in my presence. The oceans are my highways, and the mountains are my temples on whose purple domes I love to stand and throw kisses at the angels, or look down and view with rapture, the peaceful flocks that graze and sleep on a thousand sunny hillsides. All the fruited and flowered landscapes that swing between the seas are my royal hanging gardens, and I walk in the glow of their glory, and rest in the gloam of their sweet solitudes. All the springs that bubble there are mine, and all the bright streams that leap from cliff to crag, and from crag to shadowy gorge are my wandering minstrels singing to me of flowers born to blush unseen, and speckled trout that glint and glance in a thousand brimming pools. All the wild deer that spring from shady copse and tangled coverts at the sound of the hunter’s horn are my imperial game, and for my princely sport. The sly old fox in his red uniform gaily leads the royal band, and plays drum major for my bellowing hounds and for me. The glossy herds come lowing from green pastures, fragrant with the breath of clover blossoms, burdened with milk for me, and the bees sweeten my lips with honey, stolen from the lips of the flowers. The hills unfold their purple mysteries to herald my glory, and the valleys flaunt their banners of gold and shout, “Long live the King!” I love to while away the dreamy summer hours in the cool, green groves that curtain the glimmering fields, where all the joyous wings that brush the air come fluttering to my leafy bowers, and all the birds that sing warble their sweetest notes for me.

I am a King. I dwell in the palace of love, by the brawling brook of laughter, on the brink of the river of song. And so are all the sons and daughters of Adam equal Kings and Queens with me, whose hearts beat time to nature’s music, and whose souls are in love with the beautiful. There is a crown of sunshine for every brow by day; a coronet of stars by night. The angels of light hover above us all, and arch the heavens with the rainbow of hope for all, and bring from the vapory vineyards of the clouds, the sparkling champagne of pure crystal water to bless the lips of all. All the delightful dreams that spread their wings above the horizon of the heart, all the glorious thoughts that fly out from the heaven of the brain, all the jubilees of joy that crowd the circling hours of mortal life are the regal gifts of God to mankind—the royal heritage of all. There are songs sweeter than were ever sung; there is beauty which defies even the brush of a Raphael, for you and for me, and for us all.

* * * * *

On May 13, 1607, three boats anchored off a peninsula which jutted into Powhatan’s River, and there set up a stockaded place of defence, which they called James Fort. One hundred and five settlers were left by the ships; among these was John Smith, a wonderful genius and adventurer, a man destined to carry the infant colony through perilous trials.

Smith and his men and those who followed them made out of the fort a town which they called James City, and later Jamestown. From Jamestown grew Virginia, and from Virginia, these United States.

The Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition will celebrate from the last of April to the last of November, the three hundredth anniversary of the nation’s nativity. The beautiful waters and the historic shores will witness a magnificent tribute to those faithful pioneers who with their energies, aye with their very life-blood, laid the foundation of our greatness.

It will be impossible to fail of gaining information by a visit to the Exposition, it matters not what the extent of a man’s knowledge may be. Every department of our national government will be represented in miniature, complete in every detail. Every state will be represented by a reproduction of some building connected with its formative history, and the whole will form an object lesson in the history and development of our country that will surpass any means of teaching and interest ever before seen. Nearly every state in the Union is already at work upon its special buildings, and of the Southern states, all (at this writing) have commenced work except Mississippi, Texas, Alabama and Tennessee. It is certain that these states will fall into line and their respective legislatures ought not to fail to make immediate appropriations in order that the work may be worthily and adequately completed by the opening of the Exposition. Some of the states whose legislatures could not be awakened to sufficient patriotic pride to make an appropriation, have made up a fund by the efforts of their public-spirited citizens, but Tennessee will not need to resort to such methods. The Volunteer State, whose affiliations with Virginia, both in past history and in present commercial development are of the closest, will not fail to help make this enterprise a shining success. In view of the abundance of her resources she cannot afford not to make a showing of her phenomenal growth from a struggling and neglected mountain settlement to her present proud position among the galaxy of states. We have contributed leaders and men, and the bone and sinews for every movement which has resulted in our national progress and our supplies for future development are unrivalled and inexhaustible, and we cannot afford to be absent when the showing of the states is made.

THE PARADISE OF FOOLS