The Mountain Girl. Erskine Payne
back to these parts very soon," and David expressed satisfaction. His evident ignorance of mountain affairs convinced them that nothing was to be gained from him, and they asked no direct questions, and finally took their departure, with a high opinion of their host, and quite content.
Then David called his little accomplice from his hiding-place, took him into his cabin, and taught him to drink tea with milk and sugar in it, gave him crisp biscuits from his small remainder in store, and, still further to comfort his heart, searched out a card on which was a picture of an ocean liner on an open sea, with flags flying, great rolls of vapor and smoke trailing across the sky, with white-capped waves beneath and white clouds above. The boy's eyes shone with delight. He twisted himself about to look up in Thryng's face as he questioned him concerning it, and almost forgot Frale in his happiness, as he trudged home hugging the precious card to his bosom.
Contentedly Thryng proceeded to set his abode in order after the disarray of the morning, undisturbed by any question as to the equity of his deed. His mind was in a state of rebellion against the usual workings of the criminal courts, and, biassed by his observation of the youth, he felt that his act might lead as surely toward absolute justice, perhaps more surely, than the opposite course would have done.
Erelong he found a few tools carefully packed away, as was the habit of his old friend, and the labor of preparing his canvas room began. But first a ladder hanging under the eaves of the cabin must be repaired, and long before the slant rays of the setting sun fell across his hilltop, he found himself too weary to descend to the Fall Place, even with the aid of his horse. With a measure of discouragement at his undeniable weakness, he led the animal to water where a spring bubbled sweet and clear in an embowered hollow quite near his cabin, then stretched himself on the couch before the fire, with no other light than its cheerful blaze, too exhausted for his book and disinclined even to prepare his supper.
After a time, David's weariness gave place to a pleasant drowsiness, and he rose, arranged his bed, and replenished the fire, drank a little hot milk, and dropped into a wholesome slumber as dreamless and sweet as that of a tired child.
Such a sense of peace and retirement closed around him there alone on his mountain, that he slept with his cabin door open to the sweet air, crisp and cold, lulled by the murmuring of the swaying pine tops without, and the crackling and crumbling of burning logs within. Rolled in his warm Scotch rug, he did not feel the chill that came as his fire burned lower, but slept until daybreak, when the clear note of a Carolina wren, thrice repeated close to his open door, sounded his reveille.
Deeply inhaling the cold air, he lay and mused over the events of the previous day. How quickly and naturally he had been drawn into the interests of his neighbors below him, and had absorbed the peculiar atmosphere of their isolation, making a place for himself, shutting out almost as if they had never existed the harassments and questionings of his previous life. Was it a buoyancy he had received from his mountain height and the morning air? Whatever the cause, he seemed to have settled with them all, and arrived at last where his spirit needed but to rest open and receptive before its Creator to be swept clear of the dross of the world's estimates of values, and exalted with aspiration.
Every long breath he drew seemed to make his mental vision clearer. God and his own soul – was that all? Not quite. God and the souls of men and of women – of all who came within his environment – a world made beautiful, made sweet and health-giving for these – and with them to know God, to feel Him near. So Christ came to be close to humanity.
A mist of scepticism that had hung over him and clouded the later years of his young manhood suddenly rolled away, dispelled by the splendor of this triumphant thought, even as the rays of the rising sun came at the same moment to dispel the earth mists and flood the hills with light. Light; that was it! "In Him is no darkness at all."
Joyously he set himself to the preparation for the day. The true meaning of life was revealed to him. The discouragement of the evening before was gone. Yet now should he sit down in ecstatic dreaming? It must be joy in life – movement – in whatever was to be done, whether in satisfying a wholesome hunger, in creating warmth for his body, or in conquering the seeds of decay and disease therein, and keeping it strong and full of reactive power for his soul's sake.
It was a revelation to him of the eternal God, wonder-working and all-pervading. Now no longer with a haunting sense of fear would he search and learn, but with a glad perception of the beautiful orderliness of the universe, so planned and arranged for the souls of men when only they should learn how to use their own lives, and attune themselves to give forth music to the touch of the God of Love.
A cold bath, the pure air, and his abstemiousness of the previous evening gave him a compelling hunger, and it was with satisfaction he discovered so large a portion of his dinner of yesterday remaining to be warmed for his morning meal. What he should do later, when dinner-time arrived, he knew not, and he laughed to think how he was living from hour to hour, content as the small wren fluting beside his door his care-free note. Ah, yes! "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world."
The wren's note reminded him of a slender box which always accompanied his wanderings, and which had come to light rolled in the jacket which he had given Frale as part of his disguise. He opened it and took therefrom the joints of a silver flute. How long it had lain untouched!
He fitted the parts and strolled out to the rock, and there, as he gazed at the shifting, subtle beauty spread all before him and around him, he lifted the wandlike instrument to his lips and began to play. At first he only imitated the wren, a few short notes joyously uttered; then, as the springs of his own happiness welled up within him, he poured forth a tumultuous flood of trills – a dancing staccato of mounting notes, shifting and falling, rising, floating away, and then returning in silvery echoes, bringing their own gladness with them.
The pæan of praise ended, the work of the day began, and he set himself with all the nervous energy of his nature to the finishing of his canvas room. Again, ere the completion of the task, he found he had been expending his strength too lavishly, but this time he accepted his weariness more philosophically, glad if only he might labor and rest as the need came.
Nearly the whole of the glorious day was still left him. In moving his couch nearer the door, he found his efforts impeded by some heavy object underneath it, and discovered, to his surprise and almost dismay, the identical pigskin valise which Frale had taken away with him the day before. How came it there? No one, he was certain, had been near his cabin since Hoyle had trotted home yesterday, hugging his picture to his breast.
David drew it out into the light and opened it. There on the top lay the cigars he had placed in the youth's pocket, and there also every article of wearing apparel he had seen disappear down the laurel-grown path on Frale's lithe body twelve hours or more ago. He cast the articles out upon the floor and turned them over wonderingly, then shoved them aside and lay down for his quiet siesta. He would learn from Cassandra the meaning of this. He hoped the young man had got off safely, yet the fact of finding his kindly efforts thus thrust back upon him disturbed him. Why had it been done? As he pondered thereon, he saw again the steel-blue flash in the young man's eyes as he turned away, and resolved to ask no questions, even of Cassandra.
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH FRALE GOES DOWN TO FARINGTON IN HIS OWN WAY
Frale felt himself exalted by the oath he had sworn to Cassandra, as if those words had lifted the burden from his heart, and taken away the stain. As he walked away in his disguise, it seemed to him that he had acted under an irresistible spell cast upon him by this Englishman, who was to bide so near Cassandra – to be seen by her every day – to be admired by her, while he, who had the first right, must hide himself away from her, shielding himself in that man's clothes. Fine as they seemed to him, they only abashed him and filled him with a sense of obligation to a man he dreaded.
Like a child, realizing his danger only when it was close upon him, his old recklessness returned, and he moved down the path with his head held high, looking neither to the right nor to the left, planning how he might be rid of these clothes and evade his pursuers unaided. The men, climbing toward him as he descended, hearing his footsteps above them, parted and stood watching, only half screened by the thick-leaved shrubs, not ten feet from him on either side; but so elated