9 The Lone Cabin

Dinner, or supper as it was called in the mountains and even in Groveton, was served in the dining room of the new hotel, and, in the progress of it, Harry and Tom forgot all about Cad Burke. It was Tom’s moment of triumph, and Harry, recognizing it, rejoiced for his friend.

The company that Tom represented, foreseeing the merits of Pleasantville, not only as a metropolis, but, as a summer resort as well, had erected an artistic hotel, a wide, low building, with many verandas, large windows and spacious rooms. It was painted a very dark and soothing red, and as touches of autumnal scarlet were already beginning to appear in the mountain foliage the effect was harmonious and complete.

They sat in the great dining room, with all the windows open and they were a thoroughly joyous party. They had been joined by Harrison Lewis, the foreman of construction on the line, two young engineers who worked with Tom Kidd, and James Sanford, the representative of the oil company, now at work in the valley.

It was a good dinner—Tom had seen to that—the company was bright, and Mr. Newton began to regain his normal pedestal. He was no longer in the oppressive wilderness, that strange and haunted place. He was here under a roof, among the dear and familiar sights of civilization, and his features relaxed. He was once more the son of the great steel king, the master of many millions, and he beamed across the table at Rose Compton, Margaret Ayliffe and others but most of all at Cynthia Braxton. He knew that he might have had his choice among many beautiful girls in Chicago or even in New York, but in addition to her beauty, there was something singularly tantalizing and provocative about Cynthia. It was a rare, intangible, but powerful charm, and he was compelled to recognize it.

Cynthia herself did not share in this return to roof and fireside. The spell of the mountains and the wilderness was still upon her. She sat near one of the great open windows, and directly facing it. When she looked out, which was nearly all the time, she looked over the straggling village, the new railroad and the ugly oil derricks in the valley below, seeing only the slope of the mountain opposite, and the ridges and peaks beyond. Everywhere the mountains were clad in dense foliage, except for an occasional bald peak shooting up through the veil, and it was still a wilderness to her, the primitive wilderness that existed before the white man came.

Here and there in the green and brown, the sumac leaves that had already turned scarlet under the autumnal touch gleamed like spots of blood. The sun was now setting. In a sky that had been cloudless, it was a ball of red fire, and it touched all the western peaks and ridges with vivid light. The forests came out like carven tracery, edged with red. Over the further slopes was flung a red glow, like a veil, and a distant little brook, dashing down between the ridges, seemed touched with the same tint.

It was forest and mountain, mountain and forest; man was nowhere and Cynthia felt a peculiar thrill that was a mingling of awe and admiration; yet in a manner, and, through a sort of mental-inheritance, it seemed friendly and familiar to her. Her ancestors, not so far away, had fought for this land in all its many battles. To the eastward curved the Wilderness Road over which they had come, and she felt herself truly their child.

“What are you thinking about Cynthia?” asked Herbert Newton. “You had on your face one of the queerest looks I ever saw, such as I fancy a primitive woman might have worn.”

She came back to earth with a laugh.

“I was dreaming” she replied, “but you interpreted rightly. I was dreaming of the time when our people fought their way into the wilderness. It was the mountains over there that put such thoughts into my head.”

He looked and shivered. Was that terrible wilderness to haunt him still, even when he was under a roof, with the evidences of civilization all about him? “What a cheerless place!” he said. “It chills me just to look at it.”

Cynthia gave him one swift glance, and it was a glance of disapproval. Swift as it was, Harry Beauchamp saw it, and his heart leaped.

The air was indeed growing cold at the coming of the night, and the hotel attendants closed the windows. But Cynthia still looked toward the mountains, and the thrill of awe and admiration came again, but stronger. The lower edge of the sun touched the top of the highest peak, and the rocks on the bald crest burned with a red glow. In the slopes the leaves streamed for a few moments with fire. Then the sun shot down behind the highest peak, the fire died away in the forest, and darkness swept up the gorges.

Cynthia, coming from a dream, left the window. In the dining room of the hotel they were turning on the new electric lights, and, in the great fireplace at the end, they were kindling a fire under a few logs to take away the evening chill. Many voices were heard, mingling in talk and laughter, and it was the present once more.

They sat in a great semi-circle before the fire and they heard shots from the valley below.

“Merely some of the mountaineers informing the world that they are going home,” said Tom Kidd. “They are only shooting at the air.”

“Is it a diversion? asked Mr. Newton.

Tom shrugged his shoulders.

“In one sense, yes,” he replied, “but in another it’s a kind of war whoop. When they fill up with the white moonshine stuff they call whiskey they want to tell everybody that they are afraid of nobody, and that they are as good as the next man or better, and they think the best way to do it is to fire off gunpowder and bullets. I suppose the Indian let loose his war whoop for the same purpose.”

“A bad lot,” said Mr. Newton conclusively.

Tom Kidd shook his head.

“No,” he said, “It’s isolation, and the lack of a legitimate share of amusements. I should add, too, poor food. How can any people be wise or good on a diet of corn bread and molasses? But just you wait until the Groveton and Pleasantville Railroad has been running ten years or so. They then will have something better to do than drinking moonshine and fighting. But they fight the road all the time, tooth and nail. God knows why!”

“Jealousy and narrowness,” said Harry, whose vivid impressions often told him the truth, before Tom’s practical talents could reason them out. It’s the old feeling of the country against the town, the mountains against the lowlands, poverty against prosperity.”

“Look!” said Cynthia. “The moon had risen over the wilderness!”

A light was now pouring, like melted silver, over all the peaks and ridges, and a rising wind whistled in a weird tone up the gorge. It was a strange uncanny thing to Mr. Newton, and he looked back with relief at the flowing fire in the great room. Charlie Wentworth noticed his slight shiver, and as Charlie was a loyal man, a firm believer in Tom Kidd, the railroad, and all that belonged to his own region he began to chant the praises of coal, lumber, oil and scenery.

“We’re to start early in the morning to look at the oil wells and the other richness hereabouts,” said Tom Kidd at last, “so I think it’s time for us all to go to bed.”

Cynthia and Rose Compton had a room together, but Cynthia could not sleep. The mountains and the spell of the wilderness had brought knowledge to her. She had recognized her world, her mental world, and it nowhere touched that of Herbert Newton; the feeling that she had for him was only a fancy—and she knew it was nothing more—coming from a sense of triumph and the natural pleasure over attention. But tonight it was not a fancy, merely a kindly regard. Moreover Mr. Newton was in her thoughts but briefly. She was troubled by something else, something that she had seen when they came into Pleasantville. Some old words of hers spoken long ago when she was a little girl—“When Harry Beauchamp grows up to be a man he will kill Cad Burke”—returned to her mind. Why had they come back so vividly? Because she had seen Cad Burke? Yet she had seen him before more than once. Could one foresee the future? Could one have as it were flashes of prophecy? She had an uncanny feeling that she had spoken the truth long ago, that an infallible voice had spoken through her. Why not? It would only be retributive justice. Cynthia Braxton felt the blood of her fighting ancestors flowing in every vein.

She rose at last, slipped on her dress and threw a shawl around her shoulders. The room was partly lighted by the moon’s rays coming through the unclosed shutters on the upper half of a window. Rose Compton lay sound asleep, her blond hair framing her face on the pillow. Cynthia smiled, and then she walked to the window, opening the shutters on the lower half, disclosing a tiny balcony outside. She stepped upon the balcony and stood there, silent and erect.

A man in the grounds below saw the young girl standing in the window, like a painting in a frame, and he drew a sudden long savage breath. But Cynthia neither heard nor saw anything. The wind, with its singular, weird tone, was whistling up the gorge, but there was no other sound. The night was bright now. The ridges and peaks across the gorge seemed clothed in silver, and the world of night spoke only of peace.

Yet Cynthia was troubled. She felt as if she had heard a whisper of warning in her ear, and bye and bye she looked downward. Her eyes met those of a man who was looking upward, a man of middle years, very large, very powerful, his face covered with thick, black beard. His black eyes sparkled with an unholy light and a shiver of fierce repulsion and hate seized her. She knew him! For a few moments the two stared at each other, his eyes still sparkling and hers defiant. The blood of her fighting ancestors was alive and leaping now. Suddenly he put his hand to his mouth, and then flung it upward in a motion of one who throws a kiss. Her blood stopped for a moment, and then leaped more wildly than ever. But she did not move, although her face had turned white, with flaming red to follow.

Then she looked slowly away, whether he was still there she did not know. She heard no sound of footsteps, but the mountaineer can pass without noise. She would not look down again, and stood as if she had seen nothing, although her face was red. Presently she turned, stepped inside and closed the shutters, both the lower and the upper. She fell asleep at last, but just before she passed into unconsciousness these words floated dimly through her mind—“When Harry Beauchamp grows up to be a man he will kill Cad Burke.”

They were awakened very early in the morning by the sound of a gong in the halls. Cynthia and Rose came out upon the piazza. The sun was just swinging clear of the eastern ridges, and the world was flooded with a light, silver on the slopes and gold on the crests. Rose burst into a girlish chatter of delight, but Cynthia was grave and silent. Fortunately Rose talked enough for both, and she did not notice.

After breakfast, breaking into little groups, they went up the gorge to look at the oil wells. County Court was still in progress and Harry saw mountaineers, who had travelled in the night, coming into town. He knew that many “moonshine stills” or illicit distilleries were hidden back in the gorges, and he saw too that more than one of the mountaineers had imbibed of their product. It troubled, even alarmed him. His vivid imagination could read their minds as clearly as if they were print. Naturally jealous and suspicious, they were inflamed by liquor now, and they lowered, at all these well-dressed cheerful young people from the lowlands. Harry saw that they regarded Tom Kidd’s party as their natural enemies.

They reached the first oil well and the young superintendent explained its nature and capacity. “The oil is of the highest qaulity,” he said. “In a year or two it will be flowing into one end of a pipe here, and out of the other end of the same pipe in Bayonne, nearly a thousand miles away.”

“And another stream, but of money will be flowing back into the mountains,” said Cynthia.

“Yes, you’ve hit it Cynthia,” said Tom Kidd. “They say money is the root of all evil, but it’s the root of a lot of good too. Give these people an incentive, a real reward for work, something more than this thin soil affords, and you’ll soon find ’em hustling with the best of ’em.”

The oil well, with its red wooden derrick was not beautiful in itself, it was merely significant of results, and they went on up the valley to the other wells. At times the valley was so strait that the bed of the creek left only a narrow footpath beside it. Here they passed in single file, all keenly responsive to the wilderness and roughness of the place, save Herbert Newton alone, who did not like the stoney trail, the possibility of a slip that would send him into the foaming waters of the creek, and the great strain that such exploring put upon his muscles.

At the fourth oil well, a messenger, a workman from the railroad, came in great haste and apprehension for Tom Kidd.

“Some of those mountaineers who were drinking have got hold of a hand car on the track above the town,” he said. “They took it away from Jim Maloney. Said they could run it as well as anybody, an’ were goin’ to have a ride. An’ there’s been an accident.”

“You stay here,” said Tom Kidd to the party, “and I’ll go back and see about it.”

But all trailed after him. Harry, vividly alive to impressions, foresaw in an instant what would happen, and he determined to be by the side of Tom. As they approached they saw that a crowd had gathered about a wrecked hand car, a crowd that gesticulated and uttered many exclamations, mostly fierce. Two men on the ground were groaning, and, when Tom and his friends came up, threats were made.

“Push right through Tom,” said Harry. “They’re to blame of course.”

Harry and Tom shouldered their way toward the fallen men, and the others followed, despite the mutterings of anger.

The two who lay upon the ground were typical mountaineers, long-limbed, sallow, stoop-shouldered men. One had a bloody head, and the other was nursing his leg. They groaned profusely.

“See what your road has done!” exclaimed a man. “You talk about it’s helpin’ us, but it talks away our land an’ kills our people!”

The man spoke in loud, aggressive, confident tones and his words were received with cries of approval. It was Cad Burke, and Harry instantly felt that old shiver of repulsion and deadly hate. But the appearance of Burke had changed. He wore a dark mixed coat and trousers, a brilliantly colored shirt, red leather belt, and yellow shoes. A sprig of sumac burned in the band of his soft, white hat. His curly dark beard and mustache had been trimmed. Although over forty he was a mountaineer, and, however incongruous he may have seemed elsewhere, he fitted well into the picture here in his own haunts. His face bore the aspect of conscious power, and of all its features not one denoted weakness. There was even a kind of sinister beauty that the people from Groveton did not fail to see.

“You’ve begun already!” he said in his threatening tone, pointing to the fallen men.

“Nonsense!” said Tom Kidd who was always direct and practical. “Those men were drunk and seized our hand car! What right have they to be fooling with our property! Besides they are hurt but little, although they deserved to be hurt worse.”

“But you seized my land for your right o’way an’ you know it!” exclaimed Burke.

“We paid you twice as much as it was worth,” retorted Tom Kidd. “The trouble was you wanted five times as much.”

“We had to take it under the right of eminent domain,” he added in a whisper to Harry.

Burke retorted hotly, but, in a moment, slipped into another line of attack, and began to inflate the latent mountain jealousy and suspicion.

“Look at ’em!” he cried, “in all their fine clothes! People who never worked an’ who are comin’ here now, tryin’ to steal what belongs to us, laughing’ at poor Jim Self an’ Tom Morrow here, sayin’ they ain’t hurt. An’ look at that dude over thar with the scoop on his head an’ the rattle snake clothes! Now what do you think o’ that? Do you want to be run over by a railroad belongin’ to a thing like that.”

All eyes ere turned upon the unfortunate Mr. Newton, in his pith helmet and beautiful striped suit. He blushed profoundly and deeply, and his heart filled with vain rage. He, a target, when he alone was not of people, place or circumstances.

The Groveton party laughed; they laughed despite themselves and their wish to help Tom Kidd, but the menace of the mountaineers grew louder.

Burke glanced about triumphantly. It was then that his look met Cynthia Braxton’s, and despite all her courage and self command, she shrank. She saw, with the suddenness and depth of a woman’s intuition, the reason why Cad Burke appeared that morning as a mountain dandy. Hideous and incredible as it seemed it was true. She read it in every movement of the powerful figure, in its primitive and sinister beauty, and in every flash of the black eyes that had in them the cunning and wildness of the panther. He was a king among his own and he knew it.

She shrank away yet further and Burke continued his inflammatory speech. The crowd was still gathering. More mountaineers, come in to the County Court, had joined its outskirts, and they added to the clamor. They knew nothing of what had happened, save that two of their own had been injured, and of course the grasping cruel railroad had done it. Some of them, were drunk, nearly all of them carried rifles or pistols or both, and all were dangerous. Ignorance and prejudice pressed each other hot-foot in the race to do harm. Harry and Tom grew alarmed, but in this crisis it was Charlie Wentworth, the lowland orator against the highland champion, who saved them.

Wentworth leaped upon an empty goods box that lay beside the track, and in a stentorian voice, trained on the stump and in legislative halls, called for attention. Involuntarily they gave it. He announced quickly that he wanted to say a few words to “the finest and best people in the world.” Then he had them. They had suspected before that they were the finest and best people in the world, but to be confirmed in the belief by this lowland orator, an outsider, was soothing and delightful. Their hearts warmed to him as he artfully described how Jim Self and Tom Morrow and their comrades had tried to “monkey” with a hand car. They were good fighters, Jim and Tom, and each of them could whip his weight in wildcats, but they had made a great mistake in tackling an unknown thing like a hand car.

“A circus came once to Brown County over there, next to Randolph.’ he said, ”It was the first time a circus had ever come to Brown County, and everybody went to see it. Bill and Jake Wolfe were the bullies of Brown County, and they were present too. Each got outside a big bottle of moonshine, and then they undertook to clean out the side show. Gentlemen, right then they made their mistake. If they had gone into the big ring, where things are what they seem, they might have had a chance, but in the side show never. They hadn’t more than got started when the armless man hit Bill over the head with a club, the legless woman kicked Jake through the canvas, the fat woman jumped on Bill with all her weight, the Indian rubber man fetched Jake a mighty clip on the jaw, and what the whole side show did to Bill and Jake it took ’em two years to get over. Gentlemen do you wonder that Jim Self and Tom Morrow are laid out?”

A roar of laughter greeted the luckless Jim and Tom, who were just then limping to their feet, and the crisis was over. Wentworth descended triumphantly from his goods box, and the crowd scattered, Jim and Tom escorted by their friends. Cad Burke acknowledged defeat gracefully, and swaggered away like some lithe and powerful wild beast that had suddenly decided the prey was not worth his while, the sprig of sumac in his hat band blazing like a flame. Cynthia was glad when he was gone. Almost for the first time in her life, she had felt fear.

“You’ve done us a great favor old man,” said Tom to Charlie. “Now I think we’d all better go and have dinner.”

“I couldn’t miss a chance to make a speech,” said Wentworth lightly.

They went back to the hotel, but Harry noticed that, although the storm was gone, there were still plenty of clouds. The crowd in the hamlet had increased rather than diminished, and, under the influence of “moonshine,” disorder occurred here and there. Two or three shots had been fired in these stray encounters but so far nobody had been hurt. The dark looks were mostly for the “stuck-up” people from the richer and lower region. He could feel that suspicion and jealousy were growing, and he knew too that some of these mountain, men like Cad Burke, would rather have the mountains remain poor and wild, with themselves as leaders, than be submerged in the tide of wealth and prosperity flowing in from the lowlands on the railroad line.

He caught a glimpse once of a square back and a pair of thick and powerful shoulders, and he was sure that they belonged to Dave Strong. He sought a second glimpse, but the man was gone. Nevertheless he was troubled. He was sure that it was Strong, and the presence of two such men as Burke and Strong in the same tiny town boded ill. He did not think it well that Dave Strong and Cad Burke should be working together on anything.

They dined on the piazza of the hotel, and afterward they strolled along the paths that led up the slopes into the deeper mountains. It was Wentworth’s suggestion and Tom Kidd fell in with it, gladly. He had not foreseen the gathering of a suspicious and hostile crowd in Pleasantville, but the mountains themselves with their crisp air and early autumnal touches were beautiful and inviting.

In obedience to the unspoken wishes of Tom Kidd, and because he alone was a guest, all the rest having definite places in the home circle, they paid extreme courtesy to Mr. Newton. He was permitted again to walk by the side of Cynthia, although Harry was at heart rebellious, and Cynthia herself hid whatever feelings she may have had upon the subject.

It was a relief to all to get away from the hamlet and its discordant elements. Cynthia felt it perhaps the most of all. Pleasantville had grown, for the moment, hateful to her, and she did not look back. Before her stretched the peaks and ridges, and the wind came undefiled. Her eyes and mind were soothed by the clean slopes and the touches of red here and there. It was like a return to one’s own. The old primitive feeling came back, and just then she cared little for the roofs of men. And, truth to tell, she was thinking very little of Herbert Newton who was picking his way gallantly, but with some trouble, by her side.

Behind them came Harry Beauchamp and Rose Compton. Rose was a distant cousin of Harry’s, and he liked her with a sort of kindly toleration. People invariably spoke of Rose Compton, as little, although she was larger than Cynthia. She had a confiding, somewhat childish manner.

The four steadily followed the path that led in a winding line up the slope. Harry noticed not without satisfaction that Mr. Newton was not greatly enjoying himself. He was not used to hill-climbing, and now and then his breath came hard. But they persisted and every step led them deeper into the foliage which here hung thick on the slopes. Even if they had looked back now they could not have seen Pleasantville. Bough and leaf also shut out the view ahead of them, and the four were enclosed by the wilderness. They had heard the voices of the others for a little while, but then they died away.

A squirrel ran up a tree trunk and his claws rattled on the bark. A scarlet tanager darted among the leaves like a streak of flame. A rabbit sprang up in the path before them, his cotton tail showing for a moment, and then gone. The wind whistled sharply among the leaves and boughs. It was the voice of the wilderness and it alone was heard. Cynthia went lightly up the path, and a wicked spirit laid hold of her. She turned to the laboring Mr. Newton.

“Isn’t it splendid?” she said, “The mountains and the forest? Isn’t it glorious to imagine oneself wild for the time?”

Herbert Newton was a polite man, but he had the courage of his convictions.

“I think I’d rather be tame, Miss Braxton,” he said, “and if there were a sliding stairway up this ridge it would help. O yes, it would help a lot!”

“But the poetry would all be gone,” said Cynthia.

“I could never get past the first verse of any poem,” rejoined Mr. Newton.

There was a sudden whirring of wings, and a half dozen great birds flew out of a thicket, sailed gracefully away, and alighted in the topmost boughs of a distant tall tree. One of them was of magnificent size, with bronze feathers that glittered in the sun.

“Now what are those?” exclaimed the startled Mr. Newton.

“Wild turkeys,” replied Cynthia “and the great bronze fellow is the gobbler. Didn’t I tell you it was the wilderness? See, they have inspected us now and they are going.”

The birds poised in the tree for only a few minutes. A faint gobble, gobble floated down, and they sailed majestically away, to be lost in the forest.

The four reached the crest of the ridge and went on. Their immediate destination was a mineral spring, with wonderful waters, flowing away unnoticed for centuries, save by bear, deer and panther that had resorted there for its healing properties before the white man came. But the wicked spirit still held Cynthia. She flouted Mr. Newton, and she led him along the roughest ways. He did not cut a heroic figure, and he began to suspect it.

But they reached the mineral spring, tasted of its bitter waters and rested on the stones beside it. Now another malicious spirit was at work. When they rose they wandered further than they thought and from the regular path. Meanwhile, a test was preparing. The afternoon turned much warmer. Far off in the Southwest a flake of grayish mist appeared. It broadened and deepened rapidly, and the brilliant sunshine faded. The wind died. The heat increased. An intense ominous stillness lay over all the mountains. Then a low groaning sound, full of menace, came out of the Southwest. Peaks and ridges took it up and their echoes answered. The gray spread over all the heavens, and then was cut down the center by a flash of vivid intense light like the sweep of a gigantic sword-blade. The wilderness had put off its most charming mask and had put on its most terrible, all with equal suddenness.

Harry had been the first to notice the change, and it filled him with alarm—-not for himself or Mr. Newton, but for the girls. Their undertook to retrace their steps and only then did they discover that they were lost. Rose Compton and Mr. Newton were in dismay, but Harry and Cynthia were either bolder spirits, or they were more accustomed.

“That sky is full of wind and rain,” said Harry “and it will burst before long. Shelter we must have until it passes. That looks like a little corn field, on the slope over there, and where there is a corn field a cabin isn’t far away.”

It was nothing but a scrubby little patch of corn, the thin and stunted stalks that the mountains produce, and it seemed fairly to hang on the slope. But, as Harry said, it was certainly a sign that shelter could not be very far away. They began to run, Cynthia, Harry and Rose lightly, and Mr. Newton laboring.

The narrow valley which they had entered opened out a little, and there in the shelter of a hill was a cabin. Another tremendous blaze of lightning cut the sky from horizon to horizon, and then the cloud closed in again, thicker and darker than ever. Thunder rolled ominously among the peaks and ridges.

“There is shelter,” shouted Harry. “The cabin! See, just at the foot of the hill! Come on, Mr. Newton, in three minutes the rain will be upon us, and it will be no summer-shower!”

They made a fresh effort and reached the cabin door, just as they heard the swish of the coming rain. The door was closed, but Harry beat loudly upon it, and, in a moment, it was opened by a woman, tall and thin, yellow and weazened, wearing an old calico dress of broad, stripes. She gave a slight start, when she saw Harry, and raised her hand in a repelling gesture, but Harry pointed to those behind him. Cynthia and Rose would have appealed to any heart. Their faces were flushed by the unusual exertion, their hair was disarranged, but they were beautiful, all the more so perhaps because of the disorder, and the mountain woman saw that they were very young.

“Come in,” she said, and they entered, Harry and Mr. Newton following. As she closed the door the rain struck it with a sweep and a rush that made it. shake in its fastenings, and above they heard the great drops driving hard upon the roof. Through the glass of the single window they saw the forest bending before the wind in the semi-darkness. The woman offered two willow-bottomed chairs, and Cynthia and Rose sat down in them, breathing painfully. Mr. Newton found a stool for himself, and Harry stood by the window. He noticed that the woman never addressed a word to him, and seemed to avoid looking at him. He felt a chill. It was all weird and uncanny, the lone cabin, the singular woman, and her complete ignoring of him. It was plain to him that in her mind but three had come to her door, or she was resolved that it should be so. Why? He could not answer.

It was a cabin of two rooms, and the room in which they stood was rather large for such a structure. A little fire, used perhaps for cooking, smoldered on a wide hearth. Pods of red pepper garnished the walls. In one corner was a bed covered with a gorgeously colored home-made quilt. Harry’s sharp eye saw under the edge of the bed an ancient implement, a rude boot jack. “A man lives here too, of course,” he thought. “The woman’s husband no doubt.” He tried to decipher her age, but gave it up. Mountain women age early, and remain aged a long time. She might be forty or she might be sixty. But she had the instinct of hospitality. She was bending over Cynthia and Rose, bringing them water, and, in a shy way, patting them. She also offered a glass of water to Mr. Newton at whom she stared curiously, but again she ignored Harry. As before he noticed the omission. Then she pushed together the coals on the hearth, until a light blaze sprang up and threw out a cheerful glow.

The storm—a memorable one for its violence—was now at its height. The lightning ceased, the thunder died in distant rumblings among the gorges, and the rain came down in solid sheets. It roared upon the roof, and it beat against the walls. They had reached shelter none too soon!

“We have to thank you for taking us in Mrs.—Mrs—” said Harry.

She took no notice either of Harry or the intimation to give her name, but turned to the girls, obviously admiring their pretty faces and pretty clothes.

“You belong to them people that come up on the excursion to Plesantville?” she said.

“Yes” said Cynthia, “we’re from Groveton and we got lost just before the storm came. Your house was indeed welcome to us Mrs.—Mrs.—”

“An’ right glad I am that you came” she said.“Two such tender things ez you would have had a hard time uv it out in all this storm.”

She fussed about them with motherly care, but they assured her that they were comfortable. Once she bent over Cynthia and nodding slightly toward Mr. Newton asked; “What is the critter anyway?” Harry did not hear the words, but he saw the nod and he felt sure of their meaning. He wanted to smile but he did not. Mr. Newton was not a heroic figure. His huge pith helmet, which he held in his hand, had been torn across the crown by the low-swinging bough of a tree. A rent appeared in his trousers where he had fallen on one knee. His collar was a rag, and his tie in tatters. He was conscious of his disgrace, and it weighed upon him.

Harry remained by the window, standing. He too was oppressed. The woman had not even offered him a chair. Once when Cynthia started to pass a glass of water to him, she took it from her hand and went into the other room. The chill seized Harry again. Never before in his life had he been treated as an outsider, one wholly beyond the pale, or rather as one who did not exist.

He noticed with joy that the violence of the storm was abating. The roar of the deluge on the roof became less heavy, the forests rose from the sheets of water, and under one horizon a gray light was appearing. Sudden in its coming it was likely to be sudden in its going. He looked at his watch. The afternoon was almost gone, and if Cynthia and Rose reached Pleasantville that day it would be far in the dark. Such a thing would be too dangerous, and they must spend the night in the cabin. There was no way around it. He knew moreover that whatever the woman might feel toward him, and, whatever its cause, the two girls were as safe in her cabin, as they would be in their own homes in Groveton. Mountain hospitality would allow no less.

The gray light on the horizon turned to a silver bar which broadened and spread to the zenith. The silver turned to gold, the rain ceased, and all the clouds floated away, like mist driven before a wind. The whole world swam in light.

“Cynthia,” said Harry. “There is about an hour of sunlight left. Mr. Newton and I can certainly reach Pleasantville in two hours, if you will give us the directions Mrs.—Mrs.—”

“O’ course,” she said, but again she did not supply the missing name.

“And you and Rose must remain here tonight,” he continued. “We’ll tell them in Pleasantville where you are, and there’ll be no alarm about you.”

“But is it all right?” protested Mr. Newton.

The woman frowned and Cynthia who knew her own state said hastily:

“Certainly it is all right, Mr. Newton. We’ll be safe and snug here, and fortunate we were to find so good a place. ”

The woman smiled, mollified by Cynthia’s words, and Rose added that she would enjoy a night there.

“Come, Mr. Newton,” said Harry. “We’d best start at once.

Mr. Newton, sore and reluctant, rose. He would rather have stayed, but he had the spirit to go.

“We’ll be back early in the morning, Cynthia,” Harry said.

The woman gave him the instructions about the road.

Then he went out, followed by Mr. Newton, and the woman hastily closed the door behind him.

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