p555-016 CHAPTER I. IN LOVE WITH A DUTCHMAN.

[figure description] Page 011.[end figure description]

“I DON'T believe that you'd care a cent if she
did marry a Dutchman! She might as well as to
marry some white folks I know.”

Samuel Anderson made no reply. It would
be of no use to reply. Shrews are tamed only by
silence. Anderson had long since learned that the little shred
of influence which remained to him in his own house would
disappear whenever his teeth were no longer able to shut his
tongue securely in. So now, when his wife poured out this
hot lava of argumentum ad hominem, he closed the teeth down
in a dead-lock way over the tongue, and compressed the lips
tightly over the teeth, and shut his finger-nails into his workhardened
palms. And then, distrusting all these precautions,
fearing lest he should be unable to hold on to his temper even

[figure description] Page 012.[end figure description]

with this grip, the little man strode out of the house with his
wife's shrill voice in his ears.

Mrs. Anderson had good reason to fear that her daughter
was in love with a “Dutchman,” as she phrased it in her contempt.
The few Germans who had penetrated to the West at
that time were looked upon with hardly more favor than the
Californians feel for the almond-eyed Chinaman. They were
foreigners, who would talk gibberish instead of the plain English
which everybody could understand, and they were not yet
civilized enough to like the yellow saleratus-biscuit and the
“salt-rising” bread of which their neighbors were so fond.
Reason enough to hate them!

Only half an hour before this outburst of Mrs. Anderson's,
she had set a trap for her daughter Julia, and had fairly
caught her.

“Jule! Jule! O Jul-y-e-ee!” she had called.

And Julia, who was down in the garden hoeing a bed in
which she meant to plant some “Johnny-jump-ups,” came
quickly toward the house, though she knew it would be of no
use to come quickly. Let her come quickly, or let her come
slowly, the rebuke was sure to greet her all the same.

“Why don't you come when you're called, I'd like to know!
You're never in reach when you're wanted, and you're good
for nothing when you are here!”

Julia Anderson's earliest lesson from her mother's lips had
been that she was good for nothing. And every day and almost
every hour since had brought her repeated assurances that she
was good for nothing. If she had not been good for a great
deal, she would long since have been good for nothing as the
result of such teaching. But though this was not the first, nor

[figure description] Page 013.[end figure description]

the thousandth, nor the ten thousandth time that she had been
told that she was good for nothing, the accustomed insult
seemed to sting her now more than ever. Was it that, being
almost eighteen, she was beginning to feel the woman blossoming
in her nature? Or, was it that the tender words of
August Wehle had made her sure that she was good for something,
that now her heart felt her mother's insult to be a stale,
selfish, ill-natured lie?

“Take this cup of tea over to Mrs. Malcolm's, and tell her
that it a'n't quite as good as what I borried of her last week.
And tell her that they'll be a new-fangled preacher at the
school-house a Sunday, a Millerite or somethin', a preachin'
about the end of the world.”

Julia did not say “Yes, ma'am,” in her usually meek style.
She smarted a little yet from the harsh words, and so went
away in silence.

Why did she walk fast? Had she noticed that August
Wehle, who was “breaking up” her father's north field, was
just plowing down the west side of his land? If she hastened,
she might reach the cross-fence as he came round to
it, and while he was yet hidden from the sight of the house
by the turn of the hill. And would not a few words from
August Wehle be pleasant to her ears after her mother's sharp
depreciation? It is at least safe to conjecture that some such
feeling made her hurry through the long, waving timothy of the
meadow, and made her cross the log that spanned the brook
without ever so much as stopping to look at the minnows
glancing about in the water flecked with the sunlight that
struggled through the boughs of the water-willows. For, in
her thorough loneliness, Julia Anderson had come to love the

p555-019 TAKING AN OBSERVATION. [figure description] Page 014.[end figure description]

birds, the squirrels, and the fishes as companions, and in all her
life she had never before crossed the meadow brook without
stooping to look at the minnows.

All this haste Mrs. Anderson noticed. Having often scolded
Julia for “talking to the fishes like a fool,” she noticed the
omission. And now she only waited until Julia was over the
hill to take the path round the fence under shelter of the blackberry
thicket, until she came to the clump of elders, from the

[figure description] Page 015.[end figure description]

midst of which she could plainly see if any conversation should
take place between her Julia and the comely young Dutchman.

In fact, Julia need not have hurried so much. For August
Wehle had kept one eye on his horses and the other on the
house all that day. It was the quick look of intelligence between
the two at dinner that had aroused the mother's suspicious.
And Wehle had noticed the work on the garden-bed, the
call to the house, and the starting of Julia on the path toward
Mrs. Malcolm's. His face had grown hot, and his hand had
trembled. For once he had failed to see the stone in his way,
until the plow was thrown clean from the furrow. And when
he came to the shade of the butternut-tree by which she must
pass, it had seemed to him imperative that the horses should
rest. Besides, the hames-string wanted tightening on the bay,
and old Dick's throat-latch must need a little fixing. He was
not sure that the clevis-pin had not been loosened by the collision
with the stone just now. And so, upon one pretext and
another, he managed to delay starting his plow until Julia came
by, and then, though his heart had counted all her steps from
the door-stone to the tree, then he looked up surprised. Nothing
could be so astonishing to him as to see her there! For love
is needlessly crafty, it has always an instinct of concealment, of
indirection about it. The boy, and especially the girl, who
will tell the truth frankly in regard to a love affair is a miracle
of veracity. But there are such, and they are to be reverenced—
with the reverence paid to martyrs.

On her part, Julia Anderson had walked on as though she
meant to pass the young plowman by, until he spoke, and then
she started, and blushed, and stopped, and nervously broke off
the top of a last year's iron-weed and began to break it into

[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

bits while he talked, looking down most of the time, but lifting
her eyes to his now and then. And to the sun-browned but
delicate-faced young German it seemed a vision of Paradise—
every glimpse of that fresh girl's face in the deep shade of the
sun-bonnet. For girls' faces can never look so sweet in this
generation as they did to the boys who caught sight of them,
hidden away, precious things, in the obscurity of a tunnel of
pasteboard and calico!

This was not their first love talk. Were they engaged?
Yes, and no. By all the speech their eyes were capable of in
school, and of late by words, they were engaged in loving one
another, and in telling one another of it. But they were young,
and separated by circumstances, and they had hardly begun to
think of marriage yet. It was enough for the present to love and
be loved. The most delightful stage of a love affair is that in
which the present is sufficient and there is no past or future.
And so August hung his elbow around the top of the bay horse's
hames, and talked to Julia.

It is the highest praise of the German heart that it loves
flowers and little children; and like a German and like a lover
that he was, August began to speak of the anemones and the
violets that were already blooming in the corners of the fence.
Girls in love are not apt to say anything very fresh. And Julia
only said she thought the flowers seemed happy in the sunlight.
In answer to this speech, which seemed to the lover a bit
of inspiration, he quoted from Schiller the lines:

With the quick and crafty modesty of her sex, Julia evaded

A TALK WITH A PLOWMAN. [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]

this very pleasant shaft by saying: “How much you know,
August! How do you learn it?”

And August was pleased, partly because of the compliment,
but chiefly because in saying it Julia had brought the sun-bonnet
in such a range that he could see the bright eyes and blushing
face at the bottom of this camera-oscura. He did not hasten to
reply. While the vision lasted he enjoyed the vision. Not until
the sun-bonnet dropped did he take up the answer to her question.

“I don't know much, but what I do know I have learned out
of your Uncle Andrew's books.”

“Do you know my Uncle Andrew? What a strange man he
is! He never comes here, and we never go there, and my mother
never speaks to him, and my father doesn't often have anything
to say to him. And so you have been at his house. They say
he has all up-stairs full of books, and ever so many cats and
dogs and birds and squirrels about. But I thought he never let
anybody go up-stairs.”

“He lets me,” said August, when she had ended her speech
and dropped her sun-bonnet again out of the range of his
eyes, which, in truth, were too steadfast in their gaze. “I spend
many evenings up-stairs.” August had just a trace of German
in his idiom.

“What makes Uncle Andrew so curious, I wonder?”

“I don't exactly know. Some say he was treated not just
right by a woman when he was a young man. I don't know.
He seems happy. I don't wonder a man should be curious
though when a woman that he loves treats him not just right.
Any way, if he loves her with all his heart, as I love Jule
Anderson!”

These last words came with an effort. And Julia just then

[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]

remembered her errand, and said, “I must hurry,” and, with a
country girl's agility, she climbed over the fence before August
could help her, and gave him another look through her bonnet-telescope
from the other side, and then hastened on to return
the tea, and to tell Mrs. Malcolm that there was to be a Millerite
preacher at the school-house on Sunday night. And August
found that his horses were quite cool, while he was quite hot.
He cleaned his mold-board, and swung his plow round, and
then, with a “Whoa! haw!” and a pull upon the single line
which Western plowmen use to guide their horses, he drew the
team into their place, and set himself to watching the turning
of the rich, fragrant black earth. And even as he set his plowshare,
so he set his purpose to overcome all obstacles, and to marry
Julia Anderson. With the same steady, irresistible, onward
course would he overcome all that lay between him and the
soul that shone out of the face that dwelt in the bottom of the
sun-bonnet.

From her covert in the elder-bushes Mrs. Anderson had seen
the parley, and her cheeks had also grown hot, but from a very
different emotion. She had not heard the words. She had seen
the loitering girl and the loitering plowboy, and she went back
to the house vowing that she'd “teach Jule Anderson how to
spend her time talking to a Dutchman.” And yet the more she
thought of it, the more she was satisfied that it wasn't best to
“make a fuss” just yet. She might hasten what she wanted to
prevent. For though Julia was obedient and mild in word, she
was none the less a little stubborn, and in a matter of this sort
might take the bit in her teeth.

And so Mrs. Anderson had recourse, as usual, to her husband.
She knew she could browbeat him. She demanded that

[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]

August Wehle should be paid off and discharged. And when
Anderson had hesitated, because he feared he could not get
another so good a hand, and for other reasons, she burst out
into the declaration:

“I don't believe that you'd care a cent if she did marry a
Dutchman! She might as well as to marry some white folks I
know.”

p555-027 CHAPTER II. AN EXPLOSION.

[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]

IT was settled that August was to be quietly
discharged at the end of his month, which was
Saturday night. Neither he nor Julia must suspect
any opposition to their attachment, nor any discovery
of it, indeed. This was settled by Mrs. Anderson.
She usually settled things. First, she settled upon the course
to be pursued. Then she settled her husband. He always made
a show of resistance. His dignity required a show of resistance.
But it was only a show. He always meant to surrender in the
end. Whenever his wife ceased her fire of small-arms and herself
hung out the flag of truce, he instantly capitulated. As in
every other dispute, so in this one about the discharge of the
“miserable, impudent Dutchman,” Mrs. Anderson attacked her
husband at all his weak points, and she had learned by heart a
catalogue of his weak points. Then, when he was sufficiently
galled to be entirely miserable; when she had expressed her
regret that she hadn't married somebody with some heart,
and that she had ever left her father's house, for her father was
always good to her; and when she had sufficiently reminded
him of the lover she had given up for him, and of how much
he had loved her, and how miserable she had made him by
loving Samuel Anderson—when she had conducted the quarrel

[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

through all the preliminary stages, she always carried her point
in the end by a coup de partie somewhat in this fashion:

“That's just the way! Always the way with you men!
I suppose I must give up to you as usual. You've lorded it
over me from the start. I can't even have the management of
my own daughter. But I do think that after I've let you have
your way in so many things, you might turn off that fellow.
You might let me have my way in one little thing, and you would
if you cared for me. You know how liable I am to die at any
moment of heart-disease, and yet you will prolong this excitement
in this way.”

Now, there is nothing a weak man likes so much as to be
considered strong, nothing a henpecked man likes so much
as to be regarded a tyrant. If you ever hear a man boast of
his determination to rule his own house, you may feel sure
that he is subdued. And a henpecked husband always makes
a great show of opposing everything that looks toward the enlargement
of the work or privileges of women. Such a man
insists on the shadow of authority because he can not have
the substance. It is a great satisfaction to him that his wife
can never be president, and that she can not make speeches
in prayer-meeting. While he retains these badges of superiority,
he is still in some sense head of the family.

So when Mrs. Anderson loyally reminded her husband that
she had always let him have his own way, he believed her
because he wanted to, though he could not just at the moment
recall the particular instances. And knowing that he must yield,
he rather liked to yield as an act of sovereign grace to the poor
oppressed wife who begged it.

“Well, if you insist on it, of course, I will not refuse you,”

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

he said; “and perhaps you are right.” He had yielded in this
way almost every day of his married life, and in this way he
yielded to the demand that August should be discharged. But
he agreed with his wife that Julia should not know anything
about it, and that there must be no leave-taking allowed.

The very next day Julia sat sewing on the long porch in
front of the house. Cynthy Ann was getting dinner in the
kitchen at the other end of the hall, and Mrs. Anderson was
busy in her usual battle with dirt. She kept the house clean,
because it gratified her combativeness and her domineering disposition
to have the house clean in spite of the ever-encroaching
dirt. And so she scrubbed and scolded, and scolded and
scrubbed, the scrubbing and scolding agreeing in time and
rhythm. The scolding was the vocal music, the scrubbing an
accompaniment. The concordant discord was perfect. Just at
the moment I speak of there was a lull in her scolding. The
symphonious scrubbing went on as usual. Julia, wishing to
divert the next thunder-storm from herself, erected what she
imagined might prove a conversational lightning-rod, by asking
a question on a topic foreign to the theme of the last march
her mother had played and sung so sweetly with brush and
voice.

“Mother, what makes Uncle Andrew so queer?”

“I don't know. He was always queer.” This was spoken
in a staccato, snapping-turtle way. But when one has lived
all one's life with a snapping-turtle, one doesn't mind. Julia did
not mind. She was curious to know what was the matter with
her uncle, Andrew Anderson. So she said:

“I've heard that some false woman treated him cruelly; is
that so?”

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

Julia did not see how red her mother's face was, for she
was not regarding her.

“Who told you that?” Julia was so used to hearing her
mother speak in an excited way that she hardly noticed the
strange tremor in this question.

“August.”

The symphony ceased in a moment. The scrubbing-brush
dropped in the pail of soapsuds. But the vocal storm burst
forth with a violence that startled even Julia. “August said
that, did he? And you listened, did you? You listened to
that? You listened to that? You listened to that? Hey? He
standered your mother. You listened to him slander your
mother!” By this time Mrs. Anderson was at white heat. Julia
was speechless. “I saw you yesterday flirting with that Dutchman,
and listening to his abuse of your mother! And now you
insult me! Well, to-morrow will be the last day that that
Dutchman will hold a plow on this place. And you'd better
look out for yourself, miss! You—”

Here followed a volley of epithets which Julia received
standing. But when her mother's voice grew to a scream,
Julia took the word.

“Mother, hush!”

It was the first word of resistance she had ever uttered.
The agony within must have been terrible to have wrung it
from her. The mother was stunned with anger and astonishment.
She could not recover herself enough to speak until Jule
had fled half-way up the stairs. Then her mother covered her
defeat by screaming after her, “Go to your own room, you impudent
hussy! You know I am liable to die of heart-disease any
minute, and you want to kill me!”

p555-031 CHAPTER III. A FAREWELL.

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

MRS. ANDERSON felt that she had made a
mistake. She had not meant to tell Julia that
August was to leave. But now that this stormy
scene had taken place, she thought she could
make a good use of it. She knew that her husband
co-operated with her in her opposition to “the Dutchman,”
only because he was afraid of his wife. In his heart, Samuel
Anderson could not refuse anything to his daughter. Denied
any of the happiness which most men find in loving their wives,
he found consolation in the love of his daughter. Secretly, as
though his paternal affection were a crime, he caressed Julia, and
his wife was not long in discovering that the father cared more
for a loving daughter than for a shrewish wife. She watched
him jealously, and had come to regard her daughter as one who
had supplanted her in her husband's affections, and her husband
as robbing her of the love of her daughter. In truth, Mrs.
Samuel Anderson had come to stand so perpetually on guard
against imaginary encroachments on her rights, that she saw

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

enemies everywhere. She hated Wehle because he was a Dutchman;
she would have hated him on a dozen other scores if he
had been an American. It was offense enough that Julia loved
him.

So now she resolved to gain her husband to her side by her
version of the story, and before dinner she had told him how
August had charged her with being false and cruel to Andrew
many years ago, and how Jule had thrown it up to her, and how
near she had come to dropping down with palpitation of the
heart. And Samuel Anderson reddened, and declared that he
would protect his wife from such insults. The notion that he
protected his wife was a pleasant fiction of the little man's,
which received a generous encouragement at the hands of his
wife. It was a favorite trick of hers to throw herself, in a metaphorical
way, at his feet, a helpless woman, and in her feebleness
implore his protection. And Samuel felt all the courage
of knighthood in defending his inoffensive wife. Under cover
of this fiction, so flattering to the vanity of an overawed husband,
she had managed at one time or another to embroil him
with almost all the neighbors, and his refusal to join fences had
resulted in that crooked arrangement known as a “devil's
lane” on three sides of his farm.

Julia dared not stay away from dinner, which was miserable
enough. She did not venture so much as to look at
August, who sat opposite her, and who was the most unhappy
person at the table, because he did not know what all the unhappiness
was about. Mr. Anderson's brow foreboded a storm, Mrs.
Anderson's face was full of an earthquake, Cynthy Ann was
sitting in shadow, and Julia's countenance perplexed him.
Whether she was angry with him or not, he could not be sure.

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

Of one thing he was certain: she was suffering a great deal, and
that was enough to make him exceedingly unhappy.

Sitting through his hurried meal in this atmosphere surcharged
with domestic electricity, he got the notion—he could
hardly tell how—that all this lowering of the sky had something
to do with him. What had he done? Nothing. His
closest self-examination told him that he had done no wrong.
But his spirits were depressed, and his sensitive conscience condemned
him for some unknown crime that had brought about
all this disturbance of the elements. The ham did not seem very
good, the cabbage he could not eat, the corn-dodger choked him,
he had no desire to wait for the pie. He abridged his meal, and
went out to the barn to keep company with his horses and
his misery until it should be time to return to his plow.

Julia sat and sewed in that tedious afternoon She would
have liked one more interview with August before his departure.
Looking through the open hall, she saw him leave the barn
and go toward his plowing. Not that she looked up. Hawk
never watched chicken more closely than Mrs. Anderson watched
poor Jule. But out of the corners of her eyes Julia saw him
drive his horses before him from the stable. As the field in
which he worked was on the other side of the house from
where she sat she could not so much as catch a glimpse of him
as he held his plow on its steady course. She wished she might
have helped Cynthy Ann in the kitchen, for then she could have
seen him, but there was no chance for such a transfer.

Thus the tedious afternoon wore away, and just as the sun
was settling down so that the shadow of the elm in the frontyard
stretched across the road into the cow-pasture, the dead
silence was broken. Julia had been wishing that somebody

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

would speak. Her mother's sulky speechlessness was worse than
her scolding, and Julia had even wished her to resume her
storming. But the silence was broken by Cynthy Ann, who
came into the hall and called, “Jule, I wish you would go to the
barn and gether the eggs; I want to make some cake.”

Every evening of her life Julia gathered the eggs, and there
was nothing uncommon in Cynthy Ann's making cake, so that
nothing could be more innocent than this request. Julia sat
opposite the front-door, her mother sat farther along. Julia
could see the face of Cynthy Ann. Her mother could only hear
the voice, which was dry and commonplace enough. Julia
thought she detected something peculiar in Cynthy's manner.
She would as soon have thought of the big oak gate-posts with
their round ball-like heads telegraphing her in a sly way, as to
have suspected any such craft on the part of Cynthy Ann, who
was a good, pious, simple-hearted, Methodist old maid, strict
with herself, and censorious toward others. But there stood
Cynthy making some sort of gesture, which Julia took to mean
that she was to go quick. She did not dare to show any eagerness.
She laid down her work, and moved away listlessly. And
evidently she had been too slow. For if August had been in
sight when Cynthy Ann called her, he had now disappeared
on the other side of the hill. She loitered along, hoping
that he would come in sight, but he did not, and then she
almost smiled to think how foolish she had been in imagining
that Cynthy Ann had any interest in her love affair. Doubtless
Cynthy sided with her mother.

And so she climbed from mow to mow gathering the eggs.
No place is sweeter than a mow, no occupation can be more
delightful than gathering the fresh eggs—great glorious pearls,

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

more beautiful than any that men dive for, despised only because
they are so common and so useful! But Julia, gliding about
noiselessly, did not think much of the eggs, did not give much
attention to the hens scratching for wheat kernels amongst the
straw, nor to the barn swallows chattering over the adobe dwellings
which they were building among the rafters above her.
She had often listened to the love-talk of these last, but now
her heart was too heavy to hear. She slid down to the edge of
one of the mows, and sat there a few feet above the threshing-floor
with her bonnet in her hand, looking off sadly and
vacantly. It was pleasant to sit here alone and think, without
the feeling that her mother was penetrating her thoughts.

A little rustle brought her to consciousness. Her face was
fiery red in a minute. There, in one corner of the threshing-floor,
stood August, gazing at her. He had come into the barn
to find a single-tree in place of one which had broken. While
he was looking for it, Julia had come, and he had stood and
looked, unable to decide whether to speak or not, uncertain how
deeply she might be offended, since she had never once let
her eyes rest on him at dinner. And when she had come to the
edge of the mow and stopped there in a reverie, August had
been utterly spell-bound.

A minute she blushed. Then, perceiving her opportunity,
she dropped herself to the floor and walked up to August.

“August, you are to be turned off to-morrow night.”

“What have I done? Anything wrong?”

“No.”

“Why do they send me away?”

“Because—because—” Julia stopped.

But silence is often better than speech. A sudden intelligence

A LITTLE RUSTLE BROUGHT HER TO CONSCIOUSNESS. [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

came into the blue eyes of August. “They turn me off because
I love Jule Anderson.”

Julia blushed just a little.

“I will love her all the same when I am gone. I will always
love her.”

Julia did not know what to say to this passionate speech, so
she contented herself with looking a little grateful and very
foolish.

“But I am only a poor boy, and a Dutchman at that”—he
said this bitterly—“but if you will wait, Jule, I will show them
I am of some account. Not good enough for you, but good
enough for them. You will—”

“I will wait—forever—for you, Gus.” Her head was down,
and her voice could hardly be heard. “Good-by.” She stretched
out her hand, and he took it trembling.

“Wait a minute.” He dropped the hand, and taking a pencil
wrote on a beam:

“March 18th, 1843.”

“There, that's to remember the Dutchman by.”

“Don't call yourself a Dutchman, August. One day in
school, when I was sitting opposite to you, I learned this definition,
`August: grand, magnificent,' and I looked at you and
said, Yes, that he is. August is grand and magnificent, and
that's what you are. You're just grand!”

I do not think he was to blame. I am sure he was not responsible.
It was done so quickly. He kissed her forehead
and then her lips, and said good-by and was gone. And she,
with her apron full of eggs and her cheeks very red—it makes
one warm to climb—went back to the house, resolved in some
way to thank Cynthy Ann for sending her; but Cynthy Ann's

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

face was so serious and austere in its look that Julia concluded
she must have been mistaken, Cynthy Ann couldn't have known
that August was in the barn. For all she said was:

“You got a right smart lot of eggs, didn't you? The hens
is beginnin' to lay more peart since the warm spell sot in.”

p555-040 CHAPTER IV. A COUNTER-IRRITANT.

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

“VOT you kits doornt off vor? Hey?”
Gottlieb Wehle always spoke English, or
what he called English, when he was angry.
“Vot for? Hey?”

All the way home from Anderson's on that
Saturday night, August had been, in imagination, listening to
the rough voice of his honest father asking this question, and
he had been trying to find a satisfactory answer to it. He might
say that Mr. Anderson did not want to keep a hand any longer.
But that would not be true. And a young man with August's
clear blue eyes was not likely to lie.

“Vot vor ton't you not shpeak? Can't you virshta blain
Eenglish ven you hears it? Hey? You a'n't no teef vot shteels
I shposes, unt you ton't kit no troonks mit vishky? Vot you
too tat you pe shamt of? Pin lazin' rount? Kon you nicht
Eenglish shprachen? Oot mit id do vonst!”

“I did not do anything to be ashamed of,” said August. And
yet he looked ashamed.

p555-041

GOTTLIEB. [figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

“You tidn't pe no shamt, hey? You tidn't! Vot vor you
loogs so leig a teef in der bentenshry? Vot for you sprachen
not mit me ven ich sprachs der blainest zort ov Eenglish mit
you? You kooms sneaggin heim Zaturtay nocht leig a tog
vots kot kigt, unt's got his dail dween his leks; and ven I
aks you in blain Eenglish vot's der madder, you loogs zheepish
leig, und says you a'n't tun nodin. I zay you tun sompin. If
you a'n't tun nodin den, vy don't you dell me vot it is dat you
has tun? Hey?”

All this time August found that it was getting harder and
harder to tell his father the real state of the case. But the old
man, seeing that he prevailed nothing, took a cajoling tone.

“Koom, August, mine knabe, ton't shtand dare leig a vool.
Vot tit Anterson zay ven he shent you avay?”

“He said that I'd been seen a-talking to his daughter, Jule
Anderson.”

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

“Vell, you nebber said no hoorm doo Shule, tid you? If I
dought you said vot you zhoodn't zay doo Shule, I vood shust
drash you on der shpot! Tid you gwarl mit Shule, already?”

“Quarrel with Jule! She's the last person in the world I'd
think of quarreling with. She's as good as—”

“Oh! you pe in lieb mit Shule! You vool, you! Is dat all
dat I raise you vor? I dells you, unt dells you, unt dells you
to sprach nodin put Deutsche, unt to marry a kood Deutsche
vrau vot kood sprach mit you, unt now you koes right
shtraight off unt kits knee-teep in lieb mit a vool of a Yangee
kirl! You doo ant pe doornt off!”

August's countenance brightened. All the way home he had
felt that it was somehow an unpardonable sin to be a Dutchman.
Anderson had spoken hardly to him in dismissing him,
and now it was a great comfort to find that his father returned
the contempt of the Yankees at its full value. All the conceit
was not on the side of the Yankees. It was at least an open
question which was the most disgraeed, he or Julia, by their little
love affair.

But more comforting still was the quiet look of his sweetfaced
mother, who, moving about among her throng of children
like a hen with more chickens than she can hover,* never
forgot to be patient and affectionate. If there had been a look
of reproach on the face of the mother, it would have been the
hardest trial of all. But there was that in her eyes—the dear
Moravian mother—that gave courage to August. The mother
was an outside conscience, and now as Gottlieb, who had lapsed

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

into German for his wife's benefit, rattled on his denunciation of
this Canaanitish Yankee, with whom his son was in love, the
son looked every now and then into the eyes, the still German
eyes of the mother, and rejoiced that he saw there no reflection
of his father's rebuke. The older Wehle presently resumed his
English, such as it was, as better adapted to scolding. Whether
he thought to make his children love German by abusing them
in English, I do not know, but it was his habit.

“I dells you tese Yangees is Yangees. Dere neber voz
put shust von cood vor zompin. Antrew Antershon is von.
He shtaid mit us ven ve vos all zick, unt he is zhust so cood as
if he was porn in Deutschland. Put all de rest is Yangees.
Marry a Deutsche vrau vot's kot cood sense to ede kraut unt
shleep unter vedder peds ven it's kalt. Put shust led de Yangees
pe Yangees.”

Seeing August put on his hat and go to the door, he called
out testily:

“Vare you koes, already?”

“Over to the castle.”

“Vell, das is koot. Ko doo de gassel. Antrew vill dell you
vat sorts de Yangee kirls pe!”

p555-044 CHAPTER V. AT THE CASTLE.

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

By the time August reached Andrew Anderson's
castle it was dark. The castle was built in
a hollow, looking out toward the Ohio River, a
river that has this peculiarity, that it is all beautiful,
from Pittsburgh to Cairo. Through the trees,
on which the buds were just bursting, August looked out on the
golden roadway made by the moonbeams on the river. And
into the tumult of his feelings there came the sweet benediction
of Nature. And what is Nature but the voice of God?

Anderson's castle was a large log building of strange construction.
Everything about it had been built by the hands of
Andrew, at once its lord and its architect. Evidently a whimsical
fancy had pleased itself in the construction. It was an
attempt to realize something of medieval form in logs. There
were buttresses and antique windows, and by an ingenious transformation
the chimney, usually such a disfigurement to a loghouse,
was made to look like a round donjon keep. But it was
strangely composite, and I am afraid Mr. Ruskin would have
considered it somewhat confused; for while it looked like a

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

rude castle to those who approached it from the hills, it looked
like something very different to those who approached the
front, for upon that side was a portico with massive Doric
columns, which were nothing more nor less than maple logs.
Andrew maintained that the natural form of the trunk of a tree
was the ideal and perfect form of a pillar.

To this picturesque structure, half castle, half cabin, with
hints of church and temple, came August Wehle on Saturday
evening. He did not go round to the portico and knock at the
front-door as a stranger would have done, but in behind the
donjon chimney he pulled an alarm-cord. Immediately the
head of Andrew Anderson was thrust out of a Gothic hole—
you could not call it a window. His uncut hair, rather darker
than auburn, fell down to his waist, and his shaggy red beard
lay upon his bosom. Instead of a coat he wore that unique garment
of linsey-woolsey known in the West as wa'mus (warm
us?), a sort of over-shirt. He was forty-five, but there were
streaks of gray in his hair and beard, and he looked older by
ten years.

“What ho, good friend? Is that you?” he cried. “Come
up, and right welcome!” For his language was as archaic and
perhaps as incongruous as his architecture. And then throwing
out of the window a rope-ladder, he called out again, “Ascend!
ascend! my brave young friend!”

And young Wehle climbed up the ladder into the large upper
room. For it was one peculiarity of the castle that the upper
part had no visible communication with the lower. Except
August, and now and then a literary stranger, no one but the
owner was ever admitted to the upper story of the house, and
the neighbors, who always had access to the lower rooms, re

THE CASTLE. [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

garded the upper part of the castle with mysterious awe.
August was often plied with questions about it, but he always
answered simply that he didn't think Mr. Anderson would like
to have it talked about. For the owner there must have been
some inside mode of access to the second story, but he did
not choose to let even August know of any other way than
that by the rope-ladder, and the few strangers who came to see
his books were taken in by the same drawbridge.

The room was filled with books arranged after whimsical
associations. One set of cases, for instance, was called the
Academy, and into these he only admitted the masters, following
the guidance of his own eccentric judgment quite as much
as he followed traditional estimate. Homer, Virgil, Dante, and
Milton of course had undisputed possession of the department
devoted to the “Kings of Epic,” as he styled them. Sophocles,
Calderon, Corneille, and Shakespeare were all that he admitted
to his list of “Kings of Tragedy.” Lope he rejected on literary
grounds, and Goethe because he thought his moral tendency
bad. He rejected Rabelais from his chief humorists, but accepted
Cervantes, Le Sage, Molière, Swift, Hood, and the then
fresh Pickwick of Boz. To these he added the Georgia Scenes
of Mr. Longstreet, insisting that they were quite equal to Don
Quixote. I can only stop to mention one other department in
his Academy. One case was devoted to the “Best Stories,” and
an admirable set they were! I wish that anything of mine
were worthy to go into such company. His purity of feeling,
almost ascetic, led him to reject Boccaccio, but he admitted
Chaucer and some of Balzac's, and Smollett, Goldsmith, and
De Foe, and Walter Scott's best, Irving's Rip Van Winkle, Bernardin
St. Pierre's “Paul and Virginia,” and “Three Months

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

under the Snow,” and Charles Lamb's generally overlooked
“Rosamund Gray.” There were cases for “Socrates and his
Friends,” and for other classes. He had amused himself for
years in deciding what books should be “crowned,” as he called
it, and what not. And then he had another case, called “The
Inferno.” I wish there was space to give a list of this department.
Some were damned for dullness and some for coarseness.
Miss Edgeworth's Moral Tales, Darwin's Botanic Garden,
Rollin's Ancient History, and a hideously illustrated copy of
the Book of Martyrs were in the first-class, Don Juan and some
French novels in the second. Tupper, Swinburne, and Walt
Whitman he did not know.

In the corner next the donjon chimney was a little room
with a small fireplace. Thus the hermit economized wood, for
wood meant time, and time meant communion with his books.
All of his domestic arrangements were carried on after this frugal
fashion. In the little room was a writing-desk, covered with
manuscripts and commonplace books.

“Well, my young friend, you're thrice welcome,” said Andrew,
who never dropped his book language. “What will you have?
Will you resume your apprenticeship under Goethe, or shall we
canter to Canterbury with Chaucer? Grand old Dan Chaucer!
Or, shall we study magical philosophy with Roger Bacon—the
Friar, the Admirable Doctor? or read good Sir Thomas More?
What would Sir Thomas have said if he could have thought that
he would be admired by two such people as you and I, in the
woods of America, in the nineteenth century? But you do not
want books! Ah! my brave friend, you are not well. Come
into my cell and let us talk. What grieves you?”

And Andrew took him by the hand with the courtesy of a

p555-050 THE SEDILIUM AT THE CASTLE. [figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

knight, with the tenderness of a woman, and with the air of an
astrologer, and led him into the apartment of a monk.

“See!” he said, “I have made a new chair. It is the highest
evidence of my love for my Teutonic friend. You have
now a right to this castle. You shall be perpetually welcome.
I said to myself, German scholarship shall sit there, and the

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

Backwoods Philosopher will sit here. So sit down on my
sedilium, and let us hear how this uncivil and inconstant world
treats you. It can not deal worse with you than it has with me.
But I have had my revenge on it! I have been revenged! I
have done as I pleased, and defied the world and all its hollow
conventionalities.” These last words were spoken in a tone of
misanthropic bitterness common to Andrew. His love for
August was the more intense that it stood upon a background
of general dislike, if not for the world, at least for that portion
of it which most immediately surrounded him.

August took the chair, ingeniously woven and built of rye
straw and hickory splints. He knew that all this formality and
apparent pedantry was superficial. He and Andrew were bosom
friends, and as he had often opened his heart to the master of
the castle before, so now he had no difficulty in telling him his
troubles, scarcely heeding the appropriate quotations which Andrew
made from time to time by way of embellishment.

p555-052 CHAPTER VI. THE BACKWOODS PHILOSOPHER.

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

ONE reason for Andrew's love of August Wehle
was that he was a German. Far from sharing
in the prejudices of his neighbors against foreigners,
Andrew had so thorough a contempt for his
neighbors, that he liked anybody who did not
belong to his own people. If a Turk had emigrated to Clark
township, Andrew would have fallen in love with him, and
built a divan for his special accommodation. But he loved
August also for the sake of his gentle temper and his genuine
love for books. And only August or August's mother, upon
whom Andrew sometimes called, could exorcise his demon of
misanthropy, which he had nursed so long that it was now hard
to dismiss it.

Andrew Anderson belonged to a class noticed, I doubt not,
by every acute observer of provincial life in this country. In
backwoods and out-of-the-way communities literary culture produces
marked eccentricities in the life. Your bookish man at
the West has never learned to mark the distinction between

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

the world of ideas and the world of practical life. Instead of
writing poems or romances, he falls to living them, or at
least trying to. Add a disappointment in love, and you will
surely throw him into the class of which Anderson was the
representative. For the education one gets from books is sadly
one-sided, unless it be balanced by a knowledge of the world.

Andrew Anderson had always been regarded as an oddity.
A man with a good share of ideality and literary taste, placed
against the dull background of the society of a Western neighborhood
in the former half of the century, would necessarily
appear odd. Had he drifted into communities of more culture,
his eccentricity, begotten of a sense of superiority to his
surroundings, would have worn away. Had he been happily
married, his oddities would have been softened; but neither of
these things happened. He told August a very different history.
For the confidence of his “Teutonic friend” had awakened
in the solitary man a desire to uncover that story which
he had kept under lock and key for so many years.

“Ah! my friend,” said he with excitement, “don't trust the
faith of a woman.” And then rising from his seat he said,
“The Backwoods Philosopher warns you. I pray you give good
heed. I do not know Julia. She is my niece. It ill becomes
me to doubt her sincerity. But I know whose daughter she is.
I pray you give good heed, my Teutonic friend. I know whose
daughter she is!

“I do not talk much. But you have arrived at a critical
point—a point of turning. Out of his own life, out of his own
sorrow, the Backwoods Philosopher warns you. I am at peace
now. But look at me. Do you not see the marks of the
ravages of a great storm? A sort of a qualified happiness I

“LOOK AT ME.” [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

have in philosophy. But what I might have been if the storm
had not torn me to pieces in my youth—what I might have
been, that I am not. I pray you never trust in a woman's keeping
the happiness of your life!”

Here Andrew slipped his arm through Wehle's, and began
to promenade with him in the large apartment up and down an
alley, dimly lighted by a candle, between solid phalanxes of
books.

“I pray you give good heed,” he said, resuming. “I was
always eccentric. People thought I was either a genius or fool.
Perhaps I was much of both. But this is a digression. I did
not pay any attention to women. I shunned them. I said that
to be a great author and a philosophical thinker, one must not
be a man of society. I never went to a wood-chopping, to an
apple-peeling, to a corn-shucking, to a barn-raising, nor indeed to
any of our rustic feasts. I suppose this piqued the vanity of the
girls, and they set themselves to catch me. I suppose they
thought that I would be a trophy worth boasting. I have
noticed that hunters estimate game according to the difficulty of
getting it. But this is a digression. Let us return.

“There came among us, at that time, Abigail Norman. She
was pretty. I swear by all the sacred cats of Egypt, that she
was beautiful. She was industrious. The best housekeeper in
the state! She was high-strung. I liked her all the more for
that. You see a man of imagination is apt to fall in love with
a tragedy queen. But this is a digression. Let us return.

“She spread her toils in my path. While I was wandering
through the woods writing poetry to birds and squirrels, Abby
Norman was ambitious enough to hope to make me her slave,
and she did. She read books that she thought I liked. She

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

plauned in various ways to seem to like what I liked, and yet
she had sense enough to differ a little from me, and so make
herself the more interesting. I think a man of real intellect
never likes to have a man or woman agree with him entirely.
But let us return.

“I loved Abigail desperately. No, I did not love Abigail
Norman at all. I did not love her as she was, but I loved her
as she seemed to my imagination to be. I think most lovers
love an ideal that hovers in the air a little above the real recipient
of their love. And I think we men of genius and imagination
are apt to love something very different from the real
person, which is unfortunate.

“But I am digressing again. To return: I wrote poetry to
Abby. I courted her. I cut off my long hair for a woman, like
Samson. I tried to dress more decently, and made myself
ridiculous no doubt, for a man can not dress well unless he
has a talent for it. And I never had a genius for beau-knots.

“But pardon the digression. Let us return. I was to have
married her. The day was set. Then I found accidentally that
she was engaged to my brother Samuel, a young man with better
manners than mind. She made him believe that she was only
making a butt of me. But I think she really loved me more
than she knew. When I had discovered her treachery, I shipped
on the first flat-boat. I came near committing suicide, and should
have jumped into the river one night, only that I thought it
might flatter her vanity. I came back here and ignored her.
She broke with Samuel and tried to regain my affections. I
scorned her. I trod on her heart! I stamped her pride into
the dust! I was cruel. I was contemptuous. I was well-nigh
insane. Then she went back to Samuel, and made him marry

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

her. Then she forced my imbecile old father, on his death-bed,
to will all the property to Samuel, except this piece of rough
hill-land and one thousand dollars. But here I built this
castle. My thousand dollars I put in books. I learned how
to weave the coverlets of which our country people are so fond,
and by this means, and by selling wood to the steamboats, I have
made a living and bought my library without having to work
half of my time. I was determined never to leave. I swore
by all the arms of Vishnu she should never say that she had
driven me away. I don't know anything about Julia. But I
know whose daughter she is. My young friend, beware! I
pray you take good heed! The Backwoods Philosopher warns
you!”

p555-059 CHAPTER VII. WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

IF the gentleman is not born in a man, it can not
be bred in him. If it is born in him, it can not be
bred out of him. August Wehle had inherited from
his mother the instinct of true gentlemanliness. And
now, when Andrew relapsed into silence and abstraction,
he did not attempt to rouse him, but bidding him goodnight,
with his own hands threw the rope-ladder out the window
and started up the hollow toward home. The air was sultry
and oppressive, the moon had been engulfed, and the first thunder-cloud
of the spring was pushing itself up toward the zenith,
while the boughs of the trees were quivering with a premonitory
shudder. But August did not hasten. The real storm was
within. Andrew's story had raised doubts. When he went
down the ravine the love of Julia Anderson shone upon his
heart as benignly as the moon upon the waters. Now the light
was gone, and the black cloud of a doubt had shut out his
peace. Jule Anderson's father was rich. He had not thought of
it before! But now he remembered how much woodland he

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

owned and how he had two large farms. Jule Anderson
would not marry a poor boy. And a Dutchman! She was not
sincere. She was trifling with him and teasing her parents. Or,
if she were sincere now, she would not be faithful to him
against every tempting offer. And he would have to drive on
the rocks, too, as Andrew had. At any rate, he would not
marry her until he stood upon some sort of equality with her.

The wind was swaying him about in its fitful gusts, and he
rather liked it. In his anguish of spirit it was a pleasure to
contend with the storm. The wind, the lightning, the sudden
sharp claps of thunder were on his own key. He felt in the
temper of old Lear. The winds might blow and crack their
cheeks.

But it was not alone the suggestions of Andrew that aroused
his suspicions. He now recalled a strange statement that
Samuel Anderson made in discharging him. “You said what
you had no right to say about my wife, in talking to Julia.”
What had he said? Only that some woman had not treated
Andrew “just right.” Who the woman might be he had not
known until his present interview with Andrew. Had Julia
been making mischief herself by repeating his words and giving
them a direction he had not intended? He could not have
dreamed of her acting such a part but for the strange influence
of Andrew's strange story. And so he staggered on, wet to the
skin, defying in his heart the lightning and the wind, until he
came to the cabin of his father. Climbing the fence, for there
was no gate, he pulled the latch-string and entered. They were
all asleep; the hard-working family went to bed early. But
chubby-faced Wilhelmina, the favorite sister, had set up to wait
for August, and he now found her fast asleep in the chair.

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

“Wilhelmina! wake up!” he said.

“O August!” she said, opening the corner of one eye and
yawning, “I wasn't asleep. I only—ah—shut my eyes a minute.
How wet you are! Did you go to see the pretty girl up at Mr.
Anderson's?”

“No,” said August.

“O August! she is pretty, and she is good and sweet,” and
Wilhelmina took his wet cheeks between her chubby hands
and gave him a sleepy kiss, and then crept off to bed.

And, somehow, the faith of the child Wilhelmina counteracted
the skepticism of the man Andrew, and August felt the
storm subsiding.

When he looked out of the window of the loft in which he
slept the shower had ceased as suddenly as it had come, the
thunder had retreated behind the hills, the clouds were already
breaking, and the white face of the moon was peering through
the ragged rifts.

p555-062 CHAPTER VIII. FIGGERS WON'T LIE

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

FIGGERS won't lie,” said Elder Hankins, the
Millerite preacher. “I say figgers won't lie.
When a Methodis' talks about fallin' from grace
he has to argy the pint. And argyments can't
be depended 'pon. And when a Prisbyterian
talks about parseverance he haint got the absolute sartainty on
his side. But figgers won't lie noways, and it's figgers that
shows this yer to be the last yer of the world, and that the
final eend of all things is approachin'. I don't ask you to
listen to no 'mpressions of me own, to no reasonin' of nobody;
all I ask is that you should listen to the voice of the man in
the linen-coat what spoke to Dan'el, and then listen to the voice
of the 'rithmetic, and to a sum in simple addition, the simplest
sort of addition.”

All the Millerite preachers of that day were not quite so illiterate
as Elder Hankins, and it is but fair to say that the Adventists
of to-day are a very respectable denomination, doing a work
which deserves more recognition from others than it receives.

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

And for the delusion which expects the world to come to an end
immediately, the Adventist leaders are not responsible in the
first place. From Gnosticism to Mormonism, every religious
delusion has grown from some fundamental error in the previous
religious teaching of the people. By the narrowly verbal
method of reading the Scripture, so much in vogue in the polemical
discussions of the past generation, and still so fervently
adhered to by many people, the ground was prepared for Millerism.
And to-day in many regions the soil is made fallow for
the next fanaticism. It is only a question of who shall first sow
and reap. To people educated as those who gathered in Sugar
Grove school-house had been to destroy the spirit of the Scripture
by distorting the letter in proving their own sect right,
nothing could be so overwhelming as Elder Hankins's “figgers.”

For he had clearly studied figgers to the neglect of the other
branches of a liberal education. His demonstration was printed
on a large chart. He began with the seventy weeks of Daniel,
he added in the “time and times and a half,” and what Daniel
declared that he “understood not when he heard,” was plain sailing
to the enlightened and mathematical mind of Elder Hankins.
When he came to the thousand two hundred and ninety
days, he waxed more exultant than Kepler in his supreme moment,
and on the thousand three hundred and five and thirty
days he did what Jonas Harrison called “the blamedest tallest
cipherin' he'd ever seed in all his born days.”

Jonas was the new hired man, who had stepped into the
shoes of August at Samuel Anderson's. He sat by August and
kept up a running commentary, in a loud whisper, on the sermon,
“My feller-citizen,” said Jonas, squeezing August's arm at a
climax of the elder's discourse, “My feller-citizen, looky thar,

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

won't you? He'll cipher the world into nothin' in no time.
He's like the feller that tried to find out the valoo of a fat shoat
when wood was two dollars a cord. `Ef I can't do it by substraction
I'll do it by long-division,' says he. And ef this 'rithmetic
preacher can't make a finishment of this sublunary speer by
addition, he'll do it by multiplyin'. They's only one answer in
his book. Gin him any sum you please, and it all comes
out 1843!”

Now in all the region round about Sugar Grove school-house
there was a great dearth of sensation. The people liked the
prospect of the end of the world because it would be a spectacle,
something to relieve the fearful monotony of their lives. Funerals
and weddings were commonplace, and nothing could have
been so interesting to them as the coming of the end of the
world, as described by Elder Hankins, unless it had been a first-class
circus (with two camels and a cage of monkeys attached, so
that scrupulous people might attend from a laudable desire to see
the menagerie!) A murder would have been delightful to the
people of Clark township. It would have given them something
to think and talk about Into this still pool Elder Hankins
threw the vials, the trumpets, the thunders, the beast with
ten horns, the he-goat, and all the other apocalyptic symbols
understood in an absurdly literal way. The world was to come
to an end in the following August. Here was an excitement,
something worth living for.

All the way to their homes the people disputed learnedly
about the “time and times and a half,” about “the seven heads
and ten horns,” and the seventh vial. The fierce polemical discussions
and the bold sectarian dogmatism of the day had taught
them anything but “the modesty of true science,” and now the

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

unsolvable problems of the centuries were taken out of the
hands of puzzled scholars and settled as summarily and positively
as the relative merits of “gourd-seed” and “flint” corn.
Samuel Anderson had always planted his corn in the “light” of
the moon and his potatoes in the “dark” of that orb, had
always killed his hogs when the moon was on the increase lest
the meat should all go to gravy, and he and his wife had carefully
guarded against the carrying of a hoe through the house,
for fear “somebody might die.” Now, the preaching of the
elder impressed him powerfully. His life had always been not
so much a bad one as a cowardly one, and to get into heaven by
a six months' repentance, seemed to him a good transaction.
Besides he remembered that there men were never married, and
that there, at last, Abigail would no longer have any peculiar
right to torture him. Hankins could not have ciphered him into
Millerism if his wife had not driven him into it as the easiest
means of getting a divorce. No doom in the next world could
have alarmed him much, unless it had been the prospect of continuing
lord and master of Mrs. Abigail. And as for that oppressed
woman, she was simply scared. She was quite unwilling
to admit the coming of the world's end so soon. Having some
ugly accounts to settle, she would fain have postponed the payday.
Mrs. Anderson might truly have been called a woman
who feared God—she had reason to.

And as for August, he would not have cared much if the
world had come to an end, if only he could have secured one
glance of recognition from the eyes of Julia. But Julia dared
not look. The process of cowing her had gone on from childhood,
and now she was under a reign of terror. She did not yet
know that she could resist her mother. And then she lived in

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

mortal fear of her mother's heart-disease. By irritating her
she might kill her. This dread of matricide her mother held
always over her. In vain she watched for a chance. It did
not come. Once, when her mother's head was turned, she
glanced at August. But he was at that moment listening or
trying to listen to one of Jonas Harrison's remarks. And August,
who did not understand the circumstances, was only able
to account for her apparent coldness on the theory suggested
by Andrew's universal unbelief in women, or by supposing that
when she understood his innocent remark about Andrew's disappointment
to refer to her mother, she had taken offense at
it. And so, while the rest were debating whether the world
would come to an end or not, August had a disconsolate feeling
that the end of the world had already come. And it did not
make him feel better to have Wilhelmina whisper, “Oh! but
she is pretty, that Anderson girl—a'n't she, August?”

p555-067 CHAPTER IX. THE NEW SINGING-MASTER.

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

“HE sings like an owlingale!”

Jonas Harrison was leaning against the
well-curb, talking to Cynthy Ann. He'd been
down to the store at Brayville, he said, a listenin'
to 'em discuss Millerism, and seed a new singing-master
there. “Could he sing good?” Cynthy asked, rather
to prolong the talk than to get information.

“Sings like an owlingale, I reckon. He's got more seals to
his ministry a-hanging onto his watch-chain than I ever seed.
Got a mustache onto the top story of his mouth, somethin' like
a tuft of grass on the roof of a ole shed kitchen. Peart? He's
the peartest-lookin' chap I ever seed. But he a'n't no singin'master—
not ef I'm any jedge of turnips. He warn't born to
sarve his day and generation with a tunin'-fork. I think he's
a-goin' to reckon-water a little in these parts and that he's only
a-playin' singin'-master. He kin play more fiddles'n one, you
bet a hoss! Says he come up here fer his wholesome, and I
guess he did. Think ef he'd a-staid where he was, he mout

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

“DON'T BE ONCHARITABLE, JONAS.” [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

a-suffered a leetle from confinement to his room, and that room
p'raps not more nor five foot by nine, and ruther dim-lighted
and poor-provisioned, an' not much chance fer takin' exercise in
the fresh air!”

“Don't be oncharitable, Jonas, don't. We're all mis'able sinners,
I s'pose; and you know charity don't think no evil. The
man may be all right, ef he does wear hair on his lip. Charity
kivers lots a sins.”

“Ya-as, but charity don't kiver no wolves with wool. An' ef
he a'n't a woolly wolf they's no snakes in Jarsey, as little Ridin'
Hood said when her granny tried to bite her head off. I'm dead
sot in favor of charity, and mean to gin her my vote at every
election, but I a'n't a-goin' to have her put a blind-bridle on to
me. And when a man comes to Clark township a-wearing
straps to his breechaloons to keep hisself from leaving terryfirmy
altogether, and a weightin' hisself down with pewter watch-seals,
gold-washed, and a cultivating a crap of red-top hay onto
his upper lip, and a-lettin' on to be a singin'-master, I suspicions
him. They's too much in the git-up fer the come-out. Well,
here's yer health, Cynthy!”

And having made this oracular speech and quaffed the hard
limestone water, Jonas hung the clean white gourd from which
he had been drinking, in its place against the well-curb, and
started back to the field, while Cynthy Ann carried her bucket
of water into the kitchen, blaming herself for standing so long
talking to Jonas. To Cynthy everything pleasant had a flavor
of sinfulness.

The pail of water was hardly set down in the sink when
there came a knock at the door, and Cynthy found standing by
it the strapped pantaloons, the “red-top” mustache, the

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

watch-seals, and all the rest that went to make up the new singing-master.
He smiled when he saw her, one of those smiles which
are strictly limited to the lower half of the face, and are wholly
mechanical, as though certain strings inside were pulled with
malice aforethought and the mouth jerked out into a square
grin, such as an ingeniously-made automaton might display.

“Is Mr. Anderson in?”

“No, sir; he's gone to town.”

“Is Mrs. Anderson in?”

And so he entered, and soon got into conversation with the
lady of the house, and despite the prejudice which she entertained
for mustaches, she soon came to like him. He smiled
so artistically. He talked so fluently. He humored all her
whims, pitied all her complaints, and staid to dinner, eating
her best preserves with a graciousness that made Mrs. Anderson
feel how great was his condescension. For Mr. Humphreys,
the singing-master, had looked at the comely face of Julia, and
looked over Julia's shoulders at the broad acres beyond; and he
thought that in Clark township he had not met with so fine a
landscape, so nice a figure-piece. And with the quick eye of a
man of the world, he had measured Mrs. Anderson, and calculated
on the ease with which he might complete the picture
to suit his taste.

He staid to supper. He smiled that same fascinating square
smile on Samuel Anderson, treated him as head of the house,
talked glibly of farming, and listened better than he talked.
He gave no account of himself, except by way of allusion.
He would begin a sentence thus, “When I was traveling in
France with my poor dear mother,” etc., from which Mrs. Anderson
gathered that he had been a devoted son, and then he would

THE HAWK. [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

relate how he had seen something curious “when he was dining
at the house of the American minister at Berlin.” “This hazy
air reminds me of my native mountains in Northern New York.”
And then he would allude to his study of music in the Conservatory
in Leipsic. To plain country people in an out-of-the-way
Western neighborhood, in 1843, such a man was better
than a lyceum full of lectures. He brought them the odor of
foreign travel, the flavor of city, the “otherness” that everybody
craves.

He staid to dinner, as I have said, and to supper. He staid
over night. He took up his board at the house of Samuel
Anderson. Who could resist his entreaty? Did he not assure
them that he felt the need of a home in a cultivated family?
And was it not the one golden opportunity to have the daughter
of the house taught music by a private master, and thus give a
special eclat to her education? How Mrs. Anderson hoped
that this superior advantage would provoke jealous remarks
on the part of her neighbors! It was only necessary to the
completion of her triumph that they should say she was “stuck
up.” Then, too, to have so brilliant a beau for Julia! A beau
with watch-seals and a mustache, a beau who had been to Paris
with his mother, studied music in the Conservatory at Leipsic,
dined with the American minister in Berlin, and done ever so
many more wonderful things, was a prospect to delight the
ambitious heart of Mrs. Anderson, especially as he flattered the
mother instead of the daughter.

“He's a independent citizen of this Federal Union,” said
Jonas to Cynthy, “carries his head like he was intimately'
quainted with the 'merican eagle hisself. He's playin' this game
sharp. He deals all the trumps to hisself, and most everything

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

besides. He'll carry off the gal if something don't arrest him in
his headlong career. Jist let me git a chance at him when
he's soarin' loftiest into the amber blue above, and I'll cut his
kite-string fer him, and let him fall like fork-ed lightnin' into
a mud-puddle.”

Cynthy said she did see one great sin that he had committed
for sure. That was the puttin' on of gold and costly apparel.
It was sot down in the Bible and in the Methodist Discipline
that it was a sin to wear gold, and she should think the poor
man hadn't no sort o' regard for his soul, weighing it down with
them things.

But Jonas only remarked that he guessed his jewelry warn't
no sin. He didn't remember nothing agin wearin' pewter.

p555-076 CHAPTER X. AN OFFER OF HELP.

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

THE singing-master, Mr. Humphreys, went to
singing-school and church with Julia in a matter-of-course
way, treating her with attention, but
taking care not to make himself too attentive. Except
that Julia could not endure his smile—which
was, like some joint stock companies, strictly limited—she
liked him well enough. It was something to her, in her monotonous
life under the eye of her mother, who almost never left
her alone, and who cut off all chance for communication with
August—it was something to have the unobtrusive attentions
of Mr. Humphreys, who always interested her with his adventures.
For indeed it really seemed that he had had more adventures
than any dozen other men. How should a simple-hearted
girl understand him? How should she read the riddle of a life
so full of duplicity—of multiplicity—as the life of Joshua Humphreys,
the music-teacher? Humphreys intended to make love
to her, but during the first two weeks he only aimed to gain her
esteem. He felt that there was a clue which he had not got.

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

But at last the key dropped into his hands, and he felt sure that
the unsophisticated girl was in his power.

Among the girls that attended Humphreys's singing-school was
Betsey Malcolm, the near neighbor of the Andersons. The
singing-master often saw her at Mr. Anderson's, and he often
wished that Julia were as easy to win as he felt Betsey to be.
The sensuous mouth, the giddy eyes of Betsey, showed quickly
her appreciation of every flattering attention he paid her, and
though in Julia's presence he was careful how he treated her,
yet when he, walking down the road one day, alone, met her, he
courted her assiduously. He had not to observe any caution in
her case. She greedily absorbed all the flattery he could give,
only pettishly responding after a while: “O dear! that's the way
you talk to me, and that's the way you talk to Jule sometimes,
I s'pose. I guess she don't mind keeping two of you as strings
to her bow.”

“Two! What do you mean, my fair friend? I havn't seen
one, yet.”

“Oh, no! You mean you haven't seen two. You see one
whenever you look in the glass. The other is a Dutchman, and
she's dying after him. She may flirt with you, but her mother
watches her night and day, to keep her from running off with
Gus Wehle.”

Like many another crafty person, Betsey Malcolm had fairly
overshot the mark. In seeking to separate Humphreys from
Julia, she had given him the clue he desired, and he was not
slow to use it, for he was almost the only person that Mrs. Anderson
trusted alone with Julia.

In the dusk of the evening of the very day of his talk with
Betsey, he sat on the long front-porch with Julia. Julia liked

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

him better, or rather did not dislike him so much in the dark
as she did in the light. For when it was light she could see
him smile, and though she had not learned to connect a cold-blooded
face with a villainous character, she had that childish
instinct which made her shrink from Humphreys's square smile.
It always seemed to her that the real Humphreys gazed at her
out of the cold, glittering eyes, and that the smile was something
with which he had nothing to do.

Sitting thus in the dusk of the evening, and looking out over
the green pasture to where the nigher hills ceased and the distant
seemed to come immediately after, their distance only indicated
by color, though the whole Ohio “bottom” was between,
she forgot the Mephistopheles who sat not far away, and dreamed
of August, the “grand,” as she fancifully called him. And he
let her sit and dream undisturbed for a long time, until the
darkness settled down upon the hills. Then he spoke.

“I—I thought,” began Humphreys, with well-feigned hesitancy,
“I thought, I should venture to offer you my assistance
as a true and gallant man, in a matter—a matter of supreme
delicacy—a matter that I have no right to meddle with. I
think I have heard that your mother is not friendly to the suit of
a young man who—who—well, let us say who is not wholly
disagreeable to you. I beg your pardon, don't tell me anything
that you prefer to keep locked in the privacy of your own bosom.
But if I can render any assistance, you know. I have
some little influence with your parents, maybe. If I could be the
happy bearer of any communications, command me as your obedient
servant.”

Julia did not know what to say. To get a word to August
was what she most desired. But the thought of using

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

Humphreys was repulsive to her. She could not see his face in the
gathering darkness, but she could feel him smile that same
soulless, geometrical smile. She could not do it. She did not
know what to say. So she said nothing. Humphreys saw that
he must begin farther back.

“I hear the young man spoken of as a praiseworthy person.
German, I believe? I have always noticed a peculiar
manliness about Germans. A peculiar refinement, indeed, and a
courtesy that is often wanting in Americans. I noticed this
when I was in Leipsic. I don't think the German girls are quite
so refined. German gentlemen in this country seem to prefer
American girls oftentimes.”

All this might have sounded hollow enough to a disinterested
listener. To Julia the words were as sweet as the first rain
after a tedious drouth. She had heard complaint, censure, innuendo,
and downright abuse of poor Gus. These were the
first generous words. They confirmed her judgment, they comforted
her heart, they made her feel grateful, even affectionate
toward the fop, in spite of his watch-seals, his curled mustache,
his straps, his cold eyes, and his artificial smile. Poor
fool you will call her, and poor fool she was. For she could
have thrown herself at the feet of Humphreys, and thanked
him for his words. Thank him she did in a stammering way,
and he did not hesitate to repeat his favorable impressions of
Germans, after that. What he wanted was, not to break the hold
of August until he had placed himself in a position to be next
heir to her regard.

p555-080 CHAPTER XI. THE COON-DOG ARGUMENT.

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

THE reader must understand that all this time Elder
Hankins continued to bombard Clark township
with the thunders and lightnings of the Apocalypse,
continued to whirl before the dazed imaginations of
his rustic hearers the wheels within wheels and the
faces of the living creatures of 'Zek'el, continued to cipher the
world out of existence according to formulas in Dan'el, marched
out the he-goat, made the seven heads and ten horns of the
beast do service over and over again. And all the sweet mysteries
of Oriental imagery, the mystic figures which unexpounded
give so noble a depth to the perspective of Scripture,
were cut to pieces, pulled apart, and explained as though they
were tricks of legerdemain. Julia was powerfully impressed,
not by the declamations of Hankins, for she had sensibility
enough to recoil from his vivisection of Scripture, though she had
been all her life accustomed to hear it from other than Millerites,
but she was profoundly affected by the excitement about
her. Her father, attracted in part by the promise that there

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

should be no marrying there, had embraced Millerism with
all his heart, and was in such a state of excitement that he
could not attend to his business. Mrs. Anderson was in continual
trepidation about it, though she tried not to believe it.
She was on the point of rebelling and declaring that the world
should not come to an end. But on the whole she felt that the
government of the universe was one affair in which she would
have to give up all hope of having her own way. Meantime
there was no increase of religion. Some were frightened out of
their vices for a time, but a passionate terror of that sort is the
worst enemy of true piety.

“Fer my part,” said Cynthy Ann, as she walked home with
Jonas, “fer my part, I don't believe none of his nonsense. John
Wesley” (Jonas was a New-Light, and Cynthy always talked
to him about Wesley) “knowed a heap more about Scripter
than all the Hankinses and Millerses that ever was born, and
he knowed how to cipher, too, I 'low. Why didn't he say
the world was goin' to wind up? An' our persidin' elder is a
heap better instructed than Hankins, and he says God don't
tell nobody when the world's goin' to wind up.”

“Goin' to run down, you mean, Cynthy Ann. 'Kordin' to
Hankins it's a old clock gin out in the springs, I 'low. How
does Hankins know that 'Zek'el's livin' creeters means one
thing more'n another? He talks about them wheels as nateral
as ef he was a wagon-maker fixin' a ole buggy. He says the
thing's a gone tater; no more craps of corn offen the bottom
land, no more electin' presidents of this free and glorious Columby,
no more Fourths, no more shootin' crackers nor spangled
banners, no more nothin'. He ciphers and ciphers, and
then spits on his slate and wipes us all out. Whenever Gabr'el

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

blows I'll b'lieve it, but I won't take none o' Hankins's tootin'
in place of it. I shan't git skeered at no tin-horns, and as for
papaw whistles, why, I say Jericho wouldn't a-tumbled for no
sech music, and they won't fetch down no stars that air way.”

Here old Gottlieb Wehle, who had just joined the Millerites,
came up. “Yonas, you mags shport of de Piple. Ef dem
vaces in der veels, and dem awvool veels in der veels, and dem
figures vot always says aideen huntert vordy dree, ef dem tond
mean sompin awvool, vot does dey mean? Hey?”

“My venerated friend and feller-citizen of ferren birth,”
said Jonas, “you hit the nail on the crown of the head squar,
with the biggest sort ov a sledge-hammer. You gripped a-holt
of the truth that air time like the American bird a-grippin' the
arries on the shield. What do they mean? That's jest the
question, and you Millerites allers argies like the man who
warranted his dog to be a good coon-dog, bekase he warn't
good fer nothin' else under the amber blue. Now, my time-honored
friend and beloved German voter, jest let me tell you
that on the coon-dog principle you could a-wound up the trade
and traffic of this airth any time. Fer ef they don't mean
1843, what do they mean? Why, 1842 or 1844, of course.
You don't come no coon-dog argyments over me, not while I
remain sound in wind and limb.”

“Goon-tog! Who zed goon-tog? Ich tidn't, Hankins tidn't,
Ze'kel's wision tidn't zay nodin pout no goon-tog. What's
goon-togs cot do too mit de end of de vorld? Yonas, you pe
a vool, maype.”

“The same to yerself, my beloved friend and free and enlightened
feller-citizen. Long may you wave, like a green bay
hoss, and a jimson-weed on the sunny side of a board-fence!”

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

Gottlieb hurried on, finding Jonas much harder to understand
than the prophecies.

“I hear the singing-master is goin' to jine,” said Cynthy Ann.
“Wonder ef they'll take him with all his seals and straps, and
hair on his upper lip, with the plain words of the Bible agin
gold and costly apparel? Wonder ef he's tuck in, too?”

“Tuck in? He an't one of that kind. He don't never git
tuck in—he tucks in. He knows which side of his bread's got
quince presarves onto it. I used to run second mate on the
Dook of Orleans, and I know his kind. He'll soar around like
a turkey-buzzard fer a while. Presently he'll 'light. He's
rusticatin' tell some scrape blows over. An' he'll make somethin'
outen it. Business afore pleasure is his motto. He don't
hang that seducin' grin under them hawky eyes fer nothin'.
Wait till the pious and disinterested example 'lights somewheres.
Then look out for the feathers, won't ye! He won't
leave nary bone. But here we air. I declare, Cynthy, this
walk seems the shortest, when I'm in superfine, number-one
comp'ny!”

Cynthy was so pleased with this remark, that she did penance
in her mind for a week afterwards. It was so wicked
to enjoy one's self out of class-meeting!

p555-084 CHAPTER XII. TWO MISTAKES.

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

AT the singing-school and at the church August
waited as impatiently as possible for some sign
of recognition from Julia. He little knew the
fear that beset her. Having seen her hysterical
mother prostrated for weeks by the excitement
of a dispute with her father, it seemed to her that if she turned
one look of love and longing toward young Wehle, whose
sweet German voice rang out above the rest in the hymns, she
might kill her mother as quickly as by plunging a knife into
her heart. The steam-doctor, who was the family physician, had
warned her and her father separately of the danger of exciting
Mrs. Anderson's most excitable temper, and now Julia was the
slave of her mother's disease. That lucky hysteria, which the
steam-doctor thought a fearful heart-disease, had given Mrs.
Abigail the whip-hand of husband and daughter, and she was
not slow to know her advantage, using her heart in a most
heartless way.

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

August could not blame Julia for not writing, for he had
tried to break the blockade by a letter sent through Jonas and
Cynthy Ann, but the latter had found herself so well watched
that the note oppressed her conscience and gave a hangdog
look to her face for two weeks before she got it out of her
pocket, and then she put it under the pillow of Julia's bed, and
had reason to believe that the suspicious Mrs. Anderson confiscated
it within five minutes. For the severity of maternal
government was visibly increased thereafter, and Julia received
many reminders of her ingratitude and of her determination to
kill her self-sacrificing mother by her stubbernness.

“Well,” Mrs. Anderson would say, “it's all one to me
whether the world comes to an end or not. I should like to
live to see the day of judgment. But I shan't. No affectionate
mother can stand such treatment as I receive from my own
daughter. If Norman was only at home!”

It is proper to explain here that Norman was her son, in
whom she took a great deal of comfort when he was away, and
whom she would have utterly spoiled by indulgence if he had
not been born past spoiling. He was the only person to whom
she was indulgent, and she was indulgent to him chiefly because
he was so weak of will that there was not much glory
in conquering him, and because her indulgence to him was a
rod of affliction to the rest of her family.

Failing to open communication through Jonas and Cynthy
Ann, August found himself in a desperate strait, and with an
impatience common to young men he unhappily had recourse to
Betsey Malcolm. She often visited Julia, and twice, when Julia
was not at meeting, he went home with the ingenuous Betsey,
who always pretended to have something to tell him “about

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

Jule,” and who yet, for the pure love of mischief-making, tried
to make him think as poorly as possible of Julia's sincerity,
and who, from pure love of flirtation, puckered her red lips,
and flashed at him with her sensuous eyes, and sighed and
blushed, or rather flushed, while she sympathized with him in
a way that might have been perilous if he had been an American
instead of a constant-hearted “Dutchman,” wholly absorbed
with the image of Julia. But, so far as carrying messages
was concerned, Betsey was certainly a non-conductor.
She professed never to be able to run the blockade with any
communication of his. She said to herself that she wasn't
going to help Jule Anderson to keep all the beaus. She meant
to capture one or the other of them if she could. And,
indeed, she did not dream how grievous was the wrong she
did. For she could appreciate no other feeling in the matter
than vanity, and she could not see any particular harm in
“taking Jule Anderson down a peg.” And so she assured the
anxious and already suspicious August that if she was in his
place she should want that singing-master out of the way.
“Some girls can't stand people that wear jewelry and mustaches
and straps and such things. And Mr. Humphreys is
very careful of her, won't let her sit too late on the porch, and
is very comforting in his way of talking to her. And she
seems to like it. I tell you what it is, Gus”—and she looked
at him so bewitchingly that the pure and sensitive August
blushed, he could hardly tell why—“I tell you Jule's a nice
girl, and got a nice property back of her, and I hope she
won't act like her mother. And, indeed, I can't hardly believe
she will, though the way she eyes that Humphreys makes me
mad.” She had suggested the old doubt. A doubt is

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

dangerous when its face grows familiar, and one recognizes the “Monsieur
Tonson come again.”

And all the message the disinterested and benevolent Betsey
bore to Julia was to tell her exultingly that Gus had twice
walked home with her. And they had had such a nice time!
And Julia, girl that she was, declared indignantly that she didn't
care whom he went with; though she did care, and her eyes
and face said so. Thus the tongue sometimes lies—or seems
to lie—when the whole person is telling the truth. The only
excuse for the tongue is that it will not be believed, and it
knows that it will not be believed! It only speaks diplomatically,
maybe. But diplomatic talking is bad. Better the
truth. If Jule had known that her words would be reported
to August, she would have bitten out her tongue rather than
to have let it utter words that were only the cry of her
wounded pride. Of course Betsey met August in the road
the next morning, in a quiet hollow by the brook, and told him
sympathizingly, almost affectionately, that she had begun to
talk to Julia about him, and that Jule had said she didn't care.
So while Julia uttered a lie she spoke the truth, and while
Betsey uttered the truth she spoke a lie, willful, malicious, and
wicked.

Now, in the mean time, Julia, on her side, had tried to open
communication through the only channel that offered itself. She
did not attempt it by means of Betsey, because, being a woman,
she felt instinctively that Betsey was not to be trusted. But
there was only one other to whom she was allowed to speak,
except under a supervision as complete as it was unacknowledged.
That other was Mr. Humphreys. He evinced a constant
interest in her affairs, avowing that he always did have

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

a romantic desire to effect the union of suitable people, even
though it might pain his heart a little to see another more
fortunate than himself. Julia had given up all hope of communicating
by letter, and she could not bring herself to make
any confessions to a man who had such a smile and such eyes,
but to a generous proposition of Mr. Humphreys that he should
see August and open the way for any communication between
them, she consented, scarcely concealing her eagerness.

August was not in a mood to receive Humphreys kindly. He
hated him by intuition, and a liking for him had not been
begotten by Betsey's assurances that he was making headway
with Julia. August was riding astride a bag of corn on his
way to mill, when Humphreys, taking a walk, met him.

“A pleasant day, Mr. Wehle!”

“Yes,” said August, with a courtesy as mechanical as Humphreys's
smile.

The singing-master was rather pleased than otherwise to see
that August disliked him. It suited his purpose just now to
gall Wehle into saying what he would not otherwise have said.

“I hear you are in trouble,” he proceeded

“How so?”

“Oh! I hear that Mrs. Anderson doesn't like Dutchmen.”
The smile now seemed to have something of a sneer in it.

“I don't know that that is your affair,” said August, all
his suspicions, by a sort of “resolution of force,” changing into
anger.

“Oh! I beg pardon,” with a tone half-mocking. “I did
not know but I might help settle matters. I think I have
Mrs. Anderson's confidence, and I know that I have Miss
Anderson's confidence in an unusual degree. I think a great

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

deal of her. And she thinks me her friend at least. I thought
that there might be some little matters yet unsettled between
you two, and she suggested that maybe there might be something
you would like to say, and that if you would say it to
me, it would be all the same as if it were said to her. She
considers that in the relation I bear to her and the family,
a message delivered to me is the same in effect as if given to
her. I told her I did not think you would, as a gentleman,
wish to hold her to any promises that might be irksome to her
now.”

These words were spoken with a coolness and maliciousness
of good-nature quite devilish, and August's fist involuntarily
doubled itself to strike him, if only to make him cease
smiling in that villainous rectangular way. But he checked
himself

“You are a puppy. Tell that to Jule, if you choose. I shall
send her a release from all obligations, but not by the hand
of a rascal!”

Like all desperadoes, Humphreys was a coward. He could
shoot, but he could not fight, and just now he was affecting
the pious or at least the high moral rôle, and had left his
pistols, brandy-flasks, and the other necessary appurtenances
of a gentleman, locked in his trunk. Besides it would not at
all have suited his purpose to shoot. So in lieu of shooting he
only smiled, as August rode off, that same old geometric smile,
the elements of which were all calculated. He seemed incapable
of any other facial contortion. It expressed one emotion,
indeed, about as well as another, and was therefore as
convenient as those pocket-knives which affect to contain a chest
of tools in one.

“TELL THAT TO JULE.” [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

Julia was already stung to jealousy by Betsey Malcolm's
mischief-making, and it did not require much more to put her
into a frenzy. As they walked home from meeting the next
night — they had meeting all nights now, the world would
soon end and there was so much to be done—as they walked
home Humphreys contrived to separate Julia from the rest,
and to tell her that he had had a conversation with young
Wehle.

“It was painful, very painful,” he said, “I think I had
better not say any more about it.”

“Why?” asked Julia in terror.

“Well, I feel that your grief is mine. I have never felt
so much interest in any one before, and I must say that I was
grievously disappointed. This young man is not at all worthy
of you.”

“What do you mean?” And there was a trace of indignation
in her tone.

“It does seem to me that the man who has your love
should be the happiest in the world; but he refused to send
you any message, and says that he will soon send you an entire
release from all engagement to him. He showed no tenderness
and made no inquiry.”

The weakest woman and the strongest can faint. It is
a woman's last resort. When all else is gone, that remains.
Julia drew a sharp quick breath, and was just about to become
unconscious. Humphreys stretched his arms to catch
her, but the sudden recollection that in case she fainted he
would carry her into the house, produced a reaction. She
released herself from his grasp, and hurried in alone, locking
her door, and refusing admittance to her mother. From

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

Humphreys, who had put himself into a delicate minor key,
Mrs. Anderson got such an account of the conversation as he
thought best to give. She then opened and read a note placed
into her hand by a neighbor as she came out from meeting.
It was addressed to Julia, and ran:

“If all they say is true, you have quickly changed. I do
not hold you by any promises you wish to break.

Mrs. Anderson had no pity. She hesitated not an instant.
Julia's door was fast. But she went out upon the front
upper porch, and pushing up the window of her daughter's
room as remorselessly as she had committed the burglary on her
private letter, she looked at her a moment, sobbing on the bed,
and then threw the letter into the room, saying: “It's good for
you. Read that, and see what a fellow your Dutchman is.”

Then Mrs. Anderson sought her couch, and slept with a
serene sense of having done her duty as a mother, whatever
might be the result.

p555-094 CHAPTER XIII. THE SPIDER SPINS.

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

JULIA got up from her bed the moment that
her mother had gone. Her first feeling was that her
privacy had been shamefully outraged. A true
mother should honorably respect the reserve of the
little child. But Julia was now a woman, grown,
with a woman's spirit. She rose from her bed, and shut her
window with a bang that was meant to be a protest. She then
put the tenpenny nail sometimes used to fasten the window
down, in its place, as if to say, “Come in, if you can.” Then
she pulled out the folds of the chintz curtain, hanging on its
draw-string half-way up the window. If there had been any
other precaution possible, she would have taken it. But there
was not.

She took up the note, and read it. Julia was not a girl of
keen penetration. Her training was that of a country life. She
did not read between the lines of August's note, and could only
understand that she was dismissed. Outraged by her mother's
tyranny, spurned by her lover, she stood like a hunted creature,
brought to bay, looking for the last desperate chance for escape.

Crushed? No. If she had been weaker, if she had been
of the quieter, frailer sort, instead of being, as she was, elastic,
impulsive, recuperative, she might have been crushed. She was

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

wounded in her heart of hearts, but all her pride and hardihood,
of which she had not a little, had now taken up arms against
outrageous fortune. She was stung at every thought of August
and his letter, of Betsey Malcolm and her victory, of the fact
that her mother had read the letter and knew of her humiliation.
And she paced the floor of her room, and resolved to
resist and to be revenged. She would marry anybody, that
she might show Betsey and August they had not broken her
heart and that her love did not go begging.

O Julia! take care. Many another woman has jumped off
that precipice!

And she would escape from her mother. The indications of
affection adroitly given by Humphreys were all remembered now.
She could have him, and she would. He would take her to
Cincinnati. She would have her revenge all around. I am
sorry to show you my heroine in this mood. But the fairest
climes are sometimes subject to the fiercest hurricanes, the
frightfulest earthquakes!

After an hour the room seemed hot. She pulled back the
chintz curtain and pushed up the window. The blue-grass in
the pasture looked cool as it drank the heavy dews. She
climbed through the window on to the long, old-fashioned upper
porch. She sat down upon an old-fashioned settee with rockers,
and began to rock. The motion relieved her nervousness
and fanned her hot cheeks. Yes, she would accept the
first respectable lover that offered. She would go to the city
with Humphreys, if he asked her. It is only fair to say that
Julia did not at all consider—she was not in a temper to consider—
what a marriage with Humphreys implied. She only
thought of it on two sides—the revenge upon August and

p555-096 TEMPTED. [figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

Betsey, and the escape from a thralldom now grown more bitter
than death. True, her conscience was beginning to awaken,
and to take up arms against her resolve. But nothing could be
plainer. In marrying Mr. Humphreys she should marry a
friend, the only friend she had. In marrying him she would
satisfy her mother, and was it not her duty to sacrifice something
to her mother's happiness, perhaps her mother's life?

Yes, yes, Julia, a false spirit of self-sacrifice is another path
over the cliff! In such a mood as this all paths lead into the
abyss.

Her mind was made up. She braced her will against all

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

the relentings of her heart. She wished that Humphreys, who
had indirectly declared his love so often, were there to offer at
once. She would accept him immediately, and then the whole
neighborhood should not say that she had been deserted by
a Dutchman. For in her anger she found her mother's epithets
expressive.

He was there! Was it the devil that planned it? Does
he plan all those opportunities for wrong that are so sure to
offer themselves? Humphreys, having led a life that turned
night into day, sat at the farther end of the long upper porch,
smoking his cigar, waiting a bed-time nearer to the one to
which he was accustomed.

Did he suspect the struggle in the heart of Julia Anderson?
Did he guess that her pride and defiance had by this time
reached high-water mark? Did he divine this from seeing
her there? He rose and started in through the door
of the upper hall, the only opening to the porch, except
the window. But this was a feint. He turned back and
sat himself down upon the farther end of the settee from
Julia. He understood human nature perfectly, and had
had long practice in making gradual approaches. He begged
her pardon for the bungling manner in which he had communicated
intelligence that must be so terrible to a heart so
sensitive! Julia was just going to declare that she did not care
anything for what August said or thought, but her natural truthfulness
checked the transparent falsehood. She had not gone
far enough astray to lie consciously; she was, as yet, only telling
lies to herself. Very gradually and cautiously did he proceed so
as not to “flush the bird.” Even as I saw, an hour ago, a
cat creep upon a sparrow with fascinating eyes, and a waving,

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

snake-like motion of the tail, and a treacherous feline smile upon
her face, even so, cautiously and by degrees, Humphreys felt
his way with velvet paws toward his prey. He knew the
opportunity, that once gone might not come again; he soon
guessed that this was the hour and power of darkness in the
soul of Julia, the hour in which she would seek to flee from
her own pride and mortification. And if Humphreys knew
how to approach with a soft tread, very slowly and cautiously,
he also knew—men of his “profession” always know—when
to spring. He saw the moment, he made the spring, he seized
the prey.

“Will you trust your destiny to me, Miss Anderson? You
seem beset by troubles. I have means. I could not but be
wholly devoted to your welfare. Let me help you to flee away
from—from all this mortification, and this—this domestic tyranny.
Will you intrust yourself to me?”

He did not say anything about love. He had an instinctive
feeling that it would not be best. She felt herself environed
with insurmountable difficulties, threatened with agonies worse
than death—so they seemed to her. He simply, coolly opened
the door, and bade her easily and triumphantly escape. Had he
said one word of tenderness the reaction must have set in.

She was silent.

“I did hope, by sacrificing all my own hopes, to effect a
reconciliation. But when that young man spoke insulting words
about you, I determined at once to offer you my devoted protection.
I ask no more than you are able to give, your respect.
Will you accept my life-long protection as your husband?”

“Yes!” said the passionate girl in an agony of despair.

p555-099 CHAPTER XIV. THE SPIDER'S WEB.

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

NOW that Humphreys had his prey he did not
know just what to do with it. Not knowing
what to say, he said nothing, in which he
showed his wisdom. But he felt that saying nothing
was almost as bad as saying something. And he
was right. For with people of impulsive temperament reactions
are sudden, and in one minute after Julia had said yes,
there came to her memory the vision of August standing in the
barn and looking into her eyes so purely and truly and loyally,
and vowing such sweet vows of love, and she looked back upon
that perfect hour with some such feeling perhaps as Dives
felt looking out of torment across the great gulf into paradise.
Only that Dives had never known paradise, while she had. For
the man or woman that knows a pure, self-sacrificing love,
returned in kind, knows that which, of all things in this world,
lies nearest to God and heaven. There be those who have ears
to hear this, and for them is it written. Julia thought of
August's love with a sinking into despair. But then returned

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

the memory of his faithlessness, of all she had been compelled
to believe and suffer. Then her agony came back, and she was
glad that she had taken a decided step. Any escape was a
relief. I suppose it is under some such impulse that people
kill themselves. Julia felt as though she had committed suicide
and escaped.

Humphreys on his part was not satisfied. I used the
wrong figure of speech awhile ago. He was not a cat with
paw upon the prey. He was only an angler, and had but
hooked his fish. He had not landed it yet. He felt how slender
was the thread of committal by which he held Julia. August
had her heart. He had only a word. The slender vantage
that he had, he meant to use adroitly, craftily. And he
knew that the first thing was to close this interview
without losing any ground. The longer she remained bound,
the better for him. And with his craft against the country
girl's simplicity it would have fared badly with Julia had it not
been for one defect which always inheres in a bad man's plots
in such a case. A man like Humphreys never really understands
a pure woman. Certain detached facts he may know, but he can
not “put himself in her place.”

Humphreys remarked with tenderness that Julia must not stay
in the night air. She was too precious to be exposed. This
flattery was comforting to her wounded pride, and she found
his words pleasant to her. Had he stopped here he might have
left the field victorious. But it was very hard for an affianced
lover to stop here. He must part from her in some other way
than this if he would leave on her mind the impression that
she was irrevocably bound to him. He stooped quickly with a
well-affected devotion and lifted her hand to kiss it. That act

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

awakened Julia Anderson. She must have awaked anyhow,
sooner or later. But when one is in the toils of such a man,
sooner is better. The touch of Humphreys's hand and lips sent
a shudder through her frame that Humphreys felt. Instantly
there came to her a perception of all that marriage with a repulsive
man signifies.

Not suicide, but perdition.

She jerked her hand from his as though he were a snake.

“Mr. Humphreys, what did I say? I can't have you. I don't
love you. I'm crazy to-night. I must take back what
I said.”

“No, Julia. Let me call you my Julia. You must not
break my heart.” Humphreys had lost his cue, and every
word of tenderness he spoke made his case more hopeless.

“I never can marry you—let me go in,” she said, brushing
past him. Then she remembered that her door was fast on
the inside. She had climbed out the window. She turned back,
and he saw his advantage.

“I can not release you. Take time to think before you
ask it. Go to sleep now and do not act hastily.” He stood
between her and the window, wishing to get some word to
which he could hold.

Julia's two black eyes grew brighter. “I see. You took advantage
of my trouble, and you want to hold me to my
words, and you are bad, and now—now I hate you!” Then
Julia felt better. Hate is the only wholesome thing in such a
case. She pushed him aside vigorously, stepped upon the settee,
slipped in at the window, and closed it. She drew the curtain,
but it seemed thin, and with characteristic impulsiveness she
put out her light that she might have the friendly drapery of

“NOW I HATE YOU!” [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

darkness about her. She heard the soft—for the first time it
seemed to her stealthy—tread of Humphreys, as he returned to
his room. Whether she swooned or whether she slept after
that she never knew. It was morning without any time intervening,
she had a headache and could scarcely walk, and there
was August's note lying on the floor. She read it again—
if not with more intelligence, at least with more suspicion.
She wondered at her own hastiness. She tried to go about the
house, but the excitement of the previous night, added to all
she had suffered beside, had given her a headache, blinding
and paralyzing, that sent her back to bed.

And there she lay in that half-asleep, half-awake mood which
a nervous headache produces. She seemed to be a fly in a
web, and the spider was trying to fasten her. A very polite spider,
with that smile which went half-way up his face but which
never seemed able to reach his eyes. He had straps to his
pantaloons, and a reddish mustache, and she shuddered as he
wound his fine webs about her. She tried to shake off the
illusion. But the more absurd an illusion, the more it will not
be shaken off. For see! the spider was kissing her hand!
Then she seemed to have made a great effort and to have
broken the web. But her wings were torn, and her feet were
shackled by the fine strands that still adhered. She could not
get them off. Wouldn't somebody help her, even as she had
many a time picked off the webs from a fly's feet out of sheer
pity? And all day she would perpetually return into these
half-conscious states and feel the spider's web about her feet,
and ask over and over again if somebody wouldn't help her to
get out of the meshes.

Toward evening her mother brought her a cup of tea and a

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

piece of toast; and for the first time in the remembered life
of the daughter made an endeavor to show a little tenderness for
her. It was a clumsy endeavor, for when the great gulf is once
fixed between mother and child it is with difficulty bridged. And
finding herself awkward in the new role, Mrs. Anderson dropped it
and resumed her old gait, remarking, as she closed the door,
that she was glad to know that Julia was coming to her senses,
and “had took the right road.” For Mrs. Abigail was more
vigorous than grammatical.

Julia did not see anything significant in this remark at first.
But after a while it came to her that Humphreys must have told
her mother of something that had passed during the preceding
night, something on which this commendation was founded.
Then she fell into the same torpor and was in the same old
spider's web, and there was the same spider with the limited
smile and the mustache and the watch-seals and the straps!
And he was trying to fasten her, and she said “yes.” And
she could see the little word. The spider caught it and spun
it into a web and fastened her with it. And she could break
all the other webs but those woven out of that one little word
from her own lips. That clung to her, and she could neither
fly nor walk. August could not help her—he would not come.
Her mother was helping the spider. Just then Cynthy Ann came
along with her broom. Would she see her and sweep her free?
She tried to call her, but alas! she was a fly. She tried to buzz,
but her wings were fast bound with the webs. She was being
smothered. The spider had seized her. She could not move.
He was smiling at her!

Then she woke shuddering. It was after midnight.

p555-106 CHAPTER XV. THE WEB BROKEN.

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

“POVERTY,” says Béranger, “is always superstitious.”
So indeed is human extremity of
any sort. Julia's healthy constitution had resisted
the threatened illness, the feverishness had gone
with the headache. She felt now only one thing:
she must have a friend. But the hard piousness of Cynthy
Ann's face had never attracted her sympathy. It had always
seemed to her that Cynthy disapproved of her affection quite as
much as her mother did. Cynthy's face had indeed a chronic
air of disapproval. A nervous young minister said that he
never had any “liberty” when sister Cynthy Ann was in his
congregation. She seemed averse to all he said.

But now Julia felt that there was just one chance of getting
advice and help. Had she not in her dream seen Cynthy Ann
with a broom? She would ask help from Cynthy Ann.
There must be a heart under her rind.

But to get to her. Her mother's affectionate vigilance never

p555-107 AT CYNTHY'S DOOR. [figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

left her alone with Cynthy. Perhaps it was this very precaution
that had suggested Cynthy Ann to her as a possible ally.
She must contrive to have a talk with her somehow. But how?
There was one way. Black-eyed people do not delay. Right or
wrong, Julia acted with sharp decision. Before she had any
very definite view of her plan, she had arisen and slipped on a
calico dress. But there was one obstacle. Mr. Humphreys kept
late hours, and he might be on the front-porch. She might
meet him in the hall, and this seemed worse to her than

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

would the chance of meeting a tribe of Indians. She listened
and looked out of her window; but she could not be
sure; she would run the risk. With silent feet and loud-beating
heart she went down the hall to the back upper porch, for in
that day porches were built at the back and front of houses,
above and below. Once on the back-porch she turned to the
right and stood by Cynthy Ann's door. But a new fear took
possession of her. If Cynthy Ann should be frightened and
scream!

“Cynthy! Cynthy Ann!” she said, standing by the bed in
the little bare room which Cynthy Ann had occupied for five
years, but into which she had made no endeavor to bring one
ray of sentiment or one trace of beauty.

“Cynthy! Cynthy Ann!”

Had Cynthy Ann slept anywhere but in the L of the house,
her shriek—what woman could have helped shrieking a little
when startled?—her shriek must have alarmed the family. But
it did not. “Why, child! what are you doing here? You are
out of your head, and you must go back to your room at
once.” And Cynthy had arisen and was already tugging at
Julia's arm.

“I a'n't out of my head, Cynthy Ann, and I won't go back to
my room—not until I have had a talk with you.”

“What is the matter, Jule?” said Cynthy, sitting on the
bed and preparing to begin again her old fight between
duty and inclination. Cynthy always expected temptation. She
had often said in class-meeting that temptations abounded on
every hand, and as soon as Julia told her she had a communication
to make, Cynthy Ann was sure that she would find in it
some temptation of the devil to do something she “hadn't orter

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

do,” according to the Bible or the Discipline, strictly construed.
And Cynthy was a “strict constructionist.”

Julia did not find it so easy to say anything now that she
had announced herself as determined to have a conversation and
now that her auditor was waiting. It is the worst beginning in
the world for a conversation, saying that you intend to converse.
When an Indian has announced his intention of
having a “big talk,” he immediately lights his pipe and relapses
into silence until the big talk shall break out accidentally and
naturally. But Julia, having neither the pipe nor the Indian's
stolidity, found herself under the necessity of beginning abruptly.
Every minute of delay made her position worse. For every
minute increased her doubt of Cynthy Ann's sympathy.

“O Cynthy Ann! I'm so miserable!”

“Yes, I told your ma this morning that you was looking
mis'able, and that you had orter have sassafras to purify the
blood, but your ma is so took up with steam-docterin' that she
don't believe in nothin' but corn-sweats and such like.”

“Oh! but, Cynthy, it a'n't that. I'm miserable in my
mind. I wish I knew what to do.”

“I thought you'd made up your mind. Your ma told me
you was engaged to Mr. Humphreys.”

Julia was appalled. How fast the spider spins his web!

“I a'n't engaged to him, and I hate him. He got me to
say yes when I was crazy, and I believe he brought about the
things that make me feel so nigh crazy. Do you think he's a
good man, Cynthy Ann?”

“Well, no, though I don't want to set in no jedgment on
nobody; but I don't see as how as he kin be good and wear all
of them costly apparels that's so forbid in the Bible, to say

p555-110 CYNTHY ANN HAD OFTEN SAID IN CLASS-MEETING THAT TEMPTATIONS
ABOUNDED ON EVERY HAND. [figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

nothing of the Discipline. The Bible says you must know a
tree by its fruits, and I 'low his'n is mostly watch-seals. I think
a good sound conversion at the mourners' bench would make
him strip off some of them things, and put them into the missionary
collection. Though maybe he a'n't so bad arter all, fer
Jonas says that liker'n not the things a'n't gold, but pewter
washed over. But I'm afeard he's wor'ly-minded. But I don't
want to be too hard on a feller-creatur'.”

“Cynthy, I drempt just now I was a fly and he was a
spider, and that he had me all wrapped up in his web, and that
just then you came along with a broom.”

“That must be a sign,” said Cynthy Ann. “It's good you
didn't dream after daylight. Then 'twould a come true. But

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

what about him? I thought you loved Gus Wehle, and though
I'm afeard you're makin' a idol out o' him, and though I'm afeard
he's a onbeliever, and I don't noways like marryin' with onbelievers,
yet I did want to help you, and I brought a note from
him wunst and put it under the head of your bed. I was afeard
then I was doin' what Timothy forbids, when he says not
to be pertakers in other folks's sins, but, you see, how could I
help doin' it, when you was lookin' so woebegone like, and
Jonas, he axed me to do it. It's awful hard to say you won't
to Jonas, you know. So I put the letter there, and I don't
doubt your ma mistrusted it, and got a holt on it.”

“Did he write to me? A'n't he going with that Betsey
Malcolm?”

“Can't be, I 'low. On'y this evenin' Jonas said to me, says he,
when I tole him you was engaged to Mr. Humphreys, says he,
in his way, `The hawk's lit, has he? That'll be the death of
two,' says he, `fer she'll die on it, an' so'll poor Gus,' says he.
And then he went on to tell as how as Gus is all ready to leave,
and had axed him to tell him of any news; but he said he
wouldn't tell him that. He'd leave him some hope. Fer he
says Gus was mighty nigh distracted to-day, that is yisterday, fer
its most mornin' I 'low.”

Now this speech did Julia a world of good. It showed her
that Gus was not faithless, that she might count on Cynthy,
and that Jonas was her friend, and that he did not like Humphreys.
Jonas called him a hawk. That agreed with her dream.
He was a hawk and a spider.

“But, Cynthy Ann, I got a letter night before last; ma threw
it in the window. In it Gus said he released me. I hadn't asked
any release. What did he mean?”

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

“Honey, I wish I could help you. It's that hawk, as Jonas
calls him, that's at the bottom of all this trouble. I don't
believe but what he's told some lies or 'nother. I don't believe
but what he's a bad man. I allers said I didn't 'low no good
could come of a man that puts on costly apparel and wears
straps. I'm afeard you're making a idol of Gus Wehle. Don't
do it. Ef you do, God'll take him. Misses Pearsons made a
idol of her baby, a kissin' it and huggin' it every minute, and
I said, says I, Misses Pearsons, you hadn't better make a idol
of a perishin' creature. And sure enough, God tuck it. He's
jealous of our idols. But I can't help helpin' you. You're a
onbeliever yet yourself, and I 'low taint no sin fer you to marry
Gus. It's yokin' like with like. I wish you was both Christians.
I'll speak to Jonas. I don't know what I ought to do,
but I'll speak to Jonas. He's mighty peart about sech things, is
Jonas, and got as good a heart as you ever see. And—”

“Cynth-ee A-ann!” It was the energetic voice of Mrs. Anderson
rousing the house betimes. For the first time Julia and
Cynthy Ann noticed the early light creeping in at the window.
They sat still, paralyzed.

“Cynth-ee!” The voice was now at the top of the stairs,
for Mrs. Anderson always carried the war into Africa if Cynthy
did not wake at once.

“Answer quick, Cynthy Ann, or she'll be in here!” said
Julia, sliding behind the bed.

“Ma'am!” said Cynthy Ann, starting toward the door,
where she met Mrs. Abigail. “I'm up,” said Cynthy.

“Well, what makes you so long a-answerin' then? You make
me climb the steps, and you know I may drop down dead of
heart-disease any day. I'll go and wake Jule.”

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

“Better let her lay awhile,” said Cynthy, reproaching herself
instantly for the deception.

Mrs. Anderson hesitated at the top of the stairs.

“Jul-yee!” she called. Poor Jule shook from head to foot.
“I guess I'll let her lay awhile; but I'm afraid I've already
spoiled the child by indulgence,” said the mother, descending
the stairs. She relented only because she believed Julia was
conquered.

“I declare, child, it's a shame I should be helping you to
disobey your mother. I'm afeard the Lord'll bring some jedgment
on us yet.” For Cynthy Ann had tied her conscience to
her rather infirm logic. Better to have married it to her
generous heart. But before she had finished the half-penitent
lamentation, Jule was flying with swift and silent feet down
the hall. Arrived in her own room, she was so much
relieved as to be almost happy; and she was none too soon,
for her industrious mother had quickly repented her criminal
leniency, and was again climbing the stairs at the imminent
risk of her precarious life, and calling “Jul-yee!”

p555-114 CHAPTER XVI. JONAS EXPOUNDS THE SUBJECT.

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

“I 'LOWED I'd ketch you here, my venerable
and reliable feller-citizen!” said Jonas as he entered
the lower story of Andrew Anderson's castle
and greeted August, sitting by Andrew's loom.
It was the next evening after Julia's interview
with Cynthy Ann. “When do you 'low to leave this terryfirmy
and climb a ash-saplin'? To-night; hey? Goin' to the
Queen City to take to steamboat life in hopes of havin' your
sperrits raised by bein' blowed up? Take my advice and
don't make haste in the downward road to destruction, nor the
up-hill one nuther. A game a'n't never through tell it's played
out, an' the American eagle's a chicken with steel spurs.
That air sweet singer of Israel that is so hifalugeon he has
to anchor hisself to his boots, knows all the tricks, and is intimately
acquainted with the kyards, whether it's faro, poker,
euchre, or French monte. But blamed ef Providence a'n't
dealed you a better hand'n you think. Never desperandum, as
the Congressmen say, fer while the lamp holds out to burn you

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

may beat the blackleg all to flinders and sing and shout forever.
Last night I went to bed thinkin' 'Umphreys had the stakes all
in his pocket. This mornin' I found he was in a far way to
be beat outen his boots ef you stood yer ground like a man
and a gineological descendant of Plymouth Rock!”

Andrew stopped his loom, and, looking at August, said:

“Our friend Jonas speaks somewhat periphrastically and
euphuistically, and — he'll pardon me — but he speaks a little
ambiguously.”

“My love, I gin it up, as the fish-hawk said to the bald
eagle one day. I kin rattle off odd sayings and big words
picked up at Fourth-of-Julys and barbecues and big meetins,
but when you begin to fire off your forty-pound bomb-shell bookwords,
I climb down as suddent as Davy Crockett's coon.
Maybe I do speak unbiguously, as you say, but I was givin' you
the biggest talkin' I had in the basket. And as fer my good
news, a feller don't like to eat up all his country sugar to
wunst, I 'low. But I says to our young and promisin' friend
of German extraction, beloved, says I, hold onto that air limb
a little longer and you're saved.”

“But, Jonas,” said August, spinning Andrew's windingblade
round and speaking slowly and bitterly, “a man don't
like to be trifled with, if he is a Dutchman!”

“But sposin' a man hain't been trifled with, Dutchman or
no Dutchman? Sposin' it's all a optical delusion of the yeers?
There's a word fer you, Andrew, that a'n't nuther unbiguous
nor peri-what-you-may-call-it.”

“But,” said August, “Betsey Malcolm—”

“Betsey Malcolm!” said Jonas. “Betsey Malcolm to thunder!”
and then he whistled. “Set a dog to mind a basket

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

of meat when his chops is a-waterin' fer it! Set a kingfisher
to take keer of a fish-pond! Set a cat to raisin' your orphan
chickens on the bottle! Set a spider to nuss a fly sick with
dyspepsy from eatin' too much molasses! I'd ruther trust a
hen-hawk with a flock of patridges than to trust Betsey Malcolm
with your affairs. I ha'n't walked behind you from
meetin' and seed her head a bobbin' like a bluebird's and her
eyes a blazin' an' all that, fer nothin'. Like as not, Betsey
Malcolm's more nor half your trouble in that quarter.”

“But she said—”

“It don't matter three quarters of a rotten rye-straw what
she said, my inexper'enced friend. She don't keer what she
says, so long as it's fur enough away from the truth to sarve
her turn. An' she's told pay-tent double-back-action lies that
worked both ways. What do you 'low Jule Anderson tho't
when she hearn tell of your courtin' Betsey, as Betsey told it,
with all her nods an' little crowin'? Now looky here, Gus,
I'm your friend, as the Irishman said to the bar that hugged
him, an' I want to say about all that air that Betsey told you,
spit on the slate an' wipe that all off. They's lie in her soap an'
right smart chance of saft-soap in her lie, I 'low.”

These rough words of Jonas brought a strange intelligence
into the mind of August. He saw so many things in a moment
that had lain under his eyes unnoticed.

“There is much rough wisdom in your speech, Jonas,” said
Andrew.

“That's a fact. You and me used to go to school to old
Benefield together when I was little and you was growed up.
You allers beat everybody all holler in books and spellin'-matches,
Andy. But I 'low I cut my eye-teeth 'bout as airly as

p555-117 JONAS. [figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

some of you that's got more larnin' under your skelp. Now, I
say to our young friend and feller-citizen, don't go 'way tell
you've spoke a consolin' word to a girl as'll stick to you tell
the hour and article of death, and then remains yours truly forever,
amen.”

“How do you know that, Jonas?” said August, smiling in
spite of himself.

“How do I know it? Why, by the testimony of a uncorrupted
and disinterested witness, gentlemen of the jury, if the
honorable court pleases. What did that Jule Anderson do, poor

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

thing, but spend some time making a most onseasonable visit to
Cynthy Ann last night? And I 'low ef there's a ole gal in this
sublunary spear as tells the truth in a bee-line and no nonsense,
it's that there same, individooal, identical Cynthy Ann. She's
most afeard to drink cold water or breathe fresh air fer fear
she'll commit a unpard'nable sin. And that persecuted young
pigeon that thought herself forsooken, jest skeeted into Cynthy
Ann's budwoir afore daybreak this mornin' and told her all
her sorrows, and how your letter and your goin' with that Betsey
Malcolm”—here August winced—“had well nigh druv her to
run off with the straps and watch-seals to get rid of you and
Betsey and her precious and mighty affectionate ma.”

“But she won't look at me in meeting, and she sent Humphreys
to me with an insulting message.”

“Which text divides itself into two parts, my brethren and
feller-travelers to etarnity. To treat the last head first, beloved,
I admonish you not to believe a blackleg, unless it's under sarcumstances
when he's got onusual and airresistible temptations
to tell the truth. I don't advise yer to spit on the slate and rub
it out in this case. Break the slate and throw it away. To
come to the second pertikeler, which is the first in the order
of my text, my attentive congregation. She didn't look at you
in meetin'. Now, I 'spose you don't know nothin' of her mother's
heart-disease. Heart-disease is trumps with Abigail Anderson.
She plays that every turn. Just think of a young gal who
thinks that ef she looks at her beau when her mother's by,
she might kill her invalooable parient of heart-disease. Fer my
part, I don't take no stock in Mrs. Abby Anderson's dyin' of
heart-disease, no ways. Might as well talk about a whale dyin'
of footrot.”

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

“Well, Jonas, what counsel do you give our young friend?
Your sagacity is to be depended on.”

“Why, I advise him to speak face to face with the angel of
his life. Let him climb into my room to-night. Leave meetin'
jest afore the benediction—he kin do without that wunst—and
go double-quick acrost the fields, and git safe into my stoodio.
Ferther pertikelers when the time arrives.”

p555-120 CHAPTER XVII. THE WRONG PEW.

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

AUGUST'S own good sense told him that the
advice of Jonas was not good. But he had made
many mistakes of late, and was just now inclined
to take anybody's judgment in place of his own.
All that was proud and gentlemanly in him rebelled
at the thought of creeping into another man's house in the
night. Modesty is doubtless a virtue, but it is a virtue responsible
for many offenses. Had August not felt so distrustful
of his own wisdom, nothing could have persuaded him to make
his love for Julia Anderson seem criminal by an action so wanting
in dignity. But back of Jonas's judgment was that of
Andrew, whose weakness was Quixotism. He wanted to live
and to have others live on the concert-pitch of romantic action.
There was something of chivalry in the proposal of Jonas, a
spice of adventure that made him approve it on purely sentimental
grounds.

The more August thought of it, and the nearer he was to
its execution, the more did he dislike it. But I have often

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

noticed that people of a rather quiet temperament, such as
young Wehle's, show vis inertiœ in both ways—not very easily
moved, they are not easily checked when once in motion.
August's velocity was not usually great, his momentum was
tremendous, and now that he had committed himself to the
hands of Jonas Harrison and set out upon this enterprise, he
was determined, in his quiet way, to go through to the end.

Of course he understood the house, and having left the
family in meeting, he had nothing to do but to scale one of the
pillars of the front-porch. In those Arcadian days upper windows
were hardly ever fastened, except when the house was
deserted by all its inmates for days. Half-way up the post he
was seized with a violent trembling. His position brought to
him a confused memory of a text of Scripture: “He that entereth
not by the door... but climbeth up some other way, the
same is a thief and a robber.” Bred under Moravian influence,
he half-believed the text to be supernaturally suggested to him.
For a moment his purpose wavered, but the habit of going
through with an undertaking took the place of his will, and he
went on blindly, as Baker the Nile explorer did, “more like a
donkey than like a man.” Once on the upper porch he hesitated
again. To break into a man's house in this way was unlawful.
His conscience troubled him. In vain he reasoned that Mrs.
Anderson's despotism was morally wrong, and that this action
was right as an offset to it. He knew that it was not right.

I want to remark here that there are many situations in life
in which a conscience is dreadfully in the way. There are
people who go straight ahead to success—such as it is—with no
embarrassments, no fire in the rear from any scruples. Some of
these days I mean to write an essay on “The Inconvenience of

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

having a Conscience,” in which I shall proceed to show that it
costs more in the course of a year or two, than it would to keep
a stableful of fast horses. Many a man could afford to drive
Dexters and Flora Temples who would be ruined by a conscience.
But I must not write the essay here, for I am keeping
August out in the night air and his perplexity all this time.

August Wehle had the habit, I think I have said, of going
through with an enterprise. He had another habit, a very inconvenient
habit doubtless, but a very manly one, of listening
for the voice of his conscience. And I think that this habit
would have even yet turned him back, as he had his hand on
the window-sash, had it not been that while he stood there trying
to find out just what was the decision of his conscience, he heard
the voices of the returning family. There was no time to lose,
there was no shelter on the porch, in a minute more they
would be in sight. He must go ahead now, for retreat was cut
off. He lifted the window and climbed into the room, lowering
the sash gently behind him. As no one ever came into this
room but Jonas, he felt safe enough. Jonas would plan a meeting
after midnight in Cynthy Ann's room, and in Cynthy Ann's
presence.

In groping for a chair, August drew aside the curtain of the
gable-window, hoping to get some light. Had Jonas taken to
cultivating flowers in pots? Here was a “monthly” rose on the
window-seat! Surely this was the room. He had occupied it
during his stay in the house. But he did not know that Mrs.
Anderson had changed the arrangement between his leaving and
the coming of Jonas. He noticed that the curtains were not the
same. He trembled from head to foot. He felt for the bureau,
and recognized by various little articles, a pincushion, a

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

tuckcomb, and the sun-bonnet hanging against the window-frame,
that he was in Julia's room. His first emotion was not alarm. It
was awe, as pure and solemn as the high-priest may have felt in
the holy place. Everything pertaining to Julia had a curious
sacredness, and this room was a temple into which it was sacrilege
to intrude. But a more practical question took his attention
soon. The family had come in below, except Jonas and Cynthy
Ann—who had walked slowly, planning a meeting for August—
and Mr. Samuel Anderson, who stood at the front-gate with
a neighbor. August could hear his shrill voice discussing the
seventh trumpet and the thousand three hundred and thirty and
five days. It would not do to be discovered where he was.
Beside the fright he would give to Julia, he shuddered at the
thought of compromising her in such a way. To go back was
to insure his exposure, for Samuel Anderson had not yet half-settled
the question of the trumpets. Indeed it seemed to August
that the world might come to an end before that conversation
would. He heard Humphreys enter his room. He was now
persuaded that the room formerly occupied by Julia must be
Jonas's, and he determined to get to it if he could. He felt
like a villain already. He would have cheerfully gone to State's-prison
in preference to compromising Julia. At any rate, he
started out of Julia's room toward the one that was occupied by
Jonas. It was the only road open, and but for an unexpected
encounter he would have reached his hiding-place in safety, for
the door was but fifteen feet away.

In order to explain the events that follow, I must ask the
reader to go back to Julia, and to events that had occurred two
hours before. Hitherto she had walked to and from meeting
and “singing” with Humphreys, as a matter of courtesy. On

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

the evening in question she had absolutely refused to walk with
him. Her mother found that threats were as vain as coaxing.
Even her threat of dying with heart-disease, then and there,
killed by her daughter's disobedience, could not move Julia,
who would not even speak with the “spider.” Her mother
took her into the sitting-room alone, and talked with her.

“So this is the way you trifle with gentlemen, is it? Night
before last you engaged yourself to Mr. Humphreys now you
won't speak to him. To think that my daughter should prove
a heartless flirt!”

I am afraid that the unfilial thought came into Julia's mind
that nothing could have been more in the usual order of things
than that the daughter of a coquette should be a flirt.

“You'll kill me on the spot; you certainly will.” Julia felt
anxious, for her mother showed signs of going into hysteries.
But she put her foot out and shook her head in a way that said
that all her friends might die and all the world might go to
pieces before she would yield. Mrs. Anderson had one forlorn
hope. She determined to order that forward. Leaving Julia
alone, she went to her husband.

“Samuel, if you value my life go and speak to your daughter.
She's got your own stubbornness of will in her. She is just
like you; she will have her own way. I shall die.” And Mrs.
Abigail Anderson sank into a chair with unmistakable symptoms
of a hysterical attack.

I am aware that I have so far let the reader hear not one
word of Samuel Anderson's conversation. He has played a
rather insignificant part in the story. Nothing could be more
comme il faut. Insignificance was his characteristic. It was not
so much that he was small. It is not so bad a thing to be a

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

little man. But to be little and insignificant also is bad. There
is only one thing worse, which is to be big and insignificant. If
one is little and insignificant, one may be overlooked, insignificance
and all. But if one is big and insignificant, it is to be an
obtrusive cipher, a great lubber, not easily kept out of sight.

Appealed to by his wife, Samuel Anderson prepared to assert
his authority as the head of the family. He almost strutted into
Julia's presence. Julia had a real affection for her father, and
nothing mortified her more than to see him acting as a puppet,
moved by her mother, and yet vain enough to believe himself
independent and supreme. She would have yielded almost any
other point to have saved herself the mortification of seeing her
father act the fool; but now she had determined that she
would die and let everybody else die rather than walk with
a man whose nature seemed to her corrupt, and whose touch
was pollution. I do not mean that she was able to make a distinct
inventory of her reasons for disliking him, or to analyze
her feelings. She could not have told just why she had so
deep and utter a repugnance to walking a quarter of a mile to
the school-house in company with this man. She followed that
strong instinct of truth and purity which is the surest guide.

“Julia, my daughter,” said Samuel Anderson, “really you
must yield to me as head of the house, and treat this gentleman
politely. I thought you respected him, or loved him, and he told
me that you had given consent to marry him, and had told him
to ask my consent.”

In saying this, the “head of the house” was seesawing himself
backward and forward in his squeaky boots, speaking in
a pompous manner, and with an effort to swell an effeminate
voice to a bass key, resulting in something between a croak

p555-126 JULIA SAT DOWN IN MORTIFICATION. [figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]

and a squeal. Julia sat down and cried in mortification and
disgust. Mr. Anderson understood this to be acquiescence, and
turned and went into the next room.

“Mr. Humphreys, my daughter will be glad to ask your
pardon. She is over her little pet; lovers always have pets.

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

Even my wife and I have had our disagreements in our
time. Julia will be glad to see you in the sitting-room.”

Humphreys drew the draw-strings and set his face into
its broadest and most parallelogrammatic smile, bowed to Mr.
Anderson, and stepped into the hall. But when he reached the
sitting-room door he wished he had staid away. Julia had heard
his tread, and was standing again with her foot advanced. Her
eyes were very black, and were drawn to a sharp focus. She
had some of her mother's fire, though happily none of her
mother's meanness. It is hard to say whether she spoke or hissed.

“Go away, you spider! I hate you! I told you I hated
you, and you told people I loved you and was engaged to you.
Go away! You detestable spider, you! I'll die right here, but
I will not go with you.”

But the smirking Humphreys moved toward her, speaking
soothingly, and assuring her that there was some mistake. Julia
dashed past him into the parlor and laid hold of her father's arm.

“Father, protect me from that—that—spider! I hate him!”

Mr. Anderson stood irresolute a moment and looked appealingly
to his wife for a signal. She solved the difficulty herself.
On the whole she had concluded not to die of heart-disease
until she saw Julia married to suit her taste, and having found
a hill she could not go through, she went round. Seizing Julia's
arm with more of energy than affection, she walked off with her,
or rather walked her off, in a sulky silence, while Mr. Anderson
kept Humphreys company.

I thought best to keep August standing in the door of Julia's
room all this time while I explained these things to you, so
that you might understand what follows. In reality August did
not stop at all, but walked out into the hall and into difficulty.

p555-128 CHAPTER XVIII. THE ENCOUNTER.

[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]

JUST before August came out of the door of
Julia's room he had heard Humphreys enter his
room on the opposite side of the hall. Humphreys
had lighted his cigar and was on his way to the
porch to smoke off his discomfiture when he met August
coming out of Julia's door on the opposite side of the hall.
The candle in Humphreys's room threw its light full on August's
face, there was no escape from recognition, and Wehle was too
proud to retreat. He shut the door of Julia's room and stood
with back against the wall staring at Humphreys, who did not
forget to smile in his most aggravating way.

“Thief! thief!” called Humphreys.

In a moment Mrs. Anderson and Julia ran up the stairs, followed
by Mr. Anderson, who hearing the outcry had left the
matter of the Apocalypse unsettled, and by Jonas and Cynthy
Ann, who had just arrived.

“I knew it,” cried Mrs. Anderson, turning on the mortified
Julia, “I never knew a Dutchman nor a foreigner of any sort

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

that wouldn't steal. Now you see what you get by taking a
fancy to a Dutchman. And now you see”—to her husband—
“what you get by taking a Dutchman into your house. I always
wanted you to hire white men and not Dutchmen nor
thieves!”

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Anderson,” said August, with very
white lips, “I am not a thief.”

“Not a thief, eh? What was he doing, Mr. Humphreys, when
you first detected him?”

“Coming out of Miss Anderson's room,” said Humphreys,
smiling politely.

“Do you invite gentlemen to your room?” said the frantic
woman to Julia, meaning by one blow to revenge herself and
crush the stubbornness of her daughter forever. But Julia was
too anxious about August to notice the shameless insult.

“Mrs. Anderson, this visit is without any invitation from
Julia. I did wrong to enter your house in this way, but I only
am responsible, and I meant to enter Jonas's room. I did not
know that Julia occupied this room. I am to blame, she is not.”

“And what did you break in for if you didn't mean to steal?
It is all off between you and Jule, for I saw your letter. I shall
have you arrested to-morrow for burglary. And I think you
ought to be searched. Mr. Humphreys, won't you put him out?”

Humphreys stepped forward toward August, but he noticed
that the latter had a hard look in his eyes, and had two stout
German fists shut very tight. He turned back.

“These thieves are nearly always armed. I think I had best
get a pistol out of my trunk.”

“I have no arms, and you know it, coward,” said August.
“I will not be put out by anybody, but I will go out whenever

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

“GOOD-BY!” [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]

the master of this house asks me to go out, and the rest of you
open a free path.”

“Jonas, put him out!” screamed Mrs. Anderson.

“Couldn't do it,” said Jonas, “couldn't do it ef I tried.
They's too much bone and sinnoo in them arms of his'n, and
moreover he's a gentleman. I axed him to come and see me
sometime, and he come. He come ruther late it's true, but I
s'pose he thought that sence we got sech a dee-splay of watch-seals
and straps we had all got so stuck up, we wouldn't receive
calls afore fashionable hours. Any way, I 'low he didn't mean
no harm, and he's my visitor, seein' he meant to come into my
winder, knowin' the door was closed agin him. And he won't
let no man put him out, 'thout he's a man with more'n half a
dozen watch-seals onto him, to give him weight and influence.”

“Samuel, will you see me insulted in this way? Will you put
this burglar out of the house?”

The “head of the house,” thus appealed to, tried to look important;
he tried to swell up his size and his courage. But he
did not dare touch August.

“Mr. Anderson, I beg your pardon. I had no right to come
in as I did. I had no right so to enter a gentleman's house. If
I had not known that this cowardly fop—I don't know what
else he may be—was injuring me by his lies I should not have
come in. If it is a crime to love a young lady, then I have
committed a crime. You have only to exercise your authority
as master of this house and ask me to go.”

“I do ask you to go, Mr. Wehle.”

It was the first time that Samuel Anderson had ever called
him Mr. Wehle. It was an involuntary tribute to the dignity of
the young man, as he stood at bay.

[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]

“Mr. Wehle, indeed!” said Mrs. Anderson.

August had hoped Julia would say a word in his behalf. But
she was too much cowed by her mother's fierce passion. So like
a criminal going to prison, like a man going to his own funeral,
August Wehle went down the hall toward the stairs, which
were at the back of it. Humphreys instinctively retreated into
his room. Mrs. Anderson glared on the young man as he went
by, but he did not turn his head even when he passed Julia.
His heart and hope were all gone; in his mortification and
defeat there seemed to him nothing left but his unbroken
pride to sustain him. He had descended two or three steps,
when Julia suddenly glided forward and said with a tremulous
voice: “You aren't going without telling me good-by, August?”

“Jule Anderson! what do you mean?” cried her mother.
But the hall was narrow by the stairway, and Jonas, by standing
close to Cynthy Ann, in an unconscious sort of a way managed
to keep Mrs. Anderson back; else she would have laid violent
hands on her daughter.

When August lifted his eyes and saw her face full of tenderness
and her hand reached over the balusters to him, he seemed
to have been suddenly lifted from perdition to bliss. The tears
ran unrestrained upon his cheeks, he reached up and took her
hand.

“Good-by, Jule! God bless you!” he said huskily, and went
out into the night, happy in spite of all.

p555-134 CHAPTER XIX. THE MOTHER.

[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]

OUT of the door he went, happy in spite of all
the mistakes he had made and of all the contretemps
of his provoking misadventure; happy in
spite of the threat of arrest for burglary. For
nearly a minute August Wehle was happy in that
perfect way in which people of quiet tempers are happy—happy
without fluster. But before he had passed the gate, he heard
a scream and a wild hysterical laugh; he heard a hurrying of
feet and saw a moving of lights. He would fain have turned
back to find out what the matter was, he had so much of interest
in that house, but he remembered that he had been turned
out and that he could not go back. The feeling of outlawry
mingled its bitterness with the feeling of anxiety. He feared
that something had happened to Julia; he lingered and listened.
Humphreys came out upon the upper porch and looked sharply
up and down the road. August felt instinctively that he was the
object of search and slunk into a fence-corner, remembering
that he was now a burglar and at the mercy of the man whose
face was enough to show him unrelenting.

[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]

Presently Humphreys turned and went in, and then August
came out of the shadow and hurried away. When he had gone a
mile, he heard the hoofs of horses, and again he concealed himself
with a cowardly feeling he had never known before. But when
he found that it was Jonas, riding one horse and leading another,
on his way to bring Dr. Ketchup, the steam-doctor, he ran out.

“Jonas! Jonas! what's the matter? Who's sick? Is it
Julia?”

“I'll be bound you ax fer Jule first, my much-respected
comrade. But it's only one of the ole woman's conniption fits,
and you know she's got nineteen lives. People of the catamount
sort always has. You'd better gin a thought to yourself now.
I got you into this scrape, and I mean to see you out, as the dog
said to the 'possum in its hole. Git up onto this four-legged
quadruped and go as fur as I go on the road to peace and safety.
Now, I tell you what, the hawk's got a mighty good purchase
onto you, my chicken, and he's jest about to light, and when he
lights, look out fer feathers! Don't sleep under the paternal
shingles, as they say. Go to Andrew's castle, and he'll help you
git acrost the river into the glorious State of ole Kaintuck afore
any warrant can be got out fer takin' you up. Never once thought
of your bein' took up. But don't delay, as the preachers say.
The time is short, and the human heart is desperately wicked and
mighty deceitful and onsartain.”

As far as Jonas traveled his way, he carried August upon the
gray horse. Then the latter hurried across the fields to his
father's cabin. Little Wilhelmina sat with face against the
window waiting his return.

“Where did you go, August? Did you see the pretty girl
at Anderson's?”

p555-136

THE MOTHER'S BLESSING. [figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]

He stooped and kissed her, but, without speaking a word to
her, he went over to where his mother sat darning the last of
her basket of stockings. All the rest were asleep, and having
assured himself of this, he drew up a low chair and leaned his

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

clbow on his knee and his head on his hand, and told the whole
adventure of the evening to his mother, and then dropped his
head on her lap and wept in a still way. And the sweet-eyed,
weary Moravian mother laid her two hands upon his head
and prayed. And Wilhelmina knelt instinctively by the side
of her brother.

Perhaps there is no God. Or perhaps He is so great that
our praying has no effect. Perhaps this strong crying of our
hearts to Him in our extremity is no witness of his readiness
to hear. Let him live in doubt who can. Let me believe that
the tender mother-heart and the loving sister-heart in that little
cabin did reach up to the great Heart that is over us all in
Fatherly love, did find a real comfort for themselves, and did
bring a strength-giving and sanctifying something upon the head
of the young man, who straightway rose up refreshed, and
departed out into the night, leaving behind him mother and
sister straining their eyes after him in the blackness, and carrying
with him thoughts and memories, and—who shall doubt?—
a genuine heavenly inspiration that saved him in the trials in
which we shall next meet him.

At two o'clock that night August Wehle stood upon the shore
of the Ohio in company with Andrew Anderson, the Backwoods
Philosopher. Andrew waved a fire-brand at the steamboat
“Isaac Shelby,” which was coming round the bend. And the
captain tapped his bell three times and stopped his engines.
Then the yawl took the two men aboard, and two days afterward
Andrew came back alone.

p555-138 CHAPTER XX. THE STEAM - DOCTOR.

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

To return to the house of Samuel Anderson.

Scarcely had August passed out the door when
Mrs. Anderson fell into a fit of hysteries, and declared
that she was dying of heart-disease. Her time
had come at last! She was murdered! Murdered
by her own daughter's ingratitude and disobedience! Struck
down in her own house! And what grieved her most was that
she should never live to see the end of the world!

And indeed she seemed to be dying. Nothing is more frightful
than a good solid fit of hysteries. Cynthy Ann, inwardly
condemning herself as she always did, lifted the convulsed patient,
who seemed to be anywhere in her last ten breaths, and
carried her, with Mr. Anderson's aid, down to her room, and
while Jonas saddled the horse, Mr. Anderson put on his hat and
prepared to go for the doctor.

“Samuel! O Sam-u-el! Oh-h-h-h-h!” cried Mrs. Anderson,
with rising and falling inflections that even patient Dr. Rush
could never have analyzed, laughing insanely and weeping piteously
in the same breath, in the same word; running it up and

p555-139 “CORN-SWEATS AND CALAMUS.” [figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

down the gamut in an uncontrolled and uncontrollable way; now
whooping like a savage, and now sobbing like the last breath
of a broken-hearted. “Samuel! Sam-u-el! O Samuel! Ha!
ha! ha! h-a-a! Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h! You won't leave me to die
alone! After the wife I've been to you, you won't leave me to
die alone! No-o-o-o-o! Hoo-hoo-oo-OO! You musn't. You
shan't. Send Jonas, and you stay by me! Think—” here

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

her breath died away, and for a moment she seemed really to
be dying. “Think,” she gasped, and then sank away again.
After a minute she opened her eyes, and, with characteristic
pertinacity, took up the sentence just where she had left off.
She had carefully kept her place throughout the period of unconsciousness.
But now she spoke, not with a gasp, but in that
shrill, unnatural falsetto so characteristic of hysteria; that voice—
half yell—that makes every nerve of the listener jangle with
the discord. “Think, oh-h-h Samuel! why won't you think
what a wife I've been to you? Here I've drudged and scrubbed
and scrubbed and drudged all these years like a faithful and
industrious wife, never neglecting my duty. And now—oh-h-h-h—
now to be left alone in my—” Here she ceased to breathe
again for a while. “In my last hours to die, to die! to die without—
without—Oh-h-h!” What Mrs. Anderson was left to die
without she never stated. Mr. Anderson had beckoned to Jonas
when he came in, and that worthy had gone off in a leisurely
trot to get the “steam-doctor.”

Dr. Ketchup had been a blacksmith, but hard work disagreed
with his constitution. He felt that he was made for something
better than shoeing horses. This ambitious thought was first
suggested to him by the increasing portliness of his person,
which, while it made stooping over a horse's hoof inconvenient,
also impressed him with the fact that his aldermanic figure would
really adorn a learned profession. So he bought one of those
little hand-books which the founder of the Thomsonian system
sold dirt-cheap at twenty dollars apiece, and which told how
to cure or kill in every case. The owners of these important
treasures of invaluable information were under bonds not to
disclose the profound secrets therein contained, the fathomless

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

wisdom which taught them how to decide in any given case
whether ginseng or a corn-sweat was the required remedy.
And the invested twenty dollars had brought the shrewd
blacksmith a handsome return.

“Hello!” said Jonas in true Western style, as he reined up
in front of Dr. Ketchup's house in the outskirts of Brayville.
“Hello the house!” But Dr. Ketchup was already asleep.
“Takes a mighty long time to wake up a fat man,” soliloquized
Jonas. “He gits so used to hearin' hisself snore that he can't
tell the difference 'twixt snorin' and thunder. Hello! Hello the
house! I say, hello the blacksmith-shop! Dr. Ketchup, why
don't you git up? Hello! Corn-sweats and calamus! Hello!
Whoop! Hurrah for Jackson and Dr. Ketchup! Hello!
Thunderation! Stop thief! Fire! Fire! Fire! Murder! Murder!
Help! Help! Hurrah! Treed the coon at last!”

This last exclamation greeted the appearance of Dr. Ketchup's
head at the window.

“Are you drunk, Jonas Harrison? Go 'way with your
hollering, or I'll have you took up,” said Ketchup.

“You'll find that tougher work than making horseshoes any
day, my respectable friend and feller-citizen. I'll have you took
up fer sleeping so sound and snorin' so loud as to disturb all
creation and the rest of your neighbors. I've heard you ever
sence I left Anderson's, and thought 'twas a steamboat. Come,
my friend, git on your clothes and accouterments, fer Mrs. Anderson
is a-dyin' or a-lettin' on to be a-dyin' fer a drink of ginseng-tea
or a corn-sweat or some other decoction of the healin'
art. Come, I fotch two hosses, so you shouldn't lose no time a
saddlin' your'n, though I don't doubt the ole woman'd git well
ef you never gin her the light of your cheerful count'nance.

“FIRE! MURDER!! HELP!!!” [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

She'd git well fer spite, and hire a calomel-doctor jist to make
you mad. I'd jest as soon and a little sooner expect a female
wasp to die of heart-disease as her.”

The head of Dr. Ketchup had disappeared from the window
about the middle of this speech, and the remainder of it came by
sheer force of internal pressure, like the flowing of an artesian well.

Dr. Ketchup walked out, with ruffled dignity, carefully
dressed. His immaculate clothes and his solemn face were
the two halves of his stock in trade. Under the clothes lay
buried Ketchup the blacksmith; under the wiseacre face was
Ketchup the ignoramus. Ignoramus he was, but not a fool. As
he rode along back with Jonas, he plied the latter with questions.
If he could get the facts of the case out of Jonas, he
would pretend to have inferred them from the symptoms and
thus add to his credit.

“What caused this attack, Jonas?”

“I 'low she caused it herself. Generally does, my friend,”
said Jonas.

“Had anything occurred to excite her?”

“Well, yes, I 'low they had; consid'able, if not more.”

“What was it?”

“Well, you see she'd been to Hankins's preachin'. Now, I'
low, my medical friend, the day of jedgment a'n't a pleasin'
prospeck to anybody that's jilted one brother to marry another,
and then cheated the jilted one outen his sheer of his lamented
father's estate. Do you think it is, my learned friend?”

But Dr. Ketchup could not be sure whether Jonas was making
game of him or not. So he changed the subject.

“Nice hoss, this bay,” said the “doctor.”

“Well, yes,” said Jonas, “I don't 'low you ever put shoes on

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

no better hoss than this 'ere in all your days—as a blacksmith.
Did you now, my medical friend?”

“No, I think not,” said Ketchup testily, and was silent.

Mrs. Anderson had grown impatient at the doctor's delay.
“Samuel! Oo! oo! oo! Samuel! My dear, I'm dying. Jonas
don't care. He wouldn't hurry. I wonder you trusted him!
If you had been dying, I should have gone myself for the doctor.
Oo! oo! oo! oh! If I should die, nobody would be sorry.”

Abigail Anderson was not to blame for telling the truth so
exactly in this last sentence. It was an accident. She might
have recalled it but that Dr. Ketchup walked in at that moment.

He felt her pulse; looked at her tongue; said that it was
heart-disease, caused by excitement. He thought it must be
religious excitement. She should have a corn-sweat and some
wafer-ash tea. The corn-sweat would act as a tonic and strengthen
the pericardium. The wafer-ash would cause a tendency of
blood to the head, and thus relieve the pressure on the jugglervein.
Cynthy Ann listened admiringly to Dr. Ketchup's incomprehensible,
oracular utterances, and then speedily put a bushel
of ear-corn in the great wash-boiler, which was already full of
hot water in expectation of such a prescription, and set the
wafer-ash to draw.

Julia had, up to this time, stood outside her mother's door
trembling with fear, and not daring to enter. She longed to do
something, but did not know how it would be received. Now,
while the deep, sonorous voice of Ketchup occupied the attention
of all, she crept in and stood at the foot of Mrs. Anderson's bed.
The mother, recovering from her twentieth dying spell, saw her.

“Take her away! She has killed me! She wants me to
die! I know! Take her away!”

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

And Julia went to her own room and shut herself up in darkness
and in wretchedness, but in all that miserable night there
came to her not one regret that she had reached her hand to the
departing August.

The neighbor-women came in and pretended to do something
for the invalid, but really they sat by the kitchen-stove
and pumped Cynthy Ann and the doctor, and managed in some
way to connect Julia with her mother's illness, and shook their
heads. So that when Julia crept down-stairs at midnight, in hope
of being useful, she found herself looked at inquisitively, and felt
herself to be such an object of attention that she was glad to
take the advice of Cynthy Ann and find refuge in her own
room. On the stairs she met Jonas, who said as she passed:

“Don't fret yourself, little turtle-dove. Don't pay no 'tention
to ole Ketchup. Your ma won't die, not even with his corn-sweats
to waft her on to glory. You done your duty to-night
like one of Fox's martyrs, and like George Washi'ton with his
little cherry-tree and hatchet. And you'll git your reward, if
not in the next world, you'll have it in this.”

Julia lay down awhile, and then sat up, looking out into the
darkness. Perhaps God was angry with her for loving August;
perhaps she was making an idol of him. When Julia came to
think that her love for August was in antagonism to the love
of God, she did not hesitate which she would choose. All the best
of her nature was loyal to August, whom she “had seen,” as
the Apostle John has it. She could not reason it out, but a
God who seemed to be in opposition to the purest and best emotion
of her heart was a God she could not love. August and
the love of August were known quantities. God and the love of
God were unknown, and the God of whom Cynthy spoke (and

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

of whom many a mistaken preacher has spoken), that was jealous
of Mrs. Pearson's love for her baby, and that killed it because
it was his rival, was not a God that she could love without
being a traitor to all the good that God had put in her heart.
The God that was keeping August away from her because he
was jealous of the one beautiful thing in her life was a Moloch,
and she deliberately determined that she would not worship
or love him. The True God, who is a Father, and who is
not Supreme Selfishness, doing all for His own glory, as men
falsely declare; the True God—who does all things for the good
of others—loved her, I doubt not, for refusing to worship the
Conventional Deity thus presented to her mind. Even as He has
pitied many a mother that rebelled against the Governor of the
Universe, because she was told the Governor of the Universe, in
a petty seeking for his own glory, had taken away her “idols.”

But Julia looked up at the depths between the stars, and felt
how great God must be, and her rebellion against Him seemed
a war at fearful odds. And then the sense of God's omnipresence,
of His being there alone with her, so startled her and awakened
such a feeling of her fearful loneliness, orphanage, antagonism
to God, that she could bear it no longer, and at two o'clock
she went down again; but Mrs. Brown looked over at Mrs. Orcutt
in a way that said: “Told you so! Guilty conscience!
Can't sleep!” And so Julia thought God, even as she conceived
Him, better company than men, or rather than women,
for—well, I won't make the ungallant remark; each sex has its
besetting faults.

Julia took back with her a candle, thinking that this awful
God would not seem so close if she had a light. There lay on
her bureau a Testament, one of those old editions of the

[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]

American Bible Society, printed on indifferent paper, and bound in
a red muslin that was given to fading, the like whereof in book-making
has never been seen since. She felt angry with God,
who, she was sure, was persecuting her, as Cynthy Ann had
said, out of jealousy of her love for August, and she was determined
that she would not look into that red-cloth Testament,
which seemed to her full of condemnation. But there was a
fascination about it she could not resist. The discordant hysterical
laughter of her mother, which reached her ears from
below, harrowed her sorely, and her grief and despair at her
own situation were so great that she was at last fain to read
the only book in the room in order that she might occupy
her mind. There is a strange superstition among certain pietists
which leads them to pray for a text to guide them, and then take
any chance passage as a divine direction. I do not mean to
say that Julia had any supernatural leading in her reading.
The New Testament is so full of comfort that one could hardly
manage to miss it. She read the seventh chapter of Luke:
how the Lord healed the centurion's servant that was “dear
unto him,” and noted that He did not rebuke the man for loving
his slave; how the Lord took pity on that poor widow who
wept at the bier of her only son, and brought him back to life
again, and “restored him to his mother.” This did not seem to
be just the Christ that Cynthy Ann thought of as the foe of
every human affection. She read more that she did not understand
so well, and then at the end of the chapter she read about
the woman that was a sinner, that washed His feet with grateful
tears and wiped them with her hair. And she would have
taken the woman's guilt to have had the woman's opportunity
and her benediction.

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

At last, turning over the leaves without any definite purpose,
she lighted on a place in Matthew, where three verses at the
end of a chapter happened to stand at the head of a column. I
suppose she read them because the beginning of the page and
the end of the chapter made them seem a short detached piece.
And they melted into her mood so that she seemed to know
Christ and God for the first time. “Come unto me all ye that
labor and are heavy laden,” she read, and stopped. That means
me, she thought with a heart ready to burst. And that saying is
the gateway of life. When the promises and injunctions mean
me, I am saved. Julia read on, “And I will give you rest.”
And so she drank in the passage, clause by clause, until she
came to the end about an easy yoke and a light burden, and
then God seemed to her so different. She prayed for August,
for now the two loves, the love for August and the love for
Christ, seemed not in any way inconsistent. She lay down
saying over and over, with tears in her eyes, “rest for your
souls,” and “weary and heavy laden,” and “come unto me,” and
“meek and lowly of heart,” and then she settled on one word
and repeated it over and over, “rest, rest, rest.” The old feeling
was gone. She was no more a rebel nor an orphan. The
presence of God was not a terror but a benediction. She had
found rest for her soul, and He gave His beloved sleep. For
when she awoke from what seemed a short slumber, the red
light of a glorious dawn came in at the window, and her candle
was flickering its last in the bottom of the socket. The Testament
lay open as she had left it, and for days she kept it open
there, and did not dare read anything but these three verses, lest
she should lose the rest for her soul that she found here.

p555-150 CHAPTER XXI. THE HAWK IN A NEW PART.

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

HUMPHREYS was now in the last weeks of his
singing-school. He had become a devout Millerite,
and was paying attentions to the not unwilling
Betsey Malcolm, though pretending at Anderson's
to be absolutely heart-broken at the conduct of
Julia in jilting him after she had given him every assurance of
affection. And then to be jilted for a Dutchman, you know!
In this last regard his feeling was not all affectation. In his
soul, cupidity, vanity, and vindictiveness divided the narrow
territory between them. He inwardly swore that he'd get satisfaction
somehow. Debts which were due to his pride should
be collected by his revenge.

Did you ever reflect on the uselessness of a landscape when
one has no eyes to see it with, or, what is worse, no soul to look
through one's eyes? Humphreys was going down to the castle
to call on the Philosopher, and “Shady Hollow,” as Andrew
called it, had surely never been more glorious than on the morning
which he chose for his walk. The black-haw bushes hung
over the roadside, the maples lifted up their great trunk-pillars

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

toward the sky, and the grape-vines, some of them four and even
six inches in diameter, reached up to the high boughs, fifty or a
hundred feet, without touching the trunk. They had been carried
up by the growth of the tree, tree and vine having always
lived in each other's embrace. Out through the opening in the
hollow, Humphreys saw the green sea of six-feet-high Indian
corn in the fertile bottoms, the two rows of sycamores on the
sandy edges of the river, and the hazy hills on the Kentucky side.
But not one touch of sentiment, not a perception of beauty, entered
the soul of the singing-master as he daintily chose his steps so as
to avoid soiling his glossy boots, and as he knocked the leaves off
the low-hanging beech boughs with his delicate cane. He had
his purpose in visiting Andrew, and his mind was bent on
his game.

Charon, the guardian of the castle, bayed his great hoarse
bark at the Hawk, and with that keen insight into human nature
for which dogs are so remarkable, he absolutely forbade the
dandy's entrance, until Andrew appeared at the door and called
the dog away.

“I am delighted at having the opportunity of meeting a great
light in literature like yourself, Mr. Anderson. Here you sit
weaving, earning your bread with a manly simplicity that is
truly admirable. You are like Cincinnatus at his plow. I also
am a literary man.”

He really was a college graduate, though doubtless he was as
much of a humbug in recitations and examinations as he had
always been since. Andrew's only reply to his assertion that
he was a literary man was a rather severe and prolonged scrutiny
of his oily locks, his dainty mustache, his breast-pin, his watch-seals,
and finally his straps and his boots. For Andrew firmly

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

believed that neglected hair, Byron collars, and unblackened
boots were the first signs of literary taste.

“You think I dress too well,” said Humphreys with his
ghastly smirk. “You think that I care too much for appearances.
I do. It is a weakness of mine which comes from a
residence abroad.”

These words touched the Philosopher a little. To have been
abroad was the next best thing to having been a foreigner ab
origine. But still he felt a little suspicious. He was superior
to the popular prejudice against the mustache, but he could not
endure hair-oil. “Nature,” he maintained, “made the whole
beard to be worn, and Nature provides an oil for the hair. Let
Nature have her way.” He was suspicious of Humphreys, not
because he wore a mustache, but because he shaved the rest of
his face and greased his hair. He had, besides, a little intuitive
perception of the fact that a smile which breaks against the
rock-bound coast of cold cheek-bones and immovable eyes is a
mask. And so he determined to test the literary man. I have
heard that Masonic lodges have been deceived by impostors. I
have never heard that a literary man was made to believe in
the genuineness of the attainments of a charlatan.

And yet Humphreys held his own well. He could talk glibly
and superficially about books; he simulated considerable enthusiasm
for the books which Andrew admired. His mistake and
his consequent overthrow came, as always in such cases, from
a desire to overdo. It was after half an hour of talking without
tripping that Andrew suddenly asked: “Do you like the ever-to-be-admired
Xenophanes?”

It certainly is no disgrace to any literary man not to know
anything of so remote a philosopher as Xenophanes. The first

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

characteristic of a genuine literary man is the frankness with
which he confesses his ignorance. But Humphreys did not really
know but that Xenophanes was part of the daily reading of a
man of letters.

“Oh! yes,” said he. “I have his works in turkey morocco.”

“What do you think of his opinion that God is a sphere?”
asked the Philosopher, smiling.

“Oh! yes—ahem; let me see—which God is it that he speaks
of, Jupiter or—well, you know he was a Greek.”

“But he only believed in one God,” said Andrew sternly.

“Oh! ah! I forgot that he was a Christian.”

So from blunder to blunder Andrew pushed him, Humphreys
stumbling more and more in his blind attempts to right himself,
and leaving, at last, with much internal confusion but with an unruffled
smile. He dared not broach his errand by asking the
address of August. For Andrew did not conceal his disgust,
having resumed work at his loom, suffering the bowing impostor
to find his own way out without so much as a courteous adieu.

p555-154 CHAPTER XXII. JONAS EXPRESSES HIS OPINION ON DUTCHMEN.

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

SOMETIMES the virus of a family is all drawn off
in one vial. I think it is Emerson who makes
this remark. We have all seen the vials.

Such an one was Norman Anderson. The curious
law of hereditary descent had somehow worked him
only evil. “Nater,” observed Jonas to Cynthy, when the latter
had announced to him that Norman, on account of some disgrace
at school, had returned home, “nater ha'n't done him
half jestice, I 'low. It went through Sam'el Anderson and
Abig'il, and picked out the leetle weak pompous things in
the illustrious father, and then hunted out all the spiteful and
hateful things in the lovin' and much-esteemed mother, and
somehow stuck 'em together, to make as ornery a chap as ever
bit a hoe-cake in two.”

“I'm afeard her brother's scrape and comin' home won't
make Jule none the peacefuller at the present time,” said Cynthy
Ann.

“Wal,” returned Jonas, “I don't think she keers much fer
him. She couldn't, you know. Love him? Now, Cynthy
Ann, my dear”—here Cynthy Ann began to reproach herself

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

for listening to anything so pleasant as these two last words—
“Now, Cynthy Ann, my dear, you see you might maybe love
a cuckle-burr and nuss it; but I don't think you would be
likely to. I never heern tell of nobody carryin' jimson-weed
pods in their bosoms. You see they a'n't no place about Norman
Anderson that love could take a holt of 'thout gittin'
scratched.”

“But his mother loves him, I reckon,” said Cynthy Ann.

“Wal, yes; so she do. Loves her shadder in the lookin'-glass,
maybe, and kinder loves Norman bekase he's got so much of
her devil into him. It's like lovin' like, I reckon. But I 'low
they's a right smart difference with Jule. Sence she was born,
that Norman has took more delight in tormentin' Jule than a
yaller dog with a white tail does in worryin' a brindle tom-cat up
a peach-tree. And comin' home at this junction he'll gin her a
all-fired lot of trials and tribulation.”

At the time this conversation took place, two weeks had
elapsed since Mrs. Anderson's “attack.” Julia had heard nothing
from August yet. The “Hawk” still made his head-quarters
in the house, but was now watching another quarry. Mrs.
Anderson was able to scold as vigorously as ever, if, indeed, that
function had ever been suspended. And just now she was engaged
in scolding the teacher who had expelled Norman. The
habit of fighting teachers was as chronic as her heart-disease.
Norman had always been abused by the whole race of pedagogues.
There was from the first a conspiracy against him, and
now he was cheated out of his last chance of getting an education.
All this Norman steadfastly believed.

Of course Norman sided with his mother as against the
Dutchman. The more contemptible a man is, the more he

p555-156 NORMAN ANDERSON. [figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

contemns a man for not belonging to his race or nation. And Norman
felt that he would be eternally disgraced by any alliance
with a German. He threw himself into the fight with a great
deal of vigor. It helped him to forget other things.

“Jule,” said he, walking up to her as she sat alone on the
porch, “I'm ashamed of you. To go and fall in love with a
Dutchman like Gus Wehle, and disgrace us all!”

“I wonder you didn't think about disgrace before,” retorted
Julia. “I am ashamed to have August Wehle hear what you've
been doing.”

Dogs that have the most practice in cat-worrying are liable
to get their noses scratched sometimes. Norman took care never
to attack Julia again except under the guns of his mother's powerful
battery. And he revenged himself on her by appealing to

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

his mother with a complaint that “Jule had throwed up to him
that he had been dismissed from school.” And of course Julia
received a solemn lecture on her way of driving poor Norman to
destruction. She was determined to disgrace the family. If she
could not do it by marrying a Dutchman, she would do it by slandering
her brother.

Norman thought to find an ally in Jonas

“Jonas, don't you think it's awful that Jule is in love with
a Dutchman like Gus Wehle?”

“I do, my love,” responded Jonas. “I think a Dutchman
is a Dutchman. I don't keer how much he larns by burnin'
the midnight ile by day and night. My time-honored friend,
he's a Dutchman arter all. The Dutch is bred in the bone. It
won't fade. A Dutchman may be a gentleman in his way of
doin' things, may be honest and industrious, and keep all the
commandments in the catalogue, but I say he is Dutch, and
that's enough to keep him out of the kingdom of heaven and
out of this free and enlightened republic. And an American
may be a good-fer-nothin', ornery little pertater-ball, wuthless
alike to man and beast; he mayn't be good fer nothin', nuther fer
work nur study; he may git drunk and git turned outen school
and do any pertikeler number of disgraceful and oncreditable
things, he may be a reg'ler milksop and nincompoop, a fool
and a blackguard and a coward all rolled up into one piece of
brown paper, ef he wants to. And what's to hender? A'n't he a
free-born an' enlightened citizen of this glorious and civilized
and Christian land of Hail Columby? What business has a
Dutchman, ef he's ever so smart and honest and larned, got
in our broad domains, resarved for civil and religious liberty?
What business has he got breathin' our atmosphere or takin'

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

refuge under the feathers of our American turkey-buzzard? No,
my beloved and respected feller-citizen of native birth, it's as
plain to me as the wheels of 'Zek'el and the year 1843. I say,
Hip, hip, hoo-ray fer liberty or death, and down with the
Dutch!”

Norman Anderson scratched his head.

What did Jonas mean?

He couldn't exactly divine; but it is safe to say that on the
whole he was not entirely satisfied with this boomerang speech.
He rather thought that he had better not depend on Jonas.

But he was not long in finding allies enough in his war
against Germany.

p555-159 CHAPTER XXIII. SOMETHIN' LUDIKEROUS.

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

THERE was an egg-supper in the country store at
Brayville. Mr. Mandluff, the tall and rawboned
Hoosier who kept the store, was not unwilling to
have the boys get up an egg supper now and then in
his store after he had closed the front-door at night.
For you must know that an egg-supper is a peculiar Western
institution. Sometimes it is a most enjoyable institution—when
it has its place in a store where there is no Kentucky whisky
to be had. But in Brayville, in the rather miscellaneous establishment
of the not very handsome and not very graceful Mr.
Mandluff, an egg-supper was not a great moral institution. It
was otherwise, and profanely called by its votaries a camp-meeting;
it would be hard to tell why, unless it was that some of
the insiders grew very happy before it was over. For an egg-supper
at Mandluff's store was to Brayville what an oystersupper
at Delmonico's is to New York. It was one tenth hard
eggs and nine tenths that beverage which bears the name of an
old royal house of France.

How were the eggs cooked? I knew somebody would ask
that impertinent question. Well, they were not fried, they were

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

not boiled, they were not poached, they were not scrambled, they
were not omeletted, they were not roasted on the half-shell,
they were not stuffed with garlic and served with cranberries,
they were not boiled and served with anchovy sauce, they were
not “en salmi.” I think I had better stop there, lest I betray
my knowledge of cookery. It is sufficient to say that they were
not cooked in any of the above-named fashions, nor in any other
way mentioned in Catharine Beecher's or Marion Harland's cook-books.
They were baked à la mode backwoods. It is hardly
proper for me to give a recipe in this place, that belongs more
properly to the “Household Departments” of the newspapers.
But to satisfy curiosity, and to tell something about cooking,
which Prof. Blot does not know, I may say that they were broken
and dropped on a piece of brown paper laid on the top of the old
box-stove. By the time the egg was cooked hard the paper was
burned to ashes, but the egg came off clean and nice from the
stove, and made as palatable and indigestible an article for a late
supper as one could wish. It only wanted the addition of Mandluff's
peculiar whisky to make it dissipation of the choicest
kind. For the more a dissipation costs in life and health, the
more fascinating it is.

There was an egg-supper, as I said, at Mandluff's store. There
was to be a “camp-meeting” in honor of Norman Anderson's
successful return to his liberty and his cronies. It gave Norman
the greatest pleasure to return to a society where it was rather
to his credit than otherwise that he had gone on a big old time,
got caught, and been sent adrift by the old hunk that had tried
to make him study Latin.

The eggs were baked in the true “camp-meeting” style, the
whisky was drunk, and—so was the company. Bill Day's rather

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

red eyes grew redder, and his nose shone with delight as he
shuffled the greasy pack of “kyerds.” The maudlin smile crossed
the habitually melancholy lines of his face in a way that split
and splintered his visage into a curious contradiction of emotions.

“H—a—oo—p!” he shouted, throwing away the cards over
the heads of his companions. “Ha—oop! boys, thish is big—
hoo! hoo! ha—oop! I say is big. Let's do somethin'!”

Here there was a confused cry that “it was big, and that they
had better do somethin' or 'nother.”

“Let's blow up the ole school-house,” said Bill Day, who was
not friendly to education.

“I tell you what,” said Bob Short, who was dealing the cards
in another set—“I tell you what,” and Bob winked his eyes vigorously,
and looked more solemn and wise than he could have
looked if it had not been for the hard eggs and the whisky—
“I tell you what,” said Bob a third time, and halted, for his
mind's activity was a little choked by the fervor of his emotions—
“I tell you what, boys—”

“Wal,” piped Jim West in a cracked voice, “you've told us
what four times, I 'low; now s'pose you tell us somethin' else.”

“I tell you what, boys,” said Bob Short, suddenly remembering
his sentence, “don't let's do nothin' that'll git us into no
trouble arterwards. Ef we blow up the school-house we'll be'
rested fer bigamy or—or—what d'ye call it?”

“For larson,” said Bill Day, hardly able to restrain another
whoop.

“No, 'taint larson,” said Bob Short, looking wiser than a
chief-justice, “it's arsony. Now I say, don't let's go to penitentiary
for no—no larson—no arsony, I mean.”

“Ha—oop!” said Bill. “Let's do somethin' ludikerous.

p555-162 SOMETHIN' LUDIKEROUS. [figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

Hurrah for arsony and larson! Dog-on the penitentiary!
Ha—oop!”

“Let's go fer the Dutchman,” said Norman Anderson, just
drunk enough to be good-naturedly murderous and to speak in dialect.
“Gus is turned out to committin' larson by breakin' into people's
houses an' has run off. Now let's tar and feather the ole
one. Of course, he's a thief. Dutchmen always is, I 'low. Clark

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

township don't want none of 'em, I'll be dog-oned if it do,”
and Norman got up and struck his fist on the counter.

“An' they won't nobody hurt you; you see, he's on'y a
Dutchman,” said Bob Short. “Larson on a Dutchman don't
hold.”

“I say, let's hang him,” said Bill Day. “Ha—oop! Let's
hang him, or do somethin' else ludikerous!”

“I wouldn't mind,” grinned Norman Anderson, delighted at
the turn things had taken. “I'd just like to see him hung.”

“So would I,” said Bill Day, leaning over to Norman. “Ef
a Dutchman wash to court my sishter, I'd—”

“He'd be a fool ef he did,” piped Jim West. For Bill Day's
sister was a “maid not vendible,” as Shakespeare has it.

“See yer,” said Bill, trying in vain to draw his coat. “Looky
yer, Jeems; ef you say anythin' agin Ann Marier, I'll commit
the wust larson on you you ever seed.”

“I didn't say nothin' agin Ann Marier,” squeaked Jim. “I
was talkin' agin the Dutch.”

“Well, that'sh all right. Ha—oop! Boys, let's do somethin',
larson or arsony or—somethin'.”

A bucket of tar and some feathers were bought, for which
young Anderson was made to pay, and Bill Day insisted on
buying fifteen feet of rope. “Bekase,” as he said, “arter you git
the feathers on the bird, you may—you may want to help him to
go to roosht you know, on a hickory limb. Ha—oop! Come
along, boys; I say let's do somethin' ludikerous, ef it's nothin'
but a little larson.”

And so they went galloping down the road, nine drunken
fools. For it is one of the beauties of lynch law, that, however
justifiable it may seem in some instances, it always opens the

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

way to villainous outrages. Some of my readers will protest
that a man was never lynched for the crime of being a Dutchman.
Which only shows how little they know of the intense
prejudice and lawless violence of the early West. Some day
people will not believe that men have been killed in California
for being Chinamen.

Of the nine who started, one, the drunkest, fell off and broke
his arm; the rest rode up in front of the cabin of Gottlieb Wehle.
I do not want to tell how they alarmed the mother at her
late sewing and dragged Gottlieb out of his bed. I shudder
now when I recall one such outrage to which I was an unwilling
witness. Norman threw the rope round Gottlieb's neck and
declared for hanging. Bill Day agreed. It would be so ludikerous,
you know!

“Vot hash I tun? Hey? Vot vor you dries doo hanks me
already, hey?” cried the honest German, who was willing enough
to have the end of the world come, but who did not like the idea
of ascending alone, and in this fashion.

Mrs. Wehle pushed her way into the mob and threw the rope
off her husband's neck, and began to talk with vehemence in
German. For a moment the drunken fellows hung back out of
respect for a woman. Then Bill Day was suddenly impressed
with the fact that the duty of persuading Mrs. Wehle to consent
to her husband's execution devolved upon him.

“Take keer, boys; let me talk to the ole woman. I'll argy
the case.”

“You can't speak Dutch no more nor a hoss can,” squeaked
Jeems West.

“Blam'd ef I can't, though. Hyer, ole woman, firshta
Dutch?”

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

“Ya.”

“Now,” said Bill, turning to the others in triumph, “what
did I tell you? Well, you see, your boy August is a thief.”

“He's not a teef!” said the old man.

“Shet up your jaw. I say he is. Now, your ole man's got
to be hung.”

“Vot vor?” broke in Gottlieb.

“Bekase it's all your own fault. You hadn't orter be a
Dutchman.”

Here the crowd fell into a wrangle. It was not so easy to
hang a man when such a woman stood there pleading for him.
Besides, Bob Short insisted that hanging was arsony in the first
degree, and they better not do it. To this Bill Day assented.
He said he 'sposed tar and feathers was only larson in the
second degree. And then it would be rale ludikerous. And
now confused cries of “Bring on the tar!” “Where's the feathers?”
“Take off his clothes!” began to be raised. Norman
stood out for hanging. Drink always intensified his meanness.
But the tar couldn't be found. The man whom they had left
lying by the roadside with a broken arm had carried the tar,
and had been well coated with it himself in his fall.

“Ha-oop!” shouted Bill Day. “Let's do somethin'. Dog-on
the arsony! Let's hang him as high as Dan'el.”

And with that the rope was thrown over Gottlieb's neck and
he was hurried off to the nearest tree. The rope was then put
over a limb, and a drunken half-dozen got ready to pull, while
Norman Anderson adjusted the noose and valiant Bill Day undertook
to keep off Mrs. Wehle.

“All ready! Pull up! Ha-oop!” shouted Bill Day, and the
crowd pulled, but Mrs. Wehle had slipped off the noose again,

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

and the volunteer executioners fell over one another in such a
way as to excite the derisive laughter of Bill Day, who thought
it perfectly ludikerous. But before the laugh had finished,
the indignant Gottlieb had knocked Bill Day over and sent
Norman after him. The blow sobered them a little, and suddenly
destroyed Bill's ambition to commit “arsony,” or do anything
else ludikerous. But Norman was furious, and under
his lead Wehle's arms were now bound with the rope and a consultation
was held, during which little Wilhelmina pleaded for
her father effectively, and more by her tears and cries and the
wringing of her chubby hands than by any words. Bill Day said
he be blamed ef that little Dutch gal's takin' on so didn't kinder
make him feel sorter scrimpshous you know. But the mob could
not quit without doing something. So it was resolved to give
Gottlieb a good ducking in the river and send him into Kentucky
with a warning not to come back. They went down the ravine
past Andrew's castle to the river. Mrs. Wehle followed, believing
that her husband would be drowned, and little Wilhelmina
ran and pulled the alarm and awakened the Backwoods Philosopher,
who soon threw himself among them, but too late to
dissuade them from their purpose, for Andrew's own skiff, the
“Grisilde” by name, with three of the soberest of the party,
had already set out to convey Wehle, after one hasty immersion,
to the other shore, while the rest stood round hallooing like madmen
to prevent any alarm that Wehle might raise attracting attention
on the other side.

p555-167 CHAPTER XXIV. THE GIANT GREAT-HEART.

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

AS soon as Andrew's skiff, the “Grisilde,” was
brought back and the ruffians had gone off up the
ravine, Andrew left Mrs. Wehle sitting by the fire
in the loom-room of the castle, while he crossed
the river to look after Gottlieb. Little Wilhelmina
insisted on going with him, and as she handled a steering-oar
well he took her along. They found Gottlieb with his arms
cruelly pinioned sitting on a log in a state of utter dejection,
and dripping with water from his ducking.

“Ich zay, Antroo, ish dish vat dey galls a vree goontry,
already? A blace vare troonk shcounders dosh vot ever dey
hadn't ort! Dat is vree koontry. Mein knabe ish roon off ver
liebin a Yangee; unt a vool he ish, doo. Unt ich ish hoong
unt troundt unt darrdt unt vedderd unt drakt out indoo de ribber,
unt dolt if I ko back do mein vrau unt kinder I zhall pe kilt
vunst more already. Unt I shpose if ich shtays here der Gainduckee
beobles vill hang me unt dar me unt trown me all over
in der ribber, doo, already, pekoz I ish Deutsch. Ich zay de voorld
ish all pad, unt it and doo pe vinished vunst already, I ton't gare
how quick, so ash dem droonk vools kit vot pelongs doo 'em
venever Gabrel ploes his drumbet.”

TO THE RESCUE. [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

“They'll get that in due time, my friend,” said Andrew, untying
the rope with which Gottlieb had been pinioned. “Come,
let us go back to our own shore.”

“Bud daint my zhore no more. Dey said I'd god doo hang
again vunst more if I ever grossed de Ohio Ribber vunst again already,
but I ton't vants doo hang no more vor noddin already.”

“But I'll take care of that,” said Andrew. “Before to-morrow
night I'll make your house the safest place in Clark township.
I've got the rascals by the throat now. Trust me.”

It took much entreaty on the part of Andrew and much
weeping and kissing on the part of Wilhelmina to move the heart
of the terrified Gottlieb. At last he got into the skiff and allowed
himself to be rowed back again, declaring all the way that he
nebber zee no zich a vree koontry ash dish voz already.

When Bill Day and his comrades got up the next morning
and began to think of the transactions of the night, they did not
seem nearly so ludikerous as they had at the time. And when
Norman Anderson and Bill Day and Bob Short read the notice
on the door of Mandluff's store they felt that “arsony” might
have a serious as well as a ludikerous side.

Andrew at first intended to institute proceedings against the
rioters, but he knew that the law was very uncertain against
the influences which the eight or nine young men might bring to
bear, and the prejudices of the people against the Dutch. To
prosecute would be to provoke another riot. So he contented
himself with this

“To whom it may concern: I have a list of eight men connected
with the riotous mob which broke into the house of Gottlieb Wehle, a
peaceable and unoffending citizen of the United States. The said eight

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

men proceeded to commit an assault and battery on the person of the
said Gottlieb Wehle, and even endeavored at one time to take his life.
And the said riotous conduct was the result of a conspiracy, and the
said assault with intent to kill was with malice aforethought. The said
eight men, after having committed grievous outrages upon him by
dipping him in the water and by other means, warned the said Wehle
not to return to the State. Now, therefore, I give notice to all
and several of those concerned in these criminal proceedings that
the said Wehle has returned by my advice; and that if so much as a
hair of his head or a splinter of his property is touched I will appear
against said parties and will prosecute them until I secure the infliction
of the severest penalties made and provided for the punishment
of such infamous crimes. I hope I am well enough known here to
render it certain that if I once begin proceedings nothing but success
or my death or the end of the world can stop them.

“It don't look so ludikerous as it did, does it, Bill?” squeaked
Jim West, as he read the notice over Bill's shoulder.

“Shet your mouth, you fool!” said Bill. “Don't you never
peep. Ef I'd a been sober I might a knowed ole Grizzly would
interfere. He always does.”

In truth, Andrew was a sort of Perpetual Champion of the
Oppressed, and those who did not like him feared him, which is
the next best thing.

p555-172 CHAPTER XXV. A CHAPTER OF BETWEENS.

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

DID you ever move? And, in moving, did you
ever happen to notice how many little things there
are to be picked up? Now that I am about to
shift the scene of my story from Clark township,
the narrow stage upon which it has progressed
through two dozen chapters, I find a great number of little
things to be picked up.

One of the little things to be picked up is Norman Anderson.
Very little, if measured soul-wise. When his father had
read the proclamation of Andrew and divined that Norman
was interested in the riot, he became thoroughly indignant; the
more so, that he felt his own lack of power to do anything
in the premises against his wife. But when Mrs. Abigail
heard of the case she was in genuine distress. It showed
Andrew's vindictiveness. He would follow her forever with his
resentments, just because she could not love him. It was not her
fault that she did not love him. Poor Norman had to suffer all
the persecutions that usually fall to such innocent creatures.
She must send him away from home, though it broke her

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

mother's heart to do it; for if Andrew didn't have him took up,
the old Dutchman would, just because his son had turned out a
burglar. She said burglar rather emphatically, with a look at
Julia.

And so Samuel Anderson took his son to Louisville, and got
him a place in a commission and produce house on the levee,
with which Mr. Anderson had business influence. And Samuel
warned him that he must do his best, for he could not come
back home now without danger of arrest, and Norman made
many promises of amendment; so many, that his future seemed
to him barren of all delight. And, by way of encouraging himself
in the austere life upon which he had resolved to enter, he
attended the least reputable place of amusement in the city, the
first night after his father's departure.

In Clark township the Millerite excitement was at white heat.
Some of the preachers in other parts of the country had set one
day, some another. I believe that Mr. Miller, the founder, never
had the temerity to set a day. But his followers figured the
thing more closely, and Elder Hankins had put a fine point
on the matter. He was certain, for his part, that the time was
at midnight on the eleventh of August. His followers became
very zealous, and such is the nature of an infection that scarcely
anybody was able to resist it. Mrs. Anderson, true to her excitable
temper, became fanatic — dreaming dreams, seeing visions,
hearing voices, praying twenty times a day,* wearing a sourly
pious face, and making all around her more unhappy than ever.

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

Jonas declared that ef the noo airth and the noo heaven was
to be chockful of sech as she, 'most any other place in the
universe would be better, akordin' to his way of thinkin'. He
said she repented more of other folkses' sins than anybody he
ever seed.

As summer came on, Samuel Anderson, borne away on the
tide of his own and his wife's fanatical fever of sublimated
devotion, discharged Jonas and all his other employes, threw up
business, and gave his whole attention to the straightening of
his accounts for the coming day of judgment. Before Jonas
left to seek a new place he told Cynthy Ann as how as ef he'd
a met her airlier 'twould a-settled his coffee fer life. He was gittin'
along into the middle of the week now, but he'd come to
feel like a boy sence he'd been a livin' where he could have a
few sweet and pleasant words—ahem!—he thought December'd
be as pleasant as May all the year round ef he could live in the
aurora borealis of her countenance. And Cynthy Ann enjoyed
his words so much that she prayed for forgiveness for the next
week and confessed in class-meeting that she had yielded to
temptation and sot her heart on the things of this perishin'
world. She was afeared she hadn't always remembered as how
as she was a poor unworthy dyin' worm of the dust, and that
all the beautiful things in this world perished with the usin'.

And Brother Goshorn, the class-leader at Harden's Cross-Roads,
exhorted her to tear every idol from her heart. And
still the sweet woman's nature, God's divine law revealed in her
heart, did assert itself a little. She planted some pretty-by-nights
in an old cracked blue-and-white tea-pot and set it on her window-sill.
Somehow the pretty-by-nights would remind her of
Jonas, and while she tried to forget him with one half of her

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

nature, the other and better part (the depraved part, she would
have told you) cherished the memory of his smallest act and
word. In fact, the flowers had no association with Jonas except
that along with the awakening of her love came this little sentiment
for flowers into the dry desert of her life. But one day
Mrs. Anderson discovered the old blue broken tea-pot with its
young plants.

“Why, Cynthy Ann!” she cried, “a body'd think you'd have
more sense than to do such a soft thing as to be raisin' posies at
your time of life! And that when the world is drawing to a
close, too! You'll be one of the foolish virgins with no oil to
your lamp, as sure as you see that day.”

As for Julia's flowers, Mrs. Anderson had rudely thrown
them into the road by way of removing temptation from her and
turning her thoughts toward the awful realities of the close of
time.

But Cynthy Ann blushed and repented, and kept her broken
tea-pot, with a fearful sense of sin in doing so. She never watered
the pretty-by-nights without the feeling that she was offering
sacrifice to an idol.

p555-176 CHAPTER XXVI. A NICE LITTLE GAME.

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

IT was natural enough that the “mud-clerk” on
the old steamboat Iatan should take a fancy to
the “striker,” as the engineer's apprentice was called.
Especially since the striker knew so much more than
the mud-clerk, and was able to advise him about many
things. A striker with so much general information was rather
a novelty, and all the officers fancied him, except Sam Munson,
the second engineer, who had a natural jealousy of a striker that
knew more than he did.

The striker had learned rapidly, and was trusted to stand a
regular watch. The first engineer and the third were together,
and the second engineer and the striker took the other watch.
The boat in this way got the services of a competent engineer
while paying him only a striker's wage.

About the time the heavily-laden Iatan turned out of the
Mississippi into the Ohio at Cairo at six in the evening, the striker
went off watch, and he ought to have gone to bed to prepare himself
for the second watch of the night, especially as he would
only have the dog-watch between that and the forenoon. But
a passenger had got aboard at Cairo, whose face was familiar.

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

The sight of it had aroused a throng of old associations, pleasant
and unpleasant, and a throng of emotions the most tender and
the most wrathful the striker had ever felt. Sleep he could
not, and so, knowing that the mud-clerk was on watch, he sought
the office after nine o'clock, and stood outside the bar talking
to his friend, who had little to do, since most of the freight had
been shipped through, and his bills for Paducah were all ready.
The striker talked with the mud-clerk, but watched the throng of
passengers who drank with each other at the bar, smoked in the
“social hall,” read and wrote at the tables in the gentlemen's
cabin, or sat with doffed hats and chatted gallantly in the ladies'
cabin, which was visible as a distant background, seen over a
long row of tables with green covers and under a long row of
gilded wooden stalactites, which were intended to be ornamental.
The little pendent prisms beneath the chandeliers rattled gayly
as the boat trembled at each stroke of her wheels, and gaping
backwoodsmen, abroad for the first time, looked at all the rusty
gingerbread-work, and wondered if kings were able to afford anything
half so fine as the cabin of the “palatial steamer Iatan,”
as she was described on the bills. The confused murmur of
many voices, mixed with the merry tinkling of the glass pendants,
gave the whole an air of excitement.

But the striker did not see the man he was looking for.

“Who got on at Cairo? I think I saw a man from our part
of the country,” he said.

“I declare, I don't know,” said the mud-clerk, who drawled
his words in a cold-blooded way. “Let me look. Here's A. Robertson,
and T. Le Fevre, and L. B. Sykes, and N. Anderson.”

“Where is Anderson going?”

“Paid through to Louisville. Do you know him?”

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

But just then Norman Anderson himself walked in, and
went up to the bar with a new acquaintance. They did not
smoke the pipe of peace, like red Americans, but, like white
Americans, they had a mysterious liquid carefully compounded,
and by swallowing this they solemnly sealed their new-made
friendship after the curious and unexplained rite in use among
their people.

Norman had been dispatched on a collecting trip, and having
nine hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket, he felt as much
elated as if it had been his own money. The gentleman with
whom he drank, had a band of crape around his white hat.
He seemed very near-sighted.

“If that greeny is a friend of yours, Gus, I declare you'd
better tell him not to tie to the serious-looking young fellow in
the white hat and gold specs, unless he means to part with all
his loose change before bed-time.”

That is what the mud-clerk drawled to August the striker,
but the striker seemed to hear the words as something spoken
afar off. For just then he was seeing a vision of a drunken mob,
and a rope, and a pleading woman, and a brave old man
threatened with death. Just then he heard harsh and muddled
voices, rude oaths, and jeering laughter, and above it all
the sweet pleading of a little girl begging for a father's life.
And the quick blood came into his fair German face, and he
felt that he could not save this Norman Anderson from the
toils of the gambler, though he might, if provoked, pitch him
over the guard of the boat. For was not Andrew's letter, which
described the mob, in his pocket, and burning a hole in his
pocket as it had been ever since he received it?

But then this was Julia's brother, and there was nothing he

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

would not do for Julia. So, sometime after the mud-clerk had
ceased to speak, the striker gave utterance to both impulses by
replying, “He's no friend of mine,” a little crisply, and then
softly adding, “Though I shouldn't like to see him fleeced.”

By this time a new actor had appeared on the scene in the
person of a man with a black mustache and side-whiskers, who
took a seat behind a card-table near the bar.

“H'llo!” said the mud-clerk in a low and lazy voice, “Parkins
is back again. After his scrape at Paducah last February,
he disappeared, and he's been shady ever since. He's growed
whiskers since, so's not to be recognized. But he'll be skeerce
enough when we get to Paducah. Now, see how quick he'll
catch the greenies, won't you?” The prospect was so charming
as almost to stimulate the mud-clerk to speak with some animation.

But August Wehle, the striker on the Iatan, had an uncomfortable
feeling that he had seen that face before, and that the
long mustache and side-whiskers had grown in a remarkably
short space of time. Could it be that there were two men
who could spread a smile over the lower half of their faces in
that automatic way, while the spider-eyes had no sort of sympathy
with it? Surely, this man with black whiskers and mustache
was not just like the singing-master at Sugar-Grove school-house,
who had “red-top hay on to his upper lip,” and yet—and
yet—

“Gentlemen,” said Parkins—his Dickensian name would be
Smirkins—“I want to play a little game just for the fun of the
thing. It is a trick with three cards. I put down three cards,
face up. Here is six of diamonds, eight of spades, and the ace
of hearts. Now, I will turn them over so quickly that I will

A NICE LITTLE GAME. [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

defy any of you to tell which is the ace. Do you see? Now, I
would like to bet the wine for the company that no gentleman
here can turn up the ace. All I want is a little sport. Something
to pass away the evening and amuse the company. Who will
bet the wine? The Scripture says that the hand is quicker than
the eye, and I warn you that if you bet, you will probably lose.”
And here he turned the cards back, with their faces up, and the
card which everybody felt sure was the ace proved apparently
to be that card. Most of the on-lookers regretted that they had
not bet, seeing that they would certainly have won. Again the
cards were put face down, and the company was bantered to
bet the wine. Nobody would bet.

After a good deal of fluent talk, and much dexterous handling
of the cards, in a way that seemed clear enough to
everybody, and that showed that everybody's guess was right as
to the place of the ace, the near-sighted gentleman, who had
drunk with Norman, offered to bet five dollars.

“Five dollars!” returned Parkins, laughing in derision, “five
dollars! Do you think I'm a gambler? I don't want any gentleman's
money. I've got all the money I need. However,
if you would like to bet the wine with me, I am agreed.”

The near-sighted gentleman declined to wager anything but
just the five dollars, and Parkins spurned his proposition with
the scorn of a gentleman who would on no account bet a cent of
money. But he grew excited, and bantered the whole crowd.
Was there no gentleman in the crowd who would lay a wager
of wine for the company on this interesting little trick? It was
strange to him that no gentleman had spirit enough to make the
bet. But no gentleman had spirit enough to bet the wine. Evidently
there were no gentlemen in the company.

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

However, the near-sighted man with the white hat adorned
with crape now proposed in a crusty tone to bet ten dollars that
he could lift the ace. He even took out a ten-dollar bill, and,
after examining it, in holding it close to his nose as a penurious
man might, extended his hand with, “If you're in earnest, let's
know it. I'll bet you ten.”

At this Parkins grew furious. He had never been so persistently
badgered in all his life. He'd have the gentleman know
that he was not a gambler. He had all the money he wanted,
and as for betting ten dollars, he shouldn't think of it. But now
that the gentleman—he said gentleman with an emphasis—now
that the gentleman seemed determined to bet money, he would
show him that he was not to be backed down. If the young
man would like to wager a hundred dollars, he would cheerfully
bet with him. If the gentleman did not feel able to bet a hundred
dollars, he hoped he would not say any more about it. He
hadn't intended to bet money at all. But he wouldn't bet less
than a hundred dollars with anybody. A man who couldn't
afford to lose a hundred dollars, ought not to bet.

“Who is this fellow in the white hat with spectacles?”
August asked of the mud-clerk.

“That is Smith, Parkins's partner. He is only splurging
round to start up the greenies.” And the mud-clerk spoke with
an indifference and yet a sort of dilettante interest in the game
that shocked his friend, the striker.

“Why don't they set these blacklegs ashore?” said August,
whose love of justice was strong.

“You tell,” drawled the mud-clerk. “The first clerk's tried it,
but the old man protects 'em, and” (in a whisper) “get's his
share, I guess. He can set them off whenever he wants to.” (I

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

must explain that there is only one “old man” on a steamboat—
that is, the captain.)

By this time Parkins had turned and thrown his cards so that
everybody knew or thought he knew where the ace was. Smith,
the man with the white hat, now rose five dollars more and
offered to bet fifteen. But Parkins was more indignant than ever.
He told Smith to go away. He thrust his hand into his pocket
and drew out a handful of twenty-dollar gold-pieces. “If any
gentleman wants to bet a hundred dollars, let him come on.
A man who couldn't lose a hundred would better keep still.”

Smith now made a big jump. He'd go fifty. Parkins
wouldn't listen to fifty. He had said that he wouldn't bet less
than a hundred, and he wouldn't. He now pulled out handful
after handful of gold, and piled the double-eagles up like a fortification
in front of him, while the crowd surged with excitement.

At last Mr. Smith, the near-sighted gentleman in spectacles,
the gentleman who wore black crape on a white hat, concluded
to bet a hundred dollars. He took out his little portemonnaie
and lifted thence a hundred-dollar bill.

“Well,” said he angrily, “I'll bet you a hundred.” And he
laid down the bill. Parkins piled five twenty-dollar gold-pieces
atop it. Each man felt that he could lift the ace in a moment.
That card at the dealer's right was certainly the ace. Norman was
sure of it. He wished it had been his wager instead of Smith's.
But Parkins stopped Smith a moment.

“Now, young man,” he said, “if you don't feel perfectly able
to lose that hundred dollars, you'd better take it back.”

“I am just as able to lose it as you are,” said Smith snappishly,
and to everybody's disappointment he lifted not the card
everybody had fixed on, but the middle one, and so lost his money.

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

“Why didn't you take the other?” said Norman boastfully.
“I knew it was the ace.”

“Why didn't you bet, then?” said Smith, grinning a little.
Norman wished he had. But he had not a hundred dollars of
his own, and he had scruples—faint, and yet scruples, or rather
alarms—at the thought of risking his employer's money on a
wager. While he was weighing motive against motive, Smith
bet again, and again, to Norman's vexation, selected a card that
was so obviously wrong that Norman thought it a pity that so
near-sighted a man should bet and lose. He wished he had
a hundred dollars of his own and— There, Smith was betting
again. This time he consulted Norman before making his
selection, and of course turned up the right card, remarking that
he wished his eyes were so keen! He would win a thousand
dollars before bed-time if his eyes were so good! Then he took
Norman into partnership, and Norman found himself suddenly in
possession of fifty dollars, gotten without trouble. This turned
his brain. Nothing is so intoxicating to a weak man as money
acquired without toil. So Norman continued to bet, sometimes
independently, sometimes in partnership with the gentlemanly
Smith. He was borne on by the excitement of varying fortune,
a varying fortune absolutely under control of the dealer, whose
sleight-of-hand was perfect. And the varying fortune had an unvarying
tendency in the long run—to put three stakes out of five
into the pockets of the gamblers, who found the little game very
interesting amusement for gentlemen.

p555-186 CHAPTER XXVII. THE RESULT OF AN EVENING WITH GENTLEMEN.

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

ALL the time that these smiling villains were by
consummate art drawing their weak-headed victim
into their toils, what was August doing? Where
were his prompt decision of character, his quick
intelligence, his fine German perseverance, that
should have saved the brother of Julia Anderson from harpies?
Could our blue-eyed young countryman, who knew how to cherish
noble aspirations walking in a plowman's furrow—could he
stand there satisfying his revenge by witnessing the ruin of a
young man who, like many others, was wicked only because he
was weak?

In truth, August was a man whose feelings were persistent.
His resentment was—like his love—constant. But his love of
justice was higher and more persistent, and he could not have
seen any one fleeced in this merciless way without taking sides
strongly with the victim. Much less could he see the brother
of Julia tempted on to the rocks by the false lights of villainous
wreckers without a great desire to save him. For the letter of
Andrew had ceased now to burn in his pocket. That other letter—
the only one that Julia had been able to send through

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

Cynthy Ann and Jonas—that other letter, written all over with such
tender extravagances as love feeds on; the thought of that other
letter, which told how beautiful and precious were the invitations
to the weary and heavy-laden, had stilled resentment, and
there came instead a keen desire to save Norman for the sake
of Julia and justice. But how to do it was an embarrassing question—
a question that was more than August could solve. There
was a difficulty in the weakness and wrong-headedness of Norman;
a difficulty in Norman's prejudice against Dutchmen in
general and August in particular; a difficulty in the fact that
August was a sort of a fugitive, if not from justice, certainly from
injustice.

But when nearly a third of Norman's employer's money
had gone into the gamblers' heap, and when August began to
understand that it was another man's money that Norman was
losing, and that the victim was threatened by no half-way ruin,
he determined to do something, even at the risk of making
himself known to Norman and to Parkins—was he Humphreys
in disguise?—and at the risk of arrest for house-breaking.
August acted with his eyes open to all the perils from gamblers'
pistols and gamblers' malice; and after he had started to
interfere, the mud-clerk called him back, and said, in his half-indifferent
way:

“Looky here, Gus, don't be a blamed fool. That's a purty
little game. That greeny's got to learn to let blacklegs alone,
and he don't look like one that'll take advice. Let him scorch
a little; it'll do him good. It's healthy for young men. That's
the reason the old man don't forbid it, I s'pose. And these fellows
carry good shooting-irons with hair-triggers, and I declare I
don't want to be bothered writing home to your mother, and

p555-188 THE MUD-CLERK. [figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

explaining to her that you got killed in a fight with blacklegs.
I declare I don't, you see. And then you'll get the `old man'
down on you, if you let a bird out of the trap in which he goes
snucks; you will, I declare. And you'll get walking-papers at
Louisville. Let the game alone. You haven't got any hand to
play against Parkins, nohow; and I reckon the greenhorns are
his lawful prey. Cats couldn't live without mice. You'll lose
your place, I declare you will, if you say a word.”

August stopped long enough to take in the full measure of
his sacrifice. So far from being deterred by it, he was more
than ever determined to act. Not the love of Julia, so much,
now, but the farewell prayer and benediction and the whole life
and spirit of the sweet Moravian mother in her child-full house
at home were in his mind at this moment. Things which
a man will not do for the love of woman he may do for

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

the love of God—and it was with a sense of moral exaltation
that August entered into the lofty spirit of self-sacrifice he had
seen in his mother, and caught himself saying, in his heart, as he
had heard her say, “Let us do anything for the Father's sake!”
Some will call this cant. So much the worse for them. This
motive, too little felt in our day—too little felt in any day—is
the great impulse that has enabled men to do the bravest things
that have been done. The sublimest self-sacrifice is only possible
to a man by the aid of some strong moral tonic. God's love
is the chief support of the strongest spirits.

August touched Norman on the arm. The face of the latter
expressed anything but pleasure at meeting him, now that he
felt guilty. But this was not the uppermost feeling with
Norman. He noticed that August's clothes were spotted with
engine-grease, and his first fear was of compromising his
respectability.

In a hurried way August began to explain to him that he was
betting with gamblers, but Smith stood close to them, looking
at August in such a contemptuous way as to make Norman feel
very uncomfortable, and Parkins seeing the crowd attracted by
August's explanations—which he made in some detail, by way
of adapting himself to Norman—of the trick by which the
upper card is thrown out first, Parkins said, “I see you understand
the game, young man. If you do, why don't you bet?”

At this the crowd laughed, and Norman drew away from
the striker's greasy clothes, and said that he didn't want to speak
any further to a burglar, he believed. But August followed, determined
to warn him against Smith. Smith was ahead of him,
however, saying to Norman, “Look out for your pockets—
that greasy fellow will rob you.”

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

And Norman, who was nothing if not highly respectable,
resolved to shake off the troublesome “Dutchman” at once. “I
don't know what you are up to now, but at home you are known
as a thief. So please let me alone, will you?” This Norman
tried to say in an annihilating way.

The crowd looked for a fight. August said loud enough to be
heard, “You know very well that you lie. I wanted to save you
from being a thief, but you are betting money now that is not
yours.”

The company, of course, sympathized with the gentleman and
against the machine-oil on the striker's clothes, so that there
arose quickly a murmur, started by Smith, “Put the bully out,”
and August was “hustled.” It is well that he was not shot.

It was quite time for him to go on watch now; for the loudticking
marine-clock over the window of the clerk's office pointed
to three minutes past twelve, and the striker hurried to his post
at the starboard engine, with the bitterness of defeat and the
shame of insult in his heart. He had sacrificed his place, doubtless,
and risked much beside, and all for nothing. The third
engineer complained of his tardiness in not having relieved
him three minutes before, and August went to his duties with a
bitter heart. To a man who is persistent, as August was,
defeat of any sort is humiliating.

As for Norman, he bet after this just to show his independence
and to show that the money was his own, as well as in the
vain hope of winning back what he had lost. He bet every cent.
Then he lost his watch, and at half-past one o'clock he went to
his state-room, stripped of all loose valuables, and sweating great
drops. And the mud-clerk, who was still in the office, remarked
to himself, with a pleasant chuckle, that it was good for him; he

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

declared it was; teach the fellow to let monte alone, and keep his
eyes peeled when he traveled. It would so!

The idea was a good one, and he went down to the starboard
engine and told the result of the nice little game to his
friend the striker, drawling it out in a relishful way, how the
blamed idiot never stopped till they'd got his watch, and then
looked like as if he'd a notion to jump into the “drink.” But'
twould cure him of meddlin' with monte. It would so!

He walked away, and August was just reflecting on the heartlessness
of his friend, when the mud-clerk came back again, and
began drawling his words out as before, just as though each distinct
word were of a delightful flavor and he regretted that he
must part with it.

“I've got you even with Parkins, old fellow. He'll be strung
up on a lamp-post at Paducah, I reckon. I saw a Paducah man
aboard, and I put a flea in his ear. We've got to lay there an
hour or two to put off a hundred barrels of molasses and two
hundred sacks of coffee and two lots of plunder. There'll be
a hot time for Parkins. He let on to marry a girl and fooled her.
They'll teach him a lesson. You'll be off watch, and we'll have
some fun looking on.” And the mud-clerk evidently thought
that it would be even funnier to see Parkins hanged than it had
been to see him fleece Norman. Gus the striker did not see how
either scene could be very entertaining. But he was sick at heart,
and one could not expect him to show much interest in manly
sports.

p555-192 CHAPTER XXVIII. WAKING UP AN UGLY CUSTOMER.

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

THE steady beat of the wheels and the incessant
clank of the engines went on as usual. The boat
was loaded almost to her guards, and did not make
much speed. The wheels kept their persistent beat
upon the water, and the engines kept their rhythmical
clangor going, until August found himself getting drowsy.
Trouble, with forced inaction, nearly always has a soporific
tendency, and a continuous noise is favorable to sleep. Once or
twice August roused himself to a sense of his responsibility and
battled with his heaviness. It was nearing the end of his
watch, for the dog-watch of two hours set in at four o'clock.
But it seemed to him that four o'clock would never come.

An incident occurred just at this moment that helped him to
keep his eyes open. A man went aft through the engine-room
with a red handkerchief tied round his forehead. In spite of
this partial disguise August perceived that it was Parkins. He
passed through to the place where the steerage or deck passengers
are, and then disappeared from August's sight. He had
meant to disembark at a wood-yard just below Paducah, but for

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

some reason the boat did not stop, and now, as August guessed, he
was hiding himself from Paducah eyes. He was not much too
soon, for the great bell on the hurricane-deck was already ringing
for Paducah, and the summer dawn was showing itself faintly
through the river fog.

The alarm-bell rang in the engine-room, and Wehle stood by
his engine. Then the bell rang to stop the starboard engine,
and August obeyed it. The pilot of a Western steamboat depends
much upon his engines for steerage in making a landing,
and the larboard engine was kept running a while longer in order
to bring the deeply-loaded boat round to her landing at the primitive
wharf-boat of that day. There is something fine in the
faith with which an engineer obeys the bell of the pilot, not
knowing what may be ahead, not inquiring what may be the
effect of the order, but only doing exactly what he is bid when
he is bid. August had stopped his engine, and stood trying to
keep his mind off Parkins and the events of the night, that he
might be ready to obey the next signal for his engine. But the
bell rang next to stop the other engine, at which the second
engineer stood, and August was so free from responsibility in regard
to that that he hardly noticed the sound of the bell, until it
rang a second time more violently. Then he observed that the
larboard engine still ran. Was Munson dead or asleep? Clearly
it was August's duty to stand by his own engine. But then he
was startled to think what damage to property or life might take
place from the failure of the second engineer to stop his engine.
While he hesitated, and all these considerations flashed through
his mind, the pilot's bell rang again long and loud, and August
then, obeying an impulse rather than a conviction, ran over to
the other engine, stopped it, and then, considering that it had

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

run so long against orders, he reversed it and set it to backing
without waiting instructions. Then he seized Munson and
woke him, and hurried back to his post. But the larboard engine
had not made three revolutions backward before the boat, hopelessly
thrown from her course by the previous neglect,
struck the old wharf-boat and sunk it. But for the promptness
and presence of mind with which Wehle acted, the steamboat
itself would have suffered severely. The mate and then
the captain came rushing into the engine-room. Munson was
discharged at once, and the striker was promised engineer's
wages.

Gus went off watch at this moment, and the mud-clerk said
to him, in his characteristically indifferent voice, “Such luck, I
declare! I was sure you would be dismissed for meddling with
Parkins, and here you are promoted, I declare!”

The mishap occasioned much delay to the boat, as it was very
inconvenient to deliver freight at that day and at that stage of
water without the intervention of the wharf-boat. A full hour
was consumed in finding a landing, and in rigging the double-staging
and temporary planks necessary to get the molasses and
coffee and household “plunder” ashore. Some hint that Parkins
was on the river had already reached Paducah, and the sheriff
and two deputies and a small crowd were at the landing
looking for him. A search of the boat failed to discover him,
and the crowd would have left the landing but for occasional
hints slyly thrown out by the mud-clerk as he went about over
the levee collecting freight-bills. These hints, given in a noncommittal
way, kept the crowd alive with expectation, and when
the rumors thus started spread abroad, the levee was soon filled
with an excited and angry multitude.

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

If it had been a question of delivering a criminal to justice,
August would not have hesitated to tell the sheriff where to look.
But he very well knew that the sheriff could not convey the man
through the mob alive, and to deliver even such a scoundrel to
the summary vengeance of a mob was something that he could
not find it in his heart to do.

In truth, the sheriff and his officers did not seek very zealously
for their man. Under the circumstances, it was probable
he would not surrender himself without a fight, in which somebody
would be killed, and besides there must ensue a battle with
the mob. It was what they called an ugly job, and they were
not loth to accept the captain's assurance that the gambler had
gone ashore.

While August was unwilling to deliver the hunted villain
to a savage death, he began to ask himself why he might
not in some way use his terror in the interest of justice.
For he had just then seen the wretched and bewildered face of
Norman looking ghastly enough in the fog of the morning.

At last, full of this notion, and possessed, too, by his habit of
accomplishing at all hazards what he had begun, August strolled
back through the now quiet engine-room to the deck-passengers'
quarter. It was about half an hour before six o'clock, when the
dog-watch would expire and he must go on duty again.
In one of the uppermost of the filthy bunks, in the darkest
corner, near the wheel, he discovered what he thought to be his
man. The deck-passengers were still asleep, lying around stupidly.
August paused a moment, checked by a sense of the dangerousness
of his undertaking. Then he picked up a stick of
wood and touched the gambler, who could not have been very
sound asleep, lying in hearing of the curses of the mob on the

p555-196 WAKING UP AN UGLY CUSTOMER. [figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

shore. At first Parkins did not move, but August gave him a
still more vigorous thrust. Then he peered out between the
blanket and the handkerchief over his forehead.

“I will take that money you won last night from that young
man, if you please.”

Parkins saw that it was useless to deny his identity. “Do
you want to be shot?” he asked fiercely.

“Not any more than you want to be hung,” said August.
“The one would follow the other in five minutes. Give back
that money and I will go away.”

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

The gambler trembled a minute. He was fairly at bay. He
took out a roll of bills and handed it to August. There was but
five hundred. Smith had the other four hundred and fifty, he
said. But August had a quiet German steadiness of nerve. He
said that unless the other four hundred and fifty were paid at
once he should call in the sheriff or the crowd. Parkins knew
that every minute August stood there increased his peril,
and human nature is now very much like human nature in the
days of Job. The devil understood the subject very well when
he said that all that a man hath will he give for his life. Parkins
paid the four hundred and fifty in gold-pieces. He would have
paid twice that if August had demanded it.

p555-198 CHAPTER XXIX. AUGUST AND NORMAN.

[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]

IN a story such as I meant this to be, the development
of character stands for more than the evolution
of the plot, and herein is the true significance
of this contact of Wehle with the gamblers, and, indeed,
of this whole steamboat life. It is not enough
for one to be good in a country neighborhood; the sharp contests
and severe ordeals of more exciting life are needed to give
temper to the character. August Wehle was hardly the same
man on this morning at Paducah, with the nine hundred and
fifty dollars in his pocket, that he had been the evening before,
when he first felt the sharp resentment against the man who
had outraged his father. In acting on a high plane, one is unconsciously
lifted to that plane. Men become Christians sometimes
from the effect of sudden demands made upon their higher
moral nature, demands which compel them to choose between
a life higher than their present living, or a moral degradation.
Such had been August's experience. He had been drawn upward
toward God by the opportunity and necessity for heroic
action. I have no doubt the good Samaritan got more out of his
own kindness than the robbed Jew did.

[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]

Before he had a chance to restore the money to its rightful
owner, the two hours of dog-watch had expired, and he was
obliged to go on watch again, much to his annoyance. He had
been nearly twenty-four hours without sleep, and after a night
of such excitement it was unpleasant as well as perilous to
have to hold this money, which did not belong to him, for six
hours longer, liable at any minute to get into difficulty through
any scheme of the gamblers and their allies, by which his recovery
of the money might be misinterpreted. The morning seemed to
wear away so slowly. All the possibilities of Parkins's attacking
him, of young Anderson's committing suicide, and of the misconstruction
that might be put upon his motives—the making of his
disinterested action seem robbery—haunted his excitable imagination.
At last, while the engines were shoving their monotonous
shafts backward and forward, and the `palatial steamer” Iatan
was slowly pushing her way up the stream, August grew so
nervous over his money that he resolved to relieve himself of
part of it. So he sent for the mud-clerk by a passing deck-hand.

“I want you to keep this money for me until I get off
watch,” said August. “I made Parkins stand and deliver this
morning while we were at Paducah.”

“You did?” said the mud-clerk, not offering to touch the
money. “You risked your life, I declare, for that fool that called
you a thief. You are a fool, Gus, and nothing but your blamed
good luck can save you from getting salivated, bright and early,
some morning. Not a great deal I won't take that money. I
don't relish lead, and I've got to live among these fellows all my
days, and I don't hold that money for anybody. The old man
would ship me at Louisville, seeing I never stopped anybody's
engine and backed it in a hurry, as you did. If I'd known where

[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]

Parkins was, I'd a dropped a gentle word in the ear of the crowd
outside, but I wouldn't a pulled that greeny's coffee-nuts out of
the fire, and I won't hold the hot things for you. I declare
I won't. Saltpeter wouldn't save me if I did.”

So Gus had to content himself in his nervousness, not allayed
by this speech, and keep the money in his pocket until noon.
And, after all the presentiment he had had, noon came round.
Presentiments generally come from the nerves, and signify
nothing; but nobody keeps a tally of the presentiments and
auguries that fail. When the first-engineer and a new man
took the engines at noon, Gus was advised by the former to get
some sleep, but there was no sleep for him until he had found
Norman, who trembled at the sight of him.

“Where is your state-room?” said August sternly, for he
couldn't bring himself to speak kindly to the poor fellow, even
in his misery.

Norman turned pale. He had been thinking of suicide all the
morning, but he was a coward, and now he evidently felt sure
that he was to be killed by August. He did not dare disobey,
but led the way, stopping to try to apologize two or three times,
but never getting any further than “I—I—”

Once in the state-room, he sat down on the berth and gasped,
“I—I—”

“Here is your money,” said August, handing it to him. “I
made the gambler give it up.”

“I—I—” said the astonished and bewildered Norman.

“You needn't say a word. You are a cowardly scoundrel,
and if you say anything, I'll knock you down for treating my
father as you did. Only for—for—well, I didn't want to see you
fleeced.'

[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]

Norman was ashamed for once, and hung his head. It
touched the heart of August a little, but the remembrance of the
attack of the mob on his father made him feel hard again, and
so his generous act was performed ungraciously.

p555-202 CHAPTER XXX. AGROUND.

[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]

NOT the boat. The boat ran on safely enough
to Louisville, and tied up at the levee, and discharged
her sugar and molasses, and took on a new
cargo of baled hay and corn and flour, and went
back again, and made I know not how many trips,
and ended her existence I can not tell how or when. What
does become of the old steamboats? The Iatan ran for years
after she tied up at Louisville that summer morning, and then
perhaps she was blown up or burned up; perchance some cruel
sawyer transfixed her; perchance she was sunk by ice, or maybe
she was robbed of her engines and did duty as barge, or, what
is more probable, she wore out like the one-hoss shay, and just
tumbled to pieces simultaneously.

It was not the gambler who got aground that morning. He
had yet other nice little games, with three cards or more or
none, to play.

It was not the mud-clerk who ran aground—good, non-committal
soul, who never took sides where it would do him any
harm, and who never worried himself about anything. Dear,
drawling, optimist philosopher, who could see how other people's

[figure description] Page 198.[end figure description]

mishaps were best for them, and who took good care not to have
any himself! It was not he that ran aground.

It was not Norman Anderson who ran aground. He walked
into the store with the proud and manly consciousness of having
done his duty, he made his returns of every cent of money that
had come into his hands, and, like all other faithful stewards,
received the cordial commendation of his master.

But August Wehle the striker, just when he was to be
made an engineer, when he thought he had smooth sailing, suddenly
and provokingly found himself fast aground, with no
spar or capstan by which he might help himself off, with no
friendly craft alongside to throw him a hawser and pull him off.

It seems that when the captain promised him promotion, he
did not know anything of August's interference with the gamblers.
But when Parkins filed his complaint, it touched the
captain. It was generally believed among the employés of the
boat that a percentage of gamblers' gains was one of the “old
man's” perquisites, and he was not the only steamboat captain
who profited by the nice little games in the cabin upon which
he closed both eyes. And this retrieved nine hundred and fifty
dollars was a dead loss of—well, it does not matter how much,
to the virtuous and highly honorable captain. His proportion
would have been large enough at least to pay his wife's pewrent
in St. James's Church, with a little something over for charitable
purposes. For the captain did not mind giving a disinterested
twenty-five dollars occasionally to those charities that were
willing to show their gratitude by posting his name as director,
or his wife's as “Lady Manageress.” In this case his right hand
never knew what his left hand did—how it got the money, for
instance.

[figure description] Page 199.[end figure description]

So when August drew his pay he was informed that he was
discharged. No reason was given. He tried to see the captain.
But the captain was in the bosom of his family, kissing his own
well-dressed little boys, and enjoying the respect which only
exemplary and provident fathers enjoy. And never asking down
in his heart if these boys might become gamblers' victims, or
gamblers, indeed. The captain could not see August the striker,
for he was at home, and must not be interfered with by any of
his subordinates. Besides, it was Sunday, and he could not be
intruded upon—the rector of St. James's was dining with him
on his wife's invitation, and it behooved him to walk circumspectly,
not with eye-service as a man-pleaser, but serving the
Lord.

So he refused to see the anxious striker, and turned to compliment
the rector on his admirable sermon on the sin of Judas,
who sold his master for thirty pieces of silver.

And August Wehle had nothing left to do. The river was
falling fast, the large boats above the Falls were, in steamboatman's
phrase, “laying up” in the mouths of the tributaries and
other convenient harbors, there were plenty of engineers unemployed,
and there were no vacancies.

p555-205 CHAPTER XXXI. CYNTHY ANN'S SACRIFICE.

[figure description] Page 200.[end figure description]

JONAS had been all his life, as he expressed it
in his mixed rhetoric, “a wanderin' sand-hill crane,
makin' many crooked paths, and, like the cards in
French monte, a-turnin' up suddently in mighty onexpected
places.” He had been in every queer place
from Hallifax to Texas, and then had come back to his home
again. Naturally cautious, and especially suspicious of the
female sex, it is not strange that he had not married. Only when
he “tied up to the same w'arf-boat alongside of Cynthy Ann, he
thought he'd found somebody as was to be depended on in a fog
or a harricane.” This he told to Cynthy Ann as a reason why
she should accept his offer of marriage.

“Jonas,” said Cynthy Ann, “don't flatter. My heart is
dreadful weak, and prone to the vanities of this world. It makes
me abhor myself in dust and sackcloth fer you to say such
things about poor unworthy me.”

“Ef I think 'em, why shouldn't I say em? I don't know
no law agin tellin' the truth ef you git into a place where you
can't no ways help it. I don't call you angel, fer you a'n't; you
ha'nt got no wings nor feathers. I don't say as how as you're

[figure description] Page 201.[end figure description]

pertikeler knock-down handsome. I don't pertend that you're a
spring chicken. I don't lie nor flatter. I a'n't goin' it blind,
like young men in love. But I do say, with my eyes open and
in my right senses, and feelin' solemn, like a man a-makin' his
last will and testament, that they a'n't no sech another woman to
be found outside the leds of the Bible betwixt the Bay of Fundy
and the Rio Grande. I've `sought round this burdened airth,' as
the hymn says, and they a'n't but jest one. Ef that one'll jest
make me happy, I'll fold my weary pinions and settle down in a
rustic log-cabin and raise corn and potaters till death do us part.”

Cynthy trembled. Cynthy was a saint, a martyr to religious
feeling, a medieval nun in her ascetic eschewing of the pleasures
of life. But Cynthy Ann was also a woman. And a woman
whose spring-time had passed. When love buds out thus late,
when the opportunity for the woman's nature to blossom comes
unexpectedly upon one at her age, the temptation is not easily
resisted. Cynthy trembled, but did not quite yield up her Christian
constancy.

“Jonas, I don't know whether I'd orto or not. I don't deny—
I think I'd better ax brother Goshorn, you know, sence what
would it profit ef I gained you or any joy in this world, and then
come short by settin' you up fer a idol in my heart? I don't
know whether a New Light is a onbeliever or not, and whether
I'd be onequally yoked or not. I must ax them as knows better
nor I do.”

“Well, ef I'm a onbeliever, they's nobody as could teach me
to believe quicker'n you could. I never did believe much in
women folks till I believed in you.”

“But that's the sin of it, Jonas. I'd believe in you, and you'd
believe in me, and we'd be puttin' our trust in the creatur' instid

[figure description] Page 202.[end figure description]

of the Creator, and the Creator is mighty jealous of our idols,
and He would take us away fer idolatry.”

“No, but I wouldn't worship you, though I'd ruther worship
you than anybody else ef I was goin' into the worshipin' business.
But you see I a'n't, honey. I wouldn't sacrifice to you no lambs
nor sheep, I wouldn't pray to you, nor I wouldn't kiss your shoes,
like people does the Pope's. An' I know you wouldn't make
no idol of me like them Greek gods that Andrew's got picters of.
I a'n't handsome enough by a long shot fer a Jupiter or a 'Pollo.
An' I tell you, Cynthy, 'tain't no sin to love. Love is the fillfulling
of the law.”

But Cynthy Ann persisted that she must consult Brother Goshorn,
the antiquated class-leader at the cross-roads. Brother
Goshorn was a good man, but Jonas had a great contempt for
him. He was a strainer out of gnats, though I do not think he
swallowed camels. He always stood at the door of the love-feast
and kept out every woman with jewelry, every girl who had an
“artificial” in her bonnet, every one who wore curls, every man
whose hair was beyond what he considered the regulation length
of Scripture, and every woman who wore a veil. In support of
this last prohibition he quoted Isaiah iii, 23: “The glasses and the
fine linen and the hoods and the veils.”

To him Cynthy Ann presented the case with much trepidation.
All her hopes for this world hung upon it. But this
consideration did not greatly affect Brother Goshorn. Hopes and
joys were as nothing to him where the strictness of discipline
was involved. The Discipline meant more to a mind of his cast
than the Decalogue or the Beatitudes. He shook his head. He
did not know. He must consult Brother Hall. Now, Brother
Hall was the young preacher traveling his second year, very

[figure description] Page 203.[end figure description]

young and very callow. Ten years of the sharp attritions of
a Methodist itinerant's life would take his unworldliness out of
him and develop his practical sense as no other school in the
world could develop it. But as yet Brother Hall had not rubbed
off any of his sanctimoniousness, had not lost any of his belief
that the universe should be governed on high general principles
with no exceptions.

So when Brother Goshorn informed him that one of his members,
Sister Cynthy Ann Dyke, wished to marry, and to marry
a man that was a New Light, and had asked his opinion, and
that he did not certainly know whether New Lights were believers
or not, Brother Hall did not stop to inquire what Jonas
might be personally. He looked and felt very solemn, and said
that it was a pity for a Christian to marry a New Light. It
was clearly a sin, for a New Light was an Arian. And an Arian
was just as good as an infidel. An Arian robbed Christ of His
supreme deity, and since he did not worship the Trinity in the
orthodox sense he must worship a false god. He was an idolater
therefore, and it was a sin to be yoked together with such
an one.

Many men more learned than the callow but pious and sincere
Brother Hall have left us in print just such deductions.

When this decision was communicated to the scrupulous
Cynthy Ann, she folded her hopes as one lays away
the garment of a dead friend; she went to her little room
and prayed; she offered a sacrifice to God not less costly
than Abraham's, and in a like sublime spirit. She watered
the plant in the old cracked blue-and-white tea-pot, she noticed
that it was just about to bloom, and then she dropped one
tear upon it, and because it suggested Jonas in some way,

p555-209 CYNTHY ANN'S SACRIFICE. [figure description] Page 204.[end figure description]

she threw it away, resolved not to have any idols in her heart.
And, doubtless, God received the sacrifice, mistaken and needless
as it was, a token of the faithfulness of her heart to her duty as
she understood it.

[figure description] Page 205.[end figure description]

Cynthy Ann explained it all to Jonas in a severe and irrevocable
way. Jonas looked at her a moment, stunned.

“Did Brother Goshorn venture to send me any of his wisdom,
in the way of advice, layin' round loose, like counterfeit small
change, cheap as dirt?”

“Well, yes,” said Cynthy Ann, hesitating.

“I'll bet the heft of my fortin', to be paid on receipt of the
amount, that I kin tell to a T what the good Christian wanted me
to do.”

“Don't be oncharitable, Jonas. Brother Goshorn is a mighty
sincere man.”

“So he is, but his bein' sincere don't do me no good. He
wanted you to advise me to jine the Methodist class as a way of
gittin' out of the difficulty. And you was too good a Christian
to ask me to change fer any sech reason, knowin' I wouldn't be
fit for you ef I did.”

Cynthy Ann was silent. She would have liked to have Jonas
join the church with her, but if he had done it now she herself
would have doubted his sincerity.

“Now, looky here, Cynthy, ef you'll say you don't love me,
and never can, I'll leave you to wunst, and fly away and mourn
like a turtle-dove. But so long as it's nobody but Goshorn, I'm
goin' to stay and litigate the question till the Millerite millennium
comes. I appeal to Cæsar or somebody else. Neither Brother
Goshorn nor Brother Hall knows enough to settle this question.
I'm agoin' to the persidin' elder. And you can't try a man and
hang him and then send him to the penitentiary fer the rest of
his born days without givin' him one chance to speak fer hisself
agin the world and everybody else. I'm goin' to see the persidin'
elder myself and plead my own cause, and ef he goes agin

[figure description] Page 206.[end figure description]

me, I'll carry it up to the bishop or the archbishop or the nex'
highest man in the heap, till I git plum to the top, and ef they
all go agin me, I'll begin over agin at the bottom with Brother
Goshorn, and keep on till I find a man that's got common-sense
enough to salt his religion with.”

p555-212 CHAPTER XXXII. JULIA'S ENTERPRISE.

[figure description] Page 207.[end figure description]

AUGUST was very sick at the castle.

This was the first news of his return that
reached Julia through Jonas and Cynthy Ann.

But in my interest in Jonas and Cynthy Ann,
of whom I think a great deal, I forgot to say that
long before the events mentioned in the last chapter, Humphreys
had been suddenly called away from his peaceful retreat in
the hill country of Clark township. In fact, the “important business,”
or “the illness of a friend,” whichever it was, occurred
the very next day after Norman Anderson's father returned from
Louisville, and reported that he had secured for his son an “outside
situation,” that is to say, a place as a collector.

When he had gone, Jonas remarked to Cynthy Ann, “Where
the carcass is, there the turkey-buzzards is gethered. That shinin'
example of early piety never plays but one game. That is, fox-and-geese.
He's gone after a green goslin' now, and he'll find
him when he's fattest.”

But the gentle singing-master had come back from his excursion,
and was taking a profound interest in the coming end of

[figure description] Page 208.[end figure description]

the world. Jonas observed that it “seemed like as ef he hed
charge of the whole performance, and meant to shet up the
sky like a blue cotton umbrell. He's got a single eye, and it's
the same ole game. Fox and geese always, and he's the fox.”

Humphreys still lived at Samuel Anderson's, still devoted
himself to pleasing Mrs. Abigail, still bowed regretfully to Julia,
and spoke caressingly to Betsey Malcolm at every opportunity.

But August was sick at the castle. He was very sick. Every
morning Dr. Dibrell, a “calomel-doctor”—not a steam-doctor—
rode by the house on his way to Andrew's, and every morning
Mrs. Anderson wondered afresh who was sick down that way.
But the doctor staid so long that Mrs. Abigail made up her mind
it must be somebody four or five miles away, and so dismissed the
matter from her mind. For August's return had been kept secret.

But Julia noticed, in her heart of hearts, and with ever-increasing
affliction, that the doctor staid longer each day than on
the day before, and she thought she noticed also an increasing
anxiety on his face as he rode home again. Her desire to know
the real truth, and to see August, to do for him, to give her
life for him, were wearing her away. It is hard to see a friend
go from you when you have done everything. But to have a
friend die within your reach, while you are yet unable to help
him, is the saddest of all. All this anxiety Julia suffered without
even the blessed privilege of showing it. The pent-up fire
consumed her, and she was at times almost distract. Every morning
she managed to be on the upper porch when the doctor
went by, and from the same watch-tower she studied his face
when he went back.

Then came a morning when there were two doctors. A physician
from the county-seat village went by, in company with Dr.

[figure description] Page 209.[end figure description]

Dibrell. So there must be a consultation at the castle. Julia
knew then that the worst had to be looked in the face. And she
longed to get away from under the searching black eyes of her
mother and utter the long-pent cry of anguish. Another day
of such unuttered pain would drive her clean mad.

That evening Jonas came over and sought an interview with
Cynthy Ann. He had not been to see her since his unsuccessful
courtship. Julia felt that he was the bearer of a message.
But Mrs. Anderson was in one of her most exacting humors,
and it gave her not a little pleasure to keep Cynthy Ann, on
one pretext and another, all the evening at her side. Had Cynthy
Ann been less submissive and scrupulous, she might have
broken away from this restraint, but in truth she was censuring
herself for having any backsliding, rebellious wish to talk with
Jonas after she had imagined the idol cast out of her heart
entirely. Her conscience was a task-master not less grievous
than Mrs. Anderson, and, between the two, Jonas had to go away
without leaving his message. And Julia had to keep her breaking
heart in suspense a while longer.

Why did she not clope long ago and get rid of her mother?
Because she was Julia, and being Julia, conscientious, true, and
filial in spite of her unhappy life, her own character built a wall
against such a disobedience. Nearly all limitations are inside.
You could do almost anything if you could give yourself up to
it. To go in the teeth of one's family is the one thing that a person
of Julia's character and habits finds next to impossible. A beneficent
limitation of nature; for the cases in which the judgment
of a girl of eighteen is better than that of her parents are very few.
Besides, the inevitable “heart-disease” was a specter that guarded
the gates of Julia's prison. Night after night she sat looking

[figure description] Page 210.[end figure description]

out over the hills sleeping in hazy darkness, toward the hollow in
which stood the castle; night after night she had half-formed
the purpose of visiting August, and then the life-long habit of
obedience and a certain sense of delicacy held her back. But
on this night, after the consultation, she felt that she would see
him if her seeing him brought down the heavens.

It was a very dark night. She sat waiting for hours—very
long hours they seemed to her—and then, at midnight, she began
to get ready to start.

Only those who have taken such a step can understand the
pain of deciding, the agony of misgivings in the execution, the
trembling that Julia felt when she turned the brass knob on the
front door and lifted the latch—lifted the latch slowly and cautiously,
for it was near the door of her mother's room—and then
crept out like a guilty thing into the dark dampness of the night,
groping her way to the gate, and stumbling along down the road.
It had been raining, and there was not one star-twinkle in the
sky; the only light was that of glow-worms illuminating here
and there two or three blades of grass by feeble shining. Now
and then a fire-fly made a spot of light in the blackness, only to
leave a deeper spot of blackness when he shut off his intermittent
ray. And when at last Julia found herself at the place where
the path entered the woods, the blackness ahead seemed still
more frightful. She had to grope, recognizing every deviation
from the well-beaten path by the rustle of the dead leaves which
lay, even in summer, half a foot deep upon the ground. The
“fox-fire,” rotting logs glowing with a faint luminosity, startled
her several times, and the hooting-owl's shuddering bass—hoo!
hoo! hoo-oo-ah-h! (like the awful keys of the organ which
“touch the spinal cord of the universe”)—sent all her blood

[figure description] Page 211.[end figure description]

to her heart. Under ordinary circumstances, she surely would
not have started at the rustling made by the timid hare in the
thicket near by. There was no reason why she should shiver
so when a misstep caused her to scratch her face with the thorny
twigs of a wild plum-tree. But the effort necessary to the undertaking
and the agony of the long waiting had exhausted her nervous
force, and she had none left for fortitude. So that when she
arrived at Andrew's fence and felt her way along to the gate, and
heard the hoarse, thunderous baying of his great St. Bernard dog,
she was ready to faint. But a true instinct makes such a dog
gallant. It is a vile cur that will harm a lady. Julia walked
trembling up to the front-door of the castle, growled at by the
huge black beast, and when the Philosopher admitted her, some
time after she had knocked, she sank down fainting into a chair.

p555-217 CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SECRET STAIRWAY.

[figure description] Page 212.[end figure description]

“GOD bless you!” said Andrew as he handed
her a gourd of water to revive her. “You are
as faithful as Hero. You are another Heloise.
You are as brave as the Maid of Orleans. I will
never say that women are unfaithful again. God
bless you, my daughter! You have given me faith in your sex.
I have been a lonely man; a boughless, leafless trunk, shaken by
the winter winds. But you are my niece. You know how to
be faithful. I am proud of you! Henceforth I call you my
daughter. If you were my daughter, you would be to me all
that Margaret Roper was to Sir Thomas More.” And the shaggy
man of egotistic and pedantic speech, but of womanly sensibilities,
was weeping.

The reviving Julia begged to know how August was.

“Ah, constant heart! And he is constant as you are. Noble
fellow! I will not deceive you. The doctors think that he will
not live more than twenty-four hours. But he is only dying to
see you, now. Your coming may revive him. We sent for
you this morning by Jonas, hoping you might escape and come

[figure description] Page 213.[end figure description]

in some way. But Jonas could not get his message to you.
Some angel must have brought you. It is an augury of good.”

The hopefulness of Andrew sprang out of his faith in an
ideal, right outcome. Julia could not conceal from herself the
fact that his opinion had no ground. But in such a strait as
hers, she could not help clinging even to this support.

Andrew was a little perplexed. How to take Julia up-stairs?
Mrs. Wehle and Wilhelmina and the doctor went in regularly,
not by the rope-ladder, but by a more secure wooden one which
he had planted against the outside of the house. But Andrew
had suddenly conceived so exalted an opinion of his niece's
virtues that he was unwilling to lead her into the upper story in
that fashion. His imagination had invested her with all the glories
of all the heroines, from Penelope to Beatrice, and from
Beatrice to Scott's Rebecca. At last a sudden impulse seized
him.

“My dear daughter, they say that genius is to madness close
allied. When I built this house I was in a state bordering on
insanity, I suppose. I pleased my whims—my whims were my
only company—I pleased my whims in building an American
castle. These whims begin to seem childish to me now. I put
in a secret stairway. No human foot but my own has ever trodden
it. August, whom I love more than any other, and who
is one of the few admitted to my library, has always ascended
by the rope-ladder. But you are my niece; I would you were
my daughter. I will signalize my reverence for you by showing
up the stairway the woman who knows how to love and be faithful,
the feet that would be worthy of golden steps if I had them.
Come.”

Spite of her grief and anxiety, Julia was impressed and

[figure description] Page 214.[end figure description]

oppressed with the reverence shown her by her uncle. She had a
veneration almost superstitious for the Philosopher's learning.
She was not accustomed to even respectful treatment, and to be
worshiped in this awful way by such a man was something
almost as painful as it was pleasant.

The entrance to the stairway, if that could be called a stairway
which was as difficult of ascent as a ladder, was through a closet
by the side of the donjon chimney, and the logs had been so arranged
without and within that the space occupied by the narrow
and zigzag stairs was not apparent. Up these stairs he took
Julia, leaving her in a closet above. As this closet was situated
alongside the chimney, it opened, of course, into the small corner
room which I have before described, and in which August was
now lying. Andrew descended the stairs and entered the upper
story again by the outside ladder. He thought best to prepare
August for the coming of Julia, lest joy should destroy a life
that was so far wasted.

p555-220 CHAPTER XXXIV. THE INTERVIEW.

[figure description] Page 215.[end figure description]

WE left August on that summer day on the
levee at Louisville without employment. He
was not exactly disheartened, but he was homesick.
That he was forbidden to go back by
threats of prosecution for his burglarious manner
of entering Samuel Anderson's house was reason enough for
wanting to go; that his father's family were not yet free from
danger was a stronger reason; but strongest of all, though he
blushed to own it to himself, was the longing to be where he
might perchance sometimes see the face he had seen that spring
morning in the bottom of a sun-bonnet. Right manfully did he
fight against his discouragement and his homesickness, and his
longing to see Julia. It was better to stay where he was. It was
better not to go back beaten. If he surrendered so easily, he
would never put himself into a situation where he could claim
Julia with self-respect. He would stay and make his way in
the world somehow. But making his way in the world did not
seem half so easy now as it had on that other morning in March
when he stood in the barn talking to Julia. Making your fortune
always seems so easy until you've tried it. It seems rather

[figure description] Page 216.[end figure description]

easy in a novel, and still easier in a biography. But no Samuel
Smiles ever writes the history of those who fail; the vessels that
never came back from their venturous voyages left us no
log-books. Many have written the History of Success. What
melancholy Plutarch shall arise to record, with a pen dipped in
wormwood, the History of Failure?

No! he would not go back defeated. August said this over
bravely, but a little too often, and with a less resolute tone at
each repetition. He contemned himself for his weakness, and
tried, but tried in vain, to form other plans. Had he known
how much one's physical state has to do with one's force of
character, he might have guessed that he did not deserve the
blame he meted out to himself. He might have remembered
what Shakespeare's Portia says to Brutus, that “humour hath
his hour with every man.” But with a dull and unaccountable
aching in his head and back he compromised with himself. He
would go to the castle and pass a day or two. Then he would
return and fight it out.

So he got on the packet Isaac Shelby, and was soon shaking
with a chill that showed how thoroughly malaria had pervaded
his system. His very bones seemed frozen. But if you ever
shook with such a chill, or rather if you were ever shaken by
such a chill, taking hold of you like a demoniacal possession;
if you ever felt your brain congealing, your icy bones breaking,
your frosty heart becoming paralyzed, with a cold no fire could
reach, you know what it is; and if you have not felt it, no
words of mine can make you understand the sensations. After
the chill came the period when August felt himself between two
parts of Milton's hell, between a sea of ice and a sea of fire;
sometimes the hot wave scorched him, then it retired again before

[figure description] Page 217.[end figure description]

the icy one. At last it was all hot, and the boiling blood scalded
his palms and steamed to his brain, bewildering his thoughts
and almost blinding his eyes. He had determined when he
started to get off at a wood-yard three miles below Andrew's
castle, to avoid observation and the chance of arrest; and now
in his delirium the purpose as he had planned it remained fixed.
He got up at two o'clock, crazed with fever, dressed himself, and
went out into the rainy night. He went ashore in the mud
and bushes, and, guided more by instinct than by any conscious
thought, he started up the wagon-track along the river bank.
His furious fever drove him on, talking to himself, and splashing
recklessly into the pools of rain-water standing in the road.
He never remembered his debarkation. He must have fallen once
or twice, for he was covered with mud when he rang the alarm
at the castle. In answer to Andrew's “Who's there?” he
answered, “You'll have to send a harder rain than that if you
want to put this fire out!”

And so, what with the original disease, the mental discouragement,
and the exposure to the rain, the fever had well-nigh consumed
the life, and now that the waves of the hot sea after days
of fire and nights of delirium had gone back, there was hardly
any life left in the body, and the doctors said there was no
hope. One consuming desire remained. He wanted to see Julia
once before he went away; and that one desire it seemed impossible
to gratify. When he learned of the failure of Jonas to get
any message to Julia through Cynthy, he had felt the keenest
disappointment, and had evidently been sinking since the hope
that kept him up had been taken away.

The mother sat by his bed, Gottlieb sat stupefied at the foot,
with Jonas by his side, and Wilhelmina was crying in a still

[figure description] Page 218.[end figure description]

fashin in one corner of the room. August lay breathing
feebly, and with his life evidently ebbing.

“August!” said Andrew, as he stood over his bed, having
come to announce the arrival of Julia. “August!” Andrew
tried to speak quietly, but there was a something of hope in the
inflection, a tremor of eagerness in the utterance, that made the
mother look up quickly and inquiringly

August opened his eyes slowly and looked into the face of the
Philosopher. Then he slowly closed his eyes again, and a something,
not a smile—he was too weak for that—but a look of
infinite content, spread over his wan face.

“I know,” he whisperd.

“Know what?” asked Andrew, leaning down to catch his
words.

“Julia.” And a single tear crept out from under the closed
lid. The tender mother wiped it away.

After resting a moment, August looked up at Andrew's face
inquiringly

“She is coming,” said the Philosopher.

August smiled very faintly, but Andrew was sure he smiled,
and again leaned down his ear.

“She is here,” whispered August; “I heard Charon bark, and
I—saw—your—face.”

Andrew now stepped to the closet-door and opened it, and
Julia came out.

“Blamed ef he a'n't a witch!” whispered Jonas. “Cunjures
a angel out of his cupboard!”

Julia did not see anybody or anything but the white and
wasted face upon the pillow. The eyes were now closed again,
and she quickly crossed the floor, and—not without a faint

[figure description] Page 219.[end figure description]

maidenly blush—stooped and kissed the parched lips, from which
the life seemed already to have fled.

And August with difficulty disengaged his wasted hand from
the cover, and laid his nerveless fingers—alas! like a skeleton's
now—in the warm hand of Julia, and said—she leaned down to
listen, as he whispered feebly through his dry lips out of a full
heart—“Thank God!”

And the Philosopher, catching the words, said audibly,
“Amen!”

And the mother only wept.

p555-225 CHAPTER XXXV. GETTING READY FOR THE END.

[figure description] Page 220.[end figure description]

HOW Julia spent two hours of blessed sadness
at the castle; how August slept peacefully for
five minutes at a time with his hand in hers, and
then awoke and looked at her, and then slumbered
again; how she moistened his parched lips
for him, and gave him wine; how at last she had to bid him
a painful farewell; how the mother gave her a benediction
in German and a kiss; how Wilhelmina clung to her with
tears; how Jonas called her a turtle-dove angel; how Brother
Hall, the preacher who had been sent for at the mother's request,
to converse with the dying man, spoke a few consoling words to
her; how Gottlieb confided to Jonas his intention never to
“sprach nodin 'pout Yangee kirls no more;” and how at last
Uncle Andrew walked home with her, I have not time to tell.
When the Philosopher bade her adieu, he called her names
which she did not understand. But she turned back to him,
and after a minute's hesitation, spoke huskily. “Uncle Andrew
if he—if he should get worse—I want—”

[figure description] Page 221.[end figure description]

“I know, my daughter; you want him to die your husband?”

“Yes, if he wishes it. Send for me day or night, and I'll
come in spite of everybody.”

“God bless you, my daughter!” said Andrew. And he
watched until she got safely into the house without discovery, and
then he went back satisfied and proud.

Of course August died, and Julia devoted herself to philanthropic
labors. It is the fashion now for novels to end thus
sadly, and you would not have me be out of the fashion.

But August did not die. Joy is a better stimulant than wine.
Love is the best tonic in the pharmacopeia. And from the hour
in which August Wehle looked into the eyes of Julia, the tide of
life set back again. Not perceptibly at first. For two days he
was neither better nor worse. But this was a gain. Then slowly
he came back to life. But at Andrew's instance he kept indoors
while Humphreys staid.

Humphreys, on his part, like Ananias, pretended to have
disposed of all his property, paid his debts, reserved enough to
live on until the approaching day of doom, and given the
rest to the poor of the household of faith, and there were several
others who were sincere enough to do what he only pretended.
Among the leading Adventists was “Dr.” Ketchup, who still
dealt out corn-sweats and ginseng-tea, but who refused to sell
his property. He excused himself by quoting the injunction,
“Occupy till I come.” But others sold their estates for trifles,
and gave themselves up to proclaiming the millennium.

Mrs. Abigail Anderson was a woman who did nothing by
halves. She was vixenish, she was selfish, she was dishonest and
grasping; but she was religious. If any man think this paradox
impossible, he has observed character superficially. There are

[figure description] Page 222.[end figure description]

criminals in State's-prison who have been very devout all their
lives. Religious questions took hold of Mrs. Anderson's whole
nature. She was superstitious, narrow, and intense. She was
as sure that the day of judgment would be proclaimed on the
eleventh of August, 1843, as she was of her life. No consideration
in opposition to any belief of hers weighed a feather with
her. Her will mastered her judgment and conscience.

And so she determined that Samuel must sell his property
for a trifle. How far she was influenced in this by a sincere
desire to square all outstanding debts before the final settlement,
how far by a longing to be considered the foremost and most
pious of all, and how far by business shrewdness based on that
feeling which still lurks in the most protestant people, that such
sacrifices do improve their state in a future world, I can not
tell. Doubtless fanaticism, hypocrisy, and a self-interest that
looked sordidly even at heaven, mingled in bringing about the
decision. At any rate, the property was to be sold for a few
hundred dollars.

Getting wind of this decision, Andrew promptly appeared
at his brother's house and offered to buy it. But Mrs. Abigail
couldn't think of it. Andrew had always been her enemy, and
though she forgave him, she would not on any account sell
him an inch of the land. It would not be right He had claimed
that part of it belonged to him, and to let him have it would be
to admit his claim.

“Andrew,” she said, “you do not believe in the millennium,
and people say that you are a skeptic. You want to cheat us out
of what you think a valuable piece of property. And you'll find
yourself at the last judgment with the weight of this sin on
your heart. You will, indeed!”

[figure description] Page 223.[end figure description]

“How clearly you reason about other people's duty!” said
the Philosopher. “If you had seen your own duty half so
clearly, some of us would have been better off, and your account
would have been straighter.”

Here Mrs. Anderson grew very angry, and vented her spleen
in a solemn exhortation to Andrew to get ready for the coming
of the Master, not three weeks off at the farthest, and she warned
him that the archangel might blow his trumpet at any moment.
Then where would he be? she asked in exultation. Human
meanness is never so pitiful as when it tries to seize on God's
judgments as weapons with which to gratify its own spites. I
trust this remark will not be considered as applying only to Mrs.
Anderson.

But Mrs. Anderson fired off all the heavenly small-shot she
could find in the teeth and eyes of Andrew, and then, to prevent
a rejoinder, she told him it was time for her to go to secret
prayer, and she only stopped upon the threshold to send back
one Parthian arrow in the shape of a warning to “watch and
be ready.”

I wonder if a certain class of religious people have ever
thought how much their exclusiveness and Pharisaism have to do
with the unhappy fruitlessness of all their appeals! Had Mrs.
Anderson been as blameless as an angel, such exhortations would
have driven a weaker than Andrew to hate the name of religion.

But I must not moralize, for Mr. Humphreys has already
divulged his plan of disposing of the property. He has a
friend, one Thomas A. Parkins, who has money, and who will
buy the farm at two hundred dollars. He could procure the
money in advance any day by going to the village of Bethany,
the county-seat, and drawing on Mr. Parkins, and cashing the

[figure description] Page 224.[end figure description]

draft. It was a matter of indifference to him, he said, only
that he would like to oblige so good a friend.

This arrangement, by which the Anderson farm was to be sold
for a song to some distant stranger, pleased Mrs. Abigail. She
could not bear that one of her unbelieving neighbors should even
for a fortnight rejoice in a supposed good bargain at her expense.
To sell to Mr. Humphreys's friend in Louisville was just the
thing. When pressed by some of her neighbors who had not received
the Adventist gospel, to tell on what principle she could
justify her sale of the farm at all, she answered that if the farm
would not be of any account after the end of the world, neither
would the money.

Mr. Humphreys went down to the town of Bethany and came
back, affecting to have cashed a draft on his friend for two hundred
dollars. The deeds were drawn, and a justice of the peace
was to come the next morning and take the acknowledgment of
Mr. and Mrs. Anderson.

This was what Jonas learned as he sat in the kitchen talking
to Cynthy Ann. He had come to bring some message from the
convalescent August, and had been detained by the attraction
of adhesion.

“I told you it was fox-and-geese. Didn't I? And so Thomas
A. Parkins is his name. Gus Wehle said he'd bet the two was
one. Well, I must drive this varmint off afore he gits his
chickens.”

p555-230 CHAPTER XXXVI. THE SIN OF SANCTIMONY.

[figure description] Page 225.[end figure description]

JUST at this point arrived Mr. Hall, whom I have
before described as the good but callow Methodist
preacher on the circuit. Some people think that
a minister of the gospel should be exempt from criticism,
ridicule, and military duty. But the manly minister
takes his lot with the rest. Nothing could be more pernicious
than making the foibles of a minister sacred. Doubtless Mr.
Hall has long since come to laugh at his own early follies, his
official sanctimoniousness, and all that; and why should not I,
who have been a callow circuit-preacher myself in my day,
laugh at my Brother Hall, for the good of his kind?

He had come to visit Sister Cynthy Ann, whose name had
long stood on the class-book at Harden's Cross-Roads as a good
and acceptable member of the church in full connection. He was
visiting formally and officially each family in which there was a
member. Had he visited informally and unofficially, and like a
man instead of like a minister, he would have done more good.
But he came to Samuel Anderson's, and informed Mrs. Anderson
that he was visiting his members, and that as one of her

[figure description] Page 226.[end figure description]

household was a member, he would like to have a little religious conversation
and prayer with the family. Would she please gather
them together?

So Julia was called down-stairs, and Jonas was invited in
from the kitchen. The sight of him distressed Brother Hall.
For was not this New Light sent here by Satan to lead astray
one of his flock? But, at least, he would labor faithfully with
him.

He began with Mr. Samuel Anderson. But that worthy, after
looking at his wife in vain for a cue, darted off about the trumpets
of the Apocalypse.

“Mr. Anderson, as head of this family, your responsibility
is very great. Do you feel the full assurance, my brother?”
asked Mr. Hall.

“Yes,” said Mr. Anderson, “I am standing with my lamp
trimmed and ready. I am listening for the midnight shout. To-night
the trumpet may sound. I am afraid you don't do your
duty, or you would lift up your voice. The time and times and
a half are almost out.”

Mr. Hall was a little dashed at this. A man whose religious
conversation is of a set and conventional type, is always shocked
and jostled when he is thrown from the track. And he himself,
like everybody else, had felt the Adventist infection, and
did not want to commit himself. So he turned to Mrs. Anderson.
She answered like a seraph every question put to her—the
conventional questions never pierce the armor of a hypocrite or
startle the conscience of a self-deceiver. Mr. Hall congratulated
her in his most official tone (a compound of authority,
awfulness, and sanctity) on her deep experience of the things that
made for her everlasting peace. He told her that people of her

A PASTORAL VISIT. [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 229.[end figure description]

high attainments must beware of spiritual pride. And Mrs. Anderson
took the warning with beautiful meekness, sinking into
forty fathoms of undisguised and rather ostentatious humility,
heaving solemn sighs in token of self-reproach—a self-reproach
that did not penetrate the cuticle.

“And you, Sister Cynthy Ann,” he said, fighting shy of Jonas
for the present, “I trust you are trying to let your light shine.
Do you feel that you are pressing on?”

Poor Cynthy Ann sank into a despondency deeper than usual.
She was afeard not. Seemed like as ef her heart was cold
and dead to God. Seemed like as ef she couldn't no ways gin
up the world. It weighed her down like a rock, and many was
the fight she had with the enemy. No, she wuzn't getting on.

“My dear sister,” said Mr. Hall, “let me warn you. Here is
Mrs. Anderson, who has given up the world entirely. I hope
you'll follow so good an example. Do not be led astray by
worldly affections; they are sure to entrap you. I am afraid you
have not maintained your steadfastness as you should.” Here
Mr. Hall's eye waudered doubtfully to Jonas, of whom he felt
a little afraid. Jonas, on his part, had no reason to like Mr.
Hall for his advice in Cynthy's love affair, and now the minister's
praises of Mrs. Anderson and condemnation of Cynthy Ann
had not put him in any mood to listen to exhortation.

“Well, Mr. Harrison,” said the young minister solemnly,
approaching Jonas much as a dog does a hedgehog, “how do
you feel to-day?”

“Middlin' peart, I thank you; how's yourself?”

This upset the good man not a little, and convinced him that
Jonas was in a state of extreme wickedness.

“Are you a Christian?”

[figure description] Page 230.[end figure description]

“Wal, I 'low I am. How about yourself, Mr. Hall?”

“I believe you are a New Light. Now, do you believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ?” asked the minister in an annihilating tone.

“Yes, I do, my aged friend, a heap sight more'n I do in some
of them that purtends to hev a paytent right on all his blessins,
and that put on solemn airs and call other denominations hard
names. My friend, I don't believe in no religion that's made up
of sighs and groans and high temper” (with a glance at Mrs. Anderson),
“and that thinks a good deal more of its bein' sound in
doctrine than of the danger of bein' rotten in life. They's lots o'
bad eggs got slick and shiny shells!”

Mr. Hall happened to think just here of the injunction against
throwing pearls before swine, and so turned to Humphreys, who
made his heart glad by witnessing a good confession, in soft
and unctuous tones, and couched in the regulation phrases which
have worn smooth in long use.

Julia had slunk away in a corner. But now he appealed to
her also.

“Blest with a praying mother, you, Miss Anderson, ought to
repent of your sins and flee from the wrath to come. You know
the right way. You have been pointed to it by the life of your
parents from childhood. Reared in the bosom of a Christian
household, let me entreat you to seek salvation immediately.”

I do not like to repeat this talk here. But it is an unfortunate
fact that goodness and self-sacrificing piety do not always
go with practical wisdom. The novelist, like the historian, must
set down things as he finds them. A man who talks in consecrated
phrases is yet in the poll-parrot state of mental development.

“Do you feel a desire to flee from the wrath to come?”
he asked

[figure description] Page 231.[end figure description]

Julia gave some sort of inaudible assent.

“My dear young sister, you have great reason to be thankful—
very great reason for gratitude to Almighty God.” (Like many
other pious young men, Mr. Hall said Gawd.) “I met you the
other night at your uncle's. The young man whose life we then
despaired of has recovered.” And with more of this, Mr. Hall
told Julia's secret, while Mrs. Anderson, between her anger and
her rapt condition of mind, seemed to be petrifying.

I trust the reader does not expect me to describe the feelings
of Julia while Mr. Hall read a chapter and prayed. Nor the
emotions of Mrs. Anderson. I think if Mr. Hall could have
heard her grind her teeth while he in his prayer gave thanks for
the recovery of August, he would not have thought so highly
of her piety. But she managed to control her emotions until
the minister was fairly out of the house. In bidding good-by,
Mr. Hall saw how pale and tremulous Julia was, and with his
characteristic lack of sagacity, he took her emotion to be a sign
of religious feeling, and told her he was pleased to see that she
was awakened to a sense of her condition.

And then he left. And then came the deluge.

p555-237 CHAPTER XXXVII. THE DELUGE.

[figure description] Page 232.[end figure description]

THE indescribable deluge! But, after all, the worst
of anything of that sort is the moment before it
begins. A plunge-bath, a tooth-pulling, an amputation,
and a dress-party are all worse in anticipation
than in the moment of infliction. Julia, as she stood
busily sticking a pin in the window-sash, waiting for her mother
to begin, wished that the storm might burst, and be done with it.
But Mrs. Anderson understood her business too well for that.
She knew the value of the awful moments of silence before beginning.
She had not practiced all her life without learning the
fine art of torture in its exquisite details. I doubt not the black-robed
fathers of the Holy Office were leisurely gentlemen, giving
their victims plenty of time for anticipatory meditation,
laying out their utensils quietly, inspecting the thumb-screw
affectionately to make sure that it would work smoothly, discussing
the rack and wheel with much tender forethought, as
though torture were a sweet thing, to be reserved like a little
girl's candy lamb, and only resorted to when the appetite has

[figure description] Page 233.[end figure description]

been duly whetted by contemplation. I never had the pleasure
of knowing an inquisitor, and I can not certify that they were of
this deliberate fashion. But it “stands to nature” that they were.
For the vixens who are vixens of the highest quality, are always
deliberate.

Mrs. Anderson felt that the piece of invective which she
was about to undertake, was not to be taken in hand unadvisedly,
“but reverently, discreetly, and in the fear of God.”
And so she paused, and Julia fumbled the tassel of the window-curtain,
and trembled with the chill of expectation. And
Mrs. Abigail continued to debate how she might make this,
which would doubtless be her last outburst before the day of
judgment, her masterpiece—worthy song of the dying swan.
And then she hoped, she sincerely hoped, to be able by this
awful coup de main to awaken Julia to a sense of her sinfulness.
For there was such a jumble of mixed motives in her mind, that
one could never distinguish her sincerity from her hypocrisy.

Mrs. Anderson's conscience was quite an objective one. As
Jonas often remarked, “she had a feelin' sense of other folkses
unworthiness.” And the sins which she appreciated were generally
sins against herself. Julia's disobedience to herself was
darker in her mind than murder committed on anybody else
would have been. And now she sat deliberating, not on the
limit of the verbal punishment she meant to inflict—that gave
her no concern—but on her ability to do the matter justice.
Even as a tyrannical backwoods school-master straightens his long
beech-rod relishfully before applying it.

Not that Mrs. Anderson was silent all this time. She was
sighing and groaning in a spasmodic devotion. She was “seeking
strength from above to do her whole duty,” she would have

[figure description] Page 234.[end figure description]

told you. She was “agonizing” in prayer for her daughter,
and she contrived that her stage-whisper praying should now and
then reach the ears of its devoted object. Humphreys remained
seated, pretending to read the copy of “Josephus,” but watching
the coming storm with the interest of a connoisseur. And while
he remained Jonas determined to stay, to keep Julia in countenance,
and he beckoned to Cynthy to stay also. And Samuel
Anderson, who loved his daughter and feared his wife, fled
like a coward from the coming scene. Everybody expected Mrs.
Anderson to break out like a fury.

But she knew a better plan than that. She felt a new device
come like an inspiration. And perhaps it was. It really
seemed to Jonas that the devil helped her. For instead of breaking
out into commonplace scolding, the resources of which she
had long since exhausted, she dropped upon her knees, and
began to pray for Julia.

No swearer ever curses like the priest who veils his personal
spites in official and pious denunciations, and Mrs. Anderson had
never dealt out abuse so roundly and terribly and crushingly, as
she did under the guise of praying for the salvation of Julia's
soul from well-deserved perdition. But Abigail did not say perdition.
She left that to weak spirits. She thought it a virtue
to say “hell” with unction and emphasis, by way of alarming
the consciences of sinners. Mrs. Anderson's prayer is not reportable.
That sort of profanity is too bad to write. She
capped her climax—even as I have heard a revivalist pray for a
scoffer that had vexed his righteous soul—by asking God to convert
her daughter, or if she could not be converted to take her
away, that she might not heap up wrath against the day of wrath.
For that sort of religious excitement which does not quiet the

[figure description] Page 235.[end figure description]

evil passions, seems to inflame them, and Mrs. Anderson was not
in any right sense sane. And the prayer was addressed more to
the frightened Julia than to God. She would have been terribly
afflicted had her petition been granted.

Julia would have run away from the admonition which followed
the prayer, had it not been that Mrs. Anderson adroitly
put it under cover of a religious exhortation. She besought
Julia to repent, and then, affecting to show her her sinfulness,
she proceeded to abuse her.

Had Julia no temper? Yes, she had doubtless a spice of her
mother's anger without her meanness. She would have resisted,
but that from childhood she had felt paralyzed by the utter uselessness
of all resistance. The bravest of the villagers at the foot
of Vesuvius never dreamed of stopping the crater's mouth.

But, happily, at last Mrs. Anderson's insane wrath went a little
too far.

“You poor lost sinner,” she said, “to think you should go to
destruction under my very eyes, disgracing us all, by running
over the country at night with bad men! But there's mercy
even for such as you.”

Julia would not have understood the full meaning of this aspersion
of her purity, had she not caught Humphreys's eye. His
expression, half sneer, half leer, seemed to give her mother's saying
its full interpretation. She put out her hand. She turned
white, and said: “Say one word more, and I will go away from
you and never come back! Never!” And then she sat down and
cried, and then Mrs. Anderson's maternal love, her “unloving
love,” revived. To have her daughter leave her, too, would be a
sort of defeat. She hushed, and sat down in her splint-bottomed
rocking-chair, which snapped when she rocked, and which seemed

[figure description] Page 236.[end figure description]

to speak for her after she had shut her mouth. Her face settled
into a martyr-like appeal to Heaven in proof of the justice of her
cause. And then she fell back on her forlorn hope. She wept
hysterically, in sincere self-pity, to think that an affectionate
mother should have such a daughter!

Julia, finding that her mother had desisted, went to her room.
She did not exactly pray, but she talked to herself as she paced
the floor. It was a monologue, and yet there was a conscious
appeal to an invisible Presence, who could not misjudge her, and
so she passed from talking to herself to talking to God, and that
without any of the formality of prayer. Her mother had made
God seem to be against her. Now she, like David, protested her
innocence to God. She recited half to herself, and yet also to
God—for is not every appeal to one's conscience in some sense
an appeal to God?—she recited all the struggles of that night
when she went to August at the castle. People talk of the consolation
there is in God's mercy. But Julia found comfort in
God's justice. He could not judge her wrongly

Then she opened the Testament at the old place, and read
the words long since fixed in her memory. And then she—
weary and heavy laden—came again to Him who invites, and
found rest. And then she found, as many another has found,
that coming to God is not, as theorists will have it, a coming once
for a lifetime, but a coming oft and ever repeated.

Jonas and Cynthy Ann retired to the kitchen, and the former
said in his irreverent way, “Blamed ef Abigail ha'nt got more
devils into her'n Mary Magdalene had the purtiest day she ever
seed! I should think, arter a life with her fer a mother, the bad
place would be a healthy and delightful clime. The devil a'n't
a patchin' to her.”

[figure description] Page 237.[end figure description]

“Don't, Jonas; you talk so cur'us, like as ef you was kinder
sorter wicked.”

“That's jest what I am, my dear, but Abigail Anderson's
wicked without the kinder sorter. She cusses when she's aprayin'.
She cusses that poar gal right in the Lord's face.
Good by, I must go. Smells so all-fired like brimstone about
here.” This last was spoken in an undertone of indignant
soliloquy, as he crossed the threshold of Cynthy's clean kitchen.

p555-243 CHAPTER XXXVIII. SCARING A HAWK.

[figure description] Page 238.[end figure description]

JONAS was thoroughly alarmed. He exaggerated
the harm that Humphreys might do to
August, now that he knew where he was. August,
on his part, felt sure that Humphreys would
not do anything against him; certainly not in the
way of legal proceedings. And as for the sale of Samuel
Anderson's farms, that did not disturb him. Like almost
everybody else at that time, August Wehle was strongly impressed
by the assertions of the Millerites, and if the world
should be finished in the next month, the farms were of
no consequence. And if Millerism proved a delusion, the loss
of Samuel Anderson's property would only leave Julia on his
level, so far as worldly goods went. The happiness this last
thought brought him made him ashamed. Why should he
rejoice in Mr. Anderson's misfortune? Why should he wish

[figure description] Page 239.[end figure description]

to pull Julia down to him? But still the thought remained
a pleasant one.

Jonas would not have it so. He had his plan. He went
home from the Adventist meeting that very night with Cynthy
Ann, and then stood talking to her at the corner of the
porch, feeling very sure that Humphreys would listen from
above. He heard his stealthy tread, after a while, disturb a
loose board on the upper porch. Then he began to talk to
Cynthy Ann in this strain:

“You see, I can't tell no secrets, Cynthy Ann, even to
your Royal Goodness, as I might say, seein' as how as you
a'n't my wife, and a'n't likely to be, if Brother Goshorn can
have his way. But you're the Queen of Hearts, anyhow.
But s'pose I was to hint a secret?”

“Sh—sh—h-h-h!” said Cynthy Ann, partly because she felt
a sinful pleasure in the flattery, and partly because she felt
sure that Humphreys was above. But Jonas paid no attention
to the caution.

“I'll gin you a hint as strong as a Irishman's, which they
do say'll knock you down. Let's s'pose a case. They a'n't
no harm in s'posin' a case, you know. I've knowed boys
who'd throw a rock at a fence-rail and hit a stump, and then
say, `S'posin' they was a woodpecker on that air stump,
wouldn't I a keeled him over?' You can s'pose a case and
make a woodpecker wherever you want to. Well, s'posin'
they was a inquisition or somethin' of the kind from the
guv'nor of the State of ole Kaintuck to the guv'nor of the
State of Injeanny? And s'posin' that the dokyment got lodged
in this 'ere identical county? And s'posin' it called fer the
body of one Thomas A. Parkins, alias J. W. 'Umphreys?

[figure description] Page 240.[end figure description]

And s'posin' it speecified as to sartain and sundry crimes committed
in Paduky and all along the shore, fer all I know?
Now, s'posin' all of them air things, what would Clark township
do to console itself when that toonful v'ice and them air
blazin' watch-seals had set in ignominy for ever and ever?
Selah! Good-night, and don't you breathe a word to a livin'
soul, nur a dead one, 'bout what I been a-sayin'. You'll know
more by daylight to-morry 'n you know now.”

And the last part of the speech was true, for by midnight
the Hawk had fled. And the sale of the Anderson farm to
Humphreys was never completed. For three days the end of
the world was forgotten in the interest which Clark township
felt in the flight of its favorite. And by degrees the story
of Norman's encounter with the gamblers and of August's recovery
of the money became spread abroad through the confidential
hints of Jonas. And by degrees another story became
known; it could not long be concealed. It was the story of
Betsey Malcolm, who averred that she had been privately
married to Humphreys on the occasion of a certain trip they
had made to Kentucky together, to attend a “big meeting.”
The story was probably true, but uncharitable gossips shook
their heads.

It was only a few evenings after the flight of Humphreys
that Jonas had another talk with Cynthy Ann, in which he
confessed that all his supposed case about a requisition from
the governor of Kentucky for Humphreys's arrest was pure
fiction.

“But, Jonas, is—is that air right? I'm afeard it a'n't right
to tell an ontruth.”

“So 'ta'n't; but I only s'posed a case, you know.”

[figure description] Page 241.[end figure description]

“But Brother Hall said last Sunday two weeks, that anything
that gin a false impression was—was lying. Now, I
don't think you meant it, but then I thought I orto speak to
you about it.”

“Well, maybe you're right. I see you last summer a-puttin'
up a skeercrow to keep the poor, hungry little birds of the
air from gittin' the peas that they needed to sustain life. An'
I said, What a pity that the best woman I ever seed should
tell lies to the poor little birds that can't defend theirselves
from her wicked wiles! But I see that same day a skeercrow,
a mean, holler, high-percritical purtense of a ole hat
and coat, a-hanging in Brother Goshorn's garden down to the
cross-roads. An' I wondered ef it was your Methodis' trainin'
that taught you sech-like cheatin' of the little sparrys and
blackbirds.”

“Yes; but Jonas—” said Cynthy, bewildered.

“And I see a few days arterwards a Englishman with a
humbug-fly onto his line, a foolin' the poor, simple-hearted
little fishes into swallerin' a hook that hadn't nary sign of a
ginowine bait onto it. An' I says, says I, What a deceitful
thing the human heart is!”

“Why, Jonas, you'd make a preacher!” said Cynthy Ann,
touched with the fervor of his utterance, and inly resolved
never to set up another scarecrow.

“Not much, my dear. But then, you see, I make distinctions.
Ef I was to see a wolf a-goin' to eat a lamb, what
would I do? Why, I'd skeer or fool him with the very fust
thing I could find. Wouldn' you, honey?”

“In course,” said Cynthy Ann.

“And so, when I seed a wolf or a tiger or a painter, like

[figure description] Page 242.[end figure description]

that air 'Umphreys, about to gobble up fortins, and to do some
harm to Gus, maybe, I jest rigged up a skeercrow of words,
like a ole hat and coat stuck onto a stick, and run him off.
Any harm done, my dear?”

“Well, no, Jonas; I ruther 'low not.”

Whether Jonas's defense was good or not, I can not say, for
I do not know. But he is entitled to the benefit of it.

p555-248 CHAPTER XXXIX. JONAS TAKES AN APPEAL

[figure description] Page 243.[end figure description]

JONAS had waited for the coming of the
quarterly meeting to carry his appeal to the
presiding elder. The quarterly meeting for the circuit
was held at the village of Brayville, and beds
were made upon the floor for the guests who crowded
the town. Every visiting Methodist had a right to entertainment,
and every resident Methodist opened his doors very wide,
for Western people are hospitable in a fashion and with a bountifulness
unknown on the eastern side of the mountains. Who
that has not known it, can ever understand the delightfulness of
a quarterly meeting? The meeting of old friends—the social
life—is all but heavenly. And then the singing of the old Methodist
hymns, such as


“Oh! that will be joyful!
Joyful! joyful!
Oh! that will be joyful,
To meet to part no more.”
And that other solemnly-sweet refrain:


“The reaping-time will surely come,
And angels shout the harvest home!”

[figure description] Page 244.[end figure description]

And who shall describe the joy of a Christian mother, when her
scapegrace son “laid down the arms of his rebellion” and was
“soundly converted”? Let those sneer who will, but such moral
miracles as are wrought in Methodist revivals are more wonderful
than any healing of the blind or raising of the dead
could be.

Jonas turned up, faithful to his promise, and called on the
“elder” at the place where he was staying, and asked for a private
interview. He found the old gentleman exercising his
sweet voice in singing,

When he concluded the verse he raised his half-closed eyes
and saw Jonas standing in the door.

“Mr. Persidin' Elder,” said Jonas, trying in vain to speak
with some seriousness and veneration, “I come to ax your
consent to marry one of your flock—the best lamb you've
got in the whole fold.”

“Bless you, Mr. Harrison,” said Father Williams, the old
elder, laughing, “bless you, I haven't any right to consent or
forbid. Ask the lady herself!”

“Ax the lady!” said Jonas. “Didn't I though! And didn't
Mr. Goshorn forbid the lady to marry me, under the pains and
penalties pervided; and didn't Mr. Hall set his seal to the forbiddin'
of Goshorn! An' I says to her, `I won't take nothin' less

[figure description] Page 245.[end figure description]

than a elder or a bishop on this `ere vital question.' When I
want a sheep, I don't go to the underlin,' but to the boss; and
so I brought this appeal up to you on a writ of habeas corpus, or
whatever you may call it.”

The presiding elder laughed again, and looked closely at
Jonas. Then he stepped to the door and called in the circuit
preacher, Mr. Hall, and the class leader, Mr. Goshorn, both of
whom happened to be in the next room engaged in an excited
discussion with a brother who was a little touched with Millerism.

“What's this Mr. Harrison tells me about your forbidding the
banns in his case?”

“He's a New Light,” said Brother Hall, showing his abhorrence
in his face, “and it seemed to me that for a Methodist to
marry a New Light was a sin—a being yoked together unequally
with an unbeliever. You know, Father Williams, that New
Lights are Arians.”

The old man seemed more amused than ever. Turning to
Jonas, he asked him if he was an Arian.

“Not as I knows on, my venerable friend. I may have
caught the disease when I had the measles, or I may have been a
Arian in infancy, or I may be a Arian on my mother's side,
you know; but as I don't know who or what it may be, I a'n't in
no way accountable fer it—no more'n Brother Goshorn is to blame
fer his face bein' so humbly. But I take it Arian is one of them
air pleasant names you and the New Light preachers uses in
your Christian intercourse together to make one another mad.
I'm one of them as goes to heaven straight—never stoppin' to
throw no donicks at the Methodists, Presbyterians, nor no other
misguided children of men. They may ride in the packet, or go

p555-251 BROTHER GOSHORN. [figure description] Page 246.[end figure description]

by flat-boat or keel-boat, ef they chooses. I go by the swiftsailin'
and palatial mail-boat New Light, and I don't run no
opposition line, nor bust my bilers tryin' to beat my neighbors
into the heavenly port.”

Brother Goshorn looked vexed. Brother Hall was scandalized
at the lightness of Jonas's conversation. But the old
presiding elder, with keen common-sense and an equally keen
sense of the ludicrous, could not look grave with all his effort
to keep from laughing.

“Are you an unbeliever?” he asked.

“I don't know what you call onbeliever. I believe in God
and Christ, and keep Sunday and the Fourth of July; but I don't
believe in all of Brother Goshorn's nonsense about wearing veils
and artificials.”

“Well,” said Brother Hall, “would you endeavor to induce
your wife to dress in a manner unbecoming a Methodist?”

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

“SAY THEM WORDS OVER AGAIN.” [figure description] Illustration page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 249.[end figure description]

“I wouldn't fer the world. If I git the article I want, I don't
keer what it's tied up in, calico or bombazine.”

“Couldn't you join the Methodist Church yourself, and keep
your wife company?” It was Brother Goshorn who spoke.

“Couldn't I? I suppose I could ef I didn't think no more
of religion than some other folks. I could jine the Methodist
Church, and have everybody say I jined to git my wife. That
may be serving God; but I can't see how. And then how long
would you keep me? The very fust time I fired off my blunder-buss
in class-meetin', and you heerd the buckshot and the
squirrel-shot and the slugs and all sorts of things a-rattlin'
around, you'd say I was makin' fun of the Gospel. I 'low they
a'n't no Methodist in me. I was cut out cur'us, you know, and
made up crooked.”

“Is there anything against Mr. Harrison, Brother Goshorn?”
asked the elder.

“He's a New Light,” said Mr. Goshorn, in a tone that signified
his belief that to be a New Light was enough.

“Is he honest and steady?”

“Never heard anything against him as a moralist.”

“Well, then, it's my opinion that any member of your class
would do better to marry a good, faithful, honest New Light
than to marry a hickory Methodist.”

Jonas got up like one demented, and ran out of the door and
across the street. In a moment he came back, bringing Cynthy
Ann in triumph.

“Now, say them words over again,” he said to the presiding
elder.

“Sister Cynthy Ann,” said the presiding elder, “you really
love Brother Harrison?”

[figure description] Page 250.[end figure description]

“I—I don't know whether it's right to set our sinful hearts on
the things of this perishin' world. But I think more of him,
I'm afeard, than I had ort to. He's got as good a heart as I ever
seed. But Brother Goshorn thought I hadn't orter marry him,
seein' he is a onbeliever.”

“But I a'n't,” said Jonas; “I believe in the Bible, and in everything
in it, and in Cynthy Ann and her good Methodist religion
besides.”

“I think you can give up all your scruples and marry Mr.
Harrison, and love him and be happy,” said the presiding elder.
“Don't be afraid to be happy, my sister. You'll be happy in
good company in heaven, and you'd just as well get used to it
here.”

“I told you I'd find a man that had salt enough to keep
his religion sweet. And, Father Williams, you've got to marry
us, whenever Cynthy Ann's ready,” said Jonas with enthusiasm.

And for a moment the look of overstrained scrupulosity on
Cynthy Ann's face relaxed and a strange look of happiness came
into her eyes.

And the time was fixed then and there.

Brother Hall was astonished.

And Brother Goshorn drew down his face, and said that he
didn't know what was to become of good, old-fashioned Methodism
and the rules of the Discipline, if the presiding elders talked
in that sort of a way. The church was going to the dogs.

p555-256 CHAPTER XL. SELLING OUT.

[figure description] Page 251.[end figure description]

THE flight of the Hawk did not long dampen the
ardor of those who were looking for signs in the
heaven above and the earth beneath. I have known
a school-master to stand, switch in hand, and give a
stubborn boy a definite number of minutes to yield.
The boy who would not have submitted on account of any
amount of punishment, was subdued by the awful waiting. We
have all read the old school-book story of the prison-warden who
brought a mob of criminals to subjection by the same process.
Millerism produced some such effect as this. The assured belief
of the believers had a great effect on others; the dreadful drawing
on of the set time day by day produced an effect in some
regions absolutely awful. An eminent divine, at that time a pastor
in Boston, has told me that the leaven of Adventism permeated
all religious bodies, and that he himself could not avoid
the fearful sense of waiting for some catastrophe—the impression
that all this expectation of people must have some significance.
If this was the effect in Boston, imagine the effect
in a country neighborhood like Clark township. Andrew,

[figure description] Page 252.[end figure description]

skeptical as he was visionary, was almost the only man that escaped
the infection. Jonas would have been as frankly irreverent if
the day of doom had come as he was at all times; but even
Jonas had come to the conclusion that “somethin' would happen,
or else somethin' else.” August, with a young man's
impressibility, was awe-stricken with thoughts of the nearing
end of the world, and Julia accepted it as settled.

It is a good thing that the invisible world is so thoroughly
shut out from this. The effect of too vivid a conception of it
is never wholesome. It was pernicious in the middle age, and
clairvoyance and spirit-rapping would be great evils to the world,
if it were not that the spirits, even of the ablest men, in losing
their bodies seem to lose their wits. It is well that it is so, for
if Washington Irving dictated to a medium accounts of the other
world in a style such as that of his “Little Britain,” for instance,
we should lose all interest in the affairs of this sphere, and nobody
would buy our novels.

This fever of excitement kept alive Samuel Anderson's determination
to sell his farms for a trifle as a testimony to unbelievers.
He found that fifty dollars would meet his expenses
until the eleventh of August, and so the price was set at that.

As soon as Andrew heard of this, he privately arranged with
Jonas to buy it; but Mrs. Anderson utterly refused. She said
she could see through it all. Jonas was one of Andrew's fingers.
Andrew had got to be a sort of a king in Clark township, and
Jonas was—was the king's fool. She did not mean that any of
her property should go into the hands of the clique that were trying
to rob her of her property and her daughter. Even for two
weeks they should not own her house!

Before this speech was ended, Bob Walker entered the door.

p555-258 “I WANT TO BUY YOUR PLACE.” [figure description] Page 253.[end figure description]

Bob was tall, stooped, good-natured, and desperately poor. With
ten children under twelve years of age, with an incorrigible fondness
for loafing and telling funny stories, Bob saw no chance to
improve his condition. A man may be either honest or lazy and
get rich; but a man who is both honest and indolent is doomed.
Bob lived in a cabin on the Anderson farm, and when not
hired by Samuel Anderson he did days' work here and there,
riding to and from his labor on a raw-boned mare, that was the
laughing-stock of the county. Bob pathetically called her

[figure description] Page 254.[end figure description]

Splinter-shin, and he always rode bareback, for the very good reason
that he had neither saddle nor sheepskin.

“Mr. Anderson,” said Bob, standing in the door and trying to
straighten the chronic stoop out of his shoulders, “I want to
buy your place.”

If Bob had said that he wanted to be elected president
Samuel Anderson could not have been more surprised.

“You look astonished; but folks don't know everything. I'
low I know how to lay by a little. But I never could git enough
to buy a decent kind of a tater-patch. So I says to my ole
woman this mornin', `Jane,' says I, `let's git some ground. Let's
buy out Mr. Anderson, and see how it'll feel to be rich fer a few
days. If she all burns up, let her burn, I say. We've had a plaguey
hard time of it, let's see how it goes to own two farms fer
awhile.' And so we thought we'd ruther hev the farms fer two
weeks than a little money in a ole stocking. What d'ye say?”

Jonas here put in that he didn't see why they mightn't sell
to him as well as to Bob Walker. Cynthy Ann had worked fer
Mrs. Anderson fer years, and him and Cynthy was a-goin' to
be one man soon. Why not sell to them?

“Because selling to you is selling to Andrew,” said Mrs.
Abigail, in a conclusive way.

And so Bob got the farms, possession to be given after the
fourteenth of August, thus giving the day of doom three days
of grace. And Bob rode round the county boasting that he was
as rich a man as there was in Clark Township. And Jonas declared
that ef the eend did come in the month of August,
Abigail would find some onsettled bills agin her fer cheatin'
the brother outen the inheritance. And Clark Township agreed
with him.

[figure description] Page 255.[end figure description]

August was secretly pleased that one obstacle to his marriage
was gone. If Andrew should prove right, and the world
should outlast the middle of August, there would be nothing
dishonorable in his marrying a girl that would have nothing to
sacrifice.

Andrew, for his part, gave vent to his feelings, as usual, by
two or three bitter remarks leveled at the whole human race,
though nowadays he was inclined to make exceptions in favor
of several people, of whom Julia stood first. She was a
woman of the old-fashioned kind, he said, fit to go alongside
Héloise or Chaucer's Grisilde.

p555-261 CHAPTER XLI. THE LAST DAY AND WHAT HAPPENED IN IT.

[figure description] Page 256.[end figure description]

THE religious excitement reached its culmination
as the tenth and eleventh of August came on.
Some made ascension-robes. Work was suspended
everywhere. The more abandoned, unwilling to
yield to the panic, showed its effects on them by
deeper potations, and by a recklessness of wickedness meant
to conceal their fears. With tin horns they blasphemously
affected to be angels blowing trumpets. They imitated the
Millerite meetings in their drunken sprees, and learned Mr.
Hankins's arguments by heart.

The sun of the eleventh of August rose gloriously. People
pointed to it with trembling, and said that it would rise no
more. Soon after sunrise there were crimson clouds stretching
above and below it, and popular terror seized upon this as a
sign. But the sun mounted with a scorching heat, which
showed that at least his shining power was not impaired. Then
men said, “Behold the beginning of the fervent heat that is to
melt the elements!” Night drew on, and every “shooting-star”
was a new sign of the end. The meteors, as usual at this time

[figure description] Page 257.[end figure description]

of the year, were plentiful, and the simple-hearted country-folk
were convinced that the stars were falling out of the sky.

A large bald hill overlooking the Ohio was to be the mount
of ascension. Here gathered Elder Hankins's flock with that
comfortable assurance of being the elect that only a narrow
bigotry can give. And here came others of all denominations,
consoling themselves that they were just as well off if they were
Christians as if they had made all this fuss about the millennium.
Here was August, too, now almost well, joining with the rest in
singing those sweet and inspiring Adventist hymns. His German
heart could not keep still where there was singing, and now, in
gratefulness at new-found health, he was more inclined to music
than ever. So he joined heartily and sincerely in the song that
begins:

When the concourse reached the lines,


“The saints have heard the midnight cry,
Go meet him in the air!”
neither August nor any one else could well resist the infection
of the profound and awful belief in the immediate coming of the
end which pervaded the throng. Strong men and women wept
and shouted with the excitement.

[figure description] Page 258.[end figure description]

Then Elder Hankins exhorted a little. He said that the time
was short. But men's hearts were hard. As in the days of the
flood, they were marrying and giving in marriage. Not half a
mile away a wedding was at that time taking place, and a man
who called himself a minister could not discern the signs of the
times, but was solemnizing a marriage.

This allusion was to the marriage of Jonas, which was to take
place that very evening at the castle. Mrs. Anderson had refused
to have “such wicked nonsense” at her house, and as Cynthy
had no home, Andrew had appointed it at the castle, partly to
oblige Jonas, partly from habitual opposition to Abigail, but
chiefly to express his contempt for Adventism.

Mrs. Anderson herself was in a state of complete sublimation.
She had sent for Norman, that she might get him ready for
the final judgment, and Norman, without the slightest inclination
to be genuinely religious, was yet a coward, and made a provisional
repentance, not meant to hold good if Elder Hankins's
figures should fail; just such a repentance as many a man has
made on what he supposed to be his death-bed. Do not I
remember a panic-stricken man, converted by typhoid fever and
myself, who laughed as soon as he began to eat gruel, to think
that he had been “such a fool as to send for the preacher”?

Now, between Mrs. Anderson's joy at Norman's conversion,
and her delight that the world would soon be at an end and
she on the winning side, and her anticipation of the pleasure
she would feel even in heaven in saying, “I told you so!” to
her unbelieving friends, she quite forgot Julia. In fact she
went from one fit of religious catalepsy to another, falling into
trances, or being struck down with what was mysteriously
called “the power.” She had relaxed her vigilance about Julia,

[figure description] Page 259.[end figure description]

for there were but three more hours of time, and she felt that
the goal was already gained, and she had carried her point to
the very last. A satisfaction for a saint!

The neglected Julia naturally floated toward the outer edge
of the surging crowd, and she and August inevitably drifted
together.

“Let us go and see Jonas married,” said August. “It is no
harm. God can take us to heaven from one place as well as
another, if we are His children.”

In truth, Julia was wearied and bewildered, not to say disgusted,
with her mother's peculiar religious exercises, and she
gladly escaped with August to the castle and the wedding of
her faithful friends.

Andrew, in a spirit of skeptical defiance, had made his castle
look as flowery and festive as possible. The wedding took place
in the lower story, but the library was illuminated and the
Adventists who had occasion to pass by Andrew's on their way to
the rendezvous accepted this as a new fulfillment of prophecy to
the very letter. They nodded one to another, and said, “See!
marrying and giving in marriage, as in the days of Noah!”

August and Julia were too much awe-stricken to say much
on their way to the castle. But in these last hours of a world
grown old and ready for its doom, they cleaved closer together.
There could be neither heaven nor millennium for one of them
without the other! Loving one another made them love God
the more, and love cast out all fear. If this was the Last, they
would face it together, and if it proved the Beginning, they
would rejoice together. At sight of every shooting meteor,
Julia clung almost convulsively to August.

When they entered the castle, Jonas and Cynthy were already

[figure description] Page 260.[end figure description]

standing up before the presiding elder, and he was about to begin.
Cynthy's face showed her sense of the awfulness of marrying at a
moment of such fearful expectation, or perhaps she was troubling
herself for fear that so much happiness out of heaven was
to be had only in the commission of a capital sin. But, like
most people whose consciences are stronger than their intellects,
she found great consolation in taking refuge under the wing of
ecclesiastical authority. To be married by a presiding elder
was the best thing in the world next to being married by a
bishop.

Whatever fear of the swift-coming judgment others might
have felt, the benignant old elder was at peace. Commonsense,
a clean conscience, and a child-like faith enlightened his
countenance, and since he tried to be always ready, and since
his meditations made the things of the other life ever present,
his pulse would scarcely have quickened if he had felt sure that
the archangel's trump would sound in an hour. He neither felt
the subdued fear shown on the countenance of Cynthy Ann, nor
the strong skeptical opposition of Andrew, whose face of late had
grown almost into a sneer.

“Do you take this woman to be your lawful and wedded
wife—”

And before the elder could finish it, Jonas blurted out, “You'd
better believe I do, my friend.”

And then when the old man smiled and finished his question
down to, “so long as ye both shall live,” Jonas responded
eagerly, “Tell death er the jedgment-day, long or short.”

And Cynthy Ann answered demurely out of her frightened
but too happy heart, and the old man gave them his benediction
in an apostolic fashion that removed Cynthy Ann's scruples, and

[figure description] Page 261.[end figure description]

smoothed a little of the primness out of her face, so that she
almost smiled when Jonas said, “Well! it's done now, and
it can't be undone fer all the Goshorns in Christendom er
creation!”

And then the old gentleman—for he was a gentleman, though
he had always been a backwoodsman—spoke of the excitement,
and said that it was best always to be ready—to be ready
to live, and then you would be ready for death or the judgment.
That very night the end might come, but it was not best to
trouble one's self about it. And he smiled, and said that it was
none of his business, God could manage the universe; it was for
him to be found doing his duty as a faithful servant. And then it
would be just like stepping out of one door into another,
whenever death or the judgment should come.

While the old man was getting ready to leave, Julia and August
slipped away, fearing lest their absence should be discovered.
But the peacefulness of the old elder's face had entered
into their souls, and they wished that they too were solemnly
pronounced man and wife, with so sweet a benediction upon
their union.

“I do not feel much anxious about the day of judgment
or the millennium,” said August, whose idiom was sometimes
a little broken. “When I was so near dying I felt satisfied
to die after you had kissed my lips. But now that it seems we
have come upon the world's last days, I wish I were married to
you. I do not know how things will be in the new heaven and
the new earth. But I should like you to be my wife there,
or at least to have been my wife on earth, if only for one hour.”

And then he proposed that they should be made man and wife
now in the world's last hour. It was not wrong. It could not

[figure description] Page 262.[end figure description]

give her mother heart-disease, for she would not know of it till
she should hear it in the land where there are neither marriages
nor sickness. Julia could not see any sin in her disobedience
under such circumstances. She did so much want to go into the
New Jerusalem as the wedded wife of August “the grand,”
as she fondly called him.

And so in the stillness of that awful night they walked back
to Andrew's castle, and found the venerable preacher, with saddle-bags
on his arm, ready to mount his horse, for the presiding
elder of that day had no leisure time. Jonas and Cynthy stood
bidding him good-by. And the old man was saying again that if
we were always ready it would be like stepping from one door
into another. But he thought it as wrong to waste time gazing
up into heaven to see Christ come, as it had been to gaze after
Him when He went away. Even Jonas's voice was a little softened
by the fearful thought ever present of the coming on of
that awful midnight of the eleventh of August. All were surprised
to see the two young people come back.

“Father Williams,” said August, “we thought we should
like to go into the New Jerusalem man and wife. Will you
marry us?”

“Sensible to the last!” cried Jonas.

“According to the laws of this State,” said Mr. Williams, “you
can not be married without a license from the clerk of the county.
Have you a license?”

“No,” said August, his heart sinking.

Just then Andrew came up and inquired what the conversation
was about.

“Why, Uncle Andrew,” said Julia eagerly, “August and I
don't want the end of the world to come without being man and

[figure description] Page 263.[end figure description]

wife. And we have no license, and August could not go seven
miles and back to get a license before midnight. It is too bad,
isn't it? If it wasn't that we think the end of the world is so
near, I should be ashamed to say how much I want to be married.
But I shall be proud to have been August's wife, when I
am among the angels.”

“You are a noble woman,” said Andrew. “Come in, let us
see if anything can be done.” And he led the way, smiling.

p555-269 CHAPTER XLII. FOR EVER AND EVER.

[figure description] Page 264.[end figure description]

WHEN they had all re-entered the castle, Andrew
made them sit down. The old minister
did not see any escape from the fatal obstacle
of a lack of license, but Andrew was very mysterious.

“Virtue is its own reward,” said the Philosopher, “but it
often finds an incidental reward besides. Now, Julia, you are
the noblest woman in these degenerate times, according to my
way of thinking.”

“That's true as preachin', ef you'll except one,” chirped Jonas,
with a significant look at his Cynthy Ann. Julia blushed, and
the old minister looked inquiringly at Andrew and at Julia.
This exaggerated praise from a man so misanthropic as Andrew
excited his curiosity.

“Without exception,” said Andrew emphatically, looking first
at Jonas, then at Mr. Williams, “my niece is the noblest woman
I ever knew.”

“Please don't, Uncle Andrew!” begged Julia, almost speechless
with shame. Praise was something she could not bear. She
was inured to censure.

[figure description] Page 265.[end figure description]

“Do you remember that dark night—of course you do—when
you braved everything and came here to see August, who would
have died but for your coming?” Andrew was now looking at
Julia, who answered him almost inaudibly.

“And do you remember when we got to your gate, on your
return, what you said to me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Julia.

“To be sure you do, and” (turning to August) “I shall never
forget her words; she said, `If he should get worse, I should
like him to die my husband, if he wishes it. Send for me, day or
night, and I will come in spite of everything.”'

“Did you say that?” asked August, looking at her eagerly.

And Julia nodded her head, and lifted her eyes, glistening
with brimming tears, to his.

“You do not know,” said Andrew to the preacher, “how
much her proposal meant, for you do not know through what
she would have had to pass. But I say that God does sometimes
reward virtue in this world—a world not quite worn out yet—
and she is worthy of the reward in store for her.”

Saying this, Andrew went into the closet leading to his secret
stairway—secret no longer, since Julia had ascended by that
way—and soon came down from his library with a paper in his
hand.

“When you, my noble-hearted niece, proposed to make any
sacrifice to marry this studious, honest, true-hearted German
gentleman, who is worthy of you, if any man can be, I thought
best to be ready for any emergency, and so I went the next day
and procured the license, the clerk promising to keep my secret.
A marriage-license is good for thirty days. You will see, Mr.
Williams, that this has not quite expired.”