"Do you think you be?"

"I know it--taken last night--doctor's gone. Couldn't do anythin'. Worn out, Mary Ann."

"No, Nan, you just think you be. Look at me. I've had twice as much trouble as you."

The dying woman slowly shook her head. "It's been all trouble--nothin'

but trouble. Mary Ann, you know the threat I made."

"Don't now--keep still."

"Well, the Lord has taken that out of my heart. Do you think--think you could kiss me, Mary Ann?"

Milford heard the old woman sob, and he walked out beneath the trees where the leaves were falling. The day grew yellow, and brown, and the stars came out, and still he waited, with the leaves falling slowly in the quiet air. The insects sang, and sitting with his back against a tree, he fell asleep. Something touched him. He looked up with a start, and there stood Mrs. Stuvic, her feather sharp in the moonlight. "Drive me home," she said.

On the way home she did not speak, but when the buggy drew up at the gate she said: "If there's a G.o.d--and there must be one--I thank him for the tears I've shed this night. Now, you keep still. Turn the pony loose and go home. Don't come into the house. I don't want to see anybody.

Keep all my affairs to yourself and you'll make no mistake."

CHAPTER XX.

THE CUP AND THE SLIP.

In a pelting rain a funeral pa.s.sed along the road, and a man who had no time for such affairs, hastening with his milk-cans to the railway station, caught sight of Mrs. Stuvic's face, pressed against the water-streaked gla.s.s of a carriage window. He lashed his team to make up for loss of time in turning aside; he wondered at the mysterious tie that could have drawn her out, not indeed on such a day, but at all, for he knew her to be at enmity's edge with neighbors and frosty to every relative. At the station he met Milford, walking up and down beneath the shed. Milford remembered him, Steve Hardy, the man who had given him a "lift" from the station on the day of his coming into the neighborhood.

And to his head-shakings, winks, nods, wise mutterings, the new-comer owed much of his reputation for mystery.

"I see your old boss off down the road there goin' to a funeral," said Hardy.

"Did you? It's one of the privileges granted by the const.i.tution of the State."

"Yes. They don't have to take out license to go to funerals, or I don't guess the old woman would er went. Guess all her boarders have gone, or I don't s'pose she'd found the time. Who's dead?"

"Her sister, I believe."

"That so? Then I wonder more than ever. Believe I did hear somethin'

about it t'uther evenin', but I was milkin' at the time and I didn't think that she was the old woman's sister. They must have made it up."

"Made what up?"

"Why, the row they had over the line-fence a good while ago. Somebody told me you wanted to buy some calves."

"Yes, I'd like to get a few good ones."

"Well, mine are as good as ever stood on four feet. I guess you mean to settle here permanently. Well, folks that have stirred around a good bit tell me that there ain't a purtier place on the earth. I've had my house full all summer, and there ain't been a word of complaint. Goin' out my way?"

"Not till after the mail comes."

The post office was in a weather-beaten cottage, in the midst of an apple orchard, just across the railway tracks; and of late Milford had become well-acquainted with the postmaster, calling on him early and sitting with him till the last pouch had been thrown off for the day.

But not a word had he received from Gunhild. He strove to console himself with the thought that it was too soon, that she had not gone to the country, but a consolation that comes with strife, consoles but poorly. The train came, the mail-pouch was thrown off, and he followed the postmaster to the house, stood close in anxiety till the letters were all put into the pigeon-holes, and then turned sadly away. He took his course through the wet gra.s.s, across the fields. He halted at the ditch, and in the rain and the gathering dark stood there to think, amid the wind-tangled stems and the rain-shattered blooms of the wild sunflowers. He stepped down into the ditch, deep with mire, and the grim humor of his nickname in the West, "h.e.l.l-in-the-Mud," fell upon him like a cowboy's rope. He drew himself out, threw down a handful of gra.s.s that he had pulled up by the roots, and strode on, through the green slop of the low land. As he turned in at the gate, to pa.s.s through the hickory grove, he saw the light of a lantern moving about in Mrs. Stuvic's barnyard. He spoke to a dog that came scampering to meet him; the light shot upward, came toward him; and he recognized the old woman, bareheaded, with the rain pattering on her gray hair.

"Is that you, Bill? Now what are you pokin' round in this rain for? Come over to the house and get your supper."

"No, I must go home."

"Home? Why, you haven't got any home and never will have."

"That's true," he agreed.

"Not till you go where we took my old sister to-day," she said, letting the lantern down till her face was in the dark. "And just to think it should have come as it did, while I was talkin' about her! I'd been thinkin' about her all day, and I knowed somethin' was goin' to happen.

But come on in the house, and don't be standin' here in the rain like a fool. Get away, Jack. I do think he's got less sense than any dog I ever set eyes on. Now, if you do put your muddy feet on me I'll cut your throat. You just dare to do it, you triflin' whelp! Are you goin' to the house with me, Bill?"

"You're not afraid, are you?" he asked, now that her fear of the dead cat was gone.

"Now you keep still. I'm not afraid of the devil himself. But this is just the sort of a night for me to die. Yes, I'll tell you that."

"I thought you were to die on a cold night, with the wagons creaking along the road."

"That was the plan, but it has been changed. Now I'm goin' to die when the ground is soaked. You don't know Peterson, do you? Well, no matter.

But he lived just down the road there not long ago, and a meaner neighbor never breathed. I caught him drivin' his turkeys into my tomato patch. Yes. And his well went dry, and he come to my house and wanted to haul off water in barrels. Yes. And I wouldn't let him. And what did he say? He said he'd see my grave full of water. And now just think of what I've had to contend with all my life. Think of me lyin' there in the water, with that feller prancin' around!"

"But the chances are that you'll outlive him, Mrs. Stuvic."

"Yes, you bet, that's what I'm goin' to do," she said, her voice strong with encouragement. "I'll outlive the whole pack of 'em, and then mebbe they'll let me alone. Well, I'm not goin' to stand here any longer like a fool."

When Milford reached home he found the Professor warm in a disquisition delivered to the hired man. He hopped up from his chair and seized Milford by the hand. "Ha," said he, "I was just telling our friend here that exact memory is not the vital part of true culture. It is the absorption of the idea rather than the catching of the words."

"Sit down," said Milford. "But what does he know about it? Woman is his culture, and he's not only caught her idea, but has learned her by heart."

"Now you're trottin'," spoke the hired man. "If there's anything in a woman's nature that I don't know, why, it must have come to her in the last hour or so."

The Professor crossed his legs and slowly nodded his head. "You ask,"

said he, speaking to Milford, "what does he know about it? A man never knows unless he learns. Even to the ignorant, wisdom may be music. The man whose mind has been dried and hardened in the field of harsh toil, may sip the delicious luxury, the G.o.d-flavored juice of knowledge.

Wisdom cannot be concealed. You may lock it in an iron box, but it will seep through."

Upon entering the room Milford had seen the hired man put aside an earthen ewer, and now he knew that cider had been brought from the cellar.

"Nearly all utterances upon knowledge, human nature or life, are trite,"

the learned man proceeded. "And so are herbs and flowers trite, the stars in the heavens common, but once in a while there appears from the ground a shoot so new that botany marvels, a star in the sky so strange that astronomers gape in the wonder of a discovery. And I, humble as the lowly earth, may sprout a new thought."

"I was going to suggest more cider," said Milford, "but I guess you've had enough."

"Ha! enough and not too much. To pause at the line, a virtue; to cross but an inch, a vice. Do you know of a publication that would buy a paper upon the decadence of the modern drama? I have one in my head, a hot and withering blast of fierce contempt."

"The last play I saw was a hummer," said the hired man. "There was a whole lot of dancin' and cavortin' before they got down to it, fellers givin' each other gags, and women singin' songs. But when they got down to her she was there--a sort of a Mormon play; and they had a bed that reached clear across the platform."

"Melpomene rioting as a bawd," declared the Professor. "I could elucidate if permitted one more russet cup, drawn from the oak." He looked at Milford. "One more, and let it be russet."