"I had always understood," murmured the interested Channing, "that jumping over a broomstick was the accepted form of marriage in these mountains."

"Well, stranger, a broomstick's better than nothin', I reckon," replied the peddler tolerantly. "It kinder stands for law and order, anyway.

I've knowed folks down around these parts, whar they's a-plenty of preachers, to take up with each other 'thout'n so much as a broomstick to make things bindin'-like."

Philip exchanged glances with the author. "_Touche!_" he murmured. He turned to Brother Bates. "If I can manage to get away for a week or two, will you pilot me up to Misty?" he asked. "I might make up a few arrears of weddings, funerals, and so forth."

"You, Philip? Good!" exclaimed Kate, heartily.

The Apostle for the first time allowed his gaze to rest on Philip. He chuckled, with the sly malice of a child that has played some trick upon an elder. "I 'lowed you'd be speakin' up purty soon," he said. "I bin talkin' at you all the time, son. Hit don't matter what kind of a preacher you be--Methody or Cam'elite, or what--jest so's you kin give 'em the Word strong."

"I'll give it to them as strong as I can," smiled Philip, "though I must confess that I share your doubts with regard to h.e.l.l-fire."

"Can ye start a tune? That's what gits 'em every time."

"I can do better than that." He looked at Jacqueline.

Even as he spoke, inspiration had come to him. It was the answer to the problem of how to separate Jacqueline from Channing. "Will you come, too, and be my choir?" he asked her.

She clapped her hands. "What a lark! Mummy, may I? You know how I've always longed to go up into the mountains!"

Suddenly she paused, dismayed. She had remembered Channing.

But that gentleman rose to the occasion with prompt.i.tude, somewhat to the chagrin of Philip.

"How would you like to add a pa.s.sable tenor to your choir, Benoix? If you will let me in on this missionary expedition, it would be awfully good of you. Just the opportunity I've been looking for."

The Apostle beamed on them all. "They's always room for workers in the Lord's vineyard," he said solemnly.

Philip could think of no reasonable objection to offer. He murmured something vague to Kate about the necessity of a chaperon.

She stared at him in frank amazement. "A chaperon for Jacqueline--with _you_? What an idea! You and Mr. Channing will take the best possible care of my little girl. Of course she shall go! I wish I could go myself."

"Why can't you?" he asked eagerly.

She shook her head. "At State Fair time? Impossible, with my head men away. It would demoralize the farm."

Jacqueline caught Philip's eye and winked, wickedly. "You'll just have to be that chaperon yourself, Reverend Flip," she murmured.

CHAPTER XXVI

Philip did his best, somewhat hampered by the fact that the girl regarded his enforced chaperonage as a joke, and flirted with Channing quite brazenly and openly under his very eye. Even the Apostle shortly became aware of how matters stood, and remarked to Philip benignly, at an early stage of their journey, "I like to see young folks sweet-heartin'. It's a nateral thing, like the Lord intended."

Philip could not agree with any heartiness; but presently the high spirits of the other two infected him, and he entered into the adventure with a growing zest. The clean September air was like wine, and they chattered and laughed like children starting off on a picnic.

Channing had spent the night before at Storm, to be in time for a sunrise start, and he appeared at breakfast in a costume which he and Farwell had evolved as suitable for mountaineering; an affair of riding-boots, pale corduroy breeches, flannel shirt, and a silk handkerchief knotted becomingly about the throat. He was disconcerted to discover that the suit-case of other appropriate garments he had brought with him must be left behind, his luggage being finally reduced to a package of handkerchiefs and a toothbrush.

"But we are to be gone at least a week!" he pleaded unhappily. "Surely a change of linen--"

"There'll be a creek handy," said Jacqueline, "and I'm taking a cake of soap in my bundle. We can't be bothered with luggage."

When he saw the mules that were to convey them from the mountain town at which the railroad left them, up to their final destination, he realized the undesirability of luggage. He also envied the other two their horsemanship.

But the mule proved easier riding than he had expected. They traveled at a slow, steady lope that ate up the miles imperceptibly, through wild and beautiful country, always climbing; pa.s.sing at first occasional groups of unpainted pine houses which gave way, as they penetrated farther into the hills, to rough log cabins, growing fewer and farther apart. These had a bare, singularly unkempt look; and although many of them were so old as to be tumbledown, they did not fit, somehow, into their surroundings. It was as if nature had never yet accepted man and his works, still tolerated him under protest, a blot upon her loveliness.

Channing commented upon this. "Why are there no vines and flowers about, nothing to make these pitiful places look as if people lived in them?"

"Folks is too busy wrestin' a livin' out of the bare yearth to pretty-up much," explained the Apostle.

"But why stay here at all? Why not go down into the valleys, where land is more fertile?"

The other answered quietly, "Folks that have lived on the mounting-top ain't never content to be cooped up in the valleys, son."

"If you think the outsides are pitiful," exclaimed Philip, "wait till you see the insides! I was only a child when we lived up here, but I have never forgotten. I ought to have come back long ago. Frankly, I have shirked it."

"When _you_ lived up here? Why, Philip! When did you ever live in the mountains?" cried Jacqueline.

"Father and I brought my mother up here to get well. It was before you appeared on the scene, dear."

"I'd forgotten. And she didn't get well," said the girl, pityingly, reaching over to touch his hand. "Poor little boy Philip!"

Jacqueline could think of nothing more dreadful than a world without a mother in it. The pathos of that lonely little fellow who was so soon to lose his father, too, came over her in a wave.

"I _wish_ I had been alive then to comfort you!" she said, quite pa.s.sionately.

This new thing that had come to her lately had made her heart almost too big and tender. Since she had learned to love Channing, that always sensitive heart of hers ached and swelled with every grief or joy that pa.s.sed, as a wind-harp thrills to the touch of pa.s.sing airs.

She looked back at her lover suddenly, to remind herself of the blissful fact that he was there, and that presently, somehow, they would manage to be alone together.

The two had come to the stage where the world seems crowded with onlookers, and the silent solitude of the heights beyond lured them on as to a haven of refuge. Philip could not always be with them during the week ahead, nor Brother Bates. Meanwhile, the most a.s.siduous of chaperons was powerless to deflect the precious current of consciousness that flowed between them, striking out sparks at every contact of touch or glance....

At noon they rested beside a little clear leaping stream, and investigated with satisfaction the lunch-basket Big Liza had packed for them at Storm. Afterwards, Jacqueline curled herself up in the leaves and went to sleep like a contented young kitten, while the three men smoked in silence, careful not to disturb her. Once, glancing at Channing, Philip surprised in his face, as he watched her, such a look of tenderness that his heart smote him.

"What a fool I am with my suspicions!" he thought. "Of course he wants her. Dear little thing! How could he help it?"

After that he was a more merciful chaperon, and rode ahead up the trail quite obliviously, engaging Brother Bates in conversation.

It was sunset before they came to their destination, their high spirits fallen into rather weary silence, all of them glad of the sight of the cabin where the peddler had arranged for them to spend the night. He had sent word ahead to friends of his, and they were evidently expected. A man watching in the doorway called over his shoulder, "Here they be, Mehitabel," and came forward with the grave mountain greeting, "Howdy, strangers."

They were led in at once to supper, an appalling meal of soggy cornbread and mola.s.ses, with hog-meat swimming in grease. Their host and his two sons ate with them, waited on by his wife and daughter, all five staring at Jacqueline in unwinking silence, regarding her friendly efforts to draw them into conversation as frivolity beneath their notice.

The author glanced around him with a rather alarmed interest. It was evident that the room in which they were served not only as kitchen and living-room, but as bed-chamber also. It was the only room the cabin boasted, with the exception of a small lean-to, devoted, if he could trust his nostrils, to the family pig. Each end of the room was filled by a long bunk, and he came to the correct conclusion that one was for the women of the household, the other for the men. There were no windows, no means of ventilation whatever except the two doors opposite each other, and the rough chimney at which the woman Mehitabel performed her extremely primitive feats of cooking.

Channing began to wish that he had been less avid for local color; but at that moment he caught Jacqueline's eye regarding him demurely, and was of a sudden reconciled to his surroundings.