When he had at length finished all there was for him to do in the clerk's office at Moscow, and Magill had contrived to borrow enough money to pay him his fifty cents a day, Mason was too impatient to wait for some wagon bound for the Timber Creek neighborhood. He started on foot, intending to pa.s.s the night under the friendly roof of the Graysons, and to push on homeward in the morning; for he would already be a month late in beginning his college year. His mind was revolving the plan of his campaign against Barbara's pride all the way over the great lonely level prairie, the vista of which stretched away to the west until it was interrupted by a column of ominous black smoke, which told of the beginning of the autumnal prairie fires that annually sweep the great gra.s.sy plains and keep them free of trees. At length the tantalizing forest, so long in sight, was reached, and he entered the pale fringe of slender poplar-trees--that forlorn hope thrown out by the forest in its perpetual attempt to encroach on a prairie annually fire-swept. But when at last he entered the greater forest itself, now half denuded of its shade, the problem was still before him. He contrived with much travail of mind what seemed to him an ingenious device for overcoming Barbara's fear of his family. He would propose that his mother should write her a letter giving a hearty a.s.sent to his proposal of marriage. If that failed, he could not think of any other plan likely to be effective.

Like many conversations planned in absence, this one did not seem so good when he had the chance to test it. The way in which Tom welcomed him at the gate, shaking his hand and taking hold of his arm in an affectionate, informal way, gave him an unexpected pleasure, though nothing could be more natural under the circ.u.mstances than Tom's grat.i.tude. And when Tom said, "Barbara'll be awful glad to see you, an'

so'll Mother," Mason was again surprised. Not that he knew any good reason why Barbara and her mother should not be glad to see him, but he who broods long over his feelings will hatch forebodings. When Hiram looked up from Tom at the gate, he saw Barbara's half-pet.i.te figure and piquant face, full as ever of force and aspiration, waiting half-way down the walk. Barbara paused there, half-way to the gate, but she could not wait even there; she came on down farther and met him, and looked in his eyes frankly and told him--with some reserve in her tone, it is true, but with real cordiality--that she was glad to see him. And by the time he reached the porch, Mother Grayson herself--kindly, old-fashioned soul that she was--stood in the door and greeted Mason with tears in her eyes.

After a little rest and friendly talk in the cool, well-kept, home-like sitting-room, Hiram went out with Tom to look about the familiar place.

The fruit trees were pretty well stripped of their foliage by a recent wind and the ground was carpeted with brown and red and yellow leaves, while the rich autumn sunlight, which but half warmed the atmosphere, gave one an impression of transientness and of swift-impending change.

It was one of those days on which the seasons are for the instant arrested--a little moment of repose and respite before the inevitable catastrophe. The busiest man can hardly resist the influence of such a day; farmers are p.r.o.ne to bask in the slant sunlight at such times and to talk to one another over line-fences or seated on top-rails. The crows fly hither and thither in the still air, and the swallows, gathered in noisy concourse, seem reluctant to set out upon their southward journey. But Mason soon left Tom and entered the kitchen, where he sat himself down upon a bench over against the loom and watched the swift going to and fro of Barbara's nimble shuttle, and listened to the m.u.f.fled pounding of the loom-comb, presently finding a way to make himself useful by winding bobbins.

The two were left alone at intervals during the afternoon, but Mason could not summon courage to reopen the question so long closed between them. His awkward reserve reacted on Barbara, and conversation between them became difficult, neither being able to account for the mood of the other.

After a while Janet, tired with following Tom the livelong day, came into the kitchen and besought Barbara to sing "that song about d.i.c.k, you know"; and though Mason did not know who d.i.c.k might be, he thought he would rather hear Barbara sing than to go on trying to keep up a flagging conversation; so he seconded Janet's request. When Barbara had tied a broken string in the "harness" of the loom, she resumed her seat on the bench and sang while she wove.

BARBARA'S WEAVING SONG.

Fly, shuttle, right merrily, merrily, Carry the swift-running thread; Keep time to the fancy that eagerly Weaveth a web in my head.

For d.i.c.k he will come again, come again, d.i.c.k he will come again home from afar With musket and powder-horn, Musket and powder-horn, home from the war.

Beat up the threads l.u.s.tily, l.u.s.tily, Weave me a web good and strong; Heart brimful and flowing with joyousness Ever is bursting with song.

For d.i.c.k he will come again, etc.

Warp, hold the woof lovingly, lovingly, Taking and holding it fast; Hearts bound together in unity Love with a love that will last.

For d.i.c.k he will come again, come again, d.i.c.k he will come again home from afar With musket and powder-horn, Musket and powder-horn, home from the war.

By the time the ditty was ended, Mrs. Grayson was setting the supper-table by the fire-place, doing her best to honor her guest. She took down the long-handled waffle-irons and made a plate of those delicious cakes unknown since kitchen fire-places went out, and the like of which will perhaps never be known again henceforth. She got out some of the apple-b.u.t.ter, of which half a barrel had been made so toilsomely but the week before, and this she flanked with a dish of her peach preserves, kept sacredly for days of state. The "chaney" cups and saucers were also set out in honor of Hiram, and the almost transparent preserved peaches were eaten with country cream, from saucers thin enough to show an opalescent translucency, and decorated with a gilt band and delicate little flowers. This china, which had survived the long wagon-journey from Maryland, was not often trusted upon the table.

"My! What a nice supper we've got, Aunt Marthy!" said Janet, clapping her hands, as they took their seats at the table.

"It seems to me you're making company out of me," said Mason, in a tone of protest.

"We sha'n't have you again soon, Mason," said Tom, "and we don't often see the like of you."

The words were spontaneous, but Tom ducked his head with a half-ashamed air when he had spoken them. Barbara liked Tom's little speech: it expressed feelings that she could not venture to utter; and it had, besides, a touch of Tom's old gayety of feeling in it.

When supper was well out of the way Hiram proposed a walk with Barbara, but it did no good. They talked mechanically about what they were not thinking about, and by the time they got back to the house Mason was becoming desperate. He must leave in the morning very early, and he had made no progress; he could not bring himself to approach the subject about which Barbara seemed so loath to speak, and concerning which he dreaded a rebuff as he dreaded death.

They entered the old kitchen and found no one there; the embers were flickering in the s.p.a.cious fire-place and peopling the room with grotesque shadows and dancing lights.

"Let us sit here awhile, Barbara," he said, with a strange note of entreaty in his tone, as he swung the heavy door shut and put down the wooden latch--relic of the pioneer period.

"Just as you please, Mr. Mason," answered Barbara,

"Oh! say _Hiram_, won't you?" He said this with a touch of impatience.

"Hiram!" said Barbara, laughing.

He led her to the loom-bench.

"Sit there on high, as you did the night you put me into a state of misery from which I haven't escaped yet. There, put your feet on the chair-rung, as you did that night."

He spoke with peremptoriness, as he placed a chair for her feet, so that she might sit with her back to the loom. Then he drew up another shuck-bottomed chair in such a way as to sit beside and yet half facing her, but lower.

"Now," he said, doggedly, "we can finish the talk we had then."

"That seems ages ago," said Barbara, dreamily; "so much has happened since."

"So long ago that you don't care to renew the subject?"

"I--" But Barbara stopped short. The feeble blaze in the fire-place suddenly went out.

Hiram did not know where to begin. He got up and took some dry chips from a basket and threw them on the slumbering coals, so as to set the flame a-going again. Then he sat down in his chair and looked up at the now silent Barbara, and tried in vain to guess her mood. But she remained silent and waited for him to take the lead.

"Do you remember what you said then?" he asked.

"No! how can I? It seems so long ago."

"You said a pack of nonsense." As he blurted out this charge Mason turned his head round obliquely, still regarding Barbara.

"Did I? That's just like me," Barbara answered, with a little laugh.

"No, it isn't like you," he replied, almost rudely. "You're the most sensible woman I ever knew, except on one subject."

"What's that?" Barbara was startled by the vehemence and abruptness of his speech, and she asked this in a half-frightened voice.

"Your pride. I looked up to you then, as I do now. You're something above me--I just worship you." To a man of maturity this sort of talk seems extravagant enough. But one must let youth paint itself as it will, with all its follies on its head. You've said sillier things than that in your time, sober reader--you know you have!

"I do just worship you, Barbara Grayson," Hiram went on; "but you talked a parcel of fool stuff that night about the superiority of my family, and about your not being able to bear it that my people should look down on you, and--well, a pack of tomfoolery; that's what it was, Barbara, and there's no use of calling it anything else."

Barbara was silent.

"Now, I'm not going to give you a chance to make any more such speeches.

But I want to ask you whether, if I should send you a letter from my mother when I get home, and maybe from my sisters too, after I have told them the whole truth, urging you to accept me and become one of our family--I want to know whether, then, you would be willing; whether you'd take pity on a poor fellow who can't get along without you. Would that suit you?"

"No, it wouldn't," said Barbara, looking at the now blazing chips in the fire-place with her head bent forward.

"Well, what on earth _would_, then?" And Mason tilted back his chair in the nervousness of desperation and brought his eyes to a focus on her face, which was strangely illuminated in the flickering foot-lights from the hearth.

"Did I talk that way last summer?"

"Yes, you did."

"It must have hurt you. I can see it hurt you, from the way you speak about it."

"Yes," said Mason; "I've been in a sort of purgatory ever since."

"And I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'd rather do anything than to hurt your feelings." Here she paused, unable to proceed at once, but he waited for her to show the way. Presently she went on: