"I couldn't _spurn_ you," she said. Then, after another pause: "Maybe you don't care any more for me than I do for you. But I'm in such trouble--that I can't tell what to say. Won't you wait and give me a little time? Things may be better after a while."

"How long shall I stay away? A week?" Mason's voice had a note of protest in it.

"Don't be hurt," she said, lifting her eyes timidly to his. "But I'm in such a hard place. Let me have two weeks or so to think about it, and see how things are going to turn." It was not that Barbara saw any chance for a change of circ.u.mstances, but that she could not resolve to decide the question either way, and wished to escape from her present perplexity by postponement.

"Just as you say," said Mason, regretfully; "but I tell you, Barbara, it's two weeks of dead lost time."

Then he got up and held out his hand to her.

"Good-bye, Barbara."

"Good-bye, Mr. Mason."

"Oh, call me Hiram! It's more friendly, and you call all the other young men by their first names."

"But you're the master."

"I'm not the master of you, that's clear. Besides, you've left school."

He was holding her hand in gentle protest all this time.

"Well, good-bye--Hiram!" said Barbara, with a visible effort which ended in a little laugh.

Mason let go of her hand and turned abruptly and walked out of the door, and then swiftly down the meadow path. Barbara stood and looked after him as long as she could see his form; then she slowly shut and latched the kitchen door and came and covered with ashes the remaining embers of the fire, and took the candle from the mantel-piece and went through the now vacant sitting-room to her chamber above.

X

THE AFFAIR AT TIMBER CREEK CAMP MEETING

When Tom Grayson found himself suddenly stranded on the farmstead in Hubbard Township he went to work to learn again the arts half forgotten during his three-years' absence in Moscow. It was necessary to put his soft hands to the plow, and to burn his fair face in the hot sun of the hay-field. With characteristic heedlessness of results he set out, on the very first day after his return, to mow alongside the stalwart hired man, Bob McCord, the father of Mely. Bob lived in a little cabin not far from the Grayson place, and since Tom left the farm he had done most of the work for Mrs. Grayson. He was commonly known as "Big Bob," because he had a half-brother of sinister birth who was older than himself, but a small man, and who for distinction was "Little Bob." Big Bob fulfilled his name in every dimension. His chest was deep, his arms were gigantic in their muscularity, and no man had ever seen his legs show signs of exhaustion. His immense muscles were softened in outline by a certain moderate rotundity; his well-distributed adipose was only one of many indications of his extraordinary physical thriftiness. In more than one stand-up fight he had demonstrated his right to the t.i.tle of champion of the county. Yet he was a boyishly good-natured man, with no desire to hurt anybody, and he never fought from choice. But every rising fisticuffer within half a hundred miles round had heard of Bob's strength, and the more ambitious of these had felt bound to "dare" him.

It was not consonant with the honor of such a man as Bob to "take a dare"; so against first one and then another aspiring hero he had fought, until at length there was none that ventured any more to "give a dare" to the victor of so many battles. His physical perfections were not limited to mere bull strength: no man had a keener eye or a steadier hand; none could send a rifle-ball to its mark with a more unerring aim.

Had he lived in the days of the Saxon invasion of England, McCord would have stood high on the list of those renowned for exploits of strength and daring, the very darling hero of the minstrel. Our own Indian wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought renown to just such men as he, semi-barbarian path-makers for the advance of civilization.

He had lagged a generation late. In the peaceful time, when strength of muscle was secondary to mental power, and when a sure aim was no longer important for the defense of one's life, nor the chief means for winning one's meat, the powerful Bob McCord saw degenerate men, whom he could have held at arms-length, prevail over him in the struggle for subsistence. For though he was capable of hard work he could never endure steady application; his nature was under mortgage to adventurous ancestors, the ancient Indian-fighters and scouts of the Appalachian country, and those more remote forefathers, the untamed emigrants who had been almost expelled from the Scottish border in the time of the Stuarts, to help resettle the devastated north of Ireland, to say nothing of the yet wilder Irish women with whom they had mated. Nothing less than the sound of the cup sc.r.a.ping on the bottom of the family meal-box would impel Bob to work. Every wind that came from the great sea of gra.s.s to the westward brought him the whir of the wings of prairie-hens; dreams of bear-hunting filled his mind whenever he looked into the recesses of the woods. At sight of the rising moon his hunter's soul imagined the innumerable deer which at that hour come from their coverts to graze on the prairies. Every stream tantalized him with the thought of darting perch, and great prowling cat-fish hidden beneath its surface, and challenging him to catch them if he could. If, as we are taught to believe, the manliness of the English aristocracy and that of the American apery is only kept alive by outdoor sports, how much their superior in surplus manhood must such a man as Bob McCord be! In his estimation no days were counted a part of human life except those pa.s.sed in circ.u.mventing and taking the wild creatures of the woods or the prairie, and those others spent in the rude fun of musters, barbecues, elections, corn-shuckings, wood-choppings, and like a.s.semblages, where draughts from a generous big-bellied bottle, with a twisted neck, alternated with athletic feats, practical jokes, and tales as rude as the most unblushing of those told by pious pilgrims to Canterbury in the old religious time.

It was alongside this son of Anak that Tom set himself to do a full day's work at the start. The severity of labor accorded well with his pungent feeling of penitence. Big Bob regarded him as he might any other infant, not unkindly; he even had a notion that the Widow Grayson and her children were in some sense under his care, and he did not wish any harm to come to the boy, but a practical joke was too good a thing to be missed. For two hours and a half, on that morning of Tom's appearance in the field with a scythe, Bob did not once stop to take the usual rests.

Tom felt inevitable exhaustion coming on, though he cut a much narrower swath than his companion. McCord's herculean right knee was bare, having that morning forced itself through his much-bepatched trousers of b.u.t.ternut-dyed cotton cloth. While swinging his wider-sweeping scythe at a desperate rate, he kept telling Tom stories of adventure and the well-worn joe-millers of the log-cabin firesides, never seeming to notice the poor fellow's breathless endeavors to keep up or his ever-narrowing swath. Only when at length he turned and looked at Tom's face and perceived that the persistency of his will might carry him too far, he said, as with his scythe he picked some bunches of good gra.s.s from the edge of an elder patch and cast a wistful glance at the jug standing in a cool fence corner:

"Looky h-yer, Tom, you're a-gittin' kind-uh white-like about the gills, un 'f you try to keep up weth me, yer hide 'll be on the fence afore night."

"I know that," said Tom, who found himself so thoroughly beaten that there was no use in denying it.

"Well, hang yer scythe on that air red-haw over there un take a leetle rest, un then try a pitch-fork awhile. I 'lowed I'd see what sort uv stuff you've got, seein's you wuz so almighty gritty. A bigger man'n you couldn't hold agin me"; and Bob let the amus.e.m.e.nt he felt at Tom's discomfiture escape in a long hearty chuckle, rising at length into a loud laugh, as he reversed his scythe and fell to whetting it, making the neighboring woods ring with the tune he beat on the resonant metal,--a kind of accompaniment to the briskness of his spirit.

And now Barbara appeared bringing the snack that was commonly served to the mowers in the forenoon. Bob hung up his scythe, and, having taken some whisky, joined the exhausted Tom under the shady boughs of a black walnut. Barbara uncovered her basket, which contained an apple-pie to be divided between the two and a bottle of sweet milk. Tom had stretched himself in sheer exhaustion on a swath of hay.

"You foolish boy," said Barbara. "You've gone at your work too brash.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Here, take some of this pie; and don't you work so hard the rest of the day."

"Tom," said Bob, speaking with his mouth full of pie, "'f I had the eddication you've got, you wouldn't ketch me in this yere hot sun. I'd take a school. What's eddication good fer, anyhow, ef 't ain't to git a feller out uh the hot sun?"

But for the present Tom resolved to stick faithfully to his toil. As the days wore on, and he became accustomed to the strain, he found the work a sedative; he was usually too tired to think much of his disappointment. Only the face of Rachel Albaugh haunted his visions in lonely hours, and at times a rush of indignant feeling towards George Lockwood disturbed his quiet.

In the early days of August there came a time of comparative leisure.

The summer harvests were over, and the fields of tall corn had been "laid by" after the last plowing. Then Illinois had a breathing spell; and shutting up its house, and hitching up its horse, and taking all the children, it went to visit its "relations," staying a week at a place.

Farmers frequented the town to meet old friends and get the better of them in swapping horses; and in this time of relaxation came the season of Baptist a.s.sociations and Methodist Camp-meetings and two-days' Basket Meetings--jolly religious picnics, where you could attend to your soul's salvation and eat "roas'in' ears" with old friends in the thronged recesses of the forests, among a people who were perhaps as gregarious as any the world has ever produced. Children looked forward to this gypsying with eagerness, and adults gave themselves over to it with the abandon of children. What night-scenes there were! Within the oval of tents at a camp-meeting two great platforms were raised on posts six or eight feet high and covered with earth; on these were built blazing bonfires, illuminating all the s.p.a.ce inclosed by the tents and occupied by the enthusiastic a.s.sembly, which, as one great chorus, made the wide forest vocal with a tide of joyous or pathetic song. But there were two poles to the magnetism of a camp-meeting. In the region of outer blackness, quite beyond the reach of any illumination from platform bonfires or pulpit eloquence, there were also a.s.semblies of those who were attracted by the excitement, but to whom the religious influences were a centrifugal force. Here jollity and all conceivable deviltry rejoiced also in a meet companionship.

The Great Union Camp-Meeting was held in the first half of August on the Timber Creek camp-ground, only a mile and a half from the Grayson place.

The mother and Barbara went every evening and came back with accounts of the attendance, of the old friends encountered, and of the sermons of favorite preachers. They told how "powerfully" the elder had preached, and how the eloquent young preacher, who was junior on the next circuit, had carried all before him in a pathetic exhortation. But Tom showed no desire to attend. He was slowly sinking into a depression quite unusual with him. He had been accustomed to the excitement of the town, and the prospect of a life of dull routine on a farm ate into his spirit like a biting rust. Barbara amused him with stories of the camp-meeting; she told him of the eccentric German exhorter whose broken English she mimicked, and of the woman she had heard relate in a morning "speaking-meeting" that, when convinced of the sin of wearing jewelry, she had immediately taken off her ear-rings and given them to her sister. These things lightened his spirit but for a moment; he would relapse soon into the same state of mental la.s.situde, or more acute melancholy. Barbara endeavored to cheer him with projects; he could take a school the next winter, and with the money earned pay his board somewhere in town and take up the study of law again. But all of Barbara's projects were moderate and took full account of difficulties.

Tom had little heart for a process that demanded plodding and patient waiting; nor did any of Barbara's suggestions hold out any prospect of his recovering his ground with Rachel, which was the thing he most desired.

One evening, as he finished a supper which he had eaten with little relish and in silence, he pushed back his chair and sat moodily looking into the black cave of the kitchen fire-place, where the embers were smoldering under the ashes. Then when his mother had left the kitchen, and Barbara was clearing away the plates, he said:

"The more I think of it, the worse I feel about George Lockwood. The tricky villain got me into that sc.r.a.pe and then told all about it where he knew it would do me the most harm. I'd just like to shoot him."

"You'd better shoot him and get yourself hanged!" said Barbara with impatience. "_That_ would mend matters, wouldn't it?"

"'T wouldn't matter much to me," said Tom. "This country life doesn't suit me; I'd just as well be out of it, and they do say hanging is an easy way of dying." This last was spoken with a grim smile.

"I suppose you don't think of _us_," said Barbara.

"I'm more trouble than good to you and mother."

"And now if you would only commit a crime"--Barbara was looking at him with a concentrated gaze--"that would put an end to all mother's sorrows; she would soon die in torture, and I would be left alone in the world to be pointed at by people who would say in a whisper: 'That's the sister of the fellow that was hanged.'" And Barbara caught her breath with a little gasp as she turned away.

"Oh, don't talk that way, Barb! Of course I don't mean to do anything of the sort. It's a kind of relief to talk sometimes, and I do feel bitter enough."

Barbara turned sharply on him again and said: "That's just the way to get to be a murderer--keep stirring up your spite. After a while the time'll come when you can't control yourself, may be, and then you'll do something that you only meant to think about."

Tom shuddered a little and, feeling uncomfortable under Barbara's gaze, got up and started away. But Barbara followed him and caught hold of his arm, and pulled him around till she could look in his face, and said, with more feeling than she liked to show:

"Look here, Tom! Give me your word and honor that you'll put all such thoughts out of your mind."

"Of course I will, Sis, if you think there's any danger."

"And come and go over to the camp-meeting to-night with mother and me.

It'll do you good to see somebody besides the cows."

"All right," said Tom, shaking himself to get rid of his evil spirit, and remembering, as he went out to harness old Blaze-face to the wagon, that he would stand a chance of catching a glimpse of Rachel in the light of the torches.

The preaching was vigorous and stirring, and the exhorter, who came after the preacher, told many pathetic stories, which deeply moved a people always eager to be excited. The weird scene no doubt contributed by its spectacular effect to increase the emotion. The bonfires on the platforms illuminated the circle of white tents, which stood out against the wall of deep blackness in the forest behind; the light mounted a hundred feet and more through the thick branches of lofty beech and maple trees, and was reflected from the under side of leaves quivering in the breeze. The boughs and foliage, illuminated from below, had an unreal and unworldly aspect. No imagery of the preacher could make the threatened outer darkness of the lost so weird to the imagination as this scene, in which the company of simple-minded people found themselves in the presence of a savage Nature, and in a sphere of light bounded on every hand by a blackness as of darkness primeval.

Tom paid little attention to the eloquence of the preacher or to the tearful words of him who came after. At first he was interested and even excited by the scene; he watched the flickering of the great shadows of the tree trunks as the platform fires rose and fell; but presently he set himself to searching under the large straw bonnets for a face. He knew well that the sight of that face could not make him happy, but he seemed driven by some evil impulse to seek for it. If Rachel was there he did not find her. When the exhorter had closed his artless string of disconnected anecdotes with an equally artless appeal, and a hymn was announced, Tom whispered to Barbara that he would go and see if the horse was all right, and would meet her at the door of the Mount Zion tent when meeting should "let out." Then as the congregation rose, he went out by a pa.s.sage between two of the tents into the woods. The "exercises" lasted a full hour longer, and it was half-past ten before the presiding elder gave the benediction. Barbara and her mother went to the door of the Mount Zion tent, where they stood watching the moving people and waiting for Tom. Mely McCord, who was to ride home with them, was talking in her fluent way to Barbara when an excited man rushed into the s.p.a.ce within the tents, and, finding himself obstructed by the groups of people in the aisles, ran hurriedly across the boards that served for backless benches until he reached the great rude pulpit. He addressed a word to the white-haired presiding elder, who was at that moment standing on the steps of the stand, engaged in shaking hands with old friends from all parts of his district. Then the new-comer seized the tin horn that hung against a tree, and which was used to call the people to meeting. With this in his hand he mounted the rude board rostrum and blew a long, harsh blast. Part of the people out of curiosity had stopped talking when he made his appearance, and when the strident tin horn ceased, there was a momentary murmur and then the stillness of death, except for confused cries of excitement in the remote outer regions, which now became audible. Then the man on the platform said, in a breathless voice:

"A man has been killed in the woods outside of the camp-ground. The murderer has fled. The sheriff is wanted!"

"Here he is!" cried some voices, and the sheriff stood up on a bench and waved his hand to the messenger, who came down and communicated in a few words what he knew of the murder. The sheriff then hurriedly departed.