"When is she coming back?" he asked, awakened to desire further knowledge of the silent girl's aspirations.

"Soon, I reckon. She's been a right smart spell longah now 'n she 'lowed she'd be. Hit's old man Irwin. He's been hurted some way. She went ovah to see could Aunt Sally Carew go an' help Miz Irwin keer fer him--she's a fool thing, don't know nothin'. They sont down fer me--but here I be, so she rode the colt ovah fer Sally."

David wrapped and tied the piece of silver as he had found it. As he replaced it in the box, he discovered the pieces of the broken fiddle loosely tied in a sack, precious relics of a joy that was past.

Carefully he locked the box and returned the key, but the books he folded in the strip of gingham and carried away with him.

"I'll be back to-night or in the morning. If she doesn't return, send Hoyle for me. You mustn't be too long alone. Shall I mend the fire?"

He threw on another log, then lifted her a little and brought her a gla.s.s of cool water, and climbed back to his cabin, walking lightly and swiftly.

CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH DAVID ACCOMPANIES Ca.s.sANDRA ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY

Filled with the enthusiasm of his thoughts, David climbed too rapidly, and now he found he must take the more gradual rise of the mule trail without haste. His cap thrust in his pocket, the breeze lifted his hair and dried the perspiration which would still come with any too eager exertion. But why should he care? Even to be alive these days was joy.

This was continually the refrain of his heart, nor had he begun to exhaust his resources for entertainment in his solitary life.

Never were the days too long. Each was filled with such new and lively interest as to preclude the thought of ennui. To provide against it, he had sent for books--more than he had had time to read in all the busy days of the last three years. These and his microscope and his surgical instruments had been brought him on a mule team by Jerry Carew, who did his "toting" for him, fetching all he needed for work or comfort, in this way, from the nearest station where goods could be sent until the hotel opened in the early summer. Not that he needed them, but that, as an artist loves to keep a supply of paints and canvas, or a writer--even when idle--is happier to know that he has at hand plenty of pens and blank paper, he liked to have them.

Thus far he had felt no more need of his books than he had for his surgical instruments, but now he was glad he had them for the sake of the girl who was "that sot on all such." He would open the box the moment he had eaten, and look them over. The little brother should take them down to her one at a time--or better--he would take them himself and watch the smile which came so rarely and sweetly to play about her lips, and in her eyes, and vanish. Surely he had a right to that for his pains.

He heard the sound of rapid hoof beats approaching across the level s.p.a.ce from the cabin above him, and looking up, as if conjured from his innermost thought, he saw her coming, allowing the colt to swing along as he would. Her bonnet hung by the strings from her arm, her hair blew in crinkling wisps across her face, and the rapid exercise had brought roses into the creamy whiteness of her skin. She kept to the brow of the ridge and would have pa.s.sed him unseeing, her eyes fixed on the distant hills, had he not called to her in his clear Alpine jodel.

She reined in sharply and, slipping from the saddle, walked quickly to him, leading the colt, which was warm and panting as if he had carried her a good distance at that pace.

"Oh, Doctor Thryng, we need you right bad. That's why I took this way home. Have you been to the house?"

"Yes. I have just come from there."

"Is mother all right?"

"Doing splendidly." He waited, and she lifted her face to him anxiously.

"We need you bad, Doctor."

"Yes--but not you--you're not--" he began stupidly.

"It's Mr. Irwin. I went there to see could I help any, and seemed like I couldn't get here soon enough. When I found you were not at home, I was that troubled. Can--can you go up there and see why I can't rest for thinking he's a heap worse than he reckons? He thinks he's better, but--but--"

"Come in and rest and tell me about it."

"Mistress Irwin isn't quite well, and I must go back as soon as I can get everything done at home. I must get dinner for mother and Hoyle. You have been that kind to mother--I thought--I thought--if you could only see him--they can't spare him to die."

"Indeed, I'll go, gladly. But you must tell me more, so that I may know what to take with me. What is the matter with the man? Is he ill or hurt? Let me--oh, you are an independent young woman."

She had turned from him to mount, and he stepped forward with outstretched hand to aid her, but, in a breath, not seeing his offer, she placed her two hands on the horn of the saddle, and from the slight rise of ground whereon she stood, with one agile spring, landed easily in the saddle and wheeled about.

"He's been cutting trees to clear a patch for corn, and some way he hurt his foot, and he's been lying there nigh a week with the misery. Last evening she sent one of the children for mother, not knowing she was bad herself, so I went for Aunt Sally; but she was gone, so I rode on to the Irwins to see could I help. He said he wasn't suffering so much to-day, and it made my heart just stop to hear that, when he couldn't lift himself. You see, my stepfather--he--he was shot in the arm, and right soon when the misery left him, he died, so I didn't say much--but on the way home I thought of you, and I came here fast. We know so little here on the mountains," she added sadly, as she looked earnestly down at him.

"You have acted wisely. Just ride on, Miss Ca.s.sandra, and I will follow as soon as--"

"Come down with me now and have dinnah at our place. Then we can start togethah."

"Thank you, I will. You are more expert in the art of dinner getting than I am, so we will lose less time." He laughed and was rewarded with the flash of a grateful smile as she started on without another word.

It took David but a few minutes to select what articles he suspected, from her account, might be required. He hurried his preparations, and, being his own groom, stable boy, and man-of-all-work, he was very busy about it.

As a strain of music or a floating melody will linger in the background with insistent repet.i.tion, while the brain is at the same time busily occupied with surface affairs, so he found himself repeating some of her quaint phrases, and seeing her eyes--the wisps of wind-blown hair--and the smile on her lips, as she turned away, like an accompaniment to all he was thinking and doing.

Soon, equipped for whatever the emergency might demand, he was at the widow's door. His horse nickered and stretched out his nose toward Ca.s.sandra's colt as if glad to have once more a little horse companionship. Side by side they stood, with bridles slipped back and hung to their saddles, while they crunched contentedly at the corn on the ear, which Hoyle had brought them.

While at dinner, Ca.s.sandra showed David her books, pleased that he asked to see them. "I brought them to study, should I get time. It's right hard to give up hope--" she glanced at her mother and lowered her voice. "To stop--anyhow--I thought I might teach Hoyle a little."

"Ah, these are mostly school-books," he said, glancing them over.

"Yes, I was at school this time--near Farington it was. Once I stayed with Bishop Towahs and helped do housework. I could learn a heap there--between times. They let me have all the books I wanted to read."

She looked lovingly at her few precious school-books. "I haven't touched these since I got back--we're that busy."

Then she resumed her work about the house, cooking at the fireplace, waiting upon David, and serving her mother, while directing Hoyle what to do, should she be detained that night. He demurred and hung about her, begging her not to stay.

"I won't, son, without I can't help it. You won't care so much now--mother's not bad like she was."

"Yas, I will," he mourned.

"I reckon I'll have to call you 'baby' again," said his mother. "You're gettin' that babyfied since Ca.s.s come back doin' all fer ye. You has a heap o' company. Thar's the cow to keer fer, 'n' ol' Pete hollerin' at ye, an' the chickens tellin' how many aigs they've laid fer ye. Run now.

Thar's ol' Frizzle cacklin'. Get the aig, an' we'll send hit to the pore sick man. Thar, Ca.s.s," she added, as Hoyle ran out, half ashamed, to do her bidding--"hit's your own fault fer makin' such a baby of him. I 'low you betteh take 'long a few fresh aigs; likely they'll need 'em, so triflin' they be. I don't guess you'll find a thing in the house fer him to eat."

Ca.s.sandra packed one of her oddly shaped little baskets, as her mother suggested, for the sadly demoralized and distracted family to which they were going, and tucked in with the rest the warm, newly laid egg Hoyle brought her, smiling indulgently, and kissing his upturned face as she took it from him.

Toward David she was always entirely simple and natural, except when abashed by his speech, which seemed to her most elaborate and sometimes mystifying. She would pause and gaze on him an instant when he extended to her a courtesy, as if to give it its exact value. Not that she in the least distrusted him, quite the contrary, but that she was wholly unused to hearing phrased courtesies, or enthusiasms expressed in the form of words.

She had seen something of it in the bishop's pretty complimentary pleasantries with his wife, but David's manner of handing her a chair, offering her a suggestion--with a "May I be allowed?" was foreign to her, and she accepted such remarks with a moment's hesitation and a certain aloofness hardly understood by him.

He found himself treating her with a measure of freedom from the constraint which men often place upon themselves because of the recognition of the personal element which will obtrude between them and femininity in general. He recognized the reason for this in her absolute lack of coquetry toward him, but a.n.a.lyze the phenomenon, as yet, he could not.

To her he was a being from another world, strange and delightful, but set as far from her as if the sea divided them. She turned toward him sweet, expectant eyes. She listened attentively, gropingly sometimes.

She would understand him if she could,--would learn from him and trust him implicitly,--but her femininity never obtruded itself. Her personality seemed to be enclosed within herself and never to lean toward him with the subtile flattery men feel and like to awaken, but which they often fear to arouse when they wish to remain themselves unstirred. Her dignified poise and perfect freedom from all arts to attract his favor and attention pleased him, but while it gave him the safe and unconstrained feeling when with her, it still piqued his man's nature a little to see her so capable of showing tenderness to her own, yet so unstirred by himself.

Ca.s.sandra had never been up to his cabin when he was there, until to-day, since the morning she came to consult him about Frale, nor had that young man's name been uttered between them. David had said nothing to her of the return of the valise, not wishing to touch on the subject unless she gave the opportunity for him to ask what she knew about it.

Now, since his morning's talk with her mother had envisioned an ideal, and shown a glory beyond, he was glad to have this opportunity of being alone with her and of sounding her depths.

For a long time they rode in silence, and he remembered her mother's words, "He may have told Ca.s.s, but she is that still." She carried her basket carefully before her on the pommel of her saddle. Gradually the large sunbonnet which quite hid her face slipped back, and the sun lighted the bronze tints of her hair. As he rode at her side he studied her watchfully, so simply dressed in homespun material which had faded from its original color to a sort of turquoise green. The stuff was heavy and clung closely to her figure, and she rode easily, perched on her small, old-fashioned side-saddle, swaying with lithe movement to the motion of her horse. She wore no wrap, only a soft silk kerchief knotted about her neck, the fluttering ends of which caressed her chin.

Her cheeks became rosy with the exercise, and her gray eyes, under the green pines and among the dense laurel thickets, took on a warm, luminous green tint like the hue of her dress. David at last found it difficult to keep his eyes from her,--this veritable flower of the wilderness,--and all this time no word had been spoken between them. How impersonal and far away from him she seemed! While he was filled with interest in her and eager to learn the secret springs of her life, she was riding on and on, swaying to her horse as a flower on its slender stem sways in a breeze, as undisturbed by him as if she were not a human breathing girl, subject to man's dominating power.