"Well, now, I like the look of ye," called the old mother from the porch, where she still sat. "'Pears like it's done ye good a-ready to turn planter. The' hain't nothin' better'n the smell o' new sile fer them 'at's consumpted."

"Mother," cried Ca.s.sandra from within, "don't call the doctor that! Come up and have dinner with us, Doctor." She set a chair for him as she spoke, but he would not. As he stood below them, looking up and exchanging merry banter with her mother, he laughed his contagious laugh.

"I bet he's tired," shrilled Hoyle, from his perch on the porch roof.

"He be'n settin' on the fence smokin' an' rubbin' his hade with his handkercher like he'd had enough with his ploughin'. You can nigh about beat him, Ca.s.s. Hisn didn't look no better'n what yourn looked."

"Here, you young rascal you, come down from there," cried David.

Catching him by the foot, which hung far enough over to be within reach of his long arm, he pulled him headlong from his high position and caught him in mid-air. "Now, how shall I punish you?"

"Ye bettah whollop him. He hain't nevah been switched good in his hull life. Maybe that's what ails him."

The child grinned. "I hain't afeared. Get me down on the ground oncet, an' I c'n run faster'n he can."

"Suppose I duck him in the water trough yonder?"

"I reckon he needs it. He generally do," smiled Ca.s.sandra from the doorway. "Come, son, go wash up." David allowed the child to slip to the ground. "Seems like Hoyle is right enough about you, though. Don't go away up the hill; bide here and have dinner first."

David dropped on the step for a moment's rest. "I see I must make a way up to my cabin that will not pa.s.s your door. How about that? Was dinner included in the rent, and the mule and the mule's dinner? And what is Hoyle going to pay me for allowing him to ride Pete up and down while I plough?"

"Yas, an' what are ye goin' to give him fer 'lowin' ye to set his hade round straight, an' what are ye goin' to give me fer 'lowin' ye to set me on my laigs again? Ef ye go a-countin' that-a-way, I'm 'feared ye're layin' up a right smart o' debt to we-uns. I reckon you'll use that mule all ye want to, an' ye'll lick him good, too, when he needs. .h.i.t, an'

take keer o' yourself, fer he's a mean critter; an' ye'll keep that path right whar hit is, fer hit goes with the farm long's you bide up yandah."

"You good people have the best of me; we'll call it all even. Ever since I leaped off that train in the snow, I have been dependent on you for my comfort. Well, I must hurry on; since I've turned farmer I'm a busy man.

Can you suggest any one I might get to do that ploughing? Miss Ca.s.sandra here may be able to do it without help, but I confess I'm not equal to it."

"I be'n tellin' Ca.s.s that thar Elwine Timms, he ought to be able to do the hull o' that work. Widow Timmses' son. They live ovah nigh the Gerret place thar at Lone Pine Creek. He used to help Frale with the still. An' then thar's Hoke Belew--he ought to do sumthin' fer all you done fer his wife--sittin' up the hull night long, an' gettin' up at midnight to run to them. Oh, I hearn a heap sittin' here. Things comes to me that-a-way. Thar hain't much goin' on within twenty mile o' here 'at I don't know. They is plenty hereabouts owes you a heap."

"I think I've been treated very well. They keep me supplied with all I need. What more can a man ask? The other day, a man brought me a sack of corn meal, fresh and sweet from the mill--a man with six children and a sick mother to feed, but what could I do? He would leave it, and I--well, I--"

"When they bring ye things, you take 'em. Ye'll help 'em a heap more that-a-way 'n ye will curin' 'em. The' hain't nothin' so good fer a man as payin' his debts. Hit keeps his hade up whar a man 'at's good fer anything ought to keep hit. I hearn a heap o' talk here in these mountains 'bouts bein' stuck up, but I tell 'em if a body feels he hain't good fer nothin', he pretty generally hain't. He'd a heap better feel stuck up to my thinkin'."

"They've done pretty well, all who could. They've brought me everything from corn whiskey to fodder for my horse. A woman brought me a bag of dried blueberries the other day. I don't know what to do with them. I have to take them, for I can't be graceless enough to send them away with their gifts."

"You bring 'em here, an' Ca.s.s'll make ye a blueberry cake to eat hot with b.u.t.ter melt'n' on hit 'at'll make ye think the world's a good place to live in."

"I'll do it," he said, laughing, and took his solitary path up the steep. Halfway to his cabin, he heard quick, scrambling steps behind him, and, turning, saw little Hoyle bringing Ca.s.sandra's small melon-shaped basket, covered with a white cloth.

"I said I could run faster'n you could. Ca.s.s, she sont some th' chick'n fry." He thrust the basket at Thryng and turned to run home.

"Here, here!" David called after the twisted, hunched little figure.

"You tell your sister 'thank you very much,' for me. Will you?"

"Yas, suh," and the queer little gnome disappeared among the laurel below.

In the morning, David found the place of the Widow Timms, and her son agreed to come down the next day and accept wages for work. A weary, spiritless young man he was, and the home as poverty-stricken as was that of Decatur Irwin, and with almost as many children. It was with a feeling of depression that David rode on after his call, leaving the grandmother seated in the doorway, snuff stick between her yellow teeth, the grandchildren cl.u.s.tering about her knees, or squatting in the dirt, like young savages. Their father lounged in the wretched cabin, hardly to be seen in the windowless, smoke-blackened s.p.a.ce nearly filled with beds heaped with ragged bedclothes, and broken splint-bottomed chairs hung about with torn and soiled garments.

The dirt and disorder irritated David, and he felt angered at the clay-faced son for not being out preparing his little patch of ground.

Fortunately, he had been able to conceal his annoyance enough to secure the man's promise to begin work next day, or he would have gained nothing but the family's resentment for his pains. Already David had learned that a sort of resentful pride was the last shred of respectability to which the poorest and most thriftless of the mountain people clung--pride of he knew not what, and resentfulness toward any who, by thrift and labor, were better off than themselves.

He reasoned that as the young man had been Frale's helper at the still, no doubt corn whiskey was at the bottom of their misery. This brought his mind to the thought of Frale himself. The young man had not been mentioned between him and Ca.s.sandra since the day she sought his help.

He thought he could not be far from the still, as he forded Lone Pine Creek, on his way to the home of Hoke Belew, whose wife he was going to see.

David was interested in this young family; they seemed to him to be quite of the better sort, and as he put s.p.a.ce between himself and the Widow Timms' deplorable state, his irritation gradually pa.s.sed, and he was able to take note of the changes a week had wrought in the growing things about him.

More than once he diverged to investigate blossoming shrubs which were new to him, attracted now by a sweet odor where no flowers appeared, until closer inspection revealed them, and now by a blaze of color against the dark background of laurel leaves and gray rocks. Ah, the flaming azalea had made its appearance at last, huge cl.u.s.ters of brilliant bloom on leafless shrubs. How dazzlingly gay!

In the midst of his observance of things about him, and underneath his surface thoughts, he carried with him a continual feeling of satisfaction in the remembrance of the little farm below the Fall Place, and in an amused way planned about it, and built idly his "Castles in Spain." A bit of stone wall whose lower end was overgrown with vines pleased him especially, and a few enormous trees, which had been left standing when the spot had been originally cleared, and the vine-entangled, drooping trees along the banks of the small river that coursed crookedly through it,--what possibilities it all presented to his imagination! If only he could find the right man to carry out his ideas for him, he would lease the place for fifty years for the privilege of doing as he would with it.

After a time he came out upon the cleared farm of Hoke Belew, who was industriously ploughing his field for cotton, and called out to him, "How's the wife?"

"She hain't not to say right smart, an' the baby don't act like he's well, neither, suh. Ride on to th' house an' light. She's thar, an' I'll be up d'rectly."

Thryng rode on and dismounted, tying his horse to a sapling near the door. The place was an old one. A rose vine, very ancient, covered the small porch and the black, old, moss-grown roof. The small green foliage had come out all over it in the week since he was last there. The glazed windows were open, and white homespun curtains were swaying in the light breeze. A small fire blazed on the hearth, and before it, in a huge-splint-bottomed rocking-chair, the pale young mother reclined languidly, wrapped in a patchwork quilt. The hearth was swept and all was neat, but very bare.

Close to the black fireplace on a low chair, with the month-old baby on her knees, sat Ca.s.sandra. She was warming something at the fire, which she reached over to stir now and then, while the red light played brightly over her sweet, grave face. Very intent she was, and lovely to see. She wore a creamy white homespun gown, coa.r.s.e in texture, such as she had begun to wear about the house since the warm days had come.

Thryng had seen her in such a dress but once before, and he liked it.

With one arm guarding the little bundle in her lap, dividing her attention between it and the porridge she was making, she sat, a living embodiment of David's vision, silhouetted against and haloed by the red fire, softened by the blue, obscuring smoke-wreaths that slowly circled in great rings and then swept up the wide, overarching chimney.

He heard her low voice speaking, and his heart leaped toward her as he stood an instant, unheeded by them, ere he rapped lightly. They both turned with a slight start. Ca.s.sandra rose, holding the sleeping babe in the hollow of her arm, and set a chair for him before the fire. Then she laid the child carefully in the mother's arms, and removed the porridge from the fire.

"Shall I call Hoke?" she asked, moving toward the door.

David did not want her to leave them, loving the sight of her. "Don't go. I saw him as I came along," he said.

But she went on, and sat herself on a seat under a huge locust tree.

Tardiest of all the trees, it had not yet leaved out. Later it would be covered with a wealth of sweet white blossoms swarming with honey-bees, and the air all about it would be filled with its lavish fragrance and the noise of humming wings.

Presently Hoke came plodding up from the field, and smiled as he pa.s.sed her. "Doc inside?" he asked.

She nodded. When David came out, he found her still seated there, her head resting wearily against the rough tree. She rose and came toward him.

"I thought I wouldn't leave until I knew if there was anything more I could do," she said simply.

"No, you've done all you can. She'll be all right. Where's your horse?"

"I walked."

"Why did you do that? You ought not, you know."

"Hoyle rode the colt down to see could Aunt Sally come here for a day or two, until Miz Belew can do for herself better." She turned back to the house.

"Come home now with me. Ride my horse, and I'll walk. I'd like to walk,"

urged David.

"Oh, no. Thank you, Doctor, I must speak to Azalie first. Don't wait."

She went in, and David mounted and rode slowly on, but not far. Where the trail led through a small stream which he knew she must cross, he dismounted and allowed the horse to drink, while he stood looking back along the way for her to come to him. Soon he saw her white dress among the glossy rhododendron leaves as she moved swiftly along, and he walked back to meet her.

"I have waited for you. You are not used to this kind of a saddle, I know, but what's the difference? You can ride cross-saddle as the young ladies do in the North, can't you?"