The man turned to look again at the curious disarray of the room. "The law don't allow him to do sech ez this!" he blurted out in rising anger. "Why, everything hyar is bodaciously broke an' busted! War it the sheriff himself ez levied?"

"'Twar jes' the dep'ty critter, Clem Tweed," explained Medora, "mighty jokified, an' he 'peared ter be middlin' drunk, an' though he said su'thin' 'bout exemptions he 'lowed ez we-uns lived at the eend o' the world."

Her mother-in-law suddenly lowered the ap.r.o.n from her face.

"'The jumpin'-off place,' war what Clem Tweed called it!" she interpolated with a fiery eye of indignant reminiscence.

"He did! He did!" Medora bitterly resented this fling at the remoteness of their poor home. "An' he said whilst hyar he'd level on everything in sight, ez he hoped never ter travel sech roads agin-everything in sight, even the baby an' the cat!"

"Shucks, Medory, ye know the dep'ty man war funnin' whenst he said that about the baby an' the cat! Ye know ez Clem admitted he hed Christmas in his bones!" the elder objected.

"Waal, war Clem Tweed funnin' whenst he done sech ez that, in levyin' an execution?" Bruce Gilhooley pointed with his ramrod at the wreck of the furniture.

The two women burst into lugubrious sobs and rocked themselves back and forth in unison. "'Twar Dad!" Medora moaned, in smothered accents.

A pause of bewilderment ensued. Then the young man's face took on an expression of dismay so ominous that Medora's tears were checked in the ghastly fear of disasters yet to come to her father-in-law. Now and again she glanced anxiously over her shoulder at an oblong black aperture in the dusk which betokened the open door of the shed-room. Some one lurked there, evidently cherishing all aloof a grief, an anger, a despair too poignant to share.

"Dad warn't hyar whenst the dep'ty leveled," she said. "An' mighty glad we war-kase somebody mought hev got hurt. But whenst Dad kem home an' larnt the news he jes'-he jes'-he jes' lept about like a painter."

"He did! He did!" a.s.severated a voice from the veiled head, all m.u.f.fled in the checked ap.r.o.n.

"Dad 'lowed," continued Medora, "ez Peter Petrie hev persecuted and druv him ter the wall. Fust he tricked Dad out'n some unoccupied lan' what Dad hed begun ter clear, an' Petrie got it entered fust an' tuk out a grant an' holds the t.i.tle! An' whenst Dad lay claim ter it Peter Petrie declared ef enny Gilhooley dared ter cross Storm Mounting he'd break every bone in his body!"

"A true word-the insurance of the critter!" came from the blue-checked veil.

A stir in the shed-room-a half-suppressed cough and a clearing of the throat.

"An' then Dad fell on Pete Petrie at the Crossroads' store, whar the critter hed stopped with his mail-pouch, an' Dad trounced him well afore all the crowd o' loafers thar!"

"Bless the Lord, he did!" the checked ap.r.o.n voiced a melancholy triumph.

"An' then, ye remember whenst Dad set out fire in the woods las' fall ter burn off the trash on his own lan', the flames run jes' a leetle over his line an' on ter them woods on Storm Mounting, doin' no harm ter n.o.body, nor nuthin'!"

"Not a mite-not a mite," a.s.severated the ap.r.o.n.

"An' ez sech appears ter be agin the law Petrie gin information an' Dad war fined five dollars!"

"An' paid it!" cried Jane Gilhooley. "Ye know that!"

"An' then, ez it 'pears ter be the law ez one hundred dollars fur sech an offense is ter be forfeited ter ennybody ez will sue fur it," Medora resumed, "Petrie seen his chance ter git even fur bein' beat in a reg'lar knock-down-an'-drag-out fight, an'," with the rising inflection of a climax, "he hev sued and got jedgmint!"

"An' so what that half-drunk dep'ty, Clem Tweed, calls an execution war leveled!" exclaimed Jane Gilhooley, her veiled head swaying forlornly as she sobbed invisibly.

"But Dad 'lowed ez Peter Petrie shouldn't hev none o' his gear," Medora's eyes flashed with a responsive sentiment.

"His gran'mam's warpin' bars!" suggested the elder woman.

"The spinnin'-wheels she brung from No'th Carliny," enumerated Medora, "the loom an' the candle-moulds."

"The cheers his dad made fur his mam whenst they begun housekeepin'," said Jane Gilhooley's m.u.f.fled voice.

"The press an' the safe," Medora continued.

"The pot an' the oven," chokingly responded the ap.r.o.n.

"The churn an' the piggins!"

"The skillet an' the trivet!"

Medora, fairly flinching from the inventory of all the household goods, so desecrated and "leveled on," returned to the salient incident of the day. "Dad jes' tuk an axe an' bust up every yearthly thing in the house!"

"An' now we-uns ain't got nuthin'." The elder woman looked about in stunned dismay, her little black eyes a mere gleam of a pupil in the midst of their swollen lids and network of wrinkles.

One of the miseries of the very ignorant is, paradoxically, the partial character of their privation. If the unknown were to them practically non-existent they might find solace in sluggish and secure content. But even the smallest circle of being touches continually the periphery of wider spheres. The air is freighted with echoes of undistinguished sounds. Powers, illimitable, absolute, uncomprehended, seem to hold an inimical sway over their lives and of these the most dreaded is the benign law, framed for their protection, spreading above them an unperceived, unimagined aegis. Thus there was hardly an article in the house which was not exempt by statute from execution, and the house itself and land worth only a hundred or two dollars were protected by the homestead law. The facetious deputy, Clem Tweed, with "Christmas in his bones," would have committed a misdemeanor in seriously levying upon them. He had held the affair as a capital farce-even affecting with wild, appropriating gambols to seize the baby and the cat-and fully realized that malice only had prompted the whole proceeding, to humiliate Ross Gilhooley and ill.u.s.trate the completeness of the victory which Peter Petrie had won over his enemy.

The younger Gilhooley, however, quaked as his limited intelligence laid hold on the fact that if the law had permitted a levy on the household goods to satisfy the judgment of Peter Petrie their destruction was in itself a balking of the process, resistance to the law, and with an unimagined penalty.

"We-uns hev got ter git away from hyar somehows!" he said with decision.

The idea of bluff Ross Gilhooley in the clutches of the law because of one fierce moment of goaded and petulant despair, with the ignominy of a criminal accusation, with all the sordid concomitants of arrest and the jail, was infinitely terrible to his unaccustomed imagination. He revolted from its contemplation with a personal application. For an honest man, however poor, feels all the high prerogatives of honor.

There was a step in the shed-room where Ross Gilhooley had lurked and listened. His wrath now spent, his mind had traveled the obvious course to his son's conclusion. He stood a gigantic, bearded shadow in the doorway, half ashamed, wholly repentant, dimly, vaguely fearful, and all responsive and quivering to the idea of flight. "I been studyin' some 'bout goin' ter Minervy Sue's in Georgy," he said creakingly, as if his voice had suffered from its unwonted disuse.

"An' none too soon," said Bruce doggedly. "The oxen is Medory's, bein' lef' ter her whenst her dad died, an' the wagin is mine! Quit foolin' along o' that thar fire, Medory!" For with her bright hair hanging curling over her cheeks his young wife had leaned forward to start it anew.

"Never ter kindle it agin on this ha'th-stone!" she cried with a poignant realization of the significance of the uprooting of the roof-tree and the wide, vague world without. And still once more the two women fell to bemoaning their fate of exile beside the expiring embers, while the elder Gilhooley's voice sounded bluffly outside calling the oxen, and his son was rattling their heavy yoke in the corner.

They were well advanced on their journey ere yet the snowy Christmas dawn was in the sky. So slow a progress was ill-a.s.sociated with the idea of flight. It was almost noiseless-the great hoofs of the oxen fell all m.u.f.fled on the deep snow still whitely a-glitter with the moon, hanging dense and opaque in the western sky, and flecked with the dendroidal images of the overshadowing trees. The immense bovine heads swayed to and fro, cadenced to the deliberate pace, and more than once a muttered low of distaste and protest rose with the vapor curling upward from lip and nostril into the icy air. On the front seat of the c.u.mbrous, white, canvas-covered vehicle was Medora, her bright hair blowing out from the folds of a red shawl worn hood-wise; she held a cord attached to the horns of one of the oxen by which she sought to guide the yoke in those intervals when her husband, who walked by their side with a goad, must needs fall to the rear to drive up a cow and calf. Inside the wagon Ross Gilhooley did naught but bow his head between his hands as if he could not face the coming day charged with he knew not what destiny for him. His wife was adjusting and readjusting the limited gear they had dared to bring off with them-their forlorn rags of clothing and bedding, all in shapeless bundles; sundry gourds full of soft soap, salt, tobacco, and a scanty store of provisions, which she feared would not last them all the way to Georgia to the home of Minervy Sue, their daughter.

No one touched a s.p.a.ce deeply filled with straw, but now and again Medora glanced back at it with the dawning of a smile in her grief-stricken face that cold, nor fear, nor despair could wholly overcast. Three small heads, all golden and curly, all pink-cheeked and fair, all blissfully slumbering, rested there as if they had been so many dolls packed away thus for fear of breaking. But they had no other couch than the straw, for Ross Gilhooley had not spared the feather-beds, and the little cabin at the Notch was now half full of the fluff ripped out by his sharp knife from the split ticks.

Down the mountain the fugitives went, as silent as their shadows; and at last, when one might hardly know if it were the sheen of the moon that still illuminated the wan and wintry scene, or the reflection from the snow, or the dawning of the dark-gray day, the river came in sight, all a rippling, steely expanse under the chill wind between its ice-girt crags and snowy banks.

The oxen went down to the ford in a lumbering run. Bruce sprang upon the tailboard to ride, the dogs chased the cow and calf to the crossing. The wheels grated ominously against great submerged boulders; the surging waves rose almost to the wagon-bed; the wind struck aslant the immense, c.u.mbrous cover, threatening to capsize it; and, suddenly, in the midst of the transit, a sound, as clear as a bugle in the rare icy air, as searchingly sweet!

All were motionless for an instant, doubtful, anxious, listening-only the wintry wind with its keen sibilance; only the dash of the swift current; only the grating of the wheels on the sand as the oxen reached the opposite margin!

But hark, again! A clear tenor voice in the f.a.g end of an old song:

"An' my bigges' bottle war my bes' friend, An' my week's work was all at an end!"

It issued from beyond the right fork of the road in advance, and an instant panic ensued. Discovery was hard upon them. Their laborious device was brought to naught should any eye espy them in their hasty flight to the State line. It had not seemed impossible that ere the day should dawn they might be far away in those impenetrable forests where one may journey many a league, meeting naught more inimical or speculative than bear or deer. It still was worth the effort.

With a sudden spring from the tailboard of the wagon Bruce Gilhooley reached the yoke, fiercely goading the oxen onward. With an abrupt lurch, in which the vehicle swayed precariously and ponderously from side to side, they started up the steep, snowy bank, and breaking into their ungainly run were guided into the left fork of the road. It was a level stretch and fringed about with pines, and soon all sight of the pilgrims was lost amidst the heavy snow-laden boughs.

The river bank was silent and solitary; and after a considerable interval a man rode down from the right fork to the ford.

More than once his horse refused the pa.s.sage. A sort of parrot-faced man he was, known as Tank Dysart, young, red-haired, with a long, bent nose and a preposterous air of knowingness and turbulent inquiry. He c.o.c.ked his head on one side with a snort of surprised indignation, and beat with both heels, but again the horse, sidling about the drifts, declined the direct pa.s.sage and essayed to cross elsewhere.