"Hey, Buddy--Buddy--Buddy--c.u.m back heah--c.u.m back heah, I tell yo'--c.u.m back!"

Buddy came back reluctantly, his thin countenance still grim with pallor and an inquiring look in his wild eyes.

"Whut ails yo', Lem?" he panted.

Lem regarded him a second with an admonishing stare, forgetful of his own conduct.

"I'm ashamed o' yo'," he said.

"Whut, Lem?"

"Whut yo'-all a runnin' fo'--eh?" demanded Lem.

Bud jammed one hand into his pocket, abashed, and cast a fearful glance toward the church door.

"Don't yo' know hit's the revenoor?"

"Yes, course I do, Lem--but--but they's a hant in em."

"Hant er no hant, we'uns air agoin' in, an' ef he hain't daid----"

"Yo' darsn't, Lem--no--no," protested Buddy in alarm. "Yo' darsn't kill hit, Lem--yo' darsn't kill a hant--th' witches 'll spell-tuk we'uns an'

foller we'uns alers, alers. Slab says so--Slab knows."

"Well," returned Lem, "leastways we'uns 'll go back an' see."

Whereupon he strode to the church door resolutely and pushed it half open. Buddy still hung back undecided.

"Hain't yo' ole Cap Lutts' boy?" rebuked his brother severely. "An'

hain't that the revenuer?"

"Sho'," agreed Buddy, now plainly embarra.s.sed, and followed with determined alacrity. Howbeit, the same ghostly dread hung at Lem's elbow, but his mighty will whipped his body into subservience and he boldly re-entered the church, and made his way toward the lantern that shrouded the altar with its yellow glow. Buddy followed closely and tremblingly at his heels.

The soft, irregular, rapid pad of bare feet met their ears, punctuated by a prodigious breathing that might have issued from the bellows of a blown horse. They caught alternate glimpses of the b.e.s.t.i.a.l thing, as its lengthy, starved shadow hove around the near corner of the altar and struck the far rim of light. It flitted past like a gesticulating, dying toad, glued to the tire of a wagon wheel. It was galloping madly in a circle--milling around and around and around the platform as if ridden and spurred by an incubus, bent on the reward of a trophy h.e.l.l-cup.

And each time it came round to the dark blood-picture on the floor, it cleared this with a mighty leap into the air, as a horse makes a wide, dangerous ditch. The rustling wings of the eery creatures amidst the rafters aloft were hushed. The lance of moonlight had faded from the window cas.e.m.e.nt and the owl was gone. The Lutts boys halted; gripped and raised their rifles mechanically for a shot. Each time the tattered apparition flashed into the light on its desperate circuit around, their fingers would curve spasmodically about the triggers for the pull, but each time that opportune fraction of a second eluded them and the ghastly spectre sped onward.

The astounding manner in which this careening, wavering scarehead held the narrow limits of its course without plunging off the stage was acutely awesome, and little short of a phenomenon. Every downward lunge was checked as if jerked by an invisible cord. Verily, it seemed to be held to its path by the influence of a powerful magnet. As the boys stood thus agap, in firing att.i.tude, undoubtedly the subtle agency of a deep-seated plenipotent superst.i.tion which so thoroughly saturates the mountain-born had now risen up and cast its obfuscating shade between the quarry and their intent to kill.

With mutual glances they peered at each other irresolutely. At this juncture, the pattering of naked feet suddenly ceased. Again they fixed their eyes on the pulpit and its gloomed blasphemy. It tottered on the brink of the platform a second; inclined perilously forward; started on its headlong plunge outward, then miraculously checked its descent and straightened. Then, backing away, it paused, stiffened and fell backward with the rigidity of a board.

Lem and Buddy, collecting their befuddled senses, made their way forward. The hideous ma.s.s of bones and blood and rags now lay quite still on the altar. Through a short interval the two watched it for signs of life. Presently, Lem prodded it with his rifle. It gave way, yielding and inert, and now Lem took the lantern down from the hook at the rope's end and, advancing dubiously, he held the lantern over the awful spectacle and dared a look. That look sufficed. What had once been the revenuer lay sprawled athwart the b.l.o.o.d.y cross--dead.

Outside the church door Lem halted and wiped his face absently. A look of deep perturbation was plainly perceptible on his countenance. A gulch-scented wind rode the plaintive sobs of the she-panther up from the darksome thicket below, and Lem harkened attentively, as though he had never heard these faltering, familiar notes before.

"Leastways," he projected presently, "he got part o' what's due him, Buddy."

"But he'll c.u.m back, Lem--he will," predicted Bud stoutly. "They's a hant in em--he'll c.u.m back sho'--yo' see--hants alers ac's like thet--then they sneaks back agin."

Lem had started dejectedly across the clearing and did not appear to hear his brother's apprehensions.

"Yo' go ahead, Buddy," advised Lem, "an' catch up with Belle-Ann--I'll be 'long directly."

Buddy's thin, colt-like legs struck a trot, and Lem followed slowly up the mountain side, deeply absorbed in thought and obviously disgruntled.

Altogether, the whole untoward events of the night had conspired to cheat him out of his revenge. This was the strangest night he had ever known, the happenings of which seemingly, derided his own reality. A night divided into ecstasy and torture, and above the chaos of his soul, the voice of Belle-Ann ever rippled with the monotone and insistency of running water.

When finally Lem reached the cabin he found Belle-Ann huddled on the horse-block, her face pallid and distressed from the effects of the terrible, revolting scene she had witnessed in the church. Buddy sat beside her saying things, which she heard vaguely and to which she made distrait response.

Lem put his rifle and the lantern down and stood before her.

"I air sorry, Belle-Ann, thet yo'-all had t' see sich a sight," he said slowly. "He's daid."

She arose quickly to her feet and looked searchingly into his face.

"You--you--you didn't----"

"No, Belle-Ann--I didin't kill em. We'uns went back after yo'-all left an' he were up on th' altar daid."

"Oh--how awful--how terrible it all is! Oh, I wish it were morning--that I could ride away from heah! Even a day of this awful life is more than I can bear. Are you satisfied now, Lem?" she ended sadly.

"No, I hain't," he returned hotly. "I wus cheated out'n his blood. Pap an' maw wanted em t' die at my hands--they ded. Belle-Ann, air yo'

'lowin' t' go way in th' mornin' an' never c.u.m back?" he finished, with a look of despair settling on his features.

"I am going in the morning, Lem," she answered decisively, though a note of utter sorrow crept into her gentle tones. "You have had your opportunity. You told me Johnse Hatfteld offered you five hundred dollars for your interests heah. Surely you could have gone down to Blue-gra.s.s with my grandpa and taken Buddy and Slab along, and--I--I--could then--but you want to stay here and feed your soul on blood. Could you ask a more bitter punishment for the revenuer than what you saw to-night? I implore for the last time, Lem--put that evil life behind you, Lem. Ask G.o.d to help you, and take my heart and hand on it that He will not forsake you. You will come through as I did. Will you try, Lem?" she pleaded softly, with a toss of curls and a tender, compelling light in her sweet, sad eyes. "Let me lead you, Lem," she whispered.

The boy's face paled suddenly. It was the advent of a terrible upheaval coming upon him. Belle-Ann saw and divined his intent.

With no backward word, only a look that embraced an untold, profound meaning, he hurried from her, spiritless and disconsolate and tumultuous. Her eyes followed him, enthralled. She knew where he was bound! She prayed devoutly that the web, traced by destiny, wrapping their two lives into a unit, would not now, at this crisis, burst its ligatures asunder. She prayed with all the fervent strength of her young heart that Lem would come down from Eagle Crown and take her in his arms,--take her willing life to him irrevocably, with a new precept written in his heart.

CHAPTER XL

HIS ROCK OF AGES

But as Lem climbed upward, a withering despair mounted abreast with him, like the shadow cast by evil. By the time he had reached the giddy apex of the cliff, he was staggering amidst the chaos of a battle with himself that was slowly outdoing his soul.

His mind had come, miraculously, to nurture the holy dogma that Belle-Ann had brought back to him. He could see its wonderful sequence plain in Belle-Ann's beautiful face. In her angelic violet eyes he beheld its wholesome, serene pictures. He could hear it, vocal, in the anthem-music of her soft, new speech. Her very sweet, divine presence irradiated its palpable truths. All that was good in him was calling out for her.

But in the under-tide of some indefinable, contending, compelling element he was drifting apart. While his mind opened its portals to all the logic so earnestly tendered and tutored by Belle-Ann, his back-standing, immutable mountain heart fought it off like a destroyer,--repelled its invasion with a t.i.tanic force that his willing energies could not subjugate. The tentacles of his father's creed promptly admonished and enmeshed his rebellious heart, protecting its odium, cleaving to its tenancy of "eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth." Which adjuration only lent impetus to an endless cycle of strife and distress, rolling his feverish soul back amidst bones that curse the dead years--that warp the souls of men, and bow down hearts that G.o.d made to beat through life upstanding, radiant with harmony and hope and buoyancy.

In the growing vortex of this tumult of mind and heart, Lem stood like one distraught, circling the limits of the table rock, caged by empty s.p.a.ce,--scarce knowing that his feet lifted, oblivious to his whereabouts. Through this seething, tangled skein, his thoughts seeped for an instant and fled backward. He viewed the past. He saw only two sodden graves side by side. His beset pilgrim mind then turned toward the future, and groped out into the years to come in a vain quest for succor and some element of honest hope.

The boy's thoughts rushed back upon him with a picture that forbade contemplation--a barren, dismal prospect--a measure of life that did not embrace Belle-Ann. He would choose death, he told himself, rather than gain and mislead her. Even had he sought to, he knew he could not withstand his own lie to her. She whose limpid, steadfast, child-eyes could read every line that crossed his soul--every thought that pa.s.sed his eyes. He knew a lie would sheathe itself in its own being.

In his extremity, he stalked madly about the confines of this moon-touched mount. His perturbation waxed to a volcanic upheaval that now inflicted a physical pain. To him it was as if these two conflicting forces had confiscated his corporal structure for a ravaging melee, augmented by two combative rivals struggling in his own heart. His mad love for Belle-Ann--his blind adherence and faith in the code-honor of his hillman lineage. That there was something amiss in this faith his mind could not deny but, oddly enough, his heart hotly rejected it all, stirring him to mad, reckless action. Belle-Ann filled up the whole of Lem's wild, humble life. Without her the future held no hope. Without hope he wanted to die. His vain effort to dislodge the scourge within his soul, goaded him to maniacal thoughts.