What she did want to say must have been satisfactory, for thirty seconds later her delicate cheek was reposing with no apparent discomfort on a pocketful of nails on the front of a dingy yellow canvas working-coat, her slender shoulders were encircled by a pair of canvas-covered arms, and a brown, a very brown, head was bent down to hers.

"Mistu Linney, is 'oo lovin' Miss Luty?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Mistu Linney is oo lovin' Miss Luty?"]

Miss Lucy's agility, considering her years, was something remarkable, when her ears were electrified by this remark from little Katie, who with a pup in the bend of each fat arm, stood gazing in innocent wonder at her friends. Miss Lucy gave a little cry of consternation, but Mr.

Lindsay laughed, and placing an overturned box against one of the great center beams of the barn, drew Miss Lucy to this improvised chair, sat down beside her, and took the child and her dogs in his lap.

"When we're married, Lucy," he said gaily, "we'll git Henrietty to let Katie holp us keep house."

"Oh, what will Pa and Nancy say?" moaned Miss Lucy, remembering her tormentors. The happy glow in her face fled, leaving her very pale. At this moment, the loud rumble of an empty farm-wagon, driven rapidly on the road that pa.s.sed the south end of the barn, ceased abruptly.

"'Tain't what her and him says that matters to me," Mr. Lindsay soothed her: "I reckon you and me are the next theng to old enough to know our own business, ain't we?"

"I know hit," Miss Lucy mourned, "but they worry me so. Ef you don't keer, Mr.--Mr.--"

"I'm _Nathan_ to you, Lucy," Mr. Lindsay corrected her tenderly.

"I jest wanted to say I'd love to keep hit a secret a while any way.

'Twon't be no harm, will hit?"

"Ef you want to, of course hit won't," Mr. Lindsay a.s.sured her cheerfully. "I've been thenkin' about hit," he said after a moment, "and I believe ef prices are anyways good this spreng, I'll go into tobacco raisin' ag'in. Jest us two to live, a body might make a little somethin'

at hit. Next year I might fill a barn as big as this ef I had no bad luck."

Neither of them had observed the fact that the rumble of the pa.s.sing wagon had ceased when it reached the barn, nor did they notice the shadow that at this moment fell across the light that came in between two beech planks at the corner of the barn nearest them, made by the pressing of a coa.r.s.e ear to the fissure. The owner of the ear had caught the sound of voices, and thinking he heard Miss Lucy speak, wished to a.s.sure himself of the fact before entering the barn.

"O Miss Luty," little Katie shrilled, "somebody's dot in de shunshine!"

There was a hasty removal of the coa.r.s.e ear from the timbers, and a l.u.s.ty cough, and just as the astonished pair of sitters within the barn sprang to their feet, Mr. Brock's stolid face appeared in the doorway.

"Mr. Castle asked me to keep a sharp lookout for night riders about the barns, Miss Lucy," he said, breaking the embarra.s.sed silence. "Mr.

Castle's mighty scarey, you know."

Miss Lucy turned white and red, by turns, in an agony of embarra.s.sment, and remained dumb. Mr. Lindsay found his voice.

"I ain't heard of no night riders a bein' out in the daytime, so far,"

he offered, then added, turning to the door, unmindful of the entreaty in Miss Lucy's eyes, "I guess I'll be goin', Miss Lucy: my work's a waitin' fer me."

"Little Katie--I come out here with her, Mr. Brock, to see the puppies, and Mr. Lindsay he jest happened along, and opened the door fer us."

Ladies do not usually sit on boxes in tobacco barns with their admirers, and Miss Lucy trembled so she could hardly stand, in her attempt to explain her presence in the barn with Mr. Lindsay.

"You're a gittin' cold, Miss Lucy," Mr. Brock took pity on her confusion and evident misery: "s'pose you take Katie on to the house. I'll be gittin' along."

Following her sister's directions, Miss Lucy came home in the dusk. Mr.

Lindsay accosted her as she pa.s.sed through the barn lot where he was milking.

"I hope you didn't thenk hard of me fer leavin' you so sudden this mornin', Miss Lucy": his voice was tenderly apologetic, "but I 'lowed you could explain better what you was a doin' in the barn, ef--ef--I wasn't there."

Miss Lucy smiled into his anxious eyes, a smile of trust and happiness.

"I knowed you was a tryin' to do the best you could fer me, and to keep us from bein' talked about," she a.s.sured him sweetly, forgetting for once her usual precautionary glance.

Mr. Lindsay set the milk bucket down and came close to her.

"There's somethin' of my mother's, I want you to have," he murmured, looking down at her slender fingers: "I put hit in the little pink vase on the mantel-piece, and when you go to the house, I wish you'd git hit."

Before Miss Lucy could answer, he added abruptly: "I hate to tell you, Lucy, but there's somebody a holdin' the settin'-room door open. Jest tell 'em ef they ask you anytheng that I wuz a askin' you ef old Blackie'd fell off any in her milk. Hit don't look like she has, does. .h.i.t?" He held the half-filled milk bucket toward her. Miss Lucy shook her head, and walked quickly to the house.

"What on earth was you a talkin' to Mr. Lindsay about?" her sister asked her as she came in.

"About old Blackie," murmured Miss Lucy, obeying her mentor: "Mr.

Lindsay asked me ef I thought she was a fallin' off in her milk, and I told him I didn't see that she was."

"I think your tongue needs oilin', ef hit took you all that time to git off them few words," Miss Nancy replied suspiciously.

Miss Lucy did not reply to this taunt, but slipping out into the kitchen, she hastily emptied the grounds from the coffee-pot into the ashbarrel, and pouring several tablespoonfuls of coffee berries in the hopper of the little coffee-mill, she carried it stealthily down into the dairy, where the sound would not reach her sister's ears, and ground the coffee quickly.

"He loves his coffee strong," she whispered to herself, as she poured the freshly ground coffee into the pot, with a look of determination that sat oddly upon her: "and Nancy sha'n't give him weak stuff made out of old grounds, tonight, nohow!"

Miss Nancy took care that Miss Lucy had no more words alone with Mr.

Lindsay that evening, but when he took his lamp to retire, he found a little twisted slip of paper on the middle step of the stairway, that he read with satisfaction, and laid carefully in his pocket-book, while Miss Lucy went to sleep with her hand closed on a worn chased ring suspended about her neck with a little silken cord.

CHAPTER IX

"SURE SOME DISASTER HAS BEFELL"

"The sun grew weary of guilding the palaces of Morad; the clouds of sorrow gathered around his head, and the tempest of hatred roared about his dwelling."

With March, spring descended abruptly in Kentucky. Before the end of the second week, the rows of interwoven canes with the suggestion of green at their feet, in the gardens of the Silver Run neighborhood, that told that peas were up, were not the only signs of spring.

The great rolling bluegra.s.s fields had exchanged their nunlike drab carpeting for one of a delicate green: the willows that fringed the creek were lightly touched with emerald: in the maples alternating with the willows, bees worked joyously: every red-bud tree on the wooded cliffs wore a drapery of delicate pink, like a tinted bridal veil, and on one side the little James farm, the rye in the last year's tobacco field of Vaughn Castle, spread out like a lake with waters newly dyed green. Even the all-winter bare back yard of the Ephriam Doggetts had made an attempt at redeeming its appearance: the mallow and the dock had begun to lift their heads, and next the fence, some sprigs of purple henbit showed themselves.

Mr. Lindsay had resumed his work of tobacco stripping in late February--helping the belated tobacco-men, and afterward setting up hemp for the weather belated hemp growers, staying from Sat.u.r.day evening until Sunday morning at the house of the always-open-door, and turn-n.o.body-away Doggetts.

One Sunday morning, he came into the house, a half dozen yellow jonquils that bloomed under the ragged Althea bush, in a corner of the front yard, in his hand.

"Well, Marshall," he suggested, "suppose'n you git out the razors, and let's me and you shave each other, and git ready to go to see our girls this evenin'."

Wisdom had whispered in the ears of Mr. Lindsay, and, following her advice (though with reluctance) he had made no week day calls on the James family since his departure. On both the Sundays that had pa.s.sed, however, he had called. The old man and Miss Nancy (her suspicions as to his intentions allayed by his absence, and Miss Lucy's demeanor) had treated him with cordiality: he had managed un.o.bserved by them to exchange delightfully satisfactory whispers with his betrothed, and today he looked forward to a similar happy afternoon.

The sunshine was no brighter than Mr. Lindsay's low cut shoes, when, after Mrs. Doggett's early dinner, he and Marshall lifted the gate that had no hinges: the dead autumn leaves in the ditch no browner than his tidy mustache, and a faint odor of "white rose" trailed on the air behind him.

"How do we look, Ma?" invited Marshall pausing correctly to adjust the bit of white in his breast pocket.