She reached out her hand. I felt her fingers close cold and hard on mine, as though loth to let me go. I kissed her fingers and withdrew, myself at least very glad to be away.

I retired presently to my room to arrange my portmanteaus for an early journey. And there, filling up one-half of the greater valise, was a roll of hide, ragged about its edge. I drew it out, and spread it flat upon the bed before me, whitened and roughened with bone, reddened with blood, written on with rude stylus, bearing certain words which all the time, day and night, rang, yes, and sang, in my brain.

"_I, John Cowles--I, Ellen Meriwether--take thee, for better, for worse--till death--_" I saw her name, _E-l-l-e-n._

CHAPTER XLI

ELLEN OR GRACE

Presently once more I departed. My mother also ended her visit at Dixiana, preferring to return to the quiet of her two little whitewashed rooms, and the old fireplace, and the sooty pot-hooks which our people's slaves had used for two generations in the past.

As to what I learned at Huntington, which place I reached after some days of travel, I need say no more than that I began to see fully verified my father's daring and his foresight. The matter of the coal land speculation was proved perfectly feasible. Indeed, my conference with our agents made it clear that little remained excepting the questions of a part.i.tion of interests, or of joint action between Colonel Meriwether and my father's estate. The right of redemption still remained, and there offered a definite alternative of selling a part of the lands and retaining the remainder clear of inc.u.mbrance. We wrote Colonel Meriwether all these facts from Huntington, requesting his immediate attention. After this, I set out for home, not ill-pleased with the outlook of my material affairs.

All these details of surveying and locating lands, of measuring shafts and drifts, and estimating cubic yards in coal, and determining the status of tenures and fees, had occupied me longer than I had antic.i.p.ated. I had been gone two days beyond a month, when finally, somewhat wearied with stage travel, I pulled up at Wallingford.

As I approached the little tavern I heard much laughing, talking, footfalls, hurrying, as men came or went on one errand or another. A large party had evidently arrived on a conveyance earlier than my own. I leaned against the front rail of the tavern gallery and waited for some stable-boy to come. The postmaster carried away his mail sack, the loungers at the stoop gradually disappeared, and so presently I began to look about me. I found my eyes resting upon a long figure at the farther end of the gallery, sitting in the shade of the steep hill which came down, almost sharp as a house roof, back of the tavern, and so cut off the evening sun. It was apparently a woman, tall and thin, clad in a loose, stayless gown, her face hid in an extraordinarily long, green sun-bonnet. Her arms were folded, and she was motionless. But now and then there came a puff of smoke from within the caverns of the sun-bonnet, accompanied with the fragrant odor of natural leaf, whose presence brooked no debate by the human nose. I looked at this stranger again and yet again, then slowly walked up and held out my hand. No one in all the world who could counterfeit Mandy McGovern, even so far away, and under conditions seemingly impossible for her presence!

Mandy's pipe well-nigh fell from her lips. "Well, good G.o.d A'mighty! If it ain't you, son!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," I smiled.

"They told me you-all lived somewheres around here."

"Aunt Mandy," I interrupted. "Tell me, what in the world are you doing here?"

"Why, me and the folks just come down to look around. Her and her Pa was comin', and I come, too."

"_Who_ came with you, Aunt Mandy?"

"Still askin' fool questions like you didn't know! Why, you know who it was. The Colonel's ordered to jine his rigiment at Fort Henry. Gal come along o' him, o' course. I come along with the gal, o' course. My boy and my husband come along with me, o' course."

"Your son, Andrew Jackson?"

"Uh-huh. He's somewheres 'round, I reckon. I see him lickin' a n.i.g.g.e.r a few minutes ago. Say, that boy's come out to be the fightenest feller I ever did see. Him allowin' he got that there Injun, day we had the fight down on the Platte, it just made a new man out'n him. 'Fore long he whupped a teamster that got sa.s.sy with him. Then he taken a rock and lammed the cook 'cause he looked like he was laffin' at him. Not long atter that, he killed a Injun he 'lowed was crawlin' 'round our place--done kilt him and taken his skulp 'fore I had time to explain to him that like enough that Injun was plum peaceful, and only comin' in to get a loaf o' bread."

"Bread? Aunt Mandy, where was all this?"

"Where d'ye suppose it was unlessen at our _ho_tel? My man and me seen there was a good openin' there on the trail this side o' the south fork, and we set up a hotel in a dugout. Them _emigrants_ would give you anything you aste for a piece o' pie, or a real baked loaf o' bread. We may go back there some time. We could make our pile in a couple o'

years. I got over three hundred dollars right here in my pocket."

"But I don't quite understand about the man--your husband--"

"Yep, my lastest one. Didn't you know I married ole man Auberry? He's 'round here somewheres, lookin' fer a drink o' licker, I reckon.

Colonel Meriwether 'lowed there'd be some fightin' 'round these parts afore long. My man and my son 'lowed the West was gettin' right quiet for them, and they'd just take a chanct down here, to see a little life in other parts."

"I hadn't heard of this last marriage of yours, Aunt Mandy," I ventured.

"Oh, yes, me and him hooked up right soon atter you and the gal got lost. Don't see how you missed our place when you come East. We done took at least six bits off'n every other man, woman or child that come through there, east or west, all summer long. You see I was tired of that lazy husband o' mine back home, and Auberry he couldn't see nothin'

to that woman o' his'n atter he found out how I could bake pie and bread. So we both seem' the chanct there was there on the trail, we done set up in business. Say, I didn't know there was so many people in the whole world as they was of them emi_grants_. Preacher come along in a wagon one day--broke, like most preachers is. We kep' him overnight, free, and he merried us next mornin' for nothin'. Turn about's fair play, I reckon."

I scarcely heard her querulous confidences. "Where is Colonel Meriwether?" I asked her at last.

"Inside," she motioned with her pipe. "Him and the gal, too. But say, who's that a-comin' down the street there in that little sawed-off wagon?"

I looked. It was my fiancee, Grace Sheraton!

By her side was my friend, Captain Stevenson, and at the other end of the seat was a fluttering and animated figure that could be no one else but Kitty. So then I guessed that Stevenson and his wife had come on during my absence and were visiting at Dixiana. No doubt they had driven down now for the evening mail.

Could anything have lacked now to set in worse snarl my already tangled skein of evil fortune! Out of all the thousand ways in which we several actors in this human comedy might have gone without crossing each other's paths, why should Fate have chosen the only one to bring us thus together?

Kitty seemed first to spy me, and greeted me with an enthusiastic waving of her gloves, parasol, veil and handkerchief, all held confusedly, after her fashion, in one hand. "P-r-r-r-t!" she trilled, school-girl-like, to attract my attention meanwhile. "Howdy, you man! If it isn't John Cowles I'm a sinner. Matt, look at him, isn't he old, and sour, and solemn?"

Stevenson jumped out and came up to me, smiling, as I pa.s.sed down the steps. I a.s.sisted his vivacious helpmeet to alight. I knew that all this tangle would presently force itself one way or the other. So I only smiled, and urged her and her husband rapidly as I might up the steps and in at the door, where I knew they would immediately be surprised and fully occupied. Then again I approached Grace Sheraton where she still sat, somewhat discomfited at not being included in these plans, yet not unwilling to have a word with me alone.

"You sent me no word," began she, hurriedly. "I was not expecting you to-day; but you have been gone more than two weeks longer than you said you would be." The reproach of her voice was not lost to me.

Stevenson had run on into the tavern after his first greeting to me, and presently I heard his voice raised in surprise, and Kitty's excited chatter. I heard Colonel Meriwether's voice answering. I heard another voice.

"Who is in there?" asked Grace Sheraton of me, curiously. I looked her slowly and fully in the face.

"It is Colonel Meriwether," I answered. "He has come on unexpectedly from the West. His daughter is there also, I think. I have not yet seen her."

"That woman!" breathed Grace Sheraton, sinking back upon her seat. Her eye glittered as she turned to me. "Oh, I see it all now--you have been with them--_you have met her again!_ My G.o.d! I could kill you both--I could--I say I could!"

"Listen," I whispered to her, putting a hand on her wrist firmly. "You are out of your head. Pull up at once. I have not seen or heard from either of them. I did not know they were coming, I tell you."

"Oh, I say, Cowles," sang out Stevenson, at that moment running out, flushed and laughing. "What do you think, here's my Colonel come and caught me at my leave of absence! He's going across the mountains, over to his home in Albemarle. We're all to be at Henry together. But I suppose you met them--"

"No, not yet," I said. "I've just got in myself."

We both turned to the girl sitting pale and limp upon the seat of the wagonette. I was glad for her sake that the twilight was coming.

The courage of her family did not forsake Grace Sheraton. I saw her force her lips to smile, compel her face to brighten as she spoke to Captain Stevenson.

"I have never met any of the Meriwethers. Will you gentlemen present me?"

I a.s.sisted her to alight, and at that time a servant came and stood at the horse's head. Stevenson stepped back to the door, not having as yet mentioned my presence there.

There came out upon the gallery as he entered that other whose presence I had for some moments known, whom I knew within the moment I must meet--Ellen!

Her eyes fell upon me. She stepped back with a faint exclamation, leaning against the wall, her hands at her cheeks as she stared. I do not know after that who or what our spectators were. I presume Stevenson went on into the house to talk with Colonel Meriwether, whom I did not see at all at that time.

The first to speak was Grace Sheraton. Tall, thin, darker than ever, it seemed to me, and now with eyes which flickered and glittered as I had never seen them, she approached the girl who stood there shrinking. "It is Miss Meriwether? I believe I should know you," she began, holding out her hand.