Potter's place. Boone persuaded her to come, and tole her if she could make as much as Mis' Potter always does, it will be enough to pay their way back to Maryland. He helped her get ready. I don't know what he said to M'randy to make her stand aside and not interfere, but she made up the ginger-bread as meek as Moses, and let Jim roll the barrel of cider out of the smoke-house without a word."

"Why don't Boone scratch around and raise the money somehow?" put in the man, who had chewed in interested silence as he listened to the story.

Now he stopped to bite another mouthful from a big twist of tobacco he took from his broadcloth coat pocket.

"'Pears like their only son is the one that ought to do fer 'em, and at least he could make M'randy shut up and treat his parents civil."

"Boone!" sniffed the woman. "Why, he's under M'randy's thumb so tight that he da.s.sent sneeze if she don't take snuff. Besides, he's ben on the flat of his back off and on all summer, with dumb ague. It's run into a slow fever now, and it takes every picayune they can sc.r.a.pe together to git his medicines. Then, too, M'randy sprained her ankle a month or so back, and things have been awful sence then. The ole man he don't realize he is in the way, he's so childish and broken down. He jest sorter droops around, pinin' for the comforts he's always ben used to, in a way that almost breaks his ole wife's heart. She feels it keen enough for both of 'em, because she can't bear to see him lackin'

anything he needs, and she'd rather die than be a burden to anybody.

"I tell Jim I'm sorry for the whole set, and I can see it isn't the pleasantest thing for M'randy to give up a room to them when thar's only two in the cabin, and her ways ain't their ways, and their bein' thar puts everything out of joint; but Jim he sides with the ole people. He's mighty sorry for 'em, and would have put his hand in his own pocket and paid their expenses long ago back to Maryland, ef he'd a-ben able. He's ben a great comfort to the ole lady, he's jest that soft-hearted. I hope she'll sell out as fast as Mis' Potter always done."

Before the girl could echo her wish, there was a discordant sc.r.a.ping inside the tent, a sound of the band beginning to tune their instruments. Instantly there was a rush toward the tent, and all three of the little group sprang to their feet. The little woman looked wildly around for Jim, with such an anxious expression that the clown lingered a moment, regardless of the stream of people pouring into the entrance so near him that the curtain which screened him from public view was nearly torn down. He waited until he saw a burly, good-natured man push his way through the crowds and transfer the heavy baby from the woman's tired arms to his broad shoulder. Then he turned away with a queer little smile on his painted face.

"He's jest that soft-hearted," he repeated, half under his breath. The woman's story had stirred him strangely. "It's a pity there's not more like him," he continued. "I guess that too few Jims and too many M'randys is what is the matter with this dizzy old planet."

"What's that ye're grumbling about, Humpty Dumpty?" asked the pock-marked Irishman as he came up with his nine-banded armadillo, all ready for the performance. Then in his most professional tones: "If it is the toothache yez have now, I'll be afther curing it entoirely wid wan touch of this baste from----"

"Oh, get out!" exclaimed the clown, putting his hand on the tall Irishman's shoulder and springing lightly down from the barrel. "I'm dead sick of all this monkey business. If it wasn't a matter of bread-and-b.u.t.ter I wouldn't laugh again in a year."

"Ye couldn't make anybody out there in that big aujence belave it,"

laughed the Irishman. "They think yer life is wan perpetooal joke; that ye're a joke yerself for that matther, a two-legged wan, done up in cap and bells."

"You're right," said the clown bitterly, looking askance at his striped legs. "But 'a man's a man for a' that and a' that,' and he gets tired sometimes of always being taken for a jesting fool. Curse this livery!"

The Irishman looked at him shrewdly. "Ye should have gone in for a 'varsity cap and gown, and Oi've been thinking that maybe ye did start out that way."

A dull red glowed under the paint on the clown's face, and he ran into the ring in response to the signal without a reply. A thundering round of applause greeted him, which broke out again as he glanced all around with a purposely silly leer. Then he caught sight of Jim's honest face, smiling expectantly on him from one of the front benches. It struck him like a pain that this man could not look through his disguise of tawdry circus trappings, and see that a man's heart was beating under the clown's motley. There came a sudden fierce longing to tear off his outward character of mountebank, for a moment, and show Jim the stifled nature underneath, n.o.ble enough to recognize the tender chivalry hidden in the rough exterior of the awkward backwoodsman, and to be claimed by him as a kindred spirit.

As he laughed and danced and sang, no one dreamed that his thoughts kept reverting to scenes that the woman's story had called up, or that a plan was slowly shaping in his mind whereby he might serve the homesick old soul waiting out under the oak-tree for the performance to be done.

No wonder that people accustomed to seeing old Mrs. Potter in that place, gowned in homespun, and knitting a coa.r.s.e yarn sock, had stopped to stare at the newcomer. Such a type of high-born, perfect ladyhood had never appeared in their midst before. The dress that she wore was a relic of the old Maryland days; so was the lace cap that rested like a bit of rare frost-work on her silvery hair. Mrs. Potter knew everybody for miles around, and was ready to laugh and joke with any one who stopped at her stand. Mrs. Ratcliffe sat in dignified silence, a faint colour deepening in her cheeks like the blush of a winter rose. It was so much worse than she had antic.i.p.ated to have these rude strangers staring at her, as if she were a part of the show. She breathed a sigh of relief when the music began, for it drew the crowds into the tent as if by magic. She and little William were left entirely alone.

With the strident boom of the ba.s.s viol came the rank smell of the dog-fennel that hurrying feet had left bruised and wilting in the sun.

All the rest of her life, that warm, weedy odour always brought back that humiliating experience like a keen pain. The horses in the surrounding grove stamped restlessly and whinnied as they switched off the flies. The long ride and the unaccustomed labour of the morning had exhausted her. She began to nod in her chair, giving herself up to a sense of drowsiness, for as long as the people were in the tent she would have no occupation.

Her white head dropped lower and lower, until presently she was oblivious to all surroundings. Little William, sitting on the old wood-sled with his back against the cider barrel, was forgotten. M'randy and the ill-kept cabin vanished entirely from her memory. She was back in the old Maryland days on her father's plantation, hedged about with loving forethought, as tenderly sheltered as some delicate white flower.

Every path had been made smooth for her, every wish antic.i.p.ated all her life long, until that day when they had set their faces westward to find Boone. It was coming down the Ohio on that long journey by flatboat that she suddenly woke to the knowledge that her husband's illness had left him a broken-down old man, as weak and irresponsible as a child.

But mercifully her dreams were back of that time. They were back with Boone in his gay young boyhood, when he danced minuets with the Governor's daughter, and entertained his college friends in lordly style on the old plantation. Back of that time when the restlessness of his 'teens sent him roving over the Alleghanies to the frontier, regardless of their long-cherished ambitions for him. Back of the time when in a sudden mad whim he had married a settler's pretty daughter, whom he was ashamed to take back to civilization when he thought of the Baltimore belles to whom he had paid boyish court. He had not stopped to consider her rough speech and uncouth manners. He had been a long time out in the wilderness, he was only twenty, and her full red lips tempted him.

If the dreams could only have stopped then, that little s.p.a.ce she slept, while the circus band thrummed and drummed inside the tent, and the shadows of the hot August afternoon lengthened under the still trees outside, would have been a blessed respite. But they repeated the unpleasant parts as well. They came on down to the night of that unwelcome arrival. They showed her the days when Boone lay prostrated with a slow malarial fever; the days when the fierce heat made him drag his pallet desperately from one corner to another across the bare puncheons, trying to find a spot where he could be comfortable. She could see him lying as he had so often lain, with his face turned toward the back door, looking out with aching eyes on the tall corn that filled the little clearing. In his feverish wanderings he complained that it was crowding up around the house trying to choke him. And there was little William, little nine-year-old William, sitting on the floor beside him, attempting to flap away the flies with a bunch of walnut leaves. There were long intervals sometimes when the heat overpowered the child with drowsiness. Then the walnut branch wavered uncertainly or stopped in mid-air, while he leaned against the table leg with closed eyes and open mouth. Sometimes Miranda slept on the door-step, bare-footed, as usual, with a dirty bandage around her sprained ankle.

In that short sleep she seemed to relive the whole summer, that had dragged on until her sense of dependence grew to be intolerable.

Miranda's shrill complaining came penetrating again into the tiny room where she sat by her husband's bed, and the old head was bowed once more on his pillow as she sobbed: "Oh, William, dear heart, if the Lord would only take us away together! I cannot bear to be a burden to any one!" It was the sound of her own sobbing that awakened her, and she sat up with a sudden start, realizing that she had been asleep. She must have slept a long time. In that interval of unconsciousness the tavern-keeper from Burnville had erected a rival stand a few rods away.

She saw with dismay his attractive display of "store" goods. Then her face flushed as he began to set out whisky bottles and gla.s.ses. Her first impulse was to gather up her belongings and get home as quickly as possible. In her perplexity she looked around for little William.

Regarding a circus with such contempt herself, it had never occurred to her that he would care to see it.

He was a timid little fellow, who always hid when company came to the house, and he had never been away from home more than a dozen times in his life. The crowds frightened him, and he stayed as closely as a shadow at his grandmother's elbow until the music began. Then he forgot himself. It thrilled him indescribably, and he watched with longing eyes as the people crowded into the tent. It seemed to him that he must certainly go wild if he could not follow, but they had sold nothing.

Even if they had, he would not have dared to ask for enough money to pay his admission, it seemed such an enormous sum. As she began to nod in her chair he began to edge nearer the tent. He could catch now and then a word of the clown's jokes, and hear the roars of laughter that followed. When the clown began to sing, William had one ear pressed against the tent. People clapped and cheered uproariously at the last line of every stanza. He could not hear enough of the words to understand why. In the general commotion he was conscious of only one thing: he was on the outside of that tent, and he must get inside or die.

Regardless of consequences, he threw himself on the gra.s.s and wriggled around until he succeeded in squeezing himself under the canvas. There was a moment of dizzy bewilderment as he sat up and looked around. Then some cold, squirming thing touched the back of his neck. He gave a smothered cry of terror; it was the elephant's trunk. He had come up directly under the animal "from t'other side of the world, that could eat a six-foot c.o.c.k of hay at one meal."

As he sat there, shivering and blubbering, afraid to move because he did not know which end of the clumsy monster was head and which tail, he heard a loud guffaw. The pock-marked Irishman who had charge of the nine-banded armadillo had seen the little side-show, and it doubled him up with laughter. He roared and slapped his thigh and laughed again until he was out of breath. Then he gravely wiped his eyes and drew the boy out from under the great animal. William clung to him, sobbing. Then the warm-hearted fellow, seeing that he was really terrified, took him around and showed him all the sights. In the delight of that hour, home, grandmother, and the world outside were completely forgotten.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Ratcliffe sat wondering what had become of the boy.

People began to straggle out of the tent. There was to be another performance after dark, and she expected to find her customers among those who stayed for that. The tavern-keeper began calling attention to his refreshments in a facetious way that drew an amused crowd around him. Her hopes sank, as group after group pa.s.sed her without stopping.

Two young fellows from the village who had been drinking pushed roughly against her table.

"Hi, Granny!" hiccoughed one of them. "Purty fine doughnuts, ole girl!"

He gathered up a plateful, and tried to find his pocket with unsteady fingers. She stood up with a sickening feeling of helplessness, and looked around appealingly. Just then a heavy hand struck the fellow in the mouth, and jerked him back by his coat-collar. The pock-marked Irishman, to whom the bewildered little William still clung, had undertaken to find the boy's grandmother for him. The child's artless story had aroused his warmest sympathies, and nothing could have given him greater pleasure than this opportunity to fight for her.

"Put thim back, you ugly thafe o' the worruld," he roared, "or Oi'll throw yez entoirely over the sorcuss tint!"

The man bristled up for a fight, but one look into the big Irishman's glowering eyes sobered him enough to make him drop the cakes and slink away.

The Irishman looked embarra.s.sed as Mrs. Ratcliffe began to thank him with tears in her eyes, and hurried back to the tent. The look of distress deepened on her face. Everybody pa.s.sed her table for the one made popular by the loud-voiced man who knew so well how to advertise his wares. With a stifled groan she looked around on the great pile of provisions she had brought. What quant.i.ties of good material utterly wasted! What would Miranda say?

As she looked around her in dismay, she saw the clown coming toward her, still in his cap and bells. He had been watching the scene from a distance. Her distress was pitiful. To be compelled to wait on this jesting fool like any common bar-maid would fill her cup of degradation to overflowing. What could she do if he accosted her familiarly as he did every one else?

He leaned over and took off his grotesque cap. "Madam," he said, in a low, respectful tone, "I have no money, but if you will kindly give me a cake and a mug of cider, you shall soon have plenty of customers."

Greatly surprised, she filled him a cup, wondering what he would do.

There was a rush for that part of the grounds as the hero of the hour appeared. He had been funny enough in the ring, but now they found his jokes irresistible. His exaggerated praises of all he ate and drank were laughed at, but everybody followed his example. More than one gawky boy bought something for the sake of being made the subject of his flattering witticisms. The tavern-keeper called and sang in vain. As long as the clown told funny stories and praised Mrs. Ratcliffe's gingerbread, all other allurements were powerless. He stayed with her until the last cake had been bought and the cider barrel was empty.

It was nearly sundown when she started home. Jim came up to roll the empty barrel on to the sled, to place her chair against it, and help little William hitch up the oxen; but when she looked around to thank the little clown, he had disappeared. No one could tell where he had gone.

Never in her girlhood, rolling home in the stately family coach from some gay social conquest, had she felt so victorious. She jingled the silk reticule at her side with childish pleasure. She could hardly wait for the slow oxen to plod the two long miles toward home, and when they stopped in front of the little cabin she was trembling with eagerness.

Hurrying up the path through the gathering dusk, she poured her treasure out on her husband's bed.

"Look!" she cried, laying her face on the pillow and slipping an arm around his neck. "We are going back to Maryland, dear heart!" She nestled her faded cheek against his with a happy little sob. "Oh, William, we need not be a burden any longer, for we're going home to-morrow!"

Later, the full August moon swung up over the edge of the forest. It flooded the little clearing with its white light, and turned the dusty road in front of the cabin to a broad band of silver. A slow, steady tramp of many feet marching across a wooden bridge in the distance fell on the intense stillness of the summer night.

"It's the circus," said Boone, raising his head to listen. "I reckon they're travellin' by night on account of the heat, and they'll be pushin' on down to the river."

His wife limped to the door and sat down on the step to watch for its coming, but his mother hurried out to the fence and leaned across the bars, waiting.

A strange procession of unwieldy monsters, never before seen in this peaceful woodland, loomed up in the distance, huge and black, while a stranger procession of fantastic shadows stalked grimly by its side. The sleepy keepers dozed in their saddles, filing by in ghostly silence, save for the clanking of trace-chains and the creaking of the heavy lion cages.

At the extreme end of the long line came the tired little clown on the trick mule. A sorrier-looking object could not be imagined, as he sat with his knees drawn up and his head bent dejectedly down. He did not notice the figure leaning eagerly over the bars, until she called him.

Then he looked up with a start. The next instant he had dismounted and was standing bare-headed in the road before her. The moonlight made a halo of her white hair, and lighted up her gentle, aristocratic face with something of its old high-born beauty.

"I wanted to thank you," she said, holding out her slender hand to the painted little jester with the gracious dignity that had always been her charm. "You disappeared this afternoon before I could tell you how much your courtesy has done for me and mine."

He bowed low over the little hand.