Kate Beaumont

CHAPTER XXL

MAJOR LAWSON cherished hopes that he should be able to palaver General Johnson into some peaceful accommodation of the difficulty between Tom Beaumont and Frank McAlister.

But the General had an instinctive feeling, which he had greatly strengthened by venerable sanguinary experience, to the effect that accommodations not preceded by gunpowder are a disgrace to high-toned humanity, and not to be agreed to by any right-minded second. In duelling matters he was on his familiar hunting-grounds, and easily an overmatch for a novice in the intricate, tremendous chase. Moreover, one babbler is, as a rule, quite able to take care of another ; and even the Major was not a longer winded creature than the old stump orator. Thus the latter had his own sweet will, courteously balked all attempts at effecting a reconciliation, and serenely brought the two parties face to face.

An “ oldfield,” — that is, a deserted clearing, a plot of land once alive to humanity and now dead, a few acres gone utterly barren except for weeds, bushes, and dwarf pines,—an oldfield some four or five miles from the village was the place of meeting. Anxious for decorum even in homicide, and perhaps more especially in homicide, the General had made the arrangements with able secrecy, so as totally to baffle the curiosity of the loungers of Hartland. The only persons present were the principals, the seconds, Dr. Mattieson, a Dr. McAuley, two negro coachmen, and two negro servants ; these four last, by the way, being as cheerfully interested in the occasion as if they were full-blooded white men of the highest toned origin and habits. The rising sun was just beginning to steal through the stunted trees and burnish to splendor the drops of dew upon the starveling grass. The ground was so staked out as that the life-giving light should not dazzle the eyes of either of the men upon whom it now shone for perhaps the last time.

Major Lawson, looking very ghastly and piteous, as if he were about to plead for his own further existence, walked hastily up to that red-eyed destiny, Johnson, and muttered a few words in such an agitated tone that they were incomprehensible.

“ I beg your pardon ?” inquired the tranquil General. " I am obliged to reply that I did not understand you, — my hearing, Major,” explained the polite old fellow, whose senses were as acute as those of a young squirrel.

“ Hem ! ” uttered the Major, vehemently clearing his throat, for he was both ashamed of his agitation and eager to speak. “ I was taking the liberty, my very dear General, to suggest that it is not too late to — in fact to prevent bloodshed. To prevent bloodshed,” he repeated, trying to soften Johnson with a smile and an inflection.

The General, in spite of his habitual urbanity, looked frankly annoyed, not to say disgusted.

“ Major, have you anything to propose on the part of your principal ? ” he asked dryly.

“ In case of regrets — of a sufficient apology,” stammered Lawson, not knowing how to proceed, and fearing lest he had already said more than the code justified.

“ Bless me, no,” smiled the relieved General, who had absolutely feared a withdrawal of the challenge, although the scandal did not really seem possible. " My dear Major, I am happy to say — I mean I am sincerely and singularly grieved to state — that I have no authority to offer an apology. As for submitting the idea to my principal, I should not dare do it at this late moment. In my opinion it would be trespassing upon his liberty of action. But, bless me, Major ! why, you are suffering, you are pale. Don’t trouble yourself to explain. I understand it all. You are weighed upon by your sense of responsibility. Cheer up, sir,”exhorted the friendly General, nobly taking Lawson’s hand. “ You have done your whole duty as a gentleman and a Christian. Your philanthropic and humane conduct claims and obtains my sincere admiration. Let me assure you that you may make your remaining preparations with a conscience as clear as heaven’s own azure.” After gazing for a moment with blear-eyed ecstasy into the blue ethereal above, he added briskly: “ Well, let us hasten. These suspenses are trying. Moreover, we must avoid interruptions ; they are always causes of scandal. Receive my thanks, Major, for your humane suggestion, and my regrets that I cannot avail my self of it.”

With a profound bow the Major tottered away, muttering to himself, “ Bloodthirsty old beast! ”

Altogether the most excited, anxious, and alarmed man on the ground was John Lawson. He was face to face with a monstrous event, with the grandest ceremony of the knightly society in which he had been bred, with an instant question of life and death. He felt as if he were being presented at court, and also as if he were about to commit murder. Great responsibilities and duties weighed upon him ; he must fight his man well, and he must load a pistol. These things, too, these tremendous courtesies and this momentous business, he must undertake for the first time ; and, to complete his embarrassment, he must undertake them in the presence of a man who knew everything, while he knew nothing. Every step that he took, however carefully premeditated, might be an outrageous blunder in the eyes of that critical, cool, abominable old Johnson.

But Lawson’s greatest trouble was lest somebody should be shot. It that happened, how could he ever sleep again, or be happy while awake ? Especially if Frank McAlister should fall never more to rise, how would matters stand with social, soft-hearted John Lawson ? Would his pet, Kate Beaumont, or even his old friend Kershaw, ever forgive him ? The Major would have given his worldly estate to have the loading of both weapons, so that he might charge them with nothing but the softest, downiest wadding. He wished that he had the courage to submit to his principal that it would be well to fire over the head of the other principal. Meanwhile he was loading his pistol with great difficulty, for his eyes were dim with lack of sleep the night before, and his hands were so shaky that he dropped several caps before he got one on the nipple.

“ Rough business being roused out so early in the morning, is n’t it, Major?” said Tom Beaumont in such a cheerful, cheering voice, that Lawson turned to stare at the youngster.

Tom appeared as a Beaumont should on such an occasion ; he lounged easily about, and he had a pretty good color in his cheeks. He had come to the field in a proud spirit, determined to do himself and his family honor. He had been so fearful that he should look pale at the scratch, that he had washed his face repeatedly in cold water before leaving home, and finally had given it a rubbing with spirits of hartshorn.

But although Tom was resolved to behave manfully in this his first duel, he somehow did not find himself bloodthirsty nor even very pugnacious. The near prospect of death had softened his spirit and made him almost forgive his antagonist. He had come to remember with gentleness and with something like gratitude the family obligation to this Frank McAlister. By moments he considered the propriety of firing at least one shot in the air, and very nearly decided that he ought so to do. This gentle change in his feelings he only revealed to others by a single phrase, which was so ill understood that it was afterwards credited to him as a jest.

“ By heavens,” he muttered, glancing with a half-smile at his tall antagonist, “ if I wanted to shoot over his head, I could n't.”

Frank McAlister never once looked at Tom. The lofty, grand monument of a fellow stood perfectly quiet, with his arms folded, his head bent, and his eyes on the ground. He was engaged in an obstinate struggle to fix his mind entirely, steadily, and to the last on Kate Beaumont. He had passed the night mainly in carrying on this struggle. He had not slept, except in brief dozings. On awaking from each his first thought had been the duel ; no, it had not been so much a thought as a vague foreboding, — an uncertain, sombre consciousness of peril. In the very next breath came a recollection of Kate and a renewal of the effort to settle his soul upon her alone. She had not answered his letters ; she had doubtless condemned him because of his father and his family ; she had condemned him, without a hearing, to be separated from her forever ; he knew, or thought he knew, all that. Never mind ; he would love her still, make her the whole of what life remained to him, think steadily of her and of nothing but her. Thus had he passed the night, striving to reach her through enemies and circumstances ; and now, in the near presence of death, he was continuing the same pathetic, agonized battle. His constant pleading was, “ Let me die, conscious of her alone.”

Of a sudden the sun, stealing under the branches of a young pine, smote upon his eyes and summoned him to face another thought. In spite of his wrestling to cling to the beloved object which was to him nearly all of earth, he remembered and realized the awful solemnity of that transit which he was near to making. He felt that he must appeal for strength and comfort to a higher power than any human being. Wrong as he was, he dared to pray, or rather he dared not refrain from praying. An irresistible pressure was upon him, and all in the direction of prayer. It did not command him to repent, but merely to ask forgiveness and help. It was the hurried instinct of a swimmer overwhelmed by billows and dragged deathward. Without a lifting of the eyes or even a moving of the lips, there passed through his mind something like the following words : —

“ O Father in heaven, I am here by my own folly and wickedness. But I am broken-hearted, and long to die. Give me strength to bear the deserved stroke ; strength to bear wounds, suffering, and death. Pardon me for rushing upon my fate. Thou knowest what a burden has fallen upon me. Forgive me for sinking under it. Help here, and mercy in eternity.”

You can judge of the keenness of a sorrow which had thus far unseated a strong reason ; you can guess at the depth of a despair which had thus swallowed up a Christian education. We have no excuses to offer for what he himself confessed to be folly and wickedness. We only say that he should be considered as temporarily insane with broken hopes and blighted affection.

His prayer uttered, he felt strengthened. It was a moment incredible to such as have not passed through similar trials. He calmly advanced to meet death by the help of a woman whom he had lost and a Creator whom he disobeyed. Impossible as it was, these two sustained him. There was on his face an expression which was almost a smile as he took the loaded pistol from his alert, uncomprehending, heartless second. Supported, yes, and cheered by his illusions, he walked to his post of fate and waited. His eyes were fixed dreamily on the ground ; he still would not look at his adversary.

There was a short silence. Lawson, trembling visibly all over, turned away his face and then shaded it with one hand, longing to cover it altogether. The steady old Johnson, in a firm, clear, shrill voice, called : “ Gentlemen ! Are you ready ? One, two, three. Fire ! ”

Two reports answered. Each of the combatants kept his position. The tragedy had crashed by harmlessly.

At the sound of the pistols Major Lawson wheeled as quickly as if he had been hit, and made a step or two toward Frank McAlister. Then, remembering himself and seeing his favorite standing, he hurried to his own principal.

“ What the deuce did he fire in the air for ? ” at once demanded Tom.

“Did he?” inquired the amazed Major. “ Why, of course he did,” he immediately added, recovering his presence of mind. “ The ball passed thirty feet over your head.”

“I did n’t hit him?” were Tom’s next words, in a tone of inquiry.

Lawson wheeled about in alarm, and then said with a sigh of undisguisable relief, “ It appears not.”

“ There ’s no pluck in firing at a man who won’t fire back,” Tom quickly added.

Lawson silently grasped the youth’s hand and pressed it warmly.

“ It seems a little like mere murder,” continued Tom. “What do you say ? ”

“ Noble young man ! ” murmured the Major. “ Noble, gallant, chivalrous young man ! ” he continued, with real and profound feeling. “ Mr. Beaumont, you honor your race. Shall I say — shall I have the great pleasure of saying — that you demand no further satisfaction ? You may properly direct me to say it. My dear, noble, distinguished young friend, you may feel entirely justified in directing it.”

“ Ye—s,” drawled Tom, after a moment of reflection which was torture to Lawson. “ Only I won’t shake hands.

I ’ll have another fire first. He may go this time, but I won’t shake hands.”

“Noble young man ! ” sang the Major (though with less fervor than before), as he turned to meet General Johnson.

That veteran swashbuckler did not look gratified, nor hardly amiable. He had noted with dissatisfaction that his man had fired in the air, and he was in chivalrous anxiety lest the duel might be closed by that mistaken act of magnanimity, unparalleled in the history of his own personal combats.

“ I have the honor to inquire whether your principal demands any further satisfaction ? ” he said with a succinctness and grimness quite foreign to his Ciceronian habits.

“ We demand nothing more, sir,” replied Lawson, bowing and smiling, exasperatingly sweet. “The magnanimous and chivalrous conduct of your principal induces us to terminate the combat.”

The General was somewhat mollified. A compliment to his principal was precious to him ; it was a flattery which he had a right to share.

“ Allow me to express to you my admiration for the gallantry and the knightly bearing of your principal,” be responded in his stateliest way. Then, in a more familiar tone, “ Noble young fellows, both of them. Lawson Noble boys, by gad.”

“ Certainly,” coincided the Major, warmly. “Johnson, we are honored in serving them. Honored, General, honored.”

“Yes, sir,” affirmed the General, with an emphasis rarely equalled at least in this world.

“ My principal only ventures to claim one reservation,” added Lawson, apologizing for the claim with bow and smile. “ He declines a formal reconciliation,— the usual shaking of hands, General,— nothing but that.”

“Ah, indeed,” replied Johnson, smiling also, for he saw a chance to continue the duel. “ Excuse me, my very dear Major, but that is a matter which requires consideration.”

“The political antagonism of the families, you remember,” ventured to suggest the newly alarmed Lawson. “ Reasons of state, if I may venture to use the expression. No personal feeling, I assure you. Dear me, no.”

“ I shall take great pleasure in laying the matter before my principal and requesting his decision,” returned the diplomatic Johnson.

Frank McAlister, expecting nothing less than another exchange of shots, had resumed his struggle to think of no other thing on earth than Kate Beaumont, and was standing with arms folded, brows fixed, eyes drooped, unconscious of all around him.

“Shake hands?” he said dreamily, when he at last caught the meaning of the General’s elaborate statement of the fresh difficulty. “ Of course I don’t require it. I shall never touch a hand of that family again.”

“Allow me to observe that you have already shown immense forbearance,” suggested the discomfited Johnson.

“That is my part,” quietly answered Frank. “ I came here for that.”

“ My God, these are new notions,” thought the gentleman of an old school, as he marched back to make his pacific communication. “ In my day men fought till something happened. What the deuce is to come of all these Quakerly whimwhams ?” he concluded, with a notion that good society might not last his time out.

But the astonishment, and we might say the grief, of the hoary hero were fruitless ; for once a duel between a Beaumont and a McAlister ended without bloodshed ; in a few minutes more the oldfield was left deserted and without a stain.

Tom Beaumont dashed homeward on horseback, and on the way met his father, also mounted. Although the grim old knight had been able to send his son to meet death, he could not help suffering keen anxiety as to his fate. He did not know that he had the gout that morning, nor could he drink brandy enough to raise his spirits. After passing two hours in patrolling his garden, lighting and throwing away a succession of cigars, and roaring to Cato every few minutes for juleps, he called for his fastest horse, thrust his swollen feet into the stirrups and galloped off to meet the carriages. The father and son encountered each other unexpectedly at the angle of a wood.

“ Ah, Tom ! ” exclaimed Peyton Beaumont, grasping the young fellow’s hand. “All right, my boy?” Then, impelled by a strange mixture of emotions, “ God bless you, my boy ! ”

Next followed some straightforward, business-like inquiries as to the circumstances of the meeting.

“You did well, Tom,” was his brief comment. “ On the whole, taking into view the previous circumstances of the case, you did well to let him off.”

In a subsequent conversation with Lawson he expressed himself much more fully on this point of the “ letting off” of Frank McAlister.

“ By heavens, Tom is a trump ! ” he said proudly. “ I knew no son of mine would do anything in bad taste. Tom did right in sparing the fellow. And, Lawson, I am more pleased with the fact than you can imagine. Lawson, by heavens, it’s a strange thing, but I liked that fellow. I absolutely felt an affection for him ; and, what’s more, I can’t quite get over it; I can’t, by heavens. It’s a most astonishing circumstance, considering that brutal insult. Why, just think of it; just think of it, Lawson. Tied my son ! Tied him like a thief, like a nigger. Consider the outrage, Lawson ; how could he do it ? I would n’t have thought he could tie one of my sons, or tie any gentleman. I would n’t have believed it of him. I had a high opinion of that fellow. I almost loved him. He had the making of a gentleman in him. If he had been born in any other family, he would have become as fine a fellow as you could wish to see. Well, badly as he has behaved to Tom, I’m glad he was n’t hurt. I can never forgive him, never. But I did n’t want him killed. No, Lawson, no.”

“ He may do well yet,” suggested the cunning Major. “You know, I suppose, my dear Beaumont, that he fired in the air.”

“ Yes. Tom told me. Of course Tom told me everything. It speaks well for the fellow, shows that he has good instincts,” admitted Beaumont, magnanimously. “ Ashamed of his brutal insult, you see,” he explained. “Willing to take the legitimate consequences of it. On the whole — by heavens, Lawson, I wish we had never met, or never quarrelled.”

From Peyton Beaumont we return to Frank McAlister. He would have been glad to ride away alone from the duelling-ground, but he had not expected to leave it an able-bodied man or even a living one, and had therefore neglected to bring a horse. The result was that he made his journey back to Hartland in the same carriage with his second. It was a singular tête-à-têtc, an interview of gabble with revery. The old fellow tattled in his unconsciously ferocious way about the duel, and about other duels, a long series of chivalrous horrors, as ghastly and bloody as so many ghosts of Banquo. The young fellow heard not, answered not, and thought only of Kate Beaumont. It was not rational meditation ; he did not, for instance, query as to what might be the feelings of the girl concerning this meeting between himself and her brother; he was in no state to marshal facts or to draw conclusions. His condition was consciousness, rather than intelligence ; and his consciousness revolved only about the idea that he loved.

How he had met her; how she had looked on this occasion and that and the other ; what had been the tone of her voice, the expression of her eyes, the meaning of her gestures ; — these things and many more like them thronged through his spirit. Nor were they mere remembrances; they were tableaux and audiences ; she was in his presence. She advanced, and passed before his face, and went sweetly out of sight, only to come again. Except for an under voice of deepest despair which whispered, “ Lost, lost! ” the revery was indescribably delicious.

“ I have been happy,” he said in his soul. “ I thank her for the purest happiness that I ever knew. No one, no event, no lapse of time, can rob me of the fact that I once knew her and was daily near her. I am still bound, and always shall be bound, to owe her greater gratitude than I can utter. She created me anew ; she has made me nobler than I was ; she lifted me up like a queen out of mere egotism. Until I met her I did not know that I had the power in me to love. She has made me worthy to be on the earth. Thanks to her, I have no shame for myself; I am perfectly wretched, but I possess my own respect. It is proper and beautiful to exist only for another. She has ennobled me.”

At this point he vaguely understood the General to say: “Yes, sir. A man ought to shoot his own brother, sir, if that brother gives him the lie. He ought to shoot him, as sure as you are born, sir. By gad, that ’s my solemn opinion, as a gentleman, sir.”

The next moment the young man was lost again in his revery. “ I have lived, for I have loved,” he repeated from Schiller. “To her beautiful soul be all the praise for my redemption from selfishness. Thanks be to Heaven also that she has been worshipped in a manner worthy of her. It may be that no other woman was ever honored by such an adoration. Thank Heaven that I have been deemed fit to confer upon her this great distinction of entire love. Merely in laying the whole of my heart at her feet, I have honored both her and me. Perhaps no other man was ever permitted so to worship such a worshipful being. My reward is sufficient, and it is more than I deserve. I have lived to high purpose, and I am content to die.”

Here again he caught a few words from the interminably prattling General : “ The truth is, that old Hugh Beaumont, the father of Peyton, you know, shot your great-uncle, Duncan, quite unnecessarily. In my opinion you would have been justified in remembering that fact to-day, and acting accordingly. Not to mention,” etc., etc.

Notwithstanding this savage reminiscence, Frank remained in his lovelorn abstraction. His mood was more potent than mere revery ; it rose to an exaltation which was almost mania ; he was as irrational as those are who love with their whole being. His passion was a possession, the object of which had usurped the place of himself, so that he was not only ruled but absorbed by her. The power which she exercised over his spirit was absolutely a matter of pride with him. He wished to be known as her adorer, her infatuated idolater, her helpless slave. It needed all the natural gravity and dignity of his character to prevent him from babbling of her constantly to his friends. In riding or walking he had wild impulses to stop people, even though they were perfect strangers, and say, “ I am nobler than you think me, for I love Kate Beaumont.”

Let us not jeer at him ; let us study him reverently. If any man is clean of the world, it is the lover ; if any man is pure in heart, it is the lover. There is no nobler state of mind, with regard at least to merely human matters, than that of a man who loves with his whole being. The wife’s affection is equal ; so is the mother’s. There is no diminution of honor in the fact that this sublime and beautiful emotion is in a measure its own reward. It is also its own pain : think of the sorrow of rejection ! think of the agony of bereavement !

Nearing home, Frank met one of his father’s negroes on a horse which he had been taking to the smith’s. Muttering an indistinct farewell to Johnson, he sprang out of the carriage, mounted the animal, and set off at full speed toward Kershaw’s, not even remembering to send word of his safety to his brother Bruce. He was wild with impatience to look once more upon the house which sheltered Kate, even though he might not enter it. Fortune granted him more than he hoped, for he met the girl in the Kershaw barouche. She had that morning heard of the duel, and she was hurrying home to prevent it.

In his exaltation, his little less than madness, Frank dashed up to the carriage and stopped it.

CHAPTER XXII.

So haggard and pale had Frank become since Kate last saw him, that, although she had recognized him the instant his tall form appeared in the distance, yet when he drew up by her side she almost mistook him for a stranger.

“ Mr.,” she stammered, — “ Mr. McAlister.” Then guessing all at once that the duel had taken place, that he was wounded and that Tom was killed, she screamed, “What is the matter ? Why do you speak to me ? ”

He had not spoken as yet; and he could hardly speak now. It was the first time that he had ever heard such a voice from her, or seen such an expression of agony, terror, and aversion on her face. In amaze, and hardly knowing what he said, he replied, “ Your brother is well.”

“It is n’t true,” she gasped, scared by his hoarseness and pallor, and shrinking from him. “ O, is it ? ” she demanded, hope leaping up in her heart. Then, seeing the answer in his face, she reached towards him, her rich cheeks flushing, her hazel eyes sparkling, and her small mouth quivering with joy. “ O, thank you, Mr. McAlister,” she whispered. “ Then you have not fought.”

“ I wanted him to kill me,” was Frank’s confession. “ I wanted him to, and he would not.”

“ O, how could you ? ” she answered, falling back from him with a look of reproach which seemed like anger. “ Cruel —wicked man ! ”

The coachman, a grave and fatherly old negro belonging to Kershaw, judged that he had heard the last words that could ever pass between these two, and softly drove on. Had he not done so, there would surely have been explanations and pleadings on the part of Frank, and Kate might at once have pardoned, or even more than pardoned. But the uncomprehending slave, acting the part of a deaf and blind fate, divided them before they could think to forbid it.

Frank remained behind, speechless and paralyzed. The first word of harsh reproach which we receive from one whom we dearly love is an avalanche. For a time it puts out of mind all other calamities and all other things whatsoever. To Frank there seemed to be nothing in the world, nothing past or present or future, but those words, “Cruel — wicked.” His eyes were on the retreating carriage, and he did not move until it was out of sight. Then he started, rushing away at full speed, and directing his course toward a wood near the Beaumont place, his sole purpose being to reach a stile over which he had once helped Kate to pass. Finding it, he dismounted and stood for a long time contemplating the worm-eaten rail, repeatedly kissing the spot on which he remembered that her foot had rested. After an hour in this place, an hour made heavenly as well as wretched by passing pageants of her form and face, he found himself faint with hunger and fever and rode slowly homeward.

We must return to Kate. She had scarcely been driven past the sight of the man whom she had called cruel and wicked, ere she longed to call him to her side. “ Why does he drive on ? ” she thought, glancing helplessly at the slave, who would have stopped had she bidden him. Next she turned in a useless paroxysm of haste, and looked back at Frank through the rear window of the carriage, querying whether he would follow her. “ What did I say to him ? ” she asked, sure that she had uttered something bitter, but not yet able to remember what. In great trembling of body and spirit, and finding life a woful perplexity and burden, she was taken home.

The first of the family to meet her was Tom. She drew him to her, kissed him on both cheeks, and then held him back at arm’s length, looking him sadly in the eyes and saying, “ Ah, Tom ! How could you ? ”

The next instant, remembering those words, “ I wanted your brother to kill me, and he would not,” she threw herself into the boy’s arms and covered his face with kisses and tears of gratitude. This staid, simple, pure girl, her eyes humid, her cheeks flushed to burning, and every feature alight with unusual emotion, was at the moment eloquent and beautiful beyond humanity. There never was a finer glow and glory on anything earthly than was then on her exquisite young face. Just in this breath her father came to the door, and stood dazzled by his own child. Steeped in brandy and hot with his chronic pugnacity, he forgot at the sight of Kate everything but Kate.

“Ah, my daughter!” he said, taking her into his short heavy arms and pressing her against his solid chest. “ How I have neglected you for the last few days ! What have I been about ?”

“ Father, was it fair— ? ” she began, and stopped to recover control of her voice.

“No, it wasn’t fair,” answered old Peyton, understanding in a moment and repenting as quickly. “ No, by heavens, it was n’t fair. Tom, we ought to have told her. She’s a Beaumont, and she’s my own dear daughter, and she had a right to know everything we did. Kate, we have behaved, by heavens, miserably.”

“Well, it is over, and safely,” sighed Kate, laying her head on her father’s shoulder. “ I thank God for it,” she added in a whisper.

“ So do I, Kate,” replied Beaumont, touched almost to crying. “ I do, by heavens. I ’m a poor, savage, old beast ; but I am thankful, by heavens. I ’m glad Tom is out of it safe, and I’m glad the other is out of it safe.”

“ Father, I must go to bed,” said the girl, presently. “ I am very, very tired.”

“Not sick?” demanded Beaumont, staring at her in great alarm.

He assisted her up stairs to her room ; he would not let anybody else do it; he forgot that his feet were masses of gout. When he came down, he said to Tom, “ Ride for a doctor; ride like the devil. Don t bring any of those d—d surgeons who were in the duel. Bring somebody else.”

During that day and the next he haunted the passages which led to his daughter’s room. Indifferent to pain, merely cursing it, he regularly hobbled up stairs to carry her food with his own hands, affirming that no one else knew how to wait on her properly, and denouncing the incapacity and stupidity of “ niggers.” When she was awake and able to see him, he sat for hours by her bed, holding her hand, looking at her, and talking softly.

“ My God, how I have neglected you ! ” he groaned ; “ I don’t see how I could have done it. I ought to have known that you would run yourself down. I ought to have stopped it.”

Such was Peyton Beaumont: he passed his life in sinning and repenting, and he did each with equal fervor. As to the cause of Kate’s shattered condition, he had grave suspicions that it was not merely watching over Kershaw, and not merely the shock of the news of the duel. At times he regretted bitterly the renewal of the feud, and blamed Judge McAlister very severely for having brought about the untoward result, being, of course, unable to see that he himself was at all responsible therefor. “ Unreasonable, incomprehensible, hard-hearted, selfish old beast!” he grumbled in perfect honesty, meaning McAlister, and not Beaumont. Well, there was no help for it ; the only thing to be done was not to speak of that family in Kate’s presence ; above all, she must not once hear the name of Frank. This wise decision he communicated distinctly to Nellie, and vaguely but with great energy of manner to Mrs. Chester. As for his boys, he trusted to their sense and delicacy as gentlemen, and he trusted not in vain.

The result was, that, when Kate came down in a day or two to table, anxious to learn all about the quarrel and to hear the name of McAlister incessantly, she got never a word on those subjects. It was very uncomforting; it was like being shut in prison. Open utterance of hate against the McAlisters would have been more tolerable to her than this boding silence with its attendant suspense. Kate had self-command and dignity of soul ; she would not allow her face to show anxiety or sorrow ; there was nothing uncheerful in it, save a pathetic lassitude. But at times it seemed to her as if her heart must absolutely break bounds and demand, “ Will none of you speak of him? Is it not enough that I shall never see him more ? Must I not even hear his name ? ”

She could not relieve herself by struggling against the feud. She had fought it once when fighting it seemed to be a matter of simple humanity and of affection for her own race. But now, her soul more or less laden with Frank McAlister, she could not demand peace without having the air to herself of suing for a lover. Indeed, she dared not introduce the subject of the family warfare, lest her face should reveal the secret of her heart and even suggest more than was thus far true. For she maintained to herself that as yet she was not quite in love with this man. To love him, especially to confess it to others, when he had not asked for her affection, would be shameful ; and the girl was calmly resolved to endure any suffering rather than descend below her own respect or that of her family. So for several days there was silence in the Beaumont prandial and other public conclaves concerning Frank McAlister and all his breed.

“ I think Kate is getting on very well.” remarked Peyton Beaumont to his married daughter. It was not an assertion, but a query ; he did not feel at all certain that Kate was getting on well ; he wanted a woman’s opinion about a woman.

“ If saying nothing, and growing paler every day, is getting on well, you are right,” answered Nellie, in her straightforward, business-like, manly way.

“ You don’t mean,” stammered the father, — “ you don’t mean that she cares for — ”

“ Don’t mention his name,” interjected Nellie. “That man, I absolutely hate him. I did want him shot. He is intolerable. Do you know, father, I sympathized with that man and showed him that I did ? To think that after that, no matter what the provocation, he should tie my brother! grossly insult my brother ! It was not an outrage upon Tom only. It was an outrage upon me and upon Kate.”

“The scoundrel!” growled Beaumont, his eyes flaming at once and his bushy eyebrows working like a forest in a hurricane. “ Nellie, why did n’t you tell us this before ? Tom would have shot him, sure.”

“ Ah, — well. On the whole I did not. I had liked him so well, that I could not quite say the word to have him — hurt. I had really liked him ; that was it. And perhaps it is as well ; yes, perhaps it is better. He behaved well in the duel, father ? ”

“ Yes,” assented Beaumont, a tiger who had been tamed by his children, and easily followed their leading. “ He stood up to the scratch like a man.”

“ And he did n’t fire at Tom.”

“ That ’s true. He showed penitence. He behaved well.”

“Let him go,” added Nellie, after a moment of revery. “ But Kate must not be allowed to meet him again.”

“ Of course, she won’t meet him again,” declared Beaumont, lifting his eyebrows in amazement. “ How the deuce should she meet him again?”

“ Shall I take her away with me for a few weeks ?” asked Mrs. Armitage.

“ No,” returned the father, promptly. “ Why, good heavens, she has just got home. I can't spare her yet. But you are not going now,” he added. “ What do you want to go for ?”

“My husband has written me to come,” answered Nellie, with that strange look, half imploring and half defiant, which so often came over her face.

Beaumont walked up and down the room, muttering something which sounded like, “ Hang your husband ! ”

“ Besides, Aunt Marian quarrels with me every day,” pursued Mrs. Armitage, forcing a smile.

“ O, never mind Aunt Marian ! She quarrels with everybody and always did and always will. She can’t help it. She grew up that way. And really she is n’t so much to blame for it. She was a spoilt baby. My father could n’t govern his only daughter, and my mother would n’t have let him if he had wanted to. The consequence was that Marian always behaved like the very deuce, just as she does now. Yelled, scratched, fought for sugar, bounced away from table, called her mother names, sulked by the twentyfour hours, grew up that way and stayed so. Come, Aunt Marian is too old to cure ; she is a fixed fact. No use quarrelling with her. Let her alone and never mind her.”

“ I don’t mind her much,” said Nellie, coolly. “ I rather think she gets the worst of it.”

“ I rather think so,” the father could not help laughing, pleased that his daughter should overmatch his sister.

“ It’s a shame, is n’t it, that people should n’t govern their children ?” continued Nellie with a smile.

“ A shame ? It’s downright wickedness,” declared Beaumont, who had not a suspicion that he had failed to rule his offspring properly.

Nellie laughed outright.

“ Still, I must go,” she resumed. “ I have been here nearly a month : it is so pleasant to be here ! But it is time that I got back and set to work. There are the autumn suits for our niggers to be cut out and made up.”

“Oh!" answered Beaumont, seeing something to the purpose in this statement.

“ And I want Kate to help me.”

“ Pshaw ! You don’t want her.”

“ She ought to learn that sort of thing.”

Beaumont uttered a growl of discontent : he could not spare his favorite.

“ I shall leave it to Kate,” declared Nellie as she closed the interview, somewhat queening it over her father.

In the same spirit of benevolent imperiousness she went off directly to lay the question of the visit before her sister. She had not heretofore meditated her plan ; she had thought of it while talking with her father, and immediately resolved upon it ; and she was now as much prepared to urge it as if she had had it in view for weeks. She meant to suggest it to Kate ; and, if it was opposed, to argue for it ; and, if necessary, quarrel for it. It was one of those cases of instantaneous consideration and decision for which women, and indeed all emotional people, including Beaumonts, are noted.

Kate, however, was not altogether womanish or Beaumontish ; there was something manly, there was something of the Kershaw nature in her ; she was thoughtful, judicial, deliberative, and a little slow. In her aquiline face, delicate and feminine and beautiful as it was, there was a waiting, holdfast power, like that in the face of Washington.

“ Don’t you mean to go ? ” demanded Mrs. Armitage, excitedly and almost angrily, after advocating her plan for ten minutes.

“Yes,” replied Kate. “ Thank you, Nellie. I shall be very glad to go.”

“ Then why did n’t you say so ? ”

“ I was thinking,” said Kate, dreamily.

About the corners of her small, pulpy, rosy mouth there was a slight droop which Mrs. Armitage comprehended at once and translated into a long confession of trouble. She rustled forward, put one of her large arms around the girl’s waist and kissed her in an eagerly petting way, as a mother kisses her baby. Not a word of explanation passed between the two ; and when Nellie spoke again it was only to say, “ Now go and get ready.”

“ Have you asked papa about it ? ” demanded Kate.

“ I told him I should leave it to you,” replied Nellie, in her prompt, decided way. “ I will let him know that you are going.”

“ He and grandpa Kershaw must both be consulted,” said Kate, with tranquil firmness.

The next day, all relatives consenting, willingly or unwillingly, Mrs. Armitage carried her sister from the scene where she had found weariness and sorrow. Ten hours of travel in creaky, rolling, staggering cars, over a rickety railroad of a hundred and thirty miles in length, brought them into the mountainous western corner of the State, and left them at sundown in the straggling borough of Brownville.

“ We shall perhaps find Randolph here,” said Nellie as they neared the lonely, rusty station-house. “ He wrote me that he should come every evening until I appeared.” Then she added with a somewhat humbled air, “ But I don’t much expect him.”

It was a wife’s imbittered confession of the fact that her husband has learned to pay her little attention.

The Armitage equipage, a shabby barouche attached by a roughly patched harness to two noble horses, was at the station ; but the only human being about it was a ragged negro coachman; there was no Randolph.

“ He would have come if he had expected you,” was Nellie’s too frank comment. “ Husbands are fond of novelty. Walt till you get one.”

“ I am sure you are unjust to him,” said Kate. “ Of course he has his business.”

“ O yes, of course,” replied Nellie, hiding the wound which she had been indiscreet enough to expose. “ We women demand incessantly, and demand more than can be given. I only thought it worth while to warn you not to expect too much.”

“ What is that ? ” asked Kate, anxious to change the subject of the conversation, and pointing to an axe and a coil of rope which lay on the driver’s foot-board.

“ Dem ar is to mend the kerridge with, case it breaks down, miss,” grinned the coachman.

“ You don't know our Saxonburg fashions,” laughed Nellie. “ Family coaches will get shaky if they are kept long enough ; and we up-country people almost always keep them long enough.”

“ I don’t object to old things,” said Kate ; “ excepting old family feuds,” she added, unable to help thinking at every moment of the troubles at home.

In an hour the high-spirited bays halted champing at the door of Randolph Armitage’s house. It was a strange-looking residence, which had obviously not been created all at once, but in successive parts, as the means of the owner increased, and without regard to aught but interior convenience. Two stories in height here and one story there, with one front facing the south and another the southwest, it appeared less like a single building than like an accidental collection of buildings. If three or four small dwellings should be swept away by a flood, and beached together without further disposition than that of the random waters, the inchoate result would resemble this singular mansion. It was, in fact, the nest where the Armitages had grown up through three generations from backwoods rudeness to their present grandeur, if grandeur it might be called. There was evidence in the building that prosperity did not yet haunt it overflowingly. The white paint which had once decked the miscellaneous clapboards had become ragged and rusty. In a back wing, constituting the kitchen and servants’ quarters, several window-panes were broken. The wooden front steps were somewhat shaky, and the enclosing fence fantastically dilapidated.

The adorning light of a summer day in the hour after sundown fell upon Randolph Armitage as he came out to greet his wife and children. Kate had not met him since she was a girl of fourteen ; but she perfectly well recollected the glamour of his personal beauty, — a beauty which was so great that it fascinated children. In the exquisite mild radiance of the hour he seemed faultlessly beautiful still. He wore an old loose coat of gray homespun, but the shapeliness of his form could not be hidden. His long black hair, matted and careless as it was, offered superb waves and masses. There yet was the Apollonian profile of old, the advanced full forehead, the straight nose nearly on a line with it, the delicately chiselled mouth, the small but firm chin, the straight and smooth cheeks, the many-tinted brown eyes, and the clear olive complexion. He still seemed to Kate the handsomest man that she had ever seen ; handsomer even than that splendid and good giant, Frank McAlister.

“ So you have come at last ! ” were the ungracious first words of this Apollo.

Kate knew nothing of the domestic troubles of her sister. On hearing this reproving growl, she suspected only that Nellie had wrongly delayed her return home ; and before even she got out of the carriage, she tried to take the blame upon herself. She called out, “ I dare say it is my fault, Randolph.”

“ What ! ” he exclaimed, his face changing from sullenness to gayety. “Is it Kate?” he asked, helping her down the step and gazing at her with admiration. “ What a beauty you have grown!” and he kissed her cheek caressingly. “ Why, my dear little sister, you are a thousand times welcome. So my wife waited to bring you ? She is always doing better than I suspect.”

He kissed his wife now, and she calmly returned it. Kate of course could not see that the embrace was on her account. How should she, whose heart yearned to love and be loved, guess easily that husband and wife could meet without pleasure ?

“And here are my youngsters,” said Armitage, turning away from Nellie with singular suddenness. “ Willie, did you have a nice long visit ? And you, Freddy ? Did you both play with grandpapa ? ”

He lifted them successively, hugged them with a graceful air of fervor, and set them down promptly. And now, Kate,” he added, offering her his arm gayly, “ let me escort you into my house for the first time. It is a great honor to me and a great pleasure.”

All the evening his manner to his guest was most caressing and flattering. Moreover, he dressed in her honor, laying aside his slovenly homespun and coming to the table attired in a way to show his fine figure to advantage. Yet as the hours wore on, and as Kate’s spirits turned to depression under a sense of homesickness and fatigue, she seemed to perceive something disagreeable, or at least something suspicious, under this brilliant surface. She was like one who, after gazing with delight on a tide of clear sparkling water, should half think that he discovers a corpse in the translucent abysses. The light of the lamps showed her that Randolph’s face was not all that it had been in other days ; the fervid color had faded a little, and there were bags under the still brilliant eyes, and a jaded air as of dissipation. Was it true, too, that there was a shadow of reserve between husband and wife, as if neither was sure of possessing the other’s sympathy ? What did it mean, moreover, that they occupied separate rooms ?

In spite of the girl’s efforts to believe that all went well in this family which was so near and dear to her, she retired that night with a vague impression that she was in a household haunted by mysteries, if not by misery.

CHAPTER XXIII.

WHAT blessed restoration there is in the sleep and in the health of youth ! Palaces of hope and happiness which had tumbled to ruin at eventide are rebuilded ere morning by these beneficent magicians.

When Kate came to breakfast, after the refreshing slumber which even troubled hearts know at nineteen, she had forgotten the bodings of the night before, or remembered them only to scout them. All went aright to her eyes in the Armitage dwelling that day and the day following and for many days after. Good, sincere, amiable, unsuspecting of evil, anxious to think well of others, she was the easy and contented dupe of a skilful though wayward enchanter.

On certain holy festivals good Mahometans turn their jackets inside out, and go all in green, the color of the prophet. In like manner Randolph Armitage had a garment of deportment which he could turn according to the circumstances of time or company, the one side being of the color of the Devil and his angels, while the other might please the eyes of saints or pure women. The silver lining of this sable cloud it was now his pleasure to wear outward. Kate was young and beautiful, and it was one of his amusements to charm young and beautiful women ; moreover, the girl might be expected to bear witness of him among the Beaumonts, should he misbehave during her visit; and if he feared anybody on earth, it was his puissant relatives by marriage. So for weeks he controlled the seven capital devils who inhabited his soul, suffering none of them to issue forth and disport himself in her presence. He was a fond father, a gentle husband, an amiable brother-in-law, and a merciful master to his slaves. He astonished his wife, and almost rewon her heart. He fascinated Kate.

It was not a difficult matter for him to be thus delightful. He possessed that mighty glamour of excelling beauty which sheds attractiveness over even indifferent, even misbecoming behavior. So sweet and so fair to look upon was his smile, that mere young girls, mere rude boys, mere untutored crackers, were glad at winning one from him, and never forgot the pleasant sight all their lives after. Hundreds of people who knew him not had stared wonderingly in his face as he met them, turned to look at him after he had passed, and eagerly inquired his name. All through Saxonburg district, and in the rough surrounding region, he was known as Handsome Armitage. A mountaineer from East Tennessee had once stopped him in the street, and said : “ Stranger, excuse me ; but you be certainly the puttiest man I’ve seen sence I come to Sou’ Carline. Mought I ask what you call yourself? ”

But, in addition to his beauty, Randolph had the charm of a flexible character, apt to take the bent of his society. It was his nature to be hail fellow well met with Satan or with the archangel Ithuriel, according as he found himself in the company of either. He had intelligence to perceive at once, and to the full, both the purity of Kate Beaumont and the innate grossness of the vilest low-down harridan in the district. He was as much in place, so far as his behavior went, with the one as with the other. The result was, that, as Nellie divulged nothing concerning her husband, Kate believed him to be good, and knew him to be charming. She walked with him, rode with him, tried her hand at fishing under his guidance, learned games of cards of him, read him the letters which she received from home, talked with him about the feud, and made him little less than a confidant. Of course he agreed with her in all things ; caring little about the feud, it was easy for him to condemn it ; despising politics, it was easy for him to bemoan the election difficulty. He had the coinciding amiability of indifference and hypocrisy. Thus it was that this stainless and unsuspicious girl found in this thoroughly corrupt man a friend whom she valued and almost reverenced.

“ You don’t half appreciate your husband,” she reproached her sister.

“ Yes, I do,” replied Nellie, making an effort of repression which was truly sublime, and withholding her ready tongue from all confession or complaint.

“ You should be very sweet to him, if only on my account,” added Kate, with a smile of perfect incomprehension and innocence. “ How kind he is to me ! ”

“ I am obliged to him, on your account,” said the martyr-like wife. “ I have told him so.”

“ I don’t believe it,” laughed Kate. “ I want you to tell him so in my presence.”

Just then Randoph entered the room. It was one of his handsomest moments ; his cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright, his air elated ; moreover, he had dressed himself carefully and becomingly. His wife settled her eyes upon him with such an expression as if she were dazzled against her will.

“ Randolph,” she said, her voice wavering a little, perhaps with recollection of the tenderness of other days, “ Kate wants me to thank you again for your kindness to her. I do so with all my heart.”

In this speech, so set and ceremonious as between husband and wife, there was of course a hidden meaning. It was as much as to say, I thank you for restraining yourself, especially in the presence of my sister.

Armitage smiled, that smile that said so much ; he just moved his lips, those lips that were so eloquent without speaking ; then lightly and gracefully he advanced to Nellie, lifted her hand, and kissed it. For a moment the wife was much moved ; she drew his hand to her and pressed it against her heart. Kate rose, in her eyes a glistening of tears, in her heart one of the high-blooded impulses of her father’s race, and stepping quickly up to her brother-in-law, kissed his cheek.

“Thank you, my dear, good child,” he said, turning upon her with a flush of sincere gratification. “ You almost tempt me, you two, to stay at home this evening. But,” he added, without the least difficulty, and in the same breath, “ I have an engagement. Don’t sit up for me.”

After he had gone Kate said to Nellie, “ I must tell you. You have delighted me. When I came here, — when I first came,—I thought that you two were — indifferent. I beg your pardon, both of you.”

“Ah, Kate!” replied Nellie, “you are capable of falling in love. If you were not, you would not care for these things so. You can love, and I am sorry for it.”

Hours passed after this scene, and Armitage did not return. As the evening wore on towards midnight, Nellie’s brow grew darker and darker with an expression which was not so much anxiety as something sterner. She looked at last like one who is receiving blows, not in a spirit of angry retaliation, but with sullen defiance. Her air was so gloomy and hard that it disturbed her sister.

“ Had you not better send out for him ? ” asked Kate. “ Do you know where he has gone ? ”

“ He sometimes stays out in this way,”said Nellie, calmly. “We won’t sit up longer for him.”

“ But had n’t we better ? ” urged the younger woman.

“ No, no,” replied Nellie, almost imperiously. “ I would rather you would not. I wish you to go to bed.”

Leaving the two to find such sleep as is the lot of anxious women, let us follow Randolph Armitage and see how he was passing the night. On the morning of that day this “ high-strung” gentleman had risen to find himself under the spell of a mighty impulse ; an impulse which had come to him he knew not how, which he could not account for, nor analyze, nor control ; an impulse common with men of dissolute lives, and forming the mainspring of their characteristic actions. He must break bounds, he must run away, he must go wild, he must have a spree. He was no more capable of philosophizing upon the possession than a horse is able to state why he snorts, flings out his heels, and dashes headlong over his pastures. His brain, his stomach, his arterial structure, or some other physical organ, had gone mad, either with boisterous health or with inflammation, and demanded the relief of violent activity ; whether noble or vicious was indifferent, only that his habits of life almost necessarily directed the outburst towards immorality. In the horsy language of his favorite companions, lewd fellows of the baser sort, and mostly of low-down birth, “ he had got his head up for a spree.”

While in this state of mind he met Lunt Saxon, widely and unfavorably known as Redhead Saxon, a “ lowflung" descendant of the rude family which had first settled the district of Saxonburg and served as the mean origin of its name. It was with this coarse, gaunt, long-legged, hideous desperado and sycophant in homespun that he had made the engagement which took him from his home during the evening. He had gone straight from the exquisite scene with his wife and Kate Beaumont to a cracker ball.

Three miles from his house, in a region of sand and pines and scrub-oaks, there was a clearing which had once supported a settler’s family, and which, as the soil became exhausted, had degenerated into an oldfield, overgrown with bushes and long weeds. In the centre of the oldfield was a log-cabin, the clay fallen from its chinks, the boards on its roof warped and awry, ics windows without glass and closed by rude shutters, the chimney a ruinous, unshapely mass of stones and mud, the outer air free to enter at numberless crannies. This cabin was the residence of two “ lone women,” who held it rent free of its charitable owner, a wealthy physician of the village. The eldest was Nancy Gile, thirty years old, but looking thirty-five, yellow-haired, white-faced, freckled, red-eyed, dirty, ragged, shiftless, idle, a beggar, and otherwise of questionable life. The youngest was Sally Huggs. a small, square-built, rosy-cheeked, black-eyed girl of not more than seventeen, who had run away from her mother to secure larger liberty of flirtation. Nancy Gile had two illegitimate children, and Sally Huggs was herself an illegitimate child. The reader can guess at the kind of morality that adorned the household existence.

There are no outcasts. People who are not in “our society,” and not in the circle below that, and not in any circle that we deem society, have still a surrounding of more or less sympathetic humanity and even perhaps a following of admirers. Nancy Gile and Sally Huggs, poor and ignorant and degraded as they were, had an environment of friends whom they wished to hold fast and of enemies whom they desired to propitiate. Consequently, when they one day came into unexpected, almost miraculous possession of five dollars more than was necessary to buy bacon and hominy for the morrow, they resolved to raise their standing and enlarge their popularity by “ giving a treat.” A pound of tallowcandles for illumination and three gallons of white raw whiskey for refreshment summed up their purchases. As for supper, they trusted, as any other host of the oldfields would have done, that each guest would provide his or her own, and eat it before coming. For music there was Sam Tony, a youth of piny woods extraction, as lean and yellow as his own fiddle, and a gratuitous scraper on such occasions. The invitations had been spread by word of mouth at the previous “ saleday ” in the village, and had gathered in every young Saxonburg loafer or cracker who was not in open hostility with the household. Even those tramps, the Bibbs, who had no abiding habitation, but slept sometimes in brush cabins and sometimes in the sheltering corners of warm fences, had sent one representative in the shape of a ragged, dirty girl of eighteen, trim and slender and graceful in figure, but yellow and ghastly with exposure and lack of proper nourishment. When Handsome Armitage and hideous Redhead Saxon rode into the benighted tangle of the oldfield, Nancy Gile’s cabin was humming like a huge beehive with the noise of dancing and laughing low - downers, and flaming from every door and window and chink with tallow-dip splendor.

“ It looks like a storming old blowout,” said Armitage, as he tied his horse’s bridle to the drooping branch of a tree. “ Quash,” he added, addressing a negro whom he had brought along, also mounted, “ stay by these beasts. Come on, Redhead.”

He was already heated with liquor. His manner and voice had become strangely degraded since that pretty scene at his home. In place of his make-believe yet gracious gentility and tenderness there was a wild, reckless, animal-like excitement. Perhaps it was more than animal ; it may be doubted whether any beast is ever a rowdy : we have heard that even a drunken ape has decorum.

The one room of the cabin, eighteen feet or so by twenty-five, was crammed. In the centre eight couples were jostling and elbowing through a sort of country dance. Squeezing close up to them, and squeezing against the log walls, and filling the two doorways, and covering the shaky stairs which led to the loft, was a mass of young men and girls, applauding, yelling, chattering, laughing, or staring with vacant eyes and mouth. Even the wide-open doors and windows and chinks and the gaping chimney could not carry off all the mephitic steam generated by this mob of unclean people. As a perfume, an uproar, and a spectacle, the crowd was vigorously, one might almost say nauseously, interesting.

To a New-Englander or a Pennsylvania Quaker fresh from the pacific, temperate, educated faces of his birth-land, it would not have seemed possible that these visages were American. The general cast of countenance was a lean and hardened wildness, like that of Albanian mountaineers or Calabrian brigands. There were no stolid, square, bulldog faces ; everywhere you saw cleverness, or liveliness, or at least cunning, but it was cleverness of a wolfish or foxy nature. The forms, too were agile, most of them tall, slender, and bony, the outlines showing sharply through the calico gowns or homespun suits. Four or five plump and rosy girls, looking all the plumper because of sunburn, were exceptions to the general rule of muscle and sinew. All the men, through early use of tobacco and constant exposure to hardship, were figures of excessive lankness. The stinted, graceless costumes increased the general ungainliness. Some of the girls were in calico, limp with dirt; others in narrow-chested, ill-fitted, scant-skirted gowns of the coarsest white cotton, such as was commonly issued to field-hands ; others in the cast-off finery of charity, worn just as it was received, without remaking. Nearly all the men had straight, tight trousers, insufficient vests, and short-bodied, long-tailed frock-coats of gray or butternut homespun.

Scarcely one of these crowding faces had been illuminated or softened by the touch of civilization. If they were less stolid than the countenances of so many Indians, they were not much less savage. Not that the savagery was perfectly frank and open : there was an air of slyness about it and even of sycophancy ; it was the ferocity of a bloodhound, waiting to be set on. While these people knew how to commit deeds of blood, they could set about them best at the command of a “ high-tone gentleman.” But even to their masters they must have looked a little untrustworthy. It was evident that human life, no matter of what dignity and descent, would be held by them in light esteem. After all, valuing their own lives little, they were not despicable. In spite of law-abiding prejudices, it is impossible not to accord some respect to a hearty willingness to give and take hard knocks. The best intentioned members of society cannot look down with unmixed contempt upon a man who fights like the Devil, although they may find him inconvenient and proper for suppression. Born to be proud of my countrymen, reposing a loving confidence in their pugnacity and their knack at firearms, I would adventure the population of this hive in any part of the Abruzzi, sure that they would make their frontiers respected and perhaps lay Fra Diavolo under contribution. In fact, I should rejoice to colonize them in those regions, trusting that the drama of the Kilkenny cats might be re-enacted.

Into this genial mob bounced Handsome Armitage with a sense of satisfied sympathy.

“ Hurrah, Nancy ! ” he shouted, seizing the mistress of the house and whirling her round in an extemporized waltz, much to the confusion of the countrydancers. “ Bully for you, old girl! This is a glorious blow-out.”

“ Square, I’m right glad to see ye,” returned Nancy Gile, her white face reddening with pride and pleasure. “ I said you mought come. Sally said you would n’t.”

“ Where is she ? ” asked Armitage.

“ Thar she is, Square, dancin’ along with Sam Hicks.”

“ Sally, come here,” called the hightoned gentleman. “ Come here, and let’s have a look at your cheeks.”

“ Can’t,” laughed Sally, hot and gay with exercise and attentions, for she was the belle of the ball. “ Got to dance this through. Then I ’ll come.”

“Who the deuce is Sam Hicks?” demanded Armitage.

“ He’s a Dark Corner man,” explained Nancy. “ He met up with her last sale day, an' took an awful shine to her. Talks like he was goin’ to marry her. Mebbe he will.”

“ Mebbe he won’t,” laughed Armitage. “Well, give us some whiskey. I have n’t had a drink for half an hour. Redhead, try it.”

“ After you, Square,” returned the respectful Redhead, filling a glass for his superior. “ It’s the same old spring I reckon. Pickens whiskey, fresh from the mill, clar as water, an’ strong as pizen. Reckon that’ll warm you, Square, to the toes of yer boots.”

Armitage took the little tumbler, half full of pure spirit, put its sticky brim to his handsome mouth, and sipped at the contents.

“ Nasty,” he said. “ But never mind; it does its work. Redhead, this is what kills us, and we love it. We are good Christians ; we love our worst enemy.” Then, a recollection of his college reading coming upon him, he raised the glass on high and invoked it in the words of the gladiators, “ Ave Caesar ! morituri te salutant.”

“ That ’s tall talk, Square,” grinned the admiring Redhead.

“ Taller than you could understand if I should tell you what it means, you cursed ignoramus,” returned Armitage, as he tossed off the poison.

At this moment the country dance ended, and the dancers made a rush toward the whiskey. Sam Hicks sought to keep possession of his rosy-cheeked little partner by passing one butternutclothed arm around her waist while he poured out for her a half-tumbler of the Pickens district nectar.

“ Ladies first,” said Armitage, pushing him back with a jocose contemptuous roughness.

“ I was gwine to help a lady,” replied Hicks, sulkily. “ Sally here wants a drink.”

“ I ’ll give her one myself,” persisted the high-flung gentleman. “ Do you mean to keep her all the evening ? Stand out of the way ! ”

“ Let go, my boy,” counselled Redhead Saxon, sliding behind the mountaineer and whispering over her shoulder. “ Mought get a welt acrost yer snoot. Let go to catch a better holt.”

Sam cast a pleading look at his girl, then an angry though cowed one at his imposing rival, and gave back grumbling. Armitage mixed a drink for Sally, insisted upon her swallowing the whole of it, took her roughly under his arm and marched her away.

“You little wretch, why did n’t you come to me at first?” he scolded, half in jest and half in alcoholic earnest. “ What do you stick to that booby for ? Why don’t you stick to me ? ”

Sally looked up in his face with an expression which might be described as vulgar shyness or low-bred modesty. She was dazzled and awed by the handsome, fine gentleman who had taken possession of her ; and at the same time she hankered after plain homespun Sam Hicks, who wanted to marry her.

“ I don’t know jest what you ’re up to,” she blurted out spunkily and yet timorously.

“And what the deuce is he up to? Going to marry you, is he ? ”

Sally made no reply, but she colored a coarse blush, and threw a glance at the faithful pursuing Hicks.

“You can’t go to him,” said Armitage. “ You must dance the next set with me.”

And dance he did, playing pranks which raised shouts of laughter in the rough crowd, throwing fondling grimaces at his partner and threatening ones at his rival. The dance ended, he let Sally go back to Hicks, only to claim her again as soon as he had taken another glass of whiskey. A couple of hours passed much in this way. Armitage seemed possessed to get drunk, to pay a rude courtship to Sally Huggs, and to torment Sam Hicks. That he could enjoy the coarse farce seems incredible ; and yet the stupid, low-lived fact is that he did enjoy it. It was a monotonous, uninteresting, disagreeable, degrading exhibition ; and we only describe it because it dramatizes in brief the character of the man when in his cups. Intoxication had turned him into an insolent, quarrelsome savage ; and when we add that it always affected him thus, we can understand the habitual expression of his wife’s face; we know how she came to have that strange air of half pleading, half standing at bay.

Let us hurry. About midnight Armitage, wild as a madman with drink, tore Sally Huggs away from her lover for perhaps the tenth time, and gave the latter a blow which laid him prostrate.

“ Quit that, Sam ! ” shouted Redhead Saxon, rushing upon Hicks and stopping his hand as it sought the inside of his homespun coat. “ Now get out of here, Sam, before mischief is done,” continued the faithful henchman of Armitage. “ Don’t go to fightin’ with high-tone gentlemen. They ’re too hefty for you, my boy.”

Sam Hicks was not an ordinary lowdowner, educated in the depressing vicinity of great estates, and subservient to the planting chivalry. He was a mountaineer, as independent and fierce and lithe as a wild-cat, and disposed to fight any man who trespassed upon his rights or person. He tried to get at Armitage, and struggled violently with Saxon and three or four others who held him, his long yellow hair thrown back from his thin and sunburnt visage, a fine though coarse figure of virile indignation. But at last, overcome by numbers, he became sullenly quiet, and suffered himself to be led out of the cabin. Tranquillity was the more easily restored because Armitage was too drunk to care for the raving of the mountaineer, or even to notice that Sally Huggs soon slipped out of the revelry in pursuit of her betrothed.

Half an hour after this “ unpleasantness,” Saxon succeeded in persuading his intoxicated patron to mount and set out for home. The path led the length of the oldfield, then through a wood of young pines and stunted cedars, then across other oldfields and some natural barrens, and then down a lane lined by forests, at the end of which it touched the highroad. For a time the party moved slowly, there being only starlight, the ground uneven and tangled with vines, and Armitage reeling in his saddle. As they entered the lane Saxon fell back alongside of the negro, and muttered, “ Quash, when we strike the road, we’ll try a gallop. You keep on one side of him, an’ I ’ll keep on the other.”

At this moment there was a pistolshot from the dense underwood of the forest which overhung the lane.

“ Sam Hicks, by thunder ! ” growled Saxon, feeling for his revolver. “ Bill ahead, Square ! ”

Instead of pushing onward as directed, Armitage turned his horse toward the spot where the flash had showed, and put him straight at the fence which separated the narrow path from the wood. But the animal floundered in a swampy drain, and, unable to rise to the obstacle, pitched against it.

“ Hold on, Square,” called Saxon, dismounting and taking post behind his horse as behind a breastwork. “ Don’t go in thar. He ’ll pop you, sure.”

But the warning was useless ; the crazy man, shouting with rage, dismounted and began to climb the fence ; in a moment, drunk as he was, he had reached the top of it. Just then there was another report, coming from the black recesses of the wood ; and in the same breath Armitage toppled over the fence and fell to the ground ; there was a single groan, followed by silence.

“O Mars Ranney ! Mars Ranney!” presently whispered the negro, shaking with grief as well as terror.

“ Guess your boss is gone up,” muttered Redhead Saxon, after a moment of listening.

“ O, I ’se feared so, I ’se feared so,” whimpered Quash. “ O Mars Saxon, what ’ll we do ? ”

“ Dunno, though,” continued Redhead. “That last ball whistled by like it had n’t hit nothin’. So did the first one perhaps, though I did n’t notice.”

After further hearkening he resumed : “ We must git him out of thar. Ouash, I ’ll hold the hosses. You sneak in an’ feel for him.”

The negro trembled and hesitated, fearing another shot from the hidden assassin ; for life is dear to slaves.

“ Start in, you black cuss,” commanded Redhead, turning his revolver on Quash.

“ I ’se gwine,” quavered the demoralized chattel. “Wait till I catch my bref. I ’se gwine.”

Crawling on his hands and knees through the mud and water of the drain, Quash slowly approached the fence, displaced a rail, and slid through the aperture.

J. W. DeForest.