The Juggler

II.

LATE in the night of the “ show ” old Tubal Sims sat brooding over the embers of the fire. As he reviewed the incidents of the evening, he chuckled with a sort of half-suppressed glee. His capacities for enjoyment were not blunted by the event itself ; the very reminiscence afforded him a keen and acute ideasure. In all his sixty years he had never known such a vigil as this. He could not sleep for the crowding images with which his brain teemed. Each detail as it was enacted returned to him now with a freshened delight. The objections on the score of necromancy gave him peculiar joy ; for he and his wife were of a progressive tendency of mind, and had that sly sense of mental superiority which is one of the pleasantest secrets to share with one’s own consciousness. As he sat on a broken-backed chair, his shoulders bent forward and his hands hanging loosely over his knees, rubbing themselves together from time to time, for the air was growing chilly, the light of the embers on his shock of grizzled hair, and wrinkled face with its long blunt nose and projecting chin, and small deep-set eyes twinkling under their overhanging brows, he now and again lifted his head to note any sudden stir about the house. So foreign to his habit was this long-lingering wakefulness that it told on his nerves in an added acuteness of all his senses. He marked the gnawing of a mouse in the roofroom, the sound of the rising wind far away, and the first stir of the elm-tree above the clapboards. A cock crew from his roost hard by, and then with a yawn Tubal Sims pulled off one of his shoes and sat with it in his hand, looking at it absently, and laughing at old Parson Greenought and his interference to discourage Satan. “ I wisht I could hev knowed what the boy would hev done nex’, if so be he hed been lef’ alone.” He made up his mind that he would ask the juggler the next day, and if possible induce a private repetition of some of the wonders for which, evidently, the public, of Etowah Cove was not yet ripe. For the juggler was his guest, having reached his house a few evenings previous in the midst of a storm; and asking for shelter for the night, the wayfarer had found a hearty welcome, and was profiting by it. Sims could hear even now the bed-cords creak as he tossed in uneasy slumber up in the roof-room, so still the house had grown.

So still that when a deep groan and then an agonized gasping sigh came from the sleeper, the sounds were so incongruous with the trend of old Tubal Sims ’s happy reflections that he experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling that was like a shock. The rain began to fall on the roof; it seemed to come in fine lines on a fluctuating gust, for it was as if borne away on the wings of the wind, and the eaves vaguely dripped.

But oh,” cried the sleeper, “ the one who lives! what can I do —for his life! his life ! his life ! ” and spoke no more.

Yet the cabalistic words seemed to ring through the house in trumpet tones ; they sounded again and again in every blast of the wind. The place had grown cold ; the fire was dead on the hearth ; it was the unfamiliar midnight. Who was “ the one who lives,” whose life the stranger grudged ? And following the antithesis, — not that Tubal Sims would have thus phrased the process,—was there then one who died ?

It occurred to Tubal Sims, for the first time, that there was something inexplicable about this man. Apparently, he had no mission here save for the exhibition of jugglery, — how suddenly it had lost its zest ! He knew naught of the people or the surrounding region ; he had no baggage, no sort of preparation for continued existence, not even a change of clothes. Mrs. Sims, being subsidized to supply this deficiency, had already constructed for him one blue homespun shirt, which evidently astounded him when lie first beheld it, so different it was from the one he wore, but which he accepted meekly enough. Tubal Sims told himself that he had been precipitate in housing this stranger beyond a shelter during the storm.

To this it had come, — the happy dreaming over the fire, renewing a pleasure so rare, — to these vague fears and self-reproaches and suspicions and anxious speculations. He stumbled to bed at last in the dark. It was long ere he slept, and more than once he was roused from slumber to the dark silence by the fancy that he heard the poignant iteration anew.

If the juggler had dreams, they may have weighed heavily upon him the next day when he came down the rickety stairs, pale and silent, with heavy-lidded eyes and dark blue circles beneath them. Under Mrs. Sims’s kindly ministrations he sought in vain to eat the heavy thick biscuit, the underdone fried mush, and the fat greasy bacon ; for Mis. Sims was not one of those culinary geniuses sometimes encountered at humble boards ; in good sooth, but for her cows and chickens, in these early days of his stay in the Cove, he would have fared ill indeed.

“ Ye make a better out at swallerin’ needles ’h ye do swallerin’ fried ’taters,” she declared, with a reproachful glance, supplemented by her good-humored chuckle.

He could make no sort of compact with the beverage she called coffee, and after the merest feint of breakfast he took his host’s angling-tackle and wended his way down to the river, observing that the fish would bite well to-day, since it was so cloudy. Cloudy it was, undoubtedly, sombre and drear. Now and then drizzling showers fell, and when they ceased the mists that rose in every ravine and skulked in every depression were hardly less dank and chill. The river, in its deep channel of jagged rocky gray bluffs and shelving red clay banks of the most brilliant terra-cotta tones, was of the color of copper instead of the clear steel-gray or the silvered blue it was wont to show, so much of the mud of its borders did it hold now in solution, brought down by the rains of the night. Here and there slender willows hung over it in lissome and graceful wont, with such vivid vernal suggestions in the tender budding foliage as to shine with disproportionate lustre, like the high lights in some artificial landscape of a canvas, amidst the dark dripping bronze-green pines of the Cove, which from this point the young man could see stretching away in sadhued verdure some three or four miles to the opposite mountain’s base, — the breadth of the restricted little basin. This was the only large outlook at his command : for behind the house he had left, the slopes of the wooded mountain rose abruptly, steep, rugged, soon lost among the clouds. He gazed absently at the little cabin, the usual structure of two rooms with an open passage, as he lay on the shelving rock high above the river, the fishing-pole held by a heavy boulder placed on it to secure it in its place, his hands clasped under his head, his hat tilted somewhat over his eyes; for despite the paucity of light in the atmosphere the mists had a certain white glaring quality.

Meanwhile, he was the subject of a degree of disaffected scrutiny from indoors.

“ Jane Ann,” said Tubal Sims, suddenly interrupting the loud throaty wheeze by which his helpmeet beguiled the tedium of washing the dishes, and which she construed as that act of devotion commonly known as singing a hymn, “ that thar man ain’t got no bait on his hook.”

Jane Ann set the plate in her hand down on the table, and turned her broad creased face toward him as he sat smoking in the passage, just outside the door.

“ Then he ain’t goin’ ter ketch no feesh,” she replied logically, and lifting both the plate and her droning wheeze she resumed her occupation as before.

Tubal Sims, like other men, fluctuated in his estimation of his wife’s abilities according as they seemed to him convertible to his aids and uses. Ordinarily, he was wont to commend Jane Ann Sims’s logical common sense as “ powerful smartness,” and had been known to lean on her judgment even in the matter of “ craps,” in which, if anywhere, man is safe from the interference and even the ambition of women. He rejoiced in her freedom from the various notions which appertain to her sex, and felt a certain pride that she too had withstood the panic which had so preyed upon the pleasures of the “ show.” But now, when her lack of the subtler receptivities balked him of a possible approach to the key of the mystery which he sought to solve, he was irritated because of her density of perception, and disposed to underrate her capacities to deduce aught from that cabalistic phrase which he alone had heard uttered in the dumb midnight, and from such slender premises to frame a just conclusion. And furthermore, with the rebuff he realized anew that Jane Ann Sims was a woman, incompetent of reason save in its most superficial processes, or she would have perceived that the significance of the unbaited hook lay in the strange mental perturbation which could compass the neglect of so essential a particular, not in the obvious fruitlessness of the labor. Jane Ann Sims was a woman. Let her wash the dishes.

” Naw,” he said aloud, half scornfully, “ he ’ll ketch no feesh.”

Mrs. Sims ceased to wheeze, and her fat face relapsed from the pious distortions of her psalmody into its normal creases and dimples. “ I be plumb fit ter fly inter the face o’ Providence,” she said, as she moved heavily about the table and slapped down the blue platter but half dried.

“ What fur ? ” demanded the lord of the house, whose sense of humor was too blunted by his speculations, and a haunting anxiety, and a troublous eagerness to discuss the question of his discovery, to perceive aught of the ludicrous in the lightsome metaphor with which his weighty spouse had characterized her disaffection with the ordering of events.

“ Kase Euphemy ain’t hyar, o’ course. Ye ’pear ter be sorter dunder-headed this mornin’ ! ” Thus the weaker vessel!

She wheezed one more line of her matutinal hymn in a dolorous cadence and with breathy interstices between the spondees; then suddenly and finally discarding the exercise, she began to speak with animation : "I hev always claimed an’ sot out ter be suthin’ of a prophet, — ye yerse’f know ez I be more weatherwise ’n common. I be toler’ble skilled in cow diseases, too ; an’ I know ’forehand, who be goin’ ter git ’lected ter office, — ginerally, though, by knowin’ who hev got money an’ holds his hand slack ; an’ I kin tell what color hair a baby he goin’ ter hev whenst he ain’t got so much ez a furze on the top o’ his bald pate ; an’ whenst ye ’low ye air strict sober of a Christmas-time or sech, I kin tell ter the fraction of a — a quart how much applejack hev gone down yer gullet; an’ ” —

He sacrificed his curiosity as to her other accomplishments as a seer, and hastily inquired, “ What on the yearth hev sot ye off ter braggin’ this-a-way, Jane Ann ? I never hearn the beat! ”

“I ain’t braggin’,” expounded Mrs. Sims. “ I be just meditatin’ on how forehanded I be in viewin’ facts in gineral ; an’ yit,”—her voice rose in pathetic exasperation, — “ the very day o’ the evenin’ this hyar stranger-man got hyar I let Euphemy go over ter Piomingo Cove ter visit her granny’s folks ; an’ the chile did n’t want ter go much, — war afeard o’ rain, bein’ dressed out powerful starched; an’ I, so forehanded in sight, told her ’t warn’t goin’ ter rain till evenin’.”

“ Waal, no more did it. Phemie war under shelter six hours ’fore it rained.”

“ Lawd-a-massy ! ” cried Mrs. Sims, at the end of her patience. “ What war the use o’ creatin’ man with sech a slow onderstandin’ ? I reckon the reason woman was made alterward war ter gin the critter somebody ter explain things ter him! Can’t you-uns sense”—she turned toward her husband — “ ez what I be a-tryin’ ter compass is why — why — I could tell ter a minit when the storm war a-comin’, an’ yit could n’t tell the juggler war comin’ with it ? ”

Tubal Sims, staring up from under his shaggy eyebrows, his arms folded on his knees, his cob pipe cocked between his teeth, could only ejaculate, “ I dunno.”

“ Naw, you-uns dunno,” flouted Mrs. Sims, “ an’ you-uns dunno a heap besides that.”

He received this fling in humble silence. Then, after the manner of the henpecked, unable to keep out of trouble, albeit before his eyes, and flinching at the very moment from discipline, he must needs inquire, “ Why, Jane Ann. what you-uns want the pore child hyar fur ? Ye git on toler’ble well with the cookin’ ’thout her help. Let Phemie git her visit out ter her granny in Piomingo Cove,” he concluded expostulatingly.

There was not a dimple in Mrs. Sims’s face. It was all solid, set, stern, fat. She sunk down into a chair and folded her arms as she gazed at him. “Tubal Cain Sims,” she addressed him solemnly, “ ef I hed no mo’ head-stuffin’ ’n you-uns, I ’d git folks ter chain me up like that thar tame b’ar at Sayre’s Mill, so ez ’t would be knowed I warn’t ’sponsible. Ye hev yer motions like him, an’ ye kin scratch yer head like him, too ; but he can’t talk sense, an’ ye can’t nuther.” She paused for a moment; then she condescended to explain: “ I want that child Euphemy hyar kase she oughter hed a chance ter view that show las’ night.”

His countenance changed. He too valued the “ show ” as a special privilege. He was woe for Euphemia’s sake, down yonder in the backwoods of Piomingo Cove.

“ Mebbe he mought gin another over yander ter the Settlemint,” he hazarded. “ The folks over thar will be plumb sharp-set fur seek doin’s whenst they hear ’bout’n it.”

The sophistications of polite society are not recognized by the medical faculty as amongst the epidemics which spread among mankind, but no contagious principle has so dispersive a quality in every feature of the malady. Given one show in Etowah Cove, and Tubal Cain Sims developed the acumen of a keen impresario. He saw the opportunity, counted the chances, evolved as an original idea — for the existence of such a scheme had never reached his ears — a successful starring tour around the coves and mountain settlements of the Great Smoky range.

The melancholy expressed in the slow shaking of Mrs. Sims’s head aroused him from this project.

“ Naw,”she said ; “ the fool way that folks tuk on ’bout Satan — they’d better hev the high-strikes ’count o’ thar sins — an’ thar threatenings an’ sech will purvent him. He won’t show agin. An’ I be plumb afeard,” she cried out in renewed vexation, “the man will get away from hyar ’thout viewin’ Euphemy. I ’ll be bound he never seen the like of her afore ! ” with a joyous note of maternal pride.

The pipe turned around in Tubal Sims’s mouth, and the charge of fire and ashes and tobacco fell unheeded on the floor. Like a voice in his ears the echo of that strange cry of the sleeper came to him out of the deep darkness of the stormy midnight, with the problem of its occult significance, with the terror of its conjectural meaning, and every other consideration slipped from his consciousness. The perception of the mental trouble in the man’s face, its confirmation even in the trifle of the unbaited hook, returned to him, with the determination that, if possible, he must know more of him or get him out of the Cove before Euphemia’s return. “ The man ’s dad-burned good-lookin’,” he said to himself, perceiving the fact for the first time, since it had a personal application. “ An’ Phemie be powerful book-l’arned, an’ be always scornin’ the generality o’ the young cusses round about, kase she knows more ’n they do. Mebbe he knows more ’n she do.” He pondered for a moment on the possibility that daughter Euphemia’s knowledge, acquired at the little schoolhouse where the “ show ” was held, was exceeded by the fund of information stored in the brain-pan of any single individual since the world began. At all events, anxiety, complications, familiar association in the sanctions of the fireside, impended. He rose to his feet. This was a man with a secret, and, innocent or guilty, a stranger to his host. He must be quick, for Mrs. Sims — transparent Mrs. Sims! — was even now evolving methods by which Euphemia might be summoned peremptorily from Piomingo Cove, and means of transportation. She chuckled even amidst her anxieties. The juggler, in all his experience,— and his conversation now and again gave intimations that he was a man of cities and had seen much folk in his time, — had never viewed aught like Euphemia, and if scheming might avail, he should not leave Etowah Cove till this crowning mercy was vouchsafed him.

Whether Tubal Sims vaunted his wife’s mental qualities or derided them, —and his estimate swung like a pendulum from one side to the other, as her views coincided with his or differed from them, — he knew that on this topic she was immovable. To pierce the juggler’s heart by a dart still more mystic and subtle than aught his skill could wield was her motive. Help must come, if at all, from without the domestic circle. He waited, doubtful, until after dinner, and as he looked about for his hat, his resolution taken after much brooding thought, he noted a change in the weather-signs. The wind was blowing crisply through the open passage. The mists had lifted. The river, dully gurgling in the dreary early morning, had begun anew its lapsing sibilant song that seemed a concomitant of the sunshine; for the slanting afternoon glitter was on it here and there, and high on the mountain side all the various green possible to spring foliage was elicited by the broad expanse of the golden sheen that came down from the west. He noted, as he took his way along the road, that the recumbent figure once again on the ledge below was not asleep, for the juggler lifted his hand as the rocks above began to reflect the beams on the water in a tremulous shimmer, and drew his hat further over his eyes. “ Ye mought hev better comp’ny ’n yer thoughts, Mr. Showman, I ’m a-thinkin’,” Tubal Sims muttered, and he mended his pace.

His path, much trodden, wended along about the base of the range, and finally, by a series of zigzag curves, began to ascend the slope. The clouds, white, tenuous, were flying high now. The sun had grown hot. Already the moisture was dried from the wayside foliage of laurel as he came upon the projecting spur of the range where the lime-burners worked. The logs, protected from the rain by a ledge of rocks, had been piled anew with layers of limestone, and the primitive process of calcination had begun once more. Here and there were great heaps of fragments of rock placed close at hand, and numerous trees had been felled for fuel and lay at length on the ground, yet so dense was the forest that the loss was not appreciable to the eye. The stumps and boles of these trees furnished seats for a number of lounging mountaineers, in every attitude that might express a listless sloth. Those who had come to work felt that they had earned a respite from labor, and those who had come to talk hastened to utilize the opportunity. Their talk was something more brisk than usual, accelerated by interest in a new and uncommon topic. As Sims had foreseen, the events of the previous evening occupied every thought, and many experienced a freshened joy in detailing them anew to Peter Knowles, who alone of all the neighborhood for a circuit of ten miles had been absent. He had heard every incident repeatedly rehearsed without showing a sign of flagging interest. Now and then he bent his brows and looked down at the quicklime scattered on the ground, and silently meditated on its capacity to destroy bone and on the juggler’s unhallowed curiosity.

“ A body dunno how ter git thar own cornsent ter b’lieve his own eyesight,” one of the men reflectively averred. The interval since witnessing the astounding feats of the prestidigitator had afforded space for rumination, and but served to deepen the impression of possibilities set at naught and miracles enacted.

“ That thar man air in league with Satan,” declared another. “Surely, surely he air.” He accentuated his words with his long lean forefinger shaken impressively at the group.

“ Ye mark my words,” said Peter Knowles suddenly, eying the refuse of quicklime on the ground, “no good hev kem inter the Cove with that thar man.”

“ Whar ’d he kem from, ennyhows ? ” demanded the first speaker.

“ Whar’d he kem from ? ” repeated Knowles, peering over the great kiln. “ From hell, my frien’s, — straight from hell.”

He had the combined drone and whine which he esteemed appropriate to the clerical office ; for though he had never experienced a “ call,” he deemed himself singularly fitted for that vocation by virtue of a disposition to hold forth at, great length to any one who would listen to his views on religious themes, — and in this region, where time is plenty and industry scanty, he seldom lacked listeners,— a conscience ever sensitive to the sins of other people, and great freedom in the use of such Scriptural terms as are debarred to persons not naturally profane or suffering under the stress of extreme rage.

“ Waal, sir ! ” exclaimed old man Cobbs, sitting on a stump and gently nursing his knee. He spoke with a voice of deep reprehension, and as simple an acceptance of the possibility of hailing from the place in question as if it were geographically extant.

Ormsby, who had been standing leaning on an axe, silently listening, laughed slightly at this, — an incredulous laugh. “ Folks ez git ter that kentry don’t git back in a hurry,” he drawled negligently, but with a manifest satisfaction in the circumstance, as if he knew of sundry wights whom he esteemed well placed.

“ How d’ ye know they don’t ? ” demanded Peter Knowles. “Ain’t ye never read the Scriptures enough ter sense them lines, ‘Satan was a-walkin’ up and down through the yearth,’ ye blunderin’ buzzard, an’ he fell from heaven ? ”

The young fellow’s slim athletic figure was clearly defined against the western sky. He swung his axe nonchalantly now, for to be an adept in reading and remembering the Scriptures was not the height of his ambition. Nevertheless, the idea of the possibility of being in the orbit, as it were, of an earthly stroll of the Prince of Darkness roused him to argument and insistence on a less terrifying solution of the mystery.

“ He telled it ter me ez he kem from Happy Valley.” he volunteered.

The elders of the party stared at one another. The fire roared suddenly as a log broke, burned in twain ; the limestone fragments, still crude, went rattling into the crevices its fall had made. Peter Knowles’s arm, with the free ministerial gesticulation which he was wont to copy, fixed the absurdity upon Ormsby even before he spoke.

“ Don’t ye know that thar Philistine ain’t got sech speech ez them ez lives in Happy Valley, nor thar clothes, nor thar raisin’, nor thar manners, nor thar ways, nor thar — nuthin’ ? Don’t you-uns sense that ? ”

“ I ’lowed ez much ter him,” replied Ormsby, a trifle browbeaten by the seniority of his interlocutor and the difficulty of the subject. “ I up-ed an’ said, ‘ Ye ain’t nowise like folks ez live in Happy Valley. Ter look at ye, I’d set it down fur true ez ye hed never been in the shadder o’ Chilhowee all yer days.’ ”

“ An’ what did he say, bub ? ” demanded old man Cobbs gently, after a moment of waiting.

“ Great Gosh, yes ! ” exclaimed Peter Knowles explosively. “ We - uns ain’t a-waitin’ hyar ter hear you-uns tell yer talk; ennybody could hev said that an’ mo’. What did the man say ? ”

Ormsby turned doubtfully toward the descending sun and the reddening sky. “ We - uns war a-huntin’, me an’that juggler. I seen him yistiddy mornin’. I went down thar ter Mis’ Sims’ an’ happened ter view him. An’ I loant him my brother’s gun. An’ whenst I said that ’bout his looks an’ sech we war a-huntin’, an’ he ’peared not ter know thar war enny Happy Valley over yander by Chilhowee. An’ I tuk him up yander whar he could look over an’ see the Rich Woods an’ Happy Valley, an’ — an’ ” — He paused.

“ An’ what did he say ? ” inquired Knowles eagerly.

Ormsby looked embarrassed. “ He jes’ say,” he went on suddenly, as if with an effort.“ he jes’ say, ‘ Oh, Dr. Johnson ! ’ an’ bust out a-laffin’. I dunuo what the critter meant.”

Once more Ormsby turned, swinging his axe in his strong right hand, and glanced absently over the landscape.

The sun was gone. The mountains, darkly glooming, rose high above the Cove on every side, seeming to touch the translucent amber sky that, despite the sunken sun, conserved an effect of illumination heightened by contrast with the fringes of hemlock and pine, that had assumed a sombre purple hue, waving against its crystalline concave. In this suffusion of reflected color, rather than in the medium of daylight, he beheld the scanty fields below in the funnel-like basin ; for this projecting spur near the base of the range gave an outlook over the lower levels at hand. Some cows, he could discern, were still wending homeward along an undulating red clay road, rising and falling till the woods intervened. The woods were black. Night was afoot there amongst the shadowy boughs, for all the golden glow of the feigning sky. The evening mists were adrift along the ravines. Ever and anon the flames flickered out, red and yellow, from the heap of logs. Not a sound stirred the group as they pondered on this strange reply, till Ormsby said reflectively, “ The juggler be toler’ble good comp’ny, though, —nuthin’ like the devil an’ sech; leastwise, so much ez I know ’bout Satan,” — he seemed to defer to the superior acquaintanceship of Knowles. “ This hyar valley-man talks powerful pleasant; an’ he kin sing, — jes’ set up an’ sing like a plumb red-headed mockin’-bird, that ’s what! You-uns hearn him sing at the show,” — he turned from Knowles to appeal to the rest of the group.

“ Did he ’pear ter you - uns, whilst huntin’, ter try enny charms an’ spells on the wild critters ? ” asked Knowles.

“ They did n’t work if he did ! ” exclaimed Jack Ormsby, with a great gush of laughter that startled the echoes into weird unmirthful response. “He shot one yallerhammer arter travelin’ nigh ten mile ter git him.” After a pause, “ I gin him the best chance at a deer I ever hed. I never see a feller hev the ‘buck ager ’ so bad. He never witched that deer. He shot plumb two feet too high. She jes’ went a-bounein’ by him down the mounting, — bounein’ yit, I reckon ! But he kin shoot toler’ble fair at a mark.” The ready laughter again lighted his face. “ He ’lows he likes a mark ter shoot at kase it stands still. He ’s plumb pleasant comp’ny, sure.”

“ Waal, he ain’t been sech powerful pleasant comp’ny down ter my house,” protested Tubal Sims. “ Ain’t got a word ter say, an’ ’pears like he ain’t got the heart ter eat a mouthful o’ vittles. Yander he hev been a-lyin ’ flat on them wet rocks all ter-day, with no mo’ keer o’ the rheumatics ’n ef he war a bullfrog, — a-feeshin’ in the ruver with a hook ’thout no bait on it.”

“ What ’d he ketch ?” demanded one of the men, with a quick glance of alarm. Miracles for the purpose of exhibition and cutting a dash they esteemed far less repellent to the moral sense than the use of uncommon powers to serve the ordinary purpose of daily life.

“ Pleurisy, ef he got his deserts,” observed the disaffected host. “ He caught nuthin’ with ez much sense ez a stickleback. ’Pears ter me he ain’t well, nohow. He groaned a power in his sleep las’ night, arter the show. An’ ” — he felt he ventured on dangerous ground — “ he talked, too.”

There was a significant silence. “ That thar man hev got suthin’ on his mind,” muttered Peter Knowles.

“ I be powerful troubled myself,” returned the level-headed Sims weakly. “ I ought n’t ter hev tuk him in, — him a stranger, though ” — he remembered the hospitable text in time for a flimsy self-justification. “ But’t war a-stormin’ powerful, and he ’peared plumb beat out. I ’lowed that night he war goin’ inter some sort ’n fever or dee-lerium. I put him inter the roof-room, an’ he went ter bed ez soon ez he could git thar. But the nex’ day he war ez fraish an’ gay ez a jay-bird.”

“ What ’s he talk ’bout whenst sleepin ?" asked Peter Knowles, his covert glance once more reverting to the refuse of quicklime at his feet.

” Suthin’ he never lays his tongue ter whenst wakin’ , I ’ll be bound,” replied Tubal Sims precipitately. Then he hesitated. This disclosure was, he felt, a flagrant breach of hospitality. What right had he to listen to the disjointed exclamations of his guest, in his helplessness as he slept, place his own interpretation upon them, and retail them to others for their still move inimical speculation ? Jane Ann Sims, — how he would have respected her judgment had she been a man ! —he knew, would not have given the words a second thought. But then her habit of mind was incredulous. Parson Greenought often told her he feared her faith was not sufficient to take her to heaven. “ I be dependin’ on suthin’ better ’n that, pa’son.” she would smilingly rejoin. “ I ain’t lookin’ ter my own pore mind an’ my own wicked heart fur holp. An’ ye mark my words, I ’ll be the fust nangel ye shake han’s with when ye git inside the golden door.” And the parson, impaled on his own weapons, could only suggest that they should sing a hymn together, which they did, — Jane Ann Sims much the louder of the two.

Admirable woman ! she had but a single weakness, and this Tubal Cain Sims was aware that he shared. With a single thought of their household idol, Euphemia, every scruple slipped from his consciousness.

“ Last, night,” he began suddenly, “I war so conflusticated with the goin’s-on ez I could n’t sleep fur a while. An’ ez I sot downsteers afore the fire, I could but take notice o’ how oneasy this man ’peared in his sleep up in the roof-room. He sighed an’ groaned like suthin’ in agony. An’ then he says, so painful, ‘ But the one who lives — oh, what can I do — the one who lives !' ” He paused abruptly to mark the petrified astonishment on the group of faces growing white in the closing dusk.

An owl began to hoot in the bosky recesses far up the slope. At the sound, carrying far in the twilight stillness, a hound bayed from the door of the little cabin in the Cove, by the river. A light, stellular in the gloom that hung about the lower levels, suddenly sprung up in the window. A tremulous elongated reflection shimmered in the shallows close under the bank where the juggler had been lying. Was he there yet? Sims wondered, shaking with the excitement of the moment.

His anxiety was not quelled, but a great relief came upon him when Peter Knowles echoed his own thought, which seemed thus the natural sequence of the event, and not some far-fetched fantasy.

“ That thar man hev killed somebody, ez sure ez you live ! ” exclaimed Peter Knowles. “ ‘ But the one who lives ! ’ An’ who is the one who died ? ”

“ Jes’ so, jes’ so,”interpolated Sims, reassured to see his own mental process so definitely duplicated in the thoughts of a man held to be of experienced and just judgment, and much regarded in the community.

“ He be a-runnin’ from jestice,” resumed Knowles. “ He ain’t no juggler, ez he calls hisself.”

There was a general protest.

“ Shucks, Pete, ye oughter seen him swaller a bay’net.”

“ An’ ole Mis’ Sims tole him she’d resk her shears on it, she jes’ felt so reckless an’ plumb kerried away. An’ he swallered them too, an’ then tuk ’em out’n his throat, sharp ez ever.”

“ An’ he swallered a paper o’ needles an’ a spool o’ thread, an’ brung ’em out’n his mouth all threaded.”

There was a delighted laugh rippling round the circle.

“ Look-a-hyar, my frien’s,” remonstrated Peter Knowles in a solemn, sepulchral voice, “ I never viewed none o’ these doin’s, but ye air all ’bleeged ter know ez they air on-possible, the devices o’ the devil. An’ hyar ye be, perfessin’ Christians, a-laffin’ at them wiles ez air laid ter delude the onwary.”

There was a general effort to pull themselves together, and one of the men then observed gravely that on the occasion when these wonders were exhibited Parson Benias Greenought taxed the performer with this supposition.

“ Waal,” remarked Ormsby, “ ye air ’bleeged ter hev tuk notice, ef ye war thar las’ night, ez old Benias never moved toe or toe-nail till arter all the jinks war over. He seen all thar war ter see ’fore he ’lowed how the sinners war enj’yin’ tharse’fs, an’ called up the devil ter len’ a han’.”

“ What the man say ? ” demanded Peter Knowles.

“ He ’peared cornsider’ble set back a-fust, an’ then he tried ter laff it off,” replied Gideon Beck. “ He ’lowed he could l’arn sech things ter folks ez he had l’arnt ’em, too.”

“ Now tell me one thing: how’s a man goin’ ter I’arn a man ter put a persimmon seed in a pail o’ yearth, an’ lay a sheet over it, an’ sing some foolishness, an’ take off’n the sheet, an’ thar ’s a persimmon shoot with a root ez long ez my han’ a-growin’ in that yearth ? ”

There were sundry gravely shaken heads.

“ Mis’ Jernigan jes’ went plumb inter the high-strikes, she got so sheered, an’ they hed ter take her home in the wagon,” said Beck.

“ Old man Jernigan hed none ; the las’ time I viewed him he war a-tryin’ ter swaller old Mis’ Jernigan’s big shears hisse’f,” retorted Ormsby.

“ Mis’ Jernigan ain’t never got the rights o’ herself yit, an’ her cow hev done gone dry, too,” observed Beck.

“ Tell me, my brethren, what ’s them words mean, — ‘ the one who lives ’ ? ” insisted Peter Knowles significantly. “ Sure’s ye air born, thar ’s another verse an’ chapter ter that sayin’. Who war the one who died ? ”

Once more awe settled down upon the little group. The wind had sprung up. Now and again the pennons of flame flaunted out from the great heap of logs and stones, and threw livid bars of light athwart the landscape, which pulsated visibly as the flames rose and fell, — now seeming strangely distinct and near at hand, now receding into the darkness and distance. Mystery affiliated with the time and place, and there was scant responsiveness to Ormsby’s protest as he once more sought to befriend the absent juggler.

“ I can’t git my cornsent ter b’lieve ez thar be enny dead one. I reckon the feller war talkin’ ’bout his kemin’ powerful nigh dyin’ hisself. He ’lowed ter me ez he hed a mighty great shock jes’ afore he kem hyar, — what made him so diff’ent a-fust.”

“ Shocked by lightning ? ” demanded Peter Knowles dubiously.

“ I reckon so ; never hearn on no other kind.”

“ Waal, now,” said Tubal Sims, who had sought during this discussion to urge his views on the coterie, “ I ’low that the Cove ought not ter take up with sech jubious doin’s ez these.”

“ Lawsy massy ! ” exclaimed Beck, with the uplifted eyebrows of derision, “ las’ night you-uns an’ Mis’ Sims too ’peared plumb kerried away, jes’ bodaciously dee-lighted, with the juggler an’ all his pay-formances ! ”

There is naught in all our moral economy which can suffer a change without discredit and disparagement, barring what is known as a change of heart. It is a clumsy and awkward mental evolution at best, as the turncoat in politics, the apologist in social deficiencies, the fickle-minded in religious doctrines, know to their cost. The process of veering is attended invariably with a poignant mortification, as if one had warranted one’s opinions infallible, and to endure till time shall be no more. Tubal Cain Sims experienced all the ignominious sensations known as “ eatin’ crow,” as he sought to modify and qualify his satisfaction of the previous evening, and reconcile it to his complete change of sentiment now, without giving his true reason. It would argue scant courtesy to the absent Euphemia to intimate his fears lest she admire too much the juggler, and it might excite ridicule to suggest his certainty that the juggler would admire her far too much. Sometimes, indeed, he doubted if other people — that is, above the age of twenty-five — entertained the rapturous estimate of Euphemia, which was a subject on which he and Jane Ann Sims never differed.

“ I did, — I did,” he sputtered. “ Me an’ Jane Ann nare one never seen no harm in the pay-formance. An’ Jane Ann don’t know nuthin’ contrarious yit, kase I ain’t tole her, — she bein’ a ’oman, an’ liable ter talk free an’ let her tongue git a-goin’ ; she dunno whar ter stop. A man ought n’t ter tell his wife sech ez he aims ter go no furder,” he added discursively.

“ ’Thout he wants all the Cove ter be a-gabblin’ over it nex’ day,” assented a husband of three experiments. “ I know wimmin. Lawsy massy ! I know ’em now.” He shook his head lugubriously, as if his education in feminine quirks and wiles had gone hard with him, and he could willingly have dispensed with a surplusage of learning.

“ But arter I hearn them strange words,” resumed Tubal Cain Sims,— “ them strange words, so painful an’ pitiful-spoken,— I drawed the same idee ez Peter Knowles thar. I ’lowed the juggler war some sort’n evil-doer agin the law, — though he did n’t look like it ter me.”

“ He did ter me; he featured it from the fust,” Knowles protested, with a stern drawing down of his forbidding face.

There was a momentary pause while they all seemed to meditate on the evidence afforded by the personal appearance of the juggler.

“ I be afeard,” continued Sims, glancing at Knowles, “ like Pete say, he hev c’mmitted murder an’ be fleein’ from the law. An’ I be a law-abidin’ citizen — an’ — an’ — he can’t stay at my house.”

There was silence. No one was interested in the impeccability of Tubal Cain Sims’s house. It was his castle. He was free to say who should come and who should go. His own responsibility was its guarantee.

It is a pathetic aspect in human affairs that the fact of how little one’s personal difficulties and anxieties and turmoils of mind count to one’s friends can only be definitely ascertained by the experiment made in the thick of these troubles.

With a sudden return of his wonted perspicacity, Sims said, “ That thar man oughter be gin notice ter leave. I call on ye all — ye all live round ’bout the Cove — ter git him out’n it.”

There was a half-articulate grumble of protest and surprise.

“ It ’s yer business ter make him go, ef yer don’t want him in yer house,” said Peter Knowles, looking loweringly at Sims.

“ I ain’t got nuthin’ agin him,” declared Sims excitedly,holding both empty palms upward. “ I can’t say, ‘ Git out; ye talk in yer sleep, an’ ye don’t talk ter suit me ! ’ He mought say ter me, ‘ Ye walk in yer sleep, an’ ye don’t walk Spanish ! ’ But,” fixing the logic upon them with weighty emphasis and a significant pause, “ you-uns all b’lieve ez he air in league with Satan, an’ his jinks air deviltries an’ sech. An’ so be, ye ought ter make him take hisself an’ his conjurin’s off from hyar ’fore he witches the craps, or spirits away the lime, or tricks the mill, or — He ought ter be gin hours ter cl’ar out.”

Peter Knowles roused himself to argument. He had developed a vivid curiosity concerning the juggler. The threat of the devil’s agency was a far cry to his fears, — be it remembered he had not seen the bayonet swallowed ! — and he had phenomenal talents for contrariety, and graced the opposition with great persistence and power of contradiction.

“ Bein’ ez ye hev reason ter suspect that man o’ murder or sech, we-uns ain’t got the right ter give him hours ter leave. Ye ain’t got the right ter turn him out’n yer house ter escape from the off’cers o’ the law.”

The crowd, always on the alert for a sensation, pricked up their willing ears. “Naw, ye ain’t,” more than one asseverated.

“ ’T would jes’ be helpin’ him on his run from jestice,” declared Beck. “ Further he gits, further the sher’ff ’ll hev ter foller, an’ mo’ chance o’ losin’ him.”

“ They be on his track now, I reckon,” said old Josiah Cobbs dolorously.

“ It’s the jewty o’ we-uns in the Cove,” resumed Peter Knowles, “ ter keep a stric’ watch on him an’ see ter it he don’t git away ’fore the sher’ff tracks him hyar.”

Tubal Sims’s blood ran cold. A man sitting daily at his table under the espionage of all the Cove as a murderer ! A man sleeping in his best feather-bed — and the way he floundered in its unaccustomed depths nothing but a porpoise could emulate — till the sheriff of the county should come to hale him out to the ignominious quarters of the common jail! Jane Ann Sims —how his heart sank as he thought that had he first taken counsel of her he would not now be in a position to receive his orders from Peter Knowles !—to be in daily friendly association with this strange guest, to be sitting at home now calmly stitching cuffs for a man who might be wearing handcuffs before daylight! Euphemia—when he thought of Euphemia he rose precipitately from the rock on which he was seated. In twenty-four hours Euphemia should be in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where his sister lived. The juggler should never see her; for who knew what lengths Jane Ann Sims’s vicarious love of admiration would carry her ? If the man were on his knees, what cared she what the Cove thought of him ? And Euphemia should never see the juggler. She was a sensible girl. He would warn her of the character of his guest, and she would doubtless wish to avoid so unsavory an association. He hurried down the darkening way, hearing without heeding the voices of his late comrades, all dispersing homeward by devious paths, — now loud in the still twilight, now veiled and indistinct in the distance. The chirring of the myriad nocturnal insects was rising from every bush, louder, more confident, refreshed by the recent rain, and the frogs chanted by the riverside.

He had reached the lower levels at last. He glanced up and saw the first timid palpitant star spring forth with a glitter into the midst of the neutraltinted ether, and then, as if affrighted at the vast voids of the untenanted skies, disappear so elusively that the eye might not mark the spot where that white crystalline flake had trembled. It was early yet. He strode up to his own house, whence the yellow light glowed from the window. He stopped suddenly, his heart sinking like lead. There on the step of the passage sat Euphemia, her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, her eyes pensively fixed on the uncertain kindling of that pioneer star once more blazing out the road in the evening sky.

III.

Euphemia could hardly have said what it was that had brought her home, — some vague yet potent impulse, some occult, unimagined power of divination, some subjection to her mother’s will constraining her, or simply the intuition that there was some opportunity for mischief unimproved. Tubal Cain Sims shook his head dubiously as he canvassed each theory. He ventured to ask the views of Mrs. Sims, after he had partaken of the supper set aside for him —for the meal was concluded before his return — and had lighted his pipe.

“ What brung her home ? Them stout leetle brogans, — that ’s what,” said Mrs. Sims, chuckling between the whiffs of her own pipe.

“ Course I know the chile walked. I reckon she ’ll hev stone-bruises a plenty arter this, — full twelve mile. But what put it inter her head ter kem ? She ’lowed ter me she ain’t dreamed o’ nuthin’, ’ceptin’ Spot hed a new calf, which she ain’t got. Reckon ’t war a leadin’ or a warnin’ or ” —

“ I reckon ’t war homesickness. Young gals always pine fur home, special ef thar ain’t nuthin’ spry goin’ on in a new place.” And once more Jane Ann Sims, in the plenitude of her triumph, chuckled.

It chanced, that afternoon, that when the red sunset was aflare over the bronzegreen slopes that encircled the Cove, and the great pine near at hand began to sway and to sing and to east forth the rich benison of its aroma to the fresh rain-swept air, the juggler roused himself, pushed back his hat from his eyes, and gazed with listless melancholy about him. Somehow the sweet peace of the secluded place appealed to his world-weary senses. The sounds, — the distant, mellow lowing of the kine, homeward wending ; the tinkle of a sheep - bell; the rhythmic wash of the river; the ecstatic cadenzas of a mocking-bird, so intricate, delivered with such dashing élan, so marvelously clear and sweet and high as to give an effect as of glitter, — all were so harmoniously bucolic. He was soothed in a measure, or dulled, as he drew a long sigh of relief and surcease of pain, and began to experience that facile renewal of interest common to youth with all its recuperative faculties. It fights a valiant fight with sorrow or trouble, and only the years conquer it at last. For the first time he noted among the budding willows far down the stream a roof all aslant, which he divined at once was the mill. He rose to his feet with a quickening curiosity. As he released the futile fishing-rod and wound up the line he remarked the unbaited hook. His face changed abruptly with the thought of his absorption and trouble. He pitied himself.

The road down which he took his way described many a curve seeking to obviate the precipitousness of the descent. The rocks rose high on either side, and when the scene broke upon him in its entirety it was as if a curtain were suddenly lifted. How shadowy, how fragrant the budding woods above the calm and lustrous water! The mill, its walls canted askew, dark and soaked with the rain, and its mossy roof awry, was sombre and silent. Over the dam the water fell in an unbroken crystal sheet so smooth and languorous that it seemed motionless, as if under a spell. Ferns were thick on a marshy slope opposite, where scattered boulders lay, and one quivering blossomy bough of a dogwood-tree leaned over its white reflection in the water, fairer than itself, like some fond memory embellishing the thing it images.

With that sudden sense of companionship in loneliness by which a presence is felt before it is perceived, he turned sharply back as he was about to move away, and glanced again toward the mill. A young girl was standing in the doorway in an attitude of arrested poise, as if in surprise.

Timidity was not the juggler’s besetting sin. He lifted his hat with a courteous bow, the like of which had never been seen in Etowah Cove, and thus commending himself to her attention, he took his way toward her along the slant of the corduroy road ; for this fleeting glimpse afforded to him the first suggestion of interest which the Cove had as yet been able to present. For the first time since reaching its confines it occurred to him that it might be possible for him to live along awhile yet. Nevertheless, he contrived to keep his eyes decorously void of expression, and occupied them for the most part in aiding his feet to find their way among the crevices and obstacles with which the road abounded. When he paused, he asked, suffering his eyes to rest inquiringly on the girl, “ Beg pardon, but will you kindly inform me where is the miller ? ”

The glimpse that had so attracted him was, he felt, all inadequate, as he stood and gazed, privileged by virtue of his interest in the absent miller. He could not have seen from the distance how fair, how dainty, was her complexion, nor the crinkles and sparkles of gold in her fine brown hair. It waved upward from her low brow in a heavy undulation which he would have discriminated as “ à la Pompadour,” but its contour was compassed by wearing far backward a round comb, the chief treasure of her possessions ; the heavy masses of hair rising smoothly toward the front, and falling behind in long, loose ringlets about her shoulders. She had a delicate chin with a deep dimple, — which last reminded him unpleasantly of Mrs. Sims, for dimples were henceforth at a discount; a fine, small, bony, aquiline nose; two dark silken eyebrows, each describing a perfect arc; and surely there were never created for the beguilement of man two such large, lustrous gray-blue eyes, longlashed, deep-set, as those which served Euphemia Sims for the comparatively unimportant function of vision. He had hardly been certain whether her attire was more or less grotesque than the costume of the other mountain women until she lifted them and completed the charm of the unique apparition. She wore a calico bought by the yard at the store, and accounted but a flimsy fabric by the homespun-weaving mountain women. It was of a pale green tint, and had once been sprinkled over with large dark green leaves. Lye soap and water had done their merciful work. The strong crude color of the leaves had been subdued to a tint but little deeper than the ground of the material, and while the contour of the foliage was retained, it was mottled into a semblance of light and shade here and there where the dye strove to hold fast. The figure which it draped was long-waisted and slender : the feet which the full skirt permitted to be half visible were small, and arrayed in brown hose and the stout little brogans which had brought her so nimbly from Piomingo Cove. Partly amused, partly contemptuous, partly admiring, the juggler wondered at her hesitation and embarrassment, and relished it as of his own inspiring.

“ Waal,” slie drawled, hesitating, “ I don’t rightly know.” She gazed at him doubtfully. “ Air ye wantin’ ter see him special ? ”

He had a momentary terror lest she should ask him for his grist and unmask his subterfuge. He sought refuge in candor. “ Well, I was admiring the mill. This is a pretty spot, and I wished to ask the miller’s name.”

There was a flash of laughter in her eyes, although her lips were grave. “ His name be Tubal Sims; an’ ef he don’t prop up his old mill somehows, it ’ll careen down on him some day.” She added, with asperity, “ I dunno what ye be admirin’ it fur, thout it air ter view what a s’prisin’ pitch laziness kin kem ter.”

“ That’s what I admire. I’m a proficient, a professor of the science of laziness.”

She lifted her long black lashes only a little as she gazed at him with halflowered lids. “Ye won’t find no pupils in that science hyarabout. The Cove’s done graduated.” She smiled slightly, as if to herself. The imagery of her response, drawn from her slender experience at the schoolhouse, pleased her for the moment, but she had no disposition toward further conversational triumphs.

There was a moment’s silence, and then she looked at him in obvious surprise that he did not take himself off. It would seem that he had got what he had come for, — the miller’s name and the opportunity to admire the mill. He experienced a momentary embarrassment. He was so conscious of the superiority of his social status, knowledge of the world, and general attainments that her apparent lack of comprehension of his condescension in lingering to admire also the miller’s daughter was subversive in some sort of his wonted aplomb. It, rallied promptly, however, and he went on with a certain half-veiled mocking courtesy, of which the satire of the sentiment was only vaguely felt through the impervious words.

“ I presume you are the miller’s daughter ? ”

She looked at him in silent acquiescence.

“ Then I am happy to make an acquaintance which kind fortune has been holding in store for me, since my stay in the Cove is at the miller’s hospitable home.”He concluded with a smiling flourish. But her bewitching eyes gazed seriously at him.

“ What be yer name ? ” she demanded succinctly.

“ Leonard, — John Leonard, — very much at your service,” he replied, with an air half banter, half propitiation.

“ Ye be the juggler that mam’s been talkin’ ’bout,” she said as if to herself, completing his identification. “ I drawed the idee from what mam said ez ye war a old pusson, at least cornsider’ble on in years.”

“ And so I am ! ” he cried, with a sudden change of tone. “ If life is measured by what we feel and what we suffer, I am old,” — he paused with a sense of self-betrayal, — “ some four or five hundred at least,” he added, relapsing into his wonted light tone.

She shook her head sagely. “ ’Pearslike ter me ez it mought be medjured by the sense folks gather ez they go. I hev knowed some mighty young fools at sixty.”

The color showed in his face ; her unconscious intimation of his youth according to this method of estimate touched his vanity, even evoked a slight resentment.

“ You are an ancient dame, on that theory ! I bow to your wisdom, madam, — quite the soberest party I have seen since I entered the paradisaical seclusion of Etowah Cove.”

She apprehended the belligerent note in his voice, although she scarcely apprehended the casus belli There was, however, a responsive flash in her eye, which showed she was game in any quarrel. No tender solicitude animated her lest unintentionally she had wounded the feelings of this pilgrim and stranger. He had taken the liberty to be offended when no offense was intended, and perhaps with the laudable desire to give him, as it were, something to cry for, she struck back as best she might.

“ Not so sober ez some o’ them folks ye gin yer show afore, over yander at the Notch. I hearn they war fit ter weep an’ pray arterward. Mam ’lowed ye made ’em sober fur sure.”

He was genuinely nettled at this thrust. His feats of jugglery had resulted so contrary to his expectations, had roused so serious a danger, that he did not even in his own thoughts willingly revert to them. He turned away on one heel of the pointed russet shoes that had impressed the denizens of Etowah Cove hardly less unpleasantly than a cloven hoof, and looked down the long darkly lustrous avenue of the river ; for the mill so projected over the water that the point of view was as if it were anchored in midstream. The green boughs leaned far over the smooth shadowy current ; here and there, where a half-submerged rock lifted its jagged summit above the surface, the water foamed preternaturally white in the sylvan glooms. He had a cursory impression of many features to give pleasure to the eye, were his mind at ease to enjoy such trifles, and his sense alert to mark them : the moss on the logs, and the lichen ; the tangle of the trumpet-vines, all the budding tendrils blowing with the breeze, that clambered over the rickety structure, and hung down from the apex of the high roof, and swayed above the portal; even the swift motion of a black snake swimming sinuously in the clear water, and visible through the braiding of the currents as through corrugated glass.

“ No,” he said, his teeth, set together, his eyes still far down the stream, “ I did my little best, but my entertainment was not a success ; and if that fact makes you merry, I wish you joy of your mirth.”

His eyes returned to her expectantly ; he was not altogether unused to sounding the cultivated feminine heart, trained to sensibility and susceptible to many a specious sophistry. Naught he had found more efficacious than an appeal for sympathy to those who have sympathy in bulk and on call. The attribution, also, of a motive trenching on cruelty, and unauthorized by fact, was wont to occasion a flutter of protest and contrition.

Euphemia Sims met his gaze in calm silence. She had intended no mirth at his expense, and if he were minded to evolve it gratuitously he was welcome to his illusion. Aught that she had said had been to return or parry a blow. She spoke advisedly. There was no feigning of gentleness in her, no faltering nor turning back. She stood stanchly ready to abide by her words. She had known no trafficking with that pretty superficial feminine tendresse, so graceful a garb of identity, and she could not conceive of him as an object of pity because her sarcasm had cut deeper than his own. He had an impression that he had indeed reached primitive conditions. The encounter with an absolute candor shocked his mental prepossessions as a sudden douche of cold water might startle the nerves.

He was all at once very tired of the mill, extremely tired of his companion. The very weight of the fishing-rod and its unbaited hook was a burden. He was making haste to take himself off — he hardly knew where — from one weariness of spirit to another. Despite the lesson he had had, that he would receive of her exactly the measure of consideration that he meted out, he could not refrain from a half-mocking intimation as he said, “ And do you propose to take up your abode down here, that you linger so long in this watery place, — a nymph, a naiad, or a grace ? ” He glanced slightingly down the dusky bosky vista.

She was not even discomfited by his manner. “ I kem down hyar,” she remarked, the interest of her errand paramount for the moment, “ I kem down ter the mill ter see ef I could n’t find some seconds. They make a sort o’ change arter eatin’ bolted flour awhile.”

He was not culinary in his tastes, and he had no idea what “ seconds ” might be, unless indeed he encountered them in their transmogrified estate as rolls on the table.

“ And having found them, may I crave the pleasure of escorting you up the hill to the paternal domicile ? I observe the shadows are growing very long.”

“ You-uns may kerry the bag,” she replied, with composure, “ an’ I ’ll kerry the fishin’-pole.”

Thus it was he unexpectedly found himself plodding along the romantic road he had so lately traversed, with a bag of “ seconds ” on his shoulder, — “ a veritable beast of burden,” he said sarcastically to himself,—while Euphemia Sims’s light, airy figure loitered along the perfumed ways in advance of him, her cloudy curls waving slightly with the motion and the breeze, and the fishingrod over her shoulder ; on the end of it where the unbaited hook was wound with the line her green sunbonnet was perched, flouncing like some great struggling thing that the angler had caught.

When the miller’s cabin was reached, and the bag of seconds deposited upon the swinging shelf where the household stores were safe from rats and mice, he had no inclination to linger, after supper, on the step of the passage, where Euphemia sat alone. He passed stiffly by, with a sense of getting out of harm’s way, and ascended to his room in the roof, where for a long time he lay in the floundering instabilities of the feather-bed, which gave him now and again a sensation as of drowning in soft impalpable depths, — a sensation especially revolting to his nerves. Nevertheless, it was but vaguely that he heard the movements downstairs as the doors were closed, and when he opened his eyes again it was morning, and the new day marked a change.

If anything were needed to further his alienation from the beautiful daughter of the house, it might have been furnished by her own voice, the first sounds of which that reached his ears were loud and somewhat unfilial.

“ It’s a plumb sin not ter milk a cow reg’lar ter the minit every day,” she averred dictatorially.

“ Show me the chapter an’ verse fur that, ef it ’s a sin ; ye air book-l’arned,” wheezed her mother, on the defensive.

“ I ain’t lookin’ in the Bible fur cowl’arnin’,” retorted Euphemia. “ There’s nuthin’ in the Bible ter make a fool of saint or sinner.”

“ Thar ’s mo’ cows spoke of in the Bible ’n ever you see,” persisted Mrs. Sims, glad of the diversion. “ Jacob hed thousands o’ cattle, an’ Aberham thousands, an" Laban thousands, not ter count Joseph’s ten lean kine an’ ten fat kine, what I reckon war never viewed out’n a dream, an’ mought be accounted visions.”

“ Waal, I ain’t ez well pervided with cattle ez them folks, neither sleepin’ nor wakin’,” said Euphemia. “ I ’lowed ye ’d milk pore Spot reg’lar like I does, else I would n’t hev gone away.”

“ I slep’ till nigh supper-time,” apologized Mrs. Sims unctuously, pricked in conscience at last, “ else I ’d hev done it. Want me ter go walkin’ in my sleep, like yer dad, an’ milk the cow ?”

Euphemia said no more, but there rose an energetic clashing of pans and kettles, intimating that the explanation had not mitigated the enormity of the offense. It was with a distinct sentiment of apprehension that the juggler made himself ready and descended the stairs. The place was evidently under martial law. The slipshod, easy-going liberty which had characterized it was a thing of the past. He might hardly have recognized it, so different was the atmosphere, but for the fixtures. The perfumed air swept through and through the rooms that he had found so close, from open window to open door. The floors were scrubbed white, and still but half dry. The breakfast-table was set in the passage, and the graceful hop-vines which grew over the aperture at the rear showed the morning sunshine only in tiny interstices, as they waved back and forth with a fluctuating glimmer and an undertone of rustlings and murmurs ; through the drooping boughs of the elm at the opposite entrance might be caught glimpses of the silver river and the gray rocks and the purple mountains afar off.

Here he found Euphemia and her parents. The irate flush was still red on the young girl’s cheeks, and her eyes were bright with the stern elation of victory. But if submission entailed on Mrs. Sims no effort, she was not averse to subjugation. The juggler was pleased for once to perceive no diminution in the number and depth of her dimples as she welcomed him,

“ Ye ’ll hev ter put up with Phemie’s cookin’, now. I don’t b ’lieve in no old ’oman cookin’ whenst she hev got a spry young darter ter do it fur her. I reckon ye ’ll manage ter make out. She does toler’ble well fur her, bein’ inexperienced an’ sech ; but I can’t sense it into the gal how ter git some sure enough strong rich taste on ter her vittles.”

Old Sims’s grizzled, stubbly, unshaven countenance expressed a rigid neutrality, as if he intended to abide by this impartiality or perish in the attempt. His art had sufficed to keep him out of the engagement this morning, and his success had confirmed his resolution.

It seemed afterward to the juggler that this meal saved his life. He ate as if he had not tasted food for a week. He partook of mountain trout broiled on the coals, and of ” that most delicate cate ” constructed of Indian meal and called the corn dodger. The potatoes were roasted in the ashes with their jackets on, and crumbled to powder at the touch of a fork. He drank cream instead of buttermilk, — it had been too much trouble for Mrs. Sims to skim the big pans when she could tilt, tbe churn instead ; and there was a kind of dry, crisp, crusty roll compounded of the seconds that he had brought to the house on his shoulder yesterday, and which was eaten with honey and the honeycomb. He watched the river shimmer between the green willows of the banks. He watched the white mists rise on the purple mountain sides, glitter prismatically in the sun, tenuously dissolve in fleecy fragments, and vanish in mid-air. The faint tinkle of a sheep-bell sounded, — pastoral, peaceful; he heard a thrush singing with so fresh, so matutinal a delight in its tones.

“ If this is the line of march.” he said to himself, as he maintained a decorous silence, for the state of the temper of the family was too precarious to admit of conversation, “ I don’t care how soon I fall into ranks.”

It is supposed by those who affect to know that the seat of the intellectual faculties is located in the cerebrum situated in the brain-pan. Still, science cannot deny that the stomach is a singularly intelligent organ. Through its processes alone the juggler perceived how well subjection becomes parents, especially a female parent addicted to the use of the frying-pan ; realized Euphemia’s strength of character, unusual in so young a person, and conceived a deep respect for her mental and industrial capacities. He appreciated an incongruity in his bantering style and his mocking high-sounding phrases, His manner toward her became characterized by a studious although apparently incidental courtesy, which was, however, compatible with a certain cautious avoidance.

These days passed eventlessly to him. Much of the time he strolled listlessly about, so evidently immersed in some absorbing mental perturbation that Tubal Sims marveled that its indicia should not attract the attention of the womenfolk who esteemed themselves so keen of discernment in such matters. He still affected to angle at times, but his hook was hardly less efficient when it dangled bare and farcical in the deep dark pool than when the forlorn minnow it pierced stirred an eddy in the shadowy depths. He did not seem annoyed by his nonsuccess. Mrs. Sims’s banter scarcely grated on his nerves or touched his pride. But indeed Mrs. Sims herself did not think ill of the unachieving; somehow the aggressive capability of Euphemia made her lenient. If there were more people like Euphemia, Mrs. Sims might have felt in conscience bound to move on herself. As to the daughter, her little world hastily conformed itself to its dictator, and she ruled it with an absolute sway. Triumphs of baking or butter-making ministered amply to her pride. Even the dumb creatures seemed ambitious to meet her expectations and avoid her censure, The dogs, who had sat so thick around the hearthstone in her absence as to edge away the human household, and had so independently tracked mud over the floors, now never ventured nearer than the threshold ; yet there was much complimentary wagging of tails when she appeared on the porch. Sometimes the clatter of the treadle and the thumping of the batten told that the great loom in the shed-room was astir. Sometimes the spinning-wheel whirred. Occasionally she was busily carding cotton, and again she was hackling flax.

One afternoon he found her differently employed. She sat near the window and caught the waning light upon the newspaper which she held with both arms half outstretched as she read aloud. Mrs. Sims glanced up at the young man with a radiance of maternal pride that duplicated every crease and every dimple. Even Tubal Sims, who, as the juggler had fancied of late, was wont to look at him askance, met his eyes now with a smile distending his gruff, lined countenance, as he sat with his arms folded in his shirt-sleeves across his breast, his chair tilted back on its hind legs against the frame of the opposite window, his gaze reverting immediately to the young elocutionist. With a good-natured impulse to minister to the satisfaction of the old couple, the juggler silently took a chair hard by, and suppressed his rising sense of ridicule.

For, alack, Euphemia’s accomplishments were indeed of manual achievement. He listened with surprise that this should be the extent of her vaunted book-learning, knowing naught of how scanty were her opportunities, and what labor this poor proficiency had cost. Subjugation is possible only to superior force. In the instant his former attitude of mind toward her had returned, on this pitiful exhibition of incapacity which she herself and her prideful parents were totally incompetent to realize. She droned on in a painful singsong, now floundering heavily among unaccustomed words, now spelling aloud one more difficult than the others, while he had much ado to keep the contemptuous laugh from his face, knowing that now and again his countenance was anxiously yet triumphantly perused by the delighted old people, to lose no token of his appreciation and wonder.

To bear this scrutiny more successfully he sought to occupy his thoughts in other matters. His practiced eye noted even at the distance that the newspaper must be some county sheet, — published perhaps in the town of Colbury. He congratulated himself that the girl had evidently exhausted the columns of local news, and was now deep in the contents of what is known as the “ patent outside.” Otherwise his polite martyrdom might have been of greater duration. He felt that neither her interest nor that of her audience would long sustain her in the wider range of subjects and the ore varied and unaccustomed vocabulary of the articles, copied from many sources, which made up this portion of the journal.

The next moment he could have torn it from her hands. His heart gave a great bound and seemed to stand still. His eyes were fixed and shining. He half rose from his chair ; then by an absolute effort resumed his seat and resolutely held himself still. In the throe of an inexpressible suspense every fibre of his being was stretched to its extremest tension as, slowly, laboriously, pausing often, the drawling voice read on anent “ Young Lucien Royce. Details of his Terrible Death.” For so the head-lines ran.

Charles Egbert Craddock.