PART I CHAPTER I
 John Trott waked that morning at five o'clock. Whether it was due to the mere habit of a working-man or the blowing of the hoarse and mellow whistle at the great cotton-mills beyond the low, undulating hills half a mile away he did not know, but for several years the whistle had been his summons from a state of dead slumber to a day of toil. The morning was cloudy and dark, so he lighted a dingy oil-lamp with a cracked and smoked chimney, and in its dim glow drew on his coarse lime-and-mortar-splotched shirt and overalls. The cheap cotton socks he put on had holes at the heels and toes; his leather belt had broken and was tied with a piece of twine; his shoes were quite new and furnished an odd contrast to the rest of his attire.
 
He was young, under twenty, and rather tall. He was slender, but his frame was sinewy. He had no beard as yet, and his tanned face was covered with down. His hair was coarse and had a tendency to stand erect and awry. He had blue eyes, a mouth inclined to harshness,[Pg 2] a manner somewhat brusk and impatient. To many he appeared absent-minded.
 
Suddenly, as he sat tying his shoes, he heard a clatter of pans in the kitchen down-stairs, and he paused to listen. "I wonder," he thought, "if that brat is cooking breakfast again. She must be, for neither one of those women would be out of bed as early as this. It was three o'clock when they came in."
 
Blowing out his light, he groped from the room into the dark passage outside, and descended the old creaking stairs to the hall below. The front door was open, and he sniffed angrily. "They didn't even lock it. They must have been drunk again. Well, that's their business, not mine."
 
The kitchen was at the far end of the hall and he turned into it. It was almost filled with smoke. A little girl stood at the old-fashioned range, putting sticks of wood in at the door. She was about nine years of age, wore a cast-off dress, woman's size, and was barefooted. She had good features, her eyes were blue, her hair abundant and golden, her hands, now splotched with smut, were small and slender. She was not a relative of John's, being the orphaned niece of Miss Jane Holder, who shared the house with John's mother, who was a widow.
 
The child's name was Dora Boyles, and she smiled in chagrin as he stared down on her in the lamplight and demanded:
 
"Say, say, what's this—trying to smoke us to death?"
 
"I made a mistake," the child faltered. "The damper in the pipe was turned wrong, and while I was on the back porch, mixing the biscuit-dough, it smoked before I knew it. It will stop now. You see it is drawing all right."
 
With an impatient snort, he threw open the two windows[Pg 3] in the room and opened the outer door, standing aside and watching the blue smoke trail out, cross the porch floor, and dissolve in the grayish light of dawn.
 
"The biscuits are about done," Dora said. "The coffee water has boiled and I'm going to fry the eggs and meat. The pan is hot and it won't take long."
 
"I was going to get a bite at the restaurant," he answered, in a mollified tone.
 
"But you said the coffee was bad down there and the bread stale," Dora argued, as she dropped some slices of bacon into the pan. "And once you said the place was not open and you went to work without anything. I might as well do this. I can't sleep after the whistle blows. Your ma and Aunt Jane waked me when they came in. They were awfully lively. The fellows were singing and cursing and throwing bottles across the street. Aunt Jane could hardly get up the stairs and had one of her laughing spells. I think your ma was sober, for I could hear her talking steady and scolding Aunt Jane about taking a dance from her with some man or other. Did you see the men? They were the same two that had 'em out last Friday night, the big one your ma likes and the one Aunt Jane says is hers. I heard your ma say they were horse-traders from Kentucky, and have lots and lots of money to spend. That jewelry drummer—do you remember, that gave me the red pin?—he sent them with a note of introduction. The pin was no good. The shine is already off of it—wasn't even washed with gold."
 
John was scarcely heeding what she said. He had taken a piece of paper from his pocket, and with a brick-layer's flat pencil was making some calculations in regard to a wall he was building. The light was insufficient at the door and he was now bending over the table near the lamp.[Pg 4]
 
"Do you want me to make you some flour-and-cream gravy?" she asked, ignorant of his desire to be undisturbed. "The milk looks good and rich this morning."
 
"No, no!" And he swore under his breath. "Don't you see I'm figuring? Now I'll have to add up again."
 
She made the gravy, anyway. She took out the fried bacon, sprinkled flour in the brown grease, stirred the mixture vigorously, and then there was a great sizzling as she added a cup of milk, and, in a cloud of fragrant steam, still stood stirring. "There," she said, more to herself than to him. "I'm going to pour it over the bacon. It is better that way."
 
He had finished his figuring and now turned to her. "Are your biscuits done?" he asked. "I think I smell them."
 
"Just about," she answered, and she threw open the door of the oven, and, holding the hot pan with the long skirt of her dress, she drew it out. "Good! Just right!" she chuckled. "Now, where do you want to eat—here or in the dining-room? The table is set in there. Come on. You bring the coffee-pot."
 
Still absently, for his thoughts were on his figures, he followed her into the adjoining room. It was a bare-looking place, in the dim light of the lamp which she placed in the center of the small, square table with its red cloth, for there was no furniture but three or four chairs, a tattered strip of carpeting, and an old-fashioned safe with perforated tin panels. Two windows with torn Holland shades and dirty cotton curtains looked out on the side yard. Beneath the shades the yellowing glow of approaching sunlight appeared; a sort of fog hovered over everything outside and its dampness had crept within, moistening the table-cloth and chairs. John poured his[Pg 5] own coffee while standing, and Dora went to bring the other things. His mind was busy over the work he was to do. Certain stone sills must be placed exactly right in the brickwork, a new scaffold had to be erected, and he wondered if the necessary timbers had arrived from the sawmill which his employer, Cavanaugh, had promised to have delivered the night before in order that the work might not be delayed. John sat down. He burnt his lips with the hot coffee, and then pouring some of it into his saucer, he drank it in that awkward fashion.
 
"How is it?" Dora inquired. "Is it strong enough?" She was putting down a dish containing the fried things and eyed his face anxiously.
 
"Yes, it is all right," he said. "Hurry, will you? Give me something to eat. I can't stay here all day." He took a hot biscuit and buttered it and began to eat it like a sandwich. She pushed the dish toward him and sat down, her hands in her lap, watching his movements with the stare of a faithful dog.
 
"Your ma and Aunt Jane almost had a fist-fight yesterday while they was dressing to go out," she said, as he helped himself to the eggs and bacon and began to eat voraciously. "Aunt Jane said she used too much paint and that she was getting fat. Your ma rushed at her with a big hair-brush in her hand. She called her a spindle-shanked old hag and said she was going to tell the men about her false teeth. It would really have been another case in court if the two horse-men hadn't come just then. They quieted 'em down and made 'em both take a drink together. Then they all laughed and cut up."
 
"Dry up, will you?" John commanded. "I don't want to hear about them. Can't you talk about something else?"[Pg 6]
 
"I don't mean no harm, brother John." She sometimes used that term in addressing him. "I wasn't thinking."
 
"Well, I don't want to hear anything about them or their doings," he retorted, sullenly. "By some hook or crook they manage to get about all I make—I know that well enough—and half the time they keep me awake at night when I'm tired out."
 
She remained silent while he was finishing eating, and when he had clattered out through the hall and slammed the gate after him she began to partake daintily of the food he had left. "He's awfully touchy," she mused; "don't think of nothing but his work. Bother him while he is at it, and you have a fight on your hands."
 
Her breakfast eaten, Dora went to the kitchen to heat some water for dish-washing. She had filled a great pan at the well in the back yard and was standing by the range when she heard some one descending the stairs. It was Mrs. Trott, wearing a bedraggled red wrapper, her stockingless feet in ragged slippers, her carelessly coiled hair falling down her fat neck. She was about forty years of age, showed traces of former beauty, notwithstanding the fact that the sockets of her gray eyes were now puffy, her cheeks swollen and sallow.
 
"Is there any hot coffee?" she asked, with a weary sigh. "My head is fairly splitting. I was just dozing off when I heard you and John making a clatter down here. I smelled smoke, too. I was half asleep and dreamed that the house was burning down and I couldn't stir—a sort of nightmare. Say, after we all left yesterday didn't Jim Darnell come to see me?"
 
"No, not him," Dora replied, wrinkling her brow, "but another fellow did. A little man with a checked gray suit on. He said he had a date with you and looked[Pg 7] sorter mad. He asked me if I was your child and I told him it was none of his business."
 
"That was Pete Seltzwick," Mrs. Trott said, as she filled a cup with coffee from the pot on the stove and began to cool it with breath from her rather pretty, puckered and painted lips. "You didn't tell him who we went off with, did you?"
 
"No, I didn't," the child replied, then added, "Do you reckon Aunt Jane would like some coffee before she gets up?"
 
"No. She's sound asleep, and will get mad if you wake her. Oh, my head! My head! And the trouble is I can't sleep! If I could sleep the pain would go away. Did John leave any money for me? He didn't give me any last week."
 
"No," Dora answered, "he said the hands hadn't been paid off yet. You know he doesn't talk much."
 
Mrs. Trott seemed not to hear. Groaning again, she turned toward the stairway and went up to her room.
CHAPTER II
 John had passed out at the scarred and battered front door, crossed the floor of the veranda, and reached the almost houseless street, for he lived on the outskirts of the town, which was called Ridgeville. On the hillside to the right was the town cemetery. The fog, shot through with golden gleams of sunlight, was rising above the white granite and marble slabs and shafts. Ahead of him and on the right, a mile away, could be seen the mist-draped steeples of churches, the high roof and cupola of the county court-house. He heard the distant rumble of a coming street-car and quickened his step to reach it at the terminus of the line near by before it started back to the Square. The car was a toylike affair, drawn by a single horse and in charge of a negro who was both conductor and driver.
 
"Got a ride out er you dis time, boss," the negro said, with a smile, as John came up. "Met some o' yo' hands goin' in. Want any mo' help ter tote mortar en' bricks? 'Kase if you do, I'll th'o' up dis job. De headman said maybe I was stealin' nickels 'kase de traffic is so low dis spring, en' I didn't turn in much. If you got any room fer—"
 
"You'll have to see Sam Cavanaugh," John answered, gruffly. "If you climb a scaffold as slow as you drive a car you wouldn't suit our job."
 
"Huh! dat ain't me; it's dis ol' poky hoss. I'm des hired to bresh de flies offen his back."[Pg 9]
 
The negro gave a loud guffaw over his own wit and proceeded to unhitch the trace-chains and drive the horse around to the opposite end of the car. John entered and took a seat. He drew from the pocket of his short coat a blue, white-inked drawing and several pages of figures which Cavanaugh had asked him to look over. A rather pretentious court-house was to be built in a Tennessee village. Bids on the work had been invited from contractors in all directions and John's employer had made an estimate of his own of the cost of the work and had asked John's opinion of it. John was deeply submerged in the details of the estimate when the car suddenly started with a jerk. He swore impatiently, and looked up and scowled, but the slouching back of the driver was turned to him and the negro was quite unconscious of the wrath he had stirred. For the first half-mile John was the only passenger; then a woman and a child got aboard. The car jerked again and trundled onward. The woman knew who John was and he had seen her before, for he had worked on a chimney Cavanaugh had built for her, but she did not speak to him nor he to her. That he had no acquaintances among the women of the town and few among the men outside of laborers had never struck John as odd. There were gaudily dressed women who came from neighboring cities and visited his mother and Jane Holder now and then, but he did not like their looks, and so he never spoke to them nor encouraged their addressing him. A psychologist would have classified John as a sort of genius in his way, for his whole thought and powers of observation pertained to the kind of work in which he was engaged. Cavanaugh half jestingly called him a "lightning calculator," and turned to him for advice on all occasions.[Pg 10]
 
Reaching the Square, John sprang from the car and, with the papers in his hand and the pencil racked above his ear, he hurried into a hardware-store and approached a clerk who was sweeping the floor.
 
"We need those nails and bolts this morning," he said, gruffly. "You were to send them around yesterday."
 
"They are in the depot, but the agent hasn't sent 'em up yet," the clerk answered. "We'll get them around to you by ten o'clock sharp."
 
"That won't do." John frowned. "We could have got them direct from the wholesale house, and have had them long ago, but Sam would deal with you. He is too good-natured and you fellers all impose on him."
 
"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do," the clerk proposed. "I'll send a dray for them this minute and you'll have them on the ground in a half-hour."
 
"All right," John said, coldly, and turned away.
 
The building on which he was at work was a brick residence in a side-street near by which was being erected for a wealthy banker of Ridgeville, and as John approached it he saw a group of negro laborers seated on a pile of lumber at the side of the half-finished house.
 
"Here comes John now," one of them said, and it was significant that his given name was used, for it was a fact that a white man in John's position would, as a rule, be spoken of in a more formal manner, but to whites and blacks alike he was simply "John" or "John Trott." This was partly due, perhaps, to his youth, but there was no doubt that John's lack of social standing had something to do with it. He had been nothing but a dirty, neglected street urchin, a playmate of blacks and the lowest whites, till Cavanaugh had put him to work and[Pg 11] had discovered in him a veritable dynamo of physical and mental energy.
 
"Good morning," several of the negroes said, cordially, but John barely nodded. It was his way, and they thought nothing of it.
 
"Has Sam got here yet?" he inquired of a stalwart mortar-mixer called Tobe.
 
"No, suh, boss, he 'ain't," said the negro. "I was gwine ter see 'im. I'm out o' sand—not mo' 'n enough ter las' twell—"
 
"Four loads will be dumped here in half an hour," John broke in. "Did you patch that hose? Don't let the damn thing leak like it did yesterday."
 
"It's all right, boss. She won't bust erg'in." The negro smiled. Evidently he had not washed his face that day, for splotches of whitewash with globules of dry mortar were on his black cheeks and the backs of his hands.
 
The whistle at a shingle-factory blew. It was eight o'clock, the hour for work to begin.
 
"Mort'!" John's command was directed to two mortar-carriers, who promptly grasped their padded wooden hods and made for the mortar-bed where Tobe was already shoving and pulling the grayish mass to and fro with a hoe.
 
John hung up his coat on the trunk of an apple-tree into which some nails had been driven, and took his trowel and other tools from a long wooden box with a sloping water-proof lid. He was about to ascend the scaffold when he saw Cavanaugh approaching and signaling to him to wait.
 
The contractor was a man of sixty years, whose beard and hair were quite gray. He was short and stocky, slow[Pg 12] of movement, and gentle and genial in his manner. He had been a contractor for fifteen years, and had accumulated nothing, which his friends said was owing to his good nature in not insisting on his rights when it came to charges and settlements. Widows and frugal maiden ladies would have no one else to build for them, for Sam Cavanaugh was noted for his honesty and liberality, and he was never known to use faulty material.
 
"Mort' there! Get a move on you, boys!" John was eying his employer with impatience as he approached. "Fill all four boards and scrape the dry off clean!"
 
"Wait a minute, John!" Cavanaugh said, almost pleadingly. "I want to see you about the court-house bid. I want to mail it this morning."
 
"What! And hold up this whole gang?" John snorted, impatiently.
 
"Oh, let 'em wait—let 'em wait this time," Cavanaugh said. "Where are the papers?"
 
With a suppressed oath, John went to his coat and got them. "I haven't time to go over all that, Sam," he answered. "Wait till dinner-time."
 
"But I thought you was going to look it over at home," the contractor said, crestfallen, as he took the papers into his fat hands.
 
"Oh, I've looked them over, all right," John replied, "and that's the trouble—that's why it will take time to talk it over."
 
"You mean— I see." Cavanaugh pulled at his short, stiff beard nervously. "I'm too high, and you are afraid I'll lose the job."
 
"Too high nothing!" John sniffed, with a harsh smile. "You are so damned low that they will make you give double security to keep you from falling down on it.[Pg 13] Say, Sam, you told me you was in need of money and want to make something out of this job. Well, if you do, and want me to go up there in charge of the brickwork, you will have to make out another bid. I'm done with seeing you come out by the skin of your teeth in nearly every job you bid on. When a county builds a court-house like that they expect to pay for it."
 
"Why, I thought— I thought—" Cavanaugh began.
 
But John broke in: "You thought a thousand dollars would cover the ironwork. It will take two. The market reports show that steel beams have gone out of sight. Nails are up, too, and bolts, screws, locks, and all lines of plumbing material."
 
"Why, John, I thought—"
 
"You don't keep posted." John glanced up at the scaffold as if anxious to get to work. "Then look at your estimate of sash, doors, blinds, and glass. You are under the cost by seven hundred at least. And where in God's world could you get slate at your figure? And the clock and bell according to the requisition? Sam, you made those figures when you were asleep."
 
"Then you think I could afford— I want the job bad, my boy—do you reckon I could land it if I raised my offer, say by fifteen hundred?"
 
"You will have to raise it four thousand," John said, thoughtfully. "Think of the risk you would be running. If the slightest thing goes crooked the official inspectors will make you tear it down and do it over. Look at your estimate on painting," pointing with the tip of his trowel at a line on the quivering manuscript which the contractor held before his spectacled eyes. "You are away under on it. White lead is booming, and oil and varnish, and[Pg 14] you have left out stacks of small items—sash cords, sash weights, and putty."
 
"Then you think this won't do?" Cavanaugh's face was turning red.
 
"Do? It will do if you want to present several thousand dollars to one of the richest counties in Tennessee. Why, one of those big farmers up there could build that house and give it to the state without hurting himself, while you hardly own a roof over your head."
 
"You may be right about my figures," Cavanaugh muttered. "Say, John, I want to get this bid off. Leave the bricklaying to Pete Long and come over to the hotel and write it out for me."
 
"And let him ruin my wall?" John snorted. "Not on your life! His mortar joints are as thick as the mud in the cracks of a log cabin. I'll do it to-night after I go home, but not before. I don't believe any man ought to let one job stand idle in order to try to hook another. To-morrow is Saturday. They couldn't get the bid anyway till Monday. There will be plenty of time."
 
As John finished he was turning to the scaffold. "Well, all right," Cavanaugh called after him. "That will have to do."[Pg 15]
 
CHAPTER III
 When the steam-whistles of the shops and mills of Ridgeville blew that afternoon at dusk John descended from the scaffold and put his tools away. He was the last of the workers on the spot, and when he had put on his coat he went around to the side of the building and with a critical eye scanned the wall he had worked on that day.
 
"It will look all right when it is washed down with acid," he mused. "That will straighten the lines and tone it up."
 
He was too late for the car and walked home. He found Jane Holder in the kitchen, preparing supper. She was a slight woman of thirty-five, dark, erect, with brown, twinkling eyes and short chestnut hair which had not regained its normal length since it was cut during a spell of fever the preceding winter. Touches of paint showed on her yellowish cheeks, and her false teeth gave to her thin-lipped mouth a rather too full, harsh expression.
 
"Oh, here you are!" She smiled. "I know you are hungry as a bear, but I had my hands full with all sorts of things. I was sewing on my new organdie and got the waist plumb out of joint. Your ma promised to help fit it on me, but Harrington, one of those horse-dealers, come by in a hurry to drive her to Rome behind two brag blacks, and she dropped me and my work to get ready. She is always doing me that way. She makes[Pg 16] a cat's-paw of me. May Tomlin is going to have a dance at her house to-night and wrote Harrington to bring her. She left me clean out, though when May stayed here that time I was nice to her and introduced her to all my friends. Your ma didn't care a rap about me. She was going, and that was enough for her."
 
John simply grunted and turned away. He had not heard half she said. On the back porch was a tin wash-basin and a cedar pail. He wanted to bathe his face and hands, for his skin was clammy and coated with sand and brick-dust, but the pail was empty, so he took it to the well close by and filled it. He was about to return to the porch when he saw Dora, the woman's skirt pinned up about her slight waist, coming from the cow-lot with a tin pail half filled with milk.
 
"I had trouble with the cow," she said, wistfully, in her quaint, half-querulous voice. "While I was milking, she turned around to see her calf and mashed me against the fence. I pushed and pushed, but I couldn't move her. Once I thought my breath was gone entirely. The calf run along the fence, and she went after it, and that let me loose. I lost nearly half the milk, and Aunt Jane will give me the very devil about it. Well, Liz— I mean your mother's gone for the night, and we won't need quite so much. She's been drinking it for her complexion. Some woman told her—"
 
"Oh, cut it out!" John cried, with a suppressed oath. "You chatter like a feed-cutting machine."
 
He took the water to the porch, filled the basin, and washed his face, hands, and neck. He was just finishing when Dora came to him with a tattered cotton towel. "It is damp," she explained, apologetically. "I ironed them in a hurry when they were too wet. They ought to[Pg 17] have been hung out in the sun longer, but the sun was low when I got through washing, and so I brought some of them in too soon. Your ma and Aunt Jane use the best ones in their rooms, and leave the ragged ones for us."
 
"You forgot something you promised to do, brother John," she added, timidly, as he stood vigorously wiping his face and neck.
 
"What was that?" he mumbled in the towel.
 
"Why, you promised to send a nigger to cut me some stove-wood and kindling. I tried to cut some myself to-day, but the ax is dull and I had trouble getting enough wood for to-night and in the morning. Will you send him to-morrow?"
 
"Yes," he nodded. "I'll make one of the boys come over and cut it and store it under the shed. There is a lot of pine scraps at the building. I'll send a load of them over, too."
 
After supper, which he had with Jane Holder and her niece in the dimly lighted dining-room, he went up to his room and prepared to work on the estimates for Cavanaugh. He was very tired, and yet the calculations interested him and drove away the tendency to sleep. Down-stairs he heard Jane laughing and talking to some masculine visitor. He had a vague impression that he knew the man, a young lawyer who was a candidate for the Legislature. John had been approached by the man, who had asked for his vote, but John was not of age and, moreover, he had no interest in politics. In fact, he scarcely knew the meaning of the word. Politics and religion were mysteries for which he had little but contempt. He used to say that politicians were grafters and preachers fakers, though he did believe that Cavanaugh, who was a devout Methodist, was, while deluded, decidedly[Pg 18] sincere. He heard Dora's voice down-stairs as she timidly asked her aunt if she might go to bed.
 
"Have you washed the dishes and put them up?" Jane asked.
 
"Yes, 'm," the child said, and John heard her ascending the stairs to her room back of his. She used no light, and he heard her bare feet softly treading the floor as she undressed in the dark. Soon all was quiet in her room, and he plunged again into his work.
 
Finally it was concluded, and he folded the sheets on which he had written so clearly and so accurately and went to bed. It was an hour before he went to sleep. He could still hear the low mumbling, broken by laughter, below, but that did not disturb him. It was his figures and estimates squirming like living things in his brain that kept him awake till near midnight.
 
The next morning he decided to walk to the Square, that he might stop at Cavanaugh's cottage and hand him the papers.
 
The little house of only six rooms stood in another part of the town's edge. Close behind it was a swamp filled with willow-trees and bracken, and farther beyond lay a strip of woodland that sloped down from a rugged mountain range. There was a white paling fence in front, a few fruit-trees at the sides, and a grape-arbor and vegetable-garden behind. Mrs. Cavanaugh, a portly woman near her husband's age, was on the tiny porch, sweeping, and she looked up and smiled as John entered the gate.
 
"Sam's just gone down to the swamp to see what's become of our two hens," she said. "He'll be back in a few minutes. He'd like to see you. He thinks a lot of you, John."[Pg 19]
 
"I haven't time to wait," John explained, taking the papers from his pocket and handing them to her. "Give these to him. He will know all about them."
 
"I know— I understand. They are the bid on that court-house." She smiled broadly. "Sam was awfully set back. He told me all about it last night. He admits he was hasty, but, la me! he is so anxious to land that contract that he can hardly sleep. You see, he thinks maybe it is our one chance to lay by a little. You see, Sam hasn't the heart to charge stiff prices here among Ridgeville folks, but he feels like he's got a right to make something out of a public building like that one. He says you insisted on a bigger bid and he is between two fires. He wants to abide by your judgment and still he is afraid you may have your sights too high. You see, he says some of the biggest contractors will send in bids and that they will cut under him because they are bigger buyers of material."
 
"Sam's off there," John said, thoughtfully. "He can borrow all the money he needs for a job like that and he can get material as cheap as any of them. The main item is brick, and that is made right here in town, and the stone is got out and cut here, too."
 
"You may be right," the woman said. "But to tell you the truth, John, Sam is afraid you are too young to decide on a matter as big as this deal. Several men he knows have advised him to make as low a bid as possible."
 
"Well, if he cuts under the estimates I've made in those papers," John returned, "he'll lose money or barely get out whole. I want to see him make something in his old age. I'm tired of seeing folks ride a free horse to death. He may be underbid on this, and if he loses the job he'll curse me out, but I'm willing to risk it."[Pg 20] John turned away. "Just hand 'em to him," he said, from the little sagging gate, "and tell him that is my final estimate. If he wants to change it he may do so. I'm acting on my best judgment."
 
Half an hour later, as John was on the scaffold at work, Cavanaugh crossed the street and slowly ascended the ladders and runways till he stood on the narrow platform at the young mason's side. He held a long envelop which had been stamped and addressed in his fat hand. John saw him, but, being busy cutting a brick with his trowel and fitting into a mortar-filled niche a bat of exactly the right size, he did not pause or speak. It was his way, and had so long been his way that Cavanaugh had become used to it.
 
"Hey, hey! Get a move on you down there!" John shouted. "This mort' is getting dry!"
 
"Hold up a minute, John!" the contractor said. "My wife handed me the papers. I wrote the letter and stamped it and put in the bid exactly as you had it and was on the way to the post-office with it when I met Renfro going in the bank by the side door. You know he expects to lend me the money if it goes through—my bid, I mean—and he asked me what I was going to do. I told him, and he wanted to look over the bid. I let him, and he looked serious. He said he thought you was too steep, and if I wanted to get the job, why, I'd better—"
 
"I know," John sneered. "He thinks he knows something about building, but he is as green as a gourd. I've given you my judgment—take it or not, Sam, as you think fit. As big as I've made that bid, I'm afraid you will be sorry you didn't make it bigger."
 
"Renfro says young folks always aim too high,"[Pg 21] Cavanaugh ventured, tentatively. "He's got the money ready, he says, and wants me to win."
 
John was cutting another brick in halves. His steel trowel rang like a bell as he tossed the red brick like a ball in his strong, splaying hand. Cavanaugh took a small piece of a tobacco-plug from the pocket of his baggy trousers and automatically broke off a tiny bit and put it into his hesitating mouth:
 
"I want that job, John," he faltered, as he began to chew. "I've set my heart on it. It is the biggest deal I ever tackled, and I'd like to put it through. I want me and you to go up there and work on it. It would be a fine change for us both."
 
"Well, I don't want to go if it is a losing proposition," John said, as he filled his trowel with mortar and skilfully dashed it on the highest layer of bricks. "And if you cut under my estimate you will come out at the little end of the horn."
 
Cavanaugh stood silent. A negro was dumping the contents of a hod on John's board and scraping out the clinging mortar with a stick. When the man had gone down the cleated runway and John was raising his line for another layer of bricks, Cavanaugh sighed deeply.
 
"Well," he said, "I'll tell you what I'm going to do, John. I'm going to mail the bid just as you made it out and trust to luck. I'm going to do it. I admit I've been awfully upset over it, but I can't remember that you ever gave me wrong advice, young as you are. My wife says I ought to do it, and I feel so now, anyway."
 
It was as if John had not heard his employer's concluding words. He was standing on his tiptoes, leaning over and carefully plumbing the wall on the outside.
 
"Yes, I'm going to drop it in the post-office right now,"[Pg 22] Cavanaugh said, as he started down the planks. "After all, there may be a hundred bids sent in, and some of the bidders may have all sorts of political pulls."
 
Again John seemed not to hear. He was tapping a protruding brick with the handle of his trowel and gently driving it into line. "All right—all right," he said, absently, and he frowned thoughtfully as he applied his plumb to the wall and eyed it critically.
CHAPTER III
 The residence on which John was at work was almost finished. He was on the highest scaffold one morning, superintending the slating of the roof, when, hearing Cavanaugh shouting on the sidewalk below, he glanced down. The contractor, with his thin alpaca coat on his arm, was signaling to him to come down.
 
"All right," John said. "In a minute. I'm busy now. Don't throw the broken ones away," he added to the workers. "Stack 'em up. We get rebates on them, and have to count the bad ones."
 
"Right you are, boss," a negro answered, with a chuckle. "Besides, we might split somebody's skull open."
 
"Oh, come on down!" Cavanaugh shouted again, with his cupped hands at his lips. "I want to see you."
 
"I can't do two things at once," John said, with a frown and a suppressed oath. "Say, boys, get that next line straight! Look for cracked slate, take 'em out, and lap the smooth ones right."
 
He found Cavanaugh near the front fence. The contractor was fond of jesting when he was in a good humor, and from his smiling face he seemed to-day to be in the best of spirits.
 
"No use finishing the roof," he said, squinting along the north wall of the building. "That wall is out of plumb and has to come down. Great pity. Foundation must have settled. That's bad, my boy."[Pg 24]
 
"Well, it was your foundation, not mine," John retorted, seeing his trend. "What do you want?"
 
Slowly Cavanaugh took a letter from the pocket of his baggy trousers and held it in his fat hands. "What you think this letter is about?" He smiled with tobacco-stained lips.
 
"How the devil would I know?" John asked, impatiently.
 
"Well, I'll tell you," Cavanaugh continued. "It is from the Ordinary of Chipley County, Tennessee. He says he is writing to all the many bidders on that court-house to let 'em know the final decision on the bids. He was powerful sorry, he said, to have to tell me that I was nowhere nigh the lowest mark. Read what he says."
 
Wondering over his friend's mood, John opened the letter. It was a formal and official acceptance of the bid made by Cavanaugh. Without a change of countenance John folded the sheet, put it into the envelop, and handed it back. Some negroes were passing with stacks of slates on their shoulders.
 
"Be careful there, Bob!" he ordered, sharply. "You drop another load of those things and I'll dock you for a day's pay."
 
"All right now, boss," the negro laughed. "I got erhold of 'em."
 
"Well, what do you think?" Cavanaugh's gray eyes were twinkling with delight. "Lord! Lord! My boy, I feel like flying! I've laid awake many a night over this, and now it is ours. Gee! I could dance! I told Jim Luce about it at the post-office just now. He is going to write it up in his paper. Gosh! I'm glad this house is finished! We are foot-loose now and can set in up there whenever we like."[Pg 25]
 
It was like John Trott to make no comments. He was watching the workers on the roof with a restless eye. The air resounded with the clatter of the hammers and the grating of the slates one against the other as they were selected and put down.
 
"You are an odd boy," Cavanaugh said, with a pleased chuckle. "What are you looking at up there?"
 
"They are not on to that job." John frowned. "Those coons work like they were at a corn-shucking. They don't drive the nails right. They are breaking a lot of slate and losing enough nails to shingle a barn."
 
"Oh, they are all right." Cavanaugh spat and chewed unctuously. "Gee! What if they do break a few slates? We are in the swim, my boy, and we'll give that county the prettiest court-house in the state, and the people will appreciate it." Therewith, Cavanaugh put his hand on John's arm and the look of merriment passed. "I've got to say it, my boy, and be done with it. You kept me from making a dern fool of myself and losing the little I have saved up. If it hadn't been for you—"
 
"Oh, cut it out, Sam!" There was an expression of embarrassed irritation on the young man's face. He was turning to leave, but Cavanaugh, still holding his arm, drew him back.
 
"I won't cut it out!" He all but gulped, cleared his throat, and went on: "I owe you my thanks and an apology. Only yesterday I got weak-kneed because I hadn't heard from up there, and told Renfro and some others who wanted to know about the bid that I had done wrong to listen to as young a man as you are. I said that, and even talked to my wife about it the same way, and now we all see you was right. John, I don't intend to let you keep on at your old wages. You are not[Pg 26] getting enough by a long shot, and from now on I'll give you a third more. I'm going to make some money out of this deal and you deserve something for what you have done."
 
John looked pleased. "Oh, I'll take the raise, all right," he said, with one of his rare smiles. "I can find a use for the money."
 
"Say, John"—Cavanaugh pressed his arm affectionately—"this will be our first jaunt away any distance together. We can have a lot o' fun. I'm going to order me a new suit of clothes, and I am going to make you a present of one, too. You needn't kick," as John drew back suddenly, "it will be powerful small pay for all the figuring you did at night when you was plumb fagged out."
 
"Well, I'll take the suit, too," John said, and smiled again. "You are liberal, Sam, but you always was that way."
 
"Well, we'll go to the tailor shop together at noon," Cavanaugh said, delightedly. "You can help me pick out mine and I'll see that Parker fits you. You have got some shape to you, my boy, and you will cut a shine up there."
 
Leaving his employer, John ascended to the roof again, this time through the interior of the almost finished house, and out by a dormer window. The old town stretched out beneath him. To the east the hills and mountains rose majestically in their blue and green robe under the mellow rays of the sun. A fresh breeze fanned John's face. A man near him broke a slate by an unskilful stroke of the hammer and raised an abashed glance to John.
 
"It is all right, Tim," he said. "I'm no good at[Pg 27] slating myself. You are doing pretty well for a new hand. Say, Sam's landed that court-house contract."
 
The nailers and their assistants had heard. The hammers ceased their clatter. Cavanaugh was seen standing in the middle of the road, looking up at them. A man raised a cheer. Hats and hammers were waved and three resounding cheers rang out. Cavanaugh took off his straw hat and stood bowing, smiling, and waving.
 
"Lucky old duck!" Tim, who was a white man, said, "and he was afraid it would fall through."
 
John's glance roved over the town, the only spot he had ever known. Beyond the outskirts ran the creeks in which he had fished and bathed as a ragged boy. Toward the south rose the graveyard a mile away. He could see the dim roof of the ramshackle house in which he had lived since he was five years of age. John looked at his watch.
 
"Get a move on you, boys," he said, in his old tone. "Say, that last line is an eighth too low at this end. Lift it up. Take off the three slates this way and nail 'em back. Damn it! Take 'em off, even if you break 'em. I won't have a line like that in this job. It shows plain from this window."
CHAPTER IV
 Two weeks later Cavanaugh and John left for Cranston, the Tennessee village where the new building was to be erected. They had on their new clothes and were smoking cigars which Cavanaugh had bought. Some of the negroes and whites who had worked under them came to the depot to see them off, and they all stood on the platform, waiting for the train. There was much mild gaiety and frequent jests. Cavanaugh was quite talkative, but John, as usual, was silent. The men had jested with the contractor about his new clothes, but no one dared to allude to John's. Indeed, John seemed unconscious of his change of appearance. But for his coarse red hands, his rough, tanned face, and stiff, unkempt hair, he would have appeared rather distinguished-looking. A bevy of young ladies of the best social set of the town, accompanied by several of their young men associates, had gathered to see one of their number off. They passed close to John, but paid not the slightest attention to him, and they made no impression on him. That there was such a thing as social lines and castes had never occurred to him. He saw the young lawyer who stealthily visited Jane Holder join the group and stand chatting, but even this gave him no food for reflection. In regard to extraneous matters John Trott seemed asleep, but in all things pertaining to his work he was wide awake. His mental ability, strength of will, and dearth of opportunity would have set a psychologist to speculating on his future, but there were no psychologists[Pg 29] in Ridgeville. Ministers, editors, teachers, fairly well-read citizens, met John Trott almost daily and passed him without even a thought of the complex conditions of his life and of the inevitable awakening ahead of him.
 
When the train came, John and Cavanaugh said good-by to their friends and got aboard. They threw their cigars away and found seats in the best car on the train. It was the first trip of any length that John had ever taken, and yet he did not deport himself like a novice. Cavanaugh bought peanuts, candy, and a newspaper from the train "butcher," but John declined them. His employer had spoken to him about some inside walls and partitions which had to be so arranged in the new building as to admit of some alcoves and recesses not down in the specifications, and John was turning the matter over in his mind.
 
A few miles from Ridgeville a young couple got on the train and came into the car. The young man was little older than John and looked like a farmer in his best clothes. He was flushed and nervous. His companion was a dainty girl in a new traveling-dress. They sat near an open window and through it came showers of rice, a pair of old slippers, and merry jests from male and female voices outside.
 
"Bride and groom," Cavanaugh whispered, nudging his companion. "She is a cute little trick, ain't she? My, my! how that takes me back!"
 
The entire car was staring at the self-conscious pair, who were trying to appear unconcerned. The train moved on. John was no longer thinking of his work. His whole being was aflame with a new thought. Strange, but the idea of marriage as pertaining to himself had never come to him before. The sight of the pair side by side, the strong[Pg 30] masculine neck and shoulders, and the slender neck and pretty head of the girl with the tender blue eyes, fair skin, and red lips appealed to him as nothing had ever done before.
 
"That is the joy due every healthy pair in the world," Cavanaugh went on, reminiscently. "Life isn't worth a hill of beans without it. These young folks will settle down in some neat little cottage filled with pure delight—that's what it will be, a cottage of delight for them. He'll work in the field and she will be at home ready for him when he gets back. Look how they lean against each other! I can't see from here, but I will bet you he is holding her little soft hand."
 
For the next half an hour the couple was under John's observation. He found himself unable to think of anything aside from his own mind-pictures of their happiness.
 
Cavanaugh was full of the idea also. "It is ahead of you, too, my boy," he said. "You are old enough and are now making enough money to start out on. Pick you some good, sweet, industrious girl. There are plenty of the right sort, and they will love a man to death if he treats 'em right. Look, she's got her head on his shoulder, but she's not going to sleep. She's just playing 'possum. There, by gum! he kissed her! If he didn't I am powerfully mistaken. Well, who has a better right?"
 
The pair left the train at a station in the woods where there were no houses and two wagon-roads crossed and where a buggy and a horse stood waiting. Through the window John saw the bridegroom leading the bride toward it. Beyond lay mountain ranges against the clear sky, fields filled with waving corn and yellowing wheat. The near-by forests looked dank, dense, and cool.
 
"It is ahead of you, too, my boy!" The old man's words[Pg 31] rang again in his ears as the train moved on and the pair and their warm faces were lost to view. John took out some notes he had made in regard to the masonry of a vault in the new building and tried to fix his mind on them, but it was difficult to do. The mental picture of that young couple filled his whole being with a strange titillating warmth. Within an hour his view of life had broadened wonderfully. He was not devoid of imagination and it was now being directed for the first time away from the details of his occupation. He could not have analyzed his state of mind, but he had taken his first step into what was a veritable new birth.
 
"It is ahead of you, too, my boy!" Nothing Cavanaugh had ever said to him could have meant so much as those words. A home, a wife all his own. Why had he never thought of it before? He was conscious of a sort of filial love for the old contractor that was as new as the other feeling. He was conscious, too, of a new sense of manhood, and a pride in his professional ability that was bound to help him forward.
 
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when they arrived at Cranston. The Ordinary of the county, at Cavanaugh's request, had arranged board for the two men at the house of a farmer, there being no hotel in the village where board could be had by the week at a rate low enough for a laborer's pocket. So at the station they were met by the farmer himself, Richard Whaley, who stepped forward from a group of staring mountaineers and stiffly introduced himself.
 
He was a man of sixty-five, bald, gray as to hair and beard, and slightly bent from rheumatism. His skin was yellowish and had the brown splotches which indicate general physical decay.[Pg 32]
 
"My old woman is looking for you," he said, coldly. "She made the arrangement. I have nothing to do with it. She and my daughter do all the cooking and housework. If they want to make a little extra money I can't object. The whole county is excited over the new court-house. They act and talk like it was Solomon's temple, and will look on you two as divine agents of some sort. Folks are fools, as you no doubt know."
 
"A little bit—from experience," Cavanaugh joked. "The Ordinary tells me you are a Methodist. That's what I am, brother, and I'll love to live under a Methodist roof once more."
 
"Yes, thank God! that's what I am," Whaley said. "My wife is, too. I'll show you our meeting-house when we pass it. I've got a Bible-class. It is the biggest in the county—twenty-two members."
 
"That is a whopper," Cavanaugh said. "I'd like to set and listen sometimes. I've had fresh light given me many a day by other men's interpretations of passages I'd overlooked."
 
"We are very thorough," Whaley responded, warming up to the subject. Then he turned to John. "What church do you belong to?" he asked, rather sharply.
 
"I haven't joined any yet," John answered. He was slightly embarrassed and yet could not have told why.
 
"Oh, he will come around all right before long," Cavanaugh thrust in, quickly. "I've got him in charge."
 
"Well, he is old enough to affiliate somewhere," the farmer said, crisply. "It is getting entirely too common these days to meet young folks that think they can get along without divine guidance. That is our meeting-house there. We are laying off to put a fresh coat of paint on it in the fall."[Pg 33]
 
They passed the little steepled structure and walked on down the thinly inhabited street which was as much a country road as a street, till they came to a two-story house with a small farm behind it. A tall, thin woman in a gingham dress sat on the long veranda and rose at their approach.
 
"This is the house and that's my wife," Whaley explained. "The property isn't mine. I'm just a renter, but I can keep it as long as I want to. We've been here ten years." He opened the gate and let the new-comers enter ahead of him. They were introduced. Mrs. Whaley shook hands as stiffly as had her husband.
 
"Come right in," she said, smiling. "I know you've had a hot, dusty train-ride, and I reckon you will want to rest."
 
They put down their bags in the little bare-looking hallway from which a narrow flight of stairs ascended, and followed her into a big parlor on the right. Here they took chairs. The afternoon sun shone in through six wide windows and fell on the clean, carpetless floor. A wide fireplace was filled with the boughs of mountain cedar, and the hearth had been freshly whitewashed. There was a table in the center of the room, a tiny cottage organ between two windows, and some crude and gaudy print pictures in mahogany frames on the walls. The four individuals formed an awkward, purposeless group, and no one seemed able to think of anything to say. John was wondering what could possibly happen next, when Mrs. Whaley said:
 
"I know you both must be thirsty. I'll get Tilly to fetch in some fresh water from the well."
 
She rose stiffly and left the room. "Oh, Tilly! Tilly! where are you?" they heard her calling in the back part[Pg 34] of the house. "Leave the churning a minute and draw up a bucket of fresh water. They are here."
 
Through the open windows from the shaded back yard John heard a girlish voice answering, "I'm coming, mother." Then there was a whir of a loose wooden windlass and the dull thump of a bucket as it struck the surface of the water. This was followed by the slow creaking of the windlass and a sound of pouring water.
 
"We didn't come here to be waited on like a couple of nabobs," Cavanaugh jested. "Let's go out to the well. We ought to begin right and be done with it. The last time I boarded in the country I chopped my own fire-wood and toted it in. I'd have washed the dishes I messed up, but the women of the house wouldn't let me."
 
Without protest Whaley got up and led the way through the sitting-room, dining-room, and kitchen to the well in the yard where Mrs. Whaley and her daughter, a girl of about eighteen years of age, stood filling some glasses on a tray.
 
"My daughter Tilly," Whaley said, indifferently. "The only one I have left. Her two sisters married and moved off West. Her brother Tom died awhile back."
 
The girl seemed shy, and scarcely lifted her eyes as she advanced and held out her hand first to Cavanaugh and then to John. She was slight of build, not above medium height, and had blue eyes and abundant chestnut hair.
 
"Pass the water 'round," her mother instructed her, but both John and Cavanaugh stepped forward and helped themselves. For a moment Tilly stood hesitating, and then she turned to her churn at the kitchen door and began to raise and lower the dasher. She had rolled up her sleeves, and John, who was covertly watching her, saw her round white wrists and shapely fingers. The way her unbound hair fell about her neck and lay quivering on her moving[Pg 35] shoulders caught and held his fancy. How gloriously different she seemed from the only girls he had ever met, the bedizened creatures whom he sometimes saw at his home with his mother and Jane Holder! And, strange to say, he almost pitied Tilly for being bound as she was to the two unemotional old people who seemed to rule her as with a rod of iron. What a patient little sentient machine she seemed!
 
"You'll want to see your rooms, I reckon," Whaley said. "Amelia'll show you up-stairs. The Ordinary said he didn't think you'd be over-particular. They have plenty of air and light."
 
John was delighted with his room. It was palatial compared to the sordid den he inhabited at home in its constant disorder and dirt. As he glanced about him, noted the snowy whiteness of the towels at the wash-stand, the freshly laundered white window-curtains, and the clean pillows and coverlet of the great wide bed, he had a sense of meeting a new experience in life that was vastly gratifying. He heard Cavanaugh clattering about in his room across the narrow passage, and smiled. The old man's words, "A cottage filled with pure delight," rang in his ears like a haunting strain of music.
CHAPTER VI
They had supper at six o'clock in the big dining-room. The sun was not yet down, and through the open windows and door John looked out on a small but orderly arranged flower-garden upon which the slanting rays of the sun rested. Whaley sat at the head of the table, his wife at the foot. Tilly was not in sight. She was in the adjoining kitchen, and as he sat with his wrinkled hands crossed over his down-turned plate, her father suddenly called out to her.
 
"Tilly," he cried, "come set down till the blessing is asked, and then you can bring the things in."
 
Her face flushed as from the heat of the stove, the girl came in and slipped demurely into a chair opposite John and next to Cavanaugh. John had never gone through such an ordeal before, and he felt awkward. He noticed that all the others had lowered their heads, and he did likewise, though he had a certain rebellious feeling against it.
 
"I don't know what you have been accustomed to," Whaley suddenly said, looking at Cavanaugh, "but I have always held, as a principle, that the head of a house ought to ask the blessing on it; so you will understand, sir, that in failing to call on you I mean no disrespect."
 
"Oh, not at all," the contractor mumbled. "I think you are right about that. I always do it at home. Of course, if there is an ordained minister on hand, I ask him, but otherwise I don't."[Pg 37]
 
"Well, I don't even in that case," Whaley answered, crustily. "I've always made it a rule, and I stick to it." Then he cleared his throat, lowered his head again, and prayed aloud at some length. John could not have recalled afterward what it was that he had said, for the most of the words used were unusual and high-sounding.
 
The prayer was no sooner ended than Tilly rose and hastened from the room. She came back almost instantly with a great platter of fried ham and eggs and a plate of steaming biscuits, and began to pass them around.
 
"What is the matter with your hand, Tilly?" her mother asked, and John, who was helping himself from the dish the girl was offering him, noted that a red welt lay across the back of one of her small hands.
 
"I burnt it getting the biscuits out," Tilly answered, almost beneath her breath.
 
"How foolish!" her mother retorted. "You are getting more and more careless. Bring in the coffee next. I want to be pouring it out. Most folks like to start a meal that way."
 
Tilly disappeared and returned with the coffee-pot. Somehow John, as he ate his supper, found himself thinking of the painful burn on Tilly's hand, and was oblivious of the conversation regarding religious matters between Cavanaugh and Whaley and his wife.
 
"Now, come set down and eat your supper," Mrs. Whaley said to her daughter, and Tilly took the chair she had occupied while grace was being said. She kept her eyes downcast, and John noticed her long, slightly curled lashes as they rested on her flushed cheeks and her pretty, tapering hands. She said nothing during the entire meal.
 
When supper was over, Whaley led the two men into the parlor and lighted an oil-lamp which stood on the mantel-piece,[Pg 38] for it was growing dark. They had seated themselves when Whaley rose and took a song-book from the cottage organ and extended it to Cavanaugh.
 
"Have you got this new book of revival hymns down your way?" he inquired.
 
"I don't think so," the contractor answered, inspecting it.
 
"Well, it is by all odds the best all-round collection I've ever run across," Whaley said. "Tilly plays all of 'em pretty well, and we have a regular song-service here whenever we feel like it. Do you sing, Mr.—Mr. Trott?"
 
"No, sir," John replied. "I have no turn that way."
 
"Well, maybe you'll get the hang of it while you are here," Whaley smiled coldly. "I don't believe there is any way in the world that a man can get to God quicker, straighter, or closer than in sacred song. I've seen a congregation stand out against the finest appeal ever made from the stand, and the minute some good singer started a rousing hymn they were all ablaze, like soldiers following fife and drum." Herewith Whaley went to the door and called out:
 
"Amelia, let the dishes rest and you and Tilly come in. We want some music."
 
"Good! Good!" Cavanaugh chimed in, rubbing his hands. "We are in luck, John. If there is anything on earth I like after a hearty meal it is hymn-singing. It takes me back to the good old camp-meeting days when everybody, young and old, sang, and even shouted when the spirit was on them."
 
Tilly and her mother came in. The girl went to the organ on which her father was placing the lamp, and sat on the stool. The light fell on her face and John, sitting against the wall on her right, had a full view of it and[Pg 39] her graceful figure. Her father had opened the song-book and placed it on the music-rack. Her slender fingers rested on the yellow keys; the red welt on her hand showed plainly, and John wondered if it pained her much. There was no way of deciding, for she showed no sign of suffering. She began to pump the organ with her little feet. She drew out the stops and began to play. She did it badly, but there were no expert musical critics in the room. Whaley and his wife stood behind her and both of them sang loudly. Cavanaugh had never heard the song, and so he did not take active part, though John saw him beating time with his finger and now and then contributing a suitable bass note. Cavanaugh was delighted with the hymn.
 
"Why don't you join in, little girl?" he asked, gently, as he beamed on Tilly.
 
"I can't sing and play at the same time," she explained, modestly, catching John's attentive stare and avoiding it, her brown lashes flickering.
 
They sang some old familiar hymns now, and all three of the singers joined in together.
 
"I tell you we make a good trio," Whaley exulted. "You've got a roaring bass, Brother Cavanaugh. We'll surprise the natives some night at prayer-meeting. We'll set to one side like and spring it on 'em all at once."
 
John felt like an alien in the religious and musical atmosphere and was somewhat irritated by the announcement later from Whaley that he always had a chapter read from the Bible and a prayer before going to bed, and, as he believed in retiring early, he suggested that they have the service over with. Accordingly, he removed the lamp from the organ to the table, and from the sitting-room brought a big family Bible. A further surprise[Pg 40] was in store for John, for Whaley placed a chair under the lamplight and called on his daughter to sit in it. He smiled coldly as she obeyed and opened the Bible. "You may think it odd, Brother—er—Cavanaugh—you've got a hard name to remember, sir. I say, you may think it odd for me to call on my daughter to read out loud this way. I admit it isn't the general custom, but, the truth is, I discovered that she'd got the habit of not listening to me while I was reading, or commenting, either. So I made up my mind that I'd have her do the reading herself. It has worked pretty well. She is in my Bible-class, and now answers as many questions right as any of the rest, no matter the age or the education."
 
Tilly was blushing as she lowered her head over the big tome with its brass corners and clasps, and John was sorry for her. A storm of rage against her father ran through him. This was dispelled quickly, however, for when the girl began to read in her clear and sweetly modulated voice he sat transfixed by the sheer charm and music of the delivery. Her neck was bare, and he saw her white throat throbbing like that of a warbling bird. He did not grasp the full sense of what she read, for some of the words were unusual to him. Had she been reading in a foreign tongue, it would have been no more marvelous to him. Her flush had died down; her eyes rested unperturbed on the page; one little hand curved around a corner of the big book; the fingers of its mate held a leaf ready to be turned. The lamplight fell into the brown mass of hair that crowned her well-poised head like a halo. Her long lashes seemed mystic films through which he glimpsed her eyes. Looking across the room, he saw Cavanaugh, his rough fingers interlocked over his knee, staring steadily at the reader. Was it imagination[Pg 41] or were the old man's eyes actually moist? They seemed to glitter in the light.
 
Tilly finished the chapter and slowly closed the book, fastening the clasps carefully. She raised her eyes to John's face and quickly, almost guiltily, looked away. Her father had risen and stood holding the back part of his chair with his two hands.
 
"Now we'll kneel down and pray," he said. "Brother—er—er—Cavanaugh, I don't know what your habit or turn is, but I'm going to ask you to lead if you feel so inclined."
 
Cavanaugh was rising. "I make a poor out," he said, "but I'll do my best. I—I don't often refuse when called on." He was looking at John almost appealingly. "I—I regard it as a duty to—to my religion and membership."
 
The strange, alien feeling swept over John again. He had never heard his jovial associate pray, though he had been told that Cavanaugh did so now and then; besides, John felt as if he were being personally imposed upon. He was not religious; he had never even been to church, and here he was expected to kneel down with the others. Whaley and his wife knelt side by side, the worn bottoms of their coarse shoes standing steadily, their heels upward. As John knelt he felt the uneven planks of the floor press into his knees unpleasantly, and he moved them for a more comfortable spot. He had an impulse to laugh over his own predicament, but checked it, for, glancing to his right, he saw Tilly bent over her crude split-bottom chair like a wilted human flower. She looked so weary and so utterly helpless, and yet so brave and patient. As he feasted on her sweet profile he wondered if she, like himself, were thinking of other things than the ceremony at hand. He could not decide. Surely, he thought, she could not be so silly, with that broad brow and those[Pg 42] discerning eyes, as to believe that there was an invisible being away off somewhere who was now listening to what Cavanaugh was saying in his faltering, singsong tone. Somehow he expected absolute truthfulness to be found in the girl. As for the others, they knew what they claimed was untrue. They—even Cavanaugh—were hypocrites, and in their secret souls they knew it.
 
Cavanaugh's prayer was labored—it did not flow as from the tongue of a man who loves the sound of his own mouthing—and it was soon ended. Whaley's smug omission of any comment on it showed the farmer's estimate of its value or lack of value in any religious campaign.
 
Now that they were all standing, John found himself near Tilly. He felt that he was expected to say something, for she had raised a dubious glance to his face, but his tongue was tied. How could he speak there under such circumstances when he had never met a girl of her sort on any terms of social equality? He grew hot from head to foot. In kneeling his trousers had caught a white thread from the floor. He saw it and bent to remove it. It was too delicate for his thick, brick-worn fingers to grasp, and he stood awkwardly trying, now to lift it, again to brush it off. He failed, and then he forgot and swore softly. Tilly may not have heard the oath, but something excited her mirth and she smiled—smiled straight into his eyes. He smiled in return, for he had never seen such a smile as hers before. In rippling streams of delight it seemed to go through his whole being. He saw her pretty hand start down toward the thread and then check itself as she noticed her mother looking at her. It was as if she had started to remove the thread herself and decided that the act would invoke criticism from her elders as a thing too forward for a girl to do.[Pg 43]
 
With a laugh that was bold now in its sheer merriment John took out his pocket-knife, opened the blade, and managed to pick up the thread.
 
"Well, I reckon you are both tired and we are early to bed and early to rise here," Whaley was saying. "You both know the way up-stairs."
 
There were no formal good-nights exchanged. The Whaleys withdrew to their rooms on the ground floor and John and Cavanaugh went up the stairs. John thought Cavanaugh would go straight into his room, but he followed him into his and helped him find and light his lamp.
 
"I want to tell you something, my boy," he began, his eyes shifting back and forth from John's face to the jagged flame of the small lamp. "I want to get something out of me and be done with it. I made a regular fool of myself there to-night."
 
"I don't understand," John said, in surprise.
 
"Well, I did," Cavanaugh went on, flushed, and in a voice that shook a little. "That prayer of mine was the worst mixed-up mess I ever got off. You see, I never have talked much religion to you boys down home, and as far as I know none of you ever heard me pray out loud in public. Well, I—somehow when I got down to-night I just got to thinking about what you thought—you see, I've heard you sneer at the belief I hold in common with many others, and somehow to-night—well, I found that I was thinking more about what you thought of me than what I was prepared to say, and so I balled it all up. I can do first-rate in meeting at home, but I slid from it to-night. Why, I almost heard Brother Whaley grunt when I suddenly forgot what I started to say and switched off to something else. Oh, I made a fool of myself! Now, really didn't you think so?"[Pg 44]
 
"I didn't hear what you were saying," John answered. "I wouldn't care if I was you."
 
"Well, I do care," Cavanaugh muttered. "If ever a man insulted his God, I did mine to-night. I was reeling off a lot o' stuff, but not one word of it was from the heart, and a prayer that don't come from the heart ain't worth shucks. Mine wasn't much more than a song and dance before the Throne, and I'm ashamed of it."
 
"I wouldn't care," John repeated, still absently.
 
"Well, I don't know as I do care much about what that old hard-shell codger, or his wife that is just like him, thinks, but I do for that little girl. My Lord! ain't she sweet?"
 
John stared straight and warmly, but said nothing. He was conscious of the intensest interest and that he was trying not to show it.
 
Cavanaugh stood slowly shaking his head in the negative way that implies affirmation. "Yes, yes, she is a wonderful, wonderful little trick. While she was reading there to-night I seemed to be listening to the voice of an angel that had just come from behind the clouds. I was shedding tears of joy from every pore of my old body. I could have taken her in my arms and cried my heart out. That is why I wish I could have done better in my prayer. What she read was from her soul. 'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want!' I'll never to my dying day forget them words, and the sweet twist she gave to them. I never had a child, John, and if I could have had one like her, I—I— And just think of it! They make her work like a slave, even with her little hand blistered like it was to-night! Old Whaley thinks he walks side by side with God in all his rules and regulations, but his child is one of God's own glories, and don't you forget it."[Pg 45]
 
Turning suddenly, as if overcome with emotion, Cavanaugh stalked out through the door and crossed the passage into his own room. As John undressed he heard the old man's heavy tread on the floor. A window was raised. There was sudden silence. Cavanaugh was looking out into the starlight.
 
John was tired, but he remained awake till near midnight. Fancies filled his mind which he had never had before. Why did he think so often of the bride and bridegroom he had seen on the train that morning?
 
"It is ahead of you, too, my boy," Cavanaugh's words rang in his ears. Could such a thing be for him, really for him? How could it be? He had given no thought to women. He had never dreamed of marriage, but to-night the sheer idea of it was fairly tearing his being to shreds, and the flame of the impulse had risen in the face of a girl—a poor, abused, misunderstood girl. The world lay before him. He would rise in his trade, and earn money which he would lavish on the little filial slave he already adored.
 
He slept and dreamed that he heard Cavanaugh saying: "It is the cottage of delight, my boy, and it is for you and her—for you and her. Don't forget, for you and her!"
CHAPTER VII
The foundation for the court-house was soon laid. The county officials had announced to Cavanaugh that a day had been appointed for a ceremonious laying of a corner-stone, to which all the countryside had been invited. A block of marble properly marked and dated was ordered and came. The occasion was to be a great one. A brass band was expected from a near-by town. There was to be a barbecue, with speeches and singing from a hastily improvised platform.
 
John himself supervised the construction of the platform and the long tables upon which the food was to be served.
 
The day arrived. The weather was most favorable, there being cool breezes from the mountains and sufficient clouds to shut off the heat of the sun. The speakers' stand was hung with flags and decorated with flowers and evergreens. Long trenches had been dug in the earth. Fires had been going in them all day. The dry hickory wood was reduced to live coals and the pork, beef, and lamb were suspended over them. Negro men, expert in the work, were busy turning and basting the meat, the aroma of which floated on the air. A little organ from a near-by church had been placed amid some chairs for choir-singers, and then John discovered that Tilly was expected to play the instrument.
 
"The regular organist is away," Cavanaugh explained to John, "but I'll bet our little girl will do it all right."
 
John said nothing, for he had caught sight of Tilly[Pg 47] seated with her mother in the front row of benches. She was dressed in white muslin from head to foot. She wore a cheap sailor straw hat he had never seen her wear before, and some flowers were pinned on her breast. The whiteness of her attire seemed to accentuate the rare pinkness of her face, which deepened as she caught his stealthy glance. She was the last of the choir to take her place, the others being seated when she finally went forward, seated herself on the organ-stool, and began to look over the music. How calm and unruffled she seemed to John! On the platform sat a candidate for the Governorship of the state, several ministers, the Ordinary of the county, the Sheriff, an ex-judge, and several other men of prominence, and yet in the eyes of the younger spectators John Trott, who was to place and seal the stone, and stood with a new trowel in his hand, was the most envied person there. He was well dressed, good-looking, possessed with a forceful demeanor, and it was rumored that he was a mason who could demand any wages he liked. It was little wonder that poor young farmers who lived from hand to mouth to eke out an existence should deem him most fortunate, and that the girls should regard him with favor.
 
John was young; he was human, and he was experiencing a sort of new birth. Aside from Cavanaugh, no one present knew of his mother's reputation or of the social wall between him and the citizens of Ridgeville, and here to-day he was being treated as he had never been treated before. He felt strangely, buoyantly, at his ease. He was too happy to analyze his wonderful transition. He wanted to do his part well, not chiefly on account of Cavanaugh and the contract, or the dignitaries about him, but it must be admitted that above all he was considering Tilly. It[Pg 48] pleased the poor boy to think of her as conducting the music, and of himself as having charge of the other details. There was a vague, new, and even confident dignity about his erect figure, face, and tone of voice as he directed the laborers to bring the corner-stone forward. There was a square cavity in the stone into which souvenirs were to be placed, and it devolved upon John to collect them from the audience. He did it well. He was a man drawn out of an old environment by the dazzling experience of being in love. A copy of a fresh issue of the county weekly was handed to him by the paper's editor; the Ordinary contributed a photograph of the old court-house, some one else put in a sheet containing the autographs of leading citizens, and there were coins and various trinkets of more or less historic significance. John placed them in the cavity, and under the eyes of all began to close the opening. His new trowel tinkled softly as he worked in the dead silence on all sides. When it was finished the band played. There was much applause, and then the choir sang. During this part of the program John had a chance to look at Tilly without being seen by her. She sat very erectly at the organ, unabashed, unperturbed. John, even from where he stood at one side, saw the red welt on her hand. He told himself, sentimentally, that those were the same little hands which churned daily, washed dishes, made fires in the range, washed, hung out, and ironed clothes, and he marveled. Once as she turned a page of the music-book she looked at him, seemed in a flash to sense his admiration, and dropped her eyes. Something came into her face which he could not have described, but it played there for an instant like a beam of rose-colored light, and he throbbed and thrilled in his whole being.
 
The speeches passed off. The band played again and[Pg 49] John was asked by the Ordinary to announce that the barbecue was ready to be served at the tables.
 
John had never spoken in public, and yet to-day a new daring possessed him. Quite unperturbed, he rang his trowel on the corner-stone till quiet was restored, and then, with a half-jest, appropriately worded, he made the announcement. Immediately the audience was on its feet and surging toward the aromatic trenches and tables. The platform was soon vacated, and John saw Tilly alone at the organ, putting up the music-books. He longed to go to her, but a vast and sudden embarrassment checked him. He started, but stopped and pretended to be inspecting the corner-stone. She was behind him now, but she was the light and breath of his new existence and he half saw, half felt her presence. He told himself that she must think him an awkward fool, and yet he could not approach her.
 
Suddenly he saw something for which he was not prepared. A tall, thin young man with a scant brown mustache and rather long hair, who was tanned like a farmer, and who had large, coarse hands and wore a frock-coat which was thick enough for winter, was stepping upon the platform and approaching Tilly.
 
"You must come get some of the barbecue," he said. "You are doing most of the work and must be fed. I saw your ma and pa over at the first table."
 
"I'm not very hungry, Joel," John heard Tilly say, and from the corner of his eyes he saw that she was shaking hands with the young man. A moment later they were passing close behind John. He knew that to pretend still to be inspecting the corner-stone would be absurd and so he turned and faced the couple. Tilly smiled, nodded, and glanced at the stone.
 
"It is very pretty," she said, pausing and looking at[Pg 50] the work he had done. "This is my friend, Mr. Joel Eperson—Mr. Trott," she added.
 
The hands of two laboring-men met and swung up and down before the little maid. "Pleased to meet you," both men said, and they stared at each other, dumb, concealed thoughts in the depths of their eyes.
 
"You ran that singing all right." John dug the words from his perturbed self-consciousness. "It went off fine."
 
"Yes, you certainly did that," the young farmer agreed. "You all must have met and practised."
 
"Only once, last night," Tilly said. "We met at the church."
 
"We are going to get some of that barbecue," Eperson said, rather stiffly, to John. "Won't you come along with us? I've got two places reserved and can easily make room for another."
 
"Two places reserved!" The words had an unpleasant sound to John. Evidently the fellow had been counting on eating with Tilly even before he invited her. John hesitated. He noticed that Tilly had nothing to say, and that irritated him.
 
"Oh, I'm not a bit hungry," he answered, now in his old, rough, Ridgeville way, and he frowned.
 
"Well, you might come and see the rest of the animals fed," Eperson jested. "I'd like to talk to you. Tilly wrote me about you coming. I certainly would like to have a job like yours. Farming has gone to pieces in this section."
 
Tilly had written him. Again John was conscious of irritation and a strange, deep-seated uneasiness. Were the two on such terms of familiarity that they exchanged letters while living so near together? John was still hesitating[Pg 51] when Cavanaugh suddenly elbowed his way through the surging throng to his side.
 
"They expect you and me to set at the Ordinary's table along with the speakers," he announced, momentously. "I've been looking for you all about."
 
"We just asked him to go with us, Mr. Cavanaugh," Tilly said, "but of course, if the Ordinary wants him we'll have to excuse him." She introduced Eperson, and Cavanaugh smiled.
 
"I've heard about Mr. Eperson already," he said. "And I'll tell 'im to his face that he has fine taste and knows a good thing in the female line when he sees it."
 
The young farmer flushed red and smiled, but Tilly's face was unchanged. "I see you are a tease," she said, indifferently. "Well, we'd better be going."
 
John felt Cavanaugh grasp his arm and begin to lead him through the crowd toward a distant table which was smaller than the others and at which several local dignitaries were seated.
 
"We might as well give them young turtle-doves a chance to coo on a perch by themselves," the contractor said, with a low chuckle. "I understand the fellow don't get many chances to see his girl. They say he has been in love with her ever since he was a little boy, but old Whaley don't seem to like him. They say the old chap has shut down on Eperson's visits—don't let 'im come around as often as he used to. I reckon to-day is one of the fellow's chances to see her. My! what a nice little trick she is! And take it from me—she deserves a better fate than to marry a slow-going farmer like that one. She'd just change one life of drudgery for another."
 
As if in a tantalizing dream, John heard these things as he walked along, still tightly clutched by his old friend.[Pg 52] He told himself that it was incredible that he should care so much about the affairs of a simple country girl whom he had known such a short time, but the startling fact remained and haunted him.
 
They found their places at the table and sat down. The Ordinary, a genial man of middle age, with a full brown beard, had a big jug of fresh cider in front of him and was filling some tin cups with the amber fluid.
 
"We are going to drink to the health and success of these two gentlemen," he announced, when every one at the table had received his cup of the beverage. "They are both agreeable men and are an honor to our community. Moreover, I am satisfied that they are going to give us the finest public building for the money in the state."
 
They all drank standing, and, as they resumed their seats, they glanced at Cavanaugh as if expecting a response from him.
 
"I am much obliged," Cavanaugh stammered. "I can't make a speech or I'd tell you how tickled I am by your compliment, and my young friend on my right is, too. We are combining business and pleasure on this jaunt and are having a fine time."
 
John was gloomily unconscious of the fact that he, too, was expected to say something. Seeing Cavanaugh sit down, he did likewise. He was watching Eperson and Tilly, who at one of the long tables near by sat facing him. Eperson was bending eagerly toward her, smiling and saying something in her ear. Tilly seemed to be listening, for she was smiling also. Farther down the same table sat her father and mother. Whaley had a plate heaped high with the meat and its accompanying peppery relish, and was eating voraciously. Mrs. Whaley was chatting[Pg 53] with a woman at her side and scarcely eating at all. The brass band was playing, there was a great clatter of knives and forks and tin cider-cups. John was in one of his surliest moods. He was really hungry enough to have enjoyed the feast, but his thoughts kept him from doing so. Presently he managed to slip away from the table, and found himself alone. He wandered aimlessly about the foundation of the new building, trying to make himself believe that he was inspecting the work already done. The band had ceased playing. The crowd of white citizens was thinning out, and the negroes were falling into the vacant places at the tables. John saw Cavanaugh and the elder Whaleys trudging homeward. Where was Tilly? he wondered. Then he saw Eperson driving a poor horse drawing a ramshackle buggy around from the public hitching-rack. Tilly stood waiting for him alone on the edge of the sidewalk. Eperson got out, helped her into the seat, and then got in beside her and drove her homeward.
 
John lingered about the foundations for half an hour. Then he saw Eperson returning in the buggy alone. He had to pass close to where John stood, but John refused to look up as he went by and turned into the country road. There was a vague look of placid content on the earnest face of the man which portended things John dared not think about.[Pg 54]
 
CHAPTER VIII
The work on the new building went on apace. John was always tired when night came, but a new expectation at the end of each day had come into his hitherto uneventful life. It was not often that he saw Tilly alone, but he had come to look forward eagerly even for the mere sight of her in the evening, at the supper-table, on the veranda, or in the yard with the others. Both he and Cavanaugh immediately changed their clothing when the day's work was over, and this formality was a new and pleasant thing for the young mason. The change always made him feel more respectable. It gave him the sense of throwing off the grime and toil of the day. It was the first ordering of his life on any social plane, and it charmed him.
 
"You are certainly a wonder," the old man remarked to him one afternoon as they were dressing in John's room.
 
"In what way?" John asked, curiously.
 
"Why, you are different, that's all"—the contractor laughed—"as different from what you used to be down at home as night from day. You used to have a grouch on you nearly all the time, but now you are as pleasing as a basket of chips. Your mind seems brighter. You often say funny things, and you ain't as rough with the boys that work under you as you used to be. If they are a little slow with brick or mortar you don't fuss so much, and—say—you have mighty nigh quit cursing. I'm glad[Pg 55] of that, too, I must say I am, for taking the Lord's name in vain never helped a man get ahead. You see it is a slap in the face to so many well-meaning folks. Gee! ain't we having a fine time? It is about as hard to understand myself as to understand you—I mean this combination picnic and hard labor we are at. There is one point about it that I wouldn't dare tell my wife. By gum! I don't know that I'm ready to admit it even to myself yet, but it is a queer notion."
 
"What is that?" John asked, only half attentively, for he was listening to the sounds in the kitchen below and picturing Tilly at work.
 
"Why"—the old man stared gravely as he answered—"it is a fact that I don't miss Mandy at all—hardly at all, and it has set me wondering—wondering. I know I love her, you see; that fact is as solid and plain to me as that brush you've got in your hand, and why I don't miss her more I don't know. I lay in bed awake between four and five this morning, turning it over in my mind, but to no effect. However, it may be this way: a man and a woman may actually be—well, almost too well suited to each other, if such a thing is possible."
 
"You are getting tangled up." John laughed as he tied afresh a new cravat he had just bought and thrust a cheap, gaudy pin into its folds.
 
"You may think so, but I hain't," Cavanaugh denied. "I mean this, John. A couple may live together so long and become so near alike that nothing exciting happens to either one of 'em, and along with that may come a sort of strain of marriage responsibility. Down at Ridgeville somehow I was always wondering what Mandy would want done and what not, but up here when my day's work is over I can slap on a clean shirt and my best suit,[Pg 56] brush my shoes, light my pipe, and sit around till bedtime and have a good free evening of it. And I sleep—I'll admit it—I even sleep sounder and seem to get more out of it. At home I lie with one eye open, you might say. If Mandy has a bad cold, I can hear her sniffling, and if she has an attack of rheumatism I can smell the liniment she rubs on. I don't mind it, you understand, oh no, not one bit! but the—the very worry about her upsets me. She's the same about me. I know it is a fair deal between us, for she takes it powerful hard even if I come home with a cut or any little injury. I said that it was a fair deal on both sides, but I'll take that back. It is not. The woman gets the worst of married life, and I reckon that's what is bothering my conscience. I sent mine off once for a week at a big camp-meeting over in Canton. She sewed and fixed and packed and cooked for three weeks to get ready, and was gone just two days and a night. She hired a special team to fetch her back, and come acting like she'd been off for a year and had escaped from ten thousand ills and misfortunes. You see, she just couldn't live without her pans and pots and chickens and the cow and calf which she was afraid I wouldn't feed—and, I don't know, maybe—me. And that's what hurts. She keeps writing now about what I'm fed on, how my duds are washed and mended, and how long it will be before I get back home. All that when I'm cracking jokes and arguing with old Whaley over some of his hidebound Bible views about the end of the world. Why, he couldn't predict the outcome of a county election, and yet he knows to the day and hour when him and some more are going to be lifted up on a cloud of glory and all the rest of us stand looking on, wringing our hands like the bunch Noah left without a thing to cling to. But don't you let anything I say about[Pg 57] marriage influence you against it, my boy. It is the greatest institution in the world to-day, and while I don't somehow miss my wife, I'd die if I lost her. I know that as well as I know I'm alive. There must be such a thing as loving folks you don't want to be with all the time."
CHAPTER IX
That evening a wonderful thing happened to John. It was a moonlit night and Cavanaugh took the two older Whaleys down to see the progress on the new building. That left John and Tilly on the veranda together. At first the poor boy's tongue was tied, but under the influence of Tilly's calm self-possession he soon found himself conversing with her quite easily. There was a sort of commotion in the chicken-house near the barn and they started down there to see what had caused it. He had seen young men of the better class at Ridgeville walking with young ladies, holding to their arms at night, and in no little perturbation he wondered if he ought to offer Tilly his arm. He did not know, and he wondered what Joel Eperson would do in the circumstances. Finally he plunged into the matter. "Won't you take my arm?" he asked, so naturally that he was surprised at himself.
 
She did so, although the path was clear and the distance short, and the gentle pressure of her hand on his arm sent an inexplicable thrill through him. She even leaned slightly and confidently against his shoulder, and that, too, was a wonderful experience. He was filled with ecstatic emotion. He slowed down his step and clumsily adapted his long stride to her shorter one. There was a vast, swelling joy in his throat. At the barn-yard gate she released his arm and opened it, and at once he had a fear that he had made a mistake in not forestalling her. He was flooded with shame at the thought that Joel Eperson[Pg 59] would have known what was proper and have acted quicker.
 
"Excuse me," the poor fellow stammered, his eyes on hers. He had never used such words before and they sounded as strange to him as if they had belonged to a foreign tongue.
 
"Excuse you, why?" she inquired, perplexed.
 
"Because—because I didn't open the gate for you," he replied. "I wasn't thinking."
 
"Oh, that doesn't matter," she answered, evidently pleased, and there was something in her eyes that he had never seen there before. Her face seemed to fill with a warm light, and her pretty lips were slightly parted. They walked on. The chicken-house, a shack with a lean-to roof against the barn, was near and he stood by her as she looked in at the open door.
 
"One of the planks they roost on fell down," she explained. "Too many of them got on it. They will huddle together, warm as it is."
 
"I can fix it," he proposed, "but I'd have to have a light."
 
Tilly hesitated, looking again into the shack. There was a low chirping from the perches overhead.
 
"Never mind to-night," she said. "They have found new places and will soon settle down."
 
She turned back, facing him, and slowly they started toward the house. This time she took his arm without being asked, and the act gave him additional delight. He allowed the natural weight of his arm to gently press her hand against his side and she did not resent it. In fact, he felt as if her touch was responsive. The moonlight fell on her bare head and played in her wonderful hair, upon which the moisture of the night was settling. Half-way[Pg 60] between the barn and the house there was an empty road-wagon. Its massive tongue stood out straight a foot or so above the ground. To his wonderment, Tilly sat down on it, thrusting her little feet out in front of her.
 
"Let's sit here," she said. "They won't be back for some time yet."
 
He complied, his wonder and delight growing. They were silent. Finally she spoke again.
 
"You are the strangest man I ever saw," she said, looking into his face with her calm, probing eyes.
 
"Am I?" he asked. "Why, how so?"
 
"I don't know," she made answer, thoughtfully, and she locked her little hands in her lap and looked down. "I can't make you out. You are so—so gentle and tender with me. You are a mystery, a deep mystery. You don't seem to take to women in general, and yet, and yet with me—" She sighed and broke off abruptly.
 
In his all but dazed delight he could not supply the words she had failed to summon, though he knew what he would have said could he but have untangled his enthralled tongue.
 
"Oh, I'm no mystery!" He tried to laugh away his awkwardness. "I'm as plain as an old shoe; no frills about me. You ask the boys that work with me."
 
She was unconvinced. He saw her shake her wise little head and twist her fingers together as she answered:
 
"A girl I know who saw you on the platform that day said she'd bet you'd had an unfortunate love-affair. She said nothing else would make as—as fine a young man as you are shun all the girls like you do. She even hinted that maybe you were—were married down in Georgia and for some reason or other was not telling it."[Pg 61]
 
"Oh no, I'm not married," he laughed. "Gee! Sam would think that is funny. Me married!"
 
"Then you have had a—a love-affair with some girl, and—"
 
"Wrong again!" he laughed, deep in the throat of his ebullient joy. "I've just been a sort of stay-at-home, pretty busy, you know. I've had my hands full of night work, figuring, writing, and planning, and through the day I've been hard at it, as a general thing. No, I'm just, I reckon, not a natural ladies' man." How could he explain to her what he had never understood or even tried to fathom, the reason why he was different from other young men of his age whose manner of life he had only superficially observed?
 
Tilly seemed still unconvinced. "That girl was Sally Teasdale," she went on. "She was here yesterday. You may remember her—the tall, dark-haired girl that sang in the choir that day and turned my music for me once. She is going to have a party at her house down the road Wednesday night. She is—is dead set on having you there. She says all the girls want to get acquainted with you, and she—she wanted me to—to take you to it."
 
"To take me to it?" he repeated, hardly understanding what was really meant, for how could a young lady be asking him to a party at her house when no home of that sort had ever been open to him? How could that be true, and that another girl of Tilly's social rank should really be inviting him to escort her?
 
"I see, you don't want to go," Tilly said, with a touch of mild resentment. "Well, that is for you to decide, and I would not have asked you but there was no way out of it. Even mother advised me to mention it."
 
Never had his confusion been greater. "Why, I want[Pg 62] to go!" he blurted out. "I don't see how you could doubt it. And you say that you will let me go along with you?"
 
"Yes, but it was Sally's idea; not mine," Tilly urged. "Don't think I go about inviting boys to take me places. You see, you are stopping at our house, and that is why Sally mentioned it to me, but the fact that you pay us board doesn't give me the right to pull you into things you don't care for. You must be your own judge. No doubt you are frightfully tired at night, and if you have writing and figuring to do after work hours, why, it would be wrong of you to bother with a crowd of silly country girls that you never saw before."
 
"Me tired? Oh no! Leave that out of the question," he warmly thrust in. "I've set up with the boys when they were sick all night long, and worked the next day without feeling it. What ails you? Why don't you think I'd like to go with you? Well, I would— I do want to go."
 
"Well then, we'll go," Tilly said. "I know you will like the girls—Sally, especially, for she is crazy, simply crazy about you. Huh! and you don't know it? Why, she goes to town nearly every day just to pass the new court-house. Shucks! she knows every layer of brick that goes in it, and every man by name that works under you."
 
"I think I remember the girl you mean." John was not absorbing the compliment. "She is a tall, dark girl, as straight as an Indian squaw. She stopped one day and asked me some questions about the rooms on the lower floor. Sam come and showed her around— I was too busy. Sam's on the ladies' entertainment committee— I am not."[Pg 63]
 
"She told me she had never met you." Tilly leaned toward him as she spoke. She clasped her hands over her knee. She was staring steadily, her eyes flashing. "Oh, my! what won't some girls do to get in with a new man? Huh! She has failed to get at you in every other way and is now making a cat's-paw of me."
 
"I declare I don't know what you mean," John asserted, "but if you are in earnest—about the party, I mean—why, you can count me in. I've never been a party man—I wouldn't know what to do or say—but if you will go with me, I'll be ready long before you are, I'll bet you. I'll hire a horse and buggy at the livery-stable, and—"
 
"Oh no, I seldom ride," Tilly protested. "It is only about a mile and we can walk that far in pretty weather like this. They all live close about except Joel Eperson. He always drives in and brings his sister, Martha Jane."
 
"Oh, so he's going—that feller is going!" John exclaimed in a crestfallen tone. "I see—I see—he's going."
 
"Yes. He is Sally's first cousin."
 
The uncouth mason sat silent. He folded his ponderous hands and scowled as he did when displeased with the work of a bungling assistant. Tilly was covertly and studiously regarding his profile.
 
"Why do you say it like that?" she inquired. "Is there anything strange about Joel going to a party?"
 
"Strange? Not if he knows you are to be there. Does he?"
 
"I suppose he does think I may be there, but what of it—what of it?"
 
John turned and stared toward the house. It was as if he were trying to keep her from seeing the fierce expression he knew had clutched his face. Tilly leaned closer to him.[Pg 64] Her shoulder touched his. She sat waiting for him to turn his head toward her again. Presently he looked at her, his honest eyes holding a famished expression.
 
"What is there strange about Joel going?" she asked, softly and all but propitiatingly.
 
"Nothing strange about it—just the reverse," he sighed. "I've heard that he has been loving you ever since he was a little boy, and that he comes to see you every chance he gets. I've heard that your father doesn't like him. I see—his cousin has got this party up so you and he can—"
 
Tilly sprang to her feet. John kept his seat, unaware that even rural courtesy demanded that he rise when she did. But Tilly was no stickler for conventions. She was a working-girl; he was a laborer, and there was something to be fathomed in the man before her which lurked deep within him. She was angry, or perhaps only impatient, but the mood passed as if melting into the moonlight which laved her dainty form like some supernal fluid.
 
"What you said is not kind or just," she objected, sweetly. "You intimate that I'd meet Joel somewhere against my father's wishes. I would not do so. I would not disobey my father or do anything on the sly that he would oppose."
 
In dumb, almost stupid alarm John sat staring up at her. He quaked under the sudden realization that he had offended her, and yet he had never apologized to any one in his life. The fine sense of that sort of restitution belonged to social paths John Trott had never traversed. "Excuse me," he might have said, as he had said at the gate, but somehow under her bent gaze he found himself unable to utter a word. It may have been the sheer blank look in his eyes, or the helpless twitching of his lips, that[Pg 65] decided her, for she suddenly sat down by him again and leaned forward till their eyes met.
 
"You did not mean to say that I'd do anything underhand, I'm sure," she faltered. "I'm sure of it now."
 
"Oh no," he slowly shook his head and seemed to swallow an emotional contraction in his throat. "I didn't mean any harm, but—but he will be there, you say? He'll be there?"
 
"Yes, yes, of course," Tilly responded. "I suppose he will bring Martha Jane. He usually does. But what of that?"
 
"He'll want to talk to you, I suppose?" John went on, his nether lip hanging limp, his gaze steady.
 
"Why, yes—that is, maybe he will. Sometimes couples walk about between the games and dances. I don't dance. My father and mother oppose it, and our church does not sanction it; but you dance, don't you?"
 
"No, I've never even been to a dance. I hardly know what they are like. The young folks at Ridgeville have them often at their club and at the hotels and in their homes, but the boys are a lot of dudes that have nothing else to do, and I hate them. I've always had to work for a living and most of them are well off and look down on poor folks. People here treat a fellow like me different somehow."
 
"It seems very strange that you don't dance," Tilly mused aloud, "especially when you don't belong to the church. How does it happen that you never joined?"
 
He shrugged and sniffed with uncurbed contempt, unaware of the fact that what he was saying was an unheard-of thing in Tilly's circle. "I don't believe in them," he jerked out. "They are a bunch of close-fisted, grafting hypocrites. Most of them haven't the brains of a gnat.[Pg 66] I've helped build meeting-houses, run against the leaders, and know their private lives. They say they believe there is a God— I don't!"
 
Tilly sighed unresentfully. "You will see it differently some day," she said. "Will you do me a favor?"
 
"Will I? Try me," he laughed, and he sat eagerly waiting for her to continue.
 
In her earnestness she put her hand on his knee as she leaned closer to him. "Then don't tell father how you feel about it—please don't. You don't know him. You can't imagine how furious that would make him. A man stopped at our house once to stay overnight. He was selling harvesting-machines, and after supper he and my father had an argument on the veranda. He said—the man said something like what you've just said to me, and father made him leave the house—made him pack up and leave at once, for father said it would be a sin for us to sleep under the same roof. Mother did not object, either. She was glad to see him go. Our preacher preached a sermon on it and said my father did right. I'm sorry you believe as you do, but won't you promise me not to say anything about it while you are here?"
 
"I'll promise you anything on earth you ask." John sat up straight. Her little hand was still on his knee. He yearned to take it into his calloused grasp and fondle into it his assurances of compliance with her desires. "I don't object to any man's religion unless it rubs against my rights as a man," he went on. "These church folks here may be better than any I've run across, but down home the breed doesn't suit me. Why, when I was a little fellow in the public school I've had them—women and men—invite other boys to go to Christmas-tree parties, Sunday-school festivals, or picnics, and leave[Pg 67] me out. They would do it right before my face, as if I was the very dirt under their feet. A thing like that would be noticed by a little boy who wonders why he can't go along with the rest."
 
"I didn't know there were such church members as that anywhere," Tilly said, thoughtfully. "Oh, I see. I wonder if your folks are Catholics?"
 
"No. My father is dead. My mother doesn't go to any church."
 
"Oh, that's odd. Not any at all?"
 
"No. I guess she is like me. She doesn't know any of the members or care a hill of beans about them. Why did you ask if we were Catholics?"
 
"Because Catholics are looked down on so much around here. If you had said you were one, I was going to ask you not to mention that to my father, either. The greatest trouble my family ever had came through the Catholics. You see, I had a brother. He died five years ago. He was a professing member of our church, and father was awfully proud of him because he was a fine exhorter at revivals. When he wasn't more than sixteen my brother actually preached in public, though he wasn't ordained. They called him 'the boy wonder' and many people were converted under him."
 
"I've seen his sort," John said, reflectively. "They had one down our way, a sissy of a chap, that women fairly went crazy over, but you say your brother died."
 
"Yes, but not before he caused us that great trouble," Tilly went on. "It was this way. Father's chief ambition was to have him preach, and when he was about twenty, and after father had saved and stinted to put him through the Methodist seminary, an Irish family moved here. They were Catholics. There was a girl in the family, and[Pg 68] in some way or other George got acquainted with her and got to visiting at her house. You know the Catholics have no church here—there are so few of them—but at her house my brother met Catholics who talked to him and gave him books to read. The truth is, he fell in love with the girl and our trouble began. She and her folks somehow convinced him that her religion was the oldest one—that it was really established by our Lord, and that all the other denominations had shot off from it. George had the manhood to come to father and tell him what he believed and that he was going to join the Catholics, so that he and the girl could marry according to Catholic rites. I was too young to know what it was all about, but I was terrified by father's fury. He acted like a crazy man. He couldn't eat or sleep. He disowned my brother and drove him from home. George married the girl and they all moved away. By accident we heard that he had died of consumption away out West, and then a man—a Catholic, some kin of George's wife—came to deliver some message George had sent from his death-bed. We were all sitting in the parlor. Before father would let him say what the message was father asked the man if George died a Catholic, and when the man said he did and that a priest had been called in, my father refused to hear the message and showed him the door. My mother seemed willing to listen to it, but she always obeys my father. They are almost exactly alike, and so she said nothing."
 
The gate latch clicked. Voices were heard from the house. "They are back. I'll have to go in," Tilly said, and she sighed as from weighty memories awakened by her recital.
 
John got up and Tilly took his arm again. It seemed to him that her hold upon it was somehow insecure, and[Pg 69] he took her hand and drew it higher up. He had never touched her hand till now, and, while it was rough from her accustomed toil, by contrast with his own brick-and-stone rasped palm, it felt as soft as velvet. There was a warm lack of resistance in it and he released it reluctantly. How glorious and bliss-drenching seemed the moonlight as it lay on the landscape! And it was not to end, he told himself. There was the party to look forward to. That would give him another chance to see her alone. He was a strong man, and yet he was all but swooning under emotions which he had never dreamed could exist.
 
"Oh, there they are!" he heard Mrs. Whaley exclaiming.
 
Tilly now released John's arm, stepped forward, and casually explained the mishap in the chicken-house.
 
"The same thing happened some time ago," Mrs. Whaley said, pleasantly, to John. "We've got too many chickens, anyway. I'm going to ship some of them off."
 
He told her awkwardly that he would send one of the carpenters up to repair the damage, and further showed his crudeness by adding that it should not cost her anything, all of which struck her as being quite gentlemanly of him, and proving his ability to command men who ranked lower than himself in the scale of his trade.
 
They all separated for the night and John went to his bed stirred by hopes and passions that kept sleep from his brain for hours.
CHAPTER X
The evening of the party came around. John was in his room, dressing for it, and Cavanaugh was with him.
 
"It certainly is a new wrinkle for you," the old man said, with a broad smile. "And I wouldn't bother about not knowing how to dance, either, if I was you. There will be aplenty that won't take part in that, so you won't feel odd. La me! I wish I could go look on! I love to see young folks together. I spied you two the other night long before the others did, and I noticed how Tilly was leaning against you, and it was by all odds the prettiest sight I ever looked at, and took me back, back, back! I believe there is a future life, and in it we'll be allowed to unreel all the sweet and pretty things we ever wound up in our earthly passage. I want to see the girls and boys I used to know at your age that have gone on. Many of them had awful trouble and disgrace before they went, and some died in pain and poverty, but I don't believe they are suffering now, and they will come to meet me, too, and lend me some of their joy. Old Whaley's eternal-damnation idea for some of God's children don't go down with me. There is punishment—oh, I know that well enough, but it is here in the consciences of folks that go crooked. Wait, wait! You can't tie a cravat. It is the first time you ever wore a white one, isn't it? Let me see if I can do it. I used to know how."
 
With a happy laugh, John bent downward and the contractor[Pg 71] pulled the narrow strip of lawn into place around the stiff collar and managed to tie it fairly well. "You will cut a dash, my boy, for that is a dandy suit, and it fits you like a kid glove. These mountain fellers don't get as stylish a cut as that from these cross-roads stores, and no such material by a long shot. I'm going to say something and I'm afraid you will be hurt, but I hope you will remember that I feel like a father to you."
 
"Shoot it out!" John laughed. "Fire away."
 
"Well, you can't accuse me of being foolish about what is style and what ain't, John, but there are a few things that I wish you'd remember not to do any more. You see, I never lived with you down home—never set with you at the table and the like, and so I didn't notice anything out of the way, but—" The contractor was avoiding John's questioning stare and suddenly broke off.
 
"Why, what do you mean?" John asked. "Have I been doing anything wrong?"
 
"Oh no, and maybe not a single one has ever noticed what I have, but I must say there are a few things that sometimes I wish you wouldn't do. Oh, I'm going to tell you and be done with it, because if I don't some young lady may and that would hurt worse. John, I don't like the way you act at the table sometimes. I hope you won't get mad, but I don't."
 
"Well, what's wrong?" John asked, a look of shame crossing his face as he stood mechanically brushing his coat-sleeve with his big, splaying hand.
 
"There are several little things," Cavanaugh went on, lamely. "For instance, there is always a big spoon on the bean-dish or the cabbage-plate, and we are expected to use it when we are asked to help ourselves, but I've seen you take your knife, fork, or teaspoon and rake[Pg 72] it out exactly as if you was scraping mortar from a board."
 
"Oh, I see, I see." John smiled in a sheepish sort of way. "So that is wrong, eh?"
 
"Yes, and then you stick your knife in your mouth loaded to the brink with stuff, and I've seen you use your fingers, John. I've seen you pick up a chunk of meat with your fingers and ram it in like you was plugging a hole in a sinking boat. You begin eating before the rest do, too, and that don't look nice, I must say. You are all right—all right, but it is just a few little things like those that you ought to watch out for and try to avoid. These are plain-living folks, but still they seem to have pretty good manners—that is, except the old man. He does a lot o' things that he ought not to do. He drinks coffee out of a saucer, and, although I saw him rubbing the back of a cat just before we sat down yesterday, he broke off a piece of bread with his hands and handed it to me that way, and not on a fork or a plate, as would be proper. If the women hadn't been there and akin to him, I'd have throwed it down."
 
John had turned to the bureau for a handkerchief. He was angry, but more at himself than his gentle companion.
 
"It is all poppycock," he said, suddenly. "I'm astonished, Sam, to hear you say such fool things—you, a man of your age and trade. I thought you was a plain, sensible man. Why, you are trying to be a dude."
 
Nevertheless, as the old man sat silent, John made up his mind that the advice was worth heeding and he forced a smile.
 
"All right, Sam," he said; "I'll remember next time. I'm new at this game."
 
"I thought you'd take it sensible," Cavanaugh said, in[Pg 73] relief. "Now there is another little thing. It seems to me that, as you are going to escort Tilly there, you oughtn't to be behind time. You know you always had a bad memory, and it wouldn't look exactly right for you to keep her sitting somewhere waiting on you. A man ought to be first on deck in a jaunt like this."
 
"I was wondering about that." John stared eagerly. "She didn't say what time we'd leave the house. Do you suppose she'd want to start now?"
 
"I don't know, but I'll tell you what we'll do to be on the safe side. Let's go down in the yard and set about. I've got two cigars. You take one and I'll take one and we'll smoke till something turns up."
 
They went down the stairs and out into the yard. They saw no one about the house and they took chairs under the trees near the fence. They had hardly seated themselves when a horse and buggy stopped at the gate. A man and a woman sat in the buggy. Giving the reins to his companion, the man sprang down and came in at the gate. In the light of the rising moon John saw that it was Joel Eperson.
 
"Good evening," the young farmer said to John. "Is Miss Tilly about?"
 
John sat immovable. He turned his cigar over in his mouth and looked up fiercely. "What are you asking me for?" he snarled. "I'm not keeping the door."
 
"I beg your pardon;" Joel said, in a startled tone. "I meant no harm. My sister and I came by to see if she'd like to go to a party over at my cousin's house."
 
John made no reply. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and pulled at his cigar. Cavanaugh saw that he was in a rage and rose to his feet.
 
"I believe Miss Tilly is getting ready now," he explained,[Pg 74] mildly. "She is going with my young friend here, I understand; but, of course, if you and your sister want to see her, why, maybe you'd better knock at the door. Somebody will hear and come out."
 
"Oh no, no!" Joel was now flooded with embarrassment. "I didn't know she was provided for so nicely, and— No, we'll drive on. I wouldn't want to hurry Miss Tilly. I can explain it to her at the party. She will understand, anyway, for sister and I often come by after her."
 
Bowing politely and still confused, Eperson backed away a few feet, and then, restoring his hat to his head, he rejoined his sister.
 
"I'm sorry to see you act that way, John," Cavanaugh deplored, as the buggy disappeared down the road. "I know the reason of it, I reckon, but still you went a bit too far. It is give and take in a game like the one you and this chap are playing, and if you don't want to lose, you'd better be careful."
 
John stared, still angry. "I've got no use for him," he sniffed. "He looks like a jack-leg preacher or a mountain singing-teacher, bowing and scraping and holding his hat in his hand before two men. He has no backbone. He is as yellow as a pumpkin, and ought to have that long hair of his parted in the middle and tied in a knot behind his head."
 
"I know, but he looks honest and straight, and he is dead in love. That's one reason he's so timid, even with us. It works that way with some men. You are different. It makes a wild man of you, especially when the fair one is looked at by somebody else. But you've got to hold in. This fellow has got prior rights to you in this deal, and if you are too rough it may go against you. I don't say it will, but it may."
CHAPTER XI
John was about to make some retort when Tilly suddenly came out to them. She was dressed in white, wore no head-covering, and appeared very pretty and somehow changed.
 
"Oh, you are all ready to go!" she said, smiling on John. "Here is something for you to wear." She held out a few leaves of geranium and a white rosebud and proceeded to pin them on the lapel of his coat. "It is the custom," she explained. "All the girls give them to the young men they go with. Now, now, isn't that nice, Mr. Cavanaugh?"
 
"Fine! Beautiful! It sets him off just right!" the old man cried.
 
John looked pleased, but said nothing.
 
"Why don't he thank the little trick?" Cavanaugh wondered, resentfully. "And why don't the goose stand up?"
 
"I don't believe you like flowers," Tilly said, pretending to pout.
 
Still John said nothing, but what astonished Cavanaugh was the fact that Tilly evidently understood his mood, for she gave a little pat to a wrinkle the pin had made in his lapel and smiled.
 
"I thought I heard wheels just now," she remarked. "They seemed to stop here."
 
"It was that fellow Eperson with his sister," John[Pg 76] blurted out. "They came by to take you to the party. He acted like he owned you."
 
"Oh, it was Joel and Martha Jane!" Tilly smiled. "Oh no, he doesn't think he owns me, by any means. Martha Jane put him up to it. She and I are great friends and she was afraid I wouldn't get an escort."
 
John shrugged dubiously and answered: "You may look at it that way if you want to, but I see through him. I know his brand."
 
To Cavanaugh's wonderment, Tilly seemed pleased rather than offended, for she indulged in a little satisfied laugh.
 
"I suppose you told him we would be there?" she said, lightly, and it was the old man who answered, seeing that John had nothing to say.
 
"Yes, he knows that now, Miss Tilly, though he looked sorter set back. In my day and time about the last thing I'd want to do would be to take a sister of mine to a shindig. Going and coming was always the biggest part of the game, and you may bet there was times when I was in for busting a party up as soon as supper was over so as to be on the road again."
 
Tilly laughed merrily. "I'll make you a buttonhole bouquet if you will wear it," she proposed.
 
"Well, not to-night—I thank you all the same," Cavanaugh returned, "but you may some other time when I've got my best clothes on. I don't want to part with you two, but don't you think you ought to be on the way?"
 
"Yes, it is time," Tilly said, and John rose to his feet and stiffly held his arm out to her.
 
"Please tell mother that we are gone," she said, as she took John's arm and the two turned away.[Pg 77]
 
"What a purty sight!" the old man mused, standing and gazing after them as they walked away in the moonlight. He followed as far as the gate and leaned on it and watched them till they were out of sight.
 
Presently Mrs. Whaley came out and joined him. He delivered Tilly's message and they sat down and chatted for half an hour; then she went back into the kitchen.
 
She was making dough for bread to be baked the next day when her husband came and stood beside her. He wore no coat and his coarse suspenders hung loose over his hips; the collar of his shirt was open, showing his hairy chest.
 
"I saw you out there talking to Cavanaugh," he began. "Did you say anything about that matter?"
 
"I did—in a roundabout way," she said, taking the great lump of wheat dough in her hands and rolling it into a heap of dry flour at one end of the long wooden bowl. "I didn't want him to take up a notion that we want to marry her off, but I tried to find out what I could. Mr. Trott never has had any love-affairs. He is mighty young—younger than you'd naturally think to have the job he has, and somehow he never has taken to a girl before. Mr. Cavanaugh says this is the first time, and I know he is telling the truth. Oh, he had a lot to say in Mr. Trott's favor. He says he has a wonderful mind for building and the like, and that the time will come when he will make piles of money. He already gets high wages, and it is always cash, too. He doesn't have to wait till the end of the year like Joel Eperson and other farmers do, and then be up to their eyes in debt, with nothing left over to begin another crop on."[Pg 78]
 
"Does he drink or gamble? That is what I want to know," Whaley put in suddenly.
 
"No, he doesn't. Mr. Cavanaugh says he hardly thinks of anything but figuring, planning, and calculating. He goes to bed early and gets up early, and can handle a gang of men better even than he can, he's so popular with them."
 
"Didn't you find out about the feller's religion?"
 
"No, I didn't. I sorter touched on that—said you wanted to know—but Mr. Cavanaugh made light of it—said all that would come out right in due time. He said he was no hand for hurrying up the young on those lines. He said John Trott at bottom was the right sort, and that he would count on him serving the Lord in the long run as well as the next one."
 
"I don't know as I'd let that old skunk pick a religion for a son-in-law of mine." Whaley's lip was drawn tight as he spoke. "He don't take enough interest in doctrine, and when you force him to talk about it he says entirely too much about salvation through works alone. I like a man that knows what he believes and can point straight to Biblical authority in page, line, and word. It behooves a Christian to watch out what sort of a mate his daughter picks. Infidelity will breed at a fireside faster than tadpoles under skum in a mud-puddle."
 
"Well, I'm for keeping that part out of it just now," Mrs. Whaley suggested, timidly. "This is a good chance for the girl, and you know you have made a lot of folks mad by the way you talk to them."
 
"Well, I haven't said anything to Trott yet," Whaley answered, "and I may not, though he hasn't been out to meeting yet and that seems odd, when the Sabbath is a day of rest and there is nothing else to do."[Pg 79]
 
"I happened to hear him tell Tilly that he was going next Sunday," Mrs. Whaley answered, "so you see that will work out all right."
 
"Well, we'll wait and see," Whaley returned. "They dance over there at Teasdale's house, don't they?"
 
"Some do and some don't," was the answer, slowly made. "Tilly don't and Mr. Trott never did in his life."
 
"There isn't much difference in actually dancing and giving sanction to it by looking on," Whaley said, his heavy brows meeting in a frown, "an' I'm in for calling a halt on Tilly going to such places. Looks like there would be plenty of decent amusements without hot-blooded young folks hugging up tight together and spinning around on the floor till they are wet with sweat from head to foot. Sally Teasdale ought to be churched, and she would be if she was a Methodist. The Presbyterians ain't strict enough. Well, if I believed in foreordained baby damnation as they do I'd let a child of mine dance her way into hell and be done with it. They make me sick. I had an argument with old Bill Tye yesterday and I fairly flayed up the ground with him—didn't leave him a leg to stand on, but he was mad—oh, wasn't he mad? The crowd laughed at him good."
 
Whaley turned away. He intended to chat with Cavanaugh outside, but he met the contractor coming in at the front door on his way to bed.
 
"I found that passage from Paul and read the whole chapter," Whaley began, but Cavanaugh stopped him.
 
"I'll see it to-morrow," he said. "My eyes are not strong enough to read at night, even with my specs, and I'm a little bit tired, too. I walked out to the sawmill—five miles and back—this morning, to see about[Pg 80] some timber, and it was quite a stretch for me. Good night."
 
"No wonder he didn't want to see it," Whaley smiled to himself as he leaned in the doorway. "I had him beat and he knows it. I'll bet the old skunk has already looked it up, or asked somebody about it."
CHAPTER XII
A wide country road stretched out in the moonlight before John and Tilly. They walked slowly. Tilly still held his arm and he was transported with sheer ecstasy by that close contact with her. Once or twice he started to speak, but found himself unable to think of anything appropriate, and this both angered and alarmed him, for, he asked himself, how was it that Eperson was always so ready with his tongue when in Tilly's presence? But Tilly seemed to understand John's way and not to care much whether he talked or was silent. As he dared to glance down on her pretty head just below his left shoulder he remembered the bride and the bridegroom on the train, and the contractor's words came back to him like breeze music from the waving tops of celestial trees: "It is ahead of you, my boy."
 
Ahead of him? Marriage? A home for Tilly and himself alone? She, his wife?—actually his wife? Absurd! Impossible! The bare thought, checked though it was, set fire to his brain and he was thrilled in all his nerves and members. He caught her upward glance and she smiled almost as if she had glimpsed his vision and was thus responding to it.
 
"You don't like Joel," she said, knowing full well that that remark would prod his tardy speech.
 
"Well, what if I don't?" he answered, with querulous sharpness.
 
"Well, you shouldn't dislike him," the little minx[Pg 82] continued, designedly. "He hasn't done you any harm. How could he? You have known each other such a short time."
 
Had John been other than the crude working-boy that he was, he might have made a more adroit answer, but, even as it was, it was not unpleasing to his sly tormentor.
 
"What is he hanging around you so much for?" John demanded. "I've heard that your father doesn't like him. What does he mean by coming, at the slightest excuse, like to-night, for instance?"
 
"Joel and I have been friends ever since we were tiny tots," Tilly answered, as casually as a school-girl chewing gum. "And even if—if he really does love me and—and wants me to be his wife, should he be blamed for that?"
 
The very suggestion of her marriage to any one, and that man in particular, drove John wild. He bit his lip; he swore under his breath, and his oaths had never been guarded before meeting Tilly; his eyes flashed from the fires behind them. He clenched his fists.
 
"You are mine, mine, mine!" he said to himself with the grinding teeth of a cave-man, and he was all but unaware that his words were not audible. She was smiling up at him, so sweetly, so placidly. What a nimbus of transcendental charm hovered over the wonderful face in the moonlight. Suddenly he checked his onward stride, caught her, and drew her around facing him. What he might have said or done he never knew, but Tilly gravely started on again, gently extracting her hand from his fierce clasp and restoring it to his arm.
 
"We must not stop," she said. "I hear a horse behind us. It is somebody going to the party, perhaps."
 
He said nothing as her fingers left his, and they walked[Pg 83] on again. It was a horse and a buggy containing a couple from the village. Tilly spoke merrily to them and they answered back as they dashed on.
 
"It is Marietta Slocum and Fred Murray," Tilly explained. "They are engaged."
 
"Engaged?" The word seemed to fill the entire consciousness of the crude social anomaly. He told himself that an engagement must naturally precede marriage, and how was that to come about with that helpless tongue in his mouth? Besides, how did he know but that Tilly might refuse him? How did he know but that there might even now be some understanding between her and Eperson? The sheer thought chilled him like a blast from a cavern of ice. She seemed to feel the limpness of the arm she held or in some way to sense the despair that was on him so quickly following the mood she had interrupted only a moment before.
 
"You are so strange!" she sighed, taking a better grasp on his arm, and even bearing down on it slightly as she lowered her head thoughtfully. "You are a mystery to me. I can't make you out."
 
He could not explain. He was not sure that he cared to explain the terrible internal quakings which to him seemed so unmanly, so unlike any feelings that had ever come to him. He wondered if Eperson had actually spoken open words of love to her, and, if so, how had the fellow, with all his suave ability, managed it?
 
Another buggy passed. Tilly explained who the occupants of it were after she had greeted them. They were George Whitton and Ella Bell Roberts. Then she added, with a touch of seriousness:
 
"You ought to have lifted your hat just now."
 
"Lifted my hat? Why, I don't know her— I've never[Pg 84] seen her before!" he retorted, with the irritation of a great mind descending to a triviality.
 
"Because he lifted his to me and you are with me," Tilly persisted in her mild rebuke. "It is the custom here, but it may not be at Ridgeville."
 
John was chagrined, but determined to hide it. "I have never heard of a man bowing to a man or a woman he never saw before," he fumed. "I don't care what you all do; it is foolishness out and out."
 
"Well, when you are in Rome," Tilly quoted in quite a grave tone, "you ought to do as the Romans do."
 
The thing rankled within him. The blood had mounted to his brow and stayed there. Even Tilly was telling him how to deport himself. He adored her, but he was angry enough to have sworn in her gentle, uplifted eyes. She observed his moody mien and playfully shook his arm.
 
"Don't be mad," she urged, sweetly. "I meant no harm, but I do want them all to like you, and I'm afraid they won't if you fail in little things like that just now. They won't understand—they will think you are stuck up, and I know you are not a bit vain. I am sure of that—as sure as I'm alive. If you were I'd not like you."
 
She had intimated that she liked him, and that ought to have been sufficient to quell the storm within him, but it did not quite. Her rebuke hurt far more than any which had ever come to him. She adroitly changed the subject. She spoke of the work on the court-house and praised his part of it, but what did that matter? He knew what his work was and he was just learning profound and relentless things about the difference between himself and her—between her puzzling environment and his, which was all too distinctly plain for his present comfort. As they neared Teasdale's and saw the lights streaming[Pg 85] from the open doors and windows across the lush greensward and noted the considerable collection of horses and vehicles under the shade-trees and along the fences, he became conscious of an overwhelming timidity with which he felt unable to cope. Had Tilly been like himself and feared the entry into the light and easy gaiety of the chattering throng, he would not have felt so isolated. But her very unconsciousness of the thing as any sort of ordeal to be dreaded depressed him as emphasizing the fateful demarcation between her walk of life and his.
 
They reached the steps of the large, rather rambling one-story farm-house. There was a long veranda in front, both ends of which were filled with merrymakers. There was a wide hallway, and it, too, was filled with jolly, loud-talking couples, as well as the big parlor on the right.
 
"Oh, here they are!" Sally Teasdale cried, coming forward and taking Tilly into her slim, pretentious arms. "I heard of you two poking along like snails on the big road. As if you couldn't see enough of Mr. Trott at home! I am going to introduce myself to him, to pay you back. I'm Sally Teasdale"—holding out her hand to John—"and I am glad you came to my party."
 
John did not know what he said, if he said anything audible. It was the damnable glibness of speech of others which he had to contend with and which seemed to be as silly as unattainable.
 
"Now, dear, run back to my room and take off your wrap," Miss Teasdale said to Tilly. "I'll show Mr. Trott the men's room."
 
"He has nothing but his hat," Tilly lingered to say, "and he can leave that anywhere."
 
"Yes, if you like," his hostess said, leading him to a spot on the veranda where many men's hats were hanging[Pg 86] on nails driven into the weather-boarding. He hung up his and immediately felt Sally clutch his arm.
 
"Tilly says you don't dance," she ran on. "What a pity! It is great fun, and a good way to get acquainted. I suppose you are a member of the church. Which one?"
 
"None at all," he heard himself saying, as if in a dense fog and from a great distance.
 
"How funny that you don't dance, then?" she went on, leaving an opening for him which he did not enter. He did not like her. She was too tall and angular, too harsh of voice and fluent of talk and irritating suggestion. He had the sense of being managed when he wanted above all to be unmolested. Besides, she had sent Tilly away, and without Tilly he felt lost.
 
"I must introduce you to my father," Sally said. "He is old-fashioned and wants his way about everything. He would scold me if I didn't introduce you at once. He is inside. Come on. My stepmother is busy in the kitchen fixing refreshments."
CHAPTER XIII
He wormed his way after her through the surging throng to the parlor, where a fat man in dark trousers and a white-linen coat stood vigorously cooling himself with a palm-leaf fan and talking to some middle-aged men and women.
 
"Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Trotter—I mean Trott," he said, extending a clammy hand. "I've seen you about the court-house several times but you were always busy and I didn't want to climb up those rickety planks to you. How is it moving along?"
 
"All right," John said, bluntly. He was not awed by the man, for he was used to men of all types. Besides, John could not descend to empty platitudes for the sake of making conversation, and he half resented the unnecessary question about a matter that was obvious to every passer-by.
 
"Come in here with me." The old man took a large grasp on his arm and began to fan lazy waves of warm air into his face as he drew him into an adjoining room, which was evidently a sleeping-apartment from which the bed had been removed. There was a table against the wall, and on its snow-white cloth stood a great bowl of mint, some goblets, a pitcher of water, a dish of sugar, and a brown jug containing whisky.
 
"I want you to try one of my juleps," Teasdale chuckled. "That is some of the best old rye that ever slid down a thirsty throat."[Pg 88]
 
"I don't drink," John said. "I won't take anything."
 
"What, what? You don't? Well, I won't insist—I never do—but stay with me a minute till I take one straight. My old lady says I take too much at every party Sally has, and unless some feller is in here with me she thinks I am tanking up all by myself."
 
"Go ahead," John answered, and the farmer proceeded to help himself to an ample supply of the amber fluid. While he drank, the sound of tuning fiddles and the twanging of guitars came from the parlor.
 
"The niggers have come," Teasdale gurgled, as he smacked his lips and screwed the corn-cob stopper back into the neck of the jug. "Sally will start out with dancing, I reckon. I used to be a great hand at it, but I'm too heavy now."
 
He led the way back to the parlor. Four black men sat in a corner vigorously sawing and picking their instruments. One of them, the leader, called out in stentorian tones, "All hands fer de fust set!" and there was a laughing rush from the hall and the veranda of several couples to secure places. Seeing a chance to get away from his host, John drew back into the hall, where he found himself jostled and ignored by the tempestuous human mass. He edged his way along a wall to the veranda, and there saw something startlingly disagreeable. It was Joel Eperson and Tilly standing side by side, their faces averted toward the gate. Joel was regarding her with the eyes of dumb adoration and listening closely to something she was saying. John saw that the opposite end of the veranda was deserted and he went to it. He tried to keep his eyes from the pair, but it was impossible. His misery increased, seeming to ooze into him from some external reservoir of pain. All around him surged a life[Pg 89] bewilderingly new and fatuous. He saw Joel bend down to pick up a flower Tilly dropped and saw him smile as he gave it back to her. What could she be saying, with that sweet, drawn look about her lips? What was Joel asking? He saw her nod, and Joel took her arm and the two went down the steps to the gravel walk that led from the house to the gate. Here back and forth they walked, arm in arm, now in the full light from the door and windows, again in the half-darkness near the fence. Once for fully five minutes they lingered at the gate while the silent spectator of their movements leaned tense and rigid against the balustrade. The promenade was quite in accordance with rural propriety and custom, but John could not understand why that pair in particular should be the only ones in the entire company to engage in it. It did not seem right. How could it be right?
 
The music, the sonorous calls to the dancers, the tripping of feet, pounded his tortured brain. The whole world in its new aspect seemed to meet him with fangs and claws exposed. He wanted to fight something physically, to express by oaths and blows the resentment packed within his primitive breast. He felt his gnarled and hardened fingers at Joel Eperson's thin neck. He saw the long hair sway back and forth as he shook the love-smitten man. His clutch tightened till Joel's eyes bulged from their sockets, and then, in gloating fancy, John dashed him to the ground, where he lay exposed to Tilly's view. But reality has little to do with the tricks of the imagination, and there stood Eperson at the fence with Tilly by his side.
 
Two girls were approaching. One was Sally Teasdale, the other Martha Jane Eperson.
 
"They've told the truth about you," the former greeted John, with a teasing laugh, as she introduced the slight,[Pg 90] plain, dark girl whose hand she held. "You are really a woman-hater, or you would not be off here by yourself when all the girls want to know you."
 
Again he was scarcely conscious of what he was saying or leaving unsaid, and suddenly waked to the fact that his hostess had hurried away, and that the plain girl was in his care. After all, she was Eperson's sister, and he eyed her curiously, wondering if she, too, were his enemy.
 
"You've met my brother," she began. "He spoke about it the day the corner-stone was laid. There he is out there with Tilly now. I didn't want to come to-night, but he was crazy to be here so that he could see her."
 
"I thought that was it," John permitted his slow lips to say. "They have been going together a long time. That is, I've heard so."
 
"Yes, and I thought—we all thought that Tilly would end up by taking him, but it is all off now," Miss Eperson sighed, her eyes on the pair at the fence.
 
"All off?" John in his sober senses would have wondered at his ability to talk so freely with a girl he had just met. "Why, what do you mean?"
 
"As if you didn't know—as if everybody doesn't know!" Martha Jane laughed half sardonically.
 
"But I don't know what you mean." Something new and bountiful in its promise of joy filled John and drove the words from his palpitating tongue.
 
"The idea!" scoffed Martha Jane. "Well, if you don't know it you are blind as a bat in daytime. Brother knows it, I know it—everybody knows it."
 
"Knows what?" John demanded, his breath checked, his eyes gleaming, his whole being athrob under the dawn of an ecstasy the plain girl seemed to offer.
 
"Well, I'm not going to tell you, if you don't know,"[Pg 91] the girl answered, with a little shrug. "But if you want to understand, watch my poor brother. He never had a look like that before. She has been his very life. People that doubt real love ought to know Joel. He would go through fire and water for Tilly. He'd steal, he'd kill, he'd do anything. He is desperate to-night. When we got to her house and found that you and she were going to walk out here, it was the last straw. But he is a gentleman, my brother is, and he will never make a row over it."
 
Under the sheer blaze of this information, John stood speechless. He, boldly now, gave his arm to his little companion and they started to walk back and forth on the lawn as others were doing. His face was now turned from Tilly, but subconsciously he could fairly feel her proximity. John almost loved the little woman on his arm. How could he help it? She was so kind to him.
 
They were turning toward the steps when Tilly and Eperson approached. There was a wilted look of resignation on Eperson's face, a sentient animation in Tilly's eyes and about her lips, when she said to John:
 
"I hope you are having a good time and meeting all the girls. Sally said she would look after you."
 
He smiled and nodded. Something seemed to bear down on his brain and befog his sight. The lights, the lawn, the people, swirled around him.
 
"Yes, I'm all right," he said.
 
They were all on the veranda now and Joel stood facing his rival, a look of wondering respect in his shrinking gaze.
 
"Oh, Joel!" a voice was heard, and Sally Teasdale approached. "We need you. Mother is going to serve the refreshments and all the men who know the ins and outs of our kitchen are helping wait on the crowd. Will you come? Father is already unable to walk steady."
CHAPTER XIV
Joel blandly and gallantly complied. His sister, now thrown with John and Tilly after the others left, looked slightly embarrassed, and, saying that she, too, would help serve the supper, she moved away. This threw John and Tilly together again. Some couples had seated themselves in chairs against the wall, and, as there were vacancies, they sat down also. The negroes, to the accompaniment of guitars, began singing old plantation melodies. The moon, higher in the heavens now, shed a glorious sheen over the still landscape. John was too full of adoration and joy to utter a word. Tilly seemed to sense his mood to its depths and to blend a mood of like nature with it.
 
"I love you—I love you!" John's soul seemed to whisper, but his tongue remained an inactive lump in his mouth.
 
"I know—I understand," Tilly's soul seemed to be saying in the same inaudible way. He smelled the perfume of the geranium leaves on his coat, and his big red fingers raised them to his nostrils. He told himself that it was a silly, womanish act, but what did he care? Tilly's fingers had pinned them there, the little fingers he longed to caress.
 
Joel served her first. He came past other girls and brought Tilly a plate containing cake and a glass of sillibub and hastened away after she had sweetly thanked him.[Pg 93]
 
Tilly held the plate in her lap, idly toying with the spoon.
 
"Why don't you eat it?" John asked.
 
"Because the others haven't theirs yet," she answered.
 
"Oh, I see," he muttered, chagrined in spite of his happiness. "I'll never get on to your ways. I've been brought up different. I've worked hard since I was a boy—I— I—" But he could not go farther. Why should he allude to his sordid home life when it was a thing which he now so utterly despised? How could he speak of his mother, who was so widely and strangely different from the women Tilly knew? No, he would let those things rest.
 
Various young men had served all the ladies on the veranda when Joel came out with a plate and looked about as if trying to find some lady who had been overlooked. Finding no one, he brought it to John.
 
"You take it, Mr. Trott," he said, suavely, and yet with a touch of irrepressible dejection in his tone.
 
John stared in stupid bewilderment and then jerked out, "Keep it yourself." It was just such a well-meant reply as he might have made to one of his workmen who was offering him a cigar, and yet it quite frustrated Joel, who stood awkwardly waiting, the plate still timidly extended.
 
"Oh no! I'm going right back," Joel said. "I can't eat now, thank you. We are just beginning to help the men."
 
"Well, you can't wait on me," John blurted out. The situation was becoming tense and awkward, when Tilly half playfully reached out, took the plate, and gave it to John.
 
"Take it," she said, firmly. "Joel is in a hurry. The others are waiting."[Pg 94]
 
John obeyed, but failed to thank Eperson. He was vaguely conscious that Tilly was smoothly performing the duty for him and that Joel was bowing himself away. Then they sat in silence. Others near by were boisterously laughing, beating time with their feet and singing with the band, but neither Tilly nor John had aught to say. It was as if the subject which was at once burning and soothing their souls was too vast and sacred to be touched upon in the neighborhood of others less profoundly stirred.
 
"Give me your plate. I'll take it in," John heard a young farmer saying to the girl he sat with. "You don't want to hold it all night. We'll be dancing again in a minute."
 
The girl obeyed, and the young man left with two plates in his hands. John noticed that Tilly had finished, and he offered to take her plate. She gave it to him. "Be careful," she warned him. "Sally borrowed most of them from the neighbors and wants to return them in good order."
 
John chafed under the admonition as he rose with his plate and Tilly's in either hand. He had, however, scarcely reached the door when, in trying quickly to step out of the way of two girls who were approaching, one of the plates and the goblet on it fell to the floor. John stood as if paralyzed. Then he softly swore. Every one on the veranda stopped talking and stared. What he would have done next John never knew, for Tilly suddenly approached.
 
"Never mind," she said, calmly. "Take the other one to the kitchen."
 
Furious at himself and all the swirling, clattering, and chattering company, John managed to make his way into[Pg 95] the kitchen, where he delivered the plate to a buxom negro woman at a big dish-pan full of hot water. He saw Joel putting down some plates and glasses on a table near at hand. Joel smiled in a friendly way.
 
"I saw your little accident," he said. "I barely escaped the same thing just now. A fellow has to be a regular bareback rider or a tight-rope walker to get through this crowd with his arms full of glassware and crockery."
 
"No, I couldn't help it." John was conscious of a hot flow of blood to his face, and a vague sense of gratitude. "I'm no good at this sort of thing. I haven't been brought up to it."
 
Joel seemed to have no reply ready, and the two willingly parted. John found his chair by Tilly still unoccupied and sat down in it. Why didn't she say something about the accident, he wondered. He decided to bring it up himself, so ignorant was he of the ways of the new world to which she had introduced him.
 
"I'm sorry about those things I broke," he began, hurriedly. "It wasn't my fault. Those girls came out all of a sudden and faced me. I had to get out of their way, you see, or smash right into them. So I—"
 
"I know. I saw it," Tilly interposed. "Never mind. Let it pass."
 
"But I've got to fix it somehow," John blundered on. "Nobody shall lose through me. I am able to pay for any damage I do. Tell me who they belonged to and I'll send the owner a whole set of plates and goblets. I might not match the ones I broke, but—"
 
"Don't, don't think of that," Tilly urged, her pretty lips twitching with almost maternal sympathy. "If you were to offer to pay it would offend Sally."
 
"Offend her? Why, in the name of common sense?"[Pg 96]
 
"I don't know, but it would hurt me—it would hurt anybody. It is of no consequence."
 
"But you talked differently before it happened," John insisted, his lip hanging and quivering. "You said distinctly that the things were borrowed and that Miss Sally wanted—"
 
"Yes, but it is done now and the only thing is to forget it. Don't even mention it to Sally."
 
"Not mention it to her? Why not?" John's tongue was thick with the mystery in which he was warmly floundering.
 
"Because that would not be right—not according to—to custom."
 
"Custom be—" John bit off the oath with exasperated teeth. "I don't care a hill of beans what the custom is here in these backwoods. I want to pay my way in this life. I laid a cigar down one day against a fellow's hat, and burned a big hole in it. I bought him another and it tickled him to death. It was the best hat in town, while his was an old one, and—"
 
"But this is different," Tilly pleaded. "Let it drop, please do. For my sake don't say anything more about it. I'll explain what I mean some other time."
 
That had to suffice. There was more music and dancing and the game of "Stealing partners" on the lawn. Tilly asked John if he wanted to play the game, but he confessed that he did not know what it was like. Saying that it would not look well for them to sit together so long, she led him down to the grass, and they stood watching the big circle of couples. It was very simple—far too simple to interest John. A partnerless young man would dart across the ring, select the partner of another, and they would merrily trip back to his "home" on the other side.[Pg 97]
 
Seeing Tilly, a young man unknown to John came and "stole" her and drew her into the circle.
 
"Now let the girls steal!" a voice cried out, and several girls sped across the ring after partners. A lively minx with blue eyes and flowing golden hair danced up to John. "Come get in with me," she laughed. "Tilly Whaley hasn't introduced you to any of us. It is a shame. You may have heard Tilly mention me. I'm Jennie Webster."
 
"No, I never heard of you before," John said, bluntly, as they settled into their places in the ring.
 
Jennie laughed in her small handkerchief. She even bent her golden head to give vent to her amusement.
 
"What is the matter?" John demanded, in slow irritation, his eyes on Tilly, directly opposite with a young farmer whom he had once seen at the Whaleys'.
 
"Why, you are as funny as they all say you are," Jennie tittered. "I heard you were rough and outspoken, but I didn't think you'd admit that you never heard of me before. Why, sir, I'll have you know that I'm somebody, I am. You may bet your boots. I got the first prize for butter at the fair last fall and my father got two blue ribbons on a white pig—one on its neck and the other on its stumpy tail."
 
John wondered if she was making sport of him, but soon decided that there was no malice in the twinkling blue eyes.
 
"There goes Joel Eperson," she said, laying her small hand on John's arm. "He is not in the game. Watch Tilly— What did I tell you? I knew she would steal him. My, my! that couple are a wonder!"
 
John saw Tilly leaving her partner and crossing the grass to Eperson. "Come play," he heard her saying. "You've worked long enough for one evening."[Pg 98]
 
John saw Tilly and Joel find a place opposite him. How his new hopes drooped at the sheer sight of them!
 
"You are living in her house; I guess you know about them," ran on John's companion.
 
"Know about them—know what about them?" he demanded, all but fiercely.
 
"Huh!" ejaculated the girl. "Have you been so busy with your bricks and mortar that you haven't heard that they have been sweethearts since they were tiny tots? Why, even my mother and father always inquire, when I get home from a party, whether Joel and Tilly got together? You see, few folks sympathize with her hard-shell old daddy, and everybody loves Joel—everybody, man, woman, and child. And I know why. It is because he is so fine, noble, and constant. Some think—some few—that Tilly will give in to her father and drop Joel, but take it from me—and I'm a girl—she won't. She loves him—down deep she loves him, for no girl could help it. She wouldn't be a true woman if she went back on adoration like that. He is not handsome, but there is something in him too sweet and good to talk about. Once we all were arguing at Sunday-school whether anybody could actually forgive an enemy, and nearly all of us agreed that we couldn't but that Joel Eperson could. Wasn't that funny? When I talk to him I feel restful. If I was about to do a bad thing and he spoke to me, I'd throw it up. He did once, but never mind about that. It is too long to tell you now. But I'll always—always love him for what he did and said right while I was wavering."
 
John now saw that Joel had given Tilly his arm and was leading her across the grass to a rustic seat under an oak-tree. The circle of forms and faces became blurred to John's sight. There was much laughter, much darting[Pg 99] to and fro across the ring, but John heard only the voice of the little analyst at his elbow.
 
"There they go for the second dose of soothing-syrup," she twittered. "Old man Whaley doesn't know which side his bread is buttered on. By trying to keep them apart he is only driving them together. 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder,' and so does opposition. That pair is lapping up stolen sweets to-night."
CHAPTER XV
The game was breaking up. The couples were moving toward the house. John was desperate enough to have shaken the unconscious tantalizer now on his arm. He could think of nothing to say and didn't care what his companion thought about his inattention. He was wondering why Martha Jane Eperson had said what she had said, and why he had been so foolish as to believe it. Perhaps she had a motive. Perhaps it was sarcasm born in the knowledge of his presumption. For aught he knew, she might now be laughing over his credulity.
 
John was only a boy, and a crude one. Without excusing himself from his companion, he left her at the steps and abruptly stalked away. He had his choice of entering the crowded farm-house or sauntering about the grounds. Taking a cigar from his pocket, he struck a match on the door-step, lighted the cigar, and then turned toward the stables at one side of the house. Here among the horses and vehicles he stood reflecting gloomily, rebelliously. Across the lighted lawn he saw Joel and Tilly still on the bench. How close they seemed to sit, one against the other! The hot weight of rage again bore down on John's brain. He forgot to smoke. His cigar died in his inert fingers. Again he wanted to throttle his meek and placid rival. The man's sheer gentleness enraged him, for it was a quality he himself did not possess, and till now had denied. In the half-darkness he saw two young men[Pg 101] come to a buggy not far from him, take from under the seat a flask, and heard them joking as they drank.
 
"I knew you had your arm around her, you sly dog!" one said, "and I held my horse in to give you a chance."
 
"She is a little beauty, eh?" another voice said with a laugh. "She nestled up against me like a sick kitten to a hot brick."
 
The flask was emptied. It whistled as it was hurled against the barn, and the two men went back to the house. What could Tilly and Joel be saying? She had said to John that he and she should not be seen too long together, and yet for the second time that evening she and Eperson had sequestered themselves like that. John told himself that he had been a fool to hope as he had done, and his rage and despair joined forces within him.
 
Presently he noticed that some of the young men were coming for their buggies and driving them up to the veranda. Then he saw some couples getting in and driving away. Still Joel and Tilly sat on the rustic bench. Still John lurked and watched in the darkness.
 
"Oh, brother, we must go now!" It was Martha Jane calling from the steps. "I don't want to hurry you, but we really must be going."
 
"Yes, yes, dear— I'm coming!" and Joel and Tilly rose and arm in arm slowly went to the house. A moment later Joel was coming for his buggy, and John, fearing to be seen alone in the dark, quickly advanced by another way to the veranda without meeting his rival.
 
He found Tilly ready to go and looking for him. "I wondered where you were," she said, softly. "We must be on the way."
 
He went on the veranda for his hat, leaving her at the foot of the steps. He joined her, the dead cigar in his[Pg 102] mouth. He held out his arm. She took it, started on, then paused suddenly.
 
"Have you said good night to the Teasdales?" she asked.
 
"No," he retorted, impatiently, even angrily, for Eperson stood near by, hat in hand, extending a handkerchief to Tilly.
 
"You dropped it on the grass," he said. "I found it just now."
 
"Thank you," Tilly said, taking it and smiling sweetly. "Good night. Remember what I told you." Then she turned back to John. "You must say good night to them. They are rather particular, and will think it strange if you don't. There they are in the hall, all three of them."
 
He obeyed. How he got through it he never knew. He bore away with him a blurred impression of the farmer's red face, too affectionate handclasp; Mrs. Teasdale's fat and squatting movement as she silently and timidly bowed; and Sally's gushing appreciation of his coming, and her regrets at not having seen more of him through the evening.
 
Joel and Martha Jane were getting into the buggy. The latter leaned over a wheel to kiss Tilly. Joel raised his hat, and John found himself imitating the salutation, and despising it. He gave his arm to Tilly and they started home. The road ahead of them was dusty, and Joel's horse stirred the powdered clay into a cloud as he trotted ahead of them. This fact in itself angered John. He coughed and sniffed, but said nothing.
 
"I hope you liked the party," Tilly began. Her hand rested on John's arm in the same confiding way as formerly, but it stirred him no longer.
 
"I thought it was awful, silly, stupid!" he declared. "I never knew that grown-up people could act that way."[Pg 103]
 
"I'm sorry," Tilly sighed. "I was afraid you would not enjoy so many strangers. It would not be natural for you to feel as much at home as the rest. You see, they have been going together for years, and, moreover, you said you had not been accustomed to such things."
 
"No, and I have not missed anything," he threw back.
 
She made no denial. Her hold on his arm had a caressing quality that would be hard to define. She seemed to understand him better than he understood himself. "Yes, I was afraid you wouldn't like it," she rejoined, "for you are different from most persons. You are the strangest man I ever knew—the very, very strangest. Your face is as smooth as a boy's, and yet somehow you seem old in—in experience—sad experience, too, I should think. You are rough on the outside, but I know you are pure gold on the inside."
 
"Pure gold, rubbish!" he sneered, inwardly. Had he not just heard a girl say that Joel Eperson was the best man alive? What did a woman's opinion amount to, anyway? And how could Tilly expect him to be such a fool as to believe her when she had acted as she had that evening with another man? The memory of this fired him afresh and he suddenly shook her hand from his arm and with bowed head strode along. He was breathing now like a beast of burden hard driven by pain.
 
"What is the matter?" Tilly asked, blandly, although she knew full well that she was responsible for his present mood, and, reaching out, she took his arm again. He did not lift it into place, and her hand slid down his wrist till his fingers were clasped by her pleading ones.
 
"Don't be mad at me," she said, soothingly. "If you understood everything you would not be."
 
Understood everything? Did she mean now that her[Pg 104] engagement to Eperson would explain, justify all that had taken place?
 
"I do understand," he said, aloud, his cheeks twitching, his lips tight, his eyes gleaming. He had stopped short and now stood fairly panting, facing her.
 
"Oh, you don't—you don't!" she insisted. "Nobody knows, but myself and Joel, how he feels. I have tried to do right by him, and once I thought that in time I might feel otherwise, but it is impossible. I love him dearly in a certain way, but it is not as a woman ought to feel toward the one man in all the world for her—the one given by God Himself. Joel loves me in that way, and I am very, very unhappy about it. I see—I see—you thought to-night that he and I— But never mind. I was only trying to get him to take a brighter view, for he is very, very dejected."
 
"You mean to tell me, looking straight in my eyes," John cried—"you a truthful girl—you mean to tell me that you don't love him?"
 
Tilly, with eyes full to their brink with sincerity, and in a voice that rang true to its maidenly depths, answered: "No, I do not love him as—as a wife ought to love her husband. I've tried, but I can't."
 
The moonlight seemed filled with darting arrows of bliss made as visible as rockets against a black sky. John felt as if the vast earth were rocking his fears to sleep. He took her hand and drew it into its place on his arm. The ground seemed to fall away from each step he took as they moved forward.
 
"I see, I see," he heard himself saying; "then it doesn't make any difference. Poor devil! That's what ailed him, eh? No wonder! No wonder!"
 
Tilly's gentle pressure was on his arm and he was afraid[Pg 105] she would feel the wild throbs of his being, for, strong man that he was, he was as much ashamed of them as of a secret sin. How could he open those joy-tied lips of his and tell her how he felt—how he had felt since his first sight of her? He tried to summon words that would be adequate, and failed utterly. But Tilly knew. She seemed to gather a knowledge of his emotions from the very moonlit silence that pervaded the fields and the woods around them.
 
Suddenly she began to quicken her step. "We must walk faster," she said, sighing, as one in joyous slumber about to wake. "Mother and father may hear the buggies passing and think we ought to be home earlier. You see, it is Saturday night, and if I'm out after midnight father says it is breaking the Sabbath and is angry."
 
The house was still, save for a lamp burning in the hall, when they arrived home. He helped her lock the front door, insisted on giving her the lamp, and with a lighted match made his way up to his room. He had not said good night to her. He remembered that with twinges of self-contempt as he stood undressing in his room and heard Cavanaugh snoring across the hall. Why had he overlooked it, he wondered. Why did he have to be instructed on such matters like a little child learning to walk, when they came so naturally to Tilly, to Joel Eperson and others?
 
He frowned as he jerked his necktie and gave up the problem. He would tell her when he saw her that he was sorry for the oversight. How could he tell her that it was partly due to his dazed happiness over what she had said about not loving Eperson?
 
He tumbled into bed, but could not sleep for a long time. Cavanaugh snored like the roar of a distant sawmill, but[Pg 106] that didn't matter. The events of the evening were unreeling in a series of mind-pictures filled with lights and shadows and culminating in the blinding revelation of a single fact—the fact that Joel Eperson had cause for his present gloom. John knew that he himself was unlike the people he was meeting for the first time in his life, and he was sure that he could never be as they were, but he had come upon the marvelous belief that he and Tilly were meant for each other. Somehow, by some intent of Fate, they were destined to breast the world side by side, arm in arm, as they had walked the dusty road that night. He was conscious of many stupid shortcomings on his part, but she would overlook them. Indeed, she was overlooking them already. Finally he slept, and, of all absurdities, he dreamed of carrying bricks and mortar as a small, ragged boy for Cavanaugh, who had just hired him for a few cents a day to see what there was in him. Later he seemed to be telling his powdered and painted mother of his success and displaying to her indifferent gaze the first few cents Cavanaugh had ever paid him.[Pg 107]