It was the last month of the year, and the month was waning. The winds had rifled the woods and the sere leaves all had fallen. Yet still a bright after-thought of the autumnal sunshine glowed along the mountain spurs, for the tardy winter loitered on the way, and the silver rime that lay on the black frost-grapes melted at a beam.
“The weather hev been powerful onseasonable an’ onreasonable, ter my mind,” said old Jonas Scruggs, accepting a rickety chair in his neighbor’s porch. “’Tain’t healthy.”
“Waal, ’tain’t goin’ ter last,” rejoined Mrs. Knox, from the doorway, where she sat with her knitting. “’Twar jes’ ter-day I seen my old gray cat run up that thar saplin’ an’ hang by her claws with her head down’ards. An’ I hev always knowed ez that air a sure sign of a change.”
Presently she added, “The fire air treadin’ snow now.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the deep chimney-place, where a dull wood fire was sputtering fitfully with a sound that suggested footfalls crunching on a crust of snow.
“I dunno ez I need be a-hankerin’ fur a change in the weather, cornsiderin’ the rheumatiz in my shoulder ez I kerried around with me ez a constancy las’ winter,” remarked Jonas Scruggs, pre-empting a grievance in any event.
“Thar’s the wild geese a-sailin’ south,” Hilary said, in a low, melancholy drawl, as he smoked his pipe, lounging idly on the step of the porch.
His mother laid her knitting in her lap and gazed over her spectacles into the concave vault of the sky, so vast as seen from the vantage ground of the little log cabin on the mountain’s brow. Bending to the dark, wooded ranges encircling the horizon, it seemed of a crystalline transparency and of wonderful gradations of color. The broad blue stretches overhead merged into a delicate green of exquisite purity, and thence issued a suffusion of the faintest saffron in which flakes of orange burned like living fire. A jutting spur intercepted the sight of the sinking sun, and with its dazzling disk thus screened, upon the brilliant west might be descried the familiar microscopic angle speeding toward the south. A vague clamor floated downward.
“Them fowels, sure enough!” she said. “Sence I war a gal I hev knowed ’em by thar flyin’ always in that thar peaked p’int.”
“They keep thar alignment ez reg’lar,” said her son suddenly, “jes’ like we-uns hev ter do in the army. They hev actially got thar markers. Look at ’em dress thar ranks! An’ thar’s even a sergeant-major standin’ out ez stiff an’ percise—see him! Thar! Column forward! Guide left! March!” he cried delightedly.
“I ’lowed, Hilary, ez ye bed in an’ about bed enough o’ the army,” said the guest, bluntly.
Hilary’s face changed. But for some such reminder he sometimes forgot that missing right hand. He made no answer, his moody eyes fastened on that aërial marshaling along the vast plain of the sunset. His right arm was gone, and the stump dangled helplessly with its superfluity of brown jeans sleeve bound about it.
“Now that air a true word!” exclaimed Mrs. Knox, “only Hil’ry won’t hev it so. I ’lows ter him ez he los’ his arm through jinin’ the Confed’ army, an’ he ’lows ’twar gittin’ in a fight with one o’ his own comrades.”
Jonas Scruggs glanced keenly at her from under his bushy, grizzled eyebrows, his lips solemnly puckered, and his stubbly pointed chin resting on his knotty hands, which were clasped upon his stout stick. He had the dispassionate, pondering aspect of an umpire, which seemed to invite the cheerful submission of differences.
“Ye knows I war fur the Union, an’ so war his dad,” she continued. “My old man had been ailin’ ennyhows, but this hyar talk o’ bustin’ up the Union—why, it jes’ fairly harried him inter his grave. An’ I ’lowed ez Hil’ry would be fur the Union, too, like everybody in the mountings ez hed good sense. But when a critter-company o’ Confeds rid up the mounting one day Hil’ry he talked with some of ’em, an’ he war stubborn ever after. An’ so he jined the critter-company.”
She fell suddenly silent, and taking up her needles knitted a row or two, her absorbed eyes, kindling with retrospection, fixed on the far horizon, for Mrs. Knox was in a position to enjoy the melancholy pleasures of a true prophet of evil, and although she had never specifically forewarned Hilary of the precise nature of the disaster that had ensued upon his enlistment, she had sought to defer and prevent it, and at last had consented only because she felt she must. She had her own secret satisfaction that the result was no worse; it lacked much of the ghastly horrors that she had foreboded—death itself, or the terrible uncertainty of hoping against hope, and fearing the uttermost dread that must needs abide with those to whom the “missing” are dear. Never now could the fact be worse, and thus she could reconcile herself, and talk of it with a certain relish of finality, as of a chapter of intense and painful interest but closed forever.
The old man nodded his head with deliberative gravity until she recommenced, when he relapsed into motionless attention.
“An’ Hil’ry fought in a heap o’ battles, and got shot a time or two, an’ war laid up in the horspital, an’ kem out cured, an’ fought agin. An’ one day he got inter a quar’l with one o’ his bes’ frien’s. They war jes’ funnin’ afust, an’ Hil’ry hit him harder’n he liked, an’ he got mad, an’ bein’ a horseback he kicked Hil’ry. An’ Hil’ry jumped on him ez suddint ez a painter, ter pull him out’n his saddle an’ drub him. Hil’ry never drawed no shootin’ irons nor nuthin’, an’ warn’t expectin’ ter hurt him serious. But this hyar Jack Bixby he war full o’ liquor an’ fury; he started his horse a-gallopin’, an’ ez Hil’ry hung on ter the saddle he drawed his bowie-knife an’ slashed Hil’ry’s arm ez war holdin’ ter him agin an’ agin, till they war both soakin’ in blood, an’ at last Hil’ry drapped. An’ the arm fevered, an’ the surgeon tuk it off. An’ so Hil’ry hed his discharge gin him, sence the Confeds hed no mo’ use fur him. An’ he walked home, two hunderd mile, he say.”
During this recital the young mountaineer gave no indication of its effect upon him, and offered no word of correction to conform the details to the facts. His mother had so often told his story with the negligence of the domestic narrator, that little by little it had become thus distorted, and he knew from experience that should he interfere to alter a phase, another as far from reality would be presently substituted, for Mrs. Knox cared little how the event had been precipitated, or for aught except that his arm was gone, that he was well, and that she had him at home again, from which he should no more wander, for she had endeavored to utilize the misfortune to reinforce her authority, and illustrate her favorite dogma of the infallibility of her judgment.
Her words must have renewed bitter reminiscences, but his face was impassive, and not a muscle stirred as he silently watched the ranks of the migrating birds fade into the furthest distance.
“An’ now Hil’ry thinks it air cur’ous ez I ain’t sorrowin’ ’bout’n his arm,” she continued. “Naw, sir! I’m glad he escaped alive an’ that he can’t fight no mo’—not ef the war lasts twenty year, an’ it ’pears like it air powerful persistin’.”
It still raged, but to the denizens of this sequestered district there seemed little menace in its fury. They could hear but an occasional rumor, like the distant rumbling of thunder, and discern, as it were, a vague, transient glimmer as token of the fierce and scathing lightnings far away desolating and destroying all the world beyond these limits of peace.
Episodes of civilized warfare were little dreaded by the few inhabitants of the mountains, the old men, the women and the children, so dominated were they by the terrors of vagrant bands of stragglers and marauders, classed under the generic name of bushwhackers, repudiated by both armies, and given over to the plunder of non-combatants of both factions in this region of divided allegiance. At irregular intervals they infested this neighborhood, foraging where they listed, and housing themselves in the old hotel.
Looking across the gorge from where the three sat in the cabin porch, there was visible on the opposite heights a great white frame building, many-windowed and with wide piazzas. There were sulphur springs hard by, and before the war the place was famous as a health resort. Now it was a melancholy spectacle—silent, tenantless, vacant—infinitely lonely in the vast wilderness. Some of the doors, wrenched from their hinges, had served the raiders for fuel. The glass had been wantonly broken in many of the windows by the jocose thrusts of a saber. The grassy square within surrounded by the buildings was overgrown with weeds, and here lizards basked, and in their season wild things nested. There was never a suggestion of the gayeties of the past—only in the deserted old ball-room when a slant of sunshine would fall athwart the dusty floor, a bluebottle might airily zigzag in the errant gleam, or when the moon was bright on the long piazzas a cobweb, woven dense, would flaunt out between the equidistant shadows of the columns like the flutter of a white dress. The place had a weird aspect, and was reputed haunted. The simple mountaineers did not venture within it, and the ghosts had it much of the time to themselves.
The obscurities of twilight were presently enfolded about it. The white walls rose, vaguely glimmering, against the pine forests in the background, and above the shadowy abysses which it overlooked.
The old man was gazing meditatively at it as he said, reprehensively, “’Pears like ter me, Hil’ry, ez ye oughter be thankful ye warn’t killed utterly—ye oughter be thankful it air no wuss.”
“Hil’ry ain’t thankful fur haffen o’ nuthin’.” Mrs. Knox interposed. “’Twar jes’ las’ night he looked like su’thin’ in a trap. He walked the floor till nigh day—till I jes’ tuk heart o’ grace an’ told him ez his dad bed laid them puncheons ter last, an’ not to be walked on till they were wore thinner’n a clapboard in one night. An’ yit he air alive an’ hearty, an’ I hev got my son agin. An’ I sets ez much store by him with one arm ez two.”
And indeed she looked cheerfully about the dusky landscape as she rose, rolling the sock on her needles and thrusting them into the ball of yarn. Old Jonas Scruggs hesitated when she told him alluringly that she had a “mighty nice ash cake kivered on the h’a’th,” but he said that his daughter-in-law, Jerusha, would be expecting him, and he could in no wise bide to supper. And finally he started homeward a little wistful, but serene in the consciousness of having obeyed the behests of Jerusha, who in these hard times had grown sensitive about his habit of taking meals with his friends. “As ef,” she argued, “I fed ye on half rations at home.”
Hilary rose at last from the doorstep, and turning slowly to go within, his absent glance swept the night-shadowed scene. He paused suddenly, and his heart seemed beating in his throat.
A point of red light had sprung up in the vague glooms. A will-o’-the-wisp?—some wavering “ghost’s candle” to light him to his grave. With his accurate knowledge of the locality he sought to place it. The distant gleam seemed to shine from a window of the old hotel, and this bespoke the arrival of rude occupants. He heard a wild halloo, a snatch of song perhaps—or was it fancy? And were the iterative echoes in the gorge the fancy of the stern old crags?
For the first time since he returned, maimed and helpless, and a non-combatant, were the lawless marauders quartered at the old hotel.
He stood for a while gazing at it with dilated eyes. Then he silently stepped within the cabin and barred the door with his uncertain and awkward left hand.
The cheerful interior of the house was all aglow. The fire had been mended, and yellow flames were undulating about the logs with many a gleaming line of grace. Blue and purple and scarlet flashes they showed in fugitive iridescence. They illumined his face, and his mother noted its pallor—the deep pallor which he had brought from the hospital.
“Ye hev got yer fancies ag’in,” she cried. Then with anxious curiosity, “Whar be yer right hand now, Hil’ry?”
She alluded to that cruel hallucination of sensation in an amputated arm.
“Whar it oughter be,” he groaned; “on the trigger o’ my carbine.”
His grief was not only that his arm was gone. It was to recognize the fact that his heart no longer beat exultantly at the mere prospect of conflict. And he was anguished with the poignant despair of a helpless man who has once been foremost in the fight.
The next day he was moody and morose, and brooded silently over the fire. The doors were closed, for winter had come at last. The hoar frost whitened the great gaunt limbs of the trees, and lay in every curled dead leaf on the ground, and followed the zigzag lines of the fence, and embossed the fodder stack and the ash-hopper and the roofs with fantastic incongruities in silver tracery.
The sun did not shine, the clouds dropped lower and lower still, a wind sprung up, and presently the snow was flying.
The widow esteemed this as in the nature of a special providence, since the dizzying whirl of white flakes veiled the little cabin and its humble surroundings from the observation of the free-booting tenants of the old hotel across the gorge. “It air powerful selfish, I know, ter hope the bushwhackers will forage on somebody else’s poultry an’ sech, but somehows my own chickens seem nigher kin ter me than other folkses’ be. I never see no sech ten-toed chickens ez mine nowhar.”
Reflecting further upon the peculiar merits of these chickens, ten-toed, being Dorking, reinforced by the claims of consanguinity, she presently evolved as a precautionary measure a scheme of concealing them in the “roof-room” of the cabin. And from time to time, as the silent day wore on, like the blast of a bugle the crow of a certain irrepressible young rooster demonstrated how precarious was his retirement in the loft.
“Hear the insurance o’ that thar fowel!” she would exclaim in exasperation. “S’pose’n the bushwhackers war hyar now, axin fur poultry, an’ I war a-tellin’ ’em, ez smilin’ an’ mealy-mouthed ez I could, that we hain’t got no fowels! That thar reckless critter would be in the fryin’-pan ’fore night. They’ll l’arn ye ter hold yer jaw, I’ll be bound!”
But the bushwhackers did not come, and the next day the veil of the falling snow still interposed, and the familiar mountains near at hand, and the long reaches of the unexplored perspective were all obscured; the drifts deepened, and the fence seemed dwarfed half covered as it was, and the boles of the trees hard by were burlier, bereft of their accustomed height. The storm ceased late one afternoon; over the white earth was a somber gray sky, but all along the horizon above the snowy summits of the western mountains a slender scarlet line betokened a fair morrow.
Hilary, in the weariness of inaction, had taken note of the weather, and with his hat drawn down over his brow he strolled out to the verge of the precipice.
Overlooking the familiar landscape, he detected an unaccustomed smoke visible a mile or more down the narrow valley. Although but a tiny, hazy curl in the distance, it did not escape the keen eyes of the mountaineer. He could not distinguish tents against the snow, but the location suggested a camp.
The bushwhackers still lingered at the old hotel across the gorge. He could already see in the gathering dusk the firelight glancing fitfully against the window. He wondered if it were visible as far as the camp in the valley.
He stood for a long time, gazing across the snowy steeps at the desolate old building, with the heavy pine forests about it and the crags below—their dark faces seamed with white lines wherever a drift had lodged in a cleft or the interlacing tangles of icy vines might cling. In the pallid dreariness of the landscape and the gray dimness of the hovering night the lighted window blazed with the lambent splendors of some great yellow topaz. His uncontrolled fancy was trespassing upon the scene within. His heart was suddenly all a-throb with keen pain. His idle, vague imaginings of the stalwart horsemen and what they were now doing had revived within him that insatiate longing for the martial life which he had loved, that ineffable grief for the opportunity of brave deeds of value which he felt he had lost.
The drill had taught him the mastery of his muscles, but those more potent forces, his impulses, had known no discipline. A wild inconsequence now possessed him. He took no heed of reason, of prudence. He was dominated by the desire to look in upon the bushwhackers from without—they would never know—undiscovered, unimagined, like some vague and vagrant specter that might wander forlorn in the labyrinthine old house.
With an alert step he turned and strode away into the little cabin. It was very cheerful around the hearth, and the first words he heard reminded him of the season.
His younger brother, a robust lad of thirteen, was drawling reminiscences of other and happier Christmas-tides.
“Sech poppin’ o’ guns ez we-uns used ter hev!” said the tow-headed boy, listlessly swinging his heels against the rungs of the chair.
“The Lord knows thar’s enough poppin’ of guns now!” said his mother. She stooped to insert a knife under the baking hoe-cake for the purpose of turning it, which she did with a certain deft and agile flap, difficult of acquirement and impossible to the uninitiated.
“I ’members,” she added, vivaciously, “we-uns used ter always hev a hollow log charged with powder an’ tech it off fur the Chris’mus. It sounded like thunder—like the cannon the folks hev got nowadays.”
“An’ hawg-killin’ times kem about the Chris’mus,” said the boy, sustaining his part in the fugue.
“Folks had hawgs ter kill in them days,” was his mother’s melancholy rejoinder as she meditated on the contrast of the pinched penury of the present with the peace and plenty of the past when there was no war nor rumor of war.
“Ef ye git a hawg’s bladder an’ blow it up an’ tie the eend right tight an’ stomp on it suddint it will crack ez loud!” said the noise-loving boy. “Peas air good ter rattle in ’em, too,” he added, with a wistful smile, dwelling on the clamors of his happy past.
“Waal, folks ez hed good sense seen more enjyement in eatin’ spare-ribs an’ souse an’ sech like hawg-meat than in stomping on hawgs’ bladders. I hev never favored hawg-killin’ times jes’ ter gin a noisy boy the means ter keep Christian folks an’ church members a-jumpin’ out’n thar skins with suddint skeer all the Chris’mus.”
This was said with the severity of a personality, but the boy’s face distended as he listened.
Suddenly his eyes brightened with excitement. “Hil’ry,” he cried, joyously, “be you-uns a-goin’ ter fire that thar pistol off fur the Chris’mus?”
Mrs. Knox rose from her kneeling posture on the hearth and stared blankly at Hilary.
He had come within the light of the fire. His eyes were blazing, his pale cheeks flushed, his long, lank figure was tense with energy. The weapon in his hand glittered as he held it at arm’s length.
“Bein’ ez it air ready loaded I reckon mebbe I ain’t so awk’ard yit but I could make out ter fire it ef I war cornered,” he muttered, as if to himself. “Leastwise, I’ll take it along fur company.”
“Air ye goin’ ter fire it ’kase this be Chris’mus eve?” she asked in doubt.
He glanced absently at her and said not a word.
The next moment he had sprung out of the door and they heard his step crunching through the frozen crust of snow as he strode away.
There were rifts in the clouds and the moon looked out. The white, untrodden road lay, a glittering avenue, far along the solitudes of the dense and leafless forests. Sometimes belts of vapor shimmered before him, and as he went he saw above them the distant gables of the old hotel rising starkly against the chill sky. In view presently in the white moonlight were the long piazzas of the shattered old building, the shadows of the many tall pillars distinct upon the floor. He heard the sound of the sentry’s tread, and down the vista between the columns and the shadowy colonnade he saw the soldierly figure pacing slowly to and fro.
He had not reckoned on this precaution on the part of the bushwhackers. But the rambling old building, in every nook and cranny, was familiar to him. While the sentry’s back was turned, he silently crept along the piazza to an open passageway which led to the grassy square within.
The rime on the dead weeds glistened in the moonbeams; the snow lay trampled along the galleries on which opened the empty rooms; here and there, as the doors swung on their hinges, he could see through the desolate void within, the bleak landscape beyond. There were horses stabled in some of them, and in the center of the square two or three were munching their feed from the old music-stand, utilized as a manger. One of them, a handsome bay, arched his glossy neck to gaze at the intruder over the gauzy sheen of gathering vapor, his full dilated eyes with the moonlight in them. Then with a snort he went back to his corn.
Only one window was alight. There was a roaring fire within, and the ruddy glow danced on the empty walls and on the hilarious, bearded faces grouped about the hearth. The men, clad in butternut jeans, smoked their pipes as they sat on logs or lounged at length on the floor. A festive canteen was a prominent adjunct of the scene, and was often replenished from a burly keg in the corner.
As Hilary approached the window he suddenly recognized a face which he had cause to remember. He had not seen this face since Jack Bixby looked furiously down from his saddle, hacking the while with his bowie-knife at his comrade’s bleeding right arm. No enemy had done this thing—Hilary’s own fast friend.
He divined readily enough that after this dastardly deed Bixby had not dared to seek to rejoin Captain Bertley’s squadron, and thus had found kindred spirits among this marauding band of bushwhackers. His face was not flushed with liquor now—twice the canteen passed Jack Bixby unheeded. His big black hat was thrust far back on his shock of red hair; he held his great red beard meditatively in one hand, while the other fluttered the pages of a letter. He slowly read aloud, in a droning voice, now and then, from the ill-spelled scrawl. He looked up sometimes laughing, and they all laughed in sympathy.
“‘Pete Blake he axed ’bout ye, an’ sent his respec’s, an’ Jerry Dunders says tell ye ‘Howdy’ fur him, though ye be fightin’ on the wrong side,’”
“Jerry,” he explained in a conversational tone, “he jined the Loyal Tennesseans over yander in White County.”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder westward, and one of the men said that he had known Jerry since he was “knee-high ter a duck.”
In a strained, unnatural tone Jack Bixby laboriously read on.
“‘Little Ben prays at night fur you. He prayed some last night out’n his own head. He said he prayed the good Lord would deliver daddy from all harm.’”
The man’s eyes were glistening. He laughed hurriedly, but he coughed, too, and the comrade who knew Jerry at so minute a size seemed also acquainted with little Ben, and said a “pearter young one” had never stepped. “‘He prayed the good Lord would deliver daddy from all harm,’” Jack Bixby solemnly repeated as he folded the letter. And silence fell upon the group.
Hilary, strangely softened, was turning—he was quietly slipping away from the window when he became suddenly aware that there were other stealthy figures in the square, and he saw through the frosty panes the scared face of the sentry bursting into the doorway with a tardy alarm.
There was a rush from the square. Pistol shots rang out sharp on the chill air, and the one-armed man, conscious of his helpless plight, entrapped in the mêlée, fled as best he might through the familiar intricacies of the old hotel—up the stairs, through echoing halls and rooms, and down a long corridor, till he paused panting and breathless in the door of the old ball-room.
The rude, unplastered, whitewashed walls were illumined by the moonlight, for all down one side of the long apartment the windows overlooking the gorge were full of the white radiance, and in glittering squares it lay upon the floor.
He remembered suddenly that there was no other means of egress. To be found here was certain capture. As he turned to retrace his way he heard swift steps approaching. Guided by the sound of his flight one of the surprised party had followed him, lured by the hope of escape.
There was evidently a hot pursuit in the rear. Now and then the long halls reverberated with pistol shots, and a bullet buried itself in the door as Jack Bixby burst into the room. He stared aghast at his old comrade for an instant. Then as he heard the rapid footfalls, the jingle of spurs, the clamor of voices behind him, he ran to one of the windows. He drew back dismayed by the sight of the depths of the gorge below. He was caught as in a trap.
Hilary Knox could never account for the inspiration of that moment.
At right angles with the loftier main building a one-story wing jutted out, and the space within its gable roof and above its ceiling, which was on a level with the floor of the ball-room, was separated from that apartment only by a rude screen of boards.
Hilary burst one of these rough boards loose at the lower end, and held it back with the left hand spared him.
“Jump through, Jack!” he cried out to his old enemy. “Jump through the plaster o’ the ceilin’ right hyar. The counter in the bar-room down thar will break yer fall.”
Jack Bixby sprang through the dark aperture. There was a crash within as the plaster fell.
The next moment a bullet whizzed through Hilary’s hat, and the ball-room was astir with armed men; among them Hilary recognized other mountaineers, old friends and neighbors who had joined the “Loyal Tennesseans.”
“I never would hev thought ye would hev let Jack Bixby git past ye arter the way he treated ye,” one of them remarked, when the search had proved futile.
“Waal,” said Hilary, miserably, “I hain’t hed much grit nohows sence the surgeon took off my arm.”
His interlocutor looked curiously at the hole in the young fellow’s hat, pierced while he stood his ground that another man might escape. Hilary had no nice sense of discrimination. His idea of courage was the onslaught.
The others crowded about, and Hilary relished the suggestions of military comradeship that clung about them, albeit they were of the opposing faction, for they seemed so strangely cordial. Each must needs shake his hand—his awkward left hand—and he was patted on the back, and one big, bluff soul, who beamed on him with a broadly delighted smile, gave him a severe hug, such as a fatherly bear might administer.
“Hil’ry ain’t got much grit, he says,” one of them remarked with a guffaw. “He jes’ helped another feller escape whut he hed a grudge agin, while he stood ez onconsarned ez a target, an’ I shot him through the hat an’ the ball ploughed up his scalp in good fashion. Glad my aim warn’t a leetle mended.”
Hilary’s hat was gone; one of the men persisted in an exchange, and Hilary wore now a fresh new one instead of that so hastily snatched from him as a souvenir.
He thought they were all sorry for him because of the loss of his arm; yet this was strange, for many men had lost limb and life at the hands of this troop, which was of an active and bloody reputation. He could not dream they thought him a hero—these men accustomed to deeds of daring! He had no faint conception of the things they were saying of him to one another, of his gallantry and his high and noble courage in risking his life that his personal enemy might escape, when there was a chance for but one—his false friend, who had destroyed his right arm—as they mounted their horses and rode away to their camp in the valley with the prisoners they had taken.
Hilary stood listening wistfully to the jingling of their spurs and the clanking of their sabers and the regular beat of the hoofs of the galloping troop—sounds from out the familiar past, from thrilling memories, how dear!
Then as he plodded along the lonely wintry way homeward he was dismayed to reflect upon his own useless, maimed life—upon what he had suffered and what he had done.
“What ailed me ter let him off?” he exclaimed in amaze. “What ailed me ter help him git away—jes’ account o’ the word o’ a w’uthless brat. Fur me ter let him off when I hed my chance ter pay my grudge so slick!”
He paused on the jagged verge of a crag and looked absently over the vast dim landscape, bounded by the snowy ranges about the horizon. Here and there mists hovered above the valley, but the long slant of the moonbeams pervaded the scene and lingered upon its loneliness with luminous melancholy. The translucent amber sphere was sinking low in the vaguely violet sky, and already the dark summits of the westward pines showed a fibrous glimmer.
In the east a great star was quivering, most radiant, most pellucid. He gazed at it with sudden wistfulness. Christmas dawn was near—and this was the herald of redemption. So well it was for him that science had never invaded these skies! His simple faith beheld the Star of Bethlehem that the wise men saw when they fell down and worshiped. He broke from his moody regrets—ah, surely, of all the year this was the time when a child’s prayer should meet most gracious heed in heaven, should most prevail on earth! His heart was stirred with a strange and solemn thrill, and he blessed the impulse of forgiveness for the sake of a little child.
A roseate haze had gathered about the star, deepening and glowing till the sun was in the east, and the splendid Day, charged with the sanctities of commemoration, with the fulfillment of prophecy, with the promises of all futurity, came glittering over the mountains.
But the sun was a long way off, and its brilliancy made scant impression on the intense cold. Thus it was he noticed, as he came in sight of home, that, despite the icy atmosphere, the cabin door was ajar. It moved uncertainly, yet no wind stirred.
“Thar’s somebody ahint the door ez hev seen me a-comin’ an’ air waitin’ ter ketch me ‘Chris’mus Gift,’” he argued, astutely.
To forestall this he took a devious path through the brush, sprang suddenly upon the porch, thrust in his arm, and clutched the unwary party ambushed behind the door.
“Chris’mus Gift!” he shouted, as he burst into the room.
But it was Delia waiting for him, blushing and embarrassed, and seeming nearer tears than laughter. And his mother was chuckling in enjoyment of the situation.
“Now, whyn’t ye let Dely ketch you-uns Chris’mus Gift like she counted on doin’, stiddier ketchin’ her? She hain’t got nuthin’ ter gin yer fur Chris’mus Gift but herself.”
Hilary knew her presence here and the enterprise of “catching him Christmas Gift” was another overture at reconciliation, but when he said, “Waal, I’ll thank ye kindly, Dely,” she still looked at him in silence, with a timorous eye and a quivering lip.
“But, law!” exclaimed Mrs. Knox, still laughing, “I needn’t set my heart on dancin’ at the weddin’. Dely ain’t no ways ter be trusted. She hev done like a Injun-giver afore now. Mebbe she’ll take herself away from ye agin.”
Delia found her voice abruptly.
“No—I won’t, nuther!” she said, sturdily.
And thus it was settled.
They made what Christmas cheer they could, and he told them of a new plan as they sat together round the fire. The women humored it as a sick fancy. They never thought to see it proved. At the school held at irregular intervals before the war he had picked up a little reading and a smattering of writing. This Christmas day he began anew. He manufactured ink of logwood that had been saved for dyeing, and the goose lent him a quill. An old blank book, thrown aside when the hotel proprietors had removed their valuables, served as paper.
As his mother had said it was not Hilary’s nature to be thankful for the half of anything; he attacked the unpromising future with that undismayed ardor that had distinguished him in those cavalry charges in which he had loved to ride. With practice his left hand became deft; before the war was over he was a fair scribe, and he often pridefully remarked that he couldn’t be flanked on spelling. Removing to one of the valley towns, seeking a sphere of wider usefulness, his mental qualities and sterling character made themselves known and his vocation gradually became assured. He was first elected register of the county of his new home, and later clerk of the circuit court. Other preferments came to him, and the world went well with him. It became broader to his view and of more gracious aspect; his leisure permitted reading and reading fostered thought. He learned that there are more potent influences than force, and he recognized as the germ of these benignities that impulse of peace and good will which he consecrated for the sake of One who became as a Little Child.