SAT Hi SS AH EUR) fi ta Hi ani ! Hh i ah Halt i Naa ‘inl erate Gh a Gt uo su gage rtd He era a RAT ati Heit aA Hp Gaal Sia Son ti Hi i Wl 1 Peete pt if gia CORR ane Bl at Pinos Cornell oo Library PS 1034.J6 1893 “Wiitiiniiitiy colin JOHN GRAY. A KENTUCKY TALE OF THE OLDEN TIME. BY JAMES LANE ALLEN, AUTHOR OF “FLUTE AND VIOLIN,” “THE BLUE GRASS REGION OF KENTUCKY,” ETC. e PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 1893. \.260%%% CopyRIGHT, 1892, BY J. B. Lippincott CoMPANY. Printep By J. B. LIPPINCOTT Company, PHILADELPHIA. Medtiication. TO HER AND TO HER MEMORY. CONTENTS. PAGE I,.—WILL1AM PENN STUMBLES, é ‘ ; » 5 II.—A DRESS ON THE WALL, . ‘ 3 ‘ . III.—A LEsson FROM THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE Licks, 49 IV.—EDITORIAL SECRETS, . ‘ ‘ . 5 . V.—Sir ROGER DE COVERLEY, : 7 , - 98 VI.—ONE OF THE WEIRD SISTERS, . ‘ . . 116 VII.—MoreE Eprroriat SECRETS, 2 4 < . 136 VIlI.—THE Last of SCHOOL-DAYS, ; 2 . . 148 IX.—THE POETRY OF EARTH, . . : ‘ . 185 X.—THE END WILL CoME, ‘ 3 . . 194 JOHN GRAY. I. WILLIAM PENN STUMBLES. Ir was an easy path to stumble in, being one of those wagon-tracks that wound mysteriously away under the dark-green forests of Ken- tucky and through the pale-green thickets of tall, reed-like cane, ringed with delicate pur- ple-blossoming pea-vine. An easy path to stumble in, with huge stumps to be ridden around, and the loops and ends of roots to be avoided. And the horse was so old, so fat, so lazy, that he liked better to stumble and take the consequences than to be at the trouble to lift up his feet. Nor was the rider of a char- acter and equipment to interfere, being a 5 6 JOHN GRAY. small creature armed only with a switch of wild cherry, a little hand to jerk at the bridle- reins, and a sweet voice in which to make re- monstrance. So that, as for the light shower of blows which sometimes fell upon his rounded flanks, William Penn merely gave that com- forting switch of his bob tail by which he always expressed acquiescence in the small annoyances of his affluent mortality. Mean- while, of two things he felt quite sure: that it was very kind of him to move along at all when he had it in his power to remain perfectly still; and that as soon as he grew a little hungry—which~he hoped might be soon—he would stop and nibble a few mouthfuls of the delicious greenery of the wayside, of which it seemed to him that he was always full but could never get enough. He had never tasted the Kentucky delicacy of cane garnished with pea-vine before this spring. For many years he had been the sole gig-horse of a weak-eyed old dentist and his wife living in Philadelphia. In 1793 the WILLIAM PENN STUMBLES. vi doctor, greatly shrivelled and with professional fortunes that decayed faster than the molars of his acquaintances, conceived the enterprise of emigrating to Lexington, Kentucky; for the world was full of rumors touching the West, and the new land was said not only to be good for sore eyes, but to be inhabited by people who fought so much that there was constant need of new front teeth. At first he and his wife, who was delicate, had thought of setting out through the wilderness with William Penn and the gig; but, yielding to better counsels, they started in a wagon-train, though not without many embraces of their bereft servitor and minute directions that he should never be allowed to see the bottom of his manger; and hardly were they settled in Lexington before they sent back for him to come out and join them. It is discovered that he must have left Phila- delphia on his journey across the Alleghany Mountains some time early in April; but it is certain that he did not turn up in Lexington 8 JOHN GRAY. until several months later; by which time his master and mistress, having succumbed to the hardships of the journey, homesickness, and a change of life, were dead and buried, and in- deed well-nigh forgotten. So that immediately upon his arrival in town, looking a good deal ashamed of himself and not a little surprised, he was dragged with violence to the common and knocked down at public sale to a Major Falconer—price, one small mink-skin. Had William Penn known his market value, he must have been greatly mortified; for he thought extremely well of himself, after a manner of fat old creatures. This was long ago, then, as far back as the year 1795, and near the middle of a sweet afternoon in May. Far overhead vast mountain ridges of many- peaked gleaming clouds—those dear Alps of the blue air; outstretched far below the warm bosom of the earth, throbbing with the hope of vast maternity; two spirits abroad, everywhere shyly encountering each other and passing WILLIAM PENN STUMBLES. 9 into one, the pure heavenly spirit of scentless spring, born of melting snows, and the pure earthly spirit of odorous summer, born of the hearts of flowers; the road one of those wagon-tracks that were then being opened through the parklands of the Indians to the clearings of the earlier settlers, and that wound along beneath trees of which those now seen in Kentucky are the last unworthy off- spring—oaks and walnuts, maples and elms, centuries old, gnarled, massive, drooping, ma- jestic, through whose leafy arches the powerful sun hurled down only some solitary slanting spear of gold, and over whose gray-mossed roots some cold brook crept in silence; with here and there billowy open spaces of wild rye, buffalo grass, and clover, on which the light fell in solid sheets of soft radiance; with other spots of perpetual woodland twilight so dim that for ages no green shoot had sprung from the deep black vegetable mould; blown softly to and fro across this pathway, cool, pungent odors of ivy, pennyroyal, and mint, mingled 10 JOHN GRAY. with the warmer fragrance of wild grape; flit- ting to and fro across it, as low as the violet- beds, as high as the topmost branches of the sycamores, unnumbered kinds of birds, some of which, like the paroquet, are now long since vanished—a primeval woodland avenue, down which the mother of mankind might fitly have walked for the adornment of her beauty as through a glade of Eden. ;But, instead of the fabled mother, down it now there came in a drowsy amble an old white bob-tail horse, his polished coat shining like silver when he crossed an expanse of sun- light, fading into spectral pallor when he passed under the twilight of the rayless trees; his bushy foretop floating like a snowy plume in the light wind; his unshod feet, half-covered by the long, thick fetlocks, stepping noiselessly over the loamy earth; the rims of his nostrils expand- ing like flexible ebony; and in his filmy eyes that look of peace which is neverseen in any but those of petted animals. On his head he wore an old bridle with heavy WILLIAM PENN STUMBLES. 11 knots of wild blue violets tied at his ears; on his broad back was spread an immense blanket of buffalo-skin; on this rested a worn black side-saddle with a blue girth—newly bought, for William Penn was hard on girths—and sitting in the saddle was a young girl, whom many a young Virginian of the town to his sorrow knew to be Amy Falconer, and whom many a lonely old pioneer dreamed of as he fell asleep between his rifle and his hunting-knife in some snow-wrapt cabin of the wilderness” She was perhaps the first beautiful woman seen in Kentucky, and the first of the famous, innumerable train of those illustrious ones who for a hundred years since have wrecked or saved the destinies of the men. The skirt of her pink calico dress, newly starched and ironed, had looked so pretty to her —so very pretty—that she had not been able to bear the thought of wearing over it this lovely afternoon her faded, mud-stained rid- ing-habit; and it was so short and narrow that it showed, resting against the saddle, her little 12 JOHN GRAY. feet loosely fitted into new bronze morocco shoes. On her hands she had drawn white half-hand mittens of home-knit; and on her head she wore an enormous white scoop-bonnet, lined with pink and tied under her chin in a huge white muslin bow. Her face, hidden away under the pink-and-white half-shadow of this circulating tunnel, showed such tints of pearl and rose that it seemed carved from the inner surface of a sea-shell. Her eyes were a cold gray, almond-shaped, rather wide apart, with an expression changeful and playful, but withal rather shrewd and hard; her light-brown hair, as fine as unspun silk, was parted over her brow and drawn severely back behind her opalescent toys of ears; and the lips of her little mouth curved and rested against each other as fresh and velvet-like as two half-opened rose- leaves. Thus on she rode down that avenue of the primeval woods; and nature seemed arranged to salute her passing as for that of some lovely imperial presence: the soft waving of a hundred WILLIAM PENN STUMBLES. 13 green boughs above her and on each side; the hundred floating odors that are the great mother’s breath of love; the flash and rush of bright wings; the swift play of nimble forms up and down the boles of trees; and all the sweet confusion of innumerable melodies. Then happened one of those trifles that con- tain the history of our lives, as a drop of dew on the edge of a leaf draws into itself the maj- esty and solemnity of the heavens. From the right pommel of the side-saddle there dangled a heavy roll of home-spun linen, which she was taking to town to her aunt’s grocer in exchange for queensware pitchers; and behind this roll of linen, fastened to a brass ring under the seat of the saddle, was swung a bundle tied up in a large blue-and-white checked cotton handkerchief. Whenever she fidgeted in the saddle, or whenever the horse stumbled, the string by which this bundle was tied slipped a little through the knot and the bundle hung a little lower down. Just where the wagon- trail passed out into the broader public road > 14 JOHN GRAY. leading to Lexington from Frankfort, and the travelling began to be really good, the horse brought one of his lazy forefeet against the loop of a pliant root, was thrown forward in a blurred heap of white, and the bundle slipped from the saddle noiselessly to the soft earth. She did not see it. She merely gathered the reins more tightly in one hand, pushed back her bonnet, which now hung down over her eyes like the bill of a Mediterranean pelican, and applied the switch to the horse’s flank with such determined vehemence that a gadfly which was about to alight on that favored spot act- ually went to the other side. And so out of the lengthening shadows of the woods they passed on toward the little town; and far behind them in the Doe road lay the lost bundle. TL, A DRESS ON THE WALL. In the open square on Cheapside in Lexing- ton there is a bronze statue of John Breckin- ridge. Not far from this spot a hundred years ago the pioneers had built the first log school-house of the town. Poor old school-house, long since become scattered ashes! Poor little backwoods acade- micians, driven in about sunrise, driven out toward dusk! Poor little tired backs with nothing to lean against! Poor little bare feet that could never reach the floor! Poor little droop-headed figures, so sleepy, so afraid to fall asleep! Long, long since, little children of the past, those backs have become straight enough, 15 16 JOHN GRAY. measured on acool bed; sooner or later your bare feet, wherever wandering, have come to rest on the soft earth; and all your drooping heads have found the same dreamless pillow to sleep on, and there still are sleeping. And the imperious school-master, too, who seemed exempt from physical frailty—the young school-master who guarded as a stern senti- nel that lonely outpost of the imperilled alpha- bet—even he long ago laid himself down on the same mortal level with you as a common brother. John Gray, the school-master. At four o’clock that afternoon he was standing on the hickory block which formed the door-step, hav- ing just closed the door behind him for the day. Down at his side between the thumb and forefinger of one hand hung his great black hat, which was decorated with a tricolored cockade, to show that he was a member of the Demo- cratic Society of Lexington, modelled after the Democratic Society of Philadelphia and the _ Jacobin clubs of France. In the open palm of A DRESS ON THE WALL. 1? the other lay his big silver English lever watch . with glass case and broad black silk fob. A young fellow of powerful build, lean, muscular; wearing simply, but with gentle- manly care, a suit of black, which was relieved around his wrists and neck by linen, snow-white and of the finest quality. In contrast with his severe dress, a complexion singularly fresh, pure, even brilliant in tone, but colorless—the complexion of health and innocence; in contrast with this from above, a mass of coarse dark- red hair, cut short and everywhere closely curling. Much physical beauty in the head itself, the shape being noble, the pose creating an impression of dignity; almost none in the face, except in the gray eyes, which were es- pecially eloquent and true. Yet a face not without moral significance or intellectual power; rugged as a rock, but as a rock is made less rugged by a little vine creeping over it, so his was softened by a fine net-work of nerves that wrought out upon it a look of kindness; betraying the first nature of passion, but dis- 2 18 JOHN GRAY. ciplined to the second nature of patience; youthful, but wearing those unmistakable marks of maturity which mean a fierce early struggle with that vast, undying monster we call the world. On the whole, with a calm, resolute, self-respecting air of one who, having thus far won in the battle of life, has only a fiercer longing for larger conflict, and whose entire character rests on the noiseless conviction that he is a man and a gentleman. But deeper insight would have been needed to discover how sincere and earnest a soul he was, how high a value he set on what life had in store for him and on what his life was worth to himself and to others, and how, loving rather to help himself than to be helped, he loved less to be trifled with, and least of all to be seriously hindered. At this moment he was thinking, as his eyes rested on the watch, that if this were one of his ordinary days he would pursue his ordinary duties; he would go straight up street to the office of Marshall and for the next hour read A DRESS ON THE WALL. 19 as many pages of law as possible; then to sup- per at the Sign of the Spinning-Wheel near the two locust trees; then walk out into the country for two hours; then back to his room and more law until midnight by the light of his tallow dip. But this was not an ordinary day—being one that he had long waited for and was destined never to forget. At dusk the evening before, the post-rider, so tired that he had scarce strength to blow his horn, had ridden into town bringing the mail from Philadelphia; and in this mail there was news for him. At the thought of this he thrust his watch into his pocket, pulled his hat resolutely over his brow, and started rapidly to Main Street, turning thence toward Cross Street, now known as Broadway. On the outskirts of the town in that direction lay the edge of the forest, stretch- ing away for hundreds of miles in all but un- ravished beauty. But he did not get on as fast as he wished. Main Street was swarming with people. He knew everybody, everybody knew him. A pa- 20 JOHN GRAY. tron of the school stopped him to explain why little Jennie had not come to school that day— poor little Jennie, in whose organism the mys- teries of colic and subtraction seemed to be vi- tally connected, and by working together caused her many absences. A timid young lady paused to ask that he would lend her his copy of “Romeo and Juliet.” A group of married ladies closed in around him with a flurry of questions as to why he always took his walk of late toward the woods on the southwestern edge of the town. An old shoemaker, flushed and angry, jumped from his stool at his front window, and begged him to come in and look at a column of figures that wouldn’t “add up right,” although he had been adding them ever since dinner. At the new book-store he must stop and examine various classics of English literature lately taken off the pack-horses. And when at last he had reached the long, open green common of the town, they were holding foot-races there, and three lithe young fellows, stripped and girt for racing, beheld him from A DRESS ON THE WALL. 21 the upper end of the course and ran up with the speed of the wind, bantering him for a contest; for he was one of the best runners in the country-side. But he disengaged himself as quickly as pos- sible, and was soon climbing with long, rapid strides the hill where the Federal fort stood during the civil war. Then he slackened his pace. Before him stretched the primeval for- est. He entered it, keeping his face turned squarely toward the lowering sun, until, hav- ing gone about a mile and a half, he came upon evidences of a clearing: felled trees, fields of young maize, orchards, a garden, and in the midst of these a frame dwelling with various comfortable outhouses. He went on straight toward the house; but as he passed the garden he saw standing in one corner, with a rake in her hand, a delicately formed little woman in homespun, and near her a negro lad dropping garden-seed: so that he approached and leaned over the picket-fence. “How do you do, Mrs. Falconer?” 22 JOHN GRAY. She turned with a startled cry, dropping the rake and pushing her sun-bonnet from her eyes. “How unkind of you to frighten me!” she said, laughing, and then she came to the fence and gave him her hand—beautiful, but hard- ened by work. “I am glad to see you, but I am still more glad that it is not a Shawnee, come to demand my hair.” “T have come to demand something more beautiful than your hair,” he replied, laughing also, and with a flush overspreading his face. “T shall never get used to it,” she continued, not heeding his words and not yet recovered from her fright. ‘We have been living in Kentucky two years, but I shall never get used to this frontier life. It is not the hardship: it is the terror. Ihave fortitude; I’ve no cour- age. These native Kentucky women no more fear anything than so many she-bears defend- ing their cubs. Sometimes I beg Major Fal- coner to let me go back to Raleigh, so that for one month I may regain the lost art of sound A DRESS ON THE WALL. 23 sleep. Do you really believe that the country is safe? They say there is not an Indian this side of the Ohio River, but I hear and see them all the time. If anything frightens the ducks, I get weak with palpitation; and there are times when my own churn out in the yard looks like a squaw. I believe that I have something like Indian cataract forming on both eyes.” And she laughed softly. She had one of the rarest of feminine virtues: she made sport of her own weaknesses instead of those of other people. Plainly they were good friends; and as he stood leaning over the fence with his hat in his hand and a smile lighting up his face, she went industriously back to the seed-planting. “How can you retain your self-respect, to stand there idling and see me toiling here in the sweat of my brow, like Eve after she was cursed ?” “Perhaps it is my duty not to interfere with the operation of a divine command.” . “There is no divine command that I should 24 JOHN GRAY. plant corn; it is a necessity of the Kentucky backwoods. IfI were in North Carolina, and if the major were not an impoverished patriot of the Revolution, I might be lying on a yellow satin sofa reading Voltaire. Don’t you think that Voltaire and yellow satin sofas go to- gether? And, ah, that prayer, ‘G7ve us our daily bread’—not make us work for it! I never omit the prayer, but the bread is never given; either I buy it or I work for it, as though I were under the old curse. Perhaps I am; per- haps I belong to the days of Sarah: this is a very primitive world I’m now in. Besides, this is not my work: it’s Amy’s work. Aren’t you willing to work for Amy, John Gray?” “T’m willing to work for her. But ought I to do her work, so long as she can do it herself? But if the queen sits quietly in the parlor eating bread and honey——” “The queen’s not in the parlor eating bread and honey. She has gone to town to stay with Kitty Poythress until after the party. Her uncle was to take her in to-morrow; but no! A DRESS ON THE WALL. 25 she and Kitty must see each other to-night; and her uncle must be swre to bring the party finery in the gig to-morrow afternoon. I’m sorry you’ve had your walk for nothing; but you’ll stay to supper?” “Thank you, but I must go back.” “Tf you’ll stay, Pll go in and make you a johnny-cake on a new ash shingle and with my own hands.” “Thank you, I really must go back. But if there’s a johnny-cake already made, I could easily take it along with me.” “Do stay! Major Falconer will be so disap- pointed. He said at dinner there were so many things he wanted to talk to you about. He feels certain that he has at last discovered why Ophelia went mad. He hit upon this theory while he was burning brush in the new field. And, then, we have had no news for weeks. The major has been too busy to go to town, and too tired at night to read; and I!—I am as dry as one of the gourds of Confucius.” “Qh, there’s news enough. Tell him that a 26 JOHN GRAY. bookbinder has opened a shop on Cross Street— a capital hand at the business, by the name of Leischman—and that he will take in exchange, at the regular market prices, linen rags, maple sugar, and goose-quills. J advise you to keep an eye on your geese, if the major once takes a notion to have his old Shakespeare and other volumes, that had their bindings knocked off in crossing the Alleghanies, elegantly rebound. You can tell him, also, that after a squirrel-hunt in Bourbon County the farmers counted scalps and they numbered five thousand five hundred and eighty-nine; so that he is not the only one who has trouble with his corn. And then you can tell him that on the common the other day Nelson Tapp and Willis Tandy had a fearful fight over a land-suit. Now it was Tandy and Tapp; now it was Tapp and Tandy; but they went off at last and drowned themselves, if not their land, in a bowl of sagamity.” “And there is no news for me, I sup- pose?” “Oh, yes! Much. I am happy to inform A DRESS ON THE WALL. 24 you that at Mcllvain’s you can now buy the finest Dutch and English qualities of letter- paper, gilt, embossed, or marbled.” “That is not very important.” “Well, then, a saddlery has been opened by two fellows from London, England, and you can now buy Amy a new side-saddle.. She needs one.” “Neither is that important. Besides, the major buys the saddles for the family.” “Well, then, as 1 came out, I passed on Main Street some ladies who accused me of being on my way here, and who impressed upon me that I must tell you of the last displays of women- wear: painted and velvet ribbons, I think they said, and crépe scarfs, and chintzes and nan- keens and moreens and sarcenets, and—oh, yes!—some muslinette jackets tamboured with gold and silver. You see, I am like my chil- dren: I can remember what I can’t under- stand.” “That is less important still. I adorn my- self in homespun.” 28 JOHN GRAY. “Well, then, the Indians fired on the Ohio packet-boat near Three Islands and killed ——” “Oh, mercy! I want foreign news!” “In Holland two thousand cats have been put into the corn-stores, to check the ravages of rats and mice.” “ French news! do be serious!” “In New York some Frenchmen, seeing their flag insulted by Englishmen who took it down from the liberty-cap, went upstairs to the room of an English officer named Codd, seized his regimental coat, and tore it to pieces.” “T’m glad of it! It was avery proper action !”’ “But, madam, the man Codd was perfectly innocent!” “No matter! His coat was guilty. They didn’t tear him to pieces; they tore his coat. Are there any new books at the stores?” : “Many. I have spent part of the last three days in looking over them. ‘You can have new copies of your old favorites, Joseph Andrews, Roderick Random, or Humphrey Clinker. A DRESS ON THE WALL. 29 You can have Goldsmith and Young; and Chesterfield and Addison. There is Don Quixote and Hudibras, Gulliver and Hume, Paley and Butler, Hervey and Watts, Lavater and Trenck, Seneca and Gregory, Nepos and even Aspasia Vindicated—to say nothing of Abelard and Héloise and Thomas 4 Kempis. All the Voltaires have been sold, however, and the Tom Paines went off at a rattling gait. By the way, while on the subject of books, tell the major that we have raised five hundred dollars toward buying books for the Transylvania Li- brary, and that as soon as my school is out Iam to go East as a purchasing committee. What particularly interests me is that I am to go to Mount Vernon and ask a subscription from President Washington. Think of it! Think of my presenting myself there with my tri-. colored cockade—a Kentucky Jacobin!” She had seen from the outset that his mood was unusual. On his face, in his words, in the playful caprices of his talk—like little whirl- igigs of wind among dry leaves—there was a 30 JOHN GRAY. joyous excitement the true secret mainspring of which had not yet been revealed. At this point his expression for the first time grew serious. “The President may be so occupied with the plots of you American Jacobins that he. will have neither time nor inclination to consider any such petition,” she said, divining his thoughts. . t “‘ At least I am glad of my mission. I have never set eyes on a great man, and my heart beats quick at the thought of it. I feel aga young Gaul might who was going to Rome.to ask Cesar for gold with which to overthrow him. Seriously, it would be a fearful thing | for the country if a treaty should be ratified with England. There is not a democratic so- ciety from Boston to Charleston that will not feel enraged with the President. You may be sure that every patriot in Kentucky will be outraged, and that the Governor will denounce it to the House.” “There 7s news from France, then—serious news?” A DRESS ON THE WALL. 31 “Much, much! The National Convention has agreed to carry into full effect the treaty of commerce between the two Republics, and the French and American flags have been united and, suspended in the hall. The Dutch have declared the sovereignty of the French, and French and Dutch patriots have taken St. Mar- ‘tin’s. The English have declared war against the Dutch and granted letters of marque and reprisals. There has been a complete change in the Spanish ministry. There has been a treaty made between France and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The French fleet is in the West Indies and has taken possession of Guad- eloupe. All French emigrants in Switzerland have been ordered to remove ten leagues from the borders of France. A hundred and fifty thousand Austrians are hurrying down toward the Rhine, to be reinforced by fifty thousand more.” He had run over these items with the rapidity of one who has his eye on the map of the world, noting the slightest change in the situation” 32 JOHN GRAY. of affairs; and she, having left her work and come to the fence, had listened eagerly like one no less well informed. “But the treaty! The treaty! The open navigation of the Mississippi!” “The last news is that the treaty will cer- tainly be concluded and the open navigation of the Mississippi assured to us forever. The major will load his flatboats, drift down to New Orleans, sell those Spanish fops his to- bacco for its weight in gems, buy a mustang to ride home on, and if not robbed and mur- dered by the land-pirates on the way, come back to you like an enormous bumble-bee from a clover-field, his thighs heavily packed with gold.” “T am so glad, so glad, so glad!” He drew from his pockets a roll. ‘Here are papers for two months back. I?ll leave them. Just now there is no time to discuss such trifles as revolutions and navies’ and dynasties and republics. Ihave come to speak of something more important. My dear A DRESS ON THE WALL. 33 friend, I have come to speak to you about— myself!” As he uttered the last sentence, his manner, hitherto so full of humor and vivacity, suddenly changed to one of grave gentleness, and his voice, sinking to a half-tone, became charged with penetrative music. It was the voice in which one refined and sincere soul confides to another refined and sincere soul the secret of some new happiness that has come to it. But noticing the negro lad, who had paused in his work several paces off and stood regard- ing them, he said to her significantly: “May I have a drink?” She turned to the negro: “Go to the spring-house and bring some water; and remember that all the milk down there is poisoned.” The lad moved away, laughing to himself and shaking his head. “He breaks every pitcher I have,” she added. ‘To-day I had to send my last roll of linen to town by Amy to buy more queensware. 3 34 JOHN GRAY. The moss will grow on the bucket before he gets back.” When the boy was out of hearing, she turned again to him: “What is it? Tell me quickly.” “T have had news from Philadelphia. The case is at last decided in favor of the heirs, and I come at once into possession of my share. It may be eight or ten thousand dollars.” She took his hands in hers with a warm, close pressure, and tears—tears of joy—sprang to her eyes. The whole of his bare, bleak, hard life was known to her; its half-starved beginning; its early merciless buffeting; the upheaval of vast circumstance in the revolutionary history of the times by which he had again and again been thrown back upon his own undefended virtue; and stealthily following him from place to place, always closing around him, always seek- ing to strangle him, or to poison him in some vital spot, that most silent, subtle serpent of A DRESS ON THE WALL. 35 life—Poverty. Knowing this, and knowing also the man he had become, she would in secret sometimes liken him to one of those rare unions of delicacy and hardihood which in the world of wild flowers nature refuses to bring forth except from the cranny of a cold rock. Its home is the battle-field of black roaring tempests; the red lightnings play among its roots; all night long seamless snow-drifts are woven around its heart; no bee ever rises to it from the valley below where the green spring is kneeling; no morning bird ever soars past it with observant song; but still in due time, with unswerving obedience to a law of beauty unfolding from within, it sets forth its perfect leaves and strains its pure face steadfastly to- ward a hidden sun. These paltry thousands! She realized that they would lift from him the burden of debts that he had assumed, and give him, without further waiting, the liberty of his powers and the opportunities of the world. “God bless you!” she said with trembling 36 JOHN GRAY. lips. “It makes me happier than it does you.” Silence fell upon them. Both were thinking of the changes that would now take place in his life. “Do you know,” he said at length, looking into her face with the quietest smile, “that if this lawsuit had gone against me it would have been the first great defeat of my life? Sorely as I have struggled, I have yet to encounter that.common myth of inefficient characters, an insurmountable barrier. I am not so sure that I believe there are forces in society that are stronger than the will. The imperfection of our lives—what is it but the imperfection of our planning and our doing? Shattered ideals —what hand shatters them but one’s own? I declare to you at this moment, standing here in the clear light of my own past, that I firmly believe I shall be what I will, that I shall have what I want, and that I shall now go on rear- ing the structure of my life, to the last detail, just as I have long conceived it.” A DRESS ON THE WALL. - 37 She did not answer, but stood looking at him with a new pity in her eyes. After all, was he so young, so untaught of the world? “There will be this difference, of course,” he added. ‘Hitherto I have had to build slowly; henceforth there will be no delay, now that I am free to lay hold upon the material. But, my dear friend, I cannot bear to think of my life as a structure to be conscientiously reared without settling first how it is to be lighted from within. And, therefore, I have come to speak to you about—the lamp.” As he said this a solemn beauty flashed out upon his face. As though the outer curtain of his nature had been drawn up and behind this an inner curtain and behind that yet another, she now gazed into the farthest depths and veiled semi-confidences of his inmost being. Her head dropped quickly on her bosom; and she drew slightly back, as though to escape pain or danger. “You must know how long I have loved Amy,” he continued in a tone of forced calm- 38 JOHN GRAY. ness. ‘TI have not spoken sooner, because the circumstances of my life made it necessary for me to wait; and now I wish to ask her to become my wife, and I am here to beg your consent.” For some time she did not answer. The slip of an elm grew beside the picket fence, and she stood passing her fingers over the topmost leaves, with her head lowered, so that he could not see her face. At length she said in a voice uneasy and cautious: “T have feared for a long time that this moment would come; but I have never been able to get ready for it, and I am not ready for it now.” Neither spoke for some time; only his ex- pression changed, and he looked down upon her with a compassionate, amused gravity, as though he meant in a rather superior way to be very patient with her opposition. On her part, she was thinking—lIs it possible that the first use he will make of his new lib- erty is to forge the chain of anew slavery? Is this some weak spot now to be revealed in his A DRESS ON THE WALL. 39 character? Is this the sudden drain in the bottom of the lake, that will bring its high, clear level down to mud and stagnant shallows and a swarm of stinging insects? “T have known for a year that you were in- terested in Amy. You could not have been so rouch with us without our seeing that. But let me ask you one question: Have you ever thought that I wished you to love her?” “T have always beheld in you an unmasked enemy,” he replied, smiling. “Then I can go on and be consistent. But I feel—I feel—as though never in my life have I done a thing that is as near being familiar and unwomanly as I am now about to do. Nevertheless, for your sake—for hers—for ours —it is my plain, hard duty to ask you whether you are sure—even if you should have her con- sent—that my niece is the woman you ought to marry.” And she lifted to him her gentle but penetrating eyes, old in the experience of life. “T am sure,” he answered in the ready tone of one who has foreseen a question. 40 JOHN GRAY. “You have been so much with her, you know, or ought to know, her disposition, her tastes, her ways and views of life; is she the companion you need now and will always need?” “T have been much with her,” he replied, taking up the words with a mock solemnity. “But I have never worked at solving her as over an equation having various roots. I have never drawn a map of her, noting the precipices where it would be dangerous for a man to walk, and tracing the ditches into which a careless man might deserve to stumble. I+ have not turned the coat of my love inside out to examine the lining. I have not churned my love to see how much butter it would yield me “ John!” “T love her!” “Tf I should feel that I must withhold my consent——” He became serious enough, and, after the silence of a few moments, said with respectful gentleness: A DRESS ON THE WALL. 41 “T should be sorry; but——” and then he forbore. “Tf Major Falconer should withhold his?” He shook his head, turning his face sadly: “Tt would make no difference! Nothing would make any difference!” ““T suppose all this would be called the proof that you love her; but love is not enough to begin with; much less is it enough to live by.” “You wrong her! You do not do her justice!” he said hastily, his instinct of loyalty urging him to defend her. ‘“ But perhaps no «woman can ever understand why a man loves any other woman!” “T am not thinking of why you love my niece. I am thinking of why you will cease to love her if you should marry her. It would not alter the fact to know the reasons; it might alter it to foresee the results.” “My dear friend,” he cried, his face suddenly aglow with impatient enthusiasm—“my dear friend,’ and he bent his head over to touch her hand respectfully with his lips, “I have but 42 JOHN GRAY. one anxiety : will you cease to be my friend if in this matter I act in opposition to your wishes?” “Should I cease to be your friend because you bad made a mistake? It is not to me you are unkind. But let me have my last word. And think of it as you walk home.” He looked steadily and gravely into her eyes, and she, having a weight of unshed tears in hers, spoke with slow distinctness: “Some women in marrying demand all and give all: with good men they are the happy; with base men they are the broken-hearted. Some demand everything and give little: with weak men they are tyrants; with strong men they are the diyorced. Some demand little and give all: with congenial souls they are already in heaven; with uncongenial they are soon in their graves. Some give little and demand little: they are the heartless, and with them there is neither the joy of life nor the peace of death.” ~ He did not return to town by the straight course through the woods, but followed the A DRESS ON THE WALL. 43 winding road at a slow, meditative gait, giving himself up wholly to the influence of the hour. ‘The low-glinting sunbeams, the gathering hush, the holy expectancy of stars, a flock of white clouds lying at rest along the sky, the greenness of the warm earth soon to be hung with dews, the redbreast on a low bough sing- ing its evensong—these melted into his mood as notes from different instruments blend in the ear and uplift the soul into that many-toned peace which is full of pain. But he was soon aroused in an unexpected way. When he reached the point where the wagon-track passed out into the broader road, he noticed lying several yards in front of him a large bundle tied in a blue-and-white checked cotton handkerchief. Plainly it was a lost bundle, and his duty to find out, if possible, whose it was. So he picked it up, and, walking to one side, sat down, and, untying the four ends of the handkerchief, lifted out one wide, white lace tucker, two fine cambric handkerchiefs, two pairs of India cot- 44 JOHN GRAY. ton hose, one pair of silk hose, two thin muslin handkerchiefs, one pair of long kid gloves— straw color—one pair of white kid shoes, one pale-blue silk coat, one thin white striped mus- lin dress. Under the dress lay certain other articles; but at this point he allowed himself the benefit of his doubts. Whose were they? Not Amy’s: Mrs. Fal- coner had said the major was to bring her party finery to town in the gig the next day. They might have been lost by some one riding from Frankfort to town, or from town into the country. He knew several young women to any one of whom they might well belong. It was dark when he got back to town, and he went straight to his room and locked the bundle in a closet; then to supper at the Sign of the Spinning- Wheel—a cheerful tavern near by; then home, where he read law with intense concentration of mind till near midnight. Then he snuffed out the candle, undressed, and stretched himself along the edge of his bed. A DRESS ON THE WALL. 45 It was a plain bare room on the ground floor of a two-story log house. At the head of his bed there was a window opening toward the east, and the moonlight now filled the room and fell upon him where he lay. Every bachelor is really the husband of an old maid. For every single man carries around within him the spirit of a woman to whom he is more or less happily wedded. When a man actually marries, this inner helpmate wisely disappears in the presence of her external con- temporary. The woman in Gray now began to question him remorsefully about this bundle. Was it right to leave it in his three-cornered cupboard, with his Cossack boots and other male haber- dashery? The man in him said it made no dif- ference; but the woman insisted otherwise. So that at last, for the sake of inward peace, he got patiently up with the submissive virtue of the sex, went to the cupboard, and, untying the bundle, carefully lifted out the dress. Along the wall opposite to his bed there was 46 JOHN GRAY. a row of pegs, on which hung his own clothes. As he now walked across the room with the dress, a light wind coming through the open window blew the soft fabric close against him, so that it folded itself around his body and limbs and clung to them. It caused him a subtle sensation of pleasure, as though it were the embrace of a woman’s spirit. Then he went back and lay on the edge of the bedagain. But now the sight of the dress hanging on the wall held his eyes with a kind of dreamy fascination. The moonlight fell on it, the wind crept around and swayed it, until at times it looked like the wing of an angel restless for flight. Certainly it was the near- est approach to the presence of a woman in his room that he had ever known, and he welcomed it as the silent spotless annunciation of his own approaching destiny. After a while he got up more resolutely under the spell of a growing fancy. He lifted out the pale-blue silk coat and hung it beside the dress. Under it there stood alow table A DRESS ON THE WALL. 4? covered with books. He took out the white shoes and set them on this table—set them, as it happened, on his Bible—and went back and lay down again, looking at them and dream- ing—looking at them and dreaming. All the while his thoughts passed like a shining flight of white doves to her and hovered about her. The party came off on Thursday evening, and he was to go with her; but he now said that he could not wait until then. The long restraint he had put upon himself must end to-morrow. To-morrow he would see her and ask her to be his wife. And then, his whole nature yielding to this resolve, as chastely as the moonbeams stole into his room from the unsullied skies his thoughts stole farther to the time when she would be his—when he would lie thus and waking in the night see her dress on the wall and feel her head on his shoulder—until his very heart ached with the intense illusion of its own happiness. Too young, too robust, to feel at such a mo- 48 JOHN GRAY. ment the impulse of articulate prayer, he nevertheless spent himself in one impassioned voiceless outcry, that she might not die young nor he die young; that the hardship, the pain, the conflicts of the world which had so closely begirt him hitherto, might for many years be absent from them, and that side by side they might grow peacefully old together. And thus, lying outstretched, with his head resting on his folded hands, with the moon- light streaming through the window and light- ing up his dark-red curls and falling on his face and neck and chest—as white as marble —with the cool south wind blowing down his warm limbs, with his eyes opening and closing in religious purity on the dress and his mind opening and closing on the visions of his fu- ture, he fell asleep, II. A LESSON FROM THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE LICKS. WHEN John Gray awoke out of those dreams that had hung about his fancy all night, as soft white moths flutter around the half-opened hearts of flowers, and remembered that on this day he was to make a declaration of his love, for the first time his own life seemed to take on full significance. Before he got up, he stretched himself and yawned with a drowsy smile, as though the riddle of the universe floated solved from his bedpost like a yester- day’s broken cobweb. While taking his morning bath, he was struck by the beauty of his form, the tints of his flesh. He wished there had been a friend , in the next room, so that he could have run 4 49 50 JOHN GRAY. in and cried, “Really, look at my neck and chest and arms. My face does me much in- justice. Iam not ugly!” As he stepped out into the early morning, and lifted his face to the sky, he murmured reverently under his breath, “Ah, Lord! if all Thy days could be as beautiful as this!” During breakfast at the Sign of the Spinning- Wheel, he exclaimed more than once to his landlady about something she did for him, “What an angel you are!” and finally bade her sit down by him, and tell him whether her son were not in love. And when he took his seat in the school-room and looked out upon the children, they had never seemed. to him so small, so pitiful. It struck him that Nature is cruel because she does not fit us for love and marriage as soon as we are born—cruel that she makes us wait two-thirds of our lives before she lets us really begin to live. His eye lit upon a wee chubby- cheeked urchin on the end of a high hard bench, and he fell to counting how many long years must pass before that unsuspicious grub THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE LICKS. 51 would grow his palpitating wings of flame. He felt like making them a little speech and telling them how happy he was, and how happy they would all be when they got old enough. And as for the lessons that day, what differ- ence could it make whether ideas were sprout- ing sideways or upside-down in those useless brains? He asked the hard questions and answered them himself, such a mood was on him to relax; and, indeed, so sunny and exhil- arating was the weather of his discipline that little Jennie, seeing how the rays fell and the wind lay, gave up the multiplication-table al- together and fell to drawing tomahawks. A strange mixture of human life there was in Gray’s school. There were the native little Kentuckians, born in the wilderness—the first wild, hardy generation of new people; and there were little folk from Virginia, from Tennessee, from North Carolina, and from Pennsylvania and other sources, huddled to- gether, some rude, some gentle, and starting 52 JOHN GRAY. out now to be formed into the men and women of the Kentucky that was to be. They had their strange, sad, heroic games and pastimes, those primitive children under his guidance. Two little girls would be driv- ing the cows home about dusk; three little boys would play Indian and capture them and carry them off; the husbands of the little girls would form a party to the rescue; the prisoners would drop pieces of their dresses along the way; and then at a certain point of the woods —it being the dead of night now, and the little girls being bound to a tree, and the Indians, having fallen asleep beside their smouldering camp-fires—the rescuers would rush in, and there would be whoops and shrieks, and the taking of scalps, and a happy return. Or some settlement would be shut up in a fort besieged. Days would pass. The only water was a spring outside the walls, and around this the enemy skulked in the corn and grass. But the war- riors must not perish of thirst. So, with a prayer, a tear, a final embrace, the little women THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE LICKS. 53 marched out through the gates to the spring, in the very teeth of death, and brought back water in their wooden dinner-buckets. Or, when the boys would become men with contests of running, and pitching quoits, and wrestling, the girls would play wives and have a quilting in a house of green alder-bushes, or be capped and wrinkled grandmothers sitting beside imaginary spinning-wheels and smoking imaginary pipes. Sometimes it was not Indian warfare, but civil strife. For one morning as many as three Daniel Boones appeared on the playground at the same moment; and at once there was a fierce battle to ascertain which was the genuine Daniel. This being decided, the spurious Dan- iels submitted to be the one Simon Kenton, the other General George Rogers Clark. This was to be a great day for what he called his class in history. Thirteen years before, and forty miles away, had occurred the most - dreadful of all the battles—the disaster of the Blue Licks; and in town were many mothers 54 JOHN GRAY. who yet wept for sons, widows who yet dreamed of young husbands, fallen that beautiful Au- gust day beneath the oaks and the cedars, or floating down the red-dyed river. Tt was this that he had promised to tell them of at noon; and a little after twelve o’clock he was standing with them on the bank of the Town Fork, in order to give vividness to his description. This stream flows unseen beneath the streets of the city now, and with scarce current enough to wash out its grimy chan- nels; but then it flashed broad and clear through the long valley which formed the town common—a valley of scattered houses with orchards and corn-fields and patches of cane. A fine poetic picture he formed as he stood there amid their eager upturned faces, bare- headed under the cool brilliant sky of May, and reciting to them, as a prose minstrel of the wilderness, the deeds of their fathers. This Town Fork of the Elkhorn, he said, must represent the Licking River. On that side were the Indians; on this, the pioneers, a THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE LICKS. 55 crowd of foot and horse. There stretched the ridge of rocks, made bare by the stamping of ;the buffalo; here was the clay they licked for salt. In that direction headed the two ravines in which Boone had feared an ambuscade. And thus variously having made ready for bat- tle, and looking down for a moment into the eyes of a freckly impetuous little soul who was the Hotspur of the playground, he repeated the cry of McGary, which had been the signal for attack: “Let all who are not cowards follow me!” Here he had paused, and with uplifted finger was warning them that from this tragedy of their fathers they could learn a lesson which ought to last them all their lives—never to be over-hasty or over-confident, never to go for- ward without knowing the ground you are to tread, or throw themselves into a conflict without learning the nature of the enemy—he was doing this, and at the same time thinking that before he slept that night he would be happy in the declaration of his love, when a 56 JOHN GRAY. child came skipping joyously across the com- mon, and pushing her way up to him through the circle of his listeners, handed him a note. He opened it, and in an instant the great battle, hills, river, horse, rider, shrieks, groans, all vanished as silently as a puff of white smoke from a distant cannon. For a while he stood motionless, with his eyes fixed upon the paper, so absorbed as not to note the silence that had fallen upon the throng around him. At length, merely saying in a kind voice, “I will tell you the rest some other day: I must go now,” he walked raoidly across the common in the direction from which the little messenger had come. A few minutes later he stood at the door of Father Poythress, the Methodist minister, ask- ing for Amy. But she and Kitty had ridden away and would not return till night. So, leaving careful word that he would come to see her then, he went to his school-room and sat waiting for the afternoon duties to begin. In the note she had broken her engagement THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE LICKS. 57 with him for the party, giving no reasons. At first he had feared she might be ill; but, hav- ing been now set right, he felt no further con- cern on that point. He was not a party-loving man himself. If she did not go, he would not; and it was in exact accord with his own pref- erence that they would pass the evening to- gether alone. As for her breaking the engage- ment in a manner so mysterious, he argued that she had her own reason. He could honor it, or honor any other demand that she might ever have to make on his confidence. Nevertheless, there remained a sense of un- easiness, so that he grew displeased with him- self that he should reveal any disposition to be petty with her and exacting. During the afternoon he was drawn out of himself by his duties; and when at last there came re- lease from these, one thought took immediate possession of his whole nature: in a few hours he was to ask her to be his wife. The exuberance of high spirits which agi- tated him at rising had passed with the passing 58 JOHN GRAY. of the day; and as he now closed the school- house door behind him, and stepping out upon the open square, strode away under the long shadows of the few forest trees that still stood in the heart of the town, his mood was grave, and in his heart he knew not what throb of ex- alted sadness caused him to shrink from the boisterous life of the street and turn his face to nature. Not far from the town there was a deep woods still untouched by civilization; and to- ward this he bent his footsteps. Penetrating to its heart, he came upon an open green knoll sloping toward the west—a favorite spot; and here he spent the last moments of day and of early twilight, thinking of the coming inter- view and trying to realize the solemn meaning of these closing hours to him. They were a farewell and a beginning. A farewell to his boyhood and his youth—in a sense a farewell to himself. Never again was he to be merely one soul in his passage through the world, coming none knew whence, going THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE LICKS. 59 none knew whither, but beside him henceforth was to journey another soul, the two having one path, one aim, one inseparable existence. With this soul all that had thus far been his own was now to be divided; from that soul he was to receive back all that he gave—the same, and yet how different; bond for bond, heart for heart, duty for duty, life for life. His betrothal! For years he had worshipped toward this height. He looked upon it as the supreme shrine of his soul, set on a white mountain-peak; and he felt that he must pass upward to it over a pathway of thoughts as pure as a fresh fall of snow. With a kind of stern exultant joy he thought that at last the time had come when he could drop from his character its barrier and disguises and reveal himself to her. How much more she could love him then, having come to under- stand him in his realnature! Their association had always been more trivial than he could have wished. They had seemed to play at each other only before the drop-curtains of 60 JOHN GRAY. their natures and from confronting stages. But, just as he had never done himself justice, so he was sure that behind her pretty childish talk and pouting coquetries there were corre- sponding depths of noble character to be dis- covered. Thus, he had always loved her best, not for what he saw in her, but for what he believed remained unseen; and he had valued her most, not for what she was, but for what in time he fancied she would become. And now he did not doubt that, meeting him on the high level of a new sacred union, she would come forth the real woman in sympathetic com- panionship. A complete tenderness overcame him with this vision of her; a look of all but religious reverence for her filled his eyes. The last rays of the sun struck the summit of the green knoll on which he was lying. The sunset was one of unsurpassed softness and repose, with depth after depth opening inward, as though to the heart of the infinite love. The boughs of the trees over his head were hung with blossoms. THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE LICKS. 61 There were blue and white flowers at his feet. “T have ended the first season of my life!” he cried: “‘ winter lies behind me. Iam about to pass into the second: itismyspring. What are flowers but nature’s declaration of love! My heart, too, has burst into bloom; and now that it is open, like them it can never, never close again.” Thus lifted up for his meeting with her, he could not bear the thought, as he walked back to town, that he should have to speak first with any other human being. Ordinary conversation would jar on him, a rude coarse word on the street defilehim. Fortunately, he reached his room unmolested; and there, hav- ing carefully but without vanity dressed him- self in his best, he took his way to the house of Father Poythress. There were some minutes of waiting. More than once he heard in another room the sounds of smothered laughter and of two voices—one in appeal, one in refusal; then there was 62 JOHN GRAY. laughter again; and then at last Amy slowly entered the room, holding Kitty Poythress by the hand. All day she had been looking for her lost bundle, riding to different homesteads in the country, inquiring at othersin town. She had come home at dark with the last hope that it might have been returned during her absence. Now she was tired, worried over the loss of her things, disappointed that she could not go to the party of which she had dreamed for weeks. Her beautiful little head was wearing its heaviest crown of thorns, composed of deep- piercing sorrows and griefs. She did not wish to see any one, least of all John Gray, with whom she had broken her engagement, and who, no doubt, had come to know the reason. But if she told him her reason, it would only make matters worse; for he would say, “Can’t you wear another dress? What makes the difference?” and look at her in the grave, kind, patient, rather pitying way in which he would look at one of his school-children who had THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE LICKS. 63 misspelled a word of one syllable. In the bot- tom of her heart she felt that he in the bottom of his was always bearing with her and mak- ing allowances for her, as for a child who would learn better by and by. She secretly resented this, since it wounded her vanity to be made to feel that she was not perfect; and certainly to-night she was in no mood to have her troubles smiled over and herself magnani- mously pardoned for being justifiably wretched. Therefore, as she advanced slowly into the room, holding Kitty by the hand, her manner was listless, petulant, and resentful. She gave him one .of her beautiful little hands, pouted, smiled, dropped on a sofa by Kitty’s side, strengthened her hold on Kitty’s hand, and asked Kitty whether she did not feel tired. “We are both so tired,” she then said to Gray, with the air of being willing at least to include him in the conversation. “And Will- iam Penn is so broken down, and so hungry, and Iam so afraid he will starve to-night at 64 JOHN GRAY. the tavern stable. I wish, as you go home, you would stop by there and tell them to give him as much as he can eat. He is so unhappy when he is hungry!” Gray muttered rather meekly that he would go with pleasure. “You know we’ve been riding nearly all day, there were so.many places to go to. How many miles have we travelled, Kitty? Of course Kitty couldn’t count exactly,” she continued, ignoring Kitty’s smothered laugh, “because there are no mile-posts in Kentucky. Would you rather ride with mile-posts or with- out mile-posts?” This she asked in the manner in which a charming kitten might inquire of a grown-up cat whether it loved sunshine. He sat looking steadily at her this time with- out replying, and the silence became awkward. “T suppose you want to know why I broke my engagement with you,” she cut in witha hard voice; “but I don’t think you ought to ask. I think you ought to accept my reason without wanting to know it.” THE BATTLE OF THE BLUE LICKS. 65 “T do accept it. Ihad never meant to ask,” he answered, speaking quickly but quietly, like a person who recalls some trifle that had been forgotten. “Oh, don’t be too indifferent,” she cried with sarcastic humor. ‘It would not be com- plimentary. You ought to be very much dis- appointed. You ought to want to know my reason, but you ought not to ask what it is.” Then again he sat looking at her in silence. “And you really don’t care to know why I broke my engagement? You really don’t?” “Not unless you should wish to tell me.” “Tt is a very serious reason; isn’t it, Kitty?” “That I had never doubted.” “Tt might seem very amusing to you.” “It could scarcely be both.” “Yes, it is; it is both. I'll tell you why I am not going with you: I have lost my reason for going.” And she and Kitty exchanged a look of intelligent amusement. He felt only that he was being incredibly trifled with, and sought to change the subject. A few minutes 5 66 JOHN GRAY. later Kitty tried to leave the room; but Amy tightened her clasp, and gave Kitty the threat- ening glance of one who holds another to a promise. It was impossible not to divine be- tween them the kind of understanding that any man finds it hard to forgive; but he con- tinued to talk to both for some minutes longer. Then again, and more openly, Kitty endeavored to make her escape; again, and more openly, she was withheld. At once he rose to go, unruffled, polite, even with an awkward attempt at a sally of humor in his leave-taking. But once out of doors, he fell quickly to work upon making out a case in her favor.