I 
 
 
 ;!->&: 
 
"AT YOU-ALL S HOUSE" 
 
"Ai YOU-ALL S HOUSE" 
 
 A Missouri Nature Story 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES NEWTON BASKETT 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE STORY OF THE BIRDS " 
 
 Nefo 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 1898 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1898, 
 Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and elcctrotyped, April, 1898. Reprinted, June, 
 
 1898. 
 
 NorfoooD JjJrraa 
 
 J. 8. Cuihing & Co. - Berwick i Smith 
 Norwood Msi. U.S.A. 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 flag jFatijer 
 
 A MISSOURI FARMER 
 

 APOLOGY 
 
 "ANXious Nature sometimes reflects in pools and pud 
 dles the objects which our grovelling senses may fail to see 
 relieved against the sky." 
 
 "The heavens and the earth are one flower: the earth 
 the calyx, the heavens the corolla." 
 
 "Only what is thought or said at certain rare coinci 
 dences is good. I would not be one of those who will 
 foolishly drive a nail into mere lathing and plaster. Give 
 me a hammer and let me feel for the furrowing." 
 
 THOREAU. 
 
 "There is one more help which we cannot do without 
 the help of wild fair Nature." RUSKIN. 
 
 " Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, 
 and of him who can adequately use it." 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 J. N. B. 
 MEXICO, Mo., September, 1897- 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 READERS of American short stories have had 
 the opportunity, during the last twenty years, 
 of becoming acquainted with many of the most 
 interesting and charming sections of the coun 
 try. The landscape of New England, of the 
 Middle States, of Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, 
 Tennessee, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Minnesota, 
 California, Iowa, Kansas, and, more recently, 
 of Oregon, has been sketched with genuine 
 pictorial skill by a group of writers of fiction 
 who have known intimately and sympatheti 
 cally the country and people they have de 
 scribed. The scenery and life of Missouri 
 have so far remained unsketched ; and yet 
 both are rich in color and human interest. 
 The flora of the section is especially varied 
 and beautiful, the region happily combining 
 
x Introduction 
 
 the characteristic qualities of northern and 
 southern natural life, enriching the sober 
 tones of the one, and subduing the excessive 
 richness of the other. In this region life has, 
 for various reasons, developed distinct types 
 of character and habits of thought. Into this 
 fresh field the writer of this story has vent 
 ured in the hope that, by the faithful presen 
 tation of a boy s life on a Missouri farm, the 
 rural charm of the section and the quality and 
 peculiarities of its natural life may be truth 
 fully reported. The large place which Nature, 
 and what may be called natural incident, fill 
 in the story will not surprise readers who are 
 accustomed, in contemporary fiction, to the 
 constant introduction of landscape, not only 
 as a background but also as the key to man 
 ners, habits, and ideals. 
 
 The difference between Miss Jewett s New 
 England farmer and Miss Murfree s Tennes 
 see mountaineer cannot be explained unless 
 one takes into account those differences of 
 natural environment which, in the end, find 
 expression in moral and social conditions. 
 
Introduction xi 
 
 Mr. Baskett has run the thread of the love 
 story told in these pages through rural experi 
 ences of many kinds, in the hope of bringing 
 before the imagination the world of Missouri 
 farm life, and of illustrating some of those 
 ways of human helpfulness which make for 
 the increase of knowledge as well as of hap 
 piness. In such a study the imagination can 
 not rest in the mere knowledge of natural facts, 
 but passes on to those ultimate ideas which not 
 only ennoble but interpret human life. If, in 
 this process, Nature becomes more spiritual 
 and comprehensible, faith in the great spiritual 
 verities will be deepened without the loss of 
 any element of interest from the story. 
 
 HAMILTON W. MABIE. 
 
AT YOU-ALL S HOUSE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 " Our horizons are never quite at our elbows." 
 
 THOREAU. 
 
 " The bird of life is singing on the bough 
 His two eternal notes of I and Thou." 
 
 LE GALLIENNE. 
 
 THEY did not fully recognize each other till 
 they met squarely at the intersection of the 
 roads, though each had seen the other s figure 
 flitting between the branches of the hedge as 
 they neared the crossing. He was in his " shirt 
 sleeves," and wore an old chip hat that slouched 
 over his eyes, and she had on a sunbonnet that 
 fell in an invertebrate fold over her face. Each 
 knew the horse that the other rode, however, 
 and began to pull on the snaffle bit, in the 
 hope that the other might pass first into the 
 main highway and be gone. But before any 
 effect could be wrought upon the hard mouths, 
 it was too late. The courtesies of even such 
 a plight and position as this would not any 
 
2 At You- All s House 
 
 longer tolerate the feint of non-recognition. So 
 the boy shifted the double-trees, that were on 
 his shoulder, round a little, and said, 
 
 " How air you ? " and he threw up the flap 
 of his hat till it rested square across his brow. 
 The girl lifted with her left arm, on which a 
 brass kettle swung, the fold of bonnet from her 
 left eye, and, glancing shyly out, said, 
 
 " Howdy ! " 
 
 There was the consciousness in the manner 
 and flush of each that they had met a little out 
 of season ; for on Sundays they had often seen 
 each other at church, upon different steeds with 
 different panoplies, and with different very 
 different costumes for the riders. The boys 
 rode upon the right side of the girls then, which 
 was the riglit side indeed ; but now as the two 
 "nags" came respectively into the two paths, 
 which the constant passing of the double teams 
 had made, his right knee brushed her feet em 
 barrassingly ; so that he pulled his mare back 
 ward slowly, to pass behind and take the place 
 demanded by equestrian etiquette. As he 
 did so, one of the dangling single-trees caught 
 a hook into the wire handle of Dolly s kettle, 
 and, with a clatter, jerked it from her arm. 
 
At You-AU s House 3 
 
 Her horse darted forward at the clash, and the 
 boy s mare sprang backward, bringing his hat- 
 flap again over his eyes so that he could not 
 see the girl s fate ; but he felt all sorts of 
 things, and cursed himself and "old Sal" for 
 the awkwardness of the situation. 
 
 Both horses were old, and, on ordinary occa 
 sions, unusually gentle. The appearance alone 
 of a brass kettle or a jingling mass of single-trees 
 and double-trees was not frightful to either; 
 but their sudden mid-air combination was be 
 yond equine comprehension. Hence when the 
 breeze had again caught his hat-flap, and he 
 had realized himself as doing anything at all 
 voluntary, Shan was driving with heavy 
 thumps the heels of his plough shoes into the 
 sides of old Sal to prevent her from shying 
 further away from the dangling kettle, and 
 Dolly was slapping the neck of old Bill with 
 the surplus ends of her reins to make him 
 approach it. 
 
 It was the long lane together from this on till 
 their ways parted. The hope that each held, 
 that the other might hurry on, had now van 
 ished ; for the boy s working pants had a patch 
 which the bare back of old Sal did not wholly 
 
4 At You- All s House 
 
 hide, and the girl, besides realizing a sort of 
 general dishevelment from her shaking up, felt 
 sure that the placket of her skirt behind was 
 gaping badly above the rim of her saddle. 
 
 " Father made a crab-apple drag this morn 
 ing," said the boy, after a long silence. " Mr. 
 Johnson allers mashes his laprings down, or I 
 needn t ter brought these swingle-trees. We ve 
 got swingle-trees," he added apologetically. 
 
 " I wisht people d fetch home what they 
 borry," said the girl, with a sort of snap. 
 " Maw wanted ter stew some dried peaches, 
 and here our brass kittle s been over at the 
 Thorntons fer two weeks." 
 
 He felt that her apology for being on the 
 road was better than his, and this threw him on 
 the defensive. 
 
 " Our double-trees broke," he said. 
 
 Then, after a moment: "I ll take these back 
 ter-morrer." 
 
 But really he had never thought of such 
 promptness till then, and had never practised it 
 in a region where the custom of the Thorntons 
 was the rule. 
 
 " Air you-all s folk through sowin oats ? " said 
 the boy. 
 
At You-Airs House 5 
 
 " Don t know. How many hens has your 
 maw got settin ? " she replied. 
 
 "Don t know, but we ve six little lambs," 
 said Shan, indicating the progress of spring 
 over his way. 
 
 " Maw took off forty chickens Monday," was 
 her rejoinder. 
 
 Then there was a long conversational hiatus, 
 as if interest held its breath. The horses jogged 
 with a sort of dog-trot, the newly come 
 meadowlarks sang on the utmost tree tops, " I 
 see you sillies there ! " the prairie horned lark, 
 as Langille has it, giggled from a fence stake 
 as they passed, " Quit ! quit, you silly rigs, 
 and get away ! " and down on the branch in 
 a near-by tangle of willows the blackbirds were 
 wheezing out a lazy asthmatic serenade. 
 
 Now and then the horses bumped against 
 each other, and Dolly, feeling that she was rid 
 ing too near, perhaps, drew Bill off a little out 
 of the path. Here he stepped in an old horse- 
 track filled with water, and his piston-like foot 
 sent a stream of slush up so suddenly and with 
 such force that the boy could not close his eye 
 quickly enough to dodge it. Shan dropped his 
 reins, and nearly dropped his burden, and 
 
6 At Yon- All s House 
 
 with mouth wide open and face distorted he 
 rubbed his lids and suffered. The girl drew up 
 her horse, apologized extravagantly, and touched 
 his cheek with her soft finger tips as she wiped 
 the liquid slime away ; and in all she showed 
 such sweet sorrow to the muddy blinks which 
 Shan got between his tears that he thought he 
 had never known such sweet suffering. 
 
 He had barely got his vision cleared when 
 they arrived where their ways parted. 
 
 "Good-by; I m sorry that I hooked yer 
 kittle," and 
 
 "Good-by; I m sorry I filled yer eye," had 
 been said. 
 
 Then an embarrassing pause ensued, as 
 if more than this were obligated, when, with 
 an impatient snatch at the snaffles, each horse 
 turned away and relieved an embarrassing 
 situation ; for these young people still felt 
 that long lingerings at farewells showed respect, 
 and they had not yet learned the art of going. 
 
 Shan had not gone far when, in some inde 
 finable way, he felt that he had left something 
 yet behind. But his outfit was complete. Not 
 one of the clips was off the single-trees ; the 
 clevis was in the midst, and its pin was there, 
 
At You- All s House 7 
 
 of course even with the bit of leather in the 
 slot to keep it in its place. Perhaps if he 
 shifted the whole to the other shoulder it would 
 be better. No, he still felt as if one suspender 
 button were gone. Just then the old mare 
 lifted her head and voice in one long shudder 
 ing, maternal wail, and he knew. 
 
 Dolly had realized an acquisition, just a few 
 moments before; so that when Shan return 
 ing reached the forks of the road again, he 
 saw her, some distance down the " Brushy 
 Fork" lane, wildly waving her bonnet at the 
 old mare s little black mule. At sight of her 
 offspring Sal neighed again, and the colt brayed 
 a reply but kept on following Bill, in spite of 
 maternal calls and feminine remonstrance. 
 
 As Dolly " shooed " and flaunted, the colt ran 
 into the briery rail-fence corner on the one side, 
 or bounded over the brush heaps of trimmed- 
 off hedge upon the other, and seemed to think 
 that Bill was a good enough mother, and the 
 Brushy Fork lane a good enough road for any 
 plebeian mule at present. 
 
 Finally, with fine maternal prance, and with 
 clips and hooks a-clatter, the old mare and Shan 
 bore down upon the fray. Round and round, 
 
8 At You- All s House 
 
 between the two horses, beyond them both, the 
 mule went in a sort of lost maze the old mare 
 shivering with her tremulous calling. Shan 
 whistled "Whee-ooh! Whee-ooh ! Whew!" in 
 varying pitch, as if a ten-day-old colt knew the 
 whole gamut; and Dolly whirled and "headed" 
 and shied and " she-e-ed " and rattled the handle 
 of her kettle. The braids of her brown hair 
 had fallen down her back, her eyes were flash 
 ing with the excitement, and her face was 
 bright with exertion and the humor of the 
 occasion. 
 
 Finally the mule appeared to smell out, rather 
 than see, its mother seeming much surprised 
 at her presence ; and as it laid its head along 
 her side, Shan knew that the fray was over. 
 
 He looked up into the pretty, blushing face, 
 and said upon the impulse of its inspiration : 
 
 " Say, tell your brother Henry I ll be over at 
 you-all s house Saturday night to stay all night 
 with him." 
 
 And as he turned away the girl nodded and 
 laughed out what he thought was such a sweet 
 willingness to carry the message that he felt, as 
 he rode on, that, besides the horse and his rider, 
 he had left something behind him yet. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 ..." and in my breast 
 Spring wakens, too ; and my regret 
 Becomes an April violet 
 And buds and blossoms like the rest." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 " Thoughts must come naturally, like wild flowers ; they can 
 not be forced in a hot-bed even although aided by the leaf 
 mould of your past." ALEX. SMITH. 
 
 ALL that afternoon and the next morning 
 Shan rode the crab-tree drag, as he brushed in 
 the oats and watched the "bull-heads," or 
 golden plovers, as they flew past him in great, 
 mazy, migrating clouds, or swept, like wisps of 
 fog, over the burnt fallow of the further field re 
 served for corn. Often the lazy haze of the 
 heated air would quiver in the sunlight in a sort 
 of vibratory unison with the shimmer upon the 
 birds wings, as they stretched their feet in 
 alighting. They seemed to make the earth 
 alive before the rousing of root and leaf, as 
 they ran now one ahead, now another over 
 the blackened mould. 
 
 9 
 
io At You- All s House 
 
 There was to him a peculiar appropriateness 
 in their coming, not simply because they always 
 had come, but because they came and went with 
 the season which seemed to be a transient one, 
 hinting of the summer s permanence that was 
 not yet here. He was a boy who wondered ; 
 and he asked himself if this too were the reason 
 why so many strange sensations came to him 
 at this time of year only, and was the spring 
 of his own longings and high, passing hopes 
 to be followed by a greening and persisting 
 summer ? 
 
 After dinner he took the double-trees home ; 
 but he took the precaution to wear a coat and a 
 better hat, and to put a saddle and a stiff-bit 
 riding bridle upon another horse. It was not 
 because he felt that a similar set of happenings 
 would again befall him, but when his imagina 
 tion put him amid the scenes of the day before, 
 he felt better in being a little better prepared 
 for them. 
 
 While returning toward home, he lived over 
 the scenes of yesterday even turning out 
 to note where Dolly s horse had stepped into 
 the mud-puddle ; and though he could not 
 feel the burden upon the shoulder or the keen 
 
At You-AH s House 11 
 
 pain of the grating sand under his lids, he 
 closed his eyes, and there was again, as in a 
 dream, the soft brush of a finger upon his 
 cheek. 
 
 Suddenly from the dead weed stalks in the 
 draw where the blackbirds had sung yesterday, 
 there broke forth the most rollicking, tinkling, 
 broken-up, crushed-glass kind of bird melody 
 that he had ever heard something in per 
 fect accord with his mood again ; and looking 
 up he saw a flock of black-and-white birds all 
 mingled in with some plain, streaked, sparrow- 
 like kinds the former given to the utmost 
 abandon of music. He had seen these birds 
 before occasionally, but he never knew their 
 names, and now he found there was more that 
 he had not known, for he had heard the bobo 
 link sing for the first time. 
 
 Maybe they have been singing before, he 
 thought, and he had not noticed it. He was 
 over to see Sister Mary and her new little babe, 
 Sunday. Mary said it was just beginning " to 
 notice " ; and when she bowed and smiled and 
 laughed and shouted at it in a very demonstrative 
 way why, it had "noticed" and smiled in re 
 turn. Wonder if he wasn t just beginning to 
 
12 At You- All s House 
 
 "notice" a sort of second "noticin ," like 
 his second teeth ? Why was it that he hadn t 
 noticed before yesterday what a pretty sister 
 Henry Simpson had ? 
 
 He reached up and pulled some buds from 
 an overhanging elm branch. 
 
 " Why, these look like blossoms," he muttered 
 to himself. " This tree s like er peach blooms 
 before it leaves." And he glanced across into 
 the woods to see if the redbud and the service- 
 berry were in similar leafless glory yet. 
 
 He had known this girl from her babyhood. 
 He had gone to school with her at the same 
 house before the district was divided. When 
 he was in Fractions " complex fractions," she 
 was saying that if she had one apple and the 
 teacher gave her another, she would "eat em 
 bofe," and was reading " May I go up " and 
 swinging her little crossed feet under the hard 
 benches. 
 
 While visiting at her home he had sneered 
 down at her ignorance, or smiled patronizingly 
 at her innocence, as the mood moved him, when 
 she tried to talk " taws " and " knucks^ with 
 him and Henry ; or he had openly rebuked her 
 when she had slipped up and squeezed out, 
 
At You- AlV s House 13 
 
 between her little weak thumb and finger, a 
 marble into the ring as one shoots a slippery 
 cherry seed. 
 
 She was about three years his junior, he 
 reckoned : and while as a boy of about twelve 
 he had had his passions, they were always for 
 girls that were much his senior, rather than the 
 reverse. He recalled gathering blue violets and 
 other flowers for one of these ; and because her 
 name was Lizzie Williams, he remembered 
 nothing in his past life that stood out then as 
 such a fitting success, as when, one day, he pre 
 sented her, slyly, on the way home, with a bunch 
 of " Sweet Williams." Next to this bliss, per 
 haps, was the recollection of hoarding for her, 
 in the bare pocket of his pants, choice bits of 
 the savory tips of the roots of seedling hickory 
 trees, which were known to him and his fel 
 lows as " sweet roots." 
 
 Why, that was long, long ago now seven or 
 eight years. He doubted if he would now 
 know a " hickory with " that would pull well, or 
 taste right when he got it. Yes, you loop the top 
 into a ring and run a long pole through it, and 
 let one end rest upon the ground and and 
 then you strain the life out of you at the other 
 
14 At You- All s House 
 
 end, with the other fellows, till you feel the long, 
 smooth, yielding slip of the tap-root away down 
 below the "hardpan." And he smiled as he 
 recalled how they used to brag upon poor, semi- 
 idiotic Billy Benton, till in his big strength he 
 did most of the work, and in his ignorance took 
 for his portion the largest part of the root which 
 was the toughest and most tasteless. By George ! 
 he would go out and pull a sweet root all by 
 himself some day soon, just to remind himself 
 of his youth. He believed he could pull one 
 now with his hands only especially if the 
 ground were wet. 
 
 And Dolly Simpson again ! Why, he used to 
 " fight roosters " with her occasionally, as she 
 called hooking together the heads of the blue 
 violets, to see whose was the stronger ; and once, 
 he recalled, she had come to him with some 
 fresh, crimson, black-jack buds, that he might, 
 with his strong grip, squeeze out their juice to 
 stain her cheeks her little fingers not being 
 strong enough. And as she turned her little 
 cheek sideways up to him, he thought with a 
 thrill now of how, just to tease her merely, he 
 had kissed the fair face and got a ringing slap 
 upon his own for his pains. 
 
At You- All s House 15 
 
 My ! what a " plague " she was ! She knew 
 his weakness for the bigger girl, and with a cote 
 rie of other little ones which she led, sang teasing 
 songs about " One kiss from Lizzie to keep 
 him sweet," and some other stuff now forgotten. 
 She bore to him, with great enjoyment, teasing 
 messages from the other large girls, who were 
 jealous of his attentions to Lizzie a now some 
 what washed-out beauty, long since married. 
 
 It came to him what a keen eye Dolly always 
 had for the effects of water upon a boy s hair, 
 and how she delighted in shouting out, " You 
 boys have been to the creek ! " a forbidden 
 luxury, because they often lingered too long 
 beyond the call of " Books ! books ! " and the 
 clatter of the ruler against the door jamb. 
 
 Once while the boys were in bathing, a neigh 
 boring youth, not in school, had mixed their 
 shirts and declared that he had surely heard the 
 master calling. A general scramble and fight 
 had occurred, as charges and countercharges of 
 theft had passed, and Shan had darkened 
 Henry s cheek with a blow, in return for some 
 thing equally as good. By next day it was all 
 right again between him and Henry, yet as 
 they sat and learned their lessons from the 
 
16 At Yon-Airs House 
 
 same book, Dolly had not failed, every time 
 he looked up at her, to stick her tongue out at 
 him from behind her " McGuffey s First " ; and 
 when, at noon, he found her and her little " half- 
 handered " mob drinking at the well, she threw 
 some water over him, and he had to grit his 
 teeth to keep from slapping her. " By George! 
 think of that, noiv ! " 
 
 When was it before that he had gone over to 
 see Henry Simpson ? Come to think of it, he 
 had ceased going there long ago as a boy be 
 cause that "towsled-headed" little sister of his, 
 having no one else to play with, had always 
 insisted on being in all the games rejoicing 
 ever at his loss or discomfiture. 
 
 So he had chummed since with Jim Williams 
 
 whose big sister was his early love. 
 
 And now here he was acting the hypocrite, 
 with himself even, in saying that he wanted to 
 go over and renew his friendship with Henry 
 Simpson, and counting here some days away 
 
 the hours till Saturday night should come. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 "Chance sends the breeze, but if the pilot slumber at the 
 helm " SCOTT. 
 
 " They who are ready to go are already invited." 
 
 THOREAU. 
 
 "PuRTY wet, breaking corn ground to-day," 
 said Henry, as the boys went out to put up 
 Shan s filly Saturday night. 
 
 " Yes, purty tough pullin for two with a six- 
 teen-inch plough, now I tell yer," replied Shan. 
 
 " Specially if a feller covers more n he cuts, 
 as he nearly allers does" socially chimed in 
 Henry again. 
 
 "That s what I always do," said Shan. And 
 he reflected that "maybe he did when he 
 wasn t ploughin visitin , fer instunce." 
 
 The boys readily renewed their old comrade 
 ship, and, after going up to bed, they talked far 
 into the night, till a series of raps on the head 
 board of the paternal bed below telegraphed to 
 them that patience had its limits, and they went 
 to sleep. 
 
 At supper and breakfast Dolly, in neat trim 
 c 17 
 
1 8 At You- All s House 
 
 bib-apron and with her hair in two long, heart- 
 ravishing braids, red-ribboned at the tips, waited 
 upon the table, acting as though Shan were 
 only her brother s guest and she her mother s 
 helper. She had scarcely begun to receive 
 company yet not at least in a direct " set-to," 
 but occasionally boys rode to and from church 
 with her, and met her out at neighboring places. 
 Except at these table duties Shan saw very little 
 of her now, and he imagined that he noted a 
 sort of studied effort to avoid him. Perhaps, 
 after all, he thought, he had cut a little more 
 than he could cover, instead of the reverse. 
 
 Next morning, the boys went out to feed. To 
 sit around the house while Henry worked would 
 have been too pointed an intimation of the 
 visitor s intentions of directly " settin to " the 
 girl, and too great a breach of the visiting eti 
 quette of the region a breach which only an 
 open engagement to the daughter of the house 
 hold would justify. After feeding at the barn 
 they took a long walk over " the ridge " to feed 
 some hogs on the other slope where the " bottom 
 field " fringed out, this way, into the forest, and 
 where its last year s crop lay moulding in a rail 
 pen with a sodden roof of corn-fodder. 
 
At You- All s House 19 
 
 " Poo-ee-e ! Poo-ee-e ! Poo-ee-e ! Pig ! Pig ! 
 Pig! Poo-ee-e Poor-r-r Pig!" shouted Henry 
 with a deep resonance throughout the woods ; 
 and the porkers came running in for their por 
 tion of " snapped " corn. 
 
 Some of the snow-birds that flitted in the 
 borders of the thickets as they passed not hav 
 ing gone north yet seemed much more black 
 ened about the head and breast than they were 
 last fall, or when they appeared about the door- 
 yard in the winter. 
 
 " I wonder what those fellers are so dressed 
 up and gay about," said Shan. 
 
 "Just goin somewhere and glad about it," 
 said Henry. "You don t seem to be in your 
 workin duds this morning," and he glanced 
 Shan over from head to heel. 
 
 There is founded deep in human nature 
 inherited from the very birds and beasts es 
 pecially when we are plainly clad ourselves, the 
 tendency to be provoked to some emulous feel 
 ing, to phrase it mildly, when we stand in the 
 presence of extravagant dress or ornaments 
 acknowledgedly superior to our own ; and the 
 plume and crest and pretty furs, flaunted once 
 in the forest to rouse a rival s ire, find yet 
 
20 At You-All s House 
 
 in aisle and pew a similar mission, so strongly 
 still is the whole world kin. Then again, 
 what more provoking thing than that sweep 
 ing vertical glance which we feel is "sizing 
 us up ! " 
 
 As the boys went back in that glad, joyous 
 April air, they felt the muscular jubilance that 
 it inspired, and they grew reminiscent of their 
 younger days, how in their athletic struggles 
 one or the other had prevailed. Shortly one 
 slapped the other on the back and dodged 
 and ran, and then they chased and foiled, until 
 near the ridge top, in full sight of the house, 
 they clinched, in boyish emulation. It was 
 " catch as catch can," the mere impulse of the 
 moment, no time for rules or special agree 
 ments now "breeches holt," now back now 
 "grapevine," now side by side with thigh to 
 thigh, with twist, and lift, and trip, and strain, 
 with explosive bursts of breath and laughter 
 shouts, till Henry had Shan fairly on his hip, 
 and was about to hurl him forward to a fall. 
 Just then the visitor saw Dolly at the back door 
 shake out the crumbs from the tablecloth. 
 
 "Stop, Henry! I ll give up. You ll spoil 
 my Sunday suit." 
 
At You- All s House 21 
 
 "And your reputation as a rastler," said the 
 host as he loosed his guest. 
 
 " I can throw you any day with my old 
 clothes on," said Shan. 
 
 Perhaps he could, for nothing is so hamper 
 ing to a country boy as being dressed up, 
 especially in a long-tailed coat. 
 
 As he straightened up he was astonished to 
 note a certain horse hitched comfortably at the 
 Simpson stiles, and a very sudden suspicion 
 arose as to the purpose of this steed. Henry 
 seemed to know it at a glance, and it must have 
 been there before, for his eye at this distance 
 easily recognized even the saddle as " Sol 
 Jenkins, sure." 
 
 As they passed the horse-lot again, the geese 
 were chattering, screaming, and hissing, and 
 Shan wondered why some dames had two or 
 three husbands and some gallants two or more 
 wives, while some bachelors waited lonely on 
 the borders of the flock, and some forlorn goose 
 never had a sinuous neck straightened near her 
 own or a single bill-snap or wing-stroke made 
 to gain her favor. 
 
 As they were all mounting to start for church, 
 Shan brought up the horse that had Dolly s 
 
22 At Yon-Airs House 
 
 sidesaddle upon it, his old friend Bill, and 
 she mounted and adjusted herself with many 
 a bounce and tuck and shaking of her skirts, 
 and thanked him kindly for his attention. But 
 when he had mounted his little filly, after the 
 many whirls she gave him as he leaped, and had 
 really gotten his " bearings " well again, Dolly 
 and Sol Jenkins were a dozen rods up the road, 
 and Henry, reining in his impatient horse, was 
 waiting for him. 
 
 So chagrined was Shan at his defeat that he 
 did not go in when he got to church, but hung 
 around with the loungers that regard " meetin " 
 as a place to meet congenial friends. He felt, in 
 some way, that if he had gone in, all the gossipy 
 world would have known that he had been "cut 
 out"; and he was very careful not to say that 
 he had stayed all night with Henry Simpson. 
 
 Not to go in was something of a privation to 
 him, since the singing-master had been abroad in 
 the land and had developed the boy into one of 
 the neighborhood vocalists. Like all singers, he 
 delighted in hearing himself and being heard 
 enjoying nothing else so much, except an error 
 in some other singer s effort. He was in no way 
 superhuman. 
 
At You-All s House 23 
 
 At last, after the long service, when he had 
 mounted his whirligig of horseflesh and was 
 quiet, he saw Sol bringing up Dolly s horse. 
 No sooner had she ridden away from the plat 
 form than Shan cut in beside her and asked if 
 she were ready to go home. It was a daring 
 thing for him to do and very embarrassing mo 
 ment to Dolly. But Sol relieved the situation 
 by coming politely up, yet unmounted, and 
 asking Shan if he would not kindly see Miss 
 Simpson home, since he had to go another 
 way, and must deny himself that pleasure. Sol 
 took a weekly story-paper and knew the proper 
 thing to do to blunt defeat and yet retain his 
 rights. 
 
 But now the burden of the conversation was 
 upon him, for the girl was rather glum, and he 
 had serious doubts about the etiquette of his 
 position. If Dolly was at all pleased with the 
 exchange, she was not advertising it. 
 
 " Thinking about the sermon ? " said Shan, 
 after a long time, in unfortunate desperation. 
 
 " No. But how d ju like it?" 
 
 " Well er splendid. Brother Waterman 
 is always good," he replied. 
 
 " Brother Thumper, I reckon you mean. 
 
24 At You-AWs House 
 
 Brother Waterman wasn t there. You must 
 ov set far back," 
 
 " Well er yes ruther ! " he stammered. 
 
 " I thought I heard your voice behind me. 
 You sing tenor, I think. You ought ter set fur 
 ther up. Your music s needed." 
 
 Shan set his teeth against further lying if 
 possible. 
 
 " No, you didn t hear me sing. I didn t have 
 no book," he added. Surely that was the 
 truth. 
 
 " There was plenty around me," and she 
 glanced shyly at him. " You should set further 
 up next time," she repeated. 
 
 There was a bit of mischief in her tones. 
 
 "Or mount just a little sooner? " he said, in 
 the same spirit, bending forward to see her 
 averted face. 
 
 They were passing now over the bit of road on 
 which they had ridden together last week, and 
 the remembrance of those events had silenced 
 them. Neither spoke during its entire length. 
 When they passed the point where she had 
 splashed his eye, the girl turned to hhn and 
 smiled a contrition that she felt ; and at the other 
 place, after turning off toward her house, 
 
At Yon-Airs House 25 
 
 where the mother had found her mule, they 
 looked into each other s faces and laughed 
 aloud. They were nearing her stiles when 
 Shan, feeling that the good-humored occasion 
 would justify it, blurted out : 
 
 " Why didn t you wait for me this morning, 
 Dolly ? " 
 
 " Oh, you came over to our house, you know, 
 to see my brother Henry," she said in the dig 
 nity of good grammar ; " he waited for you, 
 didn t he ? Won t you come in ? " as she slid 
 upon the stiles. " Henry ll be at home shortly," 
 still with a rising inflection. 
 
 But he hitched her horse for her, said " good- 
 by" as she gathered her riding-skirt about 
 her, and without dismounting he rode home. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 " And grasp the skirts of happy chance 
 And breast the blows of circumstance." 
 
 TENNYSON. 
 
 "Before man made us citizens great Nature made us man." 
 
 LOWELL. 
 
 THERE were at least two things that bore 
 heavily down upon Shan next day as he fixed 
 the old worm fence that lay between the middle 
 prairie field and the "back forty " of virgin sod. 
 The one was that having directed his visit at 
 Henry solely, he could not again, with rustic 
 propriety, go over to the Simpson s till Henry 
 had come to see him once. He felt, too, that 
 this visiting from Henry would not be so respon 
 sive now as in their younger school-days, when 
 "you go home with me to-night and I ll go 
 home with you ter-morrer night " was the rule. 
 
 The other was the consciousness that he was 
 not up to the undertaking of a regular courting 
 campaign ; he doubted the policy of it, even if 
 he were. Yet he must look out for being too 
 much given to subterfuges. Twice yesterday 
 26 
 
At You-AlVs House 27 
 
 she had caught him fibbing certainly. She 
 had always known his weak points and ten 
 dencies, and he had had a broad hint that she 
 mistrusted his sudden interest in her brother. 
 
 But while he knew that she would never 
 respond to his attentions till he came out man 
 fully and aimed them directly at her, he could 
 not help feeling that his modesty and green 
 ness made all that impractical now. He was 
 too blunt, he felt. He knew himself too ardent. 
 The girl was too shy. He would spoil the 
 thing with the boldness of it, as he feared he 
 might have done already. He must have some 
 sort of lubrication, the foil of an excuse for 
 getting near her and some machinery for work 
 ing out his plans. 
 
 He did not like the idea, either, of depending 
 upon mere accidents. They were too purposeless. 
 He would just set his will or willingness rather 
 in the way of opportunity and wait. 
 
 " Boo-hoo-hoo ! Boo-woo-woo ! " 
 
 " Where was that now ? Birds is kinder ven 
 triloquists often. Why, it s over in the prairie 
 paster there. George! it s been er long time 
 since I heard that ser close. Never could see 
 em at it. What does it mean, anyway ? Won- 
 
28 At You-AIVs House 
 
 der just where it is. There! Look at that un 
 flyin to that spot and another n. It s close 
 by the deep draw there." 
 
 With back bent he crept down the deep 
 " wash-out " that ran out of the field into " the 
 forty," and when he looked up at the assembly 
 of the prairie grouses not twenty yards away 
 
 he began to mutter : 
 
 "Whatter they doin , anyway? Is it er 
 meetin er a dance ? Looks like both ! That 
 old feller bowin low and throwin his coat-tails 
 high looks like he s preachin . That other s 
 shoutin , I reckon and some s sayin amen, 
 I guess, like ther Methodis . Then there s ther 
 air and alto of the sisters in that cacklin and 
 ther deep bass of the No ! that s not reli 
 gious, surely ! Fightin , as I m a sinner, and 
 showin off and fightin ag in. See them women 
 
 hens, I mean just cacklin a little on the 
 outer edge and scarcely lookin at ther ring. 
 And look at that now ! that slick young rooster 
 just a-walkin off with the prettiest pullets while 
 the struttin and scratchin is goin on in camp." 
 
 He rose up coughed, and the assembly was 
 dispersed. 
 
 "Queer things is prairie chickens," said the 
 
At You-AIVs House 29 
 
 boy, as he crawled back under the water-gap to 
 his work. " Some other folks is queer, too." 
 
 It was a peculiarity of this boy that though 
 he knew the rules of grammar and could put on 
 " good speech " when the occasion demanded, 
 as he put on his good manners or his good 
 clothes, yet he always thought in his vernacular 
 of " countryfied " talk, and usually conversed 
 with his fellows in the same way. 
 
 Yet it was not so strange after all, for his 
 mother had rocked him to sleep with lullabies 
 sung in it, and soothed his hurts with the 
 crooning baby words of it; and all that the 
 school-teacher had been able to do yet was to 
 make the " I have saws " and " I seens " a 
 little scarcer in the younger generation than 
 in the older. 
 
 There were times when under the special 
 strain of care, politeness, dignity, or irony this 
 boy, Dolly, and others could sustain a conversa 
 tion in proper tense, mood, and case, with some 
 hints of orthoepy in the clear ring of the "ings"; 
 but when alone or with each other only, or when 
 strong feelings came suddenly, the grammar 
 rules were merely fragments. Their educations 
 were far beyond their practice. 
 
30 At You- All s House 
 
 " I guess old Sal won t lift that rider off," as 
 he thought of the roguish mare and glanced at 
 the top of the tall stake that he had just set. 
 The old mare had a habit of lifting up the 
 riders with her neck, backing off, and laying 
 them down till the fence was low enough to leap. 
 
 " I reckon girls is er little like prairie hens," 
 he ruminated, as he parted a thin place in the 
 hedge on the way home and crawled through. 
 " Likes ter be fought and rastled fer a little, 
 and showed off to er blamed sight and boo-hooed 
 erbout some. Met out with, too, er grain er 
 so, and stolen off with now and then. Fer 
 what else did them hens come ter that circus ? 
 
 " Hen- and human-nature ain t far apart, I 
 guess. 
 
 " Spect I d blow my neck up into bladder 
 balloons, too, if I thought it ud make me look 
 handsomer. See what er fool I am erbout my 
 necktie. Can t ever git one red enough." 
 
 That afternoon he drove the wagon down to 
 the " timber favvty " upon the creek to split out 
 a few more rails to finish his fence something 
 his father said he should have done during the 
 winter "before the sap riz." 
 
 He was walking round and round a small 
 
At You-AWs House 31 
 
 white oak, looking at its knots to determine its 
 splitting qualities, when he heard a bird song 
 entirely new to him. This, of course, was not 
 remarkable, but when he threw his head back 
 and looked, there sat over him two bluejays, 
 and from one came a beautiful subdued warble 
 not much unlike a young mocker s first effort. 
 
 " I reckon that s ther male, but dogged if 
 I knew a jay had any such song as that. 
 Thought all he knew was, jay, jay, chee- 
 dick, chee-dick, and his old pot-licker cry and 
 his hawk-mawks and a few other squawks," 
 muttered the boy to himself. 
 
 Just then the " other one " flew down into the 
 spreading limbs of a black-haw bush, and the 
 singer flew near and began hopping round and 
 round in a circle not a foot away, and grew al 
 most frantic with his song. The lady moved up 
 again into the lower limbs of a trim oak sapling. 
 The male alighted on a bough just in front of 
 her and, ceasing his song, turned his back to her 
 and began to waltz right and left, showing the 
 beautiful blue-and-white markings of his coat. 
 Anon he turned around and, with elevated crest 
 and expectant glance, bowed to her. But she 
 sat upright only, and kept an eye upon the boy. 
 
32 At You-AWs House 
 
 Again and again the lover waltzed and pranced, 
 and turned and bowed, till at last when he came 
 down in a most profound salaam, the lady 
 bowed in return and lifted her wings in the 
 merest quiver, like a young bird begging to be 
 fed. 
 
 " I ll be dinged if she didn t say yes, " said 
 Shan, disgusted that courtship should be so 
 easy ; and he stepped on a stick that snapped. 
 
 Around the trunk of the tree the birds 
 hopped upon the limbs, with scared looks, as 
 cending in spirals till they reached the top, 
 when, with their screams of "jay! jay!" they 
 flew off. 
 
 "Well, the birds puzzle me," said the boy. 
 "He never said a word! Just sung and danced 
 and bowed er little and made er fool of his- 
 self." 
 
 And he sank his axe with a sort of desperation 
 deep into the oak s heart. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 " Gossip , . . taken in homoeopathic doses was as refreshing 
 in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs." 
 
 THOREAU. 
 
 "That dreary time that comes between 
 The last snow and the earliest green, 
 One barren clod the wild fields lie, 
 And all our comfort is the sky." 
 
 LUCY LARCOM. 
 
 " To love her was a liberal education." STEELE. 
 
 TUESDAYS and Fridays were the " grinding 
 days " at Durkee s mill, which, located on Brushy 
 Fork, at first did only sawing, but had put in 
 burrs to accommodate the neighbors. 
 
 " It was no use," Durkee had said, " to think 
 of Mondays and Saturdays. The corn couldn t 
 be shelled a Sunday night, and Saturday every 
 body in creation and his wife must go ter town, 
 and either trade or stand around with their hands 
 in their pockets. Never see such a people." 
 
 Durkee was from further east, and used " see " 
 where his neighbors used " seen." 
 
 But his indictment was a true bill. He could 
 i> 33 
 
34 At You- All s House 
 
 safely put his people s record against the world 
 for watching the sale of stock in which they had 
 no interest and discussing politics of which they 
 had no knowledge. Some went to town to see 
 a man, of course ; for neighbors living within 
 two miles of each other said, as they parted with 
 unfinished business, "Well, I ll see you in town 
 Saturday," when town was ten miles away. 
 Others felt better when they had the excuse of 
 hauling two bushels of corn to town in a farm 
 wagon to have it ground at the " flourin mill," 
 or more likely to swap it for meal already 
 ground. 
 
 In fact, the prospect of this exchange was 
 usually their excuse for going to town instead of 
 to Durkee s they "didn t have ter wait ser 
 long " ; but often, with politics and gossip, the 
 day was wholly spent anyway. On these other 
 days the mill was a good rival of the village, and 
 the very thing that Durkee had growled about 
 became the source of his bread and meat. The 
 improvident are always with us, and the gossip 
 is a little nearer the bone and sweeter, as Thoreau 
 has it, at the neighboring gathering. 
 
 If you went early in order to get your "turn " 
 in soon, there was the long wait for steam to 
 
At You- All s House 35 
 
 get up for this giantess was not an early riser 
 in the old double-tubed boiler of the rural mill. 
 Then it was quite likely that the belt must be 
 laced, or even the piston packed, before a start. 
 
 When once going, gossip of the most savory 
 sort seemed to start afresh along with the redo 
 lent meal, as it ran hot from the spout under the 
 whirring burrs ; and the frequent dog-fight and 
 occasional man- or boy-fight were always possi 
 bilities at least worth staying for. Once when 
 a growing feud between two families had culmi 
 nated, late one Friday afternoon, in a settlement 
 with fists, half of the Brushy Fork region had 
 almost rent its raiment because it had allowed 
 itself to get its grinding in the morning. 
 
 "Oh, let the squire s turn come before mine, I 
 ain t in no hurry," was the favorite formula of 
 altruism in those days at Durkee s mill. And 
 these great, grown-up, rough men bowed to each 
 other in the same crude courtesy with which the 
 giggling girls of the rural picnic stand over the 
 ice-water barrel and say : "You drink," " No, you 
 drink," " No, you drink," " No, you drink," while 
 the thirsty bystander nearly dies to get hold of 
 the dipper. Nothing else but consulting doctors, 
 attitudinizing with all the etiquette of the profes- 
 
36 At You-AlVs House 
 
 sion, while the patient suffers, could exceed the 
 courtesy of a gossipy grinding day at a rural mill. 
 
 Of course, too, the sawing days were some 
 what social, but a man with energy enough to 
 haul saw-logs usually went directly back after 
 another. Besides, the everlasting buzz of the 
 old circular disk as it ran in, choked up, gagged, 
 backed, heated, and spluttered under the water s 
 dash, was not conducive to that perfect flow of 
 soul which the even hum of the burrs inspired. 
 
 You could not go off out of the sound of that 
 old saw and sit down with any peace of mind. 
 Its probabilities were too enticing. It "chawed 
 and spit " wood with such vengeance, as some 
 one said, that you could not stay away if you 
 were near it. At any moment its belt might 
 break and slap the sawyer into eternity, or a slab 
 might be jabbed into its teeth by an awkward 
 workman and two or three men hurled among 
 the cogs or, possibly, upon the saw itself, and 
 be torn asunder. The danger was always im 
 minent, but the strain alone, without converse, 
 was too tense for comfort. So the great log 
 was usually rolled off by turning the^ wagon 
 over, and the customer had the chances of 
 another day when he came for his lumber 
 
At You-AlVs House 37 
 
 two or three of them perhaps before he got it; 
 and he went away cheered by the hope that, 
 upon these, some monotony-breaking thing 
 might happen. 
 
 All over that country, that heating, warping 
 old disk had left its marks the hieroglyphs of 
 disappointed hopes ; for wherever a fence was 
 stretched or a frame arose, there were double 
 kerfs or circular notches and feather-edged 
 planks in sight. 
 
 Shan had shelled his corn the night before, 
 assisted by his father, hurling the red cobs into 
 the open fire which the cool nights yet de 
 manded. Previous to this it had usually been 
 his plan to put the tight well-filled sack upon 
 the bare back of old Sal and, mounting it with 
 care, ride it to mill. Many an hour, when too 
 small to lift the sack into its place again, should 
 it have fallen, he had ridden thus, while the 
 anxious strain lest he should lose his balance had 
 been some of the acutest suffering that he had 
 ever known. How he had longed to be a man, 
 that he might acquire the skill to balance right, 
 or, better, the strength to place the sack back if 
 it fell! 
 
 But now he was not going to mill that way, 
 
38 At Yon-All s House 
 
 first because it was too wet to plough this cold 
 drizzly time, and horses were therefore plenty ; 
 and, second, now that he had acquired it, he 
 cared no longer for the accomplishment of 
 balancing a bag. 
 
 Then there was a third reason : He might 
 meet somebody upon the road, and a meal sack 
 was a poor place to exhibit a graceful carriage. 
 Somehow he had become much concerned 
 about graceful carriages of late. So behind 
 the pair of roan mules he would go, stand 
 ing in the jolting wagon-box ; for he was to 
 pass the school-house where a certain dark- 
 haired girl was yet taking lessons in the " higher 
 branches." 
 
 So past it he went, with the spring-seat taken 
 down and lying upon the bottom his stiff self 
 standing well balanced, with whip cracking and 
 the mules trotting in the crisp April air. He 
 felt that surely this balancing of himself was 
 something to be admired. 
 
 Shan had not stayed all day at the mill solely 
 because he loved the gossip, but with the inten 
 tion of being, very accidentally, of course, upon 
 the road about the time a certain girl with 
 braided hair ought to be going home. Hence 
 
At You- All s House 39 
 
 the mission of the spring-seat, which was in its 
 proper place upon the return trip, in the hope 
 that some one upon invitation might ride with 
 him. 
 
 But his heart fell as he met Dolly a little way 
 this side of the school-house (instead of over 
 taking her on the other) going home with Sissy 
 Jenkins to stay all night. He wondered if she 
 had such a scheme toward Sol as he had toward 
 her, when he used Henry as a foil. No, he would 
 not think that. She and Sissy were good friends, 
 and Henry and Sissy were good friends also 
 if not something more. 
 
 Why didn t he have a sister of his size whom 
 the girls could visit ? 
 
 Glancing up, he found the teacher, whom he 
 had not thought of, turning out of the road to let 
 him pass, and, at her bow, he stopped, and, in 
 pure kindness, asked her if she would not ride. 
 She climbed into the spring-seat beside him. 
 She boarded with some old friends of hers, the 
 Brights, who lived just beyond Shan s father s 
 farm. 
 
 Miss Winnie Hudson was one of those teach 
 ers whose ways were not confined to the stilted 
 methods of the institutes. She was an indi- 
 
40 At You- All s House 
 
 vidual herself, and recognized each pupil before 
 her as an entity apart from another. She/?// 
 with each learner, and threw into all her teach 
 ing the influence of a strong and very striking 
 personality. Besides acquiring her teaching, 
 her pupils acquired her. She wore constantly 
 the unconscious habit of instructing, as much 
 out of school as in it, and was a slave to pedan 
 try for her pupils sake. 
 
 Her knowledge and her education were far 
 beyond books. She had been the little daugh 
 ter of an eastern professor of natural history, 
 who came west to Minnesota in the days when 
 it had the reputation of curing consumption 
 with its climate ; and in her youth and young 
 womanhood she had been more than the larger 
 daughter to him as he roamed the fens and 
 forests in his nature-studies. She was his eager 
 pupil and fellow-student till she went east again 
 to finish her education. 
 
 Then, after her graduation, when her father s 
 death had left them straitened, she had supported 
 herself and mother by taking schools, and, as a 
 motherly-hearted woman will, she had always 
 felt an interest in the large, overgrown, awk 
 ward, country striplings who came to her. She 
 
At You- Air s House 41 
 
 was a born lover of boys and birds. She was 
 not so profoundly informed; but she held 
 everything she knew by the hilt. 
 
 In some way Mr. Bright had secured the 
 neighboring school for her here, and she had 
 left her mother in her northern home and had 
 come to teach it. 
 
 " Mighty poor showing for grass yet," said 
 Shan, spurring his enunciation a little. 
 
 "Yes," she replied, as she drew her wrap up, 
 "it is positively cold yet; but in spite of the 
 lack of sunshine, things begin to grow slightly 
 in response to the alchemy of shower and cloud- 
 subdued light. Spring, Mr. McBride " (no one 
 had ever called him that before, and he took a 
 few kinks out of the hump of his back), " is not 
 all a matter of temperature, of flowers, and 
 grass and leaves, or of melody from the throats 
 of birds that corne to us. There are other 
 subtler evidences of its coming. Like early 
 vegetables, there s a keen relish of them, be 
 cause the heart is so hungry for them after its 
 long winter fast." 
 
 Shan lifted his foot and put it out upon the 
 brake lever, not because there was any need of 
 it, but because he knew not what else to do. 
 
42 At You- All s House 
 
 Perhaps he felt things were getting a little too 
 fast for him. 
 
 "The mole, I notice, in the yard has begun 
 his ploughing and ditching ; the cow licks her 
 flanks into pasty curls, much as you boys brush 
 your hair; the white hen-eggs fleck the smooth 
 depression in the hayloft a little more fre 
 quently now, and the horse, casting it shred at 
 a time, is losing his winter coat." 
 
 There was quite a period of silence. 
 
 " I declare, this ride is simply enthralling to 
 me. Look at those catkins on the hazels 
 those long, grayish, wormy things," she hastened 
 to add as she saw him staring blankly. " They 
 shine now with a new gloss ; and the bunches 
 of the black haw buds there are breaking their 
 autumn covering into which Mother Nature 
 tucked them last fall for their winter nap. 
 You recall how spread out the black haws are 
 in fruit?" 
 
 He nodded an interested face at her, and 
 reached out and took in the lash of his whip. 
 
 " As you say, Mr. McBride, there is no flush 
 yet of the earth into vernal green." (Shan won 
 dered when he had said just this.) "She is 
 only yawning and stretching now in her great 
 
At You- All s House 
 
 strength as she begins to wake from her winter 
 sleep." 
 
 Shan had never heard anything before like 
 this. It was like reading a book but better, 
 for it had in it the teacher s inspiring face. She 
 was not so pretty as Dolly, he thought, but how 
 her countenance could beam and her eyes flash ! 
 His sentimental nature rejoiced at such concep 
 tions. There were things here that had been 
 dreamt of, just the merest bit, in his philosophy, 
 but not formulated. 
 
 " Now this is one of the compensations of 
 living in the frigid north," she continued; "I m 
 from much further north yet, you know." 
 
 Shan nodded as he thought of northern Min 
 nesota as in almost hailing distance of the 
 pole. 
 
 " Ever been south, Mr. McBride ? " 
 
 " Nome." 
 
 "At the south something is always green, 
 you know, a great beauty and blessing, of 
 course, but there is not the sudden contrast of 
 the seasons there as here, to stimulate us into 
 the best of observation and appreciation. In the 
 south spring is simply an earnest a sample 
 of a six months summer." 
 
44 At You-AlTs House 
 
 There was quite a pause. 
 
 " Did you ever think that few southern writers 
 have written charmingly of the seasons ? " 
 
 Shan said " No" of course, with an inward 
 hope that she would not expect him to keep up 
 his side of the conversation. 
 
 "Well now, they just couldn t, you know. 
 They never saw the Indian summer of Irving, 
 the winter of Whittier, or the spring of Tho- 
 reau. Even John Burroughs came near getting 
 too far south the winter he spent at Washing 
 ton." 
 
 Poor Shan ! This was all Dutch to him, he 
 thought, and he reached for the brake again 
 with his foot. 
 
 "I say," she continued, "there is a great com 
 pensation for all our sufferings up north, where 
 nearly everything browns at the winter s breath ; 
 and we have the privilege every spring of being 
 present at the resurrection-morn of earth. I 
 just rejoice every spring with the birds that stay 
 with us, as I go out and stand sponsor with them 
 at the new year s birth. Such a day as this just 
 lets us into the very laboratory of nature,*" and if 
 we will only look, we can almost see her drop 
 the elements of growth into the soil. Some 
 
At You-Airs House 45 
 
 one has said Thoreau, I think that it is a 
 dangerous thing in our lives, if we ever reach a 
 period when we have no response to this, and 
 fail to ground our faith and hope upon the 
 vernal prophecy." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 " All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of 
 women." VOLTAIRE. 
 
 " Effort is itself the deed." THOREAU. 
 
 WHEN the teacher looked up, the boy s face 
 had caught her enthusiasm, with a soft, sad ten 
 derness in it which she did not understand. 
 
 " I love the spring," he said, " the birds and 
 flowers and, and things," by which last he 
 meant all the pretty sentiments which he had 
 just heard her express; "but I I just love 
 em," he almost broke down. " I think they 
 make me love other people better;" he blushed; 
 " my family, relations and such," he explained, 
 almost with a gasp. " I m always hopeful in 
 the spring," he continued, " but summer don t 
 always pan out. 
 
 " I don t see anything in nature, such a day as 
 this, to hope about," he added, as the teacher 
 remained attentively silent. "Although I know 
 a sunny day is coming, I can t feel it, and this 
 gives me thcr blues." 
 
 4 6 
 
At You- All s House - 47 
 
 "Well, we are all that way too much," she 
 said, consolingly " but Nature isn t. She 
 just seems to hope and wait. Listen now to the 
 songs of birds that stay with us in the win 
 ter. What do you call that little fellow there 
 swinging under that limb tip ? " 
 
 " Well, us boys call him See-Billy/ but I think 
 some calls it a chickerdee." 
 
 " Well, now that s good. See-Billy and see- 
 chickadee-dee-dee-de-de-de are just his small 
 talk about the weather and the hard times, you 
 know, but one of his true songs is fee-bee 
 sometimes fee-be-be, which, chimed with the 
 Peter! Peter! Peter! of the little crested tit 
 mouse, or sugar-bird, is one of the first spring 
 sounds we hear. Of course you know that 
 sap-raiser, the sugar-bird. Perhaps his call is 
 first " 
 
 " Yes m. I know him, but I heard a red-bird 
 sooner," said the boy. 
 
 " Good again, I reckoned without my host 
 that time. I had forgotten the cardinal. He 
 migrates from our region. Maybe you have 
 some of ours down here. That is one advan 
 tage of living south, for the cardinal and some 
 others sing at intervals during the winter there, 
 
48 At Yon-All s House 
 
 or here rather, I should say ; and, at the first 
 flash of spring, the male chickadee bursts into 
 full song " 
 
 " And the female too," he broke in, " sings in 
 reply to her mate, but 
 
 " Why, that is interesting. I did not know it. 
 You are an observer. You sing, I think, Mr. 
 McBride. Did I not hear your voice last Sun 
 day ? No ? Did you ever notice, I was going 
 to say, that this fee-bee of the chickadee is a 
 perfect sol mi of the scale ? " 
 
 " I never did, but it is, by George ! " he said, 
 his face lighting. He whistled it sang the 
 sol mi to it. "It s so." 
 
 " Sometimes it is a little flat," she said. 
 
 " Oh, that s ther female s reply," he laughed, 
 whistling the song a half tone down. " Girls is 
 often er little off on pitch." And a mischievous 
 light that she had scarcely expected flitted 
 across his face. 
 
 In fact, the boy was beginning to reveal him 
 self to her, and her appeal to him for informa 
 tion was a new sensation to him. He stretched 
 himself a little, took a few more humps" out of 
 his back, and reached out a foot and braced 
 himself against the front end-gate. 
 
At You-AWs House 49 
 
 " There ! " she said, jerking his arm. " What 
 do you call that little bird, head downward, upon 
 the elm trunk. We call it a nuthatch, but " 
 
 " Don t know as I ever heard any name for 
 that," he fibbed, as he styled "white lying" ; for 
 all the boys in imitation of the birds talk called 
 them " yanks," but since he knew that the 
 teacher had heard of herself as being called a 
 "yank," his delicacy forbade him to speak it. 
 
 " It must be awfully hard on his hind toe to 
 hang there so long," she said sympathetically; 
 but the boy broke out into a laugh. 
 
 "Now what are you laughing at, Mr. Mc- 
 Bride ? I declare, you are the most provoking 
 man ! " (Man ? Instantly he was taller by a 
 foot ! ) " What have I done now ? " 
 
 " Nothin , only he don t hang all the time by 
 his hind toes, that s all." 
 
 " Oh, tell me how it is, then. Do not shut up 
 like a sphinx when I am dying to learn, you 
 know." 
 
 "Why, he just stretches one leg up behind 
 him and hangs by the front toes of that like er 
 squirrel, runnin down er tree, uses his hind 
 legs," he said, with a bit of pride. 
 
 " Now that makes it all clear. In a recent 
 
50 At Yon-AlVs House 
 
 number of a well-known magazine, there was an 
 article on the gray squirrel by a naturalist, as 
 he would style himself, and it was illustrated by 
 another who makes a specialty of nature-draw 
 ing. In it the squirrel was pictured as running 
 down the tree with all his feet under him. I 
 said Mamma, what is the matter with this 
 squirrel ? but she could not tell me ; and I 
 went to Willie Duncan, who hunts, but he could 
 not say ; so I walked down to the professor of 
 natural history in the high school, who cuts up 
 a cricket, a crawfish, and a pigeon before his 
 class and calls it biology, but he said the squir 
 rel seemed all right to him. And now here you 
 flash out a comparison merely that puts the 
 matter all right. The squirrel should have had 
 his hind legs stretched back up the tree, should 
 he not ?" 
 
 " Or been uh backin down like er cat," said 
 Shan. 
 
 The teacher went further in her commenda 
 tion of his habits of observation, asking him for 
 real information about the birds of the region. 
 She had often noted him going about his work 
 industriously yet lonesomely, and she had felt 
 sorry for him, and had nodded to him as she 
 
At You- All s House 51 
 
 passed, with a great desire to meet and know 
 him better. 
 
 She was many years his senior, and had 
 passed through many moods like this which 
 she had found him in to-day. She wished to 
 rouse him out of it. As they neared his -gate 
 she insisted on getting out and walking home, 
 but Shan drove her on to her own stiles or 
 " hitchin* blocks," which, however, he could 
 not induce the mules to approach so closely 
 as he wished. So Miss Hudson had to step 
 upon the edge of the wagon-bed, then on the 
 tire, thence to the hub and the ground, as he 
 held her hand. 
 
 " I am so grateful to you for your informa 
 tion, and am sorry to have given you so much 
 trouble," she said, and turned to bid him good- 
 by. But she was almost frightened at the look 
 in his face as he stood holding his lines. 
 
 " I don t know how I ought ter say it," he 
 blurted out, " but I don t want you to feel that 
 I don t appreciate all you ve said to me. No 
 body ever talked to me that way before. They 
 jest asked about the crops and stock and ther 
 folks, sometimes. But you seem interested in 
 a feller, and nobody ever found out that I 
 
52 At Yon-Airs House 
 
 knew anything, either. I don t know much 
 not ser much as you try ter make me feel, but 
 oh, Miss Winnie, I just want and want and want 
 ter know. 
 
 " I wish t I could go ter school ter you, Miss 
 Winnie. It does seem strange that because he s 
 twenty the law should stop er feller from goin 
 ter school, jest when he s gittin some sense, 
 and start him in at six, when he s er little fool. 
 I know readin , writin , spellin , and grammar, 
 -yes, grammar, even if I don t talk it. My 
 teachers didn t talk it, tho they taught it. I 
 know algebra, geometry, ernatermy and hist ry 
 some but I don t know what ter do with em. 
 All other teachers just talked books to me with 
 the great world wide open only at A B C. 
 
 " I didn t know that there wuz books about 
 nature nature feelin s, you know. I thought 
 all writin s was tex-books or hist ries about 
 things that couldn t happen here, and about 
 stories that maybe didn t happen anywhere. 
 
 " I went to St. Louis last fall with er load 
 of steers, and on er Sunday I went out to Forest 
 Park, much of which is nuthin but woods ter 
 me ; and I saw people goin wild over their 
 beauties. One woman was takin on over the 
 
At You- All s House 53 
 
 beautiful shadin of the likens, as she called 
 em, on ther rough bark of er tree the little 
 scaly white spots, you know. They had helped 
 me at night to find the north in my coon-hunts, 
 but I couldn t see anything pretty about em. 
 But it must be there but but you know I 
 never believed it till to-day, Miss Winnie, when 
 I heard you talk. I can t see it yet, but I ivill 
 see it. Others were carryin on about the bird 
 music which was so poor then, that it was 
 only squeaking ter me, but, by George ! ex 
 cuse me, Miss Winnie don t you know I just 
 jumped when you said the chickadee sung in 
 the scale ; not because it is so strange, I reckon, 
 but because I had never noticed it. I used ter 
 see them jumpin in checkers, and it seemed so 
 foolish, and yet it was so mterestin when I 
 learned ; and a day or so ago in town I saw a 
 game of chess two fellers sittin humped up 
 with their chins in their hands and it seemed 
 f oolisher still. But I it must be mterestin too. 
 
 " I shall jest tremble now to go out, for fear 
 Nature is playin some great game at my feet 
 and I don t know ther moves. 
 
 " I read er poem once about birds settin on 
 the telegraph wires and not knowin that great 
 
54 At You-AlVs House 
 
 messages were passin through their grasp, and 
 I remember that I pitied em and now since 
 you talked to me, Miss Winnie the great world 
 seems throbbin under my feet, and I I can 
 only hear the hum. I know Nature when she s 
 passin by, but where s she goin and what s she 
 goin fer ? 
 
 " But I m wakin up. I find things pretty I 
 never thought pretty before," and he blushed, 
 "and I have feelin s at the sounds and sights of 
 things that I never had before and you can 
 help me more, Miss Winnie, won t you ? " And 
 his lip quivered again as he looked wistfully 
 into her face. " Won t you, Miss Winnie ? " 
 
 Not only was Miss Hudson s heart touched, 
 but her teaching instincts were roused, as no 
 pupil had ever roused them. Oh, that she had 
 a houseful of such pupils ! The boy, in her esti 
 mation, came out at once from the realm of 
 manhood, back into the scholar again ; and she 
 put her hand upon his shoulder, and called him 
 " Shan," and with a full heart and voice, said 
 that she should be glad to help him if she 
 could. 
 
 " Perhaps," she added, " I cannot do so much 
 for you as you think, but I may aid you in help- 
 
At You- All s House 55 
 
 ing yourself, for in your case a great cry for 
 help is help." 
 
 He climbed up to his seat, and she walked 
 over the blocks into the house. 
 
 At the door she glanced back at him, bump 
 ing down the road. 
 
 "The boy is in love/ she mused, "and has 
 been for a while. There is nothing so awaken 
 ing as that. I wonder who it is." 
 
 And she recalled an early dream. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 "To be commonplace is to strike the balance of a great 
 number of positive qualities." ELLIOTT COUES. 
 
 " Our limbs indeed have room enough. It is our souls that 
 rust in a corner." THOREAU. 
 
 "I am the very slave of circumstance and impulse." 
 
 BYRON. 
 
 THE boy was right, in a certain sense, when 
 he said that he knew Nature when she passed. 
 He had no companions at home but dogs and 
 stock, so that Nature, in a childish way, had 
 been his playmate. His sister had married and 
 gone from home when he was about twelve 
 years old. 
 
 Alone, he had hunted much in the woods day 
 and night. He knew the tall trees that were 
 the coon s castles and the high hills of the pos 
 sum s rambles. He had a quick eye for the 
 smooth holes where the squirrels hid or the leafy 
 hammocks where they dozed the heated hours 
 away. 
 
 The tangles where the Bob-Whites would 
 stand and sun themselves stood out to him at a 
 56 
 
At Yon-AWs House 57 
 
 glance, and when the ruffed grouse drummed, 
 he knew his perch and the screens to dodge 
 behind as he crept up on him. 
 
 No bird could long hide her nest from him, 
 if her shy ways piqued his search, and he knew 
 by her scolding moods and very petulance the 
 progress of her incubation, and whether her 
 young were in or out of the nest yet. 
 
 In winter, he looked at the tracks in the snow 
 and read the purposes of the runners, and in 
 the spring he could tell you where the " Spring- 
 beauties " and " Deer-tongues," as he called the 
 " dog-tooth violets," would open first. He cared 
 not for the beauty of the skyey-colored corolla 
 of the latter, but remembered it because mother 
 liked the lance-like leaves for greens sometimes, 
 since they made milder the mustard or the 
 turnip tops ; and he liked the fang-shaped bulb 
 himself for its faint sweetness. 
 
 Often he had watched the bee heap pollen 
 upon its legs, and, with a hunter s intuitions, had 
 divined, by its flight, whether it belonged to a 
 neighbor s hive or "our n." 
 
 At home, proud of the fact that he was one of 
 those that bees did not sting, he had lain under 
 the buzzing "stand" and watched the workers 
 
58 At You-All s House 
 
 as they dragged the drones out, stinging them 
 to death as they came ; and he had wondered 
 why the latter did not go to work and save their 
 lives not knowing then that they could not, 
 and that Nature cared for love as well as 
 labor. 
 
 The cruelty of the order of things did not 
 appeal to him, but in the crudity of his childish 
 thought he assigned motives and mind to all 
 things, the hawk that stole the chickens and 
 the crab grass that choked the crops, alike. He 
 had a keen delight in feeling and wreaking a 
 sort of vengeance against the things he did not 
 like cutting down a thorny honey-locust or 
 spiny thistle with clinched teeth and with en 
 mity in his heart, and hurling a stone, with a 
 sort of savage thrill in his splendid aim, at the 
 whining catbird in the bush. 
 
 To him nothing was useful but corn, wheat, 
 oats, hay, grass, stock, and the like possibly 
 the fruits and vegetables, but these latter bor 
 dered closely upon the things he ought to hate 
 because of a boy s antagonistic horror of pid 
 dling in a garden. That anything could exist 
 for beauty had scarcely got farther into his life 
 than his necktie or his saddle until recently, 
 
At You-AWs House 59 
 
 with the sprouting of the fuzzy streak upon his 
 lip, it was beginning to dawn upon him that, 
 beyond the horizon of the merely useful, there 
 was a morning yet. 
 
 Next Sunday, at another church that was in 
 another direction from his home, as he stood 
 outside, he saw Miss Hudson going in just a 
 little behind her folks. She was looking his 
 crowd over with unapproving glance, he 
 thought, and as he caught her eye he stepped 
 quickly to her side and walked in with her. 
 When he took his seat beside her he did what 
 he had never done before sat with a woman 
 on the women s side. Doubtless when he was 
 a babe his mother had bounced him upon her 
 knee, till he cried in tremolo with the score of 
 others shrieking around him, but his memory 
 could go no further back than the picture of 
 his little staring, wondering self, still covered 
 with a black wool hat well set back, being 
 dragged by his father s hand up the long aisle 
 on the right, while his mother and Mary had 
 gone up the left. 
 
 The old church still had the two doors in front, 
 and only recently had any one except young 
 swells out from town with their girls been 
 
60 At You- All s House 
 
 brave enough to violate their traditional sugges- 
 tiveness. 
 
 Shan s clear tenor rang out loud with the 
 teacher s alto ; and people turned and stared, 
 astounded that he should be over there, and 
 proclaim it so. Back of him a little he heard 
 Dolly s "air," rising up with such searching 
 tones that he could not help thinking of the 
 birds upon the tree tops shouting out their 
 whereabouts ; and the old, wild, gallant impulse 
 came to him, which he could not have carried 
 out for worlds, to get up and go back by her 
 side. 
 
 As they walked to the long platform whence 
 the horses were usually mounted or the wagons 
 climbed into by the ladies, Miss Winnie said 
 suddenly : 
 
 11 Shan, did that sermon help you much ? " 
 
 " I don t know ; I never thought much about 
 it. Never took it to myself. Thought he wus 
 after members of other churches or them that s 
 not joined yet." 
 
 He did not tell her that he had not listened. 
 
 " Sometimes he gets after the rest of us," he 
 added. 
 
 " Did it ever occur to you that you could 
 
At You-AWs House 61 
 
 be helped without being got after ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " Well, it never occurred to me that preachin 
 helped me at all, after I joined," he said, 
 " lessen I should dosomethin and be got after." 
 
 " But when this man and the others speak 
 week after week of baptism, communion, faith, 
 and works and all the mere dogmas, don t 
 you ever feel that you need something else after 
 you get these ? " 
 
 " I dunno. What else is there fer a preacher 
 to say lessen you ve stole somethin ur killed 
 somebody ? " 
 
 " Well, about keeping the commandments in 
 a positive spirit, for instance. Say, instead of 
 not taking things away from him, why not go 
 on and add something actual to your neighbor s 
 comfort; instead of not bearing false witness, 
 bear true praise ? " 
 
 They stood a moment on the platform. 
 
 " Shan, there are refinements of religious life 
 that are as much beyond that," glancing back 
 at the church, as the expression of the sermon, 
 " as there are beauties of nature that you say 
 you know not of." 
 
 The wagon drew up. 
 
62 At You-AWs House 
 
 " I have an old friend who preaches in town 
 regularly. Now and then I just must hear him. 
 Would you like to go in with me some Sunday 
 morning and hear him, too ? " 
 
 The boy s face shone as he said, "Yuh bet 
 yuh," and he went off after his horse. But he 
 was thinking more of the ride with the teacher 
 than of the prospective sermon. 
 
 He saw Miss Winnie take the rear chair in 
 the great wagon-box, and he felt that he would 
 get his filly and ride along close behind her and 
 continue the conversation. But he reckoned 
 without his steed that time. He found the 
 mare wild and impatient, because the horse 
 hitched near her had gone. Knowing her ways, 
 the boy, to save a scene, had tried to mount her 
 in the woods, but a sudden start had scraped 
 him off against a sapling. So he led her out 
 into the open space, reined her tightly in, and, 
 with a firm grip in her mane, sprang for the 
 saddle. She made a series of whirls and started 
 rapidly, in some direction, he knew not what, 
 but he " stuck to her," and when he got his 
 right foot in the stirrup and straightened up; the 
 mare was going quietly beside another horse. 
 
 When Shan glanced around, Dolly Simpson 
 
At You-AIVs House 63 
 
 was looking him rather surprisedly in the face ; 
 and her brother Henry, who had been wedged 
 away from his sister s side, was spurring for 
 ward to overtake Sissy Jenkins, who was very 
 considerately lagging behind her father a little 
 further on. There was not any help for the 
 situation. Shan did not dislike it, of course, 
 but he was not prepared for it. He was not an 
 emergency man, but the suddenness of this 
 demanded an explanation. 
 
 "I couldn t hold this fool filly back," he 
 blurted. 
 
 " Did you want to hold her back?" the girl 
 asked, with a very cool, queer look in her face. 
 " If you do, I ll help you ; " and she began to 
 rein in her horse. 
 
 " Oh, not at all," said Shan. 
 
 The conversation was not animated or inter 
 esting. Near Mr. Bright s gate they came up 
 with the wagon, and, as it turned in, Miss 
 Hudson glanced back and saw the couple. 
 She bowed and smiled at both and seemed to 
 be studying them, a little significantly, Shan 
 thought, as they passed. 
 
 " Don t you think Miss Winnie s awful 
 sweet?" said Dolly, with a school-girl s usual 
 
64 At You- All s House 
 
 gush over her teacher. Shan looked at her an 
 instant to see if the old teasing twinkle were in 
 her eyes, but her face was simply expectant. 
 
 " I think all ladies are nice," he replied, with 
 a little policy evident. 
 
 " But some s nicer n others, ain t they ? " said 
 the girl, still looking back at the departing 
 wagon. " I just love her." 
 
 "Yes, I think some s nicer n others," said 
 Shan, his face blanching, his lips getting dry. 
 This was another emergency. 
 
 There was silence only the champ of the 
 filly s bit and the leathery creaking of the sad 
 dles. 
 
 " Some that ain t teachers," he added. 
 
 The girl glanced at him with a scared look. 
 
 " Scholars, for instance," he continued. 
 "Dolly, you know " 
 
 " Oh, yes," she broke in. " I remember how 
 you used to like Lizzie Williams." 
 
 " Used ters ain t nows, " he said, trying to 
 regain his opportunity his color and breath 
 coming and going rapidly. " I was only a little 
 boy then. A feller s taste changes, yer know." 
 
 "And a girl s too," she said. 
 
 His heart leaped. 
 
At You- All s House 65 
 
 "She s married now, you know." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I know," he said, " but I ain t, and 
 and " 
 
 What he would have said she never knew; 
 for the filly had reached her own gate, and felt 
 that it was her duty to go in, and go in at once. 
 Shan set her head back toward the road, but 
 she bent her neck to her shoulder, and went in 
 sidewise, and when he spurred her she lunged 
 along the fence. 
 
 The girl, at first, thought that Shan had in 
 tended to go in and leave her to go home alone, 
 and she had ridden on her spirit up a wee 
 bit. Henry had turned off and gone home with 
 Sissy Jenkins. But Dolly rode slowly, and 
 glancing back, saw Shan still struggling with 
 his mare ; but to stop now and wait would not 
 only break the intrenchments of her position, 
 but might demand of him what he could not 
 pay. 
 
 At last Shan dismounted, led the mare into 
 the road and mounted her anew, but by the 
 time he was fully on she was at the stile-blocks 
 again. He rowelled her fearfully, but she only 
 scraped along the fence toward the gate and 
 thrust her head over it. As he looked up he 
 
66 At You- Airs House 
 
 saw Dolly s hat sink lower and lower over the 
 receding slope, till it alone seemed to rest and 
 waver a moment upon the road at the crest of 
 the slight swell, and then disappear. With 
 teeth set he got down, led the mare into the lot, 
 took the saddle off her with much difficulty, 
 jerked the bit past her rattling teeth with cruel 
 snatch, and stalked into the house. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 " Nothing so unlike a woman as another woman." ANON. 
 
 " It is a maxim that those whom everybody allows second 
 place are entitled to the first." SWIFT. 
 
 " Nature cannot be surprised in undress." EMERSON. 
 
 DOLLY S afternoon was spoiled for other 
 young men who might have called had said : 
 
 "Oh, Shan McBride s there ter-day; seen him 
 goin home with her. Seems ter be er little 
 struck that way er late." And they stayed 
 away. Henry, of course, might not come home 
 at all that afternoon, but go back to "night 
 meetin " with Sissy, as the frequent custom 
 was. 
 
 She had rather expected Shan over to ex 
 plain and apologize for deserting her, but when 
 it grew late she gave it up, and doffing her com 
 pany dress with her attitude of expectation, she 
 put on a calico dress, a sunbonnet, some sheep 
 skin "half-handers," and said she would go over 
 to Mildred " Watkins-*r" a little while, and bring 
 67 
 
68 At You-AWs House 
 
 some wild flowers to plant in the little dooryard 
 bed. 
 
 Dolly was not afraid to dress plainly on this 
 occasion for Mildred was one of that class of 
 girls whom everybody loves, except the young 
 men in the right way. Appreciative persons 
 often wondered why some fellow did not have 
 sense enough to see her merit. 
 
 Many married men in the region assured 
 their wives that when widowerhood was theirs, 
 they would woo Mildred Watkins ; and the 
 matrons had declared that it would be some 
 consolation if they knew that, after their deaths, 
 their husbands would bring her into their homes, 
 but instead of that "they d just surely run 
 off after some tittering young thing with no 
 sense." Somehow, a married woman expects 
 her husband to show good taste only once in 
 life. 
 
 One thing was certain, that Mildred was of 
 that finest material the world knows the stuff 
 that good stepmothers and second wives are 
 made of. Romantic to a turn, without the 
 semblance of an actual romance in her life, af 
 fectionate to a fault without any special object, 
 she was mother now to half the little children 
 
At You-AWs House 69 
 
 of the region, and sister to half the boys and 
 girls of her own age. More than this, she was 
 the confidante of many ; and endowed with a 
 keen insight into the motives of those she met, 
 it was hers to move in the romances of others 
 and to live in sympathy, at second hand, a sort 
 of sentiment that she could never realize for 
 herself. 
 
 That she received no special attention from 
 any one young man never seemed to worry her, 
 since she enjoyed the respect so largely of them 
 all. She viewed the gallants of her acquaint 
 ance as some other girl s lover, or, better still, as 
 her own true friend. But she made no great 
 demands of friendship. She took thankfully 
 what the world gave, and overpaid largely for 
 it in kind. 
 
 Between her and Shan there had always been 
 the freest fellowship. They were much the 
 same age but her motherliness made her 
 seem the older ; and they had been playmates, 
 not only at school, but at neighborly visits of 
 their parents, and even alone romping together 
 across the fields between their homes. Of her 
 he never knew what it was to stand in awe, as 
 he had of Dolly since she had moulted; and 
 
/o At You-All s House 
 
 with Mildred yet he was free and easy, so that 
 she knew him at his best. 
 
 Dolly was sure that if any one knew Shan s 
 feelings about herself and she had begun, of 
 course, to suspect that he had feelings it was 
 Mildred Watkins; so she had taken this walk, 
 not for flowers, but for consolation and the 
 hope of any crumb of comfort that Mildred 
 might let fall. 
 
 As she turned aside to get a particularly fine 
 bunch of prospective "bluebells" just leaved 
 out above the mould, she scared, from the root 
 of a bush, somewhere, a peculiar brown-backed, 
 long-billed, snipe-like bird, which seemed ut 
 terly unable to keep out of her way as she 
 walked. Her heart went out in pity to the 
 poor thing, and felt bitter toward the gunner 
 who had shot it. Shan shot sometimes, and so 
 did Henry. She wished they d quit it espe 
 cially Shan. But, stooping for the plant, she 
 saw almost at its root the merest apology for a 
 nest and, in it, four pear-shaped eggs, thickly 
 spotted with pale brown, almost like the dead 
 leaves they lay upon. 
 
 "You hypocrite!" the girl cried. "I thought 
 you were hurt." 
 
At You- All s House 71 
 
 The bird had now come nearer again and was 
 in the second act of the old broken-wing drama 
 doing it wonderfully well. Dolly walked on, 
 feeling better, since she was not alone, in the 
 deep woods even, in using diplomacy and a sort 
 of innocent hypocrisy for worthy ends. Were 
 they not brooding here in the very brambles ? 
 
 It was a warm welcome that Mildred gave 
 her. The two girls were enough unlike to be 
 great friends, and they were growing closer to 
 gether now as Dolly began to develop into the 
 womanhood which Mildred had reached some 
 years before. 
 
 " Now, sumpthin must have happened," Mil 
 dred said. "When did you ever come ter see me 
 on Sunday afternoon before ? You might just 
 as well out with it. Oh, that flower story and that 
 old chip-basket and case-knife won t do at all. 
 
 "You d er dug your bluebell on the way 
 back so twouldn t wilt if that was all you were 
 after. Besides, ain t you ashamed to gather 
 flowers to plant, on Sunday ? Lonesome ? 
 Now if it wus me huntin flowers and bein 
 lonesome, it might go. Where s Shan Mc- 
 Bride ? Didn t I see him runnin his horse to 
 death to catch up with you ? Twas runnin off 
 
72 At You-AWs House 
 
 with him ? Stuff, Dolly Simpson ! Horses 
 don t run off with Shan McBride very easy ! 
 Why, didn t he really go home with you ? 
 That s funny! What did you do to him? Huh! 
 That s funny again. Maybe he s hurt. You 
 don t know-o-o-o-o ? You didn t stop ter see-e-e-e ! 
 Just rode on didn t ask if he wus hurt, nor 
 nuthin ! Wel-1, Dolly Simpson ! Why, I ve a 
 great notion to go right over there myself and 
 take you with me. I would if you were dressed 
 up. Oh, you needn t get so humpy. But ain t 
 it strange that he didn t get on another horse 
 and foller you ! " 
 
 "That s that s what I wus thinking," said 
 Dolly. 
 
 " I know," said lisping little Sam, Mildred s 
 youngest brother, " coth paw and me corned by 
 there to thee about bor rin their theed-thower, 
 and The-an he hobbled out and thaid that the 
 thorrel filly had dust tored the whole thide of 
 his panth out nearly, ginth d a bobbed wire." 
 
 The girls laughed ; Dolly brightened, but in 
 a moment was more serious. 
 
 " Did he limp much, Sam ? " she said, in such 
 a way that even the child caught her interest. 
 
 " Well, I thould thay tho," said Sam, quick to 
 
At You-AU s House 73 
 
 enlarge an interesting incident up to its fullest 
 demands. " He thes thank away down on one 
 thide tho." He gave an imitation of Shan s 
 walk with a terrible stiffness in one leg, and a 
 dreadful shortness in the other. 
 
 " Did did you see any blood, Sam ? " Her 
 lips were parted a little. 
 
 " He had on his ole panth, but there wath a 
 hole in hith knee. Maybe twath hith med 
 medercated flanninth that I thaw what wath 
 red," the boy replied, very sceptically, of course. 
 
 Red flannels, sold and reputed as medicated, 
 were worn all over that region then as a cure 
 and preventive of rheumatism. But Mildred 
 gave Dolly a look that had blood and more in 
 it, and sent that fluid back to the penitent girl s 
 heart. 
 
 "Sam, did he look much hurt? " 
 
 "Well, thes thorter tho looked mighty thad, 
 you know. I thuppothe becauthe hith Thunday 
 thuit wath thuppoiled " (Mildred gave Dolly 
 an awful look). " A tored plath in your panth 
 ith er bad thign," he continued, as he looked up 
 rather superstitiously. 
 
 " What s it er sign of ? " queried Dolly rather 
 quickly. 
 
74 At You-AWs House 
 
 "That yer goin ter git er lickin and wear 
 patched dudth." 
 
 The day was further spoiled for Dolly 
 and yet there was a sort of delight in her mis 
 ery. How reprehensible was her conduct ! 
 How ungrateful of her not to wait ! Now Shan 
 was a hero a paragon of gallantry. Wasn t 
 her leaving him just awful? And yet how em 
 barrassing to both it would have been had she 
 waited. She thought of that and smiled at her 
 luck. 
 
 So the fates are kinder to us sometimes, after 
 all, than we think. 
 
 The girls walked in the woods, as Mildred 
 came part way home with her guest. They 
 stooped to notice the starting of the familiar 
 flowers which they had sought all their lives 
 calling them by their own childish names. Later 
 when they had bloomed they would seek them 
 for their color merely perchance a little for 
 their form ; but the blossom s aim in life and 
 the mystery of the foliage shapes were not even 
 mysteries to them ; for such things had not 
 yet provoked a thought. 
 
 Over their heads the boughs were still bare 
 the buds clear cut against the gray perspective 
 
At You-AIVs House 75 
 
 just hinting of the coming leanness. If they 
 glanced up and saw a last year s bird-nest, which 
 the foliage had hidden before, or found one, 
 leaf-filled, in the blackberry patch, which had 
 escaped them in their berrying, this oversight 
 was perhaps the only element of their igno 
 rance that they realized. 
 
 The great realm of appreciation, which might 
 make the woods a painting or a pastoral, had 
 not come to them. They walked in hope, of 
 course, of the conspicuous splendor which the 
 opening leaf and bursting petal would surely 
 thrust upon them, but they saw nothing of the 
 immediate beauty aside from its mere promises, 
 and could read nothing of the rugged, insistent 
 poetry in the bare prophecy itself. Yet they 
 were happy in the midst of the deep content of 
 unaroused perceptions in the bliss of the 
 purely animal anticipation that bounds high in 
 those strong youthful hearts which feel that life 
 owes them so much and pays all debts at par. 
 
 " Good-by. Don t tell nobody," said Dolly. 
 
 " Not even somebody ? " said Mildred, with a 
 sly smile. 
 
 " Of course not. If you do, I ll " and she 
 ran back to her friend, and setting her teeth in 
 
76 At You-AWs House 
 
 mock frenzy, beat her with the soft edge of her 
 closed fist, and swung to her. Then the two 
 clasped each other s waists and walked further 
 on, and kissed and said good-by again, and 
 laughed and blushed and parted. 
 
 When Dolly passed the place where the 
 woodcock had her nest, she turned aside to see 
 again the drab beauty of the eggs, but they 
 were not there, she thought. She was sure this 
 was the place. There was the hole that she 
 had taken the bluebells from the conical cut 
 of the knife. Where was the hole the nest was 
 in ? She stepped a little nearer, when, Swish ! 
 and the bird was again a hopeless invalid at her 
 feet, and the four spotted eggs were again cool 
 ing in the late evening air. 
 
 " I reckon I didn t know how ter look," she 
 mused. " Must be a little blind, anyway, or I d 
 see more n I do other places besides about 
 bird-nests." 
 
 Next morning, at a rather late breakfast, 
 Henry, who had even stayed all night at the 
 " Jenkins-es," but had come home early to eat, 
 remarked : 
 
 " Seen Shan givin his sorrel filly fits to er 
 breakin plough as I come by this mornin ." 
 
At You-AWs House 77 
 
 (Dolly brightened. He was able to be out.) 
 " Had her in twixt ther two mules." (Dolly re 
 joiced. He was punishing her.} "Was er usin* 
 er ridin plough his father s. Wonder why? 
 Used ter say he despised em, and could outwalk 
 any team er ploughin ." (Dolly s eyes dropped 
 into her plate. He ^vas still lame and couldn t 
 ivalk^) " He seems ter like er heap er things er 
 late that he used ter didn t," he added, with a 
 sly glance at his blushing sister. " How d jer 
 get home, Dolly ? " 
 
 " None of your business, Smarty." And her 
 morning meal was finished. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 "It [the thrasher s song] was the cheapest kind of top 
 dressing in which I had faith." THOKEAU. 
 
 "The farmer diagnoses the weather daily as a doctor a patient; 
 he feels the pulse of the wind, he knows when the clouds have 
 a scurfy tongue, when the cuticle of the day is feverish and dry 
 or soft and moist." BURROUGHS. 
 
 IT was still cloudy and cool after a week of 
 showers, as Shan sat upon the riding plough and 
 watched the black prairie soil roll off the mould- 
 board. Two brown thrashers, early come, were 
 vying with each other from different portions 
 of the hedge, which by its friendly protective 
 cover had led them thus out on the prairie 
 from the woods. Here and there the old, last- 
 year s nests of these birds formed a sort of 
 blurred bunch in the lower branches. Upon 
 the topmost twig-tips they sat and sang charm 
 ingly to their expected mates, which had not 
 arrived yet, of the last year s trysting-place and 
 the pleasant anticipations of the new-year s 
 home. Here, too, sat the logger-head shrike 
 78 
 
At You-AlVs House 79 
 
 known to Shan and his neighbors as the 
 "hedge-bird," because he also so frequently 
 made the tallest twigs of the Osago orange his 
 perch while he watched for the chance mouse 
 which the plough might turn up. From this 
 same perch too, in the winter, the bird had 
 pounced upon these little rodents, as Shan had 
 shucked the shocks of corn from over their 
 heads. The shrike s pose was not that of senti 
 ment or music, but rather one of watchfulness 
 and a sort of power that seemed fully conscious 
 of its muscularity and skill. In the thorny 
 honey-locust here, and further down in the 
 hedge there, were some old rude twiggy cups, 
 which showed that the butcher as well as the 
 harper must turn aside at times to tenderer 
 things. 
 
 In the lower part of the hedge, where it had 
 been laid down to make it thicker, some song- 
 sparrows were hiding as they passed up north, 
 and a clay-colored sparrow now and then rattled 
 his little castanets with a sort of falling cadence 
 as he rejoiced that this much of his journey was 
 accomplished. At the other end of the "land," 
 on the low branch of an elm that had come 
 up " volunteer " from a seed which some bird 
 
8o At You-Airs House 
 
 had sown in the corner of the old worm fence, 
 there sat a little chipping sparrow which clat 
 tered off his little "bean in the bottle" sort 
 of song much more rapidly now than he did 
 when Shan first heard him upon his arrival 
 some weeks ago. 
 
 " Guess he s gettin in a hurry for a bride," 
 mused the boy, " and sings more hurriedly now. 
 Plenty of time yet. See them snow-birds still 
 flittin their white tail feathers in the fence 
 cracks ? Can t expect no good weather while 
 ther snow-birds are with us." 
 
 Indeed, the snow-birds were with him yet, 
 ending their little rollicking, giggling threnodies 
 to the winter in a sort of " chew! chew! chew ! " 
 like a Lilliputian locomotive slipping upon its 
 rails, while the clear, ringing, varied tones of 
 a passing Bewick s wren, glancing at the holes 
 in the fence stakes, trilled a joyous ode to the 
 spring, 
 
 Near him were some already newly married 
 folk, still in the honeymoon of delicate atten 
 tions ; for as Shan heard " the blackbirds cluck 
 behind his plough," he turned and saw the rilale 
 lift his bronzed, purplish wings, puff out his 
 body and twang the poorly fingered string of 
 
At You-AWs House 81 
 
 his guitar, with a gallant bow at his mate when 
 ever she passed in her hunt for grubs. " He s 
 er pretty well heeled bird fur society," the 
 boy mused, and cast his eye to the northwest 
 sky. "Gittin blustery." 
 
 Just before noon, when many " rounds " had 
 made two twin black stripes across the field, 
 and it was getting so much cooler that the filly 
 tucked her head as she came up wind, Shan 
 looked out eastward at the sky, yet clear that 
 way, where he thought he saw some fodder- 
 blades floating high, as if a whirlwind had 
 caught them up. 
 
 " Coin to have er dry spell, I reckon. Whirl 
 winds is er sign of that. But s funny time for 
 a whirlwind." 
 
 Strange things were often described as 
 "funny" in his region. 
 
 Then he noticed that the "fodder-blades" 
 were coming on toward him, now soaring up, 
 now down, "like a mote in heaven s eye" 
 and now seeming to stagger for a moment 
 against the northwest gale. 
 
 " Can t be birds. Birds can t come erginst a 
 wind like this and not flop. Neither could er 
 corn-blade. Wo ah ! They air birds ! with 
 
82 At You- All s House 
 
 nothin but wings that s all. Golly! Just 
 look at that." 
 
 By this time the birds had dropped down to 
 his ploughed land a little behind him and were 
 dipping here and there, " like snake doctors " 
 as Shan expressed it without a wing-flap, 
 however; and as they swept near, he saw one 
 snatch up a grub, without alighting, toss it up, 
 catch it again and swallow it. They turned, 
 floated, rose, fell, stopped, went on again as 
 a feather in a giant s breath. 
 
 " If I should ever fly, I d wanter fly like that. 
 Wonder what kinder bird it is and what s 
 it er sign of, anyway ? " He looked toward the 
 house, and high above the cherry-trees he saw a 
 white flag floating from a pole which he had put 
 up there. He knew what that was " er sign of " 
 a truce to labor for the nooning hour and a 
 tribute to his enormous, healthy appetite. So 
 he unhitched the team, mounted one of the 
 mules leaving the other and the filly to follow, 
 and sitting sidewise, as a woman, rode humped 
 forward in meditation. 
 
 After noon these same birds bothered him 
 still. They swept by with their former ease, 
 and finally left westward, sailing into the very 
 
At You-AWs House 83 
 
 teeth of the gale. They seemed like eerie 
 things of the ether with their dusky plumage, 
 and keen beaks stuck so directly downward as 
 a mosquito s. 
 
 At home the boy had an old history which 
 told of the founding of Rome, and in it was a 
 picture of a great flight of birds represented by 
 rows of obtuse V s, with Romulus holding his 
 hands up at their approach. They meant so 
 much to this old herdsman of the Palatine 
 Hill. He wondered if these meant anything 
 to him. And he glanced high up at the sky 
 where the birds had disappeared. 
 
 " Why, that was a snow-flake ! I allus liked 
 snow. Makes uh felluh feel buoyant, you 
 know. Wouldn t stop work fuh that. Get up 
 there ! " 
 
 But anon his collar began to get wet about 
 his throat, and he grew chill and "gawmy," as 
 he worded it; so he "took out," and went to 
 the house. 
 
 It was an April snow in Missouri, and he was 
 thrilled at its beauty as it clung wet to the 
 blushing peach buds, and made the white of the 
 pear blossoms look dull and sallow. Every 
 where the sprigs of green grass stuck up 
 
84 At Yon-AW s House 
 
 through it, and here and there the robins ran 
 upon it and still dug at the sod beneath. 
 
 " Don t uhmount to much," the boy mused. 
 "Uh bird won t quit work nless uh storm s 
 goin tuh be a long un." 
 
 But he felt that he would like to talk to some 
 one about it and about the strange birds. He 
 wondered if Henry Simpson would know any 
 thing about them. They went away over the 
 Simpson fields. Wonder if Henry or any 
 body saw them. Believed he would go over 
 after supper and see. 
 
 But when his chores " jobs " he called them 
 were done, and he was well across the pasture, 
 he began to weaken in his resolution. His father 
 had made sport of there being any such birds, 
 and and "maybe Henry and them" would 
 do the same. He was in no position or mood for 
 ridicule. He looked at the Bright home, which 
 he was now passing. There was a light in the 
 best room, and the sub-bass of an organ 
 groaned even out to the " big road." An inspi 
 ration struck him. He would go in and see 
 Miss Winnie about it just a moment. ^She 
 would know ; and he could go over to the Simp 
 sons then a little later as one having authority 
 
At Yon-AlVs House 85 
 
 on the subject. He could then pretend to have 
 come over to impart information and to see if 
 Henry " and them " had seen the birds. It did 
 not occur to him that "them " of the household 
 in whom he was most interested was away at 
 school when the " curious " birds passed. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 " If you were not breathing and walking here, the most 
 renowned poems would be ashes." WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 " The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us." 
 
 THOREAU. 
 
 " Pain is not the fruit of pain." E. B. BROWNING. 
 
 " Now this is very nice of you, Mr. Shan, 
 I m sure," said Miss Winnie, as she shook his 
 hand cordially in response to his timid knock. 
 
 " You don t know how lonesome an old maid 
 school-teacher gets away out here with nothing 
 but birds and a few books and a a very, 
 very occasional boy who thinks and feels. 
 Oh, yes, school is always present but that 
 doesn t count, that is work, you know. 
 
 " As I came home from school this afternoon 
 you do not know how I wished for you. Snow 
 always thrills me not from the mere associa 
 tions of a tracked rabbit or a treed coon, or of 
 snowballing, sleighing, and all that, as with you 
 boys; but there is something in its mazy mo 
 tion that is energizing to me. Then it always 
 seems so pure, so honest and truthful in its 
 86 
 
At You-AIVs House 87 
 
 records, yet so merciful in what it keeps back. 
 Its charity is so unostentatious/ 
 
 The boy shifted himself a little as if he wished 
 for a brake again, or felt for a lever of his plough. 
 
 " I know I am boring you, because these are 
 the old, old things, you know, of which you 
 have heard and read, but I really feel them and 
 enjoy them anew at every snow like this. They 
 are mine by appropriation and appreciation. 
 Not all of us are geniuses, of course, but if 
 we get up to where we can appreciate the work 
 of genius we go partners with it, as you boys 
 say at games. If it were not for such minds, 
 genius would have no need to exist. Thoreau 
 says somewhere that the loudest sounds had to 
 thank his little ear that they existed. 
 
 " It is so of the emotions from nature. There 
 is nothing directly creative in us. We cannot 
 really make a blade of grass grow, of course, 
 but if we can love and enjoy what is made, we 
 become partners in its existence, finishers of 
 its purposes, and almost divine, in that we 
 make God s work exist for a great end. We 
 are formed in His image when we can see and 
 say of things that they are good, as He saw and 
 said of them." 
 
88 At You-AIVs House 
 
 The boy was twirling his hat awkwardly. 
 She offered to take it and lay it upon the 
 organ, but he said it was no use ; he " must be 
 goin dreckly." 
 
 " Yes," she babbled on, " I wish you had 
 been with me this afternoon. I thought of you 
 and wanted to talk to you. When I looked 
 away up at the flakes as they seemed to fall 
 from the very gates of heaven, I felt that if I 
 could not talk I must shout at their inspiration ; 
 and I continued to feel so till you came." 
 
 He had felt something of the same thing and 
 had thought of her, he said. 
 
 " I saw something this eve " 
 
 " You know," she broke in, " you spoke of 
 not yet seeing the beauty of the lichens. Well, 
 if you could have seen those old elms where we 
 saw the nuthatch the other day, all spattered 
 with great snow-clumps, with the brown patches 
 of rough bark showing through, and the rugged 
 knots and angles of the boughs all rounded and 
 softened with the clinging flakes, till the whole 
 perspective of the deep woods was subdued and 
 softened, I am sure that you would have felt that 
 there can be beauty without bald color. Why, 
 you had one hundred and sixty acres of bright 
 
At You-AWs House 89 
 
 golden-yellow Spanish needles there last fall in 
 that fallow where you have been ploughing to 
 day. You were simply color-blinded till you 
 are color-blind just just what is it you 
 say when a horse eats too much ? " 
 
 " Foundered," said Shan. " But I saw ter- 
 day " 
 
 "Yes, you are just foundered on color in 
 summer but I know I am simply boring you 
 to death," she said, as she saw his face. 
 
 " No," said the boy " not at all. The snow 
 always thrills me too, but I never knew why, 
 outside of the chance of a hunt, but there was 
 something else yet I didn t know what." 
 
 "I love it," she continued, "as I said, for what 
 it tells me. It seems to come to me as a sort of 
 confidential message, and I go to it as I do to 
 a new book or a new friend. Its freshness rarely 
 disappoints me, unless it should be too deep. I 
 learn of it as I learn of you, Mr. Shan." 
 
 He straightened a little, gasped a sort of 
 protest, but she was off again before he could 
 become coherent. He dropped his hat upon 
 the floor as a sort of meek surrender to the 
 situation. 
 
 " A snow is a sort of wax tablet of a night, 
 
90 At Yon-Airs House 
 
 set soft and yielding to hold the record of the 
 world s doings a kind of fossil writing 
 frozen history chronicles on ice so that he 
 who runs may read what he who ran has writ 
 ten. Even the very aims and hopes and fears 
 are recorded in the snow-tracks. You know 
 Burroughs speaks of how the squirrel s fright 
 is shown by his track to nearly every tree he 
 passes, upon which he leaps to look around 
 
 "Yes, I know," said the boy, now aroused 
 and upon his own ground. " I ve thought of 
 this uh little. I ve seen the rabbit s track when 
 I knew he was dodgin the fox, for his cat 
 like dots were in the snow by the side of it, and 
 you could see some places where he had run 
 his sharp nose into the rabbit s prints. I ve 
 seen the mink s or weasel s four tracks all to 
 gether, like you d put your four fingers round 
 uh straw and thrust them in the snow. Onct 
 I found uh rabbit s throat cut, Miss Winnie, 
 and a funny thing about it there was a weasel 
 track goin from it but none goin to it. How 
 was that ? " 
 
 "Well, that was strange, wasn t it?" said 
 the teacher. 
 
 "Yes," he replied; "but several years after 
 
At Yon-Airs House 91 
 
 one hot summer day, when I was chicken 
 huntin I heard a little scream in the rag 
 weeds near the turnin -row path, and there 
 ran out in plain sight a little half-grown cotton 
 tail with a brown weasel ridin on her back and 
 bitin at her throat. As they turned in again 
 I could see the weeds wave as she run, and I 
 shot at the motion, and when I went in, both 
 were dead. You see in this snow-track the 
 weasel had been ridin his horse till it fell." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Shan, you do help me so much. I 
 won t give up again, but just wait and hope till 
 I find out for myself or meet some one like you, 
 who can instruct me. Things often puzzle me 
 like that. One day last winter, on my way 
 home, I cut across the cornfield because I 
 wanted to read a little in the snow-book, and 
 I found a peculiar mouse-track. It ended sud 
 denly, and there were broad wing-strokes in the 
 snow. I knew, of course, that meant a tragedy, 
 and by the broad scratches I knew it was a 
 hawk or owl, not a hedge-bird, as you call 
 the shrike; but as I stooped I was puzzled. 
 There was no tail mark " 
 
 " A short-tailed meadow mouse," interrupted 
 Shan. 
 
92 At You-Airs House 
 
 " Yes, I guess, but on each side of the track 
 was a groove, as if something had been dragged ; 
 sometimes there appeared to be two marks on 
 each side." 
 
 She looked up at him with a question mark 
 in her face and found that the boy, blushing 
 and conscious, had reached for his hat again. 
 
 "Now what have I done? Made a goose of 
 myself as usual ? Don t keep me in suspense 
 any longer. What were these ? " 
 
 " Her family," said the boy, with as large a 
 period as possible, by means of a falling in 
 flection, which he emphasized by rising to his 
 feet. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, " how pitiful ! " and changed 
 the subject. 
 
 She rose as he rose to lessen the restraint and 
 branched off upon what seemed the cruelties 
 of nature ; and having stirred up these thoughts 
 in the boy s mind, she sought to excuse them by 
 the same old reasoning of good coming out of 
 evil and evil out of good, and the excuse that the 
 law that built the one perpetuated the other. 
 
 " I know," he exclaimed eagerly, to her sur 
 prise. "As I came over here, I knocked er 
 sheep in ther head because it was goin ter die. 
 
At You-All s House 93 
 
 I was cruel to prevent cruelty. But why should 
 the sheep be sick ? " 
 
 "Ate too much, perhaps violated one of 
 nature s laws," said the teacher. 
 
 "No," said the boy. "It had grubs in its 
 head, I guess. Acted like some that died with 
 that last spring." 
 
 " Yes ? " said the teacher. 
 
 "What bothers me is why ther grubs have 
 got ter crawl inter the sheep s nose. Got no 
 better place ter go, I reckon." 
 
 "Why, yes, that s it. It is a law of nature 
 the liberty of nature that every creature seeks 
 what it regards as its best place a law that 
 has built the world somewhat. Do you know 
 I like the idea that at some time in its ancestral 
 history every animal has had a choice a bit 
 of free-will grounded away down at the dawn 
 of its consciousness. But we are getting into 
 too deep water, Mr. Shan," she half apolo 
 gized, as she noted his mystified yet studious 
 look. 
 
 At last he told her of the birds he had seen 
 that day. 
 
 "Oh, those that floated by you as you 
 ploughed ? They were black terns I know 
 
94 At You- All s House 
 
 almost by their behavior and flight. I did not 
 know, however, that they ever occurred so far 
 
 inland." 
 
 ****** 
 
 " Why, yes, I could go Sunday after next 
 suits me very well. Is your horse perfectly 
 safe ? These steeds of yours have been playing 
 you some queer tricks lately, you know. Better 
 start about nine o clock, I guess. Do come 
 again soon, I have enjoyed your visit so much. 
 Do you know, you always set me to thinking 
 so! Good-night ! " 
 
 It was too late now to go over to " Simp- 
 sonses." 
 
 As Shan went home, his head hot with 
 many thoughts, he passed near the sick sheep 
 to see if it were quite dead. To his surprise 
 he found it standing on its feet. Next morning 
 it was up near the barn, chewing a corn-stalk, 
 and in a day or so it was entirely well. His 
 mercy had taken a peculiar turn. He told 
 neighbor Bright of his experience, and Jie 
 knocked his one sick sheep upon the head and 
 it got well. Another neighbor, further on, cured 
 two or three in this way by jarring loose the 
 grubs, and on the experiment went, till the last 
 
At Yon-AlVs House 95 
 
 Shan heard of it, it was careering over the county 
 line. 
 
 " Lots er things is accerdents," he muttered 
 some weeks after that, thinking back on this. 
 "Who d er thought of jarring flukes outer uh 
 sheep s head ! Law is O. K., I reckon. Can t 
 shake uh law except with uh bigger un. Won 
 der if law always guides ther accerdent. Guess 
 it does. Maybe nothin s accerdent. Maybe them 
 birds wos sent fer sheep-saving. They didn t 
 git me over to Simpsonses, that s sure. Law s 
 mixt with law till a feller can t unravel it. 
 Reckon accerdents is just God s way er givin* 
 er chance ! " . 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 " A man sits as many risks as he runs." 
 
 THOREAU. 
 
 " A grateful mind by owing owes not." 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 " While fancy, like the finger of a clock, 
 Runs the great circuit and is still at home." 
 
 Cow PER. 
 
 THE day after the next day, the boy was 
 again upon his plough, and the black streak, by 
 the end of the week, had encroached far upon 
 the brown. 
 
 Besides the soothing rhythm of the plough s 
 scotching sound, and the half hypnotizing foun 
 tain of rich soil that rolled, there was the ever- 
 present interest in what the share might turn 
 up. Once an old clevis-pin scratched on the 
 board and made a rusty blotch on the upturned 
 mould, and a little mystery of a last year s lost 
 thing was cleared. 
 
 Occasionally a meadow mouse whirled ^out 
 
 and went scampering awkwardly away, and 
 
 once a shining, " blue racer " black-snake rolled 
 
 up like a rope out of the region of some 
 
 06 
 
At You-All s House 97 
 
 small burrows, and, running sinuously, hid 
 among the clods. One day a massasauga, or 
 short prairie rattlesnake, was hurled well up 
 toward him, and fell directly in the furrow 
 behind the plough. The reptile threw itself into 
 its well-known coil and began that beating, buzz 
 ing whir, like a tattoo upon a dead leaf like 
 a bee in a paper sack like a tangled jarfly 
 in the grass like nothing but itself, and so 
 distinctive that when once heard it is instantly 
 recognized when heard again. Shan shouted 
 "Wo-ah!" at once, and the tired mules came 
 to an instant halt and stood patiently, but the 
 filly snorted wildly at the rattle. With the heel 
 of his plough-boot he bruised the serpent s head, 
 but that menacing tail still sang for some min 
 utes, and the filly shivered in her tracks. 
 
 He had heard it said that a snake would not 
 die till the sun went down. He would try it 
 with this one. Recalling his experience with 
 the sheep, he took out his knife and cut the 
 head off, and kicked the carcass out upon the 
 ploughed ground that he might watch it as he 
 passed. To clean his blade he thrust it again 
 and again into the earth, and climbed upon his 
 seat. 
 
98 At You-AWs House 
 
 " Strange erbout ther filly," he thought. "She 
 never saw er rattler never was bit by one, 
 never heard one before. Twas just fright at 
 er noise, I reckon. But look at her ! She s 
 so skeered till she s gentle seems weak from 
 fright. Why don t ther mules keer? Funny 
 noise ! makes a fellow feel curious when a rat 
 tler comes up to see him like that un. Wonder 
 if Miss Winnie could tell me why thuh filly 
 knew ? Guess it s just instinct, but why didn t 
 the mules have it ? Spect Miss Winnie d like 
 to see that rattle. I ll get it for her." 
 
 At the approach of the spot on the next 
 round the mare was noticeably affected again, 
 and even the mules seemed to sniff a down-wind 
 odor, and show some interest. Shan wondered 
 if it were the smell of the blood, the " pizen," 
 or the odor of the snake itself, and why a snake 
 had to smell like cucumbers often at this time 
 of year. 
 
 "Wo-o-ah!" 
 
 He climbed off, put one foot upon the snake s 
 body near where the head had been, and pulled 
 with the hand that did not hold the lines. But 
 there was so much stretch in the long elastic 
 body that the rattle would not slip. He lifted 
 
At You- All s House 99 
 
 the foot and placed it near the tail, and had 
 begun to pull hard again when the stump of 
 the neck curled quickly backward and struck 
 him with its bloody end squarely upon the back 
 of the hand ! 
 
 He straightened as if he had been pierced 
 with a dart, the blood left his face he stag 
 gered to his plough and fell, rather than sat, upon 
 it. A cold shiver ran up his spine and a clammy 
 sweat oozed out of every pore. He could not 
 touch the bloody spot. He knew not what to 
 do with it it seemed so cursing, so blighting, 
 so venomous. The hand hung limp as if para 
 lyzed. In a few moments he regained his self- 
 possession, stooped for a dry clod, crumbled it 
 upon the place, took out his knife and scraped 
 the gory mud away. He put more dust upon 
 it, scraped that away, spat on the spot, wiped it 
 on his pants vigorously, cleaned the knife-blade 
 in the usual way, and going forward, he stooped 
 in between the mules, and laid his arm over the 
 filly s neck. A fellow-feeling had made him 
 wondrous kind. 
 
 After a few rounds, he began to smile at the 
 joke of his fright, though it was long before his 
 throat ceased to feel a queer dryness. He could 
 
ioo At You- All s House 
 
 not help feeling that he had had a wondrous 
 escape, and in the exuberance of his gratitude 
 his heart warmed toward everything. 
 
 A prairie horned lark had already built her 
 nest in a snug little excavation, flush with the 
 bare earth evidently since the stubble was 
 burnt. Shan had seen her dart away, crouched 
 low as she ran, and then fly, sufficiently often 
 to note the eggs finally, and to shy the " land " 
 mule and the filly off from them. When the 
 plough, after a few more rounds, came to it, he 
 got off, threw his levers and glided around the 
 little "dug out" home, leaving it safe among 
 the peaks and ranges of the lifted clods. 
 
 In another place the filly s foot had scraped 
 a furry cover from a last year s horse-track, in 
 which a mother hare had hidden her family of 
 seven. Shan had just time to shout "Wo-o!" 
 as even the cellar and the well" of the little 
 rodents home began to climb the mouldboard s 
 slope. He backed out, slid his plough around 
 again, and stopped to look with a boy s interest 
 at the little furry forms which kept constantly 
 shivering and diving one beneath the other. 
 
 " Wonder what that little white spot s in 
 their foreheads for now and not when they get 
 
At You-AWs House 101 
 
 fully grown ? Kind mother these little fellers 
 have. Takes off her old cloze to wrap her 
 babies in. Reckon that s what made the old 
 * molly I saw this mornin look so ragged. 
 Lined this whole horse-track with fur. Who d 
 uh thought uh rabbit could felt like that ! It s 
 nearly as good as my Sunday hat. It just fits 
 to a T, too. Well, little buns, I ll just cover you 
 up again, and old Pont sha n t come with me any 
 more to chase your mother." 
 
 And he spread the blanket over them again, 
 and left the whole mass jerking as if it had taken 
 its strychnine a little too strong. When he passed 
 it on the next round it was still throbbing as one 
 lump all having fallen into unison. 
 
 " Funny about er little rabbit jumpin so much 
 in his bed. Guess he s just practisin the artuh 
 bein skeered. He lives that way. Maybe he s 
 practisin his hind legs too," he added, as he 
 clucked to his team, and went on, imagining 
 the mother coming to them that night over the 
 clods to relieve their hunger, make up their bed, 
 cover them up, and tuck them in again for 
 another day of orphanage. Even a mole that 
 he ploughed up he let go, though he usually 
 killed all he met. 
 
IO2 At Yoii-AU s House 
 
 At the further end of the field a little "draw " 
 or branch, that was fringed with crabs and wild 
 plums, ran as a brook in the wet spring, and in 
 it, later, the water stood in the little washed-out 
 pools. Under a fall, where the sod had held as 
 a bench, while the dirt beneath was cut away, 
 was one cool expanse, shaded from the sun by 
 the overhanging shelf of roots, and blue as the 
 sky with the particles of drab clay yet held in 
 suspension. Shan sprawled himself to drink of 
 this and then walked back over a little bit of 
 swamp where the crawfish had built their mud- 
 chimneys high up around their burrows. 
 
 He picked off a hardened lump of clay and 
 dropped it down one to find, by listening, how 
 far it was to the water. He recalled a day last 
 year upon the prairie swamps, while snipe-shoot 
 ing, when all the water was warm and slimy, how 
 the cool blue of that in the crawfish wells, only a 
 few inches out of reach, had tantalized him. The 
 memory made him so thirsty that he went back 
 to the pool and drank again. 
 
 As he again started for his plough he noted 
 some of the crawfish, at his approach, drop back 
 from the mouths of their homes ; and a little 
 further on were the case and legs of one of the 
 
At You- AW s House 103 
 
 diggers drying in the sun. He glanced up, and 
 a little way off a sparrow-hawk was hovering 
 about thirty feet up, and Shan wondered how he 
 ever caught his game. 
 
 "Wind s from the south," he said. " Er 
 hawk always hovers against the wind." 
 
 But just then a crawfish was crawling at his 
 feet, and picking it up, he found clasped be 
 neath its rear flipper her whole family of thir 
 teen young. 
 
 " Movin ," muttered the boy. " Spect that s 
 the way the hawk gets his dinner. Well, I ll 
 take care of you." 
 
 And taking her further on in the way she was 
 going, he chucked her into what appeared to be 
 an unoccupied hole. Some one once had given 
 him such a mother for a pet. He had put her in 
 a vessel of water and she freed her young. But 
 one day when he forgot her supply of angle 
 worms, he was disgusted to find that she had 
 eaten her whole family. 
 
 Then he went back again upon the plough, con 
 tent with himself, feeling that he had been a 
 benefactor ; and round after round of sameness 
 lulled his powers of observation and set his 
 fancy free. He was as mechanical as the head- 
 
104 At You- AW s House 
 
 less snake, and threw the levers, pulled the lines, 
 pressed the pedals, and clucked as though hand 
 and foot and tongue had separate souls. 
 
 There was the long stretch of the future down 
 the furrow s length, with here a farm, and there a 
 home upon it, with sloping lawn and herds and 
 flocks afield and waving crops and comfort. 
 There were episodes dramatic down the line, 
 where he was his neighbor s leader always 
 right influenced only by the right; for a bad 
 conscience is not ideal scarcely imaginable 
 only real. Sometimes he broke out in loud solilo 
 quy, and he found his tired team stop at some 
 full round O-tone, which, if they had not stopped, 
 he would have sworn he had not uttered. Im 
 patiently he would shout, " Go on ! " and lapse 
 again into fancy. 
 
 Through all his revery there was the bright, 
 flushed little face which always looked his way 
 and smiled, while the two braids, with their bits 
 of ribbon at their tips, hung down her back, and 
 the white bib of her apron was pinned at her 
 shoulders. Imagination might paint the future 
 all mature and complete in the comfort that 
 time only brings, but age upon her face or the 
 lack of vigor in his own strong step could find no 
 place. 
 
At You-AWs House 105 
 
 Not even children came into his picture 
 much as his heart had always warmed toward 
 them. His fancy never went that way, and 
 all his relations to her in his dream were just 
 as they had been when all his heart went out to 
 her at her finger s touch beneath his eye. She 
 was ever the same sweet maiden of his first 
 awakening, and all that hope seemed now to hint 
 was that he might pull her almost into him some 
 day, as one hugs a babe, and feel her scared 
 heart beat on his. 
 
 On earth few things are purer than the first 
 love of a boy. It is the incarnation of devotion. 
 There is no query in his mind about the social 
 standing, the wealth, or the intellectual or other 
 attainments of his sweetheart. All he considers 
 is that he loves her the compatibilities may 
 go to the winds, and the congruities as well. 
 He banks his admiration on whatever has first 
 aroused him the curve of the neck, the round 
 of the cheek, the flash of the eye or the sweep 
 of its lash, the cut of the mouth, the color of the 
 lip, or the rippling play of dimples anywhere. 
 Whatever it is, it is all-sufficient. He fairly 
 revels in the glory of her imperfections, without 
 any after-considerations whatever. 
 
io6 At You-AWs House 
 
 To him she stands as the expression of all 
 purity. In her presence he himself is pure by 
 association or reflection, rather; away from 
 her he is pure by imagination and hope. The 
 love of a girl herself cannot excel it especially 
 in its exhibition. The boy s ardor knows no 
 restraints his one motive is possession ; it 
 considers no proprieties, for in its single out 
 look there are none. But the girl must watch 
 and ward, not only the violation of her training, 
 but those advances which the delicacy of her 
 instincts forbids. The very conditions of her 
 relations to her lover provoke a shyness that is 
 itself inconsistent with the abandon of devotion. 
 She has to avoid, in her own mind, the tendency 
 of being too easy a conquest, and outwardly, the 
 consequences of too bold a step ; so that she 
 steels her heart, and, with coy deception, with 
 holds her hand. But the boy, with only the 
 restraints of the purity inherited from her sex 
 and of the gallantry inherent in his own upon 
 him, grasps as a baby at the light. 
 
 We prate much of our growth away from the 
 merely animal, and of the great gap that lies be 
 tween ; we talk largely of our altruism as the re 
 flex result of our rational and religious restraint, 
 
At You- All s House 107 
 
 but love, growing out of the necessary condi 
 tions of the persistence and progress of life, 
 base, yet self-denying and sacrificing, in the 
 very essentials of organisms, may, as it moves 
 the great round world, lift humanity toward the 
 angels yet. 
 
 The white flag had been streaming long above 
 the cherry-tree when Shan looked up. His 
 mind had been so occupied that it had not 
 heeded the hints which the stomach had sent up 
 though he could recall now that the mules 
 had turned reluctantly for the last hour at the 
 hither end of the field. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 "A life fed by the bounties of earth and sweetened by the 
 airs of heaven." JERROLD. 
 
 * Mute the voice of rural labor, hushed 
 The plow-boy s whistle and the milk-maid s song." 
 
 GRAHAME. 
 
 AT heart every man is a gambler, as he 
 should be. The man who does not believe in 
 luck the bit of fortune God has set aside for 
 him is a fool ; and he who does not risk and 
 trust his own is a failure. 
 
 After this, Shan was nearly crazy to see 
 Dolly. The last interview had been so unsatis 
 factory. But he had not yet the courage to go 
 over there. On Saturday, as he stood upon the 
 old wooden check-marker, made like a wide, 
 short, three-runner sled, he felt that in some 
 way he must manage again to fall in with her. 
 He thought of haunting the road home from 
 school, but this would be more pointed than a 
 visit at least, more public. What business, 
 anyway, had a conscientious, industrious boy 
 108 
 
At You- All s Ploiise 109 
 
 lounging along a country road, two miles or 
 more from home, at this stirring season ? Be 
 sides, all the children in the neighborhood 
 would be along with her, and nothing tattles 
 like a child, except but he thought again of 
 Dolly, and didn t say "er woman." 
 
 But there was the April meeting at Walnut 
 Grove to-morrow ! 
 
 " By George ! That s ther ticket. Henry and 
 Dolly always go and eat dinner with their aunt, 
 Mrs. Jordan. I ll go over to her house and stay 
 all night. No, that won t do looks too plain 
 again. Coin back ter dinner would look too 
 pointed and spongy, after stayin all night. No 
 body there, anyway, that s company fer a feller. 
 Tom s too young and lazy, and Sallie s too 
 too awful ugly. Then she might think I was 
 shinin to her, and stir up things." 
 
 But at night as he drew the "marker" out 
 upon the " turnin -row," one thing was settled : 
 that he would go over to Walnut Grove to 
 morrow, and that he would not ride the filly. 
 He would trust to luck about getting to Dolly 
 maybe ride home with her again always 
 an awkward boy s hope maybe fall in with 
 her going. He would cast himself in the way 
 
no At You- All s House 
 
 of opportunity again as he cast the seed into 
 the soil in the reach of sun and shower. 
 
 The morrow dawned a typical rural Sabbath. 
 Sunday seems more to the farmer than to most 
 laborers. It is not only the day upon which he 
 may rest, but one from which he may and does 
 reckon. Last Sunday the field was a burnt fal 
 low, to-day mellow and marked ready for the 
 planter. With Sunday he dates the past and 
 notches the progress of his work, and with it 
 he punctuates the present and lowers the hori 
 zon of the future. It is to him a literal Sab 
 bath not the first day of the week, but the 
 last not the beginning, but the ending, of 
 undertakings. 
 
 In the spring and summer, when the winter 
 feeding is over, it has a tranquillity in rural life 
 that is not the mere suspension of all activity 
 a tranquillity found in no other industry. As 
 on this day the farmer walks around his grow 
 ing crops or strolls through his grazing herds, 
 Nature seems to be running her own affairs and 
 all human interests besides. If he sits in the 
 shade simply, and gazes at the vales and hills, 
 silent in the great sweep of distance, still the 
 mother earth seems, as she rests, to bare her 
 
At Yon-All s House in 
 
 bosom, round and mammary, to give suste 
 nance to man and beast. In the growing time 
 of year, Sunday appears to have more benevo 
 lence in it than even in the autumn ; for there 
 is not anywhere the hint of failure along with 
 the hope of fruit, and the divine and boundless 
 energy seems to stride insistent now while it 
 lies measured and expended then. 
 
 It was a good way over to Walnut Grove. 
 One must start early. A country boy can 
 scarcely be too early at church not too early 
 on the way, at least. He can loiter pleasantly 
 or gossip before the service opens. So Shan 
 spurred up Ben, the bay saddle-gelding, into a 
 rapid fox-trot, that he might not be late. 
 
 But suddenly he slowed up. He was ap 
 proaching the lane that came out from the 
 Simpson home. No horses were hitched at 
 the front fence, ready to go. In the lot was 
 the blazed-face horse that Dolly sometimes 
 rode, though she might be on Bill again. But 
 he knew Bill s track his overreach even, and 
 here was only one track going out of the mouth 
 of the lane that of Henry s horse. Dolly 
 was at home and and (he brought Ben 
 to a stop). No, he couldn t go in. Maybe she 
 
112 At You- All s House 
 
 had gone over yesterday evening and was now 
 at her aunt s. So he touched Ben with his 
 spur, and had to hold his hat as the horse 
 racked rapidly. 
 
 But he slowed up again suddenly at a mem 
 ory. He recalled how several years ago, when 
 this piece of road was new and stumpy, he and 
 Henry had seen old man Huffman Herman 
 Huffman going after his second wife, the 
 widow Worman s daughter. Mr. Simpson had 
 then just turned the road around the new-cut 
 patch at the corner of the field, and, with the 
 usual economy, had left the stumps high for 
 time to rot down and the wagon wheels to 
 knock out. The boys had heard the rumble of 
 the great wagon-box away up the lane, and 
 Henry had said: 
 
 " Shan, I bet that s old Hoffman goin fer his 
 new wife. I know his wagin s rattle ; ther wed- 
 din s ter-day, yer know. Guess he ll stop that 
 gait when he strikes ther new-cut place." 
 
 But he didn t. Herman had no spring-seat. 
 He had simply provided himself with a great 
 deal of ardor, two chairs, and a hickory with." 
 One chair he sat in ; the other knocked about 
 behind him in apparent glee at its mission. The 
 
At You- AW s House 113 
 
 boys bent double with laughter as he passed in 
 his wild enthusiasm, bouncing with the stumps 
 
 his elbows, flapping like featherless wings, 
 held far out from his body, his with whacking 
 frequently at his sweating team, and the chair 
 dancing tipsy fandangos, often on one leg, 
 behind him. Sometimes he seemed about to 
 take a flight himself over the horses backs as 
 the wheels struck an unusually high stump, and 
 finally his end-gate dropped out without his 
 knowledge, and, when last seen by the boys, 
 the lady s chair was skipping dangerously near 
 the opening. 
 
 " Ho up," Shan had said, " I ll not make er 
 fool of myself like that," as he thought of the 
 incident. "I ain t goin fer no wife exactly 
 
 but," and he pulled Ben in. 
 
 When he reached the " Grove," that had 
 not a walnut in it the boys were already 
 standing around in groups, and many pairs 
 were arriving at the stiles which stood out in a 
 little open place apart from the building. The 
 edifice was new yet, and, like Thoreau s cabin, 
 had " unfenced nature right up to the sill." 
 
 Shan glanced at the woods, and reassured 
 himself that the Simpson horses were not there, 
 
114 At Yon- All s House 
 
 and he felt a bit of pride in the acuteness of his 
 observation. Shortly Henry and Sissy Jenkins 
 came riding up. Then the slight hope that he 
 might be mistaken fled and left him sad for 
 Dolly would not be there, perhaps. 
 
 But only a few minutes lapsed, when he saw 
 Sol Jenkins roan mare come prancing up the 
 rise from the creek, and under her the flaunt 
 of a long riding-skirt which he knew, and his 
 heart went into his heels ; for Dolly was not 
 upon one of her father s horses, but upon a 
 dashing, spirited, young, black gelding, which 
 was Sol s particular pride, and was known far 
 and wide as the fast single-footer of the region. 
 Evidently Sol had laid his plans deeply. Dolly 
 had gone over to Sissy s and stayed all night. 
 
 All that day Shan struggled for ease of 
 appearance, but it came not. In the reaction 
 of his desperation it seemed more important 
 than ever that he speak to Dolly to remind 
 her of his existence. To save his life he could 
 not think what he should utter, if he had a 
 chance. As she swept into church she bowed 
 in such a general way to the group he was 
 in that he could not feel that he was even 
 recognized. 
 
At You- All s House 115 
 
 " Say, boys," said one, " that Simpson girl s a 
 stunner, ain t she ? Never saw er girl come out 
 so." 
 
 " Deuced fine looking specimen," said another, 
 who had just that morning read the phrase in a 
 story. 
 
 " Sol Jenkins seems ter be pretty solid there, 
 or tryin to be," said a third. " Old man kinder 
 likes him, too, they say. Got ser much git up. " 
 And Shan went in to the sermon not that he 
 cared for it, but that he could not stand the boys 
 any longer. 
 
 Sol was far enough away from home to go in 
 and sit with his girl. Besides, this newer church 
 house had only one front door, which made it 
 easier. Perhaps he had seen Shan and his 
 hungry look, and had determined that there 
 should be no "cuttin out" this day. 
 
 Shan was nearly desperate, and strange fool 
 ish schemes began again to rise in him. He 
 slipped out of the door during the first song 
 after the dreary sermon, and stood ready for 
 any emergency that might throw him near the 
 girl. Shortly after him came Tommy Jordan 
 Dolly s cousin. 
 
 Tommy was about fifteen years old, large and 
 
ii6 At You- All s House 
 
 sleepy, bored by every sort of exertion and fond 
 of nothing but his bed and his seat at the table. 
 He was wide awake, however, to the extra labor 
 which the April meeting always brought upon 
 him in the way of taking care of the company s 
 horses, bringing chips, wood, water, and in the 
 general hustle which his mother and sister put 
 him through on this occasion. 
 
 An idea suddenly flashed on Shan. It was 
 not a new idea, but the opportunity for its exer 
 cise was unexpected. He would ask Tommy 
 to go home with him, when, of course, since he 
 could not leave company, Tommy would return 
 the compliment by saying, " Can t ter-day. Got 
 comp ny. You come go me ith me ; " where 
 upon he would accept very reluctantly, of 
 course. The scheme had worked often, and 
 was a well recognized yet courteous form of 
 self-invitation everywhere. 
 
 So Shan stepped up and said : " Tom, come 
 go home ith me." 
 
 " Don t kef- fi-do," said Tommy, and, catch 
 ing Shan by the arm and turning toward the 
 woods, he continued nervously : 
 
 " My haws is hitched there by that burr oak. 
 Where s yo r n. Let s git off fo maw comes out 
 
At You-AlVs House 117 
 
 and sees me ! " And though Shan was slow, 
 in the hope that " maw " might come out and 
 see Tommy, yet he soon found himself riding 
 homeward, five weary miles, directly away from 
 where he wished to be, with no prospect of any 
 one for company that afternoon except this 
 vealy boy. 
 
 Tom stayed all night, of course, feeling that 
 he must accept Shan s hospitality in the broad 
 est spirit. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 11 There is a tide in the affairs of men, but there is no gulf- 
 streain setting forever in one direction." LOWELL. 
 
 " Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts, God will see that 
 you do not want society." THOREAU. 
 
 "Friendship is love without his wings." BYRON. 
 
 " His maiden . . . was heaven while he pursued her as a 
 star. She cannot be heaven if she stoops to such a one as 
 he." EMERSON. 
 
 IT was before the days of wire check-rowers 
 or automatic drilling attachments to corn-plant 
 ers in fact, before drilling corn was considered 
 practical at all in Missouri. The idea that the 
 weeds could not be kept down unless the plough 
 ran both ways still prevailed. For this reason 
 some one usually a light boy sat forward 
 on the planter and threw a lever, now one way, 
 now the other, as the cross-marks or furrows 
 were passed. 
 
 There were boys and boys at this business. 
 
 The early machines let the grain fall from a 
 
 box about eighteen inches up, and as it fell it 
 
 travelled forward, as a projectile, with the same 
 
 118 
 
At You- All s House 119 
 
 speed as the team. The lever, therefore, must 
 be thrown a little before reaching the check, 
 to compensate this motion, and it required a 
 skilled hand and head. It had in it all the 
 elements of expert wing-shooting, which aims 
 so far ahead of the flying bird. 
 
 Charlie Watkins, Mildred s twelve-year-old 
 brother, was renowned for his accuracy, and all 
 day he had sat upon the hard platform in front 
 of Shan, and the " clack ! clack ! " of his lever 
 had never ceased, except when he got off at the 
 ends to set over the flag stakes, while Shan 
 threw up the runners to turn around. Thus 
 the day had gone with a strain of attention 
 on each too tense for talk. Shan s eyes were 
 upon the stakes to keep the rows straight, as 
 he drove, and the boy s were upon the pointer 
 that curved over so suggestively toward the 
 checks. 
 
 One afternoon, however, when turning, the 
 boy had thrown out a hungry bid for some sort 
 of praise of his skilled checking, whereupon 
 Shan complimented him, but added, with the 
 arrogance of a few years seniority, that the 
 boys now knew nothing of the skill of dropping 
 corn which prevailed before the planter had 
 
I2O At You- All s House 
 
 been introduced. He reminded Charlie how 
 expert his sister Mildred had been, while he 
 was a tot in dresses yet, when, out of her 
 gathered-up apron, she could drop behind a 
 shovel-plough, as it laid the furrow off, as fast 
 as a horse could walk, every hill at perfect 
 check and never holding less than three, or 
 more than five, grains. He told him of a drop 
 ping match between himself and Mildred, in 
 which she had fairly won her deft slim fingers 
 outdoing his thick clumsy ones; and he thought 
 again to himself how sweetly and modestly she 
 had taken her victory not as a matter of 
 course, but as a great accomplishment that she 
 had outdone him at anything. 
 
 He began to think further, how in all his life 
 this girl had been like a sister to him, how he 
 had confided to her his distresses, and she had 
 soothed him with her consolation. As the sun 
 sank into the fringe of woods that at the west 
 seemed sheared off so square and level, Shan 
 made the last broad wheel-stripes upon the 
 cloddy waste, and the field was finished. When 
 Charlie started home, a few minutes later, Shan 
 called to him to "Tell Milly I ll be over at you- 
 all s house after supper." 
 
At Yon-AW s House 121 
 
 Strange that he could be so free and easy 
 with Mildred. He d give his filly if he could 
 say that in that way to Henry Simpson. 
 Maybe he could some day. Maybe! But he 
 could not feel it yet. 
 
 He did not even dress up to visit Mildred. 
 No, he had won from her all he had ever 
 hoped. Dress is the price we pay for the 
 things we feel we cannot purchase by other 
 means. It is the confession of our poverty in 
 better coin the tacit acknowledgment of a 
 poor circulation of head and heart. He went 
 over in his old working "round-about." 
 
 Although he said " Howdy, Milly ! " very care 
 lessly, and she, " Why, howdy, Shan ! " in her 
 old open way, his manner was not so easy as 
 his clothes. The restraint of his mission was 
 upon him and was evident in a moment to the 
 girl. 
 
 "Shan McBride, you re not yourself to 
 night. What s the matter with you? You re 
 not yourself anywhere here lately. Why, get- 
 tin in love don t seem ter paralyze everybody 
 as it does you." 
 
 " Why, who said I was in love ? " 
 
 " Oh, nobody. Nobody don t have ter say 
 
122 At You- All s House 
 
 it. It just says itself. Come, Shan, you can t 
 fool your old friend, nor nobody else, fer that 
 matter. Didn t everybody see you runnin your 
 filly ter death ter catch up with a certain body 
 Sunday before last ? Oh, pshaw ! Runnin 
 off ! Stuff ! Now, Shan McBride, fer a boy 
 who is noted in all this country fer bein able 
 ter ride anything that has hoofs, ter talk that 
 uh way is ridiculous. Couldn t help it ! I don t 
 blame yeh. Nobody does, I reckon nobody 
 who s got any sense. Only you take it too 
 hard, some way. In your case it don t seem 
 ter break out right." 
 
 The measles were prevalent. " Well, what of 
 it ? I know she didn t. She ought ter uv 
 waited a moment, but she couldn t think. She 
 thought you could ride a zebray. She ivas hurt 
 about it and felt sorry. These sort of affairs 
 seem to hurt everybody that catches em 
 except Sol Jenkins. He seems ter keep cool." 
 
 Mildred had mentioned Jenkins not with 
 meanness, but for a certain purpose. 
 
 " I don t see any signs of her sufferm ," said 
 Shan, not yet willing to drag Sol into it. 
 
 "Well, that s all you know about it. Of 
 course a girl can t go round wearin mournin 
 
At You- All s House 123 
 
 because a feller s filly won t pass his own gate, 
 or go over and patch his pants, so s he can 
 come ter see her. Girls s got a little modesty 
 well as boys sometimes. Why don t you go 
 over ter see her and have it out?" 
 
 " I know that bothers you, and it bothers me. 
 I can t tell you why, except I love her, and 
 something about her makes me feel ser mean 
 and little. I guess that s always ther case in 
 the presence of things we adore. I not only 
 love Dolly, I could just worship ther hem of 
 her dress." 
 
 " Tell me something I don t know." 
 
 " I couldn t tell you why if you asked me. I 
 don t admire her as I do you and others. She 
 would never make ther friend that you do. She 
 lacks many of ther noble traits that you have, 
 and some of ther accomplishments that others 
 show. Miss Winnie, of course, impresses me 
 as bein her superior in many ways. Ain t it 
 strange that we can love where we can t endorse ? 
 I know Dolly s frailties know they are there 
 yet, I ve seen em in her childhood and yet 
 I d give my right arm to know her mine to 
 night. 
 
 "Why don t I ask her ? I just couldn t. I d 
 
124 dt You-AIVs House 
 
 rather live in doubt and hope than in ther de 
 spair er bein rejected. She might scorn me as 
 I may deserve. I ve no claims upon her regard ; 
 you know that. Father opposed ther change of 
 road that Mr. Simpson made, and when the 
 school district was divided, he and father were 
 upon opposin sides. Henry and I have drifted 
 away from each other. Dolly still cherishes 
 ther little feelin s of ill-will against me that she 
 showed as er child. She teased me th other 
 day about Lizzie Williams in the old mean way. 
 I guess I m such a fool that I fell in love with 
 her because she tried ter help me get my mule 
 colt ter foller, and anybody would uh done that." 
 Mildred started to protest, but he continued : 
 " Besides, Milly, I m er sort of fatalist. Oh, 
 not just the blind chance sort, yer know, but 
 ther fatalism that has God s guidance behind 
 it, but never in sight. If accerdents, like double 
 trees and brass kettles, er mud-splash and er 
 foolish colt, can so involve my heart, I ve a sort 
 of feelin some way that accerdent ought tuh see 
 me out." 
 
 Mildred smiled at this as she thought also of 
 the barbed-wire episode, but looking up she saw 
 his face very serious as he continued : 
 
At You- AW s House 125 
 
 " Sometimes I fear to exert my will too much 
 free as I feel it is for fear especially in 
 this thing I may get outside er ther order of 
 God s purposes for my good. Man fell that 
 way, you know. I ve thought of that uh good 
 deal. I know He expects me ter work in every 
 other way, but I have always felt that He would 
 send me a wife in ther line of His own choice. 
 It may be by some accerdent and and" (his 
 voice broke), " I just love and wait." 
 
 "But but " stammered Mildred. 
 
 " But in the mean time I just suffer, too, I tell 
 yer. If I only knew that Dolly cared for me 
 er little if I could only hope that God might 
 throw my reward that way " And he looked 
 so scrutinizingly and pitifully into Mildred s 
 eyes that she threw her apron up over her face 
 and turned away. 
 
 "But, Shan," she said, "you don t think you 
 should wait for Dolly ter speak first, do you ? " 
 
 "I don t mean just that," he said. "I don t 
 know what I do mean. Something seems ter 
 say ter me, Wait. " 
 
 There was a strong temptation for Mildred 
 to tell him of Dolly s visit and all that it meant, 
 but she held Dolly s joking promise sacred and 
 
126 At You- Air s House 
 
 restrained herself. But her heart smote her as 
 she looked into this lover s eager face. She 
 smiled a sort of apology to him as she said : 
 
 " If you fear too much ter press your destiny 
 outside of yourself or ter strain ther course of 
 ordinary happenin s, it would be very, very 
 wrong for me ter put myself forward into your 
 life and fate. You would not like for me ter 
 try ter do what you yourself will not attempt. 
 I can only wish you well." 
 
 " I might consider you as an accerdent," said 
 Shan, smiling faintly. 
 
 " Yes, but you came over here uh purpose to 
 put me inter this affair. Let your fate not 
 you use me as it will. I could tell you some 
 things, of course. You knew that when you 
 came. One thing you are entitled to, and that 
 is that Dolly knows your worth, and has lost 
 all those little spiteful feelin s you were speakin 
 of. She is better than you think. But she 
 is no better than I ve always known you ter 
 be." 
 
 And in her sympathy she reached out and 
 touched him upon the head, as he held it, as 
 if in despair, between his hands. In an instant 
 he lifted his face and kissed her on the cheek. 
 
At You- All s House 127 
 
 These two young persons were not in love 
 with each other, of course, for each knew where 
 the other stood, but there was a sweet feeling 
 of friendship between them Platonic or not 
 which was more than any that could ever exist 
 between man and man or girl and girl. It may 
 be that it was the sex of soul, which, leaving 
 the sex of body behind, reached out to grasp 
 its fellow s hand. Certainly there are many 
 such friendships, with this finer insight of one 
 life into another life, where the sweetheart feel 
 ing never comes ; or else the heart does not 
 always know its own. Often it may be just 
 fellow-suffering or enjoyment. 
 
 To the boy in love there comes no other such 
 comforter, and he never fails to render to this 
 friend the homage that is hers. 
 
 Perhaps with her there enters something of 
 the old match-making feeling that is in us all, 
 which parades itself as a factor of bonds built in 
 the skies, and exalts us, in this respect at least, 
 into partnership with the angels in wishing 
 good-will to the sons and daughters of men. 
 Few things remain so pure to us, and, while 
 often misdirected, few actions have their motives 
 so unselfish and sincere. " All the world loves 
 
128 At You- All s House 
 
 a lover," and Mildred slept little that night for 
 fear these lovers might miss each other in their 
 fate. 
 
 Shan rode home under the stars with a new 
 feeling in his heart but it was the old, old 
 thing with boys. He would do something that 
 would provoke attention, nay, admiration, 
 and compel an expression, in some way, of 
 Dolly s love. Yes, there was a vista where 
 Dolly was doing him homage as many others 
 were, and he had taken her to his heart with 
 condescension had won her without wooing. 
 Mingled with his great love now there crept in 
 a kind of enjoyment of her humiliation, the old, 
 old slime of vanity just as jealousy may mingle 
 hatred with the noblest emotion. 
 
 As he turned into his home he felt large 
 already with his ambitions, and he almost 
 snatched the old dragging, creaking gate off 
 its hinges so vigorous is a healthy hand 
 when stimulated by a desperate yet hoping 
 heart. All night long he lay awake, though 
 dreaming out the details of his future ; and he 
 had so far forgotten his creed that he had deter 
 mined to carve out his career by the sheer force 
 of his will, in spite of destiny. 
 
At You- All s House 129 
 
 He worked the remnant of the week with a 
 roused spirit, yet he lost his interest a little in 
 the affairs of the farm, as he thought how next 
 fall, when he was twenty-one, he would leave 
 for college and begin a higher life. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 " There is throughout Nature something . . . that leads us on 
 and on, but arrives nowhere." EMERSON. 
 
 NEXT Sunday morning Shan, having bor 
 rowed a buggy from a neighbor, " ter take the 
 teacher ter town in," hitched Ben, the reliable, 
 to it, and he and Miss Hudson started to the 
 county seat to hear her old friend, Mr. Witmer, 
 preach. It was one of those indescribable 
 April mornings when all the promises of Nature 
 seem about to be paid, and earth and air are 
 solvent. The leaves of the woods were not 
 full-sized yet, but they had swelled wonderfully 
 since yesterday, and there was a tone in the still 
 visible branches above that hinted the flooding 
 sap. The tender verdance upon the earth 
 beneath was so clean and fresh that one felt 
 newly made with the season. 
 
 Shan felt the inspiration, but was reflective 
 as they drove. Some commonplaces had passed 
 when the teacher said, simply to rouse the 
 boy: 
 
 130 
 
At You- All s House 131 
 
 " Do you know, I m just intoxicated with a 
 morning like this, rejuvenated, made over ! I 
 feel as if I never had a memory that all the 
 past is blank, and that I am just beginning an 
 everlasting Now. It could not be, of course, but 
 I feel now as if life should be an eternal spring 
 or that I should be like the oriole up there. He 
 has come up from the tropics in one long green 
 ing April, winging in on one continuous wave of 
 opening bud and bursting catkin. He loiters till 
 the insect life wakes with the tender leaf, and 
 beats his way up northward with the hum of 
 gauzy wings. He is a bird of opportunity. Per 
 haps the migratory instinct is as strong in him 
 as others often stronger but he waits, till 
 Nature leads him on with a pillar of shine by 
 day and a pillar of green by night." 
 
 "That s about my theory of life," Shan re 
 plied, "ter go where circumstance and Nature 
 leads. Of course, uh man s above uh bird, but 
 it seems that he d be happy as a bird if he 
 stopped worrying about his progress and fol 
 lowed just what he felt. Nature might be kind 
 to him then as she is to the beasts. A bird or 
 a hog knows when its goin to rain or turn cold 
 often, but I didn t know enough this morning to 
 
132 At You-AH s House 
 
 tell me whether I ought ter bring an overcoat 
 er a fan. Nature guides the bird, but leaves 
 me ter draw uh conclusion often from a very 
 poor knowledge of the facts." 
 
 " I think you put it too severely, Mr. Shan," 
 she said, noting the desponding tone in his 
 voice ; " there s that blue-bird there ; I think he 
 was here in February singing that same song, 
 and that he got caught in some cold snaps. 
 Some years he fails to go far enough south and 
 gets killed by the unusual sweep of a cold wave 
 beyond his winter home, as we were once say 
 ing. At the first flash of vernal sun among the 
 bare boughs of his old home, he hies northward 
 to greet it with his song, and seems, unlike the 
 oriole, to help Nature make the spring. He 
 and all the early comers found their faith in her 
 very hints, and take her on trust, as you do when 
 you sow your seed. They do not wait for com 
 pulsion. They are forcing Nature somewhat to 
 their wills. Why, do you know, many tender 
 birds are learning to brave our winters here ? 
 It is true they all fail sometimes. How could 
 faith exist if fruition always lay at the front 
 door? When the conditions indicate, the bird 
 puts itself in the way of Nature s opportunities, 
 
At You- All s House 133 
 
 and trusts and works. Doing this is doing 
 well." 
 
 Shan, of course, had been in town often be 
 fore, but never on Sunday. He was much im 
 pressed with the quiet of things. The rush of 
 business, the loud guffaw of the lounger, and 
 the Saturday bawl of the auctioneer as he pro 
 claimed in the most public place the age, sex, 
 sexual condition, and probabilities of the stock 
 he sold all these were missing. The street- 
 corner cigar store and the Sunday baseball 
 club had not rivalled the Sunday-school in 
 attractiveness and attendance yet. 
 
 He had gone in with Miss Hudson, and sat 
 impressed with the great stretch of the congre 
 gation away up to the pulpit. As the choir 
 up front arose, he was sure that he had never 
 before had so many persons sing directly at him, 
 and he found himself wondering where the Lord 
 got his praises. The impression that these per 
 sons were on exhibition for his benefit embar 
 rassed him. Then one of the choir-girls bent 
 her book back so far that he suffered a book 
 being such a sacred thing to him. She seemed 
 to do it to show that she was professional. 
 Another evidently had a friend on the bench 
 
134 At You- All s House 
 
 behind him, to whom she nodded and smiled 
 and almost giggled. Once she had to take a 
 kink or two in her neck to keep from " snorting 
 right out," as Shan expressed it, when telling it 
 at home. He felt at first that she was aiming 
 this at him. In all his nature-study he had 
 never met the grinning choir-girl nor read of 
 her. At that time her literature was small, but 
 her evolution was complete. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 " What I aspired to and was not comforts me." 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " One impulse from a vernal wood 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 So absorbing were all the things to be seen, 
 that Shan did not know just when Mr. Witmer 
 took his text or what it was. He remembered 
 a sort of haze of general statements, then some 
 thing about a gun aroused him, and thoughts 
 somewhat like these stayed with him : 
 
 " Aiming high is a fine beginning. It is the 
 duty of every beginner. Quite likely he may 
 even then hit below the point in sight, but he 
 would not have shot so high with lower sighting. 
 This is an old figure. Everybody knows it 
 uses it to stimulate ambition. High aim within 
 limits means long range. But it takes a genius 
 to tell where the ball will strike. We think of 
 35 
 
136 At You- All s House 
 
 Lee at Mexico, and Foote of Fort Henry, and 
 we are thrilled ; but Lees and Footes are not 
 every-day fellows. 
 
 " Recently a great gun was trained in Eng 
 land. The conditions were given. A prize was 
 offered for the closest calculation as to where 
 the ball would fall. The great projectile swept 
 fifteen miles. A hundred feet was the closest 
 estimate, and all the world clapped its hands. 
 But it was a bad miss at best. Some of the 
 estimates were wrong by miles. A city might 
 have been struck, but at point-blank tacks may 
 be driven and hairs cut. After all, the best 
 work is the work of precision. 
 
 " Do not discourage yourself with your aim 
 ing. Many of us can aim too high ; our ideals 
 may be too far beyond our capacity. There 
 is a medium, too, which is the maximum well 
 known in mathematics. If you aim directly 
 up, look out! The ball may fall back on you. 
 You had better aim too low than too high. 
 That is heresy, isn t it, but I am talking of 
 work. If you cannot do precise work, you can 
 aim lower still using the ricochet with the 
 ball bounding and rebounding on the ground 
 in dangerous plunges, ploughing through every 
 
At You- All s House 137 
 
 obstruction. Anybody can do good work at 
 this. Our enemies are low down, close at hand 
 with most of us not out of sight or beyond 
 their ramparts. Ours is the direct express 
 shooting if not that, the ricochet. 
 
 " Then we should not try to load too heavily. 
 If the projectile weighed the more, the load 
 would shoot the gun. We, and not the enemy, 
 would suffer. There is a nice adjustment of 
 self to weapon, or weapon to self, when we 
 have the choosing. David could do nothing 
 with Saul s armor, but with a sling he could 
 slay a giant. You may not be able to handle 
 a mortar, but at short range any one is dan 
 gerous with a shot-gun." 
 
 Some one came tiptoeing up the aisle, touched 
 a doctor on the shoulder, who took up his hat 
 and cane and, with great dignity and creaking 
 shoes, bent low and went out. The whisper 
 ing and giggling crowd upon the rear seats 
 straightened themselves suddenly and looked 
 demure and innocent at the minister s sudden 
 stop. 
 
 "I was pruning my grapes the other day," 
 he began again, "and burning the useless 
 branches. How strongly the figure of the Mas- 
 
138 At Yon-All* s House 
 
 ter came back to me, He purgeth it. There 
 was the ambitious lateral that wanted to run 
 away up to the tree tops, or out horizontally 
 and bear fruit away from home, for all vines 
 tend to bear toward the tip. But I cut it back, 
 because the clusters grown near the root are 
 better. Thus the branch is held within the 
 circle of its greatest usefulness. 
 
 " Somehow we do not do our best unham 
 pered. There is no free and easy way to do 
 good. To pull well we must be harnessed. 
 To return to our vine, if we are unrestrained 
 we go too much to length and leaf to woody 
 fibre. Vines cannot prune themselves. We 
 might cut off our spreading tendencies, but we 
 will not. Hence the need of some one else 
 outside of self with shears and loving foresight, 
 to put our effort where it does the best. 
 
 " I am late pruning my grapes this year. I 
 have done them that injustice. They are weep 
 ing tears of sap as if conscious of their loss ; 
 but these same tears soon heal the wounds and 
 dam themselves till they surge back into the 
 shorter stocks, and strike the roots into deeper 
 and fresher soil. 
 
 "There is this mounting ambition in us all, 
 
At Yon-All s House 139 
 
 brethren this reach so far away that per 
 formance fails in aspiration. How many of 
 us fret beneath the burden of the commonplace, 
 and feel that we should be greening among the 
 tree tops, when God has simply blighted the 
 tendrils of our ambitions that we may bear fruit 
 low down where there is so much need of it ! 
 How much the limit set upon us may enlarge 
 our capacities for refreshing others ! Doubt 
 less in a double sense, God, in thwarting many 
 of our hopes, is caring for his own." 
 
 Miss Winnie heard Shan loose a long breath 
 in a sighing expiration, and when their eyes 
 met, he had a glowing, wondering face. The 
 minister shifted his notes a little, looked at his 
 watch, cleared his throat, put a troche in his 
 mouth, and resumed in a rather subdued tone : 
 
 " I burnt some other things yesterday. All 
 morning I scraped up dead weeds. They were 
 cumbering the ground and would hinder plough 
 and hoe, and keep out the warm sun and drying 
 wind. But it isn t that which worries me, for 
 they will burn or rot, but it is the quantity of 
 seed that I see in the Jimpson pods and in 
 the fuzzy spikes of the hog-weeds. At every 
 touch these shower down where others have 
 
140 At Yon-AlVs House 
 
 fallen, and in spite of care now, I am sowing 
 trouble for the summer. 
 
 " Penitence is good, of course, in its place, 
 but abstinence is better. The weeds will grow 
 this summer in spite of present grief, which 
 will only make the hoe-stroke harder. Peni 
 tence may prevent the further sowing, but it 
 cannot unsow the sown. It was my duty to 
 never let the weed seeds ripen ; I ceased too 
 soon my last year s battle. Eternal vigilance 
 is the price of our release from the bondage 
 of bad tendencies as well as the price of liberty. 
 Perhaps my garden will never be clean again, 
 because of this neglect; for some of these 
 plants are perennial, like the docks, and strike 
 their starchy roots far beneath the reach of 
 plough and hoe, and sprout again from merest 
 fragments. With the others, some of the seeds 
 lie dormant more than a year, and sprout when 
 surroundings suit. 
 
 " Sometimes a young man sows wild oats 
 so called in his youth, in view of an expected 
 long life for penitence. But though the scatter 
 ing may cease, if God perhaps may give the 
 opportunity, the seeding still goes down the 
 ages. The men who introduced the English 
 
At Yon- Air s House 141 
 
 sparrow were doubtless sorry for it, but my 
 currant buds are being destroyed daily, just the 
 same. 
 
 " I do not know how it will be in heaven. 
 God may have some way of destroying the 
 impetus of a bad deed, if penitence shall save 
 us. But how can penitence ever save us from 
 remorse, unless our memories are blighted, and 
 we lose our past and begin as new creatures in 
 the other life. It s a saddening thought this 
 eternality of facts and deeds just alone un- 
 multiplied, unintensified. But then, a fact be 
 getting facts, a deed engendering deeds, seeds 
 from seeds weeds from weeds ! The thought 
 is awful, unless the deeds be right! " 
 
 There was some coughing and clearing of 
 throats as the preacher paused, and many looked 
 around to see on whom the remarks most fit 
 tingly fell while a long swell of rustling 
 fabrics and shuffling feet spoke the readjust 
 ment of rest. The whisperers on the back seat 
 had been listening open-mouthed. 
 
 Shan feared that the sermon had stopped for 
 good, but 
 
 "With a bit of the botanist about me/ the 
 preacher resumed, " I recall the history of some 
 
142 At You-AWs House 
 
 of the weeds whose stems I am burning. Be 
 sides the native denizens of our soil, many of 
 the weeds we fight are foreigners. The purs 
 lane, the plantain, the curled dock, the dande 
 lion, all claim European birth perhaps came 
 over in the Mayflower. You know the Jimp- 
 son got its name from Jamestown. 
 
 " How easy it is to take on other tendencies 
 than those already in our nature, and how we 
 may burden our souls with more trials than were 
 designed for us ! Life at best is a fight with 
 weeds the primal curse of thorns and this 
 tles, but it is enough to fight the cockle-burr 
 and the horse-nettle without the cottonweed and 
 the burdock. 
 
 " Think a moment and note, as a social whole 
 and as individuals, the evils that we have intro 
 duced into our lives : Tastes for whiskey, 
 beer, tobacco ; love for the brutality of the prize- 
 ring, the race-course, and the so-called manly 
 college-sport ; a craving for the mawkish senti 
 ments and prurient suggestions of poor fiction, 
 and the frothy excitement of the poor drama. 
 Much of these we have cultivated against 
 nature, and what is worse still, against our best 
 training and culture." 
 
At You- AW s House 143 
 
 There was a slight rustle again in the congre 
 gation. The brother who chewed, and spat am- 
 beer on the carpet, thought of the brother whose 
 spirituous breath came over his shoulder from a 
 rear pew ; and she with a paper-backed French 
 novel of the most prurient type laid open face 
 downward on her dresser, so as not to lose the 
 place, turned with a lifted lip toward the sister 
 whose husband s horse could go under 2.25. 
 
 " Another thought or so, and I am done," the 
 pastor said, closing his Bible and putting the 
 hymn-book neatly upon it. " Up in one corner 
 of my yard some one, before I came, allowed 
 some parsnips to escape into the grass, and 
 every year they clog my lawn-mower and mar 
 my sward. It is a splendid herb in its place, 
 but it has no business posing as a lawn plant. 
 1 A weed/ some one has said, is a plant growing 
 out of place, and this one has leaped its bounds, 
 and is not only useless but injurious. No longer 
 are the roots succulent and sweet, but hard and 
 stringy, and, like the tops, rank and poisonous. 
 
 " I do not care to re-emphasize the heaping 
 of calamities, by our heedlessness, upon those 
 who may come after us though I am suffer 
 ing from some one s former deed ; but note this, 
 
144 At Yon-All s House 
 
 that some of our better tendencies may need 
 watching lest they leap their bounds. Anger, 
 industry, learning, love and zeal of any kind 
 directed the wrong way, unrestrained, unpruned, 
 if you please, may become vices virtues out 
 of place. Even truth suppose God should tell 
 the world to-day all Fie knows of us ! 
 
 " So, after all, much of the good in us may just 
 consist in position a position of usefulness at 
 least ; and temperance in all things is the true 
 policy till experience shall make the test. 
 
 "We wonder often why God permits evil. It 
 is the old question of the ages ; but much of 
 what we style evil is just misplaced good. The 
 Jimpson that I burn is the stramonium of 
 medicine, the dandelion that I dig is the tarax 
 acum of the druggist, and the dock a spring 
 remedy on every farm. In small doses they 
 may cure ; in large ones they kill. 
 
 " But why did God give us these tendencies, I 
 know you are asking, if they are to be so re 
 stricted ? Because in them are the inherent 
 laws of growth for good. They are the forces 
 with which God through nature builds. Exu 
 berance is the outcome of life itself an inci 
 dent of existence an essential of all progress. 
 
At You- All s House 145 
 
 By its laws I shape my vine into symmetry and 
 locate my fruit, and I can almost tell you where 
 every blossom will expand. I could not expect 
 my clusters so large, if it were not for this sur 
 plus energy which I throw that way. 
 
 "The same law of love that lets the weeds 
 grow, sprouts the apple and the wheat, and it is 
 ours to guide and select that which is good for 
 us and our fellows. Out of these man becomes 
 co-creator of his better self in partnership 
 with God, forming his own character, and mould 
 ing to-day, as in Eden, his destiny by choice. 
 But still he may misplace himself, ruin his use 
 fulness, by an overstrained ambition." 
 
 L 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 " We talk of deviations from natural life as if artificial life 
 were not also natural." EMERSON. 
 
 "Sometimes we are inclined to class the once-and-a-half- 
 witted with the half-witted because we appreciate only a third 
 part of their wit." THOREAU. 
 
 " To be great we stretch ourselves and stand on tiptoe. But 
 greatness is unstrained and stands on the soles of the feet." 
 
 THOREAU. 
 
 " The body sprang . . . and stayed ; but the soul no." 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 As they walked out of the church it dawned 
 on Shan, from the region of his stomach rather 
 than his head, that he had not thought of where 
 they should get their dinners ; and the matter 
 became doubly embarrassing as he realized that 
 he had not a cent of money with him. 
 
 But Miss Winnie relieved the blank look in 
 his face somewhat, by a bow and smile of rec 
 ognition at some folks over on a side aisle, who 
 bowed and smiled in return. 
 
 "Those are acquaintances of mine, Shan, with 
 whom I travelled one day as I came here. They 
 146 
 
At You-AWs House 147 
 
 have always insisted that I visit them. I dropped 
 them a note the other day. I told them about 
 you, and they expect us to dinner." 
 
 But it was with much persuasion that they got 
 him to go at all. He wished her to go, but he 
 would "just knock eround town till time ter go 
 home." He felt that he would rather go hungry 
 than to face, in his awkwardness, " town folks " 
 in their own house. But finally he went. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Noggins had moved to town 
 a few years before to educate their children, 
 but their oldest boy had neglected school and 
 was now in the curriculum of baseball and the 
 cigarette. He was not at home to-day, because 
 he had to play in a match game at a neighbor 
 ing watering-place. 
 
 The sixteen-year-old daughter was just enter 
 ing the local college, and colloquially was in the 
 throes of that very, very distinct enunciation in 
 which we all feel that sound compensates so 
 largely for something else. She was having 
 now little spasms of lost breath at times 
 almost total paralysis of the respiratory cen 
 tresbetween her "ats" and "alls." 
 
 The parents represented the average of rural 
 folk of the region, who start out suddenly, late 
 
148 At You-AlVs House 
 
 in life, to run culture down at handicap ; and 
 Miss Hudson could not help comparing their 
 bald pretentiousness with the frank sincerity of 
 the people where she taught. Neither could 
 she resist the impression that it were better 
 that, if possible, culture should come to this 
 people midst the naturalness of their surround 
 ings, so that it need not be so strained in its 
 manifestations. 
 
 As for Shan, he was so disgusted with the 
 silly girl, in comparing her with the simplicity 
 of Mildred and Dolly, that he felt that if ambi 
 tion and education meant separation from them 
 and the acquisition of this, he had serious doubts 
 about his high hopes of yesterday. How much 
 our supercilious affectation may cause our hum 
 bler brother to stumble ! 
 
 " Miss Winnie," said the boy, as they rode 
 home, "did you tell Mr. Witmer about me as 
 you told the Nogginses ? " 
 
 " No. Why, Shan ? " 
 
 " Because he seemed to preach at me, and I 
 saw him look at you a time er two." 
 
 " No, he didn t know we were coming. Did 
 you like the sermon ? " 
 
 His eyes glowed a moment. " I didn t know 
 
At Yon- AW s House 149 
 
 there was such preachin , or could be. He s 
 been a nature-student, too, hasn t he ? " 
 
 "What do you mean by too, Shan ? " 
 
 "You know who I mean," looking at her. 
 " But, though he helped me much, he s mixt me 
 up. Oughtn t I to have ambition ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, ambition to do the best." 
 
 " But how erbout greatness ? " 
 
 "Being best as God sees it, is being greatest, 
 in His eyes at least. The lowly, well-pruned 
 fruit-bearing grape-vine is greatest, after all. 
 That was Mr. Witmer s idea, though he did not 
 bring it out so strongly. He leaves you to 
 preach something to yourself." 
 
 A meadow lark flew across the road, alighted 
 on a twig, and sang a half-high keyed, half-low 
 pitched song, with a hoarse raspiness and a 
 liquid gurgle mixed in between, which roused the 
 teacher s interest at once. It was the hybrid 
 song of the eastern and western forms. 
 
 They rode on further, noting the early coo of 
 the dove and his extravagancies of flight, 
 whereby he sailed out from a tall perch and 
 back, almost as a sparrow-hawk. 
 
 An oriole, they both said, seemed to say so 
 distinctly, " Sweet, sweet, do you hear ? do you 
 
150 At You- All s House 
 
 hear ? sweet ? " as though this was a love-song 
 indeed. A flock of geese swept over northward 
 having learned the benefits of a "flying 
 wedge " to cleave the air with long before 
 some other goose had used it as a means of 
 breaking collar bones. 
 
 Then there was the "slee-e-e"k" screak of a 
 flock of cowbirds passing, and their habits 
 caused Miss Hudson to speak of parasites and 
 their lesson old, old things to her and the 
 well-informed, but new to this boy, and interest 
 ing because they came to him so directly out of 
 Nature. When she emphasized how a great 
 law of love followed the creature down into its 
 deepest degradation that the law of suiting 
 everything to its place ivas the great law of 
 love, there came to him for a moment, in view 
 of his high, indefinite, unsatisfied ambition of 
 yesterday, a great thrill of peace. But in a 
 moment his thought seemed to jump at this 
 question : 
 
 " Miss Winnie, why did God make a devil ? " 
 " I think, Shan, that the Devil made himself 
 a devil. Anybody has in himself all the mate 
 rial for a fairly good Satan, and can go into the 
 devil-making business any day." 
 
At You-AWs House 151 
 
 They drove along awhile in one of those 
 silences that come to those who are all day in 
 each other s company. 
 
 In view of the fact that he had been fretting 
 under his fate with Dolly, he expressed some 
 skepticism upon the application of this law of 
 love to man s case though this morning he 
 was willing to let himself drift with whatever 
 came. 
 
 "Yes," she said, in reply to a question. 
 "This law has done so much for man that it 
 has almost made him appear to have fallen 
 upward. The loss of Eden was to man the 
 gain of choice to do either good or evil, and, as a 
 co-worker with God, to build himself by restraint 
 Godward. We should never have known the 
 Model Man if the mere innocence of an ignorant 
 state had not been lost in exchange for the 
 possible sinfulness which came with the know 
 ledge of right and wrong." 
 
 She thought the subject settled, and was 
 turning to speak of some roadside thing when 
 she noted a great interest in his face as he said : 
 
 " Did man sin upward, then, Miss Winnie ? " 
 
 She gasped an instant at the consequences of 
 her theology. 
 
152 At You- All s House 
 
 "No! n-u-h-oh, Shan, yeh-es. His sin was 
 turned into a blessing. Let s say that he lost 
 upward, Mr. Shan, died upward, if you like. 
 He had been doing that for ages. He was 
 created by loss and death dying by piecemeal 
 from the beginning. If the scientists be right, 
 he had lost gills to get lungs, lost paws to get 
 hands and upright pose, lost the keenness of 
 the senses and many instincts to get reason, and 
 abandoned reason to some extent, to get faith 
 and spirituality. Likewise he lost that state of 
 innocence the innocence of the babe and ani 
 mal to get moral responsibility, and the means 
 of making the final death a great moult into 
 higher things still. The real Tree of Life 
 was set in the midst of the New Jerusalem, 
 you know. This is the great lesson of this 
 morning s sermon." 
 
 " But Christ ? " said the boy, his face glowing 
 with the deepest interest. 
 
 " Is the Great Sample of what we can be and 
 the great ladder of sacrifice on which we may 
 climb. We have come up by a long line of 
 sacrifices. It is the law of life and progress 
 no more explainable than why we have to eat to 
 live. Every cry of pain, every mother s wail, 
 
At You-AWs House 153 
 
 every death-cry, is a shout of triumph in the 
 march of something upward some one taken, 
 some one left. But man as man could seize 
 nothing earthly that was higher than himself, to 
 pull his spirit up with, so the great biological 
 law of sacrifice reached up to the eternal throne 
 and grasped at God Himself." 
 
 They were at home now. She had not in 
 tended to preach to this boy. Only the merest 
 interpretation of Mr. Witmer s thought had been 
 in her mind as Shan s questions had spurred 
 her on. 
 
 " Miss Winnie," he said, as he left her at the 
 gate, " I m not goin ter try ter thank yer f er this 
 day. It s been a year of Sundays inter one with 
 me. I m er half a lifetime bigger than I wuz. 
 I had never thought I had never thought. 
 I didn t know I could think such thoughts. 
 Good-by ! " 
 
 And now, in the fervor of his feelings, his love 
 reached out and took Dolly again into its shrine ; 
 and the petty ambitions of yesterday petty only 
 in their purpose gave way to a broad enthusi 
 asm of hope that she should be his yet, because 
 he was worthy of her, or could make himself so, 
 in his soul of souls. The high impulse came, 
 
154 At You-AH s House 
 
 with the trickling tears on his face and in the 
 softness of his feelings, that she should love him, 
 not because he was great, but because he was 
 good. What a pity many of us do not die in 
 these moods ! 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 " If we were earthworms, liable at every instant to be cut in 
 two by the spade, perhaps too much sensation might not be 
 good for us." RUSKIN. 
 
 "Cruel partly through want of imagination." RUSKIN. 
 
 " Dreams . . . when monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic 
 wakes." DRYDEN. 
 
 IT is easy to see how Harvest Homes, Yule- 
 tides, Thanksgivings, and the various customs 
 of rejoicing after a finished work at certain sea 
 sons originated. They are as old as the Sab 
 bath itself, and, like it, founded in the very 
 necessity of things. 
 
 Now that the corn was all planted, here well 
 down into the month of May, Shan thought of 
 his usual custom of taking a fish or a squirrel- 
 hunt, as a sort of punctuation point between 
 the planting of the last corn and the ploughing 
 of the first the latter now just peeping up. 
 There were yet in his region then a good many 
 gray squirrels, and they were " about ripe " out 
 upon the elm limbs of the bottoms; for our 
 timber had not been so cut out then as now. 
 
156 At You- All s House 
 
 The young fox squirrels had been out for some 
 time. In March he had shot at a red-tailed 
 hawk carrying something over, and she had 
 dropped the hind legs of a half-grown north 
 ern fox squirrel, which she was carrying to 
 her nestlings, having taken the fore-parts for 
 herself. 
 
 But yielding to the mood of rest and reflec 
 tion that he was in, he decided upon a fish ; for 
 his style of fishing required small exertion. 
 Getting the grubbing-hoe he began a search 
 for earthworms along the garden fence. 
 
 "Funny things is fishin worms," he mused, 
 after he had dug up a great stretch of earth. 
 " Never around when you want em. Other 
 day when I was ploughin hereby, they squirmed 
 anywhere. Now I can t see uh one. The last 
 hard rain, one climbed into the tin cup on the 
 pump er else he was rained in there. Won 
 der which ? Don t believe in its rainin fish- 
 worms much. It don t stand ter reason. He s 
 always deep in the ground before a storm 
 comes soz a whirlwind can t get holt er him 
 to suck him up. Saw one climbin a windeY- 
 pane onct, and that settled it with me. If he 
 can get things wet enough, he can dim any- 
 
At You- All s House 157 
 
 where. He comes up on the surface when it 
 rains. Seems ter like er bath. Don t know 
 why he should dirt don t seem to stick to 
 him. He just sweats it off or greases it off, I 
 reckon s better. He seems oiled by er kinder 
 slime that makes him slip through the dirt 
 slick. Wonderful stretchy thing s er fish-worm. 
 Yer think yuh get a whopper here, but out on 
 the creek yer find him nothin but er string uh 
 skin bout a foot long. Funny things." 
 
 He finally found some in a damp place under 
 some rubbish, put them in a tin can, sprinkled 
 some moist soil over them to keep them fresh, 
 and was ready. He still had some scruples 
 about losing a whole afternoon at so busy a 
 season, and remembering a partial break in the 
 barbed-wire fence around the " timbuh fawty," as 
 his father always called it, he put a pair of cut 
 ting pliers in his pocket, with which to mend it 
 as he passed. He also took a paper sack full 
 of salt, portions of which he dropped here and 
 there in snowy piles at the roots of trees, where 
 he knew the stock would find it. 
 
 Having emptied his sack and fixed the breach 
 in the fence, he felt more as though he had 
 earned respite from toil than if he had come 
 
158 At You-AH s House 
 
 directly on; so he hurried up, and struck the 
 creek at a bend, where the whirl of the water 
 had worn out a great hole known as "big 
 deep" a favorite swimming-place. 
 
 Here he had expected to find some neighbor 
 boys, but he was disappointed; and, alone, he 
 doffed the two simple but essential garments 
 that he wore, and took his first creek-bath, for 
 the season, at a plunge. But there was no fun 
 in diving, or floating and showing off, when 
 there was no one to outdo, so he rubbed the blue 
 saponaceous mud of the bank all over him till 
 he looked like a Digger Indian, washed it off, 
 and put on his clothes. 
 
 41 Dog won t eat dog," he muttered, as he 
 used this substitute for soap, " but dirt eats dirt 
 sometimes." 
 
 He went further down to a drift, against 
 which a dull milky scum floated, under which 
 he knew large mud-cats like to live and feed. 
 He took out a bunch of worms, pierced them 
 again and again in loops, leaving their squirm 
 ing tips here and there to attract the attention 
 of the fish, spat upon the mass with great seH- 
 ousness, and threw it with quite a " chug " into 
 the bluish slime. He had cut his pole near by 
 
At You- All s House 159 
 
 a long trim pawpaw bush and had peeled 
 it all except near the end where he would 
 hold it. He did not use a cork. He "loved 
 ter feel the fish pull," he said. 
 
 He brought up a crawfish, shortly, which 
 hung a moment to his bait and dropped back. 
 Soon it came up again, and before it dropped, 
 a gentle movement had placed it over the bank, 
 where it fell and began with its tail a backward 
 flipping movement toward the creek. But the 
 boy caught it, and, with a sort of savage zest, 
 pulled off the fleshy part behind the thorax for 
 bait, and threw the struggling, pinching fore 
 part down. 
 
 Anon he felt a deep, strong, awkward jerk at 
 his pole, and his line began to describe lazily a 
 rude circle in the slime. Then there was a 
 slow, steady, but confident movement for cover 
 under the drift, whereupon Shan jerked. It 
 seemed at first as if he had struck a log. 
 There was no skill just a straight pull be 
 tween the struggling fish and straining tackle. 
 In a few seconds a cat about fifteen inches long 
 lay on the bank, began turning somersaults 
 down the slope toward the water, and, loosed 
 from the hook, threatened to escape. The boy 
 
160 At You- All s House 
 
 leaped in ahead of his prize and tried to fall 
 down upon it, here and there, till he finally se 
 cured it, not, however, till one of the spines had 
 run far into his hand. 
 
 He was not a beauty anyway, dressed as he 
 was to-day, but smeared from hip to heel with 
 the slick creek-bank mud, his appearance now 
 was doilbly ludicrous. He kicked his legs out 
 a little and resumed his fishing, but other cats 
 were not inclined to bite after so much racket. 
 As he rose to go on, he put his hand behind 
 him, and jumped and yelled a little, as the poor 
 tailless "craw" closed on his finger with one 
 of its nippers. He tore the body loose from 
 the leg, but still the latter clung and pinched 
 for a moment. 
 
 Free finally, he went further down. Here he 
 snatched out a sunfish, there a chub, and further 
 on a little school of "croppy " bit, one after the 
 other, till many, perhaps all, were taken. Shan 
 called them " pee-yearch." Lower still, he saw 
 on the other side, under and near a great stump 
 that leaned out over a deep pool, a sudden swell 
 of the water which he knew was made by N a 
 large black bass as he darted at the passing 
 minnows. He had seen some folk from town 
 
At You- All s House 161 
 
 come out one day and fish with live minnows 
 for bait ; and though he could have made a net 
 of a gunny sack and caught this bait, there was 
 something revolting to him in sacrificing a fish 
 unto a fish, and impaling one alive upon a hook 
 for hours. 
 
 He stopped opposite the stump, and tying a 
 dead twig in his line for a float, threw his 
 bunch of worms out that way. His movement 
 made a little greenish frog screech and chuck 
 itself into the creek, and other spotted ones were 
 leaping in the weeds, reminding Shan of snakes. 
 Further down the bull-frog twanged a loose, low 
 string on his bass-viol, and as the boy seated 
 himself and became quiet, a water thrush 
 alighted, bowed and minced his prancing step 
 in a mud flat near, and a muskrat floated past 
 him with his raft of hay a little shock of green 
 grass which he had newly cut from the shallow 
 bank above and he dived with it beneath the 
 sprangle of some birch roots further down. 
 
 Up-stream, shortly, came in graceful undula 
 tions the harmless little water snake of our 
 region, bearing in his mouth a little mud-cat, 
 which was struggling yet Over the stream 
 zigzagged the dragon-fly or "snake doctor," as 
 
162 At Yon-All s House 
 
 if waiting for a case of indigestion, when the 
 snake should swallow his spiny prey. 
 
 Just under him, some little black bugs, or 
 beetles, short and dumpy, were swimming round 
 and round, in intertwining circles, as if all their 
 limbs were off on one side ; and some " skeeters " 
 (skaters), as Shan called them, were sliding up, 
 by jerks upon their toetips merely, to investi 
 gate his line. Leaning back, he stretched him 
 self up the slope and stuck his pole between his 
 knees. As he gazed up, there were the mazy 
 love dances of the gnats in circling clusters, 
 the dragon-flies whirring through and through 
 them in deadly darts. With the drowsy hum of 
 insects wings in the trees, the rustle of the soft 
 foliage to the barely stirring breeze, and all the 
 sounds of a springtime woodland droning in his 
 ears, he fell asleep. 
 
 His slumber was not the oblivion that comes 
 at night, but that semi-conscious lostness that 
 is burdened with an idea of drowsy purpose. 
 His mind was trying to do something, but was 
 dimly aware of its failure ; and there was a con 
 sciousness of gnats about the nose and beetles 
 about his neck. He roused slightly, to rub the 
 "sweat-fly" from his lips, where its tickle 
 
At You-AWs House 163 
 
 lingered so persistingly ; and once, when in his 
 movements he had pressed the sweat-bee on 
 his hand, its little sting awoke him. 
 
 Just then something disturbed his cork, he 
 saw, and he pulled the bait to the surface. A 
 little fish followed it up and flipped his tail, with 
 a great splash, as he dived back. The boy 
 noted that the hook needed rebaiting the 
 worms being washed out and frayed; but he 
 simply muttered, "chubs," and falling back, 
 drew his chip hat well over his face, drowsed 
 again into the land of uncertain fancies. 
 
 There were floating, dissolving fragments of 
 stretches of tilled soil with planter stripes in 
 circles, and mules with mould-boards on them, 
 and ploughs with legs, turning Henry Simpson 
 up with a snout upon him like a mole. The 
 runners of the planter, winding like a snake, 
 were cutting Sol Jenkins into bits. There was 
 Miss Winnie hanging by a petiole, as a leaf, and 
 here was Dolly, nodding as a flower on the sward. 
 Up in a tree was little Sam, who was scamper 
 ing in the branches with a squirrel s tail over his 
 back, and an owl s ears and face upon his head ; 
 and Shan was trying to shoot him, but the shot 
 merely rolled harmlessly out of the gun-barrel, 
 
164 At You-AWs House 
 
 while Mildred fanned him with her wings and 
 swept a grass straw across his ticklish nose. 
 
 Suddenly he found himself almost rolled over 
 by a strong jerk at his pole, and jumping up, 
 saw his rod running toward the creek, as if it 
 had belonged to Moses. 
 
 He grabbed it just as it floated off. " Turkic, 
 I reckon," he thought, and he raised the paw 
 paw switch, when whiz-z-z the string whistled, 
 and a great, greenish-silvery flash made the 
 water boil at the up-stream limit of the line. 
 Back again down-stream the great something 
 swished again, and almost in the tangle of the 
 old stump s roots the green flash reappeared, 
 and the drowsy, dizzy boy almost tumbled 
 into the creek at the pull. Round and round 
 the fish went, till the boy was fully awake. At 
 last he began to pull the tired fish in, but at a 
 sudden spurt the pole broke, and the tip went 
 floating off. 
 
 Shan paused a moment, held his breath, and 
 with a leap threw himself sprawling upon the 
 water, grabbing at the piece of pole and nearly 
 knocking the breath and senses out of himself 
 with the shock. When he rose up, the water 
 was only about waist deep where he stood, and 
 
At You-AWs House 165 
 
 he soon realized that his line would not long 
 resist the fish without the spring of the pole s 
 tip. But once, in its rounds, when the fish went 
 near the bank, and grounded in the shallow 
 edge, the boy threw himself upon it, held it 
 in his arms, and despite its slippery struggles, 
 walked ashore with it as if it were a babe. 
 
 " Well, I ll be dinged," he said. " How d I 
 ketch that bass, yer reckon ? About eighteen 
 inches long ! Te whew ! won t mother s eyes 
 dance when she sees that and father ! well, I 
 guess he won t brag so much now about the big 
 fish in Kentucky. How d er bass come to bite 
 at frayed-out worms, yer reckon ? My hook s 
 a thunderin way down in him. Have ter cut a 
 forked stick ter git it out." 
 
 Having procured this, he ran its short prongs 
 along the line far down into the stomach of the 
 big-mouthed bass. After a few prods the line 
 began to come up, and to the boy s surprise he 
 found at its end, hooked in the lip, a little four- 
 inch chub. 
 
 " Huh ! " he said, " I ve been fishin with live 
 bait in spite of myself. Ain t er heap er things 
 accerdents ! " 
 
 He strung the great fish upon his string, 
 
166 At You-Airs House 
 
 which had a piece of umbrella rib upon its end, 
 as a needle ; and he put them in the water to 
 feel them pull. He was done fishing for this 
 day. Could he ever bob for mud-cats again ? 
 He would go to town soon and buy him proper 
 tackle for catching bass. 
 
 " Golly ! there s higher things in fishin , too," 
 he said. " I guess there s higher things in 
 everything." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 " Has a frog a soul; if so, how many ? " HUXLEY. 
 
 " When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind." 
 
 DRYDEN. 
 
 "As the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased." COWPER. 
 
 " I left the woods for as good reasons as I went there. I had 
 several more lives to live." THOREAU. 
 
 IN some way Shan felt that he was not ready 
 to go home yet. He thought he would tie his 
 fish to a root and walk around bird-nesting, 
 maybe. As he stooped he glanced down-stream, 
 and there was the bull-frog still " chunging " a 
 sort of musical exhaust, as if he were an engine. 
 Shan saw that he was on a root under an over 
 hanging bank, and slipping up he dropped his 
 hook, holding by the line merely, in front of the 
 frog s nose. It seemed to hump itself a little and 
 the hook flew far out of its swinging arc and 
 caught among some grasses. Again the hook 
 swung, and again and again it flew away as the 
 frog humped himself, till in a flash the creature 
 was swinging with sprawling reaches, out over 
 the water. 
 
 167 
 
i68 At You-AlVs House 
 
 Shan hauled him up, but was in a predica 
 ment. 
 
 " Can t bear a frog. Always afraid of warts. 
 Cold and clammy, anyway. How m I goin ter 
 get that hook ? That s a boss hook, I tell yer. 
 Can t afford ter give it up." He was thinking 
 of his bass. 
 
 In the mean time the frog was pulling, with 
 his hands, in a very human way, at the string in 
 his mouth. 
 
 "Whopper, ain t you?" said Shan. "They 
 say your legs is good. Believe I ll try em, if I 
 can get mother ter cook em." 
 
 And he took out his knife. "Seen fellers 
 just take off the hind legs and leave the fore 
 parts livin . That s cruel. But I did that with 
 ther crawfish. Funny how a feller s good in 
 some things and bad in others. Why ain t he 
 got his conscience with him all ther time ? Seems 
 ter be his raisin his environment, as Miss 
 Winnie would call it. Think of them worms, 
 too, I can put them on er hook squirmin , but 
 my conscience stops at givin er fish ter a fish. 
 Seems too much like goin partners with ther 
 cannerbals." 
 
 He drew the frog up to him. Its hands were 
 
At You-AWs House 169 
 
 wonderfully active. It almost seemed to pray as 
 it pulled. 
 
 " By George ! if you wuz loose, I d let you 
 go," he said, as much in pity as disgust He 
 put a stick on the frog and pulled a little at 
 the line, when a long fleshy something came out. 
 " Lord, I ll have ter kill yer now, I ve pulled all 
 your insides out," he said. 
 
 He cut the head off and held it up by the line, 
 hooked to the fleshy thing. 
 
 " By George ! that s his tongue. Dogged if I 
 knowed er frog tied his tongue in front and then 
 swallowed ther other end. That s what he kept 
 flippin at ther hook. He just rams things down 
 his throat with it kinder loadin himself like 
 er gun." 
 
 He looked at the body of the frog, and instead 
 of dying, as the boy thought any decent thing 
 should, its hands were still pulling at an imagi 
 nary string in an imaginary mouth. 
 
 "Why, ther fool don t know he s dead," the 
 boy blurted ; and as he sat astonished, a blue 
 bottle fly buzzed around and alighting on the 
 frog s side, the hind leg seemed to lift itself and 
 knock the insect off. It alighted on the other 
 side and was kicked off by the other hind foot, 
 
170 At You-AH s House 
 
 and once, when it perched further forward, a fore 
 leg swept it off and then resumed its pulling at 
 the imaginary string. 
 
 " Seems ter know er lot er things thout his 
 head," mused the boy. " Got heads in his legs, 
 I reckon like that old crawfish, who seemed ter 
 have one in his pincher which told him ter pinch 
 me after I pulled it off." 
 
 He now cut off its hind legs at the loins, and 
 left the headless and hipless trunk sitting up 
 serene, its hands now supporting it in a natural 
 position. He was stooping for some further 
 experiment, when some terrible screams came 
 to him from he hardly knew where. He sprang 
 to his feet, listened this way and that, and 
 started on a run around the bend below him. 
 Only a few yards enabled him to see a confusion 
 of sunbonncts, straw hats, and flaunting things 
 in general across the creek a little further down, 
 and under a steep bank he noted in particular 
 that a female form was standing, about waist 
 deep in the water, with her floating skirts, in 
 flated like a balloon, gently settling around her. 
 
 Instantly he jumped in, and swam and floun 
 dered across to her, and in a few seconds he 
 was pushing from below, in a rather uncere- 
 
At You-AH s House iji 
 
 monious and undignified way, Mildred Watkins 
 bedraggled form up into some friendly hands 
 stretched down from above to meet her. Then 
 he began to climb out himself, grabbing at roots 
 and growing shrubs, when he found his own 
 hands grasped by Mildred s clammy one and 
 another that was not so, and he was dragged, 
 dripping wet, up over the crumbling bank that 
 had given away under the girl. 
 
 His first efforts were to quiet the screeches of 
 little Sam, who was sure that "Thister" was 
 drowning yet, though she stood, screaming with 
 laughter, before him. Then Shan glanced at 
 the sunbonnet that was above the other hand 
 that had helped him out, and realized for the 
 first time that Dolly Simpson s face was in it. 
 
 He started as if she had struck him, when he 
 saw the pained countenance and her under lip 
 set between her teeth. In one hand she clasped 
 a finger of the other, in the ball of which a fish 
 hook was buried beyond the barb. In an instant 
 he had her hand in his, and had bitten off the 
 line an act which Mildred misinterpreted for 
 a moment. 
 
 "Oh, I know how it hurts," he said tenderly; 
 " but it will have to hurt worse to get it out. It 
 
1/2 At You-AWs House 
 
 is miles to the doctor s, and you would have to 
 suffer till he comes. I can take it out for you. 
 Will you let me?" (Eagerly.) " But I hate to 
 hurt you so much." And a sort of hope seemed 
 to fall in his voice. 
 
 The novels were all wrong, he thought. Why 
 didn t he know that hand when it grasped his in 
 good-will over the bank ? and why now, only 
 since he knew whose it was, as it lay trembling 
 with pain in his own, should he feel himself so 
 thrilled ? 
 
 The girl rapidly nodded her assent, still hold 
 ing in her lip. 
 
 " Mildred, will you help me hold her hand ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 "Well, yes, Shan, of course; but I never 
 thought of you needin help in a thing like that." 
 
 And though the tears flowed, Dolly blushed a 
 rebuke at her friend, and shot out her blue bit 
 ten lip, as if to say: "You think you re awful 
 smart." But Shan looked down and suffered. 
 
 W T hile Mildred bore the little hand hard down 
 upon his knee, he took out his cutting pliers 
 from his pocket, and asked Dolly to look another 
 way. But she only bit her lip the harder and 
 smiled to him with her eyes, from which tear 
 
At You- All s House 173 
 
 after tear was running. Steeling himself, he 
 snipped the bent loop off from the hook, where 
 the line was tied, and taking the remaining part 
 in his strong fingers, he thrust the curving point 
 in deeper, then up and outward to the surface 
 again, and, with the pliers, drew out the shank 
 as if it were a needle in a piece of cloth. 
 
 Dolly had determined not to scream or faint 
 in the face of this hero of her heart. If it had 
 been her father, or Henry, or the doctor even, 
 she would have been the same spoiled, petted 
 Dolly that she was : but humanity does not 
 always do its best in the family circle, and often 
 gives to strangers glimpses of jewels that never 
 sparkle in the home light. She just silently 
 plumped her finger into her mouth. 
 
 " Shan," said Mildred, " we won t ask you to 
 see us home or wait for us ; for you and I both 
 need some other clothes, and Dolly needs some 
 turpentine on her finger. You know how thank 
 ful I am for your help, and Dolly why, she can 
 speak for herself if her finger ll let her." 
 
 " She got her hurt in helping me," said Shan. 
 " It s me who should be thankful and and 
 I am." 
 
 "What should I er done without your 
 
174 At You- All s House 
 
 skill ? " said Dolly, spitting out her finger and its 
 blood. " Why, I owe you a doctor s bill. Wasn t 
 I helping Mildre.d help her friend and helper ? 
 What we d uh done without you, I d like to 
 know ? I don t know how to thank you, only 
 
 " By thest lovin him, Dolly, ath I do," said 
 little Sam, running in and grabbing Shan around 
 one of his big wet legs, and lifting his own little 
 bare feet from the ground as, in his gratitude, 
 he clenched his teeth and hugged. 
 
 " Thay, Thee-an," still hanging on and look 
 ing up, " I think they both lovth you, cauth they 
 both wath awful thekee-ard the time yer tored 
 yore Thunday panth." 
 
 When Shan got loose from him, Dolly had 
 turned away, her burning face safe in the depths 
 of that sunbonnet, but Mildred was mischiev 
 ously smiling her sweet good-will ; and she 
 winked the queerest little flash at him he had 
 ever seen. 
 
 He started back up the creek, and when he 
 reached a " riffle," he waded across, went to his 
 fish, slung them over his shoulder, and started 
 home. 
 
 The chat might scold him as he passed and 
 blow his whistle-in-the-bottle sort of call at him 
 
At You- AWs House 175 
 
 from the thicket s depth ; but " that fool squawk 
 ing bird didn t know " all he knew. The cat 
 bird might give his whining caterwaul from the 
 smilax tangle, but it was music now. The boy 
 was sorry for him in his distress. No longer 
 did the pert whistling " quir-r-r-k " of the crested 
 fly-catcher seem obtrusive or provoke an answer 
 ing contempt ; for he felt now that the woods 
 were his to give and the birds might have them. 
 He sat down upon a log and listened as the 
 great shadows lengthened and all was shade. 
 
 A pair of flickers were making fools of them 
 selves away up in the trees, where the sun shone 
 yet. He knew they were being silly by their 
 " Whickups ! whickups ! whickups ! " but he 
 did not blame the birds. He was making a fool 
 of himself a little when he pursed his lip about 
 that bleeding finger, and the movement into the 
 mouth had saved him. 
 
 " Twould never uh done ! My ! my ! what 
 little things do stand between er feller and his 
 fate ! " 
 
 A Maryland yellow-throat, somewhere in the 
 trees, said " Sweetity, sweetity, sweetity sweet," 
 and his mate, in the " buck bushes " near by 
 shook her wings helplessly and fell from branch 
 
176 At You- All s House 
 
 to branch in her appeal to the boy not to take 
 her young, but herself instead, if he could. But 
 they were in no danger now. Further off over 
 the tree tops came the wild shrill screams of the 
 indigo-bird rejoicing that so much of life was 
 love and he was in it. A robin of the deep 
 woods " twiler-ipped " with such a strange free 
 wildness that Shan scarcely knew his song it 
 was so clear, joyous and piercing; and a brown 
 thrasher lifted his medley in tones purer and far 
 better phrased than any his prairie fellows ever 
 knew. Far away a group of rose-breasted gros 
 beaks, ceasing war, were wooing their respective 
 mates in turns of emulatory warbles the truce 
 of love returned. 
 
 In the spirit of the birds, Shan felt that if the 
 deep woodsy earth had made him over into a 
 savage again when he first came out and threw 
 himself upon its breast, it was making him into 
 something more than a civilian now. Life had 
 become an ecstasy, and as the wood-peewee sang 
 his soft sad " Psee-oo-wee " in plaintive sibilance, 
 as if his soul were whistling out between his 
 teeth, the boy almost felt his own spirit arise 
 above his sordid body on the log and float. 
 
 Then, when his mood deepened with the shad- 
 
At You- AW s House 177 
 
 ows, there came from somewhere in the cool 
 damp bottom behind him a low tinkling trill, a 
 liquid gurgle, like a brook, a soft flute-like run, 
 slow, clear, deliberate the very voice of even 
 ing and of peace of love and all things satis 
 fied. 
 
 Oh, fruition realized! Oh, haven reached! 
 Oh, gratitude-flooded soul ! No need to fret, for 
 happiness was brooding over the earth ; no need 
 for worry or the waste of tears, for the past 
 was dead ; no need to rush or even move, for 
 the future was secure in the eternal present ! 
 
 Shan had heard what he had called the 
 "Stingaree bird "before just heard it when 
 he went fishing in the spring, or listened late for 
 the cowbell in the woods ; but then it was only 
 a sound at best, an association. But now, all 
 softened with his sympathy and tender state, the 
 wood-thrush melody crept into him as a part of 
 self a soul-step to another realm a means and 
 medium of his spirit s flight. With it he hoped, 
 aspired, and loved. He drank it till it filled him 
 with an intoxicating gratitude that Nature had 
 given him her benediction, and had breathed 
 into him the breath of a new life, and he was 
 in her image for she and he were one. 
 
 N 
 
1 78 At Yon-Airs House 
 
 Finally he arose, as one that has slept, walked 
 shamblingly along, stooped under the barbed- 
 wire fence, and drove the milk cows out from 
 the browsing herd, through the winding paths. 
 When the old gate had creaked to let them into 
 the lot, he listened back again, and whence he 
 had come he could hear nothing now but the 
 whip-poor-will s distressing wail as if in hopeless 
 love. 
 
 He straightened the languid kinks out of 
 himself, and pitied the bird, at the thought of 
 his own more fortunate condition. 
 
 " You re late, Shan," his mother said. But 
 he held high the great greenish shiny fish, and 
 smiled and kissed her on the face, with his own 
 chin just a bit a-quiver. What noble boy in love 
 has not turned with a tenderer heart toward his 
 mother ? 
 
 " That boy s not well," she said later, as he 
 arose from the table with his supper scarcely 
 touched. 
 
 " Oh, snuthin but a little flurry about ketchin 
 thuh big fish," said the father. But the matter 
 cost Shan several gags that night over a large 
 dose of dock and dandelion bitters, before he 
 went to bed. 
 
At You- All s House 179 
 
 As he lay tossing, the thing that worried him 
 was why little Sam had said "they both"; but 
 he recalled Mildred s wink and went to sleep, 
 muttering, "Dinged if er heap er things ain t 
 accerdents." 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 " If we stay at home and mind our own business, who will 
 want railroads ? " THOREAU. 
 
 WHEN the great Chicago and Denver railroad 
 determined to make a nearly straight line be 
 tween the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, it was 
 quite uncertain for a while just what portion of 
 northeastern Missouri it would cross. Even 
 after the general route was selected and Shan s 
 county town was one of the points, it was not 
 yet known what farms it would cut in its west 
 ern exit. 
 
 Many preliminary lines had been run here 
 and there, miles apart, as the engineer had felt 
 for the best grades and cheapest construction ; 
 and ranges of stakes, with cabalistic red figures 
 of -f -marks and decimals, could be seen all over 
 the prairies southwest of town. Visions of un- 
 symmetrical farms, cut bias by a track, and of 
 gateway crossings and cattle-gaps ; of " feedin " 
 steers " skee-yard " out of their fatness by the 
 " kee-yars " as they passed ; of burning pastures 
 180 
 
At You-AIVs House 181 
 
 and haystacks and even standing cornfields in 
 the autumn drouths ; of tongues broken out of 
 upturned wagons, at the engine s puff ; of even 
 death and tears and the worst to pay, to phrase 
 it mildly, had floated some here, some there, till 
 the neighborhood was in a ferment. 
 
 Some were delighted at the prospect of a 
 railroad " on our land," and had visions of added 
 wealth at the added value to the farm, per acre. 
 
 As the surveying party came and went and 
 came again in its mysterious way, the farmers 
 followed it about, scheming for depots or cattle- 
 pens at certain places, or asking for a " shyin 
 of the line a little furder off," so as to miss 
 their fields. 
 
 The transitman, who led the van, grew tired 
 of these importunities, and, because no favors at 
 all were his to give, he promised in a spirit of 
 fun all sorts of things to those that asked. As 
 the chief had sent him back and forth in this 
 Brushy Fork region, he had met nearly every 
 farmer in it, and made him glad or sad with his 
 promises or forebodings. 
 
 The high ridge between Brushy Fork and 
 Coon Creek lay directly across the general 
 route, and, though by no means insurmountable, 
 
1 82 At You- All s House 
 
 it rose abruptly near the crest, and, on a straight 
 line, was something of a terror to the engineer 
 with the engine of that period. Hence the pre 
 liminary lines galore and the great amount of 
 cheek-by-jowlness among the neighbors. 
 
 At a school meeting two friends had come to 
 blows, and their relations had taken it up, be 
 cause two depots could not stand upon "jinhV 
 forties." 
 
 "Somebody s lied," one said, "and I don t 
 think it s the engineer, nuther " (meaning the 
 transitman). 
 
 " Maybe yer think it s me," the other replied, 
 with a sort of " jibberjawed" set in his face, to 
 use a local word. 
 
 "If thcrshoe " 
 
 But he never said "fits" just seemed to 
 have a few brought on by a smacking blow 
 whereupon the " meetin broke," and the row 
 became general. 
 
 When the epidemic of " nose-bleed " and 
 blackened eyes had subsided and the school- 
 house pump was brought into requisition, the 
 men began to compare notes, and there were 
 to be depots on about every alternate quarter 
 section from there to the county seat, with 
 
At You-AIVs House 183 
 
 town sites thrown in as strictly confidential. 
 Thus the feeling against the railroad now was 
 far from friendly. 
 
 At last it was rumored that a new survey was 
 being made further north than any yet, and that 
 this was the final location, as every other one 
 had been styled, of course. Arthur Linton, the 
 field-chief, was along now with the party, and 
 late one afternoon had loitered behind to study 
 the profiles of the approaches which the various 
 lines had made to this bothersome ridge. He 
 had pointed out to his transitman what ap 
 peared, at a mere topographical glance, as the 
 best direction, and had sent him on the level- 
 man and the others following closely. He 
 would be on shortly, he had said, and overtake 
 them before they reached the crest. 
 
 He had figured half an hour, perhaps, when, 
 walking over a gentle slope, he found the whole 
 party, transitman, leveller, rodman, tapemen, and 
 axemen all bunched, like a flock of sheep, at 
 the crossing of a lane near a farm-house. 
 
 " Guess Hopkins has sprung his transit again. 
 Why doesn t he use a Gurley ? " he murmured. 
 
 An engineer will contend for the merits of his 
 favorite instrument as a woman will for her 
 
1 84 At You- AW s House 
 
 brand of sewing-machine, or a farmer for his 
 "make" of mower. 
 
 But there was nothing the matter with Hop 
 kins " Buff and Bergher." The obstruction 
 was sitting on the rider of the rail fence, on the 
 farther side of the road, with his heels in the 
 cracks below, and across his knees was laid an 
 old army musket, the hammer of which stood 
 up away back from the tube, like a rearing 
 equestrian statue of some hero. 
 
 " Hello, Hopkins," said Linton, approaching, 
 " what s the matter ? " not glancing at the 
 percher. 
 
 " I m ther matter," said the figure, throwing 
 one suspender a little nearer the neck. " You- 
 all ain t comin in here," nodding back behind 
 him. 
 
 "Why, good-evening," said the field-chief, 
 drawing still nearer. " I beg pardon. What s 
 the objection ? " 
 
 " I m ther objection, too," the farmer replied. 
 " Me an this," lifting the gun a little. 
 
 Linton could see the bright new musket cap, 
 like a plug hat, shining ominously on the stout 
 tube, as if it were freshly put on. The old man 
 was evidently loaded for the occasion. 
 
At You-Alfs House 185 
 
 "Why, I m sorry about this, Mr. Mr. er 
 ah I beg pardon, I believe I do not know your 
 name." 
 
 " My name s Simpson, but that s nothin ter 
 do with it. Case is ther same, if my name wuz 
 Brown." 
 
 "Mr. Simpson, yes " resumed the chief. 
 "My name is Linton. This " 
 
 "That s got nothin ter do with t either. 
 Same as if yourn wuz Jones. If you-all is goin 
 west ter grow up with ther country, you d better 
 go round ther big road. Longest way s best 
 sometimes. This un here through my sheep 
 pasture ain t healthy. Nearly all ther dogs that 
 go that uh way dies uh lead pizin." 
 
 Linton flushed a little, but kept cool. 
 
 "But let s talk about this, Mr. uh Simp 
 son This is my transitman, Mr. Hopkins. 
 He sets the stakes and makes the bends, you 
 know," he quickly added, as he saw that Hop 
 kins calling was not understood. 
 
 "Yer don t look like the boss liar that driv 
 all them stakes out south of here and located all 
 them dee-poze," he said, as Hopkins approached 
 the fence. 
 
 " No, that was another man," said Linton, 
 
1 86 At Yon-All s House 
 
 trying to laugh. " I had to dismiss him. He 
 was too promising. Now, about this matter! 
 Let us talk." 
 
 " I did talk." 
 
 " Well, yes, but I want to talk a little " 
 
 " Spit it out, then. Make her short, it s nearly 
 milkin time. Wanter thank me fer showin yer 
 ther best way ? " 
 
 " Well, not just that," said Linton, smiling. 
 " What are your reasons for not wanting us to 
 enter your pasture ? " 
 
 " Got no use fer yer kin drive my own pegs, 
 and don t want no dee-poze ur town sites." 
 
 "But the road may never go there may 
 run on some south survey yet. It " 
 
 " Ain t er goin ter git ter try." 
 
 " Now listen a moment," said the engineer. 
 
 " Oh, I kin listen. Kin hear too. Kin hear 
 er sheep run er half er mile erway at night." 
 
 "Well, what I have to say is simply this," 
 said Linton, firmly, " I should like to enter 
 your place peaceably." 
 
 " Find it ther peacerblest place in all creation, 
 if yer do enter. See that yaller dog under ther 
 post-oak thar. Looks peacerble, don t he ? " 
 
 "I say," resumed Linton, his eyes closed just 
 
At You- All s House 187 
 
 a little, " I should like to enter this place peace 
 ably, as I have entered others, but if I cannot 
 go in thus, I m going in any way." 
 
 The farmer looked at the chief s boots, then 
 up at his corduroy pants, next at his woollen 
 overshirt, and by the time he got to his face, 
 Linton was going on : 
 
 " The law gives us the right to make our sur 
 veys quietly wherever our judgment may deem 
 best. I can go back to town and get the 
 sheriff s help and enter. But I do not want to 
 do that. I have not time. Our company is 
 going to pay for all damages and " 
 
 " And throw in some stock-pens ter boot ? " 
 
 " No, we simply pay your damages. I want 
 to know at once the grade from here to that 
 ridge behind your house. Now look here, Mr. 
 Simpson " 
 
 " I don t see much." 
 
 "You ll not make anything out of this. 
 There are eight or nine of us, every one armed 
 in some way. You may get one of us me, 
 for I m going to start first ; but some one behind 
 me will get you sure. Now what is the use of 
 this. Our mission is peaceable and lawful. If 
 the road should pass through that ridge there, a 
 
1 88 At You- All s House 
 
 deep cut at least perhaps a tunnel will have 
 to be made, and you can sell the contractors 
 supplies at good prices. Then your damages 
 will be heavy, and these two will make quite a 
 sum." 
 
 There was something in the steely gray eye 
 of this young man that held the attention of the 
 farmer, now that it had got that far up some 
 thing businesslike, purposeful, and determined. 
 He glanced at Hopkins, also, behind his chief, 
 and saw a firm look in his face and a leathery 
 zone above his hips that ran ominously back 
 ward under his coat. The flagman had his 
 steel-shod implement with its sharp point at 
 " present arms," and the axemen s tools were 
 held by both their hands. All these had come a 
 little closer up. The tapemen, however, were 
 edging away, one behind the other, while the 
 rodman moving off suddenly recalled that he 
 had not given the last reading to the levelman, 
 who, far back on the slope, had drawn the old 
 man up to him with his powerful telescope, 
 which seemed to the farmer a very formidable 
 weapon, with its artillery-like appearance and 
 position. It was a time to consider. 
 
 " Now," said Linton, firmly, " I m going over." 
 
At Yon-All s House 189 
 
 " No! by thunder, yer don t ! " said the farmer, 
 leaping almost into the muzzle of Hopkins pis 
 tol, " till yer go horn ith me and get yer sup 
 per ! Swhat I come out here fur ! " 
 
 And Linton never knew just absolutely 
 knew to his dying day the real motives in 
 the matter. 
 
 So they all walked home with Mr. Simpson to 
 as fine a supper and as warm a welcome as they 
 had yet received along the route. By noon 
 next day the boys had run the line to the crest 
 of the divide, and when they came in for din 
 ner, Linton, Hopkins, and Yake, the levelman, 
 looked over their notes and struck a rough pro 
 file sheet ; and when the chief laid his rule upon 
 it, it was evident at a glance that the great trans 
 continental thoroughfare would cut its way to 
 Coon Creek through the crest of the deeply 
 wooded ridge behind the Simpson sheep-lot. 
 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 " The soul s Rialto hath its merchandises ; 
 I barter curl for curl upon that mart." 
 
 E. B. BROWNING. 
 
 "Flowers betray where precious wealth lies buried; not of 
 gold, but love." PARK BENJAMIN. 
 
 THESE were " flusterin " times to Dolly, as 
 her mother styled it not that so many guests 
 were confusing, for they had had more threshers 
 to stay all night than there were men in the 
 engineering crowd. But she had never come 
 so close to two such cultivated men as Linton 
 and Hopkins. While the younger was the 
 handsomer, the added years of the chief sat 
 lightly on him in appearance, and flashed out 
 strongly in easy manners, in information and 
 good-natured repartee, and the general thought 
 ful courtesies of experience. Dolly could 
 scarcely have said which one she liked the 
 better. In the one case, youth called unto youth 
 in the simple sympathy of the lack of years, 
 experience, and knowledge ; in the other case, 
 190 
 
At You-AlVs House 191 
 
 soul reached unto soul in the thirst of knowing 
 and the pleasure of imparting. 
 
 The party was a day or two yet in getting 
 just the right grade and best " tangent" up the 
 ridge, and two more nights were passed at the 
 Simpsons before the stakes told them, in plain 
 figures, that it was poor economy to return at 
 night to even such hospitable shelter. As, on 
 the third morning, they shook hands all round, 
 Dolly felt very sad at the parting. A new light 
 had shone, and she had feared that she should 
 never see its like again. 
 
 But here now, some weeks later, when she 
 got home from her fishing, who should come 
 out to meet her, with his old free, easy grace, 
 but Arthur Linton, followed by the grinning 
 Yake and his blushing rodman. And though 
 the chief hurt her sore finger in his cordial 
 grasp, she smiled at him warmly, and asked 
 about Mr. Hopkins. Linton said the young 
 man had a better job out west and would not 
 be with him any more. And Dolly had a little 
 funeral in her heart right there, though she 
 never knew just what it was she buried. 
 
 They had come back to set slope stakes, 
 Linton said, and they would be around some 
 
192 At You- All s House 
 
 days ; at which Dolly smiled again, and 
 went in. 
 
 Next day Yake and the rodman went " slope- 
 staking" up the ridge, while the chief examined 
 the region somewhat geologically, to determine, 
 if possible, whether a deep cut or a tunnel 
 through the ridge would be more economical. 
 In search for this he strolled along the creek, 
 chipped at a limestone ledge here, a shaly 
 outcropping of slate there, or dug a little into 
 a drift of flints and gravels further on. The 
 indications seemed thus far rather favorable 
 for a cut no heavy ledges of rock above the 
 grade being evident. The next morning he 
 visited a quarry near, and found the stone soft, 
 thin, in separate layers, easily taken out ; but 
 while this would make culverts and bridge piers, 
 perhaps, he doubted its quality and quantity for 
 lining a tunnel. 
 
 At dinner he heard from Mr. Simpson that 
 there was an abandoned coal shaft up the 
 creek, and he felt that by seeing what had been 
 thrown out of this he could form a better idea 
 still. 
 
 So, after the meal, he got proper directions 
 about turning up a little " draw " beyond a 
 
At Yon-Airs House 193 
 
 " riffle and ur water-gap " and " the third new- 
 cut field erbove," and he strolled off, pulling at 
 every flower that he passed. 
 
 He was an amateur botanist, and carried a 
 flora which he had cut out of a popular work 
 and had had bound in flexible leather, as his 
 Hencke and his Trautwine. 
 
 Besides his simple love for plants, he was a 
 crank upon the cross-fertilization of flowers and 
 their curious structure for its accomplishment 
 by means of winds and insects. It was what 
 the commercial drummer would have called his 
 " side line," while engineering was his business. 
 
 But here there was the new interest of a 
 partially new field. Back east, where he was 
 educated and had worked much, and down south, 
 where was his home, he knew all the commoner 
 flowers of the season, but here, new varieties, at 
 least, of some familiar friends appeared, and 
 frequently new species altogether. 
 
 At last he came to the " draw," and follow 
 ing it up soon found himself upon the dump of 
 the old coal mine. There was nothing to be 
 seen but slate and half -rotten shales no signs 
 that any strata of stone had been penetrated. 
 He wondered what was at the bottom under 
 o 
 
194 At You- All s House 
 
 this deposit. He peeped out cautiously over 
 the shaft dropped a stone heard no water 
 reached back to a shrub near by leaned 
 far out and looked into its depths. There was 
 to be seen nothing but dried leaves at the 
 bottom, and an old ladder just reaching to the 
 top. This last had been made by splitting a 
 long sapling at the lower end and leaving the 
 top entire the whole having stout pins run 
 ning horizontally through auger-holes to form 
 the rungs. He took hold of its top and shook 
 it. The white lichens shone far down it in the 
 faint light, and the bark in some places loosed 
 and fell to the bottom ; but the pole seemed to 
 feel fairly stiff to his jerk. 
 
 Yes, he would like to see the bottom of that 
 hole. Perhaps it rested on a ledge. He struck 
 a match, lighted a leaf torn from his note-book, 
 and dropped it down. It burnt all the way of 
 its fall even blazing on the bottom. There 
 was no gas, then. He shook the pole again 
 and swung himself out upon its upper rungs. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 " God be thanked, the meanest of His creatures shows two 
 soul-sides." BROWNING. 
 
 "The inward eye which is the bliss of solitude." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 "... the cry 
 
 Which made me look a thousand ways 
 In bush and tree and sky." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 THE disk cultivator had not made its appear 
 ance upon our Missouri farms yet; though, since 
 we had for half a century been tearing up our 
 roads with narrow-tired, dish-shaped wheels, it 
 seems strange that even some ordinary genius 
 had not discovered that something a little 
 smaller and thinner was a good thing with 
 which to tear up our fields. 
 
 But the double cultivator, tongued and tongue- 
 less, riding and riderless, was abroad in the land ; 
 and larger acreage of corn was being planted 
 year by year as the implements became better. 
 
 The early corn could now " stand a stirrin ," 
 the father had said, and Shan went out the second 
 day after the fishing to begin its cultivation. If 
 >95 
 
1 96 At You- All s House 
 
 he had ploughed mechanically when he broke 
 the ground, his work was almost doubly so now. 
 After he got the thing adjusted and " caught the 
 hang of it," to use his phrase, he could follow the 
 walking cultivator, guide the team with the lines, 
 kick the clods off the hills, and sway, lift, and 
 bear down upon the hinged double ploughs, one 
 in each hand, till his left scarcely knew what his 
 right was doing. 
 
 At last this merely mechanical bent of his 
 frame seemed to impress him, and musing, he 
 began to mutter: 
 
 "Wonder if a feller ain t sorter double jest 
 like his cultivators not only in his hands and 
 feet and things, but got two souls or sumpthin ?" 
 
 He ploughed a little further and began to 
 whistle. " Uh feller s heart goes on thout his 
 head havin anything ter say mine does in 
 more ways than beatin . In that way my head 
 goes on thout my heart sometimes. Heart says, 
 * Go over n have it out with Dolly ! Head says, 
 No, er if yer do go go slow. Two of me 
 that way, sure." 
 
 He stopped, rolled a clod off a hill, took x his 
 handkerchief out of his hat, wiped his face and 
 put it back. Then he stooped a little, put the 
 
At You- All s House 197 
 
 toe of one foot under the hollow of the knee- 
 joint of the other leg, held hard the heel in his 
 hand, and, with his tongue between his teethj 
 drew off a dirt-hardened plough-boot, with sundry 
 holes in it, and began beating it upon the plough- 
 stock. When the caked dirt was loosened from 
 the inner sole, he held the boot high to pour the 
 contents out, as if he thought they were some 
 thing that ought to foam and "bear a bead." 
 
 " Dinged if I ain t erbout planted in my boots. 
 Miss Winnie says she s an evo ev evolution 
 ist; says she don t berlieve man s made right 
 out er plain dirt, but of sumpthin* else that got 
 its dirt away back. I m mighty close ter mine 
 ter-day. A little extrer shine and shower, as 
 Mr. Witmer d say, and I d sprout. Sfunny 
 how I feel ter-day. I haven t sense enough to 
 be unhappy. I m another feller. I m in the 
 Garden of Eden before the fall, I reckon." 
 
 He mused awhile. His mind seemed to make 
 a long run. 
 
 " Fer what I can learn and love f er lifting 
 myself above ther animals, how I love Miss 
 Winnie. What er thing twould be ter go 
 through life with such er mind as that! 
 Fer sociability and feller-feelin , fer all ther 
 
1 98 At You- All s House 
 
 love-yer-neighbor-as-yerself sort of good-will, 
 I love Mildred Watkins. Lord, how close er 
 man s soul could live ter hers ! " 
 
 He turned and gripped his ploughs. 
 
 " But fer eyes to look into and have look into 
 yours, fer a cheek ter lay yer own against and er 
 chin ter dimple at yer, fer the rib of a feller s 
 ribs " 
 
 He mused a few minutes again. 
 
 " Why, either of them other girls could love 
 another feller and twould be all right, but if 
 Dolly did, I d " and he started his team with 
 a "Git up there," through his clenched teeth, 
 and he struck the willing mules a needless blow. 
 
 " Strange that er feller could hate the girl he 
 loves, but I could do it," he said, as he turned at 
 the end. "Howd s the devil git inter a feller 
 so? specially about love affairs. Reckon it s 
 like mother s vinegar that she makes er honey 
 and water by sourin . Spect the devil just sours 
 into us sometimes." 
 
 " Shan," said his mother at noon, " you ll 
 have ter go fer some stove wood after dinner, 
 lessen yer want ter eat yer meals raw. I ve 
 been er pickin* up chips and scratchin out cobs 
 
At You-All s House 199 
 
 in ther hog-lot long ernough. Better trot down 
 ter ther timbuh fawty. " 
 
 With the strong desire of youth to finish what 
 it is doing, and be ready for any emergency, 
 Shan wished very much to keep on plough 
 ing. But he went out, dumped the " bed " off 
 the wagon, hitched the mules to it, stuck his axe 
 in a leather loop on the rear axle, humped him 
 self upon the hounds of the running-gear, and 
 drove into the forest. 
 
 "Funny thing," he said, as he stopped in the 
 timber, " bout how ther wood s always gittin out 
 in ther busy season. Mr. Bright says Marryin s 
 all right, my boy, if yer don t git one of these 
 here stove-wood women. Guess he wasn t ser 
 lucky; father wasn t, certain. Wonder how 
 D 
 
 "Wo-o-ah! Why, what s ther matter with 
 ther fool mules ? Wo-o-uh, I tell yer ! What s 
 that ! Where s that sound from ? Seems like 
 its under my feet ; seems in ther trees. What 
 is it, anyway. Wo-a-uh ! Here, Pont, heh-uh ! 
 Listen ! " 
 
 He got off and tied the frightened mules each 
 to a limb. Then he listened again, and said 
 again to the old pointer in a whisper, " Listen ! " 
 
200 At You-AWs House 
 
 The dog pricked up his ears as the faint wail 
 ing sort of hoarseness seemed to settle around 
 them, rather than come to them. " See weet," 
 almost inaudibly hissed the boy between his 
 teeth, and the dog started his master follow 
 ing ; " see weet." 
 
 But they came to a tangle of hazel, smilax, 
 and blackberry, which stopped the boy. When 
 Shan got around it, the dog was running round, 
 apparently baffled. Now the sound had ceased. 
 
 " Nose it, Pont." 
 
 The dog knew what that meant, and again 
 and again threw his nose to the wind, running 
 now here, now there, sometimes rearing up to 
 reach higher above the vegetation. But still he 
 could detect nothing. 
 
 They then went further on in the direction 
 started, and just before they got near the "coal 
 bank," Shan threw out his hand with a 
 " Hie on ! " motion, and the dog again bounded 
 forward. Only the gentlest breeze was blowing 
 from the south, and as the old dog ran north of 
 the dump of slate, he wheeled so suddenly that 
 he fell, and, getting up, he crept, weaving this 
 way and that, till he stood nearly still on the 
 edge of the shaft. A pebble that he loosed 
 
At You- All s House 201 
 
 rolled into its mouth, when there came from its 
 depths a screech that raised the hair on the 
 dog s back and made the boy tremble. 
 
 In a moment Shan knew, and was leaning 
 out over the hole and asking who was there. 
 
 " For God s sake, get me out some way, I m 
 nearly starved." 
 
 " Can you climb ? " said the boy, thinking of 
 his lines. 
 
 "Anything but a rope, and these infernal 
 walls. I ve made my hands sore trying." 
 
 " I ll cut er tree and poke it down ter yer, but 
 yer ll have ter wait till I go to my wagon and 
 git my axe." 
 
 When he returned and cut a long pole with 
 the stubs of limbs left projecting, he, with much 
 labor, thrust it carefully down the shaft, and 
 while he steadied it, there came up to him the 
 weak form and strange pale face of Arthur 
 Linton, who grasped his hand in profuse 
 gratitude. 
 
 " Golly, that was a funny squawl yer made. 
 What yer been doin down there ? " said Shan. 
 
 "Trying to get out, mostly," replied Linton, 
 explaining further to him. 
 
 " I can take yuh home, but I can t feed you 
 
2O2 At You- All s House 
 
 till I cut a little wood. That s what I come out 
 for." 
 
 " Can t you take me down to Simpson s ? 
 I m the railroad engineer. My men are down 
 there." 
 
 " Certainly," said Shan, with alacrity. "Let s 
 go ter my wagon." 
 
 The team was backed, geed and hawed, and 
 the wagon bumped over stumps and bent down 
 small saplings till they came out upon the 
 smooth highway that ran the full length of the 
 ridge. Down this they went, till they turned off 
 into the branch road that went in at the Simp 
 son gate, back of the house. As they crossed 
 the line of the railroad, Linton saw by the 
 stakes that the imperturbable Yake had been 
 true to his work, not concerned at all about 
 the absence of his boss. The thing nettled him. 
 It seemed that he had been gone a week. 
 
 When he got to the house, where the ladies 
 only were at home, they expressed no surprise 
 at his arrival till they saw his hungry face and 
 heard of his predicament. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 "... I spake . . . this is the only witchcraft I have used." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations." 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 SHAN had gone in with Linton, his head feel 
 ing that it had a legitimate excuse now. He 
 was curious, also, to hear any further details of 
 the engineer s story. He found himself thrilled 
 as he heard the stranger tell how the treacher 
 ous ladder had broken when he was about half 
 way down and how the fall had stunned him ; 
 how, when he awoke, the stars were brighter 
 above him than he had ever seen them ; how long 
 the dreary night was when the only sounds that 
 came to him were the calls of whip-poor-wills 
 and the occasional guffaws of the barred owls, 
 mocking, it seemed, his own cries for help. 
 Morning came at last, and he reserved his cry 
 ing strength till he thought some one should 
 be abroad; and when he heard the rattle of 
 vehicles upon the ridge road (he now guessed 
 203 
 
2O4 At You- All s House 
 
 it was), he had screamed till they were beyond 
 hearing, and had dropped back nearly exhausted. 
 
 Finally, with voice nearly gone, he gave up 
 hope of this, and tried to climb out by bracing 
 his hands against one wall, his feet against the 
 other, but when half-way up, the shaft had wid 
 ened and his strength had failed and he had 
 fallen back again in a limp mass. He sus 
 pected that he must have been unconscious 
 again, for what he next recalled was the clear 
 projection against the sky of a turkey-vulture 
 that passed and repassed his narrow vista, with 
 tilting wing and a sinister eye turned sidewise 
 down upon him. How distinctly, he said, had 
 his deep, dark position enabled him to see the 
 searching eye in the disgusting, naked head 
 and the suggestive hook of the beak as it was 
 turned up sidewise to the sky. Over and over 
 him, again and again, the ghoulish thing floated, 
 till he was sure by the frequency that there 
 were more than one of them. 
 
 At last he heard a wagon nearer to him than 
 any yet, and then he had set up the yells that 
 had seemed so eerie to Shan and his mules. 
 He had just simply screeched when the dog 
 threw down the pebbles. 
 
At You- All s House 205 
 
 " Mr. McBride says he never heard such an 
 unearthly sound from such an earthly place," 
 he concluded. Shan had not phrased it this 
 way, however. "I thought the occasion justi 
 fied the outlay." 
 
 He reached down and hugged the dog up to 
 him, and slapped Shan on the knee. 
 
 " I tell you, if it hadn t been for you two 
 heroes, I should have been down on the base 
 line yet and perhaps forever. 
 
 "These people down here, old fellow," still 
 patting the pointer "just hadn t thought of 
 me. No, sir, not at all. Old Yake was setting 
 slope-stakes, and Miss Dolly and her mother 
 pegging away about their meals, and I " 
 
 " Oh, now, you mustn t think it," said Mrs. 
 Simpson, and Dolly chimed in, " No, indeed ! he 
 mustn t." 
 
 Linton had told his story well and Shan 
 found himself wonderfully interested, but when 
 he looked at Dolly s eager face, he felt his 
 sympathy merge into something else a sort 
 of uncomfortable sensation that he could not 
 name. He had felt it that day once before, 
 when he struck the mules. Here he was, again, 
 in the Simpson home, but certainly he was not 
 
206 At You- AW s House 
 
 under consideration. As they plied the stranger 
 with food and little delicacies of attention which 
 their sympathy suggested, Shan felt that it was 
 better to be the rescued than the rescuer, that 
 calamity might be bliss if ignorance was not. 
 
 " Why didn t you organize a child-hunting 
 party and start after me, Miss Dolly, shouting, 
 1 Child lost ! child lost ! " said Linton. 
 
 " Why, we did think and talk much about you, 
 but Paw thought that you might have stayed 
 all night with some one up there, or maybe, he 
 said, some of those depot-fiends had got you. 
 But mother and I were very anxious." 
 
 Shan stole out unobserved, he thought, 
 mounted upon his hounds again, and drove 
 slowly around the house. He had to get off to 
 open one gate, but when he came to the other 
 that led out of the pasture, he found it open. 
 He swore to himself that he had shut it, for it 
 would have let the sheep out. The mystery 
 was bothering him ; but just then, as he passed 
 through, there were two merry eyes peeping 
 out beneath a bar, and between this and the 
 next below a very pretty face was framed. 
 
 "Thank you," said the boy, in the dignity of 
 his grammar. " How is your finger ? " 
 
At You-AWs House 207 
 
 " Oh, it s quite well, Shan, thank you. You 
 are so kind and good, and always happening 
 around so." 
 
 He began to pull on the hard mouths of the 
 mules and they were slowing. 
 
 "He might have died," she added, "if you 
 hadn t happened along." 
 
 Then he slapped the mules with the lines and 
 rattled on; his head had the victory over his 
 heart again. When he had driven a few rods 
 further, he looked back, and saw her slim figure, 
 striped with her brown braids down her breast 
 and barred with the gray slats, writhing in 
 muscular effort to lift the old gate "to," over 
 the peg driven at the bottom to prevent the 
 hogs from wedging it open. His heart began 
 the struggle anew, and the jaws of the mules 
 parted wide by the strain of the lines that was 
 again set upon them; but just then the gate 
 dropped over the stob into its place, and the 
 lips of the mules met again around their bits. 
 
 Further up the ridge, he looked back through 
 an opening in the trees. There were the graz 
 ing sheep, the green slope striped with their 
 narrow paths, the brown home and gray out 
 houses beyond, and projected amidst them all 
 
2o8 At You- All s House 
 
 the slender figure of the girl standing still and 
 gazing after him with a sort of longing in her 
 lingering pose. As he drove into the deeper 
 woods his heart reached up and " put its heel " 
 upon his head again. 
 
 A year before a tornado had swept across the 
 woods and levelled a narrow track of trees. To 
 these the boy drove now to cut his mother s 
 wood. He had been aware for some time that 
 the air was rather odorous, when suddenly he 
 heard Pont afar off howl with pain and sup 
 pressed rage. Shan " struck off " on a run, and 
 found that the dog had attacked a large skunk, 
 which, finding its usual methods of defence un 
 availing, had secured a piercing bite through 
 the tender canine nose, and was holding on 
 with a death-grip. Do what the dog would, he 
 could not twist his mouth so as to engage his 
 enemy s throat or chest. Since, also, he could 
 not get loose, the howl was all he had left. 
 
 Shan grabbed a dead bough near by, and 
 striking it against the earth till all the rotted 
 branches broke off, he held his breath, ran in 
 and stunned the skunk at a blow, so that it 
 loosed its hold. Then he stood afar off and 
 watched the old dog s vengeance as he tore 
 
At You- All s House 209 
 
 almost to fragments his vanquished foe. The 
 boy rushed for the wagon, for he feared the 
 dog s gratitude when he came in from his rage. 
 So he climbed upon the load and waited till 
 Pont, sick and exhausted, came staggering in. 
 
 " Lie down, old feller. Better let skunks 
 erlone. Funny what makes dogs hate em so, 
 heap worse n they do er thing that fights fair. 
 This un seemed to be givin you pretty good 
 goods of the tooth and toenail kind, how 
 ever. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I ll take yer word fer it," as the dog 
 gratefully looked up and seemed about to leap 
 on to the wood. " I know you re grateful 
 grateful as some other folks, I spect. But I like 
 gratitude at long range sorter, specially in your 
 case. Funny game we ve been findin , Pont. 
 One s not quite so smellin as ther other, though 
 a feller must be a little gamey when twenty 
 feet er more under ground he can turn er dog 
 er somerset at forty yards. 
 
 "Whe e ew, old boy, I ll have ter tie yer 
 up in the stable fer a week when I get home. 
 Go down ter the creek and git uh drink." 
 
 As his master motioned westward at the word 
 " drink," the dog trotted off. Shan knew this 
 
2io At You -All s PI o use 
 
 meant a swim also, and a probable decrease of 
 odor. As he saw Pont coming back, appar 
 ently refreshed, he started his team and went, 
 crushing brush and bending bushes, out to the 
 road ; and to the monotonous rattle of an un- 
 trimmed bough in the spokes of one of his 
 wheels, he mused all the way home. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 " Some things are of that nature as to make 
 One s fancy chuckle while his heart doth ache." 
 
 BUNYAN. 
 " Ambition is no cure for love." SCOTT. 
 
 THE next day, as Shan ploughed again, he 
 had some queer feelings about his sweetheart. 
 
 He felt that Dolly regarded him in about the 
 same light as he did Mildred " awfully good, 
 but " He could conceive of nothing that he 
 disliked so much as to have goodness set as a 
 foil for an exception, and to belong to that class 
 of the best of people, " but " 
 
 His head got the mastery again, and plainly 
 told him that he had no show against such a 
 man as Arthur Linton, domiciled in her home. 
 So far did he rebound from hope, that he fancied 
 her as given up, and he felt a pride at his re 
 nunciation and a glory in his independence. 
 She might go, so far as he was concerned. 
 
 There was not in him the even old thought of 
 " other fish in the sea." He had a holy con 
 tempt for the sex. 
 
 211 
 
212 At You- All s House 
 
 " ( Nothin sticks ter er man like er woman 
 and er dog, Mr. Bright is always sayin ," he 
 muttered, " but dinged if there s any comparison, 
 lessen they re like huntin -dogs jest f oiler the 
 feller that s got ther right sort er riggin on, or 
 whistles right, or seems ter be goin ." 
 
 He would yes he would yet quit farming, 
 and make a man of himself not a mere peg 
 driver a man of mark. Not, of course, to 
 win her she wasn t worth the effort but to 
 humiliate her. And then pictures of his great 
 success and wealth, and Dolly and Linton 
 struggling and poor, with the contrast evident 
 whenever he passed, went flitting through his 
 mind. He struck the mules another needless 
 lash, as he thought of her pitying him when she 
 opened the gate. He would make her feel yet 
 that he had never been an object of pity. 
 
 He ploughed a few more rounds, and stop 
 ping once to clear a hill of clods, he snatched 
 up a stalk of corn that had grown far above its 
 fellows. 
 
 If it had been Sol Jenkins only, in the 
 matter, he thought to himself, he still might 
 have some show, but who could meet this 
 smooth engineer on his own ground ? There 
 
At You- All s House 213 
 
 was no use fighting him. A woman liked a 
 whipped man, anyway. Look how they had 
 taken on over this feller, because he didn t have 
 sense enough to know a rotten sapling. He 
 was not much on fighting, anyway. Might be 
 the whipped man himself. Then she was not 
 worth fighting for. It was a case of " mother s 
 honey and water turned to vinegar." 
 
 In turning awkwardly once he had ploughed 
 up a hill of corn, and the mules had trodden 
 down another. He had " set out " the one 
 again, and propped the other up with clods, but 
 now, after a few rounds, they were both wilted 
 and drooping. His mood had changed. 
 
 He bejgan to picture himself as a martyr 
 a suicide a a anything to provoke not 
 Dolly s sympathy, but her suffering and her 
 remorse. Then his spirit rose in the last 
 resort of exquisite politeness. He would treat 
 her kindly be nice to Mr. Linton, not go 
 about her, but freeze her with his indiffer 
 ence. 
 
 " Been er heap er fellers again," he said, un 
 hitching his team, as he put the trace-chain 
 rings upon the tips of the hames. 
 
 A few nights late", when he came in from his 
 
214 At You-AU s House 
 
 chores, his mother said : " Some fine lookin* 
 feller s in ther parlor wants ter see yer." 
 
 As he entered, his slouched hat in his hand, 
 Arthur Linton rose from a corner and greeted 
 him cordially. 
 
 " You must think I am very ungrateful, Mr. 
 McBride, since I have not called on you sooner 
 to thank you again for your timely help the 
 other day. But I ve really not been well since 
 my shaking up and long fast, and they are such 
 charming nurses at Mr. Simpson s that a fellow 
 doesn t hurry up to get well, you know." 
 
 It was well that the gloom did not permit him 
 to see Shan s face, else he would not have felt 
 so easy. 
 
 " But I m all right now," continued Linton, 
 and I thought I should like again to assure 
 you how very, very grateful I am, and " 
 
 " Oh, anybody d er done it," Shan said indif 
 ferently. " Better thank mother, I reckon, or 
 the fate that got her out er stove wood." 
 
 " However it is," said the engineer, " I m in 
 debted, and I should like to serve you any way 
 I can. I shall have to be in the region for some 
 time as I just to-day got orders to take charge 
 of the party of contractors that will cut the ridge 
 
At You- AW s House 215 
 
 back of Mr. Simpson s house ; also of the con 
 struction of the bridge over Coon Creek. At 
 times a man in a strange land gets quite lonely. 
 Can t you come over to see me ? I shall be 
 gone to Chicago soon for a short while, but after 
 my return I hope to see a great deal of you. 
 For my part, I hardly see how a fellow of your 
 time of life can keep away from there. An old 
 hardened bachelor like myself is scarcely proof 
 against charms like those. Well, good-night, Mr. 
 McBride. Give my regards to your mother, and 
 tell her I have great reasons to rejoice that her 
 needs lay so directly in the line of my own, 
 that afternoon. Oh, by the way, could I see 
 Pont ? " 
 
 " Well, it s er little dark now, but yer can smell 
 him without any trouble," said Shan, laughing, 
 and then explained the situation. 
 
 " Oh, well, then, some other time, but since he 
 seems to understand you so well, I wish you 
 would thank him again for me. Good-night ! " 
 
 " Now what s ther use fallin out with er 
 feller like that plain tomfoolery, that s all. 
 He and I are friends. We ought ter be. I 
 allers love er man after I ve done him good. 
 Anybody does. Father says it s ther way ter 
 
216 At You-AWs House 
 
 love ther world do em good. I m goin over 
 ter see him jest him." 
 
 Indeed, this chimed well with his mood of self- 
 styled indifference. He would go to see Linton 
 and freeze Dolly. But before he acted on his 
 resolution of going over, Linton had gone to 
 Chicago with his profiles and cross-section 
 sheets, with his fossils and strata-sketches, to 
 get directions from his engineer-in-chief. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 " Faith keeps many doubts in her pay." THOREAU. 
 
 " But Nature has a higher end in the production of new in 
 dividuals than security; namely, ascension." EMERSON. 
 
 " All service ranks the same with God, whose puppets, best 
 and worst, are we." BROWNING. 
 
 THE "June meetin" " basket meetin " 
 was coming on up at Nichols Chapel, and all the 
 region round about for miles was expected to 
 be there and bring its dinner. When at a cas 
 ual meeting, some weeks before, Miss Hudson 
 had said that Mr. Witmer might preach there 
 that day, it fitted Shan s mood as well as his 
 conception of the proprieties to ask her to go 
 with him. She had been something of a horse 
 woman, and, feeling that she would enjoy the 
 ride, suggested that they go horseback. 
 
 So at the proper time he put on his best 
 clothes and grammar, put a side-saddle upon 
 Ben and his own upon the filly, and " went by " 
 for the teacher. 
 
 It was early June, when the birds having 
 217 
 
218 At You- All s House 
 
 reared their first broods were renewing their 
 courting tactics for the second. The males 
 were now again in the high places, charming 
 their mates with a melody that made the second 
 spring of the season. A shower had fallen the 
 night previous, sufficient only to lay the dust 
 and cool the air, which latter was moving 
 gently. 
 
 "This is one of those rare days in June, 
 Shan, which Lowell speaks of. It is about 
 perfect." 
 
 11 I d like to see a whole year like this," said 
 the boy. 
 
 " Well, it would be very monotonous and tire 
 some, I suspect. I always enjoy a change. 
 Do you remember our talk about the beauty of 
 contrast in the spring ? " 
 
 "Yes, but why can t there be a perfect cli 
 mate," he persisted. 
 
 " Oh, there could be, but you would have to 
 know something of an imperfect climate to en 
 joy it, is my argument." 
 
 " I know," he replied, " but if everything was 
 perfect, why could we not enjoy it as we enjoy 
 the beat of hearts or the digestion of our 
 food ? " 
 
At You- All s House 219 
 
 "Do you really enjoy these things? You 
 have no consciousness of their action. En 
 joyment implies consciousness, consciousness 
 implies appreciation, or being able to see differ 
 ences in things, or choice, and this means that 
 one thing must be better than another that 
 one, at least, is imperfect. Imperfection lies at 
 the base of all enjoyment. Why, perfection 
 means all things just alike the loss of all in 
 dividuality and identity even. Dolly would be 
 no more to you than any one else. In fact, 
 there would be no Dolly no you. Instead of 
 two souls with but a single thought, there would 
 be an infinity of such with but a single idea." 
 
 "Yeh es," he said thoughtfully. 
 
 " Then for all things to be perfect," continued 
 the teacher, " they must be perfectly situ 
 ated. With reference to some standard, there 
 might be only one perfect place, and all things 
 would be merged together into one perfect posi 
 tion, of one perfect form, of one perfect ma 
 terial, with one perfect character and this 
 would be God. Your law of everything perfect 
 would tie the hands of the pure Creative Spirit, 
 so that nothing could exist but itself. Imper 
 fection is the basis of the universe." 
 
22O At You- All s House 
 
 " I see, Miss Winnie ; I had not thought 
 again. But why can t everything be made per 
 fect for its work ? " 
 
 "To a sufficient extent, it is. Your work is 
 what you can do. If some one else is better 
 endowed so that he can do your work easily, 
 you may be sure that your work is not his, or 
 his yours. A creature s work is what it can do 
 no more. 
 
 " But really no creature is made perfect for its 
 work nor should it be. The work has been 
 allowed to make the creature, and hence the 
 fitness of things which we see. These are never 
 perfect, but perfecting, which means that imper 
 fection is the outlook for progress the basis 
 of our approach to perfection." 
 
 She had slacked her rein, and they were 
 riding slowly. Ben stumbled badly, rolling his 
 nose under his body, and nearly throwing his 
 rider over his head. Shan reached out and 
 jerked him up, and said : 
 
 "We must ride a little faster, Miss Winnie 
 and and hold yer rein tighter. This philos- 
 erfizin gait don t suit Ben. I never knew him 
 ter stumble with me, but I never rode him that 
 slow." 
 
At You- All s House 221 
 
 Ben felt the disgrace, too, and went wonder 
 fully better after that. 
 
 " Now that s what I m talkin erbout," said 
 Shan. "Why couldn t er horse been made so 
 he couldn t stumble ? " 
 
 " Because he would have to be made so that 
 he could not go," she replied. " Every step is 
 a stumble often an upward one as Ben is 
 going better now for his recent blunder." 
 
 They rode on silently for some time. The 
 boy kept biting off pieces of his switch and 
 casting them away, as if he were untying a knot 
 in a rope or strap with his teeth. For some time 
 he studied Ben s feet as he stepped. Later 
 he looked up and said with a sort of satisfied 
 air: 
 
 " Yes, I reckon we can profit by our failin s 
 and progress by them too if we had as much 
 sense as er horse." 
 
 The teacher looked at him and smiled a little 
 absently. She had been wondering why the 
 Dickcissels liked to sing so at this hot hour of the 
 day, and as she noted on a fence stake a young 
 male that had not yet got his nuptial throat- 
 patch, singing his monotonous ditty to charm 
 some grass-hidden lass, she turned to smile at the 
 
222 At You-AWs House 
 
 love-sick boy beside her, yet scarcely beyond his 
 teens. 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 " But what bothers me, Miss Winnie, is that 
 Jesus allus seemed ter expect the same of them 
 that stumbled as them that didn t." 
 
 " How, Shan ? " 
 
 "Why, He never seems to consider er er 
 environment, as you would call it. He sets 
 ther same example fer all men. Never says 
 anything about stumblin up don t seem ter 
 expect you to stumble at all." 
 
 " I think you mistake example for task, Shan. 
 He gives Himself to all men as the same ideal, 
 but He does not give all the same task." 
 
 They had ridden out of the limits of the 
 morning s shower, and the dust was deep here. 
 They drew their reins a moment to study the 
 trail of a large snake that had run across the 
 road in a series of smooth S-like depressions. 
 Later they glanced up at the pretty circling of 
 a hawk overhead, and spoke of the beautiful 
 motions the same curve of beauty in the 
 earth and air. The boy s mind seemed yet to 
 be struggling with a problem, for his brow was 
 lowering. 
 
At You-AU s House 223 
 
 " I ve an awful temper, Miss Winnie. Jesus 
 seemed to expect the same work from Peter 
 with his weak nature that he did from John 
 with his lovin heart, and 
 
 " No, Shan, not that ; but he expects the 
 same progress away from the beginning 
 taking into consideration the means. A poor 
 endowment is often a great endowment; it leaves 
 such a long stretch for progress." 
 
 They reached the church platform for dis 
 mounting. She threw her knee off the pommel, 
 fetched her skirts a flounce or two, loosed her 
 riding-habit, dropped it, stepped out of its fluffy 
 ring, picked it up, and handed it to the waiting 
 boy, who, still on the filly, led Ben toward the 
 woods to hitch. When he came back and was 
 walking with her, he said slyly, 
 
 " I never knew before that Ben was called 
 to preach ! " 
 
 She laughed at his irony, with a sort of shy 
 delight in her face as they joined a group of 
 friends. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 "The Puritans hated bear-baiting . . . because it gave 
 pleasure to the spectators." MACAULAY. 
 
 "The surest way to hit a woman s heart is to take aim 
 kneeling." JERROLD. 
 
 WHEN the congregation began to gather in 
 the house, Shan walked in with Miss Hudson. 
 Other young men who had no girls lounged 
 in the shade as usual, and some that did have 
 girls waited until the house was filled, and then 
 pulled buggies up under the windows and sat 
 with their partners in them, soothing their con 
 sciences by striking one of those half-and-half 
 conditions between courtship and worship which 
 has been so delightful to us all for ages. 
 
 The brother who was to preach was afflicted 
 with that depressing spirituality which no one 
 was able to reach though some professed it 
 and which he was never able to exhibit not 
 to mention practise unless he had the pulpit 
 stand between him and the world. He was 
 tinged with the then faddish doctrine of sinless 
 224 
 
At You- All s House 225 
 
 sanctification, and wonderfully burdened with 
 the sins of other people, heavy and light, espe 
 cially the light, which were more apparent. 
 Every form of enjoyment or pleasurable indul 
 gence was a red rag to him, except, perhaps, 
 tobacco and baseball. His shirt front was usually 
 speckled brown with ambeer, and he had a son 
 who was a noted pitcher, who even slipped out 
 on Sunday occasionally to throw a curve. 
 
 He took for his text to-day, "Be ye therefore 
 perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven 
 is perfect ; " and he painted the expectation of 
 God with such fervor, and the vengeance of 
 Christ the Judge with such ardor and evident 
 enjoyment, that he could scarcely be heard for 
 the groans of the sanctified in the corner. 
 
 He was a man of great eloquence, as elo 
 quence " goes " with the country people, 
 having a favorite form of a series of long con 
 ditional phrases, with nearly the same words 
 and almost the same sense throughout, and 
 then a main clause which he finally brought in 
 with a tremendous sort of guttural gnash that 
 made the veins of his neck swell like those of an 
 ox. The louder he ranted the more he thought 
 the spirit was upon him; and, as his breath 
 Q 
 
226 At You- All s House 
 
 came and went in great gusts, he, like Elijah, 
 seemed to think that the spirit was in the 
 whirlwind, and not in the still small voice. 
 
 He had begun lately to lose his voice, he 
 said complainingly to some sympathetic sisters, 
 though there was no evidence of it to-day. He 
 didn t know why God was taking it from him, 
 since he was doing such good work; when the 
 fact was that God was having nothing to do 
 with it. When he got so angry in the pulpit 
 at not being able to make all men see with his 
 eyes, he simply rasped his vocal chords into 
 tatters, trying ill-humoredly to shriek men into 
 reformation. His sanctification had hardly got 
 above his shoulders yet. 
 
 It was a depressing sermon to Shan, and he 
 felt himself muttering, " What s ther use er 
 tryin ? " He walked out to dinner with rather 
 poor relish. Miss Winnie soon drifted from 
 him, while greeting her patrons, as those who 
 sent to her school were styled; and a gossipy 
 good time was going on generally, in which a 
 broad spirit of hospitality and good feeling pre 
 vailed. 
 
 " Mighty pow f ul summon," said an old sister, 
 who staked her hope of salvation on her belief 
 
At Yon- All s House 227 
 
 that the Lord s vengeance slipped over all her 
 shortcomings and caught on to all those of 
 her neighbors. She usually sent her dressed 
 turkeys to town with the feet crammed inside 
 and the gizzard left unopened, with a view to 
 the avoirdupois of the pebbles. 
 
 "Pow ful!" said another, whose market butter 
 was always heavy with salt and a little lardy to 
 the taste. " Young people got er terrubbul 
 sturrin up." She took her pipe out of her 
 mouth and spat upon the grass. " I guess they 
 need it." 
 
 Shan, despite his recent resolves, had been 
 watching Dolly as she did the accustomed 
 amenities of her " spread," and his heart was 
 pushing him, inch by inch, around that way 
 that he might fall within the circle of her 
 courtesies, and get a piece of the pie or cake 
 that she had baked herself. Anything of a 
 casual nature he felt himself up to, but he 
 could not walk boldly over to her yet. He was 
 looking at her rather longingly, notwithstanding 
 the recent resolution of his head to treat her 
 coolly, when he bumped against Mildred Wat- 
 kins. 
 
 "Now looker here, Shan McBride, I see 
 
228 At You-AlVs House 
 
 where you re gazin ; you hain t eyes enough fcr 
 anybody else ter keep out er their way. But 
 yer needn t think I m goin to let you pass like 
 that. You ve got to try a piece of this trans 
 parent pie and caramel cake of my own bakin , 
 and give er body er chance ter reward yer and 
 thank yer in proper shape for pullin em or 
 pushin em rather outer the creek. I couldn t 
 do ther occasion justice with my clothes all cling 
 ing to me like sticking-plaster, and you not seein 
 anything but er certain face and finger. Bet 
 yer don t know ther kind er tree yer stood 
 under, nur what other girls wuz with us." 
 
 " Oh, Shan s lookin up," said another beauty, 
 loaded with a kind of catchup made with her 
 own hand. " He s after ther higher educa 
 tion." 
 
 "I know better than that," said Mildred, 
 rather resentfully, "but," she added in a half 
 undertone, "some other folks don t," looking 
 again toward Dolly, and running off to offer 
 some more pie to somebody. 
 
 Another sickening thought came to the boy. 
 He had never thought of the effects of such an 
 insinuation as that girl threw out. He was 
 passing on, when Dolly bowed to him coolly 
 
At You- All s House 229 
 
 took the trouble to catch his eye and so bow. 
 It was worse than if she had not seen him at 
 all and had purposely ignored him. Then she 
 had cake in her hand and never came forward 
 with any. His head was on top now indeed, 
 and so autocratic that it scarcely bowed at all 
 in return. 
 
 Miss Hudson, watching interestedly, had 
 noted all this, as she talked with Mr. Witmer 
 and told him of Ben s stumbling under her, and 
 his better going for this and a tightened rein. 
 
 In the afternoon s service he preached, and 
 again Shan sat with Miss Winnie. 
 
 " What s ther matter with Dolly Simpson ter- 
 day?" he heard a sort of catarrhal whisper 
 from the seat behind him say. 
 
 "Don t know," came the snuffling reply, 
 "lessen s because her engineer feller s gone 
 away. They say he was very fastinatin , and 
 she s terribly took with him." 
 
 "Somebody else s nose badly out er jint, I 
 reckon." 
 
 Then there was a subdued snigger which 
 showed plainly that the object of its derision 
 was near. Doubtless in our human nature the 
 sneer is older, but there is nothing meaner in 
 
230 At You-AWs House 
 
 us than this snigger a thing that culture 
 leaves behind it in our childhood. 
 
 Mr. Witmer talked clearly over the heads of 
 his rural audience. He used illustrations from 
 travel, figures of boats and engines, which fell 
 flat. He roused the attention of his audience 
 only once, when he made some allusion to a 
 stumbling horse going better for his fall, for his 
 tightened rein and urging, and the danger of 
 our falling in smooth places and at a slow gait. 
 But there was a soothing spirit of love and ten 
 derness in his talk, even where the thought was 
 not understood. His very tones were helpful 
 and hoping. The boy was touched again. 
 
 " Well, you did load Mr. Witmer a little this 
 time, Miss Winnie," said Shan, as they rode 
 home. 
 
 "About Ben? Yes, but I did not mean it 
 so." 
 
 " I thought you had got all there was out of 
 it. Do you know I like the illustration about 
 the horse better than about the boats. I mean 
 it helped me more." 
 
 The influence of Mr. Witmer s good English 
 was on the boy, and he was speaking well. 
 
At You-All s House 231 
 
 "Why, I don t see," she said, "it was all 
 simple." 
 
 "Yes, but that about Ben was so close to 
 me." 
 
 " Yes ? " she said reflectively. 
 
 There was quite a stretch of silence. They 
 rode out among the " rat-tail " on the roadside 
 to let some vehicles pass, and Shan s keen eye 
 caught a hole in the leaning fence stake that 
 he dodged under. Going up to church he had 
 noticed a nuthatch somersault suddenly as it lit 
 upon another stake near by this, and he felt 
 sure now that in this hole, round and auger-like, 
 which reminded him of a carpenter s work, was 
 its nest. 
 
 "Jesus was a carpenter, wasn t he, Miss 
 Winnie?" 
 
 " Yes, Shan, at least the son of a carpenter, 
 at any rate." 
 
 "How strange that he never explained any 
 thing by his trade ; never mentioned er splinter, 
 er shavin or cuttin tool jest preached from 
 flowers, birds, trees, sowin , reapin , and so on. 
 Funny, ain t it ? " 
 
 " Why, yes, Shan ; I never thought of it, 
 though." 
 
232 At You-AWs House 
 
 "You ve helped me much in this way, Miss 
 Winnie. I see nature in a new light since 
 you ve you ve been ser kind ter 
 me." 
 
 "Thank you, Shan; I like to hear you say 
 that, but " 
 
 " But but I don t seem ter be makin much 
 headway with human nature oh, I don t mean 
 you, Miss Winnie I I mean I saw er 
 thing ter-day I didn t understand. Er friend 
 wuz cool ter me fer fer no cause." 
 
 "Yes yes, I know, Shan," she said sooth 
 ingly. " I can t help you there. Shallow 
 human nature is like the ripple, and deep 
 human nature like the pool you cannot see 
 far into either. We scarcely know ourselves." 
 
 He laughed a pained, silly laugh at her guess 
 at what he meant. He thought he would be 
 mysterious and bear the burden of Dolly s cool 
 ness alone, with the teacher s sympathy around 
 him only in a general way. But here it was bold, 
 positive almost aggressive ; still it touched him 
 as something soothing to a sore. 
 
 " We can do nothing but wait and and 
 trust a little," she added. 
 
 There was a long interval of silence. Both 
 
At You-AH s House 233 
 
 sighed heavily several times from the weariness 
 of the long day it may be from some other 
 causes. 
 
 " Won t you come in and rest awhile ? " said 
 the teacher, as they neared her home. 
 
 "No, thank you. Soon be time ter milk. 
 Got my work ter do," he said significantly. 
 
 " Are you perfectly fitted for it ? " she queried 
 slyly, catching at his drift. 
 
 "Nome. Glad I ain t?" 
 
 " Why, Shan ? " rather seriously. 
 
 " Cause then I d be a calf." 
 
 She laughed heartily at his application of the 
 morning s talk. 
 
 " I m glad you ain t perfectly fitted for yours 
 either, Miss Winnie." 
 
 "Why, Shan ? " a little seriously again. 
 
 " Then you d be an angel." 
 
 She looked up quickly to rebuke him for his 
 apparent flattery, but his face was so uncon 
 sciously solemn that she only bade him good-by, 
 and thanked him for the day, as she stepped 
 off on the stiles. 
 
 "What fools we are," she mused, as he was 
 going off, "to think we know any one. That 
 boy is deepening day by day and does not half 
 
234 At You- All s House 
 
 know himself, and I I " But she seemed 
 to close the door upon the thought and shut it 
 outside, as she went into the house. 
 
 As Shan led Ben along toward home and 
 recalled Dolly s purposeful coolness, he glanced 
 at the empty saddle beside him, and thought 
 that he had never before seen any side-saddle 
 seem quite so empty. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 " A nature sloping to the southern side." LOWELL. 
 
 " There is a pleasure sure in being mad which none but mad 
 men know." DRYDEN. 
 
 IT was the last of June when Arthur Linton 
 came back and brought with him all the para 
 phernalia of a railroad contractor s outfit. Really 
 he came with it rather the muddle of tents, 
 teams, wagons, ploughs, scrapers, shovels, 
 spades, forges, and so on and took up again 
 his abode in the Simpson home. 
 
 No one could resist his genial presence, and 
 Dolly was rejoiced to see him back. Even Sol 
 Jenkins had ceased to come now not caring, 
 he said, to waste ammunition where he could 
 bring down no game. The jovial engineer had 
 even captivated him in a casual meeting, so that 
 he felt that all his story-paper reading would be 
 of no avail against a man like that. 
 
 Linton s duties were rather light. He had 
 
 only a few grade-stakes to set here and there, 
 
 and to see the work properly done. He went 
 
 down occasionally to the quarry, to see that the 
 
 235 
 
236 At You-AWs House 
 
 stone for the bridge piers and the near-by cul 
 verts was not flawed or rotten. 
 
 Ever present was his flora and magnifying- 
 glass. On one of his walks there were great 
 straggling clusters of fenstemon, whose inflated, 
 half-grown, white corollas Dolly had " popped " 
 by squeezing, ever since her babyhood, as they 
 grew up in the hard pasture among the " seed- 
 tick grass." Linton altogether had spent many 
 hours trying to figure out what part that one 
 hairy, aborted stamen, so unlike the four others, 
 played in cross-fertilization, as he had watched 
 the ants and small native bees crawl in and out 
 among the bent filaments. 
 
 Coming home late one afternoon, he found 
 Dolly digging, ever so accidentally of course, 
 over her bed of plants in the front yard ; and she 
 called to him to come and name for her a flower 
 that had just opened. 
 
 " Nellie Judkins gave the seed to me," she 
 said, " but she didn t know its name just said 
 it was awful pretty, and it is" she added, with 
 emphasis. 
 
 " I cannot now tell you its name," he said, 
 "because I should have to destroy this only 
 blossom to analyze it. But if you will stoop 
 
At Yon- All s Ho its e 237 
 
 here a moment, I will show you that there is 
 much of interest about a flower besides its name 
 and beauty. In the first place, I can see at a 
 glance that if you were to cover this with net 
 ting you would never get any seeds." 
 
 She looked up at him with a queer kind of 
 wonder in her face. He had taught her the 
 names of the parts of the flowers, such as 
 stamens, pistils, sepals, petals, and so on, and 
 had found her an apt and interesting pupil. 
 
 "This flower," he said, "is fertilized made 
 so it will bear seed by insects exclusively." 
 And he stooped and explained to her the intri 
 cate structure for these purposes. When he 
 took his pencil-point and put some of the sticky 
 pollen between the lobes or lips of the stigma, 
 and they closed quickly together, she uttered an 
 exclamation, and looked a glad sort of gratitude 
 into his face that almost scared him. 
 
 " Flowers seem to like to attract bees for this 
 purpose. Bees are fond of pollen as well as of 
 honey. So this flower has its true stamens 
 away in there out of sight as a bee flies, but, 
 look ! Upon the broad lower lip of the corolla, 
 there are painted most perfect pictures of lus 
 cious stamens, with anthers fairly overflowing 
 
238 At You- All s House 
 
 with orange-golden pollen every detail of 
 form, shading, and color complete." 
 
 They bent their heads together to see better. 
 
 " Even the perspective is correct," he added. 
 " Let s step a yard or two away and note how 
 deceptive is the whole effect." 
 
 As they arose they bumped their faces to 
 gether, and laughed, apologized, and blushed. 
 
 " Why, how perfect and how interesting I 
 never thought I would love Mr. Linton " 
 
 "Is is Henry at home ? " stammered 
 Shan, after he had said from his saddle almost 
 over them, a blunt " Good-evenin ," which had 
 startled the wits out of them. 
 
 "Why er no, Mr. McBride " (she had 
 never called him that before). " He rode off a 
 few minutes ago. Won t you get down ? " 
 
 " No, thank yuh," said Shan, with much dig 
 nity. " Which way did he go ? " not knowing 
 what else to say, while the filly was turning. 
 
 "Why, I think down that way," indicating 
 with a nod the road leading toward the Jenkins* 
 home. 
 
 " Maybe I can overtake him," came to Shan 
 as a husky excuse for suddenly riding off and 
 going rapidly. 
 
At You-AWs House 239 
 
 He cared nothing about seeing Henry. In 
 fact, he had come over to see Linton accept 
 ing his invitation recalling his words about 
 being lonely. 
 
 " He didn t seem ser blamed lonely ter-night," 
 Shan muttered. He was sure this time that he 
 had not gone with any intentions or direct pur 
 pose of seeing Dolly. Of course he had ex 
 pected that he might see her, and be indifferent 
 to her ; but he had not counted upon the con 
 dition of seeing her cheek against Linton s face 
 and words of love upon her lips. It brought 
 him back again to desperation. 
 
 If Dolly had ever completed what she began 
 to say, it would have been thus : " I would love, 
 Mr. Linton, for you to meet my teacher, Miss 
 Winnie Hudson." If both Linton and Shan 
 had heard this out, this story might have ended 
 with this chapter. 
 
 As the sorrel filly went racking off with that 
 peculiar synchronous half melody, half racket, 
 that shows the animal well trained in this gait, 
 Linton leaned far out over the fence and saw 
 with admiration the neat handling of her feet, 
 and almost revered the graceful sitting of the 
 rider. 
 
240 At You-AH s House 
 
 It is not at all wonderful that the ancients 
 conceived the idea of the Centaur, if their men 
 rode then as our Missouri boys do now. 
 
 To-night not only did horse and rider blend 
 in motion but in mood, and the dare-devil man 
 ner of exhibiting it. The soft pressure of the 
 boy s knees, the slight shifting of his weight in 
 the saddle, forward or aft, indicated to the mare 
 the proper speed ; the pressure on the bit told 
 her every detail of the gait desired the very 
 jerk she should give her feet while the merest 
 swaying of the body this way or that guided 
 her at his will. 
 
 There is something very inspiring to a healthy 
 person in the feel of a strong, vigorous horse 
 beneath. The very animal life of a well-gaited 
 saddle-horse seems to throb upward into the 
 man, while the intelligence of the rider thrills 
 downward into the beast. 
 
 The fact that the filly racked well, that Shan 
 rode well, and that Linton leaned far out and 
 admired, were mere trifles, but large factors in 
 our little story. 
 
 How wildly the boy rode, with desperation in 
 his heart and gait ! He could not think con 
 secutively. Only great gushes of purpose rose 
 
At You-AIVs House 241 
 
 here and there, as though the filly s heart might 
 have inspired them purposes that he did not 
 like to own as his and then they subsided, 
 rose again further on in a new form, and fell 
 again. 
 
 There was little in the wayside to distract 
 him. The voices of the summer twilight were 
 not at their crest yet, but now and then a 
 familiar bird, which he would have sworn never 
 uttered a note in the night, broke out into a 
 fragment of its song as his noisy riding dis 
 turbed it. Once a catbird either awoke or sang 
 out in his sleep, and a brown thrasher, late 
 retiring as usual, " se-checked " at him as he 
 passed. 
 
 Where he would have gone he hardly knew, 
 or what desperate thing he might have done 
 he could scarcely conceive. Finally he dropped 
 his rein and the mare was walking leisurely. 
 
 Suddenly he ducked his head, crouched on 
 the mare s neck, and dodged something which, 
 behind him, seemed like a great Herculean 
 club, hurled at him from above. It had a 
 weird, shuddering sound, and appeared to jar 
 the very earth as it passed. It came evidently 
 from above, and the aerial shriek of its speed 
 
242 At You- All s House 
 
 increased rapidly as it approached and died out 
 as suddenly after it passed, only a few yards 
 further on. 
 
 Instantly the mare was gone, and he found 
 himself behind his shallow saddle, clinging to 
 the mane only his stirrups alternately thrash 
 ing him and the frightened steed. 
 
 At last, when her speed slacked a little 
 because of fatigue, he got forward in his sad 
 dle, regained his reins, slowed the filly up and 
 turned her, nervous and champing her bit, 
 toward home. 
 
 The incident had quenched his mood. It 
 was years after before he knew what it was 
 that had frightened him, and he felt that in 
 some way this had been sent to him as a 
 special providence to drive away some awful 
 thoughts that, for an instant, had seemed to 
 hover just above his head on the border of a 
 dreadful purpose. 
 
 In all his life, after that, he never saw the 
 bull-bat swoop (as he called the night-hawk) 
 that he did not shudder and feel thankful for 
 the fright one had given him once, and tliat 
 he did not realize the aptness of calling it a 
 " night jar." 
 
At Yon-AlVs House 243 
 
 At last, when he went in home, late, the male 
 house-wren, whose mate was sitting in a knot 
 hole in the barn, rattled from the tree near by, 
 where he roosted, a peculiar twitter which Shan 
 had never heard in the daylight. Of course, as 
 he walked in under the trees, the mocking 
 bird, which then, before a price was set upon 
 his song, built in our Missouri yards, awoke 
 and sang awhile, even after he had gone to 
 bed. 
 
 Next day Shan felt a keen relish a sort of 
 vengeance as he drove the new self -binder 
 into the ripened wheat, and saw it sickle it to 
 its death, and, binding it into bundles, cast it 
 aside, with a contemptuous twirl. There was 
 a kind of enjoyable cruelty that he had often 
 felt before, when a child, in meeting the great 
 wave of gold as it came welling up from the 
 windward, and hurling it to its destruction. 
 
 It seemed like a verification of the Old Testa 
 ment prophecies against the prosperity of the 
 wicked. 
 
 The sweltering heat rose up at him, as defiant 
 as his mood, and hazed the hot air into a faint 
 mirage, which seemed to lift high the further 
 end of the wheatfield and shake it as a blanket. 
 
244 At You- All s House 
 
 The Dickcissel or "little meadowlark," as 
 some of Shan s neighbors called him, turning 
 his brazen throat toward the sun, seemed to 
 chime his iterant, unmusical song with the 
 heat s quaver ; and the field-sparrow, mounting 
 a high twig to catch the breeze, said, " Whew, 
 whee-u-whee-u-wheu wheu whe-we-we-wewy ! 
 how hot it is." 
 
 But the boy only mopped the streaming sweat 
 from his eyebrows with the sleeves of his cot 
 ton working-shirt disdaining the kerchief tied 
 loosely around his neck. He rejoiced to suffer. 
 There was, after all, a sort of spiritual consola 
 tion in physical suffering, much as the soul finds 
 relief in tears. 
 
 That night, after he had gone in to supper, 
 Arthur Linton came and bought of him the 
 sorrel filly, paying his price without a word. He 
 was going to take her home with him, he said. 
 He praised loudly the mare s training; and 
 nothing mollifies a Missouri boy more than 
 to be assured that he knows how to bring a 
 horse up in the way it should go. He thought 
 Linton s taste equally as fine about women, but, 
 somehow, he could not get the same comfort 
 out of it. He wished he could give up Dolly 
 
At You- All s House 245 
 
 as easily as he could part with the filly, and be 
 done with the whole thing. 
 
 As Linton led the mare off Shan felt a sad 
 ness at her going, because of the associations 
 connected with her, yet he was glad also to be 
 rid of her, because, he feared, her moods were 
 too much like his own. He felt that he needed 
 no such stimulation as the filly gave. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 " If I am not worth the wooing, surely I am not worth the 
 winning." LONGFELLOW. 
 
 "Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty s self." KEATS. 
 
 OF course Miss Hudson could not well close 
 her school without an exhibition, unless she 
 chose to violate all the traditions of the region. 
 She was not very well acquainted with the 
 expectations of the people, so she had allowed 
 the boys and girls to make their own selections 
 for recitation and declamation, as perhaps best 
 reflecting the popular taste. 
 
 While she might tolerate Sparticus indefi 
 nitely defying the Roman gladiators, Patrick 
 Henry s wail for death if he could not get the 
 single tax, and the eternal anguish of the Soldier 
 of the Legion, yet her pedagogical and ornitho 
 logical instincts drew the line at the poem of 
 Rizpah fighting the vultures away from her 
 dead sons at night. 
 
 " I do not think any vulture flies in search of 
 prey at night even in Palestine. The Bible 
 246 
 
At Yoit-AWs House 247 
 
 certainly does not say so. Read Second Samuel 
 twenty-one, tenth verse, and get some other 
 piece, Sissy." 
 
 At last all things were ready. A few days 
 before, the larger boys in school, with many 
 volunteers from outside, had built against the 
 house, in front, an arbor of green boughs, and 
 erected a stage, and placed rude seats of slabs 
 from Durkee s mill upon it. Here the exhibi 
 tion was to be given, while the school-house itself 
 was left as the green-room of the occasion. 
 
 Of course Dolly was there. She had "a 
 part" that had been delivered early; and Lin- 
 ton was there with a bored expression on his 
 face. Shan stood out among those of the men 
 who had gallantly given their seats to the ladies. 
 
 The little ones were all through with their 
 dialogues and tableaux, and fond parents had 
 broad grins in view of their success ; and from 
 larger boys had come some speeches which 
 argued that they might yet grow famous by 
 wrangling their neighbors into discontent, but, 
 as the fathers felt, of course, better expressed 
 by " shaping the destiny of the nation." 
 
 Dolly was more to Shan than a poem in dia 
 logue, a picture in color, or a symphony in 
 
248 At You-All s House 
 
 motion, as the novelist would express it. She 
 was an ecstasy in aesthetics to him to-night, 
 though his heart did not phrase it that way. 
 But his head had simply said " Hunuh," in his 
 surprise at her frills, and the foolish, sordid 
 thought came into it, " What would she cash 
 out fer, I wonder," as if she were the filly and he 
 still wished to get rid of her. 
 
 But to him the teacher was a revelation. 
 Why, she didn t look any older than Dolly, he 
 thought. Those who had seen her come and 
 go to church supposed they had seen her 
 "dressed up." But to-night she had gone to 
 the depths of her trunk, which held things of 
 other days, when in their time of plenty she was 
 just budding into a woman at the old eastern 
 college. 
 
 She hesitated a moment, and wondered if she 
 might not wear her old graduating-dress, which 
 she had recently rather modernized. There 
 would be no one there who would ever know 
 it. She believed she would ? questioning 
 herself. , 
 
 So to-night she looked a mass "er snow- 
 cream sweetness" one gallant had ventured 
 " not er keerin who heard him unh ! " as 
 
At You- All s House 249 
 
 some one gave him an "elbow-hunch" not to 
 be so loud. She seemed to float, rather than 
 step, about the stage. 
 
 There had been a streak of gray cloud on the 
 western horizon, and Linton, with his usual con 
 sideration, born of much exposure in the field, 
 had brought his rubber coat, and was sitting 
 near the stage with it yet lying across his 
 knees, as Miss Hudson and Dolly came out to 
 sing a duet. 
 
 When the rich alto rose, the face of the engi 
 neer ceased its bored look, and it seemed as if 
 its owner were in a dream. Some pictures of 
 his boyhood were coming back, and his eyes 
 were fixed upon the dress, which reminded him 
 of a graduating scene when he himself was a 
 student, at an engineering school up North, 
 where he had loved and quarrelled with the 
 sweetest, sweetest girl that ever wore a dress 
 like that. That figure too and that voice 
 He wished he could see her face. The bad 
 light and long bangs, and the slight turning 
 away, hindered. 
 
 " What is the teacher s name ? " he whis 
 pered to a woman near him. 
 
 "I fergit." 
 
250 At You- All s House 
 
 "Oh, nevermind." 
 
 A self-important boy was standing just be 
 hind the pair, holding high a kerosene lamp, 
 that they might see the music. Partly because 
 he was peeking around it to see who was admir 
 ing him in the crowd, and partly because his 
 wrist was tired, it happened that when the wind 
 puffed up and broke the chimney, he let the 
 lamp turn in his hand toward the teacher s 
 shoulder; and a tongue of flame leaped from 
 Miss Hudson s dress sleeve and licked at the 
 now dead leaves of the arbor above. 
 
 In that flash, Linton knew where he had seen 
 that face ; and all that Miss Hudson knew, for 
 a little while, was that there was the smell of 
 rubber about her head and the strong arms of 
 some stranger around her body bearing her 
 from the stage. When poor shuddering little 
 Dolly straightened up and shook herself on the 
 outer edge of the crowd, it was not Henry at all 
 who held her hand and assured her that neither 
 she nor any one else was hurt. 
 
 There had been much screaming and scram 
 bling generally, and the exhibition was ended, 
 of course ; but there were hearts full of grati 
 tude that Linton s rubber had swept out the 
 
At You- All s House 251 
 
 flame before it reached the brush. With all 
 that crowd of little ones, some one would have 
 been badly burnt had the arbor kindled. 
 
 Linton was the hero of the evening, and these 
 simple folk had gone around to tell him so ; but 
 all that he could remember was the dropping of 
 a lovely burden and the grasp of two soft hands, 
 with, " Arthur ! How came you here ? " and a 
 face so close to his that he could have kissed it, 
 as he ought. He thought afterwards that he 
 might have said " Winifred ! " as suddenly as 
 she had said "Arthur!" but he was not sure 
 now of even this. 
 
 Then came the memory of all the dreary suf 
 fering of an unanswered letter a letter fraught 
 with penitence, and a long-ago promise to call 
 on her to-morrow afternoon. But that letter 
 had miscarried and that to-morrow had never 
 come. 
 
 She was not burned only a sleeve of her 
 old graduating-dress had gone up in the sweetest 
 incense. Why had he never written her after 
 that silly quarrel, she wondered ? and why had 
 not she written ? 
 
 Ah ! Pride ! Pride ! And he had gone back 
 to his southern home, and she had come west. 
 
252 At You- All s House 
 
 If he had not ridden the filly, Arthur felt 
 that he would go home with her to-night in the 
 farmer s wagon. Perhaps Henry would ride 
 the mare home. 
 
 No, there he was with Sissy Jenkins holding 
 to his hand, scared yet, and, from all appear 
 ances, she was going to stay scared. So he 
 rode home alone speaking into the Simpson 
 wagon, answering Dolly s prattle occasionally 
 in an absent-minded way. 
 
 When he was called down to breakfast next 
 morning, he found a messenger ordering him 
 into town to meet the chief, the president, and 
 some other high officials of the road. Again 
 he wrote a note, which old man Simpson put in 
 his coat pocket, where it lay for many months, 
 though, mistaking the remembrance of his inten 
 tion for his deed, he was sure that he had deliv 
 ered it to Mr. Bright. 
 
 The next day after the exhibition, Shan 
 hauled the teacher and her trunk into town to 
 take her train for her Minnesota home. They 
 
 let nature much alone, for their hearts were full 
 
 
 
 of other things now. 
 
 The sorrow of their separation lay heavily 
 upon them. They talked about that, and in his 
 
At You-AIVs House 253 
 
 mood of woe Shan spoke of this other sorrow, 
 about Dolly s indifference; how Mr. Linton 
 had come in and charmed her, how he was 
 pleased with her, and how there was no longer 
 any hope for himself. Then he wept in his 
 double desolation this great brave boy who 
 could have had his arm amputated without a 
 wince; and she wept with him as they jolted 
 along in a woman s sympathy purely, he 
 thought, just as Mildred had cried; but she 
 knew that it was more than this, though this 
 was in it. Her heart was burdened with a sor 
 row of its own : " Why did he not write ? or 
 come ? " 
 
 " I ll never forget you, Miss Winnie, should 
 you not come back. But you must come back. 
 God knows, life has been a new thing ter me 
 since you climbed inter that old wagon. We 
 send missionaries to the heathen. Why don t 
 some one send missionaries, like you, out to us 
 plain folks to wake us up to all God wants to 
 do for us ? " He spoke well now as a tribute to 
 her departure. 
 
 And as the train pulled out he strained his 
 eyes at the fluttering kerchief from the chair- 
 car window, and turning, he looked into Arthur 
 
254 At You-AWs House 
 
 Linton s sorrowful face, while the tears were yet 
 upon his own. 
 
 " I m too late, I see," said Linton, with much 
 regret in his voice, though it was well under 
 control. "There has been some mistake. I 
 did not know till a moment ago that Miss Hud 
 son left to-day. Did she leave me any mes 
 sage?" 
 
 " No, she s gone," the boy said dolefully, half 
 sobbing ; " the noblest woman, the best friend I 
 ever knew is gone." 
 
 She had been to Shan what Titbottom s 
 teacher had been to him "a well of cool, deep 
 water" into which he had "looked and seen 
 the stars: 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 " My days were not the days of the week, bearing the stamp 
 of any heathen deity, nor were they the minced hours by the 
 fretting of a clock." THOREAU. 
 
 " Who does not suffer in his spirit during drought and become 
 restless and unsatisfied ? " BURROUGHS. 
 
 " Bury me on my face, because in a little while the world 
 will be turned upside-down." DIOGENES. 
 
 THE summer waned with Shan at varied work. 
 After the corn was ploughed and reploughed, it 
 was "laid by"; not, however, till he had gone 
 over it with the single " diamond " plough the 
 mould-board next the hills to cover the high 
 grass. 
 
 The oats-harvest came on, and the shocks 
 stood shiftlessly a long time in the fields, daring 
 a forbearing Providence, while they waited for 
 a thresher to come by so that the labor of 
 stacking might not be necessary. When the 
 rains chanced to come and the grain rotted, 
 men gathered in little knots or met in " organi 
 zations " at the school-houses, and said a new 
 political administration was needed. 
 255 
 
256 At Yon-Airs House 
 
 Then came the cutting of meadows, put off 
 because of the pressure of other work, the 
 timothy-heads now half stripped of their seeds 
 at the top and the thickening undergrowth of 
 blades compensating at the bottom. 
 
 Shan was early and late afield now, the mower 
 was a-clatter, the rakes and stackers went to 
 and fro, till the great ricks stood browning in 
 the midst of the greening sward. The earth 
 stood out once more as the factor beneath her 
 work, the square walls of vegetation along the 
 fences and down the draws, beyond the sickles 
 reach, showing contrastingly what she had done 
 since she awoke in the spring. A little later 
 there was the flush of the second growth over all 
 the newly cut fields ; and the easy curves of swell 
 and swale rounded out again the form of nature, 
 till the freshened landscape, smooth as a strip 
 ling s face newly shaven, looked as though it 
 had renewed its youth. 
 
 At very early morn or very late afternoon the 
 long shadows lay dark and clear-cut upon the 
 thickening aftermath, and, as they lengthened 
 from the setting sun, the young prairie chickens 
 strolled out of the tasselled corn to feed on grass 
 hoppers, and the young hares crept from the 
 
At You- All s Notts e 257 
 
 hedges, or from the ragweed fringe of the draws 
 or fallows, to nibble the second-growth clover. 
 
 Finally the thresher came the first steamer 
 in the region snorting along the highway, 
 crushing culverts, frightening teams, and drag 
 ging after it its load of machinery and a string 
 of curious farmers. Women and children met 
 it at the cross-roads, and others peeped at it 
 between the fence rails as it passed. 
 
 Men stooped in the highway over its broad 
 barred and rippled tracks, and shook their 
 heads ; and their next representatives must 
 introduce into the legislature measures of re 
 straint upon its passage through the country. 
 
 " It must have a team hitched at its head," etc., 
 etc, they said. It looked too much as if progress 
 had broken loose from the four walls of the fac 
 tories and the two rails of the tramways, and was 
 running riot almost across-fields. 
 
 It was Shan s part at his home threshing to 
 haul in the shocks of oats. As he went out 
 early, and, with a steel-tined fork, swung the 
 bundles up to Charlie Watkins, the loader, 
 the young prairie chickens fluttered up from the 
 dewy stubble between the shock rows, where the 
 spiders webs lay sparkling, and dropped in 
 
258 At You-AH s House 
 
 the " bluestem " of the yet unbroken forty, where 
 the two-year-old steers were grazing, and throw 
 ing out their tongues with a snort of exertion at 
 the blanket of black flies upon their shoulders. 
 
 Here and there, in the merest depression of 
 the soil only, sat twin young doves of the second 
 broods foolish and fuzzy in their innocence, 
 while the mother was leading Pont a wild chase 
 and giving him some lessons in the art histrionic. 
 
 Others of the first brood were feeding in the 
 Hungarian millet patches, offering tempting 
 targets to the wing-shot as they fluttered up ; or 
 they went by, in straggling twos and threes, with 
 whistling wings. Later in the day they streamed 
 off to drink at the hard-pan ponds, or sat upon 
 dead limbs and jerked their pretty heads above 
 the water. 
 
 One of the threshing crew "hands" they 
 called them grew sick, and Shan was glad to 
 take his place at the fascinating work of travel- 
 ling around and cutting bundles, or poking them 
 down the humming separator s insatiable maw. 
 
 And thus went out July! with that swelterjng 
 heat by day and that sultry calm of the night, 
 found in the corn-belt. As he traversed the dry 
 roads from farm to farm the old dust-colored 
 
At You-AWs House 259 
 
 grasshopper, which as a barefoot he had chased 
 for fun, somersaulted before him now as then, 
 and lit with its head toward him at times in its 
 old suspicious way. On the sides of the narrow 
 lanes the rat-tailed plantain was going away and 
 its conqueror the rat-tailed ragweed, gray with 
 the flying earth, was crowding back the other 
 ragweeds and the dogfennel, and was creeping 
 into the trodden pastures. The people, horses 
 and vehicles, that came and passed were without 
 form and void in the chaos of the dust-cloud 
 around them. 
 
 Sometimes the crew of threshers broke tent at 
 midnight, and awoke the farmer and his dog, as 
 well as the nightly echoes, by puffing along to 
 meet a far-off engagement. Then there were at 
 this hour not so many teams upon the road to 
 meet and frighten, and so many chances of dam 
 age suits for broken wagon-tongues. Besides, 
 the method of crossing culverts and bridges was 
 not at this hour subject to such close inspection. 
 
 At these times, Shan noticed, even so early as 
 three o clock, that some birds were abroad 
 even the bee-martin, or kingbird, was giggling 
 his taunting tyranny somewhere, and later many 
 songsters that he thought had ceased their music 
 
260 At You- All s House 
 
 for the year sang yet in the cool dawning, with 
 a glad spring-like exultation. How active was 
 the field-sparrow ! He thought that he was only 
 a hot-hour bird. And here was the lark-sparrow, 
 spreading the white of his outer tail feathers 
 broadly, like a miniature turkeycock, and trilling 
 and jarring out his little song, which Shan had 
 thought the late gloaming only heard. 
 
 Once he heard a chewink, with a new loud 
 strain that he had never heard before at any 
 other hour so new that had he not, when he 
 came nearer, heard a familiar twitter as an under 
 tone, he would not have known the bird. The 
 indigo-bird also was not a heat-of-the-day singer 
 only, and the cardinal was whistling "Wheat- 
 year, wheat-year, wheat-year, sure ! sure ! sure ! " 
 the same as if the wheat were not now already 
 safely in the bin. 
 
 Robins, catbirds, thrashers and familiar friends 
 took up their springtime songs anew for a little 
 while the new part of the day being like the 
 new part of the year and even the bluebird 
 warbled a bit of his old April optimism. 
 
 Overhead once, while it was yet too dark to 
 see, Shan heard the thistle-bird s " pick-at-a- 
 pea " call, telling how, like a woodpecker, he was 
 
At You- All s House 261 
 
 playing at fast and loose with gravity and how, 
 in festooned streaks of lemon and black, he was 
 trying to decorate the very air even, for his July 
 wedding. 
 
 At times, long streams of blackbirds, with 
 their moulting wings whistling weirdly, flew 
 over him, along some definite fly-lines or aerial 
 lanes, the same from day to day, as they passed 
 between some favorite feeding-places in the 
 cornfields and some favorite couches among the 
 thick leaves miles away. 
 
 Near midday, over in the dry pastures, sere 
 from the want of rain, the cows stood in the 
 ponds half water, half mire and switched 
 their bushy tails, while the young horses bunched 
 themselves in hot groups under some lone tree 
 and stretched their necks above each other s 
 backs to dodge the hateful throat-fly, and 
 pounded the earth with stamps to drive the 
 bot-fly off. 
 
 In the dusty corners of the fence, the sheep 
 stood along the road closely huddled, with their 
 noses to the ground to baffle the nose-bot ; and 
 the geese jerked at the short grass of the nearly 
 bare slopes, where their white forms fairly glis 
 tened in the sun. 
 
262 At You-All s House 
 
 Through the day they passed troops of " half- 
 handered," sunbonneted women and children, 
 picking the low blackberries in the narrow 
 lanes; and over the careening fences the red 
 and yellow harvest apples looked luscious upon 
 the trees of the roadside orchards, while the 
 boys envied the birds their wings as the jays 
 and redheads sank their beaks into the juicy 
 pomes. 
 
 On the western horizon, as the sun passed fur 
 ther on, the bank of foamy thunder-caps boiled 
 up, white and airy, as if the sky would amuse or 
 mock the hoping, thirsting earth with a play of 
 blowing bubbles in her face. Then they shrank 
 away, leaving no dark and watery cloud-streak 
 " like the weeping eyelash of the day." 
 
 Men stopped each other and asked when it 
 was going to rain, and told their signs and their 
 ancestors signs, and spoke of the faint hints on 
 which they hung their hopes that the drought 
 might break. 
 
 Thus the day. As the sun set, with heightened 
 hope still deferred in its coppery-purple beams, 
 making the sky above seem green with envy 
 at the beauty of the mists below, the tobacco- 
 moth dipped its long trunk into the Jimpson 
 
At Yott-AH s House 263 
 
 vases, now open wide; the quails wallowed in 
 the dusty road, and the little hares kicked high 
 their furry heels along the shady patches, and 
 ran into the weeds at the approach of the puff 
 ing monster. Off from the highway could be 
 heard the cries of children in their play, tiring 
 themselves for their sleep in wild, free action 
 drinking deep of nature s best soporific. Then 
 the night-hawk circled overhead, and darkness 
 came on, leaving over the fields and lots, in the 
 pestilent whiteness of the dogfennel, spurge, 
 and boneset, the ghost only of the day s floral 
 beauty. 
 
 At night they were often belated. Besides 
 the bat that whirled against the sky then, the 
 screech-owl had now begun to set up again his 
 shuddering wail. One night when Shan was 
 "blue" and homesick, there came with this 
 sound the single cry of a raincrow or cuckoo s 
 choking call. Shan hailed this gladly as the 
 herald of a shower. But the owl kept up his cry 
 again and again, and seemed to follow the 
 rattling, puffing cavalcade, as though he would 
 curse it with his wail. Shan was behind, driving 
 the team hitched to the water-tank one night, 
 when the bird lit on a stake near, and seemed, 
 
264 At You- All s House 
 
 as Thoreau has put it, to say, " Oh-h-h-h-h : 
 that I had never been bor-oo-oo-oo-ooo-r-rr-r-n." 
 
 The suicidal cry seemed aimed so directly at 
 the boy that it was doubly depressing. He felt 
 that it was the knell of all that he had ever 
 hoped. He would have slain the bird, if he 
 could, and he missed it only a little way with 
 the lash of his whip. 
 
 "What makes uh bird, that s married early 
 and raised uh family, keep goin on that uh way 
 fer, anyway?" he muttered, back deep in the 
 vernacular which hard work and poor associa 
 tions had set up. " He was through nestin in 
 April. Splenty ov time, anyway, for next year s 
 courtin , lessen he s fond er long engagements. 
 He don t raise er second brood, like some er these 
 singin birds. Glad he don t. Oughtn t ter be 
 no second erditions of er bird like that. 
 
 11 Now these other birds, some of em have er 
 new courtship with every new brood. Glad I 
 ain t a bird that way ! One courtship s erbout 
 to do me up. Think of three in er year, all with 
 ther same sweetheart, too, like er house-wren ; 
 but then, if they wuz all successful that s 
 another thing. Ther Lord deliver me from 
 three er year, all gone wrong. 
 
At You-AIVs House 265 
 
 " Many birds have some conserlation, how 
 ever have a rest sometime. Some boy-birds 
 jest can t love a girl-bird in ther winter ter save 
 em jest can t. They ain t constitooted that 
 way. And she don t keer nothin fer him, 
 neither. Sometimes they fight, like as if they 
 wuz still married, bout which one will stay at 
 home and which will go hunt a new home-hole ; 
 and then they have their kiss-and-make-up 
 spell in ther spring ergin or git a new 
 partner. 
 
 " But in man this everlastin love business goes 
 by jerks all the year round liable to ketch 
 yer any time, like ther measles, or sumpthin*. 
 There s meeting all the Sundays, picnics in ther 
 summer, fairs in ther fall, parties in ther winter, 
 and Christmus is hardly past with its specially 
 dangerous time, till spring s here with it s sen- 
 termental feelin s and ther dogged bugs and 
 birds and things, spurrin yer on with their 
 songs and antics, and and er lot er con 
 founded accerdents ter boot. 
 
 " I wisht I wuz out of it. Thought I wuz out. 
 Would er been, if that keerless boy with his 
 lamp had died er baby. Somebody had ter 
 carry her out at ther fire and I I went in, 
 
266 At You- All s House 
 
 but I I didn t know she was goin to reach 
 fer a feller s neck like that. Twas cause she 
 was skeered, I reckon, and that don t count. 
 Nothin seems ter count much with me here 
 lately. But ther feel of that arm erbout a fel 
 ler s neck!" 
 
 Thus went the early part of August! Au 
 tumnal hints were blushing forth, as the tired 
 crew worked its way in a circle homeward. The 
 tassels of the corn were sere, and the silks brown 
 and dead. Here and there, some leaves upon 
 the trees showed the colors of early ripening, not 
 due to frost or drought. 
 
 On the roadside the wild cherries were swell 
 ing into a dark mahogany tone, and robins, 
 flickers, redheads, jays, and others were enjoy 
 ing the fruits of some old ancestor s sowing. 
 The tight-fisted clusters of the sumac s sour 
 berries were warm with ripening red, and their 
 leaves were maturing in bright crimson patches. 
 Wherever the Virginia creeper had run up and 
 bunched itself on the fence stakes, rounding 
 and softening their rugged beauty, there ,was 
 a colored leaf peeping out ; and the prairie 
 grapes hung from the roadside rails in blue, 
 acid clusters. 
 
At You-AWs House 267 
 
 The autumnal reign of brilliant yellow, 
 "fringing the roads with harmless gold," flaunt 
 ing its banners from the corners and the hedges, 
 caught the boy s uncultured eye. Besides the 
 many summer flowers yet persisting, there were 
 clumps of black-eyed Susans " nigger heads," 
 Shan called them, because of their black, woolly 
 centres; and there was the bold effrontery of 
 the various wild sunflowers. In the damp places 
 was the brilliant gold of the tall coreopsis, big 
 Spanish needles, they appeared to the boy, 
 and here and there, over these and the last, the 
 dodder or "love vine" threw its tawny yellow 
 filaments in contrast to the bright green leaves 
 and the dead drab of the fence rails. 
 
 On the prairie waysides was the compass 
 plant, in perfect chrome, whose associations 
 always made the boy sick, as he recalled an 
 attempt to use as chewing-gum its resin before 
 it had sufficiently hardened. For days his 
 teeth were sticky and meals tasted tarry ; and 
 so desperate did he become that he submitted 
 to the ordeal of having his mother scrub his 
 teeth with a stick and a rag dipped in spirits 
 of camphor to get the resin off. Ugh ! He 
 had always hated the rank thing since, and 
 
268 At You-Airs House 
 
 liked to hear his breaking plough tearing at the 
 tough roots even if it did struggle to show 
 the prairie wanderer the north and south with 
 its deeply cut, flat, thin leaves, so turned as 
 to avoid the drying sun. 
 
 It was a relief to rest his eyes upon the 
 modest partridge-pea (" weed locust " - he 
 styled it) growing in the hard roadside; or to 
 glance at the early stubbles or fallows, brighten 
 ing now with the brassy glory of the so-called 
 Spanish needles. 
 
 At this he thought of Miss Winnie and her 
 challenge that he saw too much of color to be 
 discriminative, and he guessed that there were 
 great beyonds about flowers as there were about 
 " fishin , birds, and things." 
 
 The very feel in the air was autumnal. As 
 he rode homeward at last, free from his con 
 tract, he felt himself, in the dusk, drop suddenly 
 into cool pools of atmosphere in the swales, and 
 a breeze began to spring up early in the sultry 
 night. Next morning, when he stepped out on 
 the porch at home to see the "devil s darnin 
 needle," as he called the pJiasma, or stick-insect, 
 which had spent the summer on the climbing 
 rose, he noted that though he left it a 
 
At You-AWs House 269 
 
 bright green color (slightly browning) it was 
 now as sere and faded as a frosted blade of 
 grass. 
 
 He wondered if it were fading for death, or 
 just preparing for further life putting itself 
 in harmony with Nature by changing pro 
 tectively to the color of her paling face. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 "The pointer ranges and the sportsman beats . . . lynx-like 
 is his aim." BYRON. 
 
 " Words pay no debts. Give her deeds." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 AFTER Shan had rested a few days, he felt 
 that he must relax himself with a chicken-hunt. 
 Returning from a near-by store where he bought 
 his ammunition, he fell in with Linton, out to 
 exercise the filly. 
 
 He told the engineer of his contemplated 
 sport, and saw such a hungry look in his eyes 
 that he asked the stranger over next afternoon 
 to join him. 
 
 " Get Henry s new gun. I ve got the dog," 
 Shan called as they parted. 
 
 "Well, I should say you had," called back 
 Linton. "That s what I m coming for, to see 
 Pont work." 
 
 As Shan rode on he found his motives rather 
 
 mixed. He did not like to hunt alone. " Nothin 
 
 ter stimulate a feller." He could not resist the 
 
 charm of the engineer s manner and apparent 
 
 270 
 
At You-AWs House 271 
 
 good-will and sincerity. Besides, he wanted to 
 show this accomplished fellow that there were 
 some things a country boy could do as well as 
 anybody. Then there was that eager hungry 
 lonesome look in Linton s face. 
 
 "But dinged if I thought he was thinking 
 about Pont. Thought he wanted a shot at a 
 sort of game he d never seen." 
 
 The truth was that Linton knew how to get 
 his gun off, and had broken some flying targets 
 in a city club. He had never been in the field, 
 but with his easy confidence in himself, he 
 supposed that he would do well. 
 
 Shan had told him that he need not come 
 ear ly no t earlier than three o clock. 
 
 He had taken his round among the contrac 
 tors, and now, a little early that he might have 
 time to loiter, was riding over, his cultured eye 
 pleased at the purpling effects of the thistles and 
 the sensitive briers on the banks, the bunches 
 of "blazing star," the false dragon-heads, and 
 the horsemint in the fence corners, and the 
 sweeping beauty of the pestiferous iron-weeds 
 everywhere over the pastures. 
 
 He leaned down from the saddle on the filly s 
 back, and plucked a bunch of the blue gentian 
 
272 At Yon-All s House 
 
 with its half-opened corolla cobalt blue in 
 side and green outside and dropped the reins 
 as he tried to determine why the plant once, 
 evidently, such a beautiful feature of the land 
 scape, had begun to hide its colors and lose its 
 shape. 
 
 Then there was a " woof ! woof ! " by the 
 roadside, and a rush of hogs unseen through the 
 shaking weeds, and new problems were upon 
 him. He was splitting the wind at a terrible 
 speed, and the dropped reins were just aft of 
 the filly s ears. But problem number one 
 how he was going to reach those reins on the 
 bobbing head was soon crowded out by num 
 ber two, which was how, with a gun in his 
 hands and a game-sack heavy with shells slap 
 ping him anywhere, he was going to stay in 
 that saddle, if that mare made another turn like 
 that last one. 
 
 The filly was a sort of problem-solver herself 
 at times, and before any mental solutions came 
 to Linton, she had accomplished the mechanical 
 one of stretching her neck above the old lot gate 
 at Mr. McBride s, and emitting a sort of long, 
 satisfied sigh, as if this were a thing she did 
 every day merely for exercise. 
 
At You- All s House 273 
 
 "Why, say, feller," said Shan from the barn- 
 shed, " I m glad ter see you, but you needn t 
 ter been in such a hurry. The chickens are 
 not out of the corn yet." 
 
 "It was not I that was in the hurry," laughed 
 Linton back at him. " The filly seemed to fear 
 that the birds might get out of the township 
 before we reached here. Did she ever run 
 with you that way ? " 
 
 "Well yes once or twice. She s got a 
 great head of her own. Better keep a tight 
 rein on her. Git down." 
 
 With wide detours, in a gentle lope, old Pont 
 was throwing himself across the stubble-fields, 
 back and forth, back and forth, his nose aloft 
 in the mere tilt of motion like a rocking boat. 
 Back and forth, from left to right, from right 
 to left, against the gentle breeze, past the 
 meadow, through the millet patch, now creep 
 ing here to trail, now rearing high there to 
 reach above the weeds to " wind," went the old 
 dog at his "work." Sometimes in ragweed 
 stretches he could not be seen, but was located 
 only by the shaking weeds or by the drab cloud 
 which the wings of the flying grasshoppers 
 
274 At You- All s House 
 
 made above him. At last he slowed a little, 
 and began to walk and sniff audibly upon a little 
 tongue of old meadow that ran further on yet. 
 He lifted his nose here and, snorting the weed- 
 pollen out, put it down again into another de 
 pression in the grass. 
 
 "The old dog is slowing up," said Arthur. 
 "Guess he s tired." 
 
 "Yes," said the boy simply, in answer to 
 the sound of Linton s voice, not to his words. 
 "Been sumpthin walkin through the wool- 
 grass since I was erlong here this mornin ; " 
 and he traced with his toe a little path as if you 
 had drawn your closed fist along the ground. 
 
 " Look at the dog, McBride ! Why doesn t 
 he go on, you reckon ? He s running round 
 and round and now he s stopped." 
 
 Pont was standing with one foot lifted and 
 his nose held high, and in his eyes was a far 
 away gaze beyond the fence, as if over there 
 was all that a dog could ever hope. It seemed 
 as if his very soul were lifted. 
 
 "They re over there," said Shan, pointing 
 toward the pasture with his gun. 
 
 " And can he see them ? " asked the engineer. 
 
 "Nun don t talk ser much." 
 
At Yon-Airs House 275 
 
 And, as they crept up to the fence that lay 
 between the fields and the "back-pasture forty," 
 the dog zigzagged a little this way and that, and, 
 in a low crouch, became as rigid as a statue, 
 with a fixed stare directly through the rails. 
 
 " Hold, Pont. Git over easy, Linton, and cock 
 your gun. Hold, Pont! Steady! Now wait er 
 moment till I git over. Don t move. Steady, 
 Pont." 
 
 Like a cat creeping on its prey, the boy 
 scaled the tall fence without a sound. 
 
 " Been here, sure," he whispered. " See that 
 waller and that feather in ther dust." 
 
 He turned and motioned to the stiffened dog 
 a time or two before he could induce him to 
 move. 
 
 Presently Pont sprang to a large opening 
 beneath the lower rider, but hung there like a 
 cat, and wrinkling his nose a little this way and 
 that, took a set gaze down almost at Linton s 
 feet. 
 
 " Why, what s the matter with the dog, Shan ? 
 Is he fast ? Why, the hole is large, and " 
 
 " Floo-oo-oo-oo-oop ! " 
 
 " Shoot, man ! " shouted the boy, and instantly 
 there was an explosion and a fence stake over 
 
276 At You-AWs House 
 
 Shan s head flew into splinters, but the bird 
 went on in another direction, till a shot from 
 the boy dropped it far out in the grass. 
 
 "Slip in another shell," said Shan, "and turn 
 around a little," as he glanced up at the stake. 
 "Come, Pont." 
 
 The dog struck the ground in a crouching 
 point again moved up a few feet, and lay 
 down with his tongue out, but otherwise 
 rigid. 
 
 " Is is your dog sick ? " asked Linton in an 
 undertone, looking alarmingly at Shan. 
 
 "Yes, got a bird-fit. Look that way and 
 scuffle your feet a little." 
 
 " Whir-r-r-r-up ! " 
 
 " Don t hurry now take him ! " 
 
 But in spite of pains the engineer missed 
 again, and the boy s right again brought down 
 the bird, and his left caught another close in, 
 while a third got away. 
 
 In an instant Shan had his shells in and 
 stood as rigid as the pointer in the expecta 
 tion of what was sure to come. When Pont 
 lay down, his master knew that meant many 
 birds. He simply clucked to the dog, who 
 moved cautiously up as if he were stepping on 
 
At You-AIVs House 277 
 
 thorns, and then two birds more were up and 
 down again almost at the boy s feet. Then they 
 began to straggle up all round, too fast for cour 
 tesy, and Shan dropped them right and left, 
 over him and behind him; for Linton, after 
 another miss, came rushing up excitedly and 
 thrust his loaded gun into Shan s hands and 
 took the empty one and loaded it, and ex 
 changed again and again till all the birds were 
 gone. 
 
 Quickly the dog sprang in, for his keen nose 
 had told him that all were flushed. 
 
 "I ll bring in the birds, anyway," said Lin- 
 ton, " if I can t " 
 
 " But what s the dog fer ? " said Shan. 
 
 And he went back and glanced up ruefully 
 at the fence stake (for it was the one he had 
 pitted against old Sal s roguish ways in the 
 spring) while the dog piled the dead grouse 
 at his feet. 
 
 " Some got away," said Linton, " and " 
 
 " Some didn t," said Shan, curtly. " Where d 
 they go ? " 
 
 " That way," said Linton, nodding. 
 
 "Yes, but where?" 
 
 " Oh, I don t know. I was watching you 
 
278 At You-AIVs House 
 
 shoot. Prettiest thing I ever saw. Seemed to 
 rain birds for a while. How did you learn how ? " 
 
 " By keepin at it and shootin at the birds 
 only," replied the boy, glancing at the stake 
 again. 
 
 "Why, man, I d rather be able to do that as 
 you do it than to bridge Niagara." 
 
 " Come on, then," said the boy, leading off. 
 " Hie on, Pont ! " 
 
 Back and forth, right and left, went the old 
 dog again, with lolling tongue now, and the 
 slabber rolling from his mouth in the hot August 
 sun. This way and that, that easy rocking gal 
 lop that broad deep muzzle seeking the faint 
 est breeze. Once he stopped dead still moved 
 cautiously up, and a little brown, streaked swamp- 
 sparrow flew out of a tuft of grass. 
 
 Shan called it a " stinkbird," with a hunter s 
 contempt for anything not game that balks his 
 dog. 
 
 Again, a meadow-lark had walked across the 
 route, and Pont turned a moment on the false 
 trail, till it fluttered up with a scolding twitter, 
 flirting its tail and wings in a jerky flight. 
 
 With a disgusted look the dog again began 
 his windward search, and then anon he shut 
 
At You-AWs House 279 
 
 his mouth with a snap and swallowed his saliva 
 with a gulp. Further on, he came down to a 
 trot directly forward the nose held high 
 then a walk, the head dropped a little then the 
 shoulder-blades began to show above the back, 
 the tail ceased to wag, and there was a low cun 
 ning cat-like, muscular sneak with the breast 
 sweeping the grass. 
 
 Suddenly the dog turned his head almost back, 
 till he crouched and stood in a half-moon, cata 
 leptic in a backward point. With his nose full 
 of others further on, he had almost passed a 
 bird. 
 
 " Keep cool now and take this one when he 
 gets up," said Shan. " I ll kick him out fer you. 
 Now. Noiv! Why, what s ther matter?" (Bang! 
 from his own gun.) 
 
 " Oh, you didn t have your gun cocked. Well, 
 no, that gun s not a self-cocker. The locks only 
 rebound half-way." 
 
 " I d like to see you miss once," said Linton, 
 laughing. " Can you do it ? " 
 
 "Wait till we get ter shootin quails in the 
 brush. On, Pont." 
 
 Further on Linton shot in with Shan, and the 
 boy swore that the bird was the engineer s. He 
 
280 At You- All s House 
 
 knew it was. He " wasn t holdin on," and the 
 pleased expression in Linton s face paid him 
 well for his white lie and made him resolve 
 never to tell him about the stake. 
 
 " We can t go over there," said Shan. " Old 
 Jones would die ; but he d swear first that we 
 shot a cow apiece. They don t like us and 
 won t let me shoot on their place, but I ve seen 
 him and the boys over on our place drivin the 
 game over cross the line so s they could shoot 
 em on their own land with er good conscience. 
 Er man s conscience is er funny thing, ain t it ? 
 But wait, we ll get em. Let s go to the pond 
 and rest. Font s got ter have er bath and er 
 drink." 
 
 But while Shan rested on the grass and Pont 
 lay in the water, Linton crept down the swale 
 to the "mad lane" of double fences between 
 the " McBrides and Joneses," and found what 
 he had been hunting for, some primitive prairie 
 flowers preserved from hoof and share between 
 the double fences. Here were yet the splendors 
 of the virgin prairie, and he thanked his stars 
 that something good of peace and preservation 
 should come out of this glaring evil. 
 
 Back once in a middle western state he 
 
At You- All s House 281 
 
 noticed that a certain railroad had put in double 
 cattle-guards between all the farms, whether 
 there was a lane there or not a shameful pub 
 lic commentary upon the instability of human 
 friendships. He wondered if the C. and D. had 
 better not adopt this plan, when it fenced its 
 right-of-way. 
 
 Then he recalled how in the fenced right-of- 
 ways he had seen some of the strange wild- 
 flowers abloom in the early spring as he came 
 out, the creamy indigo plant, the "shooting 
 star " or American cowslip, the pretty spider- 
 worts and many other beauties, now long since 
 almost extinct upon the pastured prairies. It 
 was a queer grip that the untrodden past had 
 here upon the very progressive present. 
 
 He strolled back and found the boy asleep in 
 the shade, and Pont, refreshed, lying near him. 
 The shadows were getting very long now. 
 Linton awoke Shan and asked him where that 
 strange weird bird note was, which he heard 
 somewhere, he could not tell just where. 
 
 " Can you tell how far away it is, McBride ? " 
 
 " No, but I know what it is and where it will 
 be," he said. " It is the young prairie chickens 
 runnin back." 
 
282 At Yon-Airs House 
 
 " Back where ? " 
 
 " Back to where we first found em. We ll go 
 by there after a while, when they git gethered up, 
 and git some more of em." 
 
 He lay back again. The dog pricked his 
 ears at the calls, and Linton listened. 
 
 " Why, McBride, that s musical, listen ! Talk 
 about there being no syrinx in the birds below 
 the perchers. I don t care if that grouse hasn t 
 four pairs of song muscles, as the bird men say, 
 there is melody and almost tears too in that 
 plaintive homesick whistle. We killed the 
 mother, too, didn t we? And there are those 
 innocent orphans running back to that place of 
 slaughter." 
 
 He listened longer while the boy dozed. The 
 plaintive whistles softened all the hunter out of 
 him. He shook the sleeper, and said : 
 
 " Say, Shan, let s leave them alone. I don t 
 want to kill any more. You ve done well and 
 we ve got enough. I haven t the heart to risk 
 even one of my shots among them. Listen 
 as they get closer together ! Why, there , are 
 wails and sobs, and broken-hearted love, and 
 home desecrated, in that orphan cry. Let s go 
 home." 
 
At You-AH s House 283 
 
 And they arose and walked to the house, call 
 ing Pont off of many a trail and scent as they 
 passed near the rendezvous of the grouse. 
 
 What a different mood was now upon the boy. 
 As the hunter, he had been down among his 
 savage ancestors in his manner. But now he 
 came back to civilization, was glad and joyous, 
 and made Linton stay to supper with him to 
 enjoy the broiled birds. 
 
 When the engineer went home, Shan made 
 him take some birds with him as his share of the 
 hunt. The boy felt well toward him, as we all 
 do for the man that lets us outshoot him and yet 
 praises our skill. 
 
 "Won t won t you send one specially to 
 Miss Dolly ? " said Linton, as he started off. 
 
 " Why, yes, I reckon," said Shan, "if you don t 
 want em all ter give her yourself." 
 
 " Well, I m selfish enough to accept the birds 
 you shot, but I m not quite up to that. What 
 shall I say?" 
 
 " Oh, you kin do ther talkin " 
 
 " Since you ve done the shooting ? " 
 
 " No, but fix it up ter suit yerself. You talk 
 well enough, I mean." 
 
284 At You-AWs House 
 
 "Yes, a plagued sight better than I shoot," 
 said Linton, as he rode off. 
 
 Shan stood a few minutes looking after him, 
 then turned into the house, feeling that he would 
 give his gun, his skill, and and almost Pont, 
 if he could use his tongue as well as the engi 
 neer used his. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 " And tis my faith that every flower 
 Enjoys the air it breathes." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 How nature paints her colors, how the bee 
 Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweets." 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 " YOUR plant is a cultivated Martynia, Miss 
 Dolly," said Linton, some mornings after their 
 flower talk. " You may call it a mousetail or 
 a unicorn plant, according as you consider the 
 beak of the fruit a tail or a horn. They are 
 often grown in the garden for pickles, but this 
 one is grown for beauty. Say," he continued in 
 another strain, " I am going to spend the day 
 at Coon Creek bridge. Would you and your 
 friend, Miss Mildred, like to join me for a day 
 among the flowers ? " 
 
 "Why, yes, if she can go. I ll go over after 
 breakfast and see." 
 
 She came back flushed with the news that 
 Mildred and little Sam would go ; and she began 
 to prepare a lunch. 
 
 285 
 
286 At You-AWs House 
 
 This was not the first time these girls had 
 been out with Linton among the flowers. He 
 had bought for each of them a book on botany, 
 and had taught them how to " analyze " the 
 simpler blossoms about them. So interesting 
 and considerate was he that the girls were de 
 lighted when they could get him to talk flowers ; 
 and under the effects of his thought and pure 
 diction they were checking themselves into the 
 dignity of better speech and better modes of 
 reasoning. 
 
 After they had spent the forenoon in speci 
 men-hunting, they came to the bridge and ate 
 their lunch, with the water from the workmen s 
 tank. 
 
 Later, Linton was turning over a specimen of 
 the partridge-pea and wondering which way it 
 was developing whether up from the regular, 
 or down from the irregular flowers of the podded 
 order. While it was of the same species, this 
 specimen here differed in many ways from those 
 he knew east and south. 
 
 "I thought you had identified that," said 
 Mildred. " What do you find about it to gaze 
 at so long ? " 
 
 " It is a sort of connecting link," he said, not 
 
At You-AIVs House 287 
 
 lowering his glass, "one of those flowers be 
 tween two forms, not either, but akin to 
 both." 
 
 Then he mentioned that there was a great 
 deal about flowers that was interesting besides 
 their beauty and their names. " You recall our 
 study of the Martynia a few evenings ago, Miss 
 Dolly ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, Millie, he means micetails or 
 * mousetails. I don t know how you make the 
 plural. But you should uh heard him. Oh, the 
 most interesting things about how the flower 
 paints its its its " 
 
 " Lips and cheeks," said Linton, " like a girl." 
 
 "To catch the passing uh ah " she 
 stammered. 
 
 "Bee or beau " he added again. 
 
 " Oh, you mean thing, hush ! Go on and tell 
 us more about it." 
 
 " Which shall I do ? Go on or hush ? " 
 
 "Why, hush about girls and go on about 
 flowers. You know." 
 
 " That is a little hard to do under the circum 
 stances. Flowers are a great deal like the rest 
 of us especially girls. I sometimes feel that 
 I should like to write a book and call it, * The 
 
288 At You-AWs House 
 
 Whole World Kin* not by one touch of 
 Nature/ but by many." 
 
 " I ve often thought of flowers as loving," said 
 Mildred "or as pining away for want of love." 
 
 "There is more in your thought than you 
 may realize. If they do not feel the emotion of 
 love, they do certainly woo in the most ingenious 
 and delicate ways. Except in the endowment 
 of speech and music, man has scarcely surpassed 
 the flowers in this. But all their wooing has 
 been toward a messenger to carry their love- 
 gifts. And they have been a long time at it too 
 some of them and are now adepts at the 
 art. Long before any balloon had soared, they 
 had wafted greetings upon the winds; before 
 any savage paddled, they had let slip little love- 
 boats richly freighted ; long before Noah loosed 
 the dove, they had used the birds as letter- 
 carriers, and I should not be surprised to hear 
 some day that some flower had hitched a love- 
 message, not a seed, to one of the quadrupeds." 
 
 " But why should they want to do this ? " said 
 Dolly. 
 
 " It s a long story," said Linton. 
 
 "And a long afternoon, unless you make it 
 interesting," she replied. 
 
At You-AIVs House 289 
 
 As he spoke confidently on his cranky topic, 
 of the evolution of flowers in keeping with their 
 needs for cross-fertilization and the like, Dolly 
 exclaimed skeptically : 
 
 " But how do you know these things, Mr. 
 Linton ? " 
 
 "Oh, I don t know them any more than I 
 know you were once a baby. They are strong 
 inferences. Thus from the leaves of a plant 
 we can infer much of its history. A nasturtium 
 leaf always suggests an aquatic ancestry. There 
 was probably a time when all plants were simply 
 leaves just as all men were once babes. The 
 halves of the kernels of seeds now are mere 
 leaves, as in the acorn. These are the baby 
 oak s nursing-bottles which sustain it till it 
 can secure food for itself. The beans bring 
 theirs up out of the ground with them, and 
 suck at them long after the stalks can stand 
 alone." 
 
 "Mr. Linton," said Mildred, "I assure you 
 Dolly was a baby once a little beauty and 
 she appreciates your illustration, because she 
 was raised on the bottle and used it after she 
 ran about." 
 
 "Mildred!!! Hush!!!" 
 u 
 
290 At You- All s House 
 
 "Never mind, Miss Dolly. I like to think 
 of us all as babes. While in one respect they 
 are little savages, in another they seem to typify 
 a time in our development when we passed a 
 stage not only of innocence but of grace as well. 
 I never see a little child wave its hand, or hear 
 it inflect its voice, that I do not feel that this 
 argues as the plant s leaf hints its origin 
 that man (and woman too) must once have been 
 both graceful and musical by nature and not by 
 education. Sometimes, when I compare the 
 grace, elocution, and music of the grown per 
 sons of to-day with that which children often 
 exhibit, I feel that man has surely fallen some 
 where, and I sigh for degeneration again to that 
 pristine state. I - 
 
 "Ain t that a little two-edged," said Dolly, 
 bridling with a sort of pout, " since you have 
 heard me recite and sing, and never saw me as 
 a baby ? " 
 
 " Oh, Miss Dolly, pardon me ! I forgot ! I 
 was not thinking of you at all. In my excite 
 ment that night, I recall you only as a as 
 a a " 
 
 " Clinger ? " said Mildred. 
 
 Linton and Dolly both looked terrible things 
 
At You- All s House 291 
 
 at her a moment, for this cut both ways also : 
 but shortly they broke into a laugh. He arose 
 and went to watch the laying of the capstone 
 of a pier, and Dolly pinched Mildred and swore, 
 as a woman swears, that she would be even 
 with her yet. 
 
 On his return he explained the probable 
 origin and the structure of the flower, and the 
 origin of sex as an effort also, on the part of 
 the plants, to get out of self. Suddenly Dolly 
 broke in : 
 
 " Mr. Linton, do you think the first woman 
 was made out of a man s rib ? " 
 
 "No. There were doubtless women before 
 that day in Eden. Male and female created 
 He them. " 
 
 " Then what makes the Bible say so ? " she 
 said petulantly. 
 
 " It puts it as the beautiful figure of the 
 pretty and close relation that woman was now 
 to sustain to her husband. In the irresponsible 
 and animal condition before this, sex in the 
 human race had been in the mire with that of 
 the other animals, but now, with the incoming 
 of the spiritual nature, it was lifted into a new 
 realm. It was a spiritual step out of self. 
 
292 At Yon- All s House 
 
 This was the account of the creation not of 
 the first woman, but of the first wife." 
 
 " But but, Mr. Linton. Is " 
 
 " Now, this is a flower talk," interrupted 
 Linton not knowing his beyond. 
 
 "But "said Dolly. 
 
 But he was off again. 
 
 He casually mentioned the probable origin of 
 honey, emphasizing how closely related chem 
 ically were woody fibre and one form of sugar. 
 
 "A great chemist is reported as saying," he 
 continued, "that he could make enough sugar 
 out of his shirt to sweeten his cup of coffee." 
 
 "Well, he could drink it, then," said Dolly, 
 her lip curling in disgust. 
 
 "Yes," said Mildred, " as Shan says, no such 
 feller could sweeten my coffee for me. He s 
 always sayin that a certain girl with platted 
 hair can sweeten his coffee for him all her life," 
 she added, as she stole a suggestive glance at 
 Dolly. 
 
 The latter simply looked down, pulled a 
 grass-stalk, bit off its end and spat it out. 
 Linton was puzzled as he turned his head 
 quickly from one to the other, but there was 
 a queer, glad look in his face as he saw Dolly s 
 
At You- All s House 293 
 
 eyes averted and Mildred s dancing so mis 
 chievously. 
 
 " Well, ladies, I wasn t that great chemist, 
 I m glad to say," said he, breaking a rather 
 embarrassing silence. "All I was trying to 
 impress was that beauty and sweetness came 
 down the ages together." 
 
 " But, Mr. Linton, how can you ever/^7 such 
 things ? " said Dolly, yet skeptical. 
 
 A little dog had been barking some minutes 
 in the woods over across the creek. Just then 
 a gun went off over that way. 
 
 " What is the man shooting at there now ? " 
 said Linton, starting at the sound. 
 
 "A squirrel," said Dolly, as though there 
 could be no doubt about it. 
 
 " How do you know ? " he said. 
 
 " Nothin else there now to shoot," she said. 
 
 " Maybe it was a quail," he suggested. 
 
 She laughed. " Did that bark sound like a 
 bird-dog ? " she asked. 
 
 " No," he said, recalling Font s silence, 
 " but " 
 
 "Well, he was barkin up a tree," she con 
 tinued confidently. " Anybody could tell that." 
 
 " Well, I couldn t," he said. 
 
294 At Yon-All s House 
 
 " Maybe you don t know much about dogs," 
 she almost sneered. 
 
 " I do not." 
 
 "The squirrel was runnin on a limb per 
 haps jumpin from tree to tree. Oh, I ve been 
 out squirrel-huntin with my brother Henry," 
 she added, as she saw a sort of answering sneer 
 on his face. 
 
 " Indeed ? Maybe you know whether or not 
 the man killed the squirrel ? " he queried, with a 
 good-natured taunt. " Heard the shot hit him, 
 perhaps ? " 
 
 " Yes. I feel sure that he killed it." 
 
 "Why? How?" 
 
 " He didn t shoot again." 
 
 "But it might have escaped run into a 
 hole, perhaps." 
 
 "Then the dog would still bark for a while," 
 she said firmly. 
 
 They looked at each other a few moments 
 with mischievous defiance in their eyes, when 
 shortly a lank, " one-gallused " boy came around 
 from behind a clump of willows on the other 
 side of the creek ; he was followed by a pant 
 ing, half-shepherd, half-rat-terrier dog ; a muzzle- 
 loading, double-barrelled shot-gun was on his 
 
At You- All s House 295 
 
 shoulder; swinging by the tail in his left hand 
 was the limp form of a fox squirrel. 
 
 " Unh ! hunhj " said Dolly, with a flash of 
 triumph. " Look there ! " 
 
 But Linton had a cool, sly expression on his 
 face, " It may be," he said, " there are folks 
 who know flowers and butterflies as you know 
 dogs, squirrels, and boys ! " 
 
 Dolly gave a little gasp as she saw his trap, 
 and looked as though she could shake him. 
 
 " When you two get tired of slippin on each 
 other s slickness," said Mildred, "I d like to 
 hear some more about the flowers." 
 
 He incidentally mentioned that all flowers 
 were not cross-fertilized, that many that once 
 were evidently so are not so now, and some of 
 these such as the grasses, which were among 
 the giants once had lost color, shape, and 
 some parts, as petals, by degenerating. 
 
 " This June grass here " he began. 
 
 "We call that * blue-grass, Mr. Linton," said 
 Mildred. " It came with many of our fore 
 fathers from Kentucky, and is a part of our 
 pedigree. Blue-grass and blue blood have much 
 the same origin in this region, and is much 
 revered unless you come from Virginia. Then 
 
296 At Yoii-AWs House 
 
 you tramp both under your feet and say 
 Thar ! " 
 
 " I beg pardon," said Linton. " I knew all 
 flesh was grass, of course, and all blood, too; 
 but I had never seen just that application of the 
 fact before. Isn t it time to go home now ? 
 There are dozens of interesting things yet, 
 but " 
 
 " Are any of these changes going on now ? " 
 said Dolly. 
 
 " Only a few, perhaps, and these solely within 
 species. So permanent have become the habits 
 and environment of plants now that, however 
 much they vary, there is little change. It is 
 the same with animals. Only mind and spirit 
 are moving rapidly onward now." 
 
 " You seem to get much pleasure out of your 
 theories, Mr. Linton," said Mildred. "To you 
 many wayside weeds have a story which I sup 
 pose you can read almost as you run, and " 
 
 " But not as the filly runs," said Dolly, slyly. 
 
 "Well, scarcely." 
 
 " But what if your theories should not .be 
 true ? " continued Mildred. 
 
 "Then, as fancies only they are delightful, 
 and are as entertaining as yours when you say 
 
At You-Airs House 297 
 
 the bluebell weeps, the daisy smiles, and so on. 
 And there is also a much greater variety of 
 my fancies, if I allow them such. Again, with 
 mine I can prophesy, while with yours you can 
 only dream dreams." 
 They arose to go. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 "Science sees signs; poetry the thing signified." HARE. 
 
 44 ... and faith became 
 A passionate intuition." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 44 The lie was dead 
 And damned, and truth stood up instead." BROWNING. 
 
 THEY walked home chatting lightly of various 
 things. Dolly and Linton had left Mildred at 
 the gate and were crossing a little wood between 
 the fields. 
 
 She had thrown her hat back upon her shoul 
 ders and was holding it by the long strings of 
 ribbon hanging down a fashion then prevail 
 ing. Linton turned to admire the pretty face, 
 when he found it so serious that it surprised 
 him. The taunt was all out of it now. 
 
 "Mr. Linton," she said soberly, "you spoke 
 of flowers deceiving, coquetting, advertising, and 
 painting things they didn t have, concealing, and 
 so on, do do you think it wrong to deceive 
 when you have a good motive or purpose in it ? 
 Wait a moment. I passed by this spot last 
 298 
 
At You-AH s House 299 
 
 April, and a mother woodcock fibbed to me 
 right here about her health said, in her way, 
 that she was sick or wounded, and she wanted 
 me to try to catch her, I guess, so that I would 
 not see her eggs. I liked her for it. Was that 
 wrong ? " 
 
 " Which, the fibbing or the liking ? " 
 
 "Why, kinder both, you know. Of course 
 the bird did not know better, but but, Mr. Lin- 
 ton, if these things seem to run so in nature in 
 the very plants and things, is is it very wrong 
 in us, you think ? " 
 
 " How about the shrike, which is said to imi 
 tate his victim s call, that he may devour it ; or 
 the pitcher-plant, for instance, that makes its 
 nectar poisonous that it may kill flies and con 
 sume them ? " 
 
 " Oh, but I said for a good purpose. " 
 
 " Whose good purpose, for the plants or the 
 flies ? " 
 
 " Why, kinder both again, I reckon, but finally 
 for the flies." 
 
 " I think God cannot but hate a liar," he said, 
 not knowing anything else just then. 
 
 "Then what does he allow the flowers and 
 birds to tell em for? " she said with a snap. 
 
3OO At You- All s House 
 
 He hesitated puzzled for a reply suited to 
 her. 
 
 " A lie may be as much an element of mere 
 vegetable and animal progress as a truth. It 
 rises out of the condition of ignorance of the 
 deceived. The hare does not know that the 
 greyhound is dashing so rapidly at him till it 
 is too late, or that the cat s slow creep is motion 
 at all. What I mean is that the lie of nature is 
 as much the fault of ignorance as of cunning or 
 deceit. But when it comes to man, where there 
 is responsibility, any lie becomes a conscious 
 wrong, and conscious wrong is the only wrong." 
 
 "But but God doesn t tell us all of the 
 truth," she said. 
 
 " That is another question. What I was going 
 to say is that character cannot be built with lies. 
 Character is the result of the breaking down of 
 selfishness and the lie must go with " 
 
 "But I didn t feel that I was doing wrong 
 I " 
 
 " Oho ! So this is a personal matter, is it ? " 
 he said, glad to get the questioning tables 
 turned. 
 
 "I haven t been telling fibs," she blushed. 
 " But, Mr. Linton, ain t misfortunes sometimes 
 
At You- All s House 301 
 
 sent us that we may be happier when they are 
 past ? Miss Winnie used to tell us so. Don t 
 the Bible teach this somewhere ? Yes ? Then 
 couldn t I a body, I mean bring misfortune 
 no, unhappiness, I mean a little, that some 
 one else could be happier after a while?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because your human judgment is too frail. 
 Who are you that you should dare the devilish 
 business of tantalizing, or, if you fancy the 
 motive good, should try the pleasure of playing 
 God, as if it were a game at dolls ? " 
 
 She shrank under his severe words and kept 
 her face away from him awhile. 
 
 " Say," he continued, in a few minutes, " do 
 you know that you impress me as if you were 
 trying to justify a case of flirting ? " 
 
 She only looked at him and laughed a little 
 foolishly. The engineer was puzzled again. 
 Later on, as they were crossing the deeply cut, 
 narrow sheep-paths, she burst out : 
 
 " Mr. Linton, didn t God make man first ? " 
 as the Bible says. 
 
 " Yes and no, both," he replied. " Rationally 
 and spiritually there is no doubt that man is 
 
3O2 At You-All s House 
 
 the older. Science and revelation agree on 
 this. But physically and sexually he is not. 
 
 " What I mean," he answered to her wonder 
 ing look, " is that the mother is the older parent, 
 and " 
 
 "I ve always felt," she said wistfully, "that 
 if ever I had a husband I should like him to be 
 older and wiser than me, and and that this 
 had been founded in in the necessity of 
 things, that that it was a fate which I 
 could not resist, a sort of compulsion." 
 
 Linton felt a little frightened. Was this girl 
 almost proposing to him? Her face did not 
 look like that. It was innocent and had a far 
 away sort of interest in it. 
 
 " In all that shall make him your husband," 
 he said solemnly, "any man that is a man is 
 this." There was quite a pause. 
 
 "We feel sure that at first things only divided," 
 he began again, " brother just separated from 
 brother, or rather, I should say, sister separated 
 from sister. They began to bud from each 
 other, and later there was one form from which 
 perhaps all the others budded and that was 
 the mother. Lastly there was the father the 
 great step out of self. But all this was long 
 
At Yon- All s House 303 
 
 before man s time. Man, however, since the 
 dawn of the human, has developed faster than 
 woman. His wars with his fellows, his struggles 
 with beasts, more rapidly provoked his mental 
 exercise and growth. He may have stood, for 
 a short time, spiritually alone with God while 
 woman beat upon the farther gate of Eden ; but 
 when once admitted she peeped out first through 
 the bars into the great Beyond, and into the 
 greater depths of spirituality is peeping yet. 
 Each of the two great resurrections were first 
 announced to woman." 
 
 He saw a new light flash into her face a 
 something that he could almost worship, and 
 he listened for its message. 
 
 "Then God did create things once without 
 a father?" she said quickly, with a hidden face. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You won t think me immodest, Mr. Linton?" 
 She turned her face full up to him now. " I do 
 so much want to know. Who else am I to ask ? 
 I don t think any one can tell less it s you." 
 
 She hesitated a moment. 
 
 "You told us how Nature went back some 
 times and did things in the old way, didn t you, 
 as in the grasses ? " 
 
304 At You- All s House 
 
 " Yes, she does that suddenly sometimes yet 
 goes backward almost in a leap. It is called 
 reversion to " 
 
 "Then if God creates that wayj^ sometimes, 
 it s it s not such an awful miracle that we 
 should not be able to believe it, is it, that He 
 could have created Jesus without an earthly 
 father; is it, Mr. Linton ? . . . Is it?" 
 
 The expectancy in her face was something 
 reverent to the engineer. 
 
 " No," he said solemnly. " Tell me why you 
 wanted to know this, little girl." And tenderly 
 he reached out and put a hand upon her hair, 
 as if she were a child. 
 
 " Because," she said, " my father says he 
 always stumbles at this miracle as almost 
 something beyond God." 
 
 " And so have I often often often al 
 ways un until now," he said, with a moist 
 ure in his eyes and a dryness in his voice. 
 
 She flashed a happy look at him for an in 
 stant, and ran through the wood-pile gate into 
 the kitchen. 
 
 And while he had felt that he was soaring so 
 far above her, a little child had led him by the 
 hand! 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 " It was autumn, and incessant 
 Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, 
 And, like living coals the apples 
 Burned among the withering leaves." 
 
 LONGFELLOW. 
 
 " Ah ! what a warning to a thoughtless man, could any spot of 
 earth render back an echo of the sad steps by which it hath 
 been trod." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 "The body is the first proselyte the soul makes." THOREAU. 
 
 LATE September, browning from the recent 
 summer drought and the early autumn frosts 
 sere in the fields with ripened corn, but bright 
 along the lanes with white-faced asters and 
 the nodding golden-rod the orchards glorious 
 in the red splendor of the jenneting and Ben 
 Davis apple. 
 
 Here and there the shocks of maize narrowed 
 the perspective of the quarter sections, and the 
 sharp sword-like stubbles stuck up as if this bit 
 of earth were on the defensive against further 
 molestation. 
 
 Shan thought, as he heaped the cut stalks of 
 x - 305 
 
306 At You-Airs House 
 
 corn into shocks, that a piece of ground seemed 
 much larger when gauged by a corn-knife than 
 when measured by a riding-plough or even a 
 walking-cultivator. And then he thought of 
 that other gauging yet with the shucking- 
 peg the slow halting at shock and shock. 
 Then the later vista came of gathering the feed 
 in from the frozen earth with the heavy jolting 
 swell of the wagon-box as it rose and fell, like a 
 surf boat, over the billows of dirt which the 
 "diamond" plough had heaped up. He could 
 almost hear the lowing cattle and see the strewn 
 fodder over the snowy feed-lot. 
 
 He had cut his twenty shocks this cool invig 
 orating morning " sixteen hills square," and 
 stood holding yet, as a wrestler holds his rival 
 upon his thigh, a great bundle of stalks. He 
 stopped to listen. 
 
 " Do you hear that, Pont ? The quails are 
 walking, sure as you live, old boy ; goin to thuh 
 river-bottom. We must get a few of em as 
 they pass." 
 
 He set up the last load against the shock, 
 twisted the tips of two stalks together, and tied 
 them around the top of the great, standing 
 sheaf. Then he stooped, and with his corn- 
 
At You-AIVs House 307 
 
 knife split, at a stroke, a stray watermelon that 
 had grown by accident among the pumpkins in 
 the corn. Frigid with the last night s frost, it 
 was as refreshing in the midday sun as an iced 
 drink. 
 
 He started early on his hunt that afternoon, 
 wiping the long silken gossamers from the 
 fence stakes as he climbed from farm to farm. 
 He was led on by flock after flock getting up 
 and flying further on as he sought the stragglers 
 of the last one here and there. He had not 
 bagged many birds ; the thick brush and high- 
 standing corn, along with his small practice yet 
 this season, caused him to miss much. 
 
 Almost before he realized it, he found himself 
 near the Simpson home, and his poor shooting 
 reminded him of his implied promise to Linton, 
 that he would show him how he could miss 
 quails in the woods. Shan had heard that the 
 engineer was going away soon, now that the 
 railroad work was nearly done. 
 
 There was something in the rejuvenescent 
 warmth of the sunny afternoon which so fre 
 quently follows a frosty night that made a little 
 spring again of the half-day. The robin and 
 the redbird had broken anew into sudden song, 
 
308 At You-AWs House 
 
 and the bluebird sat silent on the fences and the 
 dead trees, and had ceased his pessimistic call so 
 prevalent in the morning. All this warmed 
 again the boy s heart into love love almost 
 without an object he thought; just the young 
 heart hungering after that great ideal heart 
 which we all in youth feel is floating somewhere, 
 waiting for our own. Almost before he awoke 
 from his love-dream, Dolly stood before him, 
 answering his front-door knock. 
 
 " Is is Mr. Linton in ? " he asked. 
 
 Somehow he conceived of him as always in. 
 He could not understand how he could be any 
 where else. 
 
 " No," said Dolly, " he s out at the cut, busy, 
 I think. Won t you come in ? " 
 
 " No, thank you. Just wanted to see him er 
 minit. Thought maybe he might want ter take 
 er little hunt. I ll go by and see him." 
 
 " Henry s in the east field," she said. 
 
 Henry and he had sometimes met out and 
 hunted together. 
 
 " I ll not bother him this evening. I only had 
 er sort of engagement with Mr. Linton." 
 
 Lord ! how pretty she was, he thought, as she 
 pleaded these little things to detain him. 
 
At You-AWs House 309 
 
 "You don t come to see Henry any more. 
 You seem to be very much taken with Mr. Lin- 
 ton of late." 
 
 " No more n some other folks, I reckon," he 
 said, almost savagely. 
 
 The girl started and blanched. 
 
 "When did you hear from Miss Winnie? "she 
 said, almost with his own savageness. 
 
 " I haven t heard at all. Have you heard ? " 
 
 " Yes, she wrote to me but about you, mostly." 
 
 His face lighted at this. Hers did not, but 
 he was looking toward the east field now, not 
 knowing how to get away gracefully. 
 
 " Henry is not at home much these days ex 
 cept in working hours," he said, merely to be 
 saying something. 
 
 " No, he s rather social. Don t stay at home 
 all the time." 
 
 She reached a little for the swinging door and 
 laid her pretty face against its edge, till he 
 could see only one-half of it, almost smiling 
 mischievously. He looked at it a moment as 
 though he were trying to divine what the eye 
 and dimple behind the shutter were doing. 
 
 " Good-by," he said. 
 
 " Good-by." 
 
3IO At You- All s House 
 
 And as she took her face away, there was a 
 white line beside her nose, and beyond that the 
 blood had dammed itself up into a great, un 
 conscious blush. 
 
 My ! my ! how his heart recalled the thrill 
 that he felt that night when he had held her in 
 his arms a minute! 
 
 But his head, remembering the June meeting 
 and the white stripe now down her face, reached 
 down and wagged his tongue. 
 
 " Two of her, too, I reckon," he muttered, as 
 he stepped over the backyard fence. 
 
 He did not know of Linton s praise of his 
 manly courtesy, and that his smooth words had 
 piled all the grouse at her feet as the gift of 
 " the best wing-shot I ever saw, and the man 
 liest fellow." 
 
 He did not go by for Linton. His heart had 
 hardened toward him as it had again softened 
 toward the girl. A flock of quails flushed 
 before him in the bare lot, for it was that sea 
 son when quails were anywhere and they 
 flew far up on the ridge. Dolly, looking aftet 
 him, saw him climbing with a hunter s eager 
 stride. 
 
At You- All s House 311 
 
 As he left the woods late that afternoon and 
 came near home, he scared up, just at dark, 
 another flock of quails at a spot where they had 
 evidently intended to spend the night. They 
 flew in every direction, for he had almost 
 stepped upon them. It was no use to seek 
 them, for it was now too dark to shoot. 
 
 Just then he missed an old glove, which the 
 briers had pulled from the pocket of his work 
 ing-jacket. He would need it to-morrow, cutting 
 corn. So he went back a little way on his own 
 trail, called Pont in, put on the remaining glove, 
 and stretched both hands down to the dog and 
 said, " Lost." The dog gazed at him a moment, 
 at the bare hand, and darted off. Shan walked 
 a little further back, but soon met Pont with the 
 missing glove proud of doing over again a 
 trick he began in his puppyhood. 
 
 As he started home again Shan was surprised 
 to scare a second time the two parent birds 
 from the same spot, where they had returned 
 and given the signal to their young to reas 
 semble, since the danger was now gone, as they 
 thought. They flew over into a field, fall 
 ploughed for wheat. The boy stood a moment. 
 In answer to their parent s whistled " whoo-ee 
 
312 At You- All s House 
 
 whoo-ee," the young, but grown-up, children 
 were running in, crying to each other now in a 
 high treble, like the parental piping. 
 
 The old birds were now in a predicament 
 that was pitiable, even to a hunter s ear. They 
 had summoned their young to an assembling- 
 place that was again terribly dangerous. They 
 could hear the children s answering obedient 
 call, and yet if they, the parents, cried again, 
 again the enemy would know the new place 
 of meeting. 
 
 Shan wondered how they would solve the 
 problem. He stood still and whispered to the 
 dog to " down ! " At his feet the little quails 
 chirped and twittered in the gloom, and the dog, 
 with quivering chops, pointed this way and that, 
 as he crouched. Over in that ploughed field 
 there suddenly began to sound the queerest, 
 weirdest, most ventriloquial little wails and twit 
 ters the boy had ever heard ; and the children s 
 " whoo-ee* "-cry ceased at once when they heard 
 it. Shan coughed, and all was silence every 
 where. Shortly, from over in the ploughed 
 field there came one just one slow, deep 
 "whee-oo whoo" the last syllable low-pitched 
 and descending and then there was a sup- 
 
At You- All s House 313 
 
 pressed rustle at his feet, as if a snake were 
 gliding softly over the dead leaves ; and for a 
 minute or so all was silence save the jarring 
 of the dog s chops and the valvular snuffle of his 
 excited nostrils. A little later over among the 
 clods he heard plainly many happy " cheaps" 
 and chatters the rejoicings of a reunited 
 family. 
 
 As Shan walked on home he felt strongly the 
 pathos of this little incident, under the influence 
 of his softening toward Dolly again and of Lin- 
 ton s pathetic appeal for the grouse, which he 
 had not forgotten. He put his hand upon his 
 game-sack, and, as he felt the dead forms 
 therein, he wondered at the many homes made 
 unhappy by his afternoon s sport, for he had 
 flushed many flocks. He recalled sadly how 
 he had taken a bird here, and one or two 
 there, from different families. 
 
 He felt now that he had violated the sanctity 
 of the affections ; for this brotherly and parental 
 love among the birds was something to be ad 
 mired in human hearts nay, almost revered. 
 Here he had been beginning to hate Linton for 
 coming into his circle, and thwarting his plans 
 and hopes, but the engineer s conduct was 
 
314 At You- AW s House 
 
 blameless and unintentional, and he was to 
 some extent the victim of opportunity ; but he 
 himself had hunted up and persecuted these 
 things that loved and dared for love. And for 
 the moment he felt that his remorse was virtue. 
 
 Just then, in the dusk, a screech-owl hurled 
 itself across a bit of sky above him, and from 
 his hip his hands shot it. He did not know 
 what it was when he fired. It was the mere 
 mechanical impulse of habit. He did not feel 
 so much compunction about the owl, because 
 of his recent experience with the species, but 
 his conscience smote him, that in such a mood 
 of heart and head, his hands should have be 
 haved so badly. 
 
 He felt and found his left barrel cocked yet, 
 and the thought came that, while he was pitying 
 those quails, if one of them had flashed between 
 him and the twilight in the west, he would have 
 slain it. His virtue, after all, was but a necessity. 
 
 " Opportunity not only makes ther thief," he 
 mused, "it makes the rest of us it and 
 practice. And what if a feller s practice is on 
 the wrong side. Before he knows it, Bang ! 
 and the wrong is done." 
 
 He walked slowly on awhile. " Uh feller 
 
At You-AWs House 315 
 
 can t control his opportunities, but he can his 
 practice. Why, he just orter go around aimin 
 at everything good till he shoots at a good 
 thing, so ter speak, as I did at ther owl, before 
 ther devil s got time to hinder him. Why, er 
 hypocrite might do good then before he could 
 help himself make er snapshot Godward ! 
 Guess he often does." 
 
 He met an aged spinstress of the region. He 
 bowed low in his mellow mood and took off his 
 hat gallantly, and his heart glowed at the pleas 
 ant smile in return. It had never occurred to 
 him that such a face could look so kindly. 
 
 "That s about all there is in politeness, I 
 reckon. Well, that s enough. Er feller sees a 
 skirt or feather, and lifts his hat and bows as if 
 he s worshipping and some hungry heart beneath 
 a homely face is happy, cause his hand and 
 spine were trained well early. But God deliver 
 us from practisin in the wrong way and er 
 opportunity. All that saved some of them 
 quails wuz the darkness. 
 
 " I reckon," he said, as later he let Pont 
 through the lot-gate, " God keeps many of us 
 good because He never gives us ther chance 
 er bein our meanest." 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 " When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after 
 all" PUBLILIUS SVRUS. 
 
 " When the fight begins with himself, the man is worth some 
 thing." BROWNING. 
 
 " Sometimes I feel so cheap that I could write a poem about 
 it, but straightway I cannot for I am no longer mean." THOREAU. 
 
 LINTON had been " breaking " the sorrel filly 
 to the buggy. She went well, but at times was 
 a little hard-mouthed and made her old dashes 
 for favorite turnings, especially if these led 
 toward her old home. One afternoon, early 
 after dinner, he drove over to Mr. McBride s to 
 see Shan and thank him for his coming by for 
 him a few days previous. 
 
 "I m sorry that I couldn t see you miss a 
 little," he said jokingly. 
 
 But Shan was not responsive to the engineer s 
 mood. 
 
 " You couldn t go out again this afternoon ? " 
 the latter inquired. 
 
 " No," said Shan, " we are out of flour. I ve 
 got ter go ter town." 
 
 316 
 
At You- All s House 317 
 
 " I m sorry. I ve only a few more days here. 
 I shall not forget your kindness to me. But I 
 hope I shall see you again before I start." 
 
 Shan s heart smote him, not so much that he 
 could not go, but that he did not want to. 
 
 "Say," he said, "you take Pont along; he ll 
 find some birds fer you." 
 
 " Why, I don t think he will follow me," said 
 Linton. 
 
 " Wait till I git my gun. You take that and 
 he ll ride with you." 
 
 When he came back from the house and 
 handed up the gun to the engineer, holding the 
 champing filly in, Linton said : 
 
 "This is very kind of you, McBride. I 
 would not accept all these favors now, for I 
 would wait till another day when you could go, 
 but Dolly is ill and I d like to get a bird for 
 her." 
 
 Shan s heart fell and he turned away his face, 
 but Pont leaped into the buggy. 
 
 "Watch that filly," the boy said, because he 
 must say something. "She s got the devil in 
 her and is as uncertain as as er woman." 
 
 And Linton remembered again as he drove 
 along how much fierceness, almost viciousness, 
 
3i8 At Yon-Airs House 
 
 this big-hearted boy had put into that compari 
 son. He wondered if Miss Hudson had not 
 failed to write to Shan this week. He guessed 
 that that was the kind of flour he needed; he was 
 going to town, doubtless, hoping to get a letter. 
 Then he fancied Winnie Hudson, in her far 
 northern home, writing out her heart to this 
 Missouri stripling, while he, her old first love 
 madly worshipping her yet, was dawdling the 
 summer away teaching a sweet Missouri lass to 
 know a pistil from a stamen. Oh, there was a 
 terrible unfitness somewhere ! Would it ever 
 work out right ? 
 
 Sad in his mood, he put the filly up, and went 
 in and felt Dolly s pulse almost professionally. 
 He had that tender, bedside touch which makes 
 some persons ministering angels to the suffering. 
 Round and round the house Pont bounded, 
 whining, for fear the hunter would steal out 
 some back door and go off without him. 
 
 A little later he started. Some boys had fort 
 unately flushed some birds over on the crest 
 before he came out ; so now he knew where/ to 
 find some. 
 
 The walk, to him, was delightful. The air 
 was bracing, the woods were coloring rapidly, 
 
At You- All s House 319 
 
 and enough of haze stood on the hills and far 
 away swells to hint of Indian summer, that en 
 trancing season when the year, like a dying 
 saint, seems to catch upon its face the hue of 
 heaven. 
 
 Here as he walked the young meadow-larks 
 arose and flew, flirting their white tail feathers 
 jauntily to their fellows ; and to the great circle 
 that Pont felt he must take or die, some young 
 flickers rose from the ant-hills on the sward, and 
 displaying their white rump patches, flew into 
 some near-by oaks. Linton could hear them 
 rejoicing as if they thought they had escaped a 
 great danger. 
 
 At last Pont began a sort of uncertain sneak 
 upon a bunch of grass, stopped, wagged his tail, 
 and with a half laugh, almost, in his face, looked 
 back at Linton. He knew well enough that his 
 master would tolerate no points on rabbits, but 
 perhaps this kind-countenanced biped would. 
 He would test the metal of this hunter. 
 
 Linton, too, crept near, and the dog, encour 
 aged by this, came down to a rigid point. Peep 
 ing closer, the hunter saw the hare. It was a 
 thrilling thing to him, this silent battle of cun 
 ning against cunning. The dog had paused in 
 
32O At Von- All s House 
 
 the instinct of caution, and was crouched in the 
 expectancy of a spring. 
 
 The man had come " head on " to the hare, 
 with the wind toward the latter s nose, as the 
 creature nearly always sits. It was shivering in 
 nervous expectation. There was an occasional 
 humping of the body, just the merest, to feel 
 that the great hind legs were in trim ; and the 
 engineer could notice the opening and closing 
 of the harelipped slit beneath the nose as the 
 nostril-flaps were lifted to investigate him by 
 scent. There was occasionally the faintest wav 
 ing of an ear, set to listen backward and outward 
 toward the dog, and the conspicuous eyes seemed 
 closed sleepily to the merest slits. 
 
 How wonderfully his senses "boxed the com 
 pass," and how perfectly his fur blended with 
 the grass ! Nothing but a nose or an accident 
 could discover him. 
 
 Linton could not resist the idea that he could 
 catch him, but when his hand came down, it 
 was upon a warm bare place, and a white tail 
 was bobbing away out yonder over the sod. 
 
 "I don t wonder," he said to himself, "that 
 the girl felt that she might be justified by Nat 
 ure. The old dame is ahead of us yet in many 
 
At You- All s House 321 
 
 things. Here are these larks, flickers, and hares 
 signalling automatically to their fellows as they 
 flee, having left the motive of their altruism 
 long ago behind. We incline or uncover our 
 heads mechanically facts that once meant 
 reverence ; we pass the commonplaces of small- 
 talk glibly things that once meant interest; 
 and we grasp each other s hands thoughtlessly 
 an act that once meant help. But the shout 
 and the whistle of youth, the significant wave 
 of the hat and the bonnet, are gone. So much 
 of altruism, like the hare s here, is a vestige. 
 Mr. Wallace says he once led his family to the 
 burrow by this white banner, but now he early 
 deserts his young. 
 
 " But, listen ! Ah, Nature s better influences 
 are with us yet. Hear the quails. They are 
 gathered in now all but a straggler away 
 down there under the falling hazels. He pipes 
 a homesick cry and his fellows consciously an 
 swer him, though they risk their own safety. 
 At least, they don t know that they don t," he 
 added, smiling to himself at the prospect of his 
 poor shooting. 
 
 Looking up, he saw Pont on a dead stand, 
 and instantly his mood changed. Running to 
 
322 At You- All s House 
 
 him, he killed the flushing bird how, he 
 scarcely knew. 
 
 Almost before he realized it, another was up 
 and down ; and fired with his success, he fol 
 lowed them up. Pleased at his skill he per 
 secuted them, and though he missed many, 
 he bagged nearly half a dozen found another 
 flock and got some from that. 
 
 As he started home he climbed a flat-topped, 
 plank fence, and when he rested on it Pont 
 sprang up beside him and rested there, too, an 
 instant. 
 
 "Be still, Pont! As old dying Leather-stock 
 ing said, a hunter ought not to be ashamed of 
 his dog even if he climbs up to him in the 
 high places. I declare, old fellow, as I shot 
 and you retrieved, it must have seemed to a 
 looker-on that there was a pair of us. 
 
 " I came out here with the best of intentions, 
 so I thought wanted a bird for a sick friend, 
 and here I have killed a dozen, and found the old 
 demon of savagery in me as I enjoyed it. My 
 hands have led me where my head and heart 
 would not have gone alone my pleasure in 
 my growing skill has smothered out my con 
 science. A man should watch the cunning of 
 his hand." 
 
At You- All s House 323 
 
 They had started on, and Pont went again by 
 the way of the hare s form, as if its odor were 
 refreshing to him. 
 
 " Come in, Pont. Let the rabbit alone. He 
 may not know the motive of his every move 
 ment, but he s got some pretty good company 
 close around, I tell you. Come in, old boy, it 
 takes a keen nose to find birds and hares. 
 You ve done well ; and though you can smell a 
 fellow many feet underground, it takes a keener 
 sense still to find his motives. 
 
 " I wish you had it, Pont. I wish you could 
 smell into this heart of mine and tell me by 
 your point just what is hiding there. I don t 
 believe I m a hypocrite, but " and he slid a 
 hand over the dog s head. 
 
 As he went out he passed a thorny honey- 
 locust tree, in which a shrike had impaled his 
 surplus prey. He had thought that if the bird 
 were there on his return, he would shoot the 
 cruel monster. "Why does he kill more than 
 he needs ? " Now as he started homeward he 
 passed within easy gunshot of the butcher, sit 
 ting among his shambles, but he let him live. 
 Just then a quail in his game-sack began the 
 flutter of its death-agony not having been 
 
324 At You-All s House 
 
 shot dead. He took it out, beat its head across 
 his gun, and put its limp form back into the 
 sack. As he wiped the blood from the brown 
 barrels he glanced up again at the stern aspect 
 of the bird above him, and murmured, " Another 
 pair of us, I reckon," and walked reflectively on. 
 
 " I ve brought you a bird," he said to Dolly, 
 later, as he took in a quail which, in his field- 
 cooking experience, he had broiled with his own 
 hand. 
 
 " Did you kill it ? " she asked feverishly. 
 
 " Yes," he said rather proudly. 
 
 "Thank you. It was very kind." 
 
 But he thought, in some way, there was a 
 little tone of disappointment in her voice. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 " Sorrow and the scarlet leaf." PARSONS. 
 
 "Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sport; but I 
 trust it would be nobler game to shoot one s self." THOREAU. 
 
 "The body turning round the central soul makes a little 
 circle in the sand." LE GALLIENNE. 
 
 DAY by day Shan grew more morose. After 
 supper, when Linton took Pont and the gun 
 home, the boy was civil but merely civil. 
 
 " Didn t get any letter from Miss Hudson, I 
 guess," thought the engineer. 
 
 In a short while, Dolly was able to be up, 
 and daily, as the shadows of the ridge crossed 
 the swale and swept up the slope of the sheep- 
 lot, the sorrel filly hauled her and Linton out 
 upon the old ridge-road. 
 
 One afternoon, as Shan thought more and 
 more upon his fate, and was more morose than 
 ever, he took up his gun and whistled to his 
 dog. He went over much the same ground of 
 the other hunt, only he went further down ; 
 and, almost fearing to see the Simpson farm, 
 he kept the ridge between him and it, and 
 325 
 
326 At Yon-Airs Plouse 
 
 crossed the railroad beyond the deep cut, near 
 the bridge. 
 
 He had had poor luck, though his gun had 
 gone off here and there. 
 
 He was too nervous to snap-shoot well, and 
 too desperate to be deliberate. He felt, in 
 some way, that if there were not a crisis in his 
 affairs soon, he would make one. 
 
 At last, on the other side of the railroad, he 
 had wandered up the ridge to a point near the 
 highway, and looking out a little avenue in the 
 bushes, he saw, without being seen, Linton and 
 Dolly near by in the buggy, driving slowly out 
 for their evening ride. Her face was pale, and, 
 to him, appealingly beautiful in the trusting 
 weakness of body which it betokened; but it 
 was bright in the animation of some discussion 
 with the engineer. She lifted her slim finger 
 once and shook it, as a little child, up into his 
 face. Evidently there was an easy understand 
 ing between the two, and Shan ground his teeth, 
 since he expected next to see her strike his face 
 with her fan or kerchief, as is the manner of 
 many women much in love. 
 
 Fearing himself, he turned back into the 
 woods. 
 
At You- All s House 327 
 
 Just then Pont struck the cold trail of a flock 
 of birds. Round and round he went, "back 
 track fore-track," till he led off slowly and 
 meanderingly along near the road toward the 
 cut. Reaching this, the dog ran in rude circles 
 a few times, looked across the chasm and 
 whined. Evidently the birds had walked that 
 far and flown across. 
 
 The boy, baffled and discouraged, walked out 
 upon the edge of the great cut, and noted that 
 the wheel tracks of former vehicles upon the 
 highway were yet plain to the very edge of the 
 excavation, and so slight had been the rainfall 
 that the spade-marks of the laborers were still 
 sharp upon the slope. It was a fearful thing 
 to see this lofty roadway, so plain and fresh, with 
 that deep, dangerous pitfall in it yet, and the 
 dense wall of growing trees hedging it to the 
 last. He wished that he had an axe that he 
 might fell a tree across it. 
 
 There were the two branch trails of the wagon 
 road leading down to the Simpson farm upon 
 the east side of the ridge; and they had joined 
 ends at a " grade crossing" of the railroad, and 
 had formed the new highway. But these two 
 old extremities of the breach still stuck out at 
 
328 At You-AWs House 
 
 each other away up here, like the unfinished 
 false-work for an iron arch. 
 
 Shan stood for a moment on the edge, and, in 
 his mood, enjoyed the terror of an imaginary 
 plunge into this abyss upon a swift horse. God ! 
 how he would like to ride that racking demon of 
 a filly over this ; and he reached up and grasped 
 his hot forehead with his hand. 
 
 On the west the clank of hammers sounded, 
 clinching the last rivets of the bridge, and on 
 the east were the double strokes on the last 
 spikes driven beside the rails. 
 
 For a moment these sounds distracted him, 
 but the remembrance of those happy faces riding 
 up the hill came again, and he turned away and 
 took the shells of small-shot the number 8 s 
 out of his gun, and slipped into the chambers 
 some shells of goose-shot " double oughts " 
 a few of which he always carried in hopes of 
 larger game. With his hammers still at full 
 cock Jie started back! 
 
 Over on the other side, behind him, a little 
 quail lifted its thin appealing pipe, and a brother 
 answered ! 
 
 It was his hunter s habit the same which 
 
At You- All s House 329 
 
 had slain the owl that stopped the boy; and 
 then, by association, the thoughts of his last 
 experience with the gathering birds came to him 
 and softened him. Pont, passing him, thrust his 
 cold muzzle appealingly into his master s fever 
 ish palm. Shan turned, weak and trembling, 
 and walked back toward the cut, his one pur 
 pose gone ! 
 
 With another desperate resolve he hastened as 
 he neared the pitfall. But he stopped suddenly 
 upon its clayey, crumbling verge, and inching up, 
 he stuck out his toes beyond it, and rocking his 
 feet, played with his fate, as a cat might play with 
 a mouse. He turned this way and that upon his 
 heels until he was grinding the earth away so that 
 the loosened pebbles and little clods rolled down 
 the yellow slope, struck the shaly projections 
 of the black slate, many feet below, and bound 
 ing out beyond the precipitous walls of rock, 
 fell as far again, on further down, upon the solid 
 road-bed. 
 
 Suddenly the dog seemed to feel that his 
 master was trying to go over to where the birds 
 were calling, and he darted forward by the boy, 
 and pushed his fore feet far down the slope, 
 whining as he began to slide. Instantly Shan, 
 
33 At You- All s House 
 
 grabbing him by the tail, snatched him back, 
 just in time to save him. 
 
 Then the boy turned away, walked back a 
 little and off a few steps into the woods, and 
 dropped limply upon a log. Pont crept to him, 
 meek with what he thought had been rebuke, 
 and crouched and licked his hand, and turned 
 his brown eyes all full of love and adoration 
 up to the despairing human face that lay 
 between its hands. 
 
 " I m your God, Pont. I wonder if I ve got 
 any?" 
 
 And the dog looked down at something pat 
 tering on the leaves. 
 
 When Shan had glanced out upon Dolly and 
 Linton driving along, she was saying to her 
 companion that she knew Shan McBride was 
 there somewhere in the woods. She had heard 
 him shoot. 
 
 A hunter surely shows his character a little 
 by the manner in which he pulls his second 
 trigger almost as in his autograph he shows 
 his nervous peculiarities. Henry, Mildred, and 
 Dolly all claimed to know Shan s double-shot as 
 far as they could hear it, and the latter was 
 
At You-AH s House 331 
 
 sure that when near by, she knew the single 
 explosion of his twelve-bore Parker. 
 
 Linton was laughingly and skeptically ban 
 tering her about this and the squirrel episode, 
 and she was talking vivaciously back, when 
 Shan looked out at them from among the trees. 
 
 Further on they passed into the deeper woods, 
 where the branches met overhead and the un- 
 fenced shrubs and tree-trunks came up tamely 
 to the hubs of passing vehicles. Few such 
 shady roads, where one seems to drive along a 
 cool grotto into the very heart of nature, are 
 left now in North Missouri. 
 
 There is no driving that compares with this 
 especially when air is right and the com 
 panion is congenial to use a mild expression. 
 
 This was the last drive of these two congenial 
 companions. To-morrow he would go home, 
 and he was telling her how much her stimulat 
 ing mind had helped him, and expressed the 
 gratitude that every true teacher feels toward 
 the true pupil though Linton had never 
 taught a day in his life. 
 
 Her head was hung in sorrow. With her 
 nervous strength depleted by her sickness, and 
 the dark overhanging sombreness of the deep 
 
332 At Yo 21- All s House 
 
 woods impressing her, this parting talk with her 
 best friend seemed something awful ; and she 
 broke into a sob, whereupon Linton s conscience 
 smote with a new fear. Had he been indiscreet 
 in provoking Dolly s regard ? 
 
 Just then they heard it thunder behind the 
 wall of trees, and not being able to see out, they 
 thought it best to turn back. 
 
 The road was very narrow, and Dolly looked 
 up and smiled. 
 
 " Unh hunh," she said in her old teasing way, 
 just to get herself out of her mood. " How are 
 you going to turn around here, sir ? " She 
 brightened as a woman will at a man s possible 
 discomfiture. 
 
 He pulled the filly over to the right, backed 
 her, resisting and shaking her head, till the 
 buggy was out a little way into a slight notch 
 in the brush, then he pulled her over to the 
 left and started home, with a twinkling smile 
 of triumph at the girl. 
 
 But the sorrel did not like this way of turn 
 ing. She had always had a field to swing^ 
 around in, and this kind of thing had galled 
 her. She had not learned to back yet and did 
 not believe in it. Her religion was the religion 
 
At You- AW s House 333 
 
 of going. So she ground her bit between her 
 teeth as she trotted homeward in a sort of 
 prance. 
 
 The long vista of trees looked doubly sad 
 now to Dolly, and even Linton could not arouse 
 himself from the solemn spell. He was gazing 
 off on his side at the felted carpet of last year s 
 dead leaves, which, under the thick saplings, 
 held all vegetation down. Dolly was doing 
 much the same thing. Now and then a dead 
 red leaf fell whirling down into her lap. It was 
 the silence of their sorrow. 
 
 Suddenly the filly swerved a little, at the 
 sound of a squirrel s leap among the low boughs, 
 and a hub scraped a sapling, while an overhang 
 ing limb swept Dolly s hat from her head, pulled 
 her hair, and brushed noisily over the lowered 
 buggy-top. She cried out a little at the shock 
 and fright. 
 
 Her teeth set on the bit, the mad mare was 
 off in desperation with that old demoniacal 
 dash for home in her every muscle. Before 
 Linton could more than brace himself, she had 
 passed the branch road leading to the house, and 
 was running now toward the cut, along the old 
 track, with fearful speed. 
 
334 At You-All s House 
 
 There was no chance to jump. The man 
 rose and stretched himself against the lines, his 
 face terrible in his fear, his hair streaming, his 
 eyes starting. 
 
 The girl gave one awful scream and sat fasci 
 nated with fright as the clayey bank of the fear 
 ful cut flashed through the trees ahead of her. 
 
 She caught her breath to scream again as 
 she saw the great ochrish stripe of the opposite 
 wall broadening at her feet, and she shut her 
 eyes when 
 
 There was a loud explosion, a curling smoke 
 among the trees, and the mare was down, a mass 
 of quivering flesh between the shafts, while, one 
 on either side, flattened-like things shot out 
 of something, were Dolly and Linton, almost 
 within the open jaws of the chasm ! 
 
 The engineer lay a little while, he knew not 
 how long ; but only shocked, he awoke at a soft 
 moist touch which seemed a touch of love 
 upon his face, and looking up saw Pont stand 
 ing almost over him. He rose on his elbow, in 
 a dazed way, and tried to look around him. In a 
 flash it all came back. He tried to stagger to his 
 feet, but sank back again with numbness in his 
 legs. Hearing a slight noise on the other side, 
 
At You-AWs House 335 
 
 he crawled round the head of the dead mare, 
 and stopped, almost reverent at what he saw. 
 
 Over Dolly was bending Shan, with such a 
 face ! It awed Linton. She jerked a little and 
 was still then her body quivered. In an 
 instant the boy s ear was on her heart, and then, 
 with hope in his face, he arose, grabbed her hand 
 and began to rub it. She stretched herself a 
 little, her eyes opened, a faint smile shone a 
 moment and she was gone again. Linton 
 crept nearer to help restore her, but 
 
 She moved again, opened her eyes, smiled 
 happily, laughed hysterically a little gurgle, and 
 lifting a shaking hand to Shan s shoulder pulled 
 him slightly down to her, and with her finger 
 tips wiped the tear-drops from his cheek. 
 
 " Don t cry, you silly boy ! I ain t hurt ! " 
 
 Then, for a moment, it was darkness again to 
 Dolly, but high noon in one heart above her, 
 and the day dawning in another near. 
 
 They took the harness off the mare, dead with 
 Shan s snapshot of double noughts behind her 
 ear, and lifting Dolly into the buggy, they hauled 
 her home into the back-lot gate, up through 
 the sheep-lot to the wood-pile fence. 
 
336 At You-AlTs House 
 
 Here the engineer got rather suddenly lame 
 again, and limped the white lie that he would 
 not speak, that Shan alone might support the 
 slender form out of the buggy and into the 
 house. 
 
 Linton looked back over the ridge, and the 
 storm that threatened had gone around. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 " If two lives join there is oft a scar ; 
 They are one and one with a shadowy third." 
 
 BROWNING. 
 
 " That of our vices we can frame 
 A ladder, if we will but tread 
 Beneath our feet each deed of shame." 
 
 LONGFELLOW. 
 
 "The world caught dreaming with the look of heaven." 
 
 LE GALLIENNE. 
 
 " To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day." 
 
 DRYDEN. 
 
 As Shan started off, Linton asked him as a 
 special favor to haul him and his belongings into 
 town next day. 
 
 " I want to talk with you, McBride." 
 
 The boy was glad to go. 
 
 Next forenoon Linton spent packing. Just 
 after dinner he ran over to tell Mildred Watkins 
 good-by, and he told her of the affair of 
 yesterday. 
 
 " Oh, Shan came by last night. I always knew 
 it would come out right. Do you go by rail or 
 z 337 
 
338 At Yoii-AlVs House 
 
 boat ? If it was me I should like to go by boat 
 I ve heard Miss Hudson say the upper Missis 
 sippi is so beautiful." 
 
 " Upper Mississippi ! Why, woman, Natchez 
 is down the other way." 
 
 " But you go south by the way of ther north," 
 she said mischievously. 
 
 " Say, Mildred, how did you know ? " 
 
 " I saw a new, strange light in your face when 
 Dolly blushed, that picnic day, at Shan s sugar 
 and coffee proposition." 
 
 " Oh, Mildred, did you know that I was suffer- 
 ing ? " 
 
 "Yes, I saw you put a pretty burden down 
 one night." 
 
 " And take another up. Mildred, you could 
 have helped me. What a fool I was ! " 
 
 " Yes, I could. Rail or river ? " she said again, 
 banteringly, as she took the hand he offered. 
 
 " Rail. I d go by telegraph if I could. Good- 
 by!" 
 
 When he got back, Shan s wagon was waiting 
 for him. He went in where Dolly, still weak 
 from the shock, was lying on the lounge. 
 
 "Good-by, little girl!" 
 
 "Good-by, Mr. Linton. Oh, I do wish you 
 
At You- All s House 339 
 
 so well. Do you feel all right to-day? I saw 
 you limping awfully at the gate yesterday 
 evening." 
 
 " Say, that was a concession to your theory 
 the woodcock s strategy, you know. I wanted 
 some one else to help you in." 
 
 She blushed, but she could have hugged him, 
 and she looked it. 
 
 " I did know about the gun, didn t I ? " with 
 the old air of triumph. 
 
 " Yes. What if it had not been there ? " 
 
 For a moment they lived over those terrible 
 minutes, and they clasped each other s hands 
 in the bond of their suffering. It seemed to 
 draw them closer to each other. Her face 
 brightened first. 
 
 " You owe him two debts, Mr. Linton, and 
 and I, one." 
 
 " I m bankrupt, except in gratitude, but you are 
 rich in more, you Can t you pay him for us 
 both, Dolly?" 
 
 And he stooped and aimed a kiss at a bruise 
 upon her forehead, but she turned and stretched 
 herself and caught it upon her lips. 
 
 " I don t want any one to suf suf 
 fuf fuf fuffer any longer," she sobbed. 
 
340 At You-AWs House 
 
 11 Good-by," he said chokingly, his hand upon 
 her hair as she turned her face into the pillow. 
 
 But the pillow only seemed to tremble in 
 response. 
 
 He went softly out, and climbing into the 
 spring-seat by the side of Shan, who had not 
 come into the house, he glanced with a shudder 
 at the great gash in the ridge. Over it two 
 vultures were circling, and dipping, lower, 
 lower, lower, in alternating swoops ! 
 
 The ride to town was rather stiff. Linton 
 wanted to talk all the time about his debt to 
 Shan, but the boy did not care to recall it. 
 
 In some way Shan could not yet shake off his 
 fear of this splendid fellow. Then there were 
 other things. 
 
 He saw Linton express his instruments to 
 some point in the south, but when they went 
 down to the station, the engineer called rather 
 loudly for a ticket to a certain point in Minne 
 sota. They both laughed, and Shan blushed 
 scarlet, as Linton passed it to him to read. x 
 
 "We ve been a pair of fools, Shan, blind as 
 bats." 
 
 " One of us has been worse n that." 
 
 A long silence. 
 
At Yoti-Airs House 341 
 
 " Say, Mr. Linton, do you know I m awful 
 glad I saved you and and didn t lose yer 
 again 
 
 He had come near saying, "let yer stay 
 saved." 
 
 " Well, I have some reasons to rejoice 
 myself." 
 
 " There wuz times when I wasn t glad." 
 
 " I know it, old fellow. God knows I never 
 meant to pain you." 
 
 "Yes, yes, and and God knows some other 
 things. He knows best all round after all, I 
 guess." 
 
 They took a turn or two up and down the 
 platform, while the smoke of the coming train 
 (not on the C. and D.) showed over the tree tops 
 southward. 
 
 " Say, Linton, did that filly have a mission ? " 
 
 "Why, yes, I guess," and he shuddered. 
 " Pont too, / think, of course. He helped save 
 me once, you remember ? " 
 
 "Yes and and he saved me once, too 
 and some other people." 
 
 Linton looked a little puzzled. 
 
 " Shan, that was a splendid thing to do with 
 bird-shot. That s an elegant gun of yours." 
 
342 At You-Airs House 
 
 The boy blanched a moment, and trembled. 
 No compliment to his skill had ever cut like 
 that. 
 
 The train was whistling for the station. 
 
 " Say, tell Miss Winnie for me," he said 
 huskily, " that misplaced bad is good some 
 times; that that saving others even a dog 
 is salvation often ter yerself. Tell her that 
 / send you to her saved more than doubly 
 saved won t you ? that / send you to her with 
 my grateful wishes for your mutual happiness." 
 
 "God bless you, boy! Your message helps 
 me." 
 
 " Good-by ! " 
 
 " Good-by ! " 
 
 And in the same spot where he had left Miss 
 Winnie, this boy again looked into Linton s face 
 through tears, as the steaming engine swept by 
 and threw its warm breath upon their clasped 
 hands. 
 
 As he jolted home that late October after 
 noon, he took the prairie route, he knew not 
 why, for it was longer, unless it was that he 
 might see out better. The world was widening 
 to his view. 
 
At You-AWs House 343 
 
 Before him the sun was setting in a haze of 
 purpling, coppery clouds, out through the breaks 
 of which long streamers of yellow light stretched 
 across the southern sky. Behind him another 
 sun, less brilliant, but quite similar and evident, 
 seemed to lie beyond another purpling mist; 
 and it sent its streamers up westward, till like 
 interlocking fingers spread in friendly reach, 
 the two sets of sky-stripes, grasping at each 
 other, almost met. It was a scene not infre 
 quent upon our Missouri prairies this reach 
 across the heavens of the unreal for the real 
 the glory of one horizon reflected at the other 
 the day-death set back to life again at the 
 dawning place, in a flash. 
 
 The boy took it as a good omen, though he 
 knew not why, except that it seemed a kind of 
 good-will grip of the east and west around by 
 the way of the south, a sort of earth-shine 
 hurled back at heaven as though light were 
 defying gloom. Gradually it faded, and an au 
 tumn chill came on with the softened twilight. 
 
 As he glanced back later, to see if the mock 
 sun were gone, he saw a light that he had 
 never seen before, blazing like a new " star in 
 the east," away down the prairie stretch ! 
 
344 At Yon-All s House 
 
 The cool nights were rendering necessary little 
 fires in hearths and stoves, which blazed out 
 cosily the domestic comforts as he passed ; and 
 away across the prairies there were glimmerings 
 of lamps, interrupted by figures circling round 
 them, till their flashes spelt out " Home " all 
 over the broad, peaceful land. Lord ! he 
 would have one of these himself some day; 
 and a certain face should be the light of it. 
 
 But this this light away down there it 
 was none of these. Why, it was nearer now ! 
 
 In some way he thought of the date of the 
 month, and this was his birthday his twenty- 
 first. He had not thought of that before, and 
 he felt in it the thrill of another life. It was 
 not that he had been restrained with a hard 
 hand, for he had not ; but it was grand to feel 
 the freedom of advancing years and their 
 privileges. 
 
 As he approached the railroad near the Simp 
 son farm, where the surveying party had been 
 halted, there was a rumble, a sudden light shone 
 round about him, and the first regular train over, 
 the new road swept by him, on through the cut. 
 
 In the throb of all the new impulses that 
 came into him then, he felt almost like crying 
 
At You- AWs House 345 
 
 out to his own exulting soul, "What wilt thou 
 have me do ? " 
 
 Just then Henry Simpson galloped past him, 
 spoke a greeting, and was turning into the home 
 lane. 
 
 Shan shouted after him : 
 
 " Say, Henry." 
 
 " Yeh-uh." 
 
 "Tell Dolly that, after supper, I ll be over at 
 yort,-alVs house ! " 
 
 ******** 
 
 Late that night, as Shan, returning from the 
 Simpson s, neared his home, he saw Pont sit 
 ting on the low stiles beside the gate, barking 
 listlessly, yet half-wailingly, as if hope were dead 
 and life had no other object but a bark. The 
 pathos of the sound affected the boy ; he 
 thought of their last communion at the cut, 
 whereupon the remembrance of all that was 
 then within his heart swept an agony of re 
 morse into his conscience, as if his impulses 
 had been deeds. 
 
 As he glanced upward, whither the dog also 
 seemed to be looking, and gazed a moment at 
 the moon, haloed with a faint mysterious ring 
 and crowned with a nimbus burr, his gratitude 
 
346 At You- All s House 
 
 bared his heart and bowed his head to that 
 UPLIFTING, OBLIGATING SOMETHING which his 
 penitent, hoping spirit seemed to touch in the 
 Great Beyond, behind the stars. 
 
 When he reached the step, the old dog, silent 
 now and patient, was beating with his tail a 
 mild tattoo of welcome upon the hard planks, 
 and was lifting first one paw, then the other, 
 that he might, without rebuke, more surely put 
 out the proper one in a greeting hand-shake. 
 It was a trick which he had been taught to do, 
 and had done hundreds of times before ; and 
 to-night there came up, as ever, in subdued 
 whine, in look and reach, and moist murmur of 
 closing chops, the old, old, unanswered suppli 
 cation that he might be allowed once to lick 
 his master s face and yet stand approved in 
 his master s heart ! 
 
 The hand hesitated a moment as it grasped 
 the proffered paw ; then, " Yes, I m your God, 
 Pont," the human said again, and he stooped 
 and bent his cheek to the soft, warm, wor 
 shipping touch of the beast beneath him ; and 
 straightening up, he lifted his face an instant 
 to the Eternity above him, and walked slowly 
 into the house. 
 
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