ON NeVFOUND RIY6R ON NEWFOUND RIVER ON NEWFOUND RIVER BY THOMAS NELSON PAGE AUTHOR OF " IN OLE VIRGINIA," " Two LITTLE CONFEDERATES," ETC. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 1891 COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS. tty gear ANNE BRUCE PAGE M11974 ON NEWFOUND RIVER A STORY. CHAPTER I. NEWFOUND RIVER, or, as it is called by the denizens of that section of Virginia through which it glides, " Newfound," steals through two or three counties of Eastern Virginia in such a leisurely, unobtrusive fashion that it was not supposed by the early settlers to be different from the numerous " branches " which are found between the undulations, there considered hills, until it was discovered that it stretched for fifty miles in an almost direct line. It thereupon received its baptis mal name, which was, after a little time, abbreviated into " Newfound," by which it is, in the phrase of the law, still called and known. War and its effects have wrought a sor rowful change in the old county, as in other 1 2 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. sections of the State. It lay right in the track of the armies, and the civilization which existed there in the old days before the war has perished. But at the time when the events herein related occurred, the country on New found was one of the typical " neighborhoods " of the State. The Landons and others of their kind ruled unquestioned in an untitled mano rial system; their poor neighbors stood in a peculiar relation to them, part friend, part retainer, the line between independence and vassalage being impalpable; and peace and plenty reigned over a smiling land. The value of a plantation in those old times was largely determined by the amount of "bottom-land" on it, the uplands being poor. The finest " bottom " on Newfound was that at Landon Hall, which was, indeed, the only one distinguished by the more dignified name of "low ground." Year in and year out it brought corn so " rank " that, in the pictur esque language of the negroes, "you just could follow the balk," by which was meant that one could just detect or follow with the eye the spaces between the rows. Perhaps it was this perennial abundance ON NEWFOUND 1UVER. 6 of the harvest which gave the Landons their prestige in the county quite as much as the fact that they held their lands under the same grant which had been issued by Charles II. to the first of the name who had crossed the seas. Father and son, for six generations they had held it, and it was their boast that in all this period they had lost but one field. This was the tract of a hundred acres or so of arable land, and a little more of marsh, beyond Newfound, which the fourth Landon had in very exuberance of recklessness lost one night at cards to a neighbor. That side of Newfound was swampy, at best, from the backwater of the mill-pond, and the tract was chiefly valuable because on it stood the quaint old gray frame-dwelling with its dormer win dows and hipped roof, which the first Landon had built and named " Landon Hill," and in which they had lived until they erected the imposing mansion on the eminence on the other side of the stream, which they called "Landon Hall." His friend had badgered him to bet the land, and he had done so and lost. He offered to redeem at twice its value ; but the proposal was rejected. The friends be- 4 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. came bitter enemies, and a duel had in time followed in which Landon had shot his adver sary. This had not, however, remedied the mat ter. It was found that the owner had the night before, with malignant prevision, executed a will leaving the land entailed as far as pos sible, and with conditions which effectually prevented it again passing into the hands of a Landon for several generations. From this time the old place was Naboth s vineyard to the Landons. The house, peaked and gray with age, stood on a rise across the low grounds and the river immediately in front of the lofty hill on which rose the Lan dons commanding mansion. It was so situ ated that it could not be shut out of the landscape. It was the one place in sight which did not belong to the Landons, and it had been the cradle of the race : of a race which prided itself on being an older branch than that which remained in England, and on having brought its landholding instincts across the water. No wonder the Landons chafed and fretted over its loss. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 5 The son of the one who threw away the old home retrieved the impaired fortunes of the family by marrying an heiress, and the Landons became wealthier than ever. Large offers were made to the owner of the place to repurchase it ; but the will of the duellist effectually prevented its recovery, and Colonel Landon compensated himself and his wife by adding to the estate on the other side, and rebuilding Landon Hall in magnificent style. The limitation did not expire for two genera tions, and he left in his will a provision incul cating the necessity of securing the lost tract as soon as it was possible to do so. The colonel s son, who was Major Landon, on coming into the estate endeavored faithfully to fulfil his father s behest, and watched eagerly for the death of the old woman with whose life the limitations on the lost land expired. She lived in the far south, and the place for several years was unoccupied and neglected, the fences going down, the old, quaint, frame-house falling into disrepair, and the fields growing up in sassafras and pine. As soon as Major Landon heard of her death he despatched an agent to the south to secure from the heir the option to pur- G ON NEWFOUND RIVER. chase ; but to his mortification and chagrin he found that the property had the day be fore he applied for it been sold to an old navy surgeon, one Dr. Browne. He immedi ately wrote and offered the purchaser a hand some advance on his price ; but it was declined on the ground that the doctor had bought it for a home and would not sell it at any figure whatsoever. This almost threw the major into a fever. Shortly afterwards the old doctor arrived with his family, which consisted of a little granddaughter and two old negroes, one of whom was his body-servant, and the other the child s mammy. Major Landon, after the custom of the country, called formally on the new neighbor; but he was not received, and it soon became known that the newcomer was not at home to visitors and wished to be let alone. This was as open a violation of the custom on New found as if the new settler had waylaid his neighbor from behind a fence, and from that time the aversion of the major, and the sus picion of the rest of the community fell upon him. CHAPTER II. THEY were an austere people, the Landons, reaping where they had not sown, and gather ing where they had not strewn. Tall, straight, keen-eyed, aquiline they grew, father and son, for generation after generation, as dis tinct from their plain neighbors on New found as a Lombardy poplar is from the com mon pine. The major was the austerest of the race. He reigned supreme on Newfound. It was an accepted fact on Newfound that every man, woman, and child gave way to the major except Bruce. Bruce was his only son, and the prospective heir to the Landon Hall plantation, with its four thousand acres and its five hundred negroes. As Bruce sprang up tall and slim, yet straight and active, the resemblance between him and the major, " the Landon favor," was marked. There was in both the same finely cut face and clean figure, the same deep-set clear gray eyes under strong brows, the 7 8 O^V NEWFOUND ItlVER. slightly aquiline nose, the wide mouth full of fine teeth, and the firm chin and jaw. The same spirit discovered itself in each: an in domitable resolution to carry out his will which showed itself in every line of the face and every fibre of the frame. The major was stern and imperative ; the boy was resolute and defiant. One of the servants expressed it once by the saying, " De chip don fly fur from de stump." "lie has the Landon bull-dog in him," said the major, proudly; "he will not give up unless you kill him." Once when Bruce was being thrashed for going fishing in dis obedience to orders, he faced the major, and looking him straight in the eyes said dog gedly, " You d better give me two now ; for I m going again." To the credit of the major, it must be said, that this exhibition of the unconquerable will of the family for that time got the boy off. By the time Bruce was thirteen he was as well known on Newfound as his father. At least twice he had been fished out of the mill- pond unconscious (once when he was pulled out by Dick Runaway, and once when he had got Dick out), besides any number of ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 9 times when he had fallen in and been got out before he reached that state. Sam Mills considered him a prodigy. He always spoke of his qualities as if he had been a young puppy. It was more than rumored that Bruce had once or twice met some of the runaway negroes who skulked around in the woods, and had hunted with them. No one but Bruce could have stood this charge. Bruce did not deny it. He simply claimed that Dick Runaway, as he was called, was his father s negro, and no one had anything to do with it. There was only one person with whom the boy was not on good terms. A young man had come to the neighborhood a year or two before, drifted from no one knew where, though a strong accent and familiarity with the purlieus of a great city led to grave sus picion of his origin, which was subsequently verified. He was too lazy to engage in reg ular work, and lived generally by his wits. His only ostensible occupation was hunting. This he extended occasionally to hunting and capturing such runaway negroes as might from time to time, for fancied or real grievances, leave their homes and take to the woods. 10 CLV NEWFOUND RIVER. Once or twice he appeared to have large amounts of money, which he said had. been left him, and which he had gone off to get. He soon ran through them, however. At other times he used to hang around the Cross roads " groggery," drinking whenever he could get whiskey. Pie was a heavy, muscu lar fellow, with black hair, a red skin, and small eyes ; a man of whom one would at once say the moral fibres were as coarse as a door mat. He was much hated by the negroes, and generally detested by the whites ; but he possessed a certain shrewdness united to a deal of effrontery which made him feared if not popular with the lowest members of the lowest class. He called himself " Mr. Green," but a long, deep purple mark on the side of his heavy jaw and neck, which might have been a scar, but which he averred was a birth mark, had given him the name of "Poke- berry." Between this man and Bruce there was the deepest hatred, which neither pre tended to conceal. Pokeberry was a born bully, and Bruce brooked no insolence. On one occasion when they met at Jones s Cross roads, and Pokeberry made some allusion to the story of his meeting the runaway negroes ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 11 and hunting with them, the boy retorted by calling him a "nigger-hunter." A fierce quarrel ensued, and Bruce had got much ap plause by suddenly attacking the bully and felling him to the ground with a stick which lay conveniently at hand. From this time they were sworn enemies. As much credit, however, as Bruce gained from these things, his reputation 011 New found was based less on them than on his well-known resistance to his father. He was the only person who dared stand out against the major. CHAPTER III. "!T S becus they s so high sperited," a thin dim-looking fellow of about forty dressed in an old suit, of which the coat was much too large for him, and the trousers much too small, explained drawlingly one afternoon to a con templative group around him at Jones s Cross roads, where the family traits of the Landons were being discussed. The speaker was Sam Mills. Sam was a great friend of the major s, and was an authority. " It s becus they s got so much of the devil in em," declared Squire Johnson, burning at the recollection of the scarcely veiled con tempt and the sharp-edged speeches with which the major usually deigned to recog nize his existence. " Ef I ever git him befo me, I m gwine to show him who s th majistrit in this district/" The squire was a large, burly man, with a smooth-shaven red face, and a heavy bunch 12 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 13 of grizzled whisker growing under his large chin. "Ef you does," said one, u you won be majistrit long." He looked over towards Mills for corroboration. The squire was turning to him when Mills intercepted him. "You ain never gwine to git him befo you," he drawled; "he ain got no use for law." The justice turned his quid of tobacco over and over in his mouth, chewing with a force which attested the violence of his feelings. Mills understood the act as if it had been articulate speech. " I heard him say so myself," he asserted, as if he had been contradicted. " What d he say ? " a chewing animal on the fence, in brown jeans and an old straw hat, found the energy to inquire. " He said he d a had old Dr. Browne up for turning his cows into his corn long ago if th had a had a jestice with any sense ; but he ruther let the cows eat his corn than make a fool of heself going befo a fool to try an git jestice." There was a gleam of satisfaction in the 14 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. small gray eyes of the speaker as he glanced over at the man in the chair, and saw how his shafts had penetrated his armor of self- conceit. The individual referred to, whose mouth was too full to admit of an attempt to speak, chewed rancorously. " He ain never forgive me for goin against him when he run for the Convention," he said, wiping his stained mouth on the palm of his hand. "He ain never forgive you for whippin that nigger Dick of his whar you all caught out without a pass that night," said Mills, with the air of a man who knows the secret things. " He said you an Pokeberry was the cusses of the county an stirred up mo trouble with the niggers n anything else." The magistrate swore under his breath. Being classed with Pokeberry was more than he could stand. " Ef I foun a nigger roamin aroun -with out a pass, was I to change the law becus twas one of his niggers ? " he said, in a com plaining tone. " He said twant the law ; that the nigger give a good excuse : he told you he was gwine for th doctor, and he was on a mule ; and if ON NEWFOUND EIVE&. 15 you d a had any sense you would a knowed it. He said he don t allow nobody to touch one o his niggers ; and he said the law talks about discretion of them whar am got as much discretion as his horse." " Them Landons is the hard feelin est folks in Ameriky. They s wuss n Injuns ! " de clared the dispenser of justice. " Don know bout that," drawled Mills ; " but he cert ny s got some n against you. I don think you ll git his endorsement next time." This sally provoked a chuckle of amuse ment from the speaker and his auditors, which was so distasteful to the justice that he rose. " I don ixpect him and I don want him," he declared, looking defiantly at his torment ors. " Ef I ever git him befo me, I ll show him who s the jestice in this district" He stalked over to where his lean horse stood tied to the fence, and prepared to leave. " He says the squa r don know as much law as his horse," said Mills, in a confidential undertone. " He says if he had known what a fool he was, he d a took the place himself." 1C ON NEWFOUND RIVER. " Fd like to see the major befo him onct," hazarded his companion. " You d see the ha r fly," was Mills s reply. " They is a curisome folks," he added medi tatively, presently, after a pause during which the pompous old magistrate had mounted his dejected beast and ridden away. " Ain a kinder-hearteder man in th worl than the ole major if you take him right; but you can t shove him, not a inch, not a inch," he repeated. A grunt of acquiescence from his compan ions reached him. They were ruminant animals, these quiet dwellers on Newfound; they chewed their straws, or tobacco, as placidly as oxen. Mills evidently did not expect any other answer, for he proceeded. " When my ole ooman was took down that time, he corned over thar mo reg lar n th doctor, and he knowed what to do for her jes as good as him." The slanting sun fell through the trees on the little group in their coarse, rusty, old coats, and lit up their rugged faces. " But if you stir im up, umph ! " (The in articulate grunt expressed fully the speaker s O.V NEWFOUND RIVER. 17 views.) What you heard me tell the ole squa r thar jes now is the truth. He ain never gwine forgive him. He ain th for- givin kind." "Ain but two folks in th worl he don like, the squa r an ole Dr. Browne." "Three, you ought to say," interrupted one of his friends, a short, wiry, sunburned, red-headed fellow named Hall, with a turned- up nose and a big mouth. " An Pokeberry. Thar he comes now." The members of the group turned them selves lazily and glanced up the sandy road, down which, at a slouching pace, came a stout, heavy-set man of about thirty, with a gun thrown across his arm, and two thin, undersized, spotted hounds walking at his heel. The contemplation of Pokeberry as he approached appeared to engross all the fac ulties of the little group against the fence, and they chewed their tobacco in silence until he had turned in at the open door of the little store and disappeared from their view. "Yes, an Pokeberry," said Mills, taking up the thread just where he had left off. 18 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. "He put him an the squa r together. He said he won t have him trackin his uiggers with houn s." " Houn s cain t hurt nobody," drawled one of the group. " Houn s is the feardest dogs in the worl ." 44 Taint that," explained Mills, with superi ority. " He says, tis the feelin ." " I wonder the major ain never had the squa r turned out ? " said a man on the fence. 44 Nor ; he wouldn put himself out enough to do that," explained Mills. 44 He knows the squa r is po , and he won t take no step to take the office away from him." 44 1 b lieve he d rather keep the squa r in than to turn him out," suggested Hall, who had some sense of humor. 44 If he was to los him, he wouldn have nobody to abuse." 44 He could abuse that tother ole man crost the river yonder where s got his land," said Mills, with a sideways nod of his head to the smoky ridge away across the wooded bottom to the right, through which Newfound crept. 44 That s so," assented Hall, cordially. 44 Wonder what makes the major d spise him so? Becus he wouldn sell him the ole place?" ON NEWFOUND UIVER. 19 "Nor; becus he s so curious; becus he won t have nothin tall to do with nobody, and jes keeps himself shet up with them two ole niggers an that little gal o his. They say, to be sure, he s mighty good to her leastways, so the niggers says, and they knows everything." " The major says he ain never been able to lay eyes on him since he come heah an settle down on that place right crost the river from him, where his fathers was born and raised, and where by rights b longest to him anyhow. He says he shet himself up like a snake in his hole, and he wisht he d shet his cows up too." There was a gleam of amusement at the witticism about the cows which was appreci ated by the plain farmer folk. " Ain never seen him in that time," re peated one or two. " Does look like some thing was wrong." This was enough in a neighborhood where every incident of every man s life was as well known and as freely canvassed by his neigh bors as if it had happened to themselves. It was inexplicable except on the theory of either madness or crime, and, like more enlightened people, the dwellers on Newfound chose the 20 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. less charitable theory. As, however, it was not the custom under that civilization for a man to interfere with any one else unless some personal act was committed which pecul iarly affected him, the old recluse with his two attendants was left unmolested in his pine- surrounded hermitage; and his wealthy neigh bor contented himself with abusing him, and with forbidding Bruce ever to extend his fish ing or hunting excursions to the other side of the little river, or even to go on his land. CHAPTER IV. WHETHER it was that the best fishing-holes were on Dr. Browne s side of the river, and that the duck especially loved the " collard-" filled cove which the backwater from the major s mill-pond made on that bank, or whether it was Brace s natural and inevitable propensity to do that which was forbidden, the boy very shortly disobeyed his father s injunction. He came home one day with a fine string of fish which he boldly announced that he and Dick had caught on Dr. Browne s bank. The major was immediately in a passion. He declared that Bruce had ruined Dick and made him a runaway, and wound up by demanding that the boy should with his own hands immediately take the fish straight back to their owner. Bruce refused. There was a pitched battle, in which the major gave Bruce, as usual, a tremendous 21 22 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. thrashing ; but received still the same dogged reply lie had made him from the first, " I won t do it if you kill me." Then he ordered him to bed. The boy went, though it was early in the afternoon. Then his mother, who always acted the peacemaker between the two, went up stairs to him. Bruce was lying in bed, looking longingly out of the window. His eyes had an angry gleam in them, and his mouth was drawn. It is not far, however, from a mother s heart to her son s, and in a few moments the boy was weeping in his mother s arms. Her tenderness brought the submis sion which the major s discipline had failed to secure. Sitting on the bed by the boy, holding his hand in both of hers, she told him a story. It was that long years before when his father was a boy just his age, he had had an elder brother named Bruce. He was wilful and disobedient; defied all authority. One day his father, angered at his insubordina tion, in a passion said to him that he was a disgrace to the name he bore. " Then I will never disgrace it any more," he said ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 23 angrily ; " for I never will bear it again," and with that he had rushed out of the house and disappeared. The next day his hat was found floating on the pond. The dam was cut, the river was dragged, and every effort was made to recover the body, but in vain. It killed his mother, and embittered his father s whole after-life. He never got over it. Mrs. Landon broke down, weeping at the thought of the sad, bereft mother. She leaned over and drew her son to her bosom, and kissed him agai* and again. " O Bruce, Bruce ! my son ! my son ! " she sobbed. In a little while Bruce came down and said he would take the fish back. He, however, announced boldly that he was going because his mother wished him to go, and thought that he ought not to catch fish on another s land without permission, and not because he had been whipped. The boy s feelings as, after he crossed the river, he rode his colt along the old road through the pines were so strange and so complex that he remembered them years afterwards. It was the first time he had ever 24 O.V NEWFOUND RIVER. been on the place, and he had never seen any one who had been there except Dick Run away. The shame he felt as he rode along at hav ing to confess that he had caught the fish on another s property without permission gave way to a feeling of curiosity as he came in sight of the dense hedge of cedars which sur rounded the yard as with a wall. The pines grew up almost to the hedge. He passed be tween two old leaning gate-posts from one of which hung the broken fragment of an ancient gate, and found himself in a yard !! grown up in weeds and bushes. Just before him was a long, low, weather-stained frame-dwell ing with a hipped roof, queer wings, and quaint dormer windows jutting out. Bruce rode up, and stopped in front of the door. As no one appeared, he called, " Hello ! " From an old and ruinous out-building came back, " Hello ! " but there was no one in sight. " Hello ! " he called again, and again came the short reply, " Hello !" which he found was nothing but an echo from the old build ing at the side. After waiting a moment, he decided that ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 25 he could not have been seen, and rode on and tied his horse to an overhanging limb, and went up to the door. He knocked. The stillness was so intense that the sound of his rapping made him jump. He was about to leave and go around to the other side of the house, when a door opened at the far end of the passage, and an elderly negro woman, thin and black, and with her head tied up in a handkerchief, appeared and came slowly towards him. " Good evening," said Bruce, and then, without waiting for her to speak, began rapidly : "Here is a string of fish I caught down yonder on your side of the pond, and my mother sent me to bring them back." He paused to swallow, for his throat was dry. " Who you say sent em ? " asked the woman, looking at them curiously. " My mother, my father Major Landon. I caught them." The woman s face brightened. " Thankee, little marster," she said. The boy saw that she considered them a present. The temptation was strong to leave her under the impression ; for he had told her 26 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. once why he had brought them back; but Bruce was as honest as day. A Landon would not lie. He thought of that saying of Brian de Bois Guilbert, " Many a law and many a commandment have I broken ; but my word never," and he gulped out, " They are not a present I caught them on this side, on your side, and my mother -and my father sent them back: my father is Major Landon." " What s all this ? " inquired a stern voice. Bruce turned in amazement at the sound of the voice. An old gentleman, tall and gray, stood behind him. " What was that you were saying ? " he asked sharply, his keen dark eyes gleaming from beneath his shaggy white eyebrows. The stern voice and the flash of the deep eyes seemed so familiar to the boy, that he insensibly assumed a hostile attitude. But he went through his formula honestly. "I caught some fish on your side of the river, and I have brought them back, as my mother and father thought I ought not to have done it without permission." The sturdy honesty of the boy and the evident struggle he underwent attracted the ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 27 old man, and a kindly light stole into his eyes. " So you caught them without permission, did you, and they made you bring them back?" A curious look shone even through his long beard. " I brought them because my mother wanted me to do it," said Bruce doggedly. " Oh, because your mother wanted it ? " he muttered. He had averted his face slightly, but now he turned to the boy, and laying his hand on his head, he said gently, " You have my permission to fish or hunt, or do anything you wish anywhere on my property; but, my son, remember this, Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. " He suddenly turned and walked into the house. When Bruce came home that night he avowed himself the friend of his new ac quaintance, and from that time he was his steadfast champion. He gave notice of the permission he had received, and boldly announced his purpose to avail himself of it. There was another 28 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. battle which might be said to have been drawn, as neither side was conquered, and each stood at the end just where he stood at the beginning of the contest. It was not very long afterwards that he carried out his purpose, and crossing the pond went over to the forbidden bank. The ducks he was after, however, were not found, having been probably frightened off by the cows that were grazing down in the marsh, and whose bells he heard in the distance. He followed a narrow path which led along the edge of a little inlet filled with tasselled alder bushes. Up at its further point inland a fine spring bubbled from beneath a flat rock above which towered a poplar, straight and clean of limb for fifty feet. Another path came down the hill to the spring from the woods above. The water from the spring for some distance ran down rippling over a bed of clean sand just beside the path and then turned away into the thickets of alders. Bruce, laying his gun down, stooped and drank at the spring, and then flung himself on the ground at the foot of the poplar, and fixing his head comfortably, gazed up at the blue summer sky. He heard the faint clatter ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 29 of the cow-bells below him, softened by the distance to a low, mellow, and irregular tinkle. He heard the water purling over some pebbles close by; he heard a wood- wren s bright note in a tree above ; he heard the faint call of his father s ploughmen across the pond to their teams, and then he felt a hand or something 011 his face, and then some one kissed him ; and, opening his eyes, he found himself looking up into the wide- open, and somewhat startled big brown eyes of a little girl who was kneeling beside him, bending over him with a look of mingled wonderment and pleasure. Her cheeks were as pink as roses, and her curling hair was hanging in tangles on either side of her throat, leaving her oval face like a picture set in a frame of loosely twisted dull red gold. As Bruce opened his eyes, she drew back with a start. " Oh, it s come true ! " she exclaimed with a little gasp, throwing herself back and sitting on her feet, and clasping her small hands tightly in her excitement. Her great dark eyes were dancing in her head. The child was so pretty that the boy lay 30 ON NEWFOUND EIVER. still with his eyes on her, fearing that a motion might frighten her. "What has come true ?" he asked presently. "What grandpapa and mammy read me out of the fairy hook," she said, throwing her hair hack out of her way. "What was that?" " Why, about the prince who came down out of the sky ; (but he was asleep,) and the princess that kissed him, and waked him up, and made him love her, and they lived hap pily together all their lives." " Oh ! about that ! " said Bruce, definitely. " Aren t you the prince ? " she asked sweetly, moved by a faint suspicion at something in his voice. " You are the princess, at any rate," said the boy, gallantly, raising himself on his elbow and looking at her with admiration. "No, I m not the princess; I m nothing but a little girl ; but when I found you here I knew you were the prince, and I thought it might do even if I were not the princess, and I do want somebody to play with so bad." The little face was quite pitiful. " Grandpapa an mammy an Unc Folium an Laz rus and George Washington do all ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 31 they can ; but I want a prince. Aren t you a prince, sure enough? " She asked the ques tion with a sudden return of faith, struck, perhaps, by the smile which lit up the hand some face of her companion. " Well, they don t have many princes around here," said Bruce, evasively, and then a sudden thought struck him. "I will play that I am your prince." " Oh, will you? And you will love me and play with me ? " She leant forward, and in her earnestness put one little plump, brown hand on the back of Bruce s. It thrilled him, boy as he was, with a sudden sense of ownership and pro tection. " Yes," he nodded. "And you will be good to Laz rus and George Washington ? " Bruce nodded affirmatively; then in quired, "Who are they?" " Why, they are my cats, and they both have kittens." "Have they?" exclaimed Bruce, in un feigned surprise at this astonishing informa tion. 32 ON NEWFOUND RIVEE. She nodded : Umh umh !" "What is your name, Prince?" she asked presently. " Bruce." " Oh, I know : - Bruce, prince of Scotland. Grandpapa told me about him. I m so glad ! I was afraid maybe you were an Eastern prince." " No," said Bruce ; " I am not one of those. Do you think I look like one ? " "Well, you must be mighty rich;" she gazed at his watch-chain with a look of ap praisement; "but they wear chewnics, and are black like Unc Folium." "Who is Unc Folium?" asked Bruce. "Unc Folium? don t you know him? He s my mammy s husband, and my grand papa s body-servant." " Who is your grandpapa? " " Grandpapa ! Oh, he don t know grand papa," she laughed in glee. "Well, how funny! why, he s my grandpapa, my grand father, you know," she explained. " What s his name ? " "What s his name? Why, he hasn t got any name he s just grandpapa, so. Oh, ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 33 yes ; mammy and Unc Folium call him Mas ter. I reckon that must be his name." "No, that isn t a name at all," urged Bruce ; " they call him that because they are slaves." "They aren t slaves! My mammy ain t any slave ! " exclaimed the child. " Oh, ain t she ? Where do you live ? " he asked. " Up there, at home." She pointed up the path. The cow-bells sounded more distinctly, as the cows passed up the hill. She rose and brushed the leaves and small sticks from her dress. "It s getting late; I must go. I hear Teensey going home; mammy s got her. Will you come with me ? " " No, I must go home," said Bruce. " Well, will you come again to-morrow ? " " Yes ; good evening." "Good evening, Prince Bruce." She put up her mouth to be kissed, and the boy stooped and kissed her gently. " Run away, and I will wait until you are at the top of the hill," he said coaxingly. She started, and then stopped. 34 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. "Will you play with me?" she asked, turning and looking back at him. " Yes ; run along." " And you will come back to-morrow ? " " Yes ; to-morrow afternoon." u Yes; when mammy comes after the cows ? " " Yes." "Good by." And she ran up the hill, her little bare legs shining, and her loose hair streaming behind her. CHAPTER V. WHEN Bruce reached home that evening he gave so graphic a description of his meet ing with the little girl that his father was too much interested to upbraid him with his disobedience, and his mother was outspoken in her sympathy. " What was her name ? " she asked. "I didn t think to ask her," Bruce replied. "What, sir! Kiss a girl, and not know who she is ? " said his father. "She was mighty pretty," responded the boy, nai vely. " Oh, she was ? The name then doesn t make so much difference," laughed his father. " Oh, yes ! her name is Margaret Reid," said Bruce. " Sam Mills told me so once." The next afternoon Bruce was true to his appointment; but when he arrived at the spring, his little friend was not there. After waiting what, in his boyish impatience, ap- 35 36 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. peared to him an age, he started up the path which led up the hill. Just before reaching the top, however, he heard a coaxing voice calling, " Kitty, Kitty, Kitty ! Come along, Kitty ! " and through the woods at a little dis tance appeared his little girl. Her head was bare, and she was carrying something in her large poke bonnet, the edges of which she was with much pains keeping together, whilst behind her, with tails erect, walked two cats, mewing and looking up at her. At sight of Bruce she smiled and quickened her pace. " Oh, have you come ? " she called in a pleased tone. " T was late because George Washington wouldn t come, and King Alfred got under the porch and spit at me. Get back there ! " This was to a kitten whose lit tle black head was protruding from the bon net. " Which is George Washington ? " asked Bruce. " That s she, with the white nose. And King Alfred is her kitten. Here they are." And she suddenly let go one side of the cal ico bonnet and poured out on the ground a half-dozen kittens, on which the two cats ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 37 immediately pounced with maternal solici tude. "King Alfred will never go to heaven," she said suddenly, with that serious manner which characterized her utterances. "Why, cats don t go to heaven," said Bruce. " Oh, they do ! " " Where did you get that idea ? " " Why, grandpapa says that everything that loves goes to heaven; that Heaven is love." This was a little too abstruse for the boy ; but he saw that it would grieve her to dis turb her belief, so he asked, " What makes you think that King Alfred won t go to heaven ? " " Because he doesn t mind what is said to him." "Does that keep people from going to heaven ? " " Yes ; grandpapa says that it s the aw -full est thing there is." In his heart Bruce trusted that that partic ular sin did not shut the gates of mercy beyond hope ; but he said nothing. " Who is your mamma? " he asked presently. 38 O.V XEWFOUND RIVER. " She is in heaven," said the child, simply. " Who is your papa?" " Papa is there too. He was a soldier." There was a pause in which she was mani festly reflecting. " Ban quo is there too," she said presently. " Who is he ? " inquired Bruce, with a dim recollection of having read of some one of that name, he could not recall where. " He s grandpapa s old dog." "It seems to be a very large place," he suggested. " It is," she said with quiet serenity. By this time they had reached the spring, and the kittens were allowed a second release from their confinement in the bonnet. "I told grandpapa about you," she said presently. " You did ? What did he say ? " "He said that you were not a prince at all." "Did he say that?" " Yes ; and he said that I was a princess in his eyes." She seated herself on the ground beside Bruce, and leaned her elbow on his knee with perfect confidingness. "And he said that you had better not come ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 39 up there up home." She waved her little hand up towards the top of the hill. "Ah!" " Yes ; because your father would not like it." A guilty feeling came over the boy, and he felt a longing to leave her under the belief in his innocence ; but he said resolutely, " He wouldn t." "Why wouldn t he like it?" she asked, with the calm persistence of childhood. "I don t know; he doesn t like a good many things I do." "Oh, doesn t he? I do." The unaffected praise of the child was very grateful to the boy, and a smile of pleasure came over his handsome face. "I wish we could live together, don t you?" she said, suddenly turning and nestling up against him with perfect trustfulness. The conndingness of the act was so sweet that the boy stooped over and kissed her gently. " I wish we could," he said. " We can get married, and I ll give you my kitties, and you can have my mammy and grandpapa." 40 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. "All right," said Bruce, laughing at her seriousness. " All right. I told grandpapa last night we were going to be married." " You did ? What did he say ? " " At first he laughed, and then he took me up on his knee and told me I did not know what I was talking about. And he said that when I grew up you would spise me, and that I would hate you ; and then he got up and walked about and looked so angry I had to climb up on the chair and kiss him, and tell him I would not marry anybody but him." She had grown eloquent as she narrated the interview, and the boy thought she looked like a fairy, as she stood there instinctively imitating her grandfather s angry gestures. When she had ended she sank down beside him again. "You won t spise me, will you?" she asked pleadingly. " No, that I won t," said Bruce, sincerely. " And you will play with me, won t you ? because I did wake you up, didn t I ? " " Yes. And you won t ever hate me ? " " No ; and here s my ring ; it s mine ; and you must keep it just like we were married, ON NEWFOUND RIVEE. 41 and there s mammy calling me, and I must go. Come here, kitties ! " She made a rush upon the kittens, which were drowsily taking their suppers, and gath ering them up tossed them irrto her bonnet without much reference to their comfort, and with a hasty " Good by," ran up the hill, hugging her precious burden to her bosom, and followed by the faithful Lazarus and George Washington mewing faintly. That evening Bruce s recital was not re ceived by his father with the same com placency which he had exhibited the evening before. " I thought I told you not to go over there again ? " said he, sternly. " You did not tell me so yesterday," as serted the boy. " Did not tell you so yesterday ? Do you think, sir, that I have nothing else to do but to spend my time telling you the same thing?" He paused for a moment s reflection ; then he said, "Bruce, I want you to promise me not to go over there again." The boy was silent ; but the dogged look settled on his face. His father noted it. 42 ON NEWFOUND RIVER, " I should think you d be ashamed to asso ciate with such people. They are low, and worthless, and unfit associates for a gentle man," he said sneeringly. An angry light came into the boy s eyes. " They are not," he said. " Don t contradict me, sir. They may be very fit associates for you if you have a taste for such companions ; but they are nothing but common people. That little girl is the daughter of a low, common man like Poke- berry Green, or his associates." He selected his shaft carefully. " She is not," contradicted the boy, defi antly. "She is as much a lady as as any one, and I will go there. And I will marry her when I grow up, and am a man." He stood before his father, with flashing eyes and fearless mien. " Go to your room, sir," said the major. Bruce left the library and went up stairs to his room ; but his determination was un changed. The next day he learned that he was to be sent off to school at once, and that afternoon he was driven away in the carriage on his way to a school in another State. CHAPTER VI. BRUCE LANDON remained from home the best part of eight years. The major de termined to give him not only the best edu cation, but the advantages of travel as well. Bruce, having applied himself, easily won enough honors to satisfy even his father s ambition. The Landons had been noted of old for their distinction at William and Mary, and Bruce s successes awakened all his father s pride. On the few occasions when Bruce was home from college the rela tions between them were, therefore, com pletely altered. During this period things on Newfound remained in their wonted condition. Eight years made little difference in that quiet life. If affairs moved at all, they moved so slowly that a longer arc than eight years was needed to detect it. The pines had grown closer about Landon Hill, where the recluse doctor still kept himself shut up. The major still 43 44 ON NEWFOUND RIVEIt. gazed at the old place across the low grounds, and still cherished a negative kind of ani mosity against his neighbor, declaiming with much rancor of expression against the iniquity of his remaining secluded and allowing his cows to run on other people. Mills and Hall and other dwellers on the river still absorbed and reflected mildly the major s opinions. Squire Johnson, unmolested, still held his little office, contenting himself with an as sertion of independence behind the major s back. And Newfound still crept lazily be tween its low wood or corn covered banks, moving, like the people who lived upon it, slow, calm, sleepy. What passed within the pine-girt hermi tage where Dr. Browne lived with his grand daughter and two old domestics no one outside knew. The little negro man with his quaint old faded and patched uniform, his worn beaver, and his exaggerated manner, occasionally paid a visit to the mill for a small bag of meal or flour, or to the post-office to inquire for a letter, and except for these they held no more communication with the outer world than if they had been imprisoned in a dungeon. ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 45 Suspicion, fostered by Pokeberry Green, centred upon the old recluse with rather more defmiteness than before. It seemed to have a little more foundation. Pokeberry still followed his ungracious calling of trying to recapture runaway negroes. He had re ceived another legacy which he had quickly squandered. Once or twice Pokeberry had started a report that Dr. Browne gave aid and comfort to the runaways; but it had died out. Had any one else but this man circulated such a report it would have been sufficient to have occasioned an investigation, if not to have driven the old man from the county. Had there not been the overwhelming cir cumstances of the doctor s suspicious con duct, Pokeberry s character was so bad that nothing he said could have had any weight. As it was, the two together were just sufficient to keep gossip alive about the owner of the old Landon place, and to make him and everything connected with him a matter of keen interest. The eight years wrought more changes in the doctor s granddaughter than in almost any one else on Newfound. The little girl that had found the prince under the poplar 46 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. tree beside the spring grew up among the pines ; her companions : her grandfather, her mammy, the progeny of Lazarus and George Washington, the roses and hollyhocks in the ancient tangled garden, and the friends she found in the few old volumes in the bookcase. They were a curious lot: Evelina, Clarissa Harlow, Sir Charles Grandison, Pamela, Sir Roger de Coverley, Lord Orville, Lizzie Bennet, Mr. Darcy, Emma Woodhouse, and a few others. Her grandfather was a great sufferer from an old wound, a confirmed invalid, and was often confined to his room and chair. An invalid is next to a child in developing a woman s instincts. She read to him, tended him, and petted him as if he were a baby. Once or twice she ventured, when a young girl, to accompany her mammy to the Cross roads store to make a few little purchases ; but some tipsy men, one of whom had a long, ugly, purple scar on his sunburned cheek and neck, stared so at the straight, handsome, half-grown girl with her large brown eyes under her coarse hat, that she never again went beyond the pines in which was her world. Twice she met the same man with ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 47 the purple scar, down on the pond. He came upon her each time as she was fishing. He tried to talk to her ; but she hastily left the pond and ran home. The last time, he said something to her which she felt was imperti nence, and she ever afterwards avoided that part of the pond. Pokeberry, at the grocery, had drunkenly declared his devotion, and duly declared there, subsequently, his repulse. One day she found up stairs in the dark little garret several old trunks covered with dust and cobwebs. She opened one of them and found it filled with old dresses, and odds and ends of woman s wear, all curious, but rich. They must have been nearly a hundred years old. Some were lawns, filmy and faded as if with age, others stiff brocades with long waists and padded petticoats and stomachers. They made her eyes open. Whom could they have belonged to ? She took them out tenderly and turned them over and over with caressing hands ; measured them by her own straight, supple figure, and in her fancy pictured them as belonging to the fine ladies she knew in the brown calf-backed books down stairs. She 48 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. ventured to ask her grandfather about them. He seemed startled and desired her not to go into the trunks. Her grandfather s wish was law to her, and she went no more for a long time. One day, however, she asked him about her mother. He became too agitated to tell her a great deal, except that she had died when she, Margaret, was born. Marga ret knew that her father had been killed in a battle. And this was all she knew of her father or mother except that when she asked her mammy what she was like she always told her, " Like you, honey ; jes your size an* all, only prettier." So she passed her time growing up, with her large eyes, and her sunny hair, tending her grandfather as he sat in his old armchair; living with her friends in the age-browned books ; fishing in the pond ; wandering in the pines; going after the cows; tending, be cause they were pretty, her hollyhocks, sweet- peas, and roses in the garden, as wild, yet as much at home among them, as the sparrows and thrushes which built in the lilacs. If, as she ran wild about the place, or fol lowed the paths through the pines in her search for the vagrant cows, she sometimes ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 49 glanced over across the placid pond and the alder thickets to the green low-grounds and fields of Landon Hall, and may have felt a vague surmise as to the boy whom she had once found asleep under the tree by the spring, it was simply an act of memory, and the feeling was too vague to take definite shape. CHAPTER VII. THE eight years spent by Bruce Landon at school and college had, for Bruce, borne fruit in many ways. In none, however, more than in the change in the relationship between himself and his father. As soon as they were separated, and the friction of wills was want ing, they became great friends and mutual admirers. Bruce could not but admire the stern character of the old gentleman, who was inflexible in purpose, indomitable in will, and transparently honest in every word and act, however intolerant he might be and constitu tionally incapable of yielding his opinion once formed on any subject. On the other hand, the high character of the boy, and the brilliant stand he had taken from the first, and which he maintained until he graduated with distin guished honors, had caused his father very early in his course to forgive his boyish way wardness, and to overlook the infractions of collegiate discipline which were reported to 60 ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 51 him from time to time with more or less fre quency. It was only when Bruce was at home for the holidays, and the two were thrown together, that their wills came in con flict. It was soon apparent to both that the safest way to preserve the delightful relations between them was to remain separated. Thus it was, that Bruce was at home very little dur ing the eight years of his school and college life, and usually spent his vacations in travel. When, therefore, he finally came home, he was almost a stranger. As the carriage rolled up to the front door, and Bruce sprang out on the sanded walk, his father and mother both came running out to meet him, and both folded him in their arms. It was the only time Major Landon ever so far unbent. The straight boy had become a tall, straight man, muscular and clean as a race-horse. As, after the custom of the Landons, on the day he was twenty-one he stood for meas urement on the threshold of the wide wain scoted picture-hung hall, with his back to the old massive mahogany front door, where the Landons for generations, on attaining their majority, had been measured for height and 52 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. breadth, there had hardly been one in all the list who had equalled him. "Why, Bruce, you are the champion of three generations ! " exclaimed his mother, looking up at his mark with pride. " No ; there have been several as tall ; and one, the old general, my grandfather, was taller and broader," corrected his father, ex amining the door closely for the almost oblit erated marks. The young man cast his eyes across the hall at the painting of his ancestor dressed in the military dress of Marlborough s time. u He was a pretty good-looking fellow," he said, with lazy admiration. " So is his descendant," smiled his mother. " We got our height and our tempers both from him, didn t we ? " " No, sir ; we may have got our stature from him, but we got our tempers from the devil," replied the major. "No one but the devil can ever be held responsible for such devilish tempers." " I quite agree with you," said the young man, complacently. " I am pleased to receive the intelligence," replied the old gentleman, with a twinkle. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 53 44 1 believe it is the first time my views have ever received such a compliment." " Oh, no ! we both agree in admiration of this lady, sir," said Bruce, putting his arm around his mother. Mrs. Landon smiled up at him, and the major looked pleased at the delicate turn. " There s where you get your beauty," said Mrs. Landon, pointing across the hall to a full-length portrait of a lady, quite young, in rich brocade, with the long waist and satin petticoat of two generations before. The clear-cut face, with its dark .eyes, was, indeed, beautiful, and would have been per fect, but for the haughtiness which shone even through the painter s art. "I know where I got my beauty," said Bruce, leaning down and kissing his mother. Mrs. Landon blushed like a girl. " But my grandmother was a beauty, wasn t she?" He went over and examined the portrait critically. 44 It s good enough for a Kneller," he said. 44 And that patrician face and old costume make her look like a young countess. One might fancy her turning her back on the prince himself." 54 ON NEWFOUND ElVER. " She would have done it," said his father. " She turned her back on the President. He had not stood up to your grandfather. It lost my father the senatorship. But he always said it was cheap for the price." Bruce found himself in a new life, almost wholly unknown to him. He had suddenly become the companion of the man who had always been to him the incarnation of pride and reserve. His father seemed not able to let him get out of his sight. If he went only to the stables, he invited him to come with him. He told him of all his affairs ; consulted him ; deferred to him. At the same time, he was treated like a distinguished guest. It was very new and very pleasant to him. The best wine was brought from the cellar : Ma deira imported by his grandfather. The major insisted on his riding his saddle-horse, and he himself rode another. A day or two after his arrival Bruce was lounging in an easy-chair in the hall, looking over some fishing-tackle which he had ex humed. His mother was near by engaged in some little household occupation; but with her smiling eyes mainly directed towards her son. The major came in fuming. His neigh bor s cows were in his corn. ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 55 " In there again ! " he said to his wife. " I believe he thinks my cornfield belongs to him. I have stood it too long already. His cows have been living on me for twenty years, and now I am tired of it." He addressed Bruce. " My dear, I would not be hasty," said Mrs. Landon, soothingly. " Hasty ! you don t call it c hasty, when I have been fattening his cattle for twenty years, do you ? They graze in my cornfield as if it were nothing but his marsh pasture, sir. But, at least, I ve got them for a while. I ve made Bailiff have them driven up into my barnyard, and there they shall stay till he sends for them." He was speaking to Bruce. The reference to the pasture or the marsh, or something brought up to Bruce the mem ory of a summer evening long since ; of cow bells tinkling faintly, and of drowsy sounds broken by a child s voice. How long ago it all appeared ! "What ever became bf your queer old neighbor across the river, whose fish I used to catch, in defiance of the Decalogue ? " he asked, looking up ; " is he dead ? " 56 O^V NEWFOUND RIVER. "Dead? No; that sort don t die. That is he, now," said his father. "It is a pity I did not let you catch his fish ; I d have got at least that much compensation, for he has been pasturing his old cows on my corn ever since. He drives them over, sir, regu larly." " Oh ! now, my dear, you know he doesn t do that," urged Mrs. Landon. "Then they fly," said the major, dryly. He pulled off his gloves. " What a stir there used to be about it ! " said Bruce, deep in reflection. "I wonder you stand it, sir," he added, coming to the present issue. " I d break it up. I d sue him. I d do it at once." " I m going to break it up. I ll take your advice. I will give orders to my overseer to have a warrant served at once," said his father. " You are right. It will be tried next Saturday, at Jones s Crossroads. You d better go up ; I ll give you the case. You can flesh your maiden sword. I d like to have you there." "No, I don t know that I will take the case," said the young man, languidly ; " but I may. I ll go up and see the fun, anyhow. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 57 I should have supposed that old man was dead. He appeared very feeble the only time that I ever saw him." " No, sir. Dead? Not he. He has com promised with the devil to live here always, and do his work for him, I believe." "What an old wretch he must be!" said Bruce, sympathetically. "What ever became of his little granddaughter, whose head was so full of nonsense ? Has she ever married? " " No ; my neighbor, Sam Mills, tells me that she is there still. I have never seen her. She is cracked, too. Sam Mills says she has a great reputation, or would have, except that she keeps herself shut up at home all the time. An excellent man, Mills," he explained to his son. "I have a very high esteem of him. An honest, upright man. The fact is, sir, there never was a braver, better people than our population, around through this country. That fellow has all the instincts of a gentleman. He is a philoso pher. A remarkable man, sir. We agree on every subject. Now, if we had him as magis trate ! " " She was a beautiful child. By Jove ! sir, I believe I owe her my education," laughed 58 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. Bruce, ignoring the tribute to his neighbor, Mills. "I remember I swore to marry her, or something, and you shipped me off next day, post haste." " I have never seen her ; but she is very unpopular in the neighborhood ; at least, so Mills tells me. It seems that she thinks her self better than these other common people around and will have nothing to do with them." " Oh, it is simply prejudice," said Mrs. Landon. " The old man is very infirm, and she stays at home to take care of him that s all. People are so uncharitable." " Why, she has not had to stay at home for six or eight years on that account, I reckon ; and I am not so well satisfied about his being infirm. I am sure as to his moral infirmity ; but his bodily health is good enough, and too good for his neighbors security. If he had been a gentleman, he d have let me have that old place back. I offered to let him name his own price. Why, I called on him once, sir, and he never even " u My dear," interrupted Mrs. Landon, "I thought you had forgiven him." u Forgiven him ! No ! I don t believe any ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 59 one forgives unless he forgets," sniffed the major. " Do they still keep themselves mewed up in their fortress as they used to do? " inquired Bruce, examining a line critically. " Yes, sir ; he has never been off the place since he came there, that I know of, except at night, and his daughter, or granddaughter whichever she is confines herself in the same way. They stay at home and send the cows around." " Well, it is nobody s business except their own," suggested Mrs. Landon. "Nobody s business ! " exclaimed the major, hotly. " Yes, it is, it s everybody s business when a man behaves in that extraordinary way; it s against the peace and dignity of the commonwealth! If it wasn t for that lying rascal, Pokeberry s saying so, I d be lieve that the reports about him are true, and that he is one of these Yankee abolitionists." " Why, my dear, they say he is just as kind and charitable as possible. When old Mrs. Mills was sick, he used to go over there every night and attend her, and he sent her medicine; and when Mr. Hackett had his house burnt " 60 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 44 That may all be a part of his scheme. It is a cheap price to pay for security, lie ought to have been investigated and run out long ago," asserted the major. "I thought she d have married before this," said Bruce, irrelevantly. "I wonder if his granddaughter is pretty?" he added, address ing the question generally. " They say she is quite a beauty," said his mother. 44 A beauty ! No. Who ever heard of one of that class of people having beauty?" sniffed the major. u They say that Pokeberry Green is courting her." Bruce laid his line down in his astonish ment. 44 That creature ! Why, he used to be a perfect young ruffian ! " 44 He is now," said his father; 44 a ruffian, a drunkard, and a thief. But he is in love with her, I understand, at least, there s some story about them." 44 Oh, pshaw ! " said Mrs. Landon. " I did hear that ; but it was contradicted. I heard that he fancied himself in love with her, and had even ventured to speak to her once on the road ; but she was so indignant that ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 61 he slunk away. I think some one came up." "That s the reason she was indignant, I reckon," said the major, dryly. Mrs. Landon, with a woman s instinct to defend her sex, repudiated the idea warmly. Bruce was so astonished at the idea of Pokeberry Green being the victim of the ten der passion, that he led the conversation off to him, and the major was soon engaged in telling what a turbulent element in the neigh borhood he had become. " He is the greatest scoundrel unhung," he declared in conclusion. "I am confident that he is a professional thief, and that he fools negroes into running away in order to get the reward for them by catching them. Some day he will be hung. If we had a magistrate worth a button, we d have been rid of him long ago. But what can you do with such a fool as old Johnson ? Bray him in a mortar, and he d still be a fool." CHAPTER VIII. THE major informed Bruce next day that he had acted on his advice and instituted the suit. He told Mrs. Landon in the strict confi dence of their chamber that Bruce was the wisest young man he ever knew. " He reminds me veiy much of you," he said naively. Mrs. Landon repaid the compli ment by declaring with equal sincerity that he was veiy much like him. An afternoon or two after this, Bruce, wea ried with talking over and advising about the pending warrant which his father had insti tuted against his neighbor for the damage in flicted by his cows, had taken a fishing-rod and sauntered down to the river. He tried several well-remembered holes, but the fish would not bite, and at length he found him self wandering in a rather listless way up the bank, uncertain whether to return home or not. Just where a path went down to the 62 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 63 water s edge he discovered a boat tied to a small gum-tree which hung over the bank, and he determined to try the fishing on the other side. As he paddled across the pond he experi enced something of the exhilaration of boy hood. He dipped his hand down in the clear water and let it ripple against his wrist, thinking of the old days when he had so often done the same thing. On the other side he tied his boat and climbed the bank to hunt for the old fishing- hole where he had caught the fish that after noon so many years ago. When he had reached the spot he found that a tree had fallen over the bank, and its branches lay in the water, destroying all chance of sport at that place. So he retraced his steps and started up the pond through the woods. As he proceeded he fell into the path which led around the alder thickets by the old spring at the foot of the poplar, and a sudden thirst struck him to drink from the cool depths which bubbled from under the great flat rock. He followed the track, and reaching the spring, flung his rod on the ground. A gourd brown with age and use lay on the 64 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. rock ; but under an impulse guided by remi niscence he knelt down, and bending over, drank from the spring itself. He remained in that attitude for some minutes, looking into the clear dark depths. He was drinking at the spring of memory. How long ago it all was ! When he rose, he did not leave the spot ; but sauntering to the great poplar, he flung himself at its foot and gave himself up to reverie. The sky overhead was blue and fleeced with long white films of cloud, which appeared quite stationary, and the dark green poplar boughs above him were unstirred by any breeze. The faint melody of a distant cow-bell in the marsh below him brought back his boyhood and filled him with drowsy content. He was aroused by hearing a light step behind him, and he turned his head and looked around just as the " calush " of a bucket dipped into the water reached him. A slender young woman, dressed in a plain light calico dress spotlessly clean, was stoop ing over the spring, holding her skirts back with one hand, whilst with the other she lifted the dripping bucket. Bruce could not ON NEWFOUND 1UVEE. 6e5 see her face ; but he knew she was young from the pliant, supple figure, which the dress fitted closely, the easy pose, the plump arm, and the strong grasp of her hand on the bucket as she lifted it. A large, coarse straw hat was on her head ; but its plainness was relieved by a loose twist of some white lawny stuff around it, tied on one side in a great bow-knot. She lifted the bucket, and set it on the rock. As she did so, her hair, suddenly loosened, slipped, and fell down on her shoulders in a rich crinkling mass. She removed her hat, and began to coil her hair. The curves and lines of her figure were clearly marked, from the small well-poised head, round neck, and fine shoulders to the delicate ankle. She was as straight as an arrow. Bruce thought instinctively of a Diana he had once seen. He rose to his feet and leaned against the poplar. The slight noise he made caught her ear, and she turned quickly, raising her head. At the sight of a stranger so close to her, the rich color fled from her cheeks, leaving them a sudden white, and the large, dark eyes widened with startled surprise. Bruce rec ognized immediately the oval face, framed 66 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. in loose masses of dim gold; but he saw that she did not know him. Instinctively he took off his hat, and ad vanced with a smile, thinking, " By Jove ! how pretty she is ! " " How do you do ? " he said. She drew herself up for a second, at being approached by a stranger. Then a look, at first of bewilderment, and presently of pleased recognition, came over her face. It was, however, not unmixed with embarrassment; for she blushed, and made a hasty little up ward movement of her hand, as if to arrange her collar. " Don t you know me ? " he said. "Yes." " I have come back." He had the old engagement in his mind. He meant the speech to put them on the old friendly footing, for he felt that it was a kindness to her ; and perhaps both his look and voice showed it. " You are several years behind your time," she said calmly. " Yes, I am ; but it was not my fault ; they sent me off to school." He felt, as soon as he had given an excuse, ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 67 that he had made a mistake, and had lowered himself in her eyes. She bowed with so slight an inclination that he almost hoped she had not heard him. " You have been at school some time ? " It may have been the faintest suggestion of sarcasm in her tone ; it may have been the slight curve in her red lip ; or it may have been Bruce s fancy ; but he felt himself flush. "I have never been home for any length of time," he said. She looked at him quietly. " At least, in the fishing season, I mean ; and this is the first time since that afternoon when you were a little girl, and came hunting for your prince." He added the last clause tentatively. " I have grown wiser since then," she said quietly. " A sadder and a wiser woman ? " he sug gested. "No, not sadder, only wiser. Only men are sad at gaining wisdom. It brings women peace." " Have you never found the prince ? " " I have never sought for him. He does not exist." 68 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. Bruce felt somehow a vague regret. He had hoped she would think of him as she used to do; though he also hoped she did not divine his thoughts. He wondered at his em barrassment. He was accustomed to women, especially young women ; and he was accus tomed to have them appreciate any attention he might pay them. He felt that this girl, in her plain dress and her coarse straw hat, was inferior to the women he was accustomed to, and to himself. It was, therefore, a strange sensation to find himself wondering what she thought of him, and hoping that the result was in his favor. " Do you know you are very pretty ? " he said suddenly, breaking the ice, and throwing a look of admiration into his eyes as he moved a step nearer to her. He intended to catch hold of her hand, and, perhaps, on the least encouragement, to kiss her. lie had often tried the same tactics with eminent success. He held that every woman would be pleased to accept the incense. She drew herself up slightly, but sufficiently to stop him. " Do you know it is a liberty to take to say that to a woman unless you know her well ? " ON NEWFOUND E1VEE. 69 Her eyes flashed, and her lips were com pressed with sudden resentment. Bruce was taken quite aback. "Confound it!" he thought; "I wonder if she really resents it. She cannot. It is not human." "It is not usually considered a deadly insult," he said, with an attempt at a smile, trying to cover his retreat, but feeling very silly. " I suppose not to the women to whom you are accustomed to saying it." It put him on the defensive. "No; I don t have the provocation often. I am accustomed to saying what I please, and to doing what I please," he added, after a second s pause, looking her full in the eyes. The girl drew herself up, and gave him a look of defiance. " I have to go," she said quietly, leaning over and taking up her hat. "Mayn t I go with you?" asked Bruce, willing to make amend. " Let me carry your bucket." " No, thank you. Good evening." She leaned over and picked up her bucket, and without deigning another glance walked 70 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. slowly up the hill, her pliant figure swaying a little to one side under the weight of the bucket. Bruce, leaning against the poplar, watched her until she was out of sight, and then going to his boat, crossed the pond, and went home. As he walked up the path he had a perplexed, absent air, as of a man who had sustained a loss, but who could not tell just what. CHAPTER IX. BRUCE took to fishing industriously after this; and whether it was that the fish would not bite on his own side of the pond, or what ever the cause, he availed himself fully of the permission given so long ago by the old doctor, and every afternoon found him loung ing, rod in hand, up the bank, or as fre quently lying on the ground by the spring on the doctor s side of the water. It was remarkable how often he became thirsty, and how long a distance he would walk to drink at the spring that bubbled from under the rock. Sometimes he spent the whole afternoon lounging in the shade of the great poplar. He, however, was not fortunate enough to meet Miss Reid again. One afternoon he had been up to the spring as usual, and had spent some time there enjoy ing the quiet which was broken only by the crackling of leaves, the occasional note of a bird, and the sound of two cow-bells far up 71 72 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. the pond. The bells had grown fainter and fainter, and had finally ceased. He had saun tered up the stream in the opposite direction to that he usually took. He had with some difficulty crossed a small creek which ran into the pond, and was making his way along a little path, through the thick growth of pines, gums, alders, and other bushes, when he was almost startled to meet in the narrow cow- track an old negro woman. She was tall and thin, and exceedingly black; and her short, gray hair peeped out from under the pointed white handkerchief bound around the top of her head. Bruce recognized instantly the old woman with whom he had had the interview years ago on the occasion when he had carried the fish back to Dr. Browne. She had evidently been walking rapidly, for her face was stream ing with perspiration. She was startled at meeting a stranger there in the woods ; but Bruce greeted her kindly, which seemed to set her at her case. " You sarvent, marster," she said, stepping out of the path, and courtesying with a quaint little bend at the knees. Bruce spoke to her kindly. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 73 "You ain see nuthin o no cows down dat away, is you, marster?" she asked doubt fully. "No, I have not," said Bruce. "I heard the cow-bells over that way somewhere, a half-hour or more ago." He indicated the direction in which he was going. "Have your cows bells on?" "Yes, suh; bofe on em," she said. "I done been up dat away, an ain see nuthin on em. I mightly feared dee done gone crost de pawn an git in Mr. Landon s corn agin ; but I ain see whar dee cross nowhar, up dere." She stood still in evident perplexity. "How do they get across?" asked Bruce. " I clar , marster, I don know. They s jes natchel rovers ; they git whar bud can t fly." " Why do you let them run down here ? " inquired Bruce. "Why do you not keep them up ? " " Well, to tell you de truf, marster," said the old woman, simply, " we ain got nuthin to feed em on. We bleeged to le em run down heah. Dee s all de pendence we got. You see, ole marster, he s so ailin now he cyarn git bout to do nuthin ; an Folium he s my ole man, he so cruppled up wid 74 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. rheumatis, he cyarn hardly do nuthin , an all he kin do is to wait on ole marster, an help liim de little bit he s able to do, an to fish. Sometimes he ketch some right smart." She said this almost pathetically. "An de cows an de chickens is we main dependence." Bruce put his hand into his pocket and made a mental estimate of the amount of change he found there. " We didn t use to have much trouble wid em," she went on, "so long as dee had plenty o grass on dis side ; but now dee done fine de way cross we have to watch em study all de time. We do right well as long as my young mistis or I one kin watch em ; but ef we teck our eye off em now, dee gone." Bruce was all attention now, and the old woman, with feminine instinct recognizing his sympathy, was glad to relieve her troubles by imparting them to another. " Dee got way de other day when ole marster was so po ly, and got into Mr. Lan- don s corn over yonder, right over cross de pawn," she pointed, "an he meek de over seer drive em up, an put em in he lot. I had to go over dere after em. He overseer didn t warn le me have em at fust. Teensey ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 75 she went back right smart, an Princess she gone back a heap, from not being milked reg lar, you know," she explained. Bruce nodded. " But I so glad to fine em an git em back agin, I ain mine nuthin . At fust, I begin to think I ain gwine git em no mo de way dat man talk ; but I promise him faithful I wouldn t le em git in de corn no mo , an den he le me bring em long, an he suin ole marster bout de corn. De man come heah one day las week an gi him de paper." She turned, preparatory to continuing her search. " Wait a minute," said Bruce. He paused irresolutely. " How do you live ? " he asked abruptly. " Well, we got some chickens, an we sell de aigs an de butter," she explained, "an sometimes we ketch some fish." " Here, let me give you something," said Bruce. He raked up all the change in his pocket, and handed it to her, half shame facedly. Her thanks were mute astonishment. She looked first at him, and then at her hand, full of the silver he had given her, and which she 76 ON NEWFOUND E1VER. held out half-way to him, as if not certain that he had not made a mistake. " Come on ; I will help yon find your cows," he said. " You go that Avay, and I will go this," and he plunged ahead through the bushes. He found in the search a new pleasure. It brought back the zest of his boyhood ; and he went in and out along the edge of the pond, examining carefully every place where the cows could have gone down to the water. At last he came on their tracks, and follow ing them, found that the cows had gone up around the pond, and had crossed over near its head, where the water was shallow. A less keen eye might have missed the trail. The difficulty of getting over was considera ble ; but a faint jangle of bells reached him from the other bank. The cows were evi dently in the cornfield, on the opposite side. As Bruce had pledged himself, there was no help for it; so, after going up a little higher, he was able to get across, though not without difficulty. The cows were found; and after an exciting chase through the corn, in which a great deal of grain was trampled down, Bruce got them to the point where ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 77 they had crossed, and drove them back. He was walking carefully on the hummocks, and was nearly over, when his foot slipped, and he went down into the water to his waist. He gave expression to an objurgation at the cows, and climbed out, dripping. Just then, looking up, right before him on the bank stood the young girl he had met before. A distressed expression was on her face. "How do you do?" said Bruce, feeling that he must cut a sorry figure. " Did they get into your corn again ? " she asked. " I am so dreadfully sorry. We will keep them up hereafter." "No, you will not," said Bruce, almost roughly. She misinterpreted his reply. " Indeed, I will ; it was an entire accident that they got away to-day. My grandfather was sick, and I just " "I don t care anything about that," said Bruce. She misunderstood him ; but he proceeded. "I promised your old woman to find her cows for her, and as they set the fashion of wading, I had to follow it." She said " Thank you " so cordially, and 78 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. added, " I m so afraid that you will catch cold," so solicitously, that Bruce forgot his unpresentable appearance, and said : "I don t mind it the least bit. When I was a boy I used to know every foot of the pond, and I have hunted often, wet to the skin, almost for days at a time." He was after gaining time. To have her leave him suddenly looked like putting out the sun. To gain a respite he would promptly have changed his tone, and have avowed himself ready to die with cold. She started up the path, and allowed him, without anything be ing said about it, to walk with her down the pond, taking the easy pace at which the two cows lazily sauntered homewards along the narrow path, one behind the other, stop ping now and then to browse the grass or young bushes beside the way. Before the walk was over, they were on terms of confidence. Bruce had forgotten the difference in their stations. She told him of her fondness for the woods, and of how, as a girl, she used to know every path in the pines, and every nook on the pond. " I used to like to fish," she said ; " but I don t love my frogs, and I cannot handle ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 79 them as if I did. I cannot bear to see the poor fish struggling and gasping for breath. Besides that, there is a dreadful man who comes down here sometimes and frightens me. He seems to haunt the place," she ex plained. She had met him once or twice. He had once stopped her, and attempted to detain her in conversation. She described him : " He has a great purplish mark across his throat, and looks brutal and dangerous. He always carries a gun." Bruce had no difficulty in recognizing Pokeberry. As she lifted her eyes with the timid expression in them, born of the recol lection of the interview, he was filled with a sudden desire to throttle the brute who dared to frighten her. Nothing arouses a man s tenderness so surely as a woman s exhibiting fear, and yet silently confiding in his protection. "I will see that you are not molested further," said Bruce, quietly. " Oh you must not say anything to him. Please don t," she said quickly, stopping and making an earnest little gesture of entreaty towards him. " He always carries a gun, and I m so afraid he would shoot you." She 80 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. looked at him with anxious, uplifted, large eyes. " I will take care that he doesn t do that," said Bruce. "I admire courage more than anything in the world," she said naively. "I suppose it is because I am so afraid of everything my self. I remember I used as a child to make myself perform things that I was afraid of, just to have the sense of overcoming my fear." Bruce, with a look of admiration in his eyes, asked what sort of things she referred to. 44 Why, I remember once making myself go to the old graveyard in the dark. I was dreadfully afraid of the dark. I was in a terrible fright. Ugh!" She gave a little shiver at the recollection. " The grape-vines hanging down from the old trees were in the dark all like snakes. They just crawled, and made a noise. Of course it was only the leaves rustling, but I was such a coward I nearly fainted. It was so creepy." Bruce had a look in his eyes which showed what he thought of such cowardice. He for the first time noted the lirm lines about her 02V NEWFOUND ElVER. 81 mouth and chin. Somehow, they reminded him of his father. He said to her : " Did you ever hear of Marshal Turenne saying of his knees, which were trembling as he mounted his horse to command in a great battle, that if they knew where he was going to take them that day they would shake more than they were shaking then?" "Oh! it was not courage in me," she smiled ; " it was nothing but pride. I was always proud enough ; in fact, it is one of my deadly sins, at least, so grandpapa always says. Mammy used to call it obstinacy. I remember once, as a child, actually starving myself as a practice, because Katherine was starved into submission by Petruchio. I wanted to be able, by practice, to meet my Petruchio when he should come. Wasn t it silly ? I kept it up till I got really sick. Then grandpapa gave me some dreadful stuff to take. That cured me. No Petruchio ever came ; but had he done so, he would not have conquered me by starvation. Grandpapa says I got it from him. But his pride is noble. I have seen him endure torture without a groan. You do not know how brave he is. He is 82 O^Y NEWFOUND H1VER. almost blind, and will soon be quite so ; yet he never says a word of it." There was a look of softness in her face as she spoke of her grandfather, which, follow ing the expression of determination that it had borne just before, made her more beauti ful than ever. Bruce Landon looked at her with new interest. He had never met any one just like this until now. He had never taken in her full beauty before. He was conscious that he had suddenly grown bash ful. He hardly dared to touch her hand as he helped her over a fallen tree across the path. Her warm touch thrilled him as her hand lay in his. He had never noticed before what a delicate shapely hand she had ; the fingers long and tapering, the wrist so small, the skin so fine. He was overcome with a sudden sense of her beauty ; her pliant figure, her white throat, the curves of her cheek and chin, the delicate, rich mouth, the white teeth, -the fine nose, the changing color, the large, lustrous, sweet eyes, they entranced him, made his heart beat. "You must go back now," she said gently, as they neared the top of the hill. " I have to make a cup of tea for my grandfather. 1 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 83 have no doubt he has. been expecting me for a half-hour." " Cannot I go with you ? " Bruce found courage to ask. " I should like very much to meet him. I did once, as a boy." " No ; he never sees visitors," she said sim ply, with a little smile. " He is a great in valid. Good by." She held out her hand. He took it and pressed it. Good by." CHAPTER X. MARGARET passed quite through the pines, and reached the opening beyond which was what was once the yard, but was now simply a tangle of bushes and briars. Instead of going on to the house, she passed along the path to an outhouse on the side of the yard, and went in. A moment later she came out, and going over to a little wood-pile, began to pick up some chips. It was perhaps a quarter of an hour after wards that she left the old kitchen, and passed along to the house with a waiter covered with a napkin, on which were an old-fashioned teapot and cream-jug, and a cup and saucer of old blue china. As she entered the house, a high, queru lous voice sounded from an inner room, "Margaret! Margaret! Margaret!" " Yes, grandpapa, I m coming," she called, quickening her step, and opening a door on the left of the long passage. 84 ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 85 The room she entered was furnished as a bedroom. The few articles of furniture, though old and worn, were of handsomer workmanship than anything about the place would have prepared one to expect. A high and old, massive carved mahogany bedstead, with tall tester reaching up to the top of the low-pitched room, took up half of one side of the apartment ; and the two or three straight- backed chairs and the legs of the round table were carved with an elaborateness which told of a former age. By the open window, propped up with pil lows, in an armchair sat an old man, whose black, deep-set eyes, gleaming from beneath his shaggy white brows, gave the only sug gestion of color in his pallid face. The thin sharp face, the keen aquiline nose, the stern pose of the white head, and the restless deep eyes gave the invalid a resemblance to an old gray eagle, which was not diminished by the long, thin hands, which, as Margaret entered, clutched the arms of his chair nervously, as he faced the door. "Well, where have you been?" he de manded, as the girl entered the room. "Here I have been shouting myself hoarse for two hours." 86 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. His granddaughter, before she answered, crossed the room, and placed the waiter on the small table. Then she approached the invalid, and proceeded deftly to arrange his pillows. There was a little flush on her face as she met the keen eyes. " Where have I been ? " she smiled, as she smoothed the creases and patted the white napkin. "Well, I have been rubbing my lamp, and demanding a spring that bubbles up hot tea, and I have been getting a pitcher of cream from the cow that jumped over the moon, and all for the most spoilt baby that ever cried 4 two hours on a stretch, and here they are." She stooped over, and kissed the old man tenderly on the forehead. As she turned away to bring the table closer, the expression on the invalid s face changed, and the hawk eyes followed her with a new tenderness. " Ah yes, you are a dear little fairy," he said, " and I am an old tyrant." " Oh no ! you are not ; you shall not say such things of yourself. You are my dear old grandpapa." She kissed him again. " I am the worst enemy you ever had on earth," said the old man, bitterly. ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 87 " You are nothing of the kind, and you are not to talk that way. It always excites and fatigues you, and you must stop it. You know that you promised me never to speak that way. Here, your tea is getting cold. No ; you must drink it at once." She held the cup to him with a pretty authority, and the old man accepted it. Bruce walked home like a man in a trance. He was divided between his recollection of Margaret Reid and his determination to persuade his father to dismiss his warrant. When, however, he reached the house, he found his father seated on the porch, in a state of high indignation. He was indulging in a philippic against his neighbor across the river. " Why, sir," he said, taking Bruce into his audience in the middle of a sentence ; " why, sir, he has turned his cows into my cornfield again ! Right on the eve of the warrant ! He s simply flouting me ! " Bruce declared that it was impossible. " Impossible ! I tell you that it is so. I heard the cow-bells myself down there in my field ; and when my overseer went down there, he found where they had been chasing around, trampling down my best corn. He saw the 88 O.V NEWFOUND RIVER. track of the man that was with them. I believe he comes over and cuts the corn regularly." "Well, the man was driving them out," said Bruce. "No such thing. Bailiff says he saw where he came up from the water." "Well, I know he was," asserted Bruce; " for I drove them out myself." " Ah, you were acting as cowherd for old Browne ? or perhaps it was his daughter ? " said his father, with that dry, acrid tone which burned like a hot iron. The young man winced. He set his teeth hard together. " I hope that you will pasture them some where else hereafter except in my best corn," said his father. " I am not his cowherd," said Bruce ; " but perhaps if you would keep up your fences, you would not have to lay the blame on your neighbors." " You had better appear at the trial, and air your views there. They may be deemed of more value by the magistrate than I consider them. He is a fool. If he hadn t been, I d have brought the warrant years ago." It was the old gentleman s manner, not his words, which cut. ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 89 Bruce remembered his own advice to him to bring the warrant. " I shall not go to the trial at all," he said. " Ah ! you will not ? You will do me the favor to remain neutral ? Thank you." The major s fine nose looked even thinner than ever, and the nostrils dilated. Bruce had never been so patient before. He thought of the picture the old negro woman had drawn of their poverty, and it brought him self-control. "They are very poor he began, and paused. "If you knew how poor they are, you would not be so hard on them," he broke out suddenly. The major never intended to be hard on any one ; but he was thoroughly angry now, and was blind to everything. " You have been investigating the matter, and sitting in judgment on me ? You had bet ter go and ask Johnson to let you try the case. He usually makes up his mind before he hears any evidence, and you would be a very good associate for him. I don t know how poor your prote*g is ; but he ought to be rich, as he has been fattening his cattle in my corn so long." He rose and marched into the house. CHAPTER XI. THE warrant brought by the major against the old "doctor " was the absorbing topic on Newfound. Other men had brought warrants. Indeed, Squire Johnson sat monthly on the fourth Saturday in every month, at Jones s Crossroads, and dispensed justice among the neighbors, at an average of one dollar a case. But the major had never gone to law before. He had always boasted that he had never had a suit in his life. His neighbor s cows had been running on him for years, and he had contented himself with growling about it, or, when he was particularly exasperated, with threatening to sue for damages. He had never carried the threat into execution : some said, only because Squire Johnson was magis trate, whilst others ascribed it to a better motive. At any rate, now, after a long waiting, the major, who had for twenty years scouted the justice, and ridiculed with his biting speeches 90 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 91 the pitiful dissensions of his neighbors, had broken his boasted record and had gone to law himself. " Yes ; I m a fool, too," he admitted caus tically to one of his friends who rallied him on his taking the step of an appeal to law after having so often inveighed against it. " Yes ; I m a fool like the rest. But if I re main so different from my neighbors, they all impose on me and eat me up." On the morning of the trial Bruce Lan- don and his father met at breakfast. The major s face was unusually grim, and the look in his deep-set eyes, and the expression on his thin, clean-shaven lip, were not auspicious of peace. He was evidently girded up for battle. Bruce also was prepared for what ever might happen. His morning greeting, as he entered the long breakfast-roon^, was suspiciously polite ; but his face was set with a look of defiance, and everv movement was a declaration of resistance. The meal, how ever, passed off without an outbreak ; indeed, almost in silence. The major, having finished, rose and marched out of the room, shutting the door behind him with a slam. He might have been heard walking backwards and for- 92 ON NEWFOUND E1VEE. wards with a sharp, quick step from one room to another, as he made his preparations to set out, and when he left the house his tread was that of a grenadier. He carried in one hand a heavy riding-whip, and in the other an old law-hook which he had heen studying assiduously for several days, and which had the leaves turned down in many places. At the rack he gave the volume to a negro boy, and calling to another to tell Mr. Bailiff he had gone, he mounted his horse and rode away. Bruce spent the morning in lounging list lessly about the house. He tried reading, writing, and several other things ; but his favorite authors palled on him, and his pen refused to finish the sentence he begun. He saw nothing but Margaret Reid, heard noth ing but her voice. At last, about midday, he took his fishing-tackle and strolled down towards the pond. The little yard at Jones s Crossroads was quite full an hour before the time set for the hearing. The neighborhood had turned out, and the little store did a thriving business in calico, nails, and whiskey. The first person to arrive connected with the case was Hall the constable. He was ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 93 watched with great interest as he tied his horse to the fence, and took off with exag gerated deliberation his saddle-bags. They were known to contain his official papers, and were watched with expectation approach ing to awe by the crowd in the little yard across the road. They insensibly lowered their voices, and gazed at the officer as if they expected some kind of animal to jump out of his leather pockets. He entered the little yard, greeting every one he met with that exaggerated cordiality and condescension which usually appertains to public office. A group immediately surrounded him, to whom he began to tell of his visit to Dr. Browne s. "I was just about to pin the summons on the do and come away," he said, u when roun the house there came the pretties young lady that my eyes ever see, or ever expec to see." He took out a bundle of papers, and resting his finger on it, contin ued : " I have done made the return on thar that I explained the nature of the summons to her, and that she was over sixteen; but the fact is I didn t do much explainment, and the Lord knows I don t know whether she s sixteen or not. I know I d ruther fling 94 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. up the orfis than a axed her. But I jes lowed she couldn a growed all that pretty in less than sixteen years, that s all. Don t you think I am right, Sam?" As Hall was a widower of some months standing, this reasoning struck his audience as irresistible. " Talk about Pokeberry? why, she wouldn look at him cept to kick him out of her way," he said, as a stout, heavy man approached the group. His face was a deeper red than that of even the sunburned men about him. His eyes were bloodshot, and his gait was slightly unsteady. He caught the closing part of the constable s speech, and gave a harsh, grating laugh, which he followed with a storm of oaths. One of the little hounds at his heel was so unfortunate as to get in his way ; he gave the beast a savage kick which sent it off yelping with pain. "Pokeberry, you agree with me, I know?" said the constable ; at which sally there was a general laugh. A violent outburst of oaths was his answer. " All I want to do is to git my chance at em. I never missed gittin even yet, when I laid my mind to it." ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 95 " Sometimes you gits rather ahead of em, I expect," said Hall. "I b lieve the major bring that warrant more to git a sight at them folks 11 anything else," declared one of the party, meaning to change the subject. " He ain keering nothin about the little cawn them cows eat." " He s another one I ll git even with," growled Pokeberry, steadying himself against a tree. " Whyn t you say that to him ? " asked Hall. A guffaw greeted the thrust, and Poke- berry turned scowling away. " What s a little cawn to a man who s got them flats?" pursued the first speaker, not heeding the interruption. "If I had them cawnfiel s, I d want cows to git in thar some times, jes to let me see that I didii feel it." " He ain keerin bout the cawn so much as bout the old doctor lettiii his cows keep on gittin on him," explained the constable, in the authoritative tone of one who, holding a public office, is presumed to know whatever is necessary on every subject. "That s so," chimed in a tall, thin, con sumptive-looking man with a red beard, whose name was Hackett. " He don want cows nor 96 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. nothin else runnin over him, an he ain gwine have it." "No, that he ain ," asserted Mills. "And he jes as live have things runnin over him as over that Ian . He thinks as much o that Ian o hisn as if it was a gold mine. They ain a acre on the place he don think much of as if it was pu low ground. He s always talking bout it, an spendin money on it. Why, he s spent money enough on that place to buy three plantations. He s takin keer of it for Bruce." The tone was dry. He was stating the fact with the air of a man who did not suppose any one would question it. " I wonder what he d a done if his brother had a lived to divide the place with him ? " said one of the crowd. "I b lieve twould kill him to give up a acre of that land." " I b lieve twould," assented Mills. " He s always talkin about keepin it in trust for Bruce." " Bruce is come home, I ve heerd, and th say he s mighty fine and assumptions," one of the others remarked. " He s a mighty nice boy," said Mills. " In course, he s kind o curried up, but he don put on no airs. He s all right." ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 97 Pokeberry had returned to the group. "D n him, too! He s another one," he said. " Why, you seem to be after them all to day," laughed Hall. " I m after him" said Pokeberry, angrily. " You better keep some distance after him, too," said Mills. " You remember that hand spike he hit you with when he wasn t nothin but a boy ? Well, if he hits you now, you ll think a mule s kicked you." Pokeberry swore inarticulately. " I wonder if he an the old major sets horses any better than they used to ? " Hall asked generally. " Oh yes ! the major thinks all the worl of him," replied Mills. " He s talkin about puttin him in charge, and turnin over ev y thing right to him. They say he s goin to marry a furreign lady, mighty fine an rich. I didn t hear the major say so," he explained. " I heard that Bruce was gwine to manage the case for his pa to-day?" said Hall. The faint interrogation in his tone justified Mills in giving evidence of his acquaintance with the affairs of his friend. 98 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. " He is," he said, nodding his head senten- tiously. " He made him bring it." The arrival of the magistrate, who was to try the case, turned the discussion into a new channel. It was Squire Johnson. The group watched the old man intently as he came around to the gate with his book " Mayo s Guide " under his arm. " He s got his chance now about which he was talkin eight or ten years ago, that evenin you and me was here devilin him," said Mills in an undertone to Hall. The constable s mouth was full of tobacco. He waited a moment, then turned the quid in his mouth. The old man bustled about with amusing self-importance, arranging his table under a tree, and laying out his book and papers ; but no one paid any attention to him, for the in terest of the crowd was suddenly centred on a small black negro, who at this moment was coming up the sandy road at a slow, limping gait. He was not above five feet tall, and he wore a beaver hat of a style long obsolete, set on the back of his gray head. As he reached the outskirts of the crowd he paused, and took off his hat deferentially. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 99 " Sarvent, marsters," he said, with a low, sweeping salaam to the crowd. The gesture had an apparent effect ; for a dozen men near him returned the greeting, and the general manner towards him was one of kindness. " Gent men, ken you have the civility to show me which are the jestice?" he inquired with a Chesterfieldian air. This inquiry immediately directed attention to that functionary, who came through the opening which the crowd instinctively made. The old negro advanced. " Jestice," he said, by way of salutation, with another of his profound bows to the portly magistrate ; and then, after some search, took a letter from the lining of his old hat. He advanced a step. "My marster have direct me to renounce that he have the honor to present you a letter." He advanced and delivered the missive to the magistrate, whose assumed dignity in the presence of the perfectly natural and real dignity of the little negro sank at once to the point of a manifest counterfeit. The pause in which the squire with awk ward fingers was handling the note, was 100 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. broken by some one inquiring of the negro as to the health of his master. "I thank you, marster, not so very well. He s most in general uncommon indisposed. He find it impossible to repear himself on this recasion. An he reques me to meek his ixcuses to you gent men on that recount." This excessive mark of his master s esteem was accepted by the crowd with due dignity. The magistrate had by this time opened the letter which was written in a fine clear hand, and read its contents. They ran as follows : " To JOHNSON, Esq., Justice of the Peace: " SIR : I have no defence to the action instituted against me by Charles Landon, of Landon Hall, Esq., for trespass, and I plead guilty thereto, always saving any criminal intention in the same. " I have instructed my servant to satisfy whatever judgment you may see fit to enter against me, and should it exceed the amount he has at present, I re quest that no additional costs may be added other than are necessary, as I will meet whatever balance there may be by to-morrow evening. " Resp y your obd t serv t, " THOMAS BKOWNE." The effect of this letter on the burly mag istrate was to put him into a state of violent ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 101 excitement. He read it and re-read it, and then sat down and, adjusting his spectacles, studied it carefully. Finally, he rose and beckoning to the con stable, walked out of the gate to a point across the road out of earshot of the crowd, where he proceeded to read the letter to him. The conference was long and earnest. " What in the - did he have to go and plead guilty for, anyways?" he asked angrily of his friend. " You was for him befo you got that letter* warn t you?" inquired the constable. " For him ! In cose I was for him ! You ain s pose I was gwine to d cide in favor of that air overridin , slanderin Whig, is you, not withouten I was obleeged to ! I ain forgot how he talk about me, I tell you. I was gwine to show him who was the majistrit of this district, I was ; an I m gwine to yit ef they is any way to do it. What I want to know is, ain they any way to git roun it?" He indicated the letter. "Read it again," said the constable. He read it. " c Savin any criminal intention. What do that mean? " asked the constable, shutting 102 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. one eye in the effort to focus his mind on the interpretation of the abstruse words. "That s hit! that s hit! What a fool I am ! Of cose, that s hit ! 4 Savin any crimi nal intention of the same. He can t plead guilty without they being a criminal inten tion ? Jim, you s got a blame good head on you. Ef you bed the experience, you d meek a first-class majistrit." The constable looked complacent under this compliment. " Is you heard that Sam Mills is a candi date for my place?" the magistrate asked suddenly, suspiciously. Hall looked a little embarrassed. "Nor; Sam ain no candidate," he said. He turned towards the yard, perhaps to put an end to the conversation. "You d meek a sight better majistrit n Sam," said the justice, insinuatingly. " Sam ain got the head on him." This commendation was received by the sub-official with becoming modesty, and the two strolled back across the sandy road, just as a horseman appeared around the curve a quarter of a mile away, approaching on a tall, handsome horse, at a slow, easy gallop. He ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 103 was dressed in white linen, and carried an umbrella. The murmur of the crowd an nounced that he was a personage of consider ation. " There he comes," said several persons. " That s his horse," announced a number, more corroboratively. The major rode up and dismounted, flinging his bridle to a negro boy, who stepped for ward with his hat off and his teeth shining. The major raised his umbrella with delib eration. Then he came around to the gate, sa luting every man he met. His manner, if a little condescending, was perfectly easy with all, and with some was cordial. It was apparent that he was highly esteemed, for the people crowded up to speak to him. His greetings evinced an accurate knowledge of each man s affairs. He even saluted politely, if a little contemptuously, the scowling jus tice, who, as he approached, suddenly engaged in conversation with some one, and pretended not to be aware of his arrival. In a few moments the magistrate took his seat, got out his silver-rimmed spectacles, wiped them carefully and put them on; cleared his mouth of tobacco, and looked at 104 07V NEWFOUND RIVER. the major, who was busy talking to one of his neighbors about his sick cow. As no attention was paid to him, the justice called the constable, and raising his voice, ordered him to " open cote." When this was done, by a short and inco herent proclamation, without attracting the notice of the major who still discoursed with an admiring group around him, the magistrate directed the constable to inform him that his case was called. The officer, after waiting respectfully for perhaps five minutes for a break in the major s speech on the subject of the dry weather, delivered his message. " Tell him I am not ready," said the gentle man, with an easy assurance, which sent the messenger back somewhat abashed, and the speech flowed on as before, only with in creased urbanity. A few moments later his overseer, with a law-book in his hand, rode up and came into the yard. He approached his employer and waited respectfully for a time, after which he turned away to talk to some of his friends. But when the major, after delivering himself to a group with much affability on the subject ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 105 of the difference between clover and orchard- grass as a food for stock, turned suddenly and walked up to the little table beside which sat the scowling magistrate, his manager was im mediately behind him. He swept the crowd with a swift glance. He was aware that the defendant was not on the ground, and anticipating a motion for a continuance, was prepared to deliver him self with much force on the subject. " I am ready ; where is the defendant?" he asked, taking off his hat. For answer, the magistrate leaned over, and with accentuated pomposity, handed him the note, turning his quid in his mouth, in token of his perfect indifference. The major s countenance fell as he read the paper. He re-read it, and then handed it back. " I see he pleads guilty," he remarked. "No, he don t," asserted the officer, again rolling his quid in his mouth, this time in token of his determination. The major frowned. " Why, he does." " Whar do he do it?" inquired the justice, with suspicious blandness. 106 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. " Why, there," pointing to the paper. " I don t see it." " Well, I know you don t ; you never see anything you don t wish to see ; but you would unless you were blind mentally and morally as well as physically," asserted the irate major, seizing the paper. The crowd appreciated the hit, and a chuckle of enjoyment went through it. The gentleman read the note aloud, with strong emphasis. He was reading to the crowd, and they appreciated the compliment. "Isn t that pleading guilty?" he asked, looking through his gold-rimmed spectacles. " What does it say ? Savin any criminal intention in the same. What does that mean ? " "It don t mean anything. It means that he is a word-splitting old jackass, like some other people ; that s what it means," asserted the major. The crowd applauded with a guffaw. The major turned to them, read and re-read the paper, talked to them over it, and so berated the old magistrate, that he was thrown entirely on the defensive. He looked over at the constable for assistance ; but that ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 107 official had incontinently deserted and gone over to the majority, and was now grinning from ear to ear, over the major s comments on the magistrate s judicial construction. " If you cannot see what is written plainly on paper, we have men among us who are less afflicted," declared the major. The crowd understood this to be a refer ence to Sam Mills, and several of them nudged him. Sam only chewed silently. Finally, carried along by the force of his own eloquence, and inspired by the sympathy of the crowd, the major launched out against the defendant. " Why does he remain skulking at home when summoned by law to appear before a magistrate of this county and State?" he asked. " Why does he not come forward and defend himself like a man, if he is an honest man ? Is he afraid to face daylight, that he prowls around at night, and cannot be drawn out of his hole even by process of the Com monwealth? What is he? Is he a mur derer, a counterfeiter, or an abolitionist ? He ought to be made to appear ; he ought to be investigated. This is no longer a mere pri vate and personal matter; his conduct is 108 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. against the peace and dignity of the Com monwealth." This, and much more to the same effect, the old gentleman delivered to the apprecia tive crowd, who broke into loud applause at his Avords. When, therefore, he threw the paper on the table, and insisted that the magistrate at once try the case and give him judg ment, or he would, at the next court, have an inquiry instituted as to his sanity, and see if a sane man could not be found to take his place, the justice did not have the courage to resist, and with a turn of his quid in his mouth, proceeded to try the case. The overseer was duly sworn, and proved the facts and the amount of estimated dam ages ; and then the defendant was called, and failing to appear, the justice, after much figuring, gravely delivered judgment in favor of the major, for a little less than he claimed ; delivering, at the same time, a speech, which was a marvel of unintelligible contradictions, attempting to reconcile his present action with the stand he had at first taken. The contemptuous indifference with which ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 109 the major received his announcement was noted and enjoyed by the crowd. He turned to the constable. " Levy immediately," he said. " I ll bring the old abolitionist out of his hole." He turned away. As he did so, he was arrested by the little black pressing for ward, and taking off his old hat. He bowed low to the major. His grandilo quence had disappeared, and in the pres ence of the gentleman he was the picture of humility. " How much is it, marster ? " he asked. " Five dollars and thirty-seven cents," said the justice. The negro s countenance fell. " Dat s mo - he began ; then stopped ; and after much fumbling, took out of his pocket an old rag wrapped about something, and carefully tied with a string. This he worked at for some time, until he had un tied it. Unwrapping it carefully, he leaned over, and poured out on the table a hand ful of small silver and copper coins, which he carefully pushed into the very centre of the table, as if fearful that they might roll off. 110 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. " Will you please count dem, marster ?" he said timidly. The coin was counted ; the crowd looking on with breathless interest ; the major stand ing with arms folded, looking down with contemptuous amusement. " Five dollars and twenty-five cents," said the magistrate, looking over the table, and moving every paper so as to prove that none was overlooked. " Five dollars and twenty-five cents, five dollars and twenty-five cents," repeated the negro to himself, looking around the table. " How much does that lack ? " After a slight calculation the amount was announced, " Twelve cents." This sum was wanting. The negro turned to the major. " Ef you could wait, marster, for about a week " he began. " I won t wait," said the major, grimly. A pause of uncertainty ensued, in which the negro meditated. His face showed the deepest concern. " Dat s ev y cent dee is on de place," he said, half audibly, to himself. Then, in a little louder tone, ON NEWFOUND RIVER. Ill "If any gent man would lend me twelve cents ? " He looked around him. " There it is," said the major, tossing him a dollar, and putting on his glove. The old man s eyes gleamed as he seized the coin and laid it on the pile. The major walked towards the gate, but the magistrate overtook him, holding the money in one hand and a paper in the other. He stopped. " What s this ? " he inquired impatiently. " This is the judgment for you to mark satisfied. " The old justice was glad of the opportunity to display his superior knowledge on this one point at least. The major walked back to the table, and wrote the receipt on the paper. Then he pulled on his glove slowly, and was turning away when the justice held out to him the money. He stopped angrily, but held out his hand. " Count it," he said shortly. The officer counted it out coin by coin into his palm. The major looked at him with an ugly gleam in his eye; but just then the little negro passed by with a low salute. 112 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. " Here ! " he said, and pitched the handful of money to him. When the major cantered out of sight, the negro was still on his knees searching in the short grass for some of the coins. CHAPTER XII. ALL that afternoon a crowd remained around the little store at the Crossroads, drinking and discussing the trial. Several rows occurred ; Pokeberry being concerned in more than one of them, and being the aggressor. Towards sunset he was quite under the influence of liquor, as were sev eral others. When he was drunk he was always quarrelsome. He appeared now to have a special grudge against the major. He came up to a group in which were Mills and Hall, and began a tirade against Major Landon for his contempt, as he charged, of a poor man. Mills took it up and denied flatly that there was any ground for such a charge. " Any hones po man the major is got as much respec for as if he owned a big planta tion and three hundred niggers," he declared. " He said once that a man as was proud of his money was like a blacksmith as bragged 113 114 CLV NEWFOUND RIVER. of the iron in his shop and didn have sense to do any work on it." The crowd applauded this view, and Poke- berry, enraged, growled an angry threat against the Landons. " Why don t you go an tell em so?" asked Mills. " You have mighty good opportunities, and I ain never heard of you tellin either of em." The laugh of the crowd stung the bully, and with an oath he declared that any man was a hound who followed a Landon. Mills was seated on the fence. He looked at him with slightly contracted eyes, but said nothing. This was accepted by Pokeberry as a sign that he was afraid of him, and he stepped a little nearer him. The crowd stopped talking and fell back. Pokeberry addressed himself directly to Mills. " I know about you," he began. Mills lazily let his long legs down, and slipped from the fence, which he leaned against. " Look a-here, Pokeberry," he said slowly, with another contraction of his eyes, "go skeer runaway niggers. Don you try it on me. If you does, runaway niggers won have nobody to fool em away." ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 115 Pokeberry s answer to this was a furious demand to know what Mills meant, and a tirade against any and all persons who insin uated anything connecting him Avith negroes. He could whip any man, he declared, who said anything connecting him with niggers. " Look a-here, Pokeberry," said Mills, with a slight bend towards him, "talkin s cheap; but if you lay the weight of your hand on me, I ll take my pocket-knife and cut your throat from ear to ear." His thin sun-browned face was grim, and his gray eyes burnt back under his brows ; but he was very quiet. There was a murmur from the bystanders. One or two of them advised Pokeberry to let him alone. Sam Mills was not a man to trifle with. Whether it was that Pokeberry was afraid of the spare wiry creature who looked at him with such fearless eyes, or whether he deemed it unwise to fight with such a cause of quar rel, cannot be known. But he began suddenly an attack on Dr. Browne, whom he boldly declared to be an abolitionist. He adjourned to the little bar-room in the back of the store. This episode broke up the crowd, and as it was sundown, Mills and the sober ones went 116 O.V NEWFOUND RIVER. home, leaving, however, a considerable num ber still hanging around the bar. There Pokeberry continued his attack on Dr. Browne. He told of the disappearance of the two negroes, and charged that the old man had helped to get them away. He adroitly used the major s speech of that day, with additions of his own, as a lever to move the drunken crowd. " He s a abolitionist," he kept on asserting, with many oaths ; " and he ought to be run out. That s what the major said. He s a abolitionist. He ought to be tarred and feathered, and run out, and I am the man to do it." By the time he had repeated this a score of times, with such embellishments as his brutal brain suggested, he had got the drunken set around him into a state in which they be lieved the major had suggested the tarring and feathering and would warmly approve it. A few, with a little reason left, protested against such a lawless measure ; but the ma jority, to the number of a dozen or more of the most worthless characters in the county, applauded. "I m the man to do it," asserted Pokeberry, ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 117 pulling off his coat, and turning it wrong side outwards. A few minutes later he was out in the dark, with a drunken gang around him, clamorous to "drive the d d abolitionist out, as the major said." Meantime, Major Landon had arrived at home in unusually good spirits. He had car ried his point, and won his first suit ; he had publicly shown that the pompous and self- important old magistrate who had long opposed him was a fool, and had held him up to open scorn and derision ; and he had vindicated his rights, which were what he always contended for. Accordingly, as he mounted the long stone steps of his mansion, and turned, as he reached the top, to look back over his wide estate, an expression of benig nity most unusual to his firm face rested there. The scene before him was one which might well have pleased him. As far as the eye could reach in either direction, the rolling fields, green with grain and grass, and trav ersed by broVn fences, belonged to Landon Hall. Only immediately opposite, where the hills rose on the other side of Newfound, was a break in his domain. There was Landon 118 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. Hill, the first home of his forefathers, held by an unknown stranger. There, surrounded by dense woods, and keeping himself wholly se cluded, never leaving his plantation, and de clining either to receive or to return visits, lived his strange neighbor. The tops of the clump of old oak trees marking the yard showed above the pines which had been allowed to grow and cover the fields, as if to conceal the old frame hip-roofed house and its surroundings from the gaze of its imposing neighbor opposite. A slight frown crossed Major Landon s brow, as his eye rested for a moment on this spot. It was, perhaps, but the recollection of the contest he had just been tlirough with his recluse neighbor. The shadow passed in a moment, and he turned away and entered the wide hall. "He ll keep his cows to himself now, I reckon, the old abolitionist ! " he said, with a half-laugh. As his footstep sounded on the polished floor, a door on one side of the hall opened, and his wife came forward and advanced toward him with a smile of welcome. Mrs. Landon still retained much of the beauty ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 119 which had made her years before the belle of her county. Yet there was a suggestion of sadness in her manner or her countenance, it could scarcely be told which, though it might have been the contrast between the white hair on her brow and the brilliant dark eyes which shone in her pale face like stars, and which, when she smiled, made her look like a girl. As she came forward with a smile to meet her husband, his whole manner changed. The gray eyes softened, the hard strong mouth with the clean-shaven lip re laxed, and a smile lit up his face. " Well ? " she said, with a rising inflection of interrogation and of welcome. " Oh ! I won ; I beat him. Routed him 4 horse, foot, and dragoons. " He put his hat on the table, placed his gloves carefully in it, laid his horsewhip on top, and put his arm around his wife like a young lover. " I am so glad you beat," she said ; " but I hope you were not too hard on him." "Lucy, I believe you would take up for the devil," said her husband, half jestingly. "Well, if he needed it, perhaps," she smiled up at him. 120 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. " Well, I wasn t hard on them at all. If I had not warranted him, there never would have been any end to it. You will bear me witness that I had stood it for years; had sent him word ; and had shown the forbear ance of a saint, and I was forced to apply to the law. The rascal ! It is as well he did not come there, for I might have been tempted to lay my horsewhip over his shoulders. I believe he drove his cows across the river into my fields, anyhow. I do not see how they managed otherwise to get through the swamp so readily. " I am afraid they are very- poor, and you know he might have been sick when you sent him word," sighed Mrs. Landon. " Sick ! the mischief ! He has not been sick for twenty years, I reckon ; and he has been hiding from me that long. It is my opinion that he has been at the bottom of all the devilment that has been going on so long in the country." " I wish they would let me do something for them," said Mrs. Landon, who was the incarnation of charity. "I don t want to do anything for them, except get rid of them and their cows," as- O^Y NEWFOUND 1UVEE. 121 serted the major. " If I had anything to go on, I would lodge a complaint against him ; that is what I d do. I hoped to have got a sight of him to-day ; but the rascal was afraid to face me." The major was working him self up to the usual pitch of excitement over his wrongs. " My dear, they say he is a most kind and gentle person, and does a great deal of good, and if he choose to withdraw himself He must be a good man ; because "A good man, Lucy!" interrupted the major, hotly. " Who ever heard of a good man shunning the daylight, and hiding from the eyes of his neighbors, and going out only at night like a mink or a ground-hog? He is an abolitionist, in my opinion." When the major expressed a thing as his " opinion," Mrs. Landon knew that there was the end of it ; that it was useless to attempt to combat it. " You did not make them pay any money, I hope," she said sweetly, as she drew a chair up near that into which her husband had thrown himself. "Of course I didn t, that is, I gave it back after I had made him pay it," he re- 122 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. plied. He did not think it worth while to tell her just how he had given it back. Indeed, the manner of its return did not strike him now as being altogether as praise worthy as he had considered it when, in the presence of a gaping throng, he had tossed it disdainfully to the old negro, who had counted it out so quietly after the justice had decided against his master. He did not know that at that moment Poke- berry Green, half sotted with liquor, was urging his word to a drunken crowd as a justification for an act of outrageous violence. The soft evening air came through the open windows with the odor of grass upon it. It brought back a reminiscence to the major, and he went off into reflection. Sud denly he aroused himself. " Where is Bruce? " he asked. " He took his rod and went off after lunch to take a fish," said Mrs. Landon, quickly. A faint shade of anxiety came into her eyes, and she looked around, taking in her hus band s face in her glance. He shifted in his chair, and presently reached over and took a book from the table. The act was full of emphasis. He opened O^Y NEWFOUND RIVER. 123 the book and turned over the leaves impa tiently. " I wish he would stay at home sometimes. I don t like the way he is carrying on," he said abruptly, throwing the book back on the table, and rising with a jerk from the chair. The look of anxiety on Mrs. Landon s face deepened. " My dear, I hope you will not say any thing to him Avhen he comes in," she said with a tone of entreaty. " He is very " She paused. " Certainly not, if you wish it," said the major ; " but things have come to a pretty pass. I am to stand all his humors and dis obedience and never say a word. What is he always going over there after? " " My dear, you forget that Bruce is a man now." "I don t care if he is forty men," inter rupted the major, hotly ; " if he stays here, he has to conform to my wishes. I thought he had improved, but I believe that he is worse than ever." Mrs. Landon walked up and put her hand over his mouth. " Don t say that." 124 O.V NEWFOUND 1UVEE. " It is base ingratitude. I have given him every advantage and have spent a fortune on him, and he takes no notice of my requests none whatever. I asked him to go up with me to-day, and " " He could not have understood you," de fended his mother. " Could not? He could not have misun derstood me ; but he is bent on thwarting my wishes." " Oh, no ! I am sure that you misjudge him." " Nothing of the kind ; he was determined I should dismiss my warrant against that rascal, and when I would not, he refused to do what I asked him. Why is he suddenly so interested in that old creature ? Ten days ago he was urging me to bring suit." Mrs. Landon did not answer, hoping to put an end to the conversation ; but the ma jor s mind was working. " It was a great mistake to send him off to school when we did. He has got chocked full of all those fool notions about humanita- rianism those people have, and which they substitute for law and order and religion and everything else." O^V NEWFOUND EIVEE. 125 " Oh, I don t think so ; you are unjust to him," urged his wife. "Why, he insisted that I should dismiss the warrant, and let old Browne s cows eat up my corn. What do you call that?" " I think it was very kind and generous in him." The major gave a sniff. " Kind and generous, the mischief ! It s easy to be kind and generous on other peo ple s money. It s my opinion that he is ex traordinarily interested in old Browne s cows all of a sudden. The first thing you know he ll be involved in some scandal. The idea of his running opposition to Pokeberry Green ! " "I do not think there is any danger of that," Mrs. Landon said warmly. " What makes him go down fishing every afternoon on that side of the mill-pond. He is certainly not after fish, for he never catches any." " Oh, yes, he does," began Mrs. Landon. " Well, in my opinion, it is not fish he s after. I will put a stop to it. I shall give him my orders, and if he wishes to stay here, he must obey them." 120 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. " You will not do any such thing," said his wife, rising, and placing her hand on his shoulder, coaxingly. The entrance of a servant put an end to the discussion. Whether the major was right or not as to Bruce s general luck, he was correct about that occasion; for when Bruce returned he had not so much as one fish to show. CHAPTER XIII. IF, however, Bruce had not had any good luck with fish, he had had what he deemed yet better fortune. He had met Margaret Reid again. He was sauntering along the path which led up the pond, through the bushes and pines, when he came suddenly upon her gath ering blackberries. She turned and faced him smilingly as he unexpectedly appeared. A man may become ever so successful in after life ; he may amass wealth, secure power, and achieve fame ; but after a certain age he can never turn a corner in the street or a curve in the road, and meet an angel face to face with the glory of heaven all about her. This belongs to youth, and youth alone. It happened to Bruce. He turned a clump of bushes, and the dull hillside became suddenly transformed with an ineffable glory. It was only a girl with a big straw hat on her brown head, and with a glow in her 127 128 OA 7 NEWFOUND RIVER. cheeks, her half-startled look changing into one of pleased surprise ; but she seemed to him to shed a radiance around her, and to fill the woods with light. He helped her to fill the bucket she had. The afternoon sun shone down sultry, and the summer air was still. The not distant "Coo -coo, coo-oo-oo" of a dove was the only sound that reached them. He made Margaret sit down in the shade, and cutting some long bits of the blackberry bush filled with white blossoms pealed the briars from them for her as he lounged beside her. Bruce had something on his conscience which he wished to tell her. Until this was done he felt uneasy. He could not, however, see his way to begin. She took off her large hat and wreathed the boughs around it. " What a pity we cannot always have the thorns cut from among the flowers for us," she said. Bruce rose to his feet. " I have something to tell you, but I do not know how to say it," he began. She stood up and looked at him with grave surprise in her eyes. ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 129 " What is it? " she presently asked. " You know that my father has brought a warrant, a suit, against your grandfather ? - Her face flushed slightly and her eyes opened wider. He saw she knew all about it, and proceeded, " I wish to tell you I want you to know that it was my fault, that it was I who made him do it, who started it." Her head straightened on her shoulders and her expression changed. It was plainly a shock to her. "I wanted you to know that it was not my father. If I had known something that I now know ; if I had met your old woman before, I would never have done what I did. I would make any reparation in the world I could. You don t know how much I regret it." She suddenly turned away and began to cry quietly. " I did not think you would have been so cruel," she sobbed. " If you knew how my grandfather has suffered how he bears She could say no more. " I do know. I regret it more than I can tell you. It was inexcusable in me." 130 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. He took hold of her hand and kissed it. " If you knew how deeply I regret it, you would forgive me." She said nothing, but she did not draw her hand away until he had kissed it again. He had a new feeling for her, and one which he had never had before for any one. He wanted to comfort her. He longed to take her in his arms. Yet lie hardly dared to touch her hand. He had suddenly grown afraid of her. What if she should be angry with him? If she should not for give him ? Life seemed to grow dark at the thought. " Do you forgive me ? " he asked in a low voice of entreaty, as she moved slightly. " Yes," with her face still averted. She was wiping her eyes like a little girl. The sun once more came out. He felt like a ransomed criminal. " I must go now," she said. " I always give my grandfather his cup of tea in the after noon ; he is so feeble, and has been so wor ried about that suit." " May I walk home with you ? " He asked it as if she had the power of life and death. She allowed him to walk as far as the ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 131 spring. He felt grateful for even this, and followed her humbly. At the spring she said good by, and held out her hand. He took it and pressed it; and then, rais ing it quickly, pressed it to his lips. " Good by." She gave a little start, and drew it away. He did not dare to look at her. When he did look up, her face was still turned away from him, and she moved towards the path which led up to the house. When Bruce reached home, he was too much filled with thoughts of Margaret Reid to care for other company. He did not care to meet his father, who he knew would be full of his case. So he sauntered into the library, and pretended to look over a book; but he found himself unable to read, and he was sinking into a drowsy state of insensibility to everything around him, when he was aroused by a rapid step outside, fol lowed by a quick knock on the door. " Come in," he called. He had some curi osity ; for it was not often in that placid atmosphere that any step so energetic was heard, or any rap so excited. 132 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. A servant entered, and shutting the door behind him, stopped, hat in hand. He was manifestly under unusual excitement. " Well, Henry, what is it ? " inquired his master. " I heah dee s some trouble gwine on over on the other side of the pawn," he began hesi tatingly, " and I thought I d better come and let marster know." " Yes, that s right," said Bruce, languidly. "What is it?" "I don know, suh. Dick Dick Runa way s jes come home, he s been off two or three days, an he heah somehow about de warrant tryin to-day, an lie say he heah dat after marster come away dee all got to drinkin at de groggery, an dat Pokeberry got em sort o stirred up, an Dick Runaway say dee s gone over to old Dr. Browne s to breck him up, to tar an feather him, an burn his house down." Bruce sprang to his feet. "What s that?" he asked sharply. "A mob ! Why have they gone there ? " " I don know, suh. Dick says dee s a whole parcel on em," said the negro, looking down at the side of his shoe. " He say he heah em ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 133 talkin , an dee say tis cause he s a ; aboli- tioner, or someV ; I don t know nuthin bout it." He gave a sort of uneasy laugh at the word. " Dat feller Pokeberry s a bad feller," he added. " All right," said Bruce ; " I ll see about it. That s all." He turned and hurried to his room, and the negro retired. A minute later Bruce left the house by a side door, with his shot-gun in his hand, and descended the hill towards the river at a swift trot. CHAPTER XV. WHEN Margaret had given her grandfather his tea, she went to her room. Somehow she was filled with a mysterious unrest. What had come over her? She did not know her self. For the first time the life she was lead ing failed to satisfy her ; she was stifled and confined. She had suddenly outgrown her surroundings and become miserable. Why did her grandfather remain shut up ? she thought ! Why had he always discounte nanced her going out into the neighborhood ? Why was he so silent about her mother? Why was he so strange sometimes ? Oh, if he should die and leave her ! Why were they so secluded? Had he been rich once? The old dresses in the trunks in the garret were of the finest stuffs. Whose could they have been ? Why was she suddenly so dis satisfied and wretched? And, oh! why was she thinking at all of Bruce Landon ? He was nothing to her. He must be infinitely 134 ON NEWFOUND 1UVEB. 135 above her. She knew he was ; yet she did not feel it. He had kissed her hand. Why had he done it? He had taken a liberty with her, and she had permitted it, and now he despised her. She felt sure of it. She despised herself. She would never see him again. Yes, she would go and meet him, and show him that she was not one to be kissed and taken liberties with. She was so wretched that she ended by throwing herself on her bed and crying herself to sleep. When she awaked, it was nearly dark. Her grand father was calling her. There was a lovely, old curious-flowered lawn, with short sleeves and a short waist. She had brought it down from the garret, and had tried it on. It just fitted her. It had lain in her dresser ever since. She took it out and, under an impulse, put it on. It was the first time she had worn anything but the plain, coarse stuff bought in the country. She could not help being pleased at the result. If Bruce Landon could only see her in it! She determined to surprise her grandfather. " All right ; I m coming in a moment," she called cheerfully to him, in answer to his impatient summons. 136 ON NEWFOUND RIVES. When she walked in, the old man nearly sprang from his chair. She was a vision. "Gracious God! where did you get that?" he gasped. She told him. He sank back in his chair and closed his eyes. A groan escaped his pale lips. " What is it, grandpapa ? " she asked, fright ened at the effect on him. "Nothing; only you startled me," he said. She pressed him. " I have made you an outcast, I have sold your birthright," he said bitterly. " You will live to curse me." u Oh, grandpapa!" She kissed him ten derly. " You are my all - all I have in the world." " Yes, all all you have in the world ; and when I have gone, what will you have ? It is the same with every one. I seem to have cursed them all, to have put a blight upon them. I have been cursed." He was speaking to himself. "Oh, grandpapa, please don t!" sobbed Margaret, putting her hands on him caress ingly. " I have been your worst enemy," groaned ON NEWFOUND B1VEE. 137 the old man. " If you knew all, you would curse me." Margaret knelt beside him and flung her arms around him. " I would love you as I do, better than all the world." " I hoped you would escape," he muttered, his head sinking back on his pillow. " Grandpapa, tell me about my mother," she pleaded, laying her hand on his shoulder. He became too agitated to do so. But after a time he grew calmer. " She was an angel," he said. He had not understood her, and had been too hard with her ; had opposed her marriage to a young officer, whom she loved, and she had married him against his wishes. He was killed shortly afterwards. But even then, he had been cruel and had refused to forgive her. Then she, Margaret, had been born, and she had sent for him to come and forgive her before she died, and he had gone to her, and reached her just in time. She had died in his arms, forgiven ; but after she had placed her baby in his hands in token of her love for him. He had resigned from the navy, bought this place, and come here to live. 138 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. It was the first time he had ever said so much of her, and the girl s hungry spirit was feeding on the details and memories the old gentleman recalled, as if they were the bread of life. "Grandpapa, was she beautiful?" she asked. "As an angel," he said gravely. "She was very like you, my darling. She was fitted to shine in any station." The current of his thoughts seemed to change. "Margaret," he said suddenly, "you have met that young man young Landon?" " Yes, grandpapa," in a very low voice. She was glad the twilight shielded her. "He is proud and vain of his name and position?" There was an interrogation rather than an affirmation in his tone. " I do not know I cannot tell." "He is handsome? and self-confident?" Again the interrogation. Her heart gave a bound at the picture the terms called up. " Yes, grandpapa exceedingly." " It is the way with all of them," he mur mured. "You love him?" ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 139 " No, grandpapa," with a little gasp. " You will fall in love with him," said the old gentleman, this time without the inter rogation in his tone. " And he will not fall in love with you he paused, " unless, unless He broke off. " You will live to curse me," he said bit terly. " I am cursed. I have always been." His head sank on his breast. The girl flung herself on her knees be side him, and, stretching out her arms, placed her hands on his shoulders and held him. " Grandpapa," she said, eagerly lifting her face, "I am not in love with him; I will never be in love with him without your full approval. I promise you here on my knees. Oh, grandfather ! " Her voice broke. She laid her face against him and began to sob. A moment after she raised up. " I am your granddaughter," she said with pride, " and I will never be in love with him unless he is first in love with me, and then not without your consent." She rose and seated herself calmly in her chair. A look of admiration came over the ohl man s face, 140 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. " He will be in love with you," he said, as if to himself. Suddenly both started, as a strange noise came to them from without. Any sound was a novelty in that quiet spot, where even the cackling of a hen, the low of the cows, or the voices of the birds made themselves felt and noted on the utter silence of the place. But this noise was peculiar: it was con fused, unwonted, threatening. Margaret s eyes opened wide as she sat straight upright in her chair, and turned her head to the window. The noise swelled. Suddenly a gun was fired without, and loud shouts, mingled with boisterous laughter, sounded in the yard. Margaret sprang to her feet, with a white face, and her grand father suddenly rose from his chair, under the excitement of the moment oblivious of his rheumatism, and started to the door. " Youee yah ah," came the shouts from without, followed by loud boisterous laughter ; and then high above it all came the shrill, ex cited voice of old Milly, the words drowned by the confusion and derision which greeted them. Margaret pressed close to her grandfather. O^V NEWFOUND E1VEE. 141 " Oh, grandfather ! what is it coming ? Who are they? What can they want? Don t go out, please," as the old man started to the door. Old Milly s voice suddenly rang out, " Ole marster." The effect was electrical. The old officer turned back, and, reaching up over the man tel, seized the dusty sabre which had hung there for many a long day, and strode towards the door. Before he could reach it, however, the outer door, which always re mained unlocked, was flung open, and a num ber of intruders crowded pell-mell into the narrow hall with shouts and oaths. " Come out of your hole, you old aboli tionist ! " they cried. Margaret started to spring to the door of the chamber to lock it, but before she could reach it, it was thrown open violently, disclos ing a coarse, burly fellow, his face blackened as a disguise, and with a long, charred pine torch in his hand, as heavy as a club ; whilst behind him were a half-a-dozen others, also with blackened faces, and all evidently full of liquor. The girl shrank back with a cry of terror 142 ON NEWFOUND UIVER. as the ruffian in front broke into a loud laugh and, calling to those behind to come on, stepped in the door. The old surgeon, with a quick movement, put the girl behind him, and seizing the weapon in both hands, jerked the sword from the rusty scabbard. Youth had suddenly come back to his veins ; the emaciated frame straightened, and the sunken eyes blazed like coals. An angry exclamation burst from his lips, and he took a step forward, about to dash upon the mob. But Margaret, in her terror, was clinging to him and holding him. As it was, the ruffians gave back at the sudden transformation and retreated almost out of the room. They stood thus, for a moment, blocking the door. Then the blackened-faced leader called to his comrades to come on, and with drunken bravado advanced again into the apartment, cursing his companions for not backing him. They were just closing up again, when some thing occurred outside which drove the lead ers confusedly several steps into the room, and so close to the old man as he stood at bay, that he raised his sword with a furious oath to cut the leader down. Before he could do so, however, the mob ON NEWFOUND &1VEE. 148 which blocked the door was suddenly split, and a young fellow burst through them, flinging them right and left. He was bare headed, and in one hand he grasped a shot gun. As he sprang into the room and faced about, the mob fell back, squeezing out of the door as fast as they could, for it was Bruce Landon, with his Landon blood up and a gun in his hand. " Get out of here, you ruffians ! " he said, bringing his gun down upon them. They did not need this. They were getting out as fast as they could, all, at least, except the leader, who was Pokeberry Green. With the bravado born of his brutal nature inflamed by liquor, he turned and jerked out a pistol. As he did so, however, Bruce sprang on him. The impetus of the leap sent him spinning out into the passage, where, in the dark, they wrestled and struggled for life. Bruce was unable to use one hand well, as he still held his gun; but he had driven Pokeberry to the door and was forcing him steadily back when there was a deafening report, a sudden blaze of light in his face, and he felt a sensation as if a hot needle had run into his shoulder. He sank back, letting 144 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. go his antagonist; but mustering all his strength, swung his gun around his head with his uninjured arm and gave him a blow which sent him staggering backward, out into the darkness. He heard him fall heavily on the portico, and then he remembered no more. The next thing he knew, he felt a soft touch on his arm and was conscious that his shoulder hurt him a good deal, and that he was violently thirsty. Some one was say ing something in a low voice, and he opened his eyes. He was lying on a bed with white curtains around it, in a little, low-pitched room. One arm was bare, and his shoulder was being bandaged by two persons, one of whom was an old man, with a long, white beard and eyes set far back under his heavy brows, who was sitting on the bed ; and the other, a young girl, who was kneeling beside him, with her face nearly on a level with his. Her hands were busy with the band ages, one on his arm and one holding the roll. Her face was very grave and solici tous. When he first opened his eyes her dark lashes were almost lying on her cheek, as she looked down at her work. As he moved, ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 145 however, she glanced at his face, and as she caught his gaze, her great dark eyes suddenly lit up, lighting her whole face. Bruce never forgot the look, nor the sensation of her soft hand on his arm. " I must get up," he said immediately ; but both voices, at once, insisted that he must do nothing of the kind ; the old man, with grave decision, and the girl, with sweet earnest ness. As Bruce was feeling weak, he sank back and languidly gazed at the two or three old slender chairs, and the thin-legged table, on which were a few books, and a bowl filled with jonquils, which shone like gold against the snowy drapery of the dresser beyond. CHAPTER XIV. BRUCE S wound proved, after all, not to be serious ; and he walked home next day, though he was pallid and feeble from loss of blood. There was intense excitement at Landon Hall when next morning the fact that he had been shot was known. His father was in a consuming fury. He vowed that he would at once have the entire gang of ruf fians arrested and sent to the penitentiary. He was only restrained by the knowledge that to do this it would be necessary to bring out the fact of Bruce s presence on the occasion ; and this he was unwilling to do. He could not tolerate the idea of his name being dragged into public in connection with one whom he despised. This, however, did not prevent his publicly denouncing the affair in terms little short of violent. That such an outrage should have been perpetrated in his immediate neighborhood, 146 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 147 under his very nose, and, as it were, actually on the borders of his own plantation, was a crime not to be overlooked. The major had no conception that his words had borne a part in the instigation of the act : they had been spoken in heat, and he had never given a thought to them since. Indeed, he could not have been induced to believe that any connection existed between them and the outrageous act which had been perpetrated. Words were one thing, every man had a right to talk and express his opinion ; but to go and break into a man s house in the night, and attempt to drag him out why, it was monstrous ! He would have gone over to Dr. Browne s and have advised him to have the whole set of ruffians arrested, but he had sworn that he would never set his foot on the place until he owned it. He contented him self, therefore, with riding about the neighbor hood, denouncing the whole affair with all the vigor of a somewhat picturesque vocabulary, and threatening to go to court himself and have every scoundrel in the party indicted. Indeed, more than once he found some of the perpetrators as he believed, and gave his opinion of their act in such forcible terms 148 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. that they slunk away with blanched faces. Pokeberry, he publicly affirmed, ought to be hung, and he openly prophesied that he would be, only expressing his fear that some un toward accident might cheat the gallows out of its due. The old gentleman was at heart intensely pleased at Bruce s rescue of his neighbors, and behind his back referred to his cour age and decision as having held at bay a large mob and as having been worthy of a Landon. This, however, did not prevent him from being very scornful to Bruce him self about his sudden appearance at "old Browne s " and his engaging in a disreputable brawl, when, not long subsequently, he found Bruce, one afternoon, with his arm still in a sling, returning from that side of the stream, without even the time-worn excuse of a fishing-rod. He flung a caustic gibe at him about engaging in permanent rivalry with his friend Pokeberry. Bruce s face, which had flushed with self-consciousness on coming unexpectedly on his father, turned a sudden white. He was in no mood for jesting ; for he had been waiting and watching in vain all the long afternoon in the hope of catching a ON NEWFOUND RIVEE. 149 glimpse of the face which now never left his mind during his waking hours. He started to reply ; but by a strong effort controlled himself, and, turning away, walked home. The major, on reaching the house, sought his wife and held a long interview with her. He would as soon not have confessed his shortcomings to the Deity as to his wife. As a result of this conference he, after tea, sent for Bruce, and had a short interview with him. It began inauspiciously ; for both were heated at the start. In the first place, Bruce knocked at the door of the library, where his father was. This offended the old gen tleman, who was in a mood in which he might have been offended if he had not knocked. " You are formal," he said coldly, as the young man entered, and remained standing. "I thought it was a formal interview to which I was invited, sir," said Bruce, with marked dignity. "It depends upon you," said the major. " Take a seat ; I wish to speak to you." He came to the point quickly. "Bruce," he said, "I want you to go abroad." 150 ON NEWFOUND RtVER. The young man started. Go abroad, and never see Margaret Reid again ! His father continued : " I want you to go abroad at once. I will give you all the money you wish to spend, and you can be as independent as you please. You already have many pleasant acquaint ances in England and France ; and I feel sure that I can secure for you a position as secretary with one of the legations, per haps in one of those countries. It will fur nish you something to do, and give you official position." He ended, and looked at Bruce hopefully. He had got through better than he had expected. "I am very much obliged to you," said Bruce, with great urbanity. "But I don t want to go." The major s calm forsook him. " Well, sir, I order you to go." " May I ask, sir, why you propose to take me up and banish me like an exile ? Why not shut me up on a lettre de cachet?" in quired the young man. " Yes, sir, you may. It is because you are throwing away your life in an idle, worthless ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 151 fashion ; associating with people who are not fit associates for a gentleman; consorting with an unknown young woman ; making yourself the talk of the country, and drag ging your name, which is an honorable one, into the vulgar gossip at every Crossroads groggery in the neighborhood!" His sen tences were shot out one after the other. Bruce sprang to his feet. " It is not true," he said angrily ; then qualified it. " You are not speaking of your own knowledge ; and whoever has informed you has said what is false. Miss Reid is a lady- " No%so, sir," retorted the major. " It is true, and I do speak of my own knowledge : even the negroes are talking about it. It is a disgrace ; and whether you go to Europe or not, I forbid you ever to go again to that place. You cannot be going to marry the young woman, and I will not stand any dis grace. If I hear of you doing anything dis graceful I will cut you off with a shilling. What is more, I will not have my name dragged into the mire of low scandal-mon- gering, and if you go again, you go at your peril." He turned to leave. 152 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. Bruce s face turned white. " You do not know what you are talking about. I am a gentleman." The major made a gesture. "I refuse to be dictated to as if I were a negro," said the young man. " I will go wherever and whenever I please." " At your peril." The major, without awaiting his answer, left the room, leaving him to reflect on his words. The next morning the major mounted his horse and rode down upon the river, with an expression on his face which bespoke some thing extraordinary. He was dressed in immaculate linen from throat to hfcl, and carried a light umbrella. His face above his high collar was unusually severe. Every thing that he saw was wrong. His overseer told him " that fellow Dick Runaway " had gone off again the night before, the second time in three months. He " ought to sell him; he could not do anything with him." He "believed that old man over across the pond hired him to take care of his cows ; knew he harbored him." The major was inclined to believe so too, but scouted the notion to the overseer. He was not agreeing ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 153 with any one just then. However, he vowed he would not stand Dick any longer. He would not have a runaway negro. He would sell him as soon as he was caught. The overseer was so elated that he made a slip. He didn t know anybody who could catch him except Pokeberry; should he tell Pokeberry to go after him ? The mention of Pokeberry touched the major into flame. Pokeberry ! that scoundrel ! No ; he hoped if he went after Dick, Dick would kill him ; he would spend every dollar of his estate de fending him if he did. He would rather never have Dick back, rather lose every negro on his place, than have that ruffian to go after him. He left the overseer speechless and over whelmed. After finding fault with everything he saw, he rode up the river, through the woods. It was spring, and the trees were fresh and tender, their varied tints looking in the land scape like vast flowers. The old road, so long unused, was in many places grown up in bushes, the leafy limbs meeting across the path, so that the major, to pass under them, had frequently to lean down on his bay 154 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. horse s neck. Still he pushed on, and it was only when he came to the narrow ford across the stream at the head of the pond that he paused. There he stopped, irresolute. The old car riage-way down to the stream on his side and up on the other had been washed into two cuts ; but they were covered with old leaves, and a spreading dogwood filled with snowy bloom was growing right in the middle of the cut. The major looked across. He had not passed that boundary for fifteen years. On the other side, the track was even less dis tinct than on his ; for young pines were grow ing up in it. lie looked beyond the stream, and then, as if undecided, glanced back in the direction from which he had come. Sud denly he tightened the rein, and giving the hesitating horse the whip, rode down to the water, went floundering through the narrow, miry stream, and pushed on up the long-un used track. The struggle that it had cost to bring him across had brought a cloud on the major s face ; his brows were knit, and now, as he walked his horse along, his look was grim enough. To think that this was the home of his fathers, the cradle of his ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 155 race ; held by an alien ; allowed to grow up in a wilderness ; worse than any poor white s place ! It was enough to make his father turn in his grave. Why, those blackguards were right, were almost right, had some excuse for trying to drive him off. If he were not an abolitionist, he was worse. And to think of his son stooping to be in love with this man s granddaughter ! It was a dis grace ! He could not sustain the thought of it. He would cut him off with a shilling if he ever set foot on the place again. Things had gone too far. He would stand no more ! Pines everywhere. He would see the crea ture and settle the matter for good and all. She would hardly fail to accede to his wishes ; few could. If she did, if she was brazen, why, he would buy her off. He passed over the hill through pines all the way, and beyond where the fence used to be. It was all rotted now, and he rode on through the thicket towards the house. Just as he arrived in sight of an opening some distance ahead, which he knew must be the yard, he came in view of some one walking along the path before him, a young woman. A large straw hat concealed her head, and 156 O.V NEWFOUND RIVER. she carried a basket on her arm. She was tall and evidently young, and it occurred to the major, as he did not know her, that she was some visitor. Hearing his horse, she turned hastily and looked back, but was too far distant for him to see her face ; then she quickened her step. The major, wishing to get her to bear a message, pushed his horse to a trot to overtake her. He came up to her just as she reached the rude " bars " of small unbarked pine poles, which, to keep the cows in, were thrown across the road between the two old gate-posts which had once formed the entrance to the yard. " I say, good morning," said the major, sitting in an easy posture on his handsome bay and gazing ahead at the old house which could just be seen through the trees. He did not even look at her. " Can you take a message for me to the 3 r oung woman in there, Dr. Browne s grand daughter, Miss Browne, or whatever her name is?" " I am Dr. Browne s granddaughter," said the young woman, in a placid, melodious voice, turning up to him a face a little flushed with the excitement of the unexpected meeting; ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 157 but with calm, dark eyes under straight black brows, and with a certain look which the major thought of afterwards and which made him forget all else. " Oh ! ah ! ah ! You don t say so ! I beg your pardon, I m sure," he began, and before he knew it he had dismounted and was stand ing down on the ground with his hat in his hand. How awkward it was, and how like a fool he felt ! Why, she was a beauty and quite a lady. What the deuce should he say ! "It is a very fine day ah!" he began, wishing himself at home, or in perdition, or anywhere but where he was. "Yes, I have been enjoying it," she said placidly, looking him full in the eyes, her face a little lifted and slightly flushed, her eyes wide, and her lips the least bit compressed. How melodious her voice was ! Quite like a lady s voice, thought the major. He made a remark about the flowers she had in her bas ket, rather to gain time and avoid coming to the point than because they pleased him par ticularly. He was embarrassed by finding her so different from what he expected, so self- possessed, and undeniably beautiful. 158 ON NEWFOUND EIVER. " Yes ? " with a rising inflection. She looked down at them gravely, and reaching her hand around instinctively arranged them in the basket. Then she looked at him in quiringly. There was no hope for it ; he must go on. "I I . If you will allow me, I will put on my hat ; the sun is a little warm," he said, paltering. She bowed, " Certainly." "I I I came to speak to you about my son," began the major, and paused. Her face flushed a little, and she drew in her breath in a startled way, the lips growing just a shade more compressed. He looked away, and then growing angry with himself, began rapidly, " I want to say something to you about my son, Mr. Bruce Landon?" There was a shade of interrogation in his tone, and she bowed slightly to show that she understood him. She was standing very straight. " My son is is a gentleman - He paused, abashed at his speech. " Damnably unlike his father on this pres- ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 159 ent occasion," he thought suddenly, almost amused at the reflection. Then he added in a softer tone, " He is my only son, and I I have plans for him, and I wanted He paused. " Yes?" she bowed inquiringly, still looking him full in the face with that embarrassing, unflinching gaze from her eyes. " I don t want you to marry him," blurted out the major, desperately. "Neither do I. You need have no fear; I have no idea of marrying him," she said quietly, never taking her eyes from his face. Her head straightened on her shoulders just a little. The major almost staggered. She refuse Bruce ! His son ! Impossible ! " He is my only son, and I have made plans for him," explained the major again lamely, in impotent contempt for himself. "I will not prevent your carrying them out," she said, raising her head perceptibly, and standing more erect than she had done. " I will never marry him." " You are far too good for him," he began, feeling that some amend was to be made her. "I regret having to say what I have done " 1GO ON NEWFOUND RIVER. he was going on ; but the girl drew herself up, and, without taking her eyes from his face, said, "You know nothing about me." Then as the major paused abashed, added, still in the same modulated voice, "Is that all?" " Yes," said the major, in a crestfallen tone, gathering up his bridle-reins. "I am sorry " he began, but again her look stopped him. He dared not apologize. She backed slightly away. It might have been to get out of the reach of his horse ; but it seemed to the major as if a queen were end ing an audience. " Good by. I am very much obliged to you," said the old gentleman, in a rather subdued tone, putting on his hat and turning to mount. " Good day." She turned and walked slowly towards the house. The major rode off at a gallop, feeling more contempt for himself than he ever had done in his life. Who was she like? CHAPTER XVI. THE major had pulled in his horse and was riding through the pines in deep reflection, when a large man stepped suddenly out of the thick growth beside the way into the narrow path just before him, facing him. The sudden apparition caused the spirited horse that the major rode to bound and half wheel around ; but the practised hand on the bridle brought him back. It was Pokeberry Green, and as usual he carried his long, double-barrelled gun in the hollow of his left arm. He stood, glowering, right in the middle of the road. The major s anger rose. " What do you mean, sir, by jumping out of the bushes in that manner in front of a gentleman s horse? Have you no sense left? Get out of the way, and let me come by." " I want to see you," growled Pokeberry. " Well, it s more than I do you. What do you want to see me about?" 161 162 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. " I hear," he began angrily, " that you said I was in that mob that went tother night to old man Browne s and broke in his house ? " His manner was very threatening, and he looked thoroughly dangerous. "Well, you heard right," said the major, boldly; "I did say so. And I said further more that you ought to be prosecuted and sent to the penitentiary, and I will have it done if you don t look out. It s an outrage that such a scoundrel should be allowed to run free. You are a disgrace to the neigh borhood." The man with an angry oath suddenly cocked his gun, and, flinging it a little for ward, started to raise it. If the major had quailed ever so little, murder would have been done on the spot. But he did not. The menacing act of the ruffian simply enraged him. Intrepidly push ing his frightened horse closer up to him, he raised his whip. " Lower that gun instantly, you scoundrel ! " he said. " Do you think I am to be threat ened ? If you dare to assault me in this way, I ll have you tied to a tree and thrashed within an inch of your life." ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 163 The absolute fearlessness of the old gentle man, and his imperious anger, overwhelmed the ruffian. His eyes quailed and fell, and, dropping his gun, he stepped back out of the way. "I ain threatenin nobody," he half growled, half whined. "I been squirrel-huntin , an I jes wanted to tell you I didn had nothin to do with that there thing tother night. I ll swar on a stack of Bibles I didn , and I can prove it by a hundred witnesses. I hope I may die on the spot if I wan home sleep by sundown. I was home drunk that evening," he added corroboratively. " I have no doubt that you can prove it by the other scoundrels who were there," said the implacable major, "who will quite will ingly swear to that or any other invention you may suggest ; but if you expect to get off by that, I tell you now that you are mis taken. There is some law left in the land, I hope ; and unless you find it so, my name is not Landon." So saying, he passed on, leaving the crest fallen and subdued Pokeberry cursing him under his breath, and looking dangerously at his black gun-barrels. 164 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. He had not gone over a quarter of a mile further, and had not quite readied the river, when his horse again started and shied in the narrow track. The major angrily faced him towards the point from which he had veered, thinking, perhaps, that Pokeberry had inter cepted him. With pointed ears and high head the horse backed aw r ay. His master looked earnestly into the woods. "Walk out from behind that tree, and come here ! " he suddenly called sternly, to an invisible person. Finding himself discovered, a negro stepped out, and came slowly and humbly towards him. He was apparently about thirty years of age, tall and strongly built, and very black. " My marster," he said. The major pitched into him with volubility. Dick s spirits rose ; for it was Dick Runaway himself. He recognized in his master s man ner a by no means dangerous mood. It was when he was stern and silent that he was to be feared. "What do you run away for?" finally de manded the major. "Do you think that I have nothing to do but support a worthless, runaway vagabond, who lives half his time ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 165 in the woods ? I believe that you have lived half your life in the woods. What did you run away for this time ? " The negro stood looking down on the ground in some embarrassment. Suddenly he broke off a long, stout dogwood switcli from a thick clump of bushes which grew beside the path, and stripped it of its leaves. " Here, marster, whip me," he said, pushing it into his hand, and pulling off his coat. The major gave him an impatient cut with the switch, as he might have given his shying horse, and flung it away. " Do you suppose I want to be soiling my hands whipping a worthless rascal ? What I want to know is, what made you run away ? You are free enough at home, Heaven knows ; lazy enough, anyhow; it breaks me to keep you worthless rascals." He paused and waited, with his eye on the darkey, as if expecting a reply. " What was it ? sheer worthlessness ? " "Nor, suh, twant. Dat man say he was gwine meek you sell me," said Dick, doubtfully. " Make me sell you ? What man ? " " Dat po white man Mist Bailiff." The negro s sovereign contempt was in his tone. 1G6 ON NEWFOUND EIVER. " Don t you let me hear you speak of my overseer that way, sir," said the major ; but he did not look offended. Perhaps he was secretly a little pleased. The negro recog nized him as his natural and rightful chief, and looked on the other with unfeigned dis dain. " Make me sell you?" he repeated. "Who ever made me do anything? If he could have made me sell you, I d have sold you long ago, for you are not worth keeping. Come along home with me this minute." He rode on, the negro following. He was walking behind, and could have easily enough slipped off into the woods and have escaped ; but he did not attempt it. His master s will controlled him, as an officer controls a soldier in battle. Indeed, as he followed him, his whole manner had changed. The look of doubt and difficulty had disap peared from his face, and he even grinned to himself every now and then. When they had crossed the river to their own side, and come in sight of the fields through the woods, the major stopped. "You d better go back by yourself," he said; "it will be better for you. If you ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 167 come with me, they will think I brought you back. Go that way." He pointed through the woods in a direction at right angles to the road they were in. The negro hesitated, and made a gesture of embarrassment. " Marster " " If the overseer says anything to you, tell him I told you to say he was to come to see me." The major thought that was his doubt. " Nor, suh, tain dat," explained the darkey. "Dat feller Pokeberry, Pokeberry Green, dat nigger-hunter " He paused. " Well, what about him ? " demanded the major. " He s a bad feller ! " he said earnestly. "I have no doubt you think so," the major said dryly, with a quizzical look in his eyes. The negro missed the point. " He got meanness in him ! " he said. " He got he mine set for you and Marse Bruce, too; and for dem folks over yonder, too." He indicated Dr. Browne s place, across the river. " He got meanness in him ! " " Here, how do you know this ? " the major demanded. The negro paused. 168 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. "I heah him say so. I been up to he house." " Been up to his house ? " " Yes, suh ; I crope up dyah tother night, and hearn him tellin another man all about hit." " I thought he had dogs ? " said the major. " Dem ar little houn s ! " said the negro, dis dainfully. "I don mind dem no mo n I does mices. I done meek friends wid em," he said, with a shrewd gleam in his eyes. The major looked amused. "Well?" "I hearn him say," the negro proceeded, "dat he was gwine long back whar he come f om ; dat he was tired o livin down heah ; he could go back dyah now, he said, cus ev y- body is done dead whar knowed him. But b fo he go, he said, he was gwine 4 lef he mark behine him, and he name dem he gwine lef he mark on." The fellow s seriousness testified his truth, and the major listened attentively. u He say he gwine lef he mark on you, marster, and Marse Bruce, an on dat ole man " (again indicating the direction beyond the stream), "and de young lady over dyah He ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 169 said he could ketch her, and sometimes when she was out in de woods he was gwine fine her ; an Marse Bruce, he said he d git him ef he hang for it. Dat man s got meanness in him ! " he said again. " You heard him say all this ? " said the major, thoughtfully. "Yes, suh; an a heap mo , too. I been know him some time." He gave a quick glance at his master. " I been know him ever since dat time he cotch me and fotch me back tied, an you buse him so." (The major looked virtuous.) " He never forgive you for dat," proceeded the negro. "He meet me once arter dat, an ax me didn I warn run away for good. He say whar he come f om de niggers was all free, and had big house and mule like white folks, and ef I d come wid him, he could git me dyah ; dat we could slip off some night, and go like I b longst to him, tell we git whar he live, or somewhar or nother." " Ah ! Well, and what ? " " I tell him, Nor, I run away enough now. I don warn be no free nigger. I know I ain gwine meek out I b longst to him," he said, with contempt ; " not to dat mean, po white 170 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. man." He thought of the time he had caught and tied him, and of the other occasion when he had had him whipped ; but did not deem it worth while to recall these to his master. " An it good I clidn ; cause dat night I talkin bout, I heah him tellin dat turr man I ain know, bout how he had try to git me to go off wid him, an ef he had, he wuz gwine teck me down to South Cyarliny an sell me. He say he done sole too or three down dyah in he time, an he laughed and tried to git de urr man to go in wid him. Dat man got mean ness in him ! " The major was thoroughly attentive. " Was that all you heard him say ? " "Yes, suh, den," said the negro. "I got skeered de dogs mought git to barkin , an meek him let he gun off an put he mark on me, an I slipped off. He over yonder in de woods now." He nodded over towards the other side of the stream. " I don t know ef he arter Marse Bruce or dat young lady." " Go home," said the master, " and don t say anything of this to any one." "Yes, suh." He went off, and the major rode on. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 171 On the way through the fields he met his overseer, who, unfortunately for him, re curred to the conversation of the morning. The major broke out on him : " Sell one of my negroes ? No, sir ! I d as soon think of selling you. I don t care how often the fellow runs away. He must have had some cause I don t know about. I d have run away, too." This was a deadly thrust at the overseer, who looked dumfounded, and with much humility said something about the major s speech this morning. " Well, sir, I never had the least intention of it," he said truly. " I thought you knew me well enough by this time to be able to tell when I mean a thing and when I do not." He rode on to the house. As he entered the hall his eyes fell on the portrait of his grandmother as a bride, which hung on the wall. " By Jove ! how like her she is ! " he said. " She looks as proud as she was, and she was the proudest woman on earth." At that moment Margaret Reid, her pride forgot, was seated on the low porch with her 172 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. head on her arm, where she had flung herself more than an hour before. The basket of wild flowers she had gathered was overturned on the floor beside her, and the flowers lay wilting in the sun. CHAPTER XVII. WHEN the major arrived at home, the first thing he did was to consult his wife. This he always did whatever the matter might be, though he did not invariably follow her ad vice, an independence he atoned for by being always ready to admit its folly. As he came out of the audience chamber, his wife called after him, " Let Dick drive them over." The major gave her a look of admiration as he passed out of the door. A half-hour later Dick Runaway was driv ing out of the gate of the river pasture the two finest milch cows in the major s herd. The major rode down, and joining him, ac companied him to the other side of the river to see the cows safely across. As he turned back he called to the negro, "Be sure to remember, you are not to mention who sent them." This Dick faithfully engaged not to do; 173 174 ON NEWFOUND E1VER. and the major rode slowly home as he saw him start the cows up the hill, along the old road through the pines. Just as he emerged from the woods he was met by Bailiff, his overseer, in a state of great excitement. A negro had found him on some other portion of the plantation, and told him that a man had been seen down in the river pasture actually driving two of the major s cattle out of the field. He was thought to be Dick Runaway. He was following on their tracks in hot haste. "You d better sell that nigger, sir," he said earnestly. "He s ruinin every one on this place." The major looked quite sheepish. He told the overseer with much embarrassment that he had himself directed Dick to drive the cows over to a neighbor s ; that Mrs. Landon had heard his family was very poor, and wished to relieve them. It was this same day, towards the after noon. Old Dr. Browne was sitting alone in his room. He had made Margaret get him pen, ink, and paper, and then had sent her out to walk. She had found her mammy getting ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 175 ready to go after the cows ; and as the old woman was ailing with rheumatism, which she called " a misery in her back," had told her she would go in her place, and with an injunction to her to look after her grand father, had gone off through the pines down towards the pond where the cows usually roamed, sustaining themselves on the coarse pond-grass. She had not been gone long when the old woman coming to her door on the way to the house to fulfil Margaret s injunction, saw two cows being let into the yard at the old gate by a negro man. With an exclamation of astonishment at the strange sight, she hastened to meet the man at as rapid a pace as her lameness per mitted. "Whose cows is dem you got dyah? and what you drivin em thoo heah for? Don t you know marster don t low folks to be drivin stock thoo dis place ? " She spoke with some asperity in her voice. It was a little tempered by the sight of the sleek coats and large milky bags of the cows, at which she looked with the eye of a con noisseur. 176 ON NEWFOUND HIVER. " Good evenin ," said the man, who was Dick Runaway. " Dey s Dr. Browne s cows." " Dem am we cows," said the old woman. " We ain got but two cows, an dee s po er n dem." " I cyarn help it," said Dick ; " dese is de doctor s." "Don t I know my own cows? Often as I been milked Teensey and Princess ! " She looked scornfully at him. " Pears like you don t," said he, with an air of mystery about him ; " cuz I tell you dese is Dr. Browne s cows." " Whar he git em, den ? " she asked, rest ing her doubled fists on her hips. This was a question Dick was unprepared for. He remembered the major s injunction that he was on no account to say a word as to who sent them. "Whar he git em?" he asked vacantly, to gain time whilst he hunted around for a plausible lie. " Whar he git em ? What you got to do wid whar he git em ? I tell you he got em. Ain dat nough for you to know? You better go long an git bucket to milk em, cause milk running out de bags ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 177 right now. You am never see no sich cows as dese befo ! " He could not help indulging in a little bragging, and was congratulating himself on his reply. "I believe you se done stolt dem cows, and jes tryin to lef em heah to git youself out o trouble, an git we in," said the old lady, suspiciously. This completely disarranged Dick s plans and disposed of his complacency. He vowed, with many asseverations, that he had not only come by the cattle honestly, but had been in structed by his master to bring them as a present to Dr. Browne; and he was led into such a glowing description of his mas ter s wealth and grandeur, that before he was half through, the old woman had learned fully all the facts in the case. She asked if he had brought a note. Dick, thoroughly humbled, said he had not. So with a sniff at him and his master she accepted the cows without the note, and made Dick drive them down to the "back yard." There she dismissed him, with a message of thanks, couched in such language and accom panied by an air of so much condescension, 178 ON XEWFOUXD RIVER. that Dick left with a mystified feeling, partly astonishment, and partly awe. " Dat ain no po white folks nigger," he said to himself again and again, as he went home. " She talk jes as assumptions as ef she b longst to marster." When the old woman had seen Dick well out of sight her whole manner changed. In place of the indifference she had displayed before him, delight beamed from her wrinkled black face, and importance showed in every movement she made. After she had first secured and made friends with the two cows, and milked them a little to satisfy herself, she went into the house to acquaint her master with the important news. Her eager manner, however, was put off, like a garment, at his door, and when she entered his chamber she was as quiet, and apparently as calm, as usual. The old gentleman was lying back in his chair, with his eyes closed. His pen was in his hand and his paper was on his knee. She thought he was asleep, and was retiring, when he spoke her name. "Clarissa?" "Sir?" ON NEWFOUND E1VEE. 179 "Come here." She obeyed, and stood silent near his chair. " Where is your mistress ? " he asked. " She gone arter de cows. She would go, suh ; I couldn Lender her." He closed his eyes again and kept them shut. She remained motionless. " That young man, ah young Mr. Lan- don, over the other side of the river, ah you have seen him over on this side ? " " Yes, suh." "Ah! How often?" He put the ques tions very slowly, and as if they fell between his thoughts. " I ain never see him but once, suh, not to speak to," she said ; " but he comes over heah right constant. He pears to be mighty foil o fishing over heah, dthough I don think he ketches much." " What sort of a young man ah what does he seem to be doing when he isn t catch ing fish?" " He pears to me, marster, to be kind o trompin up an down. He ain arter fish, marster; he s arter my mistis, my lamb," she broke out suddenly. Her master made no reply, but he opened 180 OJV NEWFOUND RIVER. his eyes and looked at her without moving. Her tongue being loosed, she went on to tell him all she knew of Bruce, who she declared appeared to her to be " a mighty nice disposed gent man." She instanced his going to drive the cows back the day they went across the river. " I am getting very old and feeble," said her master, when she paused after her ac count. " I think I shall write a will. I had not intended to do so, but I think now I shall. I wish you to know where it is if anything should happen." She said, " Yes, suh." Then she proceeded to tell of the present of the two cows, which she attributed to Bruce. This piece of news had a very different effect on the old gentleman from that which she expected. It threw him into a violent passion. He declared that he would not sub mit to such insolence, and directed that the cows should be forthwith driven home. He would write a note. No ; no note had been sent with them ; none should go back with them, but a message to Major Landon to say ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 181 that he had cows of his own, and wanted neither his cows nor his interference. The cows accordingly reappeared that even ing at the Landon Hall barn, with a message which had lost none of its vigor by transmis sion through either old Folium or the over seer to whom he delivered it. After receiving it the major burnt at white heat ; even Mrs. Landon s soothing influence having no effect on him. When, after having started the cows home in her husband s charge, the old woman re turned to her master, as he instructed her to do, he was just folding up the paper which he had written. He made her light a candle and bring a piece of sealing-wax, and with it he sealed the document carefully, using a large seal containing a crest, which he had on his watch chain. Then he endorsed it with the words: " Statement and Will of him known as Thomas Browne, M.D., of Landon Hill. Written wholly with his own Hand. To be opened only after his Death." This paper he gave to the old woman and directed her where to place it in a drawer in an old desk in the corner, explaining to her 182 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. with great care what it was, and impressing on her its importance in event of his death at any time. She promised, with an earnest ness which satisfied him, that it should be preserved and produced, and with a wave of his hand he dismissed her. As she disappeared, he sank back on his pillow, and his eyes closed. " It was her due," he said to himself wea rily. " I had not intended it ; but it was her due. I have sacrificed everything, even her, to what I deemed my expiation, and perhaps after all it was but my pride. It has been my curse all my life. I will not sacrifice her fur ther. It shall not pursue her after my death. I will make the amend to her. I will hum ble them. Humble them ! " he repeated. " There it is again ! God forgive me ! it comes up even in my best action. It has ruined my life ! blasted all it has touched ! made me an outcast ! left her a beggar ! " He leaned back with an expression of unutterable weariness on his gray face. CHAPTER XVIII. MARGARET was looking for the cows down in the old pine-grown field on the river. She had wanted the walk ; wanted anything that would take her out of herself. The time that had passed since her inter view with Major Landon had been new to her ; her life had been different. Why had he come to see her ? Did Bruce Landon love her? He had never himself intimated it. And had she not promised that she would not marry him? Given her word, which shut him out from her forever ! Would she could she marry him against the will of that hard, cruel father of his, with his thin, proud face and his cold words? How dare he to speak so to her ! How dare he come to her at all ! It was an insult. She, poor as she was, would humble his pride. Her grand father was better than he. She would show him that she, too, was proud. And even as she walked along the well-known paths 183 184 O.V NEWFOUND RIVER. through the pines, she at the thought held her head erect and stepped with an offended mien. But there it came again : the picture of the handsome, calm, white face upturned, with the eyes closed and the lashes on his cheek, just as he had lain on the floor at her feet that evening when she thought he was dead, murdered by that ruffian. Why could she not forget it ? Why had her heart stopped beating, and then leaped into her throat ? She had thought of him as he lay that afternoon so long ago, asleep on his arm under the great poplar with the sunbeams on his beautiful, upturned face, as she had kissed him for the fairy prince to bring him to life. Why had she longed so to throw herself beside him as he lay that night on the floor, and die with him? Why had she thought of him all these years ? why had she ever seen him ? Was he not infinitely beyond her ? Besides, had she not promised not to marry him, never to marry him? She clenched her slender hands as she walked along, and pressed the nails into her pink palms till they hurt. She could see or hear nothing of the cows along the branch where they could usually ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 185 be found, so she went on towards the river, thinking they might be there. She had walked that path a thousand times, yet she now thought only of the occasions when she had met Bruce Landon. She would never see him again; for his cruel, hard father would tell him what she had said. He would be angry with her for refusing to marry him when he had never even said a word to her. She pictured to herself his indignation when his father should inform him of her prom ise. What right had she to assume that he wanted to marry her? She did not know even that he loved her. He would go away and stay another eight years ; he would never come back. She would not marry him if he did. She stopped to listen, trying to think it was for the cow-bells ; but the sorrowful notes of a dove s " Coo-coo-oo, Coo-oo-oo " on some dead limb deep in the pines were the only sound she heard, and they made the silence and loneliness more oppressive. She turned and went towards the big spring at the foot of the great poplar. Was it to find the cows ? She had almost reached the spring, when, 186 OJV NEWFOUND RIVER. at a turn in the path, she came face to face with a man. Her,heart leaped into her throat with fear ; for she recognized at once the burly figure, the coarse, bloated face crossed by the deep red mark which had given his name to Poke- berry Green. He had in his hand his gun. He broke into a coarse laugh as he observed the start she gave. "So you were lookin fer me, my pretty lady," he said with a leer, resting his gun on the ground, and standing in the middle of the narrow path. " I m havin luck to-day." "Good evening; I was looking for my cows," said Margaret .in as calm a voice as she could command, moving out of the path to let him get by. " Lookin fer the cows ; en warn you lookin fer nothin else ? Well, now, maybe I ll help you look fer em. Pleasant to find comp ny in a lonesome place onexpected, am it? Kind o lonesome place down here on the river ? " The fellow laughed amusedly at the girl s frightened look. "Let me pass, please," she said coldly, moving to go by him. " Oh, don" be in sich a hurry," he drawled. ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 187 " We ain met in a long time, not to talk, though I ve seen you often. I wuz lookin fer somehody, something else besides you, an not ixpectin to fine sich pretty game, sich a pretty little duck, and I cain bear to give you up. Don frown that wa}^; tain be- comin to sich a pretty face. Cain you smile a little on Poke ? " " Let me by, sir ; don t you dare to speak to me ! " said Margaret, raising her head de fiantly and looking at the ruffian with flash ing eyes. He was somewhat abashed, and changed his drawling tone ; but as she moved, he seized her by the wrist. " You vixen ! " he growled ; " I ve got you now ; I have been waiting fer you." Margaret was naturally wiry, and fear and anger together gave her unwonted strength. With a cry of anguish and fright, she wrenched her arm from his grasp, lacerating the wrist, and springing forward fled like a frightened deer down the path. "Ah! That s your game?" laughed the ruffian, running after her. " You are worth catching. Stop, or I ll shoot." Margaret fled the faster. 188 O.V NEWFOUND 1UVER. He was overtaking her when he suddenly stopped, and turned his head, and listened; for a shout was heard down the path a short distance ahead, and the sound of a man s footsteps rushing towards them. Pokeberry sprang into the bushes and dashed away, just as Margaret rushed into the arms of Bruce Landon. "Oh, Bruce, Bruce!" she cried. The next instant she was weeping hysteri cally, and his strong arms were about her. When the delirium had passed, Margaret found herself sitting on the great rock by the spring. Bruce was beside her, and his arm was around her. Then she remembered. She remembered how she had clung to him ; how she had loved him ; how safe she had felt in his arms, as if he alone could shield and save her ; how he had soothed her, calmed her, comforted her ; how furious he had been with the ruffian who had insulted her; and how he would have followed him and caught him, and, she believed, have killed him, but for her clinging to him, and telling him that she would die if he left her there ; then how he had kissed her and told her of his love ; and how, with her face against his, she had OJV NEW FOUND RIVER. 189 told him that she loved him ; and how she could willingly have died there in his arms. All this she now, for the first time, remem bered. Her head was on his shoulder, and his arm was around her, and she rested with a sense of such perfect security and happiness that when the recollection of the promise to his father came suddenly to her it smote her like the shock of death. She could not act. She could not give him up. Stronger and stronger, however, came the recollec tion of her position and of the humiliation which Major Landon had placed on her, on her and on her grandfather. She thought of the old gentleman sitting lonely in his armchair in the bare room at home. She thought of his patience, of his kindness, and of his pride. What a blow it would be to him to know it ! She opened her eyes and gazed straight before her for a moment, think ing it all over. Suddenly she sprang up with a movement so unexpected that Bruce started, and gazed about him, supposing some one was approach ing. Margaret looked at him, her lips half 190 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. formed for speech. An expression of deep anxiety had taken the place of the look of perfect content which had made her face so sweet. "Well, what is it?" Bruce reached out his hand to her, with a smile, and then rose to take her again in his arms. "No; I cannot. I have been wrong. I cannot marry you, ever, and I have no right to love you ; it is impossible. No." She backed away with a gesture of refusal, as Bruce caught her, and with the smile still on his lips, attempted to put his arm around her. Her face was perfectly grave, and the happi ness was dying slowly from it. "What are you talking about?" he asked. " Oh ! I cannot. No " (as he tried to draw her to him), " no. Oh, why did I ever see you ? Why did you ever come here ? " She looked at him piteously, as if she asked the question to receive an answer. " Why did you ever come here ? " she repeated. " I came because I loved you ; because you are my soul ; because God drove me here. I would have found you in a desert had you been there," declared Bruce, vehemently, catching her, and drawing her firmly up to ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 191 him. She put up her hands, and placing them on his shoulders, held him at arms length. "No; you must not. I cannot; indeed I cannot. I was wild, insane ; it is impossible. I cannot love you." She kept him from her by an effort of strength. " But you do love me ; you said you did." " No ; I was wrong. You cannot love me." " But I can, and I do, better than earth, better than heaven," declared Bruce, catch ing and holding her by her arms. " No ; you have no right to do it. I am nothing but an unknown, poor girl. I know nothing ; I have seen nothing. You are Bruce Landon. Your father " He would have interrupted her, but she would not permit him. " Your mother " "My mother is an angel," declared the young man, rejoiced to find one point he could combat. Her eyes softened, and she wavered. " Is she ? What is she like ? " Bruce seized the opportunity. " She is an angel," he repeated earnestly. "She is as beautiful in character and mind 192 ON NEIVFOUXD RIVE1L as she is in person, and she is the most beau tiful woman in the world. One of the two most beautiful," he added, his admiration showing in his eyes. " My mother would adore you, and you her," he said. She sighed. But the thought of her grand father came back to her ; of him sitting alone in his room. Then the thought of Major Landon came, as he had sat on his handsome horse, looking over her head, and asking her to " take a message to the young woman there, Dr. Browne s granddaughter Miss Browne, or whatever her name was." A hot w r ave of shame swept over her. It was an insult. With an effort she suddenly released her self from Bruce s grasp. " It is impossible," she said in a changed voice. " I can never marry you." " But I don t understand? " broke in Bruce. " You have told me that you love me." " No ; I was wrong ; I do not. I cannot. Your father I will not marry you." " My father has nothing to do with me," declared Bruce. " I love you. I have loved you all my life ever since you were a little girl, and I waked and found you at 02V NEWFOUND EIVEE. 193 my side." He caught her hand and held it fast. "You have never been to see my grand father. I will never marry I will never love any one without his approval his full approval," she said, faltering, her resolution waning. " But I will get it," he said eagerly. " I asked you to let me go and see him, and you would not; you remember?" " Yes ; but you should have gone, anyhow," she said weakly, driven from her position. "I will go now. Come." He started to turn, drawing her with him. His face was eager with determination. " No ; you are so hasty," she said, weaken ing before his decision. " Ah ! you are just teasing me ! " exclaimed Bruce. He caught her, and, breaking down the barrier of her arms, kissed her almost violently. She remained quiet in his arms a moment, and then tried to free herself again. " You must listen. You must not kiss me. I will not love you." "I will kiss you. I will not listen. You shall love me ! " He kissed her again. 194 CLV NEWFOUND 1UVEU. " I am not teasing you," she said gravely, as he smiled down into her eyes. " You must go away, and not come here any more." " I will not go away. I tell you now, I will not," said Bruce. "You have given yourself to me ; you have opened the gates of heaven to me, and you shall not shut them ; no one shall." He kissed her again. " You love me, don t you ? Tell me." " Yes ; I do." " Then you will marry me." " No ; I cannot. I will not. I have prom ised- She stopped. " Promised whom?" A sudden pang of jealousy shot through him. "I cannot tell." " You shall ; you must." He seized her, and looked into her eyes. " You must tell me." She was unable to resist him. His face was so close to hers, his eager gaze fascinated her. His will dominated her will. She felt that his word was a command which she could not disobey. "Tell me," he repeated quietly; "whom have you promised ? " " Your father." She looked him in the ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 195 eyes, and spoke the words in a low voice, almost timidly. " My father ! When did you see him ? " " Yesterday ; he came yesterday, and I promised him." She looked at him humbly, almost fearfully. " Well ; you shall unpromise him. He shall release you," he said, after a pause, quietly, but with absolute confidence ; and, for the first time, she looked down. And she let him put his arm around her, and draw her to him ; and quietly laid her head on his shoulder. She felt that he had taken charge of the matter, and lifted the responsibility from her. CHAPTER XIX. WHEN Bruce left her he had obtained from her a promise that she would meet him at the spring the following evening at sunset. His father was absent from home, but was to return in the morning, when he would extort from him a full release, and absolute permis sion for him to claim the fulfilment of her promise. He had no doubt that he would secure these, and she had suddenly learned to take her views from him. She wondered how she could ever have doubted him. " He had won her. She imposed these two condi tions, that he should bring his father s release from her pledge, and win her grandfather s consent. He walked with her to the top of the hill, and then bade her good by. He went over, word by word, all he had told her of his love. He would die for her. When he left her, the last glimpse she had of him was as he turned again to kiss his hand to her. 196 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 197 " I love you," she heard him call. He was clearly outlined against a bit of blue evening sky in a break of the trees, tall and straight, and as she looked back at him she felt that he was her master. When Bruce arrived at home, he found, as he expected, that his father was not there. The major had gone to the court-house, some twenty-five miles away, to appear before the grand jury. He had determined to have the jury present Pokeberry, and, perhaps, the other rioters who had attacked Dr. Browne s house. Not that the old creature ought not to be driven out, he explained, but that was not the way to do it. Perhaps, he might present him, too. But he would not have a gang of drunken blackguards trespassing on private property, and attacking a man in his own house. It was an outrage on the Common wealth. Besides, he would no longer submit to such a scoundrel going unwhipped of justice. After all, deep down in his heart was the fear that the ruffian might do Bruce an injury. He knew how, even from Bruce s boyhood, there had been a mortal hatred between them; and, of course, since Bruce had foiled him in his attack on Dr. Browne, 198 O.V XEU FOUND RIVER. the ruffian liad a new grudge against him, and the boy was always going where the scoundrel might easily waylay him. If any thing should happen to Bruce, what should he do? The thought made him tremble. Under all his sternness, he loved his son passionately. He was his pride, his idol. He did not return until the following after noon. He was in high good humor. Just after his arrival, Bruce found him in the library. He greeted him pleasantly. " Come in. Well, sir, I have at last set the law in motion, and I think we shall be rid of that ruffian Pokel>erry for a little while at least," he began. u Hall will have him by to-morrow night." Bruce, however, was too impatient to de lay longer the subject which engrossed his thoughts. He merely acknowledged the speech with a bow, and at once demanded a release of the promise the old gentleman had obtained from Miss Reid. In a moment there was an explosion. The serenity in which the major returned after having ac complished his purpose at the court-house gave way to a passion of anger, and he raged over Bruce s revolt. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 199 He positively refused. The young man, however, sobered by his love for Margaret, or by the gravity of the step he was tak ing, remained cool, and iirmly demanded the release. " May I ask, sir, what you. propose to sup port this young woman on?" inquired the major, with an exasperating manner. "Indeed, sir, I have not considered that matter," replied Bruce, disdainfully. "It is one which I think only concerns her and me." " It concerns you rather closely. I think you had better consider it. You are not counting, I hope, on my generosity." " I never count on your generosity," re plied the young man, with a serenity which stung the major. " I might count on your charity ; but never on your generosity." " You are presuming on my charity now," said the major, sternly. "When I found that you had taken the trouble to go, before I had even declared my love for the young lady," said Bruce, " and had exacted a promise from her to reject my addresses when they should be made, I could do no less than arrange to have her 200 ON NEWFOUND KIVEE. released, so that at least she might be free to act ; and I thought it would be indelicate to discuss any other matters. As you secured from her a rejection of me when I was the prospective heir to your opulence, I hardly imagine the loss of that honor will add greatly to the danger of my refusal." "Bruce," said the major, making an effort to remain cool, " consider carefully what you are doing. If you marry that young woman " He paused under the stress of his feelings. "If you but ask her to marry you " He paused again, unwilling to complete the threat; for Bruce straightened himself, and looked him full in the eyes. " I have asked her to marry me," he said ; " I love her, and I will marry her against both heaven and hell." He suddenly broke out, and passionately demanded a release of the promise she had given. The major rose from his chair. "Take it, and convey it to her with my compliments," he said, standing straight and white, waving his hand to the door. " And marry her, and sink down to her level, a shame and disgrace to your name. Leave ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 201 the house, and, after you marry that woman, never come into my presence again." Bruce s breast heaved. His face was deadly white, and his hands were clenched. " No other man on God s earth should speak to me so and live. I accept your release and your condition," he said almost quietly, look ing his father fearlessly in the face. Then he turned and went out. It was late when Bruce reached the old spring where he was to meet Margaret. The deep quietude of the summer afternoon filled the woods. Bruce dropped down at the foot of the old poplar, and leaned back against it as he had done so often before. He was waiting for Margaret his Margaret. A deep happiness filled his breast, driving out all thought of the stormy scene with his father. The pain it caused him had passed away. Perhaps his mother could help him ; at least, she would never forsake him. How ever thoughts of them might recur hereafter, there was no place for them in his heart now. His memory was too full of Margaret Mar garet who belonged to him Margaret who was his life. As he half sat, half reclined, on the ground, with the back of his head against 202 ON NEWFOUND BIVER. the tree-trunk, lie thought of the first time he had ever seen her. It was on that very spot. He had opened his eyes, and she had sat by his side. There was the sky he remembered as he dropped off to sleep; there were the same soft sounds, the woodwren in the alders below, the call of the ploughmen across the pond to their teams ; the same cow-bells brokenly chiming far up the pond. It made him drowsy, and he let his eyes close, and thought of Margaret. He dreamed he heard Margaret coming nearer, nearer, and then CHAPTER XX. ALL day Margaret had gone about as in a dream. She seemed to have found a new world. The sun was almost down when she slipped softly out of her room, and, gliding across the little space in the rear of the house, which was still kept clear for a yard, entered the wood by the old path which led down to the spring. The sun-rays came slanting through the trees. It was later than she sup posed. She had not intended to be so late, but the time had slipped away. She wanted to look to look right, and it had taken longer than she thought. The old dresses were hard to choose between, and then it took so long to fix exactly, the one she selected ; the little glass was so small. And now suppose any one should see her? Mammy would not matter; but if her grandfather should hear her and call ? At last, however, she was safe. 203 204 ON NEWFOUND 1UVEE. Had any one seen her as she passed, trip ping 1 down along the shady path, he would indeed have been astonished. The dress that she had selected was an old lawn, an em pire dress, as soft as feathers, and as light, faded by age to a tint which just left the rose- sprays visible like shadows of roses which had once lain on the delicate white. The waist was short, and the skirt loosely flowing, showing the little high-heeled slippers, and a hint of the dainty ankle. The white throat and shapely neck showed above the low col lar. It was the dress she had worn that night when he was wounded. What would he think of her? She felt that she knew. She was startled, as she came in sight of the spring, to see a man disappear in the bushes. She was sure it was that Pokeberry Green. She stopped, but at the same mo ment she caught sight of Bruce lying on the other side of the tree, and instantly all her fear disappeared. His presence filled every place with safety. The man had evidently seen him, and had run away. She stood still and waited, to give whoever it was time to get well out of hearing before going further. Then she tripped on. ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 205 Bruce did not stir. Ah ! he was asleep. She would trip up and catch him, and sur prise him. She remembered that time so long ago when she had found him lying there. She had kissed him then. A blush came to her cheeks as she remembered it. She would not now. She would just catch him by put ting her hands over his eyes. She tripped up softly, keeping the tree between them, and kneeling down, put her hands around and over his face. Why, it was wet ; he was crying ! She looked. Good God ! he was covered with blood ! He was dead ! She sprang to her feet with a shriek which reached the ploughmen turning their slow mules at the end of the furrows the other side of the pond, and made them stop and listen, and which fell on the ears of the heavy man with the ugly scar on his neck, hurrying off through the pines with muttered oaths, and made him quicken his pace to a run. In a flash she had taken it in. Pokeberry, that man she had seen, had murdered him. But he could not be dead. She laid his head gently down. She knew this was the way 206 ON N E W FOUND EIVER. to do when one fainted. She felt his wrist ; tore open his collar; felt his heart; ran to the spring, and dipping her handkerchief in, ran back and bathed his white face, washing the clotted blood from it, and from his hair. There was the place, a great, ugly gash on the head, over the eyes, as if he had been struck with a club or a hammer. " Bruce ! Bruce ! " she called him. No, he was dead. She sat down and took his head in her lap. She was calm now, as calm as he was, and he was calm forever. He was hers now. She bent over and kissed him, thinking quite calmly of the first time she had kissed him when he lay there. She almost expected him to wake now as he had done then. Anyhow, he was hers. The blood still flowed a little. She tore a strip from her dress and bound up his head and stopped the flow. Then she stood up. What should she do? Her grand father and Uncle Folium were both crippled and unable to walk, and mammy was away ; gone after the cows. The nearest place at which she could get help, W as, yes, she must go there. He had, she knew, crossed in a boat. She could 07V NEWFOUND EIVER. 207 carry him, she felt so strong ; but that might start the bleeding again, and he might not be dead, please God, he might not ! Her hopes revived. She felt his pulse, his heart again, and then she dashed off. It was not quite dusk in the great hall at Landon Hall. The major was striding up and down, justifying himself to his wife for his treatment of Bruce. He had, in his anger and wounded pride, said hard things about him, and Mrs. Landon had been weeping. He still felt bitter towards him, but not so bitter as he had felt at first. He was, how ever, still saying hard things about him, for his pride was wounded. Bruce had beaten him, had defied him, foiled him, overpowered him. No, he did not care, and he said so, his anger rising again against him. " No ; I don t care if he never enters that door again ; he shall never enter it with her," he was saying, when there was a sound out side : a sound of hurrying steps ; some one ran up the gravel walk, sprang across the veranda, and seizing the knob, turned it hastily, first the wrong way and then the right ; the great door flew open, and an appa rition faced him. 208 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. A young girl in a light dress, her hair dishevelled, her face deadly white, her eyes wild, her hands outstretched covered with blood, stood before him. Mrs. Landon gave a cry. " In the name of God ! what is it ? " ex claimed the major. " He is dead ! Murdered ! " she gasped. "Where? How? Who?" " Bruce, your son, murdered at the spring ! Dead ! " She swayed, as if about to fall. " Good God ! " The major caught her and held her in his arms. "Brandy!" he called; "brandy, quick!" It was brought by Mrs. Landon, and he poured some down Margaret s throat and revived her. She staggered to her feet. " Come, quick, for God s sake ! It may not be too late. Come ! " She pulled him to the door. It was quite dark when they reached him. He was still lying as Margaret had left him, outstretched, motionless, unconscious. They carried him to the old doctor s, as the nearest place, and because Margaret ordered it. She had taken charge. Her grandfather might ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 209 save him, she said. Once more she had be come calm. He was borne in and laid in her room, on her bed, where he had lain that night after he was wounded. She had run forward and warned her grand father, and when the men arrived, they met them, and she led them in in the dark. A candle was brought. The old surgeon leaned over the body and began his examination. "Brandy," he said. Some one handed it to him, and he poured a little between his lips. " He is living," he murmured. Margaret sank down on the floor in a heap. They picked her up, and in a little while she revived and went out of the room. A short time afterwards there was a knock at the outer door. It was Mrs. Landon, who had come over on horseback, around the head of the pond. The major went to meet her. She came in, her face deadly white, and fell on her knees silently beside the bed. She looked at no one ; but, pressing her face against her son s arm, uttered a low moaning sound. 210 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. " There is no fracture," said the old sur geon, gently. She made no answer. She only moved slightly and placed her hand on Bruce s hair. The doctor uttered another sentence or two of encouragement, and went out to get some article. In a little while Margaret brought it in. Major Landon had meantime stepped out of the room, and Mrs. Landon was alone with her son. She was still on her knees beside him, but she rose as Margaret entered. Margaret set the glass down and turned to leave. As she did so she glanced up. Mrs. Landon was looking at her, and their eyes met. The girl s eyes fell, and she stood still with her head bowed humbly. " I know all," said Mrs. Landon, gently. At the sound of her low voice Margaret caught her hand, and, raising it, kissed it. It was an act of obeisance. She looked up, and in an instant the two women were in each other s arms. It was an hour afterwards when the old doctor left Bruce s side again and went to his own room. Margaret followed him. A mo ment later the door opened, and the major entered without warning. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 211 The old man turned to him. It was the first time he had faced him. He was dressed in an old wrapper, and wore a black skull cap, from under which his long white hair fell down to his shoulders. He raised his head as the major entered, and gave him an almost fierce look from his piercing eyes. " In God s name who are you ? " demanded the major. The old man half turned away. " What is that to you ? " he said, in his deep voice. "Have I ever wronged you? ever interfered with you? ever asked of you a favor ? ever demanded of you a right ? Let me alone. Go back to your son. He will get well. Take him home when he is well enough, and keep him there." He turned his back. " No," said the major, who had never taken his eyes from his face. " By ! you shall tell me who you are." He caught him by the arm almost fiercely, and turned him to the light. " What is your name ? " " I have no name ; my name is dead," said the old surgeon, with emotion. He moved away, then suddenly turned back and, catch- 212 ON NEWFOUND 1UVEE. ing Margaret who, with wide eyes was stand ing near him, her burning gaze on his face, he pulled her forward. " I have no name ; I am no one ; but this child has a name and blood as good as yours, Major Landon. She is Charles Landon s great-granddaughter." He put her half be fore him. " Good God ! " exclaimed the major. He sprang forward and took the old sur geon in his arms. He embraced him almost fiercely again and again. " Brother ! " he said, with deep emotion. " My brother, my dear brother, my own brother ! " His voice sounded like a caress. He released him and caught him again, say ing. " My dear, dear brother ! " Both men were weeping. The old doctor was completely overcome. His head sank, and his sobs were audible. Presently the major let him go. Margaret was standing by, deeply moved. She stepped to her grandfather s side. " Oli, grandfather ! " she said, putting her arms about him. When she let him go, the major turned ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 213 to her with grave courtesy, almost hu mility. " I do not ask your pardon," he said. He took her hand, and, raising it, kissed it. It was an act of homage such as he had never before in all his life paid any other woman but his wife. "But I ask your leave to thank you for my son s life. I owe you everything. He and all I have are yours. I only ask that you will believe that I loved him better than all the world. He is wiser than I. I owe you his life." Margaret flung herself into his arms and wept on his shoulder. " I loved him so," she sobbed. " He loved you also," he said, soothing her tenderly. CHAPTER XXL WHILST Bruce was lying thus unconscious between life and death, his would-be murderer was fleeing for his life. His attack on Bruce had put the neighborhood in a turmoil. Never had there been such excitement on Newfound. A hue and cry had been raised, and the whole district was out scouring the country for the murderer. Sam Mills took his old, long gun from the forks over his door, and without more than a word or two, but with an ugly glitter in his eyes, struck out for the woods. Squire Johnson, his old opposition and pom posity alike forgotten, had issued the warrant, and forthwith joined in the chase. Little Hall, forgetting his official formula about " the posse," enlisted the men, as he galloped from house to house, by simply calling to them to "git their guns and come on with me and Sam; Pokeberry s done murdered that boy, Bruce Landon." It was a sympathetic people, slow to catch; 214 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 215 but when ignited, going up all together like powder. The whole country was out, and the gen eral sentiment was that when the murderer should be caught, it would be useless to wait for a trial ; a simple waste of time. Indeed, in every squad of men, one, at least, had a " plough- line " hanging on his arm, ready for use. The neighborhood was scoured. Yet, after twenty-four hours, no trace of him had been found. Many thought he had escaped and gone off " back up whar he come from." He had been saying, for some time, he was going to do so. The miserable cabin where he had lived was deserted, and the two little hounds were found inside ; one dead on the floor, with its brains dashed out, the other, with an ugly gash in its head, where it had evidently been struck with the same intent. This was regarded as positive proof that Pokeberry had fled the country ; and when the roads had been picketed and the woods scoured for twenty-four hours, many of the pursuers gave up and returned home. Little Hall, however, with the sheriff- alty in his eye, and with a yet larger number, continued the search, though without success, 216 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. and on the afternoon of the second day, he and a party were standing in the little yard in front of Pokeherry s cabin, discussing the futility of further search. Dick Runaway was among them, listening anxiously. The little hound, which had escaped Pokeberry s murderous hand, slid timidly out from under the house and became an object of interest. " He might a left them po dawgs," said one, " seem he made his livin by em. They never done him no harm, anyways." " It s a d d mean man as kills a dawg," declared Sam Mills. " An his own dawg, too." " Any dawg," said Mills. All assented to this proposition. Killing a dog was regarded as quite as unpardonable as murdering a man. The poor little beast, meantime, with his tail between his legs, circled around the group and singled out the negro. He recognized in Dick an old friend, and almost wagged his tail at him. Dick stooped down and began to examine his wound, which became the general subject of discussion. This again aroused the feeling against Pokeberry, and resulted in a determi nation to make another effort to catch the ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 217 murderer. A man who would treat his own dog that way was too dangerous to let escape. The group went off again, leaving Hall, who was completely broken down, and an other man to watch the house, in case Poke- berry should by any chance come back there. It was then about dusk. Dick set out towards home, the maimed little hound following him. As he walked along, the negro appeared in deep thought. Every now and then he stopped and muttered to himself, and several times he stooped and petted the little animal at his heels, which dumbly responded. At last, he stopped where a narrow path ran off at right angles to the one he was in. "Done kill Marse Bruce, and mos kill you, and warn sell me down to Souf Cyar- liny," he muttered, as he stooped over the little creature. He stood up presently, and peered down the narrow path earnestly. " Heah, come long," he said suddenly. " I boun he down this way," and plunged down the path through the woods. An hour later he was in the well-known territory of Landon Hill. One seeing him threading the narrow cow- 218 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. tracks would have supposed he was coon or possum hunting. The hound was in front, sniffing about, and several times started off. At last Dick took a stout cord, which was wrapped several times around his waist, and tied one end around the dog s neck, so as to control him. The waning moon rose late in the night, and let an uncertain and ghostly light fall through the trees. All night long Dick remained in the woods, slowly threading path after path, penetrat ing the densest thickets on Newfound. The hound, now thoroughly interested, several times started off as if on a trail ; but Dick pulled him up, and led him elsewhere. " Dis ain no possum hunt, you ole fool," he said, under his breath ; " you know you ain no possum dawg." It was towards morning that, deep down in the pines on the bank of Newfound, the dog struck a trail which the negro let him follow. When he first came on it, his manner changed. Dick was about to draw him away ; but the dog pulled so, that finally he let him go on. The trail went straight towards the river. At last, in a little patch of pale moonlight, Dick stooped and closely examined the ground. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 219 A man s track, almost fresh, showed in the soft earth. " Ah ! heah he, de black, nigger-ketchin devil," he muttered. Dick peered anxiously through the bushes. The dog, with his nose to the ground, pulled on the -cord. Dick paused. " Dat man got meanness in him," he mut tered to himself. Suddenly he turned, and, pulling the dog after him, started back. He talked to the little beast reassuringly as he walked along. "I know whar he is now; you needn be feared, we gwine ketch him. He ain gwine nowhar b fo we git back. I jes gwine for help. I knowed he was down dyah," he con cluded triumphantly. In a little while he was in sight of the little, mean-looking shanty where Pokeberry had lived. He reconnoitred the space before him and, stooping, approached cautiously ; for he knew the two men were on watch, and they might mistake him for the occupant. His precaution was, however, unnecessary; for, when he crept up to the door, both men were fast asleep on the floor. 220 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. Hall, who had been up all the night before, had set the other man as his subordinate, on guard for the first watch, and had pulled off his heavy boots and gone regularly to sleep ; and the guard had duly followed suit, with an easy conscience, after a short interval. The negro stole up to the constable and touched him. " Mr. Hall ! " There was no response. Then he shook him. "Mr. Hall! Marse Jim!" At the second or third shaking, Hall sprang up, and, still half asleep, seized his gun. " Tain nobody but me, Marse Jim, - Dick, Major Landon Dick," said the negro. " Oh ! I thought twas that scoundrel Pokeberry," said the little officer, in a disap pointed tone. " I dreamt he was comin up the path." " Nor, suh ; but I done fine him," said the negro. In a second the little constable was wide awake. He began to pull on his boots vigor ously. His first impulse was to get a posse ; but as he got on his boots, his courage in- ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 221 creased. The glory of catching the murderer alone dawned on him. The sheriffalty the goal of his highest ambition suddenly loomed up in sight. The sound slumber of his companion who, with his head on his arm, and his mouth wide open, slept peacefully on even through the the noise of Hall s stamping in getting on his boots, remained unbroken. "Come on; me an you can ketch him," said the constable to the negro, picking up his gun. A loud snort from his friend caught his ear. He gave him a look of contempt. " He s a - - of a guard," he said ; " ain he ! Pokeberry could have come and knocked both our brains out like he done that boy s. Come along." He picked up a rope which lay on the floor, and gave it to the negro. Dick was not afraid. He possessed plenty of physical courage. All he wanted was the leadership the moral support of a white man. His face now looked eager enough, as, calling the little hound, the two men disap peared down the path in the pines. It was just daybreak, when, deep down in the marsh, the dog suddenly stopped, and 2-2-2 ON NEWFOUND RIVERA raising his head, gave a low growl, his tail dropping, and every hair on his thin back rising. " Ah ! " said the negro, under his breath, seizing him. " Don you bark." Hall cocked his gun. They held a little whispered consultation, and then the negro crept forward, Hall fol lowing at his heels with his gun ready. Reaching a heavy clump of bushes, Dick parted them and peeped through. When he turned, his eyes were almost popping out of his head. He pointed silently for Hall to look. Ten feet ahead, on the ground, under a tree, lay a heavy man fast asleep on his back. The breast of his coarse dirty shirt was open, and his thick red neck showed the deep pur ple mark of Pokeberry. An empty whiskey- flask was near him. A gun lay beside him, and the handle of an ugly knife peeped out from his belt. Another consultation was held, and then Dick, taking the rope, and making a large running knot, crept forward, whilst Hall brought his gun half up, ready for use if it were needed. Carefully placing the open large loop around one of the sleeper s ON NEWFOUND EIVEE. 223 hands, which was raised from the ground and enabled him to adjust it, Dick suddenly jerked it tight. The murderer, with an oath, sprang up into a sitting posture. As he did so, the negro gave a turn of his rope around his other hand, and then, with a dexterous twist, wrapped it around his neck, and pulled it taut. Pokeberry lost a second trying to get at his knife, in which Dick gave another turn of the rope around his neck, and got his hands to gether. Pokeberry rose, but the negro flung himself on him. Even then it was a terrible struggle, and the clothes of the two men as they wrestled and rolled were torn to shreds. Little Hall s gun was useless ; for he could not shoot one without the other. He, how ever, jumped around and encouraged Dick with many oaths, standing ready to aid him if it should become necessary. It did not become necessary; for the liquor in Poke- berry s brain, and the tangle of cord around his wrists and neck decided the contest, and Dick finally had the murderer bound and subdued. His struggles but tightened the cords around his throat. " Loosen this rope, for God s sake ! " he 224 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. gurgled. " I m chokin to death." His eyes, in fact, looked as if he were speaking the truth. " Wait till marster and them white mens gits hold of you," said Dick, " an you ll have a tighter rope n that roun yo neck." He, however, relieved it a little. This suggestion had its effect on the ruffian. tk What they goin to do with me ? " he asked. "Try me?" " Hang you." His jaws dropped. " When ? " " Dee got rope waitin fer you now," said Dick. The ruffian s red face turned deadly white. " I didn t do it," he said. " I swear " "Yes, you did. Git up heah ; I gwine carry you to him right now." They lifted the fellow; but he dropped down again. 44 Look here," he said ; " if you all will let me get away, I ll I ll give you anything in the world." Hall laughed derisively. 44 Get up, and come on." 44 1 would n let you git way," said Dick, 44 not fer marster s big plantation an ev ry mule on it. Git up heah ! " ON NEWFOUND 1UVER. 225 The two men jerked at the rope till the brute, half strangled, agreed to come. The twenty or more men assembled at the Crossroads that morning were a sleepy and dejected-looking set. Their search had failed ; the murderer had escaped. Suddenly one of them swore a great oath and pointed up the road. There came three men, the fore most with his hands and arms tied to his body, and behind him, Hall and Dick Runa way, walking like soldiers, with guns on their shoulders. A little hound trotted at Dick s heel. The crowd was instantly in a commo tion. They streamed down the road to meet the captors and their prisoner. Pokeberry was taken from the two, who were swept from their feet, and in a minute a rope was around his neck. He recognized his peril. His face was deadly white, and he began to plead. His pleading, however, was cut short. The mob was in no humor for mercy. He was dragged along to the Cross roads, w^here a brief stop was made, and was tied to a tree, whilst a consultation was held. It was determined to lynch him immediately. The crowd again surrounded him. One or two of them told him to pray. The poor 226 ON wretch broke forth into cries. But the mob was pitiless. It contained a number who had been his boon companions. His many offences were enumerated, the attack on Dr. Browne being one of them. " Jim, you are the constable ; you ought to protect me," he said to Hall. "Protect you! I m going to hang you," said Hall. At this moment, a remark from Dick unex pectedly intervened and saved him. The negro was most eager to have him die, but suggested that maybe his master would like to see him hung. This opened a discus sion ; and by one of the freaks which fre quently operate on a mob, it turned the scale, and it was decided to put the question to a vote, whether he should or should not be hung till the major could see him. It was decided by a small majority that the hanging should be put off, as it could be at most for only a few hours. The prisoner was locked up in a little out house on the premises, with guards over him. During the day, hundreds of people flocked to the place, and the little groggery did the largest business ever known, at least in whis- ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 22? key. The guards furnished their part of the patronage, and exhibited the prisoner as if he had been a show. By nightfall they were all in liquor, and were drinking heavily. Hospitality de manded that even a murderer should be treated properly in this respect, standing, as it were, somewhat in the place of a guest. Pokeberry had been furnished all the liquor he wanted. This was a great deal. He called for it frequently. At dark he was apparently drunk. His guards were certainly so. The next morning, at daylight, the prisoner was gone. No one could tell how; and as there had been a heavy thunder-storm in the night, there was small chance of tracking him. The guards were too steeped in liquor and overwhelmed with confusion to give any coherent account. He had actually taken their guns with him. He had been there at two o clock. One of them had taken a last drink with him. There was a great commo tion. The guards were universally cursed and derided, and sought consolation in stupor. A hue and cry was again raised, and the fugitive was hotly pursued. Dick Runaway and the little hound, whose reputations were 228 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. established, were recognized as important fac tors in the chase, and were given honorable positions in the front. The crowd struck for Newfound. The woods were systematically searched. Towards sunset, the track of the fugitive was discovered. The hound had followed the scent to an old brush-pile, deep in a thicket. The fugitive had evidently lain there con cealed. The brush was scattered about, as if he had left hastily. The little hound dashed off towards the water. He was making for the pond, and the dense thickets on the other side. The little beast, thoroughly interested, followed the trail with the precision of des tiny. It cut straight for the river. It was evidently warm, for he gave mouth, his long, mellow note exciting the pursuers, who could scarcely keep up with him. Once the trail was lost for a little while, where the fugi tive had waded in a branch; but the little animal picked it up again, and struck out confidently in the same direction. At last, just at sunset, one of the pursuers caught sight of a figure on a knoll a few hun dred yards ahead, running with all his speed. His shout gave new ardor to the chase, and ON NEWFOUND E1VEE. 229 the crowd, with loud cries, dashed through the bush to head him off from the pond. It was, indeed, Pokeberry. All day he had lain concealed, crouched under a pile of brush in the pines, in a spot which he had found an hour or two after his escape. Newfound was up a little, and he could not cross safely just then ; but it would fall by night, and he could get over. He felt secure, and, overcome with fatigue and relief, had fallen asleep. How long he slept he could not tell. He was aroused suddenly by shouts in the distance. He lay still. He was so concealed that they might pass within ten feet of him and miss him. But suddenly he started up, for the note of a hound, a note well known, reached his ears. A deep oath fell from his lips, and his face grew deadly white. It was his own dog, and he was on a warm trail : on his track. The notes came again clearer. They were nearer; they were on his trail. Springing up with an oath, and seizing his gun, he dashed through the woods. If he could get to the head of the pond, and reach the other side, he would be safe. The old ravines and the thickets of the swamp would 230 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. conceal him till night, when he could steal away and leave the country. He could not swim, but he could cross the pond high up by wading. He had not gone three hundred yards, when, as he crossed a rise, he heard his dog s well-known yelp, yelp, and looked back. On the crest of a hill a few hundred yards behind him, he caught sight of the little beast. He was coining on at a gallop, straight behind, his nose to the ground. A short dis tance behind him were half-a-dozen men, Hall in the lead. They caught sight of him at the same instant, and a fierce shout went up from them. With a great oath the fugitive rushed on. His heart was thumping against his ribs, and his face burned like fire. He reached a little creek, and, springing in, ran down it through the water. If he could throw the dog from the scent, he might escape. The briars tore his face, and the thorns stuck into his flesh ; but he did not feel them. Life was before, death was behind him. He clam bered out, and rushed on. A vine caught him and threw him to the ground ; a sharp pain shot through his ankle ; but he scram bled up, and fled, limping on through the thickets. The water came in sight through ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 231 the bushes at the foot of the hill he was descending. Perhaps the hound had been thrown from the scent, and he was safe. He wanted but ten minutes. He breathed freer, and paused to listen. Suddenly, however, his hopes were dashed to the ground ; for close behind him he heard a noise, and, turning, there was the dog. A fearful oath escaped him. But hope suddenly rose again. He would take him with him. He could drown him in the pond. He turned and called him in a low voice, "Heah heah! Come heah, you d d fool!" The dog stopped and growled. He took a few steps back towards him. " Come heah ! Don you heah me ? " The little beast, with the timidity of his nature intensified, suddenly turned, and, tuck ing his tail between his legs, retreated some twenty yards, and, half turning round, gave a loud angry bark. A shout answered back in the woods. With an oath Pokeberry raised and cocked his gun, and brought it up to his shoulder. The little wretch, at the threatening motion, started to flee. There was a loud report. 232 O.V NEWFOUND RIVER. With a yelp the dog rolled over in the bushes, stone-dead. The living brute fled on again. In a few moments he was at the water s edge, wading through the alders which grew in the shallows. They were deeper than he had ever seen them. He emerged from the bushes. Only a dozen yards away was the other bank covered with a dense and almost impenetrable thicket. Once there he was safe. The pursuers were already almost on him. He could hear their voices. Not a moment was to be lost. He could not swim, but the water before him was smooth. He dashed in, and in two steps went down over his head. He came up choking and struggling, and struck out wildly, only to go down again. Rising again, he beat the water frantically, and again went under; but once more got to the top. His lungs were filled. He was going down again, sinking, drowning. Good God ! drowning ! He was strangling. Strug gling to the top again, he gave a wild cry, " Help, help ! " The water filled his throat, drawing him down, and drowned his despairing shriek. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 233 The men through the bushes only a few yards away heard the cry, wild, agonized, and rushed into the alder thickets, through the water. Parting the bushes, they gazed across to the other bank. It lay calm and quiet in the summer sunshine. They looked at the water just before them. On it, a little way down, just in the current, floated an old worn hat. That was all. The waters of Newfound slept below as placid as ever. It was late the following afternoon. Bruce had been sleeping. He had never recovered complete consciousness ; but he was, his uncle said, "doing well." The major and the doctor were sitting together on the portico, talking. It seemed as if they could not be separated a moment. Mrs. Lan- don was with them. Margaret had taken her place, and was with Bruce, sitting beside his bed gently fanning him. No one else was in the room. She was dressed in a curi ous, rich old flowered silk with a high collar and quaint long waist, which she had found in one of the old trunks. It was the counter part of that in which Mrs. Colonel Landon 234 ON NEWFOUND EIVER. had her portrait painted as a bride. She looked in it as if she had stepped out of the old picture over the piano at Landon Hall. She moved from the bedside, and stood look ing out of the window. Her profile was clearly defined. It was as fine as a cameo. The setting sun threw its golden rays upon her, and bathed her in its light. Her slender hands were clasped, and her uplifted pensive face wore a sweet gravity. Bruce suddenly opened his eyes. His gaze fell directly on her. He looked at her long and curiously, without stirring. Presently he said half aloud to himself, " That s my great-grandmother. * Margaret started, then stepped softly to his side. She noted his improvement, and smiled as she leaned over him. " Where am I ? " asked Bruce. " At home," she said. "Ami?" He glanced around the room ; memory seemed trying to reassert itself. "At home?" "Yes. Don t talk." Her voice was soft and soothing. " Can t I talk?" he asked like a child. O.V NEWFOUND RIVER. 235 " Not just now." "Why?" " Well ; because I tell you not : you belong to me." She smiled. " Do I ? Am I my grandfather, then ? " She leaned over and kissed him softly. "No, my darling, you are your own self, Bruce. But you must not talk now." " One word. Do you belong to me ? " he asked. "Yes; entirely, with all my heart." " All right ; kiss me ; I ll go to sleep." A few weeks later there was a small party assembled, one afternoon, on the portico of the old Landon place, Landon Hill. A remark able transformation had taken place in the time which had elapsed, and as two of the men who were in the party on the porch had ridden up, they had been discussing it in wondering undertones. The old fields which but a few weeks since had been thick with pines were being cleared up ; roads were being made ; fences built; and whichever way the eye turned, bodies of negroes were at work cut ting, clearing, and hauling. Loud laughter and shouts in musical chorus came across the 236 ON NEU FOUXD BIVER. fields from the white-shirted workmen, arid volumes of white and blue smoke rose from the piles where the brush was being burned, and, floating away over the fields, gave the landscape the hazy, mellow look of Indian summer. " Well, this do beat everything," one of the men, the smaller of the two, said to his companion. The speaker was Jim Hall, just elected sheriff, and the other was Sam Mills, who, owing to the paralysis of Squire Johnson a day or two after the pursuit of Pokeberry, had unexpectedly found himself elected to the honorable position of justice of the peace. tk The major s a team," said Mills, slowly, as he took a survey of the scene around them. " He must have half the Landon Hall niggers over here clearin up." " He s a team at gittin folks elected. If t hadn been for him, you an I wouldn a beat them lower een fellows so easy," said Hall. " I m glad the major got the old place back," Mills said slowly, his mind working quietly in the old direction. "He wouldn take a heap for it." ON NEWFOUND EIVER. 237 "Why, I heard the old doctor was goin to stay here, and that Bruce was goin to stay with him, now he s married," said Hall, in surprise. Mills explained: "So he is. But that s the same thing. The major offered him the other place if he wanted it. He d give him anything in the world. Bruce havin it is the same as havin it himself." " He certainly am stingy," admitted Hall, as they rode into the yard. " The way he looks after the old squa r shows that, if nothin else does. You know he went up thar and told him he d keep him comfort ble long as he lived ? " They had ridden into the yard and tied their horses. There, too, they found the work of clearing up performed: the hedges trimmed, the yard cleaned, everything tidy. Bruce, who was lounging on the porch in an easy-chair, be side which sat a young lady, her hand on his arm, came forward to meet them. His com panion rose and entered the house. He was still pale, and the bandage was not yet re moved from his head. He greeted them cor- 238 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. dially, and invited them into the house. The major met them on the portico. He was fol lowed by the young lady, dressed in a soft white robe, and with an expectant smile in her soft brown eyes, and whom he spoke of with evident pride as, u My daughter," and to whom he, in turn, presented each of the visitors as, " My friend, Mr. Sam Mills," and " My friend, Mr. James Hall." Margaret shook hands with them with a manner and a smile which at once gave her a personal place in their friendship. In a little while there was a step, and the old doctor came slowly out accompanied by Mrs. Lan- don. He looked old enough to be the major s father. " Brother, these are our two neighbors, Mr. Mills and Mr. Hall, of whom I have spoken to you," said the major. His voice appeared to the two men to have a new softness in it ; a tone of fresh tenderness. Margaret slipped away, and presently re turned, followed by two servants, each bear ing a large silver waiter, one with tea-things on it, and the other with fruit. One was the old mammy, tall, spare, dignified; the other was Dick Runaway. ON NEWFOUND RIVER. 239 " This is an old friend of yours, I believe ? " she said, addressing Loth of the two men, as Dick placed the tray 011 a little table before her. Dick s face shone at the reference to him from his mistress, and a double row of very white teeth were suddenly displayed. After a little the two visitors stated their business. They wanted the major to run for governor, and Bruce for Congress. New found would stand by them. Squire Johnson had sent them word he d live on purpose to vote for them. The major thanked them, but was humor ously inexorable in his refusal. He said he had never aspired higher than to be a jus tice or a constable ; he had aspired that high ; but there had always been better men found to fill those positions. Bruce might suit bet ter. Bruce s pretty wife looked proudly at him, and rested a slender white hand on his shoulder. As the two men an hour later rode away through the evening light, the sky above was a pale, soft blue. The sun was just disappearing in a haze over the western woods that crowned the hori- 240 ON NEWFOUND RIVER. zon beyond the wide bottom, through which, a mile ahead, crept Newfound. The fields were quiet now; but the rich voices of laughing negroes floated up from the paths by which they wended their way home ; the mellowed clangle of cow-bells sounded in the distance, accompanied by the lowing of the cows as they came slowly up to their calves from the pasture by the pond ; and a single partridge, on a stump a hundred yards away in the field, piped his three notes to his vagrant mate. The two men, touched perhaps by the peace ful scene, rode for a little distance without speaking. Hall first broke the silence. " Sam," he said, in a low, mysterious tone, "s pose we run him for governor, anyways. We can git him elected. He ll git every vote on Newfound." " I m for him for president," said Mills. Typography by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston. Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston. P133 on On Newfound river M11974 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY