GIFT OF Hearst Fountain THE WINTER BELL BOOKS BY HENRY M. RIDEOUT The Winter Bell Fern Seed The Foot-Path Way Tin Cowrie Dass The Far Cry Key of the Fields and Boldero The Siamese Cat White Tiger William Jones -6 11 n - rt THE WINTER BELL By HENRY MILNER RIDEOUT ^)° ^** NEW YORK DUFFIELD AND COMPANY 1922 Copyright, 1922, by DUFFIELD AND COMPANY *r* *s- Printed in V. S. A. To JAMES ARTHUR BALLENTINE WITH ALL THAT IS IMPLIED IN LONG FRIENDSHIP 4 7 S 3 6 5 ILLUSTRATIONS With rapid sureness of touch he printed across the board, gripped flat between his knees, "Sackamore." . . . Frontispiece "Good evening, Mr. Delaforce," she said gravely. "How do you do?" . Page 36 With a swoop, a lightning shift of hands, a bend, clutch and heave in one motion, Salem had the man aloft. . . Page 110 "No feelin's to hurt, hey?" rumbled the deep voice of Captain Constantine. "Good. Fust-rate. The clear thing." . . Page 142 THE WINTER BELL THE WINTER BELL I In all the last thin drift of snowstorm that swept the lake and made it a wilderness without borders, there appeared only one dark object. This was a man on snowshoes, who came with the wind at his back. Smoking flights of dry snow continually outstripped him; his breath whirled a'head and vanished in them; so that his advance over the white waste had a labored air, as if he were lagging amid universal hurry. Anyone who had tried to keep pace with him would have found this retardation a mere fancy, perhaps a painful fancy after half an hour or so; for Salem Delaforce was moving rapidly, with a light swing more trot than walk. A white rabbit, hanging dead at his waist in front, jog- gled as if trying limply to run, head downward. Big-boned, spare, Salem had even in winter wrap- s 4 THE WINTER BELL pings a look of slenderness which, like his pres- ent gait, deceived the eye. Kersey trousers tucked into yellow oil-tanned "larrigans," and an old brownish blanket coat mottled with ermine- like dabs of pale red and gray, hung loose upon him to disguise the power of his frame. Snow plastered his back, but was chafed away by a shotgun that swung there, its muzzle ringed with two frozen doughnuts. Melting snow on the lashes fringed his dark brown eyes ; through mois- ture as of tears they looked out, steady, thought- ful, young, and very bright. His cheeks glowed. Once he halted and turned impulsively to face the wind. The white rabbit hanging at his waist had its fur immediately blown into ruffled partings. "Lord, forgot again I" said the hunter angrily. "Thought he was followhV me. Never no more." He peered for a moment into the snow. It pricked his face like needles. Yet the range of his vision over the lake had widened, for these flying wraiths began to lose their whiteness. The wind whistled in his gun barrel. There was also a hissing, gritty sound that streamed by, a sound as of sifting, very faint, but notable, a change throughout the solitude. "Goin' to sleet." Salem went forward again. "I keep thinkin' he's after me. Never no more." THE WINTER BELL 5 The youngster's dark eyes contracted, his lips worked strangely. He rubbed one snow-crusted mitten roughly across them, and then, like a man who had driven away some pain of body or grief of mind, went swinging on with the wind, his face hard set, almost grim. "We'll git a thaw pooty quick." His bear-paw snowshoes left their oval prints in a track which, so far as it could be seen, drew a rigidly straight line on the snow. Without need of thought, by homing instinct, from one hidden point far behind toward another far aihead, through blind swirling space he had come direct; and now this change in the air — a slight clearing while drifts no longer spun upward from the lake, and the snowfall turned as from fine dry salt to pellets of sago — affected his march not at all. He kept the same course, the same untir- ing, rapid jog. Half an hour later he swerved from this bee line. A bald round patch of ice lay before him, clean swept in a freak by the wind, like a pond made ready for skaters. He began to skirt the left-hand margin, but when halfway round, stopped. On the opposite rim of the ice appeared an- other dark object. At first glance it resembled 6 THE WINTER BELL the butt of a small log; at second glance, an up- rooted stump with a brown clod of earth. Salem turned and went quickly toward it, his snowshoes clattering and slipping as on green glass. It was, or had been, a man. The head, shoulders, and one arm lay on the ice, all the rest hidden, as if he had pulled up a coverlet before going to sleep. The face, turned away, had its right cheek frozen in, and a wisp of snow across the left eye like a bandage. Salem crouched on one knee, looked intently, then came upright again. He took, it might have been thought, great pains not to touch this body. The wind, as before, prolonged a droning whistle in his gun barrel, and when he spoke, wrenched the words out of his lips. "It's Asy Beard." The dead man's face had nothing of that dig- nity which sometimes is granted. Even by what few features were revealed it had a mean, wolfish look. The lips, parted as if to sneer, clung hard along broken teeth, tobacco-stained, that looked all canine. Two kinds of snow, fine and coarse, had pelted into the rusty brown stiff hair, and gave it the likeness, cruelly exact, of a bit of old doormat. THE WINTER BELL 7 The living man's face remained inscrutable. The color of health and storm-blown exercise, darkly flaming in his cheeks, could not alter. His eyes did not, perhaps : they contained much mus- ing, some natural pity, but no dread and no surprise. "Well, Asy," he said, "guess we're even now. Him that dies pays all off." He stooped again, and after a longer interval than before, again rose. "You're fast to the ice. Ain't got nothin' with me. Some pesky thief carried off my axe." It was no weather to stand still in, but for a time the young man waited there, keeping his fellow creature company. When at last he went forward the sleet as it drove was dissolving into a chill rain. Not far ahead the end of the lake grew visible, a cove where land and water were marked off only by smooth-curving snowbanks, with here and there a clump of willow switches or the long white slant of a buried pine trunk fallen years ago. Above these, darkening the cove, stood firs all padded white on the windward side, all green and shadow-black on the leeward. Above their jagged points, in turn, low hills ad- vanced through the departing sleet, some dark evergreen, others — bare rock too steep for snow 8 THE WINTER BELL to cling on — a grayness lined vertically with thread's of white birch. Midway in the cove Salem climbed ashore, pausing at a hole chopped in the ice, and a stake on which hung a black tin can upside down. He broke the new ice in the hole, filled the can, then went straight toward the deepest bend of the fir wall. Here, muffled with snow, hidden like an animal by its marking, a cabin crouched among the boughs. He passed round this and entered-* a small clearing behind. At the back of the clearing a fire burned low under an iron pot. It had been a large fire, for up the nearest white wall reached an evergreen band where snow had melted from fir tips, and round its embers in a wide ring last year's wood- land carpet lay bared — yellow grass, leather- brown brakes, the dark red gloss of old checker- berry leaves, and one bright green spray of princess pine. Smoke still mounted into the driz- zle, and the rim of the pot lid steamed. Bringing dry wood from a lean-to behind his cabin, Salem gathered his fallen fire and made it high again. "Like to ketch the thief," he told himself, "that moseyed off with my axe." While the fresh blaze was growing he laid his THE WINTER BELL 9 mittens on the pot, removed from his gun barrel the frozen doughnuts, placed them to thaw be- side the mittens, and set some willow-bark tea brewing in the tin can. He worked with method, like one who used time thriftily but had no need for haste. From the lean-to, where he hung under cover his gun and the white rabbit, he brought an oblong bit of pine board, a hammer, some old crooked hand-wrought nails, a two- foot wooden stake, a hoe, a shovel, a corner of broken glass, and a flat, rusty iron fragment of sled runner. This last he poked into the fire. Then, taking off snowshoes, he sat on one be- neath a bough, arranged the other as a table or workbench, and so, warmed by the fire, sheltered from the mist, continued quietly busy. "Go down to Corp'ration House, ought to, and tell 'em about Asy Beard." With the broken glass he smoothed one surface of the pine board. " 'Tain't right to leave him layin' out there. But no good my tellin' 'em after dark. Better start to-morrow daylight in the mornin', git there early forenoon, then keep on down to Middle Landin' store. Make one journey of two arrants." Having smoothed the board, Salem turned to his noonday meal. It was lean fare, nothing but willow-bark tea and the pair of moist, luke- to THE WINTER BELL warm doughnuts. He ate and drank like a stoic whose thoughts went elsewhere. "Le's see what we want to the store — besides a axe. Tea's give out, tobacco's give out. Matches, and maybe a little sugar." He soon fell to work again. With the board gripped flat between his knees he drew from the heart of the fire his broken sled runner. Its point glowed orange red, starred with tiny bright sparks that vanished. Round its cooler end he wrapped a wet mitten. It made an awkward tool, all weight and no balance; but in Salem's thin brown hands it quivered no more than a pencil. With rapid sureness of touch, unhindered by the smoke curling thickly upward, he wrote or printed across the board. His lettering was neat, his alignment true. "sackamore" Delaforce laid his branding iron down, blew off the charred powder, and shook his head. "Can't even spell," he grumbled. "Prob'ly ain't right. I don't know nothing." He nailed the board to the stake, put it aside with his tools, brought out from one pocket an old cheap wooden pipe, from another some dried willow bark mixed with sweet fern, and compos- THE WINTER BELL n ing himself cross-legged, took a meditative smoke. He had not rested since daybreak. Even now he was only waiting for the fire to burn low again; and by the time his second pipeful went out he waited no longer, but impatiently rising, lifted the iron pot away, grasped his hoe, and began to tear down the fire. "Git it over with." He dug fiercely, scattering brands and coals that hissed as they turned black and bedded them- selves in snow. Under the ashes appeared a shallow trench, its floor and walls of half-thawed mud. Salem cut them deeper and wider, until his hoe sliced through glassy honeycomb, the crys- tals of the frost. He then poured in scalding water from the pot, waited, and after the steam had cleared from a new depth of mud, began hoeing again. This process he repeated many times. When the pot was empty and the hoe could fetch out no more chips of frozen earth, he drove the stake in upright at the far end of the hole, so that board and legend stood facing him, level with the ground. "Have to do. Deep as I can manage." He waded among the trees, and with a knife slashed off an armful of small fir branches. Car- rying them, the young man would have had a 12 THE WINTER BELL Christmaslike air but for the steady Indian sad- ness of his eyes. "Better for him than bare ground." He lined the pit carefully with the Christmas greens, placing and replacing them till every tip lay in order. "There." His next action was to clear away tools, all but the shovel. Having done this he went round to the door of the cabin. "Can't hardly bear to go in." Salem wiped his snowshoes cleaner than usual, grasping at any means of delay. It was with reluctance, visible effort, that he opened the door and entered. His dwelling, one room sheathed with black paper, and very dark by contrast even with the subdued, rainy light of the woods, con- tained a stove, a bunk, table and chairs, a cup- board, tiers of stove wood against the wall, and along the rafters a few spare clothes, household goods, and small pelts of fur. Salem hung his snowshoes by the foot holes on a nail in the black paper. He stood for a moment irresolute. Across the room in his bunk lay something cov- ered with a blanket, like a child hiding and keep- ing still. As though it were a child Delaforce lifted and carried this bundle outdoors. THE WINTER BELL 13 What he unwrapped and lowered into the evergreen grave was the body of a white bull terrier. He was very slow in laying the firs over it, but swift in putting back the clotted earth. "You was a good friend. None better." He rose to look at the board and his dog's name. "I won't never forget you." His face was hard while he spoke, but not his eyes. "Part o' the best days o' my life buried with you." The rain had ceased when darkness came that night, and with darkness a still and bitter frost creeping to the heart of the woods. No air stirred. Even the dry leaves of a young beech near the cabin, that since last autumn had waggled and whispered foolishly in lesser silences, were dumb. Salem, eating a late supper by the light of a candle end, now heard the fire snap cheer- fully in the stove behind him, now listened to trees groaning far off, to noises harsh and brittle as the breaking of a file. There were left in his plate some bones of the rabbit he had brought home. Without thinking Salem took one of these and held it round behind his chair. "Here you are," he said. The stillness recalled him. He looked down, i4 THE WINTER BELL saw the empty floor, dashed the bone furiously from his hand, and turning, blew out the candle. Frost veiled the bottom of each windowpane, but left at the top a curved space clear. Cold stars glittered above the whiteness where his enemy lay. They could not throw unwelcome light into this room from which his friend had gone, or know that he saw them as crosses. II Well filled with hardwood, the stove always kept its fire going for two hours. A light sleeper, Salem had formed the habit of rousing before the room grew cold, so that his night was broken at regular intervals. From deep slumber he came quietly awake, each time to find a bed of coals glowing like orange-red flowers, to cover them with kindling, split birch, and round maple, to glance at the starlight for signs of weather, and to be next moment in his bunk asleep for two hours more. Dawn found him on foot, beginning his day. The frost no longer murmured or groaned with- out. A gentle clashing and crackle seemed to fill the obscurity. On every windowpane the little hill-and-valley landscape of frost work had thickened with furry whiteness during the night, but left near its top a loophole of melting glaze through which the outdoor world shone as a mist of intense pale blue. This color and the 15 1 6 THE WINTER BELL strange airy clashing pervaded all things like a wonder that longed to be understood. Salem was aware of it. He knew the sound, he felt the quality of the light. "Lon'some mornin's without you, Sack," was all he said. "Maybe Duster Whiteneck's kep' one of them pups of yours, to town. I'll haf to see Duster. If he'd sell, take along my black- cat skin." For breakfast he had what was left of the rabbit stew, warmed over with hardtack sopped in gravy, and more willow tea ; no meal to linger over. The sun had not risen when he stepped outdoors, though all the mysterious pale blue vapor was gone, and the clear eastern sky bright- ening. From the cabin eaves a row of new icicles hung, broad and short, in the Saxon tooth pattern. "Crust'll hold. Don't need ye." Talking thus to his snowshoes he slung them with his gun on his back. "May, though, comin' home." Over his breast like a magnificent boa he car- ried some furs — two of mink, one of musquash, and one, somewhat like sable, which he called his black-cat, the rare and beautiful fur of a fisher. Any expert would have admired the skinning and cleaning. Salem betrayed no pride, but counted them and smoothed the hair. Each had been THE WINTER BELL 17 shot through the head by a man who de- spised traps. He shouldered two long faggot- like bundles of split hoop poles, cast a look at the cabin to see all tight, and set out briskly. The footing held, as he had predicted. Every- where below the trees undulated a surface glim- mering with dull polish like that on the icing of cake. Now and then it cracked under his moc- casin boots, leaving a wide shallow depression, where powdery snow burst upward among triangular plates of crust; but this happened sel- dom, for he went with a practised gliding step as clean and true as the motion of a skater. Be- tween the firs an abandoned logging road, un- broken, flowed like a white brook. It brought him suddenly out upon Lambkill Heath while the sun was clearing the evergreen tops. "Gorry, but she's handsome!" thought Salem. The heath, its buried tufts wavy with bluish hol- lows and white mounds, dazzled him as the early sunshine poured across. But this was nothing to the glory that ringed it about, far and near. A crystal forest shone with twinkling white fire. Young birches, maples and poplars, ice coated, their boughs drooped like weeping willow, caught the full blaze of morning sun in a network brighter than jewels. Whenever a breath of wind stirred, i8 THE WINTER BELL the twigs, like so many thousand glass pendants, clattered faintly and swung on from tree to tree a passing lustre that sparkled along the entire wall of the woods. Walking high over the heath-top waves, Dela- force did not stop to admire. He felt an exalta- tion on his journey; but this was gone next moment when he saw his long-drawn shadow traveling alone, with no dog's shadow trotting after on the snow; he had known more than one silver thaw; and though in the middle of the heath he paused, it was only to listen. Through the crackling brightness of the en- chanted forest he heard a sound. It came from behind him, perhaps more than a mile away, but clear in the winter air — the ringing of a bell, a little bell with a mellow tone, jangled slowly in broken rhythm, as if by an uncertain but persever- ing hand. "A sled comin' down lake," thought Salem. "Pity the shanks of any poor hoss, crustin* it to-day." With a few last single notes the bell stopped ringing. Salem waited, but heard it no longer, and started on. Ringing or silent, it did not mean much to him at the time. His track, the disused logging road, began THE WINTER BELL 19 once more across the heath and curved through the brilliant crystal wood where every twig hung down to end in a sunlit drop of icicle. From this he plunged into evergreen darkness, which continued for an hour or more. Once the smooth white ribbon of crust was broken; something heavy had wallowed across it to go smashing on through the firs; and Salem, who knew this dam- age for the work of a bear, dropped his mer- chandise, unslung his gun, crawled among boughs and loosened snow, jumped up, and ran like an Indian along the edge of the bear's track. Not so fresh as it looked, after two miles of hot pursuit it vanished among naked crags and horsebacks, gray, wind-swept rock. Without look or gesture of disappointment Salem returned quietly to take up his furs and hoop poles again. The sun was high when he came down Rum- Time Hill toward the flowage. Here his old for- gotten road joined a stream that wandered away from the lake. Ice had now melted off the trees, their fairyland shining departed; so that under little promontory shadows a lilac mist of alders, a tawny mist of willows, followed the crooks of the flowage, which revealed itself here as black ice, there as thin curved patches of crust. "Gained on me." 20 THE WINTER BELL Salem halted, and listened. The little mellow bell was jangling once more, slowly, not far upstream. Once more it made fitful music in the solitude, as if rung by an un- certain but persevering hand. He had no knowl- edge of how that hand could persevere, or how, to some book-learned persons, it might have seemed the hand of a blind goddess who comes at her own pace everywhere. By early afternoon he sighted Corporation House, a gray sag-roofed cabin, relic of other days, that lingered, not yet ready to fall, where dry cat-tails whispered and shivered in a frozen marsh. From its chimney smoke went mounting past frayed hackmatack points on a sky of more than midsummer blue. Salem climbed the bank, tossed his long hoop-pole faggots down, knocked at the door, and put his head inside. It wias a familiar room that he saw, gloomy, though lighted by one square window in the opposite gable. It smelled of hay mattresses and of green wood try- ing to burn. "And so the old man," droned a lazy voice from somewhere on the floor — u so the old feller he muckles to his pipe, and he squats, and s'e, 'Chop 'em down, Dan; I feel like rottinV " Some interminable story paused, while two THE WINTER BELL 21 listeners gazed at the open door and the new- comer. They sat smoking, each on the end of a bunk, with a rusty stove between them. "Hallo, Sale," said one. He was a long, dark, thin, melancholy young man. "Why, Sale Delfers, 'tis." The second, who looked like the first in a disguise of age, with white hair and narrow white whisker, peered and made sure before speaking. "How'd ye git here, Sale?" "Afoot." Salem knew the pair well. It was Pum Redman, of Wing Dam, and his father. "How are ye? And Trapper Kingcome still a-layin' behind the stove tellin' lies?" The floor trembled as a great weight shifted on the boards, and next moment a face like a red and freckled moon rose, grinning, through the blur of heat waves that danced above the stove. "Hallo, boy!" This interrupted story-teller was a huge, broad man, all solid flesh and lazy good humor. His pale red hair seemed to flicker in the heat, his pale blue eyes to wink between raddled slumber and acute watching. "Come in, shut the door, we hain't brass monkeys. Afoot, hey? And alon'? Where's dog?" Salem entered. "Someb'dy poisoned him on me," he replied. 22 THE WINTER BELL "Who?" All three men spoke at once. Young Pum, of Wing Dam, shook his head mournfully; old Pum removed his pipe to stare; Trapper Kingcome swore loud and deep. "Who did?" "I do' know." Salem tugged off his mittens and spread his hands over the stove. "What I come down to tell ye was, Asy Beard's dead. And git help. Found him fast to the lake, half froze in. Out on the ice not fur from my cove. Didn't have nothin' to chop him free." Silence greeted this news; a silence which, as Delaforce went on warming his hands, was grad- ually broken by the jangle of the solitary bell out- doors. "That's goin' to look bad, maybe, Sale," said Kingcome quietly. Salem glanced up in surprise. He found them all watching him as if with doubt. "What's goin' to?" "You and Asy fought over that dog," declared Trapper. "So we did, last fall. I licked him fair," said Salem. "And Asy twenty pound heavier than me. A good twenty." Trapper's moon face, dotted and flaming, wore an unwonted gravity. "Fo'ks'll think " He paused and shook THE WINTER BELL 23 his big head. u Asy Beard swore to kill that dog, and you 'lowed if he did Fo'ks heard ye, Sale. You said 'twould be the last dog ever he'd lay his dirty hand on." Young Pum gave a disconsolate nod. "Yeah," said he. "That's right, too.' 1 Salem, with his hands outspread but forgotten, stared from one to another of these men. He felt great amazement and a little anger. They were all three good friends of his. "Why, what in tunket ails ye?" he cried. "I never touched him!" What his hearers thought of this declaration he could not fathom. They continued to eye him strangely. The mellow clanging of the sled bell quickened and came with a final hurry, a slap-slap of trace chains on thills, and the sharp- edged noise of runners ripping the crust. A pause followed, a moment of stillness; and then a voice hailed Corporation House. "Hey! Who's in?" All four men went to the door without haste. The keen blue sky, the afternoon sunlight on the snow, made them blink like drowsy animals coming out of a cavern. Below them, close at hand, two ragged lines of bush tops marked where the road curved between flowage and cat-tail 24 THE WINTER BELL marsh ; and here a steaming bay horse, his winter coat frosted white down his neck, along his collar and round the root of his tail, stood harnessed to a sled. A pair of strangers, bulky in fur coats, one of black bear and one of brown-dyed sheep- skin, clung each to a stake and peered upward. What little of their faces could be seen glowed fiery. Between them on the sled lay something flat under a blanket. The driver, in the bearskin, wrapped his reins round a sled stake and beckoned. "We got a dead man here." He spoke not without gusto. "Found him on the lake this mornin'. Come see if it's anybody ye know." The Redmans, father and son, obeyed. Trap- per Kingcome, as he began to follow, gave Salem a brief stare, remarkable in such lazy pale orbs for its hardness. U I don't want to look on him again," said Salem, and remained leaning in the doorway. He saw the driver stoop unwieldily to roll back the horse blanket, while his friends gathered in line, forming with the strangers a wall of backs that hid the sled. He heard the driver's tone of relish and importance. "We been up there gittin' out knees for the Grecian Bend. . . . Yeah. You know her: three- THE WINTER BELL 25 master, is to be, on Honey Cocksall's ways. . Yeah. Coming out this forenoon we run acrost this poor feller." The exhibitor lowered his voice. It rumbled on. u Hit him 'bove the right ear with the blunt of a axe. . . . What I say. . . . Yeah. There's the axe. Found her under the snow alongside him. . . . What was left o' snowshoe tracks, them bobtail kind, plain enough in the crust f'm where he laid to a camp ashore. Who lived there?" Salem heard no answer; but he saw Kingcome's great bulk move. Quietly, as if having seen enough, Trapper drew back and turned saunter- ing up to the house. He passed in without a look, but whispered fiercely from the corner of his mouth, "Come here, Sale! Come here!" No sooner had the young man joined him than with the same ferocity, quick and silent as a pouncing cat, he closed the door, gripped Salem's arm, and swung him across the room to the bunk below the gable window. His free hand was holding out a little heap of silver coins and dirty green paper. "You take this. All I got on me." His broad, freckled face burned with excitement. "Out that winder, and make tracks acrost the border! 26 THE WINTER BELL Quick! The man's a depatty shariff down to Middle Landin\ I know him. He's got your axe. You're the only one round here wears that pattrun o' snowshoe. Come, shin outl" Salem did nothing but look bewilderment. He had never seen Trapper like this, transformed, except in time of danger to somebody else. It was the trait by which the gross lounger and gossip had first won him. "No." He pushed Kingcome's hand away. "Take it. Pay me back when ye git some- wheres safe." Not Trapper's words but his eyes, began to have meaning. "What?" cried Salem in horror. "Do you think I done it?" The other let go his arm, tried to stifle his mouth. "Never mind what I think! You git! Clear out or they'll hang ye, boy." Footsteps and voices were coming up the bank. "I never touched him," said Salem. His brown eyes rebuked this friend. "Told ye so once a'ready." A deliberate, padded knocking sounded throughout the room; somebody at the threshold THE WINTER BELL 27 kicked snow from his moccasins. The door began to open. "Oh, why didn' ye?" Trapper groaned, and sat down on the bunk like one exhausted. "Never knowed such a young fooll" Ill One day in the following spring Salem had reason to think his friend Trapper Kingcome right. It was a very fine day. With eyes closed or eyesight lost a man would have known how fine, and of what season; for besides an unmis- takable new mildness in the air, that smell of drying mud which is more delicate than perfume told how earth lay warming, released from winter, uncovered to the sun. Whiffs came now and then from a distant bonfire, aromatic smoke of burning evergreen; these having drifted by, there settled a warm drowsiness through which pine lumber diffused its clean, hearty scent; and in fits of energy, broken by silence and rest, a horsewhip beat on a carpet, volleying broad smacks that echoed. Salem had not gone blind. The feeling of spring ran in his veins, at once languid and restless, a current overcharged with winter vitality which prompted him to be doing yet checked him by a sleepy surfeit. He knew the season for spring, acknowledged the glory of 28 THE WINTER BELL 29 the day. He sat on a bench in the town jail of Crossport. The walls that imprisoned him had once been whitewashed, but now were a crazy patchwork of bare lath, of old lime scratched with obscene words and pictures, and of great brown spider-legged stains left by tobacco juice. One barred window, without glass, admitted near the ceiling enough reflection of sunlight to reveal the broken plaster, from which hung little pinches of reddish cow's hair, and darker knobs where some bygone cap- tive, furious or jocose, had flung his quids to dry. It was a doleful room. It was perhaps the worst place on earth, for a woodsman who had always gone free, to sit in and be reminded of the spring. "Don't you go nigh it no more." One self spoke to the other self; and weary of their end- less wrangle night and day Salem crouched, elbows on knees, to glare downward. "You keep away from that winder." He knew little about towns or difference of neighborhood, nothing about what he called lock-up houses. This ramshackle den, long scandalous to many decent persons, and soon to be pulled down, he thought was devised, main- tained so throughout ages for a peculiar torment 3 o THE WINTER BELL and disgrace. Outside his window lived the scum of the river, wharf-rat men and women ; to Salem, in the modesty of ignorance, they were his fel- lows, his equals, mankind gathered against him terribly in judgment. He glared down between his feet, seeing a black depth and hating this mankind. What had happened before, and what he sat dreading most, now happened again. The dim light above him fluttered. He looked up quickly and watched, as before, vague lines of shadow on the ceiling join and divide like scissors. Then a voice outside called — the voice of someone with a happy thought — "Hey! Le's go see the murd'rer!" "Where is he?" answered another. "Where they keepin' him?" "Right over here." He knew what sound would come next. It came, a scrambling and kicking of boots on clap- boards. For the twentieth time that day the window grew dark, and Salem hardened himself to meet the stare of another enemy. Hands gripped the bars; a head, black against the patch of glowing sky, hung motionless for what seemed a long time, for what was in fact so long that the blackness took on features — a heavy nose, THE WINTER BELL 31 thick lips, and all the foolish countenance of a young green-eyed lout, grinning with broad teeth. "Hallo!" This thing, like the others, gave a chuckle made somewhat breathless by the effort of holding on. "Hey, how's your neck? It'll know 'fore long how many hund'ed ye weigh behind, a-settin' on air." The mocker dropped from sight, and left the window clear. Some kind of playful combat fol- lowed outside, with bumps and whiskings and feminine squeaks. "I'll hold ye up jest like a baby." "O-o-oh, quit that!" "Sure. I'll histe ye. Hain't it a good pow'ful hand? Set yer pretty little instep right int' the palm of it. Come on, don't be scairt o' me." "Oh, git out, ye great big tomfool! Some- b'dy'll see us." Again the window became darkened. A young woman was looking in. She had bright eyes, a hard unvirtuous face, and a silly, gurgling laugh like a lie in her throat. While she gazed as into the den of a wild beast, pretending fear, her eyes beheld nothing and cared less, for they soon turned to cast their distracted light outward and down, in leers of false merriment, sham affection. "Oh," she cried pertly, "ain't he horruble?" J 32 THE WINTER BELL The word expressed what Salem was thinking of her. "You quit that ! Le' go ! Behave ! I'll sock you one!'* Her flushed face was gone, the room brighter for its absence. "Look 's if he'd like to murder us too," said her voice. "Set-fire 'f he don't!" the other agreed. "Haw, haw!" The pair moved away, dallying. Salem heard their empty jokes, watched their shadows wheel across the plaster overhead to sink among corner cobwebs, and when alone once more fell back into his brooding rage. The last few days had taught him what mankind was like; yes, and womankind. They came to look at him for sport. He sat here with his griefs, "like a passel o* baboons in a cage," he told himself, while other baboons came and grinned at him all day. This latest couple had seemed the worst; he could bear no more of them ; and now as time went slowly by the silence failed to bring comfort, because at any moment they might break it again. His mind was all one raw place that winced in expectation. Or if he made a struggle to forget, then began once more that wrangling of one self THE WINTER BELL 33 with the other. Salem had never known before that there were two of him. Misfortune, like a wedge in a block, had split the man's fibre, which, being hard and clean, therefore parted groaning. He tried to rejoin the divided halves; but when by pure will he succeeded and held himself to- gether, it was only to think; and thought which did not bear on action, which led toward nothing simple and direct to be done at once, chafed against every torn habit of his life with intol- erable pain. "Nothin' don't seem to fit no more," said Salem. The light on the ceiling faded, in time, then took a new direction, and brightened. He knew these changes. Early afternoon had dragged past, late afternoon slowly swung toward eve- ning. He was beginning to hope there would be no more visitors that day. u Ev'body in town must 'a' seen me by now." But the raw place had still to be prodded. More quietly than was usual, without kicking of clapboards or preparatory joking, someone else had come. Two big freckled fists laid hold of the bars, and like a freckled moon with rays of pale red hair a face heaved up its chin over the sill. 34 THE WINTER BELL "Listen here, boy." It was the faithless friend, Trapper Kingcome. "They tolt me you wouldn' hear o' no lawyer," he whispered. "That right, Sale? Got ye a lawyer yit?" Salem answered only with a long look. "You git ye one," said Trapper, in wheedling tones. "Don't go playin' the off ox like that. Nob'dy'll believe ye, alon\ You git ye a good lawyer, 'fore to-morrer." Salem sprang up, caught his bench by the end, and swung it like a weapon. "You put!" he growled. He took only one step forward; there were bars between them; the stout Charley Kingcome was no coward; but something deadly in the fire of Salem's eyes made him drop from the window as for dear life. Salem turned, replaced the bench, and sat down without another word. For a while he heard Trapper's voice, beyond the wall. He took no heed of what the man might be saying. What had been said was enough, and remained there like a persistent echo in the darkness. "Nob'dy'll believe ye." It was enough. All men were liars. Silence followed; probably a long silence, THE WINTER BELL 35 for his wrists — and they were not those of a weakling — began to ache like the head which they supported. A horsefly, the earliest of the year, buzzed round the room, tapped the wall with light rasping touches, and made its aimless- ness a part of the world's vacancy. Toward sun- set, this too fell quiet. Afterward, from outside, there suddenly rose a brief grating and thumping, as of some hollow object that was dragged along the ground. "Hallo!" someone hailed from above the window. "What ye doin' down there ?" It was the drawl of old Denny, who kept the lock-up house and dwelt overhead. Jailer, pound- master, and mild bugbear of truants from school, he was known to look on his duties with a blear- eyed philosophical neglect, through haze from a black Woodstock pipe. Salem could hear the rat- tletrap balcony creak under his deliberate, stock- ing-footed tread. "What ye doin' with that box bigger' n your- self?" From below, after a pause, came an answer. "I only wanted to see Mr. Delaforce," said a young and rather timid voice. "Well, you better hyper horn'," replied the old smoker aloft. A loud sucking noise interrupted 36 THE WINTER BELL his counsel, and a burnt match dropped aslant past the window. "Be'n too many of ye, guess. He don't want to see no more. Be'n pestered plenty enough t'-day. You jest kite along and let him stay put." The dialogue seemed to end. But inside his dirty room a thing was happening to Salem which he could not understand. All day long he had suffered because this careless jailer would not drive his tormentors away; he had renounced the world with every person in it; but now he found himself under the abhorred window, straining up- ward, and calling out. "Let her come !" he cried. "You never stopped the others, Denny. Let her come! Treat me fair. She's the first one who hain't called me — " He choked, and stood breathing hard, his arms raised, his fists trembling against the daylight. Presently the old man grumbled overhead, and stumped away. Again the box drew near, grat- ing hollow on pebbles. A child, or someone light and small as a child, mounted it; pale brown fin- gers rested on the sill; and then a head younger than his own looked down at him, calmly. This late comer was a girl. The evening sun which poured across the front of the jail glowed on her right cheek and darkened the left with • ••.»»»• • » "Good evening, Mr. Delaforce," she said gravely. "How do you do ?" THE WINTER BELL 37 shadow. Tucked between her lips for conve- nience in hauling or climbing, and forgotten, a dandelion shone like a disk of clear flame. Her eyes, dark blue, regarded him steadily, but with an inward sparkle, a widening thrill of enforced courage or of conquered fear. "Good evening, Mr. Delaforce," she said gravely. "How do you do?" Salem could see her only from the throat up, yet he felt certain the child was very small, and too old for her years. Her face — thin, pale under a first coat of tan — had a mingled look at variance with itself, both alert and sad, the look of a youngster who has run wild. Or perhaps the wildness lay in her hair, bright on the side toward the sun, bronze throughout the shadowy half, and all tangled. "You're the first one," declared Salem, "to call me Mister anything." She removed the dandelion, threw it away, and grimacing, rubbed its bitter milk from her lips. The action showed a thin little hand, rough with work, badly chapped. "Why am I?" she asked. "The rest of 'em," replied Salem, frowning, "call me nothin' but murd'rer. Been hearin' it all day. 'Le's go see the murd'rer.' " 38 THE WINTER BELL The child seemed lost in meditation. "Are you?" Salem drew back somewhat, to give her a bet- ter light upon his worn, hairy face. "What do you think?" he inquired. While waiting he doubted if the child might not be a cripple. Her dark blue eyes, under their heavy and fine-curved lids, contained that deep beauty of thoughtfulness granted often to the eyes of the deformed. They looked through him, slow, impartial. "No," she said. Salem nodded at her quickly. "No!" He repeated the word with delight, as if it were a thing to be proud of. "No, you bet you !" They remained studying each other for a while, without speaking. "Thank ye, little girl, for comin' to see a f el- law. You done me a heap o' good." The sadness in her eyes had not altered. "I don't know much." His visitor paused, evi- dently casting about in her mind. "I wish I did. But it does say, 'Thy rod and thy staff they com- fort me.' " Salem shook his head. "You can't tell me nothin' about the rod," he THE WINTER BELL 39 answered gruffly. "It's three-cornered whale- bon' pickled in brine, and laid on hit or miss. I hope you won't never come to feel it, young one." After she had gone he regretted the speech; no use, he thought, in talking so to a child. But she had gone quickly, dropping with a "good-by," and running off. Salem hauled himself to the window, from one edge of which he caught, past the other, no more than half a glimpse of her. Not a cripple; she ran fast — a slight figure in black, taller than he had expected her to be — and slipped through the open door of a house across the way. He could see only half the house. It was a small, unpainted, slatternly building, banked round the sill, not with fir branches but with a trough of hemlock slabs and shingle shavings. The door closed. "Poor little critter," thought Salem. "Her folks can't be no good. Tell f'm the looks of it. They'll leave their bankin' on all summer." While he hung there he found to his great surprise that a change had taken him unaware. Something in his head, like a spring wound tight to the breaking point, had loosened and freed with a rush. The evening air tasted wonderfully sweet and fresh. Sunset flooded that dismal alley by the river, poured through and flowed over the ugliest 4 o THE WINTER BELL things in splendor. On the wharves lumber shone like pile on pile of gold, straight edged, clean as its own warm scent, and mirrored in the dark shore water that between wharves covered the mud flats with a still pool, brown as tea. Out in mid-stream lay the soft color of the sky. He let go and sank back into the dusk. "Maybe I'll swamp a ro'd out through this mess yit," thought Salem. "Tomorrer's goin' to be bad. But don't ye flinch no more." He sat down, and thinking, felt sorry for two mistakes. He had driven Trapper away, when Trapper no doubt meant kindly; and he had for- gotten just now to ask the child her name. IV He did indeed confront the next day without flinching. It was to be his second ordeal in the court room. On Monday he had watched the jury being impaneled and sworn, and heard Judge Knowlton, a white-haired gentleman with quiet, leisurely manners, adjourn the court over Tues- day, saying that he had to attend a funeral, and instructing jury and witnesses to be present at ten o'clock on Wednesday morning. The hour appointed thus found Salem in the dock, composed, not hopeful, but willing to be- lieve that truth might prevail. Or so he felt for a moment, until bad air, the buzz which followed his appearance, and the host of watching eyes made his head swim. The court room was dark and small. The oldest public room in town, it had been a church, built during the days when faith came first in clearing a village out of the woods, afterward outgrown and desecrated. Along the gray side walls high narrow windows rose each to a point in a two-foot-deep recess. Men and boys, their feet dangling above the crowd, stuffed these little alcoves tightly so that no draft 41 42 THE WINTER BELL came in, though the lower panes had been swung open. Under the dangling boots all space was packed level with heads, close fitted, like black and white seeds in a sunflower. A thick, warm smell rose from old rubber matting in the aisles, a stale counter-irritant from old woodwork steeped in tobacco smoke. This might be the odor of the law, Salem thought vaguely, for as a boy he once had smelled it hanging about a law- yer's office. There were too many eyes for com- fort. He tried to meet them, but they were too many, too fixed, and too hostile. Ignoring them therefore, Salem looked toward the judge, who impended aloft, waiting and rub- bing his chin thoughtfully with slender fingers. He seemed a venerable scholar fct his desk, bowed down with the weight of this awful moment. As a matter of fact Judge Knowlton sat there tired, thinking of an old friend he had helped to bury yesterday. The buzzing died away. The roomful settled into expectancy. His glance roving about the field of eyes again, Salem encountered one pair that wished him no harm. Midway in the throng, wedged uncomfortably, a vast, round old man wearing a mop of red-golden hair and beard, both somewhat grizzled, regarded Salem with a be- THE WINTER BELL 43 nignant glare. He was eating what might have been an apple, but his big paw hid most of it. Salem had never seen the man before. He had a great chuckle nose, a wind-blown, weather-beaten air, and eyes pale and clear as a goat's. Next moment he gave Salem a shock by winking at him. Through the crowded windows came, like elfin trumpets heralding the spring, a faint blast of cockcrow, repeated from barnyard to barnyard round the outskirts of the town. Judge Knowlton folded his hands, looked up, and said as though resuming a late conversation, "In the case of The People against Delaforce, are you ready to proceed, gentlemen?" Immediately a tall man in black serge rose from a table below the judge, tossed a lock of dark hair back from his forehead, and replied,